{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_130/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_130","id":"gutenberg_130","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/130","summary":null,"tags":["Apologetics","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith), 1874-1936","Christianity","Christianity -- Essence, genius, nature"],"text":"This etext was proofread by Martin Ward and compared against a separate\ncopy scanned by Mike Perry.\n\n\n\nORTHODOXY\n\nby\n\nGILBERT K. CHESTERTON\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE\n\n\n     This book is meant to be a companion to \"Heretics,\" and to\nput the positive side in addition to the negative.  Many critics\ncomplained of the book called \"Heretics\" because it merely criticised\ncurrent philosophies without offering any alternative philosophy.\nThis book is an attempt to answer the challenge.  It is unavoidably\naffirmative and therefore unavoidably autobiographical.  The writer has\nbeen driven back upon somewhat the same difficulty as that which beset\nNewman in writing his Apologia; he has been forced to be egotistical\nonly in order to be sincere.  While everything else may be different\nthe motive in both cases is the same.  It is the purpose of the writer\nto attempt an explanation, not of whether the Christian Faith can\nbe believed, but of how he personally has come to believe it.\nThe book is therefore arranged upon the positive principle of a riddle\nand its answer.  It deals first with all the writer's own solitary\nand sincere speculations and then with all the startling style in\nwhich they were all suddenly satisfied by the Christian Theology.\nThe writer regards it as amounting to a convincing creed.  But if\nit is not that it is at least a repeated and surprising coincidence.\n\n                                           Gilbert K. Chesterton.\n\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\n   I.  Introduction in Defence of Everything Else\n  II.  The Maniac\n III.  The Suicide of Thought\n  IV.  The Ethics of Elfland\n   V.  The Flag of the World\n  VI.  The Paradoxes of Christianity\n VII.  The Eternal Revolution\nVIII.  The Romance of Orthodoxy\n  IX.  Authority and the Adventurer\n\n\n\n\n\nORTHODOXY\n\n\n\nI INTRODUCTION IN DEFENCE OF EVERYTHING ELSE\n\n\n     THE only possible excuse for this book is that it is an answer\nto a challenge.  Even a bad shot is dignified when he accepts a duel.\nWhen some time ago I published a series of hasty but sincere papers,\nunder the name of \"Heretics,\" several critics for whose intellect\nI have a warm respect (I may mention specially Mr. G.S.Street)\nsaid that it was all very well for me to tell everybody to affirm\nhis cosmic theory, but that I had carefully avoided supporting my\nprecepts with example.  \"I will begin to worry about my philosophy,\"\nsaid Mr. Street, \"when Mr. Chesterton has given us his.\"\nIt was perhaps an incautious suggestion to make to a person\nonly too ready to write books upon the feeblest provocation.\nBut after all, though Mr. Street has inspired and created this book,\nhe need not read it.  If he does read it, he will find that in\nits pages I have attempted in a vague and personal way, in a set\nof mental pictures rather than in a series of deductions, to state\nthe philosophy in which I have come to believe.  I will not call it\nmy philosophy; for I did not make it.  God and humanity made it;\nand it made me.\n\n     I have often had a fancy for writing a romance about an English\nyachtsman who slightly miscalculated his course and discovered England\nunder the impression that it was a new island in the South Seas.\nI always find, however, that I am either too busy or too lazy to\nwrite this fine work, so I may as well give it away for the purposes\nof philosophical illustration.  There will probably be a general\nimpression that the man who landed (armed to the teeth and talking\nby signs) to plant the British flag on that barbaric temple which\nturned out to be the Pavilion at Brighton, felt rather a fool.\nI am not here concerned to deny that he looked a fool.  But if you\nimagine that he felt a fool, or at any rate that the sense of folly\nwas his sole or his dominant emotion, then you have not studied\nwith sufficient delicacy the rich romantic nature of the hero\nof this tale.  His mistake was really a most enviable mistake;\nand he knew it, if he was the man I take him for.  What could\nbe more delightful than to have in the same few minutes all the\nfascinating terrors of going abroad combined with all the humane\nsecurity of coming home again?  What could be better than to have\nall the fun of discovering South Africa without the disgusting\nnecessity of landing there?  What could be more glorious than to\nbrace one's self up to discover New South Wales and then realize,\nwith a gush of happy tears, that it was really old South Wales.\nThis at least seems to me the main problem for philosophers, and is\nin a manner the main problem of this book.  How can we contrive\nto be at once astonished at the world and yet at home in it?\nHow can this queer cosmic town, with its many-legged citizens,\nwith its monstrous and ancient lamps, how can this world give us\nat once the fascination of a strange town and the comfort and honour\nof being our own town?\n\n     To show that a faith or a philosophy is true from every\nstandpoint would be too big an undertaking even for a much bigger\nbook than this; it is necessary to follow one path of argument;\nand this is the path that I here propose to follow.  I wish to set\nforth my faith as particularly answering this double spiritual need,\nthe need for that mixture of the familiar and the unfamiliar\nwhich Christendom has rightly named romance.  For the very word\n\"romance\" has in it the mystery and ancient meaning of Rome.\nAny one setting out to dispute anything ought always to begin by\nsaying what he does not dispute.  Beyond stating what he proposes\nto prove he should always state what he does not propose to prove.\nThe thing I do not propose to prove, the thing I propose to take\nas common ground between myself and any average reader, is this\ndesirability of an active and imaginative life, picturesque and full\nof a poetical curiosity, a life such as western man at any rate always\nseems to have desired.  If a man says that extinction is better\nthan existence or blank existence better than variety and adventure,\nthen he is not one of the ordinary people to whom I am talking.\nIf a man prefers nothing I can give him nothing.  But nearly all\npeople I have ever met in this western society in which I live\nwould agree to the general proposition that we need this life\nof practical romance; the combination of something that is strange\nwith something that is secure.  We need so to view the world as to\ncombine an idea of wonder and an idea of welcome.  We need to be\nhappy in this wonderland without once being merely comfortable.\nIt is THIS achievement of my creed that I shall chiefly pursue in\nthese pages.\n\n     But I have a peculiar reason for mentioning the man in\na yacht, who discovered England.  For I am that man in a yacht.\nI discovered England.  I do not see how this book can avoid\nbeing egotistical; and I do not quite see (to tell the truth)\nhow it can avoid being dull.  Dulness will, however, free me from\nthe charge which I most lament; the charge of being flippant.\nMere light sophistry is the thing that I happen to despise most of\nall things, and it is perhaps a wholesome fact that this is the thing\nof which I am generally accused.  I know nothing so contemptible\nas a mere paradox; a mere ingenious defence of the indefensible.\nIf it were true (as has been said) that Mr. Bernard Shaw lived\nupon paradox, then he ought to be a mere common millionaire;\nfor a man of his mental activity could invent a sophistry every\nsix minutes.  It is as easy as lying; because it is lying.\nThe truth is, of course, that Mr. Shaw is cruelly hampered by the\nfact that he cannot tell any lie unless he thinks it is the truth.\nI find myself under the same intolerable bondage.  I never in my life\nsaid anything merely because I thought it funny; though of course,\nI have had ordinary human vainglory, and may have thought it funny\nbecause I had said it.  It is one thing to describe an interview\nwith a gorgon or a griffin, a creature who does not exist.\nIt is another thing to discover that the rhinoceros does exist\nand then take pleasure in the fact that he looks as if he didn't.\nOne searches for truth, but it may be that one pursues instinctively\nthe more extraordinary truths.  And I offer this book with the\nheartiest sentiments to all the jolly people who hate what I write,\nand regard it (very justly, for all I know), as a piece of poor\nclowning or a single tiresome joke.\n\n     For if this book is a joke it is a joke against me.\nI am the man who with the utmost daring discovered what had been\ndiscovered before.  If there is an element of farce in what follows,\nthe farce is at my own expense; for this book explains how I fancied I\nwas the first to set foot in Brighton and then found I was the last.\nIt recounts my elephantine adventures in pursuit of the obvious.\nNo one can think my case more ludicrous than I think it myself;\nno reader can accuse me here of trying to make a fool of him:\nI am the fool of this story, and no rebel shall hurl me from\nmy throne.  I freely confess all the idiotic ambitions of the end\nof the nineteenth century.  I did, like all other solemn little boys,\ntry to be in advance of the age.  Like them I tried to be some ten\nminutes in advance of the truth.  And I found that I was eighteen\nhundred years behind it.  I did strain my voice with a painfully\njuvenile exaggeration in uttering my truths.  And I was punished\nin the fittest and funniest way, for I have kept my truths:\nbut I have discovered, not that they were not truths, but simply that\nthey were not mine.  When I fancied that I stood alone I was really\nin the ridiculous position of being backed up by all Christendom.\nIt may be, Heaven forgive me, that I did try to be original;\nbut I only succeeded in inventing all by myself an inferior copy\nof the existing traditions of civilized religion.  The man from\nthe yacht thought he was the first to find England; I thought I was\nthe first to find Europe.  I did try to found a heresy of my own;\nand when I had put the last touches to it, I discovered that it\nwas orthodoxy.\n\n     It may be that somebody will be entertained by the account\nof this happy fiasco.  It might amuse a friend or an enemy to\nread how I gradually learnt from the truth of some stray legend\nor from the falsehood of some dominant philosophy, things that I\nmight have learnt from my catechism--if I had ever learnt it.\nThere may or may not be some entertainment in reading how I\nfound at last in an anarchist club or a Babylonian temple what I\nmight have found in the nearest parish church.  If any one is\nentertained by learning how the flowers of the field or the\nphrases in an omnibus, the accidents of politics or the pains\nof youth came together in a certain order to produce a certain\nconviction of Christian orthodoxy, he may possibly read this book.\nBut there is in everything a reasonable division of labour.\nI have written the book, and nothing on earth would induce me to read it.\n\n     I add one purely pedantic note which comes, as a note\nnaturally should, at the beginning of the book.  These essays are\nconcerned only to discuss the actual fact that the central Christian\ntheology (sufficiently summarized in the Apostles' Creed) is the\nbest root of energy and sound ethics.  They are not intended\nto discuss the very fascinating but quite different question\nof what is the present seat of authority for the proclamation\nof that creed.  When the word \"orthodoxy\" is used here it means\nthe Apostles' Creed, as understood by everybody calling himself\nChristian until a very short time ago and the general historic\nconduct of those who held such a creed.  I have been forced by\nmere space to confine myself to what I have got from this creed;\nI do not touch the matter much disputed among modern Christians,\nof where we ourselves got it.  This is not an ecclesiastical treatise\nbut a sort of slovenly autobiography.  But if any one wants my\nopinions about the actual nature of the authority, Mr. G.S.Street\nhas only to throw me another challenge, and I will write him another book.\n\n\n\nII THE MANIAC\n\n\n     Thoroughly worldly people never understand even the world;\nthey rely altogether on a few cynical maxims which are not true.\nOnce I remember walking with a prosperous publisher, who made\na remark which I had often heard before; it is, indeed, almost a\nmotto of the modern world.  Yet I had heard it once too often,\nand I saw suddenly that there was nothing in it.  The publisher\nsaid of somebody, \"That man will get on; he believes in himself.\"\nAnd I remember that as I lifted my head to listen, my eye caught\nan omnibus on which was written \"Hanwell.\"  I said to him,\n\"Shall I tell you where the men are who believe most in themselves?\nFor I can tell you.  I know of men who believe in themselves more\ncolossally than Napoleon or Caesar.  I know where flames the fixed\nstar of certainty and success.  I can guide you to the thrones of\nthe Super-men. The men who really believe in themselves are all in\nlunatic asylums.\"  He said mildly that there were a good many men after\nall who believed in themselves and who were not in lunatic asylums.\n\"Yes, there are,\" I retorted, \"and you of all men ought to know them.\nThat drunken poet from whom you would not take a dreary tragedy,\nhe believed in himself.  That elderly minister with an epic from\nwhom you were hiding in a back room, he believed in himself.\nIf you consulted your business experience instead of your ugly\nindividualistic philosophy, you would know that believing in himself\nis one of the commonest signs of a rotter.  Actors who can't\nact believe in themselves; and debtors who won't pay.  It would\nbe much truer to say that a man will certainly fail, because he\nbelieves in himself.  Complete self-confidence is not merely a sin;\ncomplete self-confidence is a weakness.  Believing utterly in one's\nself is a hysterical and superstitious belief like believing in\nJoanna Southcote:  the man who has it has `Hanwell' written on his\nface as plain as it is written on that omnibus.\"  And to all this\nmy friend the publisher made this very deep and effective reply,\n\"Well, if a man is not to believe in himself, in what is he to believe?\"\nAfter a long pause I replied, \"I will go home and write a book in answer\nto that question.\"  This is the book that I have written in answer\nto it.\n\n     But I think this book may well start where our argument started--\nin the neighbourhood of the mad-house. Modern masters of science are\nmuch impressed with the need of beginning all inquiry with a fact.\nThe ancient masters of religion were quite equally impressed with\nthat necessity.  They began with the fact of sin--a fact as practical\nas potatoes.  Whether or no man could be washed in miraculous\nwaters, there was no doubt at any rate that he wanted washing.\nBut certain religious leaders in London, not mere materialists,\nhave begun in our day not to deny the highly disputable water,\nbut to deny the indisputable dirt.  Certain new theologians dispute\noriginal sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can\nreally be proved.  Some followers of the Reverend R.J.Campbell, in\ntheir almost too fastidious spirituality, admit divine sinlessness,\nwhich they cannot see even in their dreams.  But they essentially\ndeny human sin, which they can see in the street.  The strongest\nsaints and the strongest sceptics alike took positive evil as the\nstarting-point of their argument.  If it be true (as it certainly is)\nthat a man can feel exquisite happiness in skinning a cat,\nthen the religious philosopher can only draw one of two deductions.\nHe must either deny the existence of God, as all atheists do; or he\nmust deny the present union between God and man, as all Christians do.\nThe new theologians seem to think it a highly rationalistic solution\nto deny the cat.\n\n     In this remarkable situation it is plainly not now possible\n(with any hope of a universal appeal) to start, as our fathers did,\nwith the fact of sin.  This very fact which was to them (and is to me)\nas plain as a pikestaff, is the very fact that has been specially\ndiluted or denied.  But though moderns deny the existence of sin,\nI do not think that they have yet denied the existence of a\nlunatic asylum.  We all agree still that there is a collapse of\nthe intellect as unmistakable as a falling house.  Men deny hell,\nbut not, as yet, Hanwell.  For the purpose of our primary argument\nthe one may very well stand where the other stood.  I mean that as\nall thoughts and theories were once judged by whether they tended\nto make a man lose his soul, so for our present purpose all modern\nthoughts and theories may be judged by whether they tend to make\na man lose his wits.\n\n     It is true that some speak lightly and loosely of insanity\nas in itself attractive.  But a moment's thought will show that if\ndisease is beautiful, it is generally some one else's disease.\nA blind man may be picturesque; but it requires two eyes to see\nthe picture.  And similarly even the wildest poetry of insanity can\nonly be enjoyed by the sane.  To the insane man his insanity is\nquite prosaic, because it is quite true.  A man who thinks himself\na chicken is to himself as ordinary as a chicken.  A man who thinks\nhe is a bit of glass is to himself as dull as a bit of glass.\nIt is the homogeneity of his mind which makes him dull, and which\nmakes him mad.  It is only because we see the irony of his idea\nthat we think him even amusing; it is only because he does not see\nthe irony of his idea that he is put in Hanwell at all.  In short,\noddities only strike ordinary people.  Oddities do not strike\nodd people.  This is why ordinary people have a much more exciting time;\nwhile odd people are always complaining of the dulness of life.\nThis is also why the new novels die so quickly, and why the old\nfairy tales endure for ever.  The old fairy tale makes the hero\na normal human boy; it is his adventures that are startling;\nthey startle him because he is normal.  But in the modern\npsychological novel the hero is abnormal; the centre is not central.\nHence the fiercest adventures fail to affect him adequately,\nand the book is monotonous.  You can make a story out of a hero\namong dragons; but not out of a dragon among dragons.  The fairy\ntale discusses what a sane man will do in a mad world.  The sober\nrealistic novel of to-day discusses what an essential lunatic will\ndo in a dull world.\n\n     Let us begin, then, with the mad-house; from this evil and fantastic\ninn let us set forth on our intellectual journey.  Now, if we are\nto glance at the philosophy of sanity, the first thing to do in the\nmatter is to blot out one big and common mistake.  There is a notion\nadrift everywhere that imagination, especially mystical imagination,\nis dangerous to man's mental balance.  Poets are commonly spoken of as\npsychologically unreliable; and generally there is a vague association\nbetween wreathing laurels in your hair and sticking straws in it.\nFacts and history utterly contradict this view.  Most of the very\ngreat poets have been not only sane, but extremely business-like;\nand if Shakespeare ever really held horses, it was because he was much\nthe safest man to hold them.  Imagination does not breed insanity.\nExactly what does breed insanity is reason.  Poets do not go mad;\nbut chess-players do.  Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers;\nbut creative artists very seldom.  I am not, as will be seen,\nin any sense attacking logic:  I only say that this danger does\nlie in logic, not in imagination.  Artistic paternity is as\nwholesome as physical paternity.  Moreover, it is worthy of remark\nthat when a poet really was morbid it was commonly because he had\nsome weak spot of rationality on his brain.  Poe, for instance,\nreally was morbid; not because he was poetical, but because he\nwas specially analytical.  Even chess was too poetical for him;\nhe disliked chess because it was full of knights and castles,\nlike a poem.  He avowedly preferred the black discs of draughts,\nbecause they were more like the mere black dots on a diagram.\nPerhaps the strongest case of all is this:  that only one great English\npoet went mad, Cowper.  And he was definitely driven mad by logic,\nby the ugly and alien logic of predestination.  Poetry was not\nthe disease, but the medicine; poetry partly kept him in health.\nHe could sometimes forget the red and thirsty hell to which his\nhideous necessitarianism dragged him among the wide waters and\nthe white flat lilies of the Ouse.  He was damned by John Calvin;\nhe was almost saved by John Gilpin.  Everywhere we see that men\ndo not go mad by dreaming.  Critics are much madder than poets.\nHomer is complete and calm enough; it is his critics who tear him\ninto extravagant tatters.  Shakespeare is quite himself; it is only\nsome of his critics who have discovered that he was somebody else.\nAnd though St. John the Evangelist saw many strange monsters in\nhis vision, he saw no creature so wild as one of his own commentators.\nThe general fact is simple.  Poetry is sane because it floats\neasily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea,\nand so make it finite.  The result is mental exhaustion,\nlike the physical exhaustion of Mr. Holbein.  To accept everything\nis an exercise, to understand everything a strain.  The poet only\ndesires exaltation and expansion, a world to stretch himself in.\nThe poet only asks to get his head into the heavens.  It is the logician\nwho seeks to get the heavens into his head.  And it is his head\nthat splits.\n\n     It is a small matter, but not irrelevant, that this striking\nmistake is commonly supported by a striking misquotation.  We have\nall heard people cite the celebrated line of Dryden as \"Great genius\nis to madness near allied.\"  But Dryden did not say that great genius\nwas to madness near allied.  Dryden was a great genius himself,\nand knew better.  It would have been hard to find a man more romantic\nthan he, or more sensible.  What Dryden said was this, \"Great wits\nare oft to madness near allied\"; and that is true.  It is the pure\npromptitude of the intellect that is in peril of a breakdown.\nAlso people might remember of what sort of man Dryden was talking.\nHe was not talking of any unworldly visionary like Vaughan or\nGeorge Herbert.  He was talking of a cynical man of the world,\na sceptic, a diplomatist, a great practical politician.  Such men\nare indeed to madness near allied.  Their incessant calculation\nof their own brains and other people's brains is a dangerous trade.\nIt is always perilous to the mind to reckon up the mind.  A flippant\nperson has asked why we say, \"As mad as a hatter.\"  A more flippant\nperson might answer that a hatter is mad because he has to measure\nthe human head.\n\n     And if great reasoners are often maniacal, it is equally true\nthat maniacs are commonly great reasoners.  When I was engaged\nin a controversy with the CLARION on the matter of free will,\nthat able writer Mr. R.B.Suthers said that free will was lunacy,\nbecause it meant causeless actions, and the actions of a lunatic\nwould be causeless.  I do not dwell here upon the disastrous lapse\nin determinist logic.  Obviously if any actions, even a lunatic's,\ncan be causeless, determinism is done for.  If the chain of\ncausation can be broken for a madman, it can be broken for a man.\nBut my purpose is to point out something more practical.\nIt was natural, perhaps, that a modern Marxian Socialist should not\nknow anything about free will.  But it was certainly remarkable that\na modern Marxian Socialist should not know anything about lunatics.\nMr. Suthers evidently did not know anything about lunatics.\nThe last thing that can be said of a lunatic is that his actions\nare causeless.  If any human acts may loosely be called causeless,\nthey are the minor acts of a healthy man; whistling as he walks;\nslashing the grass with a stick; kicking his heels or rubbing\nhis hands.  It is the happy man who does the useless things;\nthe sick man is not strong enough to be idle.  It is exactly such\ncareless and causeless actions that the madman could never understand;\nfor the madman (like the determinist) generally sees too much cause\nin everything.  The madman would read a conspiratorial significance\ninto those empty activities.  He would think that the lopping\nof the grass was an attack on private property.  He would think\nthat the kicking of the heels was a signal to an accomplice.\nIf the madman could for an instant become careless, he would\nbecome sane.  Every one who has had the misfortune to talk with people\nin the heart or on the edge of mental disorder, knows that their\nmost sinister quality is a horrible clarity of detail; a connecting\nof one thing with another in a map more elaborate than a maze.\nIf you argue with a madman, it is extremely probable that you will\nget the worst of it; for in many ways his mind moves all the quicker\nfor not being delayed by the things that go with good judgment.\nHe is not hampered by a sense of humour or by charity, or by the dumb\ncertainties of experience.  He is the more logical for losing certain\nsane affections.  Indeed, the common phrase for insanity is in this\nrespect a misleading one.  The madman is not the man who has lost\nhis reason.  The madman is the man who has lost everything except\nhis reason.\n\n     The madman's explanation of a thing is always complete, and often\nin a purely rational sense satisfactory.  Or, to speak more strictly,\nthe insane explanation, if not conclusive, is at least unanswerable;\nthis may be observed specially in the two or three commonest kinds\nof madness.  If a man says (for instance) that men have a conspiracy\nagainst him, you cannot dispute it except by saying that all the men\ndeny that they are conspirators; which is exactly what conspirators\nwould do.  His explanation covers the facts as much as yours.\nOr if a man says that he is the rightful King of England, it is no\ncomplete answer to say that the existing authorities call him mad;\nfor if he were King of England that might be the wisest thing for the\nexisting authorities to do.  Or if a man says that he is Jesus Christ,\nit is no answer to tell him that the world denies his divinity;\nfor the world denied Christ's.\n\n     Nevertheless he is wrong.  But if we attempt to trace his error\nin exact terms, we shall not find it quite so easy as we had supposed.\nPerhaps the nearest we can get to expressing it is to say this:\nthat his mind moves in a perfect but narrow circle.  A small circle\nis quite as infinite as a large circle; but, though it is quite\nas infinite, it is not so large.  In the same way the insane explanation\nis quite as complete as the sane one, but it is not so large.\nA bullet is quite as round as the world, but it is not the world.\nThere is such a thing as a narrow universality; there is such\na thing as a small and cramped eternity; you may see it in many\nmodern religions.  Now, speaking quite externally and empirically,\nwe may say that the strongest and most unmistakable MARK of madness\nis this combination between a logical completeness and a spiritual\ncontraction.  The lunatic's theory explains a large number of things,\nbut it does not explain them in a large way.  I mean that if you\nor I were dealing with a mind that was growing morbid, we should be\nchiefly concerned not so much to give it arguments as to give it air,\nto convince it that there was something cleaner and cooler outside\nthe suffocation of a single argument.  Suppose, for instance,\nit were the first case that I took as typical; suppose it were\nthe case of a man who accused everybody of conspiring against him.\nIf we could express our deepest feelings of protest and appeal\nagainst this obsession, I suppose we should say something like this:\n\"Oh, I admit that you have your case and have it by heart,\nand that many things do fit into other things as you say.  I admit\nthat your explanation explains a great deal; but what a great deal it\nleaves out!  Are there no other stories in the world except yours;\nand are all men busy with your business?  Suppose we grant the details;\nperhaps when the man in the street did not seem to see you it was\nonly his cunning; perhaps when the policeman asked you your name it\nwas only because he knew it already.  But how much happier you would\nbe if you only knew that these people cared nothing about you!\nHow much larger your life would be if your self could become smaller\nin it; if you could really look at other men with common curiosity\nand pleasure; if you could see them walking as they are in their\nsunny selfishness and their virile indifference!  You would begin\nto be interested in them, because they were not interested in you.\nYou would break out of this tiny and tawdry theatre in which your\nown little plot is always being played, and you would find yourself\nunder a freer sky, in a street full of splendid strangers.\"\nOr suppose it were the second case of madness, that of a man who\nclaims the crown, your impulse would be to answer, \"All right!\nPerhaps you know that you are the King of England; but why do you care?\nMake one magnificent effort and you will be a human being and look\ndown on all the kings of the earth.\"  Or it might be the third case,\nof the madman who called himself Christ.  If we said what we felt,\nwe should say, \"So you are the Creator and Redeemer of the world:\nbut what a small world it must be!  What a little heaven you must inhabit,\nwith angels no bigger than butterflies!  How sad it must be to be God;\nand an inadequate God!  Is there really no life fuller and no love\nmore marvellous than yours; and is it really in your small and painful\npity that all flesh must put its faith?  How much happier you would be,\nhow much more of you there would be, if the hammer of a higher God\ncould smash your small cosmos, scattering the stars like spangles,\nand leave you in the open, free like other men to look up as well\nas down!\"\n\n     And it must be remembered that the most purely practical science\ndoes take this view of mental evil; it does not seek to argue with it\nlike a heresy but simply to snap it like a spell.  Neither modern\nscience nor ancient religion believes in complete free thought.\nTheology rebukes certain thoughts by calling them blasphemous.\nScience rebukes certain thoughts by calling them morbid.  For example,\nsome religious societies discouraged men more or less from thinking\nabout sex.  The new scientific society definitely discourages men from\nthinking about death; it is a fact, but it is considered a morbid fact.\nAnd in dealing with those whose morbidity has a touch of mania,\nmodern science cares far less for pure logic than a dancing Dervish.\nIn these cases it is not enough that the unhappy man should desire truth;\nhe must desire health.  Nothing can save him but a blind hunger\nfor normality, like that of a beast.  A man cannot think himself\nout of mental evil; for it is actually the organ of thought that has\nbecome diseased, ungovernable, and, as it were, independent.  He can\nonly be saved by will or faith.  The moment his mere reason moves,\nit moves in the old circular rut; he will go round and round his\nlogical circle, just as a man in a third-class carriage on the Inner\nCircle will go round and round the Inner Circle unless he performs\nthe voluntary, vigorous, and mystical act of getting out at Gower Street.\nDecision is the whole business here; a door must be shut for ever.\nEvery remedy is a desperate remedy.  Every cure is a miraculous cure.\nCuring a madman is not arguing with a philosopher; it is casting\nout a devil.  And however quietly doctors and psychologists may go\nto work in the matter, their attitude is profoundly intolerant--\nas intolerant as Bloody Mary.  Their attitude is really this:\nthat the man must stop thinking, if he is to go on living.\nTheir counsel is one of intellectual amputation.  If thy HEAD\noffend thee, cut it off; for it is better, not merely to enter\nthe Kingdom of Heaven as a child, but to enter it as an imbecile,\nrather than with your whole intellect to be cast into hell--\nor into Hanwell.\n\n     Such is the madman of experience; he is commonly a reasoner,\nfrequently a successful reasoner.  Doubtless he could be vanquished\nin mere reason, and the case against him put logically.  But it can\nbe put much more precisely in more general and even aesthetic terms.\nHe is in the clean and well-lit prison of one idea:  he is\nsharpened to one painful point.  He is without healthy hesitation\nand healthy complexity.  Now, as I explain in the introduction,\nI have determined in these early chapters to give not so much\na diagram of a doctrine as some pictures of a point of view.  And I\nhave described at length my vision of the maniac for this reason:\nthat just as I am affected by the maniac, so I am affected by most\nmodern thinkers.  That unmistakable mood or note that I hear\nfrom Hanwell, I hear also from half the chairs of science and seats\nof learning to-day; and most of the mad doctors are mad doctors\nin more senses than one.  They all have exactly that combination we\nhave noted:  the combination of an expansive and exhaustive reason\nwith a contracted common sense.  They are universal only in the\nsense that they take one thin explanation and carry it very far.\nBut a pattern can stretch for ever and still be a small pattern.\nThey see a chess-board white on black, and if the universe is paved\nwith it, it is still white on black.  Like the lunatic, they cannot\nalter their standpoint; they cannot make a mental effort and suddenly\nsee it black on white.\n\n     Take first the more obvious case of materialism.  As an explanation\nof the world, materialism has a sort of insane simplicity.  It has\njust the quality of the madman's argument; we have at once the sense\nof it covering everything and the sense of it leaving everything out.\nContemplate some able and sincere materialist, as, for instance,\nMr. McCabe, and you will have exactly this unique sensation.\nHe understands everything, and everything does not seem\nworth understanding.  His cosmos may be complete in every rivet\nand cog-wheel, but still his cosmos is smaller than our world.\nSomehow his scheme, like the lucid scheme of the madman, seems unconscious\nof the alien energies and the large indifference of the earth;\nit is not thinking of the real things of the earth, of fighting\npeoples or proud mothers, or first love or fear upon the sea.\nThe earth is so very large, and the cosmos is so very small.\nThe cosmos is about the smallest hole that a man can hide his head in.\n\n     It must be understood that I am not now discussing the relation\nof these creeds to truth; but, for the present, solely their relation\nto health.  Later in the argument I hope to attack the question of\nobjective verity; here I speak only of a phenomenon of psychology.\nI do not for the present attempt to prove to Haeckel that materialism\nis untrue, any more than I attempted to prove to the man who thought\nhe was Christ that he was labouring under an error.  I merely remark\nhere on the fact that both cases have the same kind of completeness\nand the same kind of incompleteness.  You can explain a man's\ndetention at Hanwell by an indifferent public by saying that it\nis the crucifixion of a god of whom the world is not worthy.\nThe explanation does explain.  Similarly you may explain the order\nin the universe by saying that all things, even the souls of men,\nare leaves inevitably unfolding on an utterly unconscious tree--\nthe blind destiny of matter.  The explanation does explain,\nthough not, of course, so completely as the madman's. But the point\nhere is that the normal human mind not only objects to both,\nbut feels to both the same objection.  Its approximate statement\nis that if the man in Hanwell is the real God, he is not much\nof a god.  And, similarly, if the cosmos of the materialist is the\nreal cosmos, it is not much of a cosmos.  The thing has shrunk.\nThe deity is less divine than many men; and (according to Haeckel)\nthe whole of life is something much more grey, narrow, and trivial\nthan many separate aspects of it.  The parts seem greater than\nthe whole.\n\n\n     For we must remember that the materialist philosophy (whether\ntrue or not) is certainly much more limiting than any religion.\nIn one sense, of course, all intelligent ideas are narrow.\nThey cannot be broader than themselves.  A Christian is only\nrestricted in the same sense that an atheist is restricted.\nHe cannot think Christianity false and continue to be a Christian;\nand the atheist cannot think atheism false and continue to be\nan atheist.  But as it happens, there is a very special sense\nin which materialism has more restrictions than spiritualism.\nMr. McCabe thinks me a slave because I am not allowed to believe\nin determinism.  I think Mr. McCabe a slave because he is not\nallowed to believe in fairies.  But if we examine the two vetoes we\nshall see that his is really much more of a pure veto than mine.\nThe Christian is quite free to believe that there is a considerable\namount of settled order and inevitable development in the universe.\nBut the materialist is not allowed to admit into his spotless machine\nthe slightest speck of spiritualism or miracle.  Poor Mr. McCabe\nis not allowed to retain even the tiniest imp, though it might be\nhiding in a pimpernel.  The Christian admits that the universe is\nmanifold and even miscellaneous, just as a sane man knows that he\nis complex.  The sane man knows that he has a touch of the beast,\na touch of the devil, a touch of the saint, a touch of the citizen.\nNay, the really sane man knows that he has a touch of the madman.\nBut the materialist's world is quite simple and solid, just as\nthe madman is quite sure he is sane.  The materialist is sure\nthat history has been simply and solely a chain of causation,\njust as the interesting person before mentioned is quite sure that\nhe is simply and solely a chicken.  Materialists and madmen never\nhave doubts.\n\n     Spiritual doctrines do not actually limit the mind as do\nmaterialistic denials.  Even if I believe in immortality I need not think\nabout it.  But if I disbelieve in immortality I must not think about it.\nIn the first case the road is open and I can go as far as I like;\nin the second the road is shut.  But the case is even stronger,\nand the parallel with madness is yet more strange.  For it was our\ncase against the exhaustive and logical theory of the lunatic that,\nright or wrong, it gradually destroyed his humanity.  Now it is the charge\nagainst the main deductions of the materialist that, right or wrong,\nthey gradually destroy his humanity; I do not mean only kindness,\nI mean hope, courage, poetry, initiative, all that is human.\nFor instance, when materialism leads men to complete fatalism (as it\ngenerally does), it is quite idle to pretend that it is in any sense\na liberating force.  It is absurd to say that you are especially\nadvancing freedom when you only use free thought to destroy free will.\nThe determinists come to bind, not to loose.  They may well call\ntheir law the \"chain\" of causation.  It is the worst chain that ever\nfettered a human being.  You may use the language of liberty,\nif you like, about materialistic teaching, but it is obvious that this\nis just as inapplicable to it as a whole as the same language when\napplied to a man locked up in a mad-house. You may say, if you like,\nthat the man is free to think himself a poached egg.  But it is\nsurely a more massive and important fact that if he is a poached egg\nhe is not free to eat, drink, sleep, walk, or smoke a cigarette.\nSimilarly you may say, if you like, that the bold determinist\nspeculator is free to disbelieve in the reality of the will.\nBut it is a much more massive and important fact that he is not\nfree to raise, to curse, to thank, to justify, to urge, to punish,\nto resist temptations, to incite mobs, to make New Year resolutions,\nto pardon sinners, to rebuke tyrants, or even to say \"thank you\"\nfor the mustard.\n\n     In passing from this subject I may note that there is a queer\nfallacy to the effect that materialistic fatalism is in some way\nfavourable to mercy, to the abolition of cruel punishments or\npunishments of any kind.  This is startlingly the reverse of the truth.\nIt is quite tenable that the doctrine of necessity makes no difference\nat all; that it leaves the flogger flogging and the kind friend\nexhorting as before.  But obviously if it stops either of them it\nstops the kind exhortation.  That the sins are inevitable does not\nprevent punishment; if it prevents anything it prevents persuasion.\nDeterminism is quite as likely to lead to cruelty as it is certain\nto lead to cowardice.  Determinism is not inconsistent with the\ncruel treatment of criminals.  What it is (perhaps) inconsistent\nwith is the generous treatment of criminals; with any appeal to\ntheir better feelings or encouragement in their moral struggle.\nThe determinist does not believe in appealing to the will, but he does\nbelieve in changing the environment.  He must not say to the sinner,\n\"Go and sin no more,\" because the sinner cannot help it.  But he\ncan put him in boiling oil; for boiling oil is an environment.\nConsidered as a figure, therefore, the materialist has the fantastic\noutline of the figure of the madman.  Both take up a position\nat once unanswerable and intolerable.\n\n     Of course it is not only of the materialist that all this is true.\nThe same would apply to the other extreme of speculative logic.\nThere is a sceptic far more terrible than he who believes that\neverything began in matter.  It is possible to meet the sceptic\nwho believes that everything began in himself.  He doubts not the\nexistence of angels or devils, but the existence of men and cows.\nFor him his own friends are a mythology made up by himself.\nHe created his own father and his own mother.  This horrible\nfancy has in it something decidedly attractive to the somewhat\nmystical egoism of our day.  That publisher who thought that men\nwould get on if they believed in themselves, those seekers after\nthe Superman who are always looking for him in the looking-glass,\nthose writers who talk about impressing their personalities instead\nof creating life for the world, all these people have really only\nan inch between them and this awful emptiness.  Then when this\nkindly world all round the man has been blackened out like a lie;\nwhen friends fade into ghosts, and the foundations of the world fail;\nthen when the man, believing in nothing and in no man, is alone\nin his own nightmare, then the great individualistic motto shall\nbe written over him in avenging irony.  The stars will be only dots\nin the blackness of his own brain; his mother's face will be only\na sketch from his own insane pencil on the walls of his cell.\nBut over his cell shall be written, with dreadful truth, \"He believes\nin himself.\"\n\n\n     All that concerns us here, however, is to note that this\npanegoistic extreme of thought exhibits the same paradox as the\nother extreme of materialism.  It is equally complete in theory\nand equally crippling in practice.  For the sake of simplicity,\nit is easier to state the notion by saying that a man can believe\nthat he is always in a dream.  Now, obviously there can be no positive\nproof given to him that he is not in a dream, for the simple reason\nthat no proof can be offered that might not be offered in a dream.\nBut if the man began to burn down London and say that his housekeeper\nwould soon call him to breakfast, we should take him and put him\nwith other logicians in a place which has often been alluded to in\nthe course of this chapter.  The man who cannot believe his senses,\nand the man who cannot believe anything else, are both insane,\nbut their insanity is proved not by any error in their argument,\nbut by the manifest mistake of their whole lives.  They have both\nlocked themselves up in two boxes, painted inside with the sun\nand stars; they are both unable to get out, the one into the\nhealth and happiness of heaven, the other even into the health\nand happiness of the earth.  Their position is quite reasonable;\nnay, in a sense it is infinitely reasonable, just as a threepenny\nbit is infinitely circular.  But there is such a thing as a mean\ninfinity, a base and slavish eternity.  