With proper changes the foregoing account applies to the plans that are useful in estab lishing a new religious sect. Always you find the same union of personal enthusiasm on the part of leaders with a disposition to define the ideal of the new organization in terms that transcend the limits of individual human life. Man, even when he is a member of a purely convivial social body, is prone to try to con ceive both his own life, and also that of this social body, in superhuman terms. Expe rience thus shows that a procedure of the sort just described does succeed, in many cases, in training people — sometimes small groups, sometimes great bodies of men — to new forms of loyalty.
The plans whereby an actually ancient institution is kept in possession of the loyalty of its own natural servants do not in their essence differ from the ones just characterized. The loyalty of a body of alumni to their university is a classic instance of a loyalty kept alive by the union of an institution with the personality of its living leaders. Even TRAINING FOR LOYALTY so, the loyalty of the sons of a subjugated nationality, such as the Irish or the Poles, to their country, is kept alive through precisely such an union of the influence of individual leaders with the more impersonal reverence for the idealized, although no longer politi cally existent nationality.
You see, so far, how the personal leaders and the superhuman cause are inseparable in the training of loyalty. The cause comes to be idealized partly because the leaders so vigor ously insist that it is indeed ideal. On the other hand, the leaders become and remain personally efficacious by reason of the dignity that the cause confers upon them. Were they considered apart from their cause, they would seem to be merely ambitious propagandists, seeking gain or notoriety. To those without the range of their personal influence, they often seem such. Yet if they did not speak for the cause, and so give to it the life of their personal enthusiasm, nobody would be taught to regard their cause as ideal. The cause thus needs to become incarnate, as it were, in the persons of THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY the leaders; but the leaders get their personal influence through the fact that they seem to be incarnations of the cause.
Facts of this sort are familiar. You can observe them whenever you attend an anni versary meeting, or other such ceremonial, of your own club, and whenever you listen to those who represent any successful propa ganda. But how vastly significant such facts may be in determining the lives of whole generations and nations and races of men, you can only judge if you read the general history of humanity in the light of the principles now pointed out. If our philosophy of loyalty has any truth, the history of human loyalty con cerns whatever is most important in the annals of mankind. And the whole history of loyalty is the history of the inseparable union of the personal influence of leaders with the tendency to idealize causes.
V But the idealization of the cause, although never possible without the aid of living per- TRAINING FOR LOYALTY sons, may also depend upon still other factors than the direct personal influence of leaders. When we consider the general history of loyalty amongst men, our attention is soon attracted to a deeply instructive process whereby, in certain cases, — some of them very great and wonderful cases, — causes have been ideal ized not only by the personal influence of the leaders, but also by certain deeply pathetic motives to which the leaders could constantly appeal. I refer to the process illustrated by the history of lost causes.
I referred a moment ago to the loyalty of the Irish and of the Poles to their own lost nationalities. Now such loyalty to a lost cause may long survive, not merely in the more or less unreal form of memories and sentiments, but in a genuinely practical way. And such loyalty to a lost cause may be some thing that far transcends the power of any mere habit. New plans, endless conspiracies, fruitful social enterprises, great political or ganizations, — yes, in the extreme case, — new religions, may grow up upon the basis THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY of such a loyalty to a cause whose worldly fortunes seem lost, but whose vitality may out last centuries, and may involve much novel growth of opinion, of custom, and of ideals.
The most notable religious development which the world has ever seen, the religion of Israel, together with its successor, Christian ity, — this whole religious evolution, — is, as we must here point out, the historical result of a national loyalty to a lost cause. The political unity of all the tribes of Israel, attained but for a moment, so to speak, under David and Solomon, and then lost from the visible world of history, survived as an ideal. Only as such a lost ideal could this conception of what Israel once was and ought again to be inspire the Old Testament prophets to speak the word of the Lord regarding the way of righteousness whereby, as the prophets held, the prosperity of Israel was to be restored. Only this same lost political ideal, and this resulting discovery of the prophetic theory of the divine govern ment of human affairs, could lead over to that later religious interpretation and to that re- TRAINING FOR LOYALTY writing of the whole ancient history of Israel, which we now read in our Old Testament. Only upon the same basis could the Messianic idea come to be defined; and only thus could the prophetic doctrine of the universal future triumph of righteousness come to be formu lated. And so through an historical process, every step of which depended upon a pathetic and yet glorious loyalty to a lost national cause, the ideals in question were at once universalized and intensified until, through Israel, all the nations of Christendom have been blessed. In consequence, to-day, in speaking of its own hopes of the salvation of mankind, and in describing its coming king dom of heaven, Christianity still uses the fa miliar terms: Zion, the throne of David, Jerusalem, — terms whose original application was to places and to persons first made notable in their own time merely by reason of the petty tribal feuds of an obscure province. Thus loyalty, steadfast and yet developing through centuries, gradually transformed what were once seemingly insignificant matters of local THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY politics into the most sacred concerns of a world religion.
