ible tribunal be seen at last, let
us venture to constitute it. Ye know not your moral power, O ye of
little faith! If there be a risk, will you not take it for the honor of
humanity? What is the value of life when you have saved it at the price
of all that is worth living for?...

_Et propter vitam, vivendi perdere causas_....

But for us, the artists and poets, priests and thinkers of all
countries, remains another task. Even in time of war it remains a crime
for finer spirits to compromise the integrity of their thought; it is
shameful to see it serving the passion of a puerile, monstrous policy of
race, a policy scientifically absurd--since no country possesses a race
wholly pure. Such a policy, as Renan points out in his beautiful letter
to Strauss,[16] "_can only lead to zoological wars, wars of
extermination, similar to those in which various species of rodents and
carnivorous beasts fight for their existence. This would be the end of
that fertile admixture called humanity, composed as it is of such
various necessary elements._" Humanity is a symphony of great collective
souls; and he who understands and loves it only by destroying a part of
those elements, proves himself a barbarian and shows his idea of harmony
to be no better than the idea of order another held in Warsaw.

For the finer spirits of Europe there are two dwelling-places: our
earthly fatherland, and that other City of God. Of the one we are the
guests, of the other the builders. To the one let us give our lives and
our faithful hearts; but neither family, friend, nor fatherland, nor
aught that we love has power over the spirit. The spirit is the light.
It is our duty to lift it above tempests, and thrust aside the clouds
which threaten to obscure it; to build higher and stronger, dominating
the injustice and hatred of nations, the walls of that city wherein the
souls of the whole world may assemble.

I feel here how the generous heart of Switzerland is thrilled, divided
between sympathies for the various nations, and lamenting that it cannot
choose freely between them, nor even express them. I understand its
torment; but I know that this is salutary. I hope it will rise thence to
that superior joy of a harmony of races, which may be a noble example
for the rest of Europe. It is the duty of Switzerland now to stand in
the midst of the tempest, like an island of justice and of peace, where,
as in the great monasteries of the early Middle Ages, th