It is amusing to notice\nthat many of the moderns, whether sceptics or mystics, have taken\nas their sign a certain eastern symbol, which is the very symbol\nof this ultimate nullity.  When they wish to represent eternity,\nthey represent it by a serpent with his tail in his mouth.  There is\na startling sarcasm in the image of that very unsatisfactory meal.\nThe eternity of the material fatalists, the eternity of the\neastern pessimists, the eternity of the supercilious theosophists\nand higher scientists of to-day is, indeed, very well presented\nby a serpent eating his tail, a degraded animal who destroys even himself.\n\n     This chapter is purely practical and is concerned with what\nactually is the chief mark and element of insanity; we may say\nin summary that it is reason used without root, reason in the void.\nThe man who begins to think without the proper first principles goes mad;\nhe begins to think at the wrong end.  And for the rest of these pages\nwe have to try and discover what is the right end.  But we may ask\nin conclusion, if this be what drives men mad, what is it that keeps\nthem sane?  By the end of this book I hope to give a definite,\nsome will think a far too definite, answer.  But for the moment it\nis possible in the same solely practical manner to give a general\nanswer touching what in actual human history keeps men sane.\nMysticism keeps men sane.  As long as you have mystery you have health;\nwhen you destroy mystery you create morbidity.  The ordinary man has\nalways been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic.\nHe has permitted the twilight.  He has always had one foot in earth\nand the other in fairyland.  He has always left himself free to doubt\nhis gods; but (unlike the agnostic of to-day) free also to believe\nin them.  He has always cared more for truth than for consistency.\nIf he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other,\nhe would take the two truths and the contradiction along with them.\nHis spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight:\nhe sees two different pictures at once and yet sees all the better\nfor that.  Thus he has always believed that there was such a thing\nas fate, but such a thing as free will also.  Thus he believed\nthat children were indeed the kingdom of heaven, but nevertheless\nought to be obedient to the kingdom of earth.  He admired youth\nbecause it was young and age because it was not.  It is exactly\nthis balance of apparent contradictions that has been the whole\nbuoyancy of the healthy man.  The whole secret of mysticism is this:\nthat man can understand everything by the help of what he does\nnot understand.  The morbid logician seeks to make everything lucid,\nand succeeds in making everything mysterious.  The mystic allows\none thing to be mysterious, and everything else becomes lucid.\nThe determinist makes the theory of causation quite clear,\nand then finds that he cannot say \"if you please\" to the housemaid.\nThe Christian permits free will to remain a sacred mystery; but because\nof this his relations with the housemaid become of a sparkling and\ncrystal clearness.  He puts the seed of dogma in a central darkness;\nbut it branches forth in all directions with abounding natural health.\nAs we have taken the circle as the symbol of reason and madness,\nwe may very well take the cross as the symbol at once of mystery and\nof health.  Buddhism is centripetal, but Christianity is centrifugal:\nit breaks out.  For the circle is perfect and infinite in its nature;\nbut it is fixed for ever in its size; it can never be larger\nor smaller.  But the cross, though it has at its heart a collision\nand a contradiction, can extend its four arms for ever without\naltering its shape.  Because it has a paradox in its centre it can\ngrow without changing.  The circle returns upon itself and is bound.\nThe cross opens its arms to the four winds; it is a signpost for free\ntravellers.\n\n     Symbols alone are of even a cloudy value in speaking of this\ndeep matter; and another symbol from physical nature will express\nsufficiently well the real place of mysticism before mankind.\nThe one created thing which we cannot look at is the one thing in\nthe light of which we look at everything.  Like the sun at noonday,\nmysticism explains everything else by the blaze of its own\nvictorious invisibility.  Detached intellectualism is (in the\nexact sense of a popular phrase) all moonshine; for it is light\nwithout heat, and it is secondary light, reflected from a dead world.\nBut the Greeks were right when they made Apollo the god both of\nimagination and of sanity; for he was both the patron of poetry\nand the patron of healing.  Of necessary dogmas and a special creed\nI shall speak later.  But that transcendentalism by which all men\nlive has primarily much the position of the sun in the sky.\nWe are conscious of it as of a kind of splendid confusion;\nit is something both shining and shapeless, at once a blaze and\na blur.  But the circle of the moon is as clear and unmistakable,\nas recurrent and inevitable, as the circle of Euclid on a blackboard.\nFor the moon is utterly reasonable; and the moon is the mother\nof lunatics and has given to them all her name.\n\n\n\nIII THE SUICIDE OF THOUGHT\n\n\n     The phrases of the street are not only forcible but subtle:\nfor a figure of speech can often get into a crack too small for\na definition.  Phrases like \"put out\" or \"off colour\" might have\nbeen coined by Mr. Henry James in an agony of verbal precision.\nAnd there is no more subtle truth than that of the everyday phrase\nabout a man having \"his heart in the right place.\"  It involves the\nidea of normal proportion; not only does a certain function exist,\nbut it is rightly related to other functions.  Indeed, the negation\nof this phrase would describe with peculiar accuracy the somewhat morbid\nmercy and perverse tenderness of the most representative moderns.\nIf, for instance, I had to describe with fairness the character\nof Mr. Bernard Shaw, I could not express myself more exactly\nthan by saying that he has a heroically large and generous heart;\nbut not a heart in the right place.  And this is so of the typical\nsociety of our time.\n\n     The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern\nworld is far too good.  It is full of wild and wasted virtues.\nWhen a religious scheme is shattered (as Christianity was shattered\nat the Reformation), it is not merely the vices that are let loose.\nThe vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage.\nBut the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander\nmore wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage.  The modern\nworld is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad.  The virtues\nhave gone mad because they have been isolated from each other\nand are wandering alone.  Thus some scientists care for truth;\nand their truth is pitiless.  Thus some humanitarians only care\nfor pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful.\nFor example, Mr. Blatchford attacks Christianity because he is mad\non one Christian virtue:  the merely mystical and almost irrational\nvirtue of charity.  He has a strange idea that he will make it\neasier to forgive sins by saying that there are no sins to forgive.\nMr. Blatchford is not only an early Christian, he is the only\nearly Christian who ought really to have been eaten by lions.\nFor in his case the pagan accusation is really true:  his mercy\nwould mean mere anarchy.  He really is the enemy of the human race--\nbecause he is so human.  As the other extreme, we may take\nthe acrid realist, who has deliberately killed in himself all\nhuman pleasure in happy tales or in the healing of the heart.\nTorquemada tortured people physically for the sake of moral truth.\nZola tortured people morally for the sake of physical truth.\nBut in Torquemada's time there was at least a system that could\nto some extent make righteousness and peace kiss each other.\nNow they do not even bow.  But a much stronger case than these two of\ntruth and pity can be found in the remarkable case of the dislocation\nof humility.\n\n     It is only with one aspect of humility that we are here concerned.\nHumility was largely meant as a restraint upon the arrogance\nand infinity of the appetite of man.  He was always outstripping\nhis mercies with his own newly invented needs.  His very power\nof enjoyment destroyed half his joys.  By asking for pleasure,\nhe lost the chief pleasure; for the chief pleasure is surprise.\nHence it became evident that if a man would make his world large,\nhe must be always making himself small.  Even the haughty visions,\nthe tall cities, and the toppling pinnacles are the creations\nof humility.  Giants that tread down forests like grass are\nthe creations of humility.  Towers that vanish upwards above\nthe loneliest star are the creations of humility.  For towers\nare not tall unless we look up at them; and giants are not giants\nunless they are larger than we.  All this gigantesque imagination,\nwhich is, perhaps, the mightiest of the pleasures of man, is at bottom\nentirely humble.  It is impossible without humility to enjoy anything--\neven pride.\n\n     But what we suffer from to-day is humility in the wrong place.\nModesty has moved from the organ of ambition.  Modesty has settled\nupon the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be.\nA man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about\nthe truth; this has been exactly reversed.  Nowadays the part\nof a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not\nto assert--himself.  The part he doubts is exactly the part he\nought not to doubt--the Divine Reason.  Huxley preached a humility\ncontent to learn from Nature.  But the new sceptic is so humble\nthat he doubts if he can even learn.  Thus we should be wrong if we\nhad said hastily that there is no humility typical of our time.\nThe truth is that there is a real humility typical of our time;\nbut it so happens that it is practically a more poisonous humility\nthan the wildest prostrations of the ascetic.  The old humility was\na spur that prevented a man from stopping; not a nail in his boot\nthat prevented him from going on.  For the old humility made a man\ndoubtful about his efforts, which might make him work harder.\nBut the new humility makes a man doubtful about his aims, which will make\nhim stop working altogether.\n\n     At any street corner we may meet a man who utters the frantic\nand blasphemous statement that he may be wrong.  Every day one\ncomes across somebody who says that of course his view may not\nbe the right one.  Of course his view must be the right one,\nor it is not his view.  We are on the road to producing a race\nof men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table.\nWe are in danger of seeing philosophers who doubt the law of gravity\nas being a mere fancy of their own.  Scoffers of old time were too\nproud to be convinced; but these are too humble to be convinced.\nThe meek do inherit the earth; but the modern sceptics are too meek\neven to claim their inheritance.  It is exactly this intellectual\nhelplessness which is our second problem.\n\n     The last chapter has been concerned only with a fact of observation:\nthat what peril of morbidity there is for man comes rather from\nhis reason than his imagination.  It was not meant to attack the\nauthority of reason; rather it is the ultimate purpose to defend it.\nFor it needs defence.  The whole modern world is at war with reason;\nand the tower already reels.\n\n     The sages, it is often said, can see no answer to the riddle\nof religion.  But the trouble with our sages is not that they\ncannot see the answer; it is that they cannot even see the riddle.\nThey are like children so stupid as to notice nothing paradoxical\nin the playful assertion that a door is not a door.  The modern\nlatitudinarians speak, for instance, about authority in religion\nnot only as if there were no reason in it, but as if there had never\nbeen any reason for it.  Apart from seeing its philosophical basis,\nthey cannot even see its historical cause.  Religious authority\nhas often, doubtless, been oppressive or unreasonable; just as\nevery legal system (and especially our present one) has been\ncallous and full of a cruel apathy.  It is rational to attack\nthe police; nay, it is glorious.  But the modern critics of religious\nauthority are like men who should attack the police without ever\nhaving heard of burglars.  For there is a great and possible peril\nto the human mind:  a peril as practical as burglary.  Against it\nreligious authority was reared, rightly or wrongly, as a barrier.\nAnd against it something certainly must be reared as a barrier,\nif our race is to avoid ruin.\n\n     That peril is that the human intellect is free to destroy itself.\nJust as one generation could prevent the very existence of the next\ngeneration, by all entering a monastery or jumping into the sea, so one\nset of thinkers can in some degree prevent further thinking by teaching\nthe next generation that there is no validity in any human thought.\nIt is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith.\nReason is itself a matter of faith.  It is an act of faith to assert\nthat our thoughts have any relation to reality at all.  If you are\nmerely a sceptic, you must sooner or later ask yourself the question,\n\"Why should ANYTHING go right; even observation and deduction?\nWhy should not good logic be as misleading as bad logic?\nThey are both movements in the brain of a bewildered ape?\"\nThe young sceptic says, \"I have a right to think for myself.\"\nBut the old sceptic, the complete sceptic, says, \"I have no right\nto think for myself.  I have no right to think at all.\"\n\n     There is a thought that stops thought.  That is the only thought\nthat ought to be stopped.  That is the ultimate evil against which\nall religious authority was aimed.  It only appears at the end of\ndecadent ages like our own:  and already Mr. H.G.Wells has raised its\nruinous banner; he has written a delicate piece of scepticism called\n\"Doubts of the Instrument.\"  In this he questions the brain itself,\nand endeavours to remove all reality from all his own assertions,\npast, present, and to come.  But it was against this remote ruin\nthat all the military systems in religion were originally ranked\nand ruled.  The creeds and the crusades, the hierarchies and the\nhorrible persecutions were not organized, as is ignorantly said,\nfor the suppression of reason.  They were organized for the difficult\ndefence of reason.  Man, by a blind instinct, knew that if once\nthings were wildly questioned, reason could be questioned first.\nThe authority of priests to absolve, the authority of popes to define\nthe authority, even of inquisitors to terrify:  these were all only dark\ndefences erected round one central authority, more undemonstrable,\nmore supernatural than all--the authority of a man to think.\nWe know now that this is so; we have no excuse for not knowing it.\nFor we can hear scepticism crashing through the old ring of authorities,\nand at the same moment we can see reason swaying upon her throne.\nIn so far as religion is gone, reason is going.  For they are both\nof the same primary and authoritative kind.  They are both methods\nof proof which cannot themselves be proved.  And in the act of\ndestroying the idea of Divine authority we have largely destroyed\nthe idea of that human authority by which we do a long-division sum.\nWith a long and sustained tug we have attempted to pull the mitre\noff pontifical man; and his head has come off with it.\n\n     Lest this should be called loose assertion, it is perhaps\ndesirable, though dull, to run rapidly through the chief modern\nfashions of thought which have this effect of stopping thought itself.\nMaterialism and the view of everything as a personal illusion have\nsome such effect; for if the mind is mechanical, thought cannot be\nvery exciting, and if the cosmos is unreal, there is nothing to think\nabout.  But in these cases the effect is indirect and doubtful.  In\nsome cases it is direct and clear; notably in the case of what is\ngenerally called evolution.\n\n     Evolution is a good example of that modern intelligence which,\nif it destroys anything, destroys itself.  Evolution is either\nan innocent scientific description of how certain earthly things\ncame about; or, if it is anything more than this, it is an attack\nupon thought itself.  If evolution destroys anything, it does not\ndestroy religion but rationalism.  If evolution simply means that\na positive thing called an ape turned very slowly into a positive\nthing called a man, then it is stingless for the most orthodox;\nfor a personal God might just as well do things slowly as quickly,\nespecially if, like the Christian God, he were outside time.\nBut if it means anything more, it means that there is no such\nthing as an ape to change, and no such thing as a man for him\nto change into.  It means that there is no such thing as a thing.\nAt best, there is only one thing, and that is a flux of everything\nand anything.  This is an attack not upon the faith, but upon\nthe mind; you cannot think if there are no things to think about.\nYou cannot think if you are not separate from the subject of thought.\nDescartes said, \"I think; therefore I am.\"  The philosophic evolutionist\nreverses and negatives the epigram.  He says, \"I am not; therefore I\ncannot think.\"\n\n     Then there is the opposite attack on thought:  that urged by\nMr. H.G.Wells when he insists that every separate thing is \"unique,\"\nand there are no categories at all.  This also is merely destructive.\nThinking means connecting things, and stops if they cannot be connected.\nIt need hardly be said that this scepticism forbidding thought\nnecessarily forbids speech; a man cannot open his mouth without\ncontradicting it.  Thus when Mr. Wells says (as he did somewhere),\n\"All chairs are quite different,\" he utters not merely a misstatement,\nbut a contradiction in terms.  If all chairs were quite different,\nyou could not call them \"all chairs.\"\n\n     Akin to these is the false theory of progress, which maintains\nthat we alter the test instead of trying to pass the test.\nWe often hear it said, for instance, \"What is right in one age\nis wrong in another.\"  This is quite reasonable, if it means that\nthere is a fixed aim, and that certain methods attain at certain\ntimes and not at other times.  If women, say, desire to be elegant,\nit may be that they are improved at one time by growing fatter and\nat another time by growing thinner.  But you cannot say that they\nare improved by ceasing to wish to be elegant and beginning to wish\nto be oblong.  If the standard changes, how can there be improvement,\nwhich implies a standard?  Nietzsche started a nonsensical idea that\nmen had once sought as good what we now call evil; if it were so,\nwe could not talk of surpassing or even falling short of them.\nHow can you overtake Jones if you walk in the other direction?\nYou cannot discuss whether one people has succeeded more in being\nmiserable than another succeeded in being happy.  It would be\nlike discussing whether Milton was more puritanical than a pig\nis fat.\n\n     It is true that a man (a silly man) might make change itself his\nobject or ideal.  But as an ideal, change itself becomes unchangeable.\nIf the change-worshipper wishes to estimate his own progress, he must\nbe sternly loyal to the ideal of change; he must not begin to flirt\ngaily with the ideal of monotony.  Progress itself cannot progress.\nIt is worth remark, in passing, that when Tennyson, in a wild and rather\nweak manner, welcomed the idea of infinite alteration in society,\nhe instinctively took a metaphor which suggests an imprisoned tedium.\nHe wrote--\n\n     \"Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves\nof change.\"\n\nHe thought of change itself as an unchangeable groove; and so it is.\nChange is about the narrowest and hardest groove that a man can\nget into.\n\n     The main point here, however, is that this idea of a fundamental\nalteration in the standard is one of the things that make thought\nabout the past or future simply impossible.  The theory of a\ncomplete change of standards in human history does not merely\ndeprive us of the pleasure of honouring our fathers; it deprives\nus even of the more modern and aristocratic pleasure of despising them.\n\n     This bald summary of the thought-destroying forces of our\ntime would not be complete without some reference to pragmatism;\nfor though I have here used and should everywhere defend the\npragmatist method as a preliminary guide to truth, there is an extreme\napplication of it which involves the absence of all truth whatever.\nMy meaning can be put shortly thus.  I agree with the pragmatists\nthat apparent objective truth is not the whole matter; that there\nis an authoritative need to believe the things that are necessary\nto the human mind.  But I say that one of those necessities\nprecisely is a belief in objective truth.  The pragmatist tells\na man to think what he must think and never mind the Absolute.\nBut precisely one of the things that he must think is the Absolute.\nThis philosophy, indeed, is a kind of verbal paradox.  Pragmatism is\na matter of human needs; and one of the first of human needs\nis to be something more than a pragmatist.  Extreme pragmatism\nis just as inhuman as the determinism it so powerfully attacks.\nThe determinist (who, to do him justice, does not pretend to be\na human being) makes nonsense of the human sense of actual choice.\nThe pragmatist, who professes to be specially human, makes nonsense\nof the human sense of actual fact.\n\n     To sum up our contention so far, we may say that the most\ncharacteristic current philosophies have not only a touch of mania,\nbut a touch of suicidal mania.  The mere questioner has knocked\nhis head against the limits of human thought; and cracked it.\nThis is what makes so futile the warnings of the orthodox and the\nboasts of the advanced about the dangerous boyhood of free thought.\nWhat we are looking at is not the boyhood of free thought; it is\nthe old age and ultimate dissolution of free thought.  It is vain\nfor bishops and pious bigwigs to discuss what dreadful things will\nhappen if wild scepticism runs its course.  It has run its course.\nIt is vain for eloquent atheists to talk of the great truths that\nwill be revealed if once we see free thought begin.  We have seen\nit end.  It has no more questions to ask; it has questioned itself.\nYou cannot call up any wilder vision than a city in which men\nask themselves if they have any selves.  You cannot fancy a more\nsceptical world than that in which men doubt if there is a world.\nIt might certainly have reached its bankruptcy more quickly\nand cleanly if it had not been feebly hampered by the application\nof indefensible laws of blasphemy or by the absurd pretence\nthat modern England is Christian.  But it would have reached the\nbankruptcy anyhow.  Militant atheists are still unjustly persecuted;\nbut rather because they are an old minority than because they\nare a new one.  Free thought has exhausted its own freedom.\nIt is weary of its own success.  If any eager freethinker now hails\nphilosophic freedom as the dawn, he is only like the man in Mark\nTwain who came out wrapped in blankets to see the sun rise and was\njust in time to see it set.  If any frightened curate still says\nthat it will be awful if the darkness of free thought should spread,\nwe can only answer him in the high and powerful words of Mr. Belloc,\n\"Do not, I beseech you, be troubled about the increase of forces\nalready in dissolution.  You have mistaken the hour of the night:\nit is already morning.\"  We have no more questions left to ask.\nWe have looked for questions in the darkest corners and on the\nwildest peaks.  We have found all the questions that can be found.\nIt is time we gave up looking for questions and began looking\nfor answers.\n\n     But one more word must be added.  At the beginning of this\npreliminary negative sketch I said that our mental ruin has\nbeen wrought by wild reason, not by wild imagination.  A man\ndoes not go mad because he makes a statue a mile high, but he\nmay go mad by thinking it out in square inches.  Now, one school\nof thinkers has seen this and jumped at it as a way of renewing\nthe pagan health of the world.  They see that reason destroys;\nbut Will, they say, creates.  The ultimate authority, they say,\nis in will, not in reason.  The supreme point is not why\na man demands a thing, but the fact that he does demand it.\nI have no space to trace or expound this philosophy of Will.\nIt came, I suppose, through Nietzsche, who preached something\nthat is called egoism.  That, indeed, was simpleminded enough;\nfor Nietzsche denied egoism simply by preaching it.  To preach\nanything is to give it away.  First, the egoist calls life a war\nwithout mercy, and then he takes the greatest possible trouble to\ndrill his enemies in war.  To preach egoism is to practise altruism.\nBut however it began, the view is common enough in current literature.\nThe main defence of these thinkers is that they are not thinkers;\nthey are makers.  They say that choice is itself the divine thing.\nThus Mr. Bernard Shaw has attacked the old idea that men's acts\nare to be judged by the standard of the desire of happiness.\nHe says that a man does not act for his happiness, but from his will.\nHe does not say, \"Jam will make me happy,\" but \"I want jam.\"\nAnd in all this others follow him with yet greater enthusiasm.\nMr. John Davidson, a remarkable poet, is so passionately excited\nabout it that he is obliged to write prose.  He publishes a short\nplay with several long prefaces.  This is natural enough in Mr. Shaw,\nfor all his plays are prefaces:  Mr. Shaw is (I suspect) the only man\non earth who has never written any poetry.  But that Mr. Davidson (who\ncan write excellent poetry) should write instead laborious metaphysics\nin defence of this doctrine of will, does show that the doctrine\nof will has taken hold of men.  Even Mr. H.G.Wells has half spoken\nin its language; saying that one should test acts not like a thinker,\nbut like an artist, saying, \"I FEEL this curve is right,\" or \"that\nline SHALL go thus.\"  They are all excited; and well they may be.\nFor by this doctrine of the divine authority of will, they think they\ncan break out of the doomed fortress of rationalism.  They think they\ncan escape.\n\n     But they cannot escape.  This pure praise of volition ends\nin the same break up and blank as the mere pursuit of logic.\nExactly as complete free thought involves the doubting of thought itself,\nso the acceptation of mere \"willing\" really paralyzes the will.\nMr. Bernard Shaw has not perceived the real difference between the old\nutilitarian test of pleasure (clumsy, of course, and easily misstated)\nand that which he propounds.  The real difference between the test\nof happiness and the test of will is simply that the test of\nhappiness is a test and the other isn't. You can discuss whether\na man's act in jumping over a cliff was directed towards happiness;\nyou cannot discuss whether it was derived from will.  Of course\nit was.  You can praise an action by saying that it is calculated\nto bring pleasure or pain to discover truth or to save the soul.\nBut you cannot praise an action because it shows will; for to say\nthat is merely to say that it is an action.  By this praise of will\nyou cannot really choose one course as better than another.  And yet\nchoosing one course as better than another is the very definition\nof the will you are praising.\n\n     The worship of will is the negation of will.  To admire mere\nchoice is to refuse to choose.  If Mr. Bernard Shaw comes up to me and\nsays, \"Will something,\" that is tantamount to saying, \"I do not mind\nwhat you will,\" and that is tantamount to saying, \"I have no will in\nthe matter.\"  You cannot admire will in general, because the essence\nof will is that it is particular. A brilliant anarchist like Mr. John\nDavidson feels an irritation against ordinary morality, and therefore\nhe invokes will--will to anything.  He only wants humanity to want\nsomething. But humanity does want something.  It wants ordinary\nmorality. He rebels against the law and tells us to will something or\nanything. But we have willed something.  We have willed the law\nagainst which he rebels.\n\n     All the will-worshippers, from Nietzsche to Mr. Davidson,\nare really quite empty of volition.  They cannot will, they can\nhardly wish.  And if any one wants a proof of this, it can be found\nquite easily.  It can be found in this fact:  that they always talk\nof will as something that expands and breaks out.  But it is quite\nthe opposite.  Every act of will is an act of self-limitation. To\ndesire action is to desire limitation.  In that sense every act\nis an act of self-sacrifice. When you choose anything, you reject\neverything else.  That objection, which men of this school used\nto make to the act of marriage, is really an objection to every act.\nEvery act is an irrevocable selection and exclusion.  Just as when\nyou marry one woman you give up all the others, so when you take\none course of action you give up all the other courses.  If you\nbecome King of England, you give up the post of Beadle in Brompton.\nIf you go to Rome, you sacrifice a rich suggestive life in Wimbledon.\nIt is the existence of this negative or limiting side of will that\nmakes most of the talk of the anarchic will-worshippers little\nbetter than nonsense.  For instance, Mr. John Davidson tells us\nto have nothing to do with \"Thou shalt not\"; but it is surely obvious\nthat \"Thou shalt not\" is only one of the necessary corollaries\nof \"I will.\"  \"I will go to the Lord Mayor's Show, and thou shalt\nnot stop me.\"  Anarchism adjures us to be bold creative artists,\nand care for no laws or limits.  But it is impossible to be\nan artist and not care for laws and limits.  Art is limitation;\nthe essence of every picture is the frame.  If you draw a giraffe,\nyou must draw him with a long neck.  If, in your bold creative way,\nyou hold yourself free to draw a giraffe with a short neck,\nyou will really find that you are not free to draw a giraffe.\nThe moment you step into the world of facts, you step into a world\nof limits.  You can free things from alien or accidental laws,\nbut not from the laws of their own nature.  You may, if you like,\nfree a tiger from his bars; but do not free him from his stripes.\nDo not free a camel of the burden of his hump:  you may be freeing him\nfrom being a camel.  Do not go about as a demagogue, encouraging triangles\nto break out of the prison of their three sides.  If a triangle\nbreaks out of its three sides, its life comes to a lamentable end.\nSomebody wrote a work called \"The Loves of the Triangles\";\nI never read it, but I am sure that if triangles ever were loved,\nthey were loved for being triangular.  This is certainly the case\nwith all artistic creation, which is in some ways the most\ndecisive example of pure will.  The artist loves his limitations:\nthey constitute the THING he is doing.  The painter is glad\nthat the canvas is flat.  The sculptor is glad that the clay\nis colourless.\n\n     In case the point is not clear, an historic example may illustrate\nit.  The French Revolution was really an heroic and decisive thing,\nbecause the Jacobins willed something definite and limited.\nThey desired the freedoms of democracy, but also all the vetoes\nof democracy.  They wished to have votes and NOT to have titles.\nRepublicanism had an ascetic side in Franklin or Robespierre\nas well as an expansive side in Danton or Wilkes.  Therefore they\nhave created something with a solid substance and shape, the square\nsocial equality and peasant wealth of France.  But since then the\nrevolutionary or speculative mind of Europe has been weakened by\nshrinking from any proposal because of the limits of that proposal.\nLiberalism has been degraded into liberality.  Men have tried\nto turn \"revolutionise\" from a transitive to an intransitive verb.\nThe Jacobin could tell you not only the system he would rebel against,\nbut (what was more important) the system he would NOT rebel against,\nthe system he would trust.  But the new rebel is a Sceptic,\nand will not entirely trust anything.  He has no loyalty; therefore he\ncan never be really a revolutionist.  And the fact that he doubts\neverything really gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything.\nFor all denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind; and the\nmodern revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces,\nbut the doctrine by which he denounces it.  Thus he writes one book\ncomplaining that imperial oppression insults the purity of women,\nand then he writes another book (about the sex problem) in which he\ninsults it himself.  He curses the Sultan because Christian girls lose\ntheir virginity, and then curses Mrs. Grundy because they keep it.\nAs a politician, he will cry out that war is a waste of life,\nand then, as a philosopher, that all life is waste of time.\nA Russian pessimist will denounce a policeman for killing a peasant,\nand then prove by the highest philosophical principles that the\npeasant ought to have killed himself.  A man denounces marriage\nas a lie, and then denounces aristocratic profligates for treating\nit as a lie.  He calls a flag a bauble, and then blames the\noppressors of Poland or Ireland because they take away that bauble.\nThe man of this school goes first to a political meeting, where he\ncomplains that savages are treated as if they were beasts; then he\ntakes his hat and umbrella and goes on to a scientific meeting,\nwhere he proves that they practically are beasts.  In short,\nthe modern revolutionist, being an infinite sceptic, is always\nengaged in undermining his own mines.  In his book on politics he\nattacks men for trampling on morality; in his book on ethics he\nattacks morality for trampling on men.  Therefore the modern man\nin revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt.\nBy rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel\nagainst anything.\n\n     It may be added that the same blank and bankruptcy can be observed\nin all fierce and terrible types of literature, especially in satire.\nSatire may be mad and anarchic, but it presupposes an admitted\nsuperiority in certain things over others; it presupposes a standard.\nWhen little boys in the street laugh at the fatness of some\ndistinguished journalist, they are unconsciously assuming a standard\nof Greek sculpture.  They are appealing to the marble Apollo.\nAnd the curious disappearance of satire from our literature is\nan instance of the fierce things fading for want of any principle\nto be fierce about.  Nietzsche had some natural talent for sarcasm:\nhe could sneer, though he could not laugh; but there is always something\nbodiless and without weight in his satire, simply because it has not\nany mass of common morality behind it.  He is himself more preposterous\nthan anything he denounces.  But, indeed, Nietzsche will stand very\nwell as the type of the whole of this failure of abstract violence.\nThe softening of the brain which ultimately overtook him was not\na physical accident.  If Nietzsche had not ended in imbecility,\nNietzscheism would end in imbecility.  Thinking in isolation\nand with pride ends in being an idiot.  Every man who will\nnot have softening of the heart must at last have softening of the brain.\n\n     This last attempt to evade intellectualism ends in intellectualism,\nand therefore in death.  The sortie has failed.  The wild worship of\nlawlessness and the materialist worship of law end in the same void.\nNietzsche scales staggering mountains, but he turns up ultimately\nin Tibet.  He sits down beside Tolstoy in the land of nothing\nand Nirvana.  They are both helpless--one because he must not\ngrasp anything, and the other because he must not let go of anything.\nThe Tolstoyan's will is frozen by a Buddhist instinct that all\nspecial actions are evil.  But the Nietzscheite's will is quite\nequally frozen by his view that all special actions are good;\nfor if all special actions are good, none of them are special.\nThey stand at the crossroads, and one hates all the roads and\nthe other likes all the roads.  The result is--well, some things\nare not hard to calculate.  They stand at the cross-roads.\n\n     Here I end (thank God) the first and dullest business\nof this book--the rough review of recent thought.  After this I\nbegin to sketch a view of life which may not interest my reader,\nbut which, at any rate, interests me.  In front of me, as I close\nthis page, is a pile of modern books that I have been turning\nover for the purpose--a pile of ingenuity, a pile of futility.\nBy the accident of my present detachment, I can see the inevitable smash\nof the philosophies of Schopenhauer and Tolstoy, Nietzsche and Shaw,\nas clearly as an inevitable railway smash could be seen from\na balloon.  They are all on the road to the emptiness of the asylum.\nFor madness may be defined as using mental activity so as to reach\nmental helplessness; and they have nearly reached it.  He who\nthinks he is made of glass, thinks to the destruction of thought;\nfor glass cannot think.  So he who wills to reject nothing,\nwills the destruction of will; for will is not only the choice\nof something, but the rejection of almost everything.  And as I\nturn and tumble over the clever, wonderful, tiresome, and useless\nmodern books, the title of one of them rivets my eye.  It is called\n\"Jeanne d'Arc,\" by Anatole France.  I have only glanced at it,\nbut a glance was enough to remind me of Renan's \"Vie de Jesus.\"\nIt has the same strange method of the reverent sceptic.  It discredits\nsupernatural stories that have some foundation, simply by telling\nnatural stories that have no foundation.  Because we cannot believe\nin what a saint did, we are to pretend that we know exactly what\nhe felt.  But I do not mention either book in order to criticise it,\nbut because the accidental combination of the names called up two\nstartling images of Sanity which blasted all the books before me.\nJoan of Arc was not stuck at the cross-roads, either by rejecting\nall the paths like Tolstoy, or by accepting them all like Nietzsche.\nShe chose a path, and went down it like a thunderbolt.  Yet Joan,\nwhen I came to think of her, had in her all that was true either in\nTolstoy or Nietzsche, all that was even tolerable in either of them.\nI thought of all that is noble in Tolstoy, the pleasure in plain\nthings, especially in plain pity, the actualities of the earth,\nthe reverence for the poor, the dignity of the bowed back.\nJoan of Arc had all that and with this great addition, that she\nendured poverty as well as admiring it; whereas Tolstoy is only a\ntypical aristocrat trying to find out its secret.  And then I thought\nof all that was brave and proud and pathetic in poor Nietzsche,\nand his mutiny against the emptiness and timidity of our time.\nI thought of his cry for the ecstatic equilibrium of danger, his hunger\nfor the rush of great horses, his cry to arms.  Well, Joan of Arc\nhad all that, and again with this difference, that she did not\npraise fighting, but fought.  We KNOW that she was not afraid\nof an army, while Nietzsche, for all we know, was afraid of a cow.\nTolstoy only praised the peasant; she was the peasant.  Nietzsche only\npraised the warrior; she was the warrior.  She beat them both at\ntheir own antagonistic ideals; she was more gentle than the one,\nmore violent than the other.  Yet she was a perfectly practical person\nwho did something, while they are wild speculators who do nothing.\nIt was impossible that the thought should not cross my mind that she\nand her faith had perhaps some secret of moral unity and utility\nthat has been lost.  And with that thought came a larger one,\nand the colossal figure of her Master had also crossed the theatre\nof my thoughts.  The same modern difficulty which darkened the\nsubject-matter of Anatole France also darkened that of Ernest Renan.\nRenan also divided his hero's pity from his hero's pugnacity.\nRenan even represented the righteous anger at Jerusalem as a mere\nnervous breakdown after the idyllic expectations of Galilee.\nAs if there were any inconsistency between having a love for\nhumanity and having a hatred for inhumanity!  Altruists, with thin,\nweak voices, denounce Christ as an egoist.  Egoists (with\neven thinner and weaker voices) denounce Him as an altruist.\nIn our present atmosphere such cavils are comprehensible enough.\nThe love of a hero is more terrible than the hatred of a tyrant.\nThe hatred of a hero is more generous than the love of a philanthropist.\nThere is a huge and heroic sanity of which moderns can only collect\nthe fragments.  There is a giant of whom we see only the lopped\narms and legs walking about.  They have torn the soul of Christ\ninto silly strips, labelled egoism and altruism, and they are\nequally puzzled by His insane magnificence and His insane meekness.\nThey have parted His garments among them, and for His vesture they\nhave cast lots; though the coat was without seam woven from the top\nthroughout.\n\n\n\nIV THE ETHICS OF ELFLAND\n\n\n     When the business man rebukes the idealism of his office-boy, it\nis commonly in some such speech as this:  \"Ah, yes, when one is young,\none has these ideals in the abstract and these castles in the air;\nbut in middle age they all break up like clouds, and one comes down\nto a belief in practical politics, to using the machinery one has\nand getting on with the world as it is.\"  Thus, at least, venerable and\nphilanthropic old men now in their honoured graves used to talk to me\nwhen I was a boy.  But since then I have grown up and have discovered\nthat these philanthropic old men were telling lies.  What has really\nhappened is exactly the opposite of what they said would happen.\nThey said that I should lose my ideals and begin to believe in the\nmethods of practical politicians.  Now, I have not lost my ideals\nin the least; my faith in fundamentals is exactly what it always was.\nWhat I have lost is my old childlike faith in practical politics.\nI am still as much concerned as ever about the Battle of Armageddon;\nbut I am not so much concerned about the General Election.\nAs a babe I leapt up on my mother's knee at the mere mention\nof it.  No; the vision is always solid and reliable.  The vision\nis always a fact.  It is the reality that is often a fraud.\nAs much as I ever did, more than I ever did, I believe in Liberalism.\nBut there was a rosy time of innocence when I believed in Liberals.\n\n     I take this instance of one of the enduring faiths because,\nhaving now to trace the roots of my personal speculation,\nthis may be counted, I think, as the only positive bias.\nI was brought up a Liberal, and have always believed in democracy,\nin the elementary liberal doctrine of a self-governing humanity.\nIf any one finds the phrase vague or threadbare, I can only pause\nfor a moment to explain that the principle of democracy, as I\nmean it, can be stated in two propositions.  The first is this:\nthat the things common to all men are more important than the\nthings peculiar to any men.  Ordinary things are more valuable\nthan extraordinary things; nay, they are more extraordinary.\nMan is something more awful than men; something more strange.\nThe sense of the miracle of humanity itself should be always more vivid\nto us than any marvels of power, intellect, art, or civilization.\nThe mere man on two legs, as such, should be felt as something more\nheartbreaking than any music and more startling than any caricature.\nDeath is more tragic even than death by starvation.  Having a nose\nis more comic even than having a Norman nose.\n\n     This is the first principle of democracy:  that the essential\nthings in men are the things they hold in common, not the things\nthey hold separately.  And the second principle is merely this:\nthat the political instinct or desire is one of these things\nwhich they hold in common.  Falling in love is more poetical than\ndropping into poetry.  The democratic contention is that government\n(helping to rule the tribe) is a thing like falling in love,\nand not a thing like dropping into poetry.  It is not something\nanalogous to playing the church organ, painting on vellum,\ndiscovering the North Pole (that insidious habit), looping the loop,\nbeing Astronomer Royal, and so on.  For these things we do not wish\na man to do at all unless he does them well.  It is, on the contrary,\na thing analogous to writing one's own love-letters or blowing\none's own nose.  These things we want a man to do for himself,\neven if he does them badly.  