The Forerunners (Romain Rolland)/II
II
UPWARDS, ALONG A WINDING ROAD
IF I have kept silence for a year, it is not because the faith to which I gave expression in Above the Battle has been shaken (it stands firmer than ever); but I am well assured that it is useless to speak to him who will not hearken. Facts alone will speak, with tragical insistence; facts alone will be able to penetrate the thick wall of obstinacy, pride, and falsehood with which men have surrounded their minds because they do not wish to see the light.
But we, as between brothers of all the nations; as between those who have known how to defend their moral freedom, their reason, and their faith in human solidarity; as between minds which continue to hope amid silence, oppression, and grief—we do well to exchange, as this year draws to a close, words of affection and solace. We must convince one another that during the blood-drenched night the light is still burning, that it never has been and never will be extinguished.
In the abyss of suffering into which Europe is plunged, those who wield the pen must be careful never to add an additional pang to the mass of pangs already endured, and never to pour new reasons for hatred into the burning flood of hate. Two ways remain open for those rare free spirits which, athwart the mountain of crimes and follies, are endeavouring to break a trail for others, to find for themselves an egress. Some are courageously attempting in their respective lands to make their fellow-countrymen aware of their own faults. This is the course adopted by the valiant Englishmen of the Independent Labour Party and of the Union of Democratic Control, and by those fine men of untrammelled mind Bertrand Russell, E. D. Morel, Norman Angell, Bernard Shaw; this is the path taken by certain persecuted Germans, too few in number; this is the path taken by the Italian socialists, by the Russian socialists, by Gorki, the master of Sorrow and of Pity; and this is the path taken by certain free Frenchmen.
My own task is different, for it is to remind the hostile brethren of Europe, not of their worst aspects but of their best, to recall to them reasons for hoping that there will one day be a wiser and more loving humanity.
What we now have to contemplate may, indeed, well incline us to despair of human reason. For those, and they were many, who were blissfully slumbering upon their faith in progress, a progress from which there was to be no looking back, the awakening has been rude. Without transition, such persons have passed from the absurd excesses of slothful optimism to the vertigo of unplumbed pessimism. They are not used to looking at life except from behind a parapet. A barrier of comfortable illusions has hidden from them, hitherto, the chasm above which, clinging to the face of the precipice, winds the narrow path along which man is marching. Here and there the wall has crumbled. The footing is treacherous. But we must pass, nevertheless. We shall pass. Our fathers had to make their way across many such places. We have been too ready to forget. Save for a few shocks, the years of our own lives have been spent in a sheltered age. But in the past, epochs of disturbance have been commoner than epochs of calm. What is taking place to-day is horribly abnormal for those alone who were drowsing in the abnormal peace of a society equally devoid of foresight and of remembrance. Let us call to mind those whom the past has known. Let us think of Buddha, the liberator; of the Orphics worshipping Dionysos-Zagreus, god of the innocent who suffer and will be avenged; of Xenophanes of Elea who had to witness the devastation of his fatherland by Cyrus; of Zeno tortured; of Socrates put to death by poison; of Plato dreaming during the rule of the Thirty Tyrants; of Marcus Aurelius, sustaining the empire whose decline was at hand. Let us think of those who watched the ruin of the old world; of the bishop of Hippo dying when his city was about to fall before the onslaught of the Vandals; of the monks who, in a Europe peopled with wolves, worked as illuminators, builders, musicians. Let us think of Dante, Copernicus, and Savonarola; of exiles, persecutions, burnings at the stake; of Spinoza, frail in health, writing his immortal Ethics by the light of the burning villages of his invaded country. Let us think of our own Michel de Montaigne, in his defenceless castle, softly pillowed, waking from his light sleep to hear the bells pealing from the church towers of the countryside, or asking himself in his dreams if he was to be murdered that very night… Man is not fond of reviving the memory of disagreeable occurrences; he dislikes to think of things which disturb his tranquility. But in the history of the world, tranquillity has been rare; nor is it in a tranquil environment that the greatest souls have been fashioned. Let us without a shudder contemplate the raging flood as it passes. For those whose ears are attuned to the rhythm of history, all contributes to the same work, evil no less than good. Those of impulsive temperament, carried away by the flood, move along blood-stained roads, and are none the less moving, willy-nilly, whither fraternal reason beckons. Were we compelled to depend upon men's common sense, upon their goodwill, upon their moral courage, upon their kindliness, there would be ample reason for despairing of the future. But those who will not or cannot march, pushed onward by blind forces, a bleating flock, move towards the goal: Unity.
