The Forerunners Part 13

The great square of Jerusalem, as in Scene Two, but after the destruction. The half-light of a moon partially veiled by clouds. In the obscurity there can be seen carts, mules, groups of those ready to depart. Voices are heard of persons calling one another and checking their numbers. The people are confused and leaderless. No one pays any attention to the unfortunate Zedekiah, who has been blinded, and whom all curse. Songs are heard, drawing nearer. The singers are in the train of Jeremiah. The prophet speaks to the people, who are at first incredulous and hostile. He consoles them, announcing their divine mission. Their heritage is grief; they are the people of suffering (Leidensvolk), but they are the people of G.o.d (Gottesvolk). Happy the vanquished, happy those that have lost all, that they may find G.o.d!

Glory to the time of trial! From the people, now inspired with enthusiasm, arise choral chants, celebrating the ordeals of ancient days; celebrating Mizraim and Moses.... The choirs break up into groups of voices, now solemn, now gay, now exultant. The whole epic of Israel marches by in these songs, which Jeremiah directs as a skilful driver manages a team. The people, gradually becoming enkindled, wish to suffer, wish to set out for exile, and they call upon Jeremiah to lead them forth. Jeremiah prostrates himself before the unhappy Zedekiah, who has been thrust aside by the crowd. Zedekiah imagines that the prophet is mocking him.

JEREMIAH. Thou hast become the king of sorrows, and never hast thou been more regal.... Anointed by suffering, lead us forth! Thou, who now seest G.o.d only, who no longer seest the world, guide thy people!

Turning to the people, Jeremiah shows to them the leader sent by G.o.d, the "Crowned-by-Suffering" (Schmerzengekronte). The people bow before the stricken king.

Day dawns. A tucket sounds. Jeremiah, from the perron of the temple, summons Israel to set out. Let the people fill their eyes with their fatherland, for the last time! "Drink your fill of the walls, drink your fill of the towers, drink your fill of Jerusalem!"--They prostrate themselves, kissing the earth, and lifting a handful to take with them.

Addressing the "wandering people" (Wandervolk), Jeremiah tells them to arise, to leave the dead who have found peace, to look not backward but forward, to look out into the distance, to the highways of the world.

These highways are theirs. An impa.s.sioned dialogue ensues between the prophet and his people.

THE PEOPLE. Shall we ever see Jerusalem again?

JEREMIAH. He who believes, looks always on Jerusalem.

THE PEOPLE. Who shall rebuild the city?

JEREMIAH. The ardour of desire, the night of prison, and the suffering which brings counsel.

THE PEOPLE. Will it endure?

JEREMIAH. Yes. Stones fall, but that which the soul builds in suffering, endureth for ever.

The trumpet sounds once more. The people are now eager to depart. The huge procession ranges itself in silence. At the head is the king, borne in a litter. The tribes follow, singing as they march, with the solemn joy of sacrifice. There is neither haste nor lagging. An infinite on the march. As they pa.s.s, the Chaldeans gaze at them with astonishment.

Strange folk, whom no one can understand, whether in their dejection or their exultation!

CHORUS OF JEWS. We move among the nations, we move athwart the ages, by the unending roads of suffering. For ever and for ever. Eternally we are vanquished.... But cities fall, nations vanish, oppressors go down into shame. We move onward, through the eternities, towards our country, towards G.o.d.

THE CHALDEANS. Their G.o.d? Have we not conquered him?... Who can conquer the invisible? Men we can slay, but the G.o.d who lives in them we cannot slay. A nation can be controlled by force; its spirit, never.

For the third time the tucket sounds. The sun, breaking forth, shines on the procession of G.o.d's people, beginning their march athwart the ages.

Thus does a great artist exemplify the supreme liberty of the spirit.

Others have made a frontal attack upon the follies and crimes of to-day.

At grips with the force which wounds them, their bitter words of revolt bruise themselves against the obstacles they are endeavouring to break down. Here, the soul which has won to peace, sees pa.s.sing before it the tragical flood of the present. Unperturbed, it torments itself no longer, for its gaze takes in the whole course of the stream, absorbing into itself the secular energies of that stream and the tranquil destiny which leads the flow onward towards the infinite.

_November 20, 1917._

Written for the review "Coen.o.bium," edited by Enrico Bignami, at Lugano.

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 ma.n.u.script sent to Switzerland, where the first German edition has just been published. The circ.u.mstances 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 encyclopaedic 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.s judgment on it; but only to persons of second-rate intelligence can it seem that we should actually pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sion.

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 pa.s.sions. 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 pa.s.s 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 ent.i.tled "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 ent.i.tled "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 a.n.a.lysis. 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, a.n.a.lyses the characteristics of German Kultur, a.n.a.lyses 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 a.s.sociate 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, pa.s.sim).

These a.n.a.lyses 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 a.n.a.lysis 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 circ.u.mstances that produced it. For instance, the wolf, wishing to cover up its tracks, buries its excrement; the dog, a town dweller, stupidly sc.r.a.pes 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 circ.u.mstances. 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 enc.u.mbered 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 a.s.suredly 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 sc.r.a.ping 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 cla.s.s, 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.