I am not here arguing the truth of any\nof these conceptions; I know that some moderns are asking to have\ntheir wives chosen by scientists, and they may soon be asking,\nfor all I know, to have their noses blown by nurses.  I merely\nsay that mankind does recognize these universal human functions,\nand that democracy classes government among them.  In short,\nthe democratic faith is this:  that the most terribly important things\nmust be left to ordinary men themselves--the mating of the sexes,\nthe rearing of the young, the laws of the state.  This is democracy;\nand in this I have always believed.\n\n     But there is one thing that I have never from my youth up been\nable to understand.  I have never been able to understand where people\ngot the idea that democracy was in some way opposed to tradition.\nIt is obvious that tradition is only democracy extended through time.\nIt is trusting to a consensus of common human voices rather than to\nsome isolated or arbitrary record.  The man who quotes some German\nhistorian against the tradition of the Catholic Church, for instance,\nis strictly appealing to aristocracy.  He is appealing to the\nsuperiority of one expert against the awful authority of a mob.\nIt is quite easy to see why a legend is treated, and ought to be treated,\nmore respectfully than a book of history.  The legend is generally\nmade by the majority of people in the village, who are sane.\nThe book is generally written by the one man in the village who is mad.\nThose who urge against tradition that men in the past were ignorant\nmay go and urge it at the Carlton Club, along with the statement\nthat voters in the slums are ignorant.  It will not do for us.\nIf we attach great importance to the opinion of ordinary men in great\nunanimity when we are dealing with daily matters, there is no reason\nwhy we should disregard it when we are dealing with history or fable.\nTradition may be defined as an extension of the franchise.\nTradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes,\nour ancestors.  It is the democracy of the dead.  Tradition refuses\nto submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely\nhappen to be walking about.  All democrats object to men being\ndisqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their\nbeing disqualified by the accident of death.  Democracy tells us\nnot to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our groom;\ntradition asks us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is\nour father.  I, at any rate, cannot separate the two ideas of democracy\nand tradition; it seems evident to me that they are the same idea.\nWe will have the dead at our councils.  The ancient Greeks voted\nby stones; these shall vote by tombstones.  It is all quite regular\nand official, for most tombstones, like most ballot papers, are marked\nwith a cross.\n\n     I have first to say, therefore, that if I have had a bias, it was\nalways a bias in favour of democracy, and therefore of tradition.\nBefore we come to any theoretic or logical beginnings I am content\nto allow for that personal equation; I have always been more\ninclined to believe the ruck of hard-working people than to believe\nthat special and troublesome literary class to which I belong.\nI prefer even the fancies and prejudices of the people who see\nlife from the inside to the clearest demonstrations of the people\nwho see life from the outside.  I would always trust the old wives'\nfables against the old maids' facts.  As long as wit is mother wit it\ncan be as wild as it pleases.\n\n     Now, I have to put together a general position, and I pretend\nto no training in such things.  I propose to do it, therefore,\nby writing down one after another the three or four fundamental\nideas which I have found for myself, pretty much in the way\nthat I found them.  Then I shall roughly synthesise them,\nsumming up my personal philosophy or natural religion; then I\nshall describe my startling discovery that the whole thing had\nbeen discovered before.  It had been discovered by Christianity.\nBut of these profound persuasions which I have to recount in order,\nthe earliest was concerned with this element of popular tradition.\nAnd without the foregoing explanation touching tradition and\ndemocracy I could hardly make my mental experience clear.  As it is,\nI do not know whether I can make it clear, but I now propose to try.\n\n     My first and last philosophy, that which I believe in with\nunbroken certainty, I learnt in the nursery.  I generally learnt it\nfrom a nurse; that is, from the solemn and star-appointed priestess\nat once of democracy and tradition.  The things I believed most then,\nthe things I believe most now, are the things called fairy tales.\nThey seem to me to be the entirely reasonable things.  They are\nnot fantasies:  compared with them other things are fantastic.\nCompared with them religion and rationalism are both abnormal,\nthough religion is abnormally right and rationalism abnormally wrong.\nFairyland is nothing but the sunny country of common sense.\nIt is not earth that judges heaven, but heaven that judges earth;\nso for me at least it was not earth that criticised elfland,\nbut elfland that criticised the earth.  I knew the magic beanstalk\nbefore I had tasted beans; I was sure of the Man in the Moon before I\nwas certain of the moon.  This was at one with all popular tradition.\nModern minor poets are naturalists, and talk about the bush or the brook;\nbut the singers of the old epics and fables were supernaturalists,\nand talked about the gods of brook and bush.  That is what the moderns\nmean when they say that the ancients did not \"appreciate Nature,\"\nbecause they said that Nature was divine.  Old nurses do not\ntell children about the grass, but about the fairies that dance\non the grass; and the old Greeks could not see the trees for\nthe dryads.\n\n     But I deal here with what ethic and philosophy come from being\nfed on fairy tales.  If I were describing them in detail I could\nnote many noble and healthy principles that arise from them.\nThere is the chivalrous lesson of \"Jack the Giant Killer\"; that giants\nshould be killed because they are gigantic.  It is a manly mutiny\nagainst pride as such.  For the rebel is older than all the kingdoms,\nand the Jacobin has more tradition than the Jacobite.  There is the\nlesson of \"Cinderella,\" which is the same as that of the Magnificat--\nEXALTAVIT HUMILES.  There is the great lesson of \"Beauty and the Beast\";\nthat a thing must be loved BEFORE it is loveable.  There is the\nterrible allegory of the \"Sleeping Beauty,\" which tells how the human\ncreature was blessed with all birthday gifts, yet cursed with death;\nand how death also may perhaps be softened to a sleep.  But I am\nnot concerned with any of the separate statutes of elfland, but with\nthe whole spirit of its law, which I learnt before I could speak,\nand shall retain when I cannot write.  I am concerned with a certain\nway of looking at life, which was created in me by the fairy tales,\nbut has since been meekly ratified by the mere facts.\n\n     It might be stated this way.  There are certain sequences\nor developments (cases of one thing following another), which are,\nin the true sense of the word, reasonable.  They are, in the true\nsense of the word, necessary.  Such are mathematical and merely\nlogical sequences.  We in fairyland (who are the most reasonable\nof all creatures) admit that reason and that necessity.\nFor instance, if the Ugly Sisters are older than Cinderella,\nit is (in an iron and awful sense) NECESSARY that Cinderella is\nyounger than the Ugly Sisters.  There is no getting out of it.\nHaeckel may talk as much fatalism about that fact as he pleases:\nit really must be.  If Jack is the son of a miller, a miller is\nthe father of Jack.  Cold reason decrees it from her awful throne:\nand we in fairyland submit.  If the three brothers all ride horses,\nthere are six animals and eighteen legs involved:  that is true\nrationalism, and fairyland is full of it.  But as I put my head over\nthe hedge of the elves and began to take notice of the natural world,\nI observed an extraordinary thing.  I observed that learned men\nin spectacles were talking of the actual things that happened--\ndawn and death and so on--as if THEY were rational and inevitable.\nThey talked as if the fact that trees bear fruit were just as NECESSARY\nas the fact that two and one trees make three.  But it is not.\nThere is an enormous difference by the test of fairyland; which is\nthe test of the imagination.  You cannot IMAGINE two and one not\nmaking three.  But you can easily imagine trees not growing fruit;\nyou can imagine them growing golden candlesticks or tigers hanging\non by the tail.  These men in spectacles spoke much of a man\nnamed Newton, who was hit by an apple, and who discovered a law.\nBut they could not be got to see the distinction between a true law,\na law of reason, and the mere fact of apples falling.  If the apple hit\nNewton's nose, Newton's nose hit the apple.  That is a true necessity:\nbecause we cannot conceive the one occurring without the other.\nBut we can quite well conceive the apple not falling on his nose;\nwe can fancy it flying ardently through the air to hit some other nose,\nof which it had a more definite dislike.  We have always in our fairy\ntales kept this sharp distinction between the science of mental relations,\nin which there really are laws, and the science of physical facts,\nin which there are no laws, but only weird repetitions.  We believe\nin bodily miracles, but not in mental impossibilities.  We believe\nthat a Bean-stalk climbed up to Heaven; but that does not at all\nconfuse our convictions on the philosophical question of how many beans\nmake five.\n\n     Here is the peculiar perfection of tone and truth in the\nnursery tales.  The man of science says, \"Cut the stalk, and the apple\nwill fall\"; but he says it calmly, as if the one idea really led up\nto the other.  The witch in the fairy tale says, \"Blow the horn,\nand the ogre's castle will fall\"; but she does not say it as if it\nwere something in which the effect obviously arose out of the cause.\nDoubtless she has given the advice to many champions, and has seen many\ncastles fall, but she does not lose either her wonder or her reason.\nShe does not muddle her head until it imagines a necessary mental\nconnection between a horn and a falling tower.  But the scientific\nmen do muddle their heads, until they imagine a necessary mental\nconnection between an apple leaving the tree and an apple reaching\nthe ground.  They do really talk as if they had found not only\na set of marvellous facts, but a truth connecting those facts.\nThey do talk as if the connection of two strange things physically\nconnected them philosophically.  They feel that because one\nincomprehensible thing constantly follows another incomprehensible\nthing the two together somehow make up a comprehensible thing.\nTwo black riddles make a white answer.\n\n     In fairyland we avoid the word \"law\"; but in the land of science\nthey are singularly fond of it.  Thus they will call some interesting\nconjecture about how forgotten folks pronounced the alphabet,\nGrimm's Law.  But Grimm's Law is far less intellectual than\nGrimm's Fairy Tales.  The tales are, at any rate, certainly tales;\nwhile the law is not a law.  A law implies that we know the nature\nof the generalisation and enactment; not merely that we have noticed\nsome of the effects.  If there is a law that pick-pockets shall go\nto prison, it implies that there is an imaginable mental connection\nbetween the idea of prison and the idea of picking pockets.\nAnd we know what the idea is.  We can say why we take liberty\nfrom a man who takes liberties.  But we cannot say why an egg can\nturn into a chicken any more than we can say why a bear could turn\ninto a fairy prince.  As IDEAS, the egg and the chicken are further\noff from each other than the bear and the prince; for no egg in\nitself suggests a chicken, whereas some princes do suggest bears.\nGranted, then, that certain transformations do happen, it is essential\nthat we should regard them in the philosophic manner of fairy tales,\nnot in the unphilosophic manner of science and the \"Laws of Nature.\"\nWhen we are asked why eggs turn to birds or fruits fall in autumn,\nwe must answer exactly as the fairy godmother would answer\nif Cinderella asked her why mice turned to horses or her clothes\nfell from her at twelve o'clock. We must answer that it is MAGIC.\nIt is not a \"law,\" for we do not understand its general formula.\nIt is not a necessity, for though we can count on it happening\npractically, we have no right to say that it must always happen.\nIt is no argument for unalterable law (as Huxley fancied) that we\ncount on the ordinary course of things.  We do not count on it;\nwe bet on it.  We risk the remote possibility of a miracle as we\ndo that of a poisoned pancake or a world-destroying comet.\nWe leave it out of account, not because it is a miracle, and therefore\nan impossibility, but because it is a miracle, and therefore\nan exception.  All the terms used in the science books, \"law,\"\n\"necessity,\" \"order,\" \"tendency,\" and so on, are really unintellectual,\nbecause they assume an inner synthesis, which we do not possess.\nThe only words that ever satisfied me as describing Nature are the\nterms used in the fairy books, \"charm,\" \"spell,\" \"enchantment.\"\nThey express the arbitrariness of the fact and its mystery.\nA tree grows fruit because it is a MAGIC tree.  Water runs downhill\nbecause it is bewitched.  The sun shines because it is bewitched.\n\n     I deny altogether that this is fantastic or even mystical.\nWe may have some mysticism later on; but this fairy-tale language\nabout things is simply rational and agnostic.  It is the only way\nI can express in words my clear and definite perception that one\nthing is quite distinct from another; that there is no logical\nconnection between flying and laying eggs.  It is the man who\ntalks about \"a law\" that he has never seen who is the mystic.\nNay, the ordinary scientific man is strictly a sentimentalist.\nHe is a sentimentalist in this essential sense, that he is soaked\nand swept away by mere associations.  He has so often seen birds\nfly and lay eggs that he feels as if there must be some dreamy,\ntender connection between the two ideas, whereas there is none.\nA forlorn lover might be unable to dissociate the moon from lost love;\nso the materialist is unable to dissociate the moon from the tide.\nIn both cases there is no connection, except that one has seen\nthem together.  A sentimentalist might shed tears at the smell\nof apple-blossom, because, by a dark association of his own,\nit reminded him of his boyhood.  So the materialist professor (though\nhe conceals his tears) is yet a sentimentalist, because, by a dark\nassociation of his own, apple-blossoms remind him of apples.  But the\ncool rationalist from fairyland does not see why, in the abstract,\nthe apple tree should not grow crimson tulips; it sometimes does in\nhis country.\n\n     This elementary wonder, however, is not a mere fancy derived\nfrom the fairy tales; on the contrary, all the fire of the fairy\ntales is derived from this.  Just as we all like love tales because\nthere is an instinct of sex, we all like astonishing tales because\nthey touch the nerve of the ancient instinct of astonishment.\nThis is proved by the fact that when we are very young children\nwe do not need fairy tales:  we only need tales.  Mere life is\ninteresting enough.  A child of seven is excited by being told that\nTommy opened a door and saw a dragon.  But a child of three is excited\nby being told that Tommy opened a door.  Boys like romantic tales;\nbut babies like realistic tales--because they find them romantic.\nIn fact, a baby is about the only person, I should think, to whom\na modern realistic novel could be read without boring him.\nThis proves that even nursery tales only echo an almost pre-natal\nleap of interest and amazement.  These tales say that apples were\ngolden only to refresh the forgotten moment when we found that they\nwere green.  They make rivers run with wine only to make us remember,\nfor one wild moment, that they run with water.  I have said that this\nis wholly reasonable and even agnostic.  And, indeed, on this point\nI am all for the higher agnosticism; its better name is Ignorance.\nWe have all read in scientific books, and, indeed, in all romances,\nthe story of the man who has forgotten his name.  This man walks\nabout the streets and can see and appreciate everything; only he\ncannot remember who he is.  Well, every man is that man in the story.\nEvery man has forgotten who he is.  One may understand the cosmos,\nbut never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.\nThou shalt love the Lord thy God; but thou shalt not know thyself.\nWe are all under the same mental calamity; we have all forgotten\nour names.  We have all forgotten what we really are.  All that we\ncall common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism\nonly means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget\nthat we have forgotten.  All that we call spirit and art and\necstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that\nwe forget.\n\n     But though (like the man without memory in the novel) we walk the\nstreets with a sort of half-witted admiration, still it is admiration.\nIt is admiration in English and not only admiration in Latin.\nThe wonder has a positive element of praise.  This is the next\nmilestone to be definitely marked on our road through fairyland.\nI shall speak in the next chapter about optimists and pessimists\nin their intellectual aspect, so far as they have one.  Here I am only\ntrying to describe the enormous emotions which cannot be described.\nAnd the strongest emotion was that life was as precious as it\nwas puzzling.  It was an ecstasy because it was an adventure;\nit was an adventure because it was an opportunity.  The goodness\nof the fairy tale was not affected by the fact that there might be\nmore dragons than princesses; it was good to be in a fairy tale.\nThe test of all happiness is gratitude; and I felt grateful,\nthough I hardly knew to whom.  Children are grateful when Santa\nClaus puts in their stockings gifts of toys or sweets.  Could I\nnot be grateful to Santa Claus when he put in my stockings the gift\nof two miraculous legs?  We thank people for birthday presents\nof cigars and slippers.  Can I thank no one for the birthday present\nof birth?\n\n     There were, then, these two first feelings, indefensible and\nindisputable.  The world was a shock, but it was not merely shocking;\nexistence was a surprise, but it was a pleasant surprise.  In fact,\nall my first views were exactly uttered in a riddle that stuck\nin my brain from boyhood.  The question was, \"What did the first\nfrog say?\"  And the answer was, \"Lord, how you made me jump!\"\nThat says succinctly all that I am saying.  God made the frog jump;\nbut the frog prefers jumping.  But when these things are settled\nthere enters the second great principle of the fairy philosophy.\n\n     Any one can see it who will simply read \"Grimm's Fairy Tales\"\nor the fine collections of Mr. Andrew Lang.  For the pleasure\nof pedantry I will call it the Doctrine of Conditional Joy.\nTouchstone talked of much virtue in an \"if\"; according to elfin ethics\nall virtue is in an \"if.\"  The note of the fairy utterance always is,\n\"You may live in a palace of gold and sapphire, if you do not say\nthe word `cow'\"; or \"You may live happily with the King's daughter,\nif you do not show her an onion.\"  The vision always hangs upon a veto.\nAll the dizzy and colossal things conceded depend upon one small\nthing withheld.  All the wild and whirling things that are let\nloose depend upon one thing that is forbidden.  Mr. W.B.Yeats,\nin his exquisite and piercing elfin poetry, describes the elves\nas lawless; they plunge in innocent anarchy on the unbridled horses\nof the air--\n\n     \"Ride on the crest of the dishevelled tide,      And dance\nupon the mountains like a flame.\"\n\nIt is a dreadful thing to say that Mr. W.B.Yeats does not\nunderstand fairyland.  But I do say it.  He is an ironical Irishman,\nfull of intellectual reactions.  He is not stupid enough to\nunderstand fairyland.  Fairies prefer people of the yokel type\nlike myself; people who gape and grin and do as they are told.\nMr. Yeats reads into elfland all the righteous insurrection of his\nown race.  But the lawlessness of Ireland is a Christian lawlessness,\nfounded on reason and justice.  The Fenian is rebelling against\nsomething he understands only too well; but the true citizen of\nfairyland is obeying something that he does not understand at all.\nIn the fairy tale an incomprehensible happiness rests upon an\nincomprehensible condition.  A box is opened, and all evils fly out.\nA word is forgotten, and cities perish.  A lamp is lit, and love\nflies away.  A flower is plucked, and human lives are forfeited.\nAn apple is eaten, and the hope of God is gone.\n\n     This is the tone of fairy tales, and it is certainly not\nlawlessness or even liberty, though men under a mean modern tyranny\nmay think it liberty by comparison.  People out of Portland\nGaol might think Fleet Street free; but closer study will prove\nthat both fairies and journalists are the slaves of duty.\nFairy godmothers seem at least as strict as other godmothers.\nCinderella received a coach out of Wonderland and a coachman out\nof nowhere, but she received a command--which might have come out\nof Brixton--that she should be back by twelve.  Also, she had a\nglass slipper; and it cannot be a coincidence that glass is so common\na substance in folk-lore. This princess lives in a glass castle,\nthat princess on a glass hill; this one sees all things in a mirror;\nthey may all live in glass houses if they will not throw stones.\nFor this thin glitter of glass everywhere is the expression of the fact\nthat the happiness is bright but brittle, like the substance most\neasily smashed by a housemaid or a cat.  And this fairy-tale sentiment\nalso sank into me and became my sentiment towards the whole world.\nI felt and feel that life itself is as bright as the diamond,\nbut as brittle as the window-pane; and when the heavens were\ncompared to the terrible crystal I can remember a shudder.\nI was afraid that God would drop the cosmos with a crash.\n\n     Remember, however, that to be breakable is not the same as to\nbe perishable.  Strike a glass, and it will not endure an instant;\nsimply do not strike it, and it will endure a thousand years.\nSuch, it seemed, was the joy of man, either in elfland or on earth;\nthe happiness depended on NOT DOING SOMETHING which you could at any\nmoment do and which, very often, it was not obvious why you should\nnot do.  Now, the point here is that to ME this did not seem unjust.\nIf the miller's third son said to the fairy, \"Explain why I\nmust not stand on my head in the fairy palace,\" the other might\nfairly reply, \"Well, if it comes to that, explain the fairy palace.\"\nIf Cinderella says, \"How is it that I must leave the ball at twelve?\"\nher godmother might answer, \"How is it that you are going there\ntill twelve?\"  If I leave a man in my will ten talking elephants\nand a hundred winged horses, he cannot complain if the conditions\npartake of the slight eccentricity of the gift.  He must not look\na winged horse in the mouth.  And it seemed to me that existence\nwas itself so very eccentric a legacy that I could not complain\nof not understanding the limitations of the vision when I did\nnot understand the vision they limited.  The frame was no stranger\nthan the picture.  The veto might well be as wild as the vision;\nit might be as startling as the sun, as elusive as the waters,\nas fantastic and terrible as the towering trees.\n\n     For this reason (we may call it the fairy godmother philosophy)\nI never could join the young men of my time in feeling what they\ncalled the general sentiment of REVOLT.  I should have resisted,\nlet us hope, any rules that were evil, and with these and their\ndefinition I shall deal in another chapter.  But I did not feel\ndisposed to resist any rule merely because it was mysterious.\nEstates are sometimes held by foolish forms, the breaking of a stick\nor the payment of a peppercorn:  I was willing to hold the huge\nestate of earth and heaven by any such feudal fantasy.  It could not\nwell be wilder than the fact that I was allowed to hold it at all.\nAt this stage I give only one ethical instance to show my meaning.\nI could never mix in the common murmur of that rising generation\nagainst monogamy, because no restriction on sex seemed so odd and\nunexpected as sex itself.  To be allowed, like Endymion, to make\nlove to the moon and then to complain that Jupiter kept his own\nmoons in a harem seemed to me (bred on fairy tales like Endymion's)\na vulgar anti-climax. Keeping to one woman is a small price for\nso much as seeing one woman.  To complain that I could only be\nmarried once was like complaining that I had only been born once.\nIt was incommensurate with the terrible excitement of which one\nwas talking.  It showed, not an exaggerated sensibility to sex,\nbut a curious insensibility to it.  A man is a fool who complains\nthat he cannot enter Eden by five gates at once.  Polygamy is a lack\nof the realization of sex; it is like a man plucking five pears\nin mere absence of mind.  The aesthetes touched the last insane\nlimits of language in their eulogy on lovely things.  The thistledown\nmade them weep; a burnished beetle brought them to their knees.\nYet their emotion never impressed me for an instant, for this reason,\nthat it never occurred to them to pay for their pleasure in any\nsort of symbolic sacrifice.  Men (I felt) might fast forty days\nfor the sake of hearing a blackbird sing.  Men might go through fire\nto find a cowslip.  Yet these lovers of beauty could not even keep\nsober for the blackbird.  They would not go through common Christian\nmarriage by way of recompense to the cowslip.  Surely one might\npay for extraordinary joy in ordinary morals.  Oscar Wilde said\nthat sunsets were not valued because we could not pay for sunsets.\nBut Oscar Wilde was wrong; we can pay for sunsets.  We can pay for them\nby not being Oscar Wilde.\n\n     Well, I left the fairy tales lying on the floor of the nursery,\nand I have not found any books so sensible since.  I left the\nnurse guardian of tradition and democracy, and I have not found\nany modern type so sanely radical or so sanely conservative.\nBut the matter for important comment was here:  that when I\nfirst went out into the mental atmosphere of the modern world,\nI found that the modern world was positively opposed on two points\nto my nurse and to the nursery tales.  It has taken me a long time\nto find out that the modern world is wrong and my nurse was right.\nThe really curious thing was this:  that modern thought contradicted\nthis basic creed of my boyhood on its two most essential doctrines.\nI have explained that the fairy tales founded in me two convictions;\nfirst, that this world is a wild and startling place, which might\nhave been quite different, but which is quite delightful; second,\nthat before this wildness and delight one may well be modest and\nsubmit to the queerest limitations of so queer a kindness.  But I\nfound the whole modern world running like a high tide against both\nmy tendernesses; and the shock of that collision created two sudden\nand spontaneous sentiments, which I have had ever since and which,\ncrude as they were, have since hardened into convictions.\n\n     First, I found the whole modern world talking scientific fatalism;\nsaying that everything is as it must always have been, being unfolded\nwithout fault from the beginning.  The leaf on the tree is green\nbecause it could never have been anything else.  Now, the fairy-tale\nphilosopher is glad that the leaf is green precisely because it\nmight have been scarlet.  He feels as if it had turned green an\ninstant before he looked at it.  He is pleased that snow is white\non the strictly reasonable ground that it might have been black.\nEvery colour has in it a bold quality as of choice; the red of garden\nroses is not only decisive but dramatic, like suddenly spilt blood.\nHe feels that something has been DONE.  But the great determinists\nof the nineteenth century were strongly against this native\nfeeling that something had happened an instant before.  In fact,\naccording to them, nothing ever really had happened since the beginning\nof the world.  Nothing ever had happened since existence had happened;\nand even about the date of that they were not very sure.\n\n     The modern world as I found it was solid for modern Calvinism,\nfor the necessity of things being as they are.  But when I came\nto ask them I found they had really no proof of this unavoidable\nrepetition in things except the fact that the things were repeated.\nNow, the mere repetition made the things to me rather more weird\nthan more rational.  It was as if, having seen a curiously shaped\nnose in the street and dismissed it as an accident, I had then\nseen six other noses of the same astonishing shape.  I should have\nfancied for a moment that it must be some local secret society.\nSo one elephant having a trunk was odd; but all elephants having\ntrunks looked like a plot.  I speak here only of an emotion,\nand of an emotion at once stubborn and subtle.  But the repetition\nin Nature seemed sometimes to be an excited repetition, like that of\nan angry schoolmaster saying the same thing over and over again.\nThe grass seemed signalling to me with all its fingers at once;\nthe crowded stars seemed bent upon being understood.  The sun would\nmake me see him if he rose a thousand times.  The recurrences of the\nuniverse rose to the maddening rhythm of an incantation, and I began\nto see an idea.\n\n     All the towering materialism which dominates the modern mind\nrests ultimately upon one assumption; a false assumption.  It is\nsupposed that if a thing goes on repeating itself it is probably dead;\na piece of clockwork.  People feel that if the universe was personal\nit would vary; if the sun were alive it would dance.  This is a\nfallacy even in relation to known fact.  For the variation in human\naffairs is generally brought into them, not by life, but by death;\nby the dying down or breaking off of their strength or desire.\nA man varies his movements because of some slight element of failure\nor fatigue.  He gets into an omnibus because he is tired of walking;\nor he walks because he is tired of sitting still.  But if his life\nand joy were so gigantic that he never tired of going to Islington,\nhe might go to Islington as regularly as the Thames goes to Sheerness.\nThe very speed and ecstasy of his life would have the stillness\nof death.  The sun rises every morning.  I do not rise every morning;\nbut the variation is due not to my activity, but to my inaction.\nNow, to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that\nthe sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising.\nHis routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush\nof life.  The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children,\nwhen they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy.  A child\nkicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life.\nBecause children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit\nfierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged.\nThey always say, \"Do it again\"; and the grown-up person does it\nagain until he is nearly dead.  For grown-up people are not strong\nenough to exult in monotony.  But perhaps God is strong enough\nto exult in monotony.  It is possible that God says every morning,\n\"Do it again\" to the sun; and every evening, \"Do it again\" to the moon.\nIt may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike;\nit may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired\nof making them.  It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy;\nfor we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.\nThe repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be\na theatrical ENCORE.  Heaven may ENCORE the bird who laid an egg.\nIf the human being conceives and brings forth a human child instead\nof bringing forth a fish, or a bat, or a griffin, the reason may not\nbe that we are fixed in an animal fate without life or purpose.\nIt may be that our little tragedy has touched the gods, that they\nadmire it from their starry galleries, and that at the end of every\nhuman drama man is called again and again before the curtain.\nRepetition may go on for millions of years, by mere choice, and at\nany instant it may stop.  Man may stand on the earth generation\nafter generation, and yet each birth be his positively last\nappearance.\n\n     This was my first conviction; made by the shock of my childish\nemotions meeting the modern creed in mid-career. I had always vaguely\nfelt facts to be miracles in the sense that they are wonderful:\nnow I began to think them miracles in the stricter sense that they\nwere WILFUL.  I mean that they were, or might be, repeated exercises\nof some will.  In short, I had always believed that the world\ninvolved magic:  now I thought that perhaps it involved a magician.\nAnd this pointed a profound emotion always present and sub-conscious;\nthat this world of ours has some purpose; and if there is a purpose,\nthere is a person.  I had always felt life first as a story:\nand if there is a story there is a story-teller.\n\n     But modern thought also hit my second human tradition.\nIt went against the fairy feeling about strict limits and conditions.\nThe one thing it loved to talk about was expansion and largeness.\nHerbert Spencer would have been greatly annoyed if any one had\ncalled him an imperialist, and therefore it is highly regrettable\nthat nobody did.  But he was an imperialist of the lowest type.\nHe popularized this contemptible notion that the size of the solar\nsystem ought to over-awe the spiritual dogma of man.  Why should\na man surrender his dignity to the solar system any more than to\na whale?  If mere size proves that man is not the image of God,\nthen a whale may be the image of God; a somewhat formless image;\nwhat one might call an impressionist portrait.  It is quite futile\nto argue that man is small compared to the cosmos; for man was\nalways small compared to the nearest tree.  But Herbert Spencer,\nin his headlong imperialism, would insist that we had in some\nway been conquered and annexed by the astronomical universe.\nHe spoke about men and their ideals exactly as the most insolent\nUnionist talks about the Irish and their ideals.  He turned mankind\ninto a small nationality.  And his evil influence can be seen even\nin the most spirited and honourable of later scientific authors;\nnotably in the early romances of Mr. H.G.Wells. Many moralists\nhave in an exaggerated way represented the earth as wicked.\nBut Mr. Wells and his school made the heavens wicked. We should lift\nup our eyes to the stars from whence would come our ruin.\n\n     But the expansion of which I speak was much more evil than all this.\nI have remarked that the materialist, like the madman, is in prison;\nin the prison of one thought.  These people seemed to think it\nsingularly inspiring to keep on saying that the prison was very large.\nThe size of this scientific universe gave one no novelty, no relief.\nThe cosmos went on for ever, but not in its wildest constellation\ncould there be anything really interesting; anything, for instance,\nsuch as forgiveness or free will.  The grandeur or infinity\nof the secret of its cosmos added nothing to it.  It was like\ntelling a prisoner in Reading gaol that he would be glad to hear\nthat the gaol now covered half the county.  The warder would\nhave nothing to show the man except more and more long corridors\nof stone lit by ghastly lights and empty of all that is human.\nSo these expanders of the universe had nothing to show us except\nmore and more infinite corridors of space lit by ghastly suns\nand empty of all that is divine.\n\n     In fairyland there had been a real law; a law that could be broken,\nfor the definition of a law is something that can be broken.\nBut the machinery of this cosmic prison was something that could\nnot be broken; for we ourselves were only a part of its machinery.\nWe were either unable to do things or we were destined to do them.\nThe idea of the mystical condition quite disappeared; one can neither\nhave the firmness of keeping laws nor the fun of breaking them.\nThe largeness of this universe had nothing of that freshness and\nairy outbreak which we have praised in the universe of the poet.\nThis modern universe is literally an empire; that is, it was vast,\nbut it is not free.  One went into larger and larger windowless rooms,\nrooms big with Babylonian perspective; but one never found the smallest\nwindow or a whisper of outer air.\n\n     Their infernal parallels seemed to expand with distance;\nbut for me all good things come to a point, swords for instance.\nSo finding the boast of the big cosmos so unsatisfactory to my\nemotions I began to argue about it a little; and I soon found that\nthe whole attitude was even shallower than could have been expected.\nAccording to these people the cosmos was one thing since it had\none unbroken rule.  Only (they would say) while it is one thing,\nit is also the only thing there is.  Why, then, should one worry\nparticularly to call it large?  There is nothing to compare it with.\nIt would be just as sensible to call it small.  A man may say,\n\"I like this vast cosmos, with its throng of stars and its crowd\nof varied creatures.\"  But if it comes to that why should not a\nman say, \"I like this cosy little cosmos, with its decent number\nof stars and as neat a provision of live stock as I wish to see\"?\nOne is as good as the other; they are both mere sentiments.\nIt is mere sentiment to rejoice that the sun is larger than the earth;\nit is quite as sane a sentiment to rejoice that the sun is no larger\nthan it is.  A man chooses to have an emotion about the largeness\nof the world; why should he not choose to have an emotion about\nits smallness?\n\n     It happened that I had that emotion.  When one is fond of\nanything one addresses it by diminutives, even if it is an elephant\nor a life-guardsman. The reason is, that anything, however huge,\nthat can be conceived of as complete, can be conceived of as small.\nIf military moustaches did not suggest a sword or tusks a tail,\nthen the object would be vast because it would be immeasurable.  But the\nmoment you can imagine a guardsman you can imagine a small guardsman.\nThe moment you really see an elephant you can call it \"Tiny.\"\nIf you can make a statue of a thing you can make a statuette of it.\nThese people professed that the universe was one coherent thing;\nbut they were not fond of the universe.  But I was frightfully fond\nof the universe and wanted to address it by a diminutive.  I often\ndid so; and it never seemed to mind.  Actually and in truth I did feel\nthat these dim dogmas of vitality were better expressed by calling\nthe world small than by calling it large.  For about infinity there\nwas a sort of carelessness which was the reverse of the fierce and pious\ncare which I felt touching the pricelessness and the peril of life.\nThey showed only a dreary waste; but I felt a sort of sacred thrift.\nFor economy is far more romantic than extravagance.  To them stars\nwere an unending income of halfpence; but I felt about the golden sun\nand the silver moon as a schoolboy feels if he has one sovereign and\none shilling.\n\n     These subconscious convictions are best hit off by the colour\nand tone of certain tales.  Thus I have said that stories of magic\nalone can express my sense that life is not only a pleasure but a\nkind of eccentric privilege.  I may express this other feeling of\ncosmic cosiness by allusion to another book always read in boyhood,\n\"Robinson Crusoe,\" which I read about this time, and which owes\nits eternal vivacity to the fact that it celebrates the poetry\nof limits, nay, even the wild romance of prudence.  Crusoe is a man\non a small rock with a few comforts just snatched from the sea:\nthe best thing in the book is simply the list of things saved from\nthe wreck.  The greatest of poems is an inventory.  Every kitchen\ntool becomes ideal because Crusoe might have dropped it in the sea.\nIt is a good exercise, in empty or ugly hours of the day,\nto look at anything, the coal-scuttle or the book-case, and think\nhow happy one could be to have brought it out of the sinking ship\non to the solitary island.  But it is a better exercise still\nto remember how all things have had this hair-breadth escape:\neverything has been saved from a wreck.  Every man has had one\nhorrible adventure:  as a hidden untimely birth he had not been,\nas infants that never see the light.  Men spoke much in my boyhood\nof restricted or ruined men of genius:  and it was common to say\nthat many a man was a Great Might-Have-Been. To me it is a more\nsolid and startling fact that any man in the street is a Great\nMight-Not-Have-Been.\n\n     But I really felt (the fancy may seem foolish) as if all the order\nand number of things were the romantic remnant of Crusoe's ship.\nThat there are two sexes and one sun, was like the fact that there\nwere two guns and one axe.  It was poignantly urgent that none should\nbe lost; but somehow, it was rather fun that none could be added.\nThe trees and the planets seemed like things saved from the wreck:\nand when I saw the Matterhorn I was glad that it had not been overlooked\nin the confusion.  I felt economical about the stars as if they were\nsapphires (they are called so in Milton's Eden): I hoarded the hills.\nFor the universe is a single jewel, and while it is a natural cant\nto talk of a jewel as peerless and priceless, of this jewel it is\nliterally true.  This cosmos is indeed without peer and without price:\nfor there cannot be another one.\n\n     Thus ends, in unavoidable inadequacy, the attempt to utter the\nunutterable things.  These are my ultimate attitudes towards life;\nthe soils for the seeds of doctrine.  These in some dark way I\nthought before I could write, and felt before I could think:\nthat we may proceed more easily afterwards, I will roughly recapitulate\nthem now.  I felt in my bones; first, that this world does not\nexplain itself.  It may be a miracle with a supernatural explanation;\nit may be a conjuring trick, with a natural explanation.\nBut the explanation of the conjuring trick, if it is to satisfy me,\nwill have to be better than the natural explanations I have heard.\nThe thing is magic, true or false.  Second, I came to feel as if magic\nmust have a meaning, and meaning must have some one to mean it.\nThere was something personal in the world, as in a work of art;\nwhatever it meant it meant violently.  Third, I thought this\npurpose beautiful in its old design, in spite of its defects,\nsuch as dragons.  Fourth, that the proper form of thanks to it\nis some form of humility and restraint:  we should thank God\nfor beer and Burgundy by not drinking too much of them.  We owed,\nalso, an obedience to whatever made us.  And last, and strangest,\nthere had come into my mind a vague and vast impression that in some\nway all good was a remnant to be stored and held sacred out of some\nprimordial ruin.  Man had saved his good as Crusoe saved his goods:\nhe had saved them from a wreck.  All this I felt and the age gave me\nno encouragement to feel it.  And all this time I had not even thought\nof Christian theology.\n\n\n\nV THE FLAG OF THE WORLD\n\n\n     When I was a boy there were two curious men running about\nwho were called the optimist and the pessimist.  I constantly used\nthe words myself, but I cheerfully confess that I never had any\nvery special idea of what they meant.  The only thing which might\nbe considered evident was that they could not mean what they said;\nfor the ordinary verbal explanation was that the optimist thought\nthis world as good as it could be, while the pessimist thought\nit as bad as it could be.  Both these statements being obviously\nraving nonsense, one had to cast about for other explanations.\nAn optimist could not mean a man who thought everything right and\nnothing wrong.  For that is meaningless; it is like calling everything\nright and nothing left.  Upon the whole, I came to the conclusion\nthat the optimist thought everything good except the pessimist,\nand that the pessimist thought everything bad, except himself.\nIt would be unfair to omit altogether from the list the mysterious\nbut suggestive definition said to have been given by a little girl,\n\"An optimist is a man who looks after your eyes, and a pessimist\nis a man who looks after your feet.