Loyalty to lost causes is, then, not only a possible thing, but one of the most potent influences of human history. In such cases, the cause comes to be idealized through its very failure to win temporary and visible suc cess. The result for loyalty may be vast. I need not remind you that the early Christian church itself was at first founded directly upon a loyalty to its own lost cause, — a cause which it viewed as heavenly just because here on earth the enemies seemed to have triumphed, and because the Master had departed from human vision. The whole history of Chris tianity is therefore one long lesson as to how a cause may be idealized through apparent defeat, and how even thereby loyalty may be taught to generation after generation of men, and may develop into endlessly new forms, and so may appeal to peoples to whom the cause in question was originally wholly strange. This history shows us how such a teaching and such an evolution of an idea may be fur- TRAINING FOR LOYALTY thered by what seems at first most likely to discourage loyalty, that is, by loss, by sorrow, by worldly defeat.
Loyalty to a lost cause, whatever the grade of dignity of the cause, depends in part, of course, upon the same motives which the simpler and more direct forms of loyalty employ.
But when a cause is lost in the visible world, and when, nevertheless, it survives in the hearts of its faithful followers, one sees more clearly than ever that its appeal is no longer to be fully met by any possible present deed. Whatever one can just now do for the cause is thus indeed seen to be inadequate. All the more, in consequence, does this cause demand that its followers should plan and work for the far-off future, for whole ages and aeons of time; should prepare the way for their Lord, the cause, and make his paths straight. Ac tivity becomes thus all the more strenuous, just because its consequences are viewed as so far-reaching and stupendous. Man's ex tremity is loyalty's opportunity. The present may seem dark. All the greater the work THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY yet to be done. The distant future must be conquered. How vast the undertaking, — how vast, but therefore how inspiring!
All this larger and broader devotion of those loyal to a lost cause is colored and illuminated by strong emotion. Sorrow over what has been lost pierces deep into the hearts of the faithful. So much the more are these hearts stirred to pour out their devotion. Mean while, the glamour of memory is over the past. Whatever was commonplace about the former visible fortunes of the lost cause is now for gotten. For the memory of those who sorrow over loss is, as we all know, fond of precious myths, and views these myths as a form in which truth appears. In the great days that have passed away — in the days before the cause suffered defeat — there was indeed tragedy; but there was glory. Legend, often truer, — yes, as Aristotle said of poetry, more philosophical than history, — thus reads into that past not what the lost cause literally was, but what it meant to be. Its body is dead. But it has risen again. The imagination, chastened TRAINING FOR LOYALTY by all this grief, stirred by all this deep need, not only reforms the story of the past, but builds wonderful visions of what is yet to be. Loyalty for the lost cause is thus attended by two comrades, grief and imagination. Yet loyalty, always strenuous and active, is not enervated by these deep emotions, nor yet confused by the wealth of these visions; but rather devotes itself to resolving upon what shall be. Grief it therefore transforms into a stimulating sense of need. If we have lost, then let us find. Loyalty also directs its deeds by the visions that imagination furnishes; and meanwhile it demands in turn that the imagination shall supply it with visions that can be translated into deeds. When it hears from the imagination the story of the coming triumph, it does not become passive. Rather does it say: Watch, for ye know not the day or the hour when the triumph of the cause is to come.
