Chapter VI. Liberty, Christianity, and the New World

CHAPTER VI Liberty, Christianity, and the New World Ideas precede accomplishment. Race, to the extent that it exists, is a fact. Nations and cultures are ideas. The racial stock which appears to preserve its identity does so only by means of an idea. If an idea contains a universal principle, it will merge races j if it cuts across an idea previously accepted, it will divide nations in fatal strife. Every achievement is foreshadowed in fancy3 every major disaster is the result of inadequacy, error, or perversion of intelligence. An idea may be previsioned in myth. Europe was a myth before it grew into a rich and complex civilization j and it is called a continent in defiance of geography, for the division between Europe and Asia was drawn in the minds of men. America was a myth centuries before its physical reality was certified. Whether Plato invented Lost Atlantis or elaborated it from a scrap of folk lore, it is equally inexplicable.

Later European legends of the Blessed Isles to westward, where there was no death, St. Brendan's Isle and Avalon and Hy-Brasil and Tir-n'an-Og, are susceptible of a slight factual hypothesis in the Canaries or a glimpse of the Azores j their felicity may have resided in being unattainable. As recently as the end of the eighteenth century, it could be said (by Baboeuf) that happiness in Europe was a new idea. As the prerequisite of happiness, the hope of liberty was from the first placed in America. Appropriately, the preliminary discovery was made in quest of freedom. During the tenth century of our era, a few intractable men of Viking blood exiled themselves from their homeland rather than submit to the imposition of a feudal monarchy. The Scandi53 54 THE GOD OF THE MACHINE navian sea-rovers telescoped the history of Europe in their national development. They were practically the last of the barbarian raiders j but they became literate before they ceased to live by looting, and they had the Roman clarity and matter-of-fact type of mind. They were widely acquainted with the civilized world, and supplied a mercenary regiment to the Eastern Empire. They turned from piracy to trade at the same time that they adopted the graded status society which commerce tends to dissolve. In their semi-barbaric condition, the equality among their fighting men obliged them to work out a measure of contract law and local deliberative government 5 but when they conquered Normandy and later England they set up a detailed feudal system. In this form again their earlier tradition of independent equality at the top impelled them to resist royal pretensions to absolutism by well-organized rebellion ; and they went back to contract law to embody the capitulation in a written charter in which the concept of the free man was again implicit, for the future to unfold. They traced a full intellectual circle. Toward its close, the small irreconcilable group who held out for their original condition retreated to the world's end, Ultima Thule, and occupied Iceland, whence the boldest presently pushed on to Greenland. Sailing direct from Norway to the Greenland settlement in the year 1000 A.r>., Leif Ericsson was swept south of his course in storm and fog, to a strange landfall, the Wonder Strand of the new world.

It is remarkable that the prospect of Vineland the Good should have been abandoned after the briefest attempt at colonization. This was not due to discouragement. The Norsemen were drawn back toward Europe by their belated acceptance of Christianity. Leif Ericsson himself became converted shortly after his voyage of discovery. It was as if the equipment for America had been incomplete without that faith j which was true if they sought liberty as a general condition, not a privilege of class asserted by the strong arm5 for they had slaves. The objection occurs that Christian LIBERTY, CHRISTIANITY, AND THE NEW WORLD $5 Europe wore the iron collar of serfdom, and countenanced outright chattel slavery. Nevertheless, the axiom of liberty cannot be postulated except on the basis affirmed by Christian philosophy. For its realization, the secular principles educed by Greece and Rome are no less indispensable. Yet America was regarded as its native soil.

About 1560 or 1570, Etienne de la Boetie, the friend of Montaigne, filled with despair by the Wars of Religion, wrote: "What think you of the dire fate that has brought us to birth in these times? and what are you resolved to do? For my own part, I see no other course than to emigrate, forsake my home and go wherever fortune bears me. Long now the wrath of the gods has warned me to flee—showing me those vast and open lands beyond the ocean. When, on the threshold of our century, a new world rose from the waves, the gods—we may well believe—destined it as a refuge where men shall till free fields under a fairer sky, while the cruel sword and shameful plague doom the ruin of Europe. Over there are fertile plains awaiting the plough, a land without bourne or master—it is there I will go." * Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—what men found in America was the wish they had sent in anticipation.

