rthOdOxy O By G K C hestertOn
ORHODOXY BY GILBER K. CHESE
RON
Copyright: Public Domain Digital edition, 2010 by Primalogue Publishing Media Private Limited Website: www.primalogue.com E‐mail:
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Cover design by George Korah or Primalogue Publishing & Media
Preace Tis book is meant to be a companion to "Heretics," and to put the positive side in addition to the negative. Many critics complained o the book called "Heretics" because it merely criticised current philosophies without oering any alternative philosophy. Tis book is an attempt to answer the challenge. It is unavoidably armative and thereoreunavoidably autobiographical. Te writer has been driven back upon somewhat the same diculty as that which beset Newman in writing his Apologia; he has been orced to be egotistical only in order to be sincere. While everything else may be dierent the motive in both cases is the same. It is the purpose o the writer to attempt an explanation, not o whether the Christian Faith can be believed, but o how he personally has come to believe it. Te book is thereore arranged upon the positive principle o a riddle and its answer. It deals rst with all the writer's own solitary and sincere speculations and then with all the startling style in which they were all suddenly satised by the Christian Teology. Te writer regards it as amounting to a convincing creed. But i it is not that it is at least a repeated and surprising coincidence. Gilbert K. Chesterton.
Contents
I. Introduction in Deence o Everything Else
9
II. Te Maniac
15
III. Te Suicide o Tought
31
IV. Te Ethics o Eland
45
V. Te Flag o the World
65
VI. Te Paradoxes o Christianity
81
VII. Te Eternal Revolution
101
VIII. Te Romance o Orthodoxy IX. Authority and the Adventurer
123 139
I Introduction In Deence O Everything Else
HE only possible excuse or this book is that it is an answer to a challenge. Even a bad shot is dignied when he accepts a duel. When some time ago I published a series o hasty but sincere papers, under the name o "Heretics," several critics or whose intellect I have a warm respect (I may mention specially Mr. G.S.Street) said that it was all very well or me to tell everybody to arm his cosmic theory, but that I had careully avoided supporting my precepts with example. "I will begin to worry about my philosophy," said Mr. Street, "when Mr. Chesterton has given us his." It was an incautious suggestion to make a person only tooMr. ready to writeperhaps books upon the eeblest provocation. Buttoafer all, though Street has inspired and created this book, he need not read it. I he does read it, he will nd that in its pages I have attempted in a vague and personal way, in a set o mental pictures rather than in a series o deductions, to state the philosophy in which I have come to believe. I will not call it my philosophy; or I did not make it. God and humanity made it; and it made me. I have ofen had a ancy or writinga romance about an English yachtsman who slightly miscalculated his course and discovered England under the impression that it was a new island in the South Seas. I always nd, however, that I am either too busy or too lazy to write this ne work, so I may as well give it away or the purposes o philosophical illustration. Tere will probably be a general impression that the man who landed (armed to the teeth and talking by signs) to plant the British ag on that barbaric temple which turned out to be the Pavilion at Brighton, elt rather a ool.
10
Orthodoxy
I am not here concerned to deny thathe looked a ool. But i you imagine that he elt a ool, or at any rate that the sense o olly was his sole or his dominant emotion, then you have not studied with sucient delicacy the rich romantic nature o the hero o this tale. His mistake was really a most and he knew he was thesame manew I take him or. Whatenviable could bemistake; more delightul than it, to i have in the minutes all the ascinating terrors o going abroad combined with all the humane security o coming home again? What could be better than to have all the un o discovering South Arica without the disgusting necessity o landing there? What could be more glorious than to brace one's sel up to discover New South Wales and then realize, with a gush o happy tears, that it was really old South Wales. Tis at least seems to me the main problem or philosophers, and is in a manner the main problem o this book. How can we contrive to be at once astonished at the world and yet at home in it? How can this queer cosmic town, with its many-legged citizens, with its monstrous and ancient lamps, how can this world give us at once the ascination o a strange town and the comort and honour o being our own town? o show that a aith or a philosophy is true rom every standpoint would be too big an undertaking even or a much bigger book than this; it is necessary to ollow one path o argument; and this is the path that I here propose to ollow. I wish to set orth my aith as particularly answering this double spiritual need, the need or that mixture o the amiliar andthe unamiliar which Christendom has rightly named romance. For the very word "romance" has in it the mystery and ancient meaning o Rome. Any one setting out to dispute anything ought always to begin by saying what he does not dispute. Beyond stating what he proposes to prove he should always state what he does not propose to prove. Te thing I do not propose to prove, the thing I propose to take as common ground between mysel and any average reader, is this desirability o an active and imaginative lie, picturesque and ull o a poetical curiosity, a lie such as western man at any rate always seems to have desired. I a man says that extinction is better than existence or blank existence better than variety and adventure, then he is not one o the ordinary people to whom I am talking. I a man preers nothing I can give him nothing. But nearly all people I have ever met in this western society in which I live would agree to the general proposition that we need this lie o practical romance; the combination o something
Introduction in Deence o Everything Else
11
that is strange with something thatis secure. We need so to view the world as to combine an idea o wonder and an idea o welcome. We need to be happy in this wonderland without once being merely comortable. It is HIS achievement o my creed that I shall chiey pursue in these pages. But I have a peculiar reason or mentioning the man in a yacht, who discovered England. For I am that man in a yacht. I discovered England. I do not see how this book can avoid being egotistical; and I do not quite see (to tell the truth) how it can avoid being dull. Dulness will, however, ree me rom the charge which I most lament; the charge o being ippant. Mere light sophistry is the thing that I happen to despise most o all things, and it is perhaps a wholesome act that this is the thing o which I am generally accused. I know nothing so contemptible as a mere paradox; a mere ingenious deence o the indeensible. I it were true (as has been said) that Mr. Bernard Shaw lived upon paradox, then he ought to be a mere common millionaire; or a man o his mental activity could invent a sophistry every six minutes. It is as easy as lying; because it is lying. Te truth is, o course, that Mr. Shaw is cruelly hampered by the act that he cannot tell any lie unless he thinks it is the truth. I nd mysel under the same intolerable bondage. I never in my lie said anything merely because I thought it unny; though o course, I have had ordinary human vainglory, and may have thought it unny because I had said it. It is one thing to describe an interview with a gorgon or a grin, a creature who does not exist. It is another thing to discover that the rhinoceros does exist and then take pleasure in the act that he looks as i he didn't. One searches or truth, but it may be that one pursues instinctively the more extraordinary truths. And I oer this book with the heartiest sentiments to all the jolly people who hate what I write, and regard it (very justly, or all I now), as a piece o poor clowning or a single tiresome joke. For i this book is a joke it is a joke against me. I am the man who with the utmost daring discovered whathad been discovered beore. I there is an element o how arceIin what ollows, is oot at my xpense; this book explains ancied I was thethe rstarce to set inown Brighton andor then ound I was the last. It recounts my elephantine dventures in pursuit o the obvious. No one can think my case more ludicrous thanI think it mysel; no reader can accuse me here o trying to make a ool o him: I am the ool o this story, and no rebel shall hurl me rom my throne. I reely coness
12
Orthodoxy
all the idiotic ambitions o he end o the nineteenth century. I did, like all other solemn little boys, try to be in advance o the age. Like them I tried to be some ten minutes in advance o the truth. And I ound that I was eighteen hundred years behind it. I did strain my voice with a painully juvenile exaggeration in, or uttering truths. And Ibut wasI have punished in the ttest and unniest way I havemy kept my truths: discovered, not that they were not truths, but simply that they were notmine. When I ancied that I stood alone I was really in the ridiculous position o being backed up by all Christendom. It may be, Heaven orgive me, that I did try to be srcinal; but I only succeeded in inventing all by mysel an inerior copy o the existing traditions o civilized religion.Te man rom the yacht thought he was the rst to nd England; I thought I was the rst to nd Europe. I did try to ound a heresy o my own; and when I had put the al st touches to it, I discovered that it was orthodoxy. It may be that somebody will be entertained by the account o this happy asco. It might amuse a riend or an enemy to read how I gradually learnt rom the truth o some stray legend or rom the alsehood o some dominant philosophy, things that I might have learnt rom my catechism--i I had ever learnt it. Tere may or may not be some entertainment in reading how I ound at last in an anarchist club or a Babylonian temple what I might have ound in the nearest parish church. I any one is entertained by learning how the owers o the eld or the phrases in an omnibus, the accidents o politics or the pains o youth came together in a certain order to produce a certain conviction o Christian orthodoxy, he may possibly read this book. But there is in everything a reasonable division o labour. I have written the book, and nothing on earth would induce me to read it. I add one purely pedantic note which comes, as a note naturally should, at the beginning o the book. Tese essays are concerned only to discuss the actual act that the central Christian theology (suciently summarized in the Apostles' Creed) is the best root o energy and sound ethics. Tey are not intended to discuss theauthority very ascinating quite dierent question o what is the present seat o or the but proclamation o that creed. When the word "orthodoxy" is used here it means the Apostles' Creed, as understood by everybody calling himsel Christian until a very short time ago and the general historic conduct o those who held such acreed. I have been orced by mere space to conne mysel to what I have got rom this
Introduction in Deence o Everything Else
13
creed; I do not ouch the matter much disputed among modern Christians, o where we ourselves got it. Tis is not an ecclesiastical treatise but a sort o slovenly autobiography. But i any one wants my opinions about the actual nature o the authority, Mr. G.S.Street has only to throw me another challenge, and I will write him another book.
II Te Maniac
horoughly worldly people never understand even the world; they rely altogether on a ew cynical maxims which are not true. Once I remember walking with a prosperous publisher, who made a remark which I had ofen heard beore; it is, indeed, almost a motto o the modern world. Yet I had heard it once too ofen, and I saw suddenly that there was nothing in it. Te publisher said o somebody, "Tat man will get on; he believes in himsel." And I remember that as I lifed my head to listen, my eye caught an omnibus on which was written "Hanwell." I said to him, "Shall I tell youI where themen menwho are believe who believe most in themselves? For I can tell you. know o in themselves more colossally than Napoleon or Caesar. I know where amesthe xed star o certainty and success. I can guide you to the thrones o the Super-men. Te men who really believe in themselves areall in lunatic asylums." He said mildly that there were a good many men afer all who believed in themselves and who were not in lunatic asylums. "Yes, there are," I retorted, "and you o all men ought to know them. Tat drunken poet rom whom you would not take a dreary tragedy, he believed in himsel. Tat elderly minister with an epic whomyour you were hiding in a backinstead room,o heyour believed himsel. I yourom consulted business experience ugly in individualistic philosophy, you would know that believing in himsel is one o the commonest signs o a rotter. Actors who can't act believe in themselves; and debtors who won't pay. It would be much truer to say that a man will certainly ail, because he believes in himsel. Complete sel-condence is
16
Orthodoxy
not merely a sin; complete sel-condence is a weakness. Believing utterly in one's sel is a hysterical and superstitious belie like believing in Joanna Southcote: the man who has it has `Hanwell' written on his ace as plain as it is written on that omnibus." And to all this my riend the publisher made thisinvery eective reply, a man is not to"Ibelieve himsel, whatdeep is heand to believe?" Afer "Well, a long ipause I replied, will goin home and write a book in answer to that question." Tis is the book that I have written in answer to it. But I think this book may well start where our argument started --in the neighbourhood o the mad-house.Modern masters o science are much impressed with the need o beginning all inquiry with a act. Te ancient masters o religion were quite equally impressed with that necessity. Tey began with the act o sin--a act as practical as potatoes. Whether or no man could be washed in miraculous waters, there was no doubt at any rate that he wanted washing. But certain religious leaders in London, not mere materialists, have begun in our day not to deny the highly disputable water, but to deny the indisputable dirt. Certain new theologians dispute srcinal sin, which is the only part o Christian theology which can really be proved. Some ollowers o the Reverend R.J.Campbell, in their almost too astidious spirituality, admit divine sinlessness, which they cannot see even in their dreams. But they essentially deny human sin, which they can see in the street. Te strongest saints and the strongest sceptics alike took positive evil as the starting-point o their argument. I it be true (as it certainly is) that a man can eel exquisite happiness in skinning a cat, then the religious philosopher can only drawone o two deductions. He must either deny the existence o God, as all atheists do; or he must deny the present union between God and man, as all Christians do. Te new theologians seem to think it a highly rationalistic solution to deny the cat. In this remarkable situation it is plainly not now possible (with any hope o a universal appeal) to start, as our athers did, with the act o sin. Tis veryact actthat which them (and is to or me) as plain as though a pikesta, is the very haswas beentospecially diluted denied. But moderns deny the existence o sin, I do not think that they have yet denied the existence o a lunatic asylum. We all agree still that there is acollapse o the intellect as unmistakable as a alling house. Men deny hell, but not, as yet, Hanwell. For the purpose o our primary argument theone may very
Te Maniac
17
well stand where the other stood. I mean that as all thoughts and theories were once judged by whether they tended to make a man lose his soul, so or our present purpose all modern thoughts and theories may be judged by whether they tend to make a man lose his wits. It is true that some speak lightly and loosely o insanity as in itsel attractive. But a moment's thought will show that i disease is beautiul, it is generally some one else's disease. A blind man may be picturesque; but it requires two eyes to see the picture. And similarly even the wildest poetry o insanity can only be enjoyed by the sane. o the insane man his insanity is quite prosaic, because it is quite true. A man who thinks himsel a chicken is to himsel as ordinary as a chicken. A man who thinks he is a bit o glass is to himsel as dull as a bit o glass. It is the homogeneity o his mind which makes him dull, and which makes him mad. It is only because we see the irony o his idea that we think him even amusing; it is only because he does not see the irony o his idea that he is put in Hanwell at all. In short, oddities only strike ordinary people. Oddities do not strike odd people. Tis is why ordinary people have a much more exciting time; while odd people are always complaining o the dulness o lie. Tis is also why the new novels die so quickly, and why the old airy tales endure or ever. Te old airy tale makes the heroa normal human boy; it is his adventures that are startling; they startle him because he is normal. But in the modern psychological novel the hero is abnormal; the centre is not central. Hence the ercest adventures ail to aect him adequately, and the book is monotonous. You can make a story out o a hero among dragons; but not out o a dragon among dragons. Te airy tale discusses what a sane man will do in a mad world. Te sober realistic novel o to-day discusses what an essential lunatic will do in a dull world. Let us begin, then, with the mad-house; rom this evil and antastic inn let us set orth on our intellectual journey. Now, i we are to glance at the philosophy o sanity, the rst thing to do in the matter is to blot out one big and common Tere is a notion adrif everywhere that imagination, especiallymistake. mystical imagination, is dangerous to man'smental balance. Poets are commonly spoken o as psychologically unreliable; and generally there is a vague association between wreathing laurels in your hair and sticking straws in it. Facts and history utterly contradict this view. Most o the very great poets have been not only sane, but extremely
18
Orthodoxy
business-like; and i Shakespeare ever really held horses, it was because he was much the saest man to hold them. Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists seldom. I am not, as will seen,not in any sense attacking logic: I only very say that this danger does lie inbelogic, in imagination. Artistic paternity is as wholesome as physical paternity. Moreover, it is worthy o remark that when a poet really was morbid it was commonly because he had some weak spot o rationality on his brain. Poe, or instance, really was morbid; not because he was poetical, but because he was specially analytical. Even chess was too poetical or him; he disliked chess because it was ull o knights and castles, like a poem. He avowedly preerred the black discs o draughts, because they were more like the mere black dots on a diagram. Perhaps the strongest case o all is this: that only one great English poet went mad, Cowper.And he was denitely driven mad by logic, by the ugly and alien logic o predestination. Poetry was not the disease, but the medicine; poetry partly kept him in health. He could sometimes orget the red and thirsty hell to which his hideous necessitarianism dragged him among the wide waters and the white at lilies o the Ouse. He was damned by John Calvin; he was almost saved by John Gilpin. Everywhere we see that men do not go mad by dreaming. Critics are much madder than poets. Homer is complete and calm enough; it is his critics who tear him into extravagant tatters. Shakespeare is quite himsel; it is only someo his critics who have discovered that he was somebody else. And though St. John the Evangelist saw many strange monsters in hisvision, he saw no creature so wild as one o his own commentators. Te general act is simple. Poetry is sane because it oats easily in an innite sea; reason seeks to cross the innite sea, and so make it nite. Te result is mental exhaustion, like the physical exhaustion o Mr. Holbein. o accept everything is an exercise, to understand everything a strain. Te poet only desires exaltation and expansion, a world to stretchhimsel in. Te poet only asks to get hishead into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits. It is a small matter, but not irrelevant, that this striking mistake is commonly supported by a striking misquotation. We have all heard people cite the celebrated line o Dryden as "Great genius is to madness near allied." But Dryden did not say that great genius was to madness near allied.
Te Maniac
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Dryden was a great genius himsel, and knew better. It would have been hard to nd a man more romantic than he, or more sensible. What Dryden said was this, "Great wits are of to madness near allied"; and that is true. It is the pure promptitude o the intellect that is in peril o a breakdown. Also people might remember o what visionary sort o man wasortalking. He was not talking o any unworldly likeDryden Vaughan George Herbert. He was talking o a cynical man o the world, a sceptic, a diplomatist, a great practical politician. Such men are indeed to madness near allied. Teir incessant calculation o their own brains and other people's brains is a dangerous trade. It is always perilous to the mind to reckon up the mind. A ippant person has asked why we say, "As mad as a hatter." A more ippant person might answer that a hatter is mad because he has to measure the human head. And i great reasoners are ofen ma niacal, it is equally true that maniacs are commonly great reasoners. When I was engaged in acontroversy with the clarion on the matter o ree will, that able writer Mr. R.B.Suthers said that ree will was lunacy, because it meant causeless actions, and the actions o a lunatic would be causeless. I do not dwell here upon the disastrous lapse in determinist logic. Obviously i any actions, even a lunatic's, can be causeless, determinism is done or. I the chain o causation canbe broken or a madman, it can be broken or a man. But my purpose is to point out something more practical. It was natural, perhaps, thata modern Marxian Socialist should not know anything about ree will. But it was certainly remarkable that a modern Marxian Socialist should not know anything about lunatics. Mr. Suthers evidently did not know an ything about lunatics. Te last thing that can be said o a lunatic is that his actions are causeless. I any human acts may loosely be called causeless, they are the minor acts o a healthy man; whistling as he walks; slashing the grass with a stick; kicking his heels or rubbing his hands. It is the happy man who does the useless things; the sick man isnot strong enough tobe idle. It is exactly such careless and causeless actions that the madman could never understand; or the madman (like the determinist) generally sees too much cause in everything. Te madman would read a conspiratorial signicance into those empty activities. He would think that the lopping o the grass was an attack on private property. He would think that the kicking o the heels was a signal to an accomplice. I the madman could or an instant become careless, he would become sane. Every one who has had the misortune
20
Orthodoxy
to talk with people in the heart or on the edge o mental disorder, knows that their most sinister quality is a horrible clarity o detail; a connecting o one thing with another in a map more elaborate than a maze. I you argue with a madman, it is extremely probable that you will get the worst o it; or manythat ways mind moves all the He quicker not beingby delayed the in things gohis with good judgment. is notorhampered a senseby o humour or by charity, or by the dumb certainties o experience. He is the more logical or losing certain sane aections. Indeed, the common phrase or insanity is in this respect a misleading one. Te madman is not the man who has lost his reason. Te madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason. Te madman's explanation o a thing is always complete, and ofen in a purely rational sense satisactory. Or, to speak more strictly, the insane explanation, i not conclusive, is at least unanswerable; this may be observed specially in the two or three commonest kinds o madness. I a man says (or instance) that men have a conspiracy against him, you cannot dispute it except by saying that all the men deny that they are conspirators; which is exactly what conspirators would do. His explanation covers theacts as much as yours. Or i a man says that he is the rightul King o England, it is no complete answer to say thatthe existing authorities call him mad; or i he were King o England that might be the wisest thing or the existing authorities to do. Or i a man says that he is Jesus Christ, it is no answer to tell him that the world denies his divinity; or the world denied Christ's. Nevertheless he is wrong. But i we attempt to trace his error in exact terms, we shall not nd it quite so easy as we had supposed. Perhaps the nearest we can get to expressing it is to say this: that his mind moves in a perect but narrow circle. A small circle is quite as innite as a large circle; but, though it is quiteas innite, it is not so large. In the same way the insane explanation is quite as complete as the sane one, but it is not so large. A bullet is quite as round as the world, but it is not the world. Tere is such a thingeternity; as a narrow universality; such a thing as a Now, small and cramped you may see it in there manyismodern religions. speaking quite externally and empirically, we may say that the strongest and most unmistakable MARK o madness is this combination between a logical completeness and a spiritual contraction. Te lunatic's theory explains a large number o things, but it does not explain them in a large
Te Maniac
21
way. I mean that i you or I were dealing with a mind that was growing morbid, we should be chiey concerned not so much to give it arguments as to give it air, to convince it that there was something cleaner and cooler outside the suocation o asingle argument. Suppose, or instance, itwere the rst case that I took as typical; against supposehim. it were a man who accused everybody o conspiring I the we case couldoexpress our deepest eelings o protest and appeal against this obsession, I suppose we should say something like this: "Oh, I admit that you have your case and have it by heart, and that many things do t into other things as you say. I admit that your explanation explains a great deal; but what a great deal it leaves out! Are there no other stories in the world except yours; and are all men busy with your business? Suppose we grant the details; perhaps when the man in the street did not seem to see you it was only his cunning; perhaps when the policeman asked you your name it was only because he knew it already. But how much happier you would bei you only knew that these people cared nothing about you! How much larger your lie would be i your sel could become smaller in it; i you could really look at other men with common curiosity and pleasure; i you could see them walking as they are in their sunny selshness and their virile indierence! You would begin to be interested in them, because they were not interested in you. You would break out o this tiny and tawdry theatre in which your own little plot is always being played, and you would nd yoursel under a reer sky, in a street ull o splendid strangers." Or suppose it were the second case o madness, that o a man who claims the crown, your impulse would be to answer, "All right! Perhaps you know that you are the King o England; but why do you care? Make one magnicent eort and you will be a human being and look down on all the kings o the earth." Or it might be the third case, o the madman who called himsel Christ. I we said what we elt, we should say, "So you are the Creator and Redeemer o the world: but what a small world it must be! What a little heaven you must inhabit, with angels no bigger than butteries! How sad it must be to be God; and an inadequate God! Is there really no lie uller and no love more marvellous than yours; and is it really in your small and painul pity that all esh must put its aith? How much happier you would be, how much more o you there would be, i the hammer o a higher God could smash your small cosmos, scattering the stars like spangles, and leave you in the open, ree like other men to look up as well as down!"
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And it must be remembered that the most purely practical science does take this view o mental evil; it does not seek to argue with it like a heresy but simply to snap it like a spell. Neither modern science nor ancient religion believes in complete ree thought. Teology rebukes certain by them callingmorbid. them blasphemous. rebukessocieties certain thoughtsthoughts by calling For example, Science some religious discouraged men moreor less rom thinking about sex. Te new scientic society denitely discourages men rom thinking about death; it is a act, but it is considered a morbid act. And in dealing with those whose morbidity has a touch o mania, modern science cares ar less or pure logic than a dancing Dervish. In these cases it is not enough that the unhappy man should desire truth; he must desire health. Nothing can save him but a blind hunger or normality, like that o a beast. A man cannot think himsel out o mental evil; or it is actually the organ o thought that has become diseased, ungovernable, and, asit were, independent. He can only be saved by will or aith. Te moment his mere reason moves, it moves in the old circular rut; he will go round and round his logical circle, just as a man in a third-class carriage on the Inner Circle will go round and round the Inner Circle unless he perorms the voluntary, vigorous, and mystical act o getting out at Gower Street. Decision is the whole business here; a door must be shut or ever. Every remedy is adesperate remedy. Every cure is a miraculous cure. Curing a madman is not arguing with a philosopher; it is casting out a devil. And however quietly doctors and psychologists may go to work in the matter, their attitude is prooundly intolerant--as intolerant as Bloody Mary. Teir attitude is really this: that the man must stop thinking, i he is to go on living. Teir counsel is one o intellectual amputation. I thy HEAD oend thee, cut it o; or itis better, not merely to enter the Kingdom o Heaven as a child, but to enter it as an imbecile, rather than with your whole intellect to be cast into hell --or into Hanwell. Such is the madman o experience; he is commonly a reasoner, requently a successul reasoner. Doubtless he could be vanquished in mere reason, and the case against him put logically. But it can be put much more precisely in more general and even aesthetic terms. He is in the clean and well-lit prison o one idea: he is sharpened to one painul point. He is without healthy hesitation and healthy complexity. Now, as I explain in the introduction, I have determined in these early chapters to give not so much a diagram o a doctrine as some pictures o apoint o view. And I
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23
have described at length my vision o the maniac or this reason: that just as I am aected by the maniac, so I am aected by most modern thinkers. Tat unmistakable mood or note that I hear rom Hanwell, I hear also rom hal the chairs o science and seats o learning to-day; and most o the madthat doctors are mad we doctors in morethe senses than one.o Tey all have exactly combination have noted: combination an expansive and exhaustive reason with a contracted common sense. Tey are universal only in the sense that they take one thin explanation and carry it very ar. But a pattern can stretch or ever and still be a small pattern. Tey see a chess-board white on black, and i the universe is paved with it, it is still white on black. Like the lunatic, they cannot alter their standpoint; they cannot make a mental eort and suddenly see it black on white. ake rst the more obvious case o materialism. As an explanation o the world, materialism has a sort o insane simplicity. It has just the quality o the madman's argument; we have at once the sense o it covering everything and the sense o it leaving everything out. Contemplate some able and sincere materialist, as, or instance, Mr. McCabe, and you will have exactly this unique sensation. He understands everything, and every thing does not seem worth understanding. His cosmos may be complete in every rivet and cog-wheel, but still his cosmos is smaller than our world. Somehow his scheme, like the lucid scheme o the madman, seems unconscious o the alien energies and the large indierence o the earth; it is not thinking o the real things o the earth, o ghting peoples or proud mothers, or rst love or ear upon the sea. Te earth is so very large, and the cosmos is so very small. Te cosmos is about the smallest hole that a man can hide his head in. It must be understood that I am not now discussing the relation o these creeds to truth; but, or the present, solely their relation to health. Later in the argument I hope to attack the question o objective verity; here I speak only o a phenomenon o psychology. I do not or the present attempt to materialism any that morehethan I attempted to prove provetotoHaeckel the manthat who thought heisuntrue, was Christ was labouring under an error. I merely remark here on the act thatboth cases have the same kind o completeness and the same kind o incompleteness. You can explain a man's detention at Hanwell by an indierent public by saying that it is the crucixion o a god o whom the world is not worthy.
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Te explanation does explain. Similarly you may explain the order in the universe by saying that all things, even the souls o men, are leaves inevitably unolding on an utterly unconscious tree--the blind destiny o matter. Te explanation does explain, though not, o course, so completely as theobjects madman's. Butbut theeels point that theobjection. normal human mind not only to both, to here both isthe same Its approximate statement is that i the man in Hanwell is the real God, he is not much o a god. And, similarly, i the cosmos o the materialist is the real cosmos, it is not much o a cosmos. Te thing has shrunk. Te deity is less divine than many men; and (according to Haeckel) the whole o lie is something much more grey, narrow, and trivial than many separate aspects o it. Te parts seem greater than the whole. For we must remember that the materialist philosophy (whether true or not) is certainly much more limiting than any religion. In one sense, o course, all intelligent ideas arenarrow. Tey cannot be broader than themselves. A Christian is only restricted in the same sense that an atheist is restricted. He cannot think Christianity alse and continue to be a Christian; and the atheist cannot think atheism alse and continue to be an atheist. But as it happens, there is a very special sense in which materialism has more restrictions than spiritualism. Mr. McCabe thinks me a slave because I am not allowed to believe in determinism. I think Mr. McCabe a slave because he is not allowed to believe in airies. But i we examine the two vetoes we shall see that his is really much more o a pure veto than mine. Te Christian is quite ree to believe that there is a considerable amount o settled order and inevitable development inthe universe. But the materialist is not allowed to admit into his spotless machine the slightest speck o spiritualism or miracle. Poor Mr. McCabe is not allowed to retain even the tiniest imp, though it might be hiding in a pimpernel. Te Christian admits that the universe is maniold and even miscellaneous, just as a sane man knows that heis complex. Te sane man knows that he has a touch o the beast, a touch o the devil, a touch o the saint, a touch o the citizen. Nay, the really sane man knows that he has a toucho the madman. But the materialist's world is quite simple and solid, just as the madman is quite sure he is sane. Te materialist is sure that history has been simply and solely a chain o causation, just as the interesting person beore mentioned is quite sure that he is simply and solely a chicken. Materialists and madmen never have doubts.
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25
Spiritual doctrines do not actually limit the mind as do materialistic denials. Even i I believe in immortality I need not think about it. But i I disbelieve in immortality I must not think about it. In the rst case the road is open and I can go as ar as I like; in the second the road is shut. But the case evenour stronger, and the withand madness yet more strange. For is it was case against theparallel exhaustive logicalistheory o the lunatic that, right orwrong, it gradually destroyed his humanity. Now it is the charge against the main deductions o the materialist that, right or wrong, they gradually destroy his humanity; I do not mean only kindness, I mean hope, courage, poetry, initiative, all that is human. For instance, when materialism leads men to complete atalism (as it generally does), it is quite idle to pretend that it is in any sense a liberating orce. It is absurd to say that you are especially advancing reedom when you only use ree thought to destroy ree will. Te determinists come to bind, not to loose. Tey may well call their lawthe "chain" o causation. It is the worst chain that ever ettered a human being. You may use the language o liberty, i you like, about materialistic teaching, but it is obvious that this is just as inapplicable to it as a whole as the same language when applied to a man locked up in a mad-house. You may say, i you like, that the man is ree to think himsel a poached egg. But it is surely a more massive and important act that i he is a poached egg he is not ree to eat, drink, sleep, walk, or smoke a cigarette. Similarly you may say, i you like, that the bold determinist speculator is ree to disbelieve in the reality o the will. But it is a much more massive and important act that he is not ree to raise, to curse, to thank, to justiy, to urge, to punish, to resist temptations, to incite mobs, to make New Year resolutions, to pardon sinners, to rebuke tyrants, or even to say "thank you" or the mustard. In passing rom this subject I may note that there is a queer allacy to the eect that materialistic atalism is in some way avourable to mercy, to the abolition o cruel punishments or punishments o any kind. Tis is startlingly the reverse o the truth. It is quite tenable that the doctrine o necessity makes no dierence at all; that it leaves the ogger ogging and the kind riend exhorting as beore. But obviously i it stops either o them it stops the kind exhortation. Tat the sins are inevitable does not prevent punishment; i it prevents anything it prevents persuasion. Determinism is quite as likely to lead to cruelty as it is certain to lead to cowardice. Determinism is not inconsistent with the cruel treatment o
26
Orthodoxy
criminals. What it is (perhaps) inconsistentwith is the generoustreatment o criminals; with any appeal to their better eelings or encouragement in their moral struggle. Te determinist does not believe in appealing to the will, but he does believe in changing the environment.He must not say to the and sinoil; no or more," becaus cannot help it. But heas can sinner, put him"Go in boiling boiling oileisthe ansinner environment. Considered a gure, thereore, the materialist has the antastic outline o the gure o the madman. Both take up a position at once unanswerable and intolerable. O course it is not only o the materialist that all this is true. Te same would apply to the other extreme o speculative logic. Tere is a sceptic ar more terrible than he who believes that everything began in matter. It is possible to meet the sceptic who believes that everything began in himsel. He doubts not the existence o angels or devils, but the existence o men and cows. For him his own riends are a mythology made up by himsel. He created his own ather and his own mother. Tis horrible ancy has in it something decidedly attractive to the somewhat mystical egoism o our day. Tat publisher who thought that men would get on i they believed in themselves, those seekers afer the Superman who are always looking or him in the looking-glass, those writers who talk about impressing their personalities instead o creating lie or the world, all these people have really only an inch between them and this awul emptiness. Ten when this kindly world all round the man has been blackened out like a lie; when riends ade into ghosts, and the oundations o the world ail; then when the man, believing in nothing and in no man, is alone in his own nightmare, then the great individualistic motto shall be written over him in avenging irony. Te stars will be only dots in theblackness o his own brain; his mother's ace will be only a sketch rom his own insane pencil on the walls o his cell. But over his cell shall be written, with dreadul truth, "He believes in himsel." All that concerns us here, however, is to note that this panegoistic extreme o isthought ht ein same paradox as the other extreme o materialism. It equallyexhibits complete theory and equally crippling in practice. For the sake o simplicity, it is easier to state the notion by saying that a man can believe that he is always ina dream. Now, obviously there can be no positive proo given to him that he is not in a dream, or the simple reason that no proo can be oered that might not be oered in a dream.