Hora novissima Tempora pessima Sunt, vigilemus.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY This wonderful awakening from the pros tration of grief to the stern but fascinating re solve to live and to be active for the lost cause, this freeing of the imagination through the very agony of missing the dear presence in the visible world, and this complete control both of such passion and of such imagination through the will to make all things work to gether for the good of the cause, — all this is the peculiar privilege of those who are loyal to a cause which the world regards as lost, and which the faithful view as ascended into a higher realm, certain to come again in re newed might and beauty. Thus may grief minister to loyalty.
And I may add, as an obvious truth of hu man nature, that loyalty is never raised to its highest levels without such grief. For what one learns from experience of grief over loss is precisely the true link between loyalty as a moral attitude, and whatever is eternally valuable in religion. One begins, when one serves the lost causes, to discover that, in some sense, one ought to devote one's highest loy- TRAINING FOR LOYALTY alty precisely to the causes that are too good to be visibly realized at any one moment of this poor wretched fleeting time world in which we see and touch and find mere things, mere sensations, mere feelings of the moment. Loyalty wants the cause in its unity; it seeks, therefore, something essentially superhuman. And therefore, as you see, loyalty is linked with religion. In its highest reaches it always is, therefore, the service of a cause that is just now lost — and lost because the mere now is too poor a vehicle for the presentation of that ideal unity of life of which every form of loyalty is in quest. Loyalty to loyalty, that cause of causes upon which I have so much insisted in the foregoing, is indeed just now in far too many ways a lost cause amongst men. But that is the fault of the men, not of the cause. Let us rejoice that we can serve a cause of which the world, as it is, is not yet worthy.
The history of the lost causes is instructive, however, not only as showing us a new aspect of the value of loyalty, namely, what I have just called the link between loyalty and religion, THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY but also as showing us something of the way in which grief, and imagination, and the stir ring of our whole human nature to its very depths, through loss and through defeat, have served in the past as means of training in loyalty. This school of adversity has often been a hard one. But the loyalty that has been trained in this school has produced for us some of humanity's most precious spiritual treasures. Thus, then, through personal leaders and through suffering, loyalty learns to idealize its cause.
VI What is the lesson of all the foregoing when we ask: How shall we ourselves seek training in loyalty?
The first answer is obvious: Whatever our cause, we need personal leaders. And how shall we be surest of finding such personal leaders? Shall we look exclusively to those who are fellow- servants of our own chosen special causes? We all do this. Yet this is often not enough. Familiarity and personal TRAINING FOR LOYALTY misunderstandings often interfere with the guidance that our fellow-servants give us. We need the wider outlook. Close friendships are amongst the most powerful supports of loyalty. Yet when people confine themselves to regarding their close friends as their leaders in loyalty, they often become narrow and for get the cause of universal loyalty. Much of the art of loyalty, consequently, depends upon training yourself to observe the loyal who are all about you, however remote their cause is from yours, however humble their lives. It is well also, whenever you have to fight, to learn the art of honoring your opponent's loyalty, even if you learn of it mainly through feeling the weight and the sharpness of his sword. "It is a deep cut; but a loyal enemy was he who could give it to me" -to think in such terms is to lighten the gloom of conflict with what may sometimes be more precious than a transient victory; for at such moments of honoring the loyally dangerous enemy, we begin to learn that all the loyal are in spirit serving, however unwittingly, the same uni- THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY versal cause. To be sure, when men have once sufficiently learned that lesson, they cease to fight. But while fighting lasts, if you cannot love your enemy, it is a beautiful thing to be able to enjoy the sight of his loyalty.
But men have not to fight one another in order to display loyalty. Open your eyes, then, to observe better the loyalty of the peaceful, as well as of the warriors. Consider especially the loyalty of the obscure, of the humble, of your near neighbors, of the strangers who by chance come under your notice. For such exemplars of loyalty you always have. Make them your leaders. Regard every loyal man as your leader in the service of the cause of universal loyalty.
VII But our review of the history of loyalty taught us another lesson. We need not only leaders. We need to idealize our causes; that is, to see in them whatever most serves to link them to the cause of universal loyalty.
