The Well and the Shallows
By
G.K. Chesterton
The Well and the Shallows
By
G.K. Chesterton
(1935)
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
AN APOLOGY FOR BUFFOONS
MY SIX CONVERSIONS I. THE RELIGION OF FOSSILS II. WHEN THE WORLD TURNED BACK III. THE SURRENDER UPON SEX IV. THE PRAYER-BOOK PROBLEM V. THE COLLAPSE OF MATERIALISM VI. THE CASE OF SPAIN VII. THE WELL AND THE SHALLOWS
THE RETURN TO RELIGION THE REACTION OF THE INTELLECTUALS LEVITY—OR LEVITATION THE CASE FOR HERMITS KILLING THE NERVE THE CASE OF CLAUDEL THE HIGHER NlHILISM THE ASCETIC AT LARGE THE BACKWARD BOLSHIE THE LAST TURN THE NEW LUTHER BABIES AND DlSTRIBUTISM THREE FOES OF THE FAMILY THE DON AND THE CAVALIER THE CHURCH AND AGORAPHOBIA BACK IN THE FOG THE HISTORIC MOMENT MARY AND THE CONVERT A CENTURY OF EMANCIPATION TRADE TERMS FROZEN FREE THOUGHT SHOCKING THE MODERNISTS A GRAMMAR OF KNIGHTHOOD REFLECTIONS ON A ROTTEN APPLE SEX AND PROPERTY ST. THOMAS MORE THE RETURN OF CAESAR AUSTRIA THE SCRIPTURE READER AN EXPLANATION WHY PROTESTANTS PROHIBIT WHERE IS THE PARADOX?
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INTRODUCTORY NOTE
I WAS monstrously attracted by a suggestion that these essays should bear the general title of “Joking Apart.” It seemed to me a simple and sensible way of saying that the reader of these pages must not look for many jokes, certainly not merely for jokes, because these are controversial essays, covering all subjects on which a controversialist is challenged, and not particular subjects chosen as they are chosen by an essayist. It is an awful revelation of the world of unreason into which we have wandered, that people more practical than I are convinced that if I say that this is apart from joking, everyone will think it is a joke. To my simple mind it seems very much as if I wanted to call a book, “Away from Jericho,” and everybody assumed that I had accepted a very general recommendation to go to Jericho. Many essays could be written on this strange modern sensibility to mere verbal allusion, or the introduction of certain words, even to repudiate them. But the only point here involved is that these essays are all under the conditions of controversy, which involve the absolute necessity of disgusting those with whom we disagree on any subject, and boring those who are indifferent to that subject. I have had, if I may say so, a very happy and lucky literary life; and have often felt rather the indulgence than the impatience of critics; and it is in a perfectly amiable spirit that I note that it has involved a certain transition or change. Up to a certain point, I was charitably chaffed for saying what I could not possibly mean; and I was then rather more sharply criticised, when it was discovered that I did really mean it. Now anybody driven to the defence of what he does really mean must cover all the strategic field of the fight, and must fight at many points which he would not have chosen in fancy, but only in relation to fact. He cannot hope to deal only with heresies that amuse him; he must, in common fairness, deal seriously with heresies that bore him. He must settle down to stating his real reasons for contradicting real statements, which are not made by him as statements, and not chosen by him as subjects. All this seems to me, with my mild rationalistic mind, excellently summarised in the words, “Joking Apart.”
Anyhow, this is why I have opened this series with an essay called “An Apology for Buffoons,” because it is in some sense, I will not say a swan-song (that ornithological metaphor would not occur to me in relation to myself), but at least a sort of summary of my more frivolous mode of writing, and all that I still think may be fairly advanced for it. Unfortunately, a man fighting what he honestly believes to be false can hardly preserve the glorious immunity of a buffoon. He is forced to be serious, and even those who despise him most are driven desperately to take him seriously. But there is one other reason for adding this preliminary note, in connection with the preliminary essay. Since I wrote it, I have come to appreciate much more warmly the admirable work of Mr. T. S. Eliot; and I should like to offer an apology to him for some errors that occurred accidentally in the article itself. It was not he, but another critic, with whom I confused him, who made the particular point against alliteration; and the quotation from him was made from memory; and I have not been able to trace it so as to reproduce the exact order of words, the inaccuracy, if any, does not affect the argument; but the article which I had already planned to put in the same magazine, called “Apology to T S Eliot” would have gone far beyond any such verbal point. It would be adding impudence to injury to dedicate a book to an author merely on the claim of having misquoted him; but I should be proud to dedicate this book to T. S. Eliot, and the return of true logic and a luminous tradition to the world.
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AN APOLOGY FOR BUFFOONS
THERE was a time when I appeared in the Mercury, covered with blushes, to acknowledge a friendly criticism which asked if my journalism held enough of autobiography; and I attempted with great embarrassment to give thanks for the criticism—and the compliment. My blush has faded; my sense of decency has departed; and I appear now with the shameless purpose of being, not merely autobiographical, but grotesquely egotistical. In a spirit of brazen contradiction, I even propose to be egotistical in disproving the charge of egotism. Nay, in a yet wilder illogicality, I claim to be egotistical in the interests of other people. It is a contradiction in terms; but as the higher mathematics, the higher morality, the higher religion and the rest now entirely consist of contradictions in terms, I go on with a ghastly calm. And I do it because I cannot think of any other way of drawing attention to a real problem of literature, and especially of popular literature (if I may dare to dream of that contradiction also) except this particular line of argument, which inevitably involves the mention of my own case— let us hope along with more amusing ones.
It is commonly alleged of writers that they resent mild criticisms as infamous personal imputations, taking them as seriously as slanders. Without affectation, I fancy my own case to be rather different and even opposite. Most of the adverse criticisms written about me strike me as quite true. Where I am in invincible ignorance, I suppose, is in a proper sense of the importance of the things thus rightly reproved. For instance, a very sympathetic reviewer said that I used too much alliteration; and quoted Mr. T. S. Eliot (see apology in Introduction) as saying that such a style maddened him to the point of unendurance; and a similar criticism of my English was made, I think, by another American writer, Mr. Cuthbert Wright. Now I think, on fair consideration, that it is perfectly true that I do use a great deal too much alliteration. The only question on which these gentlemen and I would probably differ is a question of degree; a question of the exact importance or necessity of avoiding alliteration. For I do strongly maintain that it is a question of avoiding alliteration—and even that phrase does not avoid it! If an English writer does not avoid it, he is perpetually dragged into it when speaking rapidly or writing a great deal, by the whole trend and current of the English speech; perhaps that is why the Anglo-Saxon poetry even down to Piers Plowman (which I enjoy hugely) was all alliteration. Anyhow, the tendency in popular and unconscious speech is quite obvious, in phrases and proverbs and rhymes and catchwords and a thousand things. Time and tide, wind and water, fire and flood, waste not, want not, bag and baggage, spick and span, black and blue, deaf and dumb, the devil and the deep sea, when the wine is in the wit is out, in for a penny, in for a pound, a pig in a poke, a bee in a bonnet, a bat in a belfry, and so on through a myriad fantastic changes of popular imagery. What elaborate art, what sleepless cunning even, must these more refined writers employ to dodge this rush of coincidences; and run between the drops of this deluge! It must be a terrible strain on the presence of mind to be always ready with a synonym. I can imagine Mr. T. S. Eliot just stopping himself in time, and saying with a refined cough, “Waste not, require not.” I like to think of Mr. Cuthbert Wright, in some headlong moment of American hustle, still having the self-control to cry, “Time and Fluctuation wait for no man!” I can imagine his delicate accent when speaking of a pig in a receptacle or of bats in the campanile. It is a little difficult perhaps to image the latter critic apparently confining himself to the isolated statement, “Mr. Smith is spick,” while his mind hovered in momentary hesitation about how to vary the corresponding truth that Mr. Smith is span. But it is quite easy to conceive an advanced modern artist of this school, looking for some sharp and graphic variation in the old colour scheme of black and blue. Indeed, we might almost invent a sort of colour test, like that which somebody suggested about red grass and green sky as a test of different schools of painting. We might suggest that Decadents beat people black and yellow, Futurists beat them black and orange, Neo-Victorians beat them black and magenta; but all recoil from the vulgar alliteration of beating them black and blue. Nor indeed is the reference to these new and varied styles irrelevant. Some of the more bizarre modern methods seem to me to make it rather difficult to have any fixed criticism at all, either of their style or mine. Take, for instance, the case of Mr. T. S. Eliot himself. I recently saw a poem of his praised very highly and doubtless very rightly; though to some extent (it seemed) because it was a poem of profound “disillusionment and melancholy.” But the passage specially quoted for commendation ran, if I remember right:
“the smell of steak in passages.”
That quotation is enough to indicate the difficulty I mean. For even style of this severe and classic sort is after all to some extent a matter of taste. It is not a subject for these extreme controversial passions. If I were to say that the style of that line maddened me to the point of unendurance, I should be greatly exaggerating its effect on the emotions. I should not like everything to be written in that style; I should not like to wander for ever in passages stuffy with steak (there we go again!) but I cannot think these questions of style are quite so important as these pure stylists suppose. We must be moderate in our reactions; as in that verse specially headed “The Author’s Moderation” in the Bab Ballad about Pasha Bailey Ben—another great poem written in a tone of melancholy and disillusion.
To say that Bailey oped his eyes Would feebly paint his great surprise; To say it almost made him die Would be to paint it much too high.
I may be allowed to open my eyes for a moment at some of the literary models thus commended to me; but I shall soon close them again in healthful slumber. And when the more refined critic implies that my own manner of writing almost makes him die, I think he over-estimates my power over life and death.
But I have begun with this personal example of alliteration; because a question like that of alliteration is not so simple as it looks; and the answer to it applies to much more important things than my own journalistic habits. Alliteration is an example of a thing much easier to condemn in theory than in practice. There are, of course, many famous examples in which an exaggerated alliteration seems quite wrong. And yet those are exactly the examples which it would be most difficult for anybody to put right. Byron (a splendid example of the sort of writer who does not bother much about avoiding anything) did not hesitate to say of his hero at Quatre Bras that he “rushed into the field and foremost fighting fell.” That is so extreme that we might well suppose it described the end of the life and adventures of Peter Piper. But I will trouble anybody to alter one word in the line so as to make it better; or even so as to make it sense. Byron used those words because they were the right words; and you cannot alter them without deliberately choosing the wrong words. This is more often the case in connection with alliteration than many people imagine. I do not mean to claim any such exalted company when I say that, on this particular point of conduct, I agree with Byron. But Byron does not stand alone; Coleridge, a person of some culture, could burst out boisterously and without stopping for breath:
The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew, The furrow followed free.
and I do not see that he could have done anything else. I do not think anybody could interfere with that foaming spate of Fs, if the verse that followed was really “to follow free.”
There is a problem behind all this which is also illustrated in other ways. It is illustrated in the other much controverted question of puns. I know all about the judgments regularly cited as if from dusty law-books in the matter. I know all about the story that Dr. Johnson said, “The man who would make a pun would pick a pocket.” How unlucky that the lexicographer and guardian of our language, in the very act of purging himself of puns, should have plunged so shamelessly deep into the mire of alliteration! His example, in that very instance, would alone be enough to prove the first part of my case, even when it is brought forward against the second. Johnson spluttered out all those p’s because he was an Englishman with a sense of the spirit and vigour of the English language; and not a timid prig who had to mind his p’s and q’s by using them in exact alternation with a pattern. But if it came to the old joke of invoking authorities, it would be equally easy to invoke even greater authorities on the side of the pun. Also there is something that is more important to my purpose here. It would not only be easy to quote the puns of the poets; it would be easy to quote the very bad puns of the very good poets. But the question I wish to ask is wider and more essential than all this hotch-potch of snobbery and legalism and A Hundred Familiar Quotations, which goes to make up the modern invocation of authorities. I wish to point out that there is a general attitude of mind, which is defensible; or rather two attitudes of mind, which are both defensible. It is a question of style; but there are here two different styles; because there are two different motives. If one is now criticising the other, I do not merely wish to retort the criticism; but rather to proclaim liberty for both.
It might be roughly suggested thus. It is not merely a question of a man who makes a pun; we might almost ask what is to happen to a man who meets a pun. Is he to cut it dead; is he always to pass by on the other side; is he to disown such disreputable company, as of course our refined stylists would do? I am presupposing that he is not out hunting for puns or similar monsters; I presuppose that he is walking down the street on some legitimate business of his own. But if the grotesque animal actually comes to meet him, if it stands obviously in his path, I think it is natural for him to take it in his stride. At least it is natural to one sort of man engaged in one sort of business; and it is the man and the business that I am here concerned to defend. This is quite a different sort of question from the elaborate construction of such fireworks as a form of art for art’s sake; though many men of genius, Hood for example, have occupied themselves even with that. But I am not talking about that. When I was a Pauline, an assistant master received a testimonial on leaving the school for a fellowship at Peterhouse. A solemn upper master made on this occasion the first and last joke of his life by observing in a deep voice, “We are robbing Paul to pay Peter.” An old schoolfellow of mine, now a journalist but cynical even at that early age, declared that the older master must have engineered the whole career of the younger, and made him a teacher at that particular school and then a don at that particular College, solely in order to enjoy one moment of supreme triumph in making that single pun. It is not in the sense of such a triumph of engineering that I am here apologising for the pun. I am not speaking of the man whose life’s purpose, or even whose purpose, is to make a pun; but of the man who is ready to make puns to serve his purpose. And there is a whole atmosphere and appetite involved here; which we may call if we like the spirit of the demagogue or of the buffoon or of the popular minstrel or of the orator; but which cannot be understood merely in terms of style as style, any more than of art for art’s sake.
In any case, things of this sort do exist; coincidences or combinations like alliteration or punning; repetitions or conjunctions that have in prose something of the effect of rhyme in poetry. The only question is how to deal with them when they offer themselves very obviously; as they often do. There are, I think in a general view, three different ways of dealing with them. First, a man may reject them consciously; as the stylist of the serious school of Mr Wright does when he speaks of wind and H2O2, or instinctively writes, “In for a penny in for a Treasury note of the value of twenty shillings.” I do not say that these examples are taken from the text; but it is quite a mistake to suppose that such fastidiousness is not a real literary problem. I remember a critic pointing out, even in a master of such direct and telling English as Mr A. E. Housman, a case in which the poet had obviously written “The chestnut cast her flambeaux,” simply and solely to avoid writing, “The chestnut cast her candles”— which is twenty times better in every possible way. Second, he can accept them consciously as I very often do; largely because it is not worth the trouble to reject them. I said a moment ago “disown disreputable company,” because I do not propose to search in a dictionary for an unnatural alternative to “disown”. Third, he may accept them unconsciously; and that is a great deal more dangerous than anything else, and a great deal more common than most people imagine. Nobody has yet made an adequate study of the effect of mere phonetics in confusing logic and misleading philosophers. And the worst of that sort of danger is that it is deep and subtle. To decorate an argument with puns and verbal tricks may be a superficial folly. But it is better than the sort of folly that is not superficial.
I am almost certain that many moderns suffer from what may be called the disease of the suppressed pun. I mean that, in men who would disdain to make anything so vulgar as a joke out of a verbal coincidence, there is a subconscious movement of the mind to meet the sound of the word. Thus those who would denounce creeds (a Latin word for anything that anybody believes) are seldom or never, you will notice, moved to describe them by any milder name; they must have a word that sounds like a portmanteau of “crank” and “crabbed” and “greed.” They cannot really let themselves go in reviling doctrine. It must be in reviling dogma. They would never sink so low as to make a positive pun about it, as might some poor Popish buffoon like Erasmus or Crashaw. They would not say of the Dominicans, “The dogs of God are always dogmatic.” But they are in fact affected all the time by a vague verbal association between a dogma and a mad dog. It is the accidental sound of the word that makes them use it so incessantly, and so monotonously, in preference to all other terms, even terms of abuse. On re-reading the end of Stevenson’s not consciously unsympathetic sketch of the Trappists, in the Travels with a Donkey, I could swear that he was involuntarily influenced by the suggestion that Trappists are caught in a trap. He cries out, like one who has escaped, that he thanks heaven he is free to hope, to wander and to love. The logic of it would suggest that somebody had been trying to capture and imprison him; a notion which would certainly have surprised the monks very much. He seems to forget that they also were all free to wander, to love, to do anything they liked, including going into a monastery; and that they had gone into the monastery exactly as he had gone into the mountains. Suppose some burgess of Balham, contemplating the wanderer in the Cevennes, had said, “Thank heaven, I am free to dine properly, sit in an armchair and sleep in a bed.” Stevenson might have replied that he also was free to do these things, but preferred to do something else. But he never saw the parallel between the journey to the mountain and the journey to the monastery. The terror of old words and traditional associations choked him like a nursery nightmare. And I believe he quailed inwardly at the terrible pun of La Trappe.
Now I for one greatly prefer the sort of frivolity that is thrown to the surface like froth to the sort of frivolity that festers under the surface like slime. To pelt an enemy with a foolish pun or so will never do him any grave injustice; the firework is obviously a firework and not a deadly fire. It may be playing to the gallery; but even the gallery knows it is only playing. But to associate an enemy always with certain ugly-sounding words, and never with their logical synonyms that sound a little better, is in a very real sense to poison our own minds. And that is the case with the man who is subconsciously moved by the sound of words, without realising that the very assonance is a sort of pun. He must describe a Socialist as a Bolshevist; because the word Bolshie has a vague savour of Boshy. He must refer to a Liberal as a Radical, because there is a hard sound about Rads as there is about Cads. It is a sound heard in many English names for foreigners, from the time that we first talked about Rapparees to the time when we began, more faintly, to talk about Yankees. The criticism of these foreigners is not in question; but the point is this. If a man can say about a Yankee what he would hardly say about an American, or even about a Northern American, then he is allowing this shadow of a pun, or sound of a word, to spoil his sense of justice and reality. He is obscurely confusing the word Yank with the word Swank. If he can speak of a Froggy more scornfully than he could really speak of a Frenchman, then he is being verbally affected by the word frog, as was the other man by the word dog. 1 do not think it matters how much we play about with these puns or rhymes or resemblances, or echoes of sound, so long as we are obviously doing it on the surface for the sake of the sound. Exactly when this sort of style becomes dangerous to the sense is when it is concealed, as these more sensitive stylists would conceal it. It is so that class-consciousness is worse than ever when it is class subconsciousness. It is so that the professed impartiality of certain academic historians stinks with their buried prejudice. Compared with this, I do think there is something sporting about conscious buffoonery. As it is embarrassing to use the egotistic example, I will take the example of a very much more distinguished person, who is in this respect of the same type or temper as I; I mean Mr. Bernard Shaw. There used to be at one time a great fashion of arguing about Shaw and Shakespeare, and, by the way, that must surely have been an artificial trick of alliteration. Yet it would be dangerous to suggest to Shaw that he copied Shakespeare, and there are difficulties even in telling Shakespeare he copied Shaw. Anyhow, one of the few things in which there is a real resemblance between Shaw and Shakespeare is this; that they both seem so very often to make jokes that are not worth making. When Polonius says he was Julius Caesar; whom Brutus killed in the Capitol; and Hamlet is made to answer, “It was a brute part of him, to kill so capital a calf there,” I do not imagine that Shakespeare, any more than anybody else, thought that the two puns were the most perfect and pointed specimens of wit. But he did think it vital to the story that Hamlet should make a flippant remark of some sort at that moment; and he thought it a very probable sort of flippant remark for him to make. There are any number of flippancies in Shaw’s plays that are no better than this, and serve no other purpose than this. But the point is that flippancies of this sort are only used by a very serious person; and Mr. Bernard Shaw is a very serious person. He wants to say something. He has something to say. If ever the perfect stylistic critics should find themselves in such a peculiar position, they will discover the nature of these temptations to flippancy.
It is not an idle contradiction to say that Mr. Shaw is flippant because he is serious. A man like Mr. Shaw has the deliberate intention of getting people to listen to what he has to say; and therefore he must be amusing. A man who is only amusing himself need not be amusing. Generally, when he is a perfect and polished stylist, he is not. And there is a good deal of misunderstanding about the relative moral attitude of the two types; especially in connection with the old morality of modesty. Most persons, listening to these loud flippancies would say that Mr. Bernard Shaw is egotistical. Mr. Bernard Shaw himself would emphatically and violently assert that he is egotistical; and I should emphatically and violently assert that he is not. It is not the first time we have somewhat tartly disagreed. And perhaps I could not more effectively perform the just and necessary public duty of annoying Mr. Shaw than by saying (as I do say) that in this matter he really inherits an unconscious tradition of Christian humility. The preaching friar puts his sermon into popular language, the missionary fills his sermon with anecdotes and even jokes, because he is thinking of his mission and not of himself It does not matter that Mr. Shaw’s sentences so often begin with the pronoun “I.” The Apostles Creed begins with the pronoun “I”; but it goes on to rather more important nouns and names.
Father Ronald Knox, in his satire on Modernism, has described the courteous vagueness of the Oxford manner which
… tempering pious zeal Corrected, “I believe” to “One does feel.”
And though I have much of such courtesy to be thankful for, both in conversation and criticism, I must do justice to the more dogmatic type, where I feel it to be right. And I will say firmly that it is the author who says, “One does feel,” who is really an egoist; and the author who says, “I believe,” who is not an egoist. We all know what is meant by a truly beautiful essay; and how it is generally written in the light or delicate tone of, “One does feel.” I am perfectly well aware that all my articles are articles, and that none of my articles are essays. An essay is often written in a really graceful and exquisitely balanced style, which I doubt if I could imitate, though I might try. Anyhow, it generally deals with experiences of a certain unprovocative sort in a certain unattached fashion; it begins with something like… .
“The pond in my garden shows, under the change of morning, an apprehension of the moving air, hardly to be called a wave; and so little clouding its lucidity as to seem rather vacuity in motion. Here at least is nothing to stain the bright negation of water; none of those suburban gold-fish that look like carrots and do but nose after their tails in a circle of frustration, to give some sulky gardener cause to cry ‘stinking fish’. The mind is altogether carried away upon the faint curve of wind over water; the movement is something less solid than anything that we can call liquid; the smoke of my light Virginian cigarette does not mount more unsubstantially towards the sky. Nor indeed inaptly: it needs some such haven of patriarchal mildness to accent sharply the tang of mild tobacco; alone perhaps, of all the attributes of Raleigh’s red-haired mistress, rightly to be called virginal.”
I think I might learn to do it some day; though not by a commercial correspondence course; but the truth is that I am very much occupied. I confess to thinking that the things which occupy me are more important; but I am disposed to deny that the thing I think important is myself. And in justice not only to myself but to Mr. Shaw and Mr. Belloc and Mr. Mencken and many another man in the same line of business, I am moved to protest that the other literary method, the method of, “One does feel,” is much more really arrogant than ours. The man in Mr. Shaw’s play remarks that who says artist says duellist. Perhaps, nevertheless, Mr. Shaw is too much of a duellist to be quite an artist. But anyhow, I will affirm, on the same model, that who says essayist says egoist. I am sorry if it is an alliteration, almost a rhyme and something approaching to a pun. Like a great many such things, it is also a fact.
Even in the fancy example I have given, and in a hundred far better and more beautiful extracts from the real essayists, the point could be shown. If I go out of my way to tell the reader that I smoke Virginian cigarettes, it can only be because I assume the reader to be interested in me. Nobody can be interested in Virginian cigarettes. But if I shout at the reader that I believe in the Virginian cause in the American Civil War, as does the author of The American Heresy, if I thunder as he does that all America is now a ruin and an anarchy because in that great battle the good cause went down—then I am not an egoist. I am only a dogmatist; which seems to be much more generally disliked. The fact that I believe in God may be, in all modesty, of some human interest; because any man believing in God may affect any other man believing in God. But the fact that I do not believe in gold-fish, as ornaments in a garden pond, cannot be of the slightest interest to anybody on earth, unless I assume that some people are interested in anything whatever that is connected with me. And that is exactly what the true elegant essayist does assume. I do not say he is wrong; I do not deny that he also in another way represents humanity and uses a sort of artistic fiction or symbol in order to do so. I only say that, if it comes to a quarrel about being conceited, he is far the more conceited of the two. The one sort of man deals with big things noisily and the other with small things quietly. But there is much more of the note of superiority in the man who always treats of things smaller than himself than the man who always treats of things greater than himself. The latter at least must be very small if he does not feel that they are greater.
Now the next two steps bring us to the climax of the matter. First, this dogmatist is always something of a demagogue. Second, this demagogue is always something of a buffoon. I am very far from denying that he becomes too much of a demagogue and too much of a buffoon. But he does not do so because he prefers superficial things, but rather because he is concerned with fundamental things. If I may illustrate my meaning by one of those deplorable verbalisms over which we are all lamenting, I would say that it is exactly because he is concerned with fundamentals that he is tempted to tickle the groundlings. He is interested in primary facts; and one of those primary facts is the people. He may make jokes and play to the gallery; but there is something more than a joke for him in the phrase which calls the gallery the gods.
I also am a tub-thumper; and I exaggerated my meaning a moment ago, in the necessity of defending myself, of defending Mr. Shaw and (most exciting of all) of defending Mr. Shaw against Mr. Shaw. I do not really mean, of course, that the essayist is an egoist in any selfish sense. Nobody in the world, I imagine, gets more good than I do out of good essays like those of Mr. Max Beerbohm or Mr. E. V. Lucas or Mr. Robert Lynd. I only ask, in all seriousness, that they should understand the necessities of our sort of self-assertion as well as recognising the existence of their own. And I do ask them to believe that when we try to make our sermons and speeches more or less amusing, it is for the very simple and even modest reason that we do not see why the audience should listen unless it is more or less amused. Our mode of speech is conditioned by the fact that it really is what some have fancifully supposed the function of speech to be; something addressed by somebody to somebody else. It has of necessity all the vices and vulgarities attaching to a speech that really is a speech and not a soliloquy.
I have come to the conclusion that this last point is too plain to be understood. Some of the simplest things of human history are now quite invisible to minds that have grown accustomed to sub-division or specialism. Thus the idea of the vow, one of the first facts about our social foundation, is not disputed or denied; it is simply nibbled out of existence by people who do not know that it exists. It is so with the gesture of the sacrifice, without which man is hardly human; and it is so with the gesture of the speaker or the singer dealing directly with the people. I found a case of this confusion in connection with this point, after I had tried to suggest it in an article in the Mercury called, “The True Case Against Cliques.” A critic in the American Bookman immediately assumed that it was only the old and conventional case against cliques. He got it into his head that I had merely been grumbling about log-rolling; and he said that Aristophanes and Euripides had their cliques and backers like anybody else. It seems to me that American criticism, so far from being merely crude, is rather too traditional. It has a curious conservative way with it and labels things in the manner of a museum; indeed I found in the same number a very Victorian article called, “Science and Religion,” in which these two forces were studied under the representative figures of Charles Darwin and Mr. Moody. Many things have been written about Science and Religion; but I should not feel myself overwhelmed by the onward rush of a new world which had never considered any science later than Darwin or any religion better than Moody and Sankey. Many things have also been written against log-rolling and literary clannishness; but I did not write anything against them or indeed anything about them. What I was trying, I fear rather clumsily, to express was that there is now an entirely new danger in the clique; because it is not merely a clique. It has taken on the character of an interpreter; by hypothesis the interpreter of something unintelligible; and its existence encourages the artist to be unintelligible, when it is his whole function to be intelligible. The artist is the man who is more and not less intelligible than other men; it is the mass of men whose feelings remain relatively incomprehensible, even to themselves.
Aristophanes undoubtedly had his faction and in that sense his clique. But I gravely doubt whether his audience needed anybody to explain to them that when the dead man said, “May I come to life if I do,” it was a joke and a parody of the phrase, “May I die if I do.” In other words, the jokes of Aristophanes, like the jokes of Bernard Shaw, were good jokes; but they were obvious jokes. There was not normally any question of a new and secretive sense of humour, which only a certain school of aesthetes or critics could understand. The buffoonery of Bernard Shaw is in this respect like the buffoonery of Aristophanes; or if it be difficult to make sure of the conditions in the time of Aristophanes, the element of obviousness is equally obvious in the best jokes of Molière or the best jokes of Dickens. The whole case for buffoons is that jokes ought to be obvious. We may even say that they are not really jokes unless they are obvious. There are, of course, special conditions for the thing called irony; in which it is the joke that somebody does not see the joke. But even there that person is not the audience; or if he is, the irony has failed. But in any case there is here a joke that the critics cannot apparently see; and a joke which is also something of a tragedy. There is under the surface of all this conspiratorial culture, a fantastic notion of new and even disparate psychologies breaking up the brotherhood of the common human mind; incommunicable or at least without communication between one and another. As Mr. Wells imagined man evolving into two animals, we are really called on to imagine mind breaking up not so much into cliques as into species. The buffoon may make bad jokes; I myself, who am a very minor buffoon to be mentioned with Mr. Shaw, let alone Aristophanes, do regularly and as a matter of business make a multitude of bad jokes. I do it for reasons connected with the duties of demagogy, and I am not defending it here, but rather something much more important. Buffoons may make bad jokes; but it is quite another thing that a man should make a joke and another man really not know that it is a joke at all. The first man may think it a good joke and the second a bad joke; that is normal and has always been; in the case above-mentioned my critic and I can embrace in agreeing that it is a bad joke. But if aberration and mystery be so deliberately cultivated that the jest of one school is not a jest at all but only a riddle to another, we are at the beginning of a schism more perilous than any in the past. We are suffering Taste to tear men asunder as they have never been torn asunder by religion or revolution or the wars of the world. In other times there were other and nobler examples of this direct relation between the maker and mankind. The orator could make a mob feel like an army of heroes; the prophet or preacher could isolate every soul in a crowd and make each feel immortal. To make what is now called a popular speech it is indeed necessary to make it only too like what is called an after-dinner speech; to keep our connection with the normal life only by a thin thread of flippancy. But at least the connection is kept; and something remains of what is really the archetypal relation implied in the very existence of the arts. It is not altogether our fault if a chasm has opened in the community of beliefs and social traditions, which can only be spanned by the far halloo of the buffoon.
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MY SIX CONVERSIONS
I. THE RELIGION OF FOSSILS
AT least six times during the last few years, I have found myself in a situation in which I should certainly have become a Catholic, if I had not been restrained from that rash step by the fortunate accident that I was one already. The point is not merely personal but has some representative interest, because our critics constantly expect the convert to suffer some sort of reaction, ending in disappointment and perhaps desertion. As a rule, the most that they will concede to us is that we have found peace by the surrender of reason; which generally means in practice that we pass the rest of our lives in interminable controversies with a perpetual appeal to logic. But, as a fact, it is in a rather peculiar sense, the other way about. The strongest sort of confirmation often comes to the convert after he has received enough to establish conviction. In these articles I propose to discuss some examples of this singular sort of post-conversion conversion. I mean that things have happened, since I was received into the Church, which would in any case have rendered impossible any intellectual position outside the Church, and especially the position in which I originally found myself. One occasion was the Parliamentary settlement of the controversy on the Prayer-Book—or Prayer-Books. Another was the Lambeth decision, or indecision, about Birth-Control. But I will take first the example of the latest turn of political events in Europe. I take it first because it is both typical and topical; that is, it gives perhaps the clearest and simplest example of the sort of thing I mean, and it is a thing of which the facts are fresh and familiar to everybody, even those who live only from day to day with the assistance of the daily Press; that very synthetic substitute for daily bread. But in order to explain what I think has really happened, rather more lucidly than the daily Press explains it, it is necessary to say a preliminary word about the Protestant Reformation and the sense in which its consequences, rather than itself, continue to bewilder and mislead Christendom.
Men of the type or school of Bishop Barnes or Dean Inge are, as we know, very fond of appealing to the discoveries of science; generally the not very recent discoveries of nineteenth-century science. They delight in dealing with what my grandfather would have called the Testimony of the Rocks; the geological record of natural development; and they often treat fossils and similar traces as if they were sacred hieroglyphics, by which some priesthood had symbolised the secret of the universe. And yet it is doubtful, it is more than doubtful, whether one of the Broad Church ecclesiastics would be soothed and flattered if I addressed him personally as an Old Fossil. Nor indeed should I dream of indulging in this playful form of social address; since there are truths, or half-truths, that cannot be coarsely stated without giving rise to misunderstanding even about their true meaning.
In one sense these liberal theologians are interested in fossils. They continue to demonstrate the Darwinian theory from the geological record, by means of all the fossils that ought to be found in it. They will even explain luminously why the geological evidence does not apparently exist; and they seem to think that this is quite as convincing as if it did exist. But I doubt whether they have really thought profoundly and delicately about what a fossil is, or there would be no danger of their resenting so innocent and inoffensive a comparison. For a fossil is really a very curious thing. A fossil is not a dead animal, or a decayed organism, or in essence even an antiquated object. The whole point of a fossil is that it is the form of an animal or organism, from which all its own animal or organic substance has entirely disappeared; but which has kept its shape, because it has been filled up by some totally different substance by some process of distillation or secretion, so that we might almost say, as in the medieval metaphysics, that its substance has vanished and only its accidents remain. And that is perhaps the very nearest figure of speech we can find for the truth about the New Religions, which were started only three or four hundred years ago. They are Fossils.
It is easy to see the sense in which they are now dying. But in a much deeper sense, they have long been dead. The extraordinary thing about them was that they really died almost as soon as they were born. And this was due to a fact not always emphasised, but which always strikes me as the most outstanding fact of the mysterious business; the incredible clumsiness of the Reformers. The real Protestant theologians were such very bad theologians. They had an amazing opportunity; the old Church had been swept out of their way, along with many things that were really unpopular, and some things that were deservedly unpopular. One would suppose it was easy enough to set up something that would at least look a little more popular. When they tried to do it, they made every mistake that they could make. They waged an insane war against everything in the old faith that is most normal and sympathetic to human nature; such as prayers for the dead or the gracious image of a Mother of Men. They hardened and fixed themselves upon fads which anybody could see would pass like fashions. Luther lashed himself into a sort of general fury, which obviously could not last; Calvin was logical, but used his logic for a scheme which humanity manifestly would not long find endurable. Perhaps the most successful were those who really had no ideas to offer at all; like the founders of the Anglican Church. They at least did not exasperate human nature; but even they showed the same blindness, in binding themselves instantly to the Divine Right of Kings, which was almost immediately to break down.
For this reason, there is really no historical doubt about what Protestantism did; it died. It did not die because the Protestants were wrong; Mahomet, for instance, was a far shrewder person, and his heresy has not died. The creed of the Protestants died, not because they were wrong, but because they were wrong-headed. They did not really think what they were doing; and this was chiefly because the real driving force behind them was the impatient insolence and avarice of new nobles and rebellious princes. But, anyhow, the theological and theoretical part of their work withered with extraordinary rapidity; and the void that was left was almost as rapidly filled with other things. What those things were is clear enough in many cases, including cases much more apparently harmless; but it is clearest of all in what is confronting us to-day; the Race Religion of the Germans.
Needless to say, there was no such nonsense talked in Luther’s time, or for long after his time; and, least of all, to do him justice, by Luther. Germans were turbulent and a little barbaric, as he was himself; but it is only fair to him to say that he was a Christian, in the sense that he believed that nothing could be done except in the strength of Christ. A superbly typical story reaches me from Germany; that some of the Nazis started out to sing the great reformer’s famous hymn, “A strong fortress is our God” (which sounds quite promisingly militaristic), but found themselves unable to articulate the very words at the beginning of the next verse, which ran, “Of ourselves we can do nothing.” Luther did, in his own mad way, believe in humility; but modern Germany believes simply, solely and entirely in pride. That is an example of what I mean by a void being filled up, not only by another substance, but actually by an antagonistic substance.
Luther was subject to irrational convulsions of rage, in one of which he tore out the Epistle of St. James from the Bible, because St. James exalts the importance of good works. But I shudder to imagine into what sort of epileptic convulsion he would have fallen if anybody had told him to tear out the Epistles of St. Paul, because St. Paul was not an Aryan. Luther, if possible, rather exaggerated the weakness of humanity, but at least it was the weakness of all humanity. John Knox achieved that queer Puritan paradox, of combining the same concentrated invocation of Christ with an inhuman horror and loathing for all the signs and forms and traditions generally characteristic of Christians. He combined, in the way that puzzles us so much, the adoration of the Cross with the abomination of the Crucifix. But at least John Knox would have exploded like dynamite, if anybody had asked him to adore the Swastika. All this new Nordic nonsense would seem to have nothing whatever to do with Protestant theology; or rather to be completely contrary to it. No one is more sincerely glad than we are to know that some of the German Protestants are still most consistent and courageous Christians; and that a definite number of the Lutherans still have some sort of remote connection with Luther. But, taking the development simply as an historical development, as a part of the science and philosophy of history, it is obvious by this time that the hollow places that were once tilled with the foaming fanaticism of the first Reformation doctrines are now filled with a foaming fanaticism of a totally different kind. Those who are rebelling like Luther are rebelling against Luther.
The main moral of this is so large and simple and striking, that it will soon be impossible to conceal it from the world. It is the simple fact that the moment men began to contradict the Church with their own private judgment, everything they did was incredibly ill-judged; that those who broke away from the Church’s basis almost immediately broke down on their own basis; that those who tried to stand apart from Authority could not in fact stand at all. Islam stood by being stagnant; it is not unfair to say it stood up by lying down. But Protestantism could not stand in the staggering rush of the West; it could only maintain itself by ceasing to be itself, and announcing its readiness to turn into anything else.
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MY SIX CONVERSIONS
II. WHEN THE WORLD TURNED BACK
FOR the first forty years of my life, practically no man in the world, and certainly no man of the world, had any doubt whatever about what Matthew Arnold called, “the way the world is going.” A man did not necessarily agree with Matthew Arnold, who seemed to think that he must necessarily go the way the world was going. Some regretted ages that were gone; some again were prepared to go farther than others, some to go faster than others; some almost passionately desired to go slow. But all agreed that it was, in the vulgar phrase, going it; and still going strong. It was, very broadly, the demand for freedom and fraternity flowing from the French Revolution and the American Revolution, making towards an ideal of democracy. Elements were indeed mixed in it, which logically had very little to do with each other. There was a tendency to materialism, to monism or to scepticism, which I rejected long before I was a Catholic. There was an element of equal justice, and the dignity of all citizens, which I accepted long after I was a Catholic; and which I accept still. But I assumed, like everybody else, that the main movement was still moving; and would presumably go on moving. There were three ways in which it could be recognised by a Catholic, or a man of increasingly Catholic sympathies, (1) He could say that this was the way the world was going; and so much the worse for the world. He could say the world would certainly go further and fare worse. (2) He could say, with considerable truth, that no such movement that was purely secular really touched the question that was purely spiritual. To take a simple example, the most ideal Republicans could not somehow get out of the human habit of dying; and generally of wondering whether dying meant being completely dead. Democracy could not satisfy all desires, even if it could purge itself enough to satisfy all democratic desires. (3) He could look forward, with some historical justification, to a time when any temporal quarrel between the Church and the Republic should end in a real and reasonable reconciliation of the truths in both; as St. Thomas reconciled the philosophy of Aristotle with the religion of Augustine. Something like this has largely been done, in recent Papal pronouncements; but the point is here that whether or no the Church could close this particular quarrel with the world, every one was certain that a quarrel with democracy was a quarrel with the world. In short, a Catholic might reject the present progress; or say his creed was independent of the present progress; or say his creed would find a place for the present progress. But everybody believed that the progress of the present would be the progress of the future.
Then came the astounding judgments; the strange signs of Apocalypse. First the Great War; then the paradox of Fascism in Italy; then the parody of Fascism in Germany. Now these things have left in the minds of all thinking men (as the Rationalist Press Association would say) an enormous overturn or reversal of thought, which has nothing whatever to do with thinking any of these movements right or wrong. It is very vital to realise that the change is something more fundamental than agreement or disagreement with the factions concerned. A man may think the war waged by the Allies justifiable, as I did and do; he may think that the stroke of Mussolini had considerable justification, or even that the stroke of Hitler achieved many things that were just. Or he may think exactly the opposite, and regard the whole militant epoch as a relapse into blood and barbarism, from the first recruit of Kitchener’s Army to the last ruffian dripping with the blood of Dollfuss. But there is a changed landscape at the back of all these fighting figures; and it is a landscape like an earthquake. What a man knows, now, is that the whole march of mankind can turn and tramp backwards in its tracks; that progress can start progressing, or feeling as if it were progressing, in precisely the contrary course from that which has been called progress for centuries. It can not only lose but fling away all that its fathers fought for and valued most; it can not only restore but restore exclusively all that its grandfathers were forced to abandon, or felt themselves unable to defend. The whole world is moving again; but it is moving the other way.
To-day this is the way the world is going, if there is any such thing. But in fact there is no such thing. A Catholic perhaps should have seen it from the first; but many a Catholic has only seen it in a flash at the last. There is no way the world is going. There never was. The world is not going anywhere, in the sense of the old optimist progressives, or even of the old pessimist reactionaries. It is not going to the Brave New World which Mr. Aldous Huxley described with detestation, any more than to the New Utopia which Mr. H. G. Wells described with delight. The world is what the saints and the prophets saw it was; it is not merely getting better or merely getting worse; there is one thing that the world does; it wobbles. Left to itself, it does not get anywhere; though if helped by real reformers of the right religion and philosophy, it may get better in many respects, and sometimes for considerable periods. But in itself it is not a progress; it is not even a process; it is the fashion of this world that passeth away. Life in itself is not a ladder; it is a see-saw.
Now that is fundamentally what the Church has always said; and for about four hundred years has been more and more despised for saying. The Church never said that wrongs could not or should not be righted; or that commonwealths could not or should not be made happier; or that it was not worth while to help them in secular and material things; or that it is not a good thing if manners become milder, or comforts more common, or cruelties more rare. But she did say that we must not count on the certainty even of comforts becoming more common or cruelties more rare; as if this were an inevitable social trend towards a sinless humanity; instead of being as it was a mood of man, and perhaps a better mood, possibly to be followed by a worse one. We must not hate humanity, or despise humanity, or refuse to help humanity; but we must not trust humanity; in the sense of trusting a trend in human nature which cannot turn back to bad things. “Put not your trust in princes; nor in any child of man.” That is the precise point of this very practical sort of politics. Be a Royalist if you like (and there is a vast amount to be said, and a vast amount being said, just now, for more personal and responsible rule); try a Monarchy if you think it will be better; but do not trust a Monarchy, in the sense of expecting that a monarch will be anything but a man. Be a Democrat if you like (and I shall always think it the most generous and the most fundamentally Christian ideal in politics); express your sense of human dignity in manhood suffrage or any other form of equality; but put not your trust in manhood suffrage or in any child of man. There is one little defect about Man, the image of God, the wonder of the world and the paragon of animals; that he is not to be trusted. If you identify him with some ideal, which you choose to think is his inmost nature or his only goal, the day will come when he will suddenly seem to you a traitor.
He seems a traitor to-day to all that world of liberal and enlightened opinion, which had made up its mind about the way the world was going, in the path of progress and of peace; the world of Wells and Webb and the Pacifists of America and the social reformers of Cambridge. Most of them are reduced to muttering, like the villain in the old melodrama, “a time will come.” But it is in a very different tone from that in which they were crying quite lately, like the man in the comic song, “Now we shan’t be long!” The most hopeful of them admit that we shall probably be very long, in reversing all that the reaction in Europe has done already. If, that is, it is ever reversed; and these people really have nothing except a purely mystical faith to suggest that it ever will be reversed. I am really more hopeful in being what they would call more hopeless; for I suspect that pretty nearly everything is eventually reversed. But it was exactly because they would not see this, that they were startled when their own reform or revolution was reversed before their own eyes. The point here, however, is that if there is something stable and not subject to reversal, it is not like anything that they imagine. Its habitation is not in the future or necessarily in any development of ideas peculiar to the present; we are not at the beginning of any endless and expanding dawn, but only of the ordinary daily dawns each followed by its own darkness; and the Faith, as Mr. Belloc said, “is the only beacon in this night, if beacon there be.”
In the heart of Christendom, in the head of the Church, in the centre of the civilisation called Catholic, there and in no movement and in no future, is found that crystallisation of commonsense and true traditions and rational reforms, for which the modern man mistakenly looked to the whole trend of the modern age. From this will come the reminders that mercy is being neglected or memory cast away, and not from the men who happen to make the next batch of rulers on this restless and distracted earth. That is the fact that we have all found at last; and that is why I have put it first. It is not the first in order, but it is the first in importance, of the facts I have discovered after I had discovered the truth; and if I had still been out in the darkness, it would in this dark hour have brought me to the door.
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MY SIX CONVERSIONS
III. THE SURRENDER UPON SEX
I HAVE explained that these are sketches of six separate occasions, on which I should have become a Catholic, if I had not been the one and only kind of human being who cannot become a Catholic. The excitement of conversion is still open to the atheist and the diabolist; and everybody can be converted except the convert. In my first outline, I mentioned that one of the crises, which would in any case have driven me the way I had gone already, was the shilly-shallying and sham liberality of the famous Lambeth Report on what is quaintly called Birth Control. It is in fact, of course, a scheme for preventing birth in order to escape control. But this particular case was only the culmination of a long process of compromise and cowardice about the problem of sex; the final surrender after a continuous retreat.
There is one historical human fact which now seems to me so plain and solid, that I think that even if I were to lose the Faith, I could not lose sight of the fact. It has rather the character of a fact of chemistry or geology; though from another side it is mysterious enough, like many other manifest and unmistakable facts. It is this: that at the moment when Religion lost touch with Rome, it changed instantly and internally, from top to bottom, in its very substance and the stuff of which it was made. It changed in substance; it did not necessarily change in form or features or externals. It might do the same things; but it could not be the same thing. It might go on saying the same things; but it was not the same thing that was saying them. At the very beginning, indeed, the situation was almost exactly like that. Henry VIII was a Catholic in everything except that he was not a Catholic. He observed everything down to the last bead and candle; he accepted everything down to the last deduction from a definition; he accepted everything except Rome. And in that instant of refusal, his religion became a different religion; a different sort of religion; a different sort of thing. In that instant it began to change; and it has not stopped changing yet. We are all somewhat wearily aware that some Modern Churchmen call such continuous change progress; as when we remark that a corpse crawling with worms has an increased vitality; or that a snow-man, slowly turning into a puddle, is purifying itself of its accretions. But I am not concerned with this argument here. The point is that a dead man may look like a sleeping man a moment after he is dead; but decomposition has actually begun. The point is that the snow-man may in theory be made in the real image of man. Michelangelo made a statue in snow; and it might quite easily have been an exact replica of one of his statues in marble; but it was not in marble. Most probably the snow-man has begun to melt almost as soon as it is made. But even if the frost holds, it is still a stuff capable of melting when the frost goes. It seemed to many that Protestantism would long continue to be, in the popular phrase, a perfect frost. But that does not alter the difference between ice and marble; and marble does not melt.
The same sort of progressives are always telling us to have a trust in the Future. As a fact, the one thing that a progressive cannot possibly have is a trust in the Future. He cannot have a trust in his own Future; let alone in his own Futurism. If he sets no limit to change, it may change all his own progressive views as much as his conservative views. It was so with the Church first founded by Henry VIII; who was, in almost everything commonly cursed as Popery, rather more Popish than the Pope. He thought he might trust it to go on being orthodox; to go on being sacramentalist; to go on being sacerdotalist; to go on being ritualist, and the rest. There was only one little weakness. It could not trust itself to go on being itself. Nothing else, except the Faith, can trust itself to go on being itself.
Now touching this truth in relation to Sex, I may be permitted to introduce a trivial journalistic anecdote. A few years before the War, some of my fellow-journalists, Socialists as well as Tories, were questioning me about what I really meant by Democracy; and especially if I really thought there was anything in Rousseau’s idea of the General Will. I said I thought (and I think I still think) that there can be such a thing, but it must be much more solid and unanimous than a mere majority, such as rules in party politics. I applied the old phrase of the Man in the Street, by saying that if I looked out of the window at a strange man walking past my house, I could bet heavily on his thinking some things, but not the common controversial things The Liberals might have a huge majority, but he need not be a Liberal; statistics might prove England to be preponderantly Conservative, but I would not bet a button that he would be Conservative. But (I said) I should bet that he believes in wearing clothes. And my Socialist questioners did not question this; they, too, accepted clothes as so universal an agreement of common sense and civilisation, that we might attribute the tradition to a total stranger, unless he were a lunatic. Such a little while ago! To-day, when I see the stranger walking down the street, I should not bet that he believes even in clothes. The country is dotted with Nudist Colonies; the bookstalls are littered with Nudist magazines; the papers swarm with polite little paragraphs, praising the brownness and braveness of the special sort of anarchical asses here in question. At any given moment, there may be a General Will; but it is an uncommonly weak and wavering sort of will, without the Faith to support it.
As in that one matter of modesty, or the mere externals of sex, so in all the deeper matters of sex, the modern will has been amazingly weak and wavering. And I suppose it is because the Church has known from the first this weakness which we have all discovered at last, that about certain sexual matters She has been very decisive and dogmatic; as many good people have quite honestly thought, too decisive and dogmatic. Now a Catholic is a person who has plucked up courage to face the incredible and inconceivable idea that something else may be wiser than he is. And the most striking and outstanding illustration is perhaps to be found in the Catholic view of marriage as compared with the modern theory of divorce; not, it must be noted, the very modern theory of divorce, which is the mere negation of marriage; but even more the slightly less modern and more moderate theory of divorce, which was generally accepted even when I was a boy. This is the very vital point or test of the question; for it explains the Church’s rejection of the moderate as well as the immoderate theory. It illustrates the very fact I am pointing out, that Divorce has already turned into something totally different from what was intended, even by those who first proposed it. Already we must think ourselves back into a different world of thought, in order to understand how anybody ever thought it was compatible with Victorian virtue; and many very virtuous Victorians did. But they only tolerated this social solution as an exception; and many other modern social solutions they would not have tolerated at all. My own parents were not even orthodox Puritans or High Church people; they were Universalists more akin to Unitarians. But they would have regarded Birth-Prevention exactly as they would have regarded Infanticide. Yet about Divorce such liberal Protestants did hold an intermediate view, which was substantially this. They thought the normal necessity and duty of all married people was to remain faithful to their marriage; that this could be demanded of them, like common honesty or any other virtue. But they thought that in some very extreme and extraordinary cases a divorce was allowable. Now, putting aside our own mystical and sacramental doctrine, this was not, on the face of it, an unreasonable position. It certainly was not meant to be an anarchical position. But the Catholic Church, standing almost alone, declared that it would in fact lead to an anarchical position; and the Catholic Church was right.
Any man with eyes in his head, whatever the ideas in his head, who looks at the world as it is to-day, must know that the whole social substance of marriage has changed; just as the whole social substance of Christianity changed with the divorce of Henry VIII. As in the other case, the externals remained for a time and some of them remain still. Some divorced persons, who can be married quite legally by a registrar, go on complaining bitterly that they cannot be married by a priest. They regard a church as a peculiarly suitable place in which to make and break the same vow at the same moment. And the Bishop of London, who was supposed to sympathise with the more sacramental party, recently submitted to such a demand on the ground that it was a very special case. As if every human being’s case were not a special case. That decision was one of the occasions on which I should have done a bolt, if I had delayed it so long. But the general social atmosphere is much the most important matter. Numbers of normal people are getting married, thinking already that they may be divorced. The instant that idea enters, the whole conception of the old Protestant compromise vanishes. The sincere and innocent Victorian would never have married a woman reflecting that he could divorce her. He would as soon have married a woman reflecting that he could murder her. These things were not supposed to be among the daydreams of the honeymoon. The psychological substance of the whole thing has altered; the marble has turned to ice; and the ice has melted with most amazing rapidity. The Church was right to refuse even the exception. The world has admitted the exception; and the exception has become the rule.
As I have said, the weak and inconclusive pronouncement upon Birth-Prevention was only the culmination of this long intellectual corruption. I need not discuss the particular problem again at this point; beyond saying that the same truth applies as in the case of Divorce. People propose an easv way out of certain human responsibilities and difficulties; including a way out of the responsibility and difficulty of doing economic justice and achieving better payment for the poor. But these people propose this easy method, in the hope that some people will only use it to a moderate extent; whereas it is much more probable that an indefinite number will use it to an indefinite extent. It is odd that they do not see this; because the writers and thinkers among them are no longer by any means optimistic about human nature, like Rousseau; but much more pessimistic about human nature than we are. Considering mankind as described, for instance, by Mr. Aldous Huxley, it is hard to see what answer he could possibly give, except the answer which we give, if the question were put thus: “On the one side, there is an easy way out of the difficulty by avoiding childbirth: on the other side, there is a very difficult way out of the difficulty, by reconstructing the whole social system and toiling and perhaps fighting for the better system. Which way are the men you describe more likely to take?” But my concern is not with open and direct opponents like Mr. Huxley; but with all to whom I might once have looked to defend the country of the Christian altars. They ought surely to know that the foe now on the frontiers offers no terms of compromise; but threatens a complete destruction. And they have sold the pass.
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MY SIX CONVERSIONS
IV. THE PRAYER-BOOK PROBLEM
ONE of the events which would have made me a Catholic, if I had not already been a Catholic, was the curious affair of the New Prayer-Book. It revealed to me a reality I had not hitherto realised. There really was a Church of England; or rather there really was an England which largely imagined that it possessed and controlled a Church. But this Church was not the Church I thought I had belonged to; the keen, cultivated and sincere group of men who claimed to be Catholic. It was a much vaster and vaguer background of men; who did not believe in anything in particular, but who claimed to be Protestant. But the vital point was that, whether they claimed to be Protestants or clamorously bragged of being atheists, they all seemed to have this fixed idea; that they owned the Church of England; and could turn it into a Mormon temple if they liked. I could not, in any case, have gone on being owned in that way.
But in order to understand all that was involved, it is necessary to say a word about the Anglican Prayer-Book itself. The Book of Common Prayer is the masterpiece of Protestantism. It is more so than the work of Milton. It is the one positive possession and attraction; the one magnet and talisman for people even outside the Anglican Church, as are the great Gothic cathedrals for people outside the Catholic Church. I can speak, I think, for many other converts, when I say that the only thing that can produce any sort of nostalgia or romantic regret, any shadow of homesickness in one who has in truth come home, is the rhythm of Cranmer’s prose. All the other supposed superiorities of any sort of Protestantism are quite fictitious. Tell a Catholic convert that he has lost his liberty, and he will laugh. A distinguished literary lady wrote recently that I had entered the most restricted of all Christian communions, and I was monstrously amused. A Catholic has fifty times more feeling of being free than a man caught in the net of the nervous compromises of Anglicanism; just as a man considering all England feels more free than a man obeying the Whips of one particular party. He has the range of two thousand years full of twelve-hundred thousand controversies, thrashed out by thinker against thinker, school against school, guild against guild, nation against nation, with no limit except the fundamental logical fact that the things were worth arguing, because they could be ultimately solved and settled. As for Reason, our monopoly is practically admitted in the modern world. Except for one or two dingy old atheists in Fleet Street (for whom I have great sympathy), nothing except Rome now defends the reliability of Reason. Much stronger is the appeal of unreason; or of that beauty which perhaps is beyond reason. The English Litany, the music and the magic of the great sixteenth-century style— that does call a man backwards like the song of the sirens; as Virgil and the poets might have called to a Pagan who had entered the Early Church. Only, being a Romanist and therefore a Rationalist, he does not go back; he naturally does not forget everything else, because his opponents four hundred years ago had a stylistic knack which they have now entirely lost. For the Anglicans cannot do the trick now, any more than anybody else. Modern prayers, and theirs perhaps more than any, seem to be perfectly incapable of avoiding journalese. And the Prayer-Book prose seems to follow them like a derisive echo. Lambeth or Convocation will publish a prayer saying something like, “Guide us, 0 Lord, to the solution of our social problems”; and the great organ of old will groan in the background. … “All who are desolate and oppressed.” The first Anglicans asked for peace and happiness, truth and justice; but nothing can stop the latest Anglicans, and many others, from the horrid habit of asking for improvement in international relations.
But why has the old Protestant Prayer-Book a power like that of great poetry upon the spirit and the heart? The reason is much deeper than the mere avoidance of journalese. It might be put in a sentence; it has style; it has tradition; it has religion; it was written by apostate Catholics. It is strong, not in so far as it is the first Protestant book, but in so far as it was the last Catholic book. As it happens, this can be proved in the most practical manner from the actual details of the prose. The most moving passages in the old Anglican Prayer-Book are exactly those that are least like the atmosphere of the Anglicans. They are moving, or indeed thrilling, precisely because they say the things which Protestants have long left off saying; and which only Catholics still say. Anybody who knows anything of literature knows when a style lifts itself to its loftiest efforts; and in these cases it is always to say strongly what we still endeavour to say, however weakly; but which nobody else ever endeavours to say at all. Let anyone recall for himself the very finest passages in the Book of Common Prayer, and he will soon see that they are concerned specially with spiritual thoughts and themes that now seem strange and terrible; but anyhow, the reverse of common; ” … in the hour of death and in the day of Judgment.” Who talks about the hour of death? Who talks about the Day of Judgment? Only a litter of shabby little priests from the Italian Mission. Not certainly the popular and eloquent Dean of Bumblebury, who is so Broad and yet so High. Certainly not the charming and fashionable Vicar of St. Ethelbald’s, who is so High and yet so Broad. Still less the clergyman helping in the same parish, who is frankly Low. It is the same on every page, where that spirit inspires that style. “Suffer us not, for any pains of death, to fall from Thee.”… “Ah, that’s what gets you” (or words to that effect), as Lord Peter Wimsey truly said of this phrase, in the detective tale of Miss Dorothy Sayers; who, like Lord Peter, knows a good deal about other things besides poisons; and understands her hero’s historical traditions very well. But did you ever hear the curate fresh from the cricket-field, or the vicar smiling under the Union Jacks of the Conservative Rally, dwell upon that penultimate peril; or the danger of falling from God amid the pains of death? Very morbid. Just like those Dago devotional books. So very Roman.
I do not think the old Anglo-Catholics who were my friends, or the many who are still my friends, would deny that there has been a modern vulgarisation of religion, largely through the spread of this official optimism. But though they themselves are often quite free from the vulgar form of it, they could hardly deny that it is largely official and very widely spread. Yet it came as a great shock to me to discover how official and widespread it was. I had exaggerated the importance of an intelligent minority, because it was important to me. But the public and the world without were given up to Arian and Pelagian demagogues like Dean Inge and Dr. Barnes; and a sort of negative Protestantism could still sweep the field. It swept the whole field in the matter of the Prayer-Book. The proposal of an amended Prayer-Book, or rather two alternative Prayer-Books, was not decided for the Church by the Churchy or by the communicants; or by the congregation. It was settled by a mob of politicians, atheists, agnostics, dissenters, Parsees; avowed enemies of that Church or of any Church, who happened to have M.P. after their names. If the whole thing had any historic motto, or deserved anything higher than a headline, what was written across all that Anglican story was not Ecclesia Anglicana, or Via Media, or anything of the sort; it was Cujus Regio Ejus Religio; or rendering unto Caesar the things that are God’s.
I add one incident to contrast Style, among men who had been Catholics for fourteen-hundred years, with that among men who have been Protestants for four-hundred years. A Protestant organisation presented all the atheists, etc., who had voted Protestant, with a big black Bible or Prayer-Book, or both, decorated outside with a picture of the Houses of Parliament. In hoc signo vinces. It would be very idolatrous to put a cross or crucifix outside a book; but a picture of Parliament where the Party Funds are kept, and the peerages sold—. That is the temple where dwell the gods of Israel… We know the world progresses, and education is certainly extended, and there are fewer illiterates; and I suppose it is all right. But those four strong centuries of Protestant England begin with a Book of Common-Prayer, in which, even amid the treachery and panic of Cranmer, and in the very moment of men rending themselves from Rome and Christendom, they could lift in such sublime language so authentic a cry of Christian men: “By Thy precious death and burial; by Thy glorious resurrection and ascension; and by the coming of the Holy Ghost.” Those centuries begin with that speech of men still by instinct and habit of mind Catholic; and the Protestant civilization evolves and the education spreads, and widens in wealth and power and towns and colleges; until at last the ripe and final fruit of its culture is produced, in the form of a fat black book of a cushiony sort, with a real photo-view, a view of one of the Sights, nicely tucked in to its neat black padded binding or frame… A Present from Ramsgate… anyhow, four-hundred years march from Rome.
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MY SIX CONVERSIONS
V. THE COLLAPSE OF MATERIALISM
SOME little time ago Dr. David Forsyth delivered to the Section of Psychiatry (Royal Society of Medicine) an address which was certainly a psychological curiosity; of considerable interest to psychologists, pathologists, alienists and all other students of the mental breakdown in the modern world. It was a perfect and compact illustration of the very common combination of a superiority complex with arrested development, and inhibitions on almost all forms of intelligent curiosity. But I mention it here, not because of its narrowness, but of its direct negation of all that is really new in scientific discovery. It is no news to us that a materialist can be bigoted; but we do not always come upon so startling an example of his being antiquated.
It is not worth while to take any particular notice of all the diseased stuff about sadism and masochism being the sources of religion. We may note in passing, with a rather dreary amusement, that this sort of writer can never sustain a connected train of thought; and that he gets even these dismal technical terms hopelessly entangled; for he declares that Islam stands for sadism and Christendom for masochism, having just argued that the Christian persecution of heretics was typically sadistic. But all this judgment of great human events, good or bad, in terms of some obscure streak of lunacy, is itself an amusement for lunatics. It is exactly as if a man were to argue: “There is a special sort of madman who thinks he is made of glass; I will call this disease Vitreosity; and I will then show that anybody anywhere, who for any reason had anything to do with glass was a victim of vitreosity. The desert merchants who were said to have invented glass, the medieval craftsmen who so successfully coloured glass, the early astronomers who first fitted telescopes with lenses of glass, all showed Vitreosity in various stages of that disease; it is akin to subconscious libido because Peeping Tom looked through a window, which may have been made of glass; it is the root impulse of alcoholism, because people drink out of glasses; and Prince Albert and Queen Victoria were obviously stricken with raving and uncontrolled Vitreosity; because they built the Crystal Palace.” The slight defect in this theory (which is quite as scientific as Dr. Forsyth’s) is that in order to theorise, it is sometimes useful to think. It is obvious that all these people had a thousand other reasons for doing all they did, besides being mad on glass; and it is equally obvious that the great religions, true or false, had a thousand reasons for doing all they did, without being mad on masochism or sadism.
Only, as I say, we may well emerge from this slime and consider the real case of Dr. Forsyth, and his strange ignorance of the very elements of modern thought, and even rather specially of modern science. Now on the larger matter, his thesis was essentially this; that science and religion, so far from being reconciled or even reconcilable, were divided by the vital contradiction that science belongs to what he called “reality-thinking,” or we call objective truth; while religion belonged to what he called “pleasure-thinking,” or what most people call imagination. I need not mention the hundred obvious objections to this crude division; as, for instance, that religion has not confined itself to imagining pleasurable things, but has often been blamed by people like Dr. Forsyth for imagining unpleasant ones; or that it is arguing in a circle to prove at the end that religion is inconsistent with science merely by assuming at the beginning that it is inconsistent with truth. I am only concerned here to insist, not merely that the view is the reverse of the truth, but that the view is actually the very reverse of the modern view.
If there are two staring and outstanding facts about science and religion at this particular moment, they are these. First, that science is claiming much less than it did to show us a solid and objective reality. And second, that religion is claiming much more than it did (at least for centuries past) that its miracles and marvels of mystical experience can be proved to exist as a solid and objective reality. On the one side, the Atom has entirely lost the objective solidity it had for the nineteenth-century materialists. On the other side, the Ascension is accepted as a case of Levitation by many who would not accept it as an Ascension. On the one hand, the science of physics has almost become a science of metaphysics. For it is not merely, as is often said, that the Atom has become an abstract mathematical formula; it is almost as true to say that it has become a mere algebraic symbol. For the new physicists tell us frankly that what they describe is not the objective reality of the thing they observe; that they are not examining an object as the nineteenth century materialists thought they were examining an object. Some of them tell us that they are only observing certain disturbances or distortions, actually created by their own attempt to observe. Eddington is more agnostic about the material world than Huxley ever was about the spiritual world. A very unfortunate moment at which to say that science deals directly with reality and objective truth.
On the other hand, on the other plane, the plane of historical and practical argument, it is the very moment at which religion really is appealing to reality and objective truth. The Church throws down the unanswered challenge of Lourdes; the Spiritualists positively claim to prove their new religion by experiments, like a thesis in chemistry or electricity; and a vast number of independent intellectuals, who are neither Catholics nor Spiritualists, have begun to show an entirely new interest in the logical, or even the legal case for some of the great historic miracles. For instance, there have been two or three books following on the line of the brilliant but strictly scientific book called Who Moved The Stone; and the tendency of the most detached writers is to admit more and more that the evidence for such events has been underrated. The youngest school of Catholic apologists, such as Father Knox and Mr. Christopher Hollis and Mr. Arnold Lunn, attack almost entirely with the weapons of proof and practical evidence; and it is no longer pretended that they always have the worst of it. A very unfortunate moment at which to say that religion deals only with pleasant fancies and imaginations.
Dr. Forsyth’s antiquated style of thought interests me here, however, only as drawing attention to the familiar modern facts of which he seems never to have heard. And most relevant here is the fact of that extraordinary scientific change in the attitude to facts. It has its place in this series, because it is one of the great changes which had not developed in any full and public fashion, even by the time that I finally sought admission to the Church; and, at the much earlier time when I had already begun to think about it, all the popular science that a layman heard of was dominated by the now dead materialism of Haeckel. It is, therefore, true to say that this huge revolution in the philosophy of physical science was one of the world events which came after my conversion; but would have hugely hastened it, if it had come before my conversion. Only the exact nature of the effect, of this scientific revolution upon personal religion, is often misstated and widely misunderstood.
It is not, as some seem to fancy, that we think there is anything particularly Christian about electrons, any more than there is anything essentially atheistic about atoms. It is not that we propose to base our philosophy on their physics; any more than to base our ancient theology on their most recent biology. We are not “going to the country” with a set of slogans or party-cries, like Electrons for the Elect, or For Priest and Proton. The catastrophic importance for Catholics, of this collapse of materialism, is simply the fact that the most confident cosmic statements of science can collapse. If fifty years hence the electron is as entirely exploded as the atom, it will not affect us; for we have never founded our philosophy on the electron any more than on the atom. But the materialists did found their philosophy on the atom. And it is quite likely that some spiritual fad or other is at this moment being founded on the electron. To a man of my generation, the importance of the change does not consist in its destroying the dogma (which was after all a detail, though a very dogmatic dogma), “Matter consists of indivisible atoms.” But it does consist in its destroying the accepted, universal and proclaimed and popularised dogma: “You must accept the conclusions of science.” Scores and hundreds of times I have heard, through my youth and early manhood, the repetition of that ultimatum: “You must accept the conclusions of science.” And it is that notion or experience that has now been concluded; or rather excluded. Whatever else is questionable, there is henceforth no question of anybody “accepting” the conclusions of science. The new scientists themselves do not ask us to accept the conclusions of science. The new scientists themselves do not accept the conclusions of the new science. To do them justice, they deny vigorously that science has concluded; or that it has, in that sense, any conclusion. The finest intellects among them repeat, again and again, that science is inconclusive.
Which is all very well, and all very wise, and all very true to the gradual adjustment of truths on their own plane. But meanwhile-there is such a thing as human life. The Victorian agnostics waited hopefully for science to give them a working certainty about life. The new physicist philosophers are in no way different, except that they wait hopelessly instead of hopefully. For they know very well the real meaning of relativity; that their own views may pass from being relatively right to being relatively wrong. And meanwhile, as I say, there is such a thing as wanting a working rule as to whether we should pay our debts or murder our enemies. We would not wait for a nineteenth-century enlightenment that might come. We certainly will not wait for a twentieth-century enlightenment that cannot come. If we want a guide to life, it seems that we must look elsewhere.
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MY SIX CONVERSIONS
VI. THE CASE OF SPAIN
The point of the recent political story in Spain has never been put clearly in the English papers; perhaps not quite clearly even in the Catholic papers. It is a very striking example of how the world has really moved, since my own most important change of conviction occurred. There is a paradox in every story of conversion; which is perhaps the reason why the records of it are never ideally satisfactory It is in its very nature the extinction of egoism: and yet every account of it must sound egoistic. It means, at least in the case of the Religion in question, a recognition of reality which has nothing to do with relativity. It is as if a man said, “This inn really exists, even if I have never found it”; or, “My home is actually in this village; and would be there, if I had never reached it.” It is the recognition that the truth is true, apart from the truth-seeker; and yet the description must be the autobiography of a truth-seeker; generally a rather depressing sort of person. It will therefore sound egotistical, if I preface these remarks by saying that I was for a long time a Liberal in the sense of belonging to the Liberal Party. I am still a Liberal; it is only the Liberal Party that has disappeared. I understood its ideal to be that of equal citizenship and personal freedom; and they are my own political ideals to this day. The point here, however, is that I worked for a long time with the practical organization of Liberalism; I wrote for a great part of my life for the old Daily News; and I knew of course that it identified political liberty, rightly or wrongly, with representative government. Then came the breach, on which I need not insist; except by saying that I became quite convinced of two facts. First, that representative government had ceased to be representative. Second, that Parliament was in fact gravely menaced by political corruption. Politicians did not represent the populace, even the most noisy and vulgar of the populace. Politicians did not deserve the dignified name of demagogues. They deserved no name except perhaps the name of bagmen; they were travelling for private firms. If they represented anything, it was vested interests, vulgar but not even popular.
For this reason, when the Fascists’ revolt appeared in Italy, I could not be entirely hostile to it; for I knew the hypocritical plutocracy against which it rebelled. But neither could I be entirely friendly to it; for I believed in the civic equality in which the politicians pretended to believe. For the present purpose, the problem can be put very briefly. The whole of the real case for Fascism can be put in two words never printed in our newspapers: secret societies. The whole case against Fascism could be put in one word now never used and almost forgotten: legitimacy. For the first, the Fascist was justified in smashing the politicians; for their contract with the people was secretly contradicted by their secret contracts with gangs and conspiracies. For the second, Fascism could never be quite satisfactory; for it did not rest on authority but only on power; which is the weakest thing in the world. The Fascists said in effect, “We may not be the majority, but we are the most vigorous and intelligent minority.” Which is simply challenging any other intelligent minority to show that it is more vigorous. It may well end in the very anarchy it attempted to avoid. Compared with this, despotism and democracy are legitimate. I mean there is no doubt about who is the King’s eldest son or about who has most votes in the most mechanical election. But a mere competition of intelligent minorities is a rather dreadful prospect. That, it seems to me, is a fair statement of the case for and against the Fascist movement. And now I should like to apply it to the curious case of Spain; and note how Liberalism met the issue.
For weeks and months on end my old organ the Daily News (now the News-Chronicle) had warned the public of all these doubtful and dangerous implications of Fascism. It had reviled Fascism for its vices; and rather more virulently for its virtues. But anyhow it had furiously denounced the notion of a minority imposing its will by mere violence, by weapons or military training, in contempt of the constitutional democracy in which the people expressed its will through Parliament. I think there is a great deal to be said for that view; especially in England, where Parliament is really normal and national as it never was in Italy or Germany. I could write much for and much against the Liberal theory as enunciated in the News-Chronicle, And then, suddenly, the whole case was thrown over, and turned upside down, in face of the simple situation in Spain.
First it must be remembered that the Church is always in advance of the world. That is why it is said to be behind the times. It discussed everything so long ago that people have forgotten the discussion. St. Thomas was an internationalist before all our internationalists; St. Joan was a nationalist almost before there were nations; Blessed Robert Bellarmine said all there is to be said for democracy before any ordinary worldling dared to be a democrat; and (what is to the purpose here) the Christian social reform was in full activity before any of these quarrels of Fascists and Bolshevists appeared. The Popular Party was working out the ideas of Leo XIII before a single Blackshirt had been seen in Italy. The same popular ideals had been moving in Spain; with the result that they had really become popular. There were other complications, of course; the Court had never been quite popular; the Dictatorship had not, I think, been imaginative about the curious problem of Catalonia; but all this did not effect the profound and popular Catholic change. The Pope particularly insisted that he had no objection to the Republic as such; there was no opposition to anything but to certain inhuman ideals, by which men would lose humanity in losing personal liberty and property. Well, in the perfectly fair and open intellectual interchange, in which all Liberals are supposed to believe, the Catholic ideals won. At an entirely peaceful and legal election, exactly like any English election, a vast majority voted in various degrees for the traditional truths, which had been normal to the Nation for much more than a thousand years. Spain spoke; if indeed elections do speak; and declared constitutionally against Communism, against Atheism, against the negation that starved normality in our time. Nobody said that this majority had been achieved by military violence. Nobody pretended that an armed minority had imposed it on the State. If the Liberal theory of Parliamentary majorities was just, this was just. If the Parliamentary system was a popular system, this was popular. And then the Socialists suddenly jumped up and did exactly everything that the Fascists have been blamed for doing. They used bombs and guns and instruments of violence to prevent the fulfilment of the will of the people, or at least of the will of the Parliament. Having lost the game by the rules of democracy, they tried to win it after all entirely by the rules of war; in this case of Civil War. They tried to overthrow a pacific Parliament by a militarist coup d’état. In short, they behaved exactly like Mussolini; or rather they did the very worst that has ever been attributed to Mussolini; and without a rag of his theoretical excuse.
And what did Liberalism say? What did my dear old friends of liberty and peaceful citizenship say? Naturally, I assumed on opening the paper that it would rally to the defence of Parliament and peaceful representative government and rebuke the attempt to make a minority dominant by mere military violence. Judge of my astonishment, when I found Liberals lamenting aloud over the unfortunate failure of these Socialistic Fascists to reverse the result of a General Election. I had been a Liberal in the old Liberal days; we were not unacquainted with Tory and Unionist victories at the polls; we had often gone contentedly into Opposition. It had never been suggested that when Balfour or Baldwin constitutionally became Prime Ministers, all the Nonconformists should go out with guns and bayonets to reverse the popular vote; or the Leader of the Opposition begin to throw dynamite at the elected Leader of the House. The only inference was that Liberalism was only opposed to militarists when they were Fascists; and entirely approved of Fascists so long as they were Socialists.
Now that is a small and purely political point. But to me it was very awakening. It showed me quite clearly the fundamental truth of the modern world. And that is this: there are no Fascists; there are no Socialists; there are no Liberals; there are no Parliamentarians. There is the one supremely inspiring and irritating institution in the world; and there are its enemies. Its enemies are ready to be for violence or against violence, for liberty or against liberty, for representation or against representation; and even for peace or against peace. It gave me an entirely new certainty, even in the practical and political sense, that I had chosen well.
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MY SIX CONVERSIONS
VII. THE WELL AND THE SHALLOWS
IN numberless novels and newspaper articles, we have all read about a process which is still apparently regarded as novel or new; though it has been described in almost exactly the same terms for nearly a hundred years; and in slightly different terms for hundreds of years before that. I mean what is called the growth of doubt or the disturbance of faith; and the only point about it which is pertinent here is this; that it is always described as a revolt of the deeper parts of the mind against something that is comparatively superficial. We need not deny that modern doubt, like ancient doubt, does ask deep questions; we only deny that, as compared with our own philosophy, it gives any deeper answers. And it is a general rule, touching what is called modern thought, that while the questions are often really deep, the answers are often decidedly shallow. And it is perhaps even more important to remark that, while the questions are in a sense eternal, the answers are in every sense ephemeral. The world is still asking the questions that were asked by Job. The world will not long be contented with the answers that are given by Joad.
The chances of the Book of Joad being as permanent as the Book of Job are limited by certain perfectly practical calculations. Mr. Joad is an able and sincere man; and nobody doubts that his opinions are the product of his own mind; but they are very unmistakably the product of his own age. In this case it would be more correct to say, of his own generation. For the sceptics throughout the ages inherit nothing except a negation. Their positive policy or ideal varies, not only from century to century, but even from father to son. A free-thinker like Bradlaugh, coming out of the individualistic nineteenth century and the mercantile spirit of the Midlands, was careful to explain that he was an Individualist. A free-thinker of the next generation, like Mr. Joseph McCabe, was careful to explain that he was a Socialist. A free-thinker wanting to make a splash to-day would almost certainly insist that he was not a Socialist; which has come to mean something as mild as Mr. Ramsay MacDonald. For those who can believe in each of these social moves in turn, as they happen to turn up, the matter may be irrelevant. But some of us will simply draw the moral which determines the whole question of this issue between the traditions of truth and doubt. Those who leave the tradition of truth do not escape into something which we call Freedom. They only escape into something else, which we call Fashion.
