# THE ART OF BEING CIVILIZED

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When I went down on the program to talk on "The Art of Being Civilized", I did not realize what I was letting myself in for. The first hurdle to confront me was the question as to whether being civilized is among the lost arts or among the undiscovered arts. The more I thought on the question, the more uncertain I became about the matter, and I come before you tonight unable to give the definite answer. Of only one thing am I certain, and that is that nowhere at the present time is the art of civilization being generally practiced.

My rather chaotic state of mind is probably no more than a reflection of the chaotic mind of the world. The world today is not at all sanguine about the question.

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A generation ago it was quite sanguine. Sanguine about progress in all of ^arts of civ-
ilization. At the end of the last century the world took it for granted that it was
steadily climbing a path that led to a summit from which mankind could look back and
down on all the major ills that had beset it through the ages--Back and down on the
ravages of famine and poverty and disease. And back and down on the debasing effects of
war and tyranny and brute-like human drudgery.

Humanity had a new star, a new diety. That star and diety was Science.
In the name of science all was to be conquered. By the power of science all confusion
was to be converted into order. The miraculous conquests over the material world and
the wide application of the results of those conquests to life constantly increased
humanity's faith in its new star and diety.

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A generation ago Liberal Internationalism was looking forward to the ulti-
mate breaking down of all barriers between nations--all trade barriers, all political
barriers. There were dreams even that the cultural barriers would be lowered to the
vanishing point through the use of a universal language.

It believed that through common commercial interests, by the unhampered
working of the laws of supply and demand, through the nice adjustments of internation-
al banking, the nations were to be held in economic equilibrium or, better, made to work
as a system, all revolving harmoniously in their respective orbits.

It believed that by the steady development of rapid transportation--steamships
and railroads and airships--the gaps between the nations were to be bridged; that by
the extended use of the modern means of communication--regular postal service and tel-
egraph and telephone--the world was to be grouped into a family of nations around a fig-
urative common fireside.

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Here was a plan for a world at peace, a world in which the strivings of each
individual nation would rebound to the common good of all, a world of established frat-
ernalism; in a word, a world in which men could and would practice the art of being
civilized.

The international plan formulated by the great British liberals, economists,
thinkers, and statesmen had a vast influence on liberal thought the world over, and there
was in that thought the conscious hope, and without doubt the sincere hope, that through
the ties of international commerce, finance, and transportation; through the interchange
of intellectual and cultural ideas; through the frequency of good will tours and the uni-
versality of peace pacts, the nations would at last be bound together by bonds of common
interests, of common ideals, and of common good will. A statement often and loudly made
by liberals of a generation ago was that a great war was a thing of the past.

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Then in August, 1914, came the crash--the greatest, the most brutal, the most devastating war in all of man's history. A war that was not just a struggle between armed forces; that was not just an occasion for heroic exploits; not a war inspired by the music of martial drums; not a war of gallant charges by glittering cavalry--but an underground war; a war midst rats and lice and filth; a war of barbed wire entanglements, of stealthy poison gas, of bombs dropping from a dark sky; a war that enthralled millions of starved children and panic-stricken civilians; the most cruel, loathsome, chaos-breeding war the world has ever seen. The very god of Science in which humanity had put its trust for deliverance proved a Frankenstein's Monster, a Juggernaut. Instantaneously, the most advanced section of mankind tumbled back, down to the start; back, down to the rule of claw and fang.

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And so was the plan for a stable world, a peaceful world, a federated world smashed. And so went glimmering the hopes for the dawning of the golden age of civilization.

Today the world is in semi-chaos. The spirit of the times is, each nation for itself and the devil take the hindmost. The leading nations are panting from their exertions to save themselves. One great government after another has sought security in Dictatorship--in Tyranny--in Oppression--and in the abolishment of individual freedom.

As to our own nation, none in the world was so superbly confident and self-confident.

We had supreme faith in our resources, our wealth, our energy, and our ability--supreme faith that together they insured our unending prosperity. Today it is only by the prodigious efforts of the government that a fifth of our population is being saved from hunger.