Te Maniac
27
But i the man began to burn down London and say that his housekeeper would soon call him to breakast, we should take him and put him with other logicians in a place which has ofen been alluded to in the course o this chapter. Te man who cannot believe his senses, and theman who cannot believe anything are bothbut insane, their insanity proved not by any error in theirelse, argument, by thebut maniest mistakeis o their whole lives. Tey have both locked themselves up in two boxes, painted inside with the sun and stars; they are both unable to get out, the one into the health and happiness o heaven, the other even into the health and happiness o the earth. Teir position is quite reasonable; nay, in a sense it is innitely reasonable, just asa threepenny bit is innitely circular. But there is such a thing as a mean innity, a base and slavish eternity. It is amusing to notice that many o the moderns, whether sceptics or mystics, have taken as their sign a certain eastern symbol, which is the very symbol o this ultimate nullity. When they wish to represent eternity,they represent it by a serpent with his tail in his mouth. Tere is a startling sarcasm in the image o that very unsatisactory meal. Te eternity o the material atalists, the eternity o the eastern pessimists, the eternity o the supercilious theosophists and higher scientists o to-day is, indeed, very well presented by a serpent eating his tail, a degraded animal who destroys even himsel. Tis chapter is purely practical and is concerned with what actually is the chie mark and element o insanity; we may say in summary that it is reason used without root, reason in the void. Te man who begins to think without the proper rst principles goes mad; he begins to think at the wrong end. And or the rest o these pages we have totry and discover what is the right end. But we may ask in conclusion, i this be whatdrives men mad, what is it that keeps them sane? By the end o this book I hope to give a denite, some will think a ar toodenite, answer. But or the moment it is possible in the same solely practical manner to give a general answer touching what in actual human history keeps men sane. Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. Te ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic. He has permitted the twilight. He has always had one oot in earth and the other in airyland. He has always lef himsel ree to doubt his gods; but (unlike the agnostic o to-day) ree also to believe in them. He has always cared more or truth than or consistency. I he saw two truths that seemed to
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Orthodoxy
contradict each other, he would take the two truths and the contradiction along with them. His spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two dierent pictures at once and yet sees all the better or that. Tus he has always believed that there was such a thing as ate, but such akingdom thing asoree will also. Tus he believed that the heaven, but nevertheless ought to bechildren obedientwere to theindeed kingdom o earth. He admired youth because it was young and age because it was not. It is exactly this balance o apparent contradictions that has been the whole buoyancy o the healthy man. Te whole secret o mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help o what he does not understand. Te morbid logician seeks to make everything lucid, and succeeds in making everything mysterious. Te mystic allows one thing to be mysterious, and everything else becomes lucid. Te determinist makes the theory o causation quite clear, and then nds that he cannot say "i you please" to the housemaid.Te Christian permits ree will to emain r a sacred mystery; but because o this his relations with the housemaid become o a sparkling and crystal clearness. He puts the seed o dogma in a central darkness; but it branches orth in all directions with abounding natural health. As we have taken the circle as the symbol o reason and madness, we may very well take the cross as the symbol at once o mystery and o health. Buddhism is centripetal, but Christianity is centriugal: it breaks out. For the circle is perect and innite in itsnature; but it is xed or ever in its size; it can never be larger or smaller. But the cross, though it has at its heart a collision and a contradiction, can extend its our arms or ever without altering its shape. Because it has a paradox in its centre it can grow without changing. Te circle returns upon itsel and is bound. Te cross opens its arms to the our winds; it is a signpost or ree travellers. Symbols alone are o even a cloudy value in speaking o this deep matter; and another symbol rom physical nature will express suciently well the real place o mysticism beore mankind. Te one created thing which we cannot look at is the one thing in the light o which we look at everything. Like the sun at noonday, mysticism explains everything else by the blaze o its own victorious invisibility. Detached intellectualism is (in the exact sense o a popular phrase) all moonshine; or it is light without heat, and it is secondary light, reected rom a dead world. But the Greeks were right when they made Apollo the god both o imagination and o sanity; or he was both the patron o poetry and the patron o
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healing. O necessary dogmas and a special creed I shall speak later. But that transcendentalism by which all men live has primarily much the position o the sun in the sky. We are conscious o it as o a kind o splendid conusion; it is something both shining and shapeless, at once a blaze and aand blur. But the circle the moon is as clear unmistakable, as recurrent inevitable, as theocircle oEuclid on a and blackboard. For the moon is utterly reasonable; and the moon is the mother o lunatics and has given to them all her name.
III Te Suicide O Tought
he phrases o the street are not only orcible but subtle: or a gure o speech can ofen get into a crack too small or a denition. Phrases like "put out" or "o colour"might have been coined by Mr. Henry James in an agony o verbal precision. And there is no more subtle truth than that o the everyday phrase about a man having "his heart in the right place." It involves the idea o normal proportion; not only does a certain unction exist, but it is rightly related to other unctions. Indeed, the negation o this phrase would describe with peculiar accuracy the somewhat morbid mercy and perverse o the most the representative I, or instance, I had totenderness describe with airness character omoderns. Mr. Bernard Shaw, I could not express mysel more exactly than by saying that he has a heroically large and generous heart; but not a heart in the right place. And this is so o the typical society o our time. Te modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is ar too good. It is ull o wild and wasted virtues. When a religious scheme is shattered (as Christianity was shattered at the Reormation), it is not merely the vices that are let loose. Te vices are, indeed, letloose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. Te modern world is ull o the old Christian virtues gone mad. Te virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated rom each other and arewandering alone. Tus some scientists care or truth; and their truth is pitiless. Tus some humanitarians only care or pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is ofen
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Orthodoxy
untruthul. For example, Mr. Blatchord attacks Christianity because he is mad on one Christian virtue: the merely mystical and almost irrational virtue o charity. He has a strange idea that he will make it easier to orgive sins by saying that there are nosins to orgive. Mr. Blatchord is not only an early Christian, is the only early who ought reallytrue: to have been eaten by lions.heFor in his case theChristian pagan accusation is really his mercy would mean mere anarchy. He really is the enemy o the human race--because he is so human. As the other extreme,we may take the acrid realist, who has deliberately killed in himsel all human pleasure in happy tales or in the healing o the heart. orquemada tortured people physically or the sake o moral truth. Zola tortured people morally or the sake o physical truth. But in orquemada's time there was atleast a system that could to some extent makerighteousness and peace kiss each other. Now they do not even bow. But a much stronger case than these two otruth and pity can be ound in the remarkable case o the dislocation o humility. It is only with one aspect o humility that we are here concerned. Humility was largely meant as a restrai nt upon the arrogance and innity o the appetite o man. He was always outstripping his mercies with his own newly invented needs. His verypower o enjoyment destroyed hal his joys. By asking or pleasure, he lost the chie pleasure; or the chie pleasure is surprise. Hence it becameevident that i a man would make hisworld large, he must be always making himsel small. Even the haughty visions, the tall cities, and the toppling pinnacles are the creationso humility. Giants that tread down orests like grass are the creations o humility. owers that vanish upwards above the loneliest star arethe creations o humility. For towers are not tall unless we look up at them; and giants are not giants unless they are larger than we. All this gigantesque imagination, which is, perhaps, the mightiest o the pleasures o man, is at bottom entirely humble. It is impossible without humility to enjoy anything--even pride. But what we suer rom to-day is humility in the wrong place. Modesty hasomoved rom the organ o ambition. Modesty settled upon the organ conviction; where it was never meant to be.has A man was meant to be doubtul about himsel, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed. Nowadays the part o a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert--himsel. Te part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt--the Divine Reason. Huxley preached
Te Suicide o Tought
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a humility content to learn rom Nature. But the new sceptic is so humble that he doubts i he can even learn. Tus we should be wrong i we had said hastily that there is no humility typical o our time. Te truth is that there is a real humility typical o our time; but it so happens that it is practically aold more poisonous than the wildest prostration s o the ascetic. Tein humility was ahumility spur that prevented a man rom stopping; not a nail his boot that prevented him rom going on. For the old humility made a man doubtul about his eorts, which might make him workharder. But the new humility makes a man doubtul about his aims, which will make him stop working altogether. At any street corner we may meet a man who utters the rantic and blasphemous statement that he may be wrong. Every day one comes across somebody who says that o course his view may not be the right one. O course his view must be the right one, or itis not his view. We are on the road to producing a race o men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table. We are in danger o seeing philosophers who doubt the law o gravity as being a mere ancy o their own. Scoers o old time were too proud to be convinced; but these are too humble to be convinced. Te meek do inherit the earth; but the modern sceptics are too meek even to claim their inheritance. It is exactly this intellectual helplessness which is our second problem. chapter has beenthere concerned onlycomes with arather act orom observation: that Te whatlast peril o morbidity is or man his reason than his imagination. It was not meant to attack the authority o reason; rather it is the ultimate purpose to deend it. For it needs deence. Te whole modern world is at war with reason; and the tower already reels. Te sages, it is ofen said, can see no answer to the riddle o religion. But the trouble with our sages is not that they cannot see the answer; it is that they cannot even see the riddle. Tey are like children so stupid as to notice nothing paradoxical in the playulassertion that a door is not a door. Te modern latitudinarians speak, or instance, about authority in religion not only as i there were no reason in it, but as i there had never been any reason or it. Apart rom seeing its philosophical basis, they cannot even see its historical cause. Religious authority has ofen, doubtless, been oppressive or unreasonable; just as every legal system (and especially our present one) has been callous and ull o acruel apathy. It is rational to
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Orthodoxy
attack the police; nay, it is glorious. But the modern critics o religious authority are like men who should attack the police without ever having heard o burglars. For there is a great and possible peril to the human mind: a peril as practical as burglary. Against it religious authority was reared, , asia our barrier. it something certainly must berightly rearedor aswrongly a barrier, raceAnd is to against avoid ruin. Tat peril is that the human intellect is ree to destroy itsel. Just as one generation could prevent the very existence o the next generation, by all entering a monastery or jumping into the sea, so one set o thinkers can in some degree prevent urther thinking by teaching the next generation that there is no validity in any human thought. It is idle to talk always o the alternative o reason and aith. Reason is itsel a matter o aith. It is an act o aith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all. I you are merely a sceptic, you must sooner or later ask yoursel the question, "Why should ANYHING go right; even observation and deduction? Why should not good logic be as misleading as bad logic? Tey are both movements in the brain o a bewildered ape?" Te young sceptic says, "I have a right to think or mysel." But the old sceptic, the complete sceptic, says, "I have no right to think or mysel. I have no right to think at all." Tere is a thought that stops thought. Tat is the only thought that ought to be stopped. Tat is the ultimate evil against which all religious authority aimed. only appears the end decadent ages like our own: andwas already Mr.ItH.G.Wells hasatraised its o ruinous banner; he has written a delicate piece o scepticism called "Doubts o the Instrument." In this he questions the brain itsel, and endeavours to remove all reality rom all his own assertions, past, present, and tocome. But it was against this remote ruin that all the military systems in religion were srcinally ranked and ruled. Te creeds and the crusades, the hierarchies and the horrible persecutions were not organized, as is ignorantly said, or the suppression o reason. Tey were organized or the dicult deence o reason. Man, a blind knew thatTe i once thingso were wildly questioned, reasonbycould beinstinct, questioned rst. authority priests to absolve, the authority o popes to dene the authority, even o inquisitors to terriy: these were all only dark deences erectedround one central authority, more undemonstrable, more supernatural than all-- the authority o a man to think. We know now that this is so; we haveno excuse or not knowing it.
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For we can hear scepticism crashing through the old ring o authorities, and at the same moment we can see reason swaying upon her throne. In so ar as religion is gone, reason is going. For they are both o the same primary and authoritative kind. Tey are both methods o proo which cannot themselves proved. thethe actidea o destroying the idea o Divine authority webe have largelyAnd destrin oyed o that human authority by which we do a long-division sum. With a long and sustained tug we have attempted to pull the mitre o pontical man; and his head has come o with it. Lest this should be called loose assertion, it is perhaps desirable, though dull, to run rapidly through the chie modern ashions o thought which have this eect o stopping thought itsel. Materialism and the view o everything as a personal illusion have some such eect; or i the mind is mechanical, thought cannot be very exciting, and i the cosmos is unreal, there is nothing to think about. But in these cases the eect is indirect and doubtul. In some cases it is direct and clear; notably in the case o what is generally called evolution. Evolution is a good example o that modern intelligence which, i it destroys anything, destroysitsel. Evolution is either an innocent scientic description o how certain earthly things came about; or, i it is anything more than this, it is an attack upon thought itsel. I evolution destroys anything, notdestroy religion butturned rationalism. I evolution simply means thatitadoes positive thing called an ape very slowly into a positive thing called a man, then it is stinglessor the most orthodox; or a personal God might just as well do things slowly as quickly, especially i, like the Christian God, he were outside time. But i it means anything more, it means that there is no such thing as an ape to change, and no such thing as a man or him to change into. It means that there is no such thing as a thing. At best, there is only one thing, and that is a ux o everything and anything. Tis is an attack not upon the aith, but upon the mind; you cannot i thererom are no about. You cannot you are think not separate the things subjectto o think thought. Descartes said, "Ithink think;i thereore I am." Te philosophic evolutionist reverses and negatives the epigram. He says, "I am not; thereore I cannot think." hen there is the opposite attack on thought: that urged by Mr. H.G.Wells when he insists that every separate thing is "unique," and there
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Orthodoxy
are no categories at all. Tis also is merely destructive. Tinking means connecting things, and stops i they cannot be connected. It need hardly be said that this scepticism orbidding thought necessarily orbids speech; a man cannot open his mouth without contradicting it. Tus when Mr. Wells says (as he did somewhere), "All chairs areinquite dierent, " he utters not merely a misstatement, but a contradiction terms. I all chairs were quite dierent, you could not call them "all chairs." Akin to these is the alse theory o progress, which maintains that we alter the test instead o trying to pass the test. We ofen hear it said, or instance, "What is right in one ageis wrong in another." Tis is quite reasonable, i it means that there is a xed aim, and that certain methods attain at certain times and not at other times. I women, say, desire to be elegant, it may be that they are improved at one time by growing atter and at another time by growing thinner. But you cannot say that they are improved by ceasing to wish to be elegant and beginning to wish to be oblong. I the standard changes, how can there be improvement, which implies a standard? Nietzsche started a nonsensical idea that men had once sought as good what we now call evil; i it were so, we could not talk o surpassing or even alling short o them. How can you overtake Jones i you walk in the other direction? You cannot discuss whether one people has succeeded more in being miserable than another succeeded in being happy. It would be like discussing whether Milton was more puritanical than a pig is at. It is true that a man (a silly man) might make change itsel his object or ideal. But as an ideal, change itsel becomes unchangeable. I the changeworshipper wishes to estimate his own progress, he must be sternly loyal to the ideal o change; he must not begin to irt gaily with the ideal o monotony. Progress itsel cannotprogress. It is worth remark, in passing, that when ennyson, in a wild and rather weak manner, welcomed the idea o innite alteration in society, he instinctively took a metaphor which suggests anthe imprisoned tedium.oHe wrote--"Let the great oras ever down ringing grooves change." He thought o world changespin itsel an unchangeable groove; andso it is. Change is about the narrowest and hardest groove that a man can get into. Te main point here, however, is that this idea o a undamental alteration in the standard is one o the things that make thought about the past
Te Suicide o Tought
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or uture simply impossible. Te theory o a complete change o standards in human history does not merely deprive us o the pleasure o honouring our athers; it deprives us even o the more modern and aristocratic pleasure o despising them. Tis bald summary o the thought-destroying orces o our time would not be complete without some reerence to pragmatism; or though I have here used and should everywhere deend the pragmatist method as a preliminary guide to truth, there is an extreme application o it which involves the absence o all truth whatever. My meaning can be putshortly thus. I agree with the pragmatists that apparent objective truth is notthe whole matter; that there is an authoritative need to believe the things that are necessary to the human mind. But I say that one o those necessities precisely is a belie in objective truth. Te pragmatist tells a man to think what he must think and never mind the Absolute. But precisely one o the things that he must think is the Absolute. Tis philosophy, indeed, is a kind o verbal paradox. Pragmatism is a matter o human needs; and one o the rst o human needs isto be something more than a pragmatist. Extreme pragmatism is just as inhuman as the determinism it so powerully attacks. Te determinist (who, to do him justice, does not pretend to be a human being) makes nonsense o the human sense o actual choice. Te pragmatist, who proesses to be specially human, makes nonsense o the human sense o actual act. o sum up our contention so ar, we may say that the most characteristic current philosophies have not only a touch o mania, but a touch o suicidal mania. Te mere questioner has knocked his head against the limits o human thought; and cracked it. Tis is what makes so utile the warnings o the orthodox and the boastso the advanced about the dangerous boyhood o ree thought. What we are looking at is not the boyhood o ree thought; it is the old ageand ultimate dissolution o ree thought. It is vain or bishops and pious bigwigs to discuss what dreadul things will happen i wild scepticism itsgreat course. It has It iis once vain or eloquent atheists to talkruns o the truths thatrun willitsbecourse. revealed we see ree thought begin. We have seen it end. It has no more questions to ask; it has questioned itsel. You cannot call up any wilder vision than a city in which men ask themselves i they have any selves. You cannot ancy a more sceptical world than that in which men doubt i there is a world.
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Orthodoxy
It might certainly have reached its bankruptcy more quickly and cleanly i it had not been eebly hampered by the application o indeensible laws o blasphemy or by the absurd pretence that modern England is Christian. But it would have reached the bankruptcy anyhow. Militant atheists are still unjustly but Free rather becausehas they are an old than because theypersecuted; are a new one. thought exhausted itsminority own reedom. It is weary o its own success. I any eager reethinker now hails philosophic reedom as the dawn, he is only like the man in Mark wain who came out wrapped in blankets to see the sun rise and was just in time to see it set. I any rightened curate still says that it will be awul i the darkness o ree thought should spread, we can only answer him in the high and powerul words o Mr. Belloc, "Do not, I beseech you, be troubled about the increase o orces already indissolution. You have mistaken the hour o the night: it is already morning." We have no more questions lef to ask. We have looked or questions in the darkest corners and on the wildest peaks. We have ound all the questions that can be ound. It is time we gave up looking or questions and began looking or answers. But one more word must be added. At the beginning o this preliminary negative sketch I said that our mental ruin has been wrought by wild reason, not by wild imagination. A man does not go mad because he makes a statue a mile high, but he may go mad by thinking it out in square inches. Now, one school o thinkers has seen this and jumped at it as a way o renewing the pagan health o the world. Tey see that reason destroys; but Will, they say, creates. Te ultimate authority, they say, is in will, not in reason. Te supreme point isnot why a man demands a thing, but the act that he does demand it. I have no space to trace or expound this philosophy o Will. It came, I suppose, through Nietzsche, who preached something that is called egoism. Tat, indeed, was simpleminded enough; or Nietzsche denied egoism simply by preaching it.o preach anything is to give it away. First, the egoist calls lie a war without mercy, and then he takes the greatest possible trouble to drill his enemies in war. o preach egoism is to practise altruism. But however it began, the view is common enough in current literature. Te main deence o these thinkers ishat t they are not thinkers; they are makers. Tey say that choice is itsel the divine thing. Tus Mr. Bernard Shaw has attacked the old idea that men's acts are to be judged by the standard o the desire o happiness. He says that a man does not act or his happiness, but rom his will. He does not say, "Jam will
Te Suicide o Tought
39
make me happy," but "I want jam." And in all this others ollow him with yet greater enthusiasm. Mr. John Davidson, a remarkable poet, is so passionately excited about it thathe is obliged to write prose. He publishes a short play with several long preaces. Tis is natural enough in Mr. Shaw, or hisnever plays written are preaces: Mr. Shaw (I suspect) the only(who mancan on earth whoallhas any poetry. Butisthat Mr. Davidson write excellent poetry) should write instead laborious metaphysics in deence o this doctrine o will, does show that the doctrine o will has taken hold o men. Even Mr. H.G.Wells has hal spoken in its language; saying that one should test acts not like a thinker, but like an artist, saying, "I FEEL this curve is right," or "that line SHALL go thus." Tey are all excited; and well they may be. For by this doctrine o the divine authority o will, they think they can break out o the doomed ortress orationalism. Tey think they can escape. But they cannot escape. Tis pure praise o volition ends in the same break up and blank as the mere pursuit o logic. Exactly as complete ree thought involves the doubting o thought itsel, so the acceptation o mere "willing" really paralyzes the will. Mr. Bernard Shaw has not perceived the real dierence between the old utilitarian test o pleasure (clumsy, o course, and easily misstated) and that which he propounds. Te real dierence between the test o happiness and the test o will is simply that the test o happiness is a test and the other isn't. You can discuss whether a man's act in jumping over a cli was directed towards happiness; you cannot discuss whether it wasderived rom will. O course it was. You can praise an action by saying that it is calculated to bring pleasure or pain to discover truth or to savethe soul. But you cannot praise an action because it shows will; or to say that is merely to say that it is an action. By this praise o will you cannot really choose one course as better than another. And yet choosing one course as better than another is the very denition o the will you are praising. Te worship o will is the negation o comes will. o mere choice is to reuse to choose. I Mr. Bernard Shaw upadmire to me and says, "Will something," that is tantamount to saying, "I do not mind what you will," and that is tantamount to saying, "I have no will in the matter." You cannot admire will in general, because the essence o will is that it is particular. A brilliant anarchist like Mr. John Davidson eels an irritation against ordi-
40
Orthodoxy
nary morality, and thereore he invokes will --will to anything. He only wants humanity to want something. But humanity does want something. It wants ordinary morality. He rebels against the law and tells us to will something or anything. But we have willed something. We have willed the law against which he rebels. All the will-worshippers, rom Nietzsche to Mr. Davidson, are really quite empty o volition. Tey cannot will, they can hardly wish. And i any one wants a proo o this, it can be ound quite easily. It can be ound in this act: that they always talk o will as something that expands and breaks out. But it is quite the opposite. Every act o will is an act o sellimitation. o desire action is to desire limitation. In that sense every act is an act o sel-sacrice. When you choose anything, you reject everything else. Tat objection, which men o this school used to make to the act o marriage, is really an objection to every act. Every act is an irrevocable selection and exclusion. Just as when you marry one woman you give up all the others, so when you take one course o action you give up all the other courses. I you become King o England, you give up the post o Beadle in Brompton. I you go to Rome, you sacrice a rich suggestive lie in Wimbledon. It is the existence o this negative or limiting side o will that makes most o the talk o the anarchic willworshippers little better than nonsense. For instance, Mr. John Davidson tells to have to doone with shalt not"; but it is surely obvious that us "Tou shaltnothing not" is only o"Tou the necessary corollaries o "I will." "I will go to the Lord Mayor's Show, and thou shalt not stop me." Anarchism adjures us to be bold creative artists, and care or no laws or limits. But it is impossible to be an artist and not care or laws and limits. Art is limitation; the essence o every picture is the rame. I you draw a girae, you must draw him with a long neck. I, in your bold creative way, you hold yoursel ree to draw a girae with a short neck, you will really nd that you are not ree to draw a girae. Te moment you step into the world o acts, you step a world limits. You can reenature. things You rommay, alien or accidental laws,into but not romothe laws o thei r own i you like, ree a tiger rom his bars; but do not ree him rom his stripes. Do not ree a camel o the burden o his hump: you may be reeing him rom being a camel. Do not go about as ademagogue, encouraging triangles to break out o the prison o their three sides. I a triangle breaks out o its three sides,
Te Suicide o Tought
41
its lie comes to a lamentable end. Somebody wrote a work called "Te Loves o the riangles"; I never read it, but I am sure that i triangles ever were loved, they were loved or being triangular. Tis is certainly the case with all artistic creation, which is in some ways the most decisive example o will. Te Tepainter artist loves histhat limitations: constitute the HING he pure is doing. is glad the canvasthey is at. Te sculptor is glad that the clay is colourless. In case the point is not clear, an historic example may illustrate it. Te French Revolution was really an heroic and decisive thing, because the Jacobins willed something denite and limited. Tey desired the reedoms o democracy, but also all the vetoes o democracy. Tey wished to have votes and NO to have titles. Republicanism had an ascetic side in Franklin or Robespierre as well as an expansive side in Danton or Wilkes. Tereore they have created something with a solid substance and shape, the square social equality and peasant wealtho France. But since then the revolutionary or speculative mind o Europe has been weakened by shrinking rom any proposal because o the limits o that proposal. Liberalism has been degraded into liberality. Men have tried to turn "revolutionise" rom a transitive to an intransitive verb. Te Jacobin could tell you not only the system he would rebel against, but (what was more important) the system he would NO rebel against, the system he would trust. But the new rebel is a Sceptic, and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; thereore he can never be really a revolutionist. And the act that he doubts everything really getsin his way when he wants to denounce anything. For all denunciation implies amoral doctrine o somekind; and the modern revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces,but the doctrine by which he denounces it. Tus he writes one book complaining that imperial oppression insults the purity o women, and then he writes another book (about the sex problem) in which he insults it himsel. He curses the Sultan because Christian girls losetheir virginity, and then curses Mrs. Grundy because they keep it. As a politician, he will cry out that war is a waste o lie, and then, as aphilosopher, that all lie is waste o time. A Russian pessimist will denounce a policeman or killing a peasant, and then prove by the highest philosophical principles that the peasant ought to have killed himsel. A man denounces marriage as a lie, and then denounces aristocratic proigates or treating it as a lie. He calls a ag a bauble, and then blames the oppressors o Poland or Ireland because they take away
42
Orthodoxy
that bauble. Te man o this school goes rst to a political meeting, where he complains that savages are treated as i they were beasts; then he takes his hat and umbrella and goes on to a scientic meeting, where he proves that they practically are beasts. In short, the modern revolutionist, being an undermining his owninmines. In his innite book onsceptic, politicsishealways attacksengaged men orintrampling on morality; his book on ethics he attacks morality or trampling on men. Tereore the modern man in revolt has become practically useless or all purposes o revolt. By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything. It may be added that the same blank and bankruptcy can be observed in all erce and terrible types o literature, especially in satire. Satire may be mad and anarchic, but it presupposes an admitted superiority in certain things over others; itpresupposes a standard. When little boysin the street laugh at the atness osome distinguished journalist, they are unconsciously assuming a standard o Greek sculpture. Tey are appealing to the marble Apollo. And the curious disappearance osatire rom our literature is an instance o the erce thingsading or want o any principle to be erce about. Nietzsche had some natural talent or sarcasm: he could sneer, though he could not laugh; but there is always something bodiless and without weight in his satire, simply because it has not any mass o common morality behind it. He is himsel more preposterous than anything he denounces. But, indeed, Nietzsche will stand very well as the type o the whole o this ailure o abstract violence. Te sofening o the brain which ultimately overtook him was not a physical accident. I Nietzsche had notended in imbecility, Nietzscheism would end in imbecility. Tinking in isolation and withpride ends in being an idiot. Every man who will nothave sofening othe heart must at last have sofening o the brain. Tis last attempt to evade intellectualism ends in intellectualism, and thereore in death. Te sortie has ailed. Te wild worship o lawlessness and the materialist worship olaw end in the same void. Nietzsche scales staggering mountains, but o he nothing turns upand ultimately in Tey ibet.areHe sitshelplessdown beside olstoy in the land Nirvana. both -one because he must not grasp anything, and the other because he must not let go oanything. Te olstoyan's will is rozen by a Buddhist instinct that all special actions are evil. But the Nietzscheite's will is quite equally rozen by his view that all special actions are good; or i all special actions
Te Suicide o Tought
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are good, none o them are special. Tey stand at the crossroads, and one hates all the roads and the other likes all the roads. Te result is--well, some things are not hard to calculate. Tey stand at the cross-roads. Here I end (thank God) the rst and dullest business o this book--the rough review o recent thought. Afer this I begin to sketch aview o lie which may not interest my reader, but which, at any rate, interests me. In ront o me, as I close this page, is a pile o modern books that I have been turning over or thepurpose --a pile o ingenuity, a pile o utility. By the accident o my present detachment, I can see the inevitable smash o the philosophies o Schopenhauer and olstoy, Nietzsche and Shaw, as clearly as an inevitable railway smash could beseen rom a balloon. Tey are all on the road to the emptiness othe asylum. For madness may be dened as using mental activity so as to reach mental helplessness; and they have nearly reached it. He who thinks he is made o glass, thinks to the destruction o thought; or glass cannot think. So he who wills to reject nothing, wills the destruction o will; or will is not only the choice o something, but the rejection o almost everything. And as I turn and tumbleover the clever, wonderul, tiresome, and useless modern books, the title o one them o rivets my eye. It is called "Jeanned'Arc," by Anatole France. I have only glanced at it, but a glance was enough to remind me oRenan's "Vie de Jesus." It has the same strange method othe reverentsceptic. It discredits supernatural stories that have some oundation, simply by telling natural stories that have no oundation. Because we cannot believe in what a saintdid, we are to pretend that weknow exactly what he elt. But I do not mention either book in order to criticise it, but because the accidental combination o the names called up two startling images o Sanity which blasted all the books beore me. Joan o Arc was not stuck at the cross-roads, either by rejecting all the paths like olstoy, or by accepting them all like Nietzsche.She chose a path, and went down it like a thunderbolt. Yet Joan, when I came tothink o her, had in her all that was true eitherin olstoy or Nietzsche, all h t at was even tolerable in either o them. I thought o all that is noble in olstoy, the pleasure in plain things, especially in plain pity, the actualities o the earth, the reverence or the poor, the dignity o the bowed back. Joan o Arc had all that and with this great addition, that she endured poverty as well as admiring it; whereas olstoy is only a typical aristocrat trying to nd out its secret. And then I thoughto all that was brave and proud and pathetic in poor Nietzsche, and his mutiny against the emptiness and timidity o our
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Orthodoxy
time. I thought ohis cry or the ecstatic equilibrium o danger , his hunger or the rush o greathorses, his cry to arms. Well, Joan o Arc had all that, and again with this dierence, that she did not praise ghting, but ought. We KNOW that she was not araid o an army, while Nietzsche, or all we know, was araid oonly a cow . olstoy only praised thethe peawarrior. sant; sheShe wasbeat the peasant. Nietzsche praised the warrior; she was them both at their own antagonistic ideals; she was more gentle than the one, more violent than the other. Yet she was a perectly practical person who did something, while they arewild speculators who do nothing. It was impossible that the thought should not cross my mind that she and her aith had perhaps somesecret o moralunity and utility that has been lost. And with that thought came a larger one, and the colossal gure o her Master had also crossed the theatre o my thoughts. Te same modern diculty which darkened the subject-matter o Anatole France also darkened that o Ernest Renan. Renan also divided his hero's pityrom his hero'spugnacity. Renan even represented the righteous anger at Jerusalem as a mere nervous breakdown afer the idyllic expectations o Galilee. As i there were any inconsistency between having a love or humanity and having a hatred or inhumanity! Altruists, with thin, weak voices, denounce Christ as an egoist. Egoists (with even thinner and weaker voices) denounce Him as an altruist. In our present atmosphere such ca vils are comprehensible enough. Te love o a hero is more terrible than the hatred o a tyrant. Te hatred o a hero is more generous than the love o a philanthropist. Tere is a huge and heroic sanity o whichmoderns can only collect the ragments.Tere is a giant o whom we see onlythe lopped arms andlegs walking about. Tey have torn the soul o Christ into silly strips, labelled egoism and altruism, and they are equally puzzled by His insane magnicence and His insane meekness. Tey have parted His garments among them, and or His vesture they have cast lots; though the coat was without seam woven rom the top throughout.
IV Te Ethics O Elfand
W
hen the business man rebukes the idealism o his oce-boy, it is commonly in some such speech as this: "Ah, yes, when one is young, one has these ideals in the abstract and these castles in the air; but in middle age they all break up like clouds, and one comes down to a belie in practical politics, to using the machinery one has and getting on with the world as it is." Tus, at least, venerable and philanthropic old men now in their honoured graves used to talk to me when Iwas a boy. But since then I have grown up and have discovered that these philanthropic old men were telling lies. happen. What hasTey really happened is exactly obegin what they said would said that I should lose the my opposite ideals and to believe in the methods o practical politicians. Now, I have not lost my ideals in the least; my aith in undamentals is exactly what it always was. What I have lost is my old childlike aith in practical politics. I am still as much concerned as ever about the Battle o Armageddon; but I am not so much concerned about the General Election. As a babe I leapt up on my mother's knee at the mere mention o it. No; the vision is always solid and reliable. Te vision is always a act. It is the reality that is ofen a raud. As much as I ever more thanwhen I ever Idid, I believe in Liberalism. But there was a rosy timedid, o innocence believed in Liberals. I take this instance o one o the enduring aiths because, having now to trace the roots o my personal speculation, this may be counted, I think, as the only positive bias. I was brought up a Liberal, andhave always believed in democracy, in the elementary liberal doct rine o a sel-governing human-
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Orthodoxy
ity. I any one nds the phrase vague or threadbare, I can only pause or a moment to explain that the principle o democracy, as I mean it, can be stated in two propositions. Te rst is this: that the things common to all men are more important than the things peculiar to any men. Ordinary things are moreMan valuable than extraordinary nay,something they are more extraordinary. is something more awul things; than men; more strange. Te sense o the miracle ohumanity itsel should be always more vivid to us than any marvels o power, intellect, art, or civilization. Te mere man on two legs, as such, should be elt as something more heartbreaking than any music and more startling than anycaricature. Death is more tragic even than death by starvation. Having a nose is more comic even than having a Norman nose. Tis is the rst principle o democracy: that the essential things in men are the things they hold in common, not the things they hold separately. And the second principle ismerely this: that the political instinct or desire is one o these things which they hold in common. Falling in love is more poetical than dropping into poetry. Te democratic contention is that government (helping to rule the tribe) is a thing like alling in love, and not a thing like dropping into poetry. It is not something analogous to playing the church organ, painting on vellum, discovering the North Pole (that insidious habit), looping the loop, being Astronomer Royal, and so on. For these things we do not wish a man to do at all unless he does them well. It is, on the contrary, a thing analogous to writing one's own loveletters or blowing one's own nose. Tese things we want a man to do or himsel, even i he does them badly. I am not here arguing the truth o any o these conceptions; I know that some moderns are asking to have their wives chosen by scientists, and they may soon be asking, or all I know, to have their noses blownby nurses. I merely say that mankind does recognize these universal human unctions, and that democracy classes government among them. In short, the democratic aith is this: that the most terribly important things must be lef to ordinary men themselves--the mating o the sexes, the rearing o the young, the laws o the state. Tis is democracy; and in this I have always believed. But there is one thing that I have never rom my youth up been able to understand. I have never been able to understand where people got the idea that democracy was in some way opposed to tradition. It is obvious
Te Ethics o Elfand
47
that tradition is only democracy extended through time. It is trusting to a consensus o common human voices rather than to some isolated or arbitrary record. Te man who quotes some German historian against the tradition o the Catholic Church, or instance, is strictly appealing to aristocracy. He o is aappealing the easy superiority o one expertis against awul authority mob. It isto quite to see why a legend treated,the and ought to be treated, more respectully than a book o history. Te legend is generally made by the majority o people in the village, who are sane. Te book is generally written by the one man in the village who is mad. Tose who urge against tradition that men in the past were ignorant may go and urge it at the Carlton Club, along with the statement that voters in the slums are ignorant. It will not do or us. I we attach great importance to the opinion o ordinary men in great unanimity when we are dealing with daily matters, there is no reason why we should disregard it when we are dealing with history or able. radition may be dened as an extension o the ranchise. radition means giving votes tothe most obscure o all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy o the dead. radition reuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy o those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualied by the accident o birth; tradition objects to their being disqualied by the accident o death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even i he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even i he is our ather. I, at any rate, cannot separate the two ideas o democracy and tradition; it seems evident to me that they are the same idea. We will have the dead at our councils. Te ancient Greeks voted by stones; these shall vote by tombstones. It is all quite regular and ocial, or most tombstones, like most ballot papers, are marked with a cross. I have rst to say, thereore, that i I have hada bias, it was always a bias in avour o democracy,and thereore o tradition. Beore we come to any theoretic or logical beginnings Iam content to allow or that personal equation; I have always been more inclined to believe the ruck o hard-working people than to believe that special and troublesome literary class to which I belong. I preer even the ancies and prejudices o the people who see lie rom the inside to the clearest demonstrations o the people who see lie rom the outside. I would always trust the old wives' ables against the old maids' acts. As long as wit is mother wit it can be as wild as it pleases.
