【英文读物】From the Black Mountain to Waziristan.docx

【英文读物】From the Black Mountain to WaziristanTHE UNCONQUERABLE Reporters in the war-smitten countries of Europe tell us that one effect of the horrors of death, wounds, and heartbreak is that the men are turning back to the churches. Out of the obscene muck of materialistic force is springing a revaluation of the spirit in man. Man is a curious animal. He seems to give forth his finest product only when crushed. We expect him to “curse God and die,” and suddenly his face lights up with the heavenly vision. We loathe poverty and fight disease and avoid wounds, tyranny, and oppression. Yet, somehow only when these come, do 6 the rarest flowers appear on the human bush. I know a young man, twisted, crippled, paralyzed, unable to feed or dress himself, yet who sits daily by his window with a shining face. He is cheerful, helpful, a fountain of joy to all who know him. The boys love to gather in his room at night and play cards and tell stories. One would think he would be a gloom and a burden; he is an uplift. You soon forget his limitations. You soon cease to pity him, for he does not pity himself. He does not drain you; he inspires you. In how many another family is the sickroom the shrine of the house. How many a stricken invalid woman is the resting-place for her worried husband, the delightful refuge for her childrens cares! It is not the strong, wealthy, and powerful 7 that always gleam with optimism and radiate hope. Too often the house of luxury is the nest of bitterness, boredom, and snarling. Petulance waits on plenty. Luxury and cruelty are twins. Success brings hardness of heart. The world could get along without its war lords, millionaires, and big men, with all their effective virility, better than it could do without its blind, deaf, hunchbacked, and bedridden. Some things we get from the first group, but the things we get from the second are more needed for this star-led race. Little girl, with twisted spine and useless legs, with eyes always bright with golden courage, with heart ever high with undaunted love, we could spare all the proud beauties of the ballroom or the stage better than you. 8Their bodies are finer than yours; but then we are not bodies. What a strange and strangely magnificent creature is man! And how proud his Maker must be of him, for all his faults! You cannot crush him. Put him in prison and in its half-light he writes a “Pilgrims Progress.” Strike him blind and he sings a “Paradise Lost.” When Beethoven died, a post-mortem examination showed that since childhood he had suffered from an incurable disease, aggravated by improper medical treatment and by want of home comfort and proper food. His liver was shrunk to half its proper size. He always had family troubles that annoyed him beyond endurance. His finest works were produced after he was deaf. And this was the majestic soul that was unparalleled master of music, whose art was 9 immeasurable, will be immortal! Yet we have heard fat artists whine because they are mistreated! What a piece of work is man! Too wonderful, too unconquerable, too divine for this earth! His home must be among the stars!KINGDOM COME What do we want? What precisely do we mean by the Millennium, or the Golden Age, or Utopia? What sort of “Kingdom Come” is it we pray for? Sit down sometime and think it over; try to get rid of the vagueness of the idea, and to determine exactly what conditions would satisfy you and all of us. The effort may not be without good results upon your present notions. Just as a suggestion let me give one statement of the kind of Millennium that appeals to me. It is that state of society and that perfection of government in which there shall be secured for every human being Intellectual 11 Liberty, Equality of Opportunity, Justice in all Human Relations, and free Spiritual Fraternity. This is somewhat like the French motto, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, only the terms are defined a bit, and Justice is added. First, Intellectual Liberty. The last element of coercion, direct or indirect, must be removed from the processes of the mind. The Ethics of the Intellect must be acknowledged. The mind must work absolutely unbribed by expediency, the opinions of others, fear, or authority. There can be no perfect unity of love and service that does not rest on perfect freedom of thought. There must be entire Equality of Opportunity. The state ought to see to it that every baby coming into the world has an equal start with every other baby. All inheritance of wealth that interferes with this 12 should be abated. Every child should receive adequate training for the worlds work. There will never be equality of intelligence, of physical force, of genius, nor of any other kind of ability; inequality in these respects adds zest to life. And the advantages of personal ability do not cause injustice; it is custom-buttressed and law-intrenched privilege, unearned and undeserved yet perpetuated, that oppresses the world. Justice is essential. When that comes, there shall be no more benevolence and charity as we now practise them. The great hunger of mankind is not for kindness and mercy and pityit is for justice. When we have justice we shall have peace, as it is written: “Righteousness and peace kiss each other.” Lastly, we shall have free Spiritual Fraternity. The problem of the race is one of 13 fraternizing. We now get together in sects and nations. Religiously and politically we as yet feel but faintly the universal breeze. We do not realize humanity. The human nerve is feeble. Some day the idea of universal brotherhood shall burn in the race with a heat and shine far stronger than the present sectarian, partisan, and patriotic enthusiasms. I do not think human nature will have to be transformed to get these things. It is a question of vision. We need to see. When once we understand what we want we will organize and get it.THE HUMANITIES VERSUS THE IDEALS The humanities are the ordinary universal feelings, such as family affection, aversion to cruelty, love of justice and of liberty. The ideals are the so-called big enthusiasms, as religion, patriotism, reform, and the like. The humanities are sometimes called the red passions; the ideals the white passions. The great institutions of the race have been formed and kept alive by the white passions. These include churches, political parties, nations, and various societies and associations, secret and public. The progress of mankind has been made through institutions, embodying ideals, 15 which we may call the centrifugal force. The humanities have always pulled against this, and may be termed the centripetal force. Thus, although great ideals present themselves to men as beneficial, yet in the carrying out of them men often become cruel, unjust, and tyrannical. So the greatest crimes of earth are committed under the influence of movements designed to do the greatest good. Under the church we have seen persecution, a ruthless disregard of human feeling, families torn asunder, opinion coerced, bodies tortured. The humanities in time destroyed the baleful power of the religious ideal, its dreams of dominance and its inhuman fanaticism. Plain pity and sympathy battered down the monstrous structure of iron idealism. The horrors of the medieval inquisition 16 and