Love, the Law of Life

As society in its development passes from the physical to the psychical, it abandons the primitive stage of existence upon a merely material plane, and by an inner compulsion seeks by invention and discovery to guarantee to itself a life set free from the material. And, concurrently, among civilized people the necessity for fellow countrymen mutually to distrust and war upon each other disappears. Yet without security of life through an inner power everyone in society would probably, as was the case in feudal times, go about fully armed. Since war is not an inner discovery, but an irruption from the outside, universal armaments are still maintained. Civilized people which have abolished the carrying of weapons by the citizenry still arm themselves against foreign powers, for the reason that they do not as races trust each other to have the inner power.

Society is always slower to awake than individuals. Therefore, though disarming domestically, as nations they still retain armaments. However, if the awakening of nations proceeds with anything like the speed with which individuals are today awakening, we may anticipate international disarmament. But I am not an absolute optimist: if the inner awakening is arrested, then there is no hope at all. The hope is directly proportional to the inner awakening.

Iam unable here to follow the Marxian interpretation. I think of the authority to be created when all the laborers of the world unite; but I doubt if real power is to be expected from a union of laborers of the presentday economics-mad, money-making variety. A union based upon profit will dissolve as soon as the profit ceases. A genuine union must be humanitarian, founded upon an inner, rather than an outer, power. |

When it is said that capitalism will collapse and a labor-production principle arise, the meaning is that anything external will inevitably come to an impasse, while an inner labor power will emerge. External capitalism itself has already come to an impasse, and by virtue of the power of labor it can barely get its income. Unless society can gradually awaken to the inner power, there can be no lasting hope for world peace. Yet because of the deepening realization that from the economic standpoint also the inner power is to be esteemed above superficial capital, the world will not often repeat the stupidity of a European War.

Thus, when the day of the abolition of international armaments arrives, the governments which we know now will be greatly changed inform. That is, governments will evolve from the present-day states of power and militarism into free societies—not free in the sense of having no laws—bound together by moral affinity. Those who govern will be experts in social science, and the law-making bodies will be councils possessing affinity of conscience and representing all the elements which compose society.

Parliaments (or national assemblies) of the present resemble blind lottery-drawings. In the new, genuine society the representatives of the people will not be elected in the ridiculous method of the present. All groups bound together industrially or psychically will ordinarily have their representation fixed; the representatives will express the will of their group, and upon the standard of social ethics will make social laws which will be mutually concessive, interdependent; and they will be free from all hatred and slander. National assemblies will, in other words, become conferences governed by genuine love.

The laws once promulgated will not be enforced by the militaristic politicians who delight in playing with authority, but will be committed to the care of spiritual workers who gladly serve in the public duties “ free society.

When this eventuates, we shall for the first time comprehend what is meant by the words, “Love fulfils the law.”

On reading the Bhagavad Gita, the ancient sacred poem of India, Iwas moved to tears by the solemn soulawakening revealed in the distressed appeals of Prince Arjuna, in agony at the futility of war. I was both elated and depressed upon learning that in ancient India that reeked with blood there was such a spirit as Arjuna, stirred to such holy anguish.

The awakened soul is always sad. Soldiers who follow a general blindly and fight composedly cannot agonize. It was so at first with Prince Arjuna. But man awakens to the inconsistencies of his acts and dis- - covers the outrage of men murdering their fellow men. I am utterly unable to endure this modern warfare, be it international or internecine strife.

Toward Krishna’s reply in the Gita I have a strong feeling of indignation. With questionable theory derived from absolute spiritism, Krishna instructs Prince Arjuna, who has awakened to sacred love, upon the necessity for war:

Never the spirit was born; the spirit shall cease to be never; Never was time it was not; End and Beginning are dreams! Birthless and deathless and changeless remaineth the spirit forever! Death hath not touched it at all, dead though the house of it seems!..

The end of birth is death; the end of death

Is birth: this is ordained! and mournest thou,

Chief of the stalwart arm! for what befalls

Which could not otherwise befall? The birth

Of living things comes unperceived; the death

Comes unperceived; between them, beings perceive:

What is there sorrowful herein, dear Prince?... This Life within all living things, my Prince!

Hides beyond harm; scorn thou to suffer, then,

For that which cannot suffer. Do thy part!

Be mindful of thy name, and tremble not!

Naught better can betide a martial soul

Than lawful war.

I oppose this rash discourse of Krishna. Every appeal against war has been objected to in similar fashion to thisday. Some argue thus: ‘Nature gives man life, and Nature brings death. Nothing is so cruel as Nature. However much in earnest men may be, Nature goes on killing off men regardlessly. When plagues occur, men drop dead by the hundred thousands. But war never kills so many! Quit worrying about trifles, and learn that, when it is for the right, killing without hesitation is the thing to do!”’