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Orthodoxy
Now, I have to put together a general position, and I pretend to no training in such things. I propose to do it, thereore, by writing down one afer another the three or our undamental ideas which I have ound or mysel, pretty much in the way that I ound them. Ten I shall roughly synthesise summing up mydiscovery personal philosophy or natural religion; then I shallthem, describe my startling that the whole thing had been discovered beore. It had been discovered by Christianity. But o these proound persuasions which I have to recount in order, the earliest was concerned with this element o popular tradition. And without the oregoing explanation touching tradition and democracy I could hardly make my mental experience clear. As it is, I do not know whether I canmake it clear, but I now propose to try. My rst and last philosophy, that which I believe in with unbroken certainty, I learnt in the nursery. I generally learnt it rom anurse; that is, rom the solemn and star-appointed priestess at once o democracy and tradition. Te things I believed most then, the things I believe most now, are the things called airy tales. Tey seem to me to be the entirely reasonable things. Tey are not antasies: compared with them other things are antastic. Compared with them religion and rationalism are both abnormal, though religion is abnormally right and rationalism abnormally wrong. Fairyland is nothing but the sunny country o common sense. It is not earth that judges heaven, but heaven that judges earth; so or me at least it was not earth that criticised eland, but eland that criticised the earth. I knew the magic beanstalk beore I had tasted beans; I was sure o the Man in the Moon beore I was certain o the moon. Tis was at one with all popular tradition. Modern minor poets are naturalists, and talk about the bush or the brook; but the singers o the old epics and ables were supernaturalists, and talked about the gods o brook and bush. Tat is what the moderns mean when they say that the ancients did not "appreciate Nature," because they said that Nature was divine. Old nurses do not tell children about the grass, but about the airies that dance on the grass; and the old Greeks could not see the trees or the dryads. But I deal here with what ethic and philosophy come rom being ed on airy tales. I I were describing them in detail I could note many noble and healthy principles that arise rom them. Tere is the chivalrous lesson o "Jack the Giant Killer"; that giants should be killed because they
Te Ethics o Elfand
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are gigantic. It is a manly mutiny against pride as such. For the rebel is older than all the kingdoms, and the Jacobin has more tradition than the Jacobite. Tere is the lesson o "Cinderella," which is the sameas that o the Magnicat--EXALAVI HUMILES. Tere is the great lesson o "Beauty and the Beast"; that aothing must be loved BEFORE is loveable. is the terrible allegory the "Sleeping Beauty," whichittells how theTere human creature was blessed with all birthday gifs, yet cursed with death; and how death also may perhaps be sofened to a sleep. But I am not concerned with any o the separate statutes o eland, but with the whole spirit o its law, which I learnt beore I could speak, and shall retain when I cannot write. I am concerned with a certain way o looking at lie, which was created in me by the airy tales, but has since been meekly ratied by the mere acts. It might be stated this way. Tere are certain sequences or developments (cases o one thing ollowing another), which are, in the true sense o the word, reasonable. Tey are, in the true sense o the word, necessary. Such are mathematical and merely logical sequences. We in airyland (who are the most reasonable o all creatures) admit that reason and that necessity. For instance, i the Ugly Sisters are older than Cinderella, it is (in an iron and awul sense) NECESSARY that Cinderella is younger than the Ugly Sisters. Tere is no getting out o it. Haeckel may talk as much atalism about that act as he pleases: it really must be. I Jack is the son o a miller, a miller is the ather o Jack. Cold reason decrees it rom her awul throne: and we in airyland submit. I the three brothers all ride horses, there are six animals and eighteen legs involved: that is true rationalism, and airyland is ull o it. But as I put my head over the hedge o the elves and began to take notice o the natural world, I observed an extraordinary thing. I observed that learned men in spectacles were talking o the actual things that happened--dawn and death and so on--as i HEY were rational and inevitable. Tey talked as i the act that trees bear ruit were just as NECESSARY as the act that two and one trees make three. But it is not. Tere is an enormous dierence by the test o airyland; which is the test o the imagination. You cannot IMAGINE two andone not making three. But you can easily imagine trees not growing ruit; you can imagine them growing golden candlesticks or tigers hanging on by the tail. Tese men in spectacles spoke much o a man named Newton, who was hit by an apple, and who discovered a law. But they could not be got tosee the distinction between a true law, a law o reason, and the mere act o apples alling. I
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Orthodoxy
the apple hit Newton's nose, Newton's nose hit the apple. Tat is a true necessity: because we cannot conceive the oneoccurring without theother. But we can quite well conceive the apple not alling on his nose; we can ancy it ying ardently through the air to hit some other nose, o which it had a moredenite We have alwaysrelations, in our airy kept thisreally sharp distinction betweendislike. the science o mental in tales which there are laws, and the science o physical acts, in which there are no laws, but only weird repetitions. We believe in bodily miracles, butnot in mental impossibilities. We believe that a Bean-stalk climbed up to Heaven; but that does not at all conuse our convictions on the philosophical question o how many beans make ve. Here is the peculiar perection o tone and truth in the nursery tales. Te man o science says, "Cut the stalk, and the apple will all"; but he says it calmly, as i the one idea really led up to the other. Te witch in the airy tale says, "Blow the horn, and the ogre's castle will all"; but she does not say it as i it were something in which the eect obviously arose out o the cause. Doubtless she has given the advice to ma ny champions, and hasseen many castles all, but she does not lose either her wonder or her reason. She does not muddle her head until it imagines a necessary mental connection between a horn and a alling tower. But the scientic men do muddle their heads, until they imagine a necessary mental connection between an apple leaving the tree and an apple reaching the ground. Tey do really talk as i they had ound not only a set o marvellous acts, but a truth connecting those acts. Tey do talk as i the connection o two strange things physically connected them philosophically. Tey eel that because one incomprehensible thing constantly ollows another incomprehensible thing the two together somehowmake up a comprehensible thing. wo black riddles make a white answer. In airyland we avoid the word "law"; but in the land o science they are singularly ond o it. Tus they will call some interesting conjecture about how orgotten olks pronounced alphabet, Grimm's But Grimm's Law is ar less intellectual thanthe Grimm's Fairy ales. Law Te. tales are, at any rate, certainly tales; while the law is not a law. A law implies that we know the nature o the generalisation and enactment; not merely that we have noticed some o the eects. I there is a law that pick-pockets shall go to prison, it implies that there is an imaginable mental connection
Te Ethics o Elfand
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between the idea o prison and the idea o picking pockets. And we know what the idea is. We can say why we take liberty rom a man who takes liberties. But we cannot say why an egg can turn intoa chicken any more than we can say why a bear could turn into a airy prince. As IDEAS, the egg andor theno chicken urther o rom each other thansome the bear anddo the prince; egg inare itsel suggests a chicken, whereas princes suggest bears. Granted, then, that certain transormations do happen, it is essential that we should regard them in the philosophic manner o airy tales, not in the unphilosophic manner o science and the "Laws o Nature." When we are asked why eggs turn to birds or ruits all in autumn, we must answer exactly as the airy godmother would answer i Cinderella asked her why mice turned to horses or her clothes ell rom her at twelve o'clock. We must answer that it is MAGIC. It is not a "law," or we do not understand its general ormula. It is not a necessity, or though we can count on it happening practically, we have no right to say that it must always happen. It is no argument or unalterable law (as Huxley ancied) that we count on the ordinary course o things. We do not count on it; we bet on it. We risk the remote possibility o a miracle as we do thato a poisoned pancake or a world-destroying comet.We leave it out o account, not because it is a miracle, and thereore an impossibility, but because it is a miracle, and thereore an exception. All the terms used in the science books, "law," "necessity," "order," "tendency," and so on, are really unintellectual, because they assume an inner synthesis, which we do not possess. Te only words that ever satised me as describing Nature are the terms used in the airy books, "charm," "spell," "enchantment." Tey express the arbitrariness o the act and its mystery. A tree grows ruit because it is a MAGIC tree. Water runs downhill because it isbewitched. Te sun shines because it is bewitched. I deny altogether that this is antastic or even mystical. We may have some mysticism later on; but this airy-tale language about things is simply rational and agnostic. It is the only way I can express in words my clear and denite perception that one thing is quite distinct rom another; that there is no logical connection between ying andlaying eggs. It is the man who talks about "a law" that he has never seen who is the mystic.Nay, the ordinary scientic manis strictly a sentimentalist. He is a sentimentalist in this essential sense, that he is soaked and swept away by mereassociations. He has so ofen seen birds y and lay eggs that he eels as i there must be
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some dreamy, tender connection between the two ideas, whereas there is none. A orlorn lover might be unable to dissociate the moon rom lost love; so the materialist is unable to dissociate the moon rom the tide. In both cases there is no connection, except that one has seen them together. A mightoshed the smell him o apple-blossom, because, bysentimentalist a dark association his otears wn, itatreminded o his boyhood. So the materialist proessor (though he conceals his tears) is yet a sentimentalist, because, by a dark association o his own, apple-blossoms remind him o apples. But the cool rationalist rom airyland does not see why, in the abstract, the apple tree should not grow crimson tulips; it sometimes does in his country. Tis elementary wonder, however, is not a mere ancy derived rom the airy tales; on the contrary, all the re o the airy tales is derived rom this. Just as we all like love tales because there is an instinct o sex, we all like astonishing tales because they touch the nerve o the ancient instinct o astonishment. Tis is proved by the act that when we are very young children we do not need airy tales: we only need tales. Mere lie is interesting enough. A child o seven is excited by being told that ommy opened a door and saw a dragon. But a child o three is excited by being told that ommy opened a door. Boys like romantic tales; but babies like realistic tales --because they nd them romantic. In act, a baby is about the only person, I should think, to whom a modern realistic novel could be read without boring him. Tis proves that even nursery tales only echo an almost pre-natal leap o interest and amazement. Tese tales say that apples were golden only to reresh the orgotten moment when we ound that they were green. Tey make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, or one wild moment, that they run with water. I have said that this is wholly reasonable and even agnostic. And, indeed, on this point I am all or the higher agnosticism; its better name is Ignorance. We have all read in scientic books, and, indeed, in all romances, the story o the man who has orgotten his name. Tis man walks about the streets and can see and appreciate everything; only he cannot remember who he is. Well, every man is that man in the story. Every man has orgotten whohe is. One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the sel is more distant than any star. Tou shalt love the Lord thy God; but thou shalt not know thysel. We are all under the same mental calamity; we have all orgotten our names. We have all orgotten what we really are. All that
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we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that or certain dead levels o our lie we orget that we have orgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that or one awul instant we remember that we orget. But though (like the man without memory in the novel) we walk the streets with a sort o hal-witted admiration, still it is admiration. It is admiration in English andnot only admiration in Latin. Te wonder has a positive element o praise. Tis is the next milestone to be denitely marked on our road through airyland. I shall speak in the next chapter about optimists and pessimists in their intellectual aspect, so ar as they have one. Here I am only trying to describe the enormous emotionswhich cannot be described. And the strongest emotion was that lie was as precious as it was puzzling. It was an ecstasy because it was an adventure; it was an adventure because it was an opportunity. Te goodness o the airy tale was not aected by the act that there might be more dragons than princesses; it was good to be in a airy tale. Te test o all happiness is gratitude; and I elt grateul, though I hardly knew to whom. Children are grateul when Santa Claus puts in their stockings gifs o toys or sweets. Could I not be grateul to Santa Claus when he put in mystockings the gif o two miraculous legs? We thank people or birthday presents o cigars and slippers. Can I thank no one or the birthday present o birth? twobut rst indeensible and indisputable.Tere Te were, worldthen, was athese shock, it eelings, was not merely shocking; existence was a surprise, but it was a pleasant surprise. In act, all my rst views were exactly uttered in a riddle that stuck in my brain rom boyhood. Te question was, "What did the rst rog say?" And the answer was, "Lord, how you made me jump!" Tat says succinctly all that I am saying. God made the rog jump; but the rog preers jumping. But when these things are settled there enters the second great principle o the airy philosophy. Any one can see it who will simply read "Grimm's Fairy ales" or the ne collections o Mr. Andrew Lang. For the pleasure o pedantry I will call it the Doctrine o Conditional Joy. ouchstone talked o much virtue in an "i "; according to eln ethics all virtue is in an "i." Te note o the airy utterance always is, "You may live in a palace o gold and sapphire, i you do not say the word `cow'"; or "You may live happily with the King's daughter, i you do not show her an onion." Te vision always hangs upon a veto.
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All the dizzy and colossal things conceded depend upon one small thing withheld. All the wild and whirling things that are let loose depend upon one thing that is orbidden. Mr. W.B.Yeats, in his exquisite and piercing eln poetry, describes the elves as lawless; they plunge in innocent anarchy on the unbridled horses o the air-"Ride on the crest o the dishevelled tide, And dance upon the mountains like a ame." It is a dreadul thing to say that Mr. W.B.Yeats does not understand airyland. But I do say it. He is an ironical Irishman, ull o intellectual reactions. He is not stupid enough to understand airyland. Fairies preer people o the yokel type like mysel; people who gape and grin and do as they are told. Mr. Yeats reads into eland all the righteous insurrection o his own race. But the lawlessness o Ireland is a Christian lawlessness, ounded on reason and justice. Te Fenian is rebelling against something he understands only too well; but the true citizen o airyland is obeying something that he does not understand at all. In the airy tale an incomprehensible happiness rests upon an incomprehensible condition. A box is opened, and all evils y out. A word is orgotten, and cities perish. A lamp is lit, and love ies away. A ower is plucked, and human lives are oreited. An apple is eaten, and the hope o God is gone. Tis is the tone o airy tales, and it is certainly not lawlessness or even liberty, though men under a mean modern tyranny may think it liberty by comparison. People out o Portland Gaol might think Fleet Street ree; but closer study will prove that both airies and journalists are the slaves o duty. Fairy godmothers seem at least as strict as other godmothers. Cinderella received a coach out o Wonderland and a coachman out o nowhere, but she received a command--which might have come out o Brixton--that she should be back by twelve. Also, she had a glass slipper; and it cannot be a coincidence that glass is so common a substance in olk-lore. Tis princess lives in a glass castle, that princess on a glass hill; this one sees all things in a mirror; they may all live in glass houses i they will not throw stones. For this thin glitter o glass everywhere is the expression o the act that the happiness is bright but brittle, like the substance most easily smashed by a housemaid or a cat. And this airy-tale sentiment also sank into me and became my sentiment towards the whole world. I elt and eel that lie
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itsel is as bright as the diamond, but as brittle as the window-pane; and when the heavens were compared to the terrible crystal I can remember a shudder. I was araid that God would drop the cosmos with a crash. Remember, however, that to be breakable is not the same as to be perishable. Strike a glass, and it will not endure an instant; simply do not strike it, and it will endure a thousand years. Such, it seemed, was the joy o man, either in eland or on earth; the happiness depended on NO DOING SOMEHING which you could at any moment do and which, very ofen, it was not obvious why you should not do.Now, the point here is that to ME this did not seem unjust. I the miller's third son said to the airy, "Explain why I must not stand on my head in the airy palace," the other might airly reply, "Well, i it comes to that, explain the airy palace." I Cinderella says, "How is it that I must leave the ball at twelve?" her godmother might answer, "How is it that you are going there till twelve?" I I leave a man in my will ten talking elephants and a hundred winged horses, he cannot complain i the conditions partake o the slight eccentricity o the gif. He must not look a winged horse in the mouth. And it seemed to me that existence was itsel so very eccentric a legacy that I could not complain o not understanding the limitations o the vision when I did not understand the vision they limited. Te rame was no stranger than the picture. Te veto might well be as wild as the vision; it might be as startling as the sun, as elusive as the waters, as antastic and terrible as the towering trees. For this reason (we may call it the airy godmother philosophy) I never could join the young men o my time in eeling what they called the general sentiment o REVOL. I should have resisted, let us hope, any rules that were evil, and with these and their denition I shall deal in another chapter. But I did not eel disposed to resist any rule merely because it was mysterious. Estates are sometimes held by oolish orms, the breaking o a stick or the payment o a peppercorn: I was willing to hold the huge estate earth by an y such to eudal not well be wildero than theand actheaven that I was allowed holdantasy. it at all. ItAtcould this stage I give only one ethical instance to show my meaning. I could never mix in the common murmur o that rising generation against monogamy, because no restriction on sex seemed so odd and unexpected as sex itsel. o be allowed, like Endymion, to make love to the moon and then to complain
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that Jupiter kept his own moons in a harem seemed to me (bred on airy tales like Endymion's) a vulgar anti-climax. Keeping to one woman is a small price or so much as seeing one woman. o complain that I could only be married once was like complaining that I had only been born once. It was It incommensurate the terrible excitement which one was talking. showed, not an with exaggerated sensibility to sex,obut a curious insensibility to it. A man is a ool who complains that he cannot enter Eden by ve gates at once. Polygamy is a lack o the realization o sex; it is like a man plucking ve pears in mere absence o mind. Te aesthetes touched the last insane limits o language in their eulogy on lovely things. Te thistledown made them weep; a burnished beetle brought them to their knees. Yet their emotion never impressed me or an instant, or this reason, that it never occurred to them to pay or their pleasure in any sort o symbolic sacrice. Men (I elt) might ast orty days or the sake ohearing a blackbird sing. Men might go through re to nd a cowslip. Yet these lovers o beauty could not even keep sober or the blackbird. Tey would not go through common Christian marriage by way o recompense to the cowslip. Surely one might pay or extraordinary joy in ordinary morals. Oscar Wilde said that sunsets were not valued because we could not pay or sunsets. But Oscar Wilde was wrong; we can pay or sunsets. We can pay or them by not being Oscar Wilde. Well, I lef the airy tales lying on the oor o the nursery, and I have not ound any books so sensible since. I lef the nurse guardian o tradition and democracy, and I have not ound any modern type so sanely radical or so sanely conservative. But the matter or important comment was here: that when I rst went out into the mental atmosphere o the modern world, I ound that the modern world was positively opposed on two points to my nurse and to the nursery tales. It has taken me a long time to nd out that the modern world is wrong and my nurse was right. Te really curious thing was this: that modern thought contradicted this basic creed o my boyhood on its two most essential doctrines. I have explained that the airy tales ounded in me two convictions; rst, that this world is a wild and startling place, which might have been quite dierent, but which is quite delightul; second, that beore this wildness and delight one may well be modest and submit to the queerest limitations o so queer a kindness. But I ound the whole modern world running like a high tide against both my tendernesses; and the shock o that collision created two sudden and
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spontaneous sentiments, which I have had ever since and which, crude as they were, have since hardened into convictions. First, I ound the whole modern world talkingcientic s atalism; saying that everything is as it must always have been, being unolded without ault rom the beginning. Te lea on the tree is green because it could never have been anything else. Now, the airy-tale philosopher is glad that the lea is green precisely because it might have been scarlet. He eels as i it had turned green an instant beore he looked at it. He is pleased that snow is white on the strictly reasonable ground that it might have been black. Every colour has in it a bold quality as o choice; the red o garden roses is not only decisive but dramatic, like suddenly spilt blood. He eels that something has been DONE. But the great determinists o the nineteenth century were strongly against this native eeling that something had happened an instant beore. In act, according to them, nothing ever really had happened since the beginning o the world. Nothing ever had happened since existence had happened; and even about the date o that they were not very sure. Te modern world as I ound it was solid or modern Calvinism, or the necessity o things being as they are. But when I came to ask them I ound they had really no proo o this unavoidable repetition in things except the act that the things were repeated. Now, the mere repetition made the things to me rather more weird than more rational. It was as i, having seen a curiously shaped nose in the street and dismissed it as an accident, I had then seen six other noses o the same astonishing shape. I should have ancied or a moment that it must be some local secret society. So one elephant having a trunk was odd; but all elephants having trunks looked like a plot. I speak here only o an emotion, and o an emotion at once stubborn and subtle. But the repetition in Nature seemed sometimes to be an excited repetition, like that o an angry schoolmaster saying the same thing over and over again. Te grass seemed signalling to me with all its ngers at once; the crowded stars seemed bent upon being understood. Te sun would make me see him i he rose a thousand times. Te recurrences o the universe rose to the maddening rhythm o an incantation, and I began to see an idea. All the towering materialism which dominates the modern mind rests
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ultimately upon one assumption; a alse assumption. It is supposed that i a thing goes on repeating itsel it is probably dead; a piece o clockwork. People eel that i the universe was personal it would vary; i the sun were alive it would dance. Tis is a allacy even in relation to known act. For the in human aairs generally into them, not by lie, but variation by death; by the dying downisor breakingbrought o o the ir strength or desire. A man varies his movements because o some slight element o ailure or atigue. He gets into an omnibus because he is tired o walking; or he walks because he is tired o sitting still. But i his lie andjoy were so gigantic that he never tired o going to Islington, he might go to Islington as regularly as the Tames goes to Sheerness. Te very speed and ecstasy o his lie would have the stillness o death. Te sun rises every morning. I do not rise every morning; but the variation is due not to my activity, but to my inaction. Now, to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired o rising. His routine might be due, not to a lielessness, but to a rusho lie. Te thing I mean can be seen, or instance, in children, when they nd some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, o lie. Because children have aboundingvitality, because they are in spirit erce and ree, thereore they want things repeated and unchanged. Tey always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough toexult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired o making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite o inancy; or we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. Te repetition in Naturemay not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical ENCORE. Heaven may ENCORE the bird who laid an egg. I the human being conceives and brings orth a human child instead o bringing orth a sh, or a bat, or a grin, the reason may not be that we are xed in an animal ate without lie or purpose. It may be that our little tragedy has touched the gods, that they admire it rom their starry galleries, and that at the end o every human drama man is called again and again beore the curtain. Repetition may go on or millions o years, by mere choice, and at any instant it may stop. Man may stand on the earth generation afer generation, and yet each birth be his positively
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last appearance. Tis was my rst conviction; made by the shock o my childish emotions meeting the modern creedin mid-career. I had always vaguely elt acts to be miracles in the sense that they are wonderul: now I began to think them miracles in the stricter sense that they were WILFUL. I mean that they were, ormight be, repeated exercises o some will. In short, I had always believed that the worldinvolved magic: now I thought that perhaps it involved a magician. And this pointed a proound emotion always present and sub-conscious; that this world o ours has some purpose; and i there is a purpose, there is a person. I had always elt lie rst as a story: and i there is a story there is a story-teller. But modern thought also hit my second human tradition. It went against the airy eeling about strict limits and conditions. Te one thing it loved to talk aboutwas expansion and largeness. Herbert Spencer would have been greatly annoyed i any one had called him an imperialist, and thereore it is highly regrettable thatnobody did. But he was an imperialist o the lowest type. He popularized this contemptible notion that the size o the solar system ought to over-awe the spiritual dogma o ma n. Why should a man surrender his dignity to the solar system any more than to a whale? I mere size proves that man is not the image o God, then a whale may be the image o God; a somewhat ormless image; what one might call an impressionist is quite utile to com argue thatto mathe n isnearest small compared to the cosmos;portrait. or man It was always small pared tree. But Herbert Spencer, in his headlong imperialism, would insist that we had in some way been conquered and annexed by the astronomical universe. He spoke about men and their ideals exactly as the most insolent Unionist talks about the Irish and their ideals. He turned mankind into a small nationality. And his evil inuence can be seen even in the most spirited and honourable o later scientic authors; notably in the early romances o Mr. H.G.Wells. Many moralists have in an exaggerated way represented the earth as wicked. hisrom school madewould the heavens wicked. We should lif upBut our Mr. eyesWells to theand stars whence come our ruin. But the expansion o which I speak was much more evil than all this. I have remarked that the materialist, like the madman, is in prison; in the prison o one thought. Tese people seemed to think it singularly inspiring to keep on saying that the prison was very large. Te size o this scientic
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universe gave one no novelty, no relie. Te cosmos went on or ever, but not in its wildest constellation could there be anything really interesting; anything, or instance, such as orgiveness or ree will. Te grandeur or innity o the secret o its cosmos added nothing to it. It was like telling a prisoner in Reading gaol thatwarder he would be glad hear that the gaol covered hal the county . Te would havetonothing toshow the now man except more and more long corridors o stone lit by ghast ly lights and empty o all that is human. So these expanders o the universe had nothing to show us except more and more innite corridors o space lit by ghastly suns and empty o all that is divine. In airyland there had been a real law; a law that could be broken, or the denition o a law is something that can be broken. But the machinery o this cosmic prison was something that could not be broken; or we ourselves were only a part o its machinery. We were either unable to do things or we were destined to do them. Te idea o the mystical condition quite disappeared; one can neither have the rmness o keeping laws nor the un o breaking them. Te largeness o this universe had nothing o that reshness and airy outbreak which we have praised in the universe o the poet. Tis modern universe is literally an empire; that is, it was vast, but it is not ree. One went into larger and larger windowlessrooms, rooms big with Babylonian perspective; but one never ound the smallest window or a whisper o outer air. Teir inernal parallels seemed to expand with distance; but or me all good things come to a point, swords or instance. So nding the boast o the big cosmos so unsatisactory to my emotions I began to argue about it a little; and I soon ound that the whole attitude was even shallower than could have been expected. According to these people the cosmos was one thing since it had one unbroken rule. Only (they would say) while it is one thing, it is also the only thing there is. Why, then, should one worry particularly to call it large? Tere is nothing to compare it with. It would be just sensible to calland it small. A man may say, "I like this vast with itsasthrong o stars its crowd o varied creatures." But i itcosmos, comes to that why should not a man say, "I like this cosy little cosmos, with its decent number o stars and as neat a provision o live stock as I wish to see"? One is as good as the other; they are both mere sentiments. It is mere sentiment to rejoice that the sun is larger than the earth; it is quite
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as sane a sentiment to rejoice that the sun is no larger than it is. A man chooses to have an emotion about the largeness o the world; why should he not choose to have an emotion about its smallness? It happened that I had that emotion.When one is ond o anything one addresses it by diminutives, even i it is an elephant or a lie-guardsman. Te reason is, that anything, however huge, that can be conceived o as complete, can be conceived oas small. I military moustaches did not suggest a sword or tusks a tail, then the object would be vast because it would be immeasurable. But the moment you can imagine a guardsman you can imagine a small guardsman. Te moment you really see an elephant you can call it "iny." I you can make a statue o a thing you can make a statuette o it. Tese people proessed that the universe was one coherent thing; but they were not ond o the universe. But I was rightully ond o the universe and wanted to address it by a diminutive. I ofen did so; and it never seemed to mind. Actually and in truth I did eel that these dim dogmas o vitality were better expressed by calling the world small than by calling it large. For about innity there was a sort o carelessness which was the reverse o the erce and pious care which I elt touching the pricelessness and the peril o lie. Tey showed only a dreary waste; but I elt a sort o sacred thrif. For economy is ar more romantic than extravagance. o them stars were an unending income o halpence; but I elt about the golden sun and the silver moon as a schoolboy eels i he has one sovereign and one shilling. Tese subconscious convictions are best hit o by the colour and tone o certain tales. Tus I have said that stories o magic alone canexpress my sense that lie is notonly a pleasure but a kind o eccentric privilege. I may express this other eeling o cosmic cosiness by allusion to another book always read in boyhood, "Robinson Crusoe," which I read about this time, and which owes its eternal vivacity to the act that it celebrates the poetry o limits, nay, even the wild romance o prudence. Crusoe is a man on a small a ew the comorts just snatched romthe thewreck. sea: the best thing in the rock bookwith is simply list o things saved rom Te greatest o poems is an inventory. Every kitchen tool becomes ideal because Crusoe might have dropped it in the sea. It is a good exercise, in empty or ugly hours o the day, to look at anything, the coal-scuttle or the book-case, and think how happy one could be to have brought it out o the sinking ship
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on to the solitary island. But it is a better exercise still to remember how all things have had this hair-breadth escape: everything has been saved rom a wreck. Every man has had one horrible adventure: as a hidden untimely birth he had not been, as inants that never see the light. Men spoke much intomy o restricted oraruined o genius: and o it was common sayboyhood that many a man was Great men Might-Have-Been. me it is a more solid and startling act that any man in the street is a Great Might-Not-Have-Been. But I really elt (the ancy may seem oolish) as i all the order and number o things were the romantic remnant o Crusoe's ship. Tat there are two sexes and one sun, was like the act that there were two guns and one axe. It was poignantly urgent that none should be lost; but somehow , it was rather un that none could be added. Te trees and the planets seemed like things saved romthe wreck: and when I saw the Matterhorn I was glad that it had not been overlooked in the conusion. I elt economical about the stars as i they were sapphires (they are called so in Milton's Eden): I hoarded the hills. For the universe is a single jewel, and while it is a natural cant to talk o a jewel as peerless and priceless, o this jewel itis literally true. Tis cosmos is indeed without peer and without price: or there cannot be another one. Tus ends, in unavoidable inadequacy, the attempt to utter the unutterable things. Tese are my ultimate attitudes towards lie; the soils or the seeds o doctrine. Tese in some dark way I thought beore I could write, and elt beore Icould think: that we may proceed more easily aferwards, I will roughly recapitulate them now. I elt in my bones; rst, that this world does not explain itsel. It may be a miracle with a supernatural explanation; it may be a conjuring trick, with a natural explanation. But the explanation o the conjuring trick, i it is to satisy me, will have to be better than the natural explanations I have heard. Te thing is magic, true or alse. Second, I came to eel as i magic must have a meaning, and meaning must have some one to mean it. Tere was something personal in the world, as in a work o art; whatever it meant it meant violently. Tird, I thought this purpose beautiul in its old design, in spite o its deects, such as dragons. Fourth, that the proper orm o thanks to it is some orm o humility and restraint: we should thank God orbeer and Burgundy by not drinking too much o them. We owed, also, an obedience to whatever
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made us. And last, and strangest, there had comeinto my mind a vague and vast impression that in some way all good was a remnant to be stored and held sacred out o some primordial ruin. Man had saved his good as Crusoe saved his goods: he had saved them rom a wreck. All this I elt and the age gave me no encouragement not even thought o Christian theology.to eel it. And all this time I had
V Te Flag O Te World
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hen I was a boy there were two curious men running about who were called the optimist and the pessimist. I constantly used the words mysel, but I cheerully coness that I never had any very special idea o what they meant. Te only thing which might be considered evident was that they could not mean what they said; or the ordinary verbal explanation was that the optimist thought this world as good as it could be, while the pessimist thought it as bad as it could be. Both these statements being obviously raving nonsense, one had to cast about or other explanations. An optimist not mean a man whoit thought everything right and nothing wrong.could For that is meaningless; is like calling everything right and nothing lef. Upon the whole, I came to the conclusion that the optimist thought everything good except the pessimist, and that the pessimist thought everything bad, except himsel. It would be unair to omit altogether rom the list the mysterious but suggestive denition said to have been given by a little girl, "An optimist is a man who looks afer your eyes, and a pessimist is a man who looks aferyour eet." I am not sure that this is not the best denition o all. Tere is even a sort o allegorical truth in it.more For there might, perhaps, be a pmerely rotable between that dreary thinker who thinks odistinction our contactdrawn with the earth rom moment to moment, and that happier thinker who considers rather our primary power o vision and o choice o road. But this is a deep mistake in this alternative o the optimist and the pessimist. Te assumption o itis that a man criticises this world as i he were
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house-hunting, as i he were being shown over a new suite o apartments. I a man came to this world rom some other world in ull possession o his powers he might discuss whether the advantage o midsummer woods made up or the disadvantage o mad dogs, just as a man looking or lodgings balance o a telephone againstto thethis absence a sea view.might But no man isthe in presence that position. A man belongs world o beore he begins to ask i it is nice to belong to ti. He has ought or the ag, and ofen won heroic victories or the ag long beore hehas ever enlisted. o put shortly what seems the essential matter, he has a loyalty long beore he has any admiration. In the last chapter it has been said that the primary eeling that this world is strange and yet attractive is best expressed in airy tales. Te reader may, i he likes, put down the next stage to that bellicose and even jingo literature which commonly comes next in the history o a boy.We all owe much sound morality to the penny dreaduls. Whatever the reason, it seemed and still seems to me that our attitude towards lie can be better expressed in terms o a kind o military loyalty than in terms o criticism and approval. My acceptance o the universe is notoptimism, it is more like patriotism. It is a matter o primary loyalty. Te world is not a lodging-house at Brighton, which we are to leave because it is miserable. It is the ortress o our amily, with the ag ying on the turret, and the more miserable it is the less we should leave it. Te point is not that this world is too sad to love or too glad not to love; the point is that when you do love a thing, its gladness is a reason or loving it, and its sadness a reason or loving it more. All optimistic thoughts about England and all pessimistic thoughts about her are alike reasons or the English patriot. Similarly, optimism and pessimism are alike arguments or the cosmic patriot. Let us suppose we are conronted with a desperate thing--say Pimlico. I we think what is really best or Pimlico we shallnd the thread o thought leads to the throne or the mystic and the arbitrary. It is not enough or a man to disapprove Pimlico: in that he will his throat or move to Chelsea.oNor, certainly, is itcase enough ormerely a man cut to approve o Pimlico: or then it will remain Pimlico, which would be awul. Te only way out o it seems to be or somebody to lovePimlico: to love it with a transcendental tie and without any earthly reason. I there arose a man who loved Pimlico, then Pimlico would rise into ivory towers and golden
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pinnacles; Pimlico would attire hersel as a woman does when she is loved. For decoration is not given to hide horrible things: but to decorate things already adorable. A mother does not give her child a blue bow because he is so ugly without it. A lover does not give a girl a necklace to hide her neck. I menPimlico loved Pimlico asor mothers lovebe children, arbitrari ly, because it is HEIRS, in a year two might airer than Florence. Some readers will say that this is amere antasy. I answer that this is the actual history o mankind. Tis, as a act, is how cities did grow great. Go back to the darkest roots o civilization and you will nd them knotted round some sacred stone or encircling some sacred well. People rst paid honour to a spot and aferwards gained glory or it. Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her. he eighteenth-century theories o the social contract have been exposed to much clumsy criticism in our time; in so ar as they meant that there is at the back o all historic government an idea o content and co-operation, they were demonstrably right. But they really were wrong, in so ar as they suggested that men had ever aimed at order or ethics directly by a conscious exchange o interests. Morality did not begin by one man saying to another, "I will not hit you i you do not hit me"; there is no trace o such a transaction. Tere IS a trace o both men having said, "We must not hit each other in the holyplace." Tey gained their morality by guarding their religion. Tey did not cultivate courage. Tey ought or the shrine, and ound they had become courageous. Tey did not cultivate cleanliness. Tey puried themselves or the altar, and ound that they were clean. Te history o the Jews is the only early document known to most Englishmen, and the acts can be judged suciently rom that. Te en Commandments which have been ound substantially common to mankind were merely military commands; a code o regimental orders, issued to protect a certain ark across a certain desert. Anarchy was evil because it endangered the sanctity. And only when they made a holy day or God did they nd they had made a holiday or men. I it be granted that this primary devotion to a place or thing is a source o creative energy, we can pass on to a very peculiar act. Let us reiterate or an instant that the only right optimism is a sort o universal patriotism. What is the matter with the pessimist? I think it can be stated by saying that he is the cosmic anti-patriot. And what is the matter with the anti-patriot?
