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 Out of
Revolution
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF WESTERN MAN

De Te Fabula Narratur

Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy

\.

1938 \
NEW YORK .

WILLIAM MORROW AND COMPANY

 TO
THE FAMILY OF

HENRY COPLEY and ROSALIND HUIDEKOPER GREENE

in their homes at
Cambridge, Mass. Dublin, N. H.
Durham, N. C. Mount Carmel, Conn.

In meines Vaters Garten soll die Erde

Dich umgetriebnen vielgeplagten Mann
zum freundlichsten empfangen . . .
Goethe, Na usi kaa ·Fragment.
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

THE AUTHOR OWES TWO KINDS OF THANKS. ONE GOES TO A GROUP OF

friendly supporters who have helped him in parts of the prepara-
tion of the manuscript; the other to friends who have made the
whole enterprise their own to an unusual degree.
In the first group, I am happy to list the following names: Pro-
fessor Dietrich Gerhard, of St. Loui_s, for going over the whole
manuscript and making suggestions from the historian's point of
view; my colleague at Dartmouth College, Professor W. K. Wright,
and Mrs. Wright, for reading proof; Professor Adolf Zeller, of
Breslau, for the use of a photograph in his work on Carolingian
architecture; the Verein filr Kunstwissenschaft, Berlin, for the
photograph taken from Hanns Swarzenski's Die Deutschen Buch-
malerein des Xlll. ]ahrhunderts, Berlin, 1936; the Baker Memorial
Library, of Dartmouth College, for the use of a reproduction of
Orozco's panel of Christ; Mr. Rollo Walter Brown for the passage
from his How the French Boy Learns to Write, Harvard University
Press; Messrs. A. P. Watt and Son, London, Doubleday, Doran &:
Co. 1 New York, and the heirs of Rudyard Kipling for the quotation
from Her Majesty's Servants from the Jungle Book; Brandt and
Brandt in New York for the insertion from John Brown's Body
(Farrar &:. Rinehart, Inc.), by Stephen Vincent Benet; Arthur D.
Little for the quotation from The Handwriting on the Wall, Little,
Brown &: Co., Boston; Robert McElroy for permission to quote from
The Social and Political Ideas of the Revolutionary Era, London;
Professor Arthur Meier Schlesinger .for the quotation from New
Viewpoints in American History, Macmillan. Mr. Harvey J. Swann
was most gracious in allowing a passage from his French Terminolo-
gies in the Making to be incorporated in the French chapter. Eugen
Diederichs in Jena, Germany, who published my earlier book, men-
tioned in the "Post-War Preface," generously gave up his idea of an
English translation. when I explained to him that a completely new
book must result from my life in the New World.
The staffs of the libraries at Harvard University, at •the Fogg
Vll
Vlll ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Museum, and at t~e Germanic Museum in. Cambridge, and espe-

cially at Dartmouth College, have been very patient with an author
who so frequently required most abstruse materials. ·
And yet, ~II this gratifying sympathy, such as every author would
cherish, was not ~.nough to launch this work when it had to face the
dutiful opposition of many defenders of pre-War scholarship. My
friend C. J. Friedrich, Professor of Government at Harvard Uni-
versity, recognized the difficulties of my enterprise even before I
came to these shores, and as early as 1932, he mobilized Mr. Paul
Herzog and Dr. Gerald Else for a first attempt. Although his first
plan came to nought, it gave me the courage for further initiative,
and he was helpful in every possible way in each of the later stages.
My friend Thomas H. Thomas in Cambridge contributed several
historical maps which show his experience as a cartographer of his-
tory and his· abiding interest in my work. And then came Professor
Richard Cabot, who, with that generosity and faith which are so
singular with him, saved the situation when it seemed impossible
to bring this work before the public. ·
As to Henry Copley Greene and Rosalind Huidekoper Greene-
they have become a part of the book. Obstacles in the outside world
or in the author's style meant nothing to them. I do not think there
is a page which has not definitely gained from their suggestions.
Mr. Greene has put two years of unflinching, patient labour into
the manuscript. The preparation for printing has had the same
degree of attention from Mrs. Greene. The experience itself of such
a co-oper<!Jive fellowship is unique. It . testifies to the thesis of this
book tha#inspiration, genius, talents, or simply thought, language,
writing, are not merely means for starring lonely individuals; they
are uniting people in a common life. ·
E. R.-H.
Four Wells
Norwich, Vt. ·
June 24, Ig38.

'
 CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

THE STAKES OF WORLD WAR AND

WORLD REVOLUTION
I. A Post-War Preface 3
II. Arcana Revolutionis: To the Revolutionaries 16
III. The Stakes: Liberties and Loyalties 26

PART ONE

FROM LENIN TO LUTHER: THE SECULAR

REVOLUTIONS
IV. Russia: The Eurasian Factory for Cereals 35
V. France: The European Genius of the Ile de France 126

VI. England: ~mmonwealth Within the Western

\Vorld 257
VII. Germany: A Nation's Forests and the Soul's Chorale 359

TRANSITION

VIII. Polybius, or, The Reproduction of Government 453

lX
x CONTENTS

PART TWO

FROM THE ROMAN EMPIRE TO AMERICA:

THE CLERICAL REVOLUTIONS
IX. The Roman Emperor Without His Empire 485
X. Rome: The Revolution of the Holy St:e 516
XI. Italy: The Garden of the Italian Renaissance (The
Second Clerical Revolution) 562
XII. Polybius Once More: Our Economic Future 594
XIII. The Survival of Austria-Hungary 607
XIV. The Mills That Grind 621
XV. The Americans 643

EPILOGUE

THE METANOMICS OF SOCIETY

XVI. Articulating Periods and Co-ordinating Memories 689
XVII. The Future of Revolution 708
XVIII. Farewell to Descartes 740
XIX. The Survival Value of Humour 754

Appendix 759

Index 771
 ILLUSTRATIONS

The World Adjudicated to the Twelve Apostles Endpaper

The Choice of Professions 28

Russia Before the Conquest of Siberia 36

Iconostases 44
Map of the U .S.S.R. 53
The Hapsburg Danger to France-Circa 1535 154
Paris in 1610 156
Vision of the World, Fourteenth Century 293
England Between the Old and the New World, 1578 296
Marinorama: The Great Seal, 16 5 l 300
The King's Sovereignty on the Seas, 1662 300
The Ca5e for Wittenberg~two maps 376-7
The Normal Relation of State and Church 396
An Abnormal Situation 396
A Secular Christ 482
A Medi~val Christ 484
The Rump of the Roman World 487
T he Palace of a Medi~val Emperor 492
The Emperor as Protector of the Holy Ghost 492
Xl
XU I LL USTRA TIO NS

The Apostolic Emperor and Empress 501

The Greatest Invention of the Middle Ages
I. Two Horses in the New Harness 524
II. The Oldest Picture of a Car and Four. About
1200 A.D. 527
The Oldest Type for Peter and Paul 532
Transformations in the Iconography of St. Paul 532
The Scholastic Dream: St. Thomas Aquinas in His School 548
Result of the Papal Revolution 551
Frederick II as Roman Emperor 570
Frederick II as Secular King 570
The Garden of the Empire 579
Excesses of Pilgrimage, Sixteenth Century; Jan Huss, 1515 604
Joint Enterprise of the Americans 674
God with His Elohim Creating Adam 728
The World Adjudicated to Nobody Endpaper

•
 PROLOGUE

THE STAK.ES OF WORLD WAR

AND WORLD REVOLUTION
 CHAPTER ONE

A Post-War Preface

OUR PASSIONS GIVE LIFE TO THE WORLD. OUR COLLECTIVE PASSIONS

constitute the history of mankind. No political entity can be
formed into the steel and concrete of government, frontiers,
army and navy, schools and roads, ·laws and regulations, if
people are not swayed out of their rugged individualism
into common enterprises, such as war, revolutions, adven-
ture, co-operation, by collective passions. Any political effort
must single out the peculiar human passion which, at that
moment in history, will create unanimity and coherence among
men.
Different governments, different civilizations, will exploit
and cultivate, or correspondingly defy and eliminate, different
passions of our soul. Some societies, as the Puritan, will bury
sex so deeply that the visible life of the people turns towards
the sexless virtues and vices of the meeting-house. Another, as
the Russian, may pay little or no attention to the bonfire of sex
emotions, but will outlaw and persecute grimly the gambling
and speculative instincts as revealed at the stock exchange or
the races.
A different type of man and woman is produced by stimu-
lating or repressing different potential passions; and any special
society is based on a peculiar selection in admitting o,r negating
the innumerable desires of our hearts.
This selective process could be overlooked in the Age of
Reason because in that Age man tried to persuade himself that
the increase of Rea~on was the summary of human history. In
fact, the craving for more Reason and more Enlightenment and
•
4 PROLOGUE

more Science, highly respectable and productive as it is, is a

passion nevertheless.
Now, this work intends to disclose an intelligible sequence in
the course of human passions, follies, and beliefs. The history
of our era which, at first sight and in our times, may seem a
crude encyclopedia of all possible methods of government and
public morals, is at closer inspection one ineluctable order of
alternating passions:- of the human heart. As in individual life,
every one of these passions calls for the next. The deeper and
truer it is, the more urgently does it ·call. For such is the noble
nature of man, that his heart will never wholly lose itself in one
single passion or idol, or, as people call it apologetically, one
idea. On it goes from . one devotion to the next, not because it
is ashamed of its first love, but because it must be on fire per-
petually. To fall for Reason, as our grandfathers did, is but one
Fall of Man among his many passionate attempts to find the
apples of knowledge and eternal life, both in one.
When a nation, or individual, declines the experiences that
present themselves to passionate hearts only, they are automati-
cally turned out from the realm of history. The heart of man
either falls in love with somebody or something, or it falls ill.
It can never go unoccupied. And the great question for man-
kind is what is to be loved or hated next, whenever an old love
or fear has lost its hold.
But how do the eruptions of passion make epochs in history?
How do they leave any traces behind?
When and where we love or fear, we are willing to pay. We
are willing to spend money, or in more serious turmoil to sacri-
fice some parts of our own nature, and to consecrate others. We
are ready to forget certain temptations, and to give free rein to
others.
Thus, our energies flow into new channels each time that
our hearts leap. And each leap of our hearts remakes our bodies,
our habits, and our institutions. Since anv heart th~t h~~ t h P
 A POST-WAR PREFACE 5
reward of the sacrifices which our heart has paid for its privilege
to love.
The creation of humankind, then, is the topic of this book.
A history of the inspirations of mankind as a sequel to its bio-
logical prehistory is being attempted today from many sides. Its
plan was first conceived by _Friedrich Schlegel, who founded in
1803 the first periodical to bear the name Europe. He knew
what most of the moderns try to forget: that the crucial test for
any such bridge from biology to sociology is not Egypt or Babel,
but the history of Europe in the last thousand years. If this
period is not explained and illuminated by our world-wide
surveys, nothing is explained and illuminated if we ourselves
would not be included really. Thus, our own concrete past is
the test-case, for all our otherwise too vague discoveries about
humanity.
The idea of this book originated in an experience we went
through in the trenches: that war was one thing to the soldiers
of all nations and another thing to the people at-home. The
attempt to found a new future for the united soldiers of Europe,
that is, for its manhood, on the common experience of the World
War can only be successful if this generation that was killed,
wounded, weakened, decimated, by the War can bequeath a
lasting memory of its experience to its children. Scholars cannot
demobilize until the World War has reformed their method
and th.e_ir purpose in writing history.
I, at least, shall not demobilize until I have made wy con-
tribution to that common enterprise of humanity.
The plan of writing the book in this particular way was con-
ceived in 1917, on the Battlefield of Verdun.
Since then mankind has tried a thousand times to forget its
experience. Sensations of all kinds have drowned our senses and
our thought. Historians have tried to bury the World War under
the standards of pre-War history. Many have measured it with
the yardstick of the Napoleonic wars, or have simply added a
new chapter to their endless chronicle.
But a great new event is more than an additional paragraph
to be inserted in the next edition of a book. It rewrites history,
it simplifies history, it changes the past because it iniJ:iates a
6 PROLOGUE

new future. Anyone who looks back on his own life knows how
completely a new love, a new home, a new conviction, changes
the aspect of his past. How, then, can history remain a piecemeal
confusion of national developments after a conflagration of the
dimensions of the World War? A race that was not impressed
by such an experience, that could not rewrite its history after
such an earthquake, would not deserve any history. Men who
did not long for a new history of mankind after the World War
showed thereby that they were withered leaves on the tree of
humanity. Their souls had been killed in the World War.
The present work claims one merit; it not only rewrites the
history of Europe in the light of the experience of the Great
War, but it confesses this dependence frankly. And thereby it
enables the reader to test it. For he knows now that the book
had a real day of birth. If a man refuses to accept the im-
portance of this new date in our history which is called World
War, World Revolution, Suicide of Europe, or Crusade of
America,-whether he be a writer or a scholar, a teacher or a
reader,-he must fight the method of this· book. But .he cannot
refute it, because he does not share the time and period to
which it belongs.
Often among the men who seem to be contemporaries, little
contemporaneity exists. And a contemplative. mind that is
shocked by the origin of this book in the hellfire of war and
revolution may be sure that he and I are no contemporaries.
But T have my contemporaries. They will understand why I
insist upon standing guard on the spot where the earthquake
happened: people. forget so quickly and have such wonderful
devices for disguising or escaping their own cruel experience
of truth.
May we not suppose that all new discoveries in science were
made by the stubborn patience of men who insisted on looking
at everyday things with astonishment in spite of the general
indifference? To the many apples which fell before Newton
we may compare the many falls of man before this \Vorld War.
"The War to end War" was a peculiar war indeed, a war that
revealed something about the laws of the life of nations long
since divined, but how really discoverable for the first time.
}
 A POST-WAR PREFACE 7
A pupil of the World War sees a new future and a new past.
He discovers a new political biology of the human race, filling
the gap between Planckism in physics, Darwinism in zoology,
Marxism in economy, and liberalism in theology and political
history.
Man belongs to the three realms of Earth, Heaven, and
Society. He has always-from age to age-re-established these
three realms and fixed their frontiers. It is the sovereign faculty
of man to do so. But he must not forfeit his · sovereignty by
allowing disorder, disunion, disintegration, to creep in. The
incoherence of modern knowledge in history and nature,
physics and theology bec;ame so frightening even before the
World War that nothing but a breakdown of civilizatioQ could
be expected from a kingdom so terribly divided against itself.
The World War seemed more a test than a surprise to those
who had suffered from the atmosphere of an occidental uni-
. versity and the absurdities of its specialists.
This book owes to the World War its daring to be simple
and general. It owes to events that far transcend our individual
judgment its rediscovery of what is important and what is
trifling in the life of mankind. This book owes to the sufferings
of millions and tens of millions its ability to treat the history
of the world as an autobi·ography.
I am unable to stare at history like a spectacle to be conten1-
plated from a box. The rise of empires in the West or the
downfall of civilizations in the East, the laws of systole and
diastole or of Classicism and Romanticism, and all these nice-
ties of a spectacular world history have lost their meaning since
the solidarity of twenty million men has nailed all the surviv-
ing soldiers to the same cross of reality. The world's history
is our own history. If it were but a world's history, its facts
would be endless, the selection of its millions of dates would
be undertaken in vain; it would be nothing but a hopeless
library of dust.
What if it were the autobiography of our race? Perhaps the
tree of life in the Garden of Eden and the tree of knowledge
are not far distant from each other.
If a man or a generation confess that they have lived and
8 PROLOGUE

sinned perhaps they can arrive at knowledge. History is perhaps

dark and confused only if we stare at it from the outside, with-
out solidarity, without having first lived and sympathized.
Let us try to read world history as our own autobiography.
Then our interest will centre equally on the future, the present
and the past.
Even so, it may seem doubtful whether the tools for such
an undertaking were available . .Mankind certainly could not
have an autobiography if it had always been like modern
society: completely sensational, totally forgetful, and 'wonder-
fully devoid of memory. But mankind has always, with the
utmost tenacity, cultivated its calendar. One of the innovations·
of this book in point of method consists in taking the political
and ecclesiastical calendar seriously. A day introduced into the
calendar or a day stricken out of the calendar, means a real
change in the education and tradition of a nation. Mankind
writes its own history long before the historians visit its battle-
fields; days, festivals, holidays, the order of meals, rest and vaca-
tions, together with religiously observed ritual and symbols,
are sources of political history, though rarely used by the aver-
age political or economic historian.
A holiday is always a political creation and a political instru-
ment. It is true, the importance of a ·calendar and a change in
the calendar are not visible in the history of some ten or thirty
years. Neither does creative· history begin until at least three
or four generations have collaborated toward the same goal. No
individual can go very far. Real achievements must be based on
the continuity of many generations.
We shall try to mention only those events or facts which
have left their mark, or are apt to leave their mark, upon a
time of more than one generation. The unicellular individual
and the history of isolated events are too microscopic to interest
us here, where we are concerned with the vital process of man-
kind's revolutions. But this does not mean that we wish to
escape into the generality of abstract ideas or statistics.
The drama of a playwright, the blessing of a beggar, the
prayer of a monk, the fury of a mob, can all become essential
features in the · survival of the race. Guy Fawkes' Day, the
 A POST-WAR PREFACE 9
Wedding of Figaro, a holiday like All Souls', and the sun.-song
of St. Francis are better illustrations of history than our reason-
ing. I have tried as much as I could to let them speak for them-
selves. Every human being is endowed with the wonderful gift
of speech. He can express his own secret better than anybody
else. We rarely reveal our true selves in the market place of
life. Words often seem to be made to hide our thoughts. But
the more we try to avoid emphasis, or even truth, in our speech,
the more the few moments stand out in which language has
the full weight of self-expression. A bride speaking her de~i­
sive "Yes" or "No" before the altar uses speech in its old sense
of revelation, because her answer establishes a new identity
between two separate offsprings of the race and may found a
new race, a new nation. We are so dull that we rarely realize
how much history lies hidden in marriage, and how the one
word spoken by the bride makes all the difference between
cattle-raising and a nation's good breeding.
Mankind and the groups of humankind express their secret,
their choice, and their destiny as clearly as a bride on her
wedding day. It is not necessary to record the everyday life of
a nation for a thousand years in order to know its aim and
inspiration. The great creations of history do not reveal their
deepest sense nor their soul every day. But each has its wed-
ding day; and the words and songs, the promises and laws of
this period of a nation's life express its character viva voce
and settle its destiny once and forever.
Unfortunately the records of the past cannot be assembled
mechanically. They have to be selected. Any selection means
personal responsibility; and such personal decisions and choices
make the reader dependent on my judgment. But how can he
rely on it unless he has a chance of checking me? I have tried
to offer him that chance.
I do not start my narrative at a point or date in the past for
fear of preventing the reader from testing my prejudices and
superstitions. I begin with the present day because there he
is in every respect my peer and will very soon find whether I
am betraying his confidence or not. For he knows most of
the facts as well as I 'do.
10 PROLOGUE

The narrative of the book begins with the Russian Revolu-

tion and goes back to the great French, English and German
Revolutions.
All four are secular revolutions made by the temporal power.
A comparison of all four shows them to be interdependent
and to have created a system based on their permanent inter-
play. At the end of this part it will have become evident that
the World War dealt with religious aspects not represented
by these four revolutions. Empires, Crusades and Churches,
Citizenship and Authority, were values in the World War and
are values today, though of older origin than 1789 or 1688.
For that reason a second part will establish a peculiar parallel
to the four great national revolutions, a parallel which has
become visible through and since the World War. America,
especially with its unsolved polarity between complete secu-
larism and a powerful Catholic church, Anglo-Saxons and im-
migrants, cannot act reasonably in the present World Revolu-
tion without being equipped to look at it as a short phase in
a millennial revolution. The American Revolution itself is
treated in a special chapter, because America contributes some:
thing peculiar to the doctrine of Revolutions. It belongs to at
least three different types of revolutionary events.
No nation's history remains orthodox after a war or after
a revolution. That is why we divide our biography into periods
defined by the great upheavals of all mankind, or at least, of
all Christendom. Events which did not evoke a universal inter-
est do not enter our plan. The World War demands a world
biography, not a mosaic of national histories.
However, since the book covers a period of goo years and
claims to convey in every chapter genuine and primary new
discoveries and unfamiliar facts, the specialist would expect a
series of monographs and after fifty years a ten-volume book.
Reader of this Preface, I longed to do that. I like monographs
and have written some scores of them on subjects relating to
this book. Yet the result is depressing. From many experiences
I was forced to draw the conclusion: An attempt to resuscitate
the memory and .f aith of Europe would be doomed if it ap-
pealed to the expert alone. Though it is quite impossible to
 A POST-WAR PREFACE 11

write such a book without a series of minor mistakes, I have

no reason to fear the expert. He himself knows better than
anyone else that these minor mistakes do not diminish in the
course of monographical research. They change their aspect
but they remain. Clio, the Muse of history, seems to have a
tertain sense of humour. She stirs our p~ssion for accuracy to
the utmost, but the goal, like the wheel of fortune, always
recedes.
My real sorrow is that I cannot publish more volurries on
so glorious a subject. Much of the evidence could easily have
been doubled; on the German rite of Konfirmation, the English
change from Sunday to Sabbath, the historical role of men
like Shakespeare or Tolstoi or Matthias Gruenewald, more
c9uld have been said. What a chapter "Sex in the literature of
the nineteenth century" might have made! I advise the student
to look up the volume of the Italian, Mario Praz, on The Flesh,
Death and the Devil in Nineteenth Century Romanticism, a
work of real importance. But my duty was to condense things
so that our new science may get a fair trial before the gen-
eral public.
In the meantime my German work, published at -Jena in
1931, Die Europaeischen Revolutionen, Volkscharaktere und
Staatenbildung, though treating the same problem with the old
method of the romantic historical school, and from a narrower
point of view, supplies a vast and different mass of material.
The scholar, therefore, is asked to use the two books as a
combined effort to put the source material before him.
Furthermore, I might have added a list of documents which
could serve for textbook study and could form the basis for
a dictionary of Europe's cultural and political language. It
would be the first of its kind to transcend the limits of French,
English, German, Russian, and make clear the dialectical and
interdependent structure of humankind's speech. This is of
immediate practical importance in the days of radio. I simply
quote a broadcast of the German Chancellor Bruening to the
nations of the world in 1931. Bruening, talking German, called
the effort that was needed an effort of the "soul." The French
newspapers rendered this by "morally"; the English by " loy-
12 PROLOGUE

ally." "Soul," "1noral," "loyal": all three powerful notions.

Apparently they have the same ring in the ear of millions; .t hey
produce the same amount of blood-pressure in Germany,
France, and England respectively. And although the fact is hot
mentioned in any existing dictionary, these words may take
each other's place in the viva voce dialogue of real people.
We are recording the viva voce autobiography of Europe
during the last thousand years with regard to its connection
backwards; we are convinced-, however, that any history of the
evolution of mankind will prove a failure if it tries to deprive
us of the greatest contribution of the last twenty years. I mean
any history of mankind which fails to start frankly and modestly
from the experiences and sufferings of our own get;ieration.
The autobiography of Europe is, after all, a very short story.
It covers the space of not more than twenty-seven generations.
It is really all present and our own. Though it is brief and full
of failures and disasters and fears and maladies and disap-
pointments, it is the only age of mankind which is fully ac-
cessible to us; it is our present, even where it seems to be
the past. ·
In this book we shall treat the last 900 years as _one present
day, the heritage of which we must all receive before it is
allowed to go down and be buried.
The autobiography of a world such as Europe was and is,
is no one man's enterprise. Any individual's sympathies are
lim~ted. His feeling of solidarity · cannot be all-comprehensive,
as it ·ought to be. Man's heart has and must have its predilec-
tions. But my own short-comings can be overcome by the
collaboration of my readers. Most of them not only know their
own country better than I but will find thousands of small
traits-vocabulary, sports, customs and manners~to add to the
chapter on one or the other member of the European family
of nations.
This natural and spontaneous collaboration by the reader of
this book would be the best guarantee of its truth. In adding
from his own memory whatever he knows of French, English,
Russian, or Italian history, he cannot but enlarge and round
out our draft.
 A POST-WAR PREFACE

Without such a collaboration, how could I venture to press

the wealth of a .millennium between the covers of one small
volume? The more our readers will begin to mobilize their
own thoughts, with the help of our suggestions, the sooner will
the past of revolutions become a living part of the future of
society.
Any real book conveys one idea and one idea only. Its author
is a man who is so slow of understanding that he has to write
a whole book where common sense is perfectly satisfied with
one phrase or slogan: In my case it is even worse: I am so slow
at grasping the simplest rules of the game of human society
that I have had to tum the subject over and over again. At
last, when I was thrown into the turmoil of the Great War,
revolution seemed to offer the best clues to the labyrinth; and
for twenty years I have been following that clue. This tenacity
may seem very cumbersome. Is not society moving with tre-
mendous speed, progressing indefinitely? Like a Proteus, it has
changed so quickly during the last twenty years that all we can
do is to keep track of the latest developments. I am still point-
ing at the World War, and shall always dq so. Surely, then, my
book must lag far behind. I am conscious of this crime. I am
delaying the consummation of things. But some sinners are
bold enough to boast of their sins.
My predecessors in the field of political thought poured the
strong wine of progress into the water of human traditions,
lest their generation miss its opportunities. I wish to pour the
water of patience into the strong wine of revolutionary excite-
ment, so that my contemporaries may not waste their time in
feverish and fruitless efforts.
"Too early" is the bane of most political efforts that have
been made during the last fifteen years. When we act too early
we are not ·ourselves; our intellect, our will, our efforts, are in
1dvance of our true being, and they may easily forfeit-by their
restlessness-our own secret destiny.
Obstinate retardation is, therefore, my voluntary choice. By
::iuiet procrastin~tion '\Ve can hope to add a few inches to the
nantle of time, which modern man wishes to outgrow too
;uddenly and too violently.
 PROLOGUE

The end of time is dose upon us, in the technical sense of

the word. When one man can address the whole earth at once,
when a World War technically is over after four years, time
has lost its retarding power. Our technical gain in respect to
time is so enormous that we should be entering on a period of ·
;

"plenty of time." Of all the kinds of abundance promised us

by the "economists of plenty," abundance of time seems the
most general and m~st certain. Unfortunately, the abundance
of time is not quite the same thing as the fulness of time. Most
people who have plenty of time never fill it to the full. They
throw it away. To gain time, and to learn how to regain time,
is the content of mankind's story of earth. I~ is the easiest thing
in the world to work all the time, compared to the incredible
difficulty of spending one hour or one day of rest in a
proper way.
Humanity has always conquered the flux of natural time by
means of a rhythm between active and passive time-spans. To
reconquer his holidays, to establis.h a new and better time-
schedule for life, has been the great endeavour of man ever
since the days of Noah.
The revolutions of mankind create new time-spans for our
life on earth. They give man's soul a new relation between
·present, past, and future; and by doing so they give us time
to start our life on earth all over again, with a new rhythm
and . a new faith. For ordering the three dimensions of time,
we need what St. Ambrose called the times of times, temporum
tempora, standards for making the right distribution between
past, future, and present. These standards are more easily shat-
tered than a thermometer for measuring fever. Modern men
talk so much about the three dimensions of space that they are
ignorant of the fact itself that space has nothing of the tremen-
dous triplicity of dimension which time contains.
The new science of revolutions reveals the secret of the "too
early" and the "too late"-and, on the other hand, of timeli-
ness. To you, most learned readers of this preface; I have
divulged this secret too early, since you unfortunately have no
time to read th e book. The book itself narrates how mankind
 A POST-WAR PREFACE

has conquered new time and overcome the waste of time, and
thereby reconquered itself, whenever too lazy hearts or too
nervous brains had squandered the ftdness ·of time which
is mankind's share in eternity.
 CHAPTER TWO

Arcana Revolutionis: To the Revolutionaries

ALL OVER THE GLOBE TODAY CONSERVATIVES ARE APPROACHING

more or less timidly the "Arcana Revolutionis," the secrets
and mysteries of revolution. Highly respectable people· are
beginning to think of themselves as possible revolutionaries
and are studying revolutionary technique.
After the French Revolution conservatives all over the world
insisted upon a Restoration, and waged wars of deliverance
against the ] acobins. In 1815 even an American statesman,
Gouverneur Morris, breathed his semicomical sigh of relief:
"Rejoice, America, the Bourbons are restored." Today the
nationalists in many countries are preparing a revolution, the
right kind of revolution, against the Hydra of Marxism. Nobody
seems afraid of starting a revolution. It is always astonishing
to find bankers, scholars, parsons, enthusiastically awaiting a
new. revolution without divining the satanic character of all
revolutions, whether it come from the left or from the right.
God certainly does not grant to a revolution what he gives
to thirty or fifty years of loyal collaboration in peace and law.
Awareness of this fact seetns to have vanished. A man is terribly
old-fashioned if he mentions this little difference. Conserva-
tives now insist on being as revolutionary as anybody and defy
those who might call their undertaking reactionary. The prin-
ciple of revolution no longer distinguishes the radical half of
mankind alone. It animates the ranks of conservatism as well.
Law, Legitimacy, Loyalty, have lost their flavour. Employers,
lawyers, gentlemen, generals, admirals, begin to think in tenns
of Revolution . .
16
 TO THE REVOLUTIONARIES

War, external war, used to be the measles of national life,

which even respectable people accepted as inevitable. The new
situation created by the World War excludes war for one half
of the nations. War has virtually ceased to be a weapon in the
life of the European nations. They know more or less that it
has become impossible. Any war in Europe would mean not
only the Twilight of the Gods, but quite literally the "finis"
of Europe in every respect. in a time of global economic units,
any territory smaller than a sixth or seventh of the earth cannot
have a separate existence, either economic or military. An indi-
vidual European State is beneath the level of a belligerent
power. It was below the level even in 1914. But it remained
for the World War to make clear once for all that war could
never be waged again by a single nation on the continent of
Europe. The time of national wars in Europe is past. When.
frontiers are as thin as tissue-paper, and when aeroplanes fly
300 miles an hour, there is no room for a duel between two
nations whose territories are less than a thousand miles in
diameter.
I know how many dreams are still being dreamt to ·the con-
trary in Europe. But in spite of these dreams, the actual practice
of her statesmen follows two lines of policy:
First of all, insofar as they think of war, they think of it only
in terms of coalitions, alliances, and vast combinations includ-
ing at least one whole continent or more. This in itself means
the end of national war, in the proper sense of the word-
that is, a single nation waging war to achieve a national purpose ·
or end. The time for such private adventures, in Europe at
least, is gone.
You may reply: But it can return!
The second character of all practical policy in Europe since
the War is such as to make even the prospect of a later swing-
ing back of the pendulum remote. This second line of policy
is a still stronger check on the possibility of war. European
statesmen are shifting their use of military, belligerent lan-
guage and procedure from real war to civil war.
For the first time in history civil war has become popular,
and all the glamour of war heroism, of courage and virility.
 PROLOGUE

surrounds the Black Shirts or Consomols or Storm Troopers

who, in Italy or Russia or- Germany, march against the enemy
inside the nation!
In the days of £schylus the Greeks used for civil war the
name of "cock-fight," because the cock was then a new and
exotic bird from Persia, and the old Greek tribes were as much
bewildered by a civil war as they were by that strange Persian
bird.
Civil wars have been looked upon ever since as one of the
gre~test evils of mankind, much more distressing than war
because of the total lack of chivalry, code d'honneur, limitation,
which a civil war involves. A war between relatives, friends,
comrades, seemed atrocious. Compared to a civil war a war
against Indians, Blacks, Huns, unbelievers, was easy to under-
. stand. Distance made a foreign people strange _people. Today
this difference between war and civil war has broken down,
and we witness the funeral of the old predilection for foreign
wars.
Jefferson showed the way to a new age when he asked for
a nice little revolution every twenty years. Sine~ the time of
Jefferson the Earth itself overshadows all its parts; the flag of
humanity overshadows all the .national flags. Mere distance no
longer makes us act as foes and belligerents.
When Mr. Schoen, the German Ambassador in Paris in 1914,
added to the formal declaration of war the remark: "C' est le
suicide de l'Europe,'' and when Lyautey, the French Marshal
in Morocco, greeted the news of the outbreak of the war with
the classical statement: "War in Europe? A war between Euro-
peans cannot but be a civil war!" War and Civil War had be-
come as like as twins.
The World War turned the scales definitely in favour ot
civil war. The pacifist movement today is only an overtone
of the movement of hard and unshakable facts, which forbids
war and plunges humanity, with its thirst for fight, into civil
wars instead. Pacifists are needed in America, because America
is physically able to fight. In Europe warriors, with all their
lust for battle, cannot go to war-and they know it. T herefore.
 TO THE REVOLUTIONARIES 19
they plunge into revolutions. This explains the failure of the
pre-War type of socialists all over the world, like Briand or
MacDonald or Otto Bauer. It originates in their instinctive
shunning of both external war and civil war.
The average Western socialist was certainly no adherent of
war. He was aware that Revolution was something inevitable
and natural. But by instinct, though he detes~ed war, he also
disliked civil war.
Ebert, the Socialist President of Germany, exclaimed that
he "hated social revolution like the plague.'' The fighting
instinct of the socialists was nowhere strong enough to make
them feel at home in civil war. And so not the socialist worker,
but only the national soldier returning from the World War,
was cold-blooded enough to embark on civil war.
He could do it because he had been a soldier. In the trenches
he had discovered for himself that war was obsolete. The
trenches on the other side were filled with his brothers, victims
of their respective "staffs," as he was. The motto, "Soldiers of
all countries, turn about, unite," was a real moral experience
in the trenches between 1914 and 1918.
It was more serious, more real, than the Marxian slogan of
international solidarity of the workers, because -it -was discov-
ered casually, so to speak, by men who had no intention of
experiencing anything of the kind. It was a real discovery and
conversion against expectation or purpose. It was the more
convinc.ing for this lack of premeditation.
As a matter of fact, the soldiers discovered in the trenches
exactly what Marx had tried to explain to his followers in
terms of class-consciousness. The German National Socialists
emphasize the soldier's experience without realizing that the
soldier is the proletarian in a new aggregate form. The peas-
ants, workers, craftsmen, of one nation or the other are de-
scribed by the National Socialists as a "thoroughly brotherly
lot." Wicked people, especially Jews, made for war; the nations
themselves are peaceful.
That is good Marxian propaganda. Princes and capitalists
were Marx's bugbear; Jews and journalists seem to be the bug-
bear of Nazism. Both try to explain the same event: the impos-
20 PROLOGUE

sibility of war in the future. Both use poisoned weapons to

demonstrate the wickedness of a puzzling past where wars could
happen. They hate each other. But war is abolished in both
ideologies. To Lenin, war is nonsense, and he cedes the western
territories of Russia. To Hitler, every drop of German blood
is precious, and he would certainly prefer to shed Jewish blood
instead. "Wars destroy the elite of the nations. That is why war
is out of the question," he told a French interviewer.
However, both Lenin and Hitler agree in one thing. First
of all, they realize that farmer and worker are not interested
in war, but beyond that, both are too much the pagan and
the soldier not to use the fighting force and the discipline of
a uniformed army. They abolish war by constantly using war
machinery for internal purposes. In this respect, Mussolini is
like them. The Pontine marshes, the Lira, like the coal mines
of Donez, grain, money, raw materials, houses, homesteads, are
attacked, conquered, and victoriously annexed by this new civil
war strategy. The telegrams all read like reports from the front,
whether it be Mussolini or Stalin who receives them. Powers
usually given to the executive only in time of war are bestowed
upon it in this present emergency because the emergency is
the new warfare. Lincoln's martial law measure of Emancipa-
tion and Roosevelt's New Deal powers are closely connected.
Emergency is like war, and this holds good in many countries
today. It is a great moment in the history of humankind when
the energies of the race shift from martial laws to civil emer-
gency laws. The armies enlisted against territorial enemies are
superseded or outstripped by armies enlisting against nature.
The change is so colossal, coming as it does after six thousand
years of warfare, that it can neither be achieved completely
in a few decades, nor its scope be understood by the passionate
masses. Still, it is true, revolution has taken the place of war.
To a mankind that recognizes the equality of man every-
where, every war becomes a civil war. Now every revolution
creates two people, two groups as foreign to each other as two
nations. This is a stage of human growth in which common
language and traditional values lose their grip on the individ-
ual. We see hi.m falter. People proud of their ancestors, their
·>
 TO THE REVOLUTIONARIES 21

education, their wealth, come to be guided by the course of

the stock market or by the headlines of their favourite news-
paper. It is overwhelming to discover suddenly the thorough
forgetfulness of modern man. People forget and betray their
faith, traditions, and breeding twice a week.
The sudden shift from security and civil peace to civil
war and emergency throws long-bearded colonels and "gilded
youth" alike into plain madness. Suddenly discovering that the
sanctified division between War and Peace is gone, they acclaim
the necessary evil, class-war, as a spJendid chance for excite-
ment. Even many of the literati today shift from one extreme
to the other.
The process of "Revolution" .has been discovered and is
being manipulated today like Mr. Nobel's dynamite, as a thing
in itself. The future of mankind depends very much on the
skill and courage with which "the elements of Revolution"
shall be faced and considered. The empirical facts are so abun-
.dant, experiences are so eloquent, that a science of revolutions
is possible. The future depends largely on the speed needed
for the conscious retraining of the instincts awakened in us by
the pre-scientific era which has irrevocably passed away.
A writer on revolutio·n who, like a Cassandra, should only
deplore this future would not be fit for his task, which is to
face the greatest catastrophes of mankind without anxiety. But
he who has himself lived through the World War and two
revolutions can even less take the side of the layman who finds
history · simply splendid, thrilling, fascinating, and looks for-
ward to being thrilled by the excitement of one more rev-
olution.
Life asks of us that we bury our dearest loves, and go on.
It makes allowance for tears and for joy, for despair and for
hope. A blind partisan of revolution may be satisfied with mere ·
triumph, finding everything bigger and better, believing in
progress. A sense of fairness w111 tell the reader that neither
satisfaction nor mere abhorrence can be the answer of any man
who was a man and used his human privilege of love and hate
in the days before the War. A peaceful civilian simply shudders
when people are sh9t in the streets. No autobiography can kill
22 PROLOGUE

old loves in favour of new. Going on from a funeral to a

baptism, from a shipwreck to an inauguration, man must weep
with the mourners and be merry with the merry. I think we
have shown that the necessity of a change is felt everywhere
these days. The real point is that we must change with honour
from one faith, one hope, one love, to the next, neither insult-
ing the dead we have had to bury nor idolizing the new house
which we are just building.
To change with honour seems terribly difficult. Most people
are like weathercocks, turning with every change of wind. They
rush from one creed to the next as if a change of faith were
nothing, and in the end become nothing themselves.
In a time of revolution, our own volition contributes very
little to our change. Volition and intention can do very little
in a world which makes a principle of changing every day.
Perhaps the real danger in such a period comes from our own
inertia, which makes us accept all these changes stoically but
without conviction or personal decision. We cannot really
change without a period of waiting and relearning.
To change with honour seems to be the paradoxical effort
that is asked of us today. It means keeping away from both
extremes, that of a rigid honour which kills the force of prog-
ress, and that of a mechanical change which leaves the potenti-
alities of the soul untouched.
A book on Revolutions has to deal with the great forward
leaps in the history of man. Natura facit saltus, nature proceeds
by leaps and bounds in the life of the human race. But man
survives death and nations survive their sudden leaps, thanks
to the finest forces of the soul. The marching soldier, the fight-
ing revolutionary, the struggling business man, have less per-
sonality than the bride who leaves her father's and mother's
house for her own and that of her children. She changes with
honour. She regenerates the race. She abandons and restores.
She loses and wins.
Humanity will never stop acting and believing in action as
long as men are men and hope to be like God. The era of
revolution and the future of revolution depend on man's ac-
tions, ambitions, {:rimes, and aggressive theories.
 TO THE REVOLUTIONARIES

The new phase of revolution which is beginning today must

put the destructive forces of mankind to use. The thunder-
. storms of revolution have ceased to be irregular forces of
nature; in the future they can be understood and manipulated
like water or fire.
The future of revolution and the future of m~nkind depend
on the readiness of the human soul to galvanize political action
with a spark of that queer power which regenerates mankind.
Today the significance of revolution is not that of a disgrace-
ful interruption between two periods of quiet and peace. The
present time is-for reasons to be explained in this book-bound
to attempt an organization of future society by which the dyna-
mite of revolution may be manipulated as persistently and con-
sciously as contractors use real dynamite in building tunnels or
roads.
To use lawlessness itself as a vital force in the reconstruction
of mankind was Jefferson's dream. It is the sober reality of the
future.
The manipulation of "Revolution" as a vital force for change
can be based only on the recognition of a permanent relation
between lawlessness and law. In nature, water and fire hate and
destroy each other. But man began to master nature when he
was courageous enough to force water and fire to collaborate
in his service. A loyalist revolutionary seems a contradiction in
terms; but the mutual permeation of men's souls has reached
a point w~ere this contradiction in terms will cease to be a
contradiction in life. When a potential revolutionism and a
potential conservatism exist in every man, it is useless to pre-
. tend that revolutionaries and conservatives are divided like
black and white, angels and devils. We are all eighty per centers
or fifty-one per centers now. The old "nil humani a me alienum
puto" may stand for the new truth that the forces of revolu-
tion and passive obedience are only two sides of the same thing,
man's heart and soul. Since War and Peace are both in our
souls, civil war and civil peace, revolution and legality, must
play the roles in the future which war and peace played in
former days.
A man who fougl~ t for his country has always been honoured,
 PROLOGUE

and the more so the more peaceful he was by nature. Now

that war is becoming impracticable, revealing itself in fact as
civil war, the warrior cannot simply be replaced by the civilian
of the old type. The warrior must give way to the "revolution-
ary loyalist," a man who is ready for both order and revolution,
law and overthrow of law. '
This is neither a simple task nor an agreeable outlook. But
even in times of revolution there should be a place for truth
and for an investigation of truth such as we have tried to make
here.
To us, entering a phase of world-wide mutual permeation
where everybody knows and hears of everybody else, where the
earth is so small that words fly like lightning and men fly like
words, revolution comes upon the scene with a new significance.
By its abolishing war, or changing it into civil war, the .f uture
revolution already presupposes the solidarity of mankind. As
long as war was waged against unbelievers, pagans or Huns,
civilized men could think of their foes as less than human.
This is impossible now. Henceforth men are equals, and all
wars are civil wars within one society. This in itself, even com-
pared to the last war and its propaganda, is a revolutionary
kind of spiritualization.
This mutual permeation and world-wide solidarity has been
a long time in the making. The old Messianic faith of mankind
told generation after generation that man was a citizen of one
great commonwealth. The national warrior who has been con-
verted into a conservative revolutionary or a revolutionary
conservative will find in this book the rules which governed
the husbandry of the corresponding human forces in the past.
He will see that the national warrior was always a fighter for
universal values as well. This paradox is an old paradox. It has
always been creative. It has revolutionized and regenerated· the
race again and again, though the names of the forces have
changed.
And it is important to know that the things created by
genuine revolutions are all immortal. The era of revolutions
described in the following chapters has produced a sequence
 TO THE REVOLUTIONARIES 25
of forms of characters, of types of .m en and of human homes,
which a future revolution cannot simply destroy.
Forms created by revolution, by the most terrible sacrifices,
are revolution-proof themselves. Tomorrow will fail if it does
not understand why these creations of today and yesterday are
immortal. ·
 CHAPTER THREE

The Stakes: Liberties and Loyalties

JUST WHAT ARE THE EUROPEAN TRADITIONS WHICH MAY BE CON-

sidered the stakes of the present convulsions? A short list of
very simple, everyday facts introduces us best into the centre
of revolutions.
After the World War, when normalcy seemed to be around
the corner, decent progressives wished to get back to work in
their old lines: creative art, business enterprise, scholarly re-
search, missionary work, technical inventions and so on. These
people were convinced, both in Europe and in America, that
they could rely again on the institution of the "peace of the
land." The peace of the land had been an institution from time
immemorial. Though it had been disturbed under special con-
ditions, as, for example, during the gold rush to California, it
had always been easily restored by a vigilant community. For
nobody doubted that it was a precious thing that ought to he
restored at all costs.
But what actually happened, and is happening day after day
and year after year all over the world, is not quite in line with
this reverent tradition. Shooting, riots, strikes, kidnapping,
pogroms, not only happen on a colossal scale, but for the first
time in history they are extolled as an expression of recon-
quered vitality or sound class feeling or in whatever formula
the general new gospel of "Violence for the sake of Violence"
is masking itself. Thinkers like Sorel the French, and Pareto
the Italian, engineers of the new art, minds of the ........ ,................ _. .
type which are accustomed to smelting iron, mixing . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
vivisecting pigs, turn towards human politics with
 ta1th in .. thermodynamic laws·· and overlook the practical
~quences of any political theory of the vivisecting charac-
)hirts of all colours indicate the return of private armies,
tg the name of free associations in order to build up semi-
rnmental authority. Feuds and vendetta are cultivated
l under the new name of strong racial sentiment. The
ld War, as we can see, has rehabilitated ways of thinking
forms of act~on abolished a long, long time ago. Once we
:onscious of this new glorification of violence, we shall
:e with renewed interest over the period which. felt strong
gh to eradicate vendetta and violence of clan and family
·eating the famous "Truce of God." In the beginning, this
: was a modest attempt to pacify as many days in the week
~re dedicated in ~aster week by the passion and resurrec-
of the Lord. Its vestiges date back to the eleventh century;
ok centuries to advance from these four holy days to a
>lete, lasting peace of the land forever. It is, therefore,
ing but the sober truth 'that we progressives of today are
drawing on a political institution created some nine hun-
years ago.
similar development can be sketched for our present prob-
of labour and employment. The free choice of a profes-
has been the pride of Western man ever since the Refor-
:>n. That a farmer's son might become a physician, a
~r's progeny a lord, a butcher's son a banker, is an estab-
d faith in every civilized country. Luther actually put this
into· practice when he and thousands of monks and nuns
ned into the world and took up trades. These people
l not turn to their fathers' trades, as had been universal
tion before. They came from their monasteries as indi-
1ls, stripped of their clannishness and their family-loyalties
' human being ever had been before. As the Truce of God
1eeded a superhuman effort, so it needed this superhuman
gency of some hundred thousand individuals to establish
ight of every living generation to rearrange society. Thus
ocial revolution of the sixteenth century has given to the
.ern world liberty of cleaving calling our
:e.
 After the Great War, this liberty begins to be curtailed by a
"N umerus clausus,'' a limitation of the total number of stu-
dents in universities and in the trades as well in many coun-
tries. A hereditary peasantry is one of the goals of the present
rulers of Germany and of many leaders in other countries.
Workers are sent out by the hundreds of thousands in a more

HANS BURGKMAIER
The new freedom in choosing a profession.
Sixteenth Century.

or less compulsory way on public works, whole districts are

evacuated or resettled, and emigration and immigration are
checked to such an extent that for all practical purposes they
have ceased to exist~ Certain professions have been closed for a
series of years while on the other hand pupils are assigned to
professions which the government wishes to expand. It almost
approaches the methods of cattle-raising when such and such a
number of aviators, teachers, watch-n1akers, is called into exist-
ence each year according to plan. Hff\Vever, a whole public-
school system was erected on the basic principle that a man was
to choose his profession. Now liberal arts the
universities and the public schools talk of progress on
 the pnnc1p1e ana the parucu1ar insutuuon wn1cn nas
ed them to go forward in that direction for the last four
red years is crumbling.
re recent achievements are equally imperilled. The world
it to the British Commonwealth that during the last cen-
' donations, endowments, voluntary gifts, have been the
1pring of progress in many fields. Were it not for the right
n to do what he liked with his property little would exist
ligion, art, science, social and medical work today. No
1 arbitrary power was allowed to interfere with a man's
ill as expressed in his testament. On the independence of
J fortunes a civilization was based that allowed for a rich
y of special activities introduced by imaginative donors
ounders. The ways of life explored under the protection
independent judiciary form a social galaxy. Our modern
ors, however, are cutting deeply into this tradition. This
ieved through progressive taxation of inheritance or limi-
t of a man's right over his property, by subsidizing insti-

ls, like Oxford, which were independent formerly. A still

r attempt to annihilate the freedom of wills was carried
Jccessfully in Nazi Germany. This is all the more inter-
:, as Germany claims to take an anti-communistic stand,
~o respect private property. The confiscation was per-
~d without any legislation. The social principle of "Gleich-
ung" sufficed. Stipends, Rotary clubs, hospitals, libra-
schools, associations of artists, consumers' clubs, foot-
llnions, lodges, were forced to dismiss their boards of
.ors or trustees or whatever representatives ruled the foun-
1s and new groups of Nazis took over the corporations.
\Vas done even with corporations in business, factories,
tment stores. But the greatest inroad was made in the
Jf the institutions which had come into existence through
enerosity of founders; still, this part of the national rev-
m was rarely noticed abroad. The famous Dartmouth ~ase
L Daniel \Vebster won against the State (a striking exam-

f the progressive significance of the vVhiggish principle)

~ied only a century ago; yet the conditions which made it
 possible for Webster to win are rapidly vanishing, at least in
Europe.
Turning to the American and French Revolutions, we find
that they too introduced a new stimulus to progress. To the
list of liberties they added the freedom of the mind. Not only
were freedom of belief and creative art and science guaranteed
as never before; for the first time in the history of the world
it became possible for a man, thanks to patents and copyrights,
to capitalize on his talents and genius. In fact, we have become
so dependent on the unresting efforts of the inventive mind
that we deliberately encourage.,genius by legislation and other
means. Spinoza had to toil at, the grinding of lenses. In our
times, a writer, a composer, an inventor, are able to make a
living by using the occasional sparks of inspiration. Once more,
progress has been speeded up. Turning from hereditary trades
to a life-time job has meant a new era. Now, any hour may
bring a happy chance.
But again, the institutions which thus protect genius are
losing their former energy. Great trusts are taking over the
movies, the arts, and the process of invention. A chain-gang of
hundreds and thousands of collaborating brains-in chemistry,
electricity, and the whole realm of technique and medicine-
asks for legislative protection. ~
The Truce of God, the free choice of a profession, the liberty
to make a will, the copyright of ideas-these institutions are
like letters in the alphabet which we call Western civilization.
To be sure, they are not all the letters. The Truce of God, for
example, great as it was and slowly as it was established, was
not the only preoccupation of the clerical period of Europe.
The institutions of higher learning, the universities, are a
second element which we cannot omit from our own alphabet
of everyday life. And they too antedate Humanism and Refor-
mation. The idea of a plurality of opinions to be represented
at the same time in the same place on important questions
came as an illumination to the age the great theologians and
lawyers of the Middle Ages. They established an intercollegiate
.... _ unknown Greeks and Arabs.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .# .....

Our ;omission is reallv a qao not in our 1 on n!lo-P

 but in the world outside. It is a gap which we ourselves
tst fill by action. Our contemporaries are asking for institu-
ns to protect the child, the labourer, the mill hand, against
?loitation. The character of the legislation and of the insti-
ions are now under discussion, and as always the problem
1ow to go forward and take the next step without losing the
.ns secured by previous institutions.
f\s a matter of fact, each set of these institutions, when it first
s advocated, seemed completely irreconcilable with existing
ys of life. The people who invoked the new covenant cursed
~ old one and vice versa. This is exactly what is going on
long us today. Labour sees nothing but labour problems;
! older classes see nothing but losses.
It seems, then, not inappropriate to look into the matter
>re deeply and bring into the open what all these institutions
ve in common.
They have emancipated the various elements of our social
istence from previous bondage. Each time one of these insti-
tions came into being, it had a stiffening effect on one type
human activity. Each time it enabled man to direct his
ergies towards ends that hitherto transcended his potenti-
ties. Less and less did he remain bound by the unchangeable
lditions of his environment. A police force means nothing
s than the emancipation of the civilian within myself; for
thout it, I should be forced to cultivate the rugged virtues
a yigilant man. To free the courts from the whims of a
anging government exalts my will and testament to a kind
immortality: something will endure when I have passed
ray. And so each of these institutions was hailed as a deliver-
ce. Not one of them came into existence without the shed-
ng of streams of blood. Each of these institutions was ac-
rded the greatest sacrifices.
The paradoxical truth about progress, then, is that it wholly
pends on the survival of massive institutions which prevent
~elapse from a stage which has once been reached. In general,
is is the last thing a progressive is concerned about.
ake a volte-face and learn to revere our millennium
ogress and invention as a whole. On the other hand,
list is an important lesson for the conservative as well. All the
different sides of h~man nature developed and protected in
the course of time are but sides of our whole being. Whenever
people tried to dwell exclusively on one feature, on one liberty,
and were enamoured of one specialty, life began to wither, and
the inspiration left the institution that protected this special
human activity. For the sake of preserving the previous liber-
ties, the conservative must graft a new branch on the old tree
in time.
I invite the progressive to look about and to recognize the
fact that his insatiable thirst for newness may suck the blood
out of the institutions on which he wholly depends for his
progress. I invite the conservative to recognize the fact that his
old institutions will decay if the sap of the tree is not given a
new outlet into the timely institutions of today.
The ladder of potentialities for progress and emancipation
is shown in the following list:
PROTECTING CORRESPONDING
CENTURY LIBERTIES PRINCIPLE INSTITUTION
20th Freedom for growth, Public character of (?Perhaps: adult edu-
health labour cation, decentraliza-
tion of industry?)

Freedom for talent, Public character of Copyright, patents, a

thought, genius, private ideas written constitution
speech, creativeness
to compete

Freedom of endow· Public character of An independent ju-

ment wills diciary

16lh Free choice of pro· Public character of Public schools

fession. no vows for education
children

Freedom of competi· Public character of Universities

tion between teachers the sciences

nth I~reedom of move- Public character of Judges of the peace,

ment for the men in civil life (truce of public prosecution of
the professions God) crime
 PART ONE

FROM LENIN TO LUTHER

The Secular Revolutions
 CHAPTER FOUR

Russia: The Eurasian Factory for Cereals

rourney to Bulgaria-Little Mother Russia-The Russia of the Soviets-The
ligentsia-Lenin's Private Life-The Failure of the Social Revolutionaries-
Bolsheviks-The Speech of the Russian Revolution-Totality and Reproduc-
(Karl Marx)-The Limitations of a Market-Seeking Economy-The Repro-
on of Man-The True Vieth~ of Capitalism-Dostoevski and Tolstoi-Be-
l the First and Second Revolution-Military Defeat: A Revolutionary Vic-
-World War and World Revolution-The Depression-Judas Iscariot-The
dependence of Revolutions-The First of May and the Abolition of His-
-The Soviet Calendar-Racial History

A JOURNEY TO BULGARIA.

:NI TRAVELLED IN THE BALKANS IN 1927 TO INVESTIGATE THE

pulsory Labour Service of Bulgaria, huge orthodox mon-
ries in the midst of forests and hotels in the cities offered
hospitality. I moved through both, monasteries and hotels,
l a dream of unreality.
Then I entered one of the monasteries high up in the moun-
s, a family of beggars was being entertained by the monks.
ather and his boys, clothed in rags for which any film
lucer would have paid a fantastic sum, had been going to
monastery twice a week for many years. Begging was an
~tution. This family would find its soup ready next week
next year and forever. Charity was the most noble obliga--
of Christians and particularly of monks; begging was a
lition for alms-giving. Procure beggars; otherwise you can-
be charitable. ·
i another abbey-the wealthiest of the country, and visited
.housands of pilgrims, who camp on the porches and ve-
las as well as in the hundreds rooms-the abbot assured
us that the Creator loved bugs, lice, fleas, and mosquitoes as
much as man, so that it would be sinful to lessen the excite-
ments of a night under the beams, black with insects. For fif-
teen hundred years monks have given alms to the poor, and
pilgrims have scratched themselves. And the gold of Eternity
was around them, as it is on the pictures of Christ in a Byzan-
tine Church. 1
On the other hand, when I came to the pseudo-Western
hotels, I met people who were not at home in their own coun-
try. I remember one heavy man who took his degree in Berlin
under the best German specialist in a historical detail of the
seventh century, and who was now trying to act as city coun-
cillor in modern Sofia-and another who, from his studies
in Paris, had carried with him his plan for a wonderful book.
His desk was full of manuscript which will never see the light
of day; for the Bulgarian book-market cannot digest scientific
literature. I found scores of lawyers, too, like cobblers or tailors
in Southern Europe, seated in the windows of their "shops"
at Trnovo, offering their skill in reading and writing to the
illiterate peasants so that these might fight off taxation. As for
the lawyers themselves, they were an intellectual proletariat,
three times as numerous as the- country could possibly feed,
and foreign-born in spirit. A dead church and a foreign-minded
intellectual class are the curse of the countries east of the
Roman and Protestant denominations. Heaven only knows
what any one of us might be guided to do, under conditions
where both sources of inspiration-religion and education-are
equally damaging.
LIITLE MOTHER RUSSIA.

After 1917, the Russian leaders wished to be considered as

purely post-War and Bolshevik. In its totalitarian claim, the
proletarian society abandoned the. whole Czarist past as an-
nihilated and deserving annihilation.
us that the Creator loved bugs, lice, fleas, and mosquitoes as
much as man, so that it would be sinful to lessen the excite-
ments of a night under the beams, black lvith insects. For fif-
teen hundred years monks have given alms to the poor, and
pilgrims have scratched themselves. And the gold of Eternity
was around them, as it is on the pictures of Christ in a Byzan-
tine Church. 1
On the other hand, when I came to the pseudo-Western
hotels, I met people who were not at home in their own coun-
try. !_remember one heavy man who took his degree in Berlin
under the best German specialist in a historical detail of the
seventh century, and who was now trying to act as city coun-
cillor in modern Sofia-and another who, from his studies
in Paris, had carried with him his plan for a wonderful book.
His desk was full of manuscript which will never see the light
of day; for the Bulgarian book-market cannot digest scientific
literature. I found scores of lawyers, too, like cobblers or tailors
in Southern Europe, seated in the windows of their "shops"
at Trnovo, offering their skill in reading and writing to the
illiterate peasants so that these might fight off taxation. As for
the lawyers themselves, they were an intellectual proletariat,
three times as numerous as the country could possibly feed,
lnd foreign-born in spirit. A dead church and a foreign-minded
tntellectual class are the curse of the countries east of the
Roman and Protestant denominations. Heaven only knows
what any one of us might be guided to do, under conditions
~vhere both sources of inspiration-religion and education-are
~qually damaging.

LIITLE MOTHER RUSSIA.

After 1917, the Russian leaders wished to be considered as

Jurely post-\Var and Bolshevik. In its totalitarian claim, the
)roletarian society abandoned the. '~:hole Czarist past as an-
1ihilated and deserving annihilation.
1 Compare the latest report: Ralph Brewster, The Six Thousand Beards of

rtlws, h London, 1935. See also Michael Choukas, Black A

I Vt., 1934.
RUSSIA BEFORE THE CONQUEST OF SIBERIA

~/
1, in tact, Czanst Kuss1a, compared with present-day
Russia, was a different country.
l goo "little Mother Russia" consisted of the central block
hodox Russians, with 66 per cent of the whole popula-
and the western countries, Finland, Poland, and the
provinces, Protestant or Roman Catholic in religion,
'ith an old European tradition.
! Eastern wing, Siberia and Central Asia, more than three
as large as the European wing, contained only 13,500,000
[tants, as against 114,000,000 in Europe. One sixth of the
is Russian. The territory is forty times as big as France.
tandstaaten-that is, the disannexed area yielded up by
!aty of Brest-Litovsk, and guaranteed at first by Germany
ustria and later by the Allies-is one and a half times as
Germany.
sia, in 1914, contained almost as many peasants' house-
( 2 5,000,000) as France had inhabitants at the time of her
ltion of 1789 (24,000,000).
as the Volga that held European Russia together in pre-
ld days. Without the Volga Russia would not be one
·y. The dividing range near the height of Valdai is no
since it is transversed by a combined canal-system of
lometres in length. In the old days boats were carried by
rom one network of river-lines to the other. The name
town of Volotschok, "place where the boats are carried,"
this organization of old Russia.
: Volga is navigable for 1,900 miles. More than 2,000,000
miles belong to the region of the Volga, and the system
ils running to the Baltic Sea greatly extends this region.
lne of the Volga forms the last natural articulation of
on the European continent. About 160 different tribes,
alities and cultural groups lived in this Russian terri-
with the increase of \Vestern influences, these groups
i a frightening increase in their birthrate.
population was not only subdivided into countless na-
ties, but it contained, in some of its parts, artificially
essed suppressed, five and one half millions of that
hich carries it all the of
rfare and religious peace: the Jews. In France, where the
,vs were first emancipated, there wer_e 87,000 Jews in 1900
t of 39,000,000 inhabitants; in Russia 5,250,000 Jews out of
~,000,000 inhabitants. The proportions were: in France,
23; in Russia, 4.23. When we hear of pogroms and theout-
ring and restriction of Jews as daily events in the old Russia,
must not forget this proportion, and the fact that in France
.ook more than twelve years to settle the siin ple affair of an
tocent man like Dreyfus, and that almost at the cost of civil
r.
fhe western territories were divided from Russia proper not
y by religion and history, but by other economic and social
lditions as well. In Finland, for example, no illiteracy ex-
d in 1900; in Russia, 891 out of every 1,000 could not read
write. Russian Poland, though the most agricultural section
all Poland, had at least 500 cities among her 43,000 com-
nities in 1892; Russia counted 486,000 villages and 650
es. The proportion is almost one to a hundred in Poland
l one to a thousand in Russia. In 1890 Russia had 13,000
>metres of railroad, and England 200,000! A striking paral-
in periodicals: Only 800 newspapers and magazines ap-
red in Russia, 342 of them in Petersburg and Moscow, and
throughout the rest of the country.
~he greatest peculiarity, however, was the distribution of
1ate property, 84.63 of the farming land belonging to the
imunity, and only 15.4 3 being private property. "Common
:I" was land given as security for the taxes laid upon the
1. The "Mir," the union among the peasants, was a duty,
a privilege of the community. The apportionment of taxes,
refore, was called "rolling off" or "rolling up" of souls. The
tsure for taxation was the labour-force of husband and wife
glo) or of men, or of eaters, or of good will, sometimes only
ouls.
ri 1861, simultaneously with the emancipation of the negroes
he United States of America, liberalism forced upon Russia
deliverance of the peasants. It is interesting to know
peaceful scheme of emancipation would have
en carried out in 1900, whereas in Russia the last of the
~ps provided in 1861 for redistributing the land would have
en taken in 1932.
In 1861, 22,000,000 "souls of revision" were emancipated
d 15Y2 acres of land were given them pro rata capitis, or
out three hundred and forty millions of acres of land in all.
1917 the peasants took another 250,000,000 acres; but even
these about one third had been on lease before. This may
plain why we are told today that the whole agricultural area
but 530,000,000 acres.
Eighty-five per cent of the whole population lived as peas-
ts. But the word "peasant" should not be mistaken for the
ne as "farming population." Nearly a third of the peasants
~re homeworkers on textiles, candles, timber, furs and metals.
iis helps partly to explain why, out of sixty governments,
ly twenty-nine had grain to export. Another reason was
~ rather poor soil. The fertile district in Central and South-
1 Russia covers but 950,000 square kilometres, twice the
e of Texas. Temperatures of 40° F., and 55 or even 75
! frequent even for long periods of quiet, bright and dry
ather.
Only eight governments or sections were at all thickly popu-
ed (more than seventy people to a square mile). In Russia
find a marvellous example of the truism that homogeneity
no help in organizing a country. Russia was then in a per·
ment state of fermentation from below and artificial reorgan-
tion from above. The fermentation from below is illustrated
the wanderings of the Russian peasant in the last five cen-
~ies. He was no stable freeholder of the Western type, but
ich more a nomad, a pedlar, a craftsman, and a soldier. His
)acity for expansion was tremendous.
[n the fifteenth century Russia covered 560,000 square kilo-
tres,
SQUARE KILOMETRES
in the sixteenth century it covered. . . . . . . . . . 8,720,000
in the seventeenth century it covered. . . . . . . . 14,392,000
in eighteenth century it covered. . . . . . . . 17,080,000
m century (1885) it 11
 ln 1581 Asiatic Russia was opened. Russian expansion, ex-
tending even in the eighteenth century as far as to the Russian
River in Northern California, was by no means Czaristic only.
The "Moujik," the Russian peasant, because he is not a
·'Bauer" or "farmer," or a "labourer," but a "Moujik," wan-
=lers aA.d stays, ready to migrate again eventually year after
vear.
Paul von Sokolovski, a well-known Russian scholar and ad-
ninistrator, calls our attention to the fact that the formation
)f sand dunes goes on continuously in Southern Russia and has
.vrough t this unceasing change of the soil deep into the char-
tcter of the inhabitants. The spring tide of 1peasants was the
)ermanent riddle of Russia. A gigantic land movement-how
:an it be organized? Peter the Great was the first to answer this
1uestion "from outside." He founded St. Petersburg as Russia's
vindow toward Europe. The Czarist State was a state without
L people, chiefly interested not in Russia, but in Europe, in

>olitics, in the prestige or territory which it could find abroad.

fhe Russian lumber and hemp market was Russia's first con-
tection with the world, and the Czarist regime was occupied
rom the first in organizing foreign trade. A forest was always
in hand to be liquidated by a prince or a nobleman when he
vas short of means. In the eighteenth century the English Navy
~as built, to a great extent, of Russian wood. Only in foreign
rade could one find the financial support to govern a country,
D pay an army, a navy, a civil administration, when one got
to real taxes from the Moujiks and had no cities to rely on.
~he timber trade, and later the export of wheat, gave revenues
J princes and nobility. As late as 1904 the grand princes of the
nperial family, speculating on the woods of the Yalu in l\1an-
huria, precipitated the· outbreak of the Russo-Japanese \Var.
""he Colossus with feet of clay had to go in quest of additional
)Urces of revenue, the more he tried to organize the central
ower.
An example of Russian government from the outside was
exportation of wheat with famine raging in
of the exporting sections. The Bolsheviks
ad to imitate this distortion rather in the ten
annexation of big masses of land in the west seemed
remedy against this evil, because all the western regions
lOre articulated, more civilized, and therefore better
~d for traffic. Russia can be compared to the United
1£ America in more than the question of slaves and
and their emancipation. Both are continents which
d to be organized during the last one hundred and fifty
ut in Russia the problem was somehow first solved from
mtier" toward the Baltic coast. It was as if Texas or
.d Nevada had tried to annex the thirteen colonies.
aquering Finland, in dividing Poland, in vanquishing
people of the Caucasus, in getting the Baltic provinces
veden, the Russians inherited an old investment in
and social tradition. They found a surplus for taxation
sily in the Teutonic order, the German harbours and
ties, the Polish craftsmen and peasants, and the Jewish
For Russia, the conquest of new western districts
>rganizing the purely Russian regions! This could be
~d, and was postponed. And who can blame the leaders?
irter of Russia is composed of mire and heath; 200,000
(ilometres become sand dunes every year. Nature in
atry draws towards decay. As a matter of fact, Nature,
erself, is everywhere in decay, though this may sound
:range paradox to Europeans who are intoxicated by
LI and by his childish belief in nature. But Rousseau,
neyards of Neuchatel, is easily excused. The decadence
e is felt more sharply in the middle of vast continents
~rica or Russia. The French revolutionaries in la douce
~he owners of rich plantations in Virginia, or even the
dipper ships from Boston, could believe in fortunes
de with the support of a charitable and helpful nature,
of her treasures and wealth .
. Russia nature is devastating and depressing. Now here
~ so unimproved, or, better still, less closely married
ml of man. The Russian peasant sold his manure to
nez," the German colonist next door. The busy Ger·
l a use manure because he was settled. But
nan freeholder and had been protected and
trained by centuries of education in the Western church. The
reward of such an education is a new relationship to nature
and our duties toward nature. In Russia the Church had never
conquered its liberty from the Empire. It had been petrified
for a thousand years. Nothing had move<l: within the Church
since the famous monasteries of Mount Athos were founded
during the tenth century. Beginning with 922, the old church
of the saints had concentrated in these monasteries all their
forms of praise, thanksgiving, adoration and worship.
These traditions were well-preserved in Russia. The Russian
church, it is true, kept all the joy and delightful cheerfulness
of ancient Christianity, and since there was less struggle with
popes or reformers or puritans, it upheld the old tradition
much better than Western Christendom. The childlike joy and
glee which the members of the Russian and Greek Church feel
and express at Easter are strange for a Roman Catholic, to say
nothing of a Protestant. The last genuine representative of this
pre-War Christianity in Russia, and, for that reason, the last
link between the dynasty and the people, Rasputin, wrote
home. from his pilgrimage to Palestine: "I saw the Easter of
the Roman Catholics in Jerusalem, but the holiday was not
to be compared with that of the Orthodox Church. The Cath-
olics did not look cheerful, whereas with us all the world is
merry on that day, even the animals. The faces of the Catholics
are sad, even at Easter. I think, therefore, that their souls are
not. truly glad. I do not wish to compare the two denomina-
tions, and to condemn the Catholics, but I feel how with us all
the world is happy when the bells of the church ring and how
then the holy spring blossoms for all of us.,,
Without knowing something about this unchanged life of
the Orthodox Church, it is useless to become excited over the
Bolshevik attitude toward religion. This Church never tried
to change the world, to teach, to translate, to reform. It is the
old church of adoration, attacking nobody, leaving the world
alone. The arrow of religion always pointed away the
world and never back into it. the Russian Moujik the
church one special instrument of communication the
world of God an
1[ea [0 a rar-orr v1uage 1n the country. In the lowlands of
Volga, earth is expanding and the individual is quite lost.
is, in Russia, but a blade of grass. To this po'Yerless man
church presented the Ikons, the painted images of the
:s. Art helps man to look at the world with the eyes of God
Lise in art he is lifted up above his natural environment
Hage and hut. The Saints visited the poor as witnesses of
ited Christianity far away, and as sponsors of a stream" of
~r and strength going on from time eternal.
~s John Sergiev, famous "Father John'' of Cronstadt, in
Ufe in Christ: "Ikons replace for me the persons them-
; whose names they bear. The images of the saints upon
[kons represent to us. the nearness in the spirit of God's
; who are always near to us:' For what can be far away
the spirit of God who is everywhere present?- We have
i in our houses in order to show that the eyes of God and
the heavenly dwellers are constantly fixed on us."
•day the Bolsheviks use the Ikons in their statistics; to
anybody who wears Ikons, or worships them, is a Chris-
so much does the Ikon seem identical with the Christian
As a matter of fact, this is not true even for the Orthodox
fin Russia. Pobedonostsev, the famous head of the church
r the last Czar, Nicholas II, had no Ikons in his office and
1roud of that puritanism. Art is never more than an image.
~ver, one has to admit that the Ikons reflect very clearly
.tuation of a church evangelizing scattered units, isolated
·es, whilst it was itself ecumenic and universal. A polarity
~d between an economy that covered the smallest possible
and a church that filled the largest possible circumfer-
Today we see just the opposite, a world-wide economy
>arish-wide sects or creeds. In a world-wide economy the
~ction with far-distant events becomes natural. In a period
~ctrification, the church need not emphasize this side of
.ssion, particularly to the believers. Unity now belongs to
ealm of knowledge instead of the realm of belief. The
. of is an world, and the world of
church or whatever its place~
Ikons proved that the Russian church was not a civilizing insti-
tution of reform and progress, but a place of pure adoration
and glorification; in Russia in 1914, and in Russia only, the
Christian Church was still what it had been everywhere in 900:
a place of worship and devotion without any ambition to trans-
form the world or wrest it from the devil.
The Western churches had not been afraid to redeem some
part of human life, and to build up different ne~ stages of
civilization. In the West, universities, free cities, shipping,
banking, are closely connected with stages of ecclesiastical activ-
ity; in Russia, modern technique and modern capitalism en-
countered a form of Christianity which had never committed
itself to a reform of the world, like the Roman or the Lutheran
or the Puritan Christians.
For that reason, the lkons symbolized a pre-War Russia in
which the church stood for unity and world-wide standards,
and the economic unit of the village for isolation and weak-
ness. The Bolsheviks hate the pictures and hate the religion
represented by the pictures, because it seems to perpetuate a
division of labour between faith and knowledge which they
know they can outstrip.
The Soviets must be against the Ikons because these reflect
village economy. Their mistake is not to be found so much in
the warfare against the Ikons; that fight is connected with the
industrialization of Russia. The atheism of the Bolshevik be-
comes tragic only because of his confusion of Ikons with Chris-
tianity.
THE RUSSIA OF THE SOVIETS.

To the endless plain of Little Mother Russia, the cradle of

a hundred million unconscious Moujiks, post-War Russia forms
a complete antithesis.
The Institute for the Economy and Organization of Social-
istic Agriculture has published a plan for the exploitation of
the soil. In this plan the regions of the U .S.S.R. (Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics) are divided into five sections. The
first adapted to crops for industrial use
 ICO~OSTASES

essential of the is its to shut awav

Ikons proved that the Russian church was not a civilizing insti-
tution of reform and progress, but a place of pure adoration
and glorification; in Russia in 1914, and in Russia only, the
Christian Church was still what it had been everywhere in goo:
a place of worship and devotion without any ambition to trans-
form the world or wrest it from the devil.
The Western churches had not been afraid to redeem some
part of human life, and to build up different new stages of
civilization. In the West, universities, free cities, shipping,
banking, are closely connected with stages of ecclesiastical activ-
ity; in Russia, modern technique and modern capitalism en-
countered a form of Christianity which had never committed
itself to a reform of the world, like the Roman or the Lutheran
or the Puritan Christians.
For that reason, the Ikons symbolized a pre-War Russia in
which the church stood for unity and world-wide standards,
and the economic unit of the village for isolation and weak-
ness. The Bolsheviks hate the pictures and hate the religion
represented by the pictures, because it seems to perpetuate a
division of labour between faith and knowledge which they
know they can outstrip.
The Soviets must be against the Ikons because these reflect
village economy. Their mistake is not to be found so much in
the warfare against the Ikons; that fight is connected with the
industrialization of Russia. The atheism of the Bolshevik be-
comes tragic only because of his confusion of Ikons with Chris-
tianity.
THE RUSSIA OF THE SOVIETS.

To the endless plain of Little Mother Russia, the cradle of

a hundred million unconscious Mou jiks, post-\Var Russia forms
a complete antithesis.
The Institute for the Economy and Organization of Social-
istic Agriculture has published a plan for the exploitation of
the soil. In this plan the regions of the U.S.S.R. (Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics) are divided into five sections. The
first section is adapted to crops for industrial use and intensive
cattle-raising.
 IC:O:\O'd .\SF"i
t''i'icnrial of lhe Icouo•aa-..i..; j.., ir... bein~ cmplmed to -.Jun ~t\\:t\
 ttemp
Sugar
Turnips
Indian corn Southwestern Ukraine, Black Earth
Soya beans Basin, Northern Kuban, Far East (p"ar-
Tobacco tially)
Cotton
Girasole
Hogs
he second zone produces:
Flax
Dairy farm prod-
The grazing country from the Baltic
ucts
via Moscow to the Ural
Vegetables
Hogs
1e third zone produces sub-tropical plants:

Silk
Southern Crimea
Tea
Caucasus
Grapes
Asia
Oranges
Central
etc.

te fourth zone produces:

Cattle Buriat-Mongolian Republic
Sheep } Southeastern Steppes east of the Volga

te fifth zone is marked as:

Reservation for}
Agriculture From Archangel to the Pacific
Forestation Zone

rhis classification of Russia destroys the distinction between

ssia and Siberia. It no longer looks at Russia from the West,
n St. Petersburg, nor even from Moscow. The plan is a ne\v
.cept all Russia as one sixth of the · it shakes
old yoke of European discriminations between
ano As1auc soil an<l carnes out the reso1uuon ot the 1 entn
Communist Convention in 1921: "The destruction of the ac-
tttal inequality among the nations is connected with the de-
struction of the historically conditioned inequality in their
economy. The economic iniquity was expressed in the fact that
the territories on the edge of Russia were treated like colonies,
or half-colonies, and were held by force to their function of
delivering all kinds of raw material for the manufacturers in
the 'Central.' "
The "Central" is treated like a criminal in this statement.
Now, the "Central" is nothing else but Little Mother Russia
herself. The sentimental cradle of the ·Moujik is degraded to
the same status in which the territories of the edge were before.
It is like a sinner's repentance. 4'Central" and colonies move
towards each other. They are brought to the same level. They
become sections of the area upon which one big industrial
trust, called the U .S.S.R., builds the branches of its industrial
system. What an estrangement from all sentiment and feelingI
What a Genghis Khan-like attitude! Montesquieu said in writ-
ing his L' Esprit des Lois that he wished to look at Europe as
though it were Madagascar. Lenin, as a Bolshevik, taught the
Russians to manipulate their homesteads as if they were colo-
nial soil. The ruins of Mother Russia are just a foundation on
which the real factory for cereals can be built, covering 20,000,-
000 square kilometres. This is the gigantic achievement of the
Revolution. By a process of abstraction the earth, the natural
environment, is estranged from the man who lives on it to such
an extent that anybody with roots in the soil must be extir-
pated.
Now the type of peasant or farmer whmn we know best is
the independent owner of, let us say, one hundred acres. The
pre-War reforms of Stolypin had taken this type as the normal
man for agriculture. Stolypin had imported, so to speak, the
wealthy farmer, in the form the famous Kulak. The Kulak
became the target against which the most violent cannonade
of the Bolsheviks '\·Vas directed. The expropriation and
the Kulak is parallelled by the
Thirty million acres were
 J. ne terrnory was a1v1aea into ~ovcoses, 01g estates. ffrom
eginning, bad harvests were taken into account; the vast-
>£ the area compensated for them. The biggest Sovcose is
~ as Rhode Island or a German principality of former
22,000 square kilometres. In Belgium, or in Saxony, or in
Lchusetts, a million people live in such an area. The near-
Lrt of Germany to the east and to Russia, Silesia, is very
r populated, especially along its borders. Yet in this border
:t 200,000 people live on the same extent of territory. On
ovcose "Gigant" there are seventeen thousand people.
an emptiness of the fields was well-known to the soldiers
~ World War. We called it "the emptiness of the battle-
' Our war-time experience is being exploited for the first
)y the Russian economy. The war against nature, against
ind of the steppes, against the drought, is carried on by
ny of young warriors. Ninety-five per cent of the workers
g ·the Sovcoses are under thirty years of age. But their
vigorous as they may be, is only a fraction of the tre-
ous force moved in this warfare. It is the warfare of
nes. Ninety per cent of the personnel' are technicians;
ore than ten per cent are agricultural labourers. Cultiva-
; standardized at 100 per cent. These national farms were
iled to deliver the same amount of grain in 1930 which
ulaks had delivered in 1927: 100,000,000 Pud. 2
·ewe· find a government actually carrying on a ferocious
!titi9n against its inhabitants for political reasons. For
re-War order of things, these proceedings are incompre-
>le. In the pre-War countries government had to deal
~conomy as it was. It had to protect, perhaps to develop,
. any case to acknowledge the existing economic interests;
farming, oil, building, could not be abolished by govern-
1 action. The Soviets have reversed the relationship
en the nation and business. They have abolished the
s. And they have sacrificed some billions in this civil war.
1927 the situation of the grain market had made the
s upon the Kulaks. Nobody the Kulaks
ud is about thirty-six pounds.
could offer a surplus of products for exportation. And we know
already that Russia depends upon exports for balancing her
budget. In another country the effect of this dependency would
have been a strong support of Kulak interests by the govern-
ment. Their influence would easily have doubled. But in Soviet
Russia this very fact of dependency led to the opposite result.
Communism boasts of its "jump out of the realm of necessity
into the realm of freedom," which was forecast by Karl Marx's
twin, Friedrich Engels. The individual liberty of the Kulaks
is a threat, it is. corrupt and corrupting, it leads to the slavery
of others. The organization of production must be torn out of
the hands of owners or proprietors: "Nobody but the party can
regulate consciously the producing forces of society." (Lukasz.)
The destruction of old economic values or forms is no argu-
ment by which you can frighten a Bolshevik, for England may
rule the waves, France may rule the ideas of the civilized world,
but the Bolshevik rules the means of production. Economy and
property are no given facts for this government. They are inter-
esting, not because they exist, but because they can be planned.
All members of society are interchangeable; and they must be
interchanged. If any one of them claims political privileges for
economic reasons, he must be annihilated. To the Bolshevik,
the Kulaks are but the Russian example of the destruction
which threatens all the so-called capitalistic powers. Capitalistic
powers are nations which have to take into consideration the
v~sted interests of groups of the population, nations which feel
incapable of extirpating classes from their social order.
In the Russian five-year plan (piatiletka), the key which des-
ignates the relationship between the output of consumers' goods
(production) and of capital investment (reproduction), repre-
sents a kind of last judgment over whole classes and groups of
society. The key means that a series of starvations has to be
undergone for the next five, ten or fifteen years, that a million
people have to be turned bodily into civil engineers, that this
and that group of artists, or spez._, has to disappear. The Bol-
mean business when they of "has-beens."
or ladies, or bourgeois, are "has-beens."
in physical Since no ..,'""'.._. . .
<.4 ...
l. Under favourable conditions they might get their main-
1nce, out of compassion. But they "have been," they are not
lens of the Soviet and their existence has lost all meaning,
ause they are not labour forces. With the key of the
atiletka," a power of binding and loosing is given to the
:ials which surpasses by far all the powers of government
.he nineteenth century. That is why we focus our attention
that power more than on any annual statistics of output,
Because, after all, the figures in the statistics of Russian
duction will change in her plans for reproduction. The
.res, therefore, are not interesting in themselves. The politi-
and human interest in the Soviet experiment centres in
.r contribution to the social organization of men and
.ons.
,et us look at this key of distribution once more:
Branches of Economy
Industry Power Transport Agriculture Housing Others
/28 14 % 1.4 % 16.6% 41% 17.2% g.8%
133 22.8% 4.1 % 17.2% 304% 12% 13.5%

Types of Economy
Socialistic Sector Co-operative Sector Private Business Sector
I, 1928 51% l.7% 47.3%
I, 1 933 63.6% 5.3% 31.1%
Products for
Consumption Circulation Means of Production\

I, 1g28 42.73 183 39.33

I, 1933 353 20.53 44·53

'bus it becomes clear:

'he Plan is in Russia what the constitution is in a demo-
ic country. Through the Plan not only does the soil become
area for temporary factories, and the factories moveable
; on the map of the general staff, but the kinds of men are
:luced like goods, too. In the accounts of society, everybody
eckoned as a force. The gospel preached to everybody is
he be changed into a force, an element in the electric
un that production. "From Body to Force,"
i:>.l.a.J.JI. A.'-~ VV.l.UIL.l.VIJ. \...VUJ.U VV \...J.J. IJ\.,. \....J.IJ. J..:JIL"-J.J.'-~• .I. .l.'\JJ.J..I. ILJ.J..a.~ J-'""A&&ll.

iew the offences of Bolshevism against our individual liber-

vanish. Bolshevism is not interested in individuals. It
::ely knows of such a thing. At the end of the World War it
id the bleeding, mutilated, starved body politic in complete
.lusionment and paralysis. The resuscitation of this body
the first endeavour of the proletarian revolution. To say
;e up and walk" to the corpse of broken-down Russia de-
:ied upon everybody's courage in this incantation. A man
welcome if he could conduct electric current, new energies .
.ot, nobody was interested in him. In compensation, any-
y useful in the electrification of the corpse was freed from
Sin. Man has no personal sins. Personal sin is abolished
he U.S.S.R. This impresses a European mind, especially
uestions of love; the tremendous well of personal life, love,
atered down into sex. Krupskaya, the wife of Lenin, wrote
1ok on the life of the working bees, doing away with all the
:usion of sex, love, passion. Modern youth in Russia has no
ial interest in sex. There are no privileges, there are no
ets, there are no inhibitions. Sex has ceased, therefore, to
.n obsession.
'he exaggeration of its importance is closely connected with
exaggeration of the individual in the bourgeois civilization
1e nineteenth century. But let us be carefull In abolishing,
1ot acknowledging, personal sin, the Bolsheviks did not
lish sin. They came back to an older, pre-subjective mean-
of sinz there can be public sin in society, without any per-
Ll fault, merely by the corruption of institutions. This
prevents the regeneration of life.
11 civilization is simply order, but order repeating itself.
: cultural level can only be maintained where there is room
renovation, reform, repair and reconstruction. Self-perpetu-
g forms of life must breed, nurse, and educate men. How
men reproduced? is the real question of history, and the
: question of our book.
tther periods of history tried to reproduce the citizen, the
Christian; in the Russian Revolution the
itutions reproducing types of men are shaped according
---- ------------- --- ---- r- ----- ""' . . r- """"'"~-"" ...... """ .................. ""6 ........... .., ...... ....,,& .... ""'
of our nature, too. We have in ourselves non-human forces
a·ture as steam, electricity or water, forces which can be
. like any other raw material in an industrialized world.
cter the terrible losses of the War-in which 15,000,000 in-
tants of Russia are said to have passed away-the Soviet
)n found no reliable supply of skilled labour, technical
•, economists or explorers left from the pre-War organiza-
of society. So decisions were forced upon them for the
::>duction of different kinds of men: teachers, technicians,
~d workers, farmers-nowhere else but in the piatiletka can
~round be found on which they can base their raison d'etre.
ey are not put on the map, they will become extinct, not
ically and personally, but typically and as a class. In Dante's
;atory the crown of a man's life, his personal immortality,
lied to judgment; has he a soul, a redeemable soul, or is he
.emned? In the piatiletka, the original sin of society is
ed. Not the crown but the roots of the tree of life are
d. We are punished for the original sin of inheritance, for
:orm of character and outlook into which we were intro-
d in the historical course of social events. The last judg-
t is based on older orders of society, older divisions of
Jr, older class conditions and social functions.
iis is an impersonal and earthly judgment, put into effect
:igainst our soul or person, but against us as children of
t, against the material subconscious labour force which is
ed, reorganized, redistributed. To ul)derstand the indif-
tce of the Soviets to all questions of personal morality we
take care to limit the despotic power of the piatiletka
, real scope. Man as a creature among other creatures, man
labour force, is the object of the piatiletka. In its system,
Vf ou jik in the cradle of Little Mother Russia, always a
.r, is a minor again. He is not an individual; as he was
ed before as a helpless child of God, now he is treated as
:om of the raw materials and labour forces of the. globe.
ie Soviets dropped the name of Rossiya (Russia). They
to be nucleus of a universal, pan-global order.
~d a world-revolution. much stress laid upon non-
..1.'-u.::>.::>.1.au i>H...u.... u.1.. uu::;u C'lHCl p1 l~C Llldl LUC allll UI lilC plalUelKa
reads as follows: "By means of the energetic industrialization
of the U .S.S.R. and the gradual strengthening of socialistic ele-
ments to attain and then surpass in our tin1e the level of the
most advanced countries, in order to secure the victory of the
socialist system in its historical struggle against the capitalistic
system." 3
The non-Russian duty of the Russian proletarian is to fight
capitalism. The Bolshevik, G. Grinke, writes about the pig-
iron front: "The reports in the Soviet Press from this con-
structive front recall the reports of actions at the most impor-
tant sectors of the fighting front during the War." The Rus-
sian experiment was started as a non-Russian affair. This fact
makes it the more astounding. Is it really the world revolution?
Is every event in the newspapers, in Spain, America, Germany,
France, only a step toward universal Bolshevism? In other
words: Is the international component in the Russian Revolu-
tion growing or declining?
We contrasted old pre-\Var Russia with the piatiletka. We
shall now speak of the groups of men and the set of ideas which
transformed one into the other. We are going to narrate the
rise of the governing class in Russia and the standards of Eu-
ropean Marxism. Lenin united in his synthesis the Russian
Intelligentsia as a social group and the doctrines of Western
Marxism. He destroyed, as we shall see, both the Russian intel-
Jectuals and the Western Marxists, who were not capable of
forgetting their respective beginnings. Only a few passed
through the eye of the needle; those are the men who govern
Russia today.
THE INTELLIGENTSIA.

\Vhich is the governing class of Russia? We are told the

proletariat. But there exists a queer test for admission to the
Bolshevik Party; people are taken not because they are pro-
letarians, but because they have a tested revolutionary disposi-
tion. Besides the social setting of the piatiletka, a personal and
individual disposition must n1ark man who ·
3 Russia/U.S.S.R., p. New
 ..._, ---- - ----,- -- -----~--- ~- --··- ............... ...
; of men than the old governing class in pre-War Russia
~rns Russia today as the Bolshevik Party, and it is kept
ther by the tested revolutionary and proletarian disposi-
of individuals.
ae could recognize a Bolshevik during the first fifteen years
he fact" that he was not allowed to earn more than 225
es a month. He was not allowed to dance or to show that
.ked dissipated life. Even today, kissing your sweetheart's
l in public may get you into difficulties. But in pre-War
the test was much simpler. The disposition and conviction
tested by suffering. Had he been in prison? Had he been
beria? Had he lived disguised, without a passport, under
se name, among the people? Then he had the real dis-
ion. On the whole, the women or men who suffered in this
nilar ways before the War were of good family. Lenin was
un of a gentleman, Mr. Ulianov; Trotsky of a big land
~r; Tolstoi and his friends, like Paul Birkov, were nobles,
rs in the guard. The Intelligentsia of Russia was not at
greedy group of suppressed proletarians. As early as 1825
nan who had defended Moscow against Napoleon, Count
lptschin, exclaimed: "I can understand the French citizen
his revolution for the acquisition: of rights, but what idea
Russian gentleman have in starting a revolution in order
;e his privileges?"
1at happened to these people that they went against their
nal interests for more than a century? Their crusade was
ibed as follows in 1886: These people denied their past
1letely. They no longer had private property. If anybody
tted to give away everything he excited pity and contempt.
the first Christians, they said, "I disavow Satan and all
:omes fron1 him and all his pride. I spit on him." 4
e history of Russian literature is of more importance for
1olution of Russia than the history of any other literature
its own nation. This has been valid at least since the days
ter the Great. In the other countries Europe, civiliza-
Tikhomirov, La R description.
 - __ ------ ---- _ _ ...__ - - . - . - , ......... V'-&.11...Ail-.._'"-4..&...l..I. '-'.L. .L"""~Y'"".L .l..A.1..1..I.-
LJ

ins of men than the old governing class in pre-War Russia

verns Russia today as the Bolshevik Party, and it is kept
~ether by the tested revolutionary and proletarian disposi-
in of individuals.
One could recognize a Bolshevik during the first fifteen years
the fact' that he was not allowed to earn more than 225
bles a month. He was not allowed to dance or to show that
liked dissipated life. Even today, kissing your sweetheart's
nd in public may get you into difficulties. But in pre-War
vs the test was 1nuch simpler. The disposition and conviction
re tested by su!fering. Had he been in prison? Had he been
Siberia? Had he lived disguised, without a passport, under
'.alse name, among the people? Then he had the real dis-
;ition. On the whole, the women or men who suffered in this
similar ways before the War were of good family. Lenin was
~ son of a gentleman, Mr. Ulianov; Trotsky of a big land
ner; Tolstoi and his friends, like Paul Birkov, were nobles,
cers in the guard. The Intelligentsia of Russia was not at
a greedy group of suppressed proletarians. As early as 1825
· man who had defended Moscow against Napoleon, Count
stoptschin, exclaimed: "I 5an understand the French citizen
h his revolution for the acquisition of rights, but ·what idea
• a Russian gentleman have in starting a revolution in order
lose his privileges?"
1
Vhat happened to these people that they went against their
sonal interests for more than a century? Their crusade was
cribed as follows in 1886: These people denied their past
1pletely. They no Jonger had private property. If anybody
itated to give away everything he excited pity and contempt.
e the first Christians, they said, "I disavow Satan and all
t comes from him and all his pride. I spit on him." 4
~he history of Russian literature is of more importance for
evolution of Russia than the history of any other literature
)f its mvn nation. This has been valid at least since the days

>eter the Great. In the other countrie~ of Europe, civiliza-

ee Tikhomiro\', La R Paris, 1 for a contemporary description.
 --- --, -- -- ~r--&-, ....................., . . . . . . . '-' ... u..a..a. -..1..1'"' .;,v\..J.a.L a.1.1.u pv.i.1.l.J.\..a.1

struggles of corporations and estates. In Russia the reverse was

true. There, political life began by detour via culture. In Eu-
rope the parties are founded by corporative and social interests.
These groups elect and found their organs. In Russia it was
the press and the organs of ~iterature which called new parties
into life and enabled them to exist. Whilst in Europe every
efficient individual represented a profession or a corporation,
and was supported by his group or the privileges of the group,
in Russia ·the individual could succeed only as an individu.al,
never as a representative of his kind.
Through the importing of Western erudition, the individual
found ways of social activity. The exchange of literary reflec-
tions might make him influential. It was for that reason that
poets and literati exercised such a great influence in Czarist
Russia. Only a few of the leading spirits could end their days
without being troubled by. exile or administrative discipline.
The rulers themselves propagated their reforms by literary
productions. :Peter the Great introduced plays which were
meant to make people laugh at the foes of his reform. Cath-
erine II founded satirical journals, and herself wrote plays and
essays. The sense of political satire is so fierce that even today
the normal Soviet newspaper has its daily page of caricatures.
In Russia literature brought men into groups and excited
them to political activity. You could mingle with a circle for
years without divining whether or not this or that member
were a nobleman. The only question was which line of litera-
ture he preferred. There was an astounding number of re-
views. There were ·monthlies, often two or three hundred pages
thick, and around the magazines political parties were formed.
Belles-lettres were the battlefield of politics; esthetic apprecia-
tion was impossible.
The existence of censorship had led to a real art of reading
and writing between the lines. Sometimes books passed the
censorship but the authors were disciplined for the secret sense
of the ·
of Peter's reforms, and the formation of a staff
by .................................. young men or by them
 # .... -

Russia began with satires, with the criticism of existing

iety. It had an eye that was detached, like a foreigner's, and
en that took a negative and didactic line.
rhe very first poet, Prince Cantemir (1708-1744), was edu-
!d in Paris, and his Parisian education made him think how
~er society was at home. He became a satirist. Later, Ka-
tzin began an epoch (1765-1826). He was sent to the West
his instruction and published immediately afterwards (1791-
12) his famous Letters of a Russian Traveller. Up to that
e Europe and her great men in art and science had been
1wn from translations only. Now Karamzin introduced the
llre and society of Europe by faithful and lively descriptions.
readers seemed to meet the leaders of European literature
scholarship personally. Karamzin founded the review, The
·opean Courier (Vestnik Evropy). St. Petersburg's aim to be
window towards Europe ·is well illustrated by this title of
leading national review.
"he Napoleonic Wars had a great effect on the national con-
nce. The army, which marched as far as Paris, contained
ass of educated Russians. On April i5, 1814, the Te Deum
he Allies on the Place de la Concorde was celebrated by
Orthodox priests. Everyone could now verify for himself
reports of Karamzin. Young men came home with Western
.s, and again they went into Literature. No field for practice
1.ed open to them. The neologists fought despite censorship,
e and jail. In 1825, the martyrdom of this specific intelli-
:e, conjured up by Czarism, began. This year marks the
l estrangement between the government and the youth of
leading classes, because the government tried to make
one its own work. The Czars owed all their success after
r to the introduction of Western techniques. And they
"rV it. Catherine II ( 1763-1796) corresponded with Voltaire
Diderot; she anxiously awaited what Professor Schloezer
;oettingen had to say in his magazine about her policy.
r, in I this cornerstone of Czarist expansion broke.
~<lorn of thought, the very instrument that had founded
Petersburg, the bureaucracy and the army, was
 # '-' .I. - - --~r--- ---- - .._.......,..-. _..,.._ . . . ..a.-...""'9>UUA""".&&. '-A-A&.4.4..&..&~4

The facts are very simple. Alexander I, "the monarch whoJ

in his own kingdom, had worked so much into the hands of the
Revolutionists, succumbed mentally and bodily in the fight.
Seeing himse1£ deceived in all his calculation~, under th~ neces-
sity of himself striking at a class of his owri subjects who had
been led astray and instigated by men and principles whom
he himself had long supported, his heart broke." 5
A conspiracy broke out against the succession of Alexander.e
The soldiers understood little of the French ideas of the young
officers. They cried: "Hail, Grand Duke Constantine, and hail
his wife, the Constitution!,, There was no nation behind the
innovators. But these idealists themselves paid a terrible price.
The leader of his generation, the poe.t Ryleev, was hanged in
1826. Bestuzhev, the Prince Odoevski, Polejaieff, ended their
lives in exile in the mines of Siberia, or were degraded into
private soldiers in the Caucasus. Alexander Pushkin escaped
banishment to Siberia only by a miracle, and had to live on
his estate under the supervision of the police.
The women of these Dekabrists accompanierl their husbands
as volunteers. They shared the sufferings of the men and were
ennobled by this rare companionship in permanent misfortune.
Russian women were emancipated and exalted by their rare
quality of being fellow-sufferers. This makes for an equality
with man which surpasses all the legal or moral equality in
\Vestern society.
Pushkin was the first to speak poetically, in the character of
Tatiana in Eugen Onegin, of this new type of Russian woman.
The state of mind after 1825 is well shown in the comedy, The
Misfortunes of Being Clever (Gore ot uma). Anybody who did
not bow before bureaucracy and the army was taken to be a
politically dangerous man, and was finally declared mad. The
malformation of Russian society, its hunched back, so speak,
was permanent after 1825.
5 Clemens Metternich, Memoirs, Vol. I, p. 332, New York, Scribner, 1880.
6Compare also Anatole G. Mazour, The First Russian
Decembrist Its and
Univ. of
nre11ecrua1s were au preuccup1t:u w1u1 vvt:~Lcn1 p1uu-
en though they divided themselves into Westerners
~ki) and Slavophils. It was a period of heavy oppressiqn.
~extbooks the history of the French Revolution was
I. A period of despondent literature opened. Lermon-
-ro of Our Times torments himself and others with
grief and seems to be destroying himself because he
f no use in Russia. Nicholas Gogol opened the proces-
novelists who wished to unveil social wrongs. Alex-
erzen drew the consequences of the situation. He pub-
l 1843, his Who Is Responsible? The hero of this book,
s in vain at greater activity in Russia, leaves the coun-
vallows in distinguished slothfulness.
efeat in the Crimean War and the death of Nicholas I
the sluices. For the first time the fruits of suffering
o ripen. Alexander Herzen rang The Bell, his London
Though an exile, he gave audiences like a future
The highest dignitaries visited "the criminal" with
·erence. The revaluation of values affected all the "pil-
Church and State in Russia; nowhere could jail and
ent so little degrade a man as in the best circles of
·sburg.
tew era was announced in Turgenev's Eve, and the
l1is novel Fat hers and Sons ( 1861) chooses for himself
e of Nihilist. The innovators had found their shib-
vihil, i.e., nothing, of the old loyalties was to be kept.
ete break was the only condition for a new future.
tis future was still far off. Turgenev, in 1867, full of
wrote Smoke. Nothing had come of the emancipation
~rfs, and he declared the absolute bankruptcy of "Fa-
d Sons," parties and groups of the better classes of
~e was right. The "Gebildete Gesellschaft," the upper
.vere rotten. Intellectually and mentally, everything
i thought through and fought through.
lnder that all educated people threw themselves into
t. Socialism made literature into p~opaganda. The
to conform to the class-consciousness
~tariat. But in Russia no proletariat existed. Here the
1.n uu1. v1. ua~~-w•:tr was
not oorne oy the proletarian worker
whom Marx and Engels had seen starved in the cotton mills of
Lancashire. Though the Russians were the first nation to trans-
late the Capital of Marx, its attack on capitalism was devoured
by non-capitalists and non-proletarians. Members of the feudal
class devoted themselves to the study of Marx with the same
eagerness which had led Tolstoi twenty years before to study
the school system in Goethe's Weimar, or which produced in-
credible enthusiasm for European music and musicians through-
out Czarist Russia.
Now Marxism meant the importation of a European Utopia
which was still being persecuted in the rest of Europe. From
the Russian point of view it had, therefore, one great advan-
tage compared to all-other European goods: it could still be
made a genuine Russian product, if Russia amalgamated it
first. 7 For the first time, the critical attitude of centuries could
be replaced by a faith in the pioneering role of the Russian
intellectuals. They could scorn the obsolete mentality of the
average Western man. rT'he last invention <;>f the West, the
dynamite with which to blow up all traditional order of West-
ern civilization, was now in the hands of these restless Nihilists.
Tshernychevsky had already summoned youth to gather
round Socialism in his What to Do?, written in 1863-the novel
for which he was rewarded with twenty years of Siberian
exile. Turgenev describes this new Marxism in 1876 in his
book New-Land. It is a socialism without a capitalistic society,
a Marxism without a proletariat. It is the great opportunity
for the Intelligentsia to go among the people.
From 1825 to 1880, two generations of intellectuals had suf-
fered for thinking, reading and writing. By 1880 the conflict
with the government had become irreconcilable. The Russian
Revolution was inevitable, for that reason, as early as 1890.
Our statistical figures for pre-War Russia ·were purposely chosen
from these older times, since conditions of the eighties and
nineties became fixed in the minds of the revolutionary gen-
jurist, R. von
Leon Galitzin bought for a
of publishing it in Russian one ahead of the German
 ,- - J. -o - - 0

form, no constitution offered by the government in later

~ars, could influence the future essentially, because it could
>t reach, and even less change, the picture of Russia which
.e revolutionaries had in mind. ,
Like a stream divided into branches, the life of Russian
ciety split. One branch flowed on the surface, the other
~lved into a new bed deep underneath. From 1880 onward
class existed in Russian society which had cut itself off from
l loyalties toward the existing order. The Nihilists went on
subterranean crusade. Everywhere abroad groups of them
Lidied. At Bern alone, in Switzerland, six hundred Russian
Lidents registered, all utterly devoid of means, but all more
· less the type created by this emigration; a type which may
~ described as student, intellectual, conspirator and politi-
an rolled into one, but first of all a man who says "no" to
e existing order. These men did not wish to miss their call-
.g in the history of the world. They forgot their individual
inditions, wealth, family, creed, and identified themselves with
e people. Very often they acted as hangman and executioner
their own material interests. Their own families, their own
tures, their own intellectual treasures and needs, counted for
>thing. Before murdering the Czar or the Grand Duke, they
~mmitted moral suicide and became emancipated from all
.rthly interests. The code radiating from people like Lenin
· Savinkov was the code of those who died to themselves ten
nes over because they clung to their mission. More fanatical
an the Spanish Inquisition, they were not interested in their
vn salvation. They wished-and it seems to have been their
ily genuine desire-to be ahead of the West. Once, at least,
is damned West would not be the pioneer; Russians would
~ the leaders of future society! While Europe counted con-
lently on a permanence of the century of progress, they knew,
tee for all, the secret of her total revolution. That is why the
ss of civilization was no longer a bugaboo to them. Civiliza-
)n was bourgeois. Liberty was bourgeois, because civilization
td liberty already existed. Conscience, Honour, Faith? Nihi
all been in prison, using the language of . . . . . . . . . . . ., . .-
 ....., .._,. ~- ----- - - - - - ..,. ..... &A&U ........... ...,. u.. Y'-'.1...l..l..L VL .1.J.V.1..1.VU.I..

The revolution:i-ries were the pariahs of the existing Russian

world. Their way led from the seditious students' union at
high school via study abroad to propaganda in Russia, into
prison, back into the party, abroad again, back, to Siberia and
into jail again, and so on. That is the rotation of their lives;
every stage in exile or in separation. Separation from the do-
mestic circle, separation from liberty, banishment from home,
separation from their own social position and the necessities
of life.
That all this ca1ne not as the result of external causes, but
as a free choice, made the new order more solemn still. An
order of revolutionary intention drew youth out of their classes
and out of their senses as well. All over Russia the contrast
existed between the obedient and pious son, becoming a de-
spised Chinovnik, or office holder, and the revolutionary. The
life of the latter is a life of separation. Now, a life of separa-
tion is like a life of vows. To leave your parents, faithful and
loyal subjects of the Emper_or, to leave your profession, to desist
from having children, to lose your fortune, and to give up your
civil honour, all for revolutionary conviction, makes for a
league of more practical proof than any religious order. What
more could the Jesuits ask, or the Trappists, where you had
at least benevolent Superiors? How trifling the test of the Free
Mason seem& compared with Siberia, with exile, with the dan-
ger of being executed! These are risks that they took volun-
tarily with the deepest serenity for the sake of a materialistic
theory of events, because the clock of history was soon to strike.
Comparing the dangers undergone by the French before the
Revolution in 1789, we can say that neither Beaumarchais nor
Voltaire nor Diderot had to suffer like thousands, nay, tens of
thousands, of Russians between 1870 and 1914. No wonder,
then, that the new league must have more weight than the
lofty genius of 1789. He who suffers wins in politics. The
martyr does not obtain the victory personally, but his group,
his successors, win in the long run.
materialistic philosophy of Bolshevism
to be little room ·what they would call theological
; .l."'-U.JilJ.alJ. .1.1J.L\.,J.l.l5\...1H• .::J.la. VU-'-.l .::J a 01.CU. 1.J.L.l.l5 '-""'-".l..l.lP.I.'-- U'.L

.s suffering .. The tears of the Dekabrists, the hardships

~xiles, the courage of the terrorists, the abnegation of
ilists, were not wasted.
~eat lesson of Russian intellectual history for our day
·uth that in Russia it was not the proletarian who suf
.,he intellectual made himself an intentional martyr, a
t in deliberate. renouncement.
is the reason why, instead of the proletarian governing
the old order and league of revolutionaries, tested in
[on and action, exerts the dictatorship over the prole-
As early as the eighties Lavrov, Kareev, Vorontsov,
1e question who ought to govern Russia, and they saw
~hat something like a monastic order was needed. All
i forgotten later, because the Marxians scouted the
iroblem. They were not only too much interested in
l, but they wished too much to be like the Western
ian and therefore detested all plans which smelt of
Ley or oligarchy.
heir hatred and chiding cannot veil the fact that the
ian does not govern Russia, because he did not suffer
.sia like the Bolshevik. That is why even today you
become a men1ber of the Bolshevik Party by being of
ian descent, but only by being of revolutionary dis-
. The pre-\Var revolutionary disposition is the highest
endatiqn for any candidate.
LENIN'S PRIVATE LIFE.

acrifices of pre-\Var days were not in vain. The modest

one of these lives, that of Lenin himself, may round
picture of the Intelligentsia. We quote _from the me1n-
v1adame Lenin, Nadeshda Krupskaya:
the Revolutionaries, any big apartment house with
lghfare from front to back, was a fulcrum against the
olice. Lenin was famous for knowing all houses with
lys through. Then Lenin knew enough chemistry to
:1 invisible notes in books." He made the acquaintance
us w1te when she listened to the reading of his revolu-
tary article on The Friends of the People in 1894.
1 1896 Lenin was jailed and his ~o-called "fiancee," too.
~r the imprisonment Lenin was exiled to Minusinsk, and
.pskaya to Ufa. Under the condition of being married by a
~st, Krupskaya was allowed to share the exile of Lenin.
'he complete revaluation of values by the revolutionaries
be seen in the effects of this alliance on the new Madame
in's mother .. Old Madame Krupskaya, of a good bourgeois
ily, declared that she would share the exile of her daughter
her son-in-law. "She became a true comrade, helping in the
1lutionary work. In the periods of domiciliary visits by the
ce, she would conceal illegal books, bring precious tools to
comrades in prison, deliver messages. She lived with us in
ria and abroad, kept house for us, entertained the many
rades walking in and out, sewed letters in coats or belts,
1ared chemical inscriptions." In Siberia she taught her
~hter how to fight the Russian stove, provided a Russian
~ on cooking when they were abroad, gave Lenin, who had
u coat himself when he was sent from Minusinsk to Pskov,
nuff which had at least a fur lining.
~fore 1905, the Lenins lived in Munich, London and Ge-
. In 1905 he secretly returned to Russia. In 1907 he left
l for Switzerland. Then he moved to Paris. But finally he
~d in Poronin, Galicia, where he could more easily smuggle
il pamphlets across the Russian frontier and keep in con-
wi th his party in the Duma. In 1914 the Austrian police
ght the stranger might be a Czarist spy, and, in order to be
ie safe side, they expelled the unknown man into Switzer-
He was ·without money. Now his mother-in-law had a
who had been head of a girls' school in Novo Sergiyevsk
hirty years. She had willed to her sister all her savings,
silver spoons, some Ikons, dresses, and 4,000 rubles, more
2,000 gold dollars. "The money was deposited in a bank
·acow. Viennese broker succeeded in quashing its se-
ration. Ironically enough, the old . , . ., ....,'--' . . . . . . .
.a;,.. ..,L.A

pinched herself in food so that the

U.V J.J.Q.l.\,..U \.... V \...J.] l.J.J.J..lJ.5 i:>J.J.\,.. J.V V \..U J.J.J..1.5.1..1.\. "-'U..I. .I. J V'.1..1. u..1..u• .1. n U.A

ganda from abroad.

to Madame Krupskaya, she thought herself still a good
:ian, and homesickness destroyed her health. But she
l Lenin's life to the last. Her body underwent the sad,
ertainly not Orthodox, ritual of cremation. The Lenins
l two hours in the cemetery, "till a supervisor brought
rn with the warm ashes, and pointed to the spot where
hould put the urn in the soil."
· self-denial had been the prop of an impossible life,
was rewarded in 1917 by an equaHy incredible success.
THE FAILURE OF THE SOCIAL REVOLUTIONARIES.

all the revolutionaries were successful. Like all the

1n generations between 1825 and 1905, the last pre-
·s had to undergo their disillusionment, too. The bewil-
~ cruelty of the Russian Revolution against its old revolu-
y allies is one of the striking features. But I am afraid
ust say that without this cruelty it would not have had
riportance for the rest of the world. Only by a new separa-
nto two groups inside the revolutionary party could the
1ns reach a point where their experiment coincided with
al problems of a simultaneous world-economy.
~first group which went among the people in 1881 called
'Soil and Freedom," a name well known in America from
i'ree-Soilers" movement. But in Russia, as an open preach-
~ the gospel was out of the question, every soldier stood
in hidden, subterranean trenches. No wonder that the
contact with primitive rural conditions turned most of
>eial workers into friends of the peasant, the Moujik.
~ Socialists, as they were by virtue of their European edu-
., began to revolutionize the Moujik instead of the non-
nt industrial worker. The slavery of the peasants was felt,
:he emancipation of 1861, as an unsolved problem. Their
~r for more land became a natural platform for the intel-
1 who lived among them. The intellectuals derived their
im more or from the horizon of the Moujik himself.
is the of the party of "Social Revolutionaries."
 -- - ------- -··- ............ 0 ........ v.a..a..a.u.5"- .llJ. .L'-Ui'.>i'.>J.Cl • .J.. ucy gavt: IU as
as possible to the instincts of their fellow-countrymen at .
ne. This party was very numerous and very popular until
l8; and it is difficult for any superficial observer to under-
1d why it did not take the lead, and why the Russia of today
1ot governed by this party, which was completely devoted
~ighty-five per cent of the population and represented their
~rests in the way these interests appeared to the eighty-five
cent themselves!
ro answer this question means to understand the iron laws
1istory. Not before the end of this book will the reader be
vided with all the material which will enable him to see
failure of the Social Revolutionary as the obvious and
Liral event which it is.
~t this point in our story it may be enough to point out that
Social Revolutionaries shared one prejudice with the
LI jik which blinded them against the historical order of the

'he Social Revolutionaries and the Moujik wished to reform

village, and by doing so they hoped to reform Russia. But
was not a proper aim for any revolutionary scheme, because
leant a cult of the village as an individual thing. It is one
1e common slips of the romanticist to transfer his love for
unique from the human soul to any other social unity,
[ly, village, country, and to try to make this area or group
treasure-house of everything he likes or values. Now the
lan soul is unique; and a man whose profession is the care
mis must be more interested in one soul than in the whole
d. Unfortunately this realm of the soul cannot be trans-
~d into politics. It is useless to treat the Russian village as
1valuable soul for political purposes, when the difficulties
.ussia rise from its gigantic, unorganized, continental im-
trability.
Russia, the lumber trade, the wheat export, the wars of
nsion, had to pay the budget of the central power. The
ll Revolutionaries, in starting from the particular
e suffering Russian individual, and \fishing to distribute
took a very human attitude, but did not even notice
;ease which they were ventunng to cure. 1 ne tate ot tne
.lage under the impetus of capitalism cannot be solved if it
taken as outside the history of mankind. The wish to help
1ssia in all her parts was sterile as long as it did not give
ne constitution to this unruly continent forty times as big as
ance.
The superficial and colony-like organization of Russia had
be reconstructed. This had nothing to do with sentimen-
ism.
THE BOLSHEVIKS.

The lack of intellectual sentimentalism, of prejudices orig-

iting from the "beauty" of an idea, was the outstanding
Lture of the second group in the revolution. It tried to deal
th the totality of mankind's economy as disclosed in or appli-
ble to Russia. Not to be found missing in the historical hour
progress for the economy of the world as a whole, was the
,session of this austere group. In their opinion, the economy
the Mou jik was too archaic to offer any future. Political
tion and economic thinking that intended to be of conse-
lence had to turn in the direction toward which the latest
volutionary outbursts in Western Europe pointed. In these
tbursts the abuses and short-comings of the domineering eco-
1mic trends were attacked. The Com1nune in 1871 in Paris
:ered a sketch of what had to be done to get rid of both pre-
pitalistic Russia and capitalistic Europe by one and the same
cision~ The Commune presented the alleged representative
the historical hour: the proletarian. The worker in the
burbs of Paris was the product of modern factory life, a cog
the machine, a townsman uprooted from the soil, and a
~e-thinker in religion.
This later group, the real Marxians, had the courage to con-
;s that the bourgeois society which they wanted to destroy
d not exist in Russia. Capitalism first had to be introduced
fore they could form it into socialism! This is a grandiose
nception though completely unreal. "\Ve are enemies of the
pitalistic order. In Russia the capitalistic order is only its
us hasten its coming because we hate so
~ u.J.C:u. we LauuuL co uve wunout our toe. We must
ut:ar
im, and to be killed he must first live."
less we keep in mind this situation of a starved Intelli-
[a, the attitude of Russian youth is completely inconceiv-
It was not Russian, and not proletarian, but European
;ht, that was suffering in Russia. In their quality as Eu-
n thinkers and readers and students, the Russian lntelli-
a were welded together into a fearless battalion. They
nothing more nor less than disappointed Europeans. And
N'ere disappointed Europeans because the older chapters
ropean history were not their history as orthodox Rus-
They had had no partnership in the history of European
ation since the schism between Rome and Byzantium in
They came to know Europe again only later, i.e., in the
of the eighteenth-century enlightenment, which ended
French Revolution and brought Napoleon's expedition
as Moscow. They knew the industrial expansion of the
rn states, and their capitalistic invasion of Russia, build-
e Russian railroads and factories and destroying the rural
industries of the country.
de enlightenment and colonial exploitation, capitalism
ented itself to their eyes in the form of fervent national-
o nationalism, too, seemed closely connected with the
of the bourgeois class. As much as capitalism, national-
>ming as it did from outside, showed only its reverse side
•sia.
nationalism of the nineteenth century was the natural
in France, where the national language, the spoken lan-
had been exalted for centuries into the bright instru-
of literature and where the good taste of Paris was a
eter for the spiritual and intellectual climate of the
nation.
"window into Europe," St. Petersburg, could not pos-
lay the nationalistic part of Paris because it was only a
1
r foreign goods. Furthermore, all the western territories
Empire, Poland, the Baltic provinces, were more na-
than Russia herself. How could a Russian schoolmaster
ce the in Lodz, the Lithuanians in Vilna,
 u , J ......

"he idea was perfectly meaningless because the democratic

ationalism of the nineteenth century had the strong presup-
osition of a real economic togetherness and a real historical
lmmunity.
Nevertheless, about 1880, at the same time that the invisible
ream of the Revolution delved into its subterranean bed,
:zarism ventured to begin the "Russification" of its western
ossessions. It even thought of conquering large parts of
.ustria and the Balkans. From 1878 to 1917 Czarism hoped
>r new western territories for "Russification." This was the
war-guilt" of Czarism in the World War.
In consequence of the complete failu;r~ and the cruelty of
iis task, the instinct of the revolutionades turned against this
ind of nationalism. We must neither forget their disappoint-
Lent over prevailing European trends, not their pride in being
ioneers of European thought, if we wish to understand the
.ussian Revolution.
As Europeans, the Bolsheviks did not capitulate to the vil-
.gers, but kept their own independent non-Russian standards .
.s disappointed Europeans, they chose a new standard which
ad been tried nowhere in Europe but in the revolt of the
ommune in 1871. Because the Russians were souls expatriated
'Om Europe, seeking the true solution of Europe's society, the
rench Commune became their great model. Lenin always had
ie chronology of the Commune at hand. In 1917 he oriented
is own .course by the course of events in 1871. And when they
ad held out in Moscow as many days as the people of Paris,
e cried: "This was the last thing we had to accomplish. Now
Lir honour is saved!"
Childish as this dependence may appear, it is natural to
rains that try to think about the political future in terms of
ie dialectical continuity of European thought. They had to
e European Marxists first and Russians second, because only
, could Russia obtain its leading place in Europe.
It is certainly true that super-consciousness in a political
his endeavour. In the gyeatest epic of the
~enth century, War and Peace, Leo Tolstoi ridicules hero-
 - - ----r ~- -&A- . . u.u.~ u.u. u ..:> cU.lCLld.UUU • .1"\.UU Ulell Ile goes
u..a..a..,.

n as if wishing to warn his compatriots: "In historical events

tore clearly than anywhere else the command runs: Don't eat
·om the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil. Nothing but
nconscious action bears fruit. An actor in an historical event
ever understands its significance. When he tries to see through
he condemns himself to sterilization."
But the Marxist thinks he must know exactly what historical
Jur has struck, because that is the only dowry he brings home
om Europe to his virgin country.
The consciousness of the historical hour is the core of Marx-
n theory. It is clear, therefore, that we must pay attention to
e theory of Marx before we can investigate what the Russians ·
Lve done and what they actually represent, in spite of their
vn theory.
This is all the more important as Marxism offers a scientific
eory on revolutions.
Historical materialism, as Marxism is also labelled, considers
l history as a series of class-wars and revolutions. The world-
volution, which was started by the Russians, breaks down as
eaningless if its place in a proper succession of revolutions
not the place assigned to it by the general staff. The general
JI knows the algebra, calculus and interpolations of Revolu-
n. The Russian Revolution is but a sub-species, or a practical
plication, of the general laws of revolution. Revolutions mark
~epochs in history. To know the theory of Marx makes n1en
tsters of history.
The old maxim of Horace, "Nee scire fas est omnia,'' i.e.,
are not permitted to know everything, seems to have given
y to the application of the Baconian "Knowledge is Power"
human, social and political affairs.
Ct is one purpose of this book to show that the Baconian
·mula, "Knowledge is Power," has misled the Socialists all
~r the world. The truth of "Knowledge is Power" may be
id in all the connections between man and nature. It does
. work in human affairs. \Vhen a man knows how steam
cts in a boiler, he can force the steam to work for him.
1e holds with electricity, oil, coal, and so on. But
11 1'.llV vv;) Lll<l.L 111;) 11c1511 UV! !;) a. 1 a..:>\..-a.l, l..l.l.l.:> l..l ULJ.J. U.V'-" .1..1.Vi.

~him secure. The knowledge of an individual man among

~ant people makes him more helpless than he was as an
:ent member of his group. The man who invents a ma-
~ may -be perfectly powerless in society in spite of all his
rledge. "Knowledge of what?" we must ask. Only the
rledge of organized and united mankind gives power over
re.
uxism tries to give to the knowing individual the power
:n society which united mankind has over external nature.
~ campaign is of world-wide significance. If it should be
rious, it would change the aspect of things. No country in
vorld could fail to adopt the government of the knowing.
philosopher of nature, the cosmologist, ruling society, is
tltimate vision of Marxism. Society no longer a blind piece
iture, but mastered, like the chaotic world of matter, by
an knewledge. At this point the order of men who have
Linced every normal desire in social life takes on a particu-
gnificance. Men who wish to govern the bundle of passions
interests which we call society cannot belong to it them-
s. "He who aims at the guidance of others must be able
rego a great many things." (Goethe.)
le voluntary Nihilism of the Russian Intelligentsia cuts off
·oots which make men members of social groups like fam-
ribe, nation, class. Society must become nature; men must
me scientists, beyond the good and evil of their private
ons.
THE SPEECH OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION.

rveying the vocabulary of the new order we find arrayed

he side of society all the terminology of the natural so-
~- A Bolshevik dictionary might contain:
1antity: The masses. Quality: The Bolshevik Party. So-
: The forms of co-operation. Human interests are explained
lass situation. Class situation is explained in figures and
~tics. Changes in human history become visible in statisti-
hanges, as in the key distribution.
is language. Any revolution must
okincr ("}
because it must move men in a new
1..n.1u.. ..... J.1~ ll..vu.1111uu :sidug, cue I.raa1uona1 worn-out expressions
of cultivated language or of daily talk, lack power ~e us
turn about. Old speech goes in one ear and out the other.
Revolutionary speech has to be new speech because new speech
rings effecti vel,y in the ear.
The old Biblical phrase, "He that hath ears to hear let him
hear," is for the individual soul, which can be struck by
eternal truth even though clothed in old words.
A political party cannot wait for the individual. It must
thunder in order to be heard and understood by the masses.
The speech of Socialism is the reverse of the language of the
Bible. It does not try to speak to us in our mother-tongue or
in our tradition, as the speech of prayer always does. It is strik-
ingly opposed to familiar and usual conceptions. It uproots
man by uprooting his speech. In the social movement of the
last fifty or a hundred years, the revolution is present wherever
this new uprooting language is spoken. Very often the language
is spoken by individuals who mistake themselves for tories or
conservatives. But wherever the new language has its grip on
a man, we can be sure that he is promoting the revolutionary
identification of Society with Nature.
The fascination of figures, diagrams, curves, is generally felt
in the modern world. We are all taken in by this method of
argumentation. Towns and States and Empires are ruled by
statistics, though God punished David for having numbered
an~ counted the Jews.
Instead of the high-brow quoting of a classical poem, it is
much more impressive to begin a speech or a book with dates
and figures. The reader is grateful if he can hold the eel of
science by the tail at least. The vocabulary of modern political
success is the mystic speech of figures. Each age has its specific
political melody: ours in the music of numbers. The masses,
which you cannot feed on high sentiments or questions of
personal conscience, willingly listen to numbers. Wages and
taxes, battleships and armaments, unemployed and students,
are shifted about with amazing frivolity if the states1nan can
put before us which seem to a necessity No
 sermon can melt the 1nd11terence and reluctance ot
1 masses. Figures do.
they have another merit. Figures do not blush. In speech
little indecent to talk about prostitution, crime, slums,
. Our heart, our taste, our eye and ear are hurt by any
1n of the "reverse of the medal." In society, we are ex-
not to swear and not to quote hell and the devil and the
y their real names. The part of the body which contains
ts of our passions was taboo. In English society not long
an had no thigh, no genitals, no bladder. In the famous
1tional Thesaurus of English words and phrases which
ed at this zenith of the Victorian regime, in 1852, Mr.
includes in his classifications time and space, .inorganic
, organic matter, the five senses, the intellect, the volition
e affections of man. But the poor human body is scat-
verywhere. His feces are put under the esthetic headline
rlness, his genitals under the abstract term of product:ion.
:omach is veiled under the generality of "receptacle."
figures of the materialist do not blush. They are icy and
rent. Whores can be counted, feces evaluated as fertiliz-
! soil. The hinterland of humanity can be decently de-
l by numbers and figures. In the language of the Russian
ttion neither the pleasant nor the beautiful, neither the
n the good, is at the top of the scale of values. The side
which escapes light, which ordinarily remains in the
s brought up first. The heart and its desires are elimi-
Marxians reckon in their arguments, on stony hearts
ad souls. Their logic is illuminating: "First let us have
hen I will be good." If they succeed in convincing those
>f us which represent the element of indifference, of
ef, of greed within our nature, the rest will be conquered
iore easily. An appeal to the best qualities of our nature
overlook the inertia of its other elements; but figures
~erest even the beastly part of us. The "proletarian" who
thing is always suspicious. He always thinks he is being
l or exploited when hears a fine The prole-
has no Very well, let us talk business. Things
men own language. Please count. The yearly production of
;teel or coal can be the first figure; further steps show imports,
wages, exports, increase of production, accumulation of capital,
1mortization; the maze grows larger and larger, and at the end,
,vorld economy, world war, world revolution, and world .order
tre but natural results of the first few figures.
The universe is encircled in a dialogue between brain and
>elly. The Soviets compare the index of living in pre-War days
vith the index of today. The proletarian character of the Rev-
>lution is demonstrated by the fact that the industrial worker
~ets more than he did in 1914. It does not matter that there
vere but 8,000,000 industrial workers and 80,000,000 peasants.
~1ore figures might be disturbing: for example more people
vere killed during the Russian Revolution than during· the
Var. Or it might be said that the governing class in Russia
tUmbers not half so many people today as its counterpart in
1
re-War Russia. However, these figures can simply be omitted.
~o an observer, it is true, the language of numbers seems no
etter guarantee that one has chosen the right road than any
ther language.
But despite this limitation, it remains remarkable how suc-
~ssfully this particular tune, is played tod~y on the keyboard
f political languages. It is successful in every country. Marx-
m gives it a monopoly over all others. The outstanding fea-
ue of this revolution is less the mere use of numbers than
ieir exclusive use. The equation between nature and society
true as long as we express everything in size and measures.
fodern architecture, with its square and cubic forms, its hatred
: curves and illogical details, is a striking illustration of the
onopoly claimed by the abacists and trigonometricians of this
·volution.
When Stalin declared in 1934 that the new architecture had
iled, that the people should get baroque and irrational forms
houses, pictures and dresses, the spell of the algebra of
volution was broken for the first time. "Russia Goes l\ifain
reef' ·was the judicious headline for · event. The monopoly
the language vvas abolished and other ·
rrns In I , Maxim
v \....I. u \...'l..J'.1..1.fS.1. \...o:Jo:J .L'l..J'.I. L.1..1.\.... .I. \...o:JL'l..J'.I. UL.J.'l..J'Jl.I. 'l..J'.L L.1..1.\... ..1.u.1..1.50A"'-o"" '-'&.

. classics. This shows that Russia is entering on its period

)ration. The execution or suicide or exile of all former
s of Stalin tells the same story. Communism has re-
:zarism minus its alliance with Western capitalism. And
te Great, reappearing in Russian movies, shows that the
.onary period, as symbolized by Trotsky, is over.
TOTALITY AND REPRODUCTION.
(Karl Marx)
mdiose caricature of Western civilization had entered
[n the forms of cynical satire, colonial exploitation and
tical nationalism. This caricature accounts for the vio-
ssian repercussion. However, at the core of this Western
ion, an energetic protest had been filed also in the form
jsm. The liberty of Western Man never was lulled into
r any existing order of things merely for. the reason of
5 in power. Karl Marx represents the last protest against
,ting order of things. And he formulated it because he
p in its actual centre, between the rivers Seine and
tVhich, to an industrial sociologist like Le Play, are the
demarcation for highest industrialization.
was born in 1819 in a German district ruled by codes
>leonic origin, of a Jewish family that owed its emanci-
to the new ideas of the French Revolution. He lived
tere (Rhineland, Berlin, Brussels, Paris, London, West-
of big cities and industrial progress. He studied in
it is true, but had no intention of making a contribu-
German philosophy. He laughed at the sterile works of
tlistic Sisyphi in Germany who were satisfied to reason
ie existing order. On the battlefields of the Napoleonic
~ felt that the Revolution of 1789 cried for a continua-
nce the ideas of French liberalism went around the
~he continuation could not do less.
first Marxian principle is this: For real change in
ty of "\Vorld-\Vide" is essential. The rev-
is a total revolution, or it is none at all. fall behind
cne a1ameter ot the area revolutionized by the ideas of 1789,
deprives any subsequent event of its claim to importance in
the history of the world. That the category of totality domi-
nates, is the criterioi1 for the revolutionary principle in any
science.
This category of totality reappears distorted in the modern
talk of the totalitarian state. The Fascists denied the category
of totality as it applied to the spatial side of history. They
wished to keep their national territory out of touch with the
rest of the earth. But feeling that totality is a powerful god,
they build a totalitarian order within the boundaries of a single
state.
No European, no human being, can preserve his full human-
ity and his true human countenance as a member of his nation
alone. Mankind must be reflected· across the border lines of
nations. Man as mere Italian, mere Russian, mere German,
would not be man. Our thoughts are rooted in and our feelings
are moved by for(:es which scorn geographical limitations.
This Marxian principle of totality is immensely fruitful. It
prohibits the historian, for example, from going on with na-
tional history, as he did throughout the nineteenth century. In
the history of the American Civil War, the simultaneous eman-
cipation of the serfs in Russia did not seem worthy of mention.
The Czarism of the tragic era was not to be compared with
the corresponding periods during which capitalism was in-
italled in other countries. The exhibition in the Crystal Palace
in London was not understood as a decisive victory of the
French and bourgeois idea of the "spirit of the times" over
English ideas, because totality was not a working hypothesis
~or the national historian.
Hegel had realized that it is not a historical fact, nothing of
)ermanent significance, when a king is killed or a battle lost.
f oo many accidents of that kind occur all over the world.
fhey are important as personal reminiscences. They have the
ame inestimable educational value the stories have that
. child from the lips of its gTandparents. They
enlargement of man,s horizon, which .................... . .,
 Lis own limbs, his roots and branches, his racial identity
ncestry. But the memory of humankind has to do some-
better. In its book of history nothing should be put
but what has been settled once for all.
ce in a long while it happens that a great question is
~ht up and discussed and fought through once for all.
~qual right of every human being is a fruit of the French
lution which was conquered once for all for Moujiks and
blacks and y~llows, men and women. The French Rev-
m may prove a failure. The equal rights of men may be
;hed. Undoubtedly this is possible. But if it happened it
l diminish the significance of the French Revolution,
~se an event which has not settled something once for all
10 importance to living men aftd. women. We must know
.ny things that it is enough to know what must be known
for all. The rest of history is the history of failures, experi-
;, abuses. This rest can perhaps be made interesting too,
ot without the yardstick of the true history of humanity.
:posterous attempt, a precursor, a stormy petrel, becomes
ble when we bring it into relation with the successful
, for all" achievement. The "once for all" principle works
t great sieve, sifting out quantities of superfluous tradi-

And Marxism was able to single out the important events

tory by virtue of its inheriting from the history of philos-
this princi pie of totality.
e second principle of Marxism is what Nietzsche called
; last vision "the permanent recunence of the same." In
conomic language of the Marxians this takes the shape
production. They insist on a distinction. "We produce
,, or we draw an income from a certain capital; this be-
to the sphere of production. Reproduction is something
. Our gold mine may cease to produce gold; and "then we
know how to replace it." Marx and Engels went further.
enlarged the concept of "Reproduction" beyond the eco-
cal Quite often this is ignored by "Reds." The
· concept is by far n1ore human vulgar Marxian
s. capital is a of
Jn. uovernments too must be reproduced. I go far beyond
arx in this line of thought. It is not enough to have a se-
tence of good presidents or virtuous kings; the constitution
elf must be remade one day. For instance, in a monarchy,
there is too much intermarriage among kings, decay is the
evitable result; and it may take a revolution to get a new
nasty. The two-party system may prove too lukewarm; and it
ty take a revolution to get, not a new president, but a new
le of president. A real man, unlike a politician, cannot be
:ured by mere volition. Manhood is a quality which is im-
rilled by certain forms of environment and favoured by
iers. Most of the time men are glad that they have a new
~sident or another king. They forget, even, that the type of
~sident and the kind of dynasty is much more vital, and that
~ several individuals will be formed if the nursery, the place
their breeding, is prepared in time. The blindness of n1en
1ard the re-production of kinds is healed by revolution. Rev-
tions bring forward the question of the type of society which
~ht to exist. This question is even more vital than a war.
var, according to whether it is won or lost, expands or con-
:ts the political order of a country. But revolution creates
; same political order. Wars carry out, export into new
ions, what revolutions create. Revolutions are the creative
vements of history because they reproduce the standards of
.ety. To be sure, the word "revolution" does not apply to
events like the hundred and twenty revolutions in Mexico.
1 elongs to the few events of totalitarian character which have
led a question of re-production for the human kind once
all.
.. he third and last principle of Bolshevism is less general,
revolutionary and less convincing. It claims for Marxism
merit of understanding the sufferings of the proletarian
er than anybody else, and of knolving more about his
ncipation than anybody else.
l this field of social policy, Marxism has always had many
ls. Marx's first working hypothesis was that capitalism per-
.ed a'" · kind of exploitation by capitalist.
labour worker were not paid for as
l l lU UC', UUl d :'.)Ul p1u~ Wd:'.) Kt:pl lU UlC' puLKC'l Ul UH:: t:xp1un-

Jusiness man. That is to say, Marx construed a kind of im-

1lity as the lasting relation between entrepreneur and wage
ers. Marx pretended that the capitalist made unjustifiable
lts, withholding a legitimate share from his fellow-workers.
is worthwhile to follow Marx for a moment into the
c.et of his calculations. He seems almost like a deer-stalker
is eagerness to penetrate the dark secrets of bookkeeping
business calculations. The fascination of figures which we
rved in Bolshevism and in all modern social science led
is case to a remarkable result.
'hat happened in a modern factory during the last hundred
i was an attempt to calculate wages and prices by the piece.
Jrder comes in for a thousand pairs of silk stockings. The
•lem now is how much money the firm must get for this
r. In Marx's day the cost-accounting office would begin a
~r vicious circle. It would fix its attention on the hours of
ual labour needed for the production of one pair of stock-
The units of production and of labour-one pair of stock-
and, let us say, half an hour of work-once arrived at, the
~s which had to be paid to the manual workers for this
~ of work would be called the productive wage. None of
itaff work in the factory, that of the director, agents, char-
len, porters, or calculat<?rs, could be referred in this way
single piece of the 9rder. The expense of keeping the staff,
ng interest on mortgage, meeting overhead expenses, were
1
1ated roughly at 100, 200 or 300 per cent of the 'productive
,. "
h us, in the calculations of modern business, the share of the
ual worker is brought into the limelight. His activity seems
~ the only primary force; the activities of the "white-collar"
rank as secondary. The men whose earnings account for
werhead expense appear like drones and the manual work-
ike the only productive bees. All higher social functions
ipt to be taken as a superstructure on this foundation of
ual labour.
 UKU.t.K:
Unproductive wages: 1,000 pair of
silk stockings.
Salaries } 250 per cent
I nterest
= of the pro- ==
Taxes .
. h ducuve wage
L 1g t, etc.
MATERIAL ..•.•••...•.•••

Productive wages for one piece.

Hours: Y2 @ .40 == 0.20
TOTAL: $1.10 per pair

To cut down the overhead expense means moral and eco-

nomic progress. The upper class seems more remote from the
forces of production than the manual worker, the only man
who can get productive wages.
Now the capitalist is not always expecting orders. Sometimes
he produces first and finds his market later, after his calculation
has been made. He now tries to get more than _$1.10 on the
market. Perhaps he can get $1.50. But then he seems to have
cheated his workers; for he could have paid more if he had
anticipated the final price. The fictitious price on the day he
started his production induced him to offer his workers a
fictitious productive wage. And his claim that he is paying the
utmost which he could reasonably calculate is refuted if he
repeatedly gets higher prices on the market.
The fictions and play-rules of business calculations are mis-
leading. The spies on the other side of the counter, the Com-
munists, observing the bare processes of wage-fixing, are per-
fectly right in denouncing them. The only mistake they make
is that they take the abstract scheme of wage-fixing too seri-
ously. Practically, a modern industry which sells, let us say, five
kinds of products, will get the "normal" expected prices for
only one kind, two kinds will be sold higher, and two will have
to be ~ven away without profit, or even at a loss.
Department 1 gets a 100 per cent higher price
Department 2 gets a i o cent higher price
Department 3 gets the expected price
Department 4 lowers its price 1 o cent
5 lowers its price per cent
l·r out ot hve cases the whole process of calculation ot
id prices was only preliminary and provisional. The
of Departments 1 and 2 have gotten too little, those
5 have gotten too much, if the principle of the "pro-
wage" is pursued to its last consequences.
did pursue it to its last consequences, because he had
tn ex post facto justification for his instinct that the
' of his time was destructive. But it is not true that
permanent trick of capitalism to pay low wages. Com-
by the piece leads quite as often to a wage that is too
:o one that is too low. Profit-sharing by the workers is
ion of the social question, because profits are not the
tg factor of industry.
~r Russian practice nor the later writings of Rosa Lux-
the only real successor to Marx, bear out this theory
.tation. The Class-War between Capital and Labour is
md as untrue as the sex-war between man and wife,
var between old and young, the border-war between
iring groups. But the whole process is as complicated
lier conflicts mentioned above. In the struggle between
I the man can exploit the woman, and the woman can
~he man; but there can also exist, after all, a happy
. In the Class-War, Capital can exploit Labour, but
:an also exploit Capital, or there can be real peace as
s in England between 1850 and 1882, to the great dis-
1ent of Marx. English workers exploited the world in
co-operation with English capitalists from 1846 to
~rman workers exploited the capital-owning class, to-
ith the employers, during the inflation of 1918-1923.
:hese years the workers improved or at least kept up
ndards. The people of means lowered theirs to little
in zero, because the inflation did not abolish wages,
:al.
tssia industrial labour exploits both peasantry and
lecause the few millions of "productive" workers are
y overpaid. Only since 1933 has the Russian bureau-
~d to In Russia wrong application of
has starved the of the popula-
uon, the standard of the peasant being 70 and that of the
industrial worker 135 compared to the norm of 1914.
A mere technicality of transitional and provisional character,
the incompetent work of calculators, has been used to rational-
ize fantastic emotions among the modern masses, and is leading
:hem into a blind alley. The real human question put by the
~vaste of a market-seeking society is the interest in reproduc-
:ion, and not the wages paid by the producer for productive
rVork. The Russian Revolution, in running a race with a world
rVhich was already industrialized, may teach Trade Uni-onists,
\1arxists, and capitalists alike where the real problems of the
'uture are to be found: not in the production of goods, because
his is settled better than ever, but in the reproduction of real
1
,nd all-round men, which was never less assured than today.
THE LIMITATIONS OF A MARKET-SEEKING ECONOMY.

What is the permanent and actual interest in the field culti-

ated first by Marxian theory can be cut down to two main
tatements. These, our statements, are themselves not Marxian,
nd are not acknowledged as Marxian. They are an attempt to
xplain not only the problem that baffled Marx, but also and
t the same time the causes and motives of the peculiar Marxian
nswer. Our own answer is given without a Marxian bias and
1erefore clai1ns to be post-Marxian, because it is true that the
beral did not see the dilemma, as it is true that the Marxian
·as not able to solve it.
Our first statement starts from the great achieven1ents of the
ineteenth century in the field of production. Millions of goods
nkno\vn to our grandparents are thrown upon the markets of
ie world at an incredibly low price. This miracle is achieved
y an economy which can be described most briefly as a market-
'.eking economy. If a factory produces cars, it can hope to sell
tore cars next year on condition of seeking new markets. By
Jubling its production it can, perhaps, reduce its overhead
(penses and so both earn more and sell cheaper.
The of new inarkets is the lvorld economy
te last hundred and fifty J\farket-seeking
the behind the on OuotinQ' at
- -- ---- - ----------, - ---- ----- ----------------- - - -------- /
ialf ·of monetary chaos lies behind us. This century and
of chaotic history of prices which meant prosperity or
the lifetime opportunities of innumerable individuals,
t due to acts of Providence. It was due to lack of knowl-
: economic principles or failure to apply the little knowl-
at there was. The common assumption at any given date
rays been that the conditions were world-wide and in-
e, either as a punishment for present sins or because
! benign force working for the good. Prices are as chaotic
medical practice before bacteria were known." How can
! otherwise in a world of perpetual expansion and con-
1 of markets? And this principle involves another. The
s, their expansion and their shrinkage, prosperity and
·emained changeable under one condition only: the em-
could not be obliged to deal in his calculation with the
his employees. Starting on a race for bigger markets,
. to be freed from all responsibility for the political,
and educational order of his country. \Vhen a city was
d in 12 50, the founders were responsible for the crafts-
'. the place. As in marriage, they belonged to each other
~ter or for worse. We call feudal and patriarchal that
f society where man and man belong to each other by
liscipline without being relatives.
pre-capitalistic employer owed security to his employees,
elonged to each other like landlord and tenant. The
[stic employer owes wages to a mercenary. The wages
the capitalistic system are much higher than in pre-
.stic days. It is futile to find fault with the market-
~ system for paying low wages. The exploitation is not
payment. The wages are as high as in any mercenary
,f the seventeenth century. The measure of the stipend
depended on the booty and the luck of arms.
relationship in the modern factory is not a relationship
loitation. Nobody is deprived of the fruits of labour.
he relationship is cut down to a certain number of hours
day. smne fruits of human labour do not grow
such conditions. No harvest stolen, but
A .
_ _ ___ __ -------- ... ..., ...., ...... "' """".a. '-U.AAA A.A.I.AU VI. .Al., l.11{; 1'.lllU

,vhich can be paid by hour, day or week.

The tremendous novelty of the market-seeking system was
he principle of payment by the hour. In all pre-capitalistic
imes labour was related to the physical nature of man, and
he shortest unit of work was, for that reason, a day. A man's
V'ork was paid by days, meaning that a day of twenty-four
tours, with sunshine and moonlight, food and sleep, family
ife and resting time, stand as a natural vision before the mind
,f the employer. To hire a charwoman meant to take one day
1f her life, such as her life was.
A modern worker at Zeiss-Jena, a wonder of precision though
.is work may be, is himself less to the factory that employs him
1an the charwoman was to her mistress. It is not his bio-
ra phical day of day and night, of sunrise and sunset, that is
ought by the firm. He may be in the factory for twenty-four
ears; but the twenty-four years are only the sum-total of eight
ours a day, forty-eight hours a week, ninety-six hours a dou-
le-week, 2,400 hours a year and 24 X 2,400 hours in twenty-
mr years.
The hour in the life of the modern wage-earning class is
•mething completely different from the day in the life of the
!.d labourer or charwoman. The hour for which I am paid
ages is not my hour. This hour and this sum-total of hours
·e an element in the employer's schedule. The employer in his
ruggle with nature to produce goods has a time-plan, but his
me-plan should not include the same words which signify
ements of human life, because here they mean something in
e external world organized by science. The employer's work-
g hours are abstract units of a plan; they may run into mil-
>ns. They always are related to the interest he has to pay for
s invested capital. In some countries the capitalistic and sci-
ttific abstraction is carried so far that in February, with its
'enty-eight days, interest is paid for the abstract length
irty days. The old-timers, objecting to daylight-saving time,
ve a good name for their pre-capitalistic dial: they
;od's " Capitalistic time is manufactured time,
In the card-index of a factory men appear like
llc'.ll.Ul c. vv c'.llCl l~ u~cu lUI llllt::'t::' UUUIS a uay' t::'U:::<..:lrH..:Hy
tiours, men for eight or ten hours. It is the economic
day of society, the day of finance, which is subdivided
urs when such forces are used. The only justifiable
>r the workers in the factory is "labour-forces." All
~pressions betray the truth. The worker, the employee
ters a factory, becomes a proletarian because he is
l from his own time rhythm. He changes his status.
of a person with his own time of life, consisting of
:trum, and score of years, he becomes a labour-force.
ts the point of exploitation by the market-seeking econ-
ich Marx scented without being able to define it.
lrinci pl es of the mining industry dominate our indus-
~anization. We all wor~ in shifts. We are all inter-
ble. We have all lost our anchorage in the rhythm of a
ii ty. Who will regenerate the forms of social life which
L like harvest home, and funerals, and sunsets, as the
>rk of our life?
ncredible how quickly a man degenerates without this
LJnd. The same chemist who as the assistant of a great
· worked all his nigh ts through for the sake of an
ent, will begin, as an employee of the dye trust two
er, to clean up his work-table at half-past three, because
work ends for the day.
proletariat signifies destroying the old order of the
says Marx, "because it is, in itself, its destruction."
·ase is true, because to the proletarian even his holiday
prolongation of the work-a-day world. His individual
time" has nothing to do with a general Sunday or
He is thrown out of the rhythm of the earth and of
~ime work. He is one atom in a mass of atoms. The
tion of masses can, perhaps, get hold of him. But their
is artificial, too. The masses of men can celebrate mass
s, they can observe the world holiday of the first of
tt the man of the masses no longer knows what~ arbi­
d what is necessary. Shall he go hiking, to the vies, 0
ure or shall he march in · He crum-
1at the needs a cure against atomization.
 .......... u. .u.1.au .., .uu: t.111ug~ uiac ao not enaq.re more than a year
:ire worthless," says Goethe. When man lives on this side of
~ood and evil, as an atomized labour-force, the cure must be
to strengthen the longer periods of his life, and to emphasize
:he epoch-making turns of three-, or five-, or seven-year periods,
JY which this whole life can be restored and revalued. But
\1arx could offer no remedy, because he tried "to describe the
'exploitation" in terms of money and prices. The loss of status,
10t the lower wages, makes the proletariat suffer.

THE REPRODUCTION OF MAN.

