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Out of the dark depths of this same cavern of human frustration
comes the surrender, the moral surrender, that refuses henceforth to
discover right and wrong for oneself, but submits instead to an
authority, a vengeful authority, an authority that is on the side of
the sick soul's maliciousness, and which promises to destroy the
last vestiges of the spiritual authority which the soul has
rejected. The Kremlin is the father-substitute, the god-substitute,
the symbol of mutiny enthroned in the sky. And so it becomes two
things at once: the focus of the soul's revolt and at the same time
the tranquillizer, the blesser and soother of the ill-adjusted
individual conscience.
The psychology of this is rather subtle: yet, once you have seen it,
it is perfectly plain. I have yet to meet a communist, or a
near-communist, who is not largely explained by it. Let us try to
say it again, in a rather different way. The soul is childish and
undergrown. But the mind is well developed. This means that
spiritually and morally the things a child wants are the things the
adult communist wants. He wants to accept authority and to have its
approval--this is a powerful psychological urge--and at the same
time to avoid being restrained--to rebel violently against
authority. He can only achieve this contradiction--or seem to
achieve it--by accepting an authority, the communist hierarchy,
which is itself in revolt: in revolt against all other authority,
including the authority of prevailing standards of right and wrong.
In this way, it is possible to rebel against the parental image and
at the same time be accepted and guided by the parent-substitute.
That is the first thing. The second is that restraints are removed
in such a way that inferior people, by becoming conspirators, can
cause themselves to feel superior. They belong to an elite--the
conspiracy. They can indulge their malice against society. It is not
necessary to make a personal effort at adjustment; instead of this
the society can be made to adjust to one's own undergrown soul. The
hated superiorities which one cannot oneself attain can be dragged
down and trampled on--and all in the name of justice and
restitution.
Meanwhile, there can be tantrums and name calling, as witness Hitler
or the Soviet delegates at the United Nations--obvious
manifestations of arrested emotional development and symptoms of
prolonged childhood. The malicious instincts of an undisciplined but
precocious child can be combined with plausibly right aims and
higher idealisms: right and wrong, so to speak, can be done both at
the same time. Right, that is, as the mind contrives to view it,
wrong as it exists in hidden motivation. One can have approval--the
approval of the parent-substitute, or the god-substitute--for doing
wrong; and at the same time pretend that wrong is done only that
right may eventually prevail.
That is the sickness of the stunted soul--so far as I have had time
to describe it in these few minutes--which makes it easy for
apparently honorable men to turn to treason. In some such men, the
sickness of soul is less and the idealism more, especially at the
beginning. In others there is almost no idealism whatever; nothing
but sickness of soul. And the worst of it is that highly
intellectual types--types, also, which are emotionally very
sensitive--are most susceptible to this spiritual underdevelopment.
Magnificent minds and the souls of infants...And so the minds grow
strong only to get lost. And the souls are too weak, and after a
while too sick, to help the minds to find their way.
So that our first question leads inescapably to our second. Indeed,
in formulating the one more fully, we have also stated the other.
The undergrown soul, because its sympathies are narrow, is never
cleansed of malice, never makes its peace with life as life really
is, hates itself and turns its self-hatred out upon the world, and
so is unable to find its way between right and wrong--and if the
mind is brilliant, the effect is merely to increase the
contradictions and confusion.
I do not mean by this that there are no evils in our own society
which could make us look at other societies in the hope that they
might be better and invite allegiance. A free mind is a mind free to
choose. There can be no slavish loyalty to existing institutions
merely because they claim such a loyalty. A mind which cannot look
at communism fairly and discerningly is itself undergrown. And I do
not doubt that many free minds have been strongly attracted to
communism. In the same way, a vigorous conscience will protest with
all its force against the evils of American democracy. If such a
conscience could be persuaded that Kremlin-centered communism is
more righteous than our own society, it should express itself
accordingly. This would not, however, be treason. The Constitution
of the United States permits it.
But when the individual so persuaded is asked to engage in a
conspiracy, or to become blindly obedient to the orders given him,
or to condone great evils in the hope that good will some day come
of them, if his conscience is adult and healthy he will refuse to do
these things.
And not only so; he will see clearly the unrighteousness of the
cause to which he had become attracted, and will repudiate it. And
he will do this, not at the last moment when he has become enmeshed
in treachery and his misery is unbearable, but as soon as he sees
that what he is following is evil.
Some few years ago, there may have been some excuse for those who
pinned their hope to communism; I do not say that it was
intellectually excusable, for I cannot see how anyone who had taken
the trouble to find out for himself what Lenin, Stalin and the
others had written could possibly be hopeful of it. It was always
sure to turn out as it has. But I do understand that a great many
fine people did not bring themselves to take this trouble, and so
they were more hopeful than they should have been. I can understand,
too, how some such people, looking at the deficiencies of our own
democracy, and at the evils of Western civilization as a whole, may
have thought the Russian Revolution heralded a new and brighter
opportunity. These people hoped for wider justice, and thought that
perhaps a certain amount of upheaval was inevitable in attaining it.
We must not suppose that the people who were hopeful about Russia
were all psychopathic cases! Or that all American patriots are
wholesome. Sickness of soul can express itself in many ways, not
just in one. In this respect, communism and fascism are two aspects
of the same evil, and we have at times seen symptoms of a native
fascism.
But however all this may be, confusion as to the true nature of the
issue is excusable no longer. Treason, today, and indeed for several
years past, can have no real explanation but that of the sick soul.
The London scientist, I think, would have to acknowledge that, now,
and if he is a man at all, I hope he will have the courage to give
up his false talk of schizophrenia and speak of the evil that he
allowed to poison his sick and under-developed soul.
To betray the remaining free nations of the earth today, or even to
do them injury, is to strike a blow at the only hope there is
left--here or anywhere--the only hope for the Russian people as well
as for the free peoples: the only hope on earth.
And yet, I wonder: I wonder if anyone is beyond the reach of treason
who has not made up his mind about right and wrong? Who has not
allowed the bitterness, the malice, the mutiny to be washed out of
his soul? Who does not love justice for its own sake and not
revengefully? And freedom, even when it frustrates him and strains
his patience?
What I am saying, of course, is that I wonder if anyone is safe
whose loyalty has not been given to a free man's faith: who has not
given his heart to a high religion? Communism, you see, is not
merely a political movement; it is a rival religion. As I have said,
it is a religion for stunted souls.
Can it be defeated except by another religion? A religion that sets
a soul free to grow? A religion that says love, not hate; sympathy,
not malice; justice, not vengeance; brotherhood, not conspiracy;
open-eyed devotion, not blind obedience; liberty, not
subjection--yes, and instead of this monstrous image of embitterment
and mutiny, darkening the very sky itself and threatening the world
with destruction, a religion of the heavens swept clear for that
which is imageless: God, the creative; God, the redemptive; God of
brotherhood and love.
Prayer: O thou God of truth, of justice and of love, against whom we
rebel, teach us that it is to thee alone we must surrender. Amen.
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