That is really the crux of the controversy between the two views of history and philosophy. If it were true that by leaving the temple we walked out into a world of truths, the question would be answered; but it is not true. By leaving the temple, we walk out into a world of idols; and the idols of the marketplace are more perishable and passing than the gods of the temple we have left. If we wished to test rationally the case of rationalism, we should follow the career of the sceptic and ask how far he remained sceptical about the idols or ideals of the world into which he went. There are very few sceptics in history who cannot be proved to have been instantly swallowed by some swollen convention or some hungry humbug of the hour, so that all their utterances about contemporary things now look to us almost pathetically contemporary. The little group of Atheists, who still run their paper in Fleet Street and frequently honour me with hearty but somewhat hasty denunciation, began their agitation in the old Victorian days, and selected for themselves a terribly appropriate title. They did not call themselves Atheists, they called themselves Secularists. Never was a more bitter and blighting confession made in the form of a boast. For the word “secular” does not mean anything so sensible as “worldly.” It does not even mean anything so spirited as “irreligious.” To be secular simply means to be of the age; that is, of the age which is passing; of the age which, in their case, is already passed. There is one tolerably correct translation of the Latin word which they have chosen as their motto. There is one adequate equivalent of the word “secular”; and it is the word “dated.”
In the essays in this series, I have considered some of the effects of this continuous process of time and change, as it has affected the world, even after I myself ceased to look to its changes for essential guidance. I have noted that the changes, which continue to occur, point more and more to the truth of the unchanging philosophy which stands apart from them. I could add, of course, a long list of other examples of exactly the same truth. I could point, for instance, to the collapse of Prohibition; not so much in the narrow sense of Prohibition as in the general sense of Prohibitionism. For what failed with the American experiment was not merely a particular chemical experiment with some alleged chemical constituent, which they chose to call alcohol. It was a whole attitude towards all the complex uses and abuses of human things. The great outstanding principle of the modern materialistic world has been Prohibition; even Prohibition in the abstract. Where we say that a social element is dangerous or doubtful, that it must be watched, that it may on due occasion be restrained, the thing that was called the Modern Mind always cried aloud with a voice of thunder that it must be forbidden. The Prohibitionist declares that there must be no wine; the Pacifist that there must be no war; the Communist that there must be no private property; the Secularist that there must be no religious worship. The failure of Prohibition in the one country in which it was a favourite, in which it was a popular ideal in so far as anything so inhuman can be popular, was the collapse of the whole conception of wiping out entirely the temptations of man and the trials of mortal life. After that, it is tacitly agreed that there is no such simple way out of moral problems; it is almost admitted that they must be referred to the moral sense. We were actually driven back on the desperate and tragic duty of our fathers, of deciding for ourselves whether we were drinking too much, or whether we were fighting in a just quarrel, or whether we were only defending our own lawful property, or getting other people’s property by lawless usury. Such a demand was naturally a great strain on the Modern Mind. For the Modern Mind is not at all accustomed to making up its mind. It finds the task almost as unfamiliar as working its own farm or practising its own craft; or doing a hundred other things, that human beings had done from the foundations of the world. In short, it would not accept the Catholic doctrine that human life is a battle; it only wanted to have it announced, from time to time in the newsapers, that it was a victory.
There are, I say, a number of other more general defeats of the attack on the Faith, on each of which it would be easy to write a long essay; the longer as the essential truth in the matter was more subtle and more universal. But I will close this series with the examples which I have given, because I think they suffice to show the general trend of the truth which I desire to suggest. The simplest summary of my meaning is to throw my mind back to all the things that seemed in my youth to be the rivals or reasonable alternatives to my religious conviction, and consider whether they could still play even the part which they did. The answer is that not one of them could now even remotely resemble a rival; or be even reasonable as an alternative. There was a time when men of my sympathies felt even tragically the quarrel between the Republic and the Church; the apparent misunderstanding between political equality and mystical authority. It is a commonplace to-day that the world has reacted much more against equality than against authority. But that in itself would not have disposed of the democratic ideals of any sincere democrat. It is the thing called democracy that has itself disappointed the democrat. However much I might hate the Fascists, heartily as I do indeed despise the Hitlerites, that would never restore the mere abstract faith in the Republicans. If I lost my religion to-morrow, I could not again believe that the mere fact of turning Kamchatka from a Monarchy to a Republic would solve all its social sins. I have seen too many Republicans, with their greasy platform promises and their guzzling secret societies. I can remember when being a Socialist was a real inspiration to youth; but anybody who thinks it could be an inspiration to the more elderly phase of maturity, has only to look at the more elderly Socialists. In short, the point I mentioned at the beginning of this article is the point of the whole matter; that while the questions are still deep and tragic enough, the recent answers have not really been revolutionary, but only superficial. I could not abandon the faith, without falling back on something more shallow than the faith. I could not cease to be a Catholic, except by becoming something more narrow than a Catholic. A man must narrow his mind in order to lose the universal philosophy; everything that has happened up to. this very day has confirmed this conviction; and whatever happens to-morrow will confirm it anew. We have come out of the shallows and the dry places to the one deep well; and the Truth is at the bottom of it.
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THE RETURN TO RELIGION
IN the days when Huxley and Herbert Spencer and the Victorian agnostics were trumpeting as a final truth the famous hypothesis of Darwin, it seemed to thousands of simple people almost impossible that religion should survive. It is all the more ironic that it has not only survived them all, but it is a perfect example (perhaps the only real example) of what they called the Survival of the Fittest. It so happens that it does really and truly fit in with the theory offered by Darwin; which was something totally different from most of the theories accepted by Darwinians. This real original theory of Darwin has since very largely broken down in the general field of biology and botany; but it does actually apply to this particular argument in the field of religious history. The recent re-emergence of our religion is a survival of the fittest as Darwin meant it, and not as popular Darwinism meant it; so far as it meant anything. Among the innumerable muddles, which mere materialistic fashion made out of the famous theory, there was in many quarters a queer idea that the Struggle for Existence was of necessity an actual struggle between the candidates for survival; literally a cut-throat competition. There was a vague idea that the strongest creature violently crushed the others. And the notion that this was the one method of improvement came everywhere as good news to bad men; to bad rulers, to bad employers, to swindlers and sweaters and the rest. The brisk owner of a bucket-shop compared himself modestly to a mammoth, trampling down other mammoths in the primeval jungle. The business man destroyed other business men, under the extraordinary delusion that the eohippic horse had devoured other eohippic horses. The rich man suddenly discovered that it was not only convenient but cosmic to starve or pillage the poor, because pterodactyls may have used their little hands to tear each other’s eyes. Science, that nameless being, declared that the weakest must go to the wall; especially in Wall Street. There was a rapid decline and degradation in the sense of responsibility in the rich, from the merely rationalistic eighteenth century to the purely scientific nineteenth. The great Jefferson, when he reluctantly legalised slavery, said he trembled for his country, knowing that God is just. The profiteer of later times, when he legalised usury or financial trickery, was satisfied with himself; knowing that Nature is unjust.
But, however that may be (and of course the moral malady has survived scientific mistake) the people who talked thus of cannibal horses and competitive oysters, did not understand what Darwin’s thesis was. If later biologists have condemned it, it should not be condemned without being understood, widely as it has been accepted without being understood. The point of Darwinism was not that a bird with a longer beak (let us say) thrust it into other birds, and had the advantage of a duellist with a longer sword. The point of Darwinism was that the bird with the longer beak could reach worms (let us say) at the bottom of a deeper hole; that the birds who could not do so would die; and he alone would remain to found a race of long-beaked birds. Darwinism suggested that if this happened a vast number of times, in a vast series of ages, it might account for the difference between the beaks of a sparrow and a stork. But the point was that the fittest did not need to struggle against the unfit. The survivor had nothing to do except to survive, when the others could not survive. He survived because he alone had the features and organs necessary for survival. And, whatever be the truth about mammoths or monkeys, that is the exact truth about the present survival of religion. It is surviving because nothing else can survive.
Religion has returned; because all the various forms of scepticism that tried to take its place, and do its work, have by this time tied themselves into such knots that they cannot do anything. That chain of causation of which they were fond of talking seems really to have served them after the fashion of the proverbial rope; and when modern discussion gave them rope enough, they quite rapidly hanged themselves. For there is not a single one of the fashionable forms of scientific scepticism, or determinism, that does not end in stark paralysis, touching the practical conduct of human life. Take any three of the normal and necessary ideas on which civilisation and even society depend. First, let us say, a scientific man of the old normal nineteenth-century sort would remark, “We can at least have common sense, in its proper meaning of a sense of reality common to all; we can have common morals, for without them we cannot even have a community; a man must in the ordinary sense obey the law; and especially the moral law.” Then the newer sceptic, who is progressive and has gone further and fared worse, will immediately say, “Why should you worship the taboo of your particular tribe? Why should you accept prejudices that are the product of a blind herd instinct? Why is there any authority in the unanimity of a flock of frightened sheep?” Suppose the normal man falls back on the deeper argument: “I am not terrorised by the tribe; I do keep my independent judgment; I have a conscience and a light of justice within, which judges the world.” And the stronger sceptic will answer: “If the light in your body be darkness—and it is darkness because it is only in your body— what are your judgments but the incurable twist and bias of your particular heredity and accidental environment? What can we know about judgments, except that they must all be equally unjust? For they are all equally conditioned by defects and individual ignorances, all of them different and none of them distinguishable; for there exists no single man so sane and separate as to be able to distinguish them justly. Why should your conscience be any more reliable than your rotting teeth or your quite special defect of eyesight? God bless us all, one would think you believed in God!” Then perhaps the normal person will get annoyed and say rather snappishly, “At least I suppose we are men of science; there is science to appeal to and she will always answer; the evidential and experimental discovery of real things.” And the other sceptic will answer, if he has any sense of humour: “Why certainly. Sir Arthur Eddington is Science; and he will tell you that science cannot destroy religion, or even defend the multiplication table. Sir Bertram Windle was Science; and he would tell you that the scientific mind is completely satisfied in the Roman Catholic Church. For that matter. Sir Oliver Lodge was Science; and he reached by purely experimental and evidential methods to a solid belief in ghosts. But I admit that there are men of science who cannot get to a solid belief in anything; even in science; even in themselves. There is the crystalographer of Cambridge who writes in the Spectator the lucid sentence: ’ We know that most of what we know is probably untrue.’ Does that help you on a bit, in founding your sane and solid society?”
We have of course seen just lately the most dramatic exit of great material scientists from the camp of Materialism. It was Eddington I think, who used the phrase that the universe seems to be more like a great thought than a great machine: and Dr. Whitney as reported, has declared that there is no rational description of the ultimate cosmic motion except the Will of God. But it is the perishing of the other things, at least as much as the persistence of the one thing, that has left us at last face to face with the ancient religion of our fathers. The thing once called free thought has come finally to threaten everything that is free. It denies personal freedom in denying free will and the human power of choice. It threatens civic freedom with a plague of hygienic and psychological quackeries; spreading over the land such a network of pseudo-scientific nonsense as free citizens have never yet endured in history. It is quite likely to reverse religious freedom, in the name of some barbarous nostrum or other, such as constitutes the crude and ill-cultured creed of Russia. It is perfectly capable of imposing silence and impotence from without. But there is no doubt whatever that it imposes silence and impotence from within. The whole trend of it, which began as a drive and has ended in a drift, is towards some form of the theory that a man cannot help himself; that a man cannot mend himself; above all, that a man cannot free himself. In all its novels and most of its newspaper articles it takes for granted that men are stamped and fixed in certain types of abnormality of anarchical weakness; that they are pinned and labelled in a museum of morality or immorality; or of that sort of unmorality which is more priggish than the one and more hoggish than the other. We are practically told that we might as well ask a fossil to reform itself. We are told that we are asking a stuffed bird to repent. We are all dead, and the only comfort is that we are all classified. For by this philosophy, which is the same as that of the blackest of Puritan heresies, we all died before we were born. But as it is Kismet without Allah, so also it is Calvinism without God.
The agnostics will be gratified to learn that it is entirely due to their own energy and enterprise, to their own activity in pursuing their own antics, that the world has at last tired of their antics and told them so. We have done very little against them; non nobis, Domine; the glory of their final overthrow is all their own. We have done far less than we should have done, to explain all that balance of subtlety and sanity which is meant by a Christian civilisation. Our thanks are due to those who have so generously helped us by giving a glimpse of what might be meant by a Pagan civilisation. And what is lost in that society is not so much religion as reason; the ordinary common daylight of intellectual instinct that has guided the children of men. A world in which men know that most of what they know is probably untrue cannot be dignified with the name of a sceptical world; it is simply an impotent and abject world, not attacking anything, but accepting everything while trusting nothing; accepting even its own incapacity to attack; accepting its own lack of authority to accept; doubting its very right to doubt. We are grateful for this public experiment and demonstration; it has taught us much. We did not believe that rationalists were so utterly mad until they made it quite clear to us. We did not ourselves think that the mere denial of our dogmas could end in such dehumanised and demented anarchy. It might have taken the world a long time to understand that what it had been taught to dismiss as mediaeval theology was often mere common sense; although the very term common sense, or communis sententia, was a mediaeval conception. But it took the world very little time to understand that the talk on the other side was most uncommon nonsense. It was nonsense that could not be made the basis of any common system, such as has been founded upon common sense.
To take one example out of many; the whole question of Marriage has been turned into a question of Mood. The enemies of marriage did not have the patience to remain in their relatively strong position; that marriage could not be proved to be sacramental, and that some exceptions must be treated as exceptions, so long as it was merely social. They could not be content to say that it is not a sacrament but a contract, and that exceptional legal action might break a contract. They brought objections against it that would be quite as facile and quite as futile, if brought against any other contract. They said that a man is never in the same mood for ten minutes together; that he must not be asked to admire in a red daybreak what he admired in a yellow sunset; that no man can say he will even be the same man by the next month or the next minute; that new and nameless tortures may afflict him if his wife wears a different hat; or that he may plunge her into hell by putting on a pair of socks that does not harmonise with somebody else’s carpet. It is quite obvious that this sort of sensitive insanity applies as much to any other human relation as to this relation. A man cannot choose a profession; because, long before he has qualified as an architect, he may have mystically changed into an aviator, or been convulsed in rapid succession by the emotions of a ticket-collector, a trombone-player and a professional harpooner of whales. A man dare not buy a house for fear a fatal stranger with the wrong sort of socks should come into it; or for fear his own mind should be utterly changed in the matter of carpets or cornices. A man may suddenly decline to do any business with his own business partner; because he also, like the cruel husband, wears the wrong necktie. And I saw a serious printed appeal for sympathy for a wife, who deserted her family because her psychology was incompatible with an orange necktie. This is only one application, as I say; but it exactly illustrates how the sceptical principle is now applied; and how scepticism has recently changed from apparent sense to quite self-evident nonsense. The heresies not only decay but destroy themselves; in any case they perish without a blow.
For the reply, not merely of religion but of reason and the rooted sanity of mankind, is obvious enough. “If you feel like that, why certainly you will not found families; or found anything else. You will not build houses; you will not make partnerships; you will not in any fashion do the business of the world. You will never plant a tree, lest you wish next week you had planted it somewhere else; you will never put a potato into a pot or stew, because it will be too late to take it out again; your whole mood is stricken and riddled with cowardice and sterility; your whole way of attacking any problem is to think of excuses for not attacking it at all. Very well; so be it; the Lord be with you. You may be respected for being sincere; you may be pitied for being sensitive; you may retain some of the corrective qualities which make it useful on occasion to be sceptical. But if you are too sceptical to do these things, you must stand out of the way of those who can do them; you must hand over the world to those who believe that the world is workable; to those who believe that men can make houses, make partnerships, make appointments, make promises—and keep them. And if it is necessary in order to keep a promise or boil a potato or behave like a human being, to believe in God making Man, in God being made Man, or in God made Man coming in the clouds in glory— well, then you must at least give a chance to these credulous fanatics who can believe the one and who can do the other.” That is what I mean by the spiritual Survival of the Fittest. That is why the old phrase, which is probably a mistake in natural history, is a truth in supernatural history. The organic thing called religion has in fact the organs that take hold on life. It can feed where the fastidious doubter finds no food; it can reproduce where, the solitary sceptic boasts of being barren. It may be accepting a miracle to believe in free will; but it is accepting madness, sooner or later, to disbelieve in it. It may be a wild risk to make a vow; but it is a quiet, crawling and inevitable ruin to refuse to make a vow. It may be incredible that one creed is the truth and the others are relatively false; but it is not only incredible, but also intolerable, that there is no truth either in or out of creeds, and all are equally false. For nobody can ever set anything right, if everybody is equally wrong. The intense interest of the moment is that the Man of Science, the hero of the modern world and the latest of the great servants of humanity, has suddenly and dramatically refused to have anything more to do with this dreary business of nibbling negation, and blind scratching and scraping away of the very foundations of the mastery of man. For the work of the sceptic for the past hundred years has indeed been very like the fruitless fury of some primeval monster; eyeless, mindless, merely destructive and devouring; a giant worm wasting away a world that he could not even see; a benighted and bestial life, unconscious of its own cause and of its own consequences. But Man has taken to himself again his own weapons; will and worship and reason and the vision of the plan in things; and we are once more in the morning of the world.
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THE REACTION OF THE INTELLECTUALS
I HAVE been asked if I think there is a reaction against the tendencies called “ultra-modern” and in favour of many things blasted by the term, “Victorian” and “virtuous” and “respectable,” and other wild and wicked words. I answer that there is a reaction, and I am glad of it; but it is a reaction of a very peculiar kind. It is not what I expected. It is not even particularly what I wanted. But anything is a relief from the desolate dullness and staleness of the Bright Young Thing.
First, it will clear the human mind (and save the advanced mind from many disappointments) if we realise that there always can be a reaction, right or wrong, against anything, good or bad. Life is far too complex not to leave some desirable or defensible things behind with every movement it makes. We have reactions in favour of things much more remote than Victorianism. I always remember a confident and contemptuous phrase in one of Macaulay’s speeches for the Reform Bill, which abolished Rotten Boroughs. “There has been no reaction. There will be no reaction. I no more expect a reaction in favour of Gatton and Old Sarum than a reaction in favour of Odin and Thor.” I will not discuss whether there is a reaction in favour of Gatton and Old Sarum; there most certainly is a reaction against Reform Bills and Representative Government. But what amuses me is that, even while Macaulay said the words, there was beginning a most unmistakable reaction in favour of Odin and Thor. Carlyle already had pen in hand and his Northern genius was slowly turning into Nordic insanity. He was already telling us to go back to the stark Scandinavian beginnings. A little while afterwards Nietzsche took the next step by throwing over Christian ethics as well as theology, and invoking the old gods of violence and war. And it ended with a great German General (who had led through the Great War and might have had enough of it) actually filling Germany with pagan propaganda and a publicity campaign in favour of Odin and Thor. So much for reactions in general. The most modern art finds the Ancient Greeks too modern and goes back to the Ancient Egyptians. We revive Primitive Art and may revive Prehistoric Art. We may paint on rock with red ochre, for all I know, or discover special qualities in stone hatchets and flint arrows.
There is a reaction; but that would not alone prove that the reaction is right. I think it is right; because it is a reaction in favour of civilisation; and against the destruction of civilisation. But with that word “civilisation” we come to the rather curious quality which this particular reaction shows. It is not, as I myself might have hoped or expected, a revolt of plain, old-fashioned people against the sophisticated. It is a revolt of the sophisticated. It is, at any rate, a revolt of the highly civilised; perhaps of the over-civilised. But if they are over-civilised, they are still highly intelligent. That is why they are kicking the Bright Young Thing down the street.
I will take one particular case which is rather a parable. Some time ago all the fine old English critics, Constant Readers and Conservative people generally, were in a ferment of fury and mockery against the impudent innovations of “the Sitwells”; that is, the three poets of that family. They were a proof that being modern means going mad. They were the very latest and loudest anarchists, destroying both rhyme and reason. I will not discuss their merits here. When Miss Sitwell accused the Dawn of “creaking,” there were discussions as to her meaning. Her foes said it was random nonsense, like describing the sun as sneezing or the grass as blowing its nose. Her friends said it was a bold and novel way of suggesting something harsh and reluctant about the cold morning light. But everybody agreed that it was the very latest and newest experiment, whether in liberty or in lunacy. The Sitwells were accused of beating the big drum, or blowing their own trumpet; but it was agreed that their drums and trumpets were the newest musical instruments of the queerest shape; and that they used the newest methods of shrieking for what they wanted. But what did they want?
Now, what the Sitwells want is Victorianism. What they do definitely desire, demand and incessantly describe, is a reaction to Victorian habits; to Victorian manners; and even to Victorian morals. As certainly as Shelley wanted a lot of wind and light and the rise of the pure pagan republic, as surely as Walt Whitman wanted democratic breadth and a sort of bodily brotherhood among men out-of-doors, so certainly what the Sitwells want is Victorian flower-beds and hot-houses, Victorian coloured patchwork and curios under glass; and, in no small degree, Victorian etiquette, distance and dignity. This may be a fad but it is a fact; and it is a fact that vividly illustrates the real revolt against recent moral, or immoral, tendencies. The Victorian revolt is not a revolt of Victorians. It is a revolt of Post-Victorians or rather of Post-Post-Victorians. They are going back to something remote, as much as the Pre-Raphaelites in going back to the Middle Ages. In both cases the reason is the same; because the modern ages have become too unbearably stupid for intelligent people. But the more modern case is the more acute case of this revolt against modernity among the moderns. To understand it, we must take a more general view of the singular situation in the world to-day.
Those specially called the Moderns, who are now most of them Ancients, conceived of human history as a progress in the sense of a procession. That is, they said that some slower people might bring up the rear, but all were moving onward. They also supposed that certain bold spirits, whom they called the Pioneers of Progress, went on in front and made a path for mankind. I have a great admiration for Walt Whitman; but it cannot be denied that he did exclaim, in a moment of weakness, “Pioneers, 0 Pioneers!” It was characteristic of all that world; first, that it relied upon a metaphor; and second, that it got the metaphor quite wrong. Whitman seems to associate his intellectual pioneers with the practical pioneers of the American Civil War. But a pioneer is not a person who leads the army, or decides where it shall go. The pioneers in front are as much under orders as any camp-followers in the rear. If Sherman had thrown out pioneers to clear his road to Atlanta; and if the pioneers had seen a futuristic vision and gone off to found the future city of Oklahoma, Sherman would have been very much surprised; nay, vexed. And the moral is that the marching column of mankind must have some kind of notion of where it wants to go, before it can decide whether a pioneer is a useful pioneer or not.
Now, at this moment, the marching column of mankind is in an extraordinary position. For one thing, it is not marching. But it is marking time; because it still has the general notion that it ought to march. It may seem quaint to recur to Macaulay as well as Whitman; but it is better described in Macaulay’s poem of Horatius than in Whitman’s poem about the Pioneers; though to many, I fear, Whitman is now as distant as Macaulay. But it is really true that the exact and very extraordinary position of the procession at this moment is expressed with precision in the familiar lines:
“And those behind cried ‘Forward!’ And those before cried ‘Back!’”
The camp-followers may be charging; but the pioneers are retreating. In other words, it is exactly the sort of bold and enquiring spirits, who were always said to be in advance of the age, who are now most doubtful about the desirability of advancing. It is exactly those who are content to follow tradition or convention or familiar fashions who are still following (as they suppose, at least) the tradition of progress, the convention of movement and the hundred fashions, familiar to the nineteenth-century, of appealing to the hope of change. Men are progressive because they are a little behind the times. They are reactionary because they are a little in advance of the times. It sounds like a paradox; but it is really a very practical and even inevitable state of things, given certain conditions. Those behind will still cry “Forward!”; and only those far in front will cry “Back!”; when the vanguard of the army has come suddenly to the edge of a precipice.
In short, I maintain that it is the Intellectuals (for want of a more intellectual term) who have now suddenly discovered the dangers of mere novelty, of mere anarchy, of mere negation. It is not all the Intellectuals, of course; and certainly not those who modestly gave themselves that name in the middle of the nineteenth-century. For these, by the ironic operation of their own favourite argument, are now old and venerable and established and respected; and, therefore, of no importance whatever. Men like Bertrand Russell, and H. G. Wells, are left behind by the advance; and are, therefore, under the illusion that it is still advancing. The particular state of mind I mean (which is not always a very pretty state of mind at present) is peculiar to a section of the younger Intellectuals. And, whatever it is, it is not a positive faith in the promise of the future or the tendencies of the present. If we take any typical contemporary poetry of the sort that is sensitive and critical, say the poems of Mr. Osbert Sitwell, it is quite obvious that they are not merely in revolt against the nineteenth-century; though the progressive theory was bound up with the nineteenth-century. They are in revolt against the twentieth-century; and potentially more in revolt against the twenty-first.
But the point is that it is because they are so very Modern that they have rebelled against Modernism. It is because they have themselves seen all the new tricks, and in many cases played all the new tricks, that they have realised before anybody else that the whole bag of tricks may soon be played out. Mr. Humbert Wolfe may be justified in beginning every line with a small letter; indeed, in that he is classical rather than revolutionary; for the old Latin texts were always printed so. But he is far too intelligent a man not to see that those who would prove themselves progressive, by abandoning all capital letters, can only prove themselves still more progressive by abandoning all small letters; and that this sort of destructive reform can only end in a blank page. So this kind of destructive progress ends in a blank wall. Mr. Sitwell may think himself right, in this or that case, in attaching a musical adjective to an entirely visual or pictorial substantive. But he can see, as well as anybody else, that if a hundred howling imitators come in and claim the right to attach any adjective to any substantive, it is not so much a question of literature being lawless as of its ceasing to be anything at all. And we see more and more every day, this curious sort of new alarm spreading among the most intelligent of the new schools’ which is almost unintelligible to many of the old schools; and especially to that very old school which supposes that the young have no business to be anything but reckless and revolutionary.
I will take the case of two of the most acute and individual among contemporary writers, one probably younger than the other, at least in fashion and fame; one American and the other English, and the inheritor ot a name already famous for a very English style I will take the cases of Mr. T. S. Eliot and Mr Aldous Huxley. They are different enough of course; but they exactly express two different ways of recoiling from the recent riot and vulgarity of the merely “modern” world. Mr. Eliot, who began like a child of his age with the recognised stark and jagged experiments in free verse, has come to have something like a suspicion of every sort of freedom. He had come to stand for an almost cloistered refinement, full of the virginal traditions of old religion and repudiating not only the demagogy of to-day but even the democracy of yesterday. There are passages in the works of Mr. Aldous Huxley which few will call cloistered, which few, perhaps, will call virginal. But he is none the less a representative ol the same reaction against recent vulgarity and vice. Only he reacts more in the manner of Swift; showing the ugly their own ugliness; even pelting the filthy with samples of their own filth. But he is, if not on the side of the angels, at least horribly bored with the devils. Anyone who will read his admirable account of Hollywood, which he calls, “The City of Dreadful Joy,” will find it more dreadful than joyful. There is a fight against the recent licence; but what is fighting it is a sort of fierce fastidiousness. I am not imagining this reaction because I want it; for, indeed, it is not especially the reaction that I want. I should have hoped for a popular revolt against perversions and pedantries of vice, which have never, in fact, been popular. I should have liked the ordinary, old-fashioned, obstinate people, who still stick to the notion of some connection between themselves and their own babies, to rise and bash in the heads of the inhuman prigs whose ideal is a sort of prophetic infanticide. I should like a howling rabble of really respectable people (and the rabble is still really respectable) to burn down the houses where Luxury takes on its true Latin sense of Luxuria. I should like the normal people, who live on beef and beer, to make war on the hypocritical cranks who take their vegetarianism in the form of vegetable cocktails less wholesome than the fruit of the vine. I should prefer the Intellectuals to be slaughtered by what may be called the Morals; and the mob is still very moral. But the great point is that they should be slaughtered; if not by the clubs of the crowd, then by the rapier of the more intellectual Intellectual. God moves in a mysterious way and does not disdain the strangest or the humblest instruments; and we must not be ashamed of finding ourselves, if necessary, on the side of the cultivated and the clever.
Or again, it might have been that picturesque paradox; a revolt of the old against the young. It might have been a rebellion of oppressed parents breaking the yoke of servile obedience now laid on them by their tyrannical sons and daughters. It might have been the heavy father breaking out of the coal-cellar with the original big stick, or the maiden aunt emerging from the bedroom armed with the poker; and the joyous spectacle of their smashing the gramophones and the saxophones and the ukuleles, hurling away the cocktails, wrecking the racing cars and generally showing that there is life in the old dog yet. But, as a fact, it does not seem to be coming through the fury of the father or the grandfather but rather with the slowly maturing disgust of the great-grandson with the manifest idiocy of the grandson.
It is not coming by the big stick or the cudgels of the populace; but by something which I have compared to a rapier; and might compare to a razor. Some young men of the school of Mr. Aldous Huxley have, indeed, a touch of pessimism that is only too suggestive of a razor; at once the symbol of elegance and of suicide. And yet there is a broader sense in which this is, perhaps, rather too true. When the Victorians rebuked little boys for playing with razors or rapiers, or such acute instruments and arguments ensued, the elders often used a proverbial expression here very relevant: “If you get so sharp as that, you will cut yourself” The minority of the most intelligent, in the younger generation, has really become very sharp; and it has really discovered the peril of cutting itself. Men like Mr. Huxley and Mr. Eliot have the sense to see that the half-truths of the sceptic are not only edged tools, but double-edged tools. They cut the ground from under rationalism as well as from under religion; they can be used to wound democracy as easily as despotism; in the last resort they can inoculate the mind with doubts about doubt itself. More and more the really clever young man will find that he has grown sharp enough to cut himself; and, if he does not try something beyond scepticism, he will grow sceptical enough to cut his throat.
Lastly, why do I think this small minority of rather fastidious and over-refined persons will finally have an effect? I answer, with a profound sigh, because of the great social institution which we call Snobbery. As soon as the quite brainless mob of Bright Young Things discovers that it is really being despised, as a mob of dull old things (though it were only by two well-educated minor poets) there will be a panic. The mass of the immoralists never believed in immorality or in anything else. They never really thought that wrong was right, because they never really thought at all. They merely believed what they were told; that being lawless was the latest thing. If once they hear that there is something later still, even later than the latest, they will rush for it and roll in the mud in front of it, though it were a Hermit out of the desert like St. Anthony. If it is a humorous, but slightly superior young man, who regards all their vulgar and raucous games as vieux jeu, and will only condescend to talk about Humanism and St. Thomas Aquinas, they will grovel before him. I know them. They play the goat; but they none the less do it like sheep. For they are sheep that have not a shepherd, and the shepherd named Pan is dead.
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LEVITY—OR LEVITATION
I DO not see why a man should not sometimes have a holiday, even while he is doing his work, and write about something merely because it amuses him. I know I should be doing my duty as a Distributist, doing it dismally with the pen when others are already doing it more nobly with the plough. But, for once in a way, I am going to write merely for fun; and about something only because it is funny. And the funniest thing I can find for miles round is in a paper called the Psychic News, a past issue of which was adorned with a portrait of me, accompanied with the extraordinary and rather mysterious caption, “G.K.C., the Catholic who goes up in the air.” Believing as I do in miracles, I have never claimed levitation as a power particularly likely to be manifested in my own case. But though not at present drawn irresistibly towards levitation, I am much tempted to levity. The charges are rather vague, except that they all seem to be equally unfortunate in relation to the facts of the case. The writer seemed to take it for granted that an article quite plainly signed by somebody else must really have been written by me, and written by me from no other motive but a fanatical Catholicism, although the man who really wrote is not a Catholic at all and said nothing whatever to suggest in any way that he was. He, however, is supremely capable of looking after himself, and the mere facts about this absurd muddle I have dealt with elsewhere. At the moment I only wish to wallow in sheer shameless enjoyment of the way in which the Psychic News attacks the Catholic Church and attacks me. I admit that this is mere self-indulgence on my part. I know that numbers of judicious friends will tell me that I ought not to take any notice of such an article. But nothing that can be called human is uninteresting, and this involves, to begin with, one puzzle which always interests me very much. And that is why people who fly into a rage with the Catholic Church always use an extraordinary diction, or verbal style, in which all sorts of incommensurate things are jumbled up together, so that the very order of the words is a joke. “Spiritualism depends only on the evidence which people receive in their own homes. It does not require priests. Neither do enquirers have to buy rosaries or beads, or crucifixes, or pay for candles or masses.” It must be a dreadful moment of indecision for the enquirers, when they have to make up their minds whether they will buy rosaries or beads. But the last term is the best; and here the order of words is especially significant. Apparently the first object of a Catholic is to get a candle. If once he can get hold of a candle, and walk about everywhere clasping his candle, he is all right. But if he cannot get a candle, he has the alternative of purchasing a mass; an instrument that is a sort of substitute for a candle.
Now I did not, as it happens, launch any grand persecuting personal spiritual attack on Spiritualism, as this writer imaginatively described. But if I did, as of course I might, I do think I could make a better job of attacking Spiritualism than he does of attacking Catholicism. I should not talk as if a Spiritualist hung suspended between the two divine dogmas of the Sacredness of Tambourines and the Return of the Dead. I should not talk as if men chose between a planchette and a Ouija-board. I should not talk about “tables or furniture,” or imply that a trumpet was the same sort of thing as a seance. But I never read an attack on Catholicism without finding this ignorant gabble of terms all topsy-turvy. There is always some such medley of misused words, in which mitres, misereres, nones, albs, croziers, virgins and viaticums tumble over each other without the wildest hope that anybody could possibly know what any of them mean. That is the first curiosity about this kind of writing. We can now go back to the only sentence in the paragraph in which anything like a meaning is apparent. It is that passage in which, we are told, Spiritualism does without a priesthood.
It does not require priests. It only requires a spiritual aristocracy really much more exclusive and privileged than priests; seeing they have direct access to new revelations, and their superiority is in their personal spiritual structure; they are abnormal as priests are not necessarily abnormal. But, however that may be, the paper in question reveals some remarkable impressions about spiritual functions and degrees. There is an astonishing caption under a picture of St. Joan of Arc; saying that she did not care whether she was a saint or a witch, because “she had a job to do and did it.” How refreshing this language is. How full of the fifteenth century! Joan was just all out to get that job. She reckoned she could hold down that job. Gee! Joan wasn’t the sort of skirt to bother about whether it came from God or the Devil, when there was a good job to hold down. The paper informs us that its religion is entirely founded on facts; but it seems possible to manufacture a good deal of abstract vulgarity without employing them. It were vain, I suppose, to point out the historical fact that Joan debated desperately for days and days to prove she was not a witch, long after it was obvious that her job, as a job, was either done or done for. But might not the suggestion, that it does not matter whether one is a witch or a saint, explain something of the distrust that some of us feel about Spiritualism?
As I am writing this for fun, I would not say very much about the central mystery of my own religion, or the laboriously offensive terms in which the writer asks me to “prove” Transubstantiation, as he apparently claims to “prove” Spiritualism. To him I am content to say one thing. Suppose the Church had tried to give such proofs, and with such results. Suppose Pope after Pope, and Priest after Priest, had stood up at the altar rails promising on the spot to prove Transubstantiation. And suppose Pope after Pope, and Priest after Priest, had been exposed as proving it by a faked apparatus in the Communion Table, by hidden wires in the cross and candles, and all the apparatus of fraud. Suppose, while many priests were doubtless honest men and perhaps honest dupes, it was a plain, palpable historical fact that the miracle had again and again been a mere conjuring trick, and the most famous Catholic saints had been caught and exposed doing the trick. If that had happened, I venture to say that the Eucharistic Congress would not now be so much respected by the whole civilised world; or by everybody except the hooligans of Portadown and journalists of the Psychic News.
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THE CASE FOR HERMITS
ANYONE who has ever protected a little boy from being bullied at school, or a little girl from some childish persecution at a party, or any natural person from any minor nuisance, knows that the being thus badgered tends to cry out, in a simple but singular English idiom, “Let me alone!” It is seldom that the child of nature breaks into the cry, “Let me enjoy the fraternal solidarity of a more socially organised group-life.” It is rare even for the protest to leap to the lips in the form, “Let me run around with some crowd that has got dough enough to hit the high spots.” Not one of these positive modern ideals presents itself to that untutored mind; but only the ideal of being “let alone.” It is rather interesting that so spontaneous, instinctive, almost animal an ejaculation contains the word alone.
There are now a great many boys and girls, both old and young, who are really in that state of mind; not only through being teased, but also through being petted. Most of them will fiercely deny it, since it contradicts the conventions of their new generation; just as a child kept up too late at night will more and more indignantly deny the desire to go to bed. Indeed I am always expecting to hear that a scientific campaign has been opened against Sleep. Sooner or later the Prohibitionists will turn their attention to the old tribal traditional superstition of Sleep; and they will say that the sluggard is merely encouraged by the cowardice of the moderate sleeper. There will be tables of statistics, showing how many hours of output are lost by miners, smelters, plumbers, plasterers, and every trade in which (it will be noted) men have contracted the habit of sleep; tables showing the shortage of aconite, alum, apples, beef, beetroot, bootlaces, etc., and other statistics carefully demonstrating that work of this kind can only rarely be performed by sleep-walkers. There will be all the scientific facts, except one scientific fact. And that is the fact that if men do not have Sleep, they go mad. It is also a fact that if men do not have Solitude, they go mad. You can see that, by the way they go on, when the poor miserable devils only have Society.
The incident of Miss Fitzpatrick, the lady who really liked to be alone, challenges all recent fashions, which are all for Society without Solitude. We must Get Together; as the gunman said when he ran his machine-gun into two other machine-guns and killed all the children caught between them. And we know that this sociability and communal organisation has already produced in fashionable society all that sweetness and light, all that courtesy and charity, all that True Christianity of pardon and patience, which we see in the modern organisers of gangs or “group-life.” In contrast with this happy mood now pervading our literature and conversation, it is customary to point to hermits and solitaries as if they were savages and man-haters.
But it is not true. It is not true in History or human fact. The line that ran, “Turn, gentle hermit of the Vale,” was truer to the real tradition about the real hermits. They were doubtless, from a modern standpoint, lunatics; but they were nice lunatics. Twenty touches could illustrate what I mean; for instance, the fact that they could make pets of the wild animals that came naturally to them. But many of them really had charity—even to human beings. They felt more kindly about men than men in the Forum or the Mart felt about each other. Doubtless there have been merely sulky solitaries; unquestionably there have been sham cynics and cabotins, like Diogenes. But he and his sort are very careful not to be really solitary; careful to hang about the market-place like any demagogue. Diogenes was a tub-thumper, as well as a tub-dweller. And that sort of professional sulks remains; but it is sulks without solitude. We all know there are geniuses, who must go out into polite society in order to be impolite. We all know there are hostesses who collect lions and find they have got bears. I fear there was a touch of that in the social legend of Thomas Carlyle and perhaps of Tennyson. But these men must have a society in which to be unsociable. The hermits, especially the saints, had a solitude in which to be sociable.
St. Jerome lived with a real lion; a good way to avoid being lionised. But he was very sociable with the lion. In his time, as in ours, sociability of the conventional sort had become social suffocation. In the decline of the Roman Empire, people got together in amphitheatres and public festivals, just as they now get together in trams and tubes. And there were the same feelings of mutual love and tenderness, between two men trying to get a seat in the Colosseum, as there are now between two men trying to get the one remaining seat on a Tooting tram. Consequently, in that last Roman phase, all the most amiable people rushed away into the desert, to find what is called a hermitage; but might almost be called a holiday. The man was a hermit because he was more of a human being; not less. It was not merely that he felt he could get on better with a lion than with the sort of men who would throw him to the lions. It was also that he actually liked men better when they let him alone. Now nobody expects anybody, except a very exceptional person, to become a complete solitary. But there is a strong case for more Solitude; especially now that there is really no Solitude.
The reason why even the normal human being should be half a hermit is that it is the only way in which his mind can have a half-holiday. It is the only way to get any fun even out of the facts of life; yes, even if the facts are games and dances and operas. It bears most resemblance to the unpacking of luggage. It has been said that we live on a railway station; many of us live in a luggage van; or wander about the world with luggage that we never unpack at all. For the best things that happen to us are those we get out of what has already happened. If men were honest with themselves, they would agree that actual social engagements, even with those they love, often seem strangely brief, breathless, thwarted or inconclusive. Mere society is a way of turning friends into acquaintances, rhe real profit is not in meeting our friends, but in having met them. Now when people merely plunge from crush to crush, and from crowd to crowd, they never discover the positive joy of life. They are like men always hungry, because their food never digests; also, like those men, they are cross. There is surely something the matter with modern life when all the literature of the young is so cross. That is something of the secret of the saints who went into the desert. It is in society that men quarrel with their friends; it is in solitude that they forgive them. And before the society-man criticises the saint, let him remember that the man in the desert often had a soul that was like a honey-pot of human kindness, though no man came near to taste it; and the man in the modern salon, in his intellectual hospitality, generally serves out wormwood for wine.
In conclusion, I will take one very modern and even topical case. I do not believe in Communism, certainly not in compulsory Communism. And it is typical of this acrid age that what we all discuss is compulsory Communism. I often sympathise with Communists, which is quite a different thing; but even these I respect rather as bold or honest or logical than as particularly genial or kindly. Nobody will claim that modern Communism is a specially sweet-tempered or amiable thing. But if you will look up the legends of the earliest Hermits, you will find a very charming anecdote, about two monks who really were Communists. And one of them tried to explain to the other how it was that quarrels arose about private property. So he thumped down a stone and observed theatrically, “This stone is mine.” The other, slightly wondering at his taste, said, “All right; take it.” Then the teacher of economics became quite vexed and said, “No, no; you mustn’t say that. You must say it is yours; and then we can fight.” So the second hermit said it was his; whereupon the first hermit mechanically gave it up; and the whole lesson in Business Methods seems to have broken down. Now you may agree or disagree with the Communist ideal, of cutting oneself off from commerce, which those two ascetics followed. But is there not something to suggest that they were rather nicer people than the Communists we now meet in Society? Somehow as if Solitude improved the temper?
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KILLING THE NERVE
IT is now generally agreed, with great cheerfulness and good temper, that one of the chief features of the state of Peace we now enjoy is the killing of a considerable number of harmless human beings. We are not wild and reckless and pugnacious in such things, even as these Latins. Relatively, we seem almost reconciled to the general notion of killing; so long as we can feel a real assurance that it is aimless and purposeless and fruitless. If an old woman is knocked down dead in the quiet village street where she played as a child, if a gutter-boy is not quite quick enough in getting out of the gutter and suffers the death penalty for his negligence, we all agree that it is very regrettable. But it does not withdraw the attention of some of us from a quite exclusive concentration upon the horrors of war, because nobody could confuse an old woman crossing the road with an old-world romance in any way connected with adventure or valour; and the boy has not ventured into the road (thank God) under any delusion that he is sacrificing himself for his native land. If death strikes down suddenly somebody who does not expect to die, and is not deceived by any nonsense about being faithful unto death … 0 death, where is thy sting? If a tramp is taken to a pauper’s grave unstained by any hopes or dreams of war or revolution, or any vision of justice victorious. … 0 grave, where is thy victory? It is obvious that death is a very different thing when it is the product of such peaceful surroundings. The modern version of Killing No Murder is that only militarism is murder; and there is nothing wrong with killing when it is not military.
But I have here introduced the word killing in a lighter sense; even lighter than that in which some progressives take the killing in the streets. For there are other things, though they are things less vivid and less sacred, which are killed in the streets. Even as it is we use the word “kill” in a more metaphorical sense. For instance, we talk of colours killing each other. And, as one example out of many, it may be noted that we do live in a scheme of social life in which colours kill each other. That is, we live in a world which gives us a vast exhibition of that vividness which is symbolised by colour, but which is wholly without that concerted unity of rule or tradition which is symbolised by harmony in colour. The illuminated advertisements of a big city like London, which is now in this respect almost indistinguishable from New York, exhibit exactly that contradiction between colour and design. The design, even in the sense of the purpose, is patchy and personal and not only vulgar but essentially venal. The colour is often the best and most beautiful experience given to the senses of man, if only man were in a position to make the best of it. The psychological effect produced by random commercial illumination is something which is to the real possibilities of colour what a drunken slumber is to the divine gift of wine. Or rather, it should be compared to that habit, which springs up so easily in Prohibitionist or semi-Prohibitionist countries, of trying to get the best out of the divine gift of wine by preceding it with excessive quantities of whisky, following it by equally excessive quantities of beer, or possibly beginning the whole banquet with liqueurs and ending it with cocktails. In short, Prohibitionists get drunk because they have never been taught to drink; and commercial advertising wastes its artistic materials, even when it possesses them, because it has never been taught to colour or even to enjoy colours. Colours are being killed; and they are being killed by being worked to death. The nerve is being killed; and it is being killed by being overstimulated and therefore stunted and stunned.
When I was a child, I had a toy-theatre, illuminated in those days by candles (to which perhaps the psycho-analyst will trace my subsequent downfall into ecclesiastical crypts and cloisters) and in the ordinary way I was quite content with this type of illumination, the candles seeming to my barbarous mind to be themselves like a forest of fairy trees, with flames for flowers. There were also yet more rich and rare delights, which were sufficiently rare to those not sufficiently rich. It was sometimes possible to purchase a sort of dark red powder, which when ignited burst into a rich red light. Fire was wonderful enough—but red fire! But then I was only a dull Victorian infant somewhere between five and seven; and I only used red fire rarely; when it was effective. Living under such limitations, my immature brain perceived that it was more suitable to some things than to others; as, for instance, to a goblin coming up through a trap-door out of the cavern of the King of the Copper Mines, or to the final conflagration that made a crimson halo round the dark mill and castle of the execrable Mad Miller. I should not even then have used red fire in a scene showing the shepherd (doubtless a prince in disguise) piping to his lambs in the pale green meadows of spring; or in a scene in which glassy gauzes of green and blue waved in the manner of waves round the cold weeds and fishes at the entrance to Davy Jones’s Locker. Science and progress and practical education and knowledge of the world are necessary before people can make blunders like that. Therefore, that red fire of the nursery still glows in my memory as an inward imaginative revelation, in spite of years, in spite of time, in spite even of passing through the streets of modern London.
In the London streets to-day, in what Mr. Cuthbert Baines has so vividly called, “the floodlit, bloodlit street,” the rare effect of red fire is wholly wasted and ruined, by the loss of its rarity and by the loss of its suitability. The child who has been made too familiar with all that redhot lettering will probably never have the romance that I remember in my childhood; and it is perhaps strictly true to say that he will never see red fire in his life. First, of course, because he has seen too much of it. For this is not the decorative process of using red in a scheme of colour; it is simply the dull process of painting the town red. But second, also, because the toy-theatre showed him little pictures of large things; and the town signs show him large pictures of little things. He will very soon discover that the ideas associated with these signs, the motives of the men who put them up, the mood of the men who accept them, are things connected entirely with dreary money-grubbing or shoddy luxury. He will be unable to get any great vista or vision out of a glimpse; he will know nothing but a glaring wilderness of proclamations that have emphasis without significance; and will grow up without any poetical associations with a colour he has only seen used to sell a cosmetic or a quack medicine.
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THE CASE OF CLAUDEL
I HAVE heard a story, which I have never verified either by history or topography, otherwise known as being on the spot, to the effect that the French Academy accepted the accident of the absence of Molière from its records with a magnificent gesture. It may have been only a tradition about something that somebody planned to do; it may even have been only a tale of somebody about what ought to be done; but it is exactly the sort of tradition that would represent the nation; and it is exactly the sort of thing that Frenchmen would or could have done. The French Academy, founded by Richelieu for the establishment of classical literature in the country, naturally passed over a wandering play-actor and playwright like Molière; just as Oxford and Cambridge would have passed over a wandering play-actor and playwright like Shakespeare. But here the story, even if it is only a story, strikes the note that only the French can strike. For it was said that the French Academy erected in its inner courts a special statue of Molière, with the inscription “Rien ne manque à sa gloire; il manque à la notre” … and if you want to know what is the difference between the atmosphere of France and England, both of them very jolly atmospheres in their way, you have only to imagine anybody making, or even anybody suggesting, a public apology of that sort to Shakespeare. Can you imagine a huge statue of Shakespeare in Balliol Quod, inscribed with the statement, “Shakespeare never went to Balliol.” Can you conceive even Cambridge rearing a colossal monument to Dickens, to celebrate the fact that he never had a University education— or indeed any other education? If that story about Molière is true, or even if it is a true parable or fable, there is an obvious moral to the fable. The English rather ignore defeats; the French rather exaggerate defeats; but the French do sometimes have the talent of snatching victories out of defeats.
A little while ago, to my great regret, the French Academy suffered a very serious defeat. It was when it preferred a clever writer of rather decadent verse to Paul Claudel; but nobody supposes, I hope, that it was M. Claudel who was defeated. If we are to talk about anybody really great being defeated, let us say that Richelieu was defeated. A man of the first rank of French Letters, which the great Cardinal loved, and the Catholic culture which he also loved, with all his diplomatic and even unscrupulous encouragement of those who hated it, has been met with a sort of mute resistance; presumably by those who hated more than the most unscrupulous Cardinal could ever do. Without presuming to pronounce upon the literary comparison, it is enough to say that even if the Academy were right, it would here prove itself entirely academic. It would be proved in the fact that nobody in the literary world has heard of Claudel’s rival; and everybody in the literary world, has heard of Claudel. He is recognised as standing for something quite literally from China to Peru; at least from Japan to Washington. It looks as if the Academy has made one of its rather rare mistakes; and without the obvious excuses which applied to the case of Molière. And it looks as if there might some day be another statue, with another inscription: “Nothing is wanting to his glory; but he is wanting to ours.”
There is no space here even to suggest the sumptuous wealth of images and ideas in the work of Paul Glaudel. It is only important to note the fact, as a fact of history rather than of literature, that it is on his side, and not on the other side, that the wealth of ideas can now be found. It might very well happen, at one time it probably did happen, that the historic culture he represents had dwindled down to narrow channels and rare and isolated notes; like the last pipe of the pastoral poets that sounded from the eighteenth-century clerics imitating the innocence of the Georgics; or that Irish harp of which a single string snapped whenever a heart had broken for liberty. But to-day it is exactly the other way. It is the rationalistic tradition of the nineteenth century that has narrowed into monotony and repetition. It is the artist who is an atheist who has taken refuge in a garden, to escape from the cry of all the ancient Christian civilization for the ploughing of all the fields of the earth. It is the musical instrument of the modernist that has broken all its strings but one, like the lute in the agnostic picture of Hope; and continues to strike the same few chords of truth remaining to it, but drearily and all on one note. Nobody denies, and certainly I do not deny, that the truths of the emancipated epoch are still true, even when thus isolated and irrelevant; just as the spiritual truths were still true, even when repeated mechanically by the court chaplains or stale preachers of the eighteenth century. But in the matter of fullness, of richness, and of variety, the whole advantage is now with the ancient cause. The thoughts that throng in a sort of hubbub, in a work like The Satin Slipper, are like a crowd of living men bursting the barriers of a deserted fortress. It is Claudel or the same type of man who is now storming the Bastille; a prison with all the harshness and inhumanity of a prison, except that it now contains fewer and fewer prisoners. An empty prison may be almost more depressing than a full prison; and such an empty prison is the tradition of academic scepticism to-day. Prejudice, the very spirit of a prison, alone shuts out the new generation from the full realization of the greater fruitfulness promised by the revival of Christendom. In one sense we may agree with all the old and weary journalists who say that the age is to be the age of Youth; but its most youthful manifestation is in something that renews its youth like the eagle.
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THE HIGHER NIHILISM
MR. MIDDLETON MURRY has written a generous, a stimulating and rather a strange book. It is called The Necessity of Communism: and my own first feelings about it may be expressed by saying that I have much more sympathy with the Communism than with the Necessity. I cannot but feel that Mr. Middleton Murry is caught in a sort of net of necessity; that his spirited and active mind is actually hampered by his queer religion of destiny. The reader trips over it, as if it were barbed wire, when striding through what is otherwise an open field of freedom and fair-mindedness. To take one example; no Catholic could possibly ask for a more just or even generous judgment on the Middle Ages, and their relation to the Reformation, than that given in Mr. Murry’s chapter called “The Pattern of History”; and yet it ends with a twist of phrase so abrupt and perverse that I almost cried out aloud at the inconsequence. “In England the Church was expropriated, by men who had not as individuals the faintest ethical superiority over those they expropriated, but who had the impersonal justification of being instruments of economic destiny.” Now, with all respect, I do not know in the least what the last words of that sentence mean. What is “impersonal justification”? How can anything except a person be justified, and how can he be justified except by another person judging him to be just? What are “instruments of economic destiny” or any other destiny? Instruments mean tools chosen by some person for some purpose. Who is Destiny; and in what sense can he have a purpose? It always seems to me that all this sort of thing is not even metaphysics, far less metabiology, but simply metaphor. It is all the more difficult to deal with, because the ideas for which it stands are delivered quite dogmatically as dogmas. Mr. Middleton Murry tells us at the very beginning that a man must be a complete materialist; that it is mere shilly-shallying to be only a behaviourist. But he does not give a man like me any reason for being either; and I have not the smallest intention of being either. He says that any reversion to the past is “forbidden,” and I can only say “By whom?” It would be a mere wanton veto on all art and action to forbid us to take materials from the past. But as a fact it is impossible for anybody to avoid using the past. In reality, it is impossible to use anything except the past. And why is it any more forbidden to me to say that the Catholic Church is a thing of the future and the present, as well as the past, than it is to Mr. Murry to say that Karl Marx fulfilled the purpose of the Hebrew Prophets or that Jesus of Nazareth became the supreme type of disinterestedness? But in logic there is no need even to go back to Jesus or the Jewish prophets. Karl Marx is as much a part of the past as King John Sobieski; and the Russian Revolution is as past as the Roman Empire. The book is full of violent affirmations of this sort, entirely unsupported by arguments ot any sort. Nevertheless, there is an argument running through the book; and a very curious and interesting one it is.
The writer starts, as he starts with so many unexplained things, with the very dangerous word, “disinterested.” It is dangerous because a mere touch will make it mean “uninterested”; in the sense of the Buddhist and the pessimist. We all know it has a sane sense, as meaning sincerely unselfish, self-sacrificing for a faith, and so on. But Mr. Murry does not mean merely giving up our pleasures for the sake of our ideals. In some places, he really seems to mean giving up our ideals, or some of our ideals, for a sort of super-ideal which has sometimes precious little to say for itself, except that it is Destiny. There really is a wild cry from Asia in his classic speech; an altruism that is almost nihilism; a sacrifice that is nearly suicide. We are to give up liberty; we are to give up everything. This passionate paradox is undoubtedly sincere; and yet it conceals another paradox which it will be well to watch and suspect. Morally, it is all very heroic; but intellectually, it actually contains too much caution; it is more cautious than wise. It has behind its position two alternative lines of retreat. For the logical reader will at once perceive that, by thus rising into wild renunciation, the controversialist really has it both ways. Wherever Communism can be made attractive, he will make it attractive. Wherever Communism is quite obviously repulsive, he will say it proves the selfless hardihood of Communists who embrace so repulsive a thing. When it is human, it is in sympathy with all humanity; when it is inhuman, it calls for a superhuman sympathy. When it is good it is good; and when it is bad, they are very good to swallow it. This form of Necessity might be found in that proverb from the mouldering past: “Heads I win, tails you lose.”
What Mr. Middleton Murry wants, of course, is real religion; and in parts of this book he seems to be growing desperate, or almost going mad, under the limitations of his unreal religion. He has got authority in the wrong place and asceticism in the wrong place. He is more limited by the idea of Destiny than we are by the idea of Deity. And he wants man to sacrifice civilisation as monks sacrifice luxury. He seems almost satisfied with it as a giant gesture of renunciation; there is really uncommonly little in this book about what will be the practical advantages of Communism when established. Reading between the lines, we almost find the meaning to be merely this: that he and the rest of us have come to breaking point; and this is the obvious point at which to break. There are other aspects of the book, with many of which I warmly agree, but I will conclude by saying that my fundamental objection to his Communism is that it consents to be the heir of Capitalism. His unfortunate necessitarianism narrows the possibilities of politics; and is content to say that industrialism has turned the world into One Man, who is aching in all his limbs. No doubt; and so would you and I, if we were all unnaturally tied to each other neck and heels, that we might make up together the monstrous and tottering figure of a pantomime ogre. But I do not want the ogre; I only want to cut him up. I am more revolutionary than Mr. Middleton Murry. I do not believe the unnatural monster will ache any the less, because he calls himself a Communist. I am more sceptical than Mr. Middleton Murry. I deny the pantomime myth of the One Man; and I should like to break him up again into men.
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THE ASCETIC AT LARGE
MY note on the Communism of Mr. Middleton Murry reads to me as rather too hasty and hostile; because I had no space to mention some strong and substantial parts of the book; notably those expressing contempt for the respectable sort of Socialist who will not call himself a Communist. The study of ‘parasitic’ Parliamentary Labour is masterly, and my own sympathies would be all with a man like Mr. Maxton as compared with a man like Mr. Thomas. But the sequel is still puzzling; for in the last short note there is no practical programme except a Minimum Wage for all, which is said to obviate the need of expropriation of land and property. I suppose this means that employers would be taxed till they were too poor to employ; and then the State would employ. But what State—and, my God, what statesmen! Why, presumably (if nothing is needed but a new wage raised by a new tax) just the jolly statesmen the world produces at present, the parasitic Parliamentarians turned into omnipotent bureaucrats. I should refuse it, of course; first, because it preserves the wage-system; second because the worst wage-system is one with only one employer, who may be an omnipresent enemy; and third because, in the purely practical statement, there is no provision for any change in the type of tyrant. But this is unfair to the unpractical part; which of course is the better part. Mr. Murry does demand a terrific change of heart, though his scheme hardly ensures it. We may well struggle on as Distributists, when Communism seems so steep even to Communists; and they must endure the same abnormal austerity in order to be abnormal, that we endure to be normal.
In theory, or this part of his theory at least, Mr. Middleton Murry is an ascetic who wishes to transfer asceticism from the individual life, where it may be noble and beautiful, to the whole social and historical life, where it becomes simply vandalism or barbaric destruction. In this he is undoubtedly at one with the Puritan or the Prohibitionist or the more mechanical sort of Pacifist; in short he is entirely at one with that sort of modern world which he most justly detests. Broadly considered, the fact that bulks biggest in the modern industrial world is this: that its moral movements are much more utterly and ruthlessly repressive than the past forms of mysticism or fanaticism that commonly affected only the few. Mediaeval men endured frightful fasts; but none of them would have dreamed of seriously proposing that nobody anywhere should ever have wine any more. And Prohibition, which was accepted by a huge modern industrial civilisation, did seriously propose that nobody should ever have wine any more. Cranks who dislike tobacco would utterly destroy all tobacco; I doubt whether they would even allow it medically as a sedative. Some Pagan sages and some Christian saints have been vegetarians, but nobody in the ancient world would ever have prophesied that flocks and herds would utterly vanish from the earth. But in the Utopia of the true vegetarian, I suppose they would utterly vanish from the earth. The more pedantic Pacifist has the same view of fighting, even for justice, and disarmament is as universal as conscription. For both conscription and disarmament are very modern notions. And modern notions of the sort are not only negative but nihilist; they always demand the absolute annihilation or “total prohibition” of something.
Now I am as adamant against Mr. Murry in this notion of mutilating our whole culture in a frenzy of moral renunciation. I admit that a saint may cut off his hand and enter heaven, and have a higher place there than the rest of us. But a plea for the amputation of the hands of all human beings, the vision of a Handless Humanity as the next evolutionary stage after that of the tailless ape, leaves me cold, however much it is commended as a splendid corporate self-sacrifice. These things are an allegory, in more ways than one. We may say indeed that the inhuman industrial era did really abolish the Hand, since it did abolish the Handicraft. I admit that monks have their own reasons for shaving their heads or nuns for cutting off their hair; but my advice to humanity outside such ecstasies would be to remain calm and keep its hair on. That a man should surrender his luxury is one thing; that mankind should surrender its liberty to deal with the problem of luxury is quite another. It is one thing to impoverish oneself; it is quite another responsibility to impoverish a whole cultural system of its culture. I might or might not be the better for giving up wine; I am absolutely certain that the world would not be better for giving up wine. Mr. Middleton Murry may be moved by a noble impulse to give up private property, but I do not for one single moment believe that humanity would be happier for giving up private property.
As a matter of fact, it is exactly this sort of sweeping destruction that has made it unhappy. The modern Capitalist world, which we unite to curse, actually came out of that notion of utterly abandoning the old for the promise of the new. Men said about the business of scarring English hills with rails or rolling English villages in smoke, exactly what Mr. Murry is now saying about sacrificing ancient faith or freedom and taxing moderate property out of existence. They said, as he does, that it was sad, that it was hard, that it called for a heroic sacrifice; but that we must not be sentimentalists clinging to the past, but must look to the brighter and broader future. And the brighter future was the epoch of Mr. Carnegie and Mr. Ford. Capitalism was actually founded by urging a new realism against an old romanticism. The answer is that it was not necessary for a whole society to give up beauty; and it is not necessary for a whole society to give up liberty. And if we look back at history, we shall see that these sweeping social renunciations have done nothing but harm. Over all America lies like an incubus the cold corpse of Puritanism, because one fervid generation thought that man must say farewell for ever to priests as well as play-actors, to sacraments as well as feasts. In short, men were asked to sacrifice everything for Calvinism as they are now asked to sacrifice everything for Communism. But though man may sacrifice anything, Everyman must not sacrifice everything. Individual men must sacrifice their own liberties, but only to restore liberty. And it is a grand irony that, while the cultured Communist (with all respect to him) is rending everybody else’s garments and scattering ashes on other people’s heads, away in many quiet places, on the hills of Lanark or deep in my own Buckingham beech-woods, priests and friars who have themselves renounced private property are rebuilding the farms and families of Distributism.
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THE BACKWARD BOLSHIE
AFTER all, the Bolshevist is really a Victorian. His is a nineteenth-century dream, even if it be a twentieth-century reality. It is notably so in the aspect which now makes the dream a nightmare; I mean the mad optimism about the advantages of machinery. What was offered to us as a Five Years Hence Plan ought really to have been called a Fifty Years Ago Plan. For they are only trying to do with Russia exactly what the Victorians did actually do with England; turn it into the workshop of the world and fill it with dirty tools and dismal mechanics. Marx was much more of a Victorian than Morris. He may not have been technically a subject of Queen Victoria, though it is quite likely that he was. By geographical extraction I suppose he was a German—like Queen Victoria’s husband and more remotely, Queen Victoria herself. By real or racial extraction he was a Jew; like Queen Victoria’s favourite Prime Minister and a good many other persons unnecessary to mention. But the late Victorian period was the very period at which the Jews, and especially the German Jews, were at the very top of their power and influence. From the time when they forced the Egyptian War to the time when they forced the South African War, they were imperial and immune. Certainly much more so than they are now; for the Jews are now being jumped on very unjustly in Germany itself, and old Victorians like Mr. Belloc and myself, who began in the days of Jewish omnipotence by attacking the Jews, will now probably die defending them. Anyhow, Karl Marx did not differ from any number of Victorian Jews in type or externals. He lived mostly in England, and launched his world religion from something more British than the British Empire: the British Museum. The Beard which moves Mr. Wells to impatience was simply the beard of Victorian romance; the beard of Tennyson and Longfellow and Trollope. And though his plan has been very imperfectly applied in the one place in the world where he would have said it could not be applied at all (for this true Victorian saw the great commercial cities of Western Europe as the only possible battlefields of the future) it has all the character of a new and rather barbaric people imitating something that is already stale, not to say stinking, for civilised people. It was exactly like the very Victorian incident of the industrialising of Japan. That is, it was and is something essentially behind the times. The Japanese wear billycock hats presumably under the impression that we admire billycock hats. But, whatever just vengeance may fall upon our hats, this is to do an injustice to our heads. Now, as a matter of fact, our heads have in many ways advanced a little, since the days when our own Five Year Plan filled England with filth and smoke. Some rather deeper questions have arisen; questions about the individual, about the purpose of life, about religion in history, and so on. Philosophy, even Thomist philosophy, is heard again in Paris and Oxford.
Now Marx had no more philosophy than Macaulay. The Marxians therefore have no more philosophy than the Manchester School. It was enough for Macaulay to rejoice in the mere excitement of extension, in the hope that “the roofs and chimneys of a new Manchester may rise in the wilds of Connemara.” Similarly, it is enough for the Moscow Marxians to hope that the roofs and chimneys of a new Manchester may rise in the wilds of Siberia. It is true that the original Manchester men desired competition while the Marxians desire combination; or the Combine of All Combines. But the competition ended in a Combine and the Combine has not really ended in a Communist State. For it seems clear that grades of unequal wages do exist in Bolshevist Russia, and the Bolshevist rulers can only explain that it is a temporary necessity at this political stage and that true, pure, perfect Communism will come in the future. It might be the Labour Party, mightn’t it?
But to carry competition to any lengths, because it is the fashion, or to carry combination to any lengths because it is the fashion, is not a Philosophy. A philosophy begins with Being; with the end and value of a living thing; and it is manifest that a materialism that only considers economic ethics, cannot cover the question at all. If the problem of happiness were so solved by economic comfort, the classes who are now comfortable would be happy, which is absurd. This humourless hammering on one note is like the worst Victorian fads; Temperance or Feminism. It is especially like that very old-fashioned Feminism that hated to be feminine. I am told that in Russia men and women dress roughly alike. But, mark you, that does not mean that men wear flowers in their hair or trail about in those noble pontifical robes with which tradition clothed every woman like a queen. It means that women dress like men; not that men dress like women. Now that is sheer stark, stale, dead Victorianism. That is the only original Woman’s Rights Woman, who deliberately made herself hideous with bloomers and goggles. By the following reigns, even the Suffragettes had learned better than that; but while the Suffragettes are things of the past for us, they are still far in the rosy future for the backward and belated Bolshevist. He is still plodding through that foggy factory twilight that was supposed to be the enlightened daylight of the nineteenth century; and it is truer now than in the time of the Czars to say that Russia is the most backward of the nations.
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THE LAST TURN
THE only difficulty about the evident reawakening of Catholicism in modern England, is that conversion calls on a man to stretch his mind, as a man awakening from a sleep may stretch his arms and legs. It calls on the imagination to stretch itself, for instance, over a wider area than England, and a longer period than English history. And, for certain rather curious reasons, the stretching of the mind generally stops short of anything like a complete comprehension of any great historical or philosophical process. This is what Bernard Shaw meant when he said that the world will never really progress, until every man lives for three hundred years. I remember remarking at the time that there was a sort of truth symbolised in this; and that, most certainly, if Bernard Shaw had lived for three hundred years he would be a Catholic.
This preliminary point can be quite sufficiently proved even from this particular case. Three hundred years would mean that he would remember, as part of the positive poetry of childhood, the first phase of the Reformation. The first phase of the Reformation in England was the Divine Right of Kings. It was a romantic enthusiasm for Royalty itself, and the duty of an utterly prostrate passive obedience to it. This was the first effect of the New Religion; but before the child was barely a boy it would be overthrown by another New Religion. The Calvinist killed the sacred King, who had been sacred enough to kill the Church; and darkened the land with a creed of Total Depravity and the Scottish Sabbath. By the time Mr. Shaw was a growing lad of only a hundred years old, the world would have rebelled against this tyranny in turn. The Scottish Mr. Hume would soon be preparing to burst up the Scottish Sabbath. The ingenious Mr. Rousseau would be denying Total Depravity and asserting Total Innocence, Naturalness and Niceness. Out of this, as he grew to maturity, nearing a century and a half, there would grow gradually the most pleasant and plausible, the most happy, healthy and exhilarating of all the purely human visions: the vision of Liberty. Let men be only free from their feudal chains and theological gags; let them speak as they like, write as they like, buy and sell as they like, trade and travel and enquire as they like; and the race will waken from the nightmare of ages into the broad brotherhood of reason and justice. About the time when Mr. Shaw’s first grey hair appeared, in the year 1832, when he was barely two hundred, there was much talk about a Reform Bill in England; but I do not think Mr. Shaw would have been taken in, even then. Already, for a long time, men had been buying and selling as they liked, and trading and travelling as they liked. And already the result stood up solid and enormous, in the thing called Capitalism: that is the dispossession of the populace of all forms of real productive property; all instruments of production in the hands of the few; all the millions merely the servants of the few, working for a wage, always an insecure wage, generally a mean and inhuman wage. It was when this process had gone even further that the real historical Mr. Bernard Shaw was born; with the natural consequence that Mr. Bernard Shaw has devoted his life to making war on Capitalism. He has done so because the special evil of his own lifetime was Capitalism. But shall we not guess that he would have done it rather differently, if he had already spent two or three lifetimes warring against Divine Right, and then against the Calvinism that attacked Divine Right, and then against the Rousseauan prostration before Liberty, which destroyed Calvinism—and produced Capitalism. Would he not conclude that the whole State had been staggering about in a most extraordinary and irrational manner, ever since he was first born under the Elizabethan Settlement? Would it not be obvious that the mind of man had been filled with nothing but frantic exaggerations, crude simplifications, provincial panaceas and quack medicines and sheer raving monomania, ever since it had broken away from the central civilisation and the philosophy which the Saints had handed down from the Ancients? Would it not interest him to find that, all the time, there had been written in the open books of Aquinas or Bellarmine or Suarez, a perfectly reasonable apportionment of the authority of princes, the claims of peoples, the possibilities of democracy, the use and abuse of property, and the right function of freedom?
Three hundred years felt with their full weight, really measured out in time and experience, endured as a man actually endures the passage of his days, would prove the whole Protestant story to have been the most preposterous and disproportionate detour, or straggling a chapter of accidents, that ever set out in the wrong direction and came back to the same place. For we have in a hundred ways come back to the same place; even to the detail of an exaggerated reaction, like that of the Action Française, renewing the absolute appeal to The King. And nothing is more amusing than to note the way in which those who regard themselves as the most advanced leaders, of the most modern groups, are already rearing and bucking against the whole tendency of liberal and humanitarian progress, which the last revolutionary leaders marked out for them. Nobody is less in the spirit of Walt Whitman than Wyndham Lewis or T. S. Eliot; nobody less a real heir of H. G. Wells than Aldous Huxley; nobody less disposed to follow the humanitarian paths of Mr. Nevinson the adventurous journalist, than his son Mr. Nevinson the Futurist painter. All these of the most recent school of rebels are rebelling against rebellion; that is, against the Revolution and all its heritage of liberty, equality and fraternity. Mr. Eliot, though an American, is an avowed Royalist. Mr. Nevinson has become a quite ferocious Kiplingite Imperialist. Mr. Wyndham Lewis seems to prefer a Dictatorship, in so far as he may be said to prefer anything. All this last turn of the twisting road of progress is pointing back towards what we have called for a hundred years reaction. It is apparent in the Fascists; in the Hitlerites; and even in the open anti-democracy of the Bolshevists.
Now the great danger of the moment is that young men will go on being content with these revolts against revolt, these reactions against reactions; so that we have nothing but an everlasting seesaw of the Old Young and the New Young; the last always content with its fleeting triumph over the last but one. And the only way to avoid that result is to teach men to stretch their minds and inhabit a larger period of time. It is to insist, not that we now feel inclined to stress this or stress that, in mere fashion or mere fatigue, but that there really does exist somewhere a reasonable plan of the proportions of things, which, at least in its general outline, is true all the time. The moment men, so intelligent as those I have named, begin to realise that this permanent plan is necessary, they will certainly realise that the only existing plan, that has any plausible claim to look like it, is the plan of the Catholic Faith. For the present, they seem to be quite content to continue the old squabble of fathers and sons; even if the fathers are very young fathers, or the sons actually appeal to the grandfathers against them. But this merely modern squabble is after all local and therefore provincial; it can never satisfy the thirst of thinking people for the reality of things. Nevertheless, as I stated at the beginning, the great difficulty is whether a man can stretch his mind, or (as the moderns would say) can broaden his mind, enough to see the need for an eternal Church.
And yet surely this is only the last lap in the long race in which the ancient truth, so heavily handicapped, has one by one outdistanced all the runners who prided themselves on their youth or their advance positions. If a man could have learned it by a process of elimination, merely by living through the last three hundred years, he would learn the same lesson even more clearly by living through the next three hundred years. By that time it will be more apparent than ever that these jerks of novelty do not create either a progress or an equilibrium. The very newest of the intellectuals have already learnt not to trust to mere progress, in the sense of a process of change; they already know that they have sometimes more in common with some antique authority than with some merely modern rebellion. Some of them would set up Dictators to enforce obedience; it is hard if we may not obey willingly, when they would have men obey even unwillingly. They would set up violent authority in the hands of individuals; they can hardly complain if we recognise merely moral authority in a merely mystical office. For that mystical office contains all the liberties and all the philosophies, and judges only upon their right balance and proportion; and every other thing that the moderns call a movement is only securing for a monomania the brief life of a sect.
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THE NEW LUTHER
IT seems that there is some movement or other of a religious sort; which, being founded by a Lutheran of German race and American origin, naturally connects itself with the name of Oxford. Some people say it is called the Oxford Group Movement. Other people seem to be somewhat needlessly alarmed, lest it be identified by historians with the Oxford Movement. I would suggest, in a friendly spirit, that it should be called the Oxford Street Movement. Oxford Street does actually contain the name of the University town, which seems to be all that is required; and at the same time, it is a long way from Oxford. I think the atmosphere there would be more congruous and comfortable; and somehow I feel that Mr. Gordon Selfridge, being in the neighbourhood, would be more really sympathetic and spiritually helpful than the Master of Balliol.
When I had made some such idle jest I received a letter of remonstrance against what I had written of the Buchman Group Movement. The letter was written in a pained and almost pathetic tone, expressing regret that I should depreciate anything that brought men back to the reality of religion; and I ought at least to assure the writer that I am not insensible to any such plea. In this as in many things, however religion is treated in a curious manner, as distinct from politics or ethics or economics. Nobody says that because all political parties may be presumed to contain many well-wishers to the public good, therefore we must not resist Communism or attack Capitalism, or express our trust or. distrust of Fascism. The roads which lead to different social solutions are recognised as divergent. It is only the paths to hell and heaven of which it is enough to say that they are paved with good intentions. Let me say at once that I do sympathise with any sinners who seek such an outlet; even with the rather exclusive and arrogant spiritual aristocracy which writes over its gates, “For Sinners Only.” I sympathise with them, not so much as I sympathise with the ignorant fishermen bawling hymns in any dingy old chapel in any Devonshire fishing village; not quite so much as I sympathise with a company of Holy Rollers rolling on the ground in the neighbourhood of Dayton, Tennessee, to avert the curse of Evolution; and not half so much as I sympathise with Moslem fakirs howling in the desert and shaking their splendid spears and dying on the British bayonets. But I do sympathise with all these people; since they are all seeking God. And I am sufficiently orthodox to know that, in some mystical way beyond our measurement, it is true that seeking is finding.
But if my correspondent, or anybody else, wishes to know why I rather prefer the followers of the Mad Mullah to the followers of Herr Buchman, he will find it perfectly summed up in an interview and article which appeared in the News-Chronicle and was headed in huge letters with the words, “Vision of a New Reformation: Group Leader’s Hope from Germany.” He will find it exquisitely and exactly concentrated, as in the crystallization of a gem, in these words; read them; re-read them; ponder them. They contain the whole substance of the subject. “These Groupers think on a large scale. The Canadians, for instance, have not only booked the Chateau Frontenac for a house-party of 3,000 at Quebec next year, but have already chartered a C.P.R. liner to bring their contingent to England for the next Oxford house-party.”