TRAINING FOR LOYALTY And the procedure whereby our causes are to be idealized is one involving a range of possible experiences and activities far too vast to be adequately surveyed in our present discussion. Here belong all those practically valuable rela tions between loyalty and art, and between loyalty and religion, which the history of man kind illustrates and which we can use in our own training for loyalty. Art supports loyalty whenever it associates our cause with beautiful objects, whenever it sets before us the symbols of our cause in any worthy expression, and whenever, again, by showing us any form of the beautiful, it portrays to us that very sort of learning and unity that loyalty cease lessly endeavors to bring into human life. Thus viewed, art may be a teacher of loyalty. To say this is in no wise to prejudge the fa mous question regarding the main purpose of art, and the relation of this purpose of art to the moral life. I am attempting here no theory of art. But it belongs to our present province merely to insist that part of our education in loyalty is to be won through whatever love of THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY beauty and whatever knowledge of the beau tiful we possess. The monuments of any cause that possesses monuments should associate our love of this cause with our love for beauty. Our personal causes, if they are worthy at all, need beautiful symbols to express to us their preciousness. Whatever is beautiful appears to us to embody harmonious relations. And the practical search for harmony of life consti tutes loyalty. And thus training for loyalty includes the knowledge of the beautiful.
Still more universal in its efficacy as an ideal- izer of private and personal causes is religion. In how far a genuinely religious experience results from loyalty, and in how far loyalty bears witness to any religiously significant truth, we have hereafter to see. Our closing lectures will deal with the bearing of loyalty upon religion. But we have here to mention, in passing, the converse relation; namely, the influence of religion upon loyalty. We have to point out how large a part of the function of religion in human affairs consists in the idealizing of our loyalties, by linking our causes, TRAINING FOR LOYALTY whatever they are, to a world which seems to us to be superhuman.
VIII Art and religion, however, are not our only * means for teaching ourselves to view our personal causes as linked with universal hu man interests, and with an unseen superhu man world. Sorrow, defeat, disappointment, failure, whenever these result from our efforts to serve a cause, may all be used to teach us the same lesson. How such lessons have been taught to humanity at large, the history of those lost causes which have been, even because of the loss, transformed into causes of permanent and world-w^ide importance, has now shown us. This lesson of the history of the lost causes is, however, one that has deep importance for our individual training. We do not always read this lesson aright. To keep our loyalty steadfast through defeat is something that we often view as a sort of extra strain upon loyalty, — the overcoming of a painful hindrance to THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY loyalty. We ought not so to view the matter. Defeat and sorrow, when they are incurred in the service of a cause, ought rather to be a positive aid to loyalty. If we rightly view them, they will prove to be such an aid. For they enable us to see whether we have really given ourselves to the cause, or whether what we took for loyalty was a mere flare of sanguine emotion. When sorrow over a defeat in the service of our cause reverberates all through us, it can be made to reveal whatever loyalty we have. Let us turn our attention to this revelation, even while we suffer. We shall then know for what we have been living. And whoever, once deliberately dwelling upon his cause at a moment of defeat, does not find the cause dearer to him because of his grief, has indeed yet to learn what loyalty is. The cause, furthermore, when viewed in the light of our sorrow over our loss of its present for tunes, at once tends to become idealized, — as the lost throne of David was idealized by Israel, and as the departed Master's cause was idealized by the early church.
TRAINING FOR LOYALTY The disciples, in the well-known story, say concerning their lost Master to the stranger whom they meet on the lonely road to Emmaus: " We had trusted that it was he who should have redeemed Israel." But soon after "their eyes were opened, and they knew him, and he vanished out of their sight." Amongst all the legends of the risen Lord, this one most completely expresses the spirit of that loyalty which, triumphing even through defeat, win ning the spirit even through the loss of a visible presence, was thereafter to conquer its world.
