HUMAN PROGRESS.

The mastery of the world by the Western nations is one of the most remarkable of modern developments. Time was when Europe was overrun again and again by Asiatic overflows, but for generations the East has been everywhere subject to Western domination, against which (animated by the Western spirit itself) it is only now revolting. It is a long-established custom to attribute this Occidental predominance to Christianity, and there is no doubt as to the effect which Christianity has had in accelerating human progress. But, according to Mr. J. S. Hoyland, writing in last month's "Nineteenth Century," Christianity in turn was indebted to Plato for its belief in the possibility of human progress. Of known philosophers it was Plato who first proclaimed, in the "Republic" and elsewhere, the existence behind and permeating the phenomenal Universe of the twin ideas of Goodness and Beauty. Plato dreamt of a Greek city state, anticipating St. Augustine's City of God. He labored, as Mr. Hoyland puts it, "with titanic energy to express for all future ages the Beatific Vision which he himself beheld. In his highest moments of inspiration he shows quite clearly that he knows the Idea of Goodness to be personal, to be God." But it remained for the Christian revelation to kindle the embers of Platonism to "a flame that should light the whole world," and for St. John and St. Paul, "both evidently imbued with Platonic thought," to invest that thought with an entirely new power and appeal derived from their faith in Christianity.
 The educated world had long approved of Plato's system of thought, his theory of a real world behind the phenomenal, to which real world humanity is indebted for its ideas of goodness and beauty. But to be attracted by such a theory, and even to admit its validity, was one thing; it was quite another to make it the subject of an evangel, and proclaim it as a message not to the Greeks alone, but to mankind. "The God of the Christians was in the main the Platonic God, except that they emphasised His love far more than Plato had done, and showed the outcome of that love in the Incarnation. But Christianity transformed the Platonic idealism into a power which could, and still can, effectually change the world." Here, then, we come to the link between Western predominance and Christianity. By inaugurating a state of intense mental activity, inspired by a craving to make the actual world more like the ideal, Christianity gave an impulse to progressive developments in all directions. It dawned on a stagnant and degenerate world, conscious of, but too lethargic to act upon, the truths promulgated by Plato. The Christians were as conscious as the Pagans of the utter inadequacy of this life to satisfy that restlessness of the heart of man of which St. Augustine speaks; but unlike the Pagan philosophers they believed not only in the existence of an ideal world, but in the duty of making this mundane sphere a reflex of it. The perfect State imagined by Plato "remained an unpractical dream until at the coming of Christianity that dream was suddenly transfigured into an urgently practical enterprise for which Christ had lived and died, and for which every Christian, if he was to be a true follower of his Master, must also live and die." Under the influence of this transfiguration wrong after wrong was rectified, and a new world constructed on "the wreckage of a savage and brutal past." Holding a brief for the East, Professor Cornelius in last month's "Harpers Magazine." revives the old reproach that missionaries and their supporters are spending in Asia and Africa energies and money that might find a more useful sphere for their employment in the West. But the same spirit of duty to the colored races that sustains the foreign missions keeps up a vast multitude of agencies which are combating evils at home. Had the West left East alone till it had effected its own regeneration, who can say how much longer India would not have retained its thuggee, suttee, infanticide, and juggernaut? Mr. Hoyland admits the shortcomings of Western culture, but sets against them the disappearance of such a monstrous abuse as slavery, and the strides made in the causes of political and social justice, and above all the general acceptance of the belief in progress and its realisation, "the most precious thing," he considers, in Western culture.
 What assistance the West can render India in its moral development does not amount in the opinion of Professor Cornelius, to very much, and Mr. Hoyland admits that European missionaries have labored hitherto under serious disadvantages. But with the closing of the Indian educational service to European recruits there is less fear, he believes, of Christianity being identified with all that is irksome in an alien Government." It may also be that India will have to he left to put its own interpretation on Christ's teachings, just as the Greek world did under the guidance of St. Paul and St. John. As remarked by Mr. Mayhew in his "Education of India," when "the spirit of Christ assumes an Indian form there will be an excuse for any misunderstanding of the work of European missionaries, and no reluctance on the part of Gandhi and his followers to admit openly how much they owe to their teaching." India, will then take as readily as Europe has done to the Platonic belief, fortified by Christianity, in an ideal world impinging on the world we know and permeating it with like notions of Goodness and Beauty. It is curious to recall that the late William Archer, the well-known dramatic critic and litterateur, qualified his religious scepticism by the firmest possible belief (shared by Schopenhauer) that the loftiest music draws its inspiration from another sphere with which the earth has some mysterious contact. What serious person, indeed, is wholly free from the irrepressible thought that "beyond these voices" lies the key to the riddle of human existence? Who has not experienced "those weird seizures, Heaven knows what," of which Tennyson speaks in "The Princess," and, to quote another poet—

 ... those obstinate questionings
 Of sense and outward things,
 Failings from us, vanishings,
 Blank misgivings of a creature
 Moving about in worlds not realised.

 The puzzle of frustrate possibilities and wasted lives must find its solution somewhere, for humanity would truly be, like poor Tess of the D'Urbervilles, the sport of the President of the Immortals (in Aeschylean phrase) if the future had no explanation to offer of the things that vex the sense of human justice and grieve the human heart. Were life, indeed, "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing," it would be even less worth living than Schopenhauer found it. So lame and impotent a conclusion is not only foreign to the primary instincts of the human mind, but is contradicted by those strange deathbed scenes which Sir James Crichton-Browne records in his "Physician's Portfolio," where the mind, suddenly lightening with the approach of death, gives in a smile or a look at the loved ones a valedictory signal such as to the "trembling knees of faith" has imparted more strength than have all the assurances of theologians.

Advertiser (Adelaide, SA : 1927) http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article43575361