That, you will observe, is thinking largely. To rude, rustic, Distributist minds, it would not appear that it is thinking at all. There have been any number of sectarians and Puritan fanatics who have very genuinely thought; some who have thought and thought until they went mad. But I should say that the sanity and solidity of the Group Movement was quite safe from any such danger as that. Note that it is not a question of whether religion may think too much about pomp and grandeur. It is a question of whether religion is to boast of having pomp without thinking at all. There is a real case to be made out both for and against the most Pagan phase of the Papacy, which filled Rome with trophies that might have stood for the triumphs of Trajan or Augustus. But it does need some thought to build even a Pagan temple or erect even an Imperialistic monument. The dome which Michelangelo made the culmination of St. Peter’s is not only a large dome. It is a dome made by a man who was thinking largely. Nay, it might have been less large if it had been larger. Lift it a little higher in the air and the curve is constricted; spread it a little wider and the curve is flattened. That is what is meant by thinking; and especially by thinking largely. At any rate, it is a rather different operation from buying up somebody else’s steamboat, or securing all the beds in somebody else’s hotel.
Finally, what shall we say in the light (or twilight) of all this, of the magnificent claim made in such large letters that they would cover a whole paragraph of this essay; the “Vision of a New Reformation: Group Leader’s Hope from Germany?” We may say this to begin with; that here, as in every single thing I have read about the Group Movement, as in every page and paragraph of the book called For Sinners Only, there is an extraordinary ambiguity. What is meant by a New Reformation? What is it that is to be reformed? Is it just possible that it is the Reformation that is to be reformed? And, for those who have a pedantic fancy for looking at the structure of the words they write or speak, into what form is it to be reformed? Can it be into the old original form? Certainly in all this there is no trace or outline of any new form. Or does it mean by a New Reformation, a repetition of the Reformation? Does it mean an extension of the Reformation? Does it mean that we are to look for somebody who shall be more Lutheran than Luther? I suppose the real doctrine of the great Reformer might possibly be pushed further than he pushed it. It is very difficult to imagine any doctrine that could make man more base, describe human nature as more desperately impotent, blacken the reason and the will of man with a more utterly bottomless and hopeless despair than did the real doctrine of Luther. But it may be that there are depths below the depths and that it is possible to damn the dignity of Adam more completely than Luther damned it. Is that what is meant by a New Reformation? That is the only Reformation that would bear the remotest resemblance to the old Reformation. But that is just the difficulty; and that is just the point. I cannot accuse the Buchmanites of repeating the Lutheran pessimism. I cannot accuse them of revolting against the Lutheran pessimism. The very language they use is so loose and vague and journalistic, that it might mean either that the New Reformation is to restore Luther or reverse Luther. All they are sure about is that it will come from Germany, like Luther—or like Hitler. There is a certain intellectual courage, which some would call impudence, about saying at this moment that the Vision of a New Reformation is of necessity a Hope from Germany. It is amusing to read it at the very moment when even the Pro-Germans have begun to think that Germany is hopeless. Anyhow, the religious leader in question is welcome, so far as I am concerned, to any New Reformation which puts the Swastika above the Cross and teaches men first to be very arrogant Germans before it allows them to be very apologetic Christians. All that may be a reformation in the sense of a new form; but it seems to me, on the side of religious thought, to be the very essence of formlessness.
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BABIES AND DISTRIBUTISM
I HOPE it is not a secret arrogance to say that I do not think I am exceptionally arrogant; or if I were, my religion would prevent me from being proud of my pride. Nevertheless, for those of such a philosophy, there is a very terrible temptation to intellectual pride, in the welter of wordy and worthless philosophies that surround us to-day. Yet there are not many things that move me to anything like a personal contempt. I do not feel any contempt for an atheist, who is often a man oflimited and constrained by his own logic to a very sad simplification. I do not feel any contempt for a Bolshevist, who is a man driven to the same-negative simplification by a revolt against very positive wrongs. But there is one type of person for whom I feel what I can only call contempt. And that is the popular propagandist of what he or she absurdly describes as Birth-Control.
I despise Birth-Control first because it is a weak and wobbly and cowardly word. It is also an entirely meaningless word; and is used so as to curry favour even with those who would at first recoil from its real meaning. The proceeding these quack doctors recommend does not control any birth. It only makes sure that there shall never be any birth to control. It cannot, for instance, determine sex, or even make any selection in the style of the pseudo-science of Eugenics. Normal people can only act so as to produce birth; and these people can only act so as to prevent birth. But these people know perfectly well that they dare not write the plain word Birth-Prevention, in any one of the hundred places where they write the hypocritical word Birth-Control. They know as well as I do that the very word Birth-Prevention would strike a chill into the public, the instant it was blazoned on headlines, or proclaimed on platforms, or scattered in advertisements like any other quack medicine. They dare not call it by its name, because its name is very bad advertising. Therefore they use a conventional and unmeaning word, which may make the quack medicine sound more innocuous.
Second, I despise Birth-Control because it is a weak and wobbly and cowardly thing. It is not even a step along the muddy road they call Eugenics; it is a flat refusal to take the first and most obvious step along the road of Eugenics. Once grant that their philosophy is right, and their course of action is obvious; and they dare not take it; they dare not even declare it. If there is no authority in things which Christendom has called moral, because their origins were mystical, then they are clearly free to ignore all difference between animals and men; and treat men as we treat animals. They need not palter with the stale and timid compromise and convention called Birth-Control. Nobody applies it to the cat. The obvious course for Eugenists is to act towards babies as they act towards kittens. Let all the babies be born and then let us drown those we do not like. I cannot see any objection to it; except the moral or mystical sort of objection that we advance against Birth-Prevention. And that would be real and even reasonable Eugenics; for we could then select the best, or at least the healthiest, and sacrifice what are called the unfit. By the weak compromise of Birth-Prevention, we are very probably sacrificing the fit and only producing the unfit. The births we prevent may be the births of the best and most beautiful children; those we allow, the weakest or worst. Indeed, it is probable; for the habit discourages the early parentage of young and vigorous people; and lets them put off the experience to later years, mostly from mercenary motives. Until I see a real pioneer and progressive leader coming out with a good, bold, scientific programme for drowning babies, I will not join the movement.
But there is a third, reason for my contempt, much deeper and therefore much more difficult to express; in which is rooted all my reasons for being anything I am or attempt to be; and above all, for being a Distributist. Perhaps the nearest to a description of it is to say this: that my contempt boils over into bad behaviour when I hear the common suggestion that a birth is avoided because people want to be “free” to go to the cinema or buy a gramophone or a loud-speaker. What makes me want to walk over such people like doormats is that they use the word “free.” By every act of that sort they chain themselves to the most servile and mechanical system yet tolerated by men. The cinema is a machine for unrolling certain regular patterns called pictures; expressing the most vulgar millionaires’ notion of the taste of the most vulgar millions. The gramophone is a machine for recording such tunes as certain shops and other organisations choose to sell. The wireless is better; but even that is marked by the modern mark of all three; the impotence of the receptive party. The amateur cannot challenge the actor; the householder will find it vain to go and shout into the gramophone; the mob cannot pelt the modern speaker, especially when he is a loud-speaker. It is all a central mechanism giving out to men exactly what their masters think they should have.
Now a child is the very sign and sacrament of personal freedom. He is a fresh free will added to the wills of the world; he is something that his parents have freely chosen to produce and which they freely agree to protect. They can feel that any amusement he gives (which is often considerable) really comes from him and from them, and from nobody else. He has been born without the intervention of any master or lord. He is a creation and a contribution; he is their own creative contribution to creation. He is also a much more beautiful, wonderful, amusing and astonishing thing than any of the stale stories or ijingling jazz tunes turned out bv the machines. When men no longer feel that he is so, they have lost the appreciation of primary things, and therefore all sense of proportion about the world. People who prefer the mechanical pleasures, to such a miracle, are jaded and enslaved. They are preferring the very dregs of life to the first fountains of life. They are preferring the last, crooked, indirect, borrowed, repeated and exhausted things of our dying Capitalist civilisation, to the reality which is the only rejuvenation of all civilisation. It is they who are hugging the chains of their old slavery; it is the child who is ready for the new world.
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THREE FOES OF THE FAMILY
IT was certainly a very brilliant lightning-flash of irony by which Mr. Aldous Huxley lit up the whole loathsome landscape of his satirical Utopia, of synthetic humanity and manufactured men and women, by the old romantic quotation of “Brave New World”. The quotation comes, of course, from that supreme moment of the magic of youth, nourished by the magic of old age, when Miranda the marvellous becomes Miranda the marvelling, at the unique wonder of first love. To use it for the very motto of a system which, having lost all innocence, would necessarily lose all wonder, was a touch of very withering wit. And yet it will be well to remember that, in comparison with some other worlds, where the same work is done more weakly and quite as wickedly, the Utopia of the extremists really has something of the intellectual integrity which belongs to extremes, even of madness. In that sense the two ironical adjectives are not merely ironical. The horrible human, or inhuman, hive described in Mr. Huxley’s romance is certainly a base world, and a filthy world, and a fundamentally unhappy world. But it is in one sense a new world; and it is in one sense a brave world. At least a certain amount of bravery, as well as brutality, would have to be shown before anything of the sort could be established in the world of fact. It would need some courage, and even some self-sacrifice, to establish anything so utterly disgusting as that.
But the same work is being done in other worlds that are not particularly new, and not in the least brave. There are people of another sort, much more common and conventional, who are not only working to create such a paradise of cowardice, but who actually try to work for it through a conspiracy of cowards. The attitude of these people towards the Family and the tradition of its Christian virtues is the attitude of men willing to wound and yet afraid to strike; or ready to sap and mine so long as they are not called upon to fire or fight in the open. And those who do this cover much more than half, or nearly two-thirds, of the people who write in the most respectable and conventional Capitalist newspapers. It cannot be too often repeated that what destroyed the Family in the modern world was Capitalism. No doubt it might have been Communism, if Communism had ever had a chance, outside that semi-Mongolian wilderness where it actually flourishes. But, so far as we are concerned, what has broken up households and encouraged divorces, and treated the old domestic virtues with more and more open contempt, is the epoch and Power of Capitalism. It is Capitalism that has forced a moral feud and a commercial competition between the sexes; that has destroyed the influence of the parent in favour of the influence of the employer; that has driven men from their homes to look for jobs; that has forced them to live near their factories or their firms instead of near their families; and, above all, that has encouraged, for commercial reasons, a parade of publicity and garish novelty, which is in its nature the death of all that was called dignity and modesty by our mothers and fathers. It is not the Bolshevist but the Boss, the publicity man, the salesman and the commercial advertiser who have, like a rush and riot of barbarians, thrown down and trampled under foot the ancient Roman statue of Verecundia. But because the thing is done by men of this sort, of course it is done in their own muggy and muddle-headed way; by all the irresponsible tricks of their foul Suggestion and their filthy Psychology. It is done, for instance, by perpetually guying the old Victorian virtues or limitations which, as they are no longer there, are not likely to retaliate. It is done more by pictures than by printed words; because printed words are supposed to make a some sense and a man may be answerable for printing a them. Stiff and hideous effigies of women in crinolines or bonnets are paraded, as if that could possibly be all there was to see when Maud came into the garden, and was saluted by such a song. Fortunately, Maud’s friends, who would have challenged the pressman and photographer to a duel, are all dead; and these satirists of Victorianism are very careful to find out that all their enemies are dead. Some of their bold caricaturists have been known to charge an old-fashioned bathing-machine as courageously as if it were a machine-gun. It is convenient thus courageously to attack bathing-machines, because there are no bathing-machines to attack. Then they balance these things by photographs of the Modern Girl at various stages of the nudist movement; and trust that any thing so obviously vulgar is bound to be popular. For the rest, the Modern Girl is floated on a sea of sentimental sloppiness; a continuous gush about her frankness and freshness, the perfect naturalness of her painting her face or the unprecedented courage of her having no children. The whole is diluted with a dreary hypocrisy about comradeship, far more sentimental than the old-fashioned sentiment. When I see the Family sinking in these swamps of amorphous amorous futility, I feel inclined to say, “Give me the Communists.” Better Bolshevist battles and the Brave New World than the ancient house of man rotted away silently by such worms of secret sensuality and individual appetite. “The coward does it with a kiss; the brave man with a sword.”
But there is, curiously enough, a third thing of the kind, which I am really inclined to think that I dislike even more than the other two. It is not the Communist attacking the family or the Capitalist betraying the family; it is the vast and very astonishing vision of the Hitlerite defending the family. Hitler’s way of defending the independence of the family is to make every family dependent on him and his semi-Socialist State; and to preserve the authority of parents by authoritatively telling all the parents what to do. His notion of keeping sacred the dignity of domestic life is to issue peremptory orders that the grandfather is to get up at five in the morning and do dumb-bell exercises, or the grand mother to march twenty miles to a camp to procure a Swastika flag. In other words, he appears to interfere with family life more even than the Bolshevists do; and to do it in the name of the sacredness of the family. It is not much more encouraging than the other two social manifestations; but at least it is more entertaining.
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THE DON AND THE CAVALIER
MR. CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS has written an excellent book on John Dryden. It is an instructive book; it is also an amusing book; but not so amusing as some of the reviews of it. And it concerns me here, at the moment mainly in relation to the general position to-day of the school of academic critics, who have upheld for so long a time the historical theory which is often called Parliamentarism and is in fact Plutocracy. It is of some moment to the Distributist movement because it was the official defence of this policy which made possible the dispossession of the populace. Now about the present position of that official criticism there are several rather curious things to note. The first is its tone; which is quite queer in its difference from the tone used in my youth, when historians were as simple as Macaulay; I might almost say when scholars were as ignorant as Macaulay. For a man can be very learned and very ignorant; and Macaulay achieved the combination to the admiration of heaven and earth. Macaulay would make short work, or imagine that he could make short work, of any young man who played at being a Jacobite; he was impatient with him as with a crank; but he was honestly impatient; his impatience was a sort of innocence. The critics on the same side to-day have lost their innocence. They know perfectly well that they have been defeated in battle after battle upon the big facts; and they have a curious carefulness in dealing only with very small facts. Anybody who said thirty years ago that Charles the First was not in fact a tyrant, dethroned by an indignant democracy, could really be treated as a sort of Mr. Dick, with a weakness for weeping over King Charles’s Head. The modern critic does not really dare to-day to appear as the executioner (even though the critic, like the executioner, can wear a mask and remain nameless); he has not now the nerve to shake King Charles’s Head at the people and shout confidently, “Behold the Head of a Traitor.” So he becomes more fussy and particular than ever over the ancient, profound, pressing and all-important question: “Out of which window in Whitehall did Charles the First step to have his head cut off?” And that, as Disraeli very truly observed, is one of the two or three quite infallible ways of becoming a bore.
And the new professor of the old history is rather a bore; but what is much worse, he is a nervous bore. He not only drawls, but he also stammers. And his tone, as I have said, has achieved a most peculiar accent of acrid timidity. I read one criticism of Mr. Hollis’s book, in a highly learned and authoritative weekly; and it largely left me wondering whether the critic who wrote it had read that particular passage in it, in which Mr. Hollis, contrasting the methods of Dryden and Pope, quotes the whole of the latter poet’s famous satire upon Addison. Whether or no it was like Addison, it was exactly like the critic.
“Willing to wound and yet afraid to strike, Just hint a doubt and hesitate dislike; Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, And without sneering teach the rest to sneer.”
Again, over and above this unmistakable tone, there is the change in the method which I have compared to the change from laughing at Mr. Dick over King Charles’s Head to quarrelling about which window-sill had the honour to be bestridden by King Charles’s legs. There was an excellent example in this review, of the method of avoiding battle on the main issue and picking a quarrel about a trifle. Mr. Hollis made the general remark, which is a true and valuable remark, that it is rather a disadvantage of revolutions that they often have to be followed by new and rigid repressions, set up by the revolutionists themselves. He gives the example that William of Orange’s government censored a sort of controversy which under the last Stuarts was much more free. The critic then suggested that the whole book and its author were historically unreliable, upon some verbal interpretation of William of Orange’s government; because the censorship was removed later; I think in 1695. The point of general interest is that there was a new censorship; and the critic’s way of proving that there was not a censorship is to say that there was a censorship, that lasted for about eight years. Now Mr. Hollis’s general philosophy may be right or wrong; but Mr. Hollis’s general remark was perfectly philosophical and a quite reasonable comment on this and many other cases of the same truth. The critic’s correction, if his correction is correct, is not of the slightest philosophical or rational interest to anybody; it has no relation to the point that was really raised; it only says that somebody did something, but did not do it all the time. That is what I mean by the one side being concerned with triviality and the other side with truth. Mr. Hollis’s suggestion is of some intelligent importance to us, who are living among real revolutions; Bolshevist revolutions or Hitlerite revolutions. It is not necessarily a complete condemnation of revolutions. It is simply a note on the natural history of revolutionists. But his history really is natural history, and the academic and pedantic history has become utterly unnatural.
There is a saying that a great silence broods over the great battlefields. There is certainly a very astounding silence over the great recent defeats of the Orangemen’s theory of history. Mr. Hollis begins his book by noting the picturesque coincidence that Dryden sat fishing in the river upon which Mary Stuart had looked out from the Tower of Fotheringay. The storming and taking of that Tower, with all its secrets, was a struggle that once made an amazing noise, that has now been followed by a more amazing stillness. Hardly anything is said about its sensational termination; simply because the main part of the old accepted case against the Catholic Queen has completely broken down. Considering how frightfully important it was that the Casket Letters were all certainly genuine, it is very funny to find how unimportant it is that they are most of them probably forgeries. The war was so fierce and ruthless while they thought they were winning it; it is so very quiet and casual and gentlemanly, now that they know they are losing it. That intellectual interlude at least is over; England is returning to her own past, and could hardly march under a better battle-sign than what Macaulay himself had the magnanimity to call “the towering crest of Dryden.”
I also came upon another critique of the book on Dryden; and one which goes far beyond the sort of negative hostility in the critics which I have criticised. That was, after all, only the confession that the Whig and Puritan school of history is fighting the rearguard action of a retreat, and that it mostly consists of rather futile sniping. Instead of the old uproarious cannonade of Macaulay, we do now in practice only “hear the distant and random gun that the foe is sullenly firing.” But the later criticism involved something more universal and significant than that. It really did represent the amazing, mystifying and in some ways almost exciting muddle, in what calls itself the Modern Mind. I say exciting, because when a mystification becomes as mad as that, it has almost the character of a mystery story; it is as if the modern man must have had a knock on the head, and we were all detectives trying to find out who really did it. How did it really happen that the cultivated, sometimes even the classical critic of this particular period, suffers from a heavy blow from some blunt instrument, so that he thinks and writes in the following fashion?
The critic in question said in these words, or almost these words: “We have no reason to doubt the sincerity of Dryden’s conversion to Roman Catholicism; but, after all, in the case of so great a man as Dryden, does the question matter very much?” That is the Modern Mind. This is the forest primeval, the murmuring pines and the hemlocks. This is the Jungle. This is the thickest of all thickets and the thorniest of all earthly briar-patches; and though I was born and bred in that briar-patch, like Brer Rabbit, I found it difficult to discover a path out of it; and I did not know how we are really to make a path through it.
Of course we can always begin by using the primitive implement of reason; and try to let in a little light merely by letting in a little logic. So far as I understand the argument as an argument, it is this. If John Dryden had been born half-witted, or if he had been a dunce and a dull fellow entirely insignificant in the intellectual and social life of his time-then it would have been frightfully and sensationally important to know whether he was or was not sincere, with a soul-searching sincerity, in his intellectual acceptance of the complete Catholic philosophy. But as he was not a dunce but a poet, as he was not a half-wit but a wit, as he was not a mindless person but a very great mind, then it must be a matter of indifference whether such an intellect can accept such an intellectual philosophy. Dryden was so great a thinker that it does not matter what he thought; he was almost certainly in search of the truth, but he was so capable of searching for it that nobody can take any interest in whether he found it; and it is only in the case of a small man that we could take a great interest in the great truth that he thought he found. How, I ask you, do people get their minds into a tangle like that? How could a man be sincere in his Catholicism, and yet think himself superior to his Catholicism? How could his greatness be detached from anything so great as a belief in a universal order of life, death and eternity; if he really had the greatness and really had the belief? It might make some sense if Dryden was not sincere; but it is practically admitted that he was sincere. It might make some sense if Dryden was small; but it is actually based on the view that he was great.
While the world has been talking about removing Victorian taboos, I have been resolved from the first to remove that one Victorian taboo; which really was a senseless and strangling taboo: the taboo on the topic of real religion, and its real and inevitable place in practical life. Most of the things the Moderns call Victorian taboos are about as Victorian as the Ten Commandments or the maxims of Confucius. But this really was Victorian, in the sense of having arisen recently in a vulgar, commercial and cowardly social system. It is not the notion that it is right or wrong to be a Moslem; it is the notion that it cannot really matter even to a Moslem that he is a Moslem. What is totally intolerable is the idea that everybody must pretend, for the sake of peace and decorum, that moral inspiration only comes from secular things like Distributism, and cannot possibly come from spiritual things like Catholicism. That is the fixed idea like a fossil that lies under all the labyrinthine wrappings or coil of contradictory conventions, in the mind of the reviewer whose words I quote.
It has nothing to do with what he would call being religious; or forcing religion upon him or anybody else. No Catholic thinks he is a good Catholic; or he would by that thought become a bad Catholic. I for one am not even tempted to any illusion in that matter; I fear that very often, when I have got up early to go to Mass, I have said with a groan, Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum, which, I may explain to the Moslem, is not a quotation from the Mass. But the critic here in question does not say, in the grand Lucretian manner, “Religion alone can persuade men to such evils.” He says, “Religion alone cannot really have persuaded anybody to anything.” He stands for a stupid interlude of intellectual history, in which men would not recognise religion either as a friend or an enemy, which supposed that a great. man must be great, not merely in spite of it, but even without reference to it. That intellectual interlude was never very intellectual; and anyhow, it is over.
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THE CHURCH AND AGORAPHOBIA
THE erection of a great cathedral in a great city, and especially in a great port, that is a city that is also a wide gate of the world, recalls certain truths that are curiously forgotten, or sometimes still more astonishingly contradicted or reversed. Before we come to count the million mistakes and misunderstandings which separate men from the Catholic Church, there is one enormous and elementary mistake, which has to do with this question of scale and position in the world. To put it shortly; the man who fears to enter the Church commonly fancies that what he feels is a sort of claustrophobia. As a fact, what he really feels, is rather a sort of agoraphobia. Some silly little historical accidents, almost entirely peculiar to the particular way in which Catholicism survived in England, have given many Englishmen an extraordinary notion that it is a sort of hole and corner affair. These honest Protestants, like the imaginary nuns in the impossible romances, walk about in perpetual fear of being “walled up.” For them the typical Catholic act is not going into a great thing like a church, but into a small thing like a confessional box. And to their nightmare fancy a confessional box is a sort of man-trap; and presents in its very appearance some combination of a coffin and a cage. The same notion is reinforced by the use of the word “cells,” which in a Protestant community means prison-cells, and not monastic cells. The same is suggested by the word “crypt,” about which there must obviously be something cryptic. These and many other tags of tradition have preserved in this country the custom of talking as if the danger of being a Catholic was the danger of being buried in a deep dark hole. And yet even the tradition was, not only a legend, but very nearly a pretence. Even the man who said these things knew in his heart, or at least had a vague knowledge at the back of his mind, that his fear was really a fear of something larger than himself and his tribal traditions; that he was really, as it was sometimes stated from both points of view, leaving a national for an international church. As I have said, it was not claustrophobia, the fear of the crypt or the cell; it was agoraphobia, or the fear of the forum, of the market-place, of the open spaces and the colossal public buildings. To the really insular and individualistic type of sectarian, even the fear of the Church was also partly a fear of the world. It can be seen in the terror which some of the English Tories, in the old times, felt towards the cosmopolitan culture of the Jesuits; who honestly seemed to them a sort of universal anarchists. It can be seen in the exaggerated revulsion from the very varied experiments, failures and successes of the Baroque. Of nearly all the non-Catholic types of our time we can truly say, that any such type must broaden his mind to become a Catholic. He must grow more used than he is at present to the long avenues and the large spaces. This is really what is meant by the Puritans who say that the Church is Pagan; that it does open a very long avenue, which is the only avenue left connecting us with Pagan antiquity. That is largely what is meant by insisting that the Church covers all sorts of dubious or disreputable people; all the motley mobs of tramps and pedlars and beggars, who do make up the life of an open market-place. Quicquid agunt homines; which even Matthew Arnold wisely saw was the true motto of the practical life of the Roman Catholic Church.
Now a great deal has been said by Protestants, naturally enough, and not a little even by Catholics, about the danger of displaying before the world a pomp and triumph that may easily be called worldly. Undoubtedly some harm was done, and some misunderstandings did arise, when the Popes of the Renaissance filled Rome with trophies that might have marked the triumphs of the Caesars, and permitted the slander that the father of Christian man had usurped the title of King of Kings and forgotten his own actual title of Servant of Servants. But, taking human nature as a whole, the method is justified; because it is some sort of proclamation of the profound truth mentioned above; that the Faith belongs to the heights and the open spaces, and the circle of the whole world, and is not the one thing which its enemies go on desperately calling it; a conspiracy. There could not be a better way of suggesting the very reverse of that suggestion, than by the continual use in public buildings of what is large in design and hospitable in gesture. Art, and especially architecture, can here express actualities that are at once too large and too elusive to be expressed in words. St. Mark’s Cathedral at Venice is in some ways a very curious building, and to some northern eyes does not look like a cathedral at all; but it does look like a thing coloured with the sunrise and the sunset, in touch with the very ends of the earth; open like a harbour and full of popular poetry like a fairy-palace. That is, it does express the first essential fact that Catholicism is not a narrow thing; that it knows more than the world knows about the potentialities and creative possibilities of the world, and that it will outlast all the worldly and temporary expressions of the same culture. Christianity has gone northward and established richer ports in colder seas; it has been changed and chilled for a time by colder heresies; but the same principle still stands for its expansion and exaltation; that which is expressed in the expansion and exaltation of great buildings; in the breadth of great gates declaring the brotherhood of men or the lifting of great domes pointing the way of their destiny. To-day another such building is being reared in what Mr. Belloc’s fantasy once called a Harbour in the North; and its scope and scale would indeed be idle things, if they did not remind us of the two essential truths: first, that even within the world the boundaries of the Faith are being enlarged; and second, and much more important, that the Faith itself enlarges the world; which would be a small thing without it.
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BACK IN THE FOG
THE dome of sky above Dublin was clear with the awful clarity of a burning-glass, and such a glaring gap or rent in the grey skies of Ireland was itself a portent, with some savour of a miracle. But though it was very rare in the Dublin climate, it was curiously representative of the Dublin mentality. It was none the less Irish weather because it is almost unknown in Ireland. It corresponded to the Irish brilliancy of intercourse; to the continual blend of lucidity and levity. And it was all the more Irish because there was, as there always is, in the intensity of summer, a faint thrill of thunder. It was as if the very light were lightning, and shone between two storms.
And I, who love both countries, but my own best and with most anxiety, could not help saying to myself, “This is always the real Dublin daylight. And the moment I return home, I shall find myself in the London fog.”
The difference is indescribable; but that is the nearest description. There is more hatred in Dublin; and yet there is a harder sense of the obligation of justice. There is even more slander in Dublin; and yet in some strange way there is more truth. What there is in London is something that is not so much falsehood as falsification; and not so much falsification as simply fog. After a week in Ireland, the newspaper politics of England seem to be like a vast vapour, inhabited only by phantoms. There is no question of hating men or slandering men; for they are not the same men for ten weeks together; and they are never the real men at all. I will take two examples; the two men who happened to be the heads of the two Parliamentary systems of the two countries at that moment. I will not take the case of Jim Thomas; because it is beneath the seriousness of this subject. Jim Thomas is a joke; and I am sorry to say that the joke is against us. He is not a person in the same historical world as de Valera, even as seen by those who hate de Valera, of whom there are probably more in Ireland than in England. But I will take the relatively dignified figure of Mr. Thomas’s revered leader; and point out as respectfully as possible that he is a ghost. He is an apparition. He is not really there. At least the figure that is recognised is not really there. Londoners live in a fog of journalism, out of which there looms from time to time a figure, who strikes certain spectral attitudes, and then vanishes in the fog and is forgotten. Not many years ago we saw start out of the mist, like the pale face of a fiend, the face of a traitor. He was reeling and ragged as if torn by patriot mobs; a golf-club was broken in his hand; as if it had been broken across his head, when he was expelled for treason from his club of fashionable golfers. He had been detected in a dastardly effort to escape to Stockholm and make a treacherous peace, and was only frustrated by the gallantry of our British tars. He was the wildest ruffian of the I.L.P. and wore a red tie, which had certainly been sent to him secretly from Moscow. Well, this person, after throwing himself into a few bodily postures expressive of moral baseness and political perfidy, vanished in the fog and was never seen again. This was the infamous James Ramsay MacDonald, of atrocious memory. Only, as it happens there has been a slight lapse in the memory. The crowd waiting in the fog, however, has had other diversions. There even burst upon it just recently a beautiful and ennobling vision: a stately and handsome presence, clad almost entirely in Union Jacks, with a few patches of tartan, and wearing the ancient Civic Crown; ob cives servatos: the Saviour of the State. For this being was indeed that noble statesman who became the head of the National Government, sacrificing Party to Patriotism, and triumphantly routing the traitor Henderson. This was the heroic James Ramsay MacDonald, of immortal memory, so long as he is remembered. There had once been another person called Henderson who had been a Patriot; when the other person called MacDonald was a Traitor; but neither of these persons could possibly be remembered. Perhaps it is quite right that they should none of them be remembered; for none of them ever really existed at all. There never was any traitor named MacDonald who betrayed his country to its enemies, any more than there ever was any patriot called MacDonald who preferred his country to his party. All these shadows in the shadow-pantomime of London politics have no reference to the respectable, rather vain, very serious, self-respecting “Scotsman on the make” who has risen in the profession of politics rather less scandalously than most. That is what I mean by the London fog, and that is what I mean by the Dublin daylight.
In Dublin there are men who would kill de Valera; and there are men who would die for de Valera. But there are no men who do not know the main facts for or against him. That he is not a native Irishman, in the normal sense; that he came from America, is admitted as much by his friends as his foes. It had to be, in Ireland; for there the family is everything; and a man could not even announce himself as Mr. Brown, without provoking the most sweeping generalisations about the Browns. That he helped the guerilla war which some would call the murder of English soldiers is, of course, a matter of pride and not of apology; but at least it is not a matter of mystification. That he was anti-clerical, in the sense that the bishops and priests mostly opposed his irreconcilable indignation, is known to everybody; even to the clerics or clericals who may afterwards come to support him. There is nobody in Dublin who does not know the story of de Valera; and there is next to nobody in London wlio does know the story of MacDonald. That is what I mean by the London Fog.
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THE HISTORIC MOMENT (1)
THE Eucharistic Congress in Dublin has one aspect which most Englishmen will almost certainly miss altogether. It is not the Irish aspect. The English have thought too much of Ireland, even when they thought too little for Ireland; or thought only against Ireland. When debaters are informed that they must not debate on politics or religion, the more spirited and intelligent naturally retort that there is nothing else to debate about. And yet there is a third thing, which is not identical with the debate about politics and religion in Ireland, which has filled all the debating-clubs of England. That third thing is History; and it sums up the whole problem to say that the average Englishman will hardly know what is meant by mentioning it.
The average Englishman once had a hearty and even heroic hatred of the Roman Catholic religion; it has long since turned into something much milder and more tolerant. It has slowly broadened down, if not from precedent to precedent, at least from prejudice to prejudice. At worst a morbid and malignant curiosity has been replaced by a more Christian condition of ignorance. But the point is that the religious hostility has been softened; and that the special political hostility has been softened too. The average Englishman once had a passionate patriotic distrust of the political Irish; he regarded their hope of national self-expression as a mere mad mutinous breaking up of his own Empire. That also has since turned into something much milder and more tolerant. The average Englishman probably does not understand the Irish any better, if so well, as in the time of Gladstone and Parnell; but he is much less disposed to punish them for being different. The Englishman no longer execrates Mr. Gladstone; he is not very likely to attend the anniversary celebration of the Boyne; and is the less anxious to incur the curse of Cromwell, because he has lately begun rather to curse the Puritans himself. But there is one thought that will hardly cross his mind. And that is—how very small a part of History is that which divides us from Gladstone, or from William of Orange, or even from Oliver Cromwell.
Ages before Englishmen had any notion of being Protestants, ages before Irishmen had any need to be Nationalists, there moved across the world the great searchlights of Rome; the omnipresence of those historic and hieratic things now enthroned on their two thousand years. What corresponds to the Congress is the Council; that ancient assembly of Christendom which shifted so swiftly from Athens to Spain, or from Arabia to Gaul. Any man whose mind has been magnified by History, the greatest of all the works of the imagination, can feel the futility of allowing lesser and later quarrels entirely to obliterate the memory of that marching capital; the winged and Flying City. Wherever was that presence there was Rome; Rome was set up in the sands of the African desert; Rome in the rocky plains about Toledo. And but a few years ago, Rome was in Australia, a raw and remote colony under the Southern Cross; and to-day Rome is in Ireland, the most ancient of the Celtic cultural countries of the West. That presence was already old when Ireland civilised stood up and taught England barbarous; or rather taught something still too barbarous to be called England. It was already old when England converted Germany; when St. Boniface went forth from among our own people, to baptize the barbarians of the Rhine. It is this sense of the grandeur of the great distances of human history, and the huge changes they have made between nation and nation, that is the true manner of assuaging and healing the tribal quarrels of men.
It is Ancient History that will unite the nations. It is certainly not Modern History; which has only managed to divide them. It is, least of all, Future History, of which nobody knows anything at all; which is described in a series of Utopias discarded in turn by the Utopians. The best hope for the relations of England and Ireland is that they should both acknowledge the human authority of history; and the fact which is a fact, whether we call it Europe or Christendom, The difficulty of the English is to understand that they come out of the old religion. The difficulty of the Irish is to understand that they come out of the old civilisation. Ireland was Roman in religion but never Roman in rule. England was always Roman in rule and suddenly ceased to be Roman in religion. The essential for both is to find something deep and distant enough to be shared without the exasperation of recent political memories. To say that new things like wireless and aviation have united nations is simply false. England and Ireland are only two out of many now much more divided. It is not new but old things that unify mankind; it is at the back of history that we rediscover humanity; it is quite strictly, in Genesis or the beginnings that we find the brotherhood of men; even if some controversy continues about which was Abel or Cain.
- Written at the Eucharist Congress in Dublin.
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MARY AND THE CONVERT
I WAS brought up in a part of the Protestant world which can best be described by saying that it referred to the Blessed Virgin as the Madonna. Sometimes it referred to her as a Madonna; from a general memory of Italian pictures. It was not a bigoted or uneducated world; it did not regard all Madonnas as idols or all Italians as Dagoes. But it had selected this expression, by the English instinct for compromise, so as to avoid both reverence ana irreverence. It was, when we came to think about it, a very curious expression. It amounted to saying that a Protestant must not call Mary “Our Lady,” but he may call her “My Lady.” This would seem, in the abstract, to indicate an even more intimate and mystical familiarity than the Catholic devotion. But I need not say that it was not so. It was not untouched by that queer Victorian evasion; of translating dangerous or improper words into foreign languages. But it was also not untouched by a certain sincere though vague respect for the part that Madonnas had played, in the actual cultural and artistic history of our civilisation. Certainly the ordinary reasonably reverent Englishman would never have intended to be disrespectful to that tradition in that aspect; even when he was much less liberal, travelled and well-read than were my own parents. Certainly, on the other hand, he was entirely unaware that he was saying “My Lady”; and if you had pointed out to him that, in fact, he was generally saying “a My Lady,” or “the My Lady,” he would have agreed that it was rather odd.
I do not forget, and indeed it would be a very thankless thing in me to forget, that I was lucky in this relative reasonablenesss and moderation of my own family and friends; and that there is a whole Protestant world that would consider such moderation a very poor-spirited sort of Protestantism. That strange mania against Mariolatry; that mad vigilance that watches for the first faint signs of the cult of Mary as for the spots of a plague; that apparently presumes her to be perpetually and secretly encroaching upon the prerogatives of Christ; that logically infers from a mere glimpse of the blue robe the presence of the Scarlet Woman— all that I have never felt or known or understood, even as a child; nor did those who had the care of my childhood. They knew nothing to speak of about the Catholic Church; they certainly did not know that anybody connected with them was ever likely to belong to it; but they did know that noble and beautiful ideas had been presented to the world under the form of this sacred figure, as under that of the Greek gods or heroes. But, while putting aside all pretence that this Protestant atmosphere was actively an anti-Catholic atmosphere, I may still say that my personal case was a little curious.
I have here rashly undertaken to write on a subject at once intimate and daring; a subject which ought indeed, by its own majesty, to make it impossible to be egotistical; but which does also make it impossible to be anything but personal. “Mary and the Convert” is the most personal of topics, because conversion is something more personal and less corporate than communion; and involves isolated feelings as an introduction to collective feelings. But also because the cult of Mary is in a rather peculiar sense a personal cult; over and above that greater sense that must always attach to the worship of a personal God. God is God, Maker of all things visible and invisible; the Mother of God is in a rather special sense connected with things visible; since she is of this earth, and through her bodily being God was revealed to the senses. In the presence of God, we must remember what is invisible, even in the sense of what is merely intellectual; the abstractions and the absolute laws of thought; the love of truth, and the respect for right reason and honourable logic in things, which God himself has respected. For, as St. Thomas Aquinas insists, God himself does not contradict the law of contradiction. But Our Lady, reminding us especially of God Incarnate, does in some degree gather up and embody all those elements of the heart and the higher instincts, which are the legitimate short cuts to the love of God. Dealing with those personal feelings, even in this rude and curt outline, is therefore very far from easy. I hope I shall not be misunderstood if the example I take is merely personal; since it is this particular part of religion that really cannot be impersonal. It may be an accident, or a highly unmerited favour of heaven, but anyhow it is a fact, that I always had a curious longing for the remains of this particular tradition, even in a world where it was regarded as a legend. I was not only haunted by the idea while still stuck in the ordinary stage of schoolboy scepticism; I was affected by it before that, before I had shed the ordinary nursery religion in which the Mother of God had no fit or adequate place. I found not long ago, scrawled in very bad handwriting, screeds of an exceedingly bad imitation of Swinburne, which was, nevertheless, apparently addressed to what I should have called a picture of the Madonna. And I can distinctly remember reciting the lines of the “Hymn To Proserpine,” out of pleasure in their roll and resonance; but deliberately directing them away from Swinburne’s intention, and supposing them addressed to the new Christian Queen of life, rather than to the fallen Pagan queen of death.
“But I turn to her still; having seen she shall surely abide in the end; Goddess and maiden and queen, be near me now and befriend.”
And I had obscurely, from that time onwards, the very vague but slowly clarifying idea of defending all that Constantine had set up, just as Swinburne’s Pagan had defended all he had thrown down.
It may still be noted that the unconverted world, Puritan or Pagan, but perhaps especially when it is Puritan, has a very strange notion of the collective unity of Catholic things or thoughts. Its exponents, even when not in any rabid sense enemies, give the most curious lists of things which they think make up the Catholic life; an odd assortment of objects, such as candles, rosaries, incense (they are always intensely impressed with the enormous importance and necessity of incense), vestments, pointed windows, and then all sorts of essentials or unessentials thrown in in any sort of order; fasts, relics, penances or the Pope. But even in their bewilderment, they do bear witness to a need which is not so nonsensical as their attempts to fulfil it; the need of somehow summing up “all that sort of thing,” which does really describe Catholicism and nothing else except Catholicism. It should of course be described from within, by the definition and development of its theological first principles; but that is not the sort of need I am talking about. I mean that men need an image, single, coloured and clear in outline, an image to be called up instantly in the imagination, when what is Catholic is to be distinguished from what claims to be Christian or even what in one sense is Christian. Now I can scarcely remember a time when the image of Our Lady did not stand up in my mind quite definitely, at the mention or the thought of all these things. I was quite distant from these things, and then doubtful about these things; and then disputing with the world for them, and with myself against them; for that is the condition before conversion. But whether the figure was distant, or was dark and mysterious, or was a scandal to my contemporaries, or was a challenge to myself—I never doubted that this figure was the figure of the Faith; that she embodied, as a complete human being still only human, all that this Thing had to say to humanity. The instant I remembered the Catholic Church, I remembered her; when I tried to forget the Catholic Church, I tried to forget her; when I finally saw what was nobler than my fate, the freest and the hardest of all my acts of freedom, it was in front of a gilded and very gaudy little image of her in the port of Brindisi, that I promised the thing that I would do, if I returned to my own land.
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A CENTURY OF EMANCIPATION
WHEN we really wish to know how the world is going, it is no bad test to take some tag or current phrase of the press and reverse it, substituting the precise contrary, and see whether it makes more sense that way. It generally does; such a mass of outworn conventions has our daily commentary become. An excellent example occurred recently concerning the prospects of Protestantism and Catholicism. The editor of the Sunday Express, once better known as a sympathetic critic of letters, summed up the matter by saying that he had no prejudice against Catholicism or Anglo-Catholicism, that he had every respect for them, but that England (evidently including himself) was solidly Protestant. This is a very neat and convenient statement of the exact opposite of the truth. I have most friendly feelings to the gentleman in question; and it is without the least animosity to him that I say that what is sincere and alive and active in him is Anti-Catholicism and nothing else. What is really working in the world to-day is Anti-Catholicism and nothing else. It certainly is not Protestantism; not half so much as it is Pelagianism. And if the religion of modern England is to be called Protestant, there is at least one other adjective which cannot conceivably be applied to it. Whatever else it is, it is not solid Protestantism. There might perhaps be a case for calling it liquid Protestantism.
Now this marks the chief change of the century since Catholic Emancipation. The political circumstances of the final Tory surrender to Emancipation were, of course, complex. Emancipation seemed to some a sort of mongrel and monster; produced by two opposites; the survival of the Old Religion and the principles of the French Revolution. But in such things there are complex harmonies as well as contradictions. In some ways the ultimate quarrel of Rome with the French Revolution was rather like the recent quarrel of Rome with the French Royalists. It was resistance to a pagan extreme; but there had been not a little Catholic sympathy before the thing reached that extreme. There had been countless liberal clerics in the first movements of the reform; Pius IX had begun by being the reverse of reactionary; and the atmosphere was such that the gigantic protagonist of Catholic Emancipation himself, the great Daniel O’Connell, could combine passionate Ultramontanism with the largest political Liberalism without any division in the simplicity of his mind or the general humanity of his ideals. Those who hated him both as a Radical and a Roman Catholic would have seen no inconsistency in those two hated things. The truth to seize about all that earlier situation is that the bigotry was on the other side; in one sense the theology was on the other side. We cannot see it clearly in the statesmen; for they were either freethinkers or opportunists. Wellington met his Waterloo; but he was a good soldier and therefore retreated when it was futile to stand. But if we look at the mass of the people, we find a real religious resistance—because there was a real religion. That resistance is now only found in America where just such a Democrat as Daniel O’Connell is still threatened with political exclusion solely for being a Catholic. In some points the Americans are a hundred years behind the times.
But this sort of purely political exclusiveness will not be the chief problem of the future. Whatever be the relation of Rome to the new world, her authority will not be transferred to Dayton, Tennessee. The political effects of the political emancipation are relatively simple and in a sense the easiest part of the speculation. Everybody knows that Catholic Emancipation has never led, and will never lead, to the direct political disasters that some foretold. The Duke of Norfolk was never actually caught in the act of imitating Guy Fawkes; and Lord Russell of Killowen seldom if ever invited a Spanish Armada to these shores. Outside certain local Puritan fevers, chiefly in America, there is no reason to suppose that the world will be so unreasonable as to repent having elected Catholic Mayors or sent out Catholic Ambassadors. The cant about a foreign allegiance is still heard; but that is because a cant can long outlive a cause. Men who are wide awake are well aware that the Catholic internationalism, which bids men respect their national governments, is considerably less dangerous than the financial internationalism which may make a man betray his country, or the revolutionary internationalism which may make him destroy it. It is, of course, possible that, under the pressure of Catholic conversions, the world may return to older and rougher types of persecution; but it is not immediately probable. But when we turn from the political to the spiritual prospect, we find a change which is exactly represented by the reversal of the journalistic maxim mentioned above. We must realise what England has become, under all titles and terminology, if we would make a guess about what she is next destined to be.
If we want to measure the distance between the date of emancipation and the day in which we live, between Catholic Emancipation and its consequences after a century, we shall find this newspaper quotation very important. If we want to describe the conditions a hundred years ago in this country, we could not do it better than by saying that then England was solidly Protestant; or the Protestantism of England was solid. And we shall still better understand the modern change, if we ask what is meant by that solidarity. It had a very definite meaning, which has now so completely disappeared that even those who most frequently invoke it are least able to imagine it. There is nothing like that sort of solid confidence to-day. It meant this: that the types and ranks of society really and sincerely interested in religion did really and sincerely believe that Protestant religion had been proved superior to Catholic religion. It was strongest in the middle class, especially the wealthier middle class; but that middle class had been steadily growing stronger and wealthier, as was natural in a specially mercantile and capitalist community. It covered a multitude of healthy, hard-headed and even clear-headed professional and commercial men; I say “even clear-headed” because, though the English had the name of not being logical, they were far more logical in those days than they are now. If they sat longer over their wine, they argued longer over their politics; they did not live on hurried cocktails and hurried headlines. Their mercantile politics might be narrow; but the number of them who could expound some connected thesis, such as Free Trade, was very large. And as their politics consisted of certain definite theories, right or wrong, so their religion consisted of certain definite doctrines, true or false. If you had asked any such Protestant why he was a Protestant, or what he meant by being a Protestant, he would have instantly stated or explained those doctrines; just as a Free Trader would explain Free Trade. There were Englishmen, of course, for whom the whole business was vaguer or more indifferent; but they did not make the tone of that solid mercantile England. The populace made the Pope a guy, just as they made Guy Fawkes a guy; but the poor were at the best treated like children and left, like children, to make a guy or a game of anything. A great part of the higher aristocracy had been quite sceptical and pagan throughout the eighteenth century, or even from the seventeenth century; but the same tact and informal secrecy, which keeps such a class together, kept it from any public insult to the Protestant religion of England. And that religion was a religion; it was Protestant, and it was national; that is, it was the religion of the normal citizen.
Now if you had asked an educated English Protestant in 1828 why Protestantism was right, or why Popery was wrong, he would not have had the smallest difficulty in answering. Of course the first thing to be emphasised would have been what has since been the first thing to be doubted or denied. It was the literal inspiration and inerrancy of the Hebrew Scriptures, and sometimes even of the English translation of those Scriptures. It was the view that still lingers in provincial corners and is called Fundamentalism.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, practically all Protestantism was Fundamentalism. But it is a great mistake to suppose that the true Protestant of history had nothing better to do for men than to throw a Bible at their heads. What he valued was the theological Scheme of Salvation supposed to be set forth in that work; as the Free Trader valued Adam Smith as the instrument of a theory. Of that theological theory there were two main versions; one, universal in Scotland and very prevalent in England, that God chose some to receive the benefits of redemption and rejected others even in the act of creating them; the other, that men could accept God but only by accepting this theological scheme of salvation, and that their good works had no effect on the result. This was the great doctrine of Faith independent of Works, which was so universally recognised as the chief mark and test of Protestantism that we might almost say that it was the whole of Protestantism, except indeed where Protestantism took the very fiercest form of Calvinism. It is not a question of making points against Protestantism; this was the chief point that could be made for Protestantism. It was especially the popular point; the most persuasive point, the most sympathetic point. From this idea of instantaneous individualist acceptance of the Atonement, by a pure act of faith, came the whole system of appeals on which this form of Christianity relied. That was why it was so easy, so personal, so emotional; that was why the whole of Christian’s burden fell off at the foot of the Cross. There were no degrees of sin or details of penance; because works were not in question at all. That is why they needed no Confessor or Sacrament of Penance; because there was nothing they could do to diminish sins either hopeless or already abolished or ignored. That was why it was wicked to pray for the dead; for the dead could not be anything but instantly beatified by dogmatic faith alone, or lost for lack of it. That was why there could be no progress of further enlightenment in the life to come; or, in other words, no Purgatory. And that was what was meant by being a Protestant; disapproving of prayers for the dead, disapproving of progress after death; disapproving of any religion that relied on good works. That was the great Protestant religion of Western Europe, of which we would speak as respectfully as we would of the virility and equality of Islam; and a hundred years ago it was normal and national. It was, in the newspaper phrase, solid.
To-day, as a national and normal thing, it has utterly vanished. Not one man in ninety really disapproves of praying for the dead. The War, in killing many million men, killed that pedantry and perversity. Not one man in ninety is either a Calvinist or an upholder of Faith against Works. Not one man in ninety thinks he will go to hell if he does not instantly accept the theological theory of redemption; perhaps it would be better if he did. Not one man in ninety believes the Bible infallible, as real Protestants believed it infallible. Of all that wonderful system of religious thought, thundered against Rome in so many sermons, argued against Rome in so many pamphlets, thrown out scornfully against Rome in so many Exeter Hall meetings and Parliamentary debates, nothing remains. Of all that, as it affects the forward movement of the educated classes, and the future of the world, nothing remains.
But there is something that remains. Anti-Catholicism remains; though it is no longer Protestantism, any more than it is Albigensianism or Donatism. And that is the factor we must grasp and estimate, if we are to estimate the outlook to-day. Protestantism is now only a name; but it is a name that can be used to cover any or every “ism” except Catholicism. It is now a vessel or receptacle into which can be poured all the thousand things that for a thousand reasons react against Rome; but it can only be full of these things because it is now hollow; because it is itself empty. Every sort of negation, every sort of new religion, every sort of moral revolt or intellectual irritation, that can make a man resist the claim of the Catholic Faith, is here gathered into a heap and covered with a convenient but quite antiquated label. When the journalists sav that there is solid Protestantism, all they mean is that there is a pretty heavy reluctance or resistance in the matter of any return of the English to their ancient religion; and this, up to a point, may be quite true. But the heap is a hotch-potch; the resistance is not a rational resistance, in the sense of having a clear and commonly accepted reason; and in so far as it has a prevailing colour, it is quite the contrary colour to that which prevailed in Protestantism. It is even more against Calvinism than against Catholicism; it is even more insistent on works than were the Catholics; it would make a future life far less final and more purely progressive than did the Catholic doctrine of Purgatory; it would make the Bible far less important than it is to a Catholic. On every single point on which the Protestant attacked the Pope, he would now say that the modern spirit was a mere exaggeration of the Popish errors. In so far as there is such a vague modern spirit, common to all these things, a spirit that may be called either liberality or laxity, it never was at any time the spirit of Protestantism. It came from the Revolution and the Romantic Movement, indirectly perhaps from the Renaissance of men like Rabelais and Montaigne; and ultimately much more from men like More and Erasmus than from men like Calvin and Knox. When the Protestant orators in the present crisis repeat rather monotonously, “We will not lose the freedom we gained four hundred years ago,” they show how little they share the religion which they defend. Men gained no freedom four hundred years ago; there was no particular freedom about creating the Scottish Sabbath or preaching nothing but Predestination or even yielding to the Tudor Terror or the Cromwellian Terror. But it is arguable that they gained freedom a hundred years ago, as Catholics gained it a hundred years ago. It is tenable that such freedom was the expanding effect of the American and French Revolutions and the democratic idealism which came with the nineteenth century and seems in some danger of declining with the twentieth. Above all, it is arguable that they have a certain kind of freedom now, not because they are Protestants, for they are not; but because they are anything they like and nothing if they like that better; because they are theists, theosophists, materialists, monists or mystics on their own. How much such freedom is worth, or how much chance it has of bearing any fruit in anything positive or creative, is another matter; but in order to anticipate the next phase, it is necessary to realise that this phase is one of negative liberty, not to say anarchy. Whatever it is, it is not Protestantism; and whatever it is, it is not solid.
This is the truth symbolised in the remark on the Prayer-Book Debate; that a crowd of Free-Thinkers and Noncomformists and people of any opinions dictated the affairs of the Church of England. I am very proud of the fact that Catholics abstained from doing so and avoided a very obvious piece of bad taste. But the fact itself contains fine shades that have hardly been noticed. It is not sufficiently realised that even a congregation at the City Temple, or a crowd hearing a Dean or Canon in St. Paul’s Cathedral, is often in fact almost as mixed and dubious in religion as the members of the House of Commons. Many Nonconformists are not conforming to Non-conformity; and a churchman often means only a man who never goes to chapel. Such differences exist in the same sect or even in the same man. If we would grasp the modern problem, we must simply take at random some fairly typical English man and note how little he really is anything. He has, let us say, been brought up a Congregationalist and drifted away; he is by normal and rather negative habit an Anglican; he has become by unanswered doubts and vague popular science an Agnostic; he has often wondered if there is anything in being a Theosophist; he has attended one or two seances and might be persuaded to be a Spiritualist. That is the man we have got to deal with; and not some rigid Protestant labelled Methodist or even some rigid Atheist labelled Materialist. It is that man whom we have to set out to convert, after a hundred years of relative political liberty have left the old Protestant England far behind us and the new Catholic England still far away.
It is only fair to say, of course, that events have falsified almost as much the prophecies of those who promoted Catholic Emancipation as of those who resisted it. Many Liberals hardly disguised the idea that to emancipate Catholicism would be to extinguish Catholicism. Many thought they were tolerating a dying superstition; some thought they were killing it. It is the other superstition that has been killed. But there are always new superstitions; or, to put it more moderately, new religions. And a general estimate of the chances will see them chiefly affected, I think, by the presence of these new religions side by side with that very ancient thing called Agnosticism. The real interest of the speculation is in the question of which of the two will turn out to be the really formidable opponent of the Faith in the future.
We know what is really meant by saying that the Church is merely conservative and the modern world progressive. It means that the Church is always continuous and the heresies always contradictory. We have already noted it in the case of Protestantism; and the men who now completely contradict Protestantism, even in order to contradict Catholicism. But one effect of this contrast between continuity and bewildering variety is that the Church is generally seen in the light of the last heresy. The Church is supposed to consist chiefly of the things of which that heresy happens to disapprove. So much of the Protestant tradition still remains that a great many people suppose that the chief marks of Catholicity are those which stood out as stains in the eyes of the last school of critics. Romanism is supposed to be made up of Popery and Purgatory and the Confessional, with the queerest things thrown in, such as incense and rosaries and the images of saints. But these were often the things most important to Protestants, not most important to Catholics; and not most important to the other opponents of Catholics. A Mahommedan would not connect Rome with Purgatory, because he himself believes in Purgatory; a Buddhist would not connect her with images, because he himself has images; an old pagan would not have been horrified at incense, because he used it himself. In the same way the new religions will not attack the old religion for the old reasons. A Christian Scientist will not assume that all stories of miraculous healing must have been frauds. A Spiritualist will not assume that all supernatural messages received through men must be impossible. It will be an entirely new list of charges or challenges that will come from the new mystics, who have imitated so many of the old marvels. In so far as the new religions become the leaders of the opposition, a new class of controversies will arise; with the faith-healers, for instance, upon the mystery of matter; with the psychic investigators upon the influences of evil. All this will bring us further and further from the special Protestant problems; and a hundred years hence the Church may look to her enemies something utterly different from what she looked like a hundred years ago. She will look different because she will be the same.
But if no new religion becomes important enough to be the main issue, the immediate change will be much simpler. The two centuries will probably have completed the full transition from Protestantism to Paganism. The Church will be facing once more her first and her most formidable enemy; a thing more attractive because more human than any of the heresies. This condition that can only be called Paganism is not easily defined and has often been misrepresented. In one aspect, it may be called practical materialism without the narrowness of theoretical materialism. The Pagan looks for his pleasures to the natural forces of this world; but he does not insist so strictly upon dry negations about the other; he has commonly admitted a vague borderland of the unknown, providing him with possibilities of inspiration or of awe which are forbidden to the cheap modern atheist with his clock-work cosmos. The worshippers of the Unknown God could at least build an altar, though they could not inscribe it with a name. But I fancy that men who have once been Christians, or whose fathers have been Christians, will not be long in discovering, or rather rediscovering, the profound defect that destroyed Paganism and filled centuries with a horror of its final phase. The natural forces, when they are turned into gods, betray mankind by something that is in the very nature of nature-worship. We can already see men becoming unhealthy by the worship of health; becoming hateful by the worship of love; becoming paradoxically solemn and overstrained even by the idolatry of sport; and in some cases strangely morbid and infected with horrors by the perversion of a just sympathy with animals. Unless all these things are subject to a more centralised and well-balanced conception of the universe, the local god becomes too vivid, we might say too visible, and strikes his worshippers with madness. The pantheist is always too near to the polytheist and the polytheist to the idolater; the idolater to the man offering human sacrifice. There is nothing in Paganism to check its own exaggerations; and for that reason the world will probably find again, as it found before, the necessity of a universal moral philosophy supported by an authority that can define. In any case, that quarrel between Paganism and Catholicism will again be one raising issues very unfamiliar to many even now; and issues that would have very much mystified the men who debated a hundred years ago the issue of Catholic Emancipation.
In any case, this emergence of new issues will reveal more and more one of the advantages of an old religion. Whole aspects of Catholic doctrine and tradition, hidden by historical accident and the special quarrels of recent times, will be revealed to the world when it begins to address new questions to the Church. This is a point that has not been sufficiently stressed in the relations between Protestantism and Catholicism. Very often a Protestant was not only a man merely protesting, but a man merely protesting against a particular thing. He sometimes thought that thing was Rome; but it was really only one of the thousand aspects of Rome. When new aspects appear under new searchlights, he will be not so much defeated as simply outside the affair. A Baptist disapproves of baptising babies; a Presbyterian disapproves of bishops; a Prohibitionist disapproves of beer, and so on. But a Presbyterian, as such, has nothing very special to say about the Subconscious Mind. A Baptist as such has nothing special to say to a Behaviourist as such. But a Catholic may have a great deal to say to these people. For the Catholic commentary on life has gone on so much longer, it has covered so many different social conditions, has dealt so carefully with countless fine shades of metaphysics or casuistry, that it really has a relation to almost any class of speculation that may arise. Thus, in the matter of psycho-analysis and the study of the subconscious, the Church will probably be found sooner or later defending certain essentials about Will and Conscience against a welter of wild impersonality. Catholics remembering Catholicism will have a right and reason to do this. But Calvinists who have half forgotten Calvinism have no particular reason to do it.
There is, for instance, one influence that grows stronger every day, never mentioned in the news papers, not even intelligible to people in the newspaper frame of mind. It is the return of the Thomist Philosophy; which is the philosophy of commonsense, as compared with the paradoxes of Kant and Hegel and the Pragmatists. The Roman religion will be, in the exact sense, the only Rationalistic religion. The other religions will not be Rationalist but Relativist; declaring that the reason is itself relative and unreliable; declaring that Being is only Becoming or that all time is only a time of transition; saying in mathematics that two and two make five in the fixed stars, saying in metaphysics and in morals that there is a good beyond good and evil. Instead of the materialist who said that the soul did not exist, we shall have the new mystic who says that the body does not exist. Amid all these things the return of the Scholastic will simply be the return of the sane man. There will perhaps be belated and benighted modernists, lingering from the nineteenth century, who will repeat the jaded journalistic catchword that the Schoolman only cared to ask how many angels could stand on the point of a needle. But it will be difficult to make even that fancy appear very fantastic, in a world where men deny that it hurts a man to stick the point of the needle in his leg. If there are angels, they have presumably some intellectual relation to place and space; and if there are no angels, there are still men and presumably sane men. But to say that there is no pain, or no matter, or no evil, or no difference between man and beast, or indeed between anything and anything else—this is a desperate effort to destroy all experience and sense of reality; and men will weary of it more and more, when it has ceased to be the latest fashion; and will look once more for something that will give form to such a chaos and keep the proportions of the mind of man. Millions of men are already at least wondering whether this solution is not to be found in the Catholic order and philosophy. Above all, the Church has regained that unique position in the world in a fair field and under the very reverse of favour; having had tor a hundred years no more than the common right of speaking and publishing and voting in popular assemblies; and as her Master affirmed his divinity by becoming a man among men, she has become for a season a sect among sects, to emerge at the end as something separate or supreme.
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TRADE TERMS
IT is grimly significant that the Organ of Empire has already begun to call its Imperial policy by the cheerful name of “The Empire Merger.” The sort of combine, which all free peoples have punished as a conspiracy, is now so fashionable that it is considered quite a compliment to apply this commercial term instead of a political title. Courtiers in the future, instead of saying “Your Majesty” will say “Your Monopoly”; especially when addressing Moritz IV, of the historic House of Mond, by that time Emperor of the World State. But indeed we rather doubt whether there will be even so much dignity as this in such a despotism as that. The man who prefers to say, “Imperial Merger” rather than Imperial Protection or Imperial Free Trade, is already in this curious modern mood which actually thinks mercantile terms higher than moral or social ones. The whole system of a great nation will be remodelled on the habits of a big business. The national envoy in Paris, instead of being called, “His Excellency the British Ambassador,” will be called “Our Mr. Honey-bubble,” and he will travel with samples and be proud of being called a commercial traveller. The monopolist newspapers never weary of telling us that the world ought to have outgrown the stilted and pompous language of the old Protocols and Ultimatums, and all the formal statements of the treaties which have so often been denounced as Secret Diplomacy. Doubtless the great statesmen of the great states, the heirs of Richelieu and Canning, will correspond in a brighter and brisker English, running “Yrs. rcd. and conts: noted,” when indeed it is necessary to put the arrangements into writing at all. After all, it will be even more business-like to make the international arrangements in a husky and confidential voice, in the intervals of observing “What’s yours?” and “Say when.” That is the great advantage of the New Diplomacy over the old Secret Diplomacy. The old was so very secret as to write down all its secrets in laborious documents and send them round to about fifty people in Government offices. The New Diplomacy need never be written down at all; indeed, it is better not.
We are prepared, of course, to be told that all this ugly and undignified school of manners is very practical, and that the old stately or stilted school of manners was very unpractical. After all, the old theory of dignity did only trivial and incidental things, such as creating the Roman Empire, creating the French Monarchy and the French Revolution, founding the American Republic and establishing by personal adventure that very Empire, which our hustlers and hucksters can only help by impersonal advertisement. These are slight achievements compared with that of insuring that the same bad ginger-beer shall be sold everywhere, to the exclusion and extinction of good ginger-beer, or that over some thousand square miles of God’s green earth nobody shall have anything but one kind of hat or one kind of house. But though these arguments are undoubtedly cogent and persuasive, and bear a certain appearance of practicality and realism, we are disposed to supplement them by a suggestion or reminder; the hint of something which even thinkers so lucid seem to have overlooked. Nowadays, it is considered very horrible to mention it; and it is indeed very horrible to test it or experience it. Nevertheless, it is a thing that may be tested or experienced; and, even to be avoided, had much better be mentioned.
Authority ruling men must be respected; it must even be loved. Men must in the last resort love it; for the simple reason that men must in the last resort die for it. No community or constitution can survive and retain its identity at all, that has not in the minds of its subjects enough of an ideal identity, to appear to them in certain extremes of peril as the vision of something to be saved. It is on that ideal, inhering in the reality, that every state will depend when there is a struggle of life and death. Men must feel something more about England than that she is commercial, something more about France than that Frenchmen are practical and careful about money, something more about America than that she happens at the moment to be monstrously rich[1], before any healthy and humorous human being will kill somebody else or be killed himself, and go out from the sunlight and the sane loves of this world, for the sake of any such abstraction. It will be found, therefore, that the practical theory fails at the most practical moment. It is useful while there is question of whether the commonwealth shall continue to be rich, or continue to be imperial, or continue to be monopolist. It is useless when there is question of whether the commonwealth shall continue to be. The materialistic state, cemented only with money as with mud, will fall apart under the blow of any people who have love or loyalty to their leaders or their cause; for the simple reason that those who care most for money care more for life. One may like or dislike the Fascism of Italy, the fiery nationalism of the Poles, the deep Catholicism of the Irish; but there is no doubt that their ideals can be idealised. They are conceptions for which real men can be worked up into a real rapture of sacrifice. The images under which they are presented to the world, and especially the world of their worshippers, the golden or the silver eagle, the breastplate of St. Patrick, the Roman salute, are things that do in fact lift up the heart, and were made by the mind so that they should uplift the heart. In short there is in them poetry; and that poetry is the most practical thing in the world.
[1] But easier to die for, now she is poor.
Now if the new Imperialists insist on talking of everything in terms of the counter and the commercial room, if they insist on calling Imperial Preference a Merger, as Lord Beaverbrook did, if they insist on comparing a General Election to a Company Flotation, as Mr. Amery did, they will make men familiar indeed with their government, and in a sense at home with it, but no more capable of loving it than of loving any unlucky investment. The time will come when its existence will depend on its power on the imagination; and it will be dignity or death. Nor will that dignity come solely from an Imperial Isolation; which seems merely to mean, “How we may think in continents without thinking of the Continents.”
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FROZEN FREE THOUGHT
I BELIEVE I am in possession of a piece of news which, as we say in Fleet Street, has a certain news-value. It is hardly fitted to be flashed along the telegraph wires or blazoned on the big posters; it does not definitely involve an individual, but rather generally a school; it is an historical event; something that has happened and has hardly been noticed among the many changes of the day. The substance of the news is this. The sort of man we once knew as a Secularist has become a religious maniac.
Of course he is not actually mad, in the medical sense; nor, for that matter, is he religious in the religious sense, or perhaps in any sense. Yet the words I have used, to cover very varying stages of the malady in a fairly loose group, are the only words that convey the sharpness and importance of the incident. I mean that the tone of the old Fleet Street atheism, which I knew and loved of old, has entirely altered. It has come to resemble almost exactly the tone of the Seventh Day Adventists or the Millennial Dawnists, or all those queerly prosaic and even prim fanatics who wander about handing out pamphlets, crowded with texts and vivid with italics, in which a new heaven and a new earth can be made out of a neglected cloud in the Book of Daniel or an unusually Little Horn in the Apocalypse. Perhaps the shortest way of distinguishing between the two literary styles is to record that the first was readable and the second is unreadable. The old atheist arguments, inherited from Bradlaugh and Foote, were always crude and therefore a little heavy, even for any agnostic with some background of history and philosophy. But they were at least as clear as they were crude; and we should all of us have agreed that a paper like the Freethinker was easy to read; even if some of us would have added that it was easy to answer. The Freethinker as it is to-day is not easy to read. I know, because I have just been reading it. Its editor has kindly sent me a copy, containing what appears from the frequent mention of my name to be an attack on myself; and when I am thus personally addressed I think it only polite to answer. If it is now not so easy to answer, it is simply because it is now not so easy to understand. It seems to be about a book I wrote on Victorian Literature several years before the War; but the Freethinkers of Fleet Street, ever on the alert for fresh developments, have pounced upon it already. I have read the critique over patiently several times, and am still somewhat puzzled by what the critic can possibly mean by some of his allusions and complaints. I remember that in that very able book The Flight from Reason, Mr. Arnold Lunn narrates a similar experience with the same paper. He prints the whole of the Freethinker’s criticism on him, and, naturally not being able to make head or tail of it, simply leaves it to the reader in despair. It was something about how anybody, who thinks there is good historical evidence for the Resurrection, is logically bound to believe the story of Aladdin in the Arabian Nights. I have no idea why. But what I would first emphasise, before trying to explain my critic’s remarks to myself and him, is the curious character of this change in the Secularist Press, from a tone that was crude to a tone that is really crazy.
We might take a working parallel; fortunately outside the sphere of religion. I can imagine a jolly old Radical working man talking in the old mutinous manly fashion against the King or the House of Lords, saying with surly geniality and some repetition; “What we want with a King?’ Why should ‘e ‘ave a golden crown on ‘is ‘ead and me only my old boko? What’s ‘e blasted well doing in Buckingham Palace---” and so on. Now I like that sort of man. I like him very much. I know what he means. I think there is, in the last resort, a lot to be said for it. It is not in the style of the De Monarchia; it hardly appreciates the subtleties of Mr. Charles Maurras. But it has truths behind it; the equality of men and something that is right in republican simplicity. But suppose that man, who begins by saying he is as good as the King, broods and eventually goes mad saying that he is the King. Suppose his grievance becomes a personal grievance about his great-grandfather, and he goes about boring people with plans and pedigrees to prove his Plantagenet blood. We know the whole atmosphere will alter; but chiefly in clarity. Everybody knew what the grumbler meant; nobody will listen to what the lunatic means. That is very like the difference between the Old Secularist and the New Secularist or the Millennial Dawnist.
Take some puzzles out of this page about me. “Chesterton uses his talents tyrannously in the service of the most reactionary of all Churches,“—to which he didn’t belong at the time. And how do you use talents tyrannously? I wish I knew. “He has nothing but the crudest insults for the great intellectuals.” Well, there is the book; anybody can see what I really said about Mill, about Meredith, about Matthew Arnold, about Huxley, even supposing that nobody is an intellectual unless he is an agnostic. To say I had “nothing” but crude insult for them is— well, something that could be described still more crudely. Swinburne, it seems “is accused of composing a learned and sympathetic and indecent parody on the Litany of the Blessed Virgin.” And the critic adds mysteriously, “an ironical suggestion in a Protestant country.” I do not know what the word “accused” means here. If the critic has read Swinburne he knows that an early verse in Dolores is a parody of the Litany of the Virgin. It is hardly an accusation to call it learned and sympathetic; by which I meant artistically sympathetic in an archaic Gothic mode; as were the profane Pre-Raphaelites as well as the pious ones. Whether such a thing is indecent may be discussed; but the critic is quite wrong in fancying that only Papists thought it indecent. The indecency of Dolores was denounced, more harshly than I dreamed of doing it, by the first Freethinker in English public life; the late John Morley.
Finally, here is one wonderful example of how the Freethinker gets hold of the wrong end of the stick, even when I actually offer him the right end. He writes the amazing sentence, “Even the great authors of the nineteenth century do not escape his Romish censure, and are dubbed, spitefully, ‘lame giants’.” It is not very spiteful to call an author a giant; but anyone consulting the book will see that the men I called “lame giants” were not “the great authors of the nineteenth century,” but specially the English authors of the Victorian time; whom I compared unfavourably with the franker and bolder Freethinkers of France and the Continent. Thus I praised Renan as a more logical sceptic than Tennyson, who was a lame sceptic, hampered by respectability and provincial religion. You would think a Freethinker would recognise that as an obvious concession to Freethinkers. But the new Freethinker does not read a book. He looks through it feverishly for texts to be twisted in favour of a prejudice, like the religious maniac with the Bible.
To take another instance. I wrote an article, which appeared in the London Mercury and was called “The End of the Moderns,” in which I tried to describe a certain quality in works like Brave New World, and in much of the cult of D. H. Lawrence; a quality (not necessarily a bad quality) of being near the end of its tether, or having nearly run through its resources: of having stretched something very nearly as far as it will go. It was a psychological and literary note upon certain literary psychologists of recent years; it had nothing directly to do with religion, still less with irreligion; it had nothing in the world to do with any attack on atheism. Now the Freethinker reads through all this stuff about Lawrence and Aldous Huxley, all terribly modern to him, of course; but the point is that he cannot believe that any article I write can be anything except an attack on atheism; and especially on his own antediluvian sort of atheism. That anybody should want to write an article about modern authors, and their psychological, sociological and ethical difficulties, he cannot conceive. Therefore he runs his eye through my article, until it brightens suddenly at the sight of the word “blasphemy”. At last he has found something that he understands; something that he knows all about. Blasphemy brings back Bradlaugh and the brave days of old; and, by a pardonable optical illusion, I appear to him in the form of Lord Randolph Churchill in the ’80s, moving the expulsion of the Senior Member for Northampton. I am, after all, making my unscrupulous Attack on Atheism, though (for some dark reasons best known to myself) I prefer to stick it into the middle of an article stuffed with all sorts of strange nonsense about literature and a man named Lawrence.
Why, and in what connection, as a matter of fact, did I use the sacred word “blasphemy?” The point was this; I wished to give the reader a rough working example, to begin with, of what I meant by saying that a literary process or argument could be doomed to an early exhaustion; could be of a kind that was fated to come to a finish. And I gave the example of the purely literary and artistic effect of blasphemy. I was careful to state, in so many words, that I was only talking of the literary and artistic effect. I said the particular shock or thrill, given by breaking the silence about a sanctity, cannot be repeated indefinitely, when the sanctity is no longer there. I never said a word about whether it would be a good thing, on general social grounds, that the sanctity should be no longer there. I was not discussing that question, but another question about short-lived literary effects, of which blasphemy happens to be a good working example. But the monomaniac solemnity of the Freethinker leads him to come blundering out with a very heavy club, against the blasphemer who has blasphemed the sanctity of blasphemy. He labours a ludicrous comparison, according to which saying, “there is no sense in blasphemy when there is nothing sacred to blaspheme” is no more sensible than saying “there is no sense in sanitation, when there are no enemies of sanitation to attack.” What has become of the reasoning power of atheists, I cannot think. This comparison is obviously rubbish; because sanitation is supposed to be useful whether it is opposed or no; and all I said was that blasphemy was not startling or thrilling unless there was something to which it was opposed. Whether secularism would be a good thing, when once established and unopposed, as sanitation is supposed to be a good thing when established and unopposed, was a question which I simply did not raise in that particular article at all. I only said that such a settled secular state could not enjoy eternally the artistic excitement of blasphemy; and this the secularist, after beating wildly about the bush is eventually forced to admit. “What Mr. Chesterton ought to have said is that the defiance of God, the criticism of God, or ridiculing God, can only exist so long as men believe in God. That is quite true.” That is also, as it happens, exactly what Mr. Chesterton said, and all that Mr. Chesterton said; and Mr. Chesterton is very much gratified to learn that it is also what he ought to have said. But Mr. Chesterton also said a lot more, on literary and psychological matters of the moment, in which he happens to be interested; and he is now mildly interested in the fact that The Freethinker is not in the least interested in them. The atheist is not interested in anything except attacks on atheism, so he insists that I am attacking atheism, even when I explain elaborately that I am doing something else. He therefore blames me for saying what he himself declares to be true; or for not proving what I had never set out to prove.
But the queerest thing of all is this. I was not then attacking atheism, and I was actually defending rationalism. I was doing the poor old Freethinker’s job for him; and defending the Reason that he ought to defend. I was defending it against the more modern mysticism of D. H. Lawrence, who said that we should rebel against reason: and rely entirely upon instinct and emotion. And this, I pointed out, was an instance of something which, like blasphemy in literature, may be stimulating at the very start, but cannot run very long. An attempt really to conduct life, without constant reference to reason, would quite certainly break down. That was my point about all these modern social suggestions; that they would break down. For the rest, he repeats at intervals with hissing emphasis that I am a Roman Catholic; he is so much out of touch with the twentieth century that he really seems to imagine that a Roman Catholic is now at an intellectual disadvantage among other Christians. But I want to know why the Roman Catholic is left to do the work of the Rationalist; and attack the really recent upheaval of Unreason in the world, and why the Rationalist actually attacks him for attacking it.
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SHOCKING THE MODERNISTS
How do we manage to stagger on blinded by the blaze of wit and starry brilliancy, that is showered upon us like everlasting fireworks every day in the daily papers? The writers in those papers who so often remind us, with never-failing freshness, that things that were once rare luxuries are now multiplied and minutely and exactly imitated everywhere, surely will not fail to apply this same striking truth to the intellectual world. They will doubtless point out that those perfect and pointed epigrams, which were once heard only from exceptional individuals, like Voltaire and Talleyrand, are now invented by the hundred in every column of every newspaper, and it is hardly possible to find a single dull sentence wedged between the witty repartees and immortal jests, which can now, like everything else of any value, be produced in any quantity by mass production.
However this may be, there can be no doubt that our journalism, and the world it describes, has reached an acute sensibility to wit and verbal brilliance, which has never been known before; and is so vividly alert and alive to any such ringing and rapier-like logical fencing as to cry “a hit! a palpable hit!” in circumstances in which it is only too likely that our duller forefathers would have remained deaf or indifferent. I once read a paragraph in a daily paper, about a notable outburst among the most advanced intellects in the Church of England, which bears witness to the promptitude with which such triumphs are appreciated. Under the two headlines of “Youth Finds Church a Bore,” and “A Girl Tells Clergy,” the paragraph, or rather series of paragraphs was arranged in a suitably sensational way as follows:-
“Youth finds church a bore—and stays away from it. This contention, put forward by a girl of eighteen from the platform at Girton College, Cambridge, yesterday, made the elderly delegates to the Modern Churchman’s Conference sit up sharply in their seats.