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I think it can be stated, without undue bitterness, by saying that he is the candid riend. And what is the matter with the candid riend? Tere we strike the rock o real lie and immutable human nature. I venture to say that what is bad in the candid riend is simply that he is not candid. He is keeping something back-- his own gloomypleasure in saying unpleasant things. He has a secret desire tohurt, not merely tohelp. Tis is certainly, I think, what makes a certain sort o anti-patriot irritating to healthy citizens. I do not speak (o course) o the anti-patriotism which only irritates everish stockbrokers and gushing actresses; that is only patriotism speaking plainly. A man who says that no patriot should attack the Boer War until it is over is not worth answering intelligently; he is saying that no good son should warn his mother o a cli until she has allen over it. But there is an anti-patriot who honestly angers honest men, and the explanation o him is, I think, what I have suggested: he is the uncandid candid riend; the man who says, "I am sorry to say we are ruined," and is not sorry at all. And he may be said, without rhetoric, to be a traitor; or he is using that ugly knowledge which was allowed him to strengthen the army, to discourage people rom joining it. Because he is allowed to be pessimistic as a military adviser he is being pessimistic as a recruiting sergeant. Just in the same way the pessimist (who is the cosmic anti-patriot) uses the reedom that lie allows to her counsellors to lure away the people rom her ag. Granted that he states only acts, it is still essential to know what are his emotions, what is his motive. It may be that twelve hundred men in ottenham are down with smallpox; but we want to know whether this is stated by some great philosopher who wants to curse the gods, or only by some common clergyman who wants to help the men. Te evil o the pessimist is, then, not that he chastises gods and men, but that he does not love what he chastises--he has not this primary and supernatural loyalty to things.What is the evil othe man commonly called an optimist? Obviously, it is elt that the optimist, wishing to deend the honour this world, will cosmos, deend the indeensible. He will is the o the universe;ohe will say, "My right or wrong." He bejingo less inclined to the reorm o things; more inclined to a sort o ront-bench ocial answer to all attacks, soothing every one with assurances.He will not wash the world, but whitewash the world. All this (which is true o a type o optimist) leads us to the one really interesting point opsychology, which
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could not be explained without it. We say there must be a primal loyalty to lie: the only question is, shall it be a natural or a supernatural loyalty? I you like to put it so, shall it be a reasonable or an unreasonable loyalty? Now, the extraordinary thing is that the bad optimism (the whitewashing, the weak deence o everything) comes in with the reasonable optimism. Rational optimism leads to stagnation: it is irrational optimism that leads toreorm. Let me explain by using once more the parallel o patriotism. Te man who is most likely to ruin the place he loves is exactly the man who loves it with a reason. Te man who will improve the place is the man who loves it without a reason. I a man loves some eature o Pimlico (which seems unlikely), he may nd himsel deending that eatureagainst Pimlico itsel. But i he simply loves Pimlico itsel, he may lay itwaste and turn it intothe New Jerusalem. I do not deny that reorm may be excessive; I only say that it is the mystic patriot who reorms. Mere jingo sel-contentment iscommonest amongthose who have some pedantic reason ortheir patriotism. Te worst jingoes do not love England, but a theory o England. I we love England or being an empire, we may overrate the success with which werule the Hindoos. But i we love it only or being a nation, we can ace all events: or it would be a nation even i the Hindoos ruled us. Tus also only those will permit their patriotism to alsiy history whose patriotism depends on history. A man who loves England or being English will not mind howshe arose. But a man who loves England or being Anglo-Saxon may go against all acts or his ancy. He may end (like Carlyle and Freeman) by maintaining that the Norman Conquest was a Saxon Conquest. He may end in utter unreason-because he has a reason. A man who loves France or being military will palliate the army o 1870. But a man who loves France or being France will improve the armyo 1870. Tis is exactly what the French have done, and France is a good instance o the working paradox. Nowhere else is patriotism more purely abstract and arbitrary; and nowhere else is reorm more drastic and sweeping. Te more transcendental is your patriotism, the more practical are your politics. Perhaps the most everyday instance o this point is in the case o women; and their strange and strong loyalty. Some stupid people started the idea that because women obviously back up their own people through everything, thereore women are blind and do not see anything. Tey can
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hardly have known any women. Te same women who are ready to deend their men through thick and thin are (in their personal intercourse with the man) almost morbidly lucid about the thinness o his excuses or the thickness o his head. A man's riend likes him but leaves him as he is: his wie loves himutter and mystics is always to turn into somebody Women who are intrying their creed arehim utter cynics in theirelse. criticism. Tackeray expressed this well when he made Pendennis' mother, who worshipped her son as a god, yet assume that he would go wrong as a man. She underrated his virtue, though she overrated his value. Te devotee is entirely ree to criticise; the anatic can saely be a sceptic. Love is not blind; that is the last thing that it is. Love is bound; and the more it is bound the less it is blind. Tis at least had come to be my position about all that was called optimism, pessimism, and improvement. Beore any cosmic act o reorm we must have a cosmic oath o allegiance. A man must be interested in lie, then he could be disinterested in his views o it. "My son give me thy heart"; the heart must be xed on the right thing: the moment we have a xed heart we have a ree hand. I must pause to anticipate an obvious criticism. It will be said that a rational person accepts the world as mixed o good and evil with a decent satisaction and a decent endurance. But this is exactly the attitude which I maintain to bedeective. It is, I know, very common in this age; it was perectly put in those quiet lines o Matthew Arnold which are more piercingly blasphemous than the shrieks o Schopenhauer-"Enough we live: --and i a lie, With large results so little rie, Tough bearable, seem hardly worth Tis pomp o worlds, this pain o birth." I know this eeling lls our epoch, and I think it reezes our epoch. For our itanic purposes o aith and revolution, what we need is not the cold acceptance o the world as a compromise, but some way in which we can heartily hate and heartily love it. We do not want joy and anger to neutralize each other and produce a surly contentment; we want a ercer delight and a ercer discontent. We have to eel the universe at once as an
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ogre's castle, to be stormed, and yet as our own cottage, to which we can return at evening. No one doubts that an ordinary man can get on with this world: but we demand not strength enough to get on with it, but strength enough to get it on. Can he hate it enough to change it, and yet love it enough to think it worth changing? Can he look up at its colossal good without once eeling acquiescence? Can he look up at its colossal evil without once eeling despair? Can he, in short, be at once not only a pessimist and an optimist, but a anatical pessimist and a anatical optimist? Is he enough o a pagan to die or the world, and enough o a Christian to die to it? In this combination, I maintain, it is the rational optimist who ails, the irrational optimist who succeeds. He is ready to smash the whole universe or the sake o itsel. I put these things not in their mature logical sequence, but as they came: and this view was cleared and sharpened by anaccident o the time. Under the lengthening shadow o Ibsen, an argument arose whether it was not a very nice thing to murder one's sel. Grave moderns told us that we must not even say "poor ellow," o a man who had blown his brains out, since he was an enviable person, and had only blown them out because o their exceptional excellence. Mr. William Archer even suggested that in the golden age there would be penny-in-the-slot machines, by which a man could killcalled himsel or a penny . In alland thishumane. I ound Not mysel utterly hostile to many who themselves liberal only is suicide a sin, it is the sin. It is the ultimate and absolute evil, the reusal to take an interest in existence; the reusal to take the oath o loyalty to lie. Te man who kills a man, kills a man. Te man who kills himsel, kills all men; as ar as he is concerned he wipes out the world. His act is worse (symbolically considered) than any rape or dynamite outrage. For it destroys all buildings: it insults all women. Te thie is satised with diamonds; but the suicide is not: that is his crime. He cannot be bribed, even by the blazing stones the Celestial Tesuicide thie compliments the things he steals, i not theo owner o them.City. But the insults everything on earth by not stealing it. He deles every ower by reusing to live or its sake. Tere is not a tiny creature in the cosmos at whom his death is not asneer. When a man hangs himsel on a tree, the leaves might all o in anger and the birds y away in ury: or each has received a personal aront. O course
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there may be pathetic emotional excuses or the act. Tere ofen are or rape, and there almost always are or dynamite. But i it comes to clear ideas and the intelligent meaning o things, then there is much more rational and philosophic truth in the burial at the cross-roads and the stake driven through the body, than in Mr. Archer's suicidal automatic machines. Tere is a meaning in burying the suicide apart. Te man's crime is dierent rom other crimes--or it makes even crimes impossible. About the same time I read a solemn ippancy by some ree thinker: he said that a suicide was only the same as a martyr. Te open allacy o this helped to clear the question. Obviously a suicide is the opposite o a martyr. A martyr is a man who cares so much or something outside him, that he orgets his own personal lie. A suicide is a man who cares so little or anything outside him, that he wants to see the last o everything. One wants something to begin: the other wants everything to end. In other words, the martyr is noble, exactly because (however he renounces the world or execrates all humanity) he conesses this ultimate link with lie; he sets his heart outside himsel: he dies that something may live. Te suicide is ignoble because he has not this link with being: he is a mere destroyer; spiritually, he destroys the universe. And then I remembered the stake and the cross-roads, and the queer act that Christianity had shown this weird harshness to the suicide. Christianity shownnot a wild encouragement othe martyr. HistoricFor Christianity washad accused, entirely without reason, o carrying martyrdom and asceticism to a point, desolate and pessimistic. Te early Christian martyrs talked o death with a horrible happiness. Tey blasphemed the beautiul duties o the body: they smelt the grave aar o like a eld o owers. All this has seemed to many the very poetry o pessimism. Yet there is the stake atthe crossroads to show what Christianity thought o the pessimist. Tis was the rst o the long train o enigmas with which Christianity entered the discussion. And there went with it a peculiarity o which I shall have to speak more markedly, as a note o all Christian notions, but which distinctly began in this one. Te Christian attitude to the martyr and the suicide was notwhat is so ofen armed in modern morals. It was not a matter o degree. It was not that a line must be drawn somewhere, and that the sel-slayer in exaltation ell within the line, the sel-slayer in
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sadness just beyond it. Te Christian eeling evidently was not merely that the suicide was carrying martyrdom too ar. Te Christian eeling was uriously or one and uriously against the other: these two things that looked so much alike were at opposite ends o heaven and hell. One man ung awayAnother his lie; he was so good could cities in pestilence. man ung awaythat lie;his hedry wasbones so bad that heal his bones would pollute his brethren's. I am not saying this erceness was right; but why was it so erce? Here it was that I rst ound that my wandering eet were in some beaten track. Christianity had also elt this opposition o the martyr to the suicide: had it perhaps elt it or the same reason? Had Christianity elt what I elt, but could not (and cannot) express-- this need or a rst loyalty to things, and then or a ruinous reorm o things? Ten I remembered that it was actually the charge against Christianity that it combined these two things which Iwas wildly trying to combine. Christianity was accused, at one and the same time, o being too optimistic about the universe and o being too pessimistic about the world. Te coincidence made me suddenly stand still. An imbecile habit has arisen inmodern controversy o saying that such and such a creed can be held in one age but cannot be held in another. Some dogma, we are told, was credible in the twelfh century, but is not credible in the twentieth. You but might as well that a on certain philosophy can be believed on Mondays, cannot be say believed uesdays. You might as well say o a view o the cosmos that it was suitable to hal-past three, but not suitable to hal-past our. What a man can believe depends upon his philosophy, not upon the clock or the century. I a man believes in unalterable natural law, he cannot believe in any miracle in any age. I a man believes in a will behind law, he can believe in any miracle in any age. Suppose, or the sake o argument, we are concerned with a case o thaumaturgic healing.A materialist o the twelfh century could not believe it any more thantwentieth a materialist o the Christian Scientist o the century cantwentieth believe it century. as muchBut as aaChristian o the twelfh century. It is simply a matter o a man's theory o things. Tereore in dealing with any historical answer, the point is not whether it was given in our time, but whether it was given in answer to our question. And the more I thought about when and how Christianity had come into
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the world, the more I elt that it had actually come to answer this question. It is commonly the loose and latitudinarian Christians who pay quite indeensible compliments toChristianity. Tey talk as i there had never been any piety or pity until Christianity came, a point on which any mediaeval would have been eager to correct them. Tey represent that the remarkable thing about Christianity was that it was the rst to preach simplicity or sel-restraint, or inwardness and sincerity. Tey will think me very narrow (whatever that means) i I say that the remarkable thing about Christianity was that it was the rst to preach Christianity. Its peculiarity was that it was peculiar, and simplicity and sincerity are not peculiar, but obvious ideals or all mankind. Christianity was the answer to a riddle, not the last truism uttered afer a long talk. Only the other day I saw in an excellent weekly paper o Puritan tone this remark, that Christianity when stripped o its armour o dogma (as who should speak o a man stripped o his armour o bones), turned out to be nothing but the Quaker doctrine o the Inner Light. Now, i I were to say that Christianity came into the world specially to destroy the doctrine o the Inner Light, that would be an exaggeration. But it would be very much nearer to the truth. Te last Stoics, like Marcus Aurelius, were exactly the people who did believe in the Inner Light. Teir dignity, their weariness, their sad external care or others, their incurable internal care or themselves, were all due to the Inner Light, and existed only by that dismal illumination. Notice that Marcus Aurelius insists, as such introspective moralists always do, upon small things done or undone; it is because he has not hate or love enough to make a moral revolution. He gets up early in the morning, just as our own aristocrats living the Simple Lie get up early in the morning; because such altruism is much easier than stopping the games o the amphitheatre or giving the English people back their land. Marcus Aurelius is the most intolerable o human types. He is an unselsh egoist. An unselsh egoistis a man who has pride without excuse o passion. O all enlightenment the worstthe is what these people call theconceivable Inner Light.orms O all o horrible religions the most horrible is the worshipo the god within. Any one who knows any body knows how it would work; any one who knows any one rom the Higher Tought Centre knows how it does work. Tat Jones shall worship the god within him turns out ultimately to mean that Jones shall worship
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Jones. Let Jones worship the sun or moon, anything rather than the Inner Light; let Jones worship cats or crocodiles, i he can nd any in his street, but not the god within. Christianity came into the world rstly in order to assert with violence that a man had not only to look inwards, but to look outwards, to behold and enthusiasm a divine company and a divine captain.with Teastoni onlyshment un o being a Christian was that a man was not lef alone with the Inner Light, but denitely recognized an outer light, air as the sun, clear as the moon, terrible as an army with banners. All the same, it will be as well i Jones does not worship the sun and moon. I he does, there is a tendency or him to imitate them; to say , that because the sun burns insects alive, he may burn insects alive. He thinks that because the sun gives people sun-stroke, he may give his neighbour measles. He thinks that because the moon is said to drive men mad, he may drive his wie mad. Tis ugly side o mereexternal optimism had also shown itsel in the ancient world. About the time when the Stoic idealism had begun to show the weaknesses o pessimism, the old nature worship o the ancients had begun to show the enormous weaknesses o optimism. Nature worship is natural enough while the society is young, or, in other words, Pantheism is all right as long as it is the worship o Pan. But Nature has another side which experience and sin are not slow in nding out, and it is no ippancy to say o the god Pan that he soon showed the cloven hoo. Te only objection to Natural Religion is that somehow it always becomes unnatural. A man loves Nature in the morning or her innocence and amiability, and at nightall, i he is loving her still, it is or her darkness and her cruelty. He washes at dawn in clear water as did the Wise Man o the Stoics, yet, somehow at the dark end o the day, he is bathing in hot bull's blood, as did Julian theApostate. Te mere pursuit o health always leads to something unhealthy. Physical nature must not be made the direct object o obedience; it must be enjoyed, not worshipped. Stars and mountains must not be taken seriously. I they are, we end where the pagan nature worship ended. Because the earth is kind, we can imitate all her cruelties. Because sexuality is sane, we can all go mad about sexuality. Mere optimism had reached its insane and appropriate termination. Te theory that everything was good had become an orgy o everything that was bad. On the other side our idealist pessimists were represented by the old
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remnant o the Stoics. Marcus Aurelius and his riends had really given up the idea o any god in the universe and looked only to the god within. Tey had no hope o any virtue in nature, and hardly any hope o any virtue in society. Tey had not enough interest in the outer world really to or the revolutionise it. Tey not in love theown citydesolate enough dilemma. to set re to wreck it. Tus ancient world was did exactly our Te only people who really enjoyed this world were busy breaking it up; and the virtuous people did not care enough about them to knock them down. In this dilemma (the same as ours) Christianity suddenly stepped in and oered a singular answer, which the world eventually accepted as HE answer. It was the answer then, and I think it is the answer now. Tis answer was like the slash o a sword; it sundered; it did not in any sense sentimentally unite. Briey, it divided God rom the cosmos. Tat transcendence and distinctness o the deity which some Christians now want to remove rom Christianity, was really the only reason why any one wanted to be a Christian. It was the whole point o the Christian answer to the unhappy pessimist and the still more unhappy optimist. As I am here only concerned with their particular problem, I shall indicate only briey this great metaphysical suggestion. All descriptions o the creating or sustaining principle in things must be metaphorical, because they must be verbal. Tus the pantheist is orced to speak o God in all things as i he were in a box. Tus the evolutionist has, in his very name, the idea o being unrolled like a carpet. All terms, religious and irreligious, are open to this charge. Te only question is whether all terms are useless, or whether one can, with such a phrase, cover a distinct IDEA about the srcin o things. I think one can, and so evidently does the evolutionist, or he would not talk about evolution. And the root phrase or all Christian ht eism was this, that God was a creator, as an artist is a creator. A poet is so separate rom his poem that he himsel speaks o it as a little thing he has "thrown o." Even in giving it orth he has ung it away. Tis principle that all creation and procreation is a breaking o is at least as consistent through the cosmos as the evolutionary principle that all growth isa branching out. A woman loses a child even in having a child. All creation is separation. Birth is as solemn a parting as death. It was the prime philosophic principle o Christianity that this divorce in the divine act o making (such as severs the poet rom the poem or
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the mother rom the new-born child) was the true description o the act whereby the absolute energy made the world. According to most philosophers, God in making the world enslaved it. According to Christianity, in making it, He set it ree. God had written, not so much a poem, but rather play he actors had planned as perect, but who which had necessarily beena play; lef toa human and stage-managers, had since made a great mess o it. I will discuss the truth othis theorem later. Here I have only to point out with what a startling smoothness it passed the dilemma we have discussed in this chapter. In this way at least one could be both happy and indignant without degrading one's sel to be either a pessimist or an optimist. On this system one could ght all the orces o existence without deserting the ag o existence. One could be at peace with the universe and yet be at war with the world. St. George could still ght the dragon, however big the monster bulked in the cosmos, though he were bigger than the mighty cities or bigger than the everlasting hills. I he were as big as the world he could yet be killed in the name o the world. St. George had not to consider any obvious odds or proportions in the scale o things, but only the original secret o their design. He can shake his sword at the dragon, even i it is everything; even i the empty heavens over his head are only the huge arch o its open jaws. And then ollowed an experience impossible to describe. It was as i I had been blundering about since my birth with two huge and unmanageable machines, o dierent shapes and without apparent connection--the world and the Christian tradition. I had ound this hole in the world: the act that one must somehow nd a way o loving the world without trusting it; somehow one must love the world without being worldly. I ound this projecting eature o Christian theology, like a sort o hard spike, the dogmatic insistence that God was personal, and had made a world separate rom Himsel. Te spike o dogma tted exactly into the hole in the world-- it had evidently been meant to go there--and then the strange thing began to happen. When once these two parts o the two machines had come together, one afer another , all the other parts tted and ell in with an eerie exactitude. I could hear bolt afer bolt over all the machinery alling into its place witha kind o click o relie. Having got one part right, all the other parts were repeating that rectitude, as clock afer clock strikes noon. Instinct afer instinct was answered by doctrine afer doctrine. Or, to vary the metaphor, I was like one who had advanced into a hostile country to
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take one high ortress. And when that ort had allen the whole country surrendered and turned solid behind me. Te whole land was lit up, as it were, back to the rst elds o my childhood. All those blind ancies o boyhood which in the ourth chapter I have tried in vain to trace on the darkness, anditsane. I was right when II was elt that roses became were redsuddenly by some transparent sort o choice: was the divine choice. right when I elt that I would almost rather say that grass was the wrong colour than say it must by necessity have been that colour: it might verily have been any other. My sense that happiness hung on the crazy thread o a condition did mean something when all was said: it meant the whole doctrine o the Fall. Even those dim and shapeless monsters o notions which I have not been able to describe, much less deend, stepped quietly into their places like colossal caryatides o the creed. Te ancy that the cosmos was not vast and void, but small and cosy, had a ullled signicance now, or anything that is a work o art must be small in the sight o the artist; to God the stars might be only small and dear, like diamonds. And my haunting instinct that somehow good was not merely a tool to be used, but a relic to be guarded, like the goods rom Crusoe's ship-- even that had been the wild whisper o something srcinally wise, or, according to Christianity, we were indeed the survivors o a wreck, the crew o a golden ship that had gone down beore the beginning o the world. But the important matter was this, that it entirely reversed the reason or optimism. And the instant the reversal was made it elt like the abrupt ease when a bone is put back in the socket. I had ofen called mysel an optimist, to avoid the too evident blasphemy o pessimism. But all the optimism o the age had been alse and disheartening or this reason, that it had always been trying to prove that we t in to the world. Te Christian optimism is based on the act that we do NO t in to the world. I had tried to be happy by telling mysel that man is an animal, like any other which sought meat rom God. Butbeen nowright I really happy, I had that man is its a monstrosity. I had in was eeling all or things aslearnt odd, or I mysel was at once worse and better than all things. Te optimist's pleasure was prosaic, or it dwelt on the naturalness o everything; the Christian pleasure was poetic, or it dwelt on the unnaturalness o everything in the light o the supernatural. Te modern philosopher had told me again
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and again that I was in the right place, and I had still elt depressed even in acquiescence. But I had heard that I was in the WRONG place, and my soul sang or joy, like a bird in spring. Te knowledge ound out and illuminated orgotten chambers in the darkhouse o inancy. I knew now why grassI had always seemed toatme as queer as the green beard o a giant, and why could eel homesick home.
VI Te Paradoxes O Christianity
he real trouble with this world o ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, nor even that it is a reasonable one. Te commonest kind o trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite. Lie is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap or logicians. It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wildness lies in wait. I give one coarse instance o what I mean. Suppose some mathematical creature rom the moon were to reckon up the human body; he would at once see that the essential thing about it was that it was duplicate. A mannoted is twothat men, hewas on the exactly resembling on the lef. Having there an right arm on the right and one him on the lef, a leg on the right and one on the lef, he might go urther and still nd on each side the same number o ngers, the same number o toes, twin eyes, twin ears, twin nostrils, and even twin lobes o the brain. At last he would take it as a law; and then, where he ound a heart on one side, would deduce that there was another heart onthe other. And just then, where he most elt he was right, he would be wrong. It is this silent swerving rom accuracy by an inch that is the uncanny element in everything. It seems a sort o secret treason in the universe. An apple or an orange is round enough to get itsel called round, and yet is not round afer all. Te earth itsel is shaped like anorange in order to lure some simple astronomer into calling it a globe. A blade o grass is called afer the blade o a sword, because it comes to a point; but it doesn't. Everywhere in things there is this element o the quiet and incalculable.