\"  I am not sure that this is not\nthe best definition of all.  There is even a sort of allegorical truth\nin it.  For there might, perhaps, be a profitable distinction drawn\nbetween that more dreary thinker who thinks merely of our contact\nwith the earth from moment to moment, and that happier thinker\nwho considers rather our primary power of vision and of choice\nof road.\n\n     But this is a deep mistake in this alternative of the optimist\nand the pessimist.  The assumption of it is that a man criticises\nthis world as if he were house-hunting, as if he were being shown\nover a new suite of apartments.  If a man came to this world from\nsome other world in full possession of his powers he might discuss\nwhether the advantage of midsummer woods made up for the disadvantage\nof mad dogs, just as a man looking for lodgings might balance\nthe presence of a telephone against the absence of a sea view.\nBut no man is in that position.  A man belongs to this world before\nhe begins to ask if it is nice to belong to it.  He has fought for\nthe flag, and often won heroic victories for the flag long before he\nhas ever enlisted.  To put shortly what seems the essential matter,\nhe has a loyalty long before he has any admiration.\n\n     In the last chapter it has been said that the primary feeling\nthat this world is strange and yet attractive is best expressed\nin fairy tales.  The reader may, if he likes, put down the next\nstage to that bellicose and even jingo literature which commonly\ncomes next in the history of a boy.  We all owe much sound morality\nto the penny dreadfuls.  Whatever the reason, it seemed and still\nseems to me that our attitude towards life can be better expressed\nin terms of a kind of military loyalty than in terms of criticism\nand approval.  My acceptance of the universe is not optimism,\nit is more like patriotism.  It is a matter of primary loyalty.\nThe world is not a lodging-house at Brighton, which we are to\nleave because it is miserable.  It is the fortress of our family,\nwith the flag flying on the turret, and the more miserable it\nis the less we should leave it.  The point is not that this world\nis too sad to love or too glad not to love; the point is that\nwhen you do love a thing, its gladness is a reason for loving it,\nand its sadness a reason for loving it more.  All optimistic thoughts\nabout England and all pessimistic thoughts about her are alike\nreasons for the English patriot.  Similarly, optimism and pessimism\nare alike arguments for the cosmic patriot.\n\n     Let us suppose we are confronted with a desperate thing--say\nPimlico.  If we think what is really best for Pimlico we shall find\nthe thread of thought leads to the throne or the mystic and the\narbitrary.  It is not enough for a man to disapprove of Pimlico: in\nthat case he will merely cut his throat or move to Chelsea. Nor,\ncertainly, is it enough for a man to approve of Pimlico: for then\nit will remain Pimlico, which would be awful. The only way out of\nit seems to be for somebody to love Pimlico: to love it with a\ntranscendental tie and without any earthly reason. If there arose a\nman who loved Pimlico, then Pimlico would rise into ivory towers and\ngolden pinnacles; Pimlico would attire herself as a woman does when\nshe is loved.  For decoration is not given to hide horrible things:\nbut to decorate things already adorable. A mother does not give her\nchild a blue bow because he is so ugly without it.  A lover does not\ngive a girl a necklace to hide her neck. If men loved Pimlico as\nmothers love children, arbitrarily, because it is THEIRS, Pimlico in a\nyear or two might be fairer than Florence. Some readers will say that\nthis is a mere fantasy.  I answer that this is the actual history of\nmankind.  This, as a fact, is how cities did grow great.  Go back to\nthe darkest roots of civilization and you will find them knotted round\nsome sacred stone or encircling some sacred well.  People first paid\nhonour to a spot and afterwards gained glory for it.  Men did not love\nRome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her.\n\n     The eighteenth-century theories of the social contract have\nbeen exposed to much clumsy criticism in our time; in so far\nas they meant that there is at the back of all historic government\nan idea of content and co-operation, they were demonstrably right.\nBut they really were wrong, in so far as they suggested that men\nhad ever aimed at order or ethics directly by a conscious exchange\nof interests.  Morality did not begin by one man saying to another,\n\"I will not hit you if you do not hit me\"; there is no trace\nof such a transaction.  There IS a trace of both men having said,\n\"We must not hit each other in the holy place.\"  They gained their\nmorality by guarding their religion.  They did not cultivate courage.\nThey fought for the shrine, and found they had become courageous.\nThey did not cultivate cleanliness.  They purified themselves for\nthe altar, and found that they were clean.  The history of the Jews\nis the only early document known to most Englishmen, and the facts can\nbe judged sufficiently from that.  The Ten Commandments which have been\nfound substantially common to mankind were merely military commands;\na code of regimental orders, issued to protect a certain ark across\na certain desert.  Anarchy was evil because it endangered the sanctity.\nAnd only when they made a holy day for God did they find they had made\na holiday for men.\n\n     If it be granted that this primary devotion to a place or thing\nis a source of creative energy, we can pass on to a very peculiar fact.\nLet us reiterate for an instant that the only right optimism is a sort\nof universal patriotism.  What is the matter with the pessimist?\nI think it can be stated by saying that he is the cosmic anti-patriot.\nAnd what is the matter with the anti-patriot? I think it can be stated,\nwithout undue bitterness, by saying that he is the candid friend.\nAnd what is the matter with the candid friend?  There we strike\nthe rock of real life and immutable human nature.\n\n     I venture to say that what is bad in the candid friend\nis simply that he is not candid.  He is keeping something back--\nhis own gloomy pleasure in saying unpleasant things.  He has\na secret desire to hurt, not merely to help.  This is certainly,\nI think, what makes a certain sort of anti-patriot irritating to\nhealthy citizens.  I do not speak (of course) of the anti-patriotism\nwhich only irritates feverish stockbrokers and gushing actresses;\nthat is only patriotism speaking plainly.  A man who says that\nno patriot should attack the Boer War until it is over is not\nworth answering intelligently; he is saying that no good son\nshould warn his mother off a cliff until she has fallen over it.\nBut there is an anti-patriot who honestly angers honest men,\nand the explanation of him is, I think, what I have suggested:\nhe is the uncandid candid friend; the man who says, \"I am sorry\nto say we are ruined,\" and is not sorry at all.  And he may be said,\nwithout rhetoric, to be a traitor; for he is using that ugly knowledge\nwhich was allowed him to strengthen the army, to discourage people\nfrom joining it.  Because he is allowed to be pessimistic as a\nmilitary adviser he is being pessimistic as a recruiting sergeant.\nJust in the same way the pessimist (who is the cosmic anti-patriot)\nuses the freedom that life allows to her counsellors to lure away\nthe people from her flag.  Granted that he states only facts, it is\nstill essential to know what are his emotions, what is his motive.\nIt may be that twelve hundred men in Tottenham are down with smallpox;\nbut we want to know whether this is stated by some great philosopher\nwho wants to curse the gods, or only by some common clergyman who wants\nto help the men.\n\n     The evil of the pessimist is, then, not that he chastises gods\nand men, but that he does not love what he chastises--he has not\nthis primary and supernatural loyalty to things.  What is the evil\nof the man commonly called an optimist?  Obviously, it is felt\nthat the optimist, wishing to defend the honour of this world,\nwill defend the indefensible.  He is the jingo of the universe;\nhe will say, \"My cosmos, right or wrong.\"  He will be less inclined\nto the reform of things; more inclined to a sort of front-bench\nofficial answer to all attacks, soothing every one with assurances.\nHe will not wash the world, but whitewash the world.  All this\n(which is true of a type of optimist) leads us to the one really\ninteresting point of psychology, which could not be explained\nwithout it.\n\n     We say there must be a primal loyalty to life:  the only\nquestion is, shall it be a natural or a supernatural loyalty?\nIf you like to put it so, shall it be a reasonable or an\nunreasonable loyalty?  Now, the extraordinary thing is that the\nbad optimism (the whitewashing, the weak defence of everything)\ncomes in with the reasonable optimism.  Rational optimism leads\nto stagnation:  it is irrational optimism that leads to reform.\nLet me explain by using once more the parallel of patriotism.\nThe man who is most likely to ruin the place he loves is exactly\nthe man who loves it with a reason.  The man who will improve\nthe place is the man who loves it without a reason.  If a man loves\nsome feature of Pimlico (which seems unlikely), he may find himself\ndefending that feature against Pimlico itself.  But if he simply loves\nPimlico itself, he may lay it waste and turn it into the New Jerusalem.\nI do not deny that reform may be excessive; I only say that it is the\nmystic patriot who reforms.  Mere jingo self-contentment is commonest\namong those who have some pedantic reason for their patriotism.\nThe worst jingoes do not love England, but a theory of England.\nIf we love England for being an empire, we may overrate the success\nwith which we rule the Hindoos.  But if we love it only for being\na nation, we can face all events:  for it would be a nation even\nif the Hindoos ruled us.  Thus also only those will permit their\npatriotism to falsify history whose patriotism depends on history.\nA man who loves England for being English will not mind how she arose.\nBut a man who loves England for being Anglo-Saxon may go against\nall facts for his fancy.  He may end (like Carlyle and Freeman)\nby maintaining that the Norman Conquest was a Saxon Conquest.\nHe may end in utter unreason--because he has a reason.  A man who\nloves France for being military will palliate the army of 1870.\nBut a man who loves France for being France will improve the army\nof 1870.  This is exactly what the French have done, and France is\na good instance of the working paradox.  Nowhere else is patriotism\nmore purely abstract and arbitrary; and nowhere else is reform more\ndrastic and sweeping.  The more transcendental is your patriotism,\nthe more practical are your politics.\n\n     Perhaps the most everyday instance of this point is in the case\nof women; and their strange and strong loyalty.  Some stupid people\nstarted the idea that because women obviously back up their own\npeople through everything, therefore women are blind and do not\nsee anything.  They can hardly have known any women.  The same women\nwho are ready to defend their men through thick and thin are (in\ntheir personal intercourse with the man) almost morbidly lucid\nabout the thinness of his excuses or the thickness of his head.\nA man's friend likes him but leaves him as he is:  his wife loves him\nand is always trying to turn him into somebody else.  Women who are\nutter mystics in their creed are utter cynics in their criticism.\nThackeray expressed this well when he made Pendennis' mother,\nwho worshipped her son as a god, yet assume that he would go wrong\nas a man.  She underrated his virtue, though she overrated his value.\nThe devotee is entirely free to criticise; the fanatic can safely\nbe a sceptic.  Love is not blind; that is the last thing that it is.\nLove is bound; and the more it is bound the less it is blind.\n\n     This at least had come to be my position about all that\nwas called optimism, pessimism, and improvement.  Before any\ncosmic act of reform we must have a cosmic oath of allegiance.\nA man must be interested in life, then he could be disinterested\nin his views of it.  \"My son give me thy heart\"; the heart must\nbe fixed on the right thing:  the moment we have a fixed heart we\nhave a free hand.  I must pause to anticipate an obvious criticism.\nIt will be said that a rational person accepts the world as mixed\nof good and evil with a decent satisfaction and a decent endurance.\nBut this is exactly the attitude which I maintain to be defective.\nIt is, I know, very common in this age; it was perfectly put in those\nquiet lines of Matthew Arnold which are more piercingly blasphemous\nthan the shrieks of Schopenhauer--\n\n\"Enough we live:--and if a life, With large results so little rife,\nThough bearable, seem hardly worth This pomp of worlds, this pain\nof birth.\"\n\n     I know this feeling fills our epoch, and I think it freezes\nour epoch.  For our Titanic purposes of faith and revolution,\nwhat we need is not the cold acceptance of the world as a compromise,\nbut some way in which we can heartily hate and heartily love it.\nWe do not want joy and anger to neutralize each other and produce a\nsurly contentment; we want a fiercer delight and a fiercer discontent.\nWe have to feel the universe at once as an ogre's castle,\nto be stormed, and yet as our own cottage, to which we can return\nat evening.\n\n     No one doubts that an ordinary man can get on with this world:\nbut we demand not strength enough to get on with it, but strength\nenough to get it on.  Can he hate it enough to change it,\nand yet love it enough to think it worth changing?  Can he look\nup at its colossal good without once feeling acquiescence?\nCan he look up at its colossal evil without once feeling despair?\nCan he, in short, be at once not only a pessimist and an optimist,\nbut a fanatical pessimist and a fanatical optimist?  Is he enough of a\npagan to die for the world, and enough of a Christian to die to it?\nIn this combination, I maintain, it is the rational optimist who fails,\nthe irrational optimist who succeeds.  He is ready to smash the whole\nuniverse for the sake of itself.\n\n     I put these things not in their mature logical sequence, but as\nthey came:  and this view was cleared and sharpened by an accident\nof the time.  Under the lengthening shadow of Ibsen, an argument\narose whether it was not a very nice thing to murder one's self.\nGrave moderns told us that we must not even say \"poor fellow,\"\nof a man who had blown his brains out, since he was an enviable person,\nand had only blown them out because of their exceptional excellence.\nMr. William Archer even suggested that in the golden age there\nwould be penny-in-the-slot machines, by which a man could kill\nhimself for a penny.  In all this I found myself utterly hostile\nto many who called themselves liberal and humane.  Not only is\nsuicide a sin, it is the sin.  It is the ultimate and absolute evil,\nthe refusal to take an interest in existence; the refusal to take\nthe oath of loyalty to life.  The man who kills a man, kills a man.\nThe man who kills himself, kills all men; as far as he is concerned\nhe wipes out the world.  His act is worse (symbolically considered)\nthan any rape or dynamite outrage.  For it destroys all buildings:\nit insults all women.  The thief is satisfied with diamonds;\nbut the suicide is not:  that is his crime.  He cannot be bribed,\neven by the blazing stones of the Celestial City.  The thief\ncompliments the things he steals, if not the owner of them.\nBut the suicide insults everything on earth by not stealing it.\nHe defiles every flower by refusing to live for its sake.\nThere is not a tiny creature in the cosmos at whom his death\nis not a sneer.  When a man hangs himself on a tree, the leaves\nmight fall off in anger and the birds fly away in fury:\nfor each has received a personal affront.  Of course there may be\npathetic emotional excuses for the act.  There often are for rape,\nand there almost always are for dynamite.  But if it comes to clear\nideas and the intelligent meaning of things, then there is much\nmore rational and philosophic truth in the burial at the cross-roads\nand the stake driven through the body, than in Mr. Archer's suicidal\nautomatic machines.  There is a meaning in burying the suicide apart.\nThe man's crime is different from other crimes--for it makes even\ncrimes impossible.\n\n     About the same time I read a solemn flippancy by some free thinker:\nhe said that a suicide was only the same as a martyr.  The open\nfallacy of this helped to clear the question.  Obviously a suicide\nis the opposite of a martyr.  A martyr is a man who cares so much\nfor something outside him, that he forgets his own personal life.\nA suicide is a man who cares so little for anything outside him,\nthat he wants to see the last of everything.  One wants something\nto begin:  the other wants everything to end.  In other words,\nthe martyr is noble, exactly because (however he renounces the world\nor execrates all humanity) he confesses this ultimate link with life;\nhe sets his heart outside himself:  he dies that something may live.\nThe suicide is ignoble because he has not this link with being:\nhe is a mere destroyer; spiritually, he destroys the universe.\nAnd then I remembered the stake and the cross-roads, and the queer\nfact that Christianity had shown this weird harshness to the suicide.\nFor Christianity had shown a wild encouragement of the martyr.\nHistoric Christianity was accused, not entirely without reason,\nof carrying martyrdom and asceticism to a point, desolate\nand pessimistic.  The early Christian martyrs talked of death\nwith a horrible happiness.  They blasphemed the beautiful duties\nof the body:  they smelt the grave afar off like a field of flowers.\nAll this has seemed to many the very poetry of pessimism.  Yet there\nis the stake at the crossroads to show what Christianity thought of\nthe pessimist.\n\n     This was the first of the long train of enigmas with which\nChristianity entered the discussion.  And there went with it a\npeculiarity of which I shall have to speak more markedly, as a note\nof all Christian notions, but which distinctly began in this one.\nThe Christian attitude to the martyr and the suicide was not what is\nso often affirmed in modern morals.  It was not a matter of degree.\nIt was not that a line must be drawn somewhere, and that the\nself-slayer in exaltation fell within the line, the self-slayer\nin sadness just beyond it.  The Christian feeling evidently\nwas not merely that the suicide was carrying martyrdom too far.\nThe Christian feeling was furiously for one and furiously against\nthe other:  these two things that looked so much alike were at\nopposite ends of heaven and hell.  One man flung away his life;\nhe was so good that his dry bones could heal cities in pestilence.\nAnother man flung away life; he was so bad that his bones would\npollute his brethren's. I am not saying this fierceness was right;\nbut why was it so fierce?\n\n     Here it was that I first found that my wandering feet were\nin some beaten track.  Christianity had also felt this opposition\nof the martyr to the suicide:  had it perhaps felt it for the\nsame reason?  Had Christianity felt what I felt, but could not\n(and cannot) express--this need for a first loyalty to things,\nand then for a ruinous reform of things?  Then I remembered\nthat it was actually the charge against Christianity that it\ncombined these two things which I was wildly trying to combine.\nChristianity was accused, at one and the same time, of being\ntoo optimistic about the universe and of being too pessimistic\nabout the world.  The coincidence made me suddenly stand still.\n\n     An imbecile habit has arisen in modern controversy of saying\nthat such and such a creed can be held in one age but cannot\nbe held in another.  Some dogma, we are told, was credible\nin the twelfth century, but is not credible in the twentieth.\nYou might as well say that a certain philosophy can be believed\non Mondays, but cannot be believed on Tuesdays.  You might as well\nsay of a view of the cosmos that it was suitable to half-past three,\nbut not suitable to half-past four.  What a man can believe\ndepends upon his philosophy, not upon the clock or the century.\nIf a man believes in unalterable natural law, he cannot believe\nin any miracle in any age.  If a man believes in a will behind law,\nhe can believe in any miracle in any age.  Suppose, for the sake\nof argument, we are concerned with a case of thaumaturgic healing.\nA materialist of the twelfth century could not believe it any more\nthan a materialist of the twentieth century.  But a Christian\nScientist of the twentieth century can believe it as much as a\nChristian of the twelfth century.  It is simply a matter of a man's\ntheory of things.  Therefore in dealing with any historical answer,\nthe point is not whether it was given in our time, but whether it\nwas given in answer to our question.  And the more I thought about\nwhen and how Christianity had come into the world, the more I felt\nthat it had actually come to answer this question.\n\n     It is commonly the loose and latitudinarian Christians who pay\nquite indefensible compliments to Christianity.  They talk as if\nthere had never been any piety or pity until Christianity came,\na point on which any mediaeval would have been eager to correct them.\nThey represent that the remarkable thing about Christianity was that it\nwas the first to preach simplicity or self-restraint, or inwardness\nand sincerity.  They will think me very narrow (whatever that means)\nif I say that the remarkable thing about Christianity was that it\nwas the first to preach Christianity.  Its peculiarity was that it\nwas peculiar, and simplicity and sincerity are not peculiar,\nbut obvious ideals for all mankind.  Christianity was the answer\nto a riddle, not the last truism uttered after a long talk.\nOnly the other day I saw in an excellent weekly paper of Puritan tone\nthis remark, that Christianity when stripped of its armour of dogma\n(as who should speak of a man stripped of his armour of bones),\nturned out to be nothing but the Quaker doctrine of the Inner Light.\nNow, if I were to say that Christianity came into the world\nspecially to destroy the doctrine of the Inner Light, that would\nbe an exaggeration.  But it would be very much nearer to the truth.\nThe last Stoics, like Marcus Aurelius, were exactly the people\nwho did believe in the Inner Light.  Their dignity, their weariness,\ntheir sad external care for others, their incurable internal care\nfor themselves, were all due to the Inner Light, and existed only\nby that dismal illumination.  Notice that Marcus Aurelius insists,\nas such introspective moralists always do, upon small things done\nor undone; it is because he has not hate or love enough to make\na moral revolution.  He gets up early in the morning, just as our\nown aristocrats living the Simple Life get up early in the morning;\nbecause such altruism is much easier than stopping the games\nof the amphitheatre or giving the English people back their land.\nMarcus Aurelius is the most intolerable of human types.  He is an\nunselfish egoist.  An unselfish egoist is a man who has pride without\nthe excuse of passion.  Of all conceivable forms of enlightenment\nthe worst is what these people call the Inner Light.  Of all horrible\nreligions the most horrible is the worship of the god within.\nAny one who knows any body knows how it would work; any one who knows\nany one from the Higher Thought Centre knows how it does work.\nThat Jones shall worship the god within him turns out ultimately\nto mean that Jones shall worship Jones.  Let Jones worship the sun\nor moon, anything rather than the Inner Light; let Jones worship\ncats or crocodiles, if he can find any in his street, but not\nthe god within.  Christianity came into the world firstly in order\nto assert with violence that a man had not only to look inwards,\nbut to look outwards, to behold with astonishment and enthusiasm\na divine company and a divine captain.  The only fun of being\na Christian was that a man was not left alone with the Inner Light,\nbut definitely recognized an outer light, fair as the sun, clear as\nthe moon, terrible as an army with banners.\n\n     All the same, it will be as well if Jones does not worship the sun\nand moon.  If he does, there is a tendency for him to imitate them;\nto say, that because the sun burns insects alive, he may burn\ninsects alive.  He thinks that because the sun gives people sun-stroke,\nhe may give his neighbour measles.  He thinks that because the moon\nis said to drive men mad, he may drive his wife mad.  This ugly side\nof mere external optimism had also shown itself in the ancient world.\nAbout the time when the Stoic idealism had begun to show the\nweaknesses of pessimism, the old nature worship of the ancients had\nbegun to show the enormous weaknesses of optimism.  Nature worship\nis natural enough while the society is young, or, in other words,\nPantheism is all right as long as it is the worship of Pan.\nBut Nature has another side which experience and sin are not slow\nin finding out, and it is no flippancy to say of the god Pan that he\nsoon showed the cloven hoof.  The only objection to Natural Religion\nis that somehow it always becomes unnatural.  A man loves Nature\nin the morning for her innocence and amiability, and at nightfall,\nif he is loving her still, it is for her darkness and her cruelty.\nHe washes at dawn in clear water as did the Wise Man of the Stoics,\nyet, somehow at the dark end of the day, he is bathing in hot\nbull's blood, as did Julian the Apostate.  The mere pursuit of\nhealth always leads to something unhealthy.  Physical nature must\nnot be made the direct object of obedience; it must be enjoyed,\nnot worshipped.  Stars and mountains must not be taken seriously.\nIf they are, we end where the pagan nature worship ended.\nBecause the earth is kind, we can imitate all her cruelties.\nBecause sexuality is sane, we can all go mad about sexuality.\nMere optimism had reached its insane and appropriate termination.\nThe theory that everything was good had become an orgy of everything\nthat was bad.\n\n     On the other side our idealist pessimists were represented\nby the old remnant of the Stoics.  Marcus Aurelius and his friends\nhad really given up the idea of any god in the universe and looked\nonly to the god within.  They had no hope of any virtue in nature,\nand hardly any hope of any virtue in society.  They had not enough\ninterest in the outer world really to wreck or revolutionise it.\nThey did not love the city enough to set fire to it.  Thus the\nancient world was exactly in our own desolate dilemma.  The only\npeople who really enjoyed this world were busy breaking it up;\nand the virtuous people did not care enough about them to knock\nthem down.  In this dilemma (the same as ours) Christianity suddenly\nstepped in and offered a singular answer, which the world eventually\naccepted as THE answer.  It was the answer then, and I think it is\nthe answer now.\n\n     This answer was like the slash of a sword; it sundered;\nit did not in any sense sentimentally unite.  Briefly, it divided\nGod from the cosmos.  That transcendence and distinctness of the\ndeity which some Christians now want to remove from Christianity,\nwas really the only reason why any one wanted to be a Christian.\nIt was the whole point of the Christian answer to the unhappy pessimist\nand the still more unhappy optimist.  As I am here only concerned\nwith their particular problem, I shall indicate only briefly this\ngreat metaphysical suggestion.  All descriptions of the creating\nor sustaining principle in things must be metaphorical, because they\nmust be verbal.  Thus the pantheist is forced to speak of God\nin all things as if he were in a box.  Thus the evolutionist has,\nin his very name, the idea of being unrolled like a carpet.\nAll terms, religious and irreligious, are open to this charge.\nThe only question is whether all terms are useless, or whether one can,\nwith such a phrase, cover a distinct IDEA about the origin of things.\nI think one can, and so evidently does the evolutionist, or he would\nnot talk about evolution.  And the root phrase for all Christian\ntheism was this, that God was a creator, as an artist is a creator.\nA poet is so separate from his poem that he himself speaks of it\nas a little thing he has \"thrown off.\"  Even in giving it forth he\nhas flung it away.  This principle that all creation and procreation\nis a breaking off is at least as consistent through the cosmos as the\nevolutionary principle that all growth is a branching out.  A woman\nloses a child even in having a child.  All creation is separation.\nBirth is as solemn a parting as death.\n\n     It was the prime philosophic principle of Christianity that\nthis divorce in the divine act of making (such as severs the poet\nfrom the poem or the mother from the new-born child) was the true\ndescription of the act whereby the absolute energy made the world.\nAccording to most philosophers, God in making the world enslaved it.\nAccording to Christianity, in making it, He set it free.\nGod had written, not so much a poem, but rather a play; a play he\nhad planned as perfect, but which had necessarily been left to human\nactors and stage-managers, who had since made a great mess of it.\nI will discuss the truth of this theorem later.  Here I have only\nto point out with what a startling smoothness it passed the dilemma\nwe have discussed in this chapter.  In this way at least one could\nbe both happy and indignant without degrading one's self to be either\na pessimist or an optimist.  On this system one could fight all\nthe forces of existence without deserting the flag of existence.\nOne could be at peace with the universe and yet be at war with\nthe world.  St. George could still fight the dragon, however big\nthe monster bulked in the cosmos, though he were bigger than the\nmighty cities or bigger than the everlasting hills.  If he were as\nbig as the world he could yet be killed in the name of the world.\nSt. George had not to consider any obvious odds or proportions in\nthe scale of things, but only the original secret of their design.\nHe can shake his sword at the dragon, even if it is everything;\neven if the empty heavens over his head are only the huge arch of its\nopen jaws.\n\n     And then followed an experience impossible to describe.\nIt was as if I had been blundering about since my birth with two\nhuge and unmanageable machines, of different shapes and without\napparent connection--the world and the Christian tradition.\nI had found this hole in the world:  the fact that one must\nsomehow find a way of loving the world without trusting it;\nsomehow one must love the world without being worldly.  I found this\nprojecting feature of Christian theology, like a sort of hard spike,\nthe dogmatic insistence that God was personal, and had made a world\nseparate from Himself.  The spike of dogma fitted exactly into\nthe hole in the world--it had evidently been meant to go there--\nand then the strange thing began to happen.  When once these two\nparts of the two machines had come together, one after another,\nall the other parts fitted and fell in with an eerie exactitude.\nI could hear bolt after bolt over all the machinery falling\ninto its place with a kind of click of relief.  Having got one\npart right, all the other parts were repeating that rectitude,\nas clock after clock strikes noon.  Instinct after instinct was\nanswered by doctrine after doctrine.  Or, to vary the metaphor,\nI was like one who had advanced into a hostile country to take\none high fortress.  And when that fort had fallen the whole country\nsurrendered and turned solid behind me.  The whole land was lit up,\nas it were, back to the first fields of my childhood.  All those blind\nfancies of boyhood which in the fourth chapter I have tried in vain\nto trace on the darkness, became suddenly transparent and sane.\nI was right when I felt that roses were red by some sort of choice:\nit was the divine choice.  I was right when I felt that I would\nalmost rather say that grass was the wrong colour than say it must\nby necessity have been that colour:  it might verily have been\nany other.  My sense that happiness hung on the crazy thread of a\ncondition did mean something when all was said:  it meant the whole\ndoctrine of the Fall.  Even those dim and shapeless monsters of\nnotions which I have not been able to describe, much less defend,\nstepped quietly into their places like colossal caryatides\nof the creed.  The fancy that the cosmos was not vast and void,\nbut small and cosy, had a fulfilled significance now, for anything\nthat is a work of art must be small in the sight of the artist;\nto God the stars might be only small and dear, like diamonds.\nAnd my haunting instinct that somehow good was not merely a tool to\nbe used, but a relic to be guarded, like the goods from Crusoe's ship--\neven that had been the wild whisper of something originally wise, for,\naccording to Christianity, we were indeed the survivors of a wreck,\nthe crew of a golden ship that had gone down before the beginning of\nthe world.\n\n     But the important matter was this, that it entirely reversed\nthe reason for optimism.  And the instant the reversal was made it\nfelt like the abrupt ease when a bone is put back in the socket.\nI had often called myself an optimist, to avoid the too evident\nblasphemy of pessimism.  But all the optimism of the age had been\nfalse and disheartening for this reason, that it had always been\ntrying to prove that we fit in to the world.  The Christian\noptimism is based on the fact that we do NOT fit in to the world.\nI had tried to be happy by telling myself that man is an animal,\nlike any other which sought its meat from God.  But now I really\nwas happy, for I had learnt that man is a monstrosity.  I had been\nright in feeling all things as odd, for I myself was at once worse\nand better than all things.  The optimist's pleasure was prosaic,\nfor it dwelt on the naturalness of everything; the Christian\npleasure was poetic, for it dwelt on the unnaturalness of everything\nin the light of the supernatural.  The modern philosopher had told\nme again and again that I was in the right place, and I had still\nfelt depressed even in acquiescence.  But I had heard that I was in\nthe WRONG place, and my soul sang for joy, like a bird in spring.\nThe knowledge found out and illuminated forgotten chambers in the dark\nhouse of infancy.  I knew now why grass had always seemed to me\nas queer as the green beard of a giant, and why I could feel homesick\nat home.\n\n\n\nVI THE PARADOXES OF CHRISTIANITY\n\n\n     The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an\nunreasonable world, nor even that it is a reasonable one.  The commonest\nkind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite.\nLife is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for logicians.\nIt looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is;\nits exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden;\nits wildness lies in wait.  I give one coarse instance of what I mean.\nSuppose some mathematical creature from the moon were to reckon\nup the human body; he would at once see that the essential thing\nabout it was that it was duplicate.  A man is two men, he on the\nright exactly resembling him on the left.  Having noted that there\nwas an arm on the right and one on the left, a leg on the right\nand one on the left, he might go further and still find on each side\nthe same number of fingers, the same number of toes, twin eyes,\ntwin ears, twin nostrils, and even twin lobes of the brain.\nAt last he would take it as a law; and then, where he found a heart\non one side, would deduce that there was another heart on the other.\nAnd just then, where he most felt he was right, he would be wrong.\n\n     It is this silent swerving from accuracy by an inch that is\nthe uncanny element in everything.  It seems a sort of secret\ntreason in the universe.  An apple or an orange is round enough\nto get itself called round, and yet is not round after all.\nThe earth itself is shaped like an orange in order to lure some\nsimple astronomer into calling it a globe.  A blade of grass is\ncalled after the blade of a sword, because it comes to a point;\nbut it doesn't. Everywhere in things there is this element of the\nquiet and incalculable.  It escapes the rationalists, but it never\nescapes till the last moment.  From the grand curve of our earth it\ncould easily be inferred that every inch of it was thus curved.\nIt would seem rational that as a man has a brain on both sides,\nhe should have a heart on both sides.  Yet scientific men are still\norganizing expeditions to find the North Pole, because they are\nso fond of flat country.  Scientific men are also still organizing\nexpeditions to find a man's heart; and when they try to find it,\nthey generally get on the wrong side of him.\n\n     Now, actual insight or inspiration is best tested by whether it\nguesses these hidden malformations or surprises.  If our mathematician\nfrom the moon saw the two arms and the two ears, he might deduce\nthe two shoulder-blades and the two halves of the brain.  But if he\nguessed that the man's heart was in the right place, then I should\ncall him something more than a mathematician.  Now, this is exactly\nthe claim which I have since come to propound for Christianity.\nNot merely that it deduces logical truths, but that when it suddenly\nbecomes illogical, it has found, so to speak, an illogical truth.\nIt not only goes right about things, but it goes wrong (if one\nmay say so) exactly where the things go wrong.  Its plan suits\nthe secret irregularities, and expects the unexpected.  It is simple\nabout the simple truth; but it is stubborn about the subtle truth.\nIt will admit that a man has two hands, it will not admit (though all\nthe Modernists wail to it) the obvious deduction that he has two hearts.\nIt is my only purpose in this chapter to point this out; to show\nthat whenever we feel there is something odd in Christian theology,\nwe shall generally find that there is something odd in the truth.\n\n     I have alluded to an unmeaning phrase to the effect that\nsuch and such a creed cannot be believed in our age.  Of course,\nanything can be believed in any age.  But, oddly enough, there really\nis a sense in which a creed, if it is believed at all, can be\nbelieved more fixedly in a complex society than in a simple one.\nIf a man finds Christianity true in Birmingham, he has actually clearer\nreasons for faith than if he had found it true in Mercia.  For the more\ncomplicated seems the coincidence, the less it can be a coincidence.\nIf snowflakes fell in the shape, say, of the heart of Midlothian,\nit might be an accident.  But if snowflakes fell in the exact shape\nof the maze at Hampton Court, I think one might call it a miracle.\nIt is exactly as of such a miracle that I have since come to feel\nof the philosophy of Christianity.  The complication of our modern\nworld proves the truth of the creed more perfectly than any of\nthe plain problems of the ages of faith.  It was in Notting Hill\nand Battersea that I began to see that Christianity was true.\nThis is why the faith has that elaboration of doctrines and details\nwhich so much distresses those who admire Christianity without\nbelieving in it.  When once one believes in a creed, one is proud\nof its complexity, as scientists are proud of the complexity\nof science.  It shows how rich it is in discoveries.  If it is right\nat all, it is a compliment to say that it's elaborately right.\nA stick might fit a hole or a stone a hollow by accident.\nBut a key and a lock are both complex.  And if a key fits a lock,\nyou know it is the right key.\n\n     But this involved accuracy of the thing makes it very difficult\nto do what I now have to do, to describe this accumulation of truth.\nIt is very hard for a man to defend anything of which he is\nentirely convinced.  It is comparatively easy when he is only\npartially convinced.  He is partially convinced because he has\nfound this or that proof of the thing, and he can expound it.\nBut a man is not really convinced of a philosophic theory when he\nfinds that something proves it.  He is only really convinced when he\nfinds that everything proves it.  And the more converging reasons he\nfinds pointing to this conviction, the more bewildered he is if asked\nsuddenly to sum them up.  Thus, if one asked an ordinary intelligent man,\non the spur of the moment, \"Why do you prefer civilization to savagery?\"\nhe would look wildly round at object after object, and would only be\nable to answer vaguely, \"Why, there is that bookcase . . . and the\ncoals in the coal-scuttle . . . and pianos . . . and policemen.\"\nThe whole case for civilization is that the case for it is complex.\nIt has done so many things.  But that very multiplicity of proof\nwhich ought to make reply overwhelming makes reply impossible.\n\n     There is, therefore, about all complete conviction a kind\nof huge helplessness.  The belief is so big that it takes a long\ntime to get it into action.  And this hesitation chiefly arises,\noddly enough, from an indifference about where one should begin.\nAll roads lead to Rome; which is one reason why many people never\nget there.  In the case of this defence of the Christian conviction\nI confess that I would as soon begin the argument with one thing\nas another; I would begin it with a turnip or a taximeter cab.\nBut if I am to be at all careful about making my meaning clear,\nit will, I think, be wiser to continue the current arguments\nof the last chapter, which was concerned to urge the first of\nthese mystical coincidences, or rather ratifications.  All I had\nhitherto heard of Christian theology had alienated me from it.\nI was a pagan at the age of twelve, and a complete agnostic by the\nage of sixteen; and I cannot understand any one passing the age\nof seventeen without having asked himself so simple a question.\nI did, indeed, retain a cloudy reverence for a cosmic deity\nand a great historical interest in the Founder of Christianity.\nBut I certainly regarded Him as a man; though perhaps I thought that,\neven in that point, He had an advantage over some of His modern critics.\nI read the scientific and sceptical literature of my time--all of it,\nat least, that I could find written in English and lying about;\nand I read nothing else; I mean I read nothing else on any other\nnote of philosophy.  The penny dreadfuls which I also read\nwere indeed in a healthy and heroic tradition of Christianity;\nbut I did not know this at the time.  I never read a line of\nChristian apologetics.  I read as little as I can of them now.\nIt was Huxley and Herbert Spencer and Bradlaugh who brought me\nback to orthodox theology.  They sowed in my mind my first wild\ndoubts of doubt.  Our grandmothers were quite right when they said\nthat Tom Paine and the free-thinkers unsettled the mind.  They do.\nThey unsettled mine horribly.  The rationalist made me question\nwhether reason was of any use whatever; and when I had finished\nHerbert Spencer I had got as far as doubting (for the first time)\nwhether evolution had occurred at all.  As I laid down the last of\nColonel Ingersoll's atheistic lectures the dreadful thought broke\nacross my mind, \"Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian.\"  I was\nin a desperate way.\n\n     This odd effect of the great agnostics in arousing doubts\ndeeper than their own might be illustrated in many ways.\nI take only one.  As I read and re-read all the non-Christian\nor anti-Christian accounts of the faith, from Huxley to Bradlaugh,\na slow and awful impression grew gradually but graphically\nupon my mind--the impression that Christianity must be a most\nextraordinary thing.  For not only (as I understood) had Christianity\nthe most flaming vices, but it had apparently a mystical talent\nfor combining vices which seemed inconsistent with each other.\nIt was attacked on all sides and for all contradictory reasons.\nNo sooner had one rationalist demonstrated that it was too far\nto the east than another demonstrated with equal clearness that it\nwas much too far to the west.  No sooner had my indignation died\ndown at its angular and aggressive squareness than I was called up\nagain to notice and condemn its enervating and sensual roundness.\nIn case any reader has not come across the thing I mean, I will give\nsuch instances as I remember at random of this self-contradiction\nin the sceptical attack.  I give four or five of them; there are\nfifty more.