“The Most Wonderful Thing in the World”

Dominion, Volume 18, Issue 193, 10 May 1924, Page 13

“The Most Wonderful Thing in the World”

Civilisation, The Result of the Co-operative Efforts

of all Ages and Countries

“The key to the study of history is the unity of civilsation, and the key to the conception of world citizenship is also the unity of civilisation. Civilisation is a co-operative achievement. The civilisation which we praise so highly is the result of the co-operative efforts of men and women, known and unknown, through all the ages, belonging to all countries and all races and all creeds. It is the most wonderful thing that the world has ever seen, and it is the result of the common efforts of the human family. For the last four centuries we have lived in an atmosphere from which the conception of world citizenship has almost disappeared, to the unspeakable loss of the modern world. This doctrine of the unfettered sovereignty of the individual State has, in my opinion, been the curse of the modern world.” Dr. G. P. Gooch, in his “Wider Aspects of Civilisation.”

t 1 p -rM HE most wonderful thing that the world has ever seen,” says I " Dr. G. P. Gooch, “is that mighty co-operative achievement of I known and unknown men and women of all races and times— S the building of our civilisation—the result of the common efforts ■*" of the human family.” He shows why that civilisation must be maintained, and how its unity is menaced to the common danger, and the document is an important tract for the times. “This conception of the unity of civilisation,” ho says, “is not a very old conception, nor a very new one. The founders of civilisation, in the sense in which we use it to-day, were the Greeks, but they had no conception of the unity of the human family. They knew nothing about the civilisation which had preceded their own, and they did not know, and did not want to know, anything about the civilisations by which they were surrounded. “You know that the word ‘barbarians’ was a Greek word to express people whoso language sounded like ‘bar-bar,’ and was unintelligible to the cultured Athenian. “The first glimmering of a perception of the unity of civilisation came in with the Roman Empire. The Romans, in addition to launching into the world the conception of law, also brought into the world tho conception, at any rate, in an incipient form, of the unity of civilised mankind, and by their conception of the law of nature and of the law of nations they laid the foundation for the mental processes which we use to-day. “The Middle Ages are to me more interesting for their contributions to what we will call a political theory than for almost any other reason. FOR A THOUSAND YEARS. “For a thousand years, roughly from St. Augustine to Machiavelli, from the fifth century to the fifteenth, the conception of tho unity of civilisation dominated Europe. “They called Europe tho ‘Res publica Christiana,’ the Christian Commonwealth ; and they regarded every member of the Christian Commonwealth as a member of a single family. ... ’’There was no such thing as what we call nowadays sovereignty. It never occurred .to anybody that the prince or the ruler of any given State was supreme. It never occurred to anybody in the Middle Ages that any one country was responsible for its doings to itself alone. The Middle Ages created and believed in this great conception of the unity of civilised mankind- ...

“The difference between the medireval and the modern historian is immense. Modern historians, with few exceptions, are not only natives of their particular countries, but advocates. They are far less teachers and observers than advocates of a particular claim or a particular cause, and you can have —and do have—historians of the very front rank "utterly ignorant of the underlying unity of civilised mankind. “If you turn up any of the half-dozen historical handbooks which were read all over Christendom in the Middle Ages you will find that the historian, as a matter of Course, starts from the assumption of the unity of the Christian Commonwealth, and that he regards Christendom as a whole. “I plead for the restoration of the mediaeval conception of the unity of civilisation, brought up to date, secularised and informed with a new and a wider outlook. I also want you to realise that that conception of world citizenship—for such it was—which dominated Europe, or at any rate the better mind of Europe, for a thousand years, was lost under the double impact of the Renaissance and the Reformation: the Renaissance which secularised thought and overthrew the spell of authority; and the Reformation which broke the religious life of Christendom into two parts. For the last four centuries we have lived in an atmosphere from which the conception of world citizenship has almost entirely disappeared, to the unspeakable loss of the modern world. CURSE OF THE MODERN WORLD. “About four hundred years ago, dating roughly from Machiavelli, the conception of sovereignty came into the modern world —the conception that every State was supremo, responsible only to itself, without any obligations to other States, without any obligation to the community of mankind, and without paying any more than lip homage either to a divine ruler of mankind or to the divine voice within.

“This doctrine of the unfettered sovereignty of the individual State has, in my opinion, been the curse of tho modem world. It has been bad for civilisation as a whole, and it has been degrading for every State where it has been adopted. “It is not the invention and has not been the property of any one country. I have traced it to Machiavelli, because Machiavelli was the first and -remains to this day one of the most powerful political thinkers who ever lived; and his great achievement —his great and baneful achievement was to divorce politics from ethics. “What Machiavelli began was continued by men like Hobbes in England and Hegel in Germany, and has become something like an established commonplace of statesmen and of publicists in every country in the world. If any doctrine has ever been decisively condemned by the experience of its results it has been the doctrine of the unfettered sovereignty of the individual State, which carried with it the denial of the conception of world citizenship.

“For the last four centuries,” adds Dr. Gooch, “there has been a struggle going on for the soul of man between the doctrine of ■world citizenship, which was, at any rate, adumbrated in the Middle Ages, and the newer doctrine of purely secular and national politics. This struggle has mirrored itself not only in the acts of rulers and politicians, but also in the writings and tho ideals of publicists. “I am afraid we must say that -the conception of world citizenship was the creed of a very tiny minority from the end of the fifteenth century to tho beginning of the twentieth; but all the time there were men who looked back to the days when Europe was spiritually united and looked forward to the time when Europe, and, indeed, the world, might once again be spiritually united on the broader basis of a common humanity and on the broader basis of the obligations which every member of the human family feels, and ought to feel, to every otherTHE TIDE TURNS. “And this process, this antagonism, has now led us to a period where I think tho tide has at last begun to turn,” adds Dr. Gooch. “I regard the Great War as the inevitable result and the final disproof of the truth and value of narrow-headed and narrow-minded nationalism, and I believe that the best thought and the best mind of the day in all countries without exception is turning back to the mediaeval conception of world citizenship, brought up to date, transferred from a theological to an ethical foundation, and enlarged until it embraces, at any rate, all the civilised countries of the world.

“This process has been assisted not only by the bankruptcy of the old doctrine of sovereignty which was revealed by ths Great War, but also by our experience of the results of the struggle. “Ono of the tasks of tho historian is to realise that his duty is to inquire into and to explain the whole life of humanity. . . It is impossible to teach English history faithfully, clearly, or wisely without keeping continuously in mind the fact that it is only a portion of a very much larger story.

“To me as a student of history and as a keen supporter of the League of Nations it is a great comfort to feel that the study of the past and the needs of the present both point in the same direction, namely, to get a real, clear, close grip of this fundamental fact —that we are all members of the human family. •

“It will take a very long time for this conception to work itself into the consciousness and the subconsciousness of statesmen, of the man in the street, and of the schoolmaster and of the author of school history; but it has got to come, and it will come.

“I am perfectly certain,” concludes Dr. Gooch, “that those of us who are connected with teaching and the teaching profession will be gravely neglecting our duties if we do not do all that lies in our power first to convince ourselves of this fundamental fact of the unity of civilisation and the mutual obligation of all the members of the civilised family of man; and in the second place, if we do not do all that we can to pass on this great revealing and inspiring conception to those with whom we come in contact, and to those whoso training is given into our hands.”