Orthodoxy

ORTHODOXY

BY

GILBERT K. CHESTERTON

PREFACE

This book is meant to be a companion to “Heretics,” and to put the positive side in addition to the negative. Many critics complained of the book called “Heretics” because it merely criticised current philosophies without offering any alternative philosophy. This book is an attempt to answer the challenge. It is unavoidably affirmative and therefore unavoidably autobiographical. The writer has been driven back upon somewhat the same difficulty as that which beset Newman in writing his Apologia; he has been forced to be egotistical only in order to be sincere. While everything else may be different the motive in both cases is the same. It is the purpose of the writer to attempt an explanation, not of whether the Christian Faith can be believed, but of how he personally has come to believe it. The book is therefore arranged upon the positive principle of a riddle and its answer. It deals first with all the writer’s own solitary and sincere speculations and then with all the startling style in which they were all suddenly satisfied by the Christian Theology. The writer regards it as amounting to a convincing creed. But if it is not that it is at least a repeated and surprising coincidence.

Gilbert K. Chesterton.

CONTENTS

I. Introduction in Defence of Everything Else

II. The Maniac

III. The Suicide of Thought

IV. The Ethics of Elfland

V. The Flag of the World

VI. The Paradoxes of Christianity

VII. The Eternal Revolution

VIII. The Romance of Orthodoxy

IX. Authority and the Adventurer

ORTHODOXY

I INTRODUCTION IN DEFENCE OF EVERYTHING ELSE

THE only possible excuse for this book is that it is an answer to a challenge. Even a bad shot is dignified when he accepts a duel. When some time ago I published a series of hasty but sincere papers, under the name of “Heretics,” several critics for whose intellect I have a warm respect (I may mention specially Mr. G.S.Street) said that it was all very well for me to tell everybody to affirm his cosmic theory, but that I had carefully avoided supporting my precepts with example. “I will begin to worry about my philosophy,” said Mr. Street, “when Mr. Chesterton has given us his.” It was perhaps an incautious suggestion to make to a person only too ready to write books upon the feeblest provocation. But after all, though Mr. Street has inspired and created this book, he need not read it. If he does read it, he will find that in its pages I have attempted in a vague and personal way, in a set of mental pictures rather than in a series of deductions, to state the philosophy in which I have come to believe. I will not call it my philosophy; for I did not make it. God and humanity made it; and it made me.

I have often had a fancy for writing a romance about an English yachtsman who slightly miscalculated his course and discovered England under the impression that it was a new island in the South Seas. I always find, however, that I am either too busy or too lazy to write this fine work, so I may as well give it away for the purposes of philosophical illustration. There will probably be a general impression that the man who landed (armed to the teeth and talking by signs) to plant the British flag on that barbaric temple which turned out to be the Pavilion at Brighton, felt rather a fool. I am not here concerned to deny that he looked a fool. But if you imagine that he felt a fool, or at any rate that the sense of folly was his sole or his dominant emotion, then you have not studied with sufficient delicacy the rich romantic nature of the hero of this tale. His mistake was really a most enviable mistake; and he knew it, if he was the man I take him for. What could be more delightful than to have in the same few minutes all the fascinating terrors of going abroad combined with all the humane security of coming home again? What could be better than to have all the fun of discovering South Africa without the disgusting necessity of landing there? What could be more glorious than to brace one’s self up to discover New South Wales and then realize, with a gush of happy tears, that it was really old South Wales. This at least seems to me the main problem for philosophers, and is in a manner the main problem of this book. How can we contrive to be at once astonished at the world and yet at home in it? How can this queer cosmic town, with its many-legged citizens, with its monstrous and ancient lamps, how can this world give us at once the fascination of a strange town and the comfort and honour of being our own town?

To show that a faith or a philosophy is true from every standpoint would be too big an undertaking even for a much bigger book than this; it is necessary to follow one path of argument; and this is the path that I here propose to follow. I wish to set forth my faith as particularly answering this double spiritual need, the need for that mixture of the familiar and the unfamiliar which Christendom has rightly named romance. For the very word “romance” has in it the mystery and ancient meaning of Rome. Any one setting out to dispute anything ought always to begin by saying what he does not dispute. Beyond stating what he proposes to prove he should always state what he does not propose to prove. The thing I do not propose to prove, the thing I propose to take as common ground between myself and any average reader, is this desirability of an active and imaginative life, picturesque and full of a poetical curiosity, a life such as western man at any rate always seems to have desired. If a man says that extinction is better than existence or blank existence better than variety and adventure, then he is not one of the ordinary people to whom I am talking. If a man prefers nothing I can give him nothing. But nearly all people I have ever met in this western society in which I live would agree to the general proposition that we need this life of practical romance; the combination of something that is strange with something that is secure. We need so to view the world as to combine an idea of wonder and an idea of welcome. We need to be happy in this wonderland without once being merely comfortable. It is THIS achievement of my creed that I shall chiefly pursue in these pages.

But I have a peculiar reason for mentioning the man in a yacht, who discovered England. For I am that man in a yacht. I discovered England. I do not see how this book can avoid being egotistical; and I do not quite see (to tell the truth) how it can avoid being dull. Dulness will, however, free me from the charge which I most lament; the charge of being flippant. Mere light sophistry is the thing that I happen to despise most of all things, and it is perhaps a wholesome fact that this is the thing of which I am generally accused. I know nothing so contemptible as a mere paradox; a mere ingenious defence of the indefensible. If it were true (as has been said) that Mr. Bernard Shaw lived upon paradox, then he ought to be a mere common millionaire; for a man of his mental activity could invent a sophistry every six minutes. It is as easy as lying; because it is lying. The truth is, of course, that Mr. Shaw is cruelly hampered by the fact that he cannot tell any lie unless he thinks it is the truth. I find myself under the same intolerable bondage. I never in my life said anything merely because I thought it funny; though of course, I have had ordinary human vainglory, and may have thought it funny because I had said it. It is one thing to describe an interview with a gorgon or a griffin, a creature who does not exist. It is another thing to discover that the rhinoceros does exist and then take pleasure in the fact that he looks as if he didn’t. One searches for truth, but it may be that one pursues instinctively the more extraordinary truths. And I offer this book with the heartiest sentiments to all the jolly people who hate what I write, and regard it (very justly, for all I know), as a piece of poor clowning or a single tiresome joke.

For if this book is a joke it is a joke against me. I am the man who with the utmost daring discovered what had been discovered before. If there is an element of farce in what follows, the farce is at my own expense; for this book explains how I fancied I was the first to set foot in Brighton and then found I was the last. It recounts my elephantine adventures in pursuit of the obvious. No one can think my case more ludicrous than I think it myself; no reader can accuse me here of trying to make a fool of him: I am the fool of this story, and no rebel shall hurl me from my throne. I freely confess all the idiotic ambitions of the end of the nineteenth century. I did, like all other solemn little boys, try to be in advance of the age. Like them I tried to be some ten minutes in advance of the truth. And I found that I was eighteen hundred years behind it. I did strain my voice with a painfully juvenile exaggeration in uttering my truths. And I was punished in the fittest and funniest way, for I have kept my truths: but I have discovered, not that they were not truths, but simply that they were not mine. When I fancied that I stood alone I was really in the ridiculous position of being backed up by all Christendom. It may be, Heaven forgive me, that I did try to be original; but I only succeeded in inventing all by myself an inferior copy of the existing traditions of civilized religion. The man from the yacht thought he was the first to find England; I thought I was the first to find Europe. I did try to found a heresy of my own; and when I had put the last touches to it, I discovered that it was orthodoxy.

It may be that somebody will be entertained by the account of this happy fiasco. It might amuse a friend or an enemy to read how I gradually learnt from the truth of some stray legend or from the falsehood of some dominant philosophy, things that I might have learnt from my catechism—if I had ever learnt it. There may or may not be some entertainment in reading how I found at last in an anarchist club or a Babylonian temple what I might have found in the nearest parish church. If any one is entertained by learning how the flowers of the field or the phrases in an omnibus, the accidents of politics or the pains of youth came together in a certain order to produce a certain conviction of Christian orthodoxy, he may possibly read this book. But there is in everything a reasonable division of labour. I have written the book, and nothing on earth would induce me to read it.

I add one purely pedantic note which comes, as a note naturally should, at the beginning of the book. These essays are concerned only to discuss the actual fact that the central Christian theology (sufficiently summarized in the Apostles’ Creed) is the best root of energy and sound ethics. They are not intended to discuss the very fascinating but quite different question of what is the present seat of authority for the proclamation of that creed. When the word “orthodoxy” is used here it means the Apostles’ Creed, as understood by everybody calling himself Christian until a very short time ago and the general historic conduct of those who held such a creed. I have been forced by mere space to confine myself to what I have got from this creed; I do not touch the matter much disputed among modern Christians, of where we ourselves got it. This is not an ecclesiastical treatise but a sort of slovenly autobiography. But if any one wants my opinions about the actual nature of the authority, Mr. G.S.Street has only to throw me another challenge, and I will write him another book.

II THE MANIAC

Thoroughly worldly people never understand even the world; they rely altogether on a few cynical maxims which are not true. Once I remember walking with a prosperous publisher, who made a remark which I had often heard before; it is, indeed, almost a motto of the modern world. Yet I had heard it once too often, and I saw suddenly that there was nothing in it. The publisher said of somebody, “That man will get on; he believes in himself.” And I remember that as I lifted my head to listen, my eye caught an omnibus on which was written “Hanwell.” I said to him, “Shall I tell you where the men are who believe most in themselves? For I can tell you. I know of men who believe in themselves more colossally than Napoleon or Caesar. I know where flames the fixed star of certainty and success. I can guide you to the thrones of the Super-men. The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums.” He said mildly that there were a good many men after all who believed in themselves and who were not in lunatic asylums. “Yes, there are,” I retorted, “and you of all men ought to know them. That drunken poet from whom you would not take a dreary tragedy, he believed in himself. That elderly minister with an epic from whom you were hiding in a back room, he believed in himself. If you consulted your business experience instead of your ugly individualistic philosophy, you would know that believing in himself is one of the commonest signs of a rotter. Actors who can’t act believe in themselves; and debtors who won’t pay. It would be much truer to say that a man will certainly fail, because he believes in himself. Complete self-confidence is not merely a sin; complete self-confidence is a weakness. Believing utterly in one’s self is a hysterical and superstitious belief like believing in Joanna Southcote: the man who has it has ‘Hanwell’ written on his face as plain as it is written on that omnibus.” And to all this my friend the publisher made this very deep and effective reply, “Well, if a man is not to believe in himself, in what is he to believe?” After a long pause I replied, “I will go home and write a book in answer to that question.” This is the book that I have written in answer to it.

But I think this book may well start where our argument started —in the neighbourhood of the mad-house. Modern masters of science are much impressed with the need of beginning all inquiry with a fact. The ancient masters of religion were quite equally impressed with that necessity. They began with the fact of sin—a fact as practical as potatoes. Whether or no man could be washed in miraculous waters, there was no doubt at any rate that he wanted washing. But certain religious leaders in London, not mere materialists, have begun in our day not to deny the highly disputable water, but to deny the indisputable dirt. Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved. Some followers of the Reverend R.J.Campbell, in their almost too fastidious spirituality, admit divine sinlessness, which they cannot see even in their dreams. But they essentially deny human sin, which they can see in the street. The strongest saints and the strongest sceptics alike took positive evil as the starting-point of their argument. If it be true (as it certainly is) that a man can feel exquisite happiness in skinning a cat, then the religious philosopher can only draw one of two deductions. He must either deny the existence of God, as all atheists do; or he must deny the present union between God and man, as all Christians do. The new theologians seem to think it a highly rationalistic solution to deny the cat.

In this remarkable situation it is plainly not now possible (with any hope of a universal appeal) to start, as our fathers did, with the fact of sin. This very fact which was to them (and is to me) as plain as a pikestaff, is the very fact that has been specially diluted or denied. But though moderns deny the existence of sin, I do not think that they have yet denied the existence of a lunatic asylum. We all agree still that there is a collapse of the intellect as unmistakable as a falling house. Men deny hell, but not, as yet, Hanwell. For the purpose of our primary argument the one may very well stand where the other stood. I mean that as all thoughts and theories were once judged by whether they tended to make a man lose his soul, so for our present purpose all modern thoughts and theories may be judged by whether they tend to make a man lose his wits.

It is true that some speak lightly and loosely of insanity as in itself attractive. But a moment’s thought will show that if disease is beautiful, it is generally some one else’s disease. A blind man may be picturesque; but it requires two eyes to see the picture. And similarly even the wildest poetry of insanity can only be enjoyed by the sane. To the insane man his insanity is quite prosaic, because it is quite true. A man who thinks himself a chicken is to himself as ordinary as a chicken. A man who thinks he is a bit of glass is to himself as dull as a bit of glass. It is the homogeneity of his mind which makes him dull, and which makes him mad. It is only because we see the irony of his idea that we think him even amusing; it is only because he does not see the irony of his idea that he is put in Hanwell at all. In short, oddities only strike ordinary people. Oddities do not strike odd people. This is why ordinary people have a much more exciting time; while odd people are always complaining of the dulness of life. This is also why the new novels die so quickly, and why the old fairy tales endure for ever. The old fairy tale makes the hero a normal human boy; it is his adventures that are startling; they startle him because he is normal. But in the modern psychological novel the hero is abnormal; the centre is not central. Hence the fiercest adventures fail to affect him adequately, and the book is monotonous. You can make a story out of a hero among dragons; but not out of a dragon among dragons. The fairy tale discusses what a sane man will do in a mad world. The sober realistic novel of to-day discusses what an essential lunatic will do in a dull world.

Let us begin, then, with the mad-house; from this evil and fantastic inn let us set forth on our intellectual journey. Now, if we are to glance at the philosophy of sanity, the first thing to do in the matter is to blot out one big and common mistake. There is a notion adrift everywhere that imagination, especially mystical imagination, is dangerous to man’s mental balance. Poets are commonly spoken of as psychologically unreliable; and generally there is a vague association between wreathing laurels in your hair and sticking straws in it. Facts and history utterly contradict this view. Most of the very great poets have been not only sane, but extremely business-like; and if Shakespeare ever really held horses, it was because he was much the safest man to hold them. Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination. Artistic paternity is as wholesome as physical paternity. Moreover, it is worthy of remark that when a poet really was morbid it was commonly because he had some weak spot of rationality on his brain. Poe, for instance, really was morbid; not because he was poetical, but because he was specially analytical. Even chess was too poetical for him; he disliked chess because it was full of knights and castles, like a poem. He avowedly preferred the black discs of draughts, because they were more like the mere black dots on a diagram. Perhaps the strongest case of all is this: that only one great English poet went mad, Cowper. And he was definitely driven mad by logic, by the ugly and alien logic of predestination. Poetry was not the disease, but the medicine; poetry partly kept him in health. He could sometimes forget the red and thirsty hell to which his hideous necessitarianism dragged him among the wide waters and the white flat lilies of the Ouse. He was damned by John Calvin; he was almost saved by John Gilpin. Everywhere we see that men do not go mad by dreaming. Critics are much madder than poets. Homer is complete and calm enough; it is his critics who tear him into extravagant tatters. Shakespeare is quite himself; it is only some of his critics who have discovered that he was somebody else. And though St. John the Evangelist saw many strange monsters in his vision, he saw no creature so wild as one of his own commentators. The general fact is simple. Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite. The result is mental exhaustion, like the physical exhaustion of Mr. Holbein. To accept everything is an exercise, to understand everything a strain. The poet only desires exaltation and expansion, a world to stretch himself in. The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.

It is a small matter, but not irrelevant, that this striking mistake is commonly supported by a striking misquotation. We have all heard people cite the celebrated line of Dryden as “Great genius is to madness near allied.” But Dryden did not say that great genius was to madness near allied. Dryden was a great genius himself, and knew better. It would have been hard to find a man more romantic than he, or more sensible. What Dryden said was this, “Great wits are oft to madness near allied”; and that is true. It is the pure promptitude of the intellect that is in peril of a breakdown. Also people might remember of what sort of man Dryden was talking. He was not talking of any unworldly visionary like Vaughan or George Herbert. He was talking of a cynical man of the world, a sceptic, a diplomatist, a great practical politician. Such men are indeed to madness near allied. Their incessant calculation of their own brains and other people’s brains is a dangerous trade. It is always perilous to the mind to reckon up the mind. A flippant person has asked why we say, “As mad as a hatter.” A more flippant person might answer that a hatter is mad because he has to measure the human head.

And if great reasoners are often maniacal, it is equally true that maniacs are commonly great reasoners. When I was engaged in a controversy with the CLARION on the matter of free will, that able writer Mr. R.B.Suthers said that free will was lunacy, because it meant causeless actions, and the actions of a lunatic would be causeless. I do not dwell here upon the disastrous lapse in determinist logic. Obviously if any actions, even a lunatic’s, can be causeless, determinism is done for. If the chain of causation can be broken for a madman, it can be broken for a man. But my purpose is to point out something more practical. It was natural, perhaps, that a modern Marxian Socialist should not know anything about free will. But it was certainly remarkable that a modern Marxian Socialist should not know anything about lunatics. Mr. Suthers evidently did not know anything about lunatics. The last thing that can be said of a lunatic is that his actions are causeless. If any human acts may loosely be called causeless, they are the minor acts of a healthy man; whistling as he walks; slashing the grass with a stick; kicking his heels or rubbing his hands. It is the happy man who does the useless things; the sick man is not strong enough to be idle. It is exactly such careless and causeless actions that the madman could never understand; for the madman (like the determinist) generally sees too much cause in everything. The madman would read a conspiratorial significance into those empty activities. He would think that the lopping of the grass was an attack on private property. He would think that the kicking of the heels was a signal to an accomplice. If the madman could for an instant become careless, he would become sane. Every one who has had the misfortune to talk with people in the heart or on the edge of mental disorder, knows that their most sinister quality is a horrible clarity of detail; a connecting of one thing with another in a map more elaborate than a maze. If you argue with a madman, it is extremely probable that you will get the worst of it; for in many ways his mind moves all the quicker for not being delayed by the things that go with good judgment. He is not hampered by a sense of humour or by charity, or by the dumb certainties of experience. He is the more logical for losing certain sane affections. Indeed, the common phrase for insanity is in this respect a misleading one. The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.

The madman’s explanation of a thing is always complete, and often in a purely rational sense satisfactory. Or, to speak more strictly, the insane explanation, if not conclusive, is at least unanswerable; this may be observed specially in the two or three commonest kinds of madness. If a man says (for instance) that men have a conspiracy against him, you cannot dispute it except by saying that all the men deny that they are conspirators; which is exactly what conspirators would do. His explanation covers the facts as much as yours. Or if a man says that he is the rightful King of England, it is no complete answer to say that the existing authorities call him mad; for if he were King of England that might be the wisest thing for the existing authorities to do. Or if a man says that he is Jesus Christ, it is no answer to tell him that the world denies his divinity; for the world denied Christ’s.

Nevertheless he is wrong. But if we attempt to trace his error in exact terms, we shall not find it quite so easy as we had supposed. Perhaps the nearest we can get to expressing it is to say this: that his mind moves in a perfect but narrow circle. A small circle is quite as infinite as a large circle; but, though it is quite as infinite, it is not so large. In the same way the insane explanation is quite as complete as the sane one, but it is not so large. A bullet is quite as round as the world, but it is not the world. There is such a thing as a narrow universality; there is such a thing as a small and cramped eternity; you may see it in many modern religions. Now, speaking quite externally and empirically, we may say that the strongest and most unmistakable MARK of madness is this combination between a logical completeness and a spiritual contraction. The lunatic’s theory explains a large number of things, but it does not explain them in a large way. I mean that if you or I were dealing with a mind that was growing morbid, we should be chiefly concerned not so much to give it arguments as to give it air, to convince it that there was something cleaner and cooler outside the suffocation of a single argument. Suppose, for instance, it were the first case that I took as typical; suppose it were the case of a man who accused everybody of conspiring against him. If we could express our deepest feelings of protest and appeal against this obsession, I suppose we should say something like this: “Oh, I admit that you have your case and have it by heart, and that many things do fit into other things as you say. I admit that your explanation explains a great deal; but what a great deal it leaves out! Are there no other stories in the world except yours; and are all men busy with your business? Suppose we grant the details; perhaps when the man in the street did not seem to see you it was only his cunning; perhaps when the policeman asked you your name it was only because he knew it already. But how much happier you would be if you only knew that these people cared nothing about you! How much larger your life would be if your self could become smaller in it; if you could really look at other men with common curiosity and pleasure; if you could see them walking as they are in their sunny selfishness and their virile indifference! You would begin to be interested in them, because they were not interested in you. You would break out of this tiny and tawdry theatre in which your own little plot is always being played, and you would find yourself under a freer sky, in a street full of splendid strangers.” Or suppose it were the second case of madness, that of a man who claims the crown, your impulse would be to answer, “All right! Perhaps you know that you are the King of England; but why do you care? Make one magnificent effort and you will be a human being and look down on all the kings of the earth.” Or it might be the third case, of the madman who called himself Christ. If we said what we felt, we should say, “So you are the Creator and Redeemer of the world: but what a small world it must be! What a little heaven you must inhabit, with angels no bigger than butterflies! How sad it must be to be God; and an inadequate God! Is there really no life fuller and no love more marvellous than yours; and is it really in your small and painful pity that all flesh must put its faith? How much happier you would be, how much more of you there would be, if the hammer of a higher God could smash your small cosmos, scattering the stars like spangles, and leave you in the open, free like other men to look up as well as down!”

And it must be remembered that the most purely practical science does take this view of mental evil; it does not seek to argue with it like a heresy but simply to snap it like a spell. Neither modern science nor ancient religion believes in complete free thought. Theology rebukes certain thoughts by calling them blasphemous. Science rebukes certain thoughts by calling them morbid. For example, some religious societies discouraged men more or less from thinking about sex. The new scientific society definitely discourages men from thinking about death; it is a fact, but it is considered a morbid fact. And in dealing with those whose morbidity has a touch of mania, modern science cares far less for pure logic than a dancing Dervish. In these cases it is not enough that the unhappy man should desire truth; he must desire health. Nothing can save him but a blind hunger for normality, like that of a beast. A man cannot think himself out of mental evil; for it is actually the organ of thought that has become diseased, ungovernable, and, as it were, independent. He can only be saved by will or faith. The moment his mere reason moves, it moves in the old circular rut; he will go round and round his logical circle, just as a man in a third-class carriage on the Inner Circle will go round and round the Inner Circle unless he performs the voluntary, vigorous, and mystical act of getting out at Gower Street. Decision is the whole business here; a door must be shut for ever. Every remedy is a desperate remedy. Every cure is a miraculous cure. Curing a madman is not arguing with a philosopher; it is casting out a devil. And however quietly doctors and psychologists may go to work in the matter, their attitude is profoundly intolerant—as intolerant as Bloody Mary. Their attitude is really this: that the man must stop thinking, if he is to go on living. Their counsel is one of intellectual amputation. If thy HEAD offend thee, cut it off; for it is better, not merely to enter the Kingdom of Heaven as a child, but to enter it as an imbecile, rather than with your whole intellect to be cast into hell —or into Hanwell.

Such is the madman of experience; he is commonly a reasoner, frequently a successful reasoner. Doubtless he could be vanquished in mere reason, and the case against him put logically. But it can be put much more precisely in more general and even aesthetic terms. He is in the clean and well-lit prison of one idea: he is sharpened to one painful point. He is without healthy hesitation and healthy complexity. Now, as I explain in the introduction, I have determined in these early chapters to give not so much a diagram of a doctrine as some pictures of a point of view. And I have described at length my vision of the maniac for this reason: that just as I am affected by the maniac, so I am affected by most modern thinkers. That unmistakable mood or note that I hear from Hanwell, I hear also from half the chairs of science and seats of learning to-day; and most of the mad doctors are mad doctors in more senses than one. They all have exactly that combination we have noted: the combination of an expansive and exhaustive reason with a contracted common sense. They are universal only in the sense that they take one thin explanation and carry it very far. But a pattern can stretch for ever and still be a small pattern. They see a chess-board white on black, and if the universe is paved with it, it is still white on black. Like the lunatic, they cannot alter their standpoint; they cannot make a mental effort and suddenly see it black on white.

Take first the more obvious case of materialism. As an explanation of the world, materialism has a sort of insane simplicity. It has just the quality of the madman’s argument; we have at once the sense of it covering everything and the sense of it leaving everything out. Contemplate some able and sincere materialist, as, for instance, Mr. McCabe, and you will have exactly this unique sensation. He understands everything, and everything does not seem worth understanding. His cosmos may be complete in every rivet and cog-wheel, but still his cosmos is smaller than our world. Somehow his scheme, like the lucid scheme of the madman, seems unconscious of the alien energies and the large indifference of the earth; it is not thinking of the real things of the earth, of fighting peoples or proud mothers, or first love or fear upon the sea. The earth is so very large, and the cosmos is so very small. The cosmos is about the smallest hole that a man can hide his head in.

It must be understood that I am not now discussing the relation of these creeds to truth; but, for the present, solely their relation to health. Later in the argument I hope to attack the question of objective verity; here I speak only of a phenomenon of psychology. I do not for the present attempt to prove to Haeckel that materialism is untrue, any more than I attempted to prove to the man who thought he was Christ that he was labouring under an error. I merely remark here on the fact that both cases have the same kind of completeness and the same kind of incompleteness. You can explain a man’s detention at Hanwell by an indifferent public by saying that it is the crucifixion of a god of whom the world is not worthy. The explanation does explain. Similarly you may explain the order in the universe by saying that all things, even the souls of men, are leaves inevitably unfolding on an utterly unconscious tree—the blind destiny of matter. The explanation does explain, though not, of course, so completely as the madman’s. But the point here is that the normal human mind not only objects to both, but feels to both the same objection. Its approximate statement is that if the man in Hanwell is the real God, he is not much of a god. And, similarly, if the cosmos of the materialist is the real cosmos, it is not much of a cosmos. The thing has shrunk. The deity is less divine than many men; and (according to Haeckel) the whole of life is something much more grey, narrow, and trivial than many separate aspects of it. The parts seem greater than the whole.

For we must remember that the materialist philosophy (whether true or not) is certainly much more limiting than any religion. In one sense, of course, all intelligent ideas are narrow. They cannot be broader than themselves. A Christian is only restricted in the same sense that an atheist is restricted. He cannot think Christianity false and continue to be a Christian; and the atheist cannot think atheism false and continue to be an atheist. But as it happens, there is a very special sense in which materialism has more restrictions than spiritualism. Mr. McCabe thinks me a slave because I am not allowed to believe in determinism. I think Mr. McCabe a slave because he is not allowed to believe in fairies. But if we examine the two vetoes we shall see that his is really much more of a pure veto than mine. The Christian is quite free to believe that there is a considerable amount of settled order and inevitable development in the universe. But the materialist is not allowed to admit into his spotless machine the slightest speck of spiritualism or miracle. Poor Mr. McCabe is not allowed to retain even the tiniest imp, though it might be hiding in a pimpernel. The Christian admits that the universe is manifold and even miscellaneous, just as a sane man knows that he is complex. The sane man knows that he has a touch of the beast, a touch of the devil, a touch of the saint, a touch of the citizen. Nay, the really sane man knows that he has a touch of the madman. But the materialist’s world is quite simple and solid, just as the madman is quite sure he is sane. The materialist is sure that history has been simply and solely a chain of causation, just as the interesting person before mentioned is quite sure that he is simply and solely a chicken. Materialists and madmen never have doubts.

Spiritual doctrines do not actually limit the mind as do materialistic denials. Even if I believe in immortality I need not think about it. But if I disbelieve in immortality I must not think about it. In the first case the road is open and I can go as far as I like; in the second the road is shut. But the case is even stronger, and the parallel with madness is yet more strange. For it was our case against the exhaustive and logical theory of the lunatic that, right or wrong, it gradually destroyed his humanity. Now it is the charge against the main deductions of the materialist that, right or wrong, they gradually destroy his humanity; I do not mean only kindness, I mean hope, courage, poetry, initiative, all that is human. For instance, when materialism leads men to complete fatalism (as it generally does), it is quite idle to pretend that it is in any sense a liberating force. It is absurd to say that you are especially advancing freedom when you only use free thought to destroy free will. The determinists come to bind, not to loose. They may well call their law the “chain” of causation. It is the worst chain that ever fettered a human being. You may use the language of liberty, if you like, about materialistic teaching, but it is obvious that this is just as inapplicable to it as a whole as the same language when applied to a man locked up in a mad-house. You may say, if you like, that the man is free to think himself a poached egg. But it is surely a more massive and important fact that if he is a poached egg he is not free to eat, drink, sleep, walk, or smoke a cigarette. Similarly you may say, if you like, that the bold determinist speculator is free to disbelieve in the reality of the will. But it is a much more massive and important fact that he is not free to raise, to curse, to thank, to justify, to urge, to punish, to resist temptations, to incite mobs, to make New Year resolutions, to pardon sinners, to rebuke tyrants, or even to say “thank you” for the mustard.

In passing from this subject I may note that there is a queer fallacy to the effect that materialistic fatalism is in some way favourable to mercy, to the abolition of cruel punishments or punishments of any kind. This is startlingly the reverse of the truth. It is quite tenable that the doctrine of necessity makes no difference at all; that it leaves the flogger flogging and the kind friend exhorting as before. But obviously if it stops either of them it stops the kind exhortation. That the sins are inevitable does not prevent punishment; if it prevents anything it prevents persuasion. Determinism is quite as likely to lead to cruelty as it is certain to lead to cowardice. Determinism is not inconsistent with the cruel treatment of criminals. What it is (perhaps) inconsistent with is the generous treatment of criminals; with any appeal to their better feelings or encouragement in their moral struggle. The determinist does not believe in appealing to the will, but he does believe in changing the environment. He must not say to the sinner, “Go and sin no more,” because the sinner cannot help it. But he can put him in boiling oil; for boiling oil is an environment. Considered as a figure, therefore, the materialist has the fantastic outline of the figure of the madman. Both take up a position at once unanswerable and intolerable.

Of course it is not only of the materialist that all this is true. The same would apply to the other extreme of speculative logic. There is a sceptic far more terrible than he who believes that everything began in matter. It is possible to meet the sceptic who believes that everything began in himself. He doubts not the existence of angels or devils, but the existence of men and cows. For him his own friends are a mythology made up by himself. He created his own father and his own mother. This horrible fancy has in it something decidedly attractive to the somewhat mystical egoism of our day. That publisher who thought that men would get on if they believed in themselves, those seekers after the Superman who are always looking for him in the looking-glass, those writers who talk about impressing their personalities instead of creating life for the world, all these people have really only an inch between them and this awful emptiness. Then when this kindly world all round the man has been blackened out like a lie; when friends fade into ghosts, and the foundations of the world fail; then when the man, believing in nothing and in no man, is alone in his own nightmare, then the great individualistic motto shall be written over him in avenging irony. The stars will be only dots in the blackness of his own brain; his mother’s face will be only a sketch from his own insane pencil on the walls of his cell. But over his cell shall be written, with dreadful truth, “He believes in himself.”

All that concerns us here, however, is to note that this panegoistic extreme of thought exhibits the same paradox as the other extreme of materialism. It is equally complete in theory and equally crippling in practice. For the sake of simplicity, it is easier to state the notion by saying that a man can believe that he is always in a dream. Now, obviously there can be no positive proof given to him that he is not in a dream, for the simple reason that no proof can be offered that might not be offered in a dream. But if the man began to burn down London and say that his housekeeper would soon call him to breakfast, we should take him and put him with other logicians in a place which has often been alluded to in the course of this chapter. The man who cannot believe his senses, and the man who cannot believe anything else, are both insane, but their insanity is proved not by any error in their argument, but by the manifest mistake of their whole lives. They have both locked themselves up in two boxes, painted inside with the sun and stars; they are both unable to get out, the one into the health and happiness of heaven, the other even into the health and happiness of the earth. Their position is quite reasonable; nay, in a sense it is infinitely reasonable, just as a threepenny bit is infinitely circular. But there is such a thing as a mean infinity, a base and slavish eternity. It is amusing to notice that many of the moderns, whether sceptics or mystics, have taken as their sign a certain eastern symbol, which is the very symbol of this ultimate nullity. When they wish to represent eternity, they represent it by a serpent with his tail in his mouth. There is a startling sarcasm in the image of that very unsatisfactory meal. The eternity of the material fatalists, the eternity of the eastern pessimists, the eternity of the supercilious theosophists and higher scientists of to-day is, indeed, very well presented by a serpent eating his tail, a degraded animal who destroys even himself.

This chapter is purely practical and is concerned with what actually is the chief mark and element of insanity; we may say in summary that it is reason used without root, reason in the void. The man who begins to think without the proper first principles goes mad; he begins to think at the wrong end. And for the rest of these pages we have to try and discover what is the right end. But we may ask in conclusion, if this be what drives men mad, what is it that keeps them sane? By the end of this book I hope to give a definite, some will think a far too definite, answer. But for the moment it is possible in the same solely practical manner to give a general answer touching what in actual human history keeps men sane. Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic. He has permitted the twilight. He has always had one foot in earth and the other in fairyland. He has always left himself free to doubt his gods; but (unlike the agnostic of to-day) free also to believe in them. He has always cared more for truth than for consistency. If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and the contradiction along with them. His spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two different pictures at once and yet sees all the better for that. Thus he has always believed that there was such a thing as fate, but such a thing as free will also. Thus he believed that children were indeed the kingdom of heaven, but nevertheless ought to be obedient to the kingdom of earth. He admired youth because it was young and age because it was not. It is exactly this balance of apparent contradictions that has been the whole buoyancy of the healthy man. The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of what he does not understand. The morbid logician seeks to make everything lucid, and succeeds in making everything mysterious. The mystic allows one thing to be mysterious, and everything else becomes lucid. The determinist makes the theory of causation quite clear, and then finds that he cannot say “if you please” to the housemaid. The Christian permits free will to remain a sacred mystery; but because of this his relations with the housemaid become of a sparkling and crystal clearness. He puts the seed of dogma in a central darkness; but it branches forth in all directions with abounding natural health. As we have taken the circle as the symbol of reason and madness, we may very well take the cross as the symbol at once of mystery and of health. Buddhism is centripetal, but Christianity is centrifugal: it breaks out. For the circle is perfect and infinite in its nature; but it is fixed for ever in its size; it can never be larger or smaller. But the cross, though it has at its heart a collision and a contradiction, can extend its four arms for ever without altering its shape. Because it has a paradox in its centre it can grow without changing. The circle returns upon itself and is bound. The cross opens its arms to the four winds; it is a signpost for free travellers.

Symbols alone are of even a cloudy value in speaking of this deep matter; and another symbol from physical nature will express sufficiently well the real place of mysticism before mankind. The one created thing which we cannot look at is the one thing in the light of which we look at everything. Like the sun at noonday, mysticism explains everything else by the blaze of its own victorious invisibility. Detached intellectualism is (in the exact sense of a popular phrase) all moonshine; for it is light without heat, and it is secondary light, reflected from a dead world. But the Greeks were right when they made Apollo the god both of imagination and of sanity; for he was both the patron of poetry and the patron of healing. Of necessary dogmas and a special creed I shall speak later. But that transcendentalism by which all men live has primarily much the position of the sun in the sky. We are conscious of it as of a kind of splendid confusion; it is something both shining and shapeless, at once a blaze and a blur. But the circle of the moon is as clear and unmistakable, as recurrent and inevitable, as the circle of Euclid on a blackboard. For the moon is utterly reasonable; and the moon is the mother of lunatics and has given to them all her name.

III THE SUICIDE OF THOUGHT

The phrases of the street are not only forcible but subtle: for a figure of speech can often get into a crack too small for a definition. Phrases like “put out” or “off colour” might have been coined by Mr. Henry James in an agony of verbal precision. And there is no more subtle truth than that of the everyday phrase about a man having “his heart in the right place.” It involves the idea of normal proportion; not only does a certain function exist, but it is rightly related to other functions. Indeed, the negation of this phrase would describe with peculiar accuracy the somewhat morbid mercy and perverse tenderness of the most representative moderns. If, for instance, I had to describe with fairness the character of Mr. Bernard Shaw, I could not express myself more exactly than by saying that he has a heroically large and generous heart; but not a heart in the right place. And this is so of the typical society of our time.

The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When a religious scheme is shattered (as Christianity was shattered at the Reformation), it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful. For example, Mr. Blatchford attacks Christianity because he is mad on one Christian virtue: the merely mystical and almost irrational virtue of charity. He has a strange idea that he will make it easier to forgive sins by saying that there are no sins to forgive. Mr. Blatchford is not only an early Christian, he is the only early Christian who ought really to have been eaten by lions. For in his case the pagan accusation is really true: his mercy would mean mere anarchy. He really is the enemy of the human race—because he is so human. As the other extreme, we may take the acrid realist, who has deliberately killed in himself all human pleasure in happy tales or in the healing of the heart. Torquemada tortured people physically for the sake of moral truth. Zola tortured people morally for the sake of physical truth. But in Torquemada’s time there was at least a system that could to some extent make righteousness and peace kiss each other. Now they do not even bow. But a much stronger case than these two of truth and pity can be found in the remarkable case of the dislocation of humility.

It is only with one aspect of humility that we are here concerned. Humility was largely meant as a restraint upon the arrogance and infinity of the appetite of man. He was always outstripping his mercies with his own newly invented needs. His very power of enjoyment destroyed half his joys. By asking for pleasure, he lost the chief pleasure; for the chief pleasure is surprise. Hence it became evident that if a man would make his world large, he must be always making himself small. Even the haughty visions, the tall cities, and the toppling pinnacles are the creations of humility. Giants that tread down forests like grass are the creations of humility. Towers that vanish upwards above the loneliest star are the creations of humility. For towers are not tall unless we look up at them; and giants are not giants unless they are larger than we. All this gigantesque imagination, which is, perhaps, the mightiest of the pleasures of man, is at bottom entirely humble. It is impossible without humility to enjoy anything—even pride.

But what we suffer from to-day is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed. Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert—himself. The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt—the Divine Reason. Huxley preached a humility content to learn from Nature. But the new sceptic is so humble that he doubts if he can even learn. Thus we should be wrong if we had said hastily that there is no humility typical of our time. The truth is that there is a real humility typical of our time; but it so happens that it is practically a more poisonous humility than the wildest prostrations of the ascetic. The old humility was a spur that prevented a man from stopping; not a nail in his boot that prevented him from going on. For the old humility made a man doubtful about his efforts, which might make him work harder. But the new humility makes a man doubtful about his aims, which will make him stop working altogether.

At any street corner we may meet a man who utters the frantic and blasphemous statement that he may be wrong. Every day one comes across somebody who says that of course his view may not be the right one. Of course his view must be the right one, or it is not his view. We are on the road to producing a race of men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table. We are in danger of seeing philosophers who doubt the law of gravity as being a mere fancy of their own. Scoffers of old time were too proud to be convinced; but these are too humble to be convinced. The meek do inherit the earth; but the modern sceptics are too meek even to claim their inheritance. It is exactly this intellectual helplessness which is our second problem.

The last chapter has been concerned only with a fact of observation: that what peril of morbidity there is for man comes rather from his reason than his imagination. It was not meant to attack the authority of reason; rather it is the ultimate purpose to defend it. For it needs defence. The whole modern world is at war with reason; and the tower already reels.

The sages, it is often said, can see no answer to the riddle of religion. But the trouble with our sages is not that they cannot see the answer; it is that they cannot even see the riddle. They are like children so stupid as to notice nothing paradoxical in the playful assertion that a door is not a door. The modern latitudinarians speak, for instance, about authority in religion not only as if there were no reason in it, but as if there had never been any reason for it. Apart from seeing its philosophical basis, they cannot even see its historical cause. Religious authority has often, doubtless, been oppressive or unreasonable; just as every legal system (and especially our present one) has been callous and full of a cruel apathy. It is rational to attack the police; nay, it is glorious. But the modern critics of religious authority are like men who should attack the police without ever having heard of burglars. For there is a great and possible peril to the human mind: a peril as practical as burglary. Against it religious authority was reared, rightly or wrongly, as a barrier. And against it something certainly must be reared as a barrier, if our race is to avoid ruin.

That peril is that the human intellect is free to destroy itself. Just as one generation could prevent the very existence of the next generation, by all entering a monastery or jumping into the sea, so one set of thinkers can in some degree prevent further thinking by teaching the next generation that there is no validity in any human thought. It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all. If you are merely a sceptic, you must sooner or later ask yourself the question, “Why should ANYTHING go right; even observation and deduction? Why should not good logic be as misleading as bad logic? They are both movements in the brain of a bewildered ape?” The young sceptic says, “I have a right to think for myself.” But the old sceptic, the complete sceptic, says, “I have no right to think for myself. I have no right to think at all.”

There is a thought that stops thought. That is the only thought that ought to be stopped. That is the ultimate evil against which all religious authority was aimed. It only appears at the end of decadent ages like our own: and already Mr. H.G.Wells has raised its ruinous banner; he has written a delicate piece of scepticism called “Doubts of the Instrument.” In this he questions the brain itself, and endeavours to remove all reality from all his own assertions, past, present, and to come. But it was against this remote ruin that all the military systems in religion were originally ranked and ruled. The creeds and the crusades, the hierarchies and the horrible persecutions were not organized, as is ignorantly said, for the suppression of reason. They were organized for the difficult defence of reason. Man, by a blind instinct, knew that if once things were wildly questioned, reason could be questioned first. The authority of priests to absolve, the authority of popes to define the authority, even of inquisitors to terrify: these were all only dark defences erected round one central authority, more undemonstrable, more supernatural than all— the authority of a man to think. We know now that this is so; we have no excuse for not knowing it. For we can hear scepticism crashing through the old ring of authorities, and at the same moment we can see reason swaying upon her throne. In so far as religion is gone, reason is going. For they are both of the same primary and authoritative kind. They are both methods of proof which cannot themselves be proved. And in the act of destroying the idea of Divine authority we have largely destroyed the idea of that human authority by which we do a long-division sum. With a long and sustained tug we have attempted to pull the mitre off pontifical man; and his head has come off with it.

Lest this should be called loose assertion, it is perhaps desirable, though dull, to run rapidly through the chief modern fashions of thought which have this effect of stopping thought itself. Materialism and the view of everything as a personal illusion have some such effect; for if the mind is mechanical, thought cannot be very exciting, and if the cosmos is unreal, there is nothing to think about. But in these cases the effect is indirect and doubtful. In some cases it is direct and clear; notably in the case of what is generally called evolution.

Evolution is a good example of that modern intelligence which, if it destroys anything, destroys itself. Evolution is either an innocent scientific description of how certain earthly things came about; or, if it is anything more than this, it is an attack upon thought itself. If evolution destroys anything, it does not destroy religion but rationalism. If evolution simply means that a positive thing called an ape turned very slowly into a positive thing called a man, then it is stingless for the most orthodox; for a personal God might just as well do things slowly as quickly, especially if, like the Christian God, he were outside time. But if it means anything more, it means that there is no such thing as an ape to change, and no such thing as a man for him to change into. It means that there is no such thing as a thing. At best, there is only one thing, and that is a flux of everything and anything. This is an attack not upon the faith, but upon the mind; you cannot think if there are no things to think about. You cannot think if you are not separate from the subject of thought. Descartes said, “I think; therefore I am.” The philosophic evolutionist reverses and negatives the epigram. He says, “I am not; therefore I cannot think.”

Then there is the opposite attack on thought: that urged by Mr. H.G.Wells when he insists that every separate thing is “unique,” and there are no categories at all. This also is merely destructive. Thinking means connecting things, and stops if they cannot be connected. It need hardly be said that this scepticism forbidding thought necessarily forbids speech; a man cannot open his mouth without contradicting it. Thus when Mr. Wells says (as he did somewhere), “All chairs are quite different,” he utters not merely a misstatement, but a contradiction in terms. If all chairs were quite different, you could not call them “all chairs.”

Akin to these is the false theory of progress, which maintains that we alter the test instead of trying to pass the test. We often hear it said, for instance, “What is right in one age is wrong in another.” This is quite reasonable, if it means that there is a fixed aim, and that certain methods attain at certain times and not at other times. If women, say, desire to be elegant, it may be that they are improved at one time by growing fatter and at another time by growing thinner. But you cannot say that they are improved by ceasing to wish to be elegant and beginning to wish to be oblong. If the standard changes, how can there be improvement, which implies a standard? Nietzsche started a nonsensical idea that men had once sought as good what we now call evil; if it were so, we could not talk of surpassing or even falling short of them. How can you overtake Jones if you walk in the other direction? You cannot discuss whether one people has succeeded more in being miserable than another succeeded in being happy. It would be like discussing whether Milton was more puritanical than a pig is fat.

It is true that a man (a silly man) might make change itself his object or ideal. But as an ideal, change itself becomes unchangeable. If the change-worshipper wishes to estimate his own progress, he must be sternly loyal to the ideal of change; he must not begin to flirt gaily with the ideal of monotony. Progress itself cannot progress. It is worth remark, in passing, that when Tennyson, in a wild and rather weak manner, welcomed the idea of infinite alteration in society, he instinctively took a metaphor which suggests an imprisoned tedium. He wrote—

“Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change.”

He thought of change itself as an unchangeable groove; and so it is. Change is about the narrowest and hardest groove that a man can get into.

The main point here, however, is that this idea of a fundamental alteration in the standard is one of the things that make thought about the past or future simply impossible. The theory of a complete change of standards in human history does not merely deprive us of the pleasure of honouring our fathers; it deprives us even of the more modern and aristocratic pleasure of despising them.

This bald summary of the thought-destroying forces of our time would not be complete without some reference to pragmatism; for though I have here used and should everywhere defend the pragmatist method as a preliminary guide to truth, there is an extreme application of it which involves the absence of all truth whatever. My meaning can be put shortly thus. I agree with the pragmatists that apparent objective truth is not the whole matter; that there is an authoritative need to believe the things that are necessary to the human mind. But I say that one of those necessities precisely is a belief in objective truth. The pragmatist tells a man to think what he must think and never mind the Absolute. But precisely one of the things that he must think is the Absolute. This philosophy, indeed, is a kind of verbal paradox. Pragmatism is a matter of human needs; and one of the first of human needs is to be something more than a pragmatist. Extreme pragmatism is just as inhuman as the determinism it so powerfully attacks. The determinist (who, to do him justice, does not pretend to be a human being) makes nonsense of the human sense of actual choice. The pragmatist, who professes to be specially human, makes nonsense of the human sense of actual fact.

To sum up our contention so far, we may say that the most characteristic current philosophies have not only a touch of mania, but a touch of suicidal mania. The mere questioner has knocked his head against the limits of human thought; and cracked it. This is what makes so futile the warnings of the orthodox and the boasts of the advanced about the dangerous boyhood of free thought. What we are looking at is not the boyhood of free thought; it is the old age and ultimate dissolution of free thought. It is vain for bishops and pious bigwigs to discuss what dreadful things will happen if wild scepticism runs its course. It has run its course. It is vain for eloquent atheists to talk of the great truths that will be revealed if once we see free thought begin. We have seen it end. It has no more questions to ask; it has questioned itself. You cannot call up any wilder vision than a city in which men ask themselves if they have any selves. You cannot fancy a more sceptical world than that in which men doubt if there is a world. It might certainly have reached its bankruptcy more quickly and cleanly if it had not been feebly hampered by the application of indefensible laws of blasphemy or by the absurd pretence that modern England is Christian. But it would have reached the bankruptcy anyhow. Militant atheists are still unjustly persecuted; but rather because they are an old minority than because they are a new one. Free thought has exhausted its own freedom. It is weary of its own success. If any eager freethinker now hails philosophic freedom as the dawn, he is only like the man in Mark Twain who came out wrapped in blankets to see the sun rise and was just in time to see it set. If any frightened curate still says that it will be awful if the darkness of free thought should spread, we can only answer him in the high and powerful words of Mr. Belloc, “Do not, I beseech you, be troubled about the increase of forces already in dissolution. You have mistaken the hour of the night: it is already morning.” We have no more questions left to ask. We have looked for questions in the darkest corners and on the wildest peaks. We have found all the questions that can be found. It is time we gave up looking for questions and began looking for answers.

But one more word must be added. At the beginning of this preliminary negative sketch I said that our mental ruin has been wrought by wild reason, not by wild imagination. A man does not go mad because he makes a statue a mile high, but he may go mad by thinking it out in square inches. Now, one school of thinkers has seen this and jumped at it as a way of renewing the pagan health of the world. They see that reason destroys; but Will, they say, creates. The ultimate authority, they say, is in will, not in reason. The supreme point is not why a man demands a thing, but the fact that he does demand it. I have no space to trace or expound this philosophy of Will. It came, I suppose, through Nietzsche, who preached something that is called egoism. That, indeed, was simpleminded enough; for Nietzsche denied egoism simply by preaching it. To preach anything is to give it away. First, the egoist calls life a war without mercy, and then he takes the greatest possible trouble to drill his enemies in war. To preach egoism is to practise altruism. But however it began, the view is common enough in current literature. The main defence of these thinkers is that they are not thinkers; they are makers. They say that choice is itself the divine thing. Thus Mr. Bernard Shaw has attacked the old idea that men’s acts are to be judged by the standard of the desire of happiness. He says that a man does not act for his happiness, but from his will. He does not say, “Jam will make me happy,” but “I want jam.” And in all this others follow him with yet greater enthusiasm. Mr. John Davidson, a remarkable poet, is so passionately excited about it that he is obliged to write prose. He publishes a short play with several long prefaces. This is natural enough in Mr. Shaw, for all his plays are prefaces: Mr. Shaw is (I suspect) the only man on earth who has never written any poetry. But that Mr. Davidson (who can write excellent poetry) should write instead laborious metaphysics in defence of this doctrine of will, does show that the doctrine of will has taken hold of men. Even Mr. H.G.Wells has half spoken in its language; saying that one should test acts not like a thinker, but like an artist, saying, “I FEEL this curve is right,” or “that line SHALL go thus.” They are all excited; and well they may be. For by this doctrine of the divine authority of will, they think they can break out of the doomed fortress of rationalism. They think they can escape.

But they cannot escape. This pure praise of volition ends in the same break up and blank as the mere pursuit of logic. Exactly as complete free thought involves the doubting of thought itself, so the acceptation of mere “willing” really paralyzes the will. Mr. Bernard Shaw has not perceived the real difference between the old utilitarian test of pleasure (clumsy, of course, and easily misstated) and that which he propounds. The real difference between the test of happiness and the test of will is simply that the test of happiness is a test and the other isn’t. You can discuss whether a man’s act in jumping over a cliff was directed towards happiness; you cannot discuss whether it was derived from will. Of course it was. You can praise an action by saying that it is calculated to bring pleasure or pain to discover truth or to save the soul. But you cannot praise an action because it shows will; for to say that is merely to say that it is an action. By this praise of will you cannot really choose one course as better than another. And yet choosing one course as better than another is the very definition of the will you are praising.

The worship of will is the negation of will. To admire mere choice is to refuse to choose. If Mr. Bernard Shaw comes up to me and says, “Will something,” that is tantamount to saying, “I do not mind what you will,” and that is tantamount to saying, “I have no will in the matter.” You cannot admire will in general, because the essence of will is that it is particular. A brilliant anarchist like Mr. John Davidson feels an irritation against ordinary morality, and therefore he invokes will —will to anything. He only wants humanity to want something. But humanity does want something. It wants ordinary morality. He rebels against the law and tells us to will something or anything. But we have willed something. We have willed the law against which he rebels.

All the will-worshippers, from Nietzsche to Mr. Davidson, are really quite empty of volition. They cannot will, they can hardly wish. And if any one wants a proof of this, it can be found quite easily. It can be found in this fact: that they always talk of will as something that expands and breaks out. But it is quite the opposite. Every act of will is an act of self-limitation. To desire action is to desire limitation. In that sense every act is an act of self-sacrifice. When you choose anything, you reject everything else. That objection, which men of this school used to make to the act of marriage, is really an objection to every act. Every act is an irrevocable selection and exclusion. Just as when you marry one woman you give up all the others, so when you take one course of action you give up all the other courses. If you become King of England, you give up the post of Beadle in Brompton. If you go to Rome, you sacrifice a rich suggestive life in Wimbledon. It is the existence of this negative or limiting side of will that makes most of the talk of the anarchic will-worshippers little better than nonsense. For instance, Mr. John Davidson tells us to have nothing to do with “Thou shalt not”; but it is surely obvious that “Thou shalt not” is only one of the necessary corollaries of “I will.” “I will go to the Lord Mayor’s Show, and thou shalt not stop me.” Anarchism adjures us to be bold creative artists, and care for no laws or limits. But it is impossible to be an artist and not care for laws and limits. Art is limitation; the essence of every picture is the frame. If you draw a giraffe, you must draw him with a long neck. If, in your bold creative way, you hold yourself free to draw a giraffe with a short neck, you will really find that you are not free to draw a giraffe. The moment you step into the world of facts, you step into a world of limits. You can free things from alien or accidental laws, but not from the laws of their own nature. You may, if you like, free a tiger from his bars; but do not free him from his stripes. Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump: you may be freeing him from being a camel. Do not go about as a demagogue, encouraging triangles to break out of the prison of their three sides. If a triangle breaks out of its three sides, its life comes to a lamentable end. Somebody wrote a work called “The Loves of the Triangles”; I never read it, but I am sure that if triangles ever were loved, they were loved for being triangular. This is certainly the case with all artistic creation, which is in some ways the most decisive example of pure will. The artist loves his limitations: they constitute the THING he is doing. The painter is glad that the canvas is flat. The sculptor is glad that the clay is colourless.

In case the point is not clear, an historic example may illustrate it. The French Revolution was really an heroic and decisive thing, because the Jacobins willed something definite and limited. They desired the freedoms of democracy, but also all the vetoes of democracy. They wished to have votes and NOT to have titles. Republicanism had an ascetic side in Franklin or Robespierre as well as an expansive side in Danton or Wilkes. Therefore they have created something with a solid substance and shape, the square social equality and peasant wealth of France. But since then the revolutionary or speculative mind of Europe has been weakened by shrinking from any proposal because of the limits of that proposal. Liberalism has been degraded into liberality. Men have tried to turn “revolutionise” from a transitive to an intransitive verb. The Jacobin could tell you not only the system he would rebel against, but (what was more important) the system he would NOT rebel against, the system he would trust. But the new rebel is a Sceptic, and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; therefore he can never be really a revolutionist. And the fact that he doubts everything really gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything. For all denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind; and the modern revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces, but the doctrine by which he denounces it. Thus he writes one book complaining that imperial oppression insults the purity of women, and then he writes another book (about the sex problem) in which he insults it himself. He curses the Sultan because Christian girls lose their virginity, and then curses Mrs. Grundy because they keep it. As a politician, he will cry out that war is a waste of life, and then, as a philosopher, that all life is waste of time. A Russian pessimist will denounce a policeman for killing a peasant, and then prove by the highest philosophical principles that the peasant ought to have killed himself. A man denounces marriage as a lie, and then denounces aristocratic profligates for treating it as a lie. He calls a flag a bauble, and then blames the oppressors of Poland or Ireland because they take away that bauble. The man of this school goes first to a political meeting, where he complains that savages are treated as if they were beasts; then he takes his hat and umbrella and goes on to a scientific meeting, where he proves that they practically are beasts. In short, the modern revolutionist, being an infinite sceptic, is always engaged in undermining his own mines. In his book on politics he attacks men for trampling on morality; in his book on ethics he attacks morality for trampling on men. Therefore the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything.

It may be added that the same blank and bankruptcy can be observed in all fierce and terrible types of literature, especially in satire. Satire may be mad and anarchic, but it presupposes an admitted superiority in certain things over others; it presupposes a standard. When little boys in the street laugh at the fatness of some distinguished journalist, they are unconsciously assuming a standard of Greek sculpture. They are appealing to the marble Apollo. And the curious disappearance of satire from our literature is an instance of the fierce things fading for want of any principle to be fierce about. Nietzsche had some natural talent for sarcasm: he could sneer, though he could not laugh; but there is always something bodiless and without weight in his satire, simply because it has not any mass of common morality behind it. He is himself more preposterous than anything he denounces. But, indeed, Nietzsche will stand very well as the type of the whole of this failure of abstract violence. The softening of the brain which ultimately overtook him was not a physical accident. If Nietzsche had not ended in imbecility, Nietzscheism would end in imbecility. Thinking in isolation and with pride ends in being an idiot. Every man who will not have softening of the heart must at last have softening of the brain.

This last attempt to evade intellectualism ends in intellectualism, and therefore in death. The sortie has failed. The wild worship of lawlessness and the materialist worship of law end in the same void. Nietzsche scales staggering mountains, but he turns up ultimately in Tibet. He sits down beside Tolstoy in the land of nothing and Nirvana. They are both helpless—one because he must not grasp anything, and the other because he must not let go of anything. The Tolstoyan’s will is frozen by a Buddhist instinct that all special actions are evil. But the Nietzscheite’s will is quite equally frozen by his view that all special actions are good; for if all special actions are good, none of them are special. They stand at the crossroads, and one hates all the roads and the other likes all the roads. The result is—well, some things are not hard to calculate. They stand at the cross-roads.

Here I end (thank God) the first and dullest business of this book—the rough review of recent thought. After this I begin to sketch a view of life which may not interest my reader, but which, at any rate, interests me. In front of me, as I close this page, is a pile of modern books that I have been turning over for the purpose —a pile of ingenuity, a pile of futility. By the accident of my present detachment, I can see the inevitable smash of the philosophies of Schopenhauer and Tolstoy, Nietzsche and Shaw, as clearly as an inevitable railway smash could be seen from a balloon. They are all on the road to the emptiness of the asylum. For madness may be defined as using mental activity so as to reach mental helplessness; and they have nearly reached it. He who thinks he is made of glass, thinks to the destruction of thought; for glass cannot think. So he who wills to reject nothing, wills the destruction of will; for will is not only the choice of something, but the rejection of almost everything. And as I turn and tumble over the clever, wonderful, tiresome, and useless modern books, the title of one of them rivets my eye. It is called “Jeanne d’Arc,” by Anatole France. I have only glanced at it, but a glance was enough to remind me of Renan’s “Vie de Jesus.” It has the same strange method of the reverent sceptic. It discredits supernatural stories that have some foundation, simply by telling natural stories that have no foundation. Because we cannot believe in what a saint did, we are to pretend that we know exactly what he felt. But I do not mention either book in order to criticise it, but because the accidental combination of the names called up two startling images of Sanity which blasted all the books before me. Joan of Arc was not stuck at the cross-roads, either by rejecting all the paths like Tolstoy, or by accepting them all like Nietzsche. She chose a path, and went down it like a thunderbolt. Yet Joan, when I came to think of her, had in her all that was true either in Tolstoy or Nietzsche, all that was even tolerable in either of them. I thought of all that is noble in Tolstoy, the pleasure in plain things, especially in plain pity, the actualities of the earth, the reverence for the poor, the dignity of the bowed back. Joan of Arc had all that and with this great addition, that she endured poverty as well as admiring it; whereas Tolstoy is only a typical aristocrat trying to find out its secret. And then I thought of all that was brave and proud and pathetic in poor Nietzsche, and his mutiny against the emptiness and timidity of our time. I thought of his cry for the ecstatic equilibrium of danger, his hunger for the rush of great horses, his cry to arms. Well, Joan of Arc had all that, and again with this difference, that she did not praise fighting, but fought. We KNOW that she was not afraid of an army, while Nietzsche, for all we know, was afraid of a cow. Tolstoy only praised the peasant; she was the peasant. Nietzsche only praised the warrior; she was the warrior. She beat them both at their own antagonistic ideals; she was more gentle than the one, more violent than the other. Yet she was a perfectly practical person who did something, while they are wild speculators who do nothing. It was impossible that the thought should not cross my mind that she and her faith had perhaps some secret of moral unity and utility that has been lost. And with that thought came a larger one, and the colossal figure of her Master had also crossed the theatre of my thoughts. The same modern difficulty which darkened the subject-matter of Anatole France also darkened that of Ernest Renan. Renan also divided his hero’s pity from his hero’s pugnacity. Renan even represented the righteous anger at Jerusalem as a mere nervous breakdown after the idyllic expectations of Galilee. As if there were any inconsistency between having a love for humanity and having a hatred for inhumanity! Altruists, with thin, weak voices, denounce Christ as an egoist. Egoists (with even thinner and weaker voices) denounce Him as an altruist. In our present atmosphere such cavils are comprehensible enough. The love of a hero is more terrible than the hatred of a tyrant. The hatred of a hero is more generous than the love of a philanthropist. There is a huge and heroic sanity of which moderns can only collect the fragments. There is a giant of whom we see only the lopped arms and legs walking about. They have torn the soul of Christ into silly strips, labelled egoism and altruism, and they are equally puzzled by His insane magnificence and His insane meekness. They have parted His garments among them, and for His vesture they have cast lots; though the coat was without seam woven from the top throughout.

IV THE ETHICS OF ELFLAND

When the business man rebukes the idealism of his office-boy, it is commonly in some such speech as this: “Ah, yes, when one is young, one has these ideals in the abstract and these castles in the air; but in middle age they all break up like clouds, and one comes down to a belief in practical politics, to using the machinery one has and getting on with the world as it is.” Thus, at least, venerable and philanthropic old men now in their honoured graves used to talk to me when I was a boy. But since then I have grown up and have discovered that these philanthropic old men were telling lies. What has really happened is exactly the opposite of what they said would happen. They said that I should lose my ideals and begin to believe in the methods of practical politicians. Now, I have not lost my ideals in the least; my faith in fundamentals is exactly what it always was. What I have lost is my old childlike faith in practical politics. I am still as much concerned as ever about the Battle of Armageddon; but I am not so much concerned about the General Election. As a babe I leapt up on my mother’s knee at the mere mention of it. No; the vision is always solid and reliable. The vision is always a fact. It is the reality that is often a fraud. As much as I ever did, more than I ever did, I believe in Liberalism. But there was a rosy time of innocence when I believed in Liberals.

I take this instance of one of the enduring faiths because, having now to trace the roots of my personal speculation, this may be counted, I think, as the only positive bias. I was brought up a Liberal, and have always believed in democracy, in the elementary liberal doctrine of a self-governing humanity. If any one finds the phrase vague or threadbare, I can only pause for a moment to explain that the principle of democracy, as I mean it, can be stated in two propositions. The first is this: that the things common to all men are more important than the things peculiar to any men. Ordinary things are more valuable than extraordinary things; nay, they are more extraordinary. Man is something more awful than men; something more strange. The sense of the miracle of humanity itself should be always more vivid to us than any marvels of power, intellect, art, or civilization. The mere man on two legs, as such, should be felt as something more heartbreaking than any music and more startling than any caricature. Death is more tragic even than death by starvation. Having a nose is more comic even than having a Norman nose.

This is the first principle of democracy: that the essential things in men are the things they hold in common, not the things they hold separately. And the second principle is merely this: that the political instinct or desire is one of these things which they hold in common. Falling in love is more poetical than dropping into poetry. The democratic contention is that government (helping to rule the tribe) is a thing like falling in love, and not a thing like dropping into poetry. It is not something analogous to playing the church organ, painting on vellum, discovering the North Pole (that insidious habit), looping the loop, being Astronomer Royal, and so on. For these things we do not wish a man to do at all unless he does them well. It is, on the contrary, a thing analogous to writing one’s own love-letters or blowing one’s own nose. These things we want a man to do for himself, even if he does them badly. I am not here arguing the truth of any of these conceptions; I know that some moderns are asking to have their wives chosen by scientists, and they may soon be asking, for all I know, to have their noses blown by nurses. I merely say that mankind does recognize these universal human functions, and that democracy classes government among them. In short, the democratic faith is this: that the most terribly important things must be left to ordinary men themselves—the mating of the sexes, the rearing of the young, the laws of the state. This is democracy; and in this I have always believed.

But there is one thing that I have never from my youth up been able to understand. I have never been able to understand where people got the idea that democracy was in some way opposed to tradition. It is obvious that tradition is only democracy extended through time. It is trusting to a consensus of common human voices rather than to some isolated or arbitrary record. The man who quotes some German historian against the tradition of the Catholic Church, for instance, is strictly appealing to aristocracy. He is appealing to the superiority of one expert against the awful authority of a mob. It is quite easy to see why a legend is treated, and ought to be treated, more respectfully than a book of history. The legend is generally made by the majority of people in the village, who are sane. The book is generally written by the one man in the village who is mad. Those who urge against tradition that men in the past were ignorant may go and urge it at the Carlton Club, along with the statement that voters in the slums are ignorant. It will not do for us. If we attach great importance to the opinion of ordinary men in great unanimity when we are dealing with daily matters, there is no reason why we should disregard it when we are dealing with history or fable. Tradition may be defined as an extension of the franchise. Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our father. I, at any rate, cannot separate the two ideas of democracy and tradition; it seems evident to me that they are the same idea. We will have the dead at our councils. The ancient Greeks voted by stones; these shall vote by tombstones. It is all quite regular and official, for most tombstones, like most ballot papers, are marked with a cross.

I have first to say, therefore, that if I have had a bias, it was always a bias in favour of democracy, and therefore of tradition. Before we come to any theoretic or logical beginnings I am content to allow for that personal equation; I have always been more inclined to believe the ruck of hard-working people than to believe that special and troublesome literary class to which I belong. I prefer even the fancies and prejudices of the people who see life from the inside to the clearest demonstrations of the people who see life from the outside. I would always trust the old wives’ fables against the old maids’ facts. As long as wit is mother wit it can be as wild as it pleases.

Now, I have to put together a general position, and I pretend to no training in such things. I propose to do it, therefore, by writing down one after another the three or four fundamental ideas which I have found for myself, pretty much in the way that I found them. Then I shall roughly synthesise them, summing up my personal philosophy or natural religion; then I shall describe my startling discovery that the whole thing had been discovered before. It had been discovered by Christianity. But of these profound persuasions which I have to recount in order, the earliest was concerned with this element of popular tradition. And without the foregoing explanation touching tradition and democracy I could hardly make my mental experience clear. As it is, I do not know whether I can make it clear, but I now propose to try.

My first and last philosophy, that which I believe in with unbroken certainty, I learnt in the nursery. I generally learnt it from a nurse; that is, from the solemn and star-appointed priestess at once of democracy and tradition. The things I believed most then, the things I believe most now, are the things called fairy tales. They seem to me to be the entirely reasonable things. They are not fantasies: compared with them other things are fantastic. Compared with them religion and rationalism are both abnormal, though religion is abnormally right and rationalism abnormally wrong. Fairyland is nothing but the sunny country of common sense. It is not earth that judges heaven, but heaven that judges earth; so for me at least it was not earth that criticised elfland, but elfland that criticised the earth. I knew the magic beanstalk before I had tasted beans; I was sure of the Man in the Moon before I was certain of the moon. This was at one with all popular tradition. Modern minor poets are naturalists, and talk about the bush or the brook; but the singers of the old epics and fables were supernaturalists, and talked about the gods of brook and bush. That is what the moderns mean when they say that the ancients did not “appreciate Nature,” because they said that Nature was divine. Old nurses do not tell children about the grass, but about the fairies that dance on the grass; and the old Greeks could not see the trees for the dryads.

But I deal here with what ethic and philosophy come from being fed on fairy tales. If I were describing them in detail I could note many noble and healthy principles that arise from them. There is the chivalrous lesson of “Jack the Giant Killer”; that giants should be killed because they are gigantic. It is a manly mutiny against pride as such. For the rebel is older than all the kingdoms, and the Jacobin has more tradition than the Jacobite. There is the lesson of “Cinderella,” which is the same as that of the Magnificat—EXALTAVIT HUMILES. There is the great lesson of “Beauty and the Beast”; that a thing must be loved BEFORE it is loveable. There is the terrible allegory of the “Sleeping Beauty,” which tells how the human creature was blessed with all birthday gifts, yet cursed with death; and how death also may perhaps be softened to a sleep. But I am not concerned with any of the separate statutes of elfland, but with the whole spirit of its law, which I learnt before I could speak, and shall retain when I cannot write. I am concerned with a certain way of looking at life, which was created in me by the fairy tales, but has since been meekly ratified by the mere facts.

It might be stated this way. There are certain sequences or developments (cases of one thing following another), which are, in the true sense of the word, reasonable. They are, in the true sense of the word, necessary. Such are mathematical and merely logical sequences. We in fairyland (who are the most reasonable of all creatures) admit that reason and that necessity. For instance, if the Ugly Sisters are older than Cinderella, it is (in an iron and awful sense) NECESSARY that Cinderella is younger than the Ugly Sisters. There is no getting out of it. Haeckel may talk as much fatalism about that fact as he pleases: it really must be. If Jack is the son of a miller, a miller is the father of Jack. Cold reason decrees it from her awful throne: and we in fairyland submit. If the three brothers all ride horses, there are six animals and eighteen legs involved: that is true rationalism, and fairyland is full of it. But as I put my head over the hedge of the elves and began to take notice of the natural world, I observed an extraordinary thing. I observed that learned men in spectacles were talking of the actual things that happened—dawn and death and so on—as if THEY were rational and inevitable. They talked as if the fact that trees bear fruit were just as NECESSARY as the fact that two and one trees make three. But it is not. There is an enormous difference by the test of fairyland; which is the test of the imagination. You cannot IMAGINE two and one not making three. But you can easily imagine trees not growing fruit; you can imagine them growing golden candlesticks or tigers hanging on by the tail. These men in spectacles spoke much of a man named Newton, who was hit by an apple, and who discovered a law. But they could not be got to see the distinction between a true law, a law of reason, and the mere fact of apples falling. If the apple hit Newton’s nose, Newton’s nose hit the apple. That is a true necessity: because we cannot conceive the one occurring without the other. But we can quite well conceive the apple not falling on his nose; we can fancy it flying ardently through the air to hit some other nose, of which it had a more definite dislike. We have always in our fairy tales kept this sharp distinction between the science of mental relations, in which there really are laws, and the science of physical facts, in which there are no laws, but only weird repetitions. We believe in bodily miracles, but not in mental impossibilities. We believe that a Bean-stalk climbed up to Heaven; but that does not at all confuse our convictions on the philosophical question of how many beans make five.

Here is the peculiar perfection of tone and truth in the nursery tales. The man of science says, “Cut the stalk, and the apple will fall”; but he says it calmly, as if the one idea really led up to the other. The witch in the fairy tale says, “Blow the horn, and the ogre’s castle will fall”; but she does not say it as if it were something in which the effect obviously arose out of the cause. Doubtless she has given the advice to many champions, and has seen many castles fall, but she does not lose either her wonder or her reason. She does not muddle her head until it imagines a necessary mental connection between a horn and a falling tower. But the scientific men do muddle their heads, until they imagine a necessary mental connection between an apple leaving the tree and an apple reaching the ground. They do really talk as if they had found not only a set of marvellous facts, but a truth connecting those facts. They do talk as if the connection of two strange things physically connected them philosophically. They feel that because one incomprehensible thing constantly follows another incomprehensible thing the two together somehow make up a comprehensible thing. Two black riddles make a white answer.

In fairyland we avoid the word “law”; but in the land of science they are singularly fond of it. Thus they will call some interesting conjecture about how forgotten folks pronounced the alphabet, Grimm’s Law. But Grimm’s Law is far less intellectual than Grimm’s Fairy Tales. The tales are, at any rate, certainly tales; while the law is not a law. A law implies that we know the nature of the generalisation and enactment; not merely that we have noticed some of the effects. If there is a law that pick-pockets shall go to prison, it implies that there is an imaginable mental connection between the idea of prison and the idea of picking pockets. And we know what the idea is. We can say why we take liberty from a man who takes liberties. But we cannot say why an egg can turn into a chicken any more than we can say why a bear could turn into a fairy prince. As IDEAS, the egg and the chicken are further off from each other than the bear and the prince; for no egg in itself suggests a chicken, whereas some princes do suggest bears. Granted, then, that certain transformations do happen, it is essential that we should regard them in the philosophic manner of fairy tales, not in the unphilosophic manner of science and the “Laws of Nature.” When we are asked why eggs turn to birds or fruits fall in autumn, we must answer exactly as the fairy godmother would answer if Cinderella asked her why mice turned to horses or her clothes fell from her at twelve o’clock. We must answer that it is MAGIC. It is not a “law,” for we do not understand its general formula. It is not a necessity, for though we can count on it happening practically, we have no right to say that it must always happen. It is no argument for unalterable law (as Huxley fancied) that we count on the ordinary course of things. We do not count on it; we bet on it. We risk the remote possibility of a miracle as we do that of a poisoned pancake or a world-destroying comet. We leave it out of account, not because it is a miracle, and therefore an impossibility, but because it is a miracle, and therefore an exception. All the terms used in the science books, “law,” “necessity,” “order,” “tendency,” and so on, are really unintellectual, because they assume an inner synthesis, which we do not possess. The only words that ever satisfied me as describing Nature are the terms used in the fairy books, “charm,” “spell,” “enchantment.” They express the arbitrariness of the fact and its mystery. A tree grows fruit because it is a MAGIC tree. Water runs downhill because it is bewitched. The sun shines because it is bewitched.

I deny altogether that this is fantastic or even mystical. We may have some mysticism later on; but this fairy-tale language about things is simply rational and agnostic. It is the only way I can express in words my clear and definite perception that one thing is quite distinct from another; that there is no logical connection between flying and laying eggs. It is the man who talks about “a law” that he has never seen who is the mystic. Nay, the ordinary scientific man is strictly a sentimentalist. He is a sentimentalist in this essential sense, that he is soaked and swept away by mere associations. He has so often seen birds fly and lay eggs that he feels as if there must be some dreamy, tender connection between the two ideas, whereas there is none. A forlorn lover might be unable to dissociate the moon from lost love; so the materialist is unable to dissociate the moon from the tide. In both cases there is no connection, except that one has seen them together. A sentimentalist might shed tears at the smell of apple-blossom, because, by a dark association of his own, it reminded him of his boyhood. So the materialist professor (though he conceals his tears) is yet a sentimentalist, because, by a dark association of his own, apple-blossoms remind him of apples. But the cool rationalist from fairyland does not see why, in the abstract, the apple tree should not grow crimson tulips; it sometimes does in his country.

This elementary wonder, however, is not a mere fancy derived from the fairy tales; on the contrary, all the fire of the fairy tales is derived from this. Just as we all like love tales because there is an instinct of sex, we all like astonishing tales because they touch the nerve of the ancient instinct of astonishment. This is proved by the fact that when we are very young children we do not need fairy tales: we only need tales. Mere life is interesting enough. A child of seven is excited by being told that Tommy opened a door and saw a dragon. But a child of three is excited by being told that Tommy opened a door. Boys like romantic tales; but babies like realistic tales —because they find them romantic. In fact, a baby is about the only person, I should think, to whom a modern realistic novel could be read without boring him. This proves that even nursery tales only echo an almost pre-natal leap of interest and amazement. These tales say that apples were golden only to refresh the forgotten moment when we found that they were green. They make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water. I have said that this is wholly reasonable and even agnostic. And, indeed, on this point I am all for the higher agnosticism; its better name is Ignorance. We have all read in scientific books, and, indeed, in all romances, the story of the man who has forgotten his name. This man walks about the streets and can see and appreciate everything; only he cannot remember who he is. Well, every man is that man in the story. Every man has forgotten who he is. One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God; but thou shalt not know thyself. We are all under the same mental calamity; we have all forgotten our names. We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget.

But though (like the man without memory in the novel) we walk the streets with a sort of half-witted admiration, still it is admiration. It is admiration in English and not only admiration in Latin. The wonder has a positive element of praise. This is the next milestone to be definitely marked on our road through fairyland. I shall speak in the next chapter about optimists and pessimists in their intellectual aspect, so far as they have one. Here I am only trying to describe the enormous emotions which cannot be described. And the strongest emotion was that life was as precious as it was puzzling. It was an ecstasy because it was an adventure; it was an adventure because it was an opportunity. The goodness of the fairy tale was not affected by the fact that there might be more dragons than princesses; it was good to be in a fairy tale. The test of all happiness is gratitude; and I felt grateful, though I hardly knew to whom. Children are grateful when Santa Claus puts in their stockings gifts of toys or sweets. Could I not be grateful to Santa Claus when he put in my stockings the gift of two miraculous legs? We thank people for birthday presents of cigars and slippers. Can I thank no one for the birthday present of birth?

There were, then, these two first feelings, indefensible and indisputable. The world was a shock, but it was not merely shocking; existence was a surprise, but it was a pleasant surprise. In fact, all my first views were exactly uttered in a riddle that stuck in my brain from boyhood. The question was, “What did the first frog say?” And the answer was, “Lord, how you made me jump!” That says succinctly all that I am saying. God made the frog jump; but the frog prefers jumping. But when these things are settled there enters the second great principle of the fairy philosophy.

Any one can see it who will simply read “Grimm’s Fairy Tales” or the fine collections of Mr. Andrew Lang. For the pleasure of pedantry I will call it the Doctrine of Conditional Joy. Touchstone talked of much virtue in an “if”; according to elfin ethics all virtue is in an “if.” The note of the fairy utterance always is, “You may live in a palace of gold and sapphire, if you do not say the word ‘cow’”; or “You may live happily with the King’s daughter, if you do not show her an onion.” The vision always hangs upon a veto. All the dizzy and colossal things conceded depend upon one small thing withheld. All the wild and whirling things that are let loose depend upon one thing that is forbidden. Mr. W.B.Yeats, in his exquisite and piercing elfin poetry, describes the elves as lawless; they plunge in innocent anarchy on the unbridled horses of the air—

“Ride on the crest of the dishevelled tide, And dance upon the mountains like a flame.”

It is a dreadful thing to say that Mr. W.B.Yeats does not understand fairyland. But I do say it. He is an ironical Irishman, full of intellectual reactions. He is not stupid enough to understand fairyland. Fairies prefer people of the yokel type like myself; people who gape and grin and do as they are told. Mr. Yeats reads into elfland all the righteous insurrection of his own race. But the lawlessness of Ireland is a Christian lawlessness, founded on reason and justice. The Fenian is rebelling against something he understands only too well; but the true citizen of fairyland is obeying something that he does not understand at all. In the fairy tale an incomprehensible happiness rests upon an incomprehensible condition. A box is opened, and all evils fly out. A word is forgotten, and cities perish. A lamp is lit, and love flies away. A flower is plucked, and human lives are forfeited. An apple is eaten, and the hope of God is gone.

This is the tone of fairy tales, and it is certainly not lawlessness or even liberty, though men under a mean modern tyranny may think it liberty by comparison. People out of Portland Gaol might think Fleet Street free; but closer study will prove that both fairies and journalists are the slaves of duty. Fairy godmothers seem at least as strict as other godmothers. Cinderella received a coach out of Wonderland and a coachman out of nowhere, but she received a command—which might have come out of Brixton—that she should be back by twelve. Also, she had a glass slipper; and it cannot be a coincidence that glass is so common a substance in folk-lore. This princess lives in a glass castle, that princess on a glass hill; this one sees all things in a mirror; they may all live in glass houses if they will not throw stones. For this thin glitter of glass everywhere is the expression of the fact that the happiness is bright but brittle, like the substance most easily smashed by a housemaid or a cat. And this fairy-tale sentiment also sank into me and became my sentiment towards the whole world. I felt and feel that life itself is as bright as the diamond, but as brittle as the window-pane; and when the heavens were compared to the terrible crystal I can remember a shudder. I was afraid that God would drop the cosmos with a crash.

Remember, however, that to be breakable is not the same as to be perishable. Strike a glass, and it will not endure an instant; simply do not strike it, and it will endure a thousand years. Such, it seemed, was the joy of man, either in elfland or on earth; the happiness depended on NOT DOING SOMETHING which you could at any moment do and which, very often, it was not obvious why you should not do. Now, the point here is that to ME this did not seem unjust. If the miller’s third son said to the fairy, “Explain why I must not stand on my head in the fairy palace,” the other might fairly reply, “Well, if it comes to that, explain the fairy palace.” If Cinderella says, “How is it that I must leave the ball at twelve?” her godmother might answer, “How is it that you are going there till twelve?” If I leave a man in my will ten talking elephants and a hundred winged horses, he cannot complain if the conditions partake of the slight eccentricity of the gift. He must not look a winged horse in the mouth. And it seemed to me that existence was itself so very eccentric a legacy that I could not complain of not understanding the limitations of the vision when I did not understand the vision they limited. The frame was no stranger than the picture. The veto might well be as wild as the vision; it might be as startling as the sun, as elusive as the waters, as fantastic and terrible as the towering trees.

For this reason (we may call it the fairy godmother philosophy) I never could join the young men of my time in feeling what they called the general sentiment of REVOLT. I should have resisted, let us hope, any rules that were evil, and with these and their definition I shall deal in another chapter. But I did not feel disposed to resist any rule merely because it was mysterious. Estates are sometimes held by foolish forms, the breaking of a stick or the payment of a peppercorn: I was willing to hold the huge estate of earth and heaven by any such feudal fantasy. It could not well be wilder than the fact that I was allowed to hold it at all. At this stage I give only one ethical instance to show my meaning. I could never mix in the common murmur of that rising generation against monogamy, because no restriction on sex seemed so odd and unexpected as sex itself. To be allowed, like Endymion, to make love to the moon and then to complain that Jupiter kept his own moons in a harem seemed to me (bred on fairy tales like Endymion’s) a vulgar anti-climax. Keeping to one woman is a small price for so much as seeing one woman. To complain that I could only be married once was like complaining that I had only been born once. It was incommensurate with the terrible excitement of which one was talking. It showed, not an exaggerated sensibility to sex, but a curious insensibility to it. A man is a fool who complains that he cannot enter Eden by five gates at once. Polygamy is a lack of the realization of sex; it is like a man plucking five pears in mere absence of mind. The aesthetes touched the last insane limits of language in their eulogy on lovely things. The thistledown made them weep; a burnished beetle brought them to their knees. Yet their emotion never impressed me for an instant, for this reason, that it never occurred to them to pay for their pleasure in any sort of symbolic sacrifice. Men (I felt) might fast forty days for the sake of hearing a blackbird sing. Men might go through fire to find a cowslip. Yet these lovers of beauty could not even keep sober for the blackbird. They would not go through common Christian marriage by way of recompense to the cowslip. Surely one might pay for extraordinary joy in ordinary morals. Oscar Wilde said that sunsets were not valued because we could not pay for sunsets. But Oscar Wilde was wrong; we can pay for sunsets. We can pay for them by not being Oscar Wilde.

Well, I left the fairy tales lying on the floor of the nursery, and I have not found any books so sensible since. I left the nurse guardian of tradition and democracy, and I have not found any modern type so sanely radical or so sanely conservative. But the matter for important comment was here: that when I first went out into the mental atmosphere of the modern world, I found that the modern world was positively opposed on two points to my nurse and to the nursery tales. It has taken me a long time to find out that the modern world is wrong and my nurse was right. The really curious thing was this: that modern thought contradicted this basic creed of my boyhood on its two most essential doctrines. I have explained that the fairy tales founded in me two convictions; first, that this world is a wild and startling place, which might have been quite different, but which is quite delightful; second, that before this wildness and delight one may well be modest and submit to the queerest limitations of so queer a kindness. But I found the whole modern world running like a high tide against both my tendernesses; and the shock of that collision created two sudden and spontaneous sentiments, which I have had ever since and which, crude as they were, have since hardened into convictions.

First, I found the whole modern world talking scientific fatalism; saying that everything is as it must always have been, being unfolded without fault from the beginning. The leaf on the tree is green because it could never have been anything else. Now, the fairy-tale philosopher is glad that the leaf is green precisely because it might have been scarlet. He feels as if it had turned green an instant before he looked at it. He is pleased that snow is white on the strictly reasonable ground that it might have been black. Every colour has in it a bold quality as of choice; the red of garden roses is not only decisive but dramatic, like suddenly spilt blood. He feels that something has been DONE. But the great determinists of the nineteenth century were strongly against this native feeling that something had happened an instant before. In fact, according to them, nothing ever really had happened since the beginning of the world. Nothing ever had happened since existence had happened; and even about the date of that they were not very sure.

The modern world as I found it was solid for modern Calvinism, for the necessity of things being as they are. But when I came to ask them I found they had really no proof of this unavoidable repetition in things except the fact that the things were repeated. Now, the mere repetition made the things to me rather more weird than more rational. It was as if, having seen a curiously shaped nose in the street and dismissed it as an accident, I had then seen six other noses of the same astonishing shape. I should have fancied for a moment that it must be some local secret society. So one elephant having a trunk was odd; but all elephants having trunks looked like a plot. I speak here only of an emotion, and of an emotion at once stubborn and subtle. But the repetition in Nature seemed sometimes to be an excited repetition, like that of an angry schoolmaster saying the same thing over and over again. The grass seemed signalling to me with all its fingers at once; the crowded stars seemed bent upon being understood. The sun would make me see him if he rose a thousand times. The recurrences of the universe rose to the maddening rhythm of an incantation, and I began to see an idea.

All the towering materialism which dominates the modern mind rests ultimately upon one assumption; a false assumption. It is supposed that if a thing goes on repeating itself it is probably dead; a piece of clockwork. People feel that if the universe was personal it would vary; if the sun were alive it would dance. This is a fallacy even in relation to known fact. For the variation in human affairs is generally brought into them, not by life, but by death; by the dying down or breaking off of their strength or desire. A man varies his movements because of some slight element of failure or fatigue. He gets into an omnibus because he is tired of walking; or he walks because he is tired of sitting still. But if his life and joy were so gigantic that he never tired of going to Islington, he might go to Islington as regularly as the Thames goes to Sheerness. The very speed and ecstasy of his life would have the stillness of death. The sun rises every morning. I do not rise every morning; but the variation is due not to my activity, but to my inaction. Now, to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life. The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical ENCORE. Heaven may ENCORE the bird who laid an egg. If the human being conceives and brings forth a human child instead of bringing forth a fish, or a bat, or a griffin, the reason may not be that we are fixed in an animal fate without life or purpose. It may be that our little tragedy has touched the gods, that they admire it from their starry galleries, and that at the end of every human drama man is called again and again before the curtain. Repetition may go on for millions of years, by mere choice, and at any instant it may stop. Man may stand on the earth generation after generation, and yet each birth be his positively last appearance.

This was my first conviction; made by the shock of my childish emotions meeting the modern creed in mid-career. I had always vaguely felt facts to be miracles in the sense that they are wonderful: now I began to think them miracles in the stricter sense that they were WILFUL. I mean that they were, or might be, repeated exercises of some will. In short, I had always believed that the world involved magic: now I thought that perhaps it involved a magician. And this pointed a profound emotion always present and sub-conscious; that this world of ours has some purpose; and if there is a purpose, there is a person. I had always felt life first as a story: and if there is a story there is a story-teller.

But modern thought also hit my second human tradition. It went against the fairy feeling about strict limits and conditions. The one thing it loved to talk about was expansion and largeness. Herbert Spencer would have been greatly annoyed if any one had called him an imperialist, and therefore it is highly regrettable that nobody did. But he was an imperialist of the lowest type. He popularized this contemptible notion that the size of the solar system ought to over-awe the spiritual dogma of man. Why should a man surrender his dignity to the solar system any more than to a whale? If mere size proves that man is not the image of God, then a whale may be the image of God; a somewhat formless image; what one might call an impressionist portrait. It is quite futile to argue that man is small compared to the cosmos; for man was always small compared to the nearest tree. But Herbert Spencer, in his headlong imperialism, would insist that we had in some way been conquered and annexed by the astronomical universe. He spoke about men and their ideals exactly as the most insolent Unionist talks about the Irish and their ideals. He turned mankind into a small nationality. And his evil influence can be seen even in the most spirited and honourable of later scientific authors; notably in the early romances of Mr. H.G.Wells. Many moralists have in an exaggerated way represented the earth as wicked. But Mr. Wells and his school made the heavens wicked. We should lift up our eyes to the stars from whence would come our ruin.

But the expansion of which I speak was much more evil than all this. I have remarked that the materialist, like the madman, is in prison; in the prison of one thought. These people seemed to think it singularly inspiring to keep on saying that the prison was very large. The size of this scientific universe gave one no novelty, no relief. The cosmos went on for ever, but not in its wildest constellation could there be anything really interesting; anything, for instance, such as forgiveness or free will. The grandeur or infinity of the secret of its cosmos added nothing to it. It was like telling a prisoner in Reading gaol that he would be glad to hear that the gaol now covered half the county. The warder would have nothing to show the man except more and more long corridors of stone lit by ghastly lights and empty of all that is human. So these expanders of the universe had nothing to show us except more and more infinite corridors of space lit by ghastly suns and empty of all that is divine.

In fairyland there had been a real law; a law that could be broken, for the definition of a law is something that can be broken. But the machinery of this cosmic prison was something that could not be broken; for we ourselves were only a part of its machinery. We were either unable to do things or we were destined to do them. The idea of the mystical condition quite disappeared; one can neither have the firmness of keeping laws nor the fun of breaking them. The largeness of this universe had nothing of that freshness and airy outbreak which we have praised in the universe of the poet. This modern universe is literally an empire; that is, it was vast, but it is not free. One went into larger and larger windowless rooms, rooms big with Babylonian perspective; but one never found the smallest window or a whisper of outer air.

Their infernal parallels seemed to expand with distance; but for me all good things come to a point, swords for instance. So finding the boast of the big cosmos so unsatisfactory to my emotions I began to argue about it a little; and I soon found that the whole attitude was even shallower than could have been expected. According to these people the cosmos was one thing since it had one unbroken rule. Only (they would say) while it is one thing, it is also the only thing there is. Why, then, should one worry particularly to call it large? There is nothing to compare it with. It would be just as sensible to call it small. A man may say, “I like this vast cosmos, with its throng of stars and its crowd of varied creatures.” But if it comes to that why should not a man say, “I like this cosy little cosmos, with its decent number of stars and as neat a provision of live stock as I wish to see”? One is as good as the other; they are both mere sentiments. It is mere sentiment to rejoice that the sun is larger than the earth; it is quite as sane a sentiment to rejoice that the sun is no larger than it is. A man chooses to have an emotion about the largeness of the world; why should he not choose to have an emotion about its smallness?

It happened that I had that emotion. When one is fond of anything one addresses it by diminutives, even if it is an elephant or a life-guardsman. The reason is, that anything, however huge, that can be conceived of as complete, can be conceived of as small. If military moustaches did not suggest a sword or tusks a tail, then the object would be vast because it would be immeasurable. But the moment you can imagine a guardsman you can imagine a small guardsman. The moment you really see an elephant you can call it “Tiny.” If you can make a statue of a thing you can make a statuette of it. These people professed that the universe was one coherent thing; but they were not fond of the universe. But I was frightfully fond of the universe and wanted to address it by a diminutive. I often did so; and it never seemed to mind. Actually and in truth I did feel that these dim dogmas of vitality were better expressed by calling the world small than by calling it large. For about infinity there was a sort of carelessness which was the reverse of the fierce and pious care which I felt touching the pricelessness and the peril of life. They showed only a dreary waste; but I felt a sort of sacred thrift. For economy is far more romantic than extravagance. To them stars were an unending income of halfpence; but I felt about the golden sun and the silver moon as a schoolboy feels if he has one sovereign and one shilling.

These subconscious convictions are best hit off by the colour and tone of certain tales. Thus I have said that stories of magic alone can express my sense that life is not only a pleasure but a kind of eccentric privilege. I may express this other feeling of cosmic cosiness by allusion to another book always read in boyhood, “Robinson Crusoe,” which I read about this time, and which owes its eternal vivacity to the fact that it celebrates the poetry of limits, nay, even the wild romance of prudence. Crusoe is a man on a small rock with a few comforts just snatched from the sea: the best thing in the book is simply the list of things saved from the wreck. The greatest of poems is an inventory. Every kitchen tool becomes ideal because Crusoe might have dropped it in the sea. It is a good exercise, in empty or ugly hours of the day, to look at anything, the coal-scuttle or the book-case, and think how happy one could be to have brought it out of the sinking ship on to the solitary island. But it is a better exercise still to remember how all things have had this hair-breadth escape: everything has been saved from a wreck. Every man has had one horrible adventure: as a hidden untimely birth he had not been, as infants that never see the light. Men spoke much in my boyhood of restricted or ruined men of genius: and it was common to say that many a man was a Great Might-Have-Been. To me it is a more solid and startling fact that any man in the street is a Great Might-Not-Have-Been.

But I really felt (the fancy may seem foolish) as if all the order and number of things were the romantic remnant of Crusoe’s ship. That there are two sexes and one sun, was like the fact that there were two guns and one axe. It was poignantly urgent that none should be lost; but somehow, it was rather fun that none could be added. The trees and the planets seemed like things saved from the wreck: and when I saw the Matterhorn I was glad that it had not been overlooked in the confusion. I felt economical about the stars as if they were sapphires (they are called so in Milton’s Eden): I hoarded the hills. For the universe is a single jewel, and while it is a natural cant to talk of a jewel as peerless and priceless, of this jewel it is literally true. This cosmos is indeed without peer and without price: for there cannot be another one.

Thus ends, in unavoidable inadequacy, the attempt to utter the unutterable things. These are my ultimate attitudes towards life; the soils for the seeds of doctrine. These in some dark way I thought before I could write, and felt before I could think: that we may proceed more easily afterwards, I will roughly recapitulate them now. I felt in my bones; first, that this world does not explain itself. It may be a miracle with a supernatural explanation; it may be a conjuring trick, with a natural explanation. But the explanation of the conjuring trick, if it is to satisfy me, will have to be better than the natural explanations I have heard. The thing is magic, true or false. Second, I came to feel as if magic must have a meaning, and meaning must have some one to mean it. There was something personal in the world, as in a work of art; whatever it meant it meant violently. Third, I thought this purpose beautiful in its old design, in spite of its defects, such as dragons. Fourth, that the proper form of thanks to it is some form of humility and restraint: we should thank God for beer and Burgundy by not drinking too much of them. We owed, also, an obedience to whatever made us. And last, and strangest, there had come into my mind a vague and vast impression that in some way all good was a remnant to be stored and held sacred out of some primordial ruin. Man had saved his good as Crusoe saved his goods: he had saved them from a wreck. All this I felt and the age gave me no encouragement to feel it. And all this time I had not even thought of Christian theology.

V THE FLAG OF THE WORLD

When I was a boy there were two curious men running about who were called the optimist and the pessimist. I constantly used the words myself, but I cheerfully confess that I never had any very special idea of what they meant. The only thing which might be considered evident was that they could not mean what they said; for the ordinary verbal explanation was that the optimist thought this world as good as it could be, while the pessimist thought it as bad as it could be. Both these statements being obviously raving nonsense, one had to cast about for other explanations. An optimist could not mean a man who thought everything right and nothing wrong. For that is meaningless; it is like calling everything right and nothing left. Upon the whole, I came to the conclusion that the optimist thought everything good except the pessimist, and that the pessimist thought everything bad, except himself. It would be unfair to omit altogether from the list the mysterious but suggestive definition said to have been given by a little girl, “An optimist is a man who looks after your eyes, and a pessimist is a man who looks after your feet.” I am not sure that this is not the best definition of all. There is even a sort of allegorical truth in it. For there might, perhaps, be a profitable distinction drawn between that more dreary thinker who thinks merely of our contact with the earth from moment to moment, and that happier thinker who considers rather our primary power of vision and of choice of road.

But this is a deep mistake in this alternative of the optimist and the pessimist. The assumption of it is that a man criticises this world as if he were house-hunting, as if he were being shown over a new suite of apartments. If a man came to this world from some other world in full possession of his powers he might discuss whether the advantage of midsummer woods made up for the disadvantage of mad dogs, just as a man looking for lodgings might balance the presence of a telephone against the absence of a sea view. But no man is in that position. A man belongs to this world before he begins to ask if it is nice to belong to it. He has fought for the flag, and often won heroic victories for the flag long before he has ever enlisted. To put shortly what seems the essential matter, he has a loyalty long before he has any admiration.

In the last chapter it has been said that the primary feeling that this world is strange and yet attractive is best expressed in fairy tales. The reader may, if he likes, put down the next stage to that bellicose and even jingo literature which commonly comes next in the history of a boy. We all owe much sound morality to the penny dreadfuls. Whatever the reason, it seemed and still seems to me that our attitude towards life can be better expressed in terms of a kind of military loyalty than in terms of criticism and approval. My acceptance of the universe is not optimism, it is more like patriotism. It is a matter of primary loyalty. The world is not a lodging-house at Brighton, which we are to leave because it is miserable. It is the fortress of our family, with the flag flying on the turret, and the more miserable it is the less we should leave it. The point is not that this world is too sad to love or too glad not to love; the point is that when you do love a thing, its gladness is a reason for loving it, and its sadness a reason for loving it more. All optimistic thoughts about England and all pessimistic thoughts about her are alike reasons for the English patriot. Similarly, optimism and pessimism are alike arguments for the cosmic patriot.

Let us suppose we are confronted with a desperate thing—say Pimlico. If we think what is really best for Pimlico we shall find the thread of thought leads to the throne or the mystic and the arbitrary. It is not enough for a man to disapprove of Pimlico: in that case he will merely cut his throat or move to Chelsea. Nor, certainly, is it enough for a man to approve of Pimlico: for then it will remain Pimlico, which would be awful. The only way out of it seems to be for somebody to love Pimlico: to love it with a transcendental tie and without any earthly reason. If there arose a man who loved Pimlico, then Pimlico would rise into ivory towers and golden pinnacles; Pimlico would attire herself as a woman does when she is loved. For decoration is not given to hide horrible things: but to decorate things already adorable. A mother does not give her child a blue bow because he is so ugly without it. A lover does not give a girl a necklace to hide her neck. If men loved Pimlico as mothers love children, arbitrarily, because it is THEIRS, Pimlico in a year or two might be fairer than Florence. Some readers will say that this is a mere fantasy. I answer that this is the actual history of mankind. This, as a fact, is how cities did grow great. Go back to the darkest roots of civilization and you will find them knotted round some sacred stone or encircling some sacred well. People first paid honour to a spot and afterwards gained glory for it. Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her.

The eighteenth-century theories of the social contract have been exposed to much clumsy criticism in our time; in so far as they meant that there is at the back of all historic government an idea of content and co-operation, they were demonstrably right. But they really were wrong, in so far as they suggested that men had ever aimed at order or ethics directly by a conscious exchange of interests. Morality did not begin by one man saying to another, “I will not hit you if you do not hit me”; there is no trace of such a transaction. There IS a trace of both men having said, “We must not hit each other in the holy place.” They gained their morality by guarding their religion. They did not cultivate courage. They fought for the shrine, and found they had become courageous. They did not cultivate cleanliness. They purified themselves for the altar, and found that they were clean. The history of the Jews is the only early document known to most Englishmen, and the facts can be judged sufficiently from that. The Ten Commandments which have been found substantially common to mankind were merely military commands; a code of regimental orders, issued to protect a certain ark across a certain desert. Anarchy was evil because it endangered the sanctity. And only when they made a holy day for God did they find they had made a holiday for men.

If it be granted that this primary devotion to a place or thing is a source of creative energy, we can pass on to a very peculiar fact. Let us reiterate for an instant that the only right optimism is a sort of universal patriotism. What is the matter with the pessimist? I think it can be stated by saying that he is the cosmic anti-patriot. And what is the matter with the anti-patriot? I think it can be stated, without undue bitterness, by saying that he is the candid friend. And what is the matter with the candid friend? There we strike the rock of real life and immutable human nature.

I venture to say that what is bad in the candid friend is simply that he is not candid. He is keeping something back— his own gloomy pleasure in saying unpleasant things. He has a secret desire to hurt, not merely to help. This is certainly, I think, what makes a certain sort of anti-patriot irritating to healthy citizens. I do not speak (of course) of the anti-patriotism which only irritates feverish stockbrokers and gushing actresses; that is only patriotism speaking plainly. A man who says that no patriot should attack the Boer War until it is over is not worth answering intelligently; he is saying that no good son should warn his mother off a cliff until she has fallen over it. But there is an anti-patriot who honestly angers honest men, and the explanation of him is, I think, what I have suggested: he is the uncandid candid friend; the man who says, “I am sorry to say we are ruined,” and is not sorry at all. And he may be said, without rhetoric, to be a traitor; for he is using that ugly knowledge which was allowed him to strengthen the army, to discourage people from joining it. Because he is allowed to be pessimistic as a military adviser he is being pessimistic as a recruiting sergeant. Just in the same way the pessimist (who is the cosmic anti-patriot) uses the freedom that life allows to her counsellors to lure away the people from her flag. Granted that he states only facts, it is still essential to know what are his emotions, what is his motive. It may be that twelve hundred men in Tottenham are down with smallpox; but we want to know whether this is stated by some great philosopher who wants to curse the gods, or only by some common clergyman who wants to help the men.

The evil of the pessimist is, then, not that he chastises gods and men, but that he does not love what he chastises—he has not this primary and supernatural loyalty to things. What is the evil of the man commonly called an optimist? Obviously, it is felt that the optimist, wishing to defend the honour of this world, will defend the indefensible. He is the jingo of the universe; he will say, “My cosmos, right or wrong.” He will be less inclined to the reform of things; more inclined to a sort of front-bench official answer to all attacks, soothing every one with assurances. He will not wash the world, but whitewash the world. All this (which is true of a type of optimist) leads us to the one really interesting point of psychology, which could not be explained without it.

We say there must be a primal loyalty to life: the only question is, shall it be a natural or a supernatural loyalty? If you like to put it so, shall it be a reasonable or an unreasonable loyalty? Now, the extraordinary thing is that the bad optimism (the whitewashing, the weak defence of everything) comes in with the reasonable optimism. Rational optimism leads to stagnation: it is irrational optimism that leads to reform. Let me explain by using once more the parallel of patriotism. The man who is most likely to ruin the place he loves is exactly the man who loves it with a reason. The man who will improve the place is the man who loves it without a reason. If a man loves some feature of Pimlico (which seems unlikely), he may find himself defending that feature against Pimlico itself. But if he simply loves Pimlico itself, he may lay it waste and turn it into the New Jerusalem. I do not deny that reform may be excessive; I only say that it is the mystic patriot who reforms. Mere jingo self-contentment is commonest among those who have some pedantic reason for their patriotism. The worst jingoes do not love England, but a theory of England. If we love England for being an empire, we may overrate the success with which we rule the Hindoos. But if we love it only for being a nation, we can face all events: for it would be a nation even if the Hindoos ruled us. Thus also only those will permit their patriotism to falsify history whose patriotism depends on history. A man who loves England for being English will not mind how she arose. But a man who loves England for being Anglo-Saxon may go against all facts for his fancy. He may end (like Carlyle and Freeman) by maintaining that the Norman Conquest was a Saxon Conquest. He may end in utter unreason— because he has a reason. A man who loves France for being military will palliate the army of 1870. But a man who loves France for being France will improve the army of 1870. This is exactly what the French have done, and France is a good instance of the working paradox. Nowhere else is patriotism more purely abstract and arbitrary; and nowhere else is reform more drastic and sweeping. The more transcendental is your patriotism, the more practical are your politics.

Perhaps the most everyday instance of this point is in the case of women; and their strange and strong loyalty. Some stupid people started the idea that because women obviously back up their own people through everything, therefore women are blind and do not see anything. They can hardly have known any women. The same women who are ready to defend their men through thick and thin are (in their personal intercourse with the man) almost morbidly lucid about the thinness of his excuses or the thickness of his head. A man’s friend likes him but leaves him as he is: his wife loves him and is always trying to turn him into somebody else. Women who are utter mystics in their creed are utter cynics in their criticism. Thackeray expressed this well when he made Pendennis’ mother, who worshipped her son as a god, yet assume that he would go wrong as a man. She underrated his virtue, though she overrated his value. The devotee is entirely free to criticise; the fanatic can safely be a sceptic. Love is not blind; that is the last thing that it is. Love is bound; and the more it is bound the less it is blind.

This at least had come to be my position about all that was called optimism, pessimism, and improvement. Before any cosmic act of reform we must have a cosmic oath of allegiance. A man must be interested in life, then he could be disinterested in his views of it. “My son give me thy heart”; the heart must be fixed on the right thing: the moment we have a fixed heart we have a free hand. I must pause to anticipate an obvious criticism. It will be said that a rational person accepts the world as mixed of good and evil with a decent satisfaction and a decent endurance. But this is exactly the attitude which I maintain to be defective. It is, I know, very common in this age; it was perfectly put in those quiet lines of Matthew Arnold which are more piercingly blasphemous than the shrieks of Schopenhauer—

“Enough we live: —and if a life, With large results so little rife, Though bearable, seem hardly worth This pomp of worlds, this pain of birth.”

I know this feeling fills our epoch, and I think it freezes our epoch. For our Titanic purposes of faith and revolution, what we need is not the cold acceptance of the world as a compromise, but some way in which we can heartily hate and heartily love it. We do not want joy and anger to neutralize each other and produce a surly contentment; we want a fiercer delight and a fiercer discontent. We have to feel the universe at once as an ogre’s castle, to be stormed, and yet as our own cottage, to which we can return at evening.

No one doubts that an ordinary man can get on with this world: but we demand not strength enough to get on with it, but strength enough to get it on. Can he hate it enough to change it, and yet love it enough to think it worth changing? Can he look up at its colossal good without once feeling acquiescence? Can he look up at its colossal evil without once feeling despair? Can he, in short, be at once not only a pessimist and an optimist, but a fanatical pessimist and a fanatical optimist? Is he enough of a pagan to die for the world, and enough of a Christian to die to it? In this combination, I maintain, it is the rational optimist who fails, the irrational optimist who succeeds. He is ready to smash the whole universe for the sake of itself.

I put these things not in their mature logical sequence, but as they came: and this view was cleared and sharpened by an accident of the time. Under the lengthening shadow of Ibsen, an argument arose whether it was not a very nice thing to murder one’s self. Grave moderns told us that we must not even say “poor fellow,” of a man who had blown his brains out, since he was an enviable person, and had only blown them out because of their exceptional excellence. Mr. William Archer even suggested that in the golden age there would be penny-in-the-slot machines, by which a man could kill himself for a penny. In all this I found myself utterly hostile to many who called themselves liberal and humane. Not only is suicide a sin, it is the sin. It is the ultimate and absolute evil, the refusal to take an interest in existence; the refusal to take the oath of loyalty to life. The man who kills a man, kills a man. The man who kills himself, kills all men; as far as he is concerned he wipes out the world. His act is worse (symbolically considered) than any rape or dynamite outrage. For it destroys all buildings: it insults all women. The thief is satisfied with diamonds; but the suicide is not: that is his crime. He cannot be bribed, even by the blazing stones of the Celestial City. The thief compliments the things he steals, if not the owner of them. But the suicide insults everything on earth by not stealing it. He defiles every flower by refusing to live for its sake. There is not a tiny creature in the cosmos at whom his death is not a sneer. When a man hangs himself on a tree, the leaves might fall off in anger and the birds fly away in fury: for each has received a personal affront. Of course there may be pathetic emotional excuses for the act. There often are for rape, and there almost always are for dynamite. But if it comes to clear ideas and the intelligent meaning of things, then there is much more rational and philosophic truth in the burial at the cross-roads and the stake driven through the body, than in Mr. Archer’s suicidal automatic machines. There is a meaning in burying the suicide apart. The man’s crime is different from other crimes—for it makes even crimes impossible.

About the same time I read a solemn flippancy by some free thinker: he said that a suicide was only the same as a martyr. The open fallacy of this helped to clear the question. Obviously a suicide is the opposite of a martyr. A martyr is a man who cares so much for something outside him, that he forgets his own personal life. A suicide is a man who cares so little for anything outside him, that he wants to see the last of everything. One wants something to begin: the other wants everything to end. In other words, the martyr is noble, exactly because (however he renounces the world or execrates all humanity) he confesses this ultimate link with life; he sets his heart outside himself: he dies that something may live. The suicide is ignoble because he has not this link with being: he is a mere destroyer; spiritually, he destroys the universe. And then I remembered the stake and the cross-roads, and the queer fact that Christianity had shown this weird harshness to the suicide. For Christianity had shown a wild encouragement of the martyr. Historic Christianity was accused, not entirely without reason, of carrying martyrdom and asceticism to a point, desolate and pessimistic. The early Christian martyrs talked of death with a horrible happiness. They blasphemed the beautiful duties of the body: they smelt the grave afar off like a field of flowers. All this has seemed to many the very poetry of pessimism. Yet there is the stake at the crossroads to show what Christianity thought of the pessimist.

This was the first of the long train of enigmas with which Christianity entered the discussion. And there went with it a peculiarity of which I shall have to speak more markedly, as a note of all Christian notions, but which distinctly began in this one. The Christian attitude to the martyr and the suicide was not what is so often affirmed in modern morals. It was not a matter of degree. It was not that a line must be drawn somewhere, and that the self-slayer in exaltation fell within the line, the self-slayer in sadness just beyond it. The Christian feeling evidently was not merely that the suicide was carrying martyrdom too far. The Christian feeling was furiously for one and furiously against the other: these two things that looked so much alike were at opposite ends of heaven and hell. One man flung away his life; he was so good that his dry bones could heal cities in pestilence. Another man flung away life; he was so bad that his bones would pollute his brethren’s. I am not saying this fierceness was right; but why was it so fierce?

Here it was that I first found that my wandering feet were in some beaten track. Christianity had also felt this opposition of the martyr to the suicide: had it perhaps felt it for the same reason? Had Christianity felt what I felt, but could not (and cannot) express— this need for a first loyalty to things, and then for a ruinous reform of things? Then I remembered that it was actually the charge against Christianity that it combined these two things which I was wildly trying to combine. Christianity was accused, at one and the same time, of being too optimistic about the universe and of being too pessimistic about the world. The coincidence made me suddenly stand still.

An imbecile habit has arisen in modern controversy of saying that such and such a creed can be held in one age but cannot be held in another. Some dogma, we are told, was credible in the twelfth century, but is not credible in the twentieth. You might as well say that a certain philosophy can be believed on Mondays, but cannot be believed on Tuesdays. You might as well say of a view of the cosmos that it was suitable to half-past three, but not suitable to half-past four. What a man can believe depends upon his philosophy, not upon the clock or the century. If a man believes in unalterable natural law, he cannot believe in any miracle in any age. If a man believes in a will behind law, he can believe in any miracle in any age. Suppose, for the sake of argument, we are concerned with a case of thaumaturgic healing. A materialist of the twelfth century could not believe it any more than a materialist of the twentieth century. But a Christian Scientist of the twentieth century can believe it as much as a Christian of the twelfth century. It is simply a matter of a man’s theory of things. Therefore in dealing with any historical answer, the point is not whether it was given in our time, but whether it was given in answer to our question. And the more I thought about when and how Christianity had come into the world, the more I felt that it had actually come to answer this question.

It is commonly the loose and latitudinarian Christians who pay quite indefensible compliments to Christianity. They talk as if there had never been any piety or pity until Christianity came, a point on which any mediaeval would have been eager to correct them. They represent that the remarkable thing about Christianity was that it was the first to preach simplicity or self-restraint, or inwardness and sincerity. They will think me very narrow (whatever that means) if I say that the remarkable thing about Christianity was that it was the first to preach Christianity. Its peculiarity was that it was peculiar, and simplicity and sincerity are not peculiar, but obvious ideals for all mankind. Christianity was the answer to a riddle, not the last truism uttered after a long talk. Only the other day I saw in an excellent weekly paper of Puritan tone this remark, that Christianity when stripped of its armour of dogma (as who should speak of a man stripped of his armour of bones), turned out to be nothing but the Quaker doctrine of the Inner Light. Now, if I were to say that Christianity came into the world specially to destroy the doctrine of the Inner Light, that would be an exaggeration. But it would be very much nearer to the truth. The last Stoics, like Marcus Aurelius, were exactly the people who did believe in the Inner Light. Their dignity, their weariness, their sad external care for others, their incurable internal care for themselves, were all due to the Inner Light, and existed only by that dismal illumination. Notice that Marcus Aurelius insists, as such introspective moralists always do, upon small things done or undone; it is because he has not hate or love enough to make a moral revolution. He gets up early in the morning, just as our own aristocrats living the Simple Life get up early in the morning; because such altruism is much easier than stopping the games of the amphitheatre or giving the English people back their land. Marcus Aurelius is the most intolerable of human types. He is an unselfish egoist. An unselfish egoist is a man who has pride without the excuse of passion. Of all conceivable forms of enlightenment the worst is what these people call the Inner Light. Of all horrible religions the most horrible is the worship of the god within. Any one who knows any body knows how it would work; any one who knows any one from the Higher Thought Centre knows how it does work. That Jones shall worship the god within him turns out ultimately to mean that Jones shall worship Jones. Let Jones worship the sun or moon, anything rather than the Inner Light; let Jones worship cats or crocodiles, if he can find any in his street, but not the god within. Christianity came into the world firstly in order to assert with violence that a man had not only to look inwards, but to look outwards, to behold with astonishment and enthusiasm a divine company and a divine captain. The only fun of being a Christian was that a man was not left alone with the Inner Light, but definitely recognized an outer light, fair as the sun, clear as the moon, terrible as an army with banners.