“The speaker was the attractive daughter of a Portsmouth naval chaplain. Her most telling passage was this: ‘I don’t think public worship has any attraction whatsoever for the young. Religion is supposed to express God through truth and beauty, we are told, but in this age of specialisation people turn to science, art and philosophy to satisfy those needs’.”
I wonder what her least telling passage was.
Of course the fun really begins with the astounding and staggering effect produced by the original thunderbolt of thought “Youth Finds Church a Bore,” on all those admittedly elderly delegates who were sufficiently ancient to be described as Modern Churchmen. Dr. Major leapt to his feet with a howl; Dean Inge bounced up to the ceiling like a ball. Dr. Rashdall uttered one piercing shriek and fainted; for not one of these venerable doctors, in all their long experience of the Modernist Movement, had ever heard one human being articulate with human lips the star-staggering blasphemy that youth finds church a bore. Not one of them had ever heard so much as a rumour of young people yawning during a sermon; to none had any voice dared to whisper that little boys have been known to catch flies or dig penknives into pews during Divine service; not one of them had ever in his life heard a baby begin to squeal in church; none had ever listened to the hideous slander that youths and maidens in church had been known to look at each other instead of keeping their eyes fixed rigidly on the lectern (for nobody in the church of a Modern Churchman would condescend to look at the altar); none of them ever knew before that there had ever been any friction between the fits and moods of youth and the routine of religion. Never, until the attractive daughter of a Portsmouth naval chaplain made this stupendous discovery in modern psychology, had they even thought of the possibility that a long religious service might be rather a bore to a boy.
But yet, even about that discovery, it seems as if there might be more to be said. Some of the elderly Modern Churchmen have been schoolmasters. It seems just possible that some of them had discovered that the Sixth Book of the AEneid can be a bore to a boy. But in those cases it was not invariably assumed that the boy was right and the poet was wrong. It was not taken for granted that the boredom of the boy in itself proves that Virgil is a bad poet; still less did anyone ever propose that a simplified and modernised version of Virgil must be substituted for the old one. Nobody proposed that passages from Kipling about the British Empire should be substituted for the more austere salutations of Virgil to the Roman Empire, because such education would be more modern, compact and convenient to a truly National Church. Nobody proposed that a really smart and snappy up-to-date description of the Derby, taken from an evening paper, should be regarded as a complete substitute for that thundering line in which the very earth shakes with the horsehoofs of the charioteers. And, if I may venture to hint a disagreement with the Prophetess of Girton College, Cambridge, I think it will be found that the same argument applies even to the substitutes that she herself proposes. She says that people turn to science, art and philosophy. Will she swear by the Death of Nelson, or whatever oath binds the daughter of a Portsmouth naval chaplain, that no science student ever shirks or plays truant in a science school? It will be vain for her to swear any such thing in the case of an art school; for I have been to an art school myself, and I can assure her that there were quite as many art students who found application to art a bore as there could possibly be divinity students who found divinity a bore. As for young philosophers, I have known a good many of them; at an age when nearly all of them were much more fond of philosophising than of learning philosophy. And I might hint that there are other young agitators, of the sort that seem to agitate so strangely the Modern Churchmen and the modern newspapers, who seem to have a certain spirited and spontaneous preference for saying things rather than for thinking what they are saying. Is it really necessary that we should toil through all this tiresome repetition about the perfectly obvious difficulty of getting young people to work when they naturally want to play, before we even begin to discuss the mature problem of the relation of doctrine to the mind? It is perfectly natural that the boy should find the church a bore. But why are we bound to treat what is natural as something actually superior to what is supernatural; as something which is not even merely supernatural, but is in the exact sense super-supernatural?
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A GRAMMAR OF KNIGHTHOOD
I THINK it very likely that many have never even heard of The Broadstone of Honour, the manual of chivalry written by Kenelm Digby early in the nineteenth century; unless they remember one contemptuous reference to it in Macaulay’s Essays. The reference is not much of a criticism on the Broadstone of Honour, but it is a very damaging criticism of Macaulay’s Essays. It illustrates, not only his spirited superficiality, but that considerable element of ignorance that went along with his remarkable reputation for omniscience. Just as his celebrated sneer at Spenser shows that he had not read Spenser, so his less famous sneer at Kenelm Digby shows that he had not read Kenelm Digby. He set himself to belittle certain old tales of courtesy, which is the wedding of humility with dignity. He scoffed at such stories as that of the Black Prince waiting like a servant on his helpless captive; and he thought he could not scoff at them more effectively than by saying they would be suitable to Kenelm Digby; or, as he put it, to “those who think, like the author of The Broadstone of Honour, that God made the world for the use of gentlemen.” One is tempted to reply, in some moods, that there will always be enough bounders, even among the learned, to redress the balance.
Now Kenelm Henry Digby was, as his name implies, a member of an old Catholic family, established in Ireland; and, as with the other branches of such old families established in England, it would not be very unnatural if he did attach some importance to being a gentleman. If the weakness has sometimes been too apparent in the old Catholics of England, it is at least pardonable and rather pathetic. When you are an honest and perfectly patriotic squire, and all your countrymen regard you as a liar, a traitor, a poisoner and a devil-worshipper, it must be something of a sentimental comfort to you that they cannot deny you are a gentleman. Poor human nature being what it is, you may be excused if you come to think a little too much of it. And Kenelm Digby might have been excused if he really had thought too much of it; and talked nonsense about gentlemen, as if God had made the world for them. But as a simple fact, it was not Digby who talked nonsense about gentlemen, but Macaulay who talked nonsense about Digby.
What would Macaulay have said if after writing his epigram about a universe created for the gentry, he had made the bold experiment of opening the book at random, as I did, and reading a paragraph like this:
“The noble Italian Arnigio shows how truly generous and heroic peasants and men of the lowest rank of life may become.” “The glorious nativity of the Redeemer of the world,” he observes, “was revealed to shepherds, as to men pure, just and vigilant. When our adorable Saviour was to be born blessed Mary and the devout Joseph were so little possessed of worldly grandeur that the stable of an inn was their only place of refuge. For mark, says a holy man, the evangelists do not say that there was no room in the inn, but there was no room for them. Oh what a noble school is poverty! What a temple of sovereign honour! Pope Urban IV was so little ashamed of being the son of a shoemaker that he ordered the pulpit of the church of St. Urban, at Troyes, his native city, to be adorned on great festivals with tapestry representing his father’s stall. There is even an example of legislation, on the principles of the romances, which places Chivalry before nobility, for the state of Pistoja, in the thirteenth century ennobled men as a punishment for their crimes.”
Do you think that perhaps even Macaulay would have felt slightly ashamed of himself?
Anyhow the author of The Broadstone of Honour did not think the world was made only for gentlemen He thought in his simplicity that it was made for man; and he could not escape from a prejudice in favour of brave men and honest men and (I am so antiquated as to add) men who felt a special consideration for women. The book has some of the faults of its type and time; in that sense it is now rather dated; nearly as much dated as Macaulay. We must read it, or at least parts of it, rather as we read a song of Tom Moore or a patriotic poem of Thomas Davis, or all that rather rhetorical yet very red-blooded tradition ot talking and writing that derived from the mishty melodrama of Byron or was sympathetically satirised in Micawber. But when we have allowed for variations in the taste for purple patches, a matter entirely relative in our taste as in his, the book is sustained from first to last by what can only be called a sustained energy of virtue. It does anybody good to meet a man so little ashamed of an enthusiasm for mere goodness. Many of his gestures are as noble as any of those that make the decisive moments in the Chansons de Geste. Many of his concessions are as graceful as any that he himself praises in the chronicles of the tournament or the tented field. But he was very far from being merely an amiable old antiquary haunting Melrose by moonlight; or even a dazed Don Quixote with his head hidden in folios about Arthur and Amadis of Gaul. I cannot resist making another quotation which will serve to show that Kenelm Digby was not by any means unconscious of what was going on in his own time—and, I will add, is still going on in ours.
After speaking of St. Francis and of many knights who would feed the poor and eat with them and carry their coffins, he says, “Oh! is it for the rich of the nineteenth century to talk of the inhumanity of the Middle Ages? To give alms, with them, is to encourage idleness. He is hungry, he is naked? Let him work. But he is old? There are employments for all. But he is a child? Do not teach him to beg. It is the mother of a large family? Perhaps she does not tell the truth. We have institutions on a new system. Yes truly, and woe to the unhappy ones who are doomed to receive relief from them! In order that the children of pleasure may not be incommoded by the sight of poverty the poor are shut up within high walls and condemned to confinement for the crime of being poor and miserable. When they are thus secluded from the enjoyment of nature an odious Board of Governors takes care that they should be provided with what is sufficient to support life. And then they have to endure the countenances of ferocious barbarians who are the officers to administer this horrible humanity.”
That is the testimony of Digby, as it is the testimony of Dickens, who did not presumably labour under the illusion that God made the world only for gentlemen. That is also the testimony of Cobbett, of Carlyle, of Hood, of Ruskin, of everybody who actually watched the modern industrial movement with his eyes open; but the fact that Digby wrote that paragraph may alone be my apology for writing this note on his neglected name.
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REFLECTIONS ON A ROTTEN APPLE
OUR age is obviously the Nonsense Age; the wiser sort of nonsense being provided for the children and the sillier sort of nonsense for the grown-up people. The eighteenth century has been called the Age of Reason; I suppose there is no doubt that the twentieth century is the Age of Unreason. But even that is an understatement. The Age of Reason was nicknamed from a famous rationalist book. But the rationalist was not really so much concerned to urge the rational against the irrational; but rather specially to urge the natural against the supernatural. But there is a degree of the unreasonable that would go even beyond the unnatural. It is not merely an incredible tale, but an inconsistent idea. As I pointed out to somebody long ago, it is one thing to believe that a beanstalk scaled the sky, and quite another to believe that fifty-seven beans make five.
For instance, a man may disbelieve in miracles; normally on some a priori principle of determinist thought; in some cases even on examination of the evidence. But on being told of the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, he is told something that is logical if it is not natural. He is not told that there were fewer fishes because the fishes had been multiplied. Multiplication is still a mathematical term; and a mob all feeding on miraculous fishes is a less mysterious or monstrous sight than a man saying that multiplication is the same as subtraction. Such a story, for such a sceptic, does not carry conviction; but it does make sense. He can recognise the logical consequence, if he cannot understand the logical cause. But no pope or priest ever asked him to believe that thousands died of starvation in the desert because they were loaded with loaves and fishes. No creed or dogma ever declared that there was too little food because there was too much fish. But that is the precise, practical and prosaic definition of the present situation in the modern science of economics. And the man of the Nonsense Age must bow his head and repeat his credo, the motto of his time. Credo quia impossibile.
Or again, the term unreason is sometimes used rather more reasonably; for a sort of loose or elliptical statement, which is at least illogical in form. The most popular case is what was called the Irish Bull; often suspected of resembling the Papal Bull, in being a supernatural monster bred of credulity and superstition. But even this old sort of confusion stopped short of the new sort of contradiction. If any Irishman really does say, “We are not birds, to be in two places at once,” at least we know what he means, even if it is not what he says. But suppose he says that one bird has been miraculously multiplied into a million birds, and that in consequence there are fewer birds in the world than there were before. We should then be dealing, not merely with an Irish Bull but with a Mad Bull, and concerned not with the incredible but with the incomprehensible. Or, to apply the parable, the Irish have sometimes been accused of unbalanced emotion or morbid sentiment. But nobody says that they merely imagined the Great Famine, in which multitudes starved because the potatoes were few and small. Only suppose an Irishman had said that they starved because the potatoes were gigantic and innumerable. I think we should not yet have heard the last of the wrong-headed absurdity of that Irishman. Yet that is an exact description of the economic condition to-day as it affects the Englishman. And, to a great extent, the American. We learn that there is a famine because there is not a scarcity; and there is such a good potato-crop that there are no potatoes. The Irishman, with his bull or his bird, is quite a hard-headed realist and rationalist compared to that. Thus, the old examples of the fantastic fell far short of the modern fact; whether they were mysteries supposed to be above reason or merely muddles supposed to be below it. Their miracles were more normal than our scientific averages; and the Irish blunder was less illogical than the actual logic of events.
For it seems that we live to-day in a world of witchcraft, in which the orchards wither because they prosper, and the multitude of apples on the apple-tree of itself turns them into forbidden fruit, and makes the effort to consume them in every sense fruitless. This is the modern economic paradox, which is called Over-Production, or a glut in the market, and though at first sight it sounds like the wildest fantasy, it is well to realise in what sense it is the most solid of facts. Let it be clearly understood, therefore, that as a description of the objective social situation at this instant in this industrial society, the paradox is perfectly true. But it is not really true that the contradiction in terms is true. If we take it, not as a description but as a definition, if we take it as a matter of abstract argument, then certainly the contradiction is untrue, as every contradiction is untrue. The truth is that a third element has entered into the matter, which is not mentioned in this abstract statement of it. That element might be stated in many ways; perhaps the shortest statement of it is in the fable of the man who sold razors, and afterwards explained to an indignant customer, with simple dignity, that he had never said the razors would shave. When asked if razors were not made to shave, he replied that they were made to sell. That is A Short History of Trade and Industry During the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries.
God made a world of reason as sure as God made little apples (as the beautiful proverb goes); and God did not make little apples larger than large apples. It is not true that a man whose apple-tree is loaded with apples will suffer from a want of apples; though he may indulge in a waste of apples. But if he never looks upon apples as things to eat, but always looks on them as things to sell, he will really get into another sort of complication; which may end in a sort of contradiction. If, instead of producing as many apples as he wants, he produces as many apples as he imagines the whole world wants, with the hope of capturing the trade of the whole world—then he will be either successful or unsuccessful in competing with the man next door who also wants the whole world’s trade to himself. Between them, they will produce so many apples that apples in the market will be about as valuable as pebbles on the beach. Thus each of them will find he has very little money in his pocket, with which to go and buy fresh pears at the fruiterer’s shop. If he had never expected to get fruit at the fruiterer’s shop, but had put up his hand and pulled them off his own tree, his difficulty would never have arisen. It seems simple; but at the root of all apple-trees and apple-growing, it is really as simple as that.
Of course I do not mean that the practice is at present simple; for no practical problem is simple, least of all at the present time, when everything is confused by the corrupt and evasive muddlers who are called practical politicians. But the principle is simple; and the only way to proceed through a complex situation is to start with the right first principle. How far we can do without, or control, or merely modify the disadvantages of buying and selling is quite another matter. But the disadvantages do arise from buying and selling, and not from producing: not even from over-producing. And it is some satisfaction to realise that we are not living in a nightmare in which No is the same as Yes; that even the modern world has not actually gone mad, with all its ingenious attempts to do so; that two and two do in fact make four; and that the man who has four apples really has more than the man who has three. For some modern metaphysicians and moral philosophers seem disposed to leave us in doubt on these points. It is not the fundamental reason in things that is at fault; it is a particular hitch or falsification, arising from a very recent trick of regarding everything only in relation to trade. Trade is all very well in its way, but Trade has been put in the place of Truth. Trade, which is in its nature a secondary or dependent thing, has been treated as a primary and independent thing; as an absolute. The moderns, mad upon mere multiplication, have even made a plural out of what is eternally singular, in the sense of single. They have taken what all ancient philosophers called the Good, and translated it as the Goods.
I believe that certain mystics, in the American business world, protested against the slump by pinning labels to their coats inscribed, “Trade Is Good,” along with other similar proclamations, such as, “Capone Is Dead,” or “Cancer Is Pleasant,” or “Death Is Abolished,” or any other hard realistic truths for which they might find space upon their persons. But what interests me about these magicians is that, having decided to call up ideal conditions by means of spells and incantations to control the elements, they did not (so to speak) understand the elements of the elements. They did not go to the root of the matter, and imagine that their troubles had really come to an end. Rather they worshipped the means instead of the end. While they were about it, they ought to have said, not “Trade is Good,” but “Living Is Good,” or “Life Is Good.” I suppose it would be too much to expect such thoroughly respectable people to say, “God Is Good”; but it is really true that their conception of what is good lacks the philosophical finality that belonged to the goodness of God. When God looked on created things and saw that they were good, it meant that they were good in themselves and as they stood; but by the modern mercantile idea, God would only have looked at them and seen that they were The Goods. In other words, there would be a label tied to the tree or the hill, as to the hat of the Mad Hatter, with “This Style, 10/6.” All the flowers and birds would be ticketed with their reduced prices; all the creation would be for sale or all the creatures seeking employment; with all the morning stars making sky-signs together and all the Sons of God shouting for jobs. In other words, these people are incapable of imagining any good except that which comes from bartering something for something else. The idea of a man enjoying a thing in itself, for himself, is inconceivable to them. The notion of a man eating his own apples off his own apple-tree seems like a fairy-tale. Yet the fall from that first creation that was called good has very largely come from the restless impotence for valuing things in themselves; the madness of the trader who cannot see any good in a good, except as something to get rid of. It was once admitted that with sin and death there entered the world something that we call change. It is none the less true and tragic, because what we called change, we called afterwards exchange. Anyhow, the result of that extravagance of exchange has been that when there are too many apples there are too few apple-eaters. I do not insist on the symbol of Eden, or the parable of the apple-tree, but it is odd to notice that even that accidental image pursues us at every stage of this strange story. The last result of treating a tree as a shop or a store instead of as a store-room, the last ettect ot treating apples as goods rather than as good, has been in a desperate drive of public charity and in poor men selling apples in the street.
In all normal civilisations the trader existed and must exist. But in all normal civilisations the trader was the exception; certainly he was never the rule; and most certainly he was never the ruler. The predominance which he has gained in the modern world is the cause of all the disasters of the modern world. The universal habit of humanity has been to produce and consume as part of the same process; largely conducted by the same people in the same place. Sometimes goods were produced and consumed on the same great feudal manor; sometimes even on the same small peasant farm. Sometimes there was a tribute from serfs as yet hardly distinguishable from slaves; sometimes there was a cooperation between free-men which the superficial can hardly distinguish from communism. But none of these many historical methods, whatever their vices or limitations, was strangled in the particular tangle of our own time; because most of the people, for most of the time, were thinking about growing food and then eating it; not entirely about growing food and selling it at the stiffest price to somebody who had nothing to eat. And I for one do not believe that there is any way out of the modern tangle, except to increase the proportion of the people who are living according to the ancient simplicity. Nobody in his five wits proposes that there should be no trade and no traders. Nevertheless, it is important to remember, as a matter of mere logic, that there might conceivably be great wealth, even if there were no trade and no traders. It is important for the sort of man whose only hope is that Trade Is Good or whose only secret terror is that Trade Is Bad. In principle, prosperity might be very great, even if trade were very bad. If a village were so fortunately situated that, for some reason, it was easy for every family to keep its own chickens, to grow its own vegetables, to milk its own cow and (I will add) to brew its own beer, the standard of life and property might be very high indeed, even though the long memory of the Oldest Inhabitant only recorded two or three pure transactions of trade; if he could only recall the one far-off event of his neighbour buying a new hat from a gipsy’s barrow; or the singular incident of Farmer Billings purchasing an umbrella.
As I have said, I do not imagine, or desire, that things would ever be quite so simple as that. But we must understand things in their simplicity before we can explain or correct their complexity. The complexity of commercial society has become intolerable, because that society is commercial and nothing else. The whole mind of the community is occupied, not with the idea of possessing things, but with the idea of passing them on. When the simple enthusiasts already mentioned say that Trade is Good, they mean that all the people who possess goods are perpetually parting with them. These Optimists presumably invoke the poet, with some slight emendation of the poet’s meaning, when he cries aloud, ‘Our souls are love and a perpetual farewell.’ In that sense, our individualistic and commercial modern society is actually the very reverse of a society founded on Private Property. I mean that the actual direct and isolated enjoyment of private property, as distinct from the excitement of exchanging it or getting a profit on it, is rather rarer than in many simple communities that seem almost communal in their simplicity. In the case of this sort of private consumption, which is also private production, it is very unlikely that it will run continually into overproduction. There is a limit to the number of apples a man can eat, and there will probably be a limit, drawn by his rich and healthy hatred of work, to the number of apples which he will produce but cannot eat. But there is no limit to the number of apples he may possibly sell; and he soon becomes a pushing, dexterous and successful Salesman and turns the whole world upside-down. For it is he who produces this huge pantomimic paradox with which this rambling reflection began. It is he who makes a wilder revolution than the apple of Adam which was the loosening of death, or the apple of Newton which was the apocalypse of gravitation, by proclaiming the supreme blasphemy and heresy, that the apple was made for the market and not for the mouth. It was he, by starting the wild race of pouring endless apples into a bottomless market, who opened the abyss of irony and contradiction into which we are staring to-day. That trick of treating the trade as the test, and the only test, has left us face to face with a piece of stark staring nonsense written in gigantic letters across the world; more gigantic than all its own absurd advertisements and announcements; the statement that the more we produce the less we possess.
Oscar Wilde would probably have fainted with equal promptitude, if told he was being used in an argument about American salesmanship, or in defence of a thrifty and respectable family life on the farm. But it does so happen that one true epigram, among many of his false epigrams, sums up correctly and compactly a certain truth, not (I am happy to say) about Art, but about all that he desired to separate from Art; ethics and even economics. He said in one of his plays: “A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.” It is extraordinarily true; and the answer to most other things that he said. But it is yet more extraordinary that the modern men who make that mistake most obviously are not the cynics. On the contrary, they are those who call themselves the Optimists; perhaps even those who would call themselves the Idealists; certainly those who regard themselves as the Regular Guys and the Sons of Service and Uplift. It is too often those very people who have spoilt all their good effect, and weakened their considerable good example in work and social contact, by that very error: that things are to be judged by the price and not by the value. And since Price is a crazy and incalculable thing, while Value is an intrinsic and indestructible thing, they have swept us into a society which is no longer solid but fluid, as unfathomable as a sea and as treacherous as a quicksand. Whether anything more solid can be built again upon a social philosophy of values, there is now no space to discuss at length here; but I am certain that nothing solid can be built on any other philosophy; certainly not upon the utterly un-philosophical philosophy of blind buying and selling; of bullying people into purchasing what they do not want; of making it badly so that they may break it and imagine they want it again; of keeping rubbish in rapid circulation like a dust-storm in a desert; and pretending that you are teaching men to hope, because you do not leave them one intelligent instant in which to despair.
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SEX AND PROPERTY
IN the dull, dusty, stale, stiff-jointed and lumbering language, to which most modern discussion is limited, it is necessary to say that there is at this moment the same fashionable fallacy about Sex and about Property. In the older and freer language, in which men could both speak and sing, it is truer to say that the same evil spirit has blasted the two great powers that make the poetry of life; the Love of Woman and the Love of the Land. It is important to observe, to start with, that these two things were closely connected so long as humanity was human, even when it was heathen. Nay, they were still closely connected, even when it was a decadent heathenism. But even the stink of decaying heathenism has not been so bad as the stink of decaying Christianity. The corruption of the best…
For instance, there were throughout antiquity, both in its first stage and its last, modes of idolatry and imagery of which Christian men can hardly speak. “Let them not be so much as named among you.” Men wallowed in the mere sexuality of a mythology of sex; they organised prostitution like priesthood, for the service of their temples; they made pornography their only poetry; they paraded emblems that turned even architecture into a sort of cold and colossal exhibitionism. Many learned books have been written of all these phallic cults; and anybody can go to them for the details, for all I care. But what interests me is this:
In one way all this ancient sin was infinitely superior, immeasurably superior, to the modern sin. All those who write of it at least agree on one fact; that it was the cult of Fruitfulness. It was unfortunately too often interwoven, very closely, with the cult of the fruitfulness of the land. It was at least on the side of Nature. It was at least on the side of Life. It has been left to the last Christians, or rather to the first Christians fully committed to blaspheming and denying Christianity, to invent a new kind of worship of Sex, which is not even a worship of Life. It has been left to the very latest Modernists to proclaim an erotic religion which at once exalts lust and forbids fertility. The new Paganism literally merits the reproach of Swinburne, when mourning for the old Paganism: “and rears not the bountiful token and spreads not the fatherly feast.” The new priests abolish the fatherhood and keep the feast-to themselves. They are worse than Swinburne’s Pagans. The priests of Priapus and Cotytto go into the kingdom of heaven before them.
Now it is not unnatural that this unnatural separation, between sex and fruitfulness, which even the Pagans would have thought a perversion, has been accompanied with a similar separation and perversion about the nature of the love of the land. In both departments there is precisely the same fallacy; which it is quite possible to state precisely. The reason why our contemporary countrymen do not understand what we mean by Property is that they only think of it in the sense of Money; in the sense of salary; in the sense of something which is immediately consumed, enjoyed and expended; something which gives momentary pleasure and disappears. They do not understand that we mean by Property something that includes that pleasure incidentally; but begins and ends with something far more grand and worthy and creative. The man who makes an orchard where there has been a field, who owns the orchard and decides to whom it shall descend, does also enjoy the taste of apples; and let us hope, also, the taste of cider. But he is doing something very much grander, and ultimately more gratifying, than merely eating an apple. He is imposing his will upon the world in the manner of the charter given him by the will of God; he is asserting that his soul is his own, and does not belong to the Orchard Survey Department, or the chief Trust in the Apple Trade. But he is also doing something which was implicit in all the most ancient religions of the earth; in those great panoramas of pageantry and ritual that followed the order of the seasons in China or Babylonia; he is worshipping the fruitfulness of the world. Now the notion of narrowing property merely to enjoying money is exactly like the notion of narrowing love merely to enjoying sex. In both cases an incidental, isolated, servile and even secretive pleasure is substituted for participation in a great creative process; even in the everlasting Creation of the world.
The two sinister things can be seen side by side in the system of Bolshevist Russia; for Communism is the only complete and logical working model of Capitalism. The sins are there a system which are everywhere else a sort of repeated blunder. From the first, it is admitted, that the whole system was directed towards encouraging or driving the worker to spend his wages; to have nothing left on the next pay day; to enjoy everything and consume everything and efface everything; in short, to shudder at the thought of only one crime; the creative crime of thrift. It was a tame extravagance; a sort of disciplined dissipation; a meek and submissive prodigality. For the moment the slave left off drinking all his wages, the moment he began to hoard or hide any property, he would be saving up something which might ultimately purchase his liberty. He might begin to count for something in the State; that is, he might become less of a slave and more of a citizen. Morally considered, there has been nothing quite so unspeakably mean as this Bolshevist generosity. But it will be noted that exactly the same spirit and tone pervades the manner of dealing with the other matter. Sex also is to come to the slave merely as a pleasure; that it may never be a power. He is to know as little as possible, or at least to think as little as possible, of the pleasure as anything else except a pleasure; to think or know nothing of where it comes from or where it will go to, when once the soiled object has passed through his own hands. He is not to trouble about its origin in the purposes of God or its sequel in the posterity of man. In every department he is not a possessor, but only a consumer; even if it be of the first elements of life and fire in so far as they are consumable; he is to have no notion of the sort of Burning Bush that burns and is not consumed. For that bush only grows on the soil, on the real land where human beings can behold it; and the spot on which they stand is holy ground. Thus there is an exact parallel between the two modern moral, or immoral, ideas of social reform. The world has forgotten simultaneously that the making of a Farm is something much larger than the making of a profit, or even a product, in the sense of liking the taste of beetroot sugar; and that the founding of a Family is something much larger than sex in the limited sense of.current literature; which was anticipated in one bleak and blinding flash in a single line of George Meredith; “And eat our pot of honey on the grave.”
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ST. THOMAS MORE
MOST would understand the phrase that the mind of More was like a diamond that a tyrant threw away into a ditch, because he could not break it. It is but a metaphor; but it does sometimes happen that the metaphor is many-sided, like the diamond. What moved the tyrant to a sort of terror of that mind was its clarity; it was the very reverse of a cloudy crystal filled only with opalescent dreams or visions of the past. The King and his great Chancellor had been companions as well as contemporaries; in many ways, both were Renaissance men; but in some ways, the man who was the more Catholic was the less medieval. That is, there was perhaps more in the Tudor of that mere musty fag-end of decayed medievalism, which the real Renaissance reformers felt to be the corruption of the time. In More’s mind there was nothing but clarity; in Henry’s mind, though he was no fool and certainly no Protestant, there was something of confused conservatism. Like many a better man who is an Anglo-Catholic, he had a touch of the antiquary. Thomas More was a better rationalist, which was why there was nothing in his religion that was merely local, or in that sense merely loyal. More’s mind was like a diamond also in a power like that of cutting glass; of cutting through things that seemed equally transparent, but were at once less solid and less many-sided. For the true consistent heresies generally look very clear indeed; like Calvinism then or Communism now. They sometimes even look very true; they sometimes even are very true, in the limited sense of a truth that is less than the Truth. They are at once more thin and more brittle than the diamond. For a heresy is not often a mere lie; as Thomas More himself said, “Never was there a heretic that spoke all false.” A heresy is a truth that hides all the other truths. A mind like More’s was full of light like a house made of windows; but the windows looked out on all sides and in all directions. We might say that, as the jewel has many facets, so the man had many faces; only none of them were masks.
Thus there are so many aspects of this great story, that the difficulty of dealing with it in an article is one of selection, and even more of proportion. I might attempt and fail to do justice to its highest aspect; to that holiness which now stands beyond even Beatitude; I might equally fill the whole space with the homeliest of the jokes in which the great humorist delighted in daily life; perhaps the biggest joke of all being the book called Utopia. The nineteenth century Utopians imitated the book without seeing the joke. But among a bewildering complexity of such different aspects or angles, I have decided to deal only with two points; not because they were the most important truths about Thomas More, though their importance is very great; but because they are two of the most important truths about the world at this present moment. One appears most clearly in his death and the other in his life; one, perhaps we should rather say, concerns his public life and the other his private life; one is far beyond any adequate admiration and the other may seem in comparison an almost comic bathos; but one hits exactly the right nail on the head in our present discussions about the State; and the other about the Family.
Thomas More died the death of a traitor for defying absolute monarchy; in the strict sense of treating monarchy as an absolute. He was willing, and even eager, to respect it as a relative thing, but not as an absolute thing. The heresy that had just raised its head in his own time was the heresy called the Divine Right of Kings. In that form it is now regarded as an old superstition; but it has already reappeared as a very new superstition, in the form of the Divine Right of Dictators. But most people still vaguely think of it as old; and nearly all of them think it is much older than it is. One of the chief difficulties to-day is to explain to people that this idea was not native to medieval or many older times. People know that the constitutional checks on kings have been increasing for a century or two; they do not realize that any other kind of checks could ever have operated; and in the changed conditions those other checks are hard to describe or imagine. But most certainly medieval men thought of the king as ruling sub deo et lege; rightly translated, “under God and the law,” but also involving something atmospheric that might more vaguely be called, “under the morality implied in all our institutions.” Kings were excommunicated, were deposed, were assassinated, were dealt with in all sorts of defensible and indefensible ways; but nobody thought the whole commonwealth fell with the king, or that he alone had ultimate authority there. The State did not own men so entirely, even when it could send them to the stake, as it sometimes does now where it can send them to the elementary school. There was an idea of refuge, which was generally an idea of sanctuary. In short, in a hundred strange and subtle ways, as we should think them, there was a sort of escape upwards. There were limits to Caesar; and there was liberty with God.
The highest voice of the Church has pronounced that this hero was in the true and traditional sense a Saint and Martyr. And it is appropriate to remember that he does indeed stand, for a rather special reason, with those first Martyrs whose blood was the seed of the Church in the very earliest pagan persecutions. For most of them died; as he did, for refusing to extend a civil loyalty into a religious idolatry. Most of them did not die for refusing to worship Mercury or Venus, or fabulous figures who might be supposed not to exist; or others like Moloch or Priapus whom we might well hope do not exist. Most of them died for refusing to worship somebody who certainly did exist; and even somebody whom they were quite prepared to obey but not to worship. The typical martyrdom generally turned on the business of burning incense before the statue of Divus Augustus; the sacred image of the Emperor. He was not necessarily a demon to be destroyed; he was simply a despot who must not be turned into a deity. That is where their case came so very close to the practical problem of Thomas More; and so very near to the practical problem of mere State-worship to-day. And it is typical of all Catholic thought that men died in torments, not because their foes “spoke all false”; but simply because they would not give an unreasonable reverence where they were perfectly prepared to give a reasonable respect. For us the problem of Progress is always a problem of Proportion: improvement is reaching a right proportion, not merely moving in one direction. And our doubts about most modern developments, about the Socialists in the last generation, or the Fascists in this generation, do not arise from our having any doubts at all about the desirability of economic justice, or of national order, any more than Thomas More bothered his head to object to a hereditary monarchy. He objected to the Divine Right of Kings.
In the very deepest sense he is thus the champion of Liberty in his public life and his still more public death. In his private life he is the type of a truth even less understood to-day; the truth that the real habitation of Liberty is the home. Modern novels and newspapers and problem plays have been piled up in one huge rubbish-heap to hide this simple fact; yet it is a fact that can be proved quite simply. Public life must be rather more regimented than private life; just as a man cannot wander about in the traffic of Piccadilly exactly as he could wander about in his own garden. Where there is traffic there will be regulation of traffic; and this is quite as true, or even more true, where it is what we should call an illicit traffic; where the most modern governments organize sterilization to-day and may organize infanticide to-morrow. Those who hold the modern superstition that the State can do no wrong will be bound to accept such a thing as right. If individuals have any hope of protecting their freedom, they must protect their family life. At the worst there will be rather more personal adaptation in a household than in a concentration camp; at the best there will be rather less routine in a family than in a factory. In any tolerably healthy home the rules are at least partly affected by things that cannot possibly affect fixed laws; for instance, the thing we call a sense of humour.
Therefore More is vividly important as the Humorist; as representing that special phase of the Humanist. Behind his public life, which was so grand a tragedy, there was a private life that was a perpetual comedy. He was, as Mr. Christopher Hollis says in his excellent study, “an incorrigible leg-puller.” Everybody knows, of course, that the comedy and the tragedy met as they meet in Shakespeare, on that last high wooden stage where his drama ended. In that terrible moment he realized and relished the grand joke of the human body, as of a sort of lovable lumber; gravely discussed whether his beard had committed treason; and said in hoisting himself up the ladder, “See me safely up; coming down I can take care of myself.”
But Thomas More never came down that ladder. He had done with all descents and downward goings, and what had been himself vanished from men’s eyes almost in the manner of his Master, who being lifted up shall draw all men after Him. And the dark closed over him and the clouds came between; until long afterwards the wisdom that can a read such secrets saw him fixed far above our heads like a returning star; and established his station in the skies.
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THE RETURN OF CAESAR
WHETHER or no it be an example of first and second childhood, I sometimes have a whimsical fancy that I shall end as I began, trying to make some sense out of what is called Liberalism in politics. There is a Fleet Street story about me, which may be a fact though I have entirely forgotten it, that when I was asked if I was a Liberal, I answered, “I am the only Liberal.” It will be agreed that, in these days, I should be very nearly the only Liberal. But I hope nobody will accuse me of wanting to be a Liberal leader. The Liberal Party now consists entirely of leaders—or rather mis-leaders. And all they want, all they have left to pray for, is one single simple solitary human being who is willing to be misled. On second thoughts, I rather doubt whether I will offer myself even to fulfil this humble office; whatever may be my qualifications for filling all the seats at a public meeting, and constituting the whole audience, while my five leaders address me from the platform, urging me to five urgent but incompatible courses of action. No, the sense in which I have again become conscious of the existence of purely political Liberalism is not so much due to what remains of it, as to what has vanished from it; not to what the Liberals say as to what they do not say. In the face of fashionable Fascism, and the toppling simplifications of the Totalitarian State, there really is a great deal that ought to be said for Liberalism; or, in clearer language, for Liberty.
Many things return; and thank God we live now in a time when we can talk once more about Church and State; though nowadays it generally means the Catholic Church and the Totalitarian State. But at least we have abolished the most illiberal of the illiberal limitations of Liberalism. We can recognise religion in history at the back of European ideas, including modern ideas; and in this connection the story of Church and State is very strange indeed. Of course, the one thing that has really confused the story of Church and State is the thing called the State Church. But that is a mere illogical interlude; in which God holds his authority from Caesar; instead of Caesar holding it from God. The normal relation between Church and State, through most of the varied phases of history, has not been exactly an establishment, but something more like what we have seen reappear in Germany. When there was not a conflict, there was a Concordat. It will be noted that the Church generally had a Concordat with her enemies rather than her friends. There was a dispute with Napoleon and a Concordat with Napoleon: a dispute with Mussolini and a Concordat with Mussolini; a dispute with Hitler and a Concordat with Hitler. And though the word would not perhaps have been used, and would not perhaps have been correct, something of the same paradox broods like a suspended storm over the State and Church in their relations in even earlier times. It marks the Church in her relation with the Roman Emperors; in her relation witn tne Greek Emperors; in her relation with the German Emperors. There was always some sort of Concordat, and there was never any complete concord.
It needs nearly a lifetime to trace the curve or orbit of the Church, and the rhythm of things returning. But to one growing up as a Liberal, and in many ways still a Liberal, the chief interest of the last days is in this. The Church, roughly speaking, almost always remains at about the same distance from the State and its experiments. There are exceptions, of course; when an Emperor persecutes the Church or the Church excommunicates an Emperor. The Church could hardly be expected to concord very much, even in the coldest manner, with Nero or the No-God Movement in Moscow. But it is most often found at about the same distance from the State as it is now from the Totalitarian State. Leo XIII stood at about that distance from the French Republican State. Few Catholics need originally have stood at any much greater distance even from the French Revolution. But the very names will serve to remind us of the vital point at issue. It is the State that changes; it is the State that destroys; it is nearly always the State that persecutes. The Totalitarian State is now making a clean sweep of all our old notions of liberty, even more than the French Revolution made a clean sweep of all the old ideas of loyalty. It is the Church that excommunicates; but, in that very word, implies that a communion stands open for a restored communicant. It is the State that exterminates; it is the State that abolishes absolutely and altogether; whether it is the American State abolishing beer, or the Fascist State abolishing parties, or the Hitlerite State abolishing almost everything but itself.
Now suppose, for the sake of argument, that I did become again merely an ordinary Liberal, as the term was understood when I was active in Liberal politics. Suppose I thought the time had come to remind men that there really is an intellectual advantage in hearing all sides; a help to order in a measure of liberty; a healthy irritation in government by debate. Suppose I said (as I do say) that every government ought to be checked by an opposition; suppose I said (as I do not say) that free international exchange is demonstrably better than all this economic nationalism. Suppose I said that recognised majority rule is better than random minority rule; suppose I said that Democracy as a failure is better than Dictatorship as a success. I could say all this, and much more, and remain a quite ordinary and orthodox member of the ancient Church. But I could not say it, over a great part of the modern world, without being punished by the modern State. Rome with its religious authority would not silence me. But Fascism with its secular authority would silence me. Bolshevism with its secular authority would silence me. Hitlerism with its secular authority would silence me. When I began to live and (alas) to write, all the other Liberals had inherited a huge legend that all persecution had come from the Church. Some of them still mumble old memories about the Spanish Inquisition (a thing started strictly by the State); with the fact staring them in the face that the actual persecution now going on in Spain is the spoliation of Spaniards, simply because they are Catholic priests and schoolmasters. But anyhow, it was supposed that what was called superstition was somehow the mother of persecution. I appeal to all my fellow-Liberals to admit that the facts have flatly contradicted this idea. Every Catholic enjoys much more freedom in Catholicism than any Liberal does under Bolshevism or Fascism. I might have been a Liberal and belonged to the Centrum in Germany or the Parti to Populare in Italy; it is not the Church but the State that would stop me. For the State has returned with all its ancient terrors out of antiquity; with the Gods of the City thundering from the sky and, marching with the pageant in iron panoply the ghosts of a hundred tyrants; and we have begun to understand in what wide fields and playgrounds of liberty, the Faith that made us free has so long allowed us to wander and to play.
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AUSTRIA
LAST year, the representative of all that remains of the Holy Roman Empire was murdered by the barbarians. As an atrocity it has been adequately denounced; and it breeds in some of us rather a dumb sort of disgust, almost as if it had been done not by barbarians but by beasts. Perhaps the only further fact to be noted, on that side, is the fact that this is the only kind of effort in which these clumsy people are not merely clumsy. The Nordic man of the Nazi type in Germany is a very slow thinker, and incredibly backward and behind the times in science and philosophy. That is why, for instance, he clings to the word “Aryan,” as if he were his own great-grandfather laboriously poring over the first pages of Max Muller, under the concentrated stare of the astounded ethnologists of later days. He is slow in a great many things; as, for instance, in releasing prisoners who are admittedly innocent; or in answering questions put by foreign critics or Catholic bishops. We have good reason to know that he is slow in paying his debts; to the point of ceasing to pay them. He is very slow in bringing about the Utopia that he promised to the German people; the complete financial stability and the total disappearance of unemployment. He is slow in a thousand things, from the length of his meals to the lengthiness of his metaphysics. But in one thing he is not slow but almost slick. He is swift to shed innocent blood; he really has a certain technique in the matter of murdering other people; and the prospect of this sport alone can move him to an animation that is almost human. Hitler really killed quite a creditable number of people for one week-end holiday; and the assassination of Dollfuss did show some touch of that efficiency, which the Nazis once promised to display in other fields of activity.
But it is much more important to insist on the large human and historic matters mentioned at the beginning of this article. Dollfuss died like a loyal and courageous man, asking forgiveness for his murderers; and the souls of the just are in the hands of God, however much their enemies (with that mark of mere mud that is stamped over all they do) take a pleasure in denying them the help of their religion. But Dollfuss dead, even more than Dollfuss living, is also a symbol of something of immense moment to mankind, which is practically never mentioned by our politicians or our papers. We call it for convenience Austria; in a sense we might more truly call it Europe; but, above all (for this is the vital and quite neglected fact), it would be strictly correct and consistent with history to call it Germany. The very fact that the name of “Germany” has been taken from the Austrians and given to the Prussians sums up the tragedy of three hundred years. It was the tale of the war waged by the barbarians against the Empire; the real original German Empire. It began with the first Prussian shot in the Thirty Years’ War; it ended with the shot that killed the Austrian Chancellor.
Whether we call it the Empire, or the Old Germany or the culture of the Danube, what Austria meant and means is this. That it is normal for Europeans, even for Germans, to be civilised; that it is normal for Europeans, even for Germans, to be Christians; and, we must in historic honesty add, normal for them to be Catholics. This culture always incurred the hatred of the barbarians to the north-east; and in the nineteenth century a barbarian of genius, named Bismarck, actually managed to transfer to Prussia the prestige that had always normally belonged to Austria. That is the broad fact which is always left out in all modern enlightened discussion; for it involves two things; an elementary knowledge of history, which is rare, and an elementary knowledge of recent history, which is much rarer than a knowledge of ancient history. There is always a chance that about six politicians have heard of the Roman Empire; and perhaps two and a half politicians have even heard of the Holy Roman Empire. Among the scholarly leader-writers who have hitherto hardly noticed the existence of the Austrians, there are some who have read something about the Ostro-Goths or perhaps (if they are very scholarly) really do know much more about Austrasians than about Austrians. It is sometimes possible to arouse faint interest in anything remotely historic and always possible to arouse a fashionable fuss about anything prehistoric. But the facts which led up to the facts which stare us in the face, those are known practically to nobody in the age of newspapers. And perhaps next to nobody among our rulers will know what is meant by saying that the filthy butchery at Vienna was but the continuation of a policy, expressed in the invasion of Silesia and the victory of Sadowa.
We have at least learned one lesson to-day; that old things return. This is simply that very old remembrance of our race; the barbarian invasion. This is not the Corporative State; or the Fascist Theory; or the thousand theories, including our own, for improving our ancient civilisation. This is the Turks besieging Vienna. If indeed it be not an injustice to the stately, the stable and the reverent religion of Mahomet to compare it with the feverish fads and fallacies that chase each other across the half-baked and half-baptized Teutonism of the North. This is, at least, what all men meant by the Turks besieging Vienna. It is the centre of our civilisation in peril; it is the blow of the barbarian when for once, in his blindness, he happens to aim at the heart.
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THE SCRIPTURE READER
MR. BERNARD SHAW has written a very Protestant tract, on the paramount duty of reading the Bible, and especially of re-reading the Bible; of course in the light of Private Judgment. For Private Judgment is never wrong, just as Private Property is never right. It is something of a triumph to have carried principles so entangled and contradictory, unchanged, untroubled and unenlightened, through a long and valuable life. Some technical difficulties may still prevent Mr. Shaw’s Bible tract from being included in the literature of the British and Foreign Bible Society; but I should imagine that they would soon be overcome; now that the old stuff that calls itself the Modern Mind has become such a muddy amalgam of Puritanism and Modernism that it does not matter, so long as a man reads his Bible, whether he denies his God. But I, who love and admire Bernard Shaw, cannot help being sorry that he should have returned from the land of the Boers so completely transformed into a Baptist missionary beginning to have doubts about Habakkuk. Perhaps it is a judgment on him for having supported the Imperialists in the Boer War; because the Webbs had the truly wonderful notion that it was “practical.”
Of course, like every other sectarian “Scripture-reader,” Mr. Shaw re-reads the Bible and finds something different from what the last sectarian found. That is the whole fun and futility of this “Sunday game,” which has now been played for nearly four hundred years, and is about played out. But the old sectaries, who discovered Calvinism or Quakerism or Mormonism in the Bible, at least had the tenacity to keep hold of what they found; and finish their programme logically. But, alas, Mr. Shaw is a true Modernist in the fact that he cannot complete even his own argument, for fear it should end by proving something. His new theory of Holy Scripture is broadly this; that the Old Testament Prophets were each of them dealing with a different God; though they seem to have been under the impression that it was the same God. Thus the God of Job is better than the God of Noah; the God of Micah is better than the God of Job and therefore … therefore what? The obvious logical conclusion of the argument would be that the God-Man of the Christians, the Second Person of the Trinity, was better than the God of Micah; and rightly replaced him on progressive principles. But here, of course, Mr. Shaw goes all to pieces; wildly reverses the whole of his own theory of theistic improvement, and collapses, muttering some nonsense about the psychological misfortunes of Jesus. That is only one part of the book; but it is typical of the whole of this jointless inconsequent modern way of writing. Pages upon pages are devoted to showing that primitive gods were leading up to something greater and more splendid; and it is perfectly obvious what they did actually lead up to. But the moment the Modernist sees it, he runs away from it.
The actual story of the Black Girl seems to be modelled on Candide; indeed much of it takes place in the famous garden of Voltaire. It was not really a very wide garden; indeed, it was a narrow garden, but it was a neat garden, according to the Dutch gardening of the period: and it is almost a relief after the jungle of journalese that is now called modern thought. Voltaire, unlike Shaw, had a straightforward and logical plan for his story. Candide is a youth brought up by a German professor in a very nonsensical philosophy called Optimism; like many nonsensical philosophies taught by German professors. It was to the effect that everything in this world fits in with our peace and comfort; whatever else it was, it was almost the opposite of Catholicism, or even Protestantism; for Christians had, if anything, rather exaggerated the truth that life is a vale of tears and a place of trial; that peace could only be found in the monastery or justice on the Day of Judgment. But Voltaire has no difficulty in showing how real life knocked this Teutonic heresy of Optimism to pieces. But it marks the more muddled modern mentality that we do not really know, at the end of Mr. Shaw’s parable, what it is that has been knocked to pieces; or whether the Black Girl has found God, or failed to find God, or found that there is no God to find. Anyhow, she has found Mr. Bernard Shaw, who is acting as Voltaire’s gardener, but has not yet learnt the lucid style and thought of his employer. It must be a comfort to Mr. Shaw at least to know that he is truly a Proletarian. Voltaire said that a man should cultivate his garden. It is the measure of Progress that he has since apparently become a servant cultivating his master’s garden.
For the rest, I know there are many simple people who will console and gratify my old friend by being duly shocked at various passages in his book. It would be almost cruel to deprive him of such comfort; but I confess that I myself remained cold, and could not get anything resembling a decent shock out of the whole business. It always seems to me that we must face the question of whether we are dealing with believers or unbelievers; and only a believer can be a blasphemer. We Catholics must realise that by this time we are living in pagan lands; and that the barbarians around us know not what they do. Of course, those who think Jesus was an ordinary man will talk of Him in an ordinary way. What I complain of is that, even then, they cannot talk of Him in a sensible way. For instance, Mr. Shaw has a long dialogue in which his imaginary Jesus feebly implies the idea that everything can be solved by love, and apparently love of any kind. Now there is not a grain of evidence that the historical Jesus of Nazareth ever said that any such emotion, selfish or sensual or sentimental, must be a substitute for everything else everywhere. Rousseau and the Romantics, in the time of Voltaire, sometimes said something a little like it; and the Church resisted it from the beginning, just as Bernard Shaw wakes up to resist it in the end. It is much more important for us to point out that the attack on the Faith breaks down, by its own folly on its own ground, than to express our own feelings about some of the random results of its invincible ignorance, when it stumbles upon ground more sacred.
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AN EXPLANATION
THE last two essays in this collection have so obviously the character of newspaper correspondence, that a word must be added about the circumstances of their appearance. At the request of the B.B.C., I gave an address in their series on Freedom about the Catholic view of the matter; an address which was very much criticised; but I sometimes fancy that the most deadly criticism was involuntary and unconscious. For I could not help feeling that some of my critics must have gone to sleep, and snatched a brief respite from the recital, only to wake again with a start and all the bewilderments of nightmare, to hear the ruthless infliction still going on. I should be the last to blame them; I sometimes nearly go to sleep myself when listening to myself, let alone to anybody so remote from me as I must naturally be from them. But the actual effect, anyhow, was that most of the agonised questions which they asked me afterwards I had already answered before they were asked. At the beginning of the whole address, I explained the beginning of the whole business; that I had been specially asked to speak as a Catholic and therefore as a controversialist. If they asked Sir Oswald Mosley to explain why he was a Fascist, it might or might not be popular; but it would be a little hard on Sir Oswald to complain that he had dragged the subject of Fascism into politics, or the subject ot politics into the B.B.C. Yet to read some of the innocent criticism I have read, one would really suppose I had been asked to give a literary lecture on Milton or Shelley, and had seized the opportunity to deliver a wild eulogy upon Torquemada and Guy Fawkes. If indeed, in this free country where (I am assured) all views can be expressed, it is unpardonable to suggest that the Protestant view of Freedom is wrong, some responsibility must be shared by those who ask the Catholic to explain why the Catholic view is right. For that peculiar diplomatic and tactful art of saying that Catholicism is true, without suggesting for one moment that anti-Catholicism is false, is an art which I am too old a Rationalist to learn at my time of life.
The second legend that arose out of hearing, or not hearing, my wireless speech, was an extraordinary delusion that I made a speech about drink. Out of nineteen hundred words, the newspapers seemed to have selected three words, in the form of the polished epigram, “I like beer.” Now I fear I am so constituted by cultural tradition, that I cannot for the life of me see anything more comic, or eccentric, or provocative, or sensational, about saying, “I like beer,” than about saying, “I like bananas.” But I do most certainly see that there would be something both egotistical and trivial about saying, “I like bananas,” if it were not a part of an ordinary objective argument. And my remark was a part of an objective argument. Only I was arguing for the exact opposite of what they imagine. I said it was well to remember, to start with, that an ordinary poor man from Catholic countries would find what he regarded as ancient universal popular liberties forbidden in Protestant countries. The obvicus instances are Prohibition and the veto on the Irish Sweepstake. I then said that these lighter instances were balanced indifferently for me, because “I like beer; there is nothing that bores me quite so much as horse-racing. But I have some sense of human rights.” In short it is self-evident that I only said I like beer in order to show that it did not matter a curse what I liked. Yet in face of this fact, an excellent cultivated weekly paper declared that I should not like Liberty if I did not like beer. The editor handsomely admitted the fact when I drew his attention to it, and my quarrel is not here with him. But further comments were made in the matter, which are the text of one these two essays.
For the rest if any one doubts that there is such a thing as Catholic liberty, I think it can do no harm to let him realise that there is such a thing as Catholic controversy; I mean controversy between Catholics. I have, therefore, included here my reply to some frank and friendly but very definite doubts about my action, that were expressed in one of the very best of the modern Catholic papers. For I feel it would not be fair to answer somewhat controversially a criticism in an Anglican organ, while in any way concealing the fact that I have been criticised also in an organ of my own communion. It will also be clear from the context, I think, that a distinguished Italian, Dr. Crespi, who speaks specially as an opponent of Fascism, attacked me at a slightly different angle. And this alone would illustrate the main fact; that the substance of my speech was concerned with all sorts of large modern problems, and had no more to do with my taste in beer than with my familiar appearance as a fashionable figure at Ascot. I pointed out that, by limiting liberty to preaching and printing, we had given a huge advantage to cranks over common Christian people; that we had lost a peasantry and were living under a plutocracy. Indeed, some critics combined the contradictory accusations; having proved that I was wholly concentrated upon booze and betting, they rushed on to rend the sky with cries against my sweeping slanders on the Press, the Parliament, the Landlord System and the British Empire. If they will try compressing all these topics into twenty minutes, they will understand how easy it is for the hearer (even if he manages to keep awake) to miss the proportion and the point.
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WHY PROTESTANTS PROHIBIT (1)
IT is with mingled respect and regret that I differ from a paper I admire so much as I do the Catholic Herald, or a critic for whom I have so much sympathy as I have for Dr. Crespi. I have already said that the Herald is nearly the best, or the only newspaper we have; and my confidence in Dr. Crespi’s sincerity is so complete that I unhesitatingly accept his assurance that he has both read and heard my address on Liberty; for without that assurance, I might be tempted now and then to think he had done neither. But this distressing exhibition of mine seems to have been such a shock to him as to leave him with a strange impression that I uttered some sort of eulogy, or at least apology, touching Italian Fascism, or more generally, the new dictatorships in Europe. Now as a fact, I was very careful to explain that I did nothing of the sort. I said of such a system that I detested some forms of it, that I did not defend any form of it; that it practically proclaimed itself a tyranny, and that I was quite ready to treat it as a tyranny. What I said was that this tyranny, even if it was a tyranny, had not in fact torn up certain traditions of popular freedom in Catholic countries, which have been, and are being, more and more ruthlessly and rapidly torn up and uprooted in Protestant countries. If I say, “Even Nero never forbade people to grow corn,” I am not uttering a eulogy on Nero; and that is the sort of thing I might say about the Prohibitionists who forbade men to drink wine. But there is indeed a curious irony about my two friendly critics on this occasion. My own friendly feeling for the Herald is largely founded on the fact that it does print solid blocks of information about what wicked foreigners have to say for themselves, including Fascists and Hitlerites; so that we can judge for ourselves how wicked the foreigners are. And my unfriendly criticism of British plutocracy is largely founded on the fact that its monopolist newspapers never do this; being owned by one or two millionaires ignorant of Europe and interested only in some silly stunt or slogan. In short, I only say that if dictators suppress newspapers, newspaper proprietors suppress news. And yet I am rebuked for disliking this, even by those who avoid it.
Similarly, I warmly respect Dr. Crespi for trying to free his country from what he regards as oppression and wrong. But apparently he will not allow me to do the same thing for my country. I fear, on this point, I must be firm with him. I respectfully refuse to allow my native land to be ruined by blindness and pride and hypocrisy, and its heart eaten out by corruption and the worship of wealth; merely in order that Dr. Crespi may have a wholly imaginary England to flourish in the face of Signor Mussolini.
I need not in this space destroy the delusion in detail; because for most English economists (especially Catholics) it is already destroyed. I will only say that his paean in praise of nineteenth-century capitalism would have been very welcome to the rich in the nineteenth century; and greatly encouraged those who laid on the millions a yoke little better than slavery. But I will give him a tip: from one who knows (I make bold to say) more about England than he does. Whenever he sees our newspapers announcing revival of trade it simply means that employers have found out how to cut down the wage bill. All recent industrial history here has been a scheme to lower wages; beginning with the triumph of the lock-out that crushed the miners, followed by vindictive laws against Labour after the general strike, and ending by taking advantage of the default on gold, to pay every workman a pound that is not a pound. That is how we do it here. I did not argue whether it is worse when done by a despot or by this anonymous conspiracy. But the tragedy (and to me despotism instead of democracy, even theoretical democracy, is a tragedy) is largely due to reaction against commercial conspiracies. For the rest let not your Wireless Expert weep for me; or imagine that all will be bewildered who “have not the key.” I happen to have stacks of letters from very poor people thanking me for pointing out how the small men are now crushed in England if they attempt independence. They are turned out of house and shop by the hundred, by modern monopolist aggression. They have the key all right; it is called in slang the key of the street. None of them has heard ot the Keys of Peter; but, being poor like St. Peter, they know how poor men are goaded in the House of the Governor; and what rage rises in them against the servant of Caiaphas. They support me sufficiently, thank you, in not encouraging the Englishman to play the Pharisee.
The fact is that Protestant tyranny is totally different from Catholic tyranny; let alone Catholic liberty. It is ineradicably rooted in a totally opposite motive and moral philosophy. You seem to suggest that, where Protestant restrictions are really excessive it is but a part of the normal temptation of officials to magnify their office.
Under your favour, it is nothing of the sort. That is just the point of the whole business. Protestantism is in its nature prone to what may be called Prohibitionism. I do not mean prohibition of drink (though it happens to be a convenient comparison: that none ot the ten thousand tyrants of Mediterranean history would ever have dreamed of uprooting the vine since Pentheus was torn in pieces); I mean that the Protestant tends to prohibit, rather than to curtail or control. His theory of Prohibition is rooted in his theory of progress; which began with expectation of the Millennium; but has ended in similar expectations ot the Superman. I have no notion what Dr Crespi means by my golden age: after Eden I know of no golden age in the past. But Protestant progress does imply a golden age in the future— and one utterly cut off or altered from the past. By now this Dawnism is deeply affected by Darwinism. Man is a monkey who has lost his tail and does not want it back. It is not a question of docking his tail, because it takes up too much room; or telling him to curl up his tail and only wave it on festive occasions; as in the Catholic view of discipline and recreation. No men need tails; so they need amputation.
Now the modern Protestant applies this absolute idea of amputation to all parts of problematical human nature; to all popular customs or historic traditions. He does not mean that men should be restrained in them just now; he means that men should drop them for ever, like the monkey’s tail. When puritans abolish ritualism, it means there shall be no more ritual. When prohibitionists abolished beer, they swore that a whole new generation would grow up and never know the taste of it. When Protestants look to the solution of Socialism, most of them do not merely mean to attack the contemporary congestion called capitalism; they mean to abolish for ever the very idea of private property.
Thus there is a fanatical quality, sweeping, final, almost suicidal, in Protestant reforms which there is not even in Catholic repressions. Once Puritanism pervaded America, once Prussianism pervaded Germany, there appeared a new type of law; sterilization or compulsory eugenics, from which even the dictators ot the Latin tradition would shrink. There have been any number of good Catholics who might be called puritans, from Savonarola to Manning who made their little bonfires of the vanities; but they never mistook them for the everlasting bonfire.
There have been any number of bad Catholics who might be called tyrants from Borgia to Bomba, who drilled or destroyed from hate or ambition; but even when torturing men they never thought they were twisting or altering Man. Therefore their prohibitions were never so prohibitionist. Mussolini may be wrong to suppress newspapers; but who can imagine Mussolini saying, “The world will never again be cursed with printed leaves,” as Jennings Bryan would say, “We shall never again be cursed with alcoholic liquor”? I think some of the recent Fascist schemes for drilling children reach the ridiculous; but they do not reach the point of saying that children should be kept from their mothers; a point which numberless Protestant progressive followers of Wells or Shaw would reach in one wild bound. In short, apart from Catholic liberty, Catholic tyranny is either temporary in the sense of a penance or a fast, or temporary in the sense of a state of siege or a proclamation of martial law. But Protestant liberty is far more oppressive than Catholic tyranny. For Protestant liberty is only the unlimited liberty of the rich to destroy an unlimited number of the liberties of the poor.
The B.B.C., much to the credit of its own relatively sound sense of liberty, having asked me specially for what I thought about Catholicism, I did certainly divulge the secret that I thought it was true; and that, therefore, even great cultures falling away from it, in any direction, had fallen into falsehood. I fully appreciate the desire to be fair or friendly that may lead anyone to deplore this disclosure; but I do not myself believe it will do an atom of good to anyone, least of all to the English, to whitewash or conceal the bad results of heresy in history. I was, therefore, a little puzzled when a contributor called it “a sectarian note.” Somehow, I had not expected anybody on the Catholic Herald to call the Catholic Church a sect.
- Letter to the Catholic Herald.
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WHERE IS THE PARADOX?
A WRITER on a High Church paper, being full of the lyric muse, recently described me as a “prolix Papist professor of paradox”; a line which it is my firm intention to extend into a poem of no less than nine verses depending upon the letter p; by which alliterative industry the unaccountable absence of any allusion to polygamous Popes, poisoning Pontiffs, piratical prelates and pestilent peasantries, will be supplied and made good at my own expense. And though the editor very gracefully apologised for having been accidentally prevented, doubtless by my prolixity, from discovering what I actually said in the passage he criticised, another critic has since then broken out on the same paper in the same literary style; and described the same statement as going “beyond such terminological inexactitude as is permissible in the most putrid paradox”; and saying I devote myself to the propaganda of the gutter. I rather wish I knew what it is that makes the most distant prospect of me (of me, a mere dot on the crowded horizon) throw an honest gentleman at the Faith House, Tufton Street, into such astonishing convulsions. It is all the more mysterious because, so far as I am concerned, it is entirely unprovoked. I have never made any particular attack on the Anglo-Catholic theory, or the Anglican Church, or upon any Anglicans, as such. I know the Anglo-Catholic theory can be honestly held; for I held it myself for many years. I have the greatest respect for those who are in such a state of conviction; as well as the greatest sympathy for those who are in any stage of doubt. I still have a large number of Anglo-Catholic friends, who do not find me so very putrid and prolix, and, though of course I differ from them, I have always rather avoided mere dispute with them; partly because there are so many things much more in need of being disputed; and partly because I know from experience that it often does more harm than good. I used to read the paper in question because it was a good paper; and until quite recently a good-humoured paper. Why so innocuous a reader should have this extraordinary effect on the other readers and writers, I do not clearly understand. But the effect is so extraordinary that the critic falls back desperately on a sort of half-defence of Puritanism, of Protestantism and of Prussianism; though these are things which all the old Anglo-Catholics used to denounce, and which I used to denounce quite as much when I was myself an Anglo-Gatholic. On a former occasion, for instance, in the same strained way, it picked a particular personal quarrel with me merely because I joined with the whole civilised world in deploring the assassination of Dollfuss. If it were only a matter of personal quarrels, it would not be worth referring to again; for I am quite content with the admission already made about the facts in dispute; and all is gas and gaiters. But there are much more important quarrels, which concern all Christendom and especially this country, about which I can hardly leave an important organ of opinion under so false an impression.
Touching Mr. C. E. Douglas, the smeller out of putrid paradoxes, I need only record that he complains of “an unhistorical use of the word Catholic,” and assures us that we should be content with the fact that clergy of the national church are attached to nearly all our institutions, as a guarantee that “in theory, the Catholic religion is the official religion of the nation.” I can only say that if he used his imagination about our point of view, as much as I try to use my imagination about his, it would, I think, dawn upon him that it is not altogether unreasonable in a real Catholic, or even a real Anglo-Catholic, to find this official reassurance a little thin. Certainly, in that sense, there are “Catholic” priests attached to all sorts of things; there is a “Catholic” bishop preaching that science has destroyed the whole original Christian scheme; there is a “Catholic” dean who booms Birth-Prevention like a quack medicine; there is a “Catholic” canon who is ready to “break bread” apparently with anybody from Mormons to Moslems; at least I myself should rather prefer the Moslems. But I cannot believe that either Mr. Douglas or the Editor of the paper really regards that retrospective breakfast as a substitute for the Blessed Sacrament. But though Mr. Douglas’s view of our scruples is not highly sympathetic or discerning, there is one point on which Mr. Douglas endears himself to me, though I dare not hope that I am likely to endear myself to him. He may think what he likes about me, so long as he will go on thinking what he now thinks about Prussia. Because I classed Prussia with England among the Protestant countries, he protests against anything like a suggestion that they are the same sort of countries; and there I am warmly with him. They have certain negative things in common; but even in these it would be true to say that the Prussian prefers to be bullied where the Englishman only submits to be blinded. But England is a thousand times jollier and more human as a national culture than Prussia; the disease is milder and the mood more healthy. But it is a mood which is weakened by the absence of a militant creed of Christian morals, and the power to define and defend. The test could best be made by the introduction of some of the new abnormal laws already threatening the world in the name of science. Suppose something of the type of Compulsory Sterilisation or Compulsory Contraception really stalks through the modern State, leading the march of human progress through abortion to infanticide. If the heathens in North Germany received it, they would accept it with howls of barbaric joy, as one of the sacred commands of the Race Religion; the proceedings very probably terminating (by that time) with a little human sacrifice. If the English received it, they would accept it as law-abiding citizens; that is, as something between well-trained servants and bewildered children. There is a great difference; but not so great as the certainty that the Irish would not accept it at all.
Now the real reason why I have taken the text of these two High Church critics, is that their views happily cancel out upon a point of immense international importance. Mr. Douglas preserves his healthy instinct against Prussia, as being not improbably the source of Prussianism; though he might not admit my view that the error had its original source in Protestantism. But the other writer would protect Protestantism from any such criticism; and falls back on the jolly old catchword of calling Hitler a Catholic. Of course there are countless Catholics whom I think wrong in politics; and countless Catholics who think me wrong in politics. But I wonder if it is much truer to call Hitler a Catholic than to call Bertrand Russell an Anglo-Catholic. He was quite probably christened in an Anglican Church. But the much more important point is the historic and cultural origin of the whole movement of the more admittedly heathenish Hitlerism. The Anglican critic says that this tribal cult of triumph began in Bavaria. It would be as sensible to say that it began in England; because it was popularised, long before anybody had ever heard of Hitler, by Houston Stewart Chamberlain. In fact, the movement began before the Great War; before the Franco-Prussian War; and has its origins far back in history, in the fact that the Protestant edges of Germany only partly emerged from barbarism and soon relapsed into paganism. But in its present practical form, it is simply the tail-end, we might say the rag-tag-and-bobtail of the nineteenth-century Prussianism; the camp-followers of the far better disciplined army of Bismarck. Nobody understands its very rowdy revivalism who does not understand that it is merely a revival. To suppose it began with recent headlines about Hitler is newspaper history, which is knowing no history but only news; and that frequently untrue. The movement that has actually abolished Bavaria, and left no State alive except the Bismarckian Empire, is but the last phase of the Bismarckian plan to Prussianise Germany, by crushing and outnumbering the Catholics of the Rhine; and stealing the old Imperial Crown from the other Catholics of the Danube. In short, he set up a new Protestant Empire, to dwarf and depose the old Catholic Empire; and Hitler is his heir and his executor.
These things can easily be shown to be facts, to anybody who knows anything of what happened before the newspapers of a few months ago. We need merely ask what Bavaria was like when it was Bavaria; before it felt the pressure from Prussia. When Bavaria was allowed to be Bavarian, all sorts of things were said against the Bavarians; that they were dreamy, that they were drunken, that they were ridiculously romantic, that they were mad on music, and so on. But nobody ever said that they were stiff or rigid or ruthless or inhuman or mad on mere official centralisation and militaristic discipline. That particular sort of cold brutality came from Prussian prestige; it could not possibly have come from anything else. And that Prussianism came from Protestantism; not, of course, in the sense that it came to infect all Protestants, or that there are not millions of good Protestants free from this error, or suffering from other errors. But it was a historical fruit of Protestantism; and that is not merely a historical fact; it can also be clearly traced as a philosophical truth. The racial pride of Hitlerism is of the Reformation by twenty tests; because it divides Christendom and makes all such divisions deeper; because it is fatalistic, like Calvinism, and makes superiority depend not upon choice but only on being of the chosen; because it is Caesaro-Papist, putting the State above the Church, as in the claim of Henry VIII; because it is immoral, being an innovator of morals touching things like Eugenics and Sterility; because it is subjective, in suiting the primal fact to the personal fancy, as in asking for a German God, or saying that the Catholic revelation does not suit the German temper; as if I were to say that the Solar System does not suit the Chestertonian taste. I do not apologise, therefore, for saying that this catastrophe in history has been due to heresy; and I cannot see that even an Anglo-Catholic supports his own claim to orthodoxy by denying it.
Naturally, I have never expected that people would agree with these views. Among the remarks which I must have spoken so badly that hardly; anybody heard them, was my preliminary remark that I would very much prefer to talk to my countrymen about the things on which we should agree, about Dickens or the great comic culture of the English tradition; but that any man challenged on his allegiance to a Church must disagree with those who definitely disagree with it. I said on that occasion: “If I say these things, I cannot ask most of you to agree with me; if I did anything else, I could not ask any of you to respect me.” But it does strike me, in amiable retrospect, that the whole situation is a little amusing. We live in an age in which anybody may teach anywhere, by any scientific instrument of instruction, that such a trifle as God was tossed up out of a tribal quarrel about incest or parricide, and so religion poisoned the first springs of progress; in which the Communist can claim that humanity went wrong when private property first appeared among prehistoric men; when anything, however real, in its beginning, however remoter can be called an enormous delusion darkening the whole history of man. But when I choose to think that one island, in one corner of one continent, took the wrong turning in thought at the end of one century, hardly four hundred years ago, when I attribute to that relatively recent and local fad the collapse and despair that has actually fallen on one commercial culture, a cry of protest goes up against an intolerable blasphemy; accompanied with the assurance that those who are thus horrified have, alone among all peoples, the power to tolerate all opinions.
I confess I found a faint whiff of paradox (though by no means putrid) in the fact of these few fanatics telling me in one breath that they were devoted to liberty of thought and that I had disgraced myself by saying what I thought so plainly. But they were only a few; and I ought not to close this episode without bearing testimony to the vast number of messages I received from Protestants, or even from Pagans, quite fairly recognising or quite fairly discussing, what I had really said. Above all, I know well that I could have proved my case, more clearly than appears in this hasty correspondence, if I had merely printed a correspondence far more valuable; the letters I received from very poor people, who had suffered the silent aggression and enslavement by modern monopoly; and who thanked me with only too much of the truly English generosity, for exposing the wrongs they endure with only too much of the truly English good humour.
INTRODUCTION AN APOLOGY FOR BUFFOONS
MY SIX CONVERSIONS I. THE RELIGION OF FOSSILS II. WHEN THE WORLD TURNED BACK III. THE SURRENDER UPON SEX IV. THE PRAYER-BOOK PROBLEM V. THE COLLAPSE OF MATERIALISM VI. THE CASE OF SPAIN VII. THE WELL AND THE SHALLOWS
THE RETURN TO RELIGION THE REACTION OF THE INTELLECTUALS LEVITY—OR LEVITATION THE CASE FOR HERMITS KILLING THE NERVE THE CASE OF CLAUDEL THE HIGHER NlHILISM THE ASCETIC AT LARGE THE BACKWARD BOLSHIE THE LAST TURN THE NEW LUTHER BABIES AND DlSTRIBUTISM THREE FOES OF THE FAMILY THE DON AND THE CAVALIER THE CHURCH AND AGORAPHOBIA BACK IN THE FOG THE HISTORIC MOMENT MARY AND THE CONVERT A CENTURY OF EMANCIPATION TRADE TERMS FROZEN FREE THOUGHT SHOCKING THE MODERNISTS A GRAMMAR OF KNIGHTHOOD REFLECTIONS ON A ROTTEN APPLE SEX AND PROPERTY ST. THOMAS MORE THE RETURN OF CAESAR AUSTRIA THE SCRIPTURE READER AN EXPLANATION WHY PROTESTANTS PROHIBIT WHERE IS THE PARADOX?
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INTRODUZIONE APOLOGIA DEI BUFFONI
LE MIE SEI CONVERSIONI I. LA RELIGIONE DEI FOSSILI II. QUANDO IL MONDO TORNÒ INDIETRO III. LA RESA SUL SESSO IV. IL PROBLEMA DEL LIBRO DI PREGHIERE V. IL CROLLO DEL MATERIALISMO VI. IL CASO DELLA SPAGNA VII. IL POZZO E LE SECCHE
IL RITORNO ALLA RELIGIONE LA REAZIONE DEGLI INTELLETTUALI LEGGEREZZA—O LEVITAZIONE IN DIFESA DEGLI EREMITI UCCIDERE IL NERVO IL CASO CLAUDEL IL NICHILISMO SUPERIORE L’ASCETA A PIEDE LIBERO IL BOLSCEVICO ALL’INDIETRO L’ULTIMA SVOLTA IL NUOVO LUTERO BAMBINI E DISTRIBUTISMO TRE NEMICI DELLA FAMIGLIA IL DON E IL CAVALIERE LA CHIESA E L’AGORAFOBIA DI NUOVO NELLA NEBBIA IL MOMENTO STORICO MARIA E IL CONVERTITO UN SECOLO DI EMANCIPAZIONE TERMINI DEL MESTIERE IL LIBERO PENSIERO CONGELATO SCANDALIZZARE I MODERNISTI UNA GRAMMATICA DELLA CAVALLERIA RIFLESSIONI SU UNA MELA MARCIA SESSO E PROPRIETÀ SAN TOMMASO MORO IL RITORNO DI CESARE AUSTRIA IL LETTORE DELLE SCRITTURE UNA SPIEGAZIONE PERCHÉ I PROTESTANTI PROIBISCONO DOV’È IL PARADOSSO?
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INTRODUCTORY NOTE
I WAS monstrously attracted by a suggestion that these essays should bear the general title of “Joking Apart.” It seemed to me a simple and sensible way of saying that the reader of these pages must not look for many jokes, certainly not merely for jokes, because these are controversial essays, covering all subjects on which a controversialist is challenged, and not particular subjects chosen as they are chosen by an essayist. It is an awful revelation of the world of unreason into which we have wandered, that people more practical than I are convinced that if I say that this is apart from joking, everyone will think it is a joke. To my simple mind it seems very much as if I wanted to call a book, “Away from Jericho,” and everybody assumed that I had accepted a very general recommendation to go to Jericho. Many essays could be written on this strange modern sensibility to mere verbal allusion, or the introduction of certain words, even to repudiate them. But the only point here involved is that these essays are all under the conditions of controversy, which involve the absolute necessity of disgusting those with whom we disagree on any subject, and boring those who are indifferent to that subject. I have had, if I may say so, a very happy and lucky literary life; and have often felt rather the indulgence than the impatience of critics; and it is in a perfectly amiable spirit that I note that it has involved a certain transition or change. Up to a certain point, I was charitably chaffed for saying what I could not possibly mean; and I was then rather more sharply criticised, when it was discovered that I did really mean it. Now anybody driven to the defence of what he does really mean must cover all the strategic field of the fight, and must fight at many points which he would not have chosen in fancy, but only in relation to fact. He cannot hope to deal only with heresies that amuse him; he must, in common fairness, deal seriously with heresies that bore him. He must settle down to stating his real reasons for contradicting real statements, which are not made by him as statements, and not chosen by him as subjects. All this seems to me, with my mild rationalistic mind, excellently summarised in the words, “Joking Apart.”
Anyhow, this is why I have opened this series with an essay called “An Apology for Buffoons,” because it is in some sense, I will not say a swan-song (that ornithological metaphor would not occur to me in relation to myself), but at least a sort of summary of my more frivolous mode of writing, and all that I still think may be fairly advanced for it. Unfortunately, a man fighting what he honestly believes to be false can hardly preserve the glorious immunity of a buffoon. He is forced to be serious, and even those who despise him most are driven desperately to take him seriously. But there is one other reason for adding this preliminary note, in connection with the preliminary essay. Since I wrote it, I have come to appreciate much more warmly the admirable work of Mr. T. S. Eliot; and I should like to offer an apology to him for some errors that occurred accidentally in the article itself. It was not he, but another critic, with whom I confused him, who made the particular point against alliteration; and the quotation from him was made from memory; and I have not been able to trace it so as to reproduce the exact order of words, the inaccuracy, if any, does not affect the argument; but the article which I had already planned to put in the same magazine, called “Apology to T S Eliot” would have gone far beyond any such verbal point. It would be adding impudence to injury to dedicate a book to an author merely on the claim of having misquoted him; but I should be proud to dedicate this book to T. S. Eliot, and the return of true logic and a luminous tradition to the world.