They brought with them the effective knowledge to make it come true. Hence the association persisted in spite of the prompt and atrocious contradiction offered by the treatment of the Indians and the early importation of African slaves. Montaigne himself, whose subtle candor disestablished authority as the weather brings down a stone wall, commented: "If anything could have tempted my youth, it would have been the ambition to share the dangers of this new enterprise." Yet Montaigne, like his friend, was no serf, but a seigneur, enjoying the privileges of rank and a good estate. It was his mind that was tempted to range abroad. He was the epitome of his age, furnishing his medieval tower as a •THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MONTAIGNE. By Marvin Lowenthal.

$6 THE GOD OF THE MACHINE study in which he pondered tranquilly the ideas which must undercut the whole structure. The effectual discovery of America was made by enterprise capitalism. Columbus was a promoter with a scheme. The ships were of private ownership, one under charter. Skilled management (captains) were employed. Some cash capital was subscribed. The crew worked for wages. Such an organization today could attempt any legitimate business. But most of the money was advanced by the Queen of Spain ; two of the ships had been requisitioned by the government as a fine 5 and the expedition sailed under an official commission. Contingent on the success of his voyage, Columbus was promised the hereditary title of Admiral of the (Atlantic) Ocean, and a percentage on all trade to be opened by his route, to him and his heirs. His objective was Japan and China j but even if he had landed there, the stipulation could never have been fulfilled. An ocean does not tolerate monopoly. The venture thus carried within itself the two conflicting systems of status and contract which were at odds in Europe. The continent had first been civilized and organized by the energy flowing through contract; with the breakdown of the mechanism it had lapsed into status; contract was again emerging into recognition with the increase of trade. But Spain was moving in reverse, caught by a kind of tide-rip at the Straits, toward absolutism, precisely when the geographical location as the jumping-off place gave the Iberian peninsula the first connection with the new world. Of course the shortest line between Africa and South America is scarcely half the distance Columbus covered from Spain to the West Indies; but there was no surplus energy in either Africa or South America. Europe was generating energy; it had been cut off from the land route to the Orient. The voyage of Columbus was like the leap of an electric spark across an arc.

The subjugation of the native American races was a foregone conclusion, because Europe used a much higher poLIBERTY, CHRISTIANITY, AND THE NEW WORLD 57 tential of energy. The people of the most advanced American culture did not even employ animal traction, and had not invented the wheel, much less the waterwheel, nor come to the iron age. They traveled afoot, and were their own beasts of burden. Their mode of the conversion of energy was the human body and manual appliances. Their terror of the European invaders with horses and fire-arms is usually attributed to stupefaction at the mere strangeness of the phenomena. It was rather the intelligent apprehension of a stepped-up power they could not match. Primitive ignorance is not alarmed by novelty. The savage tribes were less submissive than the most civilized, because they had no conception of the mastery of energy, although they were equally doomed by the superior potential.

It may be set down as an axiom that in a clash between two nations or cultures, if one uses a higher potential of energy than the other, that one must win. The differential is in the timespace equation, which offsets primitive manpower. A hundred men can move as fast as fifty men, and are therefore twice as effective; but no multiple of men can move as fast as a bullet, and numbers are nullified by inverse ratio to speed and range. As between two nations using the same mode of conversion of energy, it might seem that manpower and raw materials should determine the issue. But this does not work out; as has been shown, the results are so variable that no answer hitherto offered will fit even two given examples as a post hoc guess. If ever a nation and dynasty had the physical components of empire thrown in its lap by sheer chance and all at once, it so happened to Spain. The peaceful method of territorial enlargement under feudalism was by marriages which combined inheritances. In Europe the Hapsburg dynasty, by a run of luck, became the residuary legatee of this system.