All the same, it will be as well if Jones does not worship the sun and moon. If he does, there is a tendency for him to imitate them; to say, that because the sun burns insects alive, he may burn insects alive. He thinks that because the sun gives people sun-stroke, he may give his neighbour measles. He thinks that because the moon is said to drive men mad, he may drive his wife mad. This ugly side of mere external optimism had also shown itself in the ancient world. About the time when the Stoic idealism had begun to show the weaknesses of pessimism, the old nature worship of the ancients had begun to show the enormous weaknesses of optimism. Nature worship is natural enough while the society is young, or, in other words, Pantheism is all right as long as it is the worship of Pan. But Nature has another side which experience and sin are not slow in finding out, and it is no flippancy to say of the god Pan that he soon showed the cloven hoof. The only objection to Natural Religion is that somehow it always becomes unnatural. A man loves Nature in the morning for her innocence and amiability, and at nightfall, if he is loving her still, it is for her darkness and her cruelty. He washes at dawn in clear water as did the Wise Man of the Stoics, yet, somehow at the dark end of the day, he is bathing in hot bull’s blood, as did Julian the Apostate. The mere pursuit of health always leads to something unhealthy. Physical nature must not be made the direct object of obedience; it must be enjoyed, not worshipped. Stars and mountains must not be taken seriously. If they are, we end where the pagan nature worship ended. Because the earth is kind, we can imitate all her cruelties. Because sexuality is sane, we can all go mad about sexuality. Mere optimism had reached its insane and appropriate termination. The theory that everything was good had become an orgy of everything that was bad.

On the other side our idealist pessimists were represented by the old remnant of the Stoics. Marcus Aurelius and his friends had really given up the idea of any god in the universe and looked only to the god within. They had no hope of any virtue in nature, and hardly any hope of any virtue in society. They had not enough interest in the outer world really to wreck or revolutionise it. They did not love the city enough to set fire to it. Thus the ancient world was exactly in our own desolate dilemma. The only people who really enjoyed this world were busy breaking it up; and the virtuous people did not care enough about them to knock them down. In this dilemma (the same as ours) Christianity suddenly stepped in and offered a singular answer, which the world eventually accepted as THE answer. It was the answer then, and I think it is the answer now.

This answer was like the slash of a sword; it sundered; it did not in any sense sentimentally unite. Briefly, it divided God from the cosmos. That transcendence and distinctness of the deity which some Christians now want to remove from Christianity, was really the only reason why any one wanted to be a Christian. It was the whole point of the Christian answer to the unhappy pessimist and the still more unhappy optimist. As I am here only concerned with their particular problem, I shall indicate only briefly this great metaphysical suggestion. All descriptions of the creating or sustaining principle in things must be metaphorical, because they must be verbal. Thus the pantheist is forced to speak of God in all things as if he were in a box. Thus the evolutionist has, in his very name, the idea of being unrolled like a carpet. All terms, religious and irreligious, are open to this charge. The only question is whether all terms are useless, or whether one can, with such a phrase, cover a distinct IDEA about the origin of things. I think one can, and so evidently does the evolutionist, or he would not talk about evolution. And the root phrase for all Christian theism was this, that God was a creator, as an artist is a creator. A poet is so separate from his poem that he himself speaks of it as a little thing he has “thrown off.” Even in giving it forth he has flung it away. This principle that all creation and procreation is a breaking off is at least as consistent through the cosmos as the evolutionary principle that all growth is a branching out. A woman loses a child even in having a child. All creation is separation. Birth is as solemn a parting as death.

It was the prime philosophic principle of Christianity that this divorce in the divine act of making (such as severs the poet from the poem or the mother from the new-born child) was the true description of the act whereby the absolute energy made the world. According to most philosophers, God in making the world enslaved it. According to Christianity, in making it, He set it free. God had written, not so much a poem, but rather a play; a play he had planned as perfect, but which had necessarily been left to human actors and stage-managers, who had since made a great mess of it. I will discuss the truth of this theorem later. Here I have only to point out with what a startling smoothness it passed the dilemma we have discussed in this chapter. In this way at least one could be both happy and indignant without degrading one’s self to be either a pessimist or an optimist. On this system one could fight all the forces of existence without deserting the flag of existence. One could be at peace with the universe and yet be at war with the world. St. George could still fight the dragon, however big the monster bulked in the cosmos, though he were bigger than the mighty cities or bigger than the everlasting hills. If he were as big as the world he could yet be killed in the name of the world. St. George had not to consider any obvious odds or proportions in the scale of things, but only the original secret of their design. He can shake his sword at the dragon, even if it is everything; even if the empty heavens over his head are only the huge arch of its open jaws.

And then followed an experience impossible to describe. It was as if I had been blundering about since my birth with two huge and unmanageable machines, of different shapes and without apparent connection—the world and the Christian tradition. I had found this hole in the world: the fact that one must somehow find a way of loving the world without trusting it; somehow one must love the world without being worldly. I found this projecting feature of Christian theology, like a sort of hard spike, the dogmatic insistence that God was personal, and had made a world separate from Himself. The spike of dogma fitted exactly into the hole in the world— it had evidently been meant to go there—and then the strange thing began to happen. When once these two parts of the two machines had come together, one after another, all the other parts fitted and fell in with an eerie exactitude. I could hear bolt after bolt over all the machinery falling into its place with a kind of click of relief. Having got one part right, all the other parts were repeating that rectitude, as clock after clock strikes noon. Instinct after instinct was answered by doctrine after doctrine. Or, to vary the metaphor, I was like one who had advanced into a hostile country to take one high fortress. And when that fort had fallen the whole country surrendered and turned solid behind me. The whole land was lit up, as it were, back to the first fields of my childhood. All those blind fancies of boyhood which in the fourth chapter I have tried in vain to trace on the darkness, became suddenly transparent and sane. I was right when I felt that roses were red by some sort of choice: it was the divine choice. I was right when I felt that I would almost rather say that grass was the wrong colour than say it must by necessity have been that colour: it might verily have been any other. My sense that happiness hung on the crazy thread of a condition did mean something when all was said: it meant the whole doctrine of the Fall. Even those dim and shapeless monsters of notions which I have not been able to describe, much less defend, stepped quietly into their places like colossal caryatides of the creed. The fancy that the cosmos was not vast and void, but small and cosy, had a fulfilled significance now, for anything that is a work of art must be small in the sight of the artist; to God the stars might be only small and dear, like diamonds. And my haunting instinct that somehow good was not merely a tool to be used, but a relic to be guarded, like the goods from Crusoe’s ship— even that had been the wild whisper of something originally wise, for, according to Christianity, we were indeed the survivors of a wreck, the crew of a golden ship that had gone down before the beginning of the world.

But the important matter was this, that it entirely reversed the reason for optimism. And the instant the reversal was made it felt like the abrupt ease when a bone is put back in the socket. I had often called myself an optimist, to avoid the too evident blasphemy of pessimism. But all the optimism of the age had been false and disheartening for this reason, that it had always been trying to prove that we fit in to the world. The Christian optimism is based on the fact that we do NOT fit in to the world. I had tried to be happy by telling myself that man is an animal, like any other which sought its meat from God. But now I really was happy, for I had learnt that man is a monstrosity. I had been right in feeling all things as odd, for I myself was at once worse and better than all things. The optimist’s pleasure was prosaic, for it dwelt on the naturalness of everything; the Christian pleasure was poetic, for it dwelt on the unnaturalness of everything in the light of the supernatural. The modern philosopher had told me again and again that I was in the right place, and I had still felt depressed even in acquiescence. But I had heard that I was in the WRONG place, and my soul sang for joy, like a bird in spring. The knowledge found out and illuminated forgotten chambers in the dark house of infancy. I knew now why grass had always seemed to me as queer as the green beard of a giant, and why I could feel homesick at home.

VI THE PARADOXES OF CHRISTIANITY

The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, nor even that it is a reasonable one. The commonest kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite. Life is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for logicians. It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wildness lies in wait. I give one coarse instance of what I mean. Suppose some mathematical creature from the moon were to reckon up the human body; he would at once see that the essential thing about it was that it was duplicate. A man is two men, he on the right exactly resembling him on the left. Having noted that there was an arm on the right and one on the left, a leg on the right and one on the left, he might go further and still find on each side the same number of fingers, the same number of toes, twin eyes, twin ears, twin nostrils, and even twin lobes of the brain. At last he would take it as a law; and then, where he found a heart on one side, would deduce that there was another heart on the other. And just then, where he most felt he was right, he would be wrong.

It is this silent swerving from accuracy by an inch that is the uncanny element in everything. It seems a sort of secret treason in the universe. An apple or an orange is round enough to get itself called round, and yet is not round after all. The earth itself is shaped like an orange in order to lure some simple astronomer into calling it a globe. A blade of grass is called after the blade of a sword, because it comes to a point; but it doesn’t. Everywhere in things there is this element of the quiet and incalculable. It escapes the rationalists, but it never escapes till the last moment. From the grand curve of our earth it could easily be inferred that every inch of it was thus curved. It would seem rational that as a man has a brain on both sides, he should have a heart on both sides. Yet scientific men are still organizing expeditions to find the North Pole, because they are so fond of flat country. Scientific men are also still organizing expeditions to find a man’s heart; and when they try to find it, they generally get on the wrong side of him.

Now, actual insight or inspiration is best tested by whether it guesses these hidden malformations or surprises. If our mathematician from the moon saw the two arms and the two ears, he might deduce the two shoulder-blades and the two halves of the brain. But if he guessed that the man’s heart was in the right place, then I should call him something more than a mathematician. Now, this is exactly the claim which I have since come to propound for Christianity. Not merely that it deduces logical truths, but that when it suddenly becomes illogical, it has found, so to speak, an illogical truth. It not only goes right about things, but it goes wrong (if one may say so) exactly where the things go wrong. Its plan suits the secret irregularities, and expects the unexpected. It is simple about the simple truth; but it is stubborn about the subtle truth. It will admit that a man has two hands, it will not admit (though all the Modernists wail to it) the obvious deduction that he has two hearts. It is my only purpose in this chapter to point this out; to show that whenever we feel there is something odd in Christian theology, we shall generally find that there is something odd in the truth.

I have alluded to an unmeaning phrase to the effect that such and such a creed cannot be believed in our age. Of course, anything can be believed in any age. But, oddly enough, there really is a sense in which a creed, if it is believed at all, can be believed more fixedly in a complex society than in a simple one. If a man finds Christianity true in Birmingham, he has actually clearer reasons for faith than if he had found it true in Mercia. For the more complicated seems the coincidence, the less it can be a coincidence. If snowflakes fell in the shape, say, of the heart of Midlothian, it might be an accident. But if snowflakes fell in the exact shape of the maze at Hampton Court, I think one might call it a miracle. It is exactly as of such a miracle that I have since come to feel of the philosophy of Christianity. The complication of our modern world proves the truth of the creed more perfectly than any of the plain problems of the ages of faith. It was in Notting Hill and Battersea that I began to see that Christianity was true. This is why the faith has that elaboration of doctrines and details which so much distresses those who admire Christianity without believing in it. When once one believes in a creed, one is proud of its complexity, as scientists are proud of the complexity of science. It shows how rich it is in discoveries. If it is right at all, it is a compliment to say that it’s elaborately right. A stick might fit a hole or a stone a hollow by accident. But a key and a lock are both complex. And if a key fits a lock, you know it is the right key.

But this involved accuracy of the thing makes it very difficult to do what I now have to do, to describe this accumulation of truth. It is very hard for a man to defend anything of which he is entirely convinced. It is comparatively easy when he is only partially convinced. He is partially convinced because he has found this or that proof of the thing, and he can expound it. But a man is not really convinced of a philosophic theory when he finds that something proves it. He is only really convinced when he finds that everything proves it. And the more converging reasons he finds pointing to this conviction, the more bewildered he is if asked suddenly to sum them up. Thus, if one asked an ordinary intelligent man, on the spur of the moment, “Why do you prefer civilization to savagery?” he would look wildly round at object after object, and would only be able to answer vaguely, “Why, there is that bookcase … and the coals in the coal-scuttle … and pianos … and policemen.” The whole case for civilization is that the case for it is complex. It has done so many things. But that very multiplicity of proof which ought to make reply overwhelming makes reply impossible.

There is, therefore, about all complete conviction a kind of huge helplessness. The belief is so big that it takes a long time to get it into action. And this hesitation chiefly arises, oddly enough, from an indifference about where one should begin. All roads lead to Rome; which is one reason why many people never get there. In the case of this defence of the Christian conviction I confess that I would as soon begin the argument with one thing as another; I would begin it with a turnip or a taximeter cab. But if I am to be at all careful about making my meaning clear, it will, I think, be wiser to continue the current arguments of the last chapter, which was concerned to urge the first of these mystical coincidences, or rather ratifications. All I had hitherto heard of Christian theology had alienated me from it. I was a pagan at the age of twelve, and a complete agnostic by the age of sixteen; and I cannot understand any one passing the age of seventeen without having asked himself so simple a question. I did, indeed, retain a cloudy reverence for a cosmic deity and a great historical interest in the Founder of Christianity. But I certainly regarded Him as a man; though perhaps I thought that, even in that point, He had an advantage over some of His modern critics. I read the scientific and sceptical literature of my time—all of it, at least, that I could find written in English and lying about; and I read nothing else; I mean I read nothing else on any other note of philosophy. The penny dreadfuls which I also read were indeed in a healthy and heroic tradition of Christianity; but I did not know this at the time. I never read a line of Christian apologetics. I read as little as I can of them now. It was Huxley and Herbert Spencer and Bradlaugh who brought me back to orthodox theology. They sowed in my mind my first wild doubts of doubt. Our grandmothers were quite right when they said that Tom Paine and the free-thinkers unsettled the mind. They do. They unsettled mine horribly. The rationalist made me question whether reason was of any use whatever; and when I had finished Herbert Spencer I had got as far as doubting (for the first time) whether evolution had occurred at all. As I laid down the last of Colonel Ingersoll’s atheistic lectures the dreadful thought broke across my mind, “Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian.” I was in a desperate way.

This odd effect of the great agnostics in arousing doubts deeper than their own might be illustrated in many ways. I take only one. As I read and re-read all the non-Christian or anti-Christian accounts of the faith, from Huxley to Bradlaugh, a slow and awful impression grew gradually but graphically upon my mind—the impression that Christianity must be a most extraordinary thing. For not only (as I understood) had Christianity the most flaming vices, but it had apparently a mystical talent for combining vices which seemed inconsistent with each other. It was attacked on all sides and for all contradictory reasons. No sooner had one rationalist demonstrated that it was too far to the east than another demonstrated with equal clearness that it was much too far to the west. No sooner had my indignation died down at its angular and aggressive squareness than I was called up again to notice and condemn its enervating and sensual roundness. In case any reader has not come across the thing I mean, I will give such instances as I remember at random of this self-contradiction in the sceptical attack. I give four or five of them; there are fifty more.

Thus, for instance, I was much moved by the eloquent attack on Christianity as a thing of inhuman gloom; for I thought (and still think) sincere pessimism the unpardonable sin. Insincere pessimism is a social accomplishment, rather agreeable than otherwise; and fortunately nearly all pessimism is insincere. But if Christianity was, as these people said, a thing purely pessimistic and opposed to life, then I was quite prepared to blow up St. Paul’s Cathedral. But the extraordinary thing is this. They did prove to me in Chapter I. (to my complete satisfaction) that Christianity was too pessimistic; and then, in Chapter II., they began to prove to me that it was a great deal too optimistic. One accusation against Christianity was that it prevented men, by morbid tears and terrors, from seeking joy and liberty in the bosom of Nature. But another accusation was that it comforted men with a fictitious providence, and put them in a pink-and-white nursery. One great agnostic asked why Nature was not beautiful enough, and why it was hard to be free. Another great agnostic objected that Christian optimism, “the garment of make-believe woven by pious hands,” hid from us the fact that Nature was ugly, and that it was impossible to be free. One rationalist had hardly done calling Christianity a nightmare before another began to call it a fool’s paradise. This puzzled me; the charges seemed inconsistent. Christianity could not at once be the black mask on a white world, and also the white mask on a black world. The state of the Christian could not be at once so comfortable that he was a coward to cling to it, and so uncomfortable that he was a fool to stand it. If it falsified human vision it must falsify it one way or another; it could not wear both green and rose-coloured spectacles. I rolled on my tongue with a terrible joy, as did all young men of that time, the taunts which Swinburne hurled at the dreariness of the creed—

“Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilaean, the world has grown gray with Thy breath.”

But when I read the same poet’s accounts of paganism (as in “Atalanta”), I gathered that the world was, if possible, more gray before the Galilean breathed on it than afterwards. The poet maintained, indeed, in the abstract, that life itself was pitch dark. And yet, somehow, Christianity had darkened it. The very man who denounced Christianity for pessimism was himself a pessimist. I thought there must be something wrong. And it did for one wild moment cross my mind that, perhaps, those might not be the very best judges of the relation of religion to happiness who, by their own account, had neither one nor the other.

It must be understood that I did not conclude hastily that the accusations were false or the accusers fools. I simply deduced that Christianity must be something even weirder and wickeder than they made out. A thing might have these two opposite vices; but it must be a rather queer thing if it did. A man might be too fat in one place and too thin in another; but he would be an odd shape. At this point my thoughts were only of the odd shape of the Christian religion; I did not allege any odd shape in the rationalistic mind.

Here is another case of the same kind. I felt that a strong case against Christianity lay in the charge that there is something timid, monkish, and unmanly about all that is called “Christian,” especially in its attitude towards resistance and fighting. The great sceptics of the nineteenth century were largely virile. Bradlaugh in an expansive way, Huxley, in a reticent way, were decidedly men. In comparison, it did seem tenable that there was something weak and over patient about Christian counsels. The Gospel paradox about the other cheek, the fact that priests never fought, a hundred things made plausible the accusation that Christianity was an attempt to make a man too like a sheep. I read it and believed it, and if I had read nothing different, I should have gone on believing it. But I read something very different. I turned the next page in my agnostic manual, and my brain turned up-side down. Now I found that I was to hate Christianity not for fighting too little, but for fighting too much. Christianity, it seemed, was the mother of wars. Christianity had deluged the world with blood. I had got thoroughly angry with the Christian, because he never was angry. And now I was told to be angry with him because his anger had been the most huge and horrible thing in human history; because his anger had soaked the earth and smoked to the sun. The very people who reproached Christianity with the meekness and non-resistance of the monasteries were the very people who reproached it also with the violence and valour of the Crusades. It was the fault of poor old Christianity (somehow or other) both that Edward the Confessor did not fight and that Richard Coeur de Leon did. The Quakers (we were told) were the only characteristic Christians; and yet the massacres of Cromwell and Alva were characteristic Christian crimes. What could it all mean? What was this Christianity which always forbade war and always produced wars? What could be the nature of the thing which one could abuse first because it would not fight, and second because it was always fighting? In what world of riddles was born this monstrous murder and this monstrous meekness? The shape of Christianity grew a queerer shape every instant.

I take a third case; the strangest of all, because it involves the one real objection to the faith. The one real objection to the Christian religion is simply that it is one religion. The world is a big place, full of very different kinds of people. Christianity (it may reasonably be said) is one thing confined to one kind of people; it began in Palestine, it has practically stopped with Europe. I was duly impressed with this argument in my youth, and I was much drawn towards the doctrine often preached in Ethical Societies—I mean the doctrine that there is one great unconscious church of all humanity founded on the omnipresence of the human conscience. Creeds, it was said, divided men; but at least morals united them. The soul might seek the strangest and most remote lands and ages and still find essential ethical common sense. It might find Confucius under Eastern trees, and he would be writing “Thou shalt not steal.” It might decipher the darkest hieroglyphic on the most primeval desert, and the meaning when deciphered would be “Little boys should tell the truth.” I believed this doctrine of the brotherhood of all men in the possession of a moral sense, and I believe it still— with other things. And I was thoroughly annoyed with Christianity for suggesting (as I supposed) that whole ages and empires of men had utterly escaped this light of justice and reason. But then I found an astonishing thing. I found that the very people who said that mankind was one church from Plato to Emerson were the very people who said that morality had changed altogether, and that what was right in one age was wrong in another. If I asked, say, for an altar, I was told that we needed none, for men our brothers gave us clear oracles and one creed in their universal customs and ideals. But if I mildly pointed out that one of men’s universal customs was to have an altar, then my agnostic teachers turned clean round and told me that men had always been in darkness and the superstitions of savages. I found it was their daily taunt against Christianity that it was the light of one people and had left all others to die in the dark. But I also found that it was their special boast for themselves that science and progress were the discovery of one people, and that all other peoples had died in the dark. Their chief insult to Christianity was actually their chief compliment to themselves, and there seemed to be a strange unfairness about all their relative insistence on the two things. When considering some pagan or agnostic, we were to remember that all men had one religion; when considering some mystic or spiritualist, we were only to consider what absurd religions some men had. We could trust the ethics of Epictetus, because ethics had never changed. We must not trust the ethics of Bossuet, because ethics had changed. They changed in two hundred years, but not in two thousand.

This began to be alarming. It looked not so much as if Christianity was bad enough to include any vices, but rather as if any stick was good enough to beat Christianity with. What again could this astonishing thing be like which people were so anxious to contradict, that in doing so they did not mind contradicting themselves? I saw the same thing on every side. I can give no further space to this discussion of it in detail; but lest any one supposes that I have unfairly selected three accidental cases I will run briefly through a few others. Thus, certain sceptics wrote that the great crime of Christianity had been its attack on the family; it had dragged women to the loneliness and contemplation of the cloister, away from their homes and their children. But, then, other sceptics (slightly more advanced) said that the great crime of Christianity was forcing the family and marriage upon us; that it doomed women to the drudgery of their homes and children, and forbade them loneliness and contemplation. The charge was actually reversed. Or, again, certain phrases in the Epistles or the marriage service, were said by the anti-Christians to show contempt for woman’s intellect. But I found that the anti-Christians themselves had a contempt for woman’s intellect; for it was their great sneer at the Church on the Continent that “only women” went to it. Or again, Christianity was reproached with its naked and hungry habits; with its sackcloth and dried peas. But the next minute Christianity was being reproached with its pomp and its ritualism; its shrines of porphyry and its robes of gold. It was abused for being too plain and for being too coloured. Again Christianity had always been accused of restraining sexuality too much, when Bradlaugh the Malthusian discovered that it restrained it too little. It is often accused in the same breath of prim respectability and of religious extravagance. Between the covers of the same atheistic pamphlet I have found the faith rebuked for its disunion, “One thinks one thing, and one another,” and rebuked also for its union, “It is difference of opinion that prevents the world from going to the dogs.” In the same conversation a free-thinker, a friend of mine, blamed Christianity for despising Jews, and then despised it himself for being Jewish.

I wished to be quite fair then, and I wish to be quite fair now; and I did not conclude that the attack on Christianity was all wrong. I only concluded that if Christianity was wrong, it was very wrong indeed. Such hostile horrors might be combined in one thing, but that thing must be very strange and solitary. There are men who are misers, and also spendthrifts; but they are rare. There are men sensual and also ascetic; but they are rare. But if this mass of mad contradictions really existed, quakerish and bloodthirsty, too gorgeous and too thread-bare, austere, yet pandering preposterously to the lust of the eye, the enemy of women and their foolish refuge, a solemn pessimist and a silly optimist, if this evil existed, then there was in this evil something quite supreme and unique. For I found in my rationalist teachers no explanation of such exceptional corruption. Christianity (theoretically speaking) was in their eyes only one of the ordinary myths and errors of mortals. THEY gave me no key to this twisted and unnatural badness. Such a paradox of evil rose to the stature of the supernatural. It was, indeed, almost as supernatural as the infallibility of the Pope. An historic institution, which never went right, is really quite as much of a miracle as an institution that cannot go wrong. The only explanation which immediately occurred to my mind was that Christianity did not come from heaven, but from hell. Really, if Jesus of Nazareth was not Christ, He must have been Antichrist.

And then in a quiet hour a strange thought struck me like a still thunderbolt. There had suddenly come into my mind another explanation. Suppose we heard an unknown man spoken of by many men. Suppose we were puzzled to hear that some men said he was too tall and some too short; some objected to his fatness, some lamented his leanness; some thought him too dark, and some too fair. One explanation (as has been already admitted) would be that he might be an odd shape. But there is another explanation. He might be the right shape. Outrageously tall men might feel him to be short. Very short men might feel him to be tall. Old bucks who are growing stout might consider him insufficiently filled out; old beaux who were growing thin might feel that he expanded beyond the narrow lines of elegance. Perhaps Swedes (who have pale hair like tow) called him a dark man, while negroes considered him distinctly blonde. Perhaps (in short) this extraordinary thing is really the ordinary thing; at least the normal thing, the centre. Perhaps, after all, it is Christianity that is sane and all its critics that are mad—in various ways. I tested this idea by asking myself whether there was about any of the accusers anything morbid that might explain the accusation. I was startled to find that this key fitted a lock. For instance, it was certainly odd that the modern world charged Christianity at once with bodily austerity and with artistic pomp. But then it was also odd, very odd, that the modern world itself combined extreme bodily luxury with an extreme absence of artistic pomp. The modern man thought Becket’s robes too rich and his meals too poor. But then the modern man was really exceptional in history; no man before ever ate such elaborate dinners in such ugly clothes. The modern man found the church too simple exactly where modern life is too complex; he found the church too gorgeous exactly where modern life is too dingy. The man who disliked the plain fasts and feasts was mad on entrees. The man who disliked vestments wore a pair of preposterous trousers. And surely if there was any insanity involved in the matter at all it was in the trousers, not in the simply falling robe. If there was any insanity at all, it was in the extravagant entrees, not in the bread and wine.

I went over all the cases, and I found the key fitted so far. The fact that Swinburne was irritated at the unhappiness of Christians and yet more irritated at their happiness was easily explained. It was no longer a complication of diseases in Christianity, but a complication of diseases in Swinburne. The restraints of Christians saddened him simply because he was more hedonist than a healthy man should be. The faith of Christians angered him because he was more pessimist than a healthy man should be. In the same way the Malthusians by instinct attacked Christianity; not because there is anything especially anti-Malthusian about Christianity, but because there is something a little anti-human about Malthusianism.

Nevertheless it could not, I felt, be quite true that Christianity was merely sensible and stood in the middle. There was really an element in it of emphasis and even frenzy which had justified the secularists in their superficial criticism. It might be wise, I began more and more to think that it was wise, but it was not merely worldly wise; it was not merely temperate and respectable. Its fierce crusaders and meek saints might balance each other; still, the crusaders were very fierce and the saints were very meek, meek beyond all decency. Now, it was just at this point of the speculation that I remembered my thoughts about the martyr and the suicide. In that matter there had been this combination between two almost insane positions which yet somehow amounted to sanity. This was just such another contradiction; and this I had already found to be true. This was exactly one of the paradoxes in which sceptics found the creed wrong; and in this I had found it right. Madly as Christians might love the martyr or hate the suicide, they never felt these passions more madly than I had felt them long before I dreamed of Christianity. Then the most difficult and interesting part of the mental process opened, and I began to trace this idea darkly through all the enormous thoughts of our theology. The idea was that which I had outlined touching the optimist and the pessimist; that we want not an amalgam or compromise, but both things at the top of their energy; love and wrath both burning. Here I shall only trace it in relation to ethics. But I need not remind the reader that the idea of this combination is indeed central in orthodox theology. For orthodox theology has specially insisted that Christ was not a being apart from God and man, like an elf, nor yet a being half human and half not, like a centaur, but both things at once and both things thoroughly, very man and very God. Now let me trace this notion as I found it.

All sane men can see that sanity is some kind of equilibrium; that one may be mad and eat too much, or mad and eat too little. Some moderns have indeed appeared with vague versions of progress and evolution which seeks to destroy the MESON or balance of Aristotle. They seem to suggest that we are meant to starve progressively, or to go on eating larger and larger breakfasts every morning for ever. But the great truism of the MESON remains for all thinking men, and these people have not upset any balance except their own. But granted that we have all to keep a balance, the real interest comes in with the question of how that balance can be kept. That was the problem which Paganism tried to solve: that was the problem which I think Christianity solved and solved in a very strange way.

Paganism declared that virtue was in a balance; Christianity declared it was in a conflict: the collision of two passions apparently opposite. Of course they were not really inconsistent; but they were such that it was hard to hold simultaneously. Let us follow for a moment the clue of the martyr and the suicide; and take the case of courage. No quality has ever so much addled the brains and tangled the definitions of merely rational sages. Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. “He that will lose his life, the same shall save it,” is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes. It is a piece of everyday advice for sailors or mountaineers. It might be printed in an Alpine guide or a drill book. This paradox is the whole principle of courage; even of quite earthly or quite brutal courage. A man cut off by the sea may save his life if he will risk it on the precipice.

He can only get away from death by continually stepping within an inch of it. A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine. No philosopher, I fancy, has ever expressed this romantic riddle with adequate lucidity, and I certainly have not done so. But Christianity has done more: it has marked the limits of it in the awful graves of the suicide and the hero, showing the distance between him who dies for the sake of living and him who dies for the sake of dying. And it has held up ever since above the European lances the banner of the mystery of chivalry: the Christian courage, which is a disdain of death; not the Chinese courage, which is a disdain of life.

And now I began to find that this duplex passion was the Christian key to ethics everywhere. Everywhere the creed made a moderation out of the still crash of two impetuous emotions. Take, for instance, the matter of modesty, of the balance between mere pride and mere prostration. The average pagan, like the average agnostic, would merely say that he was content with himself, but not insolently self-satisfied, that there were many better and many worse, that his deserts were limited, but he would see that he got them. In short, he would walk with his head in the air; but not necessarily with his nose in the air. This is a manly and rational position, but it is open to the objection we noted against the compromise between optimism and pessimism—the “resignation” of Matthew Arnold. Being a mixture of two things, it is a dilution of two things; neither is present in its full strength or contributes its full colour. This proper pride does not lift the heart like the tongue of trumpets; you cannot go clad in crimson and gold for this. On the other hand, this mild rationalist modesty does not cleanse the soul with fire and make it clear like crystal; it does not (like a strict and searching humility) make a man as a little child, who can sit at the feet of the grass. It does not make him look up and see marvels; for Alice must grow small if she is to be Alice in Wonderland. Thus it loses both the poetry of being proud and the poetry of being humble. Christianity sought by this same strange expedient to save both of them.

It separated the two ideas and then exaggerated them both. In one way Man was to be haughtier than he had ever been before; in another way he was to be humbler than he had ever been before. In so far as I am Man I am the chief of creatures. In so far as I am a man I am the chief of sinners. All humility that had meant pessimism, that had meant man taking a vague or mean view of his whole destiny— all that was to go. We were to hear no more the wail of Ecclesiastes that humanity had no pre-eminence over the brute, or the awful cry of Homer that man was only the saddest of all the beasts of the field. Man was a statue of God walking about the garden. Man had pre-eminence over all the brutes; man was only sad because he was not a beast, but a broken god. The Greek had spoken of men creeping on the earth, as if clinging to it. Now Man was to tread on the earth as if to subdue it. Christianity thus held a thought of the dignity of man that could only be expressed in crowns rayed like the sun and fans of peacock plumage. Yet at the same time it could hold a thought about the abject smallness of man that could only be expressed in fasting and fantastic submission, in the gray ashes of St. Dominic and the white snows of St. Bernard. When one came to think of ONE’S SELF, there was vista and void enough for any amount of bleak abnegation and bitter truth. There the realistic gentleman could let himself go—as long as he let himself go at himself. There was an open playground for the happy pessimist. Let him say anything against himself short of blaspheming the original aim of his being; let him call himself a fool and even a damned fool (though that is Calvinistic); but he must not say that fools are not worth saving. He must not say that a man, QUA man, can be valueless. Here, again in short, Christianity got over the difficulty of combining furious opposites, by keeping them both, and keeping them both furious. The Church was positive on both points. One can hardly think too little of one’s self. One can hardly think too much of one’s soul.

Take another case: the complicated question of charity, which some highly uncharitable idealists seem to think quite easy. Charity is a paradox, like modesty and courage. Stated baldly, charity certainly means one of two things—pardoning unpardonable acts, or loving unlovable people. But if we ask ourselves (as we did in the case of pride) what a sensible pagan would feel about such a subject, we shall probably be beginning at the bottom of it. A sensible pagan would say that there were some people one could forgive, and some one couldn’t: a slave who stole wine could be laughed at; a slave who betrayed his benefactor could be killed, and cursed even after he was killed. In so far as the act was pardonable, the man was pardonable. That again is rational, and even refreshing; but it is a dilution. It leaves no place for a pure horror of injustice, such as that which is a great beauty in the innocent. And it leaves no place for a mere tenderness for men as men, such as is the whole fascination of the charitable. Christianity came in here as before. It came in startlingly with a sword, and clove one thing from another. It divided the crime from the criminal. The criminal we must forgive unto seventy times seven. The crime we must not forgive at all. It was not enough that slaves who stole wine inspired partly anger and partly kindness. We must be much more angry with theft than before, and yet much kinder to thieves than before. There was room for wrath and love to run wild. And the more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild.

Mental and emotional liberty are not so simple as they look. Really they require almost as careful a balance of laws and conditions as do social and political liberty. The ordinary aesthetic anarchist who sets out to feel everything freely gets knotted at last in a paradox that prevents him feeling at all. He breaks away from home limits to follow poetry. But in ceasing to feel home limits he has ceased to feel the “Odyssey.” He is free from national prejudices and outside patriotism. But being outside patriotism he is outside “Henry V.” Such a literary man is simply outside all literature: he is more of a prisoner than any bigot. For if there is a wall between you and the world, it makes little difference whether you describe yourself as locked in or as locked out. What we want is not the universality that is outside all normal sentiments; we want the universality that is inside all normal sentiments. It is all the difference between being free from them, as a man is free from a prison, and being free of them as a man is free of a city. I am free from Windsor Castle (that is, I am not forcibly detained there), but I am by no means free of that building. How can man be approximately free of fine emotions, able to swing them in a clear space without breakage or wrong? THIS was the achievement of this Christian paradox of the parallel passions. Granted the primary dogma of the war between divine and diabolic, the revolt and ruin of the world, their optimism and pessimism, as pure poetry, could be loosened like cataracts.

St. Francis, in praising all good, could be a more shouting optimist than Walt Whitman. St. Jerome, in denouncing all evil, could paint the world blacker than Schopenhauer. Both passions were free because both were kept in their place. The optimist could pour out all the praise he liked on the gay music of the march, the golden trumpets, and the purple banners going into battle. But he must not call the fight needless. The pessimist might draw as darkly as he chose the sickening marches or the sanguine wounds. But he must not call the fight hopeless. So it was with all the other moral problems, with pride, with protest, and with compassion. By defining its main doctrine, the Church not only kept seemingly inconsistent things side by side, but, what was more, allowed them to break out in a sort of artistic violence otherwise possible only to anarchists. Meekness grew more dramatic than madness. Historic Christianity rose into a high and strange COUP DE THEATRE of morality— things that are to virtue what the crimes of Nero are to vice. The spirits of indignation and of charity took terrible and attractive forms, ranging from that monkish fierceness that scourged like a dog the first and greatest of the Plantagenets, to the sublime pity of St. Catherine, who, in the official shambles, kissed the bloody head of the criminal. Poetry could be acted as well as composed. This heroic and monumental manner in ethics has entirely vanished with supernatural religion. They, being humble, could parade themselves: but we are too proud to be prominent. Our ethical teachers write reasonably for prison reform; but we are not likely to see Mr. Cadbury, or any eminent philanthropist, go into Reading Gaol and embrace the strangled corpse before it is cast into the quicklime. Our ethical teachers write mildly against the power of millionaires; but we are not likely to see Mr. Rockefeller, or any modern tyrant, publicly whipped in Westminster Abbey.

Thus, the double charges of the secularists, though throwing nothing but darkness and confusion on themselves, throw a real light on the faith. It is true that the historic Church has at once emphasised celibacy and emphasised the family; has at once (if one may put it so) been fiercely for having children and fiercely for not having children. It has kept them side by side like two strong colours, red and white, like the red and white upon the shield of St. George. It has always had a healthy hatred of pink. It hates that combination of two colours which is the feeble expedient of the philosophers. It hates that evolution of black into white which is tantamount to a dirty gray. In fact, the whole theory of the Church on virginity might be symbolized in the statement that white is a colour: not merely the absence of a colour. All that I am urging here can be expressed by saying that Christianity sought in most of these cases to keep two colours coexistent but pure. It is not a mixture like russet or purple; it is rather like a shot silk, for a shot silk is always at right angles, and is in the pattern of the cross.

So it is also, of course, with the contradictory charges of the anti-Christians about submission and slaughter. It IS true that the Church told some men to fight and others not to fight; and it IS true that those who fought were like thunderbolts and those who did not fight were like statues. All this simply means that the Church preferred to use its Supermen and to use its Tolstoyans. There must be SOME good in the life of battle, for so many good men have enjoyed being soldiers. There must be SOME good in the idea of non-resistance, for so many good men seem to enjoy being Quakers. All that the Church did (so far as that goes) was to prevent either of these good things from ousting the other. They existed side by side. The Tolstoyans, having all the scruples of monks, simply became monks. The Quakers became a club instead of becoming a sect. Monks said all that Tolstoy says; they poured out lucid lamentations about the cruelty of battles and the vanity of revenge. But the Tolstoyans are not quite right enough to run the whole world; and in the ages of faith they were not allowed to run it. The world did not lose the last charge of Sir James Douglas or the banner of Joan the Maid. And sometimes this pure gentleness and this pure fierceness met and justified their juncture; the paradox of all the prophets was fulfilled, and, in the soul of St. Louis, the lion lay down with the lamb. But remember that this text is too lightly interpreted. It is constantly assured, especially in our Tolstoyan tendencies, that when the lion lies down with the lamb the lion becomes lamb-like. But that is brutal annexation and imperialism on the part of the lamb. That is simply the lamb absorbing the lion instead of the lion eating the lamb. The real problem is— Can the lion lie down with the lamb and still retain his royal ferocity? THAT is the problem the Church attempted; THAT is the miracle she achieved.

This is what I have called guessing the hidden eccentricities of life. This is knowing that a man’s heart is to the left and not in the middle. This is knowing not only that the earth is round, but knowing exactly where it is flat. Christian doctrine detected the oddities of life. It not only discovered the law, but it foresaw the exceptions. Those underrate Christianity who say that it discovered mercy; any one might discover mercy. In fact every one did. But to discover a plan for being merciful and also severe— THAT was to anticipate a strange need of human nature. For no one wants to be forgiven for a big sin as if it were a little one. Any one might say that we should be neither quite miserable nor quite happy. But to find out how far one MAY be quite miserable without making it impossible to be quite happy—that was a discovery in psychology. Any one might say, “Neither swagger nor grovel”; and it would have been a limit. But to say, “Here you can swagger and there you can grovel”— that was an emancipation.

This was the big fact about Christian ethics; the discovery of the new balance. Paganism had been like a pillar of marble, upright because proportioned with symmetry. Christianity was like a huge and ragged and romantic rock, which, though it sways on its pedestal at a touch, yet, because its exaggerated excrescences exactly balance each other, is enthroned there for a thousand years. In a Gothic cathedral the columns were all different, but they were all necessary. Every support seemed an accidental and fantastic support; every buttress was a flying buttress. So in Christendom apparent accidents balanced. Becket wore a hair shirt under his gold and crimson, and there is much to be said for the combination; for Becket got the benefit of the hair shirt while the people in the street got the benefit of the crimson and gold. It is at least better than the manner of the modern millionaire, who has the black and the drab outwardly for others, and the gold next his heart. But the balance was not always in one man’s body as in Becket’s; the balance was often distributed over the whole body of Christendom. Because a man prayed and fasted on the Northern snows, flowers could be flung at his festival in the Southern cities; and because fanatics drank water on the sands of Syria, men could still drink cider in the orchards of England. This is what makes Christendom at once so much more perplexing and so much more interesting than the Pagan empire; just as Amiens Cathedral is not better but more interesting than the Parthenon. If any one wants a modern proof of all this, let him consider the curious fact that, under Christianity, Europe (while remaining a unity) has broken up into individual nations. Patriotism is a perfect example of this deliberate balancing of one emphasis against another emphasis. The instinct of the Pagan empire would have said, “You shall all be Roman citizens, and grow alike; let the German grow less slow and reverent; the Frenchmen less experimental and swift.” But the instinct of Christian Europe says, “Let the German remain slow and reverent, that the Frenchman may the more safely be swift and experimental. We will make an equipoise out of these excesses. The absurdity called Germany shall correct the insanity called France.”

Last and most important, it is exactly this which explains what is so inexplicable to all the modern critics of the history of Christianity. I mean the monstrous wars about small points of theology, the earthquakes of emotion about a gesture or a word. It was only a matter of an inch; but an inch is everything when you are balancing. The Church could not afford to swerve a hair’s breadth on some things if she was to continue her great and daring experiment of the irregular equilibrium. Once let one idea become less powerful and some other idea would become too powerful. It was no flock of sheep the Christian shepherd was leading, but a herd of bulls and tigers, of terrible ideals and devouring doctrines, each one of them strong enough to turn to a false religion and lay waste the world. Remember that the Church went in specifically for dangerous ideas; she was a lion tamer. The idea of birth through a Holy Spirit, of the death of a divine being, of the forgiveness of sins, or the fulfilment of prophecies, are ideas which, any one can see, need but a touch to turn them into something blasphemous or ferocious. The smallest link was let drop by the artificers of the Mediterranean, and the lion of ancestral pessimism burst his chain in the forgotten forests of the north. Of these theological equalisations I have to speak afterwards. Here it is enough to notice that if some small mistake were made in doctrine, huge blunders might be made in human happiness. A sentence phrased wrong about the nature of symbolism would have broken all the best statues in Europe. A slip in the definitions might stop all the dances; might wither all the Christmas trees or break all the Easter eggs. Doctrines had to be defined within strict limits, even in order that man might enjoy general human liberties. The Church had to be careful, if only that the world might be careless.

This is the thrilling romance of Orthodoxy. People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy. It was sanity: and to be sane is more dramatic than to be mad. It was the equilibrium of a man behind madly rushing horses, seeming to stoop this way and to sway that, yet in every attitude having the grace of statuary and the accuracy of arithmetic. The Church in its early days went fierce and fast with any warhorse; yet it is utterly unhistoric to say that she merely went mad along one idea, like a vulgar fanaticism. She swerved to left and right, so exactly as to avoid enormous obstacles. She left on one hand the huge bulk of Arianism, buttressed by all the worldly powers to make Christianity too worldly. The next instant she was swerving to avoid an orientalism, which would have made it too unworldly. The orthodox Church never took the tame course or accepted the conventions; the orthodox Church was never respectable. It would have been easier to have accepted the earthly power of the Arians. It would have been easy, in the Calvinistic seventeenth century, to fall into the bottomless pit of predestination. It is easy to be a madman: it is easy to be a heretic. It is always easy to let the age have its head; the difficult thing is to keep one’s own. It is always easy to be a modernist; as it is easy to be a snob. To have fallen into any of those open traps of error and exaggeration which fashion after fashion and sect after sect set along the historic path of Christendom—that would indeed have been simple. It is always simple to fall; there are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one stands. To have fallen into any one of the fads from Gnosticism to Christian Science would indeed have been obvious and tame. But to have avoided them all has been one whirling adventure; and in my vision the heavenly chariot flies thundering through the ages, the dull heresies sprawling and prostrate, the wild truth reeling but erect.

VII THE ETERNAL REVOLUTION

The following propositions have been urged: First, that some faith in our life is required even to improve it; second, that some dissatisfaction with things as they are is necessary even in order to be satisfied; third, that to have this necessary content and necessary discontent it is not sufficient to have the obvious equilibrium of the Stoic. For mere resignation has neither the gigantic levity of pleasure nor the superb intolerance of pain. There is a vital objection to the advice merely to grin and bear it. The objection is that if you merely bear it, you do not grin. Greek heroes do not grin: but gargoyles do—because they are Christian. And when a Christian is pleased, he is (in the most exact sense) frightfully pleased; his pleasure is frightful. Christ prophesied the whole of Gothic architecture in that hour when nervous and respectable people (such people as now object to barrel organs) objected to the shouting of the gutter-snipes of Jerusalem. He said, “If these were silent, the very stones would cry out.” Under the impulse of His spirit arose like a clamorous chorus the facades of the mediaeval cathedrals, thronged with shouting faces and open mouths. The prophecy has fulfilled itself: the very stones cry out.

If these things be conceded, though only for argument, we may take up where we left it the thread of the thought of the natural man, called by the Scotch (with regrettable familiarity), “The Old Man.” We can ask the next question so obviously in front of us. Some satisfaction is needed even to make things better. But what do we mean by making things better? Most modern talk on this matter is a mere argument in a circle—that circle which we have already made the symbol of madness and of mere rationalism. Evolution is only good if it produces good; good is only good if it helps evolution. The elephant stands on the tortoise, and the tortoise on the elephant.

Obviously, it will not do to take our ideal from the principle in nature; for the simple reason that (except for some human or divine theory), there is no principle in nature. For instance, the cheap anti-democrat of to-day will tell you solemnly that there is no equality in nature. He is right, but he does not see the logical addendum. There is no equality in nature; also there is no inequality in nature. Inequality, as much as equality, implies a standard of value. To read aristocracy into the anarchy of animals is just as sentimental as to read democracy into it. Both aristocracy and democracy are human ideals: the one saying that all men are valuable, the other that some men are more valuable. But nature does not say that cats are more valuable than mice; nature makes no remark on the subject. She does not even say that the cat is enviable or the mouse pitiable. We think the cat superior because we have (or most of us have) a particular philosophy to the effect that life is better than death. But if the mouse were a German pessimist mouse, he might not think that the cat had beaten him at all. He might think he had beaten the cat by getting to the grave first. Or he might feel that he had actually inflicted frightful punishment on the cat by keeping him alive. Just as a microbe might feel proud of spreading a pestilence, so the pessimistic mouse might exult to think that he was renewing in the cat the torture of conscious existence. It all depends on the philosophy of the mouse. You cannot even say that there is victory or superiority in nature unless you have some doctrine about what things are superior. You cannot even say that the cat scores unless there is a system of scoring. You cannot even say that the cat gets the best of it unless there is some best to be got.

We cannot, then, get the ideal itself from nature, and as we follow here the first and natural speculation, we will leave out (for the present) the idea of getting it from God. We must have our own vision. But the attempts of most moderns to express it are highly vague.

Some fall back simply on the clock: they talk as if mere passage through time brought some superiority; so that even a man of the first mental calibre carelessly uses the phrase that human morality is never up to date. How can anything be up to date? — a date has no character. How can one say that Christmas celebrations are not suitable to the twenty-fifth of a month? What the writer meant, of course, was that the majority is behind his favourite minority— or in front of it. Other vague modern people take refuge in material metaphors; in fact, this is the chief mark of vague modern people. Not daring to define their doctrine of what is good, they use physical figures of speech without stint or shame, and, what is worst of all, seem to think these cheap analogies are exquisitely spiritual and superior to the old morality. Thus they think it intellectual to talk about things being “high.” It is at least the reverse of intellectual; it is a mere phrase from a steeple or a weathercock. “Tommy was a good boy” is a pure philosophical statement, worthy of Plato or Aquinas. “Tommy lived the higher life” is a gross metaphor from a ten-foot rule.

This, incidentally, is almost the whole weakness of Nietzsche, whom some are representing as a bold and strong thinker. No one will deny that he was a poetical and suggestive thinker; but he was quite the reverse of strong. He was not at all bold. He never put his own meaning before himself in bald abstract words: as did Aristotle and Calvin, and even Karl Marx, the hard, fearless men of thought. Nietzsche always escaped a question by a physical metaphor, like a cheery minor poet. He said, “beyond good and evil,” because he had not the courage to say, “more good than good and evil,” or, “more evil than good and evil.” Had he faced his thought without metaphors, he would have seen that it was nonsense. So, when he describes his hero, he does not dare to say, “the purer man,” or “the happier man,” or “the sadder man,” for all these are ideas; and ideas are alarming. He says “the upper man,” or “over man,” a physical metaphor from acrobats or alpine climbers. Nietzsche is truly a very timid thinker. He does not really know in the least what sort of man he wants evolution to produce. And if he does not know, certainly the ordinary evolutionists, who talk about things being “higher,” do not know either.

Then again, some people fall back on sheer submission and sitting still. Nature is going to do something some day; nobody knows what, and nobody knows when. We have no reason for acting, and no reason for not acting. If anything happens it is right: if anything is prevented it was wrong. Again, some people try to anticipate nature by doing something, by doing anything. Because we may possibly grow wings they cut off their legs. Yet nature may be trying to make them centipedes for all they know.

Lastly, there is a fourth class of people who take whatever it is that they happen to want, and say that that is the ultimate aim of evolution. And these are the only sensible people. This is the only really healthy way with the word evolution, to work for what you want, and to call THAT evolution. The only intelligible sense that progress or advance can have among men, is that we have a definite vision, and that we wish to make the whole world like that vision. If you like to put it so, the essence of the doctrine is that what we have around us is the mere method and preparation for something that we have to create. This is not a world, but rather the material for a world. God has given us not so much the colours of a picture as the colours of a palette. But he has also given us a subject, a model, a fixed vision. We must be clear about what we want to paint. This adds a further principle to our previous list of principles. We have said we must be fond of this world, even in order to change it. We now add that we must be fond of another world (real or imaginary) in order to have something to change it to.

We need not debate about the mere words evolution or progress: personally I prefer to call it reform. For reform implies form. It implies that we are trying to shape the world in a particular image; to make it something that we see already in our minds. Evolution is a metaphor from mere automatic unrolling. Progress is a metaphor from merely walking along a road—very likely the wrong road. But reform is a metaphor for reasonable and determined men: it means that we see a certain thing out of shape and we mean to put it into shape. And we know what shape.

Now here comes in the whole collapse and huge blunder of our age. We have mixed up two different things, two opposite things. Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to suit the vision. Progress does mean (just now) that we are always changing the vision. It should mean that we are slow but sure in bringing justice and mercy among men: it does mean that we are very swift in doubting the desirability of justice and mercy: a wild page from any Prussian sophist makes men doubt it. Progress should mean that we are always walking towards the New Jerusalem. It does mean that the New Jerusalem is always walking away from us. We are not altering the real to suit the ideal. We are altering the ideal: it is easier.

Silly examples are always simpler; let us suppose a man wanted a particular kind of world; say, a blue world. He would have no cause to complain of the slightness or swiftness of his task; he might toil for a long time at the transformation; he could work away (in every sense) until all was blue. He could have heroic adventures; the putting of the last touches to a blue tiger. He could have fairy dreams; the dawn of a blue moon. But if he worked hard, that high-minded reformer would certainly (from his own point of view) leave the world better and bluer than he found it. If he altered a blade of grass to his favourite colour every day, he would get on slowly. But if he altered his favourite colour every day, he would not get on at all. If, after reading a fresh philosopher, he started to paint everything red or yellow, his work would be thrown away: there would be nothing to show except a few blue tigers walking about, specimens of his early bad manner. This is exactly the position of the average modern thinker. It will be said that this is avowedly a preposterous example. But it is literally the fact of recent history. The great and grave changes in our political civilization all belonged to the early nineteenth century, not to the later. They belonged to the black and white epoch when men believed fixedly in Toryism, in Protestantism, in Calvinism, in Reform, and not unfrequently in Revolution. And whatever each man believed in he hammered at steadily, without scepticism: and there was a time when the Established Church might have fallen, and the House of Lords nearly fell. It was because Radicals were wise enough to be constant and consistent; it was because Radicals were wise enough to be Conservative. But in the existing atmosphere there is not enough time and tradition in Radicalism to pull anything down. There is a great deal of truth in Lord Hugh Cecil’s suggestion (made in a fine speech) that the era of change is over, and that ours is an era of conservation and repose. But probably it would pain Lord Hugh Cecil if he realized (what is certainly the case) that ours is only an age of conservation because it is an age of complete unbelief. Let beliefs fade fast and frequently, if you wish institutions to remain the same. The more the life of the mind is unhinged, the more the machinery of matter will be left to itself. The net result of all our political suggestions, Collectivism, Tolstoyanism, Neo-Feudalism, Communism, Anarchy, Scientific Bureaucracy— the plain fruit of all of them is that the Monarchy and the House of Lords will remain. The net result of all the new religions will be that the Church of England will not (for heaven knows how long) be disestablished. It was Karl Marx, Nietzsche, Tolstoy, Cunninghame Grahame, Bernard Shaw and Auberon Herbert, who between them, with bowed gigantic backs, bore up the throne of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

We may say broadly that free thought is the best of all the safeguards against freedom. Managed in a modern style the emancipation of the slave’s mind is the best way of preventing the emancipation of the slave. Teach him to worry about whether he wants to be free, and he will not free himself. Again, it may be said that this instance is remote or extreme. But, again, it is exactly true of the men in the streets around us. It is true that the negro slave, being a debased barbarian, will probably have either a human affection of loyalty, or a human affection for liberty. But the man we see every day— the worker in Mr. Gradgrind’s factory, the little clerk in Mr. Gradgrind’s office—he is too mentally worried to believe in freedom. He is kept quiet with revolutionary literature. He is calmed and kept in his place by a constant succession of wild philosophies. He is a Marxian one day, a Nietzscheite the next day, a Superman (probably) the next day; and a slave every day. The only thing that remains after all the philosophies is the factory. The only man who gains by all the philosophies is Gradgrind. It would be worth his while to keep his commercial helotry supplied with sceptical literature. And now I come to think of it, of course, Gradgrind is famous for giving libraries. He shows his sense. All modern books are on his side. As long as the vision of heaven is always changing, the vision of earth will be exactly the same. No ideal will remain long enough to be realized, or even partly realized. The modern young man will never change his environment; for he will always change his mind.

This, therefore, is our first requirement about the ideal towards which progress is directed; it must be fixed. Whistler used to make many rapid studies of a sitter; it did not matter if he tore up twenty portraits. But it would matter if he looked up twenty times, and each time saw a new person sitting placidly for his portrait. So it does not matter (comparatively speaking) how often humanity fails to imitate its ideal; for then all its old failures are fruitful. But it does frightfully matter how often humanity changes its ideal; for then all its old failures are fruitless. The question therefore becomes this: How can we keep the artist discontented with his pictures while preventing him from being vitally discontented with his art? How can we make a man always dissatisfied with his work, yet always satisfied with working? How can we make sure that the portrait painter will throw the portrait out of window instead of taking the natural and more human course of throwing the sitter out of window?

A strict rule is not only necessary for ruling; it is also necessary for rebelling. This fixed and familiar ideal is necessary to any sort of revolution. Man will sometimes act slowly upon new ideas; but he will only act swiftly upon old ideas. If I am merely to float or fade or evolve, it may be towards something anarchic; but if I am to riot, it must be for something respectable. This is the whole weakness of certain schools of progress and moral evolution. They suggest that there has been a slow movement towards morality, with an imperceptible ethical change in every year or at every instant. There is only one great disadvantage in this theory. It talks of a slow movement towards justice; but it does not permit a swift movement. A man is not allowed to leap up and declare a certain state of things to be intrinsically intolerable. To make the matter clear, it is better to take a specific example. Certain of the idealistic vegetarians, such as Mr. Salt, say that the time has now come for eating no meat; by implication they assume that at one time it was right to eat meat, and they suggest (in words that could be quoted) that some day it may be wrong to eat milk and eggs. I do not discuss here the question of what is justice to animals. I only say that whatever is justice ought, under given conditions, to be prompt justice. If an animal is wronged, we ought to be able to rush to his rescue. But how can we rush if we are, perhaps, in advance of our time? How can we rush to catch a train which may not arrive for a few centuries? How can I denounce a man for skinning cats, if he is only now what I may possibly become in drinking a glass of milk? A splendid and insane Russian sect ran about taking all the cattle out of all the carts. How can I pluck up courage to take the horse out of my hansom-cab, when I do not know whether my evolutionary watch is only a little fast or the cabman’s a little slow? Suppose I say to a sweater, “Slavery suited one stage of evolution.” And suppose he answers, “And sweating suits this stage of evolution.” How can I answer if there is no eternal test? If sweaters can be behind the current morality, why should not philanthropists be in front of it? What on earth is the current morality, except in its literal sense—the morality that is always running away?

Thus we may say that a permanent ideal is as necessary to the innovator as to the conservative; it is necessary whether we wish the king’s orders to be promptly executed or whether we only wish the king to be promptly executed. The guillotine has many sins, but to do it justice there is nothing evolutionary about it. The favourite evolutionary argument finds its best answer in the axe. The Evolutionist says, “Where do you draw the line?” the Revolutionist answers, “I draw it HERE: exactly between your head and body.” There must at any given moment be an abstract right and wrong if any blow is to be struck; there must be something eternal if there is to be anything sudden. Therefore for all intelligible human purposes, for altering things or for keeping things as they are, for founding a system for ever, as in China, or for altering it every month as in the early French Revolution, it is equally necessary that the vision should be a fixed vision. This is our first requirement.

When I had written this down, I felt once again the presence of something else in the discussion: as a man hears a church bell above the sound of the street. Something seemed to be saying, “My ideal at least is fixed; for it was fixed before the foundations of the world. My vision of perfection assuredly cannot be altered; for it is called Eden. You may alter the place to which you are going; but you cannot alter the place from which you have come. To the orthodox there must always be a case for revolution; for in the hearts of men God has been put under the feet of Satan. In the upper world hell once rebelled against heaven. But in this world heaven is rebelling against hell. For the orthodox there can always be a revolution; for a revolution is a restoration. At any instant you may strike a blow for the perfection which no man has seen since Adam. No unchanging custom, no changing evolution can make the original good any thing but good. Man may have had concubines as long as cows have had horns: still they are not a part of him if they are sinful. Men may have been under oppression ever since fish were under water; still they ought not to be, if oppression is sinful. The chain may seem as natural to the slave, or the paint to the harlot, as does the plume to the bird or the burrow to the fox; still they are not, if they are sinful. I lift my prehistoric legend to defy all your history. Your vision is not merely a fixture: it is a fact.” I paused to note the new coincidence of Christianity: but I passed on.

I passed on to the next necessity of any ideal of progress. Some people (as we have said) seem to believe in an automatic and impersonal progress in the nature of things. But it is clear that no political activity can be encouraged by saying that progress is natural and inevitable; that is not a reason for being active, but rather a reason for being lazy. If we are bound to improve, we need not trouble to improve. The pure doctrine of progress is the best of all reasons for not being a progressive. But it is to none of these obvious comments that I wish primarily to call attention.

The only arresting point is this: that if we suppose improvement to be natural, it must be fairly simple. The world might conceivably be working towards one consummation, but hardly towards any particular arrangement of many qualities. To take our original simile: Nature by herself may be growing more blue; that is, a process so simple that it might be impersonal. But Nature cannot be making a careful picture made of many picked colours, unless Nature is personal. If the end of the world were mere darkness or mere light it might come as slowly and inevitably as dusk or dawn. But if the end of the world is to be a piece of elaborate and artistic chiaroscuro, then there must be design in it, either human or divine. The world, through mere time, might grow black like an old picture, or white like an old coat; but if it is turned into a particular piece of black and white art—then there is an artist.

If the distinction be not evident, I give an ordinary instance. We constantly hear a particularly cosmic creed from the modern humanitarians;

I use the word humanitarian in the ordinary sense, as meaning one who upholds the claims of all creatures against those of humanity. They suggest that through the ages we have been growing more and more humane, that is to say, that one after another, groups or sections of beings, slaves, children, women, cows, or what not, have been gradually admitted to mercy or to justice. They say that we once thought it right to eat men (we didn’t); but I am not here concerned with their history, which is highly unhistorical. As a fact, anthropophagy is certainly a decadent thing, not a primitive one. It is much more likely that modern men will eat human flesh out of affectation than that primitive man ever ate it out of ignorance. I am here only following the outlines of their argument, which consists in maintaining that man has been progressively more lenient, first to citizens, then to slaves, then to animals, and then (presumably) to plants. I think it wrong to sit on a man. Soon, I shall think it wrong to sit on a horse. Eventually (I suppose) I shall think it wrong to sit on a chair. That is the drive of the argument. And for this argument it can be said that it is possible to talk of it in terms of evolution or inevitable progress. A perpetual tendency to touch fewer and fewer things might—one feels, be a mere brute unconscious tendency, like that of a species to produce fewer and fewer children. This drift may be really evolutionary, because it is stupid.

Darwinism can be used to back up two mad moralities, but it cannot be used to back up a single sane one. The kinship and competition of all living creatures can be used as a reason for being insanely cruel or insanely sentimental; but not for a healthy love of animals. On the evolutionary basis you may be inhumane, or you may be absurdly humane; but you cannot be human. That you and a tiger are one may be a reason for being tender to a tiger. Or it may be a reason for being as cruel as the tiger. It is one way to train the tiger to imitate you, it is a shorter way to imitate the tiger. But in neither case does evolution tell you how to treat a tiger reasonably, that is, to admire his stripes while avoiding his claws.

If you want to treat a tiger reasonably, you must go back to the garden of Eden. For the obstinate reminder continued to recur: only the supernatural has taken a sane view of Nature. The essence of all pantheism, evolutionism, and modern cosmic religion is really in this proposition: that Nature is our mother. Unfortunately, if you regard Nature as a mother, you discover that she is a step-mother. The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister. We can be proud of her beauty, since we have the same father; but she has no authority over us; we have to admire, but not to imitate. This gives to the typically Christian pleasure in this earth a strange touch of lightness that is almost frivolity. Nature was a solemn mother to the worshippers of Isis and Cybele. Nature was a solemn mother to Wordsworth or to Emerson. But Nature is not solemn to Francis of Assisi or to George Herbert. To St. Francis, Nature is a sister, and even a younger sister: a little, dancing sister, to be laughed at as well as loved.

This, however, is hardly our main point at present; I have admitted it only in order to show how constantly, and as it were accidentally, the key would fit the smallest doors. Our main point is here, that if there be a mere trend of impersonal improvement in Nature, it must presumably be a simple trend towards some simple triumph. One can imagine that some automatic tendency in biology might work for giving us longer and longer noses. But the question is, do we want to have longer and longer noses? I fancy not; I believe that we most of us want to say to our noses, “thus far, and no farther; and here shall thy proud point be stayed:” we require a nose of such length as may ensure an interesting face. But we cannot imagine a mere biological trend towards producing interesting faces; because an interesting face is one particular arrangement of eyes, nose, and mouth, in a most complex relation to each other. Proportion cannot be a drift: it is either an accident or a design. So with the ideal of human morality and its relation to the humanitarians and the anti-humanitarians. It is conceivable that we are going more and more to keep our hands off things: not to drive horses; not to pick flowers. We may eventually be bound not to disturb a man’s mind even by argument; not to disturb the sleep of birds even by coughing. The ultimate apotheosis would appear to be that of a man sitting quite still, nor daring to stir for fear of disturbing a fly, nor to eat for fear of incommoding a microbe. To so crude a consummation as that we might perhaps unconsciously drift. But do we want so crude a consummation? Similarly, we might unconsciously evolve along the opposite or Nietzschian line of development—superman crushing superman in one tower of tyrants until the universe is smashed up for fun. But do we want the universe smashed up for fun? Is it not quite clear that what we really hope for is one particular management and proposition of these two things; a certain amount of restraint and respect, a certain amount of energy and mastery? If our life is ever really as beautiful as a fairy-tale, we shall have to remember that all the beauty of a fairy-tale lies in this: that the prince has a wonder which just stops short of being fear. If he is afraid of the giant, there is an end of him; but also if he is not astonished at the giant, there is an end of the fairy-tale. The whole point depends upon his being at once humble enough to wonder, and haughty enough to defy. So our attitude to the giant of the world must not merely be increasing delicacy or increasing contempt: it must be one particular proportion of the two—which is exactly right. We must have in us enough reverence for all things outside us to make us tread fearfully on the grass. We must also have enough disdain for all things outside us, to make us, on due occasion, spit at the stars. Yet these two things (if we are to be good or happy) must be combined, not in any combination, but in one particular combination. The perfect happiness of men on the earth (if it ever comes) will not be a flat and solid thing, like the satisfaction of animals. It will be an exact and perilous balance; like that of a desperate romance. Man must have just enough faith in himself to have adventures, and just enough doubt of himself to enjoy them.

This, then, is our second requirement for the ideal of progress. First, it must be fixed; second, it must be composite. It must not (if it is to satisfy our souls) be the mere victory of some one thing swallowing up everything else, love or pride or peace or adventure; it must be a definite picture composed of these elements in their best proportion and relation. I am not concerned at this moment to deny that some such good culmination may be, by the constitution of things, reserved for the human race. I only point out that if this composite happiness is fixed for us it must be fixed by some mind; for only a mind can place the exact proportions of a composite happiness. If the beatification of the world is a mere work of nature, then it must be as simple as the freezing of the world, or the burning up of the world. But if the beatification of the world is not a work of nature but a work of art, then it involves an artist. And here again my contemplation was cloven by the ancient voice which said, “I could have told you all this a long time ago. If there is any certain progress it can only be my kind of progress, the progress towards a complete city of virtues and dominations where righteousness and peace contrive to kiss each other. An impersonal force might be leading you to a wilderness of perfect flatness or a peak of perfect height. But only a personal God can possibly be leading you (if, indeed, you are being led) to a city with just streets and architectural proportions, a city in which each of you can contribute exactly the right amount of your own colour to the many coloured coat of Joseph.”

Twice again, therefore, Christianity had come in with the exact answer that I required. I had said, “The ideal must be fixed,” and the Church had answered, “Mine is literally fixed, for it existed before anything else.” I said secondly, “It must be artistically combined, like a picture”; and the Church answered, “Mine is quite literally a picture, for I know who painted it.” Then I went on to the third thing, which, as it seemed to me, was needed for an Utopia or goal of progress. And of all the three it is infinitely the hardest to express. Perhaps it might be put thus: that we need watchfulness even in Utopia, lest we fall from Utopia as we fell from Eden.

We have remarked that one reason offered for being a progressive is that things naturally tend to grow better. But the only real reason for being a progressive is that things naturally tend to grow worse. The corruption in things is not only the best argument for being progressive; it is also the only argument against being conservative. The conservative theory would really be quite sweeping and unanswerable if it were not for this one fact. But all conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change. If you leave a white post alone it will soon be a black post. If you particularly want it to be white you must be always painting it again; that is, you must be always having a revolution. Briefly, if you want the old white post you must have a new white post. But this which is true even of inanimate things is in a quite special and terrible sense true of all human things. An almost unnatural vigilance is really required of the citizen because of the horrible rapidity with which human institutions grow old. It is the custom in passing romance and journalism to talk of men suffering under old tyrannies. But, as a fact, men have almost always suffered under new tyrannies; under tyrannies that had been public liberties hardly twenty years before. Thus England went mad with joy over the patriotic monarchy of Elizabeth; and then (almost immediately afterwards) went mad with rage in the trap of the tyranny of Charles the First. So, again, in France the monarchy became intolerable, not just after it had been tolerated, but just after it had been adored. The son of Louis the well-beloved was Louis the guillotined. So in the same way in England in the nineteenth century the Radical manufacturer was entirely trusted as a mere tribune of the people, until suddenly we heard the cry of the Socialist that he was a tyrant eating the people like bread. So again, we have almost up to the last instant trusted the newspapers as organs of public opinion. Just recently some of us have seen (not slowly, but with a start) that they are obviously nothing of the kind. They are, by the nature of the case, the hobbies of a few rich men. We have not any need to rebel against antiquity; we have to rebel against novelty. It is the new rulers, the capitalist or the editor, who really hold up the modern world. There is no fear that a modern king will attempt to override the constitution; it is more likely that he will ignore the constitution and work behind its back; he will take no advantage of his kingly power; it is more likely that he will take advantage of his kingly powerlessness, of the fact that he is free from criticism and publicity. For the king is the most private person of our time. It will not be necessary for any one to fight again against the proposal of a censorship of the press. We do not need a censorship of the press. We have a censorship by the press.

This startling swiftness with which popular systems turn oppressive is the third fact for which we shall ask our perfect theory of progress to allow. It must always be on the look out for every privilege being abused, for every working right becoming a wrong. In this matter I am entirely on the side of the revolutionists. They are really right to be always suspecting human institutions; they are right not to put their trust in princes nor in any child of man. The chieftain chosen to be the friend of the people becomes the enemy of the people; the newspaper started to tell the truth now exists to prevent the truth being told. Here, I say, I felt that I was really at last on the side of the revolutionary. And then I caught my breath again: for I remembered that I was once again on the side of the orthodox.

Christianity spoke again and said: “I have always maintained that men were naturally backsliders; that human virtue tended of its own nature to rust or to rot; I have always said that human beings as such go wrong, especially happy human beings, especially proud and prosperous human beings. This eternal revolution, this suspicion sustained through centuries, you (being a vague modern) call the doctrine of progress. If you were a philosopher you would call it, as I do, the doctrine of original sin. You may call it the cosmic advance as much as you like; I call it what it is—the Fall.”

I have spoken of orthodoxy coming in like a sword; here I confess it came in like a battle-axe. For really (when I came to think of it) Christianity is the only thing left that has any real right to question the power of the well-nurtured or the well-bred. I have listened often enough to Socialists, or even to democrats, saying that the physical conditions of the poor must of necessity make them mentally and morally degraded. I have listened to scientific men (and there are still scientific men not opposed to democracy) saying that if we give the poor healthier conditions vice and wrong will disappear. I have listened to them with a horrible attention, with a hideous fascination. For it was like watching a man energetically sawing from the tree the branch he is sitting on. If these happy democrats could prove their case, they would strike democracy dead. If the poor are thus utterly demoralized, it may or may not be practical to raise them. But it is certainly quite practical to disfranchise them. If the man with a bad bedroom cannot give a good vote, then the first and swiftest deduction is that he shall give no vote. The governing class may not unreasonably say: “It may take us some time to reform his bedroom. But if he is the brute you say, it will take him very little time to ruin our country. Therefore we will take your hint and not give him the chance.” It fills me with horrible amusement to observe the way in which the earnest Socialist industriously lays the foundation of all aristocracy, expatiating blandly upon the evident unfitness of the poor to rule. It is like listening to somebody at an evening party apologising for entering without evening dress, and explaining that he had recently been intoxicated, had a personal habit of taking off his clothes in the street, and had, moreover, only just changed from prison uniform. At any moment, one feels, the host might say that really, if it was as bad as that, he need not come in at all. So it is when the ordinary Socialist, with a beaming face, proves that the poor, after their smashing experiences, cannot be really trustworthy. At any moment the rich may say, “Very well, then, we won’t trust them,” and bang the door in his face. On the basis of Mr. Blatchford’s view of heredity and environment, the case for the aristocracy is quite overwhelming. If clean homes and clean air make clean souls, why not give the power (for the present at any rate) to those who undoubtedly have the clean air? If better conditions will make the poor more fit to govern themselves, why should not better conditions already make the rich more fit to govern them? On the ordinary environment argument the matter is fairly manifest. The comfortable class must be merely our vanguard in Utopia.

Is there any answer to the proposition that those who have had the best opportunities will probably be our best guides? Is there any answer to the argument that those who have breathed clean air had better decide for those who have breathed foul? As far as I know, there is only one answer, and that answer is Christianity. Only the Christian Church can offer any rational objection to a complete confidence in the rich. For she has maintained from the beginning that the danger was not in man’s environment, but in man. Further, she has maintained that if we come to talk of a dangerous environment, the most dangerous environment of all is the commodious environment. I know that the most modern manufacture has been really occupied in trying to produce an abnormally large needle. I know that the most recent biologists have been chiefly anxious to discover a very small camel. But if we diminish the camel to his smallest, or open the eye of the needle to its largest—if, in short, we assume the words of Christ to have meant the very least that they could mean, His words must at the very least mean this—that rich men are not very likely to be morally trustworthy. Christianity even when watered down is hot enough to boil all modern society to rags. The mere minimum of the Church would be a deadly ultimatum to the world. For the whole modern world is absolutely based on the assumption, not that the rich are necessary (which is tenable), but that the rich are trustworthy, which (for a Christian) is not tenable. You will hear everlastingly, in all discussions about newspapers, companies, aristocracies, or party politics, this argument that the rich man cannot be bribed. The fact is, of course, that the rich man is bribed; he has been bribed already. That is why he is a rich man. The whole case for Christianity is that a man who is dependent upon the luxuries of this life is a corrupt man, spiritually corrupt, politically corrupt, financially corrupt. There is one thing that Christ and all the Christian saints have said with a sort of savage monotony. They have said simply that to be rich is to be in peculiar danger of moral wreck. It is not demonstrably un-Christian to kill the rich as violators of definable justice. It is not demonstrably un-Christian to crown the rich as convenient rulers of society. It is not certainly un-Christian to rebel against the rich or to submit to the rich. But it is quite certainly un-Christian to trust the rich, to regard the rich as more morally safe than the poor. A Christian may consistently say, “I respect that man’s rank, although he takes bribes.” But a Christian cannot say, as all modern men are saying at lunch and breakfast, “a man of that rank would not take bribes.” For it is a part of Christian dogma that any man in any rank may take bribes. It is a part of Christian dogma; it also happens by a curious coincidence that it is a part of obvious human history. When people say that a man “in that position” would be incorruptible, there is no need to bring Christianity into the discussion. Was Lord Bacon a bootblack? Was the Duke of Marlborough a crossing sweeper? In the best Utopia, I must be prepared for the moral fall of any man in any position at any moment; especially for my fall from my position at this moment.

Much vague and sentimental journalism has been poured out to the effect that Christianity is akin to democracy, and most of it is scarcely strong or clear enough to refute the fact that the two things have often quarrelled. The real ground upon which Christianity and democracy are one is very much deeper. The one specially and peculiarly un-Christian idea is the idea of Carlyle—the idea that the man should rule who feels that he can rule. Whatever else is Christian, this is heathen. If our faith comments on government at all, its comment must be this— that the man should rule who does NOT think that he can rule. Carlyle’s hero may say, “I will be king”; but the Christian saint must say “Nolo episcopari.” If the great paradox of Christianity means anything, it means this—that we must take the crown in our hands, and go hunting in dry places and dark corners of the earth until we find the one man who feels himself unfit to wear it. Carlyle was quite wrong; we have not got to crown the exceptional man who knows he can rule. Rather we must crown the much more exceptional man who knows he can’t.

Now, this is one of the two or three vital defences of working democracy. The mere machinery of voting is not democracy, though at present it is not easy to effect any simpler democratic method. But even the machinery of voting is profoundly Christian in this practical sense— that it is an attempt to get at the opinion of those who would be too modest to offer it. It is a mystical adventure; it is specially trusting those who do not trust themselves. That enigma is strictly peculiar to Christendom. There is nothing really humble about the abnegation of the Buddhist; the mild Hindoo is mild, but he is not meek. But there is something psychologically Christian about the idea of seeking for the opinion of the obscure rather than taking the obvious course of accepting the opinion of the prominent. To say that voting is particularly Christian may seem somewhat curious. To say that canvassing is Christian may seem quite crazy. But canvassing is very Christian in its primary idea. It is encouraging the humble; it is saying to the modest man, “Friend, go up higher.” Or if there is some slight defect in canvassing, that is in its perfect and rounded piety, it is only because it may possibly neglect to encourage the modesty of the canvasser.

Aristocracy is not an institution: aristocracy is a sin; generally a very venial one. It is merely the drift or slide of men into a sort of natural pomposity and praise of the powerful, which is the most easy and obvious affair in the world.

It is one of the hundred answers to the fugitive perversion of modern “force” that the promptest and boldest agencies are also the most fragile or full of sensibility. The swiftest things are the softest things. A bird is active, because a bird is soft. A stone is helpless, because a stone is hard. The stone must by its own nature go downwards, because hardness is weakness. The bird can of its nature go upwards, because fragility is force. In perfect force there is a kind of frivolity, an airiness that can maintain itself in the air. Modern investigators of miraculous history have solemnly admitted that a characteristic of the great saints is their power of “levitation.” They might go further; a characteristic of the great saints is their power of levity. Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly. This has been always the instinct of Christendom, and especially the instinct of Christian art. Remember how Fra Angelico represented all his angels, not only as birds, but almost as butterflies. Remember how the most earnest mediaeval art was full of light and fluttering draperies, of quick and capering feet. It was the one thing that the modern Pre-raphaelites could not imitate in the real Pre-raphaelites. Burne-Jones could never recover the deep levity of the Middle Ages. In the old Christian pictures the sky over every figure is like a blue or gold parachute. Every figure seems ready to fly up and float about in the heavens. The tattered cloak of the beggar will bear him up like the rayed plumes of the angels. But the kings in their heavy gold and the proud in their robes of purple will all of their nature sink downwards, for pride cannot rise to levity or levitation. Pride is the downward drag of all things into an easy solemnity. One “settles down” into a sort of selfish seriousness; but one has to rise to a gay self-forgetfulness. A man “falls” into a brown study; he reaches up at a blue sky. Seriousness is not a virtue. It would be a heresy, but a much more sensible heresy, to say that seriousness is a vice. It is really a natural trend or lapse into taking one’s self gravely, because it is the easiest thing to do. It is much easier to write a good TIMES leading article than a good joke in PUNCH. For solemnity flows out of men naturally; but laughter is a leap. It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light. Satan fell by the force of gravity.

Now, it is the peculiar honour of Europe since it has been Christian that while it has had aristocracy it has always at the back of its heart treated aristocracy as a weakness— generally as a weakness that must be allowed for. If any one wishes to appreciate this point, let him go outside Christianity into some other philosophical atmosphere. Let him, for instance, compare the classes of Europe with the castes of India. There aristocracy is far more awful, because it is far more intellectual. It is seriously felt that the scale of classes is a scale of spiritual values; that the baker is better than the butcher in an invisible and sacred sense. But no Christianity, not even the most ignorant or perverse, ever suggested that a baronet was better than a butcher in that sacred sense. No Christianity, however ignorant or extravagant, ever suggested that a duke would not be damned. In pagan society there may have been (I do not know) some such serious division between the free man and the slave. But in Christian society we have always thought the gentleman a sort of joke, though I admit that in some great crusades and councils he earned the right to be called a practical joke. But we in Europe never really and at the root of our souls took aristocracy seriously. It is only an occasional non-European alien (such as Dr. Oscar Levy, the only intelligent Nietzscheite) who can even manage for a moment to take aristocracy seriously. It may be a mere patriotic bias, though I do not think so, but it seems to me that the English aristocracy is not only the type, but is the crown and flower of all actual aristocracies; it has all the oligarchical virtues as well as all the defects. It is casual, it is kind, it is courageous in obvious matters; but it has one great merit that overlaps even these. The great and very obvious merit of the English aristocracy is that nobody could possibly take it seriously.

In short, I had spelled out slowly, as usual, the need for an equal law in Utopia; and, as usual, I found that Christianity had been there before me. The whole history of my Utopia has the same amusing sadness. I was always rushing out of my architectural study with plans for a new turret only to find it sitting up there in the sunlight, shining, and a thousand years old. For me, in the ancient and partly in the modern sense, God answered the prayer, “Prevent us, O Lord, in all our doings.” Without vanity, I really think there was a moment when I could have invented the marriage vow (as an institution) out of my own head; but I discovered, with a sigh, that it had been invented already. But, since it would be too long a business to show how, fact by fact and inch by inch, my own conception of Utopia was only answered in the New Jerusalem, I will take this one case of the matter of marriage as indicating the converging drift, I may say the converging crash of all the rest.

When the ordinary opponents of Socialism talk about impossibilities and alterations in human nature they always miss an important distinction. In modern ideal conceptions of society there are some desires that are possibly not attainable: but there are some desires that are not desirable. That all men should live in equally beautiful houses is a dream that may or may not be attained. But that all men should live in the same beautiful house is not a dream at all; it is a nightmare. That a man should love all old women is an ideal that may not be attainable. But that a man should regard all old women exactly as he regards his mother is not only an unattainable ideal, but an ideal which ought not to be attained. I do not know if the reader agrees with me in these examples; but I will add the example which has always affected me most. I could never conceive or tolerate any Utopia which did not leave to me the liberty for which I chiefly care, the liberty to bind myself. Complete anarchy would not merely make it impossible to have any discipline or fidelity; it would also make it impossible to have any fun. To take an obvious instance, it would not be worth while to bet if a bet were not binding. The dissolution of all contracts would not only ruin morality but spoil sport. Now betting and such sports are only the stunted and twisted shapes of the original instinct of man for adventure and romance, of which much has been said in these pages. And the perils, rewards, punishments, and fulfilments of an adventure must be real, or the adventure is only a shifting and heartless nightmare. If I bet I must be made to pay, or there is no poetry in betting. If I challenge I must be made to fight, or there is no poetry in challenging. If I vow to be faithful I must be cursed when I am unfaithful, or there is no fun in vowing. You could not even make a fairy tale from the experiences of a man who, when he was swallowed by a whale, might find himself at the top of the Eiffel Tower, or when he was turned into a frog might begin to behave like a flamingo. For the purpose even of the wildest romance results must be real; results must be irrevocable. Christian marriage is the great example of a real and irrevocable result; and that is why it is the chief subject and centre of all our romantic writing. And this is my last instance of the things that I should ask, and ask imperatively, of any social paradise; I should ask to be kept to my bargain, to have my oaths and engagements taken seriously; I should ask Utopia to avenge my honour on myself.

All my modern Utopian friends look at each other rather doubtfully, for their ultimate hope is the dissolution of all special ties. But again I seem to hear, like a kind of echo, an answer from beyond the world. “You will have real obligations, and therefore real adventures when you get to my Utopia. But the hardest obligation and the steepest adventure is to get there.”

VIII THE ROMANCE OF ORTHODOXY

It is customary to complain of the bustle and strenuousness of our epoch. But in truth the chief mark of our epoch is a profound laziness and fatigue; and the fact is that the real laziness is the cause of the apparent bustle. Take one quite external case; the streets are noisy with taxicabs and motorcars; but this is not due to human activity but to human repose. There would be less bustle if there were more activity, if people were simply walking about. Our world would be more silent if it were more strenuous. And this which is true of the apparent physical bustle is true also of the apparent bustle of the intellect. Most of the machinery of modern language is labour-saving machinery; and it saves mental labour very much more than it ought. Scientific phrases are used like scientific wheels and piston-rods to make swifter and smoother yet the path of the comfortable. Long words go rattling by us like long railway trains. We know they are carrying thousands who are too tired or too indolent to walk and think for themselves. It is a good exercise to try for once in a way to express any opinion one holds in words of one syllable. If you say “The social utility of the indeterminate sentence is recognized by all criminologists as a part of our sociological evolution towards a more humane and scientific view of punishment,” you can go on talking like that for hours with hardly a movement of the gray matter inside your skull. But if you begin “I wish Jones to go to gaol and Brown to say when Jones shall come out,” you will discover, with a thrill of horror, that you are obliged to think. The long words are not the hard words, it is the short words that are hard. There is much more metaphysical subtlety in the word “damn” than in the word “degeneration.”

But these long comfortable words that save modern people the toil of reasoning have one particular aspect in which they are especially ruinous and confusing. This difficulty occurs when the same long word is used in different connections to mean quite different things. Thus, to take a well-known instance, the word “idealist” has one meaning as a piece of philosophy and quite another as a piece of moral rhetoric. In the same way the scientific materialists have had just reason to complain of people mixing up “materialist” as a term of cosmology with “materialist” as a moral taunt. So, to take a cheaper instance, the man who hates “progressives” in London always calls himself a “progressive” in South Africa.

A confusion quite as unmeaning as this has arisen in connection with the word “liberal” as applied to religion and as applied to politics and society. It is often suggested that all Liberals ought to be freethinkers, because they ought to love everything that is free. You might just as well say that all idealists ought to be High Churchmen, because they ought to love everything that is high. You might as well say that Low Churchmen ought to like Low Mass, or that Broad Churchmen ought to like broad jokes. The thing is a mere accident of words. In actual modern Europe a freethinker does not mean a man who thinks for himself. It means a man who, having thought for himself, has come to one particular class of conclusions, the material origin of phenomena, the impossibility of miracles, the improbability of personal immortality and so on. And none of these ideas are particularly liberal. Nay, indeed almost all these ideas are definitely illiberal, as it is the purpose of this chapter to show.

In the few following pages I propose to point out as rapidly as possible that on every single one of the matters most strongly insisted on by liberalisers of theology their effect upon social practice would be definitely illiberal. Almost every contemporary proposal to bring freedom into the church is simply a proposal to bring tyranny into the world. For freeing the church now does not even mean freeing it in all directions. It means freeing that peculiar set of dogmas loosely called scientific, dogmas of monism, of pantheism, or of Arianism, or of necessity. And every one of these (and we will take them one by one) can be shown to be the natural ally of oppression. In fact, it is a remarkable circumstance (indeed not so very remarkable when one comes to think of it) that most things are the allies of oppression. There is only one thing that can never go past a certain point in its alliance with oppression—and that is orthodoxy. I may, it is true, twist orthodoxy so as partly to justify a tyrant. But I can easily make up a German philosophy to justify him entirely.

Now let us take in order the innovations that are the notes of the new theology or the modernist church. We concluded the last chapter with the discovery of one of them. The very doctrine which is called the most old-fashioned was found to be the only safeguard of the new democracies of the earth. The doctrine seemingly most unpopular was found to be the only strength of the people. In short, we found that the only logical negation of oligarchy was in the affirmation of original sin. So it is, I maintain, in all the other cases.

I take the most obvious instance first, the case of miracles. For some extraordinary reason, there is a fixed notion that it is more liberal to disbelieve in miracles than to believe in them. Why, I cannot imagine, nor can anybody tell me. For some inconceivable cause a “broad” or “liberal” clergyman always means a man who wishes at least to diminish the number of miracles; it never means a man who wishes to increase that number. It always means a man who is free to disbelieve that Christ came out of His grave; it never means a man who is free to believe that his own aunt came out of her grave. It is common to find trouble in a parish because the parish priest cannot admit that St. Peter walked on water; yet how rarely do we find trouble in a parish because the clergyman says that his father walked on the Serpentine? And this is not because (as the swift secularist debater would immediately retort) miracles cannot be believed in our experience. It is not because “miracles do not happen,” as in the dogma which Matthew Arnold recited with simple faith. More supernatural things are ALLEGED to have happened in our time than would have been possible eighty years ago. Men of science believe in such marvels much more than they did: the most perplexing, and even horrible, prodigies of mind and spirit are always being unveiled in modern psychology. Things that the old science at least would frankly have rejected as miracles are hourly being asserted by the new science. The only thing which is still old-fashioned enough to reject miracles is the New Theology. But in truth this notion that it is “free” to deny miracles has nothing to do with the evidence for or against them. It is a lifeless verbal prejudice of which the original life and beginning was not in the freedom of thought, but simply in the dogma of materialism. The man of the nineteenth century did not disbelieve in the Resurrection because his liberal Christianity allowed him to doubt it. He disbelieved in it because his very strict materialism did not allow him to believe it. Tennyson, a very typical nineteenth century man, uttered one of the instinctive truisms of his contemporaries when he said that there was faith in their honest doubt. There was indeed. Those words have a profound and even a horrible truth. In their doubt of miracles there was a faith in a fixed and godless fate; a deep and sincere faith in the incurable routine of the cosmos. The doubts of the agnostic were only the dogmas of the monist.

Of the fact and evidence of the supernatural I will speak afterwards. Here we are only concerned with this clear point; that in so far as the liberal idea of freedom can be said to be on either side in the discussion about miracles, it is obviously on the side of miracles. Reform or (in the only tolerable sense) progress means simply the gradual control of matter by mind. A miracle simply means the swift control of matter by mind. If you wish to feed the people, you may think that feeding them miraculously in the wilderness is impossible—but you cannot think it illiberal. If you really want poor children to go to the seaside, you cannot think it illiberal that they should go there on flying dragons; you can only think it unlikely. A holiday, like Liberalism, only means the liberty of man. A miracle only means the liberty of God. You may conscientiously deny either of them, but you cannot call your denial a triumph of the liberal idea. The Catholic Church believed that man and God both had a sort of spiritual freedom. Calvinism took away the freedom from man, but left it to God. Scientific materialism binds the Creator Himself; it chains up God as the Apocalypse chained the devil. It leaves nothing free in the universe. And those who assist this process are called the “liberal theologians.”

This, as I say, is the lightest and most evident case. The assumption that there is something in the doubt of miracles akin to liberality or reform is literally the opposite of the truth. If a man cannot believe in miracles there is an end of the matter; he is not particularly liberal, but he is perfectly honourable and logical, which are much better things. But if he can believe in miracles, he is certainly the more liberal for doing so; because they mean first, the freedom of the soul, and secondly, its control over the tyranny of circumstance. Sometimes this truth is ignored in a singularly naive way, even by the ablest men. For instance, Mr. Bernard Shaw speaks with hearty old-fashioned contempt for the idea of miracles, as if they were a sort of breach of faith on the part of nature: he seems strangely unconscious that miracles are only the final flowers of his own favourite tree, the doctrine of the omnipotence of will. Just in the same way he calls the desire for immortality a paltry selfishness, forgetting that he has just called the desire for life a healthy and heroic selfishness. How can it be noble to wish to make one’s life infinite and yet mean to wish to make it immortal? No, if it is desirable that man should triumph over the cruelty of nature or custom, then miracles are certainly desirable; we will discuss afterwards whether they are possible.

But I must pass on to the larger cases of this curious error; the notion that the “liberalising” of religion in some way helps the liberation of the world. The second example of it can be found in the question of pantheism—or rather of a certain modern attitude which is often called immanentism, and which often is Buddhism. But this is so much more difficult a matter that I must approach it with rather more preparation.

The things said most confidently by advanced persons to crowded audiences are generally those quite opposite to the fact; it is actually our truisms that are untrue. Here is a case. There is a phrase of facile liberality uttered again and again at ethical societies and parliaments of religion: “the religions of the earth differ in rites and forms, but they are the same in what they teach.” It is false; it is the opposite of the fact. The religions of the earth do not greatly differ in rites and forms; they do greatly differ in what they teach. It is as if a man were to say, “Do not be misled by the fact that the CHURCH TIMES and the FREETHINKER look utterly different, that one is painted on vellum and the other carved on marble, that one is triangular and the other hectagonal; read them and you will see that they say the same thing.” The truth is, of course, that they are alike in everything except in the fact that they don’t say the same thing. An atheist stockbroker in Surbiton looks exactly like a Swedenborgian stockbroker in Wimbledon. You may walk round and round them and subject them to the most personal and offensive study without seeing anything Swedenborgian in the hat or anything particularly godless in the umbrella. It is exactly in their souls that they are divided. So the truth is that the difficulty of all the creeds of the earth is not as alleged in this cheap maxim: that they agree in meaning, but differ in machinery. It is exactly the opposite. They agree in machinery; almost every great religion on earth works with the same external methods, with priests, scriptures, altars, sworn brotherhoods, special feasts. They agree in the mode of teaching; what they differ about is the thing to be taught. Pagan optimists and Eastern pessimists would both have temples, just as Liberals and Tories would both have newspapers. Creeds that exist to destroy each other both have scriptures, just as armies that exist to destroy each other both have guns.

The great example of this alleged identity of all human religions is the alleged spiritual identity of Buddhism and Christianity. Those who adopt this theory generally avoid the ethics of most other creeds, except, indeed, Confucianism, which they like because it is not a creed. But they are cautious in their praises of Mahommedanism, generally confining themselves to imposing its morality only upon the refreshment of the lower classes. They seldom suggest the Mahommedan view of marriage (for which there is a great deal to be said), and towards Thugs and fetish worshippers their attitude may even be called cold. But in the case of the great religion of Gautama they feel sincerely a similarity.

Students of popular science, like Mr. Blatchford, are always insisting that Christianity and Buddhism are very much alike, especially Buddhism. This is generally believed, and I believed it myself until I read a book giving the reasons for it. The reasons were of two kinds: resemblances that meant nothing because they were common to all humanity, and resemblances which were not resemblances at all. The author solemnly explained that the two creeds were alike in things in which all creeds are alike, or else he described them as alike in some point in which they are quite obviously different. Thus, as a case of the first class, he said that both Christ and Buddha were called by the divine voice coming out of the sky, as if you would expect the divine voice to come out of the coal-cellar. Or, again, it was gravely urged that these two Eastern teachers, by a singular coincidence, both had to do with the washing of feet. You might as well say that it was a remarkable coincidence that they both had feet to wash. And the other class of similarities were those which simply were not similar. Thus this reconciler of the two religions draws earnest attention to the fact that at certain religious feasts the robe of the Lama is rent in pieces out of respect, and the remnants highly valued. But this is the reverse of a resemblance, for the garments of Christ were not rent in pieces out of respect, but out of derision; and the remnants were not highly valued except for what they would fetch in the rag shops. It is rather like alluding to the obvious connection between the two ceremonies of the sword: when it taps a man’s shoulder, and when it cuts off his head. It is not at all similar for the man. These scraps of puerile pedantry would indeed matter little if it were not also true that the alleged philosophical resemblances are also of these two kinds, either proving too much or not proving anything. That Buddhism approves of mercy or of self-restraint is not to say that it is specially like Christianity; it is only to say that it is not utterly unlike all human existence. Buddhists disapprove in theory of cruelty or excess because all sane human beings disapprove in theory of cruelty or excess. But to say that Buddhism and Christianity give the same philosophy of these things is simply false. All humanity does agree that we are in a net of sin. Most of humanity agrees that there is some way out. But as to what is the way out, I do not think that there are two institutions in the universe which contradict each other so flatly as Buddhism and Christianity.

Even when I thought, with most other well-informed, though unscholarly, people, that Buddhism and Christianity were alike, there was one thing about them that always perplexed me; I mean the startling difference in their type of religious art. I do not mean in its technical style of representation, but in the things that it was manifestly meant to represent. No two ideals could be more opposite than a Christian saint in a Gothic cathedral and a Buddhist saint in a Chinese temple. The opposition exists at every point; but perhaps the shortest statement of it is that the Buddhist saint always has his eyes shut, while the Christian saint always has them very wide open. The Buddhist saint has a sleek and harmonious body, but his eyes are heavy and sealed with sleep. The mediaeval saint’s body is wasted to its crazy bones, but his eyes are frightfully alive. There cannot be any real community of spirit between forces that produced symbols so different as that. Granted that both images are extravagances, are perversions of the pure creed, it must be a real divergence which could produce such opposite extravagances. The Buddhist is looking with a peculiar intentness inwards. The Christian is staring with a frantic intentness outwards. If we follow that clue steadily we shall find some interesting things.

A short time ago Mrs. Besant, in an interesting essay, announced that there was only one religion in the world, that all faiths were only versions or perversions of it, and that she was quite prepared to say what it was. According to Mrs. Besant this universal Church is simply the universal self. It is the doctrine that we are really all one person; that there are no real walls of individuality between man and man. If I may put it so, she does not tell us to love our neighbours; she tells us to be our neighbours. That is Mrs. Besant’s thoughtful and suggestive description of the religion in which all men must find themselves in agreement. And I never heard of any suggestion in my life with which I more violently disagree. I want to love my neighbour not because he is I, but precisely because he is not I. I want to adore the world, not as one likes a looking-glass, because it is one’s self, but as one loves a woman, because she is entirely different. If souls are separate love is possible. If souls are united love is obviously impossible. A man may be said loosely to love himself, but he can hardly fall in love with himself, or, if he does, it must be a monotonous courtship. If the world is full of real selves, they can be really unselfish selves. But upon Mrs. Besant’s principle the whole cosmos is only one enormously selfish person.

It is just here that Buddhism is on the side of modern pantheism and immanence. And it is just here that Christianity is on the side of humanity and liberty and love. Love desires personality; therefore love desires division. It is the instinct of Christianity to be glad that God has broken the universe into little pieces, because they are living pieces. It is her instinct to say “little children love one another” rather than to tell one large person to love himself. This is the intellectual abyss between Buddhism and Christianity; that for the Buddhist or Theosophist personality is the fall of man, for the Christian it is the purpose of God, the whole point of his cosmic idea. The world-soul of the Theosophists asks man to love it only in order that man may throw himself into it. But the divine centre of Christianity actually threw man out of it in order that he might love it. The oriental deity is like a giant who should have lost his leg or hand and be always seeking to find it; but the Christian power is like some giant who in a strange generosity should cut off his right hand, so that it might of its own accord shake hands with him. We come back to the same tireless note touching the nature of Christianity; all modern philosophies are chains which connect and fetter; Christianity is a sword which separates and sets free. No other philosophy makes God actually rejoice in the separation of the universe into living souls. But according to orthodox Christianity this separation between God and man is sacred, because this is eternal. That a man may love God it is necessary that there should be not only a God to be loved, but a man to love him. All those vague theosophical minds for whom the universe is an immense melting-pot are exactly the minds which shrink instinctively from that earthquake saying of our Gospels, which declare that the Son of God came not with peace but with a sundering sword. The saying rings entirely true even considered as what it obviously is; the statement that any man who preaches real love is bound to beget hate. It is as true of democratic fraternity as a divine love; sham love ends in compromise and common philosophy; but real love has always ended in bloodshed. Yet there is another and yet more awful truth behind the obvious meaning of this utterance of our Lord. According to Himself the Son was a sword separating brother and brother that they should for an aeon hate each other. But the Father also was a sword, which in the black beginning separated brother and brother, so that they should love each other at last.

This is the meaning of that almost insane happiness in the eyes of the mediaeval saint in the picture. This is the meaning of the sealed eyes of the superb Buddhist image. The Christian saint is happy because he has verily been cut off from the world; he is separate from things and is staring at them in astonishment. But why should the Buddhist saint be astonished at things? —since there is really only one thing, and that being impersonal can hardly be astonished at itself. There have been many pantheist poems suggesting wonder, but no really successful ones. The pantheist cannot wonder, for he cannot praise God or praise anything as really distinct from himself. Our immediate business here, however, is with the effect of this Christian admiration (which strikes outwards, towards a deity distinct from the worshipper) upon the general need for ethical activity and social reform. And surely its effect is sufficiently obvious. There is no real possibility of getting out of pantheism, any special impulse to moral action. For pantheism implies in its nature that one thing is as good as another; whereas action implies in its nature that one thing is greatly preferable to another. Swinburne in the high summer of his scepticism tried in vain to wrestle with this difficulty. In “Songs before Sunrise,” written under the inspiration of Garibaldi and the revolt of Italy he proclaimed the newer religion and the purer God which should wither up all the priests of the world:

“What doest thou now Looking Godward to cry I am I, thou art thou, I am low, thou art high, I am thou that thou seekest to find him, find thou but thyself, thou art I.”

Of which the immediate and evident deduction is that tyrants are as much the sons of God as Garibaldis; and that King Bomba of Naples having, with the utmost success, “found himself” is identical with the ultimate good in all things. The truth is that the western energy that dethrones tyrants has been directly due to the western theology that says “I am I, thou art thou.” The same spiritual separation which looked up and saw a good king in the universe looked up and saw a bad king in Naples. The worshippers of Bomba’s god dethroned Bomba. The worshippers of Swinburne’s god have covered Asia for centuries and have never dethroned a tyrant. The Indian saint may reasonably shut his eyes because he is looking at that which is I and Thou and We and They and It. It is a rational occupation: but it is not true in theory and not true in fact that it helps the Indian to keep an eye on Lord Curzon. That external vigilance which has always been the mark of Christianity (the command that we should WATCH and pray) has expressed itself both in typical western orthodoxy and in typical western politics: but both depend on the idea of a divinity transcendent, different from ourselves, a deity that disappears. Certainly the most sagacious creeds may suggest that we should pursue God into deeper and deeper rings of the labyrinth of our own ego. But only we of Christendom have said that we should hunt God like an eagle upon the mountains: and we have killed all monsters in the chase.

Here again, therefore, we find that in so far as we value democracy and the self-renewing energies of the west, we are much more likely to find them in the old theology than the new. If we want reform, we must adhere to orthodoxy: especially in this matter (so much disputed in the counsels of Mr. R.J.Campbell), the matter of insisting on the immanent or the transcendent deity. By insisting specially on the immanence of God we get introspection, self-isolation, quietism, social indifference—Tibet. By insisting specially on the transcendence of God we get wonder, curiosity, moral and political adventure, righteous indignation—Christendom. Insisting that God is inside man, man is always inside himself. By insisting that God transcends man, man has transcended himself.

If we take any other doctrine that has been called old-fashioned we shall find the case the same. It is the same, for instance, in the deep matter of the Trinity. Unitarians (a sect never to be mentioned without a special respect for their distinguished intellectual dignity and high intellectual honour) are often reformers by the accident that throws so many small sects into such an attitude. But there is nothing in the least liberal or akin to reform in the substitution of pure monotheism for the Trinity. The complex God of the Athanasian Creed may be an enigma for the intellect; but He is far less likely to gather the mystery and cruelty of a Sultan than the lonely god of Omar or Mahomet. The god who is a mere awful unity is not only a king but an Eastern king. The HEART of humanity, especially of European humanity, is certainly much more satisfied by the strange hints and symbols that gather round the Trinitarian idea, the image of a council at which mercy pleads as well as justice, the conception of a sort of liberty and variety existing even in the inmost chamber of the world. For Western religion has always felt keenly the idea “it is not well for man to be alone.” The social instinct asserted itself everywhere as when the Eastern idea of hermits was practically expelled by the Western idea of monks. So even asceticism became brotherly; and the Trappists were sociable even when they were silent. If this love of a living complexity be our test, it is certainly healthier to have the Trinitarian religion than the Unitarian. For to us Trinitarians (if I may say it with reverence)—to us God Himself is a society. It is indeed a fathomless mystery of theology, and even if I were theologian enough to deal with it directly, it would not be relevant to do so here. Suffice it to say here that this triple enigma is as comforting as wine and open as an English fireside; that this thing that bewilders the intellect utterly quiets the heart: but out of the desert, from the dry places and the dreadful suns, come the cruel children of the lonely God; the real Unitarians who with scimitar in hand have laid waste the world. For it is not well for God to be alone.

Again, the same is true of that difficult matter of the danger of the soul, which has unsettled so many just minds. To hope for all souls is imperative; and it is quite tenable that their salvation is inevitable. It is tenable, but it is not specially favourable to activity or progress. Our fighting and creative society ought rather to insist on the danger of everybody, on the fact that every man is hanging by a thread or clinging to a precipice. To say that all will be well anyhow is a comprehensible remark: but it cannot be called the blast of a trumpet. Europe ought rather to emphasize possible perdition; and Europe always has emphasized it. Here its highest religion is at one with all its cheapest romances. To the Buddhist or the eastern fatalist existence is a science or a plan, which must end up in a certain way. But to a Christian existence is a STORY, which may end up in any way. In a thrilling novel (that purely Christian product) the hero is not eaten by cannibals; but it is essential to the existence of the thrill that he MIGHT be eaten by cannibals. The hero must (so to speak) be an eatable hero. So Christian morals have always said to the man, not that he would lose his soul, but that he must take care that he didn’t. In Christian morals, in short, it is wicked to call a man “damned”: but it is strictly religious and philosophic to call him damnable.

All Christianity concentrates on the man at the cross-roads. The vast and shallow philosophies, the huge syntheses of humbug, all talk about ages and evolution and ultimate developments. The true philosophy is concerned with the instant. Will a man take this road or that? —that is the only thing to think about, if you enjoy thinking. The aeons are easy enough to think about, any one can think about them. The instant is really awful: and it is because our religion has intensely felt the instant, that it has in literature dealt much with battle and in theology dealt much with hell. It is full of DANGER, like a boy’s book: it is at an immortal crisis. There is a great deal of real similarity between popular fiction and the religion of the western people. If you say that popular fiction is vulgar and tawdry, you only say what the dreary and well-informed say also about the images in the Catholic churches. Life (according to the faith) is very like a serial story in a magazine: life ends with the promise (or menace) “to be continued in our next.” Also, with a noble vulgarity, life imitates the serial and leaves off at the exciting moment. For death is distinctly an exciting moment.

But the point is that a story is exciting because it has in it so strong an element of will, of what theology calls free-will. You cannot finish a sum how you like. But you can finish a story how you like. When somebody discovered the Differential Calculus there was only one Differential Calculus he could discover. But when Shakespeare killed Romeo he might have married him to Juliet’s old nurse if he had felt inclined. And Christendom has excelled in the narrative romance exactly because it has insisted on the theological free-will. It is a large matter and too much to one side of the road to be discussed adequately here; but this is the real objection to that torrent of modern talk about treating crime as disease, about making a prison merely a hygienic environment like a hospital, of healing sin by slow scientific methods. The fallacy of the whole thing is that evil is a matter of active choice whereas disease is not. If you say that you are going to cure a profligate as you cure an asthmatic, my cheap and obvious answer is, “Produce the people who want to be asthmatics as many people want to be profligates.” A man may lie still and be cured of a malady. But he must not lie still if he wants to be cured of a sin; on the contrary, he must get up and jump about violently. The whole point indeed is perfectly expressed in the very word which we use for a man in hospital; “patient” is in the passive mood; “sinner” is in the active. If a man is to be saved from influenza, he may be a patient. But if he is to be saved from forging, he must be not a patient but an IMPATIENT. He must be personally impatient with forgery. All moral reform must start in the active not the passive will.

Here again we reach the same substantial conclusion. In so far as we desire the definite reconstructions and the dangerous revolutions which have distinguished European civilization, we shall not discourage the thought of possible ruin; we shall rather encourage it. If we want, like the Eastern saints, merely to contemplate how right things are, of course we shall only say that they must go right. But if we particularly want to MAKE them go right, we must insist that they may go wrong.

Lastly, this truth is yet again true in the case of the common modern attempts to diminish or to explain away the divinity of Christ. The thing may be true or not; that I shall deal with before I end. But if the divinity is true it is certainly terribly revolutionary. That a good man may have his back to the wall is no more than we knew already; but that God could have his back to the wall is a boast for all insurgents for ever. Christianity is the only religion on earth that has felt that omnipotence made God incomplete. Christianity alone has felt that God, to be wholly God, must have been a rebel as well as a king. Alone of all creeds, Christianity has added courage to the virtues of the Creator. For the only courage worth calling courage must necessarily mean that the soul passes a breaking point—and does not break. In this indeed I approach a matter more dark and awful than it is easy to discuss; and I apologise in advance if any of my phrases fall wrong or seem irreverent touching a matter which the greatest saints and thinkers have justly feared to approach. But in that terrific tale of the Passion there is a distinct emotional suggestion that the author of all things (in some unthinkable way) went not only through agony, but through doubt. It is written, “Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.” No; but the Lord thy God may tempt Himself; and it seems as if this was what happened in Gethsemane. In a garden Satan tempted man: and in a garden God tempted God. He passed in some superhuman manner through our human horror of pessimism. When the world shook and the sun was wiped out of heaven, it was not at the crucifixion, but at the cry from the cross: the cry which confessed that God was forsaken of God. And now let the revolutionists choose a creed from all the creeds and a god from all the gods of the world, carefully weighing all the gods of inevitable recurrence and of unalterable power. They will not find another god who has himself been in revolt. Nay, (the matter grows too difficult for human speech,) but let the atheists themselves choose a god. They will find only one divinity who ever uttered their isolation; only one religion in which God seemed for an instant to be an atheist.

These can be called the essentials of the old orthodoxy, of which the chief merit is that it is the natural fountain of revolution and reform; and of which the chief defect is that it is obviously only an abstract assertion. Its main advantage is that it is the most adventurous and manly of all theologies. Its chief disadvantage is simply that it is a theology. It can always be urged against it that it is in its nature arbitrary and in the air. But it is not so high in the air but that great archers spend their whole lives in shooting arrows at it—yes, and their last arrows; there are men who will ruin themselves and ruin their civilization if they may ruin also this old fantastic tale. This is the last and most astounding fact about this faith; that its enemies will use any weapon against it, the swords that cut their own fingers, and the firebrands that burn their own homes. Men who begin to fight the Church for the sake of freedom and humanity end by flinging away freedom and humanity if only they may fight the Church. This is no exaggeration; I could fill a book with the instances of it. Mr. Blatchford set out, as an ordinary Bible-smasher, to prove that Adam was guiltless of sin against God; in manoeuvring so as to maintain this he admitted, as a mere side issue, that all the tyrants, from Nero to King Leopold, were guiltless of any sin against humanity. I know a man who has such a passion for proving that he will have no personal existence after death that he falls back on the position that he has no personal existence now. He invokes Buddhism and says that all souls fade into each other; in order to prove that he cannot go to heaven he proves that he cannot go to Hartlepool. I have known people who protested against religious education with arguments against any education, saying that the child’s mind must grow freely or that the old must not teach the young. I have known people who showed that there could be no divine judgment by showing that there can be no human judgment, even for practical purposes. They burned their own corn to set fire to the church; they smashed their own tools to smash it; any stick was good enough to beat it with, though it were the last stick of their own dismembered furniture. We do not admire, we hardly excuse, the fanatic who wrecks this world for love of the other. But what are we to say of the fanatic who wrecks this world out of hatred of the other? He sacrifices the very existence of humanity to the non-existence of God. He offers his victims not to the altar, but merely to assert the idleness of the altar and the emptiness of the throne. He is ready to ruin even that primary ethic by which all things live, for his strange and eternal vengeance upon some one who never lived at all.

And yet the thing hangs in the heavens unhurt. Its opponents only succeed in destroying all that they themselves justly hold dear. They do not destroy orthodoxy; they only destroy political courage and common sense. They do not prove that Adam was not responsible to God; how could they prove it? They only prove (from their premises) that the Czar is not responsible to Russia. They do not prove that Adam should not have been punished by God; they only prove that the nearest sweater should not be punished by men. With their oriental doubts about personality they do not make certain that we shall have no personal life hereafter; they only make certain that we shall not have a very jolly or complete one here. With their paralysing hints of all conclusions coming out wrong they do not tear the book of the Recording Angel; they only make it a little harder to keep the books of Marshall & Snelgrove. Not only is the faith the mother of all worldly energies, but its foes are the fathers of all worldly confusion. The secularists have not wrecked divine things; but the secularists have wrecked secular things, if that is any comfort to them. The Titans did not scale heaven; but they laid waste the world.

IX AUTHORITY AND THE ADVENTURER

The last chapter has been concerned with the contention that orthodoxy is not only (as is often urged) the only safe guardian of morality or order, but is also the only logical guardian of liberty, innovation and advance. If we wish to pull down the prosperous oppressor we cannot do it with the new doctrine of human perfectibility; we can do it with the old doctrine of Original Sin. If we want to uproot inherent cruelties or lift up lost populations we cannot do it with the scientific theory that matter precedes mind; we can do it with the supernatural theory that mind precedes matter. If we wish specially to awaken people to social vigilance and tireless pursuit of practise, we cannot help it much by insisting on the Immanent God and the Inner Light: for these are at best reasons for contentment; we can help it much by insisting on the transcendent God and the flying and escaping gleam; for that means divine discontent. If we wish particularly to assert the idea of a generous balance against that of a dreadful autocracy we shall instinctively be Trinitarian rather than Unitarian. If we desire European civilization to be a raid and a rescue, we shall insist rather that souls are in real peril than that their peril is ultimately unreal. And if we wish to exalt the outcast and the crucified, we shall rather wish to think that a veritable God was crucified, rather than a mere sage or hero. Above all, if we wish to protect the poor we shall be in favour of fixed rules and clear dogmas. The RULES of a club are occasionally in favour of the poor member. The drift of a club is always in favour of the rich one.

