PREFACE
This book contains two closely related studies of the consciousness
of nations. It has been written during the closing months of the
war and in the days that have followed, and is completed while the
Peace Conference is still in session, holding in the balance, as
many believe, the fate of many hopes, and perhaps the whole future
of the world. We see focussed there in Paris all the motives that
have ever entered into human history and all the ideals that have
influenced human affairs. The question must have arisen in all minds
in, some form as to what the place of these motives and ideals and
dramatic moments is in the progress of the world. Is the world governed
after all by the laws of nature in all its progress? Do ideals and
motives govern the world, but only as these ideals and motives are
themselves produced according to biological or psychological principles?
Or, again, does progress depend upon historical moments, upon conscious
purposes which may divert the course of nature and in a real sense
create the future? It is with the whole problem of history that
we are confronted in these practical hours. At heart our problem
is that of the place of man in nature as a conscious factor of
progress. This is a problem, finally, of the philosophy of history,
but it is rather in a more concrete way and upon a different level
that it is to be considered here,--and somewhat incidentally to
other more specific questions. But this is the problem that is always
before us, and the one to which this study aims to make some contribution,
however small.
The first part
of the book is a study of the motives of war. It is an analysis
of the motives of war in the light of the general principles of
the development of society. We wish to see what the causes of past
wars have been, but we wish also to know what these motives are
as they may exist as forces in the present state of society. In
such a study, practical questions can never be far away. We can
no longer study war as an abstract
psychological problem, since war has brought us to a horrifying
and humiliating situation. We have discovered that our modern world,
with all its boasted morality and civilization, is actuated, at
least in its relations among nations, by very unsocial motives.
We live in a world in which nations thus far have been for the most
part dominated by a theory of States as absolutely sovereign and
independent of one another. Now it becomes evident that a logical
consequence of that theory of States is absolute war. A prospect
of a future of absolute war in a world in which industrial advances
have placed in the hands of men such terrible forces of destruction,
an absolute warfare that can now be carried into the air and under
the sea is what makes any investigation of the motives of war now
a very practical problem.
..............
The second
part of the book is a study of our present situation as an educational
problem, in which we have for the first time a problem of educating
national consciousness as a whole, or the individuals of a nation
with reference to a world-consciousness. The study has reference
especially to the conditions in our own country, but it also has
general significance. The war has brought many changes, and in every
phase of life we see new problems. These may seem at the moment
to be separate and detached conditions which must be dealt with,
each by itself, but this is not so; they are all aspects of fundamental
changes and new conditions, the main
feature of which is the new world-consciousness of which we speak.
Whatever one's occupation, one cannot remain unaffected by these
changes, or escape entirely the stress that the need of adjustment
to new ideas and new conditions compels. What we may think about
the future--about what can be done and what ought to be done, is
in part, and perhaps largely, a matter of temperament. At least
we see men, presumably having access to the same facts, drawing
from them very different conclusions. Some are keyed to high expectations;
they look for revolutions, mutations, a new era in politics and
everywhere in the social life. For them, after the war, the world
is to be a new world. Fate will make a new deal. Others appear to
believe that after the flurry is over we shall settle down to something
very much like the old order. These are conservative people, who
neither desire nor expect great changes. Others take a more moderate
course. While improvement is their great word, they are inclined
to believe that the new order will grow step by step out of the
old, and that good will come out of the evil only in so far as we
strive to make it. We shall advance along the old lines of progress,
but faster, perhaps, and with life attuned to a higher note.
Continua
>>>>>
* 