⁂
The unity of our own France was forged by age-long struggles between the separate provinces. At one time every province, even every village, was a fatherland. For more than a hundred years the Armagnacs and the Burgundians (my ancestors) went on breaking one another's heads, to discover in the end that they were men of one blood. The war which is now mingling the blood of France and of Germany, is leading the French and the Germans to drink from the same cup to their future union, like the barbaric heroes of the epic age. Struggle and bite as they may, their very grapple binds them together. These armies which are endeavouring to destroy one another, have become more akin in spirit than they were before they faced one another in battle. They can kill one another, but at least they now know one another, whereas ignorance is the nethermost circle of death. Numerous testimonies from the opposing fronts have borne clear witness to the mutual desire of the soldiers, though still fighting, to understand one another. Men who from trench to enemy trench watch one another while taking aim, may remain foes, but they are no longer strangers. At no distant day a union of the nations of the west will form a new fatherland, which itself will be but a stage upon the road leading to a still greater fatherland, that of Europe. Do we not already see the dozen states of Europe, divided into two camps, unwittingly attempting to build a federation wherein war between nations will be no less sacrilegious than would now be war between provinces; a federation in which the duty of to-day will be the crime of to-morrow? Has not the need for this future union been affirmed by the most conflicting voices: by William II, who spoke of the "United States of Europe";[1] by Hanotaux, with his "European Confederation";[2] by Ostwald, and Haeckel of lamentable memory, with their "Society of States"? Each one, doubtless, worked for his own saint; but all these saints served the same master!…
Nay more, the gigantic chaos wherein, as if amid the throes that occurred when the earth was still molten, all the human elements from the three continents of the Old World are clashing one against another, is a racial alchemy preparing, alike by force and by spiritual factors, alike by war and by peace, the coming fusion of the two halves of the world, of the two hemispheres of thought, of Europe and Asia. I do not talk utopia. For some years this drawing together has been preluded by a thousand signs, by mutual attraction in the realms of thought and of art, in the realms of politics and of commerce. The war has merely accelerated the movement; and while the war yet rages, men are at work on behalf of this cause. Two years ago, in one of the belligerent states, there were founded great institutes for the comparative study of the civilisations of Europe and of Asia, and to promote their mutual penetration.
The most striking phenomenon of our day," thus runs the program of one of these institutes,[3] "is the formation of a universal civilisation, issuing from a number of distinct civilisations handed down from earlier days.… No past epoch has ever beheld a more powerful impetus animating the human race than that which mankind has known during recent centuries and the one we have now entered. There has been nothing comparable to this torrential confluence of all the forces to form a resultant, the achievement of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the state, in science, and in art, everywhere, there is now being elaborated the great individuality of universal mankind; everywhere there is uprising the new life of the universal human spirit.… The three spiritual and social worlds, the three mankinds (that of Europe and the Near East, that of Hindustan, and that of the Far East) are beginning to be assembled to form a single mankind. … Until two generations ago, the individual man was member of a single branch of mankind, of one distinct great form of life. Now he participates in a vast vital flux constituted by the whole of mankind; he must direct his actions in accordance with the laws of that flux, and must find his own place in it. Should he fail to do this, he will lose the best part of himself.—Doubtless, the most significant features of the past, of its religions, of its art, of its thought, are not in question. These remain, and will remain. But they will be raised to new altitudes, dug to new depths. A wider circle of life is opening around us. We need not be surprised that many become giddy and imagine that the greatness of the past is decaying. But the helm must be entrusted to those who are competent, calmly and firmly, to make things ready for the new age.… The completest happiness which can accrue to man henceforward, will be derived from the intelligence of mankind as a whole, and from the multiple ways which man has discovered of attaining happiness.… For a long time to come the intensest joy which man can know on earth will derive from supplementing the ideals of Europe by the ideals of Asia."
