ry poured
by modern people on that energetic nation of the Far East of which
it has been said that "Patriotism is its only religion"; or, in other
words, that it lives only for the Soul of the Hive. When at long
intervals of the centuries Christendom grows weak, morbid or skeptical,
and mysterious Asia begins to move against us her dim populations and to
pour them westward like a dark movement of matter, in such cases it
has been very common to compare the invasion to a plague of lice
or incessant armies of locusts. The Eastern armies were indeed like
insects; in their blind, busy destructiveness, in their black nihilism
of personal outlook, in their hateful indifference to individual life
and love, in their base belief in mere numbers, in their pessimistic
courage and their atheistic patriotism, the riders and raiders of the
East are indeed like all the creeping things of the earth. But never
before, I think, have Christians called a Turk a locust and meant it
as a compliment. Now for the first time we worship as well as fear; and
trace with adoration that enormous form advancing vast and vague out
of Asia, faintly discernible amid the mystic clouds of winged creatures
hung over the wasted lands, thronging the skies like thunder and
discoloring the skies like rain; Beelzebub, the Lord of Flies.

In resisting this horrible theory of the Soul of the Hive, we of
Christendom stand not for ourselves, but for all humanity; for the
essential and distinctive human idea that one good and happy man is an
end in himself, that a soul is worth saving. Nay, for those who like
such biological fancies it might well be said that we stand as chiefs
and champions of a whole section of nature, princes of the house whose
cognizance is the backbone, standing for the milk of the individual
mother and the courage of the wandering cub, representing the pathetic
chivalry of the dog, the humor and perversity of cats, the affection of
the tranquil horse, the loneliness of the lion. It is more to the point,
however, to urge that this mere glorification of society as it is in
the social insects is a transformation and a dissolution in one of the
outlines which have been specially the symbols of man. In the cloud and
confusion of the flies and bees is growing fainter and fainter, as is
finally disappearing, the idea of the human family. The hive has become
larger than the house, the bees are destroying their captors; what the
locust hath left, the c