And now we come to the crucial question which truly concludes the whole matter. A reasonable agnostic, if he has happened to agree with me so far, may justly turn round and say, “You have found a practical philosophy in the doctrine of the Fall; very well. You have found a side of democracy now dangerously neglected wisely asserted in Original Sin; all right. You have found a truth in the doctrine of hell; I congratulate you. You are convinced that worshippers of a personal God look outwards and are progressive; I congratulate them. But even supposing that those doctrines do include those truths, why cannot you take the truths and leave the doctrines? Granted that all modern society is trusting the rich too much because it does not allow for human weakness; granted that orthodox ages have had a great advantage because (believing in the Fall) they did allow for human weakness, why cannot you simply allow for human weakness without believing in the Fall? If you have discovered that the idea of damnation represents a healthy idea of danger, why can you not simply take the idea of danger and leave the idea of damnation? If you see clearly the kernel of common-sense in the nut of Christian orthodoxy, why cannot you simply take the kernel and leave the nut? Why cannot you (to use that cant phrase of the newspapers which I, as a highly scholarly agnostic, am a little ashamed of using) why cannot you simply take what is good in Christianity, what you can define as valuable, what you can comprehend, and leave all the rest, all the absolute dogmas that are in their nature incomprehensible?” This is the real question; this is the last question; and it is a pleasure to try to answer it.

The first answer is simply to say that I am a rationalist. I like to have some intellectual justification for my intuitions. If I am treating man as a fallen being it is an intellectual convenience to me to believe that he fell; and I find, for some odd psychological reason, that I can deal better with a man’s exercise of freewill if I believe that he has got it. But I am in this matter yet more definitely a rationalist. I do not propose to turn this book into one of ordinary Christian apologetics; I should be glad to meet at any other time the enemies of Christianity in that more obvious arena. Here I am only giving an account of my own growth in spiritual certainty. But I may pause to remark that the more I saw of the merely abstract arguments against the Christian cosmology the less I thought of them. I mean that having found the moral atmosphere of the Incarnation to be common sense, I then looked at the established intellectual arguments against the Incarnation and found them to be common nonsense. In case the argument should be thought to suffer from the absence of the ordinary apologetic I will here very briefly summarise my own arguments and conclusions on the purely objective or scientific truth of the matter.

If I am asked, as a purely intellectual question, why I believe in Christianity, I can only answer, “For the same reason that an intelligent agnostic disbelieves in Christianity.” I believe in it quite rationally upon the evidence. But the evidence in my case, as in that of the intelligent agnostic, is not really in this or that alleged demonstration; it is in an enormous accumulation of small but unanimous facts. The secularist is not to be blamed because his objections to Christianity are miscellaneous and even scrappy; it is precisely such scrappy evidence that does convince the mind. I mean that a man may well be less convinced of a philosophy from four books, than from one book, one battle, one landscape, and one old friend. The very fact that the things are of different kinds increases the importance of the fact that they all point to one conclusion. Now, the non-Christianity of the average educated man to-day is almost always, to do him justice, made up of these loose but living experiences. I can only say that my evidences for Christianity are of the same vivid but varied kind as his evidences against it. For when I look at these various anti-Christian truths, I simply discover that none of them are true. I discover that the true tide and force of all the facts flows the other way. Let us take cases. Many a sensible modern man must have abandoned Christianity under the pressure of three such converging convictions as these: first, that men, with their shape, structure, and sexuality, are, after all, very much like beasts, a mere variety of the animal kingdom; second, that primeval religion arose in ignorance and fear; third, that priests have blighted societies with bitterness and gloom. Those three anti-Christian arguments are very different; but they are all quite logical and legitimate; and they all converge. The only objection to them (I discover) is that they are all untrue. If you leave off looking at books about beasts and men, if you begin to look at beasts and men then (if you have any humour or imagination, any sense of the frantic or the farcical) you will observe that the startling thing is not how like man is to the brutes, but how unlike he is. It is the monstrous scale of his divergence that requires an explanation. That man and brute are like is, in a sense, a truism; but that being so like they should then be so insanely unlike, that is the shock and the enigma. That an ape has hands is far less interesting to the philosopher than the fact that having hands he does next to nothing with them; does not play knuckle-bones or the violin; does not carve marble or carve mutton. People talk of barbaric architecture and debased art. But elephants do not build colossal temples of ivory even in a rococo style; camels do not paint even bad pictures, though equipped with the material of many camel’s-hair brushes. Certain modern dreamers say that ants and bees have a society superior to ours. They have, indeed, a civilization; but that very truth only reminds us that it is an inferior civilization. Who ever found an ant-hill decorated with the statues of celebrated ants? Who has seen a bee-hive carved with the images of gorgeous queens of old? No; the chasm between man and other creatures may have a natural explanation, but it is a chasm. We talk of wild animals; but man is the only wild animal. It is man that has broken out. All other animals are tame animals; following the rugged respectability of the tribe or type. All other animals are domestic animals; man alone is ever undomestic, either as a profligate or a monk. So that this first superficial reason for materialism is, if anything, a reason for its opposite; it is exactly where biology leaves off that all religion begins.

It would be the same if I examined the second of the three chance rationalist arguments; the argument that all that we call divine began in some darkness and terror. When I did attempt to examine the foundations of this modern idea I simply found that there were none. Science knows nothing whatever about pre-historic man; for the excellent reason that he is pre-historic. A few professors choose to conjecture that such things as human sacrifice were once innocent and general and that they gradually dwindled; but there is no direct evidence of it, and the small amount of indirect evidence is very much the other way. In the earliest legends we have, such as the tales of Isaac and of Iphigenia, human sacrifice is not introduced as something old, but rather as something new; as a strange and frightful exception darkly demanded by the gods. History says nothing; and legends all say that the earth was kinder in its earliest time. There is no tradition of progress; but the whole human race has a tradition of the Fall. Amusingly enough, indeed, the very dissemination of this idea is used against its authenticity. Learned men literally say that this pre-historic calamity cannot be true because every race of mankind remembers it. I cannot keep pace with these paradoxes.

And if we took the third chance instance, it would be the same; the view that priests darken and embitter the world. I look at the world and simply discover that they don’t. Those countries in Europe which are still influenced by priests, are exactly the countries where there is still singing and dancing and coloured dresses and art in the open-air. Catholic doctrine and discipline may be walls; but they are the walls of a playground. Christianity is the only frame which has preserved the pleasure of Paganism. We might fancy some children playing on the flat grassy top of some tall island in the sea. So long as there was a wall round the cliff’s edge they could fling themselves into every frantic game and make the place the noisiest of nurseries. But the walls were knocked down, leaving the naked peril of the precipice. They did not fall over; but when their friends returned to them they were all huddled in terror in the centre of the island; and their song had ceased.

Thus these three facts of experience, such facts as go to make an agnostic, are, in this view, turned totally round. I am left saying, “Give me an explanation, first, of the towering eccentricity of man among the brutes; second, of the vast human tradition of some ancient happiness; third, of the partial perpetuation of such pagan joy in the countries of the Catholic Church.” One explanation, at any rate, covers all three: the theory that twice was the natural order interrupted by some explosion or revelation such as people now call “psychic.” Once Heaven came upon the earth with a power or seal called the image of God, whereby man took command of Nature; and once again (when in empire after empire men had been found wanting) Heaven came to save mankind in the awful shape of a man. This would explain why the mass of men always look backwards; and why the only corner where they in any sense look forwards is the little continent where Christ has His Church. I know it will be said that Japan has become progressive. But how can this be an answer when even in saying “Japan has become progressive,” we really only mean, “Japan has become European”? But I wish here not so much to insist on my own explanation as to insist on my original remark. I agree with the ordinary unbelieving man in the street in being guided by three or four odd facts all pointing to something; only when I came to look at the facts I always found they pointed to something else.

I have given an imaginary triad of such ordinary anti-Christian arguments; if that be too narrow a basis I will give on the spur of the moment another. These are the kind of thoughts which in combination create the impression that Christianity is something weak and diseased. First, for instance, that Jesus was a gentle creature, sheepish and unworldly, a mere ineffectual appeal to the world; second, that Christianity arose and flourished in the dark ages of ignorance, and that to these the Church would drag us back; third, that the people still strongly religious or (if you will) superstitious—such people as the Irish—are weak, unpractical, and behind the times. I only mention these ideas to affirm the same thing: that when I looked into them independently I found, not that the conclusions were unphilosophical, but simply that the facts were not facts. Instead of looking at books and pictures about the New Testament I looked at the New Testament. There I found an account, not in the least of a person with his hair parted in the middle or his hands clasped in appeal, but of an extraordinary being with lips of thunder and acts of lurid decision, flinging down tables, casting out devils, passing with the wild secrecy of the wind from mountain isolation to a sort of dreadful demagogy; a being who often acted like an angry god—and always like a god. Christ had even a literary style of his own, not to be found, I think, elsewhere; it consists of an almost furious use of the A FORTIORI. His “how much more” is piled one upon another like castle upon castle in the clouds. The diction used ABOUT Christ has been, and perhaps wisely, sweet and submissive. But the diction used by Christ is quite curiously gigantesque; it is full of camels leaping through needles and mountains hurled into the sea. Morally it is equally terrific; he called himself a sword of slaughter, and told men to buy swords if they sold their coats for them. That he used other even wilder words on the side of non-resistance greatly increases the mystery; but it also, if anything, rather increases the violence. We cannot even explain it by calling such a being insane; for insanity is usually along one consistent channel. The maniac is generally a monomaniac. Here we must remember the difficult definition of Christianity already given; Christianity is a superhuman paradox whereby two opposite passions may blaze beside each other. The one explanation of the Gospel language that does explain it, is that it is the survey of one who from some supernatural height beholds some more startling synthesis.

I take in order the next instance offered: the idea that Christianity belongs to the Dark Ages. Here I did not satisfy myself with reading modern generalisations; I read a little history. And in history I found that Christianity, so far from belonging to the Dark Ages, was the one path across the Dark Ages that was not dark. It was a shining bridge connecting two shining civilizations. If any one says that the faith arose in ignorance and savagery the answer is simple: it didn’t. It arose in the Mediterranean civilization in the full summer of the Roman Empire. The world was swarming with sceptics, and pantheism was as plain as the sun, when Constantine nailed the cross to the mast. It is perfectly true that afterwards the ship sank; but it is far more extraordinary that the ship came up again: repainted and glittering, with the cross still at the top. This is the amazing thing the religion did: it turned a sunken ship into a submarine. The ark lived under the load of waters; after being buried under the debris of dynasties and clans, we arose and remembered Rome. If our faith had been a mere fad of the fading empire, fad would have followed fad in the twilight, and if the civilization ever re-emerged (and many such have never re-emerged) it would have been under some new barbaric flag. But the Christian Church was the last life of the old society and was also the first life of the new. She took the people who were forgetting how to make an arch and she taught them to invent the Gothic arch. In a word, the most absurd thing that could be said of the Church is the thing we have all heard said of it. How can we say that the Church wishes to bring us back into the Dark Ages? The Church was the only thing that ever brought us out of them.

I added in this second trinity of objections an idle instance taken from those who feel such people as the Irish to be weakened or made stagnant by superstition. I only added it because this is a peculiar case of a statement of fact that turns out to be a statement of falsehood. It is constantly said of the Irish that they are impractical. But if we refrain for a moment from looking at what is said about them and look at what is DONE about them, we shall see that the Irish are not only practical, but quite painfully successful. The poverty of their country, the minority of their members are simply the conditions under which they were asked to work; but no other group in the British Empire has done so much with such conditions. The Nationalists were the only minority that ever succeeded in twisting the whole British Parliament sharply out of its path. The Irish peasants are the only poor men in these islands who have forced their masters to disgorge. These people, whom we call priest-ridden, are the only Britons who will not be squire-ridden. And when I came to look at the actual Irish character, the case was the same. Irishmen are best at the specially HARD professions—the trades of iron, the lawyer, and the soldier. In all these cases, therefore, I came back to the same conclusion: the sceptic was quite right to go by the facts, only he had not looked at the facts. The sceptic is too credulous; he believes in newspapers or even in encyclopedias. Again the three questions left me with three very antagonistic questions. The average sceptic wanted to know how I explained the namby-pamby note in the Gospel, the connection of the creed with mediaeval darkness and the political impracticability of the Celtic Christians. But I wanted to ask, and to ask with an earnestness amounting to urgency, “What is this incomparable energy which appears first in one walking the earth like a living judgment and this energy which can die with a dying civilization and yet force it to a resurrection from the dead; this energy which last of all can inflame a bankrupt peasantry with so fixed a faith in justice that they get what they ask, while others go empty away; so that the most helpless island of the Empire can actually help itself?”

There is an answer: it is an answer to say that the energy is truly from outside the world; that it is psychic, or at least one of the results of a real psychical disturbance. The highest gratitude and respect are due to the great human civilizations such as the old Egyptian or the existing Chinese. Nevertheless it is no injustice for them to say that only modern Europe has exhibited incessantly a power of self-renewal recurring often at the shortest intervals and descending to the smallest facts of building or costume. All other societies die finally and with dignity. We die daily. We are always being born again with almost indecent obstetrics. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that there is in historic Christendom a sort of unnatural life: it could be explained as a supernatural life. It could be explained as an awful galvanic life working in what would have been a corpse. For our civilization OUGHT to have died, by all parallels, by all sociological probability, in the Ragnarok of the end of Rome. That is the weird inspiration of our estate: you and I have no business to be here at all. We are all REVENANTS; all living Christians are dead pagans walking about. Just as Europe was about to be gathered in silence to Assyria and Babylon, something entered into its body. And Europe has had a strange life— it is not too much to say that it has had the JUMPS—ever since.

I have dealt at length with such typical triads of doubt in order to convey the main contention—that my own case for Christianity is rational; but it is not simple. It is an accumulation of varied facts, like the attitude of the ordinary agnostic. But the ordinary agnostic has got his facts all wrong. He is a non-believer for a multitude of reasons; but they are untrue reasons. He doubts because the Middle Ages were barbaric, but they weren’t; because Darwinism is demonstrated, but it isn’t; because miracles do not happen, but they do; because monks were lazy, but they were very industrious; because nuns are unhappy, but they are particularly cheerful; because Christian art was sad and pale, but it was picked out in peculiarly bright colours and gay with gold; because modern science is moving away from the supernatural, but it isn’t, it is moving towards the supernatural with the rapidity of a railway train.

But among these million facts all flowing one way there is, of course, one question sufficiently solid and separate to be treated briefly, but by itself; I mean the objective occurrence of the supernatural. In another chapter I have indicated the fallacy of the ordinary supposition that the world must be impersonal because it is orderly. A person is just as likely to desire an orderly thing as a disorderly thing. But my own positive conviction that personal creation is more conceivable than material fate, is, I admit, in a sense, undiscussable. I will not call it a faith or an intuition, for those words are mixed up with mere emotion, it is strictly an intellectual conviction; but it is a PRIMARY intellectual conviction like the certainty of self of the good of living. Any one who likes, therefore, may call my belief in God merely mystical; the phrase is not worth fighting about. But my belief that miracles have happened in human history is not a mystical belief at all; I believe in them upon human evidences as I do in the discovery of America. Upon this point there is a simple logical fact that only requires to be stated and cleared up. Somehow or other an extraordinary idea has arisen that the disbelievers in miracles consider them coldly and fairly, while believers in miracles accept them only in connection with some dogma. The fact is quite the other way. The believers in miracles accept them (rightly or wrongly) because they have evidence for them. The disbelievers in miracles deny them (rightly or wrongly) because they have a doctrine against them. The open, obvious, democratic thing is to believe an old apple-woman when she bears testimony to a miracle, just as you believe an old apple-woman when she bears testimony to a murder. The plain, popular course is to trust the peasant’s word about the ghost exactly as far as you trust the peasant’s word about the landlord. Being a peasant he will probably have a great deal of healthy agnosticism about both. Still you could fill the British Museum with evidence uttered by the peasant, and given in favour of the ghost. If it comes to human testimony there is a choking cataract of human testimony in favour of the supernatural. If you reject it, you can only mean one of two things. You reject the peasant’s story about the ghost either because the man is a peasant or because the story is a ghost story. That is, you either deny the main principle of democracy, or you affirm the main principle of materialism—the abstract impossibility of miracle. You have a perfect right to do so; but in that case you are the dogmatist. It is we Christians who accept all actual evidence— it is you rationalists who refuse actual evidence being constrained to do so by your creed. But I am not constrained by any creed in the matter, and looking impartially into certain miracles of mediaeval and modern times, I have come to the conclusion that they occurred. All argument against these plain facts is always argument in a circle. If I say, “Mediaeval documents attest certain miracles as much as they attest certain battles,” they answer, “But mediaevals were superstitious”; if I want to know in what they were superstitious, the only ultimate answer is that they believed in the miracles. If I say “a peasant saw a ghost,” I am told, “But peasants are so credulous.” If I ask, “Why credulous?” the only answer is—that they see ghosts. Iceland is impossible because only stupid sailors have seen it; and the sailors are only stupid because they say they have seen Iceland. It is only fair to add that there is another argument that the unbeliever may rationally use against miracles, though he himself generally forgets to use it.

He may say that there has been in many miraculous stories a notion of spiritual preparation and acceptance: in short, that the miracle could only come to him who believed in it. It may be so, and if it is so how are we to test it? If we are inquiring whether certain results follow faith, it is useless to repeat wearily that (if they happen) they do follow faith. If faith is one of the conditions, those without faith have a most healthy right to laugh. But they have no right to judge. Being a believer may be, if you like, as bad as being drunk; still if we were extracting psychological facts from drunkards, it would be absurd to be always taunting them with having been drunk. Suppose we were investigating whether angry men really saw a red mist before their eyes. Suppose sixty excellent householders swore that when angry they had seen this crimson cloud: surely it would be absurd to answer “Oh, but you admit you were angry at the time.” They might reasonably rejoin (in a stentorian chorus), “How the blazes could we discover, without being angry, whether angry people see red?” So the saints and ascetics might rationally reply, “Suppose that the question is whether believers can see visions—even then, if you are interested in visions it is no point to object to believers.” You are still arguing in a circle— in that old mad circle with which this book began.

The question of whether miracles ever occur is a question of common sense and of ordinary historical imagination: not of any final physical experiment. One may here surely dismiss that quite brainless piece of pedantry which talks about the need for “scientific conditions” in connection with alleged spiritual phenomena. If we are asking whether a dead soul can communicate with a living it is ludicrous to insist that it shall be under conditions in which no two living souls in their senses would seriously communicate with each other. The fact that ghosts prefer darkness no more disproves the existence of ghosts than the fact that lovers prefer darkness disproves the existence of love. If you choose to say, “I will believe that Miss Brown called her fiance a periwinkle or, any other endearing term, if she will repeat the word before seventeen psychologists,” then I shall reply, “Very well, if those are your conditions, you will never get the truth, for she certainly will not say it.” It is just as unscientific as it is unphilosophical to be surprised that in an unsympathetic atmosphere certain extraordinary sympathies do not arise. It is as if I said that I could not tell if there was a fog because the air was not clear enough; or as if I insisted on perfect sunlight in order to see a solar eclipse.

As a common-sense conclusion, such as those to which we come about sex or about midnight (well knowing that many details must in their own nature be concealed) I conclude that miracles do happen. I am forced to it by a conspiracy of facts: the fact that the men who encounter elves or angels are not the mystics and the morbid dreamers, but fishermen, farmers, and all men at once coarse and cautious; the fact that we all know men who testify to spiritualistic incidents but are not spiritualists, the fact that science itself admits such things more and more every day. Science will even admit the Ascension if you call it Levitation, and will very likely admit the Resurrection when it has thought of another word for it. I suggest the Regalvanisation. But the strongest of all is the dilemma above mentioned, that these supernatural things are never denied except on the basis either of anti-democracy or of materialist dogmatism—I may say materialist mysticism. The sceptic always takes one of the two positions; either an ordinary man need not be believed, or an extraordinary event must not be believed. For I hope we may dismiss the argument against wonders attempted in the mere recapitulation of frauds, of swindling mediums or trick miracles. That is not an argument at all, good or bad. A false ghost disproves the reality of ghosts exactly as much as a forged banknote disproves the existence of the Bank of England—if anything, it proves its existence.

Given this conviction that the spiritual phenomena do occur (my evidence for which is complex but rational), we then collide with one of the worst mental evils of the age. The greatest disaster of the nineteenth century was this: that men began to use the word “spiritual” as the same as the word “good.” They thought that to grow in refinement and uncorporeality was to grow in virtue. When scientific evolution was announced, some feared that it would encourage mere animality. It did worse: it encouraged mere spirituality. It taught men to think that so long as they were passing from the ape they were going to the angel. But you can pass from the ape and go to the devil. A man of genius, very typical of that time of bewilderment, expressed it perfectly. Benjamin Disraeli was right when he said he was on the side of the angels. He was indeed; he was on the side of the fallen angels. He was not on the side of any mere appetite or animal brutality; but he was on the side of all the imperialism of the princes of the abyss; he was on the side of arrogance and mystery, and contempt of all obvious good. Between this sunken pride and the towering humilities of heaven there are, one must suppose, spirits of shapes and sizes. Man, in encountering them, must make much the same mistakes that he makes in encountering any other varied types in any other distant continent. It must be hard at first to know who is supreme and who is subordinate. If a shade arose from the under world, and stared at Piccadilly, that shade would not quite understand the idea of an ordinary closed carriage. He would suppose that the coachman on the box was a triumphant conqueror, dragging behind him a kicking and imprisoned captive. So, if we see spiritual facts for the first time, we may mistake who is uppermost. It is not enough to find the gods; they are obvious; we must find God, the real chief of the gods. We must have a long historic experience in supernatural phenomena— in order to discover which are really natural. In this light I find the history of Christianity, and even of its Hebrew origins, quite practical and clear. It does not trouble me to be told that the Hebrew god was one among many. I know he was, without any research to tell me so. Jehovah and Baal looked equally important, just as the sun and the moon looked the same size. It is only slowly that we learn that the sun is immeasurably our master, and the small moon only our satellite. Believing that there is a world of spirits, I shall walk in it as I do in the world of men, looking for the thing that I like and think good. Just as I should seek in a desert for clean water, or toil at the North Pole to make a comfortable fire, so I shall search the land of void and vision until I find something fresh like water, and comforting like fire; until I find some place in eternity, where I am literally at home. And there is only one such place to be found.

I have now said enough to show (to any one to whom such an explanation is essential) that I have in the ordinary arena of apologetics, a ground of belief. In pure records of experiment (if these be taken democratically without contempt or favour) there is evidence first, that miracles happen, and second that the nobler miracles belong to our tradition. But I will not pretend that this curt discussion is my real reason for accepting Christianity instead of taking the moral good of Christianity as I should take it out of Confucianism.

I have another far more solid and central ground for submitting to it as a faith, instead of merely picking up hints from it as a scheme. And that is this: that the Christian Church in its practical relation to my soul is a living teacher, not a dead one. It not only certainly taught me yesterday, but will almost certainly teach me to-morrow. Once I saw suddenly the meaning of the shape of the cross; some day I may see suddenly the meaning of the shape of the mitre. One fine morning I saw why windows were pointed; some fine morning I may see why priests were shaven. Plato has told you a truth; but Plato is dead. Shakespeare has startled you with an image; but Shakespeare will not startle you with any more. But imagine what it would be to live with such men still living, to know that Plato might break out with an original lecture to-morrow, or that at any moment Shakespeare might shatter everything with a single song. The man who lives in contact with what he believes to be a living Church is a man always expecting to meet Plato and Shakespeare to-morrow at breakfast. He is always expecting to see some truth that he has never seen before. There is one only other parallel to this position; and that is the parallel of the life in which we all began. When your father told you, walking about the garden, that bees stung or that roses smelt sweet, you did not talk of taking the best out of his philosophy. When the bees stung you, you did not call it an entertaining coincidence. When the rose smelt sweet you did not say “My father is a rude, barbaric symbol, enshrining (perhaps unconsciously) the deep delicate truths that flowers smell.” No: you believed your father, because you had found him to be a living fountain of facts, a thing that really knew more than you; a thing that would tell you truth to-morrow, as well as to-day. And if this was true of your father, it was even truer of your mother; at least it was true of mine, to whom this book is dedicated. Now, when society is in a rather futile fuss about the subjection of women, will no one say how much every man owes to the tyranny and privilege of women, to the fact that they alone rule education until education becomes futile: for a boy is only sent to be taught at school when it is too late to teach him anything. The real thing has been done already, and thank God it is nearly always done by women. Every man is womanised, merely by being born. They talk of the masculine woman; but every man is a feminised man. And if ever men walk to Westminster to protest against this female privilege, I shall not join their procession.

For I remember with certainty this fixed psychological fact; that the very time when I was most under a woman’s authority, I was most full of flame and adventure. Exactly because when my mother said that ants bit they did bite, and because snow did come in winter (as she said); therefore the whole world was to me a fairyland of wonderful fulfilments, and it was like living in some Hebraic age, when prophecy after prophecy came true. I went out as a child into the garden, and it was a terrible place to me, precisely because I had a clue to it: if I had held no clue it would not have been terrible, but tame. A mere unmeaning wilderness is not even impressive. But the garden of childhood was fascinating, exactly because everything had a fixed meaning which could be found out in its turn. Inch by inch I might discover what was the object of the ugly shape called a rake; or form some shadowy conjecture as to why my parents kept a cat.

So, since I have accepted Christendom as a mother and not merely as a chance example, I have found Europe and the world once more like the little garden where I stared at the symbolic shapes of cat and rake; I look at everything with the old elvish ignorance and expectancy. This or that rite or doctrine may look as ugly and extraordinary as a rake; but I have found by experience that such things end somehow in grass and flowers. A clergyman may be apparently as useless as a cat, but he is also as fascinating, for there must be some strange reason for his existence. I give one instance out of a hundred; I have not myself any instinctive kinship with that enthusiasm for physical virginity, which has certainly been a note of historic Christianity. But when I look not at myself but at the world, I perceive that this enthusiasm is not only a note of Christianity, but a note of Paganism, a note of high human nature in many spheres. The Greeks felt virginity when they carved Artemis, the Romans when they robed the vestals, the worst and wildest of the great Elizabethan playwrights clung to the literal purity of a woman as to the central pillar of the world. Above all, the modern world (even while mocking sexual innocence) has flung itself into a generous idolatry of sexual innocence—the great modern worship of children. For any man who loves children will agree that their peculiar beauty is hurt by a hint of physical sex. With all this human experience, allied with the Christian authority, I simply conclude that I am wrong, and the church right; or rather that I am defective, while the church is universal. It takes all sorts to make a church; she does not ask me to be celibate. But the fact that I have no appreciation of the celibates, I accept like the fact that I have no ear for music. The best human experience is against me, as it is on the subject of Bach. Celibacy is one flower in my father’s garden, of which I have not been told the sweet or terrible name. But I may be told it any day.

This, therefore, is, in conclusion, my reason for accepting the religion and not merely the scattered and secular truths out of the religion. I do it because the thing has not merely told this truth or that truth, but has revealed itself as a truth-telling thing. All other philosophies say the things that plainly seem to be true; only this philosophy has again and again said the thing that does not seem to be true, but is true. Alone of all creeds it is convincing where it is not attractive; it turns out to be right, like my father in the garden. Theosophists for instance will preach an obviously attractive idea like re-incarnation; but if we wait for its logical results, they are spiritual superciliousness and the cruelty of caste. For if a man is a beggar by his own pre-natal sins, people will tend to despise the beggar. But Christianity preaches an obviously unattractive idea, such as original sin; but when we wait for its results, they are pathos and brotherhood, and a thunder of laughter and pity; for only with original sin we can at once pity the beggar and distrust the king. Men of science offer us health, an obvious benefit; it is only afterwards that we discover that by health, they mean bodily slavery and spiritual tedium. Orthodoxy makes us jump by the sudden brink of hell; it is only afterwards that we realise that jumping was an athletic exercise highly beneficial to our health. It is only afterwards that we realise that this danger is the root of all drama and romance. The strongest argument for the divine grace is simply its ungraciousness. The unpopular parts of Christianity turn out when examined to be the very props of the people. The outer ring of Christianity is a rigid guard of ethical abnegations and professional priests; but inside that inhuman guard you will find the old human life dancing like children, and drinking wine like men; for Christianity is the only frame for pagan freedom. But in the modern philosophy the case is opposite; it is its outer ring that is obviously artistic and emancipated; its despair is within.

And its despair is this, that it does not really believe that there is any meaning in the universe; therefore it cannot hope to find any romance; its romances will have no plots. A man cannot expect any adventures in the land of anarchy. But a man can expect any number of adventures if he goes travelling in the land of authority. One can find no meanings in a jungle of scepticism; but the man will find more and more meanings who walks through a forest of doctrine and design. Here everything has a story tied to its tail, like the tools or pictures in my father’s house; for it is my father’s house. I end where I began—at the right end. I have entered at last the gate of all good philosophy. I have come into my second childhood.

But this larger and more adventurous Christian universe has one final mark difficult to express; yet as a conclusion of the whole matter I will attempt to express it. All the real argument about religion turns on the question of whether a man who was born upside down can tell when he comes right way up. The primary paradox of Christianity is that the ordinary condition of man is not his sane or sensible condition; that the normal itself is an abnormality. That is the inmost philosophy of the Fall. In Sir Oliver Lodge’s interesting new Catechism, the first two questions were: “What are you?” and “What, then, is the meaning of the Fall of Man?” I remember amusing myself by writing my own answers to the questions; but I soon found that they were very broken and agnostic answers. To the question, “What are you?” I could only answer, “God knows.” And to the question, “What is meant by the Fall?” I could answer with complete sincerity, “That whatever I am, I am not myself.” This is the prime paradox of our religion; something that we have never in any full sense known, is not only better than ourselves, but even more natural to us than ourselves. And there is really no test of this except the merely experimental one with which these pages began, the test of the padded cell and the open door. It is only since I have known orthodoxy that I have known mental emancipation. But, in conclusion, it has one special application to the ultimate idea of joy.

It is said that Paganism is a religion of joy and Christianity of sorrow; it would be just as easy to prove that Paganism is pure sorrow and Christianity pure joy. Such conflicts mean nothing and lead nowhere. Everything human must have in it both joy and sorrow; the only matter of interest is the manner in which the two things are balanced or divided. And the really interesting thing is this, that the pagan was (in the main) happier and happier as he approached the earth, but sadder and sadder as he approached the heavens. The gaiety of the best Paganism, as in the playfulness of Catullus or Theocritus, is, indeed, an eternal gaiety never to be forgotten by a grateful humanity. But it is all a gaiety about the facts of life, not about its origin. To the pagan the small things are as sweet as the small brooks breaking out of the mountain; but the broad things are as bitter as the sea. When the pagan looks at the very core of the cosmos he is struck cold. Behind the gods, who are merely despotic, sit the fates, who are deadly. Nay, the fates are worse than deadly; they are dead. And when rationalists say that the ancient world was more enlightened than the Christian, from their point of view they are right. For when they say “enlightened” they mean darkened with incurable despair. It is profoundly true that the ancient world was more modern than the Christian. The common bond is in the fact that ancients and moderns have both been miserable about existence, about everything, while mediaevals were happy about that at least. I freely grant that the pagans, like the moderns, were only miserable about everything—they were quite jolly about everything else. I concede that the Christians of the Middle Ages were only at peace about everything—they were at war about everything else. But if the question turn on the primary pivot of the cosmos, then there was more cosmic contentment in the narrow and bloody streets of Florence than in the theatre of Athens or the open garden of Epicurus. Giotto lived in a gloomier town than Euripides, but he lived in a gayer universe.

The mass of men have been forced to be gay about the little things, but sad about the big ones. Nevertheless (I offer my last dogma defiantly) it is not native to man to be so. Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial. Melancholy should be an innocent interlude, a tender and fugitive frame of mind; praise should be the permanent pulsation of the soul. Pessimism is at best an emotional half-holiday; joy is the uproarious labour by which all things live. Yet, according to the apparent estate of man as seen by the pagan or the agnostic, this primary need of human nature can never be fulfilled. Joy ought to be expansive; but for the agnostic it must be contracted, it must cling to one corner of the world. Grief ought to be a concentration; but for the agnostic its desolation is spread through an unthinkable eternity. This is what I call being born upside down. The sceptic may truly be said to be topsy-turvy; for his feet are dancing upwards in idle ecstasies, while his brain is in the abyss. To the modern man the heavens are actually below the earth. The explanation is simple; he is standing on his head; which is a very weak pedestal to stand on. But when he has found his feet again he knows it. Christianity satisfies suddenly and perfectly man’s ancestral instinct for being the right way up; satisfies it supremely in this; that by its creed joy becomes something gigantic and sadness something special and small. The vault above us is not deaf because the universe is an idiot; the silence is not the heartless silence of an endless and aimless world. Rather the silence around us is a small and pitiful stillness like the prompt stillness in a sick-room. We are perhaps permitted tragedy as a sort of merciful comedy: because the frantic energy of divine things would knock us down like a drunken farce. We can take our own tears more lightly than we could take the tremendous levities of the angels. So we sit perhaps in a starry chamber of silence, while the laughter of the heavens is too loud for us to hear.

Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian. And as I close this chaotic volume I open again the strange small book from which all Christianity came; and I am again haunted by a kind of confirmation. The tremendous figure which fills the Gospels towers in this respect, as in every other, above all the thinkers who ever thought themselves tall. His pathos was natural, almost casual. The Stoics, ancient and modern, were proud of concealing their tears. He never concealed His tears; He showed them plainly on His open face at any daily sight, such as the far sight of His native city. Yet He concealed something. Solemn supermen and imperial diplomatists are proud of restraining their anger. He never restrained His anger. He flung furniture down the front steps of the Temple, and asked men how they expected to escape the damnation of Hell. Yet He restrained something. I say it with reverence; there was in that shattering personality a thread that must be called shyness. There was something that He hid from all men when He went up a mountain to pray. There was something that He covered constantly by abrupt silence or impetuous isolation. There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth.

PREFACE

This book is meant to be a companion to “Heretics,” and to put the positive side in addition to the negative. Many critics complained of the book called “Heretics” because it merely criticised current philosophies without offering any alternative philosophy. This book is an attempt to answer the challenge. It is unavoidably affirmative and therefore unavoidably autobiographical. The writer has been driven back upon somewhat the same difficulty as that which beset Newman in writing his Apologia; he has been forced to be egotistical only in order to be sincere. While everything else may be different the motive in both cases is the same. It is the purpose of the writer to attempt an explanation, not of whether the Christian Faith can be believed, but of how he personally has come to believe it. The book is therefore arranged upon the positive principle of a riddle and its answer. It deals first with all the writer’s own solitary and sincere speculations and then with all the startling style in which they were all suddenly satisfied by the Christian Theology. The writer regards it as amounting to a convincing creed. But if it is not that it is at least a repeated and surprising coincidence.

Gilbert K. Chesterton.

CONTENTS

I. Introduction in Defence of Everything Else

II. The Maniac

III. The Suicide of Thought

IV. The Ethics of Elfland

V. The Flag of the World

VI. The Paradoxes of Christianity

VII. The Eternal Revolution

VIII. The Romance of Orthodoxy

IX. Authority and the Adventurer

PREFAZIONE

Questo libro vuol essere il compagno di «Eretici», e aggiungere il lato positivo a quello negativo. Molti critici mossero rimprovero al volume intitolato «Eretici», perché esso si limitava a criticare le filosofie correnti senza offrire alcuna filosofia alternativa. Questo libro è un tentativo di raccogliere quella sfida. Esso è inevitabilmente affermativo e perciò inevitabilmente autobiografico. Chi scrive si è visto ricacciato press’a poco nella stessa difficoltà che assillò il Newman quando compose la sua Apologia: si è visto costretto a essere egotista solo per poter essere sincero. Per quanto tutto il resto possa differire, il movente, nei due casi, è il medesimo. È intenzione di chi scrive tentare una spiegazione, non del se la Fede cristiana possa essere creduta, bensì del come egli, personalmente, sia giunto a crederla. Il libro è dunque ordinato secondo il principio positivo di un indovinello e della sua soluzione. Esso tratta dapprima di tutte le solitarie e sincere speculazioni di chi scrive, e poi del modo sorprendente in cui esse furono d’un tratto tutte appagate dalla Teologia cristiana. Chi scrive lo reputa un credo convincente. Ma se anche non lo fosse, è quanto meno una ripetuta e sbalorditiva coincidenza.

Gilbert K. Chesterton.

INDICE

I. Introduzione in difesa di tutto il resto

II. Il maniaco

III. Il suicidio del pensiero

IV. L’etica del paese delle fate

V. La bandiera del mondo

VI. I paradossi del Cristianesimo

VII. L’eterna rivoluzione

VIII. Il romanzo dell’ortodossia

IX. L’autorità e l’avventuriero

ORTHODOXY I INTRODUCTION IN DEFENCE OF EVERYTHING ELSE

THE only possible excuse for this book is that it is an answer to a challenge. Even a bad shot is dignified when he accepts a duel. When some time ago I published a series of hasty but sincere papers, under the name of “Heretics,” several critics for whose intellect I have a warm respect (I may mention specially Mr. G.S.Street) said that it was all very well for me to tell everybody to affirm his cosmic theory, but that I had carefully avoided supporting my precepts with example. “I will begin to worry about my philosophy,” said Mr. Street, “when Mr. Chesterton has given us his.” It was perhaps an incautious suggestion to make to a person only too ready to write books upon the feeblest provocation. But after all, though Mr. Street has inspired and created this book, he need not read it. If he does read it, he will find that in its pages I have attempted in a vague and personal way, in a set of mental pictures rather than in a series of deductions, to state the philosophy in which I have come to believe. I will not call it my philosophy; for I did not make it. God and humanity made it; and it made me.

I have often had a fancy for writing a romance about an English yachtsman who slightly miscalculated his course and discovered England under the impression that it was a new island in the South Seas. I always find, however, that I am either too busy or too lazy to write this fine work, so I may as well give it away for the purposes of philosophical illustration. There will probably be a general impression that the man who landed (armed to the teeth and talking by signs) to plant the British flag on that barbaric temple which turned out to be the Pavilion at Brighton, felt rather a fool. I am not here concerned to deny that he looked a fool. But if you imagine that he felt a fool, or at any rate that the sense of folly was his sole or his dominant emotion, then you have not studied with sufficient delicacy the rich romantic nature of the hero of this tale. His mistake was really a most enviable mistake; and he knew it, if he was the man I take him for. What could be more delightful than to have in the same few minutes all the fascinating terrors of going abroad combined with all the humane security of coming home again? What could be better than to have all the fun of discovering South Africa without the disgusting necessity of landing there? What could be more glorious than to brace one’s self up to discover New South Wales and then realize, with a gush of happy tears, that it was really old South Wales. This at least seems to me the main problem for philosophers, and is in a manner the main problem of this book. How can we contrive to be at once astonished at the world and yet at home in it? How can this queer cosmic town, with its many-legged citizens, with its monstrous and ancient lamps, how can this world give us at once the fascination of a strange town and the comfort and honour of being our own town?

To show that a faith or a philosophy is true from every standpoint would be too big an undertaking even for a much bigger book than this; it is necessary to follow one path of argument; and this is the path that I here propose to follow. I wish to set forth my faith as particularly answering this double spiritual need, the need for that mixture of the familiar and the unfamiliar which Christendom has rightly named romance. For the very word “romance” has in it the mystery and ancient meaning of Rome. Any one setting out to dispute anything ought always to begin by saying what he does not dispute. Beyond stating what he proposes to prove he should always state what he does not propose to prove. The thing I do not propose to prove, the thing I propose to take as common ground between myself and any average reader, is this desirability of an active and imaginative life, picturesque and full of a poetical curiosity, a life such as western man at any rate always seems to have desired. If a man says that extinction is better than existence or blank existence better than variety and adventure, then he is not one of the ordinary people to whom I am talking. If a man prefers nothing I can give him nothing. But nearly all people I have ever met in this western society in which I live would agree to the general proposition that we need this life of practical romance; the combination of something that is strange with something that is secure. We need so to view the world as to combine an idea of wonder and an idea of welcome. We need to be happy in this wonderland without once being merely comfortable. It is THIS achievement of my creed that I shall chiefly pursue in these pages.

But I have a peculiar reason for mentioning the man in a yacht, who discovered England. For I am that man in a yacht. I discovered England. I do not see how this book can avoid being egotistical; and I do not quite see (to tell the truth) how it can avoid being dull. Dulness will, however, free me from the charge which I most lament; the charge of being flippant. Mere light sophistry is the thing that I happen to despise most of all things, and it is perhaps a wholesome fact that this is the thing of which I am generally accused. I know nothing so contemptible as a mere paradox; a mere ingenious defence of the indefensible. If it were true (as has been said) that Mr. Bernard Shaw lived upon paradox, then he ought to be a mere common millionaire; for a man of his mental activity could invent a sophistry every six minutes. It is as easy as lying; because it is lying. The truth is, of course, that Mr. Shaw is cruelly hampered by the fact that he cannot tell any lie unless he thinks it is the truth. I find myself under the same intolerable bondage. I never in my life said anything merely because I thought it funny; though of course, I have had ordinary human vainglory, and may have thought it funny because I had said it. It is one thing to describe an interview with a gorgon or a griffin, a creature who does not exist. It is another thing to discover that the rhinoceros does exist and then take pleasure in the fact that he looks as if he didn’t. One searches for truth, but it may be that one pursues instinctively the more extraordinary truths. And I offer this book with the heartiest sentiments to all the jolly people who hate what I write, and regard it (very justly, for all I know), as a piece of poor clowning or a single tiresome joke.

For if this book is a joke it is a joke against me. I am the man who with the utmost daring discovered what had been discovered before. If there is an element of farce in what follows, the farce is at my own expense; for this book explains how I fancied I was the first to set foot in Brighton and then found I was the last. It recounts my elephantine adventures in pursuit of the obvious. No one can think my case more ludicrous than I think it myself; no reader can accuse me here of trying to make a fool of him: I am the fool of this story, and no rebel shall hurl me from my throne. I freely confess all the idiotic ambitions of the end of the nineteenth century. I did, like all other solemn little boys, try to be in advance of the age. Like them I tried to be some ten minutes in advance of the truth. And I found that I was eighteen hundred years behind it. I did strain my voice with a painfully juvenile exaggeration in uttering my truths. And I was punished in the fittest and funniest way, for I have kept my truths: but I have discovered, not that they were not truths, but simply that they were not mine. When I fancied that I stood alone I was really in the ridiculous position of being backed up by all Christendom. It may be, Heaven forgive me, that I did try to be original; but I only succeeded in inventing all by myself an inferior copy of the existing traditions of civilized religion. The man from the yacht thought he was the first to find England; I thought I was the first to find Europe. I did try to found a heresy of my own; and when I had put the last touches to it, I discovered that it was orthodoxy.

It may be that somebody will be entertained by the account of this happy fiasco. It might amuse a friend or an enemy to read how I gradually learnt from the truth of some stray legend or from the falsehood of some dominant philosophy, things that I might have learnt from my catechism—if I had ever learnt it. There may or may not be some entertainment in reading how I found at last in an anarchist club or a Babylonian temple what I might have found in the nearest parish church. If any one is entertained by learning how the flowers of the field or the phrases in an omnibus, the accidents of politics or the pains of youth came together in a certain order to produce a certain conviction of Christian orthodoxy, he may possibly read this book. But there is in everything a reasonable division of labour. I have written the book, and nothing on earth would induce me to read it.

I add one purely pedantic note which comes, as a note naturally should, at the beginning of the book. These essays are concerned only to discuss the actual fact that the central Christian theology (sufficiently summarized in the Apostles’ Creed) is the best root of energy and sound ethics. They are not intended to discuss the very fascinating but quite different question of what is the present seat of authority for the proclamation of that creed. When the word “orthodoxy” is used here it means the Apostles’ Creed, as understood by everybody calling himself Christian until a very short time ago and the general historic conduct of those who held such a creed. I have been forced by mere space to confine myself to what I have got from this creed; I do not touch the matter much disputed among modern Christians, of where we ourselves got it. This is not an ecclesiastical treatise but a sort of slovenly autobiography. But if any one wants my opinions about the actual nature of the authority, Mr. G.S.Street has only to throw me another challenge, and I will write him another book.

ORTODOSSIA I INTRODUZIONE IN DIFESA DI TUTTO IL RESTO

L’unica scusa possibile per questo libro è che esso costituisce una risposta a una sfida. Perfino un cattivo tiratore acquista dignità quando accetta un duello. Quando qualche tempo fa pubblicai una serie di scritti frettolosi ma sinceri, sotto il titolo di «Eretici», parecchi critici, per il cui ingegno nutro un caloroso rispetto (posso citare in particolare il signor G. S. Street), osservarono che era tutto molto bello che io esortassi ciascuno ad affermare la propria teoria cosmica, ma che avevo accuratamente evitato di sostenere i miei precetti con l’esempio. «Comincerò a preoccuparmi della mia filosofia», disse il signor Street, «quando il signor Chesterton ci avrà dato la sua.» Fu forse un suggerimento imprudente da rivolgere a una persona fin troppo disposta a scrivere libri alla più fiacca delle provocazioni. Ma dopo tutto, per quanto il signor Street abbia ispirato e creato questo libro, egli non è tenuto a leggerlo. Se lo leggerà, troverà che nelle sue pagine ho tentato, in un modo vago e personale, per mezzo di una serie di immagini mentali piuttosto che di una serie di deduzioni, di esporre la filosofia in cui sono giunto a credere. Non la chiamerò la mia filosofia; poiché non l’ho fatta io. La fecero Dio e l’umanità; ed essa fece me.

Ho spesso accarezzato la fantasia di scrivere un romanzo su un velista inglese che, sbagliando di poco i suoi calcoli di rotta, scoprì l’Inghilterra nella convinzione che si trattasse di una nuova isola nei Mari del Sud. Trovo però immancabilmente di essere o troppo occupato o troppo pigro per scrivere questa bella opera, sicché tanto vale che la regali a scopo di illustrazione filosofica. Si avrà probabilmente l’impressione generale che quell’uomo il quale sbarcò (armato fino ai denti e parlando a segni) per piantare la bandiera britannica su quel barbarico tempio che si rivelò poi essere il Padiglione di Brighton, si sia sentito piuttosto uno sciocco. Non mi sto qui adoperando a negare che egli avesse l’aria di uno sciocco. Ma se immaginate che egli si sentisse uno sciocco, o comunque che il senso della follia fosse la sua unica o dominante emozione, allora non avete studiato con sufficiente delicatezza la ricca e romantica natura dell’ eroe di questo racconto. Il suo errore fu davvero un errore quanto mai invidiabile; ed egli lo sapeva, se era l’uomo per cui lo prendo. Cosa vi può essere di più delizioso che avere, nello spazio di pochi minuti, tutti i terrori affascinanti dell’andare all’estero uniti a tutta l’umana sicurezza del tornare di nuovo a casa? Cosa vi può essere di meglio che godere di tutto il divertimento di scoprire il Sudafrica senza la disgustosa necessità di sbarcarvi? Cosa vi può essere di più glorioso che raccogliere ogni forza per scoprire il Nuovo Galles del Sud e poi rendersi conto, con uno sgorgare di felici lacrime, che era in realtà il vecchio Galles del Sud? Questo, almeno, mi pare il problema principale per i filosofi, ed è in un certo senso il problema principale di questo libro. Come possiamo riuscire a essere insieme stupiti del mondo e tuttavia a casa in esso? Come può questa bizzarra cittadina cosmica, con i suoi cittadini dalle molte gambe, con le sue lampade mostruose e antiche, come può questo mondo darci nel contempo il fascino di una città sconosciuta e il conforto e l’onore di essere la nostra propria città?

Mostrare che una fede o una filosofia è vera da ogni punto di vista sarebbe un’impresa troppo grande perfino per un libro molto più grande di questo; è necessario seguire un solo sentiero argomentativo; ed è questo il sentiero che qui mi propongo di seguire. Desidero esporre la mia fede come risposta particolare a questo duplice bisogno spirituale, il bisogno di quella mescolanza del familiare e dell’estraneo che la Cristianità ha giustamente chiamato romanticismo. Poiché la parola stessa «romanzo» racchiude in sé il mistero e l’antico significato di Roma. Chiunque si accinga a mettere in discussione qualcosa dovrebbe sempre cominciare col dire ciò che non mette in discussione. Oltre a enunciare ciò che si propone di provare, dovrebbe sempre enunciare ciò che non si propone di provare. La cosa che non mi propongo di provare, la cosa che mi propongo di prendere come terreno comune tra me e un lettore qualsiasi, è questa desiderabilità di una vita attiva e ricca d’immaginazione, pittoresca e piena di una poetica curiosità, una vita quale l’uomo occidentale, quanto meno, sembra avere sempre desiderato. Se un uomo dice che l’estinzione è meglio dell’ esistenza, o che la nuda esistenza è meglio della varietà e dell’avventura, allora egli non è uno di quegli uomini comuni ai quali mi rivolgo. Se un uomo non preferisce nulla, io non posso dargli nulla. Ma quasi tutti coloro che ho incontrato in questa società occidentale in cui vivo converrebbero sulla proposizione generale che abbiamo bisogno di questa vita di romanticismo pratico; la combinazione di qualcosa di strano con qualcosa di sicuro. Abbiamo bisogno di guardare il mondo in modo da unire un’idea di meraviglia e un’idea di accoglienza. Abbiamo bisogno di essere felici in questo paese delle meraviglie senza mai essere semplicemente comodi. È QUESTO risultato del mio credo che soprattutto perseguirò in queste pagine.

Ma ho una ragione particolare per menzionare l’uomo sullo yacht, colui che scoprì l’Inghilterra. Perché io sono quell’uomo sullo yacht. Io scoprii l’Inghilterra. Non vedo come questo libro possa evitare di essere egotistico; e non vedo affatto (a dire il vero) come possa evitare di essere noioso. La noia, tuttavia, mi affrancherà dall’accusa che più deploro: l’accusa di essere frivolo. La semplice, leggera sofisticheria è la cosa che per l’appunto disprezzo più di ogni altra, ed è forse un fatto salubre che sia proprio la cosa di cui vengo generalmente accusato. Non conosco nulla di più spregevole di un mero paradosso; una semplice, ingegnosa difesa dell’ indifendibile. Se fosse vero (come è stato detto) che il signor Bernard Shaw vivesse di paradossi, allora egli dovrebbe essere un comune milionario; poiché un uomo della sua attività mentale potrebbe inventare una sofisticheria ogni sei minuti. È facile come mentire; perché è mentire. Il vero è, s’intende, che il signor Shaw è crudelmente ostacolato dal fatto di non poter dire alcuna menzogna se non quando la crede vera. Mi ritrovo sottoposto alla medesima intollerabile schiavitù. Non ho mai in vita mia detto alcunché soltanto perché lo ritenessi buffo; sebbene, s’intende, io abbia avuto l’ordinaria vanagloria umana, e possa aver ritenuto una cosa buffa perché l’avevo detta io. Un conto è descrivere un colloquio con una gorgone o un grifone, una creatura che non esiste. Altro conto è scoprire che il rinoceronte esiste davvero e poi trarre piacere dal fatto che esso abbia l’aria di non esistere. Si va in cerca del vero, ma può darsi che si perseguano d’istinto le verità più straordinarie. E offro questo libro con i più cordiali sentimenti a tutte le brave persone che detestano ciò che scrivo, e lo considerano (assai giustamente, per quel che ne so) un misero pezzo di buffoneria o una singola, tediosa facezia.

Perché, se questo libro è una facezia, è una facezia a mie spese. Io sono l’uomo che con la massima audacia scoprì ciò che era stato scoperto prima. Se vi è un elemento di farsa in ciò che segue, la farsa è a mie spese; poiché questo libro spiega come m’illusi di essere il primo a mettere piede a Brighton e poi scoprii di essere l’ultimo. Esso narra le mie elefantesche avventure all’inseguimento dell’ovvio. Nessuno può ritenere il mio caso più ridicolo di quanto io stesso lo ritenga; nessun lettore può qui accusarmi di tentare di farne uno sciocco: lo sciocco di questa storia sono io, e nessun ribelle mi scaraventerà giù dal mio trono. Confesso liberamente tutte le idiote ambizioni della fine del diciannovesimo secolo. Anch’io, come tutti gli altri piccoli e solenni ragazzi, tentai di essere in anticipo sull’epoca. Come loro tentai di essere una decina di minuti in anticipo sul vero. E scoprii di esservi rimasto indietro di milleottocento anni. Sforzai davvero la voce con una esagerazione dolorosamente puerile nel pronunciare le mie verità. E fui punito nel modo più acconcio e buffo, poiché ho conservato le mie verità: ma ho scoperto, non che non fossero verità, bensì semplicemente che non erano mie. Quando m’illusi di stare solo, mi trovavo in realtà nella ridicola posizione di essere spalleggiato da tutta la Cristianità. Può darsi, il Cielo mi perdoni, che io abbia tentato di essere originale; ma riuscii soltanto a inventare tutto da me una copia scadente delle tradizioni esistenti della religione civilizzata. L’uomo dello yacht credeva di essere il primo a trovare l’Inghilterra; io credevo di essere il primo a trovare l’Europa. Tentai davvero di fondare un’eresia tutta mia; e quando vi ebbi dato gli ultimi ritocchi, scoprii che era l’ortodossia.

Può darsi che qualcuno si diverta al resoconto di questo felice fiasco. Potrebbe divertire un amico o un nemico leggere come a poco a poco appresi dalla verità di qualche leggenda sparsa o dalla falsità di qualche filosofia dominante cose che avrei potuto apprendere dal mio catechismo — se mai l’avessi appreso. Può darsi o non darsi che vi sia qualche divertimento nel leggere come trovai infine in un circolo anarchico o in un tempio babilonese ciò che avrei potuto trovare nella più vicina chiesa parrocchiale. Se qualcuno si diverte ad apprendere come i fiori del campo o le frasi udite su un omnibus, gli accidenti della politica o le pene della giovinezza si combinarono in un certo ordine per produrre una certa convinzione dell’ortodossia cristiana, egli potrà forse leggere questo libro. Ma in ogni cosa vi è una ragionevole divisione del lavoro. Io ho scritto il libro, e nulla al mondo mi indurrebbe a leggerlo.

Aggiungo una nota puramente pedantesca che viene, come una nota naturalmente dovrebbe, all’inizio del libro. Questi saggi si occupano soltanto di discutere il fatto concreto che la teologia cristiana centrale (sufficientemente riassunta nel Credo degli Apostoli) è la migliore radice di energia e di sana etica. Non sono intesi a discutere la questione affascinantissima ma del tutto diversa di quale sia l’attuale sede dell’autorità per la proclamazione di quel credo. Quando qui si usa la parola «ortodossia» essa significa il Credo degli Apostoli, così come inteso da chiunque si dicesse cristiano fino a pochissimo tempo fa, e la generale condotta storica di coloro che tennero un simile credo. Sono stato costretto dal mero spazio a limitarmi a ciò che ho tratto da questo credo; non tocco la questione, assai dibattuta tra i cristiani moderni, di dove noi stessi lo traemmo. Questo non è un trattato ecclesiastico, ma una sorta di sciatta autobiografia. Ma se qualcuno desidera le mie opinioni sull’ effettiva natura dell’autorità, al signor G. S. Street basterà lanciarmi un’altra sfida, e gli scriverò un altro libro.

II THE MANIAC

Thoroughly worldly people never understand even the world; they rely altogether on a few cynical maxims which are not true. Once I remember walking with a prosperous publisher, who made a remark which I had often heard before; it is, indeed, almost a motto of the modern world. Yet I had heard it once too often, and I saw suddenly that there was nothing in it. The publisher said of somebody, “That man will get on; he believes in himself.” And I remember that as I lifted my head to listen, my eye caught an omnibus on which was written “Hanwell.” I said to him, “Shall I tell you where the men are who believe most in themselves? For I can tell you. I know of men who believe in themselves more colossally than Napoleon or Caesar. I know where flames the fixed star of certainty and success. I can guide you to the thrones of the Super-men. The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums.” He said mildly that there were a good many men after all who believed in themselves and who were not in lunatic asylums. “Yes, there are,” I retorted, “and you of all men ought to know them. That drunken poet from whom you would not take a dreary tragedy, he believed in himself. That elderly minister with an epic from whom you were hiding in a back room, he believed in himself. If you consulted your business experience instead of your ugly individualistic philosophy, you would know that believing in himself is one of the commonest signs of a rotter. Actors who can’t act believe in themselves; and debtors who won’t pay. It would be much truer to say that a man will certainly fail, because he believes in himself. Complete self-confidence is not merely a sin; complete self-confidence is a weakness. Believing utterly in one’s self is a hysterical and superstitious belief like believing in Joanna Southcote: the man who has it has ‘Hanwell’ written on his face as plain as it is written on that omnibus.” And to all this my friend the publisher made this very deep and effective reply, “Well, if a man is not to believe in himself, in what is he to believe?” After a long pause I replied, “I will go home and write a book in answer to that question.” This is the book that I have written in answer to it.

But I think this book may well start where our argument started —in the neighbourhood of the mad-house. Modern masters of science are much impressed with the need of beginning all inquiry with a fact. The ancient masters of religion were quite equally impressed with that necessity. They began with the fact of sin—a fact as practical as potatoes. Whether or no man could be washed in miraculous waters, there was no doubt at any rate that he wanted washing. But certain religious leaders in London, not mere materialists, have begun in our day not to deny the highly disputable water, but to deny the indisputable dirt. Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved. Some followers of the Reverend R.J.Campbell, in their almost too fastidious spirituality, admit divine sinlessness, which they cannot see even in their dreams. But they essentially deny human sin, which they can see in the street. The strongest saints and the strongest sceptics alike took positive evil as the starting-point of their argument. If it be true (as it certainly is) that a man can feel exquisite happiness in skinning a cat, then the religious philosopher can only draw one of two deductions. He must either deny the existence of God, as all atheists do; or he must deny the present union between God and man, as all Christians do. The new theologians seem to think it a highly rationalistic solution to deny the cat.

In this remarkable situation it is plainly not now possible (with any hope of a universal appeal) to start, as our fathers did, with the fact of sin. This very fact which was to them (and is to me) as plain as a pikestaff, is the very fact that has been specially diluted or denied. But though moderns deny the existence of sin, I do not think that they have yet denied the existence of a lunatic asylum. We all agree still that there is a collapse of the intellect as unmistakable as a falling house. Men deny hell, but not, as yet, Hanwell. For the purpose of our primary argument the one may very well stand where the other stood. I mean that as all thoughts and theories were once judged by whether they tended to make a man lose his soul, so for our present purpose all modern thoughts and theories may be judged by whether they tend to make a man lose his wits.

It is true that some speak lightly and loosely of insanity as in itself attractive. But a moment’s thought will show that if disease is beautiful, it is generally some one else’s disease. A blind man may be picturesque; but it requires two eyes to see the picture. And similarly even the wildest poetry of insanity can only be enjoyed by the sane. To the insane man his insanity is quite prosaic, because it is quite true. A man who thinks himself a chicken is to himself as ordinary as a chicken. A man who thinks he is a bit of glass is to himself as dull as a bit of glass. It is the homogeneity of his mind which makes him dull, and which makes him mad. It is only because we see the irony of his idea that we think him even amusing; it is only because he does not see the irony of his idea that he is put in Hanwell at all. In short, oddities only strike ordinary people. Oddities do not strike odd people. This is why ordinary people have a much more exciting time; while odd people are always complaining of the dulness of life. This is also why the new novels die so quickly, and why the old fairy tales endure for ever. The old fairy tale makes the hero a normal human boy; it is his adventures that are startling; they startle him because he is normal. But in the modern psychological novel the hero is abnormal; the centre is not central. Hence the fiercest adventures fail to affect him adequately, and the book is monotonous. You can make a story out of a hero among dragons; but not out of a dragon among dragons. The fairy tale discusses what a sane man will do in a mad world. The sober realistic novel of to-day discusses what an essential lunatic will do in a dull world.

II IL MANIACO

Le persone assolutamente mondane non comprendono mai neppure il mondo; si affidano interamente a poche massime ciniche che non sono vere. Ricordo che una volta passeggiavo con un prospero editore, il quale fece un’osservazione che avevo già udito spesso; è, in verità, quasi un motto del mondo moderno. Eppure l’avevo udita una volta di troppo, e vidi d’un tratto che non conteneva nulla. L’editore disse di un tale: «Quell’uomo farà strada; crede in se stesso». E ricordo che, mentre alzavo il capo per ascoltare, il mio occhio colse un omnibus sul quale era scritto «Hanwell». Gli dissi: «Volete che vi dica dove si trovano gli uomini che più credono in se stessi? Perché posso dirvelo. Conosco uomini che credono in se stessi più colossalmente di Napoleone o di Cesare. So dove fiammeggia la stella fissa della certezza e del successo. Posso guidarvi ai troni dei Superuomini. Gli uomini che davvero credono in se stessi sono tutti nei manicomi». Egli rispose blandamente che, dopotutto, vi erano parecchi uomini che credevano in se stessi e che non erano in manicomio. «Sì, ce ne sono», ribattei, «e voi fra tutti dovreste conoscerli. Quel poeta ubriaco dal quale non voleste prendere una tetra tragedia, egli credeva in se stesso. Quell’anziano ministro con un poema epico dal quale vi nascondevate in una stanza sul retro, egli credeva in se stesso. Se consultaste la vostra esperienza d’affari invece della vostra brutta filosofia individualistica, sapreste che il credere in se stessi è uno dei segni più comuni di una canaglia. Gli attori che non sanno recitare credono in se stessi; e i debitori che non vogliono pagare. Sarebbe molto più vero dire che un uomo certamente fallirà, perché crede in se stesso. La completa fiducia nel proprio io non è soltanto un peccato; la completa fiducia nel proprio io è una debolezza. Credere assolutamente nel proprio io è una credenza isterica e superstiziosa, come credere in Joanna Southcote: chi la nutre ha ‘Hanwell’ scritto in faccia altrettanto chiaramente di quanto lo sia su quell’omnibus». E a tutto questo il mio amico editore fece questa replica profonda ed efficace: «Ebbene, se un uomo non deve credere in se stesso, in che cosa deve credere?». Dopo una lunga pausa risposi: «Andrò a casa e scriverò un libro in risposta a questa domanda». Questo è il libro che ho scritto in risposta a essa.

Ma penso che questo libro possa ben cominciare là dove è cominciato il nostro ragionamento: nei pressi del manicomio. I moderni maestri della scienza sono molto impressionati dalla necessità di iniziare ogni indagine con un fatto. Gli antichi maestri della religione ne erano impressionati esattamente allo stesso modo. Essi cominciavano con il fatto del peccato, un fatto pratico come le patate. Che l’uomo potesse o no essere lavato in acque miracolose, non v’era comunque alcun dubbio che avesse bisogno di lavarsi. Ma certi capi religiosi di Londra, non semplici materialisti, hanno cominciato ai nostri giorni non a negare l’acqua assai contestabile, bensì a negare l’incontestabile sporcizia. Certi nuovi teologi contestano il peccato originale, che è l’unica parte della teologia cristiana che possa davvero essere dimostrata. Alcuni seguaci del reverendo R. J. Campbell, nella loro spiritualità fin troppo schizzinosa, ammettono la divina assenza di peccato, che non riescono a vedere nemmeno nei loro sogni. Ma essi negano essenzialmente il peccato umano, che possono vedere per strada. I santi più forti e gli scettici più forti presero entrambi il male positivo come punto di partenza del loro ragionamento. Se è vero (come certamente lo è) che un uomo può provare una felicità squisita nello scorticare un gatto, allora il filosofo religioso può trarre soltanto una di due deduzioni. Deve o negare l’esistenza di Dio, come fanno tutti gli atei; oppure negare l’attuale unione fra Dio e l’uomo, come fanno tutti i cristiani. I nuovi teologi sembrano ritenere una soluzione altamente razionalistica il negare il gatto.

In questa notevole situazione non è evidentemente più possibile ora (con qualche speranza di un appello universale) cominciare, come facevano i nostri padri, con il fatto del peccato. Proprio questo fatto, che per loro era (e per me è) chiaro come il sole, è proprio il fatto che è stato particolarmente diluito o negato. Ma per quanto i moderni neghino l’esistenza del peccato, non credo che abbiano ancora negato l’esistenza del manicomio. Siamo tutti ancora d’accordo che esiste un crollo dell’intelletto tanto inconfondibile quanto il crollo di una casa. Gli uomini negano l’inferno, ma non ancora Hanwell. Ai fini del nostro ragionamento primario l’uno può benissimo stare là dove stava l’altro. Voglio dire che, come un tempo tutti i pensieri e le teorie venivano giudicati a seconda che tendessero a far perdere all’uomo la sua anima, così ai nostri fini presenti tutti i pensieri e le teorie moderne possono essere giudicati a seconda che tendano a far perdere all’uomo il senno.

È vero che alcuni parlano con leggerezza e con vaghezza della follia come di cosa in sé attraente. Ma un momento di riflessione mostrerà che, se la malattia è bella, in genere è la malattia di qualcun altro. Un cieco può essere pittoresco; ma per vedere il quadro occorrono due occhi. E similmente perfino la più sfrenata poesia della follia può essere goduta soltanto dai sani. Per il folle la sua follia è del tutto prosaica, perché è del tutto vera. Un uomo che si crede un pollo è per se stesso ordinario quanto un pollo. Un uomo che si crede un pezzo di vetro è per se stesso insulso quanto un pezzo di vetro. È l’omogeneità della sua mente che lo rende insulso, e che lo rende folle. È soltanto perché noi vediamo l’ironia della sua idea che lo troviamo persino divertente; è soltanto perché egli non vede l’ironia della sua idea che viene messo a Hanwell. In breve, le stranezze colpiscono soltanto le persone ordinarie. Le stranezze non colpiscono le persone strane. Ecco perché le persone ordinarie hanno una vita molto più eccitante; mentre le persone strane si lamentano sempre della monotonia della vita. Ecco anche perché i romanzi nuovi muoiono così presto, e perché le vecchie fiabe durano in eterno. La vecchia fiaba fa dell’eroe un normale ragazzo umano; sono le sue avventure a essere sorprendenti; lo sorprendono perché egli è normale. Ma nel moderno romanzo psicologico l’eroe è anormale; il centro non è centrale. Di conseguenza le avventure più feroci non riescono a colpirlo adeguatamente, e il libro è monotono. Si può ricavare una storia da un eroe fra i draghi; ma non da un drago fra i draghi. La fiaba discute ciò che un uomo sano farà in un mondo folle. Il sobrio romanzo realistico d’oggi discute ciò che un pazzo essenziale farà in un mondo insulso.

Let us begin, then, with the mad-house; from this evil and fantastic inn let us set forth on our intellectual journey. Now, if we are to glance at the philosophy of sanity, the first thing to do in the matter is to blot out one big and common mistake. There is a notion adrift everywhere that imagination, especially mystical imagination, is dangerous to man’s mental balance. Poets are commonly spoken of as psychologically unreliable; and generally there is a vague association between wreathing laurels in your hair and sticking straws in it. Facts and history utterly contradict this view. Most of the very great poets have been not only sane, but extremely business-like; and if Shakespeare ever really held horses, it was because he was much the safest man to hold them. Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination. Artistic paternity is as wholesome as physical paternity. Moreover, it is worthy of remark that when a poet really was morbid it was commonly because he had some weak spot of rationality on his brain. Poe, for instance, really was morbid; not because he was poetical, but because he was specially analytical. Even chess was too poetical for him; he disliked chess because it was full of knights and castles, like a poem. He avowedly preferred the black discs of draughts, because they were more like the mere black dots on a diagram. Perhaps the strongest case of all is this: that only one great English poet went mad, Cowper. And he was definitely driven mad by logic, by the ugly and alien logic of predestination. Poetry was not the disease, but the medicine; poetry partly kept him in health. He could sometimes forget the red and thirsty hell to which his hideous necessitarianism dragged him among the wide waters and the white flat lilies of the Ouse. He was damned by John Calvin; he was almost saved by John Gilpin. Everywhere we see that men do not go mad by dreaming. Critics are much madder than poets. Homer is complete and calm enough; it is his critics who tear him into extravagant tatters. Shakespeare is quite himself; it is only some of his critics who have discovered that he was somebody else. And though St. John the Evangelist saw many strange monsters in his vision, he saw no creature so wild as one of his own commentators. The general fact is simple. Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite. The result is mental exhaustion, like the physical exhaustion of Mr. Holbein. To accept everything is an exercise, to understand everything a strain. The poet only desires exaltation and expansion, a world to stretch himself in. The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.

It is a small matter, but not irrelevant, that this striking mistake is commonly supported by a striking misquotation. We have all heard people cite the celebrated line of Dryden as “Great genius is to madness near allied.” But Dryden did not say that great genius was to madness near allied. Dryden was a great genius himself, and knew better. It would have been hard to find a man more romantic than he, or more sensible. What Dryden said was this, “Great wits are oft to madness near allied”; and that is true. It is the pure promptitude of the intellect that is in peril of a breakdown. Also people might remember of what sort of man Dryden was talking. He was not talking of any unworldly visionary like Vaughan or George Herbert. He was talking of a cynical man of the world, a sceptic, a diplomatist, a great practical politician. Such men are indeed to madness near allied. Their incessant calculation of their own brains and other people’s brains is a dangerous trade. It is always perilous to the mind to reckon up the mind. A flippant person has asked why we say, “As mad as a hatter.” A more flippant person might answer that a hatter is mad because he has to measure the human head.

And if great reasoners are often maniacal, it is equally true that maniacs are commonly great reasoners. When I was engaged in a controversy with the CLARION on the matter of free will, that able writer Mr. R.B.Suthers said that free will was lunacy, because it meant causeless actions, and the actions of a lunatic would be causeless. I do not dwell here upon the disastrous lapse in determinist logic. Obviously if any actions, even a lunatic’s, can be causeless, determinism is done for. If the chain of causation can be broken for a madman, it can be broken for a man. But my purpose is to point out something more practical. It was natural, perhaps, that a modern Marxian Socialist should not know anything about free will. But it was certainly remarkable that a modern Marxian Socialist should not know anything about lunatics. Mr. Suthers evidently did not know anything about lunatics. The last thing that can be said of a lunatic is that his actions are causeless. If any human acts may loosely be called causeless, they are the minor acts of a healthy man; whistling as he walks; slashing the grass with a stick; kicking his heels or rubbing his hands. It is the happy man who does the useless things; the sick man is not strong enough to be idle. It is exactly such careless and causeless actions that the madman could never understand; for the madman (like the determinist) generally sees too much cause in everything. The madman would read a conspiratorial significance into those empty activities. He would think that the lopping of the grass was an attack on private property. He would think that the kicking of the heels was a signal to an accomplice. If the madman could for an instant become careless, he would become sane. Every one who has had the misfortune to talk with people in the heart or on the edge of mental disorder, knows that their most sinister quality is a horrible clarity of detail; a connecting of one thing with another in a map more elaborate than a maze. If you argue with a madman, it is extremely probable that you will get the worst of it; for in many ways his mind moves all the quicker for not being delayed by the things that go with good judgment. He is not hampered by a sense of humour or by charity, or by the dumb certainties of experience. He is the more logical for losing certain sane affections. Indeed, the common phrase for insanity is in this respect a misleading one. The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.

Cominciamo dunque dal manicomio; da questa locanda malvagia e fantastica muoviamo per il nostro viaggio intellettuale. Ora, se dobbiamo gettare uno sguardo alla filosofia della sanità mentale, la prima cosa da fare in proposito è cancellare un grande e comune errore. C’è dovunque, alla deriva, l’idea che l’immaginazione, e specialmente l’immaginazione mistica, sia pericolosa per l’equilibrio mentale dell’uomo. Dei poeti si parla comunemente come di persone psicologicamente inaffidabili; e in genere c’è una vaga associazione tra l’intrecciare allori nei capelli e il ficcarvi pagliuzze. I fatti e la storia contraddicono assolutamente questa opinione. La maggior parte dei grandissimi poeti è stata non solo sana, ma estremamente concreta negli affari; e se Shakespeare tenne davvero le briglie dei cavalli, fu perché era di gran lunga l’uomo più affidabile a cui affidarle. L’immaginazione non genera follia. Ciò che invece genera follia è precisamente la ragione. I poeti non impazziscono; ma i giocatori di scacchi sì. I matematici impazziscono, e i cassieri; ma gli artisti creativi assai di rado. Non sto affatto, come si vedrà, attaccando la logica: dico soltanto che questo pericolo risiede nella logica, non nell’immaginazione. La paternità artistica è sana quanto la paternità fisica. Inoltre, è degno di nota che, quando un poeta fu davvero morboso, ciò accadde comunemente perché aveva nel cervello qualche punto debole di razionalità. Poe, per esempio, fu davvero morboso; non perché fosse poetico, ma perché era particolarmente analitico. Perfino gli scacchi erano troppo poetici per lui; detestava gli scacchi perché erano pieni di cavalieri e di torri, come un poema. Preferiva dichiaratamente i dischi neri della dama, perché somigliavano di più ai meri puntini neri su un diagramma. Forse il caso più forte di tutti è questo: che un solo grande poeta inglese impazzì, Cowper. Ed egli fu decisamente reso folle dalla logica, dalla brutta ed estranea logica della predestinazione. La poesia non era la malattia, ma la medicina; la poesia in parte lo mantenne sano. Talvolta riusciva a dimenticare il rosso e assetato inferno verso cui lo trascinava il suo orribile necessitarismo, fra le ampie acque e i bianchi e piatti gigli dell’Ouse. Fu dannato da Giovanni Calvino; fu quasi salvato da John Gilpin. Dovunque vediamo che gli uomini non impazziscono sognando. I critici sono molto più folli dei poeti. Omero è abbastanza completo e sereno; sono i suoi critici a farlo a stravaganti brandelli. Shakespeare è pienamente se stesso; sono soltanto alcuni dei suoi critici ad aver scoperto che era qualcun altro. E benché san Giovanni Evangelista vedesse molti strani mostri nella sua visione, non vide alcuna creatura tanto selvaggia quanto uno dei suoi stessi commentatori. Il fatto generale è semplice. La poesia è sana perché galleggia agevolmente in un mare infinito; la ragione cerca di attraversare il mare infinito, e così di renderlo finito. Il risultato è l’esaurimento mentale, come l’esaurimento fisico del signor Holbein. Accettare ogni cosa è un esercizio, comprendere ogni cosa uno sforzo. Il poeta desidera soltanto esaltazione ed espansione, un mondo in cui distendersi. Il poeta chiede soltanto di ficcare il capo nei cieli. È il logico che cerca di ficcarsi i cieli nel capo. Ed è il suo capo che si spacca.

È cosa da poco, ma non irrilevante, che questo clamoroso errore sia comunemente sostenuto da una clamorosa citazione errata. Abbiamo tutti udito qualcuno citare il celebre verso di Dryden come «Il grande genio è affine alla follia». Ma Dryden non disse che il grande genio era affine alla follia. Dryden era egli stesso un grande genio, e sapeva meglio. Sarebbe stato difficile trovare un uomo più romantico di lui, o più assennato. Ciò che Dryden disse fu questo: «Gli spiriti acuti sono spesso affini alla follia»; e questo è vero. È la pura prontezza dell’intelletto a essere in pericolo di un crollo. Inoltre la gente farebbe bene a ricordare di quale sorta d’uomo Dryden stesse parlando. Non stava parlando di un visionario ultraterreno come Vaughan o George Herbert. Stava parlando di un cinico uomo di mondo, uno scettico, un diplomatico, un grande politico pratico. Simili uomini sono davvero affini alla follia. Il loro incessante calcolo del proprio cervello e del cervello altrui è un mestiere pericoloso. È sempre rischioso per la mente fare i conti con la mente. Una persona frivola ha chiesto perché diciamo «Matto come un cappellaio». Una persona ancor più frivola potrebbe rispondere che un cappellaio è matto perché deve misurare la testa umana.

E se i grandi ragionatori sono spesso maniaci, è altrettanto vero che i maniaci sono comunemente grandi ragionatori. Quando ero impegnato in una controversia con il CLARION intorno alla questione del libero arbitrio, quell’abile scrittore che è il signor R. B. Suthers disse che il libero arbitrio era follia, perché significava azioni senza causa, e le azioni di un folle sarebbero senza causa. Non mi soffermo qui sul disastroso passo falso della logica determinista. È ovvio che, se qualche azione, anche quella di un folle, può essere senza causa, il determinismo è finito. Se la catena della causalità può essere spezzata per un pazzo, può essere spezzata per un uomo. Ma il mio scopo è indicare qualcosa di più pratico. Era naturale, forse, che un moderno socialista marxista non sapesse nulla del libero arbitrio. Ma era certamente notevole che un moderno socialista marxista non sapesse nulla dei folli. Il signor Suthers evidentemente non sapeva nulla dei folli. L’ultima cosa che si può dire di un folle è che le sue azioni sono senza causa. Se alcuni atti umani possono vagamente dirsi senza causa, sono i piccoli atti di un uomo sano; il fischiettare mentre cammina; il falciare l’erba con un bastone; lo sbattere i talloni o lo stropicciarsi le mani. È l’uomo felice a fare le cose inutili; l’uomo malato non è abbastanza forte per starsene ozioso. Sono proprio azioni sbadate e senza causa come queste che il folle non potrebbe mai comprendere; poiché il folle (come il determinista) in genere vede troppa causa in ogni cosa. Il folle leggerebbe un significato cospiratorio in quelle attività vuote. Penserebbe che il falciare l’erba fosse un attacco alla proprietà privata. Penserebbe che lo sbattere i talloni fosse un segnale a un complice. Se il folle potesse per un istante diventare sbadato, diventerebbe sano di mente. Chiunque abbia avuto la sventura di parlare con persone nel cuore o al margine del disturbo mentale sa che la loro qualità più sinistra è un’orribile chiarezza di dettagli; un collegare una cosa con l’altra in una mappa più elaborata di un labirinto. Se discuti con un folle, è estremamente probabile che tu abbia la peggio; poiché in molti modi la sua mente si muove tanto più rapida per non essere trattenuta dalle cose che accompagnano il buon giudizio. Egli non è ostacolato dal senso dell’umorismo né dalla carità, né dalle mute certezze dell’esperienza. È tanto più logico per aver perduto certi sani affetti. In verità la frase comune con cui si designa la follia è, sotto questo aspetto, fuorviante. Il folle non è l’uomo che ha perduto la ragione. Il folle è l’uomo che ha perduto tutto tranne la ragione.

The madman’s explanation of a thing is always complete, and often in a purely rational sense satisfactory. Or, to speak more strictly, the insane explanation, if not conclusive, is at least unanswerable; this may be observed specially in the two or three commonest kinds of madness. If a man says (for instance) that men have a conspiracy against him, you cannot dispute it except by saying that all the men deny that they are conspirators; which is exactly what conspirators would do. His explanation covers the facts as much as yours. Or if a man says that he is the rightful King of England, it is no complete answer to say that the existing authorities call him mad; for if he were King of England that might be the wisest thing for the existing authorities to do. Or if a man says that he is Jesus Christ, it is no answer to tell him that the world denies his divinity; for the world denied Christ’s.

Nevertheless he is wrong. But if we attempt to trace his error in exact terms, we shall not find it quite so easy as we had supposed. Perhaps the nearest we can get to expressing it is to say this: that his mind moves in a perfect but narrow circle. A small circle is quite as infinite as a large circle; but, though it is quite as infinite, it is not so large. In the same way the insane explanation is quite as complete as the sane one, but it is not so large. A bullet is quite as round as the world, but it is not the world. There is such a thing as a narrow universality; there is such a thing as a small and cramped eternity; you may see it in many modern religions. Now, speaking quite externally and empirically, we may say that the strongest and most unmistakable MARK of madness is this combination between a logical completeness and a spiritual contraction. The lunatic’s theory explains a large number of things, but it does not explain them in a large way. I mean that if you or I were dealing with a mind that was growing morbid, we should be chiefly concerned not so much to give it arguments as to give it air, to convince it that there was something cleaner and cooler outside the suffocation of a single argument. Suppose, for instance, it were the first case that I took as typical; suppose it were the case of a man who accused everybody of conspiring against him. If we could express our deepest feelings of protest and appeal against this obsession, I suppose we should say something like this: “Oh, I admit that you have your case and have it by heart, and that many things do fit into other things as you say. I admit that your explanation explains a great deal; but what a great deal it leaves out! Are there no other stories in the world except yours; and are all men busy with your business? Suppose we grant the details; perhaps when the man in the street did not seem to see you it was only his cunning; perhaps when the policeman asked you your name it was only because he knew it already. But how much happier you would be if you only knew that these people cared nothing about you! How much larger your life would be if your self could become smaller in it; if you could really look at other men with common curiosity and pleasure; if you could see them walking as they are in their sunny selfishness and their virile indifference! You would begin to be interested in them, because they were not interested in you. You would break out of this tiny and tawdry theatre in which your own little plot is always being played, and you would find yourself under a freer sky, in a street full of splendid strangers.” Or suppose it were the second case of madness, that of a man who claims the crown, your impulse would be to answer, “All right! Perhaps you know that you are the King of England; but why do you care? Make one magnificent effort and you will be a human being and look down on all the kings of the earth.” Or it might be the third case, of the madman who called himself Christ. If we said what we felt, we should say, “So you are the Creator and Redeemer of the world: but what a small world it must be! What a little heaven you must inhabit, with angels no bigger than butterflies! How sad it must be to be God; and an inadequate God! Is there really no life fuller and no love more marvellous than yours; and is it really in your small and painful pity that all flesh must put its faith? How much happier you would be, how much more of you there would be, if the hammer of a higher God could smash your small cosmos, scattering the stars like spangles, and leave you in the open, free like other men to look up as well as down!”

And it must be remembered that the most purely practical science does take this view of mental evil; it does not seek to argue with it like a heresy but simply to snap it like a spell. Neither modern science nor ancient religion believes in complete free thought. Theology rebukes certain thoughts by calling them blasphemous. Science rebukes certain thoughts by calling them morbid. For example, some religious societies discouraged men more or less from thinking about sex. The new scientific society definitely discourages men from thinking about death; it is a fact, but it is considered a morbid fact. And in dealing with those whose morbidity has a touch of mania, modern science cares far less for pure logic than a dancing Dervish. In these cases it is not enough that the unhappy man should desire truth; he must desire health. Nothing can save him but a blind hunger for normality, like that of a beast. A man cannot think himself out of mental evil; for it is actually the organ of thought that has become diseased, ungovernable, and, as it were, independent. He can only be saved by will or faith. The moment his mere reason moves, it moves in the old circular rut; he will go round and round his logical circle, just as a man in a third-class carriage on the Inner Circle will go round and round the Inner Circle unless he performs the voluntary, vigorous, and mystical act of getting out at Gower Street. Decision is the whole business here; a door must be shut for ever. Every remedy is a desperate remedy. Every cure is a miraculous cure. Curing a madman is not arguing with a philosopher; it is casting out a devil. And however quietly doctors and psychologists may go to work in the matter, their attitude is profoundly intolerant—as intolerant as Bloody Mary. Their attitude is really this: that the man must stop thinking, if he is to go on living. Their counsel is one of intellectual amputation. If thy HEAD offend thee, cut it off; for it is better, not merely to enter the Kingdom of Heaven as a child, but to enter it as an imbecile, rather than with your whole intellect to be cast into hell —or into Hanwell.

La spiegazione che il folle dà di una cosa è sempre completa, e spesso, in senso puramente razionale, soddisfacente. O, per dirla più esattamente, la spiegazione folle, se non conclusiva, è quanto meno inconfutabile; ciò può osservarsi specialmente nelle due o tre specie più comuni di follia. Se un uomo dice (per esempio) che gli uomini hanno ordito una cospirazione contro di lui, non potete contestarlo se non dicendo che tutti gli uomini negano di essere cospiratori; il che è esattamente ciò che farebbero i cospiratori. La sua spiegazione copre i fatti quanto la vostra. Oppure, se un uomo dice di essere il legittimo re d’Inghilterra, non è una risposta completa il dire che le autorità esistenti lo chiamano folle; poiché, se egli fosse re d’Inghilterra, quella potrebbe essere la cosa più saggia che le autorità esistenti potessero fare. Oppure, se un uomo dice di essere Gesù Cristo, non è una risposta il dirgli che il mondo nega la sua divinità; poiché il mondo negò quella di Cristo.

Ciononostante egli ha torto. Ma se tentiamo di rintracciare il suo errore in termini esatti, non lo troveremo così facile come avevamo supposto. Forse la cosa più vicina a cui possiamo giungere per esprimerlo è dire questo: che la sua mente si muove in un cerchio perfetto ma angusto. Un piccolo cerchio è tanto infinito quanto un grande cerchio; ma, per quanto sia altrettanto infinito, non è altrettanto grande. Allo stesso modo la spiegazione folle è tanto completa quanto quella sana, ma non è altrettanto grande. Una pallottola è tonda quanto il mondo, ma non è il mondo. Esiste una cosa come una angusta universalità; esiste una cosa come una piccola e ristretta eternità; la potete vedere in molte religioni moderne. Ora, parlando in modo del tutto esteriore ed empirico, possiamo dire che il segno più forte e più inconfondibile della follia è questa combinazione tra una completezza logica e una contrazione spirituale. La teoria del folle spiega un gran numero di cose, ma non le spiega in modo grande. Voglio dire che, se voi o io avessimo a che fare con una mente che sta diventando morbosa, ci preoccuperemmo soprattutto non tanto di darle argomenti quanto di darle aria, di convincerla che vi era qualcosa di più pulito e di più fresco fuori dal soffocamento di un unico argomento. Supponiamo, per esempio, che si tratti del primo caso che ho preso come tipico; supponiamo che sia il caso di un uomo che accusava tutti di cospirare contro di lui. Se potessimo esprimere i nostri più profondi sentimenti di protesta e di appello contro questa ossessione, suppongo che diremmo qualcosa di simile: «Oh, ammetto che avete le vostre ragioni e le sapete a memoria, e che molte cose si incastrano l’una nell’altra come dite. Ammetto che la vostra spiegazione spiega moltissimo; ma quante cose lascia fuori! Non ci sono altre storie al mondo oltre alla vostra; e sono forse tutti gli uomini indaffarati con i vostri affari? Ammettiamo pure i dettagli; forse quando l’uomo per la strada non pareva vedervi era solo la sua astuzia; forse quando il poliziotto vi chiese il nome era solo perché lo conosceva già. Ma quanto più felici sareste se soltanto sapeste che a questa gente di voi non importa nulla! Quanto più grande sarebbe la vostra vita se il vostro io potesse rimpicciolirsi in essa; se poteste davvero guardare gli altri uomini con comune curiosità e piacere; se poteste vederli camminare come sono, nel loro soleggiato egoismo e nella loro virile indifferenza! Cominciereste a interessarvi a loro, perché essi non si interessano a voi. Uscireste da questo minuscolo e pacchiano teatro in cui il vostro piccolo intreccio viene sempre recitato, e vi ritrovereste sotto un cielo più libero, in una via piena di splendidi sconosciuti». Oppure, supponendo che si tratti del secondo caso di follia, quello di un uomo che rivendica la corona, il vostro impulso sarebbe di rispondere: «Va bene! Forse voi sapete di essere il re d’Inghilterra; ma perché vi importa? Fate un solo magnifico sforzo e sarete un essere umano e guarderete dall’alto tutti i re della terra». Oppure potrebbe essere il terzo caso, quello del folle che si diceva Cristo. Se dicessimo ciò che sentiamo, diremmo: «Dunque voi siete il Creatore e il Redentore del mondo: ma che piccolo mondo dev’essere! Che minuscolo cielo dovete abitare, con angeli non più grandi di farfalle! Com’è triste dover essere Dio; e un Dio inadeguato! Non c’è davvero una vita più piena e un amore più meraviglioso del vostro; ed è davvero nella vostra piccola e dolorosa pietà che ogni carne deve riporre la sua fede? Quanto più felici sareste, quanto più di voi ci sarebbe, se il martello di un Dio più alto potesse frantumare il vostro piccolo cosmo, spargendo le stelle come lustrini, e lasciarvi all’aperto, liberi come gli altri uomini di guardare in su non meno che in giù!».

E bisogna ricordare che la scienza più puramente pratica prende davvero questa posizione di fronte al male mentale; non cerca di discutere con esso come con un’eresia, ma semplicemente di spezzarlo come un incantesimo. Né la scienza moderna né l’antica religione credono nel pensiero completamente libero. La teologia rimprovera certi pensieri chiamandoli blasfemi. La scienza rimprovera certi pensieri chiamandoli morbosi. Per esempio, alcune società religiose scoraggiavano più o meno gli uomini dal pensare al sesso. La nuova società scientifica scoraggia decisamente gli uomini dal pensare alla morte; è un fatto, ma è considerato un fatto morboso. E nel trattare coloro la cui morbosità ha un tocco di mania, la scienza moderna si cura assai meno della pura logica di quanto se ne curi un derviscio danzante. In questi casi non basta che l’uomo infelice desideri la verità; egli deve desiderare la salute. Nulla può salvarlo se non una cieca fame di normalità, come quella di una bestia. Un uomo non può liberarsi dal male mentale col pensiero; poiché è proprio l’organo del pensiero a essersi ammalato, a essere diventato ingovernabile e, per così dire, indipendente. Egli può essere salvato soltanto dalla volontà o dalla fede. Nel momento in cui la sua mera ragione si muove, si muove nel vecchio solco circolare; egli girerà e rigirerà lungo il suo cerchio logico, proprio come un uomo in una carrozza di terza classe sull’Inner Circle girerà e rigirerà lungo l’Inner Circle, a meno che non compia l’atto volontario, vigoroso e mistico di scendere a Gower Street. La decisione è qui l’unica faccenda che conti; una porta deve essere chiusa per sempre. Ogni rimedio è un rimedio disperato. Ogni cura è una cura miracolosa. Curare un folle non è discutere con un filosofo; è scacciare un demonio. E per quanto quietamente medici e psicologi possano procedere nella faccenda, il loro atteggiamento è profondamente intollerante: intollerante quanto Maria la Sanguinaria. Il loro atteggiamento è in realtà questo: che l’uomo deve smettere di pensare, se vuole continuare a vivere. Il loro consiglio è un consiglio di amputazione intellettuale. Se il tuo CAPO ti scandalizza, taglialo via; poiché è meglio entrare nel Regno dei Cieli non semplicemente come un bambino, ma come un imbecille, piuttosto che con tutto il tuo intelletto essere gettato all’inferno, o a Hanwell.

Such is the madman of experience; he is commonly a reasoner, frequently a successful reasoner. Doubtless he could be vanquished in mere reason, and the case against him put logically. But it can be put much more precisely in more general and even aesthetic terms. He is in the clean and well-lit prison of one idea: he is sharpened to one painful point. He is without healthy hesitation and healthy complexity. Now, as I explain in the introduction, I have determined in these early chapters to give not so much a diagram of a doctrine as some pictures of a point of view. And I have described at length my vision of the maniac for this reason: that just as I am affected by the maniac, so I am affected by most modern thinkers. That unmistakable mood or note that I hear from Hanwell, I hear also from half the chairs of science and seats of learning to-day; and most of the mad doctors are mad doctors in more senses than one. They all have exactly that combination we have noted: the combination of an expansive and exhaustive reason with a contracted common sense. They are universal only in the sense that they take one thin explanation and carry it very far. But a pattern can stretch for ever and still be a small pattern. They see a chess-board white on black, and if the universe is paved with it, it is still white on black. Like the lunatic, they cannot alter their standpoint; they cannot make a mental effort and suddenly see it black on white.

Take first the more obvious case of materialism. As an explanation of the world, materialism has a sort of insane simplicity. It has just the quality of the madman’s argument; we have at once the sense of it covering everything and the sense of it leaving everything out. Contemplate some able and sincere materialist, as, for instance, Mr. McCabe, and you will have exactly this unique sensation. He understands everything, and everything does not seem worth understanding. His cosmos may be complete in every rivet and cog-wheel, but still his cosmos is smaller than our world. Somehow his scheme, like the lucid scheme of the madman, seems unconscious of the alien energies and the large indifference of the earth; it is not thinking of the real things of the earth, of fighting peoples or proud mothers, or first love or fear upon the sea. The earth is so very large, and the cosmos is so very small. The cosmos is about the smallest hole that a man can hide his head in.

It must be understood that I am not now discussing the relation of these creeds to truth; but, for the present, solely their relation to health. Later in the argument I hope to attack the question of objective verity; here I speak only of a phenomenon of psychology. I do not for the present attempt to prove to Haeckel that materialism is untrue, any more than I attempted to prove to the man who thought he was Christ that he was labouring under an error. I merely remark here on the fact that both cases have the same kind of completeness and the same kind of incompleteness. You can explain a man’s detention at Hanwell by an indifferent public by saying that it is the crucifixion of a god of whom the world is not worthy. The explanation does explain. Similarly you may explain the order in the universe by saying that all things, even the souls of men, are leaves inevitably unfolding on an utterly unconscious tree—the blind destiny of matter. The explanation does explain, though not, of course, so completely as the madman’s. But the point here is that the normal human mind not only objects to both, but feels to both the same objection. Its approximate statement is that if the man in Hanwell is the real God, he is not much of a god. And, similarly, if the cosmos of the materialist is the real cosmos, it is not much of a cosmos. The thing has shrunk. The deity is less divine than many men; and (according to Haeckel) the whole of life is something much more grey, narrow, and trivial than many separate aspects of it. The parts seem greater than the whole.

For we must remember that the materialist philosophy (whether true or not) is certainly much more limiting than any religion. In one sense, of course, all intelligent ideas are narrow. They cannot be broader than themselves. A Christian is only restricted in the same sense that an atheist is restricted. He cannot think Christianity false and continue to be a Christian; and the atheist cannot think atheism false and continue to be an atheist. But as it happens, there is a very special sense in which materialism has more restrictions than spiritualism. Mr. McCabe thinks me a slave because I am not allowed to believe in determinism. I think Mr. McCabe a slave because he is not allowed to believe in fairies. But if we examine the two vetoes we shall see that his is really much more of a pure veto than mine. The Christian is quite free to believe that there is a considerable amount of settled order and inevitable development in the universe. But the materialist is not allowed to admit into his spotless machine the slightest speck of spiritualism or miracle. Poor Mr. McCabe is not allowed to retain even the tiniest imp, though it might be hiding in a pimpernel. The Christian admits that the universe is manifold and even miscellaneous, just as a sane man knows that he is complex. The sane man knows that he has a touch of the beast, a touch of the devil, a touch of the saint, a touch of the citizen. Nay, the really sane man knows that he has a touch of the madman. But the materialist’s world is quite simple and solid, just as the madman is quite sure he is sane. The materialist is sure that history has been simply and solely a chain of causation, just as the interesting person before mentioned is quite sure that he is simply and solely a chicken. Materialists and madmen never have doubts.

Spiritual doctrines do not actually limit the mind as do materialistic denials. Even if I believe in immortality I need not think about it. But if I disbelieve in immortality I must not think about it. In the first case the road is open and I can go as far as I like; in the second the road is shut. But the case is even stronger, and the parallel with madness is yet more strange. For it was our case against the exhaustive and logical theory of the lunatic that, right or wrong, it gradually destroyed his humanity. Now it is the charge against the main deductions of the materialist that, right or wrong, they gradually destroy his humanity; I do not mean only kindness, I mean hope, courage, poetry, initiative, all that is human. For instance, when materialism leads men to complete fatalism (as it generally does), it is quite idle to pretend that it is in any sense a liberating force. It is absurd to say that you are especially advancing freedom when you only use free thought to destroy free will. The determinists come to bind, not to loose. They may well call their law the “chain” of causation. It is the worst chain that ever fettered a human being. You may use the language of liberty, if you like, about materialistic teaching, but it is obvious that this is just as inapplicable to it as a whole as the same language when applied to a man locked up in a mad-house. You may say, if you like, that the man is free to think himself a poached egg. But it is surely a more massive and important fact that if he is a poached egg he is not free to eat, drink, sleep, walk, or smoke a cigarette. Similarly you may say, if you like, that the bold determinist speculator is free to disbelieve in the reality of the will. But it is a much more massive and important fact that he is not free to raise, to curse, to thank, to justify, to urge, to punish, to resist temptations, to incite mobs, to make New Year resolutions, to pardon sinners, to rebuke tyrants, or even to say “thank you” for the mustard.

Tale è il folle dell’esperienza; egli è comunemente un ragionatore, e spesso un ragionatore vittorioso. Senza dubbio potrebbe essere vinto sul terreno della pura ragione, e le argomentazioni contro di lui potrebbero essere esposte logicamente. Ma possono essere esposte molto più precisamente in termini più generali e persino estetici. Egli si trova nella prigione pulita e bene illuminata di un’unica idea: è affilato fino a un solo punto doloroso. È privo di sana esitazione e di sana complessità. Ora, come spiego nell’introduzione, ho deciso in questi primi capitoli di dare non tanto un diagramma di una dottrina quanto alcune immagini di un punto di vista. E ho descritto a lungo la mia visione del maniaco per questa ragione: che, proprio come sono colpito dal maniaco, così sono colpito dalla maggior parte dei pensatori moderni. Quell’inconfondibile umore o nota che odo da Hanwell, lo odo anche da metà delle cattedre della scienza e dei seggi del sapere di oggi; e la maggior parte dei medici pazzi sono medici pazzi in più di un senso. Tutti costoro hanno esattamente quella combinazione che abbiamo notato: la combinazione di una ragione espansiva ed esaustiva con un contratto buon senso. Sono universali soltanto nel senso che prendono una sola magra spiegazione e la spingono molto lontano. Ma un disegno può estendersi in eterno e restare pur sempre un piccolo disegno. Essi vedono una scacchiera bianca su fondo nero, e se l’universo ne è lastricato, è pur sempre bianco su nero. Come il folle, non possono mutare il loro punto di vista; non possono compiere uno sforzo mentale e vedere d’un tratto nero su bianco.

Prendiamo per primo il caso più ovvio del materialismo. Come spiegazione del mondo, il materialismo ha una sorta di folle semplicità. Ha proprio la qualità dell’argomentazione del folle; abbiamo insieme la sensazione che esso copra ogni cosa e la sensazione che lasci fuori ogni cosa. Contemplate qualche abile e sincero materialista, come per esempio il signor McCabe, e proverete esattamente questa singolare sensazione. Egli comprende ogni cosa, e ogni cosa non pare degna di essere compresa. Il suo cosmo può essere completo in ogni rivetto e ingranaggio, ma il suo cosmo è pur sempre più piccolo del nostro mondo. In qualche modo il suo schema, come il lucido schema del folle, sembra inconsapevole delle energie estranee e della grande indifferenza della terra; non pensa alle cose reali della terra, ai popoli in lotta o alle madri orgogliose, o al primo amore o alla paura sul mare. La terra è così grande, e il cosmo è così piccolo. Il cosmo è all’incirca il più piccolo buco in cui un uomo possa nascondere la testa.

Deve intendersi che non sto ora discutendo il rapporto di questi credi con la verità; ma, per il momento, soltanto il loro rapporto con la salute. Più avanti nel ragionamento spero di affrontare la questione della verità oggettiva; qui parlo soltanto di un fenomeno di psicologia. Non tento per il momento di dimostrare a Haeckel che il materialismo è falso, non più di quanto tentassi di dimostrare all’uomo che si credeva Cristo che egli fosse in errore. Osservo qui semplicemente il fatto che entrambi i casi hanno lo stesso genere di completezza e lo stesso genere di incompletezza. Potete spiegare la detenzione di un uomo a Hanwell da parte di un pubblico indifferente dicendo che si tratta della crocifissione di un dio del quale il mondo non è degno. La spiegazione spiega davvero. Similmente potete spiegare l’ordine dell’universo dicendo che tutte le cose, perfino le anime degli uomini, sono foglie che inevitabilmente si schiudono su un albero del tutto inconsapevole: il cieco destino della materia. La spiegazione spiega davvero, benché, s’intende, non tanto completamente quanto quella del folle. Ma il punto qui è che la normale mente umana non solo si oppone a entrambe, ma sente verso entrambe la medesima obiezione. La sua approssimativa formulazione è che, se l’uomo di Hanwell è il vero Dio, egli non è granché come dio. E, similmente, se il cosmo del materialista è il vero cosmo, esso non è granché come cosmo. La cosa si è rimpicciolita. La divinità è meno divina di molti uomini; e (secondo Haeckel) l’intera vita è qualcosa di molto più grigio, angusto e insignificante di molti suoi aspetti separati. Le parti sembrano più grandi del tutto.

Poiché dobbiamo ricordare che la filosofia materialista (vera o no) è certamente molto più limitante di qualsiasi religione. In un senso, s’intende, tutte le idee intelligenti sono anguste. Non possono essere più ampie di se stesse. Un cristiano è limitato soltanto nello stesso senso in cui è limitato un ateo. Egli non può ritenere falso il cristianesimo e continuare a essere cristiano; e l’ateo non può ritenere falso l’ateismo e continuare a essere ateo. Ma accade che vi sia un senso del tutto particolare in cui il materialismo ha più restrizioni dello spiritualismo. Il signor McCabe mi ritiene uno schiavo perché non mi è permesso credere nel determinismo. Io ritengo il signor McCabe uno schiavo perché non gli è permesso credere nelle fate. Ma se esaminiamo i due veti, vedremo che il suo è in realtà molto più un puro veto del mio. Il cristiano è del tutto libero di credere che vi sia una considerevole quantità di ordine stabilito e di sviluppo inevitabile nell’universo. Ma al materialista non è permesso ammettere nella sua immacolata macchina il minimo granello di spiritualismo o di miracolo. Al povero signor McCabe non è permesso conservare nemmeno il più minuscolo folletto, sebbene esso possa nascondersi in una primula. Il cristiano ammette che l’universo è molteplice e persino eterogeneo, proprio come un uomo sano sa di essere complesso. L’uomo sano sa di avere un tocco della bestia, un tocco del demonio, un tocco del santo, un tocco del cittadino. Anzi, l’uomo davvero sano sa di avere un tocco del folle. Ma il mondo del materialista è del tutto semplice e solido, proprio come il folle è del tutto certo di essere sano. Il materialista è certo che la storia sia stata semplicemente e unicamente una catena di causalità, proprio come l’interessante personaggio prima menzionato è del tutto certo di essere semplicemente e unicamente un pollo. I materialisti e i folli non hanno mai dubbi.

Le dottrine spirituali non limitano realmente la mente come fanno le negazioni materialiste. Anche se credo nell’immortalità, non sono costretto a pensarci. Ma se non credo nell’immortalità, non devo pensarci. Nel primo caso la strada è aperta e posso andare tanto lontano quanto voglio; nel secondo la strada è sbarrata. Ma il caso è ancora più forte, e il parallelo con la follia è ancora più strano. Poiché la nostra tesi contro la teoria esaustiva e logica del folle era che, a torto o a ragione, essa distruggeva gradualmente la sua umanità. Ora, l’accusa contro le principali deduzioni del materialista è che, a torto o a ragione, esse distruggono gradualmente la sua umanità; non intendo soltanto la bontà, intendo la speranza, il coraggio, la poesia, l’iniziativa, tutto ciò che è umano. Per esempio, quando il materialismo conduce gli uomini al completo fatalismo (come generalmente fa), è del tutto vano fingere che esso sia in qualche senso una forza liberatrice. È assurdo dire che state particolarmente promuovendo la libertà quando usate il libero pensiero soltanto per distruggere il libero arbitrio. I deterministi vengono per legare, non per sciogliere. Ben possono chiamare la loro legge la «catena» della causalità. È la peggiore catena che abbia mai avvinto un essere umano. Potete usare, se volete, il linguaggio della libertà a proposito dell’insegnamento materialista, ma è ovvio che esso è, nel suo complesso, tanto inapplicabile quanto lo sarebbe lo stesso linguaggio applicato a un uomo rinchiuso in un manicomio. Potete dire, se volete, che l’uomo è libero di credersi un uovo in camicia. Ma è certamente un fatto più massiccio e importante che, se è un uovo in camicia, non è libero di mangiare, bere, dormire, camminare o fumare una sigaretta. Similmente potete dire, se volete, che l’ardito speculatore determinista è libero di non credere nella realtà della volontà. Ma è un fatto molto più massiccio e importante che egli non è libero di sollevare, di maledire, di ringraziare, di giustificare, di esortare, di punire, di resistere alle tentazioni, di incitare le folle, di prendere propositi per l’anno nuovo, di perdonare i peccatori, di rimproverare i tiranni, o persino di dire «grazie» per la senape.

In passing from this subject I may note that there is a queer fallacy to the effect that materialistic fatalism is in some way favourable to mercy, to the abolition of cruel punishments or punishments of any kind. This is startlingly the reverse of the truth. It is quite tenable that the doctrine of necessity makes no difference at all; that it leaves the flogger flogging and the kind friend exhorting as before. But obviously if it stops either of them it stops the kind exhortation. That the sins are inevitable does not prevent punishment; if it prevents anything it prevents persuasion. Determinism is quite as likely to lead to cruelty as it is certain to lead to cowardice. Determinism is not inconsistent with the cruel treatment of criminals. What it is (perhaps) inconsistent with is the generous treatment of criminals; with any appeal to their better feelings or encouragement in their moral struggle. The determinist does not believe in appealing to the will, but he does believe in changing the environment. He must not say to the sinner, “Go and sin no more,” because the sinner cannot help it. But he can put him in boiling oil; for boiling oil is an environment. Considered as a figure, therefore, the materialist has the fantastic outline of the figure of the madman. Both take up a position at once unanswerable and intolerable.

Of course it is not only of the materialist that all this is true. The same would apply to the other extreme of speculative logic. There is a sceptic far more terrible than he who believes that everything began in matter. It is possible to meet the sceptic who believes that everything began in himself. He doubts not the existence of angels or devils, but the existence of men and cows. For him his own friends are a mythology made up by himself. He created his own father and his own mother. This horrible fancy has in it something decidedly attractive to the somewhat mystical egoism of our day. That publisher who thought that men would get on if they believed in themselves, those seekers after the Superman who are always looking for him in the looking-glass, those writers who talk about impressing their personalities instead of creating life for the world, all these people have really only an inch between them and this awful emptiness. Then when this kindly world all round the man has been blackened out like a lie; when friends fade into ghosts, and the foundations of the world fail; then when the man, believing in nothing and in no man, is alone in his own nightmare, then the great individualistic motto shall be written over him in avenging irony. The stars will be only dots in the blackness of his own brain; his mother’s face will be only a sketch from his own insane pencil on the walls of his cell. But over his cell shall be written, with dreadful truth, “He believes in himself.”

All that concerns us here, however, is to note that this panegoistic extreme of thought exhibits the same paradox as the other extreme of materialism. It is equally complete in theory and equally crippling in practice. For the sake of simplicity, it is easier to state the notion by saying that a man can believe that he is always in a dream. Now, obviously there can be no positive proof given to him that he is not in a dream, for the simple reason that no proof can be offered that might not be offered in a dream. But if the man began to burn down London and say that his housekeeper would soon call him to breakfast, we should take him and put him with other logicians in a place which has often been alluded to in the course of this chapter. The man who cannot believe his senses, and the man who cannot believe anything else, are both insane, but their insanity is proved not by any error in their argument, but by the manifest mistake of their whole lives. They have both locked themselves up in two boxes, painted inside with the sun and stars; they are both unable to get out, the one into the health and happiness of heaven, the other even into the health and happiness of the earth. Their position is quite reasonable; nay, in a sense it is infinitely reasonable, just as a threepenny bit is infinitely circular. But there is such a thing as a mean infinity, a base and slavish eternity. It is amusing to notice that many of the moderns, whether sceptics or mystics, have taken as their sign a certain eastern symbol, which is the very symbol of this ultimate nullity. When they wish to represent eternity, they represent it by a serpent with his tail in his mouth. There is a startling sarcasm in the image of that very unsatisfactory meal. The eternity of the material fatalists, the eternity of the eastern pessimists, the eternity of the supercilious theosophists and higher scientists of to-day is, indeed, very well presented by a serpent eating his tail, a degraded animal who destroys even himself.

This chapter is purely practical and is concerned with what actually is the chief mark and element of insanity; we may say in summary that it is reason used without root, reason in the void. The man who begins to think without the proper first principles goes mad; he begins to think at the wrong end. And for the rest of these pages we have to try and discover what is the right end. But we may ask in conclusion, if this be what drives men mad, what is it that keeps them sane? By the end of this book I hope to give a definite, some will think a far too definite, answer. But for the moment it is possible in the same solely practical manner to give a general answer touching what in actual human history keeps men sane. Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic. He has permitted the twilight. He has always had one foot in earth and the other in fairyland. He has always left himself free to doubt his gods; but (unlike the agnostic of to-day) free also to believe in them. He has always cared more for truth than for consistency. If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and the contradiction along with them. His spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two different pictures at once and yet sees all the better for that. Thus he has always believed that there was such a thing as fate, but such a thing as free will also. Thus he believed that children were indeed the kingdom of heaven, but nevertheless ought to be obedient to the kingdom of earth. He admired youth because it was young and age because it was not. It is exactly this balance of apparent contradictions that has been the whole buoyancy of the healthy man. The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of what he does not understand. The morbid logician seeks to make everything lucid, and succeeds in making everything mysterious. The mystic allows one thing to be mysterious, and everything else becomes lucid. The determinist makes the theory of causation quite clear, and then finds that he cannot say “if you please” to the housemaid. The Christian permits free will to remain a sacred mystery; but because of this his relations with the housemaid become of a sparkling and crystal clearness. He puts the seed of dogma in a central darkness; but it branches forth in all directions with abounding natural health. As we have taken the circle as the symbol of reason and madness, we may very well take the cross as the symbol at once of mystery and of health. Buddhism is centripetal, but Christianity is centrifugal: it breaks out. For the circle is perfect and infinite in its nature; but it is fixed for ever in its size; it can never be larger or smaller. But the cross, though it has at its heart a collision and a contradiction, can extend its four arms for ever without altering its shape. Because it has a paradox in its centre it can grow without changing. The circle returns upon itself and is bound. The cross opens its arms to the four winds; it is a signpost for free travellers.

Symbols alone are of even a cloudy value in speaking of this deep matter; and another symbol from physical nature will express sufficiently well the real place of mysticism before mankind. The one created thing which we cannot look at is the one thing in the light of which we look at everything. Like the sun at noonday, mysticism explains everything else by the blaze of its own victorious invisibility. Detached intellectualism is (in the exact sense of a popular phrase) all moonshine; for it is light without heat, and it is secondary light, reflected from a dead world. But the Greeks were right when they made Apollo the god both of imagination and of sanity; for he was both the patron of poetry and the patron of healing. Of necessary dogmas and a special creed I shall speak later. But that transcendentalism by which all men live has primarily much the position of the sun in the sky. We are conscious of it as of a kind of splendid confusion; it is something both shining and shapeless, at once a blaze and a blur. But the circle of the moon is as clear and unmistakable, as recurrent and inevitable, as the circle of Euclid on a blackboard. For the moon is utterly reasonable; and the moon is the mother of lunatics and has given to them all her name.

Nel congedarmi da questo argomento posso notare che esiste una strana fallacia secondo cui il fatalismo materialista sarebbe in qualche modo favorevole alla misericordia, all’abolizione delle punizioni crudeli o delle punizioni di qualsiasi genere. Questo è sorprendentemente l’opposto della verità. È del tutto sostenibile che la dottrina della necessità non faccia alcuna differenza; che lasci il fustigatore a fustigare e l’amico benevolo a esortare come prima. Ma è ovvio che, se ferma l’uno o l’altro, ferma la benevola esortazione. Che i peccati siano inevitabili non impedisce la punizione; se impedisce qualcosa, impedisce la persuasione. Il determinismo è tanto probabile che conduca alla crudeltà quanto è certo che conduca alla codardia. Il determinismo non è incompatibile con il trattamento crudele dei criminali. Ciò con cui è (forse) incompatibile è il trattamento generoso dei criminali; con qualsiasi appello ai loro sentimenti migliori o incoraggiamento nella loro lotta morale. Il determinista non crede nell’appellarsi alla volontà, ma crede nel mutare l’ambiente. Egli non deve dire al peccatore: «Va’ e non peccare più», perché il peccatore non può farne a meno. Ma può metterlo nell’olio bollente; poiché l’olio bollente è un ambiente. Considerato come figura, dunque, il materialista ha il fantastico contorno della figura del folle. Entrambi assumono una posizione al tempo stesso inconfutabile e intollerabile.

