Reintegration

“ CHAOS AND REDEMPTION Present world chaos, exhibiting the impetuosity, follies, rebelliousness characteristic of humanity’s adolescent stage of development, and harbinger of the long-promised Golden Age of the maturity of the human race, is relentlessly spreading and distressingly intensified. The alternating victories and reverses, heralding parallel transition of proscribed Cause of Bahá’u’lláh struggling towards emancipation, world recognition and spiritual universal dominion, are simultaneously multiplying. ”

“ It should be a crisis and turning-point in the life of humanity, a period pregnant with momentous issues, a period in which the old order and the new are contending for mastery, or in which the old is melting into the new. ”

“ Why, we should dearly love the late revolution we have seen below—it is no longer called Reform—were it to fling up to free light from fettered darkness a few fine bold original spirits, who might give the whole world a new character, and a more majestic aspect to crouching life. ”

“ Nay; the pillars of the state are trembling even now, and the very foundations of society begin to quiver with pent-up forces that glow underneath. The struggle that must either revivify, or convulse in ruin, is near at hand, if it be not already begun. ”

“ The change from old to new times; from the inapplicable maxims of the past, to the practical truths of the present, has, every where, and in all past ages, been a period of suffering to the human race. The approaches to this state of regeneration, are marked by turbulent disaffection on one hand, inflexible severity on the other; its progress is marked by the dissolution of the social ties, and its crisis with blood and tears. ”

“ If the tendency of affairs on the other side of our encircling sea was to pull down, to destroy, to modify, and to redistribute, the tendency at home was to build up and consolidate; so that in almost exact proportion to the wild experiments and frantic strugglings of other nations after something new—new principles of government, new theories of society—there arose in this country a dogged spirit of resistance to all alterations, and a persistence in old paths and old opinions. ”

“ The change of front is something deeper than a complete collapse of the scheme on which our civilization seemed founded. It is a something deeper than the fear of death that took such awful toll in the War. ”

“ When we reflect on this, and contrast these thirty-seven years with the period that preceded them, a period of violence, of tumult, of unrestingly destructive energy,--a period throughout which the wealth of nations was scattered like sand, and the blood of nations lavished like water,--it is impossible not to look with deep interest on the final crisis of that dark and dreadful epoch; the crisis out of which our own happier cycle of years has been evolved. ”

“ The process of disintegration must inexorably continue, and its corrosive influence must penetrate deeper and deeper into the very core of a crumbling age. Much suffering will still be required ere the contending nations, creeds, classes and races of mankind are fused in the crucible of universal affliction, and are forged by the fires of a fierce ordeal into one organic commonwealth, one vast, unified, and harmoniously functioning system. ”

“ The Restoration had been one of those intermediate phases, hard to define, in which there is fatigue, buzzing, murmurs, sleep, tumult, and which are nothing else than the arrival of a great nation at a halting-place.
These epochs are peculiar and mislead the politicians who desire to convert them to profit. In the beginning, the nation asks nothing but repose; it thirsts for but one thing, peace; it has but one ambition, to be small. ”

“ After all, if the old order crumbled, was it not because of its own weakness? Was not the fact of its decay the sign of some secret disintegration, of rottenness at the core? And if the new spirit could destroy, perhaps it could build as well. ”

“ The feverish convulsions of the great cities, this unrest, this screaming torment, cannot be in vain. For they, these pains and convulsions, are only the birth-throes of the new. But he who has been the first to feel, with a glad presentiment, this pain of the masses, this fermentation, as joy, this unrest as hope, must himself be an authentic new man, one of those who are called to give a poetic answer to all the complaints and questions of our time. ”

“ But worse things than prophecy of failure accompany reforms, attempted or accomplished, and act like a discordant chorus striving to drown sweet music. Prophecy of dire results, such as ruin of society, disruption of the Empire, etc., are sometimes raised, and carry dismay into the hearts of the timid. ”

“ Frequent reactions between revolution and restoration serve to emphasize the stress of this crisis; and these contrasts in the conditions of men, revealing human character under the most diverse phases, show how inextricably the romantic and the tragic are interwoven in the average lot. ”

“ But with the wild rush of change in the pace, scope, materials, scale, and possibilities of human life that then occurred, the old boundaries, the old seclusions and separations were violently broken down. All the old settled mental habits and traditions of men found themselves not simply confronted by new conditions, but by constantly renewed and changing new conditions. ”

“ This universal and convulsive crisis of the world in latter times, now that it has happily and entirely passed by, has created a mighty chasm, and thrown up a wall of separation between the present age and the eighteenth century. ”

“ What comes when there are no longer any taboos and traditions to break? Destruction. For as is seen time and again, the rebellion of societies gains momentum, and while their consequences are slow in gathering, in the end they multiply and force those societies over the edge of power, bringing only suffering and ruin.
“And not only are the experiences of the past wielded together into that euphoria that eludes the rebellious - wisdom - but its constant state controls the present and the future. ”

“ But the empire! In that crisis,—in that narrow pass in time! It is not excellent gentlemen that can do such near-thaumaturgic business; but only disciples; for the proposition is, as I understand it, to link this world with the God-world, and hold fast through thunders and cataclysm, so that what shall come through,—what shall be when the thunder is stilled and the cataclysm over,— shall flow on and up onto a new order of cycles, higher, nearer the Spirit. ”

“ But the cause was a failing one. The new régime had everything in its favour. The old system had lost its vitality, and only showed the last gasps of a life the vigour of which belonged to another age. ”

“ Death and Devastation are the certain Consequences of Delay; every Moment is infinitely precious; an Hour lost may deluge your Country in Blood, and entail perpetual Slavery upon the few of your Posterity who may survive the Carnage. ”