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It is only by such efforts that the terrible specters that always lurk behind starving millions are being held in the background. Everywhere there is confusion, there is unrest, there is fear. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are riding again.

Every thinking person has asked: How could such a thing as the World War happen at what appeared to be so high a point in man's progress in the art of being civilized? I doubt that anyone can give the complete answer. Certainly, I cannot.

One phase of the answer, an obvious phase, is that what happened did not happen suddenly; that the first ten days in August, 1914, was not the period within which the change took place. We must look farther back.

Another phase of the answer is that the internationalism which carried the hopes of the liberals of the world also carried the seeds of its own destruction.

Capitalistic finance, commerce, and industry were the underlying and governing factors, and they led to their own nullification. The altFuisms in The plan were scarcely more Than window dressing.

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Still another phase of the answer, one that requires no exceptionally close
study to discover, is that the international plan was not <u>actually</u> international. There
was not even a pretense at universality. It never contemplated the inclusion of brown
Japanese, yellow Chinese, and black Africans. At its center was the idea, conscious
or unconscious, of the innate inferiority of the darker peoples of the world. This line
of thought could be carried out to show that this idea of the innate inferiority of the
darker peoples developed into the mortal weakness of the whole plan.

This hasty review leaves me exactly where I was when I began; that is, in the
position of not being certain as to whether being civilized is among the lost or the
undiscovered arts.

Nevertheless, I choose to fill the role of an evangel of hope rather than of
an apostle of despair. And, notwithstanding the fact the latter would probably entail
the less difficult task.

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Despite lapses, despite reversions, despite the lack of overwhelming dem-
onstration, man has given certain evidences of his capacity for becoming civilized.
The conclusion reached on this question depends on the point of view taken. From
one point of view, man is closely akin to the brute; in his lapses and reversions
sinking lower in ferocity and cruelty than anything in brute creation, except as Hans
Zinsser suggests in his recent wise and witty book, lower than anything except rats.

From another point, man appears only a little lower than the angels. Or to
quote Hamlet against Zinsser:

"What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason!
how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express
and admirable! in action, how like an angel! in apprehension,
how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of
animals!"

We are prohibited by our self-respect from accepting Zinsser's estimate.

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And we are compelled to confess that Hamlet's conception is only an image created by the magic of Shakespeare's rhetoric. The true view lies somewhere between these two points. Even the most confirmed pessimist or bitter misanthrope must admit that there is/for the genus that can produce, if only at long intervals a Homer, an Aristotle, a Phidias, a Michelangelo, a Buddah, a Christ, a Galileo, a Newton, a Pasteur, an Einstein. When we look at such figures as these, Shakespeare's words become inspired truth. On the other hand, we cannot close our eyes to the very general display of ignorance, prejudice, bigotry, selfishness, meanness, and brutality.

And these baser qualities are not confined to the so-called lower classes or to the so-called backward races. The Great War was a wholesale demonstration of the most enlightened, advanced, and as we thought, the most highly civilized peoples of the world running amuck, going berserk, reverting to something more brutal than the brute.

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How shall we analyze this paradox? How diagnose the weakness of civilization? Why
is it that the inoculations of civilization do not actually take? Why does civiliza-
tion remain something not even skin-deep, something that is washed off at the first
emotional flood of anger, envy, fear, and hate?

I think the first step in a study of the situation is to get at the current
conception of what it means to be civilized.

At a former time the central idea in the conception was the cultural idea;
at the present time it is the economic idea. Now, I have no intention of giving a rose-
colored picture of the past or of contending that under the dominance of the cultural
idea civilization was in a state of near-perfection. But I do think that if culture
had remained the central idea the world would today be nearer to a general understanding
and consistent practice of the art of being civilized than it is.