Naturalmente non è soltanto del materialista che tutto ciò è vero. Lo stesso si applicherebbe all’altro estremo della logica speculativa. C’è uno scettico assai più terribile di colui che crede che tutto abbia avuto inizio nella materia. È possibile incontrare lo scettico che crede che tutto abbia avuto inizio in se stesso. Egli non dubita dell’esistenza degli angeli o dei demoni, ma dell’esistenza degli uomini e delle vacche. Per lui i suoi stessi amici sono una mitologia inventata da lui. Egli ha creato il proprio padre e la propria madre. Questa orribile fantasticheria ha in sé qualcosa di decisamente attraente per l’egoismo alquanto mistico dei nostri giorni. Quell’editore che pensava che gli uomini avrebbero fatto strada se avessero creduto in se stessi, quei cercatori del Superuomo che lo cercano sempre nello specchio, quegli scrittori che parlano di imprimere la propria personalità invece di creare vita per il mondo, tutta questa gente ha in realtà soltanto un pollice di distanza tra sé e questo terribile vuoto. Poi, quando questo benigno mondo tutt’intorno all’uomo sarà stato cancellato come una menzogna; quando gli amici svaniranno in fantasmi, e le fondamenta del mondo verranno meno; poi, quando l’uomo, non credendo in nulla e in nessun uomo, sarà solo nel proprio incubo, allora il grande motto individualistico gli verrà scritto sopra in ironia vendicatrice. Le stelle non saranno che puntini nel buio del suo stesso cervello; il volto di sua madre non sarà che uno schizzo tracciato dalla sua stessa matita folle sulle pareti della sua cella. Ma sopra la sua cella sarà scritto, con terribile verità: «Egli crede in se stesso».

Tutto ciò che qui ci riguarda, tuttavia, è notare che questo estremo panegoistico del pensiero mostra il medesimo paradosso dell’altro estremo, il materialismo. È ugualmente completo in teoria e ugualmente paralizzante in pratica. Per semplicità, è più facile enunciare la nozione dicendo che un uomo può credere di essere sempre in un sogno. Ora, è ovvio che non gli si può dare alcuna prova positiva del fatto che egli non stia sognando, per la semplice ragione che non si può offrire alcuna prova che non possa essere offerta in un sogno. Ma se quell’uomo cominciasse a dare fuoco a Londra dicendo che la sua governante lo chiamerà presto per la colazione, noi lo prenderemmo e lo metteremmo insieme ad altri logici in un luogo cui si è spesso alluso nel corso di questo capitolo. L’uomo che non può credere ai propri sensi, e l’uomo che non può credere a nient’altro, sono entrambi folli, ma la loro follia è provata non da alcun errore nel loro ragionamento, bensì dal manifesto sbaglio dell’intera loro vita. Entrambi si sono rinchiusi in due scatole, dipinte all’interno col sole e le stelle; entrambi sono incapaci di uscirne, l’uno verso la salute e la felicità del cielo, l’altro persino verso la salute e la felicità della terra. La loro posizione è del tutto ragionevole; anzi, in un senso è infinitamente ragionevole, proprio come una monetina da tre soldi è infinitamente circolare. Ma esiste una cosa come un’infinità meschina, un’eternità vile e servile. È divertente notare che molti dei moderni, siano essi scettici o mistici, hanno preso come loro segno un certo simbolo orientale, che è proprio il simbolo di questa ultima nullità. Quando vogliono rappresentare l’eternità, la rappresentano con un serpente che si tiene la coda in bocca. C’è un sarcasmo sconcertante nell’immagine di quel pasto tanto insoddisfacente. L’eternità dei fatalisti materialisti, l’eternità dei pessimisti orientali, l’eternità degli sprezzanti teosofi e degli scienziati superiori d’oggi è, in verità, molto ben rappresentata da un serpente che si divora la coda, un animale degradato che distrugge persino se stesso.

Questo capitolo è puramente pratico e riguarda ciò che effettivamente è il segno e l’elemento principale della follia; possiamo dire in sintesi che si tratta della ragione usata senza radice, della ragione nel vuoto. L’uomo che comincia a pensare senza i debiti princìpi primi impazzisce; comincia a pensare dal capo sbagliato. E per il resto di queste pagine dobbiamo cercare di scoprire quale sia il capo giusto. Ma possiamo domandarci, in conclusione, se questo è ciò che rende folli gli uomini, che cosa è che li mantiene sani? Entro la fine di questo libro spero di dare una risposta definita, che alcuni riterranno fin troppo definita. Ma per il momento è possibile, nel medesimo modo puramente pratico, dare una risposta generale su ciò che, nella reale storia umana, mantiene sani gli uomini. Il misticismo mantiene sani gli uomini. Finché avete il mistero avete la salute; quando distruggete il mistero create la morbosità. L’uomo comune è sempre stato sano perché l’uomo comune è sempre stato un mistico. Egli ha concesso spazio al crepuscolo. Ha sempre avuto un piede sulla terra e l’altro nel regno delle fate. Si è sempre lasciato libero di dubitare dei propri dèi; ma (a differenza dell’agnostico d’oggi) libero anche di credere in essi. Ha sempre avuto più a cuore la verità che la coerenza. Se vedeva due verità che parevano contraddirsi a vicenda, prendeva le due verità e la contraddizione insieme a esse. La sua vista spirituale è stereoscopica, come la sua vista fisica: vede due immagini diverse allo stesso tempo e tuttavia vede tanto meglio per questo. Così ha sempre creduto che vi fosse una cosa come il fato, ma anche una cosa come il libero arbitrio. Così credeva che i bambini fossero davvero il regno dei cieli, ma che ciononostante dovessero essere obbedienti al regno della terra. Ammirava la giovinezza perché era giovane e la vecchiaia perché non lo era. È proprio questo equilibrio di apparenti contraddizioni che è stato l’intera galleggiabilità dell’uomo sano. L’intero segreto del misticismo è questo: che l’uomo può comprendere ogni cosa con l’aiuto di ciò che non comprende. Il logico morboso cerca di rendere ogni cosa lucida, e riesce a rendere ogni cosa misteriosa. Il mistico permette a una cosa di essere misteriosa, e ogni altra cosa diventa lucida. Il determinista rende del tutto chiara la teoria della causalità, e poi scopre di non poter dire «per favore» alla cameriera. Il cristiano permette che il libero arbitrio rimanga un sacro mistero; ma proprio per questo i suoi rapporti con la cameriera diventano di una scintillante e cristallina limpidezza. Egli pone il seme del dogma in una tenebra centrale; ma esso germoglia in tutte le direzioni con abbondante salute naturale. Come abbiamo preso il cerchio a simbolo della ragione e della follia, possiamo benissimo prendere la croce a simbolo insieme del mistero e della salute. Il buddhismo è centripeto, ma il cristianesimo è centrifugo: erompe verso l’esterno. Poiché il cerchio è perfetto e infinito per sua natura; ma è fissato per sempre nella sua dimensione; non può mai farsi più grande o più piccolo. La croce, invece, benché abbia nel suo cuore una collisione e una contraddizione, può estendere le sue quattro braccia in eterno senza mutare forma. Poiché ha un paradosso nel suo centro, essa può crescere senza cambiare. Il cerchio ritorna su se stesso ed è avvinto. La croce apre le sue braccia ai quattro venti; è un cartello indicatore per i viaggiatori liberi.

Soltanto i simboli hanno anche solo un nebuloso valore nel parlare di questa profonda materia; e un altro simbolo tratto dalla natura fisica esprimerà a sufficienza il vero posto del misticismo di fronte all’umanità. L’unica cosa creata che non possiamo guardare è l’unica cosa alla cui luce guardiamo ogni altra cosa. Come il sole a mezzogiorno, il misticismo spiega ogni altra cosa con il fulgore della propria vittoriosa invisibilità. L’intellettualismo distaccato è (nel senso esatto di una frase popolare) tutto chiaro di luna; poiché è luce senza calore, ed è luce secondaria, riflessa da un mondo morto. Ma i Greci avevano ragione quando fecero di Apollo il dio insieme dell’immaginazione e della sanità mentale; poiché egli era al tempo stesso il patrono della poesia e il patrono della guarigione. Dei dogmi necessari e di uno speciale credo parlerò più avanti. Ma quel trascendentalismo per cui tutti gli uomini vivono ha primariamente in gran parte la posizione del sole nel cielo. Ne siamo consapevoli come di una sorta di splendida confusione; è qualcosa insieme di splendente e di informe, al tempo stesso un fulgore e una macchia sfocata. Ma il cerchio della luna è chiaro e inconfondibile, ricorrente e inevitabile, come il cerchio di Euclide su una lavagna. Poiché la luna è del tutto ragionevole; e la luna è la madre dei lunatici e ha dato loro tutti il proprio nome.

III THE SUICIDE OF THOUGHT

The phrases of the street are not only forcible but subtle: for a figure of speech can often get into a crack too small for a definition. Phrases like “put out” or “off colour” might have been coined by Mr. Henry James in an agony of verbal precision. And there is no more subtle truth than that of the everyday phrase about a man having “his heart in the right place.” It involves the idea of normal proportion; not only does a certain function exist, but it is rightly related to other functions. Indeed, the negation of this phrase would describe with peculiar accuracy the somewhat morbid mercy and perverse tenderness of the most representative moderns. If, for instance, I had to describe with fairness the character of Mr. Bernard Shaw, I could not express myself more exactly than by saying that he has a heroically large and generous heart; but not a heart in the right place. And this is so of the typical society of our time.

The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When a religious scheme is shattered (as Christianity was shattered at the Reformation), it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful. For example, Mr. Blatchford attacks Christianity because he is mad on one Christian virtue: the merely mystical and almost irrational virtue of charity. He has a strange idea that he will make it easier to forgive sins by saying that there are no sins to forgive. Mr. Blatchford is not only an early Christian, he is the only early Christian who ought really to have been eaten by lions. For in his case the pagan accusation is really true: his mercy would mean mere anarchy. He really is the enemy of the human race—because he is so human. As the other extreme, we may take the acrid realist, who has deliberately killed in himself all human pleasure in happy tales or in the healing of the heart. Torquemada tortured people physically for the sake of moral truth. Zola tortured people morally for the sake of physical truth. But in Torquemada’s time there was at least a system that could to some extent make righteousness and peace kiss each other. Now they do not even bow. But a much stronger case than these two of truth and pity can be found in the remarkable case of the dislocation of humility.

It is only with one aspect of humility that we are here concerned. Humility was largely meant as a restraint upon the arrogance and infinity of the appetite of man. He was always outstripping his mercies with his own newly invented needs. His very power of enjoyment destroyed half his joys. By asking for pleasure, he lost the chief pleasure; for the chief pleasure is surprise. Hence it became evident that if a man would make his world large, he must be always making himself small. Even the haughty visions, the tall cities, and the toppling pinnacles are the creations of humility. Giants that tread down forests like grass are the creations of humility. Towers that vanish upwards above the loneliest star are the creations of humility. For towers are not tall unless we look up at them; and giants are not giants unless they are larger than we. All this gigantesque imagination, which is, perhaps, the mightiest of the pleasures of man, is at bottom entirely humble. It is impossible without humility to enjoy anything—even pride.

But what we suffer from to-day is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed. Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert—himself. The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt—the Divine Reason. Huxley preached a humility content to learn from Nature. But the new sceptic is so humble that he doubts if he can even learn. Thus we should be wrong if we had said hastily that there is no humility typical of our time. The truth is that there is a real humility typical of our time; but it so happens that it is practically a more poisonous humility than the wildest prostrations of the ascetic. The old humility was a spur that prevented a man from stopping; not a nail in his boot that prevented him from going on. For the old humility made a man doubtful about his efforts, which might make him work harder. But the new humility makes a man doubtful about his aims, which will make him stop working altogether.

At any street corner we may meet a man who utters the frantic and blasphemous statement that he may be wrong. Every day one comes across somebody who says that of course his view may not be the right one. Of course his view must be the right one, or it is not his view. We are on the road to producing a race of men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table. We are in danger of seeing philosophers who doubt the law of gravity as being a mere fancy of their own. Scoffers of old time were too proud to be convinced; but these are too humble to be convinced. The meek do inherit the earth; but the modern sceptics are too meek even to claim their inheritance. It is exactly this intellectual helplessness which is our second problem.

The last chapter has been concerned only with a fact of observation: that what peril of morbidity there is for man comes rather from his reason than his imagination. It was not meant to attack the authority of reason; rather it is the ultimate purpose to defend it. For it needs defence. The whole modern world is at war with reason; and the tower already reels.

III IL SUICIDIO DEL PENSIERO

Le espressioni della strada non sono soltanto efficaci, ma sottili: una figura retorica riesce spesso a insinuarsi in una fessura troppo angusta per una definizione. Locuzioni come «spiazzato» o «giù di corda» avrebbero potuto essere coniate dal signor Henry James in un’agonia di precisione verbale. E non c’è verità più sottile di quella racchiusa nella frase quotidiana che dice di un uomo di avere «il cuore al posto giusto». Essa implica l’idea di una giusta proporzione; non soltanto una certa funzione esiste, ma è correttamente collegata alle altre funzioni. Anzi, la negazione di questa frase descriverebbe con singolare esattezza la misericordia alquanto morbosa e la tenerezza perversa dei moderni più rappresentativi. Se, per esempio, dovessi descrivere con equità il carattere del signor Bernard Shaw, non potrei esprimermi con maggior precisione che dicendo che egli possiede un cuore eroicamente grande e generoso; ma non un cuore al posto giusto. E così è della società tipica del nostro tempo.

Il mondo moderno non è malvagio; per certi versi il mondo moderno è fin troppo buono. È pieno di virtù selvagge e sprecate. Quando un ordinamento religioso va in frantumi (come il cristianesimo andò in frantumi con la Riforma), non sono soltanto i vizi a essere sguinzagliati. I vizi, in effetti, vengono sguinzagliati, e vagano facendo danni. Ma anche le virtù vengono sguinzagliate; e le virtù vagano più selvaggiamente, e le virtù fanno danni più terribili. Il mondo moderno è pieno delle antiche virtù cristiane impazzite. Le virtù sono impazzite perché sono state isolate le une dalle altre e vagano solitarie. Così alcuni scienziati hanno a cuore la verità; e la loro verità è spietata. Così alcuni umanitari hanno a cuore soltanto la pietà; e la loro pietà (mi dispiace dirlo) è spesso menzognera. Per esempio, il signor Blatchford attacca il cristianesimo perché è invasato da una sola virtù cristiana: la virtù puramente mistica e quasi irrazionale della carità. Ha la bizzarra idea che renderà più facile perdonare i peccati affermando che non vi sono peccati da perdonare. Il signor Blatchford non è soltanto un cristiano dei primi tempi, è l’unico cristiano dei primi tempi che avrebbe davvero meritato d’essere divorato dai leoni. Poiché nel suo caso l’accusa pagana è davvero vera: la sua misericordia significherebbe pura anarchia. Egli è realmente il nemico del genere umano — perché è tanto umano. All’estremo opposto possiamo collocare l’acre realista, che ha deliberatamente ucciso in se stesso ogni piacere umano nei racconti lieti o nella guarigione del cuore. Torquemada torturava gli uomini fisicamente per amore della verità morale. Zola torturava gli uomini moralmente per amore della verità fisica. Ma ai tempi di Torquemada esisteva almeno un sistema che poteva in qualche misura fare in modo che giustizia e pace si baciassero. Ora non si scambiano nemmeno un inchino. Ma un caso ben più forte di questi due, della verità e della pietà, si può trovare nel notevole caso della dislocazione dell’umiltà.

È soltanto di un aspetto dell’umiltà che qui ci occupiamo. L’umiltà era in gran parte concepita come un freno all’arroganza e all’infinità dell’appetito dell’uomo. Egli superava sempre di corsa i propri beni con bisogni di sua invenzione. La sua stessa capacità di godimento distruggeva metà delle sue gioie. Chiedendo il piacere, perdeva il piacere più grande; poiché il piacere più grande è la sorpresa. Divenne perciò evidente che, se un uomo voleva rendere grande il suo mondo, doveva sempre farsi piccolo. Persino le visioni superbe, le città altissime e i pinnacoli vertiginosi sono creazioni dell’umiltà. I giganti che calpestano le foreste come fossero erba sono creazioni dell’umiltà. Le torri che svaniscono verso l’alto al di sopra della più solitaria delle stelle sono creazioni dell’umiltà. Poiché le torri non sono alte se non le guardiamo dal basso; e i giganti non sono giganti se non sono più grandi di noi. Tutta questa immaginazione gigantesca, che è forse il più possente dei piaceri dell’uomo, è in fondo interamente umile. È impossibile, senza umiltà, godere di alcunché — persino dell’orgoglio.

Ma ciò di cui soffriamo oggi è l’umiltà collocata nel posto sbagliato. La modestia si è spostata dall’organo dell’ambizione. La modestia si è insediata sull’organo della convinzione; dove non doveva mai stare. L’uomo era fatto per essere dubbioso di se stesso, ma privo di dubbi sulla verità; questo è stato esattamente rovesciato. Oggigiorno la parte di sé che l’uomo afferma è proprio la parte che non dovrebbe affermare — se stesso. La parte di cui dubita è proprio la parte di cui non dovrebbe dubitare — la Ragione Divina. Huxley predicava un’umiltà paga di imparare dalla Natura. Ma il nuovo scettico è tanto umile da dubitare di poter persino imparare. Sbaglieremmo dunque se avessimo detto avventatamente che non c’è alcuna umiltà tipica del nostro tempo. La verità è che esiste una vera umiltà tipica del nostro tempo; ma si dà il caso che sia in pratica un’umiltà più velenosa delle più sfrenate prostrazioni dell’asceta. L’antica umiltà era uno sprone che impediva all’uomo di fermarsi; non un chiodo nello stivale che gli impediva di procedere. Poiché l’antica umiltà rendeva l’uomo dubbioso dei propri sforzi, il che poteva indurlo a lavorare più duramente. Ma la nuova umiltà rende l’uomo dubbioso dei propri fini, il che lo indurrà a cessare del tutto di lavorare.

A qualunque angolo di strada possiamo imbatterci in un uomo che pronuncia la frenetica e blasfema affermazione di poter essere in errore. Ogni giorno s’incontra qualcuno che dice che, naturalmente, la sua opinione potrebbe non essere quella giusta. Naturalmente la sua opinione deve essere quella giusta, altrimenti non è la sua opinione. Siamo sulla buona strada per generare una razza di uomini troppo mentalmente modesti per credere nella tavola pitagorica. Corriamo il rischio di veder comparire filosofi che dubitano della legge di gravità come di una loro semplice fantasticheria. Gli schernitori dei tempi antichi erano troppo orgogliosi per lasciarsi convincere; ma questi sono troppo umili per lasciarsi convincere. I miti erediteranno la terra; ma gli scettici moderni sono troppo miti persino per reclamare la propria eredità. È proprio questa impotenza intellettuale il nostro secondo problema.

Il capitolo precedente si è occupato soltanto di un dato di osservazione: che il pericolo di morbosità per l’uomo proviene dalla sua ragione piuttosto che dalla sua immaginazione. Non intendeva attaccare l’autorità della ragione; anzi, è mio scopo ultimo difenderla. Poiché essa ha bisogno di difesa. Il mondo moderno intero è in guerra con la ragione; e la torre già vacilla.

The sages, it is often said, can see no answer to the riddle of religion. But the trouble with our sages is not that they cannot see the answer; it is that they cannot even see the riddle. They are like children so stupid as to notice nothing paradoxical in the playful assertion that a door is not a door. The modern latitudinarians speak, for instance, about authority in religion not only as if there were no reason in it, but as if there had never been any reason for it. Apart from seeing its philosophical basis, they cannot even see its historical cause. Religious authority has often, doubtless, been oppressive or unreasonable; just as every legal system (and especially our present one) has been callous and full of a cruel apathy. It is rational to attack the police; nay, it is glorious. But the modern critics of religious authority are like men who should attack the police without ever having heard of burglars. For there is a great and possible peril to the human mind: a peril as practical as burglary. Against it religious authority was reared, rightly or wrongly, as a barrier. And against it something certainly must be reared as a barrier, if our race is to avoid ruin.

That peril is that the human intellect is free to destroy itself. Just as one generation could prevent the very existence of the next generation, by all entering a monastery or jumping into the sea, so one set of thinkers can in some degree prevent further thinking by teaching the next generation that there is no validity in any human thought. It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all. If you are merely a sceptic, you must sooner or later ask yourself the question, “Why should ANYTHING go right; even observation and deduction? Why should not good logic be as misleading as bad logic? They are both movements in the brain of a bewildered ape?” The young sceptic says, “I have a right to think for myself.” But the old sceptic, the complete sceptic, says, “I have no right to think for myself. I have no right to think at all.”

There is a thought that stops thought. That is the only thought that ought to be stopped. That is the ultimate evil against which all religious authority was aimed. It only appears at the end of decadent ages like our own: and already Mr. H.G.Wells has raised its ruinous banner; he has written a delicate piece of scepticism called “Doubts of the Instrument.” In this he questions the brain itself, and endeavours to remove all reality from all his own assertions, past, present, and to come. But it was against this remote ruin that all the military systems in religion were originally ranked and ruled. The creeds and the crusades, the hierarchies and the horrible persecutions were not organized, as is ignorantly said, for the suppression of reason. They were organized for the difficult defence of reason. Man, by a blind instinct, knew that if once things were wildly questioned, reason could be questioned first. The authority of priests to absolve, the authority of popes to define the authority, even of inquisitors to terrify: these were all only dark defences erected round one central authority, more undemonstrable, more supernatural than all— the authority of a man to think. We know now that this is so; we have no excuse for not knowing it. For we can hear scepticism crashing through the old ring of authorities, and at the same moment we can see reason swaying upon her throne. In so far as religion is gone, reason is going. For they are both of the same primary and authoritative kind. They are both methods of proof which cannot themselves be proved. And in the act of destroying the idea of Divine authority we have largely destroyed the idea of that human authority by which we do a long-division sum. With a long and sustained tug we have attempted to pull the mitre off pontifical man; and his head has come off with it.

Lest this should be called loose assertion, it is perhaps desirable, though dull, to run rapidly through the chief modern fashions of thought which have this effect of stopping thought itself. Materialism and the view of everything as a personal illusion have some such effect; for if the mind is mechanical, thought cannot be very exciting, and if the cosmos is unreal, there is nothing to think about. But in these cases the effect is indirect and doubtful. In some cases it is direct and clear; notably in the case of what is generally called evolution.

Evolution is a good example of that modern intelligence which, if it destroys anything, destroys itself. Evolution is either an innocent scientific description of how certain earthly things came about; or, if it is anything more than this, it is an attack upon thought itself. If evolution destroys anything, it does not destroy religion but rationalism. If evolution simply means that a positive thing called an ape turned very slowly into a positive thing called a man, then it is stingless for the most orthodox; for a personal God might just as well do things slowly as quickly, especially if, like the Christian God, he were outside time. But if it means anything more, it means that there is no such thing as an ape to change, and no such thing as a man for him to change into. It means that there is no such thing as a thing. At best, there is only one thing, and that is a flux of everything and anything. This is an attack not upon the faith, but upon the mind; you cannot think if there are no things to think about. You cannot think if you are not separate from the subject of thought. Descartes said, “I think; therefore I am.” The philosophic evolutionist reverses and negatives the epigram. He says, “I am not; therefore I cannot think.”

Then there is the opposite attack on thought: that urged by Mr. H.G.Wells when he insists that every separate thing is “unique,” and there are no categories at all. This also is merely destructive. Thinking means connecting things, and stops if they cannot be connected. It need hardly be said that this scepticism forbidding thought necessarily forbids speech; a man cannot open his mouth without contradicting it. Thus when Mr. Wells says (as he did somewhere), “All chairs are quite different,” he utters not merely a misstatement, but a contradiction in terms. If all chairs were quite different, you could not call them “all chairs.”

I sapienti, si dice spesso, non riescono a vedere alcuna risposta all’enigma della religione. Ma il guaio dei nostri sapienti non è che non riescono a vedere la risposta; è che non riescono nemmeno a vedere l’enigma. Sono come bambini tanto stupidi da non notare nulla di paradossale nell’affermazione scherzosa che una porta non è una porta. I latitudinari moderni parlano, per esempio, dell’autorità in religione non soltanto come se in essa non vi fosse alcuna ragione, ma come se non vi fosse mai stata alcuna ragione per essa. Oltre a non vederne il fondamento filosofico, non ne vedono nemmeno la causa storica. L’autorità religiosa è stata spesso, senza dubbio, oppressiva o irragionevole; proprio come ogni sistema giuridico (e specialmente il nostro attuale) è stato insensibile e pieno di una crudele apatia. È razionale attaccare la polizia; anzi, è glorioso. Ma i critici moderni dell’autorità religiosa sono come uomini che attaccassero la polizia senza aver mai sentito parlare di scassinatori. Poiché esiste un pericolo grande e concreto per la mente umana: un pericolo tanto pratico quanto uno scasso. Contro di esso l’autorità religiosa fu eretta, a torto o a ragione, come una barriera. E contro di esso qualcosa dev’essere certamente eretto come barriera, se la nostra razza vuole evitare la rovina.

Quel pericolo è che l’intelletto umano è libero di distruggere se stesso. Proprio come una generazione potrebbe impedire la stessa esistenza della generazione successiva, entrando tutta in monastero o gettandosi in mare, così un gruppo di pensatori può in certa misura impedire ogni ulteriore pensiero, insegnando alla generazione successiva che non v’è alcuna validità in alcun pensiero umano. È ozioso parlare sempre dell’alternativa fra ragione e fede. La ragione è essa stessa una questione di fede. È un atto di fede affermare che i nostri pensieri abbiano una qualsiasi relazione con la realtà. Se sei un semplice scettico, prima o poi dovrai porti la domanda: «Perché mai qualcosa dovrebbe funzionare a dovere, persino l’osservazione e la deduzione? Perché la buona logica non dovrebbe essere fuorviante quanto la cattiva logica? Non sono forse entrambe moti nel cervello di una scimmia sconcertata?». Il giovane scettico dice: «Ho il diritto di pensare con la mia testa». Ma il vecchio scettico, lo scettico completo, dice: «Non ho alcun diritto di pensare con la mia testa. Non ho alcun diritto di pensare affatto».

C’è un pensiero che arresta il pensiero. È l’unico pensiero che andrebbe arrestato. È il male estremo contro cui mirava ogni autorità religiosa. Esso compare soltanto al termine delle epoche decadenti come la nostra: e già il signor H. G. Wells ne ha innalzato il vessillo rovinoso; ha scritto un delicato saggio di scetticismo intitolato «Doubts of the Instrument». In esso mette in dubbio il cervello stesso, e si adopera per togliere ogni realtà a tutte le proprie affermazioni, passate, presenti e future. Ma fu proprio contro questa remota rovina che tutti i sistemi militari della religione furono in origine schierati e disposti. I credo e le crociate, le gerarchie e le orribili persecuzioni non furono organizzati, come ignorantemente si dice, per la soppressione della ragione. Furono organizzati per la difficile difesa della ragione. L’uomo, per un cieco istinto, sapeva che se una volta le cose fossero state selvaggiamente messe in dubbio, la ragione sarebbe potuta essere messa in dubbio per prima. L’autorità dei sacerdoti di assolvere, l’autorità dei papi di definire l’autorità, persino quella degli inquisitori di terrorizzare: queste erano tutte soltanto oscure difese erette attorno a un’unica autorità centrale, più indimostrabile, più soprannaturale di tutte — l’autorità dell’uomo di pensare. Ora sappiamo che è così; non abbiamo scusa per non saperlo. Poiché possiamo udire lo scetticismo che si abbatte fragorosamente attraverso l’antica cerchia delle autorità, e nel medesimo istante possiamo vedere la ragione oscillare sul suo trono. Nella misura in cui la religione se ne va, la ragione se ne va. Poiché sono entrambe della stessa specie, primaria e autoritativa. Sono entrambe metodi di prova che non possono essere essi stessi provati. E nell’atto di distruggere l’idea dell’autorità divina abbiamo in gran parte distrutto l’idea di quell’autorità umana per cui eseguiamo una divisione. Con uno strattone lungo e ostinato abbiamo tentato di strappare la mitra all’uomo pontificale; e la sua testa è venuta via insieme a essa.

Perché questo non venga tacciato di affermazione avventata, è forse opportuno, benché noioso, passare rapidamente in rassegna le principali mode di pensiero moderne che hanno questo effetto di arrestare il pensiero stesso. Il materialismo e la concezione di ogni cosa come illusione personale hanno un qualche effetto del genere; poiché se la mente è meccanica, il pensiero non può essere granché entusiasmante, e se il cosmo è irreale, non c’è nulla a cui pensare. Ma in questi casi l’effetto è indiretto e incerto. In alcuni casi è diretto e chiaro; segnatamente nel caso di ciò che comunemente si chiama evoluzione.

L’evoluzione è un buon esempio di quell’intelligenza moderna che, se distrugge qualcosa, distrugge se stessa. L’evoluzione è o un’innocente descrizione scientifica di come certe cose terrene abbiano avuto origine; oppure, se è qualcosa di più di questo, è un attacco al pensiero stesso. Se l’evoluzione distrugge qualcosa, non distrugge la religione ma il razionalismo. Se l’evoluzione significa semplicemente che una cosa positiva chiamata scimmia si è mutata assai lentamente in una cosa positiva chiamata uomo, allora è priva di pungiglione anche per l’ortodosso più rigoroso; poiché un Dio personale potrebbe benissimo fare le cose lentamente come rapidamente, specie se, come il Dio cristiano, fosse fuori dal tempo. Ma se significa qualcosa di più, significa che non esiste nessuna scimmia da mutare, né alcun uomo in cui essa possa mutarsi. Significa che non esiste una cosa tale quale una cosa. Nel migliore dei casi, esiste una sola cosa, ed è un flusso di tutto e di qualsiasi cosa. Questo è un attacco non alla fede, ma alla mente; non puoi pensare se non ci sono cose a cui pensare. Non puoi pensare se non sei separato dall’oggetto del pensiero. Cartesio disse: «Penso, dunque sono». L’evoluzionista filosofico rovescia e nega l’epigramma. Dice: «Non sono; dunque non posso pensare».

C’è poi l’attacco opposto al pensiero: quello sostenuto dal signor H. G. Wells quando insiste sul fatto che ogni singola cosa è «unica», e che non esistono affatto categorie. Anche questo è puramente distruttivo. Pensare significa collegare le cose, e si arresta se esse non possono essere collegate. È appena il caso di dire che questo scetticismo, vietando il pensiero, vieta necessariamente la parola; un uomo non può aprir bocca senza contraddirlo. Così, quando il signor Wells dice (come fece da qualche parte): «Tutte le sedie sono del tutto diverse», egli non pronuncia soltanto un’inesattezza, ma una contraddizione nei termini. Se tutte le sedie fossero del tutto diverse, non potresti chiamarle «tutte le sedie».

Akin to these is the false theory of progress, which maintains that we alter the test instead of trying to pass the test. We often hear it said, for instance, “What is right in one age is wrong in another.” This is quite reasonable, if it means that there is a fixed aim, and that certain methods attain at certain times and not at other times. If women, say, desire to be elegant, it may be that they are improved at one time by growing fatter and at another time by growing thinner. But you cannot say that they are improved by ceasing to wish to be elegant and beginning to wish to be oblong. If the standard changes, how can there be improvement, which implies a standard? Nietzsche started a nonsensical idea that men had once sought as good what we now call evil; if it were so, we could not talk of surpassing or even falling short of them. How can you overtake Jones if you walk in the other direction? You cannot discuss whether one people has succeeded more in being miserable than another succeeded in being happy. It would be like discussing whether Milton was more puritanical than a pig is fat.

It is true that a man (a silly man) might make change itself his object or ideal. But as an ideal, change itself becomes unchangeable. If the change-worshipper wishes to estimate his own progress, he must be sternly loyal to the ideal of change; he must not begin to flirt gaily with the ideal of monotony. Progress itself cannot progress. It is worth remark, in passing, that when Tennyson, in a wild and rather weak manner, welcomed the idea of infinite alteration in society, he instinctively took a metaphor which suggests an imprisoned tedium. He wrote—

“Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change.”

He thought of change itself as an unchangeable groove; and so it is. Change is about the narrowest and hardest groove that a man can get into.

The main point here, however, is that this idea of a fundamental alteration in the standard is one of the things that make thought about the past or future simply impossible. The theory of a complete change of standards in human history does not merely deprive us of the pleasure of honouring our fathers; it deprives us even of the more modern and aristocratic pleasure of despising them.

This bald summary of the thought-destroying forces of our time would not be complete without some reference to pragmatism; for though I have here used and should everywhere defend the pragmatist method as a preliminary guide to truth, there is an extreme application of it which involves the absence of all truth whatever. My meaning can be put shortly thus. I agree with the pragmatists that apparent objective truth is not the whole matter; that there is an authoritative need to believe the things that are necessary to the human mind. But I say that one of those necessities precisely is a belief in objective truth. The pragmatist tells a man to think what he must think and never mind the Absolute. But precisely one of the things that he must think is the Absolute. This philosophy, indeed, is a kind of verbal paradox. Pragmatism is a matter of human needs; and one of the first of human needs is to be something more than a pragmatist. Extreme pragmatism is just as inhuman as the determinism it so powerfully attacks. The determinist (who, to do him justice, does not pretend to be a human being) makes nonsense of the human sense of actual choice. The pragmatist, who professes to be specially human, makes nonsense of the human sense of actual fact.

To sum up our contention so far, we may say that the most characteristic current philosophies have not only a touch of mania, but a touch of suicidal mania. The mere questioner has knocked his head against the limits of human thought; and cracked it. This is what makes so futile the warnings of the orthodox and the boasts of the advanced about the dangerous boyhood of free thought. What we are looking at is not the boyhood of free thought; it is the old age and ultimate dissolution of free thought. It is vain for bishops and pious bigwigs to discuss what dreadful things will happen if wild scepticism runs its course. It has run its course. It is vain for eloquent atheists to talk of the great truths that will be revealed if once we see free thought begin. We have seen it end. It has no more questions to ask; it has questioned itself. You cannot call up any wilder vision than a city in which men ask themselves if they have any selves. You cannot fancy a more sceptical world than that in which men doubt if there is a world. It might certainly have reached its bankruptcy more quickly and cleanly if it had not been feebly hampered by the application of indefensible laws of blasphemy or by the absurd pretence that modern England is Christian. But it would have reached the bankruptcy anyhow. Militant atheists are still unjustly persecuted; but rather because they are an old minority than because they are a new one. Free thought has exhausted its own freedom. It is weary of its own success. If any eager freethinker now hails philosophic freedom as the dawn, he is only like the man in Mark Twain who came out wrapped in blankets to see the sun rise and was just in time to see it set. If any frightened curate still says that it will be awful if the darkness of free thought should spread, we can only answer him in the high and powerful words of Mr. Belloc, “Do not, I beseech you, be troubled about the increase of forces already in dissolution. You have mistaken the hour of the night: it is already morning.” We have no more questions left to ask. We have looked for questions in the darkest corners and on the wildest peaks. We have found all the questions that can be found. It is time we gave up looking for questions and began looking for answers.

But one more word must be added. At the beginning of this preliminary negative sketch I said that our mental ruin has been wrought by wild reason, not by wild imagination. A man does not go mad because he makes a statue a mile high, but he may go mad by thinking it out in square inches. Now, one school of thinkers has seen this and jumped at it as a way of renewing the pagan health of the world. They see that reason destroys; but Will, they say, creates. The ultimate authority, they say, is in will, not in reason. The supreme point is not why a man demands a thing, but the fact that he does demand it. I have no space to trace or expound this philosophy of Will. It came, I suppose, through Nietzsche, who preached something that is called egoism. That, indeed, was simpleminded enough; for Nietzsche denied egoism simply by preaching it. To preach anything is to give it away. First, the egoist calls life a war without mercy, and then he takes the greatest possible trouble to drill his enemies in war. To preach egoism is to practise altruism. But however it began, the view is common enough in current literature. The main defence of these thinkers is that they are not thinkers; they are makers. They say that choice is itself the divine thing. Thus Mr. Bernard Shaw has attacked the old idea that men’s acts are to be judged by the standard of the desire of happiness. He says that a man does not act for his happiness, but from his will. He does not say, “Jam will make me happy,” but “I want jam.” And in all this others follow him with yet greater enthusiasm. Mr. John Davidson, a remarkable poet, is so passionately excited about it that he is obliged to write prose. He publishes a short play with several long prefaces. This is natural enough in Mr. Shaw, for all his plays are prefaces: Mr. Shaw is (I suspect) the only man on earth who has never written any poetry. But that Mr. Davidson (who can write excellent poetry) should write instead laborious metaphysics in defence of this doctrine of will, does show that the doctrine of will has taken hold of men. Even Mr. H.G.Wells has half spoken in its language; saying that one should test acts not like a thinker, but like an artist, saying, “I FEEL this curve is right,” or “that line SHALL go thus.” They are all excited; and well they may be. For by this doctrine of the divine authority of will, they think they can break out of the doomed fortress of rationalism. They think they can escape.

Affine a queste è la falsa teoria del progresso, che sostiene che noi alteriamo la prova invece di cercare di superarla. Spesso sentiamo dire, per esempio: «Ciò che è giusto in un’epoca è sbagliato in un’altra». Questo è del tutto ragionevole, se significa che esiste un fine fisso, e che certi metodi lo raggiungono in certi tempi e non in altri. Se le donne, poniamo, desiderano essere eleganti, può darsi che in un’epoca migliorino ingrassando e in un’altra dimagrendo. Ma non puoi dire che migliorano cessando di voler essere eleganti e cominciando a voler essere oblunghe. Se lo standard cambia, come può esserci miglioramento, che presuppone uno standard? Nietzsche mise in circolazione l’idea insensata che gli uomini un tempo cercassero come bene ciò che ora chiamiamo male; se così fosse, non potremmo parlare di superarli o persino di restare al di sotto di loro. Come puoi raggiungere Tizio se cammini nella direzione opposta? Non puoi discutere se un popolo sia riuscito meglio a essere infelice di quanto un altro sia riuscito a essere felice. Sarebbe come discutere se Milton fosse più puritano di quanto un maiale sia grasso.

È vero che un uomo (un uomo sciocco) potrebbe fare del cambiamento stesso il proprio scopo o ideale. Ma come ideale, il cambiamento stesso diventa immutabile. Se l’adoratore del cambiamento vuole valutare il proprio progresso, deve essere severamente fedele all’ideale del cambiamento; non deve mettersi a civettare allegramente con l’ideale della monotonia. Il progresso stesso non può progredire. Vale la pena osservare, di sfuggita, che quando Tennyson, in maniera sfrenata e piuttosto fiacca, salutò l’idea di un’infinita alterazione della società, prese istintivamente una metafora che suggerisce un tedio imprigionato. Egli scrisse —

«Lasciate che il gran mondo rotei in eterno lungo i risonanti solchi del cambiamento».

Egli pensava al cambiamento stesso come a un solco immutabile; e così è. Il cambiamento è forse il solco più stretto e duro in cui un uomo possa cacciarsi.

Il punto principale, qui, è tuttavia che questa idea di un’alterazione fondamentale dello standard è una di quelle cose che rendono semplicemente impossibile pensare al passato o al futuro. La teoria di un completo mutamento degli standard nella storia umana non ci priva soltanto del piacere di onorare i nostri padri; ci priva persino del piacere più moderno e aristocratico di disprezzarli.

Questo scarno resoconto delle forze distruttrici del pensiero del nostro tempo non sarebbe completo senza qualche riferimento al pragmatismo; poiché, sebbene qui io abbia usato e dovunque difenderei il metodo pragmatista come guida preliminare alla verità, esiste un’applicazione estrema di esso che comporta l’assenza di qualsiasi verità. Il mio pensiero può essere espresso brevemente così. Concordo con i pragmatisti sul fatto che l’apparente verità oggettiva non è tutta la questione; che c’è un bisogno autoritativo di credere alle cose necessarie alla mente umana. Ma dico che una di quelle necessità è precisamente la credenza nella verità oggettiva. Il pragmatista dice all’uomo di pensare ciò che deve pensare e di non curarsi dell’Assoluto. Ma proprio una delle cose che egli deve pensare è l’Assoluto. Questa filosofia, in effetti, è una specie di paradosso verbale. Il pragmatismo è una questione di bisogni umani; e uno dei primi bisogni umani è quello di essere qualcosa di più di un pragmatista. Il pragmatismo estremo è disumano tanto quanto il determinismo che esso attacca con tanta forza. Il determinista (che, per rendergli giustizia, non pretende di essere un essere umano) rende assurdo il senso umano della scelta reale. Il pragmatista, che professa di essere specialmente umano, rende assurdo il senso umano del fatto reale.

Per riassumere finora la nostra tesi, possiamo dire che le filosofie correnti più caratteristiche hanno non solo un tocco di mania, ma un tocco di mania suicida. Il puro dubbioso ha sbattuto la testa contro i limiti del pensiero umano; e se l’è spaccata. È questo che rende tanto vani gli ammonimenti degli ortodossi e le vanterie degli avanzati sulla pericolosa fanciullezza del libero pensiero. Ciò che abbiamo davanti agli occhi non è la fanciullezza del libero pensiero; è la vecchiaia e la dissoluzione finale del libero pensiero. È inutile che vescovi e pii pezzi grossi discutano quali cose spaventose accadranno se lo scetticismo sfrenato seguirà il suo corso. Lo ha già seguito. È inutile che eloquenti atei parlino delle grandi verità che verranno rivelate una volta che vedremo cominciare il libero pensiero. Lo abbiamo visto finire. Non ha più domande da porre; ha messo in dubbio se stesso. Non puoi evocare visione più sfrenata di una città in cui gli uomini si chiedono se abbiano un qualche io. Non puoi immaginare mondo più scettico di quello in cui gli uomini dubitano che esista un mondo. Esso avrebbe certamente raggiunto la sua bancarotta più rapidamente e nettamente se non fosse stato debolmente ostacolato dall’applicazione di indifendibili leggi contro la blasfemia o dall’assurda pretesa che l’Inghilterra moderna sia cristiana. Ma la bancarotta l’avrebbe raggiunta comunque. Gli atei militanti sono tuttora ingiustamente perseguitati; ma piuttosto perché sono una vecchia minoranza che perché ne sono una nuova. Il libero pensiero ha esaurito la propria libertà. È stanco del proprio successo. Se qualche entusiasta libero pensatore ora saluta la libertà filosofica come l’alba, è soltanto come l’uomo di Mark Twain che uscì avvolto nelle coperte per veder sorgere il sole e giunse giusto in tempo per vederlo tramontare. Se qualche spaventato curato dice ancora che sarà terribile se le tenebre del libero pensiero si diffonderanno, possiamo soltanto rispondergli con le alte e potenti parole del signor Belloc: «Non lasciarti turbare, ti scongiuro, dall’accrescersi di forze già in dissoluzione. Hai scambiato l’ora della notte: è già mattino». Non ci restano più domande da porre. Abbiamo cercato domande negli angoli più oscuri e sulle vette più selvagge. Abbiamo trovato tutte le domande che si possono trovare. È tempo che smettiamo di cercare domande e cominciamo a cercare risposte.

Ma bisogna aggiungere ancora una parola. All’inizio di questo preliminare schizzo negativo dissi che la nostra rovina mentale è stata provocata dalla ragione sfrenata, non dall’immaginazione sfrenata. Un uomo non impazzisce perché fa una statua alta un miglio, ma può impazzire calcolandola pollice quadrato per pollice quadrato. Ora, una scuola di pensatori ha visto questo e vi si è avventata come su un mezzo per rinnovare la salute pagana del mondo. Vedono che la ragione distrugge; ma la Volontà, dicono, crea. L’autorità ultima, dicono, sta nella volontà, non nella ragione. Il punto supremo non è perché un uomo esiga una cosa, ma il fatto che egli la esiga. Non ho spazio per tracciare o esporre questa filosofia della Volontà. Venne, suppongo, attraverso Nietzsche, che predicava qualcosa chiamato egoismo. Il che, in effetti, era abbastanza ingenuo; poiché Nietzsche negava l’egoismo semplicemente predicandolo. Predicare qualcosa significa regalarlo. Prima l’egoista chiama la vita una guerra senza pietà, e poi si dà la massima cura possibile per addestrare i suoi nemici alla guerra. Predicare l’egoismo significa praticare l’altruismo. Ma comunque sia cominciata, questa concezione è abbastanza comune nella letteratura corrente. La principale difesa di questi pensatori è che non sono pensatori; sono facitori. Dicono che la scelta è essa stessa la cosa divina. Così il signor Bernard Shaw ha attaccato l’antica idea che le azioni degli uomini debbano essere giudicate secondo lo standard del desiderio di felicità. Egli dice che un uomo non agisce per la propria felicità, ma per la propria volontà. Non dice: «La marmellata mi renderà felice», ma «Voglio la marmellata». E in tutto ciò altri lo seguono con entusiasmo ancora maggiore. Il signor John Davidson, poeta notevole, ne è così appassionatamente eccitato da essere costretto a scrivere in prosa. Pubblica una breve pièce con parecchie lunghe prefazioni. Ciò è abbastanza naturale nel caso del signor Shaw, poiché tutte le sue pièce sono prefazioni: il signor Shaw è (sospetto) l’unico uomo sulla terra che non abbia mai scritto una sola poesia. Ma che il signor Davidson (che sa scrivere poesia eccellente) scriva invece laboriosa metafisica in difesa di questa dottrina della volontà dimostra pur sempre che la dottrina della volontà ha fatto presa sugli uomini. Persino il signor H. G. Wells ne ha parlato per metà il linguaggio; dicendo che si dovrebbero valutare le azioni non come un pensatore, ma come un artista, dicendo: «Sento che questa curva è giusta», oppure «quella linea dovrà andare così». Sono tutti eccitati; e ne hanno ben donde. Poiché grazie a questa dottrina dell’autorità divina della volontà credono di poter fare irruzione fuori dalla fortezza condannata del razionalismo. Credono di potersi mettere in salvo.

But they cannot escape. This pure praise of volition ends in the same break up and blank as the mere pursuit of logic. Exactly as complete free thought involves the doubting of thought itself, so the acceptation of mere “willing” really paralyzes the will. Mr. Bernard Shaw has not perceived the real difference between the old utilitarian test of pleasure (clumsy, of course, and easily misstated) and that which he propounds. The real difference between the test of happiness and the test of will is simply that the test of happiness is a test and the other isn’t. You can discuss whether a man’s act in jumping over a cliff was directed towards happiness; you cannot discuss whether it was derived from will. Of course it was. You can praise an action by saying that it is calculated to bring pleasure or pain to discover truth or to save the soul. But you cannot praise an action because it shows will; for to say that is merely to say that it is an action. By this praise of will you cannot really choose one course as better than another. And yet choosing one course as better than another is the very definition of the will you are praising.

The worship of will is the negation of will. To admire mere choice is to refuse to choose. If Mr. Bernard Shaw comes up to me and says, “Will something,” that is tantamount to saying, “I do not mind what you will,” and that is tantamount to saying, “I have no will in the matter.” You cannot admire will in general, because the essence of will is that it is particular. A brilliant anarchist like Mr. John Davidson feels an irritation against ordinary morality, and therefore he invokes will —will to anything. He only wants humanity to want something. But humanity does want something. It wants ordinary morality. He rebels against the law and tells us to will something or anything. But we have willed something. We have willed the law against which he rebels.

All the will-worshippers, from Nietzsche to Mr. Davidson, are really quite empty of volition. They cannot will, they can hardly wish. And if any one wants a proof of this, it can be found quite easily. It can be found in this fact: that they always talk of will as something that expands and breaks out. But it is quite the opposite. Every act of will is an act of self-limitation. To desire action is to desire limitation. In that sense every act is an act of self-sacrifice. When you choose anything, you reject everything else. That objection, which men of this school used to make to the act of marriage, is really an objection to every act. Every act is an irrevocable selection and exclusion. Just as when you marry one woman you give up all the others, so when you take one course of action you give up all the other courses. If you become King of England, you give up the post of Beadle in Brompton. If you go to Rome, you sacrifice a rich suggestive life in Wimbledon. It is the existence of this negative or limiting side of will that makes most of the talk of the anarchic will-worshippers little better than nonsense. For instance, Mr. John Davidson tells us to have nothing to do with “Thou shalt not”; but it is surely obvious that “Thou shalt not” is only one of the necessary corollaries of “I will.” “I will go to the Lord Mayor’s Show, and thou shalt not stop me.” Anarchism adjures us to be bold creative artists, and care for no laws or limits. But it is impossible to be an artist and not care for laws and limits. Art is limitation; the essence of every picture is the frame. If you draw a giraffe, you must draw him with a long neck. If, in your bold creative way, you hold yourself free to draw a giraffe with a short neck, you will really find that you are not free to draw a giraffe. The moment you step into the world of facts, you step into a world of limits. You can free things from alien or accidental laws, but not from the laws of their own nature. You may, if you like, free a tiger from his bars; but do not free him from his stripes. Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump: you may be freeing him from being a camel. Do not go about as a demagogue, encouraging triangles to break out of the prison of their three sides. If a triangle breaks out of its three sides, its life comes to a lamentable end. Somebody wrote a work called “The Loves of the Triangles”; I never read it, but I am sure that if triangles ever were loved, they were loved for being triangular. This is certainly the case with all artistic creation, which is in some ways the most decisive example of pure will. The artist loves his limitations: they constitute the THING he is doing. The painter is glad that the canvas is flat. The sculptor is glad that the clay is colourless.

In case the point is not clear, an historic example may illustrate it. The French Revolution was really an heroic and decisive thing, because the Jacobins willed something definite and limited. They desired the freedoms of democracy, but also all the vetoes of democracy. They wished to have votes and NOT to have titles. Republicanism had an ascetic side in Franklin or Robespierre as well as an expansive side in Danton or Wilkes. Therefore they have created something with a solid substance and shape, the square social equality and peasant wealth of France. But since then the revolutionary or speculative mind of Europe has been weakened by shrinking from any proposal because of the limits of that proposal. Liberalism has been degraded into liberality. Men have tried to turn “revolutionise” from a transitive to an intransitive verb. The Jacobin could tell you not only the system he would rebel against, but (what was more important) the system he would NOT rebel against, the system he would trust. But the new rebel is a Sceptic, and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; therefore he can never be really a revolutionist. And the fact that he doubts everything really gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything. For all denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind; and the modern revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces, but the doctrine by which he denounces it. Thus he writes one book complaining that imperial oppression insults the purity of women, and then he writes another book (about the sex problem) in which he insults it himself. He curses the Sultan because Christian girls lose their virginity, and then curses Mrs. Grundy because they keep it. As a politician, he will cry out that war is a waste of life, and then, as a philosopher, that all life is waste of time. A Russian pessimist will denounce a policeman for killing a peasant, and then prove by the highest philosophical principles that the peasant ought to have killed himself. A man denounces marriage as a lie, and then denounces aristocratic profligates for treating it as a lie. He calls a flag a bauble, and then blames the oppressors of Poland or Ireland because they take away that bauble. The man of this school goes first to a political meeting, where he complains that savages are treated as if they were beasts; then he takes his hat and umbrella and goes on to a scientific meeting, where he proves that they practically are beasts. In short, the modern revolutionist, being an infinite sceptic, is always engaged in undermining his own mines. In his book on politics he attacks men for trampling on morality; in his book on ethics he attacks morality for trampling on men. Therefore the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything.

Ma non possono mettersi in salvo. Questa pura lode della volizione finisce nella stessa disgregazione e nello stesso vuoto della semplice ricerca della logica. Esattamente come il libero pensiero completo comporta il dubbio del pensiero stesso, così l’accettazione del puro «volere» paralizza in realtà la volontà. Il signor Bernard Shaw non ha colto la reale differenza tra l’antica prova utilitaristica del piacere (goffa, s’intende, e facilmente travisata) e quella che egli propone. La reale differenza tra la prova della felicità e la prova della volontà è semplicemente che la prova della felicità è una prova e l’altra no. Puoi discutere se l’atto di un uomo che si getta da una rupe fosse diretto verso la felicità; non puoi discutere se derivasse dalla volontà. Naturalmente ne derivava. Puoi lodare un’azione dicendo che è calcolata per procurare piacere o dolore, per scoprire la verità o per salvare l’anima. Ma non puoi lodare un’azione perché mostra volontà; poiché dire questo equivale semplicemente a dire che è un’azione. Con questa lode della volontà non puoi realmente scegliere un corso come migliore di un altro. Eppure scegliere un corso come migliore di un altro è la definizione stessa della volontà che stai lodando.

Il culto della volontà è la negazione della volontà. Ammirare la pura scelta è rifiutarsi di scegliere. Se il signor Bernard Shaw mi si accosta e dice: «Vuoi qualcosa», ciò equivale a dire: «Non m’importa cosa tu voglia», e ciò equivale a dire: «Non ho alcuna volontà in proposito». Non puoi ammirare la volontà in generale, perché l’essenza della volontà è che è particolare. Un brillante anarchico come il signor John Davidson prova irritazione contro la morale comune, e perciò invoca la volontà — la volontà di qualsiasi cosa. Vuole soltanto che l’umanità voglia qualcosa. Ma l’umanità vuole davvero qualcosa. Vuole la morale comune. Egli si ribella alla legge e ci dice di volere qualcosa o qualsiasi cosa. Ma noi abbiamo voluto qualcosa. Abbiamo voluto la legge contro cui egli si ribella.

Tutti gli adoratori della volontà, da Nietzsche al signor Davidson, sono in realtà del tutto privi di volizione. Non sanno volere, sanno a malapena desiderare. E se qualcuno vuole una prova di questo, la si può trovare assai facilmente. La si può trovare in questo fatto: che parlano sempre della volontà come di qualcosa che si espande e prorompe. Ma è tutto il contrario. Ogni atto di volontà è un atto di autolimitazione. Desiderare l’azione è desiderare la limitazione. In quel senso ogni atto è un atto di sacrificio di sé. Quando scegli una cosa qualunque, rifiuti tutto il resto. Quell’obiezione, che gli uomini di questa scuola solevano muovere all’atto del matrimonio, è in realtà un’obiezione a ogni atto. Ogni atto è una selezione e un’esclusione irrevocabili. Proprio come quando sposi una donna rinunci a tutte le altre, così quando imbocchi un corso d’azione rinunci a tutti gli altri corsi. Se diventi re d’Inghilterra, rinunci alla carica di sagrestano a Brompton. Se vai a Roma, sacrifichi una vita ricca e suggestiva a Wimbledon. È l’esistenza di questo lato negativo o limitante della volontà a rendere gran parte dei discorsi degli anarchici adoratori della volontà poco più che insensata. Per esempio, il signor John Davidson ci dice di non aver nulla a che fare con il «Non devi»; ma è certamente ovvio che il «Non devi» è soltanto uno dei necessari corollari dell’«Io voglio». «Andrò alla parata del Lord Mayor, e tu non devi fermarmi». L’anarchismo ci esorta a essere audaci artisti creativi, e a non curarci di leggi o limiti. Ma è impossibile essere un artista e non curarsi di leggi e limiti. L’arte è limitazione; l’essenza di ogni quadro è la cornice. Se disegni una giraffa, devi disegnarla col collo lungo. Se, nel tuo audace modo creativo, ti ritieni libero di disegnare una giraffa col collo corto, scoprirai in realtà che non sei libero di disegnare una giraffa. Nell’istante in cui metti piede nel mondo dei fatti, metti piede in un mondo di limiti. Puoi liberare le cose da leggi estranee o accidentali, ma non dalle leggi della loro stessa natura. Puoi, se vuoi, liberare una tigre dalle sbarre; ma non liberarla dalle sue strisce. Non liberare un cammello dal peso della sua gobba: potresti liberarlo dall’essere un cammello. Non andare in giro da demagogo, incoraggiando i triangoli a evadere dalla prigione dei loro tre lati. Se un triangolo evade dai suoi tre lati, la sua vita giunge a una fine lamentevole. Qualcuno scrisse un’opera intitolata «The Loves of the Triangles»; non l’ho mai letta, ma sono certo che se i triangoli furono mai amati, furono amati per essere triangolari. Questo è certamente il caso di ogni creazione artistica, che è per certi versi l’esempio più decisivo di pura volontà. L’artista ama le proprie limitazioni: esse costituiscono la cosa che egli sta facendo. Il pittore è lieto che la tela sia piatta. Lo scultore è lieto che l’argilla sia incolore.

Nel caso il punto non fosse chiaro, un esempio storico può illustrarlo. La Rivoluzione francese fu davvero una cosa eroica e decisiva, perché i giacobini vollero qualcosa di definito e limitato. Desideravano le libertà della democrazia, ma anche tutti i veti della democrazia. Volevano avere i voti e non avere i titoli. Il repubblicanesimo ebbe un lato ascetico in Franklin o Robespierre così come un lato espansivo in Danton o Wilkes. Perciò hanno creato qualcosa dotato di sostanza e forma solide, la quadrata eguaglianza sociale e la ricchezza contadina della Francia. Ma da allora la mente rivoluzionaria o speculativa d’Europa si è indebolita ritraendosi da ogni proposta a causa dei limiti di quella proposta. Il liberalismo è stato degradato in liberalità. Gli uomini hanno tentato di trasformare «rivoluzionare» da verbo transitivo a verbo intransitivo. Il giacobino sapeva dirti non solo il sistema contro cui si sarebbe ribellato, ma (ciò che più contava) il sistema contro cui non si sarebbe ribellato, il sistema di cui si sarebbe fidato. Ma il nuovo ribelle è uno Scettico, e non si fida interamente di nulla. Non ha alcuna lealtà; perciò non può mai essere davvero un rivoluzionario. E il fatto che dubiti di tutto gli si mette realmente di traverso quando vuole denunciare qualcosa. Poiché ogni denuncia implica una qualche dottrina morale; e il rivoluzionario moderno dubita non solo dell’istituzione che denuncia, ma della dottrina in nome della quale la denuncia. Così egli scrive un libro lamentando che l’oppressione imperiale oltraggia la purezza delle donne, e poi scrive un altro libro (sul problema sessuale) in cui l’oltraggia egli stesso. Maledice il Sultano perché le ragazze cristiane perdono la loro verginità, e poi maledice la signora Grundy perché la conservano. Come politico griderà che la guerra è uno spreco di vite, e poi, come filosofo, che tutta la vita è uno spreco di tempo. Un pessimista russo denuncerà un poliziotto per aver ucciso un contadino, e poi dimostrerà con i più elevati principi filosofici che il contadino avrebbe dovuto uccidersi da sé. Un uomo denuncia il matrimonio come una menzogna, e poi denuncia i libertini aristocratici per averlo trattato come una menzogna. Chiama una bandiera un ninnolo, e poi biasima gli oppressori della Polonia o dell’Irlanda perché portano via quel ninnolo. L’uomo di questa scuola va prima a un comizio politico, dove si lamenta che i selvaggi siano trattati come se fossero bestie; poi prende cappello e ombrello e si reca a un convegno scientifico, dove dimostra che essi sono praticamente bestie. In breve, il rivoluzionario moderno, essendo uno scettico infinito, è sempre intento a minare le proprie mine. Nel suo libro di politica attacca gli uomini per aver calpestato la morale; nel suo libro di etica attacca la morale per aver calpestato gli uomini. Perciò l’uomo moderno in rivolta è diventato praticamente inutile a ogni scopo di rivolta. Ribellandosi contro tutto ha perso il diritto di ribellarsi contro alcunché.

It may be added that the same blank and bankruptcy can be observed in all fierce and terrible types of literature, especially in satire. Satire may be mad and anarchic, but it presupposes an admitted superiority in certain things over others; it presupposes a standard. When little boys in the street laugh at the fatness of some distinguished journalist, they are unconsciously assuming a standard of Greek sculpture. They are appealing to the marble Apollo. And the curious disappearance of satire from our literature is an instance of the fierce things fading for want of any principle to be fierce about. Nietzsche had some natural talent for sarcasm: he could sneer, though he could not laugh; but there is always something bodiless and without weight in his satire, simply because it has not any mass of common morality behind it. He is himself more preposterous than anything he denounces. But, indeed, Nietzsche will stand very well as the type of the whole of this failure of abstract violence. The softening of the brain which ultimately overtook him was not a physical accident. If Nietzsche had not ended in imbecility, Nietzscheism would end in imbecility. Thinking in isolation and with pride ends in being an idiot. Every man who will not have softening of the heart must at last have softening of the brain.

This last attempt to evade intellectualism ends in intellectualism, and therefore in death. The sortie has failed. The wild worship of lawlessness and the materialist worship of law end in the same void. Nietzsche scales staggering mountains, but he turns up ultimately in Tibet. He sits down beside Tolstoy in the land of nothing and Nirvana. They are both helpless—one because he must not grasp anything, and the other because he must not let go of anything. The Tolstoyan’s will is frozen by a Buddhist instinct that all special actions are evil. But the Nietzscheite’s will is quite equally frozen by his view that all special actions are good; for if all special actions are good, none of them are special. They stand at the crossroads, and one hates all the roads and the other likes all the roads. The result is—well, some things are not hard to calculate. They stand at the cross-roads.

Here I end (thank God) the first and dullest business of this book—the rough review of recent thought. After this I begin to sketch a view of life which may not interest my reader, but which, at any rate, interests me. In front of me, as I close this page, is a pile of modern books that I have been turning over for the purpose —a pile of ingenuity, a pile of futility. By the accident of my present detachment, I can see the inevitable smash of the philosophies of Schopenhauer and Tolstoy, Nietzsche and Shaw, as clearly as an inevitable railway smash could be seen from a balloon. They are all on the road to the emptiness of the asylum. For madness may be defined as using mental activity so as to reach mental helplessness; and they have nearly reached it. He who thinks he is made of glass, thinks to the destruction of thought; for glass cannot think. So he who wills to reject nothing, wills the destruction of will; for will is not only the choice of something, but the rejection of almost everything. And as I turn and tumble over the clever, wonderful, tiresome, and useless modern books, the title of one of them rivets my eye. It is called “Jeanne d’Arc,” by Anatole France. I have only glanced at it, but a glance was enough to remind me of Renan’s “Vie de Jesus.” It has the same strange method of the reverent sceptic. It discredits supernatural stories that have some foundation, simply by telling natural stories that have no foundation. Because we cannot believe in what a saint did, we are to pretend that we know exactly what he felt. But I do not mention either book in order to criticise it, but because the accidental combination of the names called up two startling images of Sanity which blasted all the books before me. Joan of Arc was not stuck at the cross-roads, either by rejecting all the paths like Tolstoy, or by accepting them all like Nietzsche. She chose a path, and went down it like a thunderbolt. Yet Joan, when I came to think of her, had in her all that was true either in Tolstoy or Nietzsche, all that was even tolerable in either of them. I thought of all that is noble in Tolstoy, the pleasure in plain things, especially in plain pity, the actualities of the earth, the reverence for the poor, the dignity of the bowed back. Joan of Arc had all that and with this great addition, that she endured poverty as well as admiring it; whereas Tolstoy is only a typical aristocrat trying to find out its secret. And then I thought of all that was brave and proud and pathetic in poor Nietzsche, and his mutiny against the emptiness and timidity of our time. I thought of his cry for the ecstatic equilibrium of danger, his hunger for the rush of great horses, his cry to arms. Well, Joan of Arc had all that, and again with this difference, that she did not praise fighting, but fought. We KNOW that she was not afraid of an army, while Nietzsche, for all we know, was afraid of a cow. Tolstoy only praised the peasant; she was the peasant. Nietzsche only praised the warrior; she was the warrior. She beat them both at their own antagonistic ideals; she was more gentle than the one, more violent than the other. Yet she was a perfectly practical person who did something, while they are wild speculators who do nothing. It was impossible that the thought should not cross my mind that she and her faith had perhaps some secret of moral unity and utility that has been lost. And with that thought came a larger one, and the colossal figure of her Master had also crossed the theatre of my thoughts. The same modern difficulty which darkened the subject-matter of Anatole France also darkened that of Ernest Renan. Renan also divided his hero’s pity from his hero’s pugnacity. Renan even represented the righteous anger at Jerusalem as a mere nervous breakdown after the idyllic expectations of Galilee. As if there were any inconsistency between having a love for humanity and having a hatred for inhumanity! Altruists, with thin, weak voices, denounce Christ as an egoist. Egoists (with even thinner and weaker voices) denounce Him as an altruist. In our present atmosphere such cavils are comprehensible enough. The love of a hero is more terrible than the hatred of a tyrant. The hatred of a hero is more generous than the love of a philanthropist. There is a huge and heroic sanity of which moderns can only collect the fragments. There is a giant of whom we see only the lopped arms and legs walking about. They have torn the soul of Christ into silly strips, labelled egoism and altruism, and they are equally puzzled by His insane magnificence and His insane meekness. They have parted His garments among them, and for His vesture they have cast lots; though the coat was without seam woven from the top throughout.

Si può aggiungere che la stessa vacuità e bancarotta si possono osservare in tutti i tipi feroci e terribili di letteratura, specie nella satira. La satira può essere folle e anarchica, ma presuppone una riconosciuta superiorità di certe cose su altre; presuppone uno standard. Quando i monelli per strada ridono della pinguedine di qualche illustre giornalista, stanno inconsapevolmente assumendo uno standard di scultura greca. Si appellano all’Apollo di marmo. E la curiosa scomparsa della satira dalla nostra letteratura è un esempio delle cose feroci che sbiadiscono per mancanza di un qualche principio su cui essere feroci. Nietzsche aveva un certo talento naturale per il sarcasmo: sapeva sogghignare, benché non sapesse ridere; ma c’è sempre qualcosa di incorporeo e privo di peso nella sua satira, semplicemente perché non ha dietro di sé alcuna massa di morale comune. Egli è di per sé più assurdo di qualsiasi cosa denunci. Ma, in verità, Nietzsche starà benissimo come tipo dell’intero fallimento della violenza astratta. Il rammollimento del cervello che alla fine lo colse non fu un incidente fisico. Se Nietzsche non fosse finito nell’imbecillità, il nietzscheismo finirebbe nell’imbecillità. Pensare nell’isolamento e con orgoglio finisce col rendere idioti. Ogni uomo che non voglia avere il rammollimento del cuore deve infine avere il rammollimento del cervello.

Questo ultimo tentativo di sfuggire all’intellettualismo finisce nell’intellettualismo, e perciò nella morte. La sortita è fallita. Il selvaggio culto dell’assenza di legge e il culto materialista della legge finiscono nel medesimo vuoto. Nietzsche scala montagne vertiginose, ma alla fine sbuca in Tibet. Si siede accanto a Tolstoj nella terra del nulla e del Nirvana. Sono entrambi impotenti — l’uno perché non deve afferrare nulla, l’altro perché non deve lasciar andare nulla. La volontà del tolstoiano è congelata da un istinto buddista secondo cui tutte le azioni particolari sono malvagie. Ma la volontà del nietzscheano è congelata in modo del tutto identico dalla sua concezione secondo cui tutte le azioni particolari sono buone; poiché se tutte le azioni particolari sono buone, nessuna di esse è particolare. Stanno al bivio, e l’uno odia tutte le strade e l’altro ama tutte le strade. Il risultato è — be’, certe cose non sono difficili da calcolare. Stanno al bivio.

Qui pongo fine (grazie a Dio) alla prima e più tediosa faccenda di questo libro — la rozza rassegna del pensiero recente. Dopo questo comincio ad abbozzare una visione della vita che forse non interesserà il mio lettore, ma che, in ogni caso, interessa me. Davanti a me, mentre chiudo questa pagina, c’è un mucchio di libri moderni che ho sfogliato a tale scopo — un mucchio di ingegnosità, un mucchio di futilità. Per l’accidente del mio presente distacco, posso vedere l’inevitabile schianto delle filosofie di Schopenhauer e Tolstoj, Nietzsche e Shaw, con la stessa chiarezza con cui un inevitabile schianto ferroviario potrebbe essere visto da un pallone aerostatico. Sono tutti sulla strada del vuoto del manicomio. Poiché la follia si può definire come l’uso dell’attività mentale in modo da raggiungere l’impotenza mentale; ed essi l’hanno quasi raggiunta. Chi crede di essere fatto di vetro pensa fino alla distruzione del pensiero; poiché il vetro non può pensare. Così chi vuole non rifiutare nulla vuole la distruzione della volontà; poiché la volontà non è soltanto la scelta di qualcosa, ma il rifiuto di quasi tutto. E mentre rigiro e rimescolo gli abili, meravigliosi, tediosi e inutili libri moderni, il titolo di uno di essi mi inchioda lo sguardo. Si intitola «Jeanne d’Arc», di Anatole France. Vi ho soltanto dato un’occhiata, ma un’occhiata è bastata a rammentarmi la «Vie de Jésus» di Renan. Ha lo stesso strano metodo dello scettico reverente. Scredita storie soprannaturali che hanno qualche fondamento, semplicemente raccontando storie naturali che non ne hanno alcuno. Poiché non possiamo credere a ciò che un santo fece, dovremmo far finta di sapere esattamente ciò che egli provò. Ma non menziono nessuno dei due libri per criticarlo, bensì perché l’accidentale accostamento dei nomi ha evocato due sorprendenti immagini di Sanità mentale che hanno annientato tutti i libri che avevo davanti. Giovanna d’Arco non rimase piantata al bivio, né rifiutando tutti i sentieri come Tolstoj, né accettandoli tutti come Nietzsche. Scelse un sentiero, e lo percorse come una folgore. Eppure Giovanna, quando mi misi a pensare a lei, aveva in sé tutto ciò che era vero tanto in Tolstoj quanto in Nietzsche, tutto ciò che in ciascuno di loro era persino tollerabile. Pensai a tutto ciò che è nobile in Tolstoj, il piacere nelle cose semplici, specie nella semplice pietà, le realtà concrete della terra, la reverenza per i poveri, la dignità della schiena curva. Giovanna d’Arco aveva tutto questo e con questa grande aggiunta, che ella sopportava la povertà oltre ad ammirarla; laddove Tolstoj è soltanto un tipico aristocratico che cerca di scoprirne il segreto. E poi pensai a tutto ciò che di coraggioso, fiero e patetico c’era nel povero Nietzsche, e al suo ammutinamento contro la vacuità e la timidezza del nostro tempo. Pensai al suo grido per l’estatico equilibrio del pericolo, alla sua fame per l’impeto dei grandi cavalli, al suo grido alle armi. Ebbene, Giovanna d’Arco aveva tutto questo, e di nuovo con questa differenza, che ella non lodava il combattere, ma combatteva. Sappiamo che non aveva paura di un esercito, mentre Nietzsche, per quanto ne sappiamo, aveva paura di una mucca. Tolstoj lodava soltanto il contadino; ella era il contadino. Nietzsche lodava soltanto il guerriero; ella era il guerriero. Li batté entrambi sul terreno dei loro stessi ideali antagonisti; fu più gentile dell’uno, più violenta dell’altro. Eppure fu una persona perfettamente pratica che fece qualcosa, mentre essi sono sfrenati speculatori che non fanno nulla. Era impossibile che non mi attraversasse la mente il pensiero che lei e la sua fede possedessero forse un qualche segreto di unità e utilità morale che è andato perduto. E con quel pensiero ne venne uno più grande, e la figura colossale del suo Maestro aveva anch’essa attraversato il teatro dei miei pensieri. La medesima difficoltà moderna che oscurava la materia di Anatole France oscurava anche quella di Ernest Renan. Anche Renan divideva la pietà del suo eroe dalla combattività del suo eroe. Renan giunse persino a rappresentare la giusta collera a Gerusalemme come un semplice esaurimento nervoso dopo le idilliache aspettative della Galilea. Come se vi fosse una qualche incoerenza tra l’avere amore per l’umanità e l’avere odio per la disumanità! Gli altruisti, con voci esili e deboli, denunciano Cristo come un egoista. Gli egoisti (con voci ancora più esili e deboli) lo denunciano come un altruista. Nella nostra atmosfera presente simili cavilli sono abbastanza comprensibili. L’amore di un eroe è più terribile dell’odio di un tiranno. L’odio di un eroe è più generoso dell’amore di un filantropo. Esiste un’immensa ed eroica sanità mentale di cui i moderni possono raccogliere soltanto i frammenti. Esiste un gigante di cui vediamo aggirarsi soltanto le braccia e le gambe mozzate. Hanno lacerato l’anima di Cristo in sciocche strisce, etichettate egoismo e altruismo, e sono ugualmente sconcertati dalla sua folle magnificenza e dalla sua folle mitezza. Si sono spartiti le sue vesti tra loro, e per la sua tunica hanno tirato a sorte; benché la tunica fosse senza cuciture, tessuta tutta dall’alto.

IV THE ETHICS OF ELFLAND

When the business man rebukes the idealism of his office-boy, it is commonly in some such speech as this: “Ah, yes, when one is young, one has these ideals in the abstract and these castles in the air; but in middle age they all break up like clouds, and one comes down to a belief in practical politics, to using the machinery one has and getting on with the world as it is.” Thus, at least, venerable and philanthropic old men now in their honoured graves used to talk to me when I was a boy. But since then I have grown up and have discovered that these philanthropic old men were telling lies. What has really happened is exactly the opposite of what they said would happen. They said that I should lose my ideals and begin to believe in the methods of practical politicians. Now, I have not lost my ideals in the least; my faith in fundamentals is exactly what it always was. What I have lost is my old childlike faith in practical politics. I am still as much concerned as ever about the Battle of Armageddon; but I am not so much concerned about the General Election. As a babe I leapt up on my mother’s knee at the mere mention of it. No; the vision is always solid and reliable. The vision is always a fact. It is the reality that is often a fraud. As much as I ever did, more than I ever did, I believe in Liberalism. But there was a rosy time of innocence when I believed in Liberals.

I take this instance of one of the enduring faiths because, having now to trace the roots of my personal speculation, this may be counted, I think, as the only positive bias. I was brought up a Liberal, and have always believed in democracy, in the elementary liberal doctrine of a self-governing humanity. If any one finds the phrase vague or threadbare, I can only pause for a moment to explain that the principle of democracy, as I mean it, can be stated in two propositions. The first is this: that the things common to all men are more important than the things peculiar to any men. Ordinary things are more valuable than extraordinary things; nay, they are more extraordinary. Man is something more awful than men; something more strange. The sense of the miracle of humanity itself should be always more vivid to us than any marvels of power, intellect, art, or civilization. The mere man on two legs, as such, should be felt as something more heartbreaking than any music and more startling than any caricature. Death is more tragic even than death by starvation. Having a nose is more comic even than having a Norman nose.

This is the first principle of democracy: that the essential things in men are the things they hold in common, not the things they hold separately. And the second principle is merely this: that the political instinct or desire is one of these things which they hold in common. Falling in love is more poetical than dropping into poetry. The democratic contention is that government (helping to rule the tribe) is a thing like falling in love, and not a thing like dropping into poetry. It is not something analogous to playing the church organ, painting on vellum, discovering the North Pole (that insidious habit), looping the loop, being Astronomer Royal, and so on. For these things we do not wish a man to do at all unless he does them well. It is, on the contrary, a thing analogous to writing one’s own love-letters or blowing one’s own nose. These things we want a man to do for himself, even if he does them badly. I am not here arguing the truth of any of these conceptions; I know that some moderns are asking to have their wives chosen by scientists, and they may soon be asking, for all I know, to have their noses blown by nurses. I merely say that mankind does recognize these universal human functions, and that democracy classes government among them. In short, the democratic faith is this: that the most terribly important things must be left to ordinary men themselves—the mating of the sexes, the rearing of the young, the laws of the state. This is democracy; and in this I have always believed.

But there is one thing that I have never from my youth up been able to understand. I have never been able to understand where people got the idea that democracy was in some way opposed to tradition. It is obvious that tradition is only democracy extended through time. It is trusting to a consensus of common human voices rather than to some isolated or arbitrary record. The man who quotes some German historian against the tradition of the Catholic Church, for instance, is strictly appealing to aristocracy. He is appealing to the superiority of one expert against the awful authority of a mob. It is quite easy to see why a legend is treated, and ought to be treated, more respectfully than a book of history. The legend is generally made by the majority of people in the village, who are sane. The book is generally written by the one man in the village who is mad. Those who urge against tradition that men in the past were ignorant may go and urge it at the Carlton Club, along with the statement that voters in the slums are ignorant. It will not do for us. If we attach great importance to the opinion of ordinary men in great unanimity when we are dealing with daily matters, there is no reason why we should disregard it when we are dealing with history or fable. Tradition may be defined as an extension of the franchise. Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our father. I, at any rate, cannot separate the two ideas of democracy and tradition; it seems evident to me that they are the same idea. We will have the dead at our councils. The ancient Greeks voted by stones; these shall vote by tombstones. It is all quite regular and official, for most tombstones, like most ballot papers, are marked with a cross.

IV L’ETICA DELL’ELFILANDIA

Quando l’uomo d’affari rimprovera l’idealismo del suo garzone di bottega, lo fa comunemente con qualche discorso di questo tenore: «Ah, sì, quando si è giovani si nutrono tutti questi ideali astratti e si costruiscono castelli in aria; ma nella mezza età essi si dissolvono come nubi, e si scende a credere nella politica pratica, a servirsi degli strumenti che si hanno e ad andare avanti nel mondo così com’è». Così, per lo meno, mi parlavano da ragazzo quei vecchi venerabili e filantropi che ora riposano nelle loro onorate tombe. Ma da allora sono cresciuto e ho scoperto che quei vecchi filantropi dicevano bugie. Ciò che è realmente accaduto è esattamente l’opposto di quanto essi predicevano. Dicevano che avrei perduto i miei ideali e cominciato a credere nei metodi dei politici pratici. Ebbene, non ho perduto affatto i miei ideali; la mia fede nei princìpi fondamentali è esattamente quella di sempre. Ciò che ho perduto è la mia vecchia fede fanciullesca nella politica pratica. Mi sta ancora a cuore, quanto mai, la Battaglia di Armageddon; ma non mi importa più tanto delle Elezioni Generali. Da bimbo, al solo sentirle nominare, sobbalzavo sulle ginocchia di mia madre. No: la visione è sempre solida e degna di fede. La visione è sempre un fatto. È la realtà che spesso è un imbroglio. Quanto vi ho sempre creduto, e più ancora, credo nel Liberalismo. Ma vi fu un roseo tempo d’innocenza in cui credevo nei liberali.

Prendo questo esempio di una delle fedi durature perché, dovendo ora rintracciare le radici delle mie personali speculazioni, esso può contare, credo, come l’unica inclinazione positiva. Sono stato educato da liberale, e ho sempre creduto nella democrazia, nell’elementare dottrina liberale di un’umanità che si governa da sé. Se qualcuno trova questa frase vaga o logora, non posso che fermarmi un istante a spiegare che il principio della democrazia, quale io lo intendo, si può enunciare in due proposizioni. La prima è questa: che le cose comuni a tutti gli uomini sono più importanti delle cose proprie di qualche uomo. Le cose ordinarie sono più preziose delle cose straordinarie; anzi, sono più straordinarie. L’Uomo è qualcosa di più tremendo degli uomini; qualcosa di più strano. Il senso del miracolo dell’umanità stessa dovrebbe essere sempre più vivo in noi di ogni meraviglia di potenza, d’intelletto, d’arte o di civiltà. Il semplice uomo su due gambe, in quanto tale, dovrebbe apparirci qualcosa di più straziante di ogni musica e di più sconvolgente di ogni caricatura. La morte è più tragica persino della morte per fame. Avere un naso è più comico persino che avere un naso normanno.

Questo è il primo principio della democrazia: che le cose essenziali negli uomini sono quelle che essi hanno in comune, non quelle che possiedono separatamente. E il secondo principio è semplicemente questo: che l’istinto o il desiderio politico è una di queste cose che essi hanno in comune. Innamorarsi è più poetico che mettersi a poetare. La tesi democratica è che governare (contribuire a reggere la tribù) è una cosa come innamorarsi, e non una cosa come mettersi a poetare. Non è qualcosa di analogo al suonare l’organo in chiesa, al dipingere su pergamena, allo scoprire il Polo Nord (quella insidiosa abitudine), al fare il giro della morte, all’essere Astronomo Reale, e così via. Queste cose, infatti, non vogliamo affatto che un uomo le faccia, a meno che non le faccia bene. È, al contrario, una cosa analoga allo scrivere le proprie lettere d’amore o al soffiarsi il proprio naso. Queste cose vogliamo che un uomo le faccia da sé, anche se le fa male. Non sto qui argomentando la verità di alcuna di queste concezioni; so che certi moderni chiedono di farsi scegliere la moglie dagli scienziati, e per quel che ne so potrebbero presto chiedere di farsi soffiare il naso dalle infermiere. Dico soltanto che l’umanità riconosce queste universali funzioni umane, e che la democrazia annovera il governo tra esse. In breve, la fede democratica è questa: che le cose più tremendamente importanti devono essere lasciate agli uomini comuni stessi — l’unione dei sessi, l’allevamento dei figli, le leggi dello Stato. Questa è la democrazia; e in questo ho sempre creduto.

Ma c’è una cosa che, fin dalla giovinezza, non sono mai riuscito a capire. Non sono mai riuscito a capire da dove la gente abbia tratto l’idea che la democrazia sia in qualche modo contrapposta alla tradizione. È evidente che la tradizione non è altro che la democrazia estesa nel tempo. Essa consiste nell’affidarsi a un consenso di comuni voci umane piuttosto che a qualche testimonianza isolata o arbitraria. L’uomo che cita un qualche storico tedesco contro la tradizione della Chiesa cattolica, per esempio, si appella in senso stretto all’aristocrazia. Si appella alla superiorità di un solo esperto contro la tremenda autorità di una moltitudine. È facilissimo capire perché una leggenda venga trattata, e debba essere trattata, con più rispetto di un libro di storia. La leggenda è generalmente creata dalla maggioranza degli abitanti del villaggio, che sono sani di mente. Il libro è generalmente scritto dall’unico uomo del villaggio che è pazzo. Coloro che obiettano contro la tradizione che gli uomini del passato erano ignoranti vadano pure a sostenerlo al Carlton Club, insieme all’affermazione che gli elettori dei bassifondi sono ignoranti. A noi non serve. Se attribuiamo grande importanza all’opinione degli uomini comuni, quando è unanime, nel trattare le questioni quotidiane, non c’è ragione di ignorarla quando trattiamo di storia o di leggenda. La tradizione si può definire come un’estensione del diritto di voto. La tradizione significa dare il voto alla più oscura di tutte le classi: i nostri antenati. È la democrazia dei morti. La tradizione rifiuta di sottomettersi alla piccola e arrogante oligarchia di coloro che semplicemente si trovano per caso a passeggiare in giro. Tutti i democratici si oppongono a che gli uomini siano squalificati dall’accidente della nascita; la tradizione si oppone a che siano squalificati dall’accidente della morte. La democrazia ci dice di non trascurare l’opinione di un uomo dabbene, foss’anche il nostro stalliere; la tradizione ci chiede di non trascurare l’opinione di un uomo dabbene, foss’anche nostro padre. Io, in ogni caso, non riesco a separare le due idee di democrazia e di tradizione; mi sembra evidente che siano la stessa idea. Vorremo i morti nei nostri consigli. Gli antichi Greci votavano con le pietre; questi voteranno con le pietre tombali. È tutto perfettamente regolare e ufficiale, poiché la maggior parte delle pietre tombali, come la maggior parte delle schede elettorali, è contrassegnata da una croce.

I have first to say, therefore, that if I have had a bias, it was always a bias in favour of democracy, and therefore of tradition. Before we come to any theoretic or logical beginnings I am content to allow for that personal equation; I have always been more inclined to believe the ruck of hard-working people than to believe that special and troublesome literary class to which I belong. I prefer even the fancies and prejudices of the people who see life from the inside to the clearest demonstrations of the people who see life from the outside. I would always trust the old wives’ fables against the old maids’ facts. As long as wit is mother wit it can be as wild as it pleases.

Now, I have to put together a general position, and I pretend to no training in such things. I propose to do it, therefore, by writing down one after another the three or four fundamental ideas which I have found for myself, pretty much in the way that I found them. Then I shall roughly synthesise them, summing up my personal philosophy or natural religion; then I shall describe my startling discovery that the whole thing had been discovered before. It had been discovered by Christianity. But of these profound persuasions which I have to recount in order, the earliest was concerned with this element of popular tradition. And without the foregoing explanation touching tradition and democracy I could hardly make my mental experience clear. As it is, I do not know whether I can make it clear, but I now propose to try.

My first and last philosophy, that which I believe in with unbroken certainty, I learnt in the nursery. I generally learnt it from a nurse; that is, from the solemn and star-appointed priestess at once of democracy and tradition. The things I believed most then, the things I believe most now, are the things called fairy tales. They seem to me to be the entirely reasonable things. They are not fantasies: compared with them other things are fantastic. Compared with them religion and rationalism are both abnormal, though religion is abnormally right and rationalism abnormally wrong. Fairyland is nothing but the sunny country of common sense. It is not earth that judges heaven, but heaven that judges earth; so for me at least it was not earth that criticised elfland, but elfland that criticised the earth. I knew the magic beanstalk before I had tasted beans; I was sure of the Man in the Moon before I was certain of the moon. This was at one with all popular tradition. Modern minor poets are naturalists, and talk about the bush or the brook; but the singers of the old epics and fables were supernaturalists, and talked about the gods of brook and bush. That is what the moderns mean when they say that the ancients did not “appreciate Nature,” because they said that Nature was divine. Old nurses do not tell children about the grass, but about the fairies that dance on the grass; and the old Greeks could not see the trees for the dryads.

But I deal here with what ethic and philosophy come from being fed on fairy tales. If I were describing them in detail I could note many noble and healthy principles that arise from them. There is the chivalrous lesson of “Jack the Giant Killer”; that giants should be killed because they are gigantic. It is a manly mutiny against pride as such. For the rebel is older than all the kingdoms, and the Jacobin has more tradition than the Jacobite. There is the lesson of “Cinderella,” which is the same as that of the Magnificat—EXALTAVIT HUMILES. There is the great lesson of “Beauty and the Beast”; that a thing must be loved BEFORE it is loveable. There is the terrible allegory of the “Sleeping Beauty,” which tells how the human creature was blessed with all birthday gifts, yet cursed with death; and how death also may perhaps be softened to a sleep. But I am not concerned with any of the separate statutes of elfland, but with the whole spirit of its law, which I learnt before I could speak, and shall retain when I cannot write. I am concerned with a certain way of looking at life, which was created in me by the fairy tales, but has since been meekly ratified by the mere facts.

It might be stated this way. There are certain sequences or developments (cases of one thing following another), which are, in the true sense of the word, reasonable. They are, in the true sense of the word, necessary. Such are mathematical and merely logical sequences. We in fairyland (who are the most reasonable of all creatures) admit that reason and that necessity. For instance, if the Ugly Sisters are older than Cinderella, it is (in an iron and awful sense) NECESSARY that Cinderella is younger than the Ugly Sisters. There is no getting out of it. Haeckel may talk as much fatalism about that fact as he pleases: it really must be. If Jack is the son of a miller, a miller is the father of Jack. Cold reason decrees it from her awful throne: and we in fairyland submit. If the three brothers all ride horses, there are six animals and eighteen legs involved: that is true rationalism, and fairyland is full of it. But as I put my head over the hedge of the elves and began to take notice of the natural world, I observed an extraordinary thing. I observed that learned men in spectacles were talking of the actual things that happened—dawn and death and so on—as if THEY were rational and inevitable. They talked as if the fact that trees bear fruit were just as NECESSARY as the fact that two and one trees make three. But it is not. There is an enormous difference by the test of fairyland; which is the test of the imagination. You cannot IMAGINE two and one not making three. But you can easily imagine trees not growing fruit; you can imagine them growing golden candlesticks or tigers hanging on by the tail. These men in spectacles spoke much of a man named Newton, who was hit by an apple, and who discovered a law. But they could not be got to see the distinction between a true law, a law of reason, and the mere fact of apples falling. If the apple hit Newton’s nose, Newton’s nose hit the apple. That is a true necessity: because we cannot conceive the one occurring without the other. But we can quite well conceive the apple not falling on his nose; we can fancy it flying ardently through the air to hit some other nose, of which it had a more definite dislike. We have always in our fairy tales kept this sharp distinction between the science of mental relations, in which there really are laws, and the science of physical facts, in which there are no laws, but only weird repetitions. We believe in bodily miracles, but not in mental impossibilities. We believe that a Bean-stalk climbed up to Heaven; but that does not at all confuse our convictions on the philosophical question of how many beans make five.

Devo dunque premettere che, se ho avuto un pregiudizio, è stato sempre un pregiudizio in favore della democrazia, e perciò della tradizione. Prima ancora di giungere a qualsiasi principio teorico o logico, sono ben lieto di mettere in conto questa equazione personale; sono sempre stato più incline a prestar fede alla massa della gente che lavora sodo che non a quella particolare e molesta classe letteraria cui io stesso appartengo. Preferisco perfino le fantasie e i pregiudizi di coloro che vedono la vita dal di dentro alle più limpide dimostrazioni di coloro che la vedono dal di fuori. Mi fiderei sempre delle favole delle vecchie comari contro i fatti delle vecchie zitelle. Finché lo spirito è spirito nato in noi, può essere selvaggio quanto vuole.

Ora devo mettere insieme una posizione d’insieme, e non pretendo di avere alcuna dottrina in simili faccende. Mi propongo di farlo, dunque, scrivendo l’una dopo l’altra le tre o quattro idee fondamentali che ho scoperto da me, pressappoco nel modo in cui le ho scoperte. Poi le sintetizzerò alla buona, compendiando la mia filosofia personale, ossia la mia religione naturale; poi descriverò la mia sconcertante scoperta che il tutto era già stato scoperto prima. Era stato scoperto dal Cristianesimo. Ma di queste profonde convinzioni che devo esporre in ordine, la più antica riguardava proprio questo elemento della tradizione popolare. E senza la spiegazione precedente sul rapporto tra tradizione e democrazia difficilmente potrei rendere chiara la mia esperienza mentale. Così com’è, non so se riuscirò a renderla chiara, ma mi propongo ora di provarci.

La mia prima e ultima filosofia, quella in cui credo con certezza incrollabile, l’ho appresa nella stanza dei bambini. In genere l’ho appresa da una bambinaia; vale a dire dalla solenne e stellata sacerdotessa insieme della democrazia e della tradizione. Le cose in cui più credevo allora, le cose in cui più credo adesso, sono le cose chiamate fiabe. Mi sembrano le cose interamente ragionevoli. Non sono fantasie: al confronto sono le altre cose a essere fantastiche. Al confronto la religione e il razionalismo sono entrambi anormali, benché la religione sia anormalmente nel giusto e il razionalismo anormalmente nel torto. Il paese delle fate non è altro che il soleggiato paese del buon senso. Non è la terra a giudicare il cielo, ma il cielo a giudicare la terra; così, almeno per me, non era la terra a criticare il paese degli elfi, ma il paese degli elfi a criticare la terra. Conoscevo la magica pianta di fagioli prima di aver assaggiato i fagioli; ero certo dell’Uomo nella Luna prima di essere sicuro della luna. E questo era in perfetta armonia con tutta la tradizione popolare. I minori poeti moderni sono naturalisti, e parlano del cespuglio o del ruscello; ma i cantori degli antichi poemi epici e delle antiche favole erano soprannaturalisti, e parlavano degli dèi del ruscello e del cespuglio. È questo che intendono i moderni quando dicono che gli antichi non “apprezzavano la Natura”, poiché essi dicevano che la Natura era divina. Le vecchie bambinaie non raccontano ai bambini dell’erba, ma delle fate che danzano sull’erba; e i vecchi Greci, per le driadi, non riuscivano a vedere gli alberi.

Ma qui mi occupo di quale etica e quale filosofia derivino dall’essere allevati a fiabe. Se dovessi descriverle nei particolari potrei annotare molti principi nobili e sani che ne scaturiscono. C’è la cavalleresca lezione di «Jack l’ammazzagiganti»: che i giganti vanno uccisi appunto perché sono giganteschi. È una virile ribellione contro l’orgoglio come tale. Poiché il ribelle è più antico di tutti i regni, e il giacobino ha più tradizione del giacobita. C’è la lezione di «Cenerentola», che è la stessa del Magnificat: EXALTAVIT HUMILES. C’è la grande lezione della «Bella e la Bestia»: che una cosa deve essere amata PRIMA di essere amabile. C’è la terribile allegoria della «Bella addormentata», che racconta come la creatura umana fosse benedetta con tutti i doni della nascita, eppure maledetta con la morte; e come anche la morte possa forse addolcirsi in un sonno. Ma non mi occupo di alcuna delle singole leggi del paese degli elfi, bensì dell’intero spirito della sua legge, che ho appreso prima di saper parlare, e che conserverò quando non saprò più scrivere. Mi occupo di un certo modo di guardare alla vita, che le fiabe crearono in me, ma che da allora i semplici fatti hanno docilmente ratificato.

Lo si potrebbe formulare così. Vi sono certe sequenze o svolgimenti (casi di una cosa che segue a un’altra) che sono, nel vero senso della parola, ragionevoli. Sono, nel vero senso della parola, necessari. Tali sono le sequenze matematiche e puramente logiche. Noi del paese delle fate (che siamo le più ragionevoli di tutte le creature) ammettiamo quella ragione e quella necessità. Per esempio, se le Sorellastre sono più vecchie di Cenerentola, è (in un senso ferreo e tremendo) NECESSARIO che Cenerentola sia più giovane delle Sorellastre. Non c’è modo di uscirne. Haeckel può discorrere quanto gli pare di fatalismo intorno a questo fatto: davvero deve essere così. Se Jack è figlio di un mugnaio, un mugnaio è il padre di Jack. La fredda ragione lo decreta dal suo tremendo trono: e noi del paese delle fate ci sottomettiamo. Se i tre fratelli cavalcano tutti dei cavalli, vi sono sei animali e diciotto zampe in gioco: questo è vero razionalismo, e il paese delle fate ne è pieno. Ma quando sporsi la testa oltre la siepe degli elfi e cominciai a prender nota del mondo naturale, osservai una cosa straordinaria. Osservai che uomini dotti con gli occhiali parlavano delle cose reali che accadevano — l’alba, la morte e così via — come se ESSE fossero razionali e inevitabili. Parlavano come se il fatto che gli alberi portino frutti fosse altrettanto NECESSARIO quanto il fatto che due alberi più uno facciano tre. Ma non è così. C’è un’enorme differenza, alla prova del paese delle fate, che è la prova dell’immaginazione. Non puoi IMMAGINARE che due più uno non facciano tre. Ma puoi facilmente immaginare che gli alberi non producano frutti; puoi immaginarli mentre producono candelieri d’oro o tigri appese per la coda. Questi uomini con gli occhiali parlavano molto di un uomo di nome Newton, che fu colpito da una mela e che scoprì una legge. Ma non si riusciva a far loro vedere la distinzione fra una vera legge, una legge della ragione, e il semplice fatto che le mele cadano. Se la mela colpì il naso di Newton, il naso di Newton colpì la mela. Questa è una vera necessità: perché non possiamo concepire l’una senza l’altra. Ma possiamo benissimo concepire che la mela non cada sul suo naso; possiamo immaginarla mentre vola ardente per l’aria a colpire qualche altro naso, per il quale nutrisse un’antipatia più decisa. Nelle nostre fiabe abbiamo sempre mantenuto questa netta distinzione fra la scienza delle relazioni mentali, in cui vi sono davvero delle leggi, e la scienza dei fatti fisici, in cui non vi sono leggi, ma soltanto strane ripetizioni. Crediamo nei miracoli corporei, ma non nelle impossibilità mentali. Crediamo che una pianta di fagioli si sia arrampicata fino al Cielo; ma questo non confonde affatto le nostre convinzioni sulla questione filosofica di quanti fagioli facciano cinque.

Here is the peculiar perfection of tone and truth in the nursery tales. The man of science says, “Cut the stalk, and the apple will fall”; but he says it calmly, as if the one idea really led up to the other. The witch in the fairy tale says, “Blow the horn, and the ogre’s castle will fall”; but she does not say it as if it were something in which the effect obviously arose out of the cause. Doubtless she has given the advice to many champions, and has seen many castles fall, but she does not lose either her wonder or her reason. She does not muddle her head until it imagines a necessary mental connection between a horn and a falling tower. But the scientific men do muddle their heads, until they imagine a necessary mental connection between an apple leaving the tree and an apple reaching the ground. They do really talk as if they had found not only a set of marvellous facts, but a truth connecting those facts. They do talk as if the connection of two strange things physically connected them philosophically. They feel that because one incomprehensible thing constantly follows another incomprehensible thing the two together somehow make up a comprehensible thing. Two black riddles make a white answer.

In fairyland we avoid the word “law”; but in the land of science they are singularly fond of it. Thus they will call some interesting conjecture about how forgotten folks pronounced the alphabet, Grimm’s Law. But Grimm’s Law is far less intellectual than Grimm’s Fairy Tales. The tales are, at any rate, certainly tales; while the law is not a law. A law implies that we know the nature of the generalisation and enactment; not merely that we have noticed some of the effects. If there is a law that pick-pockets shall go to prison, it implies that there is an imaginable mental connection between the idea of prison and the idea of picking pockets. And we know what the idea is. We can say why we take liberty from a man who takes liberties. But we cannot say why an egg can turn into a chicken any more than we can say why a bear could turn into a fairy prince. As IDEAS, the egg and the chicken are further off from each other than the bear and the prince; for no egg in itself suggests a chicken, whereas some princes do suggest bears. Granted, then, that certain transformations do happen, it is essential that we should regard them in the philosophic manner of fairy tales, not in the unphilosophic manner of science and the “Laws of Nature.” When we are asked why eggs turn to birds or fruits fall in autumn, we must answer exactly as the fairy godmother would answer if Cinderella asked her why mice turned to horses or her clothes fell from her at twelve o’clock. We must answer that it is MAGIC. It is not a “law,” for we do not understand its general formula. It is not a necessity, for though we can count on it happening practically, we have no right to say that it must always happen. It is no argument for unalterable law (as Huxley fancied) that we count on the ordinary course of things. We do not count on it; we bet on it. We risk the remote possibility of a miracle as we do that of a poisoned pancake or a world-destroying comet. We leave it out of account, not because it is a miracle, and therefore an impossibility, but because it is a miracle, and therefore an exception. All the terms used in the science books, “law,” “necessity,” “order,” “tendency,” and so on, are really unintellectual, because they assume an inner synthesis, which we do not possess. The only words that ever satisfied me as describing Nature are the terms used in the fairy books, “charm,” “spell,” “enchantment.” They express the arbitrariness of the fact and its mystery. A tree grows fruit because it is a MAGIC tree. Water runs downhill because it is bewitched. The sun shines because it is bewitched.

I deny altogether that this is fantastic or even mystical. We may have some mysticism later on; but this fairy-tale language about things is simply rational and agnostic. It is the only way I can express in words my clear and definite perception that one thing is quite distinct from another; that there is no logical connection between flying and laying eggs. It is the man who talks about “a law” that he has never seen who is the mystic. Nay, the ordinary scientific man is strictly a sentimentalist. He is a sentimentalist in this essential sense, that he is soaked and swept away by mere associations. He has so often seen birds fly and lay eggs that he feels as if there must be some dreamy, tender connection between the two ideas, whereas there is none. A forlorn lover might be unable to dissociate the moon from lost love; so the materialist is unable to dissociate the moon from the tide. In both cases there is no connection, except that one has seen them together. A sentimentalist might shed tears at the smell of apple-blossom, because, by a dark association of his own, it reminded him of his boyhood. So the materialist professor (though he conceals his tears) is yet a sentimentalist, because, by a dark association of his own, apple-blossoms remind him of apples. But the cool rationalist from fairyland does not see why, in the abstract, the apple tree should not grow crimson tulips; it sometimes does in his country.

This elementary wonder, however, is not a mere fancy derived from the fairy tales; on the contrary, all the fire of the fairy tales is derived from this. Just as we all like love tales because there is an instinct of sex, we all like astonishing tales because they touch the nerve of the ancient instinct of astonishment. This is proved by the fact that when we are very young children we do not need fairy tales: we only need tales. Mere life is interesting enough. A child of seven is excited by being told that Tommy opened a door and saw a dragon. But a child of three is excited by being told that Tommy opened a door. Boys like romantic tales; but babies like realistic tales —because they find them romantic. In fact, a baby is about the only person, I should think, to whom a modern realistic novel could be read without boring him. This proves that even nursery tales only echo an almost pre-natal leap of interest and amazement. These tales say that apples were golden only to refresh the forgotten moment when we found that they were green. They make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water. I have said that this is wholly reasonable and even agnostic. And, indeed, on this point I am all for the higher agnosticism; its better name is Ignorance. We have all read in scientific books, and, indeed, in all romances, the story of the man who has forgotten his name. This man walks about the streets and can see and appreciate everything; only he cannot remember who he is. Well, every man is that man in the story. Every man has forgotten who he is. One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God; but thou shalt not know thyself. We are all under the same mental calamity; we have all forgotten our names. We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget.

Sta qui la singolare perfezione di tono e di verità delle storie che si raccontano ai bambini. L’uomo di scienza dice: «Recidi il picciolo, e la mela cadrà»; ma lo dice con tutta calma, come se l’una idea conducesse davvero all’altra. La strega della fiaba dice: «Suona il corno, e il castello dell’orco crollerà»; ma non lo dice come se si trattasse di qualcosa in cui l’effetto sorga con evidenza dalla causa. Senza dubbio ha dato quel consiglio a molti campioni, e ha visto crollare molti castelli, eppure non perde né il suo stupore né la sua ragione. Non s’imbroglia la testa fino a immaginare un nesso mentale necessario fra un corno e una torre che precipita. Ma gli uomini di scienza sì che s’imbrogliano la testa, fino a immaginare un nesso mentale necessario fra una mela che lascia l’albero e una mela che raggiunge il suolo. Parlano davvero come se avessero scoperto non soltanto un insieme di fatti meravigliosi, ma una verità che li collega. Parlano davvero come se il collegamento di due cose strane le collegasse filosoficamente. Sentono che, poiché una cosa incomprensibile segue di continuo un’altra cosa incomprensibile, le due insieme in qualche modo compongano una cosa comprensibile. Due enigmi neri fanno una risposta bianca.

Nel paese delle fate evitiamo la parola «legge»; ma nel paese della scienza le sono singolarmente affezionati. Così chiamano una qualche curiosa congettura su come pronunciassero l’alfabeto genti ormai dimenticate: la legge di Grimm. Ma la legge di Grimm è assai meno intellettuale delle fiabe di Grimm. Le fiabe sono, in ogni caso, certamente fiabe; mentre la legge non è una legge. Una legge implica che si conosca la natura della generalizzazione e della sanzione; non soltanto che si siano notati alcuni degli effetti. Se c’è una legge per cui i borsaioli debbano andare in prigione, essa implica che vi sia un immaginabile nesso mentale fra l’idea della prigione e l’idea di rubare nelle tasche altrui. E sappiamo qual è quell’idea. Sappiamo dire perché togliamo la libertà a un uomo che si prende delle libertà. Ma non sappiamo dire perché un uovo possa mutarsi in un pulcino, non più di quanto sappiamo dire perché un orso possa mutarsi in un principe delle fate. Come IDEE, l’uovo e il pulcino sono più lontani l’uno dall’altro di quanto lo siano l’orso e il principe; poiché nessun uovo di per sé suggerisce un pulcino, mentre certi principi qualcosa dell’orso lo suggeriscono. Ammesso, dunque, che certe trasformazioni avvengano davvero, è essenziale che le si consideri alla maniera filosofica delle fiabe, e non alla maniera antifilosofica della scienza e delle «leggi di Natura». Quando ci si chiede perché le uova diventino uccelli o i frutti cadano in autunno, dobbiamo rispondere esattamente come risponderebbe la fata madrina se Cenerentola le domandasse perché i topi diventino cavalli o le sue vesti le cadano di dosso a mezzanotte. Dobbiamo rispondere che è MAGIA. Non è una «legge», poiché non ne comprendiamo la formula generale. Non è una necessità, poiché, per quanto in pratica possiamo contarci, non abbiamo alcun diritto di dire che debba sempre accadere. Non è affatto un argomento a favore di una legge inalterabile (come s’immaginava Huxley) il fatto che contiamo sull’ordinario corso delle cose. Non ci contiamo: ci scommettiamo. Corriamo il rischio della remota possibilità di un miracolo così come corriamo quello di una frittella avvelenata o di una cometa che distrugga il mondo. Lo lasciamo fuori dal calcolo non perché sia un miracolo, e dunque un’impossibilità, ma perché è un miracolo, e dunque un’eccezione. Tutti i termini usati nei libri di scienza, «legge», «necessità», «ordine», «tendenza», e via dicendo, sono in realtà privi d’intelletto, perché presuppongono una sintesi interiore che noi non possediamo. Le uniche parole che mai mi abbiano soddisfatto come descrizione della Natura sono i termini usati nei libri di fiabe: «incantesimo», «formula magica», «malia». Esse esprimono l’arbitrarietà del fatto e il suo mistero. Un albero produce frutti perché è un albero MAGICO. L’acqua scorre in giù perché è stregata. Il sole splende perché è stregato.

Nego del tutto che questo sia fantastico o anche solo mistico. Potremo avere un po’ di misticismo più avanti; ma questo linguaggio fiabesco intorno alle cose è semplicemente razionale e agnostico. È l’unico modo in cui posso esprimere a parole la mia chiara e precisa percezione che una cosa è del tutto distinta da un’altra; che non c’è alcun nesso logico fra il volare e il fare le uova. È l’uomo che parla di «una legge» che non ha mai visto a essere il mistico. Anzi, l’uomo di scienza ordinario è a rigore un sentimentale. È un sentimentale in questo senso essenziale: che è impregnato e travolto da semplici associazioni. Ha visto così spesso gli uccelli volare e fare le uova, che sente come se dovesse esistere un qualche sognante, tenero legame fra le due idee, mentre non ce n’è alcuno. Un amante abbandonato potrebbe non riuscire a dissociare la luna dall’amore perduto; così il materialista non riesce a dissociare la luna dalla marea. In entrambi i casi non c’è alcun nesso, se non che le si è viste insieme. Un sentimentale potrebbe versare lacrime al profumo dei fiori di melo, perché, per una sua oscura associazione, gli ricorda la fanciullezza. Così il professore materialista (sebbene nasconda le lacrime) è pur sempre un sentimentale, perché, per una sua oscura associazione, i fiori di melo gli ricordano le mele. Ma il freddo razionalista venuto dal paese delle fate non vede perché, in astratto, il melo non dovrebbe produrre tulipani cremisi; nel suo paese talvolta accade.

Questo stupore elementare, tuttavia, non è una semplice fantasia derivata dalle fiabe; al contrario, tutto il fuoco delle fiabe deriva da esso. Proprio come tutti amiamo le storie d’amore perché c’è un istinto del sesso, tutti amiamo le storie stupefacenti perché toccano il nervo dell’antico istinto dello stupore. Lo prova il fatto che, quando siamo bambini piccolissimi, non abbiamo bisogno di fiabe: ci bastano le storie. La semplice vita è già abbastanza interessante. Un bambino di sette anni si eccita a sentirsi dire che Tommy aprì una porta e vide un drago. Ma un bambino di tre anni si eccita a sentirsi dire che Tommy aprì una porta. I ragazzi amano le storie romantiche; ma i lattanti amano le storie realistiche, perché le trovano romantiche. In effetti, un lattante è, credo, press’a poco l’unica persona a cui si potrebbe leggere un moderno romanzo realistico senza annoiarla. Il che prova che perfino le storie da bambini non fanno che riecheggiare un balzo di interesse e di meraviglia quasi prenatale. Queste storie dicono che le mele erano d’oro solo per ravvivare il momento dimenticato in cui scoprimmo che erano verdi. Fanno scorrere i fiumi di vino solo per farci ricordare, per un istante selvaggio, che scorrono d’acqua. Ho detto che tutto questo è pienamente ragionevole e persino agnostico. E, in effetti, su questo punto sono tutto per l’agnosticismo superiore; il cui nome migliore è Ignoranza. Abbiamo tutti letto, nei libri di scienza e, invero, in ogni romanzo, la storia dell’uomo che ha dimenticato il proprio nome. Costui va in giro per le strade e sa vedere e apprezzare ogni cosa; solo, non riesce a ricordare chi sia. Ebbene, ogni uomo è quell’uomo della storia. Ogni uomo ha dimenticato chi è. Si può comprendere il cosmo, ma mai l’io; il sé è più lontano di qualsiasi stella. Amerai il Signore Dio tuo; ma non conoscerai te stesso. Siamo tutti sotto la medesima calamità mentale; abbiamo tutti dimenticato il nostro nome. Abbiamo tutti dimenticato ciò che realmente siamo. Tutto ciò che chiamiamo buon senso e razionalità e senso pratico e positivismo significa soltanto che, per certi piani morti della nostra vita, dimentichiamo di aver dimenticato. Tutto ciò che chiamiamo spirito e arte ed estasi significa soltanto che, per un solo istante terribile, ricordiamo di dimenticare.

But though (like the man without memory in the novel) we walk the streets with a sort of half-witted admiration, still it is admiration. It is admiration in English and not only admiration in Latin. The wonder has a positive element of praise. This is the next milestone to be definitely marked on our road through fairyland. I shall speak in the next chapter about optimists and pessimists in their intellectual aspect, so far as they have one. Here I am only trying to describe the enormous emotions which cannot be described. And the strongest emotion was that life was as precious as it was puzzling. It was an ecstasy because it was an adventure; it was an adventure because it was an opportunity. The goodness of the fairy tale was not affected by the fact that there might be more dragons than princesses; it was good to be in a fairy tale. The test of all happiness is gratitude; and I felt grateful, though I hardly knew to whom. Children are grateful when Santa Claus puts in their stockings gifts of toys or sweets. Could I not be grateful to Santa Claus when he put in my stockings the gift of two miraculous legs? We thank people for birthday presents of cigars and slippers. Can I thank no one for the birthday present of birth?

There were, then, these two first feelings, indefensible and indisputable. The world was a shock, but it was not merely shocking; existence was a surprise, but it was a pleasant surprise. In fact, all my first views were exactly uttered in a riddle that stuck in my brain from boyhood. The question was, “What did the first frog say?” And the answer was, “Lord, how you made me jump!” That says succinctly all that I am saying. God made the frog jump; but the frog prefers jumping. But when these things are settled there enters the second great principle of the fairy philosophy.

Any one can see it who will simply read “Grimm’s Fairy Tales” or the fine collections of Mr. Andrew Lang. For the pleasure of pedantry I will call it the Doctrine of Conditional Joy. Touchstone talked of much virtue in an “if”; according to elfin ethics all virtue is in an “if.” The note of the fairy utterance always is, “You may live in a palace of gold and sapphire, if you do not say the word ‘cow’”; or “You may live happily with the King’s daughter, if you do not show her an onion.” The vision always hangs upon a veto. All the dizzy and colossal things conceded depend upon one small thing withheld. All the wild and whirling things that are let loose depend upon one thing that is forbidden. Mr. W.B.Yeats, in his exquisite and piercing elfin poetry, describes the elves as lawless; they plunge in innocent anarchy on the unbridled horses of the air—

“Ride on the crest of the dishevelled tide, And dance upon the mountains like a flame.”

It is a dreadful thing to say that Mr. W.B.Yeats does not understand fairyland. But I do say it. He is an ironical Irishman, full of intellectual reactions. He is not stupid enough to understand fairyland. Fairies prefer people of the yokel type like myself; people who gape and grin and do as they are told. Mr. Yeats reads into elfland all the righteous insurrection of his own race. But the lawlessness of Ireland is a Christian lawlessness, founded on reason and justice. The Fenian is rebelling against something he understands only too well; but the true citizen of fairyland is obeying something that he does not understand at all. In the fairy tale an incomprehensible happiness rests upon an incomprehensible condition. A box is opened, and all evils fly out. A word is forgotten, and cities perish. A lamp is lit, and love flies away. A flower is plucked, and human lives are forfeited. An apple is eaten, and the hope of God is gone.

This is the tone of fairy tales, and it is certainly not lawlessness or even liberty, though men under a mean modern tyranny may think it liberty by comparison. People out of Portland Gaol might think Fleet Street free; but closer study will prove that both fairies and journalists are the slaves of duty. Fairy godmothers seem at least as strict as other godmothers. Cinderella received a coach out of Wonderland and a coachman out of nowhere, but she received a command—which might have come out of Brixton—that she should be back by twelve. Also, she had a glass slipper; and it cannot be a coincidence that glass is so common a substance in folk-lore. This princess lives in a glass castle, that princess on a glass hill; this one sees all things in a mirror; they may all live in glass houses if they will not throw stones. For this thin glitter of glass everywhere is the expression of the fact that the happiness is bright but brittle, like the substance most easily smashed by a housemaid or a cat. And this fairy-tale sentiment also sank into me and became my sentiment towards the whole world. I felt and feel that life itself is as bright as the diamond, but as brittle as the window-pane; and when the heavens were compared to the terrible crystal I can remember a shudder. I was afraid that God would drop the cosmos with a crash.

