Outspoken Essays by William Ralph Inge

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It is, therefore, certain that when we speak of Christianity as a
factor in human life, we must not identify it with the opinions or
actions of the multitudes who are nominally Christians. We must not even
identify it, without qualification, with the types of character
exhibited by those who try to frame their lives in accordance with its
precepts. For these types are very largely determined by the ideals
which belong to the stage through which the life of the race is passing;
and these differ so widely in different ages and countries that the
historian of religion might well despair if he was compelled to regard
them all as typical manifestations of the same idea. There are times
when the disciple of Christ seems to turn his back upon society; he is
occupied solely with the relation of the individual soul to God. These
are periods when the opportunities for social service are much
restricted by a faulty structure of the body politic; periods when
secular civilisation is so brutal, or so servile, that the religious
life can only be led in seclusion from it. At another time the typical
Christian seems to be the active and valiant soldier of a militant
corporation. At another, again, he is a philanthropist, who devotes his
life to the redress of some great wrong, such as slavery, or the
promotion of a more righteous system of production and distribution. In
all these types we can trace the operation of the genius of
Christianity, but they are partial manifestations of it, with much alien
admixture. The spirit of the age, as well as the spirit of Christ, has
moulded the various types of Christian piety.

If there has ever been a time when organised Christianity was a concrete
embodiment of the pure principles of the Gospel, we must look for it in
the era of the persecutions, when the Church had already gained
coherence and discipline and a corporate self-consciousness, and was
still preserved from the corrupting influence of secularity by the
danger which attended the profession of an illicit creed. A vivid
picture of the Christian communities at this period has been given by
Dobschuetz, whose learning and impartiality are unimpeachable. The Church
at this time demanded from its followers an unreserved confession, even
when this meant death. It was a brotherhood within which there was no
privileged class. Men and women, the free and the slave, had an equal
share in it. It abolished the fundamental Greek distinction of civilised
and barbarian. It looked with contempt on none. Its great organisation
was spread by purely voluntary means, till it gained a firm footing
throughout the Empire and beyond it. To a large extent it was an
association for mutual aid. Wherever anyone was in need, help was at
hand. The tangible advantages of belonging to such a guild were so great
that the Church had to enforce labour on all who could work, as a
condition of sharing in the benefits of membership. Social distinctions,
such as those of rich and poor, master and slave, were not abolished,
but they had lost their sting, because genuine affection, loyalty and
sympathy neutralised these inequalities. Great importance was laid on
truth, integrity in business, and sexual purity. A complete rupture with
pagan standards of morality was insisted on from new members. The human
body must be kept holy, as the temple of God. Revenge was forbidden, and
injustice was endured with meekness and pardon. This is no imaginary
picture. In that brief golden age of the Church, such were indeed the
characteristics of the Christian society. In the opinion of Dobschuetz
the moral condition of the Church in the second century was much higher
than among St. Paul's converts in the first. The paucity of references
to sins of the flesh, and to fraud, is to be accounted for by the actual
rarity of such offences. For a short time, then, the artificial
selection effected by the persecutions kept the Church pure; and from
the happy pictures which we can reconstruct of this period we can judge
what a really Christian society would be like.

The history of institutional Catholicism must be approached from a
different side. Troeltsch argues with much cogency that the Catholic
Church must be regarded rather as the last creative achievement of
classical antiquity than as the beginning of the Middle Ages. Its growth
belongs mainly to the political history of Europe; the strictly
religious element in it is quite subordinate. There is, as Modernist
critics have seen, a real break between the Palestinian Gospel and the
elaborate mystery-religion, with its graded hierarchy, its Roman
organisation, its Hellenistic speculative theology, which achieved the
conquest of the Empire in the fourth century. The Church, as Loisy says,
determined to survive and to conquer, and adapted itself to the demands
of the time. It has travelled far from the simple teaching of the
earthly Christ; though we may, if we choose, hold that His spirit
continued to direct the growing and changing institution which, as a
matter of history, had its source in the Galilean ministry. In truth,
however, the extremely efficient organisation of the Roman Church began
in self-defence and was continued for conquest. It is one of the
strongest of all human institutions, so that it was said before the war
that it is one of the 'three invincibles,' the other two being the
German Army and the Standard Oil Trust.