\n\n     Thus, for instance, I was much moved by the eloquent attack\non Christianity as a thing of inhuman gloom; for I thought\n(and still think) sincere pessimism the unpardonable sin.\nInsincere pessimism is a social accomplishment, rather agreeable\nthan otherwise; and fortunately nearly all pessimism is insincere.\nBut if Christianity was, as these people said, a thing purely\npessimistic and opposed to life, then I was quite prepared to blow\nup St. Paul's Cathedral.  But the extraordinary thing is this.\nThey did prove to me in Chapter I. (to my complete satisfaction)\nthat Christianity was too pessimistic; and then, in Chapter II.,\nthey began to prove to me that it was a great deal too optimistic.\nOne accusation against Christianity was that it prevented men,\nby morbid tears and terrors, from seeking joy and liberty in the bosom\nof Nature.  But another accusation was that it comforted men with a\nfictitious providence, and put them in a pink-and-white nursery.\nOne great agnostic asked why Nature was not beautiful enough,\nand why it was hard to be free.  Another great agnostic objected\nthat Christian optimism, \"the garment of make-believe woven by\npious hands,\" hid from us the fact that Nature was ugly, and that\nit was impossible to be free.  One rationalist had hardly done\ncalling Christianity a nightmare before another began to call it\na fool's paradise.  This puzzled me; the charges seemed inconsistent.\nChristianity could not at once be the black mask on a white world,\nand also the white mask on a black world.  The state of the Christian\ncould not be at once so comfortable that he was a coward to cling\nto it, and so uncomfortable that he was a fool to stand it.\nIf it falsified human vision it must falsify it one way or another;\nit could not wear both green and rose-coloured spectacles.\nI rolled on my tongue with a terrible joy, as did all young men\nof that time, the taunts which Swinburne hurled at the dreariness of\nthe creed--\n\n     \"Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilaean, the world has grown\ngray with Thy breath.\"\n\nBut when I read the same poet's accounts of paganism (as\nin \"Atalanta\"), I gathered that the world was, if possible,\nmore gray before the Galilean breathed on it than afterwards.\nThe poet maintained, indeed, in the abstract, that life itself\nwas pitch dark.  And yet, somehow, Christianity had darkened it.\nThe very man who denounced Christianity for pessimism was himself\na pessimist.  I thought there must be something wrong.  And it did\nfor one wild moment cross my mind that, perhaps, those might not be\nthe very best judges of the relation of religion to happiness who,\nby their own account, had neither one nor the other.\n\n     It must be understood that I did not conclude hastily that the\naccusations were false or the accusers fools.  I simply deduced\nthat Christianity must be something even weirder and wickeder\nthan they made out.  A thing might have these two opposite vices;\nbut it must be a rather queer thing if it did.  A man might be too fat\nin one place and too thin in another; but he would be an odd shape.\nAt this point my thoughts were only of the odd shape of the Christian\nreligion; I did not allege any odd shape in the rationalistic mind.\n\n     Here is another case of the same kind.  I felt that a strong\ncase against Christianity lay in the charge that there is something\ntimid, monkish, and unmanly about all that is called \"Christian,\"\nespecially in its attitude towards resistance and fighting.\nThe great sceptics of the nineteenth century were largely virile.\nBradlaugh in an expansive way, Huxley, in a reticent way,\nwere decidedly men.  In comparison, it did seem tenable that there\nwas something weak and over patient about Christian counsels.\nThe Gospel paradox about the other cheek, the fact that priests\nnever fought, a hundred things made plausible the accusation\nthat Christianity was an attempt to make a man too like a sheep.\nI read it and believed it, and if I had read nothing different,\nI should have gone on believing it.  But I read something very different.\nI turned the next page in my agnostic manual, and my brain turned\nup-side down.  Now I found that I was to hate Christianity not for\nfighting too little, but for fighting too much.  Christianity, it seemed,\nwas the mother of wars.  Christianity had deluged the world with blood.\nI had got thoroughly angry with the Christian, because he never\nwas angry.  And now I was told to be angry with him because his\nanger had been the most huge and horrible thing in human history;\nbecause his anger had soaked the earth and smoked to the sun.\nThe very people who reproached Christianity with the meekness and\nnon-resistance of the monasteries were the very people who reproached\nit also with the violence and valour of the Crusades.  It was the\nfault of poor old Christianity (somehow or other) both that Edward\nthe Confessor did not fight and that Richard Coeur de Leon did.\nThe Quakers (we were told) were the only characteristic Christians;\nand yet the massacres of Cromwell and Alva were characteristic\nChristian crimes.  What could it all mean?  What was this Christianity\nwhich always forbade war and always produced wars?  What could\nbe the nature of the thing which one could abuse first because it\nwould not fight, and second because it was always fighting?\nIn what world of riddles was born this monstrous murder and this\nmonstrous meekness?  The shape of Christianity grew a queerer shape\nevery instant.\n\n     I take a third case; the strangest of all, because it involves\nthe one real objection to the faith.  The one real objection to the\nChristian religion is simply that it is one religion.  The world is\na big place, full of very different kinds of people.  Christianity (it\nmay reasonably be said) is one thing confined to one kind of people;\nit began in Palestine, it has practically stopped with Europe.\nI was duly impressed with this argument in my youth, and I was much\ndrawn towards the doctrine often preached in Ethical Societies--\nI mean the doctrine that there is one great unconscious church of\nall humanity founded on the omnipresence of the human conscience.\nCreeds, it was said, divided men; but at least morals united them.\nThe soul might seek the strangest and most remote lands and ages\nand still find essential ethical common sense.  It might find\nConfucius under Eastern trees, and he would be writing \"Thou\nshalt not steal.\"  It might decipher the darkest hieroglyphic on\nthe most primeval desert, and the meaning when deciphered would\nbe \"Little boys should tell the truth.\"  I believed this doctrine\nof the brotherhood of all men in the possession of a moral sense,\nand I believe it still--with other things.  And I was thoroughly\nannoyed with Christianity for suggesting (as I supposed)\nthat whole ages and empires of men had utterly escaped this light\nof justice and reason.  But then I found an astonishing thing.\nI found that the very people who said that mankind was one church\nfrom Plato to Emerson were the very people who said that morality\nhad changed altogether, and that what was right in one age was wrong\nin another.  If I asked, say, for an altar, I was told that we\nneeded none, for men our brothers gave us clear oracles and one creed\nin their universal customs and ideals.  But if I mildly pointed\nout that one of men's universal customs was to have an altar,\nthen my agnostic teachers turned clean round and told me that men\nhad always been in darkness and the superstitions of savages.\nI found it was their daily taunt against Christianity that it was\nthe light of one people and had left all others to die in the dark.\nBut I also found that it was their special boast for themselves\nthat science and progress were the discovery of one people,\nand that all other peoples had died in the dark.  Their chief insult\nto Christianity was actually their chief compliment to themselves,\nand there seemed to be a strange unfairness about all their relative\ninsistence on the two things.  When considering some pagan or agnostic,\nwe were to remember that all men had one religion; when considering\nsome mystic or spiritualist, we were only to consider what absurd\nreligions some men had.  We could trust the ethics of Epictetus,\nbecause ethics had never changed.  We must not trust the ethics\nof Bossuet, because ethics had changed.  They changed in two\nhundred years, but not in two thousand.\n\n     This began to be alarming.  It looked not so much as if\nChristianity was bad enough to include any vices, but rather\nas if any stick was good enough to beat Christianity with.\nWhat again could this astonishing thing be like which people\nwere so anxious to contradict, that in doing so they did not mind\ncontradicting themselves?  I saw the same thing on every side.\nI can give no further space to this discussion of it in detail;\nbut lest any one supposes that I have unfairly selected three\naccidental cases I will run briefly through a few others.\nThus, certain sceptics wrote that the great crime of Christianity\nhad been its attack on the family; it had dragged women to the\nloneliness and contemplation of the cloister, away from their homes\nand their children.  But, then, other sceptics (slightly more advanced)\nsaid that the great crime of Christianity was forcing the family\nand marriage upon us; that it doomed women to the drudgery of their\nhomes and children, and forbade them loneliness and contemplation.\nThe charge was actually reversed.  Or, again, certain phrases in the\nEpistles or the marriage service, were said by the anti-Christians\nto show contempt for woman's intellect.  But I found that the\nanti-Christians themselves had a contempt for woman's intellect;\nfor it was their great sneer at the Church on the Continent that\n\"only women\" went to it.  Or again, Christianity was reproached\nwith its naked and hungry habits; with its sackcloth and dried peas.\nBut the next minute Christianity was being reproached with its pomp\nand its ritualism; its shrines of porphyry and its robes of gold.\nIt was abused for being too plain and for being too coloured.\nAgain Christianity had always been accused of restraining sexuality\ntoo much, when Bradlaugh the Malthusian discovered that it restrained\nit too little.  It is often accused in the same breath of prim\nrespectability and of religious extravagance.  Between the covers\nof the same atheistic pamphlet I have found the faith rebuked\nfor its disunion, \"One thinks one thing, and one another,\"\nand rebuked also for its union, \"It is difference of opinion\nthat prevents the world from going to the dogs.\"  In the same\nconversation a free-thinker, a friend of mine, blamed Christianity\nfor despising Jews, and then despised it himself for being Jewish.\n\n     I wished to be quite fair then, and I wish to be quite fair now;\nand I did not conclude that the attack on Christianity was all wrong.\nI only concluded that if Christianity was wrong, it was very\nwrong indeed.  Such hostile horrors might be combined in one thing,\nbut that thing must be very strange and solitary.  There are men\nwho are misers, and also spendthrifts; but they are rare.  There are\nmen sensual and also ascetic; but they are rare.  But if this mass\nof mad contradictions really existed, quakerish and bloodthirsty,\ntoo gorgeous and too thread-bare, austere, yet pandering preposterously\nto the lust of the eye, the enemy of women and their foolish refuge,\na solemn pessimist and a silly optimist, if this evil existed,\nthen there was in this evil something quite supreme and unique.\nFor I found in my rationalist teachers no explanation of such\nexceptional corruption.  Christianity (theoretically speaking)\nwas in their eyes only one of the ordinary myths and errors of mortals.\nTHEY gave me no key to this twisted and unnatural badness.\nSuch a paradox of evil rose to the stature of the supernatural.\nIt was, indeed, almost as supernatural as the infallibility of the Pope.\nAn historic institution, which never went right, is really quite\nas much of a miracle as an institution that cannot go wrong.\nThe only explanation which immediately occurred to my mind was that\nChristianity did not come from heaven, but from hell.  Really, if Jesus\nof Nazareth was not Christ, He must have been Antichrist.\n\n     And then in a quiet hour a strange thought struck me like a still\nthunderbolt.  There had suddenly come into my mind another explanation.\nSuppose we heard an unknown man spoken of by many men.  Suppose we\nwere puzzled to hear that some men said he was too tall and some\ntoo short; some objected to his fatness, some lamented his leanness;\nsome thought him too dark, and some too fair.  One explanation (as\nhas been already admitted) would be that he might be an odd shape.\nBut there is another explanation.  He might be the right shape.\nOutrageously tall men might feel him to be short.  Very short men\nmight feel him to be tall.  Old bucks who are growing stout might\nconsider him insufficiently filled out; old beaux who were growing\nthin might feel that he expanded beyond the narrow lines of elegance.\nPerhaps Swedes (who have pale hair like tow) called him a dark man,\nwhile negroes considered him distinctly blonde.  Perhaps (in short)\nthis extraordinary thing is really the ordinary thing; at least\nthe normal thing, the centre.  Perhaps, after all, it is Christianity\nthat is sane and all its critics that are mad--in various ways.\nI tested this idea by asking myself whether there was about any\nof the accusers anything morbid that might explain the accusation.\nI was startled to find that this key fitted a lock.  For instance,\nit was certainly odd that the modern world charged Christianity\nat once with bodily austerity and with artistic pomp.  But then\nit was also odd, very odd, that the modern world itself combined\nextreme bodily luxury with an extreme absence of artistic pomp.\nThe modern man thought Becket's robes too rich and his meals too poor.\nBut then the modern man was really exceptional in history; no man before\never ate such elaborate dinners in such ugly clothes.  The modern man\nfound the church too simple exactly where modern life is too complex;\nhe found the church too gorgeous exactly where modern life is too dingy.\nThe man who disliked the plain fasts and feasts was mad on entrees.\nThe man who disliked vestments wore a pair of preposterous trousers.\nAnd surely if there was any insanity involved in the matter at all it\nwas in the trousers, not in the simply falling robe.  If there was any\ninsanity at all, it was in the extravagant entrees, not in the bread\nand wine.\n\n     I went over all the cases, and I found the key fitted so far.\nThe fact that Swinburne was irritated at the unhappiness of Christians\nand yet more irritated at their happiness was easily explained.\nIt was no longer a complication of diseases in Christianity,\nbut a complication of diseases in Swinburne.  The restraints\nof Christians saddened him simply because he was more hedonist\nthan a healthy man should be.  The faith of Christians angered\nhim because he was more pessimist than a healthy man should be.\nIn the same way the Malthusians by instinct attacked Christianity;\nnot because there is anything especially anti-Malthusian about\nChristianity, but because there is something a little anti-human\nabout Malthusianism.\n\n     Nevertheless it could not, I felt, be quite true that Christianity\nwas merely sensible and stood in the middle.  There was really\nan element in it of emphasis and even frenzy which had justified\nthe secularists in their superficial criticism.  It might be wise,\nI began more and more to think that it was wise, but it was not\nmerely worldly wise; it was not merely temperate and respectable.\nIts fierce crusaders and meek saints might balance each other;\nstill, the crusaders were very fierce and the saints were very meek,\nmeek beyond all decency.  Now, it was just at this point of the\nspeculation that I remembered my thoughts about the martyr and\nthe suicide.  In that matter there had been this combination between\ntwo almost insane positions which yet somehow amounted to sanity.\nThis was just such another contradiction; and this I had already\nfound to be true.  This was exactly one of the paradoxes in which\nsceptics found the creed wrong; and in this I had found it right.\nMadly as Christians might love the martyr or hate the suicide,\nthey never felt these passions more madly than I had felt them long\nbefore I dreamed of Christianity.  Then the most difficult and\ninteresting part of the mental process opened, and I began to trace\nthis idea darkly through all the enormous thoughts of our theology.\nThe idea was that which I had outlined touching the optimist and\nthe pessimist; that we want not an amalgam or compromise, but both\nthings at the top of their energy; love and wrath both burning.\nHere I shall only trace it in relation to ethics.  But I need not\nremind the reader that the idea of this combination is indeed central\nin orthodox theology.  For orthodox theology has specially insisted\nthat Christ was not a being apart from God and man, like an elf,\nnor yet a being half human and half not, like a centaur, but both\nthings at once and both things thoroughly, very man and very God.\nNow let me trace this notion as I found it.\n\n     All sane men can see that sanity is some kind of equilibrium;\nthat one may be mad and eat too much, or mad and eat too little.\nSome moderns have indeed appeared with vague versions of progress and\nevolution which seeks to destroy the MESON or balance of Aristotle.\nThey seem to suggest that we are meant to starve progressively,\nor to go on eating larger and larger breakfasts every morning for ever.\nBut the great truism of the MESON remains for all thinking men,\nand these people have not upset any balance except their own.\nBut granted that we have all to keep a balance, the real interest\ncomes in with the question of how that balance can be kept.\nThat was the problem which Paganism tried to solve:  that was\nthe problem which I think Christianity solved and solved in a very\nstrange way.\n\n     Paganism declared that virtue was in a balance; Christianity\ndeclared it was in a conflict:  the collision of two passions\napparently opposite.  Of course they were not really inconsistent;\nbut they were such that it was hard to hold simultaneously.\nLet us follow for a moment the clue of the martyr and the suicide;\nand take the case of courage.  No quality has ever so much addled\nthe brains and tangled the definitions of merely rational sages.\nCourage is almost a contradiction in terms.  It means a strong desire\nto live taking the form of a readiness to die.  \"He that will lose\nhis life, the same shall save it,\" is not a piece of mysticism\nfor saints and heroes.  It is a piece of everyday advice for\nsailors or mountaineers.  It might be printed in an Alpine guide\nor a drill book.  This paradox is the whole principle of courage;\neven of quite earthly or quite brutal courage.  A man cut off by\nthe sea may save his life if he will risk it on the precipice.\n\n     He can only get away from death by continually stepping within\nan inch of it.  A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut\nhis way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a\nstrange carelessness about dying.  He must not merely cling to life,\nfor then he will be a coward, and will not escape.  He must not merely\nwait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape.\nHe must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it;\nhe must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine.\nNo philosopher, I fancy, has ever expressed this romantic riddle\nwith adequate lucidity, and I certainly have not done so.\nBut Christianity has done more:  it has marked the limits of it\nin the awful graves of the suicide and the hero, showing the distance\nbetween him who dies for the sake of living and him who dies for the\nsake of dying.  And it has held up ever since above the European\nlances the banner of the mystery of chivalry:  the Christian courage,\nwhich is a disdain of death; not the Chinese courage, which is a\ndisdain of life.\n\n     And now I began to find that this duplex passion was the Christian\nkey to ethics everywhere.  Everywhere the creed made a moderation\nout of the still crash of two impetuous emotions.  Take, for instance,\nthe matter of modesty, of the balance between mere pride and\nmere prostration.  The average pagan, like the average agnostic,\nwould merely say that he was content with himself, but not insolently\nself-satisfied, that there were many better and many worse,\nthat his deserts were limited, but he would see that he got them.\nIn short, he would walk with his head in the air; but not necessarily\nwith his nose in the air.  This is a manly and rational position,\nbut it is open to the objection we noted against the compromise\nbetween optimism and pessimism--the \"resignation\" of Matthew Arnold.\nBeing a mixture of two things, it is a dilution of two things;\nneither is present in its full strength or contributes its full colour.\nThis proper pride does not lift the heart like the tongue of trumpets;\nyou cannot go clad in crimson and gold for this.  On the other hand,\nthis mild rationalist modesty does not cleanse the soul with fire\nand make it clear like crystal; it does not (like a strict and\nsearching humility) make a man as a little child, who can sit at\nthe feet of the grass.  It does not make him look up and see marvels;\nfor Alice must grow small if she is to be Alice in Wonderland.  Thus it\nloses both the poetry of being proud and the poetry of being humble.\nChristianity sought by this same strange expedient to save both\nof them.\n\n     It separated the two ideas and then exaggerated them both.\nIn one way Man was to be haughtier than he had ever been before;\nin another way he was to be humbler than he had ever been before.\nIn so far as I am Man I am the chief of creatures.  In so far\nas I am a man I am the chief of sinners.  All humility that had\nmeant pessimism, that had meant man taking a vague or mean view\nof his whole destiny--all that was to go.  We were to hear no more\nthe wail of Ecclesiastes that humanity had no pre-eminence over\nthe brute, or the awful cry of Homer that man was only the saddest\nof all the beasts of the field.  Man was a statue of God walking\nabout the garden.  Man had pre-eminence over all the brutes;\nman was only sad because he was not a beast, but a broken god.\nThe Greek had spoken of men creeping on the earth, as if clinging\nto it.  Now Man was to tread on the earth as if to subdue it.\nChristianity thus held a thought of the dignity of man that could only\nbe expressed in crowns rayed like the sun and fans of peacock plumage.\nYet at the same time it could hold a thought about the abject smallness\nof man that could only be expressed in fasting and fantastic submission,\nin the gray ashes of St. Dominic and the white snows of St. Bernard.\nWhen one came to think of ONE'S SELF, there was vista and void enough\nfor any amount of bleak abnegation and bitter truth.  There the\nrealistic gentleman could let himself go--as long as he let himself go\nat himself.  There was an open playground for the happy pessimist.\nLet him say anything against himself short of blaspheming the original\naim of his being; let him call himself a fool and even a damned\nfool (though that is Calvinistic); but he must not say that fools\nare not worth saving.  He must not say that a man, QUA man,\ncan be valueless.  Here, again in short, Christianity got over the\ndifficulty of combining furious opposites, by keeping them both,\nand keeping them both furious.  The Church was positive on both points.\nOne can hardly think too little of one's self.  One can hardly think\ntoo much of one's soul.\n\n     Take another case:  the complicated question of charity,\nwhich some highly uncharitable idealists seem to think quite easy.\nCharity is a paradox, like modesty and courage.  Stated baldly,\ncharity certainly means one of two things--pardoning unpardonable acts,\nor loving unlovable people.  But if we ask ourselves (as we did\nin the case of pride) what a sensible pagan would feel about such\na subject, we shall probably be beginning at the bottom of it.\nA sensible pagan would say that there were some people one could forgive,\nand some one couldn't: a slave who stole wine could be laughed at;\na slave who betrayed his benefactor could be killed, and cursed\neven after he was killed.  In so far as the act was pardonable,\nthe man was pardonable.  That again is rational, and even refreshing;\nbut it is a dilution.  It leaves no place for a pure horror of injustice,\nsuch as that which is a great beauty in the innocent.  And it leaves\nno place for a mere tenderness for men as men, such as is the whole\nfascination of the charitable.  Christianity came in here as before.\nIt came in startlingly with a sword, and clove one thing from another.\nIt divided the crime from the criminal.  The criminal we must forgive\nunto seventy times seven.  The crime we must not forgive at all.\nIt was not enough that slaves who stole wine inspired partly anger\nand partly kindness.  We must be much more angry with theft than before,\nand yet much kinder to thieves than before.  There was room for wrath\nand love to run wild.  And the more I considered Christianity,\nthe more I found that while it had established a rule and order,\nthe chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run\nwild.\n\n     Mental and emotional liberty are not so simple as they look.\nReally they require almost as careful a balance of laws and conditions\nas do social and political liberty.  The ordinary aesthetic anarchist\nwho sets out to feel everything freely gets knotted at last in a\nparadox that prevents him feeling at all.  He breaks away from home\nlimits to follow poetry.  But in ceasing to feel home limits he has\nceased to feel the \"Odyssey.\"  He is free from national prejudices\nand outside patriotism.  But being outside patriotism he is outside\n\"Henry V.\" Such a literary man is simply outside all literature:\nhe is more of a prisoner than any bigot.  For if there is a wall\nbetween you and the world, it makes little difference whether you\ndescribe yourself as locked in or as locked out.  What we want\nis not the universality that is outside all normal sentiments;\nwe want the universality that is inside all normal sentiments.\nIt is all the difference between being free from them, as a man\nis free from a prison, and being free of them as a man is free of\na city.  I am free from Windsor Castle (that is, I am not forcibly\ndetained there), but I am by no means free of that building.\nHow can man be approximately free of fine emotions, able to swing\nthem in a clear space without breakage or wrong?  THIS was the\nachievement of this Christian paradox of the parallel passions.\nGranted the primary dogma of the war between divine and diabolic,\nthe revolt and ruin of the world, their optimism and pessimism,\nas pure poetry, could be loosened like cataracts.\n\n     St. Francis, in praising all good, could be a more shouting\noptimist than Walt Whitman.  St. Jerome, in denouncing all evil,\ncould paint the world blacker than Schopenhauer.  Both passions\nwere free because both were kept in their place.  The optimist could\npour out all the praise he liked on the gay music of the march,\nthe golden trumpets, and the purple banners going into battle.\nBut he must not call the fight needless.  The pessimist might draw\nas darkly as he chose the sickening marches or the sanguine wounds.\nBut he must not call the fight hopeless.  So it was with all the\nother moral problems, with pride, with protest, and with compassion.\nBy defining its main doctrine, the Church not only kept seemingly\ninconsistent things side by side, but, what was more, allowed them\nto break out in a sort of artistic violence otherwise possible\nonly to anarchists.  Meekness grew more dramatic than madness.\nHistoric Christianity rose into a high and strange COUP DE THEATRE\nof morality--things that are to virtue what the crimes of Nero are\nto vice.  The spirits of indignation and of charity took terrible\nand attractive forms, ranging from that monkish fierceness that\nscourged like a dog the first and greatest of the Plantagenets,\nto the sublime pity of St. Catherine, who, in the official shambles,\nkissed the bloody head of the criminal.  Poetry could be acted as\nwell as composed.  This heroic and monumental manner in ethics has\nentirely vanished with supernatural religion.  They, being humble,\ncould parade themselves:  but we are too proud to be prominent.\nOur ethical teachers write reasonably for prison reform; but we\nare not likely to see Mr. Cadbury, or any eminent philanthropist,\ngo into Reading Gaol and embrace the strangled corpse before it\nis cast into the quicklime.  Our ethical teachers write mildly\nagainst the power of millionaires; but we are not likely to see\nMr. Rockefeller, or any modern tyrant, publicly whipped in Westminster\nAbbey.\n\n     Thus, the double charges of the secularists, though throwing\nnothing but darkness and confusion on themselves, throw a real light on\nthe faith.  It is true that the historic Church has at once emphasised\ncelibacy and emphasised the family; has at once (if one may put it so)\nbeen fiercely for having children and fiercely for not having children.\nIt has kept them side by side like two strong colours, red and white,\nlike the red and white upon the shield of St. George.  It has\nalways had a healthy hatred of pink.  It hates that combination\nof two colours which is the feeble expedient of the philosophers.\nIt hates that evolution of black into white which is tantamount to\na dirty gray.  In fact, the whole theory of the Church on virginity\nmight be symbolized in the statement that white is a colour:\nnot merely the absence of a colour.  All that I am urging here can\nbe expressed by saying that Christianity sought in most of these\ncases to keep two colours coexistent but pure.  It is not a mixture\nlike russet or purple; it is rather like a shot silk, for a shot\nsilk is always at right angles, and is in the pattern of the cross.\n\n     So it is also, of course, with the contradictory charges\nof the anti-Christians about submission and slaughter.  It IS true\nthat the Church told some men to fight and others not to fight;\nand it IS true that those who fought were like thunderbolts\nand those who did not fight were like statues.  All this simply\nmeans that the Church preferred to use its Supermen and to use\nits Tolstoyans.  There must be SOME good in the life of battle,\nfor so many good men have enjoyed being soldiers.  There must be\nSOME good in the idea of non-resistance, for so many good men seem\nto enjoy being Quakers.  All that the Church did (so far as that goes)\nwas to prevent either of these good things from ousting the other.\nThey existed side by side.  The Tolstoyans, having all the scruples\nof monks, simply became monks.  The Quakers became a club instead\nof becoming a sect.  Monks said all that Tolstoy says; they poured\nout lucid lamentations about the cruelty of battles and the vanity\nof revenge.  But the Tolstoyans are not quite right enough to run\nthe whole world; and in the ages of faith they were not allowed\nto run it.  The world did not lose the last charge of Sir James\nDouglas or the banner of Joan the Maid.  And sometimes this pure\ngentleness and this pure fierceness met and justified their juncture;\nthe paradox of all the prophets was fulfilled, and, in the soul\nof St. Louis, the lion lay down with the lamb.  But remember that\nthis text is too lightly interpreted.  It is constantly assured,\nespecially in our Tolstoyan tendencies, that when the lion lies\ndown with the lamb the lion becomes lamb-like. But that is brutal\nannexation and imperialism on the part of the lamb.  That is simply\nthe lamb absorbing the lion instead of the lion eating the lamb.\nThe real problem is--Can the lion lie down with the lamb and still\nretain his royal ferocity?  THAT is the problem the Church attempted;\nTHAT is the miracle she achieved.\n\n     This is what I have called guessing the hidden eccentricities\nof life.  This is knowing that a man's heart is to the left and not\nin the middle.  This is knowing not only that the earth is round,\nbut knowing exactly where it is flat.  Christian doctrine detected\nthe oddities of life.  It not only discovered the law, but it\nforesaw the exceptions.  Those underrate Christianity who say that\nit discovered mercy; any one might discover mercy.  In fact every\none did.  But to discover a plan for being merciful and also severe--\nTHAT was to anticipate a strange need of human nature.  For no one\nwants to be forgiven for a big sin as if it were a little one.\nAny one might say that we should be neither quite miserable nor\nquite happy.  But to find out how far one MAY be quite miserable\nwithout making it impossible to be quite happy--that was a discovery\nin psychology.  Any one might say, \"Neither swagger nor grovel\";\nand it would have been a limit.  But to say, \"Here you can swagger\nand there you can grovel\"--that was an emancipation.\n\n     This was the big fact about Christian ethics; the discovery\nof the new balance.  Paganism had been like a pillar of marble,\nupright because proportioned with symmetry.  Christianity was like\na huge and ragged and romantic rock, which, though it sways on its\npedestal at a touch, yet, because its exaggerated excrescences\nexactly balance each other, is enthroned there for a thousand years.\nIn a Gothic cathedral the columns were all different, but they were\nall necessary.  Every support seemed an accidental and fantastic support;\nevery buttress was a flying buttress.  So in Christendom apparent\naccidents balanced.  Becket wore a hair shirt under his gold\nand crimson, and there is much to be said for the combination;\nfor Becket got the benefit of the hair shirt while the people in\nthe street got the benefit of the crimson and gold.  It is at least\nbetter than the manner of the modern millionaire, who has the black\nand the drab outwardly for others, and the gold next his heart.\nBut the balance was not always in one man's body as in Becket's;\nthe balance was often distributed over the whole body of Christendom.\nBecause a man prayed and fasted on the Northern snows, flowers could\nbe flung at his festival in the Southern cities; and because fanatics\ndrank water on the sands of Syria, men could still drink cider in the\norchards of England.  This is what makes Christendom at once so much\nmore perplexing and so much more interesting than the Pagan empire;\njust as Amiens Cathedral is not better but more interesting than\nthe Parthenon.  If any one wants a modern proof of all this,\nlet him consider the curious fact that, under Christianity,\nEurope (while remaining a unity) has broken up into individual nations.\nPatriotism is a perfect example of this deliberate balancing\nof one emphasis against another emphasis.  The instinct of the\nPagan empire would have said, \"You shall all be Roman citizens,\nand grow alike; let the German grow less slow and reverent;\nthe Frenchmen less experimental and swift.\"  But the instinct\nof Christian Europe says, \"Let the German remain slow and reverent,\nthat the Frenchman may the more safely be swift and experimental.\nWe will make an equipoise out of these excesses.  The absurdity\ncalled Germany shall correct the insanity called France.\"\n\n     Last and most important, it is exactly this which explains\nwhat is so inexplicable to all the modern critics of the history\nof Christianity.  I mean the monstrous wars about small points\nof theology, the earthquakes of emotion about a gesture or a word.\nIt was only a matter of an inch; but an inch is everything when you\nare balancing.  The Church could not afford to swerve a hair's breadth\non some things if she was to continue her great and daring experiment\nof the irregular equilibrium.  Once let one idea become less powerful\nand some other idea would become too powerful.  It was no flock of sheep\nthe Christian shepherd was leading, but a herd of bulls and tigers,\nof terrible ideals and devouring doctrines, each one of them strong\nenough to turn to a false religion and lay waste the world.\nRemember that the Church went in specifically for dangerous ideas;\nshe was a lion tamer.  The idea of birth through a Holy Spirit,\nof the death of a divine being, of the forgiveness of sins,\nor the fulfilment of prophecies, are ideas which, any one can see,\nneed but a touch to turn them into something blasphemous or ferocious.\nThe smallest link was let drop by the artificers of the Mediterranean,\nand the lion of ancestral pessimism burst his chain in the forgotten\nforests of the north.  Of these theological equalisations I have\nto speak afterwards.  Here it is enough to notice that if some\nsmall mistake were made in doctrine, huge blunders might be made\nin human happiness.  A sentence phrased wrong about the nature\nof symbolism would have broken all the best statues in Europe.\nA slip in the definitions might stop all the dances; might wither\nall the Christmas trees or break all the Easter eggs.  Doctrines had\nto be defined within strict limits, even in order that man might\nenjoy general human liberties.  The Church had to be careful,\nif only that the world might be careless.\n\n     This is the thrilling romance of Orthodoxy.  People have fallen\ninto a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy,\nhumdrum, and safe.  There never was anything so perilous or so exciting\nas orthodoxy.  It was sanity:  and to be sane is more dramatic than to\nbe mad.  It was the equilibrium of a man behind madly rushing horses,\nseeming to stoop this way and to sway that, yet in every attitude\nhaving the grace of statuary and the accuracy of arithmetic.\nThe Church in its early days went fierce and fast with any warhorse;\nyet it is utterly unhistoric to say that she merely went mad along\none idea, like a vulgar fanaticism.  She swerved to left and right,\nso exactly as to avoid enormous obstacles.  She left on one hand\nthe huge bulk of Arianism, buttressed by all the worldly powers\nto make Christianity too worldly.  The next instant she was swerving\nto avoid an orientalism, which would have made it too unworldly.\nThe orthodox Church never took the tame course or accepted\nthe conventions; the orthodox Church was never respectable.  It would\nhave been easier to have accepted the earthly power of the Arians.\nIt would have been easy, in the Calvinistic seventeenth century,\nto fall into the bottomless pit of predestination.  It is easy to be\na madman:  it is easy to be a heretic.  It is always easy to let\nthe age have its head; the difficult thing is to keep one's own.\nIt is always easy to be a modernist; as it is easy to be a snob.\nTo have fallen into any of those open traps of error and exaggeration\nwhich fashion after fashion and sect after sect set along the\nhistoric path of Christendom--that would indeed have been simple.\nIt is always simple to fall; there are an infinity of angles at\nwhich one falls, only one at which one stands.  To have fallen into\nany one of the fads from Gnosticism to Christian Science would indeed\nhave been obvious and tame.  But to have avoided them all has been\none whirling adventure; and in my vision the heavenly chariot flies\nthundering through the ages, the dull heresies sprawling and prostrate,\nthe wild truth reeling but erect.\n\n\n\nVII THE ETERNAL REVOLUTION\n\n\n     The following propositions have been urged:  First, that some\nfaith in our life is required even to improve it; second, that some\ndissatisfaction with things as they are is necessary even in order\nto be satisfied; third, that to have this necessary content\nand necessary discontent it is not sufficient to have the obvious\nequilibrium of the Stoic.  For mere resignation has neither the\ngigantic levity of pleasure nor the superb intolerance of pain.\nThere is a vital objection to the advice merely to grin and bear it.\nThe objection is that if you merely bear it, you do not grin.\nGreek heroes do not grin:  but gargoyles do--because they are Christian.\nAnd when a Christian is pleased, he is (in the most exact sense)\nfrightfully pleased; his pleasure is frightful.  Christ prophesied\nthe whole of Gothic architecture in that hour when nervous and\nrespectable people (such people as now object to barrel organs)\nobjected to the shouting of the gutter-snipes of Jerusalem.\nHe said, \"If these were silent, the very stones would cry out.\"\nUnder the impulse of His spirit arose like a clamorous chorus the\nfacades of the mediaeval cathedrals, thronged with shouting faces\nand open mouths.  The prophecy has fulfilled itself:  the very stones\ncry out.\n\n     If these things be conceded, though only for argument,\nwe may take up where we left it the thread of the thought of the\nnatural man, called by the Scotch (with regrettable familiarity),\n\"The Old Man.\"  We can ask the next question so obviously in front\nof us.  Some satisfaction is needed even to make things better.\nBut what do we mean by making things better?  Most modern talk on\nthis matter is a mere argument in a circle--that circle which we\nhave already made the symbol of madness and of mere rationalism.\nEvolution is only good if it produces good; good is only good if it\nhelps evolution.  The elephant stands on the tortoise, and the tortoise\non the elephant.\n\n     Obviously, it will not do to take our ideal from the principle\nin nature; for the simple reason that (except for some human\nor divine theory), there is no principle in nature.  For instance,\nthe cheap anti-democrat of to-day will tell you solemnly that\nthere is no equality in nature.  He is right, but he does not see\nthe logical addendum.  There is no equality in nature; also there\nis no inequality in nature.  Inequality, as much as equality,\nimplies a standard of value.  To read aristocracy into the anarchy\nof animals is just as sentimental as to read democracy into it.\nBoth aristocracy and democracy are human ideals:  the one saying\nthat all men are valuable, the other that some men are more valuable.\nBut nature does not say that cats are more valuable than mice;\nnature makes no remark on the subject.  She does not even say\nthat the cat is enviable or the mouse pitiable.  We think the cat\nsuperior because we have (or most of us have) a particular philosophy\nto the effect that life is better than death.  But if the mouse\nwere a German pessimist mouse, he might not think that the cat\nhad beaten him at all.  He might think he had beaten the cat by\ngetting to the grave first.  Or he might feel that he had actually\ninflicted frightful punishment on the cat by keeping him alive.\nJust as a microbe might feel proud of spreading a pestilence,\nso the pessimistic mouse might exult to think that he was renewing\nin the cat the torture of conscious existence.  It all depends\non the philosophy of the mouse.  You cannot even say that there\nis victory or superiority in nature unless you have some doctrine\nabout what things are superior.  You cannot even say that the cat\nscores unless there is a system of scoring.  You cannot even say\nthat the cat gets the best of it unless there is some best to\nbe got.\n\n     We cannot, then, get the ideal itself from nature,\nand as we follow here the first and natural speculation, we will\nleave out (for the present) the idea of getting it from God.\nWe must have our own vision.  But the attempts of most moderns\nto express it are highly vague.\n\n     Some fall back simply on the clock:  they talk as if mere\npassage through time brought some superiority; so that even a man\nof the first mental calibre carelessly uses the phrase that human\nmorality is never up to date.  How can anything be up to date?--\na date has no character.  How can one say that Christmas\ncelebrations are not suitable to the twenty-fifth of a month?\nWhat the writer meant, of course, was that the majority is behind\nhis favourite minority--or in front of it.  Other vague modern\npeople take refuge in material metaphors; in fact, this is the chief\nmark of vague modern people.  Not daring to define their doctrine\nof what is good, they use physical figures of speech without stint\nor shame, and, what is worst of all, seem to think these cheap\nanalogies are exquisitely spiritual and superior to the old morality.\nThus they think it intellectual to talk about things being \"high.\"\nIt is at least the reverse of intellectual; it is a mere phrase\nfrom a steeple or a weathercock.  \"Tommy was a good boy\" is a pure\nphilosophical statement, worthy of Plato or Aquinas.  \"Tommy lived\nthe higher life\" is a gross metaphor from a ten-foot rule.