Remember, however, that to be breakable is not the same as to be perishable. Strike a glass, and it will not endure an instant; simply do not strike it, and it will endure a thousand years. Such, it seemed, was the joy of man, either in elfland or on earth; the happiness depended on NOT DOING SOMETHING which you could at any moment do and which, very often, it was not obvious why you should not do. Now, the point here is that to ME this did not seem unjust. If the miller’s third son said to the fairy, “Explain why I must not stand on my head in the fairy palace,” the other might fairly reply, “Well, if it comes to that, explain the fairy palace.” If Cinderella says, “How is it that I must leave the ball at twelve?” her godmother might answer, “How is it that you are going there till twelve?” If I leave a man in my will ten talking elephants and a hundred winged horses, he cannot complain if the conditions partake of the slight eccentricity of the gift. He must not look a winged horse in the mouth. And it seemed to me that existence was itself so very eccentric a legacy that I could not complain of not understanding the limitations of the vision when I did not understand the vision they limited. The frame was no stranger than the picture. The veto might well be as wild as the vision; it might be as startling as the sun, as elusive as the waters, as fantastic and terrible as the towering trees.

Ma, per quanto (come l’uomo senza memoria del romanzo) noi si percorra le strade con una sorta di ammirazione istupidita, resta pur sempre ammirazione. È ammirazione in inglese e non soltanto ammirazione in latino. Lo stupore contiene un elemento positivo di lode. Ecco la prossima pietra miliare da segnare con precisione lungo la nostra strada attraverso il paese delle fate. Nel capitolo seguente parlerò degli ottimisti e dei pessimisti nel loro aspetto intellettuale, per quel poco che ne hanno. Qui mi limito a tentare di descrivere le smisurate emozioni che non si possono descrivere. E l’emozione più forte era che la vita fosse tanto preziosa quanto sconcertante. Era un’estasi perché era un’avventura; era un’avventura perché era un’occasione. La bontà della fiaba non era intaccata dal fatto che potessero esserci più draghi che principesse; era bello trovarsi dentro una fiaba. La prova di ogni felicità è la gratitudine; e io mi sentivo grato, benché a stento sapessi verso chi. I bambini sono grati quando Babbo Natale mette nelle loro calze doni di giocattoli o di dolciumi. Non potevo forse essere grato a Babbo Natale quando mi metteva nelle calze il dono di due gambe miracolose? Ringraziamo la gente per i regali di compleanno di sigari e pantofole. Non posso ringraziare nessuno per il regalo di compleanno della nascita?

C’erano dunque questi due primi sentimenti, indifendibili e indiscutibili. Il mondo era uno shock, ma non era semplicemente sconvolgente; l’esistenza era una sorpresa, ma era una sorpresa piacevole. In verità, tutte le mie prime visioni erano espresse esattamente in un indovinello che mi si era conficcato nel cervello fin dalla fanciullezza. La domanda era: «Che cosa disse la prima rana?». E la risposta era: «Signore, come mi hai fatto saltare!». Questo dice succintamente tutto ciò che io sto dicendo. Dio fece saltare la rana; ma la rana preferisce saltare. Ma quando queste cose sono stabilite, ecco entrare in scena il secondo grande principio della filosofia fatata.

Chiunque può scorgerlo, purché legga anche solo le «Fiabe dei Grimm» o le belle raccolte del signor Andrew Lang. Per il gusto della pedanteria lo chiamerò la Dottrina della Gioia Condizionata. Touchstone parlava di molta virtù racchiusa in un «se»; secondo l’etica degli elfi tutta la virtù sta in un «se». La cifra dell’annuncio fatato è sempre: «Potrai vivere in un palazzo d’oro e di zaffiro, purché tu non pronunci la parola ‘mucca’»; oppure «Potrai vivere felice con la figlia del Re, purché tu non le mostri una cipolla». La visione è sempre appesa a un divieto. Tutte le vertiginose e colossali cose concesse dipendono da una piccola cosa negata. Tutte le cose selvagge e turbinose che vengono lasciate libere dipendono da una sola cosa che è proibita. Il signor W.B. Yeats, nella sua squisita e penetrante poesia elfica, descrive gli elfi come senza legge; essi si gettano in una anarchia innocente sui cavalli sfrenati dell’aria…

«Cavalca sulla cresta dell’onda scarmigliata, e danza sulle montagne come una fiamma».

È una cosa terribile dire che il signor W.B. Yeats non comprende il paese delle fate. Ma io lo dico. È un irlandese ironico, pieno di reazioni intellettuali. Non è abbastanza sciocco da comprendere il paese delle fate. Le fate preferiscono le persone del tipo villano come me; gente che sta a bocca aperta, sogghigna e fa ciò che le si dice. Il signor Yeats legge nel paese degli elfi tutta la giusta insurrezione della propria razza. Ma l’illegalità dell’Irlanda è un’illegalità cristiana, fondata sulla ragione e sulla giustizia. Il feniano si ribella contro qualcosa che comprende fin troppo bene; ma il vero cittadino del paese delle fate obbedisce a qualcosa che non comprende affatto. Nella fiaba una felicità incomprensibile riposa su una condizione incomprensibile. Si apre una scatola, e tutti i mali ne volano fuori. Si dimentica una parola, e le città periscono. Si accende una lampada, e l’amore vola via. Si coglie un fiore, e vite umane sono perdute. Si mangia una mela, e la speranza di Dio è svanita.

Questo è il tono delle fiabe, e non è certo illegalità né tantomeno libertà, per quanto uomini soggetti a una meschina tirannia moderna possano crederla libertà per contrasto. Chi esce dal carcere di Portland potrebbe credere libera Fleet Street; ma uno studio più attento proverà che tanto le fate quanto i giornalisti sono schiavi del dovere. Le fate madrine appaiono almeno altrettanto severe delle altre madrine. Cenerentola ricevette una carrozza uscita dal Paese delle Meraviglie e un cocchiere venuto dal nulla, ma ricevette anche un comando — che avrebbe potuto venire da Brixton — ossia di essere di ritorno entro la mezzanotte. Aveva inoltre una scarpetta di vetro; e non può essere un caso che il vetro sia una sostanza tanto comune nel folklore. Questa principessa vive in un castello di vetro, quella su una collina di vetro; questa vede ogni cosa in uno specchio; possono tutte abitare in case di vetro, purché non tirino sassi. Poiché questo sottile luccichio di vetro dappertutto è l’espressione del fatto che la felicità è splendente ma fragile, come la sostanza più facilmente mandata in frantumi da una domestica o da un gatto. E anche questo sentimento fiabesco mi penetrò dentro e divenne il mio sentimento verso il mondo intero. Sentivo e sento che la vita stessa è splendente come il diamante, ma fragile come il vetro di una finestra; e quando i cieli venivano paragonati al cristallo terribile, mi ricordo un brivido. Avevo paura che Dio lasciasse cadere il cosmo con un fracasso.

Si ricordi, però, che essere frangibile non è la stessa cosa che essere perituro. Percuoti un vetro, e non durerà un istante; semplicemente non percuoterlo, e durerà mille anni. Tale, così pareva, era la gioia dell’uomo, sia nel paese degli elfi sia sulla terra; la felicità dipendeva dal NON FARE QUALCOSA che tu potevi in qualunque momento fare e per cui, assai spesso, non era ovvio il perché non lo dovessi fare. Ora, il punto qui è che a ME questo non pareva ingiusto. Se il terzo figlio del mugnaio diceva alla fata: «Spiegami perché non devo mettermi a testa in giù nel palazzo delle fate», l’altra poteva giustamente rispondere: «Beh, se è per questo, spiegami tu il palazzo delle fate». Se Cenerentola dice: «Come mai devo lasciare il ballo a mezzanotte?», la sua madrina potrebbe rispondere: «Come mai ci vai fino a mezzanotte?». Se lascio in eredità a un uomo dieci elefanti parlanti e cento cavalli alati, egli non può lamentarsi se le condizioni partecipano della lieve eccentricità del dono. Non deve guardare in bocca un cavallo alato. E mi pareva che l’esistenza fosse essa stessa un’eredità così eccentrica che non potevo lamentarmi di non comprendere i limiti della visione, quando non comprendevo la visione che essi limitavano. La cornice non era più strana del quadro. Il divieto poteva ben essere selvaggio quanto la visione; poteva essere sconvolgente come il sole, sfuggente come le acque, fantastico e terribile come gli alberi torreggianti.

For this reason (we may call it the fairy godmother philosophy) I never could join the young men of my time in feeling what they called the general sentiment of REVOLT. I should have resisted, let us hope, any rules that were evil, and with these and their definition I shall deal in another chapter. But I did not feel disposed to resist any rule merely because it was mysterious. Estates are sometimes held by foolish forms, the breaking of a stick or the payment of a peppercorn: I was willing to hold the huge estate of earth and heaven by any such feudal fantasy. It could not well be wilder than the fact that I was allowed to hold it at all. At this stage I give only one ethical instance to show my meaning. I could never mix in the common murmur of that rising generation against monogamy, because no restriction on sex seemed so odd and unexpected as sex itself. To be allowed, like Endymion, to make love to the moon and then to complain that Jupiter kept his own moons in a harem seemed to me (bred on fairy tales like Endymion’s) a vulgar anti-climax. Keeping to one woman is a small price for so much as seeing one woman. To complain that I could only be married once was like complaining that I had only been born once. It was incommensurate with the terrible excitement of which one was talking. It showed, not an exaggerated sensibility to sex, but a curious insensibility to it. A man is a fool who complains that he cannot enter Eden by five gates at once. Polygamy is a lack of the realization of sex; it is like a man plucking five pears in mere absence of mind. The aesthetes touched the last insane limits of language in their eulogy on lovely things. The thistledown made them weep; a burnished beetle brought them to their knees. Yet their emotion never impressed me for an instant, for this reason, that it never occurred to them to pay for their pleasure in any sort of symbolic sacrifice. Men (I felt) might fast forty days for the sake of hearing a blackbird sing. Men might go through fire to find a cowslip. Yet these lovers of beauty could not even keep sober for the blackbird. They would not go through common Christian marriage by way of recompense to the cowslip. Surely one might pay for extraordinary joy in ordinary morals. Oscar Wilde said that sunsets were not valued because we could not pay for sunsets. But Oscar Wilde was wrong; we can pay for sunsets. We can pay for them by not being Oscar Wilde.

Well, I left the fairy tales lying on the floor of the nursery, and I have not found any books so sensible since. I left the nurse guardian of tradition and democracy, and I have not found any modern type so sanely radical or so sanely conservative. But the matter for important comment was here: that when I first went out into the mental atmosphere of the modern world, I found that the modern world was positively opposed on two points to my nurse and to the nursery tales. It has taken me a long time to find out that the modern world is wrong and my nurse was right. The really curious thing was this: that modern thought contradicted this basic creed of my boyhood on its two most essential doctrines. I have explained that the fairy tales founded in me two convictions; first, that this world is a wild and startling place, which might have been quite different, but which is quite delightful; second, that before this wildness and delight one may well be modest and submit to the queerest limitations of so queer a kindness. But I found the whole modern world running like a high tide against both my tendernesses; and the shock of that collision created two sudden and spontaneous sentiments, which I have had ever since and which, crude as they were, have since hardened into convictions.

First, I found the whole modern world talking scientific fatalism; saying that everything is as it must always have been, being unfolded without fault from the beginning. The leaf on the tree is green because it could never have been anything else. Now, the fairy-tale philosopher is glad that the leaf is green precisely because it might have been scarlet. He feels as if it had turned green an instant before he looked at it. He is pleased that snow is white on the strictly reasonable ground that it might have been black. Every colour has in it a bold quality as of choice; the red of garden roses is not only decisive but dramatic, like suddenly spilt blood. He feels that something has been DONE. But the great determinists of the nineteenth century were strongly against this native feeling that something had happened an instant before. In fact, according to them, nothing ever really had happened since the beginning of the world. Nothing ever had happened since existence had happened; and even about the date of that they were not very sure.

The modern world as I found it was solid for modern Calvinism, for the necessity of things being as they are. But when I came to ask them I found they had really no proof of this unavoidable repetition in things except the fact that the things were repeated. Now, the mere repetition made the things to me rather more weird than more rational. It was as if, having seen a curiously shaped nose in the street and dismissed it as an accident, I had then seen six other noses of the same astonishing shape. I should have fancied for a moment that it must be some local secret society. So one elephant having a trunk was odd; but all elephants having trunks looked like a plot. I speak here only of an emotion, and of an emotion at once stubborn and subtle. But the repetition in Nature seemed sometimes to be an excited repetition, like that of an angry schoolmaster saying the same thing over and over again. The grass seemed signalling to me with all its fingers at once; the crowded stars seemed bent upon being understood. The sun would make me see him if he rose a thousand times. The recurrences of the universe rose to the maddening rhythm of an incantation, and I began to see an idea.

Per questa ragione (possiamo chiamarla la filosofia della fata madrina) non ho mai potuto unirmi ai giovani del mio tempo nel provare ciò che essi chiamavano il sentimento generale della RIVOLTA. Avrei resistito, voglio sperare, a qualunque regola fosse malvagia, e di queste e della loro definizione mi occuperò in un altro capitolo. Ma non mi sentivo disposto a resistere a una regola solo perché era misteriosa. I feudi talvolta si tengono in virtù di forme insensate, la rottura di un bastoncello o il pagamento di un grano di pepe: io ero disposto a tenere l’immenso feudo della terra e del cielo in virtù di una qualunque simile fantasia feudale. Non poteva certo essere più stravagante del fatto che mi fosse concesso di tenerlo affatto. A questo punto adduco un solo esempio etico per mostrare ciò che intendo. Non ho mai potuto unirmi al comune mormorio di quella generazione nascente contro la monogamia, perché nessuna restrizione riguardo al sesso mi pareva tanto strana e inaspettata quanto il sesso stesso. Poter essere ammesso, come Endimione, a fare l’amore con la luna, e poi lamentarsi che Giove tenesse le proprie lune in un harem, mi sembrava (nutrito com’ero di fiabe come quella di Endimione) un volgare anticlimax. Restar fedele a una sola donna è un piccolo prezzo anche solo per vedere una donna. Lamentarsi di potermi sposare una volta sola era come lamentarsi di esser nato una volta sola. Era incommensurabile con la terribile emozione di cui si parlava. Rivelava non una sensibilità esagerata al sesso, ma una curiosa insensibilità ad esso. È uno sciocco l’uomo che si lamenta di non poter entrare nell’Eden per cinque porte alla volta. La poligamia è una mancanza di consapevolezza del sesso; è come uno che colga cinque pere in pura distrazione. Gli esteti toccarono gli ultimi folli limiti del linguaggio nel loro elogio delle cose belle. Il pappo del cardo li faceva piangere; uno scarabeo lucente li faceva cadere in ginocchio. Eppure la loro emozione non mi impressionò mai per un istante, e per questa ragione: che non veniva loro in mente di pagare il proprio piacere con una qualche sorta di sacrificio simbolico. Gli uomini (sentivo) potrebbero digiunare quaranta giorni pur di udir cantare un merlo. Gli uomini potrebbero attraversare il fuoco per trovare una primula. Eppure questi amanti della bellezza non riuscivano nemmeno a restar sobri per il merlo. Non volevano affrontare il comune matrimonio cristiano per rendere il dovuto alla primula. Certo si potrebbe pagare una gioia straordinaria con una morale ordinaria. Oscar Wilde disse che i tramonti non erano apprezzati perché non potevamo pagarli. Ma Oscar Wilde si sbagliava; noi possiamo pagare i tramonti. Possiamo pagarli non essendo Oscar Wilde.

Ebbene, lasciai le fiabe sparse sul pavimento della stanza dei bambini, e da allora non ho più trovato libri altrettanto sensati. Lasciai la bambinaia, custode della tradizione e della democrazia, e non ho più trovato alcun tipo moderno tanto sanamente radicale o tanto sanamente conservatore. Ma ciò che merita un commento importante era questo: che quando uscii per la prima volta nell’atmosfera mentale del mondo moderno, scoprii che il mondo moderno si opponeva positivamente su due punti alla mia bambinaia e alle fiabe della nursery. Mi ci è voluto molto tempo per scoprire che il mondo moderno ha torto e la mia bambinaia aveva ragione. La cosa davvero curiosa era questa: che il pensiero moderno contraddiceva questo credo fondamentale della mia fanciullezza nelle sue due dottrine più essenziali. Ho spiegato che le fiabe fondarono in me due convinzioni: primo, che questo mondo è un luogo selvaggio e sorprendente, che avrebbe potuto essere ben diverso, ma che è del tutto delizioso; secondo, che dinanzi a questa selvatichezza e a questa delizia si può ben essere modesti e sottomettersi alle più bizzarre limitazioni di una così bizzarra benevolenza. Ma trovai il mondo moderno intero che scorreva come un’alta marea contro entrambe queste mie tenerezze; e l’urto di quella collisione generò due sentimenti improvvisi e spontanei, che ho avuto da allora in poi e che, per quanto grezzi fossero, si sono da allora induriti in convinzioni.

Primo, trovai il mondo moderno intero a parlare di fatalismo scientifico; a dire che tutto è come dev’essere sempre stato, dispiegandosi senza errore fin dal principio. La foglia sull’albero è verde perché non avrebbe mai potuto essere altro. Ora, il filosofo delle fiabe si rallegra che la foglia sia verde proprio perché avrebbe potuto essere scarlatta. Si sente come se essa fosse divenuta verde un istante prima ch’egli la guardasse. È lieto che la neve sia bianca sulla base rigorosamente razionale che avrebbe potuto essere nera. Ogni colore ha in sé una qualità ardita, come di scelta; il rosso delle rose di giardino non è solo deciso ma drammatico, come sangue improvvisamente versato. Egli sente che qualcosa è stato FATTO. Ma i grandi deterministi del diciannovesimo secolo erano fortemente contrari a questa sensazione istintiva che qualcosa fosse accaduto un istante prima. Anzi, secondo loro, nulla era mai realmente accaduto dall’inizio del mondo. Nulla era mai accaduto da quando era accaduta l’esistenza; e persino sulla data di ciò non erano molto sicuri.

Il mondo moderno, così come lo trovai, era compatto a favore di un calvinismo moderno, della necessità che le cose siano come sono. Ma quando venni a interrogarli, scoprii che in realtà non avevano alcuna prova di questa inevitabile ripetizione delle cose, se non il fatto che le cose si ripetevano. Ora, la mera ripetizione rendeva per me le cose più bizzarre, non più razionali. Era come se, avendo visto un naso di forma curiosa per la strada e avendolo liquidato come un caso, avessi poi visto altri sei nasi della stessa stupefacente forma. Avrei immaginato per un momento che dovesse trattarsi di qualche società segreta locale. Così un elefante con la proboscide era strano; ma tutti gli elefanti con la proboscide avevano l’aria di un complotto. Parlo qui soltanto di un’emozione, e di un’emozione al tempo stesso ostinata e sottile. Ma la ripetizione nella Natura mi sembrava talvolta una ripetizione concitata, come quella di un maestro adirato che dice la stessa cosa più e più volte. L’erba pareva farmi segnali con tutte le sue dita insieme; le stelle affollate parevano decise a farsi comprendere. Il sole mi avrebbe costretto a vederlo, fosse sorto mille volte. Le ricorrenze dell’universo salivano al ritmo folle di un incantesimo, e cominciai a intravedere un’idea.

All the towering materialism which dominates the modern mind rests ultimately upon one assumption; a false assumption. It is supposed that if a thing goes on repeating itself it is probably dead; a piece of clockwork. People feel that if the universe was personal it would vary; if the sun were alive it would dance. This is a fallacy even in relation to known fact. For the variation in human affairs is generally brought into them, not by life, but by death; by the dying down or breaking off of their strength or desire. A man varies his movements because of some slight element of failure or fatigue. He gets into an omnibus because he is tired of walking; or he walks because he is tired of sitting still. But if his life and joy were so gigantic that he never tired of going to Islington, he might go to Islington as regularly as the Thames goes to Sheerness. The very speed and ecstasy of his life would have the stillness of death. The sun rises every morning. I do not rise every morning; but the variation is due not to my activity, but to my inaction. Now, to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life. The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical ENCORE. Heaven may ENCORE the bird who laid an egg. If the human being conceives and brings forth a human child instead of bringing forth a fish, or a bat, or a griffin, the reason may not be that we are fixed in an animal fate without life or purpose. It may be that our little tragedy has touched the gods, that they admire it from their starry galleries, and that at the end of every human drama man is called again and again before the curtain. Repetition may go on for millions of years, by mere choice, and at any instant it may stop. Man may stand on the earth generation after generation, and yet each birth be his positively last appearance.

This was my first conviction; made by the shock of my childish emotions meeting the modern creed in mid-career. I had always vaguely felt facts to be miracles in the sense that they are wonderful: now I began to think them miracles in the stricter sense that they were WILFUL. I mean that they were, or might be, repeated exercises of some will. In short, I had always believed that the world involved magic: now I thought that perhaps it involved a magician. And this pointed a profound emotion always present and sub-conscious; that this world of ours has some purpose; and if there is a purpose, there is a person. I had always felt life first as a story: and if there is a story there is a story-teller.

But modern thought also hit my second human tradition. It went against the fairy feeling about strict limits and conditions. The one thing it loved to talk about was expansion and largeness. Herbert Spencer would have been greatly annoyed if any one had called him an imperialist, and therefore it is highly regrettable that nobody did. But he was an imperialist of the lowest type. He popularized this contemptible notion that the size of the solar system ought to over-awe the spiritual dogma of man. Why should a man surrender his dignity to the solar system any more than to a whale? If mere size proves that man is not the image of God, then a whale may be the image of God; a somewhat formless image; what one might call an impressionist portrait. It is quite futile to argue that man is small compared to the cosmos; for man was always small compared to the nearest tree. But Herbert Spencer, in his headlong imperialism, would insist that we had in some way been conquered and annexed by the astronomical universe. He spoke about men and their ideals exactly as the most insolent Unionist talks about the Irish and their ideals. He turned mankind into a small nationality. And his evil influence can be seen even in the most spirited and honourable of later scientific authors; notably in the early romances of Mr. H.G.Wells. Many moralists have in an exaggerated way represented the earth as wicked. But Mr. Wells and his school made the heavens wicked. We should lift up our eyes to the stars from whence would come our ruin.

But the expansion of which I speak was much more evil than all this. I have remarked that the materialist, like the madman, is in prison; in the prison of one thought. These people seemed to think it singularly inspiring to keep on saying that the prison was very large. The size of this scientific universe gave one no novelty, no relief. The cosmos went on for ever, but not in its wildest constellation could there be anything really interesting; anything, for instance, such as forgiveness or free will. The grandeur or infinity of the secret of its cosmos added nothing to it. It was like telling a prisoner in Reading gaol that he would be glad to hear that the gaol now covered half the county. The warder would have nothing to show the man except more and more long corridors of stone lit by ghastly lights and empty of all that is human. So these expanders of the universe had nothing to show us except more and more infinite corridors of space lit by ghastly suns and empty of all that is divine.

Tutto il torreggiante materialismo che domina la mente moderna riposa in ultima analisi su un solo presupposto: un presupposto falso. Si suppone che una cosa, se continua a ripetersi, sia probabilmente morta; un congegno a orologeria. La gente sente che, se l’universo fosse personale, varierebbe; che se il sole fosse vivo, si metterebbe a danzare. È una fallacia perfino rispetto ai fatti noti. Perché la variazione nelle vicende umane vi è introdotta, di regola, non dalla vita, ma dalla morte; dallo spegnersi o dallo spezzarsi della loro forza o del loro desiderio. Un uomo varia i propri movimenti a causa di qualche lieve elemento di insuccesso o di stanchezza. Sale su un omnibus perché è stanco di camminare; oppure cammina perché è stanco di stare seduto. Ma se la sua vita e la sua gioia fossero tanto gigantesche da non stancarsi mai di andare a Islington, egli andrebbe a Islington con la stessa regolarità con cui il Tamigi va a Sheerness. La stessa velocità ed estasi della sua vita avrebbero l’immobilità della morte. Il sole sorge ogni mattina. Io non mi alzo ogni mattina; ma la variazione è dovuta non alla mia attività, bensì alla mia inazione. Ora, per dirla con una frase popolare, potrebbe essere vero che il sole sorge regolarmente perché non si stanca mai di sorgere. La sua consuetudine potrebbe essere dovuta non a una mancanza di vita, ma a un impeto di vita. La cosa che intendo si può vedere, per esempio, nei bambini, quando trovano un gioco o uno scherzo di cui godono in modo particolare. Un bambino scalcia ritmicamente le gambe per eccesso, non per difetto, di vita. Poiché i bambini hanno una vitalità traboccante, poiché sono nello spirito fieri e liberi, per questo vogliono che le cose siano ripetute e immutate. Dicono sempre: «Rifallo»; e la persona adulta lo rifà finché non è quasi morta. Perché le persone adulte non sono abbastanza forti da esultare nella monotonia. Ma forse Dio è abbastanza forte da esultare nella monotonia. È possibile che Dio dica ogni mattina «Rifallo» al sole; e ogni sera «Rifallo» alla luna. Può darsi che non sia una necessità automatica a rendere tutte le margherite uguali; può darsi che Dio faccia ogni margherita separatamente, ma non si sia mai stancato di farle. Può darsi che Egli abbia l’eterno appetito dell’infanzia; perché noi abbiamo peccato e siamo invecchiati, e nostro Padre è più giovane di noi. La ripetizione nella Natura può non essere un mero ricorrere; può essere un ENCORE teatrale. Il Cielo può gridare ENCORE all’uccello che ha deposto un uovo. Se l’essere umano concepisce e dà alla luce un bambino umano anziché dare alla luce un pesce, o un pipistrello, o un grifone, la ragione può non essere che siamo fissati in un destino animale privo di vita o di scopo. Può darsi che la nostra piccola tragedia abbia commosso gli dèi, che essi la ammirino dalle loro stellate gallerie, e che alla fine di ogni dramma umano l’uomo sia richiamato ancora e ancora davanti al sipario. La ripetizione può proseguire per milioni di anni, per pura scelta, e in ogni istante può cessare. L’uomo può stare sulla terra generazione dopo generazione, e tuttavia ogni nascita essere la sua positivamente ultima apparizione.

Questa fu la mia prima convinzione, prodotta dall’urto delle mie emozioni infantili che incontravano, in piena corsa, il credo moderno. Avevo sempre vagamente sentito i fatti come miracoli nel senso che sono meravigliosi: ora cominciavo a pensarli miracoli nel senso più stretto che erano VOLUTI. Voglio dire che erano, o potevano essere, ripetuti esercizi di qualche volontà. Insomma, avevo sempre creduto che il mondo comportasse la magia: ora pensavo che forse comportasse un mago. E ciò indicava un’emozione profonda sempre presente e subcosciente: che questo nostro mondo ha uno scopo; e se c’è uno scopo, c’è una persona. Avevo sempre sentito la vita, per prima cosa, come una storia: e se c’è una storia, c’è un narratore.

Ma il pensiero moderno colpì anche la mia seconda tradizione umana. Andava contro il sentimento fiabesco riguardo ai limiti e alle condizioni rigorose. L’unica cosa di cui amava parlare era l’espansione e la grandezza. Herbert Spencer si sarebbe grandemente irritato se qualcuno lo avesse chiamato imperialista, e perciò è altamente deplorevole che nessuno lo abbia fatto. Ma egli era un imperialista del genere più basso. Rese popolare quella spregevole idea che la dimensione del sistema solare dovrebbe intimidire il dogma spirituale dell’uomo. Perché mai un uomo dovrebbe cedere la propria dignità al sistema solare più di quanto la cederebbe a una balena? Se la mera dimensione prova che l’uomo non è l’immagine di Dio, allora una balena potrebbe essere l’immagine di Dio; un’immagine alquanto informe; ciò che si potrebbe chiamare un ritratto impressionista. È del tutto vano argomentare che l’uomo è piccolo in confronto al cosmo; perché l’uomo è sempre stato piccolo in confronto all’albero più vicino. Ma Herbert Spencer, nel suo impetuoso imperialismo, insisteva che noi fossimo in qualche modo stati conquistati e annessi dall’universo astronomico. Parlava degli uomini e dei loro ideali esattamente come il più insolente unionista parla degli irlandesi e dei loro ideali. Trasformava l’umanità in una piccola nazionalità. E la sua malefica influenza si può scorgere perfino nei più vivaci e onorevoli tra gli autori scientifici successivi; segnatamente nei primi romanzi del signor H.G. Wells. Molti moralisti hanno rappresentato, in modo esagerato, la terra come malvagia. Ma il signor Wells e la sua scuola resero malvagi i cieli. Dovremmo levare gli occhi alle stelle dalle quali verrebbe la nostra rovina.

Ma l’espansione di cui parlo era assai più malefica di tutto questo. Ho osservato che il materialista, come il pazzo, è in prigione; nella prigione di un solo pensiero. Costoro sembravano trovare singolarmente esaltante il ripetere di continuo che la prigione era molto grande. La dimensione di questo universo scientifico non offriva alcuna novità, alcun sollievo. Il cosmo proseguiva in eterno, ma neppure nella sua più selvaggia costellazione poteva esservi qualcosa di davvero interessante; qualcosa, per esempio, come il perdono o il libero arbitrio. La grandiosità o l’infinità del segreto del suo cosmo non vi aggiungeva nulla. Era come dire a un prigioniero nel carcere di Reading che gli avrebbe fatto piacere sapere che il carcere ora copriva metà della contea. Il carceriere non avrebbe nulla da mostrare all’uomo se non corridoi di pietra sempre più lunghi, illuminati da luci spettrali e vuoti di tutto ciò che è umano. Così questi espansori dell’universo non avevano nulla da mostrarci se non corridoi di spazio sempre più infiniti, illuminati da soli spettrali e vuoti di tutto ciò che è divino.

In fairyland there had been a real law; a law that could be broken, for the definition of a law is something that can be broken. But the machinery of this cosmic prison was something that could not be broken; for we ourselves were only a part of its machinery. We were either unable to do things or we were destined to do them. The idea of the mystical condition quite disappeared; one can neither have the firmness of keeping laws nor the fun of breaking them. The largeness of this universe had nothing of that freshness and airy outbreak which we have praised in the universe of the poet. This modern universe is literally an empire; that is, it was vast, but it is not free. One went into larger and larger windowless rooms, rooms big with Babylonian perspective; but one never found the smallest window or a whisper of outer air.

Their infernal parallels seemed to expand with distance; but for me all good things come to a point, swords for instance. So finding the boast of the big cosmos so unsatisfactory to my emotions I began to argue about it a little; and I soon found that the whole attitude was even shallower than could have been expected. According to these people the cosmos was one thing since it had one unbroken rule. Only (they would say) while it is one thing, it is also the only thing there is. Why, then, should one worry particularly to call it large? There is nothing to compare it with. It would be just as sensible to call it small. A man may say, “I like this vast cosmos, with its throng of stars and its crowd of varied creatures.” But if it comes to that why should not a man say, “I like this cosy little cosmos, with its decent number of stars and as neat a provision of live stock as I wish to see”? One is as good as the other; they are both mere sentiments. It is mere sentiment to rejoice that the sun is larger than the earth; it is quite as sane a sentiment to rejoice that the sun is no larger than it is. A man chooses to have an emotion about the largeness of the world; why should he not choose to have an emotion about its smallness?

It happened that I had that emotion. When one is fond of anything one addresses it by diminutives, even if it is an elephant or a life-guardsman. The reason is, that anything, however huge, that can be conceived of as complete, can be conceived of as small. If military moustaches did not suggest a sword or tusks a tail, then the object would be vast because it would be immeasurable. But the moment you can imagine a guardsman you can imagine a small guardsman. The moment you really see an elephant you can call it “Tiny.” If you can make a statue of a thing you can make a statuette of it. These people professed that the universe was one coherent thing; but they were not fond of the universe. But I was frightfully fond of the universe and wanted to address it by a diminutive. I often did so; and it never seemed to mind. Actually and in truth I did feel that these dim dogmas of vitality were better expressed by calling the world small than by calling it large. For about infinity there was a sort of carelessness which was the reverse of the fierce and pious care which I felt touching the pricelessness and the peril of life. They showed only a dreary waste; but I felt a sort of sacred thrift. For economy is far more romantic than extravagance. To them stars were an unending income of halfpence; but I felt about the golden sun and the silver moon as a schoolboy feels if he has one sovereign and one shilling.

These subconscious convictions are best hit off by the colour and tone of certain tales. Thus I have said that stories of magic alone can express my sense that life is not only a pleasure but a kind of eccentric privilege. I may express this other feeling of cosmic cosiness by allusion to another book always read in boyhood, “Robinson Crusoe,” which I read about this time, and which owes its eternal vivacity to the fact that it celebrates the poetry of limits, nay, even the wild romance of prudence. Crusoe is a man on a small rock with a few comforts just snatched from the sea: the best thing in the book is simply the list of things saved from the wreck. The greatest of poems is an inventory. Every kitchen tool becomes ideal because Crusoe might have dropped it in the sea. It is a good exercise, in empty or ugly hours of the day, to look at anything, the coal-scuttle or the book-case, and think how happy one could be to have brought it out of the sinking ship on to the solitary island. But it is a better exercise still to remember how all things have had this hair-breadth escape: everything has been saved from a wreck. Every man has had one horrible adventure: as a hidden untimely birth he had not been, as infants that never see the light. Men spoke much in my boyhood of restricted or ruined men of genius: and it was common to say that many a man was a Great Might-Have-Been. To me it is a more solid and startling fact that any man in the street is a Great Might-Not-Have-Been.

But I really felt (the fancy may seem foolish) as if all the order and number of things were the romantic remnant of Crusoe’s ship. That there are two sexes and one sun, was like the fact that there were two guns and one axe. It was poignantly urgent that none should be lost; but somehow, it was rather fun that none could be added. The trees and the planets seemed like things saved from the wreck: and when I saw the Matterhorn I was glad that it had not been overlooked in the confusion. I felt economical about the stars as if they were sapphires (they are called so in Milton’s Eden): I hoarded the hills. For the universe is a single jewel, and while it is a natural cant to talk of a jewel as peerless and priceless, of this jewel it is literally true. This cosmos is indeed without peer and without price: for there cannot be another one.

Nel paese delle fate esisteva una legge vera; una legge che poteva essere infranta, giacché la definizione stessa di una legge è di essere qualcosa che si può infrangere. Ma il meccanismo di questa prigione cosmica era qualcosa che non poteva essere infranto; poiché noi stessi non eravamo che una parte del suo meccanismo. O eravamo incapaci di compiere le cose, oppure eravamo destinati a compierle. L’idea della condizione mistica svaniva del tutto; non si può avere né la fermezza di osservare le leggi né il piacere di trasgredirle. La vastità di questo universo non aveva nulla di quella freschezza e di quell’aereo prorompere che abbiamo lodato nell’universo del poeta. Questo universo moderno è alla lettera un impero; vale a dire che era immenso, ma non è libero. Si passava in stanze sempre più grandi e prive di finestre, stanze enormi di prospettiva babilonese; ma non si trovava mai la più piccola finestra né un sussurro d’aria esterna.

Le loro infernali parallele parevano dilatarsi con la distanza; ma per me tutte le cose buone convergono in una punta, le spade per esempio. Sicché, trovando il vanto del grande cosmo tanto insoddisfacente per le mie emozioni, cominciai a ragionarci sopra un poco; e presto scoprii che l’intero atteggiamento era ancora più superficiale di quanto ci si potesse aspettare. Secondo costoro il cosmo era una cosa sola perché aveva un’unica regola inviolata. Solo che (dicevano) pur essendo una cosa sola, è anche l’unica cosa che esista. Perché, dunque, darsi tanta pena di chiamarlo grande? Non c’è nulla con cui paragonarlo. Sarebbe altrettanto ragionevole chiamarlo piccolo. Un uomo può dire: «Mi piace questo vasto cosmo, con la sua ressa di stelle e la sua folla di creature svariate». Ma, se è per questo, perché un uomo non dovrebbe dire: «Mi piace questo cosmo piccolo e accogliente, con il suo numero decoroso di stelle e una provvista di bestiame tanto linda quanta ne desidero vedere»? L’una vale l’altra; sono entrambi puri sentimenti. È puro sentimento rallegrarsi che il sole sia più grande della terra; è un sentimento altrettanto sensato rallegrarsi che il sole non sia più grande di quel che è. Un uomo sceglie di provare un’emozione per la grandezza del mondo; perché non dovrebbe scegliere di provarne una per la sua piccolezza?

Accadde che io provassi proprio quell’emozione. Quando si ama qualcosa, la si chiama con vezzeggiativi, foss’anche un elefante o un granatiere delle guardie. La ragione è che qualunque cosa, per quanto enorme, che possa essere concepita come completa, può essere concepita come piccola. Se i baffi militareschi non suggerissero una spada né le zanne una coda, allora l’oggetto sarebbe vasto perché sarebbe incommensurabile. Ma nel momento in cui puoi immaginare un granatiere, puoi immaginare un granatiere piccolo. Nel momento in cui vedi davvero un elefante, puoi chiamarlo «Piccino». Se puoi fare la statua di una cosa, puoi farne anche la statuetta. Costoro professavano che l’universo fosse una cosa sola e coerente; ma non amavano l’universo. Io invece amavo terribilmente l’universo e volevo chiamarlo con un vezzeggiativo. Lo facevo spesso; e non parve mai dispiacersene. In realtà e in verità sentivo che questi oscuri dogmi della vitalità si esprimevano meglio chiamando il mondo piccolo che chiamandolo grande. Perché intorno all’infinito c’era una specie di noncuranza che era il rovescio della cura fiera e devota che sentivo nel toccare l’inestimabile valore e il pericolo della vita. Essi mostravano soltanto una squallida distesa deserta; ma io sentivo una sorta di sacra parsimonia. Poiché l’economia è assai più romantica dello sperpero. Per loro le stelle erano una rendita infinita di spiccioli; ma io provavo, davanti al sole d’oro e alla luna d’argento, ciò che prova uno scolaro se possiede una sovrana e uno scellino.

Queste convinzioni subconscie si colgono al meglio nel colore e nel tono di certi racconti. Così ho detto che le storie di magia soltanto possono esprimere il mio sentimento che la vita non è soltanto un piacere, ma una sorta di stravagante privilegio. Posso esprimere quest’altro sentimento di comodità cosmica accennando a un altro libro sempre letto nella fanciullezza, «Robinson Crusoe», che lessi all’incirca in quel tempo, e che deve la sua eterna vivacità al fatto di celebrare la poesia dei limiti, anzi, persino la selvaggia avventura della prudenza. Crusoe è un uomo su un piccolo scoglio con pochi conforti appena strappati al mare: la cosa migliore del libro è semplicemente l’elenco degli oggetti salvati dal relitto. Il più grande dei poemi è un inventario. Ogni utensile da cucina diventa ideale perché Crusoe avrebbe potuto lasciarlo cadere in mare. È un buon esercizio, nelle ore vuote o brutte della giornata, guardare una cosa qualsiasi, il secchio del carbone o la libreria, e pensare quanto si potrebbe essere felici di averla portata in salvo dalla nave che affonda fino all’isola solitaria. Ma è un esercizio ancora migliore ricordare come tutte le cose abbiano avuto questo scampo per un pelo: ogni cosa è stata salvata da un naufragio. Ogni uomo ha vissuto un’unica avventura terribile: come un parto nascosto e intempestivo egli non era stato, come i bimbi che mai vedono la luce. Nella mia fanciullezza si parlava molto di uomini di genio limitati o rovinati: ed era comune dire che più d’uno era stato un Grande-Che-Avrebbe-Potuto-Essere. Per me è un fatto assai più solido e sorprendente che qualunque uomo per la strada sia un Grande-Che-Avrebbe-Potuto-Non-Essere.

Ma sentivo davvero (il capriccio potrà parere sciocco) come se tutto l’ordine e il numero delle cose fossero il romantico residuo della nave di Crusoe. Che vi siano due sessi e un solo sole, era come il fatto che vi fossero due fucili e un’ascia. Era straziantemente urgente che nessuno andasse perduto; ma, chissà come, era piuttosto divertente che nessuno potesse essere aggiunto. Gli alberi e i pianeti parevano cose salvate dal relitto: e quando vidi il Cervino fui lieto che non fosse stato trascurato nella confusione. Provavo un senso di parsimonia riguardo alle stelle come se fossero zaffiri (così vengono chiamate nell’Eden di Milton): ammassavo le colline come un tesoro. Poiché l’universo è un unico gioiello, e mentre è un luogo comune naturale parlare di un gioiello come impareggiabile e inestimabile, di questo gioiello è letteralmente vero. Questo cosmo è davvero senza pari e senza prezzo: perché non ce ne può essere un altro.

Thus ends, in unavoidable inadequacy, the attempt to utter the unutterable things. These are my ultimate attitudes towards life; the soils for the seeds of doctrine. These in some dark way I thought before I could write, and felt before I could think: that we may proceed more easily afterwards, I will roughly recapitulate them now. I felt in my bones; first, that this world does not explain itself. It may be a miracle with a supernatural explanation; it may be a conjuring trick, with a natural explanation. But the explanation of the conjuring trick, if it is to satisfy me, will have to be better than the natural explanations I have heard. The thing is magic, true or false. Second, I came to feel as if magic must have a meaning, and meaning must have some one to mean it. There was something personal in the world, as in a work of art; whatever it meant it meant violently. Third, I thought this purpose beautiful in its old design, in spite of its defects, such as dragons. Fourth, that the proper form of thanks to it is some form of humility and restraint: we should thank God for beer and Burgundy by not drinking too much of them. We owed, also, an obedience to whatever made us. And last, and strangest, there had come into my mind a vague and vast impression that in some way all good was a remnant to be stored and held sacred out of some primordial ruin. Man had saved his good as Crusoe saved his goods: he had saved them from a wreck. All this I felt and the age gave me no encouragement to feel it. And all this time I had not even thought of Christian theology.

V THE FLAG OF THE WORLD

When I was a boy there were two curious men running about who were called the optimist and the pessimist. I constantly used the words myself, but I cheerfully confess that I never had any very special idea of what they meant. The only thing which might be considered evident was that they could not mean what they said; for the ordinary verbal explanation was that the optimist thought this world as good as it could be, while the pessimist thought it as bad as it could be. Both these statements being obviously raving nonsense, one had to cast about for other explanations. An optimist could not mean a man who thought everything right and nothing wrong. For that is meaningless; it is like calling everything right and nothing left. Upon the whole, I came to the conclusion that the optimist thought everything good except the pessimist, and that the pessimist thought everything bad, except himself. It would be unfair to omit altogether from the list the mysterious but suggestive definition said to have been given by a little girl, “An optimist is a man who looks after your eyes, and a pessimist is a man who looks after your feet.” I am not sure that this is not the best definition of all. There is even a sort of allegorical truth in it. For there might, perhaps, be a profitable distinction drawn between that more dreary thinker who thinks merely of our contact with the earth from moment to moment, and that happier thinker who considers rather our primary power of vision and of choice of road.

But this is a deep mistake in this alternative of the optimist and the pessimist. The assumption of it is that a man criticises this world as if he were house-hunting, as if he were being shown over a new suite of apartments. If a man came to this world from some other world in full possession of his powers he might discuss whether the advantage of midsummer woods made up for the disadvantage of mad dogs, just as a man looking for lodgings might balance the presence of a telephone against the absence of a sea view. But no man is in that position. A man belongs to this world before he begins to ask if it is nice to belong to it. He has fought for the flag, and often won heroic victories for the flag long before he has ever enlisted. To put shortly what seems the essential matter, he has a loyalty long before he has any admiration.

In the last chapter it has been said that the primary feeling that this world is strange and yet attractive is best expressed in fairy tales. The reader may, if he likes, put down the next stage to that bellicose and even jingo literature which commonly comes next in the history of a boy. We all owe much sound morality to the penny dreadfuls. Whatever the reason, it seemed and still seems to me that our attitude towards life can be better expressed in terms of a kind of military loyalty than in terms of criticism and approval. My acceptance of the universe is not optimism, it is more like patriotism. It is a matter of primary loyalty. The world is not a lodging-house at Brighton, which we are to leave because it is miserable. It is the fortress of our family, with the flag flying on the turret, and the more miserable it is the less we should leave it. The point is not that this world is too sad to love or too glad not to love; the point is that when you do love a thing, its gladness is a reason for loving it, and its sadness a reason for loving it more. All optimistic thoughts about England and all pessimistic thoughts about her are alike reasons for the English patriot. Similarly, optimism and pessimism are alike arguments for the cosmic patriot.

Let us suppose we are confronted with a desperate thing—say Pimlico. If we think what is really best for Pimlico we shall find the thread of thought leads to the throne or the mystic and the arbitrary. It is not enough for a man to disapprove of Pimlico: in that case he will merely cut his throat or move to Chelsea. Nor, certainly, is it enough for a man to approve of Pimlico: for then it will remain Pimlico, which would be awful. The only way out of it seems to be for somebody to love Pimlico: to love it with a transcendental tie and without any earthly reason. If there arose a man who loved Pimlico, then Pimlico would rise into ivory towers and golden pinnacles; Pimlico would attire herself as a woman does when she is loved. For decoration is not given to hide horrible things: but to decorate things already adorable. A mother does not give her child a blue bow because he is so ugly without it. A lover does not give a girl a necklace to hide her neck. If men loved Pimlico as mothers love children, arbitrarily, because it is THEIRS, Pimlico in a year or two might be fairer than Florence. Some readers will say that this is a mere fantasy. I answer that this is the actual history of mankind. This, as a fact, is how cities did grow great. Go back to the darkest roots of civilization and you will find them knotted round some sacred stone or encircling some sacred well. People first paid honour to a spot and afterwards gained glory for it. Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her.

Così finisce, in un’inevitabile insufficienza, il tentativo di dire le cose indicibili. Questi sono i miei atteggiamenti ultimi verso la vita; il terreno per i semi della dottrina. Queste cose, in qualche modo oscuro, le pensai prima di saperle scrivere, e le sentii prima di saperle pensare: e affinché possiamo procedere più agevolmente in seguito, le ricapitolerò ora sommariamente. Sentii nelle ossa, in primo luogo, che questo mondo non si spiega da sé. Può darsi che sia un miracolo con una spiegazione soprannaturale; può darsi che sia un gioco di prestigio, con una spiegazione naturale. Ma la spiegazione del gioco di prestigio, se vuole soddisfarmi, dovrà essere migliore delle spiegazioni naturali che ho udito. La cosa è magia, vera o falsa. In secondo luogo, cominciai a sentire come se la magia dovesse avere un significato, e il significato dovesse avere qualcuno che lo intendesse. C’era qualcosa di personale nel mondo, come in un’opera d’arte; qualunque cosa significasse, la significava con veemenza. In terzo luogo, pensai che questo disegno fosse bello nella sua antica trama, a dispetto dei suoi difetti, come i draghi. In quarto luogo, che la forma appropriata di ringraziamento verso di esso è una qualche forma di umiltà e di temperanza: dovremmo ringraziare Dio per la birra e il Borgogna non bevendone troppo. Dovevamo, inoltre, obbedienza a chiunque ci avesse fatti. E infine, e cosa più strana, mi era entrata nella mente un’impressione vaga e vasta che in qualche modo tutto il bene fosse un residuo da custodire e tenere sacro, tratto da una qualche rovina primordiale. L’uomo aveva salvato il suo bene come Crusoe salvò i suoi beni: li aveva salvati da un naufragio. Tutto questo io sentivo, e l’epoca non mi dava alcun incoraggiamento a sentirlo. E per tutto questo tempo non avevo neppure pensato alla teologia cristiana.

V LA BANDIERA DEL MONDO

Quando ero ragazzo c’erano due curiosi personaggi che andavano in giro e che venivano chiamati l’ottimista e il pessimista. Io stesso usavo di continuo queste parole, ma confesso allegramente di non aver mai avuto un’idea molto precisa di ciò che significassero. L’unica cosa che si potesse considerare evidente era che non potevano voler dire ciò che dicevano; poiché la consueta spiegazione verbale era che l’ottimista giudicava questo mondo buono quanto poteva esserlo, mentre il pessimista lo giudicava cattivo quanto poteva esserlo. Essendo entrambe queste affermazioni palesemente farneticante nonsenso, bisognava andare in cerca di altre spiegazioni. Un ottimista non poteva significare un uomo che giudicava tutto giusto e niente sbagliato. Perché ciò è privo di senso; è come chiamare tutto destro e niente sinistro. Tutto sommato, giunsi alla conclusione che l’ottimista giudicava tutto buono tranne il pessimista, e che il pessimista giudicava tutto cattivo, tranne sé stesso. Sarebbe ingiusto omettere del tutto dall’elenco la definizione misteriosa ma suggestiva che si dice sia stata data da una bambina: «Un ottimista è un uomo che ti guarda gli occhi, e un pessimista è un uomo che ti guarda i piedi». Non sono sicuro che non sia la migliore definizione di tutte. C’è persino una sorta di verità allegorica in essa. Poiché forse si potrebbe tracciare una proficua distinzione tra quel pensatore più tetro che pensa soltanto al nostro contatto con la terra istante per istante, e quel pensatore più felice che considera piuttosto la nostra facoltà primaria della visione e della scelta della strada.

Ma in questa alternativa tra l’ottimista e il pessimista si annida un profondo errore. Il presupposto è che un uomo giudichi questo mondo come se fosse in cerca di una casa, come se gli venisse mostrato un nuovo appartamento. Se un uomo giungesse a questo mondo da qualche altro mondo in pieno possesso delle sue facoltà, potrebbe discutere se il vantaggio dei boschi di mezza estate compensi lo svantaggio dei cani rabbiosi, proprio come chi cerca un alloggio potrebbe bilanciare la presenza di un telefono con l’assenza di una vista sul mare. Ma nessun uomo si trova in quella posizione. Un uomo appartiene a questo mondo prima ancora di cominciare a chiedersi se sia bello appartenervi. Ha combattuto per la bandiera, e spesso ha riportato vittorie eroiche per la bandiera molto prima di essersi mai arruolato. Per dire in breve ciò che pare la cosa essenziale, egli ha una lealtà molto prima di avere una qualsiasi ammirazione.

Nel capitolo precedente si è detto che il sentimento primario per cui questo mondo è strano eppure attraente trova la sua migliore espressione nelle fiabe. Il lettore può, se vuole, ascrivere lo stadio successivo a quella letteratura bellicosa e persino sciovinista che di solito viene subito dopo nella storia di un ragazzo. Dobbiamo tutti molta sana moralità ai romanzetti da quattro soldi. Quale che ne sia la ragione, mi sembrava e ancora mi sembra che il nostro atteggiamento verso la vita possa essere meglio espresso nei termini di una sorta di lealtà militare che nei termini di critica e approvazione. La mia accettazione dell’universo non è ottimismo, è piuttosto qualcosa come il patriottismo. È una questione di lealtà primaria. Il mondo non è una pensione a Brighton, che dobbiamo lasciare perché è miserabile. È la fortezza della nostra famiglia, con la bandiera che sventola sulla torre, e quanto più è miserabile tanto meno dovremmo lasciarla. Il punto non è che questo mondo sia troppo triste per essere amato o troppo lieto per non essere amato; il punto è che quando ami davvero una cosa, la sua letizia è una ragione per amarla, e la sua tristezza una ragione per amarla di più. Tutti i pensieri ottimisti sull’Inghilterra e tutti i pensieri pessimisti su di lei sono egualmente ragioni per il patriota inglese. Similmente, ottimismo e pessimismo sono egualmente argomenti per il patriota cosmico.

Supponiamo di trovarci di fronte a una cosa disperata: diciamo Pimlico. Se pensiamo a ciò che è davvero meglio per Pimlico, scopriremo che il filo del pensiero conduce al trono o al mistico e all’arbitrario. Non basta che un uomo disapprovi Pimlico: in tal caso si taglierà semplicemente la gola o si trasferirà a Chelsea. Né, di certo, basta che un uomo approvi Pimlico: perché allora Pimlico resterà Pimlico, il che sarebbe spaventoso. L’unica via d’uscita sembra essere che qualcuno ami Pimlico: che la ami con un legame trascendentale e senza alcuna ragione terrena. Se sorgesse un uomo che amasse Pimlico, allora Pimlico si leverebbe in torri d’avorio e in pinnacoli d’oro; Pimlico si adornerebbe come fa una donna quando è amata. Poiché l’ornamento non è dato per nascondere cose orribili: ma per adornare cose già adorabili. Una madre non dà al suo bambino un fiocco azzurro perché egli è tanto brutto senza. Un innamorato non dà a una ragazza una collana per nasconderle il collo. Se gli uomini amassero Pimlico come le madri amano i figli, arbitrariamente, perché è LORO, Pimlico in un anno o due potrebbe essere più bella di Firenze. Alcuni lettori diranno che questa è una mera fantasia. Rispondo che questa è la storia reale del genere umano. Questo, di fatto, è il modo in cui le città divennero grandi. Risalite alle più oscure radici della civiltà e le troverete annodate attorno a qualche pietra sacra o cingenti qualche pozzo sacro. Dapprima la gente rese onore a un luogo e in seguito ne trasse gloria. Gli uomini non amarono Roma perché era grande. Era grande perché l’avevano amata.

The eighteenth-century theories of the social contract have been exposed to much clumsy criticism in our time; in so far as they meant that there is at the back of all historic government an idea of content and co-operation, they were demonstrably right. But they really were wrong, in so far as they suggested that men had ever aimed at order or ethics directly by a conscious exchange of interests. Morality did not begin by one man saying to another, “I will not hit you if you do not hit me”; there is no trace of such a transaction. There IS a trace of both men having said, “We must not hit each other in the holy place.” They gained their morality by guarding their religion. They did not cultivate courage. They fought for the shrine, and found they had become courageous. They did not cultivate cleanliness. They purified themselves for the altar, and found that they were clean. The history of the Jews is the only early document known to most Englishmen, and the facts can be judged sufficiently from that. The Ten Commandments which have been found substantially common to mankind were merely military commands; a code of regimental orders, issued to protect a certain ark across a certain desert. Anarchy was evil because it endangered the sanctity. And only when they made a holy day for God did they find they had made a holiday for men.

If it be granted that this primary devotion to a place or thing is a source of creative energy, we can pass on to a very peculiar fact. Let us reiterate for an instant that the only right optimism is a sort of universal patriotism. What is the matter with the pessimist? I think it can be stated by saying that he is the cosmic anti-patriot. And what is the matter with the anti-patriot? I think it can be stated, without undue bitterness, by saying that he is the candid friend. And what is the matter with the candid friend? There we strike the rock of real life and immutable human nature.

I venture to say that what is bad in the candid friend is simply that he is not candid. He is keeping something back— his own gloomy pleasure in saying unpleasant things. He has a secret desire to hurt, not merely to help. This is certainly, I think, what makes a certain sort of anti-patriot irritating to healthy citizens. I do not speak (of course) of the anti-patriotism which only irritates feverish stockbrokers and gushing actresses; that is only patriotism speaking plainly. A man who says that no patriot should attack the Boer War until it is over is not worth answering intelligently; he is saying that no good son should warn his mother off a cliff until she has fallen over it. But there is an anti-patriot who honestly angers honest men, and the explanation of him is, I think, what I have suggested: he is the uncandid candid friend; the man who says, “I am sorry to say we are ruined,” and is not sorry at all. And he may be said, without rhetoric, to be a traitor; for he is using that ugly knowledge which was allowed him to strengthen the army, to discourage people from joining it. Because he is allowed to be pessimistic as a military adviser he is being pessimistic as a recruiting sergeant. Just in the same way the pessimist (who is the cosmic anti-patriot) uses the freedom that life allows to her counsellors to lure away the people from her flag. Granted that he states only facts, it is still essential to know what are his emotions, what is his motive. It may be that twelve hundred men in Tottenham are down with smallpox; but we want to know whether this is stated by some great philosopher who wants to curse the gods, or only by some common clergyman who wants to help the men.

The evil of the pessimist is, then, not that he chastises gods and men, but that he does not love what he chastises—he has not this primary and supernatural loyalty to things. What is the evil of the man commonly called an optimist? Obviously, it is felt that the optimist, wishing to defend the honour of this world, will defend the indefensible. He is the jingo of the universe; he will say, “My cosmos, right or wrong.” He will be less inclined to the reform of things; more inclined to a sort of front-bench official answer to all attacks, soothing every one with assurances. He will not wash the world, but whitewash the world. All this (which is true of a type of optimist) leads us to the one really interesting point of psychology, which could not be explained without it.

We say there must be a primal loyalty to life: the only question is, shall it be a natural or a supernatural loyalty? If you like to put it so, shall it be a reasonable or an unreasonable loyalty? Now, the extraordinary thing is that the bad optimism (the whitewashing, the weak defence of everything) comes in with the reasonable optimism. Rational optimism leads to stagnation: it is irrational optimism that leads to reform. Let me explain by using once more the parallel of patriotism. The man who is most likely to ruin the place he loves is exactly the man who loves it with a reason. The man who will improve the place is the man who loves it without a reason. If a man loves some feature of Pimlico (which seems unlikely), he may find himself defending that feature against Pimlico itself. But if he simply loves Pimlico itself, he may lay it waste and turn it into the New Jerusalem. I do not deny that reform may be excessive; I only say that it is the mystic patriot who reforms. Mere jingo self-contentment is commonest among those who have some pedantic reason for their patriotism. The worst jingoes do not love England, but a theory of England. If we love England for being an empire, we may overrate the success with which we rule the Hindoos. But if we love it only for being a nation, we can face all events: for it would be a nation even if the Hindoos ruled us. Thus also only those will permit their patriotism to falsify history whose patriotism depends on history. A man who loves England for being English will not mind how she arose. But a man who loves England for being Anglo-Saxon may go against all facts for his fancy. He may end (like Carlyle and Freeman) by maintaining that the Norman Conquest was a Saxon Conquest. He may end in utter unreason— because he has a reason. A man who loves France for being military will palliate the army of 1870. But a man who loves France for being France will improve the army of 1870. This is exactly what the French have done, and France is a good instance of the working paradox. Nowhere else is patriotism more purely abstract and arbitrary; and nowhere else is reform more drastic and sweeping. The more transcendental is your patriotism, the more practical are your politics.

Le teorie settecentesche del contratto sociale sono state esposte a molte goffe critiche nel nostro tempo; nella misura in cui intendevano dire che dietro a ogni governo storico sta un’idea di consenso e di cooperazione, avevano dimostrabilmente ragione. Ma avevano davvero torto nella misura in cui suggerivano che gli uomini avessero mai mirato all’ordine o all’etica in modo diretto, mediante un cosciente scambio di interessi. La moralità non ebbe inizio quando un uomo disse a un altro: «Non ti colpirò se tu non colpirai me»; di una simile transazione non c’è la minima traccia. C’È invece traccia che entrambi gli uomini abbiano detto: «Non dobbiamo colpirci l’un l’altro nel luogo sacro». Conquistarono la loro moralità custodendo la loro religione. Non coltivarono il coraggio. Combatterono per il santuario, e si accorsero di essere diventati coraggiosi. Non coltivarono la pulizia. Si purificarono per l’altare, e si accorsero di essere puri. La storia degli Ebrei è l’unico documento antico noto alla maggior parte degli Inglesi, e i fatti possono essere giudicati a sufficienza da essa. I Dieci Comandamenti, che si sono trovati sostanzialmente comuni al genere umano, erano meri ordini militari; un codice di disposizioni di reggimento, emanate per proteggere una certa arca attraverso un certo deserto. L’anarchia era un male perché metteva in pericolo la santità. E solo quando fecero un giorno santo per Dio si accorsero di aver fatto un giorno di festa per gli uomini.

Se si concede che questa devozione primaria verso un luogo o una cosa è fonte di energia creatrice, possiamo passare a un fatto assai singolare. Ribadiamo per un istante che l’unico ottimismo giusto è una sorta di patriottismo universale. Che cos’ha che non va il pessimista? Credo lo si possa dire affermando che egli è l’anti-patriota cosmico. E che cos’ha che non va l’anti-patriota? Credo lo si possa dire, senza eccessiva acredine, affermando che egli è l’amico sincero. E che cos’ha che non va l’amico sincero? Qui urtiamo contro la roccia della vita reale e dell’immutabile natura umana.

Ardisco affermare che ciò che di cattivo c’è nell’amico sincero è semplicemente che egli non è sincero. Egli tiene qualcosa nascosto: il proprio cupo piacere nel dire cose sgradevoli. Ha un segreto desiderio di ferire, non semplicemente di aiutare. È questo, io credo, che di certo rende un certo tipo di anti-patriota irritante per i cittadini sani. Non parlo (s’intende) di quell’anti-patriottismo che irrita soltanto gli agenti di cambio febbrili e le attricette svenevoli; quello non è che patriottismo che parla senza giri di parole. Un uomo che dica che nessun patriota dovrebbe attaccare la guerra boera finché non sia finita non merita una risposta intelligente; egli sta dicendo che nessun buon figlio dovrebbe avvertire la madre che sta per cadere da una rupe finché non ci sia caduta. Ma esiste un anti-patriota che onestamente adira gli uomini onesti, e la sua spiegazione è, io credo, quella che ho suggerito: egli è l’amico sincero non sincero; l’uomo che dice: «Mi dispiace dover dire che siamo rovinati», e non gli dispiace affatto. E lo si può dire, senza retorica, un traditore; poiché egli si serve di quella brutta conoscenza che gli fu concessa per rafforzare l’esercito, per distogliere la gente dall’arruolarsi. Poiché gli è consentito di essere pessimista in qualità di consigliere militare, egli si fa pessimista in qualità di sergente reclutatore. Proprio allo stesso modo il pessimista (che è l’anti-patriota cosmico) si serve della libertà che la vita concede ai propri consiglieri per allontanare il popolo dalla sua bandiera. Ammesso che egli affermi soltanto fatti, resta pur sempre essenziale sapere quali siano le sue emozioni, quale sia il suo movente. Può darsi che milleduecento uomini a Tottenham siano colpiti dal vaiolo; ma noi vogliamo sapere se ciò venga affermato da qualche grande filosofo che vuole maledire gli dèi, o soltanto da qualche comune parroco che vuole aiutare quegli uomini.

Il male del pessimista, dunque, non è che egli castighi gli dèi e gli uomini, ma che egli non ama ciò che castiga: non ha questa fedeltà primaria e soprannaturale verso le cose. Qual è il male dell’uomo comunemente chiamato ottimista? Ovviamente, si avverte che l’ottimista, volendo difendere l’onore di questo mondo, difenderà l’indifendibile. Egli è lo sciovinista dell’universo; dirà: «Il mio cosmo, nel giusto o nel torto». Sarà meno incline alla riforma delle cose; più incline a una sorta di risposta ufficiale da banco del governo a ogni attacco, rabbonendo tutti con rassicurazioni. Egli non laverà il mondo, ma lo imbiancherà a calce. Tutto ciò (che è vero di un certo tipo di ottimista) ci conduce all’unico punto di psicologia davvero interessante, che senza di esso non potrebbe essere spiegato.

Diciamo che deve esistere una fedeltà primordiale alla vita: l’unica questione è se debba essere una fedeltà naturale o soprannaturale. Se preferite metterla così, se debba essere una fedeltà ragionevole o irragionevole. Ora, la cosa straordinaria è che il cattivo ottimismo (l’imbiancare a calce, la fiacca difesa di ogni cosa) entra in gioco con l’ottimismo ragionevole. L’ottimismo razionale conduce alla stagnazione: è l’ottimismo irrazionale che conduce alla riforma. Lasciate che mi spieghi ricorrendo ancora una volta al parallelo del patriottismo. L’uomo che con maggior probabilità rovinerà il luogo che ama è precisamente l’uomo che lo ama con una ragione. L’uomo che migliorerà il luogo è l’uomo che lo ama senza una ragione. Se un uomo ama qualche particolarità di Pimlico (il che pare improbabile), potrà ritrovarsi a difendere quella particolarità contro Pimlico stessa. Ma se egli ama semplicemente Pimlico in sé, potrà raderla al suolo e trasformarla nella Nuova Gerusalemme. Non nego che la riforma possa essere eccessiva; dico soltanto che è il patriota mistico a riformare. La mera compiacenza sciovinista di sé è più comune fra coloro che hanno qualche ragione pedantesca per il loro patriottismo. I peggiori sciovinisti non amano l’Inghilterra, ma una teoria dell’Inghilterra. Se amiamo l’Inghilterra perché è un impero, potremmo sopravvalutare il successo con cui governiamo gli Indù. Ma se la amiamo soltanto perché è una nazione, possiamo affrontare qualunque evento: poiché essa sarebbe una nazione anche se gli Indù governassero noi. Così pure, soltanto coloro il cui patriottismo dipende dalla storia permetteranno al loro patriottismo di falsificare la storia. Un uomo che ama l’Inghilterra perché è inglese non baderà a come essa sorse. Ma un uomo che ama l’Inghilterra perché è anglosassone potrà andare contro tutti i fatti per la sua fantasticheria. Potrà finire (come Carlyle e Freeman) col sostenere che la conquista normanna fu una conquista sassone. Potrà finire nella più totale irragionevolezza, perché ha una ragione. Un uomo che ama la Francia perché è militare attenuerà le colpe dell’esercito del 1870. Ma un uomo che ama la Francia perché è la Francia migliorerà l’esercito del 1870. È esattamente ciò che hanno fatto i Francesi, e la Francia è un buon esempio del paradosso all’opera. In nessun altro luogo il patriottismo è più puramente astratto e arbitrario; e in nessun altro luogo la riforma è più drastica e radicale. Quanto più trascendentale è il vostro patriottismo, tanto più pratica è la vostra politica.

Perhaps the most everyday instance of this point is in the case of women; and their strange and strong loyalty. Some stupid people started the idea that because women obviously back up their own people through everything, therefore women are blind and do not see anything. They can hardly have known any women. The same women who are ready to defend their men through thick and thin are (in their personal intercourse with the man) almost morbidly lucid about the thinness of his excuses or the thickness of his head. A man’s friend likes him but leaves him as he is: his wife loves him and is always trying to turn him into somebody else. Women who are utter mystics in their creed are utter cynics in their criticism. Thackeray expressed this well when he made Pendennis’ mother, who worshipped her son as a god, yet assume that he would go wrong as a man. She underrated his virtue, though she overrated his value. The devotee is entirely free to criticise; the fanatic can safely be a sceptic. Love is not blind; that is the last thing that it is. Love is bound; and the more it is bound the less it is blind.

This at least had come to be my position about all that was called optimism, pessimism, and improvement. Before any cosmic act of reform we must have a cosmic oath of allegiance. A man must be interested in life, then he could be disinterested in his views of it. “My son give me thy heart”; the heart must be fixed on the right thing: the moment we have a fixed heart we have a free hand. I must pause to anticipate an obvious criticism. It will be said that a rational person accepts the world as mixed of good and evil with a decent satisfaction and a decent endurance. But this is exactly the attitude which I maintain to be defective. It is, I know, very common in this age; it was perfectly put in those quiet lines of Matthew Arnold which are more piercingly blasphemous than the shrieks of Schopenhauer—

“Enough we live: —and if a life, With large results so little rife, Though bearable, seem hardly worth This pomp of worlds, this pain of birth.”

I know this feeling fills our epoch, and I think it freezes our epoch. For our Titanic purposes of faith and revolution, what we need is not the cold acceptance of the world as a compromise, but some way in which we can heartily hate and heartily love it. We do not want joy and anger to neutralize each other and produce a surly contentment; we want a fiercer delight and a fiercer discontent. We have to feel the universe at once as an ogre’s castle, to be stormed, and yet as our own cottage, to which we can return at evening.

No one doubts that an ordinary man can get on with this world: but we demand not strength enough to get on with it, but strength enough to get it on. Can he hate it enough to change it, and yet love it enough to think it worth changing? Can he look up at its colossal good without once feeling acquiescence? Can he look up at its colossal evil without once feeling despair? Can he, in short, be at once not only a pessimist and an optimist, but a fanatical pessimist and a fanatical optimist? Is he enough of a pagan to die for the world, and enough of a Christian to die to it? In this combination, I maintain, it is the rational optimist who fails, the irrational optimist who succeeds. He is ready to smash the whole universe for the sake of itself.

I put these things not in their mature logical sequence, but as they came: and this view was cleared and sharpened by an accident of the time. Under the lengthening shadow of Ibsen, an argument arose whether it was not a very nice thing to murder one’s self. Grave moderns told us that we must not even say “poor fellow,” of a man who had blown his brains out, since he was an enviable person, and had only blown them out because of their exceptional excellence. Mr. William Archer even suggested that in the golden age there would be penny-in-the-slot machines, by which a man could kill himself for a penny. In all this I found myself utterly hostile to many who called themselves liberal and humane. Not only is suicide a sin, it is the sin. It is the ultimate and absolute evil, the refusal to take an interest in existence; the refusal to take the oath of loyalty to life. The man who kills a man, kills a man. The man who kills himself, kills all men; as far as he is concerned he wipes out the world. His act is worse (symbolically considered) than any rape or dynamite outrage. For it destroys all buildings: it insults all women. The thief is satisfied with diamonds; but the suicide is not: that is his crime. He cannot be bribed, even by the blazing stones of the Celestial City. The thief compliments the things he steals, if not the owner of them. But the suicide insults everything on earth by not stealing it. He defiles every flower by refusing to live for its sake. There is not a tiny creature in the cosmos at whom his death is not a sneer. When a man hangs himself on a tree, the leaves might fall off in anger and the birds fly away in fury: for each has received a personal affront. Of course there may be pathetic emotional excuses for the act. There often are for rape, and there almost always are for dynamite. But if it comes to clear ideas and the intelligent meaning of things, then there is much more rational and philosophic truth in the burial at the cross-roads and the stake driven through the body, than in Mr. Archer’s suicidal automatic machines. There is a meaning in burying the suicide apart. The man’s crime is different from other crimes—for it makes even crimes impossible.

About the same time I read a solemn flippancy by some free thinker: he said that a suicide was only the same as a martyr. The open fallacy of this helped to clear the question. Obviously a suicide is the opposite of a martyr. A martyr is a man who cares so much for something outside him, that he forgets his own personal life. A suicide is a man who cares so little for anything outside him, that he wants to see the last of everything. One wants something to begin: the other wants everything to end. In other words, the martyr is noble, exactly because (however he renounces the world or execrates all humanity) he confesses this ultimate link with life; he sets his heart outside himself: he dies that something may live. The suicide is ignoble because he has not this link with being: he is a mere destroyer; spiritually, he destroys the universe. And then I remembered the stake and the cross-roads, and the queer fact that Christianity had shown this weird harshness to the suicide. For Christianity had shown a wild encouragement of the martyr. Historic Christianity was accused, not entirely without reason, of carrying martyrdom and asceticism to a point, desolate and pessimistic. The early Christian martyrs talked of death with a horrible happiness. They blasphemed the beautiful duties of the body: they smelt the grave afar off like a field of flowers. All this has seemed to many the very poetry of pessimism. Yet there is the stake at the crossroads to show what Christianity thought of the pessimist.

Forse l’esempio più quotidiano di questo punto è quello delle donne, e della loro strana e tenace lealtà. Certe persone sciocche misero in giro l’idea che, poiché è evidente che le donne sostengono i propri cari attraverso ogni cosa, esse debbano perciò essere cieche e non vedere nulla. Difficilmente possono aver conosciuto una sola donna. Le medesime donne che sono pronte a difendere i loro uomini a spada tratta sono, nei rapporti personali con l’uomo, quasi morbosamente lucide sulla debolezza delle sue scuse o sulla durezza della sua testa. L’amico di un uomo gli vuole bene ma lo lascia com’è: la moglie lo ama ed è sempre intenta a trasformarlo in qualcun altro. Le donne che sono mistiche assolute nel loro credo sono ciniche assolute nella loro critica. Thackeray lo espresse bene quando fece sì che la madre di Pendennis, la quale adorava il figlio come un dio, presumesse tuttavia che egli, come uomo, avrebbe sbagliato. Ne sottovalutava la virtù, benché ne sopravvalutasse il valore. Il devoto è del tutto libero di criticare; il fanatico può senza pericolo essere scettico. L’amore non è cieco; questa è l’ultima cosa che esso sia. L’amore è vincolato; e quanto più è vincolato, tanto meno è cieco.

A questo, per lo meno, ero giunto nella mia posizione riguardo a tutto ciò che si chiamava ottimismo, pessimismo e miglioramento. Prima di qualunque atto cosmico di riforma dobbiamo prestare un cosmico giuramento di fedeltà. Un uomo deve interessarsi alla vita, per poter poi essere disinteressato nelle opinioni su di essa. «Figlio mio, dammi il tuo cuore»; il cuore dev’essere fissato sulla cosa giusta: nel momento stesso in cui abbiamo un cuore fisso, abbiamo la mano libera. Devo fermarmi un istante per prevenire un’ovvia obiezione. Si dirà che la persona ragionevole accetta il mondo come una mescolanza di bene e di male, con una decorosa soddisfazione e una decorosa sopportazione. Ma è precisamente questo l’atteggiamento che io sostengo essere difettoso. Esso è, lo so, assai comune in quest’epoca; fu perfettamente espresso in quei versi sommessi di Matthew Arnold, che sono più acutamente blasfemi delle strida di Schopenhauer:

«Ci basta vivere: — e se una vita, di grandi frutti tanto poco ricca, per quanto sopportabile, par degna appena di questa pompa di mondi, di questo dolore della nascita.»

So che questo sentimento riempie la nostra epoca, e credo che la nostra epoca esso la agghiacci. Per i nostri titanici scopi di fede e di rivoluzione, ciò di cui abbiamo bisogno non è la fredda accettazione del mondo come un compromesso, ma un modo in cui possiamo di tutto cuore odiarlo e di tutto cuore amarlo. Non vogliamo che gioia e collera si neutralizzino a vicenda e producano una scontrosa contentezza; vogliamo un più fiero diletto e un più fiero scontento. Dobbiamo sentire l’universo, a un tempo, come il castello di un orco, da prendere d’assalto, e insieme come la nostra casetta, alla quale la sera possiamo far ritorno.

Nessuno dubita che un uomo comune possa cavarsela con questo mondo: ma noi non chiediamo forza sufficiente a cavarcela con esso, bensì forza sufficiente a farlo procedere. Può egli odiarlo abbastanza da mutarlo, e insieme amarlo abbastanza da ritenerlo degno di essere mutato? Può egli levare lo sguardo al suo colossale bene senza provare una sola volta acquiescenza? Può egli levare lo sguardo al suo colossale male senza provare una sola volta disperazione? Può egli, insomma, essere a un tempo non solo pessimista e ottimista, ma pessimista fanatico e ottimista fanatico? È abbastanza pagano da morire per il mondo, e abbastanza cristiano da morire ad esso? In questa combinazione, io sostengo, è l’ottimista razionale a fallire, e l’ottimista irrazionale a riuscire. Egli è pronto a mandare in pezzi l’intero universo per amore di se stesso.

Espongo queste cose non nella loro matura sequenza logica, ma così come mi vennero: e questa visione fu chiarita e affinata da un caso fortuito del tempo. Sotto l’ombra che si allungava di Ibsen, sorse un dibattito se non fosse una cosa graziosissima uccidere se stessi. Gravi moderni ci dicevano che non dovevamo neppure dire «pover’uomo» di chi si fosse fatto saltare le cervella, poiché costui era una persona da invidiare, e se le era fatte saltare soltanto in ragione della loro eccezionale eccellenza. Il signor William Archer arrivò a suggerire che nell’età dell’oro vi sarebbero state macchinette a gettone, per mezzo delle quali un uomo avrebbe potuto uccidersi per un soldo. In tutto ciò mi ritrovai profondamente ostile a molti che si dicevano liberali e umanitari. Il suicidio non è soltanto un peccato, è il peccato. È il male ultimo e assoluto, il rifiuto di prendere interesse all’esistenza; il rifiuto di prestare il giuramento di lealtà alla vita. L’uomo che uccide un uomo, uccide un uomo. L’uomo che uccide se stesso, uccide tutti gli uomini; per quanto lo riguarda, egli cancella il mondo. Il suo atto è peggiore (considerato simbolicamente) di qualunque stupro o attentato dinamitardo. Poiché esso distrugge ogni edificio: esso insulta ogni donna. Il ladro si accontenta dei diamanti; ma il suicida no: questo è il suo delitto. Egli non può essere corrotto, neppure dalle pietre fiammeggianti della Città celeste. Il ladro fa un complimento alle cose che ruba, se non al loro proprietario. Ma il suicida insulta ogni cosa sulla terra col non rubarla. Egli contamina ogni fiore col rifiutarsi di vivere per amor suo. Non c’è minima creatura nel cosmo a cui la sua morte non sia uno scherno. Quando un uomo si impicca a un albero, le foglie potrebbero cadere per l’ira e gli uccelli volare via furibondi: poiché ciascuno ha ricevuto un affronto personale. Certo, vi possono essere patetiche giustificazioni emotive per l’atto. Ve ne sono spesso per lo stupro, e ve ne sono quasi sempre per la dinamite. Ma se si viene alle idee chiare e al significato intelligente delle cose, allora c’è assai più verità razionale e filosofica nella sepoltura al crocevia e nel palo conficcato attraverso il corpo, che nelle macchine automatiche suicide del signor Archer. C’è un significato nel seppellire il suicida in disparte. Il delitto di quest’uomo è diverso dagli altri delitti — poiché rende impossibili perfino i delitti.

Verso lo stesso tempo lessi una solenne frivolezza di un libero pensatore: egli diceva che il suicida non era altro che la stessa cosa del martire. La palese fallacia di ciò contribuì a chiarire la questione. Evidentemente un suicida è l’opposto di un martire. Il martire è un uomo che si cura tanto di qualcosa fuori di sé, da dimenticare la propria vita personale. Il suicida è un uomo che si cura tanto poco di qualunque cosa fuori di sé, da voler vedere la fine di ogni cosa. L’uno vuole che qualcosa cominci: l’altro vuole che tutto finisca. In altre parole, il martire è nobile, precisamente perché (per quanto rinunci al mondo o esecri tutta l’umanità) confessa questo legame ultimo con la vita; egli pone il proprio cuore fuori di sé: muore affinché qualcosa viva. Il suicida è ignobile perché non ha questo legame con l’essere: è un puro distruttore; spiritualmente, egli distrugge l’universo. E allora mi ricordai del palo e del crocevia, e dello strano fatto che il Cristianesimo avesse mostrato questa bizzarra durezza verso il suicida. Poiché il Cristianesimo aveva mostrato un selvaggio incoraggiamento verso il martire. Il Cristianesimo storico fu accusato, non del tutto senza ragione, di spingere il martirio e l’ascetismo fino a un punto desolato e pessimistico. I primi martiri cristiani parlavano della morte con una felicità spaventosa. Bestemmiavano i bei doveri del corpo: fiutavano da lontano la tomba come un campo di fiori. Tutto questo è parso a molti la poesia stessa del pessimismo. Eppure c’è il palo al crocevia a mostrare che cosa il Cristianesimo pensasse del pessimista.

This was the first of the long train of enigmas with which Christianity entered the discussion. And there went with it a peculiarity of which I shall have to speak more markedly, as a note of all Christian notions, but which distinctly began in this one. The Christian attitude to the martyr and the suicide was not what is so often affirmed in modern morals. It was not a matter of degree. It was not that a line must be drawn somewhere, and that the self-slayer in exaltation fell within the line, the self-slayer in sadness just beyond it. The Christian feeling evidently was not merely that the suicide was carrying martyrdom too far. The Christian feeling was furiously for one and furiously against the other: these two things that looked so much alike were at opposite ends of heaven and hell. One man flung away his life; he was so good that his dry bones could heal cities in pestilence. Another man flung away life; he was so bad that his bones would pollute his brethren’s. I am not saying this fierceness was right; but why was it so fierce?

Here it was that I first found that my wandering feet were in some beaten track. Christianity had also felt this opposition of the martyr to the suicide: had it perhaps felt it for the same reason? Had Christianity felt what I felt, but could not (and cannot) express— this need for a first loyalty to things, and then for a ruinous reform of things? Then I remembered that it was actually the charge against Christianity that it combined these two things which I was wildly trying to combine. Christianity was accused, at one and the same time, of being too optimistic about the universe and of being too pessimistic about the world. The coincidence made me suddenly stand still.

An imbecile habit has arisen in modern controversy of saying that such and such a creed can be held in one age but cannot be held in another. Some dogma, we are told, was credible in the twelfth century, but is not credible in the twentieth. You might as well say that a certain philosophy can be believed on Mondays, but cannot be believed on Tuesdays. You might as well say of a view of the cosmos that it was suitable to half-past three, but not suitable to half-past four. What a man can believe depends upon his philosophy, not upon the clock or the century. If a man believes in unalterable natural law, he cannot believe in any miracle in any age. If a man believes in a will behind law, he can believe in any miracle in any age. Suppose, for the sake of argument, we are concerned with a case of thaumaturgic healing. A materialist of the twelfth century could not believe it any more than a materialist of the twentieth century. But a Christian Scientist of the twentieth century can believe it as much as a Christian of the twelfth century. It is simply a matter of a man’s theory of things. Therefore in dealing with any historical answer, the point is not whether it was given in our time, but whether it was given in answer to our question. And the more I thought about when and how Christianity had come into the world, the more I felt that it had actually come to answer this question.

It is commonly the loose and latitudinarian Christians who pay quite indefensible compliments to Christianity. They talk as if there had never been any piety or pity until Christianity came, a point on which any mediaeval would have been eager to correct them. They represent that the remarkable thing about Christianity was that it was the first to preach simplicity or self-restraint, or inwardness and sincerity. They will think me very narrow (whatever that means) if I say that the remarkable thing about Christianity was that it was the first to preach Christianity. Its peculiarity was that it was peculiar, and simplicity and sincerity are not peculiar, but obvious ideals for all mankind. Christianity was the answer to a riddle, not the last truism uttered after a long talk. Only the other day I saw in an excellent weekly paper of Puritan tone this remark, that Christianity when stripped of its armour of dogma (as who should speak of a man stripped of his armour of bones), turned out to be nothing but the Quaker doctrine of the Inner Light. Now, if I were to say that Christianity came into the world specially to destroy the doctrine of the Inner Light, that would be an exaggeration. But it would be very much nearer to the truth. The last Stoics, like Marcus Aurelius, were exactly the people who did believe in the Inner Light. Their dignity, their weariness, their sad external care for others, their incurable internal care for themselves, were all due to the Inner Light, and existed only by that dismal illumination. Notice that Marcus Aurelius insists, as such introspective moralists always do, upon small things done or undone; it is because he has not hate or love enough to make a moral revolution. He gets up early in the morning, just as our own aristocrats living the Simple Life get up early in the morning; because such altruism is much easier than stopping the games of the amphitheatre or giving the English people back their land. Marcus Aurelius is the most intolerable of human types. He is an unselfish egoist. An unselfish egoist is a man who has pride without the excuse of passion. Of all conceivable forms of enlightenment the worst is what these people call the Inner Light. Of all horrible religions the most horrible is the worship of the god within. Any one who knows any body knows how it would work; any one who knows any one from the Higher Thought Centre knows how it does work. That Jones shall worship the god within him turns out ultimately to mean that Jones shall worship Jones. Let Jones worship the sun or moon, anything rather than the Inner Light; let Jones worship cats or crocodiles, if he can find any in his street, but not the god within. Christianity came into the world firstly in order to assert with violence that a man had not only to look inwards, but to look outwards, to behold with astonishment and enthusiasm a divine company and a divine captain. The only fun of being a Christian was that a man was not left alone with the Inner Light, but definitely recognized an outer light, fair as the sun, clear as the moon, terrible as an army with banners.

Questo fu il primo di quella lunga teoria di enigmi con cui il Cristianesimo entrò nella discussione. E lo accompagnava una peculiarità di cui dovrò parlare con maggior insistenza, come tratto distintivo di tutte le nozioni cristiane, ma che precisamente ebbe qui il suo principio. L’atteggiamento cristiano verso il martire e il suicida non era quello che così spesso si afferma nella morale moderna. Non era una questione di grado. Non si trattava di dover tracciare una linea da qualche parte, sicché il sé-uccisore nell’esaltazione cadesse al di qua della linea, e il sé-uccisore nella tristezza appena al di là. Il sentimento cristiano evidentemente non era soltanto che il suicida portasse il martirio troppo oltre. Il sentimento cristiano era furiosamente a favore dell’uno e furiosamente contro l’altro: queste due cose che tanto si somigliavano stavano ai due estremi opposti del cielo e dell’inferno. Un uomo gettava via la propria vita; ed era così buono che le sue ossa disseccate potevano risanare intere città dalla peste. Un altro uomo gettava via la vita; ed era così malvagio che le sue ossa avrebbero contaminato quelle dei suoi fratelli. Non dico che questa ferocia fosse giusta; ma perché era così feroce?

Fu qui che per la prima volta scoprii che i miei passi erranti battevano un sentiero già tracciato. Anche il Cristianesimo aveva sentito questa opposizione del martire al suicida: l’aveva forse sentita per la medesima ragione? Aveva il Cristianesimo sentito ciò che io sentivo, ma non potevo (e non posso) esprimere: questo bisogno di una prima lealtà alle cose, e poi di una riforma rovinosa delle cose? Allora mi ricordai che era proprio l’accusa mossa al Cristianesimo quella di combinare queste due cose che io tentavo follemente di combinare. Il Cristianesimo veniva accusato, in uno stesso e medesimo tempo, di essere troppo ottimista riguardo all’universo e troppo pessimista riguardo al mondo. La coincidenza mi fece d’un tratto arrestare immobile.

Un’abitudine imbecille è sorta nella controversia moderna: quella di dire che un dato credo può essere sostenuto in un’epoca ma non in un’altra. Un certo dogma, ci vien detto, era credibile nel dodicesimo secolo, ma non è credibile nel ventesimo. Tanto varrebbe dire che una certa filosofia può essere creduta il lunedì, ma non può esserlo il martedì. Tanto varrebbe dire di una visione del cosmo che essa si conviene alle tre e mezza, ma non si conviene alle quattro e mezza. Ciò che un uomo può credere dipende dalla sua filosofia, non dall’orologio né dal secolo. Se un uomo crede in una legge naturale inalterabile, non può credere in alcun miracolo in alcuna epoca. Se un uomo crede in una volontà che sta dietro la legge, può credere in qualsiasi miracolo in qualsiasi epoca. Supponiamo, per amor di ragionamento, di avere a che fare con un caso di guarigione taumaturgica. Un materialista del dodicesimo secolo non poteva crederci più di quanto vi possa credere un materialista del ventesimo. Ma uno Scientista Cristiano del ventesimo secolo può crederci tanto quanto un cristiano del dodicesimo. È semplicemente questione della teoria che un uomo ha delle cose. Perciò, nel considerare qualsiasi risposta storica, il punto non è se essa fu data ai nostri tempi, ma se fu data in risposta alla nostra domanda. E quanto più riflettevo su quando e come il Cristianesimo fosse venuto nel mondo, tanto più sentivo che era venuto proprio a rispondere a questa domanda.

Sono di solito i cristiani rilassati e latitudinari a rivolgere al Cristianesimo complimenti del tutto insostenibili. Parlano come se non fosse mai esistita pietà o compassione prima che il Cristianesimo venisse, punto sul quale qualsiasi uomo del medioevo sarebbe stato ansioso di correggerli. Sostengono che la cosa notevole del Cristianesimo fosse di essere stato il primo a predicare la semplicità o l’auto-dominio, o l’interiorità e la sincerità. Mi giudicheranno assai gretto (qualunque cosa ciò significhi) se dico che la cosa notevole del Cristianesimo fu di essere stato il primo a predicare il Cristianesimo. La sua peculiarità era di essere peculiare, e la semplicità e la sincerità non sono peculiari, ma ideali ovvii per tutta l’umanità. Il Cristianesimo fu la risposta a un indovinello, non l’ultimo truismo pronunciato dopo una lunga conversazione. Proprio l’altro giorno ho letto, in un eccellente settimanale di tono puritano, l’osservazione che il Cristianesimo, spogliato della sua armatura di dogma (come chi parlasse di un uomo spogliato della sua armatura di ossa), si rivelava non essere altro che la dottrina quacchera della Luce Interiore. Ora, se dicessi che il Cristianesimo venne nel mondo appositamente per distruggere la dottrina della Luce Interiore, sarebbe un’esagerazione. Ma sarebbe molto più vicino alla verità. Gli ultimi Stoici, come Marco Aurelio, erano esattamente coloro che credevano nella Luce Interiore. La loro dignità, la loro stanchezza, la loro triste cura esteriore per gli altri, la loro incurabile cura interiore per se stessi, tutto era dovuto alla Luce Interiore, ed esisteva solo per quella tetra illuminazione. Si noti che Marco Aurelio insiste, come sempre fanno questi moralisti introspettivi, sulle piccole cose fatte o non fatte; ed è perché non ha odio né amore bastante a fare una rivoluzione morale. Si alza di buon mattino, proprio come i nostri aristocratici che praticano la Vita Semplice si alzano di buon mattino; perché tale altruismo è molto più facile che porre fine ai giochi dell’anfiteatro o restituire al popolo inglese la sua terra. Marco Aurelio è il più intollerabile dei tipi umani. È un egoista disinteressato. Un egoista disinteressato è un uomo che ha orgoglio senza la scusa della passione. Di tutte le forme concepibili di illuminazione, la peggiore è ciò che costoro chiamano la Luce Interiore. Di tutte le religioni orribili, la più orribile è l’adorazione del dio che sta dentro. Chiunque conosca qualcuno sa come funzionerebbe; chiunque conosca qualcuno del Centro del Pensiero Superiore sa come funziona davvero. Che Jones adori il dio dentro di sé finisce per significare, in ultima analisi, che Jones adori Jones. Che Jones adori il sole o la luna, qualsiasi cosa piuttosto che la Luce Interiore; che Jones adori i gatti o i coccodrilli, se ne trova per la sua strada, ma non il dio che sta dentro. Il Cristianesimo venne nel mondo anzitutto per affermare con violenza che l’uomo doveva non solo guardare in dentro, ma guardare in fuori, per contemplare con stupore ed entusiasmo una compagnia divina e un capitano divino. L’unico spasso dell’essere cristiano era che l’uomo non veniva lasciato solo con la Luce Interiore, ma riconosceva distintamente una luce esteriore, bella come il sole, chiara come la luna, terribile come un esercito schierato a bandiere spiegate.

All the same, it will be as well if Jones does not worship the sun and moon. If he does, there is a tendency for him to imitate them; to say, that because the sun burns insects alive, he may burn insects alive. He thinks that because the sun gives people sun-stroke, he may give his neighbour measles. He thinks that because the moon is said to drive men mad, he may drive his wife mad. This ugly side of mere external optimism had also shown itself in the ancient world. About the time when the Stoic idealism had begun to show the weaknesses of pessimism, the old nature worship of the ancients had begun to show the enormous weaknesses of optimism. Nature worship is natural enough while the society is young, or, in other words, Pantheism is all right as long as it is the worship of Pan. But Nature has another side which experience and sin are not slow in finding out, and it is no flippancy to say of the god Pan that he soon showed the cloven hoof. The only objection to Natural Religion is that somehow it always becomes unnatural. A man loves Nature in the morning for her innocence and amiability, and at nightfall, if he is loving her still, it is for her darkness and her cruelty. He washes at dawn in clear water as did the Wise Man of the Stoics, yet, somehow at the dark end of the day, he is bathing in hot bull’s blood, as did Julian the Apostate. The mere pursuit of health always leads to something unhealthy. Physical nature must not be made the direct object of obedience; it must be enjoyed, not worshipped. Stars and mountains must not be taken seriously. If they are, we end where the pagan nature worship ended. Because the earth is kind, we can imitate all her cruelties. Because sexuality is sane, we can all go mad about sexuality. Mere optimism had reached its insane and appropriate termination. The theory that everything was good had become an orgy of everything that was bad.

On the other side our idealist pessimists were represented by the old remnant of the Stoics. Marcus Aurelius and his friends had really given up the idea of any god in the universe and looked only to the god within. They had no hope of any virtue in nature, and hardly any hope of any virtue in society. They had not enough interest in the outer world really to wreck or revolutionise it. They did not love the city enough to set fire to it. Thus the ancient world was exactly in our own desolate dilemma. The only people who really enjoyed this world were busy breaking it up; and the virtuous people did not care enough about them to knock them down. In this dilemma (the same as ours) Christianity suddenly stepped in and offered a singular answer, which the world eventually accepted as THE answer. It was the answer then, and I think it is the answer now.

This answer was like the slash of a sword; it sundered; it did not in any sense sentimentally unite. Briefly, it divided God from the cosmos. That transcendence and distinctness of the deity which some Christians now want to remove from Christianity, was really the only reason why any one wanted to be a Christian. It was the whole point of the Christian answer to the unhappy pessimist and the still more unhappy optimist. As I am here only concerned with their particular problem, I shall indicate only briefly this great metaphysical suggestion. All descriptions of the creating or sustaining principle in things must be metaphorical, because they must be verbal. Thus the pantheist is forced to speak of God in all things as if he were in a box. Thus the evolutionist has, in his very name, the idea of being unrolled like a carpet. All terms, religious and irreligious, are open to this charge. The only question is whether all terms are useless, or whether one can, with such a phrase, cover a distinct IDEA about the origin of things. I think one can, and so evidently does the evolutionist, or he would not talk about evolution. And the root phrase for all Christian theism was this, that God was a creator, as an artist is a creator. A poet is so separate from his poem that he himself speaks of it as a little thing he has “thrown off.” Even in giving it forth he has flung it away. This principle that all creation and procreation is a breaking off is at least as consistent through the cosmos as the evolutionary principle that all growth is a branching out. A woman loses a child even in having a child. All creation is separation. Birth is as solemn a parting as death.

It was the prime philosophic principle of Christianity that this divorce in the divine act of making (such as severs the poet from the poem or the mother from the new-born child) was the true description of the act whereby the absolute energy made the world. According to most philosophers, God in making the world enslaved it. According to Christianity, in making it, He set it free. God had written, not so much a poem, but rather a play; a play he had planned as perfect, but which had necessarily been left to human actors and stage-managers, who had since made a great mess of it. I will discuss the truth of this theorem later. Here I have only to point out with what a startling smoothness it passed the dilemma we have discussed in this chapter. In this way at least one could be both happy and indignant without degrading one’s self to be either a pessimist or an optimist. On this system one could fight all the forces of existence without deserting the flag of existence. One could be at peace with the universe and yet be at war with the world. St. George could still fight the dragon, however big the monster bulked in the cosmos, though he were bigger than the mighty cities or bigger than the everlasting hills. If he were as big as the world he could yet be killed in the name of the world. St. George had not to consider any obvious odds or proportions in the scale of things, but only the original secret of their design. He can shake his sword at the dragon, even if it is everything; even if the empty heavens over his head are only the huge arch of its open jaws.

Nondimeno, sarà meglio che Jones non adori il sole e la luna. Se lo fa, in lui si desta la tendenza a imitarli; a dire che, poiché il sole brucia vivi gli insetti, anch’egli può bruciare vivi gli insetti. Egli pensa che, poiché il sole procura alla gente l’insolazione, egli possa attaccare il morbillo al vicino. Pensa che, poiché si dice che la luna faccia impazzire gli uomini, egli possa far impazzire la moglie. Questo lato sgradevole del puro ottimismo esteriore si era manifestato anche nel mondo antico. Verso il tempo in cui l’idealismo stoico aveva cominciato a mostrare le debolezze del pessimismo, l’antico culto della natura presso gli antichi aveva cominciato a mostrare le enormi debolezze dell’ottimismo. Il culto della natura è abbastanza naturale finché la società è giovane, ossia, in altre parole, il Panteismo va benissimo finché è il culto di Pan. Ma la natura ha un altro lato che l’esperienza e il peccato non tardano a scoprire, e non è una frivolezza dire del dio Pan che ben presto mostrò lo zoccolo forcuto. L’unica obiezione alla Religione Naturale è che, chissà come, essa diventa sempre innaturale. Un uomo ama la natura al mattino per la sua innocenza e la sua amabilità, e sul far della notte, se ancora l’ama, l’ama per le sue tenebre e la sua crudeltà. All’alba si lava in acqua limpida come faceva il Saggio degli Stoici, eppure, chissà come, nel cupo declinare del giorno, si bagna nel caldo sangue di toro, come faceva Giuliano l’Apostata. La sola ricerca della salute conduce sempre a qualcosa di malsano. La natura fisica non deve essere fatta oggetto diretto di obbedienza; deve essere goduta, non adorata. Le stelle e le montagne non vanno prese sul serio. Se lo si fa, si finisce dove finì il culto pagano della natura. Poiché la terra è benigna, possiamo imitare tutte le sue crudeltà. Poiché la sessualità è sana, possiamo tutti impazzire per la sessualità. Il puro ottimismo aveva raggiunto la sua folle e appropriata conclusione. La teoria che tutto fosse buono era diventata un’orgia di tutto ciò che era cattivo.

Dall’altro versante i nostri idealisti pessimisti erano rappresentati dall’antico residuo degli Stoici. Marco Aurelio e i suoi amici avevano davvero abbandonato l’idea di un qualche dio nell’universo e guardavano soltanto al dio interiore. Non nutrivano alcuna speranza di virtù nella natura, e quasi nessuna speranza di virtù nella società. Non avevano interesse sufficiente per il mondo esterno da volerlo davvero distruggere o rivoluzionare. Non amavano la città abbastanza da darle fuoco. Così il mondo antico si trovava esattamente nel nostro medesimo desolato dilemma. Le uniche persone che godevano davvero di questo mondo erano affaccendate a distruggerlo; e le persone virtuose non si curavano di loro abbastanza da abbatterle. In questo dilemma (il medesimo del nostro) il Cristianesimo fece all’improvviso il suo ingresso e offrì una risposta singolare, che il mondo alla fine accettò come LA risposta. Era la risposta allora, e credo sia la risposta anche adesso.

Questa risposta fu come il fendente di una spada; separò; non unì in alcun senso sentimentalmente. In breve, divise Dio dal cosmo. Quella trascendenza e distinzione della divinità che alcuni cristiani ora vogliono togliere dal Cristianesimo era in realtà l’unica ragione per cui qualcuno desiderava essere cristiano. Era l’intero punto della risposta cristiana all’infelice pessimista e all’ancor più infelice ottimista. Poiché qui mi occupo soltanto del loro particolare problema, indicherò solo brevemente questa grande suggestione metafisica. Tutte le descrizioni del principio che crea o sostiene le cose devono essere metaforiche, perché devono essere verbali. Così il panteista è costretto a parlare di Dio in tutte le cose come se egli fosse dentro una scatola. Così l’evoluzionista ha, nel suo stesso nome, l’idea di essere srotolato come un tappeto. Tutti i termini, religiosi e irreligiosi, sono esposti a questa accusa. L’unica questione è se tutti i termini siano inutili, oppure se con una tale frase si possa abbracciare una precisa IDEA sull’origine delle cose. Io credo che si possa, e così evidentemente crede l’evoluzionista, altrimenti non parlerebbe di evoluzione. E la frase radice di ogni teismo cristiano era questa: che Dio era un creatore, come un artista è un creatore. Un poeta è tanto separato dal suo poema da parlarne egli stesso come di una cosetta che ha «buttato giù». Perfino nel darlo alla luce lo ha scagliato via. Questo principio, che ogni creazione e procreazione è un distacco, è coerente attraverso il cosmo almeno quanto il principio evoluzionistico secondo cui ogni crescita è un ramificarsi. Una donna perde un figlio proprio nell’avere un figlio. Ogni creazione è separazione. La nascita è un commiato solenne quanto la morte.

Era il primo principio filosofico del Cristianesimo che questo divorzio nell’atto divino del fare (tale da separare il poeta dal poema o la madre dal figlio appena nato) fosse la vera descrizione dell’atto con cui l’energia assoluta fece il mondo. Secondo la maggior parte dei filosofi, Dio nel fare il mondo lo rese schiavo. Secondo il Cristianesimo, nel farlo, lo rese libero. Dio aveva scritto non tanto un poema, quanto piuttosto un dramma; un dramma che aveva concepito come perfetto, ma che necessariamente era stato lasciato ad attori e direttori di scena umani, i quali da allora ne hanno fatto un gran pasticcio. Discuterò più avanti la verità di questo teorema. Qui devo soltanto far notare con quale sorprendente scioltezza esso superò il dilemma di cui abbiamo discusso in questo capitolo. In questo modo si poteva almeno essere insieme felici e indignati senza degradare il proprio io a diventare pessimista oppure ottimista. Con questo sistema si potevano combattere tutte le forze dell’esistenza senza disertare la bandiera dell’esistenza. Si poteva essere in pace con l’universo e tuttavia in guerra col mondo. San Giorgio poteva ancora combattere il drago, per quanto grande il mostro si stagliasse nel cosmo, fosse pure più grande delle possenti città o più grande dei colli eterni. Se anche fosse stato grande quanto il mondo, poteva pur sempre essere ucciso nel nome del mondo. San Giorgio non doveva considerare alcuna evidente sproporzione o disparità nella scala delle cose, ma soltanto il segreto originario del loro disegno. Egli può brandire la spada contro il drago, anche se esso è ogni cosa; anche se i cieli vuoti sopra il suo capo non sono che l’enorme arcata delle sue fauci spalancate.

And then followed an experience impossible to describe. It was as if I had been blundering about since my birth with two huge and unmanageable machines, of different shapes and without apparent connection—the world and the Christian tradition. I had found this hole in the world: the fact that one must somehow find a way of loving the world without trusting it; somehow one must love the world without being worldly. I found this projecting feature of Christian theology, like a sort of hard spike, the dogmatic insistence that God was personal, and had made a world separate from Himself. The spike of dogma fitted exactly into the hole in the world— it had evidently been meant to go there—and then the strange thing began to happen. When once these two parts of the two machines had come together, one after another, all the other parts fitted and fell in with an eerie exactitude. I could hear bolt after bolt over all the machinery falling into its place with a kind of click of relief. Having got one part right, all the other parts were repeating that rectitude, as clock after clock strikes noon. Instinct after instinct was answered by doctrine after doctrine. Or, to vary the metaphor, I was like one who had advanced into a hostile country to take one high fortress. And when that fort had fallen the whole country surrendered and turned solid behind me. The whole land was lit up, as it were, back to the first fields of my childhood. All those blind fancies of boyhood which in the fourth chapter I have tried in vain to trace on the darkness, became suddenly transparent and sane. I was right when I felt that roses were red by some sort of choice: it was the divine choice. I was right when I felt that I would almost rather say that grass was the wrong colour than say it must by necessity have been that colour: it might verily have been any other. My sense that happiness hung on the crazy thread of a condition did mean something when all was said: it meant the whole doctrine of the Fall. Even those dim and shapeless monsters of notions which I have not been able to describe, much less defend, stepped quietly into their places like colossal caryatides of the creed. The fancy that the cosmos was not vast and void, but small and cosy, had a fulfilled significance now, for anything that is a work of art must be small in the sight of the artist; to God the stars might be only small and dear, like diamonds. And my haunting instinct that somehow good was not merely a tool to be used, but a relic to be guarded, like the goods from Crusoe’s ship— even that had been the wild whisper of something originally wise, for, according to Christianity, we were indeed the survivors of a wreck, the crew of a golden ship that had gone down before the beginning of the world.

But the important matter was this, that it entirely reversed the reason for optimism. And the instant the reversal was made it felt like the abrupt ease when a bone is put back in the socket. I had often called myself an optimist, to avoid the too evident blasphemy of pessimism. But all the optimism of the age had been false and disheartening for this reason, that it had always been trying to prove that we fit in to the world. The Christian optimism is based on the fact that we do NOT fit in to the world. I had tried to be happy by telling myself that man is an animal, like any other which sought its meat from God. But now I really was happy, for I had learnt that man is a monstrosity. I had been right in feeling all things as odd, for I myself was at once worse and better than all things. The optimist’s pleasure was prosaic, for it dwelt on the naturalness of everything; the Christian pleasure was poetic, for it dwelt on the unnaturalness of everything in the light of the supernatural. The modern philosopher had told me again and again that I was in the right place, and I had still felt depressed even in acquiescence. But I had heard that I was in the WRONG place, and my soul sang for joy, like a bird in spring. The knowledge found out and illuminated forgotten chambers in the dark house of infancy. I knew now why grass had always seemed to me as queer as the green beard of a giant, and why I could feel homesick at home.

VI THE PARADOXES OF CHRISTIANITY

The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, nor even that it is a reasonable one. The commonest kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite. Life is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for logicians. It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wildness lies in wait. I give one coarse instance of what I mean. Suppose some mathematical creature from the moon were to reckon up the human body; he would at once see that the essential thing about it was that it was duplicate. A man is two men, he on the right exactly resembling him on the left. Having noted that there was an arm on the right and one on the left, a leg on the right and one on the left, he might go further and still find on each side the same number of fingers, the same number of toes, twin eyes, twin ears, twin nostrils, and even twin lobes of the brain. At last he would take it as a law; and then, where he found a heart on one side, would deduce that there was another heart on the other. And just then, where he most felt he was right, he would be wrong.

It is this silent swerving from accuracy by an inch that is the uncanny element in everything. It seems a sort of secret treason in the universe. An apple or an orange is round enough to get itself called round, and yet is not round after all. The earth itself is shaped like an orange in order to lure some simple astronomer into calling it a globe. A blade of grass is called after the blade of a sword, because it comes to a point; but it doesn’t. Everywhere in things there is this element of the quiet and incalculable. It escapes the rationalists, but it never escapes till the last moment. From the grand curve of our earth it could easily be inferred that every inch of it was thus curved. It would seem rational that as a man has a brain on both sides, he should have a heart on both sides. Yet scientific men are still organizing expeditions to find the North Pole, because they are so fond of flat country. Scientific men are also still organizing expeditions to find a man’s heart; and when they try to find it, they generally get on the wrong side of him.

E allora seguì un’esperienza impossibile da descrivere. Era come se, fin dalla nascita, mi fossi aggirato a tentoni con due macchine enormi e ingovernabili, di forma diversa e senza alcun collegamento apparente: il mondo e la tradizione cristiana. Nel mondo avevo trovato questa lacuna: il fatto che in qualche modo si debba trovare la via per amare il mondo senza fidarsene; che in qualche modo si debba amare il mondo senza essere mondani. E nella teologia cristiana avevo trovato questo elemento sporgente, simile a una sorta di dura punta, l’insistenza dogmatica che Dio fosse personale e avesse fatto un mondo separato da Sé. La punta del dogma si incastrava esattamente nella lacuna del mondo: era stata evidentemente concepita per andare lì, e allora cominciò ad accadere la cosa strana. Non appena queste due parti delle due macchine si furono unite, una dopo l’altra tutte le altre parti combaciarono e andarono a posto con una sinistra esattezza. Potevo udire bullone dopo bullone, in tutto quel congegno, cadere al proprio posto con una sorta di scatto di sollievo. Sistemata bene una parte, tutte le altre ripetevano quella medesima rettitudine, come orologio dopo orologio batte il mezzogiorno. Istinto dopo istinto trovava risposta in dottrina dopo dottrina. O, per variare la metafora, ero come chi si è addentrato in un paese ostile per prendere un’alta fortezza. E quando quella rocca fu caduta, tutto il paese si arrese e si consolidò dietro di me. L’intera terra si illuminò, per così dire, fino ai primi campi della mia fanciullezza. Tutte quelle fantasie cieche della prima età, che nel quarto capitolo ho invano cercato di tracciare sull’oscurità, divennero d’un tratto trasparenti e sensate. Avevo ragione quando sentivo che le rose erano rosse per una sorta di scelta: era la scelta divina. Avevo ragione quando sentivo che avrei quasi preferito dire che l’erba era del colore sbagliato piuttosto che dire che doveva per necessità essere di quel colore: essa poteva davvero essere di qualunque altro. Il mio senso che la felicità pendesse dal folle filo di una condizione voleva pur dire qualcosa, a conti fatti: significava l’intera dottrina della Caduta. Perfino quei mostri di idee, oscuri e informi, che non sono stato in grado di descrivere, e ancor meno di difendere, entrarono quietamente al loro posto come colossali cariatidi del credo. La fantasia che il cosmo non fosse vasto e vuoto, ma piccolo e accogliente, aveva ora un significato compiuto, poiché tutto ciò che è opera d’arte dev’essere piccolo agli occhi dell’artista; per Dio le stelle potrebbero essere solo piccole e care, come diamanti. E il mio istinto ossessivo che in qualche modo il bene non fosse un semplice strumento da usare, ma una reliquia da custodire, come i beni salvati dalla nave di Crusoe: perfino quello era stato il selvaggio sussurro di qualcosa in origine saggio, poiché, secondo il Cristianesimo, noi eravamo davvero i superstiti di un naufragio, l’equipaggio di una nave d’oro affondata prima del principio del mondo.

Ma la cosa importante era questa: che tutto ciò capovolgeva interamente la ragione dell’ottimismo. E nell’istante in cui il capovolgimento fu compiuto, esso diede un senso di brusco sollievo, come quando un osso torna al suo incavo. Mi ero spesso definito ottimista, per evitare la troppo evidente bestemmia del pessimismo. Ma tutto l’ottimismo dell’epoca era stato falso e scoraggiante per questa ragione: che aveva sempre cercato di provare che noi ci adattiamo al mondo. L’ottimismo cristiano si fonda sul fatto che noi NON ci adattiamo al mondo. Avevo cercato di essere felice dicendomi che l’uomo è un animale, come ogni altro che cerca il proprio cibo da Dio. Ma ora ero davvero felice, perché avevo appreso che l’uomo è una mostruosità. Avevo avuto ragione nel sentire tutte le cose come strane, poiché io stesso ero al tempo stesso peggiore e migliore di tutte le cose. Il piacere dell’ottimista era prosaico, perché indugiava sulla naturalezza di ogni cosa; il piacere cristiano era poetico, perché indugiava sull’innaturalezza di ogni cosa alla luce del soprannaturale. Il filosofo moderno mi aveva ripetuto più e più volte che ero al posto giusto, e io mi ero pur sentito depresso, anche nell’acquiescenza. Ma avevo udito che ero al posto SBAGLIATO, e la mia anima cantò di gioia, come un uccello a primavera. Quella conoscenza scoprì e illuminò camere dimenticate nella casa buia dell’infanzia. Ora sapevo perché l’erba mi era sempre parsa bizzarra come la barba verde di un gigante, e perché potevo sentire nostalgia perfino stando a casa.

VI I PARADOSSI DEL CRISTIANESIMO

Il vero guaio di questo nostro mondo non è che sia un mondo irragionevole, e nemmeno che sia un mondo ragionevole. Il tipo di guaio più comune è che esso è quasi ragionevole, ma non del tutto. La vita non è un’illogicità; eppure è una trappola per i logici. Sembra appena un po’ più matematica e regolare di quanto non sia; la sua esattezza è manifesta, ma la sua inesattezza è nascosta; la sua selvatichezza sta in agguato. Do un esempio grossolano di ciò che intendo. Supponiamo che una qualche creatura matematica venuta dalla luna si mettesse a fare i conti del corpo umano; vedrebbe subito che la cosa essenziale al riguardo era che esso è duplice. Un uomo è due uomini: quello di destra somiglia esattamente a quello di sinistra. Notato che c’era un braccio a destra e uno a sinistra, una gamba a destra e una a sinistra, potrebbe spingersi oltre e trovare ancora su ciascun lato lo stesso numero di dita delle mani, lo stesso numero di dita dei piedi, occhi gemelli, orecchie gemelle, narici gemelle, e perfino lobi gemelli del cervello. Alla fine lo prenderebbe per legge; e allora, là dove trovasse un cuore da un lato, dedurrebbe che ce n’era un altro dall’altro lato. E proprio allora, là dove più si sentirebbe nel giusto, sarebbe in errore.