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Look at the mess in which civilization now is! Only a rapid analysis is needed to show how responsible is the economic factor for the existing condition. It has followed directly from the canonization of the economic idea accomplished by the classic British economists. That canonization worked wonders for England for a period, but it finally brought a blight upon England and the rest of the world. If I were making a different speech, I should give consideration to some of the errors modern man has fallen into through putting too much faith in economics as a science. I do not hesitate to say that in the sense of being an exact science with proved laws upon which predictions of events and conditions can be based, economics has been as greatly overrated as astrology once was--the distinction being that the results of the errors of economics have been farther-reaching and more vital than those of astrology.

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However, the world is coming to realize that the "economic man," man acting always according to his economic interests or even according to what he _believes_ to be his economic interests, is a myth. So much for that.

Neither can the cultural element alone nor the economic element alone form the basis for the art of being civilized. There is another element that must be included, the ethical. It was the ethical element that was lacking in the base of capitalist internationalism, on which present-day civilization was reared.

I have said that capitalist internationalism was not _actually_ international; that at its center was the idea, conscious or unconscious, of the innate inferiority of the darker peoples of the world. It was this idea which allowed the spoliation of the darker races to be rationalized into a civilized virtue, and gave to the economic factors in the scheme preponderating power and unlimited license. A power and license that soon were beyond being curbed or governed.

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World opinion condoned acts of violence against the people who were despoiled because they were represented as being inferior.

Now, the spoliation of weaker peoples by stronger peoples is no new story in history, but such stories had heretofore been frank stories of conquest and aggrandisement. Capitalist internationalism involved something more than conquest and aggrandisement. That something more was the stullification of the conscience of the so-called civilized peoples in exploiting the so-called lesser breed. The exploiters were, through a process of rationalization, enabled to apologize for, condone, and justify acts of treachery, injustice, and cruelty, and to metamorphose them into acts of civilization, benificence, and Christianity. We have (or did have) an example of this rationalizing process in the dealings of Italy with Ethiopia. Italy proclaims

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that she is acting to make herself a necessary bulwark for Western civilization. The
proclamation has been made so often, so vociferously, and so solemnly that probably
a great part of the Italian people believe it to be the truth. Out of this sheer
hypocrisy was created the quasi-moral sanction from people and state and church that
was given to the mad race in ambition, intrigue, greed, and rapaciousness which have
been the chief forces in bringing civilization to its present state. We ought to
note, however, that the reaction of intelligent world opinion to Mussolini's
savage and archaic thunderings scores one, at least, for the advance of
civilized thought. But, perhaps, it is best not to dig into the reasons back of
that reaction.

We need a revision of the concept of what it means to be civilized; and in
that revision the ethical element must be given its proper place. We need to get a
new test; to adopt a new measuring rod for the meaning of being civilized.

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The test of being civilized is generally made on nonessentials--on the amount of information and knowledge acquired, on proficiency in certain fields, on conformity to this or that custom or taboo, on the degree of material progress. All of these qualities are important, but they are not the essentials of the art of being civilized.

If you go, say, for example, to Africa, and you make Einsteinian physics or high finance or knowledge of current events in Europe and America or living in a house with modern plumbing or doing business on the 30th floor of a skyscraper of having a good bank account or an understanding of contract bridge--if, I say, these are made the standard of measurement, of course, the African fails; he is uncivilized,--he is inferior.

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But suppose we apply a different standard of measurement. Suppose we make it neighborliness and courtesy; good faith and honor; nobility of mind and courage; regard for the rights and needs of others; fidelity to the codes of law and morals, whatever the codes may be; the degree of success with which intelligence is used to meet the challenges of the peculiar environment, with a consideration of the potential powers of a changed environment,--might we not arrive at some other conclusion?

We might reach the conclusion that an African chieftian may be, at any rate, as proficient in the art of being civilized as many a European ruler.