l\1arx and Engels were the first to study the problem of

tevolution and Reproduction seriously. They made it plain
o what an extent business is behind all history, how much the
>uke of Wellington, as his monument in front of the London
tock Exchange shows, was bound up with the market of the
rorld on the hanks of the Thames.
But they did not complete their analysis.
We sum up our statements thus: It is not valid to pretend
iat the workers are exploited by the capitalists because they
~t low wages. The real outcry of man's offended nature should
e that he is degraded because his boss does not care for his
1st or his future, and because he, the worker, is deprived
: the power to weave past or future into his own day of work.
The boss, by virtue of the privileges conferred upon him by
beralism, hires a man's force and skill and presence and
~ains as a ready-made product. All the traditions that were
~eded to concoct this man's talents, and all the props that
e needed to keep up his character, are degraded into his own
·ivate affair. Modern society and the fellowship of our modern
ciety use present-day forces, disregarding their past and their
ture. \Vhat you are paid for is not a slow growth or an
ganic evolution, but something that can be ground out im-
ediately by the mill of social life. Modern society exchanges
ods, and man is used as a ready-made product. His own
vstic of reproduction, his long way of birth,
m, apprenticeship, disciplineship, hope and faith in
of his nature-all this is no interest to
~~~ JJic.UI w uu nirc5 nun rur an nuur ur a year ur tcu ycar5.
ls, parents, friends, foundations, can take care of his per-
ty. For his boss he is not a growing child of God, but a
lrdized labour-force, number such and such, output such
ich, reliability such and such. A modern factory requires
all regular and repetitive work of the same kind; a man
en as a machine of regularized, standardized capacity,
his 7,325 "ergs" or "ergons" per X Y Z calories an hour.
1at is only another expression for a thing which has no
nd no future. Electricity, coal, linen, have no past and
ture. A labour-force has no past and no future. In the
of physical experiment we base our behaviour on the
:ance of recurrence. A labour-force may last a long time,
y be wasted very quickly. But fifty years or five days of
tive labour in the factory are equally devoid of any mean-
r the past or future of its owner .
.s world of bodies is a world of mechanical time, repeat-
s sixty minutes every hour. The other world must be
t through an other gate than the "business entrance." We
1 a plurality of ~orlds. In one world, Mr. Smith, the
yer, is at home. He sits at the breakfast table, perhaps as
tocrat, but nevertheless as a man, a father, a husband,
tas a· past when he was unmarried and belonged to his
's family, and a future when all his children will have
ed their own homes and ceased to listen to his orders.
an autocrat, yes, but if he is not a fool he feels happy
1g lin1ited in time by his own experience and by his own
se and intentions. He feels how his present day stretches
~tween two other ages of equal worth. His present is no
than his past or his future; at its very best it can only
them. Such a house is a world where death almighty
ltes the arrogance of mere life. Here life is a conscious
ture of man between youth and old age. In this world
past and future exist in a positive sense, because they
n keeping the family alive and in setting its real standards.
:he business cycle and the circle of business we are in a
of : neither nor future represented. They
e preserved in schools and museums, as history, as educa-
tlon; but business itself cannot use them. It has a different
concept of time, as a mechanical recurrence. But this kind of
time occurs only in the dead world of physical nature.
Thus we are right in saying that we treat ourselves and our
neighbours as though we had to obey the laws of two different
worlds at once. In one world we deal with a man's individual-
ity, in the other we deal with ourselves and others as bodies.
Body and soul are not objective parts of the outside world.
They are the two constituent elements of two different worlds
which we ourselves are constantly building by our own actions
and reactions. The world of bodies embodies our way of work-
ing, and the world of souls our way of living. We shall soon see
that there is a third world, of another type, which we are build-
ing all the time by our way of thinking. Our mind is a creator,
too, and constructs a third world. But for the explanation of
the Communistic reaction the discovery of the two worlds may
suffice.
The important conclusion is that. all raw material can be
transferred from one world to the other, since our own atti-
tudes create both worlds and since we can tell which occur-
rences in our lives we ought to treat as elements of real life
and which we should treat as business. Lumber, electricity, a
man's talents, can be commercialized; or they cari acquire a
past and a future, enter the real life of the soul, as soon as we
become or feel responsible for their reproduction.
Suppose all the kinds of raw material we use in our business
begin to grow scarce: rubber, wood-pulp, children, poets; for-
est-fires begin to destroy our timber, and drought our fields. . . .
At that moment the employer becomes deeply interested in
the process of "Reproduction"; a new world opens before his
eyes: a world of change. The circular process of raising rubber,
replanting forests, educating foresters, resettling the country,
begins to present itself to the minds of business men who up
to that time had thought of nothing but the logs they bought
from the farmer who needed cash.
Or : artists, civil engineers, composers, publicity men,
are hired by an en1ployer them
simpl~ or
Hundreds and thousands of men wish to be employed;
t one of them is up to the standard of the men he could
l the market a year before. The irresponsibility of the
'er for the reproduction of the forces he hires, uses, and
:i.lly destroys or wastes, is the curse of capitalism.
ystem ever worked so well in producing goods. This side
talism cannot be improved by any nationalization. The
iate production of goods was never achieved with such
lous success, and socialism is completely hopeless if it
• abolish the very best side of capitalism, its insuperable
y for producing all kinds of ready-made goods .
.ife is production and reproduction at once. While the
· turns the mill, the next donkey must be bred. While
1 is being burned, new_ coal mines or substitutes for coal
>e found. While men are painting, teaching, buying,
ng, building and planning, new men must be recruited
lm of future building, planning, buying, and painting.
ad conscience of the employer about "reproduction"
nduces him to spend incredible sums for educational
:ions. But in the modern world, these educational insti-
have little chance to co-ordinate their activities so as to
uce the kind of men who are the real need of the future.
1is as it may, we have discovered the real in justice of an
tive society. Since its great aim is to produce goods
r, it has no direct interest in reproducing men. And any
to capitalism must let alone Mr. Ford's production of
ecause that is working satisfactorily; what it must find
ans of preventing Mr. Ford's waste of men in skimming
~am of the labour supply, regardless of their Past and

in justice of the acquisitive society is misrepresented in

theory. This distortion in Marxism is based on an acute
ttion of facts and is, therefore, not easily discovered.
misleads socialists into seeking the failures of the eco-
system in the wrong place, and fancying that socialism
....................... wages. We hope to shown that ·
Employer and employee are natural allies their
.uu.uu11 cuLc1 pu:sc exp101ung 01aer torms ot society, in
ur
1ich employers must bear the responsibility for the lives and
e reproduction of their labour-forces, forms such as old farm-
g communities, feudal societies, groups of primitive tribes,
any society without marked variations in the size of its
uket. Capitalism must conquer new markets or it ceases to
capitalism. Wherever a market becomes stable, the repro-
ction of the social forces becomes a burning problem for
:iety, because in, such a limited community the background
permanent relations outshines the short-lived relations
tween wage earners and employers.
THE TRUE VICTIM OF CAPITALISM.

The unrest of the labour-forces all over the world has its
:kground in the breakdown of the moral "cadres" which
)port men's social rhythm. But the factory schedule has a
ult which is nearer to the heart of the Russian. The home
lustries of Russia were ruined by the cheap import of indus-
11 goods from outside. Russia is the best example for the
onial expansion of the market-seeking economy. Liberalism
ts to death the old orders of society which cannot compete
.h its low prices. But the paradox is that its prices are low
y so long as capitalism can find pre-capitalistic markets. In
se pre-capitalistic regions the social order of reproduction,
whole framework of society, church, and art, and holiday,
till included in the price of goods. The naked production
:he acquisitive society can sell cheaper because it is without
• responsibility for the rest of the natural day.
rhe lord of the manor feeds his workers all the year round
ause year and day are felt to pe unshakable elements in
life of both lord and workers. The farmer next door who
s by the hour can easily ruin the manor. But the school and
church and the hospital are ruined, too, when the manor
>es to pay. Now the farmer innocently supposes that school
. church and hospital will continue to exist as they existed
Jre he began to produce. The modern employer comes
ttled community like a bull into a china shop. He lives
rdering pre-capitalistic orders. But own
 torces still receive au the m-0ra1 oraer rney nave, umu
ues of this same pre-capitalistic lvorld which capitalism
1ids.
(did not see that the financial exploitation of employer
tployee, of capital and labour, is directed against the pre-
istic world. In times of inflation, employer and employee
~r exploited the older classes of society. We cannot de-
the riddles of economic unrest by staring at the factories
industrial countries. France or England are not the field
ridustrial exploitation. "Capitalism," as a market-seeking
, is impossible in the world in which there is but capital
bour. There would be no profit! Capitalism can ·make
only so long as it can escape the cost of reproducing the
al and social order. That is why it is imperialistic. Un-
e feudal lord, the owner of a factory is allowed to pay
by the hour, instead of men by the year. The govern-
s responsible for the police, the relief of the poor, and
ial policies. Naturally, the capitalist prefers to sell in
ts for whose political order he bears no responsibility.
g as he sells in foreign markets he need not pay for the
:tion of the old "cadres." Capitalists earn a dividend as
s there are markets for which foreign political organiza-
are responsible. Capital and labour. are never alone.
is a third man in the game. The exploited are the natives
ry pre-capitalistic group, class, country. "Capitalism is
·st form of economy with the power of propaganda, a
vith the-tendency to expand over the earth and to elimi-
ll other forms of production. At the same ti1ne, it is the
:onomy which cannot exist without using the other forms
nomy as its alimentary soil and milieu." (Rosa Luxem-
Colonial expansion is the nutriment of any market-
g society. This discovery explains why in the Great War
·oletarians of all the \Vestern cou.ntries did not behave
Marxian theory had expected they might.
~ working classes of all the industrialized countries col-
ted in the 'varfare of i 914. The Socialist parties had to
willy~nilly the belligerent instinct of the proletarian
i. Even great Russian Marxian, Plekhanov fired
at the outbreak of the War. This astonishing fact was often
belittled as the result of superstition, atavism, patriotic hyp-
notism, surprise and similar causes, because it was a terrible
shock to Marxian theory and discipline. Nowhere had the
masses been better "Marxians" than in France and Germany.
And nowhere did they fight more courageously for their coun-
try. A Marxian wrote: "The failure of all working-class parties
in the Great War must be taken as a fact of universal impor-
tance, as the result of the former history of the class move-
ment." (Lukasz.) But it is much simpler to say that labour is
1not exploited by capitalism, and that the English worker had
been repaid by the sacrifice made for his sake in 1846 when
the rural interests of England were finally abandoned to secure
cheap bread for the cotton workers in Lancashire.
The only country which went against the Great War was
Russia. Russia mutinied not because her proletariat had noth-
ing to lose, but because she was much more of a pre-capitalistic
world exploited by capitalism than any other European coun-
try.
Our conclusion is: The most backward country started the
Revolution to abolish capitalism. The vulgar theory of progress
says that evolution makes the most progressive country more
progressive still. In the case of a revolution this theory fails.
Russia starts the Revolution because it is the most backward
country in the world of liberalism. "We will march under full
steam toward industrialization, toward Socialism, and leave
behind us the centuries-old Russian 'belatedness.' We will be-
come a country of metals, of tractorization, of electrification,
and when the U.S.S.R. climbs into the automobile and the
Moujik upon the tractor, then let the honourable capitalist, who
boasts of his civilization, try to keep up with us. Then we shall
see which countries are backward and which are progressive."
(Stalin.) Keep in mind the lesson that the most belated coun-
try started the Revolution against the market-seeking economy
of Western nationalism, and turn once more to the soil where
this eruption had been preparea.
 DOSTOEVSKI AND TOLSTOI.

n the sixties, after the emancipation of the peasants, when

split between official Czarism and the Intelligentsia had
ome final, when the revolutionary youth vanished from the
face and sank into the people, the soul of old Little Russia
;an to expire. But some poets caught the sigh. Through
ir voice and through the atmosphere created in their writ-
s Russia could still breathe between 1870 and 1914. This
rature, by being highly representative in a revolutionized
rid, became the contribution of Russia to the rest of the
rid. Without Dostoevski and Tolstoi, Western Europe would
. know what man really is. These Russian writers, using the
~stern forms of the novel, gave back to the West a knowledge
the huma~ soul which makes all French, English and Ger-
n literature wither in comparison. Step by step Russian
:rature works its way closer and closer to the work-a-day
rld of the Russian peasant, pedlar, soldier, prisoner.
rhe title pages of Dostoevski's novels tell the story: The
ot, The Humiliated and Offended, Reminiscences of the
ad-house (which means Siberian forced labour), The Demons.
)ostoevski extricates the types of men who will become the
o.dard bearers of the Revolution. To read Dostoevski is to
d the psychic history of the Russian Revolution. All the
ts, of course, are different; he ignores any quantitative ques-
ns of society. On the other hand, state and government must
appear, as in the Marxian theory of society. Since the artist
i seer is unwilling to see life in terms of quantities, the only
ure he can think of is a church-like order. In The Brothers
ramasov, his greatest book, the venerable Staretz, an ortho-
K abbot and somewhat a saint, exclaims prophetically: "Not
! Church becoming State, but the State becoming Church,
ltk that well!" Government by military or police force no
iger has any meaning for Dostoevski. The men he describes
ve nothing to do with the hilarious and creative geniuses
Western civilization. They are as dirty, as weak and as
•le as humanity itself, but they are as highly explosive,
ie homeless soul is the hero of Dostoevski, the nomadic
.... .u LA..1..1.~ .u.i..u.L.1 v .1.,1uu. u1. uustuevsK1, tne proc11ga1 son is the
ntral figure, the prodigal son, yes, but paralyzed midway,
ipenitent, obdurate, hardened, refractory. Incendiary, blas-
1emous, crin1inal, he sometimes is, but only because he can-
>t find the way home to his father's house. In a miraculous
1y, the situation of the man who leaves home at fourteen to
~ into a factory and never goes home again because he never
trts on an independent career, the proletarian form of life,
anticipated in Dostoevski. To a certain extent, the disillusion
th our first home and its reconstruction after a time of home-
.sness has to be experienced by every man during the years
tween fourteen and thirty. If he escape this crisis it is true
would never become a n1an. But in The Adolescent (an-
1er of Dostoevski's novels) all life seems to be concentrated
this unique phenomenon of the wandering between the old
me and the new. This type of man is "in becoming." He is
en to every temptation, he is agnostic, he is immature. All
~· hell of humanity lives in the visitations and manias of the
Tnal revolutionary.
~ociety has always had to deal with this side of our nature.
t man preferred to appear strong, rich, human, intelligent,
i the rules of the social game· were based on the pretence
1

J the human being is rich, good, and beautiful. Dostoevski

s the corner-stone for a new building of humanity. In the
tV house, the prodigal son becomes the basic element. Hell
opened. Mankind, always frightened by hell before, now
:>Ives to bear its presence consciously. The class conscious-
s of the proletariat, a favourite topic of Marxism, finds its
>lanation in the fact that the uprooted outlawed stranger,
idiot, the proletarian, have nothing but their consciousness.
who lives in peace and has roots in the earth, has little
d of consciousness. The Russian intellectuals need con-
msness .
.omething eternally human gains form and shape in these
ssian figures. These novels, therefore, belong to the Russian
10lution and to the history the world. The deepest stratum
)Ur being, the one most alienated light, is lifted up
l the day history. reverse all our
 , namely, our capacity for destruction, our demons, our
ntempt, hatred and laziness, envy and indifference, greed-
md jealousy, are faced without the fury of the moralist,
indifference of the anatomist, but with a glowing passion
clarity in our short-comings. The revolutionary pure and
! is bodied forth in these novels as an eternal form of
nd.
~ Russian Revolution, in proclaiming its permanence,
lizes the revolutionary, too. The Russians try to use this
,f our potentialities for solving the universal economic
~m. The destroying features of life impersonated in the
utionary" shall form the basis for a new society which
void the casual destructions that came from concealing
.oring altogether this elem;ent of our nature.
>errhanent revolution will invest the fierce element of
ction in time into the process of regenerating our sources
:ome, and this perpetual investment will ward off the
l1 economic catastrophes from which we have suffered.
·evolutionary element will become a daily neighbour of
fe, just as dynamite, the explosive invention of Nobel,
le a blessing to contractors and the mining industry. The
~e to incorporate a part of hell-fire itself into society and «

~adiness to use dynamite as the only way to a relative

ty, is the answer given by Communism to Dostoevski's
mre of hell within our own bodies.
stoi-not exiled to Siberia like Dostoevski, but living as
intary ·hermit in the social prison of his environment,
>i, the wizard of Yasnaya Polyana-became the centre of
ltenment and encouragement for the Eastern nations.
!tters, published by Paul Biriukov, are full of political
d for the emancipation of Asia. The importance of the
ln Revolution for Asia is well illustrated by Tolstoi's
llCe.
too offers no solution of the social question. Less ortho-
rnn Dostoevski, he even taunts the church which he dc-
The Sennon on the Mount, the sermon to the masses, is
keeps the Christian tradition, dropping as he does all
es us in the inner circle of the disciples. ·
who is a saint in Russia even today, prepared the way for the
Revolution by his song of the majesty of the people. Dostoev-
ski revealed the individual. Tolstoi's theme is the majesty of
the people, not the nation in the Western sense of the word.
The people's face ir'Jike that of the simple Moujik. As long
as it is not corrupted by consciousness, as long as it does not
ask for a constitution,. the people in its pre-Adamitic stage that
lies before all political volition opens like a door so that the
higher power may enter and take possession of the soul.
To be sure, Tolstoi has no solutions to offer. But by his
assertion he destroys everything superimposed upon his gen-
uine layer of "the people." Tolstoi and Dostoevski together
composed a new creed. One gave to it his doctrine of the weak
and trembling individual, the other enriched it by his faith
in the majesty of the people, which reacts like the ocean, the
cornfield, the forest, because it is patient, passive, obedient.
The Revolution itself practically abolished literature. The
statistician superseded the novelist. The poet was a man "in
the air," as the term is. One of the few better novels of post-
war Russia is called Concrete. Concrete took the place of the
air, economy the place of poetry.
The period of realization began: realization of Marxism,
realization of Russian leadership.
BETWEEN THE FIRST AND SECOND REVOLUTION.

Lenin, originally a gentleman named Ulianov, was Europe's

~lenipotentiary to Russia to stop its exploitation by a Western
narket-seeking economy.
In 1904-05 the loss of the Japanese War enabled the bour-
~eoisie to ask for parliamentary reform. Lenin soon saw that
n the absence of a Russian proletariat the revolution could not
·.erve socialistic purposes, and so took no part in it. Instead
>f the expected "Socialist Revolution'' the battleship Potemkin
tarted a revolution; the marine and the soldier, overlooked by
vf arxism, were the dangerous proletarians of the revolution
905. 1905, a stormy period brought
workers into the country. the
a Youth was corrupted by
 ror tne nove1 l'la.snzn 1a1u uart: u.1t: uc.::3puuucu\..y a.uu u1..,-
ion of society after the disappointments of 1905 .
.r nine years Russian youth was less revolutionary, more
ned to corruption and ·dissipation, than it had been before
,. To a retrospective observer these nine years seem like
riod of subterfuge all over Europe, a last attempt to over-
, to eschew, the catastrophe. In Western Europe the na-
; tried to ignore war. In Russia youth tried to ignore the
>lution. In this period of temptation the loose leaves of
tree were shaken. Anyone who resisted the corruption
,hinism) was proved the incorruptible soldier of the Revo-
m.
~nin was such a soldier. His teacher, Plekhanov, the leading
xian authority of Russia, was not. When the War broke
Plekhanov · was blinded by it and forgot his loyalties to
World Revolution. And most of the other revolutionaries
the same.
Llt some did not. "Why, you won't help us to crush the
·!" cried a young Russian revolutionary, trying to rouse
~ Bavarian soldiers who were reluctant to go to their bar-
s in Munich on the first of August, 1914.
he exclamation is important, because it already takes the
it War as the first phase of the Russian Revolution. For
War was the most important part of the Russian Revolu-
. The one hundred and fifty million inhabitants of the
>loited colony of capitalism" could not be reached in peace-
!. M"obilization of the army and concentration at the front
the only way of getting them under control. An organic
ution of a liberal economic system, with private property
high wages, would have threatened the plans of the Social-
the War ruined this potential evolution of the reformers .
.917 two per cent of Russian industry was working for the
is of the population, the rest was working for the army.
>ther words, 98 per cent of Russian industrial production
nationalized in its market, two per cent, that is, nothing,
ped. The home market was a perfect blank. No trains, no
ls. Bolshevism found a tabula rasa. But the War
1ght another condition success: it emancipated the non-
idox terntories of the West. The victories of the Central
·s freed all the sections of Russia with old European
[ons of private property, farming, craftsmanship and
ti on.
en the unsuspecting Kerenski started his milk-and-water
ltion, he overlooked the fact that the classes on which to
a national democracy no longer existed in the Czaristic

~refore Kerenski was bound to fight for the re-conquest of

estern Provinces. His tragic mistake of going on fighting
erfectly consistent with his political program. He un-
d the real revolution by deposing the Czar, and thought
1e country could be aroused to "national defence" like
ench in 1792, merely because democracy had been pro-
d. But the moral values of national pride and "fight to
t" were too much a corollary to the rule of the bourgeois-
1d to the beginning of a war to fit into the Russian situa-
fter three years of bloodshed. Nationalism, as practised
ssia since the laws of Russification, only showed the
hold of Western influence upon the upper classes in
. The Mou jik could be loyal to the Little Father Czar,
e Petersburg ideology of a cdrru pt society had no roots
vast mass of the peasants. Their sentiments were much
represented by the monk and ranter Rasputin. Dissi-
LS he seems to have been, he was certainly a better barom-
: Russian instincts than Prince Yusupov who boasts of
murdered him. Yusupov invited, poisoned, shot and
d down Rasputin because he, like all Westerners, ·was
the influence of Rasputin on Emperor and Empress
bring about a separate peace between Russia and the
I Powers. For Rasputin, being neither a nationalist nor
Krat, was unmoved by the code of honou~ of the die-
He, like his better predecessor, Father John of Cronstadt,
:ed to Emperor and rabble the primitive Christian tradi-
~s to any pre-capitalistic and naive type of man, war was
simply and plainly an evil. It had to be avoided, and
ally to be all costs. The loss a war ·was no
to blush. The. townspeople of cities, fed
 and newspaper headllnes, are eas11y 1ntox1catea into
s of patriotism. The real stupidity of the average citizen
, itself precisely in his readiness to become over-excited
es of emergency, and in his incapacity to balance the
nd cons soberly when he is told that the national
e is at stake. Of this superstition, at least, Rasputin was
1ough the superstitious super-patriots found him very
.itious indeed.
y sacrificed him to their idol, patrietism. But in killing
tey cut off the last, however corrupt, vein that, weak
as, still ran through Little Mother Russia even -in 1917,
iich had connected the Little Father Czar with the com-
1an. After Rasputin's stupid assassination, the Czar was
constitutional monarch like any in the West. The fact
{estern capitalism had Russia in its grip, and that the
ing class, though they might call themselves princes,
and counts, were really an excrescence of the money-
g class of Europe, had begun to leak out when the Czar
o Paris for foreign loans, and especially when, in 1889,
:hange for this financial help, he allowed the Mar-
e to be played before him. All the efforts of Czarism
hat were aimed at keeping a balance between the fact
ussia had become dependent on Western economic meth-
d the traditional feelings of the :Moujik. 'The enlightened
classes were only disgusted at the fanatical orthodoxy
by the German-born En1press. We are usually blinded
'.i cheap enlightenment of the free-thinker which ignores
·ational loyalties of group life. A ruler and his followers
in a common faith as in a fluid which enables them to
he Ship of State wherever it must be turned, even if it
~he harbour of a hard peace. Rational relations in govern-
do not survive, because the ship must be steered across
cks of political misfortunes. \Vars and foreign policy are
be most fatal in democracies; for there they are fought
the bitter end.
s truth can ''.rell be learned from Russian history itself.
R.usso-Japanese \Var in I and the first Russian
levolution have to be considered as a prelude 8 to the greater
vents of a decade later.
In 1904 the world crash began to appear on the horizon.
rredentism became more violent. The most sensitive writer
n the Fin de Siecle decay, Joyce, dates his witches' sabbath
,f civilization in Ulysses back to June, 1904, ~th an astound-
rig instinct for the epoch made by that year in the soul of
lie European. The catastrophe to which Europe had long
[nee been driven as if "in a torture of tension," according to
Jietzsche's phrase, first became visible in this year.
The first rapids of the cataract through which mankind has
een passing ever since appeared when the Esthonians set 'fire
) their landlords' estates on the Baltic coast, and when a yellow
ower defeated the white man for the first time.
The first Russian Revolution pleased all the Democrats,
.iberals and Humanists. But Lenin refused to take part in it .
.nd as the pre-liberal, pre-democratic ancien regime had the
Jurage to make peace in time, it survived. These two facts
re the outstanding features of 1905. The fighting fronts
rouped themselves for the first time, and the uselessness of
ie bourgeois ideology of the liberal and national revolution-
~ies was already visible.

MILITARY DEFEAT: A REVOLUTIONARY VICTORY.

In a country as badly organized as Russia a mili,ary defeat

as always possible. Now the ruler of a country is the pivot
etween war and peace, and peace and war .. He is not on one
de of the door, like his ministers or the generals of the army;
~ has to choose every day benveerl lhe use of peaceful means
id adopting brute force. He is the pivot between peace and
ar because he decides with whom his people shall be on
•eaking terms and with whom not. The reader will understand
tat "peace" and "war" are not merely the extreme cases of
>mplete disarmament or open warfare, but imply a daily deci-
on, because a country has to move day at least one inch
ward solidarity or towards isolation in its policies. A
1905 by Joseph Conrad in his " and
ar," in and Letters. o. 111 ff .. 1021.
i1c~~ a.;:, a. i. ui.\..i. \ ~.L.1.15, PJ. '"'"="'·'""''"' ...... ", o . . . . . . . . . , r-- -·-
'-AL..U..I.' " ' " ' ......

r dictator) if he no longer has the authority to swing

1r freely between peace and war. As soon as a govern-
1s finally closed the door on one of the two possibilities,
>St its proper value.
Nationalists in Russia were worthless because they could
~e peace in 1917. The statesman who could was the ruler
ia. All measures, laws and programmes of government
or questions compared to this main issue which concerns
v existence of a nation as an independent group.
)17 a German pulhnan car carried Lenin from Zurich
l Germany. Lenin was sent home by the German army
ren knowing his main duty in the future, he protected
from the very beginning against the easy impeachment
tsion with the Germans. When he stepped on the train
in his pocket a document signed by a French, a German
Swiss Marxist, saying that ·they did not object to his
l with Prussian militarism. Later, in Petrograd, he be-

1e great man, not for his radicalism or his economics

l to give in to the greed of the peasants, and painfully
,inted Rosa Luxemburg by accepting at first the seizure
land by the individual villages and peasants), but be-
e concluded the treaty of Brest-Litovsk. He alone turned
~at War into a World Revolution; for he was the only
ven in the Russia of 1917, who had the courage to do
intellectual Russian who had lived through the last
rears in Russia had escaped the infection of current
Llistic ideas. Rasputin, as a pun~-blooded Mou jik, and
as a Nihilist and refugee, were not blinded by patriotic
enin came into the country in order to conquer it for
1m. It was the field for his lask, and raw material on
to work, an object in the full sense of this word in
science. To him the amputation of all the Western
·ies from the trunk of Russia was justifiable because it
~ way to peace. No mere Russian mind imbued with
tlism could sacrifice the Balkans and Bessarabia and
v and Finland and Riga and Lithuania. Lenin was
lated when he first pronounced his "peace at all costs." Coldly,
with the relentlessness of a masseur, he began to repeat his
formula. The intoxicated patriots could not understand him.
He was in a hopeless minority for a relatively long time. But
lle uttered his monstrous formula like a curative·· treatment
=lay after day. The subconscious part of men, "their visceral
iensation," their diaphragm, was kneaded and rubbed, and
became aware of their true situation: "It does not matter how
nuch of our territory we lose, provided we can build up
)ocialism in the rest."
With this formula he dedicated the rest of Russian territory
.o a world-wide mission. The surrender of the western border
lecame the honourable price of a new organic function of the
llussians within the world. They screwed their courage to the
,ticking point: they accepted the amputation as necessary to
lussia's task.
It was a fight between reason on one side and faith and
nstinct on the other. All the phraseology of passion, of emo-
ional slogans, had been used up for war. The new language
>f Socialism could not but be cool, harsh, grey, like a doctor's
>rescription or a chemist's fonnula. Finally, Lenin won, and
he treaty was signed. ·Thus the new language of Bolshevism
vas created in the autumn of 1917~nical, icy, cooling in-
tead of warming. .·
All the procedures of the Bolshevik keep and must keep this
tandard.set forth by Lenin. The subconscious mind of man,
tis fears for life and bare material existence, his suspicion of
tis own idealistic intoxication, is used to build up a mate~
ialistic organization for every body instead of for every mind
.r soul. The new language does not cease to rely on sacrifice,
elf-denial, self-discipline and the forming of ideals for millions
•f individuals. This materialism is strictly opposed to sensual-
sm. It is an asceticism of the individual soul for the sake of
n.aterial solidarity in the body politic. The material needs of
he body politic, wheat and iron and cotton and electric
re the ideals expressed, as we have by the piatiletka.
hey to the indivdiual in the form scientific
:Lau~<:: UlllCI \\' l;:)C Lucy .u11e;1u.. u~ .lJ.J..l.;)t...Q..l'.'-.1..1. L'-J.1. L.1..1. .... ~JI.Al

Lmy lies of bourgeois ideologists.

nly inan who had the detachment to use this new "Ian-
. the diaphragm" against the intoxication of the brain
propaganda, became the demigod who founded the
, and when he died he was embalmed and enshrined
founders of cities in ancient Hellas. The creation of
1olitical scale of values always seems the achieven1ent
nigod. Ordinarily, the pilgrimage to Lenin's grave is
d to the pilgrimage to the relics of a Christian saint.
dust and bones of the saint's corpse bear witness to an
: world. Lenin's corpse is kept carefully embalmed be-
~ provides food and clothing for the masses, like an
i Pharaoh.
:rificing the favourite topic of the nationalized intel-
in time of war, that is, military victory, Lenin brought
uality home to the reasoning of the man in the street.
:ed Reason to look down, instead of staring up or
the universe. He humiliated the free, idealistic out-
the period of liberty and patriotic citizenship. This
phrase, "liberty is a bourgeois prejudice," must be
)Od in the light of the peace of Brest-Litovsk.
WORLD WAR AND WORLD REVOLUTION.

Russian Revolution remains indebted to the World

lle War, as we have seen, gathered the organized man-
the country for centralized military service, delivered
:he hands of the Bolsheviks, and later handed over to
rhat the Czar had lost: the power of concluding peace.
has been the paradox of the Russian situation ever
: was closely connected with Europe, not by economic
but by the \Var. The mobilization of the army and the
tinst Central Europe created the new unity of the
. It changed both the territory and the population.
~ it a power of "Eurasian" character, as the new geog-
n · styles it. A hundred years ago the fan1ous
r-pnnce, Pikkler-Muskau, wrote: "My book will treat
rst in its second Africa, in its third Asia,
and the tourth will deal with Russia, because it can be consid-
ered, with good reason, a continent of its own."
The result of the Russian Revolution fits well into this
definition. A new continent was established economically, not
a new world. The World War saw the greatest geographical
expansion of direct Russian influence. The high-water mark
:lf Communism was the year of 1919. Since then Communism
h.as been more and more limited to the government of Russia,
is one government among others, and the close connection
with the West has been replaced by a growing isolation from
tll Western contacts or exchanges. Russia is more Russia today
:han she had ever been since Peter the Great. She is an isolated
:ontinent of her own. This significance of the World War is
,vell-expressed .by the terms of the treaties. Being dovetailed
nto Europe· by the system of western territories, Russia had
>een a part of the Western market-seeking economy. When the
lovetailing was destroyed she moved away from the rest of
he world. The cold philosophy of the Bolsheviks failed to
~asp this point. Being primarily Europeans, they went so far
lS to drop "Rossiya" from the official name of their govern-
nent. When Mr. Troyanovsky, the first Bolshevik minister to
t\Tashington, presented his credentials to Mr. Roosevelt, the
tame of Russia, curiously enough, was not used on either side.
J.S.S.R. was the expression of the Russian hope for world-
~ide revolution. Starting from the world as a whole, they were
eluctant to see that they were creating an isolated system.
Instead they went on carefully studying the French Revo-
ution, the tactics of Robespierre and Hebert, and the impor-
:tnce of sparing the heads of the left- and right-wing opposition
1ecause in France "the Revolution had devoured its own chil-
ren." Thus they missed the main point of a comparative study,
amely, that between 17 89 and 1815 there had been three and
half years of revolution at home and twenty-three years of
rar abroad, whilst Russia saw three and a half years of war
nd then a permanent revolution.
After exhaustion caused by the external wars, a second
~volution, in I had to started to win back
urope to the maxims of its bourgeois revolution.
 d revolution set up a bourgeois king who gave the first real
pression to the material interests of the governing class.
~9 and 1830 are like the drama and the explanatory epilogue.
ln Russia a prologue clears the scene. The events of 1904
d 1905 are called, with perfect right, "the first Russian Revo-
:ion," because they really prepared the main drama of the
:ond. The .general staff of the second revolution was ready
·ty years before the existence of a real proletariat in Russia,
d waited impatiently for the economic evolution of the coun-
. to catch up with it. The French Revolution was a perfect
>del for the Marxian theory that a class interest builds up
::lass ideology and that the philosophers of the movement
~refore depend upon the material interests of their group.
lt with all their knowledge of this relationship, the Bolsheviks
~mselves could not help existing before the proletarian in
issia. The ideologist awaited, seized, educated and won over
~ proletarians in Russia! The emancipation of a class "must
the work of the class itself," is a famous phrase in Marx,
ridemning the right of the intellectual to be more than the
ecutive of a social will. But in Russia the emancipation of
e proletariat is the work of the intelligentsia. The intelli ·
ritsia suffered for a century, and its vicarious suffering gave
nin the right to enforce his "Laws." Socialism was a theory
vised by a bourgeois, with all the corollaries of bourgeois
Dught, since atheism, free-thinking, and the belief in natural
ence. are merely the accompaniment of bourgeois thought
the middle of the nineteenth century.
Finally, the Russians, being hypnotized by the example of
e French Revolution, misunderstood their own relation to
e World War. If the Napoleonic Wars had infected the rest
Europe with the germ of the ideas of 1789, the Great War,
l the contrary, preceded the so-called revolution and pervaded

irope for three years as a catastrophical force quite apart

>many formulated programme. The war was the great revolu-
ln for all European civilization. Compared with its terrible
Dodshed, destruction, and despair, Communist
is simply a drop in the ocean.
the from the t 'Var increased, the
1ce of Russian policy on the rest of Europe could not but
ecline.
We shall see later what happened to the rest of the world
; a result of the Great War. At this point we are dealing with
te effect of all these self-deceptions on the Russians them-
·lves. It took the1n ten years to realize their real tendency
1ward complete isolation. Once they discovered their destiny,
tey lost interest in Communist theories of 1918 or 1920 and
~sumed, instead, their connection with the economic problems
= 1917. Then the country made a desperate effort to organize

ielf. Lenin himself had fervently admired the efficiency of

erman organization for all the purposes of war economy, an
liciency which was certainly far distant from Communism.
he "Piatiletka" is the Hindenburg line of the Bolsheviks, the
·oblem of war economy renewed on a gigantic scale. For
.em it means drawing the conclusion from their isolation
td limiting their planning to an autarchy of the U.S.S.R.
The years 1929-1934, read in the light. of the disillusions
td mistakes of the Russians in both theory and practice, are
sober acceptance of the real results of the Great War. The
rar took the intelligentsia by surprise. Their revolution actu-
ly did not begin as a class-war! Instead, a civil war which
~t across class lines broke out between the European nations.
he differentiation of the European nations according to their
anomic 1 . 1nd geographical conditions was made clear by the
'ar, wbidh brought into sharp relief Germany's efficiency in
•lding the fortress of Central Europe, England's dependence
mn the rest of the world, and Russia's backwardness in her
ternal organization.
The materialistic outlook of the Marxists was much truer
an they imagined. According to their own theory, changes
economic conditions create new thoughts in men; but in
ite of this fact, most of the Russians believed in 1917 that
e dream of a ~world revolution could be realized after a
orld \\Tar. They habitually overlooked the fact that the \Var
elf new economic conditions unknown to
1e Great \Var, in humble and uncon-
ous rok of soldiers. made the utirm T .11-P l-l ~rn l.ot
 uld say to any Marxian dogmatist, "Our withers are
l g . ''
a the French bourgeoisie began to take the first steps
revolt, about 17 50, its leaders had in mind specific
.ic conditions and abuses which were recurrent for the
rty years. The Great War, on the other hand, made a
te change in the economic conditions of the world. Not
ie depression of 192 g was the change taken seriously.
ts, Cassandras, demagogues, had foretold it; but the
elming majority of governn1ents and parties had tried
rn to the conditions of 1914. These conditions- were
s, bigger and better conditions of living, an upward
or everything, a cheering up from year to year. In so
Communists in the Kremlin shared the illusions of the
who held the World Fair of a Century of Progress in
) as late as 1933. For had not Socialism and Marxism
>rn under pre-War conditions? According to the Marxian
:self, how could a theory be workable after a change in
erial environment? It was a triumph of Marxism over
rxists when the Great War, a real and substantial mate-
t, proved to be of more importance than any volition on
t of parties or individuals. The \Vorld War was a World
tion: it ended Marxism as it ended liberalism.
Marxists clung to their pre-War notions as long as they
The same was true of the rest of the world. In all the
, the years 1924 to 1929 mark a period of stubborn re-
> recognize the new facts. Every country exaggerated its
.r economy. The problems which America has had to
lce 1929 were exactly the problems foreseen by Theo-
.oosevelt in 1912. The thoughts of men are slow. It is
Lr brains can register news and information day by day;
t seems, on the surface, to be quick and dashing. But
1ality belongs to the particular statement only. The
rork of our thoughts is the most conservative part of
dies. The grey cells of our brains are the only cells of
:ly ·which are never rejuvenated during our lives. They
~ ten or more cmnplete restorations of all the other cells.
rocesses our judgment often on centuries in
 changed environment. Less easily does a scholar change his
1ethods than nations their religion. American lawyers follow
lle method of English common law Anno Domini 1934 as they
id in 1634. . . .
Valuing everything in terms of expansion, "bigger and bet-
er," boom and prosperity, growth and progress and evolution,
hinking, in other words, in terms of a market-seeking econ-
~my and society, was the common mistake of both Marxists
nd liberals after the War. The Marxists longed for the success
~£ a pre-War social theory, the liberals for the success of a
.re-War economic practice. Both failed because the facts of
he War were catalogued under the old headings that domi-
tated pre-War brains, instead of forming new headings them-
elves. A curve could show the ups and downs in our willing-
tess to see the War as a break in our habits of thinking. The
villingness varies. We avoid realizing that our new situation is
:onnected with the World War. In the United States the de-
>ression is blamed for what was really done by the War and
he Treaty of Versailles. In Russia the "Piatiletka" which bids
arewell to the Marxist World Revolution and means the or-
~anization of Russia as an independent and invulnerable state
~ven in time of war, is hailed as the triumph of Marxism.

THE DEPRESSION.

The economists call the crisis an economic crisis, which it

:ertainly is. But the pattern of the business cycle is not applica-
Jle to a case like ours. Our intentional suppression of what
ias happened makes all the difference between i 912 and i 92 g.
\crisis in 1912 was a crisis only; the crisis of 1929 is of double
:orce, because people have tried to forget and to make others
:orget that the open-market period since the War is gone. The
lestruction of Austria, for example, by the treaty of St. Ger-
nain, was simply a step backward from a bigger market
nany smaller ones. We cannot carry out what our own language
Jf progress calls a "regress," and then believe that the regress
will affect us like a progress. But that was exactly what the
riations the vocabulary of the
:mrl the
ate the greatest possible market. Une prov1s1on wou1a
ed all the economic difficulties of later years: "The
>ne and united for all business purposes." All the
1graphs of the treaties could have been omitted, and
Peace would have followed the World War. But in
one proposition could not have been made without
tg the life of the man who uttered it. Even today it
a logical tour de force, and has nothing to do with
e acts, speeches, and plans in the diplomatic chan-

1e facts of our World War experience we must draw

table conclusion: property, or in other words, the
~oduction of goods, is certainly an endeavour which
mankind in its struggle for life all over the world.
:luction of goods is all very well, but the nations
.rst of reproducing their exhausted man-power. They
restore the nation's vitality, to reproduce man him-
' the reproduction of man is not a formula which
all m.en,. because man is reproduced in different ways.
attitude of the nations during and after the Great
Russians themselves came to learn that even in capi-
mntries production is a less sovereign motive than
he rest of the world sacrificed its cash interests to
~rests or values. Capitalistic interests were outweighed
re by obligations toward the reproduction of national
JUDAS ISCARIOT.
o.ets of Marxism were too narrow. In opposing Capi-
Communism, an existing order to a mere unhistorical
missed the real situation. And it was able to go on
illusion as long as the self-deception of the other pre-
-rnments lasted. Its merit was to label things as revo-
before this word was popular in Western countries.
evolutions" are as plentiful as blackberries; but their
is watered down to the cheap notion of quick changes
hnique of moving pictures or textiles, or the making
)r industry. The discovery made by Marxist theory
lkind from revolution to revolution a
ader framework than the Marxists were equipped to give.
~he anti-economic result of the World \Var gives testimony
he truth of what has often been said: Marx understood some
igs in economics better than anybody among his contem-
aries, but of men he knew less than the simple housewives
L village. The souls of men can be trained to amazing pur-

~s. In Russia they are drilled to deprive their own bodies

tll pleasure, for the pleasure of acting as a force in an
mized "body economic." In Russia the governing class
1dly call themselves the "proletariat," though actually they
ri a religious order, revolutionary in intention and disposi-
' which owes its authority to the procession of vicarious
~ring, century-long martyrdom, among the Russian nobility
intelligentsia.
'he souls of men seem to hide their actions under a strange
~er of ideology. Men are much more reserved than rational-
suspect. Marxism unveils our ideologies; it strips off the
al pretexts that cover our naked interest. But it cannot
ige human nature. By the nature of our souls, even Marxists
doomed to wear clothes. Man is not naked and never will
rhere is a province in man's realm, it is true, that belongs
ense body, gnashing teeth, clenched fist, Stamping foot,
re the "brother donkey" of St. Francis of Assisi seems to
ll of us that is left. The stretch and strain of labour brings
.abour-force inside us so close to the surface that the drone
hum and whetting and pawing and swearing and scream-
;ilence the other parts of our being. Labour even acquires
iiversal language. The labour forces "waft a sigh from
ts to the Pole." The curses of the individual labourer carry
1eight; but once united the labour-forces can break their
1s. We can organize labour as part of the universe. Labour
e curse by which God has blessed mankind. Labour is a
~ for the lonely worker, but it can be made the happiness
co-operative fellowship.
1is grandiose effort the Bolsheviks is a permanent and
rgettable contribution to human real· But it is
£ £ ........... 44 ....

f alone. Ho'W meaningless is made apparent

~ol In Perm thPrP ~t'.:Jnr1~
ment to Judas lscanot. We are 11v1ng in a penod when
high treason, is revealed as an essential feature of
frailty. German National Socialism is beset by the prob-
:he traitor. Now the category of treason reveals the very
of man as a social force. Instead of a personality, man
il bundle of nerves: he follows his leader as far as his
will carry him, and then treason is the next step. 9 In
nalysis, treason is well-known as the revenge of the
gainst the strong. Nietzsche's apostasy from Richard
· is a modern parallel to the case of Judas, and is cele-
JY Nietzsche himself as a victory. Judas appears in many
books as the twin of Jesus, with the better instinct for
rld. Judas wished power and success; and in a century
~. H. Lawrence wrote Blessed the Powerful, when the
>r power becomes the basic creed of great nations, poor
ppears as a martyr to the true creed of mankind. Judas
have saved the Kingdom of Judea! He would have
out the Romans. He would not have deserted to
1doml The Bolsheviks challenged the old rule that in a
ine a man does not argue against his country. They
l old Russia. The desertion made them discover Judas.
martyr Judas is extolled in both psychoanalytical and
mist literature. One might expect the successful ruler
i' day, Cxsar Augustus, to be hailed as the model; but
ls is not mentioned. The pagan emperor has no con-
with the history of our soul; Judas has. The revolu-
·s prefer to set up Judas, the permanent natural and
.mitic force within ourselves, in opposition to the per-
ri who healed Adam's wound.
lman history, in so far as it dates from Adam and Jesus,
-Adamite is represented by the traitor. "No manual
can be virtuous," said Aristotle.
~rn society has to recognize that man, in so far as he
in the machine, must be looked upon as frail, unrdia-
~stern literature, Edmond Rostand, in the nineties, created the role of
~ous youth in La Princesse Lointaine. His traitor, Bertrand. however,
to the type, in the French setting, vanquished
l'O.
11e, tranorous-anct au this not trom bad intentions, but
1rough his lasting weakness, helplessness, fear, and disappoint-
1

1ent. But this recognition does not mean that exalted heroism
r the virtues of strength and faith and reliability are abolished
r denied. Only, the mass man in his tribal fears and night-
1ares cannot reach them. He is haunted like any Australian
ushman. "We are afraid," is the great outcry of the prole-
triat. But let us not overlook the peculiar relation between
iis outcry and the old virtues of the liberal, the self-possessed
idividual. The proletarian soul is visited by weaknesses which
re the logical antithesis of the old scale of values. The prole-
Lriat negates and ridicules these values because of its inferi-
rity complex; but it has no other values of its own. It lives
ithout values, without ideals, without any trimmings or
nbellishments. It is the eternal incendiary of this so-called
id so-des,pised higher civilization.
It is the universal and perpetual mission of the proletariat
1maintain this negative attitude, says Trotsky; for the revo-
~tion is permanent and must be permanent. The very concept
'. the Russian Revolution perverts the old order of connection
~tween means and ends. Revolution had been a means to the
td of better government; for the Bolshevik, revolution is per-
~tual because th~re is no "better government.'' Over and over
~ repeats: "The State must be destroyed once morel" The
)larity ·between the capitalistic world and Marxism is to be
ernal. On the day of the Last Judgment the Revolution can
e down, not before. Like Hebert in the French Revolution,
e Bolshevik has a clear conception of the mass man's own
capacity for government. Like the waves of the ocean drawn
tween two tides, the masses tear down in eternal recurrence
latever takes the shape of exploitation and government.
ence a peculiar eschatology: the process of attack, lawlessness,
struction, must be perpetual, because the solution cannot be
und until the Last Day of Creation. The final vision is a
aceful earth; but the whole period today and the
d is bloodshed, force, treason, strug·gle and fight.
~ans class-war. Not until history is can
ace.
>eculiar eschatology because it enables the law-giver, the
· of a government, the reformer of society, to clothe him-
a ferocious revolutionary. The governing class in Russia,
simple administrators of an economic order, rather than
realed as heirs of the old Chinovnik, the Czarist bureau-
)refer to wear the blood-red mantle of the revolutionary.
a very pedantic kind of social worker, they wear a mask
kedness. But it is a mask. The Bolshevist fashion is to
r naked, without idejals; but this naked skin is painted,
he dancing costume of the medicine man in an Indian
and the idealistic fanatics who govern because they have
~d, govern in the name of the devil of materialism.

THE INTERDEPENDENCE OF REVOLUTIONS.

y do the Bolsheviks choose the blood-red flag? Why do

corn idealism? The tricolour and the ideals of the bour-
nations are their enemies. They are the symbols of the
which, as we have seen, the Intelligentsia in Russia was
ed to overtake. As the antithesis to the polished civiliza-
1f Europe they chose their language of complete denuda-
The language of the Bourgeois Revolution had to be
ne.
~ is struck at the outset by the fact that to a Bolshevik
revolution is an end, not a means. The term is given a
sense of permanence. This concept of a continuous,
·ending state of affairs to be called "perpetual revolu-
certainly is cumbersome for any liberal mind. However,
! post-War revolutionaries agree in the new terminology.
· and Mussolini, as much as Stalin, are attempting today
ng about a complete change in our political vision. They
~oclaiming "revolution" to be the only decent political
for human beings. Intervals of mere legal and peaceful
are branded as treason against the true concept of life .
.n's "struggle for existence" is transformed by these polit-
ogmatists into the new term, "continuous revolution."
, stability, security, are dethroned. They are in-
tble cowardice. To such ................ _. . .
capitaJism is the more
allsm itself is of revolutionary origin. How can the sons and
laughters of a revolution forbear living on the interest from
he revolutionary investment of their forefathers?
Bolshevism is less concerned with showing its true faith than
t is with tearing off the mask of the French Revolution worn
>y the governing class. Its perpetual revolution goes against
temporary revolution. With the French it is anti-bourgeois,
nti-liberal, anti-democratic, anti-national. It is the dissolution
,f the existing order, the onl~radox being that it is its
~erpetual dissolution. A perpetua-l---8issolution is a contradiction
ri terms. But this contradiction is at the root of Bolshevism.
~olshevism learns, buys, borrows from capitalism, relies on its
rganization, taps its very source and vigour; it must have
:ipitalism to live. Because the proletarian is the negation of
1e bourgeois his creed begins with nihil, and the dissolution
f Family, State, Law, Art, and Religion is its revolutionary
esire.
The way to understand the Russian Revolution is, in fact,
> study the French Revolution. The Russians studied the
rench as a pattern for their own behaviour. They curtail.ed
ieir study by divorcing the Napoleonic Wars from the Revo-
ttion; but they took the French Revolution as their own
[alectical antagonist. We shall consider the French Revolu-
on in its polarity to the World War of 1914, and in doing so
e shall discover the process by which the French Revolution
~came a necessary step in the life of all mankind, not of France
one: -We shall discover in it that same interplay between real
'ents and the veneer of speech and ideology which he I ped us
understand the Bolshevik regime. The French regime is
Lsed on an assumption no less universal than the Marxian
abour-force." Man is free, equal, and the brother of every
an because he has reason, says the Frenchman. The revolu-
)llary dynamite of the proletarian is no higher an explosive
an this "reason" of the citizen who created La France une et
divisible during the Great Revolution.

In the of the resentful Stalin,

lony capitalism. It was on
 cnc1e tnat surrounaea rue J.VJ.eu..:a 01 t:1v111.t.duuu, u1~
of France, during the nineteenth century. Napoleon I,
.rrior of the French Revolution, barely touched Russia
burning of Moscow. During the regime of Napoleon III
~as of I 789 wrested from Russia the emanci pa ti on of the
ts ( 1861 ). In both cases French ideas brought a pressure
r upon Russia without solving the problem, without
lg through what they intended to achieve.
Lt a strange period, when ideas led a personal existence,
e march of ideas into Russia in 1861 proved more irre-
. than the march of the Grand Army in 1812.
1 so much power at the circumference of the circle,
<leas must have produced a hundredfold greater phos-
cence at the centre.
reflected glow of the French Revolution permeated the
of European civilization. Citizenship and civilization,
·entina and in Rumania, in Sweden and in Egypt, pro-
d their indebtedness to the French enlightenment of
~ven today this brightness still shines above the horizon
1st of us .
.ay be difficult for an author to be impartial toward the
n Revolution, because he must fight its claim to abso-
;s. It is an even more delicate matter to deal with the
L Revolution, because very few of my readers will be

:d to confess how completely their whole scale·· of senti-

and values is pitched in its key.
prepare -our ears for the "soft language of liberty in
:" we here sum up the creed and dogma of the prole-
revolt1tion in Russia.
:-IE FIRST OF MAY AND THE ABOLITION OF HISTORY.

Russian Revolution acts like a brick-layer. Men are

iled upon a wall that grows higher and higher. One of
.v good pieces of revolutionary literature is Concrete by
JV, in which he describes the disappearance of every-
atmospheric. The Revolution transforms men into con-
. is to be as tangible as concrete, and every-
too. thinker, the the poet, is called a ''man in
""' u.u.. .a. ..u .. .a..:> .a..u..ipv.-,.,Au1c auu 1~ u1sappeanng. L1v1ng souls,

ith individual faces, smiling and sobbing like personal beings,

se their form and vanish as soon as the stamp is pressed upon
1

tern. Like a trip-hammer, the daily process of industrializa-

::>n mechanizes childish, naive faces into nationalized labour-
1rces. The Russians, trying to bridge the gulf of a thousand
ars, are paving the road towards industrialization with reli-
ous devotion. If it were not a kind of worship, they probably
uld not be so reckless. When we see them acting like the
itchmen upon Mount Zion we must remember that their
on is a work-a-day world in which every man is just every-
1dy and nothing else. Since our nature presents this colour-
•s, physiological, physical, mechanical aspect as well as others,
is a side of us which is real indeed, but in the same way as
y mechanism-that is, it is monotonous. The monotony of
e ore-crusher, the trip-hammer, the steam-roller, is anti-
;torical because its principle is mere repetition.
The worship of mechanization recalls the prayer-mills of
bet-the same prayer repeated 50,000 times or 100,000 times
the spiritual counterpart of the same manipulation repeated
nillion times: at best there is the same sleight of hand. A
nous Bolshevik moving picture boasted that the Russian
~volution had shaken the world in ten days. Instinctively we
~1 that it shook the "world" less than it shook the ground
der our feet. Fascism and Nazism, which will have to be
llyzed later in connection with the Italian and German revo-
ions, are struggling hard to revolt against this dry and mo-
tonous clatter of the mill. They revolt against the use of
~mical formulas like hexamethylene, tetramine, or zoological
ms like dysrnerornorph or antherozoid to describe human
ods and tempers, against chromosomes being made to ex-
in the results of love or lack of love. But the Russians wor-
p nature in the garb of chemical fonnulas. Medicine is the
[gion of the Soviets. Good and evil are abolished, healthy
l ill are the only qualities of the labour-forces. Hundreds
)hysicians are drilled in Moscow and then sent out to
ions North and as the new evangelists of the
:lical Every physician and physicist
 a standard bearer of the new pre-Adamite gospel of man
mndle of energies .
.e first of May marks this return of men into the womb
:iety. The social masses are redeemed when they can move
he forces of nature in spring: untried, rejuvenated, juve-
endless, impersonal.
natural religion tries to double the cape of human re-"
ibility or. freedom by persuading us that sun and moon
~ain and climate rule over us. Sunwheels and rainbows,
)rs and trees, are venerated wherever man feels himself
veak to be man. The Communist revolution must deal
the weakness of man. It does so by offering him the sensa-
of recurrent nature. (Nazism has not only adopted the
:>f May, but added similar nature festivals.) But it was
er the "Nature" of lyric poetry nor the dangerous nature
ehistory which was to form the wings of the political
. It was a mechanized nature, with chanting choruses of
ands, with loud-speakers all over the place, with men
)elves changed into drops in the ocean or into leaves of
by .the most refined technique of mass-hypnotism. Men,
l, inarticulate, are galvanized by the new technique of
ling thousands. I myself have heard a thousand children
1tadium repeating monotonously a chorus on the suppres-
>f the worker in the Saar:
For - cing - Ger - man - wor - ker' s - hand
with - beast - ly .. rank .. ha - tred
in - to - serf - <lorn.

members of such a chorus are not actors. Taken sepa-

r, they are simply nothing. Not one of those children could
he phrase quoted above personally. It is the impersonal
cter of the chorus which makes it possible for the words
used. The text sung by modern choruses in mass-meetings
be irresponsible and detestable. But it would be unfair
eat its content as seriously as we were taught in school
~at poetry. We learned to worship poetry as a flower. In
nodern cult of the proletariat the chorus is filled with
1, and it The civil mass turn
;ream on and olt. ·1·11e Howers of poetry are superseded by gas-
:all it poison gas or intoxicating gas-but in any case some-
:hing that n1oves a host of mass energies toward unanimous
tction.
The symbolism of the holiday of labour, the first of May,
s based on the abolition of responsibility. The sweating labour-
'orce gets its proper reward. Georges Clemenceau wrote a great
>age on this march of the underman against the individualistic
:i vilization which he himself loved so passionate! y. Forecasting
he approach of the modern masses, he wrote: "In this heart-
ending hour, who will not pity the ennobled pangs of hope,
ost in the shadow of the past? Yes, our sons will see a day
vhen the horrible massacres of historical times, and even
.rimitive barbarism, will seem to them to represent human
~appiness in the face of the terrifying catastrophe which with
rresistible step will gain ground upon them. It would be a
1onstrous climax of pain, even into the last phases of decay,
c the notion of the necessary end were not already present
nd did not awaken in us the superior philosophy which per-
1its us to brave any destiny without growing pale.
"The horrible prostration will be accomplished impercep-
bly before our eyes. Senility will gradually deaden conscious-
ess, already diminishing in sensibility to the blows; and step
y step, along the road of death he has already travelled into
fe, man, coming from the earth and returning to the earth,
ill find his grave in his cradle, drowned in forgetfulness at
te very source of pain. Pitiless, the slow regression will perform
s work. The last human being then alive will be extinguished
t the same mystery from which the first tnan arose. Thus will
~ ended, in supreme wretchedness, the struggle for life which
as begun at the happy hour of birth in the enchanted world.
'he life of man had exercised a fatal domination over all
lferior life. New conditions of life now create new conditions
: struggle. The hour has come for the great revenge of lower
~ainst higher nature. The inferior organism, less pretentious
.an its competitors, is satisfied with ·
Jns of · In proportion as the condinons of life are nar-
1wed, n1an, beast, tree, are · become anemic
~ed. lncapao1e ot repressing any ionger iuc:: uu;::,Luit:=
f primitive forms, they now recoil; and the inferior
les the in1mense domain where the superior life had
kept it in check. It will be the last battle, the great
ife in defeat, yielding its ground step by step, un.der
:erent eyes of centuries, to some humble moss which
iiscovered retreat has been biding its time until now.
our cities crumbling, among shapeless remnants of
r, the last ruins collapsing upon expiring life, all
all the arts . . . "
1ceau describes the sentiments of a civilized man faced
arching battalions of the proletariat. Do not be misled
atural metaphor in which he speaks of mosses and
life. Such a vision always goes too far. The French
writing in pre-War days, recorded ~ike a seismograph
Jaching catastrophe of his civilization, where thought
1ce "and art prevailed. His mosses are the modern
1rom4t·their point of view, nothing is lost, everything

gained. "The proletariat has nothing to lose but its

·ent nature is the great dream of the manual worker.

e forgotten man, the unknown soldier on the battle-
nankind. Why should he worry about a superior life
nknown to him? Why care for the dishes on a table
has only the doubtful honour of washing them? In a
an song of the German 'vorkers, they are called "eeople
.ight." It is an excellent expression to describe the
Jf clearness and brightness, of all the glories of French
in this lower life of the primitive worker in the coal-
1d factories. There is something subterranean about
slavery of manual work. It is no accident that subter-
nomes and dwarfs fill the old fairy tales, the literature
~ that was better acquainted with fire and earth than
easily moved air and water. The darkn.ess within us,
~d by the diaphragm, ruled by the clear eyes, th~ lucid
the loving heart, remains darkness nevertheless. Mod-
hinery it out of its deep dens and caves, and
time _the internal forces of and earth hear a word
of hope. The sighing and groaning of the creatures become
audible, as it is promised in the gospel, a sighing and groaning
not palliated, to be sure, by the poet's flowery phrases or the
reflections of the philosopher. The people in the dark of night
and the watchmen upon the Mount Zion of this work-a-day
world, abolishing civilization as they certainly are, do not live
without an historical vision. Since its beginning, scientific so-
cialism has turned towards anthropology and ethnology. Pre-
history is the great projection of the proletarian vision into
the past. In 192 1 the radical Marxist wing of the German
Socialists, the independents, instructed their leader, Ledebur,
to work into the programme of the party the "newest results
of scientific research in the field of anthropology and pre-
history." Books like James Henry Breasted, Dawn of Conscience,
with its ardour for an age preceding the despicable age of
revelation, or like Frazer's Golden Bough, pave the road for
an age where Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome can be eradicated
from our children's textbooks, and where the life of Indians,
negroes, Egyptians, Sumerians, Teutons, and Celts will seem
much more attractive than the so-called classics of Greece and
Rome.
The primitives know no history. That is why the modern
masses adore primitivism. They are told that the worker has
always paid the price of history: he fought the battles of kings
and oil-kings, of prophets and popes. He will no longer be
fodder for cannon. Perhaps prehistory offers a way out of this
ridiculous thirst for world history which intoxicates the ruling
classes all over the world. An American statesman, defying
Europe and European imperialism, exclaimed: "Happy the
country that has no history. America has not much of it, and
should try to have even less." He was a man who had come
from Europe and with ardent love had adopted the new world
as his country. He is seconded by a niodern sophisticate of
infinite timeliness, the hero of Joyce's Ulysses, who exclaims:
"History is the nightmare from which I will awake." These
words may help us to decipher the prehistoric of
the modern masses. They don•t bother about Church and
The monotonv of · not to interrunted bv
 Il or reforms of the mind. ·1 hey long tor tne ntua1 ot
ve clan.
ing to orthodox Bolshevism, therefore, the first of
l-ie first day of a permanent revolution which tends
1te history and dive into the recurrent waves of pre-
rhe last day of the permanent revolution will be the
,f the dictatorship of the proletariat. The provisional
ent of this dictatorship is necessary for security against
alistic aggression or reaction. But it is provisional. All
!nts are provisional, legislators are provisional, the
rovisional. They are all too much like historical pow-
salvation of mankind is the abolition of all historical
md especially of the power of history over the brain
t of men.
assless society, the goal of Bolshevism, is beyond his-
prehistory regained. In the meantime, Lenin or Stalin
lfder of the Intelligentsia must govern the Union of
Soviet Republics, U .S.S.R., as the nucleus of the class-
:y. Their rulershi p stretches out, so to speak, between
of May and the last day in the calendar of history.
ious to see that any attempt by an outsider to dis-
aptoms of a classless society in Russia always meets
ern reprimand from the Marxists. Their rule being
y and provisional, it is of no use to look for any
s of a situation beyond it! Reproduction can never
1atural as long as the party must plan it every year.
Pope in Strindberg's legend, who triumphantly lis-
the clock going on after the hour of the fixed Dooms-
~ world, the "last syllable of recorded time," had passed
~ watchmen upon the tower of Bolshevism state tri-
ly every day that the revolution continues, that no
s of a classless society are available yet, and that the
function of the proletariat has to be performed day

1essianism of the Bolshevik Revolution divides the

imanity into three First Period: history before
Id Revolution, the history of symbolized
ttes of battles, dynasties, heroes, etc. Second Period: Per-
nt Revolution of the inasses against this history of class-
started by Lenin and symbolized by the celebration of
rst of May. The first of May anticipates the anti-historical
:l Period: the classless society, when man has become a
Jf recurrent and reproduced nature and can live like the
.e of prehistory.
~ we here breaking into a new era? The worship of the
)f May is not a question of Russia alone. It echoes the
1jstorical side of every man's nature; it reminds us that man
manent, recurrent, natural, physical, and that many of his
is and activities are quite unhistorical. In a century when
·y studies a poet's indigestion or a prince's unhappy mar-
under the microscope, it is refreshing to learn that after
ere is something among men which is not historical at all.

th and death and food and clothing and joy and pain are
rmanent as they are recurrent. The monotony in the re-
nce of generations on this earth is not interrupted by the
sensations of theatrical politicians.
· have cleared the way for the few events that are really
.while when we have learned to differentiate between the
ical and the unhistorical or prehistoric elements in our-
. Christianity had always preached a complete indiffer-
~oward history, and Eastern Christians can still find today,
~ mpnasteries on Mount Athos near Thessalonica (Salo-
the ·quintessence of this complete remoteness from the
. The Greek Orthodox Church, more than any other
h of Christianity, has preserved the energies of the human
vhich defend her from the temptation of time. The his-
.£ this world is a bad dream to the monk on Mount Athos.
;lory of God is visible whenever man can resist the temp-
s of time. Today orthodox Christianity is fighting history
The materialistic form of Bolshevism seems to preclude
irallel with the doctrines of Christianity. It seems a mere
ationary intoxication. But against a world which mistook
history the world for the Last Judgment" (Schiller),
believed that '',re could exoerience h as in a thP~trP
 monotony of Russian anti-historianism is like an ~fntitoxin.
e theatre is not all. The comedy on the stage of history is
the whole truth of the tragedy of mankind.
THE SOVIET CALENDAR.

rampering with the calendar began as far back as 1918.

ssia had remained true to the Julian calendar, but the Revo-
[on adopted the Gregorian instead, thus coming into line
h Western countries. This was decidedly more convenient
international intercourse, but local authorities began to
ulate the French Revolution by altering the names of the
nths and days, substituting the names of old peasant leaders
Easter and Christmas, for example. But when the central
rernment obtained real control of the country, all these
al innovations were cancelled. The government' made its
t determined assault on the seven-day week in September,
:9, with a decree ordering the general introduction of a
!-day week. The avowed purpose of this reform was to
abat religion by abolishing the common rest day. Factories
re to be kept working incessantly day and night. The oper-
vres were divided into five colours, or "labour calendars."
. any given day or night four "colours" would be working,
l the fifth colour enjoying a day of rest. A man and a wife
uld never have the same.day off unless they were in the same
hour calendar." In a family of more working individuals
bec~me still more difficult to synchronize the leisure time.
nsequently, family ties were broken up as much as religion.
rhe colour system was given up in 1932; the labour week
s lengthened to six days. A common rest was reintroduced
· all. As in the French decadic calendar of the Revolution,
~ ultimate goal was not reached permanently. After a long
riod of conferences, the system formulated in 1936 seems to
bilize a calendar, which, though less radical, shows certain
ique features still.
Whereas the year of 365 days remains divided into twelve
mths, two parallel weeks have been introduced, one of seven,
d the of six days. Labour, industry and rest are to
the ~horter, government and international
:ourse by the longer. The rest days of the labour week fall
>n the sixth, twelfth, eighteenth, twenty-fourth and thirtieth
lay of each month, with March 1 taking the place of the fifth
·est day of February.
The number of extra holidays has now been fixed at five
>f the first order and ten or twelve of secondary rank. They
vere much more numerous before the revolution and during
he first ten years of the new regime. The first of five great
iolidays is on January 22, and is known as Lenin's Day. For-
nerly there were two holidays, January 22, the anniversary
>f the Father Gapon demonstration in 1905, when the police
ired on an unarmed crowd in front of the Emperor's palace;
ranuary 21, the death of Lenin. Now, the two festivals have
>een run into one. Curiously enough, Lenin's birthday on
\.pril 22 is not observed as a full holiday. The next general
10liday is May Day, celebrated on May 1 and 2. November
r and 8 are similarly put aside to celebrate the Bolshevist
levol_ution in 1917. The character of the minor holidays is
nainly concomitant to the idea of May Day: Youth, Women,
lports, Anti-War Days are typical of a movement that empha-
izes the recurrence of human energies. A new polytheism of
;roup ideals is established. Great powers and principalities:
.Aabour, Youth, Womanhood, Peace sway this world in end-
ess recurrence. They did not begin at any moment in time;
hey are the essentials of the social order; one might expect
hem .to go on forever.
How far is the Russian Labour Calendar the practice of
'Vestern Man already? How far is it not? With the Russians
.rork is made into a public function of the people united,
eisure is a private business. Formally, this calendar contradicts
iur tradition in which each individual is toiling, bent on his
fork, during the week, and comes into the common fellow-
hi p on Sundays only. However, the Russian shift in family
nd religious tradition, its making work into a public function,
nd rest into a private one, crystallized a movement that was
a throughout the industrial For even in
axon countries, the common day of rest was slowly
ts nnrtanrP morP ~nrl mnrP rnillin.ru: nf ~&a·"''"'-1'° 7\,f"..,.:.-1.,.
U:;.l,1'.;) .l.l.l Ul U0o3l.Vl.llC.;:t' p..:.vp.&.\... VVV.l..t'll..1..1..1.0 .I.AA '-AA'-- y.a.'--&A.•."'•"".L~

, taxi drivers, telephone operators, are required to

riot Sunday, but some other day picked at random,
pr°'duction to continue more or less undiminished.
lis change in calendar, this abolition of "Sunday" for
ie population, is implicit an emphasis upon the com-
labour. The difference between the practice (not the
: Western Man and of the Russian Labour Calendar
iegree. Leisure is becoming more and more a private
duction is coming to the front as a common destiny .
.ca, some great manufacturing plants have rejected
e-month calendar and apply a thirteen-month calen-
month containing twenty-eight days. This thirteen-
lendar enables a plant to check more conveniently
nt of production per month. It glorifies production
~oods that are produced; it no longer cares for the
>f the whole community. It stands halfway, then, be-
alendar· which united people for worship only, and a
which unites the pepole who are working in shifts
RACIAL HISTORY.

' is dissolved into economics by the Russians, and

dar pushes events into the background and presses
>oint of perpetual reproduction. A system of repeti-
tcter challenges the human soul to its depth. For if
dominations and powers rule our lives incessantly,
gone. ·The only loophole for man's freedom under
·mament of social constellations is to shift emphasis
e of these powers to others.
fact, the counter-revolutions against Sovietism were
>le of shaking off the framework of recurrent social
'.itead, all the so-called national revolutions in Europe,
ts they were to the Russian dictatorship of the prole-
tve precedence to other abstract gods in their calendar,
LCt dominations these gods were, too. The native ele-
man, equally unhistorical as "labour" or "woman,"
ned. Nordic profiles, motherhood, fatherhood, race,
·e fight against the
s clearest expression in the invention of Racial War. Against
purely economic history, racial history is the appropriate
n.titoxin. Economics and race are both the least historical
lements of our existence: they are the material into which
ie Promethean spark of history-must fall in order to produce
ianges.
Racial history and a racial calendar flourish everywhere be-
mse they are the simplest way of reacting against economic
ommunism. They, too, camouflage the abolition of history
y an allegedly historical cloak (like the birthday of the Roman
ation in 753 B.c.), although the real issue is to present the
~oples with something unchangeable and perpetual. The two
.cts, that man is born and that he is hungry, are the same
rerywhere and always; whereas history tells us what happened
1ly once.
The economic and the racial historians are no longer his-
ffians in the old sense of the word; they are scientists of a
~w millennium of recurrence. On May Day, 1936, it was
licially stated that the German people would follow the
gyptian example of the Pharaohs and their peasant-slaves
id organize themselves into a body politic for the next four
lOUsand years.
For a horizon of four thousand years, facts and events of
:teen or t,1irty years appear pretty meaningless. Pragmatic
·search is easily replaced by mythology; forgeries are wel-
•med which do away with petty particularities. The eyes of
ernity scorn accurate detail and date.
Similar ideas advance today all over the world; with irre-
;tible pressure they invade the textbooks of Turkey, Russia,
ermany, Italy, etc.
Nations and individuals will always ·get what they sincerely
ave. They may, therefore, be drowned in the economic and
cial cycles into which the masses put their faith, precisely as
.e business men get their business cycle since they fail to
volt against it. However, there is a plurality of cyclical be-
~fs, a plurality of recurrent powers, and a plurality

in any responsible cannot

h any group's one-sided myth or tales or holidays. Economic
l racial history are a challenge to thought: we must transcend
h fragmentary myth, each partial calendar. Each partial
>ice of man for one or the other eternal value is a decision
de by inspired people in an hour of danger and despair. As
inspired decision the introduction of a new myth, a new
~ndar, a new social order, represents a part of the total order
things. No opposition can destroy the values represented by
Jour, Nation, Constitution, Youth, etc. And we do not
)Ose, with analytical scepticism, the irresistible march of the
up mind.
nstead, in our crucible, the calendars and values of the
agonistic groups are fused. Reality is bigger than any one
them. The races of faith are manifold. Economic recurrence
~If has a birthday and origin in dramatic struggle. Our book
~s beyond economic or racial history, because these are both
y the last style imposed on history in our time. The style
history changes. We have had so much personal, dramatic,
tstitutional history that a correction is most appropriate.
-Iowever, the totalitarian history of mankind deals with the
erplay of revolutionary styles and antagonistic inspirations.
understands each new type of history or calendar as a new
.nch on the same tree. The modern interest in recurrent life
cts against the interest taken during more than a century
individual life; for the myth of the French Revolution was
th er racial nor economic. It dramatized the powers of genius
l individuality. In taking stock of the permanent achieve-
nts of the French Revolution, we shall turn from economic
tory to history dramatized.
 CHAPTER FIVE

France: The European Genius of the ile de France

Dramatized History-The Womb of Time-The Fight for "Europe"-The
Cradle of Europe: Greece-Frankish Europe-Paris and the Rhine-Versailles-
Huguenots and Jesuits-Privil~ges-The Nation: How the Bourgeois Was Made
a Citizen-Voltaire's and Rousseau's Ideas-Freemasonry-The Constitution-The
Tyranny of the Decimal System-Madame Curie-The "Nature" of France-The
French Calendar-Capitalism Around France-The Emancipation of the Jews-
Digression Alpha and Omega: Gentiles and Jews-The New Messianism-The
"Affaire"-The Three Qualities of Higher Life-The Great Electorate: Who Can
Govern a Nation?-Adam and Eve-The Pitfall of Reason-The Peasant of Paris
-Checks on Individualism

DRAMATIZED HISTORY.

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION IS HIGHLY THEATRICAL: IT IS FULL OF

dramatic events. "Nous ne cedons qu'a la force des bafonnettes!"
exclaimed Mirabeau on June 23, 1789, being sure that no
bayonets were at hand. The abolition of the privileges of clergy
and nobility was voted in August with such enthusiasm that
the members of the National Assembly sobbed and laughed.
The gathering on the field of Mars to take the constitutional
oath, the festival (or holiday) of Reason, the execution of King
and Queen and so many thousands of aristocrats, were highly
spectacular, aye, even histrionic.
In the Russian technique there is no place for a bon mot
like Danton's remark to the executioner when Robespierre sent
him to the scaffold: "Take care of my head-Jl vaut la peine"
(it is worth the trouble).
· transportation of royal family
wonderful the
all 'vith more and spirit than in the
.est tragedy. A monument in the Pantheon tries to express
·ascination of the French Revolution by showing the law-
arguing fervently, while out of their passionate words a
ltic drummer and an army of young men grow up and
h eastward against the despots of the rest of Europe.
:her sculptor gave to the Revolution the features of the
c muse.
rly enough, the uniqueness of the French Revolution was
>y its contemporaries. Klopstock acclaimed the "bold Diet
aul" as the sunrise of a new day of mankind. Goethe 11ro-
ted that the rather harmless manceuvre of the cannonade
Limy, in 1792, began a new era in the history of the world.
ie key of the Bastille was sent to Mount Vernon, and by
ishrinement in George Washington's home the taking of
~astille on July 14, 1789, was baptized in the spirit of the
rican Declaration of Independence.
had never happened before and will never happen again
events and minds, external decisions and internal reftec-
' should be on all fours as they were then. People knew
they did, and did what they knew. While history, up to
time, had been a foggy and misty process of accidents,
trophes, causes and influences, mere turns of the wheel
rtune, crises and intrigues, now it suddenly ceased to be
nprehensible.
once, everything became perfectly clear. There seemed
~' for good or ill, a harmony between the brains of men
the nature of events, a harmony which made Hegel re-
.: "It was a unique moment in the history of mankind.
world literally stood balanced on the human head. History
become conscious of itself. Heaven and earth seemed s._

tciled, because for the first time external fate and internal
ght met in the same hour." The .old order of things in
::e passed away irresistibly, as if by an earthquake, and men
mature enough to rise to the situation.
)St people have forgotten today that the French Revolu·
seemed a miracle because of this coincidence of free will
nevitable The Russian Revolution, with its
blood, weakened our sense
 onder at such a coincidence. We assume that revolutions hap-
~n because they are planned. But this supposition is without
undation in reality. Announced revolutions do not happen.
illing, murdering, destroying, breaking down, cannot be
anned. The revolution in Austria in 1934 failed because it
as planned. A revolution must overwhelm us as other passions
J. Jealousy can lead to murder. All the passions, we know
om the stage, can lead to personal revolution and rebellion.
he French, with the sure instinct of dramatists of life, knew
at Reason could not make a revolution: Reason could only
aster it when it had happened. For the French Revolution
iy notion of a previous plan, conspiracy or premeditation
ould be worthless. The miracle of it is the marriage of an
ueasonable world with the reason of man. Hence the French
1e of the word "Revolution" is different from its use in Rus-
in or English, or German or Italian terminology. This is what
wish to demonstrate first.
Liberal historians of the nineteenth century identified the
itbreak of the French Revolution with the first acts of the
hree Estates, as they were summoned from their grave and
et at Versailles in May, 1789. Mirabeau's remark to the King's
ord Chamberlain about the force of bayonets is one of the
:casions which, to the peaceful vniter of moderate imagina-
Jn, sy1nbolize the outbreak of the Revolution. But nobody
,ought this way in 1789. In re-reading l\1irabeau, Camille
esmoulins, or the foreign di plon1ats, one nowhere finds the
ord "revolution" applied to the events either of June or of
,e first eight days of July. The courtiers and diplomats, very
~ssimistic as they were, spoke of rebellion, insurrection, civil
ar; the reformers desired "reforms," restoration of old. rights,
Ld regeneration of France. "Regeneration" especially was the
vourite expression of l\1irabeau, and was obviously the slogan
the day. These two lists do not meet. The liberals saw the
essings of a new order which they in the future; the
d statesmen the illegitimacy 1neans.
' Revolution" the plank which
.e f forward-lookina
,""'\
 the tourteentn or J u1y rne ransrnn moo ae~eaceu u1t:
on of the Bastille, the state prison corresponding to the
r in London. The demagogue, Camille Desmoulins, the
s Lord Chamberlain, Count Liancourt, the American
nat Gouverneur Morris, and a detached French scholar
reed immediately, on the fifteenth of July, that this was
evolution. Here it was. An explosion had occurred which
ged to the realm of fact. This change in the world of
:ould be matched and had to be matched by an intel-
judgment in the field of Reason. This dualism became
ttitude of the French throughout the next twenty-six
They were either revolutionaries, loyal to what had
:ned, or else counter-revolutionaries, trying to undo what
.appened! A long essay by one of the standard-bearers of
rst revolutionary years, the popular philosopher Condor-
:veals the startling fact that the word "revolutionary," as a
or an adjective, did not exist before 1789. The English
the word "revolutionist" for the adherents of the \Vhigs
1688. The Americans had no adjective throughout the
: Revolutionary War. As late as 1791 Patrick Henry had
eak of the "Revolution \Var" in his speeches, because
lutionary" did not exist! It would have meant "insur-
; and the Americans did not want to be insurgents. They
for civil law and order against the British troops.
t the French invented the word 1 to designate the men
tood with their reason on the side of the revolution! The
~ modern vocabulary of "revolutionize," "ultra-revolution-
"counter-revolutionary" is French. It is an old objective
.escriptive word which is now embraced as the expression
)jective passion:
and, too, the word Revolution. This word also had always
l. There had been revolutions in Rome, in England. There
?en one recently in America. This word was known, was used
casion, like such a word, say, as phalanx or centurion, but
~ only older quotation I can find is in the papers of Gouverneur
He there uses "revolutionary" in the general meaning of un-
But the of the whole is probably an inven-
the editor been careless about bis
the occasions· were rare. And then all of a sudden one day a king
is told: 'Une revolte'! C'est une revolution!' And the word com·
mences its whirlwind career. 'Vne revolution? C'est la revolution!'
Its article is changed from the indefinite to the definite. It ac-
quires a capital R, if not capitals throughout. It becomes a proper
noun. From being the mere general name of a political movement,
a word on a par with 'battle' or 'war' or 'invasion,' the mere
synonym, more or less extant, of revolte, sedition, insurrection,
rebellion, it now becomes one of the most individual of words,
one of the most powerful. He who could say now: 'La revolution,
c'est moi,' would wield a greater, a more violent power, than had
he who said, 'L'Etat, c'est moi.' La Revolution, in the minds of
many, now replaces l'etat, le gouvernement, l'eglise, le roi, even
Dieu. It has swept all these from their seats of authority. The
most potent word to conjure with is now not these, but La Revo-
lution. It now does for the people what these words once did for
kings.
"The power of the word may be seen by the vigour of the growth
it put forth. Before 1789, the family consisted, as given in Feraud,
of the solitary word Revolution. Now we find revolutionner, revo-
lutionnaire (noun and adjective) . . . fourteen words as compared
with a single word before." 2

From France the word was imported into the other countries.
Slowly "revolutionary" came to replace "revolutionist" in Eng-
land. As in cases like "Lord Treasurer'·' or "Whig," it took
the English a century to adopt the French terminology. If the
English today speak of the Prime Minister, instead of the First
Lord of the Treasury, or of a Liberal instead of a Whig, of
revolutionaries instead of revolutionists, they are using words
of French origin.
After the fourteenth of July, the whole French nation re-
acted to the destruction of the Bastille in the same way as
Liancourt in his famous reply to Louis XVI. The King had
stammered: ''But this is a rebellion." "No, sire," the courtier
replied, "this is the Revolution." For the rest of that summer
the country ·was visited by .the inexplicable "grande "s
In depths of their souls the people felt that the world was
2 H. J. French in the p. 163 f., New Col-
umbia IJniv. Press. •'1018
 ot 101nt. lt was like Goethe's intuition in The Natural
tghter: "These gTeat elements will no longer embrace each
er with the force of love unceasingly rene~ed. Now each
ies the other and withdraws coldly into itself." "La grande
r" is the majestic reaction of the popular instinct to a deci-
break in tradition. Mad rumours spread over the country.
ie of them proved true. But their content was not the
.ificant event: it was this complete paralysis of will and
on, the deep insight that one was no longer safe on land.
~a of passion had opened, and the French nation was des-
d for long to be on this high sea of Revolution. Thus the
gedly inexplicable Grande Peur of the summer of 1789 is
most explicable event of the whole Revolution. Shall dogs
horses scent a thunderstorm, and man not sense the break-
n of a social order that has lasted a thousand years? It shows
hopeless aridity of bourgeois historiography that the Grande
r is always treated as something special and provincial,
reas without such an evidence we should despair of find-
any deeper instinct in our race.
11 the actions of men between 1789 and 1794 are attempts
llld a rational formula for the Revolution. First the good
superficial men thought they could find the open sesame
:nglish principles. Self-government was their slogan: every
of France was to get autonomy. This would have meant
ting the wheel of history_ backward beyond the reign of
try IV; and it very soon proved impracticable. Condorcet
aimed,· on July 23, 1791, "A nation of 24,000,000, or an
of 27 ,ooo square miles-can it become a republic?" Robes-
re and Napoleon were both n1onarchists in 1791. Two
after the assault on the Bastille a leader said: "A Medi-
1nean kingdom like France, lying between two terribly
t powers, needs an executive which is completely in the
is of the King." Federalism was a still-born child. But
ublicanism seemed impossible, too. The republics of the
~ were aristocracies: Venice, Switzerland, Geneva, the
ted States (in pre-Jefferson days), were clearly oligarchic.
shall see later why an aristocracy was much more offensive
than a monarchy. Here '\Ve discover ... ,... . ,,...4&
mplete candour of the French revolutionaries. They tried to
td out what the principle of the Revolution was: a revolu-
m raging in the streets had to be interpreted by the orators
the assemblies! Reason, the interpreter, expounds the mean-
g of the pictures that move swiftly across the streets and
uares of Paris. Now that the Bastille was destroyed, a strong
ecutive without a Bastille was the problem before the French
tion-a true paradox. Each successive government set to work
interpret the true nature of the Revolution. First, in 179 l,
'law paramount" to supplant royal caprice. In 1792 the Con-
ntion mobilized the nation against the despots of Europe.
,' Etendard sanglant est leve." In 1794 Robespierre defends
e Revolution against both the ultra-revolutionaries and the
tra-revolutionaries (left and right wings). The adherents of
English system and the precursors of the Bolshevik solution
[ebert, with his idea of permanent, recurrent waves of mob~
volution) are both crushed. From 1795 to 1798 the "Direc-
~re" tries to compromise between a powerful executive for
Lr and a moderate government at home. When it fails, in
g8, the whole nation embarks on the European campaigns of
ipoleon, postponing the internal solution for which neither
~n _r1or measures exist. Napoleon fills the gap between the
~volutionary events and ideas and a stabilized order of things.
ipoleon was the son of the Revolution. His letters to Jose-
~ine from the Italian campaign affect us like the poetry of
over who touches off the whole outside world like a display
fireworks in honour of his mistress. In the days of the Terror
1e Revolution had devoured its own children." But this say-
g was even truer of Napoleon's own destiny. I-le was the
1nt of the third estate, summing up in himself the talents
d qualities, the desires and passions, of the man of the street.
~ was no hero in the high sense of the word. He did not make
mself. He was made by time, by the Revolution; and he was
tdone when he was no longer able to interpret the Revolu-
m. His mother, Letitia, had felt this dependence when, hear-
~ of his success, she said, "That's very pretty-'Pourvu que
~a dure!' (Providing it lasts)." It could not la5t
)n to be., a child of the Revolution. His
, his idea of quoting Louis XVI as his uncle, made him
ssible. As a legitimate and hereditary ruler, he was fin-
1

.. When the regicides of 1792, Talleyrand and Fouche,

i the hands of His Majesty Louis XVIII, because he
ed the lesser evil, Napoleon was superfluous.
uis XVIII, to be sure, was no interpreter of the French
lution. But his remark on his return ( 1815)-"Everything
changed, only one more good Frenchman is in France"-
s the compromise that had been reached at that time. The
·nment is no longer the interpreter of the great volcanic
~ion; the Revolution is ended. But on the other hand,
~overnment remains passive toward the ac'tual results of
{evolution; these results-the distribution of the wealth
Tgy and aristocracy among the buyers at the Revolutionary
-were recognized. And a "charter" guaranteed the old Law
nount of 1791. The Constitution made its entrance into
in the train of Louis XVIII himself.
fore returning to the "interpretation of the Revolution"
s reasonable adherents, we may briefly survey its later
The upheaval of 1789 was levelled out in 1815, and the
hon restoration lasted from 1815 to 18 30. But the stupid-
1r the sincerity, of Charles X threatened the ownership of
revolutionized lands, and the rights of Revolutionary
.s. The Revolution of July, 1830, was mentioned in our
chapter, though as an epilogue instead of a prologue, as
·allel to the first Russian Revolution of 1905. Being an
gue, the July Revolution was like an explosion in the air,
1ared to the earthquake and fires of the great Revolution.
n old Lafayette mounted his horse, as if it were 1789
, he made a poor show. Flesh and blood were gone; only
l4fmic ghost was left upon the scene. But it was again a
rical and conscious scene. As in 1789, when National As-
ly and populace rivalled each other, so in 1830 the two
; of the Revolution acted separately. The doers and fight-
tet at the City Hall, and the interpreters, Guizot, Thiers,
Talleyrand, at the Palais Bourbon. As in 1789, the "real
.ing of the Revolution,, was not discovered by the military
s of Revolution, but by the unarmed intellectuals
 other bank of the Seine. On their advice, the Bourgeois
Louis Philippe, dressed in a general's uniform as "lieu-
-general" of the kingdom, and wearing the tricolour,
cross the river from the Palais Bourbon to the Hotel de
Crowds of people watched this famous ride, for the point
ras to see what the republican fighters would do. It was
tte who ended th<:: crisis by appearing on the balcony
Hotel de Ville and embracing Louis- Philippe before all
:>pie. The doers had recognized the interpretation of the
rs.
r 1830, the dramatic course of the French Revolution
:o the third act: a time of extreme presumption and
on the part of the ruling class. Though they owed their
victory to the helplessness of the armed republicans
l Lafayette, they plunged into orgies of capitalism.
was then the paradise of "gigmanity," as Carlyle called
ddle classes, the "juste-milieu." Between 1830 and 1848
tion penetrated to the very marrow of the bourgeois
. In carrying the umbrella, despised by the English gen-
. of those days as a poor middle-class invention, the King,
11 his great talents and merits, had capitulated to the
of this class. Even today the umbrella has political value
rice. In the strike of 1908 the Prefet de Police of Paris,
~, won his popularity by being visible everywhere with
at umbrella. The head of the police, unarmed, but with
Jre~lal-Louis Philippe, himself a gentleman, encouraged
.ddle class with his famous phrase: "Enrichissez-vous."
tine pronounced this tragic verdict on the period:
e was annoyed by the untheatrical regime of Louis
)e and his juste-milieu. His reasonable policy broke
Jecause it could not make up for the unsatisfied lust for
. ,,
lll d ex pans1on. _
• period of arrogance was relieved by a fourth act, the
of humiliation. When, in 1848, the republican workers
nounted the barricades, and tried to avoid the mistakes
), they fell into the trap of a much worse reaction still.
~nder of 1830 had resulted in the careful policy
tste-m King. The of i848 conjured
 real Ctrsarism. Napoleon III was not definitely replaced
1e Law Paramount until 1875, when the republican form
>vernment was carried by one vote.
1e reign of Napoleon III was a period of shame and dis-
[on. "Passivement subi, le second empire a marque, d'une
i decisive chez nous, une diminution de foi dans l'ide-
'e combattive de la revolution franfaise aussi bien que dans
tperiorite des armees liberatrices." (Clemenceau.) Ideas
events, revolutionary interpretations and revolutionary
, were deval uated during this painful fourth act, which
d in the loss of the Franco-Prussian War, the quartering of
t>russians at Versailles, and the shooting and deportation
•,ooo Communists in Paris.
ie fifth act established the republic. The solution, a "re-
ique des camarades," was what it had to be after 1789:
~ant a strong executive without a Bastille. The Chamber,
ing at Versailles from 1871 to 1879 on account of the
st in Paris, felt that it had to reconcile the monarchical
tions of Versailles and the liberal aspirations of Paris.
~oclaimed that the Fourteenth of July, 1789, should be
1rated as the great Birthday of Liberty. It enacted that the
ion of the president of the republic should take place in
1illes by the vote of the Senate and the deputies of the
aber. Who knows whether, in the raging tempest of 1919,
~ election had been held in Paris, the electorate would not
vo~ed as it had promised, for Clemenceau, father of vic-
But in the tranquillity of Versailles the quiet citizen, Paul
llanel, though a paralytic, was elected.
te five acts of the French Revolution bear sharp marks of
ining and ending. There is no doubt when a period begins
.ds. It is a great play acted in the sunlight of consciousness,
all the clarte of the French esprit:
1789 July 14-Bastille demolished
1789 Rest of the summer-Grande Peur
.
r 1789·1792 (95) Internal Revoluuon {Period .
, . vo1came
t 1 1815 Revolut10nary 'Vars erup t"10n
 The different forms of government "interpret" the
Revolution.
II 1815-1830 The results of the Revolution upheld; the
government pre"'.revolutionary. Period of incuba-
tion.
II 1830-1848 July 'Revolution.
The bourgeois monarchy.
Period of pride.
:v 1848-1875 February Revolution.
Napoleon III-La Commune.
Period of humiliation.
v The Third Republic.

THE WOMB OF TIME.

The dramatic course of events enables us, in looking back-

-vard, to perceive a curve. Legal tradition once washed away
n 1789, floods inundate the country like a mighty unleashing
>f subterranean forces.
As long as the floods increase, people try to hold them back
period of internal constitutional experiments, until 1792 ).
3ut the revolutionary tides prevent any partial salvation. The
nundation is complete, the only possibility is to swim on top
>f the flood. Wars become the natural outlet in face of the
mpossibility of finding solid ground at home. They create
he environment in which the new France can live. In 1815
he inundation ceases. The flood, after all its changes and devas-
ations, seems to have gone down.
In 1830 it is realized that the waters are streaming still, and
. permanent curb for the well of revolutionary ideas is built
or the first time. The curb is frail. The waters seep out beyond
ontrol.
From 1848 to 1875 they are suppressed again; the symbols
•f the previous period of revolutionary wars act as a soporific
Napoleon III).
Neither the suppression nor the soporific is effective.
>oleon III cannot conquer, as his uncle had done, because
s no real revolution to support · · must
 to announce, "L' Empire, c'est la paix," in sharp con-
o the frequent wars he undertakes.
~ fifth act, the "government by inspired individuals," we
nalyze later. Here we are contemplating the curve as a
; and it points to the important fact that human affairs
to follow in a reasonable order.
~ break in legality leads to such a period as the First
)lie, of which Victor Cousin remarked: "The First Re-
: was not a form of state, but a crisis." The name must
1848

1875

HUMILIATION
-----isn·
islead us. The babble of dictators or revolutionary lead-
ring for legality is not legality.
~ constitution of France is based on a period of twenty-
us during which it lived without real legal foundations.
1lution is the larva of civilization." (Victor Hugo.)
it is impossible to pass from the stage of revolution to
Lge of evolution by a mere lapse of time. The mechanical
~tion of time might lead us to suppose that the French
ution s~ould have developed farther in 1855 than in 1840.
is a fallacy which makes history the slave of natural
~. The curve 1789-1815 Inundation, 1815-1830 Incuba-
830-1848 Pride, 1848-1875 Hun1iliation, shows that the
v of man is very unmathematical. It goes by leaps and
ls.
~ scheme given ·above does not at all claim to be perfect,
inserted as a protest against the fiat notion that time is a
it line reaching from 1-789 to 1934, ·with years marked
1011 it like inches or centimetres on a yardstick. Man's
unlike no yardstick!
~ curve will have to be studied rnore carefully later,
ow more about the other total revolutions mankind.
~he Russian curve, of course, is still unknown, but we can
eep its contrast to the French curve in mind from now on.
The curves of history are not like the recurrent formulas
f physics; but they exist and remind us that "nothing disap-
ears which the hours of men have conceived in their womb."
"'he days of the sun, the years of the stars, are not the same as
1e hours of men. The hours of history are created in a special
eld of force where distant events call to each other from
entury to century.
In Russia the two streams of action split as early as 1825
nd 1861. The Revolution was inevitable once a reconcilia-
on between them had become impossible. This "nihilism"
egan in the sixties, two generations before the open and visi-
le outburst. The body politic was affiicted by the bursting of
Id sores; by themselves, they were long forgotten, but they
ad a decisive effect on the course of events even a century
tter. The date 1685 in our diagram hints at a similar problem
l France. Superficially, the Huguenots, the Protestants, had
; little to do with 1789 as the Russian nobles of 1825 with the
roletarians of 1917. But without their grievances the French
.evolution might have been nothing more than a national
vent. The sore spot of the body politic in France lvas of Euro-
ean, world-wide, origin. The Huguenots represented a Chris-
an and a human injustice. It was not a French, it was a human,
~action which found expression in the French Revolution.
Ve all, in so far as we are human, are present and represented
n the stage of the French Revolution. To it, the category of
>tality applies. National, even nationalistic, as it worked out
i the end, it began as a great crusade to discover the nature
f the individual man in Europe. The expulsion of the Hugue-
ots could not be expiated by the simple restoration of Protes-
mtism in France. Interwoven as it was with the fate of the
ldest University in Christendom, that is, Paris, it could only
e avenged by a more general restoration of nature, by a total
~volution in the relations between individual will and
tW.
 THE FIGHT FOR "EUROPE."

ance, one fortieth the size of Russia, is "the centre of

>pe." This alone is a revolutionary statement. And it is
~ctly fitting to say that uL' Europe" is the creation of the
.ch Revolution. For us, who live in the same world with
~asia," that is, of a Russia which has become a global force
a special continent, the idea of such a sudden creation may
lost its oddity. But the average dweller in a European
L during the nineteenth century believed dogmatically that

:urope" was an eternal reality and Paris, its established and

>Ubted centre, "the Mecca of civilization," as Victor Hugo
christened it.
hen, after the War, M. E. Ravage wrote his Malady of
1pe, and G. Lowes Dickinson his The European Anarchy,
honestly believed that Europe was one civilization which
i and should be re built and reorganized.
lt it is not without its danger that America's schoolboys
:aught to believe in the real existence of a thing called
·ope." "England," for example, seems rather European to
nan from Nebraska. But in 1927 there was published at
,rd A History of Europe and the Modern World by R. B.
'at, which expressed a different opinion. The book covers
',Ce of 400 years ( 1500-1918); but Elizabeth, Cromwell, Pitt
tot mentioned. Ar.id this is not a slip of an inattentive pen,
he author wishes ''to increase the understanding of the
f of European civilization!" A man cannot be more in
est. Here, an Englishman divides the apple which the
rican schoolboy calls Europe into two parts, and lumps
Nhole continent outside England as one separate .civiliza-

1e Russians, again, have destroyed the unity of Europe

their Eurasian viewpoint. As early as 1853 a book of
levski's became the bible of the Panslavists because it
ed that the term "Europe" could be of any geographical
~. Danilevski could rely upon the that before 1730
ia was not reckoned as European. that
• showed bounded, not by ~fountains as
today, but by the river Don, leaving two thirds of what we
call European Russia to Asia! Europe had a moving frontier
toward the East! No wonder that an influential writer, Mr.
Spengler, waged war on the largest scale against the use of the
word "Europe." It has no meaning whatever to him, and he
himself prefers the expressions West, Occident. But this, too, is
obviously ambiguous. One quotation from the geographer
Ritter, in 1817, might have warned Spengler. Ritter exclaimed:
"When America was discovered, the European Occident be-
came an Orient"-a change which is very inconvenient for the
"Occident."
The few instances given here seem to justify the sullen re-
mark of Disraeli in Lot hair, one of his novels on early Victorian
policy: "The change of name from Christendon1 to Europe has
proved a failure, and a disastrous one. And what wonder?
Europe is not even a quarter of the globe I"
But failure or no failure, it has been done. You cannot kill
a word like "Europe" simply by ignoring it; it must be buried.
And the words of Disraeli open the door at least wide enough
so that we can see from which room our patient must be taken
to the cemetery. Europe, as Disraeli says, is not even a quarter
of the globe. At the same tin1e, it is a change from Christendom.
Christendom is pre-French
Europe is French
Globe is Russian
This little list protects us from the misapprehension that in
"European civilization" "Europe" was thought of as one con-
tinent among others. The words "Christendom" and "Globe"
clearly stand for a totality. Now wherever the word "Europe'' is
used with emphasis it rests on the same ambition: it shall be
valid for all mankind. Combinations like European civilization,
culture, science, arts, cathedrals, make sense because they e1n-
brace Spain and Sweden, Ireland and Dalmatia in a tacit unity.
The multi-coloured political map of the small \V estern penin-
sula Asia is illuminated as soon as we use the lvord '
for it. its variety is dignified.
in unity. The wealth Eurooean
llous paradoxes and achievements, are all dependent on
mplete freedom of its nations. Europe is a kaleidoscope
.ependent parts; that is a condition of her cultural su-
ity.
rope" is not a geographical but a moral value. It may
ticized by German, Russian and other writers; but the
expresses a desire for the independence of many nations
universal civilization, and as such it has served its pur-
rell. It cannot be dismissed until its origin and aim have
nore clearly stated than they can be by attacks from the
.....
!:lo

THE CRADLE OF EUROPE: GREECE.

)peans, "gute Europaer," good Europeans, in Friedrich

:he's term, must tell us what they wished to express by
>pellation. What, indeed, did Europe stand for? It was
ed as a response, and a loving response, from the West
old myth of the East. Everybody knows of a similar
se: I mean the response made by the Western tribes to
st during the Middle Ages, when the Frankish Knights
·.shed the troops of the Sultan ~nd conquered Jerusalem.
gave back to the Holy Place in the East the physical
it had lost. For this Christian gentry owed its intellectual
ance from the fetters of fear, human sacrifice and de-
: superstitions to the gospel which hailed from Jerusalem.
Crusaders quoted the verse of the Bible: "I will bring
~d from the East and gather thee from the West," and
id what the Europeans might have said later: "God has
r brought our seed from the East. But he will also gather

1 the West, provided he repairs the wrongs of Jerusalem

h those who have to be the first. witnesses to the ultimate
hat is, through the people of the West."
~e words of the French chronicler Guibert of Nogent
~qually well to the spirited response '\vhich is given by
ench, and especially by French revolutionary ideas, to
tern parts of Europe. The French Revolution enamoured
n man the classic traditions of Hellas, Greece .
.ace J by the stream of inspiration
freed the Eastern cradle of humanity, Greece and Crete,
he yoke of the Turks during the nineteenth century
ts legitimate place in the history of the ideas of 1789.
rope rallied to the resurrection of Greece. Lord Byron,
·y genius of modern Europe, went there. As late as .1897,
the Turko-Greek \Var, we are told that Benjamin
er, President of the University of California, roused his
ts to a frenzy of enthusiasm for the modern Hellenes.
rrible mistake of the Greek in expanding in Asia Minor
ie Great War was the furthest step in this Greek Renais-
which was carried on under the protectorate of Western
.tion throughout the nineteenth century. When Kemal
smashed Greece, drove 10,000 Greeks into the sea, and
l a new Turkey, the climax of Greek regeneration had
Here, too, the Great War brought about a moral rev-
1. Today Greece is one nation ampng others. In the
~nth century it was much more: it was a hostage, a pawn
L<l to be ransomed. The "esprit" de l'Europe, the modern
reflected itself in Greece. Any French scholar or poli-
even in a special monograph, will end by burning a
tins of incense in honour of Athens. In the France of the
:!nth century such different men as Clemenceau, Renan
'aine offer this same eulogy. The Count de Gobineau,
ting a poem on his medi~val hero Amadis, cannot help
Jlete outburst when he mentions the classics:
"Et toi, Athenes, Athenes, Athenes, Athenes."
:s ewig unsere Liebe" (To Hellas our eternal love), sings
)St influential German poet of the last generation. The
enth century might be called the Grecianizing century.
Olympiad again united all the nations of the civilized
into one Olyrnpia bent on winning the prize in fair and
ports and games.
Jving arm stretched back from the vVest to the East,
~ful echo of former hegemony Greece-this is the
le Occident when it calls itself "Europe."
l the matter an even wider
1
on all our
values. I ask perm1ss1on to narrate more 1n detail the
ection of "Europe" .as an ultimate ideal.
FRANKISH EUROPE.

1ousand years ago Charlemagne tranformed the Gaulish

on of his Frankish kingdom into a larger conception.
s expeditions through the Continent he went as far as
uy. His empire was no longer the Gaul of St. Martin
us, but neither did he, since he hated the New Romans
antium, wish to be the head of a Roman Empire. So his
ement of Gaul into a whole continent was first labelled
·.ngdom of Europe. This Europe centred in "Francia,"
retched from it toward the other parts of the continent:
Italy, the Balkans, Germany, Denmark, and so on. Here
~ was a complete break with the ancient notion of a
e which began in Crete, had its sharply defined boundary
Dardanelles, and extended westward to the Pillars of
les. Two points show the difference. The latitude of
magne's Europe is about ten degrees more northerly
1at of the classical, and its centre of gravity is exactly on
posite side of the continent.
Carolingian conception is still true today. Wherever
~ expanded, as in the "European Messenger" of St.
>urg, it expanded eastward from the old Frankish centre.
another feature had to be added later. The Europe of
magne was one Empire; and this united rule by an
Jr soon came to be labelled again with the traditional
'Roman." Europe disappeared for a long time, to be
d by the Humanists of the Renaissance. In 1450 Pope
:, £neas Silvius, wrote a book on Europe in which he
. the humanistic and classical associations of the name.
ntemporary, Lorenzo Valla, who detected the great for-
)f documents in the vVestern church, recommended the
Europe as a fresh, unspoiled \vord to replace Occident.
~ry the geographer \Vechel dedicated a map to the
ff Charles V, which showed Europe as "The Queen
" is successor, Postel of Augsburg, it
l: "Eurone is nortr;:iverl :ls :-:i i.vom~:nl
 of Spain. Spain is the head, France the left shoulder, Ger-
y the breast, Italy the right arm, and Turkey and Poland
lower parts of the body." And Postel adds: "This picture
:urope can be associated with the unity of Christendom
the true hegemony of Japhet."
ere again "Europe" was used like "Christendom" as a value
zegemony and of unity, in spite of its many different politi-
divisions. The term "Europe" keeps neutrality between
;! and Emperor, kings and princes, nations and countries.

Jpe is the expression of a faith which believes in unity

:out visible political unity.
L this sense of an invisible moral unity behind the separate

tical bodies, Europe served as the title of the great review

1e seventeenth century, the Theatrum Europreum. Yet it
ten equated with the word "Christendom," as any selection
racts of the time will show. For example, in 1690 the
lish, in debating their future policy, waver somewhat
reen the three expressions "Christendom," "Europe" and
>rld," exactly as Disraeli did in Lothair. The famous rule of
balance of power was explained in this way in 1690: "Our
lecessors ever held this to be a fundamental lVIaxim of their
duct, to hold the balance equal between these two great
iarchies in Europe. By which means they made t~emselves
arbitrators of Christendom. By remaining neutral we can-
esc~ew being exposed friendless to the reproaches of all
rest of Christendom, whereby the name of Englishn1en will
ain so much in the oblivion of Europe that nobody will
:e remember there is such a nation in the World."
slate as 1800 a German poet 'vrote a proclamation entitled
'Jpe or Christianity, with the intention of putting both on
fours again. But it was too late. In one country at least,
Jpe and Christianity had ceased to be interchangeable. This
1ite break was due to the French Revolution. The same
Kh who dared to ally themselves with the Infidel Turks as
y as I , the French ·whose King Louis XIV locked him-
in · room in a great rage when all Christendon1 lvas
lee over the the Turks Vienna in 1 Q. e
nch who were the first nation in Europe to en joy the foreign
toms of the Lettres Persanes and the Arabian Nights, now
lished all audible and visible connection between the Chris-
t past and their European civilization.
n the mouth of the Frenchman "Europe" means a field of
on for the philosopher, the artist, the thinker, the democrat,
Republican, the soldier and last, not least, a market for the
dons of Paris.
hortly before the Revolution a Minister of Louis XVI wrote
l-iis king: "France is situated in the midfi,le of Europe."
nee is-in every respect-the centre of the field of force
ch we call Europe in terms like: "Trip to Europe," "Eu-
~an standards," "European literature," "European civiliza-
,,
l.
rone of the other European countries is in the centre of
ope in this deeper sense. The Central Powers were called
ches" "Huns," "barbarians," and "A ttlres chiens" during
1

War, but certainly not Europeans. This seemed perfectly

iistent with the ideal use of "Europe," because Central
ope is only a geographical section of a continent, whereas
centre of Europe is something very French, lying in the
1ch sphere of influence. Europe is the totality for which
1ce sets the pattern. In other words, Europe is Christend01n
::>red to the classical values. These values are threefold:
Democracy
Liberalism, and
Nationalism;

the essence of all three values is contained in the French

d civilisation.
'he ideas of the French Revolution repeated in national and
1ral language the claims of France within medi~val Chris-
lom. In the great days of the University of Paris, JEgidius
:orbeil ( 12 2 4) could sing of
'rancia, cums ad exemplum reliquus formabitur orbis ...
nque
us purgabitur error."
 r'France, to the pattern of which the rest of the world will be
~haped, and in a short time all error of faith will be purged
from the Church." This could have been written in 1789, with
the slight difference that the new conformity to the pattern of
France is based on a natural orthodoxy instead of on the faith
of the Church.
This natural orthodoxy is embodied by the nation. But a
nation, in the European sense of the word, is its literature! And
the sources of this new French pattern for the organization of
Europe are literary sources. This sovereign literature is studied
or written in France, acclaimed by the clerics (as the "ecrivains
de France" can still be called today in a famous boo~, La
Trahison des Clercs), made known in Paris, made into law in
France, and carried by Napoleon's soldiers across Europe.
Even the antagonists of the French Revolution soon bowed
before the idea of "Europe." The leaders of German roman-
ticism, in 1810, founded a review called Europe. The King of
Prussia published a summons to arms against the French in
i813 with the argument, "My cause is the cause of all the men
of good will in Europe." In 1814, when the Allies against the
French began to organize the Continent, they built up the
European Concert, without the pope, as a purely secular com-
munity of nations. (In 1856 the Islamic Sultan of Turkey joined
the European Concert.) The leaders of the emancipation of
the Jews called Christian baptism the ticket of admission to
European civilization! Another example: in the thirties of the
nineteenth century all the non-democratized governments of
the old world faced revolutionary movements of young Poles,
young Germans, young Italians, etc. All these groups recog-
nized their affinity by calling the whole movement "Young
Europe."
In the time of Napoleon III the Germans and the Italians,
even without or against the French, waged wars that were
clearly French in ideology. The ideas of the French Revolu-
tion, democracy, liberalisn1 and nationalism, brought
Italy and Gern1any, about the
and the emancioation of the peasants , it
ought about the universal franchise, even without taxation,
England and Germany in 1867.
Europe was a great and powerful reality during the nine-
~nth century. This reality of course exercised no absolute
mination. Romanticists like Disraeli complained of its fail-
e, Russian prophets slated it for death. Yet it was the war cry
a real crusade; and whoever, in any part of Europe, carried
this crusade for liberty, fraternity, equality, was the partisan
the French Revolution. Any liberal (manufacturer, banker,
ist, physician, Jew, writer, journalist, tradesman) tried to
a good European because this meant nothing more nor less
m being a citizen of the liberal civilization introduced by
~ French Revolution.
Through this survey we have reached the conclusion that
rope, with its peculiar culture centring in France and
liating eastward and all over the world, though it ha4 a
lg previous history, became a definite power and tendency
ly through the force of the Revolution: The contribution
the French Revolution to European civilization very often
ms to be exaggerated in French tradition. But the French
perfectly sincere, because European civilization is the result
the French Revolution, and conversely the Revolution had
t one world-wide purpose and programme: to civilize
rope!
fhe American reader will perhaps object: "How is it pos-
le to limit the effect of the French Revolution to 'Europe'?"
e answer is that America had started her revolution so early
t she was safe and did not need help like the unfortunate
~ntries in Europe which had kings or emperors. But this
wer would not be quite to the point, because Bolivar did
fact depend on French ideas for the deliverance of South
ten ca.
~ut to France the value of "Europe" was immense and
~placeable, because it suggested the old Greek and Classical
·Id. The Revolution, in · back to ancient Rome
. Greece, intentionally within limits of "Europe,"
ause very word guaranteed new boundaries
nee.
 'rancia, the territories of the Kings of France, became "la
nee une et indivisible" of today, thanks to the support
.ch the French found in antiquity. \Vithout the vocabulary
the Classics, neither Nice nor Savoy nor Alsace-Lorraine
Id be French todayl It was the classical passion of the French
t made them call the historical map of antiquity the "true
ture" to which Europe had to be restored. France became
Gaul of Cresar's day, with the Rhine, the Mediterranean
, the Alps and the Lake of Geneva (Lacus Lemannus) for
frontiers, as described by Cresar in his book on his wars in
ul. The Netherlands, which the French tried to annex dur-
. their first revolution, had at least, as an outcome of the
::>nd French Revolution in 1830, to be divided into Belgium
l the Netherlands; and the very name Belgium, a school-
ster's invention, is a good example of the incredible <lorn-
.nee of classicism over the Europe of the French Revolution.
Lab le to replace the old name of France by "Gaul," the
~nch succeeded at least in communicating their main idea
their Northern neighbours by transforming them into a
rd of Gaul, into the "Belgre" of antiquity. It is ironical
Jugh that the most Germanic and Frankish part of Europe,
mders, should be called by the pre-Germanic name of Bel-
1m. It reminds one of the story about King Albert. When he
.s hailed at Paris as the great representative of French and
lTopean civilization, the official speaker was asked what he
rsonally thought of the Belgian ruler. He is said to have
swered, "Il n'y a pas de plus Boche."
PARIS AND THE RHINE.

Napoleon III was the last Frenchman who tried openly to

.nex the "third third" of C~sar's Gaul-Belgium. But the
story of the "natural frontier" of France keeps its fascination
en for the present day. The rest of Europe had to pay the bill
r this natural frontier, because all her border-lines were
langed to agree with it. \Vilson's Fourteen Points and the
the Peace Treaties are high-water
iatural frontiers." In America the natural frontier seems
S::.....,,rl. t-l"~ rAnt,jnpnt l<i; PnltTded bv tWQ 0Ceans. even
tere, Canada and Mexico, Puerto Rico and Bermuda, Alaska
id Hawaii, are as many demonstrations of the absence of
itural frontiers.
The history of France can be read as a highly realistic lesson
. the frontier problem. A millennium before 1789, Gallia and
ermania, that is, a bundle of old Roman provinces, had been
1nquered by the Franks. Later, the Frankish Kingdom was
vided. One third 'Of Gaul remained under the old dynasty,
ie third, Burgundy and the South, was given up, and the
st third of the old Gaulish territory remained united to the
stern territories. Treves, the German "Trier," "Augusta
reverorum" of the Roman emperors, was always called the
pital of Gaul during the Middle Ages; at the same tin1e, it
is the See of the chief prelate of the Gern1an emperors, and
mained so until 1806. Aachen, Aix-la-Chapelle, was the regu-
r scene of the Teuton kings' coronation. Strassburg, Basel,
'orms and Speyer, all on the left bank of the Rhine, in
esar' s Gallia, were the residences and the financial backbone
the Holy Roman emperors during the 1\1'.iddle Ages.
The \Vestern Franks were concentrated around the Ile de
·ance, the region formed by the River Seine, which contains
Lris and Versailles, and which gave its name to the proud
ier of the French merchant marine which carried its Prime
inister to the United States.
"L'IIe de France" is the country of the "Francs des Francs."
J.e name immortalizes the best stock of the immigrants and
:tiers· who perpetuated the work of the conquering Franks.
1e domain of the French Kings centred around that region:
tt its frontiers had no traditional significance. The older unity
Roman times was upheld by the Church alone. The Gallican
urch was larger than the realm of Western France during the
iddle Ages. And it was truly Gallican, not French. Many
illican bishops did not obey the kings of France. On the
1er hand, the kings of France had one jewel in their crown,
e rays of which shone far beyond the Gallican church and
led all Christendom. On its splendour, their glory was based.
le it true, was governed by the Eastern
~ · and the papacy (the authority of the
 Ls centred in Rome. But the Ile de France became the centre
Christian thought during the Middle Ages. People would
y: "Allemannia has the empire, Italy holds the sacerdoce,
it France possesses the 'studium,' the learning." This learn~ng
ts brought to Paris, to Mount Genevieve on the left bank
the Seine, by the powerful Descartes of the Middle Ages,
bailard.
Abailard (Abelard) was the first complete Frenchman. The
story of his "calamities" is well-known. His love for Heloise
fended her fatnily: a gang caught and castrated him. With
emendous energy, he compensated for his physical ignominy
r a glorious adventure of mind. He was the first man in Eu-
pe who dared to build a church in honour of the Holy Ghost.
ever before had it been permissible to isolate the Holy Ghost,
e life of thought, from the Body and Soul of the Church.
bailard, in his bodily frustration, threw himself body and
ul into the arms of the Spirit, and called his home the house
Paracletus. All his passions he threw into the intellectual
~ht. He became the founder of Scholasticism by his famous
reatise on "Sic et Non" (Yes and No).
French style, with its brilliance, clearness and lucidity, can
ell be traced back to his method. And since this method still
>minates much of our thought, it deserves an explanation.
Jr a thousand years before Abailard the old Church had had
) doctors, fathers and writers. They had had all the possible
~periences of personal and ecclesiastical life, and their author-
y seemed to hover over the life of Abailard's day as every
tablished authority does, lingering and threatening life with
~trifacti on.
Abailard acknowledged fully the authority of the first mil-
nnium of Christianity. He avoided the cheap solution of a
ohemian mind, which throws off the heavy yoke of tradition
.r its own personal convenience. But he urged upon men's
tought conception of totality, completeness. He refused
~ listen to any single authority, any arbitrary voice of the past.
[e asked for their togetherness, their simultaneous represen-
ltion. the authorities were their voices were
v no ineans unanimous; contradicted each
nultaneous representation of contradictions was the
lf science. The narrow way into a new science was
by this completeness, which laid bare the contradictions
1 the sacred traditions. The "Summa," the complete
::m of Church traditions by the scholastics, allowed them
:ize and use their own judgment freely. This wiser road
edom through totality" was inaugurated by Abailard.
ader will perhaps remember the great part played by
(' in any revolutionary conception of the world. Abai-
d his followers started a revolution in independent
~ by introducing into it the conception of totality, of
tg up.
Bishop of Paris, upset by the amazing success of this
us man, established or enlarged his own cathedral
llso. And this competition has been the secret of Paris
ce. Schools exist in many places, and there seems noth-
~aordinary in their existence. But in Paris two great
existed in the same place; this made room for a real
ty. The difference between a School of mere learning
Higher School of fundamental thinking has been an
in European life since Abailard. Acknowledged com-
between two schools of thought in the same place is
'es the Higher School its value. Wherever the disaccord
ls and contradictory principles is born, the higher life
iind begins to reveal its power. The forms of human
indivisible and individual (you are a physician or a
grandmother), whilst the forms of the life of thought
tly the reverse. Thought is created and promoted in a
al process, by polarities and paradoxes, in a dialogue
pro and con. The existence of at least two complete
~actors at Paris gave the proper form of existence to
and thinking for the first time in history.
vfarxians love the dialectical method in history. But
tod applies, as far as we see, first of all to philosophy,
ng and thinking. The dialogue is a condition of our
ial
1eory the narrow landmarks set
ism as soon as we trace back the institutions of dia ·
 :ical progress, of systematic competition in thought, to their
~per place.
rhe rivalry of the dialectical schools established at Paris
,Iains why a dialectical element became inherent in Euro-
n history, and why universities ever since have played a
:ling part in the history of the European revolutions.
~efore the different nations of the old world could march
: in different social and political directions, the medireval
~versity whetted the sword of thinking by the formidable
[ning of students who gathered in Paris.
>aris was the brain of the Occident, the School of all Chris-
dom, and had neither Gallican nor French limitations.
·is was, therefore, reluctant to play any leading part in the
itical organization of a united France during the Middle
es. It was a free port of learning much more than it was a
narch' s stronghold. It reflected like a mirror all the specu-
ons of Christian thought. The words "reflection," "mirror,"
eculum," "speculation" were all very popular in medheval
.ting, but revealed by their novelty the prismatic and frag-
ntary aspect of scholastic truth. We are shareholders in the
th whenever we think. But thought is and must be, by its
y essence, dialectical. Being a shareholder, the individual
1d never owns the whole capital of truth. We are thrown
others; our thought provokes other and contrary thoughtl
the bare physical plane one individual or one group can
ily copt; with the life of many other groups and individuals:
lifference and a peaceful equilibrium are possible at that
el. But thought changes the peace of the world. Thought
1lways provoking its own contradiction. This eternal dia-
ue of thoughts and principles organizes humanity into
ools of thought. The parties of policy, the armies of war,
l the classes of interest, are embodiments of this power of
· mind to act like a sword, to distinguish and to polarize,
live by paradox and conflict, by dialectical revolutions.
[he organization of the independent University of Paris
trt from empire and papacy is one of the reasons for
olutionary character of the history of Europe. This was its
effect on all the European nations. What was
ranee? ·rhe French Revolution, as we know already, did
hare the Christian tradition of the Sorbonne of the Middle
. It was the eclipse of medi~val Paris which was responsi-
Dr the French Revolution. Paris was by far the biggest city
urope at the -end of the Middle Ages. During the demo-
= movement of the great Councils of the Church the doc-
of Paris triumphed over pope and cardinals. This pre-
>tion was violently resented. The popes returned from
non and re-established their absolute power at the Curia
)Ut any regard for the doctrines of Paris ( 1450-1517). After
the progress of the Reformation destroyed for good and
ie scholastic authority of Paris over more than one half
uope; Wittenberg and Heidelberg and Marburg gained
uthority lost ·by Paris.
'out 1530 the great Spanish thinker, J. L. Vives, writes
.st the "pseudo-dialecticos," criticizing the higher school
.ris: "Don't you think that the University of Paris in the
L year of its age is raving with decrepitudes?" Then for
trst time Paris was confined within the narrow circle of
and France. Paris had never been a French or Gaulish
ution like the Kingdom. Its lofty speculations were sup-
d by the universal interest of all Christendom. The reper-
>n of its imprisonment in France could not but be tre-
lous.
e universal role of Paris being in decline, its 500,000
>itants had to come to terms with the Kingdom of the
s and·the Gallican Church.
this state of affairs the seed of modern France was sown.
:ore the Reformation the French kings had fought the
sh in the North and the emperors in Italy, whereas the
·n frontier towards the Empire was always the River Maas
se). The Reformation turned the face of the Kings of
:e from Italy and Brittany toward the east. In the October
51 a Crown Council was held, at which the traditional
for a campaign in Italy were discussed. News came that
es V intended to station troops near the French border
Toul and Verdun. The Marshal Vieilleville advo-
that should a march on Charles. And so
century-old fight for Italy, an unreal, abstract obsession of
French policy, was given up for the first time. The Kings of
France began to look eastward.
Five years later, in August, 1557, Charles V saw his son a
victor before St. Quentin. "\Vhy is my son not in Paris?" he

THE TO
The French and the Spanish and
HansburP-s {lines\.
.uupauc.uu y. .i ut: uut:al inai rans m1gnt oe 1nvaaea was

>r the last time in the Great War; it became effective for
rst time in 1557. The new policy of France meant a new
.ry situation for Paris. That great centre had now realized
1lossal danger of its un protectedness against the East. And
:nted it. The eastern frontier increasingly attracted atten-
1nd the more it did so, the more the King of France· and
fell into the same line of interest .
. now, for the first time, Paris underwent a long period
rvation and humiliation. Russia, before 1917, suffered
its exploiting capital, St. Petersburg, while Paris, before
suffered ignominiously from France. The old university
ristendom tried to cope with the threat of Protestantism
.nee in a way deserving of the great times of Paris, when
.as Aquinas (1276) and Gerson (1410) had taught all
1e. Originally, Paris had believed that her Catholicism
presupposition of her own role in the world. And later,
Luther's heresy, she abhorred any peaceful compromise
:ters of religion between the different estates of the realm.
Jniversity did not understand the new "raison d'etat"
was opposed to the reasoning of theologians. "Que Dieu
'Jrotege de la messe du chancelier" was a Paris saying
t the royal chancellor Michel de rHopital, who tried
id the massacres between Catholics and Reformers. Paris
i heresy everywhere. Immediately after the death of the
:Hor, the fury of the parties led to the famous massacre
1t Bartholomew. On the night of the twenty-fourth of
t, 1572, at the wedding of the King's daughter with the
Henri Bourbon of Navarre, the Protestants were mur-
by thousands.
despotism of the most Catholic University of Paris made
ossible for the French Government to come to terms
ie Protestants. The reasoning of scholasticism seemed to
unassailable logic: "The Ile de France can never be
ed by a Protestant king, because the King's orthodox
: the only basic element on which the Lord of the Royal
n can found his rights over and in Gallican Church.
estant king, ruling a smaller territory than was ruled
1e traditional body of the Catholic clergy, would have with-
rawn from this Gallican circle of influence." Paris stood for
1e future when it impressed upon the King this respect for
1e larger field of Gallican responsibility.
Henry IV was not blind to the partial authority of Paris.
a 1589, the first year of his government, he called it "l' abrt!gt!
t le miroir" (summary and mirror) of the country; his fol-
>wers celebrated it in verse as" l' asme et le creur de la France.''
~ut the theological reasoning of the professors was not recon-
iled by the praises of a reforming Huguenot. In 1590, on the
)Urteenth of May, 1,300 clergymen went in procession through
1e streets of Paris, the Rector of the Sorbonne at their head,
) protest because "Henri de Bourbon, etant heretique, relaps
I • I • A , •
t nommement excommunie, ne pouvait et're recf:!;nnu pour roi,
ieme s'il obtenait son absolution du Saint Siege, vu que la
etfidie et la dissimulation etaient a craindre de sa part." As a
eretic, renegade and therefore anathematized, he could not
e acknowledged as King, even if the Pope should absolve him.
n the last hour of her theological sovereignty, Paris was more
1
apal than the Pope. In her arrogant assertion of her impor-
1nce in the realm of ideas, she encroached on the rights of the
~rritorial realm.
Suddenly the theoretical croaking of her teachers was si-
~nced when Henry went to Mass and took the City of Paris
'Y an unexpected stratagem. The Sorbonne was crushed and a
arty of. "politicians" emerged who repudiated the use of the-
logical principles for political purposes. The "raison d'etat,"
political reason for purposes of peace, wealth and welfare,
1ervaded the nation for the first time in spite of the inter-
lational glory of Paris.
After this, the decline of Paris went on throughout the next
enturies. Rene Descartes (1596-1650), the Abelard of modern
imes, who was hailed by the poet La Fontaine as "Ce mortel
'.ont on fait un Dieu dans les siecles passes, et qui le
riilieu l' homme l' esprit," left Paris and went north to
ne the universities of Holland, Franeker. In his
Methode, Descartes establishes a philosophy
Here, for
0
.....
.....
(.C)

z
.....
~ traditional body of the Catholic clergy, would have with-
1wn from this Gallican circle of influence." Paris stood for
~ future when it impressed upon the King this respect for
~ larger field of Gallican responsibility.
Henry IV was not blind to the partial authority of Paris.
1589, the first year of his government, he called it "l' abrege
le miroir" (summary and mirror) of the country; his fol-
vcrs celebrated it in verse as "l'asrne et le cceur de la France.''
tt the theological reasoning of the professors was not recon-
ed by the praises of a reforming Huguenot. In 1590, on the
uteenth of May, 1,300 clergymen went in procession through
~ streets of Paris, the Rector of the Sorbonne at their head,
protest because "Henri de Bourbon, etant heretique, relaps
nommernent excommunie, ne jwuvait et're reconnu pour roi,
~me s'il obtenait son absolution du Saint Siege, vu que la
rfidie et la dissimulation etaient ti craindre de sa part." As a
retie, renegade and therefore anathematized, he could not
acknowledged as King, even if the Pope should absolve him.
the last hour of her theological sovereignty, Paris was more
pal than the Pope. In her arrogant assertion of her impor-
1ce in the realm of ideas, she encroached on the rights of the
-ritorial realm.
Suddenly the theoretical croaking of her teachers was si-
iced when Henry \Vent to l\1ass and took the City of Paris
an unexpected stratagem. The Sorbonne was crushed and a
rty of "politicians" emerged who repudiated the use of the-
)gical principles for political purposes. The "raison d'etat,"
political reason for purposes of peace, wealth and welfare,
rvaded the nation for the first time in spite of the inter-
tional glory of Paris.
After this, the decline of Paris went on throughout the next
ruuries. Rene Descartes (1596-1650), the Abelard of modern
nes, who was hailed by the poet La Fontaine as "Ce mortel
nt on eut fait un Dieu dans les siecles passes, et qui tient le
:lieu en tre l' /wm me et l' esprit," left Paris and went north to
e of the universities of Holland, Franeker. In his ·
urs /\Iethode, Descartes establishes a philosophy
eps ~ny servitude to . Here, for
--z
0
c.o

-
lie 111 1uure inan a tnousand years, philosophy claims to be
£-supporting. Descartes regenerates the pagan independence
the individual mind.
From that dates the strange conception of "spirit" which
gns in French and European civilization. Wherever "l' esprit"
i superseded the Holy Ghost, you may be sure you are on
ritory that belongs to French or "European" civilization .
.e voluntary exile of Descartes from Paris announces an anti-
'Ological, humanistic meaning of" l' esprit." The future recon-
ation between "l' esprit" and Paris becomes the problem of
next centuries. As soon as Paris would incorporate and
itically organize this spirit of the modern world, its inter-
ional and European role could be resumed. The French
volution was to be this fusion. )
VERSAILLES.

~etween 1594 and 1789 Paris was impoverished, deprived

1er old privileges, and always feverishly awaiting the true
r to her former glories. But she lay in the dust for a long
le. In 1645 a sculptor was ordered to erect a monument in
City Hall of Paris, showing Louis XIV contemptuously
ding a rebellious Parisian under his royal feet.
"'he monument was graciously removed in 1687, it is true.
then the humiliation of Paris had already become per-
1ent. The King had left Paris for Versailles. Between 167 5
18<;>5 no new building was done on the royal palace, the
.vre, in Paris. After the second of May, 1682, Versailles
the permanent residence of the King. In it lodged 2 ,200
'1es and i ,500 officers and clerics. 100,000 candles burned at
'.easts. 100,000 people lived in Versailles, while today, in
~ of the growth of most cities during the nineteenth cen-
' its population is only 30,000. vVhat is more, Versailles
made the centre of the fine arts. In 1680 a critic observed
Italy had yielded the palm in architecture, sculpture, paint-
gardening, and water-works, to France. "Versailles seul
jJOUr assurer {l jamais a Claire q a a
r:nt de tous les "
 .ftnocner expression or tne same autnor is more instructive
still: "C'est une ville, c'est un monde, que ce palais."
The Kings, suspicious of Paris, finding its population, as
Voltaire says in his description of the Siecle de Louis XIV,
more "bourgeois" than "citizen-like" ("plus bourgeois que
citoyen''), decided to "epater les bourgeois." In their ante-
chamber, the "ceil de Breu/," "se tiennent chaque jour, atten-
dant le lever du roi, ceux qui par leur naissance, leur charge, ou
la volonte du roi, ont droit aux diverses entrees, sans parler de
la joule des gens de qualite, cardinaux, archeveques, ambassa-
deurs, dues et pairs, rnarechaux de France, gouverneurs de
province, lieutenants generaux, presidents de parlement qui se
donnent rendez-vous a Versailles." Versailles became "tout
fremissant de toutes les gloires de la France."
The "esprit," the inspiration of this realm, worked passion-
1tely to overcome all natural obstacles. The fountains of Ver-
;ailles were wrested from a dry and waterless soil! The Duke
lf Saint-Simon, chronicler of Versailles, speaks of the glorious
Jleasure of enslaving nature. And nature was enslaved. The
Jhysical and the social traditions of France were overshadowed
lY the Kings' domination over nature. And what was the
Jltimate goal of this new power established in an arbitrary
:entre? The new standard was expressed by Richelieu in his
f estament: "Le but de mon ministere a ete de rendre a la
;aule les frontieres que lui a destinees la nature, de rendre aux
;aulois un roi Gaulois, de confondre la Gaule avec la France,
~t partout OU fut l'ancienne Gaule d'y retablir la nouvelle."
This was already the regeneration of a pre-Christian order
>f things. The successor to St. Louis was slated to become the
lbsolute conqueror of. ancient Gaul. The absolutism of the
lynasty destroyed the estates, which assembled in 1614 for the
ast time. It began its wars of conquest, robbery, and reunion
.gainst the east and northeast. The scar of St. Quentin, in 1557,
vas never forgotten. The "siege-trenches of the Ile de France"
vere _ carried forward toward the east year after year. Louis
\.IV, Strassburg, the old and German
n 1681, distributed a medal legend: "Gallia
;Lausa." Gaul had \Von over France.
.. '"" ...... ~'- ... .u...
'-JO.a.
1 1.u..1.~ puu\..y pu1u.u:u 110111 u1e iraa1nona1

[an anointed King over clergy, nobility and cities of a

n realm to the absolute power of a c~sar over Gaul.
n the way to this goal the government was caught in a
ie very allies it needed to help it go back beyond the
iitions of France to this abstract notion of Gaul, led
~ astray. All went well so long as he had no allies. In
tried desperately to represent the new character of a
France all by himself, by making his life in Versailles
lblic than any monarch had ever done. Every Sunday
; of the Palace were opened, and people could see the
nily and the King as close at hand as they liked. Lenin
>sed to the public gaze after his death, Louis XIV dur-
lifetime. The King's handkerchief, his foot-stool, his·
s cough or smile, were observed with sympathy and

jg sun of France was a mortal after all. The Roi-soleil

mnset, too. It was all very well to found Versailles for
of a triumph over Paris. But who ran the realm when
~ was asleep, or lazy, or a minor? Three groups en·
on the new god-like power of the King: priests, royal
.nd nobles. Under Louis XIV (1680-1715) the priests
l, under the Regency ( 17 15-172 2) the Ii berties taken
)yal family were those most violently felt, and under
V it was the insolence of the nobles which overshad-
the merits of Versailles.
ng·in the company of these three groups, which wished
the royal privileges, royalty exposed itself to the at-
the Parisians. The Constitution of modern France is
condensation of the attacks of the Parisians against
~e exploiting groups, and not against the organization
•Y the Kings at Versailles. It is therefore worthwhile
these abuses more carefully than is commonly done
)Oks. Because abuses in themselves do not lead to
ns. Graft and irregularities are the unavoidable com-
>f power and government. Only adolescents can dream
ttion as an appropriate means to the end of clean
calls for force, lawlessness for lawlessness.
·1 ·hat is why any established order is better than a complete
break. When Henry IV was accepted as King, the vanity of
Paris was sacrificed to the common sense of the French for
continuity. The traditional assumption of an innate frivolity
in the French or the Parisians is not true at all. Voltaire wrote
of them: "They come to everything late, but at last they come
to it."
Lest we underrate the angelic patience and real conservatism
of the French nation, we ought to discover their grievances.
These had little to do with the private pleasures of the Kings.
Their mistresses were expensive, but no more expensive than
the usual patronage in an aristocracy or the inevitable graft in
a democracy. Money is wasted in different ways, but wasted it
is everywhere. The grievances of the French had a deeper
meaning, which no virtuous king like Louis XVI could out-
weigh. They endured the government of their dissipated rulers,
because then it might still be doubtfu~ whether it was a ques-
tion of personal vice or of basic rottenness. But when Louis
XVI turned out to be perfectly honest, decent and brave, they
started the Revolution.
The same may be said of Nicholas II of Russia, or of Charles
I of England, or of President Buchanan in America. Because
they were innocent in their personal attitude, their govern-
ments ended in revolution. Their good personal character
made it perfectly clear that something was rotten in the State
which had nothing to do with sentiments or personalities.
Moral talk about despots and revolutions imposes on our
credulity, inasmuch as it ignores the deep instinct of a nation
for its permanent organization. The downfall of the virtuous
Louis XVI happened not because he was King, monarch or
despot, but because he could not be awake all the time. There
was no remedy which could save the King from the corruption
of the three pillars of his throne: priesthood, family and nobil-
ity. The French Revolution installed a sovereign who was
independent of priesthood, family ties, and privilege. The
French Revolution was not directed against the successor of
Louis XIV. The fact that no reasonable leader in France
to the . central government Louis XVI
Ul 1792. ~·ranee was not and is not anti-royal, but anti-
rical, anti-aristocratic, and anti-dynastic. Napoleon I, for
imple, emperor though he was, did less to violate the princi-
~s of the French Revolution than the federalists of 1790, who
ed to go back to the estates of 1614 and to decentralize
mce. They were the first to be crushed by the fury of the
.I successors of the King of VersaiUes, the courtiers of the
N Queen of France, Paris.
[n order that the courtiers of Versailles might cease to influ-
:e the King, the role of kingship was invested in the Queen
Cities, Paris; and her courtiers were allowed to rule alter-
~ely!
HUGUENOTS AND JESUITS.

fhe priests made the French C~sar a bigot. In 1685, when

uis XIV drove out the Huguenots, the friends of his great-
ndfather, Henry IV, he expelled the progressive part of
nation, whose courage alone had made it possible for him
govern the country by "raison d'etat," against the "reason
~heology." The reason of State was overruled when Madame
l\1aintenon and the Jesuits secured the repeal of the Edict
Nantes by which the Huguenots had been allowed to stay
France. Most of them left France, carrying her best blood
) the world abroad; but many of them left-for Paris.
1ngely enough, the cruel execution of the Edit de Versailles
the "Dragonnades," that is, by military quartering, seemed
>ossible in the King's "grande ville de Paris." Some 10,000
guenots remained in the place, outlawed, it is true, but for
t very reason so much more an element of permanent un-
.. In this persecution, the provincial priesthood of the coun-
acted without the Sorbonne. Paris, however, though proud
its Catholic university, did not mean to bow before the
er clergy of the King's provinces. The parochial and pro-
~ial character of the Gallican Church deprived it of all the
·ntial loyalties owed to the great Faculty of Theology. The
:t of Versailles was a triumph for the provincial and royal
·g·y, and though the Jesuits qnly joined in the triumph, it
hained the fury of Paris against as well. As a Spanish
in Rmne, to fight English, Dutch and
Protestantism, the Jesuits overruled, so to speak, the Ile de
France, the old centre of speculation. Having an international
~eputation as schoolmasters, they were apt candidates to take
>Ver the role of the old Catholic Paris for the rest of Europe,
Jut certainly not in Paris itself. Now here else was the fight
tgainst the Jesuits so much a nationalistic crusade against in-
1aders from outside. From 1590 to 1761 the Jesuits were
mathema to Paris. Richelieu had sensed this when he founded
~he Academy of Paris, to replace the dying Sorbonne, and when
ie included Huguenots in its ranks from the very beginning.
Later the great soul of Blaise Pascal represents the French
~enius in its struggle for a new orthodoxy. By turning to Pascal
rve can learn about the French Revolution. Pascal attacked
~he Jesuits because they were parochial and no longer had the
nagnanimity of Thomas of Aquinas or Bonaventura. He was
ighting against a church which had become too visible and
ised reason only for apologetics. Pascal turned the scales of
~rench thought in favour of the new principles by depriving
fesuitism of all dignity, and by unveiling its moral cowardice
n his Lettres Provinciales, the first great piece of modern
~rench prose. We should give up the superstition, of literary
iistories, that great men are read and admired for their literary
nerits alone; as if literature were a water-tight compartment
iVhere pens and tongues are used for the sake of book-writing.
~ascal could perhaps have written a better book than the
~e(tres Provinciales. I found an American friend "disap-
Jointed" with it because he disliked its sarcasm! The poor
nan had taken a course in literature and expected something
.o suit his literary palate. The French read Pascal because
?ascal was a free-lance in a desperate enterprise, more desperate
.han the enterprise of the Minute Men at Lexington and
=:oncord in 1775.
Yet, bold though he was, Pascal hin1self was no desperado.
:-Iis fight, the natural exhalation of a virile spirit, was dignified
JY his own humility and restraint. Though he collaborated
rVith of the world of space, he knew
rVas an isolated man. "Most crimes are
:ause man cannot remain calmly and quietly one hour
I. '-1..l.l.J:-'L] .I. vviu., J.J.~ vv l vu:. .1. 111~ l~ pc::ruaps Ille aeepest
ince of this brilliant thinker, fighter and Christian. The
Jf empty space was not to be vanquished by the isolated
Pascal tried to think in connection with a living com-
ty. He wrote his Pensees in connection with Port Royal,
ustere praying centre of Jansenism. He could not think
s supported by love.
•cal, then, is a great figure in the French Revolution. In
uee-fold activity of preparing the defeat of the Jesuits,
>rting the victory of Cartesian science, and also of saving
>eial and communal character of our psychic and creative
he condensed into his short life (1623-1662), the per-
nt features of the French character: the cosmological
~ of a sensualist and rationalist, the personal courage and
of a crusader, and the heart of a troubadour.
cal and Port Royal are pillars in the middle of the broad
1 which had to be bridged before the French nation could
~ the intellectual impasse created by the Reformation
~ounter-Reforma ti on.
t the gulf was bridged. In 1761, under the pressure of
: opinion, the Jesuits were exiled from France. By this
tlation the Kings lost their only intellectual allies of inter-
1al standing in their fight against Paris. Diderot, the great
tlist and rationalist, could write ( 1761 ): "With the sup-
)n of the Jesuits, absolute monarchy in France is ended."
PRIVILEGES.

"' the old French constitution, which had to be carried

f-ie abyss between the Middle Ages and modern times, had
elements:
1 Paris: intellectual centre of Christendom.
1 Isle de France: a King ruling over a score of provinces.
I Gallican Church, throughout ancient Gaul.

three elements had to remain in the same equilibrium,

t they all had to be modernized. Now the chasm between
iddle and modern times proved to be much broader
mr ·r ranee lnan ror, tel us say, r.ng1ana or uennan y. .i ue ver-
mans began their New Times as early as 1517, with Luther;
the English too, as we shall see, had started a new era, finally
dating it from the Glorious Revolution of 1688. The French
nation, having lost its international Christian reputation at
Luther's hands, had to wait until 1789 to end its Middle Ages,
Jr what the French called "ancien regime."
Situated in the middle of Europe, they had two neighbours
who had long since radically modernized their institutions:
Germany and England. This backwardness made the French
restless; their revolutionary energy was bottled up for 250
years. They could not borrow their solution from abroad; but
Jn the other hand it was not enough to decline the remedies
Jffered by the Lutheran Reformation of the Church and by
the Jesuit Counter-Reformation. The English model was an-
Jther attractive possibility; and so the remedies of the English
Revolution were tried out. Then, when it became evident that
they did not fit into the French triangular problem, the coun-
ter-revolutionary forces of absolutism, 'vhich went against the
English system, were given their turn. But they, too, left France
without the international function to which it had a right.
It was only then, after having flirted with the solutions
Jffered by her neighbours, that Marianne definitely discovered
r-ter own revolutionary way into modernity, into Gaul and
Europe.
Between France and Gaul stood one permanent obstacle: the
traditional rights of the Frankish Regions, embodied in the
t1obility, dukes, counts and barons. These owed allegiance to
the King, but their estates divided France into a crazy-quilt of
thousands of little scraps of soil. "In Lorraine," wrote Voltaire,
'you change the law as often as the horses of your mail coach."
And this was true of Picardy, Artois, Poitou, Brittany, Aqui-
taine, Normandy, and all the other provinces. These countries
~ach had a common law of its own in which Burgundian,
Gothic, and Frankish law had been fused with Roman and
Canon Law and blended with charters and privileges granted
by or popes or bishops. The living voices of the law were
the Manor, the Fief-holders ·whose rights
"" .... u. ......... "" L.1..1.U'-- l.J.J.'--
1,uuii~ .1a.w uJ. Luc u1~Lr1ct. Loca1 govern-
~, the pride of every Anglo-Saxon country, was invested in
'Coutumes.,'' the customs of the estates in all the "pays de
ce.,; "Pays" is "fatherland," patria; and Patrie meant
rn" or "Languedoc" to a Frenchman in 1700. Here he had
ights, his natural roots, his home. The Huguenots, who
ded New Rochelle in New York State after the repeal of
:diet of Nantes, kept the name of their "pays," because the
~ss of Rochelle had served for thirty years as the anchoring
of their rights as citizens. A man could not be French
>ut first having a "pays." The Huguenots, being outside
~egular organiz.ation of the bishoprics and parishes of
~e, could not exist except by being assigned to certain
1enot districts. Law and legal standing without a "pays"
i not have seemed feasible.
le French fatherlands were kept together and united by
act that the living voices of their customs, the 270,000
:sand clergy, were vassals of the Frankish King. The King
ned each fatherland according to its laws, just as the
=lent of the United States of America has to reckon with
eight State constitutions.
sooner had the living voices of the regions of England
themselves unmistakably heard during the great Civil
than the gentry of France took a deep breath and plunged
:he troubles of the Fronde ( 1645). The King of France
'iously stopped this English infection and began to kill
ml of the "pays" by taking away their leaders. He moved
to Versailles. The countryside was practically deserted,
)yal intendants took over the work of administration. The
s were turned into absentees. In the course of fifty years,
tird Duke of La Rochefoucauld spent twenty nights out-
' ersailles. The castles became summer resorts or hunting
And Versailles had to be filled artificially. Of its 100,000
itants in 1750, the greater part was made up of all the
·men of France. This was the price that the King had to
1r competing with Paris. He used the gentry of the coun-
a ram against Paris. 'Ve must keep this in mind
: his Bou · Centi was
ten 1n tne years or rne genuen1en s revo1uuon iu r..ng1anu. nut
in England the governing class would never have dared to deal
so cruelly with the merchants, because its very revolution
against the King made it feel responsible for the other classes
too. The French King allowed his gentry, in their concentra-
tion camp at Versailles, to be filled with cynical contempt for
the "crapule," the bourgeois; for the gentry no longer had any
responsibility, and yet had to be kept in good temper. The
irresponsibility of the nobles of France was the plague of the
regime of Versailles 1 As long as the "grandeur," the greatness
of the Court, overshadowed the pettiness of the courtiers, as
long as the King was "great," the century "le grand siecle," the
Duchess of Orleans "the great Mademoiselle," Conde "the
great Conde," all went well. But things ceased to be great at
Versailles when Louis XIV passed away. The drones at court,
with their empty hauteur, became incompatible with the hum-
ming bee-hive of Paris.
The result was: at Versailles a privileged class without func-
tions; in Paris a functioning society without privileges. The
concentration of leaders of the "pays" in Versailles had up-
rooted the foundations of French society. And the concentra-
tion of the privileged class resulted in its being pitilessly ex-
posed as a privileged class. Now its privileges had made sense
as long as they stayed within the framework of local govern-
ment. In the past, a count who was distinguished by the King
had added honour to his "pays." Thus, through the privileges
of its leaders, the countryside had succeeded in maintaining its
equality with the intellectual centres of commerce and teach-
ing, like Paris.
Now this balance between the "pays" and Paris had broken
down. The provinces stood naked, governed as they were by
royal officials; the nobles, wrapped up in titles, ceremonies,
privileges, no longer moved in a real world of social obliga-
tions. The cities sparkled with activity. Their busy life seemed
to avoid the extremes of both Versailles and the provinces.
They before the eyes of the nation the "juste-milieu,'' the
of society. The cities, and especially ·
more than of indi-
Lls or masses. Uur modern impression of a place like Pitts-
1 or Liverpool or Charleroi in Belgium cannot be applied
e ideas of the French Revolution about citizenship and
zation. Its civil order aimed at the mean between the
y privileged class and the denuded peasantry. This mean
iy existed in r100 or 17 50 in a city like Paris (which had
oo inhabitants in 1789). This juste-milieu needed no eco-
= revolution, no industrial revolution, no change in the
, of trade or business. France is the only country in the
. where the word "industry" has never lost its meaning
llled craftsmanship. "Industry" was not big machinery,
ord or General Motors. When the French consuls inaugu-
the exhibition of industries in Paris in 1800, the public
uniture, jewellry and Gobelin tapestries.
e French Revolution wished to expand the organization
cities of France, as the true bee-hives of life and produc·
[t wished to avenge the bourgeois who had been scoffed
imitating the gentleman.
<.e the bourgeois a citizen, and no other class can compete
iim. The dignity of the word "civilisation" depends on
ioral background, where Paris stands over against Ver-
, and Versailles over against the provinces. The privi-
class in Versailles could not offer any common denomina-
r the nation; the people in the country could not do so
. As soon as the bourgeois took the risk of being more
bourgeois, he could be turned into a citizen.
E NATION: HOW THE BOURGEOIS WAS MADE A CITIZEN.

s process deserves a closer investigation, because during

neteenth century the other countries of the world tried
arying success to imitate the methods of the French Rev-
1. The Revolution marched all over the world, as had
orecast by Napoleon. But nowhere else could the process
lization work as it did in France, where the bourgeoisie
.s held the centre between a privileged class of aristocrats
denuded class of Without this polarity, no
iilieu of citizenship and civilization!
:he "'indllstry" shovvs, the French vocabulary
mque even today. The J:t·rench civilisation has the same pe-
1liarity, centring as it does in a special concept of the nation.
Nation" is something which needs no king and no nobility
, feel itself a nation. France is a democracy; but it is by no
Leans the government of the people. The word "peuple" is
o less abhorrent to the French than the word "aristocrate."
'he French Revolution built up its European civilization of
ational democracies by avoiding both extre1nes, "aristocrats"
1d "people." The nation is not the same thing as that labelled
y the word "peuple." People of Paris, people of Flanders,
gnify the man in the street or the man in the fields, with his
ative instincts, his inborn superstitions. "Nation" is the people
~stored to a truer and greater nature; it is "people" minus
iperstitions or instincts, plus reason and speech.
"Nation" is the glory of a natural humanity which also bears
ie torch of enlightenment, gleaming like Lucifer, the morning
ar, stealing light and fire like Prmnetheus, and defying the
JCls of tradition by the majesty of human genius.
In English we can speak of "the people of this nation," which
takes it perfectly clear that people and nation are not the
true. Neither is the national government of France identical
ith the "peuple fran9ais." Most of the mischief done to the
tap of the world has happened because well-meaning people
verlook the rigid standard implied in the French conception
E"nation."
It is of practical use to lay bare the foundations of the term,
>r w·e are all taken in today by the promiscuous use of "na-
on" for all kinds of purposes. The domination of French
leas has lamed our sense of self-orientation in the social world.
I e have French words for everything. The oldest parliamen-
lry country, England, bo,vs to France and calls the First Lord
Ethe Treasury by a French title, "Prime Minister"; the British
arties are called "Liberals" and "Conservatives," which are
urely French names.
"Nation" is used even by careless Americans who forget that
ie continent America is a new lvorld embracing all kinds
f nations open to all kinds of and that
:txons believe in the Commonwealth, not in
n. A true American patriot should avoid the word "nation"
~e the plague.
The origin of the French conception of "Nation" is a fas-
1ating story of the self-defence of a social group and the
pointment of revolutionary leaders by an inarticulate society.
ie French bourgeois sa:w the emptiness of the privileged
.sses and the bareness of the rural area as early as 17 50. Every-
dy expected a change, a break, even in those days. But
)Ugh the field was ripe for mowing, no labourers were ready
harvest it. The creation of a group of intellectual leaders
s the conditio sine qua non of the Revolution. In Russia,
tories had to be built to help the intelligentsia; in France
intellectual class had to be trained up to help the industrial
sses. Hence the desire of the French to become intellectual,
~ir devotion to all the idealistic superstructure of society .
.e tiers etat J the industrial classes, feel that they will become
mce just as soon as the moral atmosphere can be made to
ee with the economic facts.
rhis new order of things was anticipated on the stage. The
atre became the hothouse for the ideas of 1789. For the
:>r, formerly despised and outlawed by society, can show a
Jtion on the stage which does not exist in reality. The
atre becomes an institution for the political education of
nation.
Vhen Moliere wrote the Bourgeois Gentilhomme, he had
uiesced in the existing order. A hundred years later the
·d was· passed along: "The son of Moliere is found." The
ase was coined about Caron de Beaumarchais. But this
1" was not one to acquiesce. Beaumarchais was a banker
> had financed, at the King's order, the deliveries of war
erial to the American Colonies during their Revolution;
he had won a great success with his play, The Barber of
'lle. In 1778 he wrote The Wedding of Figaro. The history
his play turned out to be the prologue in miniature of the
1ch Revolution. It took four long years to write it, and in
)W1ng proceedings of censor, King and Queen,
public, ·we nearer and nearer to the catastrophe
).
 The comedy of Figaro, so full of wit, brings a count and
countess down to the level of their servant and maid. This
poet represents the new society. He aims at the same time at
the defence of his legal rights, the conquest of public fame,
and the making of money; that is, at the three things which
form the queer alloy of the emerging society. Beaumarchais'
rights are less clear, his fame less noble, and his money less
pure than the legal rights, the moral fame, and the honest
money of a good citizen. But he is the prophet of the new
earthly paradise, and acts as its precursor on the stage. His
character, his money-making devices, and his legal proceedings
contained fewer grains of gold than those of the average honest
merchant; but he showed better brains, he showed genius.
In Russia the intelligentsia had to show greater character
than the average Russian. In France the moral virtues are
seated in the normal citizen. The litterateur' s task is to show
genie, vrai genie; he must have esprit, he must be a master of
expression. Then society will be indulgent toward his dissipa-
tions. Society, laden as it is with politcial electricity, hails the
electrician. The Russian Maxim Gorky tells in his diary of a
practical case of Leninism. Lenin had always repeated: "Elec-
tricity plus soviets equals socialism." Whereupon an electrician
went into a Russian village, gathered the peasants about, and
made the following speech: "You have a pope, an Orthodox
priest in your village, haven't you? You feed him well and he
maintains the eternal lamp in his church. Now you appoint
me ·as your mayor, pay me such and such a salary, and I will
produce electric light for everybody in the village." His offer
was accepted. The electric light and the electrician took the
place of the lamp of eternity and its engineer, the priest. In
France the electrician is the man of "esprit." He is extolled
because he is able to master the political clouds, and to elicit
from the atmosphere the sparks which lead to change and
reconstruction.
"Esprit" cannot be translated into English, but it must be
understood by anyone who wishes understand
tics. It the translation Holy Ghost into
sonal sing~e-minded form, that inspired ·
~ rnunaeroou, the Hash, may burst out through any person.
'ernment by inspired individuals becomes the endeavour
1e national society.
igaro sings in the final chorus of the play:
"Par le sort de la naissance
L'un est roi, l' autre est berger;
Le hasard fit leur distance;
L' esprit seul peut tout changer.
De vingt rois que l'on encense
Le trepas brise l' autel
Et Voltaire est immortel."
"By the chance of birth
One is King, the other shepherd;
Their difference is haphazard,
Inspiration alone can change everything.
Incense for twenty Kings
Vanishes with their death,
But Voltaire is immortal."

~aro sings this creed of a wor Id changed by inspiration

having taken his witty revenge on his lord, the Count
Lviva. The great of this earth, viewed from below, cease
great: "My lord Count, because you are a great lord you
yourself to be a genius? You have taken the pains to be
nothing else. For the rest you are a very ordinary man."
.e accident of birth, the privilege of birth or birthright,
:orned with all possible energy. Beaumarchais promised
vote some of the profits of the play to a home for unwed
ers! But now let us tell the whole story of the play.
ten people heard of its length, that it would last three
ours, they predicted a failure. The manuscript was circu-
among Beaumarchais' friends; and the poet could not
the temptation of reading it in certain salons. Parties
formed "pro" and "con." In 1779 people offered to bet
1uis d' or i ,ooo) that it could not he acted in public.
: Royal Theatre, the Comedie Franc;aise, enjoyed
·i vi lege making · O\vn decision on acceptance of
censor had no Accordingly,
marchais, approaching the Comedic Fran<_;a1se in 17~ 1 ana. se-
curing a favourable censor, thought he was safe. But general
rumour made the play so famous that the com1nissioner of
police thought it wise to ask the King himself. The King and
Queen heard it read. In the fifth act, during the n1onologue
of Figaro which we quoted just now, the King, with astounding
instinct, scented the revolutionary dynamite. He jumped to his
feet, shouting, "That is abominable! That shall never be acted!
The Bastille would have to be destroyed, to make the per-
formance of this play anything but an act of the most danger-
ous inconsistency.'' 4
Eight years before the taking of the Bastille, Louis XVI
anticipated it in idea through the inspiration of a playwright.
The prophetic use of the stage for political changes can be
seen particularly well in this case.
Naturally, the public demand was aroused by the royal
criticism. '\Vhat a play it must be that had an effect equal to
the destruction of the Bastille! For his many lectures on the
play in the salons, Beaumarchais wrote a special preface "to the
Ladies." The Russian Empress, Catherine II, true to the Czar-
ist interest in social satire, thought of acting the play at St.
Petersburg. All this led to the intervention of the keeper of
the Great Seal. He interested the President of the Acadcmie
Franc;aise, M. Suard, who condemned the play. All seemed to
have come to an end.
Then the royal family showed its dissipation and dissolution.
The play was going to be acted for the brother of Louis XVI,
the Count of Artois (later Charles X, 1824-1830, the reactionary
of reactionaries), at a private festival in Paris on the thirteenth
of June, 1783, and to this performance all the great dignitaries,
the princes, ministers, ladies, in short, the aristocracy, were
invited. The streets approaching the theatre were obstructed
by the throng of arriving carriages. At that moment came a
royal order forbidding the professional actors who had parts
in the play from participating in performance. The throng
was so disappointed that it burst into shrieks: "Tyranny! Sup-
r· But after all, the play was not acted.
I,
A ..... " " " ' .:lepremoer 2 3, in a country
.1..uv.1.u.u~ 1a.u:1, uuwcvt:T, on
:e, it was performed, and again in honour of the King's
ther! The pretext was that the poet had agreed to certain
" which would have to be tried out in performance. As a
l performance it was permitted. To be sure, the new censor
r approved of the play. But the royal order was still in force.

~ King asked for further cuts. Two other censors must give
r approval. Only one of them vetoed it; the other's vote
favourable, and was backed by a superior authority.
inally (the frightened bureaucrats shrank from all responsi-
.y), Beaumarchais himself summoned a real council: the
f of police, the keeper of the Great Seal, a Minister of the
inet, one of the censors, and two connoisseurs of literature.
i council met at the beginning of 1784. Thanks to the plea
1e "father" hi1nself, who explained every detail with bril-
:y, the play, this child of natural genius, was legitimized
. unanimous vote. The King was told that all the scan-
us passages had been expunged. Someone added that the
would be hissed off the stage anyway. On the other hand,
actors of the theatre petitioned to the effect that they
ed a play that paid. In March, 1784, the King withdrew
lrohibition.
as not everything smoothed out now? Not at all. The
ical tragi-comedy of this play was just beginning. The
or himself and his friends were afraid that people of good
might find fault with its unmeasured insolences. But the
·'s brother set their minds at rest. "The play will be a
~ss," he said. "People will think they have won a battle
tst the government!"
·mocracy in Europe has always wished to win battles
nst the government." April 27, 1784, the play was received
such applause that enmity and envy began to stir. The
dominated the stage, it is true; on October 2 the fiftieth
-rmance took place. But Beaumarchais was overwhelmed
invective. His old censor, Suard, attacked him in the
emie. Archbishop of Paris denounced him in a
letter. Finally Suard used he owned, the
zal de Paris) to attack him violently.
 lV!arcn 2, 1705, Dt::aUUldlLUd.l:S dll~WClCU 111 c1 puuu.'- .U,..l.l.\....Le

He exclaimed: "\Vell, I had to vanquish lions and tigers so

that the play might be allowed to go on the stage, and now,
after all its successes, you think of condemning me to kill
bugs?"
The bug, Suard, immediately declared that Beaumarchais,
in referring to lions ·and tigers, was hinting at the King and
Queen. On the ninth of March, in the fifty-third year of his
age, Beaumarchais was taken to St. Lazare, a jail for youthful
offenders. We are told that the King wrote the writ of arrest at
a game of cards, on an ace of spades.
Public opinion was divided. The tremendous impudence
of the speculator had aroused much enmity. But his imprison-
ment was not to be maintained. Eight days later he was free.
At first he refused to leave prison. He protested against the
injury inflicted upon him; he -condemned himself to a volun-
tary confinement indoors, and sold his coaches to demonstrate
that he was serious about the matter. His petitions became
such a nuisance that in time the King sent orders to reach a
compromise with him. He was offered the order of St. Michael,
the effect of which was to ennoble the receiver. Beaumarchais
insisted that he was already a noble, and asked for a pension
from the Civil List.
And what happened? By order of the King, Calonne, Min-
ister of the Cabinet, had to write a flattering letter to Beau-
marchais; and the poet received his pension from the King's
privy purse. Figaro's Wedding was acted in the presence of the
whole Cabinet of the King, after six months of delay, on
August 17. At Figaro's observation: "Since they cannot humili-
ate l' esprit, the genius, they take their revenge by torturing
him" -the whole audience burst out in a frenzy of applause.
The climax was reached when, on August 19, 1785, the
author was invited to the little palace of Trianon, built in the
style of Rousseauism by the Queen, Marie Antoinette. There,
in the disguise of shepherds and shepherdesses, the royal fam-
ily had taken up the fashion of natural life and abolition of
privilege. In this environment, Louis XVI, King of
and citizen,
wn together and saw the other play written by this en/ant
·rible: his Barber of Seville. The main part in that play,
1sine, was acted with great charm by the Queen herself, Marie
ttoinette. That evening the Bastille was destroyed.
[n 1789, on July 14, the people of Paris tore down the Bas-
e-the event which Louis XVI had instinctively foreseen
The Mad Day, or Figaro. When the Lord Chamberlain
1ounced the event to the King at Paris, Louis XVI said:
his is a rebellion." "No," the courtier replied, "this is a
olution." The moral conquest of Paris by Henry IV in 1594
• turned into its opposite. Paris ceased to be a royal city.
rhe theatres of Paris had prepared a new audience, the
ion. The most passionate German poet, Schiller, spellbound
the sounds that came from France, wrote on The Theatre
~ A1oral Institution. And not only did the actors try to play
e mad day," but the madness .of the Revolution was em-
lied in an actress who had to play the Goddess of Reason
the Field of Mars in 1794. It was an actor who first wore
costume of a sans-culotte. An actor and an actress infused
~ the French Revolution a bit of histrionic gesture, ardour
leclamation, inspiration and verve. The French Revolution
oduced the clapping of hands from the theatre into public
where it had been unknown before. One wave had to flow
a the ocean of theatrical passion into the newly organized
on to foment its new covenant; and it did.
'he true heir to all the political passions of 1789 was Georges
nenceail. This man was French of the French and revolu-
ary of the revolutionaries. \Vhen Clemenceau made his
, a hundred and fifty years after Figaro was written, he
Ted that nothing should be put into his gTave but an old
~on of Figaro, an heirloom of his family.
he theatre changed the audience; it communicated the
.ments of Daphnis and Chloe to the King and Queen of
.ce and the passions of the Great to the roturier, the busi-
man. The stage was a training camp for the new equality
tizenship, and the educators of the movement had to
nd scenes. The men of ·t, the inspired ·
could all " use phrase, were
writers of French. To the ecrivain, the literary wielder of lan-
guage, went the incense of the "twenty kings" whose lives were
overshadowed by the immortality of Voltaire.
The revolutionaries of 1789, finding a great church built
and dedicated to St. Genevieve, changed its destination. Re-
calling Abailard's teaching on St. Genevieve, and all the in-
tellectual glories of the place, they turned this church into the
"Pantheon" -the place sacred to all gods and geniuses. In this
hall we find a monument dedicated to the "ecrivains de
France" killed during the World War. The ecrivains are con-
stitutional elements of a civilized nation. They give expres-
sion and they give standards to the national existence.
The French language has had a culte in France, ever since.
An American teacher once made a scrupulous study of this
question: "How the French boy learns to write.'' One might
expect this to be son1ething rather special and dry; and in
fact our author set out with the idea that it was only a special
question of how to co-ordinate algebra, geography, Latin, Eng-
lish, German, and history into one school curriculum. That,
indeed, is all it seems to an English or German pedagogue,
except that he might emphasize Latin or history or biology.
But in France Mr. Rollo Brown found it very different indeed.
The French physicist would say: "If Latin helps us to
write French better, we must keep Latin!" The Latinist would
say: "Latin makes you write a more elegant French." No one
w~uld take his arguments from his own field; instead, the
argun1ents in the case would be built up around the problem
of how to get a perfect French style. "The French have chosen
to be influential through their speech and writing. As Bru-
netiere pointed out somewhere, the literary classes of France
long ago recognized the possibilities of influence through speech
and writing, and they set themselves, accordingly, to the task
of making their native language a powerful force in the world.
The schools served as the necessary means; and during the nine-
teenth century, 'When educational systems were developing most
rapidly, this care for c1n1e to be the ideal the
u~L uuw, uur rney meet with a stronger, more perfectly or-
anized resistance. The French schools stand as a deeply estab-
:.shed safeguard for the better use of the mother tongue. They
ave held to the conviction that whatever else the school should
:and for, it should be the exponent of good French. The
rganization of the system and the character of the instruction
iven in the schools have, together, borne this conviction to
very corner of the country and to every social class. It may
e seen that the tradition of good language does not merely
dst as tradition in spite of some vague 'spirit of the times,'
ut instead is organized, made not only defensive but positive,
trough the national system of education." 5
Language is the idol of any democracy. Yet what is a virtue
t France becomes a vice in Russia and a crime in Czecho-

Jvakia or in Hungary, where there is neither a Paris to

>itomize the speculations and reflections of a continent nor
ie single nationality with an exclusive territory. As the only
mbol of togetherness and nationality, it is misleading in
rbia and Croatia, or Austria and Germany. But at the source
our century of progress and our national civilization, in
!

ance, language has a very complicated significance. Before

e War the German historian, Lamprecht, and a French
lleague were travelling in Northern France, where so many
emish places remind us of the fight for the natural defences
Paris. Lamprecht was trying to defend the raison d'etat in
ation to different nationalities and the masterpiece of the
1strian Empire, then containing fourteen nations, against the
ench conception of an identity between linguistic and po-
tcal units. Pointing to one of the Flemish villages they passed
·ough in their car, Lamprecht asked: "What about the lan-
age of these people? Don't they speak their German idiom?
1y isn't there a single Flemish school to teach them to read
1 write?"
'Oh," replied his friend, "ce n'est pas une langue, c'est un
'ois." (It's not a language, · a dialect.) This answer betrays
· French idea of language. They think that a national Ian~
Rollo '\!alter Brown. How the French Boy Learns to Write, p ..208 Cam-
ge, Harvard Univ. 1927.
~uage needs a permanent centre ot un1hcauon: Literature.
Thus the written word, sublime, exalted, is the upper level on
which a nation must live to be in permanent contact with in-
>piration. This is illustrated by the fact that a fin de siecle
(lUthor-Anatole France-could venture to take the name of
the whole nation as his own device. A nation is not a geo-
~aphical or racial fragment. Nations are divided from bar-
barian tribes by the one reality of Inspiration. Where a nation
organizes its inspiration into an endless stream o~ literary pro-
duction it becomes civilized, it counts, it belongs to humanity
in the sense of the humanism of the French Revolution.
We shall see that the key to the French Constitution cannot
be found until we know of this endeavour to keep true inspi-
ration alive, to keep pouring into the body of the nation the
living breath of divine genius. It was this idea which made
Hilaire Belloc explain the French Revolution to his suspicious
English readers as a truly Catholic enterprise, because the belief
in universal inspiration, in a permanent guidance of the Saints
and the Holy Ghost, is the outstanding difference between the
historiCal adventure of Christianity and the natural religions.
Inspiration, forming a real stream, a continuous current of
electric power, is perpetually transforming humanity. There
are no established privileges, no water-tight compartments in
the world. "L' esprit seul peut tout changer." Inspiration is at
work all the time changing the surface of the earth and the
essei:ice of things and men.
VOLTAIRE'S AND ROUSSEAU'S IDEAS.

The cult of an inspired literature is a real creed, and in-

volves a theory of revolution; like Russian Marxism, French
Jacobinism created a dogmatic creed. Therefore, an under-
standing of Voltaire and Rousseau, the two dogmatists of "na-
tional inspiration," will make transparent most of the changes
in the map of Europe during the nineteenth century. Rather
than sacrifice two hundred pages more to the ups and
of the national democracies all over world, we shall
better investigate the revolutionary system at its literary
centre.
.e nrsc cwo ooa1es to be transferred to the Pantheon on
it St. Genevieve were those of Voltaire and Rousseau.
ire had always feared that he would have no definite rest-
~lace. The "immortal spirit" who was acclaimed as the
;sor of Louis XIV was caught in a most inconvenient
ma, between ancien regime and revolution. On the border
itzerland and France, he lived in a sort of foxhole with
~xits, so as to protect himself against both Huguenot
1a and Catholic France. He wished to conciliate the
, which he had relentlessly pursued, because the abiding
nare of his old age was that his bones would find no peace
his death. This divination came true in an astounding
He managed by a bold trick to get a Catholic funeral
'8, before the government knew that he had died. Later
s brought to the Pantheon; and this exaltation brought
'ing back. In 1814 the hotspurs of royalist reaction dug
1 ltaire's bones and scattered them, to their own satisfac-
o the four winds.
~ Dostoevski and Tolstoi, Rousseau and Voltaire uncon-
y divided their labour, one aiming at the individual,
her at the institutions. By the depth of their teaching
>restalled a petty romanticism. Their situation reminds
the victory of Tolstoi and Dostoevski over the senti-
point of view of the social revolutionaries, who fought
~ poor Mou jik against St. Petersburg, but who mistook
:orm of the village for a satisfactory synthesis between
ristian soul of the Moujik and the social regeneration
Russia. The danger in Russia was that romanticists
ed the deliverance of the in di vi dual soul, and the Ii berty
village, with the end of Czarism. People who had seen
ration of the individual and the village in a mechanical
tion of Czarism were forced out of their dreams by
rski; for he told his readers that a new concept of man,
type of mankind, was in the background of all their
Tolstoi, too, prevented any mechanical solution by
~ an endless longing for a new heaven and a new
by local, Russian only by one
and Asia.
 Kousseau ana v onaire are to oe creanea wun tne same ment,
though it is difficult for us to recapture their achievement.
Their vocabulary appears rather trite today after six genera-
tions of constant use. We should forget all we know about
Jefferson, Bentham, Spencer, and Wilson for a minute. These
men, like the other liberals, are deeply indebted to Rousseau
and Voltaire; yet they flattened out the real depth of their
thought.
The French situation in 17 59 was still very inuch the three-
fold problem of Pascal, as it was explained above. Pascal had
distinguished:
1. Sublime Science, on the highest level (his mathematics).
2. Provincialism, to be fought against as the murder of the intel-
lectµal life by mere inertia (his Let tres Provinciales).
3. Port Royal, the free harbour of the soul, which is not created
to be alone (his Pensees).

As long as mystical homes like Port Royal were a possible

escape for the individual, the bourgeois of the cities of France
could desert his seniual, earthy, political environment for those
asylums. But when, in 1750, the country cried out for stays
and uprights to build a new political roof for the house of
France, point three in Pascal's scheme had to be replaced.
And it was.
Pascal had taught: "Le moi est hai"ssable" (The I is odious).
Jean Jacques Rousseau began his confessions: "I wish to reveal
to my fellow beings a man in all the truth of nature, and this
man will be myself! . . . myself alone!" The two sentences
illustrate the revolutionary change.
The Christian ·who escaped into a Sabbath purity of church
or sect or mysticism was replaced by the "man of nature."l'
Rousseau had the courage to exhibit himself as the first indi-
vidual of the new society, the citizen of the future earthly
paradise. But his personal nervous fits and ugly acts-he went
so as to treat his legitimate children as natural children
and to banish them to a foundling asylum-needed
auxiliary constructions. Jean-Jacques restored , and
lvas to replace Jes us. Jes us, the first citizen city
tuL L1uu, was su pp1antect by the natural man and wife.
water-Adam's ale-had existed before the refinements
or beer, so Adam hi1nself was the natural inan who
before the original sin of division into classes; when
elved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman? The
had bestowed on the natural man the gift of freedom.
od who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time,"
~erson. The words "at the same time" are the essence
Achilles' heel of this natural philosophy, for they mean
nan is to be considered a priori as a free being. An
T going into the Mississippi or Ohio Valley in 1800
ee man. A man skilful in his profession, a jeweller or
was free. The govenunent of Ohio or the Chamber
nerce in Paris could be organized by t1'ese free n1en
ew," who were "competent," who were responsible for
work.
>bvious weakness of the new-born child, of the old
the dependent servant, of the ill or weak-minded man,
]age of irrational loyalties, even the slow growth of
o independence, contradict Jefferson's idea that life
~ty were "simultaneously'' given to n1an. And the Rus-
olution exploited this fallacy of Rousseauism by estab-
ts cult of the proletariat. But the bourgeois civiliza-
ls with one actual skein which does run through the
>f our life. Man's liberty to change at different stages
:e was the point that interested the restless Rousseau.
~hat the adult, the 1nan of forty or fifty years of age,
eer in a new country, or the pioneer in thought or
;covery, is the most striking proof that life and liberty
ical. Our physical life is certainly not free. It depends
1ute, from the day of our birth, upon the care, benev-
iterest and sacrifices of others. But our creative power
ng our environment, of changing the ·world, depends
y. Adam the digger, the chopper, but especially Adan1
~er, is like the Creator, free and divine. Goethe ex-
1e new when he wrote: "Al need create no
ve · create his world."
"creation,, itself changed its meaning com-
:i.y uu11ug century, at least in ~rench, and
Luc:: uu1c::ceencn
certain extent in other languages too. The "derniere
~ion" of a fashion, an industry, can be advertised in this
world because man himself becomes the Promethean
:or of a new earth organized. by free human will. The
1iurge," the magic hero of antiquity, is turned into the
1ti ve mind" of genius.
r. Groethuysen, in an excellent book, 6 has studied the
ons preached to the French middle classes before the
>lution. Everywhere the pride of "doing it oneself," of
smanship, was emphasized. To the power of skill, know-
~' and talent went most of the praise in these sermons. Adam
glorified, not merely as a piece or a child of nature, but
it is important to keep in mind this side of the simile)
man who masters nature. Man is by no means simply the
ral man, but a man on his soil, a man with his tools, a
free in the choice of his activities.
>w we do not act in empty space or time. Action presup-
1 a fair chance. Adam is, inevitably, a capitalist, perhaps
all one, like a free-soiler on fifty acres of land, or a poet
owns nothing but his leisure time-but ownership is the
lpposition of Adam's creative liberty. Rousseau's gospel fits
wner of land, the owner of property, the owner of capital,
•wner of talent, because it sees man in action according
s own free choice. No choice without opportunity. There-
the "fair chance" is our real social property and fortune;
.niplest expression of Ii beralism is that everyone shall have
pportunity. Opportunity is the electron in the field of
created by Rousseauism. The agglomeration of oppor-
ies in a few hands may lead to wealth; but the only essen-
~ature is that everybody shall get at least one opportunity.
is enough to justify Jefferson's equation of life and liberty.
1en Rousseau made the "I" presentable and exhibited
~go," he revolutionized the average conception of Adam.
l suddenly became more interesting before the fall than
His · became as innocent and natural as the
Die Emteh der p. 30, Halle. 1927.
 v01cano or tne water ot a great cataract. French sensualism
never been understood either in England or in Germany:
>oth countries philosophy remained a subject for brown
.y. All German philosophers are disguised theologians. In
ice the word "philosophy" is a much more general term .
.rl of the street will shriek when a passer-by does not listen
~er offer: "Quel philosophe!'' For to philosophize means
eflect on your own passions and to be sincere enough to
y their force to your creative life.
ll the other countries of Europe suffered during the
·mony of the French Revolution from suppressions and in-
1rity complexes. Psychoanalysis was discovered by and for
iations except the French. When the psychoanalysts or-
~ed their clientele in Europe and America, an Austrian
. to find out why the French were no.t interested. When
tme back from Paris, he exclaimed: "Of course they don't
it. They have dances in their hospitals."
ie French escaped the reign of complexes because French
>sophy was too natural, too sensual, too aware of man's
ons. They succeeded in looking at themselves in the mirror
~e without fainting. The "speculations" of the medireval
lard were, as we have seen, uses of the mirror; for "specu-
was used quite literally in the sense of mirror, looking-
The new word for this natural mirror is "reflection." To
t is to look at one's own passions. It was only one of
erivations of this principle when Taine uttered the famous
m: "A work of art is a bit of nature seen through a tern·
rient." The meaning of Spirit, Holy Ghost, turned more
nore into that of "clear idea." To a Christian this may
to degrade the dignity of the original Holy Ghost; but
believer in Ii berty a clear idea is not as poor as it looks.
all, men are free, creative, powerful, they are proprietors
)italists. The degradation of the Holy Spirit into a mere
:ti ve view is counterbalanced by the power of the indi-
1 man to carry out his own views and ideas. Provided a
1an has ideas, the difficulties of carrying them out do not
r. If man can only express his clear his inspiration
riove world. Rousseau's endeavour had to be, there-
rore, co equip every man with the power of expressing his views.
When the spirit was nothing else but the creative liberty of
every individual, it was sufficient to set this liberty a-going
and a human paradise would inevitably result.
The auxiliaries for this new political enterprise were, of
course, found not only in the biblical Adam but in the natural
wilderness of new continents besides. Jean Jacques himself and
his Emile and his creative Adam were rounded off by all the
pictures of life in non-European countries! The French, pre-
paring themselves to regenerate Europe, were perfectly willing
to place Christianity below the noble savage. For the purpose
of turning the scales from Pascal's Christian humility to the
creativeness of the man of nature, the noble savage was a won-
derful foil. Robinson Crusoe was an even better example,
because he recovered from a rotten society by setting all the
miraculous energies of his brain to work on an isolated island.
And since Robinson Crusoe became the model of classical
economics, his relation to Rousseau's Adam must be stressed.
The whole prehistory of Robinson Crusoe, his upbringing,
experience, equipment, standards, count for nothing: all our
interest centres in this man who represents society in a nut-
shell, before the division of labour, that is to say, before the
fall of man.
Today it has become a commonplace to lament the lack of
a reasonable distribution in our economy. But any economic
system which starts from Robinson Crusoe must overlook dis-
tribution. Production and consumption are Crusoe's only gods,
because he is society without the problem of distribution. Dis-
tribution takes a back seat; it is introduced too late to get a
fair hearing in the economist's reasoning.
Liberalism owes its very existence to these godfathers: Adam
and Robinson Crusoe. Wherever economists begin with human
consumption and production, they are doomed to end where
liberalism did end: in the World \Var for a world market.
Whoever starts with the individual must end with the universe.
Once the standard unit of power is conceived as one en-
terprising, well-equipped, no barrier can be found to his
activities. His field the \Vorld. naturalistic · of
.iAU.au.i.t.:J vauu 1.Ul d.11 1UdU.K.lUU WHilOUl any Olllerence Ot
ed, faith, church, denomination.
rhe wonderful equality of man is as close at hand as liberty
If wherever Adam sets our standards. Politically, the world
ms a rather uniform place from Rousseau's point of view.
d it is difficult to understand how France or., Europe could
erge out of such a universal ocean of equality. When space,
itical space, is identified with space in nature, all the prop-
es of physical space descend upon the political territory.
1cartes, in applying the notions of God to Nature, assumed
t space was endless and unlimited. The new Copernican
vV of the solar system made man a particle of dust on a minor
riet. His roots in eternity were cut off. These roots had been
ired by the doctrine of the Fourth Gospel that the Logos
nspiration" -was with God before the creation of Space,
t man therefore, by the process of his growth and salvation
ime, is above space, and that space is nothing but the three
)by dimensions into which, for our mortal eyes, time is
olved.
"'he Cartesian world put time into space, made time at its
: a fourth dimension of space, and pretended that a man's
~ime was nothing but a portion of the astronomical periods.
:lern men believe implicitly in the natural calendar of 365
s-as if man's lifetime could really be measured by clocks.
·eality it is so far from uniform that one day can count for
undred, and a thousand years be like one day-and this
iuse we are able to rest, to keep the Sabbath, and to choose
every Lord's Day whether we are to repeat the existing
~r or are called forth to create a new. Na tu re has no rest
has therefore no choice; man has. Human love condenses
~ternity into a drop in time's ocean. Human law can keep
unchanged for centuries. But Cartesian philosophy could
master this paradox. It bowed before the scientific vision