But our admiration for the subtle and tenacious power of this
corporation must not blind us to its essentially political character.
Its policy has been always directed to self-preservation and
aggrandisement; it is an _imperium in imperio_, which has only checked
fanatical nationalism by the competing influence of a still more
fanatical partisanship. In the present war, the problem before the
Pope's councillors was whether the friendship of the Central Powers or
that of the Entente was best worth cultivating; and the unshaken loyalty
of Austria to the Church, together with a natural preference for German
methods of governing as compared with democracy, turned the scale
against us. In Ireland, in Canada and in Spain the Catholic priests have
been formidable enemies of our cause. As for the other Churches, they
have not the same power of arbitrating in national quarrels. The Russian
Church has never been independent of the secular government; and the
Anglican and Lutheran Churches can hardly be expected to be impartial
when the vital interests of England or Germany are at stake. Lovers of
peace have not much to hope for from organised religion. National
Christianity, as Mr. Bernard Shaw says, will only be possible when we
have a nation of Christs.

The downfall of the medieval European system, though in truth it was a
theory rather than a fact, has removed some of the restraints upon war.
The determining principle of the medieval political theory was the
conception of a 'lex Dei,' which included the 'lex Mosis,' the 'lex
Christi,' and the 'lex ecclesiae,' but which also, as 'lex naturae,'
comprised the law, science, and ethics of antiquity. These laws were
super-national, and no nation dared explicitly to repudiate them. They
formed the basis of a real system of international law, resting, like
everything else in the Middle Ages, on supposed divine authority.

This theory, with its sanctions, was shattered at the Renaissance; and
the Machiavellian doctrine of the absolute State, accepted by Bacon and
put into practice by Frederick the Great, has prevailed ever since,
though not without frequent protests. The rise of nationalities, each
with an intense self-consciousness, has facilitated the adoption of a
theory too grossly immoral to have found favour except in the peculiar
circumstances of modern civilisation. The emergence of nationalities was
often connected with a legitimate struggle for freedom; and at such
times _esprit de corps_ seems to be almost the sum of morality, the
substitute for all other virtues. Loyalty is one of the most attractive
of moral qualities, and it necessarily inhibits criticism of its own
objects, which has the appearance of treason. But, unless the aims of
the corporate body which claims our absolute allegiance are right and
reasonable, loyalty may be, and often has been, the parent of hideous
crimes, and a social evil of the first magnitude. The perversion of
_esprit de corps_ does incalculable harm in every direction, destroying
all sense of honour and justice, of chivalry and generosity, of sympathy
and humanity. It involves a complete repudiation of Christianity, which
breaks down all barriers by ignoring them, and insists on love and
justice towards all mankind without distinction. The worship of the
State has during the last half-century been sedulously and artificially
fostered in Germany, until it has produced a kind of moral insanity.
Even philosophical historians like Troeltsch seem unable to see the
monstrosity of a political doctrine which has caused his country to be
justly regarded as the enemy of the whole human race. Eucken, writing
some years before the war, in a rather gingerly manner deprecates
_Politismus_ as a national danger; but he does not dare to grasp the
nettle firmly. It is possible that this deification of the State in
Germany may be in part due to an unsatisfied instinct of worship. In
Roman Catholic countries, where there must be a divided allegiance,
patriotism never, perhaps, assumes such sinister and fanatical forms.