Now, the lesson of such experiences, as his tory records them, relates not merely to great movements and to mankind at large. It is a personal lesson. It concerns each one of us. I repeat: View your sorrow by itself, and it is a blind and hopeless fact; view your cause in the light of your sorrow, and the cause becomes transfigured. For you learn hereby that it was not this or that fortune, nor even this or that human life which constituted your cause. There was from the beginning, about your cause, something that to human vision THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY seems superpersonal, unearthly as well as earthly. Now the memory of whatever is lost about your cause is peculiarly adapted to bring to your consciousness what this superpersonal element has been. I have already mentioned the merely psychological aspects of the pro cess that, in such cases, goes on. The gla mour which memory throws about the past, the awakening of the imagination when some visible presence is removed, the stimulating reaction from the first stroke of sorrow when ever we are able once more to think of our cause itself, the transformation of our own ideas about the cause, by virtue of the very fact that, since our loss has so changed life, the cause can no longer be served in the old way, and must be the object of new efforts, and so of some new form of devotion, — all these are the idealizing motives which are present when defeat comes. I insist, — human loyalty can never be perfected without such sorrow. Re gard defeat and bereavement, therefore, as loyalty's opportunity. Use them deliberately as means for idealizing the cause, and so far TRAINING FOR LOYALTY bringing your personal cause into closer touch with the cause of universal loyalty.
The most familiar of all those blows of for tune which seem to us, for the moment, to make our personal cause a lost cause, is death, when it comes to those with whom our per sonal cause has so far been bound up. And yet what motive in human life has done more to idealize the causes of individuals than death has done? Death, viewed as a mere fact of human experience, and as a merely psychologi cal influence, has been one of the greatest idealizers of human life. The memory of the dead idealizes whatever interest the living have in former days shared with the departed. Reverence for the dead dignifies the effort to carry on the work that they began, or that, if they died in childhood, our fond desire would have had them live to do. From the beginning a great portion of the religious imagination of mankind has centred about the fact of death. And the same motive works to-day in the minds of all the loyal, whatever their faith.
Idealize your cause. This has been our THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY maxim for the present aspect of our personal training in loyalty. I have offered merely some hints as to how this maxim may be carried into effect. How science can join with art and with religion, how joyous friendly intercourse can in its own place cooperate with our experiences of sorrow to teach us the lessons of idealizing our common causes, — all this I can only indi cate.
And thus we have before us two of the methods whereby individual loyalty is trained. The deliberate fixing of our attention upon the doings of loyal people, the deliberate use of those methods of human nature which tend to idealize our cause, — these are means for training in loyalty.
Yet one method remains, — it is the most commonplace, yet often the hardest of all. Loyalty means giving the Self to the Cause. And the art of giving is learned by giving. Strain, endurance, sacrifice, toil, — the dear pangs of labor at the moments when perhaps defeat and grief most seem ready to crush our powers, and when only the very vehemence of TRAINING FOR LOYALTY labor itself saves us from utter despair, — these are the things that most teach us what loyalty really is. I need not enlarge here upon an ancient and constantly repeated lesson of life, — a lesson which is known to all of you. The partisans of war often glorify war as a mor- alizer of humanity, because, as they say, only the greatest strains and dangers can teach men true loyalty. I do not think that war is needed for such lessons. The loyalty of the most peaceful enables us all to experience, sooner or later, what it means to give, whatever it was in our power to give, for the cause, and then to see our cause take its place, to human vision, amongst the lost causes. When such experiences come, let us face them without hesitation. For all these things together,— our personal friends who inspire us to the service of our own causes, the hosts of the loyal whom we know so little, but who constitute the invisible church of those who live in the spirit, the griefs that teach us the glory of what our human vision has lost from its field, the imagination that throws over all the range of THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY human life its idealizing light, the labors that leave us breathless, the crushing defeats that test our devotion, — well, these, these are all only the means and the ministers whereby we are taught to enter the realm of spiritual truth.
VII LOYALTY, TRUTH, AND REALITY LECTURE VII LOYALTY, TRUTH, AND REALITY IN closing my last lecture I said that what ever trains us in the arts of loyalty enables us to enter into a world of spiritual truth. These words were intended to indicate that the loyal life has another aspect than the one hitherto most emphasized in these lectures. Our foregoing account has been deliberately one-sided. We have been discussing the moral life as if one could define a plan of conduct without implying more about man's place in the real universe than we have yet made ex plicit in these lectures. Hence our discussion, so far, is open to obvious objections.