pace. "' e have already mentioned that French sensualism
not need the recent discoveries of psychoanalysis. \Ve can
now that the domination of space has been avenged in
lee in our time. Bergson's discovery of time as the
· flourish of the trumpet against the \Valls of
.oc1~~uu was nm: a nauve ot .trance, but he wrote his book
in Paris for the French. And wherever it affected men as some-
thing new, you can be sure that Cartesianism and Rousseauism
had reigned there and dried out the human soul.
In the French system, the Holy Ghost of old, l' esprit, does
not mean much more than the views and opinions of such and
such an individual. His soul, passions, hopes, became raw mate-
rial for the "ideas," reflections and speculations begotten by
man's genius. Man became a bundle of nerves. Both God and
the soul were passed over by the u esprit" of the free man and
by the world of nature as seen by this free man. Man acts as
the womb in which nature begets. The offspring of this pro-
creation are man's creations: art, science and industry. To sum
up: philosophy of the French type can be recognized by two
fallacies. In the first place, all the books written on space and
time put time after space, make time secondary to space, and
only later modify their observations on space by confessing
that time comes in too. This helpless attitude toward time is
mostly unconscious. In a great American library where I inves-
tigated the philosophy shelves, not one of the textbooks on
time and space mentioned the methodological possibility of
beginning with time. The Cartesian migration from theology
into philosophy is a migration from eternity into space, and
into space alone.
The second fallacy of the minds which were dominated by
the ideas of 1789 is the artificial and arbitrary way in which
they identify mind with soul. Scores of books have been writ-
:en on "body and soul" and "body and mind," without asking
:he simple question whether dualism is the only solution of
~he problem. Now the Christian church, for example, has
tlways maintained that soul and body belong to the individual,
)Ut that mind and spirit are not individual qualities. Intel-
igence gives the individual soul a share in the universal inspi-
·ation: that is all. Modern clergymen themselves have forgotten
his truth. By giving way to the famous God of
Vature, by abandoning the sharp distinction beween mind
oul, condemned the to nothing but a
;ad's information bureau. it not our minds our
.1 ... ....., ............ " ' ...... '-''-''-4 .1..:1 a "''-'-.I. \...L a.1..1u a .1 ic:VC1d.l.1U11. .l llC: llllllU Ul

philosopher can know nothing of God. But Cartesianism

es the mind boast that it has through its own power a
)n of the Supreme Being, a God of Nature. It was not
sseau but Voltaire who established this deistic enlighten-
t. The usual teaching of economics in a modern university
nds on the fallacies of Rousseau; the ordinary teaching of
)Sophy and psychology or political science is based on
unsm.
1us both systems became our common fallacy, and the
ical and social life of the modern world was based upon
l. Hence, to most men today they seem truisms, but I am
d they are really nothing more than a middle-class pro-
lme for economic expansion. We must try to understand
l better.
msseau had revealed the odious "I" which Pascal had
l. It was not pleasant in Rousseau either; but this artifice
! Adam and the noble savage the cornerstones of man's
Ld creation.
iltaire did something similar with the world of Descartes.
i44, in the gloomiest year in the history of Paris, Descartes,
his self-chosen exile in Holland, began his Principles of
~sophy with the astounding postulates: 1. That in order
ek truth it is necessary at least once in the course of our
o doubt, as far as possible, all things; 2. that we ought to
der false everything that is doubtful.
te dynamite of these two principles can blow up any social
. It is true, Descartes had cautiously added, "that we
t not, meanwhile, to make use of doubt in the conduct
e." But even before, in the Discourse on Method, he had
iuced the following argument: "It is not enough, before
iencing to rebuild the house in which we live, that it be
d down, and materials and builders provided . . . but it
ewise necessary that we be furnished with some other
~ in which we may live commodiously during the opera-
,,
"houses" for mankind: I. new
of 2. the traditional house
p• ,. y . .n.1.n,,c.-,, u1. u1u a 0 c.; auu 3., uenveen rnese two, a sort ot
utment to give temporary shelter to the searching mind.
Voltaire, the man who changed the letters of his name
.rouet" into "Voltaire," who lived literally in an apartment
th two exits, one on French and one on Swiss territory, who
·oughout his life published revolutionary books of which he
s forced to deny the authorship, who never earned a penny
1m his books, but lived like an aristocrat, Voltaire took
scartes' idea of the three houses more to heart than Cartesius
nself. To be sure, Descartes had pretended to be a fervent
tholic, but he had lived in Protestant countries during the
t twenty years of his life and thus accepted the existence of
>testantism. Descartes had further asserted that the house
mber three in which to "live commodiously during the oper-
)ns" had to be bui'lt according to the laws and customs of
· particular "country"-which is quite simple if you succeed
living outside your own country as he did. In this way he
l avoided giving a special character to the "temporary shel-
." Voltaire realized much more clearly than Descartes that
mind of a man who doubts everything, who is independent
l enlightened, has already sacrificed his real "old" house;
t to get to the new house it was not enough to borrow a
ial order in the meantime'--by simply obeying the laws and
toms of a Protestant country. There had to be a certain
uliar formation between old and new, distinctly hostile to
old and unquestioningly devoted to the new. Voltaire, in
tting Catholic and Protestant bigotry from his "fox-hole,"
~d the future life of the age of reason by kindling "the revo-
on of minds," or, as he said in French: "la revolution des
rits." Voltaire converted "revolution," up to his time the
·sical rotation of the stars, into an intellectual process. He
not an isolated mind like Descartes, but made himself the
tld master of enlightenment, the idol of the European read-
world. It was the readers of Europe who had to fill the
ach between the old house of tradition and the new house
1atural science.
upon Europe an army of readers who
until actual material
IC • u must. vve give some quotations trom lum:
.n.uu Lu1ue
Twenty volumes in folio will never cause a revolution. The
ap little pamphlets you buy to carry in your pocket are
ones to be feared." "Everything around me is scattering
seed of a revolution which will inevitably occur, though I
ll not have the pleasure of witnessing it." "The French
ie to everything late, but at last they come to it. The fog
become thicker and thicker, until at the first opportunity
~e will be an outburst. And then the noise will be tremen-
.s •"
.nd the goal of this revolution? A reasonable world must
~ the place of the world of n1iracles, revelations, and saints.
"the machinery of the world can be explained philosophi-
y in two ways: Either (1) God once created it and nature
obeyed ever since, or (2) God unceasingly gives existence
changes of existence to everything. A third point of view
lid be inexplicable."
·ow we all know, and Voltaire knew, that one half of the
ld is regular and recurrent, a lawful nature, and the other
is love, change, grace, surprise. We could not take a rail-
l train to go and propose to our sweetheart without this
lism. The train obeys the schedule, and we rely on it be-
e it is the mechanized part of our existence. But we tremble
I we have surprised our sweetheart and changed her mind
he sudden breaking in of a new vision of a life in common.
world is old and new at once. Progress means nothing if
not in permanent contact and contrast with the starting-
tt from which it proceeds. On a road, the man who does
keep his starting-point in mind will make no progress, but
move in a vicious circle.
iw and love, nature and creation, are in perpetual opposi-
and struggle with each other. The third viewpoint, which
inexplicable to Voltaire, is the viewpoint practised by
ybody every day.
H to the grand master of enlightenment, whose army is
1list against prejudice, ignorance, tyranny and despotism,
never be a polar antagonis1n. The old can
new can never be because the old
1eans the impossible constitution of .France and the new means
ae possible solution of all the riddles of life.
Voltairism, like Rousseauism, sacrificed the Christian dual-
;m of law and love, repetition and surprise, custom and reve-
1tion, to the fighting monism of an army of enlightenment.
rfonism was the bent of the whole nineteenth century, always
rilling to pervert the State into the Church, love into law,
ienology into education, charity into politics, war into peace,
ien into women, and women into men.
Monism dominated the whole world between 1789 and 1914
>r 1934), in the form of an attempt to identify future with
rogress and past with darkness. This monism was perfectly
~ue and admirabte in the field of science. Space and the forces
f space became known better and better from the times of
:opernicus and Galileo to those of Planck and Bohr. The "en-
ghteners," the authors and prophets of mechanism, can boast
1at under the guidance of this principle modern science has
iade its greatest progress. The services it has rendered to
iodern science can hardly be overestimated. Monism created
n alliance between all men to observe, to march as one legion
~ainst nature, to explore, to compute and to organize the
owers and forces of the universe. Man is monistic in so far
, he is a scientist, because in his fight against nature he is
nited like one man, aye, one body, and the observations of
•tronomers in Australia and in Nova Scotia can be of the same
nmediate value for the scientific result. Nature makes man-
ind· one observer, one mind. The monism of the scientific
:llightenment lets men take the place which God took in
1onotheism. We, as a body, are treated like one person, one
.dam, one Robinson Crusoe. We all agree in observing the
Lme facts, in carrying out the same chemical experiments,
l comparing mathematical calculations or dates of exploration.
Monism is the solidarity of mankind as it marches forth
·om bodily, political divisions to the intellectual union of
linds. This monism can be found everywhere in the modern
orld as a principle of wonderful driving power. Most people
~e not aware that this monistic · prevails even in
humanitarian They think it
.rat that another man can be united with them if his
lghts about the outside world are on all fours with their
.ghts. ·
lle revolutionary process itself refutes the Voltairian
ter-or." The dialectical antithesis between innovation and
tition is always before our eyes. The creation of the world
>t at all complete. "Creation's Lord, we give thee thanks
we are in the making still." Mother Earth does not de-
J purely according to the original laws of nature, seeing
millions of years ago she was only original mud. At every
tent original life and developed life exist side by side, one
becoming," the other stabilized. The revolutionary and
ficial life, devoted to change, coexists with the hard and
recurrence of old forms. Only after rigid testing is new
:mbotlied into the world; but once received, it runs in its
groove as long as it is faithful to its origin.
~chanism and freedom exist together in man's world. This
~ "third constitution" which Voltaire thought impossible.
v-as perfectly sure that man's logic faced only two alterna-
either the world was a mechanical clock-work or it was
ue of miracles; and he chose the clock-work. It is a won-
t! piece of logic, and a very French logic too. 'The Sic et
the "yes and no" which Abailard had used to cut a path
tgh the jungle of quotations from church-fathers, was used
Jltaire to clear up nature. Now dialectical quotations from
m writings can always be answered by a verdict of true
.se, yes ·and no, because man's judgment is always capable
vision. But Creation cannot be revised: it speaks a final
lage. God does not speak to us in words, he speaks in forms
:reatures. For the discussion of the values of a plant, an
11, or a civilization, our logical yes and no are of little use.
e fallacy of all enlightenment is the extension of
:tical logic to questions wholly removed from a logical
•ach. What is called the romanticism of the nineteenth
ry was constant fight against the abuse of Abailard's
Jd by Friedrich Schlegel formulated it well when
id, ' us distinguish the permanent qualities of man-
ind in its quality ,,:hich add some new
in the course of history." Schlegel was wnung during the
French Revolution. In the days of the Russian Revolution,
in ornithologist, speaking of his beloved birds, wrote bitterly
)f Voltaire's solution: "It cannot but be a pagan religion
which manages to assign to its God the role of a retired civil
)fficer or that of the capture~ Samson blindly turning the mill
.n the service of the Philistines."
\Vhat Hegel and Marx called the dialectical process of his-
~ory, was exactly this same discovery of the illogical possibilities
)f reality, as against the simplifications of the human brain.
fhe famous dialectic of the Russian Revolution means that
n the world of facts logic does not prevail, that yes and no
:an both exist. Very often, however, the adherents of Bolshe-
1ism have been too good Voltairians and Rousseauists, and
1ave forgotten this protest of life against logic, which was rep-
·esented by Marxism. They cannot understand how Communist
lussia, the negation of liberalism, can live in the same world
rVith France or the United States of America. Voltaire could
iot have understood it either. We can.
The Russian Revolution, called forth by the onesidedness
>f the French, is a new creation, a new reality; far from being
t thing of the philosopher's study, it is lived by real men and
vomen, millions of men and millions of women. These new
nen and women came into being and live by continuing the
>rocess of creation, but without destroying its former results!
Ne, therefore, can recognize the results of the Russian Revo-
ution without believing that it excludes all other principles.
Thus the preceding discussion is highly practical, because
vithout it the reader might feel that we ourselves must be
ither Voltairians or Marxians, and that after all, writing on
evolutions, we should be either a Jacobin or a Bolshevik.
L'his black-and-white logic is futile. But the thing is much
nore serious than that. It is not the platform of a political
>arty but humanity itself which is at stake. Is man to be re-born
nd regenerated? Is Creation all around us, or far away, tens of
rwusands of years ago? Are the history of nature and ·
man one thing or two? Finally, hm.v can the soul,
to a partial j · and
oook is an attempt to solve this paradox, an attempt
h history and science, law and theology, are joined into
;soluble unit.
FREEMASONRY.

ig the eighteenth century, in the days of Voltaire, the

E enlightenment formed the lodges of Freemasonry.
1onry came into existence as the political organization .
~uropean reading public. It was the expression of the
f contractors, artists, scientists, to build a new world.
e omnipresent Creator, was banished to the first days
ton; He himself was only the Master Builder. It is an
ng fact that Voltaire and the Freemasons did not fight
:he atheists are doing in Russia. The full-blooded revo-
y, the Bolshevik, must destroy God because, as a matter
iple, since the revolution is declared to be perpetual,
vindicate his right to destroy everything.
French revolution des esprits is but the temporary
>efore the house of reason is ready. There is real build-
l constructive work, a real second creation, which is
l to develop after the revolution. The revolution is a
:ween house number one and house number two. None
1rniture of the old house is abandoned. Every piece is
Lt it is enlightened, improved, refined, analyzed, mod-
All the novelties of French liberalism are given out
old ideas of humanity purified from the dross of
10n.
too, is such a purified idea, which it would be a pity
'If God did not exist, we should have to invent him,"
ous utterance of Voltaire. But, cleansed the idea must
same Voltaire could say: "Ecrasez l'infdme" (Crush
mous one), that is, the Church, the vessel in which
of God had been preserved. "\Ve, as grown-up men
~masons, will keep the idea of God. Children may be-
the Lord's outer vestments; we know better. The idea
nment, too, is a good idea. \Ve do not abolish govern-
~e the Marxians, who in their · perpetual revolution
eave more room the State than God.
the shell of this idea, kingship and old regime, is crumbling.
Our idea of government is constructive, architectural. A ncien
regime is vieux jeu: old government, bad government. The
very idea of government implies the reform of government.
Laws-we like laws because we are going to make laws.
Grown-up men are law-makers." The Bolsheviks despise laws
as ideology; the reader of Voltaire, the enlightened Freemason,
marches back into his nation to become a citizen through the
right conception of law. Common law, customs, the living
voices of the fathers?-all bad law. Let us make new laws, many
new laws, which will reflect the clarified idea of legislation.
God, liberty, immortality, were the three ideas to which
Robespierre clung like a real creed, as if they were the foun-
tainhead of the national constitution. And Jefferson and
Franklin shared his views. The belief in ideas assured the stand-
ards of the new regime. Without "ideas," the loss of values
would have been terrifying. Ideas are the clothes of the new
man's, the parvenu's mind. The man of nature or the man of
passion must get his "ideas," his values, his foundation some-
where. And he finds them in the house of Reason. "Ideas" are
the arsenal with which to equip the new legislators of France.
The bourgeoisie who devoured Voltaire's writings devoured
them to become the governing class of France! Their creative
mind, their constructive ability, their virile will, must be fur-
nished with a set of positive values; and so a compromise is
reached between the philosopher and the free man of private
property. The old wine must be put into new bottles; the
eternal "ideas" must be kept, but freed from the old institu-
tions which had corrupted them: Church, kings, and customs.
Both the philosopher and the citizen agree. The guardian of
the new civilization is he who upholds the values corrupted by
kings, priests and aristocrats.
Both the merit and the inconsequence of Freemasonry lie
in this idea of purification. All its ceremonies tend to empha-
size this purpose. Since most of members lodge
to believe that it came the old stone-masons
who built the cathedrals of the Goth or
~ncs .1 emp1ar, n is wortn n1enuon1ng that this is a typical
of mystification.
eemasonry, this temporary guild which Descartes saw to
~sential to the revolution of minds, which tried to keep
(ernel without the shell, God without Church, govern-
: without authority, and law without prescription, had
·igin in England between 1710 and 1730. It was the char-
istic reaction of the left wing of Whiggism against the
faction of the Anglican Church. It made for the real
1 of English and Scotch, despite their religious differences,
~ing the remark of Hobbes in his Leviathan: "It is strange
e that England and Scotland, being as they are but one
i, and their language almost the same, and governed by
Gng, should be thought of as foreigners to one another.
therefore, for my part I think they were mistaken, both
~nglish and Scots, in calling one another 'foreigners.' "
nasonry in England abolished the term "foreigner" be-
t these two nations Ii ving on the same island and using
ame language. It was a new common society for the
~d Kingdom. The union of the English and Scottish par-
nts was delayed until long after the reign of the Stuarts
he fusion under Cromwell; and the lodge followed the
cal union which was consummated in 1708. Freemasonry
eat Britain was, therefore, no revolutionary enterprise. But
~eading over the Continent it did become revolutionary.
:ret ritual (Mozart's Magic Flute is an apotheosis of Free-
iry) made it the provisional home between. the anCien
e and the age of reason. Masonry became the seed-ground
:ional democracy; for the lodge was always national in its
though international in its original creed. Today it is
and attacked by Fascism, not for its alleged internation-
in foreign affairs, but for its other side, its unshakable
rage in the rights of the individual against the govern-
THE CONSTITUTION.

~"ideas," the weapons of the new

nee, must accompany regenerated into
can descend from the bright heights of leisure
philosophy into the dust of men's interests and struggle for
life? Man, in his effort to remain a creator even in the daily
heat of passion, is sustained by ideas in the form of the "Con-
stitution." The idea of a "Law Paramount" had first been
discussed in 1647 by the Levellers, the precursors of democratic
ideas during Cromwell's Puritan revolution. The "Law Para-
mount" had been thought of then as a Christian and Biblical
law, a covenant of the chosen people; but even so it had been
the "idea" of a formulated and written constitution. This was
something fundamentally opposed to the Common Law of
Englano~' the very paradise of aristocracy, with its privileges,
precedents, and customs. The Levellers had been trampled
under foot, but the ideas of natural philosophy, the reason of
man, still cried for a visible home or shrine. The Constitution
of Virginia had begun to carry out the idea of a law para-
mount.
The French Revolution did the same, in spite of the almost
geological pressure of the many strata of ancient privilege. The
place of the Past was now taken by Reason, and the laws of the
land were replaced by the law of Reason. But it was the past
whose place Reason was to occupy. Neither the present nor
the present ruler was to be set on the throne which the tradi-
tion of the estates had preserved ever since Charlemagne. The
Reason of the Law Paramount, the Constitution of the Year III,
the Ideas of Voltaire or Robespierre, transcend the day-to-day
opinions of politicians. As majestic, as far away, as high and
venerable as tradition, the Constitution dwells on an Olympian
level above the passions of politics. The Constitution must be
removed from the struggles of faction or party.
The idea of a written constitution attests to the unlin1ited
belief of Freemasonry in the power of the mind. Surely the
minds of men would instinctiv~ly obey the summons of Reason.
Man would always prefer the fundamentals of the Law Para-
mount/ to the changing temptations of the day; for the Consti-
tution would move his best and emotions, it would
lpostrophize the part of man through which he was nnn .
..._..,,. . . . .., . . · tution \rould be safe it would flatter
man's us, ~very CI pride. it not him
 his inalienable rights? Does it not grant him life, liberty,
tlth, honour and property? How can a man ever prefer
~ despQtism of a confiscatory, arbitrary, communistic, bureau-
tic, tyrannic or aristocratic government to a Constitution
ich prohibits confiscation, arbitrary arrest, communistic
~lect of privacy, bureaucratic crippling of enterprise, tytan-
al suppression of speech and aristocratic contempt of genius?
\s long as the middle classes, holding the mean between
;tocrats and peasants in their form of life, marched forward
ier the flag of the Law Paramount, the choice was indeed
stly in favour of the rights of man. The "tricolour" is the
~ of this creed. Wherever you find a tricolour, you are in a
~ntry whose foundations were laid after 1789 and are based
the distinction between Constitution and everyday legisla-
1. After the deepest humiliation of the French genius, after
downfall of Napoleon III, the defeat in the war against
tssia, the loss of a part of "natural Gaul" -Alsace-Lorraine-
atrocities of the "Commune" and the equally atrocious
nter-revolution, when the French citizen seemed to be
:ly to pay any price for stability, peace, order and security,
party of the juste-milieu (MacMahon, the Orleanists, and
iers) "\vent so far as to offer the crown to the Bourbon Count
Chambord. The Count declared that, once King, he would
~t the white flag with the lilies of Bourbon. This announce-
1t brought the decision instantly. In refusing to give up the
te flag, the Count de Chambord was really refusing to
)gnize· the validity of the fundamental principles of the
rolution-the principles of popular sovereignty and equality
·ights. The Orleanists were wise enough to know that the
nch people, although not at all loath to accept a king, would
and could not deny the glorious strugge of Ideas and Con-
Jtions against aristocracy and privileges. "If we proclaim
white flag, the muskets will go off of their own accord,"
. l\!Iarshal MacMahon. That was as much as to say that the
is, even at freezing point on the revolutionary
· enough dynamite to blow up mere Tradition.
sober of its inevitability, the Republic
being carried by one Final are
uuL urnue tnumpnanuy ana unanimously; on the contrary,
like Lenin's Peace of Brest-Litovsk, they are carried by a bare
majority. In this way France retained the tricolour.
The whole character of the French Revolution can now be
better understood. It was not an anti-royal revolution. It was,
and remained to the end, an anti-aristocratic restoration of
Adam's equality.
The King remained King three years after the complete
abolition of the privileges of the nobles in 1789. He was be-
headed as a Prince of the Blood, as a supporter of aristocracy,
not as a misruler, like Charles I. Napoleon I, the sword of the
Revolution, Louis XVIII, faithful 'to the Charter, Louis
Philippe, the Bourgeois King, in short, any later Constitution
held that Reason, instead of tradition, had to be consulted as
the divine oracle for settling conflicts of interest.
But, alas, man is not always proud of his genius, and nations
cannot always be supporting the rights guaranteed by the Law
Paramount against the temptations of the hour.
Where national democracy had come into existence, politics
easily degenerated into lobbying. For this national democracy
was soon besieged by the blind forces of the fearing, expro-
priated, illiterate, and uninspired masses. The lodge of the
philosophers declined into a lobby of the lawyers and the gov-
erning class of the new nation. Yet they still claimed to be
the people bound together by nature in defence of the Con-
stitution.
, We say "by nature"; but we already know that the nature
which transforms "people" into "nation" includes literature.
A nation is comprised of people who are enlightened, led, and
inspired by the same literature. The important role of the
ecrivain in France, the political organization of the reading
class all over Europe in Freemasonary, the marvellous fight of
the French schoolteacher for his language, all have the same
tendency. 'The modern "idea" of the nation, like the other
"ideas" we have surveyed, is the result of a purifying
The concept of nation had that of a
subdivision within the Church. nation
at one of the
reat councils of the fifteenth century the French nation
by the University of Paris.
in the eighteenth century, the nation had to be organ-
.side the Church, outside Christianity, in the natural
:he doctors of theology were replaced by the writers
Junders of philosophy, and the estates of France-King,
.nd nobility-by the Freemasons of reason. These ele-
::>rmed the "nation." Wherever modern nationalism
Je succeeded in founding a national state within natu-
lers, literature and the lodge were at its back. The
nation is therefore not a product of nature but of
e, not a body of mere inhabitants but of listeners and
>f modern philosophy and science.
:he nations in the medi~val Church, the nations of
ized world are shareholders in a common spirit and a
thought. Literature and science, art and newspapers,
universal framework of this civilization. It is even
grasp the cosmopolitan idea of the new civilization
;ee any natural subdivisions within it. And, it is true,
ons of enlightenment, the national democracies of
md America, were built on the presumption that their
heritage was safer and clearer than their special de-
n. Science, information, common thought and com-
as seemed capable of linking tnen as closely as the
the international hospitality of monks, and the unity
.nd learning, had linked the Occident before. To know
.he ma·rk of man. In the schools of France the master-
: ancient and modern foreign literatures were intro-
~cause, as Sainte-Beuve said, "No one is a man who
know them."
~an civilization once more secured its unity through
v of a common literature. The study of Greek was
mpulsory during the nineteenth century as it had
en before. Plato and the Greek tragedies were made
non denominator of civilization. The enthusiasm for
ks has already been mentioned connection with
" But, this Renaissance of Nature and
ics had a much deeper than other
country. l he d1thculty of determining the political subdivi-
sions of the cosmopolitanism which we have tried to describe,
that is, of defining one "natural nation," existed in less degree
for France than for any other power in Europe. Here literature
had from time immemorial been more or less centralized in
Paris. And Paris gained when literature was brought to the
front. The classical Gallia of Cxsar could easily be confused
with the natural defences of Paris. ''The left bank of the
Rhine I" became the natural outcry of the Revolutionary Wars.
Practically, the classical quotations and the natural science of
the revolutionaries have not made for the happiness of Paris:
she has suffered more since she took up this theory of natural
boundaries than before. She was threatened or conquered by
foreign troops in 1792, 1814, 1815, 1870-1871, and 1914-1918
-all this after the Revolution. But in the field of cultural influ-
ence these sacrifices were outweighed a hundredfold, because
France became the model of national democracy. For example,
the language of science had to be national as it was in France.
Thus the Magyars, immediately after the settlement of 1867,
introduced the Magyar language into the proceedings of the
Royal Academy of Budapest. What to a French Academician
was a means of communication with the whole world showed
its reverse here by excluding the Hungarian writer frmn any
i1nportant audience. The Czechs, when they established their
republic, had no organized readers or listeners; so they paid
a lady in Prague to run a "salon." Even the wish of Austria
ahd Germany to unite after the World \Var seemed more or
less the natural result of the French belief that a common
language and a contiguous territory make for one national
democracy. Now the classical conception of Gallia being fa-
vourable to French literature, the classical notion of Germania
has always struck the French as being terribly dangerous. Their
own norm and yardstick proved fatal as soon as it favoured
the union of Germany. But how to fight against it on the
French basis of national rights and national literature? Obvi-
ously, argument against the A had found in
the same pharmacopcria 1789, the were
'liberalism," "national democracy," ' na-
" etc. But even this was achieved. On March 26, 1931,
iot, the leader of the French radical party, wrote in L' Ere
1elle: "Austria cannot be allowed to join Germany, be-
a nation must be a circle (vide France) with one centre
Paris). But Germany would become an ellipse, with two
~s: and this is of course impossible!" The deduction seems
:tly absurd. New York and Washington, St. Petersburg
\foscow, tell the story of how impossible it is. to make
e a circle around one centre. Mathematics means nothing
:ial life. But I am sure M. Herriot's readers were satisfied.
fact that geometry does not apply to society is easily
~stood. But Herriot is not speaking of society, he is deal-
ith nations; and it was the misfortune of the nineteenth
ry that it incessantly and intentionally confused nations
nature. Now in nature mathematics is applicable. It is
i ridiculous as it may seem at first to arrange nations in
>rm of circles. After all, the French Revolution stamped
1e confusion in standards of measurement.
THE TYRANNY OF THE DECIMAL SYSTEM.

can see this French use of mathematics very clearly in

~tion of world-wide interest: the decimal system. The fog
>irdupois and troy weight was dispersed. Water, Adam's
'as made the cornerstone of the new natural system of
ing and measuring bodies and distances. A thousand grams
:er are one litre, and a litre is a cubic decimetre or 1000
centimetres of water. The metre, again, is in connection
di nature, being the ten-millionth part of a quadrant (a
~r) of a meridian, from the Equator to the Pole. Its stand-
a piece of platinum kept at Paris. The grand conception
ture" could not be better expressed than by this new con-
on for nature. The old measures, foot, yard, acre, rule,
pint, etc., were all taken from the near environment
n: his mrn body, his fruit, his soil, served as sources of
1guage. The French Revolution speaks in the name
~. It from the Equator and brings home one forty-
nth of its · for practical use. The idea
·sal, adaptation is by !Vian
becomes a grain of dust on the globe in the same measure that
he believes in the metre as one ten-millionth of the quadrant
of his planet.
Decimal numeration and decimal systems are not "natural"
in the way of common sense. Dozen, score, and hundred-weight
contradict the hypothesis that ten and five are more natural
than 4, 12, 20, and l 12 or 120. They are not. Not even the
natural logarithm can be based on ten-ten in the abstract. The
decimal system ought rather to be called an abstract or rea-
sonable system.
Furthermore, the decimal system reveals the real meaning
of "nature" in the French language. "Nature" is not the noble
savage, but the reasonable Robinson Crusoe, not the blushing
Adam, but the reflecting Voltaire; it should not be called
"nature" but "reason," and should be written in capitals:
RE As o N. In 1821, John Quincy Adams, later President of
the United States, wrote about the revolutionary scope of the
decimal system:
"The substitution of an entire new system of weights and
measures, instead of one long established and in general use, is
one of the most arduous exercises of legislative authority. Weights
and measures may be ranked among the necessities of life to every
human individual and society. They enter into the economical
arrangements and daily concerns of every family. They are neces-
sary to every occupation of human industry; to the distribution
a~d security of every species of property; to every transaction of
trade or commerce; to the labours of the husbandman; to the in-
genuity of the artificer; to the studies of the philosopher; to the
researches of the antiquarian; to the navigation of the mariner, and
the marches of the soldier; to all the exchanges of peace and all
the operations of war. The knowledge of them, as in established
use, is among the first elements of education, and is often learned
by those who learn nothing else. This knowledge is etched into
the memory by the habitual application of it in the employments
of men throughout life.
change all this at is to the well-being
man, woman and child, in the community. It enters
it hand. must be
such a manner as to find house;
uuM. ue errecrea in tne use ot t>ooks tor elementary education,
n all the schools where the first principles of arithmetic may
ught.
ll this has been done in France. The system of modern France
tated with the Revolution. It is 9ne of those attempts to im·
the condition of human kind, which, should it even be
ted to fail ultimately, would, in its failure, deserve little less
~a ti on than in its success. It is founded upon the following
[ples:
That all weights and measures should be reduced to one
rm standard of linear measure.
That this standard should be an aliquot part of the circum-
:e of the globe.
That the unity of linear measure, applied to matter, in its
modes of extension, length, breadth and thickness, should be
andard of all measures of length, surface and solidarity.
That the cubic contents of the linear measure, in distilled
. at the temperature of its greatest contraction, should furnish
:e the standard weight and measure of capacity.
That for everything susceptible of being measured or
ed, there should be only one measure of length, one weight,
leasure of contents, with their multiples and subdivisions ex-
~l y in decimal proportions ..
That the principle of decimal division, and a proportion of
lear standard, should be annexed to the coins of gold, silver,
Jpper, to the moneys of account, to the division of time, to
trometer and the thermometer, to the plummet and the log
)f the sea, to the geography of the earth, and the astronomy
skies; and, finally, to everything in human existence suscepti-
comparative estimation by weight or measure.
That the whole system should be equally suitable to the use
mankind.
That every weight and every measure should be designated
appropriate, significant, characteristic name, applied ex-
~ly to itself.
Paragraphs 6 and 8, the system reveals world-wide ambi-
It an era,' not only in the history of weights and
res, but in that of human science. Every of its progress
resting. approaches to the ideal perfection of 'uniformity'
d to whether to
_.............. ;... glory
IL 1~ Luut:ei vt=u, anaupon me nauon t>y which its execution is
attempted, and has been in part achieved. In the progress of its
establishment and use, it has often been brought into conflict with
the laws of physical and of moral nature, with the impenetrability
of matter, and with the habits, passions, prejudices and nec~~sities
of man. It has undergone various important modifications. It must
undoubtedly still submit to others before it can look for universal
adoption. But if man upon earth be an improveable being, if that
universal peace, which was the object of a Saviour's mission, which
is the desire of the philosopher, the longing of the philanthropist,
the trembling hope of the Christian, is a blessing to which the
futurity of mortal man has a claim of more than mortal promise;
if the Spirit of Evil is, before the final consummation of things,
to be cast down from his dominion over men, and bound in the
chains of a thousand years, the foretaste here of man's eternal
felicity, then this system of common instruments to accomplish
all the changes of social and friendly commerce, will furnish the
links of sympathy between the inhabitants of the most distant
regions; the meter will surround the globe in use, as well as in
multiplied extension, and one language of weights and measures
will be spoken from the equator to the poles."

When this eloquent praise was printed, in 182 1, the chances

for the success of the syste1n were rather poor. In spite of an
invitation sent to Great Britain, in spite of the collaboration
of Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Danish and Swiss scholars in the
proceedings of the French Academy of Sciences, in spite of
pr~cious discoveries on the occasion of the geographical field
survey, France herself had turned the clock back. At first, for
twelve years ( 1792-1804), the mensuration of time, the calendar
itself, had been included in the decimal system: the Christian
Era was to disappear. The equinoctial, or Republican, calen-
dar, based on the new metrology, divided the solar day into
ten hours, each of ioo minutes, and each minute into 100 sec-
onds. This part of the reform was abolished on the ninth of
September, 1805. The navigators and astronomers continued
to divide the sphere into 360 degrees. Continental
unable to rule the waves. lapidaries
111 stones throughout
~·nr pecuuar to themselves, under the denomination of
rat.
812 a Napoleonic decree established a compromise be-
philosophical theory and inveterate popular habits. Re-
~ the principle of decimal multi plication and division
~ legal system, it abandoned them entirely in the weights
easures which it allowed the people to use. It gave them
toise of six feet, an inch, a foot, and a gross. But the
mes now covered new things, because they were rein-
ed as fractions of the new system.
t Quincy Adams himself confesses:

French system, admirable as it is, looked in its composi-

weights and measures as more exclusively matters of
than as tests of quantity; in its eagerness for extreme
y in the relations between things it lost sight a little of the
s of weigh ts and measures with the physical organization,
its, comforts and occupations of man; it forgot the inflexi-
ependence and the innumerable varieties of the forms of
and that she would not submit to be trammelled for the con-
e of the Counting House. The experience of the French
has proved that neither the square nor the cube, nor the
10r the sphere, nor the revolutions of the earth, nor the
ies of the heavens will, to gratify the pleasure, or to in-
1e indolence of man, be restricted to computation by deci-
nbers alone."
whole .process is highly instructive for the methods of
nsformation. A change in human affairs is never a sim-
cess. It is usually two steps forward, then one and a half
rd; and all possible wisdom is needed to avoid the
proportion of two steps forward and three steps back-

final victory of the decimal system in France itself was

1840. Not until then did the villages really accept it.
::i allowed its adoption after the Civil \Var. At the c1imax
liberalism Italy and Germany introduced the system,
al · · France in their national union. John
e common resisted this I too rea-
sonable nature most successfully. The new national democra-
cies in the rest of Europe all introduced it, giving the ideas of
17 89 an overwhelming success.
Reaumur had previously divided the thermometer into
eighty degrees between freezing and boiling point, whereas
Celsius had used the "normal" division of a hundred degrees.
But though Reaumur was French, the use of his scale was
exiled to Germany and Russia, and the French introduced the
European system of Celsius, who was not a native of their
country. The naturalization of a true citizen of Europe, a man
of ideas, was always natural to the French. The papers of citi-
zenship were quite naturally given to Americans or Germans
or Poles who joined the rank and file of the Revolution. Na-
ture redeemed, Nature regenerated, did not halt at the toll-
gates of national or regional divisions. "The system involves
nothing that savours of the peculiarities of any country; in so
much as the Commissioners observe, that if all the history were
forgotten and the results of the operations only preserved, i.t
would be impossible to tell in what nation this system had
originated.'' 7
MADAME CURIE.
One of the most moving examples of the victory of this
spirit is the biography of Madame Curie. Since we gave some
details on the revolutionary life of Lenin and his family in our
Russian chapter, it is only fair to illustrate the majesty of the
French Revolution by the biography of a typical pioneer in
the field of the exploration, of nature.
The case is the more fascinating as Marie Curie was a con-
vert. She had been exposed to the temptation of the Lenin type.
She was a Pole. "Grown up in a patriarchal atmosphere, nour-
ished by the oppression to which Poland was exposed, I in-
tended like the other young people of my country to give all
my forces to uphold the national spirit of Poland. Scientific
devotion meant that I was to abandon the social and patriotic
dream, to part from family and home in Poland. At the time
when question lvas raised, I had lived for three 1n
1 John
iris, studying physics at the Sorbonne. I lived on the seventh
>or of a house in the Quartier des Ecoles, in a miserable
om, because I was short of n1eans. But I was very happy .
. the spring of 1894 I met Pierre Curie. He respected my sim-
e life of study. He imbued me with the dream of his life,
[entific work; he asked me to share his life. He wrote to me:
et us lead a common life, immersed in our dreams, the pa-
otic dream, the humanitarian dream, the scientific dream.
~ them all, the scientific, I think, is the only justifiable one.'
e married in July, 1895. I had to keep house without any
Ip. For eleven years my husband and I shared our whole life,
~oretical inquiries, experiments in the laboratory, prepara-
n for courses and examinations." But after Pierre Curie
:::ame teacher at the School of Industrial Physics and Chem-
~y of the city of Paris, :M~adame Curie worked independently
three years. During these three years she discovered the
lio-activity of the atoms of uranium and thorium. Then she
ssified all kinds of minerals, rocks and metalloids, some of
m more radio-active than uranium itself. Pitchblende and
Jcolite have a radio-activity so strong that Madame Curie
i led to the idea of a matter much more radio-active than
.nium. The outcome of her search was, therefore, the task
isolating the new substance by means of chemical analysis.
this promising situation Pierre Curie decided to join his
e's work; he gave up his own work for hers. The Austrian
ernment presented them with one metric ton of pitchblende
duced ·in the mines of Joachimsthal in Bohemia.
low was the thing to be done? They started in a glass-
dowed room that served as a shop and a storage-place for
:hines. Later, they moved to a deserted shed. "In this shed,
1 its bituminous floor and its glass roof which did not really
tect us from the rain, suffocating us in sumn1er with the
t and rather poorly heated in winter by a cast-iron stove,
passed our best and our happiest years, devoting the whole
to our 'vork. \Vithout any of the amenities which
labours a chemist, we much trouble
,ugh a nu1nber
in
luld not be done outdoors, the windows were opened to give
passage to the obnoxious vapours. Our furniture consisted
[ a number of old pinewood tables . On these tables I arranged
ty precious particles of concentrated radium. As we had no
1est in which to put the radiant products of our work, we
laced them on the tables or on planks. It was hard work to
Love the vessels, to pour the fluids from one into the other,
1d to stir them for hours with an iron rod, the fluid seething
t a platter on the ground, and I defenceless against the coal
1d iron dust. But I can remember the delight it gave us when
e happened to enter our laboratory at night and saw in every
>rner the outlines of the products of our labour, feebly radiant
trough the dark."
Twelve years later, in 1910, Madame Curie presided over
Le first conference of physical and medical radiology. The
~eatest physicists, led by Lord Rutherford, paid homage to
~r achievements. The conference established a new physical
riit, the unit of emanation, and called it the "Curie." The
uries had succeeded in analyzing a ton of pitch blen de; and
1me centigrams of pure radium were the result of their effort.
'wenty milligrams of radium chloride, sealed in a glass tube,
·e kept in the Pavillon de Breteuil, the laboratory of the
1culty of Sciences in Paris, like the metre-rod, the standard
: the metrical system, to serve as a norm for the secondary
Liantities kept in the chief civilized countries.
To Madame Curie, after the death of her husband, his chair
as entrusted. But she also became a member of the French
cademy of Medicine. Except for Clemenceau, she was the only
;!rson who did not present her candidacy herself. It was her
,neague, the Professor A. Henry Becquerel, who moved her
~ception in the famous phrase coined for 1\1oliere: "Rien ne
anque a sa gloire; elle manque a la notre."
It is a wonderful fairy-tale of progress in science and prog-
~ss by science, producing at the same time a complete and
Lccessful naturalization of the explorer into the nature of
vil nation ·where · work is done. It is a great lesson for
te nationalism \\·hich being
>m all · only possible as as
 in the becoming, in the making, as long as pioneers,
iuses, great-and small-individuals are making their con-
mtion, not with any national aim, but with one far beyond
thly ambition. Without this inexplicable and irrational
rice for something beyond, any social group is plunged into
ptian darkness, into the hell of self-adoration~
THE "NATURE" OF FRANCE.

~uring the Revolution, all France was thrown into the melt-
pot and stirred around with an iron rod. Her own scientific
ire was discovered and established, and she was recreated
e et indivisible."
.nee the unenlightened classes, clergy and nobles had gov-
~d the inhabitants of the different pays according to their
~rent customs and laws, the words "une et indivisible" be-
e the new chemical formula, which was used with emphasis
Lll the patriots of 1792. In speeches, on coins and monu-
ts, in laws and bulletins, une et indivisible was proclaimed
d as the original formula for the body politic. In opposi-
to the federalism or self-government of English origin
ured by the moderates, the "patriots" discovered the real
.re of a civilized nation. In ten years they created the new
tch form of patrie) the outline of a centralized republic of
tty-five millions of citizens without any federal counter-
hts.
co~pletely was the tradition of federalism destroyed by
1ew conception of une et indivisible that the present slight
st among Alsatians or Basques, tending to counterbalance
:vils of centralization, is called by the poor and unimagina-
word "regionalism." This an~mic and purely logical term
onalism" illustrates the decay of the living voices of the land
te scores of pays de France. "Patrie" supplanted "pays";
names "Picardie," "Artois," "Provence," "Limousin,"
d to be heard. All the departments were baptized with the
ual" names of rivers. Even the Ile France lost its emi-
e as the stronghold of the Franks, and 'Was named Departe-
of · It is highly pathetic to the inscription
which exnlains whv ::l-.:hP~ r.f
 '.\Iapoleon I were brought there from St. Helena in 1840. In it
:he passion of genius and the equality of La France une et
indivisible are well balanced. The two aspects of the French
Revolution are fused into one in these words on the mighty
;arcophagus of the Imperator of the Revolution, upon which
you look down from a gallery: "Napoleon I asked that his
)ody might rest near the banks of the Seine, among the people
le loved so well."
Not only did the rivers of France, covering 600,000 square
dlometres, give rise to the new system of names for the regions,
Jut Napoleon organized them into a central system. It had been
in old dream to connect the ocean and the Mediterranean Sea
with the centre of the realm and its capital, as Bilistein wrote
[n 1764. In 1783 Grivel proposed that a postern gate be found,
:ommon to all the provinces, like the canal which connects
111 the provinces of China with the centre. This central system
)f canalization so hypnotized the nation that the natural rivers
which it was meant to connect were left to be choked up by
~and. The system of the highroads of France reflected the same
:lesire for centralization. When the Revolution began, there
were twenty-eight highways running from Paris to the different
borders. Even today you find before the Cathedral of Notre-
Dame in Paris a stone in the pavement marking the spot
whence all these roads depart. It is true that ninety-seven other
[iighroads existed in 1789, connecting the frontiers without
touching Paris. But while these ninety-seven highways meas-
Lired 17 ,ooo kilometres, the twenty-eight roads from the centre
were 15,000 kilometres long. These 32,000 kilometres of roads
for public use, taken together, ought to be compared with all
the rest of the roads in France, measuring not more than
20,000 kilometres. As a token of the force of centralization
under the ancien regime, that great novelty of the nineteenth
century, the railroad system, still followed the routes of the
old highroads and canals. Of the new spirit of central order,
Paris · offers a good example the Place de l'Etoile,
Triomphe and the fire at the grave of the unknown
soldier.
m, should be embodied in a great civilization is an achieve-
t to be welcomed even by those who prefer to muddle
llgh. For their muddling through would prove disastrous
least one great nation were not willing to go the whole
Even the English use the decimal system in some fields.
use does not go very far, but so far as it goes they are
bted for it to the French army of civilization, fighting for
1 and a natural, reasonable order.
THE FRENCH CALENDAR.

te French tried, during the Revolution, to deal with time

ey did with "la patrie ." The calendar was changed, too.
new era of liberty began with the fourteenth of July,
and was made up of units of ten days, "decades," instead
e Jewish week of seven days. But the real calendar of the
:h spirit is not to be found in these attempts to overthrow
~hristian calendar, interesting as they are. Every great
Lition creates a new era, as we shall see still better at the
>f the book. French calendar-making, from first to last,
ys its real conception of time. Its favourite days are days
~at passions, great loves, great geniuses. In 1788, 1789, and
many private attempts were made to draw up a citizen's
iar. The last . attempt I can find was made in 1893, in a
ndrier de l'Ere Revolutionnaire." Heloise, the tnistress
1ailard, the Aspasia of Periclean Athens, and other gen-
=>f love are always included in these lists of dates.
the tiue French calendar is not one of eternal recur-
like the Russian calendar with its First of May. The
:lea of the French Revolution is expressed by time taken
rieans of novelty and surprise. In nature as restored by
:ench, time is the power which produces novelties and
~ons. The nineteenth century became the century of news
e'vspapers. Hunting for news was legalized as the spirit
times by the French Revolution. The finest expression
; spirit is the sequence of exhibitions. In the Fine Arts
annual exhibitions of the "salon" which collect
ons of The comrades n1arched forth
by ty, into arena.
Fashion beca1ne the expressions of contemporaneity. French
painting won the leadership of European painting because
it became a perpetual campaign carried on by groups of con-
temporaries. The passion of the French for contemporaneity in
painting was well-exposed by Voltaire when he confessed that
the French were no musicians, and declared that music was
bound to be national and sectional. "But the painters," he
went on, "must represent a nature which is the same in all
countries and which is seen by the same eyes." The same na-
ture and the same eyes-but seen at different times! That made
for the tremendous rapidity with which one fashion followed
another throughout the century of impressionism. The poets
too marched in groups: Naturalists, Parnassians, Symbolists,
Impressionists, succeed each other in the leadership of the
tin1es.
This passion for exhibitions was more or less clumsily imi-
tated by other nations. America, the country which stands next
to France in its revolutionary origin, also stands next in its
passion for exhibitions. But the great series of exhibitions in
Paris, 1856, 1867, 1878, 1889 and 1900, only dot the I's and
cross the T's of the superstition of the French esprit concern-
ing tin1e. Nature in space has to be "clear," organized, cen-
tralized. It is well to observe that organization, in its French
origin, means "to create a natural organism by reason." "Or-
ganize" lies halfway between the two extremes of mechanical
anq organic. It means to create son1ething organic-a process
which to a romanticist of the German type is just as horrible
and unthinkable as any mechanism. But the French mind excels
in the organization of space and of sensations in time. Paris
is the queen of cities as long as it don1inates women's fashions.
Even after losing her importance in the series of "world"
expositions every eleventh year and the annual exhibitions of
painting, Paris still continues to dominate the tastes of the
seasons. \Vhere the rule of contemporaneity does not work,
French is at a loss: French museums and collections are
colourless. The spirit of a museum is to have no spirit of the
times. In Paris the Louvre receives the old masters, by
living
uung ine oatt1es ot genius as contemporaries. But the Louvre
) none of the aunosphere of the Hesperides. The past is lack-
~ in spirit, in genius; it is unsensational. The Louvre is
pressing to anyone who loves life and antiquity for their
n sake. Where novelty cannot give the stret~h and strain
ingenious surprise (in the ordinary run of public buildings,
· example) the French imagination is completely eclipsed.
:her time is a chain of surprises or it breaks down into a
pless conservatis~.
CAPITALISM AROUND FRANCE.

fhe French citizen, teeming with new ideas, crazy for new
l fertile efforts of productive genius, is hin1self inore con-
vative in all business and family traditions than people who
~in Asia or Africa.
t is true that French liberalism has allowed the importation
all kinds of foreign goods. M. Avenel, the historian of
nch capitalism, explains the new world-wide organization
commerce very well when he says: "Look at the simplest
iily of French peasants in its village. You will find that
ny of the things they use come from far away, and that
riy goods would become too costly if produced by them-
'es and thus hurt the producers themselves if they could
be multiplied by foreign imports. In its daily consumption
average French family uses coffee from Brazil, sugar from
departments of Aisne or Pas-de-Calais, stock-fish from New-
ndland, petrol from the Indian Ocean or the Black Sea;
:::andles are made out of foreign hides, and out of garbage
mically treated; its tractors come from America, its plough-
·es and the steel for axles from Lorraine. The ribbon
1nd their caps is made of fibre from Manila or of Riga
ip; planks and beams for their roofs come from Sweden
~orway, ready-made, and the same countries furnish the
er for French newspapers; shirts and towels are derived
ri Texas, and the cloth of their coats from the Cape or
tralia."
ut all this importing is carefully around in-
ry in N tenths in
 1914. The French Socialists have always voted for the tariffs
which protected the farmers. Family enterprise and personal
credit remain through all the orgies of capitalism as the skele-
ton of French production. The world is well received in France;
but you must not ask the French to leave their country or to
introduce foreign forms. The French language was the only
one which called the devastating form of capitalistic enterprise
by its true name: "societe anonyme" -the society without a
name. Whereas in Germany or America the corporations were
given all the privileges of free and individual men, because
they were treated as persons (it was the tragic story of the
Fourteenth Amendment that a privilege meant for the negro
was turned into a privilege for industry by the corporation
lawyers), the French sense for the juste-milieu, kept alive the
notion of the artificiality of the thing in the word "anonyme ,',
thus warning the citizens that this individual was less trust-
worthy than a true individual with a proper name.
A French carpenter or cobbler may, with perfect peace of
mind, c!ose his workshop during the summer and put up a
sign, "A la campagne'' (in the country). The French have
opened the sluices of capitalism, but they have not allowed
themselves to be submerged. It seems to me that this is the
reason why the reaction against capitalism was so much briefer
in France than in other countries. The French worker is the
most personal craftsman in the world. M. Paleologue, who was
the French Minister to Petersburg during the Great War,
shocked the Russians by remarking that one poilu or one
French intellectual was a greater loss to civilization than a
thousand Moujiks. He might have included the craftsmen,
the artisans of France. The reaction of this type against the
monotony of modern industry was syndicalistic, anarchical. It
was the result of a real individual nature. In Russia the Bol-
sheviks can play a higher trump than .the private capitalists
by using the mass-man; but in France man revolted against
the threat that capitalism might degrade him into a prole-
tarian. This was the tragedy of the Commune in 1 1; it was
individual man
it could not overthrow
consurunon wn1cn in spite of all its sore spots was based
the nature of man. No country is as safe against Communism
France today. The Russian Communists themselves pub-
bed a statistical report for the year 1924 which demonstrates
[s truth in actual figures. In considering the configuration
classes in the countries of the world they gave France the
allest concentration of proletarians. They give the figures
thousands:
TOTAL RULING CLASS
PRODUCTIVE SEMI- AND ITS
1
NTRY CLASS PROLETARIANS PROLETARIANS HENCHMEN
at Britain (without Ire-
~nd) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iS,400 16,010 560 1,830
many ................. 33,900 26,000 3,500 4,400
y ••••••••••••••••••••• 20,000 14,000 2,500 3,500
mark ........ ........ 1,350 850 100 350
~aria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 ,500 l,6oo 260 640
ted States of America. . 42,000 27,500 6,500 8,ooo

each of these countries the proletarians form two thirds or

re of the productive class. But the figures for France are
en as follows:
20,900

nee was able to raise 503 of her productive population

:omplete or semi-complete independence, while Great Britain
l not more than 153 on the side of independence.
rhese statistics, interesting as they are, are not the whole
th. England's Comn1onwealth cannot be understood by
king.at the 153 at home who feel themselves independent.
e French figures, too, are much more the result than the
lanation of the French constitution. The French citoyen
fought for a juste-milieu) and he has gotten it. And that is
most effective refutation of the Marxian theory, because at
very centre of liberal ideas the horrors of capitalism ought
>e at their worst. Instead, as we found, the system worked
:ectly in France, where it was carried out to the extreme .
.id not work well in countries into which it was imported
10ut a corresponding emotional and revolutionary effort by
nation. French nation · the n1oral equality
without which the burdens of factory
would be intolerable indeed. Without perfect and firmly estab-
lished equality, the lot of the employe is hell itself. It was
o.atural that in America the employe should look freely into
the eyes of his em ployer, because the ties of industrialism are
riot overburdened by older, pre-industrial forms of dependence;
for in the United States the old relations had scarcely existed.
But in France, where old loyalties to church and pays had
1ominated the relations and the characters of men from time
[mmemorial, it was only the political enfeeblement of the
French clergy and nobility through their de-localization in
Versailles which enabled Paris to destroy these old codes of
iociety and to create a real equality based on ideas.
THE EMANCIPATION OF THE JEWS.

Like any great process, the French Revolution introduced

1ew elements into the old mixture of forces. The Jewish ques-
~ion is not solved and will not be solved in a day, because its
very meaning is that it must be solved every day. The Jew is a
~tranger among the Gentiles, a reminder to them that their
Christianity is always threatened by a backsliding into mere
~aganism. Against this, baptism is no guarantee, church-going
~s no guarantee. There is no absolute guarantee against the
1ardening of our hearts. No institution, no pope, no priest or
:heologian can prevent the relapse of man into his natural
.ndolence. The Jews are a scandal. They do not believe in the
CI?-ristianity of the Christians. As far as I know, the Jews in
1789 did not discriminate in their language between pagans
ind Christians. They did not believe in the genuineness of the
Christian faith. The nearness of God the Father to the Chosen
People makes the "Our Father" of the Lord's Prayer such a
ninimum of faith for a Jew that he only feels how much pagan-
~sm must be left over in Christianity. All the follies of philos-
Jphy, of abstract ideas and scientific notions were characterized
~o me by a great Jewish scholar as "moral insanity," as crude
is pagan superstition. And it is true that many pagans use
as a veneer. Baptisn1 was the cheap price
originally hoped to buy and store up
Chi;istianity came to the nations as someth · old
ungu1snea, as an 1na1spensao1e equipment tor their
tn the high road of history. Many converts cursed a faith
ing that no pagan impulses were safe from its challenge.
tiis challenge of Christianity slackens, paganism imrnedi-
~eps in. The nations of Europe were on the way to com-
·paganization in the eighteenth century; the churches
ves were open to this attack. All this was changed com-
by the emanci pa ti on of the Jews.
non-Christian side of French ] acobinism is really its
uistian side. It offers to the Jew a c01nmon rneeting-
on the basis of humanity, of humanism. "Ada1n," in
1s more than a figure of speech. He was the great symbol
ity that preceded the di vision of Jews and Gentiles.
ecame a great messianic figure standing for the end of
en all men should meet again. The nation was changed
origin into a final destiny.
national messianism of the French had to outbid the
~sm embodied by the Jews themselves. The French
Jt bear that any nation should be more messianic than
rn. That is why it was not the respectable, kind, well-
l, enlightened Jew who was emancipated by the ideas
Any notion of a selective process for certain particu-
lcome and agreeable individuals must be rejected before
understand the principles of the emancipation of the
'.le deeper cause of emancipation was the new equality .
. Polish or Russian Jew had the same right to it, from
point of 1789, as the "philosopher," because citizenship
not only to the actual philosopher but to any man who
Lble of using his reason in the cause of humanity. The
1her was to fonn the leading class of this new race; but
lly everyone had his own mind to offer as a pledge of
anity and of his fitness for citizenship.
iancipating the Je,vs, the European ideals of i 789
their farthest limits. It was fifteen years before it
evident that European citizenship could not stop at
Not until i804 did the emancipation which had been
~fore, actually take place. \Vhen Napoleon was anointed
'ope, the son Revolution his ·
ag process of legitimation by the Church, the danger was great
hat the Revolution had already failed and that France would
elapse into a pre-Revolutionary stage. The emancipation of
he Jews was begun during the birth-throes of the empire, in
803. The 100,000 Jews living in France were just enough to
elp Napoleon keep his revolutionary character.
The process of the assimilation of the Jews followed upon
1eir emancipation: it was their grateful answer to the emanci-
ation. Karl Marx's father could become a lawyer in Trier
rithout abjuring his faith. No wonder that his son wrote the
reatest libel against the Jews ever published in any language
y any anti-Semite; for he was trying to disclaim his Jewishness.
le knew only the economic question of the Jew as an indi-
idual, and forgot, thanks to his philosophical education, that
udah had another reason for existence besides retail selling
l1d usury.
The emancipation of the Jews was a stroke of the pen on the
art of the respective legislators; the assimilation of the Jews
as their attempt to answer this opening of the doors of Europe.
lost of them simply entered the doors of modern Europe, not
othering about the older strata of European life. In a way,
ie emancipated Jew could not possibly forget who and what
leas had emancipated him and his people. When the great
mservative leader of Prussia, Julius Stahl, fiercely supported
te right of the Christian King and exclaimed, as a good royal-
t: "Authority, not majority," Bismarck said: "He is a liberal
evertheless." He wished to say, without irony, that Stahl him-
U could not, though now a pious Christian, betray the princi-
les which had made his own emancipation possible thirty
~ars before. Stahl depended on the idea of equality. Thus the
~ws became the natural bodyguard of liberaiism all over
>pe, not from any preconceived general ideas ou God and
ature or Man, but because liberalism stood for emancipation.
ny discussion between the Jews and the nation sense
lly · emancipation \'\'as agreed upon. Since
century, still denied the essence
equality of · Jewish population
""' ...., .... .11..a.1..1"-.1. u..1..a. ..n.1..1. «.:> .1.v.1..1.5 a.:> U.lic:: O:)llOlll.{;~l. Ud!lt)Cl Ul. u p p 1 C:S-

lained.
·gument which is often heard is that the higher bour-
lnd the Jews were connected by business interests, both
mkers and financiers. This argument is a good example
owness and superficiality. Competition and business
ias stood in the way of the Jews for centuries. For two
l years the Lutheran patricians in Frankfurt had pre-
·ven their Calvinist competitors from living in the city.
il 1780, nine years before the conquest of the Bastille,
Calvinist merchants get permission to build their
n Frankfurt itself instead of in a neighbouring village.
lger of competition should have led the capitalist class
:e, as the new rulers, to suppress the Jews even more.
nomic argument does not explain anything, because
e used both ways. Anti-Semitism is always backed by
i, envy and jealousy of the middle classes. It is largely
::m of desperate c01npetition for jobs. As a matter of
Jews had no monopoly on financiering or trade; they
Lys had Christian competitors.
DIGRESSION
ALPHA AND OMEGA; GENTILES AND JEWS.

•rench conception of the Jewish destiny within the

boundaries was restricted to emancipation. But the
•f the Chosen People is unsettled despite 1789. France
.nd could not conceive of the function that the Chosen
ad performed and that must be performed in one way
er to the end of time. Thus, the French accomplished
ute solution: this digression seeks to evaluate the ob-
roblem that will remain when all individual Jews are
tted.
tcorrect to explain the mode of life of the Jews in the
Nn way, by pretending that they were by nature a
'.usurers, pedlars and traders. They certainly were not.
he Old and the New Testaments they are farmers
I and Cause and effect, perhaps, run in
direction. When were scattered over the earth
atter the loss ot Jerusalem in 70 A.D., they had no other tunc-
tion than to bear witness to the "economy of revelation," to the
growing Kingdom of God. Without their existence, the gospel
of Jesus might have come to the Gentiles like a myth or a
legend. Christianity becomes an historical fact only through
the existence of the Jews. The natural inclination of men and
nations to take flight into dreams of ancestral pride or the
cobwebs of abstract philosophy always leads to excesses of ag-
nosticism and mythology. The Jews, simply by their existence,
bar the nations from a relapse into that comfortable self-
adoration which makes Jesus hin1self into a blond Germanic
hero instead of a despised Jew. To accomplish such a thing
over thousands of years may seem a trifle to the average philos-
opher, who overlooks the simple sociological conditions of
everyday life and does not perceive that a very important result
can be achieved by the simple fact of doing a small thing every
day. This is precisely what the Jews are constantly doing. They
exist, and by their existence remind the Gentiles of their own
deficiency, their unfinished wayfaring. The Gentiles would like
to treat Jesus as a myth. Modern literature is full of such
id~ocies. The Jews are the Ii \'ing refutation of these fictions.
\Vhen Frederick the Great said to a pastor: "After all, there
is not the slightest evidence for all your Christianity," the
pastor was quick to reply: "Certainly, the Jews."
But in order to exist, the Jews must do something, and the
business which is the least prejudicial to their mission is trade.
The ] e,,,,rs are therefore traders and not farmers, because thus
they are removed from the soil which leads Gentiles to idolize
tools of human govern1nent, earth, agriculture, countries and
cities and machines, and set them up as Gods. The formlessness
of the Jewish existence emphasizes its clerical, priest-like char-
acter. The Jews, as one of them wrote in the first book which
tried to explain our Christian faith in Jewish terms, "the
Hebrews are like the coals in the heart of the fire, powerless
in the hands of God," unable to form an earthly political order,
organization, a worldly culture. But · the
they are not even able to evangelize
strongholds empires, industries, civilization. The true
cau preacn rne \JOspe1 among the Gentiles. ·1 ·hey are the
1ent out from the central fire, which actually transform
orld. As coals in the heart of the fire, the Jews are prison-
: God. The Gentiles themselves represent the third role:
te, earth, trees, deer, cattle, metals, lions, sheep-in short,\ 1

fts of nature. Natural humanity is the moqthpiece of all

easures of creation. To be a physician, a gardener, a chem-
carpenter, a bridge-builder, a cattle-breeder, means to be
lOUthpiece and the culmination of some form which was
~stined by the pre-human part of creation and only waited
complishment through the love, faith, and hope of man.
his professions of the natural, the earthly, and the secular
man is the chosen administrator of a part of creation. As
he advances like nature itself from the birth of life to its
. He takes the _side of natural growth. Messianism, on the
hand, draws back the curtain from the end of time: it is
ological. It begins with the end, the consummation of
. One of the questions put to the Jew after his death is:
thou believed in the Messiah, in the end of Time?" If we
) ask the natural man for his faith, he would probably
r: "I have conquered, I have been a faithful administrator
1
Se gifts which were entrusted to me." But to a people of
;, the sacrifice of inborn talents is more natural than their
~he most general expression of the natural n1an is his
for power, his love of domination. But the Jews had
)f that .representative power which makes presidents and
)fS. They could be patriarchs and kings, perhaps, but
tever succeed as self-sufficing rulers, as sheer dominators.
ot their business. 8
ls far we have deduced the character of the Jews theo-
ly. Without any metaphysics, an experienced administra·
.e Russian Paul von Sokolmvski, has stated 9 that though
~ properties of man occur in Je'\vs, though they vary as
of this fact, though in Chapman's erratic form, may be
Chapman and His Letters (p. 274) by :.\L A. De Wolfe Howe,
:\1 ifHin, 1937: "It is foolish to rule the world, and the Jew
:h and are as dliterent among themselves as other peoples,
ough they have many talents and gifts that are rare among
:rs, yet they lack the instinct for government. "Some of
n try it, and some achieve great things; but it is not their
tre to rule."
'his is an important fact. The ruler who gives his name to
tour of history must be absorbed completely in that hour.
must dive into its waves and be lost in it more than any
:r man. For it is the ruler's business to mark the epoch, to
~ar on the stamps or coins of his country. Rulership, be-
e it personifies an epoch, always finds itself in a polarity to
workings of Eternity. It is in order not to discredit the
,, but to honour their priestly qualities, that we mention
r predicament in relation to political leadership. An intel-
lt being like Nebuchadnezzar sy1npathized with his prime
ister, Daniel, because the man did not bow the knee before
. But the people cried out that Daniel was a national traitor
.use he did not, and Daniel was deposed so that the races
1e empire could exercise their hero-worship for a man of
and blood. In Germany, the failure of Heinrich Bruening
largely due to his aversion for nlass idols. Bruening be-
:d like a monk; he abhorred the cult of the masses. Hitler,
:he contrary, lives on this need of the masses for hero-
1hip.
he pagan leader is the servant of time. The Jew can never
ieve" in time; he believes in Eternity. Since every Jewish
er or prophet thinks of Eternity or of innumerable genera-
;, the star of Judah always shines most brilliantly in times
ri there are no pagan heroes. \Vhen a nation is despoiled
.s governing class, when a national failure has brought a
ness without comfort or illumination, the nation is struck
'.-le fact that the Jews are less shaken by this darkness than
Gentiles. The Jews are not leaderless in the absence of a
or emperor. Anti-Semitism always becomes especially vio-
in times of a lost war. The Jews must be guilty: this is the
l that quickly passed round. For are they not as
1oulder hard times without a complaint as they were to
lt The of Judah bright,
v.1. '-'CU'- vut., IlaVe JUSt 0Urleel their
VV HCHCVCl LU<: ueIHUeS
1adnezzar or their Tiberius and are faced with disinte-

lrally, the Jews had to make their living in collaboration

·operation with the Gentiles. But for the degree of this
ation they depended upon the Gentiles. This depend·
)On foreign mercy for mere subsistence often makes the
.ger and restless. Like any clergy or profession or group,
~ not all believers. The fears of the in di vi dual Jew often
tim lose his trust in God; and such a Jew is a prey to
is of demoniac forces, because he has lost his faith in
~sthood and yet suffers from all the anxieties and exter-
1gers of his extraordinary vocation. This Jew of little
the excrescence of Judah. In the years before 1789 he
the usurer, the Shylock of pagan tradition. But the
>anker is as frequent among the Jews as the ruthless
It is not a question of the profession, but of individual
>alance. The greed of the farmer who loses his faith is
l into acquiring more and more land; the Jew who
s faith becomes greedy for money.
average Jew is no more and no less unpleasant than any
tdividual. But by his restlessness he frightens his neigh-
.vhereas lazy or vicious Gentiles do the same harm in a
ressive way. Nations, as units and on the average, are
horrible, as Count Keyserling courageously said. The
character includes all the human qualities; for all men
al. But because of his exceptional, imperilled condition
exaggerates. "Jewishness" is not a material quality, but
n. "too much." Too much charity, too much smartness,
ch understanding, too much devotion, too much self-
too much egotism, are the Jewish eccentricities and

>etta, Marx, Rathenau exaggerated. Take, for example,

tu. In 1918, when Hindenburg and Ludendorff had
ir and the Gentiles in Germany from top to
and farmer, professor and worker, knew that
blood could be spent for war because the
already nearly bled to death, Walther
Kathenau blew the trumpet ot nauonal resistance. ~ome years
later he was murdered as a national traitor, and simply because
his model behaviour exasperated the whole military class which
had failed to show the same energy.
The individual Jew, believer or unbeliever, having the same
human weaknesses as any Greek or pagan, gives no cause for
hatred of the Jews. The conflict is much wider. The terrible
antagonism between the nucleus of God's devouring fire and
the circumference of God's creation is the fatal antagonism of
death and life. The nations all wish to live, to grow, to expand,
to be immortal. The Jew lives beyond the end, the doomsday
of all the empires of the world. He had to outlive the Pharaoh
of Egypt, Nebuchadnezzar, Alexander and C~sar, popes and
emperors and kings and presidents, so that no golden calf and
no man-god might overshadow the glory of the living God. This
attitude is a threat to all the national pride of man. The oppos-
ing tension between Judah and Greece is tolerable only so long
as Christian evangelization pervades the countries of the Gen-
tiles, the "Greeks," and so long as the serenity of the peace of
God pervades the hearts of the Jews.
The average historian can neither admit nor explain the
existence of a Jewish question; it is the man in the street and
the layman who knows, by instinct alone, but by a sure instinct,
that such a question exists. Our history of revolutions would
be as tame as Macaulay's or as poisoned as Trotsky's if we too
should leave the Jewish question to the man on the street-
corner. Let us take account of his instinct, and ask our question
of both Jews and heathen. \Vithout seeing that mankind is
divided into the component elements of paganism, Christian-
ism, and Judaism, we can see and understand nothing of the
world around us. Like the three tenses of grammar, past, pres-
ent, and future, or like beginning, middle, and end, Paganism,
Christianism, and Judaism together make up the world, though
in a different proportion and interrelation in each period of
history. A special proportion between Paganism, Judaisn1, and
Christianity the sign manual of every epoch; for the
the are in constant change. \Vithout this
. world history becomes Yet
LHaL w nu u1e aoouuon or tne tnree c1.1v1s1ons, with the
l between Adam (Nature) and the revelations of Church
ynagogue a new era would begin, is natural enough. For
y, chronology, time (that is, the great system of periods
~ich our idea of humanity is formed) has been treated
lifferent way by the Gentiles and by the Jews. We today,
led by the long-established use of the Christian Era, forget
t is only a creative way out of the indissoluble dilemma
en Jewish hope and pagan faith. Yet this dilemma is not
~g of the past. Both calendars still threaten the Christian
he pagan counting fr01n the beginning of the race or the
ation of Rome, and the Jewish looking forward from day
r and year to year to the end, the Messiah, salvation, and

1g all past time in the greater glory of the God who will
at He will be.
~ anti-Semitic hatred of the Jew, in all its simplicity and
itforwardness, has always and necessarily been the hatred
Beginning of things for the End. The outlook from the
1ing is impossible once you have looked at the same thing
the end; yet that was the pern1anent conflict or tension
upon paganism by the existence of the Hebrews.
:he Bible God is called the Alpha and Omega. But we
dom conscious of the fact that he has created the natural
lS of men in His power as Alpha and the Jews in his
as Omega. The Jews represent the end of human history
its actual end: without them pagan history would not
tave had no goal, but would have gotten nowhere. The
, represent the eternal new beginnings of history, and
It them history would never have acquired any shape or
>r beauty or fulfilment or attainment.
.'s Alpha '"as lived by the Gentiles, and God's Omega is
tied in the Jews. This antithesis brought Pagans and
nto a conflict of principle. The Jewish community, as a
Linity, was created by God to be his \vitness against the
tesses of the Alpha-nations. This is the viewpoint of
ttion. But from the viewpoint of the natural nations,
and lVIoab and Assur, own faith was
l as a bulwark the precipitous end
by the "Omegas." In this antagonism the Je*'s can exaggerate
and the heathen can exaggerate, because Goa has left them
both the freedom to sin. And both are perpetually exaggerat-
ing, the one by loving the idols of the past and the other by
:herishing its endless hope for the future.
Now the periodical persecutions of the Jews were the meta-
physical warfare by which the Gentiles combated the pressure
Jf a hostile calendar. Through the pogrom they tried to throw
Jff the yoke which joins Alpha and Omega. Wherever an old
:orm is reluctant to go to its doom, like the Church in the
ifteenth century, or like Czarism before 1914, it defends its
)WU obsolete and dying institutions by persecuting the Jew,
:he eternal symbol of a life beyond any existing form of gov-
~rnment. Wherever a young generation tries to relive the first
lay of creation, it attacks the Jew because he smiles at this
)assionate belief in fugitive forms. In Germany during the
>rgies of Hitlerism a certain Jewish journalist was asked to
:orrect the book of a Nazi authoress; and in return for the
:avour she agreed to take him to see Goebbels and Goering.
\.fter tea with them he came back as though enlightened and
old his friends: "They cannot help persecuting us; they are
>laying Red Indians, and they know that we cannot take their
. I y. "
~ame senous

The persecutions of the Jews are, to the relation between

\.lpha and Omega in time, precisely what wars are between
teighbours in space.. Wars require territories, governments,
.rmies. To avoid a misunderstanding, let me add this on the
luestion of war: A Jew can, of course, serve in the armies of
Lis country with passion and devotion. But the Jewish com-
aunity, as a community, has nothing to do with war between
:eographical units. It was created above and L~yond all human
livisions. It reminds men of the hope beyond their daily hopes,
1f a more important step to come. By their persecution the
;entiles defy this challenge from the side of Eternity and final-
ty. They always accuse the Jew of provocation, because
riough quite of · Indian out
neighbours, he incapable of any of their
can shed his blood for countrv. he will ;i
that no skyscraper, no man-of-war, no Venus of Cnidos, and
lory of arms is more important than the tears of the widow
.e sigh of the orphan. And this is provoking as long as coun-
must arouse enthusiasm for great patriotic sacrifices.
~ive an example, the remark of a young German lieutenant
had been hearing of Wakher Rathenau's services to Ger-
y during the World War. He was told that Rathenau, a
had been the first and the only man to foresee that Ger-
y was going to be short of war-materials, that he had
~ed the war-economy which was introduced successfully
and is being imitated and repeated by the anti-Semites in
nany today. He was told that in 1918, when Ludendorff
miniously broke down, Rathenau tried to become the
bet ta of the nation and venture upon a last national re-
1ce. The lieutenant answered: "It is not true: and if it
Je, it is a shame." This is the quintessence of the pagan
!d against the Jew. First of all, the Jew has no merits in
national life. Secondly, if he has, he ought not. "It is a
te," because it shows that the Omegas must play the part
e Alphas! Creation feels itself humiliated when Revelation
send troops to fight its battles. Creation, paganism-what
Idly called ''secularism'' today-resents its own failures.
ie fifteenth century offers a good example of Jewish perse-
ins at a time when Christianity was frightened by the
oaching downfall of its visible unity. The fear of Reforma-
and dissolution spread all over Europe between 1450 and
, and led to violent pogroms. The pogroms were the light-
-rod that protected Papacy; they averted Luther's Reforma-
for fifty years. The same could perhaps be said of Czarist
ia. There, too, the Jews were one of the lightning-conduc-
of the regime. These atrocities of a senescent institution
.ng for a longer span of life are always peculiarly insulting
outrageous. But as mankind's propensity to war is not
tined by con ~emning iniquitous wars, neither are persecu-
explained b; condemning iniquitous persecutions. Gen-
1 the nations take advantage of the liberty of choice
mted remain in a blind alley as long as they can
e . Pogroms seem to indicate a situation
[ch a painful fact, like the loss of the World War, cannot
be swallowed by the nation. It will swallow it later; but
t the Jews-so the pagan exclaims-must suffer. For the Jews
~w of the blind alley too soon, they saw through it from the
y beginning. "Now, if we must bury these dreams, at least
will not be ashamed of them. We are determined to remain
ud of them. We wish to remain sons of the earth, builders
ts stone walls and states, artists and architects of this world.
erefore let us distinguish ourselves from the Jew who knew
>Ur defeat beforehand."
~here is permanent hostility between the wisdom of the
>ent and the naivete of Adam. There is permanent hostility
ween worshippers of the birth of forms and the beauty of
igs and worshippers of the living God, with his fire burning
ti above the shapelessness of man's soul. The genius of
:ece or of any pagan nation always tries to blossom and bear
[t so divinely that people will forget everything except itself.
s intoxicating to live the life of natural growth. The artist,
statesman, the hero, fascinate us by their personalities; their
nanity concentrates all our love, all our interest, all our
ntion on them. But lest the reader think that genius or
o-worship alone was meant by the "Alpha" side of life, I
st perhaps add that any beauty of form, any organization
mciety, any sweetness of friendship or self-realization can
>xicate our hearts.
•oth Jewish and pagan life try to honour God, the pagan
being as much the Creator as possible, the Jew by being as
ch the creature as is permitted to a son of Adam. Their
fold endeavour stretches the rope between earth and
ven. But originally the Gentiles did not see the other end
~he rope. That was revealed only to the Jews. They could
both sides: to the tragic conflict between the naive sons of
1 and the guardians of wisdom, the word "and" could be
ed only by Israel itself. Thus pagans ~111d Jews lived as
nbers one community, but withow the pagan having
understanding for the Jew. He saw only commerce, usury,
bbiness, clannishness, because the rest
him. \\lithin the narrow limits his national
au 0 ucu a.l lllc 1ucc.1. u1aL uepena on rne Jew. 1 n1s
ue :suuu1u
~rable pedlar could not· have any message for him. Later
pagans and the Jews were connected by Christianity, and
innumerable histories of tribes and cities on one side and
sufferings of Israel on the other were changed into one
ld history. During the march of the Holy Ghost through
nations, the distance between beginning and end becomes
ter and shorter. Yet it remains a difference in principle,
use at any given moment of history man can represent one
1e other aspect of his evolution. Nevertheless, the emanci-
)n of the Jews brings a real change.
ere for the first time the role of the Messiah was played by
nations rather than by the Jews. The end of time, an-
1ced in Paul's Letter to the Romans, began in 1789, when
eat nation felt itself to be the true and chief vessel of
nan1sm.
THE NEW MESSIANISM.

p to 1789 Christianity had undertaken to bring together

heavenly Creator and his chosen people on the one side,
his creatures and their earthly work on the other. The
rch balanced creation against revelation; the values of the
Judgtnent and of evolution were interwoven in the slow
:h of the Cross over the earth.
it in France in 17 89 the situation was peculiar, because
~ the normal instrument for this task, the Christian Church,
no longer usable. France, by the degradation of Paris, by
~xpulsion of the Huguenots, and by the abasement of its
~y, had been deprived of the regenerative forces of three
rent periods of religion. Scholasticism (Paris), Reformation
~uenots), and Puritanism (gentry) were all kept outside
Jolitical field and their life-giving power dried up. Yet
· had been the vital forces of Christianity for the rest of
pe from 1 200 down to 1750. The exclusion of these vigor-
forms of Christian life was not compensated for by the
>s of Jesuits, those negative defenders of the faith.
ed of narrowness inherent in any "counter"-move-
. Any counter-revolution is sterile. \Vhen the Jesuits were
lled from in i 761, it ·was the nation t
·m to be only a make-shift for the true religion. ·1 ·o under-
1d the French free-thinker, we must keep in mind the com-
tely abnormal situation of the Gallican Church about 17 50,
.h a great university derided in Voltaire's pamphlet, Tom-
iu de la Sorbonne, with the Huguenots active in Paris or in
le, and with an irresponsible, ungodly, and unrighteous
ttry; then we shall understand why France went "messianic,"
l with its natural messianism tried to outstrip the Christian
irch and the Jewish synagogue. The church seemed too
iled to serve as an instrument of the future, and the Jews
med worn and shabby under their ancient curse of the
mdering Jew. After all, church and synagogue had been
iblished as means to an end: they had been founded to
ead the Gospel and to preach the Lord. Yet the fortress of
pery built up by the Jesuits impressed people as a very
thly and defective thing, with no ultimate end beyond
~If; and the usurer, too, was a perversion of the Jewish
;sion. Usurers and Jesuits seemed to demonstrate the defeat
messianism by its own instruments.
~ogically enough, the French attacked the two old spiritual
nes of mankind with the war-cry: Humanity. Humanity
~If was the only possible aim which could inspire the new
ssianism of the French Revolution, with its hatred of the
ristian church and its abolition of the ghetto. Humanism is a
cere purging away of revelation; and through this means it
. emancipated the church and the synagogue. Of course this
manity, like the others, needed a home with walls. For a
tusand years the unity of the Christian world had been an
uality embodied in certain institutions, like the emperor
o summoned the Councils, the monasteries which gave hos-
ality and instruction, the papacy which guaranteed the pur-
of dogma, the University of Paris which reproduced and
!ected theology, and so on. The Jesuits, the fighting army of
~ Church, having failed, there \Vas no doctrine, no institu-
n, no soldiers, school, or office, which still
od for unity of mankind. A new unity had to be
on a field covered the debris of ch
ie natural inertia of the people was inflamed by a real
Lisiasm for this new world of Europe. Science, newspapers,
)ads, academies, congresses, Leagues of Nations, the deci-
iystem, all testify to the success of this reorganization. As
as the task was sincerely religious, the Jews could enter
ank and file of the new secular messianism with perfect
sty. For messianism it was. But what was to be the content
e new religion? The nineteenth century professed a creed
$S sincere than that of any other great period; and its
: was the man of genius.
my Frenchmen have professed this faith. I quote at least
~xample: In a lecture delivered at the College de France
70, when the German armies were at the gates of Paris,
~he French patriots were belittling German science, the
philologist Gaston Paris said: "]e professe absolument et
·eserve cette doctrine, que la science n'a d'autre objet que
rite, et la verite pour elle-meme, sans aucun souci des
quences, bonnes ou mauvaises, regrettables ou heureuses,
ette verite pourrait avoir dans la pratique. Celui qui par
?ti/ patriotique, religieux ou meme moral, se permet dans
its qu'il etudie, dans les conclusions qu'il tire, la plus
dissimulation, l' alteration la plus Legere, n' est pas digne
:r sa place dans le grand laboratoire, ou la probite est un
t' admission plus indispensable que l' habilete. A insi com-
' les eludes communes, poursuivies avec le meme esprit
to us les pays civilises, f orment audessus des nationalites
!ntes, diverses et souvent hostiles, une grande patrie,
r;une guerre ne souille, qu'aucun conquerant ne menace,
les dmes trouvent le refuge et l'unite que la cite de Dieu
~ donnes en d' autres temps." Scientific research, under-
in the same spirit in all the civilized countries, forms a
fatherland above our nationalities, limited, diverse, and
1ostile as they are; and in this high fatherland, not stained
not by any conqueror, men's souls find
and the unity which the City of to .. "'"" ......... ..
mer
The equation is complete. The revelation of Zion is sup-
mted. And the grandeur of this faith cannot be belittled.
teodor Mommsen answered Gaston Paris' confession with a
iilar one from the German side in his famous "Preface" to
~ third volun1e of the Corpus lnscriptionum Latinarum,
ted December 28, 1872: "I had endeavoured to confess in
blic my sense of gratitude towards every one of the men who
)moted this work. 10 Alas, even this cannot be done today in
! way I intended; the world and the nations within it being
n to pieces, most of the men whose munificence and friend-
p helped to build up this volume were changed from friends
o enemies and from enemies into personal foes. And now,
n1 not sure which among these men wish to go back on the
11efits that they previously have conferred on a foreigner
tore these things happened, neither can I venture to publish
~ names of those of whom I know that they will not go back
their benefits, because I am ignorant where to dra\v the line
i how far to compromise with the ungenerous mob and the
ims of its blind wrath. And yet, the classical studies have
s eminent and rather divine quality, that they call forth
~ry scholar out of his narrow birthplace into one common
ld, and that they, by reminding us of the common origin of
manity, associate the very best men from various nations.
vas congratulating myself for having obtained not the last
tee in this society, and I nourished hopes of seeing this
lull.1e becoming a testimony of this community and cement-
~ it. And now, it is true, it testifies only of a con1munity that
longs to the past, whereas disunited peoples receive what 'vas
iieved through united strength.
'Ho-wever, the book will last, and studies will last; and
.enever, after our part is over, the republic of science (respub-
2 litterarum) comes to life again, they will continue our
5innings as though they were not broken off, but only inter-
pted."
THE "AFF AIRE."

But reYolutionary faith was sincere only so as

manity place in minds the French.
) Amon!! them NaLmlcon III.
manity, or "Europe," as Thiers phrased it, was nowhere
rable when the French asked for help against the Prus-
.nd as a result their faith in the reality of any interna-
m abated. When Clemenceau said in 1919, "'Human-
L beautiful word, but 'France' is more beautiful," the
was over. The repercussion of this disappointment can
gnized by various symptoms. We limit ourselves, how-
~ mentioning its effect upon the Jewish question. The
ing Jew, as a permanent note of interrogation or mark
ension between the nations of this earth, could no
remain the naive soldier for national democracy which
been during the period when "humanity" was the sin-
1ivalent to an ideal revelation without priests or Jews.
en a Jew could only serve as an individual in the fight
tter European civilization. Israel, as Israel, has a longer
tnd a more difficult task than the ideas of 1789.
s not by accident, I am sure, that a Catholic French-
1illiere, after the World War, discovered the eternal
s burden of the Jew. Where the Revolution had sought
ici pate sons of "Adam," Palliere discovered "the un-
:em ple of God" (he published a book under that title).
-Iello, another great French Catholic, whose Paroles de
the most French and the most Christian book I know,
n Bloy, the Catholic Nietzsche of France, tried to justify
ig anti-Semitism in France in the nineties by the re-
ess of the average Jewish usurer and second-hand
1 the ghettos he visited. But one day Bloy saw an anti-
placard in Paris, showing St. George's spear piercing
y of Moses; and then he knew that creation was once
reatened with the extinguishing of the light of revela-
George piercing Moses meant perverting St. George
>agan and destroying Christianity. Bloy sat down to
s book, Le Salttt par les ]uifs. Reconvincing himself
re was still something to be expected from the Jews
o come, he opened the door to a new phase in the rela-
·ween the Jews and the nations, one not covered
:eption the French Revolution. Bloy, in
of restored religious to the Jewish
1uestion, much as Franz Rosenzweig did 111 Germany later on.
In the meantime the Dreyfus affair was raging in France. In
:onnection with many other atrocities of the failing "Boulan-
~ism," the unsuccessful Hitlerite movement in vanquished
France after 1887, a captain of the French general staff, who
rVas an Alsatian and a Jew, was made the scapegoat for an irregu-
arity in the service d' espionnage. His condemnation and degra-
lation was accompanied by a tremendous outburst of hatred
igainst "the filthy Jew" -so tremendous that a Jewish cor-
·espondent for an Austrian newspaper, a fervent "assimilant"
lp to that date, lost his faith in "Europe," left Paris after the
[nsulting scene at Christmas, 1894, and went to Vienna, con-
vinced that assimilation had failed. He was Theodor Herzl,
:he man who wrote The Jewish State and who became the
father of Zionism and of the resettlement of Palestine.
This same affair, which by creating Zionism ended "assimi-
lation," brought French emancipation to its decisive test. We
1ave stressed the fact that emancipation was granted before
issimilation existed, that emancipation must be viewed with
the eyes of the Jacobins and not with the eyes of the Jews.
Emancipation of the Jews-like emancipation of the slaves to
the Northerner-was an article of French faith and French
fiumanitarianism. Jews like Herzl might abandon assimilation;
but to the French Republic excluding a Jew from the Rights
Jf Man would have been equivalent to hoisting the white flag
Jf the Bourbons.
thus the Dreyfus affair became the decisive trial of the
French Republic. Through all its turns and twistings it became
:learer and clearer that the essential problem was not Dreyfus
but the Rights of Man.
In the course of the struggle the forces of pre-Revolutionary
France, church and army, proved nearly as strong as all the
forces of the three or four generations since the great Revolu-
tion. century is a short period in which to spread a new
~ospel. France was not settling the affair until 1
Meanwhile all the ·ns were called upon to support
cause of humanity. Humani was the name of the
which
tst tne government. And Anatole France was another who
1t with the League for the Rights of Man. He who had
)ed the name of his country wished to restore to France
rue ideal of equality.
THE THREE QUALITIES OF HIGHER LIFE.

iancipation has not ended the Jewish question, because

ews are not like the Armenians in Turkey or the Japanese
1lifornia or the Irish in New England. The Jews were
~d as a counterfoil to the Gentiles; and whenever the third
!nt, the Christians, grow weak in their faith, hope, and
then the glowing nucleus of revelation and the inanimate
1 of creation diverge and threaten to destroy human his-
which is a process of the salvation of the world and the
-rsion of the pagans by the Word.
t emancipation has permanently changed the aspect of
ewish question. Emancipation cannot be abolished. All
1alism will be hoisted by its own petard if it breaks off
nancipation of the Jews. Government is not everything in
fe of man: this is the creed of the French Revolution.
~eois France showed that it meant business when it pro-
:!d the equality of Jew and Greek, the vessel of God and
essel of genius. Furthermore, when the instruments of
tion and of creation both became citizens in the post-
jan body politic of Europe, all lifelong priesthood was
v-ed. Henceforth the priest, and the Jew as well, was first
>remost: a natural man. This is irrevocable. The scope of
ent is reflected by the humanism which accompanies the
:al events of the French Revolution. The movement
restored Hellas and Rome, Philosophy and Law, made
istory of Jews and pagans one tradition. The mutual
~etrability of Rome and Greece, and of Jerusalem and
s, was melted down. The new Europe blended and
the powers which had ruined the world by their
on.
en XVIII accepted the emancipation of the
Kt in 181 he accepted the of humanity as
Revolution. humanism,
better still, humanitarianism, in which Rousseau and Briand,
Diderot and Barthou, Jefferson and Wilson, Mary Wollstone-
craft and Ramsay MacDonald, were baptized, had discovered
man behind men, nature behind nations, Adam behind Shem,
Ham and Japhet, and the great identity of all men behind
creed, faith, colour and race. It baptized Gentiledom by giving
a mission to every nation! N atio·nalism makes every nation a
chosen people in competition with all the others. Messianism,
originally limited to the Jews, later con1municated to the
heathen by the Church, is transferred by the European nation-
alism born in 1789 to the nations in general, which now enter
upon a common race of messianic nationalism.
What would have been pure and ridiculous arrogance for
the different nations if it were only a vaunting of their own
nature, became reasonable through the emancipation of the
Jews. For by the addition of the element of Omega, the chosen
people of God, the "Al phaic" nations have acquired one touch
of finality and predestination. A modern nation, since 1789,
differs completely from the old natural, pagan groups called
nations, because it is a task, not a fact, a movement, not an
established house, a future and not a past. The ad1nixture of
the Jews, who can never be treated as pagans, secures the nation
from backsliding and mistaking mere existence for growth,
inheritance for heritage, Alpha for Omega. Henceforth the
secular literature of a nation could be treated as of equal re-
ligious and educational power with the Bible. True inspiration
was recognized in national poetry; secular art was sanctified as
an instrument of divine inspiration. The unleashing of a com-
petitive race in national inspiration filled the gap created by
the disappearance of the "Omegaic" nation. The cult of art
and literature and science betrays the religious character of
"inspired nationalism" during the nineteenth century.
But the scrupulous accuracy with which one messianism
(that of the Jews) was supplanted by another, n1ore general
one (that of the nations), the exactness of the ,.,..,,."'. . .
'-'H"

national by inspiration and

reliance on or prophets, shows how
gf Christianity delves its channels even
er church nor dogma, neither pope nor parsons, still play
•art in the drama. Pagans, Christians, and Jews carry out
ommands of revelation long after these commands have
:I to be represented by a clergy.
e crisis of modern history came when nationalism threw
into a fiery messianic crusade for a common future. The
aise of America/' for example, is such an attempt to put
~al life into the future. It is the great courage of those
~hink that the full life is going to be lived not now, but
With such a hope, all the failures of the past and the
:>f national pride and memory are easily forgotten. Then
ations can march forward toward a common goal. Then
~ws can be dismissed, because the nations are now inocu-
with the Jewish promise.
the Jews themselves, this inoculation has reacted in the
of Zionism. Zionism has inoculated Judah with a drop of
ly realism, of European nationalism.
spite of Hitlerism, we are living in a new era, because
forth the functions of Gentiles, Christians, and Jews are
nger invested in a visible race, a visible clergy, and a
~ Israel. In the future the character and function of a
:an no longer be judged by the outward signs of race,
or country. He has to choose for himself. He may not
know whether he is going to act as a representative of
ning, Middle, or End. Anybody can act, at any given
nt, as the representative of body, soul or spirit, that is,
~anism,' Judaism or Christianism. The yoke of embodi-
in a clergy has ceased to be universal. The three proper-
. any higher life are now accessible at various times to
s men.
-IE GREAT ELECTORATE: WHO CAN GOVERN A NATION?

1912 Raymond Poincare published a popular book on

r;rance ls Governed. The ·whole book dealt with "equal-
~quality of votes, equality of departrnents, equality
.ts, equality of cities and villages. Neither Paris nor
es \Vere mentioned. Yet in the same according to
iel, one all mobile of the country
, concentrated in the Ile de France. The written constitution
France is backed by an unwritten constitution which guar-
ees that mixture, that osmosis and concentration of all
rgies, which are needed to represent messianic humanity in
nee. Catholics, Jews, and free-thinkers must meet. Provin-
s and Parisians must meet. Poles, Italians, Germans and
nch must meet. Old fighters and new geniuses must meet.
tris will remain what it has always been, the great point
:oncentration of French thought." 11 There is no other intel-
.ual centre in France and never will be.
~he capital o~ France is a real sovereign. It is still a higher
)Olin the meaning of the law, where the word "high" means
ereign. The less its role is mentioned in the Constitution
more important it is to understand its sovereignty. What
<.es Paris the queen of cities? For two hundred years she has
:l this sovereignty through her salons.
tendhal (Henri Beyle) partly described the function of the
ms in his Life of Henri Brunard: "Dear Cousin, if you wish
make a figure in the world, twenty people must have an
~rest in speaking well of you. Therefore, choose a salon,
there regularly every day that they receive, take the pains
)e amiable, or at least very polite, to everybody. Then you
l be playing a part in the world, and you can hope to please
amiable woman as soon as two or three salons intercede in
r favour.
After ten years of perseverance, these salons, chosen from
Jng our circles of society, can promote you to anything and
rything. The main point is perseverance and regular appear-
e. "
~his advice has been sound in Paris ever since Voltaire's sue-
; in the salons at the beginning of the eighteenth century.
e Dreyfusards had their salons, those of the "precieuses radi-
~s." The last man of great note in the dynasty of writers on
passions of society, Marcel Proust, frequented, so ·we are
l by Pierre Quint, salons of:
HPa·ris est reste ce ce q u'il sera le
oncentration de la -""""'.,....,....,,, Clemenceau.
. Princess Edmond de Polignac
. Madeleine Lemaire, a painter
. Madame Aubernon and her niece Madame de Vierville
. Madame de Loynes
. Count d'Haussonville
Princess Mathilde Napoleon
Madame Strauss-Bizet
5 in the last salon "ou il se forma veritablement" (where
LS really shaped). The salons of the great ladies of society
the candidates for Mount Parnassus and the Areopagus.
Ion is never complete; all the tin1e, it must be supple-
~d and embellished. You may be plain or vicious, no
r, as long as you have connections. Each time that you
open the door of a salon, your value increases. You are
ly by yourself. You begin to exist when you are admitted
· evenings in some salons. And you are the perfect man
not one of them is closed to you at any time of the day."
el Proust.)
1ch democracy votes on an equal footing. However, there
>ea certain machinery to put candidates before the voters.
1erica the candidates are named by bosses and conven-
men and groups of men; in France, by the salo.n. The
fills the necessary function of an aristocratic process of
::m which enables the machinery of democracy to work.
· word "aristocracy" is outlawed in the political life of
~; it ha~ to be supplanted by the notion of an "Elite de
~t de genie," or "Les privilegies de ['esprit." As a demo-
voter, the Frenchman can say "Yes" or "No." But to put
.ew man, to launch a new talent, is the privilege of the
l women. They need no vote in the rank and file of men.

1ntry has been less interested in votes for women than

; for it is their salons which select the candidates. This
mwritten part of the French constitution, the part which
it possible for the French to change the government as
ts they do, to live in a perpetual cabinet crisis, with a
1li ty ministries that baffles the foreigner. single
.ual to play his in a l\!Iorrisdance
d · But seauence of insnirP<i 1nrl1ui~11-:1le!
.. .... .......... '1 ....... "-...._... ...._,.._ "-'A"".&."-V' ..... ""4.&. ... ...,, ............... ..., A."" L ........ ~'-~ ... ' - A V"'4.A&.&."-Y ..._,"-

~ her salons have replaced a dynasty of kings by a dynasty

tspired individuals whose candidacies the ladies of the
s have previously approved. Thus the keystone of the
ch constitution is not a rational thing. The society of Paris
! illogical premise to all the logical constructions on paper.
iere is no boss, no party whip, to hold together the mem-
o£ Parliament in France. No party leader can force candi-
upon the constituency. The whole apparatus of politics
it into many s1nall groups. Every candidate is an individ-
naking his career by changing his allegiances from day to
Society and its "intrigues" elude all efforts toward strict
discipline or leadership. Political treason has lost the bad
tr it has in England. "Trahison" is a natural weapon in
naze of intrigues in Paris. The ambiguity of our social ,
ections in a republic of equals, exaggerated by n1en like
!yrand and Fouche, those inasters of vice and crime by
ection, remains the eternal secret by which the govern-
can be revolutionized, so to speak, every day. The cmn-
must overthrow the government today in order to take
ck tomorrow. In no other country can a political leader
ind win so often and in so short a time. The "inspired
idual" acts his part for weeks, even n1onths; then the next
trikes the key-note of the day inore successfully, and gets
irn. But the opportunity for change is at the root of the
n .. That is what makes society, not the master, but more
·ately the mistress of governme_nt. Where else in the world
l Congress be compared to a salon? In Le Telegramme du
e-Calais, a provincial paper, I find this phrase: "Les
ii rs de la Cham bre ne sont pas le dernier salon ou l' on
"
would be a mistake to think of the French Chambre des
~tes as a parliament in the English sense of the word. The
; which corresponds to it in the English constitution is__
ion Day in the different constituencies. For in England
~lace where passion reigns is not Parliament but the con-
~ncies. Here people really act according to the emotions
 ---- ------ --- ---- ------ -----· -.. . . . . . . . . . . .&.~.&..&.~ ........ , ................... .., .... .., ........ ,.,.....,'- '-'.L \...l..l"'

:hambre itself. The Galerie was a weighty factor in French

olitics from the very beginning. When a motion was made to
xclude the public from the meetings of the National Assem-
ly, a deputy exclaimed: "How dare they propose to exclude
·om this place our constituents, our masters?" 12
That is why the dissolution of Parliament would be a real
reak of the constitution in France, whereas it is perfectly
ormal in England. In England it is a device for recapturing
opular support; in Paris, it means that the very honour of
le Chamber is at stake for not having reflected faithfully, in
le nation's greatest constituency, the passions of the day. The
hamber itself is the "faire sur· la place," Vanity Fair. One
issolution would be a blow to its required function from
hich it could never recover. The passage from England, to C
ranee is like a passage from Pickwick Papers to Victor Hugo.
he passions of the electorate are taken humorously in Eng-
nd, and they work at random. In France this weed-like growth
dignified: the crop is ennobled by the new domination of
.e esprit over the passions. Whereas the English Parliament is
e Grand Jury of England, the Chambre of the Palais Bourbon
>es not debate, but pleads, and could well be called the great
ectorate of the nation.
In 1835 a Russian princess interviewed the deputy Berryer,
distinguished French politician; and in this interview the
direct "intrigue" and the incessant "change" are both well
dicated.
"What do you think, M. Berryer, of the new laws proposed by
~ French government?"
"I approve of them in principle, and that is why I intend to
sent myself from the Chamber, where my position would oblige
~ to oppose them."
'Do you think the government will last?"
'No."
2 John Simpson Penman, The Irresistible Movement of Democracy, New
·k, Macmillan, 1923.
"Do you think there will be a republic?"
"No."
"Do you think Henri V will come in?"
"No."
"What, then, do you think?"
"Nothing; for in France it is impossible to establish anything." 13

In August af!d September, 1914, French public opinion held:

fhe State (l' Etat) has failed, Society has saved usl" For by a
~ontaneous, unorganized effort the deepest reserves of French
ith and courage had improvised a form of resistance behind
te front of defeat and retreat organized by a pedantic and
galist government. In 1911 Francis Delaisi, who had foreseen
te disintegration of society,,had invoked the decision of 1914
l his startling book La Guerre qui Vient: "Faites la guerre ou
ites un roi." (Make war or make a king!) The War took the
lace of royal restoration, and confirmed the responsibility of
1ociety" as organized by the higher bourgeoisie and its 100,000
.milies. Wars are the final test of a constitution.
The French nation will be able to live in the framework of
s democratic constitution as long as the queen of the Ile de
ranee bears the torch of genius and can bestow her laurels on
Le inspired individual of the day. In this, the queen of cities
the true heir of the monarchs of Versailles. The best state-
lent that can be made of this system of French government
as made by Louis. XIV in his memoirs:
"Wisdom requires that under certain conditions one leave much
chance. Reason itself recommends further that we follow all
nds of blind stirrings of instinct, which escape our reason and
em to come from Heaven. No one can tell when to ward off and
hen to yield. Neither books nor rules nor experience teach us
lis. A certain acuteness and a certain boldness of esprit will
ways make us find the right thing." ·

Paris has distributed this royal wisdom through society. This

ew monarch, by her "elite of the spirit" turns the wheel of
>rtune and genius in an organized way, nevertheless leaves
mch to chance, to instincts which seem to come from Heaven,
• acuteness and boldness. The Cartesian and Voltairian per-
'Ct order of the uni verse is kept alive by this irrational trust
t the lightning-flashes of surprise.
The French have made a special effort to organize the
nilieu," the environment, in which government can be pre-
Lred. They specialize, not in good government, but in prepar-
g the conditions for good government. Now this is a universal
·oblem. All governments need a social playground for the
1verning class. A revolutionary government needs a pre-rev-
utionary meeting-place to prepare the minds of the people
d to prepare its own organization. The austere character of
>lshevism is derived from the exile-character of the meeting-
1ces of the revolutionary group. They met in exile and in
ison, in Switzerland an_d in 'Germany, in France and in
>eria. They conquered Russia from outside.
France was fortunate in beginning her revolution from the
:ide, from Paris. The salons prepared the way for the revolu-
n and have kept it going ever since. And the society of Paris
i urbanized the manors of the nobility of France; the beauti-
castles along the Loire and the Seine were turned into
nmer resorts for the wealthy bourgeoisie. The "patrie" in-
led the "pays," and grafted its social customs onto the trunk
l core of the nation.
)ne of the roots of regionalism had been the aristocracy of
hops throughout France. Now, even the Church has ·been
tralized. A description of the technique of this centraliza-
1 _will round off our survey of the sovereign society of Paris.
~apoleon I, in his concordat with Rome, imposed upon the
llrch the organic articles which empowered the government
:ensor any utterance of the Holy See. Before any communi-
on can ·be made by the shepherd of Rome to his sheep in
nee (so say the first three organic articles of 1802) Paris must
~ its permission. Through Paris the Pope can affect France,
er without it. Even ecumenical councils are not allowed to
e their voices in France without the permission of the
rich government.
"'he Third Republic, during the Dreyfus affair, tried to
TOV thP (;hnrrh hv .nnrV\"inrr ;.. £""',,.......,... ... ,.~.,.- -·---- - 1•
parishes dispossessed of their churches. But during the War the
Catholic priest earned a new halo by his heroic efforts on the
battlefield, and the Freemasons like Briand began to be fright-
ened by the increasing vigour of neo-Catholicism. Therefore
they preferred not to attack it-martyrs are the best propaganda
for a creed-but to control it. Against the mild protests of the
real Catholics in France, the Pope's representative was made to
supplant almost the whole French hierarchy. The nuncio, the
Pope's minister to the French government, became the mouth-
piece of the latter so as _to assure its influence over all appoint-
ments in the Church. Practically speaking, no bishop can be
appointed who has not been recommended by the governme·nt.
No meeting of the French bishops can deal with any important
matter on its own initiative. ·The simplest way back into an
independent life for the dioceses or regions of France is suc-
cessfully barred by this surprising nationalization of the Roman
Catholic Church. When the government wished to see the
Action Franraise outlawed by the Pope, pressure was brought
to bear upon the French episcopate to such an extent that the
bish9ps themselves petitioned officially for its banishment. But
their. signatures were really furnished by the nuncio, so that
the bishops had to submit or else accuse him of having forgeq
the signatures. The plan succeeded. One bishop protested
against the use of his name, the rest bowed. The Action Fran-
r;aise was suppressed. (See the accurate account in the Mercure
de France, May, 1932.)
· Obviously, this system, though the ideal of any nationalistic
government, cannot but be unique. In no other country can
the Catholic Church be governed by Freemasons. The un-
written French constitution is not an article of export.
ADAM AND EVE.

That scene of the impudent speculator, Beaumarchais, watch-

ingMarie Antoinette act in his play in her Rousseau-like house
of Trianon anticipated the concentration of the living voices
of 'French life in the capital and the capitulation of the gentry
to the bourgeoisie.
All the other countries of Furone exnerienc:eit the shock of
Jacobinism. vVhen people like Byron and Shelley invaded
;lish society, Satan seemed to have entered the quiet houses
>ld England. Lucifer, Milton's fallen angel, the ultimate
~at to the Commonwealth of a Christian world, set foot on
British Isles when these geniuses introduced the rights of
love and suicide, free-thinking and libertinism, into the
ed social order of England.
he eccentricities of the "esprit libre," the orgies of free
us, were the background of life in French literature and
~ty; passion was the conditio sine qua non for the rule of
tlity in France. The legitimate wife and the mistress coexist
Frenchman's life. Without the eruptions of passionate feel-
passionate love, passionate cre.ation, the republic would
its anchorage in the nature of man. The Human Comedy,
was described by the great Napoleon of French literature,
ore de Balzac, is the tragedy of love and greed, ambition'
jealousy. Balzac reads the runes of this society; he draws
the veil which covers the skeleton of its organization. The
:ieur and wretchedness of the human heart (compare Cle-
:eau's Grandeurs et l\!f iseres d'une Victoire) drive the ma-
~ry of life. Balzac described the devastations of passion in
ife of the individual, the price which was paid by thou-
i of Frenchmen for the fireworks of liberalism and prog-
The literary men themselves were the victims of this law
te smelting-furnace. Sainte-Beuve described it when he
"\Vhereas the classical' writers wrote only with the higher
mrely intellectual part of their being, today the conditions
e time force the writer to wrest from his nature all and
thing that it can sell." "I must express my century," said
c.
is means condemning a man to swim with the stream of
~e to the limit of exhaustion, to struggle against death
veakness in the agony of his heart. And the strain is the
terrible because, in the age of genius, heart and spirit
o longer distinguishable. The heart no longer has an
tive order of the spirit to fall back on, as it has in civiliza-
where the spirit is public and the heart individual. The
h monism of heart and brain_ ~nirit nf th~ rn.mm-. .. ,....: ....
1d spirit of genius, leads the individual into endless effusions
ld catastrophes. This monism is the great French contribution
• the nineteenth century. Of Pierre Loti his biographer,
. Coquelin, could say: "Among the remedies for escaping the
[ght of ~ime he found, however, one noble way, the way of
terature. Loti thought that 'the necessity of fighting against
~ath is the only reason a man can have for working.' He there-
.re composed novels in order to prolong the memory of him-
lf beyond this short life, and, what was even more important
1 him, to prolong this life by living the past over again." The

.orbidity of a soul which believes in its obligation to become

amortal through intellectual means was compensated only by
te brilliance of the sparks struck from such a troubled soul
t its search for immortality.
Balzac, Zola, Proust are "artistic lenses focussed on reality.
heir "immortality" is not their fault. Lenses and prisms of
~ciety as they are, they only reflect its functioning. It is true
tat tltey mark the rapid decline of love from an exalted idea
~ a passion (Balzac), to a vice (Zola), and to a crime (Proust).
:uman love, the love of Adam and Eve, is mortal and sinful
1to death. The magnificence of the pictures drawn by the
)Velist does not alter the fatal down-hill course which indi-
dual passion took between 1789 and 1918, once it had been
t loose. The God of the French Revolution is the God of
tssion. Even Ernest H~llo, the devout Catholic, in whose work
le tears, the misery and the faith of man are transmuted into
ire sounds that can be understood in every quarter of the
obe and in every clime, cannot help ending this book with
typically French expression. Theoretically, the sentence could
lSt as well have been written by anyone else, an Englishman
· a Russian; but it would not stand as the last word of a book
: edification: "For what is God's supreme quality? Dieu qui
t feu brulant, Amen, Amen." (God is burning fire, Amen,
men.)
Passion burns us to dross; passion dies. It is true that the
ords of the genius were brought up from the well of life, the
)em was written, the picture painted, the discovery made;
,.,.1 ;.....,. f-h.o 1>"'1'rtof-hA..n.v. ..n.l= ;Yrl!Tir'u"""°f-":ll;+u -r'll-+ ..n.-nlu ":lT".o +h.o ,....,.,.,of. ~-,.1
b.emist and the ecrivain, Victor Hugo, Berthelot and Zola,
nt, but Madame Berthelot rests at the side of her husband
i she loved so passionately that they died together.
:sion excuses crime in France, and Madame Caillaux was
v-ed by the jury for having shot Calmette, the detractor of
h Caillaux who had infuriated the capitalists by sponsor-
te sacrileges of sacrileges, the income tax.
zac wrote ·after Napoleon I. After Napoleon III, Emile
facing the social struggles between classes, supplemented
:'s Comedie Humaine with his tragedy of the race. In the
y volumes of his Rougon-Macquart he draws back the
n from the destruction of the race by the passions of sex
reed. Syphilis and loveless mar~iage Tuin body and soul
tree of life.
~ third generation, represented by Marcel Proust, went
T still in its bold inv.estigation of the forces of life behind '
~nes of society. The inversion of the instincts of life scar
r as Proust describes it in his great fifteen-volume work:
~echerche du Temps Perdu. Man loving man and woman
woman sterilize the natural flowering of youth, sterilize
)pe of natural regeneration. "]'appelle ici 'amour' une
~ reciproque" was Proust's terrible definition of love.
! Balzac and like Zola, Proust was denounced as an
:ratus, a destroyer of decency. But intellectual courage
. established god in French literature; and so Proust ex-
1 proudly and calmly to his friend Louis de Robert why
. to write on Sodom and Gomorrah and their unnatural
"I am serving a general truth which prohibits me from
lg any more of my agreeable friends than of the disagree-
~o have won the favour of the Sadists will have its reac-
L me as a man once my book has been published; it could
•dify the conditions under which I experience truth, and
I did not choose from any personal caprice.''
THE PITFALL OF REASON.

on, l'esprit, the intellect of the writing and reasoning

is constantly fighting against the darkness of "illiteracy."
ust know how tfl rP~rl ~nr1 J...,,. - -~-
UT'r:'to ._,...,. 1
--- ·
11
a civilized nation. The illiterate is a poor devil in this en-
1.tened world. He clings to symbols, he is dependent on
>erstitions. He is not a pure "individual"; he wears all kinds
blinkers. He marches, perhaps, in procession on Corpus
risti day; as a husband he wears and respects (perhaps!) a
.d ring; as a gentleman, he takes off his hat when a lady
ses, though this is an old feudal abuse. In brief, the irra-
n.al part of man's nature is a slave to forms and symbols, and
ks upon life through a glass darkly. Reason sees straight
ough all the symbols. It is free of superstition. It needs no
blems, no flags. It is not subject to the fury characteristic
:he illiterate, who are roused by bugaboos. It is not deceived
the cheap intoxication of lies and· fairy-tales.
rhis is the creed of the modern mind, or was its creed twenty.
rs ago. It is one of these self-betrayals which any revolution-
party unconsciously produces as long as it is storming the'
Js of Jericho. A revolution on its way, a movement in its
t century, is perfectly honest in thinking that the twilight
the gods exist only on the other side.
n clearing up the underbrush of privilege and prejudice,
~ralism or rationalism was convinced that it held in its
td the naked truth, undisguised, unstained by dogma or
iition. Reason discovering nature can test everything by
•eriment. There is no room for traditional habits: fashion
es the place of habit. But it is precisely fashion which en-
res Reason. The philosophizing mind has its prison of sensu-
y and drudgery exactly like a pupil of the Jesuits or a child
a backwoods village. Its fairy-tale and its prejudice are
dependent upon miracles or dogmas or incense or witch-
ft, but the apparatus of Reason is subject to the same laws
ensuous disguise as any other part of the human soul. Su per-
ion sends us to the medicine man, physical pain to the
rsician. We have a native sense that urges us on toward Rea-
and Philosophy: this sense is curiosity. Without a sense for
relty, no thinker can succeed or affect the life of the com-
nity. The self-indulgence of Reason is its predilection for
new. The newspaper is the true expression of this quality
~h;l.,..,c~...-.h;,...,.1 ~~...,.,-..o'"'t-;".....,. ._.i,.~ ,r.Llt,....,."' ...... ,... .. ,.,.., C .......................... - .... L ! - L ---'-1--
an to recollect truth in its disguise as news. New facts and
~w ideas inflame our imagination. Without this flame the best
.ea, the wisest thought, remains useless. Any influence upon
ir senses is useless so long as our senses do not react. Indif-
rence is a state of perfect equilibrium. When we feel neither
1ld nor warm, our internal thermometer is not registering
tything. As long as we feel neither joy nor pride, our emo-
Jnal system is quiescent. Philosophy has recognized the ex-
rnal dependence of all our senses. It is aware that they are all
lsed on impressions, and react to influences from outside.
Now Reason is exactly the same kind of servant. It serves us
~n whenever its proper centre is stimulated. It is created and
ven to us for the purpose of distinguishing between new and
d. It begins to move and to be stimulated by sensations which
e new, unheard of. Reason is tickled by novelty. The nine~
~nth century changed the oldest truths into sensational news.
·e are willing to believe that the wind bloweth where it list-
1, or that to him who hath shall be given, if we read it on the
lnt page of our newspaper as the latest cable from Seattle.
, the latest news in the newspaper, the oldest truth is welcome
Reason. The Age of Reason reveals truth by proceeding
>m news to news. It believes that the age of Revelation is
ne; it believes in Enlightenment. But it itself is wholly based
Revelation. Reason cannot understand eternity or old age.
scorns tradition, ancien regime) customs, irrational weights or
~asll:res. It is clear, precise; but it also destroys everything
tich cannot be made either bad or happy news. Anything
1t is not willing to break out or happen or change is hidden
Reason. The nineteenth century forgot all eternal truth
iich was not ready to step down into the arena of Latest
~ws, telegrams and publicity. A man had to become a sensa-
n lest he be a failure.
To secure the electric current from which permanent sensa-
n could be drawn, Reason had to conclude an alliance with
~ almighty power through which mankind enters the realm
sensation. Venus had to be propitious to the adventure of
·ason. Without Venus, Reason is dry and sterile. All ancient
_ _ _ 1 __ _ _ 1 _ _, _ _ 1 1 1 1 r ..
ie same word. And it is true that the world comes to us
irough our most worldly quality: sex. That explains the erotic
bsession of the Age of Reason. This erotic sensitiveness repro-
uced a great mythology nourished by the ebullition of our
~sh and blood. The art of the nineteenth century is quite dif-
:rent from the art of other periods, of the Italian Renaissance,
tr example. The use of the same word for both is highly mis-
ading. In the liberal art of the "French" century in Europe,
eason invested all its faith. The fate and destiny of Reason
ere trusted to the process of sensuous revelation. A manifest
gic seemed to govern the sensations experienced by one genius
ter the other. One blood, it was supposed, runs through the
~ins of all the artists who are members of the cult. The plea~­
~es, the excitements, the fashions, the curiosities of genius, are
> longer considered to be casual impressions of private· inqi-
duals. They follow each other-from Chenier to Anatole
·ance, from Beethoven to Strauss, from Byron to Wilde, from
~opardi to d' Annunzio-with the trans-personal logic of evo-
tion. This evolution is necessary and inevitable even if it is
tal.
The experiments in the art of this last period are based on a
ythological faith in the lawfulness of our sensuous reactions;
the labyrinth of our passions and true nature, only pleasure
,elf can serve as a clue. In its manifold phases and changes,
: restless transformations, pleasure seems to have little dignity
~d .less reliability. But the artist's pleasure is ennobled, for
is believed to be part of a universal process. The sequence
sensations and intellectual emotions through which four
five generations of writers and painters and composers passed
majestic procession, this "erotomanie cerebra le" which
pped every possible source of pleasure and excitement, was
1ctified as the true self-revelation of the deity of Life. With
fe as its sovereign, art is freed from any code or creed which
not based on pleasure. Barbey d'Aurevilly, a most Catholic
ench writer, in a letter, in 1877, explained the rules of the
me to a baffled ultra-Catholic youth, Leon Bloy, by this
.r~~i?.~ paradox: "I~ q~est~?~so! morals_~~ must do what we
:e is true. There the only safe rule is to do what gives you
easure." It is no mean pleasure; for it is not individual. Our
ittered, particular pleasures are made human because they
e integrated into a human body of common experience. The
tmanism of the last century must not be mistaken either for
e licentiousness of libertines and deracines or for a pedantic
vival of classical humanity. The artists serve on a humanistic
pedition which utilizes every shock, every nervous fit, every
iotion or sensation of its members as another successful way
reconnoitring man's terra incognita: himself.
In the nineteenth century art is no longer the expression of
ldoubted values through the medium of our senses. Art itself
doubt, and every artist is rea~y for death, disease, paralysis,
struction whenever passion forces him to meet life on danger-
s ground. "Ils ne mouraient pas tous, mais tous etaient
~ppes." Baudelaire would say: '']'ai cultive ma hysterie avec
~issance et terreur." For this service he was rewarded by Vic-
~ Hugo's praise: "Vous creez un frisson nouveau," you are
ring us a new sensation. Through the creations of art the
es of the poets are integrated into the great uniting force:
Ee, in the singular, comprehending us all. "La Vie" is the
mmon denominator of a century of individualism. It is its
ity because it is the unity among all the innumerable
~issons nouveaux." Life, it was presupposed, was unitarian,
>nistic, running through all the brains of creative individuals,
one evolutionary stream. Without this on.e mythical unity
"life," Reason, in its fury of analysis, would have destroyed
! very conception of unity.
These, then, are the "grandeurs et miseres'' of the victory of
:ason. Reason, abstract and unreal, without roots in the soil,
thout rhythm in its movements, cannot govern its world
thout submitting to the directing power of sensation.
Today we are somewhat tired of this self-indulgence of Rea-
l. The titillation of our sense of novelty is expensive and
:.nous, because world, facts, truth and values lose their roots
the timeless when they are made to depend upon being
liscovered from time to time. Under the dictatorship of Rea-
1. man beQ'illS tO live JikP ~ ~Ollt~TV ~nrt OnP-rP11Pr'f ~n;m'.:ll 1
This unicellular life can get nowhere except by eating and
swallowing. Multicellular life can depend upon older achieve-
ments without eating and digesting them. The modern society
of the nineteenth century kills everything which cannot be
swallowed in the form of news and sensations. It is unicellular.
Now civilization does not form visible cells; its cells consist of
generations, ages, periods. The repressive and outstanding fea-
ture of the :ige of Reason is its "single-aged," one-generation
character. Such an age may go on for two hundred years; but
it will always remain a one-generation affair as long as its values
depend on reproduction in the form of novelty. We meet
reality through various senses. Any sense which states a dif-
ference is able to inform us. A consideration of our modern
life will reveal how much of its information is based-on a mere
,ense of curiosity. Curiosity arranges the things of the universe
iccording to their quality of being new; and this produces an
Jrder of things of remarkable futility. The movie star comes to
the foreground, wisdom is ridiculed, forests are sacrificed with-
Jut a qualm because they grow so slowly, and skyscrapers are
1dored because they go up so fast. It is a very limited outlook
)n the universe which we gain through our instruments for
1ews. There are other instruments, like hunger, reverence,
Jatience, faith, which work in a different way and discover
rery different parts of the world.
The sense of novelty has been organized in the last hundred
md fifty years as our· main highroad of information. We say:
t - has been organized. The nineteenth century did not make
liscoveries or inventions in the same way as any other period
>f history. It invented the technique of invention; it formu-
ated the methods of discovery. The secret of the French Rev-
>lution is the organization of discovery. We no longer stumble
·rom one invention to the next; we have learned to plan our
nventions and discoveries.
The sensation of novelty is sanctified by the campaigns car-
·ied on in our laboratories into the unknown. But like any
acrament, this one is stained by terrible superstitions. No one
vishes to minimize the miracles performed in the laboratory;
)Ut We must OVefCOme this ann;:11lincr rlP~t~nrf-;.,..,.,..,. -..C C--~L-
cipline, faith, by curiosity and by the growing paralysis of
, rest of our senses. Because everybody has been trained in
·iosity, most people have neglected their other senses; our
~per, wiser, better and more important links with reality
re degenerated under our system of newspapers, radios,
>nographs, movies, with their organization of novelty. They
the bane of modern life. The prohibition of news would
.ore the peace of many families. Truth will die lf the masses
it based on nothing but novelty. Truth is not new, it is all
und us. It was before we were. The original thinker knows
t true originality consists in being as old as creation.
Lt the installation of a minister, at which I was present,
:her the examiner nor the min.ister being examined cared
:he least for the old dogma of the pre-existence of Christ.
~y were faithful believers in the ideas of liberty, Class of
g, and did not suspect that truth must be as old as the
Id in order to be truth at all. "Pre-existence of Christ" is
an old expression for a law completely forgotten by the
:ury of progress, which says that truth has been and will
vhen all our sensational news has withered and faded away
the morning dew. Dew is refreshing; dew is morning-like;
dew of novelty is an image of the morning star, called
.cifer" by the ancients! But Lucifer and all his projects for
earthly happiness are very apt to presume too far. The
piness of the individu~l is limited by his mortality. The
ies must survive one individual's shortcomings. Lucifer's
.e ·brought his downfall. The heresy of the nineteenth cen-
is its utter disregard of the eternal recurrence of life .
.hie to hear or to understand through any medium which
>t telegraph, telephone or radio-that is, which is not sensa-
al or new-our period is doomed because it has not taken
lght for reproduction and regeneration.
he Russian Revolution, in trying to end history, was strik-
1gainst this nightmare of liberty and reason. The trap-door
~rlying Reason bears an illuminated sign "Latest Ne,vs,"
tsational Report." In the laboratory, ·where progress can
.rganized, this trap-door leads into a real and important
, thP ict.n.r.Ph.n.rt~A ,,...,.(: .......... ,,&T ......... ..,,+-L>-: ... 1 ... ~..-1 ------=-=---- T._ ,,
orld of society, the trap-door with this inscription leads into
le gaping pit of much ado about nothing. Sensation cannot
istinguish between the permanent and the sham, between
anity Fair and the Holy of Holies, between short-lived Noise
id long-Ii ved Silence. '
The· French Revolution sharpened our senses for change;
blunted them to the deeper sensations that precede the com-
tg earthquake of world-war and world-revolution. No civili-
.tion was ever taken so completely by surprise as was Europe
f the World War. The Age of Reason fell into the abyss of
me without any understanding of how to make a war or
JW to conclude a peace. The period of the French Revolu-
Jn, because it was a period 0£ "Reason first," was ensnared
r the absolutism of the latest news, and in spite of all intel-
ctual warnings, no wisdom, no religion, and no reverence
ere left to prepare the nations for an honest war or a 'rea-
nable peace. Reason was overruled by blind passions, because
eason had degraded the peers: Hunger and Love, Old Age
Ld Tradition.
The shortcomings of the Age of Reason are usually treated
economic shortcomings. Marxians content themselves with
.posing "capitalism" behind the mask of liberalism. They can
e only matter where the liberals saw ideas. The red intel-
:tuals are very harsh against the material interest, but they
e less eager to criticiie their own failure as intellectuals. A
~ver Frenchman unmasked the bad conscience of the red
tellectuals in a book that he called La Trahison des C lercs,
e treason of the clergy of our modern civilization, of the
erati themselves. Therefore, instead of relaxing in the rock-
g chair of economic statistics, we discussed the role of reason
any age, be it Bolshevik, liberal or feudal, and thereby
~cumscribed the relative place of the French Revolution.

THE PEASANT OF PARIS.

Today Paris, th'e "ville de la lumiere/' is threatened with

.rkness. In 1931 Aragon wrote a great novel on The Peasant
Paris (Le Paysan de Paris), in which he treated Paris as one
. 1 •
•ok is the turning away to a France without the tour d' Eiffel
Paris and the ocean of light spreading from the City to the
llages. Aragon thinks that personal life will have to disap-
1

ar from the surface of our earth. "Les personnes ont fini leur
nps sur la terre ." \Vorker and agricultural labourer, the infe-
~ organisms of Clemenceau, are advancing. The number of
:ists and foreigners is dwindling down. The lights of the tour
~iffel and the lightning flashes of genius are, after all, artifi-
Ll lights. Any strike in the electrical power-plant, this city of
ht, Paris, must result in the disintegration of France. The
:k of regeneration in the governing class of France since
emenceau and Poincare is tremendous. Of course, as in
.gland or Germany, the best m~n have died during the War.
ld the "pays," the old countries, the regions, are being spoken
again. The Basques, stimulated from the Spanish side, begin
rub their eyes. Brittany was always something apart; Alsace-
rraine is influenced by her nearness to Switzerland and her
rman expenence.
But it seems improbable that regionalism can make real
>gress in France. It is too early. The outcome of the French
vol ution, the concentration of the elite in Paris, is not to
undone after only a century of trial. Some colonial adven-
·er from Tunis or Morocco might perhaps give reality to
: rather theoretical revival of the regions in France. But
mce's universal function, the part she must play against
lshevism, will hold her for the time being to her moral and
itical constitution. Today, as always, the French are ap-
1aching a rather slight change with great violence.
CHECKS ON INDIVIDUALISM.

rhe world could not exist without severe checks on the

nch system of government, and we look around for the
:es which were vigorous enough to balance French indi-
ualism during the nineteenth century. We have already
1tioned the deep shock which characters like Byron's pro-
:ed on the British Isles. When the naked statue of Shelley
erected in University College, Oxford, something "French"
k possession of Ent!lanrl whirh w~~ ~~ rPun1nt1n.n-:»ru ~~ t-ha
ords "Prime Minister" or "Liberal," i1nported during the
.neteenth century.
But behind these influences the old organization of England
~rsisted. No Paris swallowed up the English countryside, no
)Urgeoisie hung the tricolour over the fireplaces of the old
anors of England's green and pleasant land. The English Con-
.tution remains unwritten, unreasonable, and old. To be like
te's ancestors, to have privileges, to exist by precedent, to be a
ntleman, offensive as these things are in France, are recom-
endations in England and Anglo-Saxon countries even today.
Revelation of genius, inundation by passion, are not the
'Y to a career in England. Another creed, a different faith,
eated the British Commonwealth. The French system of an
e of Reason and Nature following upon the ancien regime}
th its prejudices and unreasonableness, would not have func-
med for an hour without its active counterpart, an age' of
ecedent, prescriptive right and experience of the world.
In turning from the French Revolution to the British Con1-
)nwealth we shall find the key to the situation of America
1ay, standing as she does midway between the English and
~ French. But we shall find more. In opposing precedent and
velty, customs and written law, experience and reason,
'orld" and -"nature," we shall look deep into the variousness
man. A revolution produces a national character as one
mbination of the vast. possibilities of the human soul. The
tions of Europe are not pebbles, not bodies which developed
e atoms in the universe. They came into existence to save
~ life of the soul from deviation and one-sidedness.
The eternally valid discoveries of the proletarian and the~
urgeois revolution would make no sense if they were not
ated to the preceding attempts to express our desires through
~ framework of political forms. The French Revolution was
t a continuation of the English Revolution; it came as its
:ical antagonist. Without this permanent opposition it loses
meaning. And all Europeans are called upon to nourish
~mselves, not upon one or the other revolution, but upon
~ totality of institutions created by the great revolutions of
• hnrn!ln ~nn L
 CHAPTER SIX

England: A Commonwealth Within the Western

World
Detective History-The Realm-Common Law-The Restoration of the Com-
non Law-Economics and Budget-Particulars and Precedents-The Pedigree of
)liver Cromwell-The New Environment: The Western World-The )'heft of a
Nord-The King in Parliament-A Parliamentary Church-Public Spirit-The
~nd of Convocation-The Language of a Gentleman-The Fifth of November-
rhe European Sjgnificance of "Glorious Rcvolution"-The Three Restorations-
rhe Loss of the First Commonwealth-The Adaptation to the Bourgeois Revo-
ution: Sportsmanship and Liberalism

DETECTIVE HISTORY.

VHY SHOULD A FOREIGNER MEDDLE WITH THE ENGLISH REVOLU-

ion? The English, in any case, will not care what he says about
~ngland. While the French always claimed a European scope
or their undertaking, the British tried to make theirs a ,fam-
ly affair, for people of good breeding; and it need scarcely
>e s~id that you must be an Englishman in order to be well-
ffed. -It was English gentlemen who told the story of the
~ritish Revolution to the new middle classes of the Victorian
ra: Thomas Babington Macaulay immortalized the virtues of
Villiam and the Whigs in the Glorious Revolution, and Sam-
~el R. Gardiner published all the documents concerning the
trocities of Cromwell and the Civil War, from 1640 to 1660;
rhile other writers concentrated on the obscenities of the
~estoration (between 1660 and 1685) at court, on the stage,
nd in Pepys' diaries.
Unfortunately, the British Revolution is in sore need of
eing retold by a foreigner-not for the sake of any reader in
__ ~ • .. • 1 T "I "I r -w "" • - -
or they are being compelled to readjust themselves, and they
mnot do so without fitting England into the European pat-
Tn. The British Revolution has been splendidly isolated from
1y possible explanation, by a tacit conspiracy among Eng-
sh historians and lawyers, which stands in the way of any
~asonable treatment of politics in our textbooks on history,
Jlitical theory, economics, and law. Hence, a German World
:istory, in dealing with Europe in the seventeenth century,
1d only two sentences on England; and this was outdone by
l Oxford History of Europe that did not mention the author's
vn country at all. So well have the English contrived to make
e world believe that the Anglican Church, the English Par-
tment, and the British Empire ·are institutions not on earth
It in heaven! The catholic, European, universal character
· their experience, the correct and precise place of its faith
td vocabulary in the European concert, had no place in their
stitutions and their outlook. They used every spark of wit
Ld genius to conceal what they did from the unworthy gaze
the princes and peoples on the Continent. They were ex-
usive and insular for a great purpose. And the result is that
h.ool-children everywhere suffer; for without the part of the
ad that led mankind through the green lawns of England,
story and law resemble a maze. The English Revolution
Lght to be saved from its English detractors, because in spite
their insularity it w4s a human, a Christian, a universal
ent.
First of all, the English split their literary traditions of the
dsive hours of their past into three sections, one idealistic,
le materialistic, and one realistic. The pride of the nation
ntres about the Glorious Revolution; the depravity of the
uart Restoration allows English men of letters an insight
to the otherwise hidden sides of man's nature and body; and
e documents and pamphlets of the Civil War can be pub-
bed and registered in a completely matter-of-fact way, with-
t ever coming to an end. The Continental reproach of Eng-
h hypocrisy and perfidy dates from the unwillingness of
tglish _w:iters to con~eive of t~e years frorr 1640 to 1691
r\111&><. rl•c>f-11'1r"li"f- "lrl;t ,..,,,.....,. .............. ,,. ... ~ _____ _]
 It is true that recent authors have written valuable books on
he seventeenth century which repair this splitting up of the
1olitical tradition. But these writers go to the other extreme.
Vhen the whole of the seventeenth century is surveyed at once,
r the sixteenth and seventeenth together, the peculiarities of
ur fifty years are levelled over. Instead of two separate peaks
'.:::ivil War, 1640 to 1660, and Glorious Revolution, 1688), as
1ey appeared in the old, fictitious tale, the moderns make the
Team of history run through a monotonous plain. Either way,
1e fifty years of gigantic struggle, which tower up like a real
iountain-the "highest time in history," as Hobbes rightly
uistened it-are flattened out.
The very use of three different i;iames enabled the English
> disguise what is really one drama in the form of three differ-

1t plays. "Great Rebellion" is the official label for the years

540 to 1660; the years 1660 to 1668 are styled "Restoration";
1d the "Glorious Revolution," 16,88 and 1689, is appended
ke a stroke of Providence with almost no extension in time.
ow these three names:
Great Rebellion
Restoration
Glorious Revolution
·e in themselves great accomplishments of the British Revolu-
Jn. They are marvellously well-chosen by its contemporaries
. order to confuse the issue and befog the reader as to the
·inciples involved.
Constitutional history, in the field of Anglo-Saxon public
w, is like a detective story. We shall try to detect the mo-
ves of this intentional camouflaging, and to recover the lost
Lmes of the three parts. Under an English pen this disclosure
·obably would read like a detective story. For a real theft,
, if you prefer, the embezzlement of a nan1e was perpetrated
the midst of the Revolution. I would not go so far as to
ggest that the revolutionary crime corresponds to the peculiar
1glish worship of detective stories. Howe\-er, why may not a
ltion with a theft in ti1e very centre of her political existence
·come detective-minded?
 Since we are analyzing the theft in the capacity of outside
bservers, we cannot successfully compete with Blackstone or
:onan Doyle. And therefore ·we are not going to imitate their
rong point: we shall give away the whole plot before the
ory begins. The Drama of the English Revolution may be
tlled "The King in Parliament." It is a drama, though it lacks
ie unity of place and time which is so fascinating in the
ramatized history of France. In fact, it begins like a morality
lay, becomes a pageant in its middle part, and ends as a mira-
e play. In other words, it contains three parts:
The Puri tan Restoration 1640 to 1659
The King's Restoration 1660 to 1685
The Anglican Restoration · 1685 to 1691
In retracing the English adventures of the words "revolu-
on" and "restoration" we shall relocate this drama in 'the
1iritual pedigree of Christendom as a whole. Nevertheless, let
be said from the beginning that the British used the word
·evolution" in a sense opposite to the French and in contrast
our present-day use. In our eyes revolution is connected .
ith the schemes and intentions of revolutionaries, and points
the day of the first violent outbreak. The British coined the
rm ''Glorious Revolution" for precisely the reverse idea;
was meant as a full stop at the end of a sentence. Not the
·st, but the last, day of that stormy period was labelled Glori-
1s Revolution, and with the intention of ending all revolu-
)hary efforts forever. ,
Once the unity of the drama o'f the King in Parliament is
stored, the English Revolution is no longer insular. As the
·ench period from l 848 to 187 5 tested the ideas of 1789 to
e uttermost, so the King-in-Parliament of Great Britain was
~idly put to the test in a period of humiliation which lasted
rty years, from 1774 to 1815. The periods previous to the
1miliation resemble each other in both countries also. A
ajestic rhythm becomes visible, comparable to the Continental
ovements of the political symphony.
The third and last statement in this survey will give a clue
the seauence of our tale. It is concerned with thP nnint of
trture for the specifically British evolution. In the preced-
:hapters we found that the point of conflict came long be-
the open outbreak. In Russia the intelligentsia, this arti-
l creation of Czarism, definitely broke with the government
uly as 1825. In France something irreparable happened
the revocation of the Edit de Nantes for the Huguenots
58 5. The British, too, had their skeleton in the closet, for
~than a century. Their fate was determined in 1535 by the
ution of the Chancellor of the Realm, Thomas More. Thus
)eriods of the English Revolution are circumscribed:
r OF CoNFLICT UPHEAVAL PRIDE HUMILIATION
1535 1640-91 1745-74 1774- 18 15
1is is the part of the story that is purely British. How-
the particular charm of this evolution is its interplay
later European revolutions. After 1815 the nation had
lapt itself to the results of a later, equally universal con-
Hion, the French Revolution. From this process conclu-
may be drawn for the present, in that we, too, have to
t ourselves to an event which presses upon us from the
de. Adaptation is a process, not in the bottom of our
:s, but on the surface. During the nineteenth century Great
.in managed so well to disguise her proper constitution
today Americans or Frenchmen can speak of her as a
>eracy. This gives us reason to hope that some day France
America will be called Bolshevist by the Russians, with-
ll:aving gone any further in the direction of dictatorial
munism than the British have in the direction of egali-
1 democracy.
:is, in making this remark, I realize how, for a large class
tders, this chapter on Great Britain is under a more serious
icap ·still.
tough Americans do not share the English creed, they hold
the English creed should be stated in the terms of the
.sh themselves. The unity of language, though it does not
imply unity of ideas, yet reserves to the English the privi-
)f being known directly, without any foreign interpreter.
COmmOn-laW laWVer ::tnif thP nPr~An nf l;t-'°'r~ru f-.-,.cf-£>., ;...,,
erica, in natural response to their heritage, grant the Eng-
what they do not grant any other European tradition:
: it be left untranslated and not reduced to a common, all-
1an denominator.
Iy studies of Roman, Canon, and Germanic law, for in-
.ce, have not protected me from the violent outcries of
sts who knew nothing but the common law and their Black-
.e, Maitland, and Holdsworth. And what was so terrible?
Lt I spoke, like Burke, with perfect ingenuousness, of the
.mon law of all Europe. Common Law had to be Anglo-
)n, not universal. This lack of humour of the English-
~rican, with regard to any Continental intervention benveen
self and his direct knowledge of England, is in itself a vir-
You do not want to protect the English, but you do want
1rotect your own decency about the English. Thus, when
List get on your nerves, don't forget that this may be, not
mch the result of irreverence or ignorance, as the dire need
~cognize the English contribution for our common life.

THE REALM.

he frequent failure of parliamentarism on the Continent

urope is explained by the fact that few parliaments have
~rstood the wisdom of the English solution. English na-
11 liberty depends on the existence of a Norman Realm.
(etching the British C?mmonwealth we must first explain
permanent features of this Realm.
tie-Norman Realm, Royaume, Kingdom, is a Christian and
:inental power established over England by the right of
;word and the blessings of the Church. When the ushers
1unce the sitting of court in England they cry, "Oyezl'
" (audite!), the old French-Norman word. When the Prime
[ster of England appoints a bishop, he asks the King to
~ a letter to the chapter of the cathedral containing the
~ of the candidate, and summoning Dean and Chapter to
:ise their "droit d' elire," their fictitious right to choose this
idate. 1 When the King accepts the grievances and bills
r a recent example, see Viscount Alverstone, Recollections of Bar and
, P. 2~6-8. London. 101 r:.
ed upon these grievances by his faithful militia in the Lower
ise of Parliament, he uses the Norman formula: Le roi
ercie ses bons sujets, accepte leur benevolence et ainsi
~ut.
i 1628 the lawyers of the House refused to receive a gra-
s message in plain English from King Charles I. A verbal
;age from the King is no full royal declaration. The customs
he realm prohibit any answer outside the framework of
ncery. Coke, the leading lawyer, formulated the Petition
jghts. Again the King tried to answer it by a long speech
nglish. But the House continued to mutter until the King
in, and used the Norman formula: "Soil droit comme il
resin}." These lawyers preferred· Norman stones to English
d. The strong roof of the Realm seemed to then1 a better
:er than an English popular government. \
he English had little luck with their dynasties. With the
ption of the Tudors (Henry VII, Henry VIII, Edward,
y and Elizabeth), no English dynasty has been English since
1, and even the Tudors descended from the "butler of a
;h Bishop," Owen op Mergent, and the French princess,
lerine of Valois! No ruler of purely English blood has
. on the English throne from 1066 up to 1935. The throne
reign. But the Throne is surrounded by other royal insti-
1ns of Church and State. The Church was Norman, too.
first Lords Spiritual,. Lanfranc, Anselm, Thomas, were
ch_clergymen. The Lords Temporal were Normans: Simon
tfort of Leicester, though called Protector gen tis A nglice
te popular songs~was a Norman who took sides with the
ish people against the Realm.
1e King's Council and the King's Court were Norman.
ament is a French word, too, a translation of the old
rian-Frankish "sprakha," colloquium, into the Normanized
kish term "parliament." The Realm consisted of the
and Queen
King's Council
King's Court
King's Parliament, Earls, Dukes, Marquisses, Bishops and
-- - A

The Norman Lords, Bishops and Abbots were summoned to

Parliament individually, by their proper names; the Knights
of the Shires, "gentry," and the burgesses of the towns, by
their generic names.
Thus within the Realm the only members distinctively Eng-
lish were not recognized as personal dignitaries. The yeomanry
of the shires, however, looked up to the squires as their nearest
native leaders, after they were deprived of all native higher
nobility and royalty.

King
Bishops
Realm
Lords Temporal
Gentry

Gentry (The gen try is to be

Gens Angli~ Yeomanry found on both sides;
{ Serfs realm and nation)

War Lords and Church Lords were foreigners. The strange

aversion of Englishmen to the German title of the Emperor,
"War Lord," seems utterly unfounded to a Continental, be-
cause he knows that War Lord is a limitation, and denies un-
limited power to the War Lord in peace times. But in England
it sounds as if a foreig~er were presuming to command good
English blood. The "A ngestammten," the native princes of
Germany, being unknown in England, English blood became
the slogan of every English political movement. A gentry of
truly English descent was in itself a guarantee of the English
birthright. The gentry were looked up to by the simple yeo-
manry because they gave a voice to the English blood within
the Realm.
During the whole period of the Middle Ages, the Realm
also governed the counties of England. It looked down upon
the gentry as it did upon the Commons of England. The pride
of the gentry in belonging to the people, or at least in repre-
senting them, is derived from the haughty viewpoint that pre-
u .... ;1C' ;..,. t-h.a D.a"lm Th,,.,. ,.....,......,.._~Y• ~C •l-~ -L=--- ---- ,-.. _______ ---
t viewed from the Throne. They are Squires, Leaders and
f when looked at in their local situation and environ-
. The Commoners boast of being the Commons because
access to the People ·outside the Realm is certified by the
~ssion Commoner. This access gave them an advantage in
1arison with all the other powers in the Realm. The very
'.S of the other members, Lords and Counsellors of the
, nullified their capacity for representing anyone but them-
;! Individualism barred the gTeat members of the Realm.
'ho wishes to be the head of a living unity must not have
ne of his own, he must owe his name and leadership to
ody whose head he is to become. The Commons had the
luck to be nameless in the Realm of Great Britain and
iandy.
the old days of the Realm, during the Middle Ages, the
Lan King-like all the other Christian Kings-had sum- '
d a parliament that ·would pledge his subjects to the taxes
L his chancellor proposed to lay upon the people, rich
>oor, of the Realm. To go to Parliament was a burden
iy member of it, and a merciful King spared his subjects
teavy service so far as he could; for they knew perfectly
'.low difficult it was to withhold their consent, and how
pressure could be brought upon them when they ap-
d in the King's presence. In times of little traffic and
quate transportation, a11y government was weak as long
subjects were far away. A Russian proverb said: "Russia
:, a·nd the Czar is far away." This is the secret of the
le Ages, too. Organization was difficult because distances
s meant loss of authority. The King's servants had no
· ways of communication than any recalcitrant subject.
iay airplanes, cars, trains and ships, telephone and radio
e seized by the government with relative quickness; in
)f emergency this monopoly of information and transpor-
gives it an overwhelming power with which no private
:an compete. The French Revolution, by abolishing the
~ges of any single region and by making men equals,
1weakened the individual power that it cannot be com-
urith thP rPntr~l nn1".l1Prc;: 'lAT~ h--:.u.o h.o~...-.. ,......,.,.,.:1~.rl h-· ... h~
rench Revolution to the point of thinking any government,
ven the weakest, infinitely more powerful than its individual
[tizens. But we can see even in our day how the equality of
ten is abused by the corporation lawyers, when they establish
ersons, companies, trusts, corporations, which cripple the gov-
~nment because they can manage information, -propaganda,
Jtes, influence, lobbies, to such an extent that they become
ates within the State. We must multiply the power of the
rinces of modern business considerably in our imagination
we wish to get a proportionate· picture of media!val England.
It took so much time for any central power to get informa-
on and to act upon it~ that, practically, the local lord was
te real master of his tenants, and royalty no more than an
rerlord. Only his feudal allegiance to the sovereign dimin-
l-ied the local power and kept down the local arrogance of
lch a powerful lord. In Parliament the great became small
id the proud humble. The local governors came under the
•ntrol of a higher ruler, with better standards of adminis-
ation and justice, because they had to face his eye and listen
his words. The Christian and anointed King, owing a part
his rights to the support of the Church, would fight against
e arrogance and intemperance of the great. He would humil-
te Powers into citizens, and he would exalt the humble serv-
Lt of such a Lord into a free man by taking him into the
rvice of the Church or .the King. The disgusting utterance
James I, that a prince could cry his subjects up and down,
sounded in the ears of an English peasant as his only hope
justice in this world. Peasants and kings, serfs and princes,
>0d united in a time of rare and difficult communication,
ainst the local powers of land-owners and chiefs of clans.
Parliament was a means of breaking the resistance of the
:al governors and of co-ordinating them. No wonder that the
~mbers of Parliament pleaded for as few parliamentary ses-
ms as possible. Kings were praised for not summoning Par-
.ments! It was dangerous, expensive and burdensome to go
Parliament; taxes had to be granted. The only relief for so
1Ch hardship was the opportunity to denounce the King's
·~ ...... ~ '"~ .._ ~ .... ~ 11 .._ L _ _ L _ __ _ _ 11 _ .
aints against a judge or a bishop, or any other employe of the
ealm. The chance to utter grievances was the compensation
r the burden of Parliament's duty of granting taxes. The
ing, in his pleasure at getting his money, was willing to listen,
Ld would instruct his chancellor to go into the matter and
1olish whatever abuses there might be. Perhaps it would take
certain time, between the opening and the closing of the
5sion of Parliament, to formulate their wrongs. The Com-
ans would debate for a long time in their special meeting-
ace before their speaker was ready to join the Lords of the
pper House, kneeling down at the bar of the House of Lords
.d there giving voice to their grievances. Even today Parlia-
ent includes all its bills in the final grant of the budget!
b.e budget is still the chief act of Parliament, and all the bills
r the redress of abuses are enacted together with the budget.
1is practice was universal all over medi~val Europe, and in'
1ny countries the grievances included petitions of the estates
at such and such a counsellor be deposed, or such and such
trustee of the powers gathered in Parliament be appointed
chancellor of the kingdom.
The practice of the Norman Realm was that the chancellor
ould be: first, not a local Lord, and second, if possible, a
tn who knew the laws of the land. Both circumstances give
int to our description of the ideal which was really cherished
olden times. The chancellor must not belong to the pow-
:ul iµ a local district, representing as he did the central and
vernmental sense of justice. And though a bishop, he must
ow the English language, customs and traditions. The Eng-
ri chancellor of a King who had other interests outside the
Llntry, in France or Ireland for example, was the guarantee
it English customs would be respected by the Realm. He was
~ Keeper of the Kinfts Conscience in English affairs. This
~at name, derived from his duty of hearing the King's con-
sion, was more than a name. Ordinarily, the chancellor kept
~ Great Seal of the Kingdom. Nothing could be enacted,
~refore, without his co-operation. The will of the King be-
ne visible only under the Great Seal of the English Kingdom,
 At the beginning of the Puritan Restoration the chancellor
~till was called "Mouth, ear and eye, the very heart of the
prince," and his Court was "the King's High Court of Con-
~cience, bound by no custom." Coke, the leader of the move for
1 petition of Rights in 1628, called the Great Seal "the Key of
~he Kingdom." As Chancellor I-laldane said on the fourth of
~ovember, 1924: "The Great Seal under the Constitution of
:his country was an extraordinary instrument. Whoever had
t in his possession was Lord Chancellor, with all the powers
>f the Lord Chancellor. Constitutionally, he could exercise
.hem. It might require a statute to undo things which he could
lo at that mon1ent, if evilly minded." 2
No wonder, then, that in the Glorious Revolution of 1688,
he Great Seal played a role, too. James II flung it into the
liver Thames, and thought that by doing so he had effect~ally
lefeated the enterprise of the Prince of Orange, and Parlia-
aent would not have legal authority. The Seal was worth 2 12
1ounds sterling, the enormous a1nount of money spent for it
ri 1686. But James II was mistaken. His deed turned against
limself. A King who left the country "without so much as
~aving a guardian or Great Seal behind him" (State Tracts I,
34; 22. I. 1689) seemed to have divested himself of all author-
:y. The taboo of the Great Seal would not work in 1689. The
.ord Chancellor had ceased to be the most important link
etween the King and his English subjects. The Prince of
)range signed the checks for the Treasury with his own hand,
let this be paid." His name was now as good as the Great Seal.
Let us glance, for a moment, at later times. The power of
1e Great Seal survived in the imagination of the people. In
784, while the government was desirous of dissolving Par-
ament, the metropolis was thrown into consternation by the
ews that the Great Seal was stolen, the Great Seal, enclosed
t the two bags (one of leather, the other of silk), was stolen
om the Lord Chancellor. And many imagined that, for want
t it, all the functions of the executive government must be
1spended. This power of the Great Seal, moreover, was ex-
2 Haldane's speech is given in the Report of the English County Library Con-
loited as late as i 788. Then the King was mentally ill, and,
istead of a regency, the use of the Great Seal seemed to satisfy
te need for continuity in government. And officially, the Lord
hancellor still seems to hold the same power today as in the
iys of Sir Thomas More, taking the Woolsack in the Upper
:ouse and presiding at its sessions. Actually, the Lord Chan-
~llor belongs to the obsolete House of Lords, which was justly
llled by Disraeli as unreal as the Abode of the Blessed, a life-
ss Elysium; and he is charmingly caricatured as the "sus-
'.ptible Chancellor" in Gilbert and Sullivan's Iolanthe) or The
~er and the Peri." The Lord Chancellor has shared with all
e Upper Powers of the Realm the destiny of being overruled
r the Lower House.
But, to return to the Revolution, in no sense was the funda-
ental idea of the medi~val chancellor then alive. Neverthe-,
ss, the keeper of the King's conscience played a great part in
e Puritan Revolution. Certainly he was no revolutionary,
> Puritan; he was not even a living man. The ghost of the
ancellor, the spectre of the last true keeper of the King's
nscience, wrongfully beheaded, the shadow of the greatest
ancellor of Englnad, loomed over the horizon of the Puritan
~volution as the shadows of the Huguenots loomed over the
ench Revolution.
COMMON LAW.

Why diq the very breath of English liberty depend on the

nctioning of Chancery?
Through Chancery the conquering Realm and the conquered
tion both hearkened to the civilizing influences of the
mrch. Thanks to Chancery, England was not a merely mili-
·y and barbarian country, but a part of Christendom. For
:! chancellor embodied an order of things in which new
~as of righteousness incessantly made their way from the
ictuaries of the Church into the nation. Chancery created
~ pride of Anglo-Saxon pub,ic life, the bulwark of England
d America, the famous and mysterious Common Law.
Since the Common Law is regarded today as of national and
tlVP nr1rr1n "tA.T~ m1111C'f- .rl.c.,.,£"-._,.,. ~ C~-·· - - - - - • - .. • • -
acquainted with certain elementary facts about it. And this is
by no means an antiquarian discussion. Without an under-
standing of the values embodied in the Common Law, public
::>pinion regarding the education of lawyers can scarcely be
:leveloped to a satisfactory degree.
Before Henry VIII (1535) Common Law was not a fact or
l collection of rules, but a process. It was a product of the
nutual permeation of the Canon Law of the Church, the
lloman Law of the Franco-Roman Empire and the Norman
aw, as well as of the different laws of the land.
There was no Common Law, but anything could become
md be made "common law" by the intermediation of Chan-
:ery. The lawyers of today think.of Common Law as opposed
o Roman Law or Canon Law. To the pride of modern Anglo-
iaxon jurisprudence, Common Law seems a popular and ~a­
ive kind of law, in short, Anglo-Saxon Law. But Common Law
v-as the product of a union between universal Christian laws
nd local customs; and the union was legalized by the office
,£ the chancellor.
Henry VIII abolished this fruitful osmosis and inter-
1enetration of two equally important streams· of life. Local
ustoms and ~niversal justice were both suppressed by the
jng's justice and law. Instead of a vivifying process of give
nd take, a stable order was erected.
The Reformation rais~d the question, on the Continent as
dl as in England: The Roman Church having lost authority,
hat are the sources of the syncretistic law applied by the gen-
·al courts, the "placita communia" of the land? Hence, the
itherto merely technical term "Common Law," had to be
arified.
It is refreshing to see that the lawyers of the seventeenth
~ntury did not share the superstitions of their grandsons in
le nineteenth century. They knew pretty well that Common
aw was Christian law. A programmatic pamphlet of 1653 ex-
.ains the true meaning of Common Law. This Reply to a
raft of an Act or System proposed, as it is reported, by the
ommittee on Regulations concerning the state supplies ample
~ tPrl ~ 1 fn .......... ~.i:t ~,,.f.; ,.,....... ..... ......... ~ , _ - ...l - -- in. • "' "" -
mmonwealth, as it says, it recommends its plan with this
tortation: "Will not such Counsels, Clerks and Attorneys
reby grow and proceed to be expert in the Law, as formerly,
l be a means of preservation, of the ancient law of this
tion, being grounded at the first upon the Old and the New
1tament? According to the direction of Papa Eleutherius,
bop of Rome to the noble King Lucius of this Nation of
tain and first Christian King in the wor Id, in his Christian
itle (in answer to the message sent by King Lucius to him
the Roman Laws to govern the people of this nation), by
ting him in mind that when he was in Rome (where he
raised up in the Christian ·religion during his youth, among
Christians of the primitive ch urdi, in the Second Century
r the passion of our Saviour), with his Christian brethren
:e he received the Old and New Testaments; advising him ,
~ out of the same he and his people would take a law to
ern by; intimating to him that thereby he should govern
l and that so long as he should govern well, he was King,
~rwise cease to be King."
'he authors, it is true, misdate the origin of Common Law
1 thousand years. It originated, not under King Lucius I
50, but at the time of Pope Lucius II, about 1150, at the
~ when in Bologna, Magister Gratianus first published his
.cordia Discordantium Canonum and Thomas a Becket
ed a reluctant king to recognize the validity of Canon Law.
vever, our quotations show how little the nationalistic
.e of being English prevailed as late as in Cromwell's day.
imon Law was the good law which could not be depreciated
:he King's arbitrary power. It did not claim a national
in, but was the dowry of Christian baptism. It was not the
Lre of the English people but its public inspiration at its
rersion that gave rise to the Common Law, which could
efore contain, as it really does contain, elements of Hebrew,
ian and Ecclesiastical Law. Common Law is European law .
.ce Burke could write:
ope is virtually one great State having the same basis of
establishments. The whole of the polity and economy of every
country in Europe has been derived from the same sources."
We found that in France a hundred and four years elapsed
between the crime against the Huguenots and the full revenge
of 1789. In England, in 1640, a hundred and five years had
elapsed since the Chancellor Thomas More was sent from
the Tower to his death by the King and Parliament of Eng-
land. That had been in the days of Henry VIII, who had won
from the papacy, in its terror of Luther, the title of "Defender
of the Faith," but who later pronounced himself head of the
Anglican Church. He had cut off the connection with Rome
by means of the absurd fiction t~at the Anglican Church was
the true old Church, without any break, and that it was Rome
which had gone heretical. The King married six wives, and
beheaded ·or divorced four of them: one died. He confiscated
the wealth of the monasteries, and made himself master of the
Canon Law. This reversed the relation between King and
Church. Equity, Christianity, progress, had always worked
through the keeper of the King's conscience, the chancellor.
The quality of mercy was not strained so long as the chan-
cellor could constantly promote change; his reforms and miti-
gations of the strict law were based on equiw, Canon Law,
and all the ecclesiastical recommendations for a better social
order, divine justice against the Lords, and Christian freedom
for the underlings. This ·constant stream of equity and mercy
flowed toward the King. When the King became the head of
the Church, the sound circulation of equity from the Christian
Universe into the British Isles was stopped. The coin we repro-
:luce here with the King's Hebrew, Greek and Latin titles, con-
xacts effectively with the Hebrew, Greek and Roman elements
Jf Christian law. It illustrates the new claim of the English
K.ing to be in himself the source of universal law.
Henry VIII mistook the makeshift of a right to reform,
vhich Luther and the doctors of theology on the Continent
iad granted to the princes only in case of emergency, for an
tpostolic office. He thus cut off the prince's dependence upon
hP "m~o-i<:tPrl'.:111" h:::>")rh;r.,.... ......,.C..,. ·'"-=-·---- 1 - --· - .w .. - -
lependent and universal preaching its legitimate influence.
t he hirp.self had originally recognized that he was bound in
1science to listen to the universal Church when he sent his
bassy to Wittenberg for the divorce from Anne Boleyn.
1en Luther and Melanchthon gave him as little comfort \
his Protestant n1arriage as the Pope had given him in his
tholic, Henry VIII gave up the universal Church for a sec-
:l time 3 and withdrew into the fortress of Anglicanism. This
s clearly a perversion of Luther's teaching. In England, the
1g's counsellors had no line of retreat into a universal body
doctrine if they disagreed with their overlord. The prince's
tscience was a public institution only so long as his coun-
ors had to deduce their proposals. from the princi pies of a
urch which lived and thought and taught in a sphere not
:eeded by the radius of the King's power.
n England the King's conscience was now reduced to the '
el of a private affair. When James VI of Scotland ascended
English throne in 1603, he tried to teach his subjects the
ritinental theory of government. But he overlooked the fact
t any Continental prince was limited by his membership
a body of reform called a "Party of Religion." l\foreover,
the Protestant princes on the Continent ruled such small
·itories that they were constantly obliged to hire counsellors
n abroad and thus tacitly recognized a sovereign learning
which they depended and by which they themselves were
)rmed and reformed. James I, on the contrary, ruled over
~land and Scotland and Ireland, three countries with three
erent churches. He was the only prince in Europe "\Vhose
ernment far exceeded the extent of the respective denomi-
[ons. On an island the royal counsellors were terribly de-
dent upon the whims of the sovereign. The ecclesiastical
ms implied by the "Head of the Church" were the ruin
he liberties of England. And Thomas More, in defending
supremacy of the Church over the King's lusts, was defend-
the true liberties of England. It was Parliament that de-
ed these liberties when it co-operated with Henry VIII. No
L E. Jacobs, The Lutheran Movement in England, p. 75, Philadelphia,
~d l .11thPr::1n Pnh 1 nn~
~ ever honoured Parliament more highly than Henry VIII.
used it freely to carry his measures against the Church,
neither the Lords nor the Commons have formally abol-
d the King's supremacy over the Anglican Church. Today,
938, the King of England is its supreme and undisputed
l The Commons preferred inheriting the King's rights
· the Church to abolishing them. When the power of the
gin the Church proved too much like popery, it was taken
· by the Commons, who thenceforth furnished him his
~ge of cardinals. Today, the Prime Ministers govern the
.rch of England.

ike the Huguenots in France, .the Chancellor of England

finally defeated. Parliament was greedy. Parliament escaped
tion by plundering the property of the Church. Parlia-
lt was the prop of the King in his effort to pay the expenses
is government by confiscation. All the great Whig families
688 deriy~d their property from donations of Henry VIII.
· British Commonwealth is largely the wealth of the Com-
lS under Henry VIII, earned under his rule and the rule
1e "hammer of the monks,,, Thomas Cromwell. The char-
generosity and hospitality of the English gentry is a well-
.fied mortgage on their country-seats. Hallam, telling us
these great families, Lords or non-Lords, owed their ascent
1e period of the Tudo~s and the confiscation of ecclesiasti-
>roperty, adds characteristically: "This class which was pre-
ed-with the land of the convents, always excelled-and espe-
y in the first century after 1540-in charity and liberality."
o wonder; for this class took over the important role and
:tion of the medi~val Church. And therefore, it could never
1
ack to the period before the Reformation. It had to remain
rmed. It was an accomplice in Henry VIII's tyranny over
Church. It had to swallow all the pretensions of the thirty-
~ Articles and the Act of Supremacy, because its own fortune
at stake. After 1535 Parliament consistently supported the
g in his destruction of the checks which the existence of
~e Church had exercised upon the monarchy.
nt thP ~h~r1nu1 nf MnrP'~ ~r".llfn1r1 t-h~ rrh,-,.lt't- ~t: 'lo r..,. .. h ...... 1;f"
:>rd Chancellor who had guaranteed the influx of equity and
e checks upon the King's arbitrary power, loomed on the
>rizon of the five reigns which followed. For Thomas More
is the conscious victim of this change. He had been the most
>pular of the Chancellors. People sang of him, with a pun on
s name:
"When More one year had Chancellor been
No case did more remain;
The same will never more be seen
Till Morus comes again."
.s wit was proverbial. Shakespeare borrowed from More his
: of dialogue. When the innocent. blood of the last Catholic
tancellor of England had been shed (July 6, 1535), the biog-
>hy written by his son-in-law, Roper, gave the nation its
;t picture of a gentleman's wit and behaviour. Thomas More\
uld tell his stories with complete detachment, not a line in
face betraying the irony. When the Chancellor's office was
luced in importance, the private manners and habits of the
~ true chancellor became the future model for British law-
s. The lives of the Chancellors became a favourite in legal
~rature. But no later chancellor could equal More. With his
tth the office began to lose its political importance.
rhe fictions of the modern lawyers carefully veil this break
the tradition. A talk witJ:i a leading American authority on
Common Law taught me a valuable lesson in how far this
pression goes. He quoted certain precedents from the four-
1th century, in which the English courts had denied that
King could become a parson and take the income of a
ish without the consent of the Supreme Head of the Church,
~ is, at that time the Poper He took these precedents as valid,
a today; they showed how the courts could overrule the
·cutive. My natural question was where these same courts
been in 1535, when the monasteries were dissolved and
r property confiscated, and the King himself became head
the Church. His reply was simply: "Well, no case was
Light into court!" This answer is a good example of the legal
narli;:imPnt::irv ~rt nf rlrPCi:"-'.lnO' 111'"'\ r~rt-eo Tl-...o. 1..... T••w·~- _.]~...] - - ~
 ~ why no case that attacked the King's religious authority
uld be brought into court. But Sir Thomas More asked that
ry question. He saw that the coincidence of King and Su-
eme Head of the Church deprived the courts of any chance
acting as they had acted before. He died for his conviction,
.e of the greatest and wisest characters in history, worthy
any of the name of Saint. More, with his clear and sober in-
Jigence, recognized that Common Law had been, not an
~ablished reality; but a campaign of action by the King's
nscience, against the interests of the King and the other pow-
s. He refused to sanction with the Great Seal of England
e stopping of this wonderful process. But the lawyers inten-
>nally overlook the fact that after .1535 the Common L~w
mpletely changed its character. The orgies of fictionalism he-
n; the so-called legal "facts" pass over the real facts of com-
on sense. A historian of the Glorious Revolution, Traill, has
:scribed this attitude with masterful precision:
"All our great constitutional precedents are the parents of princi-
~, rather than its offspring; we deduce our theories from accom-
ished facts of our own creation; the creation of such accomplished
:ts being itself determined by no theoretical considerations, but
certain practical exigencies of the moment." 4
After 1535 the King of England had no organized conscience.
rhereas on the Contir~ent the conscience of any Protestant
·i~ce was kept active by the astringent force of his member-
.ip- in a large religious party which controlled, stimulated, and
>-ordinated all his particular reforms, the King of England
as alone among his servants, who had no background outside
1e mercy and favour of the King himself. The Protestant
mnsellor on the Continent represented to his prince the con-
dered advice of the new world-wide learning. The counsellor
>uld draw upon a conviction and a teaching common to all
te Protestant faculties and theologians: he was their mouth-
iece at the king's court. And therefore he was not a courtier.
'he prince could dismiss a single counsellor, but he could not
lence the voice of the Christian conscience, proclaimed by
:her when he used the doors of his prince's church to prop-
te the evangelical, universal truth of the new learning.
THE RESTORATION OF THE COMMON LAW.

'inally the gentry avenged More. But just as the French

losophers could never think of going back beyond Ver-
les, even though Versailles had killed the Huguenots, so
lawyers of the English gentry could not think of destroy-
the supremacy of the King, even though his supremacy had
~d Thomas More. The vengeance took quite a different
>e. Instead of restoring the liberties of the Church against
King, the gentry put its claim for a control over the King
he form of a secular restoration: The Ii berties of England
to be restored; the wrong side of the British Reformation
to be repaired.
he Commons never called their actions anything but a res-'
tion. Neither Great Rebellion nor Civil War, nor, of course,
olution, was the native name of their enterprise. With all
r hearts they were convinced that they were beginning
real great and glorious Restoration of the liberties of Eng-
. It is true, as we shall soon find out, that radical changes
: made in the Church, which enthroned the united Corn-
s as a religious sovereign, as the Anglican Christian people,
hurch assembled. But these changes were not allowed to
their name to the Purit.an struggle. The name of the strug-
N'as selected, not by the zealots who tried to abolish the
copal constitution and the Book of Common Prayer, but
'.le parliarnentary lawyers who looked at the matter from
;ecular point of view. Taxation was the principle which
put in the foreground by the lawyers. Finance, budget,
'ances of his majesty's loyal subjects were at stake. The
:, as a secular prince, needed an army and he needed a
1ue. And the lawyers argued with him over these two
tions under the caption "Restoration."
>w a name may seem a trifle to the reader and he may
~ that we are wasting too much effort on recovering the
er name of the Puritan Restoration. But a name is much
 rious consequences. For centuries the English historians have
rerlooked the frank profession of the Puritans that they were
storing England but, as good heirs of the Puritans, they
mtended that from Magna Charta down there was no break
: continuity in the English Constitution. But this legend is
·ecisely the revolutionary invention of 1641. It was then that
,e English became traditionalist on purpose. They dug out
d forms and gave to Magna Charta and many an old statute
significance which they had never had before. The Common
aw was restored because it had been interrupted. England,
tlce the Puritan restoration, has been making herself old by
tificial means. The features of English life which fascinate
.e observer as reflecting an unbroken tra~ition of nine hun-
·ed years are in fact the outcome of a restoration which
stored a broken tradition by revolutionary means.
It is, therefore, impossible to understand the English passion
1r old precedents, if we take it to be a native passion of the
tlglish from the days of Alfred or William the Conquerer.
is an acquired quality of the national character, acquired in
le great Puritan clash of the seventeenth century. The na-
Jnal character was not a permanent, native or inborn quality
· the race. It was produced in an historical struggle, where to
~ "old" became a weapon in the hands of a new class.
At the outbreak of the Puritan resistance, when Cromwell
is inclined to leave the country and go to America, insecu-
ty haunted the gentry. Members of their class had been con-
~m-ned to bodily punishment for 'resisting taxation. Arbitrary
xation without consent of the Commons was the centre of
Lrliamentary complaints. The Commons wished, therefore,
restore Magna Charta. And so the knights of the shires
othed their resistance in phrases such as "from time imme-
orial," and "prescriptive rights."
But "Restoration" -that is, restoration of the old laws of
tlgland-evaded the question whether these laws were of
ttional or ecclesiastical origin. The technique of the Puritan
estoration was to restore the Common Law. To that end it
as cut off from its connection with the Papacy, with the clergy
..'I------ ..__ - - - - - .... -~- ___ .._ __ .._ ---~ ... 1- .,......!_ ________ T .... ----- ----~ ~--.._-
 hands of English judges and lawyers and juries. The class
.ch was fitted to act in the courts of the country as jurors
. justices claimed the right to interpret this Common Law.
""he "Restoration of the Common Law" is the great fiction
he first half of the English Revolution. On the Great Seal
648 we read: "In the first year of freedom by God's blessing
ored."
"he Restoration of the Common Law had to create safe-
rds against any codification by the King's counsellors or
professor regius from Oxford or Cambridge. For the King's
~es and scholars had served the King's purpose too often
too willingly. They had upheld the fiction that even the
:estant King, under the Great Seal of his Kingdom, could
vhat he liked. In the famous question of taxation, in 1637,
King's judges had decided:
Vhen the good and safety of the kingdom in general is con-
~d, and the kingdom in danger, your Majesty may, by writ
T the Great Seal of England, command all your subjects of
your Kingdom . . . and we are also of the opinion that in
case your Majesty is the sole judge both of the danger and
t and how the same is to be prevented and avoided."

herefore the Common Law had to be rescued from the

(s Great Seal and from the King's legislation. The English
no written constitution and no systematic codification,
use centralizing and codHying are the artifices of kings.
Common Law relies on precedents. Precedents cannot be
ruled by royal prerogative. Precedents are a safeguard
ist despotism. A king and his counsellors rationalize, they
matize, they bring order out of the chaos of precedents.
answer of the Puritan Restoration is: "Let us intrench our-
s behind this chaos of precedents." Socially, the power of
1udiciary became intimately enmeshed with the interests
ways of life of the aristocracy. The Inns of courts became
•erpetuating bodies with the right of co-operation. The
us separation between parliamentary legislation and royal
itive never existed in England, but it was emphasized be-
~ Parliament was the Hi!lhest Court of !l 11 ~nrl it~ inrlA-
)endence lent glory to all other courts. The crown lost the
)OWer of interfering with the judiciary.
l\faterially the judiciary worked even faster. Whereas the
·eal safeguards against the crown came into existence under
William III and Anne, the law of contracts was changed in
:avour of the wealthy classes in the middle of the seventeenth
:entury. Clever safeguards against any confiscation of property
>y the crown were established. An accusation for High Treason
vould find the peer without a penny; his son owning the fam-
ly property already. For these and similar purposes, freedom
>f donations during lifetime and · freedom of testation were
~ssential. On the other hand, the rigid enforcement of all con-
racts against debtors was extended beyond all equity. To their
:andid surprise, Continental lawyers stated the paradox of a
aw protecting individual liberty to the utmost against the
~overnment but extraditing it completely to the private cred-
tors: In 1835 a French wfiter exclaimed: "C' est dans le pays
>it l'on professe le plus de respect pour la liberte individuelle,
ru' elle est le plus facilement sacrifiee aux inten~ts pecuniaires.
·1 suffit de quelques actes simules pour mettre un citoyen hors
a loi." This writer, Bayle-Mouillard, after showing that some
tatutes of the Tudors had a~ready made all reasonable conces-
ions to the creditor's interest, goes on, "Still, as if any re-
triction imposed by the law should be an insupportable bridle
or the English lawyer~, they were unable to comply with the
>rinciples of these statutes, and by the means of fictions they
inally established the rule that a personal debtor could be
.rrested without any preliminary proof." "Habeas Corpus"
vas good against the Crown; it did not protect the mighty's
>oor debtor. The producer mercilessly fell into the hands of
he wealthy in this aristocratic revolution, called Restoration
,f the Common Law.
ECONOMICS AND BUDGET.

In fact, the financial transactions of the new aristocracy be-

:ame as much an expression of religious faith and Christian
norals as the equity of Chancery had been before. The poetry
•.f hrr1'1"t 1 ~C t-h~ ~~'Y'\.'l"ll~r;f-,, l'""'\.f ~r-F"'t..'l""'lir""-m.;f'Ct f-.h.c::.. 1.,.........,.,"' ,,.......C ,..,.,,,..._ ____ : .."' __
lt national achievements by the sums that have been spent
n them, are impossible and inexplicable on the Continent.
]ishmen seem cynical when they begin a book on the ene-
) of England, as did G. Peel, with the statement: "To insure
nst European enemies, a grand total of£ 32 ,000,000 is spent.
~ charge, capitalized at the proper rate, amounts to the sum
~1,280,000." Only in England can a parliamentary paper
inances include a careful investigation of the dates of the
nnings and endings of wars since 1688. Only in England
the commonwealth become poetical about money. In 1665
Speaker told his Majesty that the Commons had prepared
curity for all such persons as should bring their money
the public bank of the Exchequer. "As the rivers do natu-
' empty themselves into the sea, so we hope the veins of
and silver in this nation will plentifully run into this
n. "
t 1816 the abolition of the income tax was hailed by the
~st applause ever heard in Parliament. But more striking
the simultaneous decision to burn all books and accounts
:h might be reminders of the existence of this tax. Taxa-
was not merely taxation. Ever since the Puritan Reforma-
the control of taxation had stood for Equity and Religion
Progress and Morals and Prosperity, in short, for every-
g important. vVhere else could a parliament address the
dace in the way Parliainent did in the Great Remonstrace
541? This document which was to call the rabble to arms
e in the language of dry figures. Adam Smith's Wealth
rations was written as a part of his moral philosophy, his
lectual faith.
~e poetical quality of numbers is demonstrated everywhere
,nglish life. A man's inheritance is published to the last
ling. Every bequest is printed~ The wealth of the rich
l item in the budget of the nation. A gentleman uses his

th as the King uses his civil list. The administration of

wealth is the backbone of English self-government. Hos-
s, museums, public schools, are maintained by founders
rlnn".ltnrc hPr".l11co t-ho ,.,,.,....,,...,,.- ..-u£>,,.1+-h ,.,.C •-t....~ ~~--~- ... --. ;_ LL -
 prop of the country's expenditures. They are all inserted in
the Golden Book of the Commonwealth as stationes fisci, self-
governing departments. In nations where the central govern-
ment is responsible for schools, hospitals, police and roads, the
badly paid officials are envious. Envy is the vice of a nation
in which civil service is preponderant. England is spared the
vice of envy. The budget has educated the nation to under-
stand figures and to appreciate their significance without
jealousy.
The role held in Germany by philosophy, in France by sci-
ence, is held in England by economics. It is the popular science
of the British. When Disraeli wished to turn the laugh against
the people who believed in the eternal necessity of wars, it
needed no more than the simile: "They are like men who think
of 5 3 as a natural rate of interest." Frantic applaus~ and
laughter greeted the statement. On the Continent neither the
comparison nor its emotional success is easy to understand.
In other countries you cannot produce a general effect of reli-
gious dignity and prophecy by the use of figures.
For this new economic and financial order of the kingdom,
the old Chancellor, with his interest in the law, was not the
natural representative. And so, he was pushed aside, despite
all protestations of restoring the former constitution.
That no full restoration of the Common Laws was planned
is shown by the development of the chancellorship. It was not
r.e$tored to its full power. In the search for a check on the
King's Conscience, the Puritans abolished the royal courts,
like the Starchamber, and the whole jurisdiction over morals
which these courts had inherited from the ecclesiastical courts.
During the Puritan Restoration "keepers of the liberties of
England" were appointed for a short time, obviously as a par-
allel to the old controlling keeper of the King's Conscience.
During the Restoration the most shocking moral misbehaviour
could not be punished because no courts existed for such
offences. 5
s The American Puritans of the "Scarlet Letter" type acted as good English-
men, in the same emergency into which their home country was thrown by the
 the end of the seventeenth century it became evident
both Puritan and Stuart restoration had bestowed on Par-
~nt the power in spiritual matters by which the Chancellor
restrained the King's arbitrary power. The Lord Chan-
~ ceased to be the link between the King and his English
cts. The first successor of More, the reckless Chancellor
nas Cromwell, was called the "Hammer of the Monks."
as a self-made man, or better still, "a man made and cried
by the King. There was true logic in the fact that his
·grand-nephew, Oliver, who got his name from Thomas
twell by adoption, avenged Thomas More, that great
tian soul and last true keeper of the King's conscience .
.toned for Thomas Cromwell's· destruction of the old
itution. But the political heir-at-law of the Chancellor
rie the political agent· who manipulated the secrets of the
:ry's wealth. The prophet of finance and figures became
ew political leader in the Commonwealth, replacing the
iet of equity. Tacitly this new leader took over the role
~ Lord Chancellor and his Great Seal. Officially intact even
, the Chancellor was in fact removed to an upper sphere,
! he presides over the House of Lords. For serious busi-
1e was replaced by somebody with quite different duties
~ King's council: the First Lord of the Treasury. Formally
~ord of the Treasury took the place of the Comptroller,
tad become the heart of.the government. Today the Prime
,ter of England is called a Prime Minister only by a
ieth-century innovation. In truth, he is still the First Lord
~ Treasury. The Committee on legislation which gives
vice to the Cabinet and the Prime Minister in all tech-
and legal questions is called Parliamentary Counsel of
'reasury. The interests of the Treasury are what connect
ri and country. The Restoration meant business in mak-
iance and religion the two cardinal points in the relations
en King and Commons. The rule prevailed that on
>f New Haven or Massachusetts to use the precedents from Holy Scrip-
. jurisdiction against moral misbehaviour. This was .an English problem
time. The case of Charles Sedley Jed to a new solution.
~stions of finance and religion the House must always sit as
)mmittee of the whole.
~he First Lord of the Treasury annually had to fight for his
lget (the name has been on record since 17 33), that is, the
le pocket which contained his accounts. He opened this
ket on budget-day. In no other country in the world has
lget-day become a popular holiday. In England, the minister
) opens the budget has the name of Chancellor of the
·hequer. On budget-day he walks from his office to Parlia-
lt, even though very often he must force his way through
:rouging crowd. The career of a statesman is counted by the
lgets which he brings before Parliament. Pitt, Asquith,
yd George, Snowden, became popular through their budg-
Pitt 1nade his fame by comprehending all revenue under
common denominator. But it would be entirely inappro-
Lte to suppose that dry greed or avarice are behind th is '
~lish liking for the budget. The same Pitt was bold enough
idd 650 million pounds to the public debt because the
:ish Commonwealth had to fight the French Revolution
ch imperilled all privileges and all precedents.
PARTICULARS AND PRECEDENTS.

'he Comn1on Law was restored by as many reaffirmations

1ossible. Coke exclaimed, on l\1arch 26, 1628: "All laws of
King which contradict l\1agna Charta are void." Magna
rta ~as reaffirmed thirty times; thirty times England's kings
roved it.
urke's famous dictum on man as a link in the chain of
~rations illustrates the concept of the English constitution.

~ecause a nation is not an idea only of local extent, and indi-

al momentary aggregation; but it is an idea of continuity,
:h extends in time as well as in numbers and in space. And this
choice not of one day or one set of people, not a tumultuary
giddy choice; it is a deliberate election of the ages and of
rations; it is a constitution made by what is ten thousand
s better than choice; it is made by the peculiar circumstances,
sions, tempers, dispositions, and morals, civil and social habi-
~ r. f t- h £> ...... L'> ' " ...... 1 ,,..,. ..... J... ; ~ J... ,.1 : ~ ~ 1 ~ ~ ~ ... L.. ~ - - - 1- -- - - -- 1 - - ~ -- - 1 - ~- - - -
me. It is a vestment which accommodates itself to the body.
~he individual is foolish, the multitude, for the moment, is
sh, when they act without deliberation; but the species is
, and when time is given to it, as a species it always acts
. ,, 6

nyone who wishes to deal with this English mind must

:k it by precedent. A Continental Christian thinks of the
lict between Catholics and Protestants as a problem of
li. At Westminster he learns that it is a matter of precedent.
Anglicans point, not to the truth, but to the age of their
Leh of the Church. The fact that the indifferent word
glican" occurs in documents as early as the fifteenth cen-
seems to them important. And the Catholics of modern
!and have realized that they must meet this challenge. On
liar in their stronghold, the Catholic Cathedral of West-
;ter in London, they have carved a list of bishops of Eng~
who were in communion with Rome from the year 600.
edents make law.
'hen the nineteenth century, with its liberal indoctrination,
ded England, Disraeli had a happy way of defending Eng-
