ARE we, then, a civilized people? Has the Man of to-day, still living by bloodshed, still striving to grow rich at the expense of his neighbour, still using torture in punishment, still seeking sport in destruction, still waging fratricidal wars, and, while making a hell on earth, claiming for himself an eternal heaven hereafter—has this selfish, predatory being arrived at a state of “civilization”?

It may be said, perhaps, that as the ideal is always in advance of the actual, and it is easy to show that any present stage of society falls far short of what it might be and ought to be, the distinction between savagery and civilization is a matter of names. This, in one sense, is true; but it is also true that names are of great importance as reacting upon conduct, and that to use flattering titles as a veil for cruel practices gives permanence to evils that otherwise would not be permitted. Our present self-satisfaction in what we are pleased to call our civilization is a very serious obstacle to improvement.

In this manner euphemism plays a great part in language; for just as the Greeks used gracious terms to denote malignant powers, and so, as they thought, to disarm their hostility, the modern mind seeks, consciously or unconsciously, to disguise iniquities by misnaming them. Thus a blind tribal hatred can be masked as “patriotism”; living idly on the work of others is termed “an independence”; vivisection cloaks itself as “research”; and the massacre of wild animals for man’s wanton amusement is dignified as “sport.” There is undoubtedly much virtue in names.

But here another objection may be raised, to wit, that in view of the vast advance that has been made by mankind from primeval savagery to the present complex social state, it is impossible to apply to the higher man the same name as to the lower man; for if we are savages, what are the Bushmen or the Esquimaux?

It may be doubted whether of late years Europe has been pleasanter as a residential district than Cathay; but, letting that pass, must we not admit that a real culture implies something more than material and mental opulence? “Civilization,” as a French writer has lately said, “is not in this terrible trumpery: if it is not in the heart of man, then it exists nowhere.”[46] It is easy to frame “ethnical periods,” as is done in Morgan’s Ancient Society, in which are postulated the three phases—Savagery, Barbarism, and Civilization—the last-named commencing with the invention of a Phonetic Alphabet; but such a definition, when put to practical test, seems a somewhat fanciful one. The brute who tortures or butchers a sentient fellow-being remains a brute, whether a Phonetic Alphabet has been invented or not. He has not learnt the ABC of civilization. What is needed, for the measurement of human progress, is a standard of ethical, not ethnical refinement.

That mankind has already advanced so far is a sign, not that it has now reached its zenith, but that it has yet further to advance; and this advance will be delayed, not promoted, by the refusal to recognize that the physical and mental sciences have far outrun the moral—that, despite our multifarious discoveries and accomplishments, we are still barbarians at heart.

In this sense, then, we are savages; and the knowledge of that fact is the first step toward civilization. There is a line which pious zoophilists are fond of quoting to sportsmen or other thoughtless persons who ill-use their humbler fellow-creatures:

The reminder is wholesome, for kinship is too apt to be forgotten; but I would venture to interpret that significant verse in a much more literal sense; for it must be confessed that many a human being, if judged by his actions, is not only related to the brute, but is himself the brute. The old Greek maxim, “Know thyself,” is the starting-point of all reformation.

Through this knowledge, and only through it, can come the patience which forgives because it fully understands: “Comprendre c’est pardonner” is assuredly one of the world’s greatest sayings.

There is no need to search for extenuating circumstances, because, as Ernest Crosby has remarked: “Is not the fact of being born a man or a woman an all-sufficient extenuating circumstance?” All is explained, when once we are content to look upon our fellow-beings, and upon ourselves, as what we verily are—a race of rough but not unkindly barbarians, emerging with infinite slowness to a more humanized condition, and to recognize that if mankind, even as it is, has been evolved from a still more savage ancestry, that fact is in itself a proof that progress is not wholly chimerical.

Considered from the point of view of personal happiness and peace of mind, the question is the same. To what sort of comfort can a person of sensibility hope to attain, in sight of the immense sum of wretchedness and suffering that is everywhere visible, and audible, around us? I know not a few humanitarians whose lives are permanently saddened by the thought of the awful destitution that afflicts large masses of mankind, and of the not less awful cruelties inflicted on the lower animals in the name of sport and science and fashion. How can sensitive and sympathetic minds forget the loss of other persons’ happiness in the culture of their own, especially if they have realized that not a little of their well-being is derived from the toil of their fellows?

Here, again, some measure of consolation may be found, if we look at the problem in a less sanguine and therefore less exacting spirit. People often indignantly ask, with reference to some cruel action or custom, whether we are living “in an age of civilization or of savagery,” the implication being that in an era of the highest and noblest civilization, such as ours is assumed to be, some unaccountably barbarous persons are stooping to an unworthy practice. Is it not wiser, and more conducive to one’s personal peace of mind, to reverse this assumption, and to start with the frank avowal that the present age, in spite of its vast mechanical cleverness, is, from an ethical point of view, one of positive barbarism, not so savage, of course, as some that have preceded it, but still undeniably savage as compared with what we foresee of a civilized future?

Viewed in this more modest light, many usages which, if prevalent in a civilized country, might well make one despair of humankind, are seen to be, like the crimes of children, symptoms of the thoughtless infancy of our race. We are not civilized folk who have degenerated into monsters, but untamed savages who, on the whole, make a rather creditable display, and may in future centuries become civilized.

