WAR

times.' But good times are not a meaning or a purpose;
the void could never be filled by them. Consequently
when the nationalists and communists appeared with their
simple idolatries and their proclamation that, though life
might mean nothing as a whole it did at least possess a
temporary and partial significance, there was a powerful re-
action away from the cynicism of the post-war years.
Millions of young people embraced the new idolatrous
religions, found a meaning in life, a purpose for their
existence, and were ready, in consequence, to make sacrifices,
accept hardships, display courage, fortitude, temperance and
indeed all the virtues except the essential and primary ones,
without which all the rest may serve merely as the means
for doing evil more effectively. Love and awareness—
these are the primary, essential virtues. But nationalism
and communism are partial and exclusive idolatries that
inculcate hatred, pride, hardness, and impose that intolerant
dogmatism that cramps intelligence and narrows the field
of interest and sympathetic awareness.

The * heads' of pointlessness has as its 'tails* idolatrous
nationalism and communism. Our world oscillates from
a neurasthenia that welcomes war as a relief from boredom
to a mania that results in war being made. The cure for
both these fearful maladies is the same—the inculcation of
a cosmology more nearly corresponding to reality than
either mechanomorphism or the grotesque philosophies
underlying the nationalistic and communistic idolatries.
This cosmology and the ethical consequences of its accept-
ance will be discussed in detail in a later chapter. My next
task is to deal with the part that can and must be played
by private individuals in the carrying through of desirable
changes.

125