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NOTA INTRODUTTIVA
FUI mostruosamente attratto da una proposta secondo cui questi saggi avrebbero dovuto recare il titolo generale di “Scherzi a Parte.” Mi parve un modo semplice e sensato di dire che il lettore di queste pagine non deve aspettarsi molti scherzi, e di certo non soltanto scherzi, perché questi sono saggi polemici, che spaziano su tutti gli argomenti sui quali un polemista viene sfidato, e non su argomenti particolari scelti come li sceglie un saggista. È una tremenda rivelazione del mondo di irragionevolezza in cui ci siamo smarriti, che persone più pratiche di me siano convinte che se io dico che questo è a parte dallo scherzo, tutti penseranno che sia uno scherzo. Alla mia mente semplice pare molto come se io volessi intitolare un libro “Lontano da Gerico,” e tutti supponessero che avessi accolto una ben generale raccomandazione di andare a Gerico. Molti saggi si potrebbero scrivere su questa strana sensibilità moderna alla mera allusione verbale, o all’introduzione di certe parole, anche solo per ripudiarle. Ma l’unico punto qui in causa è che questi saggi sono tutti sotto le condizioni della polemica, che comportano l’assoluta necessità di disgustare coloro con cui dissentiamo su un qualsiasi argomento, e di annoiare coloro che a quell’argomento sono indifferenti. Ho avuto, se posso dirlo, una vita letteraria assai felice e fortunata; e ho spesso sentito piuttosto l’indulgenza che l’impazienza dei critici; ed è con spirito perfettamente amichevole che io noto come essa abbia comportato una certa transizione o mutamento. Fino a un certo punto, fui caritatevolmente canzonato per aver detto ciò che non potevo assolutamente pensare; e fui poi piuttosto più aspramente criticato, quando si scoprì che lo pensavo davvero. Ora chiunque sia costretto a difendere ciò che pensa davvero deve coprire tutto il campo strategico della battaglia, e deve combattere in molti punti che egli non avrebbe scelto in fantasia, ma solo in relazione al fatto. Non può sperare di trattare solo le eresie che lo divertono; deve, per comune giustizia, trattare seriamente le eresie che lo annoiano. Deve mettersi di buona lena a esporre le sue reali ragioni per contraddire affermazioni reali, che non sono fatte da lui come affermazioni, né scelte da lui come argomenti. Tutto ciò mi pare, con la mia mite mente razionalistica, eccellentemente riassunto nelle parole “Scherzi a Parte.”
Comunque sia, ecco perché ho aperto questa serie con un saggio intitolato “Un’Apologia dei Buffoni,” poiché esso è in un certo senso, non dirò un canto del cigno (quella metafora ornitologica non mi verrebbe in mente a proposito di me stesso), ma almeno una sorta di sommario del mio più frivolo modo di scrivere, e di tutto ciò che ancora credo si possa lealmente addurre in suo favore. Sfortunatamente, un uomo che combatte ciò che onestamente crede falso può a stento conservare la gloriosa immunità di un buffone. È costretto a essere serio, e perfino coloro che più lo disprezzano sono spinti disperatamente a prenderlo sul serio. Ma c’è un’altra ragione per aggiungere questa nota preliminare, in connessione con il saggio preliminare. Da quando lo scrissi, sono giunto ad apprezzare assai più calorosamente l’ammirevole opera del signor T. S. Eliot; e vorrei porgergli le mie scuse per alcuni errori occorsi accidentalmente nell’articolo stesso. Non fu lui, ma un altro critico, col quale lo confusi, a muovere quella particolare obiezione contro l’allitterazione; e la citazione tratta da lui fu fatta a memoria; e non sono riuscito a rintracciarla così da riprodurre l’esatto ordine delle parole; l’inesattezza, se ve n’è, non intacca l’argomento; ma l’articolo che io avevo già progettato di mettere nella stessa rivista, intitolato “Apologia a T S Eliot,” sarebbe andato ben oltre un simile punto verbale. Sarebbe aggiungere impudenza all’ingiuria dedicare un libro a un autore solo per la pretesa di averlo citato erroneamente; ma sarei orgoglioso di dedicare questo libro a T. S. Eliot, e al ritorno della vera logic e di una luminosa tradizione al mondo.
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AN APOLOGY FOR BUFFOONS
THERE was a time when I appeared in the Mercury, covered with blushes, to acknowledge a friendly criticism which asked if my journalism held enough of autobiography; and I attempted with great embarrassment to give thanks for the criticism—and the compliment. My blush has faded; my sense of decency has departed; and I appear now with the shameless purpose of being, not merely autobiographical, but grotesquely egotistical. In a spirit of brazen contradiction, I even propose to be egotistical in disproving the charge of egotism. Nay, in a yet wilder illogicality, I claim to be egotistical in the interests of other people. It is a contradiction in terms; but as the higher mathematics, the higher morality, the higher religion and the rest now entirely consist of contradictions in terms, I go on with a ghastly calm. And I do it because I cannot think of any other way of drawing attention to a real problem of literature, and especially of popular literature (if I may dare to dream of that contradiction also) except this particular line of argument, which inevitably involves the mention of my own case— let us hope along with more amusing ones.
It is commonly alleged of writers that they resent mild criticisms as infamous personal imputations, taking them as seriously as slanders. Without affectation, I fancy my own case to be rather different and even opposite. Most of the adverse criticisms written about me strike me as quite true. Where I am in invincible ignorance, I suppose, is in a proper sense of the importance of the things thus rightly reproved. For instance, a very sympathetic reviewer said that I used too much alliteration; and quoted Mr. T. S. Eliot (see apology in Introduction) as saying that such a style maddened him to the point of unendurance; and a similar criticism of my English was made, I think, by another American writer, Mr. Cuthbert Wright. Now I think, on fair consideration, that it is perfectly true that I do use a great deal too much alliteration. The only question on which these gentlemen and I would probably differ is a question of degree; a question of the exact importance or necessity of avoiding alliteration. For I do strongly maintain that it is a question of avoiding alliteration—and even that phrase does not avoid it! If an English writer does not avoid it, he is perpetually dragged into it when speaking rapidly or writing a great deal, by the whole trend and current of the English speech; perhaps that is why the Anglo-Saxon poetry even down to Piers Plowman (which I enjoy hugely) was all alliteration. Anyhow, the tendency in popular and unconscious speech is quite obvious, in phrases and proverbs and rhymes and catchwords and a thousand things. Time and tide, wind and water, fire and flood, waste not, want not, bag and baggage, spick and span, black and blue, deaf and dumb, the devil and the deep sea, when the wine is in the wit is out, in for a penny, in for a pound, a pig in a poke, a bee in a bonnet, a bat in a belfry, and so on through a myriad fantastic changes of popular imagery. What elaborate art, what sleepless cunning even, must these more refined writers employ to dodge this rush of coincidences; and run between the drops of this deluge! It must be a terrible strain on the presence of mind to be always ready with a synonym. I can imagine Mr. T. S. Eliot just stopping himself in time, and saying with a refined cough, “Waste not, require not.” I like to think of Mr. Cuthbert Wright, in some headlong moment of American hustle, still having the self-control to cry, “Time and Fluctuation wait for no man!” I can imagine his delicate accent when speaking of a pig in a receptacle or of bats in the campanile. It is a little difficult perhaps to image the latter critic apparently confining himself to the isolated statement, “Mr. Smith is spick,” while his mind hovered in momentary hesitation about how to vary the corresponding truth that Mr. Smith is span. But it is quite easy to conceive an advanced modern artist of this school, looking for some sharp and graphic variation in the old colour scheme of black and blue. Indeed, we might almost invent a sort of colour test, like that which somebody suggested about red grass and green sky as a test of different schools of painting. We might suggest that Decadents beat people black and yellow, Futurists beat them black and orange, Neo-Victorians beat them black and magenta; but all recoil from the vulgar alliteration of beating them black and blue. Nor indeed is the reference to these new and varied styles irrelevant. Some of the more bizarre modern methods seem to me to make it rather difficult to have any fixed criticism at all, either of their style or mine. Take, for instance, the case of Mr. T. S. Eliot himself. I recently saw a poem of his praised very highly and doubtless very rightly; though to some extent (it seemed) because it was a poem of profound “disillusionment and melancholy.” But the passage specially quoted for commendation ran, if I remember right:
“the smell of steak in passages.”
That quotation is enough to indicate the difficulty I mean. For even style of this severe and classic sort is after all to some extent a matter of taste. It is not a subject for these extreme controversial passions. If I were to say that the style of that line maddened me to the point of unendurance, I should be greatly exaggerating its effect on the emotions. I should not like everything to be written in that style; I should not like to wander for ever in passages stuffy with steak (there we go again!) but I cannot think these questions of style are quite so important as these pure stylists suppose. We must be moderate in our reactions; as in that verse specially headed “The Author’s Moderation” in the Bab Ballad about Pasha Bailey Ben—another great poem written in a tone of melancholy and disillusion.
APOLOGIA DEI BUFFONI
Vi fu un tempo in cui comparvi sul Mercury, coperto di rossore, per riconoscere una critica amichevole che chiedeva se il mio giornalismo contenesse abbastanza autobiografia; e tentai con grande imbarazzo di rendere grazie per la critica — e per il complimento. Il mio rossore è svanito; il mio senso del decoro se n’è andato; e compaio ora col proposito spudorato di essere non semplicemente autobiografico, ma grottescamente egotista. In uno spirito di sfrontata contraddizione, mi propongo persino di essere egotista nel confutare l’accusa di egotismo. Anzi, in una illogicità ancor più sfrenata, pretendo di essere egotista nell’interesse di altre persone. È una contraddizione in termini; ma poiché la matematica superiore, la morale superiore, la religione superiore e tutto il resto consistono ormai interamente di contraddizioni in termini, procedo con una calma spettrale. E lo faccio perché non riesco a pensare ad alcun altro modo di richiamare l’attenzione su un vero problema della letteratura, e specialmente della letteratura popolare (se posso osare sognare anche quella contraddizione) se non questa particolare linea di argomentazione, che inevitabilmente comporta la menzione del mio proprio caso — insieme, speriamo, ad altri più divertenti.
Si suole affermare degli scrittori che essi risentono delle critiche più blande come di infami imputazioni personali, prendendole sul serio quanto calunnie. Senza affettazione, immagino che il mio caso sia piuttosto diverso e persino opposto. La maggior parte delle critiche avverse scritte sul mio conto mi paiono del tutto vere. Là dove sono in invincibile ignoranza, suppongo, è in un giusto senso dell’importanza delle cose così giustamente riprovate. Per esempio, un recensore assai benevolo disse che usavo troppa allitterazione; e citava il signor T. S. Eliot (si veda l’apologia nell’Introduzione) il quale affermava che un simile stile lo esasperava fino al punto dell’intollerabile; e una critica analoga del mio inglese fu mossa, credo, da un altro scrittore americano, il signor Cuthbert Wright. Ora io penso, a ben considerare, che sia perfettamente vero che uso davvero troppa allitterazione. L’unica questione sulla quale questi signori ed io probabilmente divergeremmo è una questione di grado; una questione dell’esatta importanza o necessità di evitare l’allitterazione. Poiché sostengo con forza che si tratta di evitare l’allitterazione — e persino quella frase non la evita! Se uno scrittore inglese non la evita, ne viene perpetuamente trascinato dentro quando parla in fretta o scrive molto, dall’intera tendenza e corrente della lingua inglese; forse è per questo che la poesia anglosassone, fin giù a Piers Plowman (che godo immensamente), era tutta allitterazione. Comunque, la tendenza nel linguaggio popolare e inconscio è del tutto evidente, in frasi e proverbi e rime e slogan e mille altre cose. Il tempo e la marea, il vento e l’acqua, il fuoco e l’alluvione, non sprecare non patire, armi e bagagli, lindo e pinto, nero e blu, sordo e muto, il diavolo e il mare profondo, quando il vino entra il senno esce, dentro per un soldo dentro per una sterlina, un maiale nel sacco, un’ape nel cappello, un pipistrello nel campanile, e così via attraverso una miriade di fantastici mutamenti dell’immaginario popolare. Quale arte elaborata, quale astuzia persino insonne, devono impiegare questi scrittori più raffinati per schivare questa ressa di coincidenze; e correre tra le gocce di questo diluvio! Dev’essere una tremenda fatica per la presenza di spirito l’esser sempre pronti con un sinonimo. Posso immaginare il signor T. S. Eliot che si trattiene appena in tempo, e dice con un raffinato colpo di tosse: «Non sprecare, non richiedere». Mi piace pensare al signor Cuthbert Wright che, in qualche impetuoso momento di frenesia americana, abbia ancora la padronanza di sé per gridare: «Il tempo e la Fluttuazione non aspettano nessuno!». Posso immaginare il suo delicato accento nel parlare di un maiale in un recipiente o di pipistrelli nel campanile. È forse un po’ difficile immaginare quest’ultimo critico che apparentemente si limiti all’affermazione isolata «Il signor Smith è lindo», mentre la sua mente indugiava in una momentanea esitazione su come variare la corrispondente verità che il signor Smith è pinto. Ma è assai facile concepire un avanzato artista moderno di questa scuola, in cerca di qualche netta e grafica variazione sul vecchio schema cromatico del nero e blu. Anzi, potremmo quasi inventare una sorta di test cromatico, come quello che qualcuno propose sull’erba rossa e il cielo verde quale prova delle diverse scuole di pittura. Potremmo suggerire che i Decadenti pestino la gente nero e giallo, i Futuristi li pestino nero e arancione, i Neo-Vittoriani li pestino nero e magenta; ma tutti rifuggono dalla volgare allitterazione del pestarli nero e blu. Né in verità è irrilevante il riferimento a questi nuovi e svariati stili. Alcuni dei più bizzarri metodi moderni mi paiono rendere piuttosto difficile avere una qualsiasi critica salda, sia del loro stile sia del mio. Si prenda, per esempio, il caso dello stesso signor T. S. Eliot. Ho visto di recente una sua poesia lodata assai altamente e senza dubbio assai a ragione; benché in certa misura (così pareva) perché era una poesia di profonda «disillusione e malinconia». Ma il passo specialmente citato per encomio suonava, se ben ricordo:
«l’odore di bistecca nei corridoi».
Quella citazione basta a indicare la difficoltà cui alludo. Poiché anche uno stile di questa specie severa e classica è dopotutto in certa misura una questione di gusto. Non è un tema per queste estreme passioni polemiche. Se dovessi dire che lo stile di quel verso mi esasperava fino al punto dell’intollerabile, esagererei grandemente il suo effetto sulle emozioni. Non vorrei che tutto fosse scritto in quello stile; non vorrei vagare in eterno per corridoi soffocanti di bistecca (ed eccoci di nuovo!) ma non riesco a credere che queste questioni di stile siano proprio tanto importanti quanto suppongono questi puri stilisti. Dobbiamo essere moderati nelle nostre reazioni; come in quel verso intitolato appositamente «La moderazione dell’Autore» nella Bab Ballad su Pasha Bailey Ben — un’altra grande poesia scritta in un tono di malinconia e disillusione.
To say that Bailey oped his eyes Would feebly paint his great surprise; To say it almost made him die Would be to paint it much too high.
I may be allowed to open my eyes for a moment at some of the literary models thus commended to me; but I shall soon close them again in healthful slumber. And when the more refined critic implies that my own manner of writing almost makes him die, I think he over-estimates my power over life and death.
But I have begun with this personal example of alliteration; because a question like that of alliteration is not so simple as it looks; and the answer to it applies to much more important things than my own journalistic habits. Alliteration is an example of a thing much easier to condemn in theory than in practice. There are, of course, many famous examples in which an exaggerated alliteration seems quite wrong. And yet those are exactly the examples which it would be most difficult for anybody to put right. Byron (a splendid example of the sort of writer who does not bother much about avoiding anything) did not hesitate to say of his hero at Quatre Bras that he “rushed into the field and foremost fighting fell.” That is so extreme that we might well suppose it described the end of the life and adventures of Peter Piper. But I will trouble anybody to alter one word in the line so as to make it better; or even so as to make it sense. Byron used those words because they were the right words; and you cannot alter them without deliberately choosing the wrong words. This is more often the case in connection with alliteration than many people imagine. I do not mean to claim any such exalted company when I say that, on this particular point of conduct, I agree with Byron. But Byron does not stand alone; Coleridge, a person of some culture, could burst out boisterously and without stopping for breath:
The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew, The furrow followed free.
and I do not see that he could have done anything else. I do not think anybody could interfere with that foaming spate of Fs, if the verse that followed was really “to follow free.”
There is a problem behind all this which is also illustrated in other ways. It is illustrated in the other much controverted question of puns. I know all about the judgments regularly cited as if from dusty law-books in the matter. I know all about the story that Dr. Johnson said, “The man who would make a pun would pick a pocket.” How unlucky that the lexicographer and guardian of our language, in the very act of purging himself of puns, should have plunged so shamelessly deep into the mire of alliteration! His example, in that very instance, would alone be enough to prove the first part of my case, even when it is brought forward against the second. Johnson spluttered out all those p’s because he was an Englishman with a sense of the spirit and vigour of the English language; and not a timid prig who had to mind his p’s and q’s by using them in exact alternation with a pattern. But if it came to the old joke of invoking authorities, it would be equally easy to invoke even greater authorities on the side of the pun. Also there is something that is more important to my purpose here. It would not only be easy to quote the puns of the poets; it would be easy to quote the very bad puns of the very good poets. But the question I wish to ask is wider and more essential than all this hotch-potch of snobbery and legalism and A Hundred Familiar Quotations, which goes to make up the modern invocation of authorities. I wish to point out that there is a general attitude of mind, which is defensible; or rather two attitudes of mind, which are both defensible. It is a question of style; but there are here two different styles; because there are two different motives. If one is now criticising the other, I do not merely wish to retort the criticism; but rather to proclaim liberty for both.
It might be roughly suggested thus. It is not merely a question of a man who makes a pun; we might almost ask what is to happen to a man who meets a pun. Is he to cut it dead; is he always to pass by on the other side; is he to disown such disreputable company, as of course our refined stylists would do? I am presupposing that he is not out hunting for puns or similar monsters; I presuppose that he is walking down the street on some legitimate business of his own. But if the grotesque animal actually comes to meet him, if it stands obviously in his path, I think it is natural for him to take it in his stride. At least it is natural to one sort of man engaged in one sort of business; and it is the man and the business that I am here concerned to defend. This is quite a different sort of question from the elaborate construction of such fireworks as a form of art for art’s sake; though many men of genius, Hood for example, have occupied themselves even with that. But I am not talking about that. When I was a Pauline, an assistant master received a testimonial on leaving the school for a fellowship at Peterhouse. A solemn upper master made on this occasion the first and last joke of his life by observing in a deep voice, “We are robbing Paul to pay Peter.” An old schoolfellow of mine, now a journalist but cynical even at that early age, declared that the older master must have engineered the whole career of the younger, and made him a teacher at that particular school and then a don at that particular College, solely in order to enjoy one moment of supreme triumph in making that single pun. It is not in the sense of such a triumph of engineering that I am here apologising for the pun. I am not speaking of the man whose life’s purpose, or even whose purpose, is to make a pun; but of the man who is ready to make puns to serve his purpose. And there is a whole atmosphere and appetite involved here; which we may call if we like the spirit of the demagogue or of the buffoon or of the popular minstrel or of the orator; but which cannot be understood merely in terms of style as style, any more than of art for art’s sake.
Dire che Bailey spalancò gli occhi Dipingerebbe fiaccamente il suo gran stupore; Dire che quasi lo fece morire Sarebbe dipingerlo troppo in alto.
Mi sia concesso di spalancare gli occhi per un momento davanti ad alcuni dei modelli letterari così raccomandatimi; ma presto tornerò a chiuderli in un sonno salutare. E quando il critico più raffinato lascia intendere che il mio modo di scrivere quasi lo fa morire, penso che sovrastimi il mio potere sulla vita e sulla morte.
Ma ho cominciato con questo esempio personale di allitterazione; perché una questione come quella dell’allitterazione non è così semplice come sembra; e la risposta a essa vale per cose ben più importanti delle mie abitudini giornalistiche. L’allitterazione è un esempio di cosa assai più facile da condannare in teoria che in pratica. Vi sono, naturalmente, molti famosi esempi in cui un’allitterazione esagerata sembra del tutto sbagliata. Eppure quelli sono esattamente gli esempi che a chiunque riuscirebbe più difficile correggere. Byron (splendido esempio del genere di scrittore che non si cura troppo di evitare alcunché) non esitò a dire del suo eroe a Quatre Bras che «si precipitò nel campo e, combattendo tra i primi, cadde». È talmente estremo che potremmo ben supporre descrivesse la fine della vita e delle avventure di Peter Piper. Ma sfido chiunque a mutare una sola parola nel verso in modo da migliorarlo; o anche solo da dargli senso. Byron usò quelle parole perché erano le parole giuste; e non si possono mutare senza scegliere deliberatamente le parole sbagliate. Questo accade più spesso, a proposito dell’allitterazione, di quanto molti immaginino. Non pretendo di essere in così eletta compagnia quando dico che, su questo particolare punto di condotta, sono d’accordo con Byron. Ma Byron non è solo; Coleridge, persona di una certa cultura, poteva prorompere fragorosamente e senza fermarsi a riprendere fiato:
La brezza propizia soffiava, la bianca schiuma volava, Il solco seguiva libero.
e non vedo che cosa altro avrebbe potuto fare. Non credo che nessuno potrebbe intromettersi in quella spumeggiante piena di F, se il verso che seguiva era davvero «to follow free».
C’è un problema dietro tutto questo, che è illustrato anche in altri modi. È illustrato in quell’altra assai dibattuta questione dei giochi di parole. Conosco bene i giudizi regolarmente citati come da polverosi codici di legge in materia. Conosco bene la storia secondo cui il dottor Johnson disse: «L’uomo capace di fare un gioco di parole sarebbe capace di sfilarti il portafogli». Che sfortuna che il lessicografo e custode della nostra lingua, proprio nell’atto di purgarsi dai giochi di parole, sia sprofondato così spudoratamente nel fango dell’allitterazione! Il suo esempio, proprio in quel caso, basterebbe da solo a provare la prima parte della mia tesi, anche quando lo si adduce contro la seconda. Johnson sputacchiò fuori tutte quelle p perché era un inglese con il senso dello spirito e del vigore della lingua inglese; e non un timido pedante costretto a badare alle sue p e q usandole in esatta alternanza secondo un modello. Ma se si trattasse del vecchio gioco di invocare autorità, sarebbe altrettanto facile invocare autorità persino maggiori dalla parte del gioco di parole. Vi è inoltre qualcosa di più importante per il mio scopo qui. Non solo sarebbe facile citare i giochi di parole dei poeti; sarebbe facile citare i pessimi giochi di parole di ottimi poeti. Ma la domanda che desidero porre è più ampia ed essenziale di tutto questo guazzabuglio di snobismo, legalismo e Cento Citazioni Familiari, che compone la moderna invocazione delle autorità. Desidero far notare che esiste un atteggiamento mentale generale, che è difendibile; o piuttosto due atteggiamenti mentali, entrambi difendibili. È una questione di stile; ma qui vi sono due stili diversi; perché vi sono due moventi diversi. Se ora l’uno critica l’altro, non desidero semplicemente ritorcere la critica; ma piuttosto proclamare libertà per entrambi.
Lo si potrebbe suggerire grossolanamente così. Non è soltanto una questione dell’uomo che fa un gioco di parole; potremmo quasi chiederci che cosa debba accadere all’uomo che incontra un gioco di parole. Deve ignorarlo del tutto; deve sempre passare oltre dall’altro lato; deve rinnegare tale compagnia poco rispettabile, come naturalmente farebbero i nostri raffinati stilisti? Presuppongo che non sia a caccia di giochi di parole o simili mostri; presuppongo che stia camminando per la strada per qualche suo legittimo affare. Ma se l’animale grottesco gli viene davvero incontro, se gli si para ovviamente sul cammino, penso sia naturale per lui prenderlo al volo nel suo incedere. Almeno è naturale per un certo tipo d’uomo impegnato in un certo tipo di affare; ed è l’uomo e l’affare che qui mi propongo di difendere. È una questione del tutto diversa dall’elaborata costruzione di simili fuochi d’artificio come forma d’arte per l’arte; sebbene molti uomini di genio, Hood per esempio, se ne siano occupati persino di quella. Ma non sto parlando di quello. Quando ero un Pauline, un maestro assistente ricevette un attestato di stima nel lasciare la scuola per una fellowship a Peterhouse. Un solenne maestro superiore fece in quell’occasione la prima e ultima battuta della sua vita osservando con voce profonda: «Stiamo spogliando Paolo per pagare Pietro». Un mio vecchio compagno di scuola, ora giornalista ma già cinico a quella tenera età, dichiarò che il maestro più anziano doveva aver architettato l’intera carriera del più giovane, e averlo reso insegnante in quella particolare scuola e poi don in quel particolare College, unicamente per godersi un momento di supremo trionfo nel fare quell’unico gioco di parole. Non è nel senso di un simile trionfo d’ingegneria che qui difendo il gioco di parole. Non parlo dell’uomo il cui scopo di vita, o anche solo il cui scopo, è fare un gioco di parole; ma dell’uomo che è pronto a fare giochi di parole per servire il proprio scopo. E qui è coinvolta tutta un’atmosfera e un appetito; che possiamo chiamare, se vogliamo, lo spirito del demagogo o del buffone o del menestrello popolare o dell’oratore; ma che non può essere compreso semplicemente in termini di stile come stile, più di quanto lo sia l’arte per l’arte.
In any case, things of this sort do exist; coincidences or combinations like alliteration or punning; repetitions or conjunctions that have in prose something of the effect of rhyme in poetry. The only question is how to deal with them when they offer themselves very obviously; as they often do. There are, I think in a general view, three different ways of dealing with them. First, a man may reject them consciously; as the stylist of the serious school of Mr Wright does when he speaks of wind and H2O2, or instinctively writes, “In for a penny in for a Treasury note of the value of twenty shillings.” I do not say that these examples are taken from the text; but it is quite a mistake to suppose that such fastidiousness is not a real literary problem. I remember a critic pointing out, even in a master of such direct and telling English as Mr A. E. Housman, a case in which the poet had obviously written “The chestnut cast her flambeaux,” simply and solely to avoid writing, “The chestnut cast her candles”— which is twenty times better in every possible way. Second, he can accept them consciously as I very often do; largely because it is not worth the trouble to reject them. I said a moment ago “disown disreputable company,” because I do not propose to search in a dictionary for an unnatural alternative to “disown”. Third, he may accept them unconsciously; and that is a great deal more dangerous than anything else, and a great deal more common than most people imagine. Nobody has yet made an adequate study of the effect of mere phonetics in confusing logic and misleading philosophers. And the worst of that sort of danger is that it is deep and subtle. To decorate an argument with puns and verbal tricks may be a superficial folly. But it is better than the sort of folly that is not superficial.
I am almost certain that many moderns suffer from what may be called the disease of the suppressed pun. I mean that, in men who would disdain to make anything so vulgar as a joke out of a verbal coincidence, there is a subconscious movement of the mind to meet the sound of the word. Thus those who would denounce creeds (a Latin word for anything that anybody believes) are seldom or never, you will notice, moved to describe them by any milder name; they must have a word that sounds like a portmanteau of “crank” and “crabbed” and “greed.” They cannot really let themselves go in reviling doctrine. It must be in reviling dogma. They would never sink so low as to make a positive pun about it, as might some poor Popish buffoon like Erasmus or Crashaw. They would not say of the Dominicans, “The dogs of God are always dogmatic.” But they are in fact affected all the time by a vague verbal association between a dogma and a mad dog. It is the accidental sound of the word that makes them use it so incessantly, and so monotonously, in preference to all other terms, even terms of abuse. On re-reading the end of Stevenson’s not consciously unsympathetic sketch of the Trappists, in the Travels with a Donkey, I could swear that he was involuntarily influenced by the suggestion that Trappists are caught in a trap. He cries out, like one who has escaped, that he thanks heaven he is free to hope, to wander and to love. The logic of it would suggest that somebody had been trying to capture and imprison him; a notion which would certainly have surprised the monks very much. He seems to forget that they also were all free to wander, to love, to do anything they liked, including going into a monastery; and that they had gone into the monastery exactly as he had gone into the mountains. Suppose some burgess of Balham, contemplating the wanderer in the Cevennes, had said, “Thank heaven, I am free to dine properly, sit in an armchair and sleep in a bed.” Stevenson might have replied that he also was free to do these things, but preferred to do something else. But he never saw the parallel between the journey to the mountain and the journey to the monastery. The terror of old words and traditional associations choked him like a nursery nightmare. And I believe he quailed inwardly at the terrible pun of La Trappe.
Now I for one greatly prefer the sort of frivolity that is thrown to the surface like froth to the sort of frivolity that festers under the surface like slime. To pelt an enemy with a foolish pun or so will never do him any grave injustice; the firework is obviously a firework and not a deadly fire. It may be playing to the gallery; but even the gallery knows it is only playing. But to associate an enemy always with certain ugly-sounding words, and never with their logical synonyms that sound a little better, is in a very real sense to poison our own minds. And that is the case with the man who is subconsciously moved by the sound of words, without realising that the very assonance is a sort of pun. He must describe a Socialist as a Bolshevist; because the word Bolshie has a vague savour of Boshy. He must refer to a Liberal as a Radical, because there is a hard sound about Rads as there is about Cads. It is a sound heard in many English names for foreigners, from the time that we first talked about Rapparees to the time when we began, more faintly, to talk about Yankees. The criticism of these foreigners is not in question; but the point is this. If a man can say about a Yankee what he would hardly say about an American, or even about a Northern American, then he is allowing this shadow of a pun, or sound of a word, to spoil his sense of justice and reality. He is obscurely confusing the word Yank with the word Swank. If he can speak of a Froggy more scornfully than he could really speak of a Frenchman, then he is being verbally affected by the word frog, as was the other man by the word dog. 1 do not think it matters how much we play about with these puns or rhymes or resemblances, or echoes of sound, so long as we are obviously doing it on the surface for the sake of the sound. Exactly when this sort of style becomes dangerous to the sense is when it is concealed, as these more sensitive stylists would conceal it. It is so that class-consciousness is worse than ever when it is class subconsciousness. It is so that the professed impartiality of certain academic historians stinks with their buried prejudice. Compared with this, I do think there is something sporting about conscious buffoonery. As it is embarrassing to use the egotistic example, I will take the example of a very much more distinguished person, who is in this respect of the same type or temper as I; I mean Mr. Bernard Shaw. There used to be at one time a great fashion of arguing about Shaw and Shakespeare, and, by the way, that must surely have been an artificial trick of alliteration. Yet it would be dangerous to suggest to Shaw that he copied Shakespeare, and there are difficulties even in telling Shakespeare he copied Shaw. Anyhow, one of the few things in which there is a real resemblance between Shaw and Shakespeare is this; that they both seem so very often to make jokes that are not worth making. When Polonius says he was Julius Caesar; whom Brutus killed in the Capitol; and Hamlet is made to answer, “It was a brute part of him, to kill so capital a calf there,” I do not imagine that Shakespeare, any more than anybody else, thought that the two puns were the most perfect and pointed specimens of wit. But he did think it vital to the story that Hamlet should make a flippant remark of some sort at that moment; and he thought it a very probable sort of flippant remark for him to make. There are any number of flippancies in Shaw’s plays that are no better than this, and serve no other purpose than this. But the point is that flippancies of this sort are only used by a very serious person; and Mr. Bernard Shaw is a very serious person. He wants to say something. He has something to say. If ever the perfect stylistic critics should find themselves in such a peculiar position, they will discover the nature of these temptations to flippancy.
In ogni caso, cose di questo genere esistono; coincidenze o combinazioni come l’allitterazione o il gioco di parole; ripetizioni o congiunzioni che hanno, nella prosa, qualcosa dell’effetto della rima in poesia. L’unica questione è come trattarle quando si offrono in modo assai evidente; come spesso fanno. Vi sono, credo in una visione generale, tre modi diversi di trattarle. Primo, un uomo può rifiutarle consapevolmente; come fa lo stilista della seria scuola del signor Wright quando parla di vento e H2O2, o istintivamente scrive: «In per un penny, in per un buono del Tesoro del valore di venti scellini». Non dico che questi esempi siano tratti dal testo; ma è del tutto errato supporre che tale schizzinosità non sia un reale problema letterario. Ricordo un critico far notare, persino in un maestro di un inglese così diretto ed efficace come il signor A. E. Housman, un caso in cui il poeta aveva evidentemente scritto «The chestnut cast her flambeaux», unicamente per evitare di scrivere «The chestnut cast her candles» — che è venti volte migliore sotto ogni possibile aspetto. Secondo, egli può accettarle consapevolmente come faccio io assai spesso; in gran parte perché non vale la pena di rifiutarle. Ho detto poco fa «rinnegare compagnia poco rispettabile», perché non mi propongo di cercare in un dizionario un’alternativa innaturale a «rinnegare». Terzo, egli può accettarle inconsapevolmente; e ciò è molto più pericoloso di qualsiasi altra cosa, e molto più comune di quanto la maggior parte della gente immagini. Nessuno ha ancora compiuto uno studio adeguato dell’effetto della mera fonetica nel confondere la logica e fuorviare i filosofi. E il peggio di quel genere di pericolo è che è profondo e sottile. Decorare un ragionamento con giochi di parole e trucchi verbali può essere una follia superficiale. Ma è meglio del genere di follia che non è superficiale.
Sono quasi certo che molti moderni soffrano di ciò che si può chiamare la malattia del gioco di parole represso. Intendo che, in uomini che sdegnerebbero di fare qualcosa di così volgare come una battuta su una coincidenza verbale, c’è un movimento subconscio della mente che va incontro al suono della parola. Così coloro che denuncerebbero i credi (creeds, parola latina per qualsiasi cosa uno creda) sono di rado o mai, si noterà, indotti a descriverli con un nome più mite; devono avere una parola che suoni come una crasi di «crank» (fissato) e «crabbed» (arcigno) e «greed» (avidità). Non riescono davvero a lasciarsi andare nell’ingiuriare la dottrina. Dev’essere nell’ingiuriare il dogma. Non si abbasserebbero mai tanto da farci sopra un vero gioco di parole, come potrebbe fare qualche povero buffone papista come Erasmo o Crashaw. Non direbbero dei Domenicani: «I cani di Dio sono sempre dogmatici». Ma sono di fatto influenzati per tutto il tempo da una vaga associazione verbale tra un dogma e un cane rabbioso. È il suono accidentale della parola a spingerli a usarla così incessantemente, e così monotonamente, di preferenza a tutti gli altri termini, persino ai termini d’insulto. Rileggendo la fine dello schizzo di Stevenson sui Trappisti, non consapevolmente ostile, nei Viaggi con un’Asina, potrei giurare che egli fu involontariamente influenzato dalla suggestione che i Trappisti siano presi in trappola (trap). Egli grida, come chi è scampato, che ringrazia il cielo di essere libero di sperare, di vagare e di amare. La logica della cosa suggerirebbe che qualcuno avesse cercato di catturarlo e imprigionarlo; nozione che avrebbe certamente sorpreso moltissimo i monaci. Egli sembra dimenticare che anch’essi erano tutti liberi di vagare, di amare, di fare qualsiasi cosa volessero, incluso entrare in un monastero; e che erano entrati nel monastero esattamente come lui era entrato nelle montagne. Supponiamo che qualche borghese di Balham, contemplando il vagabondo delle Cévennes, avesse detto: «Grazie al cielo, io sono libero di pranzare come si deve, di sedermi in poltrona e di dormire in un letto». Stevenson avrebbe potuto rispondere che anch’egli era libero di fare queste cose, ma preferiva farne altre. Ma non vide mai il parallelo tra il viaggio verso la montagna e il viaggio verso il monastero. Il terrore delle vecchie parole e delle associazioni tradizionali lo soffocava come un incubo infantile. E credo che tremasse interiormente davanti al terribile gioco di parole di La Trappe.
Ora io, per parte mia, preferisco di gran lunga il genere di frivolezza che è gettato in superficie come schiuma al genere di frivolezza che suppura sotto la superficie come melma. Bersagliare un nemico con qualche sciocco gioco di parole non gli farà mai alcuna grave ingiustizia; il fuoco d’artificio è ovviamente un fuoco d’artificio e non un fuoco mortale. Può essere recitare per la galleria; ma persino la galleria sa che è solo recita. Ma associare sempre un nemico a certe parole dal suono sgradevole, e mai ai loro sinonimi logici che suonano un po’ meglio, è in un senso molto reale avvelenare la nostra stessa mente. E questo è il caso dell’uomo che è mosso subconsciamente dal suono delle parole, senza rendersi conto che la stessa assonanza è una sorta di gioco di parole. Deve descrivere un socialista come un bolscevico; perché la parola «Bolshie» ha un vago sapore di «Boshy» (sciocco). Deve riferirsi a un liberale come a un radicale, perché c’è un suono duro in «Rads» come ce n’è in «Cads» (mascalzoni). È un suono che si ode in molti nomi inglesi per gli stranieri, dal tempo in cui parlammo per la prima volta dei Rapparees al tempo in cui cominciammo, più fiocamente, a parlare degli Yankee. La critica di questi stranieri non è in questione; ma il punto è questo. Se un uomo può dire di uno Yankee ciò che difficilmente direbbe di un americano, o persino di un nordamericano, allora sta lasciando che quest’ombra di un gioco di parole, o suono di una parola, guasti il suo senso di giustizia e di realtà. Sta oscuramente confondendo la parola «Yank» con la parola «Swank» (spocchia). Se può parlare di un «Froggy» più sprezzantemente di quanto potrebbe davvero parlare di un francese, allora è influenzato verbalmente dalla parola «frog» (rana), come l’altro uomo dalla parola «dog» (cane). Non credo che importi quanto giochiamo con questi giochi di parole o rime o somiglianze, o echi di suono, purché lo si faccia ovviamente in superficie, per amore del suono. È esattamente quando questo genere di stile diventa pericoloso per il senso che esso viene celato, come lo celerebbero questi stilisti più sensibili. È così che la coscienza di classe è peggiore che mai quando è subcoscienza di classe. È così che la dichiarata imparzialità di certi storici accademici puzza del loro pregiudizio sepolto. Al confronto, penso davvero che ci sia qualcosa di leale nella buffoneria consapevole. Poiché è imbarazzante usare l’esempio egotistico, prenderò l’esempio di una persona assai più illustre, che sotto questo rispetto è del mio stesso tipo o temperamento; intendo il signor Bernard Shaw. Un tempo c’era una gran moda di discutere di Shaw e Shakespeare, e, per inciso, dev’essere stato di certo un artificioso trucco di allitterazione. Eppure sarebbe pericoloso suggerire a Shaw che copiò Shakespeare, e ci sono difficoltà persino nel dire a Shakespeare che copiò Shaw. Comunque, una delle poche cose in cui c’è una reale somiglianza tra Shaw e Shakespeare è questa; che entrambi sembrano assai spesso fare battute che non vale la pena di fare. Quando Polonius dice di essere stato Giulio Cesare; ucciso da Bruto in Campidoglio; e ad Amleto si fa rispondere: «Fu un atto brutale (brute) da parte sua, uccidere un vitello così capitale (capital) là», non immagino che Shakespeare, più di chiunque altro, pensasse che i due giochi di parole fossero i più perfetti e acuti esemplari di arguzia. Ma riteneva vitale per la storia che Amleto facesse una battuta frivola di qualche sorta in quel momento; e la riteneva un genere di battuta frivola assai probabile per lui. Ci sono innumerevoli frivolezze nelle commedie di Shaw che non sono migliori di questa, e non servono altro scopo che questo. Ma il punto è che frivolezze di questo genere sono usate solo da una persona molto seria; e il signor Bernard Shaw è una persona molto seria. Vuole dire qualcosa. Ha qualcosa da dire. Se mai i perfetti critici stilistici dovessero trovarsi in una posizione così peculiare, scopriranno la natura di queste tentazioni alla frivolezza.
It is not an idle contradiction to say that Mr. Shaw is flippant because he is serious. A man like Mr. Shaw has the deliberate intention of getting people to listen to what he has to say; and therefore he must be amusing. A man who is only amusing himself need not be amusing. Generally, when he is a perfect and polished stylist, he is not. And there is a good deal of misunderstanding about the relative moral attitude of the two types; especially in connection with the old morality of modesty. Most persons, listening to these loud flippancies would say that Mr. Bernard Shaw is egotistical. Mr. Bernard Shaw himself would emphatically and violently assert that he is egotistical; and I should emphatically and violently assert that he is not. It is not the first time we have somewhat tartly disagreed. And perhaps I could not more effectively perform the just and necessary public duty of annoying Mr. Shaw than by saying (as I do say) that in this matter he really inherits an unconscious tradition of Christian humility. The preaching friar puts his sermon into popular language, the missionary fills his sermon with anecdotes and even jokes, because he is thinking of his mission and not of himself It does not matter that Mr. Shaw’s sentences so often begin with the pronoun “I.” The Apostles Creed begins with the pronoun “I”; but it goes on to rather more important nouns and names.
Father Ronald Knox, in his satire on Modernism, has described the courteous vagueness of the Oxford manner which
… tempering pious zeal Corrected, “I believe” to “One does feel.”
And though I have much of such courtesy to be thankful for, both in conversation and criticism, I must do justice to the more dogmatic type, where I feel it to be right. And I will say firmly that it is the author who says, “One does feel,” who is really an egoist; and the author who says, “I believe,” who is not an egoist. We all know what is meant by a truly beautiful essay; and how it is generally written in the light or delicate tone of, “One does feel.” I am perfectly well aware that all my articles are articles, and that none of my articles are essays. An essay is often written in a really graceful and exquisitely balanced style, which I doubt if I could imitate, though I might try. Anyhow, it generally deals with experiences of a certain unprovocative sort in a certain unattached fashion; it begins with something like… .
“The pond in my garden shows, under the change of morning, an apprehension of the moving air, hardly to be called a wave; and so little clouding its lucidity as to seem rather vacuity in motion. Here at least is nothing to stain the bright negation of water; none of those suburban gold-fish that look like carrots and do but nose after their tails in a circle of frustration, to give some sulky gardener cause to cry ‘stinking fish’. The mind is altogether carried away upon the faint curve of wind over water; the movement is something less solid than anything that we can call liquid; the smoke of my light Virginian cigarette does not mount more unsubstantially towards the sky. Nor indeed inaptly: it needs some such haven of patriarchal mildness to accent sharply the tang of mild tobacco; alone perhaps, of all the attributes of Raleigh’s red-haired mistress, rightly to be called virginal.”
I think I might learn to do it some day; though not by a commercial correspondence course; but the truth is that I am very much occupied. I confess to thinking that the things which occupy me are more important; but I am disposed to deny that the thing I think important is myself. And in justice not only to myself but to Mr. Shaw and Mr. Belloc and Mr. Mencken and many another man in the same line of business, I am moved to protest that the other literary method, the method of, “One does feel,” is much more really arrogant than ours. The man in Mr. Shaw’s play remarks that who says artist says duellist. Perhaps, nevertheless, Mr. Shaw is too much of a duellist to be quite an artist. But anyhow, I will affirm, on the same model, that who says essayist says egoist. I am sorry if it is an alliteration, almost a rhyme and something approaching to a pun. Like a great many such things, it is also a fact.
Even in the fancy example I have given, and in a hundred far better and more beautiful extracts from the real essayists, the point could be shown. If I go out of my way to tell the reader that I smoke Virginian cigarettes, it can only be because I assume the reader to be interested in me. Nobody can be interested in Virginian cigarettes. But if I shout at the reader that I believe in the Virginian cause in the American Civil War, as does the author of The American Heresy, if I thunder as he does that all America is now a ruin and an anarchy because in that great battle the good cause went down—then I am not an egoist. I am only a dogmatist; which seems to be much more generally disliked. The fact that I believe in God may be, in all modesty, of some human interest; because any man believing in God may affect any other man believing in God. But the fact that I do not believe in gold-fish, as ornaments in a garden pond, cannot be of the slightest interest to anybody on earth, unless I assume that some people are interested in anything whatever that is connected with me. And that is exactly what the true elegant essayist does assume. I do not say he is wrong; I do not deny that he also in another way represents humanity and uses a sort of artistic fiction or symbol in order to do so. I only say that, if it comes to a quarrel about being conceited, he is far the more conceited of the two. The one sort of man deals with big things noisily and the other with small things quietly. But there is much more of the note of superiority in the man who always treats of things smaller than himself than the man who always treats of things greater than himself. The latter at least must be very small if he does not feel that they are greater.
Non è un’oziosa contraddizione dire che il signor Shaw è frivolo perché è serio. Un uomo come il signor Shaw ha la deliberata intenzione di indurre la gente ad ascoltare ciò che ha da dire; e perciò deve essere divertente. Un uomo che si diverte soltanto da sé non ha bisogno di essere divertente. In genere, quando è un perfetto e forbito stilista, non lo è. E c’è un bel po’ di malinteso riguardo al relativo atteggiamento morale dei due tipi; specialmente in connessione con la vecchia morale della modestia. La maggior parte delle persone, ascoltando queste sonore frivolezze, direbbe che il signor Bernard Shaw è egotista. Il signor Bernard Shaw stesso affermerebbe con enfasi e veemenza di essere egotista; e io affermerei con enfasi e veemenza che non lo è. Non è la prima volta che abbiamo dissentito in modo alquanto aspro. E forse non potrei adempiere più efficacemente al giusto e necessario dovere pubblico di irritare il signor Shaw che dicendo (come dico) che in questa faccenda egli eredita davvero un’inconsapevole tradizione di umiltà cristiana. Il frate predicatore mette il suo sermone in linguaggio popolare, il missionario riempie il suo sermone di aneddoti e persino di battute, perché sta pensando alla sua missione e non a se stesso. Non importa che le frasi del signor Shaw comincino così spesso con il pronome «Io». Il Credo degli Apostoli comincia con il pronome «Io»; ma prosegue con nomi e appellativi ben più importanti.
Padre Ronald Knox, nella sua satira sul Modernismo, ha descritto la cortese vaghezza della maniera di Oxford che
… temperando il pio zelo Correggeva «Io credo» in «Si prova la sensazione».
E sebbene abbia molto di tale cortesia di cui essere grato, sia nella conversazione sia nella critica, devo rendere giustizia al tipo più dogmatico, dove sento che è nel giusto. E dirò con fermezza che è l’autore che dice «Si prova la sensazione» a essere davvero un egoista; e l’autore che dice «Io credo» a non essere un egoista. Tutti sappiamo che cosa si intende per un saggio davvero bello; e come esso sia generalmente scritto nel tono lieve o delicato di «Si prova la sensazione». Sono perfettamente ben consapevole che tutti i miei articoli sono articoli, e che nessuno dei miei articoli è un saggio. Un saggio è spesso scritto in uno stile davvero grazioso e squisitamente bilanciato, che dubito di saper imitare, per quanto potrei provarci. Comunque, esso tratta generalmente di esperienze di un certo tipo non provocatorio in un certo modo distaccato; comincia con qualcosa come… .
«Lo stagno nel mio giardino mostra, sotto il mutare del mattino, un’apprensione dell’aria in movimento, che a stento si può chiamare onda; e così poco ne intorbida la limpidezza da sembrare piuttosto vacuità in moto. Qui almeno non c’è nulla a macchiare la luminosa negazione dell’acqua; nessuno di quei pesci rossi suburbani che sembrano carote e non fanno che rincorrere la propria coda in un cerchio di frustrazione, dando a qualche tetro giardiniere motivo di gridare «pesce marcio». La mente è del tutto rapita dalla debole curva del vento sull’acqua; il movimento è qualcosa di meno solido di qualsiasi cosa possiamo chiamare liquida; il fumo della mia leggera sigaretta virginiana non sale più insostanzialmente verso il cielo. Né, invero, impropriamente: occorre un tale rifugio di patriarcale mitezza per accentuare nettamente il gusto del mite tabacco; solo, forse, di tutti gli attributi dell’amante dai capelli rossi di Raleigh, a poter essere giustamente chiamato virginale.»
Penso che potrei imparare a farlo un giorno; ma non tramite un corso commerciale per corrispondenza; la verità, però, è che sono molto occupato. Confesso di pensare che le cose che mi occupano siano più importanti; ma sono incline a negare che la cosa che ritengo importante sia io stesso. E in giustizia non solo verso me stesso ma verso il signor Shaw e il signor Belloc e il signor Mencken e molti altri uomini dello stesso ramo, sono spinto a protestare che l’altro metodo letterario, il metodo del «Si prova la sensazione», è molto più realmente arrogante del nostro. Il personaggio della commedia del signor Shaw osserva che chi dice artista dice duellante. Forse, tuttavia, il signor Shaw è troppo duellante per essere del tutto un artista. Ma comunque, affermerò, sullo stesso modello, che chi dice saggista dice egoista. Mi spiace se è un’allitterazione, quasi una rima e qualcosa che si avvicina a un gioco di parole. Come tante cose simili, è anche un fatto.
Persino nell’esempio di fantasia che ho dato, e in cento estratti ben più belli e migliori dai veri saggisti, il punto potrebbe essere mostrato. Se mi prendo la briga di dire al lettore che fumo sigarette virginiane, può essere solo perché presumo che il lettore sia interessato a me. Nessuno può interessarsi alle sigarette virginiane. Ma se grido al lettore che credo nella causa virginiana nella Guerra Civile Americana, come fa l’autore di The American Heresy, se tuono come fa lui che tutta l’America è ora una rovina e un’anarchia perché in quella grande battaglia la buona causa soccombette — allora non sono un egoista. Sono soltanto un dogmatico; il che sembra essere assai più generalmente detestato. Il fatto che io creda in Dio può essere, in tutta modestia, di qualche interesse umano; perché ogni uomo che crede in Dio può influenzare ogni altro uomo che crede in Dio. Ma il fatto che io non creda nei pesci rossi, come ornamenti in uno stagno di giardino, non può essere del minimo interesse per chiunque sulla terra, a meno che io non presuma che alcune persone siano interessate a qualsiasi cosa sia connessa con me. Ed è esattamente ciò che il vero elegante saggista presuppone. Non dico che abbia torto; non nego che egli pure, in un altro modo, rappresenti l’umanità e usi una sorta di finzione o simbolo artistico per farlo. Dico solo che, se si viene a una lite sull’essere presuntuosi, egli è di gran lunga il più presuntuoso dei due. Un tipo d’uomo tratta rumorosamente cose grandi e l’altro quietamente cose piccole. Ma c’è molto più della nota di superiorità nell’uomo che tratta sempre di cose più piccole di sé che nell’uomo che tratta sempre di cose più grandi di sé. Quest’ultimo, almeno, dev’essere molto piccolo se non sente che esse sono più grandi.
Now the next two steps bring us to the climax of the matter. First, this dogmatist is always something of a demagogue. Second, this demagogue is always something of a buffoon. I am very far from denying that he becomes too much of a demagogue and too much of a buffoon. But he does not do so because he prefers superficial things, but rather because he is concerned with fundamental things. If I may illustrate my meaning by one of those deplorable verbalisms over which we are all lamenting, I would say that it is exactly because he is concerned with fundamentals that he is tempted to tickle the groundlings. He is interested in primary facts; and one of those primary facts is the people. He may make jokes and play to the gallery; but there is something more than a joke for him in the phrase which calls the gallery the gods.
I also am a tub-thumper; and I exaggerated my meaning a moment ago, in the necessity of defending myself, of defending Mr. Shaw and (most exciting of all) of defending Mr. Shaw against Mr. Shaw. I do not really mean, of course, that the essayist is an egoist in any selfish sense. Nobody in the world, I imagine, gets more good than I do out of good essays like those of Mr. Max Beerbohm or Mr. E. V. Lucas or Mr. Robert Lynd. I only ask, in all seriousness, that they should understand the necessities of our sort of self-assertion as well as recognising the existence of their own. And I do ask them to believe that when we try to make our sermons and speeches more or less amusing, it is for the very simple and even modest reason that we do not see why the audience should listen unless it is more or less amused. Our mode of speech is conditioned by the fact that it really is what some have fancifully supposed the function of speech to be; something addressed by somebody to somebody else. It has of necessity all the vices and vulgarities attaching to a speech that really is a speech and not a soliloquy.
I have come to the conclusion that this last point is too plain to be understood. Some of the simplest things of human history are now quite invisible to minds that have grown accustomed to sub-division or specialism. Thus the idea of the vow, one of the first facts about our social foundation, is not disputed or denied; it is simply nibbled out of existence by people who do not know that it exists. It is so with the gesture of the sacrifice, without which man is hardly human; and it is so with the gesture of the speaker or the singer dealing directly with the people. I found a case of this confusion in connection with this point, after I had tried to suggest it in an article in the Mercury called, “The True Case Against Cliques.” A critic in the American Bookman immediately assumed that it was only the old and conventional case against cliques. He got it into his head that I had merely been grumbling about log-rolling; and he said that Aristophanes and Euripides had their cliques and backers like anybody else. It seems to me that American criticism, so far from being merely crude, is rather too traditional. It has a curious conservative way with it and labels things in the manner of a museum; indeed I found in the same number a very Victorian article called, “Science and Religion,” in which these two forces were studied under the representative figures of Charles Darwin and Mr. Moody. Many things have been written about Science and Religion; but I should not feel myself overwhelmed by the onward rush of a new world which had never considered any science later than Darwin or any religion better than Moody and Sankey. Many things have also been written against log-rolling and literary clannishness; but I did not write anything against them or indeed anything about them. What I was trying, I fear rather clumsily, to express was that there is now an entirely new danger in the clique; because it is not merely a clique. It has taken on the character of an interpreter; by hypothesis the interpreter of something unintelligible; and its existence encourages the artist to be unintelligible, when it is his whole function to be intelligible. The artist is the man who is more and not less intelligible than other men; it is the mass of men whose feelings remain relatively incomprehensible, even to themselves.
Aristophanes undoubtedly had his faction and in that sense his clique. But I gravely doubt whether his audience needed anybody to explain to them that when the dead man said, “May I come to life if I do,” it was a joke and a parody of the phrase, “May I die if I do.” In other words, the jokes of Aristophanes, like the jokes of Bernard Shaw, were good jokes; but they were obvious jokes. There was not normally any question of a new and secretive sense of humour, which only a certain school of aesthetes or critics could understand. The buffoonery of Bernard Shaw is in this respect like the buffoonery of Aristophanes; or if it be difficult to make sure of the conditions in the time of Aristophanes, the element of obviousness is equally obvious in the best jokes of Molière or the best jokes of Dickens. The whole case for buffoons is that jokes ought to be obvious. We may even say that they are not really jokes unless they are obvious. There are, of course, special conditions for the thing called irony; in which it is the joke that somebody does not see the joke. But even there that person is not the audience; or if he is, the irony has failed. But in any case there is here a joke that the critics cannot apparently see; and a joke which is also something of a tragedy. There is under the surface of all this conspiratorial culture, a fantastic notion of new and even disparate psychologies breaking up the brotherhood of the common human mind; incommunicable or at least without communication between one and another. As Mr. Wells imagined man evolving into two animals, we are really called on to imagine mind breaking up not so much into cliques as into species. The buffoon may make bad jokes; I myself, who am a very minor buffoon to be mentioned with Mr. Shaw, let alone Aristophanes, do regularly and as a matter of business make a multitude of bad jokes. I do it for reasons connected with the duties of demagogy, and I am not defending it here, but rather something much more important. Buffoons may make bad jokes; but it is quite another thing that a man should make a joke and another man really not know that it is a joke at all. The first man may think it a good joke and the second a bad joke; that is normal and has always been; in the case above-mentioned my critic and I can embrace in agreeing that it is a bad joke. But if aberration and mystery be so deliberately cultivated that the jest of one school is not a jest at all but only a riddle to another, we are at the beginning of a schism more perilous than any in the past. We are suffering Taste to tear men asunder as they have never been torn asunder by religion or revolution or the wars of the world. In other times there were other and nobler examples of this direct relation between the maker and mankind. The orator could make a mob feel like an army of heroes; the prophet or preacher could isolate every soul in a crowd and make each feel immortal. To make what is now called a popular speech it is indeed necessary to make it only too like what is called an after-dinner speech; to keep our connection with the normal life only by a thin thread of flippancy. But at least the connection is kept; and something remains of what is really the archetypal relation implied in the very existence of the arts. It is not altogether our fault if a chasm has opened in the community of beliefs and social traditions, which can only be spanned by the far halloo of the buffoon.
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Ora i due passi successivi ci portano al culmine della questione. Primo, questo dogmatico è sempre un po’ un demagogo. Secondo, questo demagogo è sempre un po’ un buffone. Sono ben lontano dal negare che egli diventi troppo demagogo e troppo buffone. Ma non lo fa perché preferisce le cose superficiali, bensì piuttosto perché è occupato con le cose fondamentali. Se posso illustrare il mio pensiero con uno di quei deplorevoli verbalismi su cui tutti ci lamentiamo, direi che è esattamente perché è occupato con i fondamenti che è tentato di solleticare la platea. È interessato ai fatti primari; e uno di quei fatti primari è il popolo. Può fare battute e recitare per la galleria; ma per lui c’è qualcosa di più di una battuta nella frase che chiama la galleria gli dèi.
Anch’io sono un comiziante da tribuna; e ho esagerato il mio pensiero un momento fa, nella necessità di difendere me stesso, di difendere il signor Shaw e (cosa più eccitante di tutte) di difendere il signor Shaw contro il signor Shaw. Non intendo davvero, naturalmente, che il saggista sia un egoista in alcun senso egoistico. Nessuno al mondo, immagino, trae più bene di me da buoni saggi come quelli del signor Max Beerbohm o del signor E. V. Lucas o del signor Robert Lynd. Chiedo soltanto, con tutta serietà, che essi comprendano le necessità del nostro genere di affermazione di sé così bene come riconoscono l’esistenza della propria. E chiedo loro di credere che quando cerchiamo di rendere i nostri sermoni e discorsi più o meno divertenti, è per la ragione molto semplice e persino modesta che non vediamo perché il pubblico dovrebbe ascoltare se non è più o meno divertito. Il nostro modo di parlare è condizionato dal fatto che è realmente ciò che alcuni hanno fantasiosamente supposto essere la funzione del discorso; qualcosa rivolto da qualcuno a qualcun altro. Ha necessariamente tutti i vizi e le volgarità che si accompagnano a un discorso che è realmente un discorso e non un soliloquio.
Sono giunto alla conclusione che quest’ultimo punto sia troppo semplice per essere compreso. Alcune delle più semplici cose della storia umana sono ormai del tutto invisibili a menti abituatesi alla suddivisione o allo specialismo. Così l’idea del voto, uno dei primi fatti riguardanti il nostro fondamento sociale, non è contestata o negata; è semplicemente rosicchiata fuori dell’esistenza da persone che non sanno che esiste. È così per il gesto del sacrificio, senza il quale l’uomo è a stento umano; ed è così per il gesto dell’oratore o del cantore che tratta direttamente con il popolo. Ho trovato un caso di questa confusione in connessione con questo punto, dopo aver cercato di suggerirlo in un articolo sul Mercury intitolato «La vera accusa contro le cricche». Un critico dell’American Bookman assunse immediatamente che si trattasse solo della vecchia e convenzionale accusa contro le cricche. Si mise in testa che io avessi soltanto brontolato a proposito del baratto di favori letterario (log-rolling); e disse che Aristofane ed Euripide avevano le loro cricche e i loro sostenitori come chiunque altro. Mi sembra che la critica americana, lungi dall’essere semplicemente rozza, sia piuttosto troppo tradizionale. Ha un curioso modo conservatore e cataloga le cose alla maniera di un museo; anzi trovai nello stesso numero un articolo assai vittoriano intitolato «Scienza e Religione», in cui queste due forze venivano studiate sotto le figure rappresentative di Charles Darwin e del signor Moody. Molte cose sono state scritte su Scienza e Religione; ma non mi sentirei sopraffatto dall’irruento avanzare di un nuovo mondo che non avesse mai considerato alcuna scienza più tarda di Darwin o alcuna religione migliore di Moody e Sankey. Molte cose sono state scritte anche contro il baratto di favori (log-rolling) e la consorteria letteraria; ma io non scrissi nulla contro di essi né, invero, alcunché su di essi. Ciò che cercavo, temo piuttosto goffamente, di esprimere era che c’è ora un pericolo interamente nuovo nella cricca; perché non è semplicemente una cricca. Ha assunto il carattere di un interprete; per ipotesi l’interprete di qualcosa di inintelligibile; e la sua esistenza incoraggia l’artista a essere inintelligibile, quando la sua intera funzione è essere intelligibile. L’artista è l’uomo che è più e non meno intelligibile degli altri uomini; è la massa degli uomini i cui sentimenti restano relativamente incomprensibili, persino a se stessi.
Aristofane aveva indubbiamente la sua fazione e in tal senso la sua cricca. Ma dubito gravemente che il suo pubblico avesse bisogno di qualcuno che spiegasse loro che, quando il morto diceva «Possa io tornare in vita se lo faccio», era una battuta e una parodia della frase «Possa io morire se lo faccio». In altre parole, le battute di Aristofane, come le battute di Bernard Shaw, erano buone battute; ma erano battute ovvie. Non c’era normalmente alcuna questione di un nuovo e riservato senso dell’umorismo, che solo una certa scuola di esteti o di critici potesse comprendere. La buffoneria di Bernard Shaw è sotto questo rispetto simile alla buffoneria di Aristofane; o se è difficile accertare le condizioni al tempo di Aristofane, l’elemento dell’ovvietà è ugualmente ovvio nelle migliori battute di Molière o nelle migliori battute di Dickens. L’intera difesa dei buffoni è che le battute dovrebbero essere ovvie. Possiamo persino dire che non sono davvero battute a meno che non siano ovvie. Ci sono, naturalmente, condizioni speciali per la cosa chiamata ironia; in cui è la battuta che qualcuno non colga la battuta. Ma anche là quella persona non è il pubblico; o se lo è, l’ironia è fallita. Ma in ogni caso c’è qui una battuta che i critici a quanto pare non sanno cogliere; e una battuta che è anche qualcosa di una tragedia. C’è, sotto la superficie di tutta questa cultura cospirativa, una fantastica nozione di psicologie nuove e persino disparate che spezzano la fratellanza della comune mente umana; incomunicabile o almeno senza comunicazione tra l’una e l’altra. Come il signor Wells immaginò l’uomo evolversi in due animali, siamo davvero chiamati a immaginare la mente frantumarsi non tanto in cricche quanto in specie. Il buffone può fare cattive battute; io stesso, che sono un buffone assai minore per essere menzionato accanto al signor Shaw, per non dire di Aristofane, faccio regolarmente e per mestiere una moltitudine di cattive battute. Lo faccio per ragioni connesse ai doveri della demagogia, e non lo sto difendendo qui, bensì piuttosto qualcosa di molto più importante. I buffoni possono fare cattive battute; ma è tutt’altra cosa che un uomo faccia una battuta e un altro uomo davvero non sappia affatto che è una battuta. Il primo uomo può ritenerla una buona battuta e il secondo una cattiva battuta; ciò è normale ed è sempre stato; nel caso sopra menzionato il mio critico e io possiamo abbracciarci nel convenire che è una cattiva battuta. Ma se l’aberrazione e il mistero sono così deliberatamente coltivati che il motteggio di una scuola non è affatto un motteggio bensì solo un indovinello per un’altra, siamo all’inizio di uno scisma più pericoloso di qualunque altro nel passato. Stiamo permettendo che il Gusto laceri gli uomini come non sono mai stati lacerati dalla religione o dalla rivoluzione o dalle guerre del mondo. In altri tempi c’erano altri e più nobili esempi di questa relazione diretta tra il creatore e l’umanità. L’oratore poteva far sentire una folla come un esercito di eroi; il profeta o predicatore poteva isolare ogni anima in una folla e far sentire ciascuna immortale. Per fare ciò che ora si chiama un discorso popolare è invero necessario renderlo fin troppo simile a ciò che si chiama un discorso da dopo-cena; mantenere il nostro legame con la vita normale solo con un tenue filo di frivolezza. Ma almeno il legame è mantenuto; e qualcosa rimane di ciò che è realmente la relazione archetipica implicita nella stessa esistenza delle arti. Non è del tutto colpa nostra se un abisso si è aperto nella comunità delle credenze e delle tradizioni sociali, che può essere superato solo dal lontano richiamo del buffone.
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MY SIX CONVERSIONS I. THE RELIGION OF FOSSILS
AT least six times during the last few years, I have found myself in a situation in which I should certainly have become a Catholic, if I had not been restrained from that rash step by the fortunate accident that I was one already. The point is not merely personal but has some representative interest, because our critics constantly expect the convert to suffer some sort of reaction, ending in disappointment and perhaps desertion. As a rule, the most that they will concede to us is that we have found peace by the surrender of reason; which generally means in practice that we pass the rest of our lives in interminable controversies with a perpetual appeal to logic. But, as a fact, it is in a rather peculiar sense, the other way about. The strongest sort of confirmation often comes to the convert after he has received enough to establish conviction. In these articles I propose to discuss some examples of this singular sort of post-conversion conversion. I mean that things have happened, since I was received into the Church, which would in any case have rendered impossible any intellectual position outside the Church, and especially the position in which I originally found myself. One occasion was the Parliamentary settlement of the controversy on the Prayer-Book—or Prayer-Books. Another was the Lambeth decision, or indecision, about Birth-Control. But I will take first the example of the latest turn of political events in Europe. I take it first because it is both typical and topical; that is, it gives perhaps the clearest and simplest example of the sort of thing I mean, and it is a thing of which the facts are fresh and familiar to everybody, even those who live only from day to day with the assistance of the daily Press; that very synthetic substitute for daily bread. But in order to explain what I think has really happened, rather more lucidly than the daily Press explains it, it is necessary to say a preliminary word about the Protestant Reformation and the sense in which its consequences, rather than itself, continue to bewilder and mislead Christendom.
Men of the type or school of Bishop Barnes or Dean Inge are, as we know, very fond of appealing to the discoveries of science; generally the not very recent discoveries of nineteenth-century science. They delight in dealing with what my grandfather would have called the Testimony of the Rocks; the geological record of natural development; and they often treat fossils and similar traces as if they were sacred hieroglyphics, by which some priesthood had symbolised the secret of the universe. And yet it is doubtful, it is more than doubtful, whether one of the Broad Church ecclesiastics would be soothed and flattered if I addressed him personally as an Old Fossil. Nor indeed should I dream of indulging in this playful form of social address; since there are truths, or half-truths, that cannot be coarsely stated without giving rise to misunderstanding even about their true meaning.
In one sense these liberal theologians are interested in fossils. They continue to demonstrate the Darwinian theory from the geological record, by means of all the fossils that ought to be found in it. They will even explain luminously why the geological evidence does not apparently exist; and they seem to think that this is quite as convincing as if it did exist. But I doubt whether they have really thought profoundly and delicately about what a fossil is, or there would be no danger of their resenting so innocent and inoffensive a comparison. For a fossil is really a very curious thing. A fossil is not a dead animal, or a decayed organism, or in essence even an antiquated object. The whole point of a fossil is that it is the form of an animal or organism, from which all its own animal or organic substance has entirely disappeared; but which has kept its shape, because it has been filled up by some totally different substance by some process of distillation or secretion, so that we might almost say, as in the medieval metaphysics, that its substance has vanished and only its accidents remain. And that is perhaps the very nearest figure of speech we can find for the truth about the New Religions, which were started only three or four hundred years ago. They are Fossils.
It is easy to see the sense in which they are now dying. But in a much deeper sense, they have long been dead. The extraordinary thing about them was that they really died almost as soon as they were born. And this was due to a fact not always emphasised, but which always strikes me as the most outstanding fact of the mysterious business; the incredible clumsiness of the Reformers. The real Protestant theologians were such very bad theologians. They had an amazing opportunity; the old Church had been swept out of their way, along with many things that were really unpopular, and some things that were deservedly unpopular. One would suppose it was easy enough to set up something that would at least look a little more popular. When they tried to do it, they made every mistake that they could make. They waged an insane war against everything in the old faith that is most normal and sympathetic to human nature; such as prayers for the dead or the gracious image of a Mother of Men. They hardened and fixed themselves upon fads which anybody could see would pass like fashions. Luther lashed himself into a sort of general fury, which obviously could not last; Calvin was logical, but used his logic for a scheme which humanity manifestly would not long find endurable. Perhaps the most successful were those who really had no ideas to offer at all; like the founders of the Anglican Church. They at least did not exasperate human nature; but even they showed the same blindness, in binding themselves instantly to the Divine Right of Kings, which was almost immediately to break down.
For this reason, there is really no historical doubt about what Protestantism did; it died. It did not die because the Protestants were wrong; Mahomet, for instance, was a far shrewder person, and his heresy has not died. The creed of the Protestants died, not because they were wrong, but because they were wrong-headed. They did not really think what they were doing; and this was chiefly because the real driving force behind them was the impatient insolence and avarice of new nobles and rebellious princes. But, anyhow, the theological and theoretical part of their work withered with extraordinary rapidity; and the void that was left was almost as rapidly filled with other things. What those things were is clear enough in many cases, including cases much more apparently harmless; but it is clearest of all in what is confronting us to-day; the Race Religion of the Germans.
Needless to say, there was no such nonsense talked in Luther’s time, or for long after his time; and, least of all, to do him justice, by Luther. Germans were turbulent and a little barbaric, as he was himself; but it is only fair to him to say that he was a Christian, in the sense that he believed that nothing could be done except in the strength of Christ. A superbly typical story reaches me from Germany; that some of the Nazis started out to sing the great reformer’s famous hymn, “A strong fortress is our God” (which sounds quite promisingly militaristic), but found themselves unable to articulate the very words at the beginning of the next verse, which ran, “Of ourselves we can do nothing.” Luther did, in his own mad way, believe in humility; but modern Germany believes simply, solely and entirely in pride. That is an example of what I mean by a void being filled up, not only by another substance, but actually by an antagonistic substance.
Luther was subject to irrational convulsions of rage, in one of which he tore out the Epistle of St. James from the Bible, because St. James exalts the importance of good works. But I shudder to imagine into what sort of epileptic convulsion he would have fallen if anybody had told him to tear out the Epistles of St. Paul, because St. Paul was not an Aryan. Luther, if possible, rather exaggerated the weakness of humanity, but at least it was the weakness of all humanity. John Knox achieved that queer Puritan paradox, of combining the same concentrated invocation of Christ with an inhuman horror and loathing for all the signs and forms and traditions generally characteristic of Christians. He combined, in the way that puzzles us so much, the adoration of the Cross with the abomination of the Crucifix. But at least John Knox would have exploded like dynamite, if anybody had asked him to adore the Swastika. All this new Nordic nonsense would seem to have nothing whatever to do with Protestant theology; or rather to be completely contrary to it. No one is more sincerely glad than we are to know that some of the German Protestants are still most consistent and courageous Christians; and that a definite number of the Lutherans still have some sort of remote connection with Luther. But, taking the development simply as an historical development, as a part of the science and philosophy of history, it is obvious by this time that the hollow places that were once tilled with the foaming fanaticism of the first Reformation doctrines are now filled with a foaming fanaticism of a totally different kind. Those who are rebelling like Luther are rebelling against Luther.
The main moral of this is so large and simple and striking, that it will soon be impossible to conceal it from the world. It is the simple fact that the moment men began to contradict the Church with their own private judgment, everything they did was incredibly ill-judged; that those who broke away from the Church’s basis almost immediately broke down on their own basis; that those who tried to stand apart from Authority could not in fact stand at all. Islam stood by being stagnant; it is not unfair to say it stood up by lying down. But Protestantism could not stand in the staggering rush of the West; it could only maintain itself by ceasing to be itself, and announcing its readiness to turn into anything else.
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LE MIE SEI CONVERSIONI I. LA RELIGIONE DEI FOSSILI
ALMENO sei volte durante gli ultimi anni, mi sono trovato in una situazione in cui sarei certamente diventato cattolico, se non fossi stato trattenuto da quel passo avventato dal fortunato accidente di esserlo già. Il punto non è meramente personale ma ha un certo interesse rappresentativo, perché i nostri critici si aspettano costantemente che il convertito soffra una qualche sorta di reazione, che finisce nella disillusione e forse nella diserzione. Di regola, il massimo che ci concederanno è che abbiamo trovato la pace mediante la resa della ragione; il che generalmente significa in pratica che passiamo il resto della vita in interminabili controversie con un perpetuo appello alla logica. Ma, di fatto, è in un senso piuttosto peculiare, il contrario. Il più forte genere di conferma giunge spesso al convertito dopo che egli ha ricevuto abbastanza da stabilire la convinzione. In questi articoli mi propongo di discutere alcuni esempi di questo singolare genere di conversione post-conversione. Intendo che sono accadute cose, da quando fui accolto nella Chiesa, che avrebbero in ogni caso reso impossibile qualsiasi posizione intellettuale al di fuori della Chiesa, e specialmente la posizione in cui originariamente mi trovavo. Un’occasione fu la definizione parlamentare della controversia sul Libro delle Preghiere — o Libri delle Preghiere. Un’altra fu la decisione di Lambeth, o indecisione, sul Controllo delle Nascite. Ma prenderò per prima l’esempio dell’ultima svolta degli eventi politici in Europa. La prendo per prima perché è insieme tipica e attuale; cioè, offre forse l’esempio più chiaro e semplice del genere di cosa che intendo, ed è una cosa i cui fatti sono freschi e familiari a tutti, persino a coloro che vivono solo alla giornata con l’assistenza della stampa quotidiana; quel surrogato assai sintetico del pane quotidiano. Ma per spiegare ciò che penso sia realmente accaduto, in modo un po’ più lucido di quanto lo spieghi la stampa quotidiana, è necessario dire una parola preliminare sulla Riforma protestante e sul senso in cui le sue conseguenze, piuttosto che essa stessa, continuano a sconcertare e fuorviare la cristianità.
Uomini del tipo o della scuola del vescovo Barnes o del decano Inge sono, come sappiamo, assai inclini ad appellarsi alle scoperte della scienza; generalmente le non molto recenti scoperte della scienza ottocentesca. Si dilettano nel trattare ciò che mio nonno avrebbe chiamato la Testimonianza delle Rocce; il documento geologico dello sviluppo naturale; e trattano spesso i fossili e tracce simili come se fossero sacri geroglifici, con cui qualche sacerdozio avesse simboleggiato il segreto dell’universo. Eppure è dubbio, è più che dubbio, che uno degli ecclesiastici della Broad Church sarebbe placato e lusingato se mi rivolgessi a lui personalmente chiamandolo un Vecchio Fossile. Né, invero, sognerei di indulgere in questa giocosa forma di appellativo sociale; poiché ci sono verità, o mezze verità, che non possono essere rozzamente enunciate senza dare origine a malintesi persino sul loro vero significato.
In un senso questi teologi liberali sono interessati ai fossili. Continuano a dimostrare la teoria darwiniana a partire dal documento geologico, per mezzo di tutti i fossili che dovrebbero trovarvisi. Spiegheranno persino luminosamente perché l’evidenza geologica apparentemente non esiste; e sembrano pensare che ciò sia altrettanto convincente che se esistesse. Ma dubito che abbiano davvero riflettuto profondamente e delicatamente su che cosa sia un fossile, altrimenti non ci sarebbe pericolo che si risentissero di un paragone così innocente e inoffensivo. Poiché un fossile è davvero una cosa curiosissima. Un fossile non è un animale morto, o un organismo decaduto, o in essenza persino un oggetto antiquato. Tutto il punto di un fossile è che è la forma di un animale o organismo, da cui tutta la sua propria sostanza animale o organica è interamente scomparsa; ma che ne ha conservato la sagoma, perché è stato riempito da qualche totalmente diversa sostanza mediante qualche processo di distillazione o secrezione, sicché potremmo quasi dire, come nella metafisica medievale, che la sua sostanza è svanita e solo i suoi accidenti rimangono. E questa è forse la più prossima figura retorica che possiamo trovare per la verità sulle Nuove Religioni, che furono avviate solo tre o quattrocento anni fa. Esse sono Fossili.