But we shall not understand the attraction which this naked immoralism
in international affairs exercises over the minds of many who are not
otherwise ignoble, if we do not remember that the repudiation of the
Christian ethical standard has been equally thorough in commercial
competition. The German officer believes himself to have chosen a
morally nobler profession than that of the business-man; he serves (he
thinks) a larger cause, and he is content with much less personal
reward. Socialist assailants of our industrial system, much as they
dislike war, would probably agree with him. It is not necessary to
condemn all competition. The desire to excel others is not
reprehensible, when the rivalry is in rendering useful social service.
But it cannot be denied that the present condition of industry is such
that a heavy premium is offered to mere cupidity; that the fraternal
social life which Christianity enjoins is often literally impossible,
except at the cost of economic suicide; and that in a competitive system
a business man is, by the very force of circumstances, a warrior, though
war is an enemy of love and destructive of Christian society. When the
object of bargaining is to give as little and gain as much as possible,
the Christian standard of values has been rejected as completely as it
was by Machiavelli himself. The competition between two parties to a
bargain is often a competition in unserviceableness. Money is very
frequently made by creating a local and temporary monopoly, which
enables the vendor to squeeze the purchaser. In all such transactions
one man's gain is another man's loss. This state of things, the evils of
which are almost universally recognised and deplored, marks the end of
the glorification of productive industry which was one result of the
Reformation.

Hardly anything distinguishes modern from medieval ethics more sharply
than the emphasis laid by Protestant morality on the duty of making and
producing something tangible. Theoretically the Protestant may hold that
'doing ends in death,' and he may sing these words on Sunday; but his
whole life on week days is occupied in strenuous 'doing.' We find in
Calvinism and Quakerism the genuinely religious basis of the modern
business life, which, however, has degenerated sadly, now that the
largest fortunes are made by dealing in money rather than in
commodities. In the books of Samuel Smiles, and in Clough's poem
beginning 'Hope ever more and believe, O Man,' we find the Gospel of
productive work preached with fervour. It is out of favour now in
England; but in America we still see quaint attempts to make business a
religion, as in the Middle Ages religion was a business. In these
circles, it is productive activity as such to which value is attached,
without much enquiry as to the utility of the product. The result has
been an immense accumulation of the apparatus of life, without any
corresponding elevation in moral standards. The mischiefs wrought by
modern commercialism are largely the fruit of the purely irrational
production which it encourages. There are, says Professor Santayana,
Nibelungen who toil underground over a gold which they will never use,
and in their obsession with production begrudge themselves all
inclinations to recreation, to merriment, to fancy. Visible signs of
such unreason appear in the relentless and hideous aspect which life
puts on; for those instruments which emancipate themselves from their
uses soon become hateful. 'A barbaric civilisation, built on blind
impulse and ambition, should fear to awaken a deeper detestation than
could ever be aroused by those more beautiful tyrannies, chivalrous or
religious, against which past revolutions have been directed.' We
cannot, indeed, be surprised that this ideal of productive work as a
means of grace, precious for its own sake, has no attraction for the
masses, and that independent thinkers like Edward Carpenter should write
books on 'Civilisation, its Cause and Cure.'

This Puritan ideal is not so much unchristian as narrow and
unintelligent; but the money-making life has of late become more and
more frankly predatory and anti-social. The great trusts, and the arts
of the company-promoter, can hardly be said to perform any social
service; they exist to levy tribute on the public. We may say therefore
that, though war between the leading nations of the world had become a
strange idea and a far-off memory, we had by no means risen above the
principles and practices of war in our internal life. The immunity from
militarism hitherto enjoyed by Britain and the United States was a
fortunate accident, not a proof of higher morality. Our fleet protected
both ourselves and the Americans from the necessity of maintaining a
conscript army; but we had drifted into a condition in which civil war
seemed not to be far off, and in which violence and lawlessness were
increasing. By a strange inconsistency, many who on moral or religious
grounds condemned wars between nations were found to condone or justify
acts of war against the State, organised by discontented factions of its
citizens. Revolutionary strikes, prepared long in advance by forced
levies of money which were candidly called war-funds, had as their
avowed aim the paralysis of the industries of the country and the
reduction of the population to distress by withholding the necessaries
of life. These acts of civil war, and disgraceful outbreaks of criminal
anarchism, were justified by persons who professed a conscientious
objection to defending their homes and families against a foreign
invader. This state of mind proves how little essential connexion there
is between democracy and peace. It discloses a confusion of ideas even
greater than the antithesis between industrialism and militarism in the
writings of Herbert Spencer. On this latter fallacy it is enough to
quote the words of Admiral Mahan; 'As far as the advocacy of peace rests
on material motives like economy and prosperity, it is the service of
Mammon; and the bottom of the platform will drop out when Mammon thinks
that war will pay better.' This is notoriously what has happened in
Germany. A short war, with huge indemnities, seemed to German financiers
a promising speculation. If such were the rotten foundations upon which
anti-militarism in this country was based, the Churches cannot be blamed
for giving the peace-movement a rather lukewarm support.