After the union of Castile and Aragon, Spain was joined to the Austrian conglomerate of nations, including the Nether58 THE GOD OF THE MACHINE lands and large chunks of Italy. Concurrently, the whole Iberian peninsula was brought in piecemeal, later including Portugal for a time. The ruler of these wide dominions was formally acknowledged to be pre-eminent in Europe, by his elective office as head of the Holy Roman empire. Presumably this aggrandizement would have come about if America had not been discovered. How long it might have held together is a matter of conjecture ; but at least its tenure was as secure as that of any contemporary political set-up. Thus Spain controlled the richest part of Europe, what with the Spanish and Austrian mines, the industrial towns of the Netherlands, and the diversity of other resources embraced in such extensive territory. The dominant position in respect of the Mediterranean also meant something. And then the wealth of America poured into Spain.

By comparison, the manpower and material at the disposal of England were ridiculously small; and English territory comprised only half of a foggy little island and a slippery foothold in Ireland. England had the port of Calais but lost it before entering the struggle with Spain. Finally, it should be observed that within its national borders Spain did attain perfect unity. Never has any people been so unanimous in sentiment, in thought, in manners and morals and religion and political loyalty, as Spain became subsequent to the expulsion of the Moors and the Jews. It was solid as an iron bar. That was what was the matter with it. In a living organism, such a condition is most akin to the rigor of epilepsy; if it becomes permanent, it is death. In mechanism, which must operate by the opposition of parts, it is equivalent to stalling. Though a nation may appear to act when it is thus solidified, the movement is that of dislocated mass, a falling body. It has no intelligent direction or definable objective.

Spain was electrocuted, burned out, by receiving a high voltage of energy into a political structure and mechanism without proper transmission lines, outlets, and insulation.

LIBERTY, CHRISTIANITY, AND THE NEW WORLD 59 Making contact with America, Spain picked up a vast stored charge of energy in the form of the precious metals which were convertible into European currency. Thereafter the country presented an almost incredible spectacle, with treasure ships unloading bullion year by year in unprecedented quantities, and the people increasingly impoverished by inverse ratio until they were reduced to hunger and rags. Every ordinance now recommended and applied in the name of a planned economy was tried out in Spain during that period on the same pretext of public necessity, with the inevitable consequences of stopping production. Business could be done only by license; manufactures and trade were restricted; mines in Spain were shut down by order; real money was seized from private owners, who were forced to accept government paper in exchange, and imprisoned or executed if they attempted to refuse. Taxes and tariffs multiplied. Everything went into government; and the government was always bankrupt. Yet the functions of government, alleged as the pretext for such measures, were carried on with grotesque inefficiency. The greatest military exertions incurred the most disastrous defeats, and when victorious Spain could not obtain peace. The Netherlands revolted and would not be pacified. England fought a good deal off and on during the same period, and was not invariably victorious either; if reckoned in proportion to population and available wealth, the effort of England was greater. Yet English losses were quickly repaired and her power augmented, while Spain lapsed into the unhappy position of being the battleground of Europe. The condition of Spain while still in possession of her New World empire (circa 1700) was thus described: "A country without an army, justice or police, and absolutely without liberty.... The grandees are contemptuous and contemptible. They have nothing except pride, poverty, laziness and the pox. They have no education and no sort of knowledge." Commerce and industry were at a standstill, agriculture in decay; and though there was still a consider6O THE GOD OF THE MACHINE able revenue from America, there was no money in circulation.

