August 23, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
13 
The Ferment of Reconstruction 
By Principal L. P. Jacks 
WE have been told, and never more frequently 
than during the last three \-ears, that ideas rule 
the world ; and the saying is often repeated 
with a seraphic air, as though it were a kind of 
opening prelude to the millennium. I am not the least con- 
cerned to dispute the proposition as a general, J;i;uth ; but 1 
do contend that seraphic airs are inappropn^t?,|p.the utter- 
ance of it. For it is a truth that cuts both wavs. Ideas are 
of all sorts, good and bad, true and fals'el' "Obviously the 
advantage of being ruled by them depends on which kind 
happens to be ruling you. Hell is ruled by icic^as no less than 
heaven. 
It is a common mistake to suppose that those communities 
are the most to be admired where ideas have the greatest power. 
In that case, Germany would be the most admirable nation 
on earth ; for there is no country where ideas are so powerful. 
This should be enough to prove that it is nqt:ftlvv'ays the best 
ideas which e.xercise the greatest power. Tlieworst may be 
in the ascendant, or anything between the best and the worst. 
For example, ideas " with money in them," which are neither 
the worst nor the best, may dominate an epoch, or a whole 
civilisation, while, on the other hand, the ideas' on which 
manhood and character are founded hiiy b'c'Iittll'more than 
ineffectual ghosts, present evervwhete'-'but dominant no- 
where. , 
Scientiiic and Moral Ideas 
Another mistake, to which we are all eNcessively prone, is 
to suppose that those ideas are the most powerful which are 
being most talked about. This, I believe, is seldom the fact. 
A candid reading of history suggests a strong suspicion that 
in all ages of the world the most powerful ideas are precisely 
those- t'hait^ are being least talked ab»5*. One might even 
go so far as to set up a kind of inverse proportion between the 
two things' — the more orator}' the less earnestness, the more 
eloquence the less action. For example, scientific ideas are, 
on the whole, far less talked about than moral ideas ; yet, on 
the whole, scientific ideas produce more earnestness and more 
action. A scientific idea soon gives birth to a machine, and 
the whole structure of society may be swiftly changed in 
consequence — as happened when the steam engine was in- 
vented, and a.s will happen now that tiie aeroplane has been 
invented. But it takes a long time for a moral idea to 
translate itself into a civilisation, into a character, or into a 
manner of life. 
The fate of scientific ideas in this respect is very different 
from that of moral ideas. The scientific idea turns itself 
into a plan of action, and that with the least possible delay. 
The moral idea is apt to become a literary or pulpit property, 
material for copy, stock-in-trade for novelists, playwrights, 
agitators, preachers, pamphleteers and lecturers. There is, 
of course, a literature of steam engines and aeroplanes ; but 
its bulk is nothing compared to the literature, say, of 
Christianity. Yet we are more in earnest about steam engines 
and aeroplanes than we are about Christianity. At all event?, 
it would be no hard thing to draw up a long list of ideas, good 
ideas, great ideas, true ideas, which have been in existence 
for thousands of years, which have produced' I literatures 
and been infinitely talked about, but which havffi neVer yet 
succeeded in ruling the world nor any considerable fraction of 
it. We have need, therefore, to be very cautious about the 
inferences we draw from the general proposition that ideas 
rule the world. 