È facile vedere il senso in cui esse ora stanno morendo. Ma in un senso assai più profondo, sono morte da tempo. La cosa straordinaria a loro riguardo era che davvero morirono quasi appena nate. E ciò era dovuto a un fatto non sempre sottolineato, ma che mi colpisce sempre come il fatto più cospicuo di questa misteriosa faccenda; l’incredibile goffaggine dei Riformatori. I veri teologi protestanti erano teologi pessimi. Avevano un’occasione stupefacente; la vecchia Chiesa era stata spazzata via dal loro cammino, insieme a molte cose che erano davvero impopolari, e ad alcune cose che erano meritatamente impopolari. Si supporrebbe fosse abbastanza facile erigere qualcosa che almeno apparisse un po’ più popolare. Quando tentarono di farlo, commisero ogni errore che potessero commettere. Mossero una guerra insensata contro tutto ciò che nella vecchia Fede è più normale e simpatico alla natura umana; come le preghiere per i morti o la graziosa immagine di una Madre degli uomini. Si irrigidirono e si fissarono su fisime che chiunque poteva vedere sarebbero passate come mode. Lutero si frustò in una sorta di furia generale, che ovviamente non poteva durare; Calvino era logico, ma usò la sua logica per uno schema che l’umanità manifestamente non avrebbe a lungo trovato sopportabile. Forse i più riusciti furono quelli che davvero non avevano idee da offrire affatto; come i fondatori della Chiesa anglicana. Essi almeno non esasperarono la natura umana; ma persino loro mostrarono la stessa cecità, legandosi istantaneamente al Diritto Divino dei Re, che stava quasi immediatamente per crollare.
Per questa ragione, non c’è davvero alcun dubbio storico su ciò che il protestantesimo fece; morì. Non morì perché i protestanti avessero torto; Maometto, per esempio, era una persona assai più accorta, e la sua eresia non è morta. Il credo dei protestanti morì, non perché avessero torto, ma perché erano di testa sbagliata. Non pensavano davvero a ciò che facevano; e ciò era principalmente perché la vera forza motrice dietro di loro era l’impaziente insolenza e l’avarizia di nuovi nobili e di principi ribelli. Ma, comunque, la parte teologica e teorica della loro opera avvizzì con straordinaria rapidità; e il vuoto che restò fu quasi altrettanto rapidamente riempito di altre cose. Che cosa fossero quelle cose è abbastanza chiaro in molti casi, inclusi casi assai più apparentemente innocui; ma è più chiaro di tutto in ciò che oggi ci sta di fronte; la Religione della Razza dei tedeschi.
Inutile dire che nessuna simile assurdità fu detta al tempo di Lutero, o per lungo tempo dopo il suo tempo; e, meno di tutti, per rendergli giustizia, da Lutero. I tedeschi erano turbolenti e un po’ barbari, come lo era egli stesso; ma è solo giusto verso di lui dire che era un cristiano, nel senso che credeva che nulla potesse essere fatto se non nella forza di Cristo. Una storia superbamente tipica mi giunge dalla Germania; che alcuni dei nazisti si misero a cantare il famoso inno del grande riformatore, «Forte rocca è il nostro Dio» (che suona in modo assai promettentemente militaristico), ma si trovarono incapaci di articolare le parole stesse all’inizio della strofa successiva, che diceva: «Da noi stessi nulla possiamo». Lutero, a suo modo folle, credeva nell’umiltà; ma la Germania moderna crede semplicemente, unicamente e interamente nell’orgoglio. Questo è un esempio di ciò che intendo per un vuoto riempito, non solo da un’altra sostanza, ma effettivamente da una sostanza antagonistica.
Lutero era soggetto a irrazionali convulsioni di rabbia, in una delle quali strappò l’Epistola di San Giacomo dalla Bibbia, perché San Giacomo esalta l’importanza delle buone opere. Ma rabbrividisco a immaginare in quale sorta di convulsione epilettica sarebbe caduto se qualcuno gli avesse detto di strappare le Epistole di San Paolo, perché San Paolo non era ariano. Lutero, semmai, esagerava piuttosto la debolezza dell’umanità, ma almeno era la debolezza di tutta l’umanità. John Knox conseguì quel bizzarro paradosso puritano, di combinare la stessa concentrata invocazione di Cristo con un orrore e un ribrezzo inumani per tutti i segni e le forme e le tradizioni generalmente caratteristici dei cristiani. Combinava, nel modo che tanto ci sconcerta, l’adorazione della Croce con l’abominio del Crocifisso. Ma almeno John Knox sarebbe esploso come dinamite, se qualcuno gli avesse chiesto di adorare la Svastica. Tutta questa nuova assurdità nordica sembrerebbe non avere nulla a che fare con la teologia protestante; o piuttosto esserle completamente contraria. Nessuno è più sinceramente lieto di noi di sapere che alcuni dei protestanti tedeschi sono ancora cristiani coerentissimi e coraggiosissimi; e che un certo numero di luterani ha ancora una qualche sorta di remota connessione con Lutero. Ma, prendendo lo sviluppo semplicemente come uno sviluppo storico, come parte della scienza e della filosofia della storia, è ovvio ormai a questo punto che i luoghi cavi un tempo coltivati con lo spumeggiante fanatismo delle prime dottrine della Riforma sono ora riempiti da uno spumeggiante fanatismo di genere totalmente diverso. Coloro che si ribellano come Lutero si ribellano contro Lutero.
La principale morale di questo è così grande e semplice e sorprendente, che presto sarà impossibile celarla al mondo. È il semplice fatto che nel momento in cui gli uomini cominciarono a contraddire la Chiesa con il proprio giudizio privato, tutto ciò che essi fecero fu incredibilmente mal giudicato; che coloro che si staccarono dalla base della Chiesa quasi immediatamente crollarono sulla propria base; che coloro che tentarono di stare a parte dall’Autorità non poterono di fatto stare affatto in piedi. L’Islam stette in piedi restando stagnante; non è ingiusto dire che si tenne ritto sdraiandosi. Ma il protestantesimo non poté reggere nella vertiginosa corsa dell’Occidente; poté mantenersi solo cessando di essere se stesso, e annunciando la propria prontezza a trasformarsi in qualsiasi altra cosa.
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MY SIX CONVERSIONS II. WHEN THE WORLD TURNED BACK
FOR the first forty years of my life, practically no man in the world, and certainly no man of the world, had any doubt whatever about what Matthew Arnold called, “the way the world is going.” A man did not necessarily agree with Matthew Arnold, who seemed to think that he must necessarily go the way the world was going. Some regretted ages that were gone; some again were prepared to go farther than others, some to go faster than others; some almost passionately desired to go slow. But all agreed that it was, in the vulgar phrase, going it; and still going strong. It was, very broadly, the demand for freedom and fraternity flowing from the French Revolution and the American Revolution, making towards an ideal of democracy. Elements were indeed mixed in it, which logically had very little to do with each other. There was a tendency to materialism, to monism or to scepticism, which I rejected long before I was a Catholic. There was an element of equal justice, and the dignity of all citizens, which I accepted long after I was a Catholic; and which I accept still. But I assumed, like everybody else, that the main movement was still moving; and would presumably go on moving. There were three ways in which it could be recognised by a Catholic, or a man of increasingly Catholic sympathies, (1) He could say that this was the way the world was going; and so much the worse for the world. He could say the world would certainly go further and fare worse. (2) He could say, with considerable truth, that no such movement that was purely secular really touched the question that was purely spiritual. To take a simple example, the most ideal Republicans could not somehow get out of the human habit of dying; and generally of wondering whether dying meant being completely dead. Democracy could not satisfy all desires, even if it could purge itself enough to satisfy all democratic desires. (3) He could look forward, with some historical justification, to a time when any temporal quarrel between the Church and the Republic should end in a real and reasonable reconciliation of the truths in both; as St. Thomas reconciled the philosophy of Aristotle with the religion of Augustine. Something like this has largely been done, in recent Papal pronouncements; but the point is here that whether or no the Church could close this particular quarrel with the world, every one was certain that a quarrel with democracy was a quarrel with the world. In short, a Catholic might reject the present progress; or say his creed was independent of the present progress; or say his creed would find a place for the present progress. But everybody believed that the progress of the present would be the progress of the future.
Then came the astounding judgments; the strange signs of Apocalypse. First the Great War; then the paradox of Fascism in Italy; then the parody of Fascism in Germany. Now these things have left in the minds of all thinking men (as the Rationalist Press Association would say) an enormous overturn or reversal of thought, which has nothing whatever to do with thinking any of these movements right or wrong. It is very vital to realise that the change is something more fundamental than agreement or disagreement with the factions concerned. A man may think the war waged by the Allies justifiable, as I did and do; he may think that the stroke of Mussolini had considerable justification, or even that the stroke of Hitler achieved many things that were just. Or he may think exactly the opposite, and regard the whole militant epoch as a relapse into blood and barbarism, from the first recruit of Kitchener’s Army to the last ruffian dripping with the blood of Dollfuss. But there is a changed landscape at the back of all these fighting figures; and it is a landscape like an earthquake. What a man knows, now, is that the whole march of mankind can turn and tramp backwards in its tracks; that progress can start progressing, or feeling as if it were progressing, in precisely the contrary course from that which has been called progress for centuries. It can not only lose but fling away all that its fathers fought for and valued most; it can not only restore but restore exclusively all that its grandfathers were forced to abandon, or felt themselves unable to defend. The whole world is moving again; but it is moving the other way.
To-day this is the way the world is going, if there is any such thing. But in fact there is no such thing. A Catholic perhaps should have seen it from the first; but many a Catholic has only seen it in a flash at the last. There is no way the world is going. There never was. The world is not going anywhere, in the sense of the old optimist progressives, or even of the old pessimist reactionaries. It is not going to the Brave New World which Mr. Aldous Huxley described with detestation, any more than to the New Utopia which Mr. H. G. Wells described with delight. The world is what the saints and the prophets saw it was; it is not merely getting better or merely getting worse; there is one thing that the world does; it wobbles. Left to itself, it does not get anywhere; though if helped by real reformers of the right religion and philosophy, it may get better in many respects, and sometimes for considerable periods. But in itself it is not a progress; it is not even a process; it is the fashion of this world that passeth away. Life in itself is not a ladder; it is a see-saw.
Now that is fundamentally what the Church has always said; and for about four hundred years has been more and more despised for saying. The Church never said that wrongs could not or should not be righted; or that commonwealths could not or should not be made happier; or that it was not worth while to help them in secular and material things; or that it is not a good thing if manners become milder, or comforts more common, or cruelties more rare. But she did say that we must not count on the certainty even of comforts becoming more common or cruelties more rare; as if this were an inevitable social trend towards a sinless humanity; instead of being as it was a mood of man, and perhaps a better mood, possibly to be followed by a worse one. We must not hate humanity, or despise humanity, or refuse to help humanity; but we must not trust humanity; in the sense of trusting a trend in human nature which cannot turn back to bad things. “Put not your trust in princes; nor in any child of man.” That is the precise point of this very practical sort of politics. Be a Royalist if you like (and there is a vast amount to be said, and a vast amount being said, just now, for more personal and responsible rule); try a Monarchy if you think it will be better; but do not trust a Monarchy, in the sense of expecting that a monarch will be anything but a man. Be a Democrat if you like (and I shall always think it the most generous and the most fundamentally Christian ideal in politics); express your sense of human dignity in manhood suffrage or any other form of equality; but put not your trust in manhood suffrage or in any child of man. There is one little defect about Man, the image of God, the wonder of the world and the paragon of animals; that he is not to be trusted. If you identify him with some ideal, which you choose to think is his inmost nature or his only goal, the day will come when he will suddenly seem to you a traitor.
He seems a traitor to-day to all that world of liberal and enlightened opinion, which had made up its mind about the way the world was going, in the path of progress and of peace; the world of Wells and Webb and the Pacifists of America and the social reformers of Cambridge. Most of them are reduced to muttering, like the villain in the old melodrama, “a time will come.” But it is in a very different tone from that in which they were crying quite lately, like the man in the comic song, “Now we shan’t be long!” The most hopeful of them admit that we shall probably be very long, in reversing all that the reaction in Europe has done already. If, that is, it is ever reversed; and these people really have nothing except a purely mystical faith to suggest that it ever will be reversed. I am really more hopeful in being what they would call more hopeless; for I suspect that pretty nearly everything is eventually reversed. But it was exactly because they would not see this, that they were startled when their own reform or revolution was reversed before their own eyes. The point here, however, is that if there is something stable and not subject to reversal, it is not like anything that they imagine. Its habitation is not in the future or necessarily in any development of ideas peculiar to the present; we are not at the beginning of any endless and expanding dawn, but only of the ordinary daily dawns each followed by its own darkness; and the Faith, as Mr. Belloc said, “is the only beacon in this night, if beacon there be.”
In the heart of Christendom, in the head of the Church, in the centre of the civilisation called Catholic, there and in no movement and in no future, is found that crystallisation of commonsense and true traditions and rational reforms, for which the modern man mistakenly looked to the whole trend of the modern age. From this will come the reminders that mercy is being neglected or memory cast away, and not from the men who happen to make the next batch of rulers on this restless and distracted earth. That is the fact that we have all found at last; and that is why I have put it first. It is not the first in order, but it is the first in importance, of the facts I have discovered after I had discovered the truth; and if I had still been out in the darkness, it would in this dark hour have brought me to the door.
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LE MIE SEI CONVERSIONI II. QUANDO IL MONDO TORNÒ INDIETRO
PER i primi quarant’anni della mia vita, praticamente nessun uomo al mondo, e certamente nessun uomo di mondo, ebbe il minimo dubbio su ciò che Matthew Arnold chiamava «la direzione in cui il mondo sta andando». Un uomo non concordava necessariamente con Matthew Arnold, il quale sembrava pensare di dover necessariamente andare nella direzione in cui il mondo andava. Alcuni rimpiangevano epoche ormai trascorse; altri ancora erano pronti ad andare più lontano di altri, alcuni ad andare più veloci di altri; alcuni desideravano quasi appassionatamente andare adagio. Ma tutti concordavano che esso stava, nella frase volgare, andando alla grande; e ancora andando forte. Era, assai in generale, la domanda di libertà e fraternità che fluiva dalla Rivoluzione francese e dalla Rivoluzione americana, tendendo verso un ideale di democrazia. Vi erano invero mescolati elementi che logicamente avevano assai poco a che fare l’uno con l’altro. Vi era una tendenza al materialismo, al monismo o allo scetticismo, che rifiutai molto prima di essere cattolico. Vi era un elemento di uguale giustizia, e la dignità di tutti i cittadini, che accettai molto tempo dopo essere diventato cattolico; e che accetto tuttora. Ma davo per scontato, come tutti gli altri, che il movimento principale si muovesse ancora; e presumibilmente avrebbe continuato a muoversi. C’erano tre modi in cui esso poteva essere riconosciuto da un cattolico, o da un uomo di simpatie sempre più cattoliche. (1) Poteva dire che questa era la direzione in cui il mondo stava andando; e tanto peggio per il mondo. Poteva dire che il mondo sarebbe certamente andato oltre per andare peggio. (2) Poteva dire, con considerevole verità, che nessun simile movimento puramente secolare toccava davvero la questione che era puramente spirituale. Per prendere un semplice esempio, i più ideali repubblicani non riuscivano in qualche modo a uscire dall’umana abitudine di morire; e generalmente di chiedersi se morire significasse essere completamente morti. La Democrazia non poteva soddisfare tutti i desideri, anche se potesse purgarsi abbastanza da soddisfare tutti i desideri democratici. (3) Poteva guardare avanti, con una certa giustificazione storica, a un tempo in cui ogni contesa temporale tra la Chiesa e la Repubblica sarebbe finita in una reale e ragionevole riconciliazione delle verità in entrambe; come San Tommaso riconciliò la filosofia di Aristotele con la religione di Agostino. Qualcosa di simile è stato in gran parte compiuto, in recenti pronunciamenti papali; ma il punto qui è che, sia o no che la Chiesa potesse chiudere questa particolare contesa con il mondo, ognuno era certo che una contesa con la democrazia fosse una contesa con il mondo. In breve, un cattolico poteva rifiutare il presente progresso; o dire che il suo credo era indipendente dal presente progresso; o dire che il suo credo avrebbe trovato un posto per il presente progresso. Ma tutti credevano che il progresso del presente sarebbe stato il progresso del futuro.
Poi vennero gli sbalorditivi giudizi; gli strani segni dell’Apocalisse. Prima la Grande Guerra; poi il paradosso del fascismo in Italia; poi la parodia del fascismo in Germania. Ora queste cose hanno lasciato nelle menti di tutti gli uomini pensanti (come direbbe la Rationalist Press Association) un enorme ribaltamento o rovesciamento del pensiero, che non ha nulla affatto a che fare con il ritenere giusto o sbagliato alcuno di questi movimenti. È assai vitale rendersi conto che il cambiamento è qualcosa di più fondamentale dell’accordo o del disaccordo con le fazioni in questione. Un uomo può ritenere giustificabile la guerra combattuta dagli Alleati, come io la ritenevo e la ritengo; può ritenere che il colpo di Mussolini avesse considerevole giustificazione, o persino che il colpo di Hitler abbia conseguito molte cose che erano giuste. Oppure può ritenere esattamente l’opposto, e considerare l’intera militante epoca come una ricaduta nel sangue e nella barbarie, dalla prima recluta dell’Esercito di Kitchener all’ultimo furfante grondante del sangue di Dollfuss. Ma c’è un paesaggio mutato sullo sfondo di tutte queste figure combattenti; ed è un paesaggio come un terremoto. Ciò che un uomo sa, ora, è che l’intera marcia dell’umanità può voltarsi e ricalpestare all’indietro le proprie orme; che il progresso può mettersi a progredire, o a sentirsi come se progredisse, in una direzione precisamente contraria a quella che è stata chiamata progresso per secoli. Esso può non solo perdere ma gettar via tutto ciò per cui i suoi padri combatterono e che più apprezzarono; può non solo ripristinare ma ripristinare esclusivamente tutto ciò che i suoi nonni furono costretti ad abbandonare, o si sentirono incapaci di difendere. L’intero mondo si sta muovendo di nuovo; ma si sta muovendo nell’altra direzione.
Oggi questa è la direzione in cui il mondo sta andando, se una simile cosa esiste. Ma di fatto una simile cosa non esiste. Un cattolico forse avrebbe dovuto vederlo fin dal principio; ma molti cattolici l’hanno visto solo in un lampo alla fine. Non c’è alcuna direzione in cui il mondo stia andando. Non c’è mai stata. Il mondo non sta andando da nessuna parte, nel senso dei vecchi progressisti ottimisti, o persino dei vecchi reazionari pessimisti. Non sta andando verso il Mondo Nuovo che il signor Aldous Huxley descrisse con detestazione, più di quanto vada verso la Nuova Utopia che il signor H. G. Wells descrisse con delizia. Il mondo è ciò che i santi e i profeti videro che era; non sta semplicemente migliorando né semplicemente peggiorando; c’è una cosa che il mondo fa; oscilla. Lasciato a se stesso, non arriva da nessuna parte; sebbene, se aiutato da veri riformatori della giusta religione e filosofia, possa migliorare sotto molti aspetti, e talvolta per periodi considerevoli. Ma in sé non è un progresso; non è nemmeno un processo; è la foggia di questo mondo che passa. La vita in sé non è una scala; è un’altalena.
Ora questo è fondamentalmente ciò che la Chiesa ha sempre detto; e per circa quattrocento anni è stata sempre più disprezzata per averlo detto. La Chiesa non ha mai detto che i torti non potessero o non dovessero essere raddrizzati; o che gli Stati non potessero o non dovessero essere resi più felici; o che non valesse la pena aiutarli nelle cose secolari e materiali; o che non sia una buona cosa se i costumi divengono più miti, o le comodità più comuni, o le crudeltà più rare. Ma essa disse che non dobbiamo contare sulla certezza che persino le comodità divengano più comuni o le crudeltà più rare; come se ciò fosse un’inevitabile tendenza sociale verso un’umanità senza peccato; invece di essere, come era, uno stato d’animo dell’uomo, e forse uno stato d’animo migliore, possibilmente seguito da uno peggiore. Non dobbiamo odiare l’umanità, o disprezzare l’umanità, o rifiutarci di aiutare l’umanità; ma non dobbiamo fidarci dell’umanità; nel senso di fidarci di una tendenza nella natura umana che non possa tornare indietro verso cose cattive. «Non riponete la vostra fiducia nei principi; né in alcun figlio d’uomo». Questo è il punto preciso di questo genere assai pratico di politica. Sii pure realista, se ti piace (e c’è una vasta quantità di cose da dire, e una vasta quantità di cose che si stanno dicendo, proprio ora, per un governo più personale e responsabile); prova una Monarchia se pensi che sarà migliore; ma non fidarti di una Monarchia, nel senso di aspettarti che un monarca sarà qualcosa di diverso da un uomo. Sii pure democratico, se ti piace (e penserò sempre che sia l’ideale più generoso e più fondamentalmente cristiano in politica); esprimi il tuo senso della dignità umana nel suffragio universale maschile o in qualsiasi altra forma di uguaglianza; ma non riporre la tua fiducia nel suffragio universale maschile o in alcun figlio d’uomo. C’è un piccolo difetto nell’Uomo, l’immagine di Dio, la meraviglia del mondo e il paragone degli animali; che non ci si può fidare di lui. Se lo identifichi con qualche ideale, che tu scegli di ritenere la sua più intima natura o il suo unico fine, verrà il giorno in cui egli d’improvviso ti apparirà un traditore.
Egli appare oggi un traditore a tutto quel mondo di opinione liberale e illuminata, che si era formato un’idea sulla direzione in cui il mondo stava andando, sul sentiero del progresso e della pace; il mondo di Wells e Webb e dei Pacifisti d’America e dei riformatori sociali di Cambridge. La maggior parte di loro è ridotta a borbottare, come il cattivo nel vecchio melodramma, «verrà un tempo». Ma è in un tono assai diverso da quello con cui gridavano proprio di recente, come l’uomo nella canzone comica, «Ora non ci vorrà molto!». I più speranzosi tra loro ammettono che probabilmente ci vorrà moltissimo, a rovesciare tutto ciò che la reazione in Europa ha già fatto. Se, cioè, sarà mai rovesciato; e questa gente non ha davvero nulla eccetto una fede puramente mistica a suggerire che sarà mai rovesciato. Io sono davvero più speranzoso nell’essere ciò che loro chiamerebbero più disperato; poiché sospetto che pressoché ogni cosa venga alla fine rovesciata. Ma fu esattamente perché non volevano vedere questo, che essi rimasero sbalorditi quando la loro stessa riforma o rivoluzione fu rovesciata davanti ai loro stessi occhi. Il punto qui, tuttavia, è che se c’è qualcosa di stabile e non soggetto a rovesciamento, esso non è affatto simile a nulla di ciò che essi immaginano. La sua dimora non è nel futuro o necessariamente in alcuno sviluppo di idee peculiari del presente; non siamo all’inizio di alcuna sconfinata e dilatantesi alba, ma solo delle ordinarie albe quotidiane, ciascuna seguita dalla propria oscurità; e la Fede, come disse il signor Belloc, «è l’unico faro in questa notte, se faro vi è».
Nel cuore della cristianità, nel capo della Chiesa, nel centro della civiltà chiamata cattolica, lì e in nessun movimento e in nessun futuro, si trova quella cristallizzazione del buonsenso e delle vere tradizioni e delle riforme razionali, per cui l’uomo moderno erroneamente guardava all’intera tendenza dell’età moderna. Da questo verranno i richiami che la misericordia è trascurata o la memoria gettata via, e non dagli uomini che si trovano a comporre la prossima infornata di governanti su questa irrequieta e distratta terra. Questo è il fatto che tutti abbiamo trovato alla fine; ed è per questo che l’ho messo per primo. Non è il primo in ordine, ma è il primo in importanza, dei fatti che ho scoperto dopo aver scoperto la verità; e se fossi ancora là fuori nell’oscurità, in questa buia ora mi avrebbe condotto alla porta.
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MY SIX CONVERSIONS III. THE SURRENDER UPON SEX
I HAVE explained that these are sketches of six separate occasions, on which I should have become a Catholic, if I had not been the one and only kind of human being who cannot become a Catholic. The excitement of conversion is still open to the atheist and the diabolist; and everybody can be converted except the convert. In my first outline, I mentioned that one of the crises, which would in any case have driven me the way I had gone already, was the shilly-shallying and sham liberality of the famous Lambeth Report on what is quaintly called Birth Control. It is in fact, of course, a scheme for preventing birth in order to escape control. But this particular case was only the culmination of a long process of compromise and cowardice about the problem of sex; the final surrender after a continuous retreat.
There is one historical human fact which now seems to me so plain and solid, that I think that even if I were to lose the Faith, I could not lose sight of the fact. It has rather the character of a fact of chemistry or geology; though from another side it is mysterious enough, like many other manifest and unmistakable facts. It is this: that at the moment when Religion lost touch with Rome, it changed instantly and internally, from top to bottom, in its very substance and the stuff of which it was made. It changed in substance; it did not necessarily change in form or features or externals. It might do the same things; but it could not be the same thing. It might go on saying the same things; but it was not the same thing that was saying them. At the very beginning, indeed, the situation was almost exactly like that. Henry VIII was a Catholic in everything except that he was not a Catholic. He observed everything down to the last bead and candle; he accepted everything down to the last deduction from a definition; he accepted everything except Rome. And in that instant of refusal, his religion became a different religion; a different sort of religion; a different sort of thing. In that instant it began to change; and it has not stopped changing yet. We are all somewhat wearily aware that some Modern Churchmen call such continuous change progress; as when we remark that a corpse crawling with worms has an increased vitality; or that a snow-man, slowly turning into a puddle, is purifying itself of its accretions. But I am not concerned with this argument here. The point is that a dead man may look like a sleeping man a moment after he is dead; but decomposition has actually begun. The point is that the snow-man may in theory be made in the real image of man. Michelangelo made a statue in snow; and it might quite easily have been an exact replica of one of his statues in marble; but it was not in marble. Most probably the snow-man has begun to melt almost as soon as it is made. But even if the frost holds, it is still a stuff capable of melting when the frost goes. It seemed to many that Protestantism would long continue to be, in the popular phrase, a perfect frost. But that does not alter the difference between ice and marble; and marble does not melt.
The same sort of progressives are always telling us to have a trust in the Future. As a fact, the one thing that a progressive cannot possibly have is a trust in the Future. He cannot have a trust in his own Future; let alone in his own Futurism. If he sets no limit to change, it may change all his own progressive views as much as his conservative views. It was so with the Church first founded by Henry VIII; who was, in almost everything commonly cursed as Popery, rather more Popish than the Pope. He thought he might trust it to go on being orthodox; to go on being sacramentalist; to go on being sacerdotalist; to go on being ritualist, and the rest. There was only one little weakness. It could not trust itself to go on being itself. Nothing else, except the Faith, can trust itself to go on being itself.
Now touching this truth in relation to Sex, I may be permitted to introduce a trivial journalistic anecdote. A few years before the War, some of my fellow-journalists, Socialists as well as Tories, were questioning me about what I really meant by Democracy; and especially if I really thought there was anything in Rousseau’s idea of the General Will. I said I thought (and I think I still think) that there can be such a thing, but it must be much more solid and unanimous than a mere majority, such as rules in party politics. I applied the old phrase of the Man in the Street, by saying that if I looked out of the window at a strange man walking past my house, I could bet heavily on his thinking some things, but not the common controversial things The Liberals might have a huge majority, but he need not be a Liberal; statistics might prove England to be preponderantly Conservative, but I would not bet a button that he would be Conservative. But (I said) I should bet that he believes in wearing clothes. And my Socialist questioners did not question this; they, too, accepted clothes as so universal an agreement of common sense and civilisation, that we might attribute the tradition to a total stranger, unless he were a lunatic. Such a little while ago! To-day, when I see the stranger walking down the street, I should not bet that he believes even in clothes. The country is dotted with Nudist Colonies; the bookstalls are littered with Nudist magazines; the papers swarm with polite little paragraphs, praising the brownness and braveness of the special sort of anarchical asses here in question. At any given moment, there may be a General Will; but it is an uncommonly weak and wavering sort of will, without the Faith to support it.
As in that one matter of modesty, or the mere externals of sex, so in all the deeper matters of sex, the modern will has been amazingly weak and wavering. And I suppose it is because the Church has known from the first this weakness which we have all discovered at last, that about certain sexual matters She has been very decisive and dogmatic; as many good people have quite honestly thought, too decisive and dogmatic. Now a Catholic is a person who has plucked up courage to face the incredible and inconceivable idea that something else may be wiser than he is. And the most striking and outstanding illustration is perhaps to be found in the Catholic view of marriage as compared with the modern theory of divorce; not, it must be noted, the very modern theory of divorce, which is the mere negation of marriage; but even more the slightly less modern and more moderate theory of divorce, which was generally accepted even when I was a boy. This is the very vital point or test of the question; for it explains the Church’s rejection of the moderate as well as the immoderate theory. It illustrates the very fact I am pointing out, that Divorce has already turned into something totally different from what was intended, even by those who first proposed it. Already we must think ourselves back into a different world of thought, in order to understand how anybody ever thought it was compatible with Victorian virtue; and many very virtuous Victorians did. But they only tolerated this social solution as an exception; and many other modern social solutions they would not have tolerated at all. My own parents were not even orthodox Puritans or High Church people; they were Universalists more akin to Unitarians. But they would have regarded Birth-Prevention exactly as they would have regarded Infanticide. Yet about Divorce such liberal Protestants did hold an intermediate view, which was substantially this. They thought the normal necessity and duty of all married people was to remain faithful to their marriage; that this could be demanded of them, like common honesty or any other virtue. But they thought that in some very extreme and extraordinary cases a divorce was allowable. Now, putting aside our own mystical and sacramental doctrine, this was not, on the face of it, an unreasonable position. It certainly was not meant to be an anarchical position. But the Catholic Church, standing almost alone, declared that it would in fact lead to an anarchical position; and the Catholic Church was right.
LE MIE SEI CONVERSIONI III. LA RESA SUL SESSO
HO spiegato che questi sono schizzi di sei occasioni distinte, in cui sarei diventato cattolico, se non fossi stato l’unico e solo genere di essere umano che non può diventare cattolico. L’eccitazione della conversione è ancora aperta all’ateo e al diabolista; e chiunque può essere convertito eccetto il convertito. Nel mio primo abbozzo, accennai che una delle crisi, che in ogni caso mi avrebbe spinto per la via che avevo già preso, fu il tergiversare e la finta liberalità del famoso Rapporto di Lambeth su ciò che curiosamente si chiama Controllo delle Nascite. È di fatto, naturalmente, uno schema per impedire la nascita al fine di sfuggire al controllo. Ma questo particolare caso era solo il culmine di un lungo processo di compromesso e codardia sul problema del sesso; la resa finale dopo una ritirata continua.
C’è un fatto storico umano che ora mi sembra così semplice e solido, che penso che, anche se dovessi perdere la Fede, non potrei perderlo di vista. Ha piuttosto il carattere di un fatto di chimica o di geologia; sebbene da un altro lato sia abbastanza misterioso, come molti altri fatti manifesti e inconfondibili. È questo: che nel momento in cui la Religione perse il contatto con Roma, cambiò istantaneamente e internamente, da cima a fondo, nella sua stessa sostanza e nella materia di cui era fatta. Cambiò in sostanza; non cambiò necessariamente in forma o fattezze o esteriorità. Poteva fare le stesse cose; ma non poteva essere la stessa cosa. Poteva continuare a dire le stesse cose; ma non era la stessa cosa che le diceva. All’inizio stesso, invero, la situazione era quasi esattamente così. Enrico VIII era cattolico in tutto eccetto che non era cattolico. Osservava ogni cosa fino all’ultimo grano del rosario e all’ultima candela; accettava ogni cosa fino all’ultima deduzione da una definizione; accettava ogni cosa eccetto Roma. E in quell’istante di rifiuto, la sua religione divenne una religione diversa; un diverso genere di religione; un diverso genere di cosa. In quell’istante cominciò a cambiare; e non ha ancora smesso di cambiare. Siamo tutti alquanto stancamente consapevoli che alcuni ecclesiastici moderni chiamano progresso tale continuo cambiamento; come quando osserviamo che un cadavere brulicante di vermi ha una vitalità accresciuta; o che un pupazzo di neve, che lentamente si trasforma in pozzanghera, si sta purificando dalle proprie incrostazioni. Ma non mi occupo di questo argomento qui. Il punto è che un uomo morto può sembrare un uomo addormentato un attimo dopo che è morto; ma la decomposizione è in realtà cominciata. Il punto è che il pupazzo di neve può in teoria essere fatto a reale immagine dell’uomo. Michelangelo fece una statua di neve; e avrebbe potuto benissimo essere una replica esatta di una delle sue statue di marmo; ma non era di marmo. Con ogni probabilità il pupazzo di neve ha cominciato a sciogliersi quasi appena è fatto. Ma anche se il gelo tiene, è pur sempre una materia capace di sciogliersi quando il gelo se ne va. A molti sembrava che il protestantesimo avrebbe continuato a lungo a essere, nella frase popolare, un perfetto gelo. Ma ciò non altera la differenza tra ghiaccio e marmo; e il marmo non si scioglie.
Lo stesso genere di progressisti ci dice sempre di avere fiducia nel Futuro. Di fatto, l’unica cosa che un progressista non può in alcun modo avere è fiducia nel Futuro. Non può avere fiducia nel proprio Futuro; figuriamoci nel suo stesso Futurismo. Se non pone alcun limite al cambiamento, esso può cambiare tutte le sue proprie vedute progressiste tanto quanto le sue vedute conservatrici. Fu così con la Chiesa dapprima fondata da Enrico VIII; il quale era, in quasi tutto ciò che è comunemente maledetto come papismo, piuttosto più papista del Papa. Egli pensava di poter confidare che essa continuasse a essere ortodossa; a continuare a essere sacramentalista; a continuare a essere sacerdotalista; a continuare a essere ritualista, e il resto. C’era solo una piccola debolezza. Non poteva confidare in se stessa per continuare a essere se stessa. Nient’altro, eccetto la Fede, può confidare in se stesso per continuare a essere se stesso.
Ora, toccando questa verità in relazione al Sesso, mi sia permesso di introdurre un banale aneddoto giornalistico. Alcuni anni prima della Guerra, alcuni dei miei colleghi giornalisti, socialisti così come tory, mi interrogavano su ciò che io davvero intendessi per Democrazia; e specialmente se pensassi davvero che ci fosse qualcosa nell’idea di Rousseau della Volontà Generale. Dissi che pensavo (e penso ancora, credo) che ci possa essere una cosa simile, ma dev’essere assai più solida e unanime di una mera maggioranza, quale governa nella politica di partito. Applicai la vecchia frase dell’Uomo della Strada, dicendo che se guardassi dalla finestra uno strano uomo che passa davanti alla mia casa, potrei scommettere forte su alcune cose che egli pensa, ma non sulle comuni cose controverse. I liberali potrebbero avere un’enorme maggioranza, ma egli non ha bisogno di essere un liberale; le statistiche potrebbero provare che l’Inghilterra è prevalentemente conservatrice, ma non scommetterei un bottone che egli sia conservatore. Ma (dissi) scommetterei che egli crede nell’indossare vestiti. E i miei interlocutori socialisti non contestarono questo; anch’essi accettavano i vestiti come un accordo così universale di buon senso e di civiltà, che potremmo attribuire la tradizione a un perfetto sconosciuto, a meno che non fosse un pazzo. Così poco tempo fa! Oggi, quando vedo lo sconosciuto camminare per la strada, non scommetterei che egli creda neppure nei vestiti. Il paese è costellato di Colonie Nudiste; le bancarelle di libri sono ingombre di riviste nudiste; i giornali brulicano di garbati paragrafetti, che lodano la brunezza e la bravura del particolare genere di asini anarchici qui in questione. In un qualsiasi dato momento, può esserci una Volontà Generale; ma è un genere di volontà insolitamente debole e vacillante, senza la Fede a sostenerla.
Come in quell’unica questione della modestia, o dei meri esteriori del sesso, così in tutte le più profonde questioni del sesso, la volontà moderna è stata stupefacentemente debole e vacillante. E suppongo sia perché la Chiesa ha saputo fin dal principio questa debolezza che tutti abbiamo scoperto alla fine, che su certe questioni sessuali Essa è stata assai decisa e dogmatica; come molte brave persone hanno abbastanza onestamente pensato, troppo decisa e dogmatica. Ora un cattolico è una persona che ha racimolato il coraggio di affrontare l’incredibile e inconcepibile idea che qualcos’altro possa essere più saggio di lei. E l’illustrazione più sorprendente e cospicua è forse da trovarsi nella visione cattolica del matrimonio a paragone della moderna teoria del divorzio; non, si badi, la assai moderna teoria del divorzio, che è la mera negazione del matrimonio; ma ancora di più la teoria leggermente meno moderna e più moderata del divorzio, che era generalmente accettata persino quando ero ragazzo. Questo è il punto o la prova assai vitale della questione; poiché spiega il rifiuto da parte della Chiesa della teoria moderata così come della smodata. Illustra il fatto stesso che sto indicando, che il Divorzio si è già trasformato in qualcosa di totalmente diverso da ciò che era inteso, persino da coloro che per primi lo proposero. Dobbiamo già ripensarci in un diverso mondo di pensiero, per comprendere come mai qualcuno abbia mai pensato che fosse compatibile con la virtù vittoriana; e molti assai virtuosi vittoriani lo pensarono. Ma essi tolleravano questa soluzione sociale solo come un’eccezione; e molte altre moderne soluzioni sociali non avrebbero affatto tollerato. I miei stessi genitori non erano nemmeno ortodossi puritani o gente dell’Alta Chiesa; erano universalisti più affini agli unitariani. Ma essi avrebbero considerato la Prevenzione delle Nascite esattamente come avrebbero considerato l’Infanticidio. Eppure sul Divorzio tali liberali protestanti sostenevano una veduta intermedia, che era sostanzialmente questa. Pensavano che la normale necessità e il dovere di tutte le persone sposate fosse di rimanere fedeli al loro matrimonio; che ciò potesse essere richiesto loro, come la comune onestà o qualsiasi altra virtù. Ma pensavano che in alcuni casi assai estremi e straordinari un divorzio fosse consentito. Ora, mettendo da parte la nostra propria mistica e sacramentale dottrina, questa non era, a prima vista, una posizione irragionevole. Non era certo intesa come una posizione anarchica. Ma la Chiesa Cattolica, quasi sola, dichiarò che avrebbe di fatto condotto a una posizione anarchica; e la Chiesa Cattolica aveva ragione.
Any man with eyes in his head, whatever the ideas in his head, who looks at the world as it is to-day, must know that the whole social substance of marriage has changed; just as the whole social substance of Christianity changed with the divorce of Henry VIII. As in the other case, the externals remained for a time and some of them remain still. Some divorced persons, who can be married quite legally by a registrar, go on complaining bitterly that they cannot be married by a priest. They regard a church as a peculiarly suitable place in which to make and break the same vow at the same moment. And the Bishop of London, who was supposed to sympathise with the more sacramental party, recently submitted to such a demand on the ground that it was a very special case. As if every human being’s case were not a special case. That decision was one of the occasions on which I should have done a bolt, if I had delayed it so long. But the general social atmosphere is much the most important matter. Numbers of normal people are getting married, thinking already that they may be divorced. The instant that idea enters, the whole conception of the old Protestant compromise vanishes. The sincere and innocent Victorian would never have married a woman reflecting that he could divorce her. He would as soon have married a woman reflecting that he could murder her. These things were not supposed to be among the daydreams of the honeymoon. The psychological substance of the whole thing has altered; the marble has turned to ice; and the ice has melted with most amazing rapidity. The Church was right to refuse even the exception. The world has admitted the exception; and the exception has become the rule.
As I have said, the weak and inconclusive pronouncement upon Birth-Prevention was only the culmination of this long intellectual corruption. I need not discuss the particular problem again at this point; beyond saying that the same truth applies as in the case of Divorce. People propose an easv way out of certain human responsibilities and difficulties; including a way out of the responsibility and difficulty of doing economic justice and achieving better payment for the poor. But these people propose this easy method, in the hope that some people will only use it to a moderate extent; whereas it is much more probable that an indefinite number will use it to an indefinite extent. It is odd that they do not see this; because the writers and thinkers among them are no longer by any means optimistic about human nature, like Rousseau; but much more pessimistic about human nature than we are. Considering mankind as described, for instance, by Mr. Aldous Huxley, it is hard to see what answer he could possibly give, except the answer which we give, if the question were put thus: “On the one side, there is an easy way out of the difficulty by avoiding childbirth: on the other side, there is a very difficult way out of the difficulty, by reconstructing the whole social system and toiling and perhaps fighting for the better system. Which way are the men you describe more likely to take?” But my concern is not with open and direct opponents like Mr. Huxley; but with all to whom I might once have looked to defend the country of the Christian altars. They ought surely to know that the foe now on the frontiers offers no terms of compromise; but threatens a complete destruction. And they have sold the pass.
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Ogni uomo con occhi in testa, quali che siano le idee nella sua testa, che guardi il mondo com’è oggi, deve sapere che l’intera sostanza sociale del matrimonio è mutata; proprio come l’intera sostanza sociale del Cristianesimo mutò con il divorzio di Enrico VIII. Come nell’altro caso, le apparenze esterne rimasero per un tempo e alcune di esse rimangono tuttora. Certe persone divorziate, che possono sposarsi in modo del tutto legale da un ufficiale di stato civile, seguitano a lamentarsi amaramente di non poter essere sposate da un sacerdote. Considerano una chiesa un luogo particolarmente adatto in cui fare e disfare il medesimo voto nel medesimo momento. E il Vescovo di Londra, che si supponeva simpatizzasse col partito più sacramentale, ha recentemente ceduto a una tale richiesta con la motivazione che si trattava di un caso molto speciale. Come se il caso di ogni essere umano non fosse un caso speciale. Quella decisione fu una delle occasioni in cui avrei dovuto darmela a gambe, se avessi tardato tanto a lungo. Ma la generale atmosfera sociale è di gran lunga la cosa più importante. Un gran numero di persone normali si sposa, pensando già di poter divorziare. Nell’istante in cui quell’idea entra, l’intera concezione del vecchio compromesso protestante svanisce. Il sincero e innocente vittoriano non avrebbe mai sposato una donna riflettendo che avrebbe potuto divorziare da lei. L’avrebbe sposata tanto volentieri quanto una donna riflettendo che avrebbe potuto assassinarla. Queste cose non si supponeva rientrassero tra i sogni a occhi aperti della luna di miele. La sostanza psicologica dell’intera faccenda si è alterata; il marmo si è mutato in ghiaccio; e il ghiaccio si è sciolto con la più sbalorditiva rapidità. La Chiesa ebbe ragione a rifiutare persino l’eccezione. Il mondo ha ammesso l’eccezione; e l’eccezione è divenuta la regola.
Come ho detto, il debole e inconcludente pronunciamento sull’Impedimento delle Nascite fu soltanto il culmine di questa lunga corruzione intellettuale. Non ho bisogno di discutere di nuovo il particolare problema a questo punto; se non per dire che la stessa verità si applica come nel caso del Divorzio. La gente propone una facile via d’uscita da certe responsabilità e difficoltà umane; compresa una via d’uscita dalla responsabilità e dalla difficoltà di fare giustizia economica e di ottenere una paga migliore per i poveri. Ma questa gente propone questo facile metodo, nella speranza che alcuni lo usino solo in misura moderata; mentre è assai più probabile che un numero indefinito lo usi in misura indefinita. È strano che non lo vedano; perché gli scrittori e i pensatori tra loro non sono ormai affatto ottimisti sulla natura umana, come Rousseau; ma assai più pessimisti sulla natura umana di quanto lo siamo noi. Considerando l’umanità come descritta, per esempio, dal signor Aldous Huxley, è difficile vedere quale risposta egli potrebbe mai dare, se non la risposta che diamo noi, qualora la domanda fosse posta così: “Da un lato, c’è una facile via d’uscita dalla difficoltà evitando la nascita dei figli: dall’altro, c’è una via d’uscita assai difficile dalla difficoltà, ricostruendo l’intero sistema sociale e faticando e forse combattendo per il sistema migliore. Quale via è più probabile che prendano gli uomini che descrivete?” Ma la mia preoccupazione non è per gli avversari aperti e diretti come il signor Huxley; bensì per tutti coloro a cui un tempo avrei potuto guardare perché difendessero la patria degli altari cristiani. Costoro dovrebbero certo sapere che il nemico ora alle frontiere non offre alcun termine di compromesso; ma minaccia una completa distruzione. Ed essi hanno tradito il passo.
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MY SIX CONVERSIONS
IV. THE PRAYER-BOOK PROBLEM
ONE of the events which would have made me a Catholic, if I had not already been a Catholic, was the curious affair of the New Prayer-Book. It revealed to me a reality I had not hitherto realised. There really was a Church of England; or rather there really was an England which largely imagined that it possessed and controlled a Church. But this Church was not the Church I thought I had belonged to; the keen, cultivated and sincere group of men who claimed to be Catholic. It was a much vaster and vaguer background of men; who did not believe in anything in particular, but who claimed to be Protestant. But the vital point was that, whether they claimed to be Protestants or clamorously bragged of being atheists, they all seemed to have this fixed idea; that they owned the Church of England; and could turn it into a Mormon temple if they liked. I could not, in any case, have gone on being owned in that way.
But in order to understand all that was involved, it is necessary to say a word about the Anglican Prayer-Book itself. The Book of Common Prayer is the masterpiece of Protestantism. It is more so than the work of Milton. It is the one positive possession and attraction; the one magnet and talisman for people even outside the Anglican Church, as are the great Gothic cathedrals for people outside the Catholic Church. I can speak, I think, for many other converts, when I say that the only thing that can produce any sort of nostalgia or romantic regret, any shadow of homesickness in one who has in truth come home, is the rhythm of Cranmer’s prose. All the other supposed superiorities of any sort of Protestantism are quite fictitious. Tell a Catholic convert that he has lost his liberty, and he will laugh. A distinguished literary lady wrote recently that I had entered the most restricted of all Christian communions, and I was monstrously amused. A Catholic has fifty times more feeling of being free than a man caught in the net of the nervous compromises of Anglicanism; just as a man considering all England feels more free than a man obeying the Whips of one particular party. He has the range of two thousand years full of twelve-hundred thousand controversies, thrashed out by thinker against thinker, school against school, guild against guild, nation against nation, with no limit except the fundamental logical fact that the things were worth arguing, because they could be ultimately solved and settled. As for Reason, our monopoly is practically admitted in the modern world. Except for one or two dingy old atheists in Fleet Street (for whom I have great sympathy), nothing except Rome now defends the reliability of Reason. Much stronger is the appeal of unreason; or of that beauty which perhaps is beyond reason. The English Litany, the music and the magic of the great sixteenth-century style— that does call a man backwards like the song of the sirens; as Virgil and the poets might have called to a Pagan who had entered the Early Church. Only, being a Romanist and therefore a Rationalist, he does not go back; he naturally does not forget everything else, because his opponents four hundred years ago had a stylistic knack which they have now entirely lost. For the Anglicans cannot do the trick now, any more than anybody else. Modern prayers, and theirs perhaps more than any, seem to be perfectly incapable of avoiding journalese. And the Prayer-Book prose seems to follow them like a derisive echo. Lambeth or Convocation will publish a prayer saying something like, “Guide us, 0 Lord, to the solution of our social problems”; and the great organ of old will groan in the background. … “All who are desolate and oppressed.” The first Anglicans asked for peace and happiness, truth and justice; but nothing can stop the latest Anglicans, and many others, from the horrid habit of asking for improvement in international relations.
But why has the old Protestant Prayer-Book a power like that of great poetry upon the spirit and the heart? The reason is much deeper than the mere avoidance of journalese. It might be put in a sentence; it has style; it has tradition; it has religion; it was written by apostate Catholics. It is strong, not in so far as it is the first Protestant book, but in so far as it was the last Catholic book. As it happens, this can be proved in the most practical manner from the actual details of the prose. The most moving passages in the old Anglican Prayer-Book are exactly those that are least like the atmosphere of the Anglicans. They are moving, or indeed thrilling, precisely because they say the things which Protestants have long left off saying; and which only Catholics still say. Anybody who knows anything of literature knows when a style lifts itself to its loftiest efforts; and in these cases it is always to say strongly what we still endeavour to say, however weakly; but which nobody else ever endeavours to say at all. Let anyone recall for himself the very finest passages in the Book of Common Prayer, and he will soon see that they are concerned specially with spiritual thoughts and themes that now seem strange and terrible; but anyhow, the reverse of common; ” … in the hour of death and in the day of Judgment.” Who talks about the hour of death? Who talks about the Day of Judgment? Only a litter of shabby little priests from the Italian Mission. Not certainly the popular and eloquent Dean of Bumblebury, who is so Broad and yet so High. Certainly not the charming and fashionable Vicar of St. Ethelbald’s, who is so High and yet so Broad. Still less the clergyman helping in the same parish, who is frankly Low. It is the same on every page, where that spirit inspires that style. “Suffer us not, for any pains of death, to fall from Thee.”… “Ah, that’s what gets you” (or words to that effect), as Lord Peter Wimsey truly said of this phrase, in the detective tale of Miss Dorothy Sayers; who, like Lord Peter, knows a good deal about other things besides poisons; and understands her hero’s historical traditions very well. But did you ever hear the curate fresh from the cricket-field, or the vicar smiling under the Union Jacks of the Conservative Rally, dwell upon that penultimate peril; or the danger of falling from God amid the pains of death? Very morbid. Just like those Dago devotional books. So very Roman.
I do not think the old Anglo-Catholics who were my friends, or the many who are still my friends, would deny that there has been a modern vulgarisation of religion, largely through the spread of this official optimism. But though they themselves are often quite free from the vulgar form of it, they could hardly deny that it is largely official and very widely spread. Yet it came as a great shock to me to discover how official and widespread it was. I had exaggerated the importance of an intelligent minority, because it was important to me. But the public and the world without were given up to Arian and Pelagian demagogues like Dean Inge and Dr. Barnes; and a sort of negative Protestantism could still sweep the field. It swept the whole field in the matter of the Prayer-Book. The proposal of an amended Prayer-Book, or rather two alternative Prayer-Books, was not decided for the Church by the Churchy or by the communicants; or by the congregation. It was settled by a mob of politicians, atheists, agnostics, dissenters, Parsees; avowed enemies of that Church or of any Church, who happened to have M.P. after their names. If the whole thing had any historic motto, or deserved anything higher than a headline, what was written across all that Anglican story was not Ecclesia Anglicana, or Via Media, or anything of the sort; it was Cujus Regio Ejus Religio; or rendering unto Caesar the things that are God’s.
I add one incident to contrast Style, among men who had been Catholics for fourteen-hundred years, with that among men who have been Protestants for four-hundred years. A Protestant organisation presented all the atheists, etc., who had voted Protestant, with a big black Bible or Prayer-Book, or both, decorated outside with a picture of the Houses of Parliament. In hoc signo vinces. It would be very idolatrous to put a cross or crucifix outside a book; but a picture of Parliament where the Party Funds are kept, and the peerages sold—. That is the temple where dwell the gods of Israel… We know the world progresses, and education is certainly extended, and there are fewer illiterates; and I suppose it is all right. But those four strong centuries of Protestant England begin with a Book of Common-Prayer, in which, even amid the treachery and panic of Cranmer, and in the very moment of men rending themselves from Rome and Christendom, they could lift in such sublime language so authentic a cry of Christian men: “By Thy precious death and burial; by Thy glorious resurrection and ascension; and by the coming of the Holy Ghost.” Those centuries begin with that speech of men still by instinct and habit of mind Catholic; and the Protestant civilization evolves and the education spreads, and widens in wealth and power and towns and colleges; until at last the ripe and final fruit of its culture is produced, in the form of a fat black book of a cushiony sort, with a real photo-view, a view of one of the Sights, nicely tucked in to its neat black padded binding or frame… A Present from Ramsgate… anyhow, four-hundred years march from Rome.
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LE MIE SEI CONVERSIONI
IV. IL PROBLEMA DEL PRAYER-BOOK
Uno degli eventi che mi avrebbero fatto cattolico, se non fossi già stato cattolico, fu la curiosa vicenda del nuovo Prayer-Book. Mi rivelò una realtà che fino ad allora non avevo colto. Esisteva davvero una Chiesa d’Inghilterra; o meglio, esisteva davvero un’Inghilterra che in larga misura immaginava di possedere e controllare una Chiesa. Ma questa Chiesa non era la Chiesa alla quale credevo di essere appartenuto; l’acuto, colto e sincero gruppo di uomini che rivendicavano di essere cattolici. Era uno sfondo di uomini assai più vasto e più vago; che non credevano in nulla di particolare, ma che rivendicavano di essere protestanti. Ma il punto vitale era che, sia che rivendicassero di essere protestanti, sia che si vantassero rumorosamente di essere atei, sembravano avere tutti questa idea fissa: che possedevano la Chiesa d’Inghilterra; e potevano trasformarla in un tempio mormone, se ne avevano voglia. Non avrei potuto, in ogni caso, continuare a essere posseduto a quel modo.
Ma per comprendere tutto ciò che era in gioco, è necessario dire una parola sullo stesso Prayer-Book anglicano. Il Book of Common Prayer è il capolavoro del protestantesimo. Lo è più ancora dell’opera di Milton. È l’unico possesso e l’unica attrattiva positiva; l’unica calamita e talismano per gente perfino esterna alla Chiesa anglicana, come lo sono le grandi cattedrali gotiche per gente esterna alla Chiesa Cattolica. Posso parlare, credo, per molti altri convertiti, quando dico che l’unica cosa capace di produrre una qualche sorta di nostalgia o di rimpianto romantico, una qualsiasi ombra di struggimento in chi è in verità tornato a casa, è il ritmo della prosa di Cranmer. Tutte le altre supposte superiorità di qualunque forma di protestantesimo sono del tutto fittizie. Dite a un convertito cattolico che ha perduto la sua libertà, e riderà. Una distinta signora di lettere ha scritto di recente che io ero entrato nella più ristretta di tutte le comunioni cristiane, e me ne sono divertito mostruosamente. Un cattolico ha cinquanta volte più la sensazione di essere libero di un uomo preso nella rete dei nervosi compromessi dell’anglicanesimo; proprio come un uomo che considera tutta l’Inghilterra si sente più libero di un uomo che obbedisce ai Whip di un particolare partito. Egli ha a disposizione la portata di duemila anni pieni di un milione e duecentomila controversie, sviscerate da pensatore contro pensatore, scuola contro scuola, corporazione contro corporazione, nazione contro nazione, senza altro limite che il fondamentale fatto logico che quelle cose valeva la pena di discuterle, perché potevano in ultimo essere risolte e definite. Quanto alla Ragione, il nostro monopolio è praticamente ammesso nel mondo moderno. Salvo uno o due squallidi vecchi atei di Fleet Street (per i quali nutro grande simpatia), nulla tranne Roma difende ormai l’affidabilità della Ragione. Assai più forte è il richiamo dell’irragionevolezza; o di quella bellezza che forse è oltre la ragione. La Litania inglese, la musica e la magia del grande stile cinquecentesco — ecco ciò che richiama un uomo all’indietro come il canto delle sirene; così come Virgilio e i poeti avrebbero potuto richiamare un pagano entrato nella Chiesa primitiva. Solo che, essendo un romanista e perciò un razionalista, egli non torna indietro; naturalmente non dimentica tutto il resto, per il fatto che i suoi avversari quattrocento anni fa possedevano un artificio stilistico che ora hanno interamente perduto. Poiché gli anglicani non sanno più fare il trucco, non più di chiunque altro. Le preghiere moderne, e le loro forse più di ogni altra, paiono perfettamente incapaci di evitare il gergo giornalistico. E la prosa del Prayer-Book pare seguirle come un’eco derisoria. Lambeth o il Convocation pubblicherà una preghiera che dice qualcosa come: «Guidaci, o Signore, alla soluzione dei nostri problemi sociali»; e il grande organo di un tempo gemerà sullo sfondo. … «Tutti coloro che sono desolati e oppressi». I primi anglicani chiedevano pace e felicità, verità e giustizia; ma nulla può impedire agli ultimi anglicani, e a molti altri, l’orrida abitudine di chiedere un miglioramento nelle relazioni internazionali.
Ma perché il vecchio Prayer-Book protestante possiede un potere pari a quello della grande poesia sullo spirito e sul cuore? La ragione è assai più profonda del mero evitare il gergo giornalistico. La si potrebbe esprimere in una frase; ha stile; ha tradizione; ha religione; fu scritto da cattolici apostati. È forte, non in quanto è il primo libro protestante, ma in quanto fu l’ultimo libro cattolico. Si dà il caso che ciò si possa provare nel modo più pratico a partire dai dettagli concreti della prosa. I passi più commoventi del vecchio Prayer-Book anglicano sono esattamente quelli meno simili all’atmosfera degli anglicani. Sono commoventi, anzi entusiasmanti, proprio perché dicono le cose che i protestanti hanno da tempo smesso di dire; e che soltanto i cattolici dicono ancora. Chiunque conosca qualcosa di letteratura sa quando uno stile si solleva ai suoi sforzi più alti; e in questi casi è sempre per dire con forza ciò che noi ancora ci sforziamo di dire, per quanto debolmente; ma che nessun altro si sforza mai di dire affatto. Chiunque richiami a sé i passi più belli in assoluto del Book of Common Prayer, vedrà presto che riguardano in particolare pensieri e temi spirituali che ora sembrano strani e terribili; ma comunque, l’opposto di comuni; «… nell’ora della morte e nel giorno del Giudizio». Chi parla dell’ora della morte? Chi parla del Giorno del Giudizio? Solo una nidiata di poveri pretucoli della Missione italiana. Non certo il popolare ed eloquente Decano di Bumblebury, che è tanto Broad e insieme tanto High. Certamente non l’affascinante e alla moda Vicario di St. Ethelbald, che è tanto High e insieme tanto Broad. Ancor meno il chierico che aiuta nella stessa parrocchia, che è francamente Low. È lo stesso in ogni pagina in cui quello spirito ispira quello stile. «Non permettere che, per alcun dolore della morte, noi cadiamo lontano da Te». … «Ah, ecco ciò che ti afferra» (o parole a quell’effetto), come disse giustamente Lord Peter Wimsey di questa frase, nel racconto poliziesco della signorina Dorothy Sayers; la quale, come Lord Peter, sa parecchie cose oltre che di veleni; e comprende assai bene le tradizioni storiche del suo eroe. Ma avete mai udito il curato fresco di campo da cricket, o il vicario sorridente sotto le Union Jack del Comizio conservatore, indugiare su quel penultimo pericolo; ovvero sul rischio di cadere lontano da Dio tra i dolori della morte? Molto morboso. Proprio come quei libri devozionali da Dago. Così tanto Romano.
Non credo che i vecchi anglo-cattolici che erano miei amici, o i molti che sono ancora miei amici, negherebbero che vi è stata una moderna volgarizzazione della religione, in gran parte attraverso la diffusione di questo ottimismo ufficiale. Ma per quanto essi stessi ne siano spesso del tutto immuni nella sua forma volgare, difficilmente potrebbero negare che esso è in larga misura ufficiale e assai largamente diffuso. Eppure fu per me un grande shock scoprire quanto fosse ufficiale e diffuso. Io avevo esagerato l’importanza di una minoranza intelligente, perché essa era importante per me. Ma il pubblico e il mondo là fuori erano in balìa di demagoghi ariani e pelagiani come il Decano Inge e il Dr. Barnes; e una sorta di protestantesimo negativo poteva ancora spazzare il campo. Spazzò l’intero campo nella questione del Prayer-Book. La proposta di un Prayer-Book emendato, o piuttosto di due Prayer-Book alternativi, non fu decisa per la Chiesa dalla Chiesa, né dai comunicanti; né dalla congregazione. Fu stabilita da una folla di politici, atei, agnostici, dissidenti, Parsi; nemici dichiarati di quella Chiesa o di qualunque Chiesa, che si trovavano ad avere le lettere M.P. dopo il proprio nome. Se tutta la faccenda aveva un qualche motto storico, o meritava qualcosa di più alto di un titolo di giornale, ciò che era scritto attraverso tutta quella vicenda anglicana non era Ecclesia Anglicana, né Via Media, né alcunché del genere; era Cujus Regio Ejus Religio; ovvero rendere a Cesare le cose che sono di Dio.
Aggiungo un episodio per contrapporre lo Stile, tra uomini che erano stati cattolici per millequattrocento anni, a quello tra uomini che sono stati protestanti per quattrocento anni. Un’organizzazione protestante regalò a tutti gli atei, ecc., che avevano votato protestante, una grande Bibbia nera o un Prayer-Book, o entrambi, decorati all’esterno con un’immagine delle Houses of Parliament. In hoc signo vinces. Sarebbe cosa molto idolatra mettere una croce o un crocifisso all’esterno di un libro; ma un’immagine del Parlamento, dove si custodiscono i Fondi di Partito, e si vendono i titoli nobiliari —. Ecco il tempio dove dimorano gli dèi d’Israele… Sappiamo che il mondo progredisce, e l’istruzione è certamente più estesa, e vi sono meno analfabeti; e suppongo vada tutto bene. Ma quei quattro forti secoli d’Inghilterra protestante cominciano con un Book of Common-Prayer, nel quale, perfino tra il tradimento e il panico di Cranmer, e nel momento stesso in cui gli uomini si strappavano da Roma e dalla Cristianità, essi seppero levare in un linguaggio così sublime un grido tanto autentico di uomini cristiani: «Per la Tua preziosa morte e sepoltura; per la Tua gloriosa resurrezione e ascensione; e per la venuta dello Spirito Santo». Quei secoli cominciano con quel discorso di uomini ancora per istinto e per abito mentale cattolici; e la civiltà protestante si evolve e l’istruzione si diffonde, e si allarga in ricchezza e potere e città e collegi; finché infine il frutto maturo e ultimo della sua cultura viene prodotto, nella forma di un grasso libro nero di tipo imbottito, con una vera veduta fotografica, la veduta di una delle Attrazioni, ben infilata nella sua bella rilegatura o cornice nera imbottita… Un Ricordo da Ramsgate… comunque, quattrocento anni di marcia lontano da Roma.
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MY SIX CONVERSIONS V. THE COLLAPSE OF MATERIALISM
SOME little time ago Dr. David Forsyth delivered to the Section of Psychiatry (Royal Society of Medicine) an address which was certainly a psychological curiosity; of considerable interest to psychologists, pathologists, alienists and all other students of the mental breakdown in the modern world. It was a perfect and compact illustration of the very common combination of a superiority complex with arrested development, and inhibitions on almost all forms of intelligent curiosity. But I mention it here, not because of its narrowness, but of its direct negation of all that is really new in scientific discovery. It is no news to us that a materialist can be bigoted; but we do not always come upon so startling an example of his being antiquated.
It is not worth while to take any particular notice of all the diseased stuff about sadism and masochism being the sources of religion. We may note in passing, with a rather dreary amusement, that this sort of writer can never sustain a connected train of thought; and that he gets even these dismal technical terms hopelessly entangled; for he declares that Islam stands for sadism and Christendom for masochism, having just argued that the Christian persecution of heretics was typically sadistic. But all this judgment of great human events, good or bad, in terms of some obscure streak of lunacy, is itself an amusement for lunatics. It is exactly as if a man were to argue: “There is a special sort of madman who thinks he is made of glass; I will call this disease Vitreosity; and I will then show that anybody anywhere, who for any reason had anything to do with glass was a victim of vitreosity. The desert merchants who were said to have invented glass, the medieval craftsmen who so successfully coloured glass, the early astronomers who first fitted telescopes with lenses of glass, all showed Vitreosity in various stages of that disease; it is akin to subconscious libido because Peeping Tom looked through a window, which may have been made of glass; it is the root impulse of alcoholism, because people drink out of glasses; and Prince Albert and Queen Victoria were obviously stricken with raving and uncontrolled Vitreosity; because they built the Crystal Palace.” The slight defect in this theory (which is quite as scientific as Dr. Forsyth’s) is that in order to theorise, it is sometimes useful to think. It is obvious that all these people had a thousand other reasons for doing all they did, besides being mad on glass; and it is equally obvious that the great religions, true or false, had a thousand reasons for doing all they did, without being mad on masochism or sadism.
Only, as I say, we may well emerge from this slime and consider the real case of Dr. Forsyth, and his strange ignorance of the very elements of modern thought, and even rather specially of modern science. Now on the larger matter, his thesis was essentially this; that science and religion, so far from being reconciled or even reconcilable, were divided by the vital contradiction that science belongs to what he called “reality-thinking,” or we call objective truth; while religion belonged to what he called “pleasure-thinking,” or what most people call imagination. I need not mention the hundred obvious objections to this crude division; as, for instance, that religion has not confined itself to imagining pleasurable things, but has often been blamed by people like Dr. Forsyth for imagining unpleasant ones; or that it is arguing in a circle to prove at the end that religion is inconsistent with science merely by assuming at the beginning that it is inconsistent with truth. I am only concerned here to insist, not merely that the view is the reverse of the truth, but that the view is actually the very reverse of the modern view.
If there are two staring and outstanding facts about science and religion at this particular moment, they are these. First, that science is claiming much less than it did to show us a solid and objective reality. And second, that religion is claiming much more than it did (at least for centuries past) that its miracles and marvels of mystical experience can be proved to exist as a solid and objective reality. On the one side, the Atom has entirely lost the objective solidity it had for the nineteenth-century materialists. On the other side, the Ascension is accepted as a case of Levitation by many who would not accept it as an Ascension. On the one hand, the science of physics has almost become a science of metaphysics. For it is not merely, as is often said, that the Atom has become an abstract mathematical formula; it is almost as true to say that it has become a mere algebraic symbol. For the new physicists tell us frankly that what they describe is not the objective reality of the thing they observe; that they are not examining an object as the nineteenth century materialists thought they were examining an object. Some of them tell us that they are only observing certain disturbances or distortions, actually created by their own attempt to observe. Eddington is more agnostic about the material world than Huxley ever was about the spiritual world. A very unfortunate moment at which to say that science deals directly with reality and objective truth.
On the other hand, on the other plane, the plane of historical and practical argument, it is the very moment at which religion really is appealing to reality and objective truth. The Church throws down the unanswered challenge of Lourdes; the Spiritualists positively claim to prove their new religion by experiments, like a thesis in chemistry or electricity; and a vast number of independent intellectuals, who are neither Catholics nor Spiritualists, have begun to show an entirely new interest in the logical, or even the legal case for some of the great historic miracles. For instance, there have been two or three books following on the line of the brilliant but strictly scientific book called Who Moved The Stone; and the tendency of the most detached writers is to admit more and more that the evidence for such events has been underrated. The youngest school of Catholic apologists, such as Father Knox and Mr. Christopher Hollis and Mr. Arnold Lunn, attack almost entirely with the weapons of proof and practical evidence; and it is no longer pretended that they always have the worst of it. A very unfortunate moment at which to say that religion deals only with pleasant fancies and imaginations.
Dr. Forsyth’s antiquated style of thought interests me here, however, only as drawing attention to the familiar modern facts of which he seems never to have heard. And most relevant here is the fact of that extraordinary scientific change in the attitude to facts. It has its place in this series, because it is one of the great changes which had not developed in any full and public fashion, even by the time that I finally sought admission to the Church; and, at the much earlier time when I had already begun to think about it, all the popular science that a layman heard of was dominated by the now dead materialism of Haeckel. It is, therefore, true to say that this huge revolution in the philosophy of physical science was one of the world events which came after my conversion; but would have hugely hastened it, if it had come before my conversion. Only the exact nature of the effect, of this scientific revolution upon personal religion, is often misstated and widely misunderstood.
It is not, as some seem to fancy, that we think there is anything particularly Christian about electrons, any more than there is anything essentially atheistic about atoms. It is not that we propose to base our philosophy on their physics; any more than to base our ancient theology on their most recent biology. We are not “going to the country” with a set of slogans or party-cries, like Electrons for the Elect, or For Priest and Proton. The catastrophic importance for Catholics, of this collapse of materialism, is simply the fact that the most confident cosmic statements of science can collapse. If fifty years hence the electron is as entirely exploded as the atom, it will not affect us; for we have never founded our philosophy on the electron any more than on the atom. But the materialists did found their philosophy on the atom. And it is quite likely that some spiritual fad or other is at this moment being founded on the electron. To a man of my generation, the importance of the change does not consist in its destroying the dogma (which was after all a detail, though a very dogmatic dogma), “Matter consists of indivisible atoms.” But it does consist in its destroying the accepted, universal and proclaimed and popularised dogma: “You must accept the conclusions of science.” Scores and hundreds of times I have heard, through my youth and early manhood, the repetition of that ultimatum: “You must accept the conclusions of science.” And it is that notion or experience that has now been concluded; or rather excluded. Whatever else is questionable, there is henceforth no question of anybody “accepting” the conclusions of science. The new scientists themselves do not ask us to accept the conclusions of science. The new scientists themselves do not accept the conclusions of the new science. To do them justice, they deny vigorously that science has concluded; or that it has, in that sense, any conclusion. The finest intellects among them repeat, again and again, that science is inconclusive.
Which is all very well, and all very wise, and all very true to the gradual adjustment of truths on their own plane. But meanwhile-there is such a thing as human life. The Victorian agnostics waited hopefully for science to give them a working certainty about life. The new physicist philosophers are in no way different, except that they wait hopelessly instead of hopefully. For they know very well the real meaning of relativity; that their own views may pass from being relatively right to being relatively wrong. And meanwhile, as I say, there is such a thing as wanting a working rule as to whether we should pay our debts or murder our enemies. We would not wait for a nineteenth-century enlightenment that might come. We certainly will not wait for a twentieth-century enlightenment that cannot come. If we want a guide to life, it seems that we must look elsewhere.
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LE MIE SEI CONVERSIONI V. IL CROLLO DEL MATERIALISMO
Qualche tempo fa il Dr. David Forsyth tenne alla Sezione di Psichiatria (Royal Society of Medicine) un discorso che era certamente una curiosità psicologica; di notevole interesse per psicologi, patologi, alienisti e ogni altro studioso del crollo mentale nel mondo moderno. Era una perfetta e compatta illustrazione della assai comune combinazione di un complesso di superiorità con uno sviluppo arrestato, e con inibizioni su quasi tutte le forme di intelligente curiosità. Ma lo menziono qui, non per la sua ristrettezza, bensì per la sua diretta negazione di tutto ciò che è realmente nuovo nella scoperta scientifica. Non è una novità per noi che un materialista possa essere bigotto; ma non sempre ci imbattiamo in un esempio così sorprendente del suo essere antiquato.
Non vale la pena di prestare particolare attenzione a tutta la roba malata sul sadismo e il masochismo come fonti della religione. Possiamo notare di sfuggita, con un divertimento piuttosto tetro, che questo genere di scrittore non riesce mai a sostenere una connessa catena di pensiero; e che imbroglia irrimediabilmente perfino questi lugubri termini tecnici; poiché dichiara che l’Islam sta per il sadismo e la Cristianità per il masochismo, avendo appena sostenuto che la persecuzione cristiana degli eretici era tipicamente sadica. Ma tutto questo giudicare i grandi eventi umani, buoni o cattivi, in termini di qualche oscura vena di follia, è esso stesso un divertimento per pazzi. È esattamente come se un uomo argomentasse: «Esiste una particolare specie di pazzo che crede di essere fatto di vetro; chiamerò questa malattia Vitreosità; e mostrerò poi che chiunque, in qualunque luogo, per qualsiasi ragione abbia avuto a che fare con il vetro era vittima della vitreosità. I mercanti del deserto che si dice abbiano inventato il vetro, gli artigiani medievali che con tanto successo colorarono il vetro, i primi astronomi che per primi dotarono i telescopi di lenti di vetro, tutti mostrarono la Vitreosità nei vari stadi di quella malattia; essa è affine alla libido subconscia perché Peeping Tom guardò attraverso una finestra, che può essere stata fatta di vetro; è l’impulso radicale dell’alcolismo, perché la gente beve da bicchieri di vetro; e il Principe Alberto e la Regina Vittoria erano evidentemente colpiti da una delirante e incontrollata Vitreosità; perché costruirono il Crystal Palace». Il lieve difetto di questa teoria (che è del tutto scientifica quanto quella del Dr. Forsyth) è che, per teorizzare, talvolta è utile pensare. È ovvio che tutte queste persone avevano un migliaio di altre ragioni per fare tutto ciò che fecero, oltre a essere pazze per il vetro; ed è del pari ovvio che le grandi religioni, vere o false, avevano un migliaio di ragioni per fare tutto ciò che fecero, senza essere pazze per il masochismo o il sadismo.
Solo che, come dico, possiamo bene emergere da questo fango e considerare il caso reale del Dr. Forsyth, e la sua strana ignoranza degli stessi elementi del pensiero moderno, e perfino, in modo piuttosto particolare, della scienza moderna. Ora, sulla questione più ampia, la sua tesi era essenzialmente questa; che la scienza e la religione, lungi dall’essere riconciliate o anche solo riconciliabili, erano divise dalla contraddizione vitale per cui la scienza appartiene a ciò che egli chiamava «pensiero-di-realtà», o come diciamo noi la verità oggettiva; mentre la religione apparteneva a ciò che egli chiamava «pensiero-di-piacere», ovvero ciò che la maggior parte della gente chiama immaginazione. Non ho bisogno di menzionare le cento ovvie obiezioni a questa rozza divisione; come, per esempio, che la religione non si è limitata a immaginare cose piacevoli, ma è spesso stata biasimata da gente come il Dr. Forsyth per averne immaginate di spiacevoli; o che è un ragionare in cerchio provare alla fine che la religione è incompatibile con la scienza semplicemente assumendo al principio che essa è incompatibile con la verità. Qui mi preme soltanto insistere non solo sul fatto che tale veduta è l’opposto della verità, ma che essa è in realtà proprio l’opposto della veduta moderna.
Se vi sono due fatti evidenti e cospicui riguardo alla scienza e alla religione in questo particolare momento, sono questi. Primo, che la scienza pretende molto meno di quanto pretendesse di mostrarci una realtà solida e oggettiva. E secondo, che la religione pretende molto più di quanto pretendesse (almeno da secoli a questa parte) che i suoi miracoli e prodigi di esperienza mistica possano essere provati come esistenti in quanto realtà solida e oggettiva. Da un lato, l’Atomo ha interamente perduto la solidità oggettiva che aveva per i materialisti del diciannovesimo secolo. Dall’altro lato, l’Ascensione è accettata come un caso di Levitazione da molti che non la accetterebbero come Ascensione. Da un lato, la scienza della fisica è quasi divenuta una scienza della metafisica. Poiché non è soltanto, come spesso si dice, che l’Atomo è divenuto un’astratta formula matematica; è quasi altrettanto vero dire che è divenuto un mero simbolo algebrico. Poiché i nuovi fisici ci dicono francamente che ciò che descrivono non è la realtà oggettiva della cosa che osservano; che non stanno esaminando un oggetto come i materialisti del diciannovesimo secolo credevano di esaminare un oggetto. Alcuni di essi ci dicono che stanno soltanto osservando certe perturbazioni o distorsioni, in realtà create dal loro stesso tentativo di osservare. Eddington è più agnostico riguardo al mondo materiale di quanto Huxley sia mai stato riguardo al mondo spirituale. Un momento assai infelice in cui dire che la scienza tratta direttamente con la realtà e la verità oggettiva.
Dall’altro lato, sull’altro piano, il piano dell’argomentazione storica e pratica, è proprio il momento in cui la religione appella davvero alla realtà e alla verità oggettiva. La Chiesa getta la sfida senza risposta di Lourdes; gli Spiritisti pretendono positivamente di provare la loro nuova religione con esperimenti, come una tesi di chimica o di elettricità; e un vasto numero di intellettuali indipendenti, che non sono né cattolici né spiritisti, hanno cominciato a mostrare un interesse del tutto nuovo per il caso logico, o perfino legale, di alcuni dei grandi miracoli storici. Per esempio, vi sono stati due o tre libri sulla scia di quel brillante ma rigorosamente scientifico libro intitolato Who Moved The Stone; e la tendenza degli scrittori più distaccati è di ammettere sempre più che le prove di tali eventi sono state sottovalutate. La più giovane scuola di apologisti cattolici, come Padre Knox e il signor Christopher Hollis e il signor Arnold Lunn, attaccano quasi interamente con le armi della prova e dell’evidenza pratica; e non si pretende più che abbiano sempre la peggio. Un momento assai infelice in cui dire che la religione tratta soltanto di piacevoli fantasie e immaginazioni.