In Germany there was no internal anarchy, such as prevailed in England;
there was also no illusion about the imminence of war. Our politicians
ought to have read the signs of the times better; but they were too
intent on feeling the pulse of the electorate at home to attend to
disturbing and unwelcome symptoms abroad. The causes of the war are not
difficult to determine. War has long been a national industry of
Germany, and the idea of it evoked no moral repugnance. The military
virtues were extolled; the military profession enjoyed an astonishing
social prestige; the learned class proclaimed the biological necessity
of international conflicts. The army believed itself to be invincible,
and it had begun to control the policy of the country; where these two
conditions exist, no diplomacy can avert war. Professionalism always has
a selfish and anti-social element in its code, and the professionalism
of the soldier is always prone to override the rights and disdain the
scruples of civilians.

The dominant classes in Germany also found that their power was being
undermined by the growing industrialisation. The steady increase in the
social-democratic vote was a portent not to be disregarded. A letter
from a German officer to a friend in Roumania, which found its way into
the newspapers, tells a great deal of truth in a few words. 'You cannot
conceive,' he wrote, 'what difficulty we had in persuading our Emperor
that it was necessary to let loose this war. But it has been done; and I
hope that for a long time to come we shall hear no more in Germany of
pacifism, internationalism, democracy, and similar pestilent doctrines.'
Sir Charles Walston, in his thoughtful book 'Aristodemocracy,' lays
great stress on this. 'It appeared to me,' he says, 'ever since 1905,
that in the immediate future it was all a question as to whether the
labour-men, the practical pacifists, would arrive at the realisation of
their power before the militarists had forced a war upon us, or whether
the military powers would anticipate this result, and within the next
few years force a war upon the world.' To the influence of the military
was added the cupidity of the commercial and financial class. The law of
diminishing returns was driving capital further and further afield; and
large profits, it was hoped, might be made by the exploitation of
backward countries and the reduction of their inhabitants to serfdom. To
a predatory and parasitic class war seems only a logical extension of
the principles upon which it habitually acts; and for this reason
privileged orders seldom feel much moral compunction about a war-policy.
Lastly, among the causes of the war must be reckoned one which has
received far too little attention from social and political
philosophers--the tenacious and half-unconscious memories of a race.
Injustice comes home to roost, sometimes after an astonishingly long
interval. The disaffection of Catholic Ireland would be quite
unintelligible without the massacres of the sixteenth century and the
unjust trade-legislation of the seventeenth and eighteenth. The
bitterness of the working class in England has its roots in the earlier
period of the industrial revolution (about 1760-1832), when the
labourer, with his wife and children, was treated as the 'cannon-fodder'
of industry. Similarly, the seeds of Prussian brutality and
aggressiveness were sown at Jena and in the raiding of Prussia for
recruits before the Moscow expedition. If such were the causes of the
great world-war, how little can be hoped from courts of international
arbitration!

These considerations have, perhaps, made it clear that the main causes
of international conflicts are what the Epistle of St. James declares
them to be--'the lusts that war in your members,' the pugnacious and
acquisitive instincts which pervade our social life in times of peace,
and not least in those nations which pride themselves on having advanced
beyond the militant stage. There are some who accept this state of
things as natural and necessary, and who blame Christianity for carrying
on a futile campaign against human nature. This is a very different
indictment from that which condemns Christianity for tolerating a
preventible evil; and it is, in our opinion, even less justified. The
argument that, because war has always existed, it must always continue
to exist, is justly ridiculed by Mr. Norman Angell. 'It is commonly
asserted that old habits of thought can never be shaken; that, as men
have been, so they will be. That, of course, is why we now eat our
enemies, enslave their children, examine witnesses with the thumbscrew,
and burn those who do not attend the same church.'