The need for this caution is especially great at the present 
moment. Ideas were never so plentiful as now. Indeed, I 
would venture to say that good ideas were never so plentiful 
as now. A multitude of new ones has been created, many 
old ones have been revived, and the new ones combining \vith 
the old have broken out into an efflorescence like that of, the 
apple trees in spring. The war has set, us all thinking — and 
remembering. Circumstances hayc given me a pretty, ex- 
tensive acquaintance with that immense "literature of 
reconstruction " — itself a portentT^which the war has, brought 
into being and in which all this thinking gets itself expressed ; 
and the impression it has left on. my mind, which no doubt 
is shared by ever\'one vvha has had the same experience, is 
that never before have I encountx-red such a flood of good 
ideas. One is impressed, moreover, with the enomfijpus 
number of social improvements which might easily bepftected 
by the application of one or other of the good ideas 4(ore»aid, 
or even by the application of a little commun sens?;, , 
But will th.' common , s^nse be, <j />/»//>(/ - Will, the good 
ideas prove effectual J> Will a world which has stopped its 
ears to Moses and the Prophets ])ay more attention to you and 
me ? A literature of reconstruction is no doubt a reassuring 
thing so far as it goes. But how far does it go ? The present 
would not be the first instance of an intellectual and moral 
awakening which has produced a literature, but produced 
little else. There is always the danger that the production 
of the literature may deceive mankind into the comfortable 
belief that something wonderful is going to happen of its own 
accord, that great changes will follow automaticallv — because, 
it is thought, good ideas have a Divine Right to get them- 
selves fulfilled, so that, having cast them on the waters we 
may leave the Divine Right that is in them to do the rest, 
and go to lunch or go to sleep as the occasion prompts 
An Increasing Danger 
This is the danger which attends a literature of recon- 
struction, and the danger«increases just in proportion as the 
literature in question is brilliant, ingenious, profound, 
philosophic, eloquent and earnest — all of which qualities the 
present literature of reconstruction unquestionably possesses. 
With so vast a diffusion of good ideas accomplished, it looks 
as though the main part of our work were already done. As a 
matter of fact, it has hardly begun. How many of these good 
ideas will actually succeed in ruling the world ? How many 
of them will get themselves translated into fact ? \\ hat 
reason have we for believing that the war will not be- followed 
by a tragic wastage of the intellectual and moral force whi<.h 
is now providing us with so many schemes for improving 
the world? ,Such wastage there. has often been in the past. 
And it may happen again. 
There is also a danger in the fact that most of the problems 
we are discussing are, from the intellectual point of view„ so 
fascinating, so intensely provocative of argument, so full of 
tempting opportunities for that war of minds which pro- 
vides us with wholesome gymnastic, and which, we all love 
so much. Under these circumstances discussion often gathers 
round itself a secondary importance of its own, in which the 
primary importance, perhaps the tragic importance, of the 
thing we are discussing is submerged and lost sight of. This 
also has actually happened to more than one promising 
intellectual movement. The reconstructions proposed have 
not been carried out. They have ended in verbiage, in enor- 
mous accumulations of waste paper, in big volumes which 
gather the dust and are not taken down from the shelf once 
in a generation. 
When the matter is considered in this hght we get a new 
reading of the problem of reconstruction, and one which I 
venture to think deserves the earnest and concentrated 
attention of all serious men. At first sight, the problem 
appears to consist in finding the right scheme, or the right 
idea, by the application of which this or that is to be mended. 
The importance of that I do not belittle -^nobody in his senses 
would dream of belittling it — but behind it lies the far greater 
problem of finding the power to carry out the scheme you 
have devised, to give effect to the idea you have propounded. 
And in speaking of power I am not referring to political 
power as it is represented by masses of voters, by measures 
passed into law, by armies and by policemen. I mean moral 
power, as it is represented by the steadiness of the public in 
the pursuit of its aims, by continuity of effort, by belief in 
principles, by mutual loyalty, by strict adhesion both to the 
form and the spirit of a pledge and by the refusal to be led away 
•by cant. This is the kind of power you want and without 
which your scheme of reconstruction will never be carried 
out. It is one thing to devise an excellent arrangement 
and secure the consent of the parties involved. It is quite 
another thing to secure their continued loyalty to the consent 
they have given ; and it is the last on which the success of 
your scheme ultimately depends. No scheme has ever yet 
been devised by the wit of man which was not susceptible of 
capture by sinister interests, or exposed to ruin by the dis- 
loyalty of the parties concerned in it. 
Take, for example, the League of Peace ; one of the boldest 
and most far-reaching of the " reconstructions " now before 
mankind. Power, we are told, is to be at the disposal of the 
League. But what kind of power ? Most assuredly it 
must be moral power or the League will come to grief. It 
must consist ultimately in the continued loyalty of the 
nations to the objects for which the League was founded ; 
in the spirit of good fellowship which animates their relations ; 
in mutual respect ; in a readiness to take a generous view of 