For, in talking about the good of loyalty, we have indeed appealed to human experience to show us wherein that good consists. But our very appeal also showed us that loyalty is good for a man precisely because he believes that his cause itself, even apart from his ser- THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY vice, is good, and that both his cause and its goodness are realities, founded in facts which far transcend his individual life and his per sonal experience. Now, one may well doubt whether this belief of a loyal man is, in any individual case, a well-founded belief. And if it is not well founded, one may well ques tion whether the loyal man's good is not, after all, an illusory good, which will vanish from his experience as soon as he becomes enlightened. Since any instance of loyalty is subject to this sceptical inquiry, one may doubt whether even what we have called the supreme cause, that of loyalty to loyalty, is a good cause. For any or all loyalties may be founded in illusion, and then it would be an illusion that the fostering of loyalty amongst men is a finally worthy undertaking.
Objections of this sort are best stated by those to whom they actually occur as serious difficulties regarding the discussions contained in the foregoing lectures. A dear friend of LOYALTY, TRUTH, AND REALITY mine, without receiving any instigation from me to help me by such an act, has so aptly summed up the objections here in question, that I can best show you precisely where we now stand by reading to you a portion of a letter which he has written to me, after hearing the first portion of my account of the good of loyalty.
"'Loyalty to loyalty," writes my friend, "doesn't seem ultimate. Is it not loyalty to all objects of true loyalty that is our ultimate duty? The object, not the relation, — the universe and the devotion to it, not the devo tion alone, is the object of our ultimate devo tion...Is it not the glory of this goal that lends dignity to all loyal search, — our own or that of others? It is because of this goal that we cheer on all to pursue it...It is because of what we believe about the end of the various loyalties that we are so glad of all the loyalties which make it possible to attain that end. The port gives value to the courses steering for it...Except for our knowl edge of the value of their destination, and of THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY all life lived in quest of that destination, should we be anxious to urge all seekers along their courses?...Loyalty is a relation...Can we be loyal to anything, ultimately, except the universe which is the object of all love and all knowledge?"
So far my friend's statement of his difficulty. As you will see, from these two closing lec tures of my course which still remain, I cor dially share my friend's objection to the definition of loyalty so far insisted upon in these lectures. Our definition of loyalty, and of its relation to the ultimate good which the loyal are seeking, has so far been inadequate. But, as I told you in the opening lecture, we deliberately began with an inadequate defi nition of the nature of loyalty. We were obliged to do so. I expressly said this in my opening statement. Why we were obliged to do so, and why, thus far in these lectures, we have confined ourselves to developing and to illustrating the consequences of this im perfect definition of loyalty, our closing lec tures will of themselves, I hope, make clear.
LOYALTY, TRUTH, AND REALITY A similar difficulty can be urged against any mere moralism, that is, against any purely ethical theory of the moral life. One wants a doctrine of the real world, or a religion, to help out one's ethics. For, as I have replied to my friend, morality, viewed by itself, has a character that can well be suggested by the parable of the talents. The moral life, re garded simply as the moral life, is the ser vice of a master who seems, to those who serve him, to have gone away into a far country. His servants have faith in him, but the service of his cause always has, for the moral, a certain mystery about it. They can indeed become sure, apart from any solu tion of this mystery, that their own supreme personal good lies in serving their lord. For not otherwise can they find even the relative peace that lies in a service of duty. But those who serve are not thus altogether secured against a pessimism regarding the whole outcome of human endeavor. For if loyalty is indeed our best, may not even this best itself be a failure?
THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOYALTY Or, to use further the similitude of the parable of the talents: It may be indeed our supreme good to serve the master who has gone into the far country. Yet we do not merely want to serve him; we want, like Job, to meet him face to face. Suppose that we should discover the master to be indeed un worthy or a phantom or a deceiver, would even this, our best good, the service of his cause, seem permanently valuable? Should we not say, some day: To serve him was our best chance of life; but after all even that service was vanity.
In any case, our loyalty implies a faith in the master, — an assurance that life, at its best, is indeed worth while. Our philosophy of loyalty must therefore include an attempt to see the master of life himself, and to find out whether in truth he is, what our loyalty implies that he is, a master worth serving.
To sum up: So far we have defined the moral life as loyalty, and have shown why the moral life is for us men the best life. But now we want to know what truth is LOYALTY, TRUTH, AND REALITY behind and beneath the moral life. With my friendly correspondent, we want to see the relation of loyalty to the real universe.
II