As a clue to the object of this quest, I would ask the reader to bear in
mind that the present disordered state of the world is by no means a
consequence of the late War.
The state of the world is one of confusion, but that confusion is
immemorial. Man has for ever been wrestling with an anarchy which has
for ever defeated him. The history of the human race is the diary of a
Bear Garden. Man, so potent against the mightiest and most august
forces of nature, has never been able to subdue those trivial and
unworthy forces within his own breast--envy, hatred, malice, and all
uncharitableness--which make for world anarchy. He has never been able
to love God because he has never been able to love his neighbour. It is
in the foremost nations of the world, not in the most backward, in the
most Christian nations, not the most pagan, that we find unintelligent
conditions of industrialism which lead to social disorder, and a vulgar
disposition to self-assertion which makes for war. History and Homicide,
it has been said, are indistinguishable terms. "Man is born free, and
everywhere he is in chains."
This striking impotence of the human race to arrive at anything in the
nature of a coherent world-order, this bewildering incapacity of
individual man to live in love and charity with his neighbour, justifies
the presumption that divine help, if ever given, that an Incarnation of
the Divine Will, if ever vouchsafed, must surely have had for its chief
mercy the teaching of a science of life--a way of existence which would
bring the feet of unhappy man out of chaos, and finally make it possible
for the human race to live intelligently, and so, beautifully.
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