The superficial idea of civilization is the general one. I remember that when I was in Haiti a dozen or so years ago I talked with a number of American marine officers who deeply held the naive belief that the Haitian peasant would be

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miraculously transformed and elevated to a higher state of civilization, if instead
of going round his little farm in his bare feet or in sandals he wore American
factory-made shoes; if instead of his homemade straw hat he wore an American derby;
if instead of living in his curiously-wrought cabin with its tinted walls and thatched
roof, so picturesque, so beautiful, so clean, so well adapted to the climate and his
needs, he lived in a board cottage with glass windows and a front porch, and with a
tin roof and a mortgage on it.

We must look higher and deeper than that for the essential in the art of
being civilized. It is necessary to get beyond the idea that being civilized con-
sists merely or mainly in the possession of education and culture and wealth, and
in familiarity with the refinements and accomplishments of polite life.

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These qualities are desirable and important, but in themselves they are only a veneer--a veneer that we have too often seen crack and peel off.

I do not believe there is any prospect for real internationalism, for a world at peace until ~~this~~ more fundamental conception of what it means to be civilized is created and widely accepted.

Now, we are confronted with the question: is the creation of this more fundamental conception possible? I say at once that I am not sure. But an attempt can be made, and I do feel sure that every effort will bring us nearer the goal, though we may never reach it. By every reason it is worth trying for. ~~Numbers of individuals have gained ~~in that era~~ there is no reason that it should not be set down as a human impossibility.~~

Proficiency in the art of being civilized, as in other arts, will require training and practice. Certain states of society demand stricter training and harder practice than do some others. The demands in a highly complex society are greater than those in a simple society. The higher demands, however, carry also the possibility of achieving a finer proficiency. Now, society at its simplest finds difficulty in

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measuring up to the demands upon it; what then need be said about society in its complex forms.

It requires only a moment's reflection to see that in the working out of the international scheme promulgated by liberalism in the last century a tremendous opportunity to further world civilization, world peace, and the art of being civilized was lost. The loss was due to the failure to measure up to the ethical demands imposed by the interracial factors that became an integral part of the scheme.

If those demands had been faced, even if not fully measured up to, the story of civilization for the past one hundred years would be a different one. But the demands were not faced, they were evaded, and the materially and culturally advanced nation in their dealings with the darker races, especially the nations of Africa, began piling up a record of hypocrisy, treachery, rape, spoliation, oppression, and cruelty, all for the

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sake of sheer economic exploitation on a scale such as had never before existed.

Moreover, the theory of innate inferiority was magnified to cover this whole field of actions, and used as a base on which justification could be founded. The course taken by the advanced nations during this period led to the creation of one of the chief causes of the Great War, and constituted one of the main reasons for the present precarious condition of civilization. And it is not out of place to add here that out of these same processes birth was given to the modern problem of race, a problem not merely of racial prejudices, but one in which the moves were worked out on an international chessboard of politics and diplomacy. (Expand - This fact that the modern problem of race is practically a new problem in important ways)

Out of Africa, in relation to this period of political domination and economic exploitation, comes a startling lesson bearing on the practice of the art of being civilized--Africa, in the modern sense, was weak, and Africa was despoiled. But it would have been for the world's own good if it had guarded against that weakness. Listen to

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this, will you! For the good of one's own soul, what one needs to guard against in an
opponent is that opponent's weakness as well as his strength. The passive power of our
opponent is what we need to fear greatly. This truth contains the kernel of real civilization, and out of that kernel only can spring the art of being civilized.

What a field for speculation there is in thinking what might have been the
state of world civilization and world peace today if those advanced nations through the
past one hundred years had even tried to measure up to the ethical principle, which is
an essential element in the art of being civilized.

And now I think that it might be of greater value for those of us here if we
come from the general to the particular, from the past to the present, from what is over
there to what is right here. Whenever truth, however plainly true, is stated in terms
of the general, the past of the distant, it is so easy for us to shirk all individual
responsibility in the matter.

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Let us take a glance at the state and prospects of civilization in our own country, and at what opportunities are here offered for practice in the art of being civilized.

