Spencer Heath Archive

Item 57

October 1944?

Original => 56

 

 

The Riddle of the Sphinx

     This is an age of doubt and fear. The old confidence in the progression of life has weakened. The old dreams of the future powers and greatness of man are dimmed and the world’s best minds are groping for hope and light. Many aspirations to power have been realized. The earth has opened its treasures; its lands have yielded plenty; its seas have become the highways of men; its winds and airs give homage to the power of their mighty wings and bear their sounds and words and thoughts with lightning speed over lands and seas. Through their brotherhood of service, trade and exchange, the earth yields its bounties and lays its treasures at the feet of all men, its powers in their hands. Then why are men bewildered? What have they to fear? What shadow dogs their days?

 

Not jungle beast nor savage yell;

No more the demon gods of evil will;

The bane of modern man is war.

 

     War is abhorred by all men and by none or few desired. It is a political institution, the apotheosis of governmental power. Political institutions are born out of wars, live by war, and die by the hand of war, and they live, while they do live, upon the property and lives of those whom they plunder and those whom they rule. They have no revenue but by force; when they cease to tax they cease to rule. Yet men are taught to honor government while they despise war. In this paradox they have lost their souls, seeking salvation from war in political institutions, in the sole agencies of wars. And over sands of time the stony Sphinx propounds her riddle of the ages, to wit: How can men conduct their public affairs without violence and war; how can they be protected and served and not be robbed and ruled? This they must answer or be destroyed. Out of each world cataclysm comes anew the cry, and the answer is not yet.

     Society is the silent servant, not the ruler, of mankind. All its relationships are those of non-violence, the ways of peace; and civilization is its gift.

     It is younger than anarchy, out of which it evolves; older than government that breaks it down.

     It stands for mankind between the anarchy as unorganized force that precedes it and government as organized force that bears it down.

     Society is the rule of service by exchange that creates all values while the rule of force by government breaks them down.

          While society serves, government rules and enslaves.

 

     Beyond the circle of familiars and friends, all widespread relationships are either social or political — those of mutual and reciprocal service and consent or those of submission to power. All politics is power politics, for government, in practice, has no other base.

     In triumph and in sorrow, in peace as in war, men doubt and scorn the security that blesses them and give their hearts to government and war. They cry for peace but put their faith in principalities and powers.

     This is the riddle: Where shall they put their trust; how shall they be saved; how shall they be served and yet be not destroyed?