precedent against the principles of logic. "A precedent
:ilms a principle" was his formula, which embalmed, in a
Jry of abstract principles, the English principle of prece-

~vertheless, this ideology was as n1uch a fiction as the idea

natural Gaul was a fiction with the French. For the pur-
of the English revolutionaries was not really to restore
~fiddle Ages, but to wrest from the King the ecclesiastical
~r which Parliament itself had bestowed on him.
le City of London paid 62% pounds of horseshoes annu-
for its franchi_se. Why? When some pert fellow moved, in
, to commute the obligation, his motion was lost. The
~m had always been so. It was too dangerous to change it,
lse something might result which would imperil the liberty
e City of London. "Never ask why," is the English golden
"Why?" is a question worthy of royal courtiers and think-
 who plan and systematize. Principles are an inheritance
m the party of religion, the Protestant princes. Princes estab-
1 principles; gentlemen prefer particulars.
fhe word "particulars," like public spirit, is untranslatable.
ybody who asks an English lawyer's opinion gets this answer:
et me know the particulars." In 1933 a questionnaire was
t out by an international institute to the bars and courts
,eventy nations, asking for information about the legal pro-
lure of the respective countries. The English barrister was
only one whose answer began thus: "It is impossible to
wer all your questions seriatim, because every case will have
Je approached from its own particular set of facts, and more
ticularly still, from the actual ·terms of each contract of
~-" The word "particular" occurs twice.
:Particular" and "particularism" are poor words in French
in German, signifying something irrational, shapeless, par:
or fragmentary, or a bad tendency towards egotistic pro-
cialism. In England, precedent and particulars reach into
depths of the earth. Like the Greek titan .Antceus, who drew
~ vigour for his struggle every tin1e he touched his Mother
th, so in England every particular adds vigour to a case and
ts it more deeply in the Common Law, where a King's arm
not reach. Give everyone his particular charter, his particu-
privilege, and the world is safe against arbitrary power.
~hanks to the Puritan Revolution, Englishmen have stamped
al~ feeling for system and economy of thought. They prefer
:leal with a sea of particulars, because through particulars
y feel protected against the King's officials. Particulars--they
the significant feature in the explanations of the man who
as your guide through the Tow er of London, of the Eng-
novelist or historian, of the reformer or speaker on the
lget-particulars are rooted in the past. They can only be
i by memory. In a country of particular charters and privi-
~s for every body, the word "old" became a charm of the
. order. "'Ancien regime' or 'old France' is objectionable
1rance; 'Old England' is a eulogy." (Boutmy.) In France the

tocrats of the ancien regime ·are hated; the gentry of Eng-

.. .. .. . .. . -
:l the gentry was adored by the lower classes for this odd
ice of "Old" as its device. The Man in the Street, the shop..
per, the tenant, who could not boast of being gentlemen,
themselves protected and relieved by the existence of an
gentry. Thanks to this pedigree of age proper to the gentry,
whole people was ennobled and made "ancient." And an
~ease in age meant an increase in strength against the inno-
ons of foreign-born kings and tyrants. "Innovation" was an
ilt. In France, as in any bourgeois society, novelty and sensa-
L are a merit in themselves. "News"papers are the weapons

lemocracy. Records are the guarantee of aristocracy. In 1794

imple a thing as a matter of order was solemnly broached
a member of Parliament with a· very incantation of an-
Lity:
-Ie wished the House to adhere to the princi pies, the practice, ,
the forms of proceeding adopted by our ancestors, and handed
n to the present age by them, in the manner in which he
~d they would be able to hand them down to their successors,
that they might uninterruptedly descend to posterity." 7
oke had said the same thing on May 8, 1628.
do not know whether in any other language one can speak
the wise old world" as a generalization of our experience
custom. To have a "high old time" is as reasonable in
lish as it is atrocious in French to be "vieux jeu.'' The
:r a fashion the better. Sirice the Puritan Restoration, forms
customs of social life have become an end in themselves.
: wigs of the English judges are no trifle. They exactly ex-
s the aversion of the English law toward any sign of novelty.
his worship of the "old" is a comprehensive and, as we
l see, religious view of the world which ·dates back no
[er than the seventeenth century. The European and Amer-
democrats, in turning against the ancien regime and the
prejudices of the past, in fighting against superstitions and
uity, privilege and abuse, became to a certain extent the
es of this English passion for the old; for they did not and
d not, perhaps, distinguish between the real and innocent
r ___ 1 r_ 1111 ,,...,.
meaning of "ancient" and the revolutionary and emotional
power of it for the establish1nent of aristocratic government.
In 1789, and later on, the innovators fought against all the
prejudices of popes, princes, clergy and nobles, because they
saw in every former institution something that boaste~ of
being "old." Such an exaggeration is comparable to the bad
habit which leads a Communist nowadays to call any fact he
dislikes "capitalistic." To him the past is all painted in one
color, the color of class war and capitalism. "Capitalism is
whatever I hate," a young boy once said to me; and in that
spirit he will minimize all the differences that existed in the
pre-Communistic world. Similarly, the liberals overlooked the
differences between all previous forms of society. But some of
these forms had actually been rather recent. They were preced-
ing stages of society, which had disguised its hierarchic rul,e by
priding itself on being "old." The Jacobin's attack on feudal-
ism was not directed against the real feudalism of the Middle
Ages, because that did not exist in any country in 1789. Feudal-
ism is a term of invective coined by people who suffered from
l young gentry which had made feudalism and traditionalism
1 shibboleth for revolutionary purposes. Practically, the Whigs

.n England were young families dating from the sixteenth cen-

:ury. They had nothing to do with feudal times and feudal
;ociety. But they used feudal forms because these gave them a
'patina" of old age and prescriptive right. For the English
'old" served the purpose of a legal theory and a legitimist
:endency; it was not an established fact. As a tendency, it was
•pread all over the world by the aristocracy. It was officially
~xported to the Continent in 1815, when "legitimism" was
nvented to "restore" the ancien regime. But though it had an
mmense circulation, nowhere did it fit the situation so well
LS in England.

THE PEDIGREE OF OLIVER CROMWELL.

In England the gentry, perhaps five thousand families, stood

'or the rest of the country as a bulwark against the danger of
L roval calinhate. Thev harl no rlortrinF nn intPl1Prt11'.:ll thPrwu
iiversity faculties seemed to them royal or ecclesiastical; so
~ gentry based its claims on precedent and pedigree.
Cromwell himself, for example, was shown to have a pedigree
excellent as the Stuarts. His Highness Oliver Cromwell who
lde the "glorious revolution of our monarchy" and delivered
~ Commonwealth frmn slavery and arbitrary power was
tised for having one of the finest of English pedigrees. Crom-
11, as people believed in his day, was of English, Scotch and
~lsh blood. The alleged Scotch relation had already been in-
lted by the ancestor who had profited by the Reformation
Henry VIII. He claimed to be a "Stuart" also. The royal
tarts had a dark spot in their pedigree because of the fact
~t Owen op Mergent was the son of a butler. The Crom-
llian pedigree, poor on the English side and equal on the
•tth, could compete most successfully in the Welsh field.
iescent from some good Welsh lords could easily be feigned.
us the hero of the Puritan Restoration appeared by no
ans a sdf-made mc:in, but a true native of the three nations
Great Britain.
rhe pedigree of the Russells, Salisburys, Churchills, is an
Jortant part of the English Constitutioll'F The history of
nan thought would be incomplete if it overlooked the ex-
Jrdinary prop which the new order of English society found
the dignity of the ''old." This insured the success of the
ions which were brought forward against the "innovations"
.he Protestant kings. In the Puritan ideology, the precedents
a·ction corresponded to the pedigree of men.
~romwell himself did not care very much about his nobility.
said, "I lvas by birth a gentleman, living neither in any
siderable height nor yet in obscurity." (September g, 1654,
Parliament.) His genius was enmeshed in difficulties not to
solved by genealogy. Cromwell's pedigree might or might
be equal to the Stuarts. However, Sir Oliver neither could
would point to any precedent for his actions. In a restora-
1 of precedents he was condemned to stand out as a singu-
ty, as an individual who had to do all kinds of things for
first time in the history of the world. This was shocking.
,,.,..._;.r>.,..,."' ,.......,. .... 1~1 \-.,.~ 1:1.~,1 ~~1-. -·-L-- .._1_ --- - -
:hout the newness of the first moment, his v1s1on was ad-
tted only when it became trite. He himself never won over
frightened fellow-creatures with his outbursts of immediate
piration and his fresh faith in the new things before him.
fhe "New Model" of the Army betrayed in its very name
contribution to the Revolution. He carried the New Model
~r to the Navy. He built a navy of ships wholly independent
merchant auxiliaries. "But Cromwell gave still more. He
·e the sentiment for using the instrument. For he bequeathed
the restored monarchy a definite naval policy in the Medi-
ranean and an indestructible ambition for what we now call
Jerial policies." 8 In this quotation the author himself is
tre of the impropriety of "imperial" for the days of Crom-
1. Cromwell's own vocabulary will disclose his point of view.
rfany scholars hold that Cromwell acted by instinct, uncon-
msly. They can list in their favour the fact that his vision
~ not expressed in a war-cry as simple as Restoration, or,
~r, Glorious Revolution. It is indeed not a new word but the
'I shading of a word which expressed his table of values.
1, this re-colouring of an old world embraced a fresh con-
t of England's place in the world.
~he novelty of the situation ·was widely felt. However, when
.ton tried to describe it, he had no new sound for his "trum-
from Zion." He simply called for a "reforming [of the]
~ormation." His formula was correct. The English Revolu-
1 ha~ to reform the results of a perverted Reformation of
Anglican Church. But the conceit of a "reform of the
:ormation" was no slogan for the masses. After all, there
no longer a Roman Church to be reformed. The cry was
~n up in a slightly different form by another contemporary.
1stanley, in his Platform of the Law of Freedom, asserted
he atmosphere of his day: "The spirit of the whole creation
about the reformatiqn of the world." In this passage he
riged one little word; instead of Reformation of the
~urch," he said: of the "world." But this is the most essen-
change of the world. It was the layman's world, the world
ir Julian Corbett, England in the Mediterranean, II, 298, New York, Long--
action, not the Charch of prayer which had to be reformed.
,formation of the World was the decisive step from Anglican
universal concepts. Cromwell used it when he replied to the
:tle Englanders of his day: "God has not brought us hither
ere we are but to consider the work that we may do in the
rld as well as at home."
fhat part of the world which the British organized in the
ys of their "home" country was the redeemed part of the
rid. A new term was introduced that labelled these re-
~med parts of the world. On May 19, 1649, England, with all
dependencies and dominions, was made a Commonwealth.
fhe word "Common," which appears in the phrases Corn-
n Prayer, House of Commons, common sense, reached its
nax in the enthronement of "Commonwealth." The word
1municates the thrill of pride over the fact that Church and
te were now united into a Commonwealth, whilst formerly '
Chancellor had to alternate, so to speak, between the two.
~ter, the leading Puritan moralist, well expressed the new
riotism when he exclaimed: "Every man as a member of
uch or Commonwealth must use his powers utterly for the
d of Church or Commonwealth." Commonwealth is a
gious unity as much as Church.
THE NEW ENVIRONMENT: THE WESTERN WORLD.

,ach inspired form of society must reshape its environment

>re it can begin to influence the world. Russia, in order to
)me· a "global" state, related to the whole of the earth
ead of being the eastern promontory of Europe, had to be
off from Europe by the World War. When it was forced
tbandon the countries, from Finland to Bessarabia, that
mged to the Roman and Protestant faith, its own faith had
1
e re-stated in revolutionary language; and immediately, by
change of environment, Russia began to live a full life of
own. France under Napoleon smashed the relics of feudal-
from Portugal to Memel. In the old feudal and Roman
.ronment the germ of the ideas of 1789 would have
1ered. "Europe" became France's war-cry because she had
nd a new world commensnr~tP with hPr nPu1 1r1P".l~
The same rule applies to England. Because of the constitu-
mal character of the English detective story, the change of
vironment is not discussed on principle and largely, though
is mentioned in particular again and again. Yet the British
>mmonwealth also broke through a wall of enmity and hos-
ity and surrounded itself with a new world sympathetic to
principles. It called into being the \Vestern World. Like all
~ations of political geography, the Western World was m.an-
tde. The globe does not contain it. It has unnatural measure-
~nts and proportions all of its own. One might say that the
es tern World was created around England on the basis of
uations like these: the distance from Liverpool to Boston
ill equal the distance from Liverpool to the Canary Islands.
·, the distance from Newcastle-on-Tyne to Oslo shall equal
:! distance from Newcastle-on-Tyne to St. Petersburg (Lenin-
td). Or, the journey from Plymouth to Malaga is the same
the journey from Plymouth to Alexandria. These equations,
course, do not alter the actual difference in mileage between
~ various places; but that difference shall not matter any
iger for commercial, political, and social purposes or rela-
ns. So, by a great inspiration, the oceans of the five continents
re turned into one united Western World. Selden, the author
the Mare Clausum, expressed the new law of the oceans well
~en he rhymed: "The Seas now made appropriate and yield
all the Laws of State."· He asserted that since Britannia was·
led "the Island of the Ocean" in antiquity it was permissible
turn about and to call the Seas "The Ocean of the Island."
vithout question it is true that the very shores or Ports of
~ neighbouring princes beyond seas are bounds of the sea
ritory of the British Empire, but that in the open and vast
:ean of the North and the West, they are to be placed at the
nost extent of those most spacious seas which are possessed
the English, Scotch and Irish." 9
We know of the smashing blow dealt to the millennial order
things when Napoleon I erased the Roman Etnpire from
~ surface of the globe, and, brushing away the litter of two
sand years, called the area so cleansed "Europe." The
sh under Cromwell did an equally bold piece of political
drawing. England, still for Shakespeare "that utmost cor-

hb1a.

VISION OF THE WORLD, FOURTEENTH CENTURY

Britannia on lower rim.

f the west," is relegated, on medi~val maps, to the margin.

she is in the centre of the map and is hailed as acting
he Light of the Sun, in the \Vorld's Amphitheatre, all
?e looking on and wondering.'' 10 They conceived of a
l in which the waves of all seas and oceans were consid-
for the first time in the history of mankind, as one single
water. "The Sea makes all the world an island." 11 All this one
world of waterways was destined to carry goods and men under
the English flag in free trade all over the world. The French
panorama of "Europe" is parallelled by the "marinorama," the
oceanic view of the English for the Western \V orld. For the
first time in history the waters were put before the continents
and treated as giving laws to the continents. Oceans and Con-
tinents: in this order the two halves of the world were organ-
ized. The new conception was boldly announced by the Navi-
gation Act of Oliver Cromwell. (This document, by the way,
is known to the modern lawyer mostly in its later redactions
where it has been watered down and has lost some of its great-
ness.) Among his other visions, Cromwell had a design on
Gibraltar; he planned to take it and transform it into an
island.
In the old days the English had not been sailors; they had
been conquered again and again by Continentals. England's
outposts south of the Channel made it clear that the Realm
had been established from the side of the Continent. The
permanent tendency of England had been to face south, and.
to defend her communications on the south. Like the French
kings who looked toward Italy until the Council of the Crown
in 1551, the English kings had sought their glory in France
and Belgium, inside the old Church and Empire of Rome.
Within the frame of these two old political forms, it was
enough that neither pope nor emperor should be overbearing.
After their decline in i1nportance, the various nations tried to
find a working system for coexistence. Henry VIII had formu-
lated the balance of power by saying, "Cui adluereo, prteest"
(Whmn I join prevails).
But this slogan of the Tudors is a rather negative one; though
it is already on the road to the system of a balance of power,
it does not tell us anything positive about the goal of English
policy. The English Revolution is bold enough to supplement
the negative, Machiavellian wisdom of the princes with a new,
positive message from the country. Church and Empire become
11 Purchas, his Pilgrim, p. !)8, London, 162;.
~ arena of Continental powers. Here it is always sufficient to
~p down the mightiest, be it Spain, France, Germany or
tssia. But outside this rotten, torn old world there is some-
ng better: the Western World.
When an Englishman says "world" he means God's free
rid redeemed from worldliness .. Where a Lutheran prays for
d's Kingdom from eternity to eternity, Anglicans pray:
Torld without end." This has no connection with the gen-
ie Latin text, "et in secula seculorum"; but it is perfectly
Teet in an atmosphere where public spirit has stimulated
h local unit to join in an inspired movement for a country-
le understanding. The country became the model and the
:leus of a world governed by public spirit.
\.s early as Shakespeare's day, Lord Essex had given a play
honour of the Virgin Queen which anticipated this turn. ,
re you feel England trembling before the new task of ruling
immense world, without settled government, without tradi-
1, without the dear governing will of a King. As early as
18, the Archbishop of Canterbury had been addressed as
>e and patriarch of a second orbit of the earth. An old Saxon
g had played with the notion of being "alterius orbis
Jerator." Now, in Essex's pageant, the character of England's
den between two worlds is stressed. "Atlas himself," says he,
d not bear such a burden." And it is true. The new English
~ is Trans-Atlantic.

~o understand Essex's poetic license we must remember that

:he sixteenth century "Atlas" was limited to Morocco and
Mediterranean. What we call the Atlantic Ocean today was
ed the Occidental Ocean in the sixteenth and seventeenth
turies. This made it easy for the English Revolution to
blish a new term, the "Western World." "Western \Vorld"
laces Western Church and Roman Empire, but it keeps the
ernatural, religious background and atmosphere which sur-
nds these two millennial words. Western World was a pro-
nme of hegemony, as "Europe" was for France. The word
estern" had an appeal. It announced a hP0'1nnino- ~nrt ':.)
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:foLu~iacu.s
SOVTH
,ENGLAND BETWEEN THE OLD AND THE NEW WORLD, 1578
ogative of \Vestern man. Today the French word "civilisa-
," valid for Europe and the civilized nations, is mixed up
•st indiscri1ninately with the British vision of a new West-
World governed from within by the public spirit of the
stian people of England. This French influence makes it
:ult today to isolate "vVestern World" and treat it again
was treated in 1688 or 1658. But it is worth while trying
revival. The important change of "mundus/' a religious
used for the secular worldliness in the Middle Ages, from
1otic sequence of time (seculum) into a lawful realm in
~' took place during the seventeenth century. We already
1 how much Descartes did to secure this new understand-
1f "world." But the English "world" is never Nature in the
of French philosophy. World is not nationalized, discov-
known, by the force of human brains.
]ton, the poet par excellence of the English Revolution,
~ a line which dissipates all doubts as to the character of
world: "The world was all before them where to choose
r place of rest, and Providence their guide," are the last
s of Paradise Lost. The world was all before them. The
.sh countrymen, facing a new world ascending out of the
raves of the seas, were frightened. "llli robur et ces triplex
pectus erat ," the verse of Horace inveighing against the
~rs of sea-faring, must have been in their hearts and minds.
1uired no normal courage, but a revolutionary effort, to
the. island regularly and permanently, and found the
"h Con1monwealth. Without a religious belief in God's
.nee through this world, it could not have been done.
to the Tudors, the Kings alone had cared for the world
le England, and foreign policy was a secret of State. Since
.well's Revolution, foreign policy has been in the very
: of every Englishman who goes abroad. The English Com-
realth would never have been made by Kings and Kings'
ters alone. Abroad, any Englishman, and particularly any
sh ship, learned how to be England's ambassadors to the
. The islands and coaling stations, the coasts of five con-
:s that belong to England, were not conquered by a King
, , I" • ,. ' 'I • .. ,.
)irit, flashing through groups, committees, ships. The sale of
1e majority of the bonds of the Suez Canal in 1881 to the
:nglish government was not the result of a diplomatic ma-
ceuvre, but of a commercial chance suddenly noticed by
rivate people and supported by private people in its financial
ealization.
England's foreign policy can be so flexible, can muddle
1fough, because ten thousand amateurs in foreign policy scat-
:!red all over the world are its eyes and ears. Perhaps they
)metimes see1n a nuisance, and bureaucracy in Downing Street
[ghs. But Downing Street is dead the moment it is possible for
lawyer to govern foreign policy without the support of Eng-
~shmen abroad. As this stage seems nearly to have been
eached in the days of Sir John Simon and Sir Samuel Hoare,
~ is well to think of the stream of emigrants who left Engl,and
ear after year, yet remained English. Other nations migrate;
1ut the Anglo-Saxon inhabitants of the British Empire are the
nly emigrants who take with them a ready-made constitution
overing the whole field of government, that is to say, Christian
pirit, democratic consent, authoritative government, royal in-
.ependence of the courts, and respect for public opinion.
This ready-made constitution is the export article of the
riother-country to the Western \Vorld. "The world was all
1efore them." The Englishman, leaving his country, felt him-
elf to be taking possession of a world promised to him by
•r.ovidence. Predestination was no abstract principle, but a
leep faith in an established harmony between the country at
lome and the world ahead. The world abroad expected you.
rhe world needed the new inspiration. But you, too, were not
o be imprisoned in the little island. As your passage was prom-
sed to a world that thirsted for public spirit as the hart panteth
.fter the water-brooks, it was no less clear that the world was
·ours. An Englishman going out into the world comes into his
~wn. The world and he meet because he brings to it a message
vhich is as wide as the world.
We shall see how a special form of prayer "to be used at sea"
vas invented in 1647. It is the only "left-over" of Puritan
symbols of this new world (to repeat, not Europe, but the
stern World) were erected in the time of the Civil War.
Vhen the new world was divined by Essex as emerging from
waves, it still had to be clothed in the symbols of the
1rch. Under Elizabeth man still sought his salvation behind
protecting shield of Church and State. The nation, too,
personified as an ecclesiastical power. When the Armada
destroyed, the medal in memory of its defeat showed Eng-
l as a kind of Rock of St. Peter in the middle of the sea,
ring the part of the Church. In another version it is an
L, or a laurel tree, and the Spanish Navy is shown outside,
)less and incapable of harming the English soil. The sea in
e pictures was still inimical.
l the Civil War, a new vision makes its way into the official
bols of the nation. The later idea of a Britannia who rules
waves is expressed in a way which unfolds the thought
nd these words more dearly than the proud anthem itself.
quintessence of the new doctrine was that the seashore
no longer to be considered the border line of England. Soil
waves, land and sea, previously kept carefully apart, were
tgh.t together into a new unit.
p to 1640, the Great Seal of the Realm had always shown
King in his sacred vestments, with crown and sceptre on
hrone or on horseback. In 1642 Parliament began to think
new seal that might better express the new influence of
:-louse of Commons. Parliament itself was portrayed upon
. nd finally the ultimate purpose of the Revolution was
~ visible by the able artist who designed the seal of 1651.
reverse shows Parliament with the table of the House, the
ker, the mace, etc.; on the obverse the map of England
Ireland is given with wonderful precision. And the seas
ships filling them are given, too.
1oking back to the seal of 1640 and before, we feel the
II

[ty of this Revolution; the old world of the anointed, sov-

n King, dealing with secrets of State in religious majesty;
L new world, an inspired community, ruling at once over a
try and over the waves of the Rriti~h ~nrl Tr14':h ~P".l~ Th£Jo
 tutiful design of two fleets at sea makes it perfectly clear
t the new Commonwealth has usurped something never
tquered before-the sea itself-as belonging to the nature
the Realm committed to the hands of the Commons. Royal
,ver is eclipsed by this greater vision, by this overwhelming
covery of the physical world as an object of faith. The
mmons had faith in the predestination of the physical world,
d and sea, to become the footstool of the nation's policy and
,ver.
fhe Great Seal of 1651 already has the full depth and scope
the Glorious Revolution, because the physical and corporeal
rid is seen with new eyes. \Vhereas, before man had believed
the sacraments and symbols of a Church, the world itself
, now sacred and symbolical; whereas the home of men had
~n ecclesiastical and eternal, "from eternity. to eternity,'~ it
N became worldly and permanent, ''world without end"!
)ur interpretation is supported by the Navigation Act, of
· same year as the new Seal. It equals in words the grandeur
these designs:
~esolved by Parliament and Law by its authority:
1\cts and Ordinances of the Interregnum 1642-1660, II, 559
l l ).]
'or the increase of shipping and the encouragement of the Navi-
[on of this Nation, 9, Oct. 1651.
'or the increase of the shipping and the encouragement of the
'igation of this nation, which under the good Providence and
1tection of God, is so great a means of the Welfare and Safety
this Commonwealth; be it enacted that .... no goods ~r com-
:iities whatsoever, of the growth, production of manufacture of
a, Africa or America, or of any part thereof, of any island be-
ging to them, or any of them or which are described or laid
~n in the usual Maps or Cards of those places, as well as of the
~lish Plantations as others, shall be imported or brought into
; Commonwealth of England or into Ireland, or any other lands,
nds, plantations or territories to this Commonwealth, belonging,
my other ship or ships, Vessel or Vessels whatsoever, but only in
b. as do truly and without fraud belong to the people of this.
THE GREAT SEAL 1 1651 THE KING'S SOVEREICNTY ON THE SEAS, 1662
beautiful design of two fleets at sea makes it perfectly clear
that the new Commonwealth has usurpeq something never
:=onquered before-the sea itself-as belonging to the nature
3f the Realm committed to the hands of the Commons. Royal
power is eclipsed by this greater vision, by this overwhelming
discovery of the physical world as an object of faith. The
Commons had faith in the predestination of the physical world,
land and sea, to become the footstool of the nation's policy and
power.
The Great Seal of 1651 already has the full depth and scope
3£ the Glorious Revolution, because the physical and corporeal
world is seen ·with new eyes. \Vhereas, before man had believed
in the sacraments and syn1bols of a Church, the world itself
was now sacred and symbolical; whereas the home of men had
been ecclesiastical and eternal, "frmn eternity to eternity,", it
now became worldly and permanent, "world without end"!
Our interpretation is supported by the Navigation Act, of
the same year as the new Seal. It equals in words the grandeur
of these designs:
Resolved by Parliament and Law by its authority:
[Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum 1642-1660, II, 559
)gu ).]
For the inc'rease of shipping and the encouragement of the Navi-
~ation of this Nation, 9, Oct. 1651.
For the increase of the shipping and the encouragement of the
riavigation of this nation, which under the good Providence and
Protection of God, is so great a means of the Welfare and Safety
)f this Commonwealth; be it enacted that . . . no goods or com-
modities whatsoever, of the growth, production of manufacture of
Asia, Africa or America, or of any part thereof, of any island be-
longing to them, or any of them or which are described or laid
=lawn in the usual Maps or Cards of those places, as well as of the
English Plantations as others, shall be imported or brought into
this Commonwealth of England or into Ireland, or any other lands,
[slands, plantations or territories to this Commonwealth, belonging,
[n any other ship or ships, Vessel or Vessels whatsoever, but only in
mch as do t~~ly and without fraud belong to the people of this.
'"'.&VI • • •

By the way, the untranslatable term "people of this nation"

l1as remained a property of Anglo-Saxon language. The Roads
Jf the Sea belong to the chosen people who are "the people
Jf this Commonwealth." "The sea is not a foe, not an enemy of
nen. It is subdued and transformed into a field of man's
ictivity." In the English "counties" of old, manor or house
tnd garden forn1ed the centre, and around them fields and
neadows and pastures and woods and forests and .marshes were
~he objects of man's struggle for life. They were cleared, culti-
1ated and exploited from the established centre of a country-
1eat.
Now the whole country becomes the home, whose inhabitants
llough new fields on the seas and oceans abroad. The table in
he House of Commons replaces the table in the manor, around
vhich the husbandry of the community had centred. The new
1
ision had been revealed on which all later English accom-
>lishments were based. Disraeli creating an Empire of India,
he Imperial Conference of 1932 formulating a system of im-
>artial agreements, are but the latest descendants of the Acts
.nd Drafts of 1651.
To my mind, the Seal o~ 1651 has never been surpassed for
1oquence in painting a new country and a new world. Wher-
ver ·such a new vision occurs, the world has really changed.
~ complete revolution has taken place, replacing all the old
oncepts by new tables and new commands and values. We are
ight in calling such a process a total revolution, in the same
ense in which we had to call the French or Russian Revolu~
ion a total and complete change in language, thought and
haracter.
THE THEFT OF A WORD.

The period of the Civil War and of Cromwell, between 1641

nd 1660, is the real revolution, because the Restoration of
'reedom led to a wholly new concept of a commonwealth
rithin the \Vestern \Vorld. The leaders of such a spiritual
•pie who cared so much for the law that they carried the
,st of a King in Parliament with them in battle against the
rsical person of Charles I, is an insult. It may be the only
quate descriptio11 of them from a Cavalier's point of view:
. if you call Cromwell or Pym rebels you are a Jacobite, a
art. No Whig, and no impartial writer, can speak of the
e between i640 and 1660 as Civil \Var or Great Rebellion.
race Walpole was perfectly outspoken about that. Seas
:t.de appropriate to all the Laws of State" as much as the soil,
·e a precious heritage to the returning Charles II; he was
wn, in 1662, on a Seal, riding on the waves of the ocean, a
lent in his hand, drawn by sea horses. The inscription
nted straight to the conclusion. It did not say "Britannia
~s the waves"; it used the beloved name of "world": "Britons
r the whole world are kings" (et penitus toto regnantes orbe
tannos). General Monk handed over to the monarch the
tuguese alliance which meant the Atlantic coast of the
nish peninsula, and the_ port of Tangier. Tangier, between
1 and 1684, played the part later performed by Gibraltar.
lously the Stuart king clung to it, faithful to Cromwell's
on. Here, as in all questions of European scope, the Com-
1s failed Cromwell. Parliament refused the subsidies for
igier if the Catholic succession was not abandoned. It was
last act of a parliament under Charles II. The Restoration
ierveq the legacy of the Commonwealth as far as the King
concerned.
\Thy, then, was there a break ben~een the Protectorate and .
Restoration? And why was the Restoration of the Stuarts
1hort-lived?
"'he death-warrant of Charles Stuart in 1649 hung on the
l of Walpole's bed-chamber, and he called the precious
ument, comparing it with the l\1agna Charta of 12 15, the
Larta Major," the Greater Charter! But Walpole is a rare
~ption. Many a kindly Englishman would censure Walpole
r severely for his bad taste. They would praise the cowards
traitors who invited in William III. But they tried for a
~ time to get rid of any connection with the Roundheads
ui_ u1~ u1v11 vvar. tt1stonans tried to prove that Cromwell,
Pym, Hampden, Lenthall, Hutchinson, Undlow, had not been
real gentlemen. A Frenchman, Boutmy, had to silence this
attempt. He showed that the gentry presided over the political
clubs in all the counties during the Civil War. All the leading
families of the gentry were appointed or recognized by the
revolutionary government; and Oliver Cromwell himself was
the most remarkable type of a country gentleman, using exactly
the terminology already ascribed to the Lower House when
he stated that he was born "neither too high nor too low." He
was even too modest in that respect. His friends, as we have
seen before, did not find much difference between the pedigree
of the Cromwells and the blood of the Stuarts.
May it be sufficient to say here that a Whig and any friend
of English parliamentarism must acknowledge that he depends~
much more on the Rebels of 1641 than on the Whigs of 1688.
The peculiar reserve and shyness of the gentry springs less
from the bad behaviour of their Puritan ancestors than from
the Freudian repression of later days. For it is true that some-
thing terrible did happen, not in acts but in speech, not in
deeds but in words. The proper name of the insurgents of
1640 had been stolen between 1660 and 1688. The honest title
Df their enterprise had been perverted into shame. Because in
riormal times no one can condone a ci vii war or a rebellion,
~eople disassociated themselves from their fathers and masters.
The .Royalists, under the clever leadership of Clarendon,
:ommitted the theft in cold blood. They covered the memory
>f the twenty years before Charles II came back, as King of the
>ractically united kingdom; they profiteered on Cromwell's
inification of the three kingdoms, in a way similar to the
echnique of modern conservatives who call their counter-
evolutionary methods "revolution." The ways of modern reac-
ion against Bolshevism help to explain the Stuart "Restora-
ion.,, Today ''national revolution" is being planned or brought
arward in many countries to stop world revolution. Thus the
rord "revolution" becomes ambiguous, and is used by both
rmies in the civil strife. The embarking of the conservative
lements on a "revolution," though with exactly the opposite
aim, is a recognition of necessary change, and prevents a mere
reaction. But its main importance is to spread confusion and
to weaken the position of the groups which thought they had
the privilege of being the only original revolutionaries.
That is \vhat happened in England, too. The "restorers"
were over-reached by a royal restoration. This theft of the real
name and fair title of the Puritan Revolution could not fully
be understood by the historians of the nineteenth century be-
cause the term "Restoration" was used by the Bourbons in
France after 1815, as a protest against a preceding "Revolu-
tion." Thus the word "Restoration" emphasized the end of the
French Revolution.
But in England there was no "Revolution" to be overcome
when the Stuart l\1onarchy was "restored" in 1660. Here the
term "Restoration" did not follow, but preceded, the tenp.
"Glorious Revolution." It had, therefore, quite a different
meaning in 1660 frmn that which it had in 1815. In 1815,
Restoration was opposed to Revolution, and served to discon-
nect the new era from the preceding revolutionary period. In
1660, Restoration was chosen intentionally to connect the Puri-
tan Revolution as closely as possible with the new mission of
the King. Restoration made for identity between the Puritan
endeavour and the ain1s of the dynasty. Restoration was the
word of reconciliation. It stressed the fact that the new King
recognized one half of the Puritan Restoration. It was selected
to calm the anxieties of the nation. In telling them that the
King would restore, the King's ministers cunningly took up the
very war-cry of the Puritans themselves. They showed that
they did not shrink from the dangerous and seditious word
"Restoration," and that the King also wished to restore. Charles,
too, like the Puritans, was going to restore the Constitution of
King and Country.
The Royalist leader, Hyde (Lord Clarendon), had the intel-
ligence to draw up the first proclamation of Charles II, the
so-called "Declaration of Breda," in 1660, in these terms; "To
the end that fear of punishment may not engage any . . . to a
perseverance in guilt for the future, by opposing the Quiet and
rT~--=~--- _£._1_ -=-- ______ . _ ____
~-- ,_L - T'1I • " _w
~rs and people to their just, ancient and fundamental
,,
~hts . . .
fhe document shows clearly that he tried to go as far as
sible in his adaptation to the vocabulary of the gentry. He
nowledged the victory of parliamentary speech. And when
1rles II disbanded his army, the King also appealed, in
·ds written by Clarendon, to the good will of his country-
1 "in restoring the whole nation to its primitive temper and
~grity."
.s soon as the Royalists had transferred the label "Restora-
l" from the Roundheads to themselves, they erased the

nory of any popular restoration from the textbooks. In the

k of Cmnmon Prayer, after 1660, we read under the date
fay 29 the name "Great Rebellion" 'for the years 1649-1660.
e, for the first time in the history of the world; a political
od of twenty years came under official liturgical diagnosis
tieatment. Never before had the calendar of any church
tioned political events. But the theft of the word "Restora-
,, was sealed with the greatest solemnity the Church could
. Politics abused the most sacred of instruments to brand
·estorers of 1640 £or ever as rebels.
r thus inserting the rubric "Great Rebellion" in her time-

nissals, the Church created an impasse. The Roundheads

i no longer move modestly on the plane of human affairs.
.ey wished to make a breach in the wall erected by the
1

d curse of the Anglican Church, their authority had to

ne· divine also. The Roundheads came back as Whigs.
we shall see how they managed to replace the decrees of
~ing in Parliament by the decrees of divine Providence.
lS not their~ fault that Heaven itself had to be adjured.
lS the victors over the Great Rebellion who, by adding
lessings of the Church to their political manreuvres, pre-
the way for the new theology of the Glorious Revolution
88.
THE KING IN PARLIAMENT.

~ry Anglo-Saxon schoolboy is taught that facts are at the

)f human understanding. But British facts are not what
1ocent Continental mind would call farts ~t ~ 11 Vnn-1;"J-..
facts are all parliamentary facts: they are a preserved variety,
which is changed into matter-of-fact on the table of the House.
The alleged interest of the English mind in facts languishes as
soon as the facts can no longer be construed as matters on the
table of the House.
Now the table in the House of Commons is a curious piece
of furniture. It is a communistic institution. One table serves
for all the members of the House; even today they have no
private desks, no tables. All other parliaments equip their
senators or deputies as comfortably as possible. The Mother
of Parliaments is proud of offering as little comfort as possible.
The one table really means that the Right Honourables are
members of a family assembled round one table, one instru-
ment. The members may have no tables and no rooms for
themselves, but they can put their feet on the table of the
House in order to show that they are at home there and that
this house is their house. The transactions in the House are all
carried on under. pressure of a most intimate character. The
debates are really a preliminary talk and exchange, of views.
They are a precondition of legal procedure, but not legal in
themselves. "Politics," in English, m~ans literally an aggregate
status before legislation and law begin. The debaters are not
the legislators. Their attitude reflects, not the formality of law,
but the informality of an exchange of opinions. The members
inform the Speaker, the only member of the House who can
raise his voice in the Realm, the Council of the State. The
Speaker is the Voice of the House, the only voice that is audible
outside. The ·speeches inside, considered from the legal point
of view, are nothing but a whisper and a murn1ur. No one can
or shall know who speaks in the House of Commons. In the
debates the names of members are not mentioned. The speakers
whom these different gentlemen try to inform call upon them
as "member for Ipswich," "for Bath," "for Liverpool," because
they are present as representing the shires of the Realm. The
country is represented by delegates frmn the different counties,
fifty-two in England, thirty-three in Scotland. The Knights of
the Shires, and the Citizens of the Boroughs of the Realm meet
 V' ,

the 'House of Commons, like the Grand Jury of the nation,

give their verdict on the grievances of the King's subjects
l the demands of the King's budget. They are without per-
al character, anonymous like a good jury, where twelve
.inary men are the embodiment of public conscience. The
y has one voice, and the judge has one. Thus, in respect to
sonality, the twelve men who make up one voice count for
twelfth each. Similarly, the members of the House of
nmons are not units, to be counted from l to 658-though
1 can be subdivided into, for example, 219 representatives
:ounties and 307 of cities and boroughs in England and
:land. No, the individual member is really Y£rn 8 of the unit,
will of which is voiced by the Speaker.
'he anonymous character of the single member is at the root
'.le institution. This becomes clear when an M.P. behaves
y and thereby forfeits the recognition of his membership.
censure imposed on such a member by the Speaker is the
of his personal name. When other members are annoyed
n unparliamentary remark from a debating member, they
"Name him, name him!" For as soon as the Speaker names
the member ceases to be a member. He stands naked, cut
~om the tree, a fallen leaf. That is all that happens. The
pline of the House cannot go farther. Naming the member
ts refusing to recognize his membership. It is excommuni-
n.
rely this is paradoxical enough: a man is excommunicated
~ing given back his real name. But the atmospheric inten-
f the meetings of the House of Commons cannot be better
l than by stating the fact that men are in a different aggre-
.tatus as long as they serve in Parliament. Like any group
~n who are led by a chief, for instance, like soldiers in a
any (eating bread together), under a "captain" (caput-
, like students in a college under one head, like jurors on
el led by a foreman, the absence of names changes their
:ter. The French citizen carries his name everywhere.
nost of the results of the French Revolution, this quality
ing one's own name is thought todav to he thP P~~PnrA " , :
Jolitical physics. A man is considered to be permanently one
md the same atom: Mr. Smith, the voter, full name, with his
:axes paid, and a fine record.
\Ve have already observed, in the Russian Revolution, how
lifferent man as a labour-/orce is from man as a citizen. As a
abour-force) he is No. 7,966 in a power-plant which uses hands
n the same way as amperes and H.P. A French individual is a
>ersonality. An English squire serving on a jury or in the
-louse of Commons has the aggregate status of a~member.
Charles I tried to arrest five members of the House for High
rreason, and asked the Speaker where they were. "Upon that
he Speaker fell on his knees, and desired his excuse, for he was
servant to the House, and had neither eyes nor tongue, to see
1r say anything but what they commanded him." 12 Even the
,peaker, as long as he is in the House, is not an individual
insman of the King's Majesty, but a part of a body from which
o single member can be torn without violating the body.
The body politic of the Lower House owes its privileges and
:s constitutional rights to. the specific aggregate status of anony-
1ous membership. In the Upper House, of the Lords Spiritual
nd Temporal, each person has his own name. Every Lord is
illed, as a dignitary, by his full name. Any peer can have his
issent entered in the journals of the House of Lords, together
·ith his reasons for such dissent. Such a protest is valid. But a
:ommoner cannot do the same. When, in 1641, certain mem-
er~ protested against the Great Remonstrance by which the
,O"\\ier House, for the first time in history, appealed "down-
ards" to the people instead of upward to the King, they were
~nt to the Tower. No single member in the House of Com-
tons can move anything alone. He must be seconded, and he
m speak only once in defence of his motion, because he is not
1 individual.
The House knows no split into patties. In questions of de-
1te and the order of the House, the English Parliament never
oved along party lines. Every member helps jealously to pro-
ct the privileges of the minority, because the privileges of
12 Verney Papers, Camden Society, p. 139.
te minority are never the rights of another party, but those
'. the whole membership.
The i1nmunity of an M.P. does not depend on his individual
erit or exemption. The fact that he cannot be prosecuted for
tything done, said or thought in common with his fellow
embers is derived from the central fact that the House of
lmmons is the body politic, which cannot be deprived of any
its members during its session, and which cannot allow any
dividual to bear responsibility for the course of procedure
.lowed by the House.
Most of these principles are overlooked or misinterpreted
the Continent. The Mother of Parliaments. has usually been
itated without being understood. For example, "opposition,"
~ astronomical expression of the n1overnent of the stars, is
sunderstood on the Continent as a fixed and final situation.
is hated and crushed. But in England this sterile situation
; called division, not opposition, and divisions of the House
~e irregular. Robert Walpole managed to conduct one ses-
1 with no more than three divisions of the House.
;Opposition" was borrowed from astrology, because it was
expression of temporary localization. Opposition is a par-
tlar constellation among others. Stars which are moving
.dily are in opposition and will soon be seen in conjunction
in. Con junction and opposition are stages in a permanent
em of movement across the sky of events. The leader of
opposition can even be paid, as he is in Canada, by the
~rnment, because the political solar system necessarily pro-
es curves and situations which include opposition and con-
:tion. The perfect harmony of the revolving stars being the
lel on which political life should be shaped, opposition is
vitial to the life of the body politic. The Corporation of the
tmons, embracing members without name, the Grand Jury
ie Realm) is itself not treated as a human being, but as an
mo mi cal character, a celestial power. And its ways are taken
e as sovereign, as much a matter of experience, as the
reign course of the stars in the sky.
1e world of Parliament is a real world of its own. "To be
Jf Parliament i~ to hP n111- ,...,f .. 1,." -·---- 1 _]"
Rodney in 1780. And this world is not the world of reasoning
science, of abstract measurements, of a decimal system, but the
empirical system of earth and sea, stars and sun, day and night,
ebb and flow.
A PARLIAMENTARY CHURCH.

The latest historian of England in the seventeenth century

called the Church "the key of the whole constitutional build-
ing." But we might better have called the Church the build-
ing for which a key of extraordinary subtlety was needed,
sought, and finally devised. The Christianity of England being
older than its Whiggism, the Whigs, with their passion for the
old, had to take possession of the Anglican Church. That is the
creative act. The combined impact of the words Restoration
and Revolution, though apparently tending in opposite direc-
tions, delivered the Church of England into the hands of the
Commons, and did what neither the Puritan Restoration nor
the Whig Revolution could have attained without the conquest
of the Church: it gave to the knights and officers of militia of
Merrie Old England, who were "Junkers" as much as any
Junker in Prussia or Poland or Hungary, the treasures of a
liturgy, a religious supremacy, and a godly sovereignty to which
no gentry and no lower house on the Continent of Europe, ex-
cept the Hungarian gentry, could pretend.
The British Junkers described their goal as the restoration
of Magna Charta. Magna Charta dates back to 1215. Now in
.this very year 1215, the greatest universal council of Western
Christendom was held in the Lateran at Rome, with more than
four hundred bishops present. Obviously, in 1215, the Church
of England was not a "church" of its own at all. It had been
established as a province of the Church by the Popes of the
seventh century. Lanfranc and Anselm of Canterbury had
sought the commands of the Pope for their second world, their
"orbis secundus," as it was called in 1090. Thomas a Becket had
shed his blood for the liberty of the Church, against the King
and for the Pope. Christendom had strongly admired his Cath-
nlic courage, and had canonized him as a saint two years after
his death. From 1172 to 1535 Thomas was the saint of the
- 11 • • • - 11 ..
:ed the fact that no priest could be appointed or judged by
cular power. Throughout the Middle Ages the pilgrimage
tis tomb was the symbol of Christian liberty against kings
lords, and when it was abolished by Henry VIII he was
inded by the Pilgrimage of Grace ( 1536), for a last tragic
aent, of the rights of the populace. Henry VIII did not
de the liberties of Parliament; he led a Parliamentary in-
>n of the liberties of the Church. "The Church of Eng-
lost the liberties granted by Magna Charta. These were
ties denied by Parliament and not to Parliament." 13
lie paradox of an Anglican Church ruled by the Commons
use these laymen wished to restore the Common Law of
.<eval England is, I hope, now clear. The Commons wished
store one half of the medi£eval constitution and to destroy
>letely its other half, the independence of the Christian
: from kings and parliaments. For both purposes, restora-
:tnd destruction, they used legal fictions; but these fictions
opposite in character. To destroy the universal and cleri-
1aracter of the Church it was important that the King be
1f themselves, a gentleman of the same religion they held,
villing to grant them complete influence over the stipends
ppoints within this Church. The clergy was to consist of
tristian gentleman" in every village. The theologians of
1iversities were to be without any influence on the evolu-
,f the creed; for they represented either royal interests or
1-English, universal influence of scholarship.
this mighty task the gentry could rely on an important
lent. The King, in introducing his supremacy over the
h, had deferred to his subjects by calling the reformed
the Book of Common Prayer. This beautiful book has
ved over four hundred years; and its title has contributed
~han anything else to the religious colouring of the word
non" in the English language. From the Book of Com-
rayer and from the "Commons" in Parliament originated
o mighty streams of feeling, thought and imagination
~rtF. Pollard, The Evolution of Parliament, 2nd edition, p. 215, New
ingmans, 1926.
rhich finally led to the vision of the British Commonwealth
f Nations.
This book, then, by its very title, made every reasonable con-
ession to the presumptions of the common man when it was
ublished by the King's bishops in 1549. It avoided the hier-
rchical claim by replacing the words "divine service" with
ie words "common prayer." 14 The introduction runs as fol-
lws: "There was never anything by the wit of man so well
evised or so sure established which in continuance of time
ath not been corrupted: As among other things, it may plainly
ppear by the common prayers in the church, commonly called
i vine service." This was an astounding concession on the part
E the Anglican Church to the spirit of the Commons. Here
common prayer" is suggested, or supposed, to be the original
i\.pression; and the hierarchical phrase "divine service" is re-
uced to a later, surreptitious alteration of this original mean-
1g. By a stroke of the pen the proper order of things (sacra-
tents that radiate from a holy centre to the circumference of
ie community) is replaced by the unhistorical fiction of a
~If-sufficing con1munity, created not by apostolic succession
ut by a granted equality of all the members, old and new.
There was a further concession in the Book, in that the
raying community was made the subject of the service. In
1e Lutheran churches-as in the Greek or Roman Catholic-
1e priest made the confession of sins in the singular: "I, poor
nner." It had been Luther's pride that he bestowed on every
hristian soul as much of a personal right to say "I" in church
; had the priest who prepared himself individually to sing the
[ass. But the Book of Common Prayer abolished the "I." All
.nglican ritual uses "we." When, in the eighties of the last
!ntury, the Luthe~an churches of America established a com-
lOn ritual, the one concession they made to the tradition of
nglo-Saxon congregational life was to replace "I" by "we"
L the confession of sins made by the Lutheran pastor. So
rongly did they feel the pressure of their Anglo-American
ivironment. This tradition goes back to the year 1549, the
14 For the first appearance of the phrase, see Th. Lathbury, A History of the
wk of Common Praver. o. Q, Oxford. 18;-,o.
=lest year of the Book of Common Prayer. Here the central
ayer of the Mass, the Canon, was changed into a form that
aped the character of the Christian people of England for
future times. Instead of praying for "all here standing
)und" (circumstantium), 15 the priest now prayed for "this
y congregation which is here assembled in thy name." The
iglican congregation was thus filled with the inspiration
omised to every gathering in his name; and never, after 1549,
Lild it be at rest until its inspiration was recognized as the
blic spirit of England. The conquest of the service by the
1gregation found a first conspicuous outlet in the Responsory
the Psalms. Unknown in the Lutheran Church, the Re-
lnsory not only gave the congregation a share in the service,
t endowed the English people with a real language. It made
~m into a "Christian people" by bestowing upon them the
tguage of Canaan! Like the Commons in the Realm, "Con-
~gation" became a living body politic in the Church. The
l Church had always known a distinction between clergy and
)ple. The order of voting in ecclesiastical elections had
rays been "clerus et populus," clergy and laymen. The form
the Book of Common Prayer exalted the "populus Chris-
rius" into a leading partner in the Service. Congregation,
·ex/' became the leading element in religious life.
fhe popular concessions were summed up when the "par-
l" was turned into a "minister." Whereas Luther had been a
gister,_and taught all the preachers of the "new learning" at
ttenberg to wear the gown of a university magister (the
theran frock is the doctor's gown), the English "magisters"
:ame "ministers." Now "magister" is derived from "magis,"
inister" from "minus." We find Thomas Hobbes already
ltrasting the Lutheran and Anglican conception. He says:
re look at the pulpit not as magistral, but as ministerial."
ncis Bacon had already attacked ''magisterial method" and
Jmmended "initiative method."
['his ought to be connected with the love of .low, "Lower,"
l "Common" in English, as against the aura of unreality
See prayer Suscipe in Offertorium of the Mass. in the Roman Missal.
tich surrounds everything that is called High or Upper; then
e change from magisterial into ministerial clergy will be
predated.
All these concessions to the special English political situation
re made by the Book of Common Prayer. But of course it
lld not renounce the very idea of the unity of the Anglican
.urch. It had to keep a calendar. The English Church could
t give up the great festivals of Christmas, Easter and Whit-
1day-all imperilled and attacked by the Puritans-without
:ting itself off from some of the very deepest symbols of
Ltual recognition between the Christians of England and the
ristians of the world. The same is true of the ritual. Without
~ core of the Lord's Prayer, the Nicene Creed, the Agnus
i, and certain other cardinal prayers and sacraments of the
urch, such as baptism, Christianity evaporates into some-
ng like Masonry or philosophy.
3ut the Non-Conformists, descendants of the ranters as they
~e, smelled papacy and superstition everywhere. They wished
tbolish godfathers and godmothers and put their whole trust
:he inspiration of the congregation, t,he gatherings in church.
ere the living spirit of the Christian people should fill the
uths of prophets and ministers. And serving as mouthpieces
the people, ministers should be fed by the Holy Spirit of
ir congregations and synods.
n the first period of the British Revolution, the very mean-
of what was being done had to be discovered step by step.
e men who fought for the Rights of Parliament, quite
able of understanding the legal fictions of the Realm, were
tpable of using the same fictions for the Kingdom of God.
gentry, they were ready to accept a visible head of the
.gdom. But as Puritans, their Kingdom of Heaven was not
ly to tolerate a visible head of the Church of England. The
nmons were too deeply inspired by the Scotch to bear the
gious yoke of a "King in Church" church. John Knox, in
sixteenth century, had taught that the Lower Estates were
,onsible for the Christian faith in any case of emergency;
at any time when the supreme head delayed the reform
,,.;I &............ t... ... ....1!-.!- _ 1---- ~-1-.!-- • r , • - -
:h system, with a local government of elders. This would
meant the splitting up of a great national institution into
;; and the fragments of this presbyterian church would
fallen into the hands of the squires, except for the insti-
1 of synods which were lacking in authority.
e Presbyterians tried this experiment; they abolished the
Thy. The local group was made omnipotent. But in so
· they went against their own parliamentary principles.
s we have seen, it was not that "such and such an esquire"
'keford Grantham had rights in the Realm, but that the
bled Commons exercised power in the United Kingdom.
>ut this rigid discipline of a single body, the Realm would
been dissolved into petty local governments. England
l have become like chaotic Poland where every gentleman
sed a personal veto in the Imperial Diet and could block
JCedure. The membership in the House of Commons, by
ling names, prevented chaos. It barred any return to the
of a lawless aristocracy. The very word "Commons" guar-
l that the peace of the land, the praiseworthy unifying
[ royal power, was to be inherited by the new King in
ment.
v it was completely inconsistent with this policy of the
10ns to dissolve the other half of the Realm. The Church,
s, hospitals, universities, prayer-books, calendars, in short,
ian civilization was in danger of being watered down,
1sing all its standards, if parochial and provincial presby-
, were to govern these institutions. Like any utterance of
gher life of man, the spirit must be able to move where
th. Parochial fetters suffocate the life of the spirit. As a
· of fact, animosity against the universities and the ca-
l schools ran high in the Long Parliament. The Presby-
; hated Oxford and Cambridge as they hated the bishop-
'hey were seats of the whore of Babylon, of a royal and
l power in a much too visible church. Parliament began
ndoning the liturgy of a united Anglican Church to the
trdours of Puritanism. In 1646 the Book of Common
was abolished. But in 1647 the peculiar situation of the
, Isles was suddenly rediscovered by Parliament. One
thing at least made the sacrifice of a united and hierarchical
church as impossible as the sacrifice of the royal peace. England
did not live on land alone; one half of English life was enacted
on the sea. The waves of the British sea were crossed day after
day by hundreds of ships. Few men-of-war and practically no
ship of trade carried a minister on board. But Christians they
were, and pray they must. In abolishing the Book of Common
Prayer, the Presbyterians had ignored the weakness of any· in-
stitution which is merely local and self-governed; its incapacity
to provide, all the time and e;verywhere, good, responsible,
highly trained leaders. Intellectual leadership, religious leader-
ship, is scarce. Talent is not as plentiful as blackberries. Democ-
racy believes that it is, but the belief is false. Without a Central
Power, which could be nothing but the authority of the Angli-
can Church n1ore or less disguised, the seamen would have
been lost to the religious cause of the Presbyterians. They
would have clung inevitably to the royal Book of Common
Prayer, because in order to face shipwreck and death they
needed some form of spiritual comfort.
The Presbyterians, therefore, in 1648, issued a decree that a
Directory should supersede the Book of Common Prayer. The
Directory took its position at the heart of the constitution of
the Realm. The union of Scotland, England and Ireland, which
was after all n1erely a royal union by dynastic inheritance, was
vindicated. A prayer was framed for these sacred covenants,
and for the churches of England, Scotland and Ireland, and the
King in Parliament was read a moral lesson by the cursing of
his evil counsellors: "Whereas there are thousands of ships
which have no ministers with them to guide them in prayer,
and therefore either use the old form of Common Prayer or no
prayer at all; the former whereof for many weighty reasons
hath been abolished, and the latter is likely to make them
heathens rather than Christians; therefore, to avoid these in-
conveniences, it hath been thought fit to frame some prayers,
for example, this: 'We pray thee send thy blessing upon all
the Reformed Churches, especially upon the churches and
kingdoms [sic, the churches precede!] of England, Scotland and
Ireland, now more strictly and religiously united in thP ~o1Pmn
Le and convenant. We pray thee for all in authority, espe-
r the King's majesty, that God would make him rich in

[ngs, both in his person and government, establish his

te in religion, save him from evil counsel, and make him a
~d and glorious instrument for the conservation and propa-
a of the Gospel.' "
.is time the Presbyterians were as "Anglican" and "Epis-
ian" as they well could be. In publishing the Directory
~ompletely abandoned the Presbyterian principle of local
h government. The Directory is the "sin against the Holy
~" of the Puritan Revolution. Such a great document is
ven mentioned by Gardiner in his books on the Great
llion and the civil wars of England. It would, in fact, be
.uch to ask of a Liberal of the nineteenth century that he
d divine the real dangers of the Puritan days. But the
· imperial development, the Commonwealth of England,
t stake when the Church of England was given over to
local pedants or congregationalists. In forbidding the use
: Book of Common Prayer, Parliament abdicated its re-
s dignity as a member of a Realm mighty in the things
spirit, such things as universities, schools and the calen-
fhe introduction of the Directory was the first event
stopped the threatened suicide of the Mother of Parlia-

~ year later Parliament had broken the resistance of

~s I. The King agreed to all the secular demands of his
es: But in their blindness they could not see what they
ready done in publishing the Directory; it seemed merely
:eption to the rule they had established. On land, the
~d congregationalists did not shrink at the backward step
1aos; they mistook the isolated local congregation of each
for the united members of the Commonwealth. Charles I
•t lose his life because of his temporal power. He had
to all the demands of Parliament in matters of finance
ar. But he was clear-headed enough to understand his
s famous "No bishop, no Kings" in the sense in which it
eant; namely, that a government over the counties of
td and Scotland was impossible if all that we call today
the civil departments of government were to be excluded from
its co-ordinating power. All civil departments today are of
ecclesiastical origin, derived from common law, the monastic
orders, theology, or university traditions.
Charles I died, not as a fanatic for a personal faith, but as a
clear-headed fighter for the rights of the King's role in the
Anglican Church. When he was beheaded one half of his fight
was won. His secular rights, by his own consent, were gone. But
~he return to the catholicity of the Anglican Church was made
possible by his tenacity. Had he once given up his claim it
ATould probably have been impossible to restore it at any later
:ime. Religion would have fallen into the hands of a special
>ody. The British Commons would not have acquired the
·eligious sovereignty of their House. The words on the Great
;eal of the Commons in 1642, Pro Religione, grege et Rege,
urned the scales between Rex and Grex, King and Parliament.
~ut it was the mistake of the Presbyterians not to stop there,
mt to mistake grex as meaning ecclesiastical congregation. The
;reat Seal of the Civil War would be valid only if grex pre-
eded rex and religion preceded both, embracing the whole
Ungdom at once. Then grex could not be "congregation," but
lad to mean the Christian people of all England. Not the iso-
1ted minister and congregation, but the united ministers and
rie united congregation of all England, represented by Parlia-
1ent, had to be the bearers of the inspiration.
Actually, Charles I became the martyr of this united Chris-
~anity ·and the protector of Parliament against local govern-
1ent of the Church. "The King in Parliament," by climbing
le scaffold, helped Parliament against its own blindness, along
le road to parliamentary glory and sovereignty. Charles I
Lved, not a royal Church as against a democratic Church, but
[} Anglican and a parliamentary Church as against a Derby-
1ire, a Norfolk, a Kent, a Warwickshire and a ministerial
hurch! By doing so, he acted as the true trustee of Parliament
self against Parliament, appealing from this misinformed Par-
ament to its wiser successors!
Charles I is the only saint of the Anglican Church. No other
.artyr or saint was ever inserted in its calenn::ir r.h~n·l'°c J
rns it with good reason. For it was not the "arbitrary power"
L monarch, but the Realm of Great Britain which spoke
1ugh him in favour of a Church of the Realm, regardless of
conflict between King and Commons.
PUBLIC SPIRIT.

'hus the King stood out for a sovereign Public Spirit per-
ng all England. Inspiration, in France the contribution of
national genius, was exposed in England to the terrible
~er of becoming the attribute of Hyde Park corner prophets
ranters, levellers, sectarians of all kinds of cheap spiritual
tement. The Commons of England, by shouldering the
~ious task, gave support to what is called with untranslat-
force, in Anglo-Saxon terms, "public spirit." These words
lOt be translated literally into any other language. "L'opi-
. publique" is a poor echo from the nfneteenth century,
:h distinguished between individual esprit and public opin-
But in England you can only be public-spirited-you could
)e public-opinioned!-and you have no esprit of your own.
iblic spirit is the inspiration of the populus christianus in
lt against the fossilized Realm in State and Church. Public
t is the power to which the Commons appealed when they
ed from the King to the people in 1641 and explained
· Great Remonstrance to the man in the street. "To thy
, Israel," was the war-cry of the man in the street when
les I returned from his attempt to arrest five members of
am·ent. This command voiced the public spirit. By phras-
t in biblical terms, the people emphasized the religious
tcter of this spirit, its equality with true Christian inspira-

ter 1641, England could never be governed against the

ic spirit of the nation. Public opinion, the shallow, critical,
ering, and uncomprehending intellect, can never prevent
~overnment of a great nation from acting grimly and
ly. But public spirit is serious. It is positive. It knows
e the country has to go, not for cheap profits, but for the
of the soul. Public spirit makes the whole man move, not
ly his intellect. Public spirit surrounds parliamentarv life
 England as waves bear a boat. Without public spirit, Parlia-
ent is utterly lost.
All reforms in England have been carried out, not along
Lrty lines, but by the evolution of public spirit. Wilberforce's
ccessful fight against slavery, continuing as it did for twenty-
re years, is a great example. He was a Tory, and it seemed
be the worst thing in the world that the emancipation :_,·;
..
ould come from that side ,,of the House. But he succeeded.
'hen the last bill accomplishing emancipation was voted, the l
1ole House of Commons rose in a body and honoured the
an who had won his battle against all odds.
Public spirit is conjured up by Harrington in his Oceana,
·itten under Cromwell, and is the idea under whose £egis
1glo-Saxons will always keep peace and understand each
ber. It is the first great attempt to secularize the gifts of the
::>ly Ghost. Once imprisoned in the strong walls of synods and
uncils, the decrees of popes, and the books of universities,
now invaded this "precious stone set in the silver sea" with
e force of union and enthusiasm. No wonder that at first it
ept the Presbyterians away past the limits of the real situa-
1n. The Kingdom of God had invaded the kingdom of this
.rld.
It was the idea of the Scottish Kirk which conquered Eng-
1d in the years of the Civil War. Here John Knox had taught
~n to distinguish the two kingdoms, and to be mindful that
~ .King of Scotland held no higher rank in the Kingdom of
>d ·than any other man. This ecclesiastical law of the Scotch
amped the Puritans. It was like being drowned with inspira-
n. When the waters receded, Public Spirit remained as the
rmanent result.
By its reception, not an isolated word was added to the Eng-
1 vocabulary. The Great Seal, by reversing the old Conti-
1tal
(1) (2) (3)
M it Gott fur Konig und Vaterland

i making it
(3) (2)
 ..., .

roke the old tablets and established a new value, the inspira-
on of the grex, of the united congregation of England. Every-
ting had a new colour, a new sense. Faith in Public Spirit
ade the British believe in frequent elections.
For every topic in which the Church had been concerned,
lis lay conception of spirit suggested new words. I mean
:ountry" and "commonwealth." These new words are the last
n.k we have to fill in the chaii-i of language that united the
nristian people of England; for they were re-created by the
nitan Revolution.
Public spirit, permeating the Island of Great Britain, catch-
g up great and small alike, obliterated the boundaries of
lnvocations, countries and shires. The word "country" was of
1biguous character. Usually it signified a county; sometimes
was used for the larger unity of the whole kingdqm. Now,
tder the inspiration of the general and common spirit, coun-
r and county were differentiated. When we look into the
1oks of the time, we find the same author using the word
ountry" sometimes· in the old, particular, and sometimes in
e new, general, sense of one country, represented by the
ntry of the counties meeting in London. (In Wiirttemberg
:! country in this sense was called the Landschaft.) The united
ates of the land, when assembled, represented its unity. The
Lintry now became the new fatherland, the patrie. For "coun-
"' has all the flavour of the French "patrie" or the German
'aterland." It is the first native, domestic representation of
gland within the Realm, rio longer suffering passively as in
~ Middle Ages, no longer the widow who had been lamented
1540, during the Reformation, in the famous first English
gedy Gorboduc, but a vigorous motherland of vigorous men,
fighting Christians, and godly English squires. The move-
nt, which replaced the narrow Calvinist conception of a
al congregation in a particular town by the great idea of
H1blic spirit embracing 100,000 square miles, brought the
mtries together until the abstract unity of their representa-
n. in Parliament was reflected in the notion of the "coun-
,, "My COUntry, ri2."ht Or Wrong-": thP f~rnrn1~ nhr·:H'D " " ' -
lresses the revolutionary fact that Realm and local congregation
1ave met half-way, in the conception of a country represented
)y the Commons of the Realm and moved by a public spirit
·eigning throughout the counties of the Commonwealth.
THE END OF CONVOCATION.

But there was still a gap iq the constitution for which not
~ven this grandiose idea of a united country led by public spirit
:ould compensate. Oliver Cromwell had to fill this gap single-
Landed: he had to make himself Lord Protector. Under Crom-
vell the English constitution was in effect this: the Lord Pro-
ector (himself a gentleman) represented the Realm, i.e., King
.nd Lords, while the gentry of the Lower House represented
he Commonwealth. The gap was in the constitution of the
~hurch. For the Realm without an ecclesiastical hierarchy was
tot the real Norman Realm; it was a purely military organiza-
ion of the King's feudal army, taken over by Cromwell's
Ironsides." Cromwell and the army made desperate efforts
o overcome this obstacle and make themselves into a church-
ike institution, to fill the cultural and moral portions of the
1ld Realm with religious life. But their ranting and praying
nd fanaticism could not make up for the old royal, high
;hurch of Norman tradition. The tragedy of Cromwell's "Iron-
ides" lies in this: there was an evident, unbridgeable gap be-
ween Church and piety, palpable institutions and palpitating
iith. The Christian people of England could not be put on
11 fours with the Anglican Church of the Realm by simple
nthusiasm and godliness. Cromwell, restoring the liberties of
1e Commonwealth of England, was incapable of destroying
1e need for a Church of England.
It was Charles II who carried through the parliamentariza-
.on of the English Church. In the cavalcade of "restorers" and
~volutionaries, it was the part of the monarch of the Restora-
.on to subjugate the Church to the "King in Parliament,"
nd do away with its loyalties to the "King in Council." All
1is was attained more or less indirectly. For example, Convo-
1tion, the ecclesiastical parliament, was dangerous because
ould be used by a fighting King to get money from the Church
rithout Parliament. But as early as 1662, Waller could sing:
"Convocation no longer continues to sit,
Because nobody sees any use for it."
t was no revolutionary, but Clarendon himself, the minister
f Charles II, who managed to get this settled without Parlia-
1ent. The lawyers-amongst them a famous Speaker of the
Couse of Commons-have always held that his abolishing the
nancial independence of the Church through the tacit as-
1mption that the lower clergy could be represented by the
~ntlemen of the Lower House, was one of the boldest and
lost revolutionary acts in English constitutional history. It·
as only possible because henceforth the Church was not gov-
·ned visibly, by Presbyterian zealots, but invisibly, by the
mrteous mediation of his Majesty's Minister.
We can say that this was really the great revolution: the
1ntrol, not of a mere sect, but of a real branch of the Chris-
1n Church, the Church of England, by the gentry of the
ires. The transfer of the King's rights in the Church from
e King as spiritual overlord to the "King in Parliament" was
e subtle key which finally opened the doors of the cathedral.
bis process lasted from 1660 to 1685; and the Stuart Restora-
>n, far from preventing it, was a part of it. It was under
iarles II that Parliament embarked on Church legislation,
e sur.veillance of morals, and all kinds of crucial religious
testions. The authority of Parliament in matters of religion
LS questioned for the last time in 1689, when the Non-Jurors,
little group of Royalists in the Anglican Church, refused
take the oath of allegiance to William and Mary at the
mmand of Parliament, and went to Scotland. In 1927 Par-
ment was still able to reject the reform of the Book of
1mmon Prayer, though it was proposed by archbishops,
hops, and the regalvanized Convocations of York and
nterbury.
 THE LANGUAGE OF A GENTLEMAN.

The Commons use the figures of the budget as an expres-

sion of their political influence and power. They pay the King,
the princes, the judges; and the more they pay the more they
enjoy their own wealth. But when it became necessary to speak
of the duties of the country and the nation, instead of its privi-
leges, the gentleman had no natural language at his disposal.
Yet Burke, the hero of English eloquence, called all of Europe
"virtually one State." The duties of England within this larger
Commonwealth had to be elucidated by rules and notions of
authority. Plain English was not enough to inspire these hunt-
ing, drinking, gambling, hard-riding country squires. The old
Merry England of Falstaff and Shakespeare could not have
bridled the natural pride and arrogance of the gentry. A code
had to be found which should be valid for every gentleman.
This code had to avoid all theological or philosophical raffine-
ment. It had to find old words for the wise old world in which
Englishmen were determined to live; but it need not be a
religion. This faith knows no tabernacle. The secular Catholi-
cism of modern English society has replaced the ritual of the
Mass by the ritualism of daily life. From tub to dinner, every-
thing is done in a deacon's way. I need not dwell on the rigours
of an English Sunday; they are world-famous. But the week,
too, has a special routine. The so-called "hours" of monastic
li~e in 1400, prime, matins, nones, vespers, and so on, have
been replaced-without blasphemy be it said-by breakfast,
1uncheon, tea, and dinner.
Whistler, the American painter, with his provoking wit,
neatly hit off the islanders' ritual when he fell into the midst
of them on a P. & 0. steamer during the Boer War: "Nobody
but English on board-and after months of not seeing them,
really they are amazing. There they all were at dinner-you
know-the women in low gowns, the men in dinner jackets-
they might look a trifle green, they might suddenly run when
the ship rolled-hut what matter-there they were-men in
dinner jackets, stewards behind their chairs in dinner jackets
~~....1 ~~ -11'~ ~=~L'- - .• : .. t... .... L - _____ .._ ____ , A -- -1 -1 - -- - -- 1 -- • "I
he whole business clear to me down there in South Africa.
~t home every Englishman does his duty-appears in his din-
,~er jacket at the dinner hour-and so what difference what the
~oers are doing? All is well with England." 16
The ships are England heFself; that is the result 'of the Revo-
1tion. There is no reason to believe that the English have,
y birth, "hearts cased in triple steel," which Horace thought
ecessary for those who crossed the sea. The gentry overcame
1e awe which seafaring inspires by a moral conquest. Proffi-
ate and lustful the Stuart Restoration was, but its most friv-
lous poet, Wycherley, went to sea himself and exclaimed in
"'he Gentleman Dancing-Master-with a phrase impossible in
hakespeare's time-"All gentlemen must pack to sea."
The language of the Christian gentleman was formed on°
ie vocabulary of the Old Testament. Until very recently,
very educated Englishman learned the Psalter by heart and
~arned to master the language of the Psalms by paraphrasing
iem in writing. A young gentleman of the earliest days in the
rnited States, Gouverneur Morris, wrote a description of the
rentleman, using only words of the Fifteenth Psalm; and
'homas Jefferson liked it so much that he copied it with his
wn hand:
" 'Tis he whose every thought and deed
By rule of virtue moves,
Whose generous tongue disdains to speak
The thing his heart disproves.
Who never did a slander forge,
His neighbour's fame to wound;
Nor hearken to a false report
By malice whispered round.
"Who -pice, in all its pomp and power
Can treat with just neglect;
And piety, though cloth'd in rags,
Religiously respect.
L6Joseph and Elizabeth Pennell, Life of James McNeill Whistler, II, 267.
iladelphia, Lippincott, 1908.
 Who, to his plighted words and trust
Has ever firmly stood;
And though he promised to his loss,
He makes his promise good.
"Whose soul in usury disdains
His treasures to employ,
Whom no record can ever bribe
The guiltless to destroy." 17

That this ideal was painted during the war against England is
remarkable. It is important for our political theory that the
ideal contains no features proper to a man who needs help or
mpport or money or advancement or office. Gouverneur Morris
Nas a man whose grandfather had been Governor of the State
)f New York. Robert Peel once said: "It takes three genera-
jons to make a gentleman." There is not one trait that alludes
.o a condition where a man depends on others or rules others.
fhe Gentleman is the embodiment of independence; it is in
iis power to destroy the guiltless, or to act as a usurer. These
>ossibilities presuppose wealth. He is a good loser, too:
"And though he promised to his loss
He makes his promise good."
The gentleman, the rich and independent man who "makes
.is promise good," even if it be "to his loss," is kept in moral
1

.iscipline by his abandonment of any high~brow arrogance of

1tellect. He shrinks from self-introspection, the very food of
ie French mind. He wishes to find his way by 'visceral sensa-
.ons, by instinct, not by a logical chain of deductions. The
ighest praise accorded Lord Asquith by Stanley Baldwin was
1at he was able to sense instinctively the temper and opinion
f the House, and was willing to let these impressions react on
is own judgment.
The cardinal virtue of an Englishman is presence of mind.
lhereas the German, in his speech, offers a result of past
tought, and the Russian presents plans for an abstract future,
17 The Historirnl Mno-n.,;,,..o '" ,Q~Q .... o n
te Englishman would think it impolite to intrude on the pres-
lt any suggestion of his own past thinking or his future pur-
)ses. His language excels in understatement, in the tropes of
neiosis" and mild irony. Self-control, self-mastery, self-suppres-
~n, self-effacement, self-command, self-conquest, etc., this in-
~haustible list of words indicates one of the Englishman's
·eat achievements. "He had the regular English tendency to
de away any taste or talent that might conceivably seem to
iply a claim to superiority," Sir Gilbert Murray says of a
1ung friend. 18
The French take into consideration the sudden turns in the
1eel of fortune; the English take the full risk and are good
sers. It is no accident that a gentleman's agreement became
e safest contract in international relations. Property, wealth,
vnership, belong to the English Commons; even today the
inchise is given, not to everybody, but to a householder, a
ad of a household. It is only by legal fictions that almost
eryone is treated as a householder. But Common Law wishes
deal with men .who have something to lose, who belong to a
~11-to-do family. In America, for a certain period in the
~hteenth century, the names of the graduates of Harvard Col-
~e were arranged in an order of precedence according to the
jmated rank of their families. Thus we are told, for example,
it in a class of twenty-four, John Adams, later President, held
irteenth place. So the fireside of an English country-seat
came.4 place used not merely for voting purposes but for all
:ial existence, a symbol of England which has resisted all
inges, including central heating. The fireplace, the hearth,
~ rug, accompany Englishmen all over the world; it is part
the ritual of establishing an English home, an outpost of the
loved country which their ancestors restored to its old liber-
s and which a Glorious Revolution made happy forever.
When the Commons wished to_ please Sir Robert Walpole,
.o was their leader for many years, and who liked to call him-
f a simple country gentleman, they introduced the week-end
that he might hunt the fox and shoot the deer at home in
1 A:neas on Siegecraft, ed. L. W. Hunter and S. A. Handford, Oxford 102?.
he country. English civilization does not aim at the transforma-
ion of "paysans" and "nobles" into citizens, it tries to "coun-
rify" the cities and boroughs. It is true that the words "coun-
rification" and "to countrify" are now archaic. But anything
n England may be called "countrified," even today. So far as
he gentry's Restoration is concerned, all England should be
alled "countrified," and "countrification" would be the clear-
st description of the goal which English public spirit has pur-
lled for the last three hundred years.
Sentimental affection for the low roof, the old brick, the fire-
lace, sometimes rose to the level of true poetry, as in Thomas
~ray's (1716-1771) Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.
"'he success of the poem was due to the simple things which
. opposed to grandeur, pride, "the boast of heraldry, and
omp of power." Gray praised:
"Some village Hampden that with dauntless breast
The little tyrant of his fields withstood;
Some mute, inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood."
nd the secret is out when he sings:
"Along the cool, sequestered vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way."
"Noiseless" is the way of a gentleman. Wordless deeds are
~st. This passage from Tom Brown's Schooldays at Rugby
1ould not be omitted in a chapter on the English Gentleman:
uAll the way up to London he [the father] had pondered what
· should say to Tom by way of parting advice, something that
e boy could keep in his head ready for use. . . .
"To condense the Squire's meditation, it was somewhat as fol-
ws: 'I won't tell him to read his Bible, and love and serve God;
he don't do that for his mother's sake and teaching, he won't do
for mine. Shall I go into the sort of temptations he'll meet with?
), I can't do that. Never do for an old fellow like me to go into
ch things with a boy. He won't understand me. Do him more
rm than good, ten to one. Shall I tell him to mind his work, and
7 ~.0,C". l".1"".11. . . . . . . . . . . _ --1---1 £.- ----' - 'I.
isn't sent to school for that-at any rate, not for that mainly.
Jn't care a straw for Greek particles or the digamma, no more
s his mother. What is he sent to school for? Well, partly because
wanted so to go. If he'll only turn out a brave, helpful, truth-
[ng Englishman, and a gentleman and a Christian, that's all we
tt,' thought the Squire. And upon this view of the case, framed
last words of advice to Tom, which were well enough suited to
purpose.''

~he love of understating facts is a well-known trait of Eng-

humour. An Englishman is happy if he can describe a big
nt with a small word. This English tendency to minimize
often been contrasted with the American habit of exag·
iting little things. The love of understatement runs through
the institutions of England. The oldest and greatest insur-
~ company in the world is Lloyd's, which insures against all
s of shipping. This firm was a coffee house, and for a century
directors. were called the waiters of Lloyd's Coffee House.
vas not until the Foreign Office declin~d to continue cor-
~ondence with the. waiters that they clothed themselves with
title of secretaries. In America the "waiters" would have
1 "presidents," and in Germany "general directors," before
firm was started.
tragic exam pie of such a life and such a language was pre-
ed by Sir Edward Grey, Foreign Minister of England in
l· His real language and thought is the more significant as
t .people on the Continent thought of him as a Machiavelli,
mning and intriguing politician who deliberately brought
Jt the World War. But when we meet Grey himself, we find
he corresponds perfectly to Gladstone's remark: "Edward
v-there you have the Parliamentary manner." He had the
ory that is also conversation. It is so simple, this speech-
it seems to put everybody else so utterly in the wrong. Yet
n this gentleman, by a single hour of eloquence, had moved
iament to declare war, he had gone so far that his only
~at was country life. This champion of tennis, this lover of
~m and forest, this famous angler in country waters and in
xoubled waters of world politics, had passed the bounds of
:he parliamentary manner. The matters on the table of the
House could no longer be dealt with by parliamentary conver-
•ation or debate. Grey began to brood over his responsibility,
md he could scarcely eat. His eyesight failed, and in later years,
LS death drew on, he sat under the trees, the squirrels worrying
iim for their nuts, and the birds, whose language he had
earned as his own, fighting with one another for a place near
tis friendly hand. And this was Grey, the man of the third of
\ugust, 1914.

The "countrification" of the Commonwealth would have

1een rustic, tiresome, and insupportable without the language
,f Canaan, without speechifying. The anti-intellectual attitude
,£ the country had to be leavened by some higher inspiration
han peasants or Roundheads seemed to offer in the eyes of
ourtiers and Cavaliers. The responsory of the Psalter in the
ivine service, later changed to the "common prayer" of a con-
regation, the paraphrasing of the Psalms in Sunday-school,
1is unique public service performed by the householder on
undays, the use of the language of the Psalms at the fireside
n week-day evenings by pious and witty laymen-all enabled
le country to counterbalance the culture and refinement of
le court, where Shakespeare's plays were acted and Bacon was
~ad. The Commons did not fully succeed, however, until the
ickname "Roundhead" was superseded by another nickname
"Whig." "Whig" was the designation of the Scotch Cove-
1nters. It was a play on the religious language of the Revolu-
on, as "Roundhead" had been on the hair-cut of the gentry.
was in turning from Roundhead to Whig that the English
scovered the full meaning of the new ideal: an England coun-
ified by the Psalms. Behind this island of Great Britain lay
.e Promised Land and the chosen people. The Common Law,
we have already seen, was old because it was Jewish and
h.ristian. So the country was old because it was Canaan, and
e English were the chosen people.
William Blake's wonderful verses on England and Jerusalem
esuppose the kinship of Enl!land anrl r!ln!l~n •
 "And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountain green.
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic mills?"
~romwell beat his drum through the whole of the Old Testa-
nent and summoned up every name from Abigail to Zedekiah.
fhe lunatic fringe of the English Revolution went Anglo-
sraelitic. The search for the ten lost tribes of Israel became
uch a habit that 150 years later, in 1794, an Englishman who
Lad thrown his faith and enthusiasm in the scales with his
.rothers, the patriots in America, in a laudatory speech written
or the foundation of Washington as the capital, discovered the
en tribes to be the red Indians of his day! Even in the year
934 one suddenly finds a full-page advertisement in a leading
:nglish newspaper explaining why the English are the ten lost
ri bes of Israel.
We have seen that the isolation of the Jews was ended by_ the
'rench Revolution, dissolved in the common descent of man-
ind from Adam. In the English Revolution we are at a half-
ray stage between Christ and Adam, and our model is Canaan~
1e God-governed com.monwealth of Joshua and Gideon. The
udges of Israel are the great figures of the past, the true proto-
rpes of the British statesman. I know very well that Macaulay
referred to call himself a British proconsul, and that Lord
:urzon loved to be Viceroy of an Empire. But in the British
mpire- the imperialists only belie the feelings and good con-
:ience of the common man. They estrange labour and they
roduce "Little-Englanders," by a natural reaction against their
·ass and worldly imperialism. The imperialists are the enemies
: the empire. For the imperialists simply mean customs or
n.migration laws, or subsidies, or other limited issues. They
·e essentially non-religious.
Now the political value or force of religion is its endlessness.
e>litics, being a process of realization, must be driven by the
1rce of some unlimited faith. Only the infinite can move the
1ite. There lies the fatal superiority of faith over reason. The
1th nf thP Rr1tilii:h 4':n11n'1c ]pee r1P'.'.;lrlu 1n thP rh".ll 11PrHr1rH"r ~nt-rru
 "Britannia Rules the Waves" than in the refrain of the Eng-
,h missionary hymn:
"God is working his purpose out
As year succeeds to year;
God is working his purpose out,
And the time is drawing near.
The time that shall surely be,
When earth shall be filled
\Vith the Glory of God
As waters cover the sea.

"That the light of the glorious gospel of truth

May shine throughout the world;
Fight we the fight with sorrow and sin,
To set their captives free,
That the earth may be filled with the Glory of God
As the waters cover the sea."

Nhat audacity! The continents risen out of the waves can

no better than to follow this example and praise the Lord
1nanimousl y as the waters that cover the sea. The religious
.h of the English Parliament, that it is entitled to rule
~holic Ireland and Buddhist India and the Anglican Church
l the Colonies and all the shores of the promised world,
.s on this vision of the infinite sea. The infinite has con~
~red_ the finite.
'erhaps the upper classes of England, with their empire,
ir secularism, and their loss of religious faith, are going to
~roy the unanimity of this English faith in a Commonwealth
ied by the decrees of Providence and the law of God, as
el had been guided by the Lord in the times of the Judges,
~n God alone was King.

THE FIFTH OF NOVEMBER.

1 purloining the word "Restoration" in 1660, the King left

genuine political idea of the British Commonwealth in
low. Eager to deny the charge of "roval innov::itiorn: " hP
borrowed the vocabulary of the Commons, so that they were
no longer able to set forth their purposes in plain legal lan-
guage. The secular and terrestrial vocabulary being thus de-
stroyed, the last phase of the great transformation was filled by
the growth of a new vocabulary. New names and titles haa to
be coined to express the spirit of the new society and the
"marinorama" of its new world.
It was a slow growth: It took twenty-nine years, from 1660 to
1689. During these twenty-nine years the nation suffered as
much morally as it had suffered physically during the Civil
War. Bunyan's book, Pilgrim's Progress, written in prison, is
one of the great documents of moral suffering. It was not the
return of the King that caused the moral nausea; it was the
intolerable ambiguity of the nation's vocabulary for praise and
blame, virtue and vice. On the one hand, Charles II seemed
willing to respect the liberties of England; on the other, it was
)minous that the restorers of these liberties were and remained
)Stracized as regicides. While the "King in Parliament" re-
;pected the outcome of the great upheaval, the heroes of the
·evolution and the Protector of the Commonwealth were both
~xpunged from the book of the national life, as rebels.
It is true that on one day a year at least the relative rights of
larliament were mentioned. Guy Fawkes' Day, the fifth of
~ovember, 19 was celebrated in the calendar of the same Angli-
:an Church that scourged the rebels on May 29. Guy Fawkes'
)ay, 4s_ everyone knows, is a popular holiday all over England;
)Onfires are lit, and the boys sing, "I remember, I remember
he Fifth of November . . . " 'The basement of the Parliament
~uildings is searched annually by its guards for a possible cache
1f gunpowder. It is less well-known that as late as 1859 the
~ook of Common Prayer contained a form of thanksgiving for
ne happy deliverance from the Gunpowder Plot. The Com-
1ons of Charles II might look upon the forms set aside for this
19 Compare for its introduction the German chapter. section nine. I. H.
enton, on page XL of his book on the "Anglican Agenda" (1910) says that the
iflh of November did not become a holiday until after 1662. This would
rengthen our case considerably; but it seems not to be true. See also Vernon
aley, Liturgical Studies, p. 66, London. 100'7
ty with relative satisfaction. The defeat of a plot against King
td Parliament was, it is true, only a negative event. However,
1ce the lawyers so loved their "old" prescriptive rights, a day
serted in the calendar to celebrate the salvation of an old
nstitution from a band of conspirators was an acceptable
,litical demonstration in favour of the "old." To be sure, a
ore positive statement, defending the country not only against
>pery but against King and courtiers as well, would have been
far better counterpoise to the ominous twenty-ninth of May,
. which Charles II entered his city of London and ended the
~eat Rebellion. So long as this latter date was the most recent
nbol ·of the state of affairs in the kingdom, th~ King had not
~arly committed himself to the limitation of his power. Royal
·anny might flame up again at any time.
With the succession of the Catholic Duke of York in 1685,
:! lack of any compelling symbol for the religious role of
rliament made itself felt with new violence. Already, between
78 and 1680, the Commons had done everything in their
wer to exclude him from the throne. When James became
ng the rebellion began; and when a son was born to him the
ssibility of a compromise for the period of his lifetime was
)erseded by the threat of a continuous Catholic succession.
•Won the Continent this problem did not stir up bad feeling.
Saxony, the very motherland of Protestantism, the prince
:ame a Catholic so that he might ascend the throne of Poland,
ile_ the country was governed by Protestant ministers. But in
gland a great new form of life had come into being: Parlia-
nt had been made superior to Convocation. And now the
·enues of the Whig families from the confiscated monasteries
re at stake. This threat precipitated events. The great Whigs
ed William of Orange to help them in the fight. The birth-
ht of the new-born Prince of Wales was attacked in absurd
nifestoes in which the daughters of the King by a former
rriage denied that the Queen of England had been pregnant
ill. Civil war raged. William entered London on December
1688; and in the same month James sailed for France.
·Iiament convened without a roval summons. ancl nPr1rlPr1
er endless debates that the King had forfeited his crown by
itting the country without so much as leaving the Great Seal
1ind him. In other words, James II had committed a felony
being driven out of his realmt But William forced the
ryers to go further; he sent a message that the only acceptable
ution was to make him King. In 1689 a settlement between
1g and Commons was reached; in 1690 and 1691 Ireland was
•j ugated to the new order of things. If we look at the facts
hout bias, it appears that in a struggle which lasted over a
iod of years the Commons succeeded in making the child-
William Protector for his lifetime-with the title of King,
s true, but without the right of interfering in his own suc-
;ion. The bill of rights, guaranteeing the financial and re-
ous sovereignty of Parliament, was signed by William as
tender to the throne, before he was declared Sovereign. The
Lience of the two declarations tells the true story.
n this whole course of events the usual revolutionary meth-
were used: high treason was committed, civil war let loose,
'.rnational support secured, law _and order violated. The
ilarities between Puritans and Whigs, between Cromwell
William, are striking. As a matter of course, there is the
e difference between them as between 1789 and 1830 in
[s, that is, between original and copy. The business-like
~ of 1689 differs from the moral preachments of 1640 be-
:e everybody was tired of solemnity or excitement and con-
.r.ated solely on the essentials. But why was the grandeur
the originality of the first magnanimous effort forgotten,
only the pusillanimity of the Whigs recorded in the Book
ame? It was because the nation needed records, not events.
>rder to get a clean record, unspoiled by any association
. struggle or dissent, the similarities between 1649 and 1689
~ suppressed and the contrast stressed to the utmost.
ot only was this done in the· first moment, but it was
ated for two more centuries. Macaulay is the most naive
ess to this artificial suppression. A Whig disliked the notion
-ving the glories of his Empire to the Puritans. The divorce
te Civil War between 1688 and 1691, from the Civil War
.. . - -- -
f bloodshed in connection with 1688, nor of peaceful evolu-
ion during the Great Rebellion. William's moderation is '
lways exaggerated, and on the other hand the dire necessity
f Cromwell's domestic policy is not appreciated. William came
J England, as he literally expressed himself, for the sake of the
1fety of Europe: he was obliged to gain the military support
f England for his wars on the Continent. He forcibly sup-
ressed the Loyalists in Ireland and established English tyranny
ver it for another two hundred years. William left only one
~venth of Irish soil to the sons of Erin; the rest fell into Eng-
sh hands. Well and good; this perhaps was inevitable. But
len do not tell us that there was no bloodshed, no war, no
iolence! On the other hand, Cromwell was put into power by
arliament; he did not ask for a crown, like William; he tried
>act for the world at large; he united the three kingdoms for
ie first time. And still, in the eyes of the later Whigs Crom-
ell remained a dangerous rebel and William a legitimate king.
Blackstone, the leading lawyer of the eighteenth century,
escribes William as an "hereditary monarch" and Cromwell as
"usurper"; though he has to admit, with a priceless expres-
on, that "the title to the crown is at present, though not quite
1 absolutely hereditary as formerly"! Thus it was not admitted

tat the Revolution of 1688 had been a civil war, which it had
~en nevertheless. And the Civil War, according to Blackstone,
as nothing but downright confusion, instability, and madness.
'he Civil War and the Glorious Revolution were kept as far
Jart as possible. We should miss the secret of English parlia-
.entary cant if we overlooked this violent attempt to separate
hat belongs together. William III, the new Lord Protector,
id those who followed him, those life-long First Gentlemen of
ngland who are called Kings, must have nothing whatsoever
1 do with that blood-shedding, tyrannical gentleman, Oliver
romwell.
Being thus averse to any possible comparison of Cromwell
id William III, the English were given to the point of view
hich we have called detective history. In a detective story
idless particulars are revealed one after the other, and the
-nine years of their history as a detective story, obliterating
uallels and all continuity, listing hundreds of disconnected
ltions, coronations, and so on and so forth, suppressing the
~rsal character of the struggle, and finally concentrating all
imelight on one short moment near the end. In American
ench tradition it is the first days, the Fourth or Fourteenth
ly, which get all the publicity; the first days of the revolu-
ry era are the epoch-making ones. The beginnings are
c, divine, dramatic. The end is more or less disappointing;
lgs. No Frenchmen can possibly understand the English on
loint. How can he be expected to celebrate the ghosts of
evolution of June, i 830, and forget the heroes of 1792,
tpoleon? Yet this is exactly what the British did when they
rated the last decision of the Supreme Court of history
lropped all interest in the previous long trial.
e limelight of consciousness was concentrated on the final
ecause consciousness of the foregoing stages was neither
d nor accepted. English memory is scarred by the preced-
cts, the Parliamentary War, the Cromwellian Common-
h, and the Restoration of the Stuarts. Any such scar in a
1' s life obstructs truth. Scars produce myths and legends.
· myth is the self-defence of a body politic which cannot
to see its wounds re-opened and bleeding once more. By
unswervingly on 1688, the English avoided touching
scar.
: the contrast between Whigs and Roundheads, William
:rom·well, Glorious Revolution and Great Rebellion,
er and hereditary king, legality and madness, is carried
extreme when it comes to the chronology of the two
ls. For instead of contrasting nine years for the first Civil
with a period of three or five_ years for the second, English
s speak of twenty years on one side ( 1640 to 1660) and a
day on the other. Rebellion against James II? Not at all;
insformation took place on a single day of the year 1688,
which happened to be the Fifth of November! Pamphlets
~en spread among the Stuarts' army and navy: "Remem-
e year '88" -alluding to the Spanish Armada and its defeat
1ndred years before. Thus the lanrlino- of w1111~m TH 'lf-
'orbay was compared to the defeat of the Catholic aggressor.
nd whereas in i66o it was the entrance of the King into Lon-
Jn which had been epoch-making, the accent, in 1688, was
laced on the miracle of the landing at Torbay. All the later
rents were simply omitted. The illegal convening of Parlia-
lent without a royal writ, the fruitless debates of the Com-
.ons, William's usurpation-everything was turned into an
1tomatic and legal consequence of the decrees of Providence
, manifested on the old holiday, the Fifth of November.
The popularity of Guy Fawkes' Day in modern England does
Jt really go back to 1605. So old-fashioned and restorative
ere the methods of the English revolutionaries that they even
.anaged to "restore" a holiday and disguise their triumph
1er a modern event as the celebration of an old one. But the
turgy of the Church betrays the secret when it adds to the
~ayers of thanksgiving for the failure of the Gunpowder Plot
Le concise lines: " . . . and also for the happy arrival of his
[ajesty, King William III, on this day for the deliverance of
u church and nation . . . for giving King William a safe
Tival here, and for making all opposition fall before him."
:ere we have the cant of the English Revolution. at its climax.
hurch and Parliament speak differently about the same event.
1rliament declares that William's title to the throne dates
om a felony, and that James II has committed that felony by
aving England in December; the Church extols William as a
wfµl monarch on the anniversary of his coming in November.
Legally, the Fifth of November, i688, the landing at Torbay,
.d not create the Whig government of England even in the
res of Parliament, for James did not leave England until later.
ut morally and religiously the Fifth of November is the glori-
1s revolution of God. In fact,.it seems to have impressed Wil-
1m III himself as such. Landing, on his second attempt, by
te help of a favourable wind, one hundred years after the
>anish Armada had been scattered in the same attempt, he
1ok the Anglican bishop, Burnet, by the hand and asked him
a good Calvinist: "Do you believe in predestination now?"
ot man's volition, but the decrees of Providence, had brought
" th~ D &1rounl11tirvn Th~ r-1,..'""'"" r..4= rr..,..,,.-..a,,.,.;,,. .... ,. ,..1,. .......... 1... ..... ...
·essed this distinction when it congratulated William and
:ary in the unctuous phrase: "Great was the day when the
:lrd who sitteth upon the floods, did divide his and your
lversaries like the waters of Jordan, and did begin to magnify
iu like Joshua [who after all, was not a kingt] by the deliver-
tce of the English dominions from Popery and slavery."
The epilogue of the British Revolution, embracing at least
ree months' time, was not put into the calendar because the
1

.orious Revolution had to be a final, superhuman interven-

m from heaven.
He who underrates the liturgy of the Church as evidence
ty look at the attitude of the Revolution Club of the eight-
tlth century. Year after year, down to 1789, on the Sunday
lowing the Fifth of November, it celebrated the miracle of
tt day. The members of this Club were doing homage to a
:t, an event. Revolution had no adjective in the English
tguage up to 1789. A revolutionist was merely a devotee of
~ miracle of 1688, a supporter of the Protestant succession
i the right of Parliament to exclude non-Protestant branches
the dynasty from succession to the Throne. The word "rev-
Ltionist" had nothing of the meaning of the word "revolu-
nary" today. The revolutionary fact was the landing at Tor-
r, an objective event not brought about by any Englishman.
ere is a wonderful lightening of conscience compressed into
> word "Revolution." Heaven has spoken. Englishmen, this
te at least, are innocent and humble. The Lower House of
Realm is delivered from unnatural pressure by intervention
m above. No dictator, no usurper, no protector, no pretender
share the loftiness of God's Providence. Once and forever
t1 had to distinguish between the level of their actions on
th and the level on which God acted, beyond the sky.
~he lasting abhorrence and detestation of any super-eleva-
t of the individual, a striking feature of the English national
racter, has deprived the English language of even a correct
·d for the vice of eminence, "Uberhebung," self-aggrandize-
1t and pride .
.,he political tracts of the years after 1688 all agreed in this
inction between hnm;:in ~rt1rm ".llnr1 c-,,.......,.,...._i,.~~---- ~-- • ,.
ence. The State tracts from the year 1689 were published in
1692 as an account of "our late hapjJy revolution." The re-
ligious word "glorious" of the Psahns is parallelled here by the
secular expression "happy." As early as the end of 1688, the
writers of the Proposals to the Convention expressed with
emphasis this idea of revolution: "In a word, if the Hand of
God is to be seen in human affairs, and His voice to be heard
upon Earth, we cannot anywhere find a clearer and more
remarkable instance than is to be observed in the present
Revolution. . . . If one considers how happily and wonder-
fully both persons and things are changed in a little time, and
without bloodshed. It looks like so many marks of God's favour,
by which He thinks fit, to point him out to us in this extraordi-
nary conjuncture." The editors of the first edition of Claren-
don's History of the Rebellion (of 1640-1660) point again to the
events of 1688 as a period "where a revolution became neces-
;ary, during which the fundamentals of Earth left their regular
:ourse to carry through a Reformation."
The analogy of an earthquake or a celestial catastrophe is
1sed to explain the difference between a rebellion from under-
1eath or below, and the final stroke of 1688. This did not come
-ro low, from the valley of earthly volition! It is important
understand why, on the one hand, all the men involved in
he revolution claimed to be restorers, while on the other, the
otality of the event could not be called a restoration. This is a
>aradox indeed. William III, in his Proclamation, claimed to
)e restoring the laws of England. And so claimed the lawyers
vho by their subtle precedents cleared his way to the Throne.
r1aynard, born in 1602, was in his eighty-seventh year when
le quoted the precedents of the thirteenth and fourteenth
enturies to exclude the succession of the Catholic Prince of
Vales, and, in order to cool his Protestant fever in the bloody
ersecution of the papists in Ireland; based his hatred and pas-
:_on on the duties of a medi£Eval king. He, like all the lawyers
f the revolutionary century, was restoring Magna Charta, re-
:oring the Common Law, the privileges and liberty of the
:ommons of this Kingdom.
Why, then. "Revolution" ;:inil not "1] Ad~~""' r, ___ ·
.. ;.,..,.,..,."'") 1
~e of the honour of the revolutionaries, their Restoration of
eedom had to be ennobled by the word "Revolution." When
~ Commons acted, Heaven acted along parallel lines. There
s a miraculous correlation between the actions of English-
~n and laws of a supra-English scope and importance.
The universal significance of the British Revolution which
ed Portugal, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, and many
ler small nations in Europe from annihilation, which raised
res of political movements all over the world, from Transyl-
tia to Pennsylvania, which saved the dwindling ranks of
>testantism on the Continent and set up the English Parlia-
nt as the Mother of Parliaments, is the important side of the
tish seventeenth century for any philosophy and sociology
revolutions. We found that the Bolsheviks, who habitually
ke of the World Revolution and even dropped the word
ssia, had to be seized off their guard and observed in their
cess of "going Russian." The English, on the contrary, have
ti a fear of being anything but English that their revolution
to be caught by detective methods in the very act of becom-
universal and exercising universal effects. Elizabeth, in the
es of the Armada, had compared England to an arch; that is,
had limited herself to a biblical parallel. The breadth of
ven and earth had remained within the narrow horizon of
1rch and Empire. The English Revolution looked up to the
esty of the infinite heaven of natural science, and by doing
ained the courage to comprehend a far bigger world. The
h ·in which the new Commonwealth was placed soon ex-
led over five oceans, into continents unknown to the Roman
ld. In this actualizing of a new astronomical and geographi-
vision the English Revolution was a forward step for all
.kind toward a new form of existence.
evolution and Restoration are like head and tail of one
, minted jointly by Cromwell and William III. It was the
~ion of the English tradition into two separate chapters, one
Cromwell and one for William, one for the Puritans and
for the Whigs, which created the protective colouring of
lish politics, so often called hypocrisy by people on the
tinent. In reality, the phrases of English parliamentarism
ire a plainsong in an act of religious worship. Taken literally,
:he meaning of this plainsong is lost; it can easily be unmasked
ts cant in its worst sense, that of pious lying. J. W. Croker,
iVriting in a period of parliamentary decay, masterfully de-
cribed the latent dangers of the institution:
"There is something in the very atmosphere of the House un-
avourable to bold and uncompromising _conduct. It is, de facto, a
ort of overgrown club. This is the most important part of the
rhole business. Things are every day admitted in private among
'1e members, which are studiously denied or concealed in the
Jeeches reported from the gallery. Whoever, therefore, should en-
eavour to rend asunder that veil, which by all parties in the House
. held up before the public, would lose his character and caste." 20
THE EUROPEAN' SIGNIFICANCE OF "GLORIOUS REVOLUTION."

Humanity as a whole underwent a revolutionary change

uring the seventeenth century, and expressed this change
irough an English vocabulary. We have already remarked on
ie- word "glorious" in "Glorious Revolution"; but the word
revolution" deserves sonie further notice. The new terminol-
~ sanctified revolution as a lawful event-naturally lawful
tough politically illegal. Something bigger than legality had
:ade its entrance into the Western World.
As early as a generation before 1688, individual writers had
~gun to use the word "revolution'' in a sense which implied
parallel between the rotations of government and the great
otions of the stars. In the Middle Ages politics were thought
as depending wholly on the "revolving" wheel of fortune.
f the seventeenth century the new astronomy of Copernicus
td Kepler and Galileo had impressed the public deeply
lOugh to make it apply the notion of astronomical revolutions
earthly events. Mathematics and the physics of space stimu-
:ed the imagination. Hobbes wrote, in physical terms: "If in
ne as in place there were degrees of high and low, I verily
lieve that the highest of time would be that which passed
tween the years of 1640. and 1660." In another chapter he
presses himself in this way:
o Quarlerlv Review_ Vol A<> ,.,.............. • 0 -- -- -
[ have seen in this revolution a circular motion of the sovereign
·er through two usurpers, father and son, from the l~te King
.is son. For it moved from King Charles I to the Long Parlia-
.t; from thence to the Rump; from the Rump to Oliver Crom-
; and thence back again from Richard Cromwell to the Rump;
tee to the Long ParIi amen t and thence to King Charles II,
re long may it remain."
~endon himself, in his later years, when he was no longer a
onsi ble minister of the King, called the royal restoration of
) "the revolution."
'hrough this new usage the laws of nature made their en-
ce into the world of politics. "Depression," "opposition,"
luence," "conjunction," are words of the same stamp.· The
~rious phrase "the business cycle" is also descended from
stock. All of them deserve our interest. Take, for instance,
uence": "Certain occult streams of power believed to ema-
from the heavenly bodies." 21 Revolution brought about
stronomical order of things in which the body politic is no
er moved by the High of this earth-in which a new "in-
1ce," God's glorious will from above, has opened unfore-
channels of power to the lower estates of the realm. This ·
~£ in an "influence" more powerful than the written or
.al law is related to the belief in the Revolution. The
bulary of politics always has to deal with the intangibles
h move the heart and mind of a ruler, without even being
:ioned by the law of the land. The lawyers of pre-revolu-
lry England had set up the law against those secret influ-
• of the court which made the King's power arbitrary.
r tried to exclude influence and act by law alone. But in-
ce is a fluid, as law is a solid body. Ice and water are no
closely related than politics and law. Influence cannot
~eluded by law, but only by another influence. Otherwise
rigin of new law is made impossible. Thus legitimate and
timate influence are the real opposing elements in the
.sh revolution. As the Great Remonstrance of i 642 put it,
~ing should entrust the business of the State to no other
ns than those who had the confidence of the Commons.
·ench, Study of Words. Oxford. 180A.
 The word "conjuncture" points in the same direction; it is
an astronomical term. When Charles II returned in 1660, he
said that "a happy conjuncture bad removed a malignant star.,,
"Opposition," the common expression for a political antag-
onism, is also an astronomical word. It was the insight into the
inevitability of opposition in heaven which overcame the re-
luctance of human brains to tolerate opposition on earth. When
we find the Leader of the Opposition legally established in the
Canadian constitution we should not forget that the discov-
eries of the astronomer had to give man a glimpse of the revolu-
tions of the stars before he was bold enough to legalize human
opposition.
We should add, however, that this cosmic point of view did
not mean that the individual politician was governed by the
motions of the stars. Cheap astrology, the drawing of horo-
scopes, and so on, methods freely used by princes and military
leaders all through the seventeenth century, were a kind of
black magic which a great nation could not tolerate. No, the
application of natural law was, not to the politician, but to the
whole of politics. These new words were acceptable only be-
cause they were applied, not to the individual Englishman and
his freedom, or to the King, but to the balance of power in
the body politic as a whole. Astronomical metaphors were wel-
comed because no Christian soul, no named individual, was
caught in the net. The new vocabulary emphasized the anony-
mous order of things described above, in which gentlemen had
no ·names of their own, the Speaker of the House no eyes or
ears of his own, and Members of Parliament no desks of their
own. This was the sense in which, by a happy conjuncture, the
Lower House had secured its co-ordination with the upper
spheres.
We shall understand the meaning of "G-lorious Revolution"
still better if we ask ourselves what bodies were involved in it.
Was it everybody, every citizen, who got his share of power in
this revolution? Or was it the great individuals, dignitaries of
rank and influence, lords and aristocrats, who became the gov-
erning class? Either assumption would miss the point of the
British Constitution. The Whi~s of 1688 wishen thPir mnrrl
ulution" to be taken literally. Individual men moved on
earth; but the model of the body politic was the celestial
[es on which Copernicus had written his famous treatise
revolutionibus corporum crelestium ( 1543). Arbitrary
er was banned. There was no Popery left to dim the light
ioon and stars by the alleged glories of its Roman court;
e was only the majesty of the galaxy above a benighted
cl-supra-individual, supra-personal. And the mighty of this
d were revealed as nothing and of no account compared
this celestial system of moving bodies.
THE THREE RESTORATIONS.

!rhaps it seem~ strange to a modern mind that the people

.ngland should have looked up from below to an upper
m of superhuman powers, and that they sho:µld have cele-
~d a sudden co-ordination with this upper realm of Church
State as an act of deliverance. But this is the secret of the
.ish Revolution, that by a penetration and undermining
ie upper powers of the Realm from below, high became
mountains valleys, and humble gentlemen of England the
.d masters of Church and State; and that, although Upper
Lined Upper, High remained High, and Sovereign re-
ted Sovereign, they all had to give way henceforth to the
ions, grievances and wishes of the Commons of England.
1e power of the House of Commons would vanish the
Lent either Realm, Anglican Church or House of Lords
:d ·to function. All proposals to abolish the House of the
.s Spiritual and Temporal were and are doomed, because
1

are all infected by the Continental, democratic point of

. These proposals are founded on the assumption of a
m which governs itself. But the English people do not
rn themselves. They are governed by consent, which is
thing very different. Undoubtedly, to secure this consent
have bored through the foundations of the Realm, which
ms England even today, and have transformed King and
~n, Lords and Archbishops, Chancellors and Judges of the
ish nation, for all their pompous wigs and scarlet vest-
.s. crowns and nrocessions. ritual anil nriv11Po-P~ 1ntA "uilL
;ervants of the English people. But the superstructure can-
>e abandoned. Cromwell, describing himself as neither very
nor very low, was the model of the Commoner of England.
le limelight of French tradition plays on the first years of
~rench Revolution. The fourteenth of July, 1789, is the
tening day for a period of twenty-six years. Awaited with
tience for forty years, the Revolution was realized in its
~rsal importance from the very beginning. Reality and the
iousness of reality reached a harmony unheard-of in the
1

,s of our race; in the very dawn of events consciousness

ully awake.
lorious Revolution" emphasizes a different kind of paral-
t. The French were intoxicated by the perfect harmony
~en mind and body. The English expression does homage
~ perfect harmony in God's creation of heaven and earth,
:o his power to act without man's help in His gov-
~nt of the world. And this vision came to the British
i as a farewell to forty-eight years of civil unrest. It was
ial ceremony of a long struggle; the name was uttered like
) sigh ending the fifty years of strain and precluding any
L to civil war, insurrection, or illegal procedure in the

:. A great solemnity prevails. It is the finality of the event

:rikes us most. As an illustration, I have saved one line
the divine service for the Fifth of November. In it the
sounded in the first hour of the struggle, resounds ad-
ly _in the last. I hope that the reader will share the rev-
1 felt when I discovered, under the surface of the "Glori-
!volution," the old word "restoration." So says the Book
nmon Prayer on the Fifth of November: "The glory of
tade William III the instrument of His will in restoring
hts and Ii berties of England."
have re-established the unity of the Puritan and royal
tions, and we have poi~ted out that 1688 was a third
tion, trimmed and embellished to suit the limelight of
1usness, and guaranteeing the Anglican character of the
t Church. Now we can rename the phases of the English
.tion:
Le Puritan Restoration of Freedom 1641-1660
te Royal Restoration 1660-1685
Le Anglican Restoration 1685-1689 (1692)
he secret of the English Revolution that the real revolu-
, deprived of its birthright, and that a later event carried
~lories of victory. The Glorious Revolution is an after-
.ke the July Revolution of 1830. Now we have already
asion to compare the epilogue of 1830 to the prologue
in Russia; and we asserted that 1830 played a similar
relation to the end of the French Revolution in 1815,
played by the prologue of 1905 in relation to the out-
[ the World Revolution in 1917. In each case the truth
be proclaimed over again; the effort had to be made
!fore it could be final. Without 1905, the World Rev-
of 1917 could not have been aware of its own finality.
~30 the French Revolution was without self-conscious-

English crisis obeys the sa1ne law of a two-fold begin-

Tithout 1688, the great change of 1651 could not be
fully into consciousness. Though it had long been in
needed the dramatic events of 1688 to become legiti-
d be made a formula of recurrent order. But since the
Revolution preceded the French and Russian, the Eng-
e not able to see 1688 as the sequel of 1649, as the
:ould when Lafayette rode through the streets of Paris
as.he had ridden in 1789. It is true that many members
onvention of 1689 had seen the Civil War. It is by· no
mere accident that Maynard could be so active in 1688,
~ was eighty-seven years old. But the point is that in
Tyone did the opposite of what the French did in 1830.
of comparing the old days with present events, the
n 1689 were haunted by a firm resolution not to see
larities and not to permit any comparison.
THE LOSS OF THE FIRST COMMONWEALTH.

~h all comparison with the times of Cromwell was sup-

the British gentry honoured the European obligations
incurred through \Villiam III for another fifty years. Only
after the death of Robert \Valpole was the balance of rights
and duties in this aristocratic government definitely destroyed.
A period of insolence followed, for which we may draw a paral-
lel with the corresponding French period, 1830 to 1848. Bribery
and dissipation reigned among the gentry. The Duke of New-
castle cynically pulled the wires of patronage. On one occasion,
when the opposition was saying that everybody whom the Duke
had brought in was to be turned out, without any exception,
somebody replied, "Save the Kingl" In the country, the absence
of a central royal police led to the orgies of highway robbery
described in The Beggar's Opera of 1727. The Prime Minister
boasted openly of this lack of any central government. He
stated in 1749 that it was his duty to inform the nation: "We
are not in a position to fight our enemies.,,
The moral shamelessness of Lords and Ladies in their deal-
ings with the other classes surpassed belief. Gentlemen like
Lord Holland deliberately trained their sons to be irresponsi-
ble. "For him [i.e., Lord Holland's son] there were no rules,
Jnly prerogatives. He was taught to gamble, he was taught to
:!rink himself drunk, he was taught to be gay. His debts were
:oon incredible and had to be handled by funding operations.
~is habits-but I forbear. They were the reductio ad absurdum
>f education." In these sentences Mr. P. W. Wilson 22 is speak-
ng of a leading English statesman, Charles James Fox. Edmund
lurke was referring to this state of affairs when he said in
780: "We have had so much power and luck that even the
aost modest among us is degenerated into the vices and stupidi-
ies of kings." And Horace Walpole wrote in 1763: "You could
.ot recognize your own country. You left it a private little
;land, living upon its means; you would find it the capital of
1e world . . . . The city of London is so elated that I think
: very lucky some alderman did not insist on matching his
aughter with the king."
The English in 1763 had enough arrogance to tread the
'olonies, France, Ireland, and the plantations all under foot
22 New York Times Book Review, August 16, 1936.
nee. The climax reached in this year reminds us of Boniface
I, who published his bull on the omnipotence of the Roman
1rch in 1302 and immediately afterward was made a prisoner
:he King of France. So 176 3, like 1302, was the climax of a
~period which preceded it. No wonder that the anticlimax
e as the result of an outburst of hatred on all sides. The
1ch minister, Vergennes, put it in these words: "If England
.s outside to the other countries of the world-from Buenos
~s to New Orleans, from Dunkirk to the Antilles (except
:ugal, whose defence is only one more burden)-she sees
· enemies.. ''
he First Commonwealth underwent a terrible crisis, both
rnally and externally, during the American Revolution and
Napoleonic Wars. This crisis is too often spoken of slight-
f, and so the totality and completeness of its threat to the
British Comn1'onwealth is overlooked. The truth is that
whole outside world and all the isolated interests inside
ed against the arrogance of the British Parliament in the
; between 1774 and 1815.
1e Colonies lost faith in the Commonwealth; each one
ned the name separately. qGod save the Commonwealth of
achusetts!" replaced the old "God save the King!". John
ns wrote in 1774: "If the American resistance to the act for
oying your charter [i.e., the charter of the city of Boston]
is treason, the Lords and Commons, and the whole nation,
traitors at the Revolution."
tr picture of conditions within the British Isles can be
l from John Wesley. The father of Methodism, who trav-
from four to five thousand miles annually, likened the
'1 in 177 4 and 1775 in every detail to 1640. In his letters
1rds North and Dartmouth he says:
iver that in every part of England where I have been (and I
Jeen east, west, north, and south within these two years) trade
rieral is exceedingly decayed, and thousands of people are
unemployed. I aver that the people in general all over the
t are far more deeply dissatisfied than they appear to have
~ven a year or two before the Great Rebellion, and far more
dangerously dissatisfied. The bulk of the people in every city, town,
and village where I have been do not so much aim at the ministry,
as they usually did in the last century [sic], but at the King him-
self. He is the object of their anger, contempt, and malice. They
heartily despise his Majesty; and hate him with a perfect hatred.
They wish to imbrue their hands in his blood; they are full of the
spirit of murder and rebellion, and I am persuaded, should any
occasion offer, thousands would be ready to act what they now
speak." 23
Of the emotions of present-day Englishmen towards royalty we
cannot find a trace in Wesley's report. In another letter he
wrote:
"We have thousands of enemies . . . they fill our cities, our
towns, our villages. I know the general disposition of the people,
English, Scots, and Irish, and I know an huge majority of them
are exasperated almost to madness. Exactly so they were through-
out England and Scotland about the year z640; and in great
measure by the same means-by inflammatory papers, which were
spread, as they are now, with the utmost diligence in every corner
of the land. Hereby the bulk of the people were effectually cured
of all love and reverence for the King. So that first despising, then
hating him, they were just ripe for open rebellion. And I assure
your lordships, so they are now: they want nothing but a leader."
We see that the comparison between 1640 and the present
day was on all lips. But this time the "King in Parliament" was
attac;ked by all the Nonconformists with exactly the same vio-
lence- with which the absolute Stuart king had been attacked
by the gentry. Soon Ireland was in rebellion. Freedom of the
press was abolished. :for many years the Parliamentary reports
were not offered for public sale. Habeas corpus was suspended.
In 1810, 1811, and 1812, as the figures of the Annual Register
show, England almost collapsed. When Burke said, "Our most
salutary and most beautiful institutions yield nothing but dust
and smut. The harvest of our law is no more than stubble," he
indicated that this series of humiliations cannot be understood
as a series of accidents; that it was a single long attack lasting
21 John Wesley. Journal, Standard Ed., VIII, pp. ~~4 ff •• London. 1016.
L 1776 to 1815. The English have habitually refused to see
whole period as one time-span; but it is the only way to
~rstand how fundamentally the English Commonwealth
tested during these years.
ere it is useful to look at the role played by the French.
778, the French declaration of war called on the world to
1n end to "the tyrannical empire usurped by England, and
h England pretends to exercise over the oceans.'' From out-
the Commonwealth seemed to be nothing but a tyrannical
~re. The French, first by the munitions delivered through
irm of our old acquaintance, the poet and banker, Caron
eaumarchais, and later by their fleet, armed all the internal
iies of England. In 1781, the French victory off Cape
~y finally saved the thirteen colonies of America. And now
ce's appeal to the other nations was answered. "Every
n wished to see England humiliated," said Franklin. In
, France, Spain, the Netherlands, were engaged in open
Lre against England. War raged in India. Ireland was in
ebellion. Nay, more: Russia, Sweden, Denmark, England's
~uy Prussia, Austria and Portugal were all united in an
ed neutrality" against the pirate.
'he American War of Independence was a European event.
s the great powers of Europe that brought about the heavi-
lamity in English history, the 'breach with America.' This
~ essence of the whole struggle which extended over eight
and was fought on all the seas of the four continents."
!_Reich.)
outline of three distinct periods becomes visible:
1640-1689 Total revolution
1730-1776 (1774) Presumption
1776-1815 Humiliation
period of humiliation, in England as in France, runs
~ely parallel to the first revolutionary period. First, it
; a similar length of time.
 ENGLAND FRANCE

POINT OF DEPARTURE 1535 1685

Total revolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1640-1691 1789-1815
Humiliation .................. 1776-1815 1848-1874
Then there is an even more striking parallel in the distribu-
tion of particular phases and sections.
Parliament fights the King The Colonies fight Parliament
1642-1649 1776-1783
A second rebellion seals A second war seals American
English liberty liberty
1688-1691 1812-1815

THE ADAPTATION TO THE BOURGEOIS REVOLUTION:

SPORTSMANSHIP AND LIBERALISM.

In so far as the American Revolution and the English period

of humiliation led to the independence of the United States,
we shall look at them more in detail in another chapter. For
us and our present-day problems the fascination of English
history lies in the fact that we can find in it an example of how
a nation reacts toward a new revolution. The British nation
adapted itself to the ideas of 1789 in a way rather similar to
that followed by the French and Americans in our day. This
parallel will be further illuminated when we can cite Italy's
and Germany's processes of adaptation to the British revolu-
tionary system.
England did not give in to the French Revolution until 1830.
A nation does not make concessions to a foreign spirit under
pressure! It was in 1830 that J. W. Croker coined the name
"Conservative Party" for the Tories-a concession which Peel
called "un-English." Everyone knows that the Reform Bill of
1832 and Disraeli's Reforms of 1867 installed "Liberalism" in
power, abolishing rotten boroughs and the excesses of local
self-government, extending the franchise, and so on and so
forth. It was even done in a rather cheerful manner, as for
example when Ludgershall lost its seat: "I am the proprietor of
Ludgershall. I am the member for Ludgershall. I am the con-
tuency of Ludgershall. And in all three capacities I assent to
~ disfranchisement of Ludgershall."
However, the moral survival of a House of Commons ruling
mrch and State and colonies in a secularized world and a
tion of shopkeepers and workers is not explained by electoral
.nchises. The first step had to be a moral step. Adam Smith
)Wed in his moral philosophy that the "Wealth of N ':ltions"
1ld be restored by industry, "even without territorial ex-
rision." The loss of the American Colonies, the fatal result
tyranny and heartlessness, could be repaired by industry and
industrial revolution. Adam Smith became a national
)phet because he taught the English to take wealth as na-
nal wealth. He enabled the English language to fight the
;v nationalism of the French Revolution by stressing, in a
y no other language had done, the industrial revolution. As
arles II had made a Royal Restoration, with the aim of out-
.ng the Puritan Restoration, so the English of the first half
the nineteenth century concentrated on an "Industrial Rev-
.ti on." They fell in love with the phrase, and opposed it to
French idea of revolution as an outburst of human passions.
lut one concession had to be made to "nature and human-
" To the model of the Christian Gentleman there had to be
Led a new, purely natural type, the sportsman; for even the
-hunting and tennis-playing gentleman is more than a sports-
n. It was then that sport became a religion of the masses.
m Sawyer, the boxer, was feted as a hero by the citizens of
·erpool in 1850; they went in procession to welcome him.
e Frenchman, Boutmy, compared this excitement over the
rtsman to the day when the Florentine populace walked
n Florence to Borgo Allegri to honour Cimabue, who had
: finished his picture of the Madonna. The feelings which
art of painting aroused in 1300 were unleashed in England
t850 by sport. The Derby became the most popular holiday
~ngland. A young man could look forward to his life being
wned by three achievements: becoming Prime Minister,
-rying a rich heiress, and winning the Derby. Perhaps in any
ntry a fool could dream of three such th incr.~ hnt ;...,,
r.,..,.
ther country would Lord Rosebery have been able to carry
Lit his plan: to become Prime Minister, to marry a Rothschild,
1d to win the Derby.
Today we hear the tragic news that hunting the fox may soon
~come extinct in England, because it is too expensive. If this
-rrible loss must be borne, there is comfort in the fact that
le ancient symbol of true sport can go down with honour. A
ealth of other sports, drawn from every nation, have taken its
ace: golf from Scotland, cricket from Ireland, polo from
Ldia. The penetration of England by these sports is a part of
• political revolution too. For example, golf is perhaps a sym-
>lical expression, in the field of sport, of the tremendous
otch influence in English politics during the nineteenth cen-
ry. So many English statesmen were Scotch that it seemed
if sport and politics were a two-fold sign of the Covenanters'
Huence. The spirit which had ennobled the Roundheads and
1de them Whigs was now translated once more into plain
tglish by golf and Carlyle, by Campbell-Bannerman and
tmsay MacDonald.
This spirit of sportmanship, then, was a second growth of the
rstical union between the Commons of England and the
Jtch Kirk, a second growth which no longer used the re-
ious war-cry of the Puritans. And yet the old definition of
.ritan in the Great Remonstrance still held good: "The Puri-
1, under which name they include all that desire to preserve
! laws and Ii berties of the Kingdom, and to maintain religion
the power of it." Any leader of the nineteenth century might
ve subscribed to this definition of his aim. The odd situation
the Presbyterians agreeing in 1648 on an authoritative di-
tory for seamen in foreign waters, was duplicated in 1933,
en the Presbyterians in India permitted the union of all the
lian denominations into one Episcopal Church, because
.itical and religious liberty at home and political and re-
[ous unity abroad are woven into one indissoluble fabric.
d a second growth of the religious Commonwealth was
mght about, too.
rhe Lambeth Conference of the Anglican Church, includ-
_ ..
the larger moral union of all Anglo-Saxons, beyond the con-
ts of political independence. This larger union triumphed
the World War when Lloyd George laid a wreath on a
morial to the American "Rabble in Arms," because, as he
I, they had taught the British in their crisis how to organize
·ue commonwealth of peers.
lfter the English period of humiliation not only the con-
ution but also the type of the ruling classes was regenerated.
)Ut 1780, a hundred years after the Revolution, the type
duced by the public schools began to verge on caricature.
:-control had led to spleen, and the accentuated mildness
)Ilg men to a terrible reversal in the relation between man
. woman. By putting all the charm of human intercourse
. common life into men's clubs, colleges, debates, the gentry
·rived English women of their bridal character. Flagel-
~ism in England is the name of the famous book by a Con-
~ntal physician, describing the scars left by this lack of
~ing, of courtship, between the Englishman and his wife.
llaps it is fair to say that the phase of courtship-well-
wn as a problem to every biologist-remains a thing by
.f in the life of the Englishman.
·he clubs of England, the counterparts of the French salons,
uded women from all political influence. In France, noth-
was Salic (i.e., excluding females) except the throne; in
land everything is "Salic" except the throne. Queen Eliza-
t ~nd Queen Victoria could not help their sisters. Suffra-
isni, an absurdity in France, became a necessity in Eng-
l. Mrs. Pankhurst, with all her energy, had to shock the
uenters of clubs and taverns into restoring, by the poor
ns of external, political measures, what the Puritan revo-
>n had stolen from the women of England.
1gland, old England herself, being the bride of English-
for whom they longed during their campaigns abroad,
[ndividual wife became more a comrade than a bride. The
1r wishes to find everything at home just as he left it; the
lish Constitution, by virtue of "precedent," grants the man
ingapore and Sydney the privilege of finding his country
'tilf""tl'l"""itrr.oA ,.,.{:.,..._..........,.. ......... .,..- ........... - . --- .._L~--L-- -- I' 'W - .,.
remains "old England" in its methods, though it may have
changed enormously in other respects. But the daughter of
man is likely to be starved in England because she is not al-
lowed the privilege of being new and surprising. In the femi-
nine character, Venus Anadyomene, the foam-sprung goddess
of glistening novelty, always lies hidden. Women may be
young, beautiful, a good sport, gentle, pretty and "nice"; but
she cannot be the Beatrice of a new vision, the muse of inspi-
ration. There is no English Jeanne d' Arc.
The terrible letter of Jonathan Swift to Jane Waring-"!
will marry you on certain conditions: First, you must be edu-
cated so that you can entertain me. Next, you must put up
with all my whims, and likes and dislikes. Then you must
live wherever I please. On these terms I will take you, with-
out reference to your looks or to your income. As to the first,
cleanliness is all that I require; as to the second, I only ask
that it be enough." -can perhaps only be excused in the light
of the fact that it was she who had proposed to him; however,
he would have been less censurable had he struck Varina with
his fist, or kicked her. But his mental cruelty is an extreme,
c01nparable in France only to the cruelty of women like George
Sand towards Musset or Chopin. The gentleman, before the
regeneration of his type under the pressure of the French Revo-
lution, paid for all his isolation; his independence was offset
by torpor and fastidiousness. Self-adulation, the germ of death
as· it always is, invaded the upper classes and made them snobs
ind prigs. Like "Whig," the nickname for the superficial,
worldly man, "Dandy," is a Scotch word, first used about 1780.
An essay which was written shortly afterwards, on "the look
Jf a gentleman," reveals that the stage of self-idolatry was near.
But after a period of hard struggle the ritual of t~e gentry
Nas successfully transferred to new classes. The admiration
tnd love of the new middle class revived the integrity of the
>Id gentry, lest it be found unworthy of Tennyson's lines:
"And thus he bore without abuse
The grand old name of g-entlem::in_"
the other hand, the circle of society was sufficiently en-
:d so that its features could be revitalized. England counted
tt ten thousand "independent fortunes" in 1850. Nine
is of these independent fortunes were made by middle-
men, who were accepted as ranking with the born gen-
an. In his charming book, The English, Are They Human?,
Renier has described this shift which occurred in the nine-
:h century, and the loss of vigour and naivete it involved,
without seeing that it was only the downward step from
~entry to the "gigmanity" which made the ritual of eating
drinking, love and leisure, a little unnatural and in-
an.
l the whole, the amalgamation worked quite well on the
levels of gentleman and sport, Commonwealth and Em-
But the lower classes remained outside the charmed cir-
f ritualism. On the eve of the proletarian revolution, after
, Labour, Lloyd George, and the Fabians renewed their
ks on the gentleman. Figures like Lord Curzon or Hal-
or Morley impressed them as the fin de siecle of gen-
. But in the long run the odds are not in favour of Labour
~e Fabians.
Le attempt of the lower classes to overthrow the secret
itution of English society does not seem very promising.
the life-span of the British Commonwealth is not yet
1: It is too deeply rooted in the divine conception of a
;tia~ world which "lies all before us where to choos~,''
)(pression secularized by Young, in the diabolical line,
~ world their field, and humankind their prey."
tu re, without secrets, rediscovered and refashioned fron1
o day, is the idol of the French. Earth, without history,
returning upon itself, is the Bolshevik dream. The Eng-
tdventure is a movement toward the unknown, from a
~ as old as Revelation. This is the English vision of a
~d without end."
e gentleman does not repeat nor innovate. He fights, he
lles through; and he does so because he is led from on
Oliver Cromwell, the badly mistreated Protector of the
rnmmA1TU.TP".:lllth HThA'-'.P ~t".:lltllP "UT".:11(.'. hn".'.llhr r\Prm;t-t-Prl ;,,
1906, to stand on a very, very low pedestal in front of the
House of Parliament, expressed this mixed state of irrational
security, of blind faith in the promises of God, when he said:
"Never is a man lifted higher than when he does not know
where he goes." 24
24 The Cardinal de Retz. in his Memoires, for August, 1651, quotes the Presi-
dent de Bellievre, on Cromwell. and his own response: "'Cromwell . . . me
disait un jour que l'on ne monte jamais si haut que quand l'on ne sait ou l'on
va.'-'l'ous savez/ dis-je a M. de Bellievre, 'que j'ai horreur de Cromwell; mais,
quelque grand homme que l'on nous le prone, j'y ajoute le mepris s'il est de ce
~entiment: il me parait d'un fou.'"
 CHAPTER SEVEN

Germany: A Nation's Forests and the Soul's Chorale

The Christian Soldier-Personal History-Martin Luther-The Civil Servant
md His Religious Party-Militarism-The Professions under Civil Law-Bound
n Conscience-Prophet and King-"Your Highness"-Reform of the Churches-
N'hy Teaching Is a Public Trust-Neither Machiavelli nor Bodinus-University
..eadership-Music and Government-The Green Mountain Glade-Trunk and
~ranches-Goethe's Faust-Protesting Policy-Hitler-Non-Resistance-The Birth-
lay of the Modern Constitution

THE CHRISTIAN SOLDIER.

'HE ENGLISH REVOLUTION GAVE BIRTH TO A WORLD OF SEAS, WITH

. silver island set in their midst, a home of sailors, missionaries,
nd colonial officers, that was freed from the burden of a royal
rmy and its expression on the Continent of Europe: general
onscription. The symbol of this delivery from the King's
riilitary domination by a standing army is preserved in the
nnual ceremonial of Parliament. To prove that Royal Prerog-
tive has been cut to a harmless minimum, a member of the
-louse wears the uniform of the militia on the day on which
ae answer to the speech from the throne is first brought up
Jr debate. It is the duty of this M.P. in uniform to move that
lie Mutiny Act be passed which grants the King only six
1onths' service from his army.
When kingship was restored in 1660, the disbanding of the
rmy was the essential feature of the event; for it marked the
rogress beyond the military protectorate most illuminatingly.
The freedom from military service and the prerogative of
"War Lord" has remained ever since an outstanding feature
f the national temper. As a Frenchman once put it to Rud-
ard Kin1ino-~ "WP ContinPnt!l1~ !lTP mnrP C:Pn~r~tPrl frnm unnr
world by our compulsory service than by anything else. How
can you English understand our minds if you do not realize
those years of service-those years of service for us all? When
we come to talk to you about life, it is like talking to children
about death."
This advantage for England is vanishing fast, today. "In
these days the face of England is changing so rapidly that a
man does not have to reach the age of Rip Van Winkle in
order to suffer Rip's experiences." 1 Or, as Rolf Gardiner put
it, in his North Sea and Baltic) "a conservative revolution is
transforming the former island into a part of the mainland."
Gone are the happy days when, after a severe storm, the Lon-
doner would laugh over the telegram: "Storm raging in Chan-
nel; Continent isolated."
With armaments in the air, with gas masks for women and
children, Mars returns from the British Sea to the British
Home. Military service is again a vital problem on the island
itself.
Of course it is only the motherland to which it returns as
something new today. Abroad, England has always relied on
military service as much or more than any other nation. The
~fficient army and the discipline of military service which are
iistasteful on the British Isles, are respectable when the British
l.ght in India. Rudyard Kipling, in his jungle Book) makes
:he E.nglish army the symbol of a European accomplishment.
4e relates how natives of Afghanistan attended a review of
.he British army in India. The impression which the manreu-
rres make on the Afghans has nothing to do with England or
he British in particular; but it has everything to do with
~urope and the totality of Western Civilization. It runs as
ollows:
"Then I heard an old, grizzled, long-haired Central-Asian chief
rho had come down with the Amir, asking questions of a native
fficer:
1 R. W. Chambers, The Place of Saint Thomas More in English Literature
rid History, p. ~. London. rnq.,_
 'Now,' said he, 'in what manner was this wonderful thing
le?'
And the officer answered: 'There was an order, and they
yed.'
'But are the beasts as wise as the men?' said the chief.
'They obey as the men do. Mule, horse, elephant, or bullock,
obeys his driver, and the driver his sergeant, and the sergeant
lieutenant, and the lieutenant his captain, and the captain his
jor, and the major his colonel, and the colonel his brigadier,
tmanding three regiments, and the brigadier his general, who
ys the Viceroy, who is the servant of the empress. Thus is it
~e.,

'Would it were so in Afghanistanf' said the chief, 'for there we

y only our own wills.'
'And for that reason,' said the native officer, twirling his
istache, 'your Amir, whom you do not obey, must come here
. take orders from our Viceroy.'"
~ngland remained a European country, reserving the cen-
. organization of the King's service for its maritime empire.
w this is the State, this is the meaning of "Higher" and
pper," against which the Lower House protested desper-
ly, but the essence of which it wisely kept for the running
its colonies. Here England relies on an art and faith that
·e developed, not in English self-government, but on the
itinent. The universal significance of such a hierarchy is
limited to military form. In India the army is less impor-
t than the English Civil Service. And for fifty years the
~lish government at home has increasingly reformed and
irged its Civil Service.
PERSONAL HISTORY.

:ven Americans are faced today with the problem of a

·eaucracy, a brain trust, a centre of civil prerogative.
Jow, no seed can spring from a sterile tree. Red tape, bu-
llcracy, brain trust, central power, are all very well for
·poses of academic discussion, bu~ they cannot produce
nches, because their trunk is dry and sapless.
Vithout an emotional uplifting of the soul, no nation can
hand over its liberties to a new or reorganized system of gov-
ernment. The only basis of any radical change is radical faith.
The urgent questions of a radical change in the organized
work of society cannot be solved until we reach the depths
of every man's innermost creed and conviction. Civil service as
a purely mechanical organization will never work efficiently.
To understand the real inner justification for the strict dis-
cipline of a civil service, we must turn to the German revolu-
tion; for it alone gave the civil servant a religious position in
his country. In the German revolution the drab, grey life of
the average bureaucrat was suddenly transformed, as if by a
great volcanic eruption. Graft, bribery, the spoils-system, stain
the character ·of the civil servant in every country which has
not been touched by this great revolution. In the land of its
origin, on the contrary, the civil servant became a proud, lead-
ing character, the torch-bearer of a special form of European
life, an organized unit. As man he took upon himself a new
duty towards his mother earth.
This revolution is the German Reformation. Unfortunately,
its caricature, Henry VIII's Anglican Reformation, has de-
tracted from it in the eyes of the British. Since Milton sum-
moned his nation, ''Ev'n to the Reforming of the Reforma-
tion itself" (Areopagitica), Englishmen have seldom gone
deeper into the details of Lutheranism. It seems all a dark
century, the sixte,enth.
~ut the same Milton, in order to express his belief in a
new age, coud find no better word than-Reformationl "Why
else was this nation chosen before any other, that out of her,
as out of Zion, should be proclaimed and sounded forth the
first tidings and trumpet of Reformation to all Europe?"
Thus, in the midst of the terrible devastation of the Thirty
Years' War (1618-1648), in 1644, Milton still used the word
which had been sanctioned by Luther's nailing of his Ninety-
five Theses on the door of his Prince's chapel at Wittenberg.
And there is another thing which proves the universal scope
of the German Reformation. Our division of the Christian era
into the darkness of the Middle Ages and the light of modern
timP~ 1~ ~ PrAtP~t~nt r-r~~,.;~'" T nf-h£> ..... '., ~.,.,,.11,.,.. ............... ~ -··~-- 1..... _ 1 _)
tgh to begin a new era, as Cromwell tried to do by dating
;reat Seal "In the III year of freedom restored," and the
.ch by the new calendar of a ten-day week.
it whereas the English and French era did not last, the
nan dominates all our textbooks. Later we shall find out
ricks by which French historians have changed the border..
1 between modern times and the Middle Ages. Perhaps

is only by a trick that they could keep the Protestant

igement of human history. However, the trick itself shows
impression left by the German Reformation upon all
pe. The Gen~an Reformation ventured to declare that
een 600 and 1500 "densissimce tenebrce" had obscured
arth. The Pope had governed as the Anti-Christ, and had
ned the real Christian gospel. A "new learning" was be-
by Luther and Melanchthon to restore the pure Pauline
Luther himself sometimes thought of. being St. Paul
ivus. For four hundred years St. Paul has been the symbol
new church, fighting Petrine Rome and popery, preach-
he gospel in the motl~er-tongue and integrating Church
itate, monasteries and hospitals, universities arid schools
where, into one great organ of culture.
ep and vigorous motives must have been at work when
aere reading of certain books written by a professor of
Jgy could make men discard a nine-hundred-year-old
Jd. "Reformation" must weigh heavier in the scales of
·y than "World Revolution" if we ·compare their achieve-
;. It was no theologians' quarrel, no mere clergymen's
te, but a revolution in the modern sense of the word:
aking of all moulds, a pointing toward a new order of
~, something totalitarian, universal in its aim, which had
unknown till then.
ng a Reformation of the Church, it of course took every
>er of the human race to be a member of this Christian
:h. Its gospel restored Christianity within the Church.
~r's greatest pamphlet announced "the freedom of every
:ian.''
: since half of the world was "church" in thm:P rbu~
 the destruction of the visible church was nothing less than
the reconstruction of the world.
Formally, it is easy to show what the Reformation has in
common with the later revolutions. As in the others, the first
period is one of upheaval. The second is a time of careless-
ness and arrogance, which leads to deep humiliation and abase-
ment. Furthermore, the problem of a double start, a two-fold
beginning, is very clear in the German Reformation, because
Luther's religious movement and the political moves of the
German princes are distinct and separate. The monk, Luther,
dominated the public scene from the sensational moment when
he nailed up his theses against indulgences and papal securi-
ties in 1517, up to the equally sensational event of his marriage
in 1525. In that same year the princes themselves became re-
formers during the war against the inflamed and fanatical
villagers, and remained so until the peace- of religion in 1555.
During the first eight years Luther spread his gospel all over
the Empire, aye, the world, and every Christian man was moved
and startled. The Imperial Diets tried in vain to silence him.
From 1525 on, the Empire ceased to be the centre of Luther's
struggles. The various nations and territories began to articu-
late the right of reformation more carefully; not everybody
can reform the Church. Thus Luther's religious trumpet-call
made clear that Reformation of the Church was inevitable,
here and now; in the later period the High Magistrates settled
. the question of who could and should reform the Church.
- With a similar dualism, the Thirty Years' War, the time
of deep mourning for reformed Germany, first ended in an
external peace; only six years later did the Empire find the
energy to settle the economic and juridical questions raised
by this religious war: at the "Last Recess" of any imperial
diet (Recessus imperii novissimus of 1654).
1517-1525 Luther-1648-1654-Internal Insecurity.
1525-1555 The Princes-1618-1648-External War.
The German reformers used a war-cry already familiar to
the reader in its revolutionary technique. Perhaps a list will
best hel o him to visualize this oarallel.
 Russia: Every proletarian a capitalist.
France: Every man of talent an aristocrat.
England: Every gentleman a king.
Germany: Every Christian a priest.
Ne found that these slogans presupposed a clear vision of
ritorial unity, of God-given borders which considerably
dified the rational constitution. Every proletarian a capi-
st; yes, but within one economy held together by the Com-
nist Party. Every talent an aristocrat; yes, but within an
ivisible nation. Every gentleman a king; yes, but within
United Kingdom. The real progress and the tragic blood-
i of each revolution were both caused by the paradox con-
Led in this "yes, but." The clue to the success of the Eng-
' French and Russian revolutions was that none of them
)ed the respective supported at the price of diminishing
size of the body politic; they all reached out for a political
inization bigger than anything attempted before. The Com-
1s shook off the yoke of the Congregationalists because the
tgregationalists would have dissolved the united Anglican
trch. The French beheaded the Girondins because Federal-
would have dissolved the central power of an individual
1ce built up in royal Versailles. The Russians killed the
al Revolutionaries because these people loved the Russian
tge and would not have had the hardness of heart to sac-
e it to a united economy for all Russia.
i all these cases there is some comprehensive, uniting force
rigdom, nation, economy-which is upheld in the face of
ranters and romanticists. Something pre-existing and pre-
sly united is reformed and transformed by the revolution-
; in order that everybody may participate in the circulation
.s blood.
he same is true of the German revolution. "Every Chris-
a priest" is restricted by the "yes, but" only in the uni-
11 religion as it is reforming one whole territory. The
nan revolution killed the leaders of the local reforms, the
•aptists and peasants, ruthlessly, because their dreams would
meant an individual religion of every village. Instead, a
unified economy in Russia, a unification in France, a united
kingdom in England, a universal religion are the realistic
requirements which the great revolutions cannot give up.
Minor rebellions may pick up an arbitrary course, they may
destroy units. The majestic rhythm of the Great Revolutions
of Christianity is characterized by its lack of arbitrary addi-
tions or omissions. They never go behind what has been
achieved before. No previous accomplishment is revoked by
the Revolutions of the Faith.
MARTIN LUTHER.

The person who changed a clerical world into an era of

universal priesthood had to be a priest and a Christian him-
self. On the other hand, his new equation, "every Christian
a priest," had to be fought through and secured, not for a
single farm-house or a single village or town, but for the
largest units of Christendom then in existence. In those days,
this largest unit was the single State, a State the size of Rhode
Island and Providence Plantations or Saxony or Tuscany. The
priest and the Christian who brought about the German Ref-
ormation was eager to resist the "Ranters" and to establish
the State as the minimum receptacle for a universal religion.
In order to do this it was not enough for Martin Luther,
Augustinian monk and professor of theology, to marry a nun
and become a layman; unless he risked being mistaken for a
bohemian or vagabond, he had to take upon himself the yoke
of a definite allegiance. He had to become the loyal citizen of
a particular State. The way of expressing this intention and
of asking for naturalization in his days was to become the loyal
)ervant of a High Magistrate.
Thus, the German Reformation hinges on the personal biog-
raphy of Martin Luther. In England, the theft of a word was
the clue to the ideology of its revolution. In Germany, every
~ealistic, material, social or political aspect of the Reformation
was veiled behind a curtain. And this curtain, rewoven year
ifter year by all the candidates for Chairs in Theology, was
abelled "the Life of Martin Luther." The political facts of
·hA h;n-h ,,...,.....,.h.:1:._w•'~ TI-1--11~---
iidden under the scores of theological biographies of Luther.
fhe new sovereignty of the secular princes, in the nation of
ts most glorious establishment, did not boast of its own right-
~ousness. It borrowed its glamour from the priest who ex-
:hanged his clerical priesthood for a universal one. In other
~uropean regions, like England and France, the new political
xperience was soon evaluated in abstract terms like "Preroga-
ive" and "Sovereignty." In the "Fatherland" of the Reforma-
ion, Protestantism was victorious only so long as it insisted
n remaining in the shade of Luther's personal experience. Of
ourse, this concealment of a political earthquake in the reli-·
ious biography of an indivdiual had its inconveniences for
1e German mentality. The realistic sides of the struggle re-
1ained concealed. In Luther's life itself the social aspect was
ot given its proper due. Martin Luther, the civil servant, the
ew-born citizen of a civil State, disappeared behind the
mighty personality," the "hero," the "Great German," the
ieliverer." The oversta~~ment of his personal contribution
:d to an understatement with regard to his concrete social
mction. His will, for instance, a legal document of the high-
it importance, has never been analyzed. His condemnation of
le peasantry's rebellion was always treated in the style of
Sunday-school argument. The great political stakes were ob-
ured then, and in many later phases of German politics,
~hind personal issues, allegiances and sentimentalities.
Nevertheless, this strange subjectivism is generally recog-
zed as the source of German strength and originality. The
erman Declaration of Independence is a one-man declaration;
ld the elements that regenerated the Church and emancipated
e world were personal first and institutional later.
A chronological survey of the Reformation is divided into
·o halves, one giving Luther's part in it, the other showing
e part played by the secular authorities, called High Magis-
ttes.
LUTHER'S PART IN THE REFORMATION.

t 7 Luther publishes nineiy-five theses against the securities

nrnm1~1'.lr1 hu t-ho ............... ,.. ........ 4.~ .._t_ - ,....,,~ •
 1520 He burns the Papal Bull which excommunicates him.
1521 He is outlawed by the Emperor at the Diet of Worms. His
books are to be confiscated; but the princes, including the
Archbishop of Mayence, Chancellor of the Empire, frightened
by Luther's popularity, refuse to execute the Emperor's edict.
1524 The universities and the princes determine to meet to debate
upon the Reformation. The Emperor forbids this transforma-
tion of the Imperial Diet into a council of the Church.
1525 Luther, the monk, is married to a nun. Henceforth his own
legal status and that of his family remains doubtful.
. 1541 He makes his last will without regard to the laws of the
Empire or the Church or the land, requesting the affirmation
of his prince as its only guarantee.
1546 He dies before open war breaks out.

B. THE PART OF THE SECULAR AUTHORITY, CALLED "HIGH MAGIS-

TRATES," IN THE REFORMATION.

1525 The war against the supporters of native resistance and local
military traditions is successfully carried through by the secu-
lar princes.
1526 The princes "protest" the decrees of the Empire against the
Reformation. Hence ''Protestants."
1530 The princes present to the Emperor the creed composed by
the theologians, and form a religious party on an equal
footing with the Emperor.
1546-1547 The Emperor crushes the Protestant League.
1552 The princes ally themselves with France and defeat the
Emperor.
1555 The estates of the realm are empowered to reform their re-
spective territories. Peace of religion.

THE CIVIL SERVANT AND HIS RELIGIOUS PARTY.

The civil servant is the result of the mutual permeation of

Luther's prophecy of the universal Reformation and the
princes' carrying out of their special reformation.
The civil servant is the man who first hears the prophetic
voice of universal truth, and who later enters the service of
a secular authority to carry out his part in the Reform.
In a system based on ci vii service no brain-trust governs,
orn of Andrew Jackson and his followers for a high-brow
ficialdom does not obtain in Germany, the native land of
icient civil service. Its system was more subtle; and I think
a period when efficiency and planning are current slogans
America, and hard thinking and methodical reconstruction
e inevitable in England, it is worthwhile to study the prob-
n of a paternal government more carefully.
Let us state the general principle first: any German who
tended to go into government service underwent two com-
etely different influences during his life. Both influences were
ercised by two sovereign jurisdictions independent of each
h.er, and their mutual sovereignty guaranteed the relative
tellectual liberty and reliability of the individual who had
ssed through the two jurisdictions of a teaching church and
listening government.
The second jurisdiction was, of course, the sovereignty of a
[gh Magistrate, one of the hundreds of principalities of the
~rman Federation. At the beginning of· the German Refor-
ttion there were many High Magistrates of many different
1ds in the German part of the Holy Roman Empire. For
ample, there were:
7 Electors (Palatinate, Saxony, Brandenburg, Bohemia,
Treves, Mayence and Cologne)
50 Archbishops and Bishops
70 Abbots and Abbesses of the Empire
31 Secular princes
i 28 Counts of the Em pi re
81 Free cities of the Empire
late as 17 50, in the Germany of Schiller and Goethe, Fred-
ek the Great and Maria Theresa, there were about three
ndred and fifty princely houses.
Each of these authorities occupied a different rank in the
>ly Roman Empire. As in the Norman Realm of England,
~ hierarchy of this empire descended the scale in subtle
Ldations. The ladder began at the top with the Emperor;
der him were placed the Electors spiritual and tempor~l,
e cardinals under a pope; then came
 the spiritual Princes,
the secular Princes,
the Abbots and Abbesses,
the Counts,
~ the Ci ties.
The Reformation changed all these dignitaries into peers
in a new order of government. The old gradations were no
longer valid in matters of religion. For the first time in history,
the great prince and the little count, the diocese of Cologne
on the lower Rhine and the small district of the Abbots of
Sackingen on the upper Rhine, became equals in their respon-
sibility for the religious salvation of their subjects. The earth-
quake of the Reformation, which has long been treated by
Catholic historians as a real revolution, turned the hierarchy
of the Holy Empire and its Diets, with Emperor, Princes
Electors, Princes Spiritual, Princes Temporal, Prelates, Counts,
Barons, Knights, Cities and finally Imperial valleys and vil-
lages, into a federation of peers, all of equal rank, that is to
say, into the "German Nation" embodied by its some 4un-
dreds of High Magistrates.
Of course, these High MagiShates were not equals in power,
in military force or in wealth. The Emperor himself, for ex-
ample, held a ring or bulwark of countries surrounding Ger-
many proper, and these he governed as a hereditary prince. He
was Count of Holland, and Marquis of Namur, Duke of the
Hennegau and Brabant, Landgrave of Alsace, Count of Breis-
gau, Count of Hapsburg and Kiburg, and the Thurgow in
Switzerland, Count in Bregenz and of the Tyrol, Prince of
Brixen and Trent, Marquis of Styria, Archduke of Upper and
Lower Austria, King of Bohemia and Apostolic Majesty of
Hungary, Marquis of Moravia, Duke of Silesia, Grand Duke
of Transylvania, Lord of the Cities of Trieste and Catt.aro,
King of Dalmatia, etc.
All this was contained in the Great House of Austria which
for many centuries protected Germany proper on the west,
south and southeast, and especially against the Turks, who
 besieged the Emperor's capital, Vienna, in 1529 and
83.
mpared with this Imperial crown and mantle, embrac-
h.e heart of the German countries, a Prince von Hohen-
:>r an Imperial Baron von Stein did not count materially.
morally, for the sake of the highest good of mankind,
petty Lords were peers of the Emperor. In matters of
on any High Magistrate could not only raise his voice as
as any Christian, but could act like a pope. His resolu-
in matters of Reform did not depend upon the approval
iperor and Diet. The individual High Magistrate became
1sible individually, and did not need the permission or
1sation of any superior to act as he believed he was bound
ri.science to act. The result of the Reformation was the
an Liberty, the "Teutsche Libertaet," which consisted in
ct that any High Magistrate was bound to shape his own
ence in matters of religion without depending on the
rity of pope or bishop or emperor.
ry High Magistrate became a pope in his own big or
territory. For most of the territories, because of their
mallness, the Reformation was a spiritual, religious and
:al movement; it was not a military or belligerent enter-
:it all. On the contrary, the princes of central Germany,
;e they felt protected against wars from outside by the
ror's colossal ring of countries, took up the Reformation
ler to consolidate the administration of their own terri-
Reformation to them was a revolution for the purpose
Jrdinating all ecclesiastical institutions under the juris-
1 of one High Magistrate. The outcome was the creation
l government and a civil service, to replace ecclesiastical
tment and the employment of the clergy in political
The word "clerc" (clerk) can still be used in French and
h. In German the word "clergy" was extirpated, because
rmany the civil servant appeared as a religious rival
clergy. The civil power and the Civil Law became sacred
ns against ecclesiastical power and against legislation by
Law. The old Latin word "civis," used by the middle
ri France as the basis of their civilisation. was nsPn in
Germany to build up a civilian order. What progress this was
can only be felt when we realize how we today think of such
an order of things as natural and proper. In our minds every-
one is first and foremost a civilian; only exceptionally, in cases
of emergency or war, will men join the militia or the army
and so put themselves under martial law. Ordinarily a man
looks upon it as his birthright to live under the Civil Law.
Now this was completely unknown before the Reformation.
In the Middle Ages a man was either a layman or a clergy-
man. In the first case he was governed by martial, feudal and
canon law. His marriage was regulated by the canons of the
Church, his inheritance by the customs of the land, his trade
and his contracts by the king's justice. There was no Civil
Law and no Common Law in the Middle Ages. Common Law,
the pride of England, is, as we have already seen, a seventeenth-
century invention which replaced the Continental Civil Law.
The Reformation abolished the presupposition that a man was
a warrior first, and only secondly a peaceful citizen. It created
one fundamental civil law for all the inhabitants of one terri-
tory and all the subjects of one High Magistrate, a law which
protected them from birth to death against all the threats of
popes or papal legates or bishops, guaranteed them equity
against the cruel laws of the land, and delivered them from
the expensive decisions of Roman courts.
Civil Law was the pride of every High Magistrate, because
it meant, for the first time in the Occident, the unification of
a· man's civil position. The High Magistrates took from their
subjects' shoulders the burden of being primarily soldiers, and
only exceptionally and occasionally civilians. By concentrating
the duty of defence in their own hands, they made the in-
habitants of their territories free to give most of their time to
the works of peace.
MILITARISM.

The new situation was emphasized by the borrowing, from

the inexhaustible resources of ancient Latinity, of new words
for the warrior: the words "militia" and "military." Military
forces are the forces of a civilized country, and by that very
token thev are no lonqe.r e.ssPnti~l tn thP ,..;rrht-c- ,..,.c •h~ :~..J:
al! Every subject is under the lawful protection of the
rnment, even though he is not a feudal knight or tenant.
modern world was created by the High Magistrates, who
l for their subjects as civilians and provided a militia only
second and secondary group, to protect the main body of
.ans.
1e High Magistrate, when he created a civil law and a
service, separated his generals from his civil servants and
~ them generals pure and simple, without any claim to
.ade governors, either then or later. How strange and sur-
1g this di vision of labour was and is, is shown by the
of George Washington, the Duke of Wellington, of Jack-
Taylor and Grant who were both Generals and Presidents,
[acMahon in France and Hindenburg in Germany. So
~al is it for a nation to entrust political leadership to a
ssful general.
t the Reformation abolished this confusion. From Luther's
down to 1890, ordinarily no German general was in-
i with civil power! Hindenburg was a great exception
e rule. German militarism consisted in the strict exclusion
nerals from politics. This cardinal contribution of Ger-
. to democracy and civilization was not adopted by the
1cratic countries.
ll y one general ever tried to become a political leader in
tany, namely Wallenstein. It was at the very blackest hour
~ Counter-Reformation, when all the achievements of the
eran Reformation might have been regarded as lost, that
~nstein, the successful general of the Emperor, thought of
l1g peace as he had made war. Instead· of a prince gov-
g with an army, he would have become the Cromwell
who became a prince because he commanded the army.
~nstein was stopped immediately. He was assassinated in
by orders from Vienna, and the supremacy of the High
itrate over the Field Marshal, of justice over power, was
·ed. Barely as the victory was won, it was final, because
i won at the weakest and most despondent hour of Ger-
Protestantism. The victory over Wallenstein should be
::\rPrl tn thP nnP untP hu .,..uh;rh t-h£> Th; ... ,:, D ............... i...1: ..... -··~~
carried in France in 187 5. It was decisive because it happened
at the zero hour of revolutionary faith. In 1634, as in 1874,
the result of the previous Revolution had already become an
objective, living reality that was stronger than the physique or
morale of exhausted and depressed men.
THE PROFESSIONS UNDER THE CIVIL LAW.

Luther himself, the leader of the Reformers, can serve as a

good illustration of the new realm created by the civil law of
the High Magistrate. Martin Luther had been a miner's son
in the county of Mansfeld. He, with his family, lived, there-
fore, according to Saxon tribal law. In 1509 he entered a mon-
astery. Now, a monk died to the world and its jurisdiction.
A monk had no property, no affinity, no relationship in the
mundus, the world outside. He took a new name, and he was
ruled, not by Saxon law, but by the religion of his order, the
monastic rule laid down in the charter of the monastery and
"professed'' by the entering novice. This particular monk en-
tered one of the hundred different monasteries in Thuringia
and Saxony which lay in the territory of his prince, the Elector
of Saxony and Landgrave of Thuringia. This prince had a
domain one ninth as large as England-a normal size for a state
in the sixteenth century. Parts of six different bishoprics were
included in his territory. The pope in Rome, the superiors of
the hundred monasteries, the archbishops controlling the six
.bishops, and finally five of the six bishops themselves, lived out-
side the prince's jurisdiction. He had to transact and negotiate
with Mayence and Magdeburg, with Rome and Bamberg, to
settle any religious matter at home.
The monasteries hdd a great deal of land, as much as one
third of his territory, exempt from taxation. Each one had a
"religion" of its own, granted by a pope. Religion in those
days was a special form of monastic life by which a group of
people had chosen to live together. Each order claimed its
special religion as the one way to holiness. Hence religion was
a source of rivalry, disorder and confusion.
The only way out for a prince who, like Luther's prince,
versity. If he could compel the clergy and the bailiffs,
s and parsons, all to study in his territory, then a certain
lination seemed possible.
the shabby and sandy region of Wittenberg-a town of
hundred and eighty-two citizens in 1512~a university
1een founded in the year 1502. Luther was a professor
and since, as a university, it stood under the patronage
1peror and Pope, Luther's position as a professor was
lted by Canon and Roman Law. This monk, who had
1 Saxon and who had joined the "religion" of an order,
)W involved in canonistic and imperial regulations. But,

.11, the prince who had founded Wittenberg paid Luther's

This foundation was the apple of his eye, and the rights
)ngs of any member of it involved his own rights and
~ges as well. The future of his administration might be
1ined by the prosperous or unprosperous growth of the
·sity.
her did not interest the Elector as a personality. They
10t friends. We are told that, in spite of the importance
:ist scope of Luther's actions and the smallness of the
y, the Elector never exchanged a word with Luther. The
relation between prince and professor, High Magistrate
eformer, was, as this lack of personal intercourse shows,
~tely abstract and objective .
.le in this situation, the professor, Luther, lost the sup-
: the pope because he attacked his power of dispensation .
.s banished; and when he and his students went outside
llls of Wittenberg to burn the papal bull, they created
order, a world which had not existed until that day.
had the courage to live under the curse of Rome and
the threats of all its minions.
year later Luther was summoned to the Imperial Diet.
~tters of Canon Law had been broken so successfully
en so strict a Catholic as the young Emperor, Charles V,
tlot venture to act as his forefathers had done. All pre-
Emperors had thought of themselves as bailiffs of the
i. They had defended the Church and made war on
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WURZ BURG
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sailed it, and when the CEcumenical Council of Constance had
condemned Huss in 1415, the Emperor Sigismund had risked
his own claim to the throne of Bohemia and executed the judg-
ment of the Council. Fifty years of terrible warfare, 1419-1471,
had followed the carrying out of this anathema. The desperate
Hussite wars were the fruit of the i11-omened day when John
Huss looked down at the old hag piling wood about his feet and
exclaimed: "O Sancta Simplicitas" -0 Holy Simplicity!
The tragedy of Huss had been caused by Sigismund's readi-
ness to break his Imperial promise of safe conduct, because
the Council had outlawed Huss as a heretic. A convicted
heretic could have no legal defence in this world. In Luther's
day the martyrdom of John Huss was not forgotten. A queer
prophecy went the rounds: "When one hundred years have
revolved you shall answer God and me." In 1515 a neighbo_ur
of the Duke of Saxony, a count who owned certain silver mines
between Saxony and Bohemia, had medals struck off with that
legend.
Luther profited from this century-old scar. Charles V did
not wish to commit himself as Sigismund had committed him-
self. Therefore the Emperor and his Diet usurped a privi-
lege never before granted to the secular arm, but now sought
by kings and princes everywhere, the privilege of passing on the
decisions of the Roman Church. With the bloodshed and
devastation brought about by the Hussites before their very
eyes, Emperor and. Diet refused to act as mere executioners
for the Church. Luther was invited to explain his position
at a meeting of the Diet. The secular arm showed its desire
to inquire into the proceedings of the spiritual arm; a ques-
tion which seemed to have been settled when Gregory VII
successfully excommunicated an Emperor and Innocent IV
successfully deposed the Emperor Frederick II of Sicily, came
up in a new form. The new principle was that the Church
could not bring troubles, warfare, civil war, upon kingdoms
and empires without even asking their consent.
The question of the Reformation was really this: Could the
High Magistrate refuse his consent when the Church com-
:onstitutionality of a measure of the Church? Under the
mon Law any judge can test the constitutionality of a law.
t was exactly the problem of the Reformation. Could the
1 Magistrate examine the constitutionality of a papal bull
Christian custom or a Canon law?
1e Diet of Worms tried a halfway solution. Luther was
noned. He was in high glee: having defied Canon Law,
ll.aving lost his Saxon law, he thought Imperial Law would
!Ct him. He asked for a legal pronouncement of the united
on his orthodoxy. Now this was more than he could get.
;e laymen, knights and feudal lords, and even the Em-
r himself, had never claimed to be theologiansl How could
iould the Estates of the Empire, fat abbots or illiterate
ts, suddenly pass judgment on the subtle writings of a
k. about purgatory and hell, salvation and worship?
er' s hope that the military hierarchy of the Diet would
the gap which the burning of the papal bull had made
is legal status, proved chimericaL He was examined at
ms, it is true. But the Emperor limited the trial to the
:ion of whether or not Luther had written all his alleged
11es.
ie difficulties of Charles V are still our difficulties today.
orship of movies or plays, controversies between funda-
alists and evolutionists, prohibition of books or news, oc-
laily. The function of the papacy has been taken over by
nalistic priests or Communistic fanatics or elderly society
s. And though the authorities are multiple, the result in
particular jurisdiction, in Russia or Tennessee, Italy or
iany, is as final and suffocating as it was in 1521 l
ligion, the real formation of an inner life in protest
lSt the conventional despotism of society, is never safe;
ilways a challenge. We may congratulate ourselves, there-
that the Diet of Worms arrived at no solution. For in
!rs of conscience and belief the clear-cut black and white
1ctions of those in authority are likely to be tyrannical.
cience gains whenever the men in power are doubtful
·eluctant to act.
ninating texts. Here I stand, and can do no other," the Diet,
t high pyramid of feudal lords and vassals, was at a loss.
ely their assembly could not judge heresies. But to perse-
~ their own subjects with fire and sword, as the Hussites
. been persecuted, seemed equally impossible.
Vhen the Emperor tried to impose on the princes of the
pire th~ execution of the pope's ban, the first of these
ices, the Archbishop of Mayence, Chancellor and Keeper
he Great Seal, refused his Seal and signature; and later he
te in a letter to the Emperor that he could not carry out
order without the joint action of all his neighbour-princes.
archbishop of the church, in his capacity as a secular ruler,
ld not set fire to his own house. Now this archbishop was
of those who had ecclesiastical authority in the territories
Juther' s prince. The weakness of these ecclesiastical rulers
obviously their secular power. They dared not put into
:t as High Magistrates what they had to approve as Lords
itual. The neighbour of this archbishop, the Duke of Sax-
was in a much simpler position. The archbishop at least
i special allegiance to the pope. If even he shrank from
1osing a ci vii war, the Elector had still greater reason to
).

it there was another side to the question. Frederick the

~ had in his university a stronghold of reformation and
rol over a third of the weal th and the area of his terri-
As_ long as this university could he denounced as heretical
he pope whenever it so pleased him, the university had
~ closed or opened whenever Rome intervened. The only
•on the Duke had against his one hundred and six differ-
"religions" and religious authorities would have been
ked out of his hands.
1ce universities were not old in Germany, the question
a new question indeed. But a prince who cherished his
ersity as the apple of his eye could not admit the right
yone else to pass judgment on its orthodoxy, since its very
n d'etre was to check other peoples' (that is to say, foreign-
:al) influences over his territory.
--1--- "t'T • , "• • -
rms he gave the right of censorship in all matters of reli-
1, not to the bishops, but to the theological faculty of the
versities. The Emperor himself thus implied a kind of
mption and sovereign privilege for the theological faculties
he universities. They were appointed as acting censors, and
ody else could officially rebuke them. This regulation in
1

Emperor's Writ outweighed his approval of the pope's

~sion in respect to Luther's past actions. For the future, men
Luther who, after all, was a member of a faculty, were ac-
wledged as competent judges of orthodoxy, public morals,
Christian princi pies.
uther's prince, therefore, was not protecting Luther as a
1onal friend; he was standing for the right of a High Magis-
e to harbour a sovereign university in his territories .
.11 German Catholics and Protestants were completely unan-
us on this point. In 1524 the Diet and the Imperial Vicar,
Roman King Ferdinand, brother of Charles V, agreed on
1lution which would have enacted the sovereignty of the
versities into a Law of the Empire. A special form of Diet
proposed, to which princes and universities should send
r envoys. This would have been a strange mixture of a
: and a National Council: the professors and the war-lords
.Id have met on equal terms. This idea had, in fact, been
:eived as early as 1460.
'he plan failed in 1524 as it had in 1460. Charles V saw
iediately what a hopeless confusion it might bring about,
shut the door on the experiment. The professors did not
t with the Diet. From that time on, every prince had to
de for himself whether he preferred to defend his uni-
ity and its decisions and teachings in matters of religion,
o obey the judgments of pope and bishops.
his decision was not very difficult. He who had to deal
L several bishops or orders in his territory, dignitaries
se religious foundations and jurisdictions had their centre
ide his own territory, would be inclined to defend his own
t of control. As a High Magistrate he would claim or usurp
right to cry his professor up as a Reformer or down as a
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.nclined to compromise with pope and bishops. The Duke of
iaxony or the Elector of Hesse could not make the same con-
:ession. Wittenberg and Marburg, Jena and Helmstedt, be-
:ame the centres of the new learning because, for large parts
>f Saxony, Thuringia, Hesse and Brunswick, the Episcopal See
vas a foreign See.
The Imperial Law could not protect Luther; the law of
he land did not apply to him as a monk; Canon Law had
mt its ban upon him. No one but the High Magistrate, who
vished to protect his. university, could endow the members
•f this university with a new legal status.
In 1525 Luther married a nun. With Katherine of Bora
le founded a family. Both man and wife in this marriage
vere not only without law, but outlawed. The High Magistrate
lone could supply something like a legal standing for the
housands of nuns and monks who returned to the world and
:>r Luther's children, who could not inherit anything from
monk's and a nun's household. It was pathetic for any ruler
) see the despondency of these thousands and tens of thou-
1nds who were deprived of all law and legitimacy and longed
)r a new status as civilians.
BOUND IN CONSCIENCE.

The problem could be solved only if the High Magistrate

Juld decide how much of the Canon Law should remain a
art of the Civil Law, in his territory. The protection of the
niversity led inevitably to the conclusion that certain chapters
E Canon and Imperial Law could be abolished by the prince's
ecision, that a High Magistrate might find himself bound in
Jnscience to supplement the law of the land by his own in-
iative. In an emergency which demands immediate action,
ithout time for discussion, the government of a nation is
Jliged to initiate and act on its own responsibility.
This prerogative of any government to act in times of war,
: rebellion, of famine, of earthquake is an established prin-
ple. The English, fighting the king's prerogative, stripped
>rerogative" of its innocent and necessary character. We can
ct, in the country of its ongin, it never was classified
.g the rights of the prince but among his duties. Since
•od Christians wished to mobilize the princes against the
s in the Church, ---they told the princes that they were
d in conscience to do something about these scandals. In
cs, it is more fruitful to claim duties than privileges. The
Magistrate was in duty bound to act in this religious
~ency. The pressure of circumstance weighed on his con-
:e. Although I think that no other expression gives a
· description of the "general welfare clause" for any gov-
:!nt, I don't think that the terms of German Protestantism
e resuscitated. But we cannot do without the thing itself.
[t were not for emergencies, if it were not for war and
angers of life, little initiative in government would be
d. In all these cases, "government by talk" would be no
nment at all. The government has to decide; and he who
~s what has to be done is the government. One, or a few,
command in cases of emergency, and the rest must obey.
·nment by the people is a good expression when you wish
Tound the executive with safeguards. and controls, but
is is torn like a thread the ··minute a real emergency
;. Then the prerogative of the ruler stands up alone
olated in all its glory, power and monstrosity. It is brutal,
:ruel, it is diabolical; but without it the world would
e into chaos. For the emergency is here, before us, among
ound us. The crisis shuts the banks, ridicules the pleas
ditors in courts and the humanitarian effort to educate
:! in jails. The bankers have no money, the debtors have
sh, and the community has so many unemployed that
need comes first, far ahead of the objectionable fellows

t case of war or real emergency the normal life, the very

rice of the best, most energetic stock of the population
•erilled. The withered leaves of the tree can be cared for
.ceful times. Government stays in the background; private
.ive spreads and helps the poor, the sick, the abnormal,
~ak, to reach the general standard. In normal times the
ticular care the fading leaves of the tree, they bring back
individuals to normality.
But what about a loss of the very standards for normality?
In times like the Great War or the depression one begins
to doubt everything. Is life worthwhile? Is a man out of work
still a man? What is it all about? Why found a family which
you can no longer educate for any definite profession or
denomination, because there are no definite professions or
denominations left?
These are the times to try men's souls, because what we feel
is not so much the external pain or attack or danger, but a
worm at the root, eating our faith, killing the seed of love
and conviction in our hearts.
In such times the prerogative of a leader is indispensable.
Without his iron grip on the country all standards would be-
come debatable, doubtful and dissolved. The dilution of faith
caused by the emergency forces upon the leader the respon-
sibility of uttering the cry of alarm and commanding, brutally
and harsh Iy.
We can even say that he who commands efficiently in such
times is or inakes himself the leader, even though legal pro-
cedure may not take account of him. Timely prerogative cre-
ates and restores actual government, legalizes conquest and
force. To be sure, the legitimation of brute force is never to
be found in its external success. Tyranny remains tyranny, and
iniquity is never bleached into the genuine white of sacred
authority. Nay, the test of domination is not "success" in an
abstract sense, that of a man's being called Emperor or Presi-
dent or leader by intimidated slaves. It is the success in this
emergency, and in this particular emergency only. In one spe-
cial and definite emergency the new government will rise or
the old government will be regenerated. Its test, then, is this
particular emergency. If it succeeds in its fight against this
enemy, this dilution of faith and standards, this famine, people
will feel gratified and support or tolerate it in spite of all its
other faults.
Now the curious thing in the history of Christianity is that
rlot an economic emergency. We today are sure that eco-
lC forces pull all the wires. Washington was the richest
in the colonies, the Federalists speculated in Western
the Whigs owned ecclesiastical estates, and the French
lle class wished to exploit the farmers. This is all true,
rlO truer than the fact that economics is part of all our
every day. Bread and butter is an everyday question. For
very reason it is not the permanent question of history,
1se history selects one or the other everyday question and
!S it the centre of attention for a certain time. History is
>assing from one question to another, the putting of dif-
.t questions at different times.
cause of the very fact that economics is so important all
ime, it cannot be the question for every period. History
d not be history but a recurrent mechanism if it were one
the same question which raised human fury to the pitch
u or revolution in every age. We vary, the seasons vary,
dnd varies in its furies, passions, aims and ends, and the
gencies against which we need government vary likewise.
ie secular state of the Reformation was the result of an
gency in religion and law. The monk and the nun relied
Jmeone's prerogative to give them back their rights of
~nship, of normality. He who had the power, and who
that power in order to make their situation regular, was
ld to be hailed as their sword of justice, righteous gov-
~, and _true leader toward prosperity and happiness.
ie Reformation discovered the marvellous comfort that a
~rful prerogative can give to a world which is troubled
Jnsdence and which is losing its accepted standards of
y and laymen, monks and indulgences.
i the prince and the High Magistrate centred all the en-
asm of the Reformers of the Church, because the High
lstrate alone remained as a beacon on the ocean of life.
visible church once attacked in its power of binding and
ng, the great flood of disorder inundated a world, which,
a year before Luther's theses, had seemed completely clear
well-organized. The canons of the Church had dealt with
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was complicated, it was most refined; but it was clear and safe
for the individual. Good and evil were known quantities.
The Reformation overturned all values, by denying the dis-
tinction between clergy and laymen, between a security
granted by the pope and any other worldly security. Luther
refused to believe that any clergy could influence hell or
heaven. Says Luther in his Ninety-five Theses:
THESIS 8: All paragraphs of penitence are valid for life, not for
death. It must clearly have been the Holy Ghost in the Pope who
told him to make allowance, in all his laws, for our last hour and
cases of emergency.
THESIS 27: It smells of the ways of men when preachers pretend
that the soul enters heaven as soon as the vendor of indulgences
gets his money.
THESIS 32: Whoever teaches that we can buy our salvation by
any letter of indulgence will go to hell with all his sibling.
THESIS 79: It is blasphemy when anybody mistakes the visible
cross on the armour of a crusader for the Cross of Christ.
THESIS i 6: Hell, Purgatory and Heaven must be like Despair,
Semi-Despair and Security. No one of them can be given to any-
body from outside, by a visible remedy.
Luther's final admonition was: "Exhortandi sunt Christiani
ut caput suum, Christum, per prenas, mortes, infernosque sequi
studeant ac sic magis per multas tribulationes intrare ctelum
quam per securitatem pacis confidant." This exhortation to the
Christians, against the love of security and in behalf of an
enduring state of insecurity, reads like a Bolshevist pronuncia-
mento against bourgeois security. With one stroke of the pen
it annihilated all that pleasant structure of security which we
love to piece together like a mosaic, counting over the exami-
nations we have passed, our marriage and our children, our
books, our friends, our house and our car, and figuring that
after all we have done pretty well and gathered together what
a man should gather during his life.
The somewhat deeper and more serious civilization of the
Middle Ages had asked less what cars or books a man owned
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 He had gained some comfort, say, from building a hos-
from founding a school or from going to Rome or Jeru-
. on a pilgrimage. In this way the terrible debt of man
, Creator seemed to be redeemable in instalments. And
nuch is the situation of the mode-rn man different except
we are on the cruder level of instalments on a radio or

ther destroyed the belief in the sense of this slow, me-

cal progress toward salvation. "All or nothing," was his
ry. We cannot win battles against God by isolated actions.
r He has us-and then nothing belongs ·to us, nothing
led by us, but He leads, governs, commands what we shall
r we are completely lost, and no percentage of "good
is" will interest Him or save us.
PROPHET AND KING.

March, 1522, with the Imperial Edict of Worms over

~ad, with the other Saxon Duke, George of Leipzig, rag-
~ainst Lutheranism, with the ranters in Wittenberg run-
mad with i~onoclastic radicalism, and he himself kept
, prince in the Wartburg near Eisenach, Luther suddenly
is hiding place. He explained his step to his frightened
e-Elector in a letter which I insert here in extens9; for
he most general statement that can be made of the rela-
between an invisible Church and the visible State.
th€ _abstract constitutional era of modern times, the gen-
haracter of the letter, with its "I" and "Your Grace," its
ent character of a missive from one individual to an-
, is a hindrance to its understanding. In point of fact, the
luel is between Church and State, soul and power, man
)ig business. I should like to direct the reader in each
.o translate the "I" of Luther into the sovereign claims
y church or inspiration of genius, and the "Grace" of
rince into the sovereignty of any government, be it in
ington, Ottawa, or London. Then, through the old pat-
)f style, the permanent truth and external conflict seem
, well stated, even for our modern times.
 "Grace and peace of God, our Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ,
md my most humble service. Serene Highborn Elector, most
~acious prince: Your Grace's letter and reflections reached me
Friday night as I was just about to leave the Wartburg for Witten-
)erg on horseback Saturd~y morning. That Your Grace intends the
lest needs neither· acknowledgment nor witness in my eyes, for
lY all human inquiry I am assured of the same; that I too intend
,vell, I trust I know from a higher source than human inquiry.
3ut with that alone nothing is accomplished.
"I perceived from Your Grace's letter that my letter shocked
four Grace a little, in that I recommended to you more wisdom.
Jut I have dismissed the thought, for I am confident that Your
;race knows my heart too well to suppose I wished to belittle
four Grace's renowned wisdom. [In fact, the Elector was surnamed
he Wise.] For I hope my heart dings ever to the love and indina-
ion which I have always sincerely and without hypocrisy discov-
red toward Your Grace more than toward any other Prince or
rf agistrate.
"What I wrote was written with the care of comforting Your
;race and not in my behalf, for of that I took no thought. I wrote
nly by reason of the troubles in Wittenberg, which sprung from
ur friends' great dishonouring of the Gospel. I feared this would
ause Your Grace much pain.
"I myself was so distressed that, were I not assured the pure
ospel was with us, I might have desponded of our ca.~e. All that
as happened to my pain in this cause was as chaff and nothing.
would gladly have redeemed it with my life, because it was done
i sµch a wise that we cannot justify it either before God or before
ie world. Yet it rests on my shoulders, and especially on the Holy
~ospel. This makes me sick at heart. Therefore my letter did not
urpose to treat of my own affairs; its intent was only to desire
our Grace not to look at the devil's countenance that appears in
iis game. Such an admonition, if it be not helpful to Your Grace,
~t it was necessary for me to give it.
"As for my own business, my gracious Lord, I answer in this
ay. Your Grace knows, or if he does not know, let him be in-
ffrned now, that I have the Gospel not from men, but from
'.eaven alone, through our Lord, Jesus Christ, in order that I