The United States had no hand in the partitioning of Africa; nevertheless, we did play a similar, if smaller role, in Hawaii, in Haiti, and in Nicaragua. The annexation of the island kingdom came about as a result of our economic penetration, but we seized the black republic and killed more than three thousand of its citizens under the guise of correcting certain disorders, disorders that were insignificant in comparison to those we created. The story of the seizure of Haiti is a long story, too long to be told here, a story that puts a blot on our international record—we went into Nicaragua and occupied it for twenty years in order to secure ourselves against letting the right to the Nicaraguan inter-oceanic canal route get into the hands of any other power. (Expand)

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But notwithstanding the fact that the United States had no hand in partitioning Africa, though she exercises no suzerainty in the Orient, ( if we except our position in the Philippines) she _does_ have closer relations with darker people than any other great power in the world. The United States, in addition to its relation to the worldwide problem of race, in which the moves are worked out on an international chessboard of politics and diplomacy, has a great domestic problem of race, because of 12 million citizens of more or less African blood not outside of but within her borders. This situation is unparelled even in the Union of South Africa; for the status of the black South African native is quite distinct from that of the Negro American citizen. Nor is the position of the white South Africans identical with that of the white Americans.

The crux of the situation in the United States is that Negro Americans are not colonials or natives petitioning for inclusion in the commonwealth, but are citizens, made so by the basic law of the land. The fact that constitutionally citizens but in fact are only half citizens forms a paradox which involves a segment of legal as well as a moral wrong. The inequitable interpretation of laws with regard to them lead naturally to the weakening of all law. Often to the complete overthrow of law. It is aside from the point to argue etc.

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in the United States

Here we have a situation which, because of its complexity, may be approached and discussed from a number of angles. We shall at this time approach and discuss it only from the angle that impinges upon our subject.

Let us then consider the situation as one that makes the United States a supreme testing ground for practice in the art of being civilized. Let us consider the United States as constituting a laboratory from which may be derived all the elemental qualities that must go into the making of a truly civilized state and citizenry. As a training ground on which might be gained strength in the civilized and civilizing qualities of tolerance, open-mindedness, understanding, and intelligent regard and respect on the part of each individual for the rights of each other individual. In a word, a training ground where, because of the difficulties to be overcome, there might be developed a stronger and higher sense of Right and Justice and Good Will between and among men than anywhere else in the world.

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These are the qualities that are basic in any full realization of being civil-
ized. No other great nation has the same opportunity or the same necessity for learning,
developing, and testing these fundamental qualities. The practice of these virtues is essen-
tial not only to our progress in the art of being civilized, but also to the solution of
our domestic problem of race and to our domestic peace and security.

How has the United States met this unique opportunity, this impending necessity?
What have been the effects coming out of the American race situation? In considering "the
American race situation" I, of course, have in mind group problems aside from the one that
primarily concerns the Negro. I stress the white-black problem because its magnitude en-
compasses all the others. In so stressing the white-black racial situation it is
not my intention to make primarily and exclusively a plea for the
Negro. I am using this situation because it comprehends and symbolizes the whole case for interracial tolerance, good will and justice
out of which alone may evolve a higher practice of the art of being civilized.
Of the democratic ideal

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Out of the American race situation there have come a number of gains, but the
losses still preponderate. The outstanding national traits coming out of the situation
*hypocrisy*, are still unfairness, injustice, and oppression. Negro Americans are still discriminated
against, jim crowed, segregated, disfranchised, and denied the equal protection of the
law. They are still shut out from industry, barred from the main avenues of business, and
kept out of the main streams of national life. In some sections of the country the sit-
uation still brings forth the grossest, the most ignoble and the most brutal traits to
which human beings are capable of descending.

If a glance at these outcomes leads one to conclude that the Negro minority is
the sole sufferer, it is proof only that the glance is not at all penetrating. Both black
and white America are suffering; and it is not yet certain which is the greater sufferer.