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It escapes the rationalists, but it never escapes till the lastmoment. From the grand curve o our earth it could easily be inerred that every inch o it was thus curved. It would seem rational that as a man has a brain on both sides, he should have a heart on both sides. Yet scientic men are still expeditions tomen nd are thealso North because they are so ondorganizing o at country. Scientic stillPole, organizing expeditions to nd a man's heart; and when they try to nd it, they generally get on the wrong side o him. Now, actual insight or inspiration is best tested by whether it guesses these hidden malormations or surprises. I our mathematician rom the moon saw the two arms and the two ears, he might deduce the two shoulder-blades and the two halves o the brain. But i he guessed that the man's heart was in the right place, then I should call him something more than a mathematician. Now, this is exactly the claim which I have since come to propound or Christianity. Not merely that it deduces logical truths, but that when it suddenly becomes illogical, it has ound, so to speak, an illogical truth. It not only goes right about things, but it goes wrong (i one may say so) exactly where the things go wrong. Its plan suits the secret irregularities, and expects the unexpected.It is simple about the simple truth; but it is stubborn about the subtle truth. It will admit that a man has two hands, it will not admit (though all the Modernists wail to it) the obvious deduction that he has two hearts. It is my only purpose in this chapter to point this out; to show that whenever we eel there is something odd in Christian theology, we shall generally nd that there is something odd in the truth. I have alluded to an unmeaning phrase to the eect that such and such a creed cannot be believed in our age. O course, anything can be believed in any age. But, oddly enough, there really is a sense in which a creed, i it is believed at all, can be believed more xedly in a complex society than in a simple one. I a man nds Christianity true in Birmingham, hehas actually clearer reasonsseems or aith i hehad ound it true Mercia. For the more complicated thethan coincidence, the less it caninbe a coincidence. I snowakes ell in the shape, say, o the heart o Midlothian, it might be an accident. But i snowakes ell in the exact shape o the maze atHampton Court, I think one might call it a miracle. It is exactly as o such a miracle that I have since come to eel o the philosophy o Christianity. Te com-
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plication o our modern world proves the truth o the creed more perectly than any o the plain problems o the ages o aith. It was in Notting Hill and Battersea thatI began to see that Christianity was true. Tis is why the aith has that elaboration o doctrines and details which o s much distresses those who believing inasit.scientists When once one believes in admire a creed,Christianity one is proudwithout o its complexity, are proud o the complexity o science. It shows how rich it is in discoveries. I it is right at all, it is a compliment to say that it's elaborately right. A stick might t a hole or a stone a hollow by accident. But a key and a lock are both complex. And i a key ts a lock, you know it is the right key. But this involved accuracy o the thing makes it very dicult to do what I now have to do, to describe this accumulation o truth. It is very hard or a man to deend anything o which he is entirely convinced. It is comparatively easy when he is only partially convinced. He is partially convinced because he has ound this or that proo o the thing, and he can expound it. But a man is not really convinced o a philosophic theory when he nds that something proves it. He is only really convinced when he nds that everything proves it. And the more converging reasons hends pointing to this conviction, the more bewildered he is i asked suddenly to sum them up. Tus, i one asked an ordinary intelligent man, onthe spur o the moment, "Why do you preer civilization to savagery?" he would look wildly round at object afer object, and would only be able to answer vaguely, "Why, there is that bookcase . . . and the coals in the coal-scuttle . . . and pianos . . . and policemen." Te whole case or civilization is that the case or it iscomplex. It has done so many things. But that very multiplicity o proo which ought to make reply overwhelming makes reply impossible. Tere is, thereore, about all complete conviction a kind o huge helplessness. Te belie is so big that it takes a long time to get it into action. And this hesitation chiey arises, oddly enough, rom an indierence about where one should begin. All roads lead to Rome; which is one reason why many people never get there. In the case o this deence o the Christian conviction I coness that I would as soon begi n the argument with one thing as another; I would begin it with a turnip or a taximeter cab. But i I am to be at all careul about making my meaning clear, ti will, I think, be wiser to continue the current arguments o the last chapter, which was concerned
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to urge the rst o these mystical coincidences, or rather ratications. All I had hitherto heard o Christian theology had alienated me rom it. I was a pagan at the age o twelve, and a complete agnostic by the age o sixteen; and I cannot understand any one passing the age o seventeen without having asked simple I did, indeed, cloudy reverence or himsel a cosmicsodeity anda question. a great historical interestretain in thea Founder o Christianity. But I certainly regarded Him as a man; though perhaps I thought that, even in that point, He had an advantage over some o His modern critics. I read the scientic and sceptical literatureo my time--all o it, at least, that I could nd written in English and lying about; and I read nothing else; I mean I read nothing else on any other note o philosophy. Te penny dreaduls which I also read were indeed in a healthy and heroic tradition o Christianity; but I did not know this at the time. I never read a line o Christian apologetics. I read as little as I can o them now. It was Huxley and Herbert Spencer and Bradlaugh who brought me back to orthodox theology. Tey sowed in my mind my rst wild doubts o doubt. Our grandmothers were quite right when they said that om Paine and the ree-thinkers unsettled the mind. Tey do. Tey unsettled mine horribly. Te rationalist made me question whether reason was o any use whatever; and when I had nished Herbert Spencer I had got as ar as doubting (or the rst time) whether evolution had occurred at all. As I laid down the last o Colonel Ingersoll's atheistic lectures the dreadulthought broke across my mind, "Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian." I was in a desperate way. Tis odd eect o the great agnostics in arousing doubts deeper than their own might be illustrated in many ways. I take only one. As I read and re-read all the non-Christian or anti-Christian accounts o the aith, rom Huxley to Bradlaugh, a slow and awul impression grew gradually but graphically upon my mind--the impression that Christianity must be a most extraordinary thing. For not only (as I understood) had Christianity the vices, but it had apparently a mystical ent or combining most vices aming which seemed inconsistent with each other. Ittalwas attacked on all sides and or all contradictory reasons. No sooner had one rationalist demonstrated that it was too ar to the east than another demonstrated with equal clearness that it was much too ar to the west. No sooner had my indignation died down at its angular and aggressive squareness than
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I was called up again to notice and condemn its enervating and sensual roundness. In case any reader has not come across the thing I mean, I will give such instances as I remember at random o this sel-contradiction in the sceptical attack. I give our or ve o them; there are fy more. hus, or instance, I was much moved by the eloquent attack on Christianity as a thing o inhuman gloom; or I thought (and still think) sincere pessimism the unpardonable sin. Insincere pessimism is a social accomplishment, rather agreeable than otherwise; and ortunately nearly all pessimism is insincere. But i Christianity was, as these people said, a thing purely pessimistic and opposed to lie, then I was quite prepared to blow up St. Paul's Cathedral. But the extraordinary thing is this. Tey did prove to me in Chapter I. (to my complete satisaction) that Christianity was too pessimistic; and then, in Chapter II., they began to prove to me that it was a great deal too optimistic. One accusation against Christianity was that it prevented men, by morbid tears and terrors, rom seeking joy and liberty in the bosom o Nature. But another accusation was that it comorted men with a ctitious providence, and put them in a pink-andwhite nursery. One great agnostic asked why Nature was not beautiul enough, and why it was hard to be ree. Another great agnostic objected that Christian optimism, "the garment o make-believe woven by pious hands," hid rom us the act that Nature was ugly, and that it was impossible to be ree. One rationalist had hardly done calling Christianity a nightmare beore another began to call it a ool's paradise. Tis puzzled me; the charges seemed inconsistent. Christianity could not atonce be the black mask on a white world, and also the white mask on a black world. Te state o the Christian could not be at once so comortable that he was a coward to cling to it, and so uncomortable that he was a ool to stand it. I it alsied human vision it must alsiy it one way or another; it could not wear both green and rose-coloured spectacles. I rolled on my tongue with a terrible joy, as did all young men o that time, the taunts which Swinburne hurled at the dreariness o the creed-"Tou hast conquered, O pale Galilaean, the world has grown gray with Ty breath." But when I read the same poet's accounts o paganism (as in "Atalanta"), I gathered that the world was, i possible, more gray beore the
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Galilean breathed on it than aferwards. Te poet maintained, indeed, in the abstract, that lie itsel was pitchdark. And yet, somehow, Christianity had darkened it. Te very man who denounced Christianity or pessimism was himsel a pessimist. I thought there must be something wrong. Andit did wild moment my mind that, perhaps, thosewho, mightby nottheir be the or veryone best judges o thecross relation o religion to happiness own account, had neither one nor the other. It must be understood that I did not conclude hastily that the accusations were alse or the accusers ools. I simply deduced that Christianity must be something even weirder and wickeder than they made out. A thing might have these two opposite vices; but it must be a rather queer thing i it did. A man might be too at in one place and too thin in another; but he would be an odd shape. At this point my thoughts were only o the odd shape o the Christian religion; I did not allege any odd shape in the rationalistic mind. Here is another case o the same kind. I elt that a strong case against Christianity lay in the charge that there is something timid, monkish, and unmanly about all that is called "Christian," esp ecially in its attitude towards resistance and ghting. Te great sceptics o the nineteenth century were largely virile. Bradlaugh in an expansive way, Huxley, in a reticent way, were decidedly men. In comparison, it did seem tenable that there was something weak over patient Christian counsels. Te Gospel paradox about theand other cheek, theabout actthat priests never ought, a hundred things made plausible the accusation that Christianity was an attempt to make a man too like a sheep. I read it and believed it, and i I had read nothing dierent, I should have gone on believing it. But I read something very dierent. I turned the next page in my agnostic manual, and my brain turned up-side down. Now I ound that I was to hate Christianity not or ghting too little, but or ghting too much. Christianity, it seemed, was the mother o wars. Christianity had deluged the world with blood. I had thoroughly with the Christian, because never was angry. Andgot now I was toldangry to be angry with him because his he anger had been the most huge and horrible thing in human history; because his anger had soaked the earth and smoked to the sun. Te very people who reproached Christianity with the meekness and non-resistance o the monasteries were the very people who reproached it also with the violence and valour o the
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Crusades. It was the aulto poor oldChristianity (somehowor other) both that Edward the Conessor did not ght and that Richard Coeur de Leon did. Te Quakers (we were told) were the only characteristic Christians; and yet the massacres o Cromwell and Alva were characteristic Christian crimes. could it allproduced mean? What was this Christianity orbade What war and always wars? What could be the which naturealways o the thing which one could abuse rst because it would not ght, and second because it was always ghting? In what world o riddles was born this monstrous murder and this monstrous meekness? Te shape o Christianity grew a queerer shape every instant. I take a third case; the strangest o all, because it involves the one real objection to the aith. Te one real objection to the Christian religion is simply that it is one religion. Te world is a big place, ull o very dierent kinds o people. Christianity (it may reasonably be said) is one thing conned to one kind o people; it began in Palestine, it has practically stopped with Europe. I was duly impressed with this argument in my youth, and I was much drawn towards the doctrine ofen preached in Ethical Societies--I mean the doctrine that there is one great unconscious church o all humanity ounded on the omnipresence o the human conscience. Creeds, it was said, divided men; but at least morals united them. Te soul might seek the strangest and most remote lands and ages and still nd essential ethical common sense. It might nd Conucius under Eastern trees, and he would be writing "Tou shalt not steal." It might decipher the darkest hieroglyphic on the most primeval desert, and the meaning when deciphered would be "Little boys should tell the truth." I believed this doctrine o the brotherhood o all men in the possession o a moral sense, and I believe it still-- with other things.And I was thoroughly annoyed with Christianity or suggesting (as I supposed) that whole ages and empires o men had utterly escaped this light o justice and reason.But then I ound an astonishing thing. I ound that the very people who said that mankind was one church rom Plato to Emerson were the very people who said that morality had changed altogether, and that what was right in one age was wrong in another. I I asked, say, or an altar, I was told that we needed none, or men our brothers gave us clear oracles and one creed in their universal customs and ideals. But i I mildly pointed out that one o men's universal customs was to have an altar, then my agnostic teachers turned clean round and told me that men had always been in darkness
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and the superstitions o savages. I ound it was their daily taunt against Christianity that it was the light o one people and had lef all others to die in the dark. But I also ound that it was their special boast or themselves that science and progress were the discovery o one people, and that all other peoples had died in the dark. Teir chie and insult to Christianity was actually their chie compliment to themselves, there seemed to be a strange unairness about all their relative insistence on the two things. When considering some pagan or agnostic, we were to remember that all men had one religion; when considering some mystic or spiritualist, we were only to consider what absurd religions some men had. We could trust the ethics o Epictetus, because ethics had never changed. We must not trust the ethics o Bossuet, because ethics had changed. Tey changed in two hundred years, but not in two thousand. Tis began to be alarming. It looked not so much as i Christianity was bad enough to include any vices, but rather as i any stick was good n e ough to beat Christianity with. What again could this astonishing thing be like which people were so anxious to contradict, that in doing so they did not mind contradicting themselves? I saw the same thing on every side. I can give no urther space to this discussion o it in detail; but lest any one supposes that I have unairly selected three accidental cases I will run briey through a ew others. Tus, certain sceptics wrote that the great crime o Christianity had been its attack on the amily; it had draggedwomen to the loneliness and contemplation o the cloister, away rom their homes and their children. But, then, other sceptics (slightly moreadvanced) said that the great crime o Christianity was orcing the amily and marriage upon us; that it doomed women to the drudgery o their homes and children, and orbade them loneliness and contemplation. Te charge was actually reversed. Or, again, certain phrases inthe Epistles or the marriage service, were said by the anti-Christians to show contempt or woman's intellect. But I ound that the anti-Christians thems elves had a contempt or woman's intellect; or it was their great sneer at the Church on the Continent that "only women" went to it. Or again, Christianity was reproachedwith its naked and hungry habits; with its sackcloth and dried peas. But the next minute Christianity was being reproached with its pomp and its ritualism; its shrines o porphyry and its robes o gold. It was abused or being too plain and or being too coloured. Again Christianity had always been accused o restraining sexualitytoo much, when Bradlaugh the Malthusian
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discovered that it restrained it too little. It is ofen accused in the same breath o prim respectability and o religious extravagance. Between the covers o the same atheistic pamphlet I have ound the aith rebuked or its disunion, "One thinks one thing, and one another," and rebuked also or its union, "It isIndierence opinion that prevents the aworld going to the dogs." the same o conversation a ree-thinker, riendrom o mine, blamed Christianity or despising Jews, and then despised it himsel or being Jewish. I wished to be quite air then, and I wish to be quite air now; and I did not conclude that the attack on Christianity was all wrong. I only concluded that i Christianity was wrong, it was very wrong indeed. Such hostile horrors might be combined in one thing, but that thing must be very strange and solitary. Tere are men who are misers, and also spendthrifs; but they are rare. Tere are men sensual and also ascetic; but they are rare. But i this mass o mad contradictions really existed, quakerish and bloodthirsty, too gorgeous and too thread-bare, austere, yet pandering preposterously to the lust o the eye, the enemy o women and their oolish reuge, a solemn pessimist and a silly optimist, i this evil existed, then there was in this evil something quite supreme and unique. For I ound in my rationalist teachers no explanation o such exceptional corruption. Christianity (theoretically speaking) was in their eyes only one o the ordinary myths and errors o mortals. HEY gave me no key to this twisted and unnatural badness. Such a paradox o evil rose to the stature o the supernatural. It was, indeed, almost as supernatural as the inallibility o the Pope. An historic institution, which never went right, is really quite as much o a miracle as an institution that cannot go wrong. Te only explanation which immediately occurred to my mind was that Christianity did not come rom heaven, but rom hell. Really, i Jesus o Nazareth was not Christ, He must have been Antichrist. And then in a quiet hour a strange thought struck me like a still thunderbolt. Tere hadansuddenly come my mind explanation. Suppose we heard unknown maninto spoken o by another many men. Suppose we were puzzled to hear that some men said he was too tall and some too short; some objected to his atness, some lamented his leanness; some thought him too dark, and some too air. One explanation (as has been already admitted) would be that hemight be an odd shape. But there is
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another explanation. He might be the right shape. Outrageously tall men might eel him to be short. Very short men might eel him to be tall. Old bucks who are growing stout might consider him insuciently lled out; old beaux who were growing thin might eel that he expanded beyond the narrow lines o elegance. Perhaps Swedes (who have hair like tow) called him a dark man, while negroes considered himpale distinctly blonde. Perhaps (in short) this extraordinary thing is really the ordinary thing; at least the normal thing, the centre. Perhaps, afer all, it is Christianity that is sane and all its critics that are mad--in various ways. I tested this idea by asking mysel whether there was about any o the accusers anything morbid that might explain the accusation. I was startled to nd that this key tted a lock. For instance, it was certainly odd that the modern world charged Christianity at once with bodily austerity and with artistic pomp. But then it was also odd, very odd, that the modern world itsel combined extreme bodily luxury with an extrem e absence o artistic pomp. Te modern man thought Becket's robes too richand his meals too poor. But then the modern man was really exceptional in history; no man beore ever ate such elaborate dinners in such ugly clothes. Te modern man ound the church too simple exactly where modern lie is too complex; he ound the church too gorgeous exactly where modern lie is too dingy. Te man who disliked the plain asts and easts was mad on entrees. Te man who disliked vestments wore a pair o preposterous trousers. And surely i there was any insanity involved in the matter at all it was in the trousers, not in the simply alling robe. I there was any insanity at all, it was in the extravagant entrees, not in the bread and wine. I went over all the cases, and I ound the key tted so ar. Te act that Swinburne was irritated at the unhappiness o Christians and yet more irritated at their happiness was easily explained. It was no longer a complication o diseases in Christianity, but a complication o diseases in Swinburne. Te restraints o Christians saddened him simply because he was more hedonist than a healthy man should be. Te aith o Christians angered him because he was more pessimist than a healthy man should be. In the same way the Malthusians by instinct attacked Christianity; not because there is anything especially anti-Malthusian about Christianity, but because there is something a little anti-human about Malthusianism. Nevertheless it could not, I elt, be quite true that Christianity was
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merely sensible and stood in the middle. Tere was really an element in it o emphasis and even renzy which had justied the secularists in their supercial criticism. It might be wise, I began more and more to think that it was wise, but it was not merely worldly wise;it was not merely temperate and respectable. Its ercewere crusaders and meek saints might each other; still, the crusaders very erce and the saints werebalance very meek, meek beyond all decency. Now, it was just at this point o the speculation that I remembered my thoughts about the martyr and the suicide. In that matter there had been this combination between two almost insane positions which yet somehow amounted to sanity. Tis was just such another contradiction; and this I had already ound to be true. Tis was exactly one o the paradoxes in which sceptics ound the creed wrong; and in this I had ound it right. Madly as Christians might love the martyr or hate the suicide, they never elt these passions more madly than I had elt them long beore I dreamed o Christianity. Ten the most dicult and interesting part o the mental process opened, and I began to trace this idea darkly through all the enormous thoughts o our theology. Te idea was that which I had outlined touching the optimist and the pessimist; that we want not an amalgam or compromise, but both things at the top o their energy; love and wrath both burning. Here I shall only trace it in relation to ethics. But I need not remind the reader that the idea o this combination is indeed central in orthodox theology. For orthodox theology has specially insisted that Christ was not a being apart rom God and man, like an el, nor yet a being hal human and hal not, like a centaur, but both things at once and both things thoroughly, very man and very God. Now let me trace this notion as I ound it. All sane men can see that sanity is some kind o equilibrium; that one may be mad and eat too much, or mad and eat too little. Some moderns have indeed appeared with vague versions o progress and evolution which seeks to destroy the MESONor balance o Aristotle. Tey seem to suggest that we are meant to starve progressive ly, or to go on eating larger and larger breakasts every morning or ever. But the great truism o the MESON remains or all thinking men, and these people have not upset any balance except their own. But granted that we have all to keep a balance, the real interest comes in with the question o how that balance can be kept. Tat was the problem which Paganism tried to solve: that was the problem which I think Christianity solved and solved in a very strange way.
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Paganism declared that virtue was in a balance; Christianity declared it was in a conict: the collision o two passions apparently opposite. O course they were not really inconsistent; but they were such that it was hard to hold simultaneously. Let us ollow or a moment the clue o the martyr the suicide; and and taketangled the casethe o courage. Nooquality ever so muchand addled the brains denitions merelyhas rational sages. Courage is almosta contradiction interms. It means a strong desire to live taking the orm o a readiness to die. "He that will lose his lie, the same shall save it," is not a piece omysticism or saints and heroes. It is a piece o everyday advice orsailors or mountaineers. It might be printed in an Alpine guide or a drill book. Tis paradox is the whole principle o courage; even o quite earthly orquite brutal courage. A man cut o by the sea may save his lie i he will risk it on the precipice. He can only get away rom death by continually stepping within an inch o it. A soldier surrounded by enemies, i he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire or living with a range st carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to lie, or then he will be a coward,and will not escape. He must not merely wait or death, or then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his lie in a spirit o urious indierence to it; he must desire lie like water and yet drink death like wine. No philosopher, I ancy, has ever expressed this romantic riddle with adequate lucidity, and I certainly have not done so. But Christianity has done more: it has marked the limits oit in the awul graves o the suicide and the hero, showing the distance between him who dies or the sake o living and him who dies or the sake o dying. And it has held up ever since above the European lances the bannero the mystery o chivalry: the Christian courage, which is a disdain o death; not the Chinese courage, which is a disdain o lie. And now I began to nd that this duplex passion was the Christian key to ethics everywhere. Everywhere the creed made a moderation out o still crash obalance two impetuous ake, instance, the maTe tter o the modesty, o the betweenemotions. mere pride andor mere prostration. average pagan, like the average agnostic, would merely say that he was content with himsel, but not insolently sel-satised, ht at there were many better and many worse, that his deserts were limited, but he would see that he got them. In short, he would walk with his head in the air; but not
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necessarily with his nose in theair. Tis is a manly and rational position, but it is open to the objection we noted against the compromise between optimism and pessimism--the "resignation" o Matthew Arnold. Being a mixture o two things, it is a dilution o two things; neither is present in its ull strength its ull colour Tis proper pride does notand lif the heart likeor thecontributes tongue o trumpets; you. cannot go clad in crimson gold or this. On the other hand, this mild rationalist modesty does not cleanse the soul with re and make it clear like crystal; it does not (like a strict and searching humility) make a man as a little child, who can sit at the eet o the grass. It does not make him look up and see marvels; or Alice must grow small i she is to be Alice in Wonderland. Tus it loses both the poetry o being proud and the poetry o being humble. Christianity sought by this same strange expedient to save both o them. It separated the twoideas and then exaggerated them both. In one way Man was to be haughtier than he had ever been beore; in another way he was to be humbler than he had ever been beore. In so ar as I am Man I am the chie o creatures. In so ar as I am a man I am the chie o sinners. All humility that had meant pessimism, that had meant man taking a vague or mean view o his whole destiny-- all that was to go. We were to hear no more the wail o Ecclesiastes that humanity had no pre-eminence over the brute, or the awul cry o Homer that man was only the saddest o all the beasts o the eld. Man was a statue o God walking about the garden. Man had pre-eminence over all the brutes; man was only sad because he was not a beast, but a broken god. Te Greek had spoken o men creeping on the earth, as i clinging to it. Now Man was to tread on the earth as i to subdue it. Christianity thus held a thought o the dignity o man that could only be expressed in crowns rayed like the sun and ans o peacock plumage. Yet at the same time it could hold a thought about the abject smallness o man that could only be expressed in asting and antastic submission, in the gray ashes o St. Dominic and the white snows o St. Bernard. When one came to think o ONE'S SELF, there was vista and void enough or any amount o bleak abnegation and bitter truth. Tere the realistic gentleman could let himsel go--as long as he let himsel go at himsel. Tere was an open playground or the happy pessimist. Let him say anything against himsel short o blaspheming the srcinal aim o his being; let him call himsel a ool and even a damned ool (though that is Calvinistic); but he must not say that ools are not worth saving.
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He must not say that a man, QUA man, can be valueless. Here, again in short, Christianity got over the diculty o combining urious opposites, by keeping them both, and keeping them both urious. Te Church was positive on both points. One can hardly think too little o one's sel. One can hardly think too much o one's soul. ake another case: the complicated question o charity, which some highly uncharitable idealists seem to think quite easy. Charity is a paradox, like modesty and courage.Stated baldly,charity certainly means one o two things--pardoning unpardonable acts, orloving unlovable people.But i we ask ourselves (as we did in the case o pride) what a sensible pagan would eel about such a subject, we shall probably be beginning at the bottom o it. A sensible pagan would say that there were some people one could orgive, and some one couldn't: a slave who stole wine could be laughed at; a slave who betrayed his beneactor could be killed, and cursed even afer he was killed. In so ar as the act was pardonable, the man waspardonable. Tat again is rational, and even rereshing; but it is a dilution. It leaves no place or a pure horror o injustice, such as that which is a great beauty in the innocent. And it leaves no place or a mere tenderness or men as men, such as is the whole ascination o the charitable. Christianity came in here as beore. It came in startlingly with a sword, and clove one thing rom another. It divided the crime rom the criminal. Te criminal we must orgive untoseventy times seven. Te crime we must not orgive at all. It was not enough that slaves who stole wine inspired partly anger and partly kindness. We must be much more angry with thef than beore, and yet much kinder to thieves than beore. Tere was room or wrath and love to run wild. And the more I considered Christianity,the more I ound that while it had established a rule and order, the chie aim o that order was to give room or good things to run wild. Mental and emotional liberty are not so simple as they look. Really they require almost as careul a balance o laws and conditions as do social and political liberty. Te ordinary aesthetic anarchist who sets out to eel everything reely gets knotted at last in a paradox that prevents him eeling at all. He breaks away rom home limits to ollow poetry. But in ceasing to eel home limits he has ceased to eel the "Odyssey." He is ree rom national prejudices and outside patriotism. But being outside patriotism he is outside "Henry V." Such a literary man is simply outside all literature:
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he is more o a prisoner than any bigot. For i there is a wall between you and the world, it makes little dierence whether you describe yoursel as locked in or as locked out. What we want is not the universality that is outside all normal sentiments; we want the universality that is inside all normal sentiments. It is all the dierence between being ree rom them, as a man is ree rom a prison, and being ree o them as a man is ree o a city . I am ree rom Windsor Castle (that is, I am not orcibly detained there), but I am by no means ree o that building. How can man be approximately ree o ne emotions, able to swing them in a clear space without breakage or wrong? HIS was the achievement o this Christian paradox o the parallel passions. Granted the primary dogma o the war between divine and diabolic, the revolt and ruin o the world, their optimism and pessimism, as pure poetry, could be loosened like cataracts. St. Francis, in praising all good,could be a more shouting optimist than Walt Whitman. St. Jerome, in denouncing all evil, could paint the world blacker than Schopenhauer. Both passions were ree because both were kept in their place. Te optimist could pour out all the praise he liked on the gay music o the march, the golden trumpets, and the purple banners going into battle. But he must not call the ght needless. Te pessimist might draw as darkly as he chose the sickening marches or the sanguine wounds. Butproblems, he must with not call thewith ghtprotest, hopeless. it was with all the other moral pride, andSo with compassion. By dening its main doctrine, the Church not only kept seemingly inconsistent things side by side, but, what was more, allowed them to break out ina sort o artistic violence otherwise possible only to anarchists. Meekness grew more dramatic than madness. Historic Christianity rose into a high and strange COUP DE HEARE o morality-- things that are to virtue what the crimes o Nero are to vice. Te spirits o indignation and o charity took terrible and attractive orms, ranging rom that monkish erceness that scourged dog the rst andingreatest o the Plantagenets, the sublime pity olike St. aCatherine, who, the ocial shambles, kissedtothe bloody head o the criminal. Poetry could be acted as well as composed. Tis heroic and monumental manner in ethics has entirely vanished with supernatural religion. Tey, being humble, could parade themselves: but we are too proud to be prominent. Our ethical teachers write reasonably
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or prison reorm; but we are not likelyto see Mr. Cadbury, or any eminent philanthropist, go into Reading Gaol and embrace the strangled corpse beore it is cast into the quicklime. Our ethical teachers write mildly against the power o millionaires; but we are not likely to see Mr. Rockeeller, or any modern tyrant, publicly whipped in Westminster Abbey. Tus, the double charges o the secularists, though throwing nothing but darkness and conusion on themselves, throw a real light on the aith. It is true that the historic Church has at once emphasised celibacy and emphasised the amily; has at once (i one may put it so) been ercely or having children and ercely ornot having children. It has kept them side by side like two strong colours, red and white, like the red and white upon the shield o St. George. It has always had a healthy hatred o pink. It hates that combination o two colours which is the eeble expedient o the philosophers. It hates that evolution o black into white which is tantamount to a dirty gray. In act, the whole theory o the Churchon virginity might be symbolized in the statement that white is a colour: not merely the absence o a colour. All that I am urging here can be expressed by saying that Christianity sought in most o these cases to keep two colours coexistent but pure. It is not a mixture like russet or purple; it is rather like a shot silk, or a shot silk is always at right angles, and is in the pattern o the cross. So it is about also, osubmission course, with contradictory charges theChurch antiChristians andthe slaughter. It IS true thatothe told some men to ght and others not to ght; and it IS true that those who ought were like thunderbolts and those who did not ght were like statues. All this simply means that the Church preerred to use its Supermen and to use its olstoyans. Tere must be SOME good in the lie o battle, or so many good men have enjoyed being soldiers. Tere must be SOME good in the idea o non-resistance, or so many good men seem to enjoy being Quakers. All that the Church did (so ar as that goes) was to prevent eitherTe o these good things ousting the other. Teysimply existed side by side. olstoyans, havingrom all the scruples o monks, became monks. Te Quakers became a club instead o becoming a sect. Monks said all that olstoy says; they poured out lucid lamentations about the cruelty o battles and the vanity o revenge. But the olstoyans are not quite right enough to run the whole world; and in the ages o aith they
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were not allowed to run it. Te world did not lose the last charge o Sir James Douglas or the banner o Joan the Maid. And sometimes this pure gentleness and this pure erceness met and justied their juncture; the paradox o all the prophets was ullled, and, in the soul o St. Louis, the lion lay down with the lamb. But remember that text istendencies, too lightly interpreted. It is constantly assured, especially in ourthis olstoyan that when the lion lies down with the lamb the lion becomes lamb-like. But that is brutal annexation and imperialism on the part o the lamb. Tat is simply the lamb absorbing the lion instead o the lion eating the lamb. Te real problem is-- Can the lion lie down with the lamb and still retain his royal erocity? HA is the problem the Church attempted; HA is the miracle she achieved. Tis is what I have called guessing the hidden eccentricities o lie.Tis is knowing that a man's heart is to the lef and not in the middle. Tis is knowing not only that the earth is round, but knowing exactly where it is at. Christian doctrine detected the oddities o lie. It not only discovered the law, but it oresaw the exceptions. Tose underrate Christianity who say that it discovered mercy; any one might discover mercy. In act every one did. But to discover a plan or being merciul and also severe-- HA was to anticipate a strange need o humannature. For no one wants to be orgiven or a big sin as i it were a little one. Any one might say that we should be neither quite miserable nor quitehappy. But to nd out how ar one MAY be quite miserable without making it impossible to be quite happy--that was a discovery in psychology. Any one might say, "Neither swagger nor grovel"; and it would have been a limit. But to say, "Here you can swagger and there you can grovel"-- that was an emancipation. Tis was the big act about Christian ethics; the discovery o the new balance. Paganism hadbeen like a pillar omarble, upright because proportioned with symmetry. Christianity was like a huge and ragged and romantic rock, which, though it sways on its pedestal at a touch, yet, because its exaggerated excrescences each is enthroned there or a thousand years. In aexactly Gothicbalance cathedral theother, columns wereall dierent, but they were all necessary. Every support seemed an accidental and antastic support; every buttress was a ying buttress. So in Christendom apparent accidents balanced. Becket wore a hair shirt under his goldand crimson, and there is much to be said or the combination; or Becket got
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the benet o the hair shirt while the people in the street got the benet o the crimson and gold. It is at least better than the manner o the modern millionaire, who has the black and the drab outwardly or others, and the gold next his heart. But the balance was not always in one man's body as in Becket's; the balance was prayed ofen distributed theNorthern whole body o Christendom. Because a man and asted over on the snows, owers could be ung at his estival in the Southern cities; and because anatics drank water on the sands o Syria, men could still drink cider in the orchards o England. Tis is what makes Christendom at once so much more perplexing and so much more interesting than the Pagan empire; just as Amiens Cathedral is not better but more interesting than the Parthenon. I any one wants a modern proo o all this, let him consider the curious act that, under Christianity, Europe (while remaining a unity) has broken up into individual nations. Patriotism is a perect example o this deliberate balancing o one emphasis against another emphasis. Te instinct o the Pagan empire would have said, "You shall all be Roman citizens, and grow alike; let the German grow less slow and reverent; the Frenchmen less experimental and swif." But the instinct o Christian Europe says, "Let the German remain slow and reverent, that the Frenchman may the more saely be swif and experimental. We will make an equipoise out o these excesses. Te absurdity called Germany shall correct the insanity called France." Last and most important, it is exactly this which explains what is so inexplicable to all the modern critics o the history o Christianity. I mean the monstrous wars about small points o theology, the earthquakes o emotion about a gesture or a word. It was only a matter o an inch; but an inch is everything when you arebalancing. Te Church could not aord to swerve a hair's breadth on some things i she was to continue her great and daring experiment o the irregular equilibrium. Once let one idea become less powerul and some other idea would become too powerul. It was no ock o sheep the Christian shepherd was leading, but a herd o bulls and tigers, o terrible ideals and devouring doctrines, each one o them strong enough to turn to a alse religion and lay waste the world. Remember that the Church went in specically or dangerous ideas; she was a lion tamer. Te idea o birth through a Holy Spirit, o the death o a divine being, o the orgiveness o sins, or the ullment o prophecies, are ideas which, any one can see, need but a touch to turn h t em into something
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blasphemous or erocious. Te smallest link was let drop by the articers o the Mediterranean, and the lion o ancestral pessimism burst his chain in the orgotten orests o the north. O these theological equalisations I have to speak aferwards. Here it is enough to notice that i some small mistake wereAmade in doctrine, blunders might be made in human happiness. sentence phrased huge wrong about the nature o symbolism would have broken all the best statues in Europe. A slip in the denitions might stop all the dances; might wither all the Christmas trees or break all the Easter eggs. Doctrines had to be dened within strict limits, even in order that man might enjoy general human liberties. Te Church had to be careul, i only that the world might be careless. Tis is the thrilling romanceo Orthodoxy. People have allen into a oolish habit o speaking o orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and sae. Tere never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy. It was sanity: and to be sane is more dramatic than to be mad. It was the equilibrium o a man behind madly rushing horses, seeming to stoop this way and to sway that, yet in every attitude having the grace o statuary and the accuracy o arithmetic. Te Church in its early days went erce and ast with any warhorse; yet it is utterly unhistoric to say that she merely went mad along one idea, like a vulgar anaticism. She swerved to lef and right, so exactly as to avoid enormous obstacles. She lef on one hand the huge bulk o Arianism, buttressed by all the worldly powers to make Christianity too worldly. Te next instant she was swerving to avoid an orientalism, which would have made it too unworldly. Te orthodox Church never took the tame course or accepted the conventions; the orthodox Church was never respectable. It would have been easier to have accepted the earthly power o the Arians. It would have been easy, in the Calvinistic seventeenth century, to all into the bottomless pit opredestination. It is easy to be a madman: it is easy to be a heretic. It is always easy to let the age have its head; the dicult keepoone's is always to open be a modernist; as it is easything to be isa to snob. haveown. allenItinto any oeasy those traps o error and exaggeration which ashion afer ashion and sect afer sect set along the historic path o Christendom--that would indeed have been simple. It is always simple to all; there are an innity o angles at which one alls, only one at which one stands. o have allen into any one o the ads
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rom Gnosticism to Christian Science would indeed have been obvious and tame. But to have avoided them all has been onewhirling adventure; and in my vision the heavenly chariot ies thundering through the ages, the dull heresies sprawling and prostrate, the wild truth reeling but erect.
VII Te Eternal Revolution
he ollowing propositions have been urged: First, that some aith in our lie is required even to impro ve it; second, that some dissatisaction with things as they are is necessary even in order to be satised; third, that to have this necessary content and necessar y discontent it is notsucient to have the obvious equilibrium o the Stoic. For mere resignation has neither the gigantic levity o pleasure nor the superb intolerance o pain. Tere is a vital objection to the advice merely to grin and bear it. Te objection is that i you merely bear it, you do not grin. Greek heroes do not grin: but gargoyles do--because they are Christian. And when his a Christian is pleased, he is (in the most exact sense) rightully pleased; pleasure is rightul. Christ prophesied the whole o Gothic architecture inthat hour when nervous and respectable people (such people as now object to barrel organs) objected to the shouting o the gutter-snipes o Jerusalem. He said, "I these were silent, the very stones would cry out." Under the impulse o His spirit arose like a clamorous chorus the acades o the mediaeval cathedrals, thronged with shoutingaces and open mouths. Te prophecy has ullled itsel: the very stones cry out. I these things be conceded, though only or argument, we may take up where we lef it the thread o the thought o the natural man, called by the Scotch (with regrettable amiliarity), "Te Old Man." We can ask the next question so obviously in ront o us. Some satisaction is needed even to make things better. But what do we mean by making things better? Most modern talk on this matter is a mere argument in a circle--that circle
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which we have already made the symbol o madness and o mere rationalism. Evolution is only good i it produces good; good is only good i it helps evolution. Te elephant stands on the tortoise, and the tortoise on the elephant. Obviously, it will not do to take our ideal rom the principle in nature; or the simple reason that (except or some human ordivine theory), there is no principle in nature. For instance, the cheap anti-democrat o to-day will tell you solemnly that thereis no equality in nature. He is right, but he does not see the logical addendum. Tere is no equality in nature; also there is no inequality in nature. Inequality, as much as equality, implies a standard o value. o read aristocracy into the anarchyo animals is just as sentimental as to read democracy intoit. Both aristocracy and democracy are human ideals: the one saying that all men are valuable, the other that some men are more valuable. But nature does not say that cats are more valuable than mice; nature makes no remark on the subject. She does not even say that the cat is enviable or the mouse pitiable. We think the cat superior because we have (or most o us have) a particular philosophy to the eect that lie is better than death. But i the mouse were a German pessimist mouse, he might notthink that the cat hadbeaten him at all. He might think he had beaten the cat by getting to the graverst. Or he might eel that he had actually inicted rig htul punishment on the cat by keeping him alive. Just as a microbe might eel proud o spreading a pestilence, so the pessimistic mouse might exult to think that he was renewing in the cat the torture o conscious existence. It all depends on the philosophy o the mouse. You cannot even say that there is victory or superiority in nature unless you have some doctrine about what things are superior. You cannot even say that the cat scores unless there is a system o scoring.You cannot even say that the cat gets the best o it unless there is some best to be got. We cannot, then, get the ideal itsel rom nature, and as we ollow here the rst and natural speculation, we will leave out (or the present) the idea o it romon God. We must vision. Butthrough the att Some allgetting back simply the clock: theyhave talkour as iown mere passage time brought some superiority; so that even a man o the rst mental calibre carelessly uses the phrase that human morality is never up to date. How can anything be up to date? -- adate has no character. How can one say that Christmas celebrations are not suitable to the w t enty-fh o a month?
