the world generously. All these things are unnecessary and can be ended by wisdom and courage. If they were ended, the impulsive life of men would become wholly different, and the human race might travel towards a new happiness and a new vigour. To urge this hope is the purpose of these lectures.
The impulses and desires of men and women, in so far as they are of real importance in their lives, are not detached one from another, but proceed from a central principle of growth, an instinctive urgency leading them in a certain direction, as trees seek the light. So long as this instinctive movement is not thwarted, whatever misfortunes may occur are not fundamental disasters, and do not produce those distortions which result from interference with natural growth. This intimate centre in each human being is what imagination must apprehend if we are to understand him intuitively. It differs from man to man, and determines for each man the type of excellence of which he is capable. The utmost that social institutions can do for a man is to make his own growth free and vigorous: they cannot force him to grow according to the pattern of another man. There are in men some impulses and desires—for example, those towards drugs—which do not grow out of the central principle; such impulses, when they become strong enough to be harmful, have to be checked by self-discipline. Other impulses, though they may grow out of the central principle in the individual, may be injuries to the growth of others, and they need to be checked in the interest of others. But in the main, the impulses which are injurious to others tend to result from thwarted growth, and to be least in those who have been unimpeded in their instinctive development.
Men, like trees, require for their growth the right soil and a sufficient freedom from oppression. These can be helped or hindered by political institutions. But the soil and the freedom required for a man’s growth are immeasurably more difficult to discover and to obtain than the soil and the freedom required for the growth of a tree. And the full growth which may be hoped for cannot be defined or demonstrated; it is subtle and complex, it can only be felt by a delicate intuition and dimly apprehended by imagination and respect. It depends not only or chiefly upon the physical environment, but upon beliefs and affections, upon opportunities for action, and upon the whole life of the community. The more developed and civilized the type of man the more elaborate are the conditions of his growth, and the more dependent they become upon the general state of the society in which he lives. A man’s needs and desires are not confined to his own life. If his mind is comprehensive and his imagination vivid, the failures of the community to which he belongs are his failures, and its successes are his successes: according as his community succeeds or fails, his own growth is nourished or impeded.
In the modern world, the principle of growth in most men and women is hampered by institutions inherited from a simpler age. By the progress of thought and knowledge, and by the increase in command over the forces of the physical world, new possibilities of growth have come into existence, and have given rise to new claims which must be satisfied if those who make them are not to be thwarted. There is less acquiescence in limitations which are no longer unavoidable, and less possibility of a good life while those limitations remain. Institutions which give much greater opportunities to some classes than to others are no longer recognized as just by the less fortunate, though the more fortunate still defend them vehemently. Hence arises a universal strife, in which tradition and authority are arrayed against liberty and justice. Our professed morality, being traditional, loses its hold upon those who are in revolt. Co-operation between the defenders of the old and the champions of the new has become almost impossible. An intimate disunion has entered into almost all the relations of life in continually increasing measure. In the fight for freedom, men and women become increasingly unable to break down the walls of the Ego and achieve the growth which comes from a real and vital union.
All our institutions have their historic basis in Authority. The unquestioned authority of the Oriental despot found its religious expression in the omnipotent Creator, whose glory was the sole end of man, and against whom man had no rights. This authority descended to the Emperor and the Pope, to the kings of the Middle Ages, to the nobles in the feudal hierarchy, and even to every husband and father in his dealings with his wife and children. The Church was the direct embodiment of the Divine authority, the State and the law were constituted by the authority of the King, private property in land grew out of the authority of conquering barons, and the family was governed by the authority of the pater-familias.
The institutions of the Middle Ages permitted only a fortunate few to develop freely: the vast majority of mankind existed to minister to the few. But so long as authority was genuinely respected and acknowledged even by its least fortunate subjects, medi?val society remained organic and not fundamentally hostile to life, since outward submission was compatible with inward freedom because it was voluntary. The institutions of Western Christendom embodied a theory which was really believed, as no theory by which our present institutions can be defended is now believed.