\n\n     This, incidentally, is almost the whole weakness of Nietzsche,\nwhom some are representing as a bold and strong thinker.\nNo one will deny that he was a poetical and suggestive thinker;\nbut he was quite the reverse of strong.  He was not at all bold.\nHe never put his own meaning before himself in bald abstract words:\nas did Aristotle and Calvin, and even Karl Marx, the hard,\nfearless men of thought.  Nietzsche always escaped a question\nby a physical metaphor, like a cheery minor poet.  He said,\n\"beyond good and evil,\" because he had not the courage to say,\n\"more good than good and evil,\" or, \"more evil than good and evil.\"\nHad he faced his thought without metaphors, he would have seen that it\nwas nonsense.  So, when he describes his hero, he does not dare to say,\n\"the purer man,\" or \"the happier man,\" or \"the sadder man,\" for all\nthese are ideas; and ideas are alarming.  He says \"the upper man,\"\nor \"over man,\" a physical metaphor from acrobats or alpine climbers.\nNietzsche is truly a very timid thinker.  He does not really know\nin the least what sort of man he wants evolution to produce.\nAnd if he does not know, certainly the ordinary evolutionists,\nwho talk about things being \"higher,\" do not know either.\n\n     Then again, some people fall back on sheer submission\nand sitting still.  Nature is going to do something some day;\nnobody knows what, and nobody knows when.  We have no reason for acting,\nand no reason for not acting.  If anything happens it is right:\nif anything is prevented it was wrong.  Again, some people try\nto anticipate nature by doing something, by doing anything.\nBecause we may possibly grow wings they cut off their legs.\nYet nature may be trying to make them centipedes for all they know.\n\n     Lastly, there is a fourth class of people who take whatever\nit is that they happen to want, and say that that is the ultimate\naim of evolution.  And these are the only sensible people.\nThis is the only really healthy way with the word evolution,\nto work for what you want, and to call THAT evolution.  The only\nintelligible sense that progress or advance can have among men,\nis that we have a definite vision, and that we wish to make\nthe whole world like that vision.  If you like to put it so,\nthe essence of the doctrine is that what we have around us is the\nmere method and preparation for something that we have to create.\nThis is not a world, but rather the material for a world.\nGod has given us not so much the colours of a picture as the colours\nof a palette.  But he has also given us a subject, a model,\na fixed vision.  We must be clear about what we want to paint.\nThis adds a further principle to our previous list of principles.\nWe have said we must be fond of this world, even in order to change it.\nWe now add that we must be fond of another world (real or imaginary)\nin order to have something to change it to.\n\n     We need not debate about the mere words evolution or progress:\npersonally I prefer to call it reform.  For reform implies form.\nIt implies that we are trying to shape the world in a particular image;\nto make it something that we see already in our minds.  Evolution is\na metaphor from mere automatic unrolling.  Progress is a metaphor from\nmerely walking along a road--very likely the wrong road.  But reform\nis a metaphor for reasonable and determined men:  it means that we\nsee a certain thing out of shape and we mean to put it into shape.\nAnd we know what shape.\n\n     Now here comes in the whole collapse and huge blunder of our age.\nWe have mixed up two different things, two opposite things.\nProgress should mean that we are always changing the world to suit\nthe vision.  Progress does mean (just now) that we are always changing\nthe vision.  It should mean that we are slow but sure in bringing\njustice and mercy among men:  it does mean that we are very swift\nin doubting the desirability of justice and mercy:  a wild page\nfrom any Prussian sophist makes men doubt it.  Progress should mean\nthat we are always walking towards the New Jerusalem.  It does mean\nthat the New Jerusalem is always walking away from us.  We are not\naltering the real to suit the ideal.  We are altering the ideal:\nit is easier.\n\n     Silly examples are always simpler; let us suppose a man wanted\na particular kind of world; say, a blue world.  He would have no\ncause to complain of the slightness or swiftness of his task;\nhe might toil for a long time at the transformation; he could\nwork away (in every sense) until all was blue.  He could have\nheroic adventures; the putting of the last touches to a blue tiger.\nHe could have fairy dreams; the dawn of a blue moon.  But if he\nworked hard, that high-minded reformer would certainly (from his own\npoint of view) leave the world better and bluer than he found it.\nIf he altered a blade of grass to his favourite colour every day,\nhe would get on slowly.  But if he altered his favourite colour\nevery day, he would not get on at all.  If, after reading a\nfresh philosopher, he started to paint everything red or yellow,\nhis work would be thrown away:  there would be nothing to show except\na few blue tigers walking about, specimens of his early bad manner.\nThis is exactly the position of the average modern thinker.\nIt will be said that this is avowedly a preposterous example.\nBut it is literally the fact of recent history.  The great and grave\nchanges in our political civilization all belonged to the early\nnineteenth century, not to the later.  They belonged to the black\nand white epoch when men believed fixedly in Toryism, in Protestantism,\nin Calvinism, in Reform, and not unfrequently in Revolution.\nAnd whatever each man believed in he hammered at steadily,\nwithout scepticism:  and there was a time when the Established\nChurch might have fallen, and the House of Lords nearly fell.\nIt was because Radicals were wise enough to be constant and consistent;\nit was because Radicals were wise enough to be Conservative.\nBut in the existing atmosphere there is not enough time and tradition\nin Radicalism to pull anything down.  There is a great deal of truth\nin Lord Hugh Cecil's suggestion (made in a fine speech) that the era\nof change is over, and that ours is an era of conservation and repose.\nBut probably it would pain Lord Hugh Cecil if he realized (what\nis certainly the case) that ours is only an age of conservation\nbecause it is an age of complete unbelief.  Let beliefs fade fast\nand frequently, if you wish institutions to remain the same.\nThe more the life of the mind is unhinged, the more the machinery\nof matter will be left to itself.  The net result of all our\npolitical suggestions, Collectivism, Tolstoyanism, Neo-Feudalism,\nCommunism, Anarchy, Scientific Bureaucracy--the plain fruit of all\nof them is that the Monarchy and the House of Lords will remain.\nThe net result of all the new religions will be that the Church\nof England will not (for heaven knows how long) be disestablished.\nIt was Karl Marx, Nietzsche, Tolstoy, Cunninghame Grahame, Bernard Shaw\nand Auberon Herbert, who between them, with bowed gigantic backs,\nbore up the throne of the Archbishop of Canterbury.\n\n     We may say broadly that free thought is the best of all the\nsafeguards against freedom.  Managed in a modern style the emancipation\nof the slave's mind is the best way of preventing the emancipation\nof the slave.  Teach him to worry about whether he wants to be free,\nand he will not free himself.  Again, it may be said that this\ninstance is remote or extreme.  But, again, it is exactly true of\nthe men in the streets around us.  It is true that the negro slave,\nbeing a debased barbarian, will probably have either a human affection\nof loyalty, or a human affection for liberty.  But the man we see\nevery day--the worker in Mr. Gradgrind's factory, the little clerk\nin Mr. Gradgrind's office--he is too mentally worried to believe\nin freedom.  He is kept quiet with revolutionary literature.\nHe is calmed and kept in his place by a constant succession of\nwild philosophies.  He is a Marxian one day, a Nietzscheite the\nnext day, a Superman (probably) the next day; and a slave every day.\nThe only thing that remains after all the philosophies is the factory.\nThe only man who gains by all the philosophies is Gradgrind.\nIt would be worth his while to keep his commercial helotry supplied\nwith sceptical literature.  And now I come to think of it, of course,\nGradgrind is famous for giving libraries.  He shows his sense.\nAll modern books are on his side.  As long as the vision of heaven\nis always changing, the vision of earth will be exactly the same.\nNo ideal will remain long enough to be realized, or even partly realized.\nThe modern young man will never change his environment; for he will\nalways change his mind.\n\n     This, therefore, is our first requirement about the ideal towards\nwhich progress is directed; it must be fixed.  Whistler used to make\nmany rapid studies of a sitter; it did not matter if he tore up\ntwenty portraits.  But it would matter if he looked up twenty times,\nand each time saw a new person sitting placidly for his portrait.\nSo it does not matter (comparatively speaking) how often humanity fails\nto imitate its ideal; for then all its old failures are fruitful.\nBut it does frightfully matter how often humanity changes its ideal;\nfor then all its old failures are fruitless.  The question therefore\nbecomes this:  How can we keep the artist discontented with his pictures\nwhile preventing him from being vitally discontented with his art?\nHow can we make a man always dissatisfied with his work, yet always\nsatisfied with working?  How can we make sure that the portrait\npainter will throw the portrait out of window instead of taking\nthe natural and more human course of throwing the sitter out\nof window?\n\n     A strict rule is not only necessary for ruling; it is also necessary\nfor rebelling.  This fixed and familiar ideal is necessary to any\nsort of revolution.  Man will sometimes act slowly upon new ideas;\nbut he will only act swiftly upon old ideas.  If I am merely\nto float or fade or evolve, it may be towards something anarchic;\nbut if I am to riot, it must be for something respectable.  This is\nthe whole weakness of certain schools of progress and moral evolution.\nThey suggest that there has been a slow movement towards morality,\nwith an imperceptible ethical change in every year or at every instant.\nThere is only one great disadvantage in this theory.  It talks of a slow\nmovement towards justice; but it does not permit a swift movement.\nA man is not allowed to leap up and declare a certain state of things\nto be intrinsically intolerable.  To make the matter clear, it is better\nto take a specific example.  Certain of the idealistic vegetarians,\nsuch as Mr. Salt, say that the time has now come for eating no meat;\nby implication they assume that at one time it was right to eat meat,\nand they suggest (in words that could be quoted) that some day\nit may be wrong to eat milk and eggs.  I do not discuss here the\nquestion of what is justice to animals.  I only say that whatever\nis justice ought, under given conditions, to be prompt justice.\nIf an animal is wronged, we ought to be able to rush to his rescue.\nBut how can we rush if we are, perhaps, in advance of our time?  How can\nwe rush to catch a train which may not arrive for a few centuries?\nHow can I denounce a man for skinning cats, if he is only now what I\nmay possibly become in drinking a glass of milk?  A splendid and insane\nRussian sect ran about taking all the cattle out of all the carts.\nHow can I pluck up courage to take the horse out of my hansom-cab,\nwhen I do not know whether my evolutionary watch is only a little\nfast or the cabman's a little slow?  Suppose I say to a sweater,\n\"Slavery suited one stage of evolution.\"  And suppose he answers,\n\"And sweating suits this stage of evolution.\"  How can I answer if there\nis no eternal test?  If sweaters can be behind the current morality,\nwhy should not philanthropists be in front of it?  What on earth\nis the current morality, except in its literal sense--the morality\nthat is always running away?\n\n     Thus we may say that a permanent ideal is as necessary to the\ninnovator as to the conservative; it is necessary whether we wish\nthe king's orders to be promptly executed or whether we only wish\nthe king to be promptly executed.  The guillotine has many sins,\nbut to do it justice there is nothing evolutionary about it.\nThe favourite evolutionary argument finds its best answer in\nthe axe.  The Evolutionist says, \"Where do you draw the line?\"\nthe Revolutionist answers, \"I draw it HERE:  exactly between your\nhead and body.\"  There must at any given moment be an abstract\nright and wrong if any blow is to be struck; there must be something\neternal if there is to be anything sudden.  Therefore for all\nintelligible human purposes, for altering things or for keeping\nthings as they are, for founding a system for ever, as in China,\nor for altering it every month as in the early French Revolution,\nit is equally necessary that the vision should be a fixed vision.\nThis is our first requirement.\n\n     When I had written this down, I felt once again the presence\nof something else in the discussion:  as a man hears a church bell\nabove the sound of the street.  Something seemed to be saying,\n\"My ideal at least is fixed; for it was fixed before the foundations\nof the world.  My vision of perfection assuredly cannot be altered;\nfor it is called Eden.  You may alter the place to which you\nare going; but you cannot alter the place from which you have come.\nTo the orthodox there must always be a case for revolution;\nfor in the hearts of men God has been put under the feet of Satan.\nIn the upper world hell once rebelled against heaven.  But in this\nworld heaven is rebelling against hell.  For the orthodox there\ncan always be a revolution; for a revolution is a restoration.\nAt any instant you may strike a blow for the perfection which\nno man has seen since Adam.  No unchanging custom, no changing\nevolution can make the original good any thing but good.\nMan may have had concubines as long as cows have had horns:\nstill they are not a part of him if they are sinful.  Men may\nhave been under oppression ever since fish were under water;\nstill they ought not to be, if oppression is sinful.  The chain may\nseem as natural to the slave, or the paint to the harlot, as does\nthe plume to the bird or the burrow to the fox; still they are not,\nif they are sinful.  I lift my prehistoric legend to defy all\nyour history.  Your vision is not merely a fixture:  it is a fact.\"\nI paused to note the new coincidence of Christianity:  but I\npassed on.\n\n     I passed on to the next necessity of any ideal of progress.\nSome people (as we have said) seem to believe in an automatic\nand impersonal progress in the nature of things.  But it is clear\nthat no political activity can be encouraged by saying that progress\nis natural and inevitable; that is not a reason for being active,\nbut rather a reason for being lazy.  If we are bound to improve,\nwe need not trouble to improve.  The pure doctrine of progress\nis the best of all reasons for not being a progressive.  But it\nis to none of these obvious comments that I wish primarily to\ncall attention.\n\n     The only arresting point is this:  that if we suppose\nimprovement to be natural, it must be fairly simple.  The world\nmight conceivably be working towards one consummation, but hardly\ntowards any particular arrangement of many qualities.  To take\nour original simile:  Nature by herself may be growing more blue;\nthat is, a process so simple that it might be impersonal.  But Nature\ncannot be making a careful picture made of many picked colours,\nunless Nature is personal.  If the end of the world were mere\ndarkness or mere light it might come as slowly and inevitably\nas dusk or dawn.  But if the end of the world is to be a piece\nof elaborate and artistic chiaroscuro, then there must be design\nin it, either human or divine.  The world, through mere time,\nmight grow black like an old picture, or white like an old coat;\nbut if it is turned into a particular piece of black and white art--\nthen there is an artist.\n\n     If the distinction be not evident, I give an ordinary instance.  We\nconstantly hear a particularly cosmic creed from the modern humanitarians;\n\nI use the word humanitarian in the ordinary sense, as meaning one\nwho upholds the claims of all creatures against those of humanity.\nThey suggest that through the ages we have been growing more and\nmore humane, that is to say, that one after another, groups or\nsections of beings, slaves, children, women, cows, or what not,\nhave been gradually admitted to mercy or to justice.  They say\nthat we once thought it right to eat men (we didn't); but I am not\nhere concerned with their history, which is highly unhistorical.\nAs a fact, anthropophagy is certainly a decadent thing, not a\nprimitive one.  It is much more likely that modern men will eat\nhuman flesh out of affectation than that primitive man ever ate\nit out of ignorance.  I am here only following the outlines of\ntheir argument, which consists in maintaining that man has been\nprogressively more lenient, first to citizens, then to slaves,\nthen to animals, and then (presumably) to plants.  I think it wrong\nto sit on a man.  Soon, I shall think it wrong to sit on a horse.\nEventually (I suppose) I shall think it wrong to sit on a chair.\nThat is the drive of the argument.  And for this argument it can\nbe said that it is possible to talk of it in terms of evolution or\ninevitable progress.  A perpetual tendency to touch fewer and fewer\nthings might--one feels, be a mere brute unconscious tendency,\nlike that of a species to produce fewer and fewer children.\nThis drift may be really evolutionary, because it is stupid.\n\n     Darwinism can be used to back up two mad moralities,\nbut it cannot be used to back up a single sane one.  The kinship\nand competition of all living creatures can be used as a reason for\nbeing insanely cruel or insanely sentimental; but not for a healthy\nlove of animals.  On the evolutionary basis you may be inhumane,\nor you may be absurdly humane; but you cannot be human.  That you\nand a tiger are one may be a reason for being tender to a tiger.\nOr it may be a reason for being as cruel as the tiger.  It is one way\nto train the tiger to imitate you, it is a shorter way to imitate\nthe tiger.  But in neither case does evolution tell you how to treat\na tiger reasonably, that is, to admire his stripes while avoiding\nhis claws.\n\n     If you want to treat a tiger reasonably, you must go back to\nthe garden of Eden.  For the obstinate reminder continued to recur:\nonly the supernatural has taken a sane view of Nature.  The essence\nof all pantheism, evolutionism, and modern cosmic religion is really\nin this proposition:  that Nature is our mother.  Unfortunately, if you\nregard Nature as a mother, you discover that she is a step-mother. The\nmain point of Christianity was this:  that Nature is not our mother:\nNature is our sister.  We can be proud of her beauty, since we have\nthe same father; but she has no authority over us; we have to admire,\nbut not to imitate.  This gives to the typically Christian pleasure\nin this earth a strange touch of lightness that is almost frivolity.\nNature was a solemn mother to the worshippers of Isis and Cybele.\nNature was a solemn mother to Wordsworth or to Emerson.\nBut Nature is not solemn to Francis of Assisi or to George Herbert.\nTo St. Francis, Nature is a sister, and even a younger sister:\na little, dancing sister, to be laughed at as well as loved.\n\n     This, however, is hardly our main point at present; I have admitted\nit only in order to show how constantly, and as it were accidentally,\nthe key would fit the smallest doors.  Our main point is here,\nthat if there be a mere trend of impersonal improvement in Nature,\nit must presumably be a simple trend towards some simple triumph.\nOne can imagine that some automatic tendency in biology might work\nfor giving us longer and longer noses.  But the question is,\ndo we want to have longer and longer noses?  I fancy not;\nI believe that we most of us want to say to our noses, \"thus far,\nand no farther; and here shall thy proud point be stayed:\"\nwe require a nose of such length as may ensure an interesting face.\nBut we cannot imagine a mere biological trend towards producing\ninteresting faces; because an interesting face is one particular\narrangement of eyes, nose, and mouth, in a most complex relation\nto each other.  Proportion cannot be a drift:  it is either\nan accident or a design.  So with the ideal of human morality\nand its relation to the humanitarians and the anti-humanitarians.\nIt is conceivable that we are going more and more to keep our hands\noff things:  not to drive horses; not to pick flowers.  We may\neventually be bound not to disturb a man's mind even by argument;\nnot to disturb the sleep of birds even by coughing.  The ultimate\napotheosis would appear to be that of a man sitting quite still,\nnor daring to stir for fear of disturbing a fly, nor to eat for fear\nof incommoding a microbe.  To so crude a consummation as that we\nmight perhaps unconsciously drift.  But do we want so crude\na consummation?  Similarly, we might unconsciously evolve along\nthe opposite or Nietzschian line of development--superman crushing\nsuperman in one tower of tyrants until the universe is smashed\nup for fun.  But do we want the universe smashed up for fun?\nIs it not quite clear that what we really hope for is one particular\nmanagement and proposition of these two things; a certain amount\nof restraint and respect, a certain amount of energy and mastery?\nIf our life is ever really as beautiful as a fairy-tale, we shall\nhave to remember that all the beauty of a fairy-tale lies in this:\nthat the prince has a wonder which just stops short of being fear.\nIf he is afraid of the giant, there is an end of him; but also if he\nis not astonished at the giant, there is an end of the fairy-tale. The\nwhole point depends upon his being at once humble enough to wonder,\nand haughty enough to defy.  So our attitude to the giant of the world\nmust not merely be increasing delicacy or increasing contempt:\nit must be one particular proportion of the two--which is exactly right.\nWe must have in us enough reverence for all things outside us\nto make us tread fearfully on the grass.  We must also have enough\ndisdain for all things outside us, to make us, on due occasion,\nspit at the stars.  Yet these two things (if we are to be good\nor happy) must be combined, not in any combination, but in one\nparticular combination.  The perfect happiness of men on the earth\n(if it ever comes) will not be a flat and solid thing, like the\nsatisfaction of animals.  It will be an exact and perilous balance;\nlike that of a desperate romance.  Man must have just enough faith\nin himself to have adventures, and just enough doubt of himself to\nenjoy them.\n\n     This, then, is our second requirement for the ideal of progress.\nFirst, it must be fixed; second, it must be composite.  It must not\n(if it is to satisfy our souls) be the mere victory of some one thing\nswallowing up everything else, love or pride or peace or adventure;\nit must be a definite picture composed of these elements in their best\nproportion and relation.  I am not concerned at this moment to deny\nthat some such good culmination may be, by the constitution of things,\nreserved for the human race.  I only point out that if this composite\nhappiness is fixed for us it must be fixed by some mind; for only\na mind can place the exact proportions of a composite happiness.\nIf the beatification of the world is a mere work of nature, then it\nmust be as simple as the freezing of the world, or the burning\nup of the world.  But if the beatification of the world is not\na work of nature but a work of art, then it involves an artist.\nAnd here again my contemplation was cloven by the ancient voice\nwhich said, \"I could have told you all this a long time ago.\nIf there is any certain progress it can only be my kind of progress,\nthe progress towards a complete city of virtues and dominations\nwhere righteousness and peace contrive to kiss each other.\nAn impersonal force might be leading you to a wilderness of perfect\nflatness or a peak of perfect height.  But only a personal God can\npossibly be leading you (if, indeed, you are being led) to a city\nwith just streets and architectural proportions, a city in which each\nof you can contribute exactly the right amount of your own colour\nto the many coloured coat of Joseph.\"\n\n     Twice again, therefore, Christianity had come in with the exact\nanswer that I required.  I had said, \"The ideal must be fixed,\"\nand the Church had answered, \"Mine is literally fixed, for it\nexisted before anything else.\"  I said secondly, \"It must be\nartistically combined, like a picture\"; and the Church answered,\n\"Mine is quite literally a picture, for I know who painted it.\"\nThen I went on to the third thing, which, as it seemed to me,\nwas needed for an Utopia or goal of progress.  And of all the three it\nis infinitely the hardest to express.  Perhaps it might be put thus:\nthat we need watchfulness even in Utopia, lest we fall from Utopia\nas we fell from Eden.\n\n     We have remarked that one reason offered for being a progressive\nis that things naturally tend to grow better.  But the only real\nreason for being a progressive is that things naturally tend\nto grow worse.  The corruption in things is not only the best\nargument for being progressive; it is also the only argument\nagainst being conservative.  The conservative theory would really\nbe quite sweeping and unanswerable if it were not for this one fact.\nBut all conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave\nthings alone you leave them as they are.  But you do not.\nIf you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change.\nIf you leave a white post alone it will soon be a black post.  If you\nparticularly want it to be white you must be always painting it again;\nthat is, you must be always having a revolution.  Briefly, if you\nwant the old white post you must have a new white post.  But this\nwhich is true even of inanimate things is in a quite special and\nterrible sense true of all human things.  An almost unnatural vigilance\nis really required of the citizen because of the horrible rapidity\nwith which human institutions grow old.  It is the custom in passing\nromance and journalism to talk of men suffering under old tyrannies.\nBut, as a fact, men have almost always suffered under new tyrannies;\nunder tyrannies that had been public liberties hardly twenty\nyears before.  Thus England went mad with joy over the patriotic\nmonarchy of Elizabeth; and then (almost immediately afterwards)\nwent mad with rage in the trap of the tyranny of Charles the First.\nSo, again, in France the monarchy became intolerable, not just\nafter it had been tolerated, but just after it had been adored.\nThe son of Louis the well-beloved was Louis the guillotined.\nSo in the same way in England in the nineteenth century the Radical\nmanufacturer was entirely trusted as a mere tribune of the people,\nuntil suddenly we heard the cry of the Socialist that he was a tyrant\neating the people like bread.  So again, we have almost up to the\nlast instant trusted the newspapers as organs of public opinion.\nJust recently some of us have seen (not slowly, but with a start)\nthat they are obviously nothing of the kind.  They are, by the nature\nof the case, the hobbies of a few rich men.  We have not any need\nto rebel against antiquity; we have to rebel against novelty.\nIt is the new rulers, the capitalist or the editor, who really hold\nup the modern world.  There is no fear that a modern king will\nattempt to override the constitution; it is more likely that he\nwill ignore the constitution and work behind its back; he will take\nno advantage of his kingly power; it is more likely that he will\ntake advantage of his kingly powerlessness, of the fact that he\nis free from criticism and publicity.  For the king is the most\nprivate person of our time.  It will not be necessary for any one\nto fight again against the proposal of a censorship of the press.\nWe do not need a censorship of the press.  We have a censorship by\nthe press.\n\n     This startling swiftness with which popular systems turn\noppressive is the third fact for which we shall ask our perfect theory\nof progress to allow.  It must always be on the look out for every\nprivilege being abused, for every working right becoming a wrong.\nIn this matter I am entirely on the side of the revolutionists.\nThey are really right to be always suspecting human institutions;\nthey are right not to put their trust in princes nor in any child\nof man.  The chieftain chosen to be the friend of the people\nbecomes the enemy of the people; the newspaper started to tell\nthe truth now exists to prevent the truth being told.  Here, I say,\nI felt that I was really at last on the side of the revolutionary.\nAnd then I caught my breath again:  for I remembered that I was once\nagain on the side of the orthodox.\n\n     Christianity spoke again and said:  \"I have always maintained\nthat men were naturally backsliders; that human virtue tended of its\nown nature to rust or to rot; I have always said that human beings\nas such go wrong, especially happy human beings, especially proud\nand prosperous human beings.  This eternal revolution, this suspicion\nsustained through centuries, you (being a vague modern) call the\ndoctrine of progress.  If you were a philosopher you would call it,\nas I do, the doctrine of original sin.  You may call it the cosmic\nadvance as much as you like; I call it what it is--the Fall.\"\n\n     I have spoken of orthodoxy coming in like a sword; here I\nconfess it came in like a battle-axe. For really (when I came to\nthink of it) Christianity is the only thing left that has any real\nright to question the power of the well-nurtured or the well-bred.\nI have listened often enough to Socialists, or even to democrats,\nsaying that the physical conditions of the poor must of necessity make\nthem mentally and morally degraded.  I have listened to scientific\nmen (and there are still scientific men not opposed to democracy)\nsaying that if we give the poor healthier conditions vice and wrong\nwill disappear.  I have listened to them with a horrible attention,\nwith a hideous fascination.  For it was like watching a man\nenergetically sawing from the tree the branch he is sitting on.\nIf these happy democrats could prove their case, they would strike\ndemocracy dead.  If the poor are thus utterly demoralized, it may\nor may not be practical to raise them.  But it is certainly quite\npractical to disfranchise them.  If the man with a bad bedroom cannot\ngive a good vote, then the first and swiftest deduction is that he\nshall give no vote.  The governing class may not unreasonably say:\n\"It may take us some time to reform his bedroom.  But if he is the\nbrute you say, it will take him very little time to ruin our country.\nTherefore we will take your hint and not give him the chance.\"\nIt fills me with horrible amusement to observe the way in which the\nearnest Socialist industriously lays the foundation of all aristocracy,\nexpatiating blandly upon the evident unfitness of the poor to rule.\nIt is like listening to somebody at an evening party apologising\nfor entering without evening dress, and explaining that he had\nrecently been intoxicated, had a personal habit of taking off\nhis clothes in the street, and had, moreover, only just changed\nfrom prison uniform.  At any moment, one feels, the host might say\nthat really, if it was as bad as that, he need not come in at all.\nSo it is when the ordinary Socialist, with a beaming face,\nproves that the poor, after their smashing experiences, cannot be\nreally trustworthy.  At any moment the rich may say, \"Very well,\nthen, we won't trust them,\" and bang the door in his face.\nOn the basis of Mr. Blatchford's view of heredity and environment,\nthe case for the aristocracy is quite overwhelming.  If clean homes\nand clean air make clean souls, why not give the power (for the\npresent at any rate) to those who undoubtedly have the clean air?\nIf better conditions will make the poor more fit to govern themselves,\nwhy should not better conditions already make the rich more fit\nto govern them?  On the ordinary environment argument the matter is\nfairly manifest.  The comfortable class must be merely our vanguard\nin Utopia.\n\n     Is there any answer to the proposition that those who have\nhad the best opportunities will probably be our best guides?\nIs there any answer to the argument that those who have breathed\nclean air had better decide for those who have breathed foul?\nAs far as I know, there is only one answer, and that answer\nis Christianity.  Only the Christian Church can offer any rational\nobjection to a complete confidence in the rich.  For she has maintained\nfrom the beginning that the danger was not in man's environment,\nbut in man.  Further, she has maintained that if we come to talk of a\ndangerous environment, the most dangerous environment of all is the\ncommodious environment.  I know that the most modern manufacture has\nbeen really occupied in trying to produce an abnormally large needle.\nI know that the most recent biologists have been chiefly anxious\nto discover a very small camel.  But if we diminish the camel\nto his smallest, or open the eye of the needle to its largest--if,\nin short, we assume the words of Christ to have meant the very least\nthat they could mean, His words must at the very least mean this--\nthat rich men are not very likely to be morally trustworthy.\nChristianity even when watered down is hot enough to boil all modern\nsociety to rags.  The mere minimum of the Church would be a deadly\nultimatum to the world.  For the whole modern world is absolutely\nbased on the assumption, not that the rich are necessary (which is\ntenable), but that the rich are trustworthy, which (for a Christian)\nis not tenable.  You will hear everlastingly, in all discussions\nabout newspapers, companies, aristocracies, or party politics,\nthis argument that the rich man cannot be bribed.  The fact is,\nof course, that the rich man is bribed; he has been bribed already.\nThat is why he is a rich man.  The whole case for Christianity is that\na man who is dependent upon the luxuries of this life is a corrupt man,\nspiritually corrupt, politically corrupt, financially corrupt.\nThere is one thing that Christ and all the Christian saints\nhave said with a sort of savage monotony.  They have said simply\nthat to be rich is to be in peculiar danger of moral wreck.\nIt is not demonstrably un-Christian to kill the rich as violators\nof definable justice.  It is not demonstrably un-Christian to crown\nthe rich as convenient rulers of society.  It is not certainly\nun-Christian to rebel against the rich or to submit to the rich.\nBut it is quite certainly un-Christian to trust the rich, to regard\nthe rich as more morally safe than the poor.  A Christian may\nconsistently say, \"I respect that man's rank, although he takes bribes.\"\nBut a Christian cannot say, as all modern men are saying at lunch\nand breakfast, \"a man of that rank would not take bribes.\"\nFor it is a part of Christian dogma that any man in any rank may\ntake bribes.  It is a part of Christian dogma; it also happens by\na curious coincidence that it is a part of obvious human history.\nWhen people say that a man \"in that position\" would be incorruptible,\nthere is no need to bring Christianity into the discussion.  Was Lord\nBacon a bootblack?  Was the Duke of Marlborough a crossing sweeper?\nIn the best Utopia, I must be prepared for the moral fall of any man\nin any position at any moment; especially for my fall from my position\nat this moment.\n\n     Much vague and sentimental journalism has been poured out\nto the effect that Christianity is akin to democracy, and most\nof it is scarcely strong or clear enough to refute the fact that\nthe two things have often quarrelled.  The real ground upon which\nChristianity and democracy are one is very much deeper.  The one\nspecially and peculiarly un-Christian idea is the idea of Carlyle--\nthe idea that the man should rule who feels that he can rule.\nWhatever else is Christian, this is heathen.  If our faith comments\non government at all, its comment must be this--that the man should\nrule who does NOT think that he can rule.  Carlyle's hero may say,\n\"I will be king\"; but the Christian saint must say \"Nolo episcopari.\"\nIf the great paradox of Christianity means anything, it means this--\nthat we must take the crown in our hands, and go hunting in dry\nplaces and dark corners of the earth until we find the one man\nwho feels himself unfit to wear it.  Carlyle was quite wrong;\nwe have not got to crown the exceptional man who knows he can rule.\nRather we must crown the much more exceptional man who knows he\ncan't.\n\n     Now, this is one of the two or three vital defences of\nworking democracy.  The mere machinery of voting is not democracy,\nthough at present it is not easy to effect any simpler democratic method.\nBut even the machinery of voting is profoundly Christian in this\npractical sense--that it is an attempt to get at the opinion of those\nwho would be too modest to offer it.  It is a mystical adventure;\nit is specially trusting those who do not trust themselves.\nThat enigma is strictly peculiar to Christendom.  There is nothing\nreally humble about the abnegation of the Buddhist; the mild Hindoo\nis mild, but he is not meek.  But there is something psychologically\nChristian about the idea of seeking for the opinion of the obscure\nrather than taking the obvious course of accepting the opinion\nof the prominent.  To say that voting is particularly Christian may\nseem somewhat curious.  To say that canvassing is Christian may seem\nquite crazy.  But canvassing is very Christian in its primary idea.\nIt is encouraging the humble; it is saying to the modest man,\n\"Friend, go up higher.\"  Or if there is some slight defect\nin canvassing, that is in its perfect and rounded piety, it is only\nbecause it may possibly neglect to encourage the modesty of the canvasser.\n\n     Aristocracy is not an institution:  aristocracy is a sin;\ngenerally a very venial one.  It is merely the drift or slide\nof men into a sort of natural pomposity and praise of the powerful,\nwhich is the most easy and obvious affair in the world.\n\n     It is one of the hundred answers to the fugitive perversion\nof modern \"force\" that the promptest and boldest agencies are\nalso the most fragile or full of sensibility.  The swiftest things\nare the softest things.  A bird is active, because a bird is soft.\nA stone is helpless, because a stone is hard.  The stone must\nby its own nature go downwards, because hardness is weakness.\nThe bird can of its nature go upwards, because fragility is force.\nIn perfect force there is a kind of frivolity, an airiness that can\nmaintain itself in the air.  Modern investigators of miraculous\nhistory have solemnly admitted that a characteristic of the great\nsaints is their power of \"levitation.\"  They might go further;\na characteristic of the great saints is their power of levity.\nAngels can fly because they can take themselves lightly.\nThis has been always the instinct of Christendom, and especially\nthe instinct of Christian art.  Remember how Fra Angelico represented\nall his angels, not only as birds, but almost as butterflies.\nRemember how the most earnest mediaeval art was full of light\nand fluttering draperies, of quick and capering feet.  It was\nthe one thing that the modern Pre-raphaelites could not imitate\nin the real Pre-raphaelites. Burne-Jones could never recover\nthe deep levity of the Middle Ages.  In the old Christian pictures\nthe sky over every figure is like a blue or gold parachute.\nEvery figure seems ready to fly up and float about in the heavens.\nThe tattered cloak of the beggar will bear him up like the rayed\nplumes of the angels.  But the kings in their heavy gold and the proud\nin their robes of purple will all of their nature sink downwards,\nfor pride cannot rise to levity or levitation.  Pride is the downward\ndrag of all things into an easy solemnity.  One \"settles down\"\ninto a sort of selfish seriousness; but one has to rise to a gay\nself-forgetfulness. A man \"falls\" into a brown study; he reaches up\nat a blue sky.  Seriousness is not a virtue.  It would be a heresy,\nbut a much more sensible heresy, to say that seriousness is a vice.\nIt is really a natural trend or lapse into taking one's self gravely,\nbecause it is the easiest thing to do.  It is much easier to\nwrite a good TIMES leading article than a good joke in PUNCH.\nFor solemnity flows out of men naturally; but laughter is a leap.\nIt is easy to be heavy:  hard to be light.  Satan fell by the force of\ngravity.\n\n     Now, it is the peculiar honour of Europe since it has been Christian\nthat while it has had aristocracy it has always at the back of its heart\ntreated aristocracy as a weakness--generally as a weakness that must\nbe allowed for.  If any one wishes to appreciate this point, let him\ngo outside Christianity into some other philosophical atmosphere.\nLet him, for instance, compare the classes of Europe with the castes\nof India.  There aristocracy is far more awful, because it is far\nmore intellectual.  It is seriously felt that the scale of classes\nis a scale of spiritual values; that the baker is better than the\nbutcher in an invisible and sacred sense.  But no Christianity,\nnot even the most ignorant or perverse, ever suggested that a baronet\nwas better than a butcher in that sacred sense.  No Christianity,\nhowever ignorant or extravagant, ever suggested that a duke would\nnot be damned.  In pagan society there may have been (I do not know)\nsome such serious division between the free man and the slave.\nBut in Christian society we have always thought the gentleman\na sort of joke, though I admit that in some great crusades\nand councils he earned the right to be called a practical joke.\nBut we in Europe never really and at the root of our souls took\naristocracy seriously.  It is only an occasional non-European\nalien (such as Dr. Oscar Levy, the only intelligent Nietzscheite)\nwho can even manage for a moment to take aristocracy seriously.\nIt may be a mere patriotic bias, though I do not think so, but it\nseems to me that the English aristocracy is not only the type,\nbut is the crown and flower of all actual aristocracies; it has all\nthe oligarchical virtues as well as all the defects.  It is casual,\nit is kind, it is courageous in obvious matters; but it has one\ngreat merit that overlaps even these.  The great and very obvious\nmerit of the English aristocracy is that nobody could possibly take\nit seriously.\n\n     In short, I had spelled out slowly, as usual, the need for\nan equal law in Utopia; and, as usual, I found that Christianity\nhad been there before me.  The whole history of my Utopia has the\nsame amusing sadness.  I was always rushing out of my architectural\nstudy with plans for a new turret only to find it sitting up there\nin the sunlight, shining, and a thousand years old.  For me, in the\nancient and partly in the modern sense, God answered the prayer,\n\"Prevent us, O Lord, in all our doings.\"  Without vanity, I really\nthink there was a moment when I could have invented the marriage\nvow (as an institution) out of my own head; but I discovered,\nwith a sigh, that it had been invented already.  But, since it would\nbe too long a business to show how, fact by fact and inch by inch,\nmy own conception of Utopia was only answered in the New Jerusalem,\nI will take this one case of the matter of marriage as indicating\nthe converging drift, I may say the converging crash of all the rest.\n\n     When the ordinary opponents of Socialism talk about\nimpossibilities and alterations in human nature they always miss\nan important distinction.  In modern ideal conceptions of society\nthere are some desires that are possibly not attainable:  but there\nare some desires that are not desirable.  That all men should live\nin equally beautiful houses is a dream that may or may not be attained.\nBut that all men should live in the same beautiful house is not\na dream at all; it is a nightmare.  That a man should love all old\nwomen is an ideal that may not be attainable.  But that a man should\nregard all old women exactly as he regards his mother is not only\nan unattainable ideal, but an ideal which ought not to be attained.