Lo stile di pensiero antiquato del Dr. Forsyth mi interessa qui, tuttavia, soltanto in quanto richiama l’attenzione sui familiari fatti moderni di cui egli sembra non aver mai udito. E il più rilevante qui è il fatto di quello straordinario mutamento scientifico nell’atteggiamento verso i fatti. Ha il suo posto in questa serie, perché è uno dei grandi mutamenti che non si erano sviluppati in alcuna forma piena e pubblica, nemmeno al tempo in cui infine chiesi l’ammissione alla Chiesa; e, al tempo assai più remoto in cui avevo già cominciato a rifletterci, tutta la scienza divulgativa di cui un profano sentiva parlare era dominata dall’ormai defunto materialismo di Haeckel. È dunque vero dire che questa enorme rivoluzione nella filosofia della scienza fisica fu uno degli eventi mondiali che vennero dopo la mia conversione; ma che l’avrebbe enormemente affrettata, se fosse venuta prima della mia conversione. Solo che l’esatta natura dell’effetto di questa rivoluzione scientifica sulla religione personale è spesso esposta in modo errato e largamente fraintesa.
Non è, come alcuni paiono immaginare, che noi pensiamo vi sia qualcosa di particolarmente cristiano negli elettroni, non più di quanto vi sia qualcosa di essenzialmente ateo negli atomi. Non è che ci proponiamo di fondare la nostra filosofia sulla loro fisica; non più che di fondare la nostra antica teologia sulla loro più recente biologia. Non ci presentiamo «alle urne» con un corredo di slogan o di grida di partito, come Elettroni per gli Eletti, o Per il Prete e il Protone. La catastrofica importanza, per i cattolici, di questo crollo del materialismo, è semplicemente il fatto che le più sicure affermazioni cosmiche della scienza possono crollare. Se fra cinquant’anni l’elettrone sarà interamente demolito come l’atomo, ciò non ci toccherà; poiché non abbiamo mai fondato la nostra filosofia sull’elettrone più che sull’atomo. Ma i materialisti sì che fondarono la loro filosofia sull’atomo. Ed è del tutto probabile che qualche moda spirituale o l’altra stia in questo momento venendo fondata sull’elettrone. Per un uomo della mia generazione, l’importanza del mutamento non consiste nel suo distruggere il dogma (che era dopo tutto un dettaglio, per quanto un dogma assai dogmatico), «La materia consiste di atomi indivisibili». Ma consiste bensì nel suo distruggere il dogma accettato, universale, proclamato e divulgato: «Dovete accettare le conclusioni della scienza». Decine e centinaia di volte ho udito, per tutta la mia giovinezza e la mia prima età adulta, la ripetizione di quell’ultimatum: «Dovete accettare le conclusioni della scienza». Ed è quella nozione o esperienza che ora è stata conclusa; o piuttosto esclusa. Qualunque altra cosa sia discutibile, d’ora innanzi non si dà più questione di qualcuno che «accetti» le conclusioni della scienza. Gli stessi nuovi scienziati non ci chiedono di accettare le conclusioni della scienza. Gli stessi nuovi scienziati non accettano le conclusioni della nuova scienza. Per rendere loro giustizia, negano vigorosamente che la scienza abbia concluso; o che essa abbia, in quel senso, alcuna conclusione. I più fini intelletti fra loro ripetono, ancora e ancora, che la scienza è inconcludente.
Il che è tutto assai bene, e tutto assai saggio, e tutto assai vero rispetto al graduale aggiustamento delle verità sul loro proprio piano. Ma nel frattempo — esiste una cosa come la vita umana. Gli agnostici vittoriani attendevano con speranza che la scienza desse loro una certezza operativa riguardo alla vita. I nuovi fisici filosofi non sono in alcun modo diversi, salvo che attendono senza speranza invece che con speranza. Poiché sanno assai bene il vero significato della relatività; che le loro stesse vedute possono passare dall’essere relativamente giuste all’essere relativamente sbagliate. E nel frattempo, come dico, esiste una cosa come il volere una regola operativa quanto al se dovremmo pagare i nostri debiti o assassinare i nostri nemici. Non attenderemmo un illuminismo del diciannovesimo secolo che potrebbe venire. Certamente non attenderemo un illuminismo del ventesimo secolo che non può venire. Se vogliamo una guida per la vita, pare che dobbiamo cercare altrove.
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MY SIX CONVERSIONS VI. THE CASE OF SPAIN
The point of the recent political story in Spain has never been put clearly in the English papers; perhaps not quite clearly even in the Catholic papers. It is a very striking example of how the world has really moved, since my own most important change of conviction occurred. There is a paradox in every story of conversion; which is perhaps the reason why the records of it are never ideally satisfactory It is in its very nature the extinction of egoism: and yet every account of it must sound egoistic. It means, at least in the case of the Religion in question, a recognition of reality which has nothing to do with relativity. It is as if a man said, “This inn really exists, even if I have never found it”; or, “My home is actually in this village; and would be there, if I had never reached it.” It is the recognition that the truth is true, apart from the truth-seeker; and yet the description must be the autobiography of a truth-seeker; generally a rather depressing sort of person. It will therefore sound egotistical, if I preface these remarks by saying that I was for a long time a Liberal in the sense of belonging to the Liberal Party. I am still a Liberal; it is only the Liberal Party that has disappeared. I understood its ideal to be that of equal citizenship and personal freedom; and they are my own political ideals to this day. The point here, however, is that I worked for a long time with the practical organization of Liberalism; I wrote for a great part of my life for the old Daily News; and I knew of course that it identified political liberty, rightly or wrongly, with representative government. Then came the breach, on which I need not insist; except by saying that I became quite convinced of two facts. First, that representative government had ceased to be representative. Second, that Parliament was in fact gravely menaced by political corruption. Politicians did not represent the populace, even the most noisy and vulgar of the populace. Politicians did not deserve the dignified name of demagogues. They deserved no name except perhaps the name of bagmen; they were travelling for private firms. If they represented anything, it was vested interests, vulgar but not even popular.
For this reason, when the Fascists’ revolt appeared in Italy, I could not be entirely hostile to it; for I knew the hypocritical plutocracy against which it rebelled. But neither could I be entirely friendly to it; for I believed in the civic equality in which the politicians pretended to believe. For the present purpose, the problem can be put very briefly. The whole of the real case for Fascism can be put in two words never printed in our newspapers: secret societies. The whole case against Fascism could be put in one word now never used and almost forgotten: legitimacy. For the first, the Fascist was justified in smashing the politicians; for their contract with the people was secretly contradicted by their secret contracts with gangs and conspiracies. For the second, Fascism could never be quite satisfactory; for it did not rest on authority but only on power; which is the weakest thing in the world. The Fascists said in effect, “We may not be the majority, but we are the most vigorous and intelligent minority.” Which is simply challenging any other intelligent minority to show that it is more vigorous. It may well end in the very anarchy it attempted to avoid. Compared with this, despotism and democracy are legitimate. I mean there is no doubt about who is the King’s eldest son or about who has most votes in the most mechanical election. But a mere competition of intelligent minorities is a rather dreadful prospect. That, it seems to me, is a fair statement of the case for and against the Fascist movement. And now I should like to apply it to the curious case of Spain; and note how Liberalism met the issue.
For weeks and months on end my old organ the Daily News (now the News-Chronicle) had warned the public of all these doubtful and dangerous implications of Fascism. It had reviled Fascism for its vices; and rather more virulently for its virtues. But anyhow it had furiously denounced the notion of a minority imposing its will by mere violence, by weapons or military training, in contempt of the constitutional democracy in which the people expressed its will through Parliament. I think there is a great deal to be said for that view; especially in England, where Parliament is really normal and national as it never was in Italy or Germany. I could write much for and much against the Liberal theory as enunciated in the News-Chronicle, And then, suddenly, the whole case was thrown over, and turned upside down, in face of the simple situation in Spain.
First it must be remembered that the Church is always in advance of the world. That is why it is said to be behind the times. It discussed everything so long ago that people have forgotten the discussion. St. Thomas was an internationalist before all our internationalists; St. Joan was a nationalist almost before there were nations; Blessed Robert Bellarmine said all there is to be said for democracy before any ordinary worldling dared to be a democrat; and (what is to the purpose here) the Christian social reform was in full activity before any of these quarrels of Fascists and Bolshevists appeared. The Popular Party was working out the ideas of Leo XIII before a single Blackshirt had been seen in Italy. The same popular ideals had been moving in Spain; with the result that they had really become popular. There were other complications, of course; the Court had never been quite popular; the Dictatorship had not, I think, been imaginative about the curious problem of Catalonia; but all this did not effect the profound and popular Catholic change. The Pope particularly insisted that he had no objection to the Republic as such; there was no opposition to anything but to certain inhuman ideals, by which men would lose humanity in losing personal liberty and property. Well, in the perfectly fair and open intellectual interchange, in which all Liberals are supposed to believe, the Catholic ideals won. At an entirely peaceful and legal election, exactly like any English election, a vast majority voted in various degrees for the traditional truths, which had been normal to the Nation for much more than a thousand years. Spain spoke; if indeed elections do speak; and declared constitutionally against Communism, against Atheism, against the negation that starved normality in our time. Nobody said that this majority had been achieved by military violence. Nobody pretended that an armed minority had imposed it on the State. If the Liberal theory of Parliamentary majorities was just, this was just. If the Parliamentary system was a popular system, this was popular. And then the Socialists suddenly jumped up and did exactly everything that the Fascists have been blamed for doing. They used bombs and guns and instruments of violence to prevent the fulfilment of the will of the people, or at least of the will of the Parliament. Having lost the game by the rules of democracy, they tried to win it after all entirely by the rules of war; in this case of Civil War. They tried to overthrow a pacific Parliament by a militarist coup d’état. In short, they behaved exactly like Mussolini; or rather they did the very worst that has ever been attributed to Mussolini; and without a rag of his theoretical excuse.
And what did Liberalism say? What did my dear old friends of liberty and peaceful citizenship say? Naturally, I assumed on opening the paper that it would rally to the defence of Parliament and peaceful representative government and rebuke the attempt to make a minority dominant by mere military violence. Judge of my astonishment, when I found Liberals lamenting aloud over the unfortunate failure of these Socialistic Fascists to reverse the result of a General Election. I had been a Liberal in the old Liberal days; we were not unacquainted with Tory and Unionist victories at the polls; we had often gone contentedly into Opposition. It had never been suggested that when Balfour or Baldwin constitutionally became Prime Ministers, all the Nonconformists should go out with guns and bayonets to reverse the popular vote; or the Leader of the Opposition begin to throw dynamite at the elected Leader of the House. The only inference was that Liberalism was only opposed to militarists when they were Fascists; and entirely approved of Fascists so long as they were Socialists.
Now that is a small and purely political point. But to me it was very awakening. It showed me quite clearly the fundamental truth of the modern world. And that is this: there are no Fascists; there are no Socialists; there are no Liberals; there are no Parliamentarians. There is the one supremely inspiring and irritating institution in the world; and there are its enemies. Its enemies are ready to be for violence or against violence, for liberty or against liberty, for representation or against representation; and even for peace or against peace. It gave me an entirely new certainty, even in the practical and political sense, that I had chosen well.
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LE MIE SEI CONVERSIONI VI. IL CASO DELLA SPAGNA
Il punto della recente vicenda politica in Spagna non è mai stato esposto con chiarezza nei giornali inglesi; forse nemmeno del tutto chiaramente nei giornali cattolici. È un esempio assai notevole di quanto il mondo si sia realmente mosso, da quando avvenne il mio più importante mutamento di convinzione. Vi è un paradosso in ogni storia di conversione; il che è forse la ragione per cui i suoi resoconti non sono mai idealmente soddisfacenti. Essa è per sua stessa natura l’estinzione dell’egoismo: eppure ogni resoconto di essa deve suonare egoistico. Significa, almeno nel caso della Religione in questione, un riconoscimento della realtà che nulla ha a che fare con la relatività. È come se un uomo dicesse: «Questa locanda esiste davvero, anche se non l’ho mai trovata»; oppure: «La mia casa è realmente in questo villaggio; e vi sarebbe, anche se non l’avessi mai raggiunta». È il riconoscimento che la verità è vera, indipendentemente dal cercatore di verità; eppure la descrizione dev’essere l’autobiografia di un cercatore di verità; in genere una persona piuttosto deprimente. Suonerà dunque egotistico, se premetto a queste osservazioni che per lungo tempo fui un Liberale nel senso di appartenere al Partito Liberale. Sono ancora un Liberale; è soltanto il Partito Liberale a essere scomparso. Intendevo il suo ideale come quello della pari cittadinanza e della libertà personale; e sono i miei propri ideali politici ancora oggi. Il punto qui, tuttavia, è che lavorai per lungo tempo con l’organizzazione pratica del Liberalismo; scrissi per gran parte della mia vita per il vecchio Daily News; e sapevo naturalmente che esso identificava la libertà politica, a torto o a ragione, con il governo rappresentativo. Poi venne la rottura, sulla quale non ho bisogno di insistere; salvo che col dire che divenni del tutto convinto di due fatti. Primo, che il governo rappresentativo aveva cessato di essere rappresentativo. Secondo, che il Parlamento era di fatto gravemente minacciato dalla corruzione politica. I politici non rappresentavano il popolo, nemmeno la parte più chiassosa e volgare del popolo. I politici non meritavano il dignitoso nome di demagoghi. Non meritavano altro nome se non forse quello di piazzisti; viaggiavano per ditte private. Se rappresentavano qualcosa, erano gli interessi costituiti, volgari ma nemmeno popolari.
Per questa ragione, quando la rivolta dei Fascisti apparve in Italia, non potevo esserle interamente ostile; poiché conoscevo l’ipocrita plutocrazia contro cui essa si ribellava. Ma nemmeno potevo esserle interamente amico; poiché credevo nell’uguaglianza civica in cui i politici fingevano di credere. Per il presente scopo, il problema può essere esposto assai brevemente. L’intero vero argomento a favore del Fascismo può essere espresso in due parole mai stampate nei nostri giornali: società segrete. L’intero argomento contro il Fascismo potrebbe essere espresso in una sola parola ora mai usata e quasi dimenticata: legittimità. Per il primo, il Fascista era giustificato nello schiacciare i politici; poiché il loro contratto con il popolo era segretamente contraddetto dai loro contratti segreti con bande e cospirazioni. Per il secondo, il Fascismo non potrebbe mai essere del tutto soddisfacente; poiché non poggiava sull’autorità ma soltanto sul potere; che è la cosa più debole del mondo. I Fascisti dicevano in sostanza: «Potremo non essere la maggioranza, ma siamo la minoranza più vigorosa e intelligente». Il che è semplicemente sfidare qualunque altra minoranza intelligente a mostrare di essere più vigorosa. Ciò può ben finire nella stessa anarchia che tentava di evitare. In confronto a questo, il dispotismo e la democrazia sono legittimi. Voglio dire che non vi è alcun dubbio su chi sia il figlio primogenito del Re, o su chi abbia più voti nella più meccanica delle elezioni. Ma una mera competizione di minoranze intelligenti è una prospettiva piuttosto terribile. Questo, mi pare, è un giusto enunciato del caso a favore e contro il movimento fascista. E ora vorrei applicarlo al curioso caso della Spagna; e notare come il Liberalismo affrontò la questione.
Per settimane e mesi di seguito il mio vecchio organo, il Daily News (ora il News-Chronicle), aveva messo in guardia il pubblico da tutte queste dubbie e pericolose implicazioni del Fascismo. Aveva vituperato il Fascismo per i suoi vizi; e piuttosto più virulentemente per le sue virtù. Ma comunque aveva furiosamente denunciato l’idea di una minoranza che imponesse la propria volontà con la mera violenza, con le armi o l’addestramento militare, in disprezzo della democrazia costituzionale in cui il popolo esprimeva la sua volontà attraverso il Parlamento. Credo che vi sia molto da dire a favore di quella veduta; specialmente in Inghilterra, dove il Parlamento è davvero normale e nazionale come non lo fu mai in Italia o in Germania. Potrei scrivere molto a favore e molto contro la teoria liberale enunciata nel News-Chronicle. E poi, d’improvviso, l’intero argomento fu gettato via, e capovolto, di fronte alla semplice situazione in Spagna.
Anzitutto bisogna ricordare che la Chiesa è sempre in anticipo sul mondo. Ecco perché si dice che sia indietro rispetto ai tempi. Ha discusso ogni cosa tanto tempo fa che la gente ha dimenticato la discussione. San Tommaso fu un internazionalista prima di tutti i nostri internazionalisti; Santa Giovanna fu una nazionalista quasi prima che vi fossero le nazioni; il Beato Roberto Bellarmino disse tutto ciò che vi è da dire a favore della democrazia prima che qualunque ordinario mondano osasse essere un democratico; e (ciò che qui rileva) la riforma sociale cristiana era in piena attività prima che apparisse alcuna di queste liti tra Fascisti e Bolscevichi. Il Partito Popolare stava elaborando le idee di Leone XIII prima che una sola Camicia Nera fosse stata vista in Italia. Gli stessi ideali popolari si erano mossi in Spagna; con il risultato che erano davvero divenuti popolari. Vi erano altre complicazioni, naturalmente; la Corte non era mai stata del tutto popolare; la Dittatura non era stata, credo, fantasiosa riguardo al curioso problema della Catalogna; ma tutto ciò non intaccava il profondo e popolare mutamento cattolico. Il Papa insistette in particolare di non avere obiezione alla Repubblica in quanto tale; non vi era opposizione ad alcunché se non a certi ideali disumani, per i quali gli uomini perderebbero l’umanità nel perdere la libertà e la proprietà personali. Ebbene, nel perfettamente equo e aperto scambio intellettuale, nel quale tutti i Liberali dovrebbero credere, gli ideali cattolici vinsero. In un’elezione del tutto pacifica e legale, esattamente come qualunque elezione inglese, una vasta maggioranza votò in vari gradi per le verità tradizionali, che erano state normali per la Nazione per assai più di mille anni. La Spagna parlò; se davvero le elezioni parlano; e si dichiarò costituzionalmente contro il Comunismo, contro l’Ateismo, contro la negazione che affamava la normalità nel nostro tempo. Nessuno disse che questa maggioranza fosse stata ottenuta con la violenza militare. Nessuno pretese che una minoranza armata l’avesse imposta allo Stato. Se la teoria liberale delle maggioranze parlamentari era giusta, questa era giusta. Se il sistema parlamentare era un sistema popolare, questo era popolare. E poi i Socialisti d’improvviso balzarono in piedi e fecero esattamente tutto ciò di cui i Fascisti erano stati biasimati. Usarono bombe e fucili e strumenti di violenza per impedire l’adempimento della volontà del popolo, o almeno della volontà del Parlamento. Avendo perduto la partita secondo le regole della democrazia, tentarono di vincerla dopotutto interamente secondo le regole della guerra; in questo caso della Guerra Civile. Tentarono di rovesciare un Parlamento pacifico con un colpo di Stato militarista. In breve, si comportarono esattamente come Mussolini; o piuttosto fecero il peggio in assoluto che sia mai stato attribuito a Mussolini; e senza uno straccio della sua scusa teorica.
E che cosa disse il Liberalismo? Che cosa dissero i miei cari vecchi amici della libertà e della pacifica cittadinanza? Naturalmente, aprendo il giornale, supposi che si sarebbe schierato in difesa del Parlamento e del pacifico governo rappresentativo e avrebbe rimproverato il tentativo di rendere dominante una minoranza con la mera violenza militare. Si giudichi il mio stupore, quando trovai i Liberali che si lamentavano ad alta voce dello sfortunato fallimento di questi Fascisti socialisti nel rovesciare il risultato di un’Elezione Generale. Io ero stato un Liberale nei vecchi giorni liberali; non eravamo estranei alle vittorie Tory e Unioniste alle urne; eravamo spesso passati all’Opposizione senza scomporci. Non era mai stato suggerito che, quando Balfour o Baldwin divenivano costituzionalmente Primi Ministri, tutti i Nonconformisti dovessero uscire con fucili e baionette a rovesciare il voto popolare; o che il Leader dell’Opposizione cominciasse a lanciare dinamite contro il Leader eletto della Camera. L’unica inferenza era che il Liberalismo era contrario ai militaristi soltanto quando erano Fascisti; e approvava interamente i Fascisti fintanto che erano Socialisti.
Ora, questo è un punto piccolo e puramente politico. Ma per me fu assai illuminante. Mi mostrò con tutta chiarezza la fondamentale verità del mondo moderno. Ed essa è questa: non vi sono Fascisti; non vi sono Socialisti; non vi sono Liberali; non vi sono Parlamentaristi. Vi è la sola istituzione supremamente ispiratrice e irritante del mondo; e vi sono i suoi nemici. I suoi nemici sono pronti a essere per la violenza o contro la violenza, per la libertà o contro la libertà, per la rappresentanza o contro la rappresentanza; e perfino per la pace o contro la pace. Ciò mi diede una certezza del tutto nuova, anche nel senso pratico e politico, di avere scelto bene.
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MY SIX CONVERSIONS
VII. THE WELL AND THE SHALLOWS
IN numberless novels and newspaper articles, we have all read about a process which is still apparently regarded as novel or new; though it has been described in almost exactly the same terms for nearly a hundred years; and in slightly different terms for hundreds of years before that. I mean what is called the growth of doubt or the disturbance of faith; and the only point about it which is pertinent here is this; that it is always described as a revolt of the deeper parts of the mind against something that is comparatively superficial. We need not deny that modern doubt, like ancient doubt, does ask deep questions; we only deny that, as compared with our own philosophy, it gives any deeper answers. And it is a general rule, touching what is called modern thought, that while the questions are often really deep, the answers are often decidedly shallow. And it is perhaps even more important to remark that, while the questions are in a sense eternal, the answers are in every sense ephemeral. The world is still asking the questions that were asked by Job. The world will not long be contented with the answers that are given by Joad.
The chances of the Book of Joad being as permanent as the Book of Job are limited by certain perfectly practical calculations. Mr. Joad is an able and sincere man; and nobody doubts that his opinions are the product of his own mind; but they are very unmistakably the product of his own age. In this case it would be more correct to say, of his own generation. For the sceptics throughout the ages inherit nothing except a negation. Their positive policy or ideal varies, not only from century to century, but even from father to son. A free-thinker like Bradlaugh, coming out of the individualistic nineteenth century and the mercantile spirit of the Midlands, was careful to explain that he was an Individualist. A free-thinker of the next generation, like Mr. Joseph McCabe, was careful to explain that he was a Socialist. A free-thinker wanting to make a splash to-day would almost certainly insist that he was not a Socialist; which has come to mean something as mild as Mr. Ramsay MacDonald. For those who can believe in each of these social moves in turn, as they happen to turn up, the matter may be irrelevant. But some of us will simply draw the moral which determines the whole question of this issue between the traditions of truth and doubt. Those who leave the tradition of truth do not escape into something which we call Freedom. They only escape into something else, which we call Fashion.
That is really the crux of the controversy between the two views of history and philosophy. If it were true that by leaving the temple we walked out into a world of truths, the question would be answered; but it is not true. By leaving the temple, we walk out into a world of idols; and the idols of the marketplace are more perishable and passing than the gods of the temple we have left. If we wished to test rationally the case of rationalism, we should follow the career of the sceptic and ask how far he remained sceptical about the idols or ideals of the world into which he went. There are very few sceptics in history who cannot be proved to have been instantly swallowed by some swollen convention or some hungry humbug of the hour, so that all their utterances about contemporary things now look to us almost pathetically contemporary. The little group of Atheists, who still run their paper in Fleet Street and frequently honour me with hearty but somewhat hasty denunciation, began their agitation in the old Victorian days, and selected for themselves a terribly appropriate title. They did not call themselves Atheists, they called themselves Secularists. Never was a more bitter and blighting confession made in the form of a boast. For the word “secular” does not mean anything so sensible as “worldly.” It does not even mean anything so spirited as “irreligious.” To be secular simply means to be of the age; that is, of the age which is passing; of the age which, in their case, is already passed. There is one tolerably correct translation of the Latin word which they have chosen as their motto. There is one adequate equivalent of the word “secular”; and it is the word “dated.”
In the essays in this series, I have considered some of the effects of this continuous process of time and change, as it has affected the world, even after I myself ceased to look to its changes for essential guidance. I have noted that the changes, which continue to occur, point more and more to the truth of the unchanging philosophy which stands apart from them. I could add, of course, a long list of other examples of exactly the same truth. I could point, for instance, to the collapse of Prohibition; not so much in the narrow sense of Prohibition as in the general sense of Prohibitionism. For what failed with the American experiment was not merely a particular chemical experiment with some alleged chemical constituent, which they chose to call alcohol. It was a whole attitude towards all the complex uses and abuses of human things. The great outstanding principle of the modern materialistic world has been Prohibition; even Prohibition in the abstract. Where we say that a social element is dangerous or doubtful, that it must be watched, that it may on due occasion be restrained, the thing that was called the Modern Mind always cried aloud with a voice of thunder that it must be forbidden. The Prohibitionist declares that there must be no wine; the Pacifist that there must be no war; the Communist that there must be no private property; the Secularist that there must be no religious worship. The failure of Prohibition in the one country in which it was a favourite, in which it was a popular ideal in so far as anything so inhuman can be popular, was the collapse of the whole conception of wiping out entirely the temptations of man and the trials of mortal life. After that, it is tacitly agreed that there is no such simple way out of moral problems; it is almost admitted that they must be referred to the moral sense. We were actually driven back on the desperate and tragic duty of our fathers, of deciding for ourselves whether we were drinking too much, or whether we were fighting in a just quarrel, or whether we were only defending our own lawful property, or getting other people’s property by lawless usury. Such a demand was naturally a great strain on the Modern Mind. For the Modern Mind is not at all accustomed to making up its mind. It finds the task almost as unfamiliar as working its own farm or practising its own craft; or doing a hundred other things, that human beings had done from the foundations of the world. In short, it would not accept the Catholic doctrine that human life is a battle; it only wanted to have it announced, from time to time in the newsapers, that it was a victory.
There are, I say, a number of other more general defeats of the attack on the Faith, on each of which it would be easy to write a long essay; the longer as the essential truth in the matter was more subtle and more universal. But I will close this series with the examples which I have given, because I think they suffice to show the general trend of the truth which I desire to suggest. The simplest summary of my meaning is to throw my mind back to all the things that seemed in my youth to be the rivals or reasonable alternatives to my religious conviction, and consider whether they could still play even the part which they did. The answer is that not one of them could now even remotely resemble a rival; or be even reasonable as an alternative. There was a time when men of my sympathies felt even tragically the quarrel between the Republic and the Church; the apparent misunderstanding between political equality and mystical authority. It is a commonplace to-day that the world has reacted much more against equality than against authority. But that in itself would not have disposed of the democratic ideals of any sincere democrat. It is the thing called democracy that has itself disappointed the democrat. However much I might hate the Fascists, heartily as I do indeed despise the Hitlerites, that would never restore the mere abstract faith in the Republicans. If I lost my religion to-morrow, I could not again believe that the mere fact of turning Kamchatka from a Monarchy to a Republic would solve all its social sins. I have seen too many Republicans, with their greasy platform promises and their guzzling secret societies. I can remember when being a Socialist was a real inspiration to youth; but anybody who thinks it could be an inspiration to the more elderly phase of maturity, has only to look at the more elderly Socialists. In short, the point I mentioned at the beginning of this article is the point of the whole matter; that while the questions are still deep and tragic enough, the recent answers have not really been revolutionary, but only superficial. I could not abandon the faith, without falling back on something more shallow than the faith. I could not cease to be a Catholic, except by becoming something more narrow than a Catholic. A man must narrow his mind in order to lose the universal philosophy; everything that has happened up to. this very day has confirmed this conviction; and whatever happens to-morrow will confirm it anew. We have come out of the shallows and the dry places to the one deep well; and the Truth is at the bottom of it.
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LE MIE SEI CONVERSIONI
VII. IL POZZO E LE SECCHE
In innumerevoli romanzi e articoli di giornale, tutti abbiamo letto di un processo che è ancora, a quanto pare, considerato nuovo o inedito; benché sia stato descritto in termini quasi esattamente identici da quasi cento anni; e in termini leggermente diversi per centinaia di anni prima ancora. Intendo ciò che si chiama la crescita del dubbio o il turbamento della fede; e l’unico punto al riguardo che qui rilevi è questo: che esso è sempre descritto come una rivolta delle parti più profonde della mente contro qualcosa di comparativamente superficiale. Non abbiamo bisogno di negare che il dubbio moderno, come il dubbio antico, ponga davvero domande profonde; neghiamo soltanto che, in confronto alla nostra propria filosofia, esso dia risposte più profonde. Ed è una regola generale, riguardo a ciò che si chiama pensiero moderno, che, mentre le domande sono spesso realmente profonde, le risposte sono spesso decisamente superficiali. Ed è forse ancora più importante osservare che, mentre le domande sono in un certo senso eterne, le risposte sono in ogni senso effimere. Il mondo pone ancora le domande che furono poste da Giobbe. Il mondo non si accontenterà a lungo delle risposte che sono date da Joad.
Le probabilità che il Libro di Joad sia altrettanto permanente del Libro di Giobbe sono limitate da certi calcoli perfettamente pratici. Il signor Joad è un uomo capace e sincero; e nessuno dubita che le sue opinioni siano il prodotto della sua propria mente; ma esse sono assai inequivocabilmente il prodotto della sua propria epoca. In questo caso sarebbe più corretto dire, della sua propria generazione. Poiché gli scettici attraverso i secoli non ereditano nulla se non una negazione. La loro politica o il loro ideale positivo varia, non solo di secolo in secolo, ma perfino di padre in figlio. Un libero pensatore come Bradlaugh, uscito dall’individualistico diciannovesimo secolo e dallo spirito mercantile delle Midlands, aveva cura di spiegare che era un Individualista. Un libero pensatore della generazione successiva, come il signor Joseph McCabe, aveva cura di spiegare che era un Socialista. Un libero pensatore che oggi volesse fare scalpore insisterebbe quasi certamente di non essere un Socialista; il che è arrivato a significare qualcosa di mite come il signor Ramsay MacDonald. Per coloro che sanno credere in ciascuna di queste mosse sociali a turno, via via che si presentano, la questione può essere irrilevante. Ma alcuni di noi trarranno semplicemente la morale che determina l’intera questione di questa contesa tra le tradizioni della verità e del dubbio. Coloro che lasciano la tradizione della verità non evadono in qualcosa che noi chiamiamo Libertà. Evadono soltanto in qualcos’altro, che noi chiamiamo Moda.
Ecco davvero il nodo della controversia tra le due vedute della storia e della filosofia. Se fosse vero che, lasciando il tempio, uscissimo in un mondo di verità, la questione sarebbe risolta; ma non è vero. Lasciando il tempio, usciamo in un mondo di idoli; e gli idoli del mercato sono più deperibili e passeggeri degli dèi del tempio che abbiamo lasciato. Se volessimo mettere alla prova razionalmente il caso del razionalismo, dovremmo seguire la carriera dello scettico e chiederci fino a che punto egli rimase scettico verso gli idoli o gli ideali del mondo in cui entrò. Vi sono pochissimi scettici nella storia di cui non si possa provare che furono all’istante inghiottiti da qualche gonfia convenzione o da qualche affamata impostura dell’ora, sicché tutte le loro affermazioni sulle cose contemporanee ora ci appaiono quasi pateticamente contemporanee. Il piccolo gruppo di Atei, che ancora manda avanti il proprio giornale in Fleet Street e frequentemente mi onora di cordiale ma alquanto affrettata denuncia, cominciò la propria agitazione nei vecchi giorni vittoriani, e scelse per sé un titolo terribilmente appropriato. Non si chiamavano Atei, si chiamavano Secolaristi. Mai una confessione più amara e funesta fu fatta nella forma di un vanto. Poiché la parola «secolare» non significa nulla di così sensato come «mondano». Non significa nemmeno nulla di così spiritoso come «irreligioso». Essere secolare significa semplicemente essere dell’epoca; cioè, dell’epoca che sta passando; dell’epoca che, nel loro caso, è già passata. Vi è una tollerabilmente corretta traduzione della parola latina che essi hanno scelto come proprio motto. Vi è un adeguato equivalente della parola «secolare»; ed è la parola «datato».
Nei saggi di questa serie, ho considerato alcuni degli effetti di questo continuo processo di tempo e di mutamento, così come ha influito sul mondo, anche dopo che io stesso cessai di guardare ai suoi mutamenti per una guida essenziale. Ho notato che i mutamenti, che continuano a verificarsi, indicano sempre più la verità dell’immutabile filosofia che sta in disparte da essi. Potrei aggiungere, naturalmente, un lungo elenco di altri esempi esattamente della stessa verità. Potrei indicare, per esempio, il crollo del Proibizionismo; non tanto nel senso ristretto del Proibizionismo quanto nel senso generale del proibizionismo. Poiché ciò che fallì con l’esperimento americano non fu semplicemente un particolare esperimento chimico con qualche presunto costituente chimico, che essi scelsero di chiamare alcol. Fu un intero atteggiamento verso tutti i complessi usi e abusi delle cose umane. Il grande principio dominante del moderno mondo materialistico è stato il Proibizionismo; perfino il Proibizionismo in astratto. Dove noi diciamo che un elemento sociale è pericoloso o dubbio, che deve essere sorvegliato, che può alla dovuta occasione essere frenato, ciò che veniva chiamato la Mente Moderna gridava sempre a gran voce, con voce di tuono, che esso doveva essere proibito. Il Proibizionista dichiara che non vi dev’essere vino; il Pacifista che non vi dev’essere guerra; il Comunista che non vi dev’essere proprietà privata; il Secolarista che non vi dev’essere culto religioso. Il fallimento del Proibizionismo nell’unico paese in cui era prediletto, in cui era un ideale popolare per quanto qualcosa di così disumano possa essere popolare, fu il crollo dell’intera concezione di cancellare interamente le tentazioni dell’uomo e le prove della vita mortale. Dopo di ciò, è tacitamente convenuto che non vi è una così semplice via d’uscita dai problemi morali; è quasi ammesso che essi debbano essere rimessi al senso morale. Fummo effettivamente ricacciati sul disperato e tragico dovere dei nostri padri, di decidere da noi stessi se stessimo bevendo troppo, o se stessimo combattendo in una giusta contesa, o se stessimo soltanto difendendo la nostra propria legittima proprietà, o ottenendo la proprietà altrui con illegale usura. Una simile richiesta era naturalmente un grande sforzo per la Mente Moderna. Poiché la Mente Moderna non è affatto avvezza a decidere. Trova il compito quasi tanto insolito quanto il coltivare la propria fattoria o l’esercitare il proprio mestiere; o il fare cento altre cose che gli esseri umani avevano fatto fin dalle fondamenta del mondo. In breve, non voleva accettare la dottrina cattolica che la vita umana è una battaglia; voleva soltanto che si annunciasse, di tempo in tempo nei giornali, che essa era una vittoria.
Vi sono, dico, un certo numero di altre più generali sconfitte dell’attacco alla Fede, su ciascuna delle quali sarebbe facile scrivere un lungo saggio; tanto più lungo quanto la verità essenziale nella questione era più sottile e più universale. Ma chiuderò questa serie con gli esempi che ho dato, perché credo che bastino a mostrare la tendenza generale della verità che desidero suggerire. Il più semplice riassunto del mio significato è rivolgere la mia mente a tutte le cose che nella mia giovinezza parevano essere le rivali o le ragionevoli alternative alla mia convinzione religiosa, e considerare se esse potrebbero ancora recitare anche solo la parte che recitarono. La risposta è che nemmeno una di esse potrebbe ora nemmeno lontanamente somigliare a una rivale; o essere anche solo ragionevole come alternativa. Vi fu un tempo in cui gli uomini delle mie simpatie sentivano perfino tragicamente la contesa tra la Repubblica e la Chiesa; l’apparente malinteso tra l’uguaglianza politica e l’autorità mistica. È un luogo comune oggi che il mondo abbia reagito assai più contro l’uguaglianza che contro l’autorità. Ma ciò di per sé non avrebbe liquidato gli ideali democratici di alcun sincero democratico. È la cosa chiamata democrazia che ha essa stessa deluso il democratico. Per quanto io possa odiare i Fascisti, per quanto cordialmente io in effetti disprezzi gli Hitleriani, ciò non ripristinerebbe mai la mera astratta fede nei Repubblicani. Se domani perdessi la mia religione, non potrei di nuovo credere che il mero fatto di trasformare il Kamchatka da Monarchia in Repubblica risolverebbe tutti i suoi peccati sociali. Ho visto troppi Repubblicani, con le loro untuose promesse da comizio e le loro ingorde società segrete. Posso ricordare quando essere Socialista era una vera ispirazione per la giovinezza; ma chiunque pensi che possa essere un’ispirazione per la più anziana fase della maturità, non ha che da guardare i Socialisti più anziani. In breve, il punto che ho menzionato all’inizio di questo articolo è il punto dell’intera faccenda; che, mentre le domande sono ancora abbastanza profonde e tragiche, le recenti risposte non sono state realmente rivoluzionarie, ma soltanto superficiali. Non potrei abbandonare la Fede, senza ripiegare su qualcosa di più superficiale della Fede. Non potrei cessare di essere cattolico, se non divenendo qualcosa di più angusto di un cattolico. Un uomo deve restringere la propria mente per perdere l’universale filosofia; tutto ciò che è accaduto fino a questo giorno stesso ha confermato questa convinzione; e qualunque cosa accada domani la confermerà di nuovo. Siamo usciti dalle secche e dai luoghi aridi verso l’unico profondo pozzo; e la Verità è sul fondo di esso.
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THE RETURN TO RELIGION
IN the days when Huxley and Herbert Spencer and the Victorian agnostics were trumpeting as a final truth the famous hypothesis of Darwin, it seemed to thousands of simple people almost impossible that religion should survive. It is all the more ironic that it has not only survived them all, but it is a perfect example (perhaps the only real example) of what they called the Survival of the Fittest. It so happens that it does really and truly fit in with the theory offered by Darwin; which was something totally different from most of the theories accepted by Darwinians. This real original theory of Darwin has since very largely broken down in the general field of biology and botany; but it does actually apply to this particular argument in the field of religious history. The recent re-emergence of our religion is a survival of the fittest as Darwin meant it, and not as popular Darwinism meant it; so far as it meant anything. Among the innumerable muddles, which mere materialistic fashion made out of the famous theory, there was in many quarters a queer idea that the Struggle for Existence was of necessity an actual struggle between the candidates for survival; literally a cut-throat competition. There was a vague idea that the strongest creature violently crushed the others. And the notion that this was the one method of improvement came everywhere as good news to bad men; to bad rulers, to bad employers, to swindlers and sweaters and the rest. The brisk owner of a bucket-shop compared himself modestly to a mammoth, trampling down other mammoths in the primeval jungle. The business man destroyed other business men, under the extraordinary delusion that the eohippic horse had devoured other eohippic horses. The rich man suddenly discovered that it was not only convenient but cosmic to starve or pillage the poor, because pterodactyls may have used their little hands to tear each other’s eyes. Science, that nameless being, declared that the weakest must go to the wall; especially in Wall Street. There was a rapid decline and degradation in the sense of responsibility in the rich, from the merely rationalistic eighteenth century to the purely scientific nineteenth. The great Jefferson, when he reluctantly legalised slavery, said he trembled for his country, knowing that God is just. The profiteer of later times, when he legalised usury or financial trickery, was satisfied with himself; knowing that Nature is unjust.
But, however that may be (and of course the moral malady has survived scientific mistake) the people who talked thus of cannibal horses and competitive oysters, did not understand what Darwin’s thesis was. If later biologists have condemned it, it should not be condemned without being understood, widely as it has been accepted without being understood. The point of Darwinism was not that a bird with a longer beak (let us say) thrust it into other birds, and had the advantage of a duellist with a longer sword. The point of Darwinism was that the bird with the longer beak could reach worms (let us say) at the bottom of a deeper hole; that the birds who could not do so would die; and he alone would remain to found a race of long-beaked birds. Darwinism suggested that if this happened a vast number of times, in a vast series of ages, it might account for the difference between the beaks of a sparrow and a stork. But the point was that the fittest did not need to struggle against the unfit. The survivor had nothing to do except to survive, when the others could not survive. He survived because he alone had the features and organs necessary for survival. And, whatever be the truth about mammoths or monkeys, that is the exact truth about the present survival of religion. It is surviving because nothing else can survive.
Religion has returned; because all the various forms of scepticism that tried to take its place, and do its work, have by this time tied themselves into such knots that they cannot do anything. That chain of causation of which they were fond of talking seems really to have served them after the fashion of the proverbial rope; and when modern discussion gave them rope enough, they quite rapidly hanged themselves. For there is not a single one of the fashionable forms of scientific scepticism, or determinism, that does not end in stark paralysis, touching the practical conduct of human life. Take any three of the normal and necessary ideas on which civilisation and even society depend. First, let us say, a scientific man of the old normal nineteenth-century sort would remark, “We can at least have common sense, in its proper meaning of a sense of reality common to all; we can have common morals, for without them we cannot even have a community; a man must in the ordinary sense obey the law; and especially the moral law.” Then the newer sceptic, who is progressive and has gone further and fared worse, will immediately say, “Why should you worship the taboo of your particular tribe? Why should you accept prejudices that are the product of a blind herd instinct? Why is there any authority in the unanimity of a flock of frightened sheep?” Suppose the normal man falls back on the deeper argument: “I am not terrorised by the tribe; I do keep my independent judgment; I have a conscience and a light of justice within, which judges the world.” And the stronger sceptic will answer: “If the light in your body be darkness—and it is darkness because it is only in your body— what are your judgments but the incurable twist and bias of your particular heredity and accidental environment? What can we know about judgments, except that they must all be equally unjust? For they are all equally conditioned by defects and individual ignorances, all of them different and none of them distinguishable; for there exists no single man so sane and separate as to be able to distinguish them justly. Why should your conscience be any more reliable than your rotting teeth or your quite special defect of eyesight? God bless us all, one would think you believed in God!” Then perhaps the normal person will get annoyed and say rather snappishly, “At least I suppose we are men of science; there is science to appeal to and she will always answer; the evidential and experimental discovery of real things.” And the other sceptic will answer, if he has any sense of humour: “Why certainly. Sir Arthur Eddington is Science; and he will tell you that science cannot destroy religion, or even defend the multiplication table. Sir Bertram Windle was Science; and he would tell you that the scientific mind is completely satisfied in the Roman Catholic Church. For that matter. Sir Oliver Lodge was Science; and he reached by purely experimental and evidential methods to a solid belief in ghosts. But I admit that there are men of science who cannot get to a solid belief in anything; even in science; even in themselves. There is the crystalographer of Cambridge who writes in the Spectator the lucid sentence: ’ We know that most of what we know is probably untrue.’ Does that help you on a bit, in founding your sane and solid society?”
IL RITORNO ALLA RELIGIONE
Nei giorni in cui Huxley e Herbert Spencer e gli agnostici vittoriani strombazzavano come verità definitiva la famosa ipotesi di Darwin, sembrava a migliaia di persone semplici quasi impossibile che la religione potesse sopravvivere. È tanto più ironico che essa non solo sia sopravvissuta a tutti loro, ma sia un esempio perfetto (forse l’unico esempio reale) di ciò che essi chiamavano la Sopravvivenza del più Adatto. Si dà il caso che essa realmente e veramente si accordi con la teoria offerta da Darwin; la quale era qualcosa di totalmente diverso dalla maggior parte delle teorie accettate dai darwinisti. Questa reale teoria originale di Darwin è da allora in gran parte crollata nel campo generale della biologia e della botanica; ma si applica effettivamente a questo particolare argomento nel campo della storia religiosa. La recente riemersione della nostra religione è una sopravvivenza del più adatto come Darwin la intendeva, e non come la intendeva il darwinismo popolare; nella misura in cui intendeva alcunché. Fra gli innumerevoli pasticci che la mera moda materialistica trasse dalla famosa teoria, vi era in molti ambienti una bizzarra idea che la Lotta per l’Esistenza fosse per necessità una vera e propria lotta tra i candidati alla sopravvivenza; letteralmente una competizione all’ultimo sangue. Vi era una vaga idea che la creatura più forte schiacciasse violentemente le altre. E l’idea che questo fosse l’unico metodo di miglioramento giunse dappertutto come buona novella agli uomini malvagi; ai cattivi governanti, ai cattivi datori di lavoro, ai truffatori e agli sfruttatori e a tutto il resto. Il brioso proprietario di un’agenzia truffaldina si paragonava modestamente a un mammut, che calpestava altri mammut nella giungla primordiale. L’uomo d’affari distruggeva altri uomini d’affari, sotto la straordinaria illusione che l’equide eohippico avesse divorato altri equidi eohippici. Il ricco d’un tratto scopriva che era non solo comodo ma cosmico affamare o depredare il povero, perché gli pterodattili possono aver usato le loro piccole mani per lacerarsi gli occhi a vicenda. La Scienza, quell’essere senza nome, dichiarava che il più debole doveva andare al muro; specialmente a Wall Street. Vi fu un rapido declino e degrado nel senso di responsabilità nei ricchi, dal meramente razionalistico diciottesimo secolo al puramente scientifico diciannovesimo. Il grande Jefferson, quando a malincuore legalizzò la schiavitù, disse che tremava per il suo paese, sapendo che Dio è giusto. Il profittatore dei tempi più recenti, quando legalizzò l’usura o l’imbroglio finanziario, era soddisfatto di sé; sapendo che la Natura è ingiusta.
Ma, comunque stiano le cose (e naturalmente la malattia morale è sopravvissuta all’errore scientifico) le persone che parlavano così di cavalli cannibali e ostriche competitive non capivano quale fosse la tesi di Darwin. Se i biologi successivi l’hanno condannata, essa non dovrebbe essere condannata senza essere compresa, per quanto largamente sia stata accettata senza essere compresa. Il punto del darwinismo non era che un uccello con un becco più lungo (poniamo) lo conficcasse in altri uccelli, e avesse il vantaggio di un duellante con una spada più lunga. Il punto del darwinismo era che l’uccello con il becco più lungo poteva raggiungere i vermi (poniamo) sul fondo di una buca più profonda; che gli uccelli che non potevano farlo sarebbero morti; ed egli soltanto sarebbe rimasto a fondare una razza di uccelli dal becco lungo. Il darwinismo suggeriva che, se ciò accadeva un vasto numero di volte, in una vasta serie di ere, potrebbe spiegare la differenza tra i becchi di un passero e di una cicogna. Ma il punto era che il più adatto non aveva bisogno di lottare contro l’inadatto. Il sopravvissuto non aveva nulla da fare tranne sopravvivere, quando gli altri non potevano sopravvivere. Egli sopravvisse perché soltanto lui aveva i tratti e gli organi necessari alla sopravvivenza. E, qualunque sia la verità sui mammut o sulle scimmie, questa è l’esatta verità sull’attuale sopravvivenza della religione. Essa sopravvive perché nient’altro può sopravvivere.
La religione è tornata; perché tutte le varie forme di scetticismo che tentarono di prenderne il posto, e di farne l’opera, si sono a questo tempo attorcigliate in tali nodi da non poter fare nulla. Quella catena di causazione di cui amavano parlare pare davvero averli serviti al modo della proverbiale corda; e quando la discussione moderna diede loro corda a sufficienza, si impiccarono assai rapidamente. Poiché non ve n’è una sola delle forme alla moda dello scetticismo scientifico, o del determinismo, che non finisca in assoluta paralisi, quanto alla pratica condotta della vita umana. Prendiamo tre qualsiasi delle idee normali e necessarie su cui poggiano la civiltà e perfino la società. Anzitutto, poniamo, un uomo di scienza del vecchio, normale tipo ottocentesco osserverebbe: «Possiamo almeno avere il senso comune, nel suo proprio significato di un senso della realtà comune a tutti; possiamo avere una morale comune, poiché senza di essa non possiamo nemmeno avere una comunità; un uomo deve, nel senso ordinario, obbedire alla legge; e specialmente alla legge morale». Allora il più nuovo scettico, che è progressista ed è andato più lontano trovandosi peggio, dirà immediatamente: «Perché dovresti adorare il tabù della tua particolare tribù? Perché dovresti accettare pregiudizi che sono il prodotto di un cieco istinto del gregge? Perché mai vi è alcuna autorità nell’unanimità di un branco di pecore spaventate?». Supponiamo che l’uomo normale ripieghi sull’argomento più profondo: «Non sono terrorizzato dalla tribù; io conservo il mio giudizio indipendente; ho una coscienza e una luce di giustizia dentro, che giudica il mondo». E il più forte scettico risponderà: «Se la luce nel tuo corpo è tenebra — ed è tenebra perché è soltanto nel tuo corpo — che cosa sono i tuoi giudizi se non l’incurabile piega e distorsione della tua particolare ereditarietà e del tuo accidentale ambiente? Che cosa possiamo sapere dei giudizi, se non che devono essere tutti egualmente ingiusti? Poiché sono tutti egualmente condizionati da difetti e da individuali ignoranze, tutte diverse e nessuna di esse distinguibile; poiché non esiste alcun uomo così sano e separato da poterle distinguere con giustizia. Perché la tua coscienza dovrebbe essere più affidabile dei tuoi denti cariati o del tuo affatto particolare difetto della vista? Che Dio ci benedica tutti, si direbbe quasi che tu credessi in Dio!». Allora forse la persona normale si irriterà e dirà piuttosto stizzosamente: «Almeno suppongo che siamo uomini di scienza; c’è la scienza a cui appellarsi ed essa risponderà sempre; la scoperta probatoria e sperimentale delle cose reali». E l’altro scettico risponderà, se ha un qualche senso dell’umorismo: «Ma certo. Sir Arthur Eddington è la Scienza; ed egli ti dirà che la scienza non può distruggere la religione, né tanto meno difendere la tavola pitagorica. Sir Bertram Windle era la Scienza; ed egli ti direbbe che la mente scientifica è completamente soddisfatta nella Chiesa Cattolica Romana. Se è per questo, Sir Oliver Lodge era la Scienza; ed egli pervenne, con metodi puramente sperimentali e probatori, a una solida credenza nei fantasmi. Ma ammetto che vi sono uomini di scienza che non riescono ad arrivare a una solida credenza in nulla; nemmeno nella scienza; nemmeno in se stessi. C’è il cristallografo di Cambridge che scrive nello Spectator la lucida frase: “Sappiamo che la maggior parte di ciò che sappiamo è probabilmente falsa”. Ti aiuta un poco, questo, a fondare la tua sana e solida società?».
We have of course seen just lately the most dramatic exit of great material scientists from the camp of Materialism. It was Eddington I think, who used the phrase that the universe seems to be more like a great thought than a great machine: and Dr. Whitney as reported, has declared that there is no rational description of the ultimate cosmic motion except the Will of God. But it is the perishing of the other things, at least as much as the persistence of the one thing, that has left us at last face to face with the ancient religion of our fathers. The thing once called free thought has come finally to threaten everything that is free. It denies personal freedom in denying free will and the human power of choice. It threatens civic freedom with a plague of hygienic and psychological quackeries; spreading over the land such a network of pseudo-scientific nonsense as free citizens have never yet endured in history. It is quite likely to reverse religious freedom, in the name of some barbarous nostrum or other, such as constitutes the crude and ill-cultured creed of Russia. It is perfectly capable of imposing silence and impotence from without. But there is no doubt whatever that it imposes silence and impotence from within. The whole trend of it, which began as a drive and has ended in a drift, is towards some form of the theory that a man cannot help himself; that a man cannot mend himself; above all, that a man cannot free himself. In all its novels and most of its newspaper articles it takes for granted that men are stamped and fixed in certain types of abnormality of anarchical weakness; that they are pinned and labelled in a museum of morality or immorality; or of that sort of unmorality which is more priggish than the one and more hoggish than the other. We are practically told that we might as well ask a fossil to reform itself. We are told that we are asking a stuffed bird to repent. We are all dead, and the only comfort is that we are all classified. For by this philosophy, which is the same as that of the blackest of Puritan heresies, we all died before we were born. But as it is Kismet without Allah, so also it is Calvinism without God.
The agnostics will be gratified to learn that it is entirely due to their own energy and enterprise, to their own activity in pursuing their own antics, that the world has at last tired of their antics and told them so. We have done very little against them; non nobis, Domine; the glory of their final overthrow is all their own. We have done far less than we should have done, to explain all that balance of subtlety and sanity which is meant by a Christian civilisation. Our thanks are due to those who have so generously helped us by giving a glimpse of what might be meant by a Pagan civilisation. And what is lost in that society is not so much religion as reason; the ordinary common daylight of intellectual instinct that has guided the children of men. A world in which men know that most of what they know is probably untrue cannot be dignified with the name of a sceptical world; it is simply an impotent and abject world, not attacking anything, but accepting everything while trusting nothing; accepting even its own incapacity to attack; accepting its own lack of authority to accept; doubting its very right to doubt. We are grateful for this public experiment and demonstration; it has taught us much. We did not believe that rationalists were so utterly mad until they made it quite clear to us. We did not ourselves think that the mere denial of our dogmas could end in such dehumanised and demented anarchy. It might have taken the world a long time to understand that what it had been taught to dismiss as mediaeval theology was often mere common sense; although the very term common sense, or communis sententia, was a mediaeval conception. But it took the world very little time to understand that the talk on the other side was most uncommon nonsense. It was nonsense that could not be made the basis of any common system, such as has been founded upon common sense.
To take one example out of many; the whole question of Marriage has been turned into a question of Mood. The enemies of marriage did not have the patience to remain in their relatively strong position; that marriage could not be proved to be sacramental, and that some exceptions must be treated as exceptions, so long as it was merely social. They could not be content to say that it is not a sacrament but a contract, and that exceptional legal action might break a contract. They brought objections against it that would be quite as facile and quite as futile, if brought against any other contract. They said that a man is never in the same mood for ten minutes together; that he must not be asked to admire in a red daybreak what he admired in a yellow sunset; that no man can say he will even be the same man by the next month or the next minute; that new and nameless tortures may afflict him if his wife wears a different hat; or that he may plunge her into hell by putting on a pair of socks that does not harmonise with somebody else’s carpet. It is quite obvious that this sort of sensitive insanity applies as much to any other human relation as to this relation. A man cannot choose a profession; because, long before he has qualified as an architect, he may have mystically changed into an aviator, or been convulsed in rapid succession by the emotions of a ticket-collector, a trombone-player and a professional harpooner of whales. A man dare not buy a house for fear a fatal stranger with the wrong sort of socks should come into it; or for fear his own mind should be utterly changed in the matter of carpets or cornices. A man may suddenly decline to do any business with his own business partner; because he also, like the cruel husband, wears the wrong necktie. And I saw a serious printed appeal for sympathy for a wife, who deserted her family because her psychology was incompatible with an orange necktie. This is only one application, as I say; but it exactly illustrates how the sceptical principle is now applied; and how scepticism has recently changed from apparent sense to quite self-evident nonsense. The heresies not only decay but destroy themselves; in any case they perish without a blow.
Abbiamo naturalmente veduto proprio di recente la più drammatica uscita di grandi scienziati della materia dal campo del Materialismo. Fu Eddington, credo, a usare la frase secondo cui l’universo pare essere più simile a un grande pensiero che a una grande macchina: e il Dr. Whitney, come riportato, ha dichiarato che non vi è alcuna descrizione razionale del moto cosmico ultimo se non la Volontà di Dio. Ma è il perire delle altre cose, almeno tanto quanto la persistenza dell’unica cosa, che ci ha lasciati infine faccia a faccia con l’antica religione dei nostri padri. La cosa un tempo chiamata libero pensiero è giunta infine a minacciare tutto ciò che è libero. Nega la libertà personale nel negare il libero arbitrio e l’umano potere di scelta. Minaccia la libertà civica con una peste di ciarlatanerie igieniche e psicologiche; diffondendo sul paese una tale rete di sciocchezze pseudo-scientifiche quale i liberi cittadini non hanno mai ancora sopportato nella storia. È del tutto probabile che rovesci la libertà religiosa, in nome di qualche barbaro toccasana o l’altro, come quello che costituisce il rozzo e incolto credo della Russia. È perfettamente capace di imporre il silenzio e l’impotenza dall’esterno. Ma non vi è alcun dubbio di sorta che essa imponga il silenzio e l’impotenza dall’interno. L’intera sua tendenza, che cominciò come una spinta ed è finita in una deriva, è verso qualche forma della teoria per cui un uomo non può aiutarsi da sé; che un uomo non può correggersi da sé; e soprattutto, che un uomo non può liberarsi da sé. In tutti i suoi romanzi e nella maggior parte dei suoi articoli di giornale essa dà per scontato che gli uomini siano marchiati e fissati in certi tipi di anormalità di anarchica debolezza; che siano appuntati ed etichettati in un museo di moralità o di immoralità; o di quella sorta di amoralità che è più pedante dell’una e più porcina dell’altra. Ci viene praticamente detto che potremmo del pari bene chiedere a un fossile di riformare se stesso. Ci viene detto che stiamo chiedendo a un uccello impagliato di pentirsi. Siamo tutti morti, e l’unica consolazione è che siamo tutti classificati. Poiché, per questa filosofia, che è la stessa di quella delle più nere eresie puritane, siamo tutti morti prima ancora di nascere. Ma, come è Kismet senza Allah, così anche è Calvinismo senza Dio.
Gli agnostici saranno lieti di apprendere che è interamente dovuto alla loro propria energia e intraprendenza, alla loro propria attività nel perseguire le loro proprie buffonate, che il mondo si è finalmente stancato delle loro buffonate e gliel’ha detto. Noi abbiamo fatto assai poco contro di loro; non nobis, Domine; la gloria del loro finale rovesciamento è tutta loro. Abbiamo fatto assai meno di quanto avremmo dovuto fare, per spiegare tutto quell’equilibrio di sottigliezza e di sanità mentale che si intende con una civiltà cristiana. I nostri ringraziamenti sono dovuti a coloro che ci hanno così generosamente aiutati dandoci uno scorcio di ciò che potrebbe intendersi con una civiltà pagana. E ciò che si perde in quella società non è tanto la religione quanto la ragione; l’ordinaria comune luce diurna dell’istinto intellettuale che ha guidato i figli degli uomini. Un mondo in cui gli uomini sanno che la maggior parte di ciò che sanno è probabilmente falsa non può essere dignificato con il nome di mondo scettico; è semplicemente un mondo impotente e abietto, che non attacca nulla, ma accetta ogni cosa mentre non si fida di nulla; che accetta perfino la propria incapacità di attaccare; che accetta la propria mancanza di autorità per accettare; che dubita del proprio stesso diritto di dubitare. Siamo grati per questo pubblico esperimento e dimostrazione; ci ha insegnato molto. Non credevamo che i razionalisti fossero così del tutto pazzi finché non ce l’hanno reso perfettamente chiaro. Non pensavamo noi stessi che la mera negazione dei nostri dogmi potesse finire in una così disumanizzata e demente anarchia. Potrebbe aver richiesto al mondo un lungo tempo per comprendere che ciò che gli era stato insegnato a liquidare come teologia medievale era spesso mero senso comune; benché lo stesso termine senso comune, o communis sententia, fosse una concezione medievale. Ma al mondo occorse assai poco tempo per comprendere che i discorsi dall’altra parte erano il più insolito dei nonsensi. Era un nonsenso che non poteva essere reso la base di alcun sistema comune, quale è stato fondato sul senso comune.
Per prendere un esempio fra i molti; l’intera questione del Matrimonio è stata trasformata in una questione di Umore. I nemici del matrimonio non ebbero la pazienza di rimanere nella loro posizione relativamente forte; che il matrimonio non poteva essere provato essere sacramentale, e che alcune eccezioni dovevano essere trattate come eccezioni, fintanto che esso era meramente sociale. Non seppero accontentarsi di dire che non è un sacramento ma un contratto, e che un’azione legale eccezionale potrebbe rompere un contratto. Portarono contro di esso obiezioni che sarebbero altrettanto facili e altrettanto futili, se portate contro qualunque altro contratto. Dissero che un uomo non è mai nello stesso umore per dieci minuti di seguito; che non gli si deve chiedere di ammirare in un’alba rossa ciò che ammirava in un tramonto giallo; che nessun uomo può dire che sarà perfino lo stesso uomo il mese prossimo o il minuto prossimo; che nuove e innominate torture possono affliggerlo se sua moglie indossa un cappello diverso; o che egli può precipitarla nell’inferno mettendosi un paio di calze che non si armonizzano con il tappeto di qualcun altro. È del tutto ovvio che questa sorta di sensibile follia si applica tanto a qualunque altra relazione umana quanto a questa relazione. Un uomo non può scegliere una professione; perché, molto prima di essersi qualificato come architetto, egli può essersi misticamente trasformato in aviatore, o essere stato convulso in rapida successione dalle emozioni di un bigliettaio, di un suonatore di trombone e di un professionale arpionatore di balene. Un uomo non osa comprare una casa per paura che un fatale estraneo con il tipo sbagliato di calze vi entri; o per paura che la sua propria mente muti del tutto in fatto di tappeti o di cornici. Un uomo può d’un tratto rifiutarsi di fare affari con il proprio socio d’affari; perché anche lui, come il marito crudele, porta la cravatta sbagliata. E ho visto un serio appello a stampa che chiedeva comprensione per una moglie, la quale abbandonò la propria famiglia perché la sua psicologia era incompatibile con una cravatta arancione. Questa è soltanto un’applicazione, come dico; ma illustra esattamente come il principio scettico venga ora applicato; e come lo scetticismo sia recentemente passato dall’apparente senno a un nonsenso del tutto auto-evidente. Le eresie non solo decadono ma distruggono se stesse; in ogni caso periscono senza un colpo.
For the reply, not merely of religion but of reason and the rooted sanity of mankind, is obvious enough. “If you feel like that, why certainly you will not found families; or found anything else. You will not build houses; you will not make partnerships; you will not in any fashion do the business of the world. You will never plant a tree, lest you wish next week you had planted it somewhere else; you will never put a potato into a pot or stew, because it will be too late to take it out again; your whole mood is stricken and riddled with cowardice and sterility; your whole way of attacking any problem is to think of excuses for not attacking it at all. Very well; so be it; the Lord be with you. You may be respected for being sincere; you may be pitied for being sensitive; you may retain some of the corrective qualities which make it useful on occasion to be sceptical. But if you are too sceptical to do these things, you must stand out of the way of those who can do them; you must hand over the world to those who believe that the world is workable; to those who believe that men can make houses, make partnerships, make appointments, make promises—and keep them. And if it is necessary in order to keep a promise or boil a potato or behave like a human being, to believe in God making Man, in God being made Man, or in God made Man coming in the clouds in glory— well, then you must at least give a chance to these credulous fanatics who can believe the one and who can do the other.” That is what I mean by the spiritual Survival of the Fittest. That is why the old phrase, which is probably a mistake in natural history, is a truth in supernatural history. The organic thing called religion has in fact the organs that take hold on life. It can feed where the fastidious doubter finds no food; it can reproduce where, the solitary sceptic boasts of being barren. It may be accepting a miracle to believe in free will; but it is accepting madness, sooner or later, to disbelieve in it. It may be a wild risk to make a vow; but it is a quiet, crawling and inevitable ruin to refuse to make a vow. It may be incredible that one creed is the truth and the others are relatively false; but it is not only incredible, but also intolerable, that there is no truth either in or out of creeds, and all are equally false. For nobody can ever set anything right, if everybody is equally wrong. The intense interest of the moment is that the Man of Science, the hero of the modern world and the latest of the great servants of humanity, has suddenly and dramatically refused to have anything more to do with this dreary business of nibbling negation, and blind scratching and scraping away of the very foundations of the mastery of man. For the work of the sceptic for the past hundred years has indeed been very like the fruitless fury of some primeval monster; eyeless, mindless, merely destructive and devouring; a giant worm wasting away a world that he could not even see; a benighted and bestial life, unconscious of its own cause and of its own consequences. But Man has taken to himself again his own weapons; will and worship and reason and the vision of the plan in things; and we are once more in the morning of the world.
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Perché la replica, non solo della religione ma della ragione e della radicata sanità del genere umano, è abbastanza ovvia. “Se la pensi così, allora di certo non fonderai famiglie; né fonderai alcunché d’altro. Non costruirai case; non stringerai società; non farai in alcun modo gli affari del mondo. Non pianterai mai un albero, per timore di desiderare, la settimana dopo, d’averlo piantato altrove; non metterai mai una patata in pentola a lessare o a stufare, perché sarà troppo tardi per tirarla fuori; tutto il tuo umore è colpito e crivellato di viltà e sterilità; il tuo modo di affrontare qualsiasi problema è cercare scuse per non affrontarlo affatto. Benissimo; e sia così; il Signore sia con te. Potrai essere rispettato per la tua sincerità; potrai essere compatito per la tua sensibilità; potrai conservare qualcuna di quelle qualità correttive che rendono utile, all’occasione, essere scettici. Ma se sei troppo scettico per fare queste cose, devi farti da parte davanti a chi le sa fare; devi consegnare il mondo a coloro che credono che il mondo sia governabile; a coloro che credono che gli uomini possano costruire case, stringere società, fissare appuntamenti, fare promesse — e mantenerle. E se è necessario, per mantenere una promessa o lessare una patata o comportarsi da essere umano, credere in Dio che fa l’Uomo, in Dio fatto Uomo, o in Dio fatto Uomo che viene sulle nuvole nella gloria — ebbene, allora devi almeno dare una possibilità a questi creduli fanatici che sanno credere l’uno e sanno fare l’altro.” È questo che intendo per Sopravvivenza spirituale del Più Adatto. È per questo che la vecchia frase, che è probabilmente un errore nella storia naturale, è una verità nella soprannaturale storia. La cosa organica chiamata religione ha di fatto gli organi che afferrano la vita. Può nutrirsi là dove lo scrupoloso dubbioso non trova cibo; può riprodursi là dove lo scettico solitario si vanta di essere sterile. Sarà pure accettare un miracolo credere nel libero arbitrio; ma è accettare la follia, presto o tardi, non crederci. Sarà pure un folle rischio fare un voto; ma è una quieta, strisciante e inevitabile rovina rifiutarsi di farne uno. Sarà pure incredibile che un credo solo sia la verità e gli altri siano relativamente falsi; ma non è solo incredibile, bensì anche intollerabile, che non vi sia alcuna verità né dentro né fuori dei credi, e che tutti siano ugualmente falsi. Perché nessuno potrà mai raddrizzare alcunché, se tutti hanno ugualmente torto. L’intenso interesse del momento è che l’Uomo di Scienza, l’eroe del mondo moderno e l’ultimo dei grandi servitori dell’umanità, ha d’un tratto e drammaticamente rifiutato d’avere ancora a che fare con questa tetra faccenda del rosicchiare negazioni, del cieco grattare e raschiar via le fondamenta stesse del dominio dell’uomo. Perché l’opera dello scettico nell’ultimo centinaio d’anni è stata davvero molto simile alla sterile furia di qualche primordiale mostro; senz’occhi, senza mente, meramente distruttivo e divorante; un verme gigantesco che consuma un mondo che nemmeno riusciva a vedere; una vita ottenebrata e bestiale, inconsapevole della propria causa e delle proprie conseguenze. Ma l’Uomo ha ripreso a sé le proprie armi; la volontà e l’adorazione e la ragione e la visione del disegno nelle cose; e siamo ancora una volta nel mattino del mondo.
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THE REACTION OF THE INTELLECTUALS
I HAVE been asked if I think there is a reaction against the tendencies called “ultra-modern” and in favour of many things blasted by the term, “Victorian” and “virtuous” and “respectable,” and other wild and wicked words. I answer that there is a reaction, and I am glad of it; but it is a reaction of a very peculiar kind. It is not what I expected. It is not even particularly what I wanted. But anything is a relief from the desolate dullness and staleness of the Bright Young Thing.
First, it will clear the human mind (and save the advanced mind from many disappointments) if we realise that there always can be a reaction, right or wrong, against anything, good or bad. Life is far too complex not to leave some desirable or defensible things behind with every movement it makes. We have reactions in favour of things much more remote than Victorianism. I always remember a confident and contemptuous phrase in one of Macaulay’s speeches for the Reform Bill, which abolished Rotten Boroughs. “There has been no reaction. There will be no reaction. I no more expect a reaction in favour of Gatton and Old Sarum than a reaction in favour of Odin and Thor.” I will not discuss whether there is a reaction in favour of Gatton and Old Sarum; there most certainly is a reaction against Reform Bills and Representative Government. But what amuses me is that, even while Macaulay said the words, there was beginning a most unmistakable reaction in favour of Odin and Thor. Carlyle already had pen in hand and his Northern genius was slowly turning into Nordic insanity. He was already telling us to go back to the stark Scandinavian beginnings. A little while afterwards Nietzsche took the next step by throwing over Christian ethics as well as theology, and invoking the old gods of violence and war. And it ended with a great German General (who had led through the Great War and might have had enough of it) actually filling Germany with pagan propaganda and a publicity campaign in favour of Odin and Thor. So much for reactions in general. The most modern art finds the Ancient Greeks too modern and goes back to the Ancient Egyptians. We revive Primitive Art and may revive Prehistoric Art. We may paint on rock with red ochre, for all I know, or discover special qualities in stone hatchets and flint arrows.
There is a reaction; but that would not alone prove that the reaction is right. I think it is right; because it is a reaction in favour of civilisation; and against the destruction of civilisation. But with that word “civilisation” we come to the rather curious quality which this particular reaction shows. It is not, as I myself might have hoped or expected, a revolt of plain, old-fashioned people against the sophisticated. It is a revolt of the sophisticated. It is, at any rate, a revolt of the highly civilised; perhaps of the over-civilised. But if they are over-civilised, they are still highly intelligent. That is why they are kicking the Bright Young Thing down the street.
I will take one particular case which is rather a parable. Some time ago all the fine old English critics, Constant Readers and Conservative people generally, were in a ferment of fury and mockery against the impudent innovations of “the Sitwells”; that is, the three poets of that family. They were a proof that being modern means going mad. They were the very latest and loudest anarchists, destroying both rhyme and reason. I will not discuss their merits here. When Miss Sitwell accused the Dawn of “creaking,” there were discussions as to her meaning. Her foes said it was random nonsense, like describing the sun as sneezing or the grass as blowing its nose. Her friends said it was a bold and novel way of suggesting something harsh and reluctant about the cold morning light. But everybody agreed that it was the very latest and newest experiment, whether in liberty or in lunacy. The Sitwells were accused of beating the big drum, or blowing their own trumpet; but it was agreed that their drums and trumpets were the newest musical instruments of the queerest shape; and that they used the newest methods of shrieking for what they wanted. But what did they want?
Now, what the Sitwells want is Victorianism. What they do definitely desire, demand and incessantly describe, is a reaction to Victorian habits; to Victorian manners; and even to Victorian morals. As certainly as Shelley wanted a lot of wind and light and the rise of the pure pagan republic, as surely as Walt Whitman wanted democratic breadth and a sort of bodily brotherhood among men out-of-doors, so certainly what the Sitwells want is Victorian flower-beds and hot-houses, Victorian coloured patchwork and curios under glass; and, in no small degree, Victorian etiquette, distance and dignity. This may be a fad but it is a fact; and it is a fact that vividly illustrates the real revolt against recent moral, or immoral, tendencies. The Victorian revolt is not a revolt of Victorians. It is a revolt of Post-Victorians or rather of Post-Post-Victorians. They are going back to something remote, as much as the Pre-Raphaelites in going back to the Middle Ages. In both cases the reason is the same; because the modern ages have become too unbearably stupid for intelligent people. But the more modern case is the more acute case of this revolt against modernity among the moderns. To understand it, we must take a more general view of the singular situation in the world to-day.
Those specially called the Moderns, who are now most of them Ancients, conceived of human history as a progress in the sense of a procession. That is, they said that some slower people might bring up the rear, but all were moving onward. They also supposed that certain bold spirits, whom they called the Pioneers of Progress, went on in front and made a path for mankind. I have a great admiration for Walt Whitman; but it cannot be denied that he did exclaim, in a moment of weakness, “Pioneers, 0 Pioneers!” It was characteristic of all that world; first, that it relied upon a metaphor; and second, that it got the metaphor quite wrong. Whitman seems to associate his intellectual pioneers with the practical pioneers of the American Civil War. But a pioneer is not a person who leads the army, or decides where it shall go. The pioneers in front are as much under orders as any camp-followers in the rear. If Sherman had thrown out pioneers to clear his road to Atlanta; and if the pioneers had seen a futuristic vision and gone off to found the future city of Oklahoma, Sherman would have been very much surprised; nay, vexed. And the moral is that the marching column of mankind must have some kind of notion of where it wants to go, before it can decide whether a pioneer is a useful pioneer or not.
LA REAZIONE DEGLI INTELLETTUALI
MI È STATO chiesto se io pensi che vi sia una reazione contro le tendenze chiamate «ultramoderne» e in favore di molte cose colpite dai termini «vittoriano» e «virtuoso» e «rispettabile», e da altre selvagge e malvagie parole. Rispondo che una reazione c’è, e ne sono contento; ma è una reazione di specie assai peculiare. Non è quella che mi aspettavo. Non è nemmeno particolarmente ciò che volevo. Ma qualunque cosa è un sollievo dalla desolata monotonia e stantìezza del Bright Young Thing.
Anzitutto, chiarirà la mente umana (e risparmierà alla mente avanzata molte delusioni) se ci rendiamo conto che vi può sempre essere una reazione, giusta o sbagliata, contro qualunque cosa, buona o cattiva. La vita è di gran lunga troppo complessa per non lasciarsi dietro qualche cosa desiderabile o difendibile a ogni movimento che compie. Abbiamo reazioni in favore di cose assai più remote del vittorianesimo. Ricordo sempre una frase sicura e sprezzante in uno dei discorsi di Macaulay per il Reform Bill, che abolì i Borghi Putridi. «Non vi è stata alcuna reazione. Non vi sarà alcuna reazione. Non mi aspetto una reazione in favore di Gatton e Old Sarum più di quanto mi aspetti una reazione in favore di Odino e Thor». Non discuterò se vi sia una reazione in favore di Gatton e Old Sarum; vi è di certo una reazione contro i Reform Bill e il Governo Rappresentativo. Ma ciò che mi diverte è che, perfino mentre Macaulay pronunciava quelle parole, stava cominciando una reazione più che inequivocabile in favore di Odino e Thor. Carlyle aveva già la penna in mano e il suo genio nordico si stava lentamente mutando in follia nordica. Egli ci stava già dicendo di tornare agli spogli inizi scandinavi. Poco dopo Nietzsche fece il passo successivo, gettando a mare l’etica cristiana oltre che la teologia, e invocando gli antichi dèi della violenza e della guerra. E finì con un grande Generale tedesco (che aveva comandato attraverso la Grande Guerra e avrebbe potuto averne abbastanza) che effettivamente riempiva la Germania di propaganda pagana e di una campagna pubblicitaria in favore di Odino e Thor. Tanto basti sulle reazioni in generale. L’arte più moderna trova gli Antichi Greci troppo moderni e torna agli Antichi Egizi. Facciamo rivivere l’Arte Primitiva e potremmo far rivivere l’Arte Preistorica. Potremmo dipingere sulla roccia con l’ocra rossa, per quel che ne so, o scoprire qualità speciali nelle asce di pietra e nelle frecce di selce.
Vi è una reazione; ma ciò non proverebbe da solo che la reazione sia giusta. Io penso che sia giusta; perché è una reazione in favore della civiltà; e contro la distruzione della civiltà. Ma con quella parola «civiltà» giungiamo alla qualità piuttosto curiosa che questa particolare reazione mostra. Non è, come io stesso avrei potuto sperare o aspettarmi, una rivolta di gente semplice e all’antica contro i sofisticati. È una rivolta dei sofisticati. È, in ogni caso, una rivolta degli altamente civilizzati; forse degli ipercivilizzati. Ma se sono ipercivilizzati, sono pur sempre altamente intelligenti. Ecco perché stanno prendendo a calci il Bright Young Thing giù per la strada.