During the seventeenth century, the decline of Spain allowed France to make a bid for primacy. Louis XIV contrived to make his monarchy absolute, and thus threw the whole energy of the nation into war. He obtained unity by expelling the Huguenots. To avoid being bothered with figures, "the silly dollar mark," he bestowed on one man, Chamillart, the ministries of war and finance. A first-hand observer of the result said despairingly: "No treasure will suffice for an unbridled government." When Louis had taxed his subjects into famine, anticipated several years' revenue, depreciated the currency, and found himself penniless just the same, he felt a twinge of conscience, wondering if he had a moral right to gouge deeper. He called in a selected group of professors from the great University, the Sorbonnej and they obligingly informed him that as king he owned all the property in the realm5 his subjects were merely tenants; and if he permitted them to retain any portion of their possessions or the product of their labor, he was doing them a favor. So he extorted new taxes. With unity and total control, in his old age he was compelled to beg for peace on any terms; and before his death intelligent Frenchmen, such as Cattinat, foresaw the French Revolution with dread. They knew that the political and economic structure was fatally unbalanced. The organic unit of the family as the pattern of society withstood the strain for a hundred years, but it could not hold forever. Meantime England survived a civil war, and with no particular ambition for empire, acceded to the dominant position for which Spain and France had spent themselves in vain. Energy in human affairs tends to flow with wind and water by natural law, following the line of least resistance, but as between points fixed by raw materials in quantity. Of the voyages of discovery from 1492 to 1611, only four went from England, and none of them struck it rich. Nevertheless, the world map shows that subsequently LIBERTY, CHRISTIANITY, AND THE NEW WORLD 61 another positive factor intervened, directing the flow between Europe and America somewhat north of its natural course, that is, from England to the comparatively undowered North American coast of New England and down to Virginia. These again became radial.

The train of events corresponded point by point to the internal political development of England, Spain, and France. The scope and pretensions of government in Spain and France increased continuously. The claims of government in England were no less persistently refuted, diminished, and qualified. Empires are made by private enterprise. This is the rule which determines victory between rival nations using the same technical mode of the conversion of energy: that one in which government is most limited will win. A greater territorial extent and concomitant resources may actually prove a disadvantage to a nation under absolute government, because they will make the government recklessly exorbitant toward its own citizens, and will also yield an occasional windfall to the enemy free nation, which is able to put such pickings to effective use. Though much of the energy which Spain drew from the new world served only to fuse Spain into agonized rigidity, some had to go on through, and was thus returned to productive channels elsewhere in Europe. The money circulated, and stimulated rival nations and rebellious provinces to break the Spanish monopoly by trading on their own account. The energy had a dual effect on Europe as a whole, disrupting the feudal compromise along ancient lines of cleavage and at the same time merging small principalities and free cities into national forms.

The balance of power fell to England because England allowed the energy to flow most freely, which is to say that England conceded the most liberty to the individual by respecting private property and abandoning by degrees the practice of political trade monopolies. Of course England did not desist from the granting of monopolies all at once, 62 THE GOD OF THE MACHINE and it was the remains of monopoly which precipitated the American Revolution; but free enterprise had enough leeway to beat Spain and France hands down. The crucial test of private property is the attitude of government toward money. Devaluation of currency is outright expropriation. The British empire was founded when the debased coinage was restored to standard during the opening years of the reign of Elizabeth, on the advice of Gresham. At the time, English trade was in distress, the national treasury was empty, the national credit was gone and mercantile credit shaky, war was threatening and rebellion a possibility. In such circumstances, governments usually resort to repudiation, confiscation, and fiat currency. Instead, England took the opposite course. The world came under her sway. The British empire ended three hundred and fifty years later, when England again debased her coinage, defaulted on her debts, confiscated private property, and abrogated personal liberty.

These are not sentimental considerations; they constitute the mechanism of production and therefore of power. Personal liberty is the pre-condition of the release of energy. Private property is the inductor which initiates the flow. Real money is the transmission line; and the payment of debts comprises half the circuit. An empire is merely a long circuit energy-system. The possibility of a short circuit, ensuing leakage and breakdown or explosion, occurs in the hook-up of political organization to the productive processes. This is not a figure of speech or analogy, but a specific physical description of what happens.