\nI do not know if the reader agrees with me in these examples;\nbut I will add the example which has always affected me most.\nI could never conceive or tolerate any Utopia which did not leave to me\nthe liberty for which I chiefly care, the liberty to bind myself.\nComplete anarchy would not merely make it impossible to have\nany discipline or fidelity; it would also make it impossible\nto have any fun.  To take an obvious instance, it would not be\nworth while to bet if a bet were not binding.  The dissolution\nof all contracts would not only ruin morality but spoil sport.\nNow betting and such sports are only the stunted and twisted\nshapes of the original instinct of man for adventure and romance,\nof which much has been said in these pages.  And the perils, rewards,\npunishments, and fulfilments of an adventure must be real, or\nthe adventure is only a shifting and heartless nightmare.  If I bet\nI must be made to pay, or there is no poetry in betting.  If I challenge\nI must be made to fight, or there is no poetry in challenging.\nIf I vow to be faithful I must be cursed when I am unfaithful,\nor there is no fun in vowing.  You could not even make a fairy tale\nfrom the experiences of a man who, when he was swallowed by a whale,\nmight find himself at the top of the Eiffel Tower, or when he\nwas turned into a frog might begin to behave like a flamingo.\nFor the purpose even of the wildest romance results must be real;\nresults must be irrevocable.  Christian marriage is the great\nexample of a real and irrevocable result; and that is why it\nis the chief subject and centre of all our romantic writing.\nAnd this is my last instance of the things that I should ask,\nand ask imperatively, of any social paradise; I should ask to be kept\nto my bargain, to have my oaths and engagements taken seriously;\nI should ask Utopia to avenge my honour on myself.\n\n     All my modern Utopian friends look at each other rather doubtfully,\nfor their ultimate hope is the dissolution of all special ties.\nBut again I seem to hear, like a kind of echo, an answer from beyond\nthe world.  \"You will have real obligations, and therefore real\nadventures when you get to my Utopia.  But the hardest obligation\nand the steepest adventure is to get there.\"\n\n\n\nVIII THE ROMANCE OF ORTHODOXY\n\n\n     It is customary to complain of the bustle and strenuousness\nof our epoch.  But in truth the chief mark of our epoch is\na profound laziness and fatigue; and the fact is that the real\nlaziness is the cause of the apparent bustle.  Take one quite\nexternal case; the streets are noisy with taxicabs and motorcars;\nbut this is not due to human activity but to human repose.\nThere would be less bustle if there were more activity, if people\nwere simply walking about.  Our world would be more silent if it\nwere more strenuous.  And this which is true of the apparent physical\nbustle is true also of the apparent bustle of the intellect.\nMost of the machinery of modern language is labour-saving machinery;\nand it saves mental labour very much more than it ought.\nScientific phrases are used like scientific wheels and piston-rods\nto make swifter and smoother yet the path of the comfortable.\nLong words go rattling by us like long railway trains.  We know they\nare carrying thousands who are too tired or too indolent to walk\nand think for themselves.  It is a good exercise to try for once\nin a way to express any opinion one holds in words of one syllable.\nIf you say \"The social utility of the indeterminate sentence is\nrecognized by all criminologists as a part of our sociological\nevolution towards a more humane and scientific view of punishment,\"\nyou can go on talking like that for hours with hardly a movement\nof the gray matter inside your skull.  But if you begin \"I wish\nJones to go to gaol and Brown to say when Jones shall come out,\"\nyou will discover, with a thrill of horror, that you are obliged\nto think.  The long words are not the hard words, it is the short\nwords that are hard.  There is much more metaphysical subtlety in the\nword \"damn\" than in the word \"degeneration.\"\n\n     But these long comfortable words that save modern people the toil\nof reasoning have one particular aspect in which they are especially\nruinous and confusing.  This difficulty occurs when the same long word\nis used in different connections to mean quite different things.\nThus, to take a well-known instance, the word \"idealist\" has\none meaning as a piece of philosophy and quite another as a piece\nof moral rhetoric.  In the same way the scientific materialists\nhave had just reason to complain of people mixing up \"materialist\"\nas a term of cosmology with \"materialist\" as a moral taunt.\nSo, to take a cheaper instance, the man who hates \"progressives\"\nin London always calls himself a \"progressive\" in South Africa.\n\n     A confusion quite as unmeaning as this has arisen in connection\nwith the word \"liberal\" as applied to religion and as applied\nto politics and society.  It is often suggested that all Liberals\nought to be freethinkers, because they ought to love everything that\nis free.  You might just as well say that all idealists ought to be\nHigh Churchmen, because they ought to love everything that is high.\nYou might as well say that Low Churchmen ought to like Low Mass,\nor that Broad Churchmen ought to like broad jokes.  The thing is\na mere accident of words.  In actual modern Europe a freethinker\ndoes not mean a man who thinks for himself.  It means a man who,\nhaving thought for himself, has come to one particular class\nof conclusions, the material origin of phenomena, the impossibility\nof miracles, the improbability of personal immortality and so on.\nAnd none of these ideas are particularly liberal.  Nay, indeed almost\nall these ideas are definitely illiberal, as it is the purpose\nof this chapter to show.\n\n     In the few following pages I propose to point out as rapidly\nas possible that on every single one of the matters most strongly\ninsisted on by liberalisers of theology their effect upon social\npractice would be definitely illiberal.  Almost every contemporary\nproposal to bring freedom into the church is simply a proposal\nto bring tyranny into the world.  For freeing the church now\ndoes not even mean freeing it in all directions.  It means\nfreeing that peculiar set of dogmas loosely called scientific,\ndogmas of monism, of pantheism, or of Arianism, or of necessity.\nAnd every one of these (and we will take them one by one)\ncan be shown to be the natural ally of oppression.  In fact, it is\na remarkable circumstance (indeed not so very remarkable when one\ncomes to think of it) that most things are the allies of oppression.\nThere is only one thing that can never go past a certain point\nin its alliance with oppression--and that is orthodoxy.  I may,\nit is true, twist orthodoxy so as partly to justify a tyrant.\nBut I can easily make up a German philosophy to justify him entirely.\n\n     Now let us take in order the innovations that are the notes\nof the new theology or the modernist church.  We concluded the last\nchapter with the discovery of one of them.  The very doctrine which\nis called the most old-fashioned was found to be the only safeguard\nof the new democracies of the earth.  The doctrine seemingly\nmost unpopular was found to be the only strength of the people.\nIn short, we found that the only logical negation of oligarchy\nwas in the affirmation of original sin.  So it is, I maintain,\nin all the other cases.\n\n     I take the most obvious instance first, the case of miracles.\nFor some extraordinary reason, there is a fixed notion that it\nis more liberal to disbelieve in miracles than to believe\nin them.  Why, I cannot imagine, nor can anybody tell me.\nFor some inconceivable cause a \"broad\" or \"liberal\" clergyman always\nmeans a man who wishes at least to diminish the number of miracles;\nit never means a man who wishes to increase that number.  It always\nmeans a man who is free to disbelieve that Christ came out of His grave;\nit never means a man who is free to believe that his own aunt came\nout of her grave.  It is common to find trouble in a parish because\nthe parish priest cannot admit that St. Peter walked on water;\nyet how rarely do we find trouble in a parish because the clergyman\nsays that his father walked on the Serpentine?  And this is not\nbecause (as the swift secularist debater would immediately retort)\nmiracles cannot be believed in our experience.  It is not because\n\"miracles do not happen,\" as in the dogma which Matthew Arnold recited\nwith simple faith.  More supernatural things are ALLEGED to have\nhappened in our time than would have been possible eighty years ago.\nMen of science believe in such marvels much more than they did:\nthe most perplexing, and even horrible, prodigies of mind and spirit\nare always being unveiled in modern psychology.  Things that the old\nscience at least would frankly have rejected as miracles are hourly\nbeing asserted by the new science.  The only thing which is still\nold-fashioned enough to reject miracles is the New Theology.\nBut in truth this notion that it is \"free\" to deny miracles has\nnothing to do with the evidence for or against them.  It is a lifeless\nverbal prejudice of which the original life and beginning was not\nin the freedom of thought, but simply in the dogma of materialism.\nThe man of the nineteenth century did not disbelieve in the\nResurrection because his liberal Christianity allowed him to doubt it.\nHe disbelieved in it because his very strict materialism did not allow\nhim to believe it.  Tennyson, a very typical nineteenth century man,\nuttered one of the instinctive truisms of his contemporaries when he\nsaid that there was faith in their honest doubt.  There was indeed.\nThose words have a profound and even a horrible truth.  In their\ndoubt of miracles there was a faith in a fixed and godless fate;\na deep and sincere faith in the incurable routine of the cosmos.\nThe doubts of the agnostic were only the dogmas of the monist.\n\n     Of the fact and evidence of the supernatural I will\nspeak afterwards.  Here we are only concerned with this clear point;\nthat in so far as the liberal idea of freedom can be said to be\non either side in the discussion about miracles, it is obviously\non the side of miracles.  Reform or (in the only tolerable sense)\nprogress means simply the gradual control of matter by mind.\nA miracle simply means the swift control of matter by mind.  If you\nwish to feed the people, you may think that feeding them miraculously\nin the wilderness is impossible--but you cannot think it illiberal.\nIf you really want poor children to go to the seaside, you cannot\nthink it illiberal that they should go there on flying dragons;\nyou can only think it unlikely.  A holiday, like Liberalism, only means\nthe liberty of man.  A miracle only means the liberty of God.\nYou may conscientiously deny either of them, but you cannot call\nyour denial a triumph of the liberal idea.  The Catholic Church\nbelieved that man and God both had a sort of spiritual freedom.\nCalvinism took away the freedom from man, but left it to God.\nScientific materialism binds the Creator Himself; it chains up\nGod as the Apocalypse chained the devil.  It leaves nothing free\nin the universe.  And those who assist this process are called the\n\"liberal theologians.\"\n\n     This, as I say, is the lightest and most evident case.\nThe assumption that there is something in the doubt of miracles akin\nto liberality or reform is literally the opposite of the truth.\nIf a man cannot believe in miracles there is an end of the matter;\nhe is not particularly liberal, but he is perfectly honourable\nand logical, which are much better things.  But if he can believe\nin miracles, he is certainly the more liberal for doing so;\nbecause they mean first, the freedom of the soul, and secondly,\nits control over the tyranny of circumstance.  Sometimes this truth\nis ignored in a singularly naive way, even by the ablest men.\nFor instance, Mr. Bernard Shaw speaks with hearty old-fashioned\ncontempt for the idea of miracles, as if they were a sort of breach\nof faith on the part of nature:  he seems strangely unconscious\nthat miracles are only the final flowers of his own favourite tree,\nthe doctrine of the omnipotence of will.  Just in the same way he calls\nthe desire for immortality a paltry selfishness, forgetting that he\nhas just called the desire for life a healthy and heroic selfishness.\nHow can it be noble to wish to make one's life infinite and yet\nmean to wish to make it immortal?  No, if it is desirable that man\nshould triumph over the cruelty of nature or custom, then miracles\nare certainly desirable; we will discuss afterwards whether they\nare possible.\n\n     But I must pass on to the larger cases of this curious error;\nthe notion that the \"liberalising\" of religion in some way helps\nthe liberation of the world.  The second example of it can be found\nin the question of pantheism--or rather of a certain modern attitude\nwhich is often called immanentism, and which often is Buddhism.\nBut this is so much more difficult a matter that I must approach it\nwith rather more preparation.\n\n     The things said most confidently by advanced persons to\ncrowded audiences are generally those quite opposite to the fact;\nit is actually our truisms that are untrue.  Here is a case.\nThere is a phrase of facile liberality uttered again and again\nat ethical societies and parliaments of religion:  \"the religions\nof the earth differ in rites and forms, but they are the same in\nwhat they teach.\"  It is false; it is the opposite of the fact.\nThe religions of the earth do not greatly differ in rites and forms;\nthey do greatly differ in what they teach.  It is as if a man\nwere to say, \"Do not be misled by the fact that the CHURCH TIMES\nand the FREETHINKER look utterly different, that one is painted\non vellum and the other carved on marble, that one is triangular\nand the other hectagonal; read them and you will see that they say\nthe same thing.\"  The truth is, of course, that they are alike in\neverything except in the fact that they don't say the same thing.\nAn atheist stockbroker in Surbiton looks exactly like a Swedenborgian\nstockbroker in Wimbledon.  You may walk round and round them\nand subject them to the most personal and offensive study without\nseeing anything Swedenborgian in the hat or anything particularly\ngodless in the umbrella.  It is exactly in their souls that they\nare divided.  So the truth is that the difficulty of all the creeds\nof the earth is not as alleged in this cheap maxim:  that they agree\nin meaning, but differ in machinery.  It is exactly the opposite.\nThey agree in machinery; almost every great religion on earth works\nwith the same external methods, with priests, scriptures, altars,\nsworn brotherhoods, special feasts.  They agree in the mode\nof teaching; what they differ about is the thing to be taught.\nPagan optimists and Eastern pessimists would both have temples,\njust as Liberals and Tories would both have newspapers.  Creeds that\nexist to destroy each other both have scriptures, just as armies\nthat exist to destroy each other both have guns.\n\n     The great example of this alleged identity of all human religions\nis the alleged spiritual identity of Buddhism and Christianity.\nThose who adopt this theory generally avoid the ethics of most\nother creeds, except, indeed, Confucianism, which they like\nbecause it is not a creed.  But they are cautious in their praises\nof Mahommedanism, generally confining themselves to imposing\nits morality only upon the refreshment of the lower classes.\nThey seldom suggest the Mahommedan view of marriage (for which\nthere is a great deal to be said), and towards Thugs and fetish\nworshippers their attitude may even be called cold.  But in the\ncase of the great religion of Gautama they feel sincerely a similarity.\n\n     Students of popular science, like Mr. Blatchford, are always\ninsisting that Christianity and Buddhism are very much alike,\nespecially Buddhism.  This is generally believed, and I believed\nit myself until I read a book giving the reasons for it.\nThe reasons were of two kinds:  resemblances that meant nothing\nbecause they were common to all humanity, and resemblances which\nwere not resemblances at all.  The author solemnly explained that\nthe two creeds were alike in things in which all creeds are alike,\nor else he described them as alike in some point in which they\nare quite obviously different.  Thus, as a case of the first class,\nhe said that both Christ and Buddha were called by the divine voice\ncoming out of the sky, as if you would expect the divine voice\nto come out of the coal-cellar. Or, again, it was gravely urged\nthat these two Eastern teachers, by a singular coincidence, both had\nto do with the washing of feet.  You might as well say that it was\na remarkable coincidence that they both had feet to wash.  And the\nother class of similarities were those which simply were not similar.\nThus this reconciler of the two religions draws earnest attention\nto the fact that at certain religious feasts the robe of the Lama\nis rent in pieces out of respect, and the remnants highly valued.\nBut this is the reverse of a resemblance, for the garments of Christ\nwere not rent in pieces out of respect, but out of derision;\nand the remnants were not highly valued except for what they would\nfetch in the rag shops.  It is rather like alluding to the obvious\nconnection between the two ceremonies of the sword:  when it taps\na man's shoulder, and when it cuts off his head.  It is not at all\nsimilar for the man.  These scraps of puerile pedantry would indeed\nmatter little if it were not also true that the alleged philosophical\nresemblances are also of these two kinds, either proving too much\nor not proving anything.  That Buddhism approves of mercy or of\nself-restraint is not to say that it is specially like Christianity;\nit is only to say that it is not utterly unlike all human existence.\nBuddhists disapprove in theory of cruelty or excess because all\nsane human beings disapprove in theory of cruelty or excess.\nBut to say that Buddhism and Christianity give the same philosophy\nof these things is simply false.  All humanity does agree that we are\nin a net of sin.  Most of humanity agrees that there is some way out.\nBut as to what is the way out, I do not think that there are two\ninstitutions in the universe which contradict each other so flatly\nas Buddhism and Christianity.\n\n     Even when I thought, with most other well-informed, though\nunscholarly, people, that Buddhism and Christianity were alike,\nthere was one thing about them that always perplexed me;\nI mean the startling difference in their type of religious art.\nI do not mean in its technical style of representation,\nbut in the things that it was manifestly meant to represent.\nNo two ideals could be more opposite than a Christian saint\nin a Gothic cathedral and a Buddhist saint in a Chinese temple.\nThe opposition exists at every point; but perhaps the shortest\nstatement of it is that the Buddhist saint always has his eyes shut,\nwhile the Christian saint always has them very wide open.\nThe Buddhist saint has a sleek and harmonious body, but his eyes\nare heavy and sealed with sleep.  The mediaeval saint's body is\nwasted to its crazy bones, but his eyes are frightfully alive.\nThere cannot be any real community of spirit between forces that\nproduced symbols so different as that.  Granted that both images\nare extravagances, are perversions of the pure creed, it must be\na real divergence which could produce such opposite extravagances.\nThe Buddhist is looking with a peculiar intentness inwards.\nThe Christian is staring with a frantic intentness outwards.  If we\nfollow that clue steadily we shall find some interesting things.\n\n     A short time ago Mrs. Besant, in an interesting essay,\nannounced that there was only one religion in the world, that all\nfaiths were only versions or perversions of it, and that she was\nquite prepared to say what it was.  According to Mrs. Besant this\nuniversal Church is simply the universal self.  It is the doctrine\nthat we are really all one person; that there are no real walls of\nindividuality between man and man.  If I may put it so, she does not\ntell us to love our neighbours; she tells us to be our neighbours.\nThat is Mrs. Besant's thoughtful and suggestive description of\nthe religion in which all men must find themselves in agreement.\nAnd I never heard of any suggestion in my life with which I more\nviolently disagree.  I want to love my neighbour not because he is I,\nbut precisely because he is not I. I want to adore the world,\nnot as one likes a looking-glass, because it is one's self,\nbut as one loves a woman, because she is entirely different.\nIf souls are separate love is possible.  If souls are united love\nis obviously impossible.  A man may be said loosely to love himself,\nbut he can hardly fall in love with himself, or, if he does, it must\nbe a monotonous courtship.  If the world is full of real selves,\nthey can be really unselfish selves.  But upon Mrs. Besant's principle\nthe whole cosmos is only one enormously selfish person.\n\n     It is just here that Buddhism is on the side of modern pantheism\nand immanence.  And it is just here that Christianity is on the\nside of humanity and liberty and love.  Love desires personality;\ntherefore love desires division.  It is the instinct of Christianity\nto be glad that God has broken the universe into little pieces,\nbecause they are living pieces.  It is her instinct to say \"little\nchildren love one another\" rather than to tell one large person\nto love himself.  This is the intellectual abyss between Buddhism\nand Christianity; that for the Buddhist or Theosophist personality\nis the fall of man, for the Christian it is the purpose of God,\nthe whole point of his cosmic idea.  The world-soul of the Theosophists\nasks man to love it only in order that man may throw himself into it.\nBut the divine centre of Christianity actually threw man out of it\nin order that he might love it.  The oriental deity is like a giant\nwho should have lost his leg or hand and be always seeking to find it;\nbut the Christian power is like some giant who in a strange\ngenerosity should cut off his right hand, so that it might of its\nown accord shake hands with him.  We come back to the same tireless\nnote touching the nature of Christianity; all modern philosophies\nare chains which connect and fetter; Christianity is a sword which\nseparates and sets free.  No other philosophy makes God actually\nrejoice in the separation of the universe into living souls.\nBut according to orthodox Christianity this separation between God\nand man is sacred, because this is eternal.  That a man may love God\nit is necessary that there should be not only a God to be loved,\nbut a man to love him.  All those vague theosophical minds for whom\nthe universe is an immense melting-pot are exactly the minds which\nshrink instinctively from that earthquake saying of our Gospels,\nwhich declare that the Son of God came not with peace but with a\nsundering sword.  The saying rings entirely true even considered\nas what it obviously is; the statement that any man who preaches real\nlove is bound to beget hate.  It is as true of democratic fraternity\nas a divine love; sham love ends in compromise and common philosophy;\nbut real love has always ended in bloodshed.  Yet there is another\nand yet more awful truth behind the obvious meaning of this utterance\nof our Lord.  According to Himself the Son was a sword separating\nbrother and brother that they should for an aeon hate each other.\nBut the Father also was a sword, which in the black beginning\nseparated brother and brother, so that they should love each other\nat last.\n\n     This is the meaning of that almost insane happiness in the\neyes of the mediaeval saint in the picture.  This is the meaning\nof the sealed eyes of the superb Buddhist image.  The Christian\nsaint is happy because he has verily been cut off from the world;\nhe is separate from things and is staring at them in astonishment.\nBut why should the Buddhist saint be astonished at things?--\nsince there is really only one thing, and that being impersonal can\nhardly be astonished at itself.  There have been many pantheist poems\nsuggesting wonder, but no really successful ones.  The pantheist\ncannot wonder, for he cannot praise God or praise anything as really\ndistinct from himself.  Our immediate business here, however, is with\nthe effect of this Christian admiration (which strikes outwards,\ntowards a deity distinct from the worshipper) upon the general\nneed for ethical activity and social reform.  And surely its\neffect is sufficiently obvious.  There is no real possibility\nof getting out of pantheism, any special impulse to moral action.\nFor pantheism implies in its nature that one thing is as good\nas another; whereas action implies in its nature that one thing\nis greatly preferable to another.  Swinburne in the high summer\nof his scepticism tried in vain to wrestle with this difficulty.\nIn \"Songs before Sunrise,\" written under the inspiration of Garibaldi\nand the revolt of Italy he proclaimed the newer religion and the\npurer God which should wither up all the priests of the world:\n\n\"What doest thou now      Looking Godward to cry      I am I,\nthou art thou,      I am low, thou art high,      I am thou that thou\nseekest to find him, find thou but thyself, thou art I.\"\n\n     Of which the immediate and evident deduction is that tyrants\nare as much the sons of God as Garibaldis; and that King Bomba\nof Naples having, with the utmost success, \"found himself\"\nis identical with the ultimate good in all things.  The truth is\nthat the western energy that dethrones tyrants has been directly\ndue to the western theology that says \"I am I, thou art thou.\"\nThe same spiritual separation which looked up and saw a good king in\nthe universe looked up and saw a bad king in Naples.  The worshippers\nof Bomba's god dethroned Bomba.  The worshippers of Swinburne's god\nhave covered Asia for centuries and have never dethroned a tyrant.\nThe Indian saint may reasonably shut his eyes because he is\nlooking at that which is I and Thou and We and They and It.\nIt is a rational occupation:  but it is not true in theory and not\ntrue in fact that it helps the Indian to keep an eye on Lord Curzon.\nThat external vigilance which has always been the mark of Christianity\n(the command that we should WATCH and pray) has expressed itself\nboth in typical western orthodoxy and in typical western politics:\nbut both depend on the idea of a divinity transcendent, different\nfrom ourselves, a deity that disappears.  Certainly the most sagacious\ncreeds may suggest that we should pursue God into deeper and deeper\nrings of the labyrinth of our own ego.  But only we of Christendom\nhave said that we should hunt God like an eagle upon the mountains:\nand we have killed all monsters in the chase.\n\n     Here again, therefore, we find that in so far as we value\ndemocracy and the self-renewing energies of the west, we are much\nmore likely to find them in the old theology than the new.\nIf we want reform, we must adhere to orthodoxy:  especially in this\nmatter (so much disputed in the counsels of Mr. R.J.Campbell),\nthe matter of insisting on the immanent or the transcendent deity.\nBy insisting specially on the immanence of God we get introspection,\nself-isolation, quietism, social indifference--Tibet.  By insisting\nspecially on the transcendence of God we get wonder, curiosity,\nmoral and political adventure, righteous indignation--Christendom.\nInsisting that God is inside man, man is always inside himself.\nBy insisting that God transcends man, man has transcended himself.\n\n     If we take any other doctrine that has been called old-fashioned\nwe shall find the case the same.  It is the same, for instance,\nin the deep matter of the Trinity.  Unitarians (a sect never to be\nmentioned without a special respect for their distinguished intellectual\ndignity and high intellectual honour) are often reformers by the\naccident that throws so many small sects into such an attitude.\nBut there is nothing in the least liberal or akin to reform in\nthe substitution of pure monotheism for the Trinity.  The complex\nGod of the Athanasian Creed may be an enigma for the intellect;\nbut He is far less likely to gather the mystery and cruelty\nof a Sultan than the lonely god of Omar or Mahomet.  The god\nwho is a mere awful unity is not only a king but an Eastern king.\nThe HEART of humanity, especially of European humanity, is certainly\nmuch more satisfied by the strange hints and symbols that gather\nround the Trinitarian idea, the image of a council at which mercy\npleads as well as justice, the conception of a sort of liberty\nand variety existing even in the inmost chamber of the world.\nFor Western religion has always felt keenly the idea \"it is not\nwell for man to be alone.\"  The social instinct asserted itself\neverywhere as when the Eastern idea of hermits was practically expelled\nby the Western idea of monks.  So even asceticism became brotherly;\nand the Trappists were sociable even when they were silent.\nIf this love of a living complexity be our test, it is certainly\nhealthier to have the Trinitarian religion than the Unitarian.\nFor to us Trinitarians (if I may say it with reverence)--to us God\nHimself is a society.  It is indeed a fathomless mystery of theology,\nand even if I were theologian enough to deal with it directly, it would\nnot be relevant to do so here.  Suffice it to say here that this triple\nenigma is as comforting as wine and open as an English fireside;\nthat this thing that bewilders the intellect utterly quiets the heart:\nbut out of the desert, from the dry places and the dreadful suns,\ncome the cruel children of the lonely God; the real Unitarians who\nwith scimitar in hand have laid waste the world.  For it is not well\nfor God to be alone.\n\n     Again, the same is true of that difficult matter of the danger\nof the soul, which has unsettled so many just minds.  To hope\nfor all souls is imperative; and it is quite tenable that their\nsalvation is inevitable.  It is tenable, but it is not specially\nfavourable to activity or progress.  Our fighting and creative society\nought rather to insist on the danger of everybody, on the fact\nthat every man is hanging by a thread or clinging to a precipice.\nTo say that all will be well anyhow is a comprehensible remark:\nbut it cannot be called the blast of a trumpet.  Europe ought rather\nto emphasize possible perdition; and Europe always has emphasized it.\nHere its highest religion is at one with all its cheapest romances.\nTo the Buddhist or the eastern fatalist existence is a science\nor a plan, which must end up in a certain way.  But to a Christian\nexistence is a STORY, which may end up in any way.  In a thrilling\nnovel (that purely Christian product) the hero is not eaten\nby cannibals; but it is essential to the existence of the thrill\nthat he MIGHT be eaten by cannibals.  The hero must (so to speak)\nbe an eatable hero.  So Christian morals have always said to the man,\nnot that he would lose his soul, but that he must take care that he\ndidn't. In Christian morals, in short, it is wicked to call a man\n\"damned\": but it is strictly religious and philosophic to call\nhim damnable.\n\n     All Christianity concentrates on the man at the cross-roads.\nThe vast and shallow philosophies, the huge syntheses of humbug,\nall talk about ages and evolution and ultimate developments.\nThe true philosophy is concerned with the instant.  Will a man\ntake this road or that?--that is the only thing to think about,\nif you enjoy thinking.  The aeons are easy enough to think about,\nany one can think about them.  The instant is really awful:\nand it is because our religion has intensely felt the instant,\nthat it has in literature dealt much with battle and in theology\ndealt much with hell.  It is full of DANGER, like a boy's book:\nit is at an immortal crisis.  There is a great deal of real similarity\nbetween popular fiction and the religion of the western people.\nIf you say that popular fiction is vulgar and tawdry, you only say\nwhat the dreary and well-informed say also about the images in the\nCatholic churches.  Life (according to the faith) is very like a\nserial story in a magazine:  life ends with the promise (or menace)\n\"to be continued in our next.\"  Also, with a noble vulgarity,\nlife imitates the serial and leaves off at the exciting moment.\nFor death is distinctly an exciting moment.\n\n     But the point is that a story is exciting because it has in it\nso strong an element of will, of what theology calls free-will.\nYou cannot finish a sum how you like.  But you can finish a story\nhow you like.  When somebody discovered the Differential Calculus\nthere was only one Differential Calculus he could discover.\nBut when Shakespeare killed Romeo he might have married him to\nJuliet's old nurse if he had felt inclined.  And Christendom has\nexcelled in the narrative romance exactly because it has insisted\non the theological free-will. It is a large matter and too much\nto one side of the road to be discussed adequately here; but this\nis the real objection to that torrent of modern talk about treating\ncrime as disease, about making a prison merely a hygienic environment\nlike a hospital, of healing sin by slow scientific methods.\nThe fallacy of the whole thing is that evil is a matter of active\nchoice whereas disease is not.  If you say that you are going to cure\na profligate as you cure an asthmatic, my cheap and obvious answer is,\n\"Produce the people who want to be asthmatics as many people want\nto be profligates.\"  A man may lie still and be cured of a malady.\nBut he must not lie still if he wants to be cured of a sin;\non the contrary, he must get up and jump about violently.\nThe whole point indeed is perfectly expressed in the very word\nwhich we use for a man in hospital; \"patient\" is in the passive mood;\n\"sinner\" is in the active.  If a man is to be saved from influenza,\nhe may be a patient.  But if he is to be saved from forging,\nhe must be not a patient but an IMPATIENT.  He must be personally\nimpatient with forgery.  All moral reform must start in the active\nnot the passive will.\n\n     Here again we reach the same substantial conclusion.  In so far\nas we desire the definite reconstructions and the dangerous revolutions\nwhich have distinguished European civilization, we shall not discourage\nthe thought of possible ruin; we shall rather encourage it.\nIf we want, like the Eastern saints, merely to contemplate how right\nthings are, of course we shall only say that they must go right.\nBut if we particularly want to MAKE them go right, we must insist\nthat they may go wrong.\n\n     Lastly, this truth is yet again true in the case of the common\nmodern attempts to diminish or to explain away the divinity of Christ.\nThe thing may be true or not; that I shall deal with before I end.\nBut if the divinity is true it is certainly terribly revolutionary.\nThat a good man may have his back to the wall is no more than we\nknew already; but that God could have his back to the wall is a boast\nfor all insurgents for ever.  Christianity is the only religion\non earth that has felt that omnipotence made God incomplete.\nChristianity alone has felt that God, to be wholly God,\nmust have been a rebel as well as a king.  Alone of all creeds,\nChristianity has added courage to the virtues of the Creator.\nFor the only courage worth calling courage must necessarily mean\nthat the soul passes a breaking point--and does not break.\nIn this indeed I approach a matter more dark and awful than it\nis easy to discuss; and I apologise in advance if any of my\nphrases fall wrong or seem irreverent touching a matter which the\ngreatest saints and thinkers have justly feared to approach.\nBut in that terrific tale of the Passion there is a distinct emotional\nsuggestion that the author of all things (in some unthinkable way)\nwent not only through agony, but through doubt.  It is written,\n\"Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.\"  No; but the Lord thy God may\ntempt Himself; and it seems as if this was what happened in Gethsemane.\nIn a garden Satan tempted man:  and in a garden God tempted God.\nHe passed in some superhuman manner through our human horror\nof pessimism.  When the world shook and the sun was wiped out of heaven,\nit was not at the crucifixion, but at the cry from the cross:\nthe cry which confessed that God was forsaken of God.  And now let\nthe revolutionists choose a creed from all the creeds and a god from all\nthe gods of the world, carefully weighing all the gods of inevitable\nrecurrence and of unalterable power.  They will not find another god\nwho has himself been in revolt.  Nay, (the matter grows too difficult\nfor human speech,) but let the atheists themselves choose a god.\nThey will find only one divinity who ever uttered their isolation;\nonly one religion in which God seemed for an instant to be\nan atheist.\n\n     These can be called the essentials of the old orthodoxy,\nof which the chief merit is that it is the natural fountain of\nrevolution and reform; and of which the chief defect is that it\nis obviously only an abstract assertion.  Its main advantage\nis that it is the most adventurous and manly of all theologies.\nIts chief disadvantage is simply that it is a theology.  It can always\nbe urged against it that it is in its nature arbitrary and in the air.\nBut it is not so high in the air but that great archers spend their\nwhole lives in shooting arrows at it--yes, and their last arrows;\nthere are men who will ruin themselves and ruin their civilization\nif they may ruin also this old fantastic tale.  This is the last\nand most astounding fact about this faith; that its enemies will\nuse any weapon against it, the swords that cut their own fingers,\nand the firebrands that burn their own homes.  Men who begin to fight\nthe Church for the sake of freedom and humanity end by flinging\naway freedom and humanity if only they may fight the Church.\nThis is no exaggeration; I could fill a book with the instances of it.\nMr. Blatchford set out, as an ordinary Bible-smasher, to prove\nthat Adam was guiltless of sin against God; in manoeuvring so as to\nmaintain this he admitted, as a mere side issue, that all the tyrants,\nfrom Nero to King Leopold, were guiltless of any sin against humanity.\nI know a man who has such a passion for proving that he will have no\npersonal existence after death that he falls back on the position\nthat he has no personal existence now.  He invokes Buddhism and says\nthat all souls fade into each other; in order to prove that he\ncannot go to heaven he proves that he cannot go to Hartlepool.\nI have known people who protested against religious education with\narguments against any education, saying that the child's mind must\ngrow freely or that the old must not teach the young.  I have known\npeople who showed that there could be no divine judgment by showing\nthat there can be no human judgment, even for practical purposes.\nThey burned their own corn to set fire to the church; they smashed\ntheir own tools to smash it; any stick was good enough to beat it with,\nthough it were the last stick of their own dismembered furniture.\nWe do not admire, we hardly excuse, the fanatic who wrecks this\nworld for love of the other.  But what are we to say of the fanatic\nwho wrecks this world out of hatred of the other?  He sacrifices\nthe very existence of humanity to the non-existence of God.\nHe offers his victims not to the altar, but merely to assert\nthe idleness of the altar and the emptiness of the throne.\nHe is ready to ruin even that primary ethic by which all things live,\nfor his strange and eternal vengeance upon some one who never lived\nat all.\n\n     And yet the thing hangs in the heavens unhurt.  Its opponents\nonly succeed in destroying all that they themselves justly hold dear.\nThey do not destroy orthodoxy; they only destroy political\nand common courage sense.  They do not prove that Adam was not\nresponsible to God; how could they prove it?  They only prove\n(from their premises) that the Czar is not responsible to Russia.\nThey do not prove that Adam should not have been punished by God;\nthey only prove that the nearest sweater should not be punished by men.\nWith their oriental doubts about personality they do not make certain\nthat we shall have no personal life hereafter; they only make\ncertain that we shall not have a very jolly or complete one here.\nWith their paralysing hints of all conclusions coming out wrong\nthey do not tear the book of the Recording Angel; they only make\nit a little harder to keep the books of Marshall & Snelgrove.\nNot only is the faith the mother of all worldly energies, but its foes\nare the fathers of all worldly confusion.  The secularists have not\nwrecked divine things; but the secularists have wrecked secular things,\nif that is any comfort to them.  The Titans did not scale heaven;\nbut they laid waste the world.\n\n\n\nIX AUTHORITY AND THE ADVENTURER\n\n\n     The last chapter has been concerned with the contention that\northodoxy is not only (as is often urged) the only safe guardian of\nmorality or order, but is also the only logical guardian of liberty,\ninnovation and advance.  If we wish to pull down the prosperous\noppressor we cannot do it with the new doctrine of human perfectibility;\nwe can do it with the old doctrine of Original Sin.  If we want\nto uproot inherent cruelties or lift up lost populations we cannot\ndo it with the scientific theory that matter precedes mind; we can\ndo it with the supernatural theory that mind precedes matter.\nIf we wish specially to awaken people to social vigilance and\ntireless pursuit of practise, we cannot help it much by insisting\non the Immanent God and the Inner Light:  for these are at best\nreasons for contentment; we can help it much by insisting on the\ntranscendent God and the flying and escaping gleam; for that means\ndivine discontent.  If we wish particularly to assert the idea\nof a generous balance against that of a dreadful autocracy we\nshall instinctively be Trinitarian rather than Unitarian.  If we\ndesire European civilization to be a raid and a rescue, we shall\ninsist rather that souls are in real peril than that their peril is\nultimately unreal.  And if we wish to exalt the outcast and the crucified,\nwe shall rather wish to think that a veritable God was crucified,\nrather than a mere sage or hero.  Above all, if we wish to protect\nthe poor we shall be in favour of fixed rules and clear dogmas.\nThe RULES of a club are occasionally in favour of the poor member.\nThe drift of a club is always in favour of the rich one.\n\n     And now we come to the crucial question which truly concludes\nthe whole matter.  A reasonable agnostic, if he has happened to agree\nwith me so far, may justly turn round and say, \"You have found\na practical philosophy in the doctrine of the Fall; very well.\nYou have found a side of democracy now dangerously neglected wisely\nasserted in Original Sin; all right.  You have found a truth in\nthe doctrine of hell; I congratulate you.  You are convinced that\nworshippers of a personal God look outwards and are progressive;\nI congratulate them.  But even supposing that those doctrines\ndo include those truths, why cannot you take the truths and leave\nthe doctrines?  Granted that all modern society is trusting\nthe rich too much because it does not allow for human weakness;\ngranted that orthodox ages have had a great advantage because\n(believing in the Fall) they did allow for human weakness, why cannot\nyou simply allow for human weakness without believing in the Fall?\nIf you have discovered that the idea of damnation represents\na healthy idea of danger, why can you not simply take the idea\nof danger and leave the idea of damnation?  If you see clearly\nthe kernel of common-sense in the nut of Christian orthodoxy,\nwhy cannot you simply take the kernel and leave the nut?\nWhy cannot you (to use that cant phrase of the newspapers which I,\nas a highly scholarly agnostic, am a little ashamed of using)\nwhy cannot you simply take what is good in Christianity, what you can\ndefine as valuable, what you can comprehend, and leave all the rest,\nall the absolute dogmas that are in their nature incomprehensible?\"\nThis is the real question; this is the last question; and it is a\npleasure to try to answer it.\n\n     The first answer is simply to say that I am a rationalist.\nI like to have some intellectual justification for my intuitions.