.ight (and shall in the future) call myself His servant and evan-
~list. That I have offered myself for inquiry and trial was done,
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ract others. But since I see that my excess of humbleness has
ht humiliation upon the Gospel, and that the devil pleases
e the whole when I give him so much as a hand's breadth,
brought by the force of my conscience to do otherwise. I
~d Your Grace by yielding this year, for the service of Your
. For the devil knows very well it was not through fear that
led. He saw my heart well when I entered Worms, and that
h. I had seen as many devils taking aim at me as there were
in the roofs, yet I would have sprung right upon them with

•w Duke George is much less than one single devil; and

the Father of bottomless compassion has made us joyful
~s over all devils and over death, and has given us so great
in Him that we dare call Him our dearly beloved Father,
Grace can well conceive that it would be a great shame to
t Father if we should so little trust in Him as not to remain
tasters of Duke George's anger. I know that if things were in
George's city of Leipzig as they are now in our city of Witten-
! would ride into it though it rained Duke Georges for a
and though each of them were nine times more fierce than he.
tis is written to Your Grace that Your Grace may know I
1ming to Wittenberg under a much higher protection than
~ince-Elector's. I have no mind to ask for Your Grace's pro-
1; nay, I hold that I could protect Your Grace more than he
protect me. Moreover, if I knew that Your Grace could,and
protect me, I would not come. In this, no sword can direct
~Ip; God alone must act in this matter, without all care and
g.
terefore he who believes most will protect most; and because
that Your Grace is still weak in the faith, I cannot by any
, think of Your Grace as the man who could protect or save

e voice of the prophet speaking to the kings of Israel,

)ice of Paul speaking before the governors of Rome, was
a public institution of the German nation when Luther
d Frederick his protection. Thomas Paine offering
~e Washington his protection would seem ridiculous.
r Hugo in 187,0 accomplished nothing when he chal-
i the King of Prussia to a duel in these words: "Because,
lli\ /I OTP/It Mon/lrrh ~o T Virtor Hnan ~rn ~ o-rP~t nnPt
:l therefore his equal." But Luther, believing more strongly
m the Elector who, being weak in the faith, had nothing
t his secular power-Luther's voice became a national insti-
ion for twenty, forty, eighty millions of people, and a need
l necessity for the rest of the world. A college professor
America, an Oxford don, is certainly no leader in his com-
.nity by virtue of his position; in Germany, by the queer
ttrast between an immense nation and hundreds of High
gistrates, the universities became the heirs of the bishops'
ir, the cathedra. The professor's chair was called "Kat he-
." These Katheders became a churchlike institution, like
Commons in England. The French historian, Ernest
risse, -wrote long ago that universities were national battle-
unds in Germany. He was right.
n 1542 Doctor Luther wrote his last will and testament.
·e again his faith is boundless. His authority in the beyond
~s him authority in this world. Avoiding all formulas of
1an or Canon or Saxon Law, he exclaims: "Lastly, I beg of
~ybody, though in this deed or testimonial I make no use
egal forms and words (wherefor I have had good cause),
: I may have leave to be that person which ·I really am,
tely a public person known both in heaven and on earth
in hell, and having so much of respect or authority that
e trust and belief may be put in me than in a notary. For
1g that God the father of all mercy hath entrusted unto
poor damned unworthy miserable sinner, the Gospel of
dear Son, and hath made me, kept me, and found me true
faithful therein, so that many in this world have accepted
same because of me and hold me for a teacher of the
1, notwithstanding the pope's ban and the wrath of em-
~rs, kings, princes, priests, yes, and all the devils; then I
it much more to be trusted in these smaller matters, for-
1ch especially as I here give my hand; which is well enough
vn, in the hope it will suffice if it may be said and proved,
is Doctor Martinus Luther (who is God's notary and wit-
in His Gospel), his earnest and well-considered intent, as
ed by his own hand and seal, passed and given on the day
_ ! - 1.... - - -- - -- - - ,,
'he will corroborates our sketch of the balance of power
. Lutheran government. It was for these smaller matters
the prophet had to ask a prince's favour in the visible
ld. In God's Kingdom he was a public person. The prince,
whose support the prophet was concerned, could do no
e than appropriate his fund of faith, power and authority
ie uses of the visible world, of territory and policy.
"YOUR HIGHNESS."

Thoever knows the terrible fears of men knows that they

do anything to buy security. We are so tormented by fears,
pains of a troubled heart are so agonizing, that we will
any tribute to the wonder-worker whose sorceries mitigate
anxiety. The standards of our spiritual advisers vary
!ly. The sorcerer may bear different names; he may be a
k magician, an astrologist, a psychoanalyst, a clergyman
medical man. Luther certainly attacked the purest one of
~he real and sincere Christian priest. In breaking the power
1e best and purest type of priest, he broke down all the
~r grades of priesthood or sorcery as well.
he struggle against the witches is a necessary feature of
Reformation. Wherever man tried to purchase safety too
ply, to insure the issue without exposing his faith to God's
~vention, he was the servant of the devil. Luther went
1st the sorcerers of Pharaoh who promised the life of
>iness and plenty instead of preaching penitence. Men have
sten to God passively, and then to act for themselves. But
reen the hours of listening and of action there is a middle
Jd to be endured where everything is uncertain.
tis easier to enter heaven through many tribulations than
ugh trusting in an external assurance of peace," runs
)is 84. Suddenly darkening all the bright order of the
onna, the Holy Family, Apostles, Saints, Popes, Bishops,
ier extinguished all the friendly lights kindled for the
t of life by faithful generations before him.
h.e darkness created by Luther was tremendous. The com-
! invisibility of good and evil was his final word to the
r , __ ,_ ____ 1 _____ 1 _ r . 1 • - 'I • - ,,,,.... .. 1'1 -- ..
ecame the religious party of the Reformation, fighting "God
tld the world" -which included the visible church-as the
ther, the fallen and sinful side of life. In German, "Gott und
ie Welt'' is a scornful expression for the merely external.
World" is always something indifferent.
This new religious party-each soul a priest of God Al-
lighty, but each soul alone with God and having no security
llring its lifetime as to God's plans or decrees, except the
Jundless faith and trust in His mercy-needed a support,
1mething to lean on; for otherwise its fantastic effort to stand
i the side of God must necessarily have led to utter confusion
: society in all practical matters. The new beacon of souls on
e ocean of life was the Christian law of the High Magis-
ate. He regulated the civil order, marriage, property, trade,
the world of Christian states. His very highness became
)trength that comforted the soul of every Christian who lived
his territories. "Let him stand high, let him speak out
~arly what the law is, let him be strong enough to protect
lr property and our family against emperors and popes,"
ts the necessary and genuine prayer of a Lutheran in any_ of
e territories of the Empire and of the omnipotent Catholic
iurch.
We have already discussed the predilection of Englishmen
r understatement: a Lower House and a Low Church are the
tural outcome of a revolution made by the Commons of
~ land against the Highness of tl?-e Realm.
In Lutheran countries "High" is the favourite word; the
ince, the High Magistrate, is addressed as "Your Highness."
ie subject honours himself when he puts the secular author-
as high as possi hie; for in bowing low before the prince
is fighting the pope and all priesthood. Luther abolished
~ institution of kneeling before the priest. Dutifulness, Ioy-
y, the lust for obedience, make the Lutheran; for all these
iracteristics are so many symbols of his fight against clerical
mination. Your soul is perfectly free, it is not involved, in
Jr obeisance before a secular Supreme Judge. That is simply
~egulation of this world, to direct people on their social
-- T ._ ~ - - - --
und the conscience like a devotion to relics, pictures, priests
i sacraments. Nobody can understand the German's exalta-
n of the "State" unless he knows that it is rooted in the
Jreciation of a visible church. Today, four hundred years
er, the Hitler regime shows the reverse of the medal: his
rernment commands more religious devotion than was ever
.ed by any pope or clergy. The balance between Church and
~narchy has been upset because the Church has ceased to be
1. For that reason German Protestantism has become shal-
r. A Protestant must protest against a too visible Church,
linst cheating offers of security and salvation from priests or
gicians, saints or sorcerers. Protest against a Church is the
~supposition of service in the State. The religious back-
fund of civil service in the Lutheran countries was the revolt
.inst the visible Church. The permanent protest against its
[bility was clothed in a passionate devotion to the prince
monarch, because this monarch was no pope, no saint, no
cerer at all. When Goethe celebrated the three hundredth
ii versary of the Reformation on October 3 1, 1817, he spoke
t good secular disciple of Luther: he promised never to stop
•testing in the arts and sciences, i.e., in his own field. The
1testing servant of a law-giver: this is the Protestant. type.
is Protestant character-on which Hitler is leading a central
tck-this Protestant character has been decaying for the last
tury; but in the meantime the peculiar balance of power
Lutheran hearts had created a great European type.
t is not astonishing, considering the fears and anxieties
are subjected to, that men pervert their worldly governors
J idols, messiahs, tyrants. It is more surprising to find that
Protestant remedy for idolatry kept its efficacy for four
1dred years, and purified all our superstition by making us
1
jects of a High Magistrate in this world. The independ-
e of a lofty thinker and the dependence of a humble serv-
are strangely mixed in the German character. The balance
ween a protesting subjectivism in matters of belief and a
~ndid objective efficiency has baffled observers of German
~inlinP ~~ rPrPntlv ~:u.: th~ "tATn.rlrl ·ur~,,.
 Let no one suppose that blind obedience or drill can be so
5cient. The key to the riddle of German efficiency lay in
e education of a Protestant, who was his own priest in church
t Sundays and was therefore ready to become a humble civil
rvant on week-days.
In fighting ecclesiastical government, the German civil serv-
t restored his own balance. No Anglo-Saxon will believe this.
e will ask: "But why did the whole system not work in a
untry like England?" .
The main reason for the long-time efficiency of the method
.s this: no prince, no High Magistrate, in Germany was likely
become a real pope in his territory. They were too small
· such an attempt. These princes could not protest sepa-
.ely against emperor and pope; they had to unite. The first
.theran Confession, which they brought before the Emperor
Augsburg in 1530, was drafted by Melanchthon; the High
tgistrates of eleven German territories, led by the two Mid-
. German princes of Saxony and Hesse, agreed on a com-
1n "confessio augustana." In matters of religion they formed
:ommunity. The living word of the Gospel could not be
1resented or embodied by one tyrannical potentate. No
iger that the Church of God might be made completely
isible in brick and stone, or in the laws and ritual of a
.on or a Hessian "church." Unquestionably, "Landeskir-
n," territorial churches, grew up, but they were all based on
Jundation broader and larger than the territory in which
y were established.
~he so-called "established" church of the Continental ter-
1ries was not an established church in the Anglican sense
he word, because its real sovereign was not limited by the
.ndaries of the territorial church. The Kings of England
e the heads of the Anglican Church, Oxford and Cam-
lge were its faculties of theology, the bishops were Anglican
tops, etc. On the Continent, as we have seen, the Elector
axony acknowledged the sovereign claim of the Wittenberg
llty of theology to settle right and wrong in matters of
~ion by its own authority. The prince only defended the
_ _]_ r .. •
~reign only as a mouth-piece of the convictions of the whole
·man nation. The professors of Wittenberg, though offi-
ly civil servants of His Highness, the Prince, were also min-
rs plenipotentiary of the German nation within his little
:e or Dukedom.
~he chairs of the universities derived all their authority
n the fact that they were Christian chairs of the German
~on. The Lutheran Confession was the yardstick by which
faculties measured their learning and doctrine. But this
w learning," as it was called, could be judged only by the
tlties themselves and by nobody else. No prince, no High
?;istrate, could tell them what to teach in matters of reli-
1. He had no understanding in religious matters. They were
::>Vereign as he was. They were Higher Schools in the same
:e that has made High unpopular in England and led the
itan ministers to decry the university magisters. The uni-
fries were sovereign in preaching the Gospel; the prince
sovereign in making the law. He, like any layman, had to
:n to them, be informed by them, be instructed by their
ning, or he was no true Christian. The well-informed, well-
cated, well-equipped Christian had his duty to perform in
external world, the prince giving laws, the cobbler patch-
shoes, everybody according to his calling; each man a mas-
and king in his field of action, the husbandman a king
the king a husbandman. "Every man ought to serve God
uch a :way whereto he hath best fitted him by nature, edu-
Jn or gifts or by graces acquired." 2 But the prince had no
1 on the universities, no more than the cobbler. The uni-
ities represented the life of the Holy Ghost in the German
ion, whereas the prince and his State were blind and deaf
natters of religion without the help of the preachers and
hers of the faith. State and government were not at all
ified by Luther. "Princes are God's hangmen and jailors,"
aid. ·
'homas Dudley, Governor of Massachusetts.
 REFORM OF THE CHURCHES.

This, then, was the result of the Reformation; all the High
Magistrates became equals in matters of the external manifes-
tation of the faith. The one Christian faith had to take its
worldly form, religion, from them. In 1530 the central idea
of "a party of religion" was clearly formulated: The Emperor
himself and all the great princes, and also the smallest member
of the Diet, should be equals, like parties pleading in court.
The word "party," so reduced in significance today, was ex-
pressly used in the declaration of Augsburg as the legal term
for the equality of religious sovereignty between Emperor and
estates. In matters of religion, the Protestants held: No Pope
or Emperor or Diet or council can vote us down. We, the High
Magistrates of the nation, are one party to the matter; you,
the Emperor and the old Catholic princes, are the other. We
may compromise on the subject, but of a surety we have no
earthly judge above us.
On this account all the High Magistrates needed what the
pope alone had possessed before: a staff for religious questions,
a consistorium. The Catholic and the Protestant princes did
not differ very much in this respect. The formation of a
Bavarian (Catholic) territorial church was for centuries the
aim of the ecclesiastical policy of the Dukes of Bavaria. In the
very period when Bavaria expelled the Protestants in Munich
a clerical board was e~tablished, a sovereign ecclesiastical au-
thority comparable to the consistories of the Lutherans. In
1563 the Dukes of Bavaria granted to their estates the use of
the chalice in Holy Communion. In 1620 the Hapsburg Em-
peror reformed the Bohemian church with a strong hand. He
did not so much as ask the pope before he inserted a new
Holy Day, the day of the Immaculate Conception, into the
Christian calendar: the eighth day of December is a princely
Holy Day. Thus the two parties of religion vied with one an-
other in their consistorial policy. For such a consistory the High
Magistrate of a very small town (a place of three thousand
inhabitants, surrounded by a few villages and a large forest
Which provided firewood for his SUhlPCt~ ~nrl n-_:actu-rA3 t,...- 4-1-.. ~=-
[£ NORMAL RELATION OF STATE AND CHURCH IN LUTHERAN
TERRITORY:
Sovereign Prince and Sovereign Seat of Learning.

AN ABNORMAL SITUATION:
r VIII proclaiming himself, in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, Head of the
Anglican Church, 1535.
 REFORM OF THE CHURCHES.

This, then, was the result of the Reformation; all the High
Magistrates became equals in matters of the external manifes-
tation of the faith. The one Christian faith had to
take its
worldly form, religion, from them. In 1530 the central idea
of "a party of religion" was clearly formulated: The Emperor
himself and all the great princes, and also the smallest member
of the Diet, should be equals, like parties pleading in court.
The word "party," so reduced in significance today, was ex-
pressly used in the declaration of Augsburg as the legal term
for the equality of religious sovereignty between Emperor and
estates. In matters of religion, the Protestants held: No Pope
)r Emperor or Diet or council can vote us down. We, the High
Magistrates of the nation, are one party to the matter; you,
:he Emperor anq the old Catholic princes, are the other. We
nay compromise on the subject, but of a surety we have no
~arthly judge above us.
On this account all the High Magistrates needed what the
)Ope alone had possessed before: a staff for religious questions,
L consistorium. The Catholic and the Protestant princes did

wt differ very much in this respect. The formation of a

3avarian (Catholic) territorial church was for centuries the
.im of the ecclesiastical policy of the Dukes of Bavaria. In the
'ery period when Bavaria expelled the Protestants in Munich
. clerical board was established, a sovereign ecclesiastical au-
hority comparable to the consistories of the Lutherans. In
563 the Dukes of Bavaria granted to their estates the use of
he chalice in Holy Communion. In 1620 the Hapsburg Em-
~eror reformed the Bohemian church with a strong hand. He
.id not so much as ask the pope before he inserted a new
Ioly Day, the day of the Immaculate Conception, into the
~hristian calendar: the eighth day of December is a princely
loly Day. Thus the two parties of religion vied with one an-
ther in their consistorial policy. For such a consistory the High
fagistrate of a very small town (a place of three thousand
1habitants, surrounded by a few villages and a large forest
·hich provided firewood for his subiects. and n;i~tnrP fnr th£'.>; ....
NORMAL RELATION OF STATE AND CHURCH IN LUTHERAN
TERRITORY:
Sovereign Prince and Sovereign Seat of Learning.

A::\ AB::\OR~IAL SITUATIO::\:

~·111 proclaiming himself, in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, Head of the
Anglican Church, 1535.
 and sheep), this High Magistrate would try to get a
'.ster from a good and reliable university. He knew he
i not do the job himself. The High Magistrate of a hamlet
Forst (500 citizens) established an independent consistory.
neighbour of Sorau followed in 1597. Both sought their
:tories from the university; the title of a book which was
ted in 1571 gives perhaps an idea of the strange position
le universities: Final Report and Declaration of the The-
·ans of the Two Universities, Leipzig and Wittenberg, and
·uperintendents [members of consistories] of the churches
zxony, concerning the learning which these universities
uniformly defended from the beginning of the Augustan
:ession, in all its articles. And Philipp Melanchthon, the
us Preceptor Germani~, stated, in 1543, his creed with
!ndous ingenuity, against the glamour of the papal court,
tese words: "I follow and embrace the doctrine of the
·ch of Wittenberg and its associates which without any
it represents the consent of the catholic church of Christ,
of all the better instructed in the Christian Church." s
far away we here. are from the procedure of the English
·y VIII. The Church of Wittenberg stands up against the
·ch of Rome as the Commonwealth of Massachusetts stood
~ainst the British Commonwealth.

WHY TEACHING IS A PUBLIC TRUST •

.ther; the man who offered comfort to his prince, was no

:ed individual like Thomas Paine; he was the rightful
~sman of the City of God, the guardian of the opened
·e-opened Bible, the trusted interpreter of Holy Scripture,
of the ordained seventy interpreters invested, not like
· and the priests of the old Church, with the power of
[ng and loosing, but with the authority to open and close
blic discussion in matters of national interest. The Ger-
professor was always careful to keep as part of his title
lddition, "Public Professor," in order to make clear his
era, ed. Brettschneider, 21, 603. The exact term is "Consensus eruditi-
, consensus of those who are "f!.ebildeter." See p. 4or;..
 political sovereignty. The Germans, untrained in debate or
discussion and as little inclined to pay attention to matters of
that sort as, let us say, to a cock-fight, could always be inter-
ested in questions propounded by the Chairs of their Uni-
versity. Such questions would ring in their ears like the public
theses of Luther.
A public teacher, then, had uttered this "All or nothing"
from his public Katheder (chair). No wonder that the Germans
saw in him, not a ranter or mere private person, but a public
and official spokesman taking thought for their salvation. They
were grateful for the division of labour between two sovereign
powers, and supported it faithfully to the very end. This situ-
ation, therefore, was stamped upon all relations between public
affairs and public opinion. The public in Germany thought
of the universities as keepers of the nation's conscience. Once
a question was broached in public by a university man it was
difficult to avoid practical consequences. Public opinion would
feel that an important issue was at stake, a responsible spokes-
man of the nation having opened the "Erorterung" of the
topic. Like "debate" in English, like "discussion" in French,
the German "Eriirterung" seems untranslatable into another
language. It is derived from the word "topic," translated into
German. It means to put a question in its right place. No topic
is decently "erortert," settled, until it is placed in a larger
context.
·The theologians, when they had occasion to deal with the
creed, would take up one topic this year and another ten
years hence-indulgences, say, in 1517, and the use of the sem-
inaries for priests in 1522-and would try to determine what
systematic place must be given to this or that question before
it could be answered. A systematic and hard-thinking mind was
required to follow this long campaign against so many papal
traditions point after point, paragraph after paragraph, brick
after brick, so to speak, the whole framework of the old visible
church was to be tested and rebuilt, lest the new learning lose
its reason for existence. Every year brought a new question;
but not one of these questions coulcl hP trp-.:it~~ ~1" ..... ,...
rhe result was a passion for systematic thinking in Ger-
ny. These heavy German minds developed an unheard-of
inique of systematic training in generalities. While Eng-
lmen, as we have seen, for good reasons of political self-
ence, were wading in particulars, the Germans were
wned in systems and generalities because the individual
1

1ker was fighting against the whole system of medi£evalism,

whole united front of the visible church. The little pebble
ig by the thesis of a young German scholar seems to us now
hing more than a pebble, and in Anglo-Saxon countries,
h their eye for particulars, the idea of the Ph.D. thesis as
ebble still prevails. But in Germany this pebble was David's
1ble hurled at Goliath. Any dissertation might dislodge the
stone from the Holy Sepulchre of the real Christian faith,
Luther's ninety-five theses had done in the year of salva-
1 1517.
~his salvation-character of scholarship, utterly foreign to
rest of the world, is the religious key to the political build-
erected by the Reformation.
The topic is erortert" means that a new battle against the
of darkness is opened: a new abuse of the pure gospel is
:overed.4 From this minute of the first declaration of doubt
war is on. It is now a public question and a public affair.
an Anglo-Saxon mind a battle of books may seem rather
l. The professor publicus, the German public teacher, bears
attribute which in English intellectual life attaches only
he "publisher." British public spirit needs better weapons
1 scholars' books.
ll Germany the only public war that could be waged was
ntific and scholarly. The "Weltanschauung," the most sa-
l principles, would come into play. The issue would be
[ded, not by a lay public, not ~y public spirit, but by the
contention of experts from different faculties all over the
,he anti-Catholic bias of the German method of topics is clearly stated in
rst important example: the common topics, the Loci Communes, of Ph.
nchthon when he writes, in the preface: "So we should recognize Christ
way that differs from the method exhibited by the scholastics!" "Scholas-
anti thP nPUT 1P!::ITnlnfY ~rA th,,. tu1.n ;.-.1-.011...,.,..,. •• ~1 ~~- .. !~-
country. The German professor, of course, cuts as comic a
figure as the English country squire. John Jay Chapman called
them monsters, and saw clear that Nietzsche was their last and
most terrible descenclant. English matter-of-fact empiricism,
and German pedantry, with its eternal search for reasons,
Grunde, are both blind in one eye. But· since it has become
fashionable to scorn the whole tribe, let us quote old W. H.
Riehl: "Do not forget that almost all the great reforming minds
of Germany, from Luther to Goethe, had much, and not the
worst side, in common with this type of professor who was an
authority of the first order for the nation." The professors
opened the warfare against "Misstiinde," i.e., unjust conditions.
The struggle would end the moment a High Magistrate's coun-
cil took the matter under consideration and extended to it the
"Staatliches lnteresse" (public interest), because then the living
voice of the interpreters of the true faith would have success-
fully informed and moved the organized conscience of a prince.
Thus "Wissen" and "Gewissen," science and conscience, met
in a happy constellation. The formula, "nach bestem W issen
und Gewissen," is the formula of German oaths; but is also the
German constitution at large; it means the audible and visible
organization of a person's conscience. Without "Wissen" and
"Gewissen" a man is not a person. The German cult of person-
ality is based on a faith in the conjunction of science and con-
science. The counsellors of the government, evil demons in
t'1e eyes of the Commons who impeached Laud and Straffo.rd,
were hailed as saviours in the countries of Reform. It was their
task to translate the gospel of the university chair into the
bread-and-butter policy of a prince. He might be too lazy, too
evil, too wicked to listen to the Divine voice of truth; but the
counsellor could insist. Amidst the inertia of a splendid court,
of palace cabals and intrigues, he would not forget his teachers
at the university. Truth would penetrate the walls of the coun-
cil chamber in which the prince and his servants deliberated.
Goethe and Schiller were both occupied with this problem
(Egmont, Don Carlos, Maria Stuart).
It became the passion of every German to be, or at least to
 spread of this title "Rat" was finally reduced to absurd-
Germany. Dentists insisted on becoming Sanitiitsriite,
rs ]ustizriite, postmasters Postriite, and tax-collectors finan-
)Unsellors (like Mr. Hugenberg). In the material world,
lker and the barber longed to be called at least Purveyors
court of Reuss-Schleiz-Greiz-Lobenstein.
it was a good thing that any man of importance should
incumbent on him, not to write a letter to the Times as
Lglishman would have done, but to gain the ear of his
rch. For after all, any ruler has only a limited amount
ce and time to spend in listening; and to fill out this
! of force and time with the best counsels is a serious
~m for a democracy in Washington or for a Dictator in
~w. The pride of being a counsellor of the High Magis-
vvas, then, very pardonable in the Germans, and it was
tl that a university professor should be made in most
t consiliarius a secretis, a counsellor in the inner secrets
.te. _Arcana imperii, state secrets-so obnoxious to the
h mind because of their results in the form of Starcham-
td ship money-were the very centre of activity for any
tsible German thinker, worker, or public servant. To
i this intimate and secret circle where the wheels of gov-
nt turned was the highest he could hope for.
s duty of every prince to inform himself at the purest
1

.in of truth was well expressed by the rule of precedence

S;:txon court, where the rector of Leipzig walked in
liatdy after the princes of the royal family and before
~nerals and ministers of the court. He represented the
rig guild which opened the debate on a new law, a new
.reform, a new purge of old abuses. He was a sovereign
realm of the spirit, as the king was in his wordly realm.
very much like the relation between Paul and Peter in
ttholic Church. The princes took over the functions of
•pes, the successors of Peter. They founded consistories
tssed laws governing clergymen and monks and universi-
d schools, as the popes h~d done. But in the old Church
had been a Paul too. He had left to Peter the visible
of the bishoo. but he had remained the nronhPt of thP
Kingdom of God everywhere. He was the carrier of the Gospel
before there was any shelter to be found in an established
church. He was the teacher of the established churches, to
inspire them, fight their abuses, move them forward.
The Reformation bestowed the function of St. Paul on the
universities. The universities would yield to the emergency
authority of the High Magistrate in all questions of decision
and legislation, but the inspiration was theirs. They would not
"cease from mental fight"; to raise one question of reform after
another was their uncensored and uncensorable, inalienable
duty.
This held good for all questions of principle. Down to 1870
every German court of justice was obliged to send the records
of a case to a faculty of law whenever a principle was at stake.
The records were laid before the faculty with strict precautions
against bribery or intrigue by either of the parties. The parties
were forbidden to know which faculty had been asked for its
decision, and the "Acts," as the records were called in German,
were sealed in the presence of the parties, lest the attorney or
the judge insert any arbitrary remark.
The faculty based its decision solely on the facts in the
uAkten." "Quad non in actis non erat in mundo" .· What was
not in the "acts" (records) did not exist. This famous sentence
can only be explained by the fact that the faculties stood for
the national will against the interference of any arbitrary
pQwer. The transmission of public papers to the faculty was
the guarantee of national control. The matters on the table of
the House in the English Parliament enjoyed the same prestige.
The "Acts," Reports, in Germany were as "popular," as truly
German, as the Parliamentary Papers in England. The book-
[shness of the Germans was based on this clear distinction
Jetween arbitrary oral procedure and reports which were tan-
~ible and referable to a distant scholar, a professor of national
tanding exempt from any local partisanship.
A German "Act" is like an English action, because the con-
cience of a learned man has taken over its content and dis-
:overed the "principle embalmed in it." Surveying four cen-
nriP~ of (!prm~~ D ..,.&,..--- £.. ____ _
 univers1t1es in the van of national thoughts, hopes and
'· Four hundred years of unbroken tradition made every
ble German student think of the study of theology, philos-
r or law as the road of honour. It was the respectable thing,

ie same sense in which the American calls business a re-

:able profession. To become a teacher in a university was
L1ltimate desire of men who in any other country would
written articles in newspapers or made speeches in clubs.
~ermany nothing but the public chair was surrounded by
halo of partnership in the national spirit. To become at
a PrivatdozentJ a candidate for such a sacred company,
the ambition of every intellectual. It is remarkable how
Jassion has once more sowed its wild oats in the years since
World War. From 1918 to 1933 the German universities
inundated by a flood of readers and professors who had
.ously been ministers, generals, or the like, and as a result
[Uality of the teaching staff was watered down. A lowering
e level of the institution had been perceptible for years;
:he sudden inflation of post-War times burst all bounds.
use of this influx the national revolutionists of 1933 found
mtry in which the successors of Luther and Melanchthon
become too numerous to be respected; and they could
fore abolish the achievements of the German Reforma-
The German professor's "Katheder/' of which the
ress Catherine of Russia could say that she trembled before
'itici~m, has for the moment no public voice in . the na-
1 affairs of Germany.
le inflation of 1918-19 3 3 was a wild carnival of a doomed
· of things. For without a plurality of High Magistrates
Jvereignty of the university could not have survived. Up
32 a German professor would be judged by the number
~ "calls" to other universities. He would take his degree
e faculty, begin his career in another, become a full pro-
. in a third, and so on. The republic of scholars liked to
vise the local faculties, to corroborate the vote of one by
otes of as many others as possible. The professor came
l state, to serve the community, with a prestige won in
r;.rl.o .... .h,.,.1,.1 ,,.£ •h~ __ ._: - - t-rL - r-t ~
bigger than any particular government. Even after 187 1 Austria
and Prussia remained as the Protestant and the Catholic antag-
onists. There were twenty-six different ministers of instruction
to compete for the best candidate. And this was true not only
for the universities but for all officialdom.
When all is said and done, the ultimate secret of German
efficiency lies in the fact that in the labour-market for civil
servants competition was constantly at work reshaping the type.
Long before big business, the princes were hunting for the
best man. And they did it for centuries, carefully and consci-
entiously. Moltke, the Field Marshal of Prussia, came from
abroad; Goethe went from his imperial city of Frankfurt to
Weimar, into the service of an unknown young prince; Spinoza
got his call to Heidelberg, Hegel went from Wilrttemberg to
Prussia, Schlegel from Berlin to Vienna, Schelling from Wilrt-
temberg to Munich. But Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, also met for
a short time in Jena, under the eyes of Schiller and Goethe;
for the universities, as a matter of principle, exchanged their
best men back and forth. Many of the leading Prussian ad-
ministrators came from outside: Schmoller, who started the
mcial insurance legislation and put German social policy fifty
years ahead of the rest of the world, was called from South
Germany to his chair in Berlin. Niebuhr (1776-1831), the
famous Roman historian and president of the bank of the
Kingdom, came from Copenhagen; Stein, the first great Re-
former after the defeat by Na pol eon in 1807, was an inde-
pendent High Magistrate who cast in his lot with Prussia;
Prince Hohenlohe, an equal of the Hapsburgs and Hohenzol-
.erns, became president of the cabinet of the Bavarian King in
t 867 and chancellor to the King of Prussia in 1894. Beust was
tt first Prime Minister in Saxony, and later chancellor of
"-ustria. Herding again, the last in this long line, was Prime
\1inister of Bavaria before he was called to fill and to liquidate
.he Prussian Chancellorship in 1917.
The free competition between many governments increased
he independence and moral value of their servants. Being free
.o leave his present master for another who might be more
-- - 1. , . 'I.
l the learning of the nation as against the deaf and blind
1nism of the "Racker Staal"; the voracious Leviathan of
1es, the "State," could only be enlightened by faithful
its who had been informed by learning and were learned
,elves. To be learned nleant to be a free man, even under
:ry eyes of a despot. The connection, the brotherhood and
Ldeship which were felt by the English in the word
mon," were felt in Germany as attaching to the word
:zdet." To be "gebildet" (formed or educated) meant to
in this stream of reforming thought. 5 A "gebildeter
;h" participated actively or passively in the intellectual
ture of the nation as it was represented by the professors'
in the universities, and in the artistic movement as it
·epresented by the musical service in the Lutheran
1.es. With these two roots, he was at home in an invisible
h. The more "gebildet" he was, the less could he be
.ered by the outside material world.
ile Calvinism speaks of predestination and links man's
rith the stars of his birth, with his upbringing, the Ger-
vord "Bildung" emphasizes a conscious formation, a pre-
~ stage which we might label "pre-information" if the
· will understand that the individual is fonned during
·st half of his life by being taught and informed in the
~church of German inspiration, den "Deutschen Geist." 6
dual Preformation precedes political and collective re-
The spiritual and invisible community preforms (== bil-
1e individual; reforming one part of the visible world is
sk of government. Thus, "Bildung" (preformation) and
(the organized body for reform) condition each other.
passes through two different orders during his life: the
of the Church, instructing, teaching, informing him, but
g no decisions whatever for him ("the Word is free"),
p. 397, our note on the usage of Melanchthon.
so-called "Konfirmation" was the austere climax of this preforming
At the Konfirmation, the young Christian appropriated his fund of
n teaching. In the Weimar of Goethe, in 1779, the great Herder asked
!ditary prince 255 questions, which the poor boy had to formulate him-
the Kou(irmation.
and the order of the State, using him, appointing him, listen-
ing to him, and claiming his obedience.
Free acceptance of the word of Scripture in the audible
Church and loyal obedience in the service of a Christian State
mutually balance each other. One would be intolerable with-
out the other. But together they give the soul what it needs in
order to be human and to breathe freely.
The civil servant acquired his dignity through his "Bildung."
It raised him above the level of a plaything in the hands o( an
unjust master. And the State acquired the inspiration which
was lacking in the Machiavellian prince by relying on the in-
formed and instructed service of its whole staff; from top to
bottom, prince, minister, counsellor and teacher had to be
"gebildet" in order to win anew each day their duty or ·their
right to govern others. This Bildung made Frederick the Great
of Prussia "the first Servant of his State," and it distinguished
the princes of the German Reformation from the principe
of the Italian Renaissance.
NEITHER MACHIAVELLI NOR BODINUS.

Luther really saved a world which was going Fascist. About

1500 the decay of the Catholic Church had led to a blind
struggle for power in Italy. When Machiavelli jotted down his
acute observations on this state of affairs it was a state of affairs
only, without the least tincture of Christianity. Machiavelli's
Principe was a frank guide to the secret wheels of this state
mechanism, without any veil or palliation. One sees in this
book, circulated after 1515, how, in a world where religion is
provided by a visible church, civil government can behave
much more barbarously than in any pagan or Mohammedan
nation. In Athens the deity of Athens, Athene herself, gave
religious dignity to the enterprises of her city. An Arabian
caliph was a religious leader, and people obeyed him for the
sake of their souls.
In the great deliverance wrought by the papacy for all Chris-
tian people, teaching them that rulers, kings, and princes were
mere mortals and poor sinners and Q.o better than their sub-
. .. .. - - -
st a machinery set up against murder and war: the keeper
thly justice. This degradation of the secular princes is
ated by Machiavelli. He observes that a world of perfect
al freedom is dawning for the mighty, because they need
en pretend to be more than secular despots. That the
for power justifies itself is the old teaching renewed by
1velli.
as a tremendous hour in the history of human civiliza-
hen this masque of death, greed, and arbitrary power
l on the horizon of the Western World. The year 1515,
~he Principe of Machiavelli was finished, marks the dan-
a world which has lost all faith in the Church, and
e of that complete loss of seriousness cynically says "yes"
orgies of any conqueror, dictator or despot. The mood
ry similar to the tern per of the nations today.
iis decisive hour Luther's sermon on the freedom of the
an broke in like the trumpets of the Last Judgment.
re you empty, why do you yield to the rude and shallow
)n of tyrants? Because you cling to artificial safety in
le Church. This Church has mutilated, crippled and
ed your moral courage. You cannot believe that the
· affairs at court and in the government might be touched
·istian faith, baptized by Christian promise, redeemed
istian love, because you keep Church and State in two
ght compartments. You go on Sundays and Holy Days
;tone.house which you call a church, and you tax your-
~hly to adorn this church with pictures and sculpture.
ek-days you frequent the visible palace or market and
th the things of your greed. And this ridiculous dupli-
-two systems of law, two visible orders of society-you
your superstition, "Church" and "State." The result is,
·se, the complete degeneration of both bodies politic.
iurch becomes a theatre with splendid decorations; the
m receive no real stream of power or influence from a
which is only a neighbour in space instead of a pre-
[n time.
arbitrary power of princes, attacked by the English in
1517. Reformation, Glorious Restoration, Grande Revolution,
each rekindled for another 120 years the faith of a cynical
world. The Tudors in England, with the great reign of Eliza-
)eth, cannot be imagined without Luther; the same is, of
:ourse, true of the Huguenot Henry IV, the most popular
K.ing of F ranee.
These princes were no mere Machiavellian "principi,"
.hough they were stained with many of th.e vices of the type.
rhe new invisible form of church interpolated into the life of
'.Very Christian a phase which was wholly devoted to his sys-
ematic training in catechism. A prince passed through this
>hase of pre-instruction, and later he would reinforce his
onscience _by the support of well informed counsellors. As a
ymbol of this change in character the prince might renounce
tis power. Charles V on the Catholic side, and Christine of
1weden on the Lutheran, stand like pillars of the century of
leform. Both abdicated from the throne, one at the beginning,
Ge other at the end of the struggle ( 1556 and 1654). These are
lle two great acts of the new class of princes. And in so far as
:rasmus of Rotterdam was the reformer who recommended
1is last decision to the young Charles V in his 'institution of a
:hristian prince, 1 he certainly belongs to the Reformation, as
:s Kerenski. The abdication made the prince into a human
eing, since it distinguished his dutiful struggle for power from
is individual lust for power.
The· Lutheran new learning kept the world alive and human
>r another century.
The Lutheran form of Christian State is as important, for
ie doctrines of political science and for the living memory
[ Europe, as English parliamentarianism or French democ-
tcy. This can be brought to the test by comparing Luther and
1 See on this point Pierre Mesnard, L'Essor de la Philosophie Politique au
VI Siecle, p. 96, Paris. 1936. Erasmus says, page 27 of the edition of 1518:
~epone potius ac cede tempori." The modern translators misunderstand the
c', as though it meant "and"; this deprives Erasmus' advice of all dignity;
· would say: escape. In fact, "potius ac" in Latin signifies a comparative;
asmus says: "before you agree to become an opportunist, you had better
tt down your crown."
in, the French theoretician, who became so famous because
pared his readers the necessity of knowing anything about
logy or religion or church.
:an Bodin is a good example of the laziness of man. The
·ers can read him and feel themselves experts; they can
y being left alone in their field, apart from this bothersome
~y and these quarrelsome theologians. Bodin's writings De
ublica fascinate us by their complete break with the dual-
of State and Church in the Lutheran sense. Bodin's king
all the qualities of the Protestant prince: he is Luther's
i Magistrate. And Bodin owes all the basic elements of his
ept of "Sovereignty," "Superanitas," to the structure of
~utheran government, where the Christian servant, in his
~gle to reform the church, had to make his sovereign a
L Magistrate. But Bodin isolates the highness of the Prince
an independent function. He ignores the religious balance
>Wer between the systematic fight of the learned Christian
isl the abuses of the church and his fight for the Christian
. Bodin bisects the problem. He is a philosopher. He is
interested in the Reform of the Church. He keeps the
le half, the sovereign prince, who is here to rule his terr.i-
without the old bondage of canon or imperial law; but in
~ so Bodin cut his own country off from the tree of Chris-
ty. That was outrageous and could not work: the King of
:e had to remain Catholic for another two hundred years.
in 1789, when the Catholicism of the King was finally
l up, France made the sacrifice, not for the sake of her own

·able sovereignty, in Bodin's sense of the word, but for

ake of a new community of Europe and of all civilized
ns. Bodin is the devil of territorial and moral sovereignty
ng into the garden of the Christian Commonwealth. He
iever able to win a full victory for his ideas; or when he
lS in the World War, it meant disaster. No State is morally
eign. That is the difference between a Christian and a
i government. Religion is free and sovereign, and governs
ndividual State, because no government can make the
on of its subjects. And as the government itself is run by
rts. hv nPn.nlP. t.uhn ".11"'0 o;t-h~"' r'J....,.,.:..,._:~-~ --...l L _1~ ~
believers, no government is sovereign in matters of religion;
h is subject to the religion and the inspiration which per-
les its territory. This is the concept of the Christian World
States in which each government carries out exactly the
ie duties in its casual district, as does any other government
~where. The doctrine is common to all German doctrines of
'ernment, and-except for the Prussian heathens and fol-
'ers of Bodin-the "Christlich-Germanische Staatenwelt"
~ssed the solidarity of government against the frictions or
tlries between different governments. I may quote here
Le sentences of the famous Prince Metternich which Martin
:her might have written and which are advocated today by
nch and English statesmen as the quintessence of political
:lorn. "Politics is the science of the vital interests of states.
:e, however, an isolated state no longer exists, and is found
y in the annals of the heathen wor Id, or in the abstractions
:o-called philosophers, we must always view the society of
.ons as the essential condition of the present world. Thus,
1, each state; besides its separate interests, has also those
ch are common to it with other states. The great axioms of
tical science proceed from the knowledge of the true politi-
[nterests of all states. In these general interests lies the guar-
~e of their existence, while individual interests possess only
~lative and secondary value. That which characterizes the
lern world is the tendency to enter into a social league,
ch. rests on the same basis with the great human society
~loped in the bosom of Christianity." 8
odin is not aware of this fact. To him, the philosopher, in
Horatian sense of a man with a little leisure, a library, and
;te for reflection a la Montaigne, embodies the only liberty
e is in his prince's territory. The philosopher, so Bodin
ks, cannot be coerced by the prince's sovereign power. He,
in or Montaigne, is a free individual even in the sovereign
~ because he can think ad libitum.
ere we are at the very source of most of the misunderstand-
between the Germans and the Western nations. Bodin is
emens Metternich. Memoirs. L qfi_ NPw Vnrlc 1RRn
:erested in thought alone. To him the mind is an appurte-
nce of the individual thinker. The mechanism of a sovereign
tte and the tiny, tiny cell of the philosopher are all he can
1ce1ve.
For Luther, teaching and learning have nothing to do with
! individual mind or soul. Love has created a stream of
lguage, a Word, an inspiration, and sent it into the valley of
rs, where men live blinded by their sins and in despair.
·st set this stream of instruction flowing, let love and spirit
ve their way; then all the chains of the oppressed, all the
rs of the blind, will cease to be. For the preceding and pre-
ming voice of the Redeemer restores Creation to its old
ry and true meaning. "And the Truth shall set you free"
the song of- triumph of the Reformation. The stream of
ching and learning flows through the unworthy vessel of
chers and students; but since God had pity and has pity, all
· misunderstanding cannot resist the pure, unmixed and
mine "Evangelium." "Das lautre Evangelium," "Die reine
1-re," take the place in Germany of the mere philosophical,
~r-dinner reflection of a Bodin or a Montaigne.
rhe purity of the teaching is the essence of his gospel be-
se on it can be established a Church of teachers and preach-
to purify all learning, after the utter darkness of the Middle
~s.

~uther and his pupils created the term Middle Ages. Middle
~s me~nt the times which were not interested in the purifi-
on of the Gospel. The Middle Ages meant the times when
stotle had silenced St. Paul, when the joy of additions, of
iations and branches, had complicated the Gospel instead
;implifying it. The Nachtigall of Wittenberg proposed to
~ only the old, pure Gospel; he tore down the elaborate
iedrals and regulations . and began with the white com-
nion-table and the one Bible on the pulpit as the only
ntial sources of this stream of spiritual life whose drops
:h us and turn us from brute animals into men.
"'he term "Middle Ages" has been denaturalized by English
French historians. But though they have filed off some of
»harn pifo-P~ ~nrf rh".lnrr~rl ~teo ,-1.,. .. .i,. ......... l...--·- - _.._ L - --- _
.o.. 1 -
1__
io away with it altogether. This term makes no sense when
s connected with geographical discovery or other human-
: achievements. As we have seen, neither Machiavelli, the
ural scientist of the State, nor Bodin, the modest philosopher
ler a sovereign King, founded an epoch.
UNIVERSITY LEADERSHIP •

.uther separated the Middle Ages and the modern era be-
~e he believed in the fruits of time: The Gospel preceded
political reality; the pulpit of the university trained boys of
rHy so that, as men of fifty, they might run the government.
>ther words: Luther changed the Church fron1 a neighbour
pace to a prophet in time. The Church was to be not a
dred steps from the palace or the town-hall, but a hundred
rs or days or months ahead of what was transacted in
er of those houses.
s a symbol of this relation, the Lutheran closed his church
ng the week. It was open only on Sunday because then the
nnerwort of Eternity" could break in upon the temporal
secular world. The pulpit being a prophetic voice, sowing
:uture by its preaching of the pure Gospel, the "Katheder"
Gern1an university was surrounded with all the halo of a
lment.
It we can go further. Surveying the Lutheran State during
last four hundred years, we can say that the promise has
~ true and that the State has been inspired again and again
rophecies from the chair. The various faculties have suc-
~d each other in this function. The theologians, of course,
tnated the whole of the first century. After the terrible
of the Thirty Years' War the parsons had lost much of
influence. The lawyers-and not just any lawyers, but the
~ssors at law~took up the leading role. Thomasius and
tldorf, Schlozer and Moser, reorganized the German civil
:e. Schlozer, in Gottingen, was called "the European Con-
ce." We can add the name of the philosopher Christian
f, because he, too, drew up a code based on the nature of
s. This century of lawgiving ended in the great Codes of
nd Of the ei2'hteenth CPntnrv
 w h1le .France and America were establishing the Rights of
an in their Constitutions, Germany was systematically devel-
•ing the public and private rights of the citizen in stupendous
difications. The general law of the land for the many terri-
ries of Pruss,ia was drawn up in the years after 1747 and
lished in 1786-88. The same thing was done in Bavaria and
1stria. The great systematic view of the monarchical state is
nbolized by these great codifications. They have nothing to
with the codifications of Roman Law or Canon Law during
e Middle Ages. Those codes had been collections of indi-
l"ual decisions. In a German Code all traces of precedent are
~efully obliterated: it begins with the individual and leads
step by step to the family, the partnership, the village, the
inty, the free associations, etc~, the old Lutheran investiga-
n of the "liberty of a Christian man" always looming in
! background. As late as 1900 a general code was formulated
· the Bismarckian Reich, though it never became as vigor-
~ as were its predecessors in the individual German State.
te new unity of the modern "Reich," with its lack of com-
jtion, lowered the standard of the "Bilrgerliches Gesetzbuch"
l made it unpopular and boring reading. However, it was a
~ reverberation of the great century of German professors
law.
:n the nineteenth century, inaugurated by Immanuel Kant
Konigsberg and subsequently dominated by Fichte, Schei-
~ and Hegel, the political leadership of the university shifted
centre once more. It migrated from law to philosophy. In
; transformation of theology into philosophy German learn-
once more became well-known all over the world. But this
ught and poetry can only be understood as a translation of
Lutheran learning. The preforming quality of the arts and
nces as a kind of first instruction, through which each soul
st pass, had been well understood in the sixteenth century.
smus of Rotterdam, the forerunner of Luther in the reform
:he classics, had pointed out that they should be the pre-
inary to Christian instruction. As in biogenesis, Erasmus
1ed to see men pass through the stage of paganism before
f entered the Holy of Holies. As a preparation for Chris-
tianity, the classics gained a new prestige in the eyes of the
Reformers. Since the central idea was that of running a cou-
rageous race in this dark world, rather than of building a com-
fortable house, the addition of one more antechamber could
not shake the foundations of the Lutheran dualism between
the sovereign pulpit and the High Magistrate. Philosophy be-
came the external and more general application of Christian
principles to the universe. That is the key to all the obscurities
of German philosophers. They meant by "Weltanschauung"
the re-phrasing of theology in the language of the layman.
They expanded the Lutheran war-cry of "Every Christian a
priest" into the philosophical principle of "Every man a bearer
of the torch." These philosophers-Lessing, Herder, Fichte,
Schelling, Hegel, Feuerbach, Nietzsche-and their lesser col-
leagues, Fries, Krause, N atorp, etc., were descendants of par-
sons, or former theologians themselves, and clung to the uni-
versality of the theology they inherited. Not one of them could
be an empiricist, an adventurer on the ocean of scattered data,
as an English thinker could. The Protestant philosopher in
Germany had to defend a certain system of values. He stood
for the universe, for pure learning about the totality of things.
He had to publish his system, even if he had got only the first
principles of a first chapter of the prolegomena to a system.
The famous, nay, notorious systems of German philosophy dur-
ing the nineteenth century have nothing to do with French
or English philosophy. They were an act of self-defence of Ger-
man civilization against English empiricism and French Car-
tesianism. They were intended to save the traditions of the
Reformation in a period of. foreign constellations and influ-
ences. German idealism was a romantic counter-revolution to
the French Revolution, which made as many surface conces-
,ions as necessary, in order to save the essence. It would lead
LIS too far to investigate in detail how Fichte, the Utopian-
before the defeat of Napoleon-built up a system of Christian
~schatology in his ethics; how Hegel, the historian, bound the
Prussian "Geheimriite" and "Rate" who sat in his classroom in
Berlin between 1817 and 1830, to the service of the "Welt-
~eist," that is. the march of 1rnm1r~t1nn fr.nm A.rl ... _... .t.... _____ L
hrist to himself; how Schelling, the mythologist, identified
Lir psychic life with the evolution of Mother Earth and made
ten a part of a grandiose myth of nature. It is enough to say
Lat they all sacrificed the letter of theology to save the spirit
: the Reformation for an enlightened world. Through their
forts the Lutheran gospel of the living spirit became the
leutscher Geist." This much-abused phrase is not a national-
tic conception at all. It is the translation of the Holy Ghost
to philosophical terms, adapted to the corrupted world which
Bowed the French Revolution-or as Schleiermacher, the
eological exponent of the group, called it, an exhortation
ldressed to the "Gebildete'' among those who disdained re-
~1on.

Being rooted in the Lutheran order of things, German phi-

;ophy could not be refuted from outside. Its dependence on
~ology, though on a critical and evolutionary theology, re-
1ined constant throughout the nineteenth century.
The German professor of the nineteenth century remained
~ preacher and confessor of a power which he felt to be re-
)nsible for the "rechte Geist," the right inspiration of the
Veltgeist" everywhere. And the government, too, realized its
ligations. In the eighties a young Baltic scholar, professor in
essen, had published a revolutionary book on the Christian
th of the first three centuries. Laying bare the long struggle
formulate the Christian dogmas, the book seemed to shake
~ apostolic creed still used in every church. The Berlin
ulty asked the Prussian minister of instruction to call this
n to Berlin.
fhe Empress in her narrow piety favoured a protest from
~ High Consistory against the wicked innovator. The min-
~r of instruction laid the matter before the cabinet. Under
· chairmanship of Bismarck himself the protest of Empress
l fundamentalists was rejected, and in 1889 Adolf Harnack
; called to teach in Berlin. The bishop-like authority of the
[versities and government as the upper half of tffe church,
above the level of the individual congregation, was con-
aed by this action. Harnack became the leader of liberal
olo2'V all over F.uronP ~nil AmPrlr-:\ U.a J...,,,.,..,,._.._ ... L_ ------·
dent of all the Institutes of Research established in Berlin-
Dahlem about 1900. For the last time a theologian had played
a central role in the interplay of government, universities, pub-
lic opinion, and progress in Germany.

In this connection a word or two about the specific meaning

of the word "culture," "Kultur," in German may be helpful
to the English reader.
While the French Revolution was proclaiming the gospel
of a European civilization of free and equal brothers, Germans
felt constrained to look for some way of saving the treasures of
German inspiration from the invasion of this crude enlighten-
ment. Against the geometrical over-simplification of French
armies, soldiers, organisateurs, intendants, they defended the
Jlder Protestant civilization of the many hundreds of educated
~overnments in Germany. They called this long process of the
;pirit cultivating a nation, "K ultur," and demanded that its
·.nner core be kept intact in spite of the sudden inbreak of
French civilization.
Like "deutscher Geist/' K ultur makes sense only as a Ger-
nan answer to the French ideas of 1789. It was an act of self-
lefence. And for that reason it was still used against the French
n 1914.
In the heat of a battle, both parties have the habit of not
eeing the beam in their own eye. All kinds of reproach were
Leaped upon civilisation or Kultur, as the case might be, by
he two nations that faced each other across the Vosges.
It would be absurd to take these Homeric discussions too
eriously. But the creation of the word "K ultur" in contrast
o "civilisation" is a serious and instructive matter. We see
.ere how one group-mind reacts to the creative eruption of a
.eighbouring group. An older re-birth of man, the Lutheran
leformation, keeps its old place under changed circumstances
y calling its ways of reform "Kultur," thus quenching the
rhite-hot enthusiasm of the German henchmen of Robespierre
nd Marat. As the inundation or imitation of foreign ideas is
ays dangerous, the success of the wall built up by Kultur
.n example of patriotism based on penetrating discrimina-
l.
MUSIC AND GOVERNMENT.

~he German university can be called a church-like institu-

L Like the English Parliament or the society of Paris, it
a sovereign moral personality and influence, without which
German government can be conceived.
t1 taking over the function of the bishops and archbishops,
ncils and the saints, the universities became the Church in
¥ess, in continuous process of reform. They are the "Ref-
lation in Permanence."
row the liturgy of such a revolutionized Christendom had
~e reformed as well. The purified Church replaced pictures
a-iusic, bodily pilgrimages by singing. "Luther sang many
.ions out of the Catholic Church" is an old saying. The
man chorale is unequalled in beauty and variety. The Ger-
l nation, robbed of its visible ornaments, takes refuge in

world of sound. In German an influential man does not

the fashion," he "gives the tone" (i.e., the pitch). Music
lme a politicum, a religious institution in Germany. As in
field of learning,· where three centuries were dominated
essively by theology, law, and philosophy, so German music
three periods, from Luther to Bach, from Bach to Mozart,
from Beethoven to Wagner and Strauss. "Music and gov-
tlent are like church and state," wrote Luther himself.
~estas 'ecclesiastica non impedit politicam potestatem sicut
:anendi non impedit politicam administrationem." Ecclesi-
al power does not hinder political power any more than
irt of music hinders the political administration.
he art of chanting is the symbol of the invisible Church.
~ hundred years of German music have used Luther's sug-
on as a working hypothesis. The invisible home of the
stian people in the States of Germany is music. When you
Leipzig you find the Thomas Church, the home of a ven-
le tradition. Since the days of Johann Sebastian Bach,
v Friday evening and every Saturday at noon, a concert has
been given by the choir of St. Thomas' church. The boys of
the Thomas School sing pieces of classical religious music, and,
~specially, they sing pieces composed by Bach. University and
town attend these concerts; it is bad form to miss one of them.
Bach is the patron of all German music which has not already
)roken loose from its Reformation basis. His own life at the
:ourts and in the towns of Central Germany is a wonderful
llustration of our argument that music became an institution
n Germany. Talented and congenial composers may rise in
my country; but only the Germans established music in the
vay in which Luther speaks of it, as a corollary to political
ldministration. Thus, German composers are no casual by-
>roducts. Bach, for example, is clearly not an individual, but
. universal, personality. He profited by the musical develop-
nent of three or four generations. When we pursue the history
~£his family, which occupies so unique a position in the artistic
ife of Germany, we have the feeling that everything that
lappens there must end in something consummate. We feel
t to be a matter of course that some day a Bach shall come, in
rhom all those other Bachs shall find a posthumous existence,
ne in whom the fragment of German music that has been
mbodied in this family, shall find its completion. The mem-
ers of his family had a very great attachment to one another.
ince it was impossible for them all to live together in one
lace, they made a point of seeing each other at least once a
ear. The rendezvous was generally one of the Thuringian
>wns, Eisenach, Erfurt, etc. The manner in which they passed
ie time during the meeting was wholly musical. As the com-
any consisted of cantors, organists and town musicians, all
)nnected in some way with the church, the first thing they
id when they met together was to sing a chorale. From this
evout beginning they passed to jests. They improvised folk-
mgs together in such a way that the various impromptu parts
Lade a kind of harmony, though the words were different in
tch voice. It was a kind of extempore counterpoint.
Thus Johann Sebastian Bach is a historical postulate. The
·andest creations of the chorale from the twelfth to the eight-
eenth century adorn his cantatas and passions. Bach makes the
chorale the foundation of his work. To give his true bi.ography
is to exhibit the nature and the unfolding of German art. This
genius was not an individual but a collective soul. If a soul is
life able to express itself, we cannot but attribute to it a com-
plete tonal language. In long connected stretches of sound-as
in larger, smaller, or even the smallest fragments-his music
became the vowels, syllables, words and phrases of a language
in which something hitherto unheard, unspeakable, could find
voice. Every letter of this language was of infinite intensity,
ind in the joining of these elements there was unlimited free-
:lom of judgment. "In music," Richard Wagner said, "you can
)e at home as in a veritable mother-tongue; when I had any-
:hing to say, I no longer had to trouble about the formal side
)f expression." "Music is the universal language of Mankind."
Longfellow.) A political system based on music as a national
nstitution cannot but be a universal contribution to humanity.
A good instance of this German contribution to the rest of
.he world is the German hymnody. Of it an English writer
ays: "German hymnody surpasses all others in wealth. The
~hurch hymn was born with the German Reformation, and
tas ever since been most extensively cultivated by the evangeli-
al church in Germany. The number of German hymns cannot
all short of one hundred thousand. We may safely say that
Learly one thousand of these hymns are classical and immortal.
rh.is is a larger number than can be found in any other lan-
:uage. To this treasury of German song several hundred men
nd women of all ranks and conditions-theologians and par-
=>ns, princes and princesses, generals and statesmen, physicians
nd jurists, merchants and travellers, labourers and private
1 ersons-have made contribution.
Thus these hymns constitute a most graphic book of confes-
~on for German evangelical Christianity, a clear mirror show-
1g its deepest experiences.
Now Paulus Gerhardt, the greatest of these hymnwriters,
ext to Luther, begins sixteen of his hymns with "I." It is not
) much the individual soul that lays bare its sometimes mor-
bid moods as it is the representative, speaking out the thoughts
and feelings he shares with his fellow members of the Church,
i.e., with every Christian man.
It gives me comfort to transcribe this judgment of an English
expert, John Julian, the author of The Dictionary of Hymnol-
1gy, because any German is biassed by the power German
music possesses over his mind and soul. To make the difference
~ven more striking, one may remember that the non-Lutheran
Protestants did not approve of the use of original hymns in
)Ublic worship. The Puritans were long satisfied with rnetri-
:al translations of the Psalms. A famous German, Albert
khweitzer, in his biography of Bach, says: "At the first glance
t may seem incomprehensible that Calvin, by making the
>salter the hymnbook of the people, should from the very
>eginning condemn his church to infertility." 9 Schweitzer, as
1
• German, cannot help identifying the chorale with church
nusic itself. \Ve have already seen how inevitably the English
urned to the Psalter. But, for the Reformation, music was the
vay in which every Christian man could reach the goal which
he priest had already attained in the wonderful rhythms of his
. atin prayers. The layman after Luther, in his fight for equal-
ty with the priest, had to rival, not the prose of a sermon but
l-le tunes of the mass, which lie between speech and song. The
~erman in his singing is attacking a privilege and making men
qual before God. Secular music was sovereign music stilll
From Beethoven to Strauss, philosophical music led the way.
t is true, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms were faithful to the
nphilosophical tradition. Felix Mendelssohn, the Christian
escendant of a Jewish philosopher, revived with fervent faith
ie evangelical Bach, and himself composed the wonderful
>ngs of "Paulus" or "Elias." But in spite of all these other
·ends, the political and religious force of German music was
·ansferred during the century of liberalism to the heroic, the
romethean music of Beethoven. In the era of individualism,
udwig van Beethoven could become the very genius of music
• every liberal, every individual, every self-made man. Any
9See also P.A. Scholes. l\fusir: nnd Pwritn'»ion T ':>"""'.,..,.'°' -~~·
merican or Frenchman who is dried up by the formula of
.s own nationality takes comfort when he listens to the quar-
ttes of Beethoven. Here the Christian soul of man has ex-
·essed in undenominational form the universal secret of the
tild of the nineteenth century, beyond the limits of class or
eology or economics or nationality.
Beethoven, and the worship of Beethoven by people like
omain Rolland-whose many-volumed story of a musician,
an Christophe, is but a translation of Beethoven into French
:each a great lesson in revolutionary interplay. The nine-
~nth century heing "French," "liberal," "democratic," Ger-
1ny had to adapt herself to the new situation. But her adap-
:ions in the way of democracy, capitalism, or other imitative
rms of political machinery, were much less important than
e great contribution she made through her own genuine
tional institutions.
In the field of music, Beethoven bridged the gulf between
ttheranism and modernity; and he, therefore, could become
~ best interpreter to foreign democracies of the eternity
lich lay behind Germany.
There is a sharp contrast between Beethoven and Wagner
this respect. Beethoven emancipated German music. Wagner
:roduced into the German instrument of psychic expression,
a tour de force, all the varied spices of the nineteenth cen-
·y.
Beethoven clarifies, Wagner mixes. Schopenhauer's philos-
hy, P·arisian perfumery, proletarian anti-capitalism, anti-
nitism-all the passions, prejudices and heresies of the nine-
nth century were pressed into German music till it bellied
ea sail in the full wind of contemporaneity. Wagner was so
~rossed in being the super-individual, the artist and genius
the nineteenth century, that he had no time to be a gentle-
n of the eighteenth. His music, in its perfumed sultriness,
t also in its grandeur and pomposity, replaced the pure,
tple worship of the Lutheran Church by a baroque opera-
rship.
~eethoven was a secularized Bach, manly, courageous. Wag-
·'s. m11<:1r 1~ nnt rn.11"'-::arro<:.n..'111c- it- ; .. 'VY'>,.,.,.,:c,.,: . . . . ,,.. ,.,.~-1 ~L------~--
t it had the great merit of giving to the isolated, weakened
l nervous soul of a German "Gebildeter," who no longer
it to church, a substitute for his lost religion. At Bayreuth
atmosphere of melting polyphony was consciously used to
y on the nerves of the middle-class man, who was impotent
oon as he was left alone, whose emotions had to be kneaded
f in a Turkish bath. Bayreuth, as Nietzsche exclaimed, was
ady a relapse from the Lutheran courage-to-stand-alone. It
a secular Rome again: "Rome's songs without its words,
with its incense."
or 350 years German music had accompanied the German
l in its voluntary exile from the visible church, until the
when it became too weak to bear the pressure of this lone-
ss and went back to bathe in the comfort of the senses.
ut \Vagner was no longer a Protestant musician, and it
tld be very unfair to measure him by Protestant standards.
~er dreamed of a reconciliation of the religious parties. It
no accident that he was aided by the great Catholic family
·ranz von Liszt. This family has made a wonderful contri-
on to Bayreuth. From 1840 to 1869, while Wagner was in
~' the Magyar, Franz von Liszt, the composer of the Saint
2beth, promoted, financed, consoled and protected him.
daughter, Cosima Liszt, did the same. She betrayed, left,
nded her first husband, she sacrificed everything to "Hans
lS," the old master, who married her when he was fifty-
n. S.he gave him all her tears, all her self-denial. When he
'she cut her long hair (then the only possible hair-dress for
>man) and laid it in his coffin. She watched the traditions
ayreuth like an Argus. After Cosima and Franz, Siegfried
.ficed himself, serving his father with the devotion of a
: and abandoning his own originality as a Wagner, until
ied in 1932.
hree generations of a Catholic family from Austria-Hun-
faithfully carried on and realized the Wagnerian dream of
bsolute music.
~rman music, in order to become universal, absolute, a
iamtkunstwerk," had to find a way of representing not one
nf thP r!PrTn-:»n n~f-;,.,._ J..,.,,,,._ ,:._,.. '-~..__1,:.._ __
 Germany: we have spoken of it as though it were merely
utheran. But its great national revolution had created parties
reform; and the Catholic party was even more numerous
an the Protestant. Wagner's background is not Lutheran
ermany, but all Germany; hence his music goes beyond the
lit between Protestants and Catholics.
In the chapter on Austria the antagonism between these two
ligious parties, each with equal rights, will appear more
~arly. The history of German music must be treated as begin-
ng in its purest forms in the Protestant half of the country
d nourishing generations of teachers, parsons, cantors, com-
sers, on its faith in the invisible.
Music was the audible symbol of a church struggling against
l much clearness and visibility. But the State, too, in its
nporal rule, had to find a symbolic language for its own
~als and purposes. In what form could it best be made clear
1t this State was not a papal State, that it was ruled by a
:ular prince, not a priest-and yet by a prince who was a
eply believing Christian? --
THE GREEN MOUNTAIN GLADE.

Dn the Continent, the ship of State did not move on a sea

troubles such as faced the Englishman when he sailed the
:! oceans of the world. The object of the recurrent and never-
.sing care for a territorial ruler in Central Europe was the
est.. After a thousand years of chopping and cutting, 27 per
Lt of the area of Germany is still covered by forests. More
.n one quarter of a country where every square inch has
~n "cultivated," furrowed, turned, is covered by trees even
.ay. Forestry was a national concern for the German rulers.
e notorious word "K ultur" carries, to begin with, the no-
1 of Landeskultur, cultivation of the soil. A German thinks
planting trees whenever he hears the word "K ultur." Trees
e a long time to grow. It is this long period of cultivation
t constitutes the outstanding privileges of a government's
nomic policy as against that of the individual. The far-
1tedness of a paternal government has protected the Ger-
n .,..,.y,...._,..,.1,... ''D~ ... ~---1'' - ---- - 1_ - • __
>fits; "paternal" stands for patience and indifference to the
entives of the day. Sports, movies, radio, newspapers, take
rantage of our childishness. The German individual State
; rigid and austere, its people unswayed by the demagogue;
rVas paternal because it took thought for a long future. It
:ored the chief wealth of the soil: its trees. For a poor, sandy,
1y and foggy land, it is the greatest of all services to foresee
l discount the results of any waste far in advance. In a rich
.ntry waste is less disastrous. In a poor district, where tomor-
r is as poor as today, any encroachment of today upon to-
rrow leads to destruction.
~he woods of Germany are its most popular institution.
umerable songs have been sung in their honour. The Ger-
1 passion for walking is connected with them. Carl Schurz,
great American German, wrote in his brilliant Reminis-
ces about his inner relation to the German woods:
:n these lonely walks, when roe, fox, rabbit and now and then a
~ boar rustled past me, I learned to love the woods and to feel
fascination of the forest solitude, with its mysterious silence
er the great leaf-roof and the whisper of the wind in the tree-
. Soon I cared less for the bird-trapping than for the enjoy-
t of that woodland dream. This love for the woods has never
me, and often in later life, at the aspect of a beautiful spread-
landscape or of the open ·sea, I have asked myself whether
t I had seen and felt in the forest, did not surpass all else."

'he -likeness of man in all his dignity to a tree in the forest

1 everlasting German concept.
Then German boys in their wanderings sing:
"Who has built thee, shining wood?
I wish to praise thy builder,''

are not under the spell of a jungle, a virgin forest of

iary growth; nor is it a wilderness of second growth which
got out of hand. It is an inter-play of mastership and free,
rous growth, telling not of the man who made it, but of
lawful order to which he has reformed it.
el berg and Jena, are songs of forests and hills, of wander-
:hrough green woods and fields.
the German composers have built the invisible church
Jsic, German poets have glorified the natural scenery of
:ate: its woodlands. In his greatest political poem, Ilmenau,
ie, the most universal poet of Germany, translated Luth-
opes into secular speech .
.e any German counsellor, Goethe had obeyed the call
roung prince, younger than himself. The son of a proud
Hean, a titulary counsellor of the Empire, he became the
counsellor of a petty prince in Thuringia. These native
~s had divided the territories of their houses like any
[tance, and had only one common enterprise left: the
~rsity of Jena was maintained by the Saxon princes of
., Weimar, Meiningen, Hildburghausen and Altenburg
.ceful partnership. By virtue of the university Thuringia
:ill a unit, still recognizable as the old fatherland of
r.
everything else seemed changed when Goethe arrived
~imar in 177 5. French language, philosophy and poetry,
1 as English aristocratic principles, ruled at the court.
e, because he was not a noble, had to eat at the Lord
·d's table instead of the Duke's! Only in'h1782, when the
·or ennobled him by letters patent, was he allowed to
ere princes-as we should think-or Lutheran tradition
have placed him from the very beginning.
the devoted himself to the friendship of the young duke.
evelled in mountains and woods, like prophets of nature,
1t rhetorically like Rousseau, but everywhere asking after
or man's needs, working at a fire-patrol, spending the
outdoors. And when the poet and the duke, after five
>f life together, wished to erect a monument to their
hip, it became a poem in honour of the forest. Ilmenau
:o be one of the six or seven important poems of Goethe
have never been translated into English. This in itself
in the direction of our thesis, that the political scope
stry is a specifically German thing. The forest is more
te scene of the noem. Goethe hPo-1n4i:·
 "Delightful vale and you, green mountain glade,
Once more I bring you greetings from the heart.
Spread your deep-laden branches wide apart,
And welcome me into your friendly shade!
How often in the midst of fortune's changes,
Exalted peak, have I returned to thee!
Oh grant me now, today, that I may see
A young, new Eden on thy pleasant ranges!
You owe it to me, for with care unseen,
I watch and wait while you are growing green."
It is not a dialogue with Nature, but one with a cultivated
oil which receives constant care, but always escapes the abso-
ute domination, of man. The forest is an eternal task, never
garden, never a desert. It bears fruit, but never for the man
rrho plants it. Always it asks for patience and thrift, and prays
D be spared from greed, haste, or carelessness. Goethe, at the
nd of his Ilmenau, makes the forest the pattern of govern-
1ent.
"So may this corner of thy land, 0 Prince,
Suggest the pattern of thy days!"
In no other language could one taste the sweetness of this
erse which makes the forest a model of our own "days," our
iarch through time.
Forests give and receive; we penetrate Nature by serving her
[}d. _yet leaving her free. The small Continental state is
ounded on all sides, and gets its constitution from this fact
E being a frontier. The Prince de Ligne, known Austrian gen-
~a1, said wittily of the English constitution: "Well, its most
nportant provision is the ocean that surrounds England." The
lOSt significant item in every German constitution was, as a
latter of course, this fact of the territorial frontier. Like the
zechoslovak Republic of today, the single German State had
)litical boundaries everywhere. The efficiency of the central
>Vernment was everywhere confronted by its visible limit in
1ace. It could be creative only by virtue of its intensity. It
mid not move indefinitely but had to reshape, reform. culti-
uuucea resources. No growing empire to the westward,
wooded mountains surrounding a little area; and this
area is ruled with the parsimony of a father. To be
·nal means to permit no waste.
ternalism became the common token of every prince, every
servant down to the last policeman. When Goethe intro-
:! a parliament into his little "State," he welcomed the
ties with these remarkably German verses:
"The man of good husbandry is chosen counsellor,
Everybody must be a father at home:
Then the prince can be father of the fatherland."
1e wrote these verses in 181 7.
e "Deputy," the French parliamentarian, was introduced
;erman in the form of the counsellor, already familiar to
usbandry, paternalism, was what Goethe wished to see at
in every part of the State. Then the parliamentary groups
l produce, by their collaboration and co-ordination, a
e who can act as a kindly father rather than as a stern
. Without the homogeneity of the parts, the throne would
matural. But when paternalism is at work on all levels,
Kplains the other.
th is not deaf to the courageous. The mysterious dialogue
en man and creation was represented to the Germans by
'hristmas tree. In Germany the Christmas tree is not a
en's toy. In the woodland, among a mining population,
~tither's fatherland, Christmas is the central event of the
8hildren and parents count the years from Christmas to
mas. The whole promise of the forest comes into the
t "Stube'' of the German peasant or craftsman with the
:l tree. Its candles, shining in the darkest night of the
ue a sign to him of how the world, in response to his
·, has been reformed, brought back under the hand of
ther in heaven.
TRUNK AND BRANCHES.

te generally the forest emphasizes the limitations of hu-

1fluence. It therefore takes in the German imarrination _
the place of the ocean in English literature. It is a limit; and
it explains the essence of the German State and government as
a limited concept. The State is not omnipotent. The prince
himself, in Goethe's poem, is addressed by his friend as "the
scion of an old princely stock." The limits of good government
are found in the territorial limits which define the claims of an
hereditary prince. The prince governs a section of the German
nation. This faith in the "angestammten Fursten" is incon-
ceivable to the Anglo-Saxon who has never had a native
dynasty. "Angestammt" is not simply "native" or "inborn" or
"ancestral," as it is translated in dictionaries; for in this case,
as in all cases where a national language reveals itself as a
political creed instead of a mere local mechanism, the lexi-
cographers find themselves at a loss. Languages are not me-
chanical means to an end, as they appear to be in the com-
mercial world. The business man must use language as he finds
it. He can perhaps make words artificially; and thus most
people think of language as though it were made by man. But
the true man speaks a language as he speaks the truth, not
making speeches but speaking out what crosses his mind, as a
filament glows in the electric bulb. The bulb does not make
its own light. Our speech, the Logos of the gospel, leads all
of us who are of good will. Anybody who thinks that men
invented language as they have invented the making of buttons
or coins or stamps, is certainly incapable of understanding one
word of the history of mankind. Words are not our tools;
since Adam first called things good and evil men have cried,
spoken, shrieked, screamed, sung, called and commanded be-
cause they must, not because they would. True language is an
expression of necessity, not a tool in a man's hand.
If a word like Revolution or Reformation, Commonwealth
or police, "angestammt" or "birthright" cannot be translated
from English into German, or vice versa, without misgivings,
it is precisely because these words are of overpowering weight,
dominating us like matters of life and death, not like mere
products of someone's fancy. For every honest fellow language
is prayer. And if it is not, he becomes an empty shell, oerhans
rith some remnants of parlian1entary speech still dribbling
ut of him.
This is the way in which I must try to explain the full mean-
1g of the "scion of an old princely stock" in Goethe's llmenau.
or thanks to this attitude the "stemmed" prince, the monarch,
anchored deep in his people. He belongs to them like the
unk to the branches.
In a system of civil service it is a difficult question how to
•-ordinate so many individual experts. The English Civil
~rvice lacks one of the essential points of the German tradi-
Jn: the head of a department does not always take the re-
onsibility for his inferiors. It often happens that the subordi-
Lte is made the scapegoat. It is of the essence of the idea of a
vil service or an efficient bureaucracy that the superior has
answer for the sins of his men. And that is something he
n do only if he is in moral contact with them and can answer
r them not through legal forms but through his personal re-
:ions. But then he must be looked upon as the trunk and his
lff as branches.
In the individual Lutheran State the formation of a model
·vant would have been impossible if the ruler had had to pay
~ slightest heed to suggestions from the bosses. The constitu-
t element of a good civil service is that it does not depend
favours from outside. Bureaucracy has to serve the poorest
the poor and do right, not because the petitioner has a
ter. of introduction but because he is in the right. The de-
:hment of the civil servant, which makes him no respecter
persons, is impossible wherever his appointment is the result
a bargain between the head of his department and some
tside power or boss.
fhe monarchic faith of the Lutheran throws a cross light
his courage for reform. How can you reform the abuses of
Jery, clergy, darkness, if you are in danger of losing your
y footing in the territory where you work? Only the
~mmed" prince, the native dynasty, can give stamina to the
1
itrary scrap of land called a State.
fhe German, in fighting the papal hierarchy, clung to the
,tprl trnnlr nf 'Jin .c.<'.'f-..,.hl; ... i... .... ....1 ~--..._ ___ 1 ~· -
l1 incapable monarch was not unknown to the Reformers. But
iey looked upon a wicked prince as we today look on the
epression, or as the Chinese and Russians regard famine.
'hese things are inconvenient, but it is no use to start a riot
r a little revolution against the depression. Misrule is terrible,
ut it is better than violent change. In a famous poem Chamisso
~lates in four stanzas the answer given by an old woman to the
~mands of four successive generations of lords of the manor
• which she belongs. At first she angrily resists the new tax
nposed upon -her. She succeeds; the old lord abdicates. But
le next is worse, and the third worse still. At the end of the
)em she prays, "Let this lord be saved, though he is wicked."
ad government is no specific attribute of monarchy; it is the
trse of government itself.
The Germans established a constant pole around which all
:e particles of the new body of reformers could be grouped.
There a presidenth~l election must be held every four years
ere can be no efficient bureaucracy. Under the threat of fre-
1ent change the honest public servant must entrench himself
!hind the letter of his instructions or regulations; the mo-
ent he leaves this shelter he is exposed to any and all pressure
Jm outside. The dishonest official yields to personal motives.
ow I do not believe that the majority of the people in any
~partment is ever dishonest. But they are forced to lose all
itiative. They live in fear. Red tape is a symbol of the
~spondency of a civil servant under outside pressure. He he-
mes a pedant.
Germans may be pedants in scholarship, but they are not
dants as officials. The competition between so many small
dividual states, the exchange between many staffs, the reli-
1ility of the central "stock" effectively supervising all its
anches because it itself depends on nobody's vote or favour,
ide the German civil servant both sovereign and responsible.
e knew the letter of his regulations, but he did not lose him-
lf in them. He was completely detached from the surround-
g populace, from rich and poor alike. The German monarch,
th his democracy of scholars, was a prince of the poor against
- --~ _1_ - ,_ -- • ., ...
 King of Prussia could be acclaimed by Schmoll er, in all
ousness and with all emphasis, as the Roi des Gueux. The
:itude of a Lutheran country towards its scion of old
icely stock was formulated three hundred years ago in classi-
terms: "No nation on earth has been blessed with greater
efits than this nation now enjoyeth, having the true and
profession of the Gospel under our most gracious sovereign
d King, the most great learned and religious king that has
· reigned therein, enriched with a most hopeful and plenti-
progeny, proceeding out of his royal loins, promising con-
ance of this happiness and profession to all posterity:· This
y "Lutheran" language and "Reformed" doctrine of gov-
nent was used by the English Parliament, after the Gun-
der Plot, on November 5, 1605.
he religious belief of Germans in this balance of power at
'. explains the last repercussion in 1918, when all Central
>pe was despoiled of its "stocks" of princes. Complete chaos
confusion reigned. The "cadres," the whole structure of
ty, broke down. The trunks were uprooted and the
ches fell with them. After 1918 the old dynastic religion
~red in the background, haunting the national conscience.
~rism and racial superstition are the direct result of Wood-
Wilson' s discrimination between the nations of Central
1pe and their bad governors. Once the stocks of kings were
oted, King Demos, King Mob, set up a new dynastic
ia. Ttie mass, of itself, is now descended from Valhalla,
Dn in blood, Germanic in breeding, sprung from the old
o. stock of Wotan and Thor. Though this be madness, yet
· is method in it; and he who does not lose his head under
in circumstances, has probably no head to lose.
tier's "Racism" is a reasonable, nay, rationalistic transfor-
)n of the dynastic dogma. A nation accustomed to look to
al scores of dynasties as the immutable trunks and pillars·
w and order for the many millions of its members, has
Eerred this tradition to the people themselves, since the
ities disappeared. The people have to replace the tradi-
of dynasty by the myth of race-since the former High
1:;.tr!ltP~ h".lrl °hAArl rlu..... ,.,. ..... : .... -~' 1 ~--
 GOETHE'S FAUST.

rhe German artisan and his relationship to his raw material,

in every branch of German craftsmanship, very much akin
:he attitude of the forester or the father.
n both cases, that of forestation and that of the fatherland,
1gs are produced which outgrow their progenitors. When
~the in his first years at Weimar was almost in despair over
attempt to educate the Prince, he formulated the great
yer of his life thus: "O high fortune, let me achieve the
's work of my hands. No, these are not empty dreams; these
~s, now lifeless sticks, will one day give fruit and shade."
might not see the results, but the future would bring with
recurrent life. In this there was no vanity or ambition on
part. Goethe is not thinking of immortality, like a roman-
11ero. His trees neither will nor shall bear the name Goethe .
. in their life he will be represented. Goethe also said: "He
> has not begotten a child or planted a tree is no man."
"'o plunge into an objective world which follows its own
~s but allows you to serve it, is the aim of the true ci vii
rant. He is a layman, but he has a field (Fach). This ob-
ive world of "fields" is no mechanism: it embraces peasants,
·s, animals, craftsmen, arts, sciences. It is growing and
tnic. It is God's world. You cannot mould it arbitrarily to
r shape or in your image. The things of creation shall be
ied to their destined goal by the help of man. His best in-
ation, his knowledge, his training, have to give up their
1onal character, their namedness or fame, before they can
etrate into matter and make the son greater than the
er.
'his is not a townsman's vision. In the town a man earns
living by his visible labour, sees what he visibly does, and
~s his reputation proclaimed most audibly every day. The
l servant in the remote corner of ·a wooded mountain be-
~s to an invisible order. Without this moral power, no brain
t can build up a civil service free from graft and the spoils
~m.
:he frontier, the remotest parts of the country. Here, above
the system had to work. The systematic training of the
versity graduate made him a collaborator "par distance."
methodical training overcame the limits of personal con-
. The new hierarchy of the civil service devoted itself to
~-term enterprises carried on far from the court centres,
lOUt eclat.
,he anti-town character of the German civil service is what
~es it so important today in a world of outspoken reaction
nst big-city civilization. The limiting concept of the Ger-
l frontier is reflected again and again in the greatest of
man poems, Goethe's Faust. Faust rushes through the
Id. But the world of Faust is not Africa nor America, it is
present life of a small German town, with meadows and
mtains around it, projected into the Greek classical past
into an ultimate vision of the future. Faust "rushes
ugh the world," seizes every "moment by the forelock";
his is a small wor Id.
Therever a group of men gives its time and labour to a
of nature, and thereby helps nature to its fulfilment, there
have the whole world, and the whole church, too.
mst is in the invisible church. He is put by Goethe into
sixteenth century, the century of the Reformation. Faus~,
any Lutheran, must answer these questions: Has he mis-
n anything for the invisible church? Has he bowed down to
idols of this life? And his answer is: "No, I have not. I
rushed through life." Life itself was his pilgrimage, but
tn the sense of a Bunyan .
.ust was never blinded by care nor possessed by world-
s like most men. No moment, however beautiful, ever
rbed him. He went on and on. Even in his last enter-
. he does not ask to share in the fruits of his own plan:
swamp, abutting on the mountains, breeds a pestilential
vapour-mars my loftiest deeds. •
t spot, well trenched and aptly underdrained,
'ould give salubrity to what I've gained.
n would the soace which J'vP Pmh!'.ln1-Pr1 hPrnmA
 A paradiseI-a prosperous people's home.
Those only merit competence and freedom
Who daily watch and vigilantly heed them.
Such busy fellowship-with pleasure I could see-
Standing on ransomed ground-encircled by the free!"
Thus Earth-by the current that passes through a man's soul
-is brought back to its own destiny. Man's destination is in-
visible to himself. To the last, Goethe remains a Lutheran
in poetry. Faust cannot see his free land and his free people,
but he can hear them like celestial music in his ear. The click-
ing of spades sounds to him like the chorale of a singing con-
gregation; he knows this is the sacrament of atonement for
earth, fallen from its divine destination:
"The crowds are delving, banking, piling,
Earth with itself re-reconciling."
The poets, even the religious poets, must express themselves
in a worldly style. Goethe's Faust is a secular chant: it is the
translation of Luther into the vernacular. Goethe concentrated
in his work the wealth of the German language. And he knew
it. He was, as he explains in Poetry and Truth_, by nature a
speaket, talker, narrator; in another nation, he would have
become a great orator. In the German nation, the man whose
genius lay in speech and words was forced into literature,
poetry and thought. Yet Goethe took over all the finest coin-
age of Lutheran speech from pulpit and chair. Literature was,
so to speak, his doctor's gown, as Luther had replaced his
monk's hood by the preaching of God's word.
A good instance of this transformation can be found in the
use of the word Hoch (high). The German predilection for
Hoch dates from the discovery of the highness in State and
University, as against the visible church of Rome. Goethe,
according to a new investigation by Wilhelm Ruoff, though
not at all inte_rested in the quarrel of religious parties, subli-
mated the word and made it the keystone of his metaphysics.
"Hoch is Goethe's most important word. It plays a similar
,. - .
 is still more important, because it can be extended still
trther and because it has a still greater wealth of meanings.
oethe pours everything into this word. It is his real meta-
1ysical idea. This appears most clearly in the comparative
Uiher/ 'das Hohere,' which Goethe loves because it really
>es nothing but hint at an upward movement. The word is
a peculiar state of suspension. From below it is understand-
>le; but when we look upward it is open, and it remains
iexplained what the 'H ohere' really consists in. Thus it keeps
mewhere about it a touch of the indefinite. And to imply
erything by this word, and yet leave a mystery around it-
at is the important thing to Goethe."

Goethe sang in the golden days of the German nation, 1763-

06, when the Reformation was harvesting its ripest fruits.
1e humiliation of the Thirty Years' War had been finally
tgrown; the Napoleonic wars were still ahead. Three hun-
ed and fifty princely households were competing for the
st talents in music, in the arts and sciences, and in the culti-
tion of the soil. Klopstock, Herder, Schiller, Wieland, were
iting and creating. The German Parnassus was in full splen-
ur. Lessing, a secular Luther, had assailed the obscurantists
d the narrowly orthodox in his famous exclamation, recalling
iss, recalling Hutten, recalling Luther himself: "O sancta
iplicitas!-But I am not yet at the point, my dear pastor,
.ere the noble man [Huss] was who uttered these words and
ild utter nothing more than this. Only he shall hear us and
lge us who can and will hear and judge! 0 that he might
tr it, he who I most fondly wish were my judge-Luther!
eat, misunderstood manl And by no one more misunder-
od than by the short-sighted blockheads who saunter along
: road you pioneered, with your slippers in their hands~
1uting, but indifferent at heart. . . . And so my knightly
Lllenge in a few words. Write, my dear pastor, and have your
Jciates write, to your hearts' content; I will write, too. If
ield to anything you say in the slightest matter that concerns
or my nameless friend, when you are wrong, then I will
rpr tn11rh -mu n.~n ".ll<r".ll;n "
 Lessing was preparing the way for Faust when he cried in
his Nathan the Wise: "Religion is a party also." Lessing, by
expressing the great principle that we are all on the road to
truth, each of us representing a party of religion, but only a
party, enabled Goethe to make ideally accessible to everybody
what had been limited, in reality, to the Lutheran faith. Be-
fore Goethe the Lutherans were impenetrable to the outside
world. There was no osmosis by which the Catholics could
share the experience of the Reformation. The times of
Lessing and Goethe were golden times because they made
transparent to the outside world what had been confined to
those who had paid the full price of life.
The Lutheran faith, which lived in its hundreds of thou-
sands of singing and serving members, was translated into the
worldly poem of Faust so that its gospel, of the invisible
church and of salvation through faith alone, might become
intelligible to the members of all denominations. In the
classical language of our nation's golden epoch, the heritage
of the Reformation could be spread abroad. The German
Catholics could not be converted before the time of Goethe
because they had to resist Luther. The essence of the Reforma-
tion was only revealed in a second stage, that of high art, to
those who were excluded from it in life. This is the political
{unction of great art; for as Abbot Thayer said: "Art rescues
man from his state of being limited to a point and to a mo-
Ipent. Contrive as you will, your camera cannot exclude the
peculiarity of the moment and the place. This is the torture
of the intellect, that it is condemned to still-photography. But
it longs to see from all points, from all moments, as God does.
The bliss of contemplation of a work of Art is this sense of
emancipation, of seeing as God sees, and as we may sometimes
see. What if it were prophetic?"
A man like Goethe is, in fact, a political and a religious
phenomenon. We have already mentioned Dostoevski and
Tolstoi, Balzac and Zola. Milton's Paradise Lost and Paradise
Regained turned men's eyes from preformation (Luther's creed)
to predestination. In Dante we shall have to face once more
.-J....~ .....,.,,....1;._;" .... l C,,..,.,..._:~~ ~C ~-~-----1 -- - -•-- ,.,...., •
. into the body politic today should be made easier by
isight into his political function in the past.
PROTESTING POLICY.

long to a party in matters of religion meant, of course,

ete break with hierarchy in the Church; it destroyed
plicated hierarchy of the clergy, which had a different
in every cloister. The "religious lappets and fringes"
ndred monastic orders had to give way to a single
christiana," the common religion of all Christian lay-
e six Sees whose interdicts (eleven in all) had troubled
e of Saxony during the reign of Frederick the Wise
all territorial power.
:urious antici pa ti on of the storm, the last medi~val
of Germany, the so-called "Last Knight," Emperor
ian (1493-1518), had planned in 1512 to become pope
The scheme was not so fantastic as it looks: It would
n the Anglican solution of Henry VIII, by which the
ame a pope. The Holy Roman Emperor had no way
1g a Germanic church; he had to attack the church
y centre in Rome, because his Holy Empire~ too, cen-
lome. His accession to the papacy would have con-
. the military and the civil rule in one hand. He would
ome the strong n1onarch apostrophized by James I.
~ remember that the taxes of the Holy Empire for
against the Turks were collected on Good Friday
1ors of 'the churches in every parish, from every par-
in the Communion, we see the tremendous inter-
=>n of Church and State, and ask ourselves why this
vlaximilian's toward reforming Rome herself might
been successful.
of allowing the Emperor, the advocate of Rome, to
1p the papacy, the princes of Germany swallowed up
e hierarchy: councils, popes, bishops, abbots, prel-
priests. One unified "religio christiana" sufficed for
garment of the Christian faith in each territory. The
xteenth-century books with the title Religio Chris-
matters of religion. Religio Christiana is not a pious tract like
the book of the same title written by Augustine one thousand
years before. It is a revolutionary treatise, because it subverts
the whole varied and elaborate hierarchy; it unites a hundred
"religions" under a single generalization. Henceforth the only
possible variety in religious customs is a local variety; no other
differences exist between Christians. The Holy Ghost showers
its gifts upon any place, any nation, as Luther said, like a
sudden downpour of rain. No body of "lords spiritual," no
clergy, has a genuine right to call its own office more "in-
spired" than that of any other man in the community. The
local magistrate alone is responsible for the unification and
fitting observance of divine worship among his people. These
are matters of ethics, of taste, of convenience, of education.
They are not sacraments, they are merely sound policy. The
phrase "good police" is the first expression of what the Ger-
mans later called "Kultur." Police is derived from the Greek
"polis," exactly as "civilization" is derived from the Latin
"civitas." The reform of the Church is not a matter for one
pope, one emperor, one visible head; it is a matter of good
police in every jurisdiction in the world. By coining the word
police and by glorifying it, the Germans established a united
front against the hierarchy; because, by its Greek origin and
by its intention, "police" did not belong to the magic circle of
Roman Church and Roman Empire. It was a free, pluralistic
word, accessible to every magistrate of good will and proper
education.
The democratic character of Protestantism, the generality of
its Christian form of life, was the battering-ram, "police" was
the instrument which moved the ram, and the preaching of
the word was the trumpet which made the walls of Jericho-
the hierarchical church-fall without a serious fight.
The Lutheran "party of religion" is therefore a democratic
party in the Church and a monarchical party in matters of
government. It is exactly the opposite of the situation in
England, where, as we have seen, the Commons fettered the
King in Parliament but had to leave him, the "Defender of the
.., . _ .. 99 .. .. .. -- - -
'he Lutheran "party of religion" not only had the pope
eal with, it had to do away with an overcomplicated struc-
of different clerical functjons and offices. The German
ces had to inherit and transform the functions of councils
synods, of Paris and Bologna, of cardinals and bishops.
some of these functions were quite indispensable. With
ts abuses, the Medi~val Church had set up a number of
lutely necessary institutions.
he "police" of the High Magistrates had to build schools,
1
itals, colleges for young men. Like Wolsey at Oxford, the
nan princes founded training schools for their staff. For
1ple, in 1559 the Duke of Wiirttemberg founded his
~gium Illustre. This was the princes' monastic inheritance.
maintenance of a good "police" obliged the father of his
~le to listen to the united voice of the universities and the
Limous creed of his party of religion. This was his heritage
the great democratic institutions of the Church in the
nth century. The religious party of the Reformation was
rue successor of the princely opposition against the pope
e great councils of Pisa, Constance, and Basel.
ie reforming princes had been the organized and perma-
opposition in these councils, claiming the right to re-
the church in "head and members," root and branch.
the opposition at the medi~val councils, the Magistrates
~mphasized that they as an organized body were part of
miver~al Catholic Church; though in an Opposition, they
·emained Catholic Christians. Now they dropped the word
rian" and avoided all disastrous substitutes like "Angli-
They were Christians pure and simple, not Anglicans
)man Catholics. There is a famous story of how Bismarck,
~ asked with an ironical smile by a Cardinal of the Roman
ch, "I dare say Your Excellency thinks we Catholics can-
o to heaven at all?" replied with the same smile: "A Cath-
1yman might, of course. About a priest I am not so sure."
~ as it was 350 years after Luther's time, the remark illus--
very well the Protestant's opposition to all hierarchies.
e Catholic hierarchy had committed itself so deeply that
~-- - - ... .! - - - - - - 1 _] - -- 1 - - 1_ - 1 'I 'I ... • 1 .,. "'
1e councils, the party of Reform had found itself opposing
degenerate clergy. When Luther encouraged the princes to
o without the pope, neither he nor they had rejected the
1mmons to a universal council. But they made certain con-
itions in order to test the efficacy of their opposition. When
1e pope finally fulfilled one of these conditions by summon-
tg the universal council to meet at a German place, namely
L the southernmost city of Germany, Trent, the Protestants

Jubted his good faith; but until this day the Lutheran
iurches have never rejected the possibility of such a council.
y this theoretical possibility the Protestants are still con-
~cted, even today, with the Roman Catholic Church. For in
.eory the sovereign of the local territory was nothing but an
nergency-executive, not the normal bishop or head of the
tUrch.
But this local sovereign was allied with his colleagues in a
>litical body of permanent character which had survived from
e councils of the Church, and which for that very reason
d not seriously desire any council. All that they needed they
uld accomplish just as well through their party organiza-
m. The Holy Spirit, the inspiration in matters of the Faith,
ts assured by the new learning. The new vicars of Peter, the
Titorial emergency-executives called forth by Luther, were
lling to be guided by the vicars of Paul, the leader of the
~ntiles, in all questions of universal doctrines.
~he violence of German criticism, the habit of cross-lighting
question from all possible angles, and the harshness of the
~rman police are still all relics of this truculent opposition
the established hierarchy and its abuses. In this sense
otestants are always "anti"; they are always dependent upon
~ existing darkness which they attack. -The German, with
his critical capacities, is not ready to take over the govern-
~nt he has attacked. German parliamentary government has
vays failed because the opposition never dreamed of moder-
ng its criticism and relating it to the practical issue at stake.
te first rule of the parliamentary game is: as soon as one has
led, the other has his turn. German parliaments or Diets
.r~uc rr1t-1r1.,~A nY;.-1~"'""._ 1:_...: ... L __ .._ - ---
elves. Radical prophesying seemed enough. Three short
Jles from the last century may illustrate the German
One is taken from the notorious "Era of Metternich,"
actionary period after the Napoleonic wars; the next from
le year which gave so many good citizens to America; and
st from the Weimar Republic after the World War.
1819, the conflict between the free conscience of a great
L and the despotism of the many States, based on their
forces, came to a head in the following scene: A German
sor, who had spontaneously led the German students into
u against Napoleon and so enjoyed a certain authority,
to Berlin to discuss with the Prussian government the
:al dissatisfaction among the students. In good keeping
he old dreams of 1524, ay, of 1460, he advised the chan-
to hold a convention or convocation of professors which
represent the nation's public spirit. He hoped to bridge
If between the interests of the many separate States and
lited national spirit, by such a representation of German
ig. But the old confidence of the governments was al-
gone. The chancellor replied: "Public opinion? Public
n is in no need of a special representation. Public
n is sufficiently represented by my police force."
opposite mistake was made by the professors in 1848.
~bought they could be victorious without real force .
.848 the German professors gathered in Frankfurt-am-
.n a, real national Council of Doctors a la Luther. It was
feet -harmony with their Pauline tradition that their
.g place was the Church of St. Paul. They tried to do
.he German doctors had been expected to do at the
.al Council in 1524, and before in 1460. The "Professors'
nent" of 1848 was a secular version of the part played
"new learning" at Wittenberg and all the other uni-
~s. Beseler, Dahlmann, Waitz, Gervinus, Uhland, Sybel,
L-the best scholars and civil servants of Germany-were
led in Frankfurt from the spring of 1848 to the spring
)·
they kept the Christian order of things: prophecies pre-
• '' "I 11 .. 19 ...
established by themselves," as they were in the English Par-
liament. The party of religion, not being inflexible, astro-
nomical, i.e., moving opposition as in England, but fixed in
permanent protest, made a spasmodic effort at Frankfurt, not
to govern itself, but to protect itself from being governed by
others. But not being at a distance of three thousand miles
from their rulers, like the American colonies, the professors
in Frankfurt lost the advantage of time. The kings and princes
sent their police against the professors and dissolved their
parliament.
The walls of Jericho can only fall if there is time to blow
the trumpet. 1848 was not the time to preach, but to create
a democratic police and army instantly; the professors only
preached, and so they failed. The State of the Reformation
proved Revolution-proof. Once more the police were able to
paralyze freedom of speech outside the universities. The ban
of too much police fell upon Germany again.
After the World War, the Social Democrats had no real
authority because their unlimited criticism destroyed authority
itself. Such a Socialist official, on Constitution Day of the
Weimar Republic, would hoist the Red Flag of Marxism from
his private house; at the same time, over his office, the repub-
lican tricolour was flying; and in his official capacity, he would
insist that all the old monarchists should use and respect this
tricolour which they hated. Thus, the man protested against
the order of things (by his red flag) which he represented him-
self, and which he enforced upon his political enemies, offi-
cially. This, really, was the caricature of Protestantism. And
so Protestantism was doomed.
HITLER.

The system of religious parties has been overruled in Ger-

many today. Hitler is a pre-Reformation type, by race, educa-
tion and character. He is immune to the last four centuries
of German history. He is neither a Protestant nor an academic
person nor a civil servant nor an army officer. With true in-
stinct, he has declined any honorary degree in a university
n soldier of the rank and file and for that reason he is
:o begin all over again like an unreformed man. To him,
stranger to Reformation Germany, the spiritual victory
.ul over Peter does not mean anything. He himself has
Ge pope, bishop, monk and council in one person. What
is restored is the immediate divine inspiration of the
cal "leader." The distribution between the two powers,
mer prophetical, and the outer political, one, is dismissed.
the Reformation had abolished, a visible hierarchy in
rs of faith and conviction, is restored today by a yearning
l that has missed too long the splendour of a visible spir-
authority.
e German nation, in its smaller diameter of formerly
ial territories-that is to say, with the exception of Alsace,
nburg, Switzerland, Bohemia, the Netherlands-makes
· as much a pope, a doctor of souls, a saint, a sovereign
::onscience, as any Saint Peter with the keys. When a
l of the German faith was interviewed about political
~r, he simply pointed with his finger to the picture of
Leader" on the wall; no further justification was given.
~ reaction against the Protestant tradition is most violent
north. In the territories of Habsburg-Austria, the Hitler
; well-known of old. For that reason he is less contagious
Even in Hohenzollern-Germany, no eminent Catholic
r would envision anyone as the Messiah. But Protestants
north simply give way to the temptation of being ad-
l again to the worship of a visible power.
i sorry to say that, in my own room in Berlin, the adviser
then new Reichsbishop told me that "Of course, Hitler
·ist." A certain Dr. Frank preferred, in all earnest, to
re Hitler to God the Father. In a theological summer
on the Hainstein, near Luther's Wartburg, the future
ers were taught to see Christ in every Storm Trooper.
hing is popish, is Catholic, in the new system, except the
: the word "pope" or "church" or "heresy" or Saint or
· cannot officially be used. Still, when one wishes to un-
1d the function of Hitler and Goebbels as comnared to
e army, the only equivalent can be found in the ecclesiastical
1cabulary of the Middle Ages.
After four hundred years of reform the raison d'etre of Ger-
1n Protestantism is gone. The weekly sermon against popery
s lost its meaning when all Christians line up together. The
1sion which bound together, in one person, the two atti-
des, that of a responsible pastor and that of a free, protesting
tristian, has been broken. The rock of a racial religion is
eded today in Germany because its High Magistrates, the
)nsors of the free profession of the Faith, are gone. The
wnfall of the twenty dynasties in Germany necessarily
)ught on the most terrible outbreak of fear and hysteria:
~hout the dynastic States, the German intellectual attitude
constant Protest has become a nuisance.
~great nation like the German could live without a visible
irch just as long as the thoughtful criticism of "every"
ristian was balanced by the prerogative of "every" prince.
en, the unending criticism might produce the sublimation
politics into reform. The World War destroyed this balance
destroying the power centres, and what was left of the Chris-
1,s liberty appeared as the sulky grumbling of mud rakers.
thout a powerful state, a dreaded sovereign, a victorious
iy, a possible expansion, the individual German could not
and sulk or philosophize or protest. He only could crave
a moral or religious unity of sacred character which would
v.iate the offences from the outside and the anxieties within
flock. The system of the German Reformation has been de-
1yed in Germany today.
""'he three essentials of the Reformation: civil service, uni-
;ities, music, are of no importance any longer. They have
n sacrified, after the princes fell, by a young generation
of fear, full of superstitions, full of the need for a simple
versal faith, and its personification in Hitler. A Storm
1oper like the Potemba murderers who trampled to death
>litical enemy in the presence of his mother, and who were
aimed by Goebbels and acquitted by Hitler for doing so,
tr away from the civil servant and wise counsellor of his
,ro• f-h.a. D,,.,.,.1-~:~~1~-·1--- ____1 "°"'
7/ or "The Myth of the Twentieth Century" are studied,
range contrasts to the Universities of Jena or Heidelberg
~ the "\Vord" of the Bible set in motion the stream of
1atic criticism; the Horst-Wessel-Lied is no music.
e only thing continuing the experiences of the past is
~my. And if we wish to make a real biological diagnosis
, German situation, we may ask ourselves if there has not
a similar situation, for another great European form of
n former days. That will help to explain the stripping
of Germany, the philosophy of the hammer of destruc-
,wung by Hitler.
en. the French Revolution started, the downfall of the
n Church seemed inexorable. And the bodyguard of
>pe, the Jesuit order, was sacrificed. Between 1772 and
:he order was formally dissolved. In i815, however, the
order was restored. And a restoration befell the footstool
papacy, the garden of the world, Italy, which seemed
e the life out of this great nation. In Piedmont, one
er, at least, of every noble family was executed between
nd 1830. The Jesuit restoration marked the whole Cath-
hurch during the nineteenth century. The climax of
influence was seen in 1870, when the dogma of in-
i ty was proclaimed. The Roman Church of today, we
ty without exaggeration, is the result of this comeback
Jesuits. They saved the whole Church and imbued it
O.eir spirit when they seemed to have disappeared for-

.t does accrue, from this example, to the understanding

own day? When the papacy, Italy, the Jesuits, were
d to their medi~val function by force, in 1815, they
~parated (from their own great achievement in Trecento
llattrocento) by three other revolutions, German, Eng-
·ench. Their own spirit was more than weak. The Jesu-
onging to the sixteenth century, had still more vitality
td the bodyguard of the papacy lent to the body of
the tendencies of the company de Jesu so completely
iring the nineteenth century, Church and Jesuits seemed
:he role of the German army today. Between the German
R.eformation and our present day, three revolutions occurred:
:he Glorious, the Great, and the World Revolution. The body-
~uard around the German dynasties, the Prussian army, was
n eclipse for the time from 1918 to 1933. And German mili-
arism was said to have been crushed forever. And at the end
>f the period 1918-1933, the very elements graciously permitted
he Germans by the Allies, as universities, music, and civil
ervice, naturally disappeared, and the only institution that
vas destroyed under compulsion, the army, was restored. No
tuman group of honour can behave otherwise. The popes had
rave misgivings about the Jesuits. They could not help restor-
ng them, after the persecution from the outside. Good Ger-
nans had their doubts about Ludendorff, and the Nazis them-
elves are no militarists. But what else could they do, after
;.ermany' s demilitarization under duress?
Now, this arn1y is the "Counter-Bolshevik," as the Jesuits
~ecame the Anti-Jacobins during the nineteenth century. The
ateresting fact about both, however, is that they came into
1eing much later than the civilization they defended; German
1articularism had produced Bach and Goethe, before Frederick
'.le Great fought the Prussian War of Seven Years, with its
Diplomatic Revolution" in Europe.
The Jesuits were restored and have restored the Church. But
ave they? The Prussian army was restored and has restored
~ermany. But has it?

Such, however, is the consistency of political biology that

t1Y violence perpetrated against a really created political cre-
tion-and out of revolution, real creation takes place-leads
> a regenerative effort. Hitler is one of the deepest lessons in
olitical reproduction of created political forms; the consistency
E political biology is enhanced by, not destroyed under, duress.
And the comparison between Italian and German reaction
ill enable the reader to draw his own conclusions as to the
ming of English and French developments.
 NON-RESISTANCE.

fhe doctrine of passive obedience and of non-resistance,

:h a sort of men did of late, when they thought the world
Id never change, cry up as a divine truth, is, by means of
happy revolution in these nations, exploded, and the as-
>rs of it become ridiculous." Thus wrote the man who
to justify the Revolution of 1689 in New England. Non-
tance, ridiculous in 1689, was the essence of the Lutheran
>rmation. In 1525 the peasants had taken up arms. Luther
summoned the princes to exterminate the rabble. His
fftation is pitiless, but pithy. He conjures the princes to
and hang, to crush and burn the rebellious populace. No-
r shall bear arms but the High Magistrate and his armed

:e. Anarchy is the only possible outcome of several pri-

armies within one territory.
1e Peasants' War marks an epoch because it destroyed for
and all the co-existence of different armed forces in one
tory. Since then, it has been forbidden to carry arms except
Le service of the government. \lendetta and private war-
still flourished in the days of Luther. Both peasants and
1ts subscribed to the customs of private warfare. The man
rew England, writing in 1690, was already so sure of
er's success that he could ridicule the opposite of it; but
ad no intention of reviving the feuds or the anarchical
of. affairs in Europe before the Reformation .
.now that the formula of passive obedience is what makes
er unpopular with Anglo-Saxons; but since the two revo-
GS came one after the other not much can be done to
~cile their two different ways of thinking. They were made
alectical opposition. The plea of the English Revolution
sed, however, on the achievement of the German. The
of resistance, in England, was a right of common resist-
not one for the individual lord or knight. This common
ince, established in England, was impossible before a
ory had been consolidated into one commonwealth by
rchy.
• f-h ...... ,.,..._,..,_1:...J~ .. =~- 4-1-~ --=-~~- 1--...l L- ..__ -----------_]
 '
How could Luther preach resistance against the princes when
ie had to teach them themselves to resist? His life and his work
lepended on princes who resisted. Woe to him if they did not
·esistt He was lost if the princes did not defy the pope's bulls
md beadles. Non-resistance is bad wherever a government can
lo what it pleases. But in Luther's day no government could!
n a thousand and one cases the Church ruled and passed judg-
nent on the actions of the local ruler. The magistrate was
onstantly exposed to the censorship of a visible church. Luther
ummoned the laity to abolish this censorship. Should he ask,
11 the same breath, for a check upon his deliverers? Only a
)Ol or a "Schwiirmer" would abolish all government. Luther
ad to turn against the "Schwiirmer" with all the violence of
is temperament, like Cromwell against the Levellers. Ranting
nd carrying arms were ruthlessly stamped out in Germany by
1e Reformation. Hitlerism is the first recrudescence .of pre-
'. eformation feeling in Germany. The Peasants' War is very
mch in the mind of modern German youth. But anarchy and
loodshed are inevitable when people wear coloured shirts .
.gainst both dangers, monarchy was built up.
Luther's non-resistance was not cowardice. If either mur-
~rers and brigands or princes and magistrates search out the
crets of a Christian man's conscience, Luther advises him to
y openly: "I will not do what you command; take my body
id estates, and thereby injure Him by whom you will be
.lled to strict account. We must smite the devil in the face
ith the Cross." (April 11, 1533.) It was the principle for
nich Thomas More suffered martyrdom in England.
THE BIRTHDAY OF THE MODERN CONSTITUTION.

Luther reformed the Church and made it the free source of

spiration for each Christian soul. This exalted the kings and
inces into highness and sovereignty, but it also emancipated
1use and court, stable and barn. Luther's Catechism never
rgets the ox and the ass, the maid-servant and the man-
~vant, the housewife at her washing and her husband plough-
~ the fields. This emanrin~tirm r.f ".)11 1~h,.,, .... ,... :~ ~··~11 _] ___ •
1
'
Luther's own words: "The world does not know the hidden
isures of God. It cannot be persuaded that the maid working
~diently and the servant faithfully performing his duty, or
woman rearing her children, are as good as the praying
nk who beats his breast and wrestles with his spirit," and
the words of the earliest Lutheran song-books, written by
ra Zellin in 1534: "the journeyman sang these new songs at
work, the maid while she washed her pots and pans, the hus-
dman or vintager in the field, and the mother to the crying
d in the cradle."
Laity sanctified" is the true title of the Reformation. The
v day which is unanimously added to the Catholic holidays
:he calendar of all the reformed churches is the birthday
v.Iartin Luther. The saints have their places in the calendar
the days when they were born in heaven. They are cele-
:ed on the anniversary of their last day on earth; the Chris-
calendar is a collection of Good Fridays, of martyrdoms
farewells to earth. Jesus and John the Baptist are the only
L whose birthdays are kept in the reformed Christian
rches. But the tenth of November is kept also. It is the
nday of the one man who did not revolutionize nature, who
)fed no birthrights. Luther knows nothing about a sinless
tre or an innate right. But he stands for the laity, for the
tediate relation of the soul to God. He reformed the
rch into a lay-church, he reformed it even to the point
rofanation-bringing the faith outside the fanum (pro-fane:
re the temple). He does not belong to the visible church,
:h he broke down. He certainly belongs to the Church.
t England the King's birthday is a vestige of the Lutheran
>rmation. Each territory got its own day for the layman.
prince's birthday was what Labour Day is meant to be
Lir times: the day when every man is sanctified in his call-
The birthday of independence, the Fourth of July, is a
further translation of Luther's birthday into the day of
Tican promise. America afterwards supplanted the stock
dynasty by the strong trunk of a constitution. The scions
rare w1thPr ~nrl rliP· thP l'.,-,.111d-; ... , .. ;,,.~ : ... !----~-..__1
 By virtue of this sanctification of Luther's birthday, all
forms of government which have arisen since the Reformation
have something in common: laity, dynasties (Germany), Com-
mons, custom (England), natural genius (France), and pre-
Adamitic forces (Russia) have come forward to restore the
truth confided to the universal priest: man.
TRANSITION
 CHAPTER EIGHT

)lybius) or) The Reproduction of Government

tation of Government-"Love Thine Enemy" in Politics-Marching in
on-"Open" versus "Public"-A Nation's Religion-European Dictionary-
>mics of Western Man

ROTATION OF GOVERNMENT.

VEEN 1517 AND 1918 FOUR GREAT FORMS OF GOVERNMENT

~ which entrusted the regeneration of society to the lay-
, to a secular power. All these revolutions stand for a sover-
ty of the temporal. The secular mind is made the sover-
' possessing in its own right the knowledge of good and
The layman, the commoner, the individual, the cog in the
iine-everybody may now understand government. The
ts of the State are laid open to the public, step by step.
four great forms of government all have one and the same
on: to be free from the visible Catholic Church. But they
have many other things in common. By comparing them
hall get the best available material for a real political
ce of mankind. We can then present to the political sci-
t certain statements which are more than mere abstract
.itions of our own.
rst of all, these forms of government are the well-known,
~nt forms described by Aristotle: monarchy, aristocracy,
>cracy, and dictatorship. Monarchy, as the hereditary form
wernment; aristocracy, as the system of co-optation; and
>cracy, as that of election, are represented by Germany,
and and France respectively. And Russia ended the series
~turning to the most comprehensive form, dictatorship.
"'AnrlJ,, -thoc-o .f,...,."'m"' ,,..,.C ,..,.......,...,.,,..,,._._~~-.._ £_11--.- -- - 1 · 11
order, but not within the same country. Once they have ap-
peared, each in its own country and in its proper order, they
:o-exist. Kings, parliaments, capitalists and proletariats rule
iimultaneously.
Thirdly, the European countries form a unity in spite of
~heir plurality. By acting as independent revolutionary bodies,
.hey have achieved something in common,. and each has
Lchieved something for all. The European concert is a fact,
wt a dream. It goes deeper than a mere concert of ministers
ff presidents. It is a common campaign for the best form of
;overnment.
Fourthly, the ancients knew the rotation of constitutions.
~olybius described it in detail, telling how every form of gov-
rnment degenerated and thereby failed, not because of its
rrong measures but because it fell into the hands of the wrong
ien. Polybius and Aristotle were considered classics on this
)pie of the wheel of political fortune. 1 But nobody ever
sked, during the Christian Era, whether the classical state-
1ent could be tested by the experience of Christian nations .
.,here was a good reason for this neglect of so natural a ques-
on. Christians, knowing all the failures of paganism, hated
> think of such an unreasonable rotation: the world was re-
eemed from the curse of blind repetition.
Today, Christians are much more modest; they make no dis-
nction between antiquity and the Christian era. Few people
Ln aQ.swer the very moderate question: "Is there any differ-
1ce between the Christian era and antiquity?" Many would
y, off-hand, in a pessimistic tone: "None whatever." After
1, Christians even kept slavery among their legal and consti-
.tional forms until 1865. How, then, is there any difference?
h.ristianity is a beautiful ritual which we observe on Sundays;
it a Christian era does not exist.
We do not share this conviction. The Christian era has
tablished something which is completely outside the Sunday
:ual and yet is universal, something quite simple, and yet
iraculous. Aristotle and Polybius were right in their day;
 pessimistic outlook for a permanent rotation of govern-
s and constitutions was justified; the forms of govern-
were mortal and transient. But the Christian ·era has
ved something very different from the pagans, with their
niable law of mortality. It has not been content with the
~on of monarchy, aristocracy, democracy and dictatorship;
s made them coexist. The coexistence of these four po-
l forms in one world is not a bare coexistence; it means
lter-penetration of each one with all the rest. The abuses
e form of government, at the circumference of its sphere
luence, led to reaction. Since Germany's party of religion
not exist in England, the King of England must step
. and become the first gentleman of his kingdom. Since
:nglish type of Commonwealth does not exist in France,
ristocrats must step down and become the elite in a re-
c. Since the French variety of capital does not exist in
a, capital must step down and become one social force
g many.
us, regeneration occurs not at the centre but at the outer
~. Through this happy kind of safety-valve, the centre
ch form of government remains for centuries without
~e. The coexistence of different countries obviates the
· rotation of antiquity. The peoples co-operate and co-
not merely geographically or mechanically, but morally,
e collective system of interplay and mutual dependence.
is ·mutual dependence, by its very nature, is opposed to
omination or subjection of one country by another. It
ealed best in times where the motherland of one form is
deeply humiliated in its power abroad. Never was France
successful in urging national unity and indissolubility
her neighbours, Italy and Germany, than in the period of
leon III, when she was at the lowest ebb of internal de-
1ent and oppression. It was as though the Italians and
ans-and the English, too-could only be completely he-
ed by the Gospel of 1789 when it no longer carried any
a of French superiority, as it had in the days of the first
leon (see p. 135).
e time of the loss of its first empire. In the days of England's
~atest distress the rules of the House of Commons, hitherto
pt secret, were revealed to the Colonies in America and to
! Continent of Europe. The House of Commons became the
)ther of Parliaments in the dark hour when habeas corpus
:i free speech were suspended at home. Then it was that all
~ English parliamentary expressions became the public prop-
y of the civilized world. The efficient civil service of the
theran monarchy was not copied by France until the Thirty
irs' War, under Richelieu and Mazarin, i.e., at the low ebb
the German Reformation.
\11 these forms of government were first brought forward
a tremendous and formidable explosion. Protestantism,
nmon Law, Constitutionalism, Sovietism, first tried the way
'.oud, noisy and belligerent expansion. The Huguenots, the
nde, Napoleon, the Catalonians, the Bolsheviks, all are
es of violent expansion; each belongs to the first chapter
1 World Revolution. But they all reached their limit very
ri. None of these forms of government was allowed to carry
day completely. Each revolution had to settle down in a
ticular European area; it had to occupy one certain part of
earth's surface. And this part of the world was given its
r shape by the fact of its undergoing the immediate influ-
e of one of the World Revolutions. Neither the German
the English nor the French nor the Russian nation existed
ts modern form before the specific revolution which cen-
. within its borders.
ngland had no unity with Ireland and Scotland; France
not assimilated Alsace or Provence; Russia had contained
Western Catholic and Protestant territories; and Germany
embraced Switzerland and the Netherlands, before the
: of Religious Parties determined the new boundary of
German nation. No Great Power in Europe has ever suc-
:ully incorporated a territory into its frontiers unless that
tory has shared the uniting, spiritual experience of its
lution. The German part of Austria can be annexed today
;.ermany on1y because, from 1914 to 1q18. as well as from
~lsace is in the peculiar pos1uon of having lived through
Reformation with the German, through the French Revo-
on with the French. It went through the German Refor-
jon from beginning to end ( 1517-1555 and 1618-16 54), and
this experience it was incorporated into the German na-
t. It cannot be compared with Switzerland, which left the
pire before the Reformation in 1499. Later, in its French
s, the expulsion of the Huguenots was not extended to
Alsatian Protestants. On the other hand, it was in Alsace,
ch had been governed by the French King since 1680, that
Marseillaise was composed by Rouget de Lisle. Alsatian
liers were in the forefront of the Napoleonic wars, and
~shal Ney hailed from Saar louis.
"'he Alsatians have lived through two different World Revo-
ons. Under German rulers they maintained their French
LS of citizenship born of 1789, and now, under French gov-
nent, they are again standing for the old German liberties
rie Reformation. They are, necessarily, the famous Hans im
riakeloch, of whom the Alsatian popular song runs:
"Johnny in the midge's hole
Has everything his heart could wish-
And what he has he does not want,
And what he wants he does not have.
Johnny in the midge's hole
Has everything his heart could wish. . . "

'he World Revolutions all start without reference to space,

i an absolute programme for the whole of mankind, and a
)n of a new earth. They all believe themselves to be the
el of eternal, revealed, definite truth. Only reluctantly do
r come back to the old earth. Every revolution makes the

tful discovery that it is geographically conditioned. Noth-

seems more insulting to its great leaders and great minds
l to be reminded of the earthly premises on which their
:lusions rest. The history of the first revolutionary period
othing but this process of reluctant habitation, taking root
n~ri-1rn 1~-r eon.;1
In Russia we have the spectacle of an international revo-
tion turning national before our very eyes. But France was
nited in the same way by the restoration of her frontiers
1792 in 1815. The European scope of the British Common-
!alth had to be made clear to the English Parliament by Wil-
.m III. In return for their liberties on the seven seas, they
d to pay the full price, guaranteeing their European neigh-
ur, the Netherlands, and participating in the wars against
1uis XIV on the Continent as allies of the Catholic Emperor.
ie British Parliament even endured the Hanoverians, al-
lugh they remained absolute monarchs on the Continent. In
ier words, 1688 ended the possibility of splendid isolation
· the English gentry. This was the conditio sine qua non of
illiam's accession. The end of a revolution comes when it
lSes to believe in its own universality-when its natural hope
expansion is given up. This is what happened in 1555, when
~ opposition to the pope had to recognize that no universal
ormation of the Church was possible. It was in the Peace
Religion of 1555 that the in di vi dual territory was made the
tlefield of reform.
Nhat the fanatical first period, with all its noise and tumult
~ never do, is accomplished during the period of humilia ..
1. Only then do the forms of the revolution become arti-
i of export which find willing buyers in other nations; for
y then can a neighbour-state take the same free attitude
[c~ was the mainspring of the revolution in its motherland.
~II great revolutions presuppose a colossal effort of human
~rty and free will. They all arrive at their limits because
y underestimate the freedom of their neighbours. The
at Revolutions never take into account the fact that man-
=l cannot act all at once. They overestimate the capacity
iumanity for simultaneous change. They are bound to do
because they appeal to only one class of mankind.
very class has, no doubt about that, a common interest
over the world. High Magistrates, gentlemen, bourgeois,
proletarians are all international classes. Marx's mistake
that he believed in only two classes, capitalists and prole-
rests; and Fascism has been successful in opposing Marxisrn
tuse it has rediscovered the existence of two types of men
~ are neither capitalists nor proletarians. The type of Magis-
e, judge, politician, officer, and the type of sailor or farmer
fought their battles against popes and kings long before
our arrayed itself against Capital.
"LOVE THINE ENEMY" IN POLITICS.

iur first observation in this chapter was that the Polybian

tion of the forms of government was changed in the Chris-
era into a coexistence of all these forms in one civiliza-
. This fact throws a crosslight on Marxism, which com-
ely neglected the Christian element of contemporaneity
veen antagonists. In politics "love thy enemy" means that
must learn to bear the existence of a conflicting form of
!rnment. All these forms of government survive thanks to
faith and belief of their supporters. And the rationalist,
, believes in a certain best form of government, cannot
~ feeling that this threatens his most sacred principles. The
e realistic political scientists have gone to the opposite
eme and made government the empirical product of soil,
h, history, climate, environment.
Te can adhere neither to the idealists, the best-government
natists, nor to the geographical, nationalistic school. Both
1ries would split humanity into meaningless atoms. He who
iterested only in the "best" form of government cuts all
between the different phases through which political in-
ltions have passed; he destroys all respect and reverence
continuity. And, on the other hand, the admirer of Eng-
l's or Andorra's romantic peculiarities cuts across our loyal-
to a world-wide order. Man can neither bear to be cut off
i his roots in the past, nor to have all his highest beliefs
ined within the bounds of one nation or continent. The
Its of our survey go against both; against the destroyer of
inuity and the destroyer of our unity in space. For all these
1lutions attempted the same great thing, at different times
_.,:.t- A:££~-~ ...... • --~~-..~ 1-... ••• £~..,. ~~r~~•l~. •1-~ -~-~ -------~'
\.11 of them faced a disintegration of the type of man who was
>roduced by society. All of them were haunted by a worthless,
lavish, dwarfish order of things. All thought of man as the
mage of God. The Bolsheviks would not take so much trouble
o be godless if they did not feel godlike themselves. Each of
hese revolutions could have cried with Nietzsche: "If God
xists, how can I bear not to be God?"
Each revolution, originating at the circumference of a pre-
eding revolution, faced the eternal dilemma of a divine and
bestial nature in man. Each entrusted the solution of this
ilemma to a different class, that is, to:
Nobility
Gentry
Bourgeoisie
Proletariat
In each of these classes, despair over the past and hope for
Le future kindled the spark of passionate love for a world
:born. The bearers of the gospel of man as the Son of God,
id of nations as the nurseries of the sons of God, scorned
e caricatures of humanity whom they met in real life. These
en found in the monasteries of Saxony, at the Court of St .
.mes, at Versailles or St. Petersburg, were too clearly sons of
an, ay, of cattle. They had forfeited their share of divinity
.d inspiration.
Tl;iis caricature of the former man or type was called "capi-
'.ist'' by Marx, "aristocrat" by Robespierre, "tyrant" or
espot'' by Pym, and the "Antichrist" or the "Whore of
.bylon" by Luther. And the Nazis call the proletarian "un-
rman," "tchandala)" in order to demolish him. Thus we
ta list of aggressive names, contrasting vividly with our own
Jer and prosaic sequence:
Whore of Babylon
Antichrist
Nobility ........................... Tyrant
Gentry ............................ Aristocrat
Bourgeoisie ........................ Capitalist
Pro1Pt!:lri~t
The torchbearers of a new revolution push out the degraded
)e and set about creating a new, unheard-of race. For that
.rpose cold, descriptive names would have been useless.
The new sovereign of France had to be a self-made man
d was proclaimed a citizen. The new sovereigns of Great
itain became Commoners and Christian gentlemen. The
ince, still a monster in 1515, in Machiavelli's Principe, was
:vated by Luther in the years after 1517 to the respectable
sition of a High Magistrate. And today the workers, rough
d ready, have been turned into proletarians, the distin-
ished first members of a classless society.
PROPAGANDA TITLE DESCRIPTIVE NAME SWEAR-WORD

Pope An ti-Christ
High Magistrate Prince Tyrant
Christian Gentleman Noble Aristocrat
Tory
Citizen Bourgeois Capitalist
Proletarian Worker (Underman)
[t reads, left and right, like obverse and reverse of a medal,
~ medal itself in reality embracing both sides.
But the list is not complete. The propaganda title of the
pe is lacking. The slanderous name for the proletarian is
ubtful too, because it is not used by a subsequent post-
>letarian revolution, but by the defenders of the pre-Marxian
ler of things; in other words, by the counter-revolutionaries.
fhus .the two corners of the picture, beginning and end,
mot be defined on the basis of the investigations put before
~ reader in this first part. Fascism and papacy-the present-
' reaction against Communism in the form of black, blue,
rer and brown shirts, and the existence of a Catholic Church
Europe and America-are left unexplained. Yet they are
ereign powers for the modern masses; and they turn people
o friends or enemies with all possible thoroughness.
\1 Smith could not become President of the United States
:ause he was a Catholic. Fascism could not succeed in Italy
til it made peace with the papacy. It works both ways, but
Narks. And the reproduction of mankind in the Christian
world depends on the relative power or weakness of these ele-
ments. Italy, Rome, Florence, Venice, Vienna, have not been
mentioned in the preceding chapters. Fascism and papacy are
both at home in Italy. Our excavations in the revolutionary
lava have unlocked the geological secrets of English and Ger-
man religious language and of the capitalistic and proletarian
vernacular; but we must turn to Italy if we wish to understand
the liberties of the Roman Church and the aspirations and
prospects of Fascism.
But the results reached in this second part will also give a
new and better interpretation of the modern revolutions. Their
very essence was, as we found, to be universal and totalitarian
without being unique. One coexisted with all the rest, and
that was the chief feature of modern civilization which gave it
the right to bear the name European.
The coexistence of imperialism and clericalism, with the four
modern forms of temporal power, changes the picture once
more. The laws for the future of mankind, resulting from
its past, can only be discovered after we have deepened our
perspective.
MARCHING IN ECHELON.

Still, the results of the preceding chapters already offer some

hints for further research. First of all, the rotation of the forms
of government from monarchy through aristocracy and from
iemocacy to dictatorship is an advance from small territories
to large.
The average State of the Reformation was a small fraction
)f the area covered by Cromwell's first Commonwealth. Again,
:he Continental mass of France is much greater than that of
~he British Isles. And Russia is obviously a territorial problem
n itself, with forty times as great an area and six times as
nany people as France had in 1789.
517 Individual State, Saxony for instance. Average size that of
Rhode Island to that of Yorkshire, with half a million people.
649 British Commonwealth and British Sea. Eight million people.
789 Natural frontiers of the French Nation, including all parts
of Cresar's Gaul (Belgium, Rhineland); it would exceed
modern France, and in its area in 1789 there probably lived
32,000,000 people.
Eurasia U .S.S.R. 150,000,000 people in an area forty times .
as big as modern France.

infusion had reigned in Germany at the beginning of the

rmation. Every knight, every valley, every township and
icipality had undertaken its reforms separately. The wars
LSt Hutten and Sickingen (in 1523) and the Peasants' War
525) were the cruel answer to this foreshortening of the
.re. It was the whole of each German territory with its
ts, and not merely one village or city, that had to be
iized by the Lutheran High Magistrate.
1e British aristocracy of 1649 attacked a bigger territorial
lem than the German duke or prince who had escaped
iiavellian monism and had reformed his territory by the
sovereign powers of an invisible church and an efficient
ic service. The Presbyterians. did not do justice to the size
is problem, and were doomed and replaced by Cromwell.
French democrats, aside from all their dreams of nature,
faced by the grim necessity of being a great power. They
~d against their federalists quite brutally, because the lat-
1ere not equal to the magnitude of the task. The social
utionaries in Russia made the same mistake, and were
r overthrown by the Bolsheviks, who immediately grasped
mmense problem of organizing a continent instead of a
n ..
tis progressive ascent from little to big seems to form a
~al climax. It is fascinating to see how each form of the
ion of government has been wrought out on an ascend-
cale. And this view frees the principle of rotation from
echanical aspect of being merely a logical process. Though
our forms of government follow each other, they do not
iy means repeat each other. Each revolution, standing on
houlders of the foregoing, dares to go a step farther and
k a bigger problem in organization.
cording to the pagan doctrine of mechanical change, one
:he same community went from one temporal constitution
1 the next. In the Christian Era, coexistence brought with it
.e possibility of growth. The moral presence of the older
volution spurred on the younger sister each time. During the
st four centuries, a consciousness of the forms already
hieved has kept the young revolution from relapsing into
aos, and has sharpened her own duty to achieve more.
The rotation is not mechanical and not meaningless, be-
use the starting point of the first revolution is preserved
the consciousness of all that follow. The four European
visions-Protestant prince, Puritan gentleman, Jacobin citi-
1, and Bolshevik proletarian-advance in a formation which
the army is called marching in echelon, each with its front
ar of that ahead.
Cf the Marxian revolutionary theory were correct, the revo-
ions would arise successively in the same territory and in
~ same nation. Then the march .in echelon would be im pos-
le. The French gentry would have overthrown the French
narchy, French bourgeois the gentry, and French workers
· bourgeoisie. The Lutheran princes all over Germany would
re been beheaded by the "Junkers," the Junkers by the
rman middle classes, and the middle classes by the German
:ialists. But that is completely chimerical. Luther's princes
olted for the whole German nation against the Italian pope.
e English nation rebelled against the introduction of Con-
~ntal monarchy into England, where it meant tyranny. The
nch rn;1tion expelled the megalomania which had been
trished by the "gentilhomme" ever since the British Glori-
Revolution; and the Russians expelled European capi-
sm.
n this way each country could aim at the target of progress
:.ts whole breadth and height. It did not move by simple
:tion, what the Marxists call the dialectical process of thesis
antithesis. The pagan and mechanical philosophy of the
.alists made most of them overlook the simple facts and
·s of coexistence. The English gentry, in overthrowing
heran monarchy, did not fall back into Catholicism. The
sians, in doing awav with rlemorr~ru h~uo ..... '"'" ..... ~- --'- - _]
1
~ obligations imposed upon everybody by the French Revo-
:ion. The Russians must cling to. national autonomy within
:!ir system, the British to Reformation, and the French to
rliament, though for a certain time the Presbyterians or
Lpoleon or Stalin miss the importance of this inevitable co-
rence and succession.
The whole question of progress depends on the possibility
coexistence of all the rungs of the ladder. In the woods, if
u completely forget your starting point, you are likely to
Jk in a circle. To be driven in a vicious circle is the bogey
d, in most cases, the real fate of pagan or primitive man.
ieir whole civilization is an endless repetition, without any
ening or broadening out. Mr. Spengler, with his astounding
lmitivism, basks in this recurrence of spring, summer, au-
nn, and winter in each period of civilization. Primitive
:ial groups, because they do not manage to coexist with their
emies, except by eating them, are bound to rotate in a vicious
de. The meaninglessness of so many South American revo-
:ions, even as seen by the most sympathetic observers, such
Joseph Conrad in his Nostromo, is based on the fact that
~y follow each other in hopeless repetition. These revolu-
ns are revolting to our human sensibilities because human-
yearns for growth and fulfilment. The great revolutions we
ve treated must be carefully distinguished from this mecha-
:m of the vicious circle. They are great because they are sown
one common field of man's experience and hope. They all
· to embrace all mankind; one after the other and one
)ide the other; like separate branches they are all grafted
the common tree· of humanity.
This sequence in time and togetherness in space only be-
ne possible through a process of branching. The totalitarian
th of each revolution carries one country away from the
itre, and to make up for this displacement the other coun-
es, who either bear in themselves the seeds of an older
rolution or hold back in expectation of their own day to
ne, rally all the more faithfully round the common centre.
Though the revolutions take their very name from the idea
rotation. of revolvimz. the wheel of a world revolution does
more than turn in its old orbit. It moves forward along a new
track and creates a new form of recurrent, repetitive life. Revo-
lution in this sense does not shock us like the hundred revolu-
tions in Mexico before Porfirio Diaz. Instead, it reproduces
the institutions which breed and educate man. The Reforma-
tion or the Glorious Revolution produce their first results two
hundred years after their outbreak, because it takes four or
five generations to beget the perfect fruit of such a rebirth.
Types like Pitt or Gladstone or Lincoln or Bach or Goethe had
to be ripened by a long succession of unbroken faith, by the
:oherent labour of centuries.
Our revolutions must be raised to the square of their power
Jefore they can be understood in their deeper significance.
rhey are not accidents of the kind which interest the reporter
>r the police, they are not sensational interruptions of an evolu-
ion which went on before and is resumed afterward. They
hange the face of the earth. Evolution is based on Revolu-
ion. It is sheer nonsense to put before us the choice between
:volution and Revolution. Revolution and Evolution are re-
iprocal ideas. Perhaps we do not like to believe this. But it is
iy disagreeable business, though myself a non-revolutionary,
) deal with revolutions; it is not for the sake of originality
iat I attribute so much importance to revolution. No, crea-
on goes on as God's creation has always done. A thunder-
orm of destruction clears the air; then follows the low rustle
: growth and reconstruction. We may assign the noise to the
~vil, and the still, small voice to God. But only wishful think-
:g can exclude either of these sounds.
The evolutionary theory of the nineteenth century has led
: astray and taught us to use the words "evolution" and "rev-
ution" as if they were mutually exclusive. Let the scientists
-examine their own concepts in the light of the real Darwin,
io-as Mr. Brewster has made clear in his book on Creation
lid not think of evolution in terms of an imperceptible grada-
m, but used it in the sense of creation. I prefer the word
reation" itself.
In history creation is going on all the timP ~nrl l
&>f-...,. ... ,._,.,,.
rence of the created kinds is also going on all the time.
creative act that sets free new potentialities of mankind
>perly called revolution. Not that creation is limited to
Litions; but in the course of history, the branches of the
Jf mankind are truly regenerated-ay, by grafting they
~ally reproduced and changed, and this can only be done
reconstruction of the great nurseries of men which we
Lations.
volutions do not create man; they build nurseries, as we
said before, for his reproduction in a certain way and
iing to a certain type. There is no Christian country and
1tional character which can boast that it is founded on
tionary institutions alone. "There is scarce a common-
ti in the world whose beginnings can in conscience be
ed." (Hobbes.) Pope Pius II said that kingdoms were not
by legality or righteousness but by conquest. The fact
~en emphasized so often that these quotations could easily
ultiplied-which only shows that the volcanic, illegal or
gal origin of all government has often been in the minds
)ughtful men.
· shall see later on why the rise of a new sovereign is
the creation of a new kind of man, in a biological sense:
l monarchical Reformation remoulded the father of every

f, how an aristocratic restoration reshaped every man,

a national Revolution revolutionized every mind, and
:t prol~tarian Revolution calls upon every body. Every
·, every man, every mind, every body, are the respective
~ees of the revolutionary freight. The revolutions ad-
and extol different sides of man's being; but all the revo-
LS call upon him, conjure him up, usher him into the
with the same desperate faith in his responsibility.
revolution we have investigated had something to say
~ry human being, not merely to a few. Monarchy, aris-
:y, democracy and distatorshi p cannot be distinguished
~ more or less dependence they put in every member of
roup. Every one of them uses the same passionate lan-
to all. The Russian broadcasts in I~}l 7 "to all" men are
no more universal than the Lutheran pamphlets written for
ill Christians or the English Great Remonstrance addressed
:o the public.
"OPEN" VERSUS "PUBLIC."

The Revolutions occur as much in the open as any out-

>reak of war or fire or earthquake. Now "open" means more
han "public." Open is as far above public as public stands
hove private. The lawyer knows private and public law; the
olitician or the newspaper man cannot afford to mistake pri-
ate for public affairs. Private life and public life are separate
rorlds. But what of the open air, the immediate presence of
nth and heaven, beyond the reach of social organization?
The openness of a revolution is the positive expression of
s reality. Nothing is real which does not happen under God's
pen sky and under the evident pressure of our mother earth.
'he lawless character of Revolution may frighten us; its de-
ruction of privacy and its contempt for public law make us
emble. But we ought not to deal with these greatest experi-
tces of humanity in negative language. They are neither pub-
: nor private. We must find a positive word to explain their
aracter. Whenever a name is found for a thing, whenever
thing is seized and held by a word, the world grows larger;
ien it is only described, men stay in their accustomed grooves.
All great revolutions re-create public law, public order, pub-
spirit and public opinion; they all reform private customs,
ivate manners and private feelings. They themselves must
~refore live in a third dimension, beyond the reach of public
11 and private conviction. They live in the unprotected, un-
?lored and unorganized space which is hated by every civili-
ion like hellfire itself-and which probably lies near hellfire.
t it lies near heaven, too. Heaven and hell are the only
rds left to us for this character of openness and immediacy.
~ nowadays have learned that hell and heaven are in our
Lrts. As the nineteenth century was private and individual-
c, the heart, ·too, became a private business, and so the
:hing of the gospel that heaven ancl hP11 -;Jr~ ;1n "'~~-
L - - ·
s to us like an inscription from a private album: it seems
1t for private use alone.
it man's heart is the centre of creation. His is a world-
t. The son of man lives in the centre of the universe, he
e centre of the universe, and when his heart governs him
overns the world. Let us use an illustration for this way
:e. Lovers have made a great fuss over the contrast between
iage in church and marriage by mutual private consent,
here is little difference between them in actual fact. It is
husband and wife can marry in public, with all the cere-
ies and publicity of Church and State, or they can marry
rivate. But, whatever the forms, heaven and earth must
cipate in the wedding. The whole body must be rapt to
ew calling, and the whole mind must be caught up into
~w state of marriage. Then it it safe to say that something
has happened; when body and soul are completely dis-
d and completely remade, you can be sure that this couple
become the founders of a new race, a new people, a new
n. After all, every marriage is the nucleus of a new race.
nothing but statistical idolatry to judge a nation by its
or hundred millions of population. Those are mere ab-
:ions. The people who marry change the nation unceas-
, if and when they meet in the presence of heaven and
. Private relations or public ceremonies are both conven-
1 disguises for the real story of marriage. The question is
her this young man and this young woman are going to
tarried under celestial ordination or by an "arbitrary
r." Many a marriage, it is true, represents nothing but
:e or a personal whim. The few that are something more
lerate their kind.
[s the same in politics. Some people rule, and more people
on arbitrary impulse. Those who do not, regenerate the
ards of society. Revolutions try to regenerate the order
:iety by an inbreak of celestial powers. In both cases, hell
y near heaven. Whenever we venture to live in the open,
·e exposed to all the risks of outdoor-i.e., of direct and
~diate-life. Revolutions break into the framework of so-
from outside. They bear testimony to the verv existence
of free space around us. While we are under the law we are
always anxious to forget its presence, like a good mother who
thinks she can contract a marriage for her son. And because
we are anxious to forget it, we are frightened by its sudden
appearance. No power can derive its sovereignty from laws.
Sovereignty comes first; everything else grows out of it. Luther
first had to publish his Theses openly; the Roundheads first
had to raise an army, and the Bastille first had to be destroyed
before the new sovereign could become visible and begin to
negotiate with the old powers.
This autocephalous origin of sovereignty is so certain that
what we call the period of a revolution is nothing but the time
it takes to make the new sovereign visible to the oldest veteran
of the former world order. As soon as this oldest veteran has
perceived its existence and its scope, peace can be restored
and civil war can die down. But in this world of inertia it
takes years, thirty or forty, before a new sovereign is recog-
nized.
When Louis XVIII said on his return in 1815 that nothing
had happened, only one more Frenchman was in France; the
oldest veteran of monarchy had subscribed to the dogma of
equality. When Charles V conceded the right of reformation
to the territorial powers, and when the King of England acqui-
esced in a parliamentary church, the final word of a revolu-
tionary period had been spoken. The same word which was
high treason on the first day had at last become law, with the
blessing of the very power against which it was first directed.
Every serious revolution begins, it seems, with a "grande
peur" on the part of the population. "Grande peur," great
fear, was the name given to the inexplicable anxiety of the
French nation in the summer of 1789. The same anxiety ap-
peared in Germany in 1930. Three years before Hitler came
into power the crisis could be felt and was felt by the im-
perilled educated classes in countless cases of nervous break-
down or temporary paralysis. For the Reformation, we know
that the whole German nation must have felt the meteoro-
loo-ic~ 1 s.ions. Twn VP~r~ hPforP th~ h1~~r1"h..or1 ,....f ,.i......,. D~~~~- ... -'
~, Luther, the successful, beloved, and admired Reformer,
te: "The signs of nature point certainly to a political revo-
::m, and in especial by wars. Therefore I doubt not that
many faces either a terrible war or the Last Judgment."
'his "grande peur" may be observed in the Middle Ages,
and I think for the sake of completeness, I may quote
lerick II's exclamation in 1227:
)n us, then, the end of time has come, for not only in the
ches but in the roots as well the power of love is frozen. Not
do peoples rise against peoples, and empires threaten empires,
lnly do pestilence and hunger stir the hearts of the living with
tr, but the power of love itself, by which heaven and earth are
rned, seems now to be troubled, not in its later flowing, but
Le very source."
his great outcry leads us back to the connection between
"Great Fear" and the drying-up of the power which gov-
heaven and earth. The great Revolutions break out when-
the power which has governed heaven and earth dries up
1e fountain-head. The great Revolutions seem to destroy
xisting order; but that is not true. They do not break out
1 the old state of affairs is already ended, until the old
~r of things has died and is no longer believed in by its
beneficiaries. Ranke said of the Reformation: ''When the
ers of the empire had grown suspicious of each other and
hemselves, the elementary forces on which the empire
~d began to stir. Lightnings flashed from the earth; the
ents of public life deserted their usual course; the storm
:h had been heard ·rumbling so long in the depths rose
Lrd the upper regions; everything seemed ready for a com-
~ overturn."
he ordinary laws of life, the fruit of millennia of struggle,
o the devil when the spirit that animated them departs.
positive law can hold a position which every good spirit
leserted. When that happens, Goethe's words in The Natu·
)aughter 2 are in order:
:t 5, Scene 8.
 "This realm is threatened
With utter ruin. For the elements
That met to form its greatness will no longer
Embrace each other with the force of love
In unity unceasingly renewed.
Now each evades the other, and with draws
Coldly into itself. Where is the might
Of our forefathers' spirit, that once joined them,
The warring elements, unto one end-
The spirit which to this great people came
As leader, as its own father and its king?
Vanished forever! All that now remains
Is a poor ghost that, striving against hope,
,,
Still dreams of winning back its lost possessions.
The state of Russia before the World War was described by
Joseph de Maistre as that of a frozen corpse which would stink
horribly in our nostrils when it thawed.

The power of love which governs heaven and earth is per-

ishable indeed. Its stream sometimes runs dry. No "evolution"
can guarantee mankind against this drying-up. We are no more
protected against drought in politics than we are against
drought in nature. But the "illimitable heart" by its illimitable
Revolution restores the free working of the power which gov-
erns heaven and earth. When Dante wished to give the finish-
ing touch to his pictures of the sins and virtues of mankind, he
apostrophized the power which moves the sun and the other
stars. He pointed to the equation between heaven and earth
which we have rediscovered for modern times, the equation
between human love and the rotations of the sky.
Heaven and earth are one. Christ has implanted love as
the primary moving force in man. The times of Frederick II
and Dante had the audacity to find one and the same prin-
ciple at work in heaven and earth, in human and astral bodies.
And today the physicists are finding one system of passionate
energies at work in the atom and in the universe. Niels Bohr
rlP~rr1hP~ thP nl".lnPt".lru cuct.Pm 'hr;.,.h;..,.,. t-h.o .,.,.,,..,..........,,. .... ~ ~-- ~£ ~---
e catastrophes and readjustments, as in a Liliputian solar
1.
mlutions do nothing but readjust the equation between
power and social order. They come from the open and
~n under the open sky. They bring about the Kingdom
d by force, and reach into the infinite in order to reform
nite.
us we have found out, for history and society, the im-
rit fact that open, public, and private are three different
~ate states for mankind. Unless it is open, no human
r personality is proof against the demons of life. No con-
[on can stand fast which has not sprung from war or
1tion, which has not come from beyond public law or
:e pleasure. Political order is not meant for happiness or
ill life or the greatest happiness of the greatest number.
is the cant of public-minded privateers who know noth-
f the outdoor life of the pioneer, beyond good and evil,
1 by the angels and demons of love and fear.
volutions come as a positive effort when the fear of a
lete breakdown of order preys so terribly on the bowels
~n that only a great courage and a great love can open
ay to a new equilibrium of powers.
A NATION'S RELIGION.

e difference between politics and religion, confused as they

>day; .can be re-stated simply by the distinction of public
,pen. At no time can any group exist without religion and
1ut public law. To reduce these two elements into one
ften been tried, and never will succeed. Public Law asks
itizen for obedience, religion for worship. Any group
politically its legal ruler; but it worships religiously the
.ng of a new path out of chaos.
e gentry of England, the princes and professors of Ger-
' the ecrivains of France and the Bolsheviks in Russia
>r were, revered by their respective nations as demigods.
worship bestowed on them as heroes corresponded to the
iar reli2:ion these demi2:ods stood for.
 The witness of these supermen bridged the gulf between
the natural man and the infinite by permitting him to take
on a definite character. Much has been said and written about
a nation's character. In most cases, I am sorry to say, the writers
take the character like a stone, a piece of nature. This nation-
alistic creed in fixed characters is charmingly defended by Mr.
Madariaga, the long-time member .of the League of Nations
Council. In his Englishmen) Frenchmen) Spaniards) the under-
1ying principle is the eternity of a national character. The
inevitable answer to this national fatalism is the "Revolt of
the Masses," so ably described by Mr. Madariaga's fellow-
countryman, Ortega y Gasset. How could it be otherwise? A
man who believes in fixed types should not groan when living
men do not respond. I know that the average psychologist
thinks he is delving very, very deep when he says that French-
men are democratic, Germans obedient, and that the English
have a natural liking for aristocrats. But is this not poor psy-
chology? Is . it not intolerable for any human being to feel
himself condemned once for all, by the mere accident of birth,
to a fixed character? In the field of political or moral values
we are all competitors, all of divine nature, all changeable and
transformable. But we are "nationals" because we are men,
capable of feeling gratitude and of responding to this feel-
ing. Thinking and thanking belong together. As long as we
have reason to be grateful we shall always respect and repeat
the reasoning of our elders. A nation never forgets its interval
in the open, between fear and faith, hate and love; for in it
this certain section of humanity came into contact with God.
If anyone paves a road into a new love, a new faith, a new
governing power, he becomes the legislator of the revolution.
He vanquishes the fear of hell and disintegration: "They have
knocked at all the doors that led nowhere, and the only one
by which they can enter, and for which they searched centuries
long, opens suddenly." (Proust.) Since he seals this new cove-
tlant between the Creator and his frightened and fearing crea-
tures, he establishes a new faith and a new order of things.
'inrP thi~ nr£l~,... ;"' ..,....,. .. J....,,...,,..,.-1 --- ---- ~
t very often takes a long time to make the new way prac-
~ for every-day work. However, the abolition of fear
les all practical action. For the creator of a new heaven
new earth transforms the people. And in return his own
becomes a severed caste and governing class; his social
on becomes a church-like institution for· his country.
~ prince, the gentleman, the scholar, the minister-they
taught the Germans and the English when they were
tldent how to pray so that they might be heard. The
la of this prayer becomes the secret law of the land, the
:ore of the nation's language, and makes the use of any
t1 political vocabulary impossible. It produces a kind of
nity .
~ German language in i 649 or i 688 was so full of "Ref-
ion," of chorales and the Lutheran Bible, that when a
[an tried to find the reaction of German public opinion
>mwell and William III he was overcome by disappoint-
To no revolution did Germany react so little as to the
h. Even today, in the vocabulary of German political
1ge the political concepts of England stand like foreign
;, unconnected with the native tradition, whereas "cava-
md "feudal" are high praise in a German mouth. This is
se the British Revolution came too early to find a door
The love of th~ Reformation had not yet died down.
~ronde in France was much more dangerous in its imi-
9£ the Puri tans.
lay, the same French nation cannot swallow the Russian
ution: they are si_mply too near their own great revolu-
y past. Nobody can think of Poincare and Stalin, Cle-
~au and Lenin, as contemporaries. They live on different
:s, as far apart as Venus and Neptune. And this is cer-
no quibble, but a serious attempt to explain the depth
.ability of our political religion or our religious politics.
man is a European who has not been educated by cer-
hurch-like institutions in his own country, institutions
d once and forever by a revolution which teaches him
hope, and love, but mainly love. The languages of
.. ~ .......... ~ ........ ,,.......+ ............ "'- .. ..t:l"V";"1;C"I .. ;,... S:rtir-.+.C'I ............... ,....~ ........ ,.... .... .: ..... ..,..... ......... ,. _ _ _ "_: _ _ _ _ £
a certain side of the Christian faith, used by a certain political
class in a certain section of the continent.
The successful creation of a new political language by a
new class, in a new section of the continent, is called a Revolu-
tion; and the territory within which it succeeds and the people
whom it transforms are the components of a nation. Nations
are the products of Revolutions.
Each nation depends upon a leading class, which from its
inspired stand in the open danger and open warfare of revolu-
tion becomes the governing class in public law and the model
of private life. The Bolshevik party in Russia, the religious
party in Germany, the parliamentary party in England, the
civic party in France, are not fractions of an existing nation,
but the raison d'etre of the whole.
EUROPEAN DICTIONARY.

In accordance with this rule, no country's political grammar

:an be literally translated into that of any other. A group of
.nstitutes from America and various European countries re-
:ently compiled a dictionary of political science. The method
t followed was simply to ask each national group to contribute
m article on each subject: Italians, French, Germans, and
~nglish were to work out a series on State, Government, Na-
ion, Parliament, etc. Each group worked and kneaded those
>0or words in its own fashion, according to the predilection
>r the indifference of its own nation toward each one.
But these political words are more than scholars' terms; they
ie at the heart of a nation's becoming and making. There is
to reciprocity between "nation" in English and "nation" in
'rench, nor between "civilization" in Italian and in German.
~ system of European political language can never be based
n the meretricious superstition that these words can go
':nough an international clearing-house. They are the minted
old of a nation's treasure. Let us give some examples:
AN ENG;LISH FRENCH RUSSIAN
rated Countrified Civilized Electrified
Commonwealth Nation Soviets
Christian Every man Every individual Every body
trates Commons Intellectuals Communists
der Pulpit Tribune (platform)
Gentleman Citizen Proletarian
Old New Functioning
~esinnt Public-spirited Grand
al principle Public spirit Esprit
iVohlgeboren Elite Quality
lntellectuelle
!meineMann The poor Les Illettres Quantity
,tant Whig Liberal
ter, Dr. Minister, member Ecrivain
<eit Common sense Bon sens
Equity)
: (==Duty) Right I dee Function
rnrat M.P. Academicien
;eehrter Dear Sir Cher ami Tovarich
r William (comrade)
;enhaft Righteous Bon Efficient
scientious)
er ("Rae') J.P. Legion d 'Honneur
World Nature Society

ie vocabulary of High in German and of Low in English

:reated a network of derivations. Hoheit, Hochwohlgebo-
leutselig, he·rablassend, Hochachtungsvoll, Hochgemut,
lgeehrt, should be set off against Low, Low Church, Lower
;e, common sense, minister, ministry. Or the German group
1d Mut (Ubermut, Grossmut, Demut, Armut, etc.) against
~nglish "quiet," "calm," "discreet," "demure," "reserved,"
~tc.

te positive sense of "Hochschule" in German contrasts

the negative sense of high-brow, high church in England.
~rman boy is recommended as "highly" gifted; in Eng-
he does better if he has "common sense." And the French
tage has still a third creed. The French, being above all"
iduals, translate "common" by "good." All the English
1ounds of "well" or "good" are of French origin. In 1789
was published in Paris the little Code of Human Reason,
arbeu du Bourg, which says, "Man needs at least three
s for his happiness: Health, common sense, and a clear
conscience, and man needs nothing but three things: Health,
common sense, and a clear conscience." But in French it runs
"le bonheur requires bonne sante, bon sens, bonne conscience."
The Frenchman has bon sens and a bonne conscience. But
good sense and common sense are very different. Luther would
never have permitted himself to call anything in his own sinful
,elf good. Luther's conscience was pure~ genuine; a gentleman's
motives had to be based on the common weal.
Some words have invaded the European world without keep-
[ng their national stamp because whenever an institution was
ierived from one particular country the rest of Europe took
)Ver the terms and names for its functioning in a mechanical
tnd superficial way. "Republic," "revolutionary" and "na-
:ional" are French; "supremacy," "sovereignty," and "Ph.D."
tre German; "parliament," "country" ai:id "local government"
tre English.
The dictionary will tell you that most of these words are
~atin. "Sovereign" was invented by a French thinker. "Su-
>remacy" occurs in Henry VIII's "Act of Supremacy." Why,
hen, are they German? And are not "Country" (comitatus)
md "republic" simply international? Parliament is a French
vord translated from the good old German "sprakka," i.e.,
·olloquium; but the Germans despised parliaments, the Eng-
ish believed in them.
Any number of such misunderstandings could be cited. Our
ist. on the word "nation" is a most confusing example. This
V"ord, which our statesmen are fond of pulling like an organ-
top, sounds a different note in every country. Diplomats
hould be required to say,. when they use it, whether they are
peaking French or Russian or English or German.
Each of these European languages can be heard anywhere
tl Europe: they are exchanged freely among the different
ountries. There are Catholics in Germany, Tories in England,
oyalists in France, and the "spez" in Russia, to speak the pre-
evolutionary language. To give one good example, the Royal-
•ts in France went so far as to preserve for a century the old
rersailles pronunciation of the word King, calling him not
n the days when the language of Versailles was the standard.
['he later revolutionary languages also invade the precincts
the older European stocks. Thought jumps lightly over all
1tiers. Communists are everywhere, Fascist "shirts" are
rywhere. The same was of course true of the Jacobins in
o, who could be found everywhere, and of the Conserva-
~s after 1815, wh<? reacted as the Fascists are doing today.
the sake of decency the Jacobins turned "Liberal," and as
,erals they conquered a world which. had been closed to
m as long as they were called J acobins. The pietistic affili-
. which the Whigs, the gentry, and their ministers had on
Continent were no stronger than the friends the Lutherans
in England in the seventeenth century. At that time
heranism was so much of a uniting force that even Henry
I thought of joining its League. "It is not improbable that
fate of Henry VIII's second wife, Anne Boleyn, was sealed
:-Ienry's failure to gain for his second marriage the endorse-
lt of the Wittenberg faculty."
; it not strange that within a year or two, any national up-
val born of truly revolutionary ambition can find support-
ln every country?
: is a fact, though an incredible one to the superficial demo-
' that Mr. Everyman is by no means necessarily on the side
emocracy in these processes of political infection. Dictators
nonarchs have supporters quite as ready and quite as <le-
t, when the time is ripe. "Democracy" has no surer ap-
1ch to ·the masses of men than the other three forms of
!rnment. Each form .seems, strangely enough, to express a
ular longing. The German civil law, the English Common
·, the French laws of nature, the Russian laws of Lenin,
~ all welcomed with fierce enthusiasm.
he forms of government are more than the superficial garb
ertain office-holders. At least for the Europe of modern
~s, they are the flesh and blood of a particular body politic.
country which produces the new form is given to it heart
soul. It must let some adherents of the pre-revolutionary
:r survive, it is true (Catholics, Nobles, Aristocrats, Bour-
io:\· h11t .n.n t-ho THJ...,....ln. ; • .., ,.,...,...,.,..._~w•~ ~CI:-~-"- _L ____ L _ _ 11 ·'
ligious energies of the nation. This process reaches the popula-
:ion of the whole country. Everybody is conscience-stricken,
:or everybody shared in the "grande peur," and by that shock
Nas prepared for a break-up of his inner being. Monarchy or
tristocracy or democracy are poor terms to define the power
,vhich so deeply ploughs the clods of a nation and kneads the
:lay of man into a new image of God.
BIONOMICS OF WESTERN MAN.

This totalitarian character of the Revolutions we have

tudied obliges us to insert them as stages in the natural crea-
ion of mankind. Such Revolutions carry on the process of
:reation. Thus political history ceases to be outside nature:
nan and the other forms of creation are closely akin, with the
;reat difference that man was not created a hundred thousand
ears ago, but is being made before our eyes.
Men are reproduced, regenerated and physically influenced
'Y the great Revolutions we have already observed. The Euro-
1ean nations did not exist in iooo. Most of them were shaped
1 1500. Today they are well-known to all of us, some of them
lready in decay, or reorganization, but certainly all of them
ransient. What existed before they were born? Or shall we
1y that the Revolutions did not really create them, but only
uilt a kind of well-kerb around each nation's most particular
ualities so that they might flow and come forth forever?
In each case, it was the revolutionary setting of the nation
rhich enabled it to make its contribution to the world at large.
:ivil government, parliamentarism, democracy, planning, are
eveloped in one country as an ultimate end, whereas all the
thers can use it as a thing of relative importance. When
arents, for example, compare Russia and her terrible suffer-
1gs with France or America, they thank God that they need
ot bring up their children in Russia. The Roosevelt New
ieal is less painful than the Piatiletka. The novelties of the
rench Revolution were introduced into England or Germany
ith less murder and warfare than France had to undergo.
ut we can be sure that without the French Revolution, Eng-
y its Revolution of 1848. The New Deal and the devalua-
of the dollar are unthinkable without a preceding Bol-
ik Revolution. The Great Revolutions are eccentric, they
gerate, they are brutal and cruel. But the life of the rest
1e world is 'regenerated by their outbreak. It may seem
)tful who gains more, the revolutionized country or its
aers. One thing is certain, the old forms of civilization,
iating, their circulation clotted, are regenerated by the
~r of the new form. Life is regenerated in the rest of the
d whenever a new form joins the older ones.
Jt that the older forms become superfluous. A partisan of
lsm thinks, of course, that democracy is doomed, as the
als bet in 1830 that the House of Lords in England would
>pear within ten years. But the House of Lords exists,
~s govern, and French democracy will exist in 1940 or
. Perhaps the addition of a new form even relieves and
the older forms of a part of their burden. They recover.
archy in Germany experienced a regeneration after the
)leonic ·wars, and the regeneration of the English system
1815 is well-known.
1e biological secret of eternal life can, perhaps, be formu-
thus: Lest the old kinds die or stagnate, a new kind
ches off from the tree of life. By reason of this flowing
. of life into new forms the forms already existing are able
Lrvive. The revolutionary creation of one new kind per-
the evolution of the older kinds.
l our statements thus far are based on a short period of
hundred years. It is dear that we must try to test them
e light of a longer period. The possibility of reproducing
on the larger scale of a great national revolution is in
a paradox. The rotation of government from Luther to
n, from monarchy to dictatorship, is no more than one
·vation in a limited field.
e must try to see more clearly the safeguards developed
i vilization in the Christian Era. We shall test our results
e revolutions of the preceding five hundred years.
the same rotation of the forms of government, the same
.... : ......... 1 ..... - .• ~C --1~-·~1--~--'" --- £ ________ • __ • __ - 1 •. 1 . .1
t-can be stated for a second period, the observation will
e outgrown the status of accident and blind chance.
:i the midst of our present life, one old layer has proved
~£ long-lived. The Roman Catholic Church in Europe and
erica is quite a remarkable reality even today. We saw at
very beginning that the Russians, being of Greek Orthodox
d, are the first non-Roman nation to start a world revolu-
. Bolshevism and Catholicism are the only world-wide
tnized moral powers today. In order to estimate the chances
3olshevism, we must assess the chances of the Catholic
rch. So far we have done no more than to look at the
,tern World in its "Modern World" home. But there is
a media:val world, Italy and Austria; and to understand
rl, we shall have to deal with Spain and Prussia as well.
r then shall we be equipped to deal with the New World.
he last chapter of the second part will consider the Revolu-
in the New World. Contemplating the American promise,
hall land again in the present world of Communism and
Ltorship. But in coming ba~k to the present day after a
ur through the bionomics of European history, we shall
aps have illuminated the great question of tomorrow, the
)duction of mankind.
 A SECULAR CHRIST
;wings His axe after the \\Torld \Var. Crux ergo ha:c ipsa crucifigenda est.
next-can be stated for a second period, the observation will
have outgrown the status of accident and blind chance.
In the midst of our present life, one old layer has proved
itself long-lived. The Roman Catholic Church in Europe and
America is quite a remarkable reality even today. We saw at
the very beginning that the Russians, being of Greek Orthodox
creed, are the first non-Roman nation to start a world revolu-
tion. Bolshevism and Catholicism are the only world-wide
organized moral powers today. In order to estimate the chances
of Bolshevism, we must assess the chances of the Catholic
Church. So far we have done no more than to look at the
Western World in its "Modern World" home. But there is
also a medi~val world, Italy and Austria; and to understand
them, we shall have to deal with Spain and Prussia as well.
Only then shall we be equipped to deal with the New World.
The last chapter of the second part will consider the Revolu-
tion in the New World. Contemplating the American promise,
we shall land again in the present world of Communism and
dictatorship. But in coming back to the present day after a
detour through the bionomics of European history, we shall
perhaps have illuminated the great question of tomorrow, the
reproduction of mankind.
 A SECCLAR CHRIST
ngs His axe after the \\'oriel \\'ar. Crux ergo /l{l'C ijJsa crurifigenda ('Sf.
 PART TWO

01\f THE ROMAN EMPIRE TO

AMERICA
The Clerical Revolutions
A MEDL£VAL CHRIST
A ~fEDL£VAL CHRIST
 CHAPTER NINE

The Roman Emperor Without His Empire

lVinces or Nations?-ImperiaJ Pa1ace or Local Manor?-The Last Song on
~ast Judgment (Dante AJighieri)-All Souls: The Christian Democracy of
,ast Judgment

PROVINCES OR NATIONS?

\1ALLY, WE TAKE FOR GRANTED THE EXISTENCE OF SEPARATE

)ns with boundaries, customs, currencies, armies of their
. Yet during a great revolution these boundaries seem to
)pear, and the right of nations to a separate existence is
d in question. The world unrest of today, caused by the
: revolution of the World War, should again bring home
s the truth that the nations of Europe are rather short-
.: when Austria has vanished from the map, it dawns upon
iat the great powers themselves are temporary. Not one
em existed in the year 1 ooo. It took three more centuries
·e Italy, the first of the modern nations, came into being;
it' was not until 1500 that England, Germany, France,
ia, Spain, Poland, were moulded to a recognizable degree
"nations."
te nations of the Western World were called into being by
1undred years of clerical revolution. In those days the
;ies of man's political faith expressed themselves in re-
1s language. But man is the same in all ages. How slight
the solidarity of our race if the centuries before 1500
simply a relapse into barbarism, and made no contribu-
to the political progress of modern man! The clerical
i of Christianity's struggle for life is as simple and lucid
.... "'i..:~-·-~--~- - .1 .. ~
 modern times. Conflict, despair, faith, pride, humiliation and
fulfilment, the six notes of every revolutionary keyboard, are
equally perceptible in the alleged darkness of the Middle Ages.
The outcome of that half millennium, the creation of articu-
late nations, is so definite and so important that we may as-
sume it had had inspired leadership from the beginning. The
aversion of old-time Protestants toward the medi~val order
does not excuse the civilized world today in overlooking our
perpetual dependence on the forces that were set in motion
a thousand years ago. The age that produced the great and
original musical innovation of counterpoint, the basis of musi-
cal harmony as we know it and the underlying principle of all
modern art, that built the castles and cathedrals by methods
of transportation unknown to antiquity, that invented the
drainage system of our lawns and meadows, had a latent energy
at its disposal which may well make us jealous.
All the more curious, in view of this vitality, is the geography
of lOOO A.D. Scotland was Caledonia; "Britannia" could still
signify that part of the island lying west of a line drawn from
the Isle of Wight to the Isle of Man. Naples and southern
Italy were cut off from the rest of "Italia." "France" was a
small part of Gaul; three quarters of Spain centred around the
Moslem caliphates; and the frontiers of the Roman Empire cut
right through inodern Germany. The lands of the old Roman
Empire suffered from disintegration. For the sake of peace and
. 9rder they called forth a new spirit. The result was that Roman
provincials became citizens of vast new empires and the static
lands of old were transformed into the great nations of the
modern world.
IMPERIAL PALACE OR LOCAL MANOR?

The external conditions of life in Western Europe in the

year lOOO A.D. can perhaps best be described by two negatives.
First, the Western World was no longer united, as in C~sar's
day, in an empire of thousands of cities; there was a nominal
emperor, but there were no cities to build his empire upon.
And second, the modern nations of Fnrrm~ rJ;rl ~~-- ---~-L- Tl
 ~ ••• Arezzo ••••••••• - '
I Ht nLl:JKIM:) WAY I0 ......_ ••o ..
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Bo/09"'//
Xth Century
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THE RUMP OF THE ROMAN WORLD
rope as a whole was split by tribal differences into innumerable
particles.
No nation, no cities, yet an emperor, was the paradoxical
situation a thousand years ago. Since an emperor already ex-
isted, the obsession of the last thousand years has been to build
cities. Countless words have been derived from the Latin
"civitas" to express this homesickness of Europe for the lost
cities which had once flourished on her soil. Citoyen, Civiliza-
tion, City (Citta del Vaticano), Civil service, the Italian word
civilta (culture, politeness, humanity), Civil lists, are offsprings
of a permanent longing to re-endow the Western World with
some kind of citizenship.
The unique experiment of the Western World consists in
regenerating a former world. Not a change in quantity, but a
change in quality, is the content of these thousand years of
revolution. The Great or Perfect Year of Revolutions is full of
attempts to recivilize a given world.
The result is, among other things, the moqern nations. Na-
tions have taken the place of the ancient city or polis. The
word politics or policy signifies today the tendencies of na-
tional government, even though "politik6s" is the adjective of
polis, which means town, urbs. Whenever we speak of policy
today, we move in the sphere which has transformed the classi-
cal city-state into a world-wide institution. The nations are the
cities of today. Nations covering vast continents are the right-
ful heirs of Civilization, because the empire was recivilized,
step by step, by a series of common and interdependent acts
of city-founding.
The first attempt of recivilization was an attempt to build
the whole Occident into one city, and to this city was given
the name Jerusalem. The re-founder of the Ron1an Empire,
Otto I, is represented on a liturgical vessel of the tenth century
which bears the inscription Jerusalem. visio jJacis. From this
we learn that an emperor, a thousand years ago, did not repre-
sent pre-eminently the power of this world. He was considered
the state witness of a world beyond. In a world of scattered,
continental tribes, ·who lived surrounded by inhospitable
ndly aspect of the old Roman Empire, embracing the shores
:he Mediterranean, had completely changed. The Empire
a remembrance and a desire. The emperor, as an institu-
l, could not be explained by the existing economic or social
mization; he stood in open contradiction to this organ-
[on of society. The figure of the emperor stepped into this
Id like a stranger, and by its strangeness unleashed an un-
~d-of cycle of Revolutions, whose vital powers equal the
:esses of creation which we know in other realms of nature.
:he stepping-in of a foreign principle, an absolute claim, a
er belonging to past and future, the inhabitants of Europe
~ created into one city. We used above the equation of
s with the particular nation. We were wrong. It was Euro-
1 civilization as a whole which was called upon to represent
idea of the ancient city-state! The civilized nations are
>rs of one city.
he concept of a universal civilization opposing a multitude
1cal economic units was the emperor's gift to the European
~s. Unity and E1nperor were synonyms in 1000. Social
lges have diluted Empire into Civilization, but Unity is
the original capital invested in European history by the
)n of the emperor.
he emperor was infinitely greater than reality. Stars and
were the ornaments of his mantle; for the tent of heaven
his proper garb. Mankind, lost in the darkness of dissen-
and schism, received an image of the unifying sky in the
)n of the living emperor. He had no empire in the real
~ of an established order, at least not in the sense we give
e word empire today. There were no taxation, no officials,
·affic, no money, to make it possible for him to establish a
·al government. His rule was unique, not central.
is overlooked that the Church during its first millennium
iever called Una sancta, the famous term framed by Boni-
VIII in 1302. The singular would have had no meaning
period when Rome was only prima sedes, i.e., the first
ig 1nany sees; until the return of her King, Christ, the
·ch could not hope for visible unity on earth. The Church
'.:llrl ; ....... £lrt.rl1~£"~ .....,...,. .... 1.~....,,.1~"-·.:-- =- --·----- ______ __) -'
.obe where a martyr had shed his blood. Her Head was in
1

'.eaven. On earth the duty of maintaining visible Uniqueness

1d Unity belonged to the emperor. The popes of the first
illennium refused steadfastly to be addressed as "universal."
Without visible centralization, Unity had to be represented
r a continuous effort and movement of the emperor and his
my. The Roman emperor of the year 1000 had no permanent
pita!. The Holy Roman Empire was without a capital to
i very end in i8o6; the emperor had to live on the land. His
~rgy moved with the imperial court, army and clergy being
s only central government. The clergy, having no family nor
•Use of their own, were as movable as the young knights and
ldiers. The real life of the most Christian Apostolic emperor
ntradicted sharply all his universal claims. It was local. Taxa-
m was unimportant as a source of revenue. He had certain
5 estates, palatia, which gave him such and such a number
daily services, each "service" comprising fifty pigs, twenty-
e cows, ten measures of wheat, wine in Franconia, or beer in
~ less fortunate Saxony. The services from his palaces in
~ony would amount to 365 X 40 in the course of the year.
The budget of this emperor of heaven and earth was com-
sed of the daily services of a few score of local manors! The
'.norial background of the imperial power was its weak point.
Le spiritual superlative and the material diminutive were
ectly related to each other.
For the rules and customs of a lord of the manor were the
1 organization of the imperial court. Government was set
by making an ordinary country house the organ of public
ninistration. Happy times, when neither individuals nor
amunity existed in the way of our modern, atomized worldl
blic life was tribal organization in clan and army, private
was the economic organization of husbandry. We have seen
change of husbandry and the table in the dining hall of
manor into the table of the House of Commons, on which
Lord of the Treasury places his national budget. Five
idred years before, the emperors had to manage the budget
.n empire in the form of a manorial budget. The dignitaries
:he ernnirP UTPrP f-r.o'llh:~r1 ,..,.. ~~------'- r •
The pope and the bishops were the spiritual chaplains,
achers and professors, the columnists and librarians of a
rsal "House." The whole imperial family was an organ
vernment. Ministers, princes and princesses, marshals,
>erlains, and chancellors formed an indissoluble unity,
idivisible instrument of government. Every part of Eu-
was covered by manors with the same comprehensive
tic organization. The problem of production was solved
:orporating as many members as the division of. labour
ed, into a household. As in other ways, the pre-War
try preserved best the style of the church-castle-manor-
r Unit of older times. The view of a Transylvanian

t-castle recalls the complicatedness of a feudal domestic

zation. The history of fine art and of architecture has
red our outlook on the past, by preserving the word
·," especially for the rooms devoted to everything except
The medi~val husbandry embraced a large yard. Even
irt of the emperor was but one part of his big palace; a
would belong to it, but also stables, barns, workshops,
(S; and the assembly of his staff which lived around the
>Ok place in a great hall like the Homeric "Megaron."
n the hall of the palace the order at table gave an exact
· of the social hierarchy. The Last Supper of Jesus and
ostles impresses us as something special and peculiar in
isical time of big cities, with their disintegrated society.
ooo A.D., the Last Supper was not a contrast, but the
rig symbol of every day's experience. For in the palace,
iety at table was a living body for work, courtship, social
l government. The emperor's throne was not a foolish
ce of furniture, used three or four times a year; it was
d's high seat at table. His wife and the princes would
:ootstools next to him.
complete identity of the emperor's instruments of gov-
.ta! administration with every nobleman's household
ed the emperor's position. He was, after all, only the
thousands of house-lords. The economic system had to
inistered on the spot. Consequently the emperor could
r , __ ----- " . 1
...
nother ruled over the members of their household as abso-
utely as the emperor. Fatherhood and motherhood were eco-
wmic offices; "son" and "daughter" were titles signifying a
lefinite function in society. In so far as children or servants
vorked in the household, whether it was a duke's palace or
. peasant's farm, no emperor could interfere.
The uniqueness of the emperor was, then, hard to express
n a world of local government. Judge, administrator, manager
1f business-every house-father was that. Patriarchalism was
lOthing peculiar to the emperor. The local character of econ-
my spurred the emperor to special efforts. Otherwise, in a
rorld of thousands of patriarchs, the Unity of a City of God
ould not become visible.
The emperor's house had to include a set of persons lacking
i other households. Kings and dukes served at his table and
iey were not allowed to sit while the emperor took his meals.
Vith kings as his servants, the emperor was exalted. And in
ther ways his house was exalted beyond the houses of other
ffds. He shared his meals with the highest priests of the Cath-
lic Church. His companion was an archbishop or the pope
imself, and he could talk to him at table. Sharing his meals,
te clergy removed the emperor into the atmosplrere of clerical
id divine remoteness. A shroud of mystery surrounded the
nperor; wherever he went, he was a member of the clergy.
e was a prebendary of the cathedrals of his empire. In
ologne _the emperor and the pope, with their following, each
:cupied one side of the choir.
The first interest of the emperor was the Church and the
form of the Church. He was responsible for the prayers re-
ted and the masses sung in his empire. For more than two
nturies (800-1056) the emperors imposed on the Roman
urch the forms of mass, the ceremonials, the ritual, the creed,
d the prayers of their imperial palace and court. When
Jme was an Augean stable, the German emperors saved the
Lrity and growth of religious worship in Roman Christen-
1m. But in spite of the hopeless corruption of Rome itself,
e word Roman was the onlv svmhn1 nf 1n"';h, i ..... - ...,. L-1
_:i: __ : ..
 THE PALACE OF A MEDIJEVAL EMPEROR:
Ingelheim (reconstruction).

THE EMPEROR AS PROTECTOR OF THE HOLY GHOST, IN

THE FORM OF A DOVE. ABOUT 980
nother ruled over the members of their household as abso-
.utely as the emperor. Fatherhood and motherhood were eco-
"iomic offices; "son" and "daughter" were titles signifying a
lefinite function in society. In so far as children or servants
~orked in the household, whether it was a duke's palace or
L peasant's farm, no emperor could interfere.

The uniqueness of the emperor was, then, hard to express

n a world of local government. Judge, administrator, manager
1f business-every house-father was that. Patriarchalism was
tothing peculiar to the emperor. The local character of econ-
tmy spurred the emperor to special efforts. Otherwise, in a
mrld of thousands of patriarchs, the Unity of a City of God
ould not become visible.
The emperor's house had to include a set of persons lacking
1 other households. Kings and dukes served at his table and
1ey were not allowed to sit while the emperor took his meals.
\Tith kings as his servants, the emperor was exalted. And in
ther ways his house was exalted beyond the houses of other
>rds. He shared his meals with the highest priests of the Cath-
lic Church. His companion was an archbishop or the pope
imself, and he could talk to him at table. Sharing his meals,
ie clergy removed the emperor into the atmosphere of clerical
1d divine remoteness. A shroud of mystery surrounded the
nperor; wherever he went, he was a member of the clergy.
:e was a prebendary of the cathedrals of his empire. In
ologne the emperor and the pope, with their following, each
:cupied one side of the choir.
The first interest of the emperor was the Church and the
,form of the Church. He was responsible for the prayers re-
ted and the masses sung in his empire. For more than two