È questo silenzioso scarto dall’esattezza di un pollice a costituire l’elemento perturbante in ogni cosa. Pare una sorta di segreto tradimento nell’universo. Una mela o un’arancia è abbastanza tonda da farsi chiamare tonda, eppure, a conti fatti, tonda non è. La terra stessa ha la forma di un’arancia per attirare qualche ingenuo astronomo a chiamarla globo. Un filo d’erba si chiama così dalla lama di una spada, perché termina a punta; ma non è vero. Ovunque nelle cose c’è questo elemento del quieto e dell’incalcolabile. Esso sfugge ai razionalisti, ma non sfugge mai fino all’ultimo momento. Dalla grande curva della nostra terra si potrebbe facilmente inferire che ogni suo pollice fosse così curvato. Sembrerebbe razionale che, come un uomo ha un cervello su entrambi i lati, così debba avere un cuore su entrambi i lati. Eppure gli uomini di scienza organizzano ancora spedizioni per trovare il Polo Nord, perché sono tanto affezionati ai paesi piatti. Gli uomini di scienza organizzano ancora spedizioni anche per trovare il cuore di un uomo; e quando cercano di trovarlo, in genere finiscono dalla parte sbagliata.

Now, actual insight or inspiration is best tested by whether it guesses these hidden malformations or surprises. If our mathematician from the moon saw the two arms and the two ears, he might deduce the two shoulder-blades and the two halves of the brain. But if he guessed that the man’s heart was in the right place, then I should call him something more than a mathematician. Now, this is exactly the claim which I have since come to propound for Christianity. Not merely that it deduces logical truths, but that when it suddenly becomes illogical, it has found, so to speak, an illogical truth. It not only goes right about things, but it goes wrong (if one may say so) exactly where the things go wrong. Its plan suits the secret irregularities, and expects the unexpected. It is simple about the simple truth; but it is stubborn about the subtle truth. It will admit that a man has two hands, it will not admit (though all the Modernists wail to it) the obvious deduction that he has two hearts. It is my only purpose in this chapter to point this out; to show that whenever we feel there is something odd in Christian theology, we shall generally find that there is something odd in the truth.

I have alluded to an unmeaning phrase to the effect that such and such a creed cannot be believed in our age. Of course, anything can be believed in any age. But, oddly enough, there really is a sense in which a creed, if it is believed at all, can be believed more fixedly in a complex society than in a simple one. If a man finds Christianity true in Birmingham, he has actually clearer reasons for faith than if he had found it true in Mercia. For the more complicated seems the coincidence, the less it can be a coincidence. If snowflakes fell in the shape, say, of the heart of Midlothian, it might be an accident. But if snowflakes fell in the exact shape of the maze at Hampton Court, I think one might call it a miracle. It is exactly as of such a miracle that I have since come to feel of the philosophy of Christianity. The complication of our modern world proves the truth of the creed more perfectly than any of the plain problems of the ages of faith. It was in Notting Hill and Battersea that I began to see that Christianity was true. This is why the faith has that elaboration of doctrines and details which so much distresses those who admire Christianity without believing in it. When once one believes in a creed, one is proud of its complexity, as scientists are proud of the complexity of science. It shows how rich it is in discoveries. If it is right at all, it is a compliment to say that it’s elaborately right. A stick might fit a hole or a stone a hollow by accident. But a key and a lock are both complex. And if a key fits a lock, you know it is the right key.

But this involved accuracy of the thing makes it very difficult to do what I now have to do, to describe this accumulation of truth. It is very hard for a man to defend anything of which he is entirely convinced. It is comparatively easy when he is only partially convinced. He is partially convinced because he has found this or that proof of the thing, and he can expound it. But a man is not really convinced of a philosophic theory when he finds that something proves it. He is only really convinced when he finds that everything proves it. And the more converging reasons he finds pointing to this conviction, the more bewildered he is if asked suddenly to sum them up. Thus, if one asked an ordinary intelligent man, on the spur of the moment, “Why do you prefer civilization to savagery?” he would look wildly round at object after object, and would only be able to answer vaguely, “Why, there is that bookcase … and the coals in the coal-scuttle … and pianos … and policemen.” The whole case for civilization is that the case for it is complex. It has done so many things. But that very multiplicity of proof which ought to make reply overwhelming makes reply impossible.

There is, therefore, about all complete conviction a kind of huge helplessness. The belief is so big that it takes a long time to get it into action. And this hesitation chiefly arises, oddly enough, from an indifference about where one should begin. All roads lead to Rome; which is one reason why many people never get there. In the case of this defence of the Christian conviction I confess that I would as soon begin the argument with one thing as another; I would begin it with a turnip or a taximeter cab. But if I am to be at all careful about making my meaning clear, it will, I think, be wiser to continue the current arguments of the last chapter, which was concerned to urge the first of these mystical coincidences, or rather ratifications. All I had hitherto heard of Christian theology had alienated me from it. I was a pagan at the age of twelve, and a complete agnostic by the age of sixteen; and I cannot understand any one passing the age of seventeen without having asked himself so simple a question. I did, indeed, retain a cloudy reverence for a cosmic deity and a great historical interest in the Founder of Christianity. But I certainly regarded Him as a man; though perhaps I thought that, even in that point, He had an advantage over some of His modern critics. I read the scientific and sceptical literature of my time—all of it, at least, that I could find written in English and lying about; and I read nothing else; I mean I read nothing else on any other note of philosophy. The penny dreadfuls which I also read were indeed in a healthy and heroic tradition of Christianity; but I did not know this at the time. I never read a line of Christian apologetics. I read as little as I can of them now. It was Huxley and Herbert Spencer and Bradlaugh who brought me back to orthodox theology. They sowed in my mind my first wild doubts of doubt. Our grandmothers were quite right when they said that Tom Paine and the free-thinkers unsettled the mind. They do. They unsettled mine horribly. The rationalist made me question whether reason was of any use whatever; and when I had finished Herbert Spencer I had got as far as doubting (for the first time) whether evolution had occurred at all. As I laid down the last of Colonel Ingersoll’s atheistic lectures the dreadful thought broke across my mind, “Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian.” I was in a desperate way.

Ora, la vera intuizione o ispirazione si mette alla prova al meglio nel vedere se essa indovina queste malformazioni nascoste o queste sorprese. Se il nostro matematico venuto dalla luna vedesse le due braccia e le due orecchie, potrebbe dedurne le due scapole e le due metà del cervello. Ma se indovinasse che il cuore di quell’uomo si trova al posto giusto, allora lo chiamerei qualcosa di più di un matematico. Ora, questa è esattamente la pretesa che da allora sono giunto a rivendicare per il cristianesimo. Non semplicemente che esso deduca verità logiche, ma che, quando all’improvviso diventa illogico, ha trovato, per così dire, una verità illogica. Non solo va nel verso giusto riguardo alle cose, ma va anche nel verso sbagliato (se così si può dire) esattamente là dove le cose vanno nel verso sbagliato. Il suo disegno si accorda con le irregolarità segrete, e si aspetta l’inaspettato. È semplice riguardo alla verità semplice; ma è ostinato riguardo alla verità sottile. Ammetterà che un uomo ha due mani, non ammetterà (per quanto tutti i modernisti glielo implorino con i loro lamenti) l’ovvia deduzione che egli abbia due cuori. Il mio unico scopo in questo capitolo è mettere in luce questo; mostrare che, ogni qual volta sentiamo che c’è qualcosa di strano nella teologia cristiana, generalmente scopriremo che c’è qualcosa di strano nella verità.

Ho accennato a una frase priva di senso, secondo cui questo o quel credo non può essere abbracciato nella nostra epoca. Naturalmente, qualsiasi cosa può essere creduta in qualsiasi epoca. Ma, per quanto strano, c’è davvero un senso in cui un credo, se lo si abbraccia, può essere abbracciato più saldamente in una società complessa che in una società semplice. Se un uomo trova vero il cristianesimo a Birmingham, ha in realtà ragioni più chiare per la propria fede di quante ne avrebbe se lo avesse trovato vero in Mercia. Perché più complicata appare la coincidenza, meno essa può essere una coincidenza. Se i fiocchi di neve cadessero, mettiamo, nella forma del cuore del Midlothian, potrebbe trattarsi di un caso. Ma se i fiocchi di neve cadessero nella forma esatta del labirinto di Hampton Court, credo che si potrebbe chiamarlo un miracolo. È proprio come di un tale miracolo che da allora sono giunto a sentire riguardo alla filosofia del cristianesimo. La complicazione del nostro mondo moderno dimostra la verità del credo in modo più perfetto di qualunque dei problemi elementari delle epoche della fede. Fu a Notting Hill e a Battersea che cominciai a vedere che il cristianesimo era vero. Ecco perché la fede possiede quell’elaborazione di dottrine e di particolari che tanto affligge coloro che ammirano il cristianesimo senza credere in esso. Quando una volta si crede in un credo, si è fieri della sua complessità, come gli scienziati sono fieri della complessità della scienza. Ciò mostra quanto sia ricco di scoperte. Se ha ragione in tutto, è un complimento dire che ha ragione in modo elaborato. Un bastone potrebbe adattarsi a un foro, o una pietra a un incavo, per puro caso. Ma una chiave e una serratura sono entrambe complesse. E se una chiave si adatta a una serratura, sai che è la chiave giusta.

Ma questa complicata precisione della cosa rende assai difficile fare ciò che ora devo fare, cioè descrivere questo accumulo di verità. È molto arduo per un uomo difendere qualcosa di cui è interamente convinto. È comparativamente facile quando ne è solo parzialmente convinto. Ne è parzialmente convinto perché ha trovato questa o quella prova della cosa, e può esporla. Ma un uomo non è veramente convinto di una teoria filosofica quando scopre che qualcosa la dimostra. È veramente convinto solo quando scopre che ogni cosa la dimostra. E più ragioni convergenti trova che puntano verso questa convinzione, più resta sconcertato se gli si chiede all’improvviso di riassumerle. Così, se si chiedesse a un uomo ordinariamente intelligente, su due piedi: «Perché preferisci la civiltà alla barbarie?», egli si guarderebbe intorno smarrito, oggetto dopo oggetto, e non saprebbe rispondere se non vagamente: «Be’, c’è quella libreria… e i carboni nel secchio del carbone… e i pianoforti… e i poliziotti». L’intero argomento a favore della civiltà è che l’argomento a suo favore è complesso. Essa ha compiuto tante cose. Ma proprio quella molteplicità di prove che dovrebbe rendere la risposta schiacciante rende la risposta impossibile.

Vi è, dunque, in ogni convinzione completa una sorta di immensa impotenza. La fede è così grande che occorre molto tempo per metterla in azione. E questa esitazione nasce principalmente, per quanto strano, da un’indifferenza circa il punto da cui si dovrebbe cominciare. Tutte le strade portano a Roma; il che è una delle ragioni per cui molte persone non vi arrivano mai. Nel caso di questa difesa della convinzione cristiana confesso che comincerei l’argomentazione con una cosa tanto volentieri quanto con un’altra; la comincerei con una rapa o con un tassametro. Ma se devo essere in qualche modo attento a rendere chiaro il mio significato, sarà, credo, più saggio proseguire gli argomenti in corso dell’ultimo capitolo, che si era preoccupato di sostenere la prima di queste mistiche coincidenze, o piuttosto ratifiche. Tutto ciò che avevo fino ad allora udito della teologia cristiana mi aveva estraniato da essa. Ero un pagano all’età di dodici anni, e un agnostico completo all’età di sedici; e non riesco a capire come qualcuno possa oltrepassare i diciassette anni senza essersi posto una domanda tanto semplice. Conservavo, sì, una nebulosa reverenza per una divinità cosmica e un grande interesse storico per il Fondatore del cristianesimo. Ma certamente Lo consideravo un uomo; benché forse pensassi che, anche su quel punto, Egli avesse un vantaggio su alcuni dei Suoi critici moderni. Leggevo la letteratura scientifica e scettica del mio tempo — tutta, almeno, quella che riuscivo a trovare scritta in inglese e a portata di mano; e non leggevo nient’altro; voglio dire che non leggevo nient’altro su nessun altro registro di filosofia. I romanzetti da quattro soldi che pure leggevo appartenevano invero a una sana ed eroica tradizione del cristianesimo; ma allora non lo sapevo. Non lessi mai una riga di apologetica cristiana. Ne leggo quanto meno posso anche ora. Furono Huxley e Herbert Spencer e Bradlaugh a ricondurmi alla teologia ortodossa. Essi seminarono nella mia mente i miei primi selvaggi dubbi sul dubbio. Le nostre nonne avevano perfettamente ragione quando dicevano che Tom Paine e i liberi pensatori sconvolgevano la mente. È così. Sconvolsero orribilmente la mia. Il razionalista mi indusse a domandarmi se la ragione servisse in qualche modo a qualcosa; e quando ebbi finito Herbert Spencer ero giunto fino al punto di dubitare (per la prima volta) che l’evoluzione fosse mai avvenuta. Mentre posavo l’ultima delle conferenze ateistiche del colonnello Ingersoll, il terribile pensiero mi attraversò la mente: «Per poco non mi persuadi a farmi cristiano». Ero ridotto a mal partito.

This odd effect of the great agnostics in arousing doubts deeper than their own might be illustrated in many ways. I take only one. As I read and re-read all the non-Christian or anti-Christian accounts of the faith, from Huxley to Bradlaugh, a slow and awful impression grew gradually but graphically upon my mind—the impression that Christianity must be a most extraordinary thing. For not only (as I understood) had Christianity the most flaming vices, but it had apparently a mystical talent for combining vices which seemed inconsistent with each other. It was attacked on all sides and for all contradictory reasons. No sooner had one rationalist demonstrated that it was too far to the east than another demonstrated with equal clearness that it was much too far to the west. No sooner had my indignation died down at its angular and aggressive squareness than I was called up again to notice and condemn its enervating and sensual roundness. In case any reader has not come across the thing I mean, I will give such instances as I remember at random of this self-contradiction in the sceptical attack. I give four or five of them; there are fifty more.

Thus, for instance, I was much moved by the eloquent attack on Christianity as a thing of inhuman gloom; for I thought (and still think) sincere pessimism the unpardonable sin. Insincere pessimism is a social accomplishment, rather agreeable than otherwise; and fortunately nearly all pessimism is insincere. But if Christianity was, as these people said, a thing purely pessimistic and opposed to life, then I was quite prepared to blow up St. Paul’s Cathedral. But the extraordinary thing is this. They did prove to me in Chapter I. (to my complete satisfaction) that Christianity was too pessimistic; and then, in Chapter II., they began to prove to me that it was a great deal too optimistic. One accusation against Christianity was that it prevented men, by morbid tears and terrors, from seeking joy and liberty in the bosom of Nature. But another accusation was that it comforted men with a fictitious providence, and put them in a pink-and-white nursery. One great agnostic asked why Nature was not beautiful enough, and why it was hard to be free. Another great agnostic objected that Christian optimism, “the garment of make-believe woven by pious hands,” hid from us the fact that Nature was ugly, and that it was impossible to be free. One rationalist had hardly done calling Christianity a nightmare before another began to call it a fool’s paradise. This puzzled me; the charges seemed inconsistent. Christianity could not at once be the black mask on a white world, and also the white mask on a black world. The state of the Christian could not be at once so comfortable that he was a coward to cling to it, and so uncomfortable that he was a fool to stand it. If it falsified human vision it must falsify it one way or another; it could not wear both green and rose-coloured spectacles. I rolled on my tongue with a terrible joy, as did all young men of that time, the taunts which Swinburne hurled at the dreariness of the creed—

“Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilaean, the world has grown gray with Thy breath.”

But when I read the same poet’s accounts of paganism (as in “Atalanta”), I gathered that the world was, if possible, more gray before the Galilean breathed on it than afterwards. The poet maintained, indeed, in the abstract, that life itself was pitch dark. And yet, somehow, Christianity had darkened it. The very man who denounced Christianity for pessimism was himself a pessimist. I thought there must be something wrong. And it did for one wild moment cross my mind that, perhaps, those might not be the very best judges of the relation of religion to happiness who, by their own account, had neither one nor the other.

It must be understood that I did not conclude hastily that the accusations were false or the accusers fools. I simply deduced that Christianity must be something even weirder and wickeder than they made out. A thing might have these two opposite vices; but it must be a rather queer thing if it did. A man might be too fat in one place and too thin in another; but he would be an odd shape. At this point my thoughts were only of the odd shape of the Christian religion; I did not allege any odd shape in the rationalistic mind.

Here is another case of the same kind. I felt that a strong case against Christianity lay in the charge that there is something timid, monkish, and unmanly about all that is called “Christian,” especially in its attitude towards resistance and fighting. The great sceptics of the nineteenth century were largely virile. Bradlaugh in an expansive way, Huxley, in a reticent way, were decidedly men. In comparison, it did seem tenable that there was something weak and over patient about Christian counsels. The Gospel paradox about the other cheek, the fact that priests never fought, a hundred things made plausible the accusation that Christianity was an attempt to make a man too like a sheep. I read it and believed it, and if I had read nothing different, I should have gone on believing it. But I read something very different. I turned the next page in my agnostic manual, and my brain turned up-side down. Now I found that I was to hate Christianity not for fighting too little, but for fighting too much. Christianity, it seemed, was the mother of wars. Christianity had deluged the world with blood. I had got thoroughly angry with the Christian, because he never was angry. And now I was told to be angry with him because his anger had been the most huge and horrible thing in human history; because his anger had soaked the earth and smoked to the sun. The very people who reproached Christianity with the meekness and non-resistance of the monasteries were the very people who reproached it also with the violence and valour of the Crusades. It was the fault of poor old Christianity (somehow or other) both that Edward the Confessor did not fight and that Richard Coeur de Leon did. The Quakers (we were told) were the only characteristic Christians; and yet the massacres of Cromwell and Alva were characteristic Christian crimes. What could it all mean? What was this Christianity which always forbade war and always produced wars? What could be the nature of the thing which one could abuse first because it would not fight, and second because it was always fighting? In what world of riddles was born this monstrous murder and this monstrous meekness? The shape of Christianity grew a queerer shape every instant.

Questo curioso effetto dei grandi agnostici, capaci di suscitare dubbi più profondi dei loro stessi dubbi, potrebbe essere illustrato in molti modi. Ne prendo uno soltanto. A mano a mano che leggevo e rileggevo tutti i resoconti non cristiani o anticristiani della fede, da Huxley a Bradlaugh, un’impressione lenta e tremenda si formava a poco a poco, ma con crescente nitidezza, nella mia mente: l’impressione che il Cristianesimo dovesse essere una cosa quanto mai straordinaria. Perché non solo (per quanto capivo) il Cristianesimo possedeva i vizi più fiammeggianti, ma sembrava avere un talento mistico per combinare vizi che parevano l’uno con l’altro incompatibili. Lo si attaccava da ogni parte e per ogni motivo contraddittorio. Non appena un razionalista aveva dimostrato che era troppo spostato verso oriente, un altro dimostrava con pari chiarezza che era troppo spostato verso occidente. Non appena la mia indignazione si era placata dinanzi alla sua angolosa e aggressiva quadratura, ecco che ero di nuovo chiamato a notare e a condannare la sua snervante e sensuale rotondità. Nel caso in cui qualche lettore non si sia mai imbattuto nella cosa che intendo, darò gli esempi che ricordo, presi a caso, di questa auto-contraddizione nell’attacco scettico. Ne do quattro o cinque; ce ne sono altri cinquanta.

Così, per esempio, fui molto scosso dall’eloquente attacco al Cristianesimo come cosa di cupezza disumana; perché ritenevo (e ritengo tuttora) che il pessimismo sincero sia il peccato imperdonabile. Il pessimismo insincero è un’abilità mondana, anzi piuttosto gradevole; e per fortuna quasi tutto il pessimismo è insincero. Ma se il Cristianesimo era, come costoro dicevano, una cosa puramente pessimistica e ostile alla vita, allora ero prontissimo a far saltare in aria la Cattedrale di San Paolo. Ma ecco la cosa straordinaria. Costoro mi provarono nel Capitolo I (con mia piena soddisfazione) che il Cristianesimo era troppo pessimistico; e poi, nel Capitolo II, cominciarono a provarmi che era di gran lunga troppo ottimistico. Una delle accuse contro il Cristianesimo era che impediva agli uomini, con lacrime e terrori morbosi, di cercare la gioia e la libertà nel grembo della Natura. Ma un’altra accusa era che esso confortava gli uomini con una provvidenza fittizia, e li metteva in una stanza da bambini tutta rosa e bianca. Un grande agnostico chiedeva perché la Natura non fosse abbastanza bella, e perché fosse tanto difficile essere liberi. Un altro grande agnostico obiettava che l’ottimismo cristiano, «la veste di finzione tessuta da mani pie», ci nascondeva il fatto che la Natura era brutta, e che era impossibile essere liberi. Un razionalista aveva appena finito di chiamare il Cristianesimo un incubo, che un altro cominciava a chiamarlo il paradiso di uno sciocco. Questo mi lasciava perplesso; le accuse parevano contraddittorie. Il Cristianesimo non poteva essere insieme la maschera nera su un mondo bianco, e insieme la maschera bianca su un mondo nero. La condizione del cristiano non poteva essere a un tempo tanto comoda da rendere vile chi vi si aggrappa, e tanto scomoda da rendere sciocco chi la sopporta. Se falsava la visione umana, doveva falsarla in un senso o nell’altro; non poteva portare a un tempo occhiali verdi e occhiali color di rosa. Facevo rotolare sulla lingua, con terribile gioia, come tutti i giovani di quel tempo, gli scherni che Swinburne scagliava contro lo squallore del credo:

«Hai vinto, o pallido Galileo, il mondo si è fatto grigio al tuo respiro».

Ma quando lessi i resoconti dello stesso poeta sul paganesimo (come in «Atalanta»), ne ricavai che il mondo, semmai, era più grigio prima che il Galileo vi alitasse sopra che non dopo. Il poeta sosteneva, in verità, in astratto, che la vita stessa fosse buia come la pece. E tuttavia, in qualche modo, il Cristianesimo l’aveva incupita. Proprio colui che denunciava il Cristianesimo per il suo pessimismo era egli stesso un pessimista. Pensai che ci dovesse essere qualcosa che non andava. E per un istante di follia mi passò per la mente che, forse, non fossero i migliori giudici del rapporto tra la religione e la felicità proprio coloro che, per loro stessa ammissione, non possedevano né l’una né l’altra.

Si intenda bene che non conclusi frettolosamente che le accuse fossero false o gli accusatori degli sciocchi. Dedussi semplicemente che il Cristianesimo doveva essere qualcosa di ancora più strano e più malvagio di quanto essi lo dipingessero. Una cosa poteva ben avere questi due vizi opposti; ma doveva essere una cosa assai bizzarra, se li aveva. Un uomo poteva essere troppo grasso in un punto e troppo magro in un altro; ma sarebbe stato di forma ben strana. A questo punto i miei pensieri riguardavano soltanto la forma strana della religione cristiana; non attribuivo alcuna forma strana alla mente razionalistica.

Ecco un altro caso dello stesso genere. Sentivo che un forte argomento contro il Cristianesimo stava nell’accusa che vi è qualcosa di timido, di monacale e di poco virile in tutto ciò che si dice «cristiano», specialmente nel suo atteggiamento verso la resistenza e la lotta. I grandi scettici dell’Ottocento erano in gran parte virili. Bradlaugh in modo espansivo, Huxley in modo riservato, erano decisamente uomini. In confronto, sembrava sostenibile che vi fosse qualcosa di debole e di troppo paziente nei precetti cristiani. Il paradosso evangelico dell’altra guancia, il fatto che i preti non combattessero mai, cento cose rendevano plausibile l’accusa che il Cristianesimo fosse un tentativo di rendere l’uomo troppo simile a una pecora. Lo leggevo e ci credevo, e se non avessi letto nulla di diverso, avrei continuato a crederci. Ma lessi qualcosa di ben diverso. Voltai la pagina successiva del mio manuale agnostico, e il mio cervello si capovolse. Ora scoprivo che dovevo odiare il Cristianesimo non perché combatteva troppo poco, ma perché combatteva troppo. Il Cristianesimo, a quanto pareva, era la madre delle guerre. Il Cristianesimo aveva inondato il mondo di sangue. Mi ero infuriato per bene con il cristiano, perché non si adirava mai. E ora mi si diceva di adirarmi con lui perché la sua ira era stata la cosa più immensa e più orribile della storia umana; perché la sua ira aveva impregnato la terra ed era salita fumante verso il sole. Proprio coloro che rimproveravano al Cristianesimo la mitezza e la non resistenza dei monasteri erano proprio coloro che gli rimproveravano anche la violenza e il valore delle Crociate. Era colpa del povero vecchio Cristianesimo (in un modo o nell’altro) sia che Edoardo il Confessore non combattesse, sia che Riccardo Cuor di Leone combattesse. I quaccheri (così ci si diceva) erano gli unici cristiani caratteristici; eppure i massacri di Cromwell e di Alva erano crimini tipicamente cristiani. Che cosa poteva mai significare tutto questo? Che cos’era questo Cristianesimo che sempre proibiva la guerra e sempre produceva guerre? Quale poteva essere la natura di una cosa che si poteva rimproverare dapprima perché non voleva combattere, e poi perché combatteva di continuo? In quale mondo di enigmi era nato questo mostruoso assassinio e questa mostruosa mitezza? La forma del Cristianesimo si faceva più bizzarra a ogni istante.

I take a third case; the strangest of all, because it involves the one real objection to the faith. The one real objection to the Christian religion is simply that it is one religion. The world is a big place, full of very different kinds of people. Christianity (it may reasonably be said) is one thing confined to one kind of people; it began in Palestine, it has practically stopped with Europe. I was duly impressed with this argument in my youth, and I was much drawn towards the doctrine often preached in Ethical Societies—I mean the doctrine that there is one great unconscious church of all humanity founded on the omnipresence of the human conscience. Creeds, it was said, divided men; but at least morals united them. The soul might seek the strangest and most remote lands and ages and still find essential ethical common sense. It might find Confucius under Eastern trees, and he would be writing “Thou shalt not steal.” It might decipher the darkest hieroglyphic on the most primeval desert, and the meaning when deciphered would be “Little boys should tell the truth.” I believed this doctrine of the brotherhood of all men in the possession of a moral sense, and I believe it still— with other things. And I was thoroughly annoyed with Christianity for suggesting (as I supposed) that whole ages and empires of men had utterly escaped this light of justice and reason. But then I found an astonishing thing. I found that the very people who said that mankind was one church from Plato to Emerson were the very people who said that morality had changed altogether, and that what was right in one age was wrong in another. If I asked, say, for an altar, I was told that we needed none, for men our brothers gave us clear oracles and one creed in their universal customs and ideals. But if I mildly pointed out that one of men’s universal customs was to have an altar, then my agnostic teachers turned clean round and told me that men had always been in darkness and the superstitions of savages. I found it was their daily taunt against Christianity that it was the light of one people and had left all others to die in the dark. But I also found that it was their special boast for themselves that science and progress were the discovery of one people, and that all other peoples had died in the dark. Their chief insult to Christianity was actually their chief compliment to themselves, and there seemed to be a strange unfairness about all their relative insistence on the two things. When considering some pagan or agnostic, we were to remember that all men had one religion; when considering some mystic or spiritualist, we were only to consider what absurd religions some men had. We could trust the ethics of Epictetus, because ethics had never changed. We must not trust the ethics of Bossuet, because ethics had changed. They changed in two hundred years, but not in two thousand.

This began to be alarming. It looked not so much as if Christianity was bad enough to include any vices, but rather as if any stick was good enough to beat Christianity with. What again could this astonishing thing be like which people were so anxious to contradict, that in doing so they did not mind contradicting themselves? I saw the same thing on every side. I can give no further space to this discussion of it in detail; but lest any one supposes that I have unfairly selected three accidental cases I will run briefly through a few others. Thus, certain sceptics wrote that the great crime of Christianity had been its attack on the family; it had dragged women to the loneliness and contemplation of the cloister, away from their homes and their children. But, then, other sceptics (slightly more advanced) said that the great crime of Christianity was forcing the family and marriage upon us; that it doomed women to the drudgery of their homes and children, and forbade them loneliness and contemplation. The charge was actually reversed. Or, again, certain phrases in the Epistles or the marriage service, were said by the anti-Christians to show contempt for woman’s intellect. But I found that the anti-Christians themselves had a contempt for woman’s intellect; for it was their great sneer at the Church on the Continent that “only women” went to it. Or again, Christianity was reproached with its naked and hungry habits; with its sackcloth and dried peas. But the next minute Christianity was being reproached with its pomp and its ritualism; its shrines of porphyry and its robes of gold. It was abused for being too plain and for being too coloured. Again Christianity had always been accused of restraining sexuality too much, when Bradlaugh the Malthusian discovered that it restrained it too little. It is often accused in the same breath of prim respectability and of religious extravagance. Between the covers of the same atheistic pamphlet I have found the faith rebuked for its disunion, “One thinks one thing, and one another,” and rebuked also for its union, “It is difference of opinion that prevents the world from going to the dogs.” In the same conversation a free-thinker, a friend of mine, blamed Christianity for despising Jews, and then despised it himself for being Jewish.

I wished to be quite fair then, and I wish to be quite fair now; and I did not conclude that the attack on Christianity was all wrong. I only concluded that if Christianity was wrong, it was very wrong indeed. Such hostile horrors might be combined in one thing, but that thing must be very strange and solitary. There are men who are misers, and also spendthrifts; but they are rare. There are men sensual and also ascetic; but they are rare. But if this mass of mad contradictions really existed, quakerish and bloodthirsty, too gorgeous and too thread-bare, austere, yet pandering preposterously to the lust of the eye, the enemy of women and their foolish refuge, a solemn pessimist and a silly optimist, if this evil existed, then there was in this evil something quite supreme and unique. For I found in my rationalist teachers no explanation of such exceptional corruption. Christianity (theoretically speaking) was in their eyes only one of the ordinary myths and errors of mortals. THEY gave me no key to this twisted and unnatural badness. Such a paradox of evil rose to the stature of the supernatural. It was, indeed, almost as supernatural as the infallibility of the Pope. An historic institution, which never went right, is really quite as much of a miracle as an institution that cannot go wrong. The only explanation which immediately occurred to my mind was that Christianity did not come from heaven, but from hell. Really, if Jesus of Nazareth was not Christ, He must have been Antichrist.

Prendo un terzo caso; il più strano di tutti, perché coinvolge la sola vera obiezione alla fede. La sola vera obiezione alla religione cristiana è semplicemente che essa è una sola religione. Il mondo è un luogo grande, pieno di tipi di persone assai diversi. Il Cristianesimo (si potrebbe ragionevolmente dire) è una cosa confinata a un solo tipo di persone; è cominciato in Palestina e si è praticamente arrestato con l’Europa. Da giovane rimasi debitamente impressionato da questo argomento, e mi sentii molto attratto dalla dottrina spesso predicata nelle Società Etiche: intendo la dottrina secondo cui esiste un’unica grande chiesa inconsapevole di tutta l’umanità, fondata sull’onnipresenza della coscienza umana. I credi, si diceva, dividevano gli uomini; ma almeno la morale li univa. L’anima poteva cercare le terre e le età più strane e più remote e trovarvi pur sempre l’essenziale buon senso etico. Poteva trovare Confucio sotto gli alberi d’Oriente, e lo troverebbe intento a scrivere «Non rubare». Poteva decifrare il più oscuro geroglifico nel più primevo deserto, e il significato, una volta decifrato, sarebbe stato «I bambini devono dire la verità». Credevo in questa dottrina della fratellanza di tutti gli uomini nel possesso di un senso morale, e vi credo tuttora — insieme ad altre cose. Ed ero profondamente irritato con il Cristianesimo perché suggeriva (così supponevo) che intere età e imperi di uomini fossero sfuggiti del tutto a questa luce di giustizia e di ragione. Ma poi scoprii una cosa stupefacente. Scoprii che proprio quelle persone che dicevano che l’umanità era una sola chiesa da Platone a Emerson erano proprio quelle persone che dicevano che la moralità era cambiata del tutto, e che ciò che era giusto in un’età era sbagliato in un’altra. Se chiedevo, poniamo, un altare, mi si diceva che non ne avevamo bisogno, poiché gli uomini nostri fratelli ci davano chiari oracoli e un solo credo nelle loro consuetudini e nei loro ideali universali. Ma se facevo mite osservare che una delle consuetudini universali degli uomini era proprio quella di avere un altare, allora i miei maestri agnostici si voltavano di netto e mi dicevano che gli uomini erano sempre stati nelle tenebre e nelle superstizioni dei selvaggi. Scoprii che il loro quotidiano rimprovero al Cristianesimo era che esso fosse la luce di un solo popolo e avesse lasciato tutti gli altri a morire nel buio. Ma scoprii anche che il loro speciale vanto per sé stessi era che la scienza e il progresso fossero la scoperta di un solo popolo, e che tutti gli altri popoli fossero morti nel buio. Il loro principale insulto al Cristianesimo era in realtà il loro principale complimento a sé stessi, e sembrava esservi una strana iniquità in tutta la loro relativa insistenza sulle due cose. Considerando qualche pagano o agnostico, dovevamo ricordare che tutti gli uomini avevano una sola religione; considerando qualche mistico o spiritista, dovevamo considerare soltanto quali assurde religioni avessero avuto certi uomini. Potevamo fidarci dell’etica di Epitteto, perché l’etica non era mai cambiata. Non dovevamo fidarci dell’etica di Bossuet, perché l’etica era cambiata. Erano cambiate in duecento anni, ma non in duemila.

La cosa cominciava a farsi allarmante. Sembrava non tanto che il Cristianesimo fosse abbastanza cattivo da includere ogni vizio, quanto piuttosto che ogni bastone fosse buono abbastanza per bastonare il Cristianesimo. Che cosa poteva mai essere questa cosa stupefacente che le persone erano così ansiose di contraddire, al punto che nel farlo non si curavano di contraddire sé stesse? Vedevo la medesima cosa da ogni parte. Non posso concedere altro spazio a questa discussione nel dettaglio; ma perché nessuno supponga che io abbia scelto in modo iniquo tre casi accidentali, ne percorrerò brevemente alcuni altri. Così, certi scettici scrissero che il grande crimine del Cristianesimo era stato il suo attacco alla famiglia; esso aveva trascinato le donne verso la solitudine e la contemplazione del chiostro, lontano dalle loro case e dai loro figli. Ma, poi, altri scettici (di poco più avanzati) dicevano che il grande crimine del Cristianesimo era stato imporci la famiglia e il matrimonio; che esso condannava le donne alla fatica servile delle loro case e dei loro figli, e vietava loro la solitudine e la contemplazione. L’accusa era, di fatto, rovesciata. Oppure, ancora, certe frasi delle Epistole o del rito del matrimonio venivano addotte dagli anticristiani per mostrare disprezzo per l’intelletto della donna. Ma scoprii che gli anticristiani stessi disprezzavano l’intelletto della donna; poiché il loro grande sarcasmo contro la Chiesa nel Continente era che vi andassero «solo le donne». Oppure ancora, al Cristianesimo si rimproveravano le sue abitudini nude e affamate; il suo cilicio e i suoi piselli secchi. Ma il minuto dopo al Cristianesimo si rimproveravano la sua pompa e il suo ritualismo; i suoi santuari di porfido e le sue vesti d’oro. Lo si biasimava per essere troppo dimesso e per essere troppo variopinto. Di nuovo, il Cristianesimo era sempre stato accusato di reprimere troppo la sessualità, salvo poi Bradlaugh il malthusiano scoprire che la reprimeva troppo poco. Lo si accusa spesso nel medesimo respiro di compassata rispettabilità e di stravaganza religiosa. Fra le pagine del medesimo opuscolo ateo ho trovato la fede rimproverata per la sua disunione, «Uno pensa una cosa, e un altro un’altra», e rimproverata anche per la sua unione, «È la diversità di opinione che impedisce al mondo di andare in malora». Nella medesima conversazione un libero pensatore, un mio amico, biasimò il Cristianesimo perché disprezzava gli ebrei, e poi lo disprezzò lui stesso perché era ebraico.

Volevo essere del tutto equo allora, e voglio essere del tutto equo ora; e non conclusi che l’attacco al Cristianesimo fosse tutto sbagliato. Conclusi soltanto che se il Cristianesimo era sbagliato, lo era in modo davvero gravissimo. Simili orrori ostili potevano combinarsi in una sola cosa, ma quella cosa doveva essere ben strana e solitaria. Vi sono uomini avari, e insieme prodighi; ma sono rari. Vi sono uomini sensuali e insieme ascetici; ma sono rari. Ma se questa massa di folli contraddizioni esisteva davvero, quacchera e sanguinaria, troppo sfarzosa e troppo lisa, austera eppure indulgente in modo assurdo alla concupiscenza degli occhi, nemica delle donne e loro sciocco rifugio, solenne pessimista e sciocca ottimista, se questo male esisteva, allora vi era in questo male qualcosa di del tutto supremo e unico. Poiché non trovavo nei miei maestri razionalisti alcuna spiegazione di una corruzione tanto eccezionale. Il Cristianesimo (parlando in teoria) era ai loro occhi soltanto uno degli ordinari miti ed errori dei mortali. LORO non mi davano alcuna chiave a questa malvagità contorta e innaturale. Un simile paradosso del male si levava all’altezza del soprannaturale. Era, in verità, quasi tanto soprannaturale quanto l’infallibilità del Papa. Un’istituzione storica, che non ha mai fatto la cosa giusta, è davvero un miracolo tanto grande quanto un’istituzione che non può sbagliare. La sola spiegazione che mi venne subito in mente fu che il Cristianesimo non venisse dal cielo, ma dall’inferno. In verità, se Gesù di Nazaret non era il Cristo, doveva essere l’Anticristo.

And then in a quiet hour a strange thought struck me like a still thunderbolt. There had suddenly come into my mind another explanation. Suppose we heard an unknown man spoken of by many men. Suppose we were puzzled to hear that some men said he was too tall and some too short; some objected to his fatness, some lamented his leanness; some thought him too dark, and some too fair. One explanation (as has been already admitted) would be that he might be an odd shape. But there is another explanation. He might be the right shape. Outrageously tall men might feel him to be short. Very short men might feel him to be tall. Old bucks who are growing stout might consider him insufficiently filled out; old beaux who were growing thin might feel that he expanded beyond the narrow lines of elegance. Perhaps Swedes (who have pale hair like tow) called him a dark man, while negroes considered him distinctly blonde. Perhaps (in short) this extraordinary thing is really the ordinary thing; at least the normal thing, the centre. Perhaps, after all, it is Christianity that is sane and all its critics that are mad—in various ways. I tested this idea by asking myself whether there was about any of the accusers anything morbid that might explain the accusation. I was startled to find that this key fitted a lock. For instance, it was certainly odd that the modern world charged Christianity at once with bodily austerity and with artistic pomp. But then it was also odd, very odd, that the modern world itself combined extreme bodily luxury with an extreme absence of artistic pomp. The modern man thought Becket’s robes too rich and his meals too poor. But then the modern man was really exceptional in history; no man before ever ate such elaborate dinners in such ugly clothes. The modern man found the church too simple exactly where modern life is too complex; he found the church too gorgeous exactly where modern life is too dingy. The man who disliked the plain fasts and feasts was mad on entrees. The man who disliked vestments wore a pair of preposterous trousers. And surely if there was any insanity involved in the matter at all it was in the trousers, not in the simply falling robe. If there was any insanity at all, it was in the extravagant entrees, not in the bread and wine.

I went over all the cases, and I found the key fitted so far. The fact that Swinburne was irritated at the unhappiness of Christians and yet more irritated at their happiness was easily explained. It was no longer a complication of diseases in Christianity, but a complication of diseases in Swinburne. The restraints of Christians saddened him simply because he was more hedonist than a healthy man should be. The faith of Christians angered him because he was more pessimist than a healthy man should be. In the same way the Malthusians by instinct attacked Christianity; not because there is anything especially anti-Malthusian about Christianity, but because there is something a little anti-human about Malthusianism.

Nevertheless it could not, I felt, be quite true that Christianity was merely sensible and stood in the middle. There was really an element in it of emphasis and even frenzy which had justified the secularists in their superficial criticism. It might be wise, I began more and more to think that it was wise, but it was not merely worldly wise; it was not merely temperate and respectable. Its fierce crusaders and meek saints might balance each other; still, the crusaders were very fierce and the saints were very meek, meek beyond all decency. Now, it was just at this point of the speculation that I remembered my thoughts about the martyr and the suicide. In that matter there had been this combination between two almost insane positions which yet somehow amounted to sanity. This was just such another contradiction; and this I had already found to be true. This was exactly one of the paradoxes in which sceptics found the creed wrong; and in this I had found it right. Madly as Christians might love the martyr or hate the suicide, they never felt these passions more madly than I had felt them long before I dreamed of Christianity. Then the most difficult and interesting part of the mental process opened, and I began to trace this idea darkly through all the enormous thoughts of our theology. The idea was that which I had outlined touching the optimist and the pessimist; that we want not an amalgam or compromise, but both things at the top of their energy; love and wrath both burning. Here I shall only trace it in relation to ethics. But I need not remind the reader that the idea of this combination is indeed central in orthodox theology. For orthodox theology has specially insisted that Christ was not a being apart from God and man, like an elf, nor yet a being half human and half not, like a centaur, but both things at once and both things thoroughly, very man and very God. Now let me trace this notion as I found it.

All sane men can see that sanity is some kind of equilibrium; that one may be mad and eat too much, or mad and eat too little. Some moderns have indeed appeared with vague versions of progress and evolution which seeks to destroy the MESON or balance of Aristotle. They seem to suggest that we are meant to starve progressively, or to go on eating larger and larger breakfasts every morning for ever. But the great truism of the MESON remains for all thinking men, and these people have not upset any balance except their own. But granted that we have all to keep a balance, the real interest comes in with the question of how that balance can be kept. That was the problem which Paganism tried to solve: that was the problem which I think Christianity solved and solved in a very strange way.

Paganism declared that virtue was in a balance; Christianity declared it was in a conflict: the collision of two passions apparently opposite. Of course they were not really inconsistent; but they were such that it was hard to hold simultaneously. Let us follow for a moment the clue of the martyr and the suicide; and take the case of courage. No quality has ever so much addled the brains and tangled the definitions of merely rational sages. Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. “He that will lose his life, the same shall save it,” is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes. It is a piece of everyday advice for sailors or mountaineers. It might be printed in an Alpine guide or a drill book. This paradox is the whole principle of courage; even of quite earthly or quite brutal courage. A man cut off by the sea may save his life if he will risk it on the precipice.

E allora, in un’ora tranquilla, mi colpì un pensiero strano come un fulmine silenzioso. Mi era d’improvviso balenata un’altra spiegazione. Supponiamo di sentir parlare di un uomo sconosciuto da parte di molti. Supponiamo di restare perplessi nel sentire che alcuni lo dicono troppo alto e altri troppo basso; che alcuni si dolgono della sua pinguedine, altri lamentano la sua magrezza; che alcuni lo giudicano troppo bruno, altri troppo chiaro. Una spiegazione (come già si è ammesso) sarebbe che egli abbia una forma bizzarra. Ma c’è un’altra spiegazione. Potrebbe avere la forma giusta. Uomini smisuratamente alti potrebbero sentirlo basso. Uomini bassissimi potrebbero sentirlo alto. Vecchi galletti che si vanno impinguando potrebbero considerarlo insufficientemente riempito; vecchi bellimbusti che si vanno smagrendo potrebbero sentire che egli si dilata oltre le anguste linee dell’eleganza. Forse gli svedesi (che hanno i capelli pallidi come la stoppa) lo chiamavano un uomo bruno, mentre i negri lo consideravano decisamente biondo. Forse (in breve) questa cosa straordinaria è in realtà la cosa ordinaria; o almeno la cosa normale, il centro. Forse, dopo tutto, è il Cristianesimo a essere sano, e tutti i suoi critici a essere folli — in vari modi. Misi alla prova questa idea domandandomi se in ciascuno degli accusatori vi fosse qualcosa di morboso che potesse spiegare l’accusa. Rimasi trasecolato nel trovare che questa chiave entrava nella serratura. Per esempio, era certo curioso che il mondo moderno accusasse il Cristianesimo a un tempo di austerità corporale e di fasto artistico. Ma poi era anche curioso, curiosissimo, che il mondo moderno stesso combinasse un estremo lusso corporale con un’estrema assenza di fasto artistico. L’uomo moderno trovava le vesti di Becket troppo ricche e i suoi pasti troppo poveri. Ma allora l’uomo moderno era davvero un’eccezione nella storia; mai prima nessun uomo aveva mangiato pranzi così elaborati con abiti così brutti. L’uomo moderno trovava la Chiesa troppo semplice proprio là dove la vita moderna è troppo complicata; la trovava troppo sfarzosa proprio là dove la vita moderna è troppo squallida. L’uomo cui spiacevano i digiuni e le feste schietti impazziva per gli entrées. L’uomo cui spiacevano i paramenti portava un paio di pantaloni assurdi. E certo, se in tutta questa faccenda c’era qualche follia, essa stava nei pantaloni, non nell’abito che scende semplice. Se v’era una qualsiasi follia, stava negli stravaganti entrées, non nel pane e nel vino.

Passai in rassegna tutti i casi, e trovai che sin qui la chiave calzava. Il fatto che Swinburne fosse irritato dall’infelicità dei cristiani e ancor più irritato dalla loro felicità si spiegava facilmente. Non era più una complicazione di malattie nel Cristianesimo, ma una complicazione di malattie in Swinburne. Le rinunce dei cristiani lo rattristavano semplicemente perché egli era più edonista di quanto un uomo sano dovrebbe essere. La fede dei cristiani lo adirava perché egli era più pessimista di quanto un uomo sano dovrebbe essere. Allo stesso modo i malthusiani per istinto attaccavano il Cristianesimo; non perché vi sia nel Cristianesimo qualcosa di particolarmente anti-malthusiano, ma perché vi è nel malthusianesimo qualcosa di un po’ anti-umano.

Nondimeno non poteva, sentivo, essere del tutto vero che il Cristianesimo fosse semplicemente assennato e stesse nel mezzo. V’era in esso davvero un elemento di enfasi e persino di frenesia che aveva dato ragione ai secolaristi nella loro critica superficiale. Poteva essere saggio, e sempre più cominciavo a pensare che fosse saggio, ma non era una saggezza meramente mondana; non era semplicemente temperato e rispettabile. I suoi feroci crociati e i suoi miti santi potevano bilanciarsi a vicenda; eppure i crociati erano ferocissimi e i santi miti, miti oltre ogni decenza. Ora, fu proprio a questo punto della riflessione che ricordai i miei pensieri sul martire e sul suicida. In quella faccenda si era data questa combinazione tra due posizioni quasi folli che pure in qualche modo davano la sanità di mente. Questa era proprio un’altra contraddizione siffatta; e questa già l’avevo trovata vera. Questo era esattamente uno di quei paradossi in cui gli scettici trovavano il credo in errore; e in questo l’avevo trovato nel giusto. Per quanto follemente i cristiani potessero amare il martire od odiare il suicida, mai provarono queste passioni più follemente di quanto le avessi provate io stesso, molto prima di sognarmi del Cristianesimo. Allora si aprì la parte più difficile e interessante del processo mentale, e cominciai a rintracciare oscuramente questa idea attraverso tutti gli enormi pensieri della nostra teologia. L’idea era quella che avevo delineato a proposito dell’ottimista e del pessimista; che noi vogliamo non un amalgama o un compromesso, ma entrambe le cose al culmine della loro energia; l’amore e l’ira che ardono insieme. Qui la rintraccerò soltanto in relazione all’etica. Ma non ho bisogno di ricordare al lettore che l’idea di questa combinazione è davvero centrale nella teologia ortodossa. Poiché la teologia ortodossa ha specialmente insistito sul fatto che il Cristo non fosse un essere separato da Dio e dall’uomo, come un elfo, né un essere metà umano e metà no, come un centauro, ma entrambe le cose a un tempo, ed entrambe compiutamente: verissimo uomo e verissimo Dio. Ora lasciatemi rintracciare questa nozione così come la trovai.

Ogni uomo sano di mente vede che la sanità di mente è una sorta di equilibrio; che si può essere folli e mangiare troppo, oppure folli e mangiare troppo poco. Alcuni moderni sono in verità comparsi con vaghe versioni del progresso e dell’evoluzione che cercano di distruggere il MESON, ossia l’equilibrio di Aristotele. Sembrano suggerire che siamo destinati ad affamarci progressivamente, o a mangiare colazioni sempre più abbondanti ogni mattina, in eterno. Ma il grande truismo del MESON resta valido per ogni uomo che pensa, e costoro non hanno sconvolto alcun equilibrio se non il proprio. Ma, ammesso che tutti dobbiamo tenere un equilibrio, il vero interesse sopraggiunge con la domanda su come quell’equilibrio possa essere tenuto. Questo era il problema che il paganesimo tentò di risolvere: questo era il problema che, io credo, il Cristianesimo risolse, e risolse in modo assai strano.

Il paganesimo dichiarava che la virtù stava in un equilibrio; il Cristianesimo dichiarava che stava in un conflitto: la collisione di due passioni apparentemente opposte. Naturalmente non erano davvero incoerenti; ma erano tali che riusciva difficile tenerle insieme simultaneamente. Seguiamo per un momento il filo del martire e del suicida; e prendiamo il caso del coraggio. Nessuna qualità ha mai tanto confuso i cervelli e ingarbugliato le definizioni dei saggi meramente razionali. Il coraggio è quasi una contraddizione in termini. Significa un forte desiderio di vivere che assume la forma di una prontezza a morire. «Chi perderà la propria vita, la salverà» non è un frammento di misticismo per santi ed eroi. È un frammento di consiglio quotidiano per marinai o alpinisti. Potrebbe essere stampato in una guida alpina o in un manuale d’esercitazioni. Questo paradosso è l’intero principio del coraggio; persino di un coraggio del tutto terreno o del tutto brutale. Un uomo isolato dalla marea può salvarsi la vita se avrà l’ardire di rischiarla sul precipizio.

He can only get away from death by continually stepping within an inch of it. A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine. No philosopher, I fancy, has ever expressed this romantic riddle with adequate lucidity, and I certainly have not done so. But Christianity has done more: it has marked the limits of it in the awful graves of the suicide and the hero, showing the distance between him who dies for the sake of living and him who dies for the sake of dying. And it has held up ever since above the European lances the banner of the mystery of chivalry: the Christian courage, which is a disdain of death; not the Chinese courage, which is a disdain of life.

And now I began to find that this duplex passion was the Christian key to ethics everywhere. Everywhere the creed made a moderation out of the still crash of two impetuous emotions. Take, for instance, the matter of modesty, of the balance between mere pride and mere prostration. The average pagan, like the average agnostic, would merely say that he was content with himself, but not insolently self-satisfied, that there were many better and many worse, that his deserts were limited, but he would see that he got them. In short, he would walk with his head in the air; but not necessarily with his nose in the air. This is a manly and rational position, but it is open to the objection we noted against the compromise between optimism and pessimism—the “resignation” of Matthew Arnold. Being a mixture of two things, it is a dilution of two things; neither is present in its full strength or contributes its full colour. This proper pride does not lift the heart like the tongue of trumpets; you cannot go clad in crimson and gold for this. On the other hand, this mild rationalist modesty does not cleanse the soul with fire and make it clear like crystal; it does not (like a strict and searching humility) make a man as a little child, who can sit at the feet of the grass. It does not make him look up and see marvels; for Alice must grow small if she is to be Alice in Wonderland. Thus it loses both the poetry of being proud and the poetry of being humble. Christianity sought by this same strange expedient to save both of them.

It separated the two ideas and then exaggerated them both. In one way Man was to be haughtier than he had ever been before; in another way he was to be humbler than he had ever been before. In so far as I am Man I am the chief of creatures. In so far as I am a man I am the chief of sinners. All humility that had meant pessimism, that had meant man taking a vague or mean view of his whole destiny— all that was to go. We were to hear no more the wail of Ecclesiastes that humanity had no pre-eminence over the brute, or the awful cry of Homer that man was only the saddest of all the beasts of the field. Man was a statue of God walking about the garden. Man had pre-eminence over all the brutes; man was only sad because he was not a beast, but a broken god. The Greek had spoken of men creeping on the earth, as if clinging to it. Now Man was to tread on the earth as if to subdue it. Christianity thus held a thought of the dignity of man that could only be expressed in crowns rayed like the sun and fans of peacock plumage. Yet at the same time it could hold a thought about the abject smallness of man that could only be expressed in fasting and fantastic submission, in the gray ashes of St. Dominic and the white snows of St. Bernard. When one came to think of ONE’S SELF, there was vista and void enough for any amount of bleak abnegation and bitter truth. There the realistic gentleman could let himself go—as long as he let himself go at himself. There was an open playground for the happy pessimist. Let him say anything against himself short of blaspheming the original aim of his being; let him call himself a fool and even a damned fool (though that is Calvinistic); but he must not say that fools are not worth saving. He must not say that a man, QUA man, can be valueless. Here, again in short, Christianity got over the difficulty of combining furious opposites, by keeping them both, and keeping them both furious. The Church was positive on both points. One can hardly think too little of one’s self. One can hardly think too much of one’s soul.

Take another case: the complicated question of charity, which some highly uncharitable idealists seem to think quite easy. Charity is a paradox, like modesty and courage. Stated baldly, charity certainly means one of two things—pardoning unpardonable acts, or loving unlovable people. But if we ask ourselves (as we did in the case of pride) what a sensible pagan would feel about such a subject, we shall probably be beginning at the bottom of it. A sensible pagan would say that there were some people one could forgive, and some one couldn’t: a slave who stole wine could be laughed at; a slave who betrayed his benefactor could be killed, and cursed even after he was killed. In so far as the act was pardonable, the man was pardonable. That again is rational, and even refreshing; but it is a dilution. It leaves no place for a pure horror of injustice, such as that which is a great beauty in the innocent. And it leaves no place for a mere tenderness for men as men, such as is the whole fascination of the charitable. Christianity came in here as before. It came in startlingly with a sword, and clove one thing from another. It divided the crime from the criminal. The criminal we must forgive unto seventy times seven. The crime we must not forgive at all. It was not enough that slaves who stole wine inspired partly anger and partly kindness. We must be much more angry with theft than before, and yet much kinder to thieves than before. There was room for wrath and love to run wild. And the more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild.

Egli può sottrarsi alla morte soltanto sfiorandola di continuo, a un pollice di distanza. Un soldato circondato dai nemici, se vuole aprirsi un varco a colpi di spada, ha bisogno di unire un forte desiderio di vivere a una strana noncuranza del morire. Non deve limitarsi ad aggrapparsi alla vita, perché allora sarà un vigliacco e non riuscirà a fuggire. Non deve limitarsi ad attendere la morte, perché allora sarà un suicida e non riuscirà a fuggire. Deve cercare la propria vita in uno spirito di furiosa indifferenza verso di essa; deve desiderare la vita come l’acqua e nondimeno bere la morte come vino. Nessun filosofo, immagino, ha mai espresso questo romantico enigma con adeguata limpidezza, e certo non l’ho fatto io. Ma il Cristianesimo ha fatto di più: ne ha segnato i limiti nelle terribili tombe del suicida e dell’eroe, mostrando la distanza tra chi muore per amore del vivere e chi muore per amore del morire. E da allora ha tenuto issato sopra le lance europee lo stendardo del mistero della cavalleria: il coraggio cristiano, che è un disprezzo della morte; non il coraggio cinese, che è un disprezzo della vita.

E cominciai allora a scoprire che questa duplice passione era la chiave cristiana all’etica in ogni ambito. Ovunque il credo ricavava una moderazione dallo scontro immobile di due emozioni impetuose. Si prenda, per esempio, la questione della modestia, dell’equilibrio tra il mero orgoglio e la mera prostrazione. Il pagano medio, come l’agnostico medio, direbbe semplicemente di essere contento di sé, ma non insolentemente soddisfatto di sé, che ce ne sono molti migliori e molti peggiori, che i suoi meriti erano limitati, ma che avrebbe badato a ottenere ciò che gli spettava. In breve, camminerebbe a testa alta; ma non necessariamente col naso all’insù. È una posizione virile e razionale, ma è esposta all’obiezione che rilevammo contro il compromesso tra ottimismo e pessimismo: la «rassegnazione» di Matthew Arnold. Essendo una mescolanza di due cose, è una diluizione di due cose; nessuna delle due è presente in tutta la sua forza né apporta il suo pieno colore. Questo orgoglio misurato non solleva il cuore come lo squillo delle trombe; per esso non si può andare vestiti di scarlatto e d’oro. D’altra parte, questa mite modestia razionalista non deterge l’anima col fuoco né la rende limpida come cristallo; non fa (come fa una rigorosa e penetrante umiltà) di un uomo un piccolo fanciullo, capace di sedersi ai piedi dell’erba. Non gli fa levare lo sguardo e scorgere prodigi; perché Alice deve farsi piccola, se vuole essere Alice nel Paese delle Meraviglie. Così perde tanto la poesia dell’essere orgogliosi quanto la poesia dell’essere umili. Il Cristianesimo cercò, con questo stesso strano espediente, di salvare entrambe.

Separò le due idee e poi le esagerò entrambe. Per un verso l’Uomo doveva essere più altero di quanto fosse mai stato prima; per un altro verso doveva essere più umile di quanto fosse mai stato prima. In quanto sono Uomo, sono il principe delle creature. In quanto sono un uomo, sono il principe dei peccatori. Tutta l’umiltà che aveva significato pessimismo, che aveva significato un uomo che assumeva una visione vaga o meschina dell’intero suo destino, tutto ciò doveva sparire. Non dovevamo più udire il lamento dell’Ecclesiaste per cui l’umanità non aveva alcuna preminenza sul bruto, né il tremendo grido di Omero per cui l’uomo era soltanto la più triste di tutte le bestie dei campi. L’uomo era una statua di Dio che passeggiava per il giardino. L’uomo aveva preminenza su tutti i bruti; l’uomo era triste solo perché non era una bestia, ma un dio infranto. Il Greco aveva parlato di uomini striscianti sulla terra, come aggrappati a essa. Ora l’Uomo doveva calcare la terra come per soggiogarla. Il Cristianesimo nutriva così un pensiero sulla dignità dell’uomo che poteva esprimersi soltanto in corone raggiate come il sole e in ventagli di piume di pavone. Eppure nello stesso tempo poteva nutrire un pensiero sull’abietta piccolezza dell’uomo che poteva esprimersi soltanto nel digiuno e nella fantastica sottomissione, nelle grigie ceneri di san Domenico e nelle bianche nevi di san Bernardo. Quando si veniva a pensare al proprio SÉ, c’era abbastanza vertigine e vuoto per qualunque quantità di cupa abnegazione e di amara verità. Là il gentiluomo realistico poteva lasciarsi andare, purché si lasciasse andare contro se stesso. C’era un aperto terreno di gioco per il pessimista felice. Che dica pure qualunque cosa contro se stesso, fin quasi a bestemmiare il fine originario del proprio essere; che si chiami pure sciocco e persino dannato sciocco (benché ciò sia calvinista); ma non deve dire che gli sciocchi non meritano di essere salvati. Non deve dire che un uomo, QUA uomo, possa essere privo di valore. Anche qui, in breve, il Cristianesimo superò la difficoltà di combinare opposti furiosi, conservandoli entrambi, e conservandoli entrambi furiosi. La Chiesa fu affermativa su ambedue i punti. Difficilmente si può pensare troppo poco del proprio sé. Difficilmente si può pensare troppo della propria anima.

Si prenda un altro caso: la complicata questione della carità, che certi idealisti assai poco caritatevoli sembrano ritenere del tutto facile. La carità è un paradosso, come la modestia e il coraggio. Detta crudamente, la carità significa certamente una di due cose: perdonare atti imperdonabili, oppure amare persone inamabili. Ma se ci chiediamo (come facemmo nel caso dell’orgoglio) che cosa proverebbe un pagano assennato di fronte a un simile tema, probabilmente ne coglieremo il fondo. Un pagano assennato direbbe che c’erano persone che si potevano perdonare e altre che non si potevano: uno schiavo che rubava il vino si poteva deridere; uno schiavo che tradiva il proprio benefattore si poteva uccidere, e maledire anche dopo che era stato ucciso. Nella misura in cui l’atto era perdonabile, l’uomo era perdonabile. Anche questo è razionale, e persino ristoratore; ma è una diluizione. Non lascia alcuno spazio a un puro orrore dell’ingiustizia, quale è quello che costituisce una grande bellezza nell’innocente. E non lascia alcuno spazio a una semplice tenerezza per gli uomini in quanto uomini, quale è tutto il fascino di chi è caritatevole. Il Cristianesimo intervenne qui come prima. Intervenne in modo sorprendente con una spada, e recise una cosa dall’altra. Divise il delitto dal delinquente. Il delinquente dobbiamo perdonarlo fino a settanta volte sette. Il delitto non dobbiamo perdonarlo affatto. Non bastava che gli schiavi ladri di vino ispirassero in parte collera e in parte benevolenza. Dobbiamo essere molto più adirati col furto di prima, e nondimeno molto più benevoli coi ladri di prima. C’era posto perché l’ira e l’amore corressero liberi e sfrenati. E quanto più consideravo il Cristianesimo, tanto più scoprivo che, se pure aveva stabilito una regola e un ordine, lo scopo principale di quell’ordine era dare spazio alle cose buone perché corressero libere e sfrenate.

Mental and emotional liberty are not so simple as they look. Really they require almost as careful a balance of laws and conditions as do social and political liberty. The ordinary aesthetic anarchist who sets out to feel everything freely gets knotted at last in a paradox that prevents him feeling at all. He breaks away from home limits to follow poetry. But in ceasing to feel home limits he has ceased to feel the “Odyssey.” He is free from national prejudices and outside patriotism. But being outside patriotism he is outside “Henry V.” Such a literary man is simply outside all literature: he is more of a prisoner than any bigot. For if there is a wall between you and the world, it makes little difference whether you describe yourself as locked in or as locked out. What we want is not the universality that is outside all normal sentiments; we want the universality that is inside all normal sentiments. It is all the difference between being free from them, as a man is free from a prison, and being free of them as a man is free of a city. I am free from Windsor Castle (that is, I am not forcibly detained there), but I am by no means free of that building. How can man be approximately free of fine emotions, able to swing them in a clear space without breakage or wrong? THIS was the achievement of this Christian paradox of the parallel passions. Granted the primary dogma of the war between divine and diabolic, the revolt and ruin of the world, their optimism and pessimism, as pure poetry, could be loosened like cataracts.

St. Francis, in praising all good, could be a more shouting optimist than Walt Whitman. St. Jerome, in denouncing all evil, could paint the world blacker than Schopenhauer. Both passions were free because both were kept in their place. The optimist could pour out all the praise he liked on the gay music of the march, the golden trumpets, and the purple banners going into battle. But he must not call the fight needless. The pessimist might draw as darkly as he chose the sickening marches or the sanguine wounds. But he must not call the fight hopeless. So it was with all the other moral problems, with pride, with protest, and with compassion. By defining its main doctrine, the Church not only kept seemingly inconsistent things side by side, but, what was more, allowed them to break out in a sort of artistic violence otherwise possible only to anarchists. Meekness grew more dramatic than madness. Historic Christianity rose into a high and strange COUP DE THEATRE of morality— things that are to virtue what the crimes of Nero are to vice. The spirits of indignation and of charity took terrible and attractive forms, ranging from that monkish fierceness that scourged like a dog the first and greatest of the Plantagenets, to the sublime pity of St. Catherine, who, in the official shambles, kissed the bloody head of the criminal. Poetry could be acted as well as composed. This heroic and monumental manner in ethics has entirely vanished with supernatural religion. They, being humble, could parade themselves: but we are too proud to be prominent. Our ethical teachers write reasonably for prison reform; but we are not likely to see Mr. Cadbury, or any eminent philanthropist, go into Reading Gaol and embrace the strangled corpse before it is cast into the quicklime. Our ethical teachers write mildly against the power of millionaires; but we are not likely to see Mr. Rockefeller, or any modern tyrant, publicly whipped in Westminster Abbey.

Thus, the double charges of the secularists, though throwing nothing but darkness and confusion on themselves, throw a real light on the faith. It is true that the historic Church has at once emphasised celibacy and emphasised the family; has at once (if one may put it so) been fiercely for having children and fiercely for not having children. It has kept them side by side like two strong colours, red and white, like the red and white upon the shield of St. George. It has always had a healthy hatred of pink. It hates that combination of two colours which is the feeble expedient of the philosophers. It hates that evolution of black into white which is tantamount to a dirty gray. In fact, the whole theory of the Church on virginity might be symbolized in the statement that white is a colour: not merely the absence of a colour. All that I am urging here can be expressed by saying that Christianity sought in most of these cases to keep two colours coexistent but pure. It is not a mixture like russet or purple; it is rather like a shot silk, for a shot silk is always at right angles, and is in the pattern of the cross.

So it is also, of course, with the contradictory charges of the anti-Christians about submission and slaughter. It IS true that the Church told some men to fight and others not to fight; and it IS true that those who fought were like thunderbolts and those who did not fight were like statues. All this simply means that the Church preferred to use its Supermen and to use its Tolstoyans. There must be SOME good in the life of battle, for so many good men have enjoyed being soldiers. There must be SOME good in the idea of non-resistance, for so many good men seem to enjoy being Quakers. All that the Church did (so far as that goes) was to prevent either of these good things from ousting the other. They existed side by side. The Tolstoyans, having all the scruples of monks, simply became monks. The Quakers became a club instead of becoming a sect. Monks said all that Tolstoy says; they poured out lucid lamentations about the cruelty of battles and the vanity of revenge. But the Tolstoyans are not quite right enough to run the whole world; and in the ages of faith they were not allowed to run it. The world did not lose the last charge of Sir James Douglas or the banner of Joan the Maid. And sometimes this pure gentleness and this pure fierceness met and justified their juncture; the paradox of all the prophets was fulfilled, and, in the soul of St. Louis, the lion lay down with the lamb. But remember that this text is too lightly interpreted. It is constantly assured, especially in our Tolstoyan tendencies, that when the lion lies down with the lamb the lion becomes lamb-like. But that is brutal annexation and imperialism on the part of the lamb. That is simply the lamb absorbing the lion instead of the lion eating the lamb. The real problem is— Can the lion lie down with the lamb and still retain his royal ferocity? THAT is the problem the Church attempted; THAT is the miracle she achieved.

La libertà mentale ed emotiva non sono così semplici come sembrano. In realtà esigono un equilibrio di leggi e di condizioni quasi altrettanto accurato di quello che esigono la libertà sociale e politica. L’anarchico estetico ordinario, che si propone di sentire ogni cosa liberamente, finisce per aggrovigliarsi in un paradosso che gli impedisce di sentire alcunché. Rompe con i limiti della casa per seguire la poesia. Ma, cessando di sentire i limiti della casa, ha cessato di sentire l’«Odissea». È libero dai pregiudizi nazionali e sta fuori dal patriottismo. Ma, stando fuori dal patriottismo, sta fuori dall’«Henry V». Un simile uomo di lettere sta semplicemente fuori da ogni letteratura: è più prigioniero di qualunque bigotto. Perché, se tra te e il mondo si leva un muro, poco importa se descrivi te stesso come chiuso dentro o come chiuso fuori. Ciò che vogliamo non è l’universalità che sta fuori da tutti i sentimenti normali; vogliamo l’universalità che sta dentro tutti i sentimenti normali. È tutta la differenza che passa tra l’essere libero da essi, come un uomo è libero da una prigione, e l’essere libero di essi come un uomo è libero di una città. Io sono libero dal castello di Windsor (vale a dire, non vi sono trattenuto a forza), ma non sono affatto libero di quell’edificio. Come può l’uomo essere approssimativamente libero delle nobili emozioni, capace di farle roteare in uno spazio sgombro senza rotture né guasti? QUESTA fu la conquista di questo paradosso cristiano delle passioni parallele. Ammesso il dogma primario della guerra tra il divino e il diabolico, la rivolta e la rovina del mondo, il loro ottimismo e il loro pessimismo, come pura poesia, potevano essere scatenati come cateratte.

San Francesco, nel lodare ogni bene, poteva essere un ottimista più clamoroso di Walt Whitman. San Girolamo, nel denunciare ogni male, poteva dipingere il mondo più nero di Schopenhauer. Entrambe le passioni erano libere perché entrambe erano tenute al loro posto. L’ottimista poteva riversare tutta la lode che voleva sulla gaia musica della marcia, sulle trombe d’oro e sui vessilli purpurei che movevano alla battaglia. Ma non doveva dire che la battaglia era inutile. Il pessimista poteva ritrarre con tutta la cupezza che sceglieva le marce nauseanti o le ferite sanguinolente. Ma non doveva dire che la battaglia era senza speranza. Così accadeva con tutti gli altri problemi morali, con l’orgoglio, con la protesta, con la compassione. Definendo la sua dottrina fondamentale, la Chiesa non solo teneva l’una accanto all’altra cose apparentemente incoerenti, ma, cosa ancor più notevole, permetteva loro di prorompere in una sorta di violenza artistica altrimenti possibile solo agli anarchici. La mansuetudine divenne più drammatica della follia. Il cristianesimo storico si levò in un alto e strano COUP DE THÉÂTRE di moralità— cose che stanno alla virtù come i delitti di Nerone stanno al vizio. Gli spiriti dell’indignazione e della carità presero forme terribili e attraenti, spaziando da quella ferocia monacale che flagellò come un cane il primo e il più grande dei Plantageneti, fino alla sublime pietà di santa Caterina, la quale, nel mattatoio ufficiale, baciò la testa insanguinata del criminale. La poesia poteva essere recitata non meno che composta. Questa maniera eroica e monumentale nell’etica è interamente svanita con la religione soprannaturale. Essi, essendo umili, potevano mettersi in mostra: ma noi siamo troppo orgogliosi per essere vistosi. I nostri maestri di etica scrivono ragionevolmente in favore della riforma delle prigioni; ma non è probabile che vedremo il signor Cadbury, o alcun eminente filantropo, entrare nel carcere di Reading e abbracciare il cadavere strangolato prima che venga gettato nella calce viva. I nostri maestri di etica scrivono blandamente contro il potere dei milionari; ma non è probabile che vedremo il signor Rockefeller, o alcun tiranno moderno, frustato pubblicamente nell’abbazia di Westminster.

Così, le duplici accuse dei laicisti, per quanto gettino null’altro che tenebra e confusione su se stessi, gettano una luce reale sulla fede. È vero che la Chiesa storica ha nel medesimo tempo esaltato il celibato ed esaltato la famiglia; è stata nel medesimo tempo (se così si può dire) fieramente a favore dell’avere figli e fieramente a favore del non avere figli. Li ha tenuti l’uno accanto all’altro come due colori intensi, il rosso e il bianco, come il rosso e il bianco sullo scudo di san Giorgio. Ha sempre avuto un sano odio per il rosa. Odia quella combinazione di due colori che è il debole espediente dei filosofi. Odia quell’evoluzione del nero nel bianco che equivale a un grigio sudicio. In effetti, l’intera teoria della Chiesa sulla verginità potrebbe essere simboleggiata nell’affermazione che il bianco è un colore: non la mera assenza di un colore. Tutto ciò che qui sto sostenendo può esprimersi dicendo che il cristianesimo cercò nella maggior parte di questi casi di tenere due colori coesistenti ma puri. Non è una mescolanza come il rossiccio o il porpora; è piuttosto come una seta cangiante, poiché una seta cangiante è sempre ad angolo retto, ed è nel disegno della croce.

Così è anche, naturalmente, con le accuse contraddittorie degli anticristiani riguardo alla sottomissione e al massacro. È vero che la Chiesa disse ad alcuni uomini di combattere e ad altri di non combattere; ed è vero che coloro che combattevano erano come folgori e coloro che non combattevano erano come statue. Tutto questo significa semplicemente che la Chiesa preferì servirsi dei suoi Superuomini e servirsi dei suoi Tolstoiani. Deve esserci QUALCHE bene nella vita di battaglia, poiché tanti uomini buoni hanno goduto d’essere soldati. Deve esserci QUALCHE bene nell’idea della non resistenza, poiché tanti uomini buoni sembrano godere d’essere Quaccheri. Tutto ciò che la Chiesa fece (per quanto ciò conti) fu impedire che l’una o l’altra di queste cose buone soppiantasse l’altra. Esistevano l’una accanto all’altra. I Tolstoiani, avendo tutti gli scrupoli dei monaci, divennero semplicemente monaci. I Quaccheri divennero un circolo anziché una setta. I monaci dissero tutto ciò che dice Tolstoj; riversarono lucide lamentazioni sulla crudeltà delle battaglie e sulla vanità della vendetta. Ma i Tolstoiani non hanno abbastanza ragione da governare il mondo intero; e nelle età della fede non fu loro concesso di governarlo. Il mondo non perse l’ultima carica di Sir James Douglas o il vessillo di Giovanna la Pulzella. E talvolta questa pura dolcezza e questa pura ferocia si incontrarono e giustificarono la loro congiunzione; il paradosso di tutti i profeti si adempì e, nell’anima di san Luigi, il leone giacque accanto all’agnello. Ma ricordate che questo testo è interpretato troppo alla leggera. Si dà costantemente per certo, specialmente nelle nostre tendenze tolstoiane, che quando il leone giace accanto all’agnello il leone diventi simile all’agnello. Ma questo è brutale annessione e imperialismo da parte dell’agnello. Questo è semplicemente l’agnello che assorbe il leone invece del leone che mangia l’agnello. Il vero problema è: può il leone giacere accanto all’agnello e conservare tuttavia la sua regale ferocia? QUESTO è il problema che la Chiesa tentò; QUESTO è il miracolo che ella compì.

This is what I have called guessing the hidden eccentricities of life. This is knowing that a man’s heart is to the left and not in the middle. This is knowing not only that the earth is round, but knowing exactly where it is flat. Christian doctrine detected the oddities of life. It not only discovered the law, but it foresaw the exceptions. Those underrate Christianity who say that it discovered mercy; any one might discover mercy. In fact every one did. But to discover a plan for being merciful and also severe— THAT was to anticipate a strange need of human nature. For no one wants to be forgiven for a big sin as if it were a little one. Any one might say that we should be neither quite miserable nor quite happy. But to find out how far one MAY be quite miserable without making it impossible to be quite happy—that was a discovery in psychology. Any one might say, “Neither swagger nor grovel”; and it would have been a limit. But to say, “Here you can swagger and there you can grovel”— that was an emancipation.

This was the big fact about Christian ethics; the discovery of the new balance. Paganism had been like a pillar of marble, upright because proportioned with symmetry. Christianity was like a huge and ragged and romantic rock, which, though it sways on its pedestal at a touch, yet, because its exaggerated excrescences exactly balance each other, is enthroned there for a thousand years. In a Gothic cathedral the columns were all different, but they were all necessary. Every support seemed an accidental and fantastic support; every buttress was a flying buttress. So in Christendom apparent accidents balanced. Becket wore a hair shirt under his gold and crimson, and there is much to be said for the combination; for Becket got the benefit of the hair shirt while the people in the street got the benefit of the crimson and gold. It is at least better than the manner of the modern millionaire, who has the black and the drab outwardly for others, and the gold next his heart. But the balance was not always in one man’s body as in Becket’s; the balance was often distributed over the whole body of Christendom. Because a man prayed and fasted on the Northern snows, flowers could be flung at his festival in the Southern cities; and because fanatics drank water on the sands of Syria, men could still drink cider in the orchards of England. This is what makes Christendom at once so much more perplexing and so much more interesting than the Pagan empire; just as Amiens Cathedral is not better but more interesting than the Parthenon. If any one wants a modern proof of all this, let him consider the curious fact that, under Christianity, Europe (while remaining a unity) has broken up into individual nations. Patriotism is a perfect example of this deliberate balancing of one emphasis against another emphasis. The instinct of the Pagan empire would have said, “You shall all be Roman citizens, and grow alike; let the German grow less slow and reverent; the Frenchmen less experimental and swift.” But the instinct of Christian Europe says, “Let the German remain slow and reverent, that the Frenchman may the more safely be swift and experimental. We will make an equipoise out of these excesses. The absurdity called Germany shall correct the insanity called France.”

Last and most important, it is exactly this which explains what is so inexplicable to all the modern critics of the history of Christianity. I mean the monstrous wars about small points of theology, the earthquakes of emotion about a gesture or a word. It was only a matter of an inch; but an inch is everything when you are balancing. The Church could not afford to swerve a hair’s breadth on some things if she was to continue her great and daring experiment of the irregular equilibrium. Once let one idea become less powerful and some other idea would become too powerful. It was no flock of sheep the Christian shepherd was leading, but a herd of bulls and tigers, of terrible ideals and devouring doctrines, each one of them strong enough to turn to a false religion and lay waste the world. Remember that the Church went in specifically for dangerous ideas; she was a lion tamer. The idea of birth through a Holy Spirit, of the death of a divine being, of the forgiveness of sins, or the fulfilment of prophecies, are ideas which, any one can see, need but a touch to turn them into something blasphemous or ferocious. The smallest link was let drop by the artificers of the Mediterranean, and the lion of ancestral pessimism burst his chain in the forgotten forests of the north. Of these theological equalisations I have to speak afterwards. Here it is enough to notice that if some small mistake were made in doctrine, huge blunders might be made in human happiness. A sentence phrased wrong about the nature of symbolism would have broken all the best statues in Europe. A slip in the definitions might stop all the dances; might wither all the Christmas trees or break all the Easter eggs. Doctrines had to be defined within strict limits, even in order that man might enjoy general human liberties. The Church had to be careful, if only that the world might be careless.

This is the thrilling romance of Orthodoxy. People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy. It was sanity: and to be sane is more dramatic than to be mad. It was the equilibrium of a man behind madly rushing horses, seeming to stoop this way and to sway that, yet in every attitude having the grace of statuary and the accuracy of arithmetic. The Church in its early days went fierce and fast with any warhorse; yet it is utterly unhistoric to say that she merely went mad along one idea, like a vulgar fanaticism. She swerved to left and right, so exactly as to avoid enormous obstacles. She left on one hand the huge bulk of Arianism, buttressed by all the worldly powers to make Christianity too worldly. The next instant she was swerving to avoid an orientalism, which would have made it too unworldly. The orthodox Church never took the tame course or accepted the conventions; the orthodox Church was never respectable. It would have been easier to have accepted the earthly power of the Arians. It would have been easy, in the Calvinistic seventeenth century, to fall into the bottomless pit of predestination. It is easy to be a madman: it is easy to be a heretic. It is always easy to let the age have its head; the difficult thing is to keep one’s own. It is always easy to be a modernist; as it is easy to be a snob. To have fallen into any of those open traps of error and exaggeration which fashion after fashion and sect after sect set along the historic path of Christendom—that would indeed have been simple. It is always simple to fall; there are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one stands. To have fallen into any one of the fads from Gnosticism to Christian Science would indeed have been obvious and tame. But to have avoided them all has been one whirling adventure; and in my vision the heavenly chariot flies thundering through the ages, the dull heresies sprawling and prostrate, the wild truth reeling but erect.

Questo è ciò che ho chiamato indovinare le eccentricità nascoste della vita. È sapere che il cuore di un uomo sta a sinistra e non nel mezzo. È sapere non soltanto che la terra è rotonda, ma sapere esattamente dove è piatta. La dottrina cristiana individuò le stranezze della vita. Non solo scoprì la legge, ma previde le eccezioni. Sminuisce il Cristianesimo chi dice che esso scoprì la misericordia; chiunque potrebbe scoprire la misericordia. E infatti tutti la scoprirono. Ma scoprire un piano per essere misericordiosi e insieme severi— QUESTO fu anticipare uno strano bisogno della natura umana. Poiché nessuno vuole essere perdonato di un grande peccato come se fosse un piccolo peccato. Chiunque potrebbe dire che non dovremmo essere né del tutto infelici né del tutto felici. Ma scoprire fin dove si POSSA essere del tutto infelici senza rendere impossibile essere del tutto felici—quella fu una scoperta della psicologia. Chiunque potrebbe dire: «Non spavaldeggiare e non strisciare»; e sarebbe stato un limite. Ma dire: «Qui puoi spavaldeggiare e là puoi strisciare»— quella fu un’emancipazione.

Questo era il grande fatto dell’etica cristiana: la scoperta del nuovo equilibrio. Il paganesimo era stato come una colonna di marmo, diritta perché proporzionata con simmetria. Il Cristianesimo era come un’immane, scabra e romantica rupe che, benché oscilli sul suo piedistallo al minimo tocco, tuttavia, poiché le sue esagerate escrescenze si bilanciano esattamente l’una con l’altra, vi troneggia da mille anni. In una cattedrale gotica le colonne erano tutte diverse, ma erano tutte necessarie. Ogni sostegno sembrava un sostegno accidentale e fantastico; ogni contrafforte era un arco rampante. Così nella cristianità gli accidenti apparenti si bilanciavano. Becket portava un cilicio sotto l’oro e il cremisi, e molto c’è da dire a favore di quella combinazione; poiché Becket traeva il beneficio del cilicio mentre la gente per strada traeva il beneficio del cremisi e dell’oro. È perlomeno meglio del modo del milionario moderno, che ostenta il nero e il grigio all’esterno per gli altri, e tiene l’oro accanto al cuore. Ma l’equilibrio non stava sempre nel corpo di un solo uomo come in quello di Becket; l’equilibrio era spesso distribuito sull’intero corpo della cristianità. Poiché un uomo pregava e digiunava tra le nevi del Nord, si potevano gettare fiori alla sua festa nelle città del Sud; e poiché i fanatici bevevano acqua sulle sabbie della Siria, gli uomini potevano ancora bere sidro nei frutteti d’Inghilterra. È questo che rende la cristianità a un tempo tanto più sconcertante e tanto più interessante dell’impero pagano; proprio come la cattedrale di Amiens non è migliore, ma più interessante del Partenone. Se qualcuno desidera una prova moderna di tutto ciò, consideri il curioso fatto che, sotto il Cristianesimo, l’Europa (pur rimanendo un’unità) si è frammentata in nazioni distinte. Il patriottismo è un esempio perfetto di questo deliberato bilanciare un’enfasi contro un’altra enfasi. L’istinto dell’impero pagano avrebbe detto: «Sarete tutti cittadini romani, e crescerete uguali; il Germano diventi meno lento e riverente, il Francese meno sperimentale e rapido». Ma l’istinto dell’Europa cristiana dice: «Il Germano rimanga lento e riverente, affinché il Francese possa tanto più sicuramente essere rapido e sperimentale. Faremo un contrappeso di questi eccessi. L’assurdità chiamata Germania correggerà la follia chiamata Francia».

Da ultimo, e più importante, è proprio questo a spiegare ciò che riesce tanto inesplicabile a tutti i critici moderni della storia del Cristianesimo. Intendo le guerre mostruose su piccoli punti di teologia, i terremoti d’emozione per un gesto o una parola. Era solo questione di un pollice; ma un pollice è tutto quando si è in equilibrio. La Chiesa non poteva permettersi di deviare di un capello su certe cose, se voleva continuare il suo grande e temerario esperimento dell’equilibrio irregolare. Bastava che un’idea divenisse meno potente e qualche altra idea sarebbe divenuta troppo potente. Non era un gregge di pecore che il pastore cristiano conduceva, ma una mandria di tori e di tigri, di ideali terribili e di dottrine divoranti, ciascuno abbastanza forte da mutarsi in una falsa religione e devastare il mondo. Si ricordi che la Chiesa si dedicò specificamente alle idee pericolose: era una domatrice di leoni. L’idea della nascita per opera di uno Spirito Santo, della morte di un essere divino, del perdono dei peccati, o dell’adempimento delle profezie, sono idee che, chiunque può vederlo, basta un tocco a mutarle in qualcosa di blasfemo o di feroce. Il più piccolo anello fu lasciato cadere dagli artefici del Mediterraneo, e il leone del pessimismo ancestrale spezzò la sua catena nelle dimenticate foreste del nord. Di queste equalizzazioni teologiche dovrò parlare in seguito. Qui basta notare che se un piccolo errore si commetteva nella dottrina, immensi sbagli potevano commettersi nella felicità umana. Una frase formulata male sulla natura del simbolismo avrebbe mandato in frantumi tutte le più belle statue d’Europa. Un passo falso nelle definizioni avrebbe potuto arrestare tutte le danze; avvizzire tutti gli alberi di Natale o rompere tutte le uova di Pasqua. Le dottrine dovevano essere definite entro limiti severi, anche solo affinché l’uomo potesse godere delle comuni libertà umane. La Chiesa doveva essere attenta, non foss’altro perché il mondo potesse essere spensierato.

Questo è il palpitante romanzo dell’Ortodossia. La gente è caduta nella sciocca abitudine di parlare dell’ortodossia come di qualcosa di pesante, monotono e sicuro. Non ci fu mai nulla di così pericoloso o di così eccitante come l’ortodossia. Era sanità di mente: ed essere sani di mente è più drammatico che essere folli. Era l’equilibrio di un uomo dietro cavalli lanciati all’impazzata, che pare piegarsi da una parte e oscillare dall’altra, eppure in ogni atteggiamento possiede la grazia della statuaria e l’esattezza dell’aritmetica. La Chiesa, ai suoi primi giorni, corse fiera e veloce con qualunque cavallo da guerra; eppure è del tutto antistorico dire che essa semplicemente impazzì dietro una sola idea, come un volgare fanatismo. Sterzò a sinistra e a destra, con tanta precisione da evitare enormi ostacoli. Si lasciò da un lato l’immensa mole dell’arianesimo, puntellato da tutte le potenze mondane per rendere il Cristianesimo troppo mondano. L’istante successivo sterzava per evitare un orientalismo, che l’avrebbe reso troppo ultramondano. La Chiesa ortodossa non prese mai la via mansueta né accettò le convenzioni; la Chiesa ortodossa non fu mai rispettabile. Sarebbe stato più facile accettare il potere terreno degli ariani. Sarebbe stato facile, nel calvinistico Seicento, cadere nel pozzo senza fondo della predestinazione. È facile essere pazzi: è facile essere eretici. È sempre facile lasciare che l’epoca prenda la sua strada; la cosa difficile è mantenere la propria. È sempre facile essere modernisti, come è facile essere snob. Cadere in una qualsiasi di quelle trappole aperte dell’errore e dell’esagerazione che moda dopo moda e setta dopo setta disposero lungo il cammino storico della cristianità—quello sarebbe stato davvero semplice. È sempre semplice cadere; vi sono infiniti angoli secondo cui si cade, uno solo secondo cui si sta ritti. Cadere in una qualsiasi delle manie, dallo gnosticismo alla Scienza Cristiana, sarebbe stato davvero ovvio e insulso. Ma averle evitate tutte è stata una vorticosa avventura; e nella mia visione il carro celeste vola tuonando attraverso i secoli, le opache eresie riverse e prostrate, la selvaggia verità vacillante ma eretta.

VII THE ETERNAL REVOLUTION

The following propositions have been urged: First, that some faith in our life is required even to improve it; second, that some dissatisfaction with things as they are is necessary even in order to be satisfied; third, that to have this necessary content and necessary discontent it is not sufficient to have the obvious equilibrium of the Stoic. For mere resignation has neither the gigantic levity of pleasure nor the superb intolerance of pain. There is a vital objection to the advice merely to grin and bear it. The objection is that if you merely bear it, you do not grin. Greek heroes do not grin: but gargoyles do—because they are Christian. And when a Christian is pleased, he is (in the most exact sense) frightfully pleased; his pleasure is frightful. Christ prophesied the whole of Gothic architecture in that hour when nervous and respectable people (such people as now object to barrel organs) objected to the shouting of the gutter-snipes of Jerusalem. He said, “If these were silent, the very stones would cry out.” Under the impulse of His spirit arose like a clamorous chorus the facades of the mediaeval cathedrals, thronged with shouting faces and open mouths. The prophecy has fulfilled itself: the very stones cry out.

If these things be conceded, though only for argument, we may take up where we left it the thread of the thought of the natural man, called by the Scotch (with regrettable familiarity), “The Old Man.” We can ask the next question so obviously in front of us. Some satisfaction is needed even to make things better. But what do we mean by making things better? Most modern talk on this matter is a mere argument in a circle—that circle which we have already made the symbol of madness and of mere rationalism. Evolution is only good if it produces good; good is only good if it helps evolution. The elephant stands on the tortoise, and the tortoise on the elephant.

Obviously, it will not do to take our ideal from the principle in nature; for the simple reason that (except for some human or divine theory), there is no principle in nature. For instance, the cheap anti-democrat of to-day will tell you solemnly that there is no equality in nature. He is right, but he does not see the logical addendum. There is no equality in nature; also there is no inequality in nature. Inequality, as much as equality, implies a standard of value. To read aristocracy into the anarchy of animals is just as sentimental as to read democracy into it. Both aristocracy and democracy are human ideals: the one saying that all men are valuable, the other that some men are more valuable. But nature does not say that cats are more valuable than mice; nature makes no remark on the subject. She does not even say that the cat is enviable or the mouse pitiable. We think the cat superior because we have (or most of us have) a particular philosophy to the effect that life is better than death. But if the mouse were a German pessimist mouse, he might not think that the cat had beaten him at all. He might think he had beaten the cat by getting to the grave first. Or he might feel that he had actually inflicted frightful punishment on the cat by keeping him alive. Just as a microbe might feel proud of spreading a pestilence, so the pessimistic mouse might exult to think that he was renewing in the cat the torture of conscious existence. It all depends on the philosophy of the mouse. You cannot even say that there is victory or superiority in nature unless you have some doctrine about what things are superior. You cannot even say that the cat scores unless there is a system of scoring. You cannot even say that the cat gets the best of it unless there is some best to be got.

We cannot, then, get the ideal itself from nature, and as we follow here the first and natural speculation, we will leave out (for the present) the idea of getting it from God. We must have our own vision. But the attempts of most moderns to express it are highly vague.

Some fall back simply on the clock: they talk as if mere passage through time brought some superiority; so that even a man of the first mental calibre carelessly uses the phrase that human morality is never up to date. How can anything be up to date? — a date has no character. How can one say that Christmas celebrations are not suitable to the twenty-fifth of a month? What the writer meant, of course, was that the majority is behind his favourite minority— or in front of it. Other vague modern people take refuge in material metaphors; in fact, this is the chief mark of vague modern people. Not daring to define their doctrine of what is good, they use physical figures of speech without stint or shame, and, what is worst of all, seem to think these cheap analogies are exquisitely spiritual and superior to the old morality. Thus they think it intellectual to talk about things being “high.” It is at least the reverse of intellectual; it is a mere phrase from a steeple or a weathercock. “Tommy was a good boy” is a pure philosophical statement, worthy of Plato or Aquinas. “Tommy lived the higher life” is a gross metaphor from a ten-foot rule.

This, incidentally, is almost the whole weakness of Nietzsche, whom some are representing as a bold and strong thinker. No one will deny that he was a poetical and suggestive thinker; but he was quite the reverse of strong. He was not at all bold. He never put his own meaning before himself in bald abstract words: as did Aristotle and Calvin, and even Karl Marx, the hard, fearless men of thought. Nietzsche always escaped a question by a physical metaphor, like a cheery minor poet. He said, “beyond good and evil,” because he had not the courage to say, “more good than good and evil,” or, “more evil than good and evil.” Had he faced his thought without metaphors, he would have seen that it was nonsense. So, when he describes his hero, he does not dare to say, “the purer man,” or “the happier man,” or “the sadder man,” for all these are ideas; and ideas are alarming. He says “the upper man,” or “over man,” a physical metaphor from acrobats or alpine climbers. Nietzsche is truly a very timid thinker. He does not really know in the least what sort of man he wants evolution to produce. And if he does not know, certainly the ordinary evolutionists, who talk about things being “higher,” do not know either.

VII LA RIVOLUZIONE ETERNA

Sono state sostenute le seguenti proposizioni: primo, che una qualche fede nella nostra vita è necessaria anche solo per migliorarla; secondo, che una qualche insoddisfazione per le cose come stanno è indispensabile persino per poter essere soddisfatti; terzo, che per avere questa necessaria contentezza e questo necessario scontento non basta possedere l’ovvio equilibrio dello Stoico. Poiché la mera rassegnazione non ha né la gigantesca leggerezza del piacere né la superba intolleranza del dolore. C’è un’obiezione vitale al consiglio di limitarsi a sorridere e sopportare. L’obiezione è che, se ti limiti a sopportare, non sorridi. Gli eroi greci non sorridono: ma i gargoyle sì, perché sono cristiani. E quando un cristiano è contento, è (nel senso più esatto) spaventosamente contento; il suo piacere è spaventoso. Cristo profetizzò tutta l’architettura gotica in quell’ora in cui persone nervose e rispettabili (persone come quelle che oggi si lamentano degli organetti a manovella) si lamentavano delle grida dei monelli di Gerusalemme. Egli disse: «Se costoro tacessero, griderebbero le pietre stesse». Sotto l’impulso del Suo spirito sorsero come un clamoroso coro le facciate delle cattedrali medievali, gremite di volti gridanti e di bocche spalancate. La profezia si è adempiuta da sé: le pietre stesse gridano.

Se queste cose si concedono, foss’anche solo per amor di discussione, possiamo riprendere là dove l’avevamo lasciato il filo del pensiero dell’uomo naturale, chiamato dagli scozzesi (con deplorevole familiarità) «il Vecchio Adamo». Possiamo porci la domanda successiva, così ovviamente davanti a noi. Una qualche soddisfazione è necessaria anche solo per rendere migliori le cose. Ma cosa intendiamo per rendere migliori le cose? Gran parte del discorso moderno su questa materia non è che un ragionamento circolare: quel circolo che abbiamo già eletto a simbolo della follia e del mero razionalismo. L’evoluzione è buona soltanto se produce il bene; il bene è buono soltanto se favorisce l’evoluzione. L’elefante sta sulla tartaruga, e la tartaruga sull’elefante.

Evidentemente, non è possibile ricavare il nostro ideale dal principio insito nella natura; per la semplice ragione che (salvo una qualche teoria umana o divina) nella natura non esiste alcun principio. Per esempio, l’antidemocratico da quattro soldi di oggi ti dirà solennemente che nella natura non c’è uguaglianza. Ha ragione, ma non vede il corollario logico. Nella natura non c’è uguaglianza; e nemmeno c’è disuguaglianza nella natura. La disuguaglianza, tanto quanto l’uguaglianza, implica un criterio di valore. Leggere l’aristocrazia nell’anarchia degli animali è altrettanto sentimentale che leggervi la democrazia. Tanto l’aristocrazia quanto la democrazia sono ideali umani: l’una afferma che tutti gli uomini hanno valore, l’altra che alcuni uomini hanno più valore. Ma la natura non dice che i gatti valgono più dei topi; la natura non fa alcuna osservazione in proposito. Non dice nemmeno che il gatto sia invidiabile o il topo compassionevole. Noi pensiamo il gatto superiore perché abbiamo (o la maggior parte di noi ha) una particolare filosofia secondo cui la vita è migliore della morte. Ma se il topo fosse un topo pessimista tedesco, potrebbe non pensare affatto che il gatto lo abbia sconfitto. Potrebbe pensare di aver sconfitto lui il gatto arrivando primo alla tomba. Oppure potrebbe sentire di aver in realtà inflitto una punizione spaventosa al gatto tenendolo in vita. Proprio come un microbo potrebbe andar fiero di diffondere una pestilenza, così il topo pessimista potrebbe esultare al pensiero di rinnovare nel gatto il tormento dell’esistenza cosciente. Tutto dipende dalla filosofia del topo. Non puoi nemmeno dire che ci sia vittoria o superiorità nella natura se non hai una qualche dottrina su quali cose siano superiori. Non puoi nemmeno dire che il gatto segni un punto se non esiste un sistema di punteggio. Non puoi nemmeno dire che il gatto abbia la meglio se non c’è una qualche meglio da avere.

Non possiamo, dunque, ricavare l’ideale stesso dalla natura, e poiché qui seguiamo la prima e naturale speculazione, lasceremo da parte (per ora) l’idea di ricavarlo da Dio. Dobbiamo avere la nostra propria visione. Ma i tentativi della maggior parte dei moderni di esprimerla sono estremamente vaghi.

Alcuni ripiegano semplicemente sull’orologio: parlano come se il mero passaggio attraverso il tempo recasse con sé una qualche superiorità; tanto che persino un uomo del primo calibro intellettuale usa con noncuranza la frase secondo cui la morale umana non è mai al passo coi tempi. Come può qualcosa essere al passo coi tempi? — una data non ha carattere. Come si può dire che i festeggiamenti del Natale non siano adatti al venticinque di un mese? Ciò che lo scrittore intendeva, naturalmente, era che la maggioranza è dietro alla sua minoranza prediletta — o davanti a essa. Altri vaghi moderni si rifugiano in metafore materiali; anzi, questo è il segno distintivo dei vaghi moderni. Non osando definire la loro dottrina di ciò che è bene, usano figure retoriche fisiche senza misura né pudore e, quel che è peggio di tutto, sembrano credere che queste analogie da quattro soldi siano squisitamente spirituali e superiori alla vecchia morale. Così ritengono intellettuale parlare di cose che sono «alte». È perlomeno l’esatto contrario di intellettuale; è una semplice espressione da campanile o da banderuola. «Tommy era un bravo bambino» è una pura affermazione filosofica, degna di Platone o di Tommaso d’Aquino. «Tommy visse la vita superiore» è una grossolana metafora tratta da un metro da tre passi.

Questa, per inciso, è quasi tutta la debolezza di Nietzsche, che alcuni rappresentano come un pensatore audace e forte. Nessuno negherà che fosse un pensatore poetico e suggestivo; ma era esattamente il contrario di forte. Non era affatto audace. Non pose mai il proprio significato davanti a sé in nude parole astratte: come fecero Aristotele e Calvino, e persino Karl Marx, i duri, intrepidi uomini del pensiero. Nietzsche sfuggiva sempre a una domanda con una metafora fisica, come un allegro poetucolo. Diceva «al di là del bene e del male», perché non aveva il coraggio di dire «più buono del bene e del male», oppure «più malvagio del bene e del male». Se avesse affrontato il suo pensiero senza metafore, si sarebbe accorto che era un’assurdità. Così, quando descrive il suo eroe, non osa dire «l’uomo più puro», o «l’uomo più felice», o «l’uomo più triste», poiché tutte queste sono idee; e le idee sono allarmanti. Dice «l’uomo superiore», o «superuomo», una metafora fisica presa dagli acrobati o dagli scalatori alpini. Nietzsche è davvero un pensatore assai timido. In realtà non sa minimamente quale sorta di uomo voglia che l’evoluzione produca. E se non lo sa lui, di certo gli evoluzionisti ordinari, che parlano di cose che sono «più alte», non lo sanno nemmeno loro.

Then again, some people fall back on sheer submission and sitting still. Nature is going to do something some day; nobody knows what, and nobody knows when. We have no reason for acting, and no reason for not acting. If anything happens it is right: if anything is prevented it was wrong. Again, some people try to anticipate nature by doing something, by doing anything. Because we may possibly grow wings they cut off their legs. Yet nature may be trying to make them centipedes for all they know.

Lastly, there is a fourth class of people who take whatever it is that they happen to want, and say that that is the ultimate aim of evolution. And these are the only sensible people. This is the only really healthy way with the word evolution, to work for what you want, and to call THAT evolution. The only intelligible sense that progress or advance can have among men, is that we have a definite vision, and that we wish to make the whole world like that vision. If you like to put it so, the essence of the doctrine is that what we have around us is the mere method and preparation for something that we have to create. This is not a world, but rather the material for a world. God has given us not so much the colours of a picture as the colours of a palette. But he has also given us a subject, a model, a fixed vision. We must be clear about what we want to paint. This adds a further principle to our previous list of principles. We have said we must be fond of this world, even in order to change it. We now add that we must be fond of another world (real or imaginary) in order to have something to change it to.

We need not debate about the mere words evolution or progress: personally I prefer to call it reform. For reform implies form. It implies that we are trying to shape the world in a particular image; to make it something that we see already in our minds. Evolution is a metaphor from mere automatic unrolling. Progress is a metaphor from merely walking along a road—very likely the wrong road. But reform is a metaphor for reasonable and determined men: it means that we see a certain thing out of shape and we mean to put it into shape. And we know what shape.

Now here comes in the whole collapse and huge blunder of our age. We have mixed up two different things, two opposite things. Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to suit the vision. Progress does mean (just now) that we are always changing the vision. It should mean that we are slow but sure in bringing justice and mercy among men: it does mean that we are very swift in doubting the desirability of justice and mercy: a wild page from any Prussian sophist makes men doubt it. Progress should mean that we are always walking towards the New Jerusalem. It does mean that the New Jerusalem is always walking away from us. We are not altering the real to suit the ideal. We are altering the ideal: it is easier.

Silly examples are always simpler; let us suppose a man wanted a particular kind of world; say, a blue world. He would have no cause to complain of the slightness or swiftness of his task; he might toil for a long time at the transformation; he could work away (in every sense) until all was blue. He could have heroic adventures; the putting of the last touches to a blue tiger. He could have fairy dreams; the dawn of a blue moon. But if he worked hard, that high-minded reformer would certainly (from his own point of view) leave the world better and bluer than he found it. If he altered a blade of grass to his favourite colour every day, he would get on slowly. But if he altered his favourite colour every day, he would not get on at all. If, after reading a fresh philosopher, he started to paint everything red or yellow, his work would be thrown away: there would be nothing to show except a few blue tigers walking about, specimens of his early bad manner. This is exactly the position of the average modern thinker. It will be said that this is avowedly a preposterous example. But it is literally the fact of recent history. The great and grave changes in our political civilization all belonged to the early nineteenth century, not to the later. They belonged to the black and white epoch when men believed fixedly in Toryism, in Protestantism, in Calvinism, in Reform, and not unfrequently in Revolution. And whatever each man believed in he hammered at steadily, without scepticism: and there was a time when the Established Church might have fallen, and the House of Lords nearly fell. It was because Radicals were wise enough to be constant and consistent; it was because Radicals were wise enough to be Conservative. But in the existing atmosphere there is not enough time and tradition in Radicalism to pull anything down. There is a great deal of truth in Lord Hugh Cecil’s suggestion (made in a fine speech) that the era of change is over, and that ours is an era of conservation and repose. But probably it would pain Lord Hugh Cecil if he realized (what is certainly the case) that ours is only an age of conservation because it is an age of complete unbelief. Let beliefs fade fast and frequently, if you wish institutions to remain the same. The more the life of the mind is unhinged, the more the machinery of matter will be left to itself. The net result of all our political suggestions, Collectivism, Tolstoyanism, Neo-Feudalism, Communism, Anarchy, Scientific Bureaucracy— the plain fruit of all of them is that the Monarchy and the House of Lords will remain. The net result of all the new religions will be that the Church of England will not (for heaven knows how long) be disestablished. It was Karl Marx, Nietzsche, Tolstoy, Cunninghame Grahame, Bernard Shaw and Auberon Herbert, who between them, with bowed gigantic backs, bore up the throne of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

E poi vi sono coloro che si rifugiano nella pura sottomissione e nell’immobilità. La Natura farà pur qualcosa un giorno o l’altro; nessuno sa cosa, e nessuno sa quando. Non abbiamo alcuna ragione per agire, né alcuna ragione per non agire. Se accade qualcosa, è giusto: se qualcosa viene impedito, era sbagliato. Altri, ancora, tentano di anticipare la natura facendo qualcosa, facendo qualunque cosa. Poiché forse un giorno ci spunteranno le ali, ecco che si tagliano le gambe. Eppure la natura potrebbe star cercando di farne dei millepiedi, per quel che ne sanno.

Vi è infine una quarta categoria di persone, quelle che prendono ciò che per caso desiderano e affermano che quello è lo scopo ultimo dell’evoluzione. E sono le uniche persone assennate. Questo è l’unico modo davvero sano di trattare la parola evoluzione: lavorare per ciò che si vuole, e chiamare QUELLO evoluzione. L’unico senso intelligibile che il progresso o l’avanzamento possano avere tra gli uomini è che noi abbiamo una visione precisa, e che desideriamo rendere il mondo intero simile a quella visione. Se così vi piace formularlo, l’essenza della dottrina è che ciò che ci circonda non è altro che il metodo e la preparazione di qualcosa che dobbiamo creare. Questo non è un mondo, ma piuttosto la materia prima di un mondo. Dio ci ha dato non tanto i colori di un quadro quanto i colori di una tavolozza. Ma ci ha dato anche un soggetto, un modello, una visione fissa. Dobbiamo aver chiaro ciò che vogliamo dipingere. Ciò aggiunge un ulteriore principio al nostro precedente elenco di principi. Abbiamo detto che dobbiamo amare questo mondo, se non altro per poterlo mutare. Aggiungiamo ora che dobbiamo amare un altro mondo (reale o immaginario) per avere qualcosa in cui mutarlo.

Non occorre disputare sulle mere parole evoluzione o progresso: personalmente preferisco chiamarla riforma. Perché riforma implica forma. Implica che noi cerchiamo di plasmare il mondo secondo una determinata immagine; di renderlo qualcosa che già vediamo nella nostra mente. L’evoluzione è una metafora tratta da un mero srotolarsi automatico. Il progresso è una metafora tratta dal semplice camminare lungo una strada—molto probabilmente la strada sbagliata. Ma la riforma è una metafora per uomini ragionevoli e risoluti: significa che vediamo una certa cosa deforme e intendiamo darle forma. E sappiamo quale forma.

Ed ecco che qui si insinua l’intero crollo e l’enorme abbaglio della nostra epoca. Abbiamo confuso due cose diverse, due cose opposte. Progresso dovrebbe significare che mutiamo di continuo il mondo per adattarlo alla visione. Progresso significa (proprio adesso) che mutiamo di continuo la visione. Dovrebbe significare che siamo lenti ma sicuri nel portare la giustizia e la misericordia fra gli uomini: significa invece che siamo velocissimi nel dubitare della desiderabilità della giustizia e della misericordia: una pagina forsennata di un qualsiasi sofista prussiano fa sì che gli uomini ne dubitino. Progresso dovrebbe significare che camminiamo sempre verso la Nuova Gerusalemme. Significa invece che la Nuova Gerusalemme si allontana sempre da noi. Non stiamo alterando il reale per adattarlo all’ideale. Stiamo alterando l’ideale: è più facile.

Gli esempi sciocchi sono sempre i più semplici; supponiamo che un uomo desiderasse un particolare tipo di mondo; poniamo, un mondo azzurro. Egli non avrebbe motivo di lamentarsi dell’esiguità o della rapidità del suo compito; potrebbe faticare per un lungo tempo alla trasformazione; potrebbe darsi da fare (in ogni senso) finché tutto non fosse azzurro. Potrebbe vivere avventure eroiche; l’ultimo tocco dato a una tigre azzurra. Potrebbe fare sogni fatati; l’alba di una luna azzurra. Ma se lavorasse sodo, quel riformatore magnanimo, di certo (dal proprio punto di vista), lascerebbe il mondo migliore e più azzurro di come l’aveva trovato. Se ogni giorno mutasse un filo d’erba nel suo colore prediletto, procederebbe lentamente. Ma se ogni giorno mutasse il proprio colore prediletto, non procederebbe affatto. Se, dopo aver letto un nuovo filosofo, si mettesse a dipingere ogni cosa di rosso o di giallo, la sua opera andrebbe sprecata: non resterebbe nulla da mostrare se non qualche tigre azzurra a spasso, esemplari della sua prima maniera scadente. Questa è esattamente la posizione del pensatore moderno medio. Si dirà che questo è, per stessa ammissione, un esempio assurdo. Ma è letteralmente il fatto della storia recente. I grandi e gravi mutamenti della nostra civiltà politica appartennero tutti al primo Ottocento, non al secondo. Appartennero all’epoca in bianco e nero in cui gli uomini credevano fermamente nel Torismo, nel Protestantesimo, nel Calvinismo, nella Riforma, e non di rado nella Rivoluzione. E qualunque cosa ciascuno credesse, la martellava con costanza, senza scetticismo: e vi fu un tempo in cui la Chiesa d’Inghilterra avrebbe potuto cadere, e la Camera dei Lord poco mancò che cadesse. Fu perché i Radicali furono abbastanza saggi da essere costanti e coerenti; fu perché i Radicali furono abbastanza saggi da essere Conservatori. Ma nell’atmosfera odierna non vi è nel Radicalismo abbastanza tempo e tradizione da abbattere alcunché. Vi è molta verità nel suggerimento di Lord Hugh Cecil (formulato in un bel discorso) che l’era del mutamento sia finita, e che la nostra sia un’era di conservazione e di riposo. Ma probabilmente addolorerebbe Lord Hugh Cecil il rendersi conto (come di certo è il caso) che la nostra è un’era di conservazione soltanto perché è un’era di completa incredulità. Lasciate che le fedi sbiadiscano rapide e frequenti, se volete che le istituzioni restino le stesse. Quanto più la vita della mente è scardinata, tanto più il macchinario della materia sarà lasciato a se stesso. Il risultato netto di tutte le nostre proposte politiche, Collettivismo, Tolstoismo, Neo-Feudalesimo, Comunismo, Anarchia, Burocrazia Scientifica— il puro frutto di tutte quante è che la Monarchia e la Camera dei Lord rimarranno. Il risultato netto di tutte le nuove religioni sarà che la Chiesa d’Inghilterra non verrà (Dio solo sa per quanto tempo ancora) privata del suo statuto di chiesa di Stato. Furono Karl Marx, Nietzsche, Tolstoj, Cunninghame Grahame, Bernard Shaw e Auberon Herbert che, tutti insieme, con le loro curve schiene gigantesche, ressero il trono dell’Arcivescovo di Canterbury.

We may say broadly that free thought is the best of all the safeguards against freedom. Managed in a modern style the emancipation of the slave’s mind is the best way of preventing the emancipation of the slave. Teach him to worry about whether he wants to be free, and he will not free himself. Again, it may be said that this instance is remote or extreme. But, again, it is exactly true of the men in the streets around us. It is true that the negro slave, being a debased barbarian, will probably have either a human affection of loyalty, or a human affection for liberty. But the man we see every day— the worker in Mr. Gradgrind’s factory, the little clerk in Mr. Gradgrind’s office—he is too mentally worried to believe in freedom. He is kept quiet with revolutionary literature. He is calmed and kept in his place by a constant succession of wild philosophies. He is a Marxian one day, a Nietzscheite the next day, a Superman (probably) the next day; and a slave every day. The only thing that remains after all the philosophies is the factory. The only man who gains by all the philosophies is Gradgrind. It would be worth his while to keep his commercial helotry supplied with sceptical literature. And now I come to think of it, of course, Gradgrind is famous for giving libraries. He shows his sense. All modern books are on his side. As long as the vision of heaven is always changing, the vision of earth will be exactly the same. No ideal will remain long enough to be realized, or even partly realized. The modern young man will never change his environment; for he will always change his mind.

This, therefore, is our first requirement about the ideal towards which progress is directed; it must be fixed. Whistler used to make many rapid studies of a sitter; it did not matter if he tore up twenty portraits. But it would matter if he looked up twenty times, and each time saw a new person sitting placidly for his portrait. So it does not matter (comparatively speaking) how often humanity fails to imitate its ideal; for then all its old failures are fruitful. But it does frightfully matter how often humanity changes its ideal; for then all its old failures are fruitless. The question therefore becomes this: How can we keep the artist discontented with his pictures while preventing him from being vitally discontented with his art? How can we make a man always dissatisfied with his work, yet always satisfied with working? How can we make sure that the portrait painter will throw the portrait out of window instead of taking the natural and more human course of throwing the sitter out of window?

A strict rule is not only necessary for ruling; it is also necessary for rebelling. This fixed and familiar ideal is necessary to any sort of revolution. Man will sometimes act slowly upon new ideas; but he will only act swiftly upon old ideas. If I am merely to float or fade or evolve, it may be towards something anarchic; but if I am to riot, it must be for something respectable. This is the whole weakness of certain schools of progress and moral evolution. They suggest that there has been a slow movement towards morality, with an imperceptible ethical change in every year or at every instant. There is only one great disadvantage in this theory. It talks of a slow movement towards justice; but it does not permit a swift movement. A man is not allowed to leap up and declare a certain state of things to be intrinsically intolerable. To make the matter clear, it is better to take a specific example. Certain of the idealistic vegetarians, such as Mr. Salt, say that the time has now come for eating no meat; by implication they assume that at one time it was right to eat meat, and they suggest (in words that could be quoted) that some day it may be wrong to eat milk and eggs. I do not discuss here the question of what is justice to animals. I only say that whatever is justice ought, under given conditions, to be prompt justice. If an animal is wronged, we ought to be able to rush to his rescue. But how can we rush if we are, perhaps, in advance of our time? How can we rush to catch a train which may not arrive for a few centuries? How can I denounce a man for skinning cats, if he is only now what I may possibly become in drinking a glass of milk? A splendid and insane Russian sect ran about taking all the cattle out of all the carts. How can I pluck up courage to take the horse out of my hansom-cab, when I do not know whether my evolutionary watch is only a little fast or the cabman’s a little slow? Suppose I say to a sweater, “Slavery suited one stage of evolution.” And suppose he answers, “And sweating suits this stage of evolution.” How can I answer if there is no eternal test? If sweaters can be behind the current morality, why should not philanthropists be in front of it? What on earth is the current morality, except in its literal sense—the morality that is always running away?

