Vera Stanley Alder on History

“There are two ways of summing up world history, the inner way and the outer way. Both have been at the mercy of scribes and policies. We must use our divinely-given intuition in order to arrive near to the truth. Let us begin by realizing that the story of human evolution has progressed steadily from complete exclusiveness to an ever broadening inclusiveness. At first it was built up around the self-interest of the family unit. Later the ring-pass-not enlarged to include the tribe. The tribal communities finally produced the small state or nation. The aggressive self-interest of nations eventually produced Empires. Everything outside of the Empire was potential enemy or potential prey. Finally came the conceptions of Federation and of Commonwealth. This saw the emergence of a new concept of co-operation instead of tyranny, and of the rights of the individual instead of those of the autocrat. Nevertheless, even the most benign and powerful of these nation-groups had still to consider everything outside of itself as potential enemy, and therefore self-interest still ruled.”

“The past is a pointer to the future. If we can understand the past and follow the trend of development throughout history we shall be more sure of where we are going. History tells us of wars and conquests and empires and revolutions, of cities and cultures, and of religions and persecutions. Yet actually it is a rather superficial survey. It leaves out almost entirely one vital part of the picture — the most important part. It has very little to say of man’s purpose in living, of his understanding of the reason of his existence and of his conception of life around him, and his interpretation of the mysteries of creation and evolution. So little does history say about this aspect of man — the mainspring and motive of his living — that we are left guessing about the most important part of the story — the extent of man’s actual knowledge throughout the ages... We are given superficial and rather materialistic details of the outward forms and the bitter strife which accompanied the development of the various religions as they were interpreted and practised by the people, much of which leaves us with an impression of brutal and bigoted primitiveness.”

“Escapists take refuge in cliches such as “Human nature will never change” and “History always repeats itself!” Nevertheless, human nature is changing before our eyes, and quite new history is being made. This century has seen world war for the first time. It has seen a world civilization threatened with self-destruction, not only through war but through the exploitation of all the kingdoms in nature. It has also seen the beginnings of international alignment and collaboration. It has seen the leaders of the people struggling with great patience to work out a new political approach from the ‘world’ angle. It has seen the people themselves taking increasing individual and collective action in order to obtain a world organization or government, a universal religion, or a universal language. Let us avoid being misled by the apparent irresponsibility of the crowd with its absorption in crime films, dog racing and gambling, and its immorality and apathy!... It is traditional for the outstanding leaders of humanity to work for the shaping of history. It is a new procedure when a large and ever growing section of the public begins to take responsibility for the trend of evolution to such purpose that the community is increasingly honeycombed with progressive movements of every possible kind. This is the new element in history which constitutes a mighty landmark in the development of mankind.”