Researches of this nature, characterised by universality and objectivity, "formally exclude," continues the program, "everything that tends to foster hatred among nations, classes, and races; everything that induces disintegration and useless struggle.… Those who are engaged in such researches have to fight one thing above all, to fight hatred, ignorance, and lack of understanding.… Their splendid and urgent task is to bring to light the beauty which exists in every human individuality and every nation; their task is the practical one of discovering the scientific means of adjusting differences between nations, classes, and races. Science, and science alone, is competent, by strenuous labour, to win peace.…"
Thus amid the warfare of the nations are being laid the foundations of spiritual peace between the nations, like a lighthouse which reveals to widely separated vessels the distant haven where they will anchor side by side. The human mind has reached the gateway leading into a new road. The gateway is too narrow, and people are crushing one another as they endeavour to get through. But beyond it I see stretching the broad highway along which they will move and where there is room for all. Amid the encircling horrors, the vision comforts me. My heart suffers, but my spirit sees the light.
⁂
Take courage, brothers! Despite all, there are good reasons for hope. Willy-nilly, men are advancing towards our goal; even those who think they have turned their backs on it. In 1887, when the ideas of democracy and international peace bade fair to triumph, I was talking to Renan, who uttered these prophetic words: "You will live to see another great reaction. It may seem to you then that all we are defending has been destroyed. But rest easy in your mind. Humanity's road is a mountain path, winding to and fro among the spurs, so that at times we fancy that we are going away from the summit. But we never cease to climb."
Everything is working on behalf of our ideal; even those are working for it whose blows are directed towards its ruin. Everything makes for unity, the worst no less than the best. Let no one interpret me as implying that the worst is as good as the best! Between the misguided ones who (poor innocents!) preach the war that will end war (those whom we may name the "bellipacifists"), and the unqualified pacifists, those who take their stand upon the gospels, there is a difference like that between madmen who, desiring to get quickly from the attic into the street, would throw furniture and children out of the window—and those who walk down the stairs. Progress is achieved; but nature does not hurry, and her methods are wasteful. The most trifling advance is secured by a terrible squandering of wealth and of lives.[4] When Europe, moving reluctantly, haltingly, like a sorry screw, comes at length to the conviction that she must unify her forces, the union, alas, will be a union of the blind and the paralytic. She will reach the goal, but will be bloodless and exhausted.
For our part, however, we have long been awaiting you there; long ago we achieved unity, we, the free spirits of all the ages, all the classes, and all the races. Those belonging to the remote civilisations of Egypt and the east; the Socrates' and the Lucians of the modern age, such as Thomas More, Erasmus, and Voltaire; those belonging to a distant future, a future which will perchance (looping the loop of time) return to the thought of Asia—the great and the simple, but all free spirits and all brothers, we are but one people. The centuries of the persecutions, the wide world round, have linked us heart and hand. It is this unbreakable chain, encompassing the clay image we term civilisation, which keeps the frail structure from falling to pieces.
- ↑ Conversation with L. Mabilleau, "Opinion," June 20, 1908.
- ↑ In a recent issue of the "Revue des Deux Mondes."
- ↑ Institut für Kulturforschung (Institute for the Study of Civilisation), founded at Vienna in February, 1915, by Dr. Erwin Hanslick. So rapid was its success that in February, 1916, it gave birth to the Institute for the Study of the East and the Orient.
- ↑ "Nature," writes Voltaire in L'Homme aux quarante écus, "is like those great princes who think nothing of the loss of 400,000 men, provided they can fulfil their own august designs."
The princes of to-day, great and small alike, are more spendthrift!