the dark intolerance of puritanism had to yield to the humanities. Most of the great tragedies have been the crushing out of human and natural feeling by some ideal which, once helpful, has become monstrous. Such were the Greek tragedies, where men were the victims of the gods. War is the colossal force of an ideal, patriotism, where the check of the humanities has been entirely cut off. It is supposed to ennoble men and states. It has always been the preferred occupation of the noble class, kings and courtiers, because the contempt of personal feelings and the merciless sacrifice of the humanities have seemed grand and royal. But by and by war must yield to the eternal humanities. Sheer human sympathies will abolish it. 17The humanities are peculiarly of the common people. Therefore they find expression and come into political effect quickly in democracies. In the United States, for instance, the rule of a religious party or the program of patriotic militarism is impossible. We have too much red passion to permit the ascendency of white passions. “Uncle Toms Cabin,” a book of red passion, sympathy for the negro, overthrew the “white” ideals of the slave oligarchy. The cry of a starving mother, the protest of wronged workmen, can defeat the apparently resistless power of massed capital. One drop of blood outweighs the most splendid scheme of the theorist. The history of the world is the unceasing struggle of the humanities against great ideals which, crystallized into institutions, have become inhuman.PRECEDENT Precedent is solidified experience. In the realm of ideas it is canned goods. It is very useful when fresh ideas are not to be had. There are advantages in doing things just because they always have been done. You know what will happen. When you do new things you do not know what will happen. Success implies not only sound reasoning, but also the variable factor of how a thing will work, which is found out only by trying it. Hence, the surest road to success is to use a mixture of precedent and initiative. Just how much of each you will require is a matter for your judgment. 19To go entirely by precedent you become a mossback. You are safe, as a setting hen or a hiving bee is safe. Each succeeding generation acts the same way. There is a level of efficiency, but no progress. Boards, trustees, and institutions lay great stress upon precedent, as they fear responsibility. To do as our predecessors did shifts the burden of blame a bit from our shoulders. The precedent is the haven of refuge for them that fear to decide. Courts of law follow precedent, on the general theory that experience is more just than individual decision. Precedent, however, tends to carry forward the ignorance and injustice of the past. Mankind is constantly learning, getting new views of truth, seeing new values in social justice. Precedent clogs this advance. 20 It fixes and perpetuates the wrongs of man as much as the rights of man. Hence, while the many must trust to precedent, a few must always endeavor to break it, to make way for juster conclusions. Precedent is the root, independent thinking is the branch of the human tree. Our decisions must conform to the sum of human experience, yet there must be also the fresh green leaf of present intelligence. We cannot cut the root of the tree and expect it to live, neither can we lop off all the leafage of the tree and expect it to live. The great jurist, such as Marshall, is one who not only knows what the law is, but what the law ought to be. That is, to his knowledge of precedent he adds his vision of right under present conditions. Precedent is often the inertia of monstrous iniquity. War, for instance, is due 21 to the evil custom of nations who go on in the habit of war-preparedness. The problem of the twentieth century is to batter down this precedent by the blows of reason, to overturn it by an upheaval of humanity. Evil precedent also lurks in social conditions, in business, and in all relations of human rights. The past constantly operates to enslave the present. We must correct the errors of our fathers if we would enable our children to correct ours. Our reverence for the past must be continually qualified by our reverence for the future. We are on our way to the Golden Age. The momentum of what has been must be supplemented by the steam of original conviction, and guided by the intelligence and courage of the present.THERE IS NO LABORING CLASS It cannot too often be stated that the labor problem is not a class affair, but that it concerns the entire human race. There may be a class of aristocrats, of plutocrats, of criminals, of society idlers, or of any such group whose instinct is to withdraw itself from the common mass of humanity. But for laborers this is an impossibility. They remain, and must remain, part and parcel of the whole people. They are the people. There can be no laboring class. It is a contradiction of terms. Especially is this true in America, where from the President of the country down to the coal-heaver everybody is supposed to 23 work. So strong is this supposition, that the inference is that whoever does not bear some part of the worlds burden is a diseased unit in humanity. The ultimate aim of all normal progress in social justice is to remove these units. All who have wealth in excess of a reasonable accumulation of the products of their own labor, all who live on endowment and inheritance, all who are sycophants, idlers, or holders of sinecures, must some day, when the terms of justice shall have been worked out, be put to work, and those who will not work shall not eat. Just by what route the millennial state of simple equity shall come we cannot say, but come it surely will, and the profits of individual labor of brawn or brain shall go to the individual, and the profits arising from the state or social combination shall go to the state, to the people as a whole. 24One of the most far-reaching acts of 1914 was the statement by the national congress, in its passage of the anti-trust law preventing the use of the Sherman act against trade unions, that “the labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce.” The implications of this declaration it will be difficult to see for some time. It seems now to strike a blow at the very centre of the old system of business under which the world has operated for some six thousand years. It means that humanity does not consist of employers and endowed persons, of nobles, wealthy people, and professional mendoctors, lawyers, priests, and squires; that culture, schools, courts, and senates are not for these only, and that the employed, the clerks, and workmen, who make the money for these upper classes, are not on the 25 same economic level as the spades and pens they handle; but that a man; any man, and his wage are direct concern of government; that the iron law of supply and demand may govern the grinding of flour, but not of human creatures, and that the brute law of competition shall some time, in some way, be changed to the human law of co-operation.THE PATH TO PERFECTION The path to perfection, it has been said, leads through a series of disgusts. The sinner is converted not when he reforms, but when he experiences revulsion. Dr. Chalmers defined the renovating force as the “expulsive power of a new affection.” Any form of pleasure