For example, when one meets a number of “sportsmen” going forth, with horses and with hounds, to do to death with every circumstance of barbarity some wretched little animal whom they have actually bred, or “preserved,” or imported for the purpose, such a sight—if one regards them as rational and civilized beings—might well spoil one’s happiness for a fortnight. But if we take a lower stand, and see in them nothing more than fine strapping barbarians, engaged in one of the national recreations of those “dark ages” in which we live, the outlook becomes immediately a more cheerful one; and instead of being surprised that ladies and gentlemen in the twentieth century should desire to “break up” a fox, we are able to recognize the moderation and civility with which in other respects they conduct themselves.

One advantage, at least, can be drawn by humanitarians from the present state of affairs—a more accurate apprehension of the obstacles by which their hopes are beset. Much has been said and written about the causes of the war; and it is inevitable that the immediate causes (for they alone are discussed) should be thoroughly investigated. But the deeper underlying causes of the recent war, and of every war, are not those upon which diplomatists and politicians and journalists and historians are intent: they must be sought in that callous and selfish habit of mind—common to all races, and as such accepted without thought, and transmitted from one generation to another—which exhibits itself not in war only, but in numerous other forms of barbarity observed in so-called civilized life.

No League of Nations, or of individuals, can avail, without a change of heart. Reformers of all classes must recognize that it is useless to preach peace by itself, or socialism by itself, or anti-vivisection by itself, or vegetarianism by itself, or kindness to animals by itself. The cause of each and all of the evils that afflict the world is the same—the general lack of humanity, the lack of the knowledge that all sentient life is akin, and that he who injures a fellow-being is in fact doing injury to himself. The prospects of a happier society are wrapped up in this despised and neglected truth, the very statement of which, at the present time, must (I well know) appear ridiculous to the accepted instructors of the people.

The one and only talisman is Love. Active work has to be done, but if it is to attain its end, it is in the spirit of love that it must be undertaken. Perhaps the most significant symptom of the brutishness aroused by the war-fever was the blank inability which many Christians showed not only to practise such injunctions as “Love your enemies,” but even to understand them.[47] Had it not been that humour, like humaneness, was sunk fathoms deep in an ocean of stupidity, one would have been tempted to quote Ernest Crosby’s delightful lines on “Love the Oppressors”:

In these days, when the voice of hatred and malevolence is so dominant, it is a joy to turn to the pages of writers who proclaim a wiser faith. “This is a gray world,” says Howard Moore. “There is enough sorrow in it, even though we cease to scourge each other—the sorrow of floods, famines, fires, earthquakes, storms, diseases, and death. We should trust each other, and love each other, and sympathize with and help each other, and be patient and forgiving.” Nor is it only the human that claims our sympathy; for does not Pierre Loti, in his Book of Pity and Death, imagine even his stray Chinese cat, whom he had befriended on shipboard, addressing him in similar words: “In this autumn day, so sad to the heart of cats, since we are here together, both isolated beings ... suppose we give, one to the other, a little of that kindness which softens trouble, which resembles the immaterial and defies death, which is called affection, and which expresses itself from time to time by a caress.”

Has not this distracted world had enough, and more than enough, of jealousies and denunciations? Is it not time that we tried, in their stead, the effect, say, of a bombardment of blessings? If there are light-waves, heat-waves, sound-waves, may there not also be love-waves? How if we sent out a daily succession of these to earth’s uttermost parts? A benediction is as easily uttered as a curse; and it needs no priest to pronounce it. At least it is pleasant to think (and men put faith in creeds that are much less believable) that gentle thoughts, the “wireless” of the heart, may penetrate and be picked up in regions that are beyond our ken, and so create a more favourable atmosphere for gentle deeds. “Why did none of them tell me,” asks Crosby, “that my soul was a loving-machine?” It is strange, certainly, that we take so much more pains to kindle the fires of hate than the fires of love.

“Boundless compassion for all living beings,” says Schopenhauer, “is the surest and most certain guarantee of pure moral conduct, and needs no casuistry. Whoever is filled with it will assuredly injure no one, do harm to no one, encroach on no man’s rights; he will rather have regard for every one, forgive every one, help every one as far as he can, and all his actions will bear the stamp of justice and loving-kindness.”[48] Incidentally it may be observed that, as Schopenhauer points out, the difficulties of what is called the sex question would in large measure be solved, if this rule of “injure no one” were more fully believed and acted on.

The lesson of the past six years is this. It is useless to hope that warfare, which is but one of many savage survivals, can be abolished, until the mind of man is humanized in other respects also—until all savage survivals are at least seen in their true light. As long as man kills the lower races for food or sport, he will be ready to kill his own race for enmity. It is not this bloodshed, or that bloodshed, that must cease, but all needless bloodshed—all wanton infliction of pain or death upon our fellow-beings. Only when the great sense of the universal kinship has been realized among us, will love cast out hatred, and will it become impossible for the world to witness anew the senseless horrors that disgrace Europe to-day.

Humanitarians, then, must expect little, but claim much; must know that they will see no present fruits of their labours, but that their labours are nevertheless of far-reaching importance. Let those who have been horrified by the spectacle of an atrocious war resolve to support the peace movement more strongly than ever; but let them also support the still wider and deeper humanitarian movement of which pacifism is but a part, inasmuch as all humane causes, though seemingly separate, are ultimately and essentially one.