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What the writer meant, o course, was that the majority is behind his avourite minority-- or in ront o it. Other vague modern people take reuge in material metaphors; in act, this is the chie mark o vague modern people. Not daring to dene their doctrine o what is good, they use physical gures speech without stintare orexquisitely shame, and, what isand worst o all,toseem to thinkothese cheap analogies spiritual superior the old morality. Tus they think it intellectual to talk about things being "high." It is at least the reverse o intellectual; it is a mere phrase rom a steeple or a weathercock. "ommy was a good boy" is a pure philosophical statement, worthy o Plato orAquinas. "ommy lived the higher lie" is a gross metaphor rom a ten-oot rule. Tis, incidentally, is almost the whole weakness o Nietzsche, whom some are representing as a bold and stro ng thinker. No one will deny that he was a poetical and suggestive thinker;but he was quite the reverse o strong. He was not at all bold. He never put his own meaning beore himsel in bald abstract words: as did Aristotle and Calvin, and even Karl Marx, the hard, earless men o thought. Nietzsche always escaped a question by a physical metaphor, like a cheery minor poet. He said, "beyond good and evil," because he had not the courage to say, "more good than good and evil," or, "more evil than good and evil." Had he aced his thought without metaphors, he would have seen that it was nonsense. So, when he describes his hero, he does not dare to say, "the purer man," or "the happier man," or "the sadder man," or all these are ideas; and ideas are alarming. He says "the upper man," or "over man," a physical metaphor rom acrobats or alpine climbers. Nietzsche is truly a very timid thinker. He does not really know in the least what sort o man he wants evolution to produce. And i he does not know, certainly the ordinary evolutionists, who talk about things being "higher," do not know either. Ten again, some people all back on sheer submission and sitting still. Nature is going to do something some day; nobody knows what, and nobody knows when. We have no acting, is and no reason or not acting. I anything happens it is reason right: ior anything prevented it was wrong. Again, some people try to anticipate nature by doing something, by doing anything. Because we may possibly grow wings they cut o their legs. Yet nature may be trying to make them centipedes or all they know. Lastly, there is a ourth class o people who take whatever it is that they
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happen to want, and say that that is the ultimate aim o evolution. And these are the only sensible people. Tis is the only really healthy way with the word evolution, to work or what you want, and to call HA evolution. Te only intelligible sense that progress or advance can have among men, thatthat we vision. have a denite vision, anditthat we wish to make whole worldislike I you like to put so, the essence o thethe doctrine is that what we have around us is the mere method and preparation or something that we have to create. Tis is not a world, but rather the material or a world. God has given us not so much the colours o a picture as the colours o a palette. But he has also given us a subject, a model, a xed vision. We must be clear about what we want to paint. Tis adds a urther principle to our previous list o principles. We have said we must be ond o this world, even in order to change it. We now add that we must be ond o another world (real or imaginary) in order to have something to change it to. We need not debate about the merewords evolution or progress: personally I preer to call it reorm. For reorm implies orm. It implies that we are trying to shape the world in aparticular image; to make it something that we see already in our minds. Evolution is a metaphor rom mere automatic unrolling. Progress is a metaphor rom merely walking along a road--very likely the wrongroad. But reorm is a metaphor or reasonable and determined men: it means that we see a certain thing out o shape and we mean to put it into shape. And we know what shape. Now here comes in the whole collapse and huge blunder o our age.We have mixed up two dierent things, two opposite things. Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to suit the vision. Progress does mean (just now) that we are always changing the vision. It should mean that we are slow but sure in bringing justice and mercy among men: it does mean that we are very swif in doubting the desirability o justice and mercy: a wild page rom any Prussian sophist makes men doubt it. ProgressItshould meanthat thatthe weNew are always walking towards the New Jerusalem. does mean Jerusalem is always walking away rom us. We are not altering the real to suitthe ideal. We are altering the ideal: it is easier. Silly examples are always simpler; let us suppose a man wanted a particular kind o world; say, a blue world. He would have no cause to
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complain o the slightness or swifness o his task; he might toil or a long time at the transormation; he could work away (in every sense) until all was blue. He could have heroic adventures; theputting o the last touches to a blue tiger. He could have airy dreams;the dawn o a blue moon. But i he point worked reormer would his own o hard, view) that leavehigh-minded the world better andbluer thancertainly he ound(rom it. I he altered a blade o grass to his avourite colour every day, he would get on slowly. But i he altered his avourite colour every day,he would not get on at all. I, afer reading aresh philosopher, he started to painteverything red or yellow, his work would be thrown away: there would be nothing to show except a ew blue tigers walking about, specimens o his early bad manner. Tis is exactly the position o the average modern thinker. It will be said that this is avowedly a preposterous example. But it is literally the act o recent history. Te great and grave changes in our political civilization all belonged to the early nineteenth century, not to the later. Tey belonged to the black and white epoch when men believed xedly in oryism, in Protestantism, in Calvinism, in Reorm, and not unrequently in Revolution. And whatever each man believed in he hammered at steadily, without scepticism: and there was a time when the Established Churchmight have allen, and the House o Lords nearly ell. It was because Radicals were wise enough to be constant and consistent; it was because Radicals were wise enough to be Conservative. But in the existing atmosphere there is not enough time and traditionin Radicalism to pull anything down. Tere is a great deal o truth in Lord Hugh Cecil's suggestion (made in a ne speech) that the era o change is over, and that ours is an era o conservation and repose. But probably it would pain Lord Hugh Cecil i he realized (what is certainly the case) that ours is only an age o conservation because it is an age o complete unbelie. Let belies ade ast and requently, i you wish institutions to remain the same. Te more the lie o the mind is unhinged, the more the machinery o matter will be lef to itsel. Te net result o all our political suggestions, Collectivism, olstoyanism, Neo-Feudalism, Communism, Anarchy, Scientic Bureaucracy-- the plain ruit o all o them is that the Monarchy and the House o Lords will remain. Te net result o all the new religions will be that the Church o England will not (or heaven knows how long) be disestablished. It was Karl Marx, Nietzsche, olstoy, Cunninghame Grahame, Bernard Shaw and Auberon Herbert, who between them, with bowed gigantic backs, bore up the throne o the Archbishop o Canterbury.
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We may say broadly that ree thought is the best o all the saeguards against reedom. Managed in a modern style the emancipation o the slave's mind is the best way o preventing the emancipation o the slave. each him to worry about whether he wants to be ree, and he will not ree it may saidmen that in this is remote But, himsel. again, it Again, is exactly true be o the theinstance streets around us.orItextreme. is true that the negro slave, being a debased barbarian, will probably have either a human aection o loyalty, or a human aection or liberty. But the man we see every day-- the worker in Mr. Gradgrind's actory, the little clerk in Mr. Gradgrind's oce--he is too mentally worried to believe in reedom. He is kept quiet with revolutionary literature. He is calmed and keptin his place by a constant succession o wild philosophies. He is a Marxian one day, a Nietzscheite the next day, a Superman (probably) the next day; and a slave every day. Te only thing that remains afer all the philosophies is the actory. Te only man who gains by all the philosophies is Gradgrind. It would be worth his while to keep his commercial helotry supplied with sceptical literature. And now I come to think o it, o course, Gradgrind is amous or giving libraries. He shows his sense. All modern books are on his side. As long as the vision o heaven is always changing, the vision o earth will be exactly the same. No ideal will remain long enough to be realized, or even partly realized. Te modern young man will never change his environment; or he will always change his mind. Tis, thereore, is our rst requirement about the ideal towards which progress is directed; it must be xed. Whistler used to make many rapid studies o a sitter; it did not matter i he tore up twenty portraits. But it would matter i he looked up twenty times, and each time saw a newperson sitting placidly or his portrait. So it does not matter (comparatively speaking) how ofen humanity ails to imitate its ideal; or then all its old ailures are ruitul. But it does rightully matter how ofen humanity changes its ideal; or then all its old ailures are ruitless. Te question thereore becomes this: How can we keep the artist discontentedwith his pictures while preventing him rom being vitally discontented with hisart? How can we make a man always dissatised with his work, yet always satised with working? How can we make sure that the portrait painter will throw the portrait out o window instead o taking the natural and more human course o throwing the sitter out o window?
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A strict rule is not only necessary or ruling; it is also necessary or rebelling. Tis xed and amiliar ideal is necessary to any sort o revolution. Man will sometimes act slowly upon new ideas; but he will only act swifly upon old ideas. I I am merely to oat or ade or evolve, it may be towards something i I am tooriot, it must be or respectable. Tis isanarchic; the wholebut weakness certain schools osomething progress and moral evolution. Tey suggest that there has been a slow movement towards morality, with an imperceptible ethical change in every year or at every instant. Tere is only one great disadvantage inthis theory. It talks o a slow movement towards justice; but it does not permit a swif movement. A man is not allowed to leap up anddeclare a certain state o things to be intrinsically intolerable. o make the matter clear, it is better to take a specic example. Certain o the idealistic vegetarians, such as Mr. Salt, say that the time has now come or eating no meat; by implication they assume that at one time it was right to eat meat, and they suggest i(n words that could be quoted) that some day it may be wrong to eat milk and eggs. I do not discuss here the question o what is justice to animals. I only say that whatever is justice ought, under given conditions, to be prompt justice. I an animal is wronged, we ought to be able to rush to his rescue. But how can we rush i we are, perhaps, in advance o our time? How can we rush to catch a train which may not arrive or a ew centuries? How can I denounce a man or skinning cats, i he is only now what I may possibly become in drinking a glass o milk? A splendid and insane Russian sect ran about taking all the cattle out o all the carts. How can I pluck up courage to take the horse out o my hansom-cab, when I do not know whether my evolutionary watch is only a little ast or the cabman's a little slow? Suppose I say to a sweater, "Slavery suited one stage o evolution." And suppose he answers, "And sweating suits this stage o evolution." How can I answer i there is no eternal test? I sweaters can be behind the current morality, why should not philanthropists be in ront o t? i What on earth is the current morality, except in its literal sense--the morality that is always running away? Tus we may say that a permanent ideal is as neces sary to the innovator as to the conservative; it is necessary whether we wish the king's orders to be promptly executed or whether we only wish the king to be promptly executed. Te guillotine has many sins, but to do it justice there is nothing evolutionary about it. Te avourite evolutionary argument nds its
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best answer in the axe. Te Evolutionist says, "Where do you draw the line?" the Revolutionist answers, "I draw it HERE: exactly between your head and body." Tere must at any given moment be an abstract right and wrong i any blow is to be struck; there must be something eternal i there is be anything Tereore or as all they intelligible purposes, ortoaltering thingssudden. or or keeping things are, orhuman ounding a system or ever, as in China, or or altering it every month as in the early French Revolution, it is equally necessary that the vision should be a xed vision. Tis is our rst requirement. When I had written this down, I elt once again the presence o something else in the discussion: as a man hears a church bell above the sound o the street. Something seemed to be saying, "My ideal atleast is xed; or it was xed beore the oundations o the world. My vision o perection assuredly cannot be altered; or it is called Eden. You may alter the place to which you are going; but you cannot alter the place rom which you have come. o the orthodox there must always be a case orrevolution; or in the hearts o men God has been put under the eet o Satan. In the upper world hell once rebelled against heaven. But in this world heaven is rebelling against hell. For the orthodox there can always be a revolution; or a revolution is a restoration. At any instant you may strike a blow or the perection which noman has seen since Adam. No unchanging custom, no changing evolution can make the original good any thing but good. Man may have had concubines as long as cows have had horns: still they are not a part o him i they are sinul. Men may have been under oppression ever since sh were under water; still they ought not to be, i oppression is sinul. Te chain may seem as natural to the slave, or the paint to the harlot, as does the plume to the bird or the burrow to the ox; still they are not, i they are sinul. I lif my prehistoric legend to dey all your history. Your vision is not merely a xture: it is a act." I paused to note the new coincidence o Christianity: but I passed on. I passed on to the next ideal o progress. Some people (as we have said) seem to necessity believe inoanany automatic and impersonal progress in the nature o things. But it is clear that no political activity can be encouraged by saying that progress is natural and inevitable; that is not a reason or being active, but rather a reason or being lazy. I we are bound to improve, we need not trouble to improve. Te pure doctrine o progress
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is the best o all reasons or not being a progressive. But it is to none o these obvious comments that I wish primarily to call attention. Te only arresting point is this: that i we suppose improvement to be natural, it must be airly simple. Te world might conceivably be working towards one consummation, but hardly towards any particular arrangement o many qualities. o take our original simile: Nature by hersel may be growing more blue; that is, a process so simple that it might be impersonal. But Nature cannot be making a careul picture made o many picked colours, unless Natureis personal. I the end othe world were mere darkness or mere light it might come as slowly and inevitably as dusk or dawn. But i the end o the world is to be a piece o elaborate and artistic chiaroscuro, then there must bedesign in it, either humanor divine. Te world, through mere time, might grow black like an old picture, or white like an old coat; but i it is turned into a particular piece o black and white art--then there is an artist. I the distinction be not evident, I give an ordinary instance. We constantly hear a particularly cosmic creed rom the modern humanitarians; I use the word humanitarian in the ordinary sense, as meaning one who upholds the claims oall creatures against those o humanity. Tey suggest that through the ageswe have been growing more and more humane, that is to say, that one afer another, groups or sections o beings, slaves, children, women,Tey cows,say orthat whatwenot, have been itgradually admitted to didn't); mercy or justice. once thought right to eat men (we butto I am not here concerned with their history, which is highly unhistorical. As a act, anthropophagy is certainly a decadent thing, not a primitive one. It is much more likely that modern men will eat human esh out o aectation than that primitive man ever ate it out o ignorance. I am here only ollowing the outlines o their argument, which consists in maintaining that man has been progressively more lenient, rst to citizens, then to slaves, then to animals, and then (presumably) to plants. I think it wrong to sit on a man. Soon, think wrong to sit on a horse. Eventually (I suppose) I shall thinkI shall it wrong to itsit ona chair. Tat is the drive o the argument. And or this argument it can be said that it is possible to talk o it in terms o evolution or inevitable progress. A perpetual tendency to touch ewer and ewer things might--one eels, eba mere brute unconscious tendency, like that o a species to produce ewer and ewer children. Tis
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drif may be really evolutionary, because it is stupid. Darwinism can be used to back up two mad moralities, but it cannot be used to back up a single sane one. Te kinship and competition o all living creatures can be used as a reason or being insanely cruelor insanely sentimental; but not ora healthy loveo animals. On the evolutionary basis you may be inhumane, or you may beabsurdly humane; but you cannot be human. Tat you and a tiger are one may be a reason or being tender to a tiger. Or it may be a reason or being as cruel as the tiger. It is one way to train the tiger to imitate you, itis a shorter way to imitate the tiger. But in neither case does evolution tell you how to treat a tiger reasonably, that is, to admire his stripes while avoiding his claws. I you want to treat a tiger reasonably, you must go back to the garden o Eden. For the obstinate reminder continued to recur: only the supernatural has taken a sane view o Nature. Te essence o all pantheism, evolutionism, and modern cosmicreligion isreally in thisproposition: that Nature is our mother. Unortunately, i you regard N ature as a mother,you discover that she is a step-mother. Te main point o Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister. We can be proud o her beauty, since we have the same ather; but she has no authority over us; we have to admire, but not to imitate. Tis gives to the typically Christian pleasure in this earth a strange touch o lightness that is almost rivolity. Nature was a solemn to the worshippers o Isis and was a solemn mothermother to Wordsworth or to Emerson. ButCybele. NatureNature is not solemn to Francis o Assisi or toGeorge Herbert. o St. Francis, Nature is a sister, and even a younger sister: a little, dancing sister,to be laughed at as well as loved. Tis, however, is hardly our main point at present; I have admitted it only in order to show how constantly, and as it were accidentally, the key would t the smallest doors. Our main point is here, that i there be a mere trend o impersonal improvement in Nature, it must presumably be a simple trend towards some simple triumph. One can imagine thatsome automatic tendency in biology might work or giving us longer and longer noses. But the question is, do we want to have longer and longer noses? I ancy not; I believe that we most o us want to say to our noses, "thus ar, and no arther; and here shall thy proud point be stayed:" we require a nose o such length as may ensure an interesting ace. But we cannot imagine
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a mere biological trend towards producing interesting aces; because an interesting ace is one particular arrangement o eyes, nose, and mouth, in a most complex relation to each other. Proportion cannot be a drif: it is either an accident or a design. So with the ideal o human morality and its relation thegoing humanitarians thetoanti-hum anitarians. is conceivable that wetoare more andand more keep our hands oItthings: not to drive horses; not to pick owers. We may eventually be bound not to disturb a man's mind even by argument; not to disturb the sleep o birds even by coughing. Te ultimate apotheosis would appear tobe that o a man sitting quite still, nor daring to stir or ear o disturbing a y, nor to eat or ear o incommoding a microbe. o so crude a consummation as that we might perhaps unconsciously drif. But do we want so crude a consummation? Similarly, we might unconsciously evolve along the opposite or Nietzschian line o development--superman crushing superman in one tower o tyrants until the universe is smashed up or un. But do we want the universe smashed up orun? Is it not quite clear that what we really hope or is one particular management and proposition o these two things; a certain amount o restraint and respect, a certain amount o energy and mastery? I our lie is ever really as beautiul as a airy-tale, we shall have to remember that all the beauty o a airy-tale lies in this: that the prince has a wonder which just stops short o being ear . I he is araid o the giant, there is an end o him; but also i he is not astonished at the giant, there is an end o the airy-tale. Te whole point depends upon his being at once humble enough to wonder, and haughty enough to dey. So our attitude to the giant o the world must not merely be increasing delicacy or increasing contempt: it must be one particular proportion o the two--which is exactly right. We must have in us enough reverence or all things outside us to make us tread earully on the grass. We must also have enough disdain or all things outside us, to make us, on due occasion, spit at the stars. Yet these two things (i we are to be good or happy) must be combined, not in any combination, but in one particular combination. Te perect happiness o men on the earth (i it ever comes) will not be a at and solid thing, like the satisaction o animals. It will be an exact and perilous balance; like that oa desperate romance. Man must have just enough aith in himsel to have adventures, and just enough doubt o himsel to enjoy them. Tis, then, is our second requirement orthe ideal o progress. First, it
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must be xed; second, it must be com posite. It must not (i it is to satisy our souls) be the mere victory o some one thing swallowing up everything else, love or pride or peace or adventure; it must be a denite picture composed o these elements in their best proportion and relation. I am not concerned at this moment to denyreserved that some good culmination the constitution o things, or such the human race. I only may pointbe, outbythat i this composite happiness is xed or us it must be xed by some mind; or only a mind can place the exact proportions o a composite happiness. I the beatication o the world is a mere work o nature, then it must be as simple as the reezing o the world,or the burning up o the world. But i the beatication o the world is not a work o nature but a work o art, then it involves an artist. And here again my contemplation was cloven by the ancient voice which said, "I could have told you all this a long time ago. I there is any certain progress it can only be my kind o progress, the progress towards a complete city o virtues and dominations where righteousness and peace contrive to kiss each other. An impersonal orce might be leading you to a wilderness o perect atness or a peak o perect height. But only a personal God can possibly be leading you (i, indeed, you are being led) to a city with just streets and architectural proportions, a city in which each o you can contribute exactly the right amount o your own colour to the many coloured coat o Joseph." wice again, thereore, Christianity had come in withthe exact answer that I required. I had said, "Te ideal must be xed," and the Church had answered, "Mine is literally xed, or it existed beore anything else." I said secondly, "It must be artistically combined, like a picture"; and the Church answered, "Mine is quite literally a picture, o r I know who paintedit." Ten I went on to the third thing, which, as it seemed to me, was needed or an Utopia or goal o progress. And o all the three it is innitely the hardest to express. Perhaps it might be put thus: that we need watchulness even in Utopia, lest we all rom Utopia as we ell rom Eden. have remarked that one oered or being a progressive that We things naturally tend to gro w reason better. But the only real reason or beingis a progressive is that things naturally tendto grow worse. Te corruption in things is not only the best argument or being progressive; it is also the only argument against being conservative. Te conservative theory would really be quite sweeping and unanswerable i it were not or this one act.
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But all conservatism is based upon the idea that i you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. I you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent o change. I you leave a white post alone itwill soon be a black post. I you particularly want it to be white you must be always painting it again; that is, you must always revolution. Briey, i you want the old white post yoube must havehaving a new awhite post. But this which is true even o inanimate things is in a quite special and terrible sense true o all human things. An almost unnatural vigilance is really required o the citizen because o the horrible rapidity with which human institutions grow old. It is the custom in passing romance and journalism to talk o men suering under old tyrannies. But, as a act, men have almost always suered under new tyrannies; under tyrannies that had been public liberties hardly twenty years beore. Tus England went mad with joy over the patriotic monarchy o Elizabeth; and then (almost immediately aferwards) went mad with rage in the trap o the tyranny o Charles the First. So, again, in France the monarchy became intolerable, not just afer it had been tolerated, but just afer it had been adored. Te son o Louis the well-beloved was Louis the guillotined. So in the same way in England in the nineteenth century the Radical manuacturer was entirely trusted as a mere tribune o the people, until suddenly we heard the cry o the Socialist that he was a tyrant eating the people like bread. So again, we have almost up to the last instant trusted the newspapers as organs o public opinion. Just recently some ous have seen (not slowly, but with a start) that they are obviously nothing o the kind. Tey are, by the nature o the case, the hobbies o a ew rich men. We have not any need to rebel against antiquity; we have to rebel against novelty. It is the new rulers, the capitalist or the editor, who really hold up the modern world. Tere is no ear that amodern king will attemptto override the constitution; it is more likely that he will ignore the constitution and work behind its back; he will take no advantage o his kingly power; it is more likely that he will take advantage o his kingly powerlessness, o the act that he is ree rom criticism and publicity. For the king is the most private person o our time. It will not be necessary or any one to ght again against the proposal o a censorship o the press. We do not need a censorship o the press. We have a censorship by the press. Tis startling swifness with which popular systems turn oppressive is
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the third act or which we shall ask our perect theory o progress to allow. It must always be on the look out or every privilege being abused, or every working right becoming a wrong. In this matter I am entirely on the side o the revolutionists. Tey are really right to be always suspecting human institutions; are right not to their trust o in the princes norbecomes in any child o man. Tethey chiefain chosen toput be the riend people the enemy o the people; the newspaper started to tell the truth now exists to prevent the truth being told. Here, I say, I elt that I was really at last on the side o the revolutionary. And then I caught my breath again: or I remembered that I was once again on the side o the orthodox. Christianity spoke again and said: "I have always maintained thatmen were naturally backsliders; that human virtue tended o its own nature to rust or to rot; I have always said that human beings as such go wrong, especially happy human beings, especially proud and prosperous human beings. Tis eternal revolution, this suspicion sustained through centuries, you (being a vague modern) call the doctrine o progress. I you were a philosopher you would call it, as I do, the doctrine o srcinal sin.You may call it the cosmic advance as much as you like; I call it what it is--the Fall." I have spoken o orthodoxy coming in like a sword; here I coness it came in like a battle-axe. For really (when I came to think o it) Christianity is the only thing lef that has any real right to question the power o the well-nurtured or the well-bred. I have listened conditions ofen enough to Socialists, or even to democrats, saying that the physical o the poor must o necessity make them mentally and morally degraded. I have listened to scientic men (and there are still scientic men not opposed to democracy) saying that i we give the poor healthier conditions vice and wrong will disappear. I have listened to them with a horrible attention, with a hideous ascination. For it was like watching a man energetically sawing rom the tree the branch he is sitting on. I these happy democrats could prove their case, they would strike democracy dead. I the poor are thus utterly demoralized, it may ormay not be practical toman raisewith them. But it is certainly quite practical to disranchise them. I the a bad bedroom cannot give a good vote, then the rst and swifest deduction is that he shall give no vote. Te governing class maynot unreasonably say: "It may take us some time to reorm his bedroom. But i he is the brute you say, it will take him very little time to ruin our country. Tereore we
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will take your hint and notgive him the chance." It lls me with horrible amusement to observe the way in which the earnest Socialist industriously lays the oundation o all aristocracy, expatiating blandly upon the evident untness o the poor to rule. It is like listening to somebody at an evening party or entering without dress, andoexplaining he hadapologising recently been intoxicated, had evening a personal habit taking othat his clothes in the street, and had, moreover, only just changed rom prison uniorm. At any moment, one eels, the host might say that really, i it was as bad as that, he need not come in at all. So it is when the ordinary Socialist, with a beaming ace, proves that the poor, afer their smashing experiences, cannot be really trustworthy. At any moment the rich may say, "Very well, then, we won't trust them," and bang the door in his ace. On the basis o Mr. Blatchord's view o heredity and environment, the case or the aristocracy is quite overwhelming. I clean homes and clean air make clean souls, why not give the power (or the present at any rate) to those who undoubtedly have the clean air? I better conditions will make the poor more t to govern themselves, why should not better conditions already make the rich moret to govern them? On the ordinary environment argument the matter is airly maniest. Te comortable class must be merely our vanguard in Utopia. Is there any answer to the proposition that those who have had the best opportunities will probably be our best guides? Is there any answer to the argument that those who have breathed clean air had better decide or those who have breathed oul? As ar as I know, there is only one answer, and that answer is Christianity. Only the Christian Church can oer any rational objection to a complete condence in the rich. For she has maintained rom the beginning that the danger was not in man's environment, but in man. Further, she has maintained that i we come to talk o a dangerous environment, the most dangerous environment o all is the commodious environment. I know that the most modern manuacture has been really occupied in trying to produce an abnormally large needle. I know that the most recent biologists have been chiey anxious to discover a very small camel. But i we diminish the camel to his smallest, or open the eye o the needle to its largest--i, in short, we assume the words o Christ to have meant the very least that they could mean, His words must at the very least mean this--that rich men are not very likely to be morally trustworthy. Christianity even when watered down is hot enough to boil
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all modern society to rags. Te mere minimum o the Church would be a deadly ultimatum to the world. For the whole modern world is absolutely based on the assumption, not that the rich are necessary (which is tenable), but that the rich are trustworthy, which (or a Christian) is not tenable. Youaristocracies, will hear everlastingly, in all this discussions about newspapers, companies, or party politics, argument that the rich man cannot be bribed. Te act is, o course, that the rich man is bribed; he has been bribed already. Tat is why he is a rich man. Te whole case or Christianity is that a man who is dependent upon the luxuries o this lie is a corrupt man, spiritually corrupt, politically corrupt, nancially corrupt. Tere is one thing that Christ and all the Christian saints have said with a sort o savage monotony. Tey have said simply that to be rich isto be in peculiar danger o moral wreck. It is not demonstrably un-Christian to kill the rich asviolators odenable justice. It is not demonstrably un-Christian to crown the rich as convenient rulers o society. It is not certainly unChristian to rebel against the richor to submit to the rich. But it is quite certainly un-Christian to trust the rich, to regard the rich as more morally sae than the poor. A Christian may consistently say, "I respect that man's rank, although he takes bribes." But a Christian cannot say, as all modern men are saying at lunch and breakast, "a man o that rank would not take bribes." For it is a part o Christian dogma that any manin any rank may take bribes. It is a part o Christian dogma; it also happens by a curious coincidence that it is a part o obvious human history. When people say that a man "in that position" would be incorruptible, there is no need to bring Christianity into thediscussion. Was Lord Bacon a bootblack? Was the Duke o Marlborough a crossing sweeper? In the best Utopia, I must be prepared or the moral all o any man in any position at any moment; especially or my all rom my position at this moment. Much vague and sentimental journalism has been poured out to the eect that Christianity is akin to democracy, and most o it is scarcely strong or clear enough to reute the act that the two things have ofen quarrelled. Te real ground upon which Christianity and democracy are one is very much deeper. Te one specially and peculiarly un-Christian idea is the idea o Carlyle--the idea that the man should rule who eels that he can rule. Whatever else is Christian, this is heathen. I our aith comments on government at all, its comment must be this-- that the man should rule who does NO think that he can rule.
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Carlyle's hero may say, "I will be king"; but the Christian saint must say "Nolo episcopari." I the great paradox o Christianity means anything, it means this--that we must take the crown in our hands, and go hunting in dry places and dark corners o the earth until we nd the one man who eels himsel unt to wear . Carlyle wrong; wehave not crown got to crown the exceptional man itwho knowswas he quite can rule. Rather we must the much more exceptional man who knows he can't. Now, this is one o the two or three vital deences o working democracy. Te mere machinery o voting is not democracy, though at present it is not easy to eect any simpler democratic method. But even the machinery o voting is prooundly Christian in this practical sense-- that it is an attempt to get at the opinion o those who would be too modest to oer it. It is a mystical adventure; it is specially trusting those who do not trust themselves. Tat enigma is strictly peculiar to Christendom. Tere is nothing really humble about the abnegation o the Buddhist; the mild Hindoo is mild, but he is not meek. But there is something psychologically Christian about the idea o seeking or the opinion o the obscure rather than taking the obvious course o accepting the opinion o the prominent. o say that voting is particularly Christian may seem somewhat curious. o say that canvassing is Christian may seem quite crazy.But canvassing is very Christian in its primary idea. It is encouraging the humble; it is saying to the modest man, "Friend, go up higher." Or i there is someslight deect in canvassing, that is in its perect and rounded piety, it is only because it may possibly neglect to encourage the modesty o the canvasser. Aristocracy is not an institution: aristocracy is a sin; generally a very venial one. It is merely the drif or slide o men into a sort o natural pomposity and praise o the powerul, which is the most easy and obvious aair in the world. It is one o the hundred answers to the ugitive perversion o modern "orce" that the promptest and boldest agencies are also the most ragile or ull o sensibility. Te swifest things arethe sofest things. A bird is active, because a bird is sof. A stone is helpless, because a stone is hard. Te stone must by its own nature go downwards, because hardness is weakness. Te bird can o its nature go upwards, because ragility is orce. In perect orce there is a kind o rivolity, an airiness that can maintain itsel in the air. Modern investigators o miraculous history have solemnly admitted
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that a characteristic o the great saints is their power o "levitation." Tey might go urther; a characteristic o the great saints is their power o levity. Angels can y because they can take themselves lightly. Tis has been always the instinct o Christendom, and especially the instinct o Christian art. Fra Angelico represented all most his angels, only as birds,Remember butalmost how as butteries. Remember howthe earnestnot mediaeval art was ull o light and uttering draperies, o quick and capering eet. It was the one thing that the modern Pre-raphaelites could not imitate in the real Pre-raphaelites. Burne-Jones could never recover the deep levity o the Middle Ages. In the old Christian pictures the sky over every gure is like a blue or gold parachute. Every gure seems ready to y up and oat about in the heavens. Te tattered cloak o the beggar will bear him up like the rayed plumes o the angels. But the kings in their heavy gold and the proud in their robes o purple will all o their nature sink downwards, or pride cannot rise to levity orlevitation. Pride is the downwarddrag o all things into an easy solemnity. One "settles down" into a sort o selsh seriousness; but one has to rise to a gay sel-orgetulness. A man "alls" into a brown study; he reaches up ata blue sky. Seriousness is not a virtue. It would be a heresy, but a much more sensible heresy, to say that seriousness is a vice. It is really a natural trend or lapse into taking one's sel gravely, because it is the easiest thing to do. It is much easier to write a good IMES leading article than a good joke in PUNCH. For solemnity ows out o men naturally; but laughter is a leap. It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light. Satan ell by the orce o gravity. Now, it is the peculiar honour o Europe since it has been Christian that while it has had aristocracy it has always at the back o its heart treated aristocracy asa weakness-- generally as a weakness that must be allowed or. I any one wishes to appreciate this point, let him go outside Christianity into some other philosophical atmosphere. Let him, or instance, compare the classes o Europe with thecastes o India. Tere aristocracy is ar more awul, ar morevalues; intellectual. It is seriously elt than that the o classesbecause is a scaleitois spiritual that the baker is better thescale butcher in an invisible and sacred sense. But no Christianity, not even the most ignorant or perverse, ever suggested that a baronet was better than a butch er in that sacred sense. No Christianity, however ignorant or extravagant, ever suggested that a duke would not be damned. In pagan society there
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may have been (I do not know) some such serious division between the ree man and the slave. But in Christian society we have always thought the gentleman a sort o joke, though I admit that in some great crusades and councils he earned the right to be called a practical joke. But we in Europe never really and at the root o our souls took aristocracy seriously. It is only an occasional non-European alien (such as Dr. Oscar Levy, the only intelligent Nietzscheite) who can even manage or a moment to take aristocracy seriously. It may be a mere patriotic bias, though I do not think so, but it seems to me that the English aristocracy is not only the type, but is the crown and ower o all actual aristocracies; it has all the oligarchical virtues as well as all the deects. It is casual, it is kind, it is courageous in obvious matters; but it has one great merit that overlaps even these. Te great and very obvious merit o the English aristocracy is that nobody could possibly take it seriously. In short, I had spelled out slowly, as usual, the need or an equal law in Utopia; and, as usual, I ound that Christianity had been there beore me. Te whole history o my Utopia has the same amusing sadness. I was always rushing out o my architectural study with plans or a new turret only to nd it sitting up there in the sunlight, shining,and a thousand years old. For me, in the ancient and partly in the modern sense, God answered the prayer, "Prevent us, O Lord, in all our doings." Without vanity, I really think was a moment when couldbut have invented the marriage (as anthere institution) out o my ownIhead; I discovered, with a sigh, vow that it had been invented already. But, since it would be toolong a business to show how, act by act and inch by inch, my own conception o Utopia was only answered in the New Jerusalem, I will take this one case o the matter o marriage as indicating the converging drif, I may say the converging crash o all the rest. When the ordinary opponents o Socialism talk about impossibilities and alterations in human nature they always miss an important distinction. In modern ideal conceptions o society there are some desires that are possibly not attainable: but there are some desires that are not desirable. Tat all men should live in equally beautiul houses is a dream that may or may not be attained. But that all men should live in the same beautiul house is not a dream at all; it is a nightmare. Tat a man should love all old women is an ideal that may not be attainable. But that a man should regard all old
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women exactly as he regards his mother is not only an unattainable ideal, but an ideal which ought not to be attained. I do not know i the reader agrees with me in these examples; but I will add the example which has always aected me most. I could never conceive or tolerate any Utopia which not leave to me the liberty or which I chiey care, the liberty to binddid mysel. Complete anarchy would not merely make it impossible to have any discipline or delity; it would also make it impossible to have any un. o take an obvious instance, it would not be worth while to bet i a bet were not binding. Te dissolution o all contracts would not only ruin morality but spoil sport. Now betting and such sports are only the stunted and twisted shapes o the srcinal instinct o man or adventure and romance, o which much has been said in these pages. And the perils, rewards, punishments, and ullments o an adventure must be real, or the adventure is only ashifing and heartless nightmare. I I bet I must be made to pay, or there is no poetry in betting. I I challenge I must be made to ght, or there is no poetry in challenging. I I vow to be aithul I must be cursed when I am unaithul, or there is noun in vowing. You could not even make a airy tale rom the experiences o a man who, when he was swallowed by a whale, might nd himsel at the top o the Eiel ower, or when he was turned into a rog might begin to behave like a amingo. For the purpose even o the wildest romance results must be real; results must be irrevocable. Christian marriage is the great example o a real and irrevocable result; and that is why it is the chie subject and centre o all our romantic writing. And this is my last instance o the things that I should ask, and ask imperatively, o any social paradise; I should ask to be kept to my bargain, to have my oaths and engagements taken seriously; I should ask Utopia to avenge my honour on mysel. All my modern Utopian riendslook at each other ratherdoubtully, or their ultimate hope is the dissolution o all special ties. But again I seem to hear, like a kind o echo, an answer rom beyond the world. "You will have real obligations, and thereore real adventures when you get to my Utopia. But the hardest obligation and the steepest adventure is to get there."
