than it would be in such a community as human effort may be able to build up in the future. Those who are to begin the regeneration of the world must face loneliness, opposition, poverty, obloquy. They must be able to live by truth and love, with a rational unconquerable hope; they must be honest and wise, fearless, and guided by a consistent purpose. A body of men and women so inspired will conquer—first the difficulties and perplexities of their individual lives, then, in time, though perhaps only in a long time, the outer world. Wisdom and hope are what the world needs; and though it fights against them, it gives its respect to them in the end.
When the Goths sacked Rome, St. Augustine wrote the “City of God,” putting a spiritual hope in place of the material reality that had been destroyed. Throughout the centuries that followed St. Augustine’s hope lived and gave life, while Rome sank to a village of hovels. For us too it is necessary to create a new hope, to build up by our thought a better world than the one which is hurling itself into ruin. Because the times are bad, more is required of us than would be required in normal times. Only a supreme fire of thought and spirit can save future generations from the death that has befallen the generation which we knew and loved.
It has been my good fortune to come in contact as a teacher with young men of many different nations— young men in whom hope was alive, in whom the creative energy existed that would have realized in the world some part at least of the imagined beauty by which they lived. They have been swept into the war, some on one side, some on the other. Some are still fighting, some are maimed for life, some are dead; of those who survive it is to be feared that many will have lost the life of the spirit, that hope will have died, that energy will be spent, and that the years to come will be only a weary journey towards the grave. Of all this tragedy, not a few of those who teach seem to have no feeling: with ruthless logic, they prove that these young men have been sacrificed unavoidably for some coldly abstract end; undisturbed themselves, they lapse quickly into comfort after any momentary assault of feeling. In such men the life of the spirit is dead. If it were living, it would go out to meet the spirit in the young, with a love as poignant as the love of father or mother. It would be unaware of the bounds of self; their tragedy would be its own. Something would cry out: “No, this is not right; this is not good, this is not a holy cause, in which the brightness of youth is destroyed and dimmed. It is we, the old, who have sinned; we have sent these young men to the battlefield for our evil passions, our spiritual death, our failure to live generously out of the warmth of the heart and out of the living vision of the spirit. Let us come out of this death, for it is we who are dead, not the young men who have died through our fear of life. Their very ghosts have more life than we: they hold us up for ever to the shame and obloquy of all the ages to come. Out of their ghosts must come life, and it is we whom they must vivify.”
INDEX
Publication Titles beginning with ‘A’ or ‘The’ will be filed under the first significant word. Page references to Endnotes will have the letter ‘n’ following the number
abuse of power 13–14
adultery 109, 110;
penalty for 111–12
adventure, mental 105–6
Africa 79, 149
aggression 8–9, 31, 56
Allen & Unwin xiv
alliances of nations 65
America:
B.R.’s reputation in xiv;
and England 26, 65;
as free State 26;
helplessness of citizens in 35;
money, respect for 59;
safety of 36;
War of Independence 147;
and worship of money 71, 73
anarchy 25, 26, 35, 132
anti-capitalist movements 34
Aquinas, Thomas 129
Army 25, 28n, 29, 63
art/artistic creation 6, 10, 21, 59, 138n, 150
artificial injustice, law 78
Athens 99
atomist philosophy xv, xvi
Aurelius, Marcus 157
Australia 34
Austria 29
authority:
in education 93;
function of 39;
and institutions 10, 13, 17;
in marriage 121;
and obedience 100;
and religion 14;
of State 37;
traditional bonds based on 122
aversion, common 18, 19
Balance of Power 61
beliefs 2–3, 98
Bentham, Jeremy ix
bias, of Governments 37–38
biological groups 18
birth-rate 114, 115n, 117;
selectiveness of 118, 120
blasphemy prosecutions 26
blind impulses 6, 7
Boer Republics 56
bondage 136
Burns, Delisle xv
Butler, Sir William 56
capital and labour, conflict between 17
capitalism 75, 86, 87
captains of industry 80–81
Carlyle, T. 18, 19, 21
Catholic religion 115, 117, 129, 133
Caxton Hall, London xi, xii
Century Company xiv
children:
