Morals and Citizenship.

There is another characteristic of a civilised community: Righteousness and Justice must exist therein. What is meant by Righteousness and Justice? We must obey the moral law. Without such obedience we stand condemned. Everyone has his rights. We must sec that no individual and no association of individuals is oppressed. Differences of opinion amongst our people must not affect the rights of our citizens. The community must ever act according to the highest dictates of morality and of justice, and must recognise and applaud all who, "with whatever imperfections of doctrine, or even of conduct, contribute materially to the work of human improvement." If we find a nation or a people repudiating their contracts, breaking their word, acting dishonourably, what must we say about them? We must say that they are uncivilised.

Have I then exhausted all the characteristics of a civilised community? No, there are others. Love, Brotherhood, and Affection must be found amongst the people. People in a civilised community feel for the sorrows of others. If you had a community that had no hospitals, gave no aid to the poor and to the weak, that community would not have attained a high state of civilisation. It has been suggested that having hospitals may tend to the physical injury of the race, because it may keep alive those who will ever be weak physically, and in this way the race may suffer. This has been said by some philosophers, and they have said that in order to preserve the race, to uplift it and make it efficient, you have no right to give aid to the weak; you must allow them to die. There is something in humanity besides mere physical strength. Man is a composite animal; he has such a thing as what we term a soul, and if you have a community page 14 that looks merely after physical strength, and neglects what is termed the finer feelings of humanity, that community will cease to be civilised. It will lapse into savagery and barbarity. Perhaps what has happened during the past three years in Europe is an illustration and a lesson to us, that unless a nation, in addition to physical strength and intellectual training, has endowments of kindness and good feeling, has love and brotherhood, it has not attained to what may be termed a civilised state. The invaders of Belgium, of Northern France, of Servia, of Poland, have by their inhuman acts shocked all civilised people, and all such people proclaim their deeds to be the acts of savages.

And as a corollary to Love and Brotherhood, human life will be deemed sacred. Anything that makes human life cheap, that tends to lead us to believe that in our social life or under our Individualism the death of the young or of the aged is of little or no concern, so long as wealth, or comfort, or pleasure is obtained—destroys civilisation.

A community that does not look with horror on the destruction of human life is on the downward road, and it will end as the society that made human sacrifices to Moloch ended. Do we now rate human life higher than successful manufactures, or speed in travelling? I hope some of us do.

Last of all, in a civilised State the citizens will show by their actions that they are prepared for self-sacrifice, that they are willing to do what they can for order and for progress in the community that they are prepared to live, not for themselves alone, but for the community and for humanity. In fact, the true test of whether a nation is civilised or not is found in the conduct of its people. Given a nation where the people are orderly, are obedient to the laws they themselves have made, page 15 and are just, where the people are truthful, where they love each other, where human life is sacred, and where they are ready to make sacrifices for the benefit of the community, and for the benefit of humanity, that nation is civilised, by whatever name it is called. Self-sacrifice is one of the best proofs of civilisation that perhaps can be adduced.