Prenderò un caso particolare che è piuttosto una parabola. Qualche tempo fa tutti i fini vecchi critici inglesi, i Lettori Assidui e le persone Conservatrici in generale, erano in un fermento di furore e di scherno contro le impudenti innovazioni dei «Sitwell»; cioè, i tre poeti di quella famiglia. Essi erano una prova che essere moderni significa impazzire. Erano gli anarchici più recenti e più rumorosi, che distruggevano sia la rima sia la ragione. Non discuterò qui i loro meriti. Quando la signorina Sitwell accusò l’Alba di «scricchiolare», vi furono discussioni sul suo significato. I suoi nemici dissero che era un nonsenso casuale, come descrivere il sole che starnutisce o l’erba che si soffia il naso. I suoi amici dissero che era un modo audace e nuovo di suggerire qualcosa di aspro e riluttante nella fredda luce del mattino. Ma tutti concordavano che era l’esperimento più recente e più nuovo, sia nella libertà sia nella follia. I Sitwell furono accusati di battere la grancassa, o di soffiare nella loro propria tromba; ma si conveniva che i loro tamburi e le loro trombe erano i più nuovi strumenti musicali della forma più bizzarra; e che usavano i più nuovi metodi di strillare per ciò che volevano. Ma che cosa volevano?
Ora, ciò che i Sitwell vogliono è il vittorianesimo. Ciò che essi definitamente desiderano, esigono e incessantemente descrivono, è una reazione verso le abitudini vittoriane; verso le maniere vittoriane; e perfino verso la morale vittoriana. Con la stessa certezza con cui Shelley voleva una gran quantità di vento e di luce e il sorgere della pura repubblica pagana, con la stessa sicurezza con cui Walt Whitman voleva un’ampiezza democratica e una sorta di fratellanza corporea tra gli uomini all’aperto, così di certo ciò che i Sitwell vogliono sono le aiuole e le serre vittoriane, il colorato patchwork vittoriano e le curiosità sotto vetro; e, in non piccola misura, l’etichetta, la distanza e la dignità vittoriane. Questo può essere una fisima ma è un fatto; ed è un fatto che illustra vividamente la reale rivolta contro le recenti tendenze morali, o immorali. La rivolta vittoriana non è una rivolta di Vittoriani. È una rivolta di Post-Vittoriani o piuttosto di Post-Post-Vittoriani. Essi stanno tornando a qualcosa di remoto, tanto quanto i Preraffaelliti nel tornare al Medioevo. In entrambi i casi la ragione è la stessa; perché le età moderne sono divenute troppo insopportabilmente stupide per le persone intelligenti. Ma il caso più moderno è il caso più acuto di questa rivolta contro la modernità fra i moderni. Per comprenderlo, dobbiamo prendere una veduta più generale della singolare situazione nel mondo di oggi.
Coloro che erano chiamati in modo speciale i Moderni, che ora sono per la maggior parte degli Antichi, concepivano la storia umana come un progresso nel senso di una processione. Cioè, dicevano che alcune persone più lente potessero portare la retroguardia, ma che tutte si muovevano in avanti. Supponevano inoltre che certi spiriti audaci, che essi chiamavano i Pionieri del Progresso, andassero avanti in testa e aprissero un sentiero per l’umanità. Nutro una grande ammirazione per Walt Whitman; ma non si può negare che egli esclamasse, in un momento di debolezza: «Pionieri, o Pionieri!». Era caratteristico di tutto quel mondo; primo, che si affidava a una metafora; e secondo, che sbagliava del tutto la metafora. Whitman pare associare i suoi pionieri intellettuali ai pionieri pratici della Guerra Civile Americana. Ma un pioniere non è una persona che guida l’esercito, o che decide dove esso debba andare. I pionieri in avanti sono soggetti agli ordini tanto quanto qualunque saccheggiatore al seguito nella retroguardia. Se Sherman avesse mandato avanti dei pionieri a sgombrare la sua strada verso Atlanta; e se i pionieri avessero avuto una visione futuristica e se ne fossero andati a fondare la futura città di Oklahoma, Sherman sarebbe stato assai sorpreso; anzi, contrariato. E la morale è che la colonna in marcia dell’umanità deve avere una qualche nozione di dove voglia andare, prima di poter decidere se un pioniere sia un pioniere utile o no.
Now, at this moment, the marching column of mankind is in an extraordinary position. For one thing, it is not marching. But it is marking time; because it still has the general notion that it ought to march. It may seem quaint to recur to Macaulay as well as Whitman; but it is better described in Macaulay’s poem of Horatius than in Whitman’s poem about the Pioneers; though to many, I fear, Whitman is now as distant as Macaulay. But it is really true that the exact and very extraordinary position of the procession at this moment is expressed with precision in the familiar lines:
“And those behind cried ‘Forward!’ And those before cried ‘Back!’”
The camp-followers may be charging; but the pioneers are retreating. In other words, it is exactly the sort of bold and enquiring spirits, who were always said to be in advance of the age, who are now most doubtful about the desirability of advancing. It is exactly those who are content to follow tradition or convention or familiar fashions who are still following (as they suppose, at least) the tradition of progress, the convention of movement and the hundred fashions, familiar to the nineteenth-century, of appealing to the hope of change. Men are progressive because they are a little behind the times. They are reactionary because they are a little in advance of the times. It sounds like a paradox; but it is really a very practical and even inevitable state of things, given certain conditions. Those behind will still cry “Forward!”; and only those far in front will cry “Back!”; when the vanguard of the army has come suddenly to the edge of a precipice.
In short, I maintain that it is the Intellectuals (for want of a more intellectual term) who have now suddenly discovered the dangers of mere novelty, of mere anarchy, of mere negation. It is not all the Intellectuals, of course; and certainly not those who modestly gave themselves that name in the middle of the nineteenth-century. For these, by the ironic operation of their own favourite argument, are now old and venerable and established and respected; and, therefore, of no importance whatever. Men like Bertrand Russell, and H. G. Wells, are left behind by the advance; and are, therefore, under the illusion that it is still advancing. The particular state of mind I mean (which is not always a very pretty state of mind at present) is peculiar to a section of the younger Intellectuals. And, whatever it is, it is not a positive faith in the promise of the future or the tendencies of the present. If we take any typical contemporary poetry of the sort that is sensitive and critical, say the poems of Mr. Osbert Sitwell, it is quite obvious that they are not merely in revolt against the nineteenth-century; though the progressive theory was bound up with the nineteenth-century. They are in revolt against the twentieth-century; and potentially more in revolt against the twenty-first.
But the point is that it is because they are so very Modern that they have rebelled against Modernism. It is because they have themselves seen all the new tricks, and in many cases played all the new tricks, that they have realised before anybody else that the whole bag of tricks may soon be played out. Mr. Humbert Wolfe may be justified in beginning every line with a small letter; indeed, in that he is classical rather than revolutionary; for the old Latin texts were always printed so. But he is far too intelligent a man not to see that those who would prove themselves progressive, by abandoning all capital letters, can only prove themselves still more progressive by abandoning all small letters; and that this sort of destructive reform can only end in a blank page. So this kind of destructive progress ends in a blank wall. Mr. Sitwell may think himself right, in this or that case, in attaching a musical adjective to an entirely visual or pictorial substantive. But he can see, as well as anybody else, that if a hundred howling imitators come in and claim the right to attach any adjective to any substantive, it is not so much a question of literature being lawless as of its ceasing to be anything at all. And we see more and more every day, this curious sort of new alarm spreading among the most intelligent of the new schools’ which is almost unintelligible to many of the old schools; and especially to that very old school which supposes that the young have no business to be anything but reckless and revolutionary.
I will take the case of two of the most acute and individual among contemporary writers, one probably younger than the other, at least in fashion and fame; one American and the other English, and the inheritor ot a name already famous for a very English style I will take the cases of Mr. T. S. Eliot and Mr Aldous Huxley. They are different enough of course; but they exactly express two different ways of recoiling from the recent riot and vulgarity of the merely “modern” world. Mr. Eliot, who began like a child of his age with the recognised stark and jagged experiments in free verse, has come to have something like a suspicion of every sort of freedom. He had come to stand for an almost cloistered refinement, full of the virginal traditions of old religion and repudiating not only the demagogy of to-day but even the democracy of yesterday. There are passages in the works of Mr. Aldous Huxley which few will call cloistered, which few, perhaps, will call virginal. But he is none the less a representative ol the same reaction against recent vulgarity and vice. Only he reacts more in the manner of Swift; showing the ugly their own ugliness; even pelting the filthy with samples of their own filth. But he is, if not on the side of the angels, at least horribly bored with the devils. Anyone who will read his admirable account of Hollywood, which he calls, “The City of Dreadful Joy,” will find it more dreadful than joyful. There is a fight against the recent licence; but what is fighting it is a sort of fierce fastidiousness. I am not imagining this reaction because I want it; for, indeed, it is not especially the reaction that I want. I should have hoped for a popular revolt against perversions and pedantries of vice, which have never, in fact, been popular. I should have liked the ordinary, old-fashioned, obstinate people, who still stick to the notion of some connection between themselves and their own babies, to rise and bash in the heads of the inhuman prigs whose ideal is a sort of prophetic infanticide. I should like a howling rabble of really respectable people (and the rabble is still really respectable) to burn down the houses where Luxury takes on its true Latin sense of Luxuria. I should like the normal people, who live on beef and beer, to make war on the hypocritical cranks who take their vegetarianism in the form of vegetable cocktails less wholesome than the fruit of the vine. I should prefer the Intellectuals to be slaughtered by what may be called the Morals; and the mob is still very moral. But the great point is that they should be slaughtered; if not by the clubs of the crowd, then by the rapier of the more intellectual Intellectual. God moves in a mysterious way and does not disdain the strangest or the humblest instruments; and we must not be ashamed of finding ourselves, if necessary, on the side of the cultivated and the clever.
Ora, in questo preciso momento, la colonna in marcia dell’umanità si trova in una posizione straordinaria. Anzitutto, non sta marciando. Ma segna il passo; perché conserva ancora l’idea generale di dover marciare. Potrà sembrare bizzarro ricorrere a Macaulay oltre che a Whitman; ma la cosa è descritta meglio nel poema di Macaulay su Orazio che in quello di Whitman sui Pionieri; per quanto per molti, temo, Whitman sia ormai lontano quanto Macaulay. Ma è davvero vero che la posizione esatta e assai straordinaria della processione in questo momento è espressa con precisione nei versi ben noti:
«E quelli dietro gridavano “Avanti!” E quelli davanti gridavano “Indietro!”»
I seguaci al campo forse caricano; ma i pionieri arretrano. In altre parole, sono proprio quegli spiriti arditi e indagatori, che si dicevano da sempre in anticipo sull’epoca, a essere ora i più dubbiosi sull’opportunità di avanzare. Sono proprio coloro che si accontentano di seguire la tradizione o la convenzione o le mode familiari a seguire ancora (o così almeno suppongono) la tradizione del progresso, la convenzione del movimento e le cento mode, familiari all’Ottocento, dell’appellarsi alla speranza del cambiamento. Gli uomini sono progressisti perché un poco arretrati rispetto ai tempi. Sono reazionari perché un poco in anticipo sui tempi. Suona come un paradosso; ma è in realtà uno stato di cose molto pratico e persino inevitabile, date certe condizioni. Quelli dietro grideranno ancora «Avanti!»; e solo quelli molto avanti grideranno «Indietro!»; quando l’avanguardia dell’esercito sarà giunta d’improvviso sull’orlo di un precipizio.
In breve, sostengo che sono gli Intellettuali (per mancanza di un termine più intellettuale) ad avere ora d’improvviso scoperto i pericoli della mera novità, della mera anarchia, della mera negazione. Non tutti gli Intellettuali, s’intende; e certamente non quelli che modestamente si diedero quel nome a metà dell’Ottocento. Costoro, infatti, per l’ironico operare del loro argomento prediletto, sono ora vecchi e venerabili e affermati e rispettati; e perciò del tutto privi d’importanza. Uomini come Bertrand Russell e H. G. Wells sono lasciati indietro dall’avanzata; e vivono perciò nell’illusione che essa stia ancora avanzando. Il particolare stato d’animo che intendo (che al presente non è sempre uno stato d’animo troppo bello) è peculiare a una sezione dei più giovani Intellettuali. E, qualunque cosa sia, non è una positiva fede nella promessa del futuro o nelle tendenze del presente. Se prendiamo una qualsiasi tipica poesia contemporanea del genere sensibile e critico, poniamo le poesie del signor Osbert Sitwell, è del tutto evidente che esse non sono soltanto in rivolta contro l’Ottocento; benché la teoria progressista fosse legata all’Ottocento. Esse sono in rivolta contro il Novecento; e potenzialmente ancora più in rivolta contro il secolo ventunesimo.
Ma il punto è che è proprio perché sono così Moderni che si sono ribellati al Modernismo. È perché essi stessi hanno visto tutti i nuovi trucchi, e in molti casi giocato tutti i nuovi trucchi, che hanno compreso prima di chiunque altro che l’intero repertorio di trucchi potrà presto esaurirsi. Il signor Humbert Wolfe potrà avere ragione di cominciare ogni verso con una lettera minuscola; anzi, in ciò è classico piuttosto che rivoluzionario; giacché gli antichi testi latini si stampavano sempre così. Ma è un uomo troppo intelligente per non vedere che coloro i quali vorrebbero dimostrarsi progressisti, abbandonando tutte le maiuscole, possono solo dimostrarsi ancor più progressisti abbandonando tutte le minuscole; e che questa sorta di riforma distruttiva non può che finire in una pagina bianca. Così questa specie di progresso distruttivo finisce contro un muro cieco. Il signor Sitwell potrà ritenersi nel giusto, in questo o quel caso, nell’attaccare un aggettivo musicale a un sostantivo interamente visivo o pittorico. Ma egli sa vedere, bene quanto chiunque altro, che se cento ululanti imitatori sopraggiungono e rivendicano il diritto di attaccare qualsiasi aggettivo a qualsiasi sostantivo, non si tratta tanto di una letteratura divenuta senza legge quanto di una letteratura che cessa di essere alcunché. E vediamo ogni giorno di più questa curiosa specie di nuovo allarme diffondersi tra i più intelligenti delle nuove scuole, quasi inintelligibile a molti delle vecchie scuole; e specialmente a quella vecchissima scuola che suppone che i giovani non abbiano altro compito che essere temerari e rivoluzionari.
Prenderò il caso di due tra gli scrittori contemporanei più acuti e individuali, uno probabilmente più giovane dell’altro, almeno per moda e fama; uno americano e l’altro inglese, ed erede di un nome già celebre per uno stile assai inglese. Prenderò i casi del signor T. S. Eliot e del signor Aldous Huxley. Sono abbastanza diversi, s’intende; ma esprimono esattamente due diversi modi di ritrarsi dal recente tumulto e dalla volgarità del mondo meramente «moderno». Il signor Eliot, che cominciò come un figlio del suo tempo con i riconosciuti esperimenti nudi e frastagliati del verso libero, è giunto ad avere qualcosa come un sospetto verso ogni sorta di libertà. È giunto a rappresentare una raffinatezza quasi claustrale, colma delle verginali tradizioni dell’antica religione e ripudiante non solo la demagogia d’oggi ma persino la democrazia di ieri. Vi sono passi nelle opere del signor Aldous Huxley che pochi diranno claustrali, e che pochi, forse, diranno verginali. Ma egli non è meno un rappresentante della medesima reazione contro la recente volgarità e il recente vizio. Solo che reagisce più alla maniera di Swift; mostrando ai turpi la loro turpitudine; anzi bersagliando gli immondi con campioni della loro stessa immondizia. Ma egli è, se non dalla parte degli angeli, almeno orribilmente annoiato dai diavoli. Chiunque legga il suo mirabile resoconto di Hollywood, che egli chiama «La Città della Gioia Tremenda», lo troverà più tremendo che gioioso. Vi è una lotta contro la recente licenza; ma ciò che la combatte è una sorta di feroce schizzinosità. Non sto immaginando questa reazione perché la desidero; ché, in verità, non è propriamente la reazione che desidero. Avrei sperato in una rivolta popolare contro le perversioni e le pedanterie del vizio, che non sono mai state, di fatto, popolari. Mi sarebbe piaciuto che la gente comune, all’antica, ostinata, che ancora si attiene all’idea di qualche legame tra sé e i propri figli, insorgesse e sfondasse le teste degli inumani saccenti il cui ideale è una sorta di profetico infanticidio. Vorrei che un’urlante plebaglia di persone davvero rispettabili (e la plebaglia è ancora davvero rispettabile) desse alle fiamme le case dove il Lusso assume il suo vero senso latino di Luxuria. Vorrei che la gente normale, che vive di manzo e di birra, muovesse guerra agli ipocriti maniaci che prendono il loro vegetarianismo sotto forma di cocktail vegetali meno salubri del frutto della vite. Preferirei che gli Intellettuali fossero trucidati da ciò che si può chiamare la Morale; e la folla è ancora molto morale. Ma il gran punto è che siano trucidati; se non dai randelli della folla, allora dallo stocco dell’Intellettuale più intellettuale. Dio si muove per vie misteriose e non disdegna gli strumenti più strani o più umili; e non dobbiamo vergognarci di trovarci, se necessario, dalla parte dei colti e degli ingegnosi.
Or again, it might have been that picturesque paradox; a revolt of the old against the young. It might have been a rebellion of oppressed parents breaking the yoke of servile obedience now laid on them by their tyrannical sons and daughters. It might have been the heavy father breaking out of the coal-cellar with the original big stick, or the maiden aunt emerging from the bedroom armed with the poker; and the joyous spectacle of their smashing the gramophones and the saxophones and the ukuleles, hurling away the cocktails, wrecking the racing cars and generally showing that there is life in the old dog yet. But, as a fact, it does not seem to be coming through the fury of the father or the grandfather but rather with the slowly maturing disgust of the great-grandson with the manifest idiocy of the grandson.
It is not coming by the big stick or the cudgels of the populace; but by something which I have compared to a rapier; and might compare to a razor. Some young men of the school of Mr. Aldous Huxley have, indeed, a touch of pessimism that is only too suggestive of a razor; at once the symbol of elegance and of suicide. And yet there is a broader sense in which this is, perhaps, rather too true. When the Victorians rebuked little boys for playing with razors or rapiers, or such acute instruments and arguments ensued, the elders often used a proverbial expression here very relevant: “If you get so sharp as that, you will cut yourself” The minority of the most intelligent, in the younger generation, has really become very sharp; and it has really discovered the peril of cutting itself. Men like Mr. Huxley and Mr. Eliot have the sense to see that the half-truths of the sceptic are not only edged tools, but double-edged tools. They cut the ground from under rationalism as well as from under religion; they can be used to wound democracy as easily as despotism; in the last resort they can inoculate the mind with doubts about doubt itself. More and more the really clever young man will find that he has grown sharp enough to cut himself; and, if he does not try something beyond scepticism, he will grow sceptical enough to cut his throat.
Lastly, why do I think this small minority of rather fastidious and over-refined persons will finally have an effect? I answer, with a profound sigh, because of the great social institution which we call Snobbery. As soon as the quite brainless mob of Bright Young Things discovers that it is really being despised, as a mob of dull old things (though it were only by two well-educated minor poets) there will be a panic. The mass of the immoralists never believed in immorality or in anything else. They never really thought that wrong was right, because they never really thought at all. They merely believed what they were told; that being lawless was the latest thing. If once they hear that there is something later still, even later than the latest, they will rush for it and roll in the mud in front of it, though it were a Hermit out of the desert like St. Anthony. If it is a humorous, but slightly superior young man, who regards all their vulgar and raucous games as vieux jeu, and will only condescend to talk about Humanism and St. Thomas Aquinas, they will grovel before him. I know them. They play the goat; but they none the less do it like sheep. For they are sheep that have not a shepherd, and the shepherd named Pan is dead.
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Oppure, ancora, avrebbe potuto essere quel pittoresco paradosso; una rivolta dei vecchi contro i giovani. Avrebbe potuto essere una ribellione di genitori oppressi che spezzano il giogo di servile obbedienza ora imposto loro dai tirannici figli e figlie. Avrebbe potuto essere il padre severo che sbuca dalla carbonaia con l’originario grosso bastone, o la zia zitella che emerge dalla camera da letto armata di attizzatoio; e il gioioso spettacolo di loro che fracassano i grammofoni e i sassofoni e le ukulele, scagliano via i cocktail, sfasciano le auto da corsa e in generale mostrano che c’è ancora vita nel vecchio cane. Ma, di fatto, non sembra che venga attraverso la furia del padre o del nonno, bensì piuttosto con il lentamente maturante disgusto del pronipote per la manifesta idiozia del nipote.
Non viene attraverso il grosso bastone o i randelli della plebe; ma attraverso qualcosa che ho paragonato a uno stocco; e potrei paragonare a un rasoio. Certi giovani della scuola del signor Aldous Huxley hanno, in verità, un tocco di pessimismo fin troppo suggestivo di un rasoio; insieme simbolo di eleganza e di suicidio. Eppure vi è un senso più ampio in cui questo è, forse, fin troppo vero. Quando i vittoriani rimproveravano i ragazzini che giocavano coi rasoi o con gli stocchi, o con simili strumenti taglienti, e ne seguivano acuti argomenti, gli anziani usavano spesso un’espressione proverbiale qui assai pertinente: “Se diventi così affilato, ti taglierai” La minoranza dei più intelligenti, nella generazione più giovane, è davvero divenuta molto affilata; e ha davvero scoperto il pericolo di tagliarsi. Uomini come il signor Huxley e il signor Eliot hanno il senno di vedere che le mezze verità dello scettico non sono soltanto strumenti taglienti, ma strumenti a doppio taglio. Tagliano il terreno sotto il razionalismo così come sotto la religione; possono essere usate per ferire la democrazia con la stessa facilità del dispotismo; in ultima istanza possono inoculare nella mente dubbi sul dubbio stesso. Sempre più il giovane davvero intelligente scoprirà di essere divenuto abbastanza affilato da tagliarsi; e, se non tenta qualcosa al di là dello scetticismo, diventerà abbastanza scettico da tagliarsi la gola.
Infine, perché ritengo che questa piccola minoranza di persone piuttosto schizzinose e troppo raffinate avrà alla fine un effetto? Rispondo, con un profondo sospiro, a causa della grande istituzione sociale che chiamiamo Snobismo. Non appena la del tutto scervellata plebaglia dei Bright Young Things scoprirà di essere davvero disprezzata, come una plebaglia di vecchie cose barbose (anche solo da due poeti minori ben educati), ci sarà il panico. La massa degli immoralisti non ha mai creduto nell’immoralità né in nient’altro. Non hanno mai davvero pensato che il torto fosse ragione, perché non hanno mai davvero pensato affatto. Hanno soltanto creduto a ciò che veniva detto loro; che essere senza legge fosse l’ultima moda. Se una volta udiranno che c’è qualcosa di ancora più tardo, persino più tardo dell’ultima moda, si precipiteranno verso di essa e vi si rotoleranno nel fango davanti, fosse pure un Eremita del deserto come sant’Antonio. Se si tratta di un umoristico, ma lievemente superiore, giovane che considera tutti i loro giochi volgari e chiassosi come vieux jeu, e si degnerà di parlare soltanto di Umanesimo e di san Tommaso d’Aquino, gli si prostreranno davanti. Io li conosco. Fanno la capra; ma non per questo lo fanno meno da pecore. Poiché sono pecore che non hanno un pastore, e il pastore di nome Pan è morto.
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LEVITY—OR LEVITATION
I DO not see why a man should not sometimes have a holiday, even while he is doing his work, and write about something merely because it amuses him. I know I should be doing my duty as a Distributist, doing it dismally with the pen when others are already doing it more nobly with the plough. But, for once in a way, I am going to write merely for fun; and about something only because it is funny. And the funniest thing I can find for miles round is in a paper called the Psychic News, a past issue of which was adorned with a portrait of me, accompanied with the extraordinary and rather mysterious caption, “G.K.C., the Catholic who goes up in the air.” Believing as I do in miracles, I have never claimed levitation as a power particularly likely to be manifested in my own case. But though not at present drawn irresistibly towards levitation, I am much tempted to levity. The charges are rather vague, except that they all seem to be equally unfortunate in relation to the facts of the case. The writer seemed to take it for granted that an article quite plainly signed by somebody else must really have been written by me, and written by me from no other motive but a fanatical Catholicism, although the man who really wrote is not a Catholic at all and said nothing whatever to suggest in any way that he was. He, however, is supremely capable of looking after himself, and the mere facts about this absurd muddle I have dealt with elsewhere. At the moment I only wish to wallow in sheer shameless enjoyment of the way in which the Psychic News attacks the Catholic Church and attacks me. I admit that this is mere self-indulgence on my part. I know that numbers of judicious friends will tell me that I ought not to take any notice of such an article. But nothing that can be called human is uninteresting, and this involves, to begin with, one puzzle which always interests me very much. And that is why people who fly into a rage with the Catholic Church always use an extraordinary diction, or verbal style, in which all sorts of incommensurate things are jumbled up together, so that the very order of the words is a joke. “Spiritualism depends only on the evidence which people receive in their own homes. It does not require priests. Neither do enquirers have to buy rosaries or beads, or crucifixes, or pay for candles or masses.” It must be a dreadful moment of indecision for the enquirers, when they have to make up their minds whether they will buy rosaries or beads. But the last term is the best; and here the order of words is especially significant. Apparently the first object of a Catholic is to get a candle. If once he can get hold of a candle, and walk about everywhere clasping his candle, he is all right. But if he cannot get a candle, he has the alternative of purchasing a mass; an instrument that is a sort of substitute for a candle.
Now I did not, as it happens, launch any grand persecuting personal spiritual attack on Spiritualism, as this writer imaginatively described. But if I did, as of course I might, I do think I could make a better job of attacking Spiritualism than he does of attacking Catholicism. I should not talk as if a Spiritualist hung suspended between the two divine dogmas of the Sacredness of Tambourines and the Return of the Dead. I should not talk as if men chose between a planchette and a Ouija-board. I should not talk about “tables or furniture,” or imply that a trumpet was the same sort of thing as a seance. But I never read an attack on Catholicism without finding this ignorant gabble of terms all topsy-turvy. There is always some such medley of misused words, in which mitres, misereres, nones, albs, croziers, virgins and viaticums tumble over each other without the wildest hope that anybody could possibly know what any of them mean. That is the first curiosity about this kind of writing. We can now go back to the only sentence in the paragraph in which anything like a meaning is apparent. It is that passage in which, we are told, Spiritualism does without a priesthood.
It does not require priests. It only requires a spiritual aristocracy really much more exclusive and privileged than priests; seeing they have direct access to new revelations, and their superiority is in their personal spiritual structure; they are abnormal as priests are not necessarily abnormal. But, however that may be, the paper in question reveals some remarkable impressions about spiritual functions and degrees. There is an astonishing caption under a picture of St. Joan of Arc; saying that she did not care whether she was a saint or a witch, because “she had a job to do and did it.” How refreshing this language is. How full of the fifteenth century! Joan was just all out to get that job. She reckoned she could hold down that job. Gee! Joan wasn’t the sort of skirt to bother about whether it came from God or the Devil, when there was a good job to hold down. The paper informs us that its religion is entirely founded on facts; but it seems possible to manufacture a good deal of abstract vulgarity without employing them. It were vain, I suppose, to point out the historical fact that Joan debated desperately for days and days to prove she was not a witch, long after it was obvious that her job, as a job, was either done or done for. But might not the suggestion, that it does not matter whether one is a witch or a saint, explain something of the distrust that some of us feel about Spiritualism?
As I am writing this for fun, I would not say very much about the central mystery of my own religion, or the laboriously offensive terms in which the writer asks me to “prove” Transubstantiation, as he apparently claims to “prove” Spiritualism. To him I am content to say one thing. Suppose the Church had tried to give such proofs, and with such results. Suppose Pope after Pope, and Priest after Priest, had stood up at the altar rails promising on the spot to prove Transubstantiation. And suppose Pope after Pope, and Priest after Priest, had been exposed as proving it by a faked apparatus in the Communion Table, by hidden wires in the cross and candles, and all the apparatus of fraud. Suppose, while many priests were doubtless honest men and perhaps honest dupes, it was a plain, palpable historical fact that the miracle had again and again been a mere conjuring trick, and the most famous Catholic saints had been caught and exposed doing the trick. If that had happened, I venture to say that the Eucharistic Congress would not now be so much respected by the whole civilised world; or by everybody except the hooligans of Portadown and journalists of the Psychic News.
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LEVITÀ, OVVERO LEVITAZIONE
Non vedo perché un uomo non debba talvolta concedersi una vacanza, pur mentre attende al proprio lavoro, e scrivere di qualcosa unicamente perché lo diverte. So bene che dovrei compiere il mio dovere di distributista, compiendolo tetramente con la penna mentre altri già lo compiono più nobilmente con l’aratro. Ma, per una volta tanto, scriverò soltanto per divertimento; e di qualcosa solo perché è buffo. E la cosa più buffa che riesca a trovare nel raggio di miglia si trova in un giornale chiamato «Psychic News», un cui numero passato era ornato di un mio ritratto, accompagnato dalla straordinaria e piuttosto misteriosa didascalia: «G.K.C., il cattolico che si leva in aria». Pur credendo, come credo, nei miracoli, non ho mai rivendicato la levitazione come un potere particolarmente propenso a manifestarsi nel mio caso. Ma, per quanto al presente non sia irresistibilmente attratto verso la levitazione, sono assai tentato dalla levità. Le accuse sono piuttosto vaghe, salvo che paiono tutte egualmente sfortunate rispetto ai fatti del caso. Lo scrittore sembrava dare per scontato che un articolo firmato in modo del tutto chiaro da qualcun altro dovesse in realtà essere stato scritto da me, e scritto da me per nessun altro motivo se non un fanatico cattolicesimo, sebbene l’uomo che davvero lo scrisse non sia affatto cattolico e non abbia detto nulla che in alcun modo suggerisse di esserlo. Egli, tuttavia, è sommamente capace di badare a sé stesso, e i meri fatti circa questo assurdo pasticcio li ho trattati altrove. Per il momento desidero soltanto crogiolarmi nel puro e svergognato piacere del modo in cui la «Psychic News» attacca la Chiesa cattolica e attacca me. Ammetto che questa è mera autoindulgenza da parte mia. So che parecchi amici assennati mi diranno che non dovrei prestare alcuna attenzione a un simile articolo. Ma nulla che possa dirsi umano è privo d’interesse, e ciò comporta, tanto per cominciare, un enigma che sempre m’interessa moltissimo. Ed è il motivo per cui le persone che vanno su tutte le furie contro la Chiesa cattolica usano sempre una dizione straordinaria, o stile verbale, in cui ogni sorta di cose incommensurabili sono ammucchiate insieme, tanto che il solo ordine delle parole è uno scherzo. «Lo spiritismo si fonda soltanto sulle prove che le persone ricevono nelle proprie case. Non richiede sacerdoti. Né gli indagatori devono comprare rosari o grani, o crocifissi, o pagare per candele o messe.» Dev’essere un terribile momento d’indecisione per gli indagatori, quando devono risolversi se comprare rosari o grani. Ma l’ultimo termine è il migliore; e qui l’ordine delle parole è particolarmente significativo. A quanto pare il primo scopo di un cattolico è procurarsi una candela. Se solo riesce a mettere le mani su una candela, e ad andare in giro dovunque stringendo la sua candela, è a posto. Ma se non riesce a procurarsi una candela, ha l’alternativa di acquistare una messa; uno strumento che è una sorta di succedaneo della candela.
Ora, per come stanno le cose, io non ho affatto lanciato alcun grande attacco spirituale personale e persecutorio contro lo spiritismo, come questo scrittore ha immaginosamente descritto. Ma se l’avessi fatto, come di certo potrei, credo davvero che saprei fare un lavoro migliore nell’attaccare lo spiritismo di quanto egli non ne faccia nell’attaccare il cattolicesimo. Non parlerei come se uno spiritista pendesse sospeso tra i due dogmi divini della Sacralità dei Tamburelli e del Ritorno dei Morti. Non parlerei come se gli uomini scegliessero tra una planchette e una tavola Ouija. Non parlerei di «tavoli o mobilio», né lascerei intendere che una tromba fosse la stessa cosa di una seduta spiritica. Ma non ho mai letto un attacco al cattolicesimo senza trovarvi questo ignorante blaterare di termini tutti sottosopra. C’è sempre un qualche simile guazzabuglio di parole malmesse, in cui mitre, misereri, none, camici, pastorali, vergini e viatici si accavallano l’uno sull’altro senza la più sfrenata speranza che qualcuno possa mai sapere che cosa alcuno di essi significhi. Questa è la prima curiosità di questo genere di scrittura. Possiamo ora tornare all’unica frase del paragrafo in cui affiora qualcosa come un significato. È quel passo in cui, ci viene detto, lo spiritismo fa a meno di un sacerdozio.
Non richiede sacerdoti. Richiede soltanto un’aristocrazia spirituale in realtà assai più esclusiva e privilegiata dei sacerdoti; giacché costoro hanno accesso diretto a nuove rivelazioni, e la loro superiorità sta nella loro personale struttura spirituale; essi sono anormali come i sacerdoti non sono necessariamente anormali. Ma, comunque stiano le cose, il giornale in questione rivela alcune notevoli impressioni circa le funzioni e i gradi spirituali. C’è una stupefacente didascalia sotto un’immagine di Santa Giovanna d’Arco; che dice come a lei non importasse d’essere una santa o una strega, perché «aveva un lavoro da fare e lo fece». Com’è ristoratore questo linguaggio. Com’è pieno del quindicesimo secolo! Giovanna puntava dritta ad accaparrarsi quel lavoro. Riteneva di poter tenere ben saldo quel lavoro. Perbacco! Giovanna non era il tipo di gonnella da preoccuparsi se esso venisse da Dio o dal Diavolo, quando c’era un buon lavoro da tenersi stretto. Il giornale ci informa che la sua religione è interamente fondata sui fatti; ma pare possibile fabbricare una buona dose di volgarità astratta senza impiegarli. Sarebbe vano, suppongo, far notare il fatto storico che Giovanna disputò disperatamente per giorni e giorni per provare di non essere una strega, molto dopo che era ovvio che il suo lavoro, come lavoro, era o compiuto o spacciato. Ma non potrebbe il suggerimento, che non importa se si è una strega o una santa, spiegare qualcosa della diffidenza che alcuni di noi provano verso lo spiritismo?
Poiché scrivo questo per divertimento, non direi gran che circa il mistero centrale della mia religione, o i termini laboriosamente offensivi con cui lo scrittore mi chiede di «provare» la Transustanziazione, così come egli apparentemente pretende di «provare» lo spiritismo. A lui mi accontento di dire una cosa. Supponiamo che la Chiesa avesse tentato di dare simili prove, e con simili risultati. Supponiamo che Papa dopo Papa, e Sacerdote dopo Sacerdote, si fossero levati in piedi alla balaustra dell’altare promettendo lì per lì di provare la Transustanziazione. E supponiamo che Papa dopo Papa, e Sacerdote dopo Sacerdote, fossero stati smascherati mentre la provavano mediante un apparato truccato nella Mensa della Comunione, mediante fili nascosti nella croce e nelle candele, e tutto l’apparato della frode. Supponiamo che, mentre molti sacerdoti erano senza dubbio uomini onesti e forse onesti gabbati, fosse un chiaro, palpabile fatto storico che il miracolo era stato ancora e ancora un mero gioco di prestigio, e che i più famosi santi cattolici fossero stati colti e smascherati mentre facevano il trucco. Se ciò fosse accaduto, mi arrischio a dire che il Congresso Eucaristico non sarebbe ora tanto rispettato dall’intero mondo civile; o da chiunque tranne i teppisti di Portadown e i giornalisti della «Psychic News».
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THE CASE FOR HERMITS
ANYONE who has ever protected a little boy from being bullied at school, or a little girl from some childish persecution at a party, or any natural person from any minor nuisance, knows that the being thus badgered tends to cry out, in a simple but singular English idiom, “Let me alone!” It is seldom that the child of nature breaks into the cry, “Let me enjoy the fraternal solidarity of a more socially organised group-life.” It is rare even for the protest to leap to the lips in the form, “Let me run around with some crowd that has got dough enough to hit the high spots.” Not one of these positive modern ideals presents itself to that untutored mind; but only the ideal of being “let alone.” It is rather interesting that so spontaneous, instinctive, almost animal an ejaculation contains the word alone.
There are now a great many boys and girls, both old and young, who are really in that state of mind; not only through being teased, but also through being petted. Most of them will fiercely deny it, since it contradicts the conventions of their new generation; just as a child kept up too late at night will more and more indignantly deny the desire to go to bed. Indeed I am always expecting to hear that a scientific campaign has been opened against Sleep. Sooner or later the Prohibitionists will turn their attention to the old tribal traditional superstition of Sleep; and they will say that the sluggard is merely encouraged by the cowardice of the moderate sleeper. There will be tables of statistics, showing how many hours of output are lost by miners, smelters, plumbers, plasterers, and every trade in which (it will be noted) men have contracted the habit of sleep; tables showing the shortage of aconite, alum, apples, beef, beetroot, bootlaces, etc., and other statistics carefully demonstrating that work of this kind can only rarely be performed by sleep-walkers. There will be all the scientific facts, except one scientific fact. And that is the fact that if men do not have Sleep, they go mad. It is also a fact that if men do not have Solitude, they go mad. You can see that, by the way they go on, when the poor miserable devils only have Society.
The incident of Miss Fitzpatrick, the lady who really liked to be alone, challenges all recent fashions, which are all for Society without Solitude. We must Get Together; as the gunman said when he ran his machine-gun into two other machine-guns and killed all the children caught between them. And we know that this sociability and communal organisation has already produced in fashionable society all that sweetness and light, all that courtesy and charity, all that True Christianity of pardon and patience, which we see in the modern organisers of gangs or “group-life.” In contrast with this happy mood now pervading our literature and conversation, it is customary to point to hermits and solitaries as if they were savages and man-haters.
But it is not true. It is not true in History or human fact. The line that ran, “Turn, gentle hermit of the Vale,” was truer to the real tradition about the real hermits. They were doubtless, from a modern standpoint, lunatics; but they were nice lunatics. Twenty touches could illustrate what I mean; for instance, the fact that they could make pets of the wild animals that came naturally to them. But many of them really had charity—even to human beings. They felt more kindly about men than men in the Forum or the Mart felt about each other. Doubtless there have been merely sulky solitaries; unquestionably there have been sham cynics and cabotins, like Diogenes. But he and his sort are very careful not to be really solitary; careful to hang about the market-place like any demagogue. Diogenes was a tub-thumper, as well as a tub-dweller. And that sort of professional sulks remains; but it is sulks without solitude. We all know there are geniuses, who must go out into polite society in order to be impolite. We all know there are hostesses who collect lions and find they have got bears. I fear there was a touch of that in the social legend of Thomas Carlyle and perhaps of Tennyson. But these men must have a society in which to be unsociable. The hermits, especially the saints, had a solitude in which to be sociable.
St. Jerome lived with a real lion; a good way to avoid being lionised. But he was very sociable with the lion. In his time, as in ours, sociability of the conventional sort had become social suffocation. In the decline of the Roman Empire, people got together in amphitheatres and public festivals, just as they now get together in trams and tubes. And there were the same feelings of mutual love and tenderness, between two men trying to get a seat in the Colosseum, as there are now between two men trying to get the one remaining seat on a Tooting tram. Consequently, in that last Roman phase, all the most amiable people rushed away into the desert, to find what is called a hermitage; but might almost be called a holiday. The man was a hermit because he was more of a human being; not less. It was not merely that he felt he could get on better with a lion than with the sort of men who would throw him to the lions. It was also that he actually liked men better when they let him alone. Now nobody expects anybody, except a very exceptional person, to become a complete solitary. But there is a strong case for more Solitude; especially now that there is really no Solitude.
The reason why even the normal human being should be half a hermit is that it is the only way in which his mind can have a half-holiday. It is the only way to get any fun even out of the facts of life; yes, even if the facts are games and dances and operas. It bears most resemblance to the unpacking of luggage. It has been said that we live on a railway station; many of us live in a luggage van; or wander about the world with luggage that we never unpack at all. For the best things that happen to us are those we get out of what has already happened. If men were honest with themselves, they would agree that actual social engagements, even with those they love, often seem strangely brief, breathless, thwarted or inconclusive. Mere society is a way of turning friends into acquaintances, rhe real profit is not in meeting our friends, but in having met them. Now when people merely plunge from crush to crush, and from crowd to crowd, they never discover the positive joy of life. They are like men always hungry, because their food never digests; also, like those men, they are cross. There is surely something the matter with modern life when all the literature of the young is so cross. That is something of the secret of the saints who went into the desert. It is in society that men quarrel with their friends; it is in solitude that they forgive them. And before the society-man criticises the saint, let him remember that the man in the desert often had a soul that was like a honey-pot of human kindness, though no man came near to taste it; and the man in the modern salon, in his intellectual hospitality, generally serves out wormwood for wine.
In conclusion, I will take one very modern and even topical case. I do not believe in Communism, certainly not in compulsory Communism. And it is typical of this acrid age that what we all discuss is compulsory Communism. I often sympathise with Communists, which is quite a different thing; but even these I respect rather as bold or honest or logical than as particularly genial or kindly. Nobody will claim that modern Communism is a specially sweet-tempered or amiable thing. But if you will look up the legends of the earliest Hermits, you will find a very charming anecdote, about two monks who really were Communists. And one of them tried to explain to the other how it was that quarrels arose about private property. So he thumped down a stone and observed theatrically, “This stone is mine.” The other, slightly wondering at his taste, said, “All right; take it.” Then the teacher of economics became quite vexed and said, “No, no; you mustn’t say that. You must say it is yours; and then we can fight.” So the second hermit said it was his; whereupon the first hermit mechanically gave it up; and the whole lesson in Business Methods seems to have broken down. Now you may agree or disagree with the Communist ideal, of cutting oneself off from commerce, which those two ascetics followed. But is there not something to suggest that they were rather nicer people than the Communists we now meet in Society? Somehow as if Solitude improved the temper?
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IN DIFESA DEGLI EREMITI
CHIUNQUE abbia mai protetto un ragazzino dai soprusi a scuola, o una bambina da qualche puerile persecuzione a una festa, o una qualunque persona naturale da un qualsiasi piccolo fastidio, sa che l’essere così tormentato tende a gridare, in un’espressione inglese semplice ma singolare: «Lasciatemi solo!» È raro che il figlio della natura prorompa nel grido: «Lasciatemi godere la solidarietà fraterna di una vita di gruppo socialmente più organizzata». È raro persino che la protesta balzi alle labbra nella forma: «Lasciatemi scorrazzare con qualche compagnia che abbia grana a sufficienza per spassarsela alla grande». Nessuno di questi positivi ideali moderni si presenta a quella mente non educata; ma soltanto l’ideale di essere «lasciato solo». È piuttosto interessante che un’esclamazione così spontanea, istintiva, quasi animale, contenga la parola solo.
Vi sono oggi moltissimi ragazzi e ragazze, vecchi e giovani insieme, che si trovano davvero in quello stato d’animo; non solo perché stuzzicati, ma anche perché vezzeggiati. La maggior parte di loro lo negherà con veemenza, poiché contraddice le convenzioni della loro nuova generazione; proprio come un bambino tenuto alzato troppo tardi la notte negherà con crescente indignazione il desiderio di andare a letto. In effetti mi aspetto sempre di sentire che è stata aperta una campagna scientifica contro il Sonno. Prima o poi i Proibizionisti rivolgeranno la loro attenzione alla vecchia superstizione tribale e tradizionale del Sonno; e diranno che il poltrone è semplicemente incoraggiato dalla codardia del dormitore moderato. Vi saranno tabelle di statistiche, che mostreranno quante ore di produzione vengano perdute da minatori, fonditori, idraulici, intonacatori, e ogni mestiere in cui (si noterà) gli uomini hanno contratto l’abitudine del sonno; tabelle che mostreranno la penuria di aconito, allume, mele, manzo, barbabietole, stringhe da scarpe, ecc., e altre statistiche che dimostreranno accuratamente come un lavoro di questo genere possa solo di rado essere svolto da sonnambuli. Vi saranno tutti i fatti scientifici, tranne un fatto scientifico. Ed è il fatto che se gli uomini non hanno il Sonno, impazziscono. È anche un fatto che se gli uomini non hanno la Solitudine, impazziscono. Lo si può vedere, dal modo in cui si comportano, quando i poveri disgraziati hanno soltanto la Società.
L’episodio di Miss Fitzpatrick, la dama a cui piaceva davvero stare sola, sfida tutte le mode recenti, tutte a favore della Società senza Solitudine. Dobbiamo Fare Gruppo; come disse il pistolero quando scagliò la sua mitragliatrice contro altre due mitragliatrici e uccise tutti i bambini rimasti in mezzo a esse. E sappiamo che questa socievolezza e organizzazione comunitaria ha già prodotto nella società alla moda tutta quella dolcezza e luce, tutta quella cortesia e carità, tutto quel vero Cristianesimo di perdono e pazienza, che vediamo nei moderni organizzatori di bande o di «vita di gruppo». In contrasto con questo lieto umore che ora pervade la nostra letteratura e conversazione, è consuetudine additare gli eremiti e i solitari come se fossero selvaggi e misantropi.
Ma non è vero. Non è vero né nella Storia né nei fatti umani. Il verso che diceva: «Volgiti, gentile eremita della Valle», era più fedele alla vera tradizione sui veri eremiti. Erano senza dubbio, da un punto di vista moderno, dei pazzi; ma erano simpatici pazzi. Venti tocchi potrebbero illustrare ciò che intendo; per esempio, il fatto che sapevano rendere domestici gli animali selvatici che spontaneamente venivano a loro. Ma molti di essi avevano davvero carità—persino verso gli esseri umani. Provavano più benevolenza per gli uomini di quanta ne provassero gli uni per gli altri gli uomini del Foro o del Mercato. Senza dubbio vi sono stati solitari meramente scontrosi; indubitabilmente vi sono stati falsi cinici e istrioni, come Diogene. Ma lui e i suoi pari hanno gran cura di non essere davvero solitari; cura di gironzolare per la piazza del mercato come qualsiasi demagogo. Diogene era un agitatore da botte, oltre che un abitante della botte. E quel genere di broncio professionale permane; ma è broncio senza solitudine. Sappiamo tutti che vi sono geni i quali devono uscire nella buona società per poter essere scortesi. Sappiamo tutti che vi sono padrone di casa che collezionano leoni e scoprono di aver preso orsi. Temo che vi fosse un tocco di questo nella leggenda mondana di Thomas Carlyle e forse di Tennyson. Ma questi uomini devono avere una società in cui essere asociali. Gli eremiti, specialmente i santi, avevano una solitudine in cui essere socievoli.
San Girolamo viveva con un vero leone; un buon modo per evitare di essere trattato da leone di società. Ma era molto socievole con il leone. Ai suoi tempi, come ai nostri, la socievolezza di tipo convenzionale era divenuta soffocazione sociale. Nel declino dell’Impero Romano, la gente si radunava negli anfiteatri e nelle feste pubbliche, proprio come oggi si raduna nei tram e nelle metropolitane. E vi erano gli stessi sentimenti di reciproco amore e tenerezza, tra due uomini che cercavano di conquistare un posto nel Colosseo, di quanti ve ne siano ora tra due uomini che cercano di conquistare l’unico posto rimasto su un tram di Tooting. Di conseguenza, in quell’ultima fase romana, tutte le persone più amabili fuggivano nel deserto, per trovare ciò che si chiama un eremo; ma che si potrebbe quasi chiamare una vacanza. L’uomo era eremita perché era più uomo; non meno. Non era soltanto che sentiva di poter andare più d’accordo con un leone che con il genere di uomini che l’avrebbero gettato ai leoni. Era anche che gli uomini gli piacevano davvero di più quando lo lasciavano solo. Ora nessuno si aspetta che qualcuno, tranne una persona eccezionalissima, diventi un solitario completo. Ma vi sono validi argomenti a favore di maggiore Solitudine; specialmente ora che di Solitudine non ve n’è davvero più.
La ragione per cui persino il normale essere umano dovrebbe essere per metà eremita è che questo è l’unico modo in cui la sua mente può avere una mezza vacanza. È l’unico modo per trarre un po’ di gioia perfino dai fatti della vita; sì, anche se i fatti sono giochi e balli e opere liriche. Assomiglia moltissimo al disfare i bagagli. È stato detto che viviamo in una stazione ferroviaria; molti di noi vivono in un vagone bagagli; o vagano per il mondo con bagagli che non disfano mai. Perché le cose migliori che ci accadono sono quelle che ricaviamo da ciò che è già accaduto. Se gli uomini fossero onesti con se stessi, converrebbero che gli effettivi impegni mondani, persino con coloro che amano, sembrano spesso stranamente brevi, affannosi, frustrati o inconcludenti. La mera società è un modo di trasformare gli amici in conoscenti; il vero profitto non sta nell’incontrare i nostri amici, ma nell’averli incontrati. Ora, quando la gente si limita a tuffarsi da calca a calca, e da folla a folla, non scopre mai la gioia positiva della vita. Sono come uomini sempre affamati, perché il loro cibo non si digerisce mai; e, come quegli uomini, sono di malumore. C’è certamente qualcosa che non va nella vita moderna quando tutta la letteratura dei giovani è così di malumore. Questo è in parte il segreto dei santi che andarono nel deserto. È nella società che gli uomini litigano con i loro amici; è nella solitudine che li perdonano. E prima che l’uomo di mondo critichi il santo, si ricordi che l’uomo nel deserto aveva spesso un’anima simile a un vaso di miele di umana bontà, benché nessuno si avvicinasse ad assaggiarla; e l’uomo del moderno salotto, nella sua ospitalità intellettuale, generalmente mesce assenzio invece di vino.
In conclusione, prenderò un caso molto moderno e persino d’attualità. Non credo nel Comunismo, certamente non nel Comunismo obbligatorio. Ed è tipico di questa età acre che ciò di cui tutti discutiamo sia il Comunismo obbligatorio. Spesso simpatizzo con i Comunisti, il che è cosa ben diversa; ma perfino costoro li rispetto più in quanto audaci o onesti o logici che in quanto particolarmente cordiali o benevoli. Nessuno sosterrà che il Comunismo moderno sia una cosa particolarmente amabile o di buon carattere. Ma se andrete a cercare le leggende dei primi Eremiti, troverete un aneddoto assai delizioso, su due monaci che erano davvero Comunisti. E uno di essi cercò di spiegare all’altro come nascessero le liti a proposito della proprietà privata. Così scagliò a terra una pietra e osservò teatralmente: «Questa pietra è mia». L’altro, un po’ meravigliato di quel gusto, disse: «Va bene; prendila». Allora il maestro di economia si spazientì alquanto e disse: «No, no; non devi dire così. Devi dire che è tua; e allora possiamo litigare». Così il secondo eremita disse che era sua; al che il primo eremita gliela cedette meccanicamente; e l’intera lezione di Metodi Commerciali sembra essere fallita. Ora, potrete essere d’accordo o in disaccordo con l’ideale comunista, di tagliarsi fuori dal commercio, che quei due asceti seguivano. Ma non v’è forse qualcosa a suggerire che fossero persone piuttosto più simpatiche dei Comunisti che ora incontriamo in Società? Quasi come se la Solitudine migliorasse il carattere?
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KILLING THE NERVE
IT is now generally agreed, with great cheerfulness and good temper, that one of the chief features of the state of Peace we now enjoy is the killing of a considerable number of harmless human beings. We are not wild and reckless and pugnacious in such things, even as these Latins. Relatively, we seem almost reconciled to the general notion of killing; so long as we can feel a real assurance that it is aimless and purposeless and fruitless. If an old woman is knocked down dead in the quiet village street where she played as a child, if a gutter-boy is not quite quick enough in getting out of the gutter and suffers the death penalty for his negligence, we all agree that it is very regrettable. But it does not withdraw the attention of some of us from a quite exclusive concentration upon the horrors of war, because nobody could confuse an old woman crossing the road with an old-world romance in any way connected with adventure or valour; and the boy has not ventured into the road (thank God) under any delusion that he is sacrificing himself for his native land. If death strikes down suddenly somebody who does not expect to die, and is not deceived by any nonsense about being faithful unto death … 0 death, where is thy sting? If a tramp is taken to a pauper’s grave unstained by any hopes or dreams of war or revolution, or any vision of justice victorious. … 0 grave, where is thy victory? It is obvious that death is a very different thing when it is the product of such peaceful surroundings. The modern version of Killing No Murder is that only militarism is murder; and there is nothing wrong with killing when it is not military.
But I have here introduced the word killing in a lighter sense; even lighter than that in which some progressives take the killing in the streets. For there are other things, though they are things less vivid and less sacred, which are killed in the streets. Even as it is we use the word “kill” in a more metaphorical sense. For instance, we talk of colours killing each other. And, as one example out of many, it may be noted that we do live in a scheme of social life in which colours kill each other. That is, we live in a world which gives us a vast exhibition of that vividness which is symbolised by colour, but which is wholly without that concerted unity of rule or tradition which is symbolised by harmony in colour. The illuminated advertisements of a big city like London, which is now in this respect almost indistinguishable from New York, exhibit exactly that contradiction between colour and design. The design, even in the sense of the purpose, is patchy and personal and not only vulgar but essentially venal. The colour is often the best and most beautiful experience given to the senses of man, if only man were in a position to make the best of it. The psychological effect produced by random commercial illumination is something which is to the real possibilities of colour what a drunken slumber is to the divine gift of wine. Or rather, it should be compared to that habit, which springs up so easily in Prohibitionist or semi-Prohibitionist countries, of trying to get the best out of the divine gift of wine by preceding it with excessive quantities of whisky, following it by equally excessive quantities of beer, or possibly beginning the whole banquet with liqueurs and ending it with cocktails. In short, Prohibitionists get drunk because they have never been taught to drink; and commercial advertising wastes its artistic materials, even when it possesses them, because it has never been taught to colour or even to enjoy colours. Colours are being killed; and they are being killed by being worked to death. The nerve is being killed; and it is being killed by being overstimulated and therefore stunted and stunned.
When I was a child, I had a toy-theatre, illuminated in those days by candles (to which perhaps the psycho-analyst will trace my subsequent downfall into ecclesiastical crypts and cloisters) and in the ordinary way I was quite content with this type of illumination, the candles seeming to my barbarous mind to be themselves like a forest of fairy trees, with flames for flowers. There were also yet more rich and rare delights, which were sufficiently rare to those not sufficiently rich. It was sometimes possible to purchase a sort of dark red powder, which when ignited burst into a rich red light. Fire was wonderful enough—but red fire! But then I was only a dull Victorian infant somewhere between five and seven; and I only used red fire rarely; when it was effective. Living under such limitations, my immature brain perceived that it was more suitable to some things than to others; as, for instance, to a goblin coming up through a trap-door out of the cavern of the King of the Copper Mines, or to the final conflagration that made a crimson halo round the dark mill and castle of the execrable Mad Miller. I should not even then have used red fire in a scene showing the shepherd (doubtless a prince in disguise) piping to his lambs in the pale green meadows of spring; or in a scene in which glassy gauzes of green and blue waved in the manner of waves round the cold weeds and fishes at the entrance to Davy Jones’s Locker. Science and progress and practical education and knowledge of the world are necessary before people can make blunders like that. Therefore, that red fire of the nursery still glows in my memory as an inward imaginative revelation, in spite of years, in spite of time, in spite even of passing through the streets of modern London.
In the London streets to-day, in what Mr. Cuthbert Baines has so vividly called, “the floodlit, bloodlit street,” the rare effect of red fire is wholly wasted and ruined, by the loss of its rarity and by the loss of its suitability. The child who has been made too familiar with all that redhot lettering will probably never have the romance that I remember in my childhood; and it is perhaps strictly true to say that he will never see red fire in his life. First, of course, because he has seen too much of it. For this is not the decorative process of using red in a scheme of colour; it is simply the dull process of painting the town red. But second, also, because the toy-theatre showed him little pictures of large things; and the town signs show him large pictures of little things. He will very soon discover that the ideas associated with these signs, the motives of the men who put them up, the mood of the men who accept them, are things connected entirely with dreary money-grubbing or shoddy luxury. He will be unable to get any great vista or vision out of a glimpse; he will know nothing but a glaring wilderness of proclamations that have emphasis without significance; and will grow up without any poetical associations with a colour he has only seen used to sell a cosmetic or a quack medicine.
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UCCIDERE IL NERVO
È ormai opinione generalmente condivisa, con grande allegria e buon umore, che uno dei tratti principali dello stato di Pace di cui ora godiamo sia l’uccisione di un considerevole numero di innocui esseri umani. Non siamo selvaggi, temerari e bellicosi in tali faccende, come invece questi Latini. In termini relativi, sembriamo quasi rassegnati all’idea generale dell’uccidere; purché possiamo avere la reale certezza che essa sia senza scopo, senza fine e senza frutto. Se una vecchia viene abbattuta e uccisa nella quieta via del villaggio dove giocava da bambina, se un monello di strada non è abbastanza svelto a togliersi dal rigagnolo e sconta la pena di morte per la sua negligenza, tutti conveniamo che è cosa assai deplorevole. Ma ciò non distoglie l’attenzione di alcuni di noi da una concentrazione del tutto esclusiva sugli orrori della guerra, poiché nessuno potrebbe confondere una vecchia che attraversa la strada con un romanzo d’altri tempi in qualche modo legato all’avventura o al valore; e il ragazzo non si è avventurato nella strada (grazie a Dio) sotto l’illusione di sacrificarsi per la propria terra natia. Se la morte abbatte all’improvviso qualcuno che non si aspetta di morire, e non è ingannato da alcuna sciocchezza sull’essere fedele fino alla morte… 0 morte, dov’è il tuo pungiglione? Se un vagabondo viene portato alla fossa di un povero, non macchiata da alcuna speranza o sogno di guerra o di rivoluzione, né da alcuna visione di giustizia vittoriosa… 0 fossa, dov’è la tua vittoria? È ovvio che la morte sia cosa assai diversa quando è il prodotto di simili circostanze pacifiche. La versione moderna del Uccidere Non è Assassinare è che soltanto il militarismo è assassinio; e non c’è nulla di male nell’uccidere quando non è cosa militare.
Ma io ho qui introdotto la parola uccidere in un senso più leggero; persino più leggero di quello in cui certi progressisti prendono l’uccisione nelle strade. Poiché vi sono altre cose, benché siano cose meno vivide e meno sacre, che vengono uccise nelle strade. Anche così come stanno le cose, noi usiamo la parola «uccidere» in un senso più metaforico. Per esempio, diciamo che i colori si uccidono a vicenda. E, come uno fra i tanti esempi, si può notare che noi viviamo davvero in un ordinamento di vita sociale in cui i colori si uccidono a vicenda. Vale a dire, viviamo in un mondo che ci offre una vasta esibizione di quella vividezza che è simboleggiata dal colore, ma che è del tutto priva di quella concertata unity di regola o di tradizione che è simboleggiata dall’armonia nel colore. Le insegne pubblicitarie luminose di una grande città come Londra, che sotto questo riguardo è ormai quasi indistinguibile da New York, esibiscono esattamente quella contraddizione tra colore e disegno. Il disegno, persino nel senso dell’intento, è disordinato e personale e non solo volgare ma essenzialmente venale. Il colore è spesso l’esperienza migliore e più bella data ai sensi dell’uomo, se solo l’uomo fosse in condizione di trarne il meglio. L’effetto psicologico prodotto dall’illuminazione commerciale casuale è, rispetto alle reali possibilità del colore, ciò che un sonno da ubriaco è al dono divino del vino. O piuttosto, andrebbe paragonato a quell’abitudine, che nasce così facilmente nei paesi proibizionisti o semi-proibizionisti, di cercare di trarre il meglio dal dono divino del vino facendolo precedere da quantità eccessive di whisky, seguire da quantità altrettanto eccessive di birra, o magari cominciando l’intero banchetto con liquori e concludendolo con cocktail. In breve, i proibizionisti si ubriacano perché non hanno mai imparato a bere; e la pubblicità commerciale sperpera i propri materiali artistici, persino quando li possiede, perché non ha mai imparato a colorare né tantomeno a godere dei colori. I colori vengono uccisi; e vengono uccisi facendoli lavorare fino alla morte. Il nervo viene ucciso; e viene ucciso venendo iperstimolato e perciò atrofizzato e stordito.
Quando ero bambino, avevo un teatrino di cartone, illuminato a quei tempi da candele (alle quali forse lo psicanalista farà risalire la mia successiva rovinosa caduta nelle cripte e nei chiostri ecclesiastici) e nel modo consueto ero del tutto pago di questo tipo di illuminazione, poiché le candele parevano alla mia mente barbara come una foresta di alberi fatati, con fiamme in luogo di fiori. Vi erano anche delizie ancor più ricche e rare, che erano abbastanza rare per chi non era abbastanza ricco. A volte era possibile acquistare una sorta di polvere rosso scuro, che accesa divampava in una ricca luce rossa. Il fuoco era già di per sé meraviglioso—ma il fuoco rosso! Ma allora io ero soltanto un ottuso bimbo vittoriano fra i cinque e i sette anni; e usavo il fuoco rosso soltanto di rado; quando faceva effetto. Vivendo entro tali limitazioni, il mio cervello immaturo intuiva che esso si adattava ad alcune cose più che ad altre; come, per esempio, a un folletto che sbucava da una botola dalla caverna del Re delle Miniere di Rame, o alla conflagrazione finale che cingeva d’un alone cremisi il tetro mulino e castello dell’esecrabile Mugnaio Pazzo. Non avrei usato, neppure allora, il fuoco rosso in una scena che mostrava il pastore (senza dubbio un principe travestito) intento a suonare il flauto ai suoi agnelli nei pallidi verdi prati di spring; o in una scena in cui garze vitree di verde e d’azzurro ondeggiavano a mo’ di onde attorno alle fredde alghe e ai pesci all’ingresso dello Scrigno di Davy Jones. Occorrono la scienza e il progresso e l’istruzione pratica e la conoscenza del mondo prima che la gente possa commettere sbagli simili. Perciò, quel fuoco rosso della stanza dei bambini ancora arde nella mia memoria come un’interiore rivelazione immaginativa, a dispetto degli anni, a dispetto del tempo, a dispetto persino dell’attraversare le strade della moderna Londra.
Nelle strade di Londra d’oggi, in ciò che il signor Cuthbert Baines ha così vividamente chiamato «la strada inondata di luce, inondata di sangue», il raro effetto del fuoco rosso è del tutto sprecato e rovinato, per la perdita della sua rarità e per la perdita della sua idoneità. Il bambino che è stato reso troppo familiare con tutte quelle scritte incandescenti probabilmente non avrà mai il fascino che io ricordo nella mia fanciullezza; ed è forse rigorosamente vero dire che egli non vedrà mai il fuoco rosso in vita sua. In primo luogo, naturalmente, perché ne ha visto troppo. Poiché questo non è il decorativo procedimento di usare il rosso in uno schema di colore; è semplicemente l’ottuso procedimento di dipingere la città di rosso. Ma, in secondo luogo, anche perché il teatrino di cartone gli mostrava piccole immagini di grandi cose; e le insegne cittadine gli mostrano grandi immagini di piccole cose. Egli scoprirà ben presto che le idee associate a queste insegne, i moventi degli uomini che le hanno affisse, l’animo degli uomini che le accettano, sono cose interamente connesse con squallida avidità di denaro o con lusso dozzinale. Egli non riuscirà a trarre alcuna grande prospettiva o visione da un barlume; non conoscerà nulla se non uno sfolgorante deserto di proclami che hanno enfasi senza significato; e crescerà senza alcuna associazione poetica con un colore che ha visto usare soltanto per vendere un cosmetico o una medicina da ciarlatano.
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THE CASE OF CLAUDEL
I HAVE heard a story, which I have never verified either by history or topography, otherwise known as being on the spot, to the effect that the French Academy accepted the accident of the absence of Molière from its records with a magnificent gesture. It may have been only a tradition about something that somebody planned to do; it may even have been only a tale of somebody about what ought to be done; but it is exactly the sort of tradition that would represent the nation; and it is exactly the sort of thing that Frenchmen would or could have done. The French Academy, founded by Richelieu for the establishment of classical literature in the country, naturally passed over a wandering play-actor and playwright like Molière; just as Oxford and Cambridge would have passed over a wandering play-actor and playwright like Shakespeare. But here the story, even if it is only a story, strikes the note that only the French can strike. For it was said that the French Academy erected in its inner courts a special statue of Molière, with the inscription “Rien ne manque à sa gloire; il manque à la notre” … and if you want to know what is the difference between the atmosphere of France and England, both of them very jolly atmospheres in their way, you have only to imagine anybody making, or even anybody suggesting, a public apology of that sort to Shakespeare. Can you imagine a huge statue of Shakespeare in Balliol Quod, inscribed with the statement, “Shakespeare never went to Balliol.” Can you conceive even Cambridge rearing a colossal monument to Dickens, to celebrate the fact that he never had a University education— or indeed any other education? If that story about Molière is true, or even if it is a true parable or fable, there is an obvious moral to the fable. The English rather ignore defeats; the French rather exaggerate defeats; but the French do sometimes have the talent of snatching victories out of defeats.
A little while ago, to my great regret, the French Academy suffered a very serious defeat. It was when it preferred a clever writer of rather decadent verse to Paul Claudel; but nobody supposes, I hope, that it was M. Claudel who was defeated. If we are to talk about anybody really great being defeated, let us say that Richelieu was defeated. A man of the first rank of French Letters, which the great Cardinal loved, and the Catholic culture which he also loved, with all his diplomatic and even unscrupulous encouragement of those who hated it, has been met with a sort of mute resistance; presumably by those who hated more than the most unscrupulous Cardinal could ever do. Without presuming to pronounce upon the literary comparison, it is enough to say that even if the Academy were right, it would here prove itself entirely academic. It would be proved in the fact that nobody in the literary world has heard of Claudel’s rival; and everybody in the literary world, has heard of Claudel. He is recognised as standing for something quite literally from China to Peru; at least from Japan to Washington. It looks as if the Academy has made one of its rather rare mistakes; and without the obvious excuses which applied to the case of Molière. And it looks as if there might some day be another statue, with another inscription: “Nothing is wanting to his glory; but he is wanting to ours.”
There is no space here even to suggest the sumptuous wealth of images and ideas in the work of Paul Glaudel. It is only important to note the fact, as a fact of history rather than of literature, that it is on his side, and not on the other side, that the wealth of ideas can now be found. It might very well happen, at one time it probably did happen, that the historic culture he represents had dwindled down to narrow channels and rare and isolated notes; like the last pipe of the pastoral poets that sounded from the eighteenth-century clerics imitating the innocence of the Georgics; or that Irish harp of which a single string snapped whenever a heart had broken for liberty. But to-day it is exactly the other way. It is the rationalistic tradition of the nineteenth century that has narrowed into monotony and repetition. It is the artist who is an atheist who has taken refuge in a garden, to escape from the cry of all the ancient Christian civilization for the ploughing of all the fields of the earth. It is the musical instrument of the modernist that has broken all its strings but one, like the lute in the agnostic picture of Hope; and continues to strike the same few chords of truth remaining to it, but drearily and all on one note. Nobody denies, and certainly I do not deny, that the truths of the emancipated epoch are still true, even when thus isolated and irrelevant; just as the spiritual truths were still true, even when repeated mechanically by the court chaplains or stale preachers of the eighteenth century. But in the matter of fullness, of richness, and of variety, the whole advantage is now with the ancient cause. The thoughts that throng in a sort of hubbub, in a work like The Satin Slipper, are like a crowd of living men bursting the barriers of a deserted fortress. It is Claudel or the same type of man who is now storming the Bastille; a prison with all the harshness and inhumanity of a prison, except that it now contains fewer and fewer prisoners. An empty prison may be almost more depressing than a full prison; and such an empty prison is the tradition of academic scepticism to-day. Prejudice, the very spirit of a prison, alone shuts out the new generation from the full realization of the greater fruitfulness promised by the revival of Christendom. In one sense we may agree with all the old and weary journalists who say that the age is to be the age of Youth; but its most youthful manifestation is in something that renews its youth like the eagle.
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IL CASO CLAUDEL
HO udito una storia, che non ho mai verificato né mediante la storia né mediante la topografia, altrimenti nota come l’essere sul posto, secondo cui l’Accademia di Francia accolse con un gesto magnifico il fatto accidentale dell’assenza di Molière dai suoi registri. Può darsi che fosse soltanto una tradizione riguardo a qualcosa che qualcuno progettò di fare; può persino darsi che fosse soltanto un racconto di qualcuno su ciò che si sarebbe dovuto fare; ma è esattamente il genere di tradizione che rappresenterebbe la nazione; ed è esattamente il genere di cosa che i francesi avrebbero fatto o avrebbero potuto fare. L’Accademia di Francia, fondata da Richelieu per l’affermazione della letteratura classica nel paese, naturalmente sorvolò su un attore girovago e commediografo come Molière; proprio come Oxford e Cambridge avrebbero sorvolato su un attore girovago e commediografo come Shakespeare. Ma qui la storia, anche se è soltanto una storia, coglie quella nota che solo i francesi sanno cogliere. Poiché si diceva che l’Accademia di Francia avesse eretto nei suoi cortili interni una statua speciale di Molière, con l’iscrizione «Rien ne manque à sa gloire; il manque à la notre»… e se volete sapere qual è la differenza tra l’atmosfera della Francia e quella dell’Inghilterra, entrambe atmosfere assai gioviali a modo loro, non avete che da immaginare qualcuno che rivolga, o anche solo che proponga, una pubblica scusa di quel genere a Shakespeare. Potete immaginare un’enorme statua di Shakespeare nel cortile del Balliol, incisa con la dichiarazione «Shakespeare non frequentò mai il Balliol». Potete concepire persino Cambridge che erige un colossale monumento a Dickens, per celebrare il fatto che egli non ebbe mai un’istruzione universitaria — o invero alcuna altra istruzione? Se quella storia su Molière è vera, o anche se è una vera parabola o favola, vi è un’ovvia morale nella favola. Gli inglesi tendono piuttosto a ignorare le sconfitte; i francesi tendono piuttosto a esagerare le sconfitte; ma i francesi hanno talvolta il talento di strappare vittorie alle sconfitte.
Poco tempo fa, con mio grande rammarico, l’Accademia di Francia subì una sconfitta assai grave. Fu quando preferì un abile scrittore di versi alquanto decadenti a Paul Claudel; ma nessuno suppone, lo spero, che sia stato il signor Claudel a essere sconfitto. Se dobbiamo parlare di qualcuno veramente grande che è stato sconfitto, diciamo che fu Richelieu a essere sconfitto. Un uomo del primo rango delle Lettere francesi, che il grande Cardinale amava, e la cultura cattolica che egli parimenti amava, con tutto il suo diplomatico e persino spregiudicato incoraggiamento di coloro che la odiavano, si è visto opporre una sorta di muta resistenza; presumibilmente da parte di coloro che la odiavano più di quanto il più spregiudicato dei Cardinali potesse mai fare. Senza presumere di pronunciarmi sul confronto letterario, basti dire che, anche se l’Accademia avesse ragione, essa si dimostrerebbe qui interamente accademica. Lo si proverebbe nel fatto che nessuno nel mondo letterario ha sentito parlare del rivale di Claudel; e tutti nel mondo letterario hanno sentito parlare di Claudel. Egli è riconosciuto come rappresentante di qualcosa, letteralmente, dalla Cina al Perù; o almeno dal Giappone a Washington. Sembra che l’Accademia abbia commesso uno dei suoi errori piuttosto rari; e senza le ovvie scusanti che si applicavano al caso di Molière. E sembra che un giorno possa esservi un’altra statua, con un’altra iscrizione: «Nulla manca alla sua gloria; ma egli manca alla nostra».
Non v’è qui spazio nemmeno per suggerire la sontuosa ricchezza di immagini e di idee nell’opera di Paul Claudel. È soltanto importante notare il fatto, come un fatto di storia più che di letteratura, che è dalla sua parte, e non dall’altra parte, che la ricchezza delle idee può ora essere trovata. Potrebbe assai bene accadere, e in un certo tempo probabilmente accadde, che la cultura storica che egli rappresenta si fosse ridotta a canali angusti e a note rare e isolate; come l’ultimo zufolo dei poeti pastorali che risuonava dagli ecclesiastici del Settecento che imitavano l’innocenza delle Georgiche; o come quell’arpa irlandese di cui una singola corda si spezzava ogni volta che un cuore si era infranto per la libertà. Ma oggi è esattamente il contrario. È la tradizione razionalistica dell’Ottocento che si è ristretta nella monotonia e nella ripetizione. È l’artista ateo che si è rifugiato in un giardino, per sfuggire al grido di tutta l’antica civiltà cristiana che reclamava l’aratura di tutti i campi della terra. È lo strumento musicale del modernista che ha spezzato tutte le sue corde tranne una, come il liuto nel quadro agnostico della Speranza; e continua a percuotere i pochi accordi di verità che gli restano, ma tetramente e tutti su una sola nota. Nessuno nega, e certo io non nego, che le verità dell’epoca emancipata siano ancora vere, anche quando così isolate e irrilevanti; proprio come le verità spirituali erano ancora vere, anche quando ripetute meccanicamente dai cappellani di corte o dai predicatori stantii del Settecento. Ma in materia di pienezza, di ricchezza e di varietà, tutto il vantaggio è ora dalla parte dell’antica causa. I pensieri che si accalcano in una sorta di tumulto, in un’opera come La scarpina di raso, sono come una folla di uomini vivi che sfondano le barriere di una fortezza deserta. È Claudel, o lo stesso tipo d’uomo, che ora prende d’assalto la Bastiglia; una prigione con tutta la durezza e l’inumanità di una prigione, salvo che ora contiene sempre meno prigionieri. Una prigione vuota può essere quasi più deprimente di una prigione piena; e tale prigione vuota è oggi la tradizione dello scetticismo accademico. Il Pregiudizio, il vero spirito di una prigione, da solo esclude la nuova generazione dalla piena realizzazione della maggiore fecondità promessa dal risveglio della Cristianità. In un senso possiamo convenire con tutti i vecchi e stanchi giornalisti che dicono che l’età dev’essere l’età della Giovinezza; ma la sua manifestazione più giovanile è in qualcosa che rinnova la propria giovinezza come l’aquila.
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THE HIGHER NIHILISM
MR. MIDDLETON MURRY has written a generous, a stimulating and rather a strange book. It is called The Necessity of Communism: and my own first feelings about it may be expressed by saying that I have much more sympathy with the Communism than with the Necessity. I cannot but feel that Mr. Middleton Murry is caught in a sort of net of necessity; that his spirited and active mind is actually hampered by his queer religion of destiny. The reader trips over it, as if it were barbed wire, when striding through what is otherwise an open field of freedom and fair-mindedness. To take one example; no Catholic could possibly ask for a more just or even generous judgment on the Middle Ages, and their relation to the Reformation, than that given in Mr. Murry’s chapter called “The Pattern of History”; and yet it ends with a twist of phrase so abrupt and perverse that I almost cried out aloud at the inconsequence. “In England the Church was expropriated, by men who had not as individuals the faintest ethical superiority over those they expropriated, but who had the impersonal justification of being instruments of economic destiny.” Now, with all respect, I do not know in the least what the last words of that sentence mean. What is “impersonal justification”? How can anything except a person be justified, and how can he be justified except by another person judging him to be just? What are “instruments of economic destiny” or any other destiny? Instruments mean tools chosen by some person for some purpose. Who is Destiny; and in what sense can he have a purpose? It always seems to me that all this sort of thing is not even metaphysics, far less metabiology, but simply metaphor. It is all the more difficult to deal with, because the ideas for which it stands are delivered quite dogmatically as dogmas. Mr. Middleton Murry tells us at the very beginning that a man must be a complete materialist; that it is mere shilly-shallying to be only a behaviourist. But he does not give a man like me any reason for being either; and I have not the smallest intention of being either. He says that any reversion to the past is “forbidden,” and I can only say “By whom?” It would be a mere wanton veto on all art and action to forbid us to take materials from the past. But as a fact it is impossible for anybody to avoid using the past. In reality, it is impossible to use anything except the past. And why is it any more forbidden to me to say that the Catholic Church is a thing of the future and the present, as well as the past, than it is to Mr. Murry to say that Karl Marx fulfilled the purpose of the Hebrew Prophets or that Jesus of Nazareth became the supreme type of