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t is customary to complain o the bustle and strenuousness o our epoch. But in truth the chie mark o our epoch is a proound laziness and atigue; and the act is that the real laziness is the cause o the apparent bustle. ake one quite external case; the streets are noisywith taxicabs and motorcars; but thisis not due to human activity but to human repose. Tere would be less bustle i there were more activity, i people were simply walking about. Our world would be more silent i it were more strenuous. And this which is true o theapparent physical bustle is true also o the apparent bustle o the intellect. Most o the machinery o modern language is labour-saving machinery; and it saves mental labour very much more than it ought. Scientic phrases are used like scientic wheels and piston-rods to make swifer and smoother yet the path o the comortable. Long words go rattling by us like long railway trains. We know they are carrying thousands who are too tired or too indolent to walk and think or themselves. It is a good exercise to try or once in a way to express any opinion one holds in words o one syllable. I you say "Te social utility o the indeterminate sentence is recognized by all criminologists as a partview o our sociological evolution towards a more humane and scientic o punishment," you can go on talking like that or hours with hardly a movement o the gray matter inside your skull. But i you begin "I wish Jones to go to gaol and Brown to say when Jones shall come out," you will discover, with a thrill o horror, that you are obliged to think. Te long words are not the hard words, it is the
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short words that are hard. Tere is much more metaphysical subtlety in the word "damn" than in the word "degeneration." But these long comortable words that save modern people the toilo reasoning have oneparticular aspect in which they are especially ruinous and conusing. Tis diculty occurs when the same long word is used in dierent connections to mean quite dierent things. Tus, to take a well-known instance, the word "idealist" has one meaning as a piece o philosophy and quite another as a piece o moral rhetoric. In the same way the scientic materialists have had just reason to complain o people mixing up "materialist" as a term o cosmology with "materialist" as a moral taunt. So, to take a cheaper instance, the man who hates "progressives" in London always calls himsel a "progressive" in South Arica. A conusion quite as unmeaning as this has arisen in connection with the word "liberal" as applied to religion and as applied to politics and society. It is ofen suggested that all Liberals ought tobe reethinkers, because they ought to loveeverything that is ree. You might just as well say that all idealists ought to be High Churchmen, because they ought to love everything that is high. You might as well say that Low Churchmen ought to like Low Mass, or that Broad Churchmen ought to like broad jokes. Te thing is a mere accident o words. In actual modern Europe a reethinker does not mean a man who thinks or himsel. It means a man who, having orsrcin himsel, has come tothe oneimpossibility particular class o conclusions, thethought material o phenomena, o miracles, the improbability o personal immortality and so on. And none o these ideas are particularly liberal. Nay, indeed almost all these ideas are denitely illiberal, as it is the purpose o this chapter to show. In the ew ollowing pages I propose to point out as rapidly as possible that on every single one o the matters most strongly insisted on by liberalisers o theology their eect upon social practic e would be denitely illiberal. Almost every contemporary proposal to bring reedom into the church is simply a proposal to bring tyranny into the world. For reeing the church now does not even mean reeing it in all directions. It means reeing that peculiar set o dogmas loosely called scientic, dogmas o monism, o pantheism, or o Arianism, or o necessity. And every one o these (and we will take them one by one) can be shown to be the natural ally o oppression. In act, it is a remarkable circumstance (indeed not
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so very remarkable when one comes to think o it) that most things are the allies o oppression. Tere is only one thing that can never go past a certain point in its alliance with oppression--and that is orthodoxy. I may, it is true, twist orthodoxy so as partly to justiy a tyrant. But I can easily make up a German philosophy to justiy him entirely. Now let us take in order the innovations that are the notes o the new theology or the modernist church. We concluded the last chapter with the discovery o one o them. Te very doctrine which is called the most old-ashioned was ound to be the only saeguard o the new democracies o the earth. Te doctrine seemingly most unpopular was ound to be the only strength o the people. In short, we ound that the only logical negation o oligarchy was in the armation o srcinal sin. So it is, I maintain, in all the other cases. I take the most obvious instance rst, the case o miracles. For some extraordinary reason, there is a xed notion that it is more liberal to disbelieve in miracles than to believe in them. Why, I cannot imagine, nor can anybody tell me. For some inconceivable cause a "broad" or "liberal" clergyman always means a man who wishes at least to diminish the number o miracles; it never means a man who wishes to increase that number. It always means a man who is ree to disbelieve that Christ came out o His grave; it never means a man who is ree to believe ht at his own auntthe came out priest o her cannot grave. Itadmit is common nd trouble parish because parish that St.toPeter walked in onawater; yet how rarely do we nd trouble in a parish because the clergyman says that his ather walked on the Serpentine? And this is not because (as the swif secularist debater would immediately retort) miracles cannot be believed in our experience. It is not because "miracles do not happen," as in the dogma which Matthew Arnold recited with simple aith. More supernatural things are ALLEGED to have happened in our time than would have been possible ei ghty years ago. Men o science believe in such marvels much more thanand they did:are thealways most being perplexing, andin even horrible, prodigies o mind spirit unveiled modern psychology. Tings that the old science at least would rankly have rejected as miracles are hourly being asserted by the new science. Te only thing which is still old-ashioned enough to reject miracles is the New Teology. But in truth this notion that it is "ree" to deny miracles
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has nothing to do with the evidence or or against them. It is a lieless verbal prejudice o which the srcinal lie and beginning was not in the reedom o thought, butsimply in the dogma o materialism. Te man o the nineteenth century did not disbelieve in the Resurrection because his liberal alloweddid him doubthim it. to Hebelieve disbelieved in it because his veryChristianity strict materialism nottoallow it.ennyson, a very typical nineteenth century man, uttered one o the instinctive truisms o his contemporaries when he said that there was aith in their honest doubt. Tere was indeed. Tose words have a proound and even a horrible truth. In their doubt o miracles there was a aith in a xed and godless ate; a deep and sincere aith in the incurable routine o the cosmos. Te doubts o the agnostic were only the dogmas o the monist. O the act and evidence o the supernatural I will speak aferwards. Here we are only concerned with this clear point; that in so ar as the liberal idea o reedom can be said to be on either side in the discussion about miracles, it is obviously on the side o miracles. Reorm or (in the only tolerable sense) progress means simply the gradual control o matter by mind. A miracle simply means the swif control o matter by mind. I you wish to eed the people, you may think that eeding them miraculously in the wilderness is impossible--but you cannot think it illiberal. I you really want poor children to go to the seaside, you cannot think it illiberal that they should go there on ying dragons; you can only think it unlikely. A holiday, like Liberalism, only means the liberty o man. A miracle only means the liberty o God. You may conscientiously deny either o them, but you cannot call your denial a triumph o the liberal idea. Te Catholic Church believed that man and God both had a sort o spiritual reedom. Calvinism took away the reedom rom man, but lef it to God. Scientic materialism binds the Creator Himsel; it chains up God as the Apocalypse chained the devil. It leaves nothing ree in the universe. And those who assist this process are called the "liberal theologians." I say, is theinlightest andomost evident that Tis, there as is something the doubt miracles akin case. to libeTe ralityassumption or reorm is literally the opposite o the truth. I a man cannot believe in miracles there is an end o the matter; he is not particularly liberal, but he is perectly honourable and logical, which are much better things. But i he can believe in miracles, he is certainly the more liberal or doing so; because
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they mean rst, the reedom o the soul, and secondly, its control over the tyranny o circumstance. Sometimes this truth is ignored in a singularly naive way, even by the ablest men. For instance, Mr. Bernard Shaw speaks with hearty old-ashioned contempt or the idea o miracles, as i hey t were ascious sort o breach o aith thethe part o nature: strangely unconthat miracles are on only nal owers he o seems his own avourite tree, the doctrine o the omnipotence o will. Just in the same way he calls the desire or immortality a paltry selshness, orgetting that he has just called the desire or lie a healthy and heroic selshness. How can it be noble to wish to make one's lie innite and yet mean to wish to make it immortal? No, i it is desirable that man should triumph over the cruelty o nature or custom, then miracles are certainly desirable; we will discuss aferwards whether they are possible. But I must pass on to the larger cases o this curious error; the notion that the "liberalising" o religion in some way helps the liberation o the world. Te second example o itcan be ound in the question o pantheism-or rather o a certain modern attitude which isofen called immanentism, and which ofen is Buddhism. But this is so much more dicult a matter that I must approach it with rather more preparation. Te things said most condently by advanced persons to crowded audiences are generally those quite opposite to the act; it is actually our truisms thatagain are untrue. Here is a case. Tere is a phrase o acile ity uttered and again at ethical societies and parliaments o liberalreligion: "the religions o the earth dier in rites and orms, but they are the same in what they teach." It is alse; it is the opposite o the act. Te religions o the earth do not greatly dier in rites and orms; they do greatly dier in what they teach. It is as i a man were to say, "Do not be misled by the act that the CHURCH IMES and the FREEHINKER look utterly dierent, that one is painted on vellum and the other carved on marble, that one is triangular and the other hectagonal; read them and you will see that they say the in same truth is,say o course, that theyAn areatheist alike instockbroker everything except the thing." act thatTe they don't the same thing. in Surbiton looks exactly like a Swedenborgian stockbroker in Wimbledon. You may walk round and round them and subject them to the most personal and oensive study without seeing anything Swedenborgian in the hat or anything particularly godless in the umbrella. It is exactly in
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their souls that they are divided. So the truth is that the diculty o all the creeds o the earth is not as alleged in this cheap maxim: that they agree in meaning, but dier inmachinery. It is exactly the opposite. Tey agree in machinery; almost every great religion on earth works with the same external methods, priests, altars, sworn brotherhoods, special easts. Teywith agree in the scriptures, mode o teaching; what they dier about is the thing to be taught. Pagan optimists and Eastern pessimists would both have temples, just asLiberals and ories would both have newspapers. Creeds that exist to destroy each other both have scriptures, just as armies that exist to destroy each other both have guns. Te great example o this alleged identity o all human religions is the alleged spiritual identity o Buddhism and Christianity. Tose who adopt this theory generally avoid the ethics o most other creeds, except, indeed, Conucianism, which they like because it is not a creed. But they are cautious in their praises o Mahommedanism, generally conning themselves to imposing its morality only upon the rereshment o the lower classes. Tey seldom suggest the Mahommedan view o marriage (or which there is a great deal to be said), and towards Tugs and etish worshippers their attitude may even be called cold. But in the case o the great religion o Gautama they eel sincerely a similarity. Students o popular science, like Mr. Blatchord, are always insisting that and Buddhism are veryitmuch alike, Buddhism. Tis Christianity is generally believed, and I believed mysel untilespecially I read a book giving the reasons or it. Te reasons were o two kinds: resemblances thatmeant nothing because they were common to all humanity, and resemblances which were not resemblances at all. Te author solemnly explained that the two creeds were alike in things in which all creeds are alike, or else he described them as alike in some point in which they are quite obviously dierent. Tus, as a case o the rst class, he said that both Christ and Buddha were called by the divine voice coming out o the sky, as i you would expecturged the divine voicetwo to com e outteachers, o the coal-cellar. Or, again, was gravely that these Eastern by a singular coinci-it dence, both had to do with the washing o eet. You might as well say that it was a remarkable coincidence that they both had eet to wash. And the other class o similarities were those which simplywere not similar. Tus this reconciler o the two religions draws earnest attention to the act that at
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certain religious easts the robe o the Lama is rent in pieces out o respect, and the remnants highly valued. But this is the reverse o a resemblance, or the garments o Christ were not rent in pieces out o respect, but out o derision; and the remnants were not highly valued except or what they would in thethe ragtwo shops. It is rather likesword: alluding to the obvious connectionetch between ceremonies o the when it taps a man's shoulder, and when it cuts ohis head. It is not at all similar or the man. Tese scraps o puerile pedantry would indeed matter little i it were not also true that the alleged philosophical resemblances are also o these two kinds, either proving too much or not proving anything. Tat Buddhism approves o mercy or o sel-restraint is not to say that it is specially like Christianity; it is only to say that it is not utterly unlike all human existence. Buddhists disapprove in theory o cruelty or excess because all sane human beings disapprove in theory ocruelty or excess. But to say that Buddhism and Christianity give the same philosophy o these things is simply alse. All humanity does agree that we are in a net o sin. Most o humanity agrees that there is some way out. But as to what is the way out, I do not think that there are two institutions in the universe which contradict each other so atly as Buddhism and Christianity. Even when I thought, with most other well-inormed, though unscholarly, people, that Buddhism and Christianity were alike, there was one thing about them that always perplexed me; I mean the startling dierence in their type o religious art. I do not mean in its technical style o representation, but in the things that it was maniestly meant to represent. No two ideals could be more opposite than a Christian saint in a Gothic cathedral and a Buddhist saint in a Chinese temple. Te opposition exists at every point; but perhaps the shortest statement o it is that the Buddhist saint always has his eyes shut, while the Christian saint always has them very wide open. Te Buddhist saint has a sleek and harmonious body, but his eyes are heavy and sealed with sleep. Te mediaeval saint's body is wasted to its crazy bones, but his eyes are rightully alive. Tere cannot be any real community o spirit between orces that produced symbols so dierent as that. Granted that both images are extravagances, are perversions o the pure creed, it must be a real divergence which could produce such opposite extravagances. Te Buddhist is looking with a peculiar intentness inwards. Te Christian is staring with a rantic intentness outwards. I we ollow that clue steadily we shall nd some interesting things.
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A short time ago Mrs. Besant, in an interesting essay, announced that there was only one religion in the world, that all aiths were only versions or perversions o it, and that she was quite prepared to say what it was. According to Mrs. Besant this universal Church is simply the universal sel. It is the doctrine that between we are really person; that put there no real walls o individuality man all andone man. I I may it are so, she does not tell us to love our neighbours; she tells us to be our neighbours. Tat is Mrs. Besant's thoughtul and suggestive description o the religion in which all men must nd themselves in agreement. And I never heard o any suggestion in my lie with which I more violently disagree. I want to love my neighbour not because he is I, but precisely because he is not I. I want to adore the world, not as one likes a looking-glass, because it is one's sel, but as one loves a woman, because she is entirely dierent. I souls are separate love is possible. I souls are united love is obviously impossible. A man may be said loosely to love himsel, but he can hardly all in love with himsel, or, i he does, it must be a monotonous courtship. I the world is ull o real selves, they can be really unselsh selves. But upon Mrs. Besant's principle the whole cosmos is only one enormously selsh person. It is just here that Buddhism is on the side o modern pantheism and immanence. And it is just here that Christianity is on theside o humanity and liberty and love. Love desires personality; thereore love desires division. It is the instinct o Christianity to be glad that God has broken the universe into little pieces, because they are living pieces. It is her instinct to say "little children love one another" rather than to tell one large person to love himsel. Tis is the intellectual abyss between Buddhism and Christianity; that or the Buddhist or Teosophist personality is the all o man, or the Christian it is the purpose o God, the whole point o his cosmic idea. Te world-soul o the Teosophists asks man to love it only in order that man may throw himsel into it. But the divine centre o Christianity actually threw man out o it in order that he might love it. Te oriental deity is like a giant who should have lost his leg or hand and be always seeking to nd it; but the Christian power is like some giant who in a strange generosity should cut o his right hand, so that it might o its own accord shake hands with him. We come back to the same tireless note touching the nature o Christianity; all modern philosophies are chains which connect and etter; Christianity is a sword which separates and sets
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ree. No other philosophy makes God actually rejoice in the separation o the universe into living souls. But according to orthodox Christianity this separation between God and man is sacred, because this is eternal. Tat a man may love God it is necessary that there should be not only a God to loved,the but a man to love him. Allmelting-pot those vagueare theosophical minds orbe whom universe is an immense exactly the minds which shrink instinctively rom that earthquake saying o our Gospels, which declare that the Son o God came not with peace but with a sundering sword. Te saying rings entirely true even considered as what it obviously is; the statement that any man who preaches real love is bound to beget hate. It is as true o democratic raternity as a divine love; sham love ends in compromise and common philosophy; but real love has always ended in bloodshed. Yet there is another and yetmore awul truth behind the obvious meaning o this utterance o our Lord. According to Himsel the Son was a sword separating brother and brother that they should or an aeon hate each other. But the Father also was a sword, which in the black beginning separated brother and brother, so that they should love each other at last. Tis is the meaning o that almost insane happiness in the eyes o the mediaeval saint in the picture. Tis is the meaning o the sealed eyes o the superb Buddhist image. Te Christian saint is happy because he has verily been cut o rom the world; he is separate rom things and is staring at them in astonishment. But why should the Buddhist saint be astonished at things? --since there is really only one thing, and that being impersonal can hardly be astonished at itsel. Tere have been many pantheist poems suggesting wonder, but no really successul ones. Te pantheist cannot wonder, or he cannot praise God or praise anything as really distinct rom himsel. Our immediate business here,however, is with the eect o this Christian admiration (which strikes outwards, towards a deity distinct rom the worshipper) upon the general need or ethical activity and social reorm. And surely its eect is suciently obvious. Tere is no real possibility o getting out o pantheism, any special impulse to moral action. For pantheism implies in its nature that one thing is as good as another; whereas action implies in its nature that one thing is greatly preerable to another. Swinburne in the high summero his scepticism tried in vain to wrestle with this diculty. In "Songs beore Sunrise," written under the inspiration o Garibaldi and the revolt o tIaly he proclaimed the newer reli-
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gion and the purer God which shouldwither up all the priests o the world: "What doest thou now Looking Godward to cry I am I, thou art thou, I am low, thou art high, I am thou that thou seekest to nd him, nd thou but thysel, thou art I." O which the immediate and evident deduction is that tyrants are as much the sons o God as Garibaldis; and that King Bomba o Naples having, with the utmost success, "ound himsel" is identical with the ultimate good in all things. Te truth is that the western energy that dethrones tyrants has been directly due to the western theology that says "I am I, thou art thou." Te same spiritual separation which looked up and saw a good king in the universe looked up and sawa bad king in Naples. Te worshippers o Bomba's god dethroned Bomba. Te worshippers o Swinburne's god have covered Asia or centuries and have never dethroned atyrant. Te Indian saint may reasonably shut his eyes because he is looking at that which is I and Tou and We and Tey and It. It is a rational occupation: but it is not true in theory and not true in act that it helps the Indian to keep an eye on Lord Curzon. Tat external vigilance which has always been the mark o Christianity (the command that we should WACH and pray) has expressed itsel both in typical western orthodoxy and in typical western politics: but both depend on the idea o a divinity transcendent, dierent rom ourselves, a deity that disappears. Certainly the most sagacious creeds may suggest that we should pursue God into deeper and deeper rings o the labyrinth o our own ego. But only we o Christendom have said that we should hunt God like an eagle upon the mountains: and we have killed all monsters in the chase. Here again, thereore, we nd that in so ar as we value democracy and the sel-renewing energies o the west, we are much more likely to nd them in the old theology than the new. I we want reorm, we must adhere to orthodoxy: especially in this matter (so much disputed in the counsels o Mr. R.J.Campbell), the matter o insisting on the immanent or
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the transcendent deity. By insisting specially on the immanence o God we get introspection, sel-isolation, quietism, social indierence--ibet. By insisting specially on the transcendence o God we get wonder, curiosity, moral and political adventure, righteous indignation--Christendom. Insisting God is inside man,has mantranscended is always inside himsel. By insisting that God that transcends man, man himsel. I we take any other doctrine that has been called old-ashioned we shall nd the case the same. It is the same, or instance, in the deep matter o the rinity. Unitarians (a sect never to be mentioned without a special respect or their distinguished intellectual dignity and high intellectual honour) are ofen reormers by the accident that throws so many small sects into such an attitude. But there is nothing in the least liberal or akin to reorm in the substitution o pure monotheism or the rinity. Te complex God o the Athanasian Creed may be an enigma or the intellect; but He is ar less likely to gather the mystery and cruelty o a Sultan than the lonely god o Omaror Mahomet. Te god who is a mereawul unity is not only a king but an Eastern king. Te HEAR o humanity, especially o European humanity, is certainly much more satised by the strange hints and symbols that gather round the rinitarian idea, the image o a council at which mercy pleads as well as justice, the conception o a sort o liberty and variety existing even in the inmost chamber o the world. For Western religion has always elt keenly the idea "it is not well or man to be alone." Te social instinct asserted itsel everywhere as when the Eastern idea o hermits was practically expelled by the Western idea o monks. So even asceticism became brotherly; and the rappists were sociable even when they were silent. I this love o a living complexity be our test, it is certainly healthier to havethe rinitarian religion than the Unitarian. For to us rinitarians (i I may say it with reverence)--to us God Himsel is a society. It is indeed a athomless mystery o theology, and even i I were theologian enough to deal with it directly, it would not be relevant to do so here. Suce it to say here that this triple enigma is as comorting as wine and open as an English reside; that this thing that bewilders the intellect utterly quiets the heart: but out o the desert, rom the dry places and the dreadul suns, come the cruel children o the lonely God; the real Unitarians who with scimitar in hand have laid waste the world. For it is not well or God to be alone.
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Again, the same is true o that dicult matter o the danger o the soul, which has unsettled so many justminds. o hope or all souls is imperative; and it is quite tenable that their salvation is inevitable. It is tenable, but it is not specially avourable to activity or progress. Our ghting and creative ought rather to on or theclinging danger to oaeverybody, onsay the act that society every man is hanging by insist a thread precipice. o that all will be well anyhow is acomprehensible remark: but it cannot be called the blast o a trumpet. Europe ought rather to emphasize possible perdition; and Europe always has emphasized it. Here its highest religion is at one with all its cheapest romances. o the Buddhist or the eastern atalist existence is a science or a plan, which must end up in a certain way. But to a Christian existence is a SORY, which may end up in any way. In a thrilling novel (that purely Christian product) the hero is not eaten by cannibals; but it is essential to the existence o the thrill that he MIGH be eaten by cannibals. Te hero must (so to speak) be an eatable hero. So Christian morals have always said to the man, not that he would lose his soul, but that he must take care that he didn't. In Christian morals, in short, it is wicked to call a man "damned": but it is strictly religious and philosophic to call him damnable. All Christianity concentrates on the man at the cross-roads. Te vast and shallow philosophies, the huge syntheses o humbug, all talk about ages and evolution and ultimate developments. Te true philosophy is concerned with the instant. Will a man take this road or that? --that is the only thing to think about, i you enjoy thinking. Te aeons are easy enough to think about, any one can think about them. Te instant is really awul: and it is because our religion has intensely elt the instant, that it has in literature dealt much with battle and in theology dealt much with hell. It is ull o DANGER, like a boy's book: it is at an immortal crisis. Tere is a great deal o real similarity between popular ction and the religion o the western people. I you say that popular ction is vulgar and tawdry, you only say what the dreary and well-inormed say also about the images in the Catholic churches. Lie (accordingto the aith) is very like a serial story in a magazine: lie ends with the promise (or menace) "to be continued in our next." Also, with a noble vulgarity, lie imitates the serial and leaves o at the exciting moment. For death is distinctly an exciting moment. But the point is that a story is exciting because it has in it so strong an
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element o will, o what theology calls ree-will. You cannot nish a sum how you like. But you can nish a story how you like. When somebody discovered the Dierential Calculus there was only one Dierential Calculus he could discover. But when Shakespeare killed Romeo he might have married himin tothe Juliet's old nurse i he had elt inclined. Christendom has excelled narrative romance exactly because itAnd has insiste d on the theological ree-will. It is a large matter and too much to one side o the road to be discussed adequately here; but this is the real objection to that torrent o modern talk about treating crime as disease, about making a prison merely a hygienic environment like a hospital, o healingsin by slow scientic methods. Te allacy o the whole thing is that evil is a matter o active choice whereas disease is not. I you say that you are going to cure a proigate as you cure an asthmatic, my cheap and obvious answer is, "Produce the people who want to be asthmatics as many people want to be proigates." A man may lie still and be cured o a malady. But he must not lie still i he wants to be cured o a sin; on the contrary, he must get up and jump about violently. Te whole point indeed is perectly expressed in the very word which we use or a man in hospital; "patient" is in thepassive mood; "sinner" is in the active. I a man is to be saved rom inuenza, he may be a patient. But i he is to be saved rom orging, he must be not a patient but an IMPAIEN. He must be personally impatient with orgery. All moral reorm must start in the active not the passive will. Here again we reach the same substantial conclusion. In so ar as we desire the denite reconstructions and the dangerous revolutions which have distinguished European civilization, we shall not discourage the thought o possible ruin; we shall rather encourage it. I we want, like the Eastern saints, merely to contemplate how right things are, o course we shall only say that they must go right. But i we particularly want to MAKE them go right, we must insist that they may go wrong. Lastly, this truth is yet again true in the case o the common modern attempts to diminish or to explain divinity Christ. thing may be true or not; that I shall dealaway with the beore I end.o But i theTe divinity is true it is certainly terribly revolutionary. Tat a good man may have his back to the wall is no more than we knew already; but that God could have his back to the wall is a boast or all insurgents or ever. Christianity is the only religion on earth that has elt that omnipotence made God
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incomplete. Christianity alone has elt that God, to be wholly God, must have been a rebel as well as a king. Alone o all creeds, Christianity has added courage to the virtues o the Creator. For the only courage worth calling courage must necessarily mean that the soul passes a breaking point--and doesit not break. In thisand indeed I approach a matteri more and awul than is easy to discuss; I apologise in advance any odark my phrases all wrong or seem irreverent touching a matter which the greatest saints and thinkers havejustly eared to approach. But in that terric tale o the Passion there is a distinct emotional suggestion that the author o all things (in some unthinkable way) went not only through agony, but through doubt. It is written, "Tou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." No; but the Lord thy God may tempt Himsel; and it seems as i this was what happened in Gethsemane. In a garden Satan tempted man: and in a garden God tempted God. He passed in some superhuman manner through our human horror o pessimism. When the world shookand the sun was wiped out o heaven, it was not at the crucixion, but at the cry rom the cross: the cry which conessed that God was orsaken o God. And now let the revolutionists choose a creed rom all the creeds and a god rom all the gods o the world, careully weighing all the gods o inevitable recurrence and o unalterable power. Tey will not nd another god who has himsel been in revolt. Nay, (the matter growstoo dicult or human speech,) but let the atheists themselves choose a god. Tey will nd only one divinity who ever uttered their isolation; only one religion in which God seemed or an instant to be an atheist. Tese can be called the essentials o the old orthodoxy, o which the chie merit is that it is the natural ountain o revolution and reorm; and o which the chie deect is that it is obviously only an abstract assertion. Its main advantage is that it is the most adventurous and manly o all theologies. Its chie disadvantage is simply that it isa theology. It can always be urged against it that it is in its nature arbitrary and in the air. But it is not so high in the air but that great archers spend their whole lives in shooting arrows at it--yes, and their last arrows; there are men who will ruin themselves and ruin their civilization i they may ruin also this old antastic tale. Tis is the last and most astounding act about this aith; that its enemies will use any weapon against it, the swords that cut their own ngers, and the rebrands that burn their own homes. Men who begin to ght the Church or the sake o reedom and humanity end by inging
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away reedom and humanity i only they may ght the Church. Tis is no exaggeration; I could ll a book with the instances o it. Mr. Blatchord set out, as an ordinary Bible-smasher, to prove that Adam was guiltless o sin against God; in manoeuvring so as to maintain this he admitted, as a mere that all humanity the tyrants, Nero to King guiltless oside anyissue, sin against . Irom know a man who Leopold, has suchwere a passion or proving that he will have no personal existence afer death that he alls back on the position that he has no personal existence now. He invokes Buddhism and says that all souls ade into each other; in order to prove that he cannot go to heaven he proves that he cannot go to Hartlepool. I have known people who protested against religious education with arguments against any education, saying that the child'smind must grow reely or that the old must not teach the young. I have known people who showed that there could be no divine judgment by showing that there can be no human judgment, even or practical purposes. Tey burned their own corn to set re to the church; they smashed their own tools to smash it; any stick was good enough to beat it with, though it were the last stick o their own dismembered urniture. We do not admire, we hardly excuse, the anatic who wrecks this world or love o the other. But what are we to say o the anatic who wrecks this world out o hatred o the other? He sacrices the very existence o humanity to the non-existence o God. He oers his victims not to the altar, but merely to assert the idleness o the altar and the emptiness o the throne. He is ready to ruin even that primary ethic by which all things live, or his strange and eternal vengeance upon some one who never lived at all. And yet the thing hangs in the heavens unhurt. Its opponents only succeed in destroying all that they themselves justly hold dear. Tey do not destroy orthodoxy; they only destroy political courage and common sense. Tey do not prove that Adam was not responsible to God; howcould they prove it? Tey only prove (rom their premises) that the Czar isnot responsible to Russia. Tey do not prove that Adam should not have been punished by God; they only prove that the nearest sweater should not be punished by men. With their oriental doubts about personality they do not make certain that we shall have no personal lie hereafer; they only make certain that we shall not have a very jolly or complete one here. With their paralysing hints o all conclusions coming out wrong they do not tear the book o the Recording Angel; they only make it a little harder to
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keep the books o Marshall & Snelgrove. Not only is the aith the mother o all worldly energies, but its oes are the athers o all worldly conusion. Te secularists have not wrecked divine things; but the secularists have wrecked secular things, i that is any comort to them. Te itans did not scale heaven; but they laid waste the world.
IX Authority And Te Adventurer
he last chapter has been concerned with the contention that orthodoxy is not only (as is ofen urged) the only sae guardian o morality or order, but is also the only logical guardian o liberty, innovation and advance. I we wish to pull down the prosperous oppressor wecannot do it with the new doctrine o human perectibility; we can do it with the old doctrine o Original Sin. I we want to uproot inherent cruelties or lif up lost populations we cannot do it with the scientic theory that matter precedes mind; we can do it with the supernatural theory that mind precedes matter. I we wish specially to awaken people to social vigilance and tireless pursuit o practise, we cannot help it much by insisting on the Immanent God and the Inner Light: or these are at best reasons or contentment; we can help it much by insisting on the transcendent God and the ying and escaping gleam; or that means divine discontent. I we wish particularly to assert the idea o a generous balance against that o a dreadul autocracy we shall instinctively be rinitarian rather than Unitarian. I we desire European civilization to be a raid and a rescue, we shall insist rather that souls are in real peril than that their peril is ultimately unreal. And i we wish exalt theGod outcast the crucied, we shall rather wish to think that atoveritable wasand crucied, rather than a mere sage or hero. Above all, i we wish to protect the poor we shall be in avour o xed rules and clear dogmas. Te RULES o a club are occasionally in avour o the poor member. Te drif o a club is always in avour o the rich one.