Others cite the argument of the struggle for existence, after the evolutionary doctrine of Darwin, to support the necessity for war. ‘Through the continual strife of living things,” they argue, “the bad are eliminated and the good remain. Thus development proceeds, and war is therefore absolutely necessary for the promotion of biological evolution. The principle applies to human society, and both international war and class struggle are indispensable in social evolution.” That arguments such as the foregoing, enunciated by General Bernhardi at the time of the European War, are senseless, I have demonstrated in some detail in my Philosophy of the Struggle for Existence. Hence I will not repeat the proof here; but in thinking of the various reasons advanced for the necessity of war I have been compelled to consider how imperfectly humanity has developed.

Often I wonder if humanity is not insane, and thoughts like this drag me down into the very abyss of sorrow. Just as certain men develop homicidal mania, so mankind is afflicted with racial and social insanity. Attacks of this kind are the major causes of war. When war fills men’s minds, they have no room to consider all phases of a situation; and that is proof of their insanity. In nothing is there unity. In hospitals for the insane we are told that lack of unity is a characteristic of the insane.

My own belief is that the man who thinks that war is necessary is mildly subnormal, and that he who does not abhor death is a spirit so poor and mean that he will not be lamented if he does die.

In war there is no intelligence—only reckless waste. War destroys the best manhood. It wastes the whole inner life.;

Pray do not ask me MS deal with this subject in detail. For me it would be a task too depressing. Babylon,

Greece, Rome—all were destroyed by war; and Europe too will sometime suffer ruin. It is not science, but war, that destroys humanity.

In time of war the people concentrate all their efforts. They call it union for the sake of victory; but to achieve this harmony the people are all transformed into machines. The nation is consolidated by militarism. The buds of inventive genius, the young buds about to sprout, passing through war are plucked off prematurely. Ask Burbank, the genius of plant propagation, whether evolution is possible for the violet in places where the struggle for existence is severe, or in the hothouse, where struggle is eliminated. He will tell you that the wild violet expends all of its capacity for evolution in struggle. The same truth holds for all plant and animal life. In order to insure evolution the limited energies must be employed in a certain definite direction. While the powers are consumed in struggle, the ability to evolve is arrested. It is just for this reason that the building up of a high culture demands a reasonably long period of peace.

Civilized people of today have by degrees come to realize the absurdity of war. The sphere of mutual aid has been extended. Even while engaging in war men have become able to recognize the good points of their enemies. The development of communications has served further to unite large numbers of people. As intercourse has become closer, all people have come to realize the necessity for supplying each other’s deficiencies.

Today, except among uncivilized communities, all nations have discarded arms within their own borders. This result is the great contribution of mechanical civilization, which has made every person in each country necessary as a producer and has thus effected a new organization of society. In a well organized society it becomes impossible for men to fight with each other. A society that offers any scope for conflict is not organized. The same fact applies to international conflicts. Wars break out in rapid succession because there is as yet no strong international organization. If men could perfect an organization for growth, 7. e., for economy, they would realize the wastefulness of war, its detriment to growth and evolution, and would forthwith abolish it. But today we are in the age of capitalistic national economy, and it appears. still impossible for us to establish close international economic relations. This condition is responsible for most of our wars.

However, though the world has gradually awakened to the folly of international war, it has not yet awakened as regards class struggle.

Economics has from the first developed upon the basis of the principle of growth, one of the three factors of life, 2. €., Variation, growth, and selection. Now the life of conscience is based upon selection, but the principle of growth lacks direct relation to that of selection. Wherefore, ethical life and economic life have in modern times become widely separated. For economics implies that force which makes one thing grow to be one hundred, or, in other words, the human activity which results from the desire to make one hundred dollars grow to one hundred eight dollars in one year; and in the capitalism of modern times this element has developed astoundingly. That is, modern capitalism has developed upon the basis of mass production by machinery. If there were no such mass production there would be no capitalism. But between mass production and the life of conscience based upon selection there is no direct relation. Hence, in modern capitalism the life of conscience has become sadly dulled.

Marx, observing the passing of this dulled life of conscience over into the capitalistic life of mass production which rushes madly for mere “simple equational augmentation”’ and increase, declared that all culture is established upon an economic foundation, 7. e., upon the principle of growth. Naturally, since Marx lacked the creative view of economics as based upon the development of life, his economic theory contains grave

If we argue from the principle of growth, then it is evident that war is detrimental to growth and never a guarantor of evolution. And everyone knows that our modern mechanical civilization has not been bestowed upon us by war.