\nIf I am treating man as a fallen being it is an intellectual\nconvenience to me to believe that he fell; and I find, for some odd\npsychological reason, that I can deal better with a man's exercise\nof freewill if I believe that he has got it.  But I am in this matter\nyet more definitely a rationalist.  I do not propose to turn this\nbook into one of ordinary Christian apologetics; I should be glad\nto meet at any other time the enemies of Christianity in that more\nobvious arena.  Here I am only giving an account of my own growth\nin spiritual certainty.  But I may pause to remark that the more I\nsaw of the merely abstract arguments against the Christian cosmology\nthe less I thought of them.  I mean that having found the moral\natmosphere of the Incarnation to be common sense, I then looked\nat the established intellectual arguments against the Incarnation\nand found them to be common nonsense.  In case the argument should\nbe thought to suffer from the absence of the ordinary apologetic I\nwill here very briefly summarise my own arguments and conclusions\non the purely objective or scientific truth of the matter.\n\n     If I am asked, as a purely intellectual question, why I believe\nin Christianity, I can only answer, \"For the same reason that an\nintelligent agnostic disbelieves in Christianity.\"  I believe in it\nquite rationally upon the evidence.  But the evidence in my case,\nas in that of the intelligent agnostic, is not really in this or that\nalleged demonstration; it is in an enormous accumulation of small\nbut unanimous facts.  The secularist is not to be blamed because\nhis objections to Christianity are miscellaneous and even scrappy;\nit is precisely such scrappy evidence that does convince the mind.\nI mean that a man may well be less convinced of a philosophy\nfrom four books, than from one book, one battle, one landscape,\nand one old friend.  The very fact that the things are of different\nkinds increases the importance of the fact that they all point\nto one conclusion.  Now, the non-Christianity of the average\neducated man to-day is almost always, to do him justice, made up\nof these loose but living experiences.  I can only say that my\nevidences for Christianity are of the same vivid but varied kind\nas his evidences against it.  For when I look at these various\nanti-Christian truths, I simply discover that none of them are true.\nI discover that the true tide and force of all the facts flows\nthe other way.  Let us take cases.  Many a sensible modern man\nmust have abandoned Christianity under the pressure of three such\nconverging convictions as these:  first, that men, with their shape,\nstructure, and sexuality, are, after all, very much like beasts,\na mere variety of the animal kingdom; second, that primeval religion\narose in ignorance and fear; third, that priests have blighted societies\nwith bitterness and gloom.  Those three anti-Christian arguments\nare very different; but they are all quite logical and legitimate;\nand they all converge.  The only objection to them (I discover)\nis that they are all untrue.  If you leave off looking at books\nabout beasts and men, if you begin to look at beasts and men then\n(if you have any humour or imagination, any sense of the frantic\nor the farcical) you will observe that the startling thing is not\nhow like man is to the brutes, but how unlike he is.  It is the\nmonstrous scale of his divergence that requires an explanation.\nThat man and brute are like is, in a sense, a truism; but that being\nso like they should then be so insanely unlike, that is the shock\nand the enigma.  That an ape has hands is far less interesting to the\nphilosopher than the fact that having hands he does next to nothing\nwith them; does not play knuckle-bones or the violin; does not carve\nmarble or carve mutton.  People talk of barbaric architecture and\ndebased art.  But elephants do not build colossal temples of ivory\neven in a roccoco style; camels do not paint even bad pictures,\nthough equipped with the material of many camel's-hair brushes.\nCertain modern dreamers say that ants and bees have a society superior\nto ours.  They have, indeed, a civilization; but that very truth\nonly reminds us that it is an inferior civilization.  Who ever\nfound an ant-hill decorated with the statues of celebrated ants?\nWho has seen a bee-hive carved with the images of gorgeous queens\nof old?  No; the chasm between man and other creatures may have\na natural explanation, but it is a chasm.  We talk of wild animals;\nbut man is the only wild animal.  It is man that has broken out.\nAll other animals are tame animals; following the rugged respectability\nof the tribe or type.  All other animals are domestic animals;\nman alone is ever undomestic, either as a profligate or a monk.\nSo that this first superficial reason for materialism is, if anything,\na reason for its opposite; it is exactly where biology leaves off that\nall religion begins.\n\n     It would be the same if I examined the second of the three chance\nrationalist arguments; the argument that all that we call divine\nbegan in some darkness and terror.  When I did attempt to examine\nthe foundations of this modern idea I simply found that there\nwere none.  Science knows nothing whatever about pre-historic man;\nfor the excellent reason that he is pre-historic. A few professors\nchoose to conjecture that such things as human sacrifice were once\ninnocent and general and that they gradually dwindled; but there is\nno direct evidence of it, and the small amount of indirect evidence\nis very much the other way.  In the earliest legends we have,\nsuch as the tales of Isaac and of Iphigenia, human sacrifice\nis not introduced as something old, but rather as something new;\nas a strange and frightful exception darkly demanded by the gods.\nHistory says nothing; and legends all say that the earth was kinder\nin its earliest time.  There is no tradition of progress; but the whole\nhuman race has a tradition of the Fall.  Amusingly enough, indeed,\nthe very dissemination of this idea is used against its authenticity.\nLearned men literally say that this pre-historic calamity cannot\nbe true because every race of mankind remembers it.  I cannot keep\npace with these paradoxes.\n\n     And if we took the third chance instance, it would be the same;\nthe view that priests darken and embitter the world.  I look at the\nworld and simply discover that they don't. Those countries in Europe\nwhich are still influenced by priests, are exactly the countries\nwhere there is still singing and dancing and coloured dresses and art\nin the open-air. Catholic doctrine and discipline may be walls;\nbut they are the walls of a playground.  Christianity is the only\nframe which has preserved the pleasure of Paganism.  We might fancy\nsome children playing on the flat grassy top of some tall island\nin the sea.  So long as there was a wall round the cliff's edge\nthey could fling themselves into every frantic game and make the\nplace the noisiest of nurseries.  But the walls were knocked down,\nleaving the naked peril of the precipice.  They did not fall over;\nbut when their friends returned to them they were all huddled in\nterror in the centre of the island; and their song had ceased.\n\n     Thus these three facts of experience, such facts as go to make\nan agnostic, are, in this view, turned totally round.  I am left saying,\n\"Give me an explanation, first, of the towering eccentricity of man\namong the brutes; second, of the vast human tradition of some\nancient happiness; third, of the partial perpetuation of such pagan\njoy in the countries of the Catholic Church.\"  One explanation,\nat any rate, covers all three:  the theory that twice was the natural\norder interrupted by some explosion or revelation such as people\nnow call \"psychic.\"  Once Heaven came upon the earth with a power\nor seal called the image of God, whereby man took command of Nature;\nand once again (when in empire after empire men had been found wanting)\nHeaven came to save mankind in the awful shape of a man.\nThis would explain why the mass of men always look backwards;\nand why the only corner where they in any sense look forwards is\nthe little continent where Christ has His Church.  I know it will\nbe said that Japan has become progressive.  But how can this be an\nanswer when even in saying \"Japan has become progressive,\" we really\nonly mean, \"Japan has become European\"? But I wish here not so much\nto insist on my own explanation as to insist on my original remark.\nI agree with the ordinary unbelieving man in the street in being\nguided by three or four odd facts all pointing to something;\nonly when I came to look at the facts I always found they pointed\nto something else.\n\n     I have given an imaginary triad of such ordinary anti-Christian\narguments; if that be too narrow a basis I will give on the spur\nof the moment another.  These are the kind of thoughts which in\ncombination create the impression that Christianity is something weak\nand diseased.  First, for instance, that Jesus was a gentle creature,\nsheepish and unworldly, a mere ineffectual appeal to the world; second,\nthat Christianity arose and flourished in the dark ages of ignorance,\nand that to these the Church would drag us back; third, that the people\nstill strongly religious or (if you will) superstitious--such people\nas the Irish--are weak, unpractical, and behind the times.\nI only mention these ideas to affirm the same thing:  that when I\nlooked into them independently I found, not that the conclusions\nwere unphilosophical, but simply that the facts were not facts.\nInstead of looking at books and pictures about the New Testament I\nlooked at the New Testament.  There I found an account, not in the\nleast of a person with his hair parted in the middle or his hands\nclasped in appeal, but of an extraordinary being with lips of thunder\nand acts of lurid decision, flinging down tables, casting out devils,\npassing with the wild secrecy of the wind from mountain isolation to a\nsort of dreadful demagogy; a being who often acted like an angry god--\nand always like a god.  Christ had even a literary style of his own,\nnot to be found, I think, elsewhere; it consists of an almost furious\nuse of the A FORTIORI.  His \"how much more\" is piled one upon\nanother like castle upon castle in the clouds.  The diction used\nABOUT Christ has been, and perhaps wisely, sweet and submissive.\nBut the diction used by Christ is quite curiously gigantesque;\nit is full of camels leaping through needles and mountains hurled\ninto the sea.  Morally it is equally terrific; he called himself\na sword of slaughter, and told men to buy swords if they sold their\ncoats for them.  That he used other even wilder words on the side\nof non-resistance greatly increases the mystery; but it also,\nif anything, rather increases the violence.  We cannot even explain\nit by calling such a being insane; for insanity is usually along one\nconsistent channel.  The maniac is generally a monomaniac.  Here we\nmust remember the difficult definition of Christianity already given;\nChristianity is a superhuman paradox whereby two opposite passions\nmay blaze beside each other.  The one explanation of the Gospel\nlanguage that does explain it, is that it is the survey of one\nwho from some supernatural height beholds some more startling synthesis.\n\n     I take in order the next instance offered:  the idea that\nChristianity belongs to the Dark Ages.  Here I did not satisfy myself\nwith reading modern generalisations; I read a little history.\nAnd in history I found that Christianity, so far from belonging to the\nDark Ages, was the one path across the Dark Ages that was not dark.\nIt was a shining bridge connecting two shining civilizations.\nIf any one says that the faith arose in ignorance and savagery\nthe answer is simple:  it didn't. It arose in the Mediterranean\ncivilization in the full summer of the Roman Empire.  The world\nwas swarming with sceptics, and pantheism was as plain as the sun,\nwhen Constantine nailed the cross to the mast.  It is perfectly true\nthat afterwards the ship sank; but it is far more extraordinary that\nthe ship came up again:  repainted and glittering, with the cross\nstill at the top.  This is the amazing thing the religion did:\nit turned a sunken ship into a submarine.  The ark lived under the load\nof waters; after being buried under the debris of dynasties and clans,\nwe arose and remembered Rome.  If our faith had been a mere fad\nof the fading empire, fad would have followed fad in the twilight,\nand if the civilization ever re-emerged (and many such have\nnever re-emerged) it would have been under some new barbaric flag.\nBut the Christian Church was the last life of the old society and\nwas also the first life of the new.  She took the people who were\nforgetting how to make an arch and she taught them to invent the\nGothic arch.  In a word, the most absurd thing that could be said\nof the Church is the thing we have all heard said of it.  How can\nwe say that the Church wishes to bring us back into the Dark Ages?\nThe Church was the only thing that ever brought us out of them.\n\n     I added in this second trinity of objections an idle instance\ntaken from those who feel such people as the Irish to be weakened\nor made stagnant by superstition.  I only added it because this\nis a peculiar case of a statement of fact that turns out to be\na statement of falsehood.  It is constantly said of the Irish that\nthey are impractical.  But if we refrain for a moment from looking\nat what is said about them and look at what is DONE about them,\nwe shall see that the Irish are not only practical, but quite\npainfully successful.  The poverty of their country, the minority\nof their members are simply the conditions under which they were asked\nto work; but no other group in the British Empire has done so much\nwith such conditions.  The Nationalists were the only minority\nthat ever succeeded in twisting the whole British Parliament sharply\nout of its path.  The Irish peasants are the only poor men in these\nislands who have forced their masters to disgorge.  These people,\nwhom we call priest-ridden, are the only Britons who will not be\nsquire-ridden. And when I came to look at the actual Irish character,\nthe case was the same.  Irishmen are best at the specially\nHARD professions--the trades of iron, the lawyer, and the soldier.\nIn all these cases, therefore, I came back to the same conclusion:\nthe sceptic was quite right to go by the facts, only he had not\nlooked at the facts.  The sceptic is too credulous; he believes\nin newspapers or even in encyclopedias.  Again the three questions\nleft me with three very antagonistic questions.  The average sceptic\nwanted to know how I explained the namby-pamby note in the Gospel,\nthe connection of the creed with mediaeval darkness and the political\nimpracticability of the Celtic Christians.  But I wanted to ask,\nand to ask with an earnestness amounting to urgency, \"What is this\nincomparable energy which appears first in one walking the earth\nlike a living judgment and this energy which can die with a dying\ncivilization and yet force it to a resurrection from the dead;\nthis energy which last of all can inflame a bankrupt peasantry\nwith so fixed a faith in justice that they get what they ask,\nwhile others go empty away; so that the most helpless island\nof the Empire can actually help itself?\"\n\n     There is an answer:  it is an answer to say that the energy\nis truly from outside the world; that it is psychic, or at least\none of the results of a real psychical disturbance.  The highest\ngratitude and respect are due to the great human civilizations such\nas the old Egyptian or the existing Chinese.  Nevertheless it is\nno injustice for them to say that only modern Europe has exhibited\nincessantly a power of self-renewal recurring often at the shortest\nintervals and descending to the smallest facts of building or costume.\nAll other societies die finally and with dignity.  We die daily.\nWe are always being born again with almost indecent obstetrics.\nIt is hardly an exaggeration to say that there is in historic\nChristendom a sort of unnatural life:  it could be explained as a\nsupernatural life.  It could be explained as an awful galvanic life\nworking in what would have been a corpse.  For our civilization OUGHT\nto have died, by all parallels, by all sociological probability,\nin the Ragnorak of the end of Rome.  That is the weird inspiration\nof our estate:  you and I have no business to be here at all.  We are\nall REVENANTS; all living Christians are dead pagans walking about.\nJust as Europe was about to be gathered in silence to Assyria\nand Babylon, something entered into its body.  And Europe has had\na strange life--it is not too much to say that it has had the JUMPS--\never since.\n\n     I have dealt at length with such typical triads of doubt in order\nto convey the main contention--that my own case for Christianity is\nrational; but it is not simple.  It is an accumulation of varied\nfacts, like the attitude of the ordinary agnostic. But the ordinary\nagnostic has got his facts all wrong. He is a non-believer for a\nmultitude of reasons; but they are untrue reasons.  He doubts because\nthe Middle Ages were barbaric, but they weren't; because Darwinism is\ndemonstrated, but it isn't; because miracles do not happen, but they\ndo; because monks were lazy, but they were very industrious; because\nnuns are unhappy, but they are particularly cheerful; because\nChristian art was sad and pale, but it was picked out in peculiarly\nbright colours and gay with gold; because modern science is moving\naway from the supernatural, but it isn't, it is moving towards the\nsupernatural with the rapidity of a railway train.\n\n     But among these million facts all flowing one way there is,\nof course, one question sufficiently solid and separate to be\ntreated briefly, but by itself; I mean the objective occurrence\nof the supernatural.  In another chapter I have indicated the fallacy\nof the ordinary supposition that the world must be impersonal because it\nis orderly.  A person is just as likely to desire an orderly thing\nas a disorderly thing.  But my own positive conviction that personal\ncreation is more conceivable than material fate, is, I admit,\nin a sense, undiscussable.  I will not call it a faith or an intuition,\nfor those words are mixed up with mere emotion, it is strictly\nan intellectual conviction; but it is a PRIMARY intellectual\nconviction like the certainty of self of the good of living.\nAny one who likes, therefore, may call my belief in God merely mystical;\nthe phrase is not worth fighting about.  But my belief that miracles\nhave happened in human history is not a mystical belief at all; I believe\nin them upon human evidences as I do in the discovery of America.\nUpon this point there is a simple logical fact that only requires\nto be stated and cleared up.  Somehow or other an extraordinary\nidea has arisen that the disbelievers in miracles consider them\ncoldly and fairly, while believers in miracles accept them only\nin connection with some dogma.  The fact is quite the other way.\nThe believers in miracles accept them (rightly or wrongly) because they\nhave evidence for them.  The disbelievers in miracles deny them\n(rightly or wrongly) because they have a doctrine against them.\nThe open, obvious, democratic thing is to believe an old apple-woman\nwhen she bears testimony to a miracle, just as you believe an old\napple-woman when she bears testimony to a murder.  The plain,\npopular course is to trust the peasant's word about the ghost\nexactly as far as you trust the peasant's word about the landlord.\nBeing a peasant he will probably have a great deal of healthy\nagnosticism about both.  Still you could fill the British Museum with\nevidence uttered by the peasant, and given in favour of the ghost.\nIf it comes to human testimony there is a choking cataract of human\ntestimony in favour of the supernatural.  If you reject it, you can\nonly mean one of two things.  You reject the peasant's story about\nthe ghost either because the man is a peasant or because the story\nis a ghost story.  That is, you either deny the main principle\nof democracy, or you affirm the main principle of materialism--\nthe abstract impossibility of miracle.  You have a perfect right\nto do so; but in that case you are the dogmatist.  It is we\nChristians who accept all actual evidence--it is you rationalists\nwho refuse actual evidence being constrained to do so by your creed.\nBut I am not constrained by any creed in the matter, and looking\nimpartially into certain miracles of mediaeval and modern times,\nI have come to the conclusion that they occurred.  All argument\nagainst these plain facts is always argument in a circle.  If I say,\n\"Mediaeval documents attest certain miracles as much as they attest\ncertain battles,\" they answer, \"But mediaevals were superstitious\";\nif I want to know in what they were superstitious, the only\nultimate answer is that they believed in the miracles.  If I say \"a\npeasant saw a ghost,\" I am told, \"But peasants are so credulous.\"\nIf I ask, \"Why credulous?\" the only answer is--that they see ghosts.\nIceland is impossible because only stupid sailors have seen it;\nand the sailors are only stupid because they say they have seen Iceland.\nIt is only fair to add that there is another argument that the\nunbeliever may rationally use against miracles, though he himself\ngenerally forgets to use it.\n\n     He may say that there has been in many miraculous stories\na notion of spiritual preparation and acceptance:  in short,\nthat the miracle could only come to him who believed in it.\nIt may be so, and if it is so how are we to test it?  If we are\ninquiring whether certain results follow faith, it is useless\nto repeat wearily that (if they happen) they do follow faith.\nIf faith is one of the conditions, those without faith have a\nmost healthy right to laugh.  But they have no right to judge.\nBeing a believer may be, if you like, as bad as being drunk;\nstill if we were extracting psychological facts from drunkards,\nit would be absurd to be always taunting them with having been drunk.\nSuppose we were investigating whether angry men really saw a red\nmist before their eyes.  Suppose sixty excellent householders swore\nthat when angry they had seen this crimson cloud:  surely it would\nbe absurd to answer \"Oh, but you admit you were angry at the time.\"\nThey might reasonably rejoin (in a stentorian chorus), \"How the blazes\ncould we discover, without being angry, whether angry people see red?\"\nSo the saints and ascetics might rationally reply, \"Suppose that the\nquestion is whether believers can see visions--even then, if you\nare interested in visions it is no point to object to believers.\"\nYou are still arguing in a circle--in that old mad circle with which this\nbook began.\n\n     The question of whether miracles ever occur is a question of\ncommon sense and of ordinary historical imagination:  not of any final\nphysical experiment.  One may here surely dismiss that quite brainless\npiece of pedantry which talks about the need for \"scientific conditions\"\nin connection with alleged spiritual phenomena.  If we are asking\nwhether a dead soul can communicate with a living it is ludicrous\nto insist that it shall be under conditions in which no two living\nsouls in their senses would seriously communicate with each other.\nThe fact that ghosts prefer darkness no more disproves the existence\nof ghosts than the fact that lovers prefer darkness disproves the\nexistence of love.  If you choose to say, \"I will believe that Miss\nBrown called her fiance a periwinkle or, any other endearing term,\nif she will repeat the word before seventeen psychologists,\"\nthen I shall reply, \"Very well, if those are your conditions,\nyou will never get the truth, for she certainly will not say it.\"\nIt is just as unscientific as it is unphilosophical to be surprised\nthat in an unsympathetic atmosphere certain extraordinary sympathies\ndo not arise.  It is as if I said that I could not tell if there\nwas a fog because the air was not clear enough; or as if I insisted\non perfect sunlight in order to see a solar eclipse.\n\n     As a common-sense conclusion, such as those to which we come\nabout sex or about midnight (well knowing that many details must\nin their own nature be concealed) I conclude that miracles do happen.\nI am forced to it by a conspiracy of facts:  the fact that the men who\nencounter elves or angels are not the mystics and the morbid dreamers,\nbut fishermen, farmers, and all men at once coarse and cautious;\nthe fact that we all know men who testify to spiritualistic incidents\nbut are not spiritualists, the fact that science itself admits\nsuch things more and more every day.  Science will even admit\nthe Ascension if you call it Levitation, and will very likely admit\nthe Resurrection when it has thought of another word for it.\nI suggest the Regalvanisation.  But the strongest of all is\nthe dilemma above mentioned, that these supernatural things are\nnever denied except on the basis either of anti-democracy or of\nmaterialist dogmatism--I may say materialist mysticism.  The sceptic\nalways takes one of the two positions; either an ordinary man need\nnot be believed, or an extraordinary event must not be believed.\nFor I hope we may dismiss the argument against wonders attempted\nin the mere recapitulation of frauds, of swindling mediums or\ntrick miracles.  That is not an argument at all, good or bad.\nA false ghost disproves the reality of ghosts exactly as much as\na forged banknote disproves the existence of the Bank of England--\nif anything, it proves its existence.\n\n     Given this conviction that the spiritual phenomena do occur\n(my evidence for which is complex but rational), we then collide\nwith one of the worst mental evils of the age.  The greatest\ndisaster of the nineteenth century was this:  that men began\nto use the word \"spiritual\" as the same as the word \"good.\"\nThey thought that to grow in refinement and uncorporeality was\nto grow in virtue.  When scientific evolution was announced,\nsome feared that it would encourage mere animality.  It did worse:\nit encouraged mere spirituality.  It taught men to think that so long\nas they were passing from the ape they were going to the angel.\nBut you can pass from the ape and go to the devil.  A man of genius,\nvery typical of that time of bewilderment, expressed it perfectly.\nBenjamin Disraeli was right when he said he was on the side of\nthe angels.  He was indeed; he was on the side of the fallen angels.\nHe was not on the side of any mere appetite or animal brutality;\nbut he was on the side of all the imperialism of the princes\nof the abyss; he was on the side of arrogance and mystery,\nand contempt of all obvious good.  Between this sunken pride\nand the towering humilities of heaven there are, one must suppose,\nspirits of shapes and sizes.  Man, in encountering them,\nmust make much the same mistakes that he makes in encountering\nany other varied types in any other distant continent.  It must\nbe hard at first to know who is supreme and who is subordinate.\nIf a shade arose from the under world, and stared at Piccadilly,\nthat shade would not quite understand the idea of an ordinary\nclosed carriage.  He would suppose that the coachman on the box\nwas a triumphant conqueror, dragging behind him a kicking and\nimprisoned captive.  So, if we see spiritual facts for the first time,\nwe may mistake who is uppermost.  It is not enough to find the gods;\nthey are obvious; we must find God, the real chief of the gods.\nWe must have a long historic experience in supernatural phenomena--\nin order to discover which are really natural.  In this light I\nfind the history of Christianity, and even of its Hebrew origins,\nquite practical and clear.  It does not trouble me to be told\nthat the Hebrew god was one among many.  I know he was, without any\nresearch to tell me so.  Jehovah and Baal looked equally important,\njust as the sun and the moon looked the same size.  It is only\nslowly that we learn that the sun is immeasurably our master,\nand the small moon only our satellite.  Believing that there\nis a world of spirits, I shall walk in it as I do in the world\nof men, looking for the thing that I like and think good.\nJust as I should seek in a desert for clean water, or toil at\nthe North Pole to make a comfortable fire, so I shall search the\nland of void and vision until I find something fresh like water,\nand comforting like fire; until I find some place in eternity,\nwhere I am literally at home.  And there is only one such place to\nbe found.\n\n     I have now said enough to show (to any one to whom such\nan explanation is essential) that I have in the ordinary arena\nof apologetics, a ground of belief.  In pure records of experiment (if\nthese be taken democratically without contempt or favour) there is\nevidence first, that miracles happen, and second that the nobler\nmiracles belong to our tradition.  But I will not pretend that this curt\ndiscussion is my real reason for accepting Christianity instead of taking\nthe moral good of Christianity as I should take it out of Confucianism.\n\n     I have another far more solid and central ground for submitting\nto it as a faith, instead of merely picking up hints from it\nas a scheme.  And that is this:  that the Christian Church in its\npractical relation to my soul is a living teacher, not a dead one.\nIt not only certainly taught me yesterday, but will almost certainly\nteach me to-morrow. Once I saw suddenly the meaning of the shape\nof the cross; some day I may see suddenly the meaning of the shape\nof the mitre.  One fine morning I saw why windows were pointed;\nsome fine morning I may see why priests were shaven.  Plato has\ntold you a truth; but Plato is dead.  Shakespeare has startled you\nwith an image; but Shakespeare will not startle you with any more.\nBut imagine what it would be to live with such men still living,\nto know that Plato might break out with an original lecture to-morrow,\nor that at any moment Shakespeare might shatter everything with a\nsingle song.  The man who lives in contact with what he believes\nto be a living Church is a man always expecting to meet Plato\nand Shakespeare to-morrow at breakfast.  He is always expecting\nto see some truth that he has never seen before.  There is one\nonly other parallel to this position; and that is the parallel\nof the life in which we all began.  When your father told you,\nwalking about the garden, that bees stung or that roses smelt sweet,\nyou did not talk of taking the best out of his philosophy.  When the\nbees stung you, you did not call it an entertaining coincidence.\nWhen the rose smelt sweet you did not say \"My father is a rude,\nbarbaric symbol, enshrining (perhaps unconsciously) the deep\ndelicate truths that flowers smell.\"  No: you believed your father,\nbecause you had found him to be a living fountain of facts, a thing\nthat really knew more than you; a thing that would tell you truth\nto-morrow, as well as to-day. And if this was true of your father,\nit was even truer of your mother; at least it was true of mine,\nto whom this book is dedicated.  Now, when society is in a rather\nfutile fuss about the subjection of women, will no one say how much\nevery man owes to the tyranny and privilege of women, to the fact\nthat they alone rule education until education becomes futile:\nfor a boy is only sent to be taught at school when it is too late\nto teach him anything.  The real thing has been done already,\nand thank God it is nearly always done by women.  Every man\nis womanised, merely by being born.  They talk of the masculine woman;\nbut every man is a feminised man.  And if ever men walk to Westminster\nto protest against this female privilege, I shall not join\ntheir procession.\n\n     For I remember with certainty this fixed psychological fact;\nthat the very time when I was most under a woman's authority,\nI was most full of flame and adventure.  Exactly because when my\nmother said that ants bit they did bite, and because snow did\ncome in winter (as she said); therefore the whole world was to me\na fairyland of wonderful fulfilments, and it was like living in\nsome Hebraic age, when prophecy after prophecy came true.  I went\nout as a child into the garden, and it was a terrible place to me,\nprecisely because I had a clue to it:  if I had held no clue it would\nnot have been terrible, but tame.  A mere unmeaning wilderness is\nnot even impressive.  But the garden of childhood was fascinating,\nexactly because everything had a fixed meaning which could be found\nout in its turn.  Inch by inch I might discover what was the object\nof the ugly shape called a rake; or form some shadowy conjecture\nas to why my parents kept a cat.\n\n     So, since I have accepted Christendom as a mother and not\nmerely as a chance example, I have found Europe and the world\nonce more like the little garden where I stared at the symbolic\nshapes of cat and rake; I look at everything with the old elvish\nignorance and expectancy.  This or that rite or doctrine may look\nas ugly and extraordinary as a rake; but I have found by experience\nthat such things end somehow in grass and flowers.  A clergyman may\nbe apparently as useless as a cat, but he is also as fascinating,\nfor there must be some strange reason for his existence.  I give\none instance out of a hundred; I have not myself any instinctive\nkinship with that enthusiasm for physical virginity, which has\ncertainly been a note of historic Christianity.  But when I look\nnot at myself but at the world, I perceive that this enthusiasm\nis not only a note of Christianity, but a note of Paganism, a note\nof high human nature in many spheres.  The Greeks felt virginity\nwhen they carved Artemis, the Romans when they robed the vestals,\nthe worst and wildest of the great Elizabethan playwrights clung to\nthe literal purity of a woman as to the central pillar of the world.\nAbove all, the modern world (even while mocking sexual innocence)\nhas flung itself into a generous idolatry of sexual innocence--\nthe great modern worship of children.  For any man who loves children\nwill agree that their peculiar beauty is hurt by a hint of physical sex.\nWith all this human experience, allied with the Christian authority,\nI simply conclude that I am wrong, and the church right; or rather\nthat I am defective, while the church is universal.  It takes\nall sorts to make a church; she does not ask me to be celibate.\nBut the fact that I have no appreciation of the celibates,\nI accept like the fact that I have no ear for music.  The best\nhuman experience is against me, as it is on the subject of Bach.\nCelibacy is one flower in my father's garden, of which I have\nnot been told the sweet or terrible name.  But I may be told it\nany day.\n\n     This, therefore, is, in conclusion, my reason for accepting\nthe religion and not merely the scattered and secular truths out\nof the religion.  I do it because the thing has not merely told this\ntruth or that truth, but has revealed itself as a truth-telling thing.\nAll other philosophies say the things that plainly seem to be true;\nonly this philosophy has again and again said the thing that does\nnot seem to be true, but is true.  Alone of all creeds it is\nconvincing where it is not attractive; it turns out to be right,\nlike my father in the garden.  Theosophists for instance will preach\nan obviously attractive idea like re-incarnation; but if we wait\nfor its logical results, they are spiritual superciliousness and the\ncruelty of caste.  For if a man is a beggar by his own pre-natal sins,\npeople will tend to despise the beggar.  But Christianity preaches\nan obviously unattractive idea, such as original sin; but when we\nwait for its results, they are pathos and brotherhood, and a thunder\nof laughter and pity; for only with original sin we can at once pity\nthe beggar and distrust the king.  Men of science offer us health,\nan obvious benefit; it is only afterwards that we discover\nthat by health, they mean bodily slavery and spiritual tedium.\nOrthodoxy makes us jump by the sudden brink of hell; it is only\nafterwards that we realise that jumping was an athletic exercise\nhighly beneficial to our health.  It is only afterwards that we\nrealise that this danger is the root of all drama and romance.\nThe strongest argument for the divine grace is simply its ungraciousness.\nThe unpopular parts of Christianity turn out when examined to be\nthe very props of the people.  The outer ring of Christianity\nis a rigid guard of ethical abnegations and professional priests;\nbut inside that inhuman guard you will find the old human life\ndancing like children, and drinking wine like men; for Christianity\nis the only frame for pagan freedom.  But in the modern philosophy\nthe case is opposite; it is its outer ring that is obviously\nartistic and emancipated; its despair is within.\n\n     And its despair is this, that it does not really believe\nthat there is any meaning in the universe; therefore it cannot\nhope to find any romance; its romances will have no plots.  A man\ncannot expect any adventures in the land of anarchy.  But a man can\nexpect any number of adventures if he goes travelling in the land\nof authority.  One can find no meanings in a jungle of scepticism;\nbut the man will find more and more meanings who walks through\na forest of doctrine and design.  Here everything has a story tied\nto its tail, like the tools or pictures in my father's house;\nfor it is my father's house.  I end where I began--at the right end.\nI have entered at last the gate of all good philosophy.  I have come\ninto my second childhood.\n\n     But this larger and more adventurous Christian universe has\none final mark difficult to express; yet as a conclusion of the whole\nmatter I will attempt to express it.  All the real argument about\nreligion turns on the question of whether a man who was born upside\ndown can tell when he comes right way up.  The primary paradox of\nChristianity is that the ordinary condition of man is not his sane\nor sensible condition; that the normal itself is an abnormality.\nThat is the inmost philosophy of the Fall.  In Sir Oliver Lodge's\ninteresting new Catechism, the first two questions were:\n\"What are you?\" and \"What, then, is the meaning of the Fall of Man?\"\nI remember amusing myself by writing my own answers to the questions;\nbut I soon found that they were very broken and agnostic answers.\nTo the question, \"What are you?\"  I could only answer, \"God knows.\"\nAnd to the question, \"What is meant by the Fall?\"  I could answer\nwith complete sincerity, \"That whatever I am, I am not myself.\"\nThis is the prime paradox of our religion; something that we have\nnever in any full sense known, is not only better than ourselves,\nbut even more natural to us than ourselves.  And there is really\nno test of this except the merely experimental one with which these\npages began, the test of the padded cell and the open door.  It is only\nsince I have known orthodoxy that I have known mental emancipation.\nBut, in conclusion, it has one special application to the ultimate idea\nof joy.\n\n     It is said that Paganism is a religion of joy and Christianity\nof sorrow; it would be just as easy to prove that Paganism is pure\nsorrow and Christianity pure joy.  Such conflicts mean nothing and\nlead nowhere.  Everything human must have in it both joy and sorrow;\nthe only matter of interest is the manner in which the two things\nare balanced or divided.  And the really interesting thing is this,\nthat the pagan was (in the main) happier and happier as he approached\nthe earth, but sadder and sadder as he approached the heavens.\nThe gaiety of the best Paganism, as in the playfulness of Catullus\nor Theocritus, is, indeed, an eternal gaiety never to be forgotten\nby a grateful humanity.  But it is all a gaiety about the facts of life,\nnot about its origin.  To the pagan the small things are as sweet\nas the small brooks breaking out of the mountain; but the broad things\nare as bitter as the sea.  When the pagan looks at the very core of the\ncosmos he is struck cold.  Behind the gods, who are merely despotic,\nsit the fates, who are deadly.  Nay, the fates are worse than deadly;\nthey are dead.  And when rationalists say that the ancient world\nwas more enlightened than the Christian, from their point of view\nthey are right.  For when they say \"enlightened\" they mean darkened\nwith incurable despair.  It is profoundly true that the ancient world\nwas more modern than the Christian.  The common bond is in the fact\nthat ancients and moderns have both been miserable about existence,\nabout everything, while mediaevals were happy about that at least.\nI freely grant that the pagans, like the moderns, were only miserable\nabout everything--they were quite jolly about everything else.\nI concede that the Christians of the Middle Ages were only at\npeace about everything--they were at war about everything else.\nBut if the question turn on the primary pivot of the cosmos,\nthen there was more cosmic contentment in the narrow and bloody\nstreets of Florence than in the theatre of Athens or the open garden\nof Epicurus.  Giotto lived in a gloomier town than Euripides,\nbut he lived in a gayer universe.\n\n     The mass of men have been forced to be gay about the little things,\nbut sad about the big ones.  Nevertheless (I offer my last dogma\ndefiantly) it is not native to man to be so.  Man is more himself,\nman is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him,\nand grief the superficial.  Melancholy should be an innocent interlude,\na tender and fugitive frame of mind; praise should be the permanent\npulsation of the soul.  Pessimism is at best an emotional half-holiday;\njoy is the uproarious labour by which all things live.  Yet, according to\nthe apparent estate of man as seen by the pagan or the agnostic,\nthis primary need of human nature can never be fulfilled.\nJoy ought to be expansive; but for the agnostic it must be contracted,\nit must cling to one corner of the world.  Grief ought to be\na concentration; but for the agnostic its desolation is spread\nthrough an unthinkable eternity.  This is what I call being born\nupside down.  The sceptic may truly be said to be topsy-turvy;\nfor his feet are dancing upwards in idle ecstasies, while his brain\nis in the abyss.  To the modern man the heavens are actually below\nthe earth.  The explanation is simple; he is standing on his head;\nwhich is a very weak pedestal to stand on.  But when he has found\nhis feet again he knows it.  Christianity satisfies suddenly\nand perfectly man's ancestral instinct for being the right way up;\nsatisfies it supremely in this; that by its creed joy becomes\nsomething gigantic and sadness something special and small.\nThe vault above us is not deaf because the universe is an idiot;\nthe silence is not the heartless silence of an endless and aimless world.\nRather the silence around us is a small and pitiful stillness like\nthe prompt stillness in a sick-room. We are perhaps permitted tragedy\nas a sort of merciful comedy:  because the frantic energy of divine\nthings would knock us down like a drunken farce.  We can take our\nown tears more lightly than we could take the tremendous levities\nof the angels.  So we sit perhaps in a starry chamber of silence,\nwhile the laughter of the heavens is too loud for us to hear.\n\n     Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic\nsecret of the Christian.  And as I close this chaotic volume I open\nagain the strange small book from which all Christianity came; and I\nam again haunted by a kind of confirmation.  The tremendous figure\nwhich fills the Gospels towers in this respect, as in every other,\nabove all the thinkers who ever thought themselves tall.  His pathos\nwas natural, almost casual.  The Stoics, ancient and modern,\nwere proud of concealing their tears.  He never concealed His tears;\nHe showed them plainly on His open face at any daily sight, such as\nthe far sight of His native city.  Yet He concealed something.\nSolemn supermen and imperial diplomatists are proud of restraining\ntheir anger.  He never restrained His anger.  He flung furniture\ndown the front steps of the Temple, and asked men how they expected\nto escape the damnation of Hell.  Yet He restrained something.\nI say it with reverence; there was in that shattering personality\na thread that must be called shyness.  There was something that He hid\nfrom all men when He went up a mountain to pray.  There was something\nthat He covered constantly by abrupt silence or impetuous isolation.\nThere was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when\nHe walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was\nHis mirth.","title":"Orthodoxy","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":63819}