Thus we may say that a permanent ideal is as necessary to the innovator as to the conservative; it is necessary whether we wish the king’s orders to be promptly executed or whether we only wish the king to be promptly executed. The guillotine has many sins, but to do it justice there is nothing evolutionary about it. The favourite evolutionary argument finds its best answer in the axe. The Evolutionist says, “Where do you draw the line?” the Revolutionist answers, “I draw it HERE: exactly between your head and body.” There must at any given moment be an abstract right and wrong if any blow is to be struck; there must be something eternal if there is to be anything sudden. Therefore for all intelligible human purposes, for altering things or for keeping things as they are, for founding a system for ever, as in China, or for altering it every month as in the early French Revolution, it is equally necessary that the vision should be a fixed vision. This is our first requirement.

Possiamo dire, in linea generale, che il libero pensiero è la migliore fra tutte le difese contro la libertà. Gestita alla maniera moderna, l’emancipazione della mente dello schiavo è il modo più sicuro di impedire l’emancipazione dello schiavo. Insegnategli a tormentarsi sul fatto se voglia o no essere libero, ed egli non si libererà. Di nuovo si potrà obiettare che questo esempio è remoto o estremo. Ma, di nuovo, esso è esattamente vero per gli uomini che ci circondano nelle strade. È vero che lo schiavo negro, essendo un barbaro degradato, avrà probabilmente o un umano affetto di fedeltà, o un umano affetto per la libertà. Ma l’uomo che vediamo ogni giorno — l’operaio nella fabbrica del signor Gradgrind, il piccolo impiegato nell’ufficio del signor Gradgrind — costui è troppo travagliato nella mente per credere nella libertà. Lo si tiene quieto a forza di letteratura rivoluzionaria. Lo si calma e lo si tiene al suo posto con una costante successione di sfrenate filosofie. Un giorno è marxista, il giorno dopo nietzscheano, il giorno appresso (probabilmente) un Superuomo; e schiavo tutti i giorni. L’unica cosa che rimane dopo tutte le filosofie è la fabbrica. L’unico uomo che ci guadagna da tutte le filosofie è Gradgrind. Gli converrebbe rifornire la sua ilotìa commerciale di letteratura scettica. E ora che ci penso, naturalmente, Gradgrind è celebre per le biblioteche che dona. Dà prova di buon senso. Tutti i libri moderni stanno dalla sua parte. Finché la visione del cielo muta di continuo, la visione della terra rimarrà esattamente la stessa. Nessun ideale durerà abbastanza a lungo da essere realizzato, o anche solo in parte realizzato. Il giovane moderno non muterà mai il proprio ambiente; perché muterà sempre idea.

Questo, dunque, è il nostro primo requisito riguardo all’ideale verso cui è diretto il progresso: esso dev’essere fisso. Whistler era solito fare molti schizzi rapidi di un soggetto in posa; non aveva importanza se stracciava venti ritratti. Ma avrebbe avuto importanza se avesse alzato gli occhi venti volte, e ogni volta avesse visto una persona nuova posare placidamente per il suo ritratto. Così non ha importanza (relativamente parlando) quante volte l’umanità fallisca nell’imitare il proprio ideale; perché allora tutti i suoi vecchi fallimenti sono fecondi. Ma ha una tremenda importanza quante volte l’umanità muti il proprio ideale; perché allora tutti i suoi vecchi fallimenti sono sterili. La questione diventa dunque questa: come possiamo mantenere l’artista scontento dei suoi quadri, impedendogli però di essere vitalmente scontento della sua arte? Come possiamo fare in modo che un uomo sia sempre insoddisfatto della propria opera, e tuttavia sempre soddisfatto del lavorare? Come possiamo assicurarci che il ritrattista getti il ritratto dalla finestra invece di prendere la via naturale e più umana di gettare il soggetto dalla finestra?

Una regola rigorosa non è necessaria soltanto per governare; è necessaria anche per ribellarsi. Questo ideale fisso e familiare è necessario a ogni sorta di rivoluzione. L’uomo talvolta agirà lentamente in base a idee nuove; ma agirà rapidamente solo in base a idee antiche. Se non devo far altro che galleggiare o dileguarmi o evolvermi, potrà essere verso qualcosa di anarchico; ma se devo far tumulto, dev’essere per qualcosa di rispettabile. In ciò sta tutta la debolezza di certe scuole di progresso e di evoluzione morale. Esse suggeriscono che vi sia stato un lento movimento verso la moralità, con un impercettibile mutamento etico in ogni anno o in ogni istante. Vi è un solo grande svantaggio in questa teoria. Essa parla di un lento movimento verso la giustizia; ma non consente un movimento rapido. Non è concesso a un uomo di levarsi in piedi e dichiarare che un certo stato di cose è intrinsecamente intollerabile. Per chiarire la faccenda, è meglio ricorrere a un esempio specifico. Certi vegetariani idealisti, come il signor Salt, dicono che è ormai giunto il tempo di non mangiare più carne; per implicazione essi presuppongono che in un tempo fosse giusto mangiare carne, e suggeriscono (con parole che si potrebbero citare) che un giorno potrà essere sbagliato mangiare latte e uova. Non discuto qui la questione di che cosa sia giusto verso gli animali. Dico soltanto che qualunque cosa sia giusta dovrebbe, in date condizioni, essere giustizia pronta. Se un animale subisce un torto, dovremmo poter accorrere in suo soccorso. Ma come possiamo accorrere se siamo, forse, in anticipo sul nostro tempo? Come possiamo correre a prendere un treno che potrebbe non arrivare prima di qualche secolo? Come posso denunciare un uomo perché scuoia i gatti, se egli è solo ora ciò che io potrei forse diventare bevendo un bicchiere di latte? Una splendida e folle setta russa andava in giro togliendo tutto il bestiame da tutti i carri. Come posso trovare il coraggio di togliere il cavallo dalla mia carrozza da nolo, quando non so se il mio orologio evoluzionista vada solo un po’ avanti o quello del vetturino un po’ indietro? Supponiamo che io dica a uno sfruttatore: «La schiavitù si addiceva a uno stadio dell’evoluzione». E supponiamo che egli risponda: «E lo sfruttamento si addice a questo stadio dell’evoluzione». Come posso ribattere se non esiste alcun criterio eterno? Se gli sfruttatori possono essere indietro rispetto alla moralità corrente, perché i filantropi non dovrebbero esserle davanti? Che cosa mai è la moralità corrente, se non nel suo senso letterale — la moralità che è sempre in fuga?

Possiamo dunque dire che un ideale permanente è tanto necessario all’innovatore quanto al conservatore; è necessario sia che desideriamo che gli ordini del re vengano prontamente eseguiti, sia che desideriamo soltanto che il re venga prontamente giustiziato. La ghigliottina ha molti peccati, ma per renderle giustizia non c’è nulla di evoluzionista in essa. Il prediletto argomento evoluzionista trova la sua migliore risposta nella scure. L’Evoluzionista dice: «Dove tracciate la linea?»; il Rivoluzionario risponde: «La traccio QUI: esattamente fra la vostra testa e il vostro corpo». In ogni dato momento deve esistere un giusto e uno sbagliato astratti, se si vuole vibrare un qualsiasi colpo; deve esistere qualcosa di eterno, se si vuole che accada qualcosa di improvviso. Perciò, per tutti gli scopi umani intelligibili, sia per mutare le cose sia per mantenerle come sono, sia per fondare un sistema in eterno, come in Cina, sia per mutarlo ogni mese, come nella prima Rivoluzione francese, è ugualmente necessario che la visione sia una visione fissa. Questo è il nostro primo requisito.

When I had written this down, I felt once again the presence of something else in the discussion: as a man hears a church bell above the sound of the street. Something seemed to be saying, “My ideal at least is fixed; for it was fixed before the foundations of the world. My vision of perfection assuredly cannot be altered; for it is called Eden. You may alter the place to which you are going; but you cannot alter the place from which you have come. To the orthodox there must always be a case for revolution; for in the hearts of men God has been put under the feet of Satan. In the upper world hell once rebelled against heaven. But in this world heaven is rebelling against hell. For the orthodox there can always be a revolution; for a revolution is a restoration. At any instant you may strike a blow for the perfection which no man has seen since Adam. No unchanging custom, no changing evolution can make the original good any thing but good. Man may have had concubines as long as cows have had horns: still they are not a part of him if they are sinful. Men may have been under oppression ever since fish were under water; still they ought not to be, if oppression is sinful. The chain may seem as natural to the slave, or the paint to the harlot, as does the plume to the bird or the burrow to the fox; still they are not, if they are sinful. I lift my prehistoric legend to defy all your history. Your vision is not merely a fixture: it is a fact.” I paused to note the new coincidence of Christianity: but I passed on.

I passed on to the next necessity of any ideal of progress. Some people (as we have said) seem to believe in an automatic and impersonal progress in the nature of things. But it is clear that no political activity can be encouraged by saying that progress is natural and inevitable; that is not a reason for being active, but rather a reason for being lazy. If we are bound to improve, we need not trouble to improve. The pure doctrine of progress is the best of all reasons for not being a progressive. But it is to none of these obvious comments that I wish primarily to call attention.

The only arresting point is this: that if we suppose improvement to be natural, it must be fairly simple. The world might conceivably be working towards one consummation, but hardly towards any particular arrangement of many qualities. To take our original simile: Nature by herself may be growing more blue; that is, a process so simple that it might be impersonal. But Nature cannot be making a careful picture made of many picked colours, unless Nature is personal. If the end of the world were mere darkness or mere light it might come as slowly and inevitably as dusk or dawn. But if the end of the world is to be a piece of elaborate and artistic chiaroscuro, then there must be design in it, either human or divine. The world, through mere time, might grow black like an old picture, or white like an old coat; but if it is turned into a particular piece of black and white art—then there is an artist.

If the distinction be not evident, I give an ordinary instance. We constantly hear a particularly cosmic creed from the modern humanitarians;

I use the word humanitarian in the ordinary sense, as meaning one who upholds the claims of all creatures against those of humanity. They suggest that through the ages we have been growing more and more humane, that is to say, that one after another, groups or sections of beings, slaves, children, women, cows, or what not, have been gradually admitted to mercy or to justice. They say that we once thought it right to eat men (we didn’t); but I am not here concerned with their history, which is highly unhistorical. As a fact, anthropophagy is certainly a decadent thing, not a primitive one. It is much more likely that modern men will eat human flesh out of affectation than that primitive man ever ate it out of ignorance. I am here only following the outlines of their argument, which consists in maintaining that man has been progressively more lenient, first to citizens, then to slaves, then to animals, and then (presumably) to plants. I think it wrong to sit on a man. Soon, I shall think it wrong to sit on a horse. Eventually (I suppose) I shall think it wrong to sit on a chair. That is the drive of the argument. And for this argument it can be said that it is possible to talk of it in terms of evolution or inevitable progress. A perpetual tendency to touch fewer and fewer things might—one feels, be a mere brute unconscious tendency, like that of a species to produce fewer and fewer children. This drift may be really evolutionary, because it is stupid.

Darwinism can be used to back up two mad moralities, but it cannot be used to back up a single sane one. The kinship and competition of all living creatures can be used as a reason for being insanely cruel or insanely sentimental; but not for a healthy love of animals. On the evolutionary basis you may be inhumane, or you may be absurdly humane; but you cannot be human. That you and a tiger are one may be a reason for being tender to a tiger. Or it may be a reason for being as cruel as the tiger. It is one way to train the tiger to imitate you, it is a shorter way to imitate the tiger. But in neither case does evolution tell you how to treat a tiger reasonably, that is, to admire his stripes while avoiding his claws.

If you want to treat a tiger reasonably, you must go back to the garden of Eden. For the obstinate reminder continued to recur: only the supernatural has taken a sane view of Nature. The essence of all pantheism, evolutionism, and modern cosmic religion is really in this proposition: that Nature is our mother. Unfortunately, if you regard Nature as a mother, you discover that she is a step-mother. The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister. We can be proud of her beauty, since we have the same father; but she has no authority over us; we have to admire, but not to imitate. This gives to the typically Christian pleasure in this earth a strange touch of lightness that is almost frivolity. Nature was a solemn mother to the worshippers of Isis and Cybele. Nature was a solemn mother to Wordsworth or to Emerson. But Nature is not solemn to Francis of Assisi or to George Herbert. To St. Francis, Nature is a sister, and even a younger sister: a little, dancing sister, to be laughed at as well as loved.

Quando ebbi scritto tutto questo, avvertii ancora una volta la presenza di qualcos’altro nel dibattito: come chi ode il rintocco di una campana al di sopra del frastuono della strada. Qualcosa pareva dire: «Il mio ideale, almeno, è fisso; poiché fu fissato prima che il mondo avesse fondamenta. La mia visione della perfezione non può di certo essere mutata; poiché si chiama Eden. Tu puoi mutare il luogo verso cui vai; ma non puoi mutare il luogo da cui sei venuto. Per l’ortodosso vi è sempre motivo di rivoluzione; poiché nel cuore degli uomini Dio è stato posto sotto i piedi di Satana. Nel mondo di lassù l’inferno un tempo si ribellò al cielo. Ma in questo mondo è il cielo a ribellarsi contro l’inferno. Per l’ortodosso vi può essere sempre una rivoluzione; poiché una rivoluzione è una restaurazione. In ogni istante tu puoi vibrare un colpo in nome di quella perfezione che nessun uomo ha più veduto dai tempi di Adamo. Nessuna consuetudine immutabile, nessuna evoluzione mutevole potrà mai rendere il bene originario altro che bene. L’uomo può aver avuto concubine da tanto tempo quanto le vacche hanno avuto le corna: eppure esse non sono parte di lui, se sono peccaminose. Gli uomini possono essere stati sotto oppressione da quando i pesci sono sotto l’acqua; eppure non dovrebbero esserlo, se l’oppressione è peccaminosa. La catena può parere naturale allo schiavo, o il belletto alla meretrice, quanto il piumaggio all’uccello o la tana alla volpe; eppure non lo sono, se sono peccaminosi. Innalzo la mia leggenda preistorica a sfidare tutta la vostra storia. La vostra visione non è soltanto qualcosa di stabilito: è un fatto». Mi soffermai a osservare la nuova coincidenza del Cristianesimo: ma proseguii.

Proseguii verso la necessità successiva di ogni ideale di progresso. Alcuni (come s’è detto) paiono credere in un progresso automatico e impersonale, insito nella natura delle cose. Ma è chiaro che nessuna attività politica può essere incoraggiata dal dire che il progresso è naturale e inevitabile; ciò non è una ragione per essere attivi, bensì piuttosto una ragione per essere pigri. Se siamo destinati a migliorare, non abbiamo bisogno di darci pena di migliorare. La pura dottrina del progresso è la migliore fra tutte le ragioni per non essere un progressista. Ma non è a nessuno di questi ovvii rilievi che desidero anzitutto richiamare l’attenzione.

L’unico punto che colpisce è questo: che se supponiamo il miglioramento naturale, esso dev’essere abbastanza semplice. Il mondo potrebbe forse concepibilmente muovere verso un unico compimento, ma difficilmente verso una particolare disposizione di molte qualità. Per riprendere la nostra similitudine iniziale: la Natura da sé sola può farsi via via più azzurra; e questo è un processo tanto semplice da poter essere impersonale. Ma la Natura non può dipingere un quadro accurato, fatto di molti colori scelti, a meno che la Natura non sia personale. Se la fine del mondo dovesse essere mera tenebra o mera luce, potrebbe giungere lentamente e inevitabilmente come il crepuscolo o l’alba. Ma se la fine del mondo dev’essere un elaborato e artistico chiaroscuro, allora vi dev’essere in essa un disegno, umano o divino. Il mondo, per il mero scorrere del tempo, potrebbe annerirsi come un vecchio quadro, o imbiancarsi come un vecchio soprabito; ma se viene mutato in una particolare opera d’arte in bianco e nero — allora c’è un artista.

Se la distinzione non risulta evidente, ne offro un esempio ordinario. Sentiamo di continuo un credo particolarmente cosmico da parte dei moderni umanitari;

io uso la parola umanitario nel suo senso comune, per indicare colui che sostiene i diritti di tutte le creature contro quelli dell’umanità. Costoro suggeriscono che nel corso delle età siamo divenuti sempre più umani, vale a dire che, l’uno dopo l’altro, gruppi o categorie di esseri — schiavi, bambini, donne, vacche o che so io — sono stati gradualmente ammessi alla misericordia o alla giustizia. Dicono che un tempo ritenevamo giusto mangiare gli uomini (non lo ritenevamo); ma qui non mi occupo della loro storia, che è quanto mai antistorica. Di fatto, l’antropofagia è certamente cosa decadente, non primitiva. È assai più probabile che l’uomo moderno mangi carne umana per affettazione di quanto l’uomo primitivo l’abbia mai mangiata per ignoranza. Qui mi limito a seguire le linee del loro argomento, che consiste nel sostenere che l’uomo è stato progressivamente più mite, prima verso i cittadini, poi verso gli schiavi, poi verso gli animali e infine (presumibilmente) verso le piante. Ritengo sbagliato sedermi sopra un uomo. Presto riterrò sbagliato sedermi sopra un cavallo. Alla fine (suppongo) riterrò sbagliato sedermi sopra una sedia. Ecco dove spinge l’argomento. E in favore di questo argomento si può dire che è possibile parlarne in termini di evoluzione o di progresso inevitabile. Una perpetua tendenza a toccare sempre meno cose potrebbe — si sente — essere una mera cieca tendenza inconscia, come quella di una specie a generare sempre meno figli. Questa deriva potrebbe essere davvero evolutiva, appunto perché è stupida.

Il darwinismo può essere usato a sostegno di due morali folli, ma non può essere usato a sostegno di una sola morale sana. La parentela e la competizione di tutte le creature viventi possono essere usate come ragione per essere follemente crudeli o follemente sentimentali; ma non per un sano amore degli animali. Su basi evoluzioniste puoi essere disumano, o puoi essere assurdamente umanitario; ma non puoi essere umano. Che tu e una tigre siate una cosa sola può essere una ragione per essere teneri con la tigre. Oppure può essere una ragione per essere crudeli quanto la tigre. È una via per addestrare la tigre a imitare te, ed è una via più breve imitare la tigre. Ma in nessuno dei due casi l’evoluzione ti dice come trattare una tigre ragionevolmente, vale a dire ammirarne le strisce evitandone gli artigli.

Se vuoi trattare una tigre ragionevolmente, devi tornare al giardino dell’Eden. Poiché l’ostinato monito continuava a ripresentarsi: solo il soprannaturale ha assunto una visione sana della Natura. L’essenza di ogni panteismo, evoluzionismo e moderna religione cosmica sta davvero in questa proposizione: che la Natura è nostra madre. Sfortunatamente, se consideri la Natura come una madre, scopri che è una matrigna. Il punto cardine del Cristianesimo era questo: che la Natura non è nostra madre: la Natura è nostra sorella. Possiamo essere fieri della sua bellezza, poiché abbiamo lo stesso padre; ma essa non ha autorità su di noi; dobbiamo ammirarla, non imitarla. Ciò conferisce al piacere tipicamente cristiano di questa terra una strana nota di leggerezza che è quasi frivolezza. La Natura era una madre solenne per gli adoratori di Iside e di Cibele. La Natura era una madre solenne per Wordsworth o per Emerson. Ma la Natura non è solenne per Francesco d’Assisi o per George Herbert. Per san Francesco la Natura è una sorella, e persino una sorella minore: una piccola sorella danzante, di cui ridere tanto quanto amarla.

This, however, is hardly our main point at present; I have admitted it only in order to show how constantly, and as it were accidentally, the key would fit the smallest doors. Our main point is here, that if there be a mere trend of impersonal improvement in Nature, it must presumably be a simple trend towards some simple triumph. One can imagine that some automatic tendency in biology might work for giving us longer and longer noses. But the question is, do we want to have longer and longer noses? I fancy not; I believe that we most of us want to say to our noses, “thus far, and no farther; and here shall thy proud point be stayed:” we require a nose of such length as may ensure an interesting face. But we cannot imagine a mere biological trend towards producing interesting faces; because an interesting face is one particular arrangement of eyes, nose, and mouth, in a most complex relation to each other. Proportion cannot be a drift: it is either an accident or a design. So with the ideal of human morality and its relation to the humanitarians and the anti-humanitarians. It is conceivable that we are going more and more to keep our hands off things: not to drive horses; not to pick flowers. We may eventually be bound not to disturb a man’s mind even by argument; not to disturb the sleep of birds even by coughing. The ultimate apotheosis would appear to be that of a man sitting quite still, nor daring to stir for fear of disturbing a fly, nor to eat for fear of incommoding a microbe. To so crude a consummation as that we might perhaps unconsciously drift. But do we want so crude a consummation? Similarly, we might unconsciously evolve along the opposite or Nietzschian line of development—superman crushing superman in one tower of tyrants until the universe is smashed up for fun. But do we want the universe smashed up for fun? Is it not quite clear that what we really hope for is one particular management and proposition of these two things; a certain amount of restraint and respect, a certain amount of energy and mastery? If our life is ever really as beautiful as a fairy-tale, we shall have to remember that all the beauty of a fairy-tale lies in this: that the prince has a wonder which just stops short of being fear. If he is afraid of the giant, there is an end of him; but also if he is not astonished at the giant, there is an end of the fairy-tale. The whole point depends upon his being at once humble enough to wonder, and haughty enough to defy. So our attitude to the giant of the world must not merely be increasing delicacy or increasing contempt: it must be one particular proportion of the two—which is exactly right. We must have in us enough reverence for all things outside us to make us tread fearfully on the grass. We must also have enough disdain for all things outside us, to make us, on due occasion, spit at the stars. Yet these two things (if we are to be good or happy) must be combined, not in any combination, but in one particular combination. The perfect happiness of men on the earth (if it ever comes) will not be a flat and solid thing, like the satisfaction of animals. It will be an exact and perilous balance; like that of a desperate romance. Man must have just enough faith in himself to have adventures, and just enough doubt of himself to enjoy them.

This, then, is our second requirement for the ideal of progress. First, it must be fixed; second, it must be composite. It must not (if it is to satisfy our souls) be the mere victory of some one thing swallowing up everything else, love or pride or peace or adventure; it must be a definite picture composed of these elements in their best proportion and relation. I am not concerned at this moment to deny that some such good culmination may be, by the constitution of things, reserved for the human race. I only point out that if this composite happiness is fixed for us it must be fixed by some mind; for only a mind can place the exact proportions of a composite happiness. If the beatification of the world is a mere work of nature, then it must be as simple as the freezing of the world, or the burning up of the world. But if the beatification of the world is not a work of nature but a work of art, then it involves an artist. And here again my contemplation was cloven by the ancient voice which said, “I could have told you all this a long time ago. If there is any certain progress it can only be my kind of progress, the progress towards a complete city of virtues and dominations where righteousness and peace contrive to kiss each other. An impersonal force might be leading you to a wilderness of perfect flatness or a peak of perfect height. But only a personal God can possibly be leading you (if, indeed, you are being led) to a city with just streets and architectural proportions, a city in which each of you can contribute exactly the right amount of your own colour to the many coloured coat of Joseph.”

Twice again, therefore, Christianity had come in with the exact answer that I required. I had said, “The ideal must be fixed,” and the Church had answered, “Mine is literally fixed, for it existed before anything else.” I said secondly, “It must be artistically combined, like a picture”; and the Church answered, “Mine is quite literally a picture, for I know who painted it.” Then I went on to the third thing, which, as it seemed to me, was needed for an Utopia or goal of progress. And of all the three it is infinitely the hardest to express. Perhaps it might be put thus: that we need watchfulness even in Utopia, lest we fall from Utopia as we fell from Eden.

We have remarked that one reason offered for being a progressive is that things naturally tend to grow better. But the only real reason for being a progressive is that things naturally tend to grow worse. The corruption in things is not only the best argument for being progressive; it is also the only argument against being conservative. The conservative theory would really be quite sweeping and unanswerable if it were not for this one fact. But all conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change. If you leave a white post alone it will soon be a black post. If you particularly want it to be white you must be always painting it again; that is, you must be always having a revolution. Briefly, if you want the old white post you must have a new white post. But this which is true even of inanimate things is in a quite special and terrible sense true of all human things. An almost unnatural vigilance is really required of the citizen because of the horrible rapidity with which human institutions grow old. It is the custom in passing romance and journalism to talk of men suffering under old tyrannies. But, as a fact, men have almost always suffered under new tyrannies; under tyrannies that had been public liberties hardly twenty years before. Thus England went mad with joy over the patriotic monarchy of Elizabeth; and then (almost immediately afterwards) went mad with rage in the trap of the tyranny of Charles the First. So, again, in France the monarchy became intolerable, not just after it had been tolerated, but just after it had been adored. The son of Louis the well-beloved was Louis the guillotined. So in the same way in England in the nineteenth century the Radical manufacturer was entirely trusted as a mere tribune of the people, until suddenly we heard the cry of the Socialist that he was a tyrant eating the people like bread. So again, we have almost up to the last instant trusted the newspapers as organs of public opinion. Just recently some of us have seen (not slowly, but with a start) that they are obviously nothing of the kind. They are, by the nature of the case, the hobbies of a few rich men. We have not any need to rebel against antiquity; we have to rebel against novelty. It is the new rulers, the capitalist or the editor, who really hold up the modern world. There is no fear that a modern king will attempt to override the constitution; it is more likely that he will ignore the constitution and work behind its back; he will take no advantage of his kingly power; it is more likely that he will take advantage of his kingly powerlessness, of the fact that he is free from criticism and publicity. For the king is the most private person of our time. It will not be necessary for any one to fight again against the proposal of a censorship of the press. We do not need a censorship of the press. We have a censorship by the press.

Questo, tuttavia, non è propriamente il nostro punto principale per ora; l’ho ammesso soltanto per mostrare quanto costantemente, e come per caso, la chiave si adattasse alle porte più piccole. Il nostro punto principale è questo: che se nella Natura vi fosse un semplice andamento di miglioramento impersonale, esso dovrebbe presumibilmente essere un semplice andamento verso qualche semplice trionfo. Si può immaginare che qualche tendenza automatica della biologia lavori a darci nasi sempre più lunghi. Ma il problema è: vogliamo davvero avere nasi sempre più lunghi? Direi di no; credo che la maggior parte di noi voglia dire al proprio naso: «fin qui, e non oltre; e qui la tua superba punta si arresti»: pretendiamo un naso di lunghezza tale da assicurare un volto interessante. Ma non possiamo immaginare un mero andamento biologico volto a produrre volti interessanti; poiché un volto interessante è una particolare disposizione di occhi, naso e bocca, in una relazione fra loro quanto mai complessa. La proporzione non può essere una deriva: è o un caso o un disegno. Così è dell’ideale della moralità umana e del suo rapporto con gli umanitari e gli anti-umanitari. È concepibile che andiamo sempre più tenendo le mani lontane dalle cose: non aizzare i cavalli; non cogliere fiori. Potremmo alla fine essere tenuti a non turbare la mente di un uomo neppure con un argomento; a non turbare il sonno degli uccelli neppure con un colpo di tosse. L’apoteosi ultima apparirebbe essere quella di un uomo che se ne sta perfettamente immobile, senza osare muoversi per paura di disturbare una mosca, né mangiare per paura di incomodare un microbo. A un coronamento così rozzo forse potremmo derivare inconsapevolmente. Ma vogliamo davvero un coronamento così rozzo? Allo stesso modo, potremmo inconsapevolmente evolverci lungo la linea di sviluppo opposta, o nietzschiana: il superuomo che schiaccia il superuomo in un’unica torre di tiranni finché l’universo non venga fatto a pezzi per gioco. Ma vogliamo davvero l’universo fatto a pezzi per gioco? Non è del tutto chiaro che ciò che veramente speriamo è una particolare disposizione e composizione di queste due cose; una certa misura di ritegno e rispetto, una certa misura di energia e padronanza? Se mai la nostra vita sarà davvero bella come una fiaba, dovremo ricordare che tutta la bellezza di una fiaba sta in questo: che il principe prova una meraviglia che si arresta appena prima di diventare paura. Se ha paura del gigante, è finita per lui; ma anche, se non si stupisce del gigante, è finita per la fiaba. Tutto il punto dipende dal fatto che egli sia insieme abbastanza umile da meravigliarsi, e abbastanza altero da sfidare. Così il nostro atteggiamento verso il gigante del mondo non deve essere semplicemente una crescente delicatezza o un crescente disprezzo: deve essere una particolare proporzione dei due, ed esattamente quella giusta. Dobbiamo avere in noi abbastanza reverenza per tutte le cose fuori di noi da farci calpestare l’erba con timore. Dobbiamo anche avere abbastanza sdegno per tutte le cose fuori di noi, da farci, all’occorrenza, sputare contro le stelle. Eppure queste due cose (se vogliamo essere buoni o felici) devono combinarsi, non in una combinazione qualunque, ma in una particolare combinazione. La perfetta felicità degli uomini sulla terra (se mai verrà) non sarà una cosa piatta e solida, come la soddisfazione degli animali. Sarà un equilibrio esatto e pericoloso; come quello di un disperato romanzo. L’uomo deve avere in sé giusto tanta fede da vivere avventure, e giusto tanto dubbio di sé da goderne.

Questo, dunque, è il nostro secondo requisito per l’ideale di progresso. Primo, esso dev’essere fisso; secondo, dev’essere composito. Non dev’essere (se ha da appagare le nostre anime) la mera vittoria di una sola cosa che inghiotte tutto il resto, amore o orgoglio o pace o avventura; dev’essere un quadro definito composto di questi elementi nella loro migliore proporzione e relazione. Non mi preme in questo momento negare che un tale buon culmine possa essere, per la costituzione delle cose, riservato al genere umano. Faccio solo notare che, se questa felicità composita è fissata per noi, dev’essere fissata da qualche mente; poiché solo una mente può collocare le esatte proporzioni di una felicità composita. Se la beatificazione del mondo è mera opera della natura, allora dev’essere semplice come il gelarsi del mondo, o il consumarsi del mondo tra le fiamme. Ma se la beatificazione del mondo non è opera della natura bensì opera d’arte, allora essa implica un artista. E qui di nuovo la mia contemplazione fu spaccata dall’antica voce che diceva: «Avrei potuto dirti tutto questo molto tempo fa. Se c’è un qualche progresso certo, esso può essere soltanto il progresso a modo mio, il progresso verso una completa città di virtù e dominazioni dove giustizia e pace si contendono un bacio reciproco. Una forza impersonale potrebbe condurti a un deserto di perfetta piattezza o a una vetta di perfetta altezza. Ma solo un Dio personale può forse condurti (se davvero sei condotto) a una città dalle vie diritte e dalle proporzioni architettoniche, una città in cui ciascuno di voi possa contribuire esattamente con la giusta misura del proprio colore alla veste dai molti colori di Giuseppe».

Due volte ancora, dunque, il Cristianesimo era intervenuto con l’esatta risposta di cui avevo bisogno. Avevo detto: «L’ideale dev’essere fisso», e la Chiesa aveva risposto: «Il mio è letteralmente fisso, poiché esisteva prima di ogni altra cosa». Dissi in secondo luogo: «Dev’essere combinato artisticamente, come un quadro»; e la Chiesa rispose: «Il mio è del tutto letteralmente un quadro, poiché so chi lo dipinse». Poi passai alla terza cosa che, a quanto mi pareva, occorreva per un’Utopia o meta del progresso. E di tutte e tre è di gran lunga la più difficile da esprimere. Forse la si potrebbe formulare così: che ci occorre vigilanza persino nell’Utopia, per non cadere dall’Utopia come cademmo dall’Eden.

Abbiamo osservato che una ragione addotta per essere progressisti è che le cose tendono naturalmente a migliorare. Ma l’unica vera ragione per essere progressisti è che le cose tendono naturalmente a peggiorare. La corruzione nelle cose non è soltanto il miglior argomento per essere progressisti; è anche l’unico argomento contro l’essere conservatori. La teoria conservatrice sarebbe davvero del tutto radicale e inconfutabile se non fosse per questo unico fatto. Ma ogni conservatorismo si fonda sull’idea che, se lasci le cose in pace, le lasci come sono. Ma non è così. Se lasci una cosa in pace, la abbandoni a un torrente di cambiamento. Se lasci in pace un palo bianco, presto sarà un palo nero. Se lo vuoi proprio bianco, devi essere sempre lì a riverniciarlo; cioè, devi essere sempre in rivoluzione. In breve, se vuoi il vecchio palo bianco, devi avere un nuovo palo bianco. Ma ciò che è vero perfino delle cose inanimate è vero in un senso del tutto speciale e terribile di tutte le cose umane. Una vigilanza quasi innaturale è realmente richiesta al cittadino, a causa della orribile rapidità con cui le istituzioni umane invecchiano. È usanza, nel romanzo e nel giornalismo corrente, parlare di uomini che soffrono sotto vecchie tirannie. Ma, di fatto, gli uomini hanno quasi sempre sofferto sotto tirannie nuove; sotto tirannie che erano state pubbliche libertà appena vent’anni prima. Così l’Inghilterra impazzì di gioia per la monarchia patriottica di Elisabetta; e poi (quasi subito dopo) impazzì di rabbia nella trappola della tirannia di Carlo Primo. Così, di nuovo, in Francia la monarchia divenne intollerabile, non appena dopo essere stata tollerata, ma appena dopo essere stata adorata. Il figlio di Luigi il Beneamato fu Luigi il ghigliottinato. Così, allo stesso modo, in Inghilterra nel diciannovesimo secolo l’industriale radicale fu interamente creduto un mero tribuno del popolo, finché a un tratto non udimmo il grido del socialista che egli era un tiranno che divorava il popolo come pane. Così di nuovo, abbiamo fin quasi all’ultimo istante creduto ai giornali come organi dell’opinione pubblica. Solo di recente alcuni di noi hanno visto (non lentamente, ma di soprassalto) che essi ovviamente non sono nulla del genere. Sono, per la natura stessa della cosa, i passatempi di pochi uomini ricchi. Non abbiamo alcun bisogno di ribellarci contro l’antichità; dobbiamo ribellarci contro la novità. Sono i nuovi governanti, il capitalista o il direttore di giornale, a reggere davvero il mondo moderno. Non c’è alcun timore che un re moderno tenti di scavalcare la costituzione; è più probabile che ignori la costituzione e lavori alle sue spalle; non trarrà alcun vantaggio dal suo potere regale; è più probabile che tragga vantaggio dalla sua impotenza regale, dal fatto che è libero da critica e da pubblicità. Poiché il re è la persona più privata del nostro tempo. Non sarà necessario a nessuno combattere di nuovo contro la proposta di una censura della stampa. Non ci serve una censura della stampa. Abbiamo una censura da parte della stampa.

This startling swiftness with which popular systems turn oppressive is the third fact for which we shall ask our perfect theory of progress to allow. It must always be on the look out for every privilege being abused, for every working right becoming a wrong. In this matter I am entirely on the side of the revolutionists. They are really right to be always suspecting human institutions; they are right not to put their trust in princes nor in any child of man. The chieftain chosen to be the friend of the people becomes the enemy of the people; the newspaper started to tell the truth now exists to prevent the truth being told. Here, I say, I felt that I was really at last on the side of the revolutionary. And then I caught my breath again: for I remembered that I was once again on the side of the orthodox.

Christianity spoke again and said: “I have always maintained that men were naturally backsliders; that human virtue tended of its own nature to rust or to rot; I have always said that human beings as such go wrong, especially happy human beings, especially proud and prosperous human beings. This eternal revolution, this suspicion sustained through centuries, you (being a vague modern) call the doctrine of progress. If you were a philosopher you would call it, as I do, the doctrine of original sin. You may call it the cosmic advance as much as you like; I call it what it is—the Fall.”

I have spoken of orthodoxy coming in like a sword; here I confess it came in like a battle-axe. For really (when I came to think of it) Christianity is the only thing left that has any real right to question the power of the well-nurtured or the well-bred. I have listened often enough to Socialists, or even to democrats, saying that the physical conditions of the poor must of necessity make them mentally and morally degraded. I have listened to scientific men (and there are still scientific men not opposed to democracy) saying that if we give the poor healthier conditions vice and wrong will disappear. I have listened to them with a horrible attention, with a hideous fascination. For it was like watching a man energetically sawing from the tree the branch he is sitting on. If these happy democrats could prove their case, they would strike democracy dead. If the poor are thus utterly demoralized, it may or may not be practical to raise them. But it is certainly quite practical to disfranchise them. If the man with a bad bedroom cannot give a good vote, then the first and swiftest deduction is that he shall give no vote. The governing class may not unreasonably say: “It may take us some time to reform his bedroom. But if he is the brute you say, it will take him very little time to ruin our country. Therefore we will take your hint and not give him the chance.” It fills me with horrible amusement to observe the way in which the earnest Socialist industriously lays the foundation of all aristocracy, expatiating blandly upon the evident unfitness of the poor to rule. It is like listening to somebody at an evening party apologising for entering without evening dress, and explaining that he had recently been intoxicated, had a personal habit of taking off his clothes in the street, and had, moreover, only just changed from prison uniform. At any moment, one feels, the host might say that really, if it was as bad as that, he need not come in at all. So it is when the ordinary Socialist, with a beaming face, proves that the poor, after their smashing experiences, cannot be really trustworthy. At any moment the rich may say, “Very well, then, we won’t trust them,” and bang the door in his face. On the basis of Mr. Blatchford’s view of heredity and environment, the case for the aristocracy is quite overwhelming. If clean homes and clean air make clean souls, why not give the power (for the present at any rate) to those who undoubtedly have the clean air? If better conditions will make the poor more fit to govern themselves, why should not better conditions already make the rich more fit to govern them? On the ordinary environment argument the matter is fairly manifest. The comfortable class must be merely our vanguard in Utopia.

Is there any answer to the proposition that those who have had the best opportunities will probably be our best guides? Is there any answer to the argument that those who have breathed clean air had better decide for those who have breathed foul? As far as I know, there is only one answer, and that answer is Christianity. Only the Christian Church can offer any rational objection to a complete confidence in the rich. For she has maintained from the beginning that the danger was not in man’s environment, but in man. Further, she has maintained that if we come to talk of a dangerous environment, the most dangerous environment of all is the commodious environment. I know that the most modern manufacture has been really occupied in trying to produce an abnormally large needle. I know that the most recent biologists have been chiefly anxious to discover a very small camel. But if we diminish the camel to his smallest, or open the eye of the needle to its largest—if, in short, we assume the words of Christ to have meant the very least that they could mean, His words must at the very least mean this—that rich men are not very likely to be morally trustworthy. Christianity even when watered down is hot enough to boil all modern society to rags. The mere minimum of the Church would be a deadly ultimatum to the world. For the whole modern world is absolutely based on the assumption, not that the rich are necessary (which is tenable), but that the rich are trustworthy, which (for a Christian) is not tenable. You will hear everlastingly, in all discussions about newspapers, companies, aristocracies, or party politics, this argument that the rich man cannot be bribed. The fact is, of course, that the rich man is bribed; he has been bribed already. That is why he is a rich man. The whole case for Christianity is that a man who is dependent upon the luxuries of this life is a corrupt man, spiritually corrupt, politically corrupt, financially corrupt. There is one thing that Christ and all the Christian saints have said with a sort of savage monotony. They have said simply that to be rich is to be in peculiar danger of moral wreck. It is not demonstrably un-Christian to kill the rich as violators of definable justice. It is not demonstrably un-Christian to crown the rich as convenient rulers of society. It is not certainly un-Christian to rebel against the rich or to submit to the rich. But it is quite certainly un-Christian to trust the rich, to regard the rich as more morally safe than the poor. A Christian may consistently say, “I respect that man’s rank, although he takes bribes.” But a Christian cannot say, as all modern men are saying at lunch and breakfast, “a man of that rank would not take bribes.” For it is a part of Christian dogma that any man in any rank may take bribes. It is a part of Christian dogma; it also happens by a curious coincidence that it is a part of obvious human history. When people say that a man “in that position” would be incorruptible, there is no need to bring Christianity into the discussion. Was Lord Bacon a bootblack? Was the Duke of Marlborough a crossing sweeper? In the best Utopia, I must be prepared for the moral fall of any man in any position at any moment; especially for my fall from my position at this moment.

Questa sorprendente rapidità con cui i sistemi popolari si fanno oppressivi è il terzo fatto per il quale chiederemo alla nostra teoria perfetta del progresso di lasciare spazio. Essa dovrà sempre stare in guardia perché ogni privilegio non venga abusato, perché ogni diritto operante non si tramuti in un torto. In questa faccenda sto interamente dalla parte dei rivoluzionari. Hanno pienamente ragione a sospettare sempre delle istituzioni umane; hanno ragione a non riporre la loro fiducia nei principi né in alcun figlio dell’uomo. Il capo scelto per essere l’amico del popolo diviene il nemico del popolo; il giornale nato per dire la verità ora esiste per impedire che la verità sia detta. Qui, dico, sentii di trovarmi finalmente davvero dalla parte del rivoluzionario. E allora trattenni di nuovo il fiato: perché mi ricordai che una volta di più mi trovavo dalla parte dell’ortodosso.

Il Cristianesimo parlò ancora e disse: «Ho sempre sostenuto che gli uomini fossero per natura inclini a ricadere; che la virtù umana tendesse per sua stessa natura ad arrugginirsi o a marcire; ho sempre detto che gli esseri umani in quanto tali vanno per la cattiva strada, specialmente gli esseri umani felici, specialmente gli esseri umani superbi e prosperi. Questa rivoluzione eterna, questo sospetto mantenuto attraverso i secoli, tu (essendo un vago moderno) lo chiami la dottrina del progresso. Se tu fossi un filosofo, lo chiameresti, come faccio io, la dottrina del peccato originale. Puoi chiamarlo l’avanzata cosmica quanto ti pare; io lo chiamo per quel che è: la Caduta».

Ho detto che l’ortodossia entrava in scena come una spada; qui confesso che entrò come una scure da battaglia. Perché in verità (quando venni a rifletterci) il Cristianesimo è l’unica cosa rimasta che abbia un qualche reale diritto di mettere in dubbio il potere di chi è ben nutrito o di buona nascita. Ho ascoltato abbastanza spesso socialisti, o perfino democratici, sostenere che le condizioni fisiche dei poveri devono per forza degradarli mentalmente e moralmente. Ho ascoltato uomini di scienza (e vi sono ancora uomini di scienza non ostili alla democrazia) sostenere che, se dessimo ai poveri condizioni più salubri, il vizio e il male sparirebbero. Li ho ascoltati con un’attenzione orribile, con un fascino spaventoso. Perché era come guardare un uomo che sega con energia dall’albero il ramo su cui è seduto. Se questi felici democratici potessero provare la loro tesi, colpirebbero a morte la democrazia. Se i poveri sono a tal punto totalmente demoralizzati, può essere pratico oppure no risollevarli. Ma è certamente del tutto pratico privarli del voto. Se l’uomo con una brutta camera da letto non sa dare un buon voto, allora la prima e più rapida deduzione è che non debba dare voto alcuno. La classe dominante potrebbe non irragionevolmente dire: «Potrebbe volerci un po’ di tempo per riformare la sua camera da letto. Ma se è quel bruto che dite, gli occorrerà pochissimo tempo per rovinare il nostro paese. Perciò coglieremo il vostro suggerimento e non gliene daremo l’occasione». Mi riempie di orribile divertimento osservare il modo in cui il socialista zelante getta industriosamente le fondamenta di ogni aristocrazia, dilungandosi blandamente sull’evidente inettitudine dei poveri a governare. È come sentire qualcuno, a un ricevimento serale, scusarsi di essere entrato senza abito da sera, e spiegare che si è di recente ubriacato, che ha l’abitudine personale di togliersi i vestiti per strada, e per giunta che si è appena cambiato dalla divisa da prigione. Da un momento all’altro, si sente, il padrone di casa potrebbe dire che davvero, se la faccenda è così grave, non c’è affatto bisogno che entri. Così accade quando l’ordinario socialista, col volto raggiante, dimostra che i poveri, dopo le loro esperienze disastrose, non possono essere davvero degni di fiducia. Da un momento all’altro i ricchi potrebbero dire: «Benissimo, allora, non ci fideremo di loro», e sbattergli la porta in faccia. Sulla base della veduta del signor Blatchford intorno all’ereditarietà e all’ambiente, le ragioni dell’aristocrazia sono del tutto schiaccianti. Se case pulite e aria pulita fanno anime pulite, perché non dare il potere (per il momento, quantomeno) a coloro che indubbiamente hanno l’aria pulita? Se condizioni migliori renderanno i poveri più adatti a governare se stessi, perché condizioni migliori non dovrebbero già rendere i ricchi più adatti a governarli? Secondo l’ordinario argomento dell’ambiente la faccenda è abbastanza manifesta. La classe agiata dev’essere semplicemente la nostra avanguardia in Utopia.

Vi è forse qualche risposta alla proposizione che coloro i quali hanno avuto le migliori opportunità saranno probabilmente le nostre guide migliori? Vi è forse qualche risposta all’argomento che coloro i quali hanno respirato aria pulita farebbero meglio a decidere per coloro che hanno respirato aria corrotta? Per quel che ne so, vi è una sola risposta, e quella risposta è il Cristianesimo. Solo la Chiesa cristiana può opporre una qualsiasi obiezione razionale a una completa fiducia nei ricchi. Poiché essa ha sostenuto fin dal principio che il pericolo non stava nell’ambiente dell’uomo, bensì nell’uomo. Di più, ha sostenuto che, se veniamo a parlare di un ambiente pericoloso, il più pericoloso di tutti gli ambienti è l’ambiente comodo. So bene che la manifattura più moderna si è davvero occupata di tentare di produrre un ago di grandezza abnorme. So bene che i più recenti biologi sono stati soprattutto ansiosi di scoprire un cammello molto piccolo. Ma se rimpiccioliamo il cammello al minimo, o allarghiamo la cruna dell’ago al massimo, se, in breve, ammettiamo che le parole di Cristo abbiano significato il meno che potessero significare, le sue parole devono almeno significare questo: che i ricchi non sono granché propensi a essere moralmente degni di fiducia. Il Cristianesimo, anche annacquato, è abbastanza rovente da far bollire l’intera società moderna riducendola in brandelli. Il mero minimo della Chiesa sarebbe un ultimatum mortale al mondo. Poiché l’intero mondo moderno è assolutamente fondato sull’assunto non che i ricchi siano necessari (il che è sostenibile), bensì che i ricchi siano degni di fiducia, il che (per un cristiano) non è sostenibile. Sentirete in eterno, in tutte le discussioni sui giornali, sulle società, sulle aristocrazie o sulla politica di partito, questo argomento che il ricco non può essere corrotto. Il fatto è, naturalmente, che il ricco è corrotto; è già stato corrotto. È per questo che è un ricco. Tutta la tesi del Cristianesimo è che un uomo dipendente dai lussi di questa vita è un uomo corrotto, spiritualmente corrotto, politicamente corrotto, finanziariamente corrotto. Vi è una cosa che Cristo e tutti i santi cristiani hanno detto con una sorta di feroce monotonia. Hanno detto semplicemente che essere ricchi significa trovarsi in un pericolo particolare di naufragio morale. Non è dimostrabilmente anticristiano uccidere i ricchi come violatori di una giustizia definibile. Non è dimostrabilmente anticristiano incoronare i ricchi come comodi reggitori della società. Non è certamente anticristiano ribellarsi ai ricchi o sottomettersi ai ricchi. Ma è del tutto certamente anticristiano fidarsi dei ricchi, considerare i ricchi come moralmente più sicuri dei poveri. Un cristiano può dire con coerenza: «Rispetto il rango di quell’uomo, benché egli prenda tangenti». Ma un cristiano non può dire, come tutti gli uomini moderni vanno dicendo a pranzo e a colazione: «Un uomo di quel rango non prenderebbe tangenti». Poiché è parte del dogma cristiano che qualsiasi uomo in qualsiasi rango possa prendere tangenti. È parte del dogma cristiano; e accade altresì, per una curiosa coincidenza, che sia parte dell’ovvia storia umana. Quando la gente dice che un uomo «in quella posizione» sarebbe incorruttibile, non c’è bisogno di tirare in ballo il Cristianesimo nella discussione. Lord Bacon era un lustrascarpe? Il duca di Marlborough era uno spazzino d’incrocio? Nella migliore delle Utopie, devo essere pronto alla caduta morale di qualsiasi uomo in qualsiasi posizione in qualsiasi momento; specialmente alla mia caduta dalla mia posizione in questo momento.

Much vague and sentimental journalism has been poured out to the effect that Christianity is akin to democracy, and most of it is scarcely strong or clear enough to refute the fact that the two things have often quarrelled. The real ground upon which Christianity and democracy are one is very much deeper. The one specially and peculiarly un-Christian idea is the idea of Carlyle—the idea that the man should rule who feels that he can rule. Whatever else is Christian, this is heathen. If our faith comments on government at all, its comment must be this— that the man should rule who does NOT think that he can rule. Carlyle’s hero may say, “I will be king”; but the Christian saint must say “Nolo episcopari.” If the great paradox of Christianity means anything, it means this—that we must take the crown in our hands, and go hunting in dry places and dark corners of the earth until we find the one man who feels himself unfit to wear it. Carlyle was quite wrong; we have not got to crown the exceptional man who knows he can rule. Rather we must crown the much more exceptional man who knows he can’t.

Now, this is one of the two or three vital defences of working democracy. The mere machinery of voting is not democracy, though at present it is not easy to effect any simpler democratic method. But even the machinery of voting is profoundly Christian in this practical sense— that it is an attempt to get at the opinion of those who would be too modest to offer it. It is a mystical adventure; it is specially trusting those who do not trust themselves. That enigma is strictly peculiar to Christendom. There is nothing really humble about the abnegation of the Buddhist; the mild Hindoo is mild, but he is not meek. But there is something psychologically Christian about the idea of seeking for the opinion of the obscure rather than taking the obvious course of accepting the opinion of the prominent. To say that voting is particularly Christian may seem somewhat curious. To say that canvassing is Christian may seem quite crazy. But canvassing is very Christian in its primary idea. It is encouraging the humble; it is saying to the modest man, “Friend, go up higher.” Or if there is some slight defect in canvassing, that is in its perfect and rounded piety, it is only because it may possibly neglect to encourage the modesty of the canvasser.

Aristocracy is not an institution: aristocracy is a sin; generally a very venial one. It is merely the drift or slide of men into a sort of natural pomposity and praise of the powerful, which is the most easy and obvious affair in the world.

It is one of the hundred answers to the fugitive perversion of modern “force” that the promptest and boldest agencies are also the most fragile or full of sensibility. The swiftest things are the softest things. A bird is active, because a bird is soft. A stone is helpless, because a stone is hard. The stone must by its own nature go downwards, because hardness is weakness. The bird can of its nature go upwards, because fragility is force. In perfect force there is a kind of frivolity, an airiness that can maintain itself in the air. Modern investigators of miraculous history have solemnly admitted that a characteristic of the great saints is their power of “levitation.” They might go further; a characteristic of the great saints is their power of levity. Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly. This has been always the instinct of Christendom, and especially the instinct of Christian art. Remember how Fra Angelico represented all his angels, not only as birds, but almost as butterflies. Remember how the most earnest mediaeval art was full of light and fluttering draperies, of quick and capering feet. It was the one thing that the modern Pre-raphaelites could not imitate in the real Pre-raphaelites. Burne-Jones could never recover the deep levity of the Middle Ages. In the old Christian pictures the sky over every figure is like a blue or gold parachute. Every figure seems ready to fly up and float about in the heavens. The tattered cloak of the beggar will bear him up like the rayed plumes of the angels. But the kings in their heavy gold and the proud in their robes of purple will all of their nature sink downwards, for pride cannot rise to levity or levitation. Pride is the downward drag of all things into an easy solemnity. One “settles down” into a sort of selfish seriousness; but one has to rise to a gay self-forgetfulness. A man “falls” into a brown study; he reaches up at a blue sky. Seriousness is not a virtue. It would be a heresy, but a much more sensible heresy, to say that seriousness is a vice. It is really a natural trend or lapse into taking one’s self gravely, because it is the easiest thing to do. It is much easier to write a good TIMES leading article than a good joke in PUNCH. For solemnity flows out of men naturally; but laughter is a leap. It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light. Satan fell by the force of gravity.

Now, it is the peculiar honour of Europe since it has been Christian that while it has had aristocracy it has always at the back of its heart treated aristocracy as a weakness— generally as a weakness that must be allowed for. If any one wishes to appreciate this point, let him go outside Christianity into some other philosophical atmosphere. Let him, for instance, compare the classes of Europe with the castes of India. There aristocracy is far more awful, because it is far more intellectual. It is seriously felt that the scale of classes is a scale of spiritual values; that the baker is better than the butcher in an invisible and sacred sense. But no Christianity, not even the most ignorant or perverse, ever suggested that a baronet was better than a butcher in that sacred sense. No Christianity, however ignorant or extravagant, ever suggested that a duke would not be damned. In pagan society there may have been (I do not know) some such serious division between the free man and the slave. But in Christian society we have always thought the gentleman a sort of joke, though I admit that in some great crusades and councils he earned the right to be called a practical joke. But we in Europe never really and at the root of our souls took aristocracy seriously. It is only an occasional non-European alien (such as Dr. Oscar Levy, the only intelligent Nietzscheite) who can even manage for a moment to take aristocracy seriously. It may be a mere patriotic bias, though I do not think so, but it seems to me that the English aristocracy is not only the type, but is the crown and flower of all actual aristocracies; it has all the oligarchical virtues as well as all the defects. It is casual, it is kind, it is courageous in obvious matters; but it has one great merit that overlaps even these. The great and very obvious merit of the English aristocracy is that nobody could possibly take it seriously.

Molto giornalismo vago e sentimentale è stato riversato per sostenere che il Cristianesimo è affine alla democrazia, e per la maggior parte è appena abbastanza vigoroso o limpido da confutare il fatto che le due cose hanno spesso litigato. Il vero terreno su cui il Cristianesimo e la democrazia sono una cosa sola è assai più profondo. L’unica idea specialmente e peculiarmente anticristiana è l’idea di Carlyle: l’idea che debba governare l’uomo che si sente in grado di governare. Qualunque altra cosa sia cristiana, questa è pagana. Se la nostra fede esprime un qualche commento sul governo, quel commento non può che essere questo: che debba governare l’uomo che NON crede di essere in grado di governare. L’eroe di Carlyle può dire: «Sarò re»; ma il santo cristiano deve dire: «Nolo episcopari». Se il grande paradosso del Cristianesimo significa qualcosa, significa questo: che dobbiamo prendere la corona nelle nostre mani e andare a caccia per i luoghi aridi e gli angoli oscuri della terra finché non troviamo l’unico uomo che si sente indegno di portarla. Carlyle aveva del tutto torto; non dobbiamo affatto incoronare l’uomo eccezionale che sa di poter governare. Dobbiamo piuttosto incoronare l’uomo assai più eccezionale che sa di non poterlo fare.

Ora, questa è una delle due o tre difese vitali della democrazia operante. Il mero meccanismo del voto non è la democrazia, per quanto oggigiorno non sia facile attuare un metodo democratico più semplice. Ma anche il meccanismo del voto è profondamente cristiano in questo senso pratico: che è un tentativo di cogliere l’opinione di coloro che sarebbero troppo modesti per offrirla. È un’avventura mistica; è dare fiducia in modo speciale a coloro che non si fidano di sé stessi. Quell’enigma è strettamente peculiare della Cristianità. Non c’è nulla di davvero umile nell’abnegazione del buddista; il mite indù è mite, ma non è remissivo. Ma c’è qualcosa di psicologicamente cristiano nell’idea di cercare l’opinione dell’oscuro piuttosto che seguire l’ovvia via di accogliere l’opinione dell’eminente. Dire che votare è particolarmente cristiano può sembrare alquanto curioso. Dire che fare propaganda elettorale è cristiano può sembrare del tutto folle. Eppure la propaganda elettorale è molto cristiana nella sua idea prima. Essa incoraggia l’umile; dice all’uomo modesto: «Amico, sali più in alto». O se c’è qualche lieve difetto nella propaganda elettorale, che ne intacca la perfetta e compiuta pietà, è soltanto perché essa può forse trascurare di incoraggiare la modestia di chi la fa.

L’aristocrazia non è un’istituzione: l’aristocrazia è un peccato; in genere assai veniale. Non è che il lasciarsi andare o scivolare degli uomini in una sorta di naturale pomposità ed esaltazione del potente, che è la faccenda più facile e ovvia del mondo.

È una delle cento risposte alla fuggevole perversione della «forza» moderna il fatto che gli agenti più pronti e arditi siano anche i più fragili o pieni di sensibilità. Le cose più veloci sono le più morbide. Un uccello è attivo, perché un uccello è morbido. Una pietra è impotente, perché una pietra è dura. La pietra deve, per sua natura, andare verso il basso, perché la durezza è debolezza. L’uccello può, per sua natura, andare verso l’alto, perché la fragilità è forza. Nella forza perfetta c’è una sorta di frivolezza, una leggerezza aerea che sa mantenersi in aria. Gli indagatori moderni della storia miracolosa hanno solennemente ammesso che una caratteristica dei grandi santi è il loro potere di «levitazione». Potrebbero spingersi oltre; una caratteristica dei grandi santi è il loro potere di levità. Gli angeli possono volare perché sanno prendersi alla leggera. Questo è sempre stato l’istinto della Cristianità, e specialmente l’istinto dell’arte cristiana. Si ricordi come Fra Angelico raffigurava tutti i suoi angeli, non soltanto come uccelli, ma quasi come farfalle. Si ricordi come l’arte medievale più intensa fosse piena di drappeggi luminosi e svolazzanti, di piedi rapidi e saltellanti. Era l’unica cosa che i moderni preraffaelliti non riuscirono a imitare nei preraffaelliti autentici. Burne-Jones non poté mai recuperare la profonda levità del Medioevo. Nei vecchi dipinti cristiani il cielo sopra ogni figura è come un paracadute azzurro o dorato. Ogni figura sembra pronta a spiccare il volo e fluttuare nei cieli. Il mantello lacero del mendicante lo sosterrà in alto come le piume raggianti degli angeli. Ma i re nel loro pesante oro e i superbi nelle loro vesti di porpora sprofonderanno tutti, per loro natura, verso il basso, poiché la superbia non può innalzarsi alla levità o alla levitazione. La superbia è il trascinamento verso il basso di tutte le cose in una comoda solennità. Ci si «adagia» in una sorta di egoistica serietà; ma bisogna innalzarsi a un allegro oblio di sé. Un uomo «cade» in una cupa fantasticheria; si protende verso un cielo azzurro. La serietà non è una virtù. Sarebbe un’eresia, ma un’eresia assai più sensata, dire che la serietà è un vizio. È in realtà una naturale inclinazione o caduta nel prendere sé stessi gravemente, perché è la cosa più facile da fare. È molto più facile scrivere un buon articolo di fondo sul TIMES che una buona battuta sul PUNCH. Poiché la solennità sgorga dagli uomini naturalmente; ma il riso è un salto. È facile essere pesanti: difficile essere leggeri. Satana cadde per la forza di gravità.

Ora, è il peculiare onore dell’Europa, da quando è divenuta cristiana, che pur avendo avuto l’aristocrazia abbia sempre, in fondo al cuore, trattato l’aristocrazia come una debolezza: in genere come una debolezza di cui bisogna tener conto. Se qualcuno desidera apprezzare questo punto, esca dal Cristianesimo in qualche altra atmosfera filosofica. Metta a confronto, per esempio, le classi d’Europa con le caste dell’India. Là l’aristocrazia è assai più tremenda, perché è assai più intellettuale. Si sente seriamente che la scala delle classi è una scala di valori spirituali; che il fornaio è migliore del macellaio in un senso invisibile e sacro. Ma nessun Cristianesimo, neppure il più ignorante o perverso, ha mai suggerito che un baronetto fosse migliore di un macellaio in quel senso sacro. Nessun Cristianesimo, per quanto ignorante o stravagante, ha mai suggerito che un duca non sarebbe stato dannato. Nella società pagana può esserci stata (non lo so) una tale seria divisione tra l’uomo libero e lo schiavo. Ma nella società cristiana abbiamo sempre considerato il gentiluomo una sorta di scherzo, benché ammetta che in alcune grandi crociate e concili si sia guadagnato il diritto di essere chiamato uno scherzo pratico. Ma noi in Europa non abbiamo mai preso davvero, e alla radice delle nostre anime, l’aristocrazia sul serio. È solo qualche occasionale straniero non europeo (come il dottor Oscar Levy, l’unico nietzscheano intelligente) che riesce anche solo per un momento a prendere l’aristocrazia sul serio. Sarà forse un mero pregiudizio patriottico, benché io non lo creda, ma mi pare che l’aristocrazia inglese non sia soltanto il tipo, ma sia la corona e il fiore di tutte le aristocrazie reali; possiede tutte le virtù oligarchiche non meno che tutti i difetti. È disinvolta, è gentile, è coraggiosa nelle questioni ovvie; ma ha un grande pregio che supera perfino questi. Il grande e assai ovvio pregio dell’aristocrazia inglese è che nessuno potrebbe mai prenderla sul serio.

In short, I had spelled out slowly, as usual, the need for an equal law in Utopia; and, as usual, I found that Christianity had been there before me. The whole history of my Utopia has the same amusing sadness. I was always rushing out of my architectural study with plans for a new turret only to find it sitting up there in the sunlight, shining, and a thousand years old. For me, in the ancient and partly in the modern sense, God answered the prayer, “Prevent us, O Lord, in all our doings.” Without vanity, I really think there was a moment when I could have invented the marriage vow (as an institution) out of my own head; but I discovered, with a sigh, that it had been invented already. But, since it would be too long a business to show how, fact by fact and inch by inch, my own conception of Utopia was only answered in the New Jerusalem, I will take this one case of the matter of marriage as indicating the converging drift, I may say the converging crash of all the rest.

When the ordinary opponents of Socialism talk about impossibilities and alterations in human nature they always miss an important distinction. In modern ideal conceptions of society there are some desires that are possibly not attainable: but there are some desires that are not desirable. That all men should live in equally beautiful houses is a dream that may or may not be attained. But that all men should live in the same beautiful house is not a dream at all; it is a nightmare. That a man should love all old women is an ideal that may not be attainable. But that a man should regard all old women exactly as he regards his mother is not only an unattainable ideal, but an ideal which ought not to be attained. I do not know if the reader agrees with me in these examples; but I will add the example which has always affected me most. I could never conceive or tolerate any Utopia which did not leave to me the liberty for which I chiefly care, the liberty to bind myself. Complete anarchy would not merely make it impossible to have any discipline or fidelity; it would also make it impossible to have any fun. To take an obvious instance, it would not be worth while to bet if a bet were not binding. The dissolution of all contracts would not only ruin morality but spoil sport. Now betting and such sports are only the stunted and twisted shapes of the original instinct of man for adventure and romance, of which much has been said in these pages. And the perils, rewards, punishments, and fulfilments of an adventure must be real, or the adventure is only a shifting and heartless nightmare. If I bet I must be made to pay, or there is no poetry in betting. If I challenge I must be made to fight, or there is no poetry in challenging. If I vow to be faithful I must be cursed when I am unfaithful, or there is no fun in vowing. You could not even make a fairy tale from the experiences of a man who, when he was swallowed by a whale, might find himself at the top of the Eiffel Tower, or when he was turned into a frog might begin to behave like a flamingo. For the purpose even of the wildest romance results must be real; results must be irrevocable. Christian marriage is the great example of a real and irrevocable result; and that is why it is the chief subject and centre of all our romantic writing. And this is my last instance of the things that I should ask, and ask imperatively, of any social paradise; I should ask to be kept to my bargain, to have my oaths and engagements taken seriously; I should ask Utopia to avenge my honour on myself.

All my modern Utopian friends look at each other rather doubtfully, for their ultimate hope is the dissolution of all special ties. But again I seem to hear, like a kind of echo, an answer from beyond the world. “You will have real obligations, and therefore real adventures when you get to my Utopia. But the hardest obligation and the steepest adventure is to get there.”

VIII THE ROMANCE OF ORTHODOXY

It is customary to complain of the bustle and strenuousness of our epoch. But in truth the chief mark of our epoch is a profound laziness and fatigue; and the fact is that the real laziness is the cause of the apparent bustle. Take one quite external case; the streets are noisy with taxicabs and motorcars; but this is not due to human activity but to human repose. There would be less bustle if there were more activity, if people were simply walking about. Our world would be more silent if it were more strenuous. And this which is true of the apparent physical bustle is true also of the apparent bustle of the intellect. Most of the machinery of modern language is labour-saving machinery; and it saves mental labour very much more than it ought. Scientific phrases are used like scientific wheels and piston-rods to make swifter and smoother yet the path of the comfortable. Long words go rattling by us like long railway trains. We know they are carrying thousands who are too tired or too indolent to walk and think for themselves. It is a good exercise to try for once in a way to express any opinion one holds in words of one syllable. If you say “The social utility of the indeterminate sentence is recognized by all criminologists as a part of our sociological evolution towards a more humane and scientific view of punishment,” you can go on talking like that for hours with hardly a movement of the gray matter inside your skull. But if you begin “I wish Jones to go to gaol and Brown to say when Jones shall come out,” you will discover, with a thrill of horror, that you are obliged to think. The long words are not the hard words, it is the short words that are hard. There is much more metaphysical subtlety in the word “damn” than in the word “degeneration.”

Insomma, avevo compitato lentamente, come al solito, la necessità di una legge uguale in Utopia; e, come al solito, scoprii che il Cristianesimo c’era già arrivato prima di me. L’intera storia della mia Utopia ha la stessa spassosa malinconia. Non facevo che precipitarmi fuori dal mio studio d’architetto con i progetti di una nuova torretta, solo per ritrovarla già lassù, seduta nella luce del sole, splendente, e vecchia di mille anni. Per me, nel senso antico e in parte in quello moderno, Dio esaudì la preghiera: «Previenici, o Signore, in tutte le nostre opere». Senza vanità, credo davvero che vi fu un momento in cui avrei potuto inventare il voto del matrimonio (come istituzione) di mia testa; ma scoprii, con un sospiro, che era già stato inventato. Ma, poiché sarebbe faccenda troppo lunga mostrare come, fatto per fatto e pollice per pollice, la mia concezione dell’Utopia trovasse risposta soltanto nella Nuova Gerusalemme, prenderò questo unico caso della questione del matrimonio come indice della deriva convergente, direi anzi del crollo convergente di tutto il resto.

Quando i soliti avversari del socialismo parlano di impossibilità e di mutamenti nella natura umana, mancano sempre una distinzione importante. Nelle moderne concezioni ideali della società vi sono alcuni desideri che forse non sono attingibili: ma vi sono anche alcuni desideri che non sono desiderabili. Che tutti gli uomini vivano in case egualmente belle è un sogno che può o non può essere realizzato. Ma che tutti gli uomini vivano nella stessa bella casa non è affatto un sogno; è un incubo. Che un uomo ami tutte le vecchie donne è un ideale che forse non è attingibile. Ma che un uomo consideri tutte le vecchie donne esattamente come considera sua madre non è soltanto un ideale inattingibile, ma un ideale che non dovrebbe essere raggiunto. Non so se il lettore concordi con me in questi esempi; ma aggiungerò l’esempio che mi ha sempre colpito di più. Non ho mai potuto concepire né tollerare alcuna Utopia che non mi lasciasse la libertà cui più tengo, la libertà di vincolarmi. Un’anarchia completa non renderebbe soltanto impossibile avere qualsiasi disciplina o fedeltà; renderebbe anche impossibile avere qualsiasi divertimento. Per prendere un esempio ovvio, non varrebbe la pena di scommettere se una scommessa non fosse vincolante. La dissoluzione di tutti i contratti non rovinerebbe soltanto la moralità ma guasterebbe lo sport. Ora, il gioco d’azzardo e simili sport sono solo le forme stentate e contorte dell’originario istinto dell’uomo per l’avventura e il romanzesco, di cui molto si è detto in queste pagine. E i pericoli, i premi, le punizioni e i compimenti di un’avventura devono essere reali, altrimenti l’avventura è soltanto un incubo mutevole e senza cuore. Se scommetto, devo essere costretto a pagare, o non c’è poesia nello scommettere. Se lancio una sfida, devo essere costretto a battermi, o non c’è poesia nello sfidare. Se faccio voto di essere fedele, devo essere maledetto quando sono infedele, o non c’è gusto nel far voti. Non si potrebbe nemmeno trarre una fiaba dalle esperienze di un uomo che, inghiottito da una balena, si ritrovasse in cima alla Torre Eiffel, o che, mutato in rana, cominciasse a comportarsi come un fenicottero. Anche ai fini del più sfrenato romanzesco i risultati devono essere reali; i risultati devono essere irrevocabili. Il matrimonio cristiano è il grande esempio di un risultato reale e irrevocabile; ed è per questo che è il soggetto principale e il centro di tutta la nostra scrittura romantica. E questo è il mio ultimo esempio delle cose che dovrei chiedere, e chiedere imperativamente, a qualunque paradiso sociale; chiederei di essere tenuto fermo al mio patto, di veder presi sul serio i miei giuramenti e i miei impegni; chiederei all’Utopia di vendicare il mio onore su me stesso.

Tutti i miei moderni amici utopisti si guardano l’un l’altro alquanto dubbiosi, poiché la loro speranza ultima è la dissoluzione di tutti i legami particolari. Ma di nuovo mi pare di udire, come una specie di eco, una risposta al di là del mondo. «Avrai obblighi reali, e perciò avventure reali quando arriverai alla mia Utopia. Ma l’obbligo più duro e l’avventura più ardua è arrivarci».

VIII IL ROMANZESCO DELL’ORTODOSSIA

È consuetudine lamentarsi del trambusto e dell’affannarsi della nostra epoca. Ma in verità il tratto principale della nostra epoca è una profonda pigrizia e stanchezza; e il fatto è che è proprio la vera pigrizia la causa dell’apparente trambusto. Si prenda un caso del tutto esteriore: le strade sono rumorose di taxi e automobili; ma ciò non è dovuto all’attività umana bensì al riposo umano. Ci sarebbe meno trambusto se ci fosse più attività, se la gente semplicemente camminasse a piedi. Il nostro mondo sarebbe più silenzioso se fosse più affannato. E ciò che è vero dell’apparente trambusto fisico è vero anche dell’apparente trambusto dell’intelletto. La maggior parte del macchinario del linguaggio moderno è un macchinario che risparmia fatica; e risparmia fatica mentale molto più di quanto dovrebbe. Le frasi scientifiche si usano come ruote e bielle scientifiche per rendere più rapido e più liscio ancora il cammino di chi sta comodo. Le lunghe parole ci passano accanto sferragliando come lunghi treni ferroviari. Sappiamo che trasportano migliaia di persone che sono troppo stanche o troppo indolenti per camminare e pensare da sé. È un buon esercizio provare almeno una volta a esprimere una qualunque opinione che si tenga in parole di una sola sillaba. Se dite «L’utilità sociale della sentenza indeterminata è riconosciuta da tutti i criminologi come una parte della nostra evoluzione sociologica verso una visione più umana e scientifica della pena», potete continuare a parlare così per ore senza quasi un movimento della materia grigia dentro il vostro cranio. Ma se cominciate «Voglio che Jones vada in galera e che Brown dica quando Jones ne uscirà», scoprirete, con un brivido d’orrore, che siete obbligati a pensare. Le parole lunghe non sono le parole difficili, sono le parole corte che sono difficili. C’è molta più sottigliezza metafisica nella parola «dannazione» che nella parola «degenerazione».

But these long comfortable words that save modern people the toil of reasoning have one particular aspect in which they are especially ruinous and confusing. This difficulty occurs when the same long word is used in different connections to mean quite different things. Thus, to take a well-known instance, the word “idealist” has one meaning as a piece of philosophy and quite another as a piece of moral rhetoric. In the same way the scientific materialists have had just reason to complain of people mixing up “materialist” as a term of cosmology with “materialist” as a moral taunt. So, to take a cheaper instance, the man who hates “progressives” in London always calls himself a “progressive” in South Africa.

A confusion quite as unmeaning as this has arisen in connection with the word “liberal” as applied to religion and as applied to politics and society. It is often suggested that all Liberals ought to be freethinkers, because they ought to love everything that is free. You might just as well say that all idealists ought to be High Churchmen, because they ought to love everything that is high. You might as well say that Low Churchmen ought to like Low Mass, or that Broad Churchmen ought to like broad jokes. The thing is a mere accident of words. In actual modern Europe a freethinker does not mean a man who thinks for himself. It means a man who, having thought for himself, has come to one particular class of conclusions, the material origin of phenomena, the impossibility of miracles, the improbability of personal immortality and so on. And none of these ideas are particularly liberal. Nay, indeed almost all these ideas are definitely illiberal, as it is the purpose of this chapter to show.

In the few following pages I propose to point out as rapidly as possible that on every single one of the matters most strongly insisted on by liberalisers of theology their effect upon social practice would be definitely illiberal. Almost every contemporary proposal to bring freedom into the church is simply a proposal to bring tyranny into the world. For freeing the church now does not even mean freeing it in all directions. It means freeing that peculiar set of dogmas loosely called scientific, dogmas of monism, of pantheism, or of Arianism, or of necessity. And every one of these (and we will take them one by one) can be shown to be the natural ally of oppression. In fact, it is a remarkable circumstance (indeed not so very remarkable when one comes to think of it) that most things are the allies of oppression. There is only one thing that can never go past a certain point in its alliance with oppression—and that is orthodoxy. I may, it is true, twist orthodoxy so as partly to justify a tyrant. But I can easily make up a German philosophy to justify him entirely.

Now let us take in order the innovations that are the notes of the new theology or the modernist church. We concluded the last chapter with the discovery of one of them. The very doctrine which is called the most old-fashioned was found to be the only safeguard of the new democracies of the earth. The doctrine seemingly most unpopular was found to be the only strength of the people. In short, we found that the only logical negation of oligarchy was in the affirmation of original sin. So it is, I maintain, in all the other cases.

I take the most obvious instance first, the case of miracles. For some extraordinary reason, there is a fixed notion that it is more liberal to disbelieve in miracles than to believe in them. Why, I cannot imagine, nor can anybody tell me. For some inconceivable cause a “broad” or “liberal” clergyman always means a man who wishes at least to diminish the number of miracles; it never means a man who wishes to increase that number. It always means a man who is free to disbelieve that Christ came out of His grave; it never means a man who is free to believe that his own aunt came out of her grave. It is common to find trouble in a parish because the parish priest cannot admit that St. Peter walked on water; yet how rarely do we find trouble in a parish because the clergyman says that his father walked on the Serpentine? And this is not because (as the swift secularist debater would immediately retort) miracles cannot be believed in our experience. It is not because “miracles do not happen,” as in the dogma which Matthew Arnold recited with simple faith. More supernatural things are ALLEGED to have happened in our time than would have been possible eighty years ago. Men of science believe in such marvels much more than they did: the most perplexing, and even horrible, prodigies of mind and spirit are always being unveiled in modern psychology. Things that the old science at least would frankly have rejected as miracles are hourly being asserted by the new science. The only thing which is still old-fashioned enough to reject miracles is the New Theology. But in truth this notion that it is “free” to deny miracles has nothing to do with the evidence for or against them. It is a lifeless verbal prejudice of which the original life and beginning was not in the freedom of thought, but simply in the dogma of materialism. The man of the nineteenth century did not disbelieve in the Resurrection because his liberal Christianity allowed him to doubt it. He disbelieved in it because his very strict materialism did not allow him to believe it. Tennyson, a very typical nineteenth century man, uttered one of the instinctive truisms of his contemporaries when he said that there was faith in their honest doubt. There was indeed. Those words have a profound and even a horrible truth. In their doubt of miracles there was a faith in a fixed and godless fate; a deep and sincere faith in the incurable routine of the cosmos. The doubts of the agnostic were only the dogmas of the monist.

Ma queste lunghe e comode parole, che risparmiano all’uomo moderno la fatica di ragionare, hanno un aspetto particolare per cui riescono specialmente rovinose e confuse. La difficoltà si presenta quando la medesima parola lunga viene adoperata in contesti diversi per significare cose del tutto diverse. Così, per prendere un esempio ben noto, la parola «idealista» ha un significato in quanto pezzo di filosofia e tutt’altro in quanto pezzo di retorica morale. Allo stesso modo i materialisti scientifici hanno avuto giusto motivo di lamentarsi che si confondesse «materialista» come termine di cosmologia con «materialista» come insulto morale. Così, per prendere un esempio più dozzinale, l’uomo che detesta i «progressisti» a Londra si proclama sempre «progressista» in Sudafrica.

Una confusione altrettanto insensata è sorta a proposito della parola «liberale» applicata alla religione e applicata alla politica e alla società. Si suggerisce spesso che tutti i liberali dovrebbero essere liberi pensatori, poiché dovrebbero amare tutto ciò che è libero. Tanto varrebbe dire che tutti gli idealisti dovrebbero essere fautori dell’Alta Chiesa, poiché dovrebbero ben amare tutto ciò che è alto. Tanto varrebbe ben dire che i fautori della Bassa Chiesa dovrebbero amare la Messa bassa, o che i fautori della Chiesa larga dovrebbero amare le battute grasse. La cosa è un mero accidente di parole. Nell’Europa moderna reale un libero pensatore non significa un uomo che pensa con la propria testa. Significa un uomo che, avendo pensato con la propria testa, è giunto a una particolare classe di conclusioni: l’origine materiale dei fenomeni, l’impossibilità dei miracoli, l’improbabilità dell’immortalità personale e così via. E nessuna di queste idee è particolarmente liberale. Anzi, quasi tutte queste idee sono decisamente illiberali, come questo capitolo si propone di mostrare.

Nelle poche pagine che seguono mi propongo di segnalare quanto più rapidamente possibile che, su ognuna delle questioni su cui più insistono i liberalizzatori della teologia, il loro effetto sulla pratica sociale risulterebbe decisamente illiberale. Quasi ogni proposta contemporanea di introdurre la libertà nella Chiesa è semplicemente una proposta di introdurre la tirannide nel mondo. Perché liberare la Chiesa, oggi, non significa nemmeno liberarla in tutte le direzioni. Significa liberare quel curioso insieme di dogmi vagamente detti scientifici: i dogmi del monismo, del panteismo, dell’arianesimo o della necessità. E ognuno di questi (e li prenderemo a uno a uno) si può dimostrare essere il naturale alleato dell’oppressione. Anzi, è una circostanza notevole (invero non poi così notevole, se ci si riflette) che la maggior parte delle cose sono alleate dell’oppressione. C’è una cosa sola che non può mai spingersi oltre un certo punto nella sua alleanza con l’oppressione: ed è l’ortodossia. Posso, è vero, torcere l’ortodossia in modo da giustificare in parte un tiranno. Ma posso ben più facilmente inventare una filosofia tedesca che lo giustifichi per intero.

Prendiamo ora in ordine le innovazioni che sono i tratti distintivi della nuova teologia o della Chiesa modernista. Abbiamo concluso il capitolo precedente con la scoperta di una di esse. Proprio quella dottrina che si dice la più antiquata si è rivelata l’unica salvaguardia delle nuove democrazie della terra. La dottrina in apparenza più impopolare si è rivelata l’unica forza del popolo. In breve, abbiamo scoperto che l’unica negazione logica dell’oligarchia stava nell’affermazione del peccato originale. Così è, sostengo, in tutti gli altri casi.

Prendo per primo l’esempio più ovvio, il caso dei miracoli. Per qualche straordinaria ragione, esiste un’idea fissa secondo cui sarebbe più liberale non credere ai miracoli che crederci. Perché, non riesco a immaginarlo, né alcuno sa dirmelo. Per qualche inconcepibile motivo un ecclesiastico «largo» o «liberale» significa sempre un uomo che desidera almeno diminuire il numero dei miracoli; non significa mai un uomo che desidera accrescerne il numero. Significa sempre un uomo libero di non credere che Cristo sia uscito dal Suo sepolcro; non significa mai un uomo libero di credere che la sua stessa zia sia uscita dal proprio sepolcro. È frequente veder nascere guai in una parrocchia perché il parroco non può ammettere che San Pietro abbia camminato sull’acqua; eppure quanto di rado troviamo guai in una parrocchia perché l’ecclesiastico afferma che suo padre ha camminato sulla Serpentine? E ciò non perché (come ribatterebbe all’istante lo svelto disputatore secolarista) i miracoli non possano essere creduti nella nostra esperienza. Non perché «i miracoli non accadono», come nel dogma che Matthew Arnold recitava con semplice fede. Nel nostro tempo si ALLEGA che siano accadute cose più soprannaturali di quante ne sarebbero state possibili ottant’anni fa. Gli uomini di scienza credono a simili prodigi assai più di un tempo: i più sconcertanti, e persino orribili, portenti della mente e dello spirito vengono di continuo svelati dalla psicologia moderna. Cose che almeno la vecchia scienza avrebbe francamente respinto come miracoli vengono asserite di ora in ora dalla nuova scienza. L’unica cosa ancora abbastanza antiquata da respingere i miracoli è la Nuova Teologia. Ma in verità questa nozione, che sia «libero» negare i miracoli, non ha nulla a che fare con le prove a loro favore o contro di essi. È un pregiudizio verbale senza vita, la cui vita e il cui principio originari non stavano nella libertà di pensiero, ma semplicemente nel dogma del materialismo. L’uomo dell’Ottocento non rifiutava di credere alla Risurrezione perché il suo liberale cristianesimo gli permetteva di dubitarne. La rifiutava perché il suo rigidissimo materialismo non gli permetteva di crederci. Tennyson, uomo assai tipico dell’Ottocento, espresse uno degli istintivi luoghi comuni dei suoi contemporanei quando disse che nel loro onesto dubbio c’era fede. E c’era davvero. Quelle parole racchiudono una verità profonda e persino orribile. Nel loro dubbio dei miracoli c’era una fede in un destino fisso e senza Dio; una fede profonda e sincera nella incurabile routine del cosmo. I dubbi dell’agnostico erano soltanto i dogmi del monista.

Of the fact and evidence of the supernatural I will speak afterwards. Here we are only concerned with this clear point; that in so far as the liberal idea of freedom can be said to be on either side in the discussion about miracles, it is obviously on the side of miracles. Reform or (in the only tolerable sense) progress means simply the gradual control of matter by mind. A miracle simply means the swift control of matter by mind. If you wish to feed the people, you may think that feeding them miraculously in the wilderness is impossible—but you cannot think it illiberal. If you really want poor children to go to the seaside, you cannot think it illiberal that they should go there on flying dragons; you can only think it unlikely. A holiday, like Liberalism, only means the liberty of man. A miracle only means the liberty of God. You may conscientiously deny either of them, but you cannot call your denial a triumph of the liberal idea. The Catholic Church believed that man and God both had a sort of spiritual freedom. Calvinism took away the freedom from man, but left it to God. Scientific materialism binds the Creator Himself; it chains up God as the Apocalypse chained the devil. It leaves nothing free in the universe. And those who assist this process are called the “liberal theologians.”

This, as I say, is the lightest and most evident case. The assumption that there is something in the doubt of miracles akin to liberality or reform is literally the opposite of the truth. If a man cannot believe in miracles there is an end of the matter; he is not particularly liberal, but he is perfectly honourable and logical, which are much better things. But if he can believe in miracles, he is certainly the more liberal for doing so; because they mean first, the freedom of the soul, and secondly, its control over the tyranny of circumstance. Sometimes this truth is ignored in a singularly naive way, even by the ablest men. For instance, Mr. Bernard Shaw speaks with hearty old-fashioned contempt for the idea of miracles, as if they were a sort of breach of faith on the part of nature: he seems strangely unconscious that miracles are only the final flowers of his own favourite tree, the doctrine of the omnipotence of will. Just in the same way he calls the desire for immortality a paltry selfishness, forgetting that he has just called the desire for life a healthy and heroic selfishness. How can it be noble to wish to make one’s life infinite and yet mean to wish to make it immortal? No, if it is desirable that man should triumph over the cruelty of nature or custom, then miracles are certainly desirable; we will discuss afterwards whether they are possible.

But I must pass on to the larger cases of this curious error; the notion that the “liberalising” of religion in some way helps the liberation of the world. The second example of it can be found in the question of pantheism—or rather of a certain modern attitude which is often called immanentism, and which often is Buddhism. But this is so much more difficult a matter that I must approach it with rather more preparation.

The things said most confidently by advanced persons to crowded audiences are generally those quite opposite to the fact; it is actually our truisms that are untrue. Here is a case. There is a phrase of facile liberality uttered again and again at ethical societies and parliaments of religion: “the religions of the earth differ in rites and forms, but they are the same in what they teach.” It is false; it is the opposite of the fact. The religions of the earth do not greatly differ in rites and forms; they do greatly differ in what they teach. It is as if a man were to say, “Do not be misled by the fact that the CHURCH TIMES and the FREETHINKER look utterly different, that one is painted on vellum and the other carved on marble, that one is triangular and the other hectagonal; read them and you will see that they say the same thing.” The truth is, of course, that they are alike in everything except in the fact that they don’t say the same thing. An atheist stockbroker in Surbiton looks exactly like a Swedenborgian stockbroker in Wimbledon. You may walk round and round them and subject them to the most personal and offensive study without seeing anything Swedenborgian in the hat or anything particularly godless in the umbrella. It is exactly in their souls that they are divided. So the truth is that the difficulty of all the creeds of the earth is not as alleged in this cheap maxim: that they agree in meaning, but differ in machinery. It is exactly the opposite. They agree in machinery; almost every great religion on earth works with the same external methods, with priests, scriptures, altars, sworn brotherhoods, special feasts. They agree in the mode of teaching; what they differ about is the thing to be taught. Pagan optimists and Eastern pessimists would both have temples, just as Liberals and Tories would both have newspapers. Creeds that exist to destroy each other both have scriptures, just as armies that exist to destroy each other both have guns.

The great example of this alleged identity of all human religions is the alleged spiritual identity of Buddhism and Christianity. Those who adopt this theory generally avoid the ethics of most other creeds, except, indeed, Confucianism, which they like because it is not a creed. But they are cautious in their praises of Mahommedanism, generally confining themselves to imposing its morality only upon the refreshment of the lower classes. They seldom suggest the Mahommedan view of marriage (for which there is a great deal to be said), and towards Thugs and fetish worshippers their attitude may even be called cold. But in the case of the great religion of Gautama they feel sincerely a similarity.

Del fatto e delle prove del soprannaturale parlerò in seguito. Qui ci occupiamo soltanto di questo punto chiarissimo: che, nella misura in cui si possa dire che l’idea liberale della libertà stia da una delle due parti nella disputa sui miracoli, essa sta con ogni evidenza dalla parte dei miracoli. La Riforma o (nell’unico senso tollerabile) il progresso significa semplicemente il graduale controllo della materia da parte della mente. Un miracolo significa semplicemente il rapido controllo della materia da parte della mente. Se volete sfamare il popolo, potrete pensare che sfamarlo miracolosamente nel deserto sia impossibile — ma non potete pensare che sia illiberale. Se davvero desiderate che i bambini poveri vadano al mare, non potete pensare che sia illiberale che vi giungano a cavallo di draghi volanti; potete soltanto pensare che sia improbabile. Una vacanza, come il liberalismo, significa soltanto la libertà dell’uomo. Un miracolo significa soltanto la libertà di Dio. Potete in coscienza negare l’una o l’altra, ma non potete chiamare il vostro diniego un trionfo dell’idea liberale. La Chiesa cattolica credeva che l’uomo e Dio possedessero entrambi una sorta di libertà spirituale. Il calvinismo tolse la libertà all’uomo, ma la lasciò a Dio. Il materialismo scientifico incatena il Creatore stesso; incatena Dio come l’Apocalisse incatenò il diavolo. Non lascia nulla di libero nell’universo. E coloro che assecondano questo processo si chiamano i «teologi liberali».

Questo, come dico, è il caso più lieve ed evidente. La supposizione che vi sia nel dubbio sui miracoli qualcosa di affine alla liberalità o alla riforma è letteralmente l’opposto della verità. Se un uomo non riesce a credere ai miracoli, la faccenda è chiusa; egli non è particolarmente liberale, ma è perfettamente onorevole e logico, che sono cose di gran lunga migliori. Ma se riesce a credere ai miracoli, allora è certamente più liberale a farlo; perché essi significano, in primo luogo, la libertà dell’anima, e in secondo luogo, il suo dominio sulla tirannia delle circostanze. A volte questa verità viene ignorata in modo singolarmente ingenuo, perfino dagli uomini più capaci. Per esempio, il signor Bernard Shaw parla con cordiale e antiquato disprezzo dell’idea dei miracoli, come se fossero una sorta di venir meno alla fede da parte della natura: sembra stranamente inconsapevole che i miracoli sono soltanto i fiori ultimi del suo albero prediletto, la dottrina dell’onnipotenza della volontà. Allo stesso modo egli chiama il desiderio di immortalità una meschina egoismo, dimenticando di aver appena chiamato il desiderio di vita un egoismo sano ed eroico. Come può essere nobile voler rendere infinita la propria vita e nondimeno spregevole volerla rendere immortale? No, se è desiderabile che l’uomo trionfi sulla crudeltà della natura o della consuetudine, allora i miracoli sono certamente desiderabili; discuteremo in seguito se siano possibili.

Ma devo passare ai casi più ampi di questo curioso errore: l’idea che il «liberalizzare» la religione aiuti in qualche modo la liberazione del mondo. Il secondo esempio se ne trova nella questione del panteismo — o piuttosto di un certo atteggiamento moderno che spesso si chiama immanentismo, e che spesso è buddhismo. Ma questa è materia tanto più difficile che devo accostarmivi con qualche preparazione in più.

Le cose dette con maggior sicurezza dalle persone d’avanguardia ad affollati uditori sono in genere del tutto contrarie al fatto; sono proprio i nostri truismi a essere falsi. Ecco un caso. Vi è una frase di facile liberalità pronunciata più e più volte nelle società etiche e nei parlamenti delle religioni: «le religioni della terra differiscono nei riti e nelle forme, ma sono le stesse in ciò che insegnano». È falso; è l’opposto del fatto. Le religioni della terra non differiscono granché nei riti e nelle forme; differiscono grandemente in ciò che insegnano. È come se un uomo dicesse: «Non lasciatevi ingannare dal fatto che il CHURCH TIMES e il FREETHINKER appaiono del tutto diversi, che l’uno è dipinto su pergamena e l’altro inciso nel marmo, che l’uno è triangolare e l’altro ettagonale; leggeteli e vedrete che dicono la stessa cosa». La verità è, naturalmente, che essi sono simili in tutto tranne che nel fatto di non dire la stessa cosa. Un agente di cambio ateo di Surbiton somiglia esattamente a un agente di cambio swedenborghiano di Wimbledon. Potete girargli attorno e sottoporli allo studio più personale e offensivo senza scorgere nulla di swedenborghiano nel cappello o alcunché di particolarmente empio nell’ombrello. È esattamente nelle loro anime che sono divisi. Così la verità è che la difficoltà di tutti i credi della terra non sta, come si pretende in questa massima da quattro soldi, nel fatto che concordino nel significato ma differiscano nel meccanismo. È esattamente il contrario. Concordano nel meccanismo; quasi ogni grande religione della terra opera con gli stessi metodi esterni, con sacerdoti, scritture, altari, confraternite giurate, feste speciali. Concordano nel modo di insegnare; ciò su cui differiscono è la cosa da insegnare. Gli ottimisti pagani e i pessimisti orientali avrebbero entrambi i loro templi, proprio come i liberali e i conservatori avrebbero entrambi i loro giornali. Credi che esistono per distruggersi a vicenda hanno entrambi le loro scritture, proprio come eserciti che esistono per distruggersi a vicenda hanno entrambi i loro cannoni.

Il grande esempio di questa pretesa identità di tutte le religioni umane è la pretesa identità spirituale del buddhismo e del cristianesimo. Coloro che adottano questa teoria evitano in genere l’etica della maggior parte degli altri credi, tranne, invero, il confucianesimo, che apprezzano perché non è un credo. Ma sono cauti nelle loro lodi del maomettanesimo, limitandosi in genere a imporne la morale soltanto per il ristoro delle classi inferiori. Di rado suggeriscono la concezione maomettana del matrimonio (a favore della quale ci sarebbe molto da dire), e verso i Thugs e gli adoratori di feticci il loro atteggiamento può addirittura dirsi freddo. Ma nel caso della grande religione di Gautama avvertono sinceramente una somiglianza.

Students of popular science, like Mr. Blatchford, are always insisting that Christianity and Buddhism are very much alike, especially Buddhism. This is generally believed, and I believed it myself until I read a book giving the reasons for it. The reasons were of two kinds: resemblances that meant nothing because they were common to all humanity, and resemblances which were not resemblances at all. The author solemnly explained that the two creeds were alike in things in which all creeds are alike, or else he described them as alike in some point in which they are quite obviously different. Thus, as a case of the first class, he said that both Christ and Buddha were called by the divine voice coming out of the sky, as if you would expect the divine voice to come out of the coal-cellar. Or, again, it was gravely urged that these two Eastern teachers, by a singular coincidence, both had to do with the washing of feet. You might as well say that it was a remarkable coincidence that they both had feet to wash. And the other class of similarities were those which simply were not similar. Thus this reconciler of the two religions draws earnest attention to the fact that at certain religious feasts the robe of the Lama is rent in pieces out of respect, and the remnants highly valued. But this is the reverse of a resemblance, for the garments of Christ were not rent in pieces out of respect, but out of derision; and the remnants were not highly valued except for what they would fetch in the rag shops. It is rather like alluding to the obvious connection between the two ceremonies of the sword: when it taps a man’s shoulder, and when it cuts off his head. It is not at all similar for the man. These scraps of puerile pedantry would indeed matter little if it were not also true that the alleged philosophical resemblances are also of these two kinds, either proving too much or not proving anything. That Buddhism approves of mercy or of self-restraint is not to say that it is specially like Christianity; it is only to say that it is not utterly unlike all human existence. Buddhists disapprove in theory of cruelty or excess because all sane human beings disapprove in theory of cruelty or excess. But to say that Buddhism and Christianity give the same philosophy of these things is simply false. All humanity does agree that we are in a net of sin. Most of humanity agrees that there is some way out. But as to what is the way out, I do not think that there are two institutions in the universe which contradict each other so flatly as Buddhism and Christianity.

Even when I thought, with most other well-informed, though unscholarly, people, that Buddhism and Christianity were alike, there was one thing about them that always perplexed me; I mean the startling difference in their type of religious art. I do not mean in its technical style of representation, but in the things that it was manifestly meant to represent. No two ideals could be more opposite than a Christian saint in a Gothic cathedral and a Buddhist saint in a Chinese temple. The opposition exists at every point; but perhaps the shortest statement of it is that the Buddhist saint always has his eyes shut, while the Christian saint always has them very wide open. The Buddhist saint has a sleek and harmonious body, but his eyes are heavy and sealed with sleep. The mediaeval saint’s body is wasted to its crazy bones, but his eyes are frightfully alive. There cannot be any real community of spirit between forces that produced symbols so different as that. Granted that both images are extravagances, are perversions of the pure creed, it must be a real divergence which could produce such opposite extravagances. The Buddhist is looking with a peculiar intentness inwards. The Christian is staring with a frantic intentness outwards. If we follow that clue steadily we shall find some interesting things.

A short time ago Mrs. Besant, in an interesting essay, announced that there was only one religion in the world, that all faiths were only versions or perversions of it, and that she was quite prepared to say what it was. According to Mrs. Besant this universal Church is simply the universal self. It is the doctrine that we are really all one person; that there are no real walls of individuality between man and man. If I may put it so, she does not tell us to love our neighbours; she tells us to be our neighbours. That is Mrs. Besant’s thoughtful and suggestive description of the religion in which all men must find themselves in agreement. And I never heard of any suggestion in my life with which I more violently disagree. I want to love my neighbour not because he is I, but precisely because he is not I. I want to adore the world, not as one likes a looking-glass, because it is one’s self, but as one loves a woman, because she is entirely different. If souls are separate love is possible. If souls are united love is obviously impossible. A man may be said loosely to love himself, but he can hardly fall in love with himself, or, if he does, it must be a monotonous courtship. If the world is full of real selves, they can be really unselfish selves. But upon Mrs. Besant’s principle the whole cosmos is only one enormously selfish person.

It is just here that Buddhism is on the side of modern pantheism and immanence. And it is just here that Christianity is on the side of humanity and liberty and love. Love desires personality; therefore love desires division. It is the instinct of Christianity to be glad that God has broken the universe into little pieces, because they are living pieces. It is her instinct to say “little children love one another” rather than to tell one large person to love himself. This is the intellectual abyss between Buddhism and Christianity; that for the Buddhist or Theosophist personality is the fall of man, for the Christian it is the purpose of God, the whole point of his cosmic idea. The world-soul of the Theosophists asks man to love it only in order that man may throw himself into it. But the divine centre of Christianity actually threw man out of it in order that he might love it. The oriental deity is like a giant who should have lost his leg or hand and be always seeking to find it; but the Christian power is like some giant who in a strange generosity should cut off his right hand, so that it might of its own accord shake hands with him. We come back to the same tireless note touching the nature of Christianity; all modern philosophies are chains which connect and fetter; Christianity is a sword which separates and sets free. No other philosophy makes God actually rejoice in the separation of the universe into living souls. But according to orthodox Christianity this separation between God and man is sacred, because this is eternal. That a man may love God it is necessary that there should be not only a God to be loved, but a man to love him. All those vague theosophical minds for whom the universe is an immense melting-pot are exactly the minds which shrink instinctively from that earthquake saying of our Gospels, which declare that the Son of God came not with peace but with a sundering sword. The saying rings entirely true even considered as what it obviously is; the statement that any man who preaches real love is bound to beget hate. It is as true of democratic fraternity as a divine love; sham love ends in compromise and common philosophy; but real love has always ended in bloodshed. Yet there is another and yet more awful truth behind the obvious meaning of this utterance of our Lord. According to Himself the Son was a sword separating brother and brother that they should for an aeon hate each other. But the Father also was a sword, which in the black beginning separated brother and brother, so that they should love each other at last.

Gli studiosi di scienza divulgativa, come il signor Blatchford, insistono sempre nel dire che il Cristianesimo e il Buddhismo si somigliano moltissimo, e il Buddhismo in special modo. È una cosa che si crede comunemente, e io stesso la credevo, finché non lessi un libro che ne adduceva le ragioni. Le ragioni erano di due specie: somiglianze che non significavano nulla, perché comuni a tutta l’umanità, e somiglianze che non erano affatto somiglianze. L’autore spiegava solennemente che le due fedi si somigliavano in cose nelle quali tutte le fedi si somigliano, oppure le descriveva come simili in qualche punto nel quale sono con tutta evidenza diversissime. Così, come esempio della prima classe, diceva che sia il Cristo sia il Buddha furono chiamati dalla voce divina che scendeva dal cielo, come se ci si aspettasse che la voce divina uscisse dalla carbonaia. Oppure, ancora, si adduceva con gravità che questi due maestri orientali, per una singolare coincidenza, ebbero entrambi a che fare con la lavanda dei piedi. Tanto varrebbe dire che era una coincidenza notevole che entrambi avessero dei piedi da lavare. E l’altra classe di somiglianze era quella delle cose che semplicemente non erano simili. Così questo conciliatore delle due religioni richiama con fervore l’attenzione sul fatto che, in certe feste religiose, la veste del Lama viene stracciata in pezzi per rispetto, e i brandelli tenuti in gran conto. Ma questo è il rovescio di una somiglianza, perché le vesti del Cristo non furono stracciate in pezzi per rispetto, ma per scherno; e i brandelli non furono tenuti in gran conto se non per quel che avrebbero reso nelle botteghe dei cenciaioli. È un po’ come alludere all’evidente connessione tra le due cerimonie della spada: quando essa sfiora la spalla di un uomo, e quando gli mozza la testa. Per l’uomo non c’è affatto somiglianza. Questi brandelli di puerile pedanteria conterebbero invero assai poco se non fosse altresì vero che anche le presunte somiglianze filosofiche sono di queste due specie, o provando troppo o non provando nulla. Che il Buddhismo approvi la misericordia o l’autodominio non equivale a dire che esso somigli in modo speciale al Cristianesimo; equivale soltanto a dire che non è del tutto dissimile da ogni umana esistenza. I buddhisti disapprovano in teoria la crudeltà o l’eccesso perché tutti gli esseri umani sani di mente disapprovano in teoria la crudeltà o l’eccesso. Ma dire che il Buddhismo e il Cristianesimo diano la stessa filosofia di queste cose è semplicemente falso. Tutta l’umanità conviene che siamo presi in una rete di peccato. La maggior parte dell’umanità conviene che vi sia una qualche via d’uscita. Ma quanto a quale sia la via d’uscita, non credo che esistano nell’universo due istituzioni che si contraddicano l’un l’altra così piattamente come il Buddhismo e il Cristianesimo.

Persino quando pensavo, come la maggior parte delle altre persone bene informate, benché non erudite, che il Buddhismo e il Cristianesimo fossero simili, c’era in essi una cosa che sempre mi lasciava perplesso; intendo la sconcertante differenza nel loro tipo di arte religiosa. Non intendo nello stile tecnico della rappresentazione, ma nelle cose che essa era manifestamente destinata a rappresentare. Non potrebbero esservi due ideali più opposti di un santo cristiano in una cattedrale gotica e di un santo buddhista in un tempio cinese. L’opposizione sussiste in ogni punto; ma forse il modo più breve di enunciarla è che il santo buddhista ha sempre gli occhi chiusi, mentre il santo cristiano li ha sempre spalancatissimi. Il santo buddhista ha un corpo liscio e armonioso, ma gli occhi pesanti e suggellati dal sonno. Il corpo del santo medievale è consunto fino alle ossa scarne, ma gli occhi sono spaventosamente vivi. Non può esservi alcuna reale comunità di spirito tra forze che hanno prodotto simboli tanto diversi. Ammesso pure che entrambe le immagini siano stravaganze, perversioni del credo puro, dev’essere una divergenza reale quella che ha potuto produrre stravaganze così opposte. Il buddhista guarda con una peculiare intensità verso l’interno. Il cristiano fissa con una frenetica intensità verso l’esterno. Se seguiamo quel filo con costanza, troveremo alcune cose interessanti.

Poco tempo fa la signora Besant, in un interessante saggio, annunciò che vi era una sola religione al mondo, che tutte le fedi ne erano soltanto versioni o perversioni, e che era del tutto pronta a dire quale fosse. Secondo la signora Besant questa Chiesa universale è semplicemente l’io universale. È la dottrina secondo cui siamo in realtà tutti una sola persona; secondo cui non vi sono reali muri di individualità tra uomo e uomo. Se posso esprimermi così, ella non ci dice di amare il nostro prossimo; ci dice di essere il nostro prossimo. Questa è la ponderata e suggestiva descrizione che la signora Besant dà della religione nella quale tutti gli uomini devono trovarsi d’accordo. E in vita mia non ho mai udito proposta con la quale io dissenta più violentemente. Io voglio amare il mio prossimo non perché egli sia me, ma precisamente perché egli non è me. Voglio adorare il mondo, non come si ama uno specchio, perché è il proprio io, ma come si ama una donna, perché è interamente diversa. Se le anime sono separate, l’amore è possibile. Se le anime sono unite, l’amore è evidentemente impossibile. Si può dire, in senso lato, che un uomo ami se stesso, ma difficilmente può innamorarsi di sé, o, se lo fa, dev’essere un corteggiamento monotono. Se il mondo è pieno di io reali, essi possono essere io realmente disinteressati. Ma secondo il principio della signora Besant l’intero cosmo è soltanto un’unica persona enormemente egoista.

È proprio qui che il Buddhismo sta dalla parte del panteismo moderno e dell’immanenza. Ed è proprio qui che il Cristianesimo sta dalla parte dell’umanità e della libertà e dell’amore. L’Amore desidera la personalità; perciò l’amore desidera la divisione. È l’istinto del Cristianesimo a rallegrarsi che Dio abbia infranto l’universo in piccoli pezzi, perché sono pezzi viventi. È suo istinto dire «figlioletti, amatevi gli uni gli altri» piuttosto che dire a un’unica grande persona di amare se stessa. Questo è l’abisso intellettuale tra il Buddhismo e il Cristianesimo: che per il buddhista o il teosofo la personalità è la caduta dell’uomo, mentre per il cristiano è il disegno di Dio, l’intero punto della sua idea cosmica. L’anima del mondo dei teosofi chiede all’uomo di amarla soltanto affinché l’uomo possa gettarsi in essa. Ma il centro divino del Cristianesimo gettò in realtà l’uomo fuori di sé, affinché egli potesse amarlo. La divinità orientale è come un gigante che avesse perduto la gamba o la mano e andasse sempre cercando di ritrovarla; ma la potenza cristiana è come un gigante che, in una strana generosità, si recidesse la mano destra, così che questa potesse di propria spontanea volontà stringergli la mano. Torniamo alla stessa instancabile nota che tocca la natura del Cristianesimo: tutte le filosofie moderne sono catene che collegano e incatenano; il Cristianesimo è una spada che separa e libera. Nessun’altra filosofia fa sì che Dio si rallegri realmente della separazione dell’universo in anime viventi. Ma secondo il Cristianesimo ortodosso questa separazione tra Dio e l’uomo è sacra, perché è eterna. Affinché un uomo possa amare Dio è necessario che vi sia non soltanto un Dio da amare, ma anche un uomo che lo ami. Tutte quelle vaghe menti teosofiche, per le quali l’universo è un immenso crogiuolo, sono precisamente le menti che istintivamente rifuggono da quella parola sismica dei nostri Vangeli, che dichiara che il Figlio di Dio venne non con la pace ma con una spada che divide. La parola suona interamente vera anche considerata per ciò che manifestamente è: l’affermazione che ogni uomo il quale predichi il vero amore è destinato a generare odio. Ciò è vero della fraternità democratica quanto dell’amore divino: l’amore fittizio finisce nel compromesso e nella filosofia comune; ma l’amore vero è sempre finito nel sangue. Eppure vi è un’altra e ancor più tremenda verità dietro l’ovvio significato di questa affermazione di nostro Signore. Secondo Lui stesso il Figlio era una spada che separava fratello da fratello, affinché per un’era si odiassero l’un l’altro. Ma anche il Padre era una spada, che nel nero principio separò fratello da fratello, affinché essi alfine si amassero l’un l’altro.

This is the meaning of that almost insane happiness in the eyes of the mediaeval saint in the picture. This is the meaning of the sealed eyes of the superb Buddhist image. The Christian saint is happy because he has verily been cut off from the world; he is separate from things and is staring at them in astonishment. But why should the Buddhist saint be astonished at things? —since there is really only one thing, and that being impersonal can hardly be astonished at itself. There have been many pantheist poems suggesting wonder, but no really successful ones. The pantheist cannot wonder, for he cannot praise God or praise anything as really distinct from himself. Our immediate business here, however, is with the effect of this Christian admiration (which strikes outwards, towards a deity distinct from the worshipper) upon the general need for ethical activity and social reform. And surely its effect is sufficiently obvious. There is no real possibility of getting out of pantheism, any special impulse to moral action. For pantheism implies in its nature that one thing is as good as another; whereas action implies in its nature that one thing is greatly preferable to another. Swinburne in the high summer of his scepticism tried in vain to wrestle with this difficulty. In “Songs before Sunrise,” written under the inspiration of Garibaldi and the revolt of Italy he proclaimed the newer religion and the purer God which should wither up all the priests of the world:

“What doest thou now Looking Godward to cry I am I, thou art thou, I am low, thou art high, I am thou that thou seekest to find him, find thou but thyself, thou art I.”

Of which the immediate and evident deduction is that tyrants are as much the sons of God as Garibaldis; and that King Bomba of Naples having, with the utmost success, “found himself” is identical with the ultimate good in all things. The truth is that the western energy that dethrones tyrants has been directly due to the western theology that says “I am I, thou art thou.” The same spiritual separation which looked up and saw a good king in the universe looked up and saw a bad king in Naples. The worshippers of Bomba’s god dethroned Bomba. The worshippers of Swinburne’s god have covered Asia for centuries and have never dethroned a tyrant. The Indian saint may reasonably shut his eyes because he is looking at that which is I and Thou and We and They and It. It is a rational occupation: but it is not true in theory and not true in fact that it helps the Indian to keep an eye on Lord Curzon. That external vigilance which has always been the mark of Christianity (the command that we should WATCH and pray) has expressed itself both in typical western orthodoxy and in typical western politics: but both depend on the idea of a divinity transcendent, different from ourselves, a deity that disappears. Certainly the most sagacious creeds may suggest that we should pursue God into deeper and deeper rings of the labyrinth of our own ego. But only we of Christendom have said that we should hunt God like an eagle upon the mountains: and we have killed all monsters in the chase.

Here again, therefore, we find that in so far as we value democracy and the self-renewing energies of the west, we are much more likely to find them in the old theology than the new. If we want reform, we must adhere to orthodoxy: especially in this matter (so much disputed in the counsels of Mr. R.J.Campbell), the matter of insisting on the immanent or the transcendent deity. By insisting specially on the immanence of God we get introspection, self-isolation, quietism, social indifference—Tibet. By insisting specially on the transcendence of God we get wonder, curiosity, moral and political adventure, righteous indignation—Christendom. Insisting that God is inside man, man is always inside himself. By insisting that God transcends man, man has transcended himself.

If we take any other doctrine that has been called old-fashioned we shall find the case the same. It is the same, for instance, in the deep matter of the Trinity. Unitarians (a sect never to be mentioned without a special respect for their distinguished intellectual dignity and high intellectual honour) are often reformers by the accident that throws so many small sects into such an attitude. But there is nothing in the least liberal or akin to reform in the substitution of pure monotheism for the Trinity. The complex God of the Athanasian Creed may be an enigma for the intellect; but He is far less likely to gather the mystery and cruelty of a Sultan than the lonely god of Omar or Mahomet. The god who is a mere awful unity is not only a king but an Eastern king. The HEART of humanity, especially of European humanity, is certainly much more satisfied by the strange hints and symbols that gather round the Trinitarian idea, the image of a council at which mercy pleads as well as justice, the conception of a sort of liberty and variety existing even in the inmost chamber of the world. For Western religion has always felt keenly the idea “it is not well for man to be alone.” The social instinct asserted itself everywhere as when the Eastern idea of hermits was practically expelled by the Western idea of monks. So even asceticism became brotherly; and the Trappists were sociable even when they were silent. If this love of a living complexity be our test, it is certainly healthier to have the Trinitarian religion than the Unitarian. For to us Trinitarians (if I may say it with reverence)—to us God Himself is a society. It is indeed a fathomless mystery of theology, and even if I were theologian enough to deal with it directly, it would not be relevant to do so here. Suffice it to say here that this triple enigma is as comforting as wine and open as an English fireside; that this thing that bewilders the intellect utterly quiets the heart: but out of the desert, from the dry places and the dreadful suns, come the cruel children of the lonely God; the real Unitarians who with scimitar in hand have laid waste the world. For it is not well for God to be alone.