The long history of war as a racial habit explains why a ruinous and
insane anachronism shows such tenacity; for the conditions which
established the habit among primitive tribes demonstrably no longer
exist. It is probably true, as William James says, that 'militarist
writers without exception regard war as a biological or sociological
necessity'; lawyers might say the same about litigation. But laws of
nature 'are not efficient causes, and it is open to any one to prove
that they are not laws, if he can break them with impunity. It would be
the height of pessimistic fatalism to hold that men must always go on
doing that which they hate, and which brings them to misery and ruin.
Man is not bound for ever by habits contracted during his racial nonage;
his moral, rational, and spiritual instincts are as natural as his
physical appetites; and against them, as St. Paul says, 'there is no
law,' Huxley's Romanes Lecture gave an unfortunate support to the
mischievous notion that the 'cosmic process' is the enemy of morality.
The truth seems to be that Nature presents to us not a categorical
imperative, but a choice. Do we prefer to pay our way in the world, or
to be parasites? War, with very few exceptions, is a mode of parasitism.
Its object is to exploit the labour of other nations, to make them pay
tribute, or to plunder them openly, as the Germans have plundered the
cities of Belgium. War is a parasitic industry; and Christianity forbids
parasitism. Nature has her own penalties for the lower animals which
make this choice, and they strike with equal severity 'the peoples that
delight in war,' The bellicose nations have nearly all perished.

There remains, however, a class of wars which escapes this
condemnation; and about them difficult moral problems may be raised. We
can hardly deny to a growing and civilised nation the right to expand at
the expense of barbarous hunters and nomads. No one would suggest that
the Americans ought to give back their country to the Indians, or that
Australia should be abandoned to the aborigines. But were the
Anglo-Saxons justified in expropriating the Britons, and the Spaniards
the Aztecs? There is room for differences of opinion in these cases; and
a very serious problem may arise in the future, as to whether the
European races are morally justified in using armed force to restrict
Asiatic competition. As a general principle, we must condemn the
expropriation of any nation which is in effective occupation of the
soil. The popular estimate of superior and inferior races is thoroughly
unchristian and unscientific, as is the prejudice against a dark skin.
The opinion that a nation which is increasing in population has a right
to expel the inhabitants of another country to make room for its own
emigrants is surely untenable. If it justifies war at all, it sanctions
a war of extermination, which would attain its objects most completely
by massacring girls and young women. The pressure of population is a
real cause of war; but the moral is, not that war is right, but that a
nation must cut its coat according to its cloth, and limit its numbers.

Unless we justify wars of extermination, war has no biological sanction,
and Christianity is not flying in the face of nature by condemning it.
On the contrary, by condemning every form of parasitism, it indicates
the true path of evolution. It is equally right in rejecting the purely
economic valuation of human goods. The 'economic man' does not exist in
nature; he is a fictitious creature who is responsible for a great deal
of social injustice. Some modern economists, like Mr. Hobson, would
substitute for the old monetary standards of production and distribution
an attempt to estimate the 'human costs' of labour. Creative work
involving ingenuity and artistic qualities is not 'costly' at all,
unless the hours of labour, or the nervous strain, exceed the powers of
the worker. More monotonous work is not costly to the worker if the
day's labour is fairly short, or if some variety can be introduced. The
human cost is greatly increased if the worker thinks that his labour is
useless, or that it will only benefit those who do not deserve the
enjoyment of its fruits. Work which only produces frivolous luxuries is
and ought to be unwelcome to the producer, even if he is well paid. It
must also be emphasised that worry and anxiety take the heart out of a
man more than anything else. Security of employment greatly reduces the
'human cost' of labour. These considerations are comparatively new in
political economy. They change it from a highly abstract science into a
study of the conditions of human welfare as affected by social
organisation. The change is a victory for the ideas of Buskin and
Morris, though not necessarily for the practical remedies for social
maladjustments which they propounded. It brings political economy into
close relations with ethics and religion, and should induce economists
to consider carefully the contribution which Christianity makes to the
solution of the whole problem. For Christianity has its remedy to
propose, and it is a solution of the problem of war, not less than of
industrial evils.

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