nturies (800-1056) the emperors imposed on the Roman
mrch the forms of mass, the ceremonials, the ritual, the creed,
Ld the prayers of their i1nperial palace and court. When
ome was an Augean stable, the German emperors saved the
irity and growth of religious worship in Roman Christen-
•m. But in spite of the hopeless corruption of Ron1e itself,
e word Roman was the onlv svmhol of nn1tv for ~ ,-1;...,;rl.,...rt
 THE PALACE OF A MEDI,,£\'AL E\IPEROR:
Ingelheim (reconstruction).

THE E\IPEROR AS PROTECTOR OF THE HOLY GHOST, J'.\'

THE FOR~I OF ..\ DO\'E. ABOt'T 9HO
mtinent. The emperor, though a German, had to move and
:t as a Roman.
The millennium of creation and revolution had to revive
l the dead words of the Latin language, one after the other,
resurrect the corpse of the Occident, as it had been in goo.
>r this continent, hopelessly divided, as it was, into small
ntons and valleys, was held together by one language. The
Ltin tongue comforted the souls of these natives of little
ices in the Alps, or the northern plains, by reminding them
the great past. But the sea, the ancient road of commerce,
ing in the hands of Moslems, Normans, Byzantines, Danes,
d the continent itself overrun by the frequent raids of Huns
d Magyars, the Latin speech was more like a reminiscence
unity and universality than an everyday fact.
i\ comparison will help, perhaps, to explain. When in 1869
~ American transcontinental railroad was finished, the work-
who met at the junction were Chinese coolies and Irish
migrants. This was a peaceful meeting. To understand the
ging of the Europeans for Rome, you have only to imagine
t Chinese and Irish had come with the support of their
?ective motherland~, and that parts of several Middle West-
States and of the Wes tern provinces of Canada were the
y regions free from invasion .
.. et us assume that these fragments had resolved to preserve
sacred name of the United States, that they were happy to
1g Greenland, thickly populated by means of her technical
ices, into their league, and that after a long campaign,
shington, D. C., had been saved by these far distant Green-
iers from being absorbed either by a de Valera or by the
,ps of a Sun Yat Sen II.
'hese few States, out of so many, would base all their ·poli-
on the old claims of Washington to be the capital of the
ted States. Perhaps in some of them, facing the dismem-
nent of their territory, the restoration of the union would
tinate all political thought for centuries.
thousand years ago, the situation on the Continent of
Jpe recalled somewhat the one we have outlined here. ThP
inable centre. For them, the last ruler of the Roman Empire
in the West had not been the little Romulus Augustulus whose
downfall in 4 76 figures in our textbooks as the beginning of
the Middle Ages. Happily enough, they enjoyed life without
even knowing the term Middle Ages. It had not been invented
by the Lutherans then!
Roman was the whole past millennium, and Charlemagne
was looked upon as but the last in the long series of emperors
of Rome. Charles' Frankish army, having conquered most of
the Western provinces of ancient Rome, was regarded as the
pillar of the Roman order of things.
"Roman" was the spell of unity that enabled the provinces
of Europe to go along as children born of one cradle, eternal
Rome, Roma <eterna. "Public" is a Latin word, because only
Latin could make Europe the field of one public law, one
public spirit and public opinion. This spell of "Roman" is fast
vanishing. We shall live, probably, to see its extinction or its
natural death. It is after all, not more than a background
before which the characters of the great national civilizations
have unfolded themselves. But they unfolded themselves by
translating something general, something that had been Roman,
into English, French, Italian, etc. The nations of Europe gave
a, particular answer to a general appeal. But nations cannot
build up a centennial memory without institutions. The appeal
could only become real and permanent through an institution.
_The permanent appeal for regeneration was conveyed and en-
shrined in the Catholic Church, with its life of adoration and
prayer. The prayers and adorations of this church were the
quintessence of antiquity. _
The total revolutions of our era were all answers given by
the will and the unlimited faith of the laymen to a gospel
preached by Latin tradition. We have regarded the answers.
We shall understand them better when the appeal is revoiced
directly. We have in fact listened to the dialogue between the
parents-Roman Empire and Roman Church-and their chil-
dren through all the centuries. We could not begin with the
exhortations of the parents because our ears are deafened bv
ticized we turn to the original language about our world,
~neral and universal destiny. All universal meaning and
~;ic requirements of life, a thousand years ago, were felt
'pressed in the name Roman. Our own remembrance of
>rld of free trade of our pre-War days, now relapsing into
~er of tariffs, passport regulations, immigration quotas
.I kinds of barriers, sub-divisions and sectionalism, can
find its own likeness in the situation of a Roman empire
had lost its hold over the earth, but still conveyed to
ody who thought and fought politically, the two motives
ty and universality.
lstory of the world can only be based on these two ele-
of unity and universality. No nation can plan or restore
md prosperity without facing the question of what must
. united in spite of antagonism or seclusion, and what
be universal in the future, in spite of territorial or con-
1 particularities.
lend of mine once tried to discover the unum and uni-
of the future. What is going to be the world-wide unity
~ children? It seems as if it must be something in the
of an economic unity. My fr.iend found his suggestion
>rated by the fact that Christians today dream of the
ancta" alone, dropping the word ecclesia (church), to
"una sancta" originally belonged. That omission, he
forecasts a future when society, not church, will be
livers~l City, the "Una sancta," the "city without a
' of Revelation, Chapter 2 1, 2 2. Many sects, many
many races, many ways of education and self-expression,
~ unshakable bondage or freedom of economic organiza-
LY remain for us in the future. The various creeds and
nations and national beliefs will be small parishes in a
'ide economic society.
e beginning of European history, the opposite propor-
~tween Church and economy prevailed. Economy was
lry,-something local, parochial, narrow,-split into
of atoms. Christianity claimed universality and unity.
eat ocean of creed and an archipelago of economic
. I
 This unity of creed was the necessary condition of any gen-
eral experience, because work and labour and capital were spe-
cial, fixed to the soil. \Vhen men were summoned to join in a
common purpose, a general effort, they could understand only
a Roman effort, a Roman purpose, because they knew that
unity and universality had existed once before in the form of
Rome.
Church and economy have changed their places during the
last thousand years.

A.D<General : Chu~c~ ,,Ec.9nomy

~
General

1000 1938 A.D.

Particular : Econcfr:y~ ''

Church : Particula
But this scheme conveys a wrong idea unless we take account
of the steady march of the nations from the old situation into
the new. We have to add to our scheme two arrows hinting at
the movement, the revolutions which obliged the nations to
move on two levels. The universal church becomes more and
more particular in her operations; economy becomes more
and more universally organized. We still pray for One Catholic
Church. The real trouble of the future will be, whether we can
pray for it sincerely or not. It is true that for ten centuries the
nations carried both visions, the vision of local rights and pri-
vate property, and the vision of a universal realm of peace.
·Private property is being attacked today on the same ground as
the unity of faith. Both ideals are imperilled. Bolshevism is
radical enough to make the church a private affair for the in-
dividual, and property the public affair of the community. But
the question is not dependent on any subjective theory about
Marxism. It is an issue for any government which subsidizes
industry, taxes private educational institutions, propagates po-
litical ideas, or repopulates its deserted villages with self-subsist-
ing homesteads.
The same question is put to us constantly: how to balance
local interests and the universal welfare of humanity? Our
..,..,.F'.r'lt..£" ............ -- .._, _____ - • ~' • 'I
e try to do now. The march of the nations is always mov-
towards a two-fold goal. Every stage of this campaign was
<.ed by a new compromise, a new covenant of the children
aphet with God. Every time, the covenant was declared
~d and inviolable. Every time, a part of Christianity found
last covenant most unsatisfactory and stated a new one,
ucing a new order of society, a new type of man, a new
of life.
an is but a brute when he does not struggle for both ends
ltaneously. The dualism of liberty and particularity, on
iide, and unity and universality, on the other side, is what
~s man a man. Pitt renovating the English finances and
~theless plunging his country into appalling debts for the
>leonic Wars, is a good example of this double-edged char-
of man's struggle for life.
Le American Civil War did not pay, certainly not. Yet it
[nevitable because the equality of men was a universal
which men could not forget or suppress. The other side
~ medal was industrial revolution and it, too, was urgent.
~ain our ends by a strange dualism. If a man thinks of
·y or private interests only, he will fail in the long run.
1ank will go bankrupt, his children will become lazy; for
money is the highest good, why think of anything else?
~he public-spirited man who lacks a healthy shrewdness
~s own interests will fail as well. We walk very slowly on
arth, in a mutual interdependence of unitarian and uni-
duties and rights and particular and individual rights
uties.
ny people think of their interests primarily as rights, and
·eluctantly as duties. They do the same in public affairs.
enjoy the rights of a voter more than the duties of a
yer. They think they can do as they please; it seems not
tter. But after a time, duties and rights are revalued. A
uptcy, a war, a riot, an earthquake in the social world,
the scales and they cry for united support in their pri-
ffairs, and go in with their life and property for public
~SS.
 made less particular. Are we in earnest when we pray for a
universal church? Or are we on the road to a united economy?
When Luther abolished the hundred monastic "religions"
in Saxony, restoring one united religion and one common
fund for the church and the schools in each territory, he made
economy very much more general and universal than it ever
had been before. But his church became less universal. It
became at its best a national church, somewhat bigger, as we
have seen, than one particular State, and extending over the
whole body of a nation that comprised six kingdoms, 100
princes and innumerable High Magistrates; but the gains in
economic unity and the loss of ecclesiastical universality are
both unmistakable.
In England, the Anglican Church struggled hard to main-
tain a broader area than that of the Commonwealth. But it did
not succeed. Non-conformity spread. The Commonwealth be-
came larger than the Anglican Church. In the nineteenth cen-
tury, the concept Nation was accepted as the spiritual unit; the
economic reality embraced all civilized nations on equal foot-
ing; another half of the globe was treated as zones of interest,
colonies, spheres of expansion. In the economic confederacy
of liberalism, the colonial territories were the underdog. In the
Soviet-system, there is an attempt to make the despised colonial
ground the cornerstone of the social order.
The literary and political language of every nation is the
. result of a special balance between spirit and economy at a
certain period. Each expresses a decision on the proportions
between capital and faith. Each swept Europe in its own time
as the best expression for the right balance between individu-
ality (rights) and universality (obligations). And finally, be-
cause they all expressed a sincere disclosure of the human soul,
each took permanent roots in one of the provinces of Europe
and shaped this part by a great institution. Therefore, dif-
ferent as the European languages are, they are branches on
the same tree since the dualism of faith and wealth is the
problem of all of them. Without this dualism man is a mere
brute and denies his history. We can only feel at home, and
tlism is respected and revered and lived. The deeper
~ of civilization can be defined by referring to the an1 ..
of the word citizen. City of God and City of Durham:
of a place and citizen of a greater kingdom you must
u are a human being. Two allegiances are the secret
zation. Since the Russians are in their Restoration-
lOW and have joined the League of Nations, their faith
:kly take its seat among the previous creeds. It coexists
.er systems.
1ery modern man or political group a certain expres-
his dualism in the past or abroad can be a real power
le can visit, as a friend, the home in which this expres-
'10mething eternal was born, and come back from his
lrged and better equipped for his own two-edged strug-
fe.
~ST SONG ON THE LAST JUDGMENT (DANTE ALIGHIERI).

~an history is the sequence of these equations between

and particular, between local rights and federal gov-
it is a sequence as complete as a paradigm of word-
grammar. The oldest form of this equation is, on one
Emperor of Holy Rome marching on his laborious
ugh the Continent as the sole and universal judge,
:he other, the Lords of the Manor asking absolute
ncluding the vendetta, from their knaves, chaplains
lren ..
inder that before anything else the final judgment
te imagination of the Imperial period. A universal
.-that was·a political programme of truly world-wide
It would release men from local bondage and arbi-
rer. The more rarely the actual presence of the em-
ured a fair trial, the more passionately the picture
;al and efficient judgment was drawn by all the souls
ed for a definite redistribution of justice. Now, the
1uch a final and accomplished judgment was easily
d into a great system of thought and this system has
1ed from the earth and never wilL ThP honP nf ~
_.ast Judgment will always reappear, and \vhenever it is resusci-
ated it will make man the brother of the Holy Emperor.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of dispriz'd love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes ..
But that the dread of something after death,
puzzles the will.

~his old system is fully accessible, is so to speak still palpable,

1 a great work of art. The quintessence of the Holy Roman
'.mperor's mission in a weary world was condensed into a
1ajestic vision by the last great Ghibelline, the last believer
1 the emperors from the North.
The Divine Comedy of the Last Judgment was sung by
~ante Alighieri of Florence. He visits the eight circles of Hell,
1e mountain of Purgatory, then Paradise and the blinding
rightness of Heaven; and he dares to conceive for the first
me the great idea of Revolution. At the end of his poem he
tys that one and the same power moves the life of mankind
1d the life of Stars and Suns. Our actions and movements,
ierefore, when prompted by love, are near to the constella-
ons and revolutions of the celestial bodies. With this bold
iuation, Dante transferred and projected our deepest and
lOSt human experience upon the sky of the external world.
:e ·prepared the reapplication of the world revolution to
>eiety. For Dante made these revolutions of the stars the sym-
)ls of life, and their motivation identical with the passions
: our own life. No wonder that his century, the fourteenth, is
te century in which the main concept of this work, Revolu-
:>n, was first used by Italian chroniclers to draw a parallel
~tween heaven and earth, between the meteoric changes in
e sky and those in the political life of the Italian City-States.
Lit the rnost important feature of Dante's poem is that it bears
itness to the old time when the Sacred Emperor, marching
rough this world, still paved the road for God's Last J udg-
ent.
 THE APOSTOLIC EMPEROR AND EMPRESS
They are ushered in by the Apostles Peter and Paul and crowned by Christ. About 1008-09.
.e imperial form of the dualism pervading humanity is
nt and accessible to us in Dante's great poem, The Divine
~dy. This poem, begun in 1300, testifies to a much older
;m. The dualism for which the song of Hell, Purgatory,
leaven was conceived as a high dirge was the dualism of
. oman Empire during the tenth and eleventh centuries.
!mperors of the North, from Henry I (1002-24) to Henry
307-13) were the heroes of Dante. Much trouble has been
to show Dante's training in the Scholastic literature of
irteenth century. It is obvious that he lived physically in
ne of Giotto and Albertus Magnus; but what matter? An
1h country squire can live in flesh and blood in the same
with Mr. Stalin; but are they contemporaries in the real
of the word? For any important issue, they are not. This
:isely the situation of Dante in his day. Facing a changed
, he had to sing the Last Judgment so that the great
. when the emperors had acted as judges of Christianity
be eternalized in a work of art. As a simple outline of
's vision of the Last Judgment, we can say that he draws
from everybody's specific and particular existence to his
in the universe which lies beyond the visible organiza-
f earth. His Last Judgment applies the categories of
and universality to the Beyond, because earthly life is
)arochial, particular, fragmentary. He is obliged to trace
ody's destiny to its last judgment; it is the only way to
nen who are separated on earth. The realm of faith is
ly universal and unifying home for the scattered villages
tenth century. ·
orialism prevailed in the economic world. Dante him-
is true, already lived in the Free City of Florence, which,
hall see, passed successfully from the manor.ial unit into
,r economic concept. But he was exiled when the old
s of clannish tradition were driven from the town. He
rhaps the last great victim of this first step beyond the
nd tribes of imperial days! Dante was driven out by
lian revolution into the life of a refugee. He was made,
his theory than by his fate, into a Ghibelline, a partisan
~O'P nf th&:.l &>mn.A-rr.-reo f'l"r.~ 4-h,.. 1\.T~-'-L yy_ -·-- - 1•1
 THE APOSTOLIC EMPEROR AND EMPRESS
They arc ushered in by the Apostles Peter and Paul and crowned by Christ. About 1008-09.
he imperial form of the dualism pervading humanity is
ent and accessible to us in Dante's great poem, The Divine
.edy. This poem, begun in 1300, testifies to a much older
ism. The dualism for which the song of Hell, Purgatory,
Heaven was conceived as a high dirge was the dualism of
Roman Empire during the tenth and eleventh centuries.
emperors of the North, from Henry I (1002-24) to Henry
t 307-13) were the heroes of Dante. Much trouble has been
l to show Dante's training in the Scholastic literature of
hirteenth century. It is obvious that he lived physically in
ime of Giotto and Albertus Magnus; but what matter? An
ish country squire can Ii ve in flesh and blood in the same
i with Mr. Stalin; but are they contemporaries in the real
of the word? For any important issue, they are not. This
:cisely the situation of Dante in his day. Facing a changed
i, he had to sing the Last Judgment so that the great
d when the emperors had acted as judges of Christianity
t be eternalized in a work of art. As a simple outline of
~, s vision of the Last Judgment, we can say that he draws
~ from everybody's specific and particular existence to his
in the universe which lies beyond the visible organiza-
of earth. His Last Judgment applies the categories of
and universality to the Beyond, because earthly life is
parochial, particular, fragmentary. He is obliged to trace
Jody's destiny to its last judgment; it is the only way to
men who are separated on earth. The realm of faith is
ily universal and unifying home for the scattered villages
tenth century.
t1orialism prevailed in the economic world. Dante him-
. is true, already lived in the Free City of Florence, which,
shall see, passed successfully from the manor.ial unit into
er economic concept. But he was exiled when the old
es of clannish tradition were driven from the town. He
~rhaps the last great victim of this first step beyond the
and tribes of imperial days! Dante was driven out by
tlian revolution into the life of a refugee. He was made,
· his theory than by his fate, into a Ghibelline, a partisan
~<TP r..f t-ha omr..a~,,....""" C.,,.,,........,... '-1... ~ 1'.T ___ ._1_ TT
American Loyalist in 1790, a stranger to his time. He owed his
immortality to the immortal achievements of a Roman Empire
that lay between local feuds, local monasteries, local economy,
and the Last Judgment of the Universe. It is the first immortal
period of our past; in it we can experience the principle of
Church and economy in a form far removed from our own
situation and yet perfectly close to our own doubts and expe-
nences.
Dante looked on the emperor as the only legal vicar of the
terrors of the Last Judgment. On his campaigns in Italy, in
Poland, in France, in Burgundy, in Hungary, the emperor pro-
tected the widows and orphans, the poor and the weak, against
the local politician. The Majesty of his Sword stood in judg-
ment over the wickedness of local despots. The lord of the
manor had to tremble, because before the court of the emperor
the poorest serf could bring his complaint. The emperor wore
a mantle decorated with the galaxy and the sun and the moon
as symbols of his universality. With his mantle covering heaven,
the emperor's sword held together the local fragments of an
unarticulated Continent.
The old Romans had never liked the Continent. They had
organized the coasts of the Mediterranean. The ports of this
well-articulated sea had formed the highways of antiquity.
Antiquity had not known the rudder for steering a boat. But
it knew even less about mass transportation on land by me-
chanical aid. It was completely ignora~t of how to harness a
horse or a bull for haulage over a long distance.
The indefatigable march of the Emperor and his army was
therefore the only moving force for unity and universality. To
understand Dante's concentration on the cruelties and bless-
ings of the Last Judgment, we must think of the loneliness of
the clans and individuals who were threatened by the merciless
persecution of feud and vendetta, wandering from one country
to the next to find refuge. The sudden apparition of the em-
peror could suppress the vendetta, restore peace, establish se-
curity. Like lightning in the dark the emperor appeared to the
tribes in their local system.
r "I , • 'I
>ps of Rome had degenerated. Nobody doubted the fact
e papal succession to St. Peter. But it would be fatal to
. that this was a great comfort; for the Church of Rome
~otten and known to be rotten. Pornocracy, "pig-rule,"
~ians have called this squalid period of the papacy. The
; of St. Peter were despised by clergy and laity alike. No
.er that the emperors who succeeded in raising a Christian
for a march to Rome appeared as the true heads and
ners of the Christian Church.
e desires and longings of the time are expressed remark-
well on the golden bowl from the tenth century, which
produced on p. 492, the significance of which has never
pointed out because the finding and interpretation of it
f ~ather recent date. The legend on the basin reads:
salem visio pacis." In the centre is the Emperor Otto,
~g up a bottle for the oil of baptism and a dove, the sym-
f the Holy Ghost. Otto appears on a sacramental vessel
se only he can ,restore the Jerusalem of Eternal Peace .
.m is entrusted the Dove of Inspiration. Public Spirit, to
general force of democratic inspiration, centres in the
~or. What is certainly a blasphemy to us, is no blasphemy
ime of piggishness among the clergy, when the marching
of the empire was the only force for restoring peace. The
tg of the Holy Ghost in the hand of the emperor is a
ll deviation from orthodoxy, but a deviation in self-
:e. It is a real outcry for a force which can at least unite
niversalize life. This force has always been idolized by
.nd, and always will be. "When Otto III sat in judgment,
n groaned, earth boomed," sang a poet.
wonder that this emperor sought for the model of his
not in Roman history, but in the past of the Roman
h. The pagan C~sars did not attract him, the devoted
ian. Was he not rather the successor of St. Paul the
e? Was he not inculcating the Gospel in a clergy that for
rldliness was called "mundus," world, and in Christians
ittle faith that a man had to become a monk before he
be called "convert" and "religious." "Conversus" and
 Otto III ordered a statuette of St. Paul, perhaps the most
ndividual piece of art we have from his time. In an imperial
nonastery, Echternach, a master carved it and added, on a roll
n the hand of Paul: "Dei gratia sum id quod sum" -the proud
vord of the apostle: "By the grace of God I am what I am."
~ow, this "by the grace of God" was exactly the title on which
he emperors so strongly based their sovereignty. Otto went so
ar as to adopt St. Paul's formula from his letters, and to call
Limself "serous ]esu Christi."
It is true that when Otto III (984-1002) reformed the Holy
;ee and installed northern-born popes, first his cousin Gregory
r and later his teacher, Sylvester II, the reform itself, by exalt-
ng the bishops of Rome, was bound to weaken his own apos-
olic claims. Therefore he now called himself "servus apos-
olorum," seneschal, majordomo of the apostles. On the maps
1
£ the time the earth was shown divided into twelve sections,
ne for each apostle. The emperor, as the majordomo of our
. ord's twelve apostles, had to administer the apostolic inher-
:ance (see illustration facing page 501 ).
It was with deep feeling that the renovation of the Christian
:hurch was introduced. Sylvester was the first pope who called
imself "the Second," after Pope Sylvester, who had, according
J the legend, baptized Constantine, the emperor of the Coun-
il of Nic~a.
A renaissance begins where names forgotten for 700 years
re. brought back into man's ken. And the existence of a Pope
ylvester II suggested an Emperor Constantine II. Only, after
ll, Pope Sylvester I had converted the pagan emperor Con-
.antine to Christianity, while the pious emperor Otto III in
is zeal for the Church had himself installed Pope Sylvester II.
f o wonder that he felt himself superior to the pope. St. Paul
ppeared to Otto in a vision and strengthened him in certain
lans for reforms in Rome, against the objections of Pope Syl-
~ster. As Paul had preached, founded, reformed in Asia Minor
1d Spain, in Rome and Illyria, as a "free-lancer" of inspira-
on, as the faithful legate of the Holy Ghost, so Otto would
urry from Posen to Aachen, from Aachen to the south of
~ss earth as the dove had flown in Noah's day, after the
ffood of sin. A poet summoned the emperor "as a second
Lii" to clean the Augean stable in Rmne!
~ appeal to the authority of Paul was more easily con-
le because the eastern emperors and patriarchs of Con-
t0ple were given to playing up Paul against Peter. I shall
)n only one great example of this practice of the Orien-
ristians. To the second universal Council of Nic£ea, in
1e pope wrote a long letter in which his authority was
,ased on St. Peter. vVhen his legates arrived in Nic£ea,
:onceived how little interest Peter's authority would
among clergy who came from the oldest churches of
~ndom. They changed or forged, in the Greek transla-
he mention of Peter into a mention of Peter and Paul.
~reeks in answering did not mention Peter at_ all, but
their respect for Rome on the fact that St. Paul himself
aised the orthodoxy of the Romans! Whereas Peter gave
a monopoly, Paul was both Roman and universal, sweep-
<.e the Holy Ghost itself, freely over the whole earth.
us Paulus Romanus et non Romanus est/' "Paul is a
L and not a Roman," was the remark of one of the popes,

III himself. Thus the emperor's universal task was

;ized by his acting under the special auspices of St. Paul.
emperor was even called the vicar of God by his en-
tic chroniclers. Today, the theory of such a government
~rved in the rights of the only respected (though not
~) Apostolic Majesty, the "kiraly" of Hungary. This
jng got his name from "Karolus"-Charlemagne. And
mgarian Crown of St. Stephen en joys today all the ec-
[cal privileges of the Roman emperor in 1000, on Hun-
territory. Roman Cath_olic bishops and abbots, for ex-
may be appointed by the Crown, an incredible anach-
today, but an undoubted maintainer of unity in 1000;
.he Regent of a country that easily never will see a king
he "Crown of St. Stephen" still is the objective embodi-
f apostolic ruling. And all through the last thousand
I _,..., •
 time, when they saw, preserved in Hungary, that which pointed
to a pre-Gregorian Church of imperial reform.
ALL SOULS: THE CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY OF THE LAST JUDGMENT.

This universal power standing above local tyranny had to

be more than a naked sword and a merciless crushing force of
conquest. Dante's Last Judgment reveals its moral majesty by
showing all the tears and fears of a human heart under the
weight of true judgment.
The emperor's Pauline dignity, when it had to restore the
papacy and govern the Christian Church, could rely on an
army of monks who centred around the monastery of Cluny.
It was they who, for the first time~ wrote the idea of super-
local unity into the constitution of a monastic order, and, by
inserting a new day in the calendar, wrote the notion of uni-
versality into the hearts of the Christian peoples.
They united monasticism by imitating imperial centralism.
As the emperor had distributed public duties among the many
imperial monasteries, so did now the abbot of Cluny for spir-
itual purposes. Cluny incorporated all the "Roman" monaster-
ies which were reformed by it. The abbot of Cluny was the
only abbot, the other monasteries being ruled by friars, vicars
president. Cluny became a super-abbey.
For the first time in history space was conquered by the legal
personality of a corporation, scattered though it was all over
. _the empire.
The constitution of Cluny is the first trust, the trans-local
corporation. It was even attacked on that ground. In a venom-
ous satirical poem, the bishops ridiculed the "kingdom of
Cluny." But in the loose fabric of the tenth-century world it
was a great step forward.
One abbot of Cluny refused to become pope in Rome. The
monasteries carried the reform in spite of Rome's decay. And
the monasteries gave comfort to the layman, too. They in-
vented the·treuga dei,· the truce of the land. The liturgy of the
church was used to restore peace. The week of Easter, from
Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday, with Maundy Thursday and
day, Wednesday, a man was allowed to fight his kind. But
Thursday to Sunday, Cluny imposed abstinence from all
nee. Holy Week was epoch-making in that it divided life
l into peace and war, making peace and war definite,

shing their complete confusion; and ennobling the task

e common knight as a defence of God's peace. The ritual
k.ing' s coronation was extended to the knighting of every
~r of God.
t Cluny's greatest act was giving to mankind the day of
ouls. All Souls is a Holy Day celebrated by Catholics on
~cond of November, the day after All Saints.
ll Saints" represents the last feast common to Greeks and
ms, Orthodox and Catholics. Its celebration dates back to
inth century, two centuries before our period. 1 It is a day
Limph for the redeemed and victorious part of humanity.
he day of all those since St. Stephen, the first martyr, who
~ir deaths have opened the dark mystery of heaven to us.
and jubilation fill the day of All Saints.
Souls is a day of purgatory. The Church in 1000 is no
h of saints. It is a church of sinners, who by their blood-
re all involved in bloods·heds: pious bishops fighting in
iperial army, innocent children being biassed by vendetta.
Souls established the solidarity of all souls from the
riing of the world to the end of time, We learnt from the
Lpher of St. Odilo of Cluny, how Odilo conceived the
1
£ begging on the hill of Purgatory for all souls ever born
be born. The Ii turgy of the mass for the day is full of
shadows. He who has ever heard a Catholic mass· at a
tl should know that it is taken from the formula invented
lilo of Cluny, probably in 998, certainly before 1031, to
ate All Souls.
~ Empire, with all the apostolic majesty of one sacred
or at the top of the hierarchy, was a Christian democ-
~y a late ritual in Austria the corpse of the emperor was
d to be carried to the door of an abbey. The chamber-
~uentin, Les Martyrologes historiques du Mayen Age, pp. 366 ff., Paris,
lain ~who leads the cortege knocks at the door. A friar opens
the window and asks: "Who knocks?"-"The Emperor."-"!
know no man of that name." The chamberlain knocks again.
"Who is there?"-"The Emperor Francis Joseph."-''We do not
know him." Third knock, and the same question. After reflec-
tion, the chamberlain now answers: "Brother Francis." Then
the door opens to receive a comrade in the army of death, on
equal terms with all souls.
The first universal democracy in the world was a democracy
of sinners, united by their common confession of sins in ex-
pectation of the Last Judginent. That is why the members of
this democracy wore the uniforms of death. It was an army in
winding-sheets. The forms of this confederacy were first devel-
oped, not for a personal day of death, but for that general day.
From it, the ceremony was carried over to individual burial.
Oswald Spengler says in one of his deepest remarks that
every civilization sets out with a new experience of death. In
so far, Europe started with a new experience when All Souls
was added to All Saints. For it gave comfort to innumerable
people in the loneliness of their hearts to celebrate the truth
that death was universal and that all men would be rallied
at the Last Judgment. And they would actually spend two
thirds of their fortune to arm themselves against this last day.
I hope I have succeeded in overcoming our common notion
Jf the Last Judgment as a mere religious concept without prac-
:ical c~nsequences. In fact, it was a political agency of the first
mportance; it attracted the wealth of the people like a magnet,
Juilding up an immense property in the hands of a disinter-
~sted trustee, the Church.
And this confederacy was also democratic. In Dante's poem,
here are popes in hell and emperors in purgatory. From the
:omplicated structure of Society in his time, he drew his wires
o a common focus in the Beyond. All people had to be deeply
mpressed by the fact that they were equal in the sight of God.
t is the poet's and the artist's privilege to use his art like God,
o see, not with the eyes of the transient hour, but with the
ision of eternity. Dante's Divine Comedy is divine because it
1 1 . -
ut poetry and fiction and art are always a sequel to re-
Jn. Goethe's Faust translated the experience of Luther and
iis singing congregation to the unbelieving public of the
~teenth century. Dante, writing as a lost, an exiled, soul.
1e end of the imperial period, enables us, who are not con-
poraries of the eleventh century, to share the feeling stirred
.he introduction of All Souls in 998.
i All Souls, every Christian anticipated through the com-
l purgation of death, what we would call the final judgment
·orld history. He was changed into dust, a mere part of this
ing world. World was not "without end'' in 1000. "World"
an utterly unstable fog of blindness, vanity, insecurity,
s. Yet Odilo of Cluny discovered world history as a uni-
11 order and fact, when he ordered the whole religious
~rnity to pray for the liberty of "omnes omnimodo fideles.''
to that time, monks had prayed only for their abbey, their
jves, their friends, their connections. Odilo conjured up
~ad 2 the universe which lies between heaven and hell,
1een saints and sinners, waiting for our prayers, and which
ists of all those who have been, from the beginning of
Nor Id to its end.
he liturgical readings for All Souls emphasize the utter
~ht which is man. Man is like Job, like grass, like a shadow.
8-od thinks highly enough of him to fix His eyes upon him
to call him to judgment.
the.se prayers the idea of Judgment was called a privi-
"Last Judgment" conveyed more than terror; it revealed
's dignity, his claim not to be thrown into the fire like a
l, but to be judged. And is that not true? Is not a fair
ing the first human claim? Can we ask for more in this
of tears? It is true, man trembles at the idea of being
ed.
lll Souls" continues: "Spare me, because my days are
~ht." But the army of Christian soldiers marches with
istible faith before the Saviour who was their comrade,
is now their judge. The triumphant outcry, in the mass
gne, Patrolo!!ia. Vol. u2_ rn~R-
>r the dead on All Souls, runs: "I know that my R~deemer
veth, and I shall rise on the Last Day."
Liberty was promised to all souls, liberty, the great promise
E Revolution, is first heard in the Occident at All Souls. This
·y for liberty divides East and West, the Eastern church being
Le quiet church of holiness and adoration, Western Chris-
anity fighting for salvation and deliverance: "Free Thou,"
le Mass for All Souls beseeches Heaven, "Free Thou the souls
: all believers from the punishment of hell, from the deep
>yss, free them from the lion's maw. May thy standard-bearer,
:ichael, bring them into the Holy Light which thou didst
·omise to Abraham and his seed." "Visio pacis Jerusalem/'
:is the motto of the Empire. The vision of peace prom.ised
Abraham, the ancestor of Jerusalem, now appeared to the
rmy of the Dead.
The crowning hymn of All Souls is the "Dies irte, dies illa,"
song which has been translated into English more than one
mdred and fifty times. It cannot be translated; the words
~ated, the language shaped, in a real revolution of the human
art, are untranslatable. The mass being sung in Latin, the
1g of Thomas of Celano (1226) on the Last Judgment was
Latin, also. But Latin, which was then sung and prayed all
er the Continent in the form of plain chant, was a more
tural language for mankind than English or French today.
i All Souls, the priest used the real first and last language
our s~ul, which is before the division of song and speech.
te plain song of the mass also keeps alive the oldest of all
lths, that language is living and life-giving speech. This lan-
age is not to be found in the dead, soundless prose of our
[ly talk and chatter. We whisper; our language is a dead
mch of the living tree of speech. Souls dive into language
into their true element and where they dare commit them-
ves to the flood of sincere speech, there is no di vision of
guage, no Babylonian confusion of tongues. Where mind
l heart are fully represen~ed, mankind knows only one lan-
Lge. English psalms, French ideas, German chorales, Russian
:istics and diagrams-what else have they tried to do but
.,....,..,,.. ...................... .,.i__ -----~.L.-- _r"
ng power of all the great revolutions is what makes them
ting, creative, restoring. The imperial democracy of All
and the Last Judgpient attempted the same thing. The
:ong of the mass represents man in his deepest emotions.
~nows nothing of division. "The division of man" is the
: man. It was not William Blake alone who preached
1spel. Division has been man's ruin again and again. The
lrre} Dies Illa/' restored unity in a divided world, restored
union by singing and playing in child-like plasticity be-
Le Creator.
ugh the "Dies Irce" was written two centuries after the
tration of All Souls, it faithfully repeats words, ideas
1ociations which we find expressed in the verses of Odilo' s
phy. In our human world, when one faith pervades it,
'orks as an evolutionary force. It takes a number of gen-
ts to carry to perfection what the soul began to express
w outbreak of inspiration. Our pragmatic history-writing
rates the external evidence of contemporaneity. The
flower of a civilization springs up after centuries of
. Dante was no contemporary of the people who asked
, apologize ~o them before returning to Florence. It is
ly admissible, but necessary, to declare that the seed
1nted when the first revolutionary set out with a new
i the meaning of life and death. Since the year 1000 all
ave prayed the dies irce:
Dies irce, dies ilia
Solvet sceclum in f avilla
Teste David cum Sybilla.
Quantus tremor est futurus
Quando iudex est venturus
Cuncta stricte discussurus.
Tuba mire spargens sonum
Per sepulchra regionum
Coget omnes ante thronum.
M ors stupebit et natura
Cum resurget creatura,
; •• ,1:~--.1..: ---.L....--------
 Liber scriptus proferetur
in quo totum continetur
Unde mundus judicetur.
]udex ergo cum sedebit,
Quidquid latet, apparebit,
Nil inultum remanebit.
I uste iudex ultionis,
Don um fac remission is
Ante diem ration is.
Lacrimosa dies ilia
Qua resurget ex f avilla
judicandus homo reus,
huic ergo parce, deus.

Day of wrath, that (very) day

shall dissolve the age into ashes
our witnesses being David and the Sybil.
What a tremour is to he
when the judge is to come
everything strictly examining.
The trumpet spreading marvellous the sound
through the graves of (all) regions
shall force all before the throne.
Death shall be stunned and Nature
when shall rerise the creature
to him who judges giving answer.
Book written will be brought forth,
in which the whole is contained
whence the world is to be judged.
The Judge, then, when he will take his seat
whatsoever is hidden, will appear
nothing unvindicated will remain.
0 righteous judge of vengeance
the gift make of forgiveness
before the dav of accounts.
 Full of tears will be that day
when man shall rise again from his ashes,
to be judged, in thy court.
Spare him (for whom we here pray), 0 Lord.
prayers anticipate the inevitable, and by anticipating
~ate a field of force for liberty. Liberty is nothing but
ng of death into our lives. By anticipating death, we
vered from evil. Love, prayer, solidarity, sacrifices can
the process of purification. So-called world history be-
reality from the moment when All Souls began to
t every man.
r there is no time. In war people have lost control over
1.en it is that the wheel of nature grinds us in its turn-
.Ce restores to us the room for free action. But unless
r into this action an idea of the future, of final values,

:ion, our liberty will not be of any use. In anticipating

ms of death, Europe learned democracy, she learned
h.e learned Universality. All Souls is the cornerstone of
modern civilization.
lay of All Souls, proclaiming purgatory to be the stage
:>ntemporaries, has separated us forever from the jubi-
~ of the ancient church. In a minute correction, this
was expressed most strikingly by the Cluniacs: At
.me, everybody was happy in the experience of resur-
and evil itself was redeemed since God can make use
LS well as of good; in recognizing the restoration of
d, the old church sang: "O happy fault that produced
~eme1 !" 3 Cluny resented this slighting of our human

s Adam lay ibounden_

Bounden in a bond;
Four thousand winter
Thought he not too long;
And all was for an apple,
An apple that he took,
As clerkes finden
Written in their book.
Nor had the apple taken been,
The apple taken been,
Nor had never our Lady
guilt: the prayer "O felix culpa" was suppressed. 4 Losses and
gains in the life of the spirit are interdependent, so it seems.
Man grew up to a greater knowledge of his own nature when
he started the anticipation of the Last Judgment in his Great
Year of Revolution.
All Souls became a popular Holy Day. It made its way from
Cluny in spite of the conservative attitude of the popes. Some
inhibitions against it exist even today in the Roman practice
which tries to protect the day of All Saints and its claim to be
a feast of two days, including the Second of November. Long
before Papal Rome was able to regularize All Souls-a last
regulation was tried by the Pope during the World War-
the monks of Cluny flooded the Occident with an ocean of
masses on this day. The monks, in an alliance with the apos-
tolic majordomos of the Church, t~e great German Emperors,
educated the tribes of Europe in a faith of repentance and
prayer. This was done without the support of bishops and
popes. Ghibelline and Dantesque Christianity is a special
stratum of Catholic faith; this stratum is older than Roman
Catholicism in the modern sense. Protestants and Dante's Chris-
tians easily meet. They are not in a deadly opposition. The
very existence of the imperial period of Christianity prevented
-in Luther's days-the Reformation from destroying the unit ,
of our faith totally and forever. For Roman Catholicism con-
tained many more layers than popery against which Luther
raged, and especially a strong imperial and monastic admixture.
And in all later centuries, liturgical revivals like Anglo-
Catholicism and similar movements have freely used the treas-
ures of All Souls and of the Christian democracy of the Last
Judgment.
Blessed be the time
That apple taken was.
Therefore we moun singen
"Deo Gratias."
Quoted with spelling modernized, from Sloane Ms. 2595 (according to Bradly
Stratmann early fourteenth century) as printed in Early English Lyrics, E. N.
Chambers and F. Sedgwick, p. 102, London, 1907.
4 Cardinale Schuster, O.S.B., Liber Sacramentorum, Vol. IV (1a~o). o. Ao. and
I;-
very moment our field of free action is imperilled. The
War has destroyed it again. Where there is no choice,
no soul. When Dollfuss, the Chancellor of Austria, was
ately deprived of the comfort of the last anointment,
onfession and the solace of a priest were denied to the
of the German Purge in 1934, the World War revealed
ructive force as the end of a civilization. All Souls died
, because the Christian democracy of the dead and the
vas no longer real. Modern man believes, perhaps, in
r of birth. But he fancies that everybody dies alone and
Lially.
complete breakdown of a civilization that does not
Lte death is certain. Common sufferings create. Common
store. That is why the spiritual regeneration of Cluny
led "dona lacri marum ," the gifts of tears. A stream of
eansed the soil, long smirched by bloodshed, and the
f the former empire were inundated by a peace un-
in ancient Rome.
 CHAPTER TEN

Rome: The Revolution of the Holy See

Papal Court Against Imperial Palace-The Triumph of Old Age-The Eco-
nomic Revolution-Paul Helps Peter: The Technique of the Papal Revolution-
The Addressees of the First Revolutionary Document-Crusade and Scholasticism
-A Church Made Visible and Raphael's Greatest Painting-Anti-Christ

PAPAL COURT AGAINST IMPERIAL PALACE.

THE PALACE OF THE EMPEROR MOVED WITH HIS ARMY. WHERE

the army was not, the emperor's judgment could not become
a reality. This lack of permanent organization was the sore
spot of the whole system. It became intolerable when the army
showed itself unable to cover the whole area that longed for
peace and order.
The emperor's palace was not real for a great part of West-
ern civilization. The kingdom of Western France and of the
Anglo-Saxons in England did not obey his orders. But here
the local kings acted as vice-emperors; in other words, they
claimed a sacred and ecclesiastical function like the apostolic
majesty at the centre. Regna, kingdoms, were sub-divisions of
an ideal empire. These anointed kings did not deny the po-
tential uniqueness of the Empire. They were all in favour of
a form of government which gave to the head of the army
the advowson of the Church. The weakness of the imperial
programme became conspicuous when old Mediterranean
provinces of· the Roman Empire showed themselves ready to
renew their connections with the Holy See. Spain and Sicily
changed masters in the eleventh century. They turned the
Kales of the Holy Roman Empire, because they laid bare its
inadequacy to reform the Church in the islands anci nPnimm h~
 the former Roman world. In Spain, Cid Campeador tak-
~ Toledo from the Moslems, and Robert Guiscard ruling
~r Southern Italy, prepared the way for an attempt to re-
re a Mediterranean civilization, to organize its shores instead
the continental mass. Without a navy, without a permanent
idence on these coasts, the emperor could not think of bring-
~ his peace and his church regulations to bear on these coun-
~s. Sicily and Spain, by re-entering the orbit of Western life,
~ned the door to a new era. This era ejected the emperors
i kings and vice-emperors from the Church, and assigned
·m one State among many as their jurisdiction. In 1060, when
· Normans of Sicily paid their homage to the pope, they
ated the "State." By that act they changed the Holy See in
me from a part of the imperial palace into an independent
Jal court. To have a Curia (a court) became the cry of the
Jacy against the palatine principle under which emperor
l pope had shared one and the same chancellor.
rresistibly, the emancipation of this first section of the im-
ial palace called forth the emancipation of all the rest. The
Jal Court was followed in the process of emanci pa ti on by
Princes' Chamber and by the Cabinet of Ministers. The
uence of European revolutions can be illustrated by a dia-
m of the imperial palace and its slow dissolution. Consti-
lonal history runs from palace to cabinet, and ends in the
t of the dictator, put up again by an army, but this time
hout the productive force of a household at his disposal.
.sso.lini or Hitler are reduced, in their governmental stock
:lothes, to the shirt of a "leader." Compared to the wardrobe
he imperial palace or the Papal Court, the "shirts" of mod-
government-black, brown or blue-are but poor raiment.
1ple in the eleventh century might well have considered
m "nudists."
~he Papal See was newly established in a section of the
>erial "church fortress"; archway and cloisters around the
:l were cut off and used as the field for a new organiza-
l. The Mediterranean parts of the old Roman Empire, like
ly, Apulia and Calabria, which had never been Frankish,
TD'YYlf')i;n~rl U.'f:r7rtY'tf-;.....,.~ ~..,..,....,.,,:~,,.,.,,,......- _. ..... --.-- ----- ----- - 1 1
ian princes for the Western Church; but they were no longer
icorporated in the Western Empire. Instead, Robert Guiscard,
ie great Norman chief, paid homage to St. Peter in Rome.
·wo decades later, a princess in her own right gave Tuscany to
te papacy. Though this bequest was never acknowledged by
te emperor, it marked an epoch nevertheless. Without im-
~rial dispensation ea prince within the empire had turned over
' the Papal Court what had been under imperial control for
~nturies. The Papal Court was no longer overshadowed by
',e walls of the imperial palace. It lay for the first time under
e open sky, an immediate, sovereign court. The hieratic
~altation of the emperor ceased to dominate. With great con-
seness, the popes now called their canon laws by a new term,
~s Poli, the law of the firmament. Moon and stars on the em-
~ror's mantle no longer frightened the pope. His rising sun
read a bright daylight over the new civilization, centring
ound his Court in Rome.
Central government was invented by the papacy when it
anted the free right of appeal to every Christian soul. Before
e Papal Revolution, no son of a church anywhere had been
owed to denounce the crimes of his bishop or to carry his
ievances outside his own diocese.
The new spiritual party claimed the right to open the road
Rome for all parts of the world. Every bishop had to be
epared to see complaints of his own diocesans brought up
Rome. Even today, any Catholic may refer questions of
trriage to the Roman Courts. The bishops were summoned
visit the pope at regular intervals, "ad limina apostolorum.1'
ie Papal Court broke through the forms of personal alle-
mce which existed in the feudal system of the empire, and
ablished a new system of immediate allegiance between
~ry bishop, every abbot,_ every Christian and the pope.
The emperor's chancery was accustomed to call Rome the
)ther of all Churches. The Papal Revolution, by requiring
~ular visits in Rome of every bishop, and by granting free
?eal to everybody, created the situation so familiar to us,
PrPhV thP ~ nm~n rhn~"'J.... I-..,.~ l-...-~-~ - ~1- -
llolic individual. This modern vision was not generally con-
ed before 11 oo. It was the content of a revolution.
THE TRIUMPH OF OLD AGE.

'he ascetic monk on the papal throne spoke still from the
)nd. At his "conversion" a monk was buried in symbolical
as; he handed over his life, his property, his family, to his
·on. He died in every sense. He lived and anticipated a
itual world.
:ivil death" or monastic death is a legal term which de-
les the consequences of the monastic profession. Greg-
VII manifested the monk's spiritual world of after-death
cradle of government. Ancestral wisdom from beyond the
·e was introduced into a world threatened by child mor-
y, juvenile leadership, and the rare survival of people past
die age. Today man's life spiral so often reaches the third
e, from sixty to ninety years, that this age is not especially
hasized as a basis for a certain attitude toward government.
~hat time the tremendous lack of older men made it ad-
)le to specialize in the features of old age, of the non-
larian with his natural resignation and renouncement. The
.k's existence is an artificial substitute for the man who has
red all his claims because of age. "Senescence by establish-
t," the papal rule could be called, if the English language
preserved the flavour of the Latin "Senectus," old age.
Jrtunately, the word "senile" en joys no distinction in Eng-
the worship of virility has atrophied the English interest
Id age as a peculiar form of life. The indifference. of the
lish to the "third age" as deserving political representation
be compared to tge failure of German paternalism to rep-
1t youth politically. In German, old age kept a good mean-
in the special word "Greis" (senex), while "youth" was
~ and more neglected. At the end, the German word mean-
'a youth" became comical: "Jungling" ceased to have any
dignity or value. In reaction against this suppression and
1st paternalism, the famous Youth Movement sprang up
;ermany, restoring the phases of adolescent youth as a
eleventh century could appeal to a corresponding situation
regarding old age. By the distribution of ages among the popu-
lation, there was a lack of proportion between young and old.
The "third age" was undermanned. The special phase of Ger-
man paternalism will best be understood when we come to
the phase of "motherhood by establishment" which prevailed
in Italian civilization. But we are here considering primarily
the first phase of the papal renovation of the Church, and we
can describe it as a constitution by which the ancestral cult
of the "third age," the grandfather, the man who stands be-
yond the passions of the soul and the changes of the body, is
established. "Spiritual" came to be the motto of the revolu-
tionary party. The pope, the priestly father of all believers,
was himself the clearest symbol of the new force which was to
be established. Celibacy became the issue of this struggle
against an imperial church.
At the outbreak of the revolution the pope called upon all
laymen to expel their married priests. The married cleric
shared too much in the passions and material interests of his
:ontemporaries. In the Eastern Church, bishops and priests
ilways married before being ordained. There the phase of
priesthood came in the natural course of events as a late stage
'.n life, after a man had experienced the preceding phases. In
:he Western Church, the phase of natural life for the cleric
,vas shortened to its minimum, and the period of renunciation
.vas lengthened. Thereby, the importance of this particular
)hase in the life-cycle was suddenly enhanced. By this tem-
)Oral variation, old age got a most powerful representation in
L century of too early mortality. The shibboleth for recogniz-

ng the true servant of the spirit became-and naturally, I

hink-celibacy. Any responsible cleric who felt it his duty to
pare the married priests under his jurisdiction was leaning
,y so much toward the imperial side.
The new party among the clergy was a minority in the be-
inning; it took fifty years to secure the establishment of the
tew class of a spiritualized clergy. And in honour of its reor-
anization, the name "Spirituals" was coined under Gregory
rgy" itself meant "chosen people" in Greek; but the new
ituals" of the Papal Revolution were not the whole clergy.
part of this clergy was imperial; that is, in the eyes of the
mers it was rotten, corrupt, deserving of extirpation and
1ilation. It had not passed through a true conversion
te baptism and ordination. The old clergy ceased to bear
aark of holiness. It was "mundus," world, secular clergy,
Ltradiction in terms. It had to show by a new effort that
i turned from the world to the new life. The new effort
sted mainly in a decision to fight with the pope against
Kal governor and, eventually, the emperor. Whereas the
rial and royal bishops insisted that no priest could engage
arfare, the Gregorians defended crusading as a holy
pnse.
e change from secular clergy to Lords Spiritual could be
ssed by no better symbol than by a new obedience and
ance to the court in Rome. The success of the popes in
establishment of central government could not be ex-
~d without the symbolical value of this subjection of the
~ clergy in the Western world. He who went to Rome
ned himself! The pope's own office was brought nearer
~ry congregation, because his nan1e had to be mentioned
~ public prayers of every service.
i the pope's individual name was made a weapon in the
~le for reform. From 1047 to 1146 the popes choose to be
ids," to imitate the times of the fathers of the Church,
gli'rig out venerable names from the first centuries. Never
Lere a more deliberate "Renaissance" than in this century
.aming the popes. If any period deserves the attribute of
ical Renovation it is the time of the Crusades.
·gory VII, it is true, was not a "second." But he com-
two purposes in the choice of his name. One was a pro-
~ainst the imperial action which had forced Gregory VI,
brand's patron, out of office in 1046. By calling himself
;regory confirmed the legitimacy of Gregory VI. Then,
ry I (590-604) was the pope who more than any other
uoted and appealed to by his great revolutionary suc-
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 THE "RENAISSANCE" OF THE ELEVENTH CENTURY

List of "Seconds" Among the Popes

1046-1047 Clemens II takes the name of Clemens I, 91-100,

author of the Clementines. l
1048 Damascus II (I. 366-384) 2
1055-1057 Victor II (I. 190-202) 3
1059-1061 Nicolaus II (I. 858-867) 4
1061-1073 Alexander II (I. 109-u9) 5
1088-1099 Urbanus II (I. 222-230) 6
1099-u 18 Paschalis II (I. 817-824) 7
I ll8-u 19 Gelasius II (I. 492-496) 8
1119-u24 Calixtus II (I. 218-222) 9
1124-1130 Honorius II (I. 625-638) 10
u30-1143 Innocentius II (I. 402-417) 11
1143-1144 Ccelestinus II (I. 422-432) 12
u44-1145 Lucius II (I. 253-254) 13
(out of 18 popes between 1046 and 1145)

Interval of 313 years. No pope is a "second." As an aftermath,

:he list is reopened-with a joke-by Pius II.

t458-1464 Pius II (I. 142-154) ("Pi us A:neas" from Virgil)

l464-1471 Paul II (I. 757-767)
l503-1513 Julius II (I. 337-352)
.555, April Marcellus II (I. 307-309)

There are other papal names of the first thousand years still
vaiting for application.* Until the end of the tenth century, the
:hristian name, as received in baptism, held good even for a pope.
rhus any intentional repetition of a name was impossible in the
[rst millennium. Only when a second name-giving was asked could
;erbert of Reims, the friend of the Emperor Otto III, choose to
•e called a second Sylvester (999-1003), the first Sylvester (314-335)
laving been the friend of the great Constantine.
• This fact is important because from it we have evidence that neither in 1145
or in 1555 was the stopping of the custom caused by a lack of names. Not the
ames, but the interest in the Renaissance-process, had passed.
 himself thought of the times of Gregory I as being now
,tored. It was the deliberate restoration of a past five hundred
trs before.
We have a precious document which makes it clear how
lical the revolutionary ideology was. This document is ~
ter from one of the great papal abolitionists, Anselm of
cca. Like any revolutionary group, the class which destroyed
~ liturgical and apostolic aspect of imperial dignity was
led upon to justify its rebellion against a form of govern·
nt which had lasted more than five hundred years. Every
ler exists by prescriptive right, and five hundred years are
: a poor title to authority.
ro those objections Anselm replied, and his words are as
d as those of any political radical today:
'You say that this execrable form of government over the
trch has lasted an immeasurable length of time, through all
ich time the rulers of this earth had the power of appoint-
bishops. That is no argument. A perversion introduced by
princes of this world can be no prejudice to the right form
~overnrnent, through ·whatever length of time it may have
vailed. Otherwise, our Lord God himself would be guilty,
:e he left mankind in bondage to the devil, to the deforma-
1 of true government, and only redeemed it by his own
th after the lapse of five thousand years!" 1 Five thousand
rs of rule cannot legalize the devil's government. This is
.ly lhe boldest revolutionary argument. It turned "time"
iy-turvy by stripping the most ancient custom and tradi-
L of its weight and significance. The wisdom of the ages
denly became questionable and objectionable. There was
r an older wisdom, a previous conception, a more genuine
mpt to fall in with the original ideas and intentions of
l's creation.
ive thousand years do not prove anything in the devil's
mr. Empires, then, cannot be based on the prescriptive .
lt of a mere five hundred. Any historical form can be dis-
ed when prehistory and future conclude an alliance in
li!!ne. Patrnlnuin l_nfittn 1 An ,,1\1\
the hearts of menl This alliance is something extraordinary.
The inertia of men gives an advantage to custom and tradi-
tion. In any settled organization of society, future is easily
kept from its rights by an historical order which seems full
o.f authority. The future is handicapped by our lack of faith.
This explains the fate of ordinary revolts or rebellions, even
where there is notorious misrule. Mere rebellions are nothing
but "future." Bare future, without images and patterns of a
visible order, frightens the mass of men. They will never have
~he patience to live for an invisible future. They would feel
:lizzy. Man needs images, rules, traditions, hand-rails by which
:o find his way in the throng of problems and doubts.
"Revolution" has changed the face of the earth over and
>Ver again, by its excavation of prehistory. The ghost of the
irst day of history is put up against . all later depravity.
lousseau's Adam, Hitler's Teutonic tribes, Coke's Old Eng-
and of Magna Charta, Luther's "original Christianity," are
10t more visionary than the papal vision of God's tolerance
~£ the devil for five thousand years. The divine right of God
~nows no prescriptive right through ~he mere passing of time.
Ul the revolutions of Europe share this same heroic rallying
1f past and future against a rotten present. What establishes
he precedence of certain revolutions over the host of seditions
nd rebellions is the assumption of full responsibility for the
{hole past of mankind. The revolutions of this type deserve
o be .rendered prominent and conspicuous. Their generosity
ompensates for the necessary atrocities which make them hide-
us. They are devoted to more than a stupid thirst for power
r an unwillingness to cope with traditional duties. The fer-
1ent of decomposition is overcome by the total revolutions
uough a vision of responsibility for the future and the past.
~he immediate past is shunned as a casual and accidental
rranny of man's inertia and blindness. The true past points
ito a new future. Revolutions project their political pro-
rammes into a distant past.
The superficial critic may think that this is but a trick, and
iat its discovery deprives it of all moral value. Was it not
•L>_...,.1,., ..-.~ ~ 1-,.1!~..J £ __ -~'I_~.._~ - - - .1 ..... T
 TWO HORSES IN THE NEW HARNESS
They pull twelve people, six times as many as before.
the hearts of in en! This alliance is something extraordinary.
The inertia of men gives an advantage to custom and tradi-
tion. In any settled organization of society, future is easily
kept from its rights by an historical order which seems full
o.f authority. The future is handicapped by our lack of faith.
This explains the fate of ordinary revolts or rebellions, even
where there is notorious misrule. Mere rebellions are nothing
but "future.'' Bare future, without images and patterns of a
visible order, frightens the mass of men. They will never have
the patience to live for an invisible future. They would feel
dizzy. Man needs images, rules, traditions, hand-rails by which
to find his way in the throng of problems and doubts.
"Revolution" has changed the face of the earth over and
over again, by its excavation of prehistory. The ghost of the
first day of history is put up against all later depravity.
Rousseau's Adam, Hitler's Teutonic tribes, Coke's Old Eng-
land of Magna Charta, Luther's "original Christianity," are
not more visionary than the papal vision of God's tolerance
of the devil for five thousand years. The divine right of God
know~ no prescriptive right through ~he mere passing of time.
All the revolutions of Europe share this same heroic rallying
of past and future against a rotten present. What establishes
the precedence of certain revolutions over the host of seditions
and rebellions is the assumption of full responsibility for the
whole past of mankind. The revolutions of this type deserve
to be. rendered prominent and conspicuous. Their generosity
compensates for the necessary atrocities which make them hide-
ous. They are devoted to more than a stupid thirst for power
or an unwillingness to cope with traditional duties. The fer-
ment of decomposition is overcome by the total revolutions
through a vision of responsibility for the future and the past.
The immediate past is shunned as a casual and accidental
tyranny of man's inertia and blindness. The true past points
into a new future. Revolutions project their political pro-
grammes into a distant past.
The superficial critic may think that this is but a trick, and
that its discovery deprives it of all moral value. \Vas it not
 TWO HORSES IN THE NEW HARNESS
They pull twelve people, six times as many as before.
of Alexander and C~sar, or Cromwell addressed the Eng-
, the chosen people of Israel?
the historical responsibility of revolutions for the uni-
past is not a trick. The sceptic who thinks he has freed
If from a necessary property of the human mind when-
Le discovers and understands the special function of this
rty, overlooks the contribution made by the past to the
~- The sceptic who loves to strip man of his historical
s mistaken. To answer this disrobing scepticism, we must
e the situation better. Revolution runs the risk of chaos.
ution feels that an old order has died. When the spirit
ft the body of an institution, the revolution breaks out.
s hour no language exists, or can exist, to lead people
ll the words and concepts that might be used are over-
l with associations rooted in the past state of affairs. All
>rds are dead, toot This complete destruction of the val-
nnected with traditional words characterizes total revolu-
1 contradistinction to the petty revolts, the Putsch} or
up d'etat.
· fighters against chaos are a relatively small group, which
strengthen its grip on the future slowly. This group
inority in its own country; and beyond that the country
s only a section of a wider area. Inspiration, the driving
'.or a growing unit, seeks a universal way of expression,
lt which it cannot expand. In this fatal dilemma, between
te but well-organized language of a dying past and the
d faith of a group without visible or audible means of
Jression, universal history furnishes the needed gener-
to the leaders of the future!
1uips the revolution with a language everybody is able
erstand. It clothes the empty space of "Future" with an
ed tapestry of pictures and stories.
it does this on one great condition: the tapestry must
ren out of universal history, stories of all mankind, of
rVide value, global significance. The ambitious rebel or
r would be satisfied to see his own picture on the walls
y house. Total revolutions, in search of a new language,
_._ :~ ~ 1.:~...l _£ -----L __ _] _£ ~---- ___ 1 • 1 11
~rstood by an unlimited number of people all over the world
id through a long future. Western civilization, filling its
)Uses with Greek and Roman books, pictures, and ideas, uni-
~d Europe, because the new language of classicism was a
~mmon, general language for Italians and Swedes, Poles and
>aniards! The concepts supplied by universal history force
Jon a hitherto local and social revolution the character of
1iversality, which grafts the new branch-government, the new
rig of civilization, on the universal tree of mankind.
It is not, therefore, as the sceptic thinks, any arbitrary past
~ich can be conjured up by a great revolution. Like a prin-
ple of mathematics, history in its full sense, in spite of all
; abuse by antiquarians, is and has always been world his-
ry, mankind's history, universal history. In history, complete-
~ss of responsibility is the only safeguard against arbitrariness
td the making of national mythologies. An influx of universal
story gives a revolution the connection with reality at its
ost dangerous moment of unreality and chaos. Universal
story was the historic weapon of weak men against the strong-
>lds of established, non-universal order. Any movement, for
.ample, the Russian Revolution and its counter-revolutions,
n be tested by this general criticism. If its historical perspec-
re toward the past is special, it is a counter-revolutionary
ovement. If its prehistory is universally valid, the movement
really concerned with the future!
THE ECONOMIC REVOLUTION.

In the rebellion against the manorial system, a very tangible

cial question had to be solved. A new technical invention
read through the Western world. The increase in power
ought by this invention was as colossal as that brought in
e last century by the use of coal and electricity. No wonder
at the social unrest was similar. At that time, the harnessing
horses was radically changed. Where before, in antiquity
d in the first millennium of our era, a carload had amounted
four, or at most five, hundred pounds, it was now possible
transport five thousand pounds. For the new harness ex-
more, it was now, for the first time in history, possible to
have a car and four or a car and six or eight, one pair of horses
being harnessed behind the other. A score of people could now
ride in one car. Grain, timber, stone, restricted to water trans-
port before, now beca1ne carloads on the highways of the main-
land of Europe.
The consequences of this technical revolution were numer-
ous. It is no accident that most of the famous stone bridges of
the Middle Ages were built shortly before or after 1100. The
majority of churches had been wooden. Now the number of
stone churches increased to the great admiration of contem-
poraries. Other technical improvements followed, wind-mills,
for example, the transportation of grain over longer distances
now being possible. The lords of the manors provided the roads
with many strongholds; from 1050 to 1150, some thousands
of stone castles were built.
This increase in power over nature came unexpectedly. The
manorial system had been established for a society less power-
ful, and therefore more dependent on human labour. The
dependency of the labour forces on the lord of the manor was
complete. His military force was treated as a part of his house-
hold; they were knaves. Now, these knaves were sent out into
distant castles; the huge manors were split into the smaller
units of castellanies. The new form of life in these "branch
offices" asked for a new law. Feudal law was the answer to
the new technique of transportation and the far-reaching
changes it made in society.
The Church placed itself at the head of the new movement.
In the inevitable struggle over the issue as to whether the
increased power over nature should finally belong to the old
manorial lords or to the other classes as well, the Church
turned the scales by establishing itself as a feudal co~rt for
the world at large. The very word for the Holy See that is
most commonly used today, Curia, is not older than the
eleventh century. And it means a centre of feudal law for an
army which is no longer living in the home of its military
commander but which is living outside on separate estates.
.ges, came as a striking innovation to loosen the ties
L lord and knave and to develop the latter into a Chris-
ight. The blessing of the Church was needed for this
in order to lend a spiritual justification to the social
What seems to the superficial student of the Middle
theological quarrel, was a struggle for applying justice
r situation for man in nature.
olically, the artists of the twelfth century placed the
herself into the new car, to show her victorious march.
UL HELPS PETER: THE TECHNIQUE OF THE PAPAL
REVOLUTION.

:lergy mutinied against its dependence on the palace.

1tiny is called by historians the struggle over investi-
vestiture was the appointment of a bishop or abbot by
order from the king's palace or chapel. During the
this privilege of the emperor was contested by the
llt in so doing the pope was acting as the trustee of
stendom against imperialism. The Papal Revolution
omplete in social depth as any modern "revolt of the
The popes emancipated the whole spiritual army,
imate and archbishop down to chaplain and parish
.,he papacy cut the direct and domestic relation be-
rone and altar in every manor or palace, and claimed
~ to be guardian and spokesman for every local rep-
ve of the spirit. The vicar of St. Peter, to whom the
jfiguished Cathedral in Christendom was given, now
to represent every pulpit or cathedral before the

n debates about the Gregorian revolution against the

are seldom fair to the viewpoint of either pope or
as they were in the eleventh century. One side main-
: the popes did not innovate at all but went on in the
~ as before; the other speaks of despotism and arbi-
ffpation by the papacy. The one party really denies
e was a revolution, and the other is not aware of its
essity. Both fail to see the precedent which was set
:;".nrnnP hv thP P".l'Y'\".l 1 D """'""1 ...... : ~~ -- -1 •
1
biological phenomenon of total revolution which started at
the throne of St. Peter. One of the causes of this failure might
be found in the fact that the revolution was carried out by one
man, who acts and speaks in the solitude of a hermit. We are
so accustomed to thinking of revolution in terms of masses and
appeals to the populace that the one-man principle of the
Papal Revolution seems irreconcilable with the modern par-
allels. But revolutions change their technique. How else can
they effect the surprise which is the conditio sine qua non
of their success?
The Papal Revolution is outwardly a revolution of one man,
one dignitary, the pope alone. But simply because Lenin's
revolution is disguised as a revolution of the proletariat, it is
none the less the action of one man and a very few of his
friends. Revolutions, as we have seen, run down the scale from
palace to tent, from wardrobe to shirt. Numerically they run
through the scale from I to infinity. The ostensible basis
of support for the revolution has increased all the time; the
real basis was always universal. The avowed share of one par-
ticular leader has become less and less outspoken; the real
leadership was always restricted. In each revolution, a balance
exists between 1 and infinity, between the few who know and
the many who follow. The Papal Revolution was the most
general and intensive social earthquake Europe has ever seen.
It shook the only stable, unblemished and respected symbol
of_ unity: the economic, racial, religious, and moral unit of
palace and manor. It emancipate~ the sons, clergy, knights,
and servants of every manor in Europe. By a revolutionary act
the pope set up a new balance between economic particular-
ism and spiritual universalism.
The initial impulse of the Papal Revolution was the Synod
of Sutri in the year 1046. The emperor, in his pious zeal for
reform, deposed three popes and installed another. This Synod
of Sutri was extolled by his monk-allies of Cluny as a very
miracle of heaven. But a new generation in the clergy felt it
as an insult. Walloon and French writers venomously attacked
this whole-hearted union between emperor and pope which
Better the whole earth be changed into one jurisdiction,
the bishops of the whole earth come together and elect
pope, than leave him the serf of the emperor," exclaims
first revolutionary pamphleteer. In these words he revealed
true problem of Roman Catholicism, as it survives today.
) shall elect the pope? The group which elects the pope
Laster of the Church, because through it the pope rules .
. the group which controls the papal election is the pre-
1ed model for appointments for every church in the world.
oday the pope is elected by the cardinals, i.e., nominally,
he bishops, priests, and deacons of the city of Rome. But
y their Roman title is a matter of form. Instead of being
tan priests, they are. customarily one half Italians and one
foreigners. The papacy is an Italian, not a Roman, dig-
But this is something quite foreign to the eleventh cen-
, the practical result of the struggle of investiture. It is
·esting to notice that the first author who treated the prob-
on principle foresaw a solution which still occupies the
olic world in our time.
hat the reform party did tackle immediately was the ex-
on of the Roman nobility from the election of the pope.
clergy alone is entitled to elect the pope. The populus
5tianus of Rome, the laymen, were excluded from the
ion. The bishop of Rome ceased formally to be the chosen
.s city by the decree of io59, which empowered the car-
.s ~lone to elect him. The decree recognized the possi-
' of an imperial veto. And this veto also survived for nine
lred years. It was exercised for the last time in 1903 by
tpostolic majesty of the Hapsburg emperor against the
.on of Cardinal Rampolla as pope. The Crown Cardinal
e Apostolic Majesty once more acted in the conclave as
?okesman of his house-lord, the emperor, as he had in the
, of the Ottos.
:er 1046, a break was inevitable between a Northern em-
. and an independent pope, capable of shifting the balance
~ Church to the classic shores of the Mediterranean. With
~owth of southern Italian, Spanish, and Balkan ques-
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ence from any particular temporal monarch. A unique
emperor became intolerable as soon as he abused his ecclesi-
astical claims in order to conceal the defects of his political

THE OLDEST TYPE FOR PETER AND PAUL

Third Century.

expansion. His only possible justification would have been the

reality of his totalitarian government. If he was not the judge
of the globe, his close alliance with the Holy See in Rome was
prejudicial to every action the pope might think necessary
in a country outside the sphere of imperial influence. The
threat of a Caliphate was not fictitious in the Western civili-
,. .'I
se be eschewed by the new emancipation of the clergy.
be word orb (circle, world) became the obsession of papacy.
~r before had Rome thought of its place in the world in
r than organic terms. It had been extolled as prima sedes,
t m undi, the brightest star in the galaxy of churches. The
lutionaries made it, as one of their leaders wrote to Greg-
~n his letter of welcome, 1074: "The centre of an orb, to
h radii must be drawn from the circumference." The
: (City) of Rmne was to be the centre of the Orbis, the
~ of the earth. When the revolution had completed its
ry, a universal council was convened in the Lateran, of
h it was said that the "orb is" seemed to be contained in
'urbs." The Pope pronounced his blessing and gave his
nands urbi et orbi. This notion of a central power made
·chbishop say: "The pope is changing the bishops into his
its and stewards." At the recumenical council of 1139 it
l be proclaimed that all the dignities of the Universal
ch were derived from the pope like the fiefs of vassals.
summoning the Christians to Jerusalem, the papacy resus-
d the maritime character of the old Roman Empire. The
Lders, going from France to Sicily and Palestine, built up
lte of traffic and exchange which crippled the old conti-
.1 axis of the Empire, from the North Sea to Rome. The
olic figure of St. Peter, long depressed by the corruption
vicars, was supported in his new undertaking by St. Paul,
! omce had helped to interpret the emperor's office. St.
the apostle of the Gentiles, was the natural apostle of
rbis. The popes of the struggle for investiture multiplied
istances in which they acted as vicars of Peter and Paul.
e emperor was denied apostolic character. He became one
among many. Gregory VII gives the lie to the emperor's
by aligning him with all the other kings, in the plural.
only singular and universal power was the papacy; the
emperor," the only unique name and dignity, had to be
ope.
~ Pope, by the struggle for investiture, by preaching the
des, undermined the kingdoms of this earth. The em-
firmed, deposed him; and all the princes of the empire shouted:
"Descende, descende: go down, Hildebrand." In that revolu-
tionary hour of history, the pope turned his face from earth
to heaven. He was not answering any human being. He ban-
ished the princes, shouters and slanderers as he thought them;
but he did not speak to them. He did not face the emperor,
who to him was but one king among many. Where did he
turn?
The first revolution of the Christian era began in the lone-
liness of a monk's cell and a monk's heart. The incredible
technique of this first world revolution, unchaining fifty years
of bloodshed, disorder and despair, was the resolution of
Gregory to make himself "monk-emperor." Gregory fused the
functions of Cluny and of the Apostolic Majesty, the "reli-
giosus" (monk) and the judge of this world.
Hildebrand had been a monk; and so his adversaries re-
proached him with the many embassies and journeys of his
younger days. They were thinking of the old Benedictine
rule by which a monk was the inmate of one monastery, at one
consecrated spot. But Gregory inherited the Cluny idea of
amalgamation in space. He had been prior of San Paolo at Rome
before he was made bishop of St. Peter. And the very friend
who had called him the "Holy Satan" had sung the praise of
the trans-local power of St. Paul. Gregory had listened to this
psalm, by Petrus Damiani, of the precedence of St. Paul over
Peter: "Paul resembles Christ. Christ was crucified in Jerusa-
lem, but he did not make the place of his death the capital
of the world. Christ is present in every church. Likewise, Paul
has no predilection for one church. He has no special cathedral.
He is the right arm of God, held out over the whole breadth
of the earth) presiding over all churches." "A world heart like
Christ himself, and supplementing the sufferings of Christ by
his own," Paul had been worshipped at his grave. Now the
Praise of Paul as the Right Arm of God 2 raised him from the
grave up into the bright ·sky of a new dawn. The saints of a
2 uQui divince dexterce non ambigitur exercere virtutem"-"Who undoubtedly
e~erts the po~er of the_ ~~ght a_:m o_f ~od_:-''-_Petr~~ _Damiani,
De picturis prin-
1 outside this world now became real, immediate guid-
ars to political organization. Paul, so long worshipped
grave, now rises to establish the !us Poli, the law of the
nent, as the ecclesiastical legislation began to be called
1100.
I furnished another power symbol, that of the two swords.
:orresponded to Benjamin in the Old Testament alle-
lly. And of Benjamin it was said (Judges 3, 15) that one
use both hands, the temporal and the spiritual, simul-
tsly.3 It is scarcely an accident that Paul is represented
vi th two swords, whereas before 11 oo the Apostle never
l a worldly weapon.
icy profited from the new symbolism.
sword of faith, which Paul himself had spoken of, was
iven into the pope's hand for the first time. It was em-
~d, as against older traditions, that Paul had died on the
lay as Peter, not a year later. The papal statute-book,
aons, inserted new paragraphs on Paul who had never
nentioned before. Coins were sold to the Pilgrims to
showing Paul and Peter each carrying the famous key
gave the power of binding and loosing. 4 Gregory VII
e first to put Paul together with Peter on his coins and
opes put them on their seals. In the official concordat of
he Church Universal was distinguished from St. Peter's
ne. It labelled the new centralized power of the pope
sact any business with the ten1poral power in the name
other bishops, the church of Peter and Paul, whereas
1ly See in Rome itself was simply called St. Peter. 5
was glorified with new fervour. The wandering apostle
nsformed into a stabilized, central, yet universal symbol
Erdmann, Die Entstehung des Kreuzzugsgedankens, p. 147 f., Berlin,

irregularity, which fits so badly into the static picture most of us en-
bout the Roman traditions, also is found in a document contemporary
ry VII; here, too, both apostles, Peter and Paul, will "close the gates
ise to a trespasser." Carles de Cluny, IV, 752, no. 3594. And another
>rary can speak of pope Gregory "cum predecessore suo beato Paulo"
rita Germani~ historica, Libelli de Lite I, 308.
feature of the document was discussed in detail in my paper read be-
of the new Church. The pope, who for a thousand years had
anxiously avoided calling himself universal or recumenical,
because he feared that the expression would be derogatory to
the other churches, was now settled, as Paul's vicar, on the
universal apostolic throne of the whole earth and dropped his
resistance to the title "universal." The symbol of St. Paul, now
reclaimed from the emperor, ceased to lead the unorganized
movements in the Church against the established order. This
prophetic function was forgotten for four hundred years, until
it was re-invoked by Luther. For four hundred years people
identified, practically, the functions of Peter and Paul and if
anyone looked beyond this state of affairs, he foresaw only a
Johannine age. The medi~val critics of papacy looked for a
new era under the sign of St. John the Evangelist. Paul was not
mentioned in this great vision of the future. He had become
identified with papacy; the Pope had taken over his function.
Paul, the strongest prop of imperial theocracy in I ooo A.D.,
was regained for the papacy. This needed a special effort.
Though buried in Rome under Peter_,s jurisdiction, though a
co-founder of its apostolic church, he had not more belonged
to Rome than to Christianity at large. The friend of Greg-
ory VII could exclaim that Peter presided over Rome, Paul,
like Christ himself, over all the churches of Christendom.
But now the Pope-acting as the legal spokesman and pleni-
potentiary of the universal clergy for any settlement between
kings and bishops-took to himself this Pauline presidency over
all the churches.
Rome and the New Jerusalem, urbs and orbis, the City of
Rome and the circumference of the globe, were united by per-
meating all places with one supernatural vision. Spengler has
called Greek antiquity Euclidian, local, atomistic, without the
Faustian character of perspective and background, fusion and
shadows. Gregory is the man who discovered the fusion of
omnipresence and centralization, the anti-classical and anti-
pagan concept of the Middle Ages.
What we call Middle Age begins with the ubiquity of the
~hhnt nf rlnnu ;..,, "")11 t-l-,..a mqr11u "l-..h.L:ln., ,,..,.C ..,i,."' "'IAT"'~'--"'-- -·----1..l
 the transference of this ubiquity to the monk on the papal
me.
Vas it only seventy-five years before that an emperor was
shipped as a second Paul; cleansing the Urbs? Well, he,
gory, was the vicar of Peter and of Paul, cleansing the orbis.
1k and Emperor blended into one; Gregory restored the
copal, i.e., mundane, See of Rome to its religious leader-
. In the famous document that answered the emperor, he
.ed up to Peter and Paul as to the lords of everything in
i and orbis.

IE ADDRESSEES OF THE FIRST REVOLUTIONARY DOCUMENT.

he greatest proclamation of his revolution was given him

:he spirit and he dictated it for his private recollection.
"dictatus papce" explains to us the technique of the first
"ersal revolution in our history. Corrupted by the fiction
crowd of millions on whom the modern dictators train
~ loud-speakers and their broadcasting systems, we easily
the criterion which constitutes the real revolution. Lenin,
not one hundred and fifty millions of Rusians, formulated
~vhole content of the Russian Revolution. Though all the
ents of the Papal Revolution ·were utterly opposed to
n's formula, we must understand that in the orbit of
lutions, the last one is so extreme in its mass-ideology only
use it is the last; the number of allegedly conscious revo-
naries seems to grow from one revolution to the next. But
increase in numbers is one of the unavoidable technical
:es in the mechanism of revolutions. Nothing in history
be repeated. If two events are to have the same effect on
at different times, the forms of the two events must differ.
ie course of nine centuries, man had to pass through the
of possible arrangements. Gregory the Seventh's "Dictatus
~,, for his private use and the Bolshevik broadcasts "To
1d everybody" are two ends of a series. We shall find that
:oo the Pope started the Guelphic Revolution by address-
1imself to the College of Cardinals assembled in a con-
·y. With this later development in mind. we can draw
one clear line from the technique of Gregory to that of mod-
ern times.

FORM AND ADDRESS OF THE FIRST REVOLUTIONARY DECLARATIONS

l 07 5 Dictatus Pa pm The Holy Spirit speaks to the Pope

and he puts it on record.
1200 Deliberatio de statu Pope reads an allocution to the
imperii Cardinals in his consistory.
1517 Luther's 95 theses Nailed on the doors of the prince's
church in his university, inviting op-
ponents.
1641 The Great Rem on- Printed copies of the document,
strance which the Commons are sending to
the King, are sold to the public.
1789 The Etats Generaux Changed into the "National Assem-
in Versailles bly," which summons the Nation.
· The deputies speak to the galleries ..
1917 The Bolsheviks Address all and everybody in radio
broadcasts.

The pope's decision appears even more sublime if we con-

sider the pressure under which he acted. The "Dictatus Papa!''
formulated a programme, in the sense that the writing down
of these paragraphs was a way of justifying them. For such is
the property and the honour of true human speech that the
user stands sponsor for its validity and asks to be taken at his
word. Some of the items of the "Dictatus Papal' deserve to be
repeated here:
The Roman Church is founded by God alone.
1.
2. Nobody except the High Priest of Rome can be named
recumenical (universal).
3. The pope alone can, according to circumstances, make new
laws, found new congregations, change foundations into monas-
teries, divide a rich bishopric and consolidate a poor one.
8. He is the only one who shall wear imperial insignia.
9. The pope's feet all princes shall kiss.
10. His name is the onlv one whirh rnrn:.t hP rPrnlll!)rtl!)rl ....... t-J.u~
yers in all churches. (The emperor's name had been inserted
former days, never the pope's.)
2. He can depose emperors.
B. His judgments can be changed by nobody. He alone can
1ose the judgments of everybody else.
9. No paragraph and no code are canonical without his
1ority.
J. Nobody can judge him.
1. Every pope is-by the merits of St. Peter-sanctified.
)· The pope can judge bishops without a synod (i.e., as the
y Ghost dictates the decision, the pope is master of the Holy
•st without the inspiration of a council).

""his document itself is the revolution. For how could the

lllible have mere thoughts about his office? When he thinks,
thinks right, since the Spirit is with him. Therefore his
>iration is in itself an action. The "Dictatus Papce," in ap-
rance a mere private memorandum, was nevertheless a
>lution and decision of a competent authority. The first
>lution of the Occident broke out in the breast of one man .
.he loneliness of his heart, he dictated to his own soul the
~amme of the Papal Revolution. This first political pro-
nme of the Christian world should be studied carefully by
!.ents of political theory. They will find that no such pro-
nme can be understood without interpreting it in a dia-
.cal way. In fact it is a dialogue. Gregory says, for example,
icum nomen est papre." Why this haughtiness? Because we
~ seen· the emperor alone had been thought unique until
t. The pope has the Holy Spirit "without any council."
r this wilfulness? It means that his Italian council in Rome,
local clergy of Rome, cannot help the pope sufficiently in
questions of the whole Church-that he must act in those
:ers as the permanent secretary, so to speak, of the Uni-
11 Church in Council. Thus he becomes the spiritual seis-
raph, not of Rome, not of Italy, but of the world.
nee then, the Pope's breast, il petto del papa, has been the
of the political secrets of the Holy See. We are so accus-
~d to think of the largest possible audience in politics
to speak to your own heart. and to govern "1~n fJP.ttn"
ems rather odd. After all, this fashion of the popes is men-
Jned in the newspapers even today. But it has established
ice and forever a second power of political inspiration, an
imediate connection of the spiritual leader with the inspira-
)11 of 'the day. The Spirit, if he is to become the Spirit of

~eation, must work without delay. Councils, emperors, space,

ean delay. The human heart moves immediately. The politi-
1 togetherness and contemporaneity of our present world has
: origin in the isolation of a human heart. A monk breaks
1wn the humble walls of the Cluny monastery, grows and
ows until his heart begins to move heaven and earth, and
~ voice to frighten like the Trumpet of Doom. That is the
ie emperor, who needs -no physical marching through space,
wse very word at the world's end is as terrible as a sword,
:>ugh he himself remains at Rome. Gregory- was so full of
is vision that he even anticipated the modern telephone. He
.d Odilo of Cluny, when they passed a broad river and
·egory was far in advance, that he saw a thread leading from
Iilo's mouth to his own ear and transporting to his under-
nding every word Odilo thought. (Migne, 148, 45.) And the
~th answers to the sonority of the new voice of the "true
lperor" (verus imperator). Not only do the knaves of the
mor become Christian knights, emancipated by the Crusades,
t one law of the firmament begins so to govern all marriage
i all clergy in Christendom that the soldiers of the new
ritual army leave wives and children and devote themselves
celibacy, like true pilgrims and strangers to all localized
:i established family life.
i\. contemporary hymn, partly imitating the ancient John
rysostomus, describes the new church government in these
·ses:
uba domini, Paule, maxima
~ celestibus dans tonitrua
ostes dissipans cives aggrega."
1, Paul, greatest trumpet of the Lord;
ho sendest the thunderbolts down from Heaven,
s.nPrS.P thv PnPmiP~ ~nrl o-~thAr t'hn.eo.a ..... i.. ..... i..~1...-..~ ..... .._~ '"T'L-- -~L--"
's spiritual sword governs the world-wide city of God.
popes tested their spiritual power by demanding to be
ed.
~egory died in exile, in Salerno, after eleven years of strug-
gainst the inertia of a baffled world. The bishops did not
to be treated as his stewards, and the emperor did not
~rstand how he was expected to govern without two thirds
s budget. The pope himself, on his deathbed, was despond-
tt his exile from Rome, and complained: "I have loved
:e and hated iniquity. That is why I die in exile." But
at a bishop gave a fitting answer: "You cannot call your-
~xiled, my father, because the earth is given to you as
possession, and the nations of it are your heredity." In-
invocation of the guiding stars of a new firmament had
the pope at home on the whole earth illuminated by this
ment. The bishop's answer made the pope the prince of
r city, the civitas Romanr,e ecclesice. Henceforth the whole
was conceived as an edifice in shining marble, one city,
~hurch. The unity passionately believed in the catacombs
:ippeared in the full light of day. Against the picture of
Coly Emperor crowned by Christ, the new vision, with a
inversion, shows St. Peter crowning the Church.
~gory died with this solace in his ears. Forty years later,
eace between Church and emperor was restored by a
ordat." As the first believers had become one heart and
>ul, so emperor and pope, it was thought, should become
earf and soul again. Till today the name originated in
tias been used for any treaty between Church and State;
l our modern world we are so blind that we overlook the

tat a concordat cannot be either a treaty between govern-

or a contract between individuals.
oncordat makes a presupposition otherwise known only
.rriage; namely, that each partner can be expected to
of the salvation of the other's soul, under certain cir-
1nces, even more than of his own. Without this inter-
1ared by both parties, we cannot help misunderstanding
und relationship between Church and State: they are
nerely parties to a contract. Since the r;:iilir~J foith ri.f
:hristians may carry them away into non-governmental chan-
els, any government may be imperilled by the religion of the
eople. It need not be the Roman Catholic denomination. But
n.y ruler reaches the limits of his power whenever his people
egin to believe that something else is worth dying for other
ian that which they believed in before. No money, no power,
o soldiers, can hold a fortress or a nation if the spirit is gone
hich bound all the inner loyalties of his society into one faith
1d one infinite willingness to die for it. Anything a man is
~ady to die for is stronger than anything people merely live
1.
The concordat expresses the experience of the Christian
orld that government relies on the faith in the infinite, end-
ss, unconditioned absolute for which men are ready to die,
id that any institution entitled to influence this faith is a
1vereign of the first importance. Because people had suffered
~rsecutions and exile and boycott for half a century, pope
id emperor recognized each other's sovereign power. Ac-
1ainted with the lessons in sovereignty presented by the revo-
~tions a government will understand the meaning of the
mcordat. It will not act as a sceptic philosopher, like Bodin,
)r will it try to make itself the object of religious worship,
<.e a caliph. Every such heresy of ~ worldly power has called
rth a violent rebellion. Luther, Cromwell, Napoleon, Lenin,
l introduced a new sovereignty either because the old one
emed an<emic or because it claimed for itself a religious wor-
i p. The concordat of Worms in 1122 grew out of the experi-
Lce of a caliphate and therefore limited the absolute power
the emperors. The emperor's son even deserted his own
ther, saying that he had a father in Heaven, represented by
e pope, whom he must obey before his earthly father. This
ay seem too simple for a modern reader who has forgotten
at, and why, and how far, we are to obey our earthly father
deed. In the days of vendetta, it was a great discovery for
e crown prince of the empire to be faced by the fact of a
mble allegiance. Now this is the secret of political liberty.
berty becomes vital when man is faced by a dilemma. No
::an 1~ frPP tn rln nrh-::1t hP lilrPC! J...l P. r'ln n~:nr.e:>-r ,-1,.,. _..."".....,,.,. •h. ... -
se between two things: for example between peace and
1

past and future, security and adventure, his mother and

>ride, his employer and his trade union, the nation and
>arty, and so on. But every choice proposes one loyalty
h you prefer and one which you neglect.
1e Papal Revolution of the eleventh century introduced
~rinciple of dualism into the political world. Jesus had
:!n of God and of c~sar, it is true; but God is not a vis-
institution. The dualism of institutions enables men to
Him. In Western civilization, at least since Gregory VII,
mvereign powers have always balanced each other. This,
:his alone, has created European freedom.
Leoretically, all philosophers praise liberty. Practically, it
xist only when every human soul has two loyalties. Every
sm leads to slavery. The modern democracies are leading
lVery, because they have no guarantee against the mono-
: tendencies of popular government.
e Papal Revolution, by asking the Roman monarch to
back his right of investiture to the universal church of
and Paul, expressed the idea of a new sovereign, co-
ng with every king and emperor in every parish. The
is of Cluny and of Gregory had come true. The idea of
n.s-local organization, a corporation, was realized. The
,lie Church is not at all international. It would be bad
to call her so. And in the mouths of her detractors of
ascist or Teutonic or Freemason type it is an intentional
!r: -The Church never was international; she was trans-
and universal. She was present in the same way and
the same intensity in the home of the coal-miner and
~ court of the prince. The lord of the house had to allow
~vants the right of pilgrimage and crusade. And this active
mage emancipated them.
~sovereignty of Peter and Paul in 1122 restored the 'dual-
:!Cessary for our moral freedom, which had been invaded
the emperor was welcomed as a second St. Paul.
~ idea of the new sovereignty was expressed, too, when
rusaders who took Jerusalem in 1099 elected Geoffrey
1111nn 'Irina- l4nr t-hic:? nnhlo 1...... ~.rl ........... 11 --··--~ 1!1- - rt
:!ll the Protector, that the papal struggle for liberty of the
1urch had been fought by the kings of this earth, took the
lme, not of a king, but of a defender of the Holy Sepulchre.
Space itself is seized upon by the movement toward Jerusa-
n. It is common knowledge that Christian churches are
iented, and that orientation means to look toward the East.
llis is not enough for the Age of the Crusades. The church
>0d hidden among houses, or outside the town on a hill,
th its crypts deeply rooted in the earth. The new desire of
e heart transcends the Alps and the seas. It blasts open the
Llls and the roofs of the earthly house. The walls of Cluny
~ the first to show symptoms of upheaval. The diagonal ribs
the vault heave; they were called ogives (augivi) because
~y augmented. its power, added to its capacity for becoming
1ault. Ogive was a new word then; and so, too, was "vault."
branched off from the word "volvo ," the root which is pres-
t in revolution and evolution. Thus "vault" is in itself
exorbitant word, leaving the orbit of general tradition,
:ording to which a roof and a shelter must obey the laws
gravity.
There can be no revolution where the law of gravity rules
~ hearts of men. Man has to be inspired to overcome his
~rtia. When he does that, he re-creates creation. The Papal
·volution goes against the laws of gravity. The vaults of a
1thic cathedral are an inverted ship. Nave equals navis, ship;
~house of stone in the Gothic style is not a local house, fixed
space,· but a symbol of pilgrimage, suspended in time. The
;ions from which the first Crusaders came were the first
develop the new style. The Germans and the English fol-
~ed enthusiastically. But it is very important to remember
lt the Gothic style never gained ground in Italy. The Papal
volution in its first stage is not an Italian business. It is a
logue inside the orbit of Christendom. Every spiritual power
the periphery is magnetized by the new central power of
: Sepulchre. The new dualism which delivers the local resi-
1t from his local gods, ancestors, -vendetta, is based on the
ttr~st _bet~een horr:e_ a~d pi~grima~e ?r crusade. The Papal
ne tinge of a spiritual mission as a pilgrim. The seven sacra-
~nts, from baptism to the extreme unction, were established
the twelfth century, creating a psychic biography, adding
every "body's" physical experience the "soul's" psychic
grimage. The cathedrals help us to see that the dualism
.ween the two swords, the temporal power and the spiritual
.ver, does not mean a geographical division. It means the
erty of all souls to leave their country and their friendships.
e Christian democracy, under the spiritual leadership of
popes, delivered the cathedrals from their spatial fixity.
rhe Gothic minster is a ship in a fleet that sails the sea of
spirit. All souls seek the Holy Sepulchre and therefore em-
k in this navy. In the fleet of the Gothic cathedrals the
>al Revolution of the Church majestically moves on.
CRUSADE AND SCHOLASTICISM.

~he Crusades and the struggle for investiture changed the

) of Europe, the Western world. The concept of a potential
nan Empire gave way, at least at the periphery and in the
th, to an orb, to be governed by the mother of all churches,
Roman Church. The Holy Sepulchre in the East helped
build a new axis, leading from Northwest to Southeast
ich was eccentric to the former North-South axis), Aachen,
ny, Alps, Roncaglia (near Milan), Rome. It led from Can-
1ury and Rouen to Genoa or to Marseilles where Greg-
VII even tried to erect a rival of Cluny, and by Sicily to
~stine, or by Barcelona into crusading Spain.
'he mother of all churches became the Mother Church.
~ orb was held together as one civitas. For Augustine the
· of God and the city terrestrial had not met. In the twelfth
.ury a new city was planned, with the pope as its true
1eror.
he old emperors had represented the light of the stars in
darkness of time. The "true" emperor was hailed as a ris-
sun, bringing daylight to the world. The broad noonday
vilization was present wherever the new concept of ecclesia
iana was formulated or used. How often had Christ been
.. ..
>f Christ for Heaven and Earth, the eternal and the temporal.
[he pope, therefore, was the sun; the emperor was at best his
teward, the moon. "Thereby," a canonist writer, Hostiensis,
leclared, "it is evident that the priest's dignity is 7,644Y2 times
ligher than the royal. For thus the proportion between sun
nd moon is stated in the fifth book of the Almagest of
>tolemt:eus." 6 No wonder then, if the dignity of tens of thou-
ands of priests was condensed into the united power ~f the
,ope, that he seemed to be a sun. His Roman Church now
ppeared as a bright city in which every Christian could taste
he joy of citizenship. The times of Christ himself were at
land. Christ's words were in the mouths of the popes as though
te were alive again. With Christ's words at the Last Supper-
Desiderio desideravi hoc pascha manducare vobiscum": "With
.esire I have desired to eat this passover with you" (Luke 22,
5)-Innocent III welcomed his council in 12 15. In the day-
:.ght of an effective organization of life, the paths of men were
isible at a glance. This led to a transformation of the concept
f a sacrament. Before the Crusades, in the night of the world,
very act of the Church had seemed an act of atonement to
~od, a lightning worthy to be called sacrament. The deeds of
tints, the prayers of monks, the victories of the emperor, were
limpses of light piercing the fog connecting heaven and earth,
~placing the unreal shadows of man's will by the decrees of
rovidence. Now the arch of reality made a vault over the
irth. A thousand years of sacrament could be summed up.
The twelfth century felt itself the Summa Summarum of the
·easures and sacraments of the Church. The list of "second"
opes recapitulated the whole past of the Roman Church. A
ch literature parallelled the undertaking of the Roman
hurch, reconciling the discordant traditions of the fathers .
.bailard's famous "Sic et Non" was described in our French
iapter; Magister Gratianus of Bologna wrote Concordia dis-
>rdantium canonum, a parallel to the idea of concordat in the
)litical field. Once more the old patristic ways of thinking
o This statement still recurs, 350 years later, in Jean Bodin's famous Six Livres
In T},J,r,..,J-,T;,,,,,a • Q.,. • .........
ere re-embodied in the "Last Father of the Church," Bernard
Clairvaux. On the whole, the world had definitely changed.
new science was started. Its name itself, "theology," so trite
day, was new and bold. The Fathers of the Church carefully
oided this pagan term, that hinted at a rational knowledge
1out the gods. Now, the new "theologians," to the despair
Bernard, declared the Bible to be down below, in the crypt
the Church, as its foundation; their new science, however,
d to erect up from the ground the eight storeys of theological
tnking. The walls of the new cathedral of theology were to
lect the mysteries of the sacraments. In this programme,
Jgo de St. Victor in Paris pictured the future architecture
the Gothic cathedral. (Migne, 176, 803.)
The much-admired style of the Gothic arch, then, reflects
1ew mental vision, conceived, not by masons only, but by
! theological scholars first.
The teachings of eleven successive centuries, thirty-three
ierations, were brought together and made present simul-
teousl y by the lectures and glosses of a new scholarship.
iolasticism was the grandiose Renaissance of Christian learn-
~' precisely in the same way as Humanism resurrected
ssical learning, during modern times. Paul's apostleship to
: Gentiles was. replaced by a new apostolate among the Chris-
1s. A "doctor of the Gentiles" seemed less needed than doc-
s for the Christian kingdoms.
fhe corporations of professors and students, the universi-
'1, armed for their doctorate in the form of a mission. They

·.med the privileges of knights. It was a crusade of mind

l spirit. Yet it was a crusade, not a mission. Missions require
~in countries; crusades reconquer districts formerly ortho-
:, but since lost. Similarly, scholasticism developed a Chris-
1 doctorate, an inner doctorate for a world outwardly ortho-
:, but completely pagan under the surface. The populace of
iousand years ago had no unified Christian culture; that is
Jmantic prejudice of certain nineteenth-century souls like
1alis or Henry Adams. As a doctor for re-paganized Chris-
lS, Hug-o de St. Victor "overroofed" thP rrvnt nf th~ Ra,10
his idea of the eight Orders of the Sacraments of Divinity
tch correspond exactly to the ideologies of Revolutions:
IUGO DE ST. VICTOR REVOLUTIONS CHAPTER
;reator
;reation of Matter 1917 IV
'reedom of Will and Fall of Man (Adam) 1789 V
fatural Law (Noah) 1776 XV
Ud Testament (Israel) 1649 - VI
lew Testament 1517 VII
:hurch 1075 X
.ast Judgment {Resurrection) 998 IX
goes on: "This is the whole Divinity, this is the whole
itual building, and as many sacraments as it contains, by so
iy storeys does it rise into the sky."
cholasticism tried to unify and to Christianize the people
ts time because they were slipping back into paganism. The
torate of the new scholars was something completely un-
wn in antiquity. It was an effort for human solidarity.
~y were fighting the hell of paganism from the inside, be-
•e since the Empire and All Souls everybody had learned
are for everybody else. These people of the twelfth century,
er the leadership of the pope, knew that perfectly well. They
ld not give up the solidar~ty of mankind, embodied in the
:ept of a world-purgatory and a world history. They knew
to science for science's sake. They thought like the Cru-
Ts,- one for all. The subject of their crusade of restoration
Christendom, all and every man united. Scholasticism out-
1nces Platonism and_ any classical philosophy by virtue of
clear service in a crusade. In both periods, it is true,
1ght is cultivated in schools. But in the Christian Era uni-
ities are organs of one solid body politic which sends out
:ors and knights to recover its lost provinces both inwardly
outwardly.
he thought of the last thousand years is Christian by estab-
nent. Pagan thought reflects on the world from outside
polis, because it was pushed out of the particular polis
thP nntvP1""c.t!l1 rnc::1'Y'lln~ r.h.,..iciti-::an t-h,-,.nrrhf- .... ,.,.,.,. .....al-.. ....... ,...9' ...... e
ST. THOMAS AQUINAS IN HIS SCHOOL, BY FRA ANGELICO
The Scholastic Dream: The heart made visible
y his idea of the eight Orders of the Sacraments of Divinity
rhich correspond exactly to the ideologies of Revolutions:
HUGO DE ST. VICTOR REVOLUTIONS CHAPTER
Creator
Creation of Matter 1917 IV
Freedom of Will and Fall of Man (Adam) 1789 v
Natural Law (Noah) 1776 xv
Old Testament (Israel) 1649 VI
New Testament 1517 VII
Church 1075 x
Last Judgment (Resurrection) 998 IX
[e goes on: "This is the whole Divinity, this is the whole
>iritual building, and as many sacraments as it contains, by so
lany storeys does it rise into the sky."
Scholasticism tried to unify and to Christianize the people
: its time because they were slipping back into paganism. The
)Ctorate of the new scholars was something completely un-
1own in antiquity. It was an effort for human solidarity.
'hey were fighting the hell of paganism from the inside, be-
.use since the Empire and All Souls everybody had learned
1
care for everybody else. These people of the twelfth century,
1der the leadership of the pope, knew that perfectly well. They
mld not give up the solidarity of mankind, embodied in the
incept of a world-purgatory and a world history. They knew
: no science for science's sake. They thought like the Cru-
ders, one for all. The subject of their crusade of restoration
is Christendom, all and every man united. Scholasticism out-
stances Platonism and any classical philosophy by virtue of
is clear service in a crusade. In both periods, it is true,
ought is cultivated in schools. But in the Christian Era uni-
Tsities are organs of one solid body politic which sends out
>ctors and knights to recover its lost provinces both inwardly
td outwardly.
The thought of the last thousand years is Christian by estab-
.hment. Pagan thought reflects on the world from outside
e polis, because it was pushed out of the particular polis
..__ ..,.L _ _ _ _ ! ______ 1 -------- ,.....L __ ~_,_• ___ ,1 1. 11 "'
ST. THOMAS AQUINAS IN HIS SCHOOL, BY FRA ANGELICO
The Scholastic Dream: The heart made visible
lict between two forces in one society, Pope and Em-
This conflict created a scientific method unknown to
s and Romans: it forced upon European thought its
:ical sagacity and its comprehensive power of thinking
·adoxes and in contradictions. All possible varieties of
1t were still embraced by a universal society, because two
>f explanation were presented by the two protectors of
it, Emperor and Pope. Western civilization was built
'citizenship in the universe" from the start. The "Cos-
itanism" of modern free-thinkers is but a tardy transla-
E the medi~val citizenship in the Church. For the same
, neither scholasticism nor modern free thought reflects
1ubts or whims of private individuals or schools. They
~nt a process of meditation and regeneration going on
new city of the Holy Ghost, the city of revolutionized
~ndom.

\ CHURCH MADE VISIBLE AND RAPHAEL'S GREATEST

PAINTING.

r we are equipped to understand the transformation of

raments. Where the old Church had known only count-
ts of grace which built up its mysterious body, the
tic period of the Crusades surveyed the whole process
glance. All the sparks of divine light ever emitted at
ne were now collected into one centre: the papacy and
ible Church. The famous fight of Luther against the
e" church is often misunderstood by both Catholics and
ants, because neither see that Luther stopped, not the
of embodiment and realization in the old church, but
nscious tendency to "make visible" in the scholastic
t. In the period of the old church the hidden treasures
ysteries of man's soul were experienced and revealed.
~riod of the "Scholastic Church" made these treasures
ysteries visible to the mind and eye of a "mundane"
ndom. The favourite literature of the visible church
}ecula," mirrors. Thousands of books used the name as
Why? Because they tried to make visible. The "visible
" attacked bv Luther was the result of a recononPst ~
the aim of which was to make visible its treasures. From Greg-
ory VII to 1500 the Church was more than the audible and
visible Body of Christ. It was, besides, a stormy party of reform
within the Corpus Christi, waging war against the mundane
decay of clergy and laity by means of Crusades and Doctorates,
making its internal treasures visible. Mysteries were unfolded,
secrets explained; the ways of life were made clear. The multi-
tude of Sacraments was simplified. Seven sacraments dealt with
every Christian's life-cycle from cradle to bier. Baptism, Con-
firmation, Marriage, Ordainment, Repentance, and Extreme
Unction were the recurrent stations of every soul's pilgrimage.
All Souls, the night-watch of the monks in memory of the Last
Judgment, was supplemented in the daily life of the crusading
church by this curriculum for every soul.
The seventh sacrament-actually the first-was, of course,
Holy Communion itself. The reconquest of theology especially
centred around the Last Supper. The real presence of Christ
in the consecrated wafer became the obsession of all thoughts
and disputes. By granting it to mankind, the Lord seemed to
have revealed the unique secret of the whole structure. In
order to make this secret visible, no effort was spared. The
sacrament of the host appeared in the annual calendar on
Maundy Thursday, as a station in the life and passion of our
Lord. It was a part of the entire history of Christ's Passion.
The new campaign to reveal even the most mysterious ele-
ments of the creed, detached Holy Communion from its his-
torical place in Passion Week. It was also observed separately;
the tie between the omnipresence of the sacrament, and its
historical genesis in the course of events, was loosened. Not
only at the beginning of spring, at Easter, but at the full height
of summer, after th~ Holy Ghost had built up Holy Church,
the Eucharist had to be celebrated on a special day.
At the climax of the Church's crusade to recover its lost
possessions in time and space, Thomas Aquinas composed the
order of the Service for Corpus Christi. Raphael reached the
zenith of his art when he told the day's origin in his "Mass
of Bolsena" in the Vatican. Instituted in 1264, the feast was
_,...,,..,l,. ,..,..,..._~.~1,.~-w• £~- 4,.L.~ -··L.~1- Tl-~--- ----. 1 _1 • -
on the Thursday after Trinity. Unknown in the Orient,
id.al to any Protestant, the Feast of Corpus Christi com-.
ffates the opus operatum} the real reality of the Church's
of reconcentration. The crusading Church believed in

RESULT OF THE PAPAL REVOLUTION

St. Peter crowning the Church .

.city to concentrate the light of all priesthood in· one

1e thoughts of all saints in one summa} the problems
1

thers in one concord. It believed, therefore, in its right

rate this process of reconcentration by one feast, which
rated the revealing power of a whole millennium of
nts into the triumphant procession of one bright sum-
r. Corpus Christi leaves the crypt and choir, the altar
e of the church building. The crusading Church cele-
tl orocession. Lerl hv thP T nrrl~ ~.,..,.;r;h ..... 1 ....,....,. r " - - - - - -
Christi Day the Church recalls its fight for liberty. The result
of the Papal Revolution is well expressed in the text of the
service. The faithful pray for protection against the perse-
cutors of the Church; they pray for the pope, "whom Thou
has destined to preside over Thy church." (This singular-
"Thy church"-would have been impossible three centuries
before.) They pray for the new barriers established against the
emperor's "simony" with the words: "Let Thy church serve
thee, resistance and heresies being utterly destroyed, in pro-
tected Ii berty."
The liberty of the Church was and remained the great war-
cry for four centuries. Even in the four centuries after the Ref-
ormation the liberties of man were only translations of this
liberty of the church. The Rights of Man were a translation
of the Rights of the Christian people, the Rights of the Chris-
tian people were a translation of the Rights of the Universal
Priesthood and the Rights of Priesthood were deduced from
the Rights of the Trustee of Priesthood, the Pope, against
the threats of the Anti-Christ.
ANTI-CHRIST

For such was the revolutionary change in the underlying

principles of civilization that the Anti-Christ now became
the favourite theme of curialist literature. The fear of Anti-
Christ is something different from the fear of the Ghibelline
lge~ before the Last Judgment. The vision of the Last J udg-
ment concentrates all our attention on our fate after death.
The vision of the Anti-Christ cannot be based on this interest
in immortality, because the Anti-Christ is expected on earth,
long before the Last Judgment. Man's asking whether this
world is threatened by the advent o~ the Anti-Christ proves
that he has become interested in the world itself. How could
it be otherwise? The reform of the popes had built an edifice
is like as possible to the celestial order. Space was organized,
:i visible centre established, temporal forces checked and lim-
ited, the past regenerated, the earth civilized. Nobody but the
Anti-Christ could trample under foot the seeds of this new
ng. An oath of allegiance, phrased by the great Inno-
III himself for a king of Aragon, gives us a glimpse of
~mporary thought. This oath gives the lie to the naive
1mption of modern man that the name Christ meant, after
lothing very different from Jesus of Nazareth. The medi~­
~ath carefully distinguished the pope's "succession" from
vicarate." "Succession" was used to point back to Peter;
the unbroken historical chain gave proof of legality. But
tew authority of the popes, won in the twelfth century,
iot based on the historical aspect of his office. Europe,
~h scholastic, was not historistic. The life-cycle of man-
did not seem to point from a preponderance of Chris-
y in the past to a preponderance of secularism in the
e. Christianity lay before medi~val men as a growing
e, a process of salvation. They were marching towards
t. The pope, therefore, balanced his descent from Peter
his service to the future emperor. Not the humiliated
efeated Jesus, but the triumphant Christ, was the pope's
rity. The pope was in authority till Christ came again.
1dged the world before the Anti-Christ should tempt
~'s church; he was the superior of kings as Christ's vicar.
is the oath:
th my heart I will believe and with my mouth I confess that
1man Pope, successor to St. Peter, is vicar of Him by whom
1gs reign, who is the master of the world's kingdoms and
ingship to whom he will."
his oath the papacy is the sole representative of Christ's
government. Thus the Roman Emperor is detached from
tim to finality. The Roman Emperor descended from the
C<esars, the contemporaries of Peter and Paul; but any
Jr who claimed connection with the final goal, the Day
nement, was clearly the Anti-Christ. Indeed, once the
e of Christ was conjured up by the popes of the twelfth
y, the role of the Anti-Christ, the devilish power tempt-
~ nations by secular pride, got a new actuality.
new Vicar of the Last Judge, the Pope, unchained an
:al process, a real torrent of :lrtinnc:.! hPr".l1H.'~ h.c.. ~··~-"-- _] ~ -
1e the "·Concorder" of Christendom. The old apostolic Em-
~erors had fitted into quite a different frame, that of a time-
ess, eternal Church of the Saints. In an unaltering Body of
;hrist, a mystical growth had gone on, but time was not split
n past present and future; anything touched by the Church
ras lifted out of time and became eternal.
This frame was destroyed. The actual emperor is removed
rom his place as a reformer or as the High Commissioner in
he history of Salvation. He is a mere bailiff, needed by the
•ope for special support in the secular branch. "lmperator
'otest dici official is ecclesice Romance," says Canon Law. When-
ver the imperial throne is vacant, the pope fills the vacancy.
Ie is the only pilot to the proper end of time. Compared to
he disordered plurality of kingdoms, the pope is not a prince
if this world. That is the basis for his claim to authority. "To
1e in authority" is a phrase preserved in English tradition from
~atholic times. These two words authority (auctoritas) and
1ower (potestas) were strangely transformed by Scholasticism.
In ancient Rome Augustus Cresar had claimed both power
nd authority. In so doing he was assuming a dignity com-
1arable to that of George Washington; for like Washington he
.eld more than the highest office in the country-he was first
ri the hearts of his countrymen. This Augustus expressed by
Lixtaposing the legal potestas and the moral and impondera-
1le auctoritas enjoyed by the best and wisest men in the com-
1unity. A millennium later, "authority" came to express the
risdoni -revealed by Christ's death and the resurrection from
he grave against the powers of the natural world. "Authority"
;, so to speak, the most papal word still in use today. It covers
1ore than the legal claim of a man who has grown up from
~atural birth and inherited the apostolic succession; his author-
ty is derived from and reflects a last judgment over men and
hings. It co-ordinates the world in the direction of its final
oal. As a matter of course, and as with Augustus or Washing-
Jn, the pope's authority outweighs his power. By it he is able
J see through the temporal divisions here on earth. The pa-
1acy looks with the eye of immortality, with God's eye, upon
u:: practical gain from the pope's vicarate was stupendous.
w time span was wrested from death and decay. Mankind
•nger had to fear an immediate inbreak of the Last Judg-
. The formula of the "rapidly approaching end of time,"
mmon in the documents between 800 and 1100, now dis-
trs .
.e new threat is the coming of the Anti-Christ. And the
in Church keeps a vigilant watch; it protects Christen-
against this eventuality. And the coming of the An ti-
t has not quite the paralyzing quality of the Last Judg-
Even though the Anti~Christ was an eschatological
~, it was a great release for the medi~val mind, to be
red from the immediate contemplation of the Last Day,
~ lighter problems of his coming. For, it was a problem,
· the Beyond, but of this lower world.
~doctrines of authority on one side and of Anti-Christ on
her brought men back to a definite interest in the history
~ world. We have begun "the witness of the ultimate
' says the historian of the First Crusade. This seems, per-
still pretty near the abyss of the Last Day; but to con-
raries the change amounted to a rediscovery of the world.
vorld of creation had come into real being; a precarious
to be sure; yet from the bottomless depths of smoke
oud there had emerged a new vision, that of a garden
ted by the authority of the Holy See .
.re we deal with the garden of the empire, "il giardino
npero," as created by the Papal Revolution, I wish to
ie our statement in this chapter with our previous find-
>out modern eschatology. Actually the Papal Authority
mmitted to a postponement of salvation. The more effi-
it delayed the coming of the Anti-Christ, the more pow-
t became, and the less real seemed the end of time.
nti-Christ was the vision which circumscribed the his-
vision of the papal party bewteen 1200 and 1500. When-
t emperor or a prince was proclaimed the Anti-Christ,
ederick II of Sicily in 1245, the end of history seemed
ly so much it becomes clear that Oswald Spengler or
s Clemenceau were not the first to fear thP p1··u·l ~ .... ...,.--.
form of civilization has its own v1s1on of the end of things.
The dictatorship of the proletariat, the so-called revolution in
permanence, is limited, even threatened, by the possibility of
a state-less and class-less society. The English Revolution is cir-
cumscribed by the inbreak of the "pride of man," by Lucifer
and the downfall of the angels. Luther's gospel ends with the
kingdom of God which is never here, always unattainable,
always ahead of us.
Each new form of civilization can therefore be discovered,
or divorced from its predecessor, the moment it loses interest
in the horizon of the former historical vision. As a matter of
fact, Luther, Cromwell, Robespierre, and Lenin were all well
aware that they lived in a different world from their prede-
cessors. To Lenin, the downfall of civilization was not a threat,
as it was to Clemenceau: it was a fact upon which to build.
For Robespierre, the fall of the angels had already happened;
Lucifer reigned and should reign; Shelley and Byron were in-
nocent romanticists compared to the brazen and conscious
genius of the French self-made man. Cromwell accepted the
kingdom of God as being either here or nowhere. He hated
men who passively faced the unattainable, in the Lutheran
way. Up to the present day, Anglo-Saxon Christians sigh at the
rigid inactivity of the Lutherans and their disbelief that we
can realize the kingdom of heaven on earth. All German philos-
ophy is but an attempt to remove the kingdom of heaven to
a transcendental space and time which is inaccessible for mor-
tals ·but which nevertheless stimulates us constantly to make
a new (though hopeless) effort in the direction of the ideal.
The list is completed by Luther. Luther broke out of the
narrow circle of the Roman ideas when he conceived of the
pope as the Anti-Christ. He brought the vision so terribly
feared by the Guelphs, the papal party, down to earth: the
Anti-Christ had come. One had only to single him out: he was
papacy itself! Meanwhile, between Anti-Christ and the king-
dom of God, the Protestant Christian had to find his way in
the dark.
We find the same principle at work in the Papal Revolution
;.,..,.olj: T,.... .. ,.c- ;.,. c-.o.omc- t-h".llt- t-h.o T ".llc-t- T~11rlrrrv11.o . . . . 1- " ........... ~ ........ 1-.. .............. 1-.. ..... ~-
tticipated. And yet it was: literally. The curialists clearly had
e idea that pope and Holy Church could pass judgment on
1

• and every thing, as vicars of Christ. They actually no longer

Lited for the Last Judgment.
The vicarate of Christ, claimed by the popes since the middle
the twelfth century, has found a poor interpretation in
>dern times. Historians have not considered the problem
eschatology. Reading of the pope as vicar of Christ, they
>ught of him, as vicar of the historical Jesus Christ of the
tr 30 A.D., the revealed God on the Cross; whereas the people
the twelfth century thought of Christ primarily as the Last
ige of this wor Id. A vicar of Christ was therefore a vicar
the Last Judgment. In the eleven-forties, when the new doc-
1e was formulated that the pope was the vicar of Christ,
vas combined with his claim to wield the spiritual and the
tporal sword. Now the temporal was that part of our world
[ch proved vain and worthless in the eyes of the Last Judge.
the pope the temporal sword was given in this sense, that
alone could descry the re la ti ve values of the tern poral,
ause he alone could judge it from the final vantage-point
ieaven and hell. The vicar of Christ, therefore, according
"cholastic ideas, did not look forward into the future; he
~ed backward from the end of things into this world of
n and fiction.
ooking backward from the final goal of all mankind, the
e perceived the truth about this world. He anticipated the
" Judgment. And it was this anticipation of Christ's Last
5ment which aroused Luther's fury.
t Lutheranism the lost horizon was replaced by the limit-
concept of the kingdom of God. Yet soon, the new party
1e Puritans felt that the Lutherans did nothing to bring
Lt this kingdom of heaven. So they marched into it boldly,
e chosen people. When~ was an end to their kingdom? For
Elect, the ultimate danger was pride, Lucifer's sin. This
d mean the renewed loss of paradise regained.
to this abyss of Lucifer_'s pride, into the earthly paradise
ian's genius and self-made arts and sciences, mankind
~ed intention~ llv ~ftp-r , ~Q" T .......... !£~-- 1
~ " • • • - - -
haracter. He was hailed as Prometheus. To this Promethean
ivilization of the nineteenth century the old curses no longer
)Uncled terrible. The only future that seemed dreadful was
hysical decay and disintegration. The downfall of all higher
alues, the desertion from the beautiful, the good and the true
) the primitive standards of violence, vitality and regularity
ras forecast and deplored by all the prophets of the liberal
entury. The Soviets by abolishing truth, the Nazis by abolish-
1g justice, openly broke away from the liberal tradition of
1e French Revolution.
And again, the new Russian masses of the perpetual revolu-
on get their corresponding historical horizon. They, too, must
e located and sheltered in a certain phase. They are told that
1ey are in the midst of an everlasting turmoil. The spasms of
lass-war will last till the Classless Society shall make its en-
·ance on earth. That will not happen for a long time to come.
ri the meantime, the governing party is safe in its claim for
ictatorial power.
With the speed appropriate to our era of aeronautical time-
i Mr. Lindbergh so happily baptized it in his Berlin speech-
1e modern counter-revolutions against Bolshevism are trying
> anticipate "Classless Society." If successful, they would an-
ihilate the historical horizon of Marxism. But they are merely
Junter-revolutionary; for they are not overawed by the .end
E time.
ain and Loss of Historical Horizons:
Last Judgment anticipated 1080;
An ti-Christ an tici pated 151 7;
Kingdom of Heaven anticipated 1649;
Earthly Paradise (Adam) anticipated 1789;
Decadence, Disintegration, anticipated 1917;
Downfall of Liberty, New Barbarian Classless
Society anticipated 1933.
To the sceptic observer and enlightened historian, these des-
erate acts of transforming "the ends of time" may seem sheer
it. They are unwilling to admit the facts because for the
dern historian the only facts that exist are facts of the past.
the facts of the past, for the Iiving, would be of no im por-
ce whatever except for the facts of the future l
o we find all the written history of today at a loss to deal
1 the change in perspective without deep pity for the folly
nan. Of Gregory VII, the distinguished scholar Mr. Hauck
caustically: "It is in vain to ask where there is any gain
le by Rome during Gregory's reign." 1 He is right in the
Id of his facts. Bloodshed, exile, humiliation, rebellion, dis-
!r, reached a climax in the year in which Gregory died.
men like Gregory or Cromwell or Robespierre do not
e to construct a new house but to allot a new area on ·
:h to build! Since we are ascribing to the total revolutions
ur era an intention that is not admitted by the average
tic, two examples may show the preoccupation of the real
nner of a new era. The first is taken from Gregory VII, the
id from the English conquerors of the kingdom of heaven.
his Bulls in which he humbled the Roman Emperor into
~utonic king, Gregory asserted: "We are taking victory
his arms, we are binding him not in the spirit only, but
.e physical world and in the thriving of his life as well."
will have neither power in any battle nor victory for the
Jf his life." These assertions show clearly that the pope
lied with the decrees of Providence quite literally: he
ipate~ the Last Judgment.
a confrmporary of the English Revolution, R. M. Jones
s: 8 "He did not propose to postpone the practice of the
iples of the kingdom until it had finally come in its final
lph. If that course were pursued there would never be a
om. The way to bring it is to start courageously to be the
om so far as the person can reveal it. Instead of postpon-
to a heavenly sphere or to a millennial dawn he boldly
took to begin living the way of the kingdom." This
bes accurately what "anticipation" means in each Total
tck, Kirchengeschichte Deutsch/ands, III, 832, Leipzig, 1896.
bert Journal. 2~. ~a.
~evolution. As soon as we grasp for 'vhat these people were
ghting it becomes clear that they were highly successful.
"'hese anticipations have little to do with an immediate result
in cash," be it territorial or financial. The Cromwellians sanc-
Jied the waves of the Western world; Gregory VII emanci-
ated the nations of Europe from the fetters of the Roman
~mpire and changed knaves of the manor into crusading
nights. The same victory over the encircling gloom was car-
Led by Robespierre, when he attacked the kingdom of the
Ject, the privileged classes; by Luther, when his Christian
tith survived the fact that the Anti-Christ had already risen
l might and yet Christianity survived. All these acts have
othing to do with politics in the trite sense of the word. Yet,
rhat generations of men have feared as the final death-blow to
ivilization is suddenly recognized as the chiming of a new
our of history. What was labelled end or death is now called
:art or birth. The leaders of a revolution re-name the era.
"'hat is all they do. Only when we are acquainted with man's
ncirclement by an evolutionary horizon can we do justice to
1e heroes who destroy and create these horizons. '\Vhy should
1ey be successful in any other sense than that which they
ltended? '\Vhen Oliver Cromwell, on his death-bed, assured
is stunned physicians that, by direct revelation he was certain
ot to die, he was mad as a mortal and right in his vision of a
crmanent place for himself in the evolution of man.
~or the evolution of man, the so-called successful people
rho are praised by the opportunists are utterly unimportant.
~volution of Man is but another term for perpetual victory
ver death, over the encircling gloom. The so-called successful
eople don't touch this problem. They move contentedly
rithin the conventional gloom of their epoch.
Christian civilization has always faced more than the death
f the individual; it anticipates the death of its most sacred
ieals and institutions. In contradiction to nature, civilization
; not interested in the survival of the fittest. It is interested in
lmething more modest and more in1portant, something too
~mple to be mentioned by philosophers. It is interested in
man lives to build a shell of civilization around him which
be quasi-immortal, like a turtle's shell. The Church, how-
, has taught us the mortality of any such shell which is void
te spirit of life. Man must have the power to build these
ers and must keep the power of destroying any one shelter.
'ter the renovation by emperors and monks, the Church
had to learn to bury its old shell. Kings, aristocrats, bour-
' and labourers learned to distrust the immortality of
respective civilization in a process of eternal vigilance. In
ipating the Anti-Christ the medi~val Church watched for
ightest symptom of decay. By anticipating the final threat,
orm of society can attain immortality. By anticipation of
our of death, the life cycle can be governed consciously.
life of civilization is eternally recurrent, it is immortal,
ever the fear of its last hour is kept present by frank
.lSm.
e famous critical power of the Western world is one of its
important Christian qualities. This inner criticism of
ltions from the point of view of their death has made
eternal. Papacy exists today, in spite of all odds and in
of all its enemies. England and France exist in spite of
roletarian revolution. The anticipation of a Last Judg-
loorning over ·our own civilization is the best remedy
t its inevitable downfall. This is the paradoxical wisdom
~ope an revolutions.
 CHAPTER ELEVEN

Italy: The Garden of the Italian Renaissance (The

Second Clerical Revolution)
National Millennium Versus "Middle Ages"-Key Soldiers-Diplomatic Whis-
per-Italian Geography-"Hourly Rule": The Secret of Secular Government-
Landscape in Politics-The Poverty of St. Francis

NATIONAL MILLENNIUM VERSUS "MIDDLE AGES."

FROM 1200 TO 1517 THE POWERS OF THE ROMAN POPE CHECKED

every temporal power in Europe. Modern nationalists deplore
this degradation of national "sovereignty." They repeatedly
accuse the Church of degrading national pride and the nature
of man by making both depend upon a priesthood. But these
same secularists and Fascists, Freemasons or Die-hards, take
every chance to visit Italy and to fall in love with the Italian
cities and the beautiful landscape of Tuscany or Umbria. Their
admiration for Florence, Siena, Assisi, Perugia, Urbino, these
pearls of the Italian Middle Ages, give the lie to their national
fanaddsm against popery. Before the World War, a Swedish
Protestant wrote a book 1 on Western Democracy, in which,
after 250 pages on modern popular government, the reader is
surprisingly transported from modern London to medi~val
Siena. In a rapture of enthusiasm Mr. Steffen tells him that
here, in the Italian Free-Cities of the Middle Ages, all the
liberties of modern Europe and America were hatched. Now,
if the Italian City-State was really the cradle of the Rights of
Man, it was a cradle which was possible only under the author-
ity of the Roman Catholic Church. Italy would not have seen
y or tne glories of the Renaissance without the Papal Rev-
ttion and its continuous work. Furthermore, the downfall
Italian civilization clearly came about with Luther's attack
popery. In the Catholic world, revolutionized by his ser-
ns, the notorious sacco d' Roma ( 1527) was like a conflagra-
ri marking the end of Italian liberty. The conquest of Rome
the pillaging hordes of the imperial army, Germans, Span-
ls, and all the rest, was the symbol of Luther's victory over
Anti-Christ of Rome. But it also put an end to the three
idred years of Italian Iiberty !
:very form of civilization is a wise equilibrium between firm
structure. and soaring Ii berty. Childlike people praise the
-rty and ignore the substructure which creates this liberty.
~y wish to have Sunday without week-days, sugar without
civil peace without police. They do not ask the price of
's privileges. Pacifists, liberals, Protestants, Socialists, in
r genuine passion for improvement, forget the delicate
ilibrium that underlies a civilization. Mankind always
ds on the edge of barbarism and universal warfare; a matter
riches separates it from ruin. The breeding-place of man
:h we call civilization is no impregnable fortress. It is easily
royed. Civilization, as a living body politic, is mortal. It is
1d to die by its own accomplishments. Death is the goal
Ee. Dead things, like porcelain, cannot die. It is the honour
ving bodies that they can die. Living forms have a history,
l birth to death, because it is of the essence of life to be

:ted by an experience of death.

Llian civilita-the Italian form of city-was in dynamic
librium between Roman authority and local potesta.
·efore, with the defeat of Roman authority the tradition
:ilian city-power ended. Modern papacy alone keeps alive
Id glories of Italy as a vital force in European civilization,
.Hing its possessions in Rome "La Citta del Vaticano." In
tame Citta del Vaticano) coined by the Concordat with
in 1929, the great character of the Italian nation and the
Italian contribution to humanity are well combined. The
1

.oxical basis of Italian liberty was exactly what modern

tationalis1n deprecates. Italy lived by excluding all universal
ule from the peninsula except the papacy.
Italy did not exist in 1200. When the Church harvested its
.rst great victory, in its Concordat of 1122, the concept of
taly did not fit into the geographical conception. From the
mpire one piece is detached: the Teuton kingdom. Italy is
.ot mentioned, it is no political term. This is the more impor-
ant to state as our text-books maintain the opposite: they
eport on the struggle between emperors and popes as if the
iopes had kept "Italy" in 1122. The negligence of our text-
ooks is, perhaps, more significant than the terms used in 112 2
llemselves. From this negligence springs the laziness with
rhich people will repeat again and again the time-worn word
Middle Ages." ·rhis word is useless for all the purposes of
iodern men who wish to understand their own antecedents.
~n our antecedents are twofold: Roman and Christian on one
~de, national on the other. The first millennium created our
~oman and Christian past, the second, by restoring Roman
:hurch and Christendom, created the Christian nations. With-
ut dropping the term Middle Ages, this clear distribution of
rvo different n1illennia cannot be taught to our children. If
ur children cannot learn son1e simple facts about the last two
1illennia, they will give up and follow the line of least re-
stance. Sacrificing all chronology, they will place prehistory,
~n thousand years B.c. before their own past. The skulls and
ones of primitive man will act as an historical charm and
obody will penetrate into the thicket of facts about our real
ast. In restoring the Church, the papacy had to create Italy:
1is is the great transformation from a uni versa! revolution
f the Roman Church ( 107 5-1 198) to a national revolution of
..ome and its allies in Italy, the so-called Guelphs. The first
ation to be established in Europe had a universal, a Christian,
spiritual head: the Pope. All nations of today cling to this
laim that saves us from barbarism. The conscious alliance
etween the papacy and Italy did not begin until the times of
1nocent III and Francis of Assisi. The memory of the second
alf of the Papal Revolution was embodied in the life of
:is, and in the actions of the popes after Innocent Ill's
Jn to the papal throne in .t 198.
KEY SOLDIERS.

:! Crusade, the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre, lost its

on the leading men of the new time. The papacy, the
and soul of the undertaking, no longer hoped for the
:les as a magic charm, a way of counter-balancing the
axis from Aachen to Rome by a permanent highway
~he British Channel to Marseilles, to Palermo, Rhodes,
alestine. For the Roman emperors had managed to ac-
Sicily and Southern Italy. True enough, they did not
l it as emperors. They gave up the universal claim of

1n Em pi re" by promising the pope that the Sicilian king-

1ould be kept outside the empire. They did not bring
~ral pressure of a united, universal empire to bear on the
l. Yet the geographical fact of an emperor who ruled
'.ighths of Italy and the surrounding sea was, if anything,
:han a legal theory of universalism. In 1198, practically
y obeyed the emperor. The pope's only salvation lay in
tg him off on a crusade; but this was more or less an
. The crusade in the hands of the emperor was a contra-
in terms. Its very concept had been anti-imperialistic.
1der that the popes lost interest in the political symbols
=:rusades.
emblems were needed to combat the emperor's sphere
ence. And they sprang up. With the beginning of the
tth century, the independent use of the keys of St.
emblems or badges of the papacy makes its appearance .
•v symbol of warfare for the specific ends of papal policy
lag bearing the keys of St. Peter, which is first rnen-
under Innocent III. 2 His successors recruited troops
the emperor under the name of key soldiers-a name
les of the independent use of the keys as emblems or badges of the
1

~ unknown before the beginning of the thirteenth century. Donald

llbreath, A Treatise on Ecclesiastical Heraldry, Vol. I, p. 6, Cambridge
1930.
which survives today for the Swiss bodyguard in the Citta del
Vaticano.
The new flag betokened a changed world. The popes now
began the attempt to recover the papal territories in Italy, and
to loosen the grip of the emperor on Rome. The technical
term was "Recuperation"; and we may call the second half of
the Papal Revolution by this term "Recuperation." For geo-
graphical integrity was the endeavour which guided every step
of the papacy between 1198 and 1268. The House of Swabia,
with its claim to the empire and the Kingdom of Sicily, became
an obsession with the popes. They did not cease from their
fight against the "poisonous tree" of this family until papal
key soldiers, after 12 50, marched into its hereditary Kingdom
of Sicily and until its last descendant, Conradin, was beheaded.
Conradin of Swabia was fourth in the line of ''persecutors
of the Church" from this house., When he came to Italy and
was defeated near Tagliacozzo by Charles of Anjou, and later
captured, the allegation brought against him was that he had
offended against the Church, his nurse. Charles of An jou, him-
self a knight and a prince, based the prosecution on a crime
against the Church! He acted as the steward of the pope, called
into Italy against the Ghibellines. The relation between the
sword of the Angevin Prince and the spiritual sword of papacy
is well illustrated by the legend that during the battle of
Tagliacozzo, Clement IV, though far away in his palace, expe-
rienced the whole battle internally, so to speak, as an intense
vision. The popes direct, equip, instruct the secular arm: they
are not able to act themselves, but they find arms and legs to
carry out their intense will. The stirring story of this papal
vision marks the climax of the papal rebellion against geo-
graphical encirclement. After the death of Conradin no em-
peror ever re-established a political domination over the Italian
peninsula. The papal "Recuperation" was accomplished.
But the exhaustion after those seventy years was terrible.
Clement IV died soon after the final victory, and the papal
throne stood vacant for three years, nine months and twenty-
one days. "The simple-minded found this long vacancy of the
oanal throne rno~t ~~tonnrlino-" lArT'AtP rhrn.-n;r-1..a.... T .. ~1...~-··~...l
'Ji
1w tremendous the effort had been on both sides, and how
lall the advantage had been which had brought the final
:tory-an experience that recurs in every serious world
uggle.
DIPLOMATIC WHISPER.

We began intentionally with the end of the revolution, be-

1se it sharpens our insight into the revolutionary character
the beginning. The struggle was ended by a vacancy in the
pal See; it was begun by a vacancy on the imperial throne,
1198.
rhe newly elected Emperor Frederick was an orphan whose
1rman mother lived in Sicily and for whom, therefore, ac-
ding to the Frankish law, no regency could be established.
e orphan's next-of-kin, his uncle, could take his nephew
o his own house, but he could not be made a regent in the
1han's house and conduct the business of the empire in the
ld's name. The old concept of the House as a real economic
t prevented Philip of Swabia from becoming regent for
nephew Frederick. He resolved, therefore, to go "under
wn," that is, to act as emperor, but to omit the sacrament
tnointment. By this device he could act as temporary king
il Frederick became of age.
~his gave the papacy a chance to intervene. A counter-candi-
~' a Guelph, was anointed as quickly as possible. By this act
pope drove Philip into a defensive position; Philip took
Lted refuge in anointment, in spite of his loyalty to his
hew.- But the anointment, being a sacrament, made Philip
vocably king and destroyed his plan for a temporary ar-
~ement.
l this chain of events, the pope found the pretext for an
ck on the honest and over-scrupulous Philip. He banned
for having repudiated his loyalty to his nephew! He
lsed Philip of a violated conscience. The term is important;
as destined to become epoch-making. The wounded con-
1ce of Philip was an artificial construction by the pope, so
he might condemn him. Nobody was ever more honest
correct than Philip. His tender conscience had even marlP
him avoid being anointed immediately, for fear of damaging
his nephew.
Martin Luther's restoration of the personal conscience reads
like a reply, after the lapse of three hundred years, to the Pope's
Machiavellian accusation of Philip. Perhaps in no other case is
the grandeur of historical continuity clearer than in this dia-
logue between the papal attack on the German prince's con-
science and Luther's restitution of the princely conscience. The
dialectical process between the revolutions takes the form of a
dialogue carried on across a valley of centuries. And the full
weight of a revolution can be tested by asking whether it has
such a contradictory answer to give to another.
The document which formulated the papal right to ruin
Philip stands, as might be expected, half way between the
Dictatus Papce of 1075 and the 95 theses of Luther in 1517. It
was a deliberatio de statu imperii, read to the cardinals in con-
sistory in 1200. No longer does the pope begin the revolution
"in petto," by a monologue. Yet we are still far from the public
disputation of theses in a university. The pope does not ad-
dress an uncertain number of people. He makes no public
speech or protest or thesis. He deliberates with his cardinals
within the walls of the papal court. The document fittingly
opens a period of aristocratic government in the Church. Dur-
ing the long vacancies of the Holy See, the duty of governing
the Church fell, practically, on the cardinals. The second half
of the Papal Revolution is carried out, less by a monarchical
than by an aristocratic, form of Roman Church. Aristocratic
chapters became the form of government in every bishopric.
The "deliberation" of 1200 is a statement of interest. It asks:
"What is necessary, what is fitting, what is convenient (quid
oportet, quid decet, quid expedit)?" And the reader is left in
no doubt that the "expedit," the interest, carries the decision.
The document is a masterpiece of diplomacy. In the Dictatus
Papce of 1075, a man holds a soliloquy before his God. The
sin of Simony is fought. In the deliberatio of 1200 we hear the
halftones of a diplomatic whisper. A political danger is Haired.
Papacy now has at its command both the superhuman
strenQ'th of the last trnmnPt-~nrl thP h-:a lft~TH~ ,....{: ...l:.-..1,..,._..,..'°:""
:i.nguage. The deliberatio, in its bodiless whisper, reminds us
1£ the bodiless presence of the pope's mind at the Battle of
~agliacozzo. It was not any full-blooded virility, but the culti-
ated wink of the diplomat, which made the papal curialists
imous all over the world. Papal diplomacy became one of
1e great artistic achievements of civilization. All European
iplomacy learned its trade from the papacy. The methods of
iplomacy differ from the ringing sound of "papal bulls" and
~hortations as the grooves on a modern gramophone disc
iffer from a monumental style.
ITALIAN GEOGRAPHY.

The deliberatio of i 200 advanced the cause of the Guelphic

~ndidate. After innumerable detours, the papacy always came
tck to this deliberate effort to destroy the union between the
orthern empire and Sicily.
In this annihilation of the Hohenstaufen, the popes un-
m btedly were involving themselves in a purely secular strug-
e. But emperor and pope could not be room-mates in Italy.
'e owe to this struggle the first concept of a secular kingdom
"state." In 122 l, Frederick II had to promise the pope that
: would never use the same seal for his em pi re and for his
:ilian kingdom. As a result the emperor's insignia disap-
ared from the Seal of Sicily. Instead there appeared a clumsy
ip, probably the first secular map in European history. Its
~es and bridges and the straits of Messina, symbolize the
wn -of secular government under the pressure of papal
thority. The word "pressure" should be taken as literally
possible. This map was not the result of the free play of an
ist's imagination; it was literally extorted from Frederick II.
marked the end of the emperor's sacred character on Italian
l, and ushered in the period of the city-state with its purely
rldly character.
From the beginning of his reign, Innocent III worked to
Tuperate'' the possessions of the Church. In re-assembling
at had been gathered piece by piece for a thousand years,
was led to organize the papal possessions once more, and
s time in the form of a sina1P no11t1r~1 11n1t Tr. "6T"';._;"""" '"~ ~11
 Sacred or Secular Government
I. FREDERICK II AS ROMAN EMPEROR
(Eternal Rome and her eagle are on his seals.)

II. FREDERICK II AS SECULAR KING

e oldest secular map, gives the Straits of Messina, castles, fruit trees, cities of
:1ues and towns, in summoning all his subjects to con-
1ces, the pope created the Papal State. This state borrowed
.ght and existence from his universal authority, but was
: merely a geographical area, a state without a racial, na-
Ll, or historical unity, a bishop's state. The case of Sicily
its new geographical seal had its counterpart in the organ-
m of Central Italy.
:t the pope could not stop at this point. For his opposition
e legitimate house of the Ghibellines, he had to find allies.
time not Norman princes from the South, but the cities
orthern Italy offered their support. However, they an-
l certain conditions. The pope could not longer act, as
)ry VII had acted, as an impartial, super-local authority
id space and time. He was forced into a coalition as an
n pnnce.
early as 1180 the cities of Verona, Venice, Vicenza,
mo, Treviso, Ferrara, Brescia, Cremona, Milan, Lodi,
'.lza, Parma, Modena and Bologna had written to the
"We were first to bear the emperor's attack, so that he
not destroy Italy and suppress the liberty of the Church.
~fused, for the honour and liberty of Italy and for the
y of the Church, to receive or to listen to the emperor."
ent III, in one of his first letters, written on April i 6,
recommended "the interest of Italy" to the cities of Tus-
The same papacy which as recently as in u50 had de-
d .upon the emperor to overthrow the revolutionary
i of Brescia in Rome, now committed itself irrevocably
"common cause against a common enemy"! (Potthast
:25.) The biography of Innocent III explains that the
200 was the turning-point, after which the pope was
! to act from a purely ecclesiastical point of view but
become definitely Italian: "Our Lord the Pope thought
nditions of peace [with the emperor] reasonable. Yet
Nere scandalized, as though he were going to favour the
1s in Italy, who through cruel tyrants had subjected
o a most grievous servitude. He, therefore, deflected his
in favour of Italian liberty and did not accent thP tPrrnC! "
ieµectzon zn favour of Italian liberty was the new course
ed upon the papacy. The Italian view of the struggle was
~rly expressed in the terms of the alliance which the cities
~orthern Italy concluded in 1226: "No emperor shall march
n Germany to Rome with more than 1,200 soldiers!" Be-
en 950 and 1250 the Northern emperors had personally
te to Italy eighty-five times. The territories between the
s and Rome felt themselves abused, degraded into a mere
troad for constant expeditions to Rome. They were but a
ns to an end. And they suffered the more as the Northern
~s rose one by one to an equal footing with the old Frank-
,tock, the backbone of the realm, through their tribal dukes
1ming emperors. With the Swabian dynasty the last of the
~s had given the empire a ruling house. Hence the contrast
t1 emancipated Germany and a subdued Italy was now at
enith.
n the other hand, Italy had no big ecclesiastical territories
the North. Also, after 1122, the Italian bishops were under
:ontrol of the popes. In 1161 the emperors had destroyed
·ich city of Milan. For the Italian revolt against the North,
cruel act was that "last straw," that final event which we
found at the bottom of every great revolution. After 1161,
was in ferment. The revolution went "underground."
"Italy" still meant the highway of the emperors from the
to Rome. It was still a special medi(eval concept, by which
Lame Italy was reserved for the northern two thirds of the
1sula.
the South, no league of cities made itself respected by the
'· In Sicily, Campania, Apulia, Calabria, 153 bishoprics
~d the stronghold of papal policy. When we read that in
the "orb" met in Rome for the Lateran Council, an
sis of the figures illustrates the special character of this
Of 412 prelates, more than a hundred came from the
iom of the Two Sicilies. There, in the South, the classical
ion survived which gave a bishop to every town. In Sicily
polis" of antiquity had remained through the centuries.
1uthern Italy the Ron1an popes inherited a province of
~ institutions. Therefore the Roman hishnn 1n h;~ "''"" .... ""
:ils, had three hundred Italian bishops to set off against the
hirty-five of Germany or the eighty of France! Secular Italy,
n the modern sense of the word, showed no political homo-
eneity in 1200. But, for the papacy, the smallness of each epis-
opal jurisdiction and the multitude of bishoprics in Italy,
rere big with consequences. The pope became the born leader
E the whole Italian body of Lords spiritual 3 despite all the
ifferences of government in the peninsula. The "Natio ltalica"
t the councils of the fifteenth century was naturally led by
le pope himself, as the foremost Italian prince, while Spain,
ermany, England and France had difficulty in finding a true
ttional representative.
"HOURLY RULE": THE SECRET OF SECULAR GOVERNMENT.

All "authority" being reserved for the pope, Italian "liberty"

tfolded itself in the direction of "potestas." It seems incredi-
~ that the modern word "power" is the same word as
otestas/' so great is the change in meaning. "Potestas,'' in
.lian political thought, meant the. reverse of modern power.
otestas" was a transient public function in a temporal order
things. "Potestas" entered the plan of the creator best when
;vas as transient and short-lived as possible. The Italian ex-
·iment in potestas is a grandiose experiment in the ·fleeting
lracter of time. "Potestas," the power of office, given, accord-
. to St. Paul, by God to magistrates, became the name for
head of an Italian city. This Podesta was appointed for one
r; and to emphasize the fleeting character of this "power"
was fetched from outside, and left the city after his term of
:e. The Lord Mayor of London and the rectors of the uni-
•ities in Germany are appointed for one year only. "A year
a day" was a set term iJ?. European courts for the right of
1ession; any officer who stayed on for more than a year was
urned to be in lawful possession forever. The one-year
tion of office made it plain that in a republic nobody had
vivid picture of this leadership occurs as late as 1807 in Napoleon's talk
the Papal Nuncio, described in Clemens Metternich, Mt:rnoirs, I, 292, New
Scribner, 1880.
power as his own property. It opposed potestas to property,
and its "modern usage," as they called it, to the feudal life
tenure of hereditary succession. Around the podesta a new
kind of literature sprang up. 4 His power came from God, be-
cause it carefully avoided all sacramental authority. Feudal
society was scorned as having misused power by treating it like
property. The thrill of a new discovery in the application of
short set terms, originally used only in court, can still be felt
if we analyze the hundreds of Italian "statutes" established in
the thirteenth century. We find: "Rights of Men," "Bills of
Rights," ordinamenta della Giustizia_, all animated by the great-
est political optimism. In spite of their variety, these statutes
are all devoted to one serious effort. Power must be established
between and beyond individuals. Nobody can be, or represent,
the body politic. Man as a temporal being shall organize his
society in forms of temporal, i.e., provisional order. Often one
year seems too long a period, and the appointed time was
shortened to six months, four months, two months. During
each term, instead of one individual, six or four or twelve,
might be in power together. These men form~d an intimate
comradeship during their term of office. The Russians would
call their group a "collective." They slept together and took
their meals together. They were not allowed to go home or to
speak to their families during the term. They were construed
as one indivisible body. As the emblems of power had to be
entrusted to this group, the constitution divested them of all
attributes of power after their term expired. Lots were drawn
to select the group. Nobody should aspire to office. Not per-
4 Dr. Fritz Herftter, Die Podestaliteratur Italiens im z2. u. I). ]ahrhundert,
Leipzig, 1910. Chapter 129, "Johannes v. Viterbo,,: Appendix, De duabus po-
testatibus.
Cognoscant igitur et manifeste sciant ex predictis potestates et civitatum et
aliorum Jocorum rectores, se a deo esse, et nulla inde excitatio de cetero move-
atur in cordibus eorum, et cognoscant gladium habere ab ipso domino deo.
Nee sine causa datus est eis gladius temporalis; quia ad vindictam malefactorum,
ad laudem vero bonorum. Ergo precipue deum et equitatem habeant ante oculos
suos,• ut supra dictum est. Scituri pro certo quod non magis alios iudicant
quam ipsi iudicabuntur. t Qua enim mensura mensi fuerint eadem remetietur
eis. t
• Dig. XIII, 4, 4. t Cod. lust. III. 1. IL + M-:1rlr TU ""
11
l1 aspiration, but the impersonal inspiration of office, was
tted. The Italian city-state freed the State once and for all
n its identification with individual rights or the physical
of one of its citizens.
: is true, in modern times, that society is organized by the
sion of powers into a variety of simultaneous functions.
: Lutheran State made civil service and military service
.llel. English parliamentarianism distinguished king in
iament from king in council, judiciary from executive.
~rica and France divided government into three branches,
checking the other: the judicial, the legislative, and the
utive. Division of power has been a departmental arrange-
t of different activities during the last four hundred years.
Italy, for the three hundred years preceding, power was
divided, but by a successive arrangement of men in the
activity. If the men in power alternated three times a
then the annual power was divided into three different
>ns, an arrangement in series, which people then thought
icient as we now think our departmental divisions. The
dency in the United States is a modern example of medi-
principles; great power must be vested in one man, but
very short time.
e "temporal" organization treated society as temporary.
is the clue to all the grandeurs and ineptitudes of medi-
politics. Italian thought and Italian political experimen-
L in the cities led the way. This was the revolutionary

>hie idea of the years between 1200 and 1500.

our days, in the midget Republic of Andorra, the "tern-
' is still sanctified in a mediceval way. Six valleys in the
ees form the Republic. The result is that the six valleys
form a temporal power. Six men are sent out from the
s on a certain day, their mandate being valid only for
iy. They get a "diet" for their going, staying and return-
1e very word "diet," "dies," being the mediceval word for
1poral" assembly instead of "parliament." The six men
in the "Iron Cabinet" which contains the chest with the
tmental archives. Here the charters and privile{!es of the
State" are kept. They must be laid upon the table before the
ten at every meeting, to endow the group afresh with the
ower of government. Six locks secure the chest. Each of the
x parish representatives brings one key with him. Six men
irn their keys in the lock-the chest is opened-government
m begin. When they depart, no authority is left behind them.
'he day's power has been exercised, it expires at sunset.
Here we have the metaphysics of the secular state: the order
ust remain a day's order; it may not exceed the orbit of the
~ar. Under the empire, Passion Week had stood for peace.
ow the ecclesiastical calendar of the year, successfully rivalling
.e emperor, begins to subdue the temporal power and com-
·ess it into the short span of the twelve months. Everything
~yond a year was dangerous because it created abuse. Thus
e transience of human things was made the essential princi-
e of political institutions. The political body and will were
iilt up out of the days of various and varying men, and not
Lt of the life-times of particular men. The Guelphic city sub~
dinated man's calendar to the church calendar. It forbade
e body politic to go beyond the year of the religious soul.
1is "Guelphic" concept was so general that it spread over all
irope. The kings and princes took it up for the government
their realms, by giving a temporal share to the estates of
e country. I say, a temporal share; for it was the "diet," the
::>resentative of the country in "going, staying, and returning''
it gave the estates their power. What we have mentioned in
tie Andorra, can be found just as well in Great Britain. The
nous dictum of Henry VIII, on the splendour of parliament,
ist be read with a careful eye to this conception of tern poral
transient order:
'We be informed by our judges, that we at no time stand so
hly in our state royal as in the time of parliament, wherein we
head and you as members are con joined and knit together in
! body politic, so as whatever offence or in jury during that time
>ffered to the meanest member of the House is to be judged as
ie against our person and the whole court of Parliament." (Pol-
l, p. 231.)
:enry VIII transformed this temporal State into a modern
e, by making the king head of the Church. Thereby the
~ inherited the eternal timelessness of the Church. The
'rious divine right of kings was a discovery or invention
ie sixteenth century. The period between 1200 and 1517
v of no such divine right, because the secular order pro-
ed by diets and year-books; any time-span exceeding the
~ of a year was under the authority of the Church. Men
. with "a year and a day," and they were happy because,
Jy accepting the fugitive character of time, they felt that
were not imperilled by the slavery or idolatry of any
ar power.
LANDSCAPE IN POLITICS.

le vision of the territory to be governed by this temporal

r underwent a definite change also. By the concentration
wer into the time-span of a "diet," it seemed possible to
he whole territory as present on that one day. The diet
the political power so real that it ceased to belong to
.duals: the countries and valleys and boroughs were repre-
l, embodied, on the spot.
is new vision of space was clearly developed in the
1hic states. As early as 1192 all the peasants in the county
1oa were made citizens of Genoa. In 1235 the Florentines
ed all the farmers of their Tuscan possessions as citizens.
qual status of every man, despite the distance of his home
he political centre, is so natural to our political thought
e forget how utterly difficult it was to arrive at this con-
nd to carry it through. Dante, the man of Ghibelline
ons, always protested against the Guelphic mixing of
ts and citizens. (Ercole II (1928), 26.) Yet this was one
most important changes of his century. His protest
it made Dante once more a stranger to his time.
te's antipathy to the artificial citizenship of the husband-
as shared by all the Northern princes. In Germany, for
.e, this Italian principle was considered an outright
;ystem. Time after time in the next two centuries the
.
f or b ad e b v Iaw t h e ex1stPnrP n f '' .. . . ''
~C'°" .. ,... ................ _ _ _ _ _ -
f/t.r,..,, ..
burger," "Pfahlburgertum"). Neither peasants nor knights
could become citizens in the Northern cities. Meanwhile the
progress of Italy depended on this Guelphic generosity towards_
the country-side. The peasants had civil rights, and joined the
minor guilds and crafts of the city. The great artists of Flor-
ence came from her villages. Settignano gave her Michelangelo,
Vinci the great Leonardo, Vespignano produced the first
painter of the "stilo nuovo," Giotto. In exchange, the city gave
something to the country which no peasant or knight could
have given. The alliance between city and country created
what modern man enjoys as landscape. No "landscape" what-
:!ver was in existence before 1200. It has long been noticed how
~eat a detachment and distance is needed to perceive a land-
~cape. A peasant is a part of his environment; he cannot see it,
Jr treat it as his object. Scientists have investigated the way in
.vhich a native of the Alps contemplates high mountains. An
mthority reports his findings: "The peasant or farmer often
;eems to overlook mighty ridges or summits or extensive
ralleys. Instead, he names a multitude of trifles. As a genuine
:hild of nature, he is not detached enough from it to visualize
he main forms of the landscape. Like all the impressions of
>rimitive men, 'landscape' is split into a mass of details." This
luotation from the Alpinist Finsterwalder may be rounded off
>y a few words from Carl Schurz's Reminiscences: "The per-
eption of natural beauty is not primitive, but the result of
ducation, of culture. N a!ve people seldom possess it, or at
east do-not express it. The aspects of nature, mountain, valley,
orest, desert, river, sea, sunshine, storm, etc., etc., are to them
ither beneficent, helpful, or disagreeable, troublesome, terri-
1le. It is a significant fact that in Homer, with all the vividness
f his pictures, there is no description of a landscape or of a
atural phenomenon from the point of view of the beautiful.
Ve remark the same in the primitive literature of other coun-
.
~1es.
,,
Guelphic Italy discovered the landscape as the background
f its cities, because the landscape was no longer owned by
~parate and greedy proprietors. It was changed into the field
f r'\"'1;.-;r,..1 ...-.."f-o<"f-...,,., ~£ "~:~.:1:A--" T - ., "
 THE GARDEN OF THE EMPIRE
States and small principalities in Italy-circa 1300. All the lines are
political boundaries.
cal and an artistic reality. In looking at the Guelphs and
Ghibellines of Italy we are reminded of the difference between
the Social Revolutionaries and the Bolsheviks in Russia. Here
it was the Social Revolutionaries who were in love with the
individual peasant or village. They distributed the land among
individual settlements. The Bolsheviks conceived the unifying
vision of one Russian economy. The Italian city-state is so
small that modern national historians always wonder why the
Italians did not unify the whole peninsula in the Ducento.
This absurd projection of present-day proportions into the past
hinders us from learning by the past where it is really identical
with our own situation. The Guelphic effort was as real as
modern economic planning, because the economy of the city
was something new, something bigger than manorial husbandry
had been. The division of labour between the craftsmen was
something startling and confusing in a time when 18 3 crafts
contributed to one knight's equipment. The knight being, so
to speak, the heavy artillery of the Guelphic period, the organ-
ization of the crafts around his panoply meant what the arma-
ment industry means to us: the most complicated and most
efficient branch of technical production. A vision which bound
the vinedresser and wheat-farmer together with the artisans of
this industry, did not lack boldness and grandeur. It overcame
the idea of local autarchy; it changed locality into territory.
T'hree thousand square miles may seem a contemptible piece
of land today. Yet, as it embraced a most complicated mecha-
nism . of production, its social problem was not less difficult
than ours.
We find a steady increase in size from revolution to revolu-
tion. 3,000 square miles in Italy, 25,000 in Germany, 140,000
square miles in Great Britain, 360,000 square miles in France:
such were the units to be organized. Soviet Russia· measures
forty times the size of France; its problem is the problem of
organizing a continent.
Manor,
City-State,
Princedom,
 United Kingdom,
Nation,
Continent,
1 one after the other the substratum of a social revolution.
majority, during such a revolution, misses the point of
:entration, the bigger issue. The new rulers are those who
bold enough to organize a new area by means of a new
n. They are always a minority when they begin. But they
~ problems inaccessible to the old ways of thought, because
think in a new order of magnitude.
t-ie break between two worlds is a shift in the size of the
to which political thought is applied. The jump from
to "territorial" economy was as dangerous as the jump
"national" to continental economy. In medheval Italy as
.odern Russia this jump was made abruptly, by violent
utions; whereas the other countries temporized more or
)etween the two radical solutions. The boldness of the
into a new comprehension of the world frightened man,
always does. A new horizon dawned before the eyes of
in the thirteenth century, leaving the dark walls of palace
hurch, opening out into the dim colours of the last cloud
~he last hill in the distance, where earth and heaven
~d to meet.
e co-operation of papal authority and secular "potestas"
~ise to a new political symbolis1n. The art of tlie Renais-
was the expression of a unique political constellation.
iew governments of the Italian cities lacked the dignity
~nt in an anointed king or a sacred emperor. They were,
nciple, republics of this world. The Italian city-state left
ip, theology, religion, to the Roman Catholic Church;
ie citizen of Italy was easily led to exalt her, the One
h, into the common nurse and mother. Where Rome had
he Mother of all Churches, it now became "Our Mother
h." The symbol of this spiritual motherhood was the
ion of the Virgin Mary. The ebullition of Italian liberty
~tin1ately connected with a new effort to increase her
p. The Rosary, by which the Ave M;:irb ~nrl f-ha T "--1'~
~ayer were combined into a chain of prayers, was invented in
e thirties of the Ducento, i.e., in the thirteenth century. The
gnity of Holy Mary's position on Earth and in Heaven he-
me the subject of increasing debate between the two groups
friars, Franciscans and Dominicans. Mary's intercession was
nstrued as the intervention of the mother for her family and
rvants in a manor or palace of the time. An empress or a
1een or a farmer's wife, being in charge of the whole econ-
ny of her household, was not only entitled, nay, in duty
1und, to raise her voice and interpose her authority in any
msaction concerning one of her labour-forces. Among the
ivileges of the Empress or the Queen, this intervention is
~ularly mentioned. The comprehensive protection of a
ouse" being the chief feudal conception of society, the
rgin Mary's intervention with her son was much more nat-
al than in modern days, where the mother is no longer the
disputed queen.
Now all the discussions about Mary reacted directly on the
lurch. The Church stood sponsor, not theologically but prac-
ally, for the real presence of Mary, as Holy Communion
;towed the real presence of the Saviour. The stone edifice of
:athedral, embracing the altar with the sacred host, was like
~ womb of the Virgin embracing her blessed child. Yet better
m stone or glass would "Mother Church" give to every
ristian the warm feeling of protection and guidance. The
1
man Church seemed omnipresent in the life of the Chris-
a, the .World ceased to be unfeeling and cold, the Madonna
Jeared anywhere and everywhere. Her mantle reached from
aven down through clouds and snow to the earth, and
rmed the children of men in the field, in the forest, at sea,
i in their workshops. The Sienese, before the battle of Mon-
1erti, dedicated their city to the Holy Virgin. They gave to
na the title of "Civitas Virginis,'' and the bishop collabo-
ed with the Sindaco in the cathedral to offer the city sol-
nly to the Mother of Christ. No wonder that the Sienese,
the battlefield, saw the mantle of the Madonna floating over
ir troops. All over Europe Our Lady's churches became the
rrrh~C! fn-r t-ho 'l"\ouY ,..,.,........,..,_..,...._ ...
 The Madonna was so near that her representation behind
he altar now became a rule. Beginning in 1200, the Catholic
ffiest elevated the sacred wafer; moreover in doing so, he
urned away from his congregation toward the East. The space
rito which he looked had to be filled. It could not be filled
1ore naturally than by the picture of the Madonna; and so it
ras. The three hundred years of Madonna-painting are cele-
rated today by countless books on medheval art. The tri-
mphant vision of the new political movement in Italy became
ie "Madonna in the Landscape."
What distinguishes painting after 1300 from all previous art?
erspective. What distinguishes Occidental art from Chinese,
1 which it owes perhaps the knowledge of landscape painting?

;:!rspective. The gilded background of Byzantine art is ex-

Langed in Italy for a new perspective. The Madonna, the
~ed visual centre of the divine service in the church, is framed
r the political vision of the new city-state: the Landscape.
he stilo nuovo in painting was what books on planning are
day, or what written literature was to the national revolution
France: the expression of a common efjort and a common
:th. The Mother Church, and the citizen protected by her,
:re felt to be the centre from which light shone into the dark-
ss of the world. A landscape is the country viewed from
thin the city. When Petrarch wrote his famous verse, "Fior,
'ndi, erbe, ombre, antri, onde, aure soavi,'' the painters had
~nded cathedral and country. A whole territory lay before
! charmed eye, delivered from local tyrants, centralized under
~ lawful power of purely temporal government. The deeply
t opposition between the new temporal and the old local
ler may help us to sympathize with the enthusiasm of the
>ple whenever a Madonna was painted in the stilo nuovo.
:olo Pisani is, I think, the first artist to receive special
nage from the community for his famous relievos, in 1260.
out 1300, Duccio of Siena, an eye witness of the battle dur-
which the Virgin had spread out her mantle of protection,
nted a Madonna which was received by bishop and clergy,
ernors and people, and was conveverl to thP r~th,::.rl .... .-. 1 ............ :...t
 ringing of all the bells. In his verse-subscription to this
1ting, the artist treats himself as an equal of the city:
Mater Sancta Dei Sis Senis causa requiei,
Sis Duccio vita te quia pinxit ita.
Holy Mother of God,
Be thou the cause of peace to the Sienese;
Be thou life to Duccio because he painted thee thus.
relationship between the pope and Raphael or Michel-
do exceeds by far the customary relation between princes
artists in other countries. Even in Venice, the proud pa-
.an city, we read in the Cathedral of St. Mark: "First con-
plate carefully and acknowledge the art and labour of
:hers Francesco and Valerio Zuccati, of Venice, then judge."
: painter, being an artisan (artista) himself, and being hon-
!d for painting the symbol of the city's liberty, could repre-
all the crafts and guilds of his community. He was no
lted, impressionable genius like the artist of the nineteenth
ury. He was the best man in his craft.
THE POVERTY OF ST. FRANCIS.

he independence of the city-state was such a great enter-

~ that one really wonders how the papacy itself survived
violent impetus of secular feeling. We have called the
Jd from 1200 to 1269 the second half of the Papal Revolu-
. Looking into the heresies in the Italian cities, their re-
us ·indifference, their anti-clerical legislation, we wonder
·hat sense this Guelphic movement was really religious at
Dur astonishment increases when we turn to the general
.tion of the papacy in this period, and to its greatest defeat,
'.ail ure of the Crusades.
1e more Italian the interests were which the pope was
~d to consider, the less real became the idea of the Cru-
;. It is true, the Crusades still loomed like a spectre on the
~on of the eighteenth century. The Roman calendar or-
ed Crusaders' holidays for victory over the unbelievers as
1S 1700. On the eve of the Reformation in ILi.Oh. the Ger-
man peasants of the "Bundschuh" dreamt of a crusade to end
all their miseries. Luther had to explain seriously that "God
cares no more for the empty spot called the 'Holy Sepulchre'
than for all the cows in Switzerland." ..£neas Sylvius, the hu-
manist pope who called himself "Pius" in memory of Virgil's
pagan hero, the "Pius £neas," nevertheless planned a crusade
against the Turks as late as 1460. Knowing all this, I still main-
tain that the Crusades ceased to be the leading idea of the
papacy after 1200. In 1204 the so-called Latin Empire was set
up in Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade. The violation
of the Greek churches in Byzantium shocked everybody who.
took the word "crusade" to heart. The Children's Crusade, in
1212, ended in a hecatomb of innocent victims. In 1226 the
atrocities of a crusade against the Waldenses and Albigenses
put public opinion to the test again. The _climax was reached
when the Emperor Frederick II, though solemnly banned by
the pope's excommunication, stood in the Church of the
Saviour in Jerusalem and crowned himself by taking the crown
crom the altar. The Crusades had definitely turned out to be a
~wo-edged weapon. Had it not fallen into the hands of a rebel
tgainst the Church, and of people who compromised the pope
)y unspeakable mistreatment of other Christians? The terrible
Lbuses of the Crusade compelled the papacy to bow before a
iew and pure vision.
After 1226, when the pope banned the emperor, and when
his emperor carried out his Crusade in spite of the papal ban,
he pope found moral comfort and spiritual solace by visiting
he man whose merit it was to knot together papal and national
evolution, the Saint of whom his bishop could say in the words
1f the 142nd Psalm: "God gives not such a man to every
.ation." In 1228 the pope visited Assisi and knelt at the death-
1ed of him whom we may call the last Crusader and the first
~iar of the Occident.
Francis of Assisi is the coping stone in the vault which was
1ised by the Guel phic revolution over "the garden of the
mpire." He was a rich young man of knight-like education,
·ho dreamt of a crusade. He went to Apulia from where he
Leant to embark for the Orient- Tn~tp~f1 hA ......a.-. . --,.,.-1 .,...'- -
idea of a crusade proved, by his heart's own experience, to be
unreal or obsolete. This return from Apulia is the greatest
event in his life. It closed, for this deep soul, the door to a past
form of expression which still sufficed for many of his con-
temporaries. His turning about in Apulia was a demand for a
new form of Christian life to replace the Crusades. We do not
know whether, on his way South, he came in contact with
friends of a certain Abbot in Calabria, Joachim di Fiore, but
we are sure that he and Joachim di Fiore came to be connected
in a providential way. The great historical prophet Joachim
di Fiore was the John the Baptist of the "poverello." The
prophecy of Joachim was a new monastic religion; and its ful-
filment was the life of Francis. Joachim turned against the
.scholastici of the twelfth century who, in a period that would
last only sixty years before the Johannine "third age" began,
were still pre~ccupied with their school-doctrines. Joachim
forecast the end of the existing form of the Church; the Holy
Ghost moved on. In his terms, the Virgin Mary had to con-
ceive a new son by the spirit. This son was a new people, with
all the power (potestas) under heaven that was promised by
Daniel. Here the people's sovereignty is proclaimed to be a
seed of the spirit. The year 1201 begins a new era in the history
of the world's salvation, which was to be awaited with the
greatest anxiety. The prophet dated the great change from the
ancient form of the Church to a new form, to the epoch be-
tween 1201 and 1260. 5 In his philosophy of history, Odilo of
Cluny's great conception of All Souls is kept alive, but with· the
additional idea of revolutionary change. After the era of the
Church will come an era 9f the Holy Spirit. We find here the
temptation of a change in era so characteristic of every total
revolution. Joachim calls the future "J ohannine"; Paul being
tied up with Peter in the visible church of Rome, John, the
Apostle of charity, is made the patron of the new age of pure
5 The greatest general of the Franciscan order, Bonaventura, fearing to keep
his spirituals from getting out of hand, around the dangerous date 126o, scolded
Joachim di Fiore for "irreverence." This slip of the greatest Franciscan thinker
marked the end of the inspired period in this revolution.
irit. Joachim's writings had so great an influence that other
oks were forged in his name. An Evangelium ceternum was
blished, around which a strong party of so-called Spirituals,
>ecially monks, gathered. The pope's spiritual sword was no
iger acknowledged by the Spirituals as the climax of spiritual
~- Preceding Wycliff, Huss and Luther, they, the Spirituals,
tght that the clerical functions of the Church bore the name
spiritual improperly, and at best figuratively; that the gift
the Holy Ghost came long before all clerical ministrations;
i that next to the famous seven gifts 'Of the Spirit, the free
erances of inspiration would still precede the hierarchy in
~itual rank. It was a complete revolution of values, taught by
left wing, the Joachimites, and it prepared the way for
:her. A victorious papacy had destroyed Simony, but it had
1ropriated the silver and gold of the faithful to its own uses.
~Church had become wealthy. The Vicar of Christ, wishing
wield both swords, was clearly fighting for earthly riches
~n he armed his soldiers of the keys for the "Recuperation"
taly. The second clerical revolution had to cure the disgust
.ted by this spectacle. The Recuperations might have ex-
uished the flame of allegiance to the visible church if there
not been the new ideal of poverty. Poverty is the great
»el of the mendicant Orders as celibacy had been the price
l by the Gregorians. Poverty meant conjuring up the early
of Christianity in its darkness, abjection and starvation,
alance this late period of sun-like radiancy. The prayer for
~rty is. ~he greatest expression of the new program. It con-
icts the abuses at the Holy See. Like the Dies Jrce, or like
te, this prayer connects us forever with the clerical era of
's revolutions on earth. Again and again poets have entered
the beauty of this prayer, most recently the German poet,
ler Maria Rilke. But it is not beauty alone, it is political
~r, it is a new life which surrounds us in these terse and
gent lines: "Poverty was in thy crib, and like a faithful
·e she kept herself armed in the great combat that thou
wage for our redemption. During thy passion she alone
iot forsake thee. Mary thy mother stopped at the foot of
ross. hnt hn11Prl"' ,,,_..l _, ___ - _] ·
IJ')'Jl'l'11'>'11orl : 1- 1 • "
·ace unto the end; and when thou wast dying of thirst, like a
atchful spouse she prepared for thee the gall. Thou didst
~pire in the ardour of her embraces, nor did she leave thee
h.en dead, 0 Lord Jes us, for she allowed not thy body to rest
sew here than in a borrowed grave, 0 poorest Jesus, the grace
beg of thee is to bestow on me the treasure of the highest
>verty. Grant that the distinctive mark of our Order may be
:ver to possess anything as its own under the sun, for the
ory of thy name, and to have no other patrimony than beg-
tlg."
Yet, this poverty could have remained a negative attitude,
opposition to papacy and clergy. In St. Francis the political
iion of Joachim found one who realized and embodied the
w era, and yet did not condemn the past.
St. Francis dared to sanctify the temporal. The days of his
e were called "Fioretti," a wonderful illustration of the spe-
ll emphasis laid by his contemporaries upon the temporal;
~ every one of his days was considered as modest, as beautiful,
d as unstable as a flower. His poverty and his principle of
~ndicancy enabled his followers to lead a new form of life,
· away from the manor, in the cities, with the townspeople.
ancis did not retire from the world into a monastery and
vote himself to agriculture and cattle-breeding. The Fran-
cans lived in the city. The new world of stone cities, built
free men, and the new horsepower, now was sanctified.
Yet Francis kept his filial devotion to the Church, which
me could make his experience of Christ's life on earth a
lid experience for all Christianity. Toward the end of his
~ he received the five stigmata of the Crucified Himself.
mds and feet showed the traces of the wounds caused by
~ nails of the Cross. The age of the Spirit was clearly at hand.
spiritual identification, the poverello relived the experiences
the Saviour Himself. The impression which the friars made
s tremendous. In 1300 there seem to have been 200,000
us, organized in two orders, Dominicans and Franciscans,
~ir existence no longer debatable. Nobody doubted that he
mld join one of the two, the only possible question being,
,1rh",J ThP~P fr1~n:. rovPrPrl Tt~lv ur1th '.:l nPtur.n.rlr ,.....,: .,. ..... h;+ ........
L and peacemaking. The cities, no longer recognizing any
~rior, were faced by permanent feuds with neighbouring
ns. Friars would travel from city to city, invoke Our Lady,
command peace. In i233, for example, the pope sent one
ie ·friars, John of Vicenza, to Tuscany for the reconciliation
·~iena and Florence. John thought it more important to
<. in the Marchionate of Treviso. All the cities of Lom-
.y, Venetia, and Romagne were represented on the day of
'Great Devotion" in Verona.
multaneously, the people in Parma started the "great
uia." Ave Maria was sung with a three-fold Alleluia. The
e population marched in procession. The sparks of this
ral fraternizing in Parma reached Bologna and Modena.
?60, the year forecast by Joachim as the beginning of the
t Johannine form of life, had arrived. No wonder that this
saw the outbreak of the greatest movement of the Fran-
1 type. "The people," wrote a chronicler, "seemed to fear
1itation of God,' " because all Italy was visited by misery,
and crimes. Suddenly in Perugia, a hermit raised his
The inhabitants marched, headed by bishop and clergy,
ong train as far as the next city. In spite of winter's cold,
~re naked to the belt and scourged themselves till the
came. From church to church they marched. Peace, char-
isericordia) were the words they uttered with signs.
first they are ridiculed. But soon the whole neighbouring
as infected. All threw off their coats and scourged them-
All confessed their sins and made peace. From Perugia
ne, in Tuscany and in Liguria, in all of Lombardy, one
sited the other, and for the period of a month or two all
vas at peace. The exiled could go home. The prisons
pened. The political problem was always the same: peace
archipelago of independent cities. And the begging
, living not on the country, but with the citizens, were
~ans of this peace. •
ern Europeans know of ftagellantism only vaguely from
:hanical revival in the fourteenth century. During the
nian captivity of the Church, when the popes were far
~ ~
to the French sufferings under Na pol eon III. In every respect,
the Second Empire in France was the reverse of the first, and
yet it lived by imitating the slogans of the first. In the same
way, the formulas of Francis and the Spirituals were re-
peated between 1305 and 1377. The Black Death in 1348, in
Boccaccio's day, led to a new outbreak of flagellantism.
Perhaps the Flagellants of the Ducento e~pressed the moral
need which was felt after the violent destruction of feudalism
in Italy. Half a million people or more had shaken off the
manorial servitude of local seigniors and had begun to breathe
the free air of the cities. It is not easy for a class to keep its
bala~ce after the sudden breakdown of immemorial allegiances.
Flagellantism replaced, perhaps, the rigid discipline in the
manors by a voluntary self-chastisement.
We turn once more to the great healer of the evils of the
Ducento, Francis of Assisi. To the average historian, Francis
is simply a Saint of the Church. The Guelphic centuries seem
to continue the~ __line of their predecessors. Then "modern"
times would begin with Petrarch. Let me cite the example of
a leading scholar, Mr. Vossler. In his book on Medi~val Cul~
ture, he deals exactly with the Guelphic period, the time of
Francis of Assisi and Dante, and he says that the famous Sun
Hymn of St. Francis is, in general, a repetition of the 148th
Psalm. Now I am the last to disparage the Psalm. And at the
first reading, it may seem that the Psalm, like the Hymn of
St. Francis, seeks the glory of God in Nature.
"Praise ye the Lord, from the Heavens, praise Him in the heights.
Praise ye Him, sun and moon, praise Him all ye stars of light.
Praise Him, ye heavens of heavens, and ye waters that be above
the heavens. Let them praise the name of the Lord: for He
commanded and they were created.
Praise the Lord from the earth, ye dragons, and all deeps;
Fire and hail; snow and vapours, stormy wind fulfilling His word;
Mountains and all hills; fruitful trees and all cedars."

. ! pause: ~ould. we
...... "'~ r..4= f-h•co ...... ,..,,.,.,...,...'.)
wish more than to go on in endless repe-
ut the terrible price paid by the chosen people for this
tation of the Lord was the prohibition of any graven image
ny likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is
te earth beneath. The Jews, having no home on this earth,
i the other nations not to adore created things, not to bow
re any secular order.
Francis of Assisi in the thirteenth century transforms the
1 Psalm, it is to redeem the secular order. What the Jews
anticipated, the Christians are allowed to carry out, to
'.nto action, nay, to transform into temporal and secular
:;. To understand St. Francis' hymn, one must see the
t Psalm against the background of the secular state. Cluny

ietested the temporal: "Solvet saculum in favilla," the

tr will be brought to ashes. We have seen that between
and 1500 the secular is pardoned, rediscovered, restored;
he last aim of this chapter is to show the difference be-
. the original text of the 148th Psahn and its projection
he "Secular," which our modern civilization so takes for
~d today.
1 is a fio,ver, the world the Garden in which he is
d; this was St. Frat;icis' great experience. He discovered
world, within the old world of monasteries, emperors
1anors. All these powers avoided the external world,
nature: were frightened night and day by demons and
l spirits. In his vision of Christ, Francis himself feels that
heart was with all creation, that He came not to redeem
rid only, but the whole cosmos. The heart of man moves
. creation. For the first time the walls of a house were
be hostile to the reconciliation of man and nature.
; made creation his family. He praised the glory of the
t1 His creation. But he did not, like the Psalmist, look
the Lord after having looked down at His creatures.
•t his eyes on the soil. In this his attitude differed from
the Hebrew psalter.
Vossler says: "There is not much difference between the
•salm and the Hymn of St. Francis." We cannot ignore
,coveries about the landscape, which in the German
~hnfl" ;"' ...,.'""",. .... :~- 1 -- ---
political representation of the country. This has left more than
a trace in the hymn of the poverello. Does it not make a great
difference to say Thou and Thee to God's creatures, to live
intimately with the land, to be a member, one flesh and blood,
with the land?
St. Francis' hymn describes his discovery of physical crea-
tion. When one reads, one understands why it makes an epoch,
why Raphael and all the painters of the Renaissance are the
fulfilment of thirteenth-century Spiritualism. One understands
that there is one stream of life running through the whole
period. Henry Thode was right when he said that the Italian
Renaissance began with St. Francis. The political and religious
life between 1200 and 1500 is a unit, preceded by the Crusades
and followed by the Reformation. Here is the Hymn of
St. Francis:
"Most High, Omnipotent, good Lord, thine is the praise, the glory
and every benediction;
To thee alone, Most High, these do belong, and no man is worthy
to name thee.
Praised be thou, my Lord, with all thy creatures, especially my
Lord Brother,
Sun, that dawns and lightens us; and he, beautiful and radiant
with great splendour, signifies thee, Most High.
Be praised, my Lord, for Sister Moon and the Stars, that thou hast
made bright and precious and beautiful.
Be praised, my Lord, for Brother Wind and for the air and the
cloud, and the clear sky, and for all weathers through which
thou givest sustenance to thy creatures.
Be praised, my Lord, for Sister Water, that is very useful and
humble and precious and chaste.
Be praised, my Lord, for Brother Fire, through whom thou dost
illumine the night, and comely is he and glad and bold and
strong.
Be praised, my Lord, for Sister, our Mother Earth, that doth cher-
ish and keep us and produces various fruits with coloured
flowers and the grass.
Sister Our Mother Earth who cherishes us,
Our Brother Fire, who is glad and bold
A •• - c: .............. "ti\T...,,,,.,.....,. 9 •• 1-.,..,. : .... ~t... ......... ,,. ''
 This is final. For "Sister, our Mother Earth" is the sublime
1aradox of this faith. It preserves the full pagan value of
Mother Earth" within the Christian "Sisterhood." The term
Middle Ages" is a negative political challenge thrown out by
1e German Reformers; Guelphic Franciscan Italy is the posi-
ve creation of a human heart, which made men brothers
1d sisters of the creatures around them, which re-clothed itself
l a sweet, new style under the protection of the Lord and his
hurch. In the dialectic of the clerical revolutions, man turned
om the judge to the judge's mother and extorted from her
e solution that the judge seemed to withhold. 6
1This is no figure of speech. Extorting Mary's grace is a contemporary ex·
$sion, stated by the Jesuit Verley, Vol. 125 of the Etudes par les peres de la
mpag11ie de Jesus, pp. 161 /J. (1910). And Abailard sang:
"To the Judge's mother fly,
Who from the Judge's wrath do fly.
To pray for them she is compelled,
Man's mother becoming when in bail he is held."
 CHAPTER TWELVE

Polybius Once More: Our Economic Future

~OPEAN THOUGHT IN 1900 WAS ACCUSTOMED TO DATE THE

dern era from the days of Cola di Rienzi in 1347 and the
::amerone of Boccaccio. Mr. Friedell's history of modern
tlization 1 begins with this period. Modern liberals start at
; epoch with as good reason as if someone began the history
the French Revolution with Napoleon III! Certain modern
ms that came into use in the fourteenth century attracted
· attention of people who had already decided that the Mid-
Ages were uninteresting or "dark."
H:owever, by the use of this date things which are related
each other like original and caricature are separated by force.
Le curve of the Guelphic revolution is distorted. Alleluia and
~ellation were great realities in the Ducento; they were shal-
l/ memories of the past in the days of Boccaccio.
Let us fix the periods of the Papal Revolution so clearly that
~erficial enlightenment can no longer divorce what belongs
~ether.
The dialogue between the revolutions is as real in the clerical
mlutions as in those investigated by Marxians. It need not
said that this fact proves -nothing for the economic causation
any of these revolutions. It proves that revolutions are un-
rtaken, in our era, in the face of mankind, in an open dia-
~e, and are carried on on a wave-length of several cen-
ries. The exaggeration of the particular idea of the Last
.dgment inevitably led to the reaction in which another side
Egon Friedell, Cultural History of Modern Civilization, New York, Knopl,
~e ecclesiastical tradition was put in the centre of the map.
'he Gregorian and the Guelphic revolution were like a
itual and an earthly expression of the same effort. Gregory
Innocent III, the dictating monk and the deliberating
omatist, set out, one crying loudly, the other whispering,
Lrd one and the same goal. The deliverance of the Holy
tlchre opened the door to liberty for the Gregorians,
·eas the two Innocents (III and IV) cared only for the de-
ance of Italy. Yet they seem to be two halves of one and
ame majestic process. The clergy of Christendom changed
te ways of life in the Occident. If the national revolutions
todern times led to a regeneration of the peoples, the
:al revolutions in the time of the Crusades regenerate the
)f "Our Sister, our Mother Earth" with no less thorough-
And as they aroused all the great passions of humanity,
only natural that we should find, in the ·course of the
al revolutions, the same swings of the pendulum which
1served in the French or English volcanic eruptions.
h the Gregorian and the Guelphic revolution pass
~h a period of frivolous arrogance and presumption:

1122 to 1147
1269 to 1302

: "Enrichissez-vous" of Louis Philippe is a mild expres-

om pared to the presumption of the· curialists in these
:riods. In the first the emperor was treated as the pope's
An impertinent picture in Rome kept alive the humilia-
. this serfdom. But scandals in Rome brought the papacy
> the abyss; and finally, the enraged Romans drove out
pe, who fled to foreign countries. The same carelessness
ed afte;r the Guelphs' victory over the Ghibellines a
'.d and fifty years later. After the death of Urban IV,
dinals delayed the Conclave for two and a half years.
ntioned before how bewildered the people were at this
e, after seventy years of suffering for the sake of the
Some years later, when the pope had to pass through
V'hich was under his inte-rrlirt 1-h 1¥,..~~:- ~
0
• -
 lifted the ban on entering the town, and renewed it when leav-
ing! The crowning expression of this era of presumption was
the famous bull, "Unam Sanctam," of Boniface VIII, promul-
gated in 1302. In a time when every prince and layman was
nauseated by the insolence of the clergy, this pope re-empha-
sized his apocalyptic claim to the control of all secular power.
He had the two-headed eagle of the empire stitched on his
robes.
One cannot avoid the impression that the defeat of the Holy
See was conjured up by this pope's arrogant decree. He was
made a prisoner by French knights, and the king of France
debased the papacy's moral dignity by the trial of the Templars.
Papacy was stripped of its crusading organization; the Order
of the Knights Templar, founded to protect the Holy Sepulchre
and Christian pilgrin1s, was persecuted, disavowed and anni-
hilated by the French kings. These auxiliaries of the first Papal
Revolution against the apostolic dignity of the emperor, had
nowhere been stronger than in those regions in which the
popes of the struggle for investiture, had taken refuge from
the empire. It was in France, therefore, that the institution of
Crusading Knighthood had become most burdensome and
troublesome. Now, the auto da fe of the Templars in 1314
showed how far the basis of papal liberty had shifted from
the emancipated warriors of the Crusades to the territorial
devices of the Guelphs in Italy. But the sway of counter-attacks
even forced the popes out of their Italian domain and exiled
the~ for seventy years to Southern France, to Avignon.
For three quarters of a century, Italy, the garden of the em-