È questo il significato di quella felicità quasi folle negli occhi del santo medievale raffigurato nel quadro. È questo il significato degli occhi socchiusi della superba immagine buddhista. Il santo cristiano è felice perché è stato davvero reciso dal mondo; è separato dalle cose e le contempla con stupore. Ma perché mai il santo buddhista dovrebbe stupirsi delle cose? — giacché in realtà esiste una cosa sola, e questa, essendo impersonale, difficilmente può stupirsi di se stessa. Vi sono state molte poesie panteistiche che suggerivano la meraviglia, ma nessuna davvero riuscita. Il panteista non può meravigliarsi, poiché non può lodare Dio né lodare alcuna cosa come realmente distinta da sé. Il nostro compito immediato, qui, riguarda tuttavia l’effetto di questa ammirazione cristiana (che si slancia verso l’esterno, verso una divinità distinta dall’adoratore) sul bisogno generale di attività etica e di riforma sociale. E il suo effetto è senza dubbio abbastanza evidente. Non c’è alcuna reale possibilità di ricavare dal panteismo un qualche impulso particolare all’azione morale. Poiché il panteismo implica per sua natura che una cosa valga quanto un’altra; mentre l’azione implica per sua natura che una cosa sia grandemente preferibile a un’altra. Swinburne, nella piena estate del suo scetticismo, tentò invano di lottare con questa difficoltà. Nei “Songs before Sunrise”, scritti sotto l’ispirazione di Garibaldi e della rivolta d’Italia, egli proclamava la religione più nuova e il Dio più puro che avrebbe dovuto disseccare tutti i sacerdoti del mondo:

“Che fai tu ora volgendoti a gridare verso Dio io sono io, tu sei tu, io sono in basso, tu sei in alto, io sono te, che tu cerchi di trovarlo, trova solo te stesso, tu sei me.”

Da cui la deduzione immediata ed evidente è che i tiranni sono figli di Dio non meno dei Garibaldi; e che re Bomba di Napoli, avendo, col massimo successo, “trovato se stesso”, è identico al bene ultimo di tutte le cose. La verità è che l’energia occidentale che detronizza i tiranni è stata direttamente dovuta alla teologia occidentale che dice “io sono io, tu sei tu”. La stessa separazione spirituale che, guardando in alto, vide un buon re nell’universo, guardando in alto vide un cattivo re a Napoli. Gli adoratori del dio di Bomba detronizzarono Bomba. Gli adoratori del dio di Swinburne hanno coperto l’Asia per secoli e non hanno mai detronizzato un tiranno. Il santo indiano può ragionevolmente chiudere gli occhi perché contempla ciò che è Io e Tu e Noi e Loro ed Esso. È un’occupazione razionale: ma non è vero in teoria, né è vero di fatto, che essa aiuti l’indiano a tenere d’occhio Lord Curzon. Quella vigilanza esteriore che è sempre stata il contrassegno del Cristianesimo (il comando di VEGLIARE e pregare) si è espressa tanto nella tipica ortodossia occidentale quanto nella tipica politica occidentale: ma entrambe dipendono dall’idea di una divinità trascendente, diversa da noi stessi, di una divinità che scompare. Certo, i più sagaci fra i credi possono suggerire che dovremmo inseguire Dio in anelli sempre più profondi del labirinto del nostro stesso io. Ma soltanto noi della Cristianità abbiamo detto che dovremmo dare la caccia a Dio come a un’aquila sulle montagne: e nella caccia abbiamo ucciso ogni mostro.

Anche qui, dunque, troviamo che, nella misura in cui teniamo alla democrazia e alle energie di auto-rinnovamento dell’Occidente, siamo assai più propensi a trovarle nella vecchia teologia che nella nuova. Se vogliamo la riforma, dobbiamo aderire all’ortodossia: specialmente in questa materia (così dibattuta nei consigli del signor R. J. Campbell), la materia dell’insistere sulla divinità immanente o su quella trascendente. Insistendo in modo particolare sull’immanenza di Dio otteniamo l’introspezione, l’auto-isolamento, il quietismo, l’indifferenza sociale — il Tibet. Insistendo in modo particolare sulla trascendenza di Dio otteniamo la meraviglia, la curiosità, l’avventura morale e politica, la sacra indignazione — la Cristianità. Insistendo che Dio è dentro l’uomo, l’uomo è sempre dentro se stesso. Insistendo che Dio trascende l’uomo, l’uomo ha trasceso se stesso.

Se prendiamo qualsiasi altra dottrina che sia stata detta antiquata, troveremo che il caso è lo stesso. È lo stesso, per esempio, nella profonda materia della Trinità. Gli unitariani (una setta da non menzionarsi mai senza un particolare rispetto per la loro insigne dignità intellettuale e per il loro alto onore intellettuale) sono spesso riformatori per quell’accidente che getta tante piccole sette in un simile atteggiamento. Ma non c’è nulla di men che liberale o di affine alla riforma nel sostituire il puro monoteismo alla Trinità. Il Dio complesso del Credo atanasiano potrà essere un enigma per l’intelletto; ma è assai meno probabile che raccolga il mistero e la crudeltà di un Sultano del solitario dio di Omar o di Maometto. Il dio che è una mera terribile unità non è soltanto un re, ma un re orientale. Il CUORE dell’umanità, specialmente dell’umanità europea, è certo assai più appagato dagli strani accenni e simboli che si raccolgono intorno all’idea trinitaria, l’immagine di un concilio in cui la misericordia perora del pari alla giustizia, la concezione di una sorta di libertà e varietà esistente perfino nella più intima camera del mondo. Poiché la religione occidentale ha sempre sentito acutamente l’idea “non è bene che l’uomo sia solo”. L’istinto sociale si affermò ovunque, come quando l’idea orientale degli eremiti fu praticamente scacciata dall’idea occidentale dei monaci. Così perfino l’ascetismo divenne fraterno; e i Trappisti erano socievoli anche quando tacevano. Se questo amore di una viva complessità è la nostra pietra di paragone, è certamente più sano avere la religione trinitaria che l’unitaria. Poiché per noi trinitari (se posso dirlo con riverenza) — per noi Dio stesso è una società. È in verità un imperscrutabile mistero della teologia, e anche se fossi teologo abbastanza da trattarlo direttamente, non sarebbe pertinente farlo qui. Basti dire qui che questo triplice enigma è consolante come il vino e aperto come un focolare inglese; che questa cosa che sconcerta l’intelletto acquieta interamente il cuore: ma dal deserto, dai luoghi aridi e dai soli tremendi, vengono i crudeli figli del Dio solitario; i veri unitariani che, scimitarra in pugno, hanno devastato il mondo. Poiché non è bene che Dio sia solo.

Again, the same is true of that difficult matter of the danger of the soul, which has unsettled so many just minds. To hope for all souls is imperative; and it is quite tenable that their salvation is inevitable. It is tenable, but it is not specially favourable to activity or progress. Our fighting and creative society ought rather to insist on the danger of everybody, on the fact that every man is hanging by a thread or clinging to a precipice. To say that all will be well anyhow is a comprehensible remark: but it cannot be called the blast of a trumpet. Europe ought rather to emphasize possible perdition; and Europe always has emphasized it. Here its highest religion is at one with all its cheapest romances. To the Buddhist or the eastern fatalist existence is a science or a plan, which must end up in a certain way. But to a Christian existence is a STORY, which may end up in any way. In a thrilling novel (that purely Christian product) the hero is not eaten by cannibals; but it is essential to the existence of the thrill that he MIGHT be eaten by cannibals. The hero must (so to speak) be an eatable hero. So Christian morals have always said to the man, not that he would lose his soul, but that he must take care that he didn’t. In Christian morals, in short, it is wicked to call a man “damned”: but it is strictly religious and philosophic to call him damnable.

All Christianity concentrates on the man at the cross-roads. The vast and shallow philosophies, the huge syntheses of humbug, all talk about ages and evolution and ultimate developments. The true philosophy is concerned with the instant. Will a man take this road or that? —that is the only thing to think about, if you enjoy thinking. The aeons are easy enough to think about, any one can think about them. The instant is really awful: and it is because our religion has intensely felt the instant, that it has in literature dealt much with battle and in theology dealt much with hell. It is full of DANGER, like a boy’s book: it is at an immortal crisis. There is a great deal of real similarity between popular fiction and the religion of the western people. If you say that popular fiction is vulgar and tawdry, you only say what the dreary and well-informed say also about the images in the Catholic churches. Life (according to the faith) is very like a serial story in a magazine: life ends with the promise (or menace) “to be continued in our next.” Also, with a noble vulgarity, life imitates the serial and leaves off at the exciting moment. For death is distinctly an exciting moment.

But the point is that a story is exciting because it has in it so strong an element of will, of what theology calls free-will. You cannot finish a sum how you like. But you can finish a story how you like. When somebody discovered the Differential Calculus there was only one Differential Calculus he could discover. But when Shakespeare killed Romeo he might have married him to Juliet’s old nurse if he had felt inclined. And Christendom has excelled in the narrative romance exactly because it has insisted on the theological free-will. It is a large matter and too much to one side of the road to be discussed adequately here; but this is the real objection to that torrent of modern talk about treating crime as disease, about making a prison merely a hygienic environment like a hospital, of healing sin by slow scientific methods. The fallacy of the whole thing is that evil is a matter of active choice whereas disease is not. If you say that you are going to cure a profligate as you cure an asthmatic, my cheap and obvious answer is, “Produce the people who want to be asthmatics as many people want to be profligates.” A man may lie still and be cured of a malady. But he must not lie still if he wants to be cured of a sin; on the contrary, he must get up and jump about violently. The whole point indeed is perfectly expressed in the very word which we use for a man in hospital; “patient” is in the passive mood; “sinner” is in the active. If a man is to be saved from influenza, he may be a patient. But if he is to be saved from forging, he must be not a patient but an IMPATIENT. He must be personally impatient with forgery. All moral reform must start in the active not the passive will.

Here again we reach the same substantial conclusion. In so far as we desire the definite reconstructions and the dangerous revolutions which have distinguished European civilization, we shall not discourage the thought of possible ruin; we shall rather encourage it. If we want, like the Eastern saints, merely to contemplate how right things are, of course we shall only say that they must go right. But if we particularly want to MAKE them go right, we must insist that they may go wrong.

Lastly, this truth is yet again true in the case of the common modern attempts to diminish or to explain away the divinity of Christ. The thing may be true or not; that I shall deal with before I end. But if the divinity is true it is certainly terribly revolutionary. That a good man may have his back to the wall is no more than we knew already; but that God could have his back to the wall is a boast for all insurgents for ever. Christianity is the only religion on earth that has felt that omnipotence made God incomplete. Christianity alone has felt that God, to be wholly God, must have been a rebel as well as a king. Alone of all creeds, Christianity has added courage to the virtues of the Creator. For the only courage worth calling courage must necessarily mean that the soul passes a breaking point—and does not break. In this indeed I approach a matter more dark and awful than it is easy to discuss; and I apologise in advance if any of my phrases fall wrong or seem irreverent touching a matter which the greatest saints and thinkers have justly feared to approach. But in that terrific tale of the Passion there is a distinct emotional suggestion that the author of all things (in some unthinkable way) went not only through agony, but through doubt. It is written, “Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.” No; but the Lord thy God may tempt Himself; and it seems as if this was what happened in Gethsemane. In a garden Satan tempted man: and in a garden God tempted God. He passed in some superhuman manner through our human horror of pessimism. When the world shook and the sun was wiped out of heaven, it was not at the crucifixion, but at the cry from the cross: the cry which confessed that God was forsaken of God. And now let the revolutionists choose a creed from all the creeds and a god from all the gods of the world, carefully weighing all the gods of inevitable recurrence and of unalterable power. They will not find another god who has himself been in revolt. Nay, (the matter grows too difficult for human speech,) but let the atheists themselves choose a god. They will find only one divinity who ever uttered their isolation; only one religion in which God seemed for an instant to be an atheist.

Di nuovo, altrettanto vale per quella spinosa questione del pericolo dell’anima, che ha turbato tante menti rette. Sperare per tutte le anime è un dovere; ed è del tutto sostenibile che la loro salvezza sia inevitabile. È sostenibile, ma non è particolarmente propizio all’operosità o al progresso. La nostra società combattiva e creatrice dovrebbe piuttosto insistere sul pericolo di ciascuno, sul fatto che ogni uomo pende da un filo o si aggrappa a un precipizio. Dire che tutto andrà bene comunque è un’osservazione comprensibile: ma non la si può dire uno squillo di tromba. L’Europa dovrebbe piuttosto sottolineare la possibile perdizione; e l’Europa l’ha sempre sottolineata. Qui la sua religione più alta è tutt’uno con i suoi più dozzinali romanzi d’appendice. Per il buddista o il fatalista orientale l’esistenza è una scienza o un piano, che deve finire in un certo modo. Ma per un cristiano l’esistenza è una STORIA, che può finire in un modo qualsiasi. In un romanzo avvincente (quel prodotto puramente cristiano) l’eroe non viene divorato dai cannibali; ma è essenziale all’esistenza stessa del brivido che egli POTREBBE essere divorato dai cannibali. L’eroe deve (per così dire) essere un eroe commestibile. Così la morale cristiana ha sempre detto all’uomo, non che avrebbe perduto l’anima, ma che doveva badare a non perderla. Nella morale cristiana, in breve, è cosa malvagia chiamare un uomo «dannato»: ma è cosa rigorosamente religiosa e filosofica chiamarlo dannabile.

Tutta la cristianità si concentra sull’uomo al crocevia. Le vaste e superficiali filosofie, le enormi sintesi di ciarpame, parlano tutte di epoche e di evoluzione e di sviluppi ultimi. La vera filosofia si occupa dell’istante. Prenderà l’uomo questa strada o quella? — ecco l’unica cosa a cui pensare, se ti piace pensare. Gli eoni sono abbastanza facili da pensare, chiunque può pensarci. L’istante è davvero tremendo: ed è perché la nostra religione ha sentito intensamente l’istante, che essa in letteratura si è occupata tanto di battaglie e in teologia si è occupata tanto dell’inferno. È piena di PERICOLO, come un libro per ragazzi: è in una crisi immortale. Vi è una grande somiglianza reale tra la narrativa popolare e la religione dei popoli d’Occidente. Se dici che la narrativa popolare è volgare e pacchiana, non dici altro che quel che i tediosi e i beninformati dicono anche delle immagini nelle chiese cattoliche. La vita (secondo la fede) è molto simile a un romanzo a puntate su una rivista: la vita finisce con la promessa (o la minaccia) «continua nel prossimo numero». E ancora, con una nobile volgarità, la vita imita il romanzo a puntate e si interrompe nel momento più emozionante. Perché la morte è, senza dubbio, un momento emozionante.

Ma il punto è che una storia è emozionante perché contiene in sé un elemento così forte di volontà, di ciò che la teologia chiama libero arbitrio. Non puoi finire un’addizione come ti pare. Ma puoi finire una storia come ti pare. Quando qualcuno scoprì il calcolo differenziale c’era un solo calcolo differenziale che egli potesse scoprire. Ma quando Shakespeare uccise Romeo avrebbe potuto sposarlo alla vecchia nutrice di Giulietta, se ne avesse avuto voglia. E la cristianità ha eccelso nel romanzo narrativo proprio perché ha insistito sul libero arbitrio teologico. È una questione vasta e troppo in disparte lungo la strada per essere discussa a dovere qui; ma questa è la vera obiezione a quel torrente di chiacchiere moderne sul trattare il delitto come una malattia, sul fare della prigione un ambiente meramente igienico come un ospedale, sul guarire il peccato con lenti metodi scientifici. La fallacia di tutto ciò è che il male è una faccenda di scelta attiva, mentre la malattia non lo è. Se dici che curerai un dissoluto come curi un asmatico, la mia risposta a buon mercato e ovvia è: «Producimi le persone che vogliono essere asmatiche come tante persone vogliono essere dissolute». Un uomo può starsene disteso e guarire da un malanno. Ma non deve starsene disteso se vuole guarire da un peccato; al contrario, deve alzarsi e saltare in giro con violenza. Tutto il punto, in verità, è espresso perfettamente proprio dalla parola che usiamo per un uomo in ospedale; «paziente» è al modo passivo; «peccatore» è all’attivo. Se un uomo deve essere salvato dall’influenza, può essere un paziente. Ma se deve essere salvato dal falsificare, deve essere non un paziente ma un IMPAZIENTE. Deve essere personalmente impaziente col falso. Ogni riforma morale deve cominciare nella volontà attiva, non nella passiva.

Anche qui giungiamo alla medesima sostanziale conclusione. Nella misura in cui desideriamo le ricostruzioni precise e le pericolose rivoluzioni che hanno contraddistinto la civiltà europea, non scoraggeremo il pensiero di una possibile rovina; anzi lo incoraggeremo. Se vogliamo, come i santi d’Oriente, soltanto contemplare quanto le cose siano giuste, certo diremo soltanto che devono andar bene. Ma se vogliamo in particolare FARLE andar bene, dobbiamo insistere sul fatto che possono andar male.

Infine, questa verità è ancora una volta vera nel caso dei comuni tentativi moderni di sminuire o di spiegar via la divinità di Cristo. La cosa può essere vera o no; di ciò tratterò prima di concludere. Ma se la divinità è vera, essa è certamente terribilmente rivoluzionaria. Che un uomo buono possa trovarsi con le spalle al muro non è più di quel che già sapevamo; ma che Dio potesse trovarsi con le spalle al muro è un vanto per tutti gli insorti in eterno. La cristianità è la sola religione sulla terra che abbia sentito che l’onnipotenza rendeva Dio incompleto. La cristianità sola ha sentito che Dio, per essere pienamente Dio, doveva essere stato un ribelle non meno che un re. Sola fra tutti i credi, la cristianità ha aggiunto il coraggio alle virtù del Creatore. Poiché il solo coraggio che meriti d’essere chiamato coraggio deve necessariamente significare che l’anima valica un punto di rottura — e non si spezza. In questo, in verità, mi accosto a una materia più oscura e tremenda di quanto sia facile discutere; e mi scuso in anticipo se qualcuna delle mie frasi cade a sproposito o pare irriverente toccando una materia che i più grandi santi e pensatori hanno a giusto titolo temuto di accostare. Ma in quel terrificante racconto della Passione vi è una netta suggestione emotiva che l’autore di tutte le cose (in qualche modo impensabile) sia passato non solo attraverso l’agonia, ma attraverso il dubbio. Sta scritto: «Non tentare il Signore Dio tuo». No; ma il Signore Dio tuo può tentare Se stesso; e sembra che sia proprio questo ciò che accadde nel Getsemani. In un giardino Satana tentò l’uomo: e in un giardino Dio tentò Dio. Egli passò in qualche modo sovrumano attraverso il nostro umano orrore del pessimismo. Quando il mondo tremò e il sole fu cancellato dal cielo, non fu alla crocifissione, ma al grido dalla croce: il grido che confessava che Dio era abbandonato da Dio. E ora lascia che i rivoluzionari scelgano un credo fra tutti i credi e un dio fra tutti gli dèi del mondo, soppesando accuratamente tutti gli dèi dell’inevitabile ricorrenza e dell’inalterabile potenza. Non troveranno un altro dio che sia stato egli stesso in rivolta. Anzi, (la materia si fa troppo ardua per l’umana parola,) ma lascia che gli atei stessi scelgano un dio. Troveranno una sola divinità che abbia mai proferito il loro isolamento; una sola religione in cui Dio parve per un istante essere un ateo.

These can be called the essentials of the old orthodoxy, of which the chief merit is that it is the natural fountain of revolution and reform; and of which the chief defect is that it is obviously only an abstract assertion. Its main advantage is that it is the most adventurous and manly of all theologies. Its chief disadvantage is simply that it is a theology. It can always be urged against it that it is in its nature arbitrary and in the air. But it is not so high in the air but that great archers spend their whole lives in shooting arrows at it—yes, and their last arrows; there are men who will ruin themselves and ruin their civilization if they may ruin also this old fantastic tale. This is the last and most astounding fact about this faith; that its enemies will use any weapon against it, the swords that cut their own fingers, and the firebrands that burn their own homes. Men who begin to fight the Church for the sake of freedom and humanity end by flinging away freedom and humanity if only they may fight the Church. This is no exaggeration; I could fill a book with the instances of it. Mr. Blatchford set out, as an ordinary Bible-smasher, to prove that Adam was guiltless of sin against God; in manoeuvring so as to maintain this he admitted, as a mere side issue, that all the tyrants, from Nero to King Leopold, were guiltless of any sin against humanity. I know a man who has such a passion for proving that he will have no personal existence after death that he falls back on the position that he has no personal existence now. He invokes Buddhism and says that all souls fade into each other; in order to prove that he cannot go to heaven he proves that he cannot go to Hartlepool. I have known people who protested against religious education with arguments against any education, saying that the child’s mind must grow freely or that the old must not teach the young. I have known people who showed that there could be no divine judgment by showing that there can be no human judgment, even for practical purposes. They burned their own corn to set fire to the church; they smashed their own tools to smash it; any stick was good enough to beat it with, though it were the last stick of their own dismembered furniture. We do not admire, we hardly excuse, the fanatic who wrecks this world for love of the other. But what are we to say of the fanatic who wrecks this world out of hatred of the other? He sacrifices the very existence of humanity to the non-existence of God. He offers his victims not to the altar, but merely to assert the idleness of the altar and the emptiness of the throne. He is ready to ruin even that primary ethic by which all things live, for his strange and eternal vengeance upon some one who never lived at all.

And yet the thing hangs in the heavens unhurt. Its opponents only succeed in destroying all that they themselves justly hold dear. They do not destroy orthodoxy; they only destroy political courage and common sense. They do not prove that Adam was not responsible to God; how could they prove it? They only prove (from their premises) that the Czar is not responsible to Russia. They do not prove that Adam should not have been punished by God; they only prove that the nearest sweater should not be punished by men. With their oriental doubts about personality they do not make certain that we shall have no personal life hereafter; they only make certain that we shall not have a very jolly or complete one here. With their paralysing hints of all conclusions coming out wrong they do not tear the book of the Recording Angel; they only make it a little harder to keep the books of Marshall & Snelgrove. Not only is the faith the mother of all worldly energies, but its foes are the fathers of all worldly confusion. The secularists have not wrecked divine things; but the secularists have wrecked secular things, if that is any comfort to them. The Titans did not scale heaven; but they laid waste the world.

Questi possono dirsi i punti essenziali della vecchia ortodossia, il cui pregio maggiore è di essere la sorgente naturale della rivoluzione e della riforma; e il cui difetto maggiore è di essere, con ogni evidenza, soltanto un’asserzione astratta. Il suo vantaggio principale è di essere la più avventurosa e virile di tutte le teologie. Il suo svantaggio principale è semplicemente di essere una teologia. Le si potrà sempre obiettare che è per sua natura arbitraria e campata in aria. Ma non è così alta nell’aria che grandi arcieri non spendano l’intera loro vita a scagliarle contro frecce; sì, financo le loro ultime frecce; vi sono uomini che rovineranno se stessi e rovineranno la propria civiltà, purché possano rovinare anche questa vecchia, fantastica favola. È questo l’ultimo e più sbalorditivo fatto intorno a questa fede: che i suoi nemici useranno contro di essa qualsiasi arma, le spade che tagliano loro le dita e i tizzoni che incendiano le loro stesse case. Gli uomini che cominciano a combattere la Chiesa per amore della libertà e dell’umanità finiscono col gettar via la libertà e l’umanità, pur di poter combattere la Chiesa. Non è un’esagerazione; potrei riempire un libro con gli esempi che ne ho. Il signor Blatchford si mise in cammino, da comune demolitore della Bibbia, per dimostrare che Adamo era innocente di ogni peccato contro Dio; e manovrando così da sostenere questa tesi ammise, come mera questione secondaria, che tutti i tiranni, da Nerone a re Leopoldo, erano innocenti d’ogni peccato contro l’umanità. Conosco un uomo che ha una tale passione di dimostrare che non avrà alcuna esistenza personale dopo la morte, da ripiegare sulla posizione che non ha alcuna esistenza personale nemmeno adesso. Invoca il buddhismo e dice che tutte le anime si dissolvono l’una nell’altra; per provare che non può andare in cielo, prova che non può andare a Hartlepool. Ho conosciuto persone che protestavano contro l’educazione religiosa con argomenti contro qualsiasi educazione, dicendo che la mente del fanciullo deve crescere liberamente, o che i vecchi non devono istruire i giovani. Ho conosciuto persone che dimostravano non potervi essere alcun giudizio divino dimostrando che non può esservi alcun giudizio umano, nemmeno a fini pratici. Bruciavano il proprio grano per dar fuoco alla chiesa; spezzavano i propri arnesi per spezzarla; qualunque bastone era buono abbastanza per bastonarla, fosse pure l’ultimo bastone dei loro stessi mobili fatti a pezzi. Non ammiriamo, e a stento scusiamo, il fanatico che manda in rovina questo mondo per amore dell’altro. Ma che diremo del fanatico che manda in rovina questo mondo per odio dell’altro? Egli sacrifica l’esistenza stessa dell’umanità alla non-esistenza di Dio. Offre le proprie vittime non all’altare, ma soltanto per affermare l’inutilità dell’altare e la vacuità del trono. È pronto a rovinare perfino quell’etica primaria per cui ogni cosa vive, in nome della sua strana ed eterna vendetta contro qualcuno che non è mai vissuto affatto.

E tuttavia la cosa pende dai cieli senza un graffio. I suoi avversari non riescono che a distruggere tutto ciò che essi stessi, a buon diritto, hanno caro. Non distruggono l’ortodossia; distruggono soltanto il coraggio politico e il buon senso. Non provano che Adamo non fosse responsabile dinanzi a Dio; come potrebbero provarlo? Provano soltanto (partendo dalle loro premesse) che lo Zar non è responsabile dinanzi alla Russia. Non provano che Adamo non avrebbe dovuto essere punito da Dio; provano soltanto che lo sfruttatore più vicino non dovrebbe essere punito dagli uomini. Con i loro dubbi orientali sulla personalità non ci danno la certezza che non avremo alcuna vita personale nell’aldilà; ci danno soltanto la certezza che non ne avremo una molto gaia o completa quaggiù. Con i loro paralizzanti insinuazioni che tutte le conclusioni riescano sbagliate non strappano il libro dell’Angelo Registratore; rendono soltanto un po’ più difficile tenere i libri contabili di Marshall & Snelgrove. Non solo la fede è la madre di tutte le energie del mondo, ma i suoi nemici sono i padri di ogni confusione mondana. I secolaristi non hanno mandato in rovina le cose divine; ma i secolaristi hanno mandato in rovina le cose secolari, se ciò può essere loro di qualche conforto. I Titani non scalarono il cielo; ma devastarono il mondo.

IX AUTHORITY AND THE ADVENTURER

The last chapter has been concerned with the contention that orthodoxy is not only (as is often urged) the only safe guardian of morality or order, but is also the only logical guardian of liberty, innovation and advance. If we wish to pull down the prosperous oppressor we cannot do it with the new doctrine of human perfectibility; we can do it with the old doctrine of Original Sin. If we want to uproot inherent cruelties or lift up lost populations we cannot do it with the scientific theory that matter precedes mind; we can do it with the supernatural theory that mind precedes matter. If we wish specially to awaken people to social vigilance and tireless pursuit of practise, we cannot help it much by insisting on the Immanent God and the Inner Light: for these are at best reasons for contentment; we can help it much by insisting on the transcendent God and the flying and escaping gleam; for that means divine discontent. If we wish particularly to assert the idea of a generous balance against that of a dreadful autocracy we shall instinctively be Trinitarian rather than Unitarian. If we desire European civilization to be a raid and a rescue, we shall insist rather that souls are in real peril than that their peril is ultimately unreal. And if we wish to exalt the outcast and the crucified, we shall rather wish to think that a veritable God was crucified, rather than a mere sage or hero. Above all, if we wish to protect the poor we shall be in favour of fixed rules and clear dogmas. The RULES of a club are occasionally in favour of the poor member. The drift of a club is always in favour of the rich one.

And now we come to the crucial question which truly concludes the whole matter. A reasonable agnostic, if he has happened to agree with me so far, may justly turn round and say, “You have found a practical philosophy in the doctrine of the Fall; very well. You have found a side of democracy now dangerously neglected wisely asserted in Original Sin; all right. You have found a truth in the doctrine of hell; I congratulate you. You are convinced that worshippers of a personal God look outwards and are progressive; I congratulate them. But even supposing that those doctrines do include those truths, why cannot you take the truths and leave the doctrines? Granted that all modern society is trusting the rich too much because it does not allow for human weakness; granted that orthodox ages have had a great advantage because (believing in the Fall) they did allow for human weakness, why cannot you simply allow for human weakness without believing in the Fall? If you have discovered that the idea of damnation represents a healthy idea of danger, why can you not simply take the idea of danger and leave the idea of damnation? If you see clearly the kernel of common-sense in the nut of Christian orthodoxy, why cannot you simply take the kernel and leave the nut? Why cannot you (to use that cant phrase of the newspapers which I, as a highly scholarly agnostic, am a little ashamed of using) why cannot you simply take what is good in Christianity, what you can define as valuable, what you can comprehend, and leave all the rest, all the absolute dogmas that are in their nature incomprehensible?” This is the real question; this is the last question; and it is a pleasure to try to answer it.

The first answer is simply to say that I am a rationalist. I like to have some intellectual justification for my intuitions. If I am treating man as a fallen being it is an intellectual convenience to me to believe that he fell; and I find, for some odd psychological reason, that I can deal better with a man’s exercise of freewill if I believe that he has got it. But I am in this matter yet more definitely a rationalist. I do not propose to turn this book into one of ordinary Christian apologetics; I should be glad to meet at any other time the enemies of Christianity in that more obvious arena. Here I am only giving an account of my own growth in spiritual certainty. But I may pause to remark that the more I saw of the merely abstract arguments against the Christian cosmology the less I thought of them. I mean that having found the moral atmosphere of the Incarnation to be common sense, I then looked at the established intellectual arguments against the Incarnation and found them to be common nonsense. In case the argument should be thought to suffer from the absence of the ordinary apologetic I will here very briefly summarise my own arguments and conclusions on the purely objective or scientific truth of the matter.

If I am asked, as a purely intellectual question, why I believe in Christianity, I can only answer, “For the same reason that an intelligent agnostic disbelieves in Christianity.” I believe in it quite rationally upon the evidence. But the evidence in my case, as in that of the intelligent agnostic, is not really in this or that alleged demonstration; it is in an enormous accumulation of small but unanimous facts. The secularist is not to be blamed because his objections to Christianity are miscellaneous and even scrappy; it is precisely such scrappy evidence that does convince the mind. I mean that a man may well be less convinced of a philosophy from four books, than from one book, one battle, one landscape, and one old friend. The very fact that the things are of different kinds increases the importance of the fact that they all point to one conclusion. Now, the non-Christianity of the average educated man to-day is almost always, to do him justice, made up of these loose but living experiences. I can only say that my evidences for Christianity are of the same vivid but varied kind as his evidences against it. For when I look at these various anti-Christian truths, I simply discover that none of them are true. I discover that the true tide and force of all the facts flows the other way. Let us take cases. Many a sensible modern man must have abandoned Christianity under the pressure of three such converging convictions as these: first, that men, with their shape, structure, and sexuality, are, after all, very much like beasts, a mere variety of the animal kingdom; second, that primeval religion arose in ignorance and fear; third, that priests have blighted societies with bitterness and gloom. Those three anti-Christian arguments are very different; but they are all quite logical and legitimate; and they all converge. The only objection to them (I discover) is that they are all untrue. If you leave off looking at books about beasts and men, if you begin to look at beasts and men then (if you have any humour or imagination, any sense of the frantic or the farcical) you will observe that the startling thing is not how like man is to the brutes, but how unlike he is. It is the monstrous scale of his divergence that requires an explanation. That man and brute are like is, in a sense, a truism; but that being so like they should then be so insanely unlike, that is the shock and the enigma. That an ape has hands is far less interesting to the philosopher than the fact that having hands he does next to nothing with them; does not play knuckle-bones or the violin; does not carve marble or carve mutton. People talk of barbaric architecture and debased art. But elephants do not build colossal temples of ivory even in a rococo style; camels do not paint even bad pictures, though equipped with the material of many camel’s-hair brushes. Certain modern dreamers say that ants and bees have a society superior to ours. They have, indeed, a civilization; but that very truth only reminds us that it is an inferior civilization. Who ever found an ant-hill decorated with the statues of celebrated ants? Who has seen a bee-hive carved with the images of gorgeous queens of old? No; the chasm between man and other creatures may have a natural explanation, but it is a chasm. We talk of wild animals; but man is the only wild animal. It is man that has broken out. All other animals are tame animals; following the rugged respectability of the tribe or type. All other animals are domestic animals; man alone is ever undomestic, either as a profligate or a monk. So that this first superficial reason for materialism is, if anything, a reason for its opposite; it is exactly where biology leaves off that all religion begins.

IX L’AUTORITÀ E L’AVVENTURIERO

Il capitolo precedente si è occupato della tesi secondo cui l’ortodossia non è soltanto (come spesso si sostiene) l’unica custode sicura della moralità o dell’ordine, ma è anche l’unica custode logica della libertà, dell’innovazione e del progresso. Se vogliamo abbattere l’oppressore prospero non possiamo farlo con la nuova dottrina della perfettibilità umana; possiamo farlo con l’antica dottrina del Peccato Originale. Se vogliamo sradicare le crudeltà connaturate o risollevare le popolazioni perdute non possiamo farlo con la teoria scientifica secondo cui la materia precede la mente; possiamo farlo con la teoria soprannaturale secondo cui la mente precede la materia. Se vogliamo in modo particolare destare gli uomini alla vigilanza sociale e all’infaticabile ricerca dell’azione, non possiamo giovarvi molto insistendo sul Dio Immanente e sulla Luce Interiore: poiché questi sono, tutt’al più, ragioni di appagamento; possiamo invece giovarvi assai insistendo sul Dio trascendente e sul barlume che vola e si sottrae; perché ciò significa divina inquietudine. Se vogliamo in particolare affermare l’idea di un generoso equilibrio contro quella di una spaventosa autocrazia, saremo istintivamente trinitari piuttosto che unitari. Se desideriamo che la civiltà europea sia un’incursione e un salvataggio, insisteremo piuttosto sul fatto che le anime sono in reale pericolo che non sul fatto che il loro pericolo sia in fondo irreale. E se vogliamo esaltare il reietto e il crocifisso, preferiremo pensare che a essere crocifisso sia stato un vero Dio, piuttosto che un semplice saggio o eroe. Soprattutto, se vogliamo proteggere i poveri saremo a favore di regole fisse e di dogmi chiari. Le REGOLE di un circolo sono di quando in quando a favore del socio povero. La tendenza di un circolo è sempre a favore di quello ricco.

E ora giungiamo alla questione cruciale che davvero conclude l’intera faccenda. Un ragionevole agnostico, se per caso si è trovato d’accordo con me fin qui, può giustamente voltarsi e dire: «Avete trovato una filosofia pratica nella dottrina della Caduta; benissimo. Avete trovato un aspetto della democrazia oggi pericolosamente trascurato saggiamente affermato nel Peccato Originale; d’accordo. Avete trovato una verità nella dottrina dell’inferno; me ne rallegro con voi. Siete convinto che gli adoratori di un Dio personale guardino verso l’esterno e siano progressivi; me ne rallegro con loro. Ma anche ammesso che quelle dottrine racchiudano quelle verità, perché non potete prendere le verità e lasciare le dottrine? Concesso che tutta la società moderna si fidi troppo dei ricchi perché non tiene conto della debolezza umana; concesso che le epoche ortodosse abbiano avuto un grande vantaggio perché (credendo nella Caduta) tenevano conto della debolezza umana, perché non potete semplicemente tenere conto della debolezza umana senza credere nella Caduta? Se avete scoperto che l’idea della dannazione rappresenta una sana idea di pericolo, perché non potete semplicemente prendere l’idea del pericolo e lasciare l’idea della dannazione? Se vedete chiaramente il nòcciolo di buon senso dentro il guscio dell’ortodossia cristiana, perché non potete semplicemente prendere il nòcciolo e lasciare il guscio? Perché non potete (per usare quella frase fatta dei giornali che io, in quanto agnostico di elevata dottrina, mi vergogno un poco di usare) perché non potete semplicemente prendere ciò che vi è di buono nel Cristianesimo, ciò che potete definire prezioso, ciò che potete comprendere, e lasciare tutto il resto, tutti i dogmi assoluti che sono per loro natura incomprensibili?». Questa è la vera domanda; questa è l’ultima domanda; ed è un piacere provare a rispondervi.

La prima risposta è semplicemente dire che io sono un razionalista. Mi piace avere qualche giustificazione intellettuale per le mie intuizioni. Se tratto l’uomo come un essere caduto, per me è una comodità intellettuale credere che sia caduto; e trovo, per qualche strana ragione psicologica, di saper trattare meglio l’esercizio del libero arbitrio di un uomo se credo che egli lo possieda. Ma in questa materia io sono ancora più decisamente razionalista. Non ho intenzione di trasformare questo libro in una delle solite apologetiche cristiane; sarei lieto di incontrare in qualsiasi altro momento i nemici del Cristianesimo in quell’arena più ovvia. Qui mi limito a dare un resoconto della mia crescita nella certezza spirituale. Ma posso indugiare a osservare che quanto più consideravo i meri argomenti astratti contro la cosmologia cristiana, tanto meno li stimavo. Voglio dire che, avendo trovato che l’atmosfera morale dell’Incarnazione era buon senso, guardai poi agli affermati argomenti intellettuali contro l’Incarnazione e li trovai puro nonsenso. Nel caso si pensasse che l’argomentazione soffra dell’assenza della consueta apologetica, riassumerò qui molto brevemente le mie argomentazioni e conclusioni sulla verità puramente oggettiva o scientifica della questione.

Se mi si chiede, come pura questione intellettuale, perché io creda nel Cristianesimo, posso solo rispondere: «Per la stessa ragione per cui un intelligente agnostico non crede nel Cristianesimo». Vi credo del tutto razionalmente, sulla base delle prove. Ma le prove, nel mio caso come in quello dell’intelligente agnostico, non stanno realmente in questa o quella pretesa dimostrazione; stanno in un enorme accumulo di fatti piccoli ma unanimi. Il laicista non è da biasimare perché le sue obiezioni al Cristianesimo sono disparate e persino frammentarie; è proprio tale prova frammentaria che convince la mente. Voglio dire che un uomo può ben essere meno convinto di una filosofia da quattro libri che da un libro, una battaglia, un paesaggio e un vecchio amico. Il fatto stesso che le cose siano di generi diversi accresce l’importanza del fatto che tutte convergono verso una sola conclusione. Ora, la non-cristianità dell’uomo colto medio di oggi è quasi sempre, per rendergli giustizia, fatta di queste esperienze slegate ma vive. Posso solo dire che le mie prove a favore del Cristianesimo sono dello stesso genere vivido ma vario delle sue prove contro di esso. Poiché quando guardo a queste varie verità anticristiane, scopro semplicemente che nessuna di esse è vera. Scopro che la vera corrente e la vera forza di tutti i fatti scorrono nella direzione opposta. Prendiamo dei casi. Più di un uomo moderno assennato deve aver abbandonato il Cristianesimo sotto la pressione di tre convinzioni convergenti come queste: primo, che gli uomini, per forma, struttura e sessualità, sono in fin dei conti molto simili alle bestie, una semplice varietà del regno animale; secondo, che la religione primordiale sorse dall’ignoranza e dalla paura; terzo, che i sacerdoti hanno afflitto le società di amarezza e cupezza. Quei tre argomenti anticristiani sono assai diversi; ma sono tutti del tutto logici e legittimi; e tutti convergono. La sola obiezione che si può muovere loro (io scopro) è che sono tutti falsi. Se smettete di guardare libri sulle bestie e sugli uomini, se cominciate a guardare le bestie e gli uomini, allora (se avete un po’ di umorismo o di immaginazione, un qualche senso del frenetico o del farsesco) osserverete che la cosa sorprendente non è quanto l’uomo sia simile ai bruti, ma quanto sia dissimile. È la mostruosa misura della sua divergenza che richiede una spiegazione. Che l’uomo e il bruto siano simili è, in un certo senso, un truismo; ma che, essendo così simili, debbano poi essere così follemente dissimili, questo è lo sconcerto e l’enigma. Che una scimmia abbia mani è di gran lunga meno interessante per il filosofo del fatto che, avendo mani, essa non ne faccia quasi nulla; non gioca agli aliossi né suona il violino; non scolpisce il marmo né trincia il montone. Si parla di architettura barbarica e di arte degradata. Ma gli elefanti non costruiscono colossali templi d’avorio, nemmeno in stile rococò; i cammelli non dipingono nemmeno brutti quadri, benché forniti del materiale di molti pennelli di pelo di cammello. Certi sognatori moderni dicono che le formiche e le api hanno una società superiore alla nostra. Hanno, in effetti, una civiltà; ma proprio quella verità ci ricorda soltanto che è una civiltà inferiore. Chi ha mai trovato un formicaio adorno delle statue di formiche celebri? Chi ha mai visto un alveare intagliato con le immagini di splendide regine di un tempo? No; l’abisso fra l’uomo e le altre creature può avere una spiegazione naturale, ma è un abisso. Parliamo di animali selvaggi; ma l’uomo è l’unico animale selvaggio. È l’uomo che ha rotto gli argini. Tutti gli altri animali sono animali mansueti; seguono la rude rispettabilità della tribù o del tipo. Tutti gli altri animali sono animali domestici; l’uomo soltanto è sempre indomestico, sia come libertino sia come monaco. Cosicché questa prima superficiale ragione a favore del materialismo è, semmai, una ragione a favore del suo contrario; è esattamente là dove la biologia cessa che ogni religione comincia.

It would be the same if I examined the second of the three chance rationalist arguments; the argument that all that we call divine began in some darkness and terror. When I did attempt to examine the foundations of this modern idea I simply found that there were none. Science knows nothing whatever about pre-historic man; for the excellent reason that he is pre-historic. A few professors choose to conjecture that such things as human sacrifice were once innocent and general and that they gradually dwindled; but there is no direct evidence of it, and the small amount of indirect evidence is very much the other way. In the earliest legends we have, such as the tales of Isaac and of Iphigenia, human sacrifice is not introduced as something old, but rather as something new; as a strange and frightful exception darkly demanded by the gods. History says nothing; and legends all say that the earth was kinder in its earliest time. There is no tradition of progress; but the whole human race has a tradition of the Fall. Amusingly enough, indeed, the very dissemination of this idea is used against its authenticity. Learned men literally say that this pre-historic calamity cannot be true because every race of mankind remembers it. I cannot keep pace with these paradoxes.

And if we took the third chance instance, it would be the same; the view that priests darken and embitter the world. I look at the world and simply discover that they don’t. Those countries in Europe which are still influenced by priests, are exactly the countries where there is still singing and dancing and coloured dresses and art in the open-air. Catholic doctrine and discipline may be walls; but they are the walls of a playground. Christianity is the only frame which has preserved the pleasure of Paganism. We might fancy some children playing on the flat grassy top of some tall island in the sea. So long as there was a wall round the cliff’s edge they could fling themselves into every frantic game and make the place the noisiest of nurseries. But the walls were knocked down, leaving the naked peril of the precipice. They did not fall over; but when their friends returned to them they were all huddled in terror in the centre of the island; and their song had ceased.

Thus these three facts of experience, such facts as go to make an agnostic, are, in this view, turned totally round. I am left saying, “Give me an explanation, first, of the towering eccentricity of man among the brutes; second, of the vast human tradition of some ancient happiness; third, of the partial perpetuation of such pagan joy in the countries of the Catholic Church.” One explanation, at any rate, covers all three: the theory that twice was the natural order interrupted by some explosion or revelation such as people now call “psychic.” Once Heaven came upon the earth with a power or seal called the image of God, whereby man took command of Nature; and once again (when in empire after empire men had been found wanting) Heaven came to save mankind in the awful shape of a man. This would explain why the mass of men always look backwards; and why the only corner where they in any sense look forwards is the little continent where Christ has His Church. I know it will be said that Japan has become progressive. But how can this be an answer when even in saying “Japan has become progressive,” we really only mean, “Japan has become European”? But I wish here not so much to insist on my own explanation as to insist on my original remark. I agree with the ordinary unbelieving man in the street in being guided by three or four odd facts all pointing to something; only when I came to look at the facts I always found they pointed to something else.

I have given an imaginary triad of such ordinary anti-Christian arguments; if that be too narrow a basis I will give on the spur of the moment another. These are the kind of thoughts which in combination create the impression that Christianity is something weak and diseased. First, for instance, that Jesus was a gentle creature, sheepish and unworldly, a mere ineffectual appeal to the world; second, that Christianity arose and flourished in the dark ages of ignorance, and that to these the Church would drag us back; third, that the people still strongly religious or (if you will) superstitious—such people as the Irish—are weak, unpractical, and behind the times. I only mention these ideas to affirm the same thing: that when I looked into them independently I found, not that the conclusions were unphilosophical, but simply that the facts were not facts. Instead of looking at books and pictures about the New Testament I looked at the New Testament. There I found an account, not in the least of a person with his hair parted in the middle or his hands clasped in appeal, but of an extraordinary being with lips of thunder and acts of lurid decision, flinging down tables, casting out devils, passing with the wild secrecy of the wind from mountain isolation to a sort of dreadful demagogy; a being who often acted like an angry god—and always like a god. Christ had even a literary style of his own, not to be found, I think, elsewhere; it consists of an almost furious use of the A FORTIORI. His “how much more” is piled one upon another like castle upon castle in the clouds. The diction used ABOUT Christ has been, and perhaps wisely, sweet and submissive. But the diction used by Christ is quite curiously gigantesque; it is full of camels leaping through needles and mountains hurled into the sea. Morally it is equally terrific; he called himself a sword of slaughter, and told men to buy swords if they sold their coats for them. That he used other even wilder words on the side of non-resistance greatly increases the mystery; but it also, if anything, rather increases the violence. We cannot even explain it by calling such a being insane; for insanity is usually along one consistent channel. The maniac is generally a monomaniac. Here we must remember the difficult definition of Christianity already given; Christianity is a superhuman paradox whereby two opposite passions may blaze beside each other. The one explanation of the Gospel language that does explain it, is that it is the survey of one who from some supernatural height beholds some more startling synthesis.

Lo stesso accadrebbe se esaminassi il secondo dei tre argomenti razionalisti presi a caso: l’argomento secondo cui tutto ciò che chiamiamo divino ebbe origine in qualche tenebra e in qualche terrore. Quando tentai davvero di esaminare i fondamenti di questa idea moderna, scoprii semplicemente che non ce n’erano. La scienza non sa proprio nulla dell’uomo preistorico; per l’eccellente ragione che egli è preistorico. Alcuni professori scelgono di congetturare che pratiche come il sacrificio umano fossero un tempo innocenti e generali e che a poco a poco si siano estinte; ma non ve n’è alcuna prova diretta, e il poco di prova indiretta va assai piuttosto nel senso opposto. Nelle più antiche leggende che possediamo, quali i racconti di Isacco e di Ifigenia, il sacrificio umano non è introdotto come qualcosa di antico, bensì come qualcosa di nuovo; come un’eccezione strana e spaventosa, cupamente pretesa dagli dèi. La storia non dice nulla; e le leggende dicono tutte che la terra era più benigna nel suo primo tempo. Non esiste una tradizione del progresso; ma l’intera razza umana ha una tradizione della Caduta. Cosa abbastanza divertente, in verità, la diffusione stessa di questa idea viene usata contro la sua autenticità. Uomini dotti dicono, alla lettera, che questa preistorica calamità non può essere vera proprio perché ogni razza dell’umanità la ricorda. Non riesco a tenere il passo con questi paradossi.

E se prendessimo il terzo esempio scelto a caso, sarebbe lo stesso; la tesi secondo cui i preti oscurano e inaspriscono il mondo. Io guardo il mondo e scopro semplicemente che non lo fanno. Quei paesi d’Europa che sono ancora influenzati dai preti sono esattamente i paesi dove ancora si canta e si danza e si portano vesti variopinte e si fa arte all’aria aperta. La dottrina e la disciplina cattoliche saranno pure mura; ma sono le mura di un cortile di giochi. Il Cristianesimo è l’unica cornice che abbia conservato il piacere del Paganesimo. Potremmo immaginare dei bambini che giocano sulla cima piatta ed erbosa di qualche alta isola in mezzo al mare. Finché c’era un muro intorno all’orlo del precipizio, potevano gettarsi in ogni gioco più sfrenato e fare di quel luogo la più chiassosa delle nursery. Ma le mura furono abbattute, lasciando scoperto il nudo pericolo del baratro. Non caddero giù; ma quando i loro amici tornarono da loro li trovarono tutti rannicchiati per il terrore al centro dell’isola; e il loro canto era cessato.

Così questi tre fatti dell’esperienza, i fatti stessi che concorrono a fare un agnostico, sono, in questa prospettiva, capovolti del tutto. Mi ritrovo a dire: «Datemi una spiegazione, primo, della torreggiante eccentricità dell’uomo tra i bruti; secondo, della vasta tradizione umana di un’antica felicità; terzo, della parziale perpetuazione di tale gioia pagana nei paesi della Chiesa Cattolica». Una spiegazione, in ogni caso, le copre tutte e tre: la teoria secondo cui per due volte l’ordine naturale fu interrotto da qualche esplosione o rivelazione come quelle che oggi si chiamano «psichiche». Una volta il Cielo scese sulla terra con una potenza o un sigillo detto immagine di Dio, per cui l’uomo prese il comando della Natura; e ancora una volta (quando in impero dopo impero gli uomini erano stati trovati manchevoli) il Cielo venne a salvare l’umanità nella tremenda forma di un uomo. Questo spiegherebbe perché la massa degli uomini guardi sempre indietro; e perché l’unico angolo in cui in qualche senso guardano avanti è quel piccolo continente dove Cristo ha la Sua Chiesa. So che mi si dirà che il Giappone è diventato progressista. Ma come può essere questa una risposta se persino nel dire «il Giappone è diventato progressista» noi in realtà intendiamo soltanto «il Giappone è diventato europeo»? Ma qui desidero insistere non tanto sulla mia spiegazione quanto insistere sulla mia osservazione iniziale. Concordo con l’ordinario uomo miscredente della strada nel lasciarmi guidare da tre o quattro fatti bizzarri che tutti additano qualcosa; solo che, quando venni a guardare i fatti, scoprii sempre che essi additavano qualcos’altro.

Ho fornito una triade immaginaria di simili ordinari argomenti anticristiani; se questa base fosse troppo angusta, ne fornirò lì per lì un’altra. Sono questi i generi di pensieri che, combinati, creano l’impressione che il Cristianesimo sia qualcosa di debole e malato. Primo, per esempio, che Gesù fosse una creatura mite, pecorile e non mondana, un mero e inefficace appello al mondo; secondo, che il Cristianesimo sorse e fiorì nei secoli bui dell’ignoranza, e che a questi la Chiesa vorrebbe trascinarci indietro; terzo, che le genti ancora fortemente religiose o (se volete) superstiziose — genti come gli Irlandesi — siano deboli, poco pratiche e in ritardo sui tempi. Menziono queste idee soltanto per affermare la medesima cosa: che, quando le esaminai in modo indipendente, trovai, non che le conclusioni fossero antifilosofiche, ma semplicemente che i fatti non erano fatti. Invece di guardare libri e quadri sul Nuovo Testamento, guardai il Nuovo Testamento. Vi trovai un resoconto, non di certo di una persona con i capelli spartiti nel mezzo o le mani giunte in preghiera, bensì di un essere straordinario dalle labbra di tuono e dagli atti di lurida risolutezza, che rovescia le tavole, scaccia i demòni, passa con la selvaggia segretezza del vento dall’isolamento della montagna a una sorta di terribile demagogia; un essere che spesso agiva come un dio adirato — e sempre come un dio. Cristo aveva perfino uno stile letterario tutto suo, che non si trova, credo, altrove; consiste in un uso quasi furioso dell’A FORTIORI. Il suo «quanto più» è ammucchiato l’uno sull’altro come castello su castello tra le nuvole. Il linguaggio usato INTORNO a Cristo è stato, e forse saggiamente, dolce e sottomesso. Ma il linguaggio usato da Cristo è, cosa assai curiosa, gigantesco; è pieno di cammelli che saltano attraverso la cruna degli aghi e di montagne scagliate in mare. Moralmente è ugualmente terrificante; egli chiamò se stesso una spada di strage, e disse agli uomini di comprare spade se per esse avessero venduto il mantello. Che egli abbia usato altre parole ancor più selvagge in favore della non-resistenza accresce grandemente il mistero; ma, semmai, accresce piuttosto anche la violenza. Non possiamo neppure spiegarlo definendo folle un simile essere; poiché la follia scorre di solito lungo un unico canale coerente. Il maniaco è generalmente un monomaniaco. Qui dobbiamo ricordare la difficile definizione del Cristianesimo già data; il Cristianesimo è un sovrumano paradosso per cui due passioni opposte possono ardere l’una accanto all’altra. L’unica spiegazione del linguaggio del Vangelo che davvero lo spieghi è che si tratta della vista d’un essere che da qualche altezza soprannaturale contempla una sintesi ancor più sconvolgente.

I take in order the next instance offered: the idea that Christianity belongs to the Dark Ages. Here I did not satisfy myself with reading modern generalisations; I read a little history. And in history I found that Christianity, so far from belonging to the Dark Ages, was the one path across the Dark Ages that was not dark. It was a shining bridge connecting two shining civilizations. If any one says that the faith arose in ignorance and savagery the answer is simple: it didn’t. It arose in the Mediterranean civilization in the full summer of the Roman Empire. The world was swarming with sceptics, and pantheism was as plain as the sun, when Constantine nailed the cross to the mast. It is perfectly true that afterwards the ship sank; but it is far more extraordinary that the ship came up again: repainted and glittering, with the cross still at the top. This is the amazing thing the religion did: it turned a sunken ship into a submarine. The ark lived under the load of waters; after being buried under the debris of dynasties and clans, we arose and remembered Rome. If our faith had been a mere fad of the fading empire, fad would have followed fad in the twilight, and if the civilization ever re-emerged (and many such have never re-emerged) it would have been under some new barbaric flag. But the Christian Church was the last life of the old society and was also the first life of the new. She took the people who were forgetting how to make an arch and she taught them to invent the Gothic arch. In a word, the most absurd thing that could be said of the Church is the thing we have all heard said of it. How can we say that the Church wishes to bring us back into the Dark Ages? The Church was the only thing that ever brought us out of them.

I added in this second trinity of objections an idle instance taken from those who feel such people as the Irish to be weakened or made stagnant by superstition. I only added it because this is a peculiar case of a statement of fact that turns out to be a statement of falsehood. It is constantly said of the Irish that they are impractical. But if we refrain for a moment from looking at what is said about them and look at what is DONE about them, we shall see that the Irish are not only practical, but quite painfully successful. The poverty of their country, the minority of their members are simply the conditions under which they were asked to work; but no other group in the British Empire has done so much with such conditions. The Nationalists were the only minority that ever succeeded in twisting the whole British Parliament sharply out of its path. The Irish peasants are the only poor men in these islands who have forced their masters to disgorge. These people, whom we call priest-ridden, are the only Britons who will not be squire-ridden. And when I came to look at the actual Irish character, the case was the same. Irishmen are best at the specially HARD professions—the trades of iron, the lawyer, and the soldier. In all these cases, therefore, I came back to the same conclusion: the sceptic was quite right to go by the facts, only he had not looked at the facts. The sceptic is too credulous; he believes in newspapers or even in encyclopedias. Again the three questions left me with three very antagonistic questions. The average sceptic wanted to know how I explained the namby-pamby note in the Gospel, the connection of the creed with mediaeval darkness and the political impracticability of the Celtic Christians. But I wanted to ask, and to ask with an earnestness amounting to urgency, “What is this incomparable energy which appears first in one walking the earth like a living judgment and this energy which can die with a dying civilization and yet force it to a resurrection from the dead; this energy which last of all can inflame a bankrupt peasantry with so fixed a faith in justice that they get what they ask, while others go empty away; so that the most helpless island of the Empire can actually help itself?”

There is an answer: it is an answer to say that the energy is truly from outside the world; that it is psychic, or at least one of the results of a real psychical disturbance. The highest gratitude and respect are due to the great human civilizations such as the old Egyptian or the existing Chinese. Nevertheless it is no injustice for them to say that only modern Europe has exhibited incessantly a power of self-renewal recurring often at the shortest intervals and descending to the smallest facts of building or costume. All other societies die finally and with dignity. We die daily. We are always being born again with almost indecent obstetrics. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that there is in historic Christendom a sort of unnatural life: it could be explained as a supernatural life. It could be explained as an awful galvanic life working in what would have been a corpse. For our civilization OUGHT to have died, by all parallels, by all sociological probability, in the Ragnarok of the end of Rome. That is the weird inspiration of our estate: you and I have no business to be here at all. We are all REVENANTS; all living Christians are dead pagans walking about. Just as Europe was about to be gathered in silence to Assyria and Babylon, something entered into its body. And Europe has had a strange life— it is not too much to say that it has had the JUMPS—ever since.

I have dealt at length with such typical triads of doubt in order to convey the main contention—that my own case for Christianity is rational; but it is not simple. It is an accumulation of varied facts, like the attitude of the ordinary agnostic. But the ordinary agnostic has got his facts all wrong. He is a non-believer for a multitude of reasons; but they are untrue reasons. He doubts because the Middle Ages were barbaric, but they weren’t; because Darwinism is demonstrated, but it isn’t; because miracles do not happen, but they do; because monks were lazy, but they were very industrious; because nuns are unhappy, but they are particularly cheerful; because Christian art was sad and pale, but it was picked out in peculiarly bright colours and gay with gold; because modern science is moving away from the supernatural, but it isn’t, it is moving towards the supernatural with the rapidity of a railway train.

Prendo in ordine l’istanza successiva che mi viene offerta: l’idea che il Cristianesimo appartenga ai Secoli Bui. Qui non mi accontentai di leggere generalizzazioni moderne; lessi un po’ di storia. E nella storia scoprii che il Cristianesimo, lungi dall’appartenere ai Secoli Bui, era l’unico sentiero attraverso i Secoli Bui che non fosse buio. Era un ponte splendente che congiungeva due splendenti civiltà. Se qualcuno dice che la fede sorse nell’ignoranza e nella barbarie, la risposta è semplice: non è così. Sorse nella civiltà mediterranea, in piena estate dell’Impero Romano. Il mondo brulicava di scettici, e il panteismo era chiaro come il sole, quando Costantino inchiodò la croce all’albero maestro. È perfettamente vero che in seguito la nave affondò; ma è assai più straordinario che la nave sia riemersa: ridipinta e scintillante, con la croce ancora in cima. Questa è la cosa prodigiosa che compì la religione: trasformò una nave affondata in un sottomarino. L’arca visse sotto il peso delle acque; dopo essere stati sepolti sotto le macerie di dinastie e clan, risorgemmo e ci ricordammo di Roma. Se la nostra fede fosse stata una semplice moda dell’impero morente, moda avrebbe seguito moda nel crepuscolo, e se mai la civiltà fosse riemersa (e molte di esse non sono mai riemerse) lo avrebbe fatto sotto qualche nuova barbarica bandiera. Ma la Chiesa cristiana fu l’ultima vita della vecchia società e fu anche la prima vita della nuova. Prese la gente che stava dimenticando come si costruisce un arco e le insegnò a inventare l’arco gotico. In una parola, la cosa più assurda che si possa dire della Chiesa è la cosa che tutti abbiamo sentito dire di essa. Come possiamo affermare che la Chiesa desidera ricondurci nei Secoli Bui? La Chiesa fu l’unica cosa che mai ce ne trasse fuori.

In questa seconda triade di obiezioni aggiungevo un’istanza oziosa, tratta da coloro che sentono un popolo come quello irlandese indebolito o reso stagnante dalla superstizione. La aggiungevo soltanto perché è un caso peculiare di un’affermazione di fatto che si rivela un’affermazione di falsità. Si dice di continuo degli irlandesi che sono impratici. Ma se ci asteniamo per un momento dal guardare a ciò che si dice di loro e guardiamo a ciò che si FA a loro, vedremo che gli irlandesi non solo sono pratici, ma di un successo quasi doloroso. La povertà del loro paese, la minoranza dei loro membri sono semplicemente le condizioni entro cui è stato loro chiesto di operare; ma nessun altro gruppo dell’Impero britannico ha fatto tanto con simili condizioni. I nazionalisti furono l’unica minoranza che mai riuscì a piegare bruscamente l’intero Parlamento britannico fuori dalla propria strada. I contadini irlandesi sono gli unici poveri di queste isole che abbiano costretto i loro padroni a restituire il maltolto. Questa gente, che noi chiamiamo dominata dai preti, sono gli unici britanni che non si lasceranno dominare dai signorotti. E quando venni a considerare il carattere irlandese reale, il caso era lo stesso. Gli irlandesi riescono al meglio nelle professioni specialmente DURE: i mestieri del ferro, l’avvocato e il soldato. In tutti questi casi, dunque, tornai alla medesima conclusione: lo scettico aveva perfettamente ragione ad attenersi ai fatti, solo che non aveva guardato i fatti. Lo scettico è troppo credulo; crede ai giornali o persino alle enciclopedie. Di nuovo, le tre questioni mi lasciarono con tre questioni assai antagoniste. Lo scettico medio voleva sapere come spiegassi la nota sdolcinata del Vangelo, la connessione del credo con l’oscurità medievale e l’impraticabilità politica dei cristiani celti. Ma io volevo domandare, e domandare con una serietà che rasentava l’urgenza: «Cos’è questa incomparabile energia che appare dapprima in uno che cammina sulla terra come un giudizio vivente, e questa energia che può morire con una civiltà morente e nondimeno costringerla a una resurrezione dai morti; questa energia che, ultima cosa fra tutte, può infiammare un contadiname in rovina con una fede nella giustizia così salda che essi ottengono ciò che chiedono, mentre altri se ne vanno a mani vuote; sicché la più impotente isola dell’Impero può davvero aiutare se stessa?»

C’è una risposta: è una risposta dire che l’energia proviene veramente dal di fuori del mondo; che è psichica, o almeno uno degli esiti di un reale turbamento psichico. La più alta gratitudine e il più alto rispetto sono dovuti alle grandi civiltà umane, come l’antica egizia o la cinese tuttora esistente. Nondimeno non è ingiustizia dire di esse che soltanto l’Europa moderna ha esibito incessantemente un potere di rinnovamento di sé, ricorrente spesso agli intervalli più brevi e disceso fino ai fatti più minuti della costruzione o del costume. Tutte le altre società muoiono infine e con dignità. Noi moriamo ogni giorno. Veniamo sempre partoriti di nuovo con un’ostetricia quasi indecente. Non è quasi esagerato dire che nella cristianità storica vi è una sorta di vita innaturale: la si potrebbe spiegare come una vita soprannaturale. La si potrebbe spiegare come una tremenda vita galvanica che opera in ciò che sarebbe stato un cadavere. Poiché la nostra civiltà AVREBBE DOVUTO morire, per ogni parallelo, per ogni probabilità sociologica, nel Ragnarök della fine di Roma. Ecco la bizzarra ispirazione della nostra condizione: tu e io non abbiamo alcun diritto di trovarci affatto qui. Siamo tutti dei REVENANT; tutti i cristiani viventi sono pagani morti che vanno in giro. Proprio mentre l’Europa stava per essere raccolta nel silenzio presso l’Assiria e Babilonia, qualcosa entrò nel suo corpo. E da allora l’Europa ha avuto una strana vita: non è troppo dire che da allora ha avuto i SUSSULTI.

Ho trattato a lungo simili triadi tipiche di dubbio per trasmettere la tesi principale: che la mia stessa argomentazione a favore del Cristianesimo è razionale, ma non è semplice. È un accumulo di fatti svariati, come l’atteggiamento dell’agnostico ordinario. Ma l’agnostico ordinario ha tutti i suoi fatti sbagliati. Egli è un non credente per una moltitudine di ragioni; ma sono ragioni non vere. Dubita perché il Medioevo era barbaro, ma non lo era; perché il darwinismo è dimostrato, ma non lo è; perché i miracoli non accadono, ma accadono; perché i monaci erano pigri, ma erano molto industriosi; perché le monache sono infelici, ma sono particolarmente allegre; perché l’arte cristiana era triste e pallida, ma era lumeggiata di colori peculiarmente vivaci e gaia d’oro; perché la scienza moderna si sta allontanando dal soprannaturale, ma non è così, si sta muovendo verso il soprannaturale con la rapidità di un treno.

But among these million facts all flowing one way there is, of course, one question sufficiently solid and separate to be treated briefly, but by itself; I mean the objective occurrence of the supernatural. In another chapter I have indicated the fallacy of the ordinary supposition that the world must be impersonal because it is orderly. A person is just as likely to desire an orderly thing as a disorderly thing. But my own positive conviction that personal creation is more conceivable than material fate, is, I admit, in a sense, undiscussable. I will not call it a faith or an intuition, for those words are mixed up with mere emotion, it is strictly an intellectual conviction; but it is a PRIMARY intellectual conviction like the certainty of self of the good of living. Any one who likes, therefore, may call my belief in God merely mystical; the phrase is not worth fighting about. But my belief that miracles have happened in human history is not a mystical belief at all; I believe in them upon human evidences as I do in the discovery of America. Upon this point there is a simple logical fact that only requires to be stated and cleared up. Somehow or other an extraordinary idea has arisen that the disbelievers in miracles consider them coldly and fairly, while believers in miracles accept them only in connection with some dogma. The fact is quite the other way. The believers in miracles accept them (rightly or wrongly) because they have evidence for them. The disbelievers in miracles deny them (rightly or wrongly) because they have a doctrine against them. The open, obvious, democratic thing is to believe an old apple-woman when she bears testimony to a miracle, just as you believe an old apple-woman when she bears testimony to a murder. The plain, popular course is to trust the peasant’s word about the ghost exactly as far as you trust the peasant’s word about the landlord. Being a peasant he will probably have a great deal of healthy agnosticism about both. Still you could fill the British Museum with evidence uttered by the peasant, and given in favour of the ghost. If it comes to human testimony there is a choking cataract of human testimony in favour of the supernatural. If you reject it, you can only mean one of two things. You reject the peasant’s story about the ghost either because the man is a peasant or because the story is a ghost story. That is, you either deny the main principle of democracy, or you affirm the main principle of materialism—the abstract impossibility of miracle. You have a perfect right to do so; but in that case you are the dogmatist. It is we Christians who accept all actual evidence— it is you rationalists who refuse actual evidence being constrained to do so by your creed. But I am not constrained by any creed in the matter, and looking impartially into certain miracles of mediaeval and modern times, I have come to the conclusion that they occurred. All argument against these plain facts is always argument in a circle. If I say, “Mediaeval documents attest certain miracles as much as they attest certain battles,” they answer, “But mediaevals were superstitious”; if I want to know in what they were superstitious, the only ultimate answer is that they believed in the miracles. If I say “a peasant saw a ghost,” I am told, “But peasants are so credulous.” If I ask, “Why credulous?” the only answer is—that they see ghosts. Iceland is impossible because only stupid sailors have seen it; and the sailors are only stupid because they say they have seen Iceland. It is only fair to add that there is another argument that the unbeliever may rationally use against miracles, though he himself generally forgets to use it.

He may say that there has been in many miraculous stories a notion of spiritual preparation and acceptance: in short, that the miracle could only come to him who believed in it. It may be so, and if it is so how are we to test it? If we are inquiring whether certain results follow faith, it is useless to repeat wearily that (if they happen) they do follow faith. If faith is one of the conditions, those without faith have a most healthy right to laugh. But they have no right to judge. Being a believer may be, if you like, as bad as being drunk; still if we were extracting psychological facts from drunkards, it would be absurd to be always taunting them with having been drunk. Suppose we were investigating whether angry men really saw a red mist before their eyes. Suppose sixty excellent householders swore that when angry they had seen this crimson cloud: surely it would be absurd to answer “Oh, but you admit you were angry at the time.” They might reasonably rejoin (in a stentorian chorus), “How the blazes could we discover, without being angry, whether angry people see red?” So the saints and ascetics might rationally reply, “Suppose that the question is whether believers can see visions—even then, if you are interested in visions it is no point to object to believers.” You are still arguing in a circle— in that old mad circle with which this book began.

The question of whether miracles ever occur is a question of common sense and of ordinary historical imagination: not of any final physical experiment. One may here surely dismiss that quite brainless piece of pedantry which talks about the need for “scientific conditions” in connection with alleged spiritual phenomena. If we are asking whether a dead soul can communicate with a living it is ludicrous to insist that it shall be under conditions in which no two living souls in their senses would seriously communicate with each other. The fact that ghosts prefer darkness no more disproves the existence of ghosts than the fact that lovers prefer darkness disproves the existence of love. If you choose to say, “I will believe that Miss Brown called her fiance a periwinkle or, any other endearing term, if she will repeat the word before seventeen psychologists,” then I shall reply, “Very well, if those are your conditions, you will never get the truth, for she certainly will not say it.” It is just as unscientific as it is unphilosophical to be surprised that in an unsympathetic atmosphere certain extraordinary sympathies do not arise. It is as if I said that I could not tell if there was a fog because the air was not clear enough; or as if I insisted on perfect sunlight in order to see a solar eclipse.

Ma fra questo milione di fatti che scorrono tutti nella medesima direzione ve n’è, si capisce, uno abbastanza solido e distinto da dover essere trattato brevemente, ma a sé stante: intendo l’obiettivo verificarsi del soprannaturale. In un altro capitolo ho segnalato la fallacia dell’usuale supposizione che il mondo debba essere impersonale perché è ordinato. Una persona è propensa a desiderare una cosa ordinata esattamente quanto una cosa disordinata. Ma la mia stessa positiva convinzione che la creazione personale sia più concepibile del fato materiale è, lo ammetto, in un certo senso indiscutibile. Non la chiamerò fede né intuizione, perché quelle parole si mescolano alla pura emozione: è rigorosamente una convinzione intellettuale; ma è una convinzione intellettuale PRIMARIA, come la certezza del sé o del bene del vivere. Chiunque lo voglia, dunque, può pure definire la mia fede in Dio semplicemente mistica; la frase non merita che ci si azzuffi. Ma la mia convinzione che i miracoli siano avvenuti nella storia umana non è affatto una convinzione mistica; io vi credo su prove umane, come credo alla scoperta dell’America. Su questo punto c’è un semplice fatto logico che chiede soltanto di essere enunciato e chiarito. In un modo o nell’altro è sorta la straordinaria idea che chi non crede ai miracoli li consideri con freddezza e imparzialità, mentre chi vi crede li accetti solo in connessione con qualche dogma. Il fatto sta esattamente all’opposto. Coloro che credono ai miracoli li accettano (a torto o a ragione) perché ne hanno le prove. Coloro che non credono ai miracoli li negano (a torto o a ragione) perché hanno una dottrina che vi si oppone. La cosa aperta, ovvia, democratica è credere a una vecchia venditrice di mele quando testimonia di un miracolo, esattamente come le si crede quando testimonia di un assassinio. Il procedimento schietto e popolare è fidarsi della parola del contadino intorno al fantasma esattamente quanto ci si fida della sua parola intorno al padrone di casa. Essendo un contadino, egli nutrirà probabilmente una buona dose di sano agnosticismo verso entrambi. Eppure si potrebbe riempire il British Museum con le testimonianze pronunciate dai contadini a favore del fantasma. Se si tratta di testimonianza umana, c’è una cateratta soffocante di testimonianza umana a favore del soprannaturale. Se la si respinge, si può intendere soltanto una di due cose. Si respinge il racconto del contadino sul fantasma o perché l’uomo è un contadino, o perché il racconto è un racconto di fantasmi. Ossia: o si nega il principio fondamentale della democrazia, oppure si afferma il principio fondamentale del materialismo, cioè l’astratta impossibilità del miracolo. Si ha pieno diritto di farlo; ma in tal caso il dogmatico siete voi. Siamo noi cristiani ad accettare ogni prova reale; siete voi razionalisti a rifiutare le prove reali, costretti a ciò dal vostro credo. Ma io non sono costretto da alcun credo in questa materia, e guardando con imparzialità a certi miracoli di tempi medievali e moderni sono giunto alla conclusione che essi avvennero. Ogni argomento contro questi semplici fatti è sempre un argomento circolare. Se dico: «I documenti medievali attestano certi miracoli tanto quanto attestano certe battaglie», mi rispondono: «Ma i medievali erano superstiziosi»; se voglio sapere in che cosa erano superstiziosi, l’unica risposta ultima è che credevano nei miracoli. Se dico: «Un contadino ha visto un fantasma», mi si dice: «Ma i contadini sono così creduloni». Se domando: «Perché creduloni?», l’unica risposta è che vedono fantasmi. L’Islanda è impossibile perché soltanto marinai stupidi l’hanno vista; e i marinai sono stupidi soltanto perché dicono di aver visto l’Islanda. È giusto aggiungere che c’è un altro argomento che l’incredulo può razionalmente usare contro i miracoli, benché egli stesso di solito dimentichi di usarlo.

Egli può dire che in molte storie di miracoli era presente una nozione di preparazione e di accettazione spirituale: insomma, che il miracolo poteva venire soltanto a chi vi credeva. Può darsi che sia così; e se è così, come potremo verificarlo? Se stiamo indagando se certi risultati seguono alla fede, è inutile ripetere stancamente che (nel caso avvengano) essi seguono alla fede. Se la fede è una delle condizioni, chi è privo di fede ha il più sano dei diritti di ridere. Ma non ha alcun diritto di giudicare. Essere credenti sarà magari, se volete, brutto quanto essere ubriachi; eppure, se stessimo estraendo fatti psicologici dagli ubriachi, sarebbe assurdo continuare a rinfacciar loro di essere stati ubriachi. Supponiamo di indagare se gli uomini in collera vedano davvero una nebbia rossa dinanzi agli occhi. Supponiamo che sessanta eccellenti capifamiglia giurino che, adirati, hanno visto questa nube cremisi: sarebbe certo assurdo rispondere: «Oh, ma voi ammettete che in quel momento eravate in collera». Essi potrebbero ragionevolmente ribattere (in un coro stentoreo): «Come diamine potremmo scoprire, senza essere in collera, se le persone in collera vedono rosso?». Così i santi e gli asceti potrebbero razionalmente replicare: «Supponiamo che la questione sia se i credenti possano avere visioni: anche allora, se v’interessate delle visioni, non è il caso di obiettare che siano credenti». State ancora ragionando in cerchio, in quell’antico cerchio folle con cui questo libro è cominciato.

La questione se i miracoli avvengano mai è una questione di buon senso e di ordinaria immaginazione storica: non di alcun esperimento fisico definitivo. Si può qui senz’altro liquidare quella pedanteria del tutto cervellotica che parla della necessità di «condizioni scientifiche» a proposito dei presunti fenomeni spirituali. Se domandiamo se un’anima morta possa comunicare con una vivente, è ridicolo insistere che ciò avvenga in condizioni nelle quali due anime viventi in senno non comunicherebbero mai seriamente l’una con l’altra. Il fatto che i fantasmi preferiscano l’oscurità non smentisce l’esistenza dei fantasmi più di quanto il fatto che gli innamorati preferiscano l’oscurità smentisca l’esistenza dell’amore. Se scegliete di dire: «Crederò che la signorina Brown abbia chiamato il suo fidanzato “pervinca”, o con qualsiasi altro appellativo affettuoso, purché ripeta la parola davanti a diciassette psicologi», allora io risponderò: «Benissimo: se queste sono le vostre condizioni, non giungerete mai alla verità, perché di certo lei non lo dirà». È tanto antiscientifico quanto antifilosofico stupirsi che in un’atmosfera priva di simpatia non sorgano certe straordinarie simpatie. È come se dicessi di non poter capire se ci fosse nebbia perché l’aria non era abbastanza limpida; o come se pretendessi la perfetta luce del sole per osservare un’eclissi solare.

As a common-sense conclusion, such as those to which we come about sex or about midnight (well knowing that many details must in their own nature be concealed) I conclude that miracles do happen. I am forced to it by a conspiracy of facts: the fact that the men who encounter elves or angels are not the mystics and the morbid dreamers, but fishermen, farmers, and all men at once coarse and cautious; the fact that we all know men who testify to spiritualistic incidents but are not spiritualists, the fact that science itself admits such things more and more every day. Science will even admit the Ascension if you call it Levitation, and will very likely admit the Resurrection when it has thought of another word for it. I suggest the Regalvanisation. But the strongest of all is the dilemma above mentioned, that these supernatural things are never denied except on the basis either of anti-democracy or of materialist dogmatism—I may say materialist mysticism. The sceptic always takes one of the two positions; either an ordinary man need not be believed, or an extraordinary event must not be believed. For I hope we may dismiss the argument against wonders attempted in the mere recapitulation of frauds, of swindling mediums or trick miracles. That is not an argument at all, good or bad. A false ghost disproves the reality of ghosts exactly as much as a forged banknote disproves the existence of the Bank of England—if anything, it proves its existence.

Given this conviction that the spiritual phenomena do occur (my evidence for which is complex but rational), we then collide with one of the worst mental evils of the age. The greatest disaster of the nineteenth century was this: that men began to use the word “spiritual” as the same as the word “good.” They thought that to grow in refinement and uncorporeality was to grow in virtue. When scientific evolution was announced, some feared that it would encourage mere animality. It did worse: it encouraged mere spirituality. It taught men to think that so long as they were passing from the ape they were going to the angel. But you can pass from the ape and go to the devil. A man of genius, very typical of that time of bewilderment, expressed it perfectly. Benjamin Disraeli was right when he said he was on the side of the angels. He was indeed; he was on the side of the fallen angels. He was not on the side of any mere appetite or animal brutality; but he was on the side of all the imperialism of the princes of the abyss; he was on the side of arrogance and mystery, and contempt of all obvious good. Between this sunken pride and the towering humilities of heaven there are, one must suppose, spirits of shapes and sizes. Man, in encountering them, must make much the same mistakes that he makes in encountering any other varied types in any other distant continent. It must be hard at first to know who is supreme and who is subordinate. If a shade arose from the under world, and stared at Piccadilly, that shade would not quite understand the idea of an ordinary closed carriage. He would suppose that the coachman on the box was a triumphant conqueror, dragging behind him a kicking and imprisoned captive. So, if we see spiritual facts for the first time, we may mistake who is uppermost. It is not enough to find the gods; they are obvious; we must find God, the real chief of the gods. We must have a long historic experience in supernatural phenomena— in order to discover which are really natural. In this light I find the history of Christianity, and even of its Hebrew origins, quite practical and clear. It does not trouble me to be told that the Hebrew god was one among many. I know he was, without any research to tell me so. Jehovah and Baal looked equally important, just as the sun and the moon looked the same size. It is only slowly that we learn that the sun is immeasurably our master, and the small moon only our satellite. Believing that there is a world of spirits, I shall walk in it as I do in the world of men, looking for the thing that I like and think good. Just as I should seek in a desert for clean water, or toil at the North Pole to make a comfortable fire, so I shall search the land of void and vision until I find something fresh like water, and comforting like fire; until I find some place in eternity, where I am literally at home. And there is only one such place to be found.

I have now said enough to show (to any one to whom such an explanation is essential) that I have in the ordinary arena of apologetics, a ground of belief. In pure records of experiment (if these be taken democratically without contempt or favour) there is evidence first, that miracles happen, and second that the nobler miracles belong to our tradition. But I will not pretend that this curt discussion is my real reason for accepting Christianity instead of taking the moral good of Christianity as I should take it out of Confucianism.

I have another far more solid and central ground for submitting to it as a faith, instead of merely picking up hints from it as a scheme. And that is this: that the Christian Church in its practical relation to my soul is a living teacher, not a dead one. It not only certainly taught me yesterday, but will almost certainly teach me to-morrow. Once I saw suddenly the meaning of the shape of the cross; some day I may see suddenly the meaning of the shape of the mitre. One fine morning I saw why windows were pointed; some fine morning I may see why priests were shaven. Plato has told you a truth; but Plato is dead. Shakespeare has startled you with an image; but Shakespeare will not startle you with any more. But imagine what it would be to live with such men still living, to know that Plato might break out with an original lecture to-morrow, or that at any moment Shakespeare might shatter everything with a single song. The man who lives in contact with what he believes to be a living Church is a man always expecting to meet Plato and Shakespeare to-morrow at breakfast. He is always expecting to see some truth that he has never seen before. There is one only other parallel to this position; and that is the parallel of the life in which we all began. When your father told you, walking about the garden, that bees stung or that roses smelt sweet, you did not talk of taking the best out of his philosophy. When the bees stung you, you did not call it an entertaining coincidence. When the rose smelt sweet you did not say “My father is a rude, barbaric symbol, enshrining (perhaps unconsciously) the deep delicate truths that flowers smell.” No: you believed your father, because you had found him to be a living fountain of facts, a thing that really knew more than you; a thing that would tell you truth to-morrow, as well as to-day. And if this was true of your father, it was even truer of your mother; at least it was true of mine, to whom this book is dedicated. Now, when society is in a rather futile fuss about the subjection of women, will no one say how much every man owes to the tyranny and privilege of women, to the fact that they alone rule education until education becomes futile: for a boy is only sent to be taught at school when it is too late to teach him anything. The real thing has been done already, and thank God it is nearly always done by women. Every man is womanised, merely by being born. They talk of the masculine woman; but every man is a feminised man. And if ever men walk to Westminster to protest against this female privilege, I shall not join their procession.

Come conclusione di buon senso, del genere di quelle a cui approdiamo a proposito del sesso o della mezzanotte (ben sapendo che molti particolari devono per loro stessa natura restare celati), concludo che i miracoli accadono davvero. Vi sono costretto da una cospirazione di fatti: il fatto che gli uomini i quali s’imbattono in elfi o in angeli non sono i mistici né i sognatori morbosi, ma pescatori, contadini, e ogni sorta d’uomini a un tempo rozzi e prudenti; il fatto che tutti conosciamo uomini i quali testimoniano di episodi spiritici pur non essendo spiritisti; il fatto che la scienza stessa ammette simili cose ogni giorno di più. La scienza ammetterà persino l’Ascensione, se la chiamate Levitazione, e con ogni probabilità ammetterà la Resurrezione non appena avrà escogitato un altro nome per essa. Io propongo Rigalvanizzazione. Ma il più forte di tutti è il dilemma sopra menzionato, ossia che queste cose soprannaturali non vengono mai negate se non in base o all’anti-democrazia, o al dogmatismo materialista — potrei dire al misticismo materialista. Lo scettico assume sempre una delle due posizioni: o un uomo comune non merita d’essere creduto, oppure un evento straordinario non deve essere creduto. Poiché spero che possiamo liquidare l’argomento contro i prodigi tentato nella mera enumerazione di frodi, di medium truffaldini o di miracoli da baraccone. Quello non è affatto un argomento, buono o cattivo che sia. Un falso fantasma confuta la realtà dei fantasmi esattamente quanto una banconota contraffatta confuta l’esistenza della Banca d’Inghilterra — semmai, ne prova l’esistenza.

Data questa convinzione che i fenomeni spirituali avvengono davvero (le mie prove al riguardo sono complesse ma razionali), ci scontriamo allora con uno dei peggiori mali mentali dell’epoca. Il più grande disastro del diciannovesimo secolo fu questo: che gli uomini cominciarono a usare la parola «spirituale» come sinonimo della parola «buono». Credettero che crescere in raffinatezza e in incorporeità fosse crescere in virtù. Quando fu annunciata l’evoluzione scientifica, alcuni temettero che essa avrebbe incoraggiato la mera animalità. Fece di peggio: incoraggiò la mera spiritualità. Insegnò agli uomini a pensare che, fintanto che si allontanavano dalla scimmia, si dirigevano verso l’angelo. Ma dalla scimmia ci si può allontanare per andare al diavolo. Un uomo di genio, assai tipico di quel tempo di smarrimento, lo espresse alla perfezione. Benjamin Disraeli aveva ragione quando disse d’essere dalla parte degli angeli. Lo era davvero; era dalla parte degli angeli caduti. Non era dalla parte di un qualche mero appetito o brutalità animale; ma era dalla parte di tutto l’imperialismo dei principi dell’abisso; era dalla parte dell’arroganza e del mistero, e del disprezzo di ogni bene evidente. Fra questo orgoglio sprofondato e le torreggianti umiltà del cielo vi sono, bisogna supporre, spiriti di forme e dimensioni diverse. L’uomo, incontrandoli, deve commettere pressappoco gli stessi errori che commette incontrando qualunque altra varietà di tipi in qualunque altro continente lontano. Dev’essere difficile, in un primo tempo, sapere chi sia il superiore e chi il subordinato. Se un’ombra sorgesse dal mondo di sotto, e fissasse Piccadilly, quell’ombra non comprenderebbe bene l’idea di un’ordinaria carrozza chiusa. Supporrebbe che il cocchiere a cassetta fosse un trionfante conquistatore, il quale si trascina dietro un prigioniero scalciante e recluso. Così, se vediamo per la prima volta i fatti spirituali, possiamo sbagliarci su chi stia in cima. Non basta trovare gli dèi; essi sono evidenti; dobbiamo trovare Dio, il vero capo degli dèi. Dobbiamo avere una lunga esperienza storica dei fenomeni soprannaturali — per scoprire quali siano realmente naturali. In questa luce trovo la storia del Cristianesimo, e persino delle sue origini ebraiche, del tutto pratica e chiara. Non mi turba sentirmi dire che il dio ebraico era uno fra molti. So che lo era, senza che alcuna ricerca me lo dica. Jehovah e Baal apparivano ugualmente importanti, proprio come il sole e la luna apparivano della stessa grandezza. Solo lentamente impariamo che il sole è incommensurabilmente il nostro signore, e la piccola luna soltanto il nostro satellite. Credendo che esista un mondo di spiriti, vi camminerò come faccio nel mondo degli uomini, cercando la cosa che mi piace e che ritengo buona. Proprio come cercherei in un deserto acqua limpida, o mi affannerei al Polo Nord per accendere un confortevole fuoco, così frugherò la terra del vuoto e della visione finché non troverò qualcosa di fresco come l’acqua, e di confortante come il fuoco; finché non troverò un luogo nell’eternità, dove io sia, alla lettera, a casa mia. E un solo luogo simile si può trovare.

Ho detto ormai abbastanza per mostrare (a chiunque, per lui, una tale spiegazione sia essenziale) che possiedo, nell’ordinaria arena dell’apologetica, un fondamento di fede. Nei puri resoconti d’esperienza (se presi democraticamente, senza disprezzo né favore) vi è la prova, primo, che i miracoli accadono, e secondo che i miracoli più nobili appartengono alla nostra tradizione. Ma non pretenderò che questa spiccia discussione sia la mia vera ragione per accettare il Cristianesimo anziché prendere il bene morale del Cristianesimo come lo prenderei dal Confucianesimo.

Ho un altro fondamento, assai più solido e centrale, per sottomettermi a esso come a una fede, anziché limitarmi a raccogliere spunti da esso come da uno schema. Ed è questo: che la Chiesa cristiana nel suo rapporto pratico con la mia anima è un maestro vivo, non un maestro morto. Non solo di certo mi ha insegnato ieri, ma quasi di certo m’insegnerà domani. Una volta vidi d’un tratto il significato della forma della croce; un giorno potrò vedere d’un tratto il significato della forma della mitra. Un bel mattino vidi perché le finestre erano a sesto acuto; un bel mattino potrò vedere perché i preti erano rasati. Platone ti ha detto una verità; ma Platone è morto. Shakespeare ti ha sorpreso con un’immagine; ma Shakespeare non ti sorprenderà più. Ma immagina che cosa sarebbe vivere con uomini simili ancora vivi, sapere che Platone potrebbe prorompere in una conferenza inedita domani, o che in qualsiasi momento Shakespeare potrebbe mandare in frantumi ogni cosa con un’unica canzone. L’uomo che vive a contatto con ciò che crede essere una Chiesa vivente è un uomo che sempre si aspetta d’incontrare Platone e Shakespeare domani a colazione. Sempre si aspetta di vedere qualche verità che non ha mai visto prima. Vi è un solo altro parallelo a questa posizione; ed è il parallelo della vita in cui tutti abbiamo cominciato. Quando tuo padre ti diceva, passeggiando per il giardino, che le api pungono o che le rose profumano dolcemente, tu non parlavi di trarre il meglio dalla sua filosofia. Quando le api ti pungevano, non lo chiamavi una divertente coincidenza. Quando la rosa profumava dolcemente non dicevi: «Mio padre è un rude, barbarico simbolo, che racchiude (forse inconsciamente) le profonde e delicate verità secondo cui i fiori profumano.» No: credevi a tuo padre, perché avevi scoperto ch’egli era una viva sorgente di fatti, una cosa che davvero sapeva più di te; una cosa che ti avrebbe detto la verità domani, così come oggi. E se questo era vero di tuo padre, era ancor più vero di tua madre; almeno era vero della mia, a cui questo libro è dedicato. Ora, mentre la società si affanna in un agitarsi piuttosto vano attorno alla soggezione delle donne, non vorrà nessuno dire quanto ogni uomo debba alla tirannia e al privilegio delle donne, al fatto che esse sole governano l’educazione finché l’educazione diventa vana: poiché un ragazzo è mandato a farsi istruire a scuola solo quando è troppo tardi per insegnargli alcunché. La cosa vera è già stata fatta, e grazie a Dio è quasi sempre fatta dalle donne. Ogni uomo è donneggiato, per il solo fatto di nascere. Parlano della donna mascolina; ma ogni uomo è un uomo femminilizzato. E se mai gli uomini marceranno fino a Westminster per protestare contro questo privilegio femminile, io non mi unirò al loro corteo.

For I remember with certainty this fixed psychological fact; that the very time when I was most under a woman’s authority, I was most full of flame and adventure. Exactly because when my mother said that ants bit they did bite, and because snow did come in winter (as she said); therefore the whole world was to me a fairyland of wonderful fulfilments, and it was like living in some Hebraic age, when prophecy after prophecy came true. I went out as a child into the garden, and it was a terrible place to me, precisely because I had a clue to it: if I had held no clue it would not have been terrible, but tame. A mere unmeaning wilderness is not even impressive. But the garden of childhood was fascinating, exactly because everything had a fixed meaning which could be found out in its turn. Inch by inch I might discover what was the object of the ugly shape called a rake; or form some shadowy conjecture as to why my parents kept a cat.

So, since I have accepted Christendom as a mother and not merely as a chance example, I have found Europe and the world once more like the little garden where I stared at the symbolic shapes of cat and rake; I look at everything with the old elvish ignorance and expectancy. This or that rite or doctrine may look as ugly and extraordinary as a rake; but I have found by experience that such things end somehow in grass and flowers. A clergyman may be apparently as useless as a cat, but he is also as fascinating, for there must be some strange reason for his existence. I give one instance out of a hundred; I have not myself any instinctive kinship with that enthusiasm for physical virginity, which has certainly been a note of historic Christianity. But when I look not at myself but at the world, I perceive that this enthusiasm is not only a note of Christianity, but a note of Paganism, a note of high human nature in many spheres. The Greeks felt virginity when they carved Artemis, the Romans when they robed the vestals, the worst and wildest of the great Elizabethan playwrights clung to the literal purity of a woman as to the central pillar of the world. Above all, the modern world (even while mocking sexual innocence) has flung itself into a generous idolatry of sexual innocence—the great modern worship of children. For any man who loves children will agree that their peculiar beauty is hurt by a hint of physical sex. With all this human experience, allied with the Christian authority, I simply conclude that I am wrong, and the church right; or rather that I am defective, while the church is universal. It takes all sorts to make a church; she does not ask me to be celibate. But the fact that I have no appreciation of the celibates, I accept like the fact that I have no ear for music. The best human experience is against me, as it is on the subject of Bach. Celibacy is one flower in my father’s garden, of which I have not been told the sweet or terrible name. But I may be told it any day.

This, therefore, is, in conclusion, my reason for accepting the religion and not merely the scattered and secular truths out of the religion. I do it because the thing has not merely told this truth or that truth, but has revealed itself as a truth-telling thing. All other philosophies say the things that plainly seem to be true; only this philosophy has again and again said the thing that does not seem to be true, but is true. Alone of all creeds it is convincing where it is not attractive; it turns out to be right, like my father in the garden. Theosophists for instance will preach an obviously attractive idea like re-incarnation; but if we wait for its logical results, they are spiritual superciliousness and the cruelty of caste. For if a man is a beggar by his own pre-natal sins, people will tend to despise the beggar. But Christianity preaches an obviously unattractive idea, such as original sin; but when we wait for its results, they are pathos and brotherhood, and a thunder of laughter and pity; for only with original sin we can at once pity the beggar and distrust the king. Men of science offer us health, an obvious benefit; it is only afterwards that we discover that by health, they mean bodily slavery and spiritual tedium. Orthodoxy makes us jump by the sudden brink of hell; it is only afterwards that we realise that jumping was an athletic exercise highly beneficial to our health. It is only afterwards that we realise that this danger is the root of all drama and romance. The strongest argument for the divine grace is simply its ungraciousness. The unpopular parts of Christianity turn out when examined to be the very props of the people. The outer ring of Christianity is a rigid guard of ethical abnegations and professional priests; but inside that inhuman guard you will find the old human life dancing like children, and drinking wine like men; for Christianity is the only frame for pagan freedom. But in the modern philosophy the case is opposite; it is its outer ring that is obviously artistic and emancipated; its despair is within.

And its despair is this, that it does not really believe that there is any meaning in the universe; therefore it cannot hope to find any romance; its romances will have no plots. A man cannot expect any adventures in the land of anarchy. But a man can expect any number of adventures if he goes travelling in the land of authority. One can find no meanings in a jungle of scepticism; but the man will find more and more meanings who walks through a forest of doctrine and design. Here everything has a story tied to its tail, like the tools or pictures in my father’s house; for it is my father’s house. I end where I began—at the right end. I have entered at last the gate of all good philosophy. I have come into my second childhood.

Perché ricordo con certezza questo dato psicologico immutabile: che proprio nel tempo in cui più mi trovavo sotto l’autorità di una donna, ero anche più colmo di fiamma e d’avventura. Appunto perché, quando mia madre diceva che le formiche mordono, mordevano davvero, e perché la neve veniva d’inverno (come lei diceva); perciò il mondo intero era per me una terra di fate colma di meravigliosi adempimenti, ed era come vivere in un’età ebraica, quando profezia dopo profezia si avverava. Uscivo, bambino, nel giardino, ed esso era per me un luogo tremendo, precisamente perché ne possedevo la chiave: se non avessi tenuto alcuna chiave non sarebbe stato tremendo, ma domestico. Una landa deserta e senza significato non è nemmeno impressionante. Ma il giardino dell’infanzia era affascinante, appunto perché ogni cosa aveva un significato fisso che, a suo tempo, poteva essere scoperto. Pollice a pollice potevo scoprire quale fosse lo scopo di quella brutta forma chiamata rastrello; o formulare qualche ombrosa congettura sul perché i miei genitori tenessero un gatto.

Così, poiché ho accolto la Cristianità come una madre e non come un semplice esempio casuale, ho ritrovato l’Europa e il mondo nuovamente simili al piccolo giardino in cui fissavo le forme simboliche del gatto e del rastrello; guardo ogni cosa con l’antica ignoranza e aspettazione da folletto. Questo o quel rito o dottrina può apparire brutto e straordinario come un rastrello; ma ho scoperto per esperienza che tali cose finiscono in qualche modo in erba e fiori. Un ecclesiastico può sembrare inutile come un gatto, ma è anche altrettanto affascinante, poiché ci dev’essere una qualche strana ragione per la sua esistenza. Ne offro un esempio su cento; io non ho in me alcuna affinità istintiva con quell’entusiasmo per la verginità fisica, che è certo stato una nota della Cristianità storica. Ma quando guardo non me stesso bensì il mondo, mi accorgo che questo entusiasmo non è soltanto una nota della Cristianità, ma una nota del Paganesimo, una nota dell’alta natura umana in molte sfere. I Greci sentirono la verginità quando scolpirono Artemide, i Romani quando ammantarono le vestali, il peggiore e il più selvaggio dei grandi drammaturghi elisabettiani si aggrappò alla letterale purezza di una donna come al pilastro centrale del mondo. Soprattutto, il mondo moderno (persino mentre schernisce l’innocenza sessuale) si è gettato in una generosa idolatria dell’innocenza sessuale: il grande culto moderno dei fanciulli. Poiché ogni uomo che ama i fanciulli converrà che la loro peculiare bellezza è ferita anche solo da un cenno di sesso fisico. Con tutta questa esperienza umana, alleata all’autorità cristiana, concludo semplicemente che io ho torto e la chiesa ragione; o piuttosto che io sono difettoso, mentre la chiesa è universale. Ci vuole ogni sorta d’uomini per fare una chiesa; essa non mi chiede di essere celibe. Ma il fatto che io non abbia alcun apprezzamento per i celibi, lo accetto come accetto il fatto di non avere orecchio per la musica. La migliore esperienza umana è contro di me, come lo è a proposito di Bach. Il celibato è un fiore nel giardino di mio padre, di cui non mi è stato detto il nome dolce o terribile. Ma potrebbe essermi detto un giorno qualunque.

Questa, dunque, è, in conclusione, la mia ragione per accettare la religione e non soltanto le sparse e secolari verità estratte dalla religione. Lo faccio perché quella cosa non ha soltanto detto questa verità o quella verità, ma ha rivelato se stessa come una cosa che dice il vero. Tutte le altre filosofie dicono le cose che palesemente sembrano vere; solo questa filosofia ha detto, ancora e ancora, la cosa che non sembra vera, ma è vera. Sola fra tutti i credi essa è convincente là dove non è attraente; risulta aver ragione, come mio padre nel giardino. I teosofi, per esempio, predicheranno un’idea ovviamente attraente come la reincarnazione; ma se attendiamo i suoi esiti logici, sono la superciliosità spirituale e la crudeltà della casta. Poiché, se un uomo è mendicante per i propri peccati prenatali, la gente tenderà a disprezzare il mendicante. Ma la Cristianità predica un’idea ovviamente non attraente, come il peccato originale; ma quando ne attendiamo gli esiti, sono il pathos e la fratellanza, e un tuono di riso e di pietà; poiché solo con il peccato originale possiamo insieme compiangere il mendicante e diffidare del re. Gli uomini di scienza ci offrono la salute, un ovvio beneficio; è solo dopo che scopriamo che, per salute, essi intendono la schiavitù del corpo e il tedio dello spirito. L’ortodossia ci fa sobbalzare sull’orlo improvviso dell’inferno; è solo dopo che ci accorgiamo che il salto era un esercizio atletico assai benefico per la nostra salute. È solo dopo che ci accorgiamo che questo pericolo è la radice di ogni dramma e romanzo. L’argomento più forte a favore della grazia divina è semplicemente la sua sgraziatezza. Le parti impopolari della Cristianità, a esaminarle, risultano essere i puntelli stessi del popolo. L’anello esterno della Cristianità è una rigida guardia di rinunce etiche e di sacerdoti di professione; ma dentro quella guardia disumana troverai l’antica vita umana che danza come i bambini e beve vino come gli uomini; poiché la Cristianità è l’unica cornice per la libertà pagana. Ma nella filosofia moderna il caso è opposto; è il suo anello esterno a essere ovviamente artistico ed emancipato; la sua disperazione è all’interno.

E la sua disperazione è questa: che essa in realtà non crede vi sia alcun significato nell’universo; perciò non può sperare di trovare alcun romanzo; i suoi romanzi non avranno trame. Un uomo non può aspettarsi alcuna avventura nella terra dell’anarchia. Ma un uomo può aspettarsi avventure a non finire se va viaggiando nella terra dell’autorità. Non si trova alcun significato in una giungla di scetticismo; ma troverà sempre più significati l’uomo che cammina attraverso una foresta di dottrina e di disegno. Qui ogni cosa ha una storia legata alla coda, come gli attrezzi o i quadri nella casa di mio padre; poiché è la casa di mio padre. Finisco dove ho cominciato: al capo giusto. Sono entrato finalmente per la porta di ogni buona filosofia. Sono giunto nella mia seconda infanzia.

But this larger and more adventurous Christian universe has one final mark difficult to express; yet as a conclusion of the whole matter I will attempt to express it. All the real argument about religion turns on the question of whether a man who was born upside down can tell when he comes right way up. The primary paradox of Christianity is that the ordinary condition of man is not his sane or sensible condition; that the normal itself is an abnormality. That is the inmost philosophy of the Fall. In Sir Oliver Lodge’s interesting new Catechism, the first two questions were: “What are you?” and “What, then, is the meaning of the Fall of Man?” I remember amusing myself by writing my own answers to the questions; but I soon found that they were very broken and agnostic answers. To the question, “What are you?” I could only answer, “God knows.” And to the question, “What is meant by the Fall?” I could answer with complete sincerity, “That whatever I am, I am not myself.” This is the prime paradox of our religion; something that we have never in any full sense known, is not only better than ourselves, but even more natural to us than ourselves. And there is really no test of this except the merely experimental one with which these pages began, the test of the padded cell and the open door. It is only since I have known orthodoxy that I have known mental emancipation. But, in conclusion, it has one special application to the ultimate idea of joy.

It is said that Paganism is a religion of joy and Christianity of sorrow; it would be just as easy to prove that Paganism is pure sorrow and Christianity pure joy. Such conflicts mean nothing and lead nowhere. Everything human must have in it both joy and sorrow; the only matter of interest is the manner in which the two things are balanced or divided. And the really interesting thing is this, that the pagan was (in the main) happier and happier as he approached the earth, but sadder and sadder as he approached the heavens. The gaiety of the best Paganism, as in the playfulness of Catullus or Theocritus, is, indeed, an eternal gaiety never to be forgotten by a grateful humanity. But it is all a gaiety about the facts of life, not about its origin. To the pagan the small things are as sweet as the small brooks breaking out of the mountain; but the broad things are as bitter as the sea. When the pagan looks at the very core of the cosmos he is struck cold. Behind the gods, who are merely despotic, sit the fates, who are deadly. Nay, the fates are worse than deadly; they are dead. And when rationalists say that the ancient world was more enlightened than the Christian, from their point of view they are right. For when they say “enlightened” they mean darkened with incurable despair. It is profoundly true that the ancient world was more modern than the Christian. The common bond is in the fact that ancients and moderns have both been miserable about existence, about everything, while mediaevals were happy about that at least. I freely grant that the pagans, like the moderns, were only miserable about everything—they were quite jolly about everything else. I concede that the Christians of the Middle Ages were only at peace about everything—they were at war about everything else. But if the question turn on the primary pivot of the cosmos, then there was more cosmic contentment in the narrow and bloody streets of Florence than in the theatre of Athens or the open garden of Epicurus. Giotto lived in a gloomier town than Euripides, but he lived in a gayer universe.

The mass of men have been forced to be gay about the little things, but sad about the big ones. Nevertheless (I offer my last dogma defiantly) it is not native to man to be so. Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial. Melancholy should be an innocent interlude, a tender and fugitive frame of mind; praise should be the permanent pulsation of the soul. Pessimism is at best an emotional half-holiday; joy is the uproarious labour by which all things live. Yet, according to the apparent estate of man as seen by the pagan or the agnostic, this primary need of human nature can never be fulfilled. Joy ought to be expansive; but for the agnostic it must be contracted, it must cling to one corner of the world. Grief ought to be a concentration; but for the agnostic its desolation is spread through an unthinkable eternity. This is what I call being born upside down. The sceptic may truly be said to be topsy-turvy; for his feet are dancing upwards in idle ecstasies, while his brain is in the abyss. To the modern man the heavens are actually below the earth. The explanation is simple; he is standing on his head; which is a very weak pedestal to stand on. But when he has found his feet again he knows it. Christianity satisfies suddenly and perfectly man’s ancestral instinct for being the right way up; satisfies it supremely in this; that by its creed joy becomes something gigantic and sadness something special and small. The vault above us is not deaf because the universe is an idiot; the silence is not the heartless silence of an endless and aimless world. Rather the silence around us is a small and pitiful stillness like the prompt stillness in a sick-room. We are perhaps permitted tragedy as a sort of merciful comedy: because the frantic energy of divine things would knock us down like a drunken farce. We can take our own tears more lightly than we could take the tremendous levities of the angels. So we sit perhaps in a starry chamber of silence, while the laughter of the heavens is too loud for us to hear.

Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian. And as I close this chaotic volume I open again the strange small book from which all Christianity came; and I am again haunted by a kind of confirmation. The tremendous figure which fills the Gospels towers in this respect, as in every other, above all the thinkers who ever thought themselves tall. His pathos was natural, almost casual. The Stoics, ancient and modern, were proud of concealing their tears. He never concealed His tears; He showed them plainly on His open face at any daily sight, such as the far sight of His native city. Yet He concealed something. Solemn supermen and imperial diplomatists are proud of restraining their anger. He never restrained His anger. He flung furniture down the front steps of the Temple, and asked men how they expected to escape the damnation of Hell. Yet He restrained something. I say it with reverence; there was in that shattering personality a thread that must be called shyness. There was something that He hid from all men when He went up a mountain to pray. There was something that He covered constantly by abrupt silence or impetuous isolation. There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth.

Ma questo universo cristiano, più vasto e più avventuroso, possiede un ultimo carattere, difficile da esprimere; eppure, a conclusione di tutto il discorso, tenterò di esprimerlo. Tutta la vera disputa intorno alla religione ruota sulla questione se un uomo nato a testa in giù sappia riconoscere il momento in cui torna diritto. Il primo paradosso del Cristianesimo è che la condizione ordinaria dell’uomo non è la sua condizione sana o assennata; che il normale stesso è un’anormalità. È questa la filosofia più intima della Caduta. Nell’interessante nuovo Catechismo di Sir Oliver Lodge, le prime due domande erano: «Che cosa sei tu?» e «Quale, allora, è il significato della Caduta dell’uomo?». Ricordo di essermi divertito a scrivere le mie risposte a quelle domande; ma presto scoprii che erano risposte assai incrinate e agnostiche. Alla domanda «Che cosa sei tu?» potevo rispondere soltanto: «Dio lo sa». E alla domanda «Che cosa s’intende per Caduta?» potevo rispondere con piena sincerità: «Che, qualunque cosa io sia, io non sono me stesso». Questo è il primo paradosso della nostra religione: qualcosa che noi non abbiamo mai conosciuto, in nessun senso pieno, non solo è migliore di noi stessi, ma ci è persino più naturale di noi stessi. E in verità non v’è altra prova di ciò che quella meramente sperimentale con cui queste pagine ebbero inizio, la prova della cella imbottita e della porta aperta. È solo da quando ho conosciuto l’ortodossia che ho conosciuto l’emancipazione della mente. Ma, in conclusione, essa ha una speciale applicazione all’idea ultima della gioia.

Si dice che il Paganesimo sia una religione di gioia e il Cristianesimo una religione di dolore; sarebbe altrettanto facile dimostrare che il Paganesimo è puro dolore e il Cristianesimo pura gioia. Tali conflitti non significano nulla e non conducono in alcun luogo. Tutto ciò che è umano deve contenere in sé tanto la gioia quanto il dolore; l’unica cosa che interessi è il modo in cui le due cose vengono bilanciate o ripartite. E la cosa davvero interessante è questa: che il pagano era (nel complesso) sempre più felice a mano a mano che si avvicinava alla terra, ma sempre più triste a mano a mano che si avvicinava ai cieli. La gaiezza del miglior Paganesimo, come nella giocosità di Catullo o di Teocrito, è, in verità, una gaiezza eterna, che un’umanità riconoscente non dovrà mai dimenticare. Ma è tutta una gaiezza intorno ai fatti della vita, non intorno alla sua origine. Per il pagano le piccole cose sono dolci come i piccoli ruscelli che sgorgano dalla montagna; ma le grandi cose sono amare come il mare. Quando il pagano guarda il nucleo stesso del cosmo è colto da un gelo. Dietro gli dèi, che sono meramente dispotici, siedono i fati, che sono mortali. Anzi, i fati sono peggio che mortali; sono morti. E quando i razionalisti dicono che il mondo antico era più illuminato di quello cristiano, dal loro punto di vista hanno ragione. Perché quando dicono «illuminato» intendono oscurato da una disperazione incurabile. È profondamente vero che il mondo antico era più moderno di quello cristiano. Il vincolo comune sta nel fatto che gli antichi e i moderni sono stati entrambi infelici riguardo all’esistenza, riguardo a ogni cosa, mentre i medievali erano felici almeno riguardo a quella. Concedo volentieri che i pagani, come i moderni, erano infelici soltanto riguardo a ogni cosa: erano assai allegri riguardo a tutto il resto. Ammetto che i cristiani del Medioevo erano in pace soltanto riguardo a ogni cosa: erano in guerra riguardo a tutto il resto. Ma se la questione verte sul cardine primario del cosmo, allora vi era più contentezza cosmica nelle strade anguste e insanguinate di Firenze che nel teatro di Atene o nell’aperto giardino di Epicuro. Giotto visse in una città più cupa di quella di Euripide, ma visse in un universo più gaio.

La massa degli uomini è stata costretta a essere gaia riguardo alle piccole cose, ma triste riguardo alle grandi. Ciononostante (offro il mio ultimo dogma con sfida) non è connaturato all’uomo essere così. L’uomo è più se stesso, l’uomo è più simile all’uomo, quando la gioia è la cosa fondamentale in lui, e il dolore la cosa superficiale. La malinconia dovrebbe essere un innocente intermezzo, uno stato d’animo tenero e fuggevole; la lode dovrebbe essere la pulsazione permanente dell’anima. Il pessimismo è, nella migliore delle ipotesi, un mezzo giorno di festa emotivo; la gioia è la fragorosa fatica per cui tutte le cose vivono. Eppure, secondo l’apparente condizione dell’uomo come la vede il pagano o l’agnostico, questo bisogno primario della natura umana non potrà mai essere appagato. La gioia dovrebbe essere espansiva; ma per l’agnostico dev’essere contratta, deve rannicchiarsi in un angolo del mondo. Il dolore dovrebbe essere una concentrazione; ma per l’agnostico la sua desolazione si diffonde attraverso un’eternità impensabile. Questo è ciò che io chiamo essere nati a testa in giù. Dello scettico si può dire in tutta verità che è capovolto; perché i suoi piedi danzano all’insù in oziose estasi, mentre il suo cervello è nell’abisso. Per l’uomo moderno i cieli si trovano in realtà al di sotto della terra. La spiegazione è semplice: egli sta ritto sulla testa; che è un piedistallo assai debole su cui reggersi. Ma quando ha ritrovato i propri piedi lo sa. Il Cristianesimo appaga d’un tratto e alla perfezione l’ancestrale istinto dell’uomo di stare dritto; lo appaga supremamente in questo: che per il suo credo la gioia diventa qualcosa di gigantesco e la tristezza qualcosa di speciale e piccolo. La volta sopra di noi non è sorda perché l’universo sia un idiota; il silenzio non è il silenzio senza cuore di un mondo infinito e senza scopo. Piuttosto il silenzio intorno a noi è una piccola e pietosa quiete, come la sollecita quiete in una camera di malato. Ci è forse concessa la tragedia come una sorta di commedia misericordiosa: perché l’energia frenetica delle cose divine ci abbatterebbe come una farsa da ubriachi. Possiamo prendere le nostre lacrime con più leggerezza di quanta ne potremmo avere di fronte alle tremende leggerezze degli angeli. Così sediamo forse in una stellata camera di silenzio, mentre la risata dei cieli è troppo forte perché la possiamo udire.

La gioia, che era la piccola pubblicità del pagano, è il gigantesco segreto del cristiano. E mentre chiudo questo caotico volume riapro il piccolo libro strano da cui è venuto tutto il Cristianesimo; e di nuovo mi sento perseguitato da una sorta di conferma. La tremenda figura che riempie i Vangeli si erge, sotto questo aspetto come sotto ogni altro, al di sopra di tutti i pensatori che mai si ritennero grandi. Il suo pathos era naturale, quasi casuale. Gli Stoici, antichi e moderni, erano fieri di nascondere le proprie lacrime. Egli non nascose mai le sue lacrime; le mostrava apertamente sul suo volto scoperto a ogni quotidiana vista, come la lontana vista della sua città natale. Eppure qualcosa nascondeva. Solenni superuomini e imperiali diplomatici sono fieri di trattenere la propria collera. Egli non trattenne mai la sua collera. Scaraventò gli arredi giù per i gradini del Tempio, e chiese agli uomini come sperassero di sfuggire alla dannazione dell’Inferno. Eppure qualcosa tratteneva. Lo dico con riverenza: v’era in quella sconvolgente personalità un filo che bisogna chiamare timidezza. V’era qualcosa che Egli celava a tutti gli uomini quando saliva su un monte a pregare. V’era qualcosa che Egli velava di continuo con improvvisi silenzi o con impetuosa solitudine. V’era un’unica cosa troppo grande perché Dio potesse mostrarcela quando camminò sulla nostra terra; e talvolta ho immaginato che fosse la sua letizia.