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When the average American thinks about the race situation he probably asks,
"What are we going to do with the Negro?" never once thinking of what the Negro is doing
with America. The common idea is that the Negro in America is some sort of neutral mat-
erial with which something is to be done, material to be shaped and made and molded in this
fashion or that. All of which is in a degree true; but it is equally true that the Negro
is at the same time helping to shape and make and mold America. America would not and
could not be precisely the America it is except for the influences that the Negro has had
upon it. And those influences have been both active and passive. (Expand active influences)

// A moment ago I spoke of the passive power that Africa exercised on the world. The
Negro exercises a similar power on the United States. A contemplation of the passive power
that the Negro has exercised in the making of America and its civilization is more than
disturbing.// Can you estimate the effect inherent in the character of the American people

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because of the fact that for three hundred years the Negro has involuntarily and unwittingly offered a dominant majority the temptation coupled with the opportunity to practice injustice, wrong and brutality upon a defenseless minority within its midst? Not many nations have had that temptation and opportunity coupled. We may say that the only nation in the present-day world that has them both is Germany. (Expand- And how can we point the accusing finger at Hitler?)
of the passive influence of the Negro

Let me make this thought a bit more graphic. I recite an incident that took place not many years ago in a little town in the state of Tennessee. Similar incidents could be related of a score or more of American communities. A Negro youth kills a white youth in a fight--he makes his escape--he is captured and brought back into the little town in the custody of officers of the law--a mob takes the prisoner away from the officers --he is dragged to the town's square--there under the shadow of two Christian churches and the building typifying the majesty of the law, and before a crowd of two thousand

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white American men, women, and children, women holding their children up to see the sight,
women with babies in their wombs, he is chained to a stake, tortured with red-hot irons,
baptized with gasoline, set afire and burned alive.

Now, balance if you can the momentary sufferings of the miserable victim against
the moral and spiritual degradation of that whole community, and you begin to get at the
meaning of the passive influence that the Negro, against his will, has wielded in the
making of America and American civilization. You begin to realize that there are phases
of the race situation, as I have frequently said, that involve the saving of black
America's body and white America's soul.

Now, keeping our thoughts as nearly as we can within the confines of our subject,—
we are considering the racial situation as one that makes the United States a supreme

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testing ground for practice in the art of being civilized--as a laboratory from which may be derived all the elemental qualities that must go into the making of a truly civilized society--as a training ground where, because of the peculiar difficulties to be overcome, there may be developed the strongest and highest sense of right and justice and good will between and among men anywhere in the world. In a word, the task and opportunity before this country is to extract from the situation those basic qualities of tolerance, open-mindedness, understanding, ~~understanding~~, regard and respect on the part of each individual, for the rights of each other individual, which must underlie and sustain our education, culture, wealth, and material progress if we are to be a civilized state in the fullest sense of the term.

At the present we are not. In some respects the United States is a barbarous country; in one respect the most barbarous in the world. The demonstration of savagery

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that I just recited could take place only in the United States of America--not in any other country in the world, not in any other spot on earth. Have we the right to pride ourselves upon being a civilized people so long as our mores, our morals, our sense of our sense of common decency humanity allow such deeds to be done, and when done, to go unpunished.

Let me say, in concluding, that we must bear in mind that civilized states are made up of civilized citizens. Civilization is not an attribute of the state, it must consist of the combined civilized attributes of the individuals who constitute the state.

There is always a temptation in questions of this sort for the individual to shift responsibility off his own shoulders and conscience on to what he vaguely thinks of as "society." The individual has no right to such evasion. Responsibility for

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conditions ultimately come down to him and he cannot free himself from or feel that he
has done his full duty by merely shifting the burden off on "society". When that is done,
nothing further is done.

Do we want our country to be a really civilized land? Then each one of us as
individuals must make serious efforts to become proficient in the art of being civilized.
For the American who wishes to be a truly civilized person, perhaps the most difficult,
certainly the most significant step to take will be the freeing of himself from race
prejudice.-If he has already accomplished this, progress in the art of being civilized
will be comparatively easy.

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