“ It was fearfully apparent that, under the old system, we had sunk into irredeemable contempt abroad, and were on the very verge of ruin and anarchy at home. So blessedly true is it, that when things come to the worst, they begin to mend! ”

“ I have tried to prevent the sharp discussions of the foreground, the dramatic moments and eloquent passages, from blinding us to the dark and darkening background of Old World affairs. I have tried to show that even the horrors of war are not the whole or the main disaster which results from human disunion and disorder in the presence of increasing mechanical power. I have stressed the theme of economic and social dissolution. ”

“ For instance, if you come to the conclusion that we have exhausted every expedient, will you still continue the struggle? Are we not to desist until every man of us is in captivity, in exile, or in his grave? ”

“ A century of progress and refinement is a century of vices; the increasing complexity of our mechanism creates, with new temptations, new occasions of falling. The car of civilization, like that of Juggernaut, destroys many of those who throw themselves under its wheels. ”

“ The changes of good government and rebellion are still with us, as of old. And since these things are actually heard and seen and do alternate, even a hundred years seem too many; how much more miserable would be a still further prolongation of life? ”

“ Seen from this point of view, the progress of all modern States means retrogression, a paradox which has passed now from the friends of the old order, few of whom have still the courage to sustain it, to the socialists, the sum of whose contentions it exactly formulates. ”

“ How is it that we have been allowed to indulge in expectation of an approaching completion of success, only to behold the utter disappointment of our wishes? Why has a system of advance suddenly and inevitably been converted into a system of retreat? ”

“ Lost in despondence, while contemplating
Not my own wayward destiny alone,
(Hard as it is, and difficult to bear!)
But in beholding the unhappy lot
Of the lorn Exiles; who, amid the storms
Of wild disastrous Anarchy, are thrown,
Like shipwreck'd sufferers, on England's coast,
To see, perhaps, no more their native land,
Where Desolation riots: They, like me,
From fairer hopes and happier prospects driven,
Shrink from the future, and regret the past. ”

“ We will be confronted by the grave danger of complacency and reaction, the old habits that refuse to die, the claims of ancient legacy, the exacting demands of daily and routinary living and survival in a world crushed by crisis and emergency. ”

“ The transition 'from the casque to the cushion,' that so easy step in the heroic ages, whether it be 'an entrance by conquest,' foreign or otherwise, or whether the chieftain's own followers bring him home in triumph, and the people, whose battle he has won, conduct him to their chair of state, in either case, that transition appears, to this author's eye, worth going back, and looking into a little, in an age so advanced in civilization, as the one in which he finds himself. ”

“ The mystery of her coming forth from vacancy, the marvel of her wealth in gold and silver, the spectacle of her captives led through European capitals, filled the minds of men with unrest: and unrest is the first stage of revolution. ”

“ The sympathizing heart has looked abroad and wept the many victims of affliction, inevitably such in consequence of civil feuds and the concomitant miseries of war, either foreign or domestic. The reverses of life, and the instability of the world, have been viewed on the point in both extremes. ”

“ It is a fact, however startling, that each, though a perfect civil war in all its proportions, frequent in warlike incident, and the former rich in tragedy, passed through all the stages of growth, maturity, and final extinction within one single revolution of the moon. ”

“ The transition we are witnessing is no equable transition of growth and normal alteration; no silent, unconscious unfolding of one age into another, its natural heir and successor. Society is looking itself over, in our day, from top to bottom ”

“ For a weary instant I felt again the pressure of all those currents which bewilder, crush, and smother the struggling individual—movements of peoples, marching of armies, alliances of nations, the tides of poverty and disease, the tremendous impersonal economic conflicts. ”

“ To retreat may be painful and mortifying to their gallantry and pride, but it is to retreat to the union, to safety, and to those brethren with whom, or with whose ancestors, they, or their ancestors, have won, on fields of glory, imperishable renown. To advance, is to rush on certain and inevitable disgrace and destruction. ”

“ There are here no signs of a millennium. Internal reconstruction, while men are still limited, egotistical, passionate, ignorant, and ignorantly led, means seditions and revolutions, and the rectification of frontiers means wars. ”

“ What change may come, no mortal man can tell, but that some great change must come, thoughtful men begin to feel. The civilized world is trembling on the verge of a great movement. Either it must be a leap upward, which will open the way to advances yet undreamed of, or it must be a plunge downward, which will carry us back towards barbarism. ”

“ But when we contrast the state of man in the opening of the twentieth century with the condition of any previous period in his history, then perhaps we may begin to understand something of that blind confidence. ”

“ Revolutions, whether sudden or gradual, are fearful things; we learn to feel attachments to those things which they tear up, as a poor cripple feels attached to the mortified limb, that must be amputated to save his life. ”

“ I have often perplexed myself to divine the various motives that give impulse to this strange migration; but whatever they may be, whether an insane hope of a better condition of life, or a desire of shaking off the restraints of law and society, or mere restlessness, certain it is that multitudes bitterly repent the journey. ”

“ Here are the fixed terms: action or reaction, revolution or counter-revolution. For, at our epoch, we no longer believe either in inertia or in immobility. For the people against the people, that is the question. ”

“ These endless revolutions, taken in themselves, exactly balance; and I am not sure that, impartially considered, it is any sadder that new worlds should arise than that this world should always continue. ”

“ Our nature being at all times essentially the same, I presume that after a certain period of ferociousness and horrors, a resettlement of some sort, probably of the most despotic governments, would have taken place. ”

“ Here let the insigniaed banner begin to be unfurled that shall yet extend its benign protecting wand to every kingdom upon the face of the earth; that while revolution treads on the heel of revolution—while commotion, anarchy and devastation push forward the reckless besom of destruction, and with continuous sweep are annihilating the last hopes of comfort in human life ”