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And now we come to the crucial question which truly concludes the whole matter. A reasonable agnostic, i he hashappened to agree with me so ar, may justly turn round and say, "You have ound a practical philosophy in the doctrine o the Fall; very well. You have ound a side o neglected wisely asserted Original Sin; all democracy right. You now havedangerously ound a truth in the doctrine o hell; in I congratulate you. You are convinced that worshippers o a personal God lo ok outwards and are progressive; I congratulate them. But even supposing that those doctrines do include those truths, why cannot you take the truths and leave the doctrines? Granted that all modern society is trusting the rich too much because it does not allow or human weakness; granted that orthodox ages have had a great advantage because (believing in the Fall) they did allow or human weakness, why cannot you simply allow or human weakness without believing in the Fall? I you have discovered that the idea o damnation represents a healthy idea o danger, why can you not simply take the idea o danger and leave the idea o damnation? I you see clearly the kernel o common-sense in the nut o Christian orthodoxy, why cannot you simply take the kernel and leave the nut? Why cannot you (to use that cant phrase o the newspapers which I, as a highly scholarly agnostic, am a little ashamed o using) why cannot you simply take what is good in Christianity, what you can dene as valuable, what you can comprehend, and leave all the rest, all the absolute dogmas that are in their nature incomprehensible?" Tis is the real question; this is the last question; and it is a pleasure to try to answer it. Te rst answer is simplyto say that I am a rationalist. I like to have some intellectual justication or my intuitions. I I am treating man as a allen being it is an intellectual convenience to me to believe that he ell; and I nd, or some odd psychological reason, that I can deal better with a man's exercise o reewill i I believe that he has got it. But I am in this matter yet more denitely a rationalist. I do not propose to turn this book into one o ordinary Christian apologetics; I should be glad to meet at any other time the enemies o Christianity in that more obvious arena. Here I am only giving an account o my own growth in spiritual certainty. But I may pause to remark that the more I saw o the merely abstract arguments against the Christian cosmology the less I thought o them. I mean that having ound the moral atmosphere o the Incarnation to be common sense, I then looked at the established intellectual argu-
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ments against the Incarnation and ound them to be common nonsense. In case the argument should be thought to suer rom the absence o the ordinary apologetic I will here very briey summarise my own arguments and conclusions on the purely objective or scientic truth o the matter. I I am asked, as a purely intellectual question, why I believe in Christianity, I can only answer, "For the same reason that an intelligent agnostic disbelieves in Christianity." I believe in it quite rationally upon the evidence. But the evidence in my case, as in that o the intelligent agnostic, is not really in this or that alleged demonstration; it is in an enormous accumulation o small but unanimous acts. Te secularist is not to be blamed because his objections to Christianity are miscellaneous and even scrappy; it is precisely such scrappy evidence that does convince the mind. I mean that a man may well be less convinced o a philosophy rom our books, than rom one book, one battle, one landscape, and one old riend. Te very act that the things are o dierent kinds increases the importance o the act that they all point to one conclusion. Now, the non-Christianity o the average educated man to-day is almost always, to do him justice, made up o these loose but living experiences. I can only say that my evidences or Christianity are o the same vivid but varied kind as his evidences against it. For when I look at these various anti-Christian truths, I simply discover that none o them are true. I discover that the true tide and orce o all the acts ows the other way. Let us take cases. Many a sensible modern man must have abandoned Christianity under the pressure o three such converging convictions as these: rst, that men, with their shape, structure, and sexuality, are, afer all, very much like beasts, a mere variety o the animal kingdom; second, that primeval religion arose in ignorance and ear; third, that priests have blighted societies with bitterness and gloom. Tose three anti-Christian arguments are very dierent; but they are all quite logical and legitimate; and they all converge. Te only objection to them (I discover) is that they are all untrue. I you leave o looking at books about beasts and men, i you begin to look at beasts and men then (i you have any humour or imagination, any sense o the rantic or the arcical) you will observe that the startling thing is not how like man is to the brutes, but how unlike he is. It is the monstrous scale o his divergence that requires an explanation. Tat man and brute are like is, in a sense, a truism; but that being so like they should then be so insanely unlike, that is the shock and the
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enigma. Tat an ape has hands is ar less interesting to the philosopher than the act that having hands he does next tonothing with them; does not play knuckle-bones or the violin; does not carve marble or carve mutton. People talk o barbaric architecture anddebased art. But elephants do not build colossal temples o ivory even in a rococo style; o camels not paint even bad pictures, though equipped with the material manydo camel's-hair brushes. Certain modern dreamers say that ants and bees have a society superior to ours. Tey have, indeed, a civilization; but that very truth only reminds us that it is an inerior civilization. Who ever ound an ant-hill decorated with the statues o celebrated ants? Who has seen a bee-hive carved with the images o gorgeous queens o old? No; the chasm between man and other creatures may have a natural explanation,but it is a chasm. We talk o wild animals; but manis the only wild animal. It is man that has broken out. All other animals are tame animals; ollowing the rugged respectability o the tribe or type. All other animals are domestic animals; man alone is ever undomestic, either as a proigateor a monk. So that this rst supercial reason or materialism is, i anything, a reason or its opposite; it is exactly where biology leaves o that all religion begins. It would be the same i I examined the second o the three chance rationalist arguments; the argument that all that we call divine began in some darkness and terror. When I did attempt to examine the oundations o this modern idea I simply ound that there were none. Science knows nothing whatever about pre-historic man; or the excellent reason that he is pre-historic. A ew proessors choose to conjecture that such things as human sacrice were once innocent and general and that they gradually dwindled; but there is no direct evidence o it, and the small amount o indirect evidence is very much the other way. In the earliest legends we have, such as the tales o Isaac and o Iphigenia, human sacrice is not introduced as something old, but rather as something new; as a strange and rightul exception darkly demanded by the gods. History says nothing; and legends all say that the earth was kinder in its earliest time. Tere is no tradition o progress; but the whole human race has a tradition o the Fall. Amusingly enough, indeed, the very dissemination o this idea is used against its authenticity. Learned men literally say that this pre-historic calamity cannot be true because every race o mankind remembers it. I cannot keep pace with these paradoxes.
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And i we took the third chance instance, it would be the same; the view that priests darken andembitter the world. I look at the world and simply discover that they don't. Tose countries in Europe which are still inuenced by priests, are exactly the countries where there is still singing and and coloured andthey art in doctrinedancing and discipline may bedresses walls; but arethe theopen-air. walls o aCatholic playground. Christianity is the only rame which has preserved the pleasure o Paganism. We might ancy some children playing on the at grassy top o some tall island in the sea. So long as there was a wall round the cli 's edge they could ing themselves into every rantic game and make the place the noisiest o nurseries. But the walls were knocked down, leaving the naked peril o the precipice. Tey did not all over; but when their riends returned to them they were all huddled in terror in the centre o the island; and their song had ceased. Tus these three acts o experience, such acts as go to make an agnostic, are, in this view, turned totally round. I am lef saying, "Give me an explanation, rst, o the towering eccentricity o man among the brutes; second, o the vast human tradition o some ancient happiness; third, o the partial perpetuation o such pagan joy in the countries o the Catholic Church." One explanation, at any rate, covers all three: the theory that twice was the natural order interrupted by some explosion or revelation such as people now call "psychic." Once Heaven came upon the earth with a power or seal called the image o God, whereby man took command o Nature; and once again (when in empire afer empire men had been ound wanting) Heaven cameto save mankind in the awul shape o aman. Tis would explain why the mass o men always look backwards; and why the only corner where they in any sense look orwards is the little continent where Christ has His Church. I know it will be said that Japan has become progressive. But how can this be an answer when even in saying "Japan has become progressive," we really only mean, "Japan has become European"? But I wish here not so much to insist on my own explanation as to insist on my srcinal remark. I agree with the ordinary unbelieving man in the street in being guided by three or our odd acts all pointing to something; only when I came to look at the acts I always ound they pointed to something else. I have given an imaginary triad o such ordinary anti-Christian argu-
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ments; i that be too narrow a basis I will give on the spur o the moment another. Tese are the kind o thoughts which in combinationcreate the impression that Christianity is something weak and diseased. First, or instance, that Jesus was a gentle creature, sheepish and unworldly, a mere ineectual theoworld; second, that Christianity arose and ourished in theappeal dark to ages ignorance, and that to these the Church would drag us back; third, that the people still strongly religious or (i you will) superstitious--such people as the Irish--are weak, unpractical, and behind the times. I only mention these ideas to arm the same thing: that when I looked into them independently I ound, not that the conclusions were unphilosophical, but simply that the acts were not acts. Instead o looking at books and pictures about the New estament I looked at the New estament. Tere I ound an account, not in the least o a person with his hair parted in the middle or his hands clasped in appeal, but o an extraordinary being with lips o thunder and acts o lurid decision, inging down tables, casting out devils, passing with thewild secrecy o the wind rom mountain isolation to a sort o dreadul demagogy; a being who ofen acted like an angry god--and always like a god. Christ had even a literary style o his own, not to be ound, I think, elsewhere; it consists o an almost urious use o the A FORIORI. His "how much more" is piled oneupon another like castle upon castle in the clouds. Te diction used ABOU Christ has been, and perhaps wisely, sweet and submissive. But the diction used by Christ is quite curiously gigantesque; it is ull o camels leaping through needles and mountains hurled into the sea. Morally it is equally terric; he called himsel a sword o slaughter, and told men to buy swords i they sold their coats or them. Tat he used other even wilder words on the side o non-resistance greatly increases the mystery; but it also, i anything, rather increases the violence. We cannot even explain it by calling such a being insane; or insanity isusually along one consistentchannel. Te maniac is generally a monomaniac.Here we must remember the dicult denition o Christianity already given; Christianity is a superhuman paradox whereby two opposite passions may blaze beside each other. Te one explanation o the Gospel language that does explain it, is that it is the survey o one who rom some supernatural height beholds some more startling synthesis. I take in order the next instance oered: the idea that Christianity belongs to the Dark Ages. Here I did not satisy mysel with r eading modern generalisations; I read a little history. And in history I ound that
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Christianity, so ar rom belonging to the Dark Ages, was the one path across the Dark Ages that was not dark. It was a shining bridge connecting two shining civilizations. I any one says that the aith arose in ignorance and savagery the answer is simple: it didn't. It arose in the Mediterranean civilization in sceptics, the ull and summer o the was Roman Empire. Te world was swarming with pantheism as plain as the sun, when Constantine nailed the cross to the mast. It is perectly true that aferwards the ship sank; but it is ar more extraordinary that the ship came up again: repainted and glittering, with the cross still at the top. Tis is the amazing thing the religion did: it turned a sunken ship into a submarine. Te ark lived under the load o waters; afer being buried under the debris o dynasties and clans, we arose and remembered Rome. I our aith had been a mere ad o the ading empire, ad would have ollowed ad in the twilight, and i the civilization ever re-emerged (and many such have never re-emerged) it would have been under some new barbaric ag. But the Christian Church was the last lie o the old societyand was also the rst lie o the new. She took the people who were orgetting how to make anarch and she taught them toinvent the Gothic arch. In a word, the most absurd thing that could be said o the Church is the thing we have all heard said o it. How can we say that the Church wishes to bring us back into the Dark Ages? Te Church was the only thing that ever brought us out o them. I added in this second trinity o objections an idle instance taken rom those who eel such people as the Irish to be weakened or made stagnant by superstition. I only added it because this is a peculiar case o a statement o act that turns out to be a statement o alsehood. It is constantly said o the Irish that they areimpractical. But i we rerain or a moment rom looking at what is said about them and look at what is DONE about them, we shall see that the Irish are not only practical, but quite painully successul. Te poverty o their country, the minority o their members are simply the conditions under which they were asked to work; but no other group in the British Empire has done so much with such conditions. Te Nationalists were the only minority that ever succeeded in twisting the whole British Parliament sharply out o its path. Te Irish peasants are the only poor men in these islands who have orced their masters to disgorge. Tese people, whom we call priest-ridden, are the only Britons who will not be squire-ridden. And when I came to look at the actual Irish character, the case was the same. Irishmen are best at the specially
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HARD proessions--the trades o iron, the lawyer, and the soldier. In all these cases, thereore, I came back to the same conclusion: the sceptic was quite right to go by the acts, only he had not looked at the acts. Te sceptic is too credulous; he believes in newspapers or even in encyclopedias. Again the three questions leftome withhow threeI very antagonistic questions. Te average sceptic wanted know explained the namby-pamby note in the Gospel, the connection o the creed with mediaeval darkness and the political impracticability o the Celtic Christians. But I wanted to ask, and to ask with an earnestness amounting to urgency, "What is this incomparable energy which appears rst in one walking the earth like a living judgment and this energy which can die with a dying civilization and yet orce it to a resurrection rom the dead; thisenergy which last o all can iname a bankrupt peasantry with so xed a aith in justice that they get what they ask, while others go empty away; so that the most helpless island o the Empire can actually help itsel?" Tere is an answer: it is an answer to say that the energy is truly rom outside the world; that it is psychic, or at least one o the results o a real psychical disturbance. Te highest gratitude and respect are due to the great human civilizations such as the old Egyptian or the existing Chinese. Nevertheless it is no injustice or them to say that only modern Europe has exhibited incessantly a power o sel-renewal recurring ofen at the shortest intervals and descending to the smallest acts o building or costume. All other societies die nally and with dignity. We die daily. We are always being born again withalmost indecent obstetrics. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that there is in historic Christendom a sort o unnatural lie: it could be explained as a supernatural lie. It could be explained as an awul galvanic lie working in what would have been a corpse.For our civilization OUGH to have died, by all parallels, by all sociological probability, in the Ragnarok o the end o Rome. Tat is the weird inspiration o our estate: you and I have no business to be here at all. We are all REVENANS; all living Christians are dead pagans walking about. Just as Europe was about to be gathered in silence to Assyria and Babylon, something entered into its body. And Europe has had a strange lie-- it is not too much to say that it has had the JUMPS--ever since. I have dealt at length with such typical triads o doubt in order to convey the main contention--that my own case or Christianity is rational;
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but it is not simple. It is an accumulation o varied acts, like the attitude o the ordinary agnostic. But the ordinary agnostic has got his acts all wrong. He is a non-believer or a multitude o reasons; but they are untrue reasons. He doubts because the Middle Ages were barbaric, but they weren't; becausebut Darwinism demonstrated, but itlazy, isn't;but because miracles do not happen, they do; isbecause monks were they were very industrious; because nuns are unhappy, but they are particularly cheerul; because Christian art was sad and pale, but it was picked out in peculiarly bright colours and gay with gold; because modern science is moving away rom the supernatural, but it isn't, it is moving towards the supernatural with the rapidity o a railway train. But among these million acts all owing one way there is, o course, one question suciently solid and separate to be treated briey,but by itsel; I mean the objective occurrence o the supernatural. In another chapter I have indicated the allacy o the ordinary supposition that the world must be impersonal because it is orderly. A person is just as likely to desire an orderly thing as a disorderly thing. But my own positive conviction that personal creation is more conceivable than material ate, is, I admit, in a sense, undiscussable. I will not call it a aith or an intuition, or those words are mixed up with mere emotion,it is strictly an intellectual conviction; but it is a PRIMARY intellectual conviction like the certainty o sel o the good o living. Any one who likes, thereore, may call my belie in God merely mystical; the phrase is not worth ghting about. But my belie that miracles have happened in human history is not a mystical belie at all; I believe in them upon human evidences as I do in the discovery o America. Upon this point there is a simple logical act that only requires to be stated and cleared up. Somehow or other an extraordinary idea has arisen that the disbelievers in miracles consider them coldly and airly, while believers in miracles accept them only in connection with some dogma. Te act is quite the other way. Te believers in miracles accept them (rightly or wrongly) because they have evidence or them. Te disbelievers in miracles deny them (rightly or wrongly) because they have a doctrine against them. Te open, obvious, democratic thing is to believe an old apple-woman when she bears testimony to a miracle, just as you believe an old apple-woman when she bears testimony to a murder. Te plain, popular course is to trust the peasant's word about the ghost exactly as ar as you trust the peasant's word about the landlord. Being a peasant
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he will probably have a great deal o healthy agnosticism about both. Still you could ll the British Museum with evidence uttered by the peasant, and given in avour othe ghost. I it comes to human testimony there is a choking cataract o humantestimony in avouro the supernatural. I you reject caneither onlymean onethe o two You reject the peasant's stor about it, theyou ghost because manthings. is a peasant or because the story isy a ghost story. Tat is, you either deny the main principle o democracy, or you arm the main principle o materialism--the abstract impossibility o miracle. You have a perect right to do so; but in that case you are the dogmatist. It is we Christians who accept all actual evidence-- it is you rationalists who reuse actual evidence being constrained to do so by your creed. But I am not constrained by any creed in the matter, and looking impartially into certain miracles o mediaeval and modern times, I have come to the conclusion that they occurred. All argument against these plain acts is always argument ina circle. I I say, "Mediaeval documents attest certain miracles as much as they attest certain battles," they answer, "But mediaevals were superstitious"; i I want to know in what they were superstitious, the only ultimate answer is that they believed in the miracles. I I say "a peasant saw a ghost," I am told, "But peasants are so credulous." I I ask, "Why credulous?" the only answer is--that they see ghosts. Iceland is impossible because only stupid sailors have seen it; and the sailors are only stupid because they say they have seen Iceland. It is only air to add that there is another argument that the unbeliever may rationally use against miracles, though he himsel generally orgets to use it. He may say that there has been in many miraculous stories a notion o spiritual preparation and acceptance: in short, that the miracle could only come to him who believed in it. It may be so, and i it is so how are we to test it? I we are inquiring whether certain results ollow aith,it is useless to repeat wearily that (i they happen) they do ollow aith. I aith is one o the conditions, those without aith have a most healthy right to laugh. But they have no right to judge. Being a believer may be, i you like, as bad as being drunk; still i we were extracting psychological acts rom drunkards, it would be absurd to be always taunting them withhaving been drunk. Suppose we were investigating whether angry men really sawa red mist beore their eyes. Suppose sixty excellent householders swore that when angry they had seen this crimson cloud: surely it would be absurd to answer "Oh, but you admit you were angry at the time." Tey might
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reasonably rejoin (in a stentorian chorus), "How the blazes could we discover, without being angry, whether angry people see red?" So the saints and ascetics might rationally reply, "Suppose that the question is whether believers can see visions--even then, i you are interested in visions it is no point to object believers. " Youbegan. are still arguing in a circle-- in that old mad circle with to which this book Te question o whether miracles ever occur is a question o common sense and o ordinary historical imagination: not o any nal physical experiment. One may here surely dismiss that quite brainless piece o pedantry which talks about the need or "scientic conditions" in connection with alleged spiritual phenomena. I we are asking whether a dead soul can communicate with a living it is ludicrous to insist that it shall be under conditions in which no two living souls in their senses would seriously communicate with each other. Te act that ghosts preer darkness no more disproves the existence o ghosts than the act that lovers preer darkness disproves the existence o love. I you choose to say, "I will believe that Miss Brown called her ance a periwinkle or, any other endearing term, i she will repeat the word beore seventeen psychologists," then I shall reply, "Very well, i those are your conditions, you will never get the truth, or she certainly will not say it." It is just as unscientic as it is unphilosophical to be surprised that in an unsympathetic atmosphere certain extraordinary sympathies do not arise. It is as i I said that I could not tell i there was a og because the air was not clear enough; or as i I insisted on perect sunlight in order to see a solar eclipse. As a common-sense conclusion, such as thoseto which we come about sex or about midnight (well knowing that many details must in their own nature be concealed) I concludethat miracles do happen. I am orced to it by a conspiracy o acts: the act that the men who encounter elves or angels are not the mystics and the morbid dreamers, but shermen, armers, and all men at once coarse and cautious; the act that we all know men who testiy spiritualistic incidents butand aremore not spiritualists, act that science itseltoadmits such things more every day. the Science will even admit the Ascension i you call it Levitation, and will very likely admit the Resurrection when it has thought o another word or it. I suggest the Regalvanisation. But the strongest o all is the dilemma above mentioned, that these supernatural things are never denied except on the basis either o
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anti-democracy or o materialist dogmatism--I may say materialist mysticism. Te sceptic always takes one o the two positions; either anordinary man need not be believed, or an extraordinary event must not be believed. For I hope we may dismiss the argument against wonders attempted in the mere ulation o rauds, swindling mediums trick miracles. Tat is notrecapit an argument at all, goodoor bad. A alse ghostordisproves the reality o ghosts exactly as much as a orged banknote disproves the existence o the Bank o England--i anything, it proves its existence. Given this conviction that the spiritual phenomena do occur (my evidence or which is complex but rational), we then collide with one o the worst mental evils o the age. Te greatest disaster o thenineteenth century was this: that men began to use the word "spiritual" as the same as the word "good." Tey thought that to grow in renement and uncorporeality was to grow in virtue. When scientic evolution was announced, someeared that it would encourage mereanimality. It did worse: it encouraged mere spirituality. It taught men to think that so long as they were passing rom the ape they were going to the angel. But you can pass rom the ape and go to the devil. A man o genius, very typical o that time o bewilderment, expressed it perectly. Benjamin Disraeli was right when he said he was on the side o the angels. He was indeed; he was on the side o the allen angels. He was not on the side o any mere appetite or animal brutality; but he was on the side o all the imperialism o the princes o the abyss; he was on the side o arrogance and mystery, and contempt o all obvious good. Between this sunken pride and the towering humilities o heaven there are, one must suppose, spirits o shapes and sizes. Man, in encountering them, must make much the same mistakes that he makes in encountering any other varied types in any other distant continent. It must be hard at rst to know who is supreme and who is subordinate. I a shade arose rom the under world, and stared at Piccadilly, that shade would not quite understand the idea oan ordinary closed carriage. He would suppose that the coachman on the box was a triumphant conqueror, dragging behind him a kicking and imprisoned captive. So, i we see spiritual acts or the rst time, we may mistake who is uppermost. It is not enough to nd the gods; they are obvious; we must nd God, the real chie o the gods. We must have a long historic experience in supernatural phenomena-- in order to discover which are really natural. In this light I nd the history o Christianity, and even oits Hebrew srcins, quite practical and clear.It
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does not trouble me to be told that the Hebrew god was one among many. I know he was, without any research to tell me so. Jehovah and Baal looked equally important, just as the sun and the moon looked the same size. It is only slowly that we learn that the sun is immeasurably our master, and the small moon satellite. Believing that there is o spirits, I shall walk in itonly as I our do in the world o men, looking ora world the thing that I like and think good. Just as I should seek in a desert or clean water, or toil at the North Pole to make a comortable re, so I shall search the land o void and vision until I nd something resh like water, and comorting like re; until I nd some place in eternity, where I am literally at home. And there is only one such place to be ound. I have now said enough to show (to any one to whom such an explanation is essential) that I have in the ordinary arena o apologetics, a ground o belie. In pure records o experiment (i these be taken democratically without contempt or avour) there is evidence rst, that miracles happen, and second that the nobler miracles belong to our tradition. But I will not pretend that this curt discussion is my real reason or accepting Christianity instead o taking the moral good o Christianity as I should take it out o Conucianism. I have another ar more solid and centralground or submitting to it as a aith, instead o merely picking up hintsrom it as a scheme. And that is this: thatnot theaChristian in itscertainly practicaltaught relation my soul is, but a living teacher, dead one.Churc It noth only metoyesterday will almost certainly teach me to-morrow. Once I saw suddenly the meaning o the shape o the cross; some day I may see suddenly the meaning o the shape o the mitre. One ne morning I saw why windows were pointed; some ne morning I may see why priests were shaven. Plato has told you a truth; but Plato is dead. Shakespeare has startled you with an image; but Shakespeare will not startle you with any more. But imagine what itwould be to live with such men still living, to know that Plato might break out with an srcinal lecture to-morrow, that at any moment Shakespeare shatter everything with a singleorsong. Te man who lives in contactmight with what he believes to be a living Church is a man always expecting to meet Plato and Shakespeare to-morrow at breakast. He is always expecting to see some truth that he has never seen beore. Tere is one only other parallel to this position; and that is the parallel o the lie in which we all
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began. When your ather told you, walking about the garden, that bees stung or that roses smelt sweet, you did not talk o taking the best out o his philosophy. When the bees stung you, you did not call it an entertaining coincidence. When the rosesmelt sweet you did not say "My ather is a rude, barbaric symbol, unconsciously) deep delicate truths that owersenshrining smell." No:(perhaps you believed your ather,the because you had ound him to be a living ountain o acts, a thing that really knew more than you; a thing that would tell you truth to-morrow, as well as to-day. And i this was true o your ather, it was even truer o your mother; at least it was true o mine, to whom this book is dedicated. Now, when society is in a rather utile uss about the subjection o women, will no one say how much every man owes to the tyranny and privilege o women, to the act that they alone rule education until education becomes utile: or a boy is only sent to be taught at school when it is too late to teach him anything. Te real thing has been done already, and thank God it is nearly always done by women. Every man is womanised, merely by being born. Tey talk o the masculine woman; but every man is a eminised man. And i ever men walk to Westminster to protest against this emale privilege, I shall not join their procession. For I remember with certainty this xed psychological act; that the very time when I was most under a woman's authority, I was most ull o ame and adventure. Exactly because when my mother said that ants bit they did bite, and because snow did come in winter (as she said); thereore the whole world was to me a airyland o wonderul ullments, and it was like living in some Hebraic age, when prophecy afer prophecy came true. I went out as a child into the garden, and it was a terrible place to me, precisely because I had a clue to it: i I had held no clue it would not have been terrible, but tame. A mere unmeaning wilderness is not even impressive. But the garden o childhood was ascinating, exactly because everything had a xed meaning whichcould be ound outin its turn. Inch by inch I might discover what was the object o the ugly shape called a rake; or orm some shadowy conjecture as to why my parents kept a cat. So, since I have accepted Christendom as a mother and not merely as a chance example, I have ound Europe and the world once more like the little garden where I stared at the symbolic shapes o cat and rake; I look at everything with the old elvish ignorance and expectancy. Tis or that
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rite or doctrine may look as ugly and extraordinary as a rake; but I have ound by experience that such things end somehow in grass and owers. A clergyman may be apparently as useless as a cat, but he is also as ascinating, or there must be some strange reason orhis existence. I give one instance out o aor hundred; I have not mysel kinship with that enthusiasm physical virginity, which any has instinctive certainly been a note o historic Christianity. But when I look not at mysel but at the world, I perceive that this enthusiasm is not only a note o Christianity, but a note o Paganism, a note o high human nature in many spheres. Te Greeks elt virginity when they carved Artemis, the Romans when they robed the vestals, the worst and wildest o the greatElizabethan playwrights clung to the literal purity o a woman as to the central pillar o the world. Above all, the modern world (even while mocking sexual innocence) has ung itsel into a generous idolatry o sexual innocence--the great modern worship o children. For any man who loves children will agree that their peculiar beauty is hurt by a hint o physical sex. With all this human experience, allied with the Christian authority, I simply conclude that I am wrong, and the church right; or rather that I am deective, while the church is universal. It takes all sorts to make a church; she does not ask me to be celibate. But the act that I have no appreciation o the celibates, I accept like the act that I have no ear or music. Te best human experience is against me, as it is on the subject o Bach. Celibacy is one ower in my ather's garden, o which I have not been told the sweet or terrible name. But I may be told it any day. Tis, thereore, is, in conclusion, my reason or accepting the religion and not merely the scattered and secular truths out o the religion. I do it because the thing has not merely told this truth or that truth, but has revealed itsel as atruth-telling thing. All other philosophies say the things that plainly seem to be true; only this philosophy has again and again said the thing that does not seem to be true, but is true. Alone o all creeds it is convincing where it is not attractive; it turns out to be right, like my ather in the garden. Teosophists or instance will preach an obviously attractive idea like re-incarnation; but i we wait or its logical results, they are spiritual superciliousness and the cruelty ocaste. For i a man is a beggar by his own pre-natal sins, people will tend to despise the beggar. But Christianity preaches an obviously unattractive idea, such as srcinal sin; but when we wait or its results, they are pathos and brotherhood, and
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a thunder o laughter and pity; or only with srcinal sin we can at once pity the beggar and distrust the king. Men o science oer us health, an obvious benet; it is only aferwards that we discover that by health, they mean bodily slavery and spiritual tedium. Orthodoxy makes us jump by the brink o hell; it is only aferwards we It realise jumping wassudden an athletic exerci se highly benecial to ourthat health. is onlythat aferwards that we realise that this danger is the root o all drama and romance. Te strongest argument or the divine grace is simply its ungraciousness. Te unpopular parts o Christianity turn out when examined to be the very props o the people. Te outer ring o Christianity is a rigid guard o ethical abnegations and proessional priests; but inside that inhuman guard you will nd the old human lie dancing like children, and drinking wine like men; or Christianity is the only rame or pagan reedom. But in the modern philosophy the case is opposite; it is its outerring that is obviously artistic and emancipated; its despair is within. And its despair is this, that it does not really believe that there is any meaning in the universe; thereore it cannot hope to nd any romance; its romances will have no plots. A man cannot expect any adventuresin the land o anarchy. But a man can expect any number o adventures i he goes travelling in the land oauthority. One can nd no meanings in a jungle o scepticism; but the man will nd more and more meanings who walks through a orest o doctrine and design. Here everything has a story tied to its tail, like the tools or pictures in my ather's house; or it is my ather's house. I end where I began--at the right end. I have entered at last the gate o all good philosophy. I have come into my second childhood. But this larger and more adventurous Christian universe has one nal mark dicult to express; yet as a conclusion o the whole matter I will attempt to express it. All the real argument about religion turns on the question o whether a man who was born upside down can tell when he comes right way up. Te primary paradox o Christianity is that the ordinary condition o man is not hisissane or sensible condition; that the normal itsel is an abno rmality. Tat the inmost philosophy o the Fall. In Sir Oliver Lodge's interesting new Catechism, the rst two questions were: "What are you?" and "What, then, is the meaning o the Fall o Man?" I remember amusing mysel by writing my own answers to the questions; but I soon ound that they were very broken and agnostic answers. o the
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question, "What are you?" I could only answer, "God knows." And to the question, "What is meant by the Fall?" I could answer with complete sincerity, "Tat whatever I am, I am not mysel." Tis is the prime paradox o our religion; something that we have never in any ull sense known, is not only than eventhe mor e natural to us than ourselves. And therebetter is really noourselves, test o thisbut except merely experimental one with which these pages began, the test o the padded cell and the open door. It is only since I have known orthodoxy that I have known mental emancipation. But, in conclusion, it has one special application to the ultimate idea o joy. It is said that Paganism is a religion o joy and Christianity o sorrow; it would be just as easy to prove that Paganism is pure sorrow and Christianity pure joy. Such conicts mean nothing and lead nowhere. Everything human must have in it both joy and sorrow; the only matter o interest is the manner in which the two things are balanced or divided. And the really interesting thing is this, that the pagan was (in the main) happier and happier as he approached the earth, but sadder and sadder as he approached the heavens. Te gaiety o the best Paganism, as in the playulness o Catullus or Teocritus, is, indeed, an eternal gaiety never to be orgotten by a grateul humanity. But it is all a gaiety about the acts o lie, not about its srcin. o the pagan the small things are assweet as the small brooks breaking out o the mountain; but the broad things are as bitter as the sea. When the pagan looks at the very core o the cosmos he is struck cold. Behind the gods, who are merely despotic, sit the ates, who are deadly. Nay, the ates are worse than deadly; they are dead. And when rationalists say that the ancient world was more enlightened than the Christian, rom their point o view they are right. For when they say "enlightened" they mean darkened with incurable despair . It is prooundly true that the ancient world was more modern than the Christian. Te common bond is in the act that ancients and moderns have both been miserable about existence, about everything, while mediaevals were happy about that at least. I reely grant that the pagans, like the moderns, were only miserable about everything--they were quite jolly about everything else. I concede that the Christians o the Middle Ages were only at peace about everything--they were at war about everything else. But i the question turn on the primary pivot o the cosmos, then there was more cosmic contentment in the narrow and bloody streets o Flor-
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ence than in the theatre oAthens or the open garden o Epicurus. Giotto lived in a gloomier town than Euripides, but he lived in a gayer universe. Te mass o men have been orced to be gay about the little things, but sad about the big ones. Nevertheless (I oer my last dogma de antly) it is not native to man to be so. Man is more himsel, man is more manlike, when joy is the undamental thing in him, and grie the supercial. Melancholy should be an innocent interlude, atender and ugitive rame o mind; praise should be the permanent pulsation o the soul. Pessimism is at best an emotional hal-holiday; joy is the uproarious labour by which all things live. Yet, according to the apparent estate o man as seen by the pagan or the agnostic, this primary need o human nature can never be ullled. Joy ought to be expansive; but or the agnostic it must be contracted, it must cling to one corner othe world. Grie ought to be a concentration; butor the agnostic its desolation isspread through an unthinkable eternity. Tis is what I call being born upside down. Te sceptic may truly be said to be topsy-turvy; or his eet are dancing upwards in idle ecstasies, while his brain is in the abyss. o the modern man the heavens are actually below the earth. Te explanation is simple; he is standing on his head; which is a very weak pedestal to stand on. But when he has ound his eet again he knows it. Christianity satises suddenly and perectly man's ancestral instinct or being the right way up; satises it supremely in this; that by its creed joy becomes something gigantic and sadness something special and small. Te vault above us is not dea because the universe is an idiot; the silence is not the heartless silence o an endless and aimless world. Rather the silence around us is a small and pitiul stillness like the prompt stillness in a sick-room. We are perhaps permitted tragedy as a sort o merciul comedy: because the rantic energy o divine things would knock us down like a drunken arce. We can take our own tears more lightly than we could take the tremendous levities o the angels. So we sit perhaps in a starry chamber o silence, while the laughter o the heavens is too loud or us to hear. Joy, which was the small publicity o the pagan, is the gigantic secret o the Christian. And as I close this chaotic volume I open again the strange small book rom which all Christianity came; and I am again haunted by a kind o conrmation. Te tremendous gurewhich lls the Gospels towers in this respect, as in every other, above all the thinkers who ever thought
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themselves tall. His pathos was natural, almost casual. Te Stoics, ancient and modern, were proud o concealing their tears. He never concealed His tears; He showed them plainly on His open ace at any daily sight, such as the ar sight o His native city. Yet He concealed something. Solemn supermen and imperial are urniture proud o down restraining their anger. He never restrained His diplomatists anger. He ung the ront steps o the emple, and asked men how they expected to escape the damnation o Hell. Yet He restrained something. I say it with reverence; there was in that shattering personality a thread that must be called shyness. Tere was something that He hid rom all men when He went up a mountain to pray. Tere was something that He covered constantly by abrupt silence or impetuous isolation. Tere was some one thing that was too great or God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes ancied that it was His mirth.