The medi?val theory of life broke down through its failure to satisfy men’s demands for justice and liberty. Under the stress of oppression, when rulers exceeded their theoretical powers, the victims were forced to realize that they themselves also had rights, and need not live merely to increase the glory of the few. Gradually it came to be seen that if men have power, they are likely to abuse it, and that authority in practice means tyranny. Because the claim to justice was resisted by the holders of power, men became more and more separate units, each fighting for his own rights, not a genuine community bound together by an organic common purpose. This absence of a common purpose has become a source of unhappiness. One of the reasons which led many men to welcome the outbreak of the present war was that it made each nation again a whole community with a single purpose. It did this by destroying, for the present, the beginnings of a single purpose in the civilized world as a whole; but these beginnings were as yet so feeble that few were much affected by their destruction. Men rejoiced in the new sense of unity with their compatriots more than they minded the increased separation from their enemies.
The hardening and separation of the individual in the course of the fight for freedom has been inevitable, and is not likely ever to be wholly undone. What is necessary, if an organic society is to grow up, is that our institutions should be so fundamentally changed as to embody that new respect for the individual and his rights which modern feeling demands. The medi?val Empire and Church swept away the individual. There were heretics, but they were massacred relentlessly, without any of the qualms aroused by later persecutions. And they, like their persecutors, were persuaded that there ought to be one universal Church: they differed only as to what its creed should be. Among a few men of art and letters, the Renaissance undermined the medi?val theory, without, however, replacing it by anything but scepticism and confusion. The first serious breach in this medi?val theory was caused by Luther’s assertion of the right of private judgment and the fallibility of General Councils. Out of this assertion grew inevitably, with time, the belief that a man’s religion could not be determined for him by authority, but must be left to the free choice of each individual. It was in matters of religion that the battle for liberty began, and it is in matters of religion that it has come nearest to a complete victory.[8]
The development through extreme individualism to strife, and thence, one hopes, to a new redintegration, is to be seen in almost every department of life. Claims are advanced in the name of justice, and resisted in the name of tradition and prescriptive right. Each side honestly believes that it deserves to triumph, because two theories of society exist side by side in our thought, and men choose, unconsciously, the theory which fits their case. Because the battle is long and arduous all general theory is gradually forgotten; in the end, nothing remains but self- assertion, and when the oppressed win freedom they are as oppressive as their former masters.
This is seen most crudely in the case of what is called nationalism. Nationalism, in theory, is the doctrine that men, by their sympathies and traditions, form natural groups, called “nations,” each of which ought to be united under one central Government. In the main this doctrine may be conceded. But in practice the doctrine takes a more personal form. “I belong,” the oppressed nationalist argues, “by sympathy and tradition to nation A, but I am subject to a government which is in the hands of nation B. This is an injustice, not only because of the general principle of nationalism, but because nation A is generous, progressive, and civilized while nation B is oppressive, retrograde, and barbarous. Because this is so, nation A deserves to prosper, while nation B deserves to be abashed.” The inhabitants of nation B are naturally deaf to the claims of abstract justice, when they are accompanied by personal hostility and contempt. Presently, however, in the course of war, nation A acquires its freedom. The energy and pride which have achieved freedom generate a momentum which leads on, almost infallibly, to the attempt at foreign conquest, or to the refusal of liberty to some smaller nation. “What? You say that nation C, which forms part of our State, has the same rights against us as we had against nation A? But that is absurd. Nation C is swinish and turbulent, incapable of good government, needing a strong hand if it is not to be a menace and a disturbance to all its neighbours.” So the English used to speak of the Irish, so the Germans and Russians speak of the Poles, so the Galician Poles speak of the Ruthenes, so the Austrians used to speak of the Magyars, so the Magyars speak of the South Slav sympathizers with Serbia, so the Serbs speak of the Macedonian Bulgars. In this way nationalism, unobjectionable in theory, leads by a natural movement to oppression and wars of
