Page:Jay William Hudson - A Practical International Program.pdf/32

 pensable "the prospective mind": the mind that not merely looks about and includes all existent beings in its interests, but looks forward and views the human race in terms of a never ending progress, which is capable of infinite possibilities. Civilization is not static: it is intensely dynamic. Human nature is not static: it is capable of boundless change and improvement. It is needful for us to realize this last fact, because there are so many people who keep telling us that it is human nature to go to war; that it always has been human nature; and that it always will be human nature. If there is any argument that is feeblest, it is this. There is nothing in this world that can be said to belong to a permanent human nature, except the quality of not being permanent at all. There is nothing so changeable as human nature; and that is the glory of it. It is that which makes man divine in his ideals and possibilities. As a matter of fact, men have not always warred; in truth, war has been the exception, and great minds, as well as the minds of the common people, have always looked forward to a time when some reasonable method would be devised which would make war forever impossible. In the journal, La Revue, of February 15, 1909, a writer by the name of B. Beau wrote a very good satire on the traditional defense of war as being a necessity of an unchanging human nature. He entitled his article "A Defense of Cannibalism." It is supposed to be a speech of a medicine man addressed to his tribe in answer to anti-cannibalistic propaganda that a Christian missionary was making among them. The argument has been reprinted as a document of the American Association for International Conciliation. There is no space here to reproduce the argument in detail. The following short extract, however, will at once remind one of the sorts