The Essentials of Spirituality | Page 9

race or creed. In practice,
however, the idea of equal human worth was more or less limited to the
Chosen People. At least, to keep within the bounds of the artistic simile,
the members of the Hebrew people were regarded as first-proof copies,
and other men as somewhat dim and less perfect duplicates.

In the Christian religion a new idea was introduced. The belief in the
worth of man was founded on the doctrine of redemption. The sacrifice
of atonement had been offered up for the benefit of all persons who
chose to avail themselves of it. Christ had come to save the Gentile as
well as the Jew, the bond as well as the free, men, women and children
of every race, living under every sky, of every color of skin and degree
of intelligence. The sacred respect which we owe to every human being
is due from this point of view to the circumstance that every human
being is a possible beneficiary of the Atonement. For him too--as the
theological phrase is--Christ died upon the cross. But in Christianity
too we find that the idea of brotherhood, of equal worth, universal as it
is in theory, in practice came to be considerably restricted. It did not
really extend to all human beings as such; it did not extend to those
who refused to be the beneficiaries of the act of atonement. In reality, it
applied only to Christians or to those who were not averse to receiving
the Christian faith. The theological formulation of the fundamental idea
which we are discussing, therefore, is beset by two difficulties: it is
limited in application, and it is based on theological conceptions. As
soon as these theological conceptions are relinquished, the doctrine of
equality is in danger of being abandoned.
In 1776, the founders of the American Republic undertook to supply a
new and a secular foundation for this doctrine. In the Declaration of
Independence, Jefferson wrote: "We hold these truths to be self-evident,
that all men are created free and equal." In other words, he put forth the
astonishing proposition that human equality is self-evident. Many of us
would incline to the opinion that the opposite is self-evident, that the
inequalities which subsist between men are so palpable that we cannot
overlook them. If, however, we inquire what led Jefferson to this
statement, we shall find that, at the time when the Declaration of
Independence was written, there existed a basis of fact that gave color
to his assumption. The population of the United Colonies was
small--only about three millions--and on the whole homogeneous. The
great majority of the people were agriculturists, pursuing the same
occupations and on the whole exhibiting the same traits. They were all,
or almost all, of vigorous stock, capable of self-government, jealous of
their rights, independent in spirit. At that particular time, the points of

similarity and equality among the members of the American Colonies
far outweighed the points of dissimilarity. It was, then, to a certain
extent on facts of experience, and not entirely on the hypothesis of the
eighteenth century philosophy, that Jefferson's famous proclamation
rested.
Since Jefferson's day the facts have markedly changed. We have passed
beyond the agricultural stage, and have entered the stage of industrial
development. The occupations of our citizens have become greatly
diversified. Large bodies of foreign immigrants have come to us. If we
survey the conditions of American life at present, we are strongly
impressed with the differences that exist between the various strata of
our population: differences in mental ability, differences in vital energy,
differences in the point of culture attained, differences in capacity to
rise. As a consequence, the Declaration of Independence is treated by
many as an obsolete document, and its assertions as mere bombast and
rhetoric; unjustly so, because the truth which it attempts to convey is
valid, though the form in which the truth is expressed and the grounds
on which it is put are no longer adequate.
We have arrived, then, at this pass: the theological foundation for the
doctrine of human equality has failed or is failing us; the facts to which
the Declaration of Independence appealed have altered. Are we, then,
to give up the belief in human equality--that priceless postulate of the
moral law, the basis alike of democracy and of private morality? At
times it seems to us that the world is almost ready to do so. Nietzsche
in Germany puts it forth as a philosophic principle that humanity exists
not for the democratic purpose of securing the highest development of
all, but for the aristocratic purpose of producing a race of supermen, an
elite of strong, forceful, "leonine" beings. And in his doctrine that the
many exist as a kind of pedestal for the grandeur of the few,