pire, lived without the presence of the pope to whom she owed
the sovereignty of the cities. The Babylonian exile at Avignon
(1309-1377), with its seventy years, is of equal length with the
time of exaltation ( 1200-1269). The exile is that period of
humiliation well-known to us from other revolutions. The
time-span of seventy years is longer than in any other case.
Even the first clerical revolution, the Gregorian, had only about
fifty years of exaltation and fifty of humiliation.
 THE CLERICAL REVOLUTIONS CORRESPOND TO
EACH OTHER IN THE FOLLOWING WAY:

GREGORIAN GUELPHIC
Point of departure 1046 1161
Exaltation ......... 107 5-112 2 1200-1269
Humiliation ....... u47-u98 1309-1377
~ut the period of humiliation is not the last word in the
rse of a revolution. For the Italian cities and the Roman
uch there is a golden period beginning in the middle of
fifteenth century. The so-called "Renaissance'' is like a
len -age of fulfilment.
'he German nation has something similar long after its
iiliation in the Thirty Years' War-in the peaceful times
veen 1763-1805. The classical period of German music and
ature, with Goethe, Mozart, Beethoven, Schiller, Klop-
(, Lessing, Herder, Kant, can easily be compared with the
ical period of Italian art, when Leonardo, Raphael, Lo-
o de' Medici, Michelangelo, were alive, when the Vatican
ary and the Singing Schools of the Sistina were founded,
when the pope acted as arbiter mundi in the quarrels over
1ewly discovered American world.
~r English civilization, the Victorian Age offers a similar
:t of achievement and satisfaction between the Corn Laws
the Boer War (1846-1900).
ie golden age of German princely particularisn1 ended
enly with the Napoleonic invasion. The door of Italy's
lisaic age was banged by the French invasion in 1498.
ITALY GERMANY ENGLAND
:ition ... 1075-1122 1200-1269 15 17- 1555 1641-1688
liation .. 1147-u98 1309- 1377 1618-1648 (54) 1776-1815
n Age .. 1450-1498 1763-1805 1846-1900
e famous Italian "Renaissance" has little to do with the
test of Constantinople in 1453. The Renaissance is the
nate outcome of a five-centuries-long effort. 2 Its painters
the anti-Protestant bias in the modern use of the term see part III,
6.
 and architects and poets translate the great inspirations of
Gregory and Francis of Assisi into secular garb and classical
forms. But the landscapes of Raphael's Madonnas, and the
background of the Ca:saric Judge in Michelangelo's "Last
Judgment," are translations into humanistic terms of the
whole-hearted effort of more religious centuries. The fashion,
ay, the idolatry, of the Renaissance in our day should not
blind us to the fact that the Renaissance was a sunset. The
cynical humanists of the Quattrocento spoke the last word, not
the first. They dissolved, they could not construct. They did
for Scholasticism what Goethe did for the Reformation: they
secularized its mysteries. By Renaissance art, the Guelphic
revolution was made accessible to the agnostic and the snob,
and to the educated man of modern Europe.
Italy's contribution to mankind is immense. Her glories were
compressed into the masterpieces of fifty years; these kept
Europeans and Americans under her charm for another four
hundred. Italy very early became the Holy Sepulchre for the
European traveller.
But the periods of the clergy's revolutions should be con-
sidered under another aspect, also. For the rest of Europe,
the Renaissance was no golden age. Italy's advantage was the
world's misfortune. The fifteenth century is a terrible, un-
happy, dark, and cruel period. The orgies of the Italian princes
(Borgia!), and the sufferings of all the European nations, throw
a lasting shadow over all its amenities in art and literature.
The fifteenth century was a time of dissolution, of disappoint-
. ment, of wildest reactionism. The fifteenth century offers, in
some respects, the key to our own present situation: it was a
premature time, with many pressing problems, and nothing
prepared to solve them.
For the purposes of a comparison, we must go into the con-
stitutional evolution of the Church; for, after all, this evolu-
tion had a world-wide bearing, and made every member of
Christendom suffer.
The Schism of 1378 which ended the exile in Avignon
aroused all the critics of aristocratic government in the Church.
Not only had the cardinals become omnin{)tPnt ~~ .. h~u ..,.,.. ..,._
1 tor years without electing any pope, but throughout
~hurch the chapters dominated and overruled the bishops
abbots. The aristocratic principle was now bitterly criti-
by the friars who detested the snobbish life of the upper
io. The insecure, the poor, and the intellectual groups
e Church united for the attack. After 1377, the left wing
~ Franciscan Movement united with the responsible teach-
£ theology when two and more popes were struggling
taneously for recognition. The Professors of Paris and
1e Doctors of Christendom, the Intelligentsia of the
:h, easily found support among their secular princes and
Between 1377 and 1460 the Church would not have sur-
the disgust, hate and envy of the laity, without a definite
pt by the theologians to broaden its foundations and to
ts constitution on a clerical democracy. Democracy of the
was no luxury to the great Gerson of Paris or to Nicolaus
us. It was the only way to save any authority for the
of Europe. St. Peter had been rehabilitated in 1075 by
ving from St. Paul the principle of universality in space.
centralization had enabled the popes to dethrone the
or. After 1200 the Johannine church of the Spirituals,
;t by Joachim di Fiore and embodied in Francis of
had again supported St. Peter's authority. Now, after
r one hundred and fifty years, the nations organized
:Ives with the purpose of regenerating the Church. The
378 to 1449 might well be labelled: The nations sup-
.. Peter. The nations were organized at the great demo-
:oundls of Pisa (1409), Constance (1414-18), and Basel
g). The University of Paris led the French nation, while
atest nation, the German, embraced six different king-
Spain and England were represented also. Scheduled
tents of the whole Church, in the form of councils, were
led for thirty years in advance, and when they finally
.pectation ran high. The national Doctors were full of
:le which every young class shows in its first political
They were much more eager than the popes or car-
1ot to expose themselves to any charge of heresy, or
iifference in matters of orthorloYv· -:lnr1 •h; .. l ,,.-1 .._ - ~
A
1
•
defeat. They plunged the world into the disastrous wars against
the Hussites.
The mistakes in the trial of Huss at Constance in 1415 can
be explained by the jealous desire of the young parliamentary
democracy to equal the Roman curialists. The councils, by
their inexperienced eagerness, unchained the violent rebellion
of the Hussites: for, like all democracies, the councils were
weak in their foreign policy. What they really wished was to
fight their "King": they turned against the pope. Frequent
universal councils, at least one every five years, had to be
granted by the popes; for a continent of such size, and with-
out modern transportation, a very Utopia of parliamentary
power. The greatest victory was the formal subjection of the
popes to the council's authority in 1432: here the nations, the
five clerical bodies of the universal Church, declared them-
selves to be sovereign. Thus princes and doctors tried to· carry
out' the Reformation within the Church one hundred years
before they left its walls.
But the clerical democracy of the councils was not able to
stop the Hussites, who rejected all organized clergy. The Huss-
ites were the Nihilists of the time. Like those Marxists who
cannot bear to see a defective "state" at work, and wish to
abolish all government, the Hussites not only disapproved of
the Church, but concluded that it was better to have no visible
church whatever.
Between papacy and Hussites, the nations showed no united
front.~ It was easy for the popes to divide the national bodies
and to satisfy each nation by special concessions. In 1449 the
last council was dissolved. The popes after 1450 began to live
in Rome permanently, and to rebuild their residence with great
care and foresight.
The world outside Italy was deeply disappointed. Every-
thing seemed to have been in vain. The outraged laity scorned
the whole clergy. Democracy was despised as it is today. The
canonists seemed nothing but politicians of the worst type.
Cynicism prevailed, the popes were taunted with their forged
Donation of Constantine. monks and nriests with their dissi-
c1on, canonists and doctors with their graft and their vexa-
us practices.
fhe new secular needs brought forward new kinds of men,
o tried to satisfy them by a queer mixture of holiness and
itical leadership. Lack of civilized state government is the
1per explanation of characters like Joan of Arc, Savonarola,
Swiss prophet Nicolaus von der Flue. Half saints, half
iticians, they tried to bridge the gulf between the old
:!stly organization and the political one of modern times.
e fifteenth century is a time of endless travail.
Iitler is very much a political "saint," in the peculiar sense
the fifteenth century. He especially resembles Giovanni
•istrano, the Crusader against the Turks, later canonized as
ostolus Europa," an anti-Semitic leader who had a tremen-
s following between 1445 and 1455. Capistrano fought the
;sites, as Hitler fights Communism; he introduced a new
bol, namely, the rays of the sun surrounding the name
S, appalling to good Christians then. He and his like de-
d the Reformation for another fifty years by defending
dictatorship of a ruthless papacy. The European masses,
lusioned by the democratic rule of the universal councils,
frightened by the Bolshevik experiments in Bohemia, lis-
d to his Italian speeches with complete idolatry. In these
meetings after four or five hours of unswerving attention
speaker of 'vhose words they could not understand a sylla-
when the interpreter began to translate it into the native
n, the crowd would disperse immediately. Capistrano
ted the doctors of democratic councils, burned the Jews,
ked the Turks, the Hussites, intimidated the 1-Iumanists,
.rinces. He preached the restoration of the papacy in the
~rable form which this institution took on between 1450
t517.
venerable old institution it was, but its own members
:lefenders no longer believed in it. The Pontificate of
'.S Sylvio Piccolomini as Pius II ( 1458-1464), with its min-
of pagan and Christian symbols, is an example of the
~ compromise concluded by such a humanist. Old Virgil
poken of his Trojan hero as "Pius fi.ne::i~" Th~ c;~-~~-
~neas chose Pius as his new name on account of this Virgilian
phrase. Any institution in its senility goes back to a kind of
primitive restoration; all the detail and the refinement of
subtle forms are given up. The papal government of 1460 was
much more brutal and primitive than that of Gregory, Inno-
cent, or Boniface had been. It was an undisguised dictatorship
that met with disgust, suspicion, rebellion and contempt inside
and outside.
The so-called Renaissance was, for the world at large, a des-
perate period of delay. From 1460 ·to 1517 the world was
through with its medi~val constitution; yet the Bolshevik at-
tempt of the Hussites, abolishing the visible church without
any substitute, clearly offered nothing acceptable to the coun-
tries which suffered. The negative impression made by the
radical destroyers of the visible church threw the nations once
more into the arms of an obsolete form of government. The
Middle Ages culminated through the efforts of the then Fascists,
like Capistrano, in dictatorship. In 1460 the pope promulgated
the notorious bull "Execrabilis," which forbade appeals to any
synod of the Church. Its violent language seems to be taken
from modern anti-democrats. From the Dictatus papce in 1075,
through the cardinals' Consistory of Innocent III in 1200 and
the democratic claims of the councils between 1377 and 1449;
to this bull "Execrabilis" of Pius II, the rotation of govern-
ment is unmistakable.
Monarchy in the visible church. . . . . . . . . . 1075-1200
Aristocracy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1200-1377
Democracy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1377-1460
Dictatorship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1460-1517 3
It is true, these changes did not shake the older groundwork
of the Christian Church. The papacy of 1075 was a limited
enterprise. It did not build up a new Christianity. It only made
the pope the trustee of every monk and clergyman in Europe,
abolished the unique office of the emperor inside the Church,
and exalted the pope, the successor of St. Peter, into the Vicar
of the world, s Last Judge. These three acts of external defence
s For the present-day papacy, compare PP. 2u. 6o.it. 6oR.
vc1c:: necessary to the internal revival of the Church. They
nabled a world of tribes and clans to advance from superficial
aptism en bloc to the virtual conversion of all and every-
1

ody. However, the papacy had to use political means to make

1is process of regeneration visible.
The deliberate campaign to make conspicuous the mysteries
Ethe old Church was based on secular, centralized methods of
)Vernment. From 1075 to 1517 human and natural law came
~ make up the bulk of Canon Law. The !us Divinum, the
[vine forms of life of the first thousand years, remained the
undation; but the superstructure was completely political
id rational.
This visible, unmystic part of the Church could no longer
ad a timeless existence in worship and adoration and holiness.
became a body politic, entering the life of the world and
llowing the course of the world. No wonder that this part
Christianity behaved like any great political form. It un-
rwent the Polybian rotation of government. In spite of its
tchanged name, the rulership of the Church was monarchical
1100, aristocratic in 1300, democratic in 1430 and virtually
:lictatorship after 1460.
The interesting question is how the equilibrium between
inge and continuity was preserved. A special study will have
be made of this equilibrium by students of political science
.o feel that the rotation of government must now be seriously
restigated. For our purpose, it suffices that rotation of gov-
tment occurs twice in the history of Europe, once for the
remment of the Church, between 1075 and 1517, and again
the national governments between 1517 and our day. Both
Les it is by no means a mere stumbling from change to
.nge. The Church of the Crusades and the nations of modern
.es both escaped the hopelessness of the circle which had
ned before the eyes of ancient thinkers. In the Christian
~Id no form, so to speak, was completely forgotten or lost.
political forms are mortal forms. Monarchy, aristocracy,
1ocracy, dictatorship, are parts of our existence which be-
~ to the passing world. They wear out in their very applica-
t. They cannot survive for an unlimited timP nn~ mu,, ..
be replaced by the next, and the order of succession between
the four forms seems unalterable. The following table gives
evidence of an interplay between eternity and temporality,
between timeless and passing order in the last millennium.
CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION

PAPAL ORGANIZATION NATIONAL ORGANIZATION

OF THE OF THE
CHRISTIAN CLERGY CHRISTIAN PEOPLES

Main emphasis on the mo-

narchical side . . . . . . . . . . . 1075-1200
Main emphasis on the aris-
tocratic side ............ 1200-1377
Main emphasis on the demo-
cratic side . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1377-1460 1789-1917
Dictatorship, Fascism, etc... 1460-1517 1917 ....

Church and State in Christendom have delved deeply into

reality and the nature of things. I do not think that it dimin-
ishes their new dignity to see them in their struggle for exist-
ence. In i929, when the pope abandoned his full claim to a
papal state and was satisfied by a reminiscence of the Guelphic
revolution in the form of his Citta del Vaticano, he showed how
the fruits of the past are gathered in at the beginning of a
new period. For I see no reason why the clerical and national
organization of the world should be the only two periods of our
civilization.
An economic organization of the world will probably be
the problem of the future, and it will demand ample time for
its fulfilment. The comparison between the two periods of
rotation of government suggests why, for the moment, the
world is unable to shift immediately from its national to an
economic organization. When the Church had gone through
the trials of Hussitism and conciliarism, the new national forms
of life, in Germany, France, Spain, England, etc., found their
warmest advocates in the enlightened clergy of the Church.
In the fifteenth century the wisest reformers were clerics. But
in spite of their wisdom, clerics could not build up the secular
government of modern times. Their clerical bondage stood in
EXCESSES OF PILGRIMAGE, SIXTEENTH CENTURY
(Inserts: Centenary Medal in memory of Huss.I
be replaced by the next, and the order of succession between
the four forms seems unalterable. The following table gives
evidence of an interplay between eternity and temporality,
between timeless and passing order in the last millennium.
CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION

PAPAL ORGANIZATION NATIONAL ORGANIZATION

OF THE OF THE
CHRISTIAN CLERGY CHRISTIAN PEOPLES

Main emphasis on the mo-

narchical side ........... 1075-1200
Main emphasis on the aris-
tocratic side . . . . . . . . . . . . 1200-1377
Main emphasis on the demo-
cratic side .............. 1377-1460 1789-1917
Dictatorship, Fascism, etc. . . 1460-1517 1917 ....
Church and State in Christendom have delved deeply into
reality and the nature of things. I do not think that it dimin-
ishes their new dignity to see then1 in their struggle for exist-
ence. In 1929, when the pope abandoned his full claim to a
papal state and was satisfied by a reminiscence of the Guelphic
revolution in the form of his Citta del Vaticano_, he showed how
the fruits of the past are gathered in at the beginning of a
new period. For I see no reason why the clerical and national
organization of the world should be the only two periods of our
civilization.
An economic organization of the world will probably be
the ptoblem of the future, and it will demand ample time for
its fulfilment. The comparison between the two periods of
rotation of government suggests why, for the moment, the
world is unable to shift im1nediately from its national to an
economic organization. When the Church had gone through
the trials of Hussitism and conciliarism, the new national forms
of life, in Germany, France, Spain, England, etc., found their
warmest advocates in the enlightened clergy of the Church.
In the fifteenth century the ,wisest reformers were clerics. But
in spite of their wisdom, clerics could not build up the secular
governn1ent of modern times. Their clerical bondage stood in
EXCESSES OF PILGRnL\GE, SIXTEE:'\TH CE'.\:TCR \'
(Inserts: Centenary ~Iedal in JllPJllCff'"' nf 1-[ .. c~· \
eir way. Being honest bishops or theologians or monks, they
uld not face the destruction of their own political and social
istence. Their programme remained sterile because it could
it propose as its first paragraph the exclusion of priesthood
>m matters of State.
Our statesmen since the World War are to a large extent
are of their shortcomings. National policy prevents economic
:overy, and they know it. National interests have closed the
rld market. However, a statesman is paid by his own nation.
e more disinterested and the more honest a patriot he is,
less effective will all his wisdom be. MacDonald, Briand,
Ison, had to remain national statesmen in spite of their
per insight. Mussolini, Hitler, De Valera, draw the conclu-
1 that nothing but national statesmanship is needed. They
wrong. State sovereignty is doomed. Yet it cannot be sacri-
i until some other road is open.
1 1460, no staff of civilians existed to inherit the political
onsibilities of the clergy. In 1938, no economic staff exists
1herit the social responsibilities of the politicians. Bankers,
heviks and trade unions alike seem utterly unqualified for
. a task. For the gigantic task of an economic organization
1e world, the effort to produce a technical staff must be
ed on for at least another fifty years. Statesmen will balk
tany of the steps which might lead to training this staff.
itors will crush all such anti-national attempts. But, I am
d, the democratic Isolationists will persecute them with
ss conviction. Neither the purity of heart nor the sincerity
ind needed for such a work can be found in a sceptical
:ynical post-War world of crisis and disintegration.
tly those who prove immune against the germs of this
:egration, against Fascism, Communism, Humanism, Rac-
~tc., will be fit to undertake the final task. But a glance
:he past may encourage them. There is really no hurry.
e modern economic stand-still has a striking parallel in
:teenth century. After 1400 no city increased in size; and
onomy of the city-state of those times corresponds to the
tal economy of today. The whole Occident was tortured
appointment and cynicism. R~ri~m rD1,-.l..--L - -
1
•. -
then as today. Yet the life of humanity was not suffocated. In
a completely new way, man was enabled to renew the natural
rotation of political life for another four or five hundred
years. The cynical humanists of the Renaissance did not open
the new way. They extirpated their own faith and hated any
belief. More courageous souls discovered the new approach to
life by a new positive faith. If this statement encourages one
young reader to smile at the facile talk of busy intellectuals,
and to think in time-spans worthy of man's nature, I will
gladly suffer the hatred of the new sceptic.
 CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The Survival of Austria-Hungary

HE MEMORABLE FEATURES OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION IN ITS

:clesiastical period were all based on permanent elements in
uman nature: on the weariness and resignation represented
y the monks of Cluny, on the seniority of a spiritual over-
1rd, the pope, and on the maternal care of "Mother Church"
id her wandering friars. One after the other, these elements
·evailed because they offered light and warmth in the struggle
;ainst disintegration. These three remedies served their pur-
>se well, and seemed therefore to be precious European tra-
tions. The revolutionary leaders in each phase were men of
monastic type: Odilo of Cluny, Hildebrand, St. Francis of
1sisi. With the Reformation, a secular type replaced the
)nkish. Luther, the prophet of the secular state, left his
Jnastery and married a nun. His remedy was paternalism-
ternalism in the state and in the family. Luther was suc-
~ded by a line of military leaders. The revolutions of more
>dern times were led by men like Cromwell, George Wash-
~ton, Napoleon, and Lenin-all of them descendants of coun-
proprietors. Monks and country gentlemen represent the
J halves of the European millennium of revolutions. Dif-
ent as the two types are, they nevertheless ought to be
arded as carriers of the same mission. Furthermore, the see-
r leaders were not able to destroy the achievements of their
ritual predecessors; they could do no more than exploit
•ther part of human nature, hitherto neglected. That ex-
ins why the monkish type was not simply wiped out by the
:ormation. And so we need not wonder that Catholicism_
papacy, monasticism, are still among us, even though their
principles were attacked by the four modern revolutions.
The papacy, in its stronghold of self-chosen absolutism,
donned the armour of a merely secular policy when Julius II,
as head of the papal state, took it upon himself to act the part
of a second C~sar. The Counter-Reformation surrounded the
purified Church with an army of defenders, the Jesuits. For
four centuries the Church developed its absolutism and cen-
tralism. It is true that the French Revolution seemed to usher
in its final decline. The army of the papacy, the order of the
Jesuits, was disbanded, and the pope himself made a prisoner
of Napoleon.
But the nineteenth century saw another revival of Catholi-
cism. Never before had the Catholic Church paid so much
obedience to the Apostolic See. The move1nent of Solesmes
united all the churches of the Catholic world by introducing
the Roman mass and liturgy into every diocese. Centralization
in cult and worship reached a climax. Today bishops and
priests have become what they seemed to be slated for under
Gregory VII, when Archbishop Liemar groaned, "The bishops
are becoming the pope's stewards and bailiffs." The process of
centralization is pervading the whole structure of the Roman
Church, throttling the initiative of its branches, desiccating the
soil wherever an unconscious growth might seem possible.
Through the incessant attacks of secularism, the spiritual
Church of Scholasticism was forced into a straitjacket of vigi-
iant self-defence. In an age of reason and naturalism, the
Church surrounded itself with a rational and highly sceptical
system of thought-the Jesuit literature-and with the most
natural weapon of government: power. Today the Catholic
Church appears in the role of a centralized organization, a
natural power of the highest efficiency, because it lives in a
world which believes in nothing but reason, nature, organiza-
tion and power.
The different steps by which the Roman Church adapted
itself to a changing environment are all quite logical. Yet they
have only a secondary interest for the bionomics of European
civilization. because thev are self-evident reactions of an or-
nsm struggling for survival. They do not surprise us by
king out along new paths, as in the era of complete regen-
tion of the Church. Thus they add little to our knowledge
human nature; whereas Odilo of Cluny, Gregory VII, and
Francis of Assisi conquered realms in our own life which
1ld not exist but for their having championed them. From
neering, the energies of the Church have turned to apolo-
cs. At no period in its history was the clergy simpler, more
'.cal, more orthodox, more correct, more disciplined than
r. This means that the purposes of the past have been ac-
lplished. That accomplishment means a great deal: it brings
world nearer to its end. But it cannot be creative, because
as to be loyal to foregone conclusions. The Church is no
~er politically creative in the way it was during its ~enova­
' when it acted as a driving and revolutionizing force. It
carefully follows the movements of the world.
o give one important example: When the maternalism of
Guelphic centuries was challenged by Luther's rugged
rnalism, that is, when the Reformation began, the Church
the attack on St. Mary and the Mother Church by con-
rating on the cult of St. Joseph, the foster-father of Jesus.
1e beginning of the sixteenth century St. Joseph's day, the
teenth of March, was emphasized, fraternities in his honour
numerous, and the limiting concept of Joseph's sublimated
Thood was the well-chosen weapon of the Church against
vorld's secular paternalism. In 1500, the new emphasis on
:ult of Joseph was an intelligent reaction, but it was in-
bly mote a symbol than a real force.
her progress through two thousand years the Church gen-
' moves by infinitely small steps. The shift from St. Mary
. Joseph was accomplished with a minimum of discon-
ty; yet it is attested by Catholic historians themselves.
coincidence of this gradual shift with the rising paternal-
1£ the Reformation is a precious argument for the deep
1m by which the different stages of European civilization
tterconnected. The forces which bring on each constella-
n the political sky logically exclude each other like two
ite principles-in our examnle_ m~tPrn-:l11c:"m ....... -l - - · -
nalism. Logically they are like water and fire, purely hostile
elements. Yet the sequence represented by the different revo-
lutions turns out to be necessary and complete. The exhaustion
of one phase or form is proved not only by the outbreak of a
violent revolution, but by the concessions which the leading
power of the older phase itself instinctively makes to the next
period-as in our case of St. Joseph.
During the last four centuries the Roman Church has been
put on the defensive against a universal secularism. Yet the
hundreds of millions who lived under its crosier are still a
reality. It should not surprise us to find that this survival of
a Catholic laity long ago acquired a political form of its own
to symbolize its existence and raison d'etre. The Catholic laity
kept its representation in modern Europe. Up to the World
War, one great European power survived which united the
heritage of imperial and papal and Guelphic centuries in one
comprehensive structure. Here the old empire of St. Henry
and the Apostolic realm of Otto the Great and St. Stephen
of Hungary survived.
Austria-Hungary was an astonishing combination of the
entire list of elements that made up European civilization.
This "Volkermonarchie," this "international nation," was a
riddle by the very fact of its existence·. Yet it existed, against
ill logic and reason.
Friedrich Schlegel (1772-1829), the inspiring genius of nine-
:eenth-century Romanticism, tried to express the collective
:haracter of Austrian civilization by founding a magazine in
Vienna-under the title Concordia: the name hinted at the time
>f unbroken harmony between spiritual and temporal power.
fhe conversion of the Hanoverian Schlegel into an Austrian
oyalist may help us to explain Austria's achievement for hu-
nanity. Friedrich Schlegel stood all his life for totality. He
~new that thought laid claim to completeness, that in thinking
L man should try to act as a representative of his species, not

>f his individual, subjective interests. True reason, therefore,

>y its own nature, must be universal. To think along party
ines may be good politics, or piety, or loyalty, or chivalry; it
:annot be thoug-ht in its nurest form_ whirh rnp~n~ 1-h~1- h~ ·ml-.-
~., .1.cc1:sn1msea responsible for the very existence of truth
1g the other powers of this world, who concern themselves
adapting thought to thoughtless ends.
·this responsible attitude, Schlegel, in a period of factional
national tendencies, preserved the universality of schol·
p. He was the founder of the European school which
ves most of the credit for the scientific successes of the
eenth century. He drew a clear line between the natural
:he social sciences. He foresaw our own attempt to deal
the continuous process of creation in mankind itself. He
lguished c~early between a description of the permanent
~rties of man and a science that would interpret man's
tative variations, as species and as specimen, through the
~ of history. Thereby he defined the human soul and
:ter as the irreplaceable object of scientific history.
~el knew that the acquisition of new qualities could alter
himself, that saltations and mutations occurred. As a
~r he could not but be comprehensive; although a po-
fighter must think partially, Schlegel, without denying
lative claims of the French Revolution, was concerned
he representation of all the features of civilized man.
birth he was a Protestant from Northern Germany;
the influence of the revolutionary emancipation of the
1e married a divorced Jewess in Berlin. When Napoleon
1e Holy Roman Empire its knockout blow, Schlegel, in
tzine published in Paris, tried to build up a new solidar-
i called his review Europa. He settled in Vienna; he
~ a· devout Catholic. He made himself famous by his
s on world literature, and in Vienna he published his
l'dia. This magazine was meant to be something like the
val Concordantia discordantium, to restore peace be-
denominations, parties, and nations. And Schlegel ex-
:ed the mutual interpenetration of different forms and
)f civilization in the phases of his own life. He himself
~uropean by virtue of a long and painful course of train-
s settling in Vienna was the free choice of the conscien-
esponsible universalist, who could find no other asylum
led Europe for his comprehensive asnir;:1tinn~
 .n..uu .n.u~Lna was more than an agglomeration of fourteen
different nationalities. As such, it was treated by short-sighted
European nationalists as a "contresens dans l' Europe mo-
derne." 1 But Palacky, the founder of Czech national self-
consciousness, had shown deeper insight when he wrote: "If
Austria did not exist, it would have to be invented." In space,
the Austrian empire was a sum-total of fourteen nationalities. 2
~et this was only one side of its constitution. It was likewise
l comprehensive sequence in time. The title of the Austrian
~mperor bore witness to every layer of Western civilization.
qe was an apostolic monarch who appointed bishops and ab-
lots, vetoing the pope's election like the apostolic emperors
>f Saxon-Roman times. As a good ally of St. Gregory VII, he
vas a faithful supporter of the pope's claims to temporal power
lnd canonical jurisdiction. He was a staunch supporter of the
riars. This same emperor was podesta of the Free City of
rrieste, using the title made famous by the glorious city-states
1£ Italy and governing the city under a special constitution.
n his hereditary lands he ruled as a father of his people, with
n unparallelled staff of civil servants, the "H ofrat'' being the
utstanding type in this system of civil service. In Hungary,
rhere the Crown of St. Stephen was the symbol of a victorious
entry, he was, for all secular purposes, an English "king in
arliament." By granting universal manhood suffrage to his
ibjects, he paved the road for nineteenth-century democracy
l his empire. And finally, to complete the circle, in some of
is territories he acted with dictatorial powers, under the mar-
al law of conquest and occupation.
Like a Frankish king, he was loved and worshipped by his
~my; whatever form of government the individual soldier
tight be subject to in the different sections of the empire, he
as proud to join the army. With deep understanding, Grill-
uzer, the greatest Austrian poet, hailed the army camp as
1 Before the World War, this expression was used in official French textbooks
geography.
:? H. A. L. Fisher (A History of Europe, Vol. II, p. 734, London, 1935) "sees in
1e Austrian Empire] an attempt to realize upon a small scale the ideal of a
lristian society, embracing all races and tongues."
.te Hu111e or J-\.usrna; and. Uus was no love of despotism,
eat the same time he violently denounced the inorganic
acy of Russia and promised that Austria herself would
)Ut the duty of destroying Czarist Russia in the name
rty.
pe that our short list of the different forms of govern-
n the Austrian empire has made it clear, not only that
mlts of all the volcanic eruptions of a thousand years
en precipitated in the Austrian area, but that the pre-
~s were preserved in completeness and integrity. I do
an to overlook the fact that in every country in Europe
had blended different phases of civilization into an
ial unity. Yet the distinction between this part of the
ent and the other civilized nations of Europe was very
:: throughout the rest of Europe the attempt was always
>lish a single principle by violent means. One principle
aggerated, others were attacked and suppressed. The
states and nations was fixed by conscious efforts based
>retical claims: the dominium maris (dominion of the
le "natural frontiers," the divine right of kings. Austria-
~y was Christendom itself, was Western civilization in
ity. Faced with the Turkish danger on its eastern fron-
1stria-Hungary had kept up the traditions of the de-
of the faith, the emperors of the Holy Roman Empire.
itutions, in their completeness, differed from the par-
;tic traditions of the rest of Europe. Austria's complete-
s .a "completeness by establishment." To preserve the
::>fall the phases of historical evolution in one whole
essence of her existence. It was that fact which made
an Austrian.
Jolitical principle of this constitution was real, though
>t be interpreted from the narrow viewpoint of Ger-
ungarian, or Czech policy. For the provinces of old
Hungary were too narrow to explain her raison d'etre.
s frontiers were accidental; they were imposed on her
tside. She represented something bigger than she could
If. She stood for the heritage of Christianity. Patiently,
" ya.""u'"' wa.y, vc1 y unt:n surrenng, sne Dore the burden of
unity which was threatened by one member of the family
nations after the other. The errors of the European nations
iich mistook themselves for independent individuals re-
1unded from the flexible constitution of this part of the
iristian world, complete as it was by definition. New forms
~re added; but there still remained the old palace of the
iperor, the "Kaiserliche Hofiager" -the last special head of
tich was Count Montenuovo-=-with its special Hungarian
Jresentative, the "Minister am kaiserlichen H ofiager," and
strict Spanish ceremonial, in which the "monk-emperor"
>e of Cluny was consciously revived.
Austria's entire mission depended on a relative sacrifice of
rticularism and individualism by the groups that composed
~ empire. This bulwark of Christianity was based on a
~adox. No attempt was made to force the component na-
ns and countries into a colourless unity. Their particulari-
; were frankly recognized; but march they must with a dis-
line like that of the Crusaders-who had also hailed from
[erent nations. The self-denying sacrifice of the Slavic races
Austria was the price that had to be paid for the existence
:he last remnant of togetherness and completeness in Europe.
fhe World War emancipated the Slavic elements in Aus-
L and gave them a short Indian summer of State particu-
.sm. Jugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Lithuania, and Hungary
stragglers in the march of European nations. Their post-
.r independence should not be overrated. Six hundred years
l more of common traditions cannot be eradicated by fifteen
rs of nationalism. The new States in Europe are particular
:es very much as Saxony or Bavaria were a hundred years
: they presuppose a unity. Not one of these States can think
ously of going to war. Their shape forbids it, their minori-
forbid it, their permanent state of martial law forbids it.
in these countries war means. the arming of everybody;
ce means the arming of the ruling half only. Accordingly,
r prefer peace .
.t the dawn of modern times, Central Europe, the field of
Reformation, was divided into "Reich" and "Nation."
mpue ana parncu1ar ~tates. In the beginning, the empire
the countries and regions from Ostend, Antwerp, and
~ls to Liege, Strassburg, the Lake of Constance, Arlberg,
yrol, Styria, Carinthia, Slavonia, and north again as far
.wiebus, a place two hours by railway from BerUn (see
n p. 154)· The central area which was thus surrounded
· emperor's "Erblande" (hereditary possessions) was split
inumerable territories governed by high magistrates, so
escribed by Carlyle in Sartor Resartus or Gobineau in
eiades or Romain Rolland in Jean-Christophe. The high
rates were civilians; the ring of imperial dominions was
:ary frontier.
; was four hundred years ago. When we study the map
ope in 1938, we find exactly the reverse of the environ-
.n which Luther lived. The inner group of particular
1as been amalgamated into one "Reich," under the mili-
1mmand of a "Realm leader." There is no Bavaria or
, no Free Cities or principalities in this block. On
ler hand, the sma~l countries around this block amount
core: Finland, Latvia, Esthonia, Lithuania, Poland,
slovakia, Hungary, Rumania, Jugoslavia, Liechtenstein,
land, Disannexed France, Luxemburg, Netherlands,
n, Denmark.
new situation is as complex as the old. Obviously, in
w political arrangement, nothing is settled; but a new
has been initiated. The States of the Danube basin
Western Europe, between France, England, and Ger-
ue - situated in a special field of force. They are not
smopolitan world, with its centre of gravity in Paris.
re in a very definite world, of less universal character.
le played by the France of Henry IV and Richelieu in
to the small princes of the inner Reich is performed
=lay by Italy toward the succession-States. Before 1938,
ni guaranteed the existence of Austria; he counter-
i Hungary's sympathies for Germany; he checked Jugo-

liplomatic manreuvres of this kind do not go deep

to destroy the ties which bound the old Austria-
nungary together. ·1 ·he secret of Austria's "international na-
tion" was intermarriage. Our current phraseology of "nation"
and "internationalism" is rather an£emic. When we think of
international relations, we think of trade, of treaties and con-
ferences. But the most important relation between two sepa-
rate groups is that of matrimony. Every marriage eventually
works for the making of a new nation. A wedding is an act
which may found a new people. The wisdom of Abraham was
right, and is always right. There was a famous dictum which
distinguished Austria's princes from Machiavelli's principe:
"Let others wage war; thou, happy Austria, shalt marry." Not
only was this true of the emperor's house, it was also the secret
of the nations under his sceptre. Officers, landowners, business
men, civil engineers, masters and foremen, diplomats, ci vii
servants, and pedlars intermarried. The nations in Austria-
Hungary are nothing but nationalities of Austria, that is to
say, they are subdivisions and subspecies of a dominant type.
Agram, Ljubljana, Budapest, Cracow and Prague are Austrian
cities, in spite of the passionate efforts of the Hungarians to
make us think of Budapest in more heroic terms.
The dominant type of man in Austrian civilization was de-
veloped by a system of marriage rules which, from the point
of view of the particular nationality, may be called outbreed-
ing, but which was inbreeding as it concerned the one great
area of Austria-Hungary. Thus a type with specific qualities
of character was produced, which necessarily differed frmn the
dominant type in other European countries. Its speech was
bilingual; its heritage was translation, transformation, meta-
morphosis. The husband's official "nation" could not remain
unchanged by the inheritances that came from the wife's side.
The daughter who leaves the house of her parents behind
her brings into her husband's house a treasure of instincts,
rules and ways of living, habits and customs, values and tradi-
tions, which are really subject to an "evolution." Here the
much abused word "evolution," or development, means what
it says: thirty or forty years of married life bring a disentan-
gling and unfolding, provided there is a real heritage which
comes down through the "daughter" from her fathFr's hrn1~P
1 Luuuren s craa1e. .14 rom this point of view the modern
:1.se in divorce is easily explained. \Vhere father and daugh-
re no longer seriously connected, where the life of two
ations is no longer a twofold expression of one soul, a
1 interest in a girl cannot endure more than a few years.

she learns in college is not very interesting to her

.nd.
nan does not become a husband in the full sense of the
on his wedding-day or during the honeymoon; and the
i is that he marries something more than an individual.
e brings to her marriage the full past of her kin. If we
ill men, the clans and races of men would never amalga-
The rugged male, armed with his rigid convictions and
~hting spirit, is inaccessible to the influences of another
Jut in the form of a wife's devotion, her inheritance from
icestors gains a foothold in her husband's soul. It takes
1le life to make such influences bear fruit in the man's
of living and thinking. These are a woman's deepest
and treasures, unknown even to herself. A woman's
are more important than her smile; her smile is only
trtain that covers them. Modern feminism gives us a
face value, like the famous grin of the Cheshire cat or
Sphinx without a riddle. In the recurrent monotony of
ianical society, the full meaning of daughterhood seems
:lisappearing rapidly. In an age where men do not dare
Jme real fathers or elders or patriarchs, girlhood, bride-
womanhood and motherhood are less seriously threat-
hai1 daughterhood.
he Austrians their poet, Anton Wildgans, said, "We have
>een compared to the Phceacians. Our nature might bet-
symbolized by Nausicaa, the king's daughter on the
of the Ph£eacians. To the stranger who hails from a
t land and is driven to her shore by adverse winds, the

,s is sent by her divine instinct." Nausicaa and Odysseus

'. the true parable of "tu} felix Austria, nube" -Thou,
Austria, shalt marry.
symbolical character in Austrian history was Maria
a, the "Erbtochter," "the daughter of succession," who
 took over the immense legacy bequeathed by her father. By
her forty-year reign she transformed the territories that pro-
tected the Holy Roman Empire into a secular Austrian Empire.
As a woman, she herself could not become emperor; never-
theless she kept up the Hapsburg monarchy and the union
between its different countries. Austria underwent a real revo-
lution when Europe tried to divide the spoils of an apparently
easy victory over Maria Theresa. She left Vienna and placed
herself in the hands of the Hungarian gentry; and for two
hundred years the liberties of the Crown of St. Stephen domi-
nated Austria because Maria Theresa, in her fight against the
Estates of the Empire, guaranteed the liberties of the Magyars.
With her successors, the golden crown of the emperor em-
blematized more and more the mere dominance of the Hun-
garians over the rest of the empire. At the end, seven million
Magyars were sole rulers of Hungary-twenty million people-
and held two thirds of the population in complete subjection;
and Hungary, in turn, governed the whole empire, forty-six
million people, though she paid only 30 per cent of the taxes.
In 1914, the real constitution of Austria-Hungary was not ex-
pressed by its name. In fact, it was a Hungary-Austria, where,
by a most complicated system, the Hungarian gentry swayed
a great empire. The exemptions and privileges of Hungary
were the price paid by Maria Theresa and all her successors
for the transformation of the Austrian parts of the Holy Em-
pire into an Austrian Empire. Attempts at treating Hungary
like the rest of the provinces always failed. The irregularity
that w-as undoubtedly involved in this favoured position can
be compared to a revolution; for an illogical and objectionable
constitution was forced upon the heiress in her own right, by
insidious and reckless adversaries. Moreover, this revolution
followed the rules which we have stated for other revolutions.
It went through its period of humiliation, between 1805 .and
1813. In those years the Austrian constitution was shown to
have been too mechanical, too naturalistic. It was not enough
for Austria to have ceased to be a Holy Roman Empire and
to become an hereditary monarchy. The great powers of Eu-
rope are either representations of somethinl! absolute_ sPer1-hPr1~
· tne growth of man, or they are lost. Austria seemed lost
the end of the eighteenth century because it was nothing
t a natural agglomeration secularized through the accident of
1inine succession, not a living body politic with a definite
e in the European concert.
Ne have seen how and why Friedrich Schlegel and his
~nds threw in their lot with Austria and imbued her, in
:e of her dependence on Hungary, with the proud conscious..
s ~f representing completeness and totality. Thus Austria
able to sublimate the role of Maria Theresa and of the
ghter of man. The patient sufferings of Austria in this role
he daughter, the famous Viennese charm-all the virtues of
~eat soul that learned to speak universally in the midst of
ibel of tongues-produced an Austrian language which we
(now: music. Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Bruckner, Franz
Liszt, Johann Strauss, Mahler-a stream of music that wa-
d the gardens of Austrian civilization. Of Vienna Eduard
lslick wrote in 1886: "By her supremacy in the art of sound,
ina is more than the musical capital of Austria; she is a
erful empire in herself. The sovereignty of this empire
nds far beyond the borders of the political monarchy.
it overtones of Slavic, Magyar, the Italian melody, blend
the eminently German character of this music; and like
mccessful mixture of races, they revivify and embellish it."
1stria's Catholicism and her "daughterhood'' stood in oppo-
1 to the Protestant paternalism developed by the Refor-
on .. The passive attitude of the receiving, enduring, for-
ng, abiding part of Christendom found a way of spiritual
mation; and thanks to this sublimation Austria survived.
~ survival of the fittest" leaves us asking: Who, after all,
In the case of Austria we can answer this question. When
ng being delves into the very depths of its potentialities,
ll prove to be fit. Considered from the outside, Austria
llogical, impossible, a hopeless case of contradictory po-
l principles. But a city is protected by men, not by walls.
ia strengthened her weak political foundations by creat-
new type of man. Here again, as in all other revolution~-
man regenerated. h1mselt by going back to an eternal trait in
ri uman character.
We have explained why even the Little Austria of today can-
1ot be called a linguistic province of Germany. Language is
l more complicated matter than nationalists suspect. It is not
t cellophane wrapper thrown around several millions of peo-
Jle. Language is language in the full sense only so long as it
!xpresses the deepest impulses of human life. National tongues
vhich refuse to serve the great biological purpose of our species
:ease to speak. Since nationalism severs the purpose of speech
rom the deepest desire of man and woman (which goes far
leeper than the noisy national slogans), the languages degen-
Tate into propaganda. They decay before our eyes, though
hey may survive as fossils for another thousand years. Their
uture will be very interesting, because people who speak the
ame language will understand each other less and less, while
lasses, professions and groups of different nationality will find
aemselves closer to each other, all over the globe. The arro-
ant destruction of the Hapsburg monarchy was based on a
ross heresy concerning language. The Austrian character was
great character because it was conceived as a unity in spite
f variety, through the faith of generations of devoted inen
nd women who based their actions on magnanimous patience,
aughterly candour, and unaffected hospitality.
Lest the reader be confused by what he is reading in the
aily papers, it might be well to say that the annexation of
Austria" by Hitler in 1938 was not the annexation of Austria.
[is· reunion was nothing more than what happened to Jugo-
avs, or Czechs, or Rumanians, or Poles, in 1918. Hitler only
ihed the driftwood of the German Austrians out of the flooded
·ea of a world catastrophe. The German Austrians are only
1e sixth of that Austria with whom we were concerned in
lis chapter.
The daughter in Europe, Nausicaa-Austria, destroyed by the
Torld War, will find her resurrection in the world.
 CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The Mills That Grind

te Rehabilitation of the Repressed-Emancipation from the Old Gods-
pe's Second Peace

THE REHABILITATION OF THE REPRESSED.

DISINTEGRATION OF EUROPE AFTER THE GREAT WAR REVEALS

her set of mechanisms at work in revolutions. Here we
study the technique of readjustment. In ancient times, a
lted group like Troy or Carthage ceased to exist. Modern
)ns do not die. Ireland, Poland, Lithuania, for example,
l immortal. To make this possible, the mechanism of re-

stment must function unceasingly. But how is readjust-

t possible for a nation which has received its national
tutions as a religion and a worshipped creed? If nations
loose groups of some millions of individuals, existing for
in general purposes like food and shelter, readjustment
d be easy. Nations are something much more complicated,
:manent apparatus of special selection. The members of
a group must be ready to die for the values selected by
national experience and their national traditions; and
are. The readiness of men to die for a cause makes read-
Lent a highly difficult task. If people prefer death to seeing
1herited order shaken, the attempt at change may simply
he life of the radical leaders, without any practical result.
-eyed patriotism imperils the evolution of any group.
· such is the nobility of man that he can overcome his
~or existence, and die for a lost cause. He can exclude his
body from the life-interest he wishes to embody. With-
uuL uu: courage to clle tor his class, country, child, ideal, a man
could never represent any form of historical life. Parents who
are not courageous enough to fight a kidnapper, mariners who
will not save the passengers of their burning ship at the risk
of their own lives, have ceased to fulfil the minimum require-
ments for mankind. Fortunately, in the majority of cases, the
readiness of people to suffer for the survival of the group tran-
scends the cowardice of the tenderfeet. Thus readiness for
duty guarantees the perpetuation of any body politic.
Revolution can never succeed where people are ready to
die for the existing order of things. Revolutions fail where
the troops fire, where the police disperses the mob, where a
handful of volunteers takes up arms for the legitimate govern-
ment. It is only when the mass of the people prefer their own
struggle for life to the sacrifice of their lives that revolutions
prosper. Such a state of affairs proves that the old order no
longer contains a valued element of truth. For without exag-
geration it can be said that the value of any order of things
is tested by martyrdom, by the willingness of people to die
for it.
The French constitution survived the wave of violent feeling
in 1934 because the mass of the French nation is still imbued
with the stream of ideas that inspired the founders of the
republic in 1789. They still believe in the pricelessness of
their contribution to the true self-expression of mankind.
Therefore even Russian Communism has made no impression
on them. The French are the youngest group in the civilized
world in respect of their revolutionary experience. The revolu-
tion of the oldest nation in Europe, Italy, is six times further
removed from the Bolshevik experiment than is the French.
Italy, therefore, reacted most violently of all the European
nations to the world revolution of the World War. That is
why Mussolini was the first symbolic figure on the post-War
stage of events. Hohenzollern and Hapsburg Germany, divided
in the Reformation, reacted ten years later than Italy ( 1933
and 1g38). England, America and France resist better on ac-
count of their more recent creation. Yet England will react
more fundamentally than France; and it is easier for thP
tlch to resist than for the Italians. A nation's faith in its
l revelation lasts only a relative length of time.
'he vital reactions of the older forms of civilization to the
~Id War and the revolution brought about by the War
Tve special attention. For if they prove to be merely me-
1ical means of defence and counter-revolution, the simplest
of explaining them would be inertia. Shabbiness, stupidity,
hunger for life would suffice to bring about such counter-
ements.
ow a short survey of Europe since the War shows that the
1Wing courses have been taken. Italy solved the papal ques-
: it finally overcame the division into Guelphs and Ghibel-
' that is, the protest of the Vatican against the unification
aly. Today Italy is imperialistic. True enough, the name
mperor, outlawed in Italy since 1200, remains excluded
Italy herself. Yet Mussolini is a Roman emperor in every
~ct except the name. Italy's obsession during the last four
1ries had been that foreigners did not take Italian politics
Lisly. Italy gave the world musicians, painters, actors, car-
s and diplomatists; but for the rest she was the Holy
lchre of a past civilization. Beggars, late trains, dirt and
'.ous disorder-this conception of their country enraged
talians. Mussolini tries to change all this. From a country
t and religion, he has made Italy into the hegemonic
r among the succession-States. As Louis XIV dominated
Je after the Thirty Years' War, Mussolini dominated Cen-
:urope. For the first time in fifteen hundred years Italian
nee reached out beyond the Alps. As Louis XIV was
:ed by the German princes, so Mussolini's Fascism was
:ed in all the impoverished and vanquished nations of the
r imperial area. The nations have changed roles. Musso-
vershadows the former Italian contribution to our world
papacy-by the political game he is playing in the North
ast and West. He plays empire whilst, strangely enough,
d imperial country, Germany, has before her a religious
.hat of tribal, "volkischer," regeneration. Nazism is the
~ak of popular energies against the overweight of the
tn "State." Hitler is the tr11P PvnrPc:'.c:'.l"'"' .,..,..i: 1-J...~ -~------ _,
desires of peasants and lower middle-class, who were under the
yoke of the "Gebildeten" and can now avenge the1nselves upon
that class. The foreign observer who mistakes Nazism for
Fascism can test this point by the following facts: Not one
name or memory from the Guelphic times between 1200 and
1517-the very times so forgotten and ignored in Italy today
-has been overlooked in the national revival of Germany since
the \Var. Whereas the last four hundred years offered little
or nothing for the purposes of this revival, every successful
trend has pointed to the times of Joan of Arc, the Teutonic
Order, the "Vehme/' the Peasants' War, Matthias Grlinewald,
Ordensburgen, and Marken des Reichs.
In Germany the division of the nation into two separate
bodies, Catholics and Protestants, has been overcome by a
Messiah. The result of the Reformation, the system of schol-
arly trained civil servants, is being revised; the rigid organi-
zation of the States is superseded by a sort of nationalistic
papacy. The Germans long for something like the medi~val
papacy, though in a secular form. Hitler is as much a national
pope as Mussolini is an Italian emperor. In Germany there was
no need to produce a strong State; in fact, the spontaneity of
the German people had been throttled by too much govern-
ment.
The "Volkische Revolution" does not solve the problem of
Capitalism or of Communism. It looks beyond both and an-
ticipates the classless society of con1plete racial identity. The
worq "revolution," deliberately used by the anti-Marxian
movement in Italy and in Germany in order to captivate the
revolutionary youth of the nations, does not have the same
meaning in both countries. In Italy it is used for an imperial-
istic effort. In the field of foreign affairs, the German Nazi
revolution is really going back to the forests of Germania
antiqua. It needs world peace more than anyone else. The
repressed instincts of pre-State existence turn up again and
are deliberately fostered. The Germans are anticipating the
tribal organization of an economically united world.
The English are also returning to a pre-revolutionary de-
"Plrn.... mPnt Thro110-h thP 1".lur -n.~cc-Prl ;..,. l\.T,...,...,,.......,....1-... ___ - - - -
hman's house has ceased to be his castle. The Crown is
made the centre of a restoration of centralized govern-
police and civil service, and of serious and methodical
ig. Music returns to the English-speaking nations. The
n inhibitions against systematic thinking give way to
lux of intellectual and philosophical energies. Ramsay
)nald presided over a "national" government. Every move
by the English during the last few years is a step back
1

• the Tudor State. The Judges of the Common Law,

.lly the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Hewart, write books
"the New Despotism." And Edward VIII seems vitu-
~ to the same church that came into being by the divorces
ry VIII.
French, little as they are able to change, are going in
~ionalism and self-government of provinces and pro-
;. For the first time political unrest is stronger in the
:es than in Paris. Bretons, Alsatians, Basques and, per-
'atalonians rekindle the flame of federalism stamped out
d been by the unitarian ideals of 1789.
rery great nation in Europe we observe a resurgence of
ressed. Those features of the human life-cycle are being
ated which the great national revolutions had sup-
or shortened. The one-sidedness of the national char-
su pplemented by features which were silenced for cen-
This process gives the lie to the superstition that
l character is eternal. Man is too proud a creature to
~ stigma of partial development; he cannot help long-
completeness. And the consequence is that the estab-
livision of functions between the European nations is
~vised. Though the achievements of the great revolu-
nnot be cancelled, the lost phases of the human soul
as the price of the revolutions-are being rediscovered
nnexed. The Europeans are going home to a more
e concept of humanity. Yet there is one law which
them: No European nation can have a real second
Jn. The slogan of "revolution," the word "revolution,"
r used for these post-War processes, cannot hide the
SffiallneSS Of the PVPnt~ thPu 'rt,.,,.
rn."f.u::nr• ___ .._
T.lL --
change within national areas cannot be compared to the
colossal creative acts of -earlier centuries. Europe has been
"revolutionized" by the World War and the subsequent World
Revolution; but its single "revolutions" are all partial proc-
esses of adaptation in one general world-readjustment. A score
of national revolutions today. are no more than enough to
equal one genuine, complete revolution.
Everywhere it is the underdog of the last revolution who is
being released from the pressure of the great national system.
This underdog is not an individual; he is neither the poor
man nor the proletarian. We, in our modern individualism,
fancy that oppression and injustice can be done only to human
individuals. In actual fact, any social system is unfair to certain
ways of life. In Germany the medireval peasantry was crushed
in the Peasants' War; in Italy, the Imperial Roman tradition
was trodden under foot by the popes; England, in 1688, abol-
ished royal conscience and centralized government; and the
living voices of the "pays de France" were silenced in 1789.
The achievements of civilization are sublime. Only psycho-
analysis discovers the price of any sublimation. We become
aware, today, of the price of civilizations. By a revolution, whole
systems of behaviour are put under a taboo and fall into
desuetude. At such a moment the famous "inhibitions" begin
to work. A gentleman cannot scratch himself in good society,
under the threat of being automatically outlawed. He foresees
his social death and prefers to suffer. And that is not all. The
negative fear-explanations of psychology fall short of explain-
ing- the mechanism of national character fully. It is true that
a member of, let us say, French society can foresee that he
will be outlawed if he does not know the bon ton. The threat
of social capital punishment prevents most of the outbreaks
of unco-ordinated instinct. But the positive love for the estab-
lished ideal of national character does more than fear could
do. A gentleman does not behave like a gentleman because
he is afraid of being an outcast. He does it because he feels
that he must be a gentlemant It is a positive desire to
strengthen the code of national character which pervades the
averae.-e member of a QTOUDa He q-rafts anti trims. hi~ num n~tn-r~
gard.ener-a gardener in the service of the god or goddess
reated the group. It is the secret of any ruling class that
s against its native instincts in the service of its god. It
>riesthood which believes that the national character,
ented by certain habits and beliefs, is ultimate. A con-
lS procession of pilgrims join in worshipping at the
s tern pl es, of good breeding, genius, statecraft, mother-
asceticism.

ll the great national forms of life the World War brought

;. The colossal bloodshed among the governing classes
ied the priesthood of the national tradition. The ruling
lost a much bigger proportion of its young men than
~ rest of the population. This misproportion between
s of officers and that of private soldiers forced a read-
1t upon the nations. There were no longer enough
~d and voluntary representatives of the divine tradition
esent it in the feeble hearts and souls of natural men,
in the cogs of the industrial machine.
iis point the great nations show the wisdom of their
ir reaction. The divine element being so weakly repre-
after the heavy death-toll among the educated classes,
letarian might sway the whole civilization if the basis of
.ion itself could not be enlarged and broadened. The
lity of the gentry, of civil service, of inspired individ-
is not accessible to the mass-men or to post-War youth.
ism would be inevitable for them. At the same time,
oic achievements of the national efforts made in the
War largely support and justify the various national
1s. Even Germany, though financially defeated by the
llls, would never have succumbed to her European ene-
me. The war between the Europeans was a stalemate.
at nations of Europe have all proved indestructible.
s twilight of the national gods, the masses would have
st without some indirect inducement to follow the
tradition. They would feel incapable of bearing the
burden of priesthood; the divine ego of the national
1ld crush these mechanized heino-~ ThPr~fn-ro .-J.u,.u
 nave oeen allowed to worship gods belonging to a pre-natal
stage of national character. The European nations cannot civ-
ilize the modern proletariat directly. Such a straightforward
attempt would be asking too much responsibility and self-
denial of the mass-man.
The process of amalgamation into the traditional civiliza-
tion works indirectly. All we can hope from these labour-
forces is that they may still have some moral vitality. The
masses are no longer expected to conform to the standards of
the national elite; they are permitted and encouraged to be
primeval. That is, they are trained to embody the specific pre-
revolutionary shapeless type, the underdog that was repressed
by the national revolutions. Meanwhile the real national re-
sponsibility rests on the shoulders of an inner group. These
leaders of the post-War readjustment necessarily have two
faces. Outwardly they resemble the underdog set free in post-
War days: Mussolini looks like a proletarian Ct£sar and Hitler
like a peasant pope. Inwardly they are heirs to the pre-War
national policy.
Under these circumstances, public education no longer has
the function of training the crown-princes and candidates for
government office, as naive national education always did.
Since the Great War, the mere vitality of the masses has be-
come, for the first time in history, an independent item in
national education. Even if these masses will not produce
leaders for the nation, they must be organized. So they are
put through a training stage which serves as preliminary in
the real national history. The mythology which modern democ-
racies are beginning to teach their masses is no longer simply
a glorification of the national institutions. It runs riot among
the lost opportunities, the suppressed instincts, the reminis-
cences of the nations' pre-civilized days.
This is a new mechanism of adaptation. The Nazi of today
is related to the true German Lutheran type created after 1517
by the fact that he is encouraged to Ii ve through the previous
stage, that of the German of 1500-which once again leads
to the type of the Lutheran public official. After the French
Revolution, the technique of adaptation differed: the best
.1.J.l..l\..i:) v.1. 1.ucgenueman-- could be parallelled .in
.c..ugusn
middle classes by the type of the "good sport." The sports-
t is not, by himself, a gentleman; yet he resembles him in
·y respect. And the ritualism that governed the daily life
he gentry who hunted the fox was made accessible, by a
nd codification, to everybody who owned a bath-tub. The
>tation in the Reformation countries consisted in replac-
theology by philosophy. In Germany and in all countries
:h adopted its type of scholarship, the philosophical lead-
of 1800, Hegel, Fichte, Schelling, Schleiermacher, per-
ed the shopkeeper that he was no longer getting theology
real natural philosophy as his moral nourishment.
it the anti-Bolshevik reaction of today is not based on
lilosophical translation of the older values: the modern
es would not care for philosophy. It is effected by a psy-
>gical technique which satisfied ttieir pre-natal instincts.
iis reaction deprives the national institutions, as we know
, of their splendour and prestige. The chief organ of
aplicated organism abandons its claim to form the visible
~1 for the rest. For this process, however, there is a his-
tl parallel. In the horrible times of the Borgias, when the
:y became a dictatorial organization, it ceased to be un-
Jod. It handed the masses over to leaders and movements
iich it itself did not approve. The education of candi-
for the inner circle, and the education of common men,
deliberately separated. Yet this senile organization saved
nity of the Church for another hundred years. It was at
im·e_ that Erasmus of Rotterdam canonized the separa-
>f clerical and secular education by doing the same thing
J today. He, and the secular governments of his days,
'ith humanism what we are beginning to do with prim-
a: namely, prefix it as antecedent in education to the
1g curriculum. Erasmus said: Of course, Christianity
crown, but why not start with the classics of Greece
lome? In the same way our colleges are beginning to
primitive sociology and barbarism and anthropology
and more, as one other precinct to the sanctuary of our
 ................. YU..1.'"4'-..,, vvHa.u:vcr uus may mean. ·1·he modern masses
will soon be led through a maze of precincts: pre-history, Pre-
natal Man, Stone Age, Egypt, perhaps some hours will remain
for the Greeks, and the humanities; Christianity will be post-
poned till St. Tib's eve. Once more mankind is patching on
some chapters to the education of man which probably will
become the chapters most violently taken in. The step from
humanism into anthropology today is as final as the step from
Christianity to Humanism. Again, political need asks for a
simplification. The European nations have been forced since
the World War into the segregation of two types. On the one
side they established a dictatorial group, and on the other
they emancipated the repressed instincts of the underdog. By
the use of this mechanism the particular State may prolong
its national sovereignty for another period of years, in spite
of the fact that the natural conditions for it are _gone.
The return of the repressed means that the nations are mark-
ing time and preparing for the economic organization of the
whole world. By admitting the irresponsibility of their masses
for the traditional national priesthood and creed, the nations
unconsciously acknowledge the inadequacy of these national
traditions themselves. They have absolved the masses of an
allegiance which would eternalize nationalism and which would
make it impossible for the peoples to start afresh with a new
human image of God.
EMANCIPATION FROM THE OLD GODS.

This is an era of psychoanalysis. Whatever. its merits, no

analyst certainly can be compared to the Great War. Emanci-
pation from the old gods · was perpetrated by an analytical
process on a colossal scale. The national concepts and ideas
of the belligerent parties concerning their own situation in
the world were challenged and used up during the World
War. While at war, the nations clung to those reminiscences
of the past which seemed most fitted to stimulate every com-
batant, at the front and at home, to the utmost energy.
Through the constant application of these familiar associa-
tions during the War itself, their force was spent. This process
!xnausuon has never been taken into account. And yet the
ig up of familiar national sentiments occurred everywhere.
ven America's sentiment, which one might think relatively
from historical traditions, was overstrained by war propa-
da. When General Pershing landed in France, he was re-
:ed to have uttered his message to French civilization in
e words: "Lafayette, we are here." 1 The crusade of the
-Spangled Banner led to the defeat of the Central Powers
:urope. Once before, the United States had been involved.
~uropean quarrels in spite of its determination to keep
f. In 1812 America threw its weight in the scale with revo-
mary France against conservative England. It was a fight
new principles, for the rights of man, against Georgian
Lt Britain. There was a portion of gratitude for Lafayette
Le War of 1812. Every textbook admits that the old alliance
France played its part in the events between 1812 and
: the war was a last act in the revolutionary campaign
n in 1776.
crusade is not a revolutionary war. And though it is not
llusiness to decide how much of a crusade America's part-
tip in the World War was, it cannot be doubted that the
tion in 1917 here was very different from that at the dawn
>erty, in 1812 or 1776. The very name "Crusade" is a term,
:or progress, but for the regaining of old, lost territory
·eventing its loss. 2 The difference between a pioneer dis-
ing a new world and a crusader fighting for Europe and
'cracy is exactly the same as that between a missionary on
ide, and the Crusaders of nine hundred years ago on the
. Missions and campaigns for missions are concerned with
~rting pagan countries wliich are now to hear the Gospel
te first time. A crusade is conservative. Its purpose is to
ize the very background and premises of progress: the
ion of the oldest provinces of the faith. During her
geous advance towards the West, America was called back
·.es for help from the cradle of modern civilization. This
the whole story, see Gen. John J. Pershing, My Experiences in the
War, p. 93, New York, Stokes, 1931.
P· 547·
was a para11e1 to the alarming news which once came to the
Western world of the conquest of the cradle of Bethlehem and
the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem by the Mohammedans.
Thus we see that in 1917 "crusade" was a very special term,
which had a meaning only for America. The European coun-
:ries themselves, deeply interwoven in one old world, were like
Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Nazareth and Transjordania, fighting
tgainst each other and themselves destroying the land of prom-
se. But, for the New World, the "crusade" persuaded a
vestw'ard-facing continent to look back toward the east and
he dawn of its own civilization.
"Crusade" was only a name. But such a name lifts a new
~vent out of the grey limbo of every-day existence. It frees it
rom any possibility of being confused with egoistic or impe-
ialistic enterprises. It dedicates, separates and distinguishes.
•rotecting this war against pettiness and coarseness, it shows
hat gratitude reaches across hundreds and thousands of years.
Thus the value of some such exalting name was felt in every
1elligerent country. The memory of an older heroic or bril-
'.ant struggle for life was present in the minds of all the Euro-
ean nations. As we· have seen, the word "crusade" was not
vailable to them; but there were other reminiscences to
:rengthen their morale. We give a list of these associations.
WORLD WAR PARALLELS
The following list contains two classes of comparisons which
ere made during the years 1914-18, with the intention of inter-
~eting the catastrophe.
One was used by responsible patriots, statesmen, and teachers to
certain the ideals of their own nation. The other was found in
e more detached writings of scholars. The scholarly parallels all
owed the weakness of intellectual abstraction, because they
eked out events entirely outside the experience of any contem-
>raneous belligerent. The political parallels were all invoked be-
use they suggested very real scars and experiences of a particular
1dy politic.
 A. POLITICAL COMPARISONS

for: Bulgaria: The War of the Balkans.

France: The War with Prussia.
-1815 England: The Napoleonic Wars.
~) 1793, 1795 Poland: Her Partitions between Russia, Prussia,
Austria.
1783 America's First Comparison: The Collaboration
with France.
1763 Prussia: Frederick the Great and the Seven Years'
War.
1748 Austria: The War of Succession under Maria
Theresa.
1579 Belgium: The Struggle of the Low Countries
against Spain.
Russia: The Loss of the Cross of the Hagia
Sophia in Byzantium.
1434 Bohemia: The Martyrdom of John Huss and the
War of .the H ussi tes.
t274 America's Second Comparison: The Crusades.
t 268 Italy: The Invasions and the Rule of the Nordic
Emperors.
B. ACADEMIC COMPARISONS

French:
.D. Alaric and the Goths in Rome (defeatistic mood) .
.D. Attila and St. Genevieve (victorious mood).
German:
c. Rome (Prussia) against Carthage (victorious mood).
c: -Macedonia's War against Rome (defeatistic mood).
Russian, Marxist:
f History. Last capitalistic catastrophe, no parallel, properly
.king.
ese recollections are as different as the wave-lengths of
~nt radio stations. France was taking its "revanche" for
and Bulgaria for the Balkan Wars of 1881 and 1912.
~ two countries had the shortest memories, or, to put it
carefully, used the most recent past as a parallel to the
tt war. Other countries looked further back. England saw
nerselt hghting the new Napoleon: Lloyd George, with his
"Hang the Kaiser," was repeating the English slogans of 1810.
Prussia and Austria had a precedent in the Seven Years' War,
1756-1763, and the War for the Austrian Succession, 1742-
1748. The very foundations of both countries had been laid in
these two great struggles; and since their existence was at stake
in the World War, many authors have stressed the analogy.
Thomas Mann wrote a famous and very serious essay which
drew a comparison between Saxony's alleged neutrality in 1756
and Belgium's neutrality in 1914. The destruction of Prussia
and Austria as a reslt of the War has fully justified the com-
parison. Both powers had really lost their basis of existence,
laid down one hundred and seventy years before. They invoked
the ghosts of this past with good reason. It was a last effort,
as a. drowning man surveys his whole past; swift as lightning,
all the chief remembrances of his life turn up in his imagina-
tion, probably because the mind hopes to recall a former
iituation which might offer an experience, a remedy, a way
Jut of its mortal danger. Our list goes on and shows the in-
~eresting parallels for the Czechs and the Poles. The "oldest"
:ountry, in the sense of the remoteness of its historical par-
1llel, is Italy. Italy was the only great European power that
:ought under the spell of the clerical period of the Occident.
ihe was fighting for the last time, in the person of the Austrian
~mperor, the emperors from the North who had possessed and
naintained the Roman Empire of the Middle Ages. Thus her
·eminiscence peered back almost as far as the American vision
,f a crusade. Every nation read into the World War a great
·hapter from its own past. And all these images were wasted.
-Jot one of the parallels proved satisfactory. The World War
ranscended the boldest expectations, as well as the usual con-
epts, of historiography. A German historian was so ingenuous
s to confess during the War that it offered little interest to
ae historian. So little did it fit into his framework of his-
Jrical periods and motives!
When a post-War generation had to be introduced into
ational life, the exhaustive use of historical traditions and
~al memories during the War made necessarv ::1 rPtnrn t-n ~,.;11
A.~J. .a.a y\;1., nat is wny the ~uropean coun-
ui. 1 cu1eu1urance. 1
es turned to the language extirpated by their own formation.
iese new languages have already been explained. Today, in
~ry country in Europe, the traveller will find sympathy if he
lls the stop which opens the memories of the repressed.
But how shall we speak in America? Crusading America dif-
ed from the Old World. When the United States of America
nt through its revolution in 1776, it had neither 130 mil-
ns of people nor even 24 millions, as France had in 1789.
the course of 150 years America bred at home, and attracted
m the Old World, a hundred million people and taught
~m the American Revolution. The problem of its political
1cation after the War was less intense, therefore, than in
rope, where whole nations had to face right about at once.
America the experiment made by two and a half million
,ple in 1776 had already been repeated and memorized by
res of millions of immigrants. Thus, it was spared the reha-
[tation of the repressed which is going on all over Europe.
EUROPE'S SECOND PEACE.
1rom 1914 to 1917, six great nations went to war, five of
[ch had made their contribution to the life of mankind
former centuries, whereas one, Russia, was only entering
period of self-revelation. In 1917 Europe reached a stale-
:e. The European War gave way to World War and World
rolution. Something bigger than Europe now proved to be
field of force of this catastrophe.
rom 1917 to 1920, America extinguished the fire of open
fare, and peace was re-established on the surface. However,
technical war had run off faster than the evolution of the
.ds and souls involved in the struggle. In the Napoleonic
s, the Thirty Years' War, the Hundred Years' War, the
Lhersome technique of warfare made hostilities last so long
a new generation grew up during the war itself. The tech-
.I achievements of our age condensed military events and
ructions into five short years. For that reason our wartime
~ration grew up in the twilight of a so-called post-War
od.
 ror au pracucal purposes this allegedly post-War period was
nothing but a hangover of the pre-War ideologies. It was the
Indian summer of national sovereignties. By 1930 these na-
tional ideologies had worn off definitely. And when President
Hoover sent his message on a war debts moratorium to Europe,
the French, the leading nation in the century of national sov-
ereignty, immediately realized the decay of their pride. They
exclaimed, "On nous a traites com me Nicaragua."
Finally new problems that emerged from the War itself, each
i world problem instead of a European, battered at the doors
Jf the diplomatic chanceries, and asked for recognition. A
nental war ensued, fought under different names in different
:ountries, putting up dictators in Portugal and Poland, in the
'.bltic States and the Balkans, producing Hitlerism in Ger-
nany, the Italian conquest of Abyssinia, Roosevelt's visit to
luenos Aires, and the first socialist government in the bour-
~eois republic of France.
This mental warfare found a restricted outlet for its passions
n Spanish territory. Spain lent itself as the ideological battle-
teld of Europe, like the Balkan battlefield before the World
Var. The goal of all these movements is a second peace, super-
eding the so-called peace of Versailles and of St. Germain.
Therefore nothing new is being enacted now; only a new
eneration is introduced and integrated into a situation created
y the World War. Thus the Spanish civil war itself is cor-
Jborating the new dilemma of a technical era; here again the
~chnical destruction has been so efficient that the problems
tised- by the war itself overshadow the issues existing on the
'.ghteenth of July, 1936. Neither the childish simplicity of
te generals nor the stubborn doctrinairism of anarchists, Com-
lunists and syndicalists has survived. Their queer .idea was to
iminate the other party. This term "elimination"-by shoot-
tg or bombing-is the interesting contribution of this new
vii war to revolutionary terminology. Unfortunately, elimina-
::m is not going to work. Ten thousand children, women,
orkers, protestants, priests, nuns, may be "eliminated"; but
> problem of society will be solved. The cost of the destruc-
)n will have to be paid off by whole g-enerations. A irnbnP~
........ , .1.U.'--'-- cu. Lvp ~pccu u1 nours; man uves up to his real expe-
ience pretty slowly.
A new political science, then, is bound to differentiate
etween technical and political time. Statesmen of the future
rill become aware of the dualism between the inevitable lag
)r political action (till the masses may be introduced into
~ality) and the inevitable settling of accounts which comes as
~rtainly as the rotation of the planets.
To this bilateral law we owe the second, mental, warfare
tat has been raging since 1931. A thoughtless and largely aim-
ss world war is being repeated today in theory and reflection.
Then we analyze the attitude of the nations in this aftermath,
e may observe how lawfully the march of the nations pro-
~eds. For what are these nations actually trying to do? They
·e all trying to reclaim the valuable features of the epoch of
e World War; they are all trying to avoid the mistakes and
unders of that period. They do this by instinct more than
r any clear understanding of the new law of technical pre-
city and mental make-up. Of course, the leaders who tried to
Im the masses during the depression ignored the fact that
tr modern military technique works faster than national
inking can follow. Nevertheless, they all acted on this as-
mption.
President Roosevelt scarcely remembered Wilson's mistake
going to Versailles, into the den of the lion. Fortunately,
>osevelt went to Buenos Aires instead of to Europe. His social
licy, after much wavering and experimenting, liquidated the
r problems. Baruch and Nye, in compliance with Roosevelt's
5hes, moved for legislation that would take the profits out of
r. He had to accept the veterans' bonus, and realized that
~ twelve millions of unemployed could not be left in the
·ch like individual losers in life's gambling. Loss of their
portunities was no individual bad luck in their case. Labour
tits capital in the World War, because the growth of foreign
rkets came to an end then. Americans are unemployed as
· result of the War. It is true that after the War the Ameri-
L loans to Europe postponed this result. In 1929, however,

simple issue had already become: Who should pay for the
World War-capital, labour, or the farmer? To a certain extent
Roosevelt simply acknowledged the problems of the Wilson
administration.
Th'is "handwriting on the wall" was clearly exposed by the
scientist, Arthur D. Little, as early as 1928, when he wrote, in
the midst of prosperity: "The War developed amongst us a
new Bushido, another Samurai class pledged to service. Its
membership included those who toiled for the common good
in a supreme emergency; devoted women; our youth who on
land and sea and in the air dared the impossible, and achieved
it. Shall we permit this unity of purpose, this capacity for co-
operative effort to become dissipated in the perpetuation of
past mistakes, or shall we direct these new and potent forces
to the development of our estate? It is well to be wise in a
great moment." 3
England and France have tried to be wise during this mental
war. These two arrogant victors of 1919 have been volunteer-
ing as the vanquished from 1932 to 1937· France did not go
to war for any of the many violations of the Versailles treaty,
n.ot even for the remilitarization of the Rhineland, which made
aational sovereignty impossible in Europe. She allowed Ger-
ITTany to play the victor in this mental war because Versailles
1ad falsified France's real achievement.
After all, Germany did not lose the World War in the East.
rhe Germans saved the world from Czarism. The winning-
tway of all the Baltic States from Russia was due to the Ger-
nan victories only. Neither England nor France would have
~nia:ncipated these countries, and so the simple truth that Cen-
ral and Eastern Europe formed one administrative unit at the
~nd of the World War is coming forth _again in the frantic
>Verrunning of Austria, the alliance between Poland and Ger-
nany, the ousting of the Francophiles in the Balkan countries,
tc. However, though Germany did not lose the World War
n the East, neither did she win it. The arrogance of Lloyd
;eorge and Clemenceau is replaced by Hitler's pride today.
l\Thenever mankind does not reach its destiny by humility and
8 Arthur D. Little, The Handwriting on the Wall, p. 25, Boston, 1g28.
istice, it will reach it by a sequence of two self-conceits and·
vo injustices. Likenesses of Lloyd George and Hitler should
e carved on one side of a war memorial, and the mourning
iughter of man, Europa, on the other. Then the soldiers of
urope, the 800,000 killed in action around Verdun alone,
ight come to rest in their graves.
The second peace, of course, means that the sovereignty of
ttional states in Europe has gone for good. I know that the
eptic will point to the noisy chauvinism of all countries. Let
be understood that the mental war, though conducted on
ies of the most violent nationalism, is eating out the very
~art of patriotism. For the national gods are degraded today.
; we have seen before, the World War resulted in degrading
.tional gods into idols and inefficient dreams. The second war
degrading the idols into cash. They are advertised by travel
lreaus like "merchandise, and broadcast daily by loudspeakers.
1is accelerates the selling out of nationalism.
On the other hand, rulers in Poland, Hungary, Italy, Ger-
my, Spain, are forced to enter a new international combina-
n. The Communistic International, and the Warriors' Inter-
tional, are racing for hegemony today. The result of the
orld War, then, is the emerging of a nationalist-international
rty in Europe. Unconsciously and inadvertently, this party
the warriors is doing away with any possible sovereignty of
~ single European state. Modern dictators exclaim, like Marx
i Engels in 1847, "Soldiers of Europe, you have nothing to
e, unite." The direction of this process is easily overlooked
:ause their philosophy is the soldier's philosophy; its prophet,
edrich Nietzsche, baptized it "the philosophy of the ham-
r." This is difficult for educated people to grasp, since their
:rained ways of thinking date back to the "Revolution of
as" of 1789. The Philosophy of the Hammer is the reverse
the Philosophy of Ideas. Veteran idealists still expect that
actors in the political drama should make speeches an-
1ncing their actions and conforming to their actions. Un-
:unately, the World War means a material revolution; it is
i-ideological, anti-bourgeois, and anti-liberal.
ts chamoions. therefore. are no revnlntinn~rv 1rlP~11~t~ th~u
·e materially revolutionized masses. It is significant that the
~ry word "revolutionary" is out of date today. It is too con-
ious, too active. To modern masses the philosophical con-
iousness of a liberal mind no longer applies. Robespierre was
volutionary; modern mass-man is revolutionized passively.
as anyone noticed that the catchword of 1789, "Revolution-
y," is dropped today? We contemporaries of the World War
.ve accepted man's cosmical and social passiveness by adding
the term "revolution" of 1688, and to the adjective "revolu-
mary" coined in 1789, the new tenn "revolutionized."
So we need not be surprised if the Fascist International
)Uld execute the death warrant of the sovereign state against
~ir own wish. By making nationalism cheap and unpalatable
over the small promontory of Asia called Europe, they pro-
ce the nausea that will end nationalism. On the other hand,
! Warriors' International ends where European nationalism
is. Russia dropped her national flag as early as 1917 and, by
1ing at the whole world, united one sixth of the globe; to
·, then, the unity of the nations of Europe is nothing very
·. She dreamt of a world-wide union and does everything in
· power to outdo any particular unity of the old European
tntries by her international radicalism. And, west of the
antic, America, too, is far too vast a continent to feel or act
~ one European nation .. America is a whole world, opened
by all the nations of Europe.
lussia and America, then, are too big to share the problems
ltomized Europe. Europe, from Gibraltar to Danzig, and
n Dublin to Stamboul, is the battlefield of the specific cam-
~n of this wor Id war to end the sovereignty of the indi-
1al European nation. For any one of them, it has become
fossible to go to war simply. In this area, therefore, some
~r is required by which Europe be organized economically
~merica and Russia are organized already. In the light of
~aphical exclusivity, we ought to read the speeches of Hit-
1gainst "Communism." I think we all have to admit, that
Western World never will nor can "go Russian." The old
1an and Protestant countries are impervious to the Soviet
~riment th~t fitt~rl ~n ~-r.o.-. ;....,. ....... L.: - 1- -- -
1
• • ,. • • • -
mged society for a thousand years. If this is so, non-Russian
rope is compelled to search for a new social union of her
n. And this search is accelerated by the Warriors' Interna-
aal. They may never find it. The geography of Europe is
st un~avourable to any such tendency. Eccentric interests
too strong.
rhe solution for Europe that would serve the purpose, prob-
y, would be the common administration of Africa. In han-
1g Africa, Europe would acquire the unity of purpose that
ie the thirteen American colonies into a union. In America
vast continent beyond the Alleghenies was a federal enter-
~e. Common enterprises are the only ties that bind groups
~ther. Unfortunately, in Europe they all talk, still, of divid-
Africa instead of organizing it, as Europe's last chance.
Rever, the mental war puts this question squarely before
ope for the first time.
'he prospects for any real merger of Europe are dim; the
ish Empire is not European, and France is responsible for
achievement of the last 150 years, and therefore is as slow
:he trans-national road as Wellington's England was slow
815. When the British are willing to admit the European
tinent as junior partner into their empire, and the French
ready for the conception of a true confederacy, the taming
1e shrew may happen. A second peace then may be con-
ed. Unfortunately neither France nor England may go so
for they represent previous steps in the adventure of the
an race which still are significant.
he ·second peace, therefore, that is bound to come at the
of the mental war of the last years, will be no more than
trmistice. Japan, India, China, South America, Africa,
ralia are only materially connected with the organic whole
we mean when speaking of Europe. They all will have to
1tegrated sooner or later into the working whole of the
an race. Meantime it is better to speak frankly of an
5tice. On an armistice pacifists and militarists may agree,
i reasonable armistice often outlasts an arbitrary peace.
e are in a twilight zone between peace and war, and the
'I 'I •
which there was either war or peace, are helpless in this new
situation. The "accidents" that worry them and for which
they use up their fountain pens, as in the case of the Panay
accident, cannot be classified with the sign: peace or war? The
Warriors' International laughs at this obsolete classification.
Every step today is half belligerent, half peaceful. Diplomatic
1otes do not fit the new situation: swift but only partial action
s expected. No moral complaints, no eternal sanctions, but
~nergetic moves on a chessboard: retaliations, limited and yet
·eal acts, flash through the twilight zone between peace and
var. There no longer exists the clear cut "either-or" of
'French" clarity, just as French ceases to be the language of
liplomacy. The new world of energies wants to be aware of
lay and night, peace and war, sun and shadow, at the same
ime. The nations begin to talk the truth to each other, they
l-lout indecently, they bite, scratch, in short, they drop diplo-
1acy. This only means that they are integrated into a whole.
.Vithin
Lves.
one organism, no diplomatic shyness any longer sur-
 CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The Americans
Independence-Equality-Forerunner and Failure-A "Half-Revolution"-The
hythm of America-The New World-"Promise" and Natural Law in America-
Lle Process of Law

INDEPENDENCE.

-J AMERICAN HISTORIAN ONCE TOLD ME THIS ANECDOTE OF HIS

Jdent days. A professor of history had asked his class for the
use of the American Revolution, and had announced that of
l the many possible answers he wanted only one. His students
~re at a loss; they knew too many answers. His answer ran;
~ecause the Colonies were three thousand miles away." Only
perts have the right to ask such questions, and only experts
t1 give such answers. I am no expert in American history, I
i an expert in revolutions; and so when I look at the profes-
~' s question, and listen to his answer, I can only say; "This
ty be the right explanation; but if it is true, then there was
revolution." Birth is not rebirth. A far distant colony does
t make a revolution merely by becoming independent. Cut-
g the umbilical cord of the new-born child is no r~volutiont
Hence our question: Was the American Revolution a true
rolution, with revolutionary effects, effects that were per-
.neut and that forecast a particular form of life? Fortunately,
: question has often been asked by American historians
:mselves. We shall listen to what they and the contempora-
, of the Revolution have to say. There is much more evi-
1ce in the sources than I can quote or cite, but at least the
~stion will become answerable; and the answer will show
why it is possible for me to say something new about the sig-
nificance of the American Revolution as a revolution.
"The very term American Revolution is not without difficulties,
and its use has led to misconception and confusion. In letter after
letter Johµ Adams tried to teach a headstrong generation some de-
gree of accuracy in the use of an expression of which they had
knowledge only by hearsay. 'A history of the first war of the United
States is a very different thing from a history of the American Rev-
olution,' he wrote in 1815. . . . 'The Revolution was effected be-
fore the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and
hearts of the people.' " 1
Now the same John Adams wrote in 1821:

"That there existed a general desire of Independence of the

Crown in any part of America before the Revolution, is as far from
the truth as the Zenith is from the Nadir ... for my own part,
there was not a moment during the Revolution, when I would
not have given every thing I possessed for a restoration to the state
of things before the contest began, provided we could have had
any sufficient security for its continuance. I always dreaded the
Revolution as fraught with ruin, to me and my family, and indeed
it has been but little better."

Now, which statement is true? In history, diverse and even

contradictory aspects of the same fact may each be true. Both
statements must be taken as sincere.
All we can be sure of is that there were two different con-
cepts of revolution in the world between 1750 and 1775. The
one was French, the other English. 2 The British tradition of
1688 made glorious revolution a return to old historical princi-
ples. Let me give some examples of this side of the question.
[n the letters forged by John Randolph, uncle of Edward Ran-
iolph, and purporting to be written by George Washington,
landolph, who had been a friend of the Washington family,
nakes the general write:
1 Arthur Meier Schlesinger, New Viewpoints in American History, p. 161, New
'ork, Macmillan, 1922.
2 See my study on Revolution als Politischer Begrif] in der New:.eit, Breslau,
931.
'Having been brought up in revolution [sic] principles, I thought
rod surely when I traced the footsteps of those venerable men.
mderfull These too are the principles of our opponents; so that
our misfortune and fault is the having put in practise the very
ets which they profess to embrace."
3arrett Wendell, in his delightful Stelligeri, develops these
tservative ideas of the leading class at length when he writes:
For looked at in the light of the centuries, our own constitution
. all that has grown up beneath it are but outgrowth, strong
1 the strength that comes from natural, undistorted growth, of
~ firmest known system of human rights-the common law of
land.
[t was the purpose of our native conquest to impose no system
mybody or on any territory; but only to maintain, in the face
11 the military force of England, those rights which by the com-
t law of England not even the English Crown had the right to

h. This is the trait that distinguishes our revolution from all

others that have since troubled the Old World and the New.
s, and ours only, strove not to innovate but to preserve; not
ianufacture a ready-made system of law and government, but
1ard and protect in its normal growth a system of government
:h had been proved sound and wholesome by centuries of an-
al experience .
. . The Americans were in the right, and in the right because
: they fought for was no abstract principle, but rather the
ttenance of their vested rights.
1 so doing, however, they were forced to be for a moment
s. As rebels it was their inevitable misfortune to find opposed
erh that great part of the best and worthiest people in the land
in any crisis feel bound to throw themselves on the side of
stablished authority. And the old grey house of the Pepperells
es what few of us allow ourselves to remember-the tremen-
sacrifice of good men and true that was the inevitable price
r national independence."
1 this same subject of the close connection between 1688
rigland and i 776 in the colonies, the American edition of
[am Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England
rks in a footnote to the paragraph on the Convention of
: "The student who has rp~fl with r~rP f-h~ T\.ar-1.,.1'"',...!~- _£
dependence will see that the framers of it had this declara-
•n [i.e., of 1689] in mind and intended to keep strictly within
~ precedent."
This simple view, which laid nine tenths of the weight on
~ maintenance of vested rights and one tenth on the neces-
'Y inconvenience of rebellion, was re-emphasized in a dark
ur of American history, namely, in 1862:
~we will glance now at our fourth and last historical example,
American Revolution of 1776. . . . The American Revolution
; not a revolution in the sense in which the Southern rebellion
tecessarily a revolution, if it attain to that dignity at all. It was
organic disruption of society, no radical disintegration of the
nework of government. It was a mere separation of certain gov-
mental dependencies from a distant sovereignty, with which,
ugh largely affiliated in origin and language, they had scarcely
thing in common in respect to governmental policy and tend-
ies. The colonies were not incorporated, functional members
:he British government, and their severance left that govern-
tt whole and sound in all its parts." 3
~ut a more abstract concept of the word "revolution" was
Jived in the course of events from the very beginning. The
nch spies in America and the French ministers at home
red the interest of all the French in "les revolutions des
Jires,'' the revolution of empires. And in 1776 the young
erican statesman who perhaps more than most of his col·
;ues was brought up in French philosophical ideas, Gouver-
r Mor.ris, wrote to his mother:
rVhat may be the event of the present war, it is not in men to
rmine. Great revolutions of empire are seldom achieved with-
much human calamity, but the worst that can happen is to
)n the last bleak mountain of America, and he who dies there,
efense of the injured rights of mankind, is happier than his
ueror. . . ."
lltwe know now from the books of Doniol and Van Tyne
as early as the 176o's Choiseul, Durand and others were
ev. Joseph Clark, The History and Theory of Revolutions, Philadelphia,
ting a revolution in America. Not only was "The Inde-
~nce of America" a common toast in the French West
n Islands (New England Chronicle, May 2, 1776), but
:ii, in 1770, wrote on the "English Revolutions," in the
L Durand reported to Choiseul:
n'y a personne en Angleterre qui n'avoue que, faute de
1ance, les colonies qu'elle possede en Amerique formeront un
n etat separe; c'est la forme de cette revolution que je desire-
' prevoir."
here were a man in New York with.the genius of a Cromwell,
lid set up a republic there more easily than did the great
." "It is for France and Spain," [Durand] urged, "to make
tan appear."
~re is good evidence that the great leaders were counting
ly as 1769 on help from France. And: "Pontleroy be-
that Revolution would be the end of all England's
to better the lot of her colonists."
ill these French statements the English-American con-
Jn of "the" Glorious Revolution is dropped. The new
tion is but one of many; and French curiosity is indif-
to its content. An early French visitor soberly links the
,tions of independence and of new forms of government:
!re is a gentleman here of French extraction, whose name
Hmitiere, a painter by profession . . . . This M. du Simitiere
·y curious man. He has begun a collection of materials for a
of this- revolution. He begins with the first advices of the
>s. He cuts out of the newspapers every scrap of intelligence,
~ry piece of speculation. . . . He has a list of every specu·
:oncerning independence, and another of those concerning
>f government." 4
vo li~ts are excellent, because they show two very dif-
trends, one emphasizing the English principle of "no
n without representation," and, derived therefrom, in-
lence, and the other facing the problem of a new form
Adams, in Letters of Members of the Continental Congress, II, No.
ff __ A nunc;:t 1 A 1 '"''"'"
of government. Independence, as a return to Whig principles
and methods of action, is certainly only one side of the Ameri-
can Revolution.
EQUALITY.

The colonies desired equality with the motherland. The

French word egalite, the rallying-cry of 1789, meant equality
within one country. Equal the citizen should be, regardless of
vocation or profession. The American word equality, in 1776,
was much less individualistic. The whole body politic of the
colonies was jealous of the pretensions of the body politic at
home. The colony of Massachusetts called itself the Common-
wealth of Massachusetts; the name United States recalled the
United Kingdom. George Washington could be compared with
the noblest and best type of English gentleman. The American
state papers were written in a peerless style of parliamentary
English. The content of the American Revolution was no
novelty, no new discovery of the nature of man; it was, first
of all, an assertion of the equal right of the pioneers to have
their English way in the new world.
The inferiority complex of many educated Americms has
its counterpart in the epoch of independence; the unques-
tioned leadership of Europe is to give way to an equality of the
new States with the old Monarchies, or, as the Preamble of the
Declaration says, "an equal station among the Powers of the
Earth." This Equality of 1776 still belongs to the Anglo-Saxon
world of values; whereas the Egalite of 1789 was a radical out-
cry of men's individual nature. That explains, among other
things, the compromise which was made on slavery. In 1776
nobody thought of forcing the gentlemen of Georgia and
South Carolina to abolish slavery. It existed in other English
colonies. It was not the objective of the Natural Rights of Man.
But of course slavery was the reverse of the medal.
The first version of Equality had been: We, the colonies, are
the peers of the motherland. The second version, eleven years
later, took cognizance of the tremendous universality of every
word that is uttered by human faith. In revolutions, we believe
in a new word without divining its full scope, without know-
ing what hones or fears onr OlA!n "U.T~rrl .......... ~c-LH'
:- .._L - l_
I'
~llowmen. The sudden or slow reaction of our neighbours,
nemies, our servants or employers, to our word of faith
us how much we have been in the dark, and how much
ord itself was like a seed buried in the darkness of a new
ro our faith and to the words of our faith the answer
from the outside world. In the non-Whiggist world of
h friends of America, of free-thinkers, of negroes, the
"equality" found an echo which resulted in changing the
itself. It became a word of hope for new peoples, slaves,
rrants, Indians, who had not been so much as thought of
6.
! Jeffersonian Ordinance of 1784 was the first solution
•mpromise between faith and hope in the word Equality.
1rdinance, the only practical constitutional advance made
~n 1780 and 1787, is remarkable indeed, for it balances
tbly the two notions of equality. On the one hand it gave
United States the power to own territories in common;'
1mmon ownership and sovereignty was necessary before
iited States could take the place of the United Kingdom
!at Britain and Ireland or the United Empire of the
its in Canada. It established full equality between the
~s and the British Commonwealth. The United States
ed the colonial adventure of the English. The frontier,
1ning of a continent abandoned by the French in 1763,
!came the united enterprise of the thirteen colonies, and
to their provincial and parochial local governments an
11 task commensurate with the First English Empire .
.evolution appeared clearly as the result of the Anglo-
war and the expulsion of the French from the con-
It crowned the equality of the colonies and the mother-
ith the only crown worthy of the name: the crown of
d full growth into the future. It placed the responsibil-
the continent on the thirteen colonies united.
ordinance ruled that the new territory, ceded and to be
should be divided into prospective States, to which
were given; each of them to receive in due time a
ary or territorial government, and ultimately to be ad-
into the ConfPnPr::ttion of ."t~tP~ 11nn.n t-ha. a."'"'~'° ....... ,.. ... ,.. ..... ~ ....
of two thirds of the preceding States. The West was made an
equal of the East. The colonies recognized the equality of each
territory and its admission "on an equal footing with the
original States."
Now one of the five fundamental conditions to the establish-
ment of both their temporary and their permanent govern-
ments foreshadowed the reverse of the medat announced the
change of Equality from a word of faith to a word of hope.
Jefferson, as author of the Ordinance, had inserted the follow-
ing paragraph: "That after the year 1800 of the Christian Era,
there shall be neither slavery n9r involuntary servitude in any
of the said States." This paragraph was the first word of love
spoken in mediation between faith in equality and hope of
equality as elements in American constitutional life. But the
fifth provision was lost through the absence of a member from
New Jersey, rendering the vote of that State null and void for
want of a quorum. Sixteen members had voted for Jefferson's
prohibition of slavery, seven against; six States for, three
against. But an affirmative vote of a majority of all the thirteen
States was required. Thus by a vote of 6Y2 to 6Y2 the prohibi-
tion of slavery failed in 1784. This indicates clearly how little
progress Equality had made from faith toward hope.
Three years later-and, by that token, three years nearer the
French Revolution-Jefferson,s Ordinance was reframed for the
territories northwest of the Ohio, excluding, by its silence,
the territories south of that river. Here the Jeffersonian prin-
ciple was incorporated by Nathan Dane of Massachusetts:
"There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in
the said Territory.,, Instead of a vote of 6Y2 to 6Y2 it was a
division of the continent into two halves. Equality in the body
politic was granted to every colony. Equality of the individual
was granted in the northern half only. ·
When the grandsons of the sons of the Revolution reopened
the proceedings in 1860, the word equality was read from the
other side. Colonial equality weighed, so to speak, one fourth
or one eighth in the scale; the equality of the individual over-
balanced it. And this experience was not peculiar to America.
The absolutist Czar of Russi~ likPmic:P h~'1 1-r-~ ~:: 1
- -
..,. ................... _ _ ... _ A.
nen and serfs of his landlords. Cheap, free, mobile labour
)peared on the market. The word of hope for the serf or
tve had been made intelligible to the governing class in
.ca by the factory system. In 1860 the word of hope met,
capitalist class, not so much faith in a new world as dear
edge of the conditions of the new world. A religious
iad enabled the fathers of the Revolution to go forward.
)o it was a secular knowledge, a sober insight into the
riery of the industrial system, which accepted the re-
; hopes of the coloured people as an ally. The brunt of
l religious faith in the equality of the colonies was borne
~ Southerners. The song Maryland) My Maryland is a
example of this frenzy of the religious belief in the
rights established by the Revolution.
American Revolution, by this ambiguity of the use of
>rd "equality," offers a lesson in political language in
.I. Equality began in the dark, as a word of faith. It
equality of the colonies with the motherland. Its other
1e word of hope-equality for the slaves-first appeared
4 and 1787. 5 It had already achieved then, one half of
w order. But the hour for its universal application in
ays, in the way of faith and in the way of hope, did not
Lintil the War of Secession. And as this was a war and
ommittee-vote as in 1787, the religious faith of 1776 in
y was on the side of the South. The Northern industri-
rere led to hear equality as a word of hope, and with a
lergy and vigour, because all over the world liberalism
vancing triumphantly. The waves expanding from the
of Europe reached Russia and America simultaneously,
both countries they carried reluctant and unsentimental
n the direction of "hope for equality."
we look deep into the machinery of human speech and
~very revolution starts from faith; hope alone can never
r excuse the terrible evils of a revolution. Despair must
efore faith in the Creator and in the dignity of human-
:ling to older Declarations (Delaware, 1776, etc.), "Every man is created
equal"; but slaves were not touched by these statements.
ity can enter the scene in such a brutal form as it does in times
of revolution. Faith is a belief in things unseen; it goes against
hope, it defies all odds, all probability, all chances. Faith in
your mission enables you to break down the protecting walls
of law and continuity. Faith drove Abraham from his country.
And faith, in times of real necessity, is always accounted right-
eousness. It is a passive attitude, a strike in an impasse, a walk-
out.
It is only in a later stage of the revolution that Hope replaces
Faith. When those who have uttered, stammered, cried out the
new word in the dark of despair and revolution, when they
have passed away, their grandchildren who have listened to it
in the open day of revolution, try to write the next chapter.
Hope is active. And action is, in spite of the great heresy of the
nineteenth century, completely sterile without a foregoing
promise, without the Word. Without the promise of faith, and
its desperate decision to bear the worst, the later activities of
hope would be of no practical result.
Faith, hope and love, the religious forces of mankind, are
not limited to denominational purposes. Faith, hope and love
are universal. They are the only real motive forces of history ·
and of political life and language, for the simple reason that
they alone connect the words men speak and use as means of
communication with a real power working in time and space.
In the Civil War we can study the decay of this religious
language. The profiteers from the North who abused the South
after the War, the carpet-baggers, disorganized and dismantled
the American political credo so passionately defended by Lin-
eoln. After 1868 the words of religious promise and the acts
of their fulfilment were debased to rational and deliberate
uses. Interests, rationalism, scepticism, racketeers, litterateurs
and traders reduce our creative words to the level of mech-
1nized speech. They use them as advertisement, as talk, and
is a means of hiding their thoughts.
So this is a lesson we should draw from our study of this
)Ile side of the American Revolution. Faith, Hope and Love
tre not individual qualities of the so-called individual soul.
'Jeither are we, as humble members of a rhnrrh nr c·un~.n-,r,.,...,.,...,.
.odge, expected to bother about these allegorical ladies.
:y are beyond our individual "intentionality." Whole gen-
ions are given over to them. Periods of faith, periods of·
e, and periods of trading in words seem to follow each
·r with inescapable logic. The only liberty left to the indi-
'.al is whether his actions during these different periods
l be dictated by love or fear. Self-forgetfulness or self-con-
makes all the difference in our individual appearances on
scene of history. Abraham Lincoln is the everlasting hero
~If-forgetful devotion, who bridged the gulf between faith
hope, fear and salesmanship, with the one timeless quality
.an.
FORERUNNER AND FAILURE.

iuality was one important promise of the Declaration of

pendence. But that it was the only one is emphatically
~d by so careful and conservative an American as Henry
•t Lodge. There was a universal aspect of the American
1lution which had nothing to do with the struggle between
ties and motherland. When we turn to this aspect we feel
:alized. We are no longer listening to local gods, jealous
eir territorial rights. We can hardly understand why this
~ happened, of all places, in America. It becomes human,
~rsal, inevitable, a psychic adventure of the whole species
m. Lodge says:
om the American point of view, then, there was nothing in-
~1e about the American Revolution. It was created by a series
nisterial mistakes, each one of which could have been easily
~d. From another point of view, however, it was absolutely
able, the inexorable result of the great social and political
which had long been gathering and now were beginning to
forward.
tien the great democratic movement started, at the close of
ghteenth century, it began in England, where there was no
:ic personal monarchy, where personal Ii berty was most
d, and where freedom existed in the largest measure. The
of aristocracy and monarchy in England were as nothing to
:hey were on the Continent. The subjects of George III were
ound down bv taxes. Wf>Tf> not ~o1r1 intn mi1it".l't"U -~
C'.O"l"U;,..,,. ..........
t trampled on by an aristocracy and crushed by their king, they
~re the freest, best-governed people on earth, faulty as their gov-
1ment no doubt was in many respects. Yet it was among the
:glish-speaking people that we detect the first signs of the demo-
Ltic movement, for, as they were the least oppressed, so they were
! most sensitive to any abuse or to any infringement upon the
erties they both prized and understood. The entire English
)ple, both at home and abroad, were thus affected. The Middle-
~ elections, the career of Wilkes, the letters of Junius, the reso-
ion of Burke against the increasing power of the Crown,. the
ng demand for Parliamentary reform, the growing hostility to
~ corrupt system of bargain and intrigue, by which the great
1ilies parcelled out offices and seats and controlled Parliament,
pointed in the same direction, all were signs of an approaching
rm.
'If the revolution had not come in the American colonies it
Llld have come in England itself. . . . The colonies were the
a-governed, the best-governed, and the freest part of the do-
1ion of Great Britain. . . . America rebelled, not because the
Jnies were oppressed, but because their inhabitants were the
!St people then in- the world and did not mean to suffer op-
ssion." 6
:-Jere we are within the British Empire. We are facing a
~stion, not primarily of independence, but of ideas versus
.er ideas. Jonathan Boucher said in 1797, "Now the Ameri-
l Revolution was clearly a struggle for pre-eminence between

iigs and Tories." But when Du Simitiere began his lists on

ms .of government, in August, 1776, the Whigs in England
l the revolutionaries in America had already separated.
fhe Declaration of Rights, written by George Mason, rec-
mends, it is true, a frequent return to fundamental princi-
s. This is good English style. But Article Five introduced
t minimum of new principles, over and beyond Whiggism,
tch constituted the real break. As the expression is particu-
y sober and modest, it seems to me the more striking. Mason
)mmends, on the authority of Cicero, De Legibus, III, 2, a
Ienry Cabot Lodge, The Story of the Revolution, I, pp. 14-16, New York,
mer. 1808.
n equable rotation of obedience and command: and the
ia Declaration of Rights reads in his draft;
fhat the legislative and executive powers of the state should
rate and distinct from the judicial; and that the members
~wo first may be restrained from oppression by feeling and
ating the burthens of the people, they should, at fixed
1

be reduced to a private station and return unto that body

h.ich they were originally taken."
>tation is indeed the pregnant expression of democratic
les. The "reduction to a private station" and "return
1

body from which he was originally taken" was in opera-

1en Washington refused the third term; it made Presi-
rant, in his old age, write books so that he might pay
ts. The return to a low station is utterly objectionable
ristocracy. In England, "once a member of society [that
md society], always a member." In America, a man can
ften out as he is in, and there is no self-pity about it.
re is the political principle and the spiritual force of
rolution. Thomas Paine dwelt at length on nature; but
not alone in doing so. Even Gouverneur Morris, after
turned poor Paine out of Congress, wrote in the same
his Observations on the American Revolution. These
1blished by a committee of Congress, in accordance
resolution of that body, in 1779. Now this enemy of
and democracy could not help declaring on the title

great principle is and ever will remain in force that men

ature free. As accountable to Him that made them, they
so; and so long as we have any idea of divine justice, we
Jciate with it that of human freedom. The right to be free
r be alienated. Still less is it practicable for one generation
:age the privileges of another. . . . "
the conservative who in 1814 uttered the remarkable
Rejoice, America, the Bourbons are restored," opened
·to the mighty goddess of Nature, who if she is invited
ffing with her the emancipation of all creeds, all races,
ins_ T,oril C.h~rnwoorl ~~1r1 nf l 1nrnln ·
 "His affection for his own country and its institutions is curi-
ously dependent upon a wider cause of human good, and is not a
whit the less intense for that."
And Lincoln himself, in 1860, said with deep feeling:
"I have pondered over the evils that were endured by the officers
and soldiers of the army who achieved that independence. . . . It
was not the mere matter of separation of the colonies from the
motherland, it was the sentiment in the Declaration of Inde-
pendence which gave liberty, not alone to the people of this
country, but I hope to the world, for all future time. It was that
which gave promise that in due time the weight would be lifted
from the shoulders of all men."

The nature of man, of the individual man, is exorcised. The

Whigs in America are obliged to adopt a vocabulary unknown
~o their English ancestors. What the Levellers, the left wing,
:he lunatic fringe of Cromwell's revolution, had first arrived
it, in 1648-the idea of a law paramount-was now put into
Jractice in the form of a written Constitution. And the colo-
1ists cannot dispense with Thomas Paine, this typical Leveller,
his English radical. He crosses the threshold of the· English
anctuary, Canaan, he relinquishes the language of Israel, and
Lares to set foot outside, in free space. Paine exclaims: "We
wve it in our power to begin the world over again. A situa-
ion, similar to the present, hath not happened since the days
1/ Noah until now." We are outside Revelation, in .the free
vorld of Nature.
The ideas of the French Revolution seem, and are, similar.
Nature" had arisen to power all over Europe between 1688
nd 1770. But how different is the situation! This time Nature
; rediscovered, not in Paris, the intellectual centre of medi-
~val Christianity, but in Boston and Philadelphia. Nature is
ot reimplanted in a refined country by revolutionary forces;
n the contrary, a capital is artificially projected into the wilds
E a new continent. The revolution mobilizes the inhabitants
f thirteen British colonies against the wild Nature of a half-
nknown area.
1ere are three significant features in this attempt to sup-
independence by exorcising nature. Two of them are not
liar to the American Revolution; they can be found in
~ forms of government which sprang from other revolu-
zed areas. The third feature is unique and belongs to
rica alone.
· the two regular features which the American Revolution
ri common with all other periods of revolutionary prepara-
the first is its connection with the upheaval which follows
e French Revolution. We find that the main revolutions,
xample, the Russian, the English, the Italian, each had a
trsor. And the precursor is always a failure. From this
loint shall we call the American Revolution a failure
We must look deeper into the question of precursors.
1rmally, it is the radicals, the left wing within the sphere
e last great revolution, who take the next step. The idea
enry Cabot Lodge is perfectly justified, that the freest
:ry is always full of the forces which are preparing the
revolution.
where have there been more Communists than in France
~ Napoleon III. It is in Paris that they start the Commune
71. It breaks down. The Communists are destroyed for a
:ime. Fifty thousand are condemned to deportation. Paris
Russia. It is totally unfit for the proletarian dictatorship.
1ains the meeting place of inspired individuals.
~many lived through the Reformation in her little prin-
ties. The Calvinists, the left wing, felt strongly that they
:i bring the reformed church into the hands of the lower
), and they began a real Puritan revolution in Bohemia.
~lector Palatine was made king in Prague for one winter.
Bohemian simile to the later William III of England suf-
a total breakdown, at the famous battle of the White
tain in May of the next year, 1620. The Puritan Revolu-
ad to migrate from continental Bohemia to insular Great
n. The King of England, father-in-law of the king-for-
inter, became the target of the Puritans; his brother-in-
~harles I, was brought to the scaffold. Bohemia had all
11~lit-iP~ nf "'.l rAnf-;,....~ ..... ~ ..... 1 ,.. ......... ~ ... --- ---~~ 1 - ·1
strong central power. Only in Shakespeare does Bohemia lie on
the sea-coast. The ideas of local self-government, and of democ-
racy in the congregation, would not work there. They were
transplanted to the island which calls for self-government, in
its capacity as domestic centre for a new commonwealth across
~he seas.
By now, the reader will not be surprised to find the same
~orm of precursor revolution in the cycle of clerical revolu-
ions. Arnold of Brescia, and Savonarola are well-known cases
n point. Both tried to overcome the abuses of the preceding
:ivilization by an attack at its very centre. Savonarola attacked
he Guelphic city-state in Florence in 1495. Arnold of Brescia
mticipated the new Franciscan vow of poverty by his struggles
n Rome in 1146, but since emperor and pope turned against
tim unitedly, he failed. Four times, the seed seemed to be ripe.
1our times, in 1146, 1495, 1620, 1871, the seed, though ripe,

ould not bear fruit, because it remained within the old en-
ironment. The stormy petrels of a revolution must go from
he centre of the previous revolution to its fringe, as the seeds
if plants are carried over to another specimen~-
With the lesson of these four distinct cases of precursor rev-
lutions in mind, we turn to the American Revolution again.
t is a minor point, but of a certain interest, to compare the
olitics of the Stuarts and the Bourbons just before their fall .
.ouis XIV and James I both supported the precursor revolu-
:on abroad and by supporting them, became the unconscious
1struments of the real and total revolution which went against
iemselves. The ways of Providence are inscrutable! More gen-
ral is the statement that, as in the four other cases, the radical
pposition against the abuses of the last total revolution was
rong within the whole British Commonwealth, and the out-
urst in America was only its symptom. And the colonies, in
:cepting all these radical forces, rid the motherland-to a cer-
.in extent-of their infection.
But when we look at the thirteen colonies as a part of the
ritish Commonwealth, we realize , immediately how utterly
riprepared they were to expand their ideas so a.~ to indnifp
 world. The struggle for existence was much too hard. In
:nee, nature is a relief from an aristocratic civilization; in
colonies, nature is attacked day after day by a body of
neering individuals, who must stick to facts and have no
e for abstract ideas. In a virgin country, Nature is not lazy.
· threatens you with annihilation if you do not move faster
n she does. Nature marches against you if you do not out-
~ch her in time. A thinly populated country faces a constant
.pse into a second wilderness, a repeated loss of regions al-
ly conquered for plough and pasture.
"'he sound of the axe is the natural philosophy of America.
tzsche's desire to philosophize with a hammer in his hand
rtificial in comparison with the natural philosophy of the
dchopper in the West. Facts, facts, facts, are the reality in a
· world. Men,' men, men, are the need of a pioneering group.
·, not the salon, not a feminine culture, but bos·ses who run
erica. Not inspired writers, but shrewd politicians, not
·.us, but self-made men, are what is wanted.
·ow all this does not vary greatly from the English type.
· pioneer is necessarily harsher, coarser, more ruthless than
fighting gentleman; but he is by no means his antitype, as
Frenchman is. Thus no really new type was created by the
!rican Revolution. In this respect, America is like her sister-
s. All the "precursors" remain geographically, spiritually,
morally too much within the orbit of the previous great
lution to be original. A certain variation is attempted, but
really new variety of man is produced, based on a new
ct of the human soul.
ter 1780, the American advance reached its limit. Thomas
e's sharpest anti-British protest lost its influence. Paine's
~ss in 1776 was not a beginning but an end.

1at the forward leap had not gone far enough for a "total"
lution becomes clear not only when one compares the fate
ie other harbingers of revolution, but when one recurs
irely American observations. What says John Adams' mar-
us letter to H. Niles in 1818 (Works, X, 282)?
"The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a
change in their religious sentiments of their duties and obligations.
While the king and all in authority under him were believed to
govern in justice and mercy, according to laws and constitutions
derived from the God of Nature and transmitted to them by their
ancestors, they thought themselves bound to pray for the king and
queen and all the royal family, and all in authority under them,
as ministers ordained of God for their good; but when they saw
those powers renouncing all the principles of authority, and bent
upon the destruction of all the securities of their lives, liberties
and properties, they thought it their duty to pray for the Conti-
nental Congress and all the thirteen State Congresses. . . . "
How excellent! Modern rationalists easily forget that in
every American household and in every parish in the thirteen
colonies a day came when the words in the prayers had to be
changed and were changed; that in the year 1776 any such
change was still felt as a religious conversion, a deep break in
the life of the people. The daily forn1 of expression for the
visible body politic was transferred from the whole to a part,
from the British Commonwealth to the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts. Even today, the judge in any State still prays for
the common weal of his State!
True enough, it was the beginning of a new era in America
when King George was no longer mentioned from the pulpit
on Sunday; but the warmth of the old prayers of the pioneers
for their European homes could not simply be transferred to
the Continental Congress. The prayer for Continental Con-
gress was a substitute, not an equivalent. We hear that a dead
silence prevailed when the word "nation" was first adopted by
Congress. The British nation could as little be replaced by an
American "nation" as the king could be replaced by Congress.
"Nation" is one of those artificial words of European coinage
that swim on the surface of America's political talk. But above
and beyond the particular colonies, beyond the Commonwealth
of Massachusetts and beyond Rhode Island and Providence
Plantations, America is neither a state nor a nation nor an
empire. All these names reduce America's stature to the petty
level of political institutions. There is, to be sure. a Federal
rernment serving as a lever by which Americans can move
world. But the space they live in is neither State nor
tpire nor any other human and social substitute for nature;
s nature itself. To pray for Congress was a poor thing; it
ant, in effect, that one no longer prayed at all.
The colonies had grown up under constitutions of government-
lifferent, there was. so great a variety of religions, they were
lposed of so many different nations, their customs, manners and
its had so little resemblance, and their intercourse had been so
', and their knowledge of each other so imperfect, that to unite
n in the same principles in theory and the same system of
:m, was certainly a very difficult enterprise." (John Adams, X,
)
us keep in mind this hollow, incomplete religious situa-
L and the sudden shrinking, the crippling of the idea of
1mmonwealth." It will help us later to understand what the
faith of America has been since her breaking away from
;land .
.,he American Revolution was a precursor, and as a pre-
;or it was as unable to create a new language as the Romans,
Bohemians, or the forerunners of revolution in Paris and
~ence had been incapable of tearing down the traditions
heir environment. In that respect America, as she appears
he American Letter of MacLeish, must be interpreted as an
1lfilled promise, snuffed out between the two great forms
ife and education which were created by England and
ice. respectively. Something has happened to America; she
lost one political language without finding another. She
suffered a psychic loss. In France the walls of the Bastille,
mse they were of stone, allowed of a real total revolution.
amite will not accomplish much in a desert. The same is
of a revolution three thousand miles away from its base.
professor's answer on the cause of the American Revolu-
really ought to be changed into its opposite; the Ameri-
Revolution could not go deep enough to be a true revolu-
, for the very reason that it happened three thousand miles
l England!
 A ''HALF-REVOLUTION.''

The tremendous remoteness of America brings us to the

question of geographical chance. Poland's sandy provinces re-
sisted the aristocratic domination of a gentry. The gentry,
which in England was the nation's chief pride and glory,
brought only division and disintegration to Poland; for, to
paraphrase the witty remark of the Prince de Ligne, she had
ao British sea in her Constitution. The Polish Revolution of
~he gentry failed, after a great beginning. As I mentioned
Jefore, the American Revolution might be placed in the same
:lass. This class is more difficult to explain. It is earmarked
)y the fact that it stands halfway between the solitary catas-
.rophes and the long, long march of the great revolutions. We
tave seen that in any revolutionized territory periods of pride
~nd humiliation alternate for centuries like strophe and anti-
trophe. And we find that these periods correspond in length
or the various revolutions.
There exists a series of what may be called "half-revolu-
ions": a concomitant phenomenon to the great revolution.
lalf-revolutions cannot create an original key or melody of
olitical language, being placed for one reason or another too
ear the focus of some other realm of influence. But they
~present a real and externally successful revolution; only
ie achievement is undone by a period of demolition. Spain,
weden and the Netherlands are the great examples of such a
rocess.
A list of half-revolutions would show that Spain became a
~al great power as the result of a rather brief effort. Between
;66 and 1581 Spain. crushed the Netherlands, Portugal and
te Grand Turk; and the Spanish order of the Jesuits con-
1ered the field of education at Rome. The might established
. so brilliant a campaign spread over all Europe. In 1658
liver Cromwell was buried according to Spanish ceremonial;
e Puritan leader was carried to the grave with all the cere-
onies used at the burial of Philip II of Spain. What a lesson
the hegemony of Spain over Europe during the seventeenth
nturyt And at the beginning of the eighteenth, Frederick
lliam of Prussia copied the code of honour of the Spanish
ers of knighthood for his new staff of officers. Spanish eti-
~tte, with its strict separation of king and queen, survived
changes in Austria down to 1917, when it was discarded by
young Charles I. In their common bed-chamber, the Em-
;s Zita was allowed to interfere in matters of state: she even
i conversations with cabinet ministers over the telephone.
~ austere majesty of the Catholic king was turned into the
racy of a middle-class couple. It meant the certain collapse
:he Hapsburg throne; but it also meant the vanishing of
last Spanish glory. This glory had already been dimmed as
y as 1700, in the War of the Spanish Succession. For twelve
hirteen years Spain had proved to be merely a pawn in the
Le of the rest of Europe. With the treaties which ended this
, Spain ceased to be a great power.
"he same sudden extinction befell Sweden. Its periods are
0-1651 (from the entrance of Sweden into the Thirty Years'
r to the abdication of Gustavus Adolphus' daughter Chris-
), that is, the period of its revolutionary influence on Eu-
~; and 1700-1721 (the reign of Charles XII), that is, the
of extinction. Nobody can read Voltaire's famous Charles
without a shudder, without the feeling of Nemesis at work.
the merits of Gustavus Adolphus and Oxenstierna, the wise
1cellor of the king and of Christina, are undone. A pres-
earned by twenty years of hegemony over Europe is wasted
fool's adventure that lasts another twenty years.
o~h Spain and Sweden are less concerned with making a
1lution in their own national character than with imposing
eady-made on the rest of Europe. And so they fail. The
ible attempt of Philip II to turn the wheel of history back-
i is expiated by the complete obliteration of Spain in its
· of Succession. The same is true of the Netherlands, whose
liant fight against Spain, together with their aristocratic
~m and their Cromwell-like Lord Protector, successfully
cipate the Bohemian adventure in 1620.
he reason why these half-revolutions are so different from
r greater brothers is that they meet no full martyrdom at
1P ThP tPst of the Great Revolutions is that thev were most
fertile during the period when their countries were most
deeply humiliated. By that token they have an immortal soul.
The half-revolutions expire; and in the hour of their expira-
tion nobody is concerned for their former achievement. All
that is gone. It was only on the surface. But I should add that
1

there are many questions here open to discussion; the inquiry

ought to be carried on from the point at which we have
arrived. A special volume should be devoted to the compara-
tive study of half-revolutions. It would reveal the brutal char-
acter of political life, which never delivers anything without
its full price of psychic depth, of faith, hope and love.
It may not be clear how the American War of Secession
really fits into, the list of half-revolutions. But that it belongs
in a series of correlations~ strophe corresponding to antistrophe,
I am convinced. Over long periods of time each revolution
calls for its sequel. Time is a field of interplay as well as space;
and we are only beginning to divine the rules of this interplay.
These correlating conditions are certainly remarkable. What
they prove is neither a rough and ready individualism of purely
atomic events, nor a crude, astrological, meaningless fluctua-
tion of abstract princi pies.
These correlations are asymmetrical. Mankind lives in a sys-
tem which is forever opening and changing. The thirty years
of the German Reformation, and its downfall in the Thirty
Years' War, mean the same for the substance of the process, as
the twenty-six years of the French Revolution or the twenty
years of the English Civil War. They form an equation with
th:e sixty-eight years of the Italian revolution and the exile of
the popes in Avignon. Thus the door is opened wide to the
individual shape of each event. But though they are full of
variation, nevertheless the periods are rhythmical.
I say all this because I promised to make a contribution
toward reintegrating the scattered atoms of history. But we
also need it for the very practical purpose of grasping the rela-
tion between the American Revolution and the Civil War.
Everybody feels that there is such a relation. The nature of
man revolted in 1861 against the fictions of a Constitution
based on the nature of man. Ann thP nr1nr;~1° ,..., ~-~ ..... -~-...l-- - -
mt to the test as well. The South had to realize that this
>endence had not meant a permanent separate existence
ny and every region, but a single Declaration of Inde-
ence at a unique historical moment. As against the States'
ts the liberal ideas of the French Revolution had invaded
~merican world. The slaves were emancipated.
t do the years of the War of Independence correspond to
ears of the War of Secession? And do they correspond to
>eriods of upheaval (1640-1688) and humiliation (1776-
, in England as well? Let the new science of Revolution
~r these questions.

THE RHYTHM OF AMERICA •

.e States of the continent of America, united in 1776, offer ,

uliar and, so far as I know, unparallelled lesson in Revolu-
A close relationship between war and revolution has
been mentioned in these pages. Revolution begins with
(Russian), or ends with wars (French), or is focussed by
(German, England), etc. But in all these cases the rela-
1ip is· obvious; no one doubts, for example, that the
:y Years' War was a chastisement of the religious party in
1any. In the peculiar case of America we find a Freudian
ssion which forbids all mention of the interplay between
lnd revolution. American history began by suppressing it,
:ontinued to repress it. This suppression was not invented
evised by politicians or users of rhetoric; it merely
en ed.
le three, ay, the four, turning-points of American policy
each preceded, at a distance of half a generation, by a
The experience of war sank deep into the womb of the
and fertilized, in a population with little time or leisure
~flection, the common thinking and common understand-
£ a change to come. When this new phase of life appeared,
act that it had been begotten in the preceding war was
ooked. War and revolution, though secretly interdepend-
vere not visibly connected.
ery American war had the same effect on the country; a
.cal outbreak after a generation, or in about fifteen years.
The fact is not apparent so long as you begin American history
with the Boston Tea Party or the Declaration of Independence,
because then the greatest interplay of war and revolution is
automatically excluded. Let us admit the working hypothesis
that there might be an interdependence between external wars
and internal revolutions. Then set up the following list:
1756-1763 French and Indian War
1776-1783 Revolution
1812-1815 War of 1812
1829-1837 Jacksonian democracy; spoils system
1845-1846 Mexican War
1860-1868 Civil War
1917-1918 World War
1933- New Deal
The difference between the Revolutionary War against the
British Crown and the War of 1812 is made especially deaf by
this comparison: the Revolution is an answer, given in the
form of a civil war, to the expulsion of the French rivals. The
personality of George Washington links the War of 1756 and
the Revolution of 1776; Washington owed his fame at the
beginning of the Revolution to his pre-eminence in the fore-
going war. The War of 1812 was a real external war. True, it
was also an aftermath. People .still remembered 1776. Other-
wise Napoleon might equally well have been the foe. But the
War of 1812 was a war pure and simple; it had no idea, no
constitutional purpose, no reforming intention whatever. It
was an aftermath of the era of humiliation for the English,
the era between 1775 and 1815. Here American was under the
spell of European meteorology, as it had been in 1756.
However, the War of 1812 brought forward a new leader:
Jackson. Old Hickory did not become President until 1829;
but when he did, the nation he led into the spoils system was
l new nation. The English-American War of 1812 had shaken
the remnants of English Whiggism in America. The moral
itmosphere of the English-American War, with the open re-
:alcitrance of New EnQ'1ann h~rl h<PA~ 1-h ...... -,.,. •• -1- '-- -- - · ·
t had been a war of resentment and prejudice against
id, the populace could put up for the first time an abso-
un-English type of man, the man of the people and of
ntier. But it took them fifteen years to do so.
war against Mexico brought a third empire, the Span-
to the hands of the United Colonies. The way to Texas
California was no longer to be paved by individualistic
; or sailors: California and the Spanish third of the
l States had to be unified by the concentrated effort of
d-building. The Union Pacific was the organizing force
new period, which had to deal for the first time with
~fiddle West, and West as three essential parts of the
l States. Railroads meant big business, vast agglomera-
f capital, cheap labour, proletarian immigration.
War of Secession was the constitutional and political
n of the economic problems raised by the Mexican War.
ism, which was significant only for the thirteen original
~s, and Federalism, which had no meaning in the new
were replaced by Republicanism. Republicanism meant
lustrial Revolution. This has often been said; in repeat-
we wish to stress two facts: first, that the new West was
~red by that vanguard of fortune-hunters which is con-
nt with early capitalism; and second, that the word
trial" means the united and centralized effort of big
and hundreds of thousands of employed hands.
, third of the United States was not won piece-mea],
r acre, farm after farm; it was taken as one big field for
·ial organization. For that very- reason the people who
:mployed in the task were distinguished very sharply
ae people who had settled the Middle West. The Irish
sh or Italian or Chinese workers who built the railroads
~merica and made the steel and iron and copper to run
were not individuals like the farmers and squatters of
he personalities of the Industrial Revolution were the
·porations which hired those thousands of men.
Civil War ended with the amendment protecting every
in life and property. It was the hopeful ideology of
~umner and the Abolitionists which was reflected in this word
"person." The Fourteenth Amendment, in 1868, inherited
from the Northwest Ordinance the formula: "No person shall
be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process
of law." Lincoln had wished to use the old text of 1787, for
obvious reasons of conciliation.
At first the Supreme Court limited the word "person" to
human beings; but later they extended it to include corpora-
tions. A statute which had been the Magna Charta of indi-
vidual liberty north of the Ohio from 1787 to 1868 became the
Magna Charta of corporations, with the ultimate result of the
Delaware Corporation. The corporations were victorious in
1868 because the task laid upon the nation in 1846 could only
le solved by their organizing capacity. .
The World War swept over the United States at the end of
heir Industrial Revolution, as the War of 1812 had swept over
hem at the end of the first period of revolution. Both times
hey thought themselves "too proud to fight"; and both times
l1ey were drawn into the European maelstrom.
1763 reads not unlike 1846
1776 Washington reads like 1860 Lincoln
1812-1815 is comparable to i917-1919
In 1829 a new era began as in 1933
Take the times of good feeling between 1815 and 1828, for
mmple, and compare them with the prosperity after the
Torld War. Coolidge and Hoover were conservatives of the
~hn Quincy Adams stamp. Mr. Harding proclaiming the
[thdrawal from all European activities, from the League of
ations, etc., and Monroe formulating the principle of hands
E America, have something in common. The situations in
iich they found themselves were not at all the same; but the
me spirit guided them both, and the same attitude made
~m both popular-and unreal.
The unreality is especially evident in both post-war situa-
ns. In 1815, as in 1919, a completely exhausted Europe and
prosperous America conclude the peace. But prosperous
:HLd wd:s guvernea ror anorner nau generauon oy a group
ien who had lost contact with the new structure of the
)nal life. The frontier rose up suddenly in 1828, to the
pressible shock of the older generation. The explosion in
came just as unexpectedly. Trade Unions, Socialism,
n Trust, subsidies . . . a torrent of new blessings and new
tions, and no brains or hearts prepared to meet them.
be World War turned the scales against the big "corpora-
1" protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. Collective
:al had been organizing America for fifty years. Now coI-
ve labour, collective groups of immigrants, class-groups,
ms sections of the country, are restless in America because
World War destroyed European civilization upon which
had relied as a background. Up to the War, the social and
tral groups of American life drew on Europe for nourish-
:. In spite of "Equality," engi.neers, historians, physicians,
: unions, parsons and social workers, foresters and farmers
d corresponding groups in Europe, based-as it seemed-
aexhaustible funds of reproduction and regeneration in
ield of thought and taste, remedies and ideas, beauty and
ination. As a result of the Great War the respective groups
merica have lost these props of their moral existence. The
lards of beauty, piety, scholarship, parliamentarism, crafts-
,hip, are no longer delivered on post-card order from
pe. Bolsheviks, Fascists, depression and dissolution beset
pe. Meanwhile, at the back of all American institutions, a
>egins to be felt. The sudden enthusiasm for Scandinavia
attempt to fill this gap. It is a makeshift.
Le American crusade did not save Europe. Of the unfore-
results of the American crusade in 1917-18, the fate of
~ia is, I think, an undisputed example. The "Balkaniza-
' the atomization of Europe has lowered all the standards
:r culture. In consequence, many elements of American
re being forced into a readjustment of their backgrounds.
le word "immigrant" is not welcome in American public
ssion; but it is less the individual immigrant than his
. or cultural background which now claims reception into
~ whole. America's immigrant groups could once live by
tracing back independent and individual ties with a particular
European influence or institution, but that will not work any
longer. At this time, immigration of individuals is negligible.
The emphasis can be shifted now. The formative energies
which were reflected in the new-comers of the last hundred
years must now be transfused into the American system. Un-
assimilated, these energies will produce, as they have at times
already produced, embolism and paralysis.
It is not our business to prophesy. But we can see that recov-
ery is no important part of the New Deal. The New Deal has
little to do with the business cycle; it is not a question of one
~articular failure of the economic system. It must accept, willy-
1illy, the results of the World War: Europe destroyed, markets
:losed, and America's cultural groups left to desiccate by the
Irying up of their fountainheads. The New World is only
iow returning to its first great vision, that of being really a
~ew World. After all, the four wars, 1756, i812, 1845, 1917,
llld their four applications, 1776, 1829, 1860 and 1933, have
•nly developed and circumscribed the one theme proposed by
he first war of 1756. The contemporaries of the Revolution
.new, to an astonishing degree, how far the true American
1rinciple lay beyond any particular political principle. They
new that all forms of government, all schemes and proclama-
ions, were dwarfed by the Star-Spangled Banner and its galaxy
f States. The completeness of America was the American
remise from the very beginning.
But before illustrating this faith of the fathers of the Consti-
1tion, I wish to point out the astonishing fact that the politi-
tl turns of American life were always rather unforeseen, rather
nprepared. There was a period of incubation during which
ie seed planted by a previous war was ripened. Then, sud-
enly, a new group of men came to the fore and tried out the
ew forms of government befitting the changed situation which
lat war had brought about. It is fatal for any great truth to
! thought of as a textbook truism. Nobody will make any
•e of it. "War is the father of all things" is such a worn out
irase; it has never been applied in political science as a work-
g hypothesis. The peculiar trait of American historv sPPm~
me only the long period between cause and effect, between
ernal war and ci vii change.
>erhaps in older countries a greater sophistication of the
ing classes, and a greater differentiation and variety of ideas,
mits a subtler interweaving of events with the conscious-
s of those events. Only in the Great War, it seems, did
~ope show something comparable to the innocent and in-
.nous American habit of digesting the results of a war half
:eneration later. Hitlerism, at least, offers many features
~ch hint at the fact that Germany entered the War without
thought, any goal, or any insight into the future. It took a
r generation of youth to bring the "movement of the un-
1wn soldier" into political power, fifteen years later.
~xternal war is the father of domestic law. The community
var times is always the new community.* Peace writes down
constitution which was tested in time of war. Rights, lib-
es, privileges, the wheels and checks of a system, depend
on arbitrary notions of individual leaders, but on the scars
'Xperience left on the body politic by the period of its most
[cal testing. It is a comfort, I think, to find that our human
irs do not depend so much on volition or brains or chance
n the real fact of trial and sacrifice. That wars should bring
ut, after a rather long time of secret influence, a form of
ernment tested by these very wars, seems a convincing ex-
>le of the super-individual forces at work in society. Roose-
may never quote Wilson or refer to the World War situa-
.; yet the emergency measure of 1933 had to take up the
)}em of economic organization at the exact point where it
been left in 1918. The war-machinery of the country in
~ is being rebuilt today for peace-time purposes; but it is
tg rebuilt, no doubt about that.
'he march of nations is slow, but at least it is not arbitrary;
march from war toward peace. War means sacrifices, peace
ns profits. Government is the Colossus that bestrides war
peace. Wherever scarcity and self-denial are virtues, there
ugen Rosenstock-Huessy, Kriegsheer und Rechtsgemeinschaft, Akademische
~e, Breslau, 1932.
is war being waged. Wherever plenty and happiness are ex-
tolled, there is peace.
Social forms reflect the experiences of war, and reconcile
war-time mobilization with peace-time reconstruction. Any
suppression of this interplay between war and New Deal will
only prolong the crisis. Politicians, frightened by the supposed
cowardice of the masses, are easily led to gloss over such seri-
ous truths. The forgetfulness of the man in the crowd deters
even those who have some memory of the past from applying
it. But unless the United States recognizes this interconnection
of war and peace, the country will stumble into one interna-
tional puzzle after the other. Its withdrawal from Europe since
the war is an expression of the American dismay at learning
that war is never the end, but always the beginning of a new
social order.
THE NEW WORLD.

The contemporaries of the Revolution often conjured up

the great promise of a new world, united by the abandonment
of the French colonies in North America and by the spon-
taneous effort of the English colonies during the war of 17 56.
The States founded in the Revolution are called the United
States. The name reminds one of the United Kingdom of
Great Britain. The new unity was no kingdom, and a unity
nevertheless. At the end of the eighteenth century such a
unity was unheard of. Now the newness of this unity was not
a mere legal or formal fact. The Federalists were mistaken in
considering it simply a constitutional issue. Jefferson was more
far~sighted; and this insight was what brought him his tri-
umph in 1800. For the new unity was a unity not in being, but
in becoming. It was not a togetherness of possessions but the
potentiality of an unfolding, ever widening system. As Thomas
Paine shouted: "We have it in our power to begin the world
over again. The birthday of a new world is at hand, and a race
of men, perhaps as numerous as all Europe contains, are to
receive their freedom." He was much less interested in the
constitution of 1776 or 1787 than in the concept of a world
tn space and time, destined "to begin all over again."
This iubilation mav be scornPrl hu .-J... ..... nL= ~-A·
1
Vlachiavellian statesman like Vergennes stated the same fact,
vhen he wrote in i775:
"But it may be said that the independence of the English Colo-
ties will produce a revolution in the New World . . . that they
rill scarcely be quiet again and assured of their liberty before they
rill be seized with desire for conquest." 1
Let us consider the words of Vergennes; for they give us the
.ey to America's calling. He takes the independence of the
hirteen colonies for granted; he is indifferent to forms of
:overnment. He makes a new point. He foresees a revolution
a the New World, after independence and the new govern-
1ent are established. "Even supposing," he goes on, "that the
lmericans should overrun the Spanish possessions, it is by no
1eans certain that such a revolution would be prejudicial to
'ranee." The revolution is to be carried on indefinitely by
1e fiery nucleus which pioneers the new world. The Ameri-
an Revolution is a permanent revolution by a little nucleus
f two and a half million people within the new world, with
1e mission of unifying it. "By adding an unmeasured world,
re rush like a comet into infinite space." 8
A growing unity is not a natural thing, it is revolutionary.
fot a federal government, but only the glories of this grow-
1g unit with all the future before it, could counterbalance
ie old desire expressed in the prayers for the British Com-
Lonwealth. The wealth of space beyond the Commonwealth
E Virginia and the Continental Congress was filled by the
1dless desire for a new world. The God of Nature is deaf and
umb. The God of eight hundred years of English history had
> be-and may I add, has been-superseded by the God of a

·eative future. "God of Nature," for the Americans, covered

te naive faith in a Nature waiting for them.
This was very well formulated by T. Pownall as early as
780:
1 Charlemagne Tower, Marquis de La Fayette in the American Revolution, I,
, Philadelphia, Lippincott, 1926.
s Fisher Ames to Gore, October 3, 1803; Works, I, .324, Boston, 18r;4.
 JOINT ENTERPRISE OF THE AMERICANS
199 million acres for wagon roads, ·canals and railroads granted by the Federal Government and
Texas, 1823-1870.
th America is become a very primary planet in the system of
rnrld which, while it takes its own course in its own orbit,
have effect on the orbit of every other planet and shift the
ion centre of gravity of the whole system of the European
L" 9

1all goes on-and this, too, was written in the year 1780:
tg thus planted in a New System in a New World . . . if they
llP this character and hold out its operation and effect to the
World, they will become a Nation to whom all nations will
, a People to whom the Remnants of all ruined people will
horn all the oppressed and injured of every nation will seek
~fuge. The riches of the sea will pour in upon them; the
h of Nations _must flow in upon them. . . ."

Lomas Paine said, "A situation similar to the present, has

tappened since the days of Noah until now."
.d President Stiles of Yale, in his election sermon in 1783,
' a perfect harmony with Thomas Paine's point of view.
)0 is enthusiastic over the age of Noah now returned. But
akes it clear that the Revolution is a revolution toward
v world:

ren has provided this country, not indeed derelict, but only
Hy settled, and consequently open for the reception of a new
~ement of Japhet. Europe was settled by Japhet; America is
:ettling from Europe. And perhaps this second enlargement
'air to surpass the first . . . . In two or three hundred years
~cond enlargement may cover America with [a population of
hundred millions] . . . . The United States may be two hun-
nillion souls, whites. . . . Can we contemplate their present,
n.ticipate their future increase, and not be struck with aston-
n.t to find ourselves in the midst of the fulfillment of the
ecy of Noah that his sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth should
tish the earth?" 10 (Genesis IX, 11-19.)
w this is not simply the Monroe Doctrine or the impe-
n of Theodore Roosevelt; it is much more. Regarded
Pownall, A Memorial ... to the Sovereigns of Europe on the Present
~A/fairs between the Old and New World, p. 4, London, 1780.
N. Thornton. Pulbit of the Revolution. nn. Ao!'! fL Rodon 1 ~Rn
from the inner side, it seems that the task of America is not
limited by any static Constitution. From the very beginning
it is a new, complete unit, which shall be created, but with
a clear aim; to be complete, to lead into the new continent
not one branch, not one offshoot, but the full life of the hu-
man race. The complete representation of all forms of life,
of all the types of men, of all human achievements in govern-
ment and education, can be an expression of mere curiosity,
but it can also become a duty. The Americans of the Revolu-
tion, in appealing to the world, did much more than defend
their cause: they made an offer. I am not thinking of the
offer to individuals; they made an offer to the world to be
complete, to establish in the New World a complete image of
Europe. Europe had the visible unity of the Roman Empire
as its origin. America, from the beginning, took a continent
for its visible unity in the future. The revolutionary idea of
the New World was to become politically united and humanly
complete. The revolutionary element in the term "the Ameri-
:an Revolution" is not to be found in the word "Revolution"
Nhich is simply the exercise of the British Right of Resistance.
[t is hidden in the word "American."
Congress was called the Continental Congress. And a hu-
nan being became an American by two steps: integration into
me of the colonies, and pioneering (or at least ,speculating)
omewhere on the continent.
Without that polarity between unity and completeness the
Jnited States cannot breathe. For the movement toward com-
~Ieteness must balance the movement toward unity. The bal-
nce beween the two principles was kept, by the moving fron-
[er on the one side, and the European immigration on the
ther. The thirteen colonies started the Revolution in the New
Vorld by moving the frontier and by drawing in new people.
,hen they had to develop unity of government and the com-
lete range of human characters. One without the other would
e meaningless. The aspiration for totality is, as we know, a
ature of the Revolution. The totality of the American Revo-
ttion consists in making America an epitome of thP r~rP
n this present hour, America, in her tradition of tolerance
l hospitality, has allowed European influences to make her
ind of pandemonium. All the races, all the voices, all the
~ds, all the teachings of divided and hostile Europe, meet
e. Pandemonium is not a goal, it is the inevitable new start.
polyphonic organization of life might make that pande-
llium a panchronion, uniting all the voices of the human
~. By "pandemonium" I mean the babble of voices caused
the flood of irrelevant, accidental European problems and
Ltions, by "pan~hronion," their appropriate sequence and
urence .
.merica, as we have seen, hardly keeps abreast of her own
[evement. She is seldom consciously up to· the stage which,
:tically, she has already reached. We have observed that
:he restlessness and unreflectiveness of the American ad-
:e, it took wars to force new issues upon the nation. And
l after these wars, as in 18 15 or 1847, it took another half
~ration before the issue was grasped not only practically
consciously. Formulation has always come late in Ameri-
history. James Russell Lowell, like MacLeish, calls America
name which alludes to her half-consciousness:
"O strange New World that never yet was young,
Whose youth from thee by griping need was wrung .
Thou, skilled by freedom and by great events
To pitch new states as Old \Vorld men pitch tents . . ."
this c9ntinent also knows something about men. America
:ls for more than pure geographical expansion.
"Thou, taught by fate to know Jehovah's plan
That man's devices can't unmake a man,
And whose free latch-string never was drawn in
Against the poorest child of Adam's kin."
an eloquent prose parallel to Lowell's verses Herman
1ille exclaims, in the thirtieth year of his life, in the ful-
of manhood:
)r who was our father and our mother? Or can we point to
).n.m .... 1 .... ,, ~~-1 n ------ ,._ If' .. - -
~ universal paternity; and Cresar and Alfred, St. Paul and Luther,
:l Homer and Shakespeare are as much ours as Washington, who
:ts much the world's as our own.
'We are the heirs of all time, and with all nations we divide
~inheritance. On this Western Hemisphere all tribes and peoples
forming into one federated whole; and there is a future which
II see the estranged children of Adam restored as to the old
.rthstone in Eden!"
fhe whole depth and height of European institutions ·is
nmoned to emigrate to Anierica today! The collapse of
rope makes America the heir of all time in a less primitive,
: even more comprehensive, sense than that in which Mel-
e spoke. The creations of the last two thousand years, down
the least and poorest, are asking shelter and protection in
terica. And the Americanization of the foreign-born is no
ger a problem of education for the individual immigrant.
erica, with its wealth of European "goods" and institu-
ts, still has to integrate these individual legacies to make
'.ll her living property. Museums of art and science are all
r well; but the task at hand lies outside and beyond the
;eums. ''And there is a future which shall see the estranged
dren of Adam restored as to the old hearthstone in Eden!"
.merica, by the very fact of being the New World, is bound
Nith the whole world! She has never tried to make a world
~lution; but her very existence has changed, and is chang-
the World War into a World Revolution.
''PROMISE" AND NATURAL LAW IN AMERICA .

.s there is a law in. England called the common law which

1 precedence of all other, as there is a law in America, called
1atural law which takes the same precedence, so there is in
vorld the fundamental law, which is above Statutes or consti-
n, which the religious mind calls the law of God, the philo-
lcal mind calls the law of nature, and the judicial mind calls
aw of human society. It is not a law; it is the law, supreme
all other law, and defending the individual against all human
:y.... The nation which overrides them [the rights which
human being possesses] is the enemy not of one nation but
nations." 11
.ericans, fighting against Europe for independence and
ity, were not interested in a maximum revolution, in
high was to be turned into low, old into new, natural
ocial as in the total revolutions. They wished to divorce
other country as little as possible. In this minimum revo-
' then, the political vocabulary was not turned topsy-
The British concepts were kept, Common Law retained.
tecessary revaluation came by a shift of emphasis within
Jrds.
l, this shift was important enough to give America a
Lilar place in the language of mankind. In the history
nkind's thought on religion and politics, America occu-
place of universal interest, not for any vocabulary of
n but for the "Umlaut/' the transformation of meaning
s produced within the given English vocabulary.
)mise," "natural law," and "due process of law" har-
. a highly original change in emphasis, a change of which
· be said that like Voltaire's God, "s'il n'existait pas, il
it l' inventer." We should have to invent the role played
ierica because this role was forecast and foreshadowed
he beginning of European political life as one essential
f the whole drama. In this respect, I feel it to be my
ge to enlarge the findings of American scholarship, so
ut together in the books of Charles Grove Haines, The
ran Doctrine of Judicial Supremacy (1932), R. L. Mott
e Process of Law (1926), and B. F. Wright on American
relations of Natural Law (1931). I wish to trace the
i of specification by which these elements, after having
>arts of a more comprehensive system for six hundred
took over the full content of the whole system. Natural
1 America is not different from Natural Law in the
an tradition in general, as long, at least, as we compare
tobert McEiroy's The Social and Political Ideas of the Revolutionary
don, 1931. "Theorists of the American Revolution," p. 22 f.
.en craa1uon with the other as a thing by itself. It is only
1en we investigate the place of natural law within the whole
bric of thought that we become aware of the American
ama. Without changing the content or the vocabulary, the
nericans changed every bit of it, by placing it elsewhere.
To Cromwell and Blake and the Anglo-Israelites and to
merous British, England was the promised land. The laws of
~ chosen people, their judges, their sabbath and their faith
d been resuscitated ever since the streets of London heard
~ cry: "To thy tents, Israel!" as the summons to arms of the
ritans. The spirit of the God of Israel was the Spirit of the
[tish Commonwealth. And the promises given to Moses came
e when the Egyptian darkness of Stuart despotism was
troy ed.
~or America, too, "promise" was a biblical word. It was
•d English Rule that the people of Massachusetts or Con-
ticut established in their alleged theocracies of the seven-
1th century. The same gap which the Puritans in New
~land filled by referring the courts to the Bible 12 puzzled
English after 1640. For on both sides of the Atlantic sore
d was felt for an equivalent to the former ecclesiastical and
11 courts in moral matters. The promises of God were for
righteous only, and therefore it was resolved, in 1641,
. a court might pass judgment "in the case of the defect of
.w in any particular case by the word of God." 13 As an
~rgency measure, the word of God, the promises of the
le, crept into the court records on both sides of the Atlantic.
iri the second half of the eighteenth century the vision
1e promises of God migrated from Israel to a broader area
ueaning. We described this re-migration from Israel to
~re, from the circle of revelation to the universe, in our
on on precursor revolutions. And in our section on the
· World, Pownall, Thomas Paine and Ezra Stiles bore wit-
to the fact that the times of Noah were back again, when
villiam MacDonald, Select Charters and other Documents, p. 53, New
1899.
. N. Thorpe, The Federal and State Constitutions, I, 529, Washington~
n first took possession of the whole earth. Noah's promise
; more complex and more adaptable to the new world than
promises to Abraham. The natural covenant between God
l Noah and his sons took the place of the Holy covenant
ween God and Moses at Sinai. This is the original meaning
ind "the promise of America," "God's country," and simi-
terms.
Jow, Noah was intimately connected with natural law ac-
ling to the unbroken chain of Christian tradition. God had
failed man, from the beginnings of the world. And one of
phases of the evolutionary history of his dealings with
i, was labelled the stage or period of Natural Law in the
books of the Middle Ages. 14 Natural Law bore the proud
te of a Sacrament and held the fourth place among the
lt sacramental orders. Because the word sacrament has gone
of business today, we may translate Natural Law as the
.t evolutionary phases of creation. Natural Law had its spe-
historical time in which it was sovereign according to
.'s plan. And like any other phase of God's creation, this
od could be restored and resuscitated from the dead. Mod-
thought has erected a wall against the appreciation of
tral law by treating it as an idea outside time and space.
n, of course, it is debased into a whim. Its authority and
ing become inexplicable. Lest we underrate its immor-
y we should pay more attention to the chain in which it
meant as one link. This special link rivalled all the other
; iq unbreakable proof that "from the start until the end
me God is taking care of his world." (Migne, 176, 802 A.)
system of natural law in the Christian era never was an
ract system of rules. It had its place in the biogenetic
er of mankind's climb upward. It was a peculiar and per-
ent independent stratum in the geology of human salva-
15 And since it had its clear period in the chronology of

·ace, it kept its distinct rank as a permanent stratification

ie order of every society. The eight sacramental orders,
~eabove p. 547 f. our report on Hugo de St. Victor.
n each epoch we find all these different kinds of man simultaneously; but
imo ~ r1;a.o._,,,, ..... •··-- : . . . ' - - -1.! __ - '' ',. - ---- ~-- -
after having dominated a period completely at one time in the
past, were now all perpetual potentialities of political be-
haviour. The eight orders distinguished by Hugo de St. Victor
as early as 1150 were both historical orders and perpetual
qualities of social life. Without the interplay between its law-
ful place in history and its being available daily, natural law
loses its power.
Christian doctrine held that, between the fall of Adam and
~he covenant with Abraham, the unspoiled elements of man's
will were at work for the restoration of society. Individuals
:a-operate spontaneously to build up a reasonable and peace-
'.ul order. The mortar is consent. They can never achieve the
>uilding completely because man is not an author and legis-
ator only, he is a product too; therefore he never quite recap-
ures the forces of bis being through his own reason; too much
~£ other people's reason permeates him. In this natural order
1£ society something is achieved; ay, everything that can be
1roduced by agreement between individuals. The lesson of
rhat can be achieved is unforgettable, for it is now in incessant
peration as one element in the historical process. In the res-
)ration of the last millennium, the day of doom, the last of
1e evolutionary phases in scholasticism, displayed regener-
tive power first. Later, the seventh, the sixth and the fifth
rade were' resurrected from the dead. Precisely as scholasticism
mght, first Church, then New, then Old Testament were used
; separate orders upon which a new life could be modelled.
ccordingly, we find the complete sequence from the Last
idgment to Church, New Testament, Old Testament, re-
ved in Cluniacs, Gregorians and Guelphs, in Luther and the
rotestants, and finally in Cromwell and his Commonwealth.
L this series of restorations, Natural Law obviously got its
lance when the Jewish analogies of the British Revolution
Ld run their course. The Anglican Restoration of the prom-
!S given to the chosen people, was exhausted. Like its
edecessors-Last Judgment, Church of the Fathers, New
~stament-it had been overworked and abused. Hence Noah's
omise and the Natural Law of consent, with its place be-
een Moses and Adam frp:u11nrr h~rlruTroi"".rl\ C~··-
_J •
1
-
en. ·1·hey spelled the Mosaic promise and the revealed law
the Jews in the role of a persuasive set of values for peace
.ong men.
~atural Law, then, in the texts of the eighteenth century,
no arbitrary choice. It did not come as a break with the
~ological tradition. It did not lead away from theology to
ysics. All this our dim eyes read into the story. Only the
't paragraph of the creed common to all Western man, was
N read aloud. Because "revelation" in its specific British
aning proved an abomination, Natural Law was put on the
p. When the Judges in the High Court of England-Israel
.ed the spirit behind the letter of "revelation" America gave
ah and Natural Law their legitimate chance. "Reason," in
; American context, gets its proper colour, too. The Ameri-
does not think of reason in the European way, of raisonner,
wnnieren, i.e., private reasoning. "Boost-and don't knock!''
ce consent is the life of natural law, American reasoning
.ot arbitrary or passionate individualistic reasoning; instead
s co-operative reasoning of the men of good will. "Co-
rate" is the most striking phase of the American vocabulary.
concrete co-operation, not for abstract philosophy, reason
given to men. This was the principle underlying Hugo
it. Victor's doctrine, and it became the principle of Ameri-
life. Reason in America is co-operative and practical.
cmerica differs from all other 'countries in that it was settled
the free choice of its citizens whether they came with the
~ims or in the last immigrant ship. By this free choice of
lions and millions (the principle of natural law), free con-
. became a living reality time and again. And this reality,
spontaneous agreement may solve the problems of society,
.scended by far the narrow concept of natural law as a
~ce in the courts and for the bar. As with scholasticism,
rhich the phases of the Old Testament and of Natural Law
>f Creation were real patterns of life, "Natural Law" in
~rica meant neither a system of government nor a code, but
~sign for living. And its identifying mark is that nothing
t is fixed. The mind of America is not set and. does not
t to be set. "Her inhabitants know no lastinQ4 citv_ no
_____ A naons. 1 ney are as ttuid as
................... . , , ..u.v l ..uJ.ui. ca.1'.dUJt;

::>S of water in a society as fluid as themselves. The Ameri-

moves so fast that he takes in his unthinking stride the
sformations that have the effect of violent revolutions in
~r countries." 16

DUE PROCESS OF LAW.

nee 1776, French ideas and Russian economics have had

~ day, and they have instilled their gospel into some Amer-
i. America as a whole, however, lives under stars of her
. And she can see more clearly than the trembling masses
,urope that the spirit behind all the seven evolutionary
es of sacramental orders of society is one and the same
t, revived whenever one phase becomes a dead letter. All
· forms are elements only. Despite their temporary decay
iumph, they are, every one of them, everlasting elements
eation. This is man's Magna Charta of Freedom. For at
~iven moment in our history or biography, we may take up
)Ile of these elements as the adequate expression of our
And this liberty is not badly protected under the law
ture that underlies the American Constitution.
nee, one thing before all others asked for protection when
European Frontier in America" was independently or-
ed: n1obility, flexibility, free movement all over the new
.. Strangely enough, the right to this free movement has
ven a specific name in American law, whereas the Ger-
to whom it was new, invented the term "Freizuegigkeit"
of _roaming wherever you like). The Constitution of the
d States, however, guaranteed to every citizen the oppor-
. of "rushing like a meteor into infinite space." 11 And
pportunity cannot be taken away from him without due
',s of law.
~ peculiar emphasis given to this concept by American
:e reveals the power of natural law in America. Due
s of law was a "protection of the general rules which
.rth-of-July editorial, 1936, New York Times.
p. 673, note 8.
n society." 18 "Old" in the British language, "new" in
'rench, may well be translated by "natural" as much as
>ig" in a Dictionary of Correlative Values. Correspond-
the British would evaluate "parliamentary procedure,"
rench "passionate discussions or conversations" as highly
aericans appreciate "due process of law." The appeal to
ual law, promising a chance and an opportunity to every-
is the great hymn of praise throughout the years of the
ican people. And due process of law is the wall around
mctuary.
i walls need watchmen; for men, not walls, protect a
fhis Constitution had to be protected by special guardi-
"nd here, American Law was confronted with an impasse
t. How could a "design for living," the new American
n, be protected by political institution or legislature?
Jolitical agency will crave power; here, power was to
:hheld from the political agencies. Government by com-
:onsent means a government weaker than the wills of
who consent. In 1935, it was still considered possible
i a Constitutional Convention in Rhode Island; in other
, the people still felt it to be in their power to recast
government completely. In the English Common Law,
·eguard existed against Parliament. And the American
as so thoroughly filled with the British tradition that as
• 1817 the Chief Justice of New Hampshire declared
ue process of law could "not limit the powers of parlia-
to rule otherwise would make the whole statute book a
etter.'' 19 The chosen people of England-Israel relied on
.blic spirit embodied in the High Court of Parliament.
ourt of courts was considered inspired, as a "congrega-
if congregations" listening to the king of kings. In
:a, the whole foundation for a special moral rank of
nent was lacking, all the more so since this very insti-
failed the Americans in their struggle. The historical
e social functions of the English Parliament were trans-
iel Webster in the Dartmouth College case.
orts of Cases in New Hampshire, I (1819), 129 and 131.
erred to Congress, the House of Representatives reflecting
he social changes, the Senate the historical continuity. The
luasi-religious function of Parliament was untransferable to
political agency. The moral conscience that is neither social
.or historical is represented in America by the nine interpre-
ers of the written Constitution. The co-operative sons of Noah
eply on the wisdom of the fathers of the Constitution, as
hem, Japhet and Ham, and their latest progeny, had to trace
ack their claims to their father's covenant with the God of
fature, in case of a dispute. The spirit enabling the individ-
als of good will to co-operate is not embodied in an inspired
:sembly as in England. It is an "antefact," antedating all
.sible institutions, only to be found in the settlement that pre-
~des all divisions.
For these reasons, Parliament in England is sovereign to
lterpret the meaning of due process of law. Congress in Amer-
a is not. Otherwise the glorious march of forty-eight new
ates, built up out of thirteen colonies of the British Com-
onwealth, would have been impossible. Shem, Japhet and
atn populated the earth, thanks to the promise given to
oah. All the races of the world populated America under
e protection of due process of law granted by the Fathers
the Constitution, and upheld by the Spfrit vested in their
presentatives.
This part of the American Constitution was the latest to
come self-conscious. Long after the Executive and the Legis-
ive took up their operations, the Judiciary found its place.
lat delay may seem an accidental development. In fact, it
lS the ke.ystone of the. building, and probably could not be
;closed before the Fathers of the Constitution saw their
earns of personal power, or party-power, pass away. When
~ Federalists died as a party, their own role as a moral sov-
~ign power rose as a phrenix from their ashes. John Marshall
red their authority by capturing for the Supreme Court the
wer of interpreting the American "design for living." The
preme Court is the Fathers of the Constitution made present.
ley make the promise of America a reality by guaranteeing
•rvhorlu h1eo r.'llf--...-,..1 .... : ..... i.. .. ~ .... i.. ______1 • 1 •
 EPILOGUE

THE METANOMICS OF SOCIETY

 CHAPTER SIXTEEN

~ulating Periods and Ca-ordinating Memories

~nment by Textbooks-A Nation's Memory-Unifying Memories: The
[ the Historian-A Nineteenth-Century Myth: The Renaissance-Micro-
or Telescoping?

GOVERNMENT BY TEXTBOOKS.

:XPERIENCES CREATE THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF NEW HISTOR-

!riods. When we begin to talk quite naturally of a time
"after the depression" or "after the World War," we
:in epoch. This is as much a new creation of history as
the Revolution" (of 1776 or 1688). Thus we should not
prised that the nineteenth century, inspired by Rousseau
::>ltaire, with its great wave of scientific discoveries, and
:le in the arts and sciences, revolutionized the history of
o.d in thousands of textbooks for colleges and schools.
it is astounding how little attention was paid to this
>gmatism. For the first time in the history of the world,
ues cherished by a child's parents became less noticeable
education than the traditions created by its schoolmas-
~xtbooks. The individual, having too short a life in
[, must always be transformed into a living conductor of
~torical current, by a special device. In former days, a
ancestors were made present to his mind in two ways:
holidays and customs and furniture of the house, and
tales of older people: grandfather, grandmother, uncle
nt helped the parents to tell the stories of the past in
vivid way that the listener could fill in the gaps. The
:elt he had been actually present at Lexington or
mrg.
 Modern man no longer trusts in aunts and grandmothers;
:hey, like old furniture, became the outfit of museums. He
loes trust. in textbooks.
This makes a textbook a thing of political significance and
>f catechizing power. Hence all dictators now excel in the swift
·ecruiting of textbooks. In Turkey, all professors were dis-
nissed or curtailed in salary who did not teach that Turkish
ms the main language from which all others-English, Rus-
ian, etc.-had sprung. And Turkey only stands for all the
1ther new or regenerated nations with dictatorial textbook-
dministration. It is true, in more democratic countries, the
1eriods of history vary from year to year, according to the
.ewest historical discoveries. I myself learned two different
·eginnings for modern times, and three different dates for
1e end of antiquity; and the numoer of periods or epoch-
1aking events collected from books, documents and textbooks
uring my later studies is not to be counted. Whenever I can
ick out a new "chronology" or era, I feel like a collector who
as discovered a new butterfly.
The more the periods differ in the different countries and
:hools, the greater the confusion. Thus the advance of schol-
~shi p in history seems to replace certainty by ambiguity, lu-
dity by a dark fog of dates, only to be pierced by the acumen
: college examiners.
In this situation, the simple statement seems permissible
lat most authors of textbooks do not know what historical
~riods are. An inquiry made among Amercian history teach-
s, splendid high school staffs, showed me how naive they
ere about the political bearing of "modern times" or "A.n."
hey overrated "facts" and underrated "periods." But a thou-
nd facts, whatever they are, cannot weight the scale against
e authority of a system of periods, for a system of periods
1bodies the hierarchy of values of a generation. As long as
e Middle Ages are called the Middle Ages they must remain
rk and romantic.
Today every system of periods is a scholarly system and
fleets the domineering influences of scholarship. Any scholar
r • • ..
ri new documents found in the archives of Erewhon. The
ublic thinks of periods as interchangeable, quite arbitrary
ivisions for purposes of chapter headings. Yet "antiquity,"
Le Christian Era, the future, modern times, are landmarks
: reality.
They tell a story of two professors who held chairs of me-
.~val and modern history in the German University of Halle.
Then a thesis was submitted to them on the years between
bgo and 151 o, they both declined to criticize it, because one
an's duty ended with 1500 A.D., and the other's began there.
hese gentlemen went a little far with their faith in the abso-
te righteousness of the princi pies ruling the guild and craft
the historians.
Still, the periods of history are not historian-made. Every
athematician relies on the fact that A is not B. In the same
ty the historian does homage to the eternal truth that the
iddle Ages were intrinsically different from his own more
odern times. A simple restatement of the relations that
ould prevail between historical periods and their narrators
nnot be skipped in a work which centres around the making
epochs by revolution. To us, the pluralism of eras is not
:::urse but a blessing, because it delivers the historian from
~ greatest danger-that of mistaking himself for an explorer
mute nature instead of a servant of society.
If this seems a bit obscure at first, we may simply ask what
~ object matter is on which the historian works. What are
i facts? Most answers would run: the historian's facts should
as simple, as well-tested, as objective, as the facts of natural
ence. Man describing man's actions should be as precise as
y biologist describing the Drosophyllum or oxalate crystals.
tis first blunder degrades the writing of history into a natu-
science. Not one of the achievements in the field of natural
ences can be equalled by the scientific historian. He seems
know much more, but his readers feel they understand much
). The function of history is not to march in the rear-guard
natural science: the historian's subject matter is not life
nature. As soon as this becomes clear, his aspiration to be
ated as a natural scientist can be dropped. For if the en-
ea vours are completely different, they will no longer be mixed
p together in one faculty or technique, of the natural ex-
lorer, and of the historical narrator. Then the historian's
rstem of chronology will also cease to be the result of his
hims or subjective theories. Whenever he fixes new periods,
~ will do so not in his quality of scholar but as leader and
·ophet of his nation.
In the nineteenth century historians were, in fact, the po-
ical leaders of the community. They were trusted as knowing
e past of mankind and of their own country. Knowledge of
e past and leadership for present and future did not seem
be in conflict. Historians represented both the memories
.d the good conscience of the community. Guizot and Thiers,
ihlman and Gervinus, Mommsen and Sybel, Macaulay and
mcroft, are well-known cases in point.
These golden .days are gone. The historian is no longer the
rn political leader, and he is no longer completely trusted.
ie predicament of modern history arises from its no longer
ing in harmony with the memories and traditions of any
arly defined group. The neglect of the double role played
the historians during the nineteenth century easily explains
! chief difficulties of history in the post-War world. The
torian is no longer the standard bearer of a nation's or a
uch's best traditions. He has become merely a scholar.
A NATION'S MEMORY.

Nhat, then, do I call memory or tradition, as opposed to

, writing of history? Edmund Burke has unanswerably de-
~bed the memory of a nation, though he seems only to be
ining the nation itself:
A nation is not an idea only of local extent, and individual
nentary aggregation, but it is an idea of continuity, which ex-
ls in time as well as in numbers and in space. And this is a
[ce not of one day, or of one set of people, not a tumultuary
giddy choice; it is a deliberate election of the .ages and of
~rations; it is a constitution made by what is ten thousand
~s better than choice; it is made by the peculiar circumstances,
.sions, tempers, dispositions, and moral, civil and social hahi-
.es ot the people which disclose themselves only in a long space
time. It is a vestment which accommodates itself to the body.
e individual is foolish, the multitude, for the moment, is foolish;
: the species is wise, and when time is given to it, as a species,
'ays acts right." (Ed. of 1856, VI, 146.)
Let us apply this statement of Burke to the situation of
tory-writing today. The scientific historian does not enter
gin territory when he begins to write. He enters, not a
rld of animal nature, but a world which mankind has pre-
usly conquered by action, discovery, sacrifice, emotion. The
torian's facts are not facts in the common sense of this
ised word. His facts are man's experiences.
~onsciously experienced life, erlebteJ Leben, as we say in
rman, is more than life. It shows its higher complications
a simple event like the battle of Waterloo which ended the
~nch Revolution. The soldiers on the battlefield are in-
ved in a manreuvre which they do not understand. Men
~ar, children cry, horses run, women try to save little things,
i the soldiers are marching, marching, marching, Heaven
Jws why or where. Stendhal or Tolstoi, describing the com-
te blindness of the individual sharer in a great event, are
·fectly right. Yet the deeper the embarrassment, the more
igerous the confusion, the more violent is the effort of all
1se involved in it to establish a common experience and a
nmon intelligence. Probably because the confusion which
gned during the battle was so tremendous, the battle of
tterloo became a name, an impression, and a reality long
:ore the historians sat down to write of it. Some features,
rle actions, some human traits, tower above the mire of
omprehensible sufferings and hardships as the individual
dition of this particular victory and defeat. Fears and hopes,
ry and generosity, collaborated to coin the names "Belle-
iance" or "Waterloo." Man is a name-giving animal. Con-
Jus experience is the presupposition for a new name.
:-Iistory is incapable of producing names. It proceeds by con-
•ts, definitions, and corrections of names. Research is unable
create names. The process of commemoration is under way
lg before the critic argues about the importance or unin1-
rtance of an event. Gettysburg, Saratoga, Yorktown, Mara-
m, are not facts, but creations of a nation's memory. This
ative process precedes historiography by as great an interval
that by which it follows the confusion of the thousands of
iiers or civilians who, among countless facts, did not know
at it all meant. The Peloponnesian War was in the hearts
l bowels of the Greeks long before Thucydides clarified its
mory in the first scientific book on history.
~he memories of an individual or a group are not built
by science. They are a process of selection by the group
ch goes through a decisive experience of victory or defeat.
mory differs in its working from literature or science. Mem-
uses other means, because it is not an effort of the intellect.
~ whole being of the nation is at stake in a great event. The
· name is only the minimum requirement for the assimila-
of an overwhelming experience. And assimilated it must
lest it become an obsession. Monuments are built, cere-
lies are devised, to keep the memory awake.
he periods of history are products of this creative process.
Crusades, the Reformation, the Middle Ages, Antiquity,
Glorious Revolution of '88, are-like all important divi-
, of era-expressions of a group-morale, and not in the least
)Utcome of scientific research. We see the same thing hap-
ng today when people begin to date things in relation to
World War. The scholar is not the master of the periods
ses. He only corrects those which exist.
1e climax is reached when an event is incorporated into
a:lendar as a recurrent date. Memory is fixed by the calen-
)f a group or a nation. Seven hundred and sixty years ago,
nas a Becket was put into the calendar of the Christian
·ch as a martyr to its liberty. He-the victim of an English
-replaced in the calendar the ideal of true righteousness;
)Ok the day of King David himself, directly after St.
ten, the first of all martyrs. The introduction of such a
nto the English kingdom, two years after the murder,
r the authority of the Pope in Rome, tells us more about
iedireval relations between Gregorian Rome and a local
.om than do many discussions of th'° A .... ,,..1;,.. ... ~- ...] ___ •
1eteenth century. The pilgrimage to Canterbury once
llnderlines the fact that the day of St. Thomas was
ourteenth of July" of the Papal Revolution, and the
Charta of the common man from 1174 to i535. The
iny of re-reading Washington's Farewell Address in the
is another example of the formation of memory. In
se, reading is a means to the chief end of tradition-it
ime for reflection. "Those who remember the past are
idemned to repeat it." (Santayana.) Burke observed that
~des is wise when time is given to it. Since only a few
can make an epoch or become holidays, names or monu-
traditions are based on a selective process. Memory
1nical. It represses and excludes; it exalts and prefers.
t may be unfair; but it is real. Group memory is a bar-
:tween the alleged facts and the historiographer's task.
rNIFYING MEMORIES: THE TASK OF THE HISTORIAN.

us analyze now the historian's duty; let us turn to the

Thucydides. To our mind he is the first great scien-
storian because he is conscious of his duty of detach-
He has "distance." He opposes the "agalma," the monu-
Nhich a group dedicates to its gods after a conscious
~nee. He corrects Athenian tradition by giving the in-
LS and purposes of the other side. He writes the history
war between Greeks in a way acceptable to both sides.
eeches are no mere ornament. They are Thucydides'
.iscovery. All our modern scientific· apparatus is nothing
.han the evolution of his speeches. In using the forms
1 pleading, Thucydides transforms the "national monu-
into a "possession for ever," partial tradition into uni-
history. History, after Thucydides, can be defined as
.ateral restoration of two unilateral memories. History
~ected and purified tradition, enlarged and unified
·y.
r must the history of the Great War be tried and tried
Its history must he written because it has left memory
:ed by prejudice. Disgust prevents many people and
n~tion~ from thinkinQ' of it. Tohn Brown's Bodv deals
with all the scars of partial memory left by the Civil War.
An eminent pragmatic historian, Samuel Eliot Morison, called
Stephen Vincent Benet's poem the best history of the Civil
War. Benet not only resuscitated the :memories of the few
leading men, and the traditions of North and South; he went
further and balanced the experience of the soldiers with the
emotions of the folk at home. Thus his poem ends the "in-
fandum dolorem," as Virgil called the unspeakable pains of
war and defeat.
The historian is the physician of memory. It is his honour
to heal wounds, genuine wounds. As a physician must act,
regardless of medical theories, because his patient is ill, so
the historian must act under a moral pressure to restore a
nation's memory or that of mankind. Buried instincts, re-
pressed fears, painful scars, come for treatment to the historian.
The historian regenerates the great moments of history and
disentangles them from the mist of particularity.
Scientific interpretations of history, like the Marxian or the
Hegelian scheme or Henry Adams' law of acceleration, are
little more than his gadgets and tools for building another
scaffold around the old house of mankind's memories for his
work of repair. The historians of the last century particularly
sinned: they took their scaffold for an end in itself. Hegel
and Marx, Carlyle and Spengler, over-cultivated the historian's
pride. The machinery of their individual scaffolds appealed
to them too much. They remind one of the famous Viennese
medical school which took less interest in the patient than in
the ·theory of the disease. However, all the great historians
instinctively preserved their loyalty to great events. But today
they are less read by the masses than are the "constructors" of
laws and generalities.
One thing seems to be especially responsible for the eman-
:ipation of history from its service to real memory. Traditions
were entering into dissolution and anarchy during the nine-
:eenth century. History and written literature became substi-
:utes for all other forms of tradition. This monopoly in matters
)f the past was an emergency measure. With an industrial
·evolntion ~ urP'llro-n;..,,.,... ~c LL - ,..... 1
ll home and trade traditions, the historian seemed the
available protector of tradition. The Romantic historian
in an emergency. And since all great historiography of
iays owes its very existence to the historical faith and
)n of the Romantic school, it is only fair to say that
ry partially rescued memory in a period of forgetfulness
iestruction of tradition .
.t history-writing cannot replace the memories of the
an. It is the birthright of man to build up a memory and
LVe faith in the future. Memory and faith are properties
man as a layman, a member of the people. It is the privi-
of the historian to unify dualistic memory; and for this
ng capacity he must be made independent in his research.
the layman's birthright and the historian's privileges
been sacrificed by modern philosophy. It ascribed to the
rian both the non-scientific faith of the natural man and
mlimited access to unrecorded facts enjoyed by the natu-
:ientist. This has become something of a disgrace now,
L natural scientists themselves no longer claim such an

ediate access to their facts. Physics and mathematics have

1explicable advantage over the rest of man's reasonable
1pts to cope with the riddle of creation. Thus the apolo-
philosopher, following always at the heels of science, was
etually duped, and history-writing itself lost its honour-
place as a helper of memory. The historian became a
Lpion of one of the traditional abstract scientific theories.
ie divorce of national memory from history-writing is
5 answered today by an outbreak of national, social and
1 mythologies. "Myth," as modern literati use the word,
substitute for lost memory. Scientific history, in self-
ice against mythology, must base itself frankly on previous
p-traditions; otherwise history cannot demonstrate that its
eptions are rooted in empirical reality. If history were the
human activity for representing the past, it would remain
.rary and would have no means of distinguishing itself
mythology. As long as other ways of forming memory
isted, the historian's book could play its proper synthetic
l\J,-.."'.w~rl·:nr~ ~nv "iolPnt ~nil n~rti~l hook on historv will
find millions of readers who have not learned to digest a real
historical experience. In these cases the best-intended history
plays the role of a dangerous soporific. It once more weakens
the creative power of the reader to experience history for
himself.
Oswald Spengler is the clearest type of a writer of "history
without memory." In his Decline of the West he gives a world
history without mentioning one word or expression used by
the contemporaries of his events. No "Dieu le veult," no "rights
of Man," no "To thy Tents, Israel," no "These are the times
to try men's souls." He looks at the world of man as if man
had no memory. He writes for those who despair of ever ac-
quiring a memory and a tradition, to the children who wish
never to become adults.
Why, then, has he become so popular? His readers are people
weary of their own memories-people shaken by the earth-
quake of the World War and quite willing to surrender their
own traditions and memories! At the end of a period, tradi-
tions are so shaky that the stylus of Clio gives way to the brush
ind the obliterating sponge. Spengler's book outdistanced all
European and occidental traditions by subordinating them to
l scheme that was suitable for the str~ggles of the second or
~hird millennium B.c. It dumped the burden of our own fore-
~athers' history into an abyss where it lay together with the
·ubbish of five or six other "civilizations." Spengler enabled
>Ost-War society, especially in Germany, to bury its own tradi-
ions, since it now had as little contact with the names and
lates of its own past as with the external facts of any Saharan
ivilization.
Thus the historian is as often the grave-digger of our memo-
ies as their restorer. His work tests the duration of living
iemory, strengthens the rising, and buries the withered. Lib-
ra! society was vigorous enough in 1815 to build up a new
istorical faith; Spengler obliterated the same society's tradi-
on after 1918.
The blight which the World War laid upon national tradi-
ons is perhaps best made clear by contrast with the powerful
1vth ~Pt- 11n. hu "'"'l-.-..1~-~ - L __ - 1 "
 ew "periodization'' of mankind's history in order to make
t into the Jacobin scheme of progress and self-made man-
d. They did it so well that the workings of the new machin-
have only recently been laid bare.
A NINETEENTH-CENTURY MYTH: THE RENAISSANCE.

~oday all our schoolboys and schoolgirls are taught a

ench" myth. Not by a contemptible trick, but through the
ve faith of three or four generations, what we may rightly
the "French" periodization of history was created-un-
1wn and inconceivable before, but now believed, worshipped
. learned by heart in every civilized nation. All the former
ll revolutions had done the same. Odilo of Cluny re-erected
great framework for one united history of all mankind,
~evers and infidels. Joachim .di Fiore distinguished success-
y, first, an ecclesiastical history of the Christian centuries
)re him, and, second, a post-ecclesiastical, i.e., political, spir-
Ll and cultural history for our millennium, beginning in
own time. And Luther's disciples separated what they
~lled the Middle Ages from modern times. All these three
isions are of permanent value. They are all unforgettable.
e same is true of the French contribution to mankind's re-
jng its memory time after time. The French invented the
iod of the "Renaissance," beginning about 1450 and ending
1498 or 1500 or 1517. Today every college president knows
:his Renaissance period as a golden age.
~ctually, the time between 1450 arid 1517 is one of the
iesi: ·and darkest hours of the past. The growth of the cities
sed all over Europe, and the men of the guilds and crafts,
lack of employment, streamed into the gangster life of
