A Continuing City
By PROFESSOR ERNEST BARKER
" Tms book is an attempt to discover a guiding principle in public affairs." In this one brief sentence, printed on the wrapper, Mr. Curtis states the aim of his Civitas Dei*. In effect it is his political Testament. After many years of wrestling, in many countries, with the complexities of public affairs and " the problem of the commonwealth," he attempts to set out his ultimate belief, in thirty-three brief and com- pressed chapters, packed with quotations from the Bible and St. Augustine, Thucydides and Josephus, Dr. Headlam and Dr. Streeter, Mommsen and Professor P, +Hard. The questions he asks himself are the eternal questions (propounded by Plato in the Republic, and still more in the Laws, and again by St. Augustine in the De Civitate Dei)—what is the ultimate principle which human society should serve, and what is the ultimate form which society must assume in order to serve this principle truly ?
The ultimate principle, Mr. Curtis answers, is the principle of the commonwealth. It is a principle of self- government, and of self-development through self-govern- ment. " The commonwealth is a system which enables the structure of society to be moulded by its own mem- bers in the light of experience." The principle of the com- monwealth is opposed to the principle of authority—and therefore, apparently, it is opposed to the principle of the Church ; but this is never made really clear. It is a principle foreseen and half achieved by the Greeks ; it is a principle fully realized and expounded in the teaching of Jesus (whom Mr. Curtis seems to regard as the human prophet of human society) : it is a principle which has been developed in England, and which has also " developed in England a some- what higher sense of realities and also a somewhat deeper instinct for truth than is commonly found elsewhere." This is the lesson of past history about the ultimate principle of society : " a commonwealth is simply the Sermon on the Mount translated into political terms." What of the future, and of the ultimate form which society must achieve in order to serve its principle truly ? " The ultimate goal," Mr. Curtis replies, " can be no other than the organization of all human society in one State based on the principle of the commonwealth." We shall find the Civitas Dei if we " think of a world commonwealth as the goal of human endeavour." In other words the democratic State, exalted and extended to the dimensions of universality, is the principle and the purpose of human life.
In order to attain this conclusion, Mr. Curtis pursues the method of a review of our human past, and attempts a philosophy of history. " In the long run the validity of principles is proved in their application, and therefore only in the course of ages. It is this which vests history with its special importance." Mr. Curtis's review of the lessons of history falls into three sections. The first section (down to page 104) is a review of ancient history. The second (from page 105 to page 222) is a review of the idea of the Kingdom of God—in its false, or " transcendental ", and its true, or "realist", conception—from the epoch of our Lord to the days of St. Augustine and the establishment of the Church Triumphant as a transcendental kingdom. The third and last section, of some sixty-five pages, covers the period from the rise of Islam to the coming of the world commonwealth. Mr. Curtis's review of history often runs into unnecessary detail, and sometimes (as if in compensation) it is cursory to a degree.
• Civitas Del. By Lionel Curtis. (Macmillan. 10s. 6d.) " A tyro might have written all this," the reader will often murmur to himself as he reads ; and Mr. Curtis confesses as much at the end of Chapter XXXII—pleading, however, that he sees in these details the threads of the potent and creative idea of the Kingdom of God. One part of the review of the world's history runs into some volume—the part concerned with the examination of the miracles and the resurrection of our Lord. It is necessary, Mr. Curtis feels, to examine these things, because they imply, if they are accepted, a trans- cendental view of the Kingdom. They are therefore examined —and dismissed. They involve the principle of authority : they are foreign to the principle of the commonwealth.
Mr. Curtis writes eloquently ; and every reader will feel that a gospel is struggling to express itself in his pages. It is, in brief, a gospel of democracy, hallowed by the name of the commonwealth and consecrated by the name of the Kingdom. Many of us can subscribe to that gospel—but only up to a point. Politics is not everything. The democratic State may be one mansion in God's house ; but His house has many other mansions. There are such things as churches, but they do not appear in Mr. Curtis's philosophy—or, if they appear (as in the chapter on the Church Triumphant, which deals somewhat hardly with St. Augustine), they appear under the guise of " theocracy in its transcendental form," which has " ousted the principle of the commonwealth." The zeal of the State has eaten Mr. Curtis up. He has a passion for political organization in all its forms, whether discrepant or con- cordant—a passion for sovereignty (" which is founded on dedication . . . and is the essence of the State ") ; but equally a passion for village-community and the happy habit of village-debate.
This passion for the State, however wide and inclusive it may be, is really an over-simplification. A philosophy of history which wrestles with the full facts has to reckon with churches as well as States. It has also to reckon with nations and national cultures, and to estimate their place and importance in the human scheme. (The word Nation is not included in Mr. Curtis's vocabulary, except as a " scale" or dimension of the commonwealth.) It has to reckon, again, with social groupings and social classes, and to appreciate the significance of economic factors and needs in the past and the future of human life. (There are some who think Russia the Kingdom, and economics the Gospel.) These are reckonings which Mr. Curtis has not made. He begins and ends with an abstract " political man." The three pillars of his temple are the Greek Polls, the British Commonwealth, and a simplified, rationalized and " politicized " interpreta- tion of the teaching of Jesus. There is a mixture of nobility and naiveté in his philosophy. There is a mixture of fine apercus and pure errors in his history. His whole book is a paradox—or a rap& rpooloday. We should have expected a man who had been a great part of great affairs to have gathered a rich harvest of ripe experience, and to have gathered it direct from life. We find instead a series of historical disquisitions (or even, now and again, of historical tabulations) mixed with a number of quasi-theological specu- lations. Through all, it is true, there runs the thread of the commonwealth. Yes—but what is the commonwealth ? Is it a Civitas Dei, or is it a liberalized Leviathan ? Perhaps, after all, there is more of Hobbes than of St. Augustine in Mr. Curtis's thought. Would that he had read St. Augustine more deeply, and understood him more truly, before he had borrowed the title of his great work for this volume.
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