nagnacs and Landsknechte. Petty tyrants destroyed the
ndations of local rights. The Church nearly collapsed under
disillusionments of the universal councils and the wars
inst the Hussites. Christianity ran wild. One might almost
that the gargoyles of the Gothic cathedrals tried to become
itical leaders and alleged saints. One of these had his fol-
rers daily take notes of his achievements, lest they be missed
his canonization delaved. And canonized he was. Louis XI
[ France was only one among the refined torturers of those
1ys. Popes killed their cardinals, and princes their brothers
id fathers. The Roman emperor's son was imprisoned by
petty town. The Spanish Inquisition was set up, and the
>torious Hammer of Witches published. Constantinople
is conquered by the Turks. By that mysterious cyclical proc-
~' the monarchical, aristocratic and democratic institutions
the clerical period of Europe entered the decadent phase
dictatorship.
This period of atrocities was turned into the Golden Age of
e Renaissance after 1815. The French Revolution of 1789,
inging a new day for natural humanity, could no longer
mit that a supernaturalist's Reformation had decried and
ded the Egyptian darkness of the Middle Ages, and began
todern times." The "Neuzeit" of German Protestantism,
5inning about 1517 or 1518 or 1526 and extending indefi-
ely into the future, would have embraced the Great Revo-
ion of '89, and by this enclosure would have reduced the
portance of the latter. Thus, genuine modernity had to be-
with 1789. Everything before was ancient, "ancien regime."
the other hand, it could not be denied that France was
~ady surrounded by a preceding civilization whose own
~cries were "newness," videlicet Protestantism. In order to
)ncile the two elements, the accent was shifted from the
~ormation, as the great beginning, to a more splendid age
troyed by the Reformation. The times of dissolution for
clerical authority which preceded Luther's outburst, were
v severed from the rest of the Middle Ages as a period of
ged secular emancipation. The religious laxity which had
trged the field of scholastic interest to include the Greek
Roman classics, was proclaimed the greatest asset of the~

r fifteenth century. It is true that in the Quattrocento many

.he clergy saw no great harm in dressing as Romans or
eks. Pope Julius II (1503-1512) certainly did not object
>eing likened to Julius C~sar and a beautiful Parmesan
~ss of his times can be seen on the wall of her own mon-
~y, portrayed during her lifetime, as a Greek goddess. This
rival of pagan beauty, of Hellas and Rome, which in the
ieteenth century refounded Greece and the Olympic games,
s seized upon as the glory of a Renaissance "Humanism."
would be a mistake to ascribe the new period to one man's
lden idea. Long before it was formulated, the Protestant
tern showed signs of decay. The old admiration for the Ref-
nation was gone; the atrocities of the fifteenth century and
~ human monsters it produced-like Pietro Aretino who
>wed his impudence as a blackmailer by calling himself "per
grazia di Dio uomo libero" (a free man by the grace of God)
i implied libertinism instead of liberty-were sufficiently far
ay to become interesting for the age of Beaumarchais and
~aro. People began to forget exactly why the cut was made
the reign of Charles V ( 1519-56). This state ~f transition be-
e the "Renaissance" was established, with the previous
>eh of Luther fading away, is reflected lucidly in an essay
ltten by a German in Paris in 1796: Wilhelm von Hum-
"dt, in dealing with the mysterious three periods "antiquity,"
ddle Ages," "Modern Times," betrays the impasse out of
ich "Renaissance" was to become a way out. Humboldt's
t period is no longer the era of the Old Testament, but
~ "antiquity of Greece and Rome" only. Jerusalem is elimi-
:ed from his horizon. Consequently, the Middle Ages no
~ger are connected with the New Jerusalem, i.e., the Church.
· literally says of the Middle Ages: "They are the era from
· decline of taste and scientific culture until their steady
i full regeneration." He seems fully to apply the yardstick
Humanism. However, the spell of the Protestant tradition
gers in his memory too. For he clings to its starting point
modernity in the sixteenth century, instead of in 1450,
ich latter year is the high water mark for Humanism. Hum-
"dt solves this perplexity in a telling way: "The era of the
ddle Ages," he goes on to say, "extends from the middle
the fourth to the middle of the sixteenth century; for at that
te [ 1550] only the results of the restoration of sciences which
1pened more than a century before[!] began to become really
1nspicuous." ("Da erst um diese Zeit die Folgen der mehr als
lndert ]ahre frueher geschehenen Wiederherstellung der
'issenschafter recht sichtbar zu werden anfingen.") 1 Hum-
>ldt, then, anticipated fully the evaluation of the later ad-
irers of the Renaissance. And since the leading class of writers
~e Humboldt did not even mention the destinies of the
1urch any longer, the cut needed no longer to be simulta-
~ous with Luther. It was transposed to 1450. History-writing
umanism was now purified from any respect for religion.
stead of the confession of the monk Luther, the interest of
e professions in 1789 and 1800 determined the formula of
e historians. A knowledge of Renaissance art became a kind
religious liturgy for every educated free-thinker of the nine-
~nth century. The new chronology, fixed about 1825, and
pidly spreading from France to England and Switzerland,
d from both countries to Germany and Italy, got a world-
de significance through the personal relations of scholars
d artists. A Viennese scholar and patron of the arts, Gey-
~iller, wholly French in culture and outlook, though a
eply Christian soul, in his correspondence regularly ad-
essed the famous Swiss author of the Culture of the Ren-
sance, Jacob Burckhardt, "We citizens of the Renaissance!"
this complicated way, English Tories and Prussian Junkers,
'iss Conservatives and Austrian Catholics, all of whom openly
tested any communion with the ideas of 1789, nevertheless
came imbued with them in the forms of their most impor-
1t ·reflection on man's way through time. They began to
:ast history, as though it had foreshadowed in 1450 the
manism of 1789. From Jacob Burckhardt and Friedrich
etzsche to Berenson and R. Roeder, the new glorification of
~intellectual emancipation four hundred years ago outshone
the deep shadows of that dying age.
[t is only today that the historians of art begin to criticize
!ir own creation of a thing called "Renaissance Art" and
[umanism,, as a definite period. The newest book on the
)ject published during the Great Depression (Richard Ha-
.nn's History of Art) drops the whole concept of a specific
 le to be labelled Renaissance. 2 His new volume, as if dating
~m an age ignorant of a "Renaissance," was intentionally
itten without mentioning either the word or the period
. enaissance" that thrilled us in our youth.
Thus we see that today the French Revolution, having ex-
usted its dynamic elements, is repelled from one of its most
~essive outposts. An allegedly separate "Renaissance" as a
~cific period dividing the Middle Ages from Modern Times,
gins to vanish even in its central field of origin, the history
art itself. Popular writers on the period, like R. Roeder, be-
1 and end their writing with the amazing statement that
~y could not find what they had expected-a real Renaissance
mt much decay and despair. In fact, as early as 1885, Henry
10de, the son-in-law of Richard Wagner, reacted against the
>l of Liberalism by publishing a book in which he traced
~ Renaissance back to St. Francis of Assisi in 1200! We our-
ves, after listening to the voices of contemporaries, drew the
e for the origins of a new civilization at 1200; and so we
ght happily accept Mr. Thode's thesis. But what use would
be to call the Saint who received the five stigmata of the
icified in his body, the beginner of Europe's repaganiza-
n? If the humanistic Renaissance began about 1200, there
s no such thing as a Renaissance.
Now if the reader will look up our chapters on the cycles
Polybius and on the latest phase of the Guelphic revolu-
n, he will find that between 1450 (end of the Councils;
>uilding of the Vatican began) and 1517 (Luther) there is
:learly· marked period which ends the one great cycle reach-
~ from 995 to 1517. In pointing this out we are not trying
break up real periods in history-writing; we are merely op-
sing an unanalyzed, self-confident n_ai:vete of certain experts.
iey honestly believe in the prejudices of their own time!
t they think themselves unbiassed by any faith or creed! By
.s assertion they constantly violate the rules of the game that
)Ught them to the top, a~d forfeit the immunity which their
1ction en joys in modern· society.
Geschichte der Kunst von der Altchristlichen Zeit bis z.ur Gegenwart, 2nd
 With the laity it was a different story. They showed a mag-
nificent spirit in their worship of the "Renaissance." They
spent millions and millions of dollars on its cult; and founded
numberless museums and university chairs for its study. It
will take centuries to erase from our textbooks all the blind
and dogmatic panegyrics on its achievements. Probably they
never will be erased. For the work was not futile. By detract-
ing from the German Reformation, it helped to overcome the
anti-Catholic complex of the Protestant countries. It delivered
one phase of pre-Protestant "darkness," 1450 to 1517, from the
curse of belonging to the deplorable Middle Ages, and it
revealed the trick of the Lutheran Revolution which was to
create a unity, "the Middle Ages," out of Roman, Frankish,
Cluniac, Papal and Guelphic periods. Rightfully it purified
our denominational memory. However, it is revealing that,
after all, the new scientific treatment never became as simple
as memory. For the time limits given for the Renaissance epoch
in textbooks differ widely, whereas periods really experienced
by mankind have an unmistakable birthday and an irrevocable
end. John Addington Symonds has a memorable article on the
"indefinite space of time" for the Renaissance in the Encyclo-
pcedia Britannica. According to him, not only any time from
Dante to Milton can claim a share of it, but without the
ichievements of the nineteenth century, the "Renaissance"
would have no meaning! This unconscious confession by one
Jf the faithful bears out our thesis.
The wholly secondary character of the division is best com-
Jared to the British device in substituting an "Industrial Revo-
ution" for the real French Revolution in their textbooks. In
loth cases the instinct of the evolutionist was at work, putting
iis evolutionary scheme above the revolutionary. This would
>e all right if the new scheme were not explicitly bound up
vith the old. "Industrial Evolution," "Renaissance of the arts
lnd sciences," would be unobjectionable; whereas "Industrial
tevolution" carries with it the conscious suppression of the
'ther (French) Revolution and its un-English principles of gov-
rnment. "Renaissance of the arts and sciences" would be all
trting points purely negative events like the loss of Con-
inople in 1453, or a purely technical change like the in-
on of printing, and closing the period of Humanism in
or 1498, before the world becomes inhuman (read Protes-
once more, tends to belittle the Protestant and to mini-
the definite break made by the Reformation. Periods like
of Humanism or of the Industrial Revolution are after-
ghts, not born of original, contemporary experience but
condary tendencies. It would be unfair to call them arti-
; but secondary they are. They lack the candour and
ental greatness of the historical calendars built up im-
ately in the wake of revolutions. They should not be
red to dominate the Great Year of mankind as it is pic-
l in the creations of real holidays and traditions by monks,
cy, free cities, princes, parliaments, citizens and workers.
rated by the World War from the naive faith in Renais-
~ and Humanism, we may even go a step further and
:ate that the period between 1870 and 1914 brought a
of golden fulfilment to the ideals of Modern Times, and
hat reason it is possible to look back to the care-free days
·e-War Europe as to a golden age. My guess is that later
rians will do so and compare the medi~val epilogue of the
iaissance" to the epilogue of pre-War peace and security.
:hem not exaggerate the happiness of the two sunsets of a
day. Of the spirit of pre-War Europe, 1870-1914, Fried-
N ietzsche could say: "God was dead." And for the fifteenth
iry, Martin Luther used a strikingly similar epithet: ''God
~ the cards on the table and refused to play the game any
~r. "
MICROSCOPING OR TELESCOPING?

iturally our own attempt to bring back a respect for the

ive moments in history is the positive supplement to the
tive criticism we have had to make in this chapter. Our
ks on the tacit bias of the "scientific" history should be
in the light of our own scruples against deviating one
in our narrative from mankind's self-revelation. We know
men like Ranke never overrated the intellectual after-
oughts of historians or scholars. Historians in all times have
:ide the people themselves speak again. And in this respect
e good historian of a limited period could and can escape
englerianism much more easily than I who have had to deal
th the Great Series of Revolutions.
That is why my historical technique differs from that of
>st of my colleagues who can fill many chapters with the
~nts of a day, a month and a year. I am trying, by my tech-
iue, to do what they do, only for long periods. Modern man
interested more an~ more, not in days, but in centuries
i millenniums. Many writers have a flair for what the mod-
t reader is demanding. He will not read the diary of Alfred's
rd counsellor or every letter written by Daniel Webster
his political friends in Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
wishes to revive a bigger unit of man's history. For that
~pose, there are other documents than diaries or letters or
ords, these favourite sources of the national historian. The
~ndar and its holidays, the monuments and fashions of a
lntry, the words and names of its speech, are equally im-
tant sources in this book. By emphasizing their bearing on
moulding of a nation's or a class's memory and-by that-
character, the teacher of history can steer between the two
remes of our present history-writing-the confusion of end-
detail and the charlatanism of cheap and irresponsible
structions.
"'he scholar, in his desperate fight for truth, usually prefers
ten_ess of detail; the public, in its longing for thrill, seeks
theartedly the "broad view" of the march of civilization.
! detail known and handed down to us about the last thou-
l years is overwhelming and practically unlimited. For the
ier millennia, the main outline is easily drawn. Hence
riitive and distant times are analyzed in the geologist's man-
into large strata of diluvium or stone-age. Modern times
microscopically searched for minute data. Thus, one and
same history of man is treated with telescopes or micro-
es according to distance. Today, this most undesirable di-
ence of methods bars the way to a common historical
In attacking our own immediate present and past-those last
~vitable thousand years still represented and continued by
r every thought and action-we have had to overcome this
rergence between telescopical and microscopical history.
tr macroscopical method looks into the birth throes of birth-
ys and holidays, into the creation of words, into actions that
led forth permanent reactions, into those revolutionary proc-
es which have fixed certain permanent processes of national
ucation. In doing so, we may have to brave the ire of re-
>nsible scholars, and take the wind out of the sails of irre-
>nsible writers, and thereby irritate both, though we wish
bring them together again. Still, even our failure would not
ieve the scholar and the writer from their common duty; to
>id the Scylla of disordered detail and the Charybdis of
aningless generalities.
Let us go back to the unity of man's history and yet listen
the inimitable variety of his original tongues. For when God
d, "Let us make man, historical man·, the varieties of man,"
let all these varieties speak for themselves. Each type and
td, each tribe and nation, sprang into life as a particular
tgue. When they were called into existence, they themselves
led their existence with new names. The other creatures
re produced without any such spontaneous contribution of
cing the issues themselves; whenever new men were cre-
d, they were carried away by the living word so that they
,elled the new phase in the life of !Ilankind by a "before"
l "after" the event.
 CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The Future of Revolution

Viva Voce Biography-Viva Voce Concerto-The Suspension of the Cosmic
~aws-The Passing of the Inspiration-Post-War Economics-Face to Face with
fankind

VIVA VOCE BIOGRAPHY.

LL THIS BOOK LONG, ONE VISION THAT SLOWLY ASCENDED BEFORE

1y inner eye on the winter morning at Verdun, more than
Nenty years ago, and that has been tried, tested, rejected, for-
otten, reproduced, corrected and transformed and yet has
~mained real ever since, had to be placed before my readers.
[ere, finally, I can pause. I am no longer under its spell, since
has crossed the bridge to you. I have said it. And I am free
> consider, for you and for myself, some conclusions and
ractical results. We all spring from this pedigree of revolu-
ons. As cousins, then, we may elicit from the autobiography
: our race some guiding principles for our own conscience.
That conclusions have we to draw from this long epic of
tssions and beliefs? In fact we cannot trust our narrative
: revolution until we can test its human validity by applying
to our own nature. Until we have the revolutionary vein
ithin ourselves as something quite independent from politics,
is narrative can be belittled as mere theory. But our book
n be personally tested: De te f abula narratur; it is your own
)ry that is told in this volume. That is to say: Any real man
haves in the volcanic hours of his own life as people behaved
tring revolutions. Those hours are extreme and terrible, yet
ey tell us more about the unity of human nature than soft
vs of peace from whirh hPh~n,1n.n~~"' .. "' ..,, ... ~ ----
L -
[cists must speak about things; for things cannot speak
lves. Mathematics helps us to describe the mysteries of
tter which we observe and investigate from the outside.
and equations attack the mysteries of the world.
is not like the world outside man. Man-that is what
ourselves. Man does not allow any other fellow to ex-
ts own secret of existence. Man can only be understood
~ning to his own word. That is the great object-lesson
lution for our own personal situation. In the white heat
lution, a society reaches the height of its sincerity, pene-
and clairvoyance into its own self. In the same way
~ist in the life of every living soul one or two solemn
ts when he speaks the full truth about himself.
climax of insight must not be mistaken for anything
~ conscious self-complacency of a salesman or a soldier.
1
t the boastful John Falstaff, but St. John lying on the
like one dead, to whom we must compare a nation in
:h-throes of conversion to its eternal role. In every-day
most similar event was perhaps the act of the bride
ssed from her parents' house into that of her suitor by
~ word "Yes." If she meant it, the full content of her
r choice and her destination, was implied in this mo-
rhat is why the word spoken at such an hour has little
vith the gabbling which is also called language, but
s only the rubbish and off-scourin_gs of creative speech.
ide's single word of reply has a power as divine as the
ere be -light" of the world's first day. Like the cry in
r of revolution, her "yes" carries a weight as heavy as
•t heroic action. It is a revelation of the woman's whole
a decision over her whole past. It is irrevocable, and
le.
words and such n1oments are rare in the life of the
Lial, and in the life of mankind as well. Daily life pre-
f measures and half lights. The pressure and danger
~come tremendous, it must be a question of life and
>efore our cold reason, our conventional language, and
v-. """c . ,.,., ..,-,. ~ -- : ...... .: - - - - - -- - - 1 - - - - - ~ ~ 11 • - .. •
 This is astounding enough; the outcry of a group, suddenly
placed outside the world's century-long conventions, this mono-
logue in the darkness of the first minute. Men and nations
speak out their own secret; to be a historical being means to
have one's hour of perfect sincerity.
If human life can express itself in the unshielded, un-
guarded moments of despair and ecstasy, it is not the philoso-
pher's business to go behind or beyond that expression. yvoe
to him who would abstract, deduce, comment and interpret
these clearest expressions of the one and united soul of man-
kind for the sake of his logical concepts. Society mocks the
philosophers or sociologists who try to get behind the scenes.
All we can learn is to listen better and better. And listening
is difficult enough. The daily life of the nations recoils from
the open sincerity of great hours. The fictions and pleasures
of every day divert our attention from the deeper symbols. A
deadening clatter of cheap gossip and excitement deafens our
ears to the true creations of life. Yet in the hours of danger
the simplest emotions return and throw blind millions back
into the ruts in which the car of destiny is driven.
So this is the answer to your question: We must cease to
look around or behind the great facts of our past or future.
The great events are the great events. We, born after the event
and living on the surface, need a special training before we
can even hear a voice from the depths. Most men judge~c:lepth
by surface-standards, with the ugly self-complacency of the
globe-trotter. Please judge the surface by the standards of
viva voce biography. Stephen Vincent Benet warned us, in
John Brown's Body:
"This is the monster and the sleeping queen
And both have roots stuck deep in your own mind.

"So when the crowd gives tongue

And prophets old and young
Bawl out their strange despair
Or fall in worship there
 "Before the flame hoping it will give ear,
If you at last must have a word to say,
Say neither, in their way,
. 'It is a deadly magic and accursed,'
Nor 'It is blest,' but only 'It is here.' "
:he true sounds will come to our ears in the nights of
and the nights of sorrow, and we shall know whether
ounds of past realizations still bind us with fear and
Jr whether, released from our old loyalties, we must
LU dead and emigrate into the new country of the soul
o the faithful by the Lord over Life and Death.
VIVA VOCE CONCERTO.

: had discovered only the fact of viva voce biography we

have reconciled the laws of life for the individual with
lr his kind.
we have found a deeper secret-the monologues of the
tt revolutionaries form a dialogue among themselves.
d praises its "lower" House because Germany had be-
1bsessed by the idea of "highness." The French speak
i sens," because "common s~nse" had been pre-empted
glorification in the British Commonwealth. The Ger-
raise paternal methods as applied to the world, because
tturies of Italian hegemony had praised the maternal
~ the Church beyond the world. Noah was praised by
tericans because they came after the English revival of
1
sen people of Abram's seed. The Soviets are organizing
-Adamitic forces of society so that the bourgeois preju-
ff L'homme Libre, Adam, may not remain the last word
listory of creation.
revolutionary self-confession, then, depends logically
aose which precede. This logical dependency does not
:h its sincerity or spontaneity. For the logical contradic-
the previous set of values occurs before it clothes itself
•litical power. The self-confessions of Gregory's Dictatus
1ight seem to be the most secret and wordless kind of
Yet they were the seed which bore fruit in the majestic
Confessions had to precede Robespierre, as Colonel Hutchin-
son's austere prayers preceded Cromwell's passionate outbursts.
If the interdependence of all the .utterances and the sponta-
neous character of each are both true, we cannot ex plain this
relationship by the cheap motives of jealousy, imitation, intel-
lectual dependence or other circumstances of human frailty.
On the other hand, the interplay cannot be treated as an
atomistic fact, outside our other system of ideas; it is no acci-
dent. The fact of a ineaningful dialogue between the nations
in their most sincere and self-centred utterances is surprising.
I do not wish to hide my own surprise. But at least one con-
sequence is clear; this interplay proves that one spirit makes
its way through the letters of this alphabet.
The great and totalitarian Revolutions are the test of the
unity of mankind. They refute all the theories which followed
in the wake of Darwinism proclaiming the "autocephalic"
origin of every race, kind and nation. The tremendous impetus
which carries every revolution out to all the world refutes
the idea that men are separated by territorial limits. The dif-
ferences themselves between the nations spring from unity.
They can be compared to processes of mutual polarization.
Revolutionary ideas call mankind to order. They put the
great questions which are going to divide and rally the next
century.
Not one of these national revolutions is local in purpose
or result. The grain of seed is hidden in one part of the earth.
~ike any earthly form, it must secure a local seed bed and a
fidd in which it can root itself. But the tree planted in such
a national area bears fruits for all mankind. The fruits of the
revolution tree are articles of export for the various countries.
German theology, English government, Italian painting, French
literature, are known to everybody as the most significant con-
tributions of each country to all the rest.
THE SUSPENSION OF THE COSMIC LAWS.

The life-cycle of man leads him through different physical

stages. Child, adolescent, youth, man and old man; each is dif-
,....... . .. .,. ..
mother are even more sharply divided. The human race
:ploited the potentialities of this life-cycle. It has based
ferent forms of organization on the properties of differ-
~es in the two sexes. Whereas 1000 A.D. saw an emperor
iing an unamalgamated, unspecialized agglomeration
•es, nine hundred years later we find a civilization which
~plaited all the advantages of the different stages in the
our kind.
age, motherhood, fatherhood, manhood, bridehood, son-
and daughterhood have been utilized to establish the
f, the free cities of Italy, the German system of civil
~' English parliamentarism, French national democracy,
ternational empire of Austria, and the Russian soviets.
1
ld phrase, "Europe a family of nations," seems to have
iost too literal sense when we think of a real family and
er the completeness of our list. Here the qualities of
biographical stages or of a family's members are trans-
l and exalted into national characters. The properties
and sex belong to all ·men. It is therefore not ridiculous
the civilizations of Italy, France and Austria by names
from "womanhood." In everybody's soul both sexes 1
esent. It throws no shadow of humiliation on the Italian
Frenchman to say that he has helped to personify quali-
b.ich through the lameness of our language seem to be
i to one sex. The artist's genius, for example, has the
1
f conception and begetting developed to an enormous
. N<?w, the artist is an eternal potentiality as man. Yet
tist is nearer to the feminine side of life, the receptive,
creature-like forces of our existence, and his dwelling in
'pths of "Sister, our Mother Earth" is what makes him
us. Thus the most virile artist, the inspired writer or
r, can represent bridehood or motherhood with better
~han can a spoiled flapper. The same can be said of the
or the thinker. On the other hand, the statesman, the
er, the soldier, are akin to masculine elements. A German
1 epoch of sex obsession it may be useful to recall the utterly dry mean·
exus in Latin: part of the race. From this meaning it is obvious that
I cannot exdude anv "nart of the race" from its ~mhition
 woman can represent the paternalism of her country without
losing an inch of her dignity as a woman.
The properties enumerated above are primary forces in
the character of men and nations. Beyond their physical mean-
ing, they embrace moral, intellectual and social processes nec-
essary to any human existence. They are the great forms
through which man can root himself in the cosmos and gov-
ern it.
The pedigree of revolutions shows that each tried to realize
one neglected or imperilled potentiality of the life-cycle, and
stressed its importance by establishing one great national insti-
tution to take care of the reproduction of these special proc-
esses and types. Each Revolution started permanent cultural
processes to mould a specific character out of plastic humanity.
This evolution began by using the end of the life-cycle, by
the conscious re-establishment of "old age" at a time when
old age was especially misrepresented. 2 Then it continued dia-
lectically, following the series of ages or phases backward to
Mother, Father, Man, Woman, Daughter, Son. The stage
of the Russian proletarian is the stage of the delocalized emi-
grant, the boy of twenty, the born revolutionary, the prodigal
son. But no stage was left out. Arbitrary revolutions might
happen. But they failed. Only those revolutions were successful
and memorable which obeyed the deepest need of the life-
cycle. This need may be called its desire for complete repre-
sentation. Each embodiment gave birth to the next form, for
otherwise the completeness 0£ the cycle would be interrupted.
The list of man's revolutionary personifications, going back-
wards, shows that the cycle of conscious revolutions is complete.
For, back of the adolescent, man lives unconsciously.
The name for the revolutionary inspiration will change in
the future as it has changed over and over again. All the dif-
ferent names were derived from the inspiration revealed to
nany by the Holy Ghost, that unruly power that bloweth
Nhere it listeth. The list of nouns runs:
2 Chapter Ten.
 (both: Lords Spiritual and "The Spirituals" in the Fran-
~n sense)
>f the New Leaming
pirit

tlsciousness

verb "to inspire" is the same for all, it even cannot

:!d for the latest phase of revolutionary inspiration,
1eople act under the spell of "instinct," the racial or
.ntagonist of class-consciousness.
true the change of names will be connected with a
>f procedure. Future revolutionary phases are unavoid-
ce life is not going to die out immediately on our
That will be their form? We have already foreshadowed
ver. With a conscious economic organization of the
arth, subconscious tribal organizations are needed to
man's 'mind from commercialization and disintegra-
1e more our shrinking globe demands technical and
c co-operation, the more necessary it will prove to
:he balance by admitting the primitive archetypes of
tture also.
mg asked for a restoration of the archetypes of Indian
~se or Malayan traditions because he found his patients
nerica and Europe were "in search of a soul." The
is more crucial. For Christian civilization was built
.vorship of a child in its cradle. It went out into the
> .regenerate and reimplant all processes and types of
te. Since Jes us himself, however, passed away at thirty-
e had lived only from childhood to early manhood.
re Christianity, when restoring the dignity of old age,
ood and fatherhood by creating sublime institutions,
exposed to comparisons with the life of the perfect
tpacy (1075), mother church (1200), paternal state
)roved immune against jealousy. This lack of rivalry
:onspicuous in the case of St. Francis with his patience
h in his mother church. The inspiration of the first
rolutions of the Holy See, of Guelphic Italy and Lu-
theran Germany and the Christian Gentry, were therefore un-
swervingly Christian; in fact, they were wholly aware of their
indebtedness to Chrsitianity for their own new life by the ways
of the spirit. They depended, for their own self-realization,
on the good conscience granted to them by Christianity.
The aspect changed when the stages near to the biographical
tradition of Jesus' own life were about to be re-established.
The French and the Russian revolutions are particularly jeal-
ous of Jes us. Before them was the task of representing a single
)tage in our life-cycle which can also be found in the life of
Jesus. The life of Jesus knows of no exclusivity for one phase.
For on it was founded the whole concept of re-birth in the
8hristian era. His life therefore, as far as we know of it, by
Jeing more universal, overshadows any absolute pretensions
>n the part of a young proletarian or a Ii beral genius. The pro-
'essions of artist and writer are secular by principle and are
·ooted in matter and earth. The French creative mind and
iervous receptiveness, as detached from Jesus' manhood, was
llustrated by types like Prometheus, Herakles, Alkibiades, and
.ny self-made man. Later, the Russians in worshipping Judas
scariot found a most paradoxical way of eliminating Jesus.
rudas is sterile, without real faith, a traitor, but he is ·the
ealist, to dream of an immediate dictatorship. Such a notion
; congenital in a group of revolutionaries who must organize
proletariat on principles suitable to the unreliable age be-
ween fifteen and twenty-one.
This does not alter the fact that the French and Russian
~volutions are results of the Christian era. They depend upon
:, they complete it. Christianity is not a mutual admiration
>ciety. It may allot to a certain form of life the necessary
rea in which to establish its own realm. The chief duty of
riy member of the Corpus Christi is to strengthen the other
>rces of humanity and thereby to assure the later co-ordination
[ the Russian antitheistic form with the rest of the Christian
>mmunity. The economic unity of the world will probably
Ier an opportunity for co-operation between forces of life
hich are consciously Christian and others which suppress
1Pir rhr;"f';~"" ;...,.l-,.,.,,,...~ .. ~~-- £ ___ · 1
 phase. Still the un-Christian forces play their part in the
ess of reimplantation of every branch of mankind into the
tree which is the perpetual effort of our era. During the
millennium the scattered nations of the whole earth were
>ulded into parts of a whole.
the future, many buried instincts will have to be revived
te white man if he is really to survive in this age of "child-
l regained" into which a senile world is plunging. Here,
ity is no metaphor. In this world of one-child families, old
Jensions, birth control and the abolition of illness, youth
a minority, with its proper contribution neglected, as was
Lge a thousand ,years ago. Gregorian Papacy was then the
for too much clannishness and tribalism. Today clan-
1ess and primitivism may be recalled to life, to restore the
ice of a senile world in which there are three adults to
::hild. The longing to dance, behave, forget, dream like a
is felt increasingly. The stages of the first twenty years
an's life, which in former days were treated as steps pre-
Dry for old age, are changing before our eyes into ends
Lemselves. Though this cult of childishness is spreading
·where, Germany, removing its harness of paternalism in
td of orgy, is anticipating the tribalism of the next three
lred years. They especially long to return to the "arche-
,, of childhood and primordial dawn, to rites of initiation
>agan sacrifice because Germans crave a fountain of youth.
llntil the economic unity of the wodd is estbalished, the
n .to dream states would prove fatal. These dream states
~dmissible only as an antidote, in the education of the
~s in the national sectors of the globe.
fore any tribe or group can sacrifice reason to the unreal
and magic of pre-history, its food and shelter must be
mteed by the peaceful world-wide organization of produc-
N azism is premature; it cannot coexist with the poten-
f of war. Frightened by the proletarian Revolution, the
are attempting "a classless nation," a solution which lies
beyond the Russian society. They are developing the
cteristics of the primitive tribes before they can commit
~ ""'1 ",,..,.. +.,.... ,.. .... ..-. 1-. ...... ~ ,..,. ...1 w ....... ~ ,_ • • - ...... A - -1 .._ L _ _ -- _ £ _ _ _ _ ~1 • r
of Hitler hinges upon the fact that the Nazis plan to return
into the forests like the Germanic tribes. The Jews, who repre-
sent the universal history of mankind, stand in their way. Yet
it is perhaps only through the Jews that the world may become
a playground for tribal primitivism! Possibly the Jews will
contribute more than others to that universal organization of
production which makes wars impossible and leads in a world-
wide economy. This is the necessary presupposition for the
revival of primitive archetypes in different sectors of the globe.
Since this revival is interested in buried instincts, it can be
neither Christian nor philosophical, in the sense in which the
English, American or French Revolutions were philo~~phical
or the Roman, Italian, and German were Christian. -·
The early stages of human development will be the goal of
efforts which will no longer pretend to be deli berate or logical
revolutions. They will be "Relapses" into instinctive phases
of primitive life and "Reproductions" of archetypes. That is
why our future evolution will lead t9 a variety of special repro-
ductions. A relapse toward the dawn of civilization is opposed
to any world-wide generalization. It will become the pride of
such a relapse to be anti-universal and limited to a single local
or social group. Economy will be universal, mythology regional.
Every step in the direction of organizing the world's economy
will have to be bought off by a great number of tribal reac-
tions. The clans of the future cannot follow the same- tech-
nique which we described through the two cycles of clerical
and secular revolutions. Even so, it remains probable that the
tribes of the future will pass through the forms of monarchy,
aristocracy and democracy like Church and State in the past.
If this future cycle of political forms occurs-breaking up
the dictatorships of our present stage of transition-it will have
nothing to do with the course of the season through the year,
as Spengler thought. Civilization is not a counterpart of the
seasons, spring, summer, autumn and winter in perpetual re-
currence. For man answers the threats of nature by heroic
efforts which counterbalance her eccentricities. In the "spring"
of civilization man was not at all springlike, but cultivated old
• 'I 1 'I • -
 and a terminus, is reviving youth and boyhood by des-
effor~s. The power of going up-stream is the revolution-
~ce in man. It is never comparable to the seasons of
, because man goes against the inertia of his own habits.
has the specific gift of closing a rift in the cosmos. By
tg the peril of death or decay in time, nations or indi-
stem the tide of events. Man is the creature who lifts
: and climbs up-hill; he overcomes the inertia inherent
lre. The waters join the sea; men, in a revolution, flow
mountain tops and descend on the other side in a new
Man's symbolical place in nature would be a great
from which the waters run down in varying directions.
ires to climb upwards, in an unnatural direction, stop-
1e natural descent of the life-cycle by forcing life to
He forces his own nature to dwell at one level of his
, physiological life-history longer and more consciously,
tnsforms a phase which seemed unimportant into a
g-place for generations to come.
THE PASSING OF THE INSPIRATION.

Great Revolutions succeeded because they achieved

[ng that was necessary. The dialogue between them is
re majestic for this intrinsic necessity. True statesman-
d true direction of one's own life are guided by instinct
necessary, the unum necessarium. Arbitrariness is the
f men and of nations. He who forces superfluous actions
fepow men is a political charlafan or a despot. Each
volution accomplished something necessary. By this fact
e exalted above the Satanic caprices of tyranny or

category of necessity is beyond abstract good and evil.

)le necessity-like manifest destiny-is a category of the
ture. That is to say: present hardships can be trans.-
by the gleam of the future, whenever men are ready
riteer for a sacred goal. Our social grammar should be
into one futuristic and one past. This hits the moral-
d. For their usual epithets of "good" and "evil," as
f-n. h;~f-nru ".lnrl ~nl;t-;r~ ~~r;nn" frn.m 'JI f-;m.al.aeo"" .,,...,.._.: .....
mind which ignores the differences between past and future.
The moralist and the creator live in different tenses. This is
usually overlooked; yet if we mix the ethical with the political
aspect of life we shall never be able to do justice to our own
best actions.
Every soul that faces reality is perfectly aware of this distinc-
tion and acts accordingly with the best of consciences. Only if
a man tries to take his stand outside the world, as the philos-
opher of ethics does, he deliberately and constantly neglects
the triplicity of past, present and future. It is a great secret,
unknown to children or adolescents, but one which is revealed
and becomes familiar to everyone who grows up to full man-
hood, that our ideas about good and evil are one thing, and
the right time to introduce a change for the better is another.
The idealist who thinks anything can be good outside of time
and space only makes a fool of himself. Timeliness is every-
thing. Reality is "good" when it proceeds timely; it is bad
when too late or too early. "Good" and "evil" themselves in
their deepest sense mean ripeness and immaturity. Any man
who looks around him finds a great many desirable points
which might make for the improvement of his environment.
It is a wise man who realizes that it will take all his energy to
carry one per cent of these good and desirable points into
reality. The rest of the "good" is excluded. Reality is closed to
the empty pretensions of the "always" idealist. Reality seems
to hate the abstract good with the intense hatred the first Chris-
tians felt toward their idealistic rivals, the Gnostics. Real life
can certainly never hate "the" good, but it does hate the ab-
stract idea of the good. It has always spat out the abstract, and
always will.
Real life's only approach to a fuller, better form of existence
is through necessity and timeliness. Bring a thing into fashion,
create a fresh interest, make it timely, and, as a climax, let it
be clear that it is inevitable and necessary-and it will be
incorporated into the lists of reality.
Fashion expresses a tendency, timeliness launches us on the
current of irresistibility, whose driving force leads into the
vhole mechanism for attaining the future by one compre-
.ve word, "necessity," then all the minor items mentioned
such as modes and fashions, are included as subspecies
eelers" into the "fulness of time."
ue action is not responsible to so-called ethics. A vital
rises above the known good and evil because it leads into
nknown. Is it good or evil to marry? Ridiculous question.
uch a decision is always answerable to the question: "Is it
rary or is it necessary?" It is strange that, though every
m being acts on these principles, they are rarely men-
d. If a kidnapper invades my house and I fire at him, this
:annot be measured by abstract standards of good and evil.
e I am shooting my only responsibility is for perceiving
rue inevitability of this action. I must not shoot from
fear. The danger must be real, and any other means
be impossible for me. The fellow who uses his gun when-
1e gets a chance is as despicable as the other who is unable
row the intruder out of his house. The delicate line of
.ction between the virile man, the milksop, the saint, is
1 by nothing but "necessity." A man's behaviour in an
~ency is the test of his relation to the future, to the things
in store for mankind by tin1e.
e results of all our crucial actions are hidden from us. We
pt to foresee the success of our actions repeatedly by our
ect; but it never works. Pre-calculated action fails when
ets the full reality of life. I know, .of course, that many
llculated actions do succeed. But they all happen in a
rom which the full inbreak of free and divine future has
excluded by careful organization. Car-driving under rigid
ttions, teaching under the inflexible time-schedule of the
Jorn, social gatherings with their certainty of being over
£-past ten, all avoid an exposure to the real future. In all
fields, time is limited to re-presentation, repetition, of
lculated acts. Here life is immured in the categories of
nd present. In the recurrent parts of our social organiza-
ife has become cyclical. A complete cycle means the ex-
n of novelty and real future.
nrrtnf\~P to'.::} o·irl tA CPttlA ; n 'll naur ~1..-.~.o. t-r.. "'"'"",1 ~ ~--L
book-these are dangerous things. To have a date, to drive up
to an inn for tea, to read the Saturday Evening Post, are less
dangerous because so little real future is at stake. Of course
we must not allow names to mislead us. One and the same
name may cover both "futuristic" and purely "cyclical" hap-
penings. To a man of seventy, meeting a new person generally
means little. His capital of future time is nearly exhausted.
A boy, as long as he is not blase, finds in every "date" the ex-
citement of a final commitment. If this youngster is willing to
expose himself to the full impact of the occasion, the date sud-
denly loses its character of a mere date, and can signify every-
thing or nothing. Then the shallow ethics which has framed
the rules for our behaviour on a "date" is soon forgotten. The
boy's whole being enters the game, past and future included.
The only justification for Romeo's infringing the traditional
morality on his "date" with Juliet is the tragic necessity of
their love. Fortunately, in Romeo and Juliet, the complete-
ness of their surrender to the future asserts its own right. Even
the spinster has learned that. In a tragedy the hero belongs
to the future and is defeated by the chains of the past and the
standard of the present. Whereas in a farce the people we
laugh at are obsolete, petrified and unchangeable types. They
are not surprising; the plot is. Human tragedies and comedies
may be divided according to the relation between the past or
future character of hero and plot. And any great play will mix
tragical and comical elements as life does.
Unfortunately the political spinster is less educated than the
poetical spinster. And most political spinsters are men. They
will not admit that the case of true lovers is rather like the
"cases" of other departments of social life. Yet love and hatred
remain the powers which govern the sun and all the other stars,
nations and individuals, in so far as their desire for a full and
true future is capable of lifting them out of their rutted tracks
and orbits. In any field of action, necessary changes are justi-
fied whether they be legal or not. The whims of crowd emotion
or mob brutality are not excusable. They remain in the sphere
of arbitrariness, though irresponsible politicians may help to
mere legal forms which is a greater offence to life's
cies than an open breach of the law. A very frequent
ure in modern society is to pass arbitrary measures in a
tate or at least legal form. But the mechanical prolonga-
existing life by legal tricks and the genuine creation of
life in dangerous action are at opposite poles of political
:Jment.
an acting responsibly tries to answer a real demand. His
nee is visited by a question. In the old days the hero
ked us a question of life and death, and wrested a vital
from us, was called a god. The human being within
es that was willing to listen to such a question, to obey
1act on heart and conscience, and answer it, was called
~he slave, who could not listen, had neither name nor
, nor 6peech like the men who could. He was a thing.
hen was a "thing"? Any thing involved in the dialogue,
Ltent of question or answer, was a thing, id est; whatever
ated as a theme was an object, a part of the objectivated
In this sense God himself, when treated as the helpless
alyzed subject matter of discussion, as the Divine, be-
1 "thing"; but any part of the world, sun, earthquake,
·evolution, can become a god when we feel that it is a
Lirging questions upon us.
-man-world are the three eternal components of spir-
Ee. Any process of thought, speech or inspiration must
the tripartite order between divine question, human
and subject matter. The triplicity is inevitable since
:ous question is beyond the individual that is struggling
rer it; any theme, on the contrary, is beneath the man
analyzing it. Names, of course, are ambiguous. The
~od may degenerate into a mere word, the "world" may
:!aimed God; but the mechanism of the three levels is
in every breath of life. No attempt at replacing them
ng everything divine, or everything worldly, or every
•ocial or human, stands the logical test. Where there is
stion, no standard, no command, no conscience, God
n both disappear and only brute nature remains. When
all the divine nower into m;::in hv mnir4;.:h1nn1nn- c:-~r;ohr
or humanity, man's truly human side evaporates into dust, and
God and world remain the only realities.
That is what happened to the age of science. Man asked
wonderful, divine questions at random. He imitated God's
divine power of raising the issue, without limiting himself to
necessary issues, and forgot that man is responsible only as an
answerer of powerful and overwhelming questions or demands.
He got drunk on arbitrary, unnecessary "problems." On the
other hand, science reduced his human side into a natural
organism, a part of the world's mechanism. Liberalism treated
man's mind as divine and man's body as matter. The human
soul, which is the only specifically human element in man, was
throttled by the pressure from both sides. Practically all the
books of the nineteenth century use mind (mind and body,
etc.), where the twentieth century is learning to•discriminate
between mind and soul. We no longer believe in man's God-
like and world-like behaviour as his only human features. But
if man has abused the name and power of God so terribly that
he can no longer call upon Him by the name "Creator," we
can still grasp the triunity of question, answer and object, in
this dialogue which goes on in mankind and in every soul.
Let us forget all our foolish notions about God and the
world; let us analyze the curious fact that we are all the time
answering this appeal. That which "asks" within us may be
our own genius; or it may be some very different power. Art,
or truth, may ask our allegiance. Scholarship may take its toll
from.man by demanding his time, his sleep and his good health.
Manifold are the powers which raise their voices in man. Any-
thing may become his. "god," anything his "world." Atheists,
for example, may bring the "concept of God" before their
tribunal in the name of their own God, matter. In other words,
their God is matter, and their doubts and questions are aimed
at a dead thing, the definitions of theology. But this heckling
of theological concepts has little to do with the name of the
living God. A God is present in the materialist's question as in
any other. God is not a concept. He is always a person, and he
bears a name, that name in which we are asked to ask others.
do such and such a thing?" I invoke the power of sport.
;portsman in question shall not justify himself for my
ial satisfaction. He is summoned to satisfy "Sportsman-
and Her Imperative. I am evading the disagreeable sit-
1 of somebody setting himself up as in authority, by put-
port on the higher level and myself remaining on the same
n level with the other fellow. Yet there can be no doubt
am relying on the existence of two levels, one of human
:racy, the other of ruling powers. This becomes utterly
when the alleged sportsman shrugs his shoulders and re-
" 'Sportsmanship' can go to H--; I don't care." In that
ny whole argument was in vain, because he simply re-
~o acknowledge Sportsmanship's authority. Perhaps I am
: on the college team and believe unswerving! y in Sports-
ti p; then I am deeply shocked by my friend's blasphemy.
~ power who puts questions into our mouth and makes
wer them, is our God. The power which makes the athe-·
1t for atheism is his God. Of course God is not a school
ner. Man never gives his real answer in words; he gives
lf. When a man asks if a girl loves him he hopes that she
ive not an empty phrase, but herself. The more com-
r she gives herself the greater her response, the more
, has she made the question. The gods whom we answer
voting our lives to their worship and service ask for
~nee, not for a lip-confession. Art, science, sex, greed,
sm, speed-these gods of our age devour the lives of their
ippers. completely. They trace every line in the faces of
;ervants. Yet servant and master are never the same. The
and the answerer remain different units. I summon you
ve me," "obey me." You answer this with an "I will" or
1 not." But the I which urges you to react, and the you
reacts, more or less reluctantly, are not in command of
me powers. The "you" that ans~vers has not the same
ns at its disposal as the "I" that presses you for an an-
God's questions come to us through the meek yet irre-
: forces of heart and soul; our answers may rely on the
nd devices of our intellectual and social equipment. The
 I that asks me to seek the vital truth of an issue is in command
of all the good angels of truth.
The old meaning of the word "to ask" included the ideas of
command, demand, search, and question. When the modern
mind began its scientific adventure, it limited the verb "ask"
to the sense of a purely intellectual process. By this lowering,
it became possible to ignore the difference between the divine
"I" that asks and the human "you" that endeavours to answer.
Descartes fell into an heroic fallacy when he identified the
majestic "I" of the God in his soul, who asked a response from
him, with the responsive "you" from which the answer is
wrested. He labelled the two interlocutors with a single am-
biguous term, "ego." This self-conversing personality is an in-
vention of modern times. Neither Plato nor Aristotle knew
anything of such a chimeric "Ego," who was neither God nor
man; but Godlike and yet anthropomorphical. On the one
hand, all the real distinctions between men-sex, age, colour,
race-were neglected; the "Ego," so we were told, transcended
them all. On the other hand, the really superhuman powers,
those veritable "I's," were denied. As a scientist, man was given
a superindividual, transcending capacity which nevertheless
still claimed that it was not divine. This unreal I, the Ego,
once manufactured, God, Man and World all three collapsed.
No man ever lived or ever will live in whom God and man
are the same. He who knew the secret of our two-fold nature
to perfection cried out with the sincerity which exalted him
tp the first-born son of man: "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani." This
one phrase from the Gospel gives the lie to any heroic philos-
ophy of the Ego. It remains for ever the touchstone of man's
position between God and World: "My God, my God, why
hast thou forsaken me?" By that cry the limits between divinity
and humanity in man were established for ever.
When we rediscover the inexchangeability of God, man, and
world, their axiomatic coexistence in every act of the spirit,
when the triunity of the three levels (questioning power, an-
swering man, and discussed subject matter) is re-established,
we shall enter the last era of history. Under the new trichotomy
1 1'1 1 1 r • 1 . , 1 .1 • .... - •
ere are many questions and many answers. But none of
mltiplex deities who demand our thanks, thought, and
e can enslave all the elements of our being. There may
:ime when we must worship them. Yet when we analyze
·hole life between birth and death, we cannot assign the
life of any human being to a single one of these many
; and powers. No one of them is supreme. Some enter the
rather late. Science is too severe a god for children.
: abdicates her authority over old age. Socialism annoys
an of sixty, and greed is hardly conceivable to a young
L. The gods pass. When the individual realizes their
g, their unceasing change, he is converted to God-the
God who invites us to obey the "unum necessarium,"
.e thing necessary and timely at every moment. This man
ers his complete liberty, the unbelievable freedom of the
en of God, who are independent of all specific codes and
onal creeds, because the God of our future and our be-
tg is superior to the gods he has put around us in the
Jeriods of our conscious efforts.
he Bible there are two names for God: one is grammati-
l plural, Elohim; the other is the singular J ahve. The
a are the divine powers in creation; Jahve is he who
~ what he will be. When man sees through the works of
a and discovers Jahve at work, he himself begins to sep-
>ast from future. And only he who distinguishes between
id future is a grown person; if most people are not per-
t is- because they serve one of the many Elohim. This is
id.rate performance; it deprives man of his birthright as
the immediate sons of God.
he Sistine Chapel of the Vatican, Michelangelo shows
~eating Adam, and keeping in the folds of his immense
score of angels or spirits. Thus at the beginning of the
all the divine powers were on God~s side; man was stark
We might conceive of a pendant to this picture; the
creation, in which all the spirits that had accompanied
eator should have left him and descended to man, help-
·enQ'theninQ'. enlan:rino- his hPino- 1ntn thP rliuinP Tn th;"'
picture God would be alone, while Adam would have all the
Elohim around him as his companions.
POST-WAR ECONOMICS.

What we have tried to state for the individual is also true

for the nations of Europe. Today they face a dilemma: either
destruction through loyalty to their national deity or conver-
sion to a living faith. A scholar who sacrifices marriage, health,
and active citizenship to his learning is deaf to the temptations
and commands of any power except scholarship. A nation, nat-
urally, .never could devote itself to such narrow aims. A nation
is bound to contain farmers, scholars, lawyers, business men.
Its national type embraces a wealth of callings and interests.
The danger for a nation lies not so much in its one-sided greed ·
for money, land, knowledge or material things, but in the im-
poverishment of its types of man.
Each of the nations of Europe has aimed to represent one
definite member of the human family. And the particular goal
of each nation was legitimate so long as it was meant as a safe-
guard against exaggerating another. By studying the origin of
each national type, we were able to make transparent the
mutual dependence of the great national characters. They
balanced each other. Each one furiously and absolutely driving
ahead in its own direction, they together achieved a process of
permanent regeneration. Each sang its theme in that symphony.
Each spoke with a thousand idiomatic tongues its part in the
common drama. The ultimate ends of these revolutionary
processes were far beyond the goals of individual professions;
out of the tremendous .and universal effort a true form of man-
kind was reproduced.
Why can this no longer go on as it did before? The in-
nocence of effort has vanished. Today we know too much
about the merits of other members of civilization. When man
feels the divine touch on his shoulder, he must follow. Noth-
ing of real divine truth can remain excluded from man's de-
sires. Such is his di vine nature that he can never bear to be
deprive~ of on~ of Go_d's ~o~.ers £c:r_all_tin:e. "Yhen a ~er~~n
ture God would be alone, while Adam would have all the
>him around him as his companions.
POST-WAR ECONOMICS.

What we have tried to state for the individual is also true 1

the nations of Europe. Today they face a dilemma: either

truction through loyalty to their national deity or conver-
ri to a living faith. A scholar who sacrifices marriage, health,
I active citizenship to his learning is deaf to the temptations
l commands of any power except scholarship. A nation, nat-
.lly, .never could devote itself to such narrow aims. A nation
Jound to contain farmers, scholars, lawyers, business men.
national type embraces a wealth of callings and interests.
e danger for a nation lies not so much in its one-sided greed
money, land, knowledge or material things, but in the im-
rerishmen t of its types of man.
~ach of the nations of Europe has aimed to represent one
Lnite member of the human family. And the particular goal
~ach nation was legitimate so long as it was meant as a safe-
lrd against exaggerating another. By studying the origin of
h national type, we were able to make transparent the
tual dependence of the great national characters. They
anced each other. Each one furiously and absolutely driving
ad in its own direction, they together achieved a process of
manent regeneration. Each sang its theme in that symphony.
:h spoke with a thousand idiomatic tongues its part in the
1mon . drama. The ultimate ends of these revolutionary
cesses were far beyond the goals of individual professions;
of the tremendous and universal effort a true form of man-
d was reproduced.
Vhy can this no longer go on as it did before? The in-
ence of effort has vanished. Today we know too much
ut the merits of other members of civilization. When man
s the di vine touch on his shoulder, he must follow. Noth-
of real divine truth can remain excluded from man's de-
s. Such is his di vine nature that he can never bear to be
rived of one of God's powers for all time. When a German
. . ..
1

.. .. ..
0
0
v
.n sees the lovely qualities of an Austrian girl, a process
rrowing, of longing, of mutual permeation is begun; and
s inevitable, because man can never be confined to the
.i p of any single god. He cries out for the one God of all
ind. "'\.
e stalemate of the World War has spread the application
~s truth which was always valid for individuals, to the
is themselves. Even the English nation trembles in its
because it knows-as a nation-that its type is no longer
ent, not even in the Anglican Church. The great nations
eing forced to make allowances for the inadequacy of
Jwn types. They are shocked by this. They meet the shock
1lent revulsions and all kinds of escapes and arrangements
tich the shock may be neutralized. By their convulsions
~If-encirclements they clearly admit that this mutual per-
Jn is at work.
o. will no longer be satisfied to remain shut up within
nits of one nation's institutions and ways of life. Lenin,
, Mussolini, Hitler, and even second-rate leaders in Ger-
like Hess, Goering, Darre, Rosenberg, have drawn their
ation from outside, from living in foreign countries, from
g from other countries, or from marrying from abroad.
is to say: even these leaders of ultra-nationalism stahd in
listic situation, in which at least two different environ-
and national experiences are fused together.
~ relativity of each nation's particular type and standard
the end of the modern era and its secular revolutions.
Vorld ·war, with its sequel, the Russian Revolution, was
;t total revolution tending to cast all men in one mould.
~forth more than one type has to be made accessible to
uls of men. The absolute power of each separate god is

~ future task is to lead man's life through a sequence of

nt phases and well-timed allegiances. No single alle-
can ·claim domination any longer over our whole life.
1lace of the old Christian conversion will be taken by a
i and deliberate change of allegiance in n1id-life. Man is
I' 1r1 1_ ~ _____ 1 I' TT _ _ _ _ _ -- 1 _ 0
I' I' 1
remain inaccessible to him? Youth and adults, men and
women, children and old men, will live and worship in dif-
ferent ways. This change during the course of life is becoming
more and more the great issue for a mechanized world.
By this time, perhaps the reader is coiivinced of the sterility
of the so-called revolutionaries or reactionaries in this, our
present age. The time of "one-type" revolutions is over. When
Marx discovered the class-war, he thought of the proletarian
as the ultimate type for all mankind. No proletarian himself,
he gave a special type the character of totality. Looking beyond
Marx we take the proletarian as typical of one stage only in
the life of the individual, and one phase only in the life of
mankind. The juvenile type of the proletarian, with its dy-
namic and nomadic tendencies, immediately calls up all the
other phases of a man's complete life-cycle. In this respect the
modern class-warrior is handicapped in comparison with the
bourgeois. The "citoyen" really felt that aristocrats were super-
fluous. But no proletarian can conceive of a social machinery
without entrepreneurs. The proletarian class is not the only
one to survive; they should recognize the variety of character
and calling among the phases of life.
The Marxian demands a monotonous, one-type organization
Df Communistic youth; the post-Marxian will crave a poly-
phonic economy. Because man is man he cannot live, and
aever has lived, in one form of economy. I know, of course,
that modern thought circles around the two systems of capital-
ism .and Communism. They may be attacked or defended, but
they are always praised as modern in comparison with an
1lleged third system-feudalism. Capitalism and Socialism may
be systems which the modern man does not like; but the third
~ystem seems so contemptible that we simply need not know
1nything about it. Feudalism, they say, is just the economy
which immediately preceded capitalism.
Nothing is less true. Capitalism was preceded by at least
[our different economic systems; all of which have survived to
1 certain extent; and modern economy is based on an interplay
)et ween them all. Setting out from the immediate local "Serv-
h.ed the stage of continent-wide economy. In this progress
.orialism was replaced by Curialism, Curialism by Cameral-
and Cameralism by Colonialism. The complete list, as
ved in our various chapters, should be:
t. Manorialism
?• Curialism especially in Rome and the centralized
orders of the Church
J. Cameralism especially in the German states
~- Colonialism especially in the British Commonwealth
,. Capitalism especially in the industrialized areas
;. Communism especially in Eurasia
~r was any one of these systems more than the prevailing
~ncy of an age. Its respective adherents were but "more
fest in their conversation and in a more shining station,"
ugo de St. Victor put it nicely. All government mixes mo-
1ic, democratic, dictatorial and aristocratic elements. Well,
)mies mixes the elements of all the "isms" catalogued here.
ri we wish to study economics, we must not restrict our
of understanding to the concepts of one single "ism." It
he political and intellectual blindness of the liberal econ-
: to mistake his tools for ideals. It is clear that these sys-
are ideal types. In a way they are timeless. In reality some
em have always coexisted; not one of them can stand
. A modern college student may pass through all of them
e course of his life. As a farmer's son, he may have lived
:teen years in a household which, so far as his own horizon
is still a seignorial manor. He then passes through college
a scholarship from a quasi-ecclesiastical foundation. He
erve in the army as the servant of a cameralistic state. He
vork in a factory as a proletarian. He may open a shop as
italist, on his own responsibility, and hold shares in for-
enterprises in Shanghai or Straits Settlements which are
ged by a British firm on a colonial basis.
e economic interpretation of history is perfectly right in
~ and stressing one side of the revolutionary process by
. the way was paved from manor to continent, and
~L _ .• L!-L .._L_ ---------~- - -- •. 1
and State into a new geographical order of magnitude. The
economic interpretation explains, for example, many of the
colonial problems of American history, where capitalism was
delayed by the possibilities of colonial exploitation. All the
total revolutions of mankind have resulted in changes of a
social and economic order. Yet none of them would have hap-
pened if each people had talked only of economics. The secret
of the due process of revolution is a progressive change in
vocabulary. The Russian Revolution took the guise of an eco-
nomic revolution because the previous revolutions had stressed
other sides of the social order. Society is based on an economy
of forces, of which economy, in the usual sense, is only one
force. Soul, body, mind, hands, breeding; any one can be made
the centre of a revolution. The material side is always present
in history. But our study includes man's other allegiances in
Society. Man can live as man only because he can choose vari-
ous ways of approach to the organization of mankind. He can-
not be limited to one social or economic system. Systems are
man-1nade. In consequence of this truism, man can never be
enslaved by his own tools. The whole talk of a one-princi pie
economy seems inhuman. The dynamic transition from one
form of economy to another is the central problem for the
individual members of society. Any working economy always
has been and always will have to be a polyphonic economy,
made up of different forms of work and development for the
different phases of our life. A child needs a .patriarchal econ-
omy; an adolescent is perfectly happy in a communistically
organized camp; a man or woman at forty is concerned about
savings and private property; and an old man is perhaps most
interested in defending his hermit-like solitude. At one point
in our lives we must expand consumption; in another we vol-
untarily cut down all our needs. Man is too complex a being to
be imprisoned in one phase of his biographical evolution. So-
cialism is wrong, for no other reason than for its monotony.
The Socialists have believed too easily that capitalism was the
curse of all previous civilizations. Man has the undeniable right
to outgrow any form of social organization, because he is the
h and propagate economic uniformity than to acknowl-
man's natural multifariousness. The only stable unity
l we can know is beyond our reach. We are not God.
e age of total revolutions has passed away. A unified
y with a multiplicity of tribal characters and national
will be the "leit-motif" of the centuries before us. Mean-
, Communism and dictatorship are the daily political fare
mmanity which was thrown into the post-war world un-
red. Since the Marxists belong to the last generation of
neteenth century, their fallacies have come to light a bit
.han their nationalistic predecessors. The World War re-
both. Our common experience now forces upon us a new
)t of the world's revolutions.
FACE TO FACE WITH MANKIND.

reat revolution is the meaningful creation of a new vari-

1ong the existing varieties of mankind. Nat one of the
g national characters of Europe is older than a millen-
Not one of them was created without regard to the types
racter that already existed. Each nation was called upon
y its part in the great symphony in which man has lis-
to the revelation of his own character and destiny. The
ean "nation" is one variety, conscious of its relations to
her varieties of man. At the bottom of revolutionary
ons, we can draw the distinctive line between chance
on in nature and man's varieties in society. Man's dis-
n, as compared with animals and plants, depends upon
ion in· the face of the other varieties of his kind.
1ther respects man shares the fate of nature's children.
illy is he subject to the tremendous thirst for "diver-
of character" which pervades all creation and which
mted so much to Charles Darwin's reflections on the
of species. Every genus in nature splits into hundreds
ousands of classes; every human language splits into
:ores of dialects and variants. Life is not to be thought
tout constant variation. "To live" means to search and
~rience change and differentiation. This is a biological
eauallv va11ci for nhnt~ ~n1m~1(.'! ':l1'11rl m..::m
 Still there is a deep gap between natural reproduction and
the revolutions of our era. As we said before, civilized man in
Europe and America is not the offspring of unconscious evolu-
tion. He is the product of a revolution. The melting-pots of
revolution are full of images, revivals and reminiscences. Man
-not the individual, but man as the family of nations-was
created by a series of volcanic explosions to which people gave
themselves up heart and soul; and the result was a type hitherto
unknown, yet connected by a secret harmony with the previous
revolution-born types of Europe. From these unmistakable
results of our survey of the last thousand years, it becomes clear
that most of the dogmas of the nineteenth century about man
are untenable.
Men being products of revolution, we cannot continue to
speak of "man" in the singular without grave misunderstand-
ings. This "singular of man"-that is, the unity of mankind
present in each individual-is not so easily attained as our an-
cestors thought. Of course it exists, since every man is poten-
tially a "great divide" and a "transformer." Every man is "rev-
olutionizable" from one status of aggregate into another. In
this quality of changeability we are all peers. Both the socio-
logical statement that man is capable of any change and the
theological doctrine that we are sinners to be converted, are
true. He can be transformed into the most extreme· type on
the scale of types by the creative act of a total and world-wide
revolution. This is the one general truth about every man
which makes brothers of us all. We either are or can become
sons ·and descendants of certain creative acts called revolutions.
Yet all being products of revolution, we are differentiated by
the different stages represented by these very revolutions. Each
European became what he is because his brothers were what
they were.
Every national character arose because other types of men
existed which called urgently for a supplement· or an antag-
onist. The nations and classes of Europe are interdependent.
Through their respective great historical hours they came to
occupy the different stages of man's biographical progress; that
;.,. t-h"""'"' ..,. ... ,.-1 ...... :•~-l ... L~ ~--.a..----~-- ~.1- _ 1•r r
ary unconsciously. They enriched and re-created life con-
1ly. Nothing is gained when we try to explain the rebirth
~ through man by the operation of the glands or by ther-
namics. The application of chemical or physical concepts
iety loses all meaning in the face of man's power for the
naking of life. By the modest "Re" as in Revolution, Res-
Jn, Renaissance, Renovation, Recuperation, Reversion,
tduction, man is separated from the rest of his fellow
.res.
1 wishes to reproduce his kind. His kind being by princi-
changing species, homo sapiens mutabilis, man is con-
t with the actual course of "re" -generation. He selects
~ the other course; his "re" -building is a responsible act
face of the rest of mankind. Neither the mere reproduc-
f tall brutes full of vitamins nor the idealistic celibacy
philosopher is the theme of human history. Human his-
lls the tale of a free man's reproduction. The everlasting
always free and always a son, always an heir and always
ovator. That is expressed by the syllable "re" in revolu-
:ven in the moment of history when man seems wholly
ned with change and obviously despondent about any
)n, he still paints his experience as a re-volution, bring-
ck something pre-existing or prefixed in the order of
Out of millions of possibilities, one certain action is
.vith the support of the "re." The syllable "re" signifies
s action implies selection. The riddles of our human
ce lie in the fact that we are reproducing a changeable
~hat is why we are neither angels nor bees, and why the
;s angels of heaven and the swarming beehives of nature
suffice to explain human behaviour. The angelic light
iration and the busy persistence of the bees have to be
iled afresh in every century. Every century demands a
.ective principle reconciling the two.
up to us to find, to prepare for, and to establish pend-
ns of reconciliation in creating new varieties. In nature,
less species of fishes, insects, of plants, spread downward
1umerable subspecies and individuals, without involv-
, diSCUSSiOn between thesP V::ITlPtlPC• .:~
ttnYl t... ..... ~-1--
..
 species aware of its own varieties. From the very beginning of
primitive societies, from the totems of bear and fox and wolf
for the sections of a tribe, man has been moved by his urge to
justify his variations explicitly. The totems, by including more
than one species of animal, recognized man's plea for conscious
completeness. '"'Wolf" and "fox" in human society knew of
each other and existed for each other. Yelling and shouting
perhaps, they still named each other. In their language the
primitive tribes always embraced more than their own variety.
Classes, Nations, Types, are not at all like the mute varieties
of natural species, because they feel proud or humiliated by
being varieties. This draws a clear line between Sociology and
Biology. The Marshal Niel rose is not yellow because the La
France rose is deep red. But a king was a king because a knight
was a knight and a slave a slave. Mothers and daughters, fathers
and sons, artists and scholars, monks and generals, French and
Germans, English and Americans, are obviously related to each
other. Among men one variety presupposes all the others, and
justifies its right to exist among the others.
Marx's vision of the individual being mould~d into a kind
of type by the specific organization of his society is true. But,
strangely enough, his vision excluded just the creative results
of revolution. In our era the social relationship between the
classes in one city or country-rich and poor, gentry and knaves,
princes and subjects has been dominated by a more sublime
process. Social relations in one territory are subordinate to the
meaningful embodiment of human types iri national bodies.
· -Thus, when Marx re-discovered the polarizing processes be-
tween Capital and Labour, the civilized world was concerned
with the more complex problem of reproducing all genuine
forms of man in a family of nations. Marx cared for the Re-
production of Capital and Labour. But in the sober reality of
our era, Christians and Europeans are concerned with more
than a bread-and-butter policy. They have sacrificed their very
blood to provide one great power as a centre of reproduction
for every truly human type. Western man's types are not atom-
istic units, to be numbered and labelled as French, Russian,
ay be sixty-six equal members of the League of Nations in
eneva; but they are only single and special characters on the
ee of life of mankind. Only as implanted in a functioning
iiverse for a unique task are they real nations.
One very simple form of interplay between the different
ecimens of man prevents us from forgetting our interrela-
m. All men can speak to each other. Speech is the universal
tribute by virtue of which man is the one animal conscious
his variety. Divergent animals of the same family cannot
eak to each other except in human fairy tales. But it is no
ry tale that men can speak to each other.
I hear the atomistic linguist of the nineteenth century ob-
:ting: there are some three hundred different languages in
~ world, and he thinks of them as housed in watertight com-
rtments, with only a little osmosis between them. Latin,
ench, English and German seem languages-irrevocably
iral.
[ do not doubt the plurality of speaking groups and lin-
istic units. But I challenge the common interpretation of
~ir plurality as merely a meaningless sum. This is the great-
fallacy of the nineteenth century. Were not the Italian of
nte, the English of Milton, the German of Luther and
ethe, and the Russian of the Bolsheviks created by the rev-
ltionary desire of one part of Christendom to express itself
the others? Have we not found every important word in a
.ion's vocabulary deeply rooted in the human dialogue to
ich it committed itself in its hour of revolution? "Country,"
brigkeit/' State, Civilization, Revolution itself, visible
trch and Soviet Union-these were not particles of a local
material stock of words, called French or English; they were
cries coming from mankind in the throes of rebirth.
~ach new stratum of revolution-born Europe spoke a new
guage. Scholastic Latin was one of these regenerated idioms,
ken by all Europe till her other members added their new
s to the concert. Even in the nineteenth century, with its
h in nationalism and its philological creed of three hundred
.inct, permanent, objective languages, the faith that man-
_1 1
.,, .
thoven, Verdi, Wagner and Bizet answered the philological
heresy: that man doe.s not speak to every man. "Music," it said,
"is the universal language of mankind." For speech is more
comprehensive than is suspected in grammar schools.
Mankind does not try to speak one language. It does not·
monotonously speak the same words. But this is only because
in every dialogue the two partners assume different parts, rep-
resent different points of view, use different arguments. Variety
is of the essence of real speech between men. In the old days
when priest and layman, chief and henchman, spoke together,
they used two idioms as a matter of course. In language the
principle of idiom and dialect is inherent from the beginning.
By the multitude of dialects we are reminded of the innum-
erable quarrels, dialogues, disputes between the men of the
past. But interplay and mutual relation are at the bottom of
the tower of Babel which linguists study today by the queer
method of approaching each language separately. Each human
variety has its particular coagulated speech. Every speech is
dissoluble; it is retranslatable into the universal language be-
hind one separate tongue. Through translation, each variety
of man remains in contact with all the other varieties.
An efficient philology cannot believe in the material im-
penetrability of languages. It is not by chance that mankind
restored its unity after the Babylonian confusion of tongues,
by translating a single book into almost every tongue. The
translation of the Bible into three hundred languages made up
for man's loss of unity in speech. Furthermore, this restoration
by common terms of thought was the pride and rallying cry
of every total revolution in Europe and America. So definitely
is the revolutionary process of the last thousand years bound
up with the unification of thought by the common possession
of the Bible that every revolution passionately claimed a spe-
cial section of Biblical history as the classical text for its own
drama.
The popes of the Gregorian Revolution, from Victor II to
Eugene III, clearly recalled the last chapter of Biblical history:
the early centuries of the Church, during which the very canon
lelphic leaders, Saint Francis and his followers, as well as
~nocent III, lived the passion and cross of Christ and His
)ciples. Luther, by enthroning the "Predigtamt" of the Ger-
1n "Geist" (Spirit) as the controlling power of secular gov-
1ment, restored the prophetic office of the times of Elias,
hn and Jesus. Cromwell's and-William's England reinstated
~ Judges' function and the di vine voice of public spirit
Lich had ruled Israel before the Kingdom of David. France
nt in for the period before the age of revelations-natural
m, the God of nature and the rights of Adam before the
ll. And Russia and we contemporaries of Bolshevism delve
~p into the pre-adamitic and pre-historic forces of labour,
:, youth, primitive tribes and clans, hormones and vitamines.
rhis exact sequence, an inverted Biblical chronicle from
> A.D. back to the first days of life on earth, was traced by
·olutionaries who thought themselves completely free, inde-
1dent and original, and who violently opposed the terms
i slogans of every other revolution, preceding or following.
: they were all under the invincible spell of "One Universal
1guage for all Mankind." The vigour of this epic unity,
.ding the national revolutions together, was tested to the
1ost by our investigation of the American vocabulary. Half-
r between the English and the French, America might not
·e shared in this strange Biblical retrogression. But this was
so at all. We found in the pamphlets and sermons of the
r of Independence the figures of Noah and his sons sym-
izing the new cradle of nations in these United States!
:ih, Shem, Ham and Japhet, taking their places exactly
ween the Puritan Judges of Israel and the Rousseauist
lam," bear witness to the unity of "language" throughout
Christian era, in spite of all national languages. Regenera-
L of Language would be no faulty name for the due process
levolution. This process was the means of survival during
sixth day of creation.
 CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Farewell to Descartes

'HE YEAR OF HARVARD'S TERCENTENARY, 1936-1937, WAS ALSO

he tercentenary of a great intellectual event. Three hundred
ears ago the rational foundations of modern science were
stablished. It was then that the "Weltanschauung" which lies
t the root of our modern universities was first put into a book.
ts author had intended to write some comprehensive volumes
mder the proud title, Le Monde. But that philosopher, Rene
)escartes, was dissuaded by religious dangers from publishing
hem in full, and limited his task to the famous Discours de la
fethode. In it the great idealistic postulate of the "Cogito
rgo sum" was formulated, and therewith the programme of
1an's scientific conquest of nature. Descartes' "Cogito ergo
um" opened the way to three hundred years of incredible sci-
ntific progress.
When Descartes came forward with his "wondrous strange"
)iscourse, the scholastic type of university had long since been
ri decay. He replaced the principles by which medireval
llought had been guided ever since Anselm's "Credo ut intel-
~gam," with his "Cogito ergo sum." Among the possible start-
rig points for our powers of reason, scholasticism had singled
ut man's faith in the revealing power of God: Descartes sec-
nded it with his no less paradoxical faith in the rational char-
cter of existence and nature.
The "Cogito ergo sum," for its rivalry with theology, was
ne-sided. We post-War thinkers are less concerned with the
evealed character of the true God or the true character of
.ing for a truly human society we put the question of truth
:e more; but our specific endeavour is the living realization
truth in mankind. Truth is divine and has been divinely
·ealed-credo ut intelligam. Truth is pure and can be sci-
.ifically stated-cogito ergo sum. Truth is vital and must be
ially represented-Respondeo etsi m utabor.
)ur attack on Cartesianism is inevitable since "pure"
ught encroaches everywhere on the field of social studies.
;torians and economists and psychologists cannot stand the
a of not being "pure" thinkers, real scientists. What a frus-
. '
.ion.
am an impure thinker. I am hurt, swayed, shaken, elated,
llusioned, shocked, comforted, and I have to transmit my
1tal experiences lest I die. And although I may die. To
te this book was no luxury. It was a means of survival. By
ting a book, a man frees his mind from an overwhelming
>ression. The test for a book is its lack of arbitrariness, is
fact that it had to be done in order to clear the road for
.her life and work. I have done all in my power to forget
plan of this book again and again. Here it is, once more.
,hrough 'Man's own revolutionary experience, we know
·e about life than through any outward observation. Our
lynamic moving through society is the basis for all our sci-
~s of nature. Distant nature is less known to us than man's
val, through constant selection of the fittest, and through
;cious variation. Man's memories of his own experiences
1 the background of all our knowledge of society and of
tion. · -
:ience, and history in its positivist stage, underrated the
ogical element in both nature and society. They took
1ics and metaphysics, measurable and weighable matter and
:al and metaphysical ideas as the elementary and basic
tdations on which to build our knowledge. By beginning
abstract figures in physics, or general ideas in metaphysics,
never did justice to the central point in our existence.
neither physics nor metaphysics can offer us any practical
from which to enter the fields of biology or sociology .
.. '1 • 'I
ethics is there any bridge to lead into the realms of life, be it
the life of plants and animals or of human society. Dead things
are forever divided from the living; figures and ideas belong
to the limbo of unreality.
We can drop the methods of the past. The schemes of that
era, whatever they might be, were based on either physics or
metaphysics. Some were subjective and some were objective;
some were idealistic and some were materialistic, and many
were a mixture of both. But they were unanimous in assuming
that scientific thought should proceed from the simple facts
of physics or general ideas. They were unanimous in assuming
that either the laws of gravity or the laws of logic were primary
and central truths on which the system of knowledge must be
built. They all believed in a hierarchy with physics and meta-
physics at the bottom, as primary sciences, and a ladder reach-
ing upwards to the second and third stories of the house of
knowledge. Once we see the cardinal fallacy of this assumption,
Marx becomes as much the son of a bygone era as Descartes
or Hume or Hobbes. They all look astoundingly akin. They
all set out with abstract generalities on man's mind and on the
nature of matter.
We renounce their approach to knowledge. "Thought" and
"being," mind and body, are not the right points of departure
for the masteries of life and society. Physics, interested in the
mere being of abstract matter, and metaphysics, speculating
about man's ideas, are at best marginal methods for dealing
wi.th reality. They do not touch the core, since they begin by
investigating dead things or abstract notions. They are not
concerned with the real life, either of natural creatures or of
society. It is quite true that the universe is full of dead things
and the libraries of men full of abstract concepts. This may
explain the former presumption that, in studying a vast quan-
tity of stones, gravel and dust, or an endless series of doctrines
and ideas, one was attacking the substances which preponder-
ate in the world. Yet this presumption remains a vicious circle.
In a whole valley of stones and lava, one blade of grass is
enough to refute a system which pretends to explore the grass
· way, the presence of one living soul among the three
on volumes of a great library offers sufficient proof against
Lotion that the secret of this soul is to be found by reading
~ three million books. Coal can be explai~ed as the em-
ed corpse of ancient forests; no tree can be explained by
tigating anthracite only. Physics deals with corpses, and
physics with formulas from which the life has passed away.
sciences are concerned with secondary forms of existence,
ants of life. The scientific treatment of these remnants
be very useful; yet remains a secondary form of knowl-
Life precedes death; and any knowledge of life in its two
: of social and cosmic life can rightly claim precedence
both physics and metaphysics. The two modern sciences
;!, biology and sociology, must cease to take orders from

iences of death, physics and metaphysics.

a recent series of publications on biology, called "Bios"
riaugurated by the leading American, German, and Eng-
iologists, the first volume, written by A. Meyer and pub-
in 1934, is devoted to this Copernican revolution. Meyer
that physics has to do solely with an extreme case in
~' its most remote appearance. Therefore physics can
fittingly be described as the last chapter of biology than
· first chapter of natural science. The same holds good
~ social sciences in their relation to metaphysics. And the
; which interest the sciences of death and abstraction, are
• for the task which lies before the explorers of the life
oes o~ between heaven and earth, in the fields of eco-
s and bionomics.
the way, since the sciences under the spell of the old
:::hy of physics and metaphysics are usually characterized
: ending -ology (viz., sociology, philology, theology, zo-
etc.), a different suffix for the emancipated sciences of
>uld be convenient. When we speak of physiology, psy-
y, etc., we generally mean the sciences in their old form
assed by the physicist's and the metaphysician's errors.
speaking of Theonomy-as now commonly used by Ger-
1inkers-Bionomics-as the English usage goes-and Eco-
: life which have become conscious of their independence
om the sciences of death. Since we are facing the emancipa-
Jn of these bio-sciences from "amalgamate false natures," a
lange in name is highly desirable to discriminate between
eir enslaved and their emancipated status.
The reality that confronts the bionomist and economist
nnot be divided into subject and object; this customary
chotomy fails to convey any meaning to us. In fact, Mr.
exkuell and the modern school in bionomics insist on the
bjective character of every living object that comes under
e microscope. They have rediscovered in every alleged "ob-
::t" of their research the quality of being an "Ego." But if we
e forced to agree that every It is also an Ego, and every Ego
ntains the It, the whole nomenclature of subject and object
revealed as ambiguous and useless for any practical purpose.
Sociologists like MacI ver have taken the same point of view
the social sciences. The division of reality into subject and
1ject is becoming worthless, ay, even misleading. It should
clear that in the fields of bionomy and economy it is an
ltrage to common sense to divide reality into subject and
1ject, mind and body, idea and matter. Whoever acted as a
~re subject or a mere body? The Ego and the It are limiting
ncepts, luckily seldom to be found in vital reality. The word
:," which may not give offence when applied to a stone or a
rpse, is an impossible metaphor for a dog or a horse, let
>ne a human being. Applied to men it would reduce them
"cheap labour," "hands," cogs in the machine. Thus a wrong
ilosophy must necessarily lead us into a wrong society.
The four hundred years' dominance of physics inevitably
Lds up to the social revolution of the "It's," the "quantity"
~o which the workers are degraded by a mechanistic society.
ie politics· and education of the last centuries proved a dis-
er whenever they tried to establish the abnormal and most
iuman extremes of Ego and It as norms. An imagination
tich could divide the world into subject and object, mind
d matter, will not only accept the cog in the machine with
rfect equanimity, but will shrink even less from the cold
--L~-~---- _r A._1_ - ~--"' _11 _ , yy• ,. e
uae, typical of the deracine, will be thought of as normal.
'.oreover, when humankind approaches a development by
:h one of its members, a class or a nation or a race, is to
nslaved and made into an "it," a mere stock of raw mate-
for labour, or freed to become, as a group or class, the
~ tyrannic Ego-a revolution will arise and destroy these
~mes. Idealistic subject, the Ego, and materialistic object,
"It," are both dead leaves on the tree of mankind. Our
ey of revolution shows that they are both insupportable
~mes. The positions of Ego and It are deadening carica-
; of man's true location in society. The great European
ly of nations was not concerned with the production or
ring of ideals or material things, but with the reproduc-
of types of the everlasting man, such as daughter, son,
~r, sister, mother and, of course, their combinations.
ie abstractions and generalities that prevailed in philos-
from Descartes to Spencer, and in politics from Machia-
to Lenin, made caricatures of living men. The notions of
:t and subject, idea and matter, do not aim at the heart-
tr human existence. They describe the tragic possibilities
iman arrogance or pettiness, the potentialities of despot
;lave, genius or proletarian. They miss the target at which
pretend to shoot: human nature. Though man tends to
ne an Ego and is pressed by his environment to behave
an It, he never is what these tendencies try to make of
A man so pressed into behaviourism by awkward circum-
es that he reacts like matter, is dead. A man so completely
~ntred that he is constantly behaving as the sovereign Ego,
insane. Real man enjoys the privilege of occasionally sac-
1g personality to passion. Between action as an Ego and
.on as a thing, man's soul can only be found in his capacity
·n either to active initiative or to passive reaction. To veer
~en Ego and It is the secret of man's soul. And as long
nan can return to this happy balance he is sound. Our
ledge of society should no longer be built on non-existent
tctions like Godlike Egos or stone-like It's, but based on
nd me, faulty and real "middle voices" as we are in our
al interdependence, talking to each other, saving- "vou"
and "me." A new social grammar lies behind all the successful
twentieth century attempts in the social sciences.
King Ptolemceus' grammarians in Alexandria first invented
;the table which all of us had to learn in school: "I love, he
loves, we love, you love, they love." Probably that table of
tenses set the keystone into the arch of the wrong psychology.
For in this scheme all persons and forms of action seem to be
interchangeable. This scheme, used as the logic of philosophy
from Descartes to Spencer and as the principle of politics from
Machiavelli to Marx, is a grammar of human caricatures.
How far, in fact, does the "I" apply to man? For an answer
to this question let us look into the Imperative. A man is com-
manded from outside for a longer time in his life than he can
dispose of the "I." Before we can speak or think, the Impera-
tive is aiming at us all the time, by mother, nurse, sisters and
neighbours: "Eat, come, drink, be quiet!" The first form and
the permanent form under which a man can recognize himself
and the unity of his existence is the Imperative. We are called
a Man and we are summoned by our name long before we are
1ware of ourselves as an Ego. And in all weak and childlike
iituations later we find ourselves in need of somebody to talk
to us, call us by our name and tell us what to do. We talk to
:mrselves in hours of despair, and ask ourselves: How could
you? Where are you? What will you do next? There we have
~he real man, waiting and hoping for his name and his Impera-
tive. There we have the man on whom we build society. A
riation of philosophizing Egos runs into war, a nation of pure
'cogs in the machine" runs into anarchy. A man who can listen
:o his Imperative is governable, educationable, answerable.
t\.nd when we leave the age of childhood behind us we receive
)Ur personality once more by love: "It is my soul that calls
lpon my name," says Romeo. It cannot be our intention at this
noment to follow up the implications of this truth in all detail.
rhe hour for such a discussion will quite naturally arise after
~he facts expounded in this volume have received better con-
fideration by the general public.
However, one central result cannot be repressed even at this
~;:irlv c;.t!'.lO"P nf thP "rP-~lianmPnt nf thP cnri-:il ~rio~.,-.oc-" +-1-.. ..... ,.,.,, .. ..-1...
tdy of human revolution; and that is, that this study
riore realistic notions for man than the study of his mind
y. For the famous concepts derived from mind or body
s we have said, "subject" and "object"; and they are not
)Und in healthy men in a healthy society. Man as a sub-
as an object is a pathological case rather. The everlast-
n as a member of society can only be described by re-
~ the faculties which he has shown to us in the due
of revolution. He proved to be a beginner and a con-
r, a creator and a creature, a product of environment,
producer, a grand-son or an ancestor, a revolutionary
volutionist. This dualism that permeates every perfect
r of the civilized world may be summed up by two
hat fittingly should supersede the mislead.ing "objectiv-
i ''subjectivity" so dear to the natural scientists. The
~ms are "traject," i.e., he who is forwarded on ways
rrom the past, and "preject," i.e., he who is thrown out
mt into an unknown future. We all are both, trajects
jects. As long and in so far as our civilization follows a
rection we all are sitting in its boat of peaceful evolu-
d are safely trajected to the shores of tomorrow accord-
lie rules of the game. Whereas whenever society shows
of direction, when the old boat of its institutions seems
:er afloat, we are challenged by the pressure of an
.cy to take to an unknown vessel that we have to build
s and in the building of which more than one genera-
' be devoured. To build a new boat without precedent
o.ergency, is the imperative of the revolutionary. Our
.ness and our prejectedness, then, are our social im-
•· Their interplay is the problem of the social sciences.
is the evolutionary; preject is the revolutionary predi-
man.
e aware of the bearing of this attack on Cartesian sci-
Lind up as it is with Descartes' formula, "Cogito ergo
re take the full risk of leaving his platform forever .
. does not prove reality. Modern man-and one need
to exaggerations like Ulysses by Joyce-is made into a
.£ nerves bv thoue-ht. The modern rn~n 1~ npru-:»rlor1 h ....
so many "foreign-born" ideas that he risks disintegration by
thinking. The mind is not the centre of personality.
Before bidding farewell to the "Cogito ergo sum" we should
once more realize its power and majesty. This formula invited
us all to join the army of research in its fight against irrational
nature. Whenever a man was trained for the abstract Ego of
the observer, our mastery over nature was at stake. On this uni-
fying war-cry of "I think therefore I am" man founded his
glorious technical conquest of the "objective" forces and raw
materials of the world. The George Washington Bridge across
the Hudson is, perhaps, one of the finest results of this religious
co-operation between rational Egos. Nobody can remain un-
moved by its crystal-clear form. The alliance between all the
thousands and millions whose co-operation was needed before
man was capable of such a technical miracle is certainly in-
spiring. Or as President Coolidge said when he welcomed
Charles A. Lindbergh home from his flight to Paris: "Particu-
larly has it been delightful to have him refer to his airplane
as somehow possessing a personality and being equally entitled
to credit with himself, for we are proud that in every particular
this silent partner represented American genius and industry.
I am told that more than one hundred separate companies fur-
nished materials, parts or service in its construction." And
Lindbergh himself added: "In addition to this, consideration
should be given the scientific researches that have been in prog-
ress for countless centuries." This army of men enlisted against
nature under the password of "Cogito ergo sum" deserves our
lasting support.
But among men, in society, the vigorous identity asked of
us by the "Cogito ergo sum'' tends to destroy the guiding Im-
peratives of the good life. We do not exist because we think.
Man is the son of God and not brought into being by thinking.
We are called into society by a mighty entreaty, "Who art
thou, man, that I should care for thee?" And long before our
intelligence can help us, the new-born individual survives this
tremendous question by his naive faith in the love of his elders.
We grow into society on faith, listening to all kinds of human
alike, in the effort to justify our existence by respond-
he call. We try to distinguish between the many tern pt-
rs made to our senses and appetites by the world. We
follow the deepest question, the central call which goes
to the heart, and promises our soul the lasting certainty
~ inscribed in the book of life.
rn man no longer believes in any certainty of existence
trength of abstract reasoning. Yet he is dedicated, heart
l, to man's great fight against the decay of creation. He
'1at his whole life will have to be an answer to the call.
·e, near the end of this book, a short formula may be
use, to condense our whole endeavour into a sort of
ence. The formula we propose, as the basic principle
dal sciences, for the understanding of man's group life
rt as Descartes' "Cogito ergo sum." Descartes assumed,
~rmula, that the same subject that asks a question and
doubt solves the problem. This may seem true in
1tics or physics, though today with Einstein even this
hypothesis has become undemonstrable. In any vital
· who asks and we who answer are widely separated.
blem is put to us by a power which far transcends our
and by situations beyond our choice. Crisis, injustice,
epression, are problems put to us by the power that
mr miseries. We can only try to give a momentary
Jur answer, to the everlasting protean question. Our
~e and science are no leisure-hour 1uxury. They are
uments for survival, for answering, at any given hour
he universal problem. The answers given by science
om are like a chain of which every link fits one special
he wheel of time. The greatest and most universal
hat man has tried to give, like the Reformation or the
volution, even these, as we have seen, were temporary
and had to be supplemented after a century had

think" has to be divided into the divine: "How wilt

.pe this abyss of nothingness?" and the man's or na-
iwer, given throui!h the devotion of hi.~ whnlP 1if~
md work: "Let this be my answerl" "Man" is the second per-
1on in the grammar of society.
Having discovered, in every serious problem, the dialogue
)etween the superhuman power that puts it and those among
is to whom it appeals, we transfer the questioning I to regions
nore powerful than the individual. Environment, fate, God,
s the I that always precedes our existence and the existence of
)Ur fellow creatures. It addresses us: and though we may per-
1aps voice the question, we are no egos in serving as its mouth-
)iece. Persons we become as addressees, as "you." We are chil-
lren of time and the emergency of the day is upon us before
rve can rise to solve it.
Whenever a governing class forget their quality of addressees,
t suppressed part of mankind will raise its voice instead for
m answer. Society shifted from an unsupportable dualism of
iaughty Ego and suppressed It into its proper place as God's
tddressee at the point of outbreak of every great revolution.
\ new psychic type took over the part of answering the ques-
.ion of the day whenever a province of Christianity was denied
ts own proper voice. When Italy was a mere tool of the Holy
~mpire, as in 1200, when Russia was an exploited colony of
,vestern Capitalism-as in .1917-a new sigh was wrung from
:he apparent corpse: and no Ego, but a new appealable group
,vas born. No governing class ever survives as a mere self-
tsserting Ego. It will always survive by responding to its orig-
nal claim as God's "you."
Nations are grateful. As long as a shred of the original prob-
em is before the nation and as long as the members of the
~overning group show the faintest response to it, nations tol-
~rate the most atrocious eccentricities in a perfect patience.
rhis patience and gratitude may truly be called the religion
)f a nation. When a man-or a nation or mankind-wishes to
Je re-born, whether from too much solitude or out of the
:rowd, he must leave both the study of the Platonic thinker
tnd the machinery of modern society behind him, and become
tn addressee again, free from egocentric questions and from
:he material chains of the It. In our natural situation, that of
ior passive like the suffering under-dog. We are swimmers
buoyant and everlasting medium. The dawn of creation
Jn us, and we await our question, our specific mandate,
~ silence of the beginnings of time. When we have learned
ten to the question and serve towards its solution, we
idv_anced to a new day. That is the way in which mankind
.ruggled forward, century after century, during the las~
10usand years, building up the calendar of its re-birthdays
~ue testament of its faith.
~ responsibility of inventing questions does not rest on
ring soul. Only the devil is interested in bringing up su-
ous and futile problems. Rightly, Tristram Shandy begins
m outburst against the "If's." The real riddles are put
· us not by our own curiosity. They fall upon us out of
ue sky. But we are "respondents." That is man's pride,
what makes him take his stand between God and nature
Liman being.
LS our formula has been given in three simple words: Re-
~o etsi mutabor, I answer though I have to change. That
ill make answer to the question because Thou madest
ponsible for life's reproduction on earth. Respondeo etsi
or: By self-forgetting response, mankind stays "mutative"
ts answerable members. The "Cogito ergo sum" becomes
rsion of our formula, that version of it which was most
when man's path opened up into the co-operative dis-
of nature. In the person of Descartes, mankind, sure
iivine blessing, decided on a common and general effort,
·or all men, that would transform the dark chaos of
into objects of our intellectual domination. For the suc-
this effort, it was necessary to cast the spell of the Cogito
m over men to overcome their natural weaknesses and
ove them far enough from the world that had to be
1.ed. "C ogito ergo sum" gave man distance from nature.
this distance is useful for a special phase within the
of catching the questions and pondering over the an-
1d finally making the answer known. For the phase dur-
.ch we doubt, we are sure of ,.nothing . but our
-
thought;
leed. And since, in natural science, this phase is the most essen-
ial, natural scientists thought mankind could live on this phi-
osophy at large. But we know already that the expressing of
ruth is a social problem by itself. In so far as the human race
ias to decide today on a common effort how to express or
epresent truth socially, the Cartesian formula has nothing to
ay. And the same is true about the impression of truth on our
>lastic conscience. Neither the centuries that prepared and
inally produced Descartes nor we post-War people can found
mr common international and interdenominational efforts on
~ formula that says nothing about the dignity of impressions
.nd expressions, of learning and teaching, or listening and
peaking to our fellowman.
The centuries of the clerical revolutions were concerned
vith giving us the good conscience and the certainty of the
llumination on which Cartesius was able to found his appeal
o the general reason in every one of us. They had to study the
>roblem of impression, i.e., how man can learn what to ask
rom life. For that purpose, they had to establish another kind
>f distance within the thinking process. And the establishing
,f this kind of distance had to precede that secondary distance
>etween subject and objects as established by Descartes. If
•cI1olasticism had not done away with all the local myths about
he universe, Descartes could not have asked the reasonable
iuestions about it. In order that man might become able to
hink objectively at all, he had to know first that all wishful
hinking of our race was outwitted by a superior process that
>riginated and determined the part played by ourselves in the
1n1verse.
The real process of life that permeates us and gets hold of
is, that imperils us and uses us, transcends our off-hand aims
md ends. By revering it, we can detach ourselves from our fear
>f death, and can begin to listen.
As a principle of efficient reasoning, this detachment was
ransferred into philosophy by the greatest English philosopher,
\.nselm of Canterbury, in a sentence rivalling with the Car-
esian in conciseness: "Credo ut intelligam" is the principle
~t translate the Latin (which literally means: I have faith
der that I may come to understand) in our terms: I must
learned to listen before I can distinguish valid truth from
made truth. This, again, turns out to be but another ver-
of our proposed formula in its triangular relation. In
lm's statement the emphasis is on the hearing, as the
t for inspiration by truth. In Cartesius', it is on the doubt-
s the organ for transformation of this divine truth into
m knowledge. In our phrasing, the emphasis shifts once
, and now to the process of making known, of speaking
t the right time, in the right place, as the proper social
sentation. We no longer believe in the timeless innocence
ilosophers, theologians, scientists; we see them write books
ry to gain power. And this whole process of teaching again
the same century-long self-criticism applied by Anselm-
1d Cartesians to the processes of detaching us from God
rom nature. In society, we must detach ourselves from
steners before we can teach them.
h the Credo ut intelligam and the Cogito ergo sum
d very well for a time. However, finally the Credo ut
'gam led to the Inquisition and the Cogito ergo sum into
lmunition factory. The progressive science of our <;lays of
ft-bombing has progressed just a bit too far into the hu-
ies, precisely as theology had dogmatized just a bit too
when it built up its inquisition. When Joan of Arc was
oned under torture, her theological judges had ceased to
e. When Nobel Prize winners produced poison-gas, their
ng was no longer identified with existence.
· formula "Respondeo etsi mutabor" reminds us that hu-
ociety has outgrown the stage of mere existence which
Is in nature. In Society we must respond, and by our
of response we bear witness that we know what no other
knows: the secret of death and life. We feel ourselves
·able for life's "Renaissance." Revolution, love, any glo-
work, bears the stamp of eternity if it was called into
tee by this sign in which Creator and creature are at
Respondeo etsi mutabor," a vital word alters life's course
e outruns the alreadv nresent clei;ith _
 CHAPTER NINETEEN

The Survival Value of Humour

T US TURN A LAST TIME TO THE VENERABLE DESCARTES, OUR

versary, the great seducer of the modern world. In his book-
: on method, he seriously, without any trace of humour, com-
1ined that man had impressions before his mind developed
the full power of logic. For twenty years, so his complaint
ns, I was impressed confusedly by objects which I was unable
understand. Instead of having my brain a clean slate at
enty, I found innumerable false ideas engraved upon it.
hat a pity that man is unable to think clearly from the day
his birth, or that he should have memories which antedate
, maturity.
Have these naive confessions of the demigod of modern sci-
ce, the inventor of the mind-body dualism, met with the
.ly success that they deserve: unending laughter? This brings
1 the serious question of what th~ omission of laughter, or

application, mean in the evolution of science. Scientists

~m to be unable to grasp the folly of Descartes' remark. Com-
)n sense, however, acts on the principle that a man who fails
apply laughing and weeping in the discovery of vital truth
nply is immature. Descartes is a gigantically expanded
olescent, full of curiosity, loathing his mental childhood, and
istrating his mental manhood.
Descartes wished to have man's plastic age erased. He wished
transform man from a plastic preject thrown into life and
:iety so that it might be impressed and educated, into ·an
ipty subject to be filled with objectivity. This amounts to
.: ...... ,.,,. .i.. ....... +ho hnm'lln Tn;nrl ~hn11 lr1 rlPr1nhPr on lv thP 1mnrP~-
ls made on those parts of the world that are outside himself.
isequently the scientists today, for they all represent the
:tice of Cartesianism, think that they must not be impressed
nselves, that it is their duty to keep cool, disinterested,
tral and dispassionate. And they try hard to develop this
. of humour. 'T,heir inhibitions and repressions are such
. they give vent to their passions for trifles, and most un-
•ciously, only because they do not dare to admit them as
greatest capital of human investigation.
he more a man represses the impressions made upon him-
the more he must depend, in his orientation and conclu-
s, on vestiges and impressions made by life on others. He
ppressing some of the evidence of the world he is studying
a he claims to work with pure mind. Let us compare very
fly the physicist or geologist, the biologist or physician, and
own economics and metanomics of society. Then, it will
me clear that they all form a logical sequence.
~ology depends on impressions made by floods, earth-
~es, volcanoes. The mountains tell the story of their oppres-
: and rebellions. The outstanding data of this science of
1er Earth are those furnished by the most violent impres-
that mark an epoch in evolution.
uning to medicine, we easily observe that a physician will
recommend a new drug before some living beings have
it out. The serum or antidote becomes of interest when it
s a real impression on or in a living organism.
l true sciences are based on impressions made on parts of
vorld, on stones, metals, plants, animals, human bodies,
atom to guinea-pig.
ry well, if the impressions made on stones have brought
a special science, that of stones, and if the impressions
.ved in bodies have built up modern medicine and bi-
' then the impressions that are powerful enough to shake
ninds must be of greatest scientific fruitfulness. Aping,
ver, the natural sciences, the brahmins of the knowledge
n boast of their own neutrality and impassive indifference
e issue. No science being possible without impressions,
urn to an artificial laboratory where thev nrodurP pffprt~
t guinea pigs, and substitute the experiences of the guinea
gs for their own.
The truth is that the great Cartesius, when he obliterated
e impressions of the child Rene, maimed himself for any
cial perception, outside natural science. This is the price
lid by any natural scientific method. As far as it is applied,
td neutralizes the geologist or physicist or biochemist, it
>literates their personal social and political experiences.
ence, the sciences develop a habit which is disastrous for
e social thinker.
No scientific fact may be verified before it has made an
delible impression. The terror of revolutions, war, anarchy,
~cadence, must have made an indelible impression before we
n study them. "Indelible" is a quality that differs widely
:>m "clear." In fact, the more confused and complex and
olent the impression, the longer it will stick, the more results
lll it produce. A revolution, then, is the most important fact
r understanding, because it throws our minds out of gear.
f definition, a revolution changes the mental processes of
an. The scientists who sit in objective judgment before they
e overwhelmed simply disable themselves for their real task,
1ich is to digest the event. They do not expose their minds
the shock. In other fields of life, this is called cowardice.
The cowardice of the social thinker who denies that he is
ipressed and shell-shocked personally by a revolution or a
u-scar, makes him turn to statistics describing the buttons
t the uniforms of the soldiers, or makes him list the botanic
Lmes of the trees on the parkways where the insurgents fell.
he impressions that matter, as they are given, for instance,
Tolstoi's War and Peace (his own fears, hopes, etc.), he is
a loss to admit: and so he looks for second-rate impressions
at are too funny for words. And again, nobody dares to laugh.
Hence, scientific progress in the social field depends on the
gulating power of humour. Humour precludes wrong meth-
ls, by simply ridiculing them. Le ridicule tue. And as much
chemists need laughing gas, we need, to exclude the pre-
~-=--- =~----=---"--
_£ . . L=-1.: __ - _.._ ____ ...] ____ £
L--~-----
could place mirth on the throne of society, the war-scar
·oduced this volume would finally have vanished.
generation has survived pre-War decadence, the killing
War, post-War anarchy, and revolutions, i.e., civil war.
, before anybody awakens to conscious life in this nar-
world, unemployment, or airbomb-strafing, or class-
:ions, or lack of vitality, or lack of integration may have
e die of his fate, and stamped him forever. We daily
~ out of social death by a miracle. Hence, we no longer
r Cartesian metaphysics which lead man's mind beyond
rsical death in nature. We are groping for a social wis-
.at leads beyond the brutal "nomical" facts of economics
e monstrosities of the social volcano.
survivor, man smiles when realizing how narrowly he
:aped. This smile, unknown to the dogmatic idealist
scientific materialist, twists the face because a human
ias survived danger and therefore knows what matters.
ir illuminates the inessential. Our modern sciences, on
.er hand, die from the carloads of inessentials that are
i daily on the student's brain. In modern society the
evails that science is on the increase in bulk. They are
adding, adding to the mountain of knowledge. The
h.o survives is starting, starting, starting. For he is re-
g his mental powers after a social catastrophe. And he
lto the blossom of a flower with greater surprise and
at seventy than when he was a child. The survivor
hough he may lose in curiosity, gains in astonishment.
etanomics of human society, as put forward in this
.re tokens of the surprise that man survives. Beyond,
to say "meta," the nomical, the all-too-mechanical bru-
of social chaos, metanomics arise. They constitute the
•wledge that Nietzsche was the first man to acclaim as
)cienza," mirthful science. The results of metanomics
le frame to the joyous exultations of life; they allow
be resuscitated and revitalized whenever it has spent
rhe results of a "gay science" do not neutralize life,
>tect its exuberance. They bind together, in a common
i...~ -··--·=-·-·-- __ ..] ..._1 __ -- - 1 ,.........,, ••
its definite place in the autobiography of the race. Whenever
the survivors have experienced death they are able to instil
their dearly bought humour into the vigorous joy of youth.
Never did mankind acquire a common knowledge by storing
it away in libraries. Tell me, however, that you are willing to
experience your life as a sentence in humankind's autobiog-
raphy, tell me how far you share responsibility with the blun-
derers of the past, and when you have shown me to what extent
you are capable of identification with the rest of mankind,
I shall know whether your knowledge is survival knowledge,
metanomics of society as a whole, or merely your private
metaphysics.
My generation has survived social death in all its variations,
and I have survived decades of study and teaching in scholastic
and academic sciences. 1 Every one of their venerable scholars
mistook me for the intellectual type which he most despised.
The atheist wanted me to disappear into Divinity, the theolo-
gians into sociology, the sociologists into history, the historians
into journalism, the journalists into metaphysics, the philoso-
phers into law, and-need I say it?-the lawyers into hell, which
as a member of our present world, I never had left. For no-
body leaves hell all by himself without going mad. Society is
a hell as long as man or woman is alone. And the human soul
dies from consumption in the hell of social catastrophe, unless
it makes common cause with others. In the community that
common sense rebuilds, after the earthquake, upon the ashes
on the slope of Vesuvius, the red wine of life tastes better than
anywhere else. And a man writes a book, even as he stretches
out his hand, so that he may find that he is not alone in the
survival of humankind.
1 See the author's essay, "Die Krise der Universitat," in Die Hochzeit des
Kriegs und der Revolution, pp. 204 fj., Patmos Verlag, Wilrzburg, 1920.
 APPENDIX

Explanatory List of Maps and Illustrations

t Endpaper Map, The World Adjudicated to the Twelve

ties .
.e heads of the twelve Apostles are distributed according to
missionary districts. St. Paul has no particular section; on this
see our text on pages 534 and 536.
e map is "oriented"; that is, East is shown at the top, where
lise is placed. The "Antipodes," in the South, are marked by
1 lifting his foot. The more than humble position of Western
)e is significant; all the more so since the map originated in
xtreme West of Europe, in Northwest Spain, where it was
l by the monk Beatus, in 776, for a commentary to St. John's
ation. (The text, without pictures, was reprinted in 1935 by
merican Academy in Rome.) The map was reconstructed by
Ld Miller (Mappm Mundi, I, p. 35, Stuttgart, 1895). See also
Kenton, The Book of Earths, New York, William Morrow
:ompany, 1928.
four· hundred years, this type of world-map dominated the
;tic manuscripts. A revision took place only with the Cru-
Jerusalem now was put in the centre. This geographical
tion of the Earthly Jerusalem was quite abhorrent to the an-
:::hurch, which cared only for the spaceless celestial Jerusalem
tr picture on page 491 ). The revision depended on the ration-
)n which we describe on pages 531-536. The revised edition is
aed in the map from the Chronicle of St. Denis on page 293
book.
Page 28, The New Freedom in Choosing a Profession (Die Berufs-
wahl). Woodcut by Hans Burgkmair (1473-1532).
The original caption, in old German verse, says: "Many estates
are signified here; hence my reason commands me to choose wisely
among them lest I be tormented by horrible repentance." G. Hirth,
Kulturgeschichtliches Bilderbuch, I, p. 224, No. 360, Leipzig, sine
an no.

Page 36, Map of Pre-Siberian Russia.

Russim, Moscovice, et Tartarim Descriptio auctore Antonio ]en-
kensono Anglo, Londini, anno z562, here taken from Theatrum
Orbis Terrarum by Francis Hogenberg, Antwerp, 1570.

Page 44, Two Iconostases.

An iconostasis is the pictured wall separating the laity from the
clergy in the Orthodox (Greek, Russian, Bulgarian, etc.) Church.
The first, schematized, drawing is taken from Michael Rajewsky,
Euchologion (in German), plate XI, Vienna, 1861.
The second, an actual Iconostasis from E. Golubinski, Istoria
Russkoi Tserkoi, Atlas, plate LI, No. 1, Moscow, 1906.
Compare also N. P. Konakov, The Russian .Jeon, Oxford, 1927.

Page 52, Map of U.S.S.R. (Soviet Russia).

See the periodical USSR in Reconstruction, 1931, No. 6.

Page z56, Bird's-Eye View of Paris about 1610.

From Antoine Fontanon, Les Edits et Ordonnances des Rois de
France, IV, Paris, 1611.

Page z54, The Hapsburg Danger to France. Original map drawn

by T. H. Thomas.
The French territory is shaded; the Hapsburg possessions in
Spain, Italy, Germany, are in lines; the shifting allies or neighbors
of both are left white.

Pages 293 and 296, England's Place in the Middle Ages and 1n
Modern Times: two maos.
.,his map, from the Chronicle of St. Denis, 1364-1372, is
discussed in our remarks on the front endpaper map. Jeru-
is in the centre; England is on the left part of the lower rim.
peare must have this map in mind when he speaks of Eng-
5 "the utmost corner of the globe" in King ] ohn.
est's map of the world, 1578. The map was printed when the
l Court and the City of London speculated on the discovery
Northwestern Passages to Cathay. Now England is in the
, between the familiar and a new world. Mark the "Fro-
Sttaightes."
1er material in Miller Christi, The Silver Map of the World,
i, 1900, and A. E. Nordenskjoeld, Periplus, maps XXXIX,
XLIII; text pp. 19, 56a, 103, Stockholm, 1897.

10, The British Vision: Two Seals.

~verse of the Great Seal of 1651. This Seal, drawn by Simon,
n the obverse the House of Commons with the Table of the
pp. 306 ff.), and the legend: "In the third yeare of freedome
blessing restored" (pp. 277 ff.). The Great Seal of "the First
f Freedome Restored" dates from 1648 and is called "Seal
Count of Common Bench at Westminster." It already has
trinorama" (p. 294), as given in our picture, even more
accentuated. It is, however, far less developed in detail. See
3. Wyon, The Great Seals, p. 36, London, 1887.
1 used by the Admiralty Office, 1662 (right after the taking
ier and the Portuguese alliance). Charles II on the waves.
vever, noticeable that the inscription (our text, p. 302) does
k of the king but of the Britons as the kings of the orb;
ration of 1660 stressed the fact that by no means the king
t much more the whole nation, was restored (pp. 304 £).
'ertue, Medals, Coins and Great Seals, plate 23, London,

ader who wishes to study the contrast to the pre-Restora-

od may look up the Armada medal of Elizabeth and the
~harles I in 1640 and of his son used in the fifties, i.e., be-
~oyal "Restoration." In their picture of the king anointed,
these Seals still belong to the type shown on page 570 (King of
Sicily) of Guelphic days.
For the Britannia-Rule-the-Waves concept, see also Ben Jonson,
The Fortunate Isles and their Union, a Masque, 1626.

Pages 376 and 377, The Case for Wittenberg: two maps. Original
drawings by Thomas H. Thomas.
The conflict between Church and State that compelled the States
to reform is shown by contrasting two maps covering exactly the
same territory, one under the title, "One prince yet ntany terri-
tories," the other, "Many bishoprics yet one university."
1. Secular Saxony in 1520. The wondrous meandering of the
lands of Luther's prince, the Prince Elector Friedrich der Weise.
Down to 1918, the curious shape and small size of the Thuringian
and Saxon principalities, with Weimar, Gotha, Erfurt, Jena, Mein-
ingen, Eisenach, etc., has been an inexhaustible gold mine for ro-
manticism and political humour.
2. Clerical Saxony in 1520. Pre-Reformation boundaries of ec-
clesiastical administration. The residences of the majority of the
bishops concerned were located outside Saxony. In addition to this
"absentee" regime by "extramural" bishops, part of the circa 100
Saxon monasteries depended on superiors who resided outside the
principality. (Consult text p. 437.)
This map, though it is hard to believe that the real political
background of the Reformation should have been so little studied,
had to be drawn from poor resources. See Hans Beschorner in A mt
und_ Volk, V, pp. 12 ff., 1931, and in Catalogus Mapparum Geo-
graphicarum ad Historiam pertinentium, p. 169, Warsaw, 1933. For
the neighbouring principality of Hessen, with the University of
Marburg, the material is available in the book of Wilhelm Classen,
Kirchliche Organisation Althessens im l\J.ittelalter samt einem Um-
riss der neuzeitlichen Entwicklung, mit 2I Kartentafeln, Schriften
des Instituts fib geschichtliche Landeskunde von Hessen und Nas-
rnu Nr. 8, Marburg (Lahn), 1929.

Page 396, Right and Wrong in the Reformation: two medals.

1 MPrbl "trnr~ for thP RirPntf'n.:nv of WittPnhPn:r lTniversitv.
~. On one side, the Crown Prince of Saxony in his capacity as
:or of the University (see page 401); on the other, God (His
e in Hebrew) illuminating the town of Wittenberg, with uni-
ty and church. Two sovereignties: one. of the prince, one of
university. An engraving of 1540 enlarges on this topic well
may be used as a running commentary to our medal: its in-
tion reads (in Latin):
Wittenberg, Glorious City of God,
See and Castle of the True Catholic Doctrine,
Of the Academies of Europe the Most Famous,
And in the Last Millennium by Far the Holiest Place.
ter Koehler in Pflugk-Harttung, Im Morgenrot der Reforma-
p. 379, Halle, 1917.)
The Anglican distortion which made the Puritan Restoration
sary: Medal struck in honour of the Supremacy of Henry VIII
tgland, 1535. The king is proclaimed Head of the Church in
nee sacred tongues: Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. At the same
England is only one of the territories which he governs (origin
! Irish problem).

482, Christ swinging the axe, after the World War, and de-
ng His Cross. Mural by J. C. Orozco, Baker Library, Dart-
1 College, Hanover, N. H. See Baker Library Bulletin, March,

have added a sentence from Augustine which, strangely

h, empowers us to express this idea: Crux ergo htec ipsa cru-
ida est-The Cross Itself has to be crucified. (Epistulte 241 in
ienhese edition-38 of the former editions.)

t84, A Medi~val Christ. The Christian Virtues, Pity, Humil-

.d Wisdom, eagerI y crucifying Christ.
n a Dominican Legendary of German origin, end of the thir-
century, now in Keble College, Oxford, folio 7. See J. Sieg-
\1.itteilungen der Zentralkommission, pl. LXXXIII, Vienna,
Hanns Swarzenski, Die Deutschen Buchmalereien des XIII.
mderts, No. 343, pl. 61, and text pp. 19, 38, 96 n. I, Berlin,
5warzenski gives five more samples of the same theme: he
ces it to a sermon of Bernard de Clairvaux (Migne, Patrologia,
~' 27 5).

~e 487, The Pilgrim's Way in the Tenth Century. Original draw-

; by Thomas H. Thomas.
fhe documentary evidence for this road as in regular use dates
m the year 993 (Konrad Miller, Mappte Mundi, III, 156-158,
lttgart, 1895). This map deserves the title "Rump of the Roman
>rld."
~ot only does this road touch nearly all land that is "Roman"
the tenth century, but it also uses, and that for the last time,
man roads and bridges. Later, the bridges collapsed, and other
~ds, as for example after 1215, the St. Gotthard Pass, became
Jular.
:t is the rump of a Roman "World," because the Empire as well
the Church of Rome, in their ramifications, are comprehended .
.e reader will observe that the map is "oriented" like the front
!paper map of Beatus, because the contemporaries would look
s way (East at the top). Not· one of the modern nations is fully
ttained in it. The borderlines cut through Spain, France, Eng..
d, Germany, Italy, in the modern sense of these names. Most
the seashore was in the hands of infidels, Normans, Moslems, or
~eks. Huns made their inroads to west of Basel (see page 502).
e central location of Cluny is obvious, too (see pages 506 ff.).

~e 492, 1. Palace of a Medheval Emperor. Reconstruction of In-

heim ·on the Rhine, built by Charlemagne. See Adolf Zeller,
einhessische Bauten, Berlin, Walter de Gruyter, Heft, 2 (1936),
~e 8, pict. 26
rhe palace, of course, contained a church, one of those "cha-
/es elevees dans les clulteaux, comme un tour de plus de l'enceinte
tifiee" 0· Puig I Cadafalch, Geographie du Premier Art Romain,
?58, Paris, 1935).
:. The Emperor as Protector of the Holy Ghost, about 980.
\. bronze vessel. The Emperor Otto (either Otto I, 936-973, or,
re probably, Otto II, 973-983) carries a dove for the chrism and
 I - '-'

tank of oil for the catechumens. Legend: Hierusalem Tlisio Pacis.

ritte, Zeitschrift fur Christliche Kunst 32 (1919), p. 58, n. 7.

~ge 5oz, The Apostolic Emperor and Empress.

Christ crowns the Emperor Henry II, the Saint, and the Empress
1nigund; the Apostles Peter and Paul are officiating by ushering
em in. This miniature is from the manuscript elm 57 == no. 4452
Munich. It was painted between 1008 and 1014. Even Gregory
I did not dare to withhold the title of Saint from this emperor,
to forced on the Romans the form of mass which was observed
the Franks in Aachen. In Bamberg, the bishopric founded by
~nry, and to which he gave this manuscript, in the hymn ad sex-
n, Henry was called "Apostolus." See also Monumenta Ger-
nit:e Historica, Scriptores, XI, 235; Percy Schramm, Kaiser, Rom
d Renovatio, pp. 156-60 and 34, Leipzig, 1929.

~e 524, The Greatest Invention of the Middle Ages I.

farnessed with a collar, two horses are shown pulling twelve
>pie, that is, six times as many as before 1100. From Bible Mo-
~see Illustree, edited by Count de Laborde, V, folio 48, p. 328,
'is, 1911. We are adding this picture to the collection in the book
Lefebvre. In the H ortus De liciarum, Herrad, on planche 47/ 48,
ws the new collar; and two donkeys are able to pull fourteen
l and Dame Luxury. Two groups of facts in the sources of the
lfth century get their explanation now, one having been over-
~e?, and the other misinterpreted by the historians of art .
. The Church herself, during the twelfth century, and appar-
.y neither before nor after, is shown as a car with the twelve
•sties packed in it, and the four Evangelists pulling. See ms.
'.leiana, 270B, folio 32, col. 1, no. 2; Louisa Twining, Symbols
~arly and Medieval Christian Art, pl. 61, text p. 124, London,·
e.
The much discussed Culte des Carts is not a merely hysterical
>reak. Noblemen and women of the time would vie with their
ants in pulling by hand the cars loaded with stones for the
·ch. We see, from' our own reaction~ tn th~ T '3h'"' ...... ,....,.. __ ""''-- -
:mt today, how a new machinery provokes a moral reaction for
)Our. Mortet et Deschamp, Rescuil des Textes II (Paris 1929), 66 £.
For the contrast with the days before the invention, see two
Lgons on plate 65 (from a tenth-century manuscript) of Adolf
erton's Buchmalerei von St. Gallen, Leipzig, 1923.

ge 527, The Greatest Invention of the Middle Ages II.

The oldest picture of a car and four, about 1200. From Hortus
~liciarum by Herrad von Landsberg, pl. V bis., Strassburg, 1879-
. Also given in the systematic treatment of the invention by
iunt Lefebvre de Noettes, L'Attelage, le Cheval de Selle a Trayers
Ages. Contributions a l'Histoire de l'Esclavage, 2nd ed., figure
1, Paris, 1931.

ges 532 and 533, Transformation in the Iconography of the

•ostle St. Paul: From Scroll through Key to Sword: seven pictures.
1. Peter and Paul seated, Latin inscription, third century (page

J).
~. St. Paul. Ivory (about 1000), from the Imperial Abbey of
h.ternach, now in the Musee Cluny, Paris. Text: Dei gratia sum
quod sum. See our text, page 504, and A. Goldschmidt, Elfen-
'.nskulpturen, II, no. 25, Berlin, 1918.
J and 4. Pilgrim Tokens, showing Peter and Paul, each with a
{. These keys were sold to pilgrims in Rome before the end of
~ twelfth century (Anton de Waal, Romische Quartalsschrif t fiir
ristliche Altertumskunde und Kirchengeschichte, XIV (1900),
64, pL J, 1-4).
>· Peter and Paul, with key and sword, flanking the door of San
~tro di Ferentillo in Umbria. We give this specimen of the new,
egorian symbolism, first because it shows the final attribute of
Lll, and second because it so often has been misdated as being of
~ eighth century (Herzig, Die Langobardischen Fragmente in der
tei San Pietro di Ferentillo, Romische Quartalsschrift, XX
08), p. 77, fig. 7; P. Toesca, Storia dell' Arte ltaliana, I (1927),
l, no. 2; correct: A. Bertini-Calosso, Enciclopedia ltaliana, XV,

t, Rome, 1932). A similar misdating for a Greek picture of Paul

:h Sword is to be found in Tameson. Sacred. and f,P.UP.ndnr'\1 A rt
69, pp. 177, 191, London, 1857. Another pre-Gregorian Paul
h Sword was eliminated, incidentally, by Adolf Goldschmidt in
~ Elfenbeinskulpturen aus der Zeit der Karolingischen und
hsischen Kaiser, pl. 155e, Berlin, 1914: an ivory fan, of undoubt-
y Carolingian origin, in the Carrand Collection at Florence,
.tains a Paul with Sword. Goldschmidt showed that his figure has
en the place of an original, Carolingian, St. Agnes. A thorough
Lse-cleaning of the material is highly needed, with the motto of
old Muenter, Sinnbilder und Kunstvorstellungen der Alten
·isten, II (1825), p. 35: "There are no monuments with the
rds, prior to the end of the eleventh century, .which can be abso-
ly trusted." A. K. Porter, Crosses of Ireland (1931), pp. 42, 59.
Peter carrying the key, Peter the sword. Pilgrim tokens sold
tome after u90 (0. Wulff, Altchristliche Bildwerke, II (19u ),
2, pl. VI, no. 1898).
The earliest known sculpture of St. Paul with Sword, 1120-25,
v.f aguelonne-Herault. The dating is from A. Kingsley Porter,
ianesque Sculpture on the Pilgrimage Roads, fig. 1288, text I,
268 ff. He analyzes the parts of the church architecture and
)ture. Since the cathedral was rebuilt in l I 7 2, this date was in-
~ctly given to the St. Paul also by P. Dobschiltz in his Der
~tel Paulus, II: Seine Stellung in der Kunst, Halle, 1928.
1r the symbolic significance of the sword still valuable, Auber,
-;ire et Theorie du Symbolism Religieux, II, p. 151, Paris, 1871.
sources are Ephesians 6, 17: the sword of the spirit, and He-
s 4, 12: the word of God is powerful and sharper than a two-
:l sword. The frequent assumption, that Paul's sword is noth-
nfr the application of the later general rule that any martyr is
:ed with the instruments of his martyrdom, is refuted by the
.hat in the days when this rule prevailed Paul was shown with
:words.
tV historians have paid sufficient attention to the revolutionary
ess of the doctrine of the two swords. Most were satisfied to
~ a Carolingian source in which the emperor claimed two
ls! The best collection of the material is in the index to vol-
lII of the Libelli de Lite, Monumenta Germanit:e Historica.
general, three mistakes may be mentioned because thev PY-
tin why the great significance of this change is· ignored by the
perts: 1) our numbers 3 and 4 went unheeded; 2) several monu-
~nts were misdated or undated and blocked the road; 3) the deg-
lation of Peter, by the decay of Rome, and the special value
Paul for the new universality of the "orb" were as little evalu-
~d as the specific Gregorian emphasis on the two swords. (A. J.
rlyle, in his Medieval Political Theory, II, p. 206, New York,
l?8, writes: "There was here nothing new or revolutionary," with
tich compare our quotation from Hauck on page 559.)
For contrast, see coin of Pope Victor II (1055-1057). Although
eady a reformer, Victor put only Peter with his key on the coin
h.arles et Rohault de Fleury, Les Saints de la Messe, VI, pl.
{IX).
Further literature: R. C. Gillie, The Pauline Period, in W. S.
arrow, The New Testament in Art, pp. 64 ff., London, Hodder &
mghton, sine anno; Stefan Beissel, Bilder aus der Geschichte der
mst in ltalien, pp. 134 and 226, Freiburg, 1899; Anton de Waal
d Kirsch, Roma Sacra, p. 47, 1925.

ge 548, St. Thomas Teaching. The Scholastic Dream: everything,

m the heart, made visible.
Painting by Fra Angelico da Fiesole ( 1387-1455).

ge 55r, The Result of the Papal Revolution: St. Peter Crowning

~ Church.
~rom Louisa Twining, Symbols and Emblems, pl. 60, no. 4, Lon-
n, 1852._ See our text on page 541.

ge 570, Sacred or Secular Government: Two Sets of Symbols.

t. Frederick II as Roman Emperor. Eternal Rome and her eagle
~ on his seals and coins. The models are ancient coins. From
tillard-Breholles, Historia Frederici Secundi Diplomatica, I, page
lowing title page, Paris, 1852.
?. Frederick II as Secular King of Sicily. The oldest "secular"
.p gives the Straits of Messina, castles, fruit trees, cities of Sicily,
labria, Apulia (Huillard-Breholles, op. cit., VI, pp. viii, 800, and
re followinQ' title nave. Paris_ 1 Rno\
79, The Garden of the Empire. Original drawing by Thomas
om as.
City-States and principalities which claimed to have no
>r ("superiorem non recognoscentes"), north of Rome and
)f the Alps about 1300. All the black lines on the map rep-
political boundaries.

04, Excesses of Pilgrimage and the Commemorative Medal

Huss.
image to the miracle-working Virgin at Regensburg, Bavaria,
lmultuous scenes, by lVIichael Ostendorfer (1490-1559). Left
:ht of the church steeple are the obverse and reverse of a
'.n memory of Huss. It belongs to a series of coins struck in
td after for the centenary of the burning of Huss at Con-
in 1415. The coins were struck in Northern Bohemia by
Stephen Schlick (1487-1536). The legend runs: "Centum
s annis deo respondebitis et mihi"-When a hundred years
rned you will have to answer God and myself. Hence, the
the medal is 1415. Zeitschrift fiir Numismatik, 14 (1887),
Eduard Fiala, Beschreibung der Sammlung Biihmischer
und Medaillen des Max Donebauer, pl. LXIII, no. 3738,
10. 3451, Prague, 1889.

f, Joint Enterprise of the Americans. Original drawing by

~opley Greene.

99,000,000 acres of land for wagon roads, canals and rail-

anted b_y the Federal Government and the State of Texas
1823 and 1870. The grants given by Texas a~ounted to
,800,000 acres, one sixth of the area of the state (which
ie percentage granted by the Federal Government). They
.<led in our map because the United States had no public
'.n Texas, so that this state itself exercised the right which
ral Government held in the rest of the new states. See De-
. of Commerce and Labor, Bureau of Corporations, The
rndustry, I, pp. 220, 231, Washington, 1913.
publications on this matter are based on a map published
1nd thev all omit thP T~"'~"' ......,. . . . _ .. _ ,..._ --
~orical Geography of the United States by Charles 0. Paullin,
:ed by John K. Wright, map 56D, Carnegie Institution of Wash-
1932; J. W. Powell, Report on the Arid Lands of the United
es, Washington, 1879; The Public Domain, Washington, 1883.
· map purposely omits all detail.
n the map, a blank space is noticeable east of the northerly
le of Texas; this blank space is Indian territory in which land
Lts, quite properly, were not made, although a railroad crossed
area.

~ 728, Michelangelo Buonarotti (1475-1564): God with His

iim Creating Adam.
rom the Sistine Chapel, Vatican City, Rome.

i Endpaper Map, The World Adjudicated to Nobody: No

[on or Continent Is in the Centre. The map is given twice.
bipolar, transverse, elliptical, equal-area map. Like a Mercator
ection, this map distorts forms; unlike a Mercator map, it rep-
nts areas exactly, and shows all the connections possible across
poles. The first map of this type was drawn, perhaps in an un-
ressi ve technique, by Sir C. F. Close in Great Britain's Ord-
ce Survey, Professional Papers, New Series, volume II, i927.
s seems to be omitted in the otherwise exhaustive study by
t-I. Deetz and Oscar S. Adams, Elements of Map Projection,
). Department of Commerce, Coast and Geodetic Survey, Spe-
Publication No. 68 (Fourth edition revised April 2, 1934). See
C_. H. Deetz, Cartography (Special Publication No. 205), pp.
·., Washington, 1936, and this book, pp. 465, 604 £., 630, 715,
729.
INDEX
 INDEX

The sign - in the text repeats the catchword: war; World - ==World War.
ee" means that the quotations are put under the other catchword. Additional
~erences to related topics are given in parenthesis; "Atlas (geography),"
!ans that relevant material may be found under the catchword "geography,"
>. When names of persons are mentioned in the text the index supplies the
tes of their lives in parenthesis. St. Denis seek under Denis. For the word
~volution" the changes in terminology and concept are listed completely;
the different revolutions the various chapters should be consulted.

:hen, 504, 765 Albigenses (perish 1229), 585

Lilard (1079-u42), 150 ff., 540 (au- Alexandria, 746
10r of hymn), 546, 593 n. 6 Alleghenies, 641
ication of princes, 408 n. 7, 625 allegiance, 240, 542 f., 553, 630, 732;
1litionists, 532, 668 change of, 22, 729
aham, 652, 711 Alleluja, the Great, 589, 594
ractions, 70 ff., 326, 720, 742, 745 All Saints, 507, 514
:iemy, 162, 633 All Souls, 9, 506 ff.
on Fram;aise, 244 Alphas, see paganism
402 ff. Alsace, 456 f., 615
concept of, 690 St. Ambrose of Milan (340-397), 14
rn (Biblical), 18off., 217, 236, Amendment, Fourteenth, 667 ff.
3 f., 678, 711, 727 f., 739 America, Promise of -, 237, 672, 678 ff.
ns, Henry (1838-1918), 696 America, presidency of the U. S. of
ns, John (1735-1826), 349, 644, -, 575
7, 659 American Academy in Rome, 759
ns, John Quincy (1767-1848), American Declaration of Independ-
? ff., 668 . ence, 127, 645 ff.
tation, 628 ff. Americans and U. S. of America, 6,
.ive thinking, 757 IO, 16, 27, 38, 41, 131, 146, 165,
~ssees, 537, 750 168 ff., 205, 215, 256, 278, 300, 327,
iralty Office, 761 329, 355, 390, 403, 442, 449, 461, 575,
NSOn, 517 627, 631, 633, 635, 640, 643-686, 739
ius of Corbeil (12/13 cty.), 145 American vocabulary, 329, 683, 739
ylus (525-456), 8 Ames, Fisher (1758-1808), 673 note
ire" (Dreyfus -, 1894-1906), anarchy, 447, 746
ff. ancien regime, 194, 286, 700
l, 641 Andorra, 459, 575 f.
see Old -, - of Reason, - of Fra Angelico da Fiesole (1387-1455),
relation, - of Science 768
;nes, 767 angels, 727, 735
rl, 616 Anglican, 285, 694 £., 729, 763
nent, 682 Anglo-Israelites, 331, 680
versendung, see acts d'Annunzio, Gabriele (1864-1938), 250
",J,,,.. .. ~i.14•--,, - - - ,.
l, 149
selm of Canterbury (1033-1109), St. Augustine (354-430), 763
:63, 740 Australia, 641
selm of Lucca (1036-1086), 523 Austria-Hungary, 200 f., 404, 413,
,wer, 494, 537, 568, 749 ff. 422 f ., 6o7 ff.
efact, 686 Austria, German part of -, 128, 456,
ti-Christ, 363, 552 ff., 563 620, 638
icipations, political, 555 ff. authority, 10, 554 f., 66o
tipodes, 759 autobiography (biography), 21 f., 708-
iquity, 454 f., 494; end of -, 690 f. 739
isemitism, 222 ff., 421, 440, 601 Ave Maria, 581
>logetics, 6og · Avignon, 596, 598
>sties, apostolic, 503 ff., 514, 554, Augustus Cresar Octavianus (63 B.c.-
10, 612, 759, 765, 766 ff. 14 A.D.), 109, 554
>stolus Europa! (title of G. Capis-
rano, canonized in 16go), 601 Bach, Johann Sebastian (1685-1750),
>eal to the world, 676 417, 420
•riori, 181; - of social science, 757 background, 66g
tgon, 553 Bacon (1561-1626), 68
tgon, Louis (1897- ), 254 f. Balkans, 35 f., 633
itration, 588 f., 597 baloburger, 577 f.
itrariness, 719 ff. Baltic States, 615, 636
ma imperii (secrets), 297, 401, 453; Balzac, Honore de (1799-1850), 245 ff.
- revolutionis, 17 ff. . Bamberg, 765 .
hetypes, 715 Bancroft (1800-1891), 692
tino, Pietro (1492-1556), 701 Bar, the American -, 683, 685
:tocracy, 348, 453 ff., 568, 652 f. Barbeu de Bourg, 477
stotle (384-322 B.c.), 109, 453 f., 726 Barbey d'Aurevilly (1808-1889), 250
berg, 615 Baruch, B. (born 1870), 637
nada, 299, 337, 761 Basel, 764
nagnacs (around 1440), 699 Bastille in Paris, 129, 131 f., 135, 172,
tistice, 641 175, 661
ty, IOI, 445 f., 612 Baudelaire (1821-1867), 251
taldo di Brescia (uoo-u55), 571, Bavaria, 396, 404, 413, 614 f.
58 Baxter, Richard (1651-1691), 291
)gance, 595 ff. Bayreuth, 422
artist, 250 f., 417 ff., 436 f., 544, Beatus (eighth century), 759
78, 583 ff., 598, 702 ff., 713, 725 Beaumarchais, Caron de (1732-1798),
~ticism, 627 169 ff., 351
l, 37' 40, 93, 179, 493 Becquerel, A. Henry (1852-1908), 208
uith, Herbert Henry, Earl of Ox- Beethoven, Ludwig van (1770-1827),
)fd. (1852-1928), 284, 326 250, 420 £., 737 f.
nt (consent), 649 f. behaviourism, 708, 745
milation, 218, 234, 680 Belgium, 148, 294, 615, 633
lsi, 585 Belle Alliance, 693
ology, 664 Bellievre, French minister to England
is, atlantic, 295 ff., 680 under Cromwell, 358 n. 24
ene, 406 Belloc, Hilaire (1876- ), 178
ens, 142, 695 Benda, Julien (author of La Trahison
os, Mount, 36 n. 1, 120 des Clercs; 1867- ), .254
lla (406-453), 633 Benet, Vincent Stephen (1898- ), 695.
>er, Abbe, 767 710 f.
toritas, 554 f. Benjamin, 535
ible, 306, 423 Berenson, B. (1865- ), 702
~sburg, Confession of - (1530), 394, Bergson (1859· ), 185 f.
)6, ~Q7 Berlin. LU.I. 61 ~
i de Clairvaux (1091-1153), Bologna (Italy). 571, 589
763 Bolsheviks, 65 ff., 739, passim
(1790-1868), 241 f. Bonaparte, Letitia, Madame-Mere of
ot (1827-1907), 247 Napoleon I (1750-1836), 132
·ner, Hans, 762 Bonaventura, Doctor Seraphicus (1221·
1809-1886), 404 1274), 162, 586 n. 5
Henry (Stendhal, 1783-1842), Boniface VIII (born 1228, pope 1294-
693 1303), 349, 489
70, 141, 219 ff., 225, 236, 271, Book of Common Prayer, 312 ff.
>So ff., 727, 738 boost, 683
·, 405 f. Bora, Katharina von (1499-1552; mar-
:ic ladder, 681 ried to Martin Luther in 1525), 382
1ical progress, 734 Borgia, Rodrigo (Pope Alexander VI,
1ical stages, 716 1492-1503; his son Cesare, 1478-1507),
iical tradition of Jesus, 716 598, 629
iy, autobiography (life-cycle), boss, 659
59 ff., 109, 156 f., 188, 275, 358, Boston, 349, 656, 666
419, 426, 585 ff., 588, 684, Boston tea party, 647
714 ff., 754, 757 f. Boucher, Jonathan (1738-1804), 654
I purpose, 620 Boulanger (1837-1891), 234
l method, 691 boundaries, see frontier
:s, biology, 5 ff., 467, 480 ff., Bourbons (1589-1793; 1814-1830), 16,
2, 733 ff., 736, 743 304, 605
"JS. sociology, 736 Bourgeois, 105, 167 ff.
43 Breasted, James Henry (1865-1935), 118
;es, 744 Brest-Litovsk, peace of - (1918), 99 ff.
Paul, 53, 93 bride, 9, 355, 709
political significance, 448 ff., Britannia rules the waves, 299, 761 f.
of a world, 672 British Empire, 298, 351, 357, 641, 649,
ishopric, 244, 262, 315, 322 f., 654
434 f., 507, 514, 520, 531 f., Brown. Rollo 'Valter, 176
508, 762 Bruning, Heinrich (German chancel.
Otto von (1815-1898), 218, lor 1930-1932, born 1885), 11, 222
} Briand, Aristide (1862-1932), 244
)rges (1838-1875), 738 bridges (stone -, Roman), 527, 764
~. Sir William (1723-1780), Brunetiere (1849-1906), 196
~. 336, 645 Brussels, 615
lliam (1757-1827), 330 f., 5u, Buchanan, President (1791-1868), 160
Budapest, 616
n (1846-1917), 233 f., 250 budget:, 64, 267, 282 ff., 490, 541
Giovanni (1313-1375), 590, Buenos Aires, 636 f.
Bulgaria, 35 f., 633
an (1530-1596), 406 ff., 542, Bull (Papal - of 1460), "Execrabilis"
forbidding appeal to a council, 6m~
;tial, 500 "Bundschuh," 585
ybody, 4, 50, 85, 100 f., 542, Bunyan, John, author of the Pilgrim,s
I 621, 683 Progress (1628-1688), 333
1omic," 108 Burckhardt, Jacob, author of the Kul-
nal, 655 tur der Renaissance (1818-1897), 702
tic," 337, 407, 574, 622, 624, Burgkmair, Hans (1473-1532), 28, 760
Burke, Edmund (1729-1797), 271, 348,
597 350, 654, 692 f.
;33· 657 ff. Burnet, bishop (1643-1715), 338
s (1885- ), 472 business, 77 ff., 85, 403 f., 428, 670
ne (1507-1536), 273, 479 Byron, Lord (1788-1824), 149, 556
non (1783-1830), 147 Bvzantium_ fiqq
cabinet, 239, 283, 517 chanting, 417 ff.
Cresar, Caius Julius (100-44 B.c.), 148, Chapman, John Jay (18foH933), 221,
200, 486, 503, 553, 628 400
C~r, Augustus, see Augustus character, change of -, 625 ff.
Caillaux, Joseph (1863- ), 247 Charlemagne (742-814), 143, 196, 492,
Calabria, 586 494, 505, 764
calculation, 77 ff. Charles of Anjou, later of Sicily (1220-
calendar, 8, 6g4 ff., 705, 751; Russian, 1285), 566
121 ff.; French, 211 f.; English, 305, Charles VI of Austria-Hungary (1887-
~p4, 318; German, 449 f.; American, 1922; governed 1916-1918), 663
123; Cluniac, 507; Roman, 584 Charles I, king of England (16oo-1649),
California, 40, 667 160, 317 ff., 657' 761
Caliphate, 486, 532, 542 Charles II of England (1630-1685),
Calvinism, 314, 321, 420, 405, 657 302 ff., 761
Cameralism, 731 Charles X, king of France, before
Canada, 309, 344, 649 Count d'Artois (1757-1836; governs
Canon Law, 270 f., 372, 382 1824-1830), 133, 172
canonization, 6g4, 699 Charles XII of Sweden (1682-1718), 663
cant, 338 Charles V, Roman Emperor (1500-
Canterbury, archbishop of -, 295 1558; abdicates 1556), 153 f., 378,
Capistrano, Giovanni (1386-1456) (apos- 408
tol us), 6o1 ff. Charnwood, Lord, 655 f.
Capital, State -, 237 f., 331, 490 Charta Magna, given by John Lack-
capitalism, 213, 624, 667, 731 ff. land in 1215, 278, 284, 310 ff., 668,
car, invention. of new type of -, 526 ff., 684, 695
765 f. charter, 286, 302
car and four, 766 Chicago, Century of Progress, 105
Cardinals, 531, 538, 595, 598 f., 6o2, 700 child, 7 1 5· 717, 754
Carinthia, 615 China, 641
Carlyle, A. J., 768 Choiseul (1719-1785), 646 f.
Carlyle, Thomas (1795-1881), 134, 354, Chorale, 417 ff.
615 Christ, 443, 504, 534, 557 f., 763
carpet-baggers, 652 Christ, pre-existence of -. 253
Cartesianism, 414, see Descartes Christina of Sweden (1fo?6-1689; abdi-
Carthage, 621, 633 cates as queen 1654), 408, 663
Catalonia, 625 Chi:istmas tree, 427
catastrophe, 757 chronology (calendar), 690
catechism, 408, 448 f. Church, 35 ff., 42 ff., 461 ff., 489-620,
Cathay, 761 738; Anglican -, 272 ff., 310 ff.; Gal-
Catherine II, empress of Russia ( 1729- lican -, 149 ff., 198 ff.; visible vs.
. - 1796), 54, 55, 172, 403 invisible -, 363 ff.; audible -, 406,
Catholicism, 619, see Church 417; Orthodox -, 35, 42, 482, 505,
celibacy, 540, 587 585, 76o
Celsius, Anders, from Upsala, Sweden Church, Mother -, 581 ff.
(1701-1744), 2o6 church as car, 765
centralism, 29g ff., 348, 2og ff., 455, church-fortress, 491, 764
495 ff., 506 churchlike institutions (quasi-reli-
century, 245, see nineteenth, etc. gious), 178, 390, 417
ceremonies, 662 Cicero, Marcus Tullius (106-43 n.c.).
Chambord, Count de, last Bourbon 654 f.
(1820-1883), 197 Cid Campeador (1040-1099), 517
Chamisso, Adelbert von - (1781-1838), citoyen, 730
430 Ci tta del Vaticano, 563 f.
chance (opportunity), 182 cities, 486 ff., 6gg
chancellors in England, 266 ff.; in Ger- City of God, 231
m~riv C>~n
 central importance of the term, Communion, Holy, 582 (Last Supper)
: (body politic) Communism (Russia), 215, 622, 730 ff.
law, 372 ff. completeness, 612 ff,, 676; - of Amer-
list, 174 ica, 670
service, 362 ff. concept of God, 724
Nar, 17 ff. passim; also: American Conception, Immaculate, 396
W. and revolution; English -, concord, 551
ff. concordat, 243, 541, 563 f.
ation, 297, 416 f., 438 (society) concorder, 554
e, civilized, 372, 628 concordia, 610
, civilitas, 563, 578 Condorcet (1743-1794), 129, 131
371 confederation, 641, 649 ff.
'545 confusion, Babylonian, of tongues, 738
; Virginis, 582 congregation, 313, 321, 521
tdon, Edward Hyde (1609-1674), congregation of congregations, 685
I., 323 Congress, 686; Continental -, 66o, 673
Joseph, 646 conjunction, conjuncture, 309, 343 f.
u7, 642 Connecticut, 338, 680
)7 ff., 215, 458, 736; ruling -, Conrad, Joseph (1857-1924), 98, 465
627 ff., 671 Conradin of Swabia (b. 1252; executed
ar. 104ff. 1268), 566
' 199, 597 conscience as political concept, 267,
> society, 119, 558, 717 276 f., 379, 282 ff., 400, 686, 723:
tceau, Georges, 116 f., 135, 142, wounded -, 567 ff. (science, con-
208, 233, 238, 245, 255 sciousness); - of prince, 267, 273,
.t IV, pope (governed 1265- 276 f.; "the European -," 412
, 566 consciousness, 92, 715
254, 371, 520, 550 conscription, 359 £.
revolutions, 594 ff., 658 consent, 265, 682
71 conservative, 16, ·352
;if C. F. (1865- ), 770 consistorium, consistory, 396 f., 401,,
506, 530, 544 f., 591, 764 537
lt, 18 Constance, 615, 769
honour, 663 Constantine (272-337), 504; donation
ion, 279, 413 of -, 600 (forgery of about 775 A.D.)
~nee, 453 ff., 731 Constantinople, 585, 700, 705
rgo sum, 740 ff. constitution, 49, 56, 132 ff., 196, 279,
r Edward (1552-1634), 263, 268, 622, Q64, 670 ff.
87, 524 Constitution Day, 448 ff.
ivention of, 526 f ., 765 f. consumption, 732
~. 49 f.,. 574 contemporaneity, 6, 211 f., 475, 501,
731 540, 640, 670 (co-existence)
)ffi, 731 f. continent, 640 ff., 676; a new -, 102
16, 89, 95, l I 2, 299 ff., 348 f ., Continental Congress, 660, 673
98, 641, 643 ff., 648 ff., 654, continuity, maximum of historical, 568
convention, constitutional, 685
principle of, 722 conversus (religious conversion), 503,
·n, 639 519, 660, 709, 727, 734
Law, 261 ff., 270 ff., 379, 625, Coolidge, President C. (1872-1933), 668,
8 ff., 685 748
;, 263 ff., 365, 477, see parlia- co-operation, 108, 683, 686, 715, 748
Copernicus (1473-1543), 345
sense, 477, 754 copyright, 30 ff.
vealth, 29, 291, 300 f., 660 f., Corn Laws, 597
corporation, 214, 266, 309, 506, 667 ff.
~ of 187 I, 67, 13_1), 214 £.. 6~"7 · C,orn 11 .;:. r.hri"ti n..,..., ~ ·0 --- - " ~
cosmos, 719; cosmopolitanism, 549 Dartmouth, William, Earl (1731-1801),
councils of the Church, 378, 439 f ., 349
538 f., 572, 599 ff. Dartmouth College Case, 29, 685 n. 18
counsellor, 273, 279, 414 Darwin, Charles (1809-1882), 7, 111,
counter-revolution, 623 466, 619, 733
country, 321 ff., 737 daughter, 112, 131, 356, 616 ff.
countrification, 328, 4 77 David, King, 6g4, 739
courts, 31, 32, 68o ff., see curia death, political function of, 508, 622,
Cousin, Victor (1792-1867), 137 627, 757 £.; Black Death (1348), 5go;
covenant, 681, 682, 686 social -, 757 f.
Cracow (Poland), 616 debts, moratorium of -, 636
creation, 466, 681 ff. decay, 703, 749
creator, 724 decentralization of industry, 32
credo ut intelligam, 740 ff. decimal system, 201 ff., 210 £.
critical power, 536, 561 Declaration of Independence, 645 f .,
Croker, J. W. (1780-1857), 342, 352 648, 656, 665; - of Rights, 654
Cromwell, Oliver (1599-1658), 278, Deetz, Charles H ..(1864- ), 770
288 ff. (passim), 357 f., 555 ff., 560, Defender, 544; - of the Faith, 613
662, 680, 739; allusions to -, 350, deity, 250, 727
647 Dekabrists (Decembrists), 56, 61
Cromwell, Thomas (1490-1540), 283 Delaisi, Fran~ois (1873- ), 242
cross, 229, 386, 448, 482, 484, 763 Delaware, 651; - corporation, 668
crown, 505, 618, 625 deliberatio de statu imperii (1200),
crucifixion, mystical, 763 538, 568 f.
crusades, 545-552, 584-586, 759; First demigod, 754, see hero
-, 555; Fourth -, 585; Children's demiurge, 182
-. 585; - of the star-spangled ban- democracy, 173, 599 ff., 612, 615, 628,
ner, 6, 631 653 ff.; - of scholars, 430
crusader, 386 St. Denis, chronicle of (between 1364
Crusoe, Robinson, 184 and 1372), 761
Culte des Carts, 765 f. Denmark, 493, 615
curia, court (feudal, papal), 491, 517 f., denominational, 652, 704
527; - Romana, 153, 345 depression, 106 ff., 637
Curie, Marie, born Sklodovska (1867- Descartes, Rene (1596-1650), 156, 185.
1934), 206 ff. 187 f., 195, 297. 740 ff .• 754 f.
Curie, Pierre (1859-1906), 207 descendants, 734
Curzon, Lord (1859-1925), 357 Deschanel, Paul (1856-1922), 135
cycle of political forms, 703; - of design for living, 683, 686
revolutions, 718 Desmoulins, Camille ( 176o-1794), 128 f.
czarism, 40 ff. despair, 651 f., 698, 746
Czechoslovakia, 426, 612 ff. despotism, the new, 625
destiny, manifest, 721 £.
devil, Satan, 11, 53, 111, 389, 390;
Damiani, Petrus (1007-1072), 534
"Holy Satan"-Gregory VII, 523
Dane, Nathan (1752-1835), 650 dialectics, historical, 67, 568, 593 ff.
Danes, see Denmark
dialects, 177, 733, 738
Dahlmann, Friedrich Christoph (1785- dialogical history, 711
1800), 692 Diaz, Porfirio (1830-1915), 466
dandy, 356 Dickens, Charles (1812-1870), 241
Daniel, prophet, 222, 586 dictatorship, 29, 119, 453 ff., 629, 700,
Danilevski, Nicolai Jakoulevich (1822- 716, 718
1885), 139 dictatus Pap~, 537 ff., 568, 602
Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), 51, 499 ff., dictionary of political language, 11 f .,
577, 704 69, 46o ff., 476 ff., 685
Danton (1759-1794), 126 Diderot, Denis (1713-1784), 55, 60, 163
 779
{parliament), 364, 440, 575 ff. ego, 180, 182, 187, 312, 419 f., 725 ff.;
omacy, 567, 615, 636, 640 ff. recent origin of this concept, 726,
aeli (Lord Beaconsfield, Benjamin 744 ff., 748; divine -, 627
' 1804-1881), 140, 144, 147, 269, 282, Egypt, 100, 113, 118, 124
5, 301, 353 Einstein, Albert (1879- ), 749
rgence of character, 733 elections, 430, 531
iity, 726 electorate, 241
rce, 617, 625 electrification, 49 ff., go, i 70, 477
;chiitz, P ., 767 elevation of the wafer, 583
)fS, 313, 399, 599 ff. Elias, prophet (about 875 B.c.), 739
ias of nineteenth century, 734 Elizabeth (born 1533; queen 1558-
uss, Engelbert (1892-murdered 1603), 295, 299, 341, 355, 761
'4), 515 elite, 20, 239, 628
nicans, 582, 763 Elohim, 727
nium maris, 613 emancipation, 20, 63, 93, 130, 146,
>l (1818-1906), 646 216ff., 436, 611, 636, 65off.
evski, Fedor Michailovich (1821- embodiment, 621 ff.
1), 91 ff. emergency, 20, 382ff.
t, 175; dramatized history, 120 ff., emperor, 295, 566 ff., 572, 764, 765, 767,
ff. 768
, 717; - states, 717; Scholastic emperor, decline of -, 553 ff.; name
768 of -, 623
ts, Alfred (1859-1935), 38, 234 ff. empire, Latin -, 585; British -, 292,
ing, 634 301, 332, 351, 644, 649; Holy Roman
n, 498 ff., 501, 637 -, 149 f., 292, 295, 364 ff., 437' 485-
, di B uoninsegna, da Siena (died 489, 494, 566 ff., 612 ff., 618; French
), 583 -·, 1 37
·, Thomas, Governor of Massa- end of time, 14; see time
~tts (1576-1653), 395 n. 2 Engels, Friedrich (1820-1895), 48
l, 646 f. England, 257-361, 449, 648 ff., 694, 739,
1itiere, 647 76o, 761, 763
c economics, 732 f. environment (behaviourism), 243, 745
te, 21 ff., 91, 93, 112, 187, 661 epoch (era, calendar, time, period),
689 ff.
: Rome, 570; double eagle, 596 epilogue, 103, 133, 705
86, 357, 434, 648 equality, 75, 185, 215 £., 648 ff.
27, 506, 546 equations of time, 664
'riedrich (1871-1925), 19 era, Christian, 454 f., 650, 660, 668,
(Church), 495, 545; ecclesiastica 680, 715 ff.
as, 417; ecclesiastical govern- Erasmus of Rotterdam (1467 or 1469-
394 . - 1536), 408, 413, 629
marching in -, 462 ff. Erdmann, Carl, 535
tch, 504, 766 Erorterung, topics, loci communes, 398
nic, 730 f., 741 erotomanie cerebrale, 250
: organization, 630; - stand- eschatology, 414, 499 ff., 594 ff.
05 £.; - unity, 716 esprit, 171, 174, 175, 178, 186, 188, 193,
:s, 684, 743 239, 241, 247, 477, 715
43 ff., 105, 364 f., 385, 495 ff., Essex, Robert Devereux, second Earl
630, 718, 670 of -, 1567-1001
ts, 14, 730 ff. Esthonia, 615
' 538 ethics, 742
, public (teaching, schools, etiquette, Spanish, 663
628 ff., 661 Eugen III (pope 1145-1153), 738
VIII (1894- ), since 1936 Eurasia, 45 f., 101, 139, 463
1f Windsor, 625 (abdication) Europa, 611
~LOAR
European Concert, 454 Fouche, Joseph, Duke of Otranto
evangelium teternum, 587 (1763-1820), 133, 240
every (also see body), 365, 467, 479, 734 Fourteenth of July, 135, 695
examinations, 6go Fox, Charles James (1749-1806), 348
exhibitions, 74 ff. fox hunting, 629
expert, 181, 395, 703 ff.. France, 126-256, 346 ff., 349, 365 f.,
exploitation, 76 ff., 81 ff. 4og, 545, 615, 625, 633, 642, 657, 700,
external war, 671; - manifestation of 702, 76o, 764
the faith, 396 France, Anatole Qacques Anatole
extorting Mary's Grace, 583 n. 6 Thibault, 1844-1924), 178, 235
Francis, St. of Assisi (1182-1226), 9,
Fabian Society (founded 1884), 357 108, 564 ff., 599, 703, 739
facts, English -, 276, 305 ff., 441 f., Franciscans, 582
659, 690 Francophils, 638
faith, 649 ff., 661, 664, 711, 748 Frankfurt am Main, 219, 441
family, 57, 121 ff., 202; - of nations, Frankish Law, 567
713, 717, 736, 745 Franklin, Benjamin (1706-1790), 351
farmer, 638 Franks, 143 ff., 209, 492 ff., 765
Fascism, 461 f., 6o1 f., 623 ff. Frazer, Sir James George ( 18 54- ),
fashion, 720 118
father, 492; - of the Church, 547, 551; Frederick the Great (1712-1786), 220,
- of the Revolution, 651; - of the 369, 406, 446, 633 f.
Constitution, 686 Frederic II, emperor, king of Sicily
Guy Fawkes Day (1605, Nov. 5), 8, 333 (1194-1250), 378, 471 f., 555, 569 ff.,
fear, 626, 648 585, 768
Federalist, 131, 16i, 385, 672, 686 Frederick the Wise, of Saxony (1463-
Felix culpa, 513 f. 1525), 375, 388 f., 437' 762
:eminism, 617 Frederick William I of Prussia (1688-
Ferdinand (Roman King, later em- 1740), 663
peror, 1503-1564), 381 free choice, 28, 683; - thinker, 701, 702
Ferentillo (Umbria), 766 freedom, 181 ff., 245
:eudal allegiance, 266; - law, 527 ff. Freemasonry, 194 ff.
:eudalism, 81, 288, 532, 582, 730; de- Free-Soilers, 63 ff.
struction of -, 590 Freizugigkeit, 684
~ichte, Johann Gottlieb (1762-1814), French (France), 642, 649, 659; - Rev-
404, 414 olution, u::6-256; end of -, 693
ictions, 279, 311, 710, 723 Friars, 589, 612
igures, 70 ff., 742 Friedell, Egon (1878-1937), 594
•inland, 38, 41, 615 Frobisher, Martin (ca. 1535-1594), 296,
<'insterwalder, Sebastian (1862- ), 761
578 Fronde (1648-1654), 165, 475
ioretti (of Francis of Assisi), 588 frontier, 99 f., 148 ff., 292, 426, 613,
irmament, as a political concept, 255, 649 ff., 669, 684, 762, 764, 76g
340 f., 427, 489, 518, 534 ff., 541 future, 524, 525, 604 ff., 678, 710,
lag, 134, 197 f., 234, 256, 640 720 ff., 727, 729 ff.
1
lagellantism, 355, 590
1
lorence, 511, 577, 658 galt!rie, 241
orce (labour-forces), 49, 83 ff. Gallia, Gaul, 149, 158, 200, 285, 462·
'ord, Henry (1863- ), 87, 167 Gallican Church, 230
orests, 40, 423 ff., 718 Gambetta, Leon (1838-1882), 223
orgetfulness, 21, 672, 6g8 f. gambling, 3
orms of government, 453 ff., 670 ff., Gardiner, Rolf (1902- ), 36o
673, 718 Gardiner, Samuel Rawson (1829-1902),
)rmula, 100 f. 258, 317
Jrtunes, 11; 10,000 independent-, 29, Gaul, see Gallia
~~!'1
det (Bildung), 397 n. 3, 405, 422, gospel, 631
Gothic style, 194, 544 f.
(spirit, esprit), 405 f., 415 £., 715, government, 382 ff., 450, 452 ff., 598 ff.,
I 647 f.
al, 684 (abstract, natural) St. Gotthard Pass, 764
ation, 8, 120, 326, 634 ff., 650, Grace, extorting Mary's - (pilgrim-
' 7 19 age), 593 n. 6
enevieve (about 422-512), 633 grammar, 719 ff., 737 ff., 746
>, 127 ff., 716 grand, 166, 477
l, 577 grandfather, grandparents, ancestors,
man, 324 ff., 607 ff., 626, 659 74 £., 5 19 f.
, 244 Grant, General Ulysses (1822-1885),
phy, geographical conceptions, 373, 655
., 102, 139 ff., 293, 424 ff., 457' grants, 769 f.
i., 516 ff., 532, 564, 578, 583, 641, Gratianus (founder of jurisprudence
672 ff. among canonists about 1142), 271
phical orbit of revolution, 659 Gray, Thomas (1716-1771), 328
f, method of -, 755 great divide, 719
ny, 41, 362-450, 462, 519, 627, Greeks, Greece, 30, 141 ff., 629, 695
717; post-War -, 623 ff., 698 Gregory I, pope (590-604), 521 ff.
-i princes, 264 . Gregory V, pope (996-999), 504
, Jean Charlier de (1363-1429), Gregory VI, pope (1045-1046), 521
)99 Gregory VII, as Archdeacon of the
is, Georg Gottfried (1805-1871), Roman Church "Hi1debrandt," pope
(1073-1085), the "Holy Satan," 521,
urg (1863), 694 529 ff., 559 f., 765, 768
~Iler, 702. Grey, Edward, Viscount of Fallodon
ine, 514 f., 552, 566, 623 (1862-1933), 329
Holy, see Spirit Grillparzer, Franz (1791-1872), 613 f.
lf, 294, 302 group (body politic), 621 ff.
ty, 134, 357 Gruenewald, Matthias (about 1480-
l. c., 768 about 1529), 624
about 1270-1337), 501, 578 GueJphs, 564, 567, 577 ff., 623 f., 7fo~
(1883- ), 113 Gueux, Roi des -, 431
haltung, revolutionary confis- Guibert de Nogent, abbe ( 1053-1124),
of property in Germany, 29 141 [517
obal, 45, 140, 291, 525, 718 Guiscard, Robert (about 1015-1085),
720 Guizot (Franc;ois Pierre Guillaume,
1, Count Joseph Arthur (1816- 1787-1874), 133, 692
192, 615 Gunpowder Plot, November 5, 1605,
), 627, 673, 679, 723 ff., 733, against King and Par) iament, 431
B, 749 ff.; gods (plural), 630 ff., (compare Guy Fawkes Day)
3; goddess, 700; image of -, Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden
odlike, 745: - of all men, (1594-1632), 663
of nature, 660; God's country,
td's eye, 436, 508; God's plan, Habeas Corpus (1679), 280, 350, 456
>d's time, 82 Haines, Ch. G. (1879- ), 679
ohann Wolfgang (1749-1832), Halle, University of, 691
84, 131, 181, 393, 404, 405 Haldane, Richard Burdon, Viscount
j ff., 432 ff., 509 (1856-1928), 268, 357
colay ( 1809-1852), 57 Hamann, Richard (18j9- ), 702
~, 435, 597 f., 699, 700, 705 Hammer of the witches (published in
!,dt, Adolph (1863- ), 766, 1489), 700
Hanslick, Eduard (1825-1904), 619
.ay, 437, 506
1
Hapsburg, 154. 396, 61·8, 663, 760
lXim { 1868-1 ()~6). '7 2. 1 '7n
u..., ... A:-- T47 -
Harnack, Adolf (1851-1930), 415 f. history of art, 702
Harness, the new, of the eleventh cen- history as a science, 6u, 634, 6g1, 6g3
tury, 526 ff., 765 f. Hitler, Adolf (1889- ), 20, 393, 431,
Harvard College (founded 1636), 327, 442 ff., 6o1, 620, 623, 638 f., 640, 671
740 Hobbes, Thomas (1588-1679), 195, 259,
Hauck, Albert (1845-1918), 559, 768 3i3, 342, 405, 467
head and body in politics (body pol- Hohenlohe, Prince Chlodwig (1809-
itic), 265, 307 1901 ), 371
Hebert, Jacques Rene (1755-1794), 110, Hohenzollern, 622
132 Holland, Lord (1705-1774), 348
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Holland, see Netherlands
(1770-1831), 74, 127 holidays (calendar, ritual), 284, 449,
hell, 92, 386, 557 ff., 758 705
Hellas, see Greece Holy Ghost, see Spirit, 178
Hello, Ernest (1828-1885), 233, 246 homo sapiens mutabilis, 735
Henry II, Emperor, Saint (973-1024), Hoover, Herbert C. (1874- ), 636,
501, 610, 765 668
Henry IV of France (1553-1610), 155 ff., hope, political role of -, 648 ff., 664,
408, 615 667, 693
Henry VII, Roman King (1308-1313), Hopital, Michel de I' - (1507-1573),
501 1 55
Henry VIII of England (1491-1547), Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus, 65-
270 ff., 397, 437, 577, 625, 763 8 B.C.), 68, 297
Henry, Patrick (1736-1799), 129 Hostiensis, Cardinal, Henry of Segusio
Herder, Johann Gottfried (1744-1803), (d. 1254), 546
405 n.6 house, 490-493, 517, 527, 529, 582, 625,
1ereditary monarchy, 336, 427 ff. 731
1eresy, 652 House of Swabia, 566, 572
1ero, man-god, demigod, 101, 224 Hugenberg, Alfred (1865- ), 401
Herrad von Landsberg (twelfth cen- Hugo de St. Victor (about 1097-1141),
tury; German abbess), 765 f. 547, 681 ff., 731
:.ierriot, Edouard (1872- ), 201 Hugo, Victor (1802-1885), 137, 139, 241,
Iertling, Georg F., Count (1843-1919), 247, 251, 389
404 Huguenots, 138, 155 ff., 161 ff., 269
Ierzen, Alexander (1812-1870), 57 humanism, 601 ff., 629 f., 701 ff.
Ierzl, Theodor (186o-1904), 234 humanitarianism, 383
-lessen, 382, 394, 762 humanity, 726
-Iewart, Lord Chief Justice (1870- ), Humboldt, Wilhelm von - (1767-
625 1835), 701 f.
lierarchy, social (bishops), 492, 742 humiliation, 135, 137, 260 f., 349-352,
~ugh, Higher, hoch, 395, 434 364, 455 f.
-Iigh Magistrate (Obrigkeit), 366, humour, 11, 262, 754 ff., 762
369 ff., 391 ff. Hungary, 491, 505, 615, 618
iighness, Hoheit, 391 ff., 7u Huns, 145, 764
ligh schools, 690 Huss, Johannes (Jan. 1369-1415), 375,
-Iildebrandt, see Gregory VII 378 ff., 435, 769
-Iindenburg, Paul von - (1847-1934), husband, 616 ff.
223, 373 Hussites, 6oo ff., 633 .
listory, history-writing, 3 ff., 50, 118 ff., Hutchinson, Colonel (1615-1664), 712
123 ff., 127, 138, 257 ff., 363, 428, 499, Hutten, Ulrich von - (1488-1523), 435
509, 525, 555, 558 ff., 563, 586, 664, Hyde, see Clarendon
692, 6go ff., 735 hymnody, 419 f.
tistorical existence, 710
tistorical horizons, 555-561 I, see ego; Luther's I, meaning of -,
tistory, end of, 110; limits, 119 ff.; 387
touchstone, 7_~ icon. ironost~sis AQ f ,..,f\n
iconoclasts, 387, 654; iconography, Jacobinism, 245, 699
532 f., 759-768 Jahve, 727
:deas, 71, 178 ff., 659, 661, 683, 742; James I of England and Scotland
- of 1789, 194, 622 (1566-1625), 266, 273, 658
deology, 636 Japhet, 236, 675
diom, 738 Jeanne d'Arc, see St. Joan
dol, 97, 226, 639 Jefferson, Thomas (1743-1826), 18, 181,
le de France, 238 649 f., 672
mage (idea), ideal, idol, 4, 524, 630, Jehovah, 677
634. 639, 734; - of Europe, 676 Jena (university, founded in 1548), 425
nmigrants, 669 f ., 678 Jenkinson, Antony (died 16u), 76o
nmortality, 621 ff., 664 Jerusalem, 488, 503, 759, 761, 765
nmunity, social, 703 Jesuits, 6o, 161 ff., 229 f., 446, 662
nperatives, 725 £., 746 f. Jesus, 93, 109, 180 f., 449, 553 ff., 591,
nperator, verus, 540, 545 7J 5 f., 726, 739
nperialism, 623 ff., 675 Jews, 19, 38, 70, 146, 216-229, 232-237,
tbreeding, 616 f. 591, 601, 682 f., 718
1dependence, 181 f., 664 f. Joachim di Fiore (died 1202), abbot in
tdia, 354, 641 Calabria, 586 f., 699
dividuals, 150 ff., 265 passim, 670 Joachimites, 587
dulgences, 385 ff., 398 St. Joan (1412-1431), 356, 601, 624 ·
dustrial Revolution, 667 ff.; creation Johannine Age (Third Empire), 586 ff.
of term, 704 f. St. John the Evangelist, 495, 586 f.,
fallibility of the Pope, 445 589, 7og, 759, 765
feriority complex, 648 John the Baptist, 449
fation, 403 Father John of Cronstadt (1829-1908),
gelheim, Charlemagne's palace in 43, 96
-, 764 John of Vicenza (died 1260), 589
1ibitions, 71, 625 ff., 755 John of Viterbo, also Annio (1432-
iocent III (pope, n98-1216), 553, 1502), 574 n. 4
•64 ff. Jones, Rufus M. (1863- ), 599
iocent IV (pope, 1243-1254), 378, Jonson, Ben (1573-1673), 762
,95 St. Joseph, 6o9 f.
ts of court, 279 Josephine, empress (1763-1814), 132
tuisition, Spanish, 700 Joyce, James (1882- ), 98, 118, 747
)iration (esprit, spirit, Geist), 945 ff. Judas Iscariot, 107 ff., 716
assim Judges of Israel and England, 279 ff.,
incts, 252-254, 715, 717 287' 625, 686, 739
~lligentsia, 52-61, 66, 69, 599, 744 Judiciary, 32, 686
Tdict, 437, 595 f. Last Judgment, 51, 229, 471, 499 ff.,
rmarriage, 616 ff. 561, 594
~rnational, the Warrior's -, 639 ff. Jugoslavia, 615
:ntion, the greatest of the middle Julius U (pope, 1503-1512), 584, 700
~es, 526 ff.; inventing how to in- Jung, Dr. C. C., 715
:nt, 252 Jungling, 519
stiture, struggle over (1074-1122), "junker," German, 310, 464
9 ff., 596 ]us divinum, 603; jus poli, 518, 535
iible, see Church; invisibility of
od and evil, 391 ff. [763 Kant, Immanuel (1724-1804), 413
nd, 335, 336, 350 f ., 354, 456, 621, Kareev (1850-1921), 61
'I, 680 ff., 739 Karamzin, Nicoloi Mikhailovich (1766-
as limiting concept, 744 ff. 1826)
· art, 766, 767 Katheder, 390, 395, 398, 403, 412
Keeper of the Great Seal: 1. in Ger-
on, Andrew (1767-1845), 369, 373, ~afl:Y· 3_80; 2. in France, 172 f.: ~- in
• f.
)er of the King's Conscience (Eng- Lateran Council of 1215, 310, 546, 572
rld), 267, 269 Latin, 493, 737
lers of the nation's conscience, 398 Latvia, 615
lers of the Liberties of England, Laud, Archbishop William (1573-
2 1645), 400
.al, Pascha Mustafa (1881- ), Lavisse, Ernest (1842-1922), 390
2 Lavrov, Peter (1823-1900), 61
:on, Edna, 759 law, 16, 23, 27, 103, 109, 164, 168, 375,
as political concept, 69, 256, 268, 678; see Canon, Common, Feudal,
(), 399, 598, 6fo?, 673, 737' 766, 768 Frankish, Roman Law
soldiers, papal, 56,1) ff. Law Paramount, 132 ff. (Constitution);
erling, Count (1880- ), 223 living voices of the -, 164 f.
:one, 686 laws, suspension of the cosmio -,
:. 387 ff., 516, 564 f., 66o, 761, 768; 712 ff.
in Parliament, 260 ff., 612 lawyers, 106, 323 ,ff., 409, 678
ing, Rudyard (1865-1936), 359 ff. leader, 443, 530, 628
•stock, Friedrich Gottlieb (1724- League of Nations, 668, 737
l3), 127 erlebtes Leben, 693
hts, 437, 447, 530 ff., 540 ff., 547, Ledebour, Georg (1850-1832), 118
) Lefebvre de Noettes, 765, 766
c, John (1513-1572), 314, 320 legal fact, 672; - fictions, 275, 279, 311,
tier, Walter (1870- ), 763 723; - forms, 31, 390; - personality,
irmation, Lutheran, 11, 405 n. 6 506
k, 46 Leipzig, 397, 401, 418 f.
ur, cultivation, 416 f., 423 ff., 432 f. Lenin, Vladimir Ilich Ulianov (1870-
gund, Empress (died 1038), 765 1924), 20, 46, 61 ff., 556, 745
Leonardo da Vind (1452-1519), 578
aborde, Count (1807-1869), 765 Lepine (1846- ), 134
ir, labour-forces, 24, 31, 76-90, Le Play (1806-1882), 73
>-125, 308, 527, 628 ff., 744, 766 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim (1729-
u's universal language, 108 1781), 435
u camp movement, 765 f. Levellers, 196, 656
ur Day, 122, 449 liberal, 358, 651, 716; liberty, 183
, Our, see Mary, Virgin Libertiit, teutsche, 371
fette (1757-1834), 133 f., 631 Liberty, 183
)ntaine, Jean Fram;ois (1621-1695), Liechtenstein, 615
; life, 743
·, 364, 372, 392, 420 f., 448 f., 494 f. life-cycle, 520, 561, 625 ff., 712, 713 f.,
Jeth Conference, 354 f. 719 (bionomics, biography)
trt.ine (1790-1869), 134 life-interest, 621 ff.
lrecht, Karl (1856-1915), 177 Ligne, Prince de (1735-1814), 426
eskirche, 394 Lincoln, Abraham (1809-1865), 652 ff.,
cape in politics, 577-5·84 655, 668
schaft, 321 Lindbergh, Charles A., 558, 748
sknechte, 699 Liszt, Franz von (1811-1886), 422
1age, 20, 66, 70 ff., 176 ff., 324 ff., literature, 53 ff., 170 ff., 176 ff., 220,
244 f., 712
•• 523, 620, 709, 713, 737 ff Lithuania, 621
1age, classical •. 73, 176; - of dip- Little, Arthur D. (1863- ), 638
iacy, 642; - of mankind, 420, 679, liturgy, 324, 507
' ff. Ljubl_jana, 616
tage in America, 651; loss of -, Lloyd George (1863- ), 284, 355, 634
(vocabulary, speech) Lloyd's (after Edward Lloyd's coffee
lochefoucauld, Duke of (1634- shop in Tower Street, London,
4), 165 opened in 1688), 329
Suooer. AOL t:.Afi_ i::.i::.o f_ lnr<ry, I .1r./::. I+
:>dge, Henry Cabot (1850-1924), man, type of, 619 f., 750; unity of -,
653 ff., 657 708 ff.
gic, 191, 741 ff.; - in history, 4 manhood, 716, 754
gos, 428 Mann, Thomas (1875- ), 634
>mbardy, 589 Manor, manorial system, 88, 256, 266,
mdon, 129, 285, 348, 573 301, 486 ff., 499, 501, 591, 731
>rd Protector, see Protector map, first secular -, 569; first map of
1rds Spiritual, 264, 322 ff., 380, 438, the Commonwealth, 299; maps, 759-
j5I, 715 770
ti, Pierre (1850-1923), 246
1
Marburg (Lahn), 762
uis XIV (1638-1715), 157 ff., 242, Maria Theresa (1717-1780), 617 ff., 633
158, 623 Marie Antoinette (1755-1793), 169 ff.
uis XV (1710-1774), 159 f. marinorama, 294, 333, 761
uis XVI (1754-1793), 126 ff., 658 market-seeking society, So ff., 90, 106,
uis XVIII (1755-1824), 133 f., 235 637
uis Philippe (1773-1850), 134, 595 marriage, wedding, bride, courtship, 9,
r, lower, 313, 477, 711 76, 364, 469
well, James Russell (1819-189I), 677 Marseillaise (written in 1792), 97, 132,
al, Loyalist, loyalty, 12, 23, 336, 649, 457
I I Marseilles, 545, 565
:ifer, 253, 556 Marshan, John (1755-1835), 686
::ius II (pope I 144-1145), 271, 522 Martin of Tours (325?-397?), 143
:lendorff (1865-1937), 223, 227, 446 Marx, Karl (1818-1883), 7, 19, 58, 68,
igershall, 352 f. 73-88, 94 f., 99, 103, 105, 108, 110,
her, Martin (1483-1546), 27, 155, 218, 458 ff., 594, 600, 633, 639, 730,
61-450, 609, 699 ff., 705 746
her's restoration of conscience, 568; Mary, Virgin, 581 ff., 589, 609
· testament, 390; - theses, 538 Mary's grace, extorting, 593 n. 6
heranism, 312, 362, 447, 556 f., 560 Maryland, 651
.emburg, 615 Mason, George (1725-1792), 654
emburg, Rosa (1870-1919), 99 mask, 111, 112
ury, Dame -, 765 mass, 507 ff., 514, 550 f., 765
lltey, Hubert (1854-1934), 18 masses, mass-man, 108 ff., 629, 640, 672
Massc;ichusetts, 283 n. 5, 660, 680
aulay, Thomas Babington (1800- materialistic, 71 f., 104 f., 731 ff., 742
"59), 224, 258, 335, 692 mathematics, 201 ff., 691, 697
chiavelli, Nicol6 (1469-1527), matter, 330, 716
6 ff., 461, 463, 745 f., 6I6
1
Maximilian, Roman Emperor, the Last
Donald, Ramsay (I866-1937), 19, Knight (1459-1519), 437
4 May Day, 113ff., 122, 124, 211
~donia, 633 Maynard (1002-1689), 340, 347
lroy, Robert (1872- ), 671 medicine, 114, 755
[ver, R. M. (1882- ), 744 Mediterranean, 210, 295, 489, 502
Leish, Archibald (1892- ), 661 Melanchthon, Philipp (1497-1560),
\fa hon, Duke of Magenta ( 1808- 363, 394, 397' 399 n. 4
)3), 197, 373 Melville, Herman (1879-1891), 677
uiaga, Salvador de (1886- ), membership, 265, 306 ff., 492, 713
~ memory, 10, 12, 75, 333, 337, 568,
C, 717 630 ff., 634 f., 689 ff., 694 ff., 741, 754
sterial, 272 Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Felix (1809-
la Charta, see Charta 1847), 420
'.aguelonne (France), 767 Messiah, 229 ff., 393, 443
ar, 200, 618 Messina, Straits of, 768
aistre, Joseph, Count (1754-1821), metaphysics, 741 ff.
Prince Metternich (1773-1859), 410, 441
·domo, 491, 504 MP11..:P li\Jf.,.,.,..,\ n:T·~- ---
[eyer, Adolf (1893- ), 743 Morley, John (1838-1923), 357
[ichelangelo, Buonarotti (1475-1564), Moser, J. J. (1701-1785; 1759-1764 pris-
578, 598, 727 f., 770 oner of State), 412
ticroscopic method, 705 ff. Moses, 233, 680·£.
riddle Ages and modern times, in- Moslem, 486, 764
vention and use of term, 164, 411 f ., mother of churches vs. Mother Church,
494, 564, 593, 634, 6go ff., 699 ff. 518
'.iddlesex elections, 654 Mother Church, 518 ff., 715
iddle voices, 744 f. Mother Earth, 592 f ., 595
·iddle West, 667 motherhood, 520
Han, 545, 571 f. motherland, 648 ff., 658
ilitary, 99, 372, 446; - technique, Mott, R. L., 679
580 ff., 636 ff. Moujik, 44, 214
iller, Konrad (1844-1933), 759, 764 Muenter, Fr. (1761-1830), 767
ilton, John (16o8-1674), 290, 297, 362, mundus, 297, 374, 503, 521
704 Murray, Gilbert (1866- ), 327
ind, loo f., 186, 683 f. Museum, 678, 708
ind and body: the false dualism of, music, 417 ff., 625
742, 754 Musset, Alfred de (1810-1857), 356
inister, 313 ff., 477, 66o Mussolini, Benito (1883- ), 20, 615,
inorities, 669 f. 621 ff.
irabeau, Count de (1749-1791), 128 Mutiny Act (1689-1881; now: Army
issionary, 631 Act), 359
:>demity, 700 f. myth, mythology, 125, 337, 415, 445,
oliere (Jean Baptist Poquelin, 1622- 526, 628 ff., 697 f., 699 ff., 717 f.
1673), 165
oltke, Helmut von (1800-1891), 404 name, naming, 24, 51, 71, 111, 222, 259,
ommsen, Theodor (1817-1903), 231, 264 £., 303 ff., 367 ff., 432, 460 ff., 504,
592 538 f., 623, 632, 672, 6g3 f., 698, 707,
marchy, 76, 431, 447 ff., 648 713 f., 722 f., 744, 746
masteries, monastic life, monks, 35 f., names of God, 727 f.
~431 272, 283, 334, 364 ff., 374 ff., 437' Napoleon I (Bonaparte) (1769-1821),
506 ff., 587 ff., 6o7, 762 53, 66, 113, 151 £., 161, 217 f., 243,
:>nk, General (16o8-1670), 302 291 f., 524 f., 573, 6u, 633, 634, 666
mk-emperor, 507 ff., 537, 614 Napoleon III (1808~1873), 197, 455, 589,
:>nroe (1758-1831; pres., 1817-1825), 594
168, 675 Napoleonic wars, 5
mologues, 711 N ashinism, 94 f.
mtaigne, Michel Eyquem (1533- nation, 46, 94, 456 ff., 459 ff., 469,
1592), 410, 411 485 ff., 599 ff., 614 ff., 66o, 692 f., 717
mtaperti, battle of -, in 1260, the (people); modern -, 485 ff.; as ap-
'.;.hibeIJines of Florence annihilat- paratus of selection, 621
.ng their Guelphic opponents, 582 nationalism, 620, 630 ff.
mtenuovo, Prince (grandson of the nature, 22 f., 198, 202, 206, 297, 740,
~mpress Marie-Louise), 614 748
mtesquieu, Charles de Secondat, natural frontiers (frontiers), 148 f., 158
Baron ( 1689-1755), 46 Natural Law, 678 ff.
mtfort, Simon de -, Earl of Lei- naturalization, 2o6
:ester, protector (1208-1265), 263 Nausicaa, 617 f.
~ral, immoral, 11, 50 f ., 77, 245 f ., Navigation Act, 294, 300 f.
~71, 7 1 9 ff. Nazi, Nazism, 115, 460, 558, 623 ff.,
>re, Thomas (1478-1535, July 6), 261, 628 ff., 717; Nazintern, 639
~69, 272 ff., 448 necessity, 720 ff.
>rison, Samuel Eliot (1887- ), 696 negro, 648
>rris, Gouverneur (1752-1816), 16, Netherlands, 615. 662 f .
()(\ H 'I hAh /;,,..,.. ....... .t:lli1l'lf-._-1: .... ,. I ! - ..
 • I

1t, 700 opus operatum, 551

stle, Duke of (1693-1768), 348 oratory, 329
>ea1, 672 orbis, 532
fodel, 290 organism, 642
'.ngland, 447. 666, 680 origin of species, 733
[ampshire, 685 orientation, 583, 755, 759, 764
ersey, 650 Orozco, J. C., 763
.earning, 395, 399 ff., 441, 775 Ortega y Gasset, Jose (1883- ), 414
s, 699 ff. Orthodox Church, see Church
.ochelle, 165 osmosis, 238, 436
per, 38, 54, 21l, 647 Ostendorfer, Michael, 769
l, Isaac (1642-1727), 6 Otto I, emperor (936-973), 488, 764
forld, 670, 672 ff. Otto II, 764
1s Cusanus (1401-1464), 599 Otto III, 503 ff.
ts von ·der Fliie (1417-1487), 601 outbreeding, 616 f.
r, B. G. (1776-1831), 404 overhead expenses, 77 ff.
ie, Friedrich (1844-1900; insane, Owen Meredydd, father of Owen
I 75, 98, 141, 422, 460, 639, 659, Tudor, 263, 289
757 Oxenstjerna, Count Axel (1583-1654),
1th century, 190, 652, 689 ff., 663
, 724, 737 (dogma) Oxford, 29, 255, 390, 394
4, 505, 656, 672, 675, 680-683,
39 Pacifists, 18, 718
Alfred Bernhard (1833-1896), Paganism, 192, 224 ff., 409, 454, 463 f.,
548 f ., 700 f.
I 621 Paine, Thomas (1737-1809), 389, 397,
ness, 328 f. 655 ff.
ature, scientific (language, vo- painting, 212, 583 f., 712
lry), 744 palace, 490 ff., 764
757 Palacky, Frantisek (1798-1876), 612
ors (after 1689), 323 Paleologue, G. Maurice (1859- ), 214
istance, 447 ff. Pailliere, A., 233
;, 369, 517 f., 569, 764; Nor- Panay accident, 642
lea1m in England, 362 ff. panchronion; pandemonium, 677
(Friedrich von Hardenberg) Pankhurst, Mrs. (1857-1928), 355
801), 144 Panslavists, 139
247 ff. papacy {pope), 156, 371, 374 f., 394,
P. (1892- ), 637 406, 437, 461, 529 ff., 623, 628, 715
papal court, see curia
allegiance, 323, 553 Paradise, 535 n. 4, 759
, 742, 744; objectivity, 754 parallels, historical, passim 630 ff.
'. (highness), 391 ff., 737 parents, 622
12 ff., 414, 426, 428 (sea)
Pareto, Vilfredo (1848-1923), 26
tl, 295 ff., 372
Paris, 55, 126 ff., 657, 760
Cluny, 507, 536, 586
617 Paris, Gaston (1839-1903), 231 f.
~ army, 627
Paris, University of, 151 ff., 599
parliament, 240 f., 263 ff., 599 ff., 685 f.
4
~r, 650 "parliamentarization," 322
:., 477, 519 ff.; old age, 519 ff., parliamentary language, 429, 456; -
papers, 402
142, 701 Parma, 571, 589, 700
ce, 68, 436 parson, 313
' 468 ff., 733 ff. particulars, 284 ff., 292, 386
ty in America, 637 party, 63 ff., 240, 308
~--·....
L 180. 200_ 9A9 f HU'\ Ii: --1!-! --- - ,,,.. ,,,.
al, Blaise (1623-1662), 162, 180, 184 physics, 697, 741-745
nts, 30 ff. pictures (icons, painting), 393, 417
rnalism, 36g, 424, 619, 714; pater- Piedmont, 445
ty, 678 pilgrimage (Freizilgigkeit), 333, 433,
iarchs, 617 550, 627; right of -, 543 ff.
iotism, 97, 99, 621 ff. Pilgrimage of Grace, 31 1
I, St., apostle of the gentiles, 229, pioneering, 609, 631, 648, 659, 673, 676
'3• 401 f., 411, 440, 441, 443, 503- Pitt, Jr. (1759-1806), 284, 497
16, 533-537, 540 f., 543, 573, 599, Pittsburgh, 167
16-768 Pius II (1405-1464), 143, 467, 585,
:e, 97-100, 638 f., 641 f. 601 ff.
ant, 39 f.; Peasants' War, 364 ff., plainchant, 510 f.
8, 463 plan, "Piatiletka," Five Year Plan,
, G., 281 49 ff.; God's -, 681
, Sir Robert (1788-1850), 326, 352 Planck, Max (1858- ), 7
ponnesian War (431-404 B.c.), 694 plastic age, 754
•le (populus, nation), 94, 264 f., 308, Plato, Platonism, 199, 548, 736
3, 319ff., 346, 572, 586 Playfair, John (1748-1819), 206
>le of this nation, 301 Plekhanov (1857-1918), 95
)Crell, Sir William (1696-1759), 645 pluralism of eras, 124, 691; - of econ-
)ds of history (era, calendar, omies, 731 ff.; - of language, 707,
och), 690 ff. 737 ff.
1anence, 558, 673; Reformation in Pobedonostsev, Konstantin Petrovich
417; Revolution in -, 119 ff. (1827-1907), 43
etual revolution, 119 ff., 558; per- podesta, 573, 574, 612
tuation, 622 poet, 70, 389 £., 425, 436 f., 508 f.
hing, General J. J. (1860- ), 631 pogrom, 38, 227 f.
ia, 18 Poincare, Raymond (1860-1934), 237
m, 50 f., 255, 264, 266, 307 f., 390 f., Poland, 38, 41, 315, 615, 621, 633 ff.,
7 ff., 72 4 662
gia, 589 Police, 438 ff.
r, St., 401 f., 440, 443, 532 ff., 551 ff., polis, 572
5 ff., 599, 766. 768 Politics, political science, 3 ff., 70,
r, of Russia, the Great (1672-1725), 239 ff., 306, 406 ff., 454 ff., 469, 540,
' 53 ff., 73 594 ff., 603, 637' 692, 744
uch, Francesco (1304-1374), 583, "politicum," 417, 659
9 Polybius (205-123 B.c.), 453 ff., 594 ff.,
LIS Damiani, see Damiani 707
>etersburg (today Leningrad), 40, poor, 280, 430 f., 584 ff.
' 55, 57, 66, 155 pope, the word -, 443 f.
etto {in ·one's breast), 539, 568 population, problems of, 519 ff., 627 ff.,
·, la Grande (1789), 130 f., 135; as 659, 665 ff.
rt of every revolution, 470 f., 480 populus christianus, 313, 319 ff., 531
lbilrger, 578 Port Royal, 163
I., 399 Porter, A. Kingsley (1883-1933). 767
icians, 617 ff. Portugal, 349, 351, 636, 662, 761
·aoh of Egypt, 101, 391 positivism, 741
idelphia, 656 Postel, Guillaume (1510-1581), 144
'.p II, King of Spain (1527-1598), Potemba murderers (1932 in Ger-
2 many), 444
:p of Swabia (u80-1208), 567 f. potestas, 554, 573 ff., 586; - ecclesias-
>logy, 737 tica, 417; - politica, 417
>Sopher, 183, 194, 282, 413 ff., 639, Powell, J. W. (1834-1902), 770
~ ff., 720, 735 power (potestas), 534 n. 2
>Sophy, specialty of German -, Pownall, T. (1722-1805), 673 f.
it ff .. i;i;.6. 620: - anrl soriPrv. '7AA Pr~rrnP f\1 fl
::!r, 70, II4, 298, 312 f., 316, 322 f., Prometheus, 182, 558, 716
~ f., 338, 346, 428, 431, 432, 434, promise, 325 f., 652 ff., 678 ff.; of
,, 496, 498, 509, 538 £., 552, 587 ff., America, 237, 678 ff.
promised land, 680
•~damite, 109, 711 propaganda, 57 ff., 620
dence, 401 property, private, 29, 732
dent, 284 ff., 355 f., 413, 646 prophetic, 387 ff., 412, 436, 639
trsor revolutions, 656 ff. protector, protection, Lord Protector,
~stination (preformation), 298, 338 31 ff., 263, 322' 335 f ., 35 7 389, 544, J

gtamt, 739 552, 593, 596, 619, 678, 684 ff.; Dutch
rmation, 405, 408, 413 f. -, 663; - of thought, 549
story, 118,, 226, 524, 564, 629 f., protestantism, 362 ff., 437 ff., 700 f., 705
f. Proust, Marcel (1871-1922), 238 f.,
:t, 747, 754 246 f., 474
iices, 12, 695 ff., 703 Providence, 338 f., 559, 658
:le, see prologue Prussia, 146, 404, 406, 413 ff.
Lturity, 13 f., 717 Psalms, Psalter, 325, 330, 340, 420,
tal, 628 541; second -, verse 8, 541; 15th
~ative, 265, 348, 359, 361 ff., 382 ff. psalm, 325; 148th -, 591 f.
rterian, 310 ff. psychoanalysis, l 09, 630 ff.
iption, 523 f. psychology, 6!;~6, 743, 746
ice of mind, 326 Ptolema!us, Claudius (second Christian
ency of U. S. of America, 575 century), 546
81 public, 397 ff., 468 ff., 494; public do-
638 main in America, 769. 319 ff.
priesthood, 235, 311, 391 ff., 439, Public Opinion, 319, 441; - Spirit,
605, 627 319 ff.
1ood, universal, 367 ff.; concen- Pueckler-Muskau, Prince (pseudonym
on of -, 551 f. Semilasso; 1785-1871), 101 f.
Minister, 130, 274 Puig I Cadafakh, J., 764
·y forces, 714 Purchas, Samuel (1515-:1626), 293
'al (prehistory), 628 pure thought, 741; purification, 194 ff.,
[vism, 717 605
(king), 294, 395, 406 ff., 461, 523, Puritans, 3, 268, 277 ff., 282 n. 5, 335,
420, 475, 556 ff., 559, 625, 657, 739,
1les, 644, 664 680
~ozent, 403 Pushkin, Alexander (1799-1837), 56
station, 655 Putsch, 525
~es, 157, 163 ff., 166, 178, 196, Pym, John (1584-1643), 302
" 256, 265. 655
~ies de /'esprit, 239 race, 123 ff., 605, 616, 624, 676
of law, due, 668, 684 ff.; - - - railroads, 493, 502, 667, 674, 76g
ution, 732 ff., 739 radio, 11
·.on, 551, 589, 627 Rampolla, Cardinal (1843-1913), 513
:ive wage, 77 ff. Randolph, John (1728-1784), 684
ons, 27 ff., 374 ff., 760 Ranke, Leopold von (1795-1886), 471,
>r in France, 156 ff.; in Eng- 705
279, 289: in the twelfth cen- Raphael Sanzio (1483-1520), 550
30, 599; in Germany, 397-417, Rasputin (1872-1916), 96 ff.
Rathenau, Walter (1867-1922), 223 ff.
1rs' Parliament in 1848 in rationalist, 459
any, 441 Raynal, Abbe (1713-1796), 647
, theory of, 13, 22, go, 631 "re-," importance of this syllable, 735
iat, 83 ff., 628, 716 reading public, 9, 12, 113, 176 f., 188,
e in revolutions, 18, 103 (epi- 199
-r.ort A ! ... ,.. .. - - -
, 347
.c.. ,. -
, &./-

eality, 720 revolution, revolutionary, terminology

eason (mathematics, enlightenment), and definitions of -, 128 f., 188 f.,
3, 112, 126 ff., 196 ff., 682 f., 740 ff., 304, 338, 340 ff., 500, 624 ff., 640,
748, 752 644 ff., 676, 714 f .; the American -
leaumur (1683-1757), 206 as term, 676; Austrian -, 618; diplo-
lebellion, Great, 259 ff.; rebels, 645 f. matic -, 446; revolution des esprits,
e-birth, 449, 716, 751 188, 193; influence of French - on
lecessus lmperii Novissimus (1654), history-writing, 700 ff.; Glorious R.,
364 259-347, 645, 647; Half-Revolutions,
e-civilize, 488 f. 662 ff.
ecords (memory), 9, 335, 402 ff. revolutionize, revolutionizable, 24, 68,
ecovery, 6']o 240, 417, 626, 640, 734
ecuperation, 566, 587 Rhineland, 638
eflection, 183 Rhode Island, 366, 66o, 685
leformation (preformation), 290, rhythm (calendar), 14, 82 ff., 88 ff.,
362 ff., 584, 607 ff., 664, 762 f. 664 ff.
egeneration, 50, 128 Richelieu, Cardinal de (1585-1642),
legensburg, 769 158, 615
legicides of 1649, 333 Riehl, Wilhelm Heinrich (1823-1897),
egionalism, 243, 255, 625 400
ehabilitation, 6:u ff. Rights of Man, 648 ff.
~eich, 614 f. Rilke, R. M. (1875-1926), 587
elapse as danger of America, 659, 718 Ritter, Karl (1778-1859), 140
elativity, 729 Robespierre, Maximilien (1758-1794),
eligio, 437 f., 509; religion, 379, 498, 131 ff., 556, 640, 712
621 passim Robinson Crusoe, 184
r:digiosus, 503 Rodney, G. B. (Admiral, 1719-1792),
~emonstrance, Great, 308 310
emigration, 680 Roeder, Ralph (1890- ), 702 f.
~enaissance, 250, 406, 581, 597 ff.; Roget, Peter Mark (1779-1869), 71
origin of this term, 699 ff. Rolland, Romain (1866- ), 421, 615
e-naming, 305, 521 Roman civilization, 143, 216, 382, 486-
~enan, Ernest (182.3-1892), 142 489, 493-496, 564, 764
rnovatio, 504, 523 ff., 609, 765 Romantic School, 696 ff., 762
~-perpetuation, 638 Rome, 422, 486 ff., 531 ff., 579 ff., 629,
~presentation, 547, 622, 647 658, 662, 694, 764, 765, 766 f.
~pression of instincts, 625 ff., 665 Romeo, see Shakespeare
eproduction (of man), 48 ff., 84 ff., Romulus Augustulus (475-476), 494
107, 718 Roosevelt, F. D. (1882- ), 20, 102,
~publica.nism, 580, 622, 667 636 ff.
~search, 748 Roosevelt, Theodore (1858-1919), 105,
espectable, 403 675
'!spondeo etsi mutabor, 741 ff. Rosary, 581
~sponsibility, 649 Rosebery, Lord (1847-1929), 354
~-establishment, 714 Rosenzweig, Franz (1886-1929), 234
.estoration (renovatio; Renaissance), Rostand, Edmond (1868-1918), 109 n. 9
16, 105, 259-347, 564, 568, 682 f., 761; Rostopchin, Count Fedor Vasilevich
- of the ·sciences, 701 (1763-1826), 53
~uscitation, 681 rotation of government, 453 ff., 6o2 ff.•
~etz, Cardinal de - (1614-1679), 356 6o6, 700; - of office, 655; - of the
n.24 stars, 188
evaluation of values, 101, 497, 555 f. Rouget de Lisle (176o-1836), 457
evanche, 116, 633 Roundheads, 305
evelation, 118, 220, 249 f ., 622 f ., 635, Rousseau, J. J. (1712-1778), 41, 178 ff.,
6_r;6, 680, 68~ 421;, 7 l l f.
10ff, Wilhelm, 434 science or history?, 691 ff.; scientific
issia, 35 ff., i38, 170, 192, 265, 291, history, 633
~65, 613, 633, 638, 640, 650, 657, 76o Scotland, 195, 289, 320, 354
1ssian River (California), 40 sea, 293 f ., 299, 325, 493, 502
1therford, Lord (1871-1938), 208 Seal, Great, 267 ff., 279. 320, 335, 363,
569, 761, 768
)bath, 180 Secession, 651
:co di Roma (1527), 563 secret, political, 14, 17 ff., 283, 297, 401,
raments, 300, 549 f.; eight - of his- 453, 627 ff., 671, 710
ory, 547 ff., 681 ff., 684 secular, 10, 573 ff., 591 ff., 716; - state,
ramental authority, 574 385 ff., 573 ff.
rifice, 53, 60, 622, 671 secul um, 297
ate-Beuve, Ch. A. (1804-1869), 199, security, 81, 386f., 66o, 705
45 Sedley, Case of Charles (1639-1701), 283
1ts, 42 f ., 449, 765 Seine, 73, 150, 210
~sman, 709 Selden, John (1584-1654), 292
,n, 200, 211, 238 ff., 659 selection, 735
mrai, 638 self-denial, 658, 67 r f.
:tions, 642 self-government, 131
d, George (Dudevant, 1804-1876), self-made man, 659
;6 self-revelation, 705 ff.
tayana, George (1863- ), 695 Senate, 686
.n, Holy -, 53, 534 senectus, 519 ff .
~rday Evening Post, 722 Sepulchre, Holy -, 543 ff., 565, 585,
marola (1452-1498), 658 623, 632
1y, 148 serfdom. 651
my, 374 ff., 401, 404, 615, 634, 762 sex (Venus), 3, 11, 50, 713
:old, scientific, 696 Shakespeare, William (1564-1616), 11,
:ity, 671 275, 293, 50~ 65~ 713, 722, 746, 761
Hing (1775-1854), 404, 415 Shelley, P. B. (1792-1822), 245, 255, 556
'ler, Friedrich (1759-1805), 120, shirt~, brown, black, etc., 18, 448, 461
B, 175, 369, 400, 404, 435 shop keeper, 629
im, 598 Siberia, 37 ff., 45, 53, 56, 60, 93
~gel, Friedrich (1772-1829), 5, 146, ·Sicily, 517 f., 565 ff., 567, 569, 768
I f., 404, 610 ff., 613 Siena, 562, 582, 583 f.
~inger, Arthur Meier (1888- ), Sigismund, emperor (1368-1437), 378
l Silesia, 47
ck, Count Stephen (1487-1536), Simon, Thomas (1623-1665), engraver,
>
761; see Montfort
1e~er, August Ludwig von (1735- Simony, 587
•9), ·55, 412 sin, public, original -, 50 ff.
oiler, Gustav (1838-1917), 404, 431 singing schools, 597
~n, W. E., Baron von (1851-1933), singular, 734
sister, 592 f., 595
irship, 106, 6go, 724 ff.; scholarly slavery, 454, 648 ff.
allels, 632 ff.; scholastici, 586; Slavophils, 57 ff., 139
Slavs, 614 ff.
foeval scholasticism, 150 ff., 399
Smith, Alfred (1873- ), 461
, 545 ff., 599, 682, 740 Snowden, Philip (1864- ), 284
ls, 85, 547, 690 ff. Social Democrats, 442
ITTm, Percy, 765 Socialists, 19, 732
Z, Carl (1829-1906), 424, 578 social policy, 637
itzer, Albert (1875- ), 420 Social Revolutionaries, 63-65, 580
ebus, 615 social sciences, 649-758
e, 151 , 231 f., 341 f., 400, 665, society, 8, 13, 240, 242, 4q_i; ff.. ~A.2. 601 _
ff.
ciology versus biology, 736 Hungary (died 1038), 507, 610, 612
,fia, 36 Stiles, Ezra, President of Yale (1725-
kolovski, Paul von, 40, 221 1795). 675
1ldier (warrior), 19, 104 f., 359 ff., 639, stilo nuovo, 578, 583
7og; unknown -, 671 Stolypin (1863-1911), 46
n, 57, 112, u6, 542, 734 f.; prodigal Strassburg, 158, 615
-, 92 ff. Strindberg, Johan August (1849-1912),
1rbonne, 139, 1.r50 ff., 230 u9
,rel, G. (1847-1922), 26 Stuart (16o3-1688), 680
ul, 11, 23, 359 ff., 713, 715, 724, subconscious future, 715
744 ff.; collective -, 419 subjective, 742 f., 745
urces, historical, 706 suffrage, 612
uth America, 641 summa, 151, 547-551
utherner, 651 Sumner, Charles (1811-1874), 668
vereign, 398, 453 ff., 562, 630, 639 ff., Sunday, 11, 121, 204, 327 f., 330, 394,
681; creation of a -, 160 407, 454, 660
vereignty of the gospel, 388 superstition, 9, 97. 193
viet Russia, 35 ff., 760 Supreme Court in Washington, 668,
ace, 14, 465, 552 685 £.
1ain, 482, 633, 636, 6fo~ ff., 759, 764; surprise, 757
empire of -, 667, 673 survival, 619, 622, 740, 749, 754 ff.
1anish ceremonial, 614 f. Swarzenski, Hanns, 763 f.
1arks, J. (1789-1866), 129 n. 1 Sweden, 113, 663
1eaker of the House of Commons, Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745), 356
281, 306 ff., 344 Switzerland, 131, 477, 566, 615, 702
eculation, speculum, 152, 183, 676 sword, symbol of -, 502, 535, 540,
eech (vocabulary, language, nomen- 766 f.; two swords, 587, 767
clature), 11, 12, 683 Sybel, H. von (1817-1895), 692
eeches in Thucydides, 695 Sylvester I (pope 314-335), 502; Syl-
1encer, Herbert (1820-1903), 745 f. vester II (999-1003), 502 £.
engler, Oswald (1880-1937), 140, 465, symbolism in art, 766 ff.
508, 696, 698, 706, 718 Symonds, John Addington, 704
iinoza, Baruch (1632-1677), 30, 404 system, 399, 414
iirit (Geist, esprit, inspiration), 178,
237, 399, 586 ff., 712, 714 f. Table of the House (in Parliament),
iritual, 520 ff.; Spirituals, 587; com- 301, 306 ff., 402, 490 ff.
pare Lords Spiritual taboo, 626
oils System, 666 Tagliacozzo (defeat of Konradin by
ortsman, 352 ff., 629, 734 f. Charles of Anjou, August 23, 1268),
rafford (1593-1641), 400 566, 569
ihl, Friedrich Julius (1802-1861), 218 Taine (1828-1893), 142, 183
alin, J. V. (1879- ), (real name Talleyrand-Perigord, Charles Maurice,
Dzugasvili), 20, 72, go Prince de (1754-1838), 133, 240
trs (bodies), 684; Star Chamber, 382 Tangier, 302, 761
He, 110, 366 ff., 405, 623 ff., 660, 686, Tartaria, 760
737; creation of the -. 517; - par- taxation, 24 7, 266, 490, 647
ticularism, 614 ff.; - of the Reforma- Taylor, Zachary, General (1784-1850),
tion, 762 f .; - Rights, 651, 665 373
ttesman, 605 teachers of history, 690, 706
ttistics, 8, 43, 215 telephone, 253, 540
effen, Gustav F. (1864- ), 562 telescopic method of history, 705 ff.
ein, Imperial Baron von (1757-1831), Templars, Knights - (1118-1312), 195,
371, 404 596
mdhal, see Beyle Tennessee, 379
ephen, protomartyr, 6g4 Tennyson, Alfred (1809-189'2), 356
)ry. 580 f., 583, 649 ff. treason, trahison, 109, 240, 254, 280
' 756 Treasury, 283 f.
~nic order, 624 treuga dei, 506
' 41, 667, 769 trial, fYj 1
>oks, 363, 564, 670, 681, 689 ff., tribalism, 717, 736
trichotomy of thought, 736
~r,Abbot (1849-1921), 436 Trieste, 612
e, 169 ff. Trnovo, 36
acy, 680 Trotsky, Leon (1879- ), 53, 110, 224
gy, 193, 547 ff., 629, 740; Ger- Troy, 621
-, 363, 398 ff., 629 Truce of God, 27, 506
>my, 743 true, truth, 740
)dynamics, 27, 735 Tudors (1485-1603), 263
, Adolphe (1797-1877), 133, 233, Turgenev, Ivan Sergeyevich (1818-
1883), 57 f.
Age, 586 Turks, 142 ff., 146, 437, 613, 662, 690,
Years' War, 364, 372 ff., 597, 663 700
, Henry (1857-1920), 592, 703 types, 734, 745
omas Aquinas (1225-1274), 111, Tyrol, 615
550, 768
ts a Becket ( 1118-1170, Dec. 29; urbi et orbi, 532
nized in u72), 310, 694 f. UexkueJI, Baron Jakob von (1864- ),
lS of Celano (died 1255), 510 744
.sius, Christian (1655-1728), 412 una sancta, 495
1 and thee, 552, 592 underdog, political, 626 ff.
lides (460-399 ?), 694 ff. understatement, 327
.gia, 418, 425
1
unemployment, 637
3 ff. (abuse of -, 84 ff.), ug, Union Pacific, .667
·., 222, 254, 465, 513, 523, 525, United States, U. S., see America
., 576, 637, 664, 693, 747 (his- universal history, first concept of -,
memory, calendar) 525
parliament, 576 universality, 457 f.
eronautical, 558; historical -, universe, 680
limits of -, 704 university, 7, 28, 30, 44, 279, 311, 315,
t the same time, fallacy of ex- 380, 758; German -, 375, 380, 691,
on, 181 762, 763; principles of -, 151
eir of all - , 678 unum necessarium, 719
the, 401 up-stream, 719
Pietro, 766 Urban IV, pope (1261-1264), 595
Leo (1828-1910), 53, 58, 67, urbanization, 96 f., 241 f.
755 . urbi et orbi, 532
sacred, 763 U.S.S.R., 102, 760
73 ff., 125, 151, 256, 299, 613, usurper, William III as -, 336

vol u tion, first, 530, 659 Valera, Eamon de (1822- ), 605

654 Valhalla, 431
136 Valla, Lorenzo (1407-1457), 143
iion, 6o!), 669 values, hierarchy of -~ 690, 699, 702,
t, producing of -, 693 ff.; heal- 711
-, 695 ff. Van Tyne, C. H. (1869-1930), 646
121, 722 varieties, 707, 733
fenry Duff (1842-1900), 276 Vatican, 623, 703, 727
747 vault, 544
:m, 738 vendetta, 27, 44 7
.~: . .q~3 ~. - Venice, 131, 584
Terdi, G~ (1813-1901), 138 Spanish Succession, 663; World -,
Terdun, 5, 639, 708 6o5, 614 ff., 630, 632 ff., 668, 6g4,
Tergennes, Count (1717-1787), 673 763; also from the German point
'erona, 571, 589 of view, 227, 444, 446; - of 1812,
'ersailles, 157 ff., 637; peace of -, 636 666 f.
eterans, 637 Washington, George (1732-1799), 127,
Teto, Imperial, 531 375, 385, 389, 554, 644, 648, 655, 666,
icarate, 553 ff. 678, 6g5
'ictor II (1054-1057), 738, 768 Washington, D. C., 331, 493; George
'ictor III (1086-1087), 505 Washington bridge, 748
'ictoria, Queen (1819-1901), 355 Waterloo, battle of - Qune 18, 1815),
'ictorian Age, 71, 597 693
'ieilleville, Marechal de (1509-1571), "We," 748
1 53 Webster, Daniel (1782-1852), 29 f.
'ienna, 611, 618 f.; Viennese School, Wechel, printer (died 1554), 146
696 week, 121 ff., 211 £.; Passion Week, 576
rirgilius, Publius-Maro (70-19 B.C.), Weimar, 425
6g6 Wellington (1769-1852), 84, 641
'irgin, miracle-working, 76g; see Mary Weltanschauung, 399
'irginia, 40, 196, 673 Wendell, Barrett (1855-1921), 645
irility, 728 Wesley, John (1703-1791), 349 f.
isible, 768; - church, 162, 385, 398, Westminster, 761; - Cathedral, 285
444, 759; - model, 6:~9 Wheeler, Benjamin I. (1854-1927), 142
ision, 566 Whigs, 31 o, 654, 667
itality, 6!?8 ff. Whistler, J. A. M. (1834-1903), 324 f.
iva voce, 12, 708 ff. White Mountain, battle of the (1620),
ives, G. L. (1492-1540), 153 657
)Cabulary (see dictionary, language, wife, 617 f.
speech, nomenclature), 679, 737 Wilberforce (1759-1833), 320
olga, 37 Wildgans, Anton von (1881-1932), 617
7lkisch, 623 ff. Wilkes, John (1727-1797), 654
oltaire, Arouet (1694-1778), 55, 6o, William the Conqueror (1021-1087),
158, 160, 164, 171, 178 ff., 187 ff., 278
212, 230, 663, 679 William HI of Orange (1650-1702),
)} unteers, 622 268, 337 ff., 348, 458, 657
oron tsov, 61 Wilson, Woodrow (1856-1924), 431,
ossler, Karl (1872- ), 590 f. 637 f.
Winstanley, William (1628-1690), 290
Taal, Anton de (1836-1917), 766 Wittenberg, 273, 313, 362 ff., 375 ff.,
ages, 77 ff. 762, 763
lagner, Richard (1813-1883), 109, 419, Wolff, Christian von (1679-1754), 412
421 ff., 738 Wollstonecraft, Mary (1797-1851, mar-
/agner, Cosima, 422; - Siegfried, 422 ried to Shelley), 236
agon roads, 527 Wolsey, Thomas, Cardinal (1471-1530),
laldenses (since 1176), 585
lallenstein, Duke of Friedland (1583- 439
woman, 56, 239, 617
1634), 373 womb of time, 665
Taller, Edmund (16o6-1687), 323
Talpole, Horace (1717-1797), 302, 348 words, creation of, 707; - of God, 680
Talpole, Robert (1676-1745), 309, 327, working class parties, 89 f.
348 world, 297, 357, 630, 659, 755, 759,
Tar, 17 ff., 95, 98 ff., 104, 513, 630 ff., 761, 770
665 ff., 671, 746; - scar, 757; - of world history, 525 f., 548; see history;
the Balkans, 633; - (American World War, see war
Civil), 633, 652, 665; -, mental, worldy system of -, 675; Western
t:-0 a:. 1'.A"--.!--- CCC l ! . -l! •L- ,..,,...-1.,.1 nr.• ii=
rms, Diet of (1521); Edict of -, youth, 519
79 ff., 387 Yusupov, Prince, 96
ter, 659
rtemberg, 404, 439 Zeller, Adolf, 764
:herley (1640-1716), 325 Zionism, 234
Zita, empress of Austria, 663
· and day' 573, 577 Zola, Emile (1840-1902), 234, 246 f.
709 f. Zucati, Francesco and Valerio, mosai-
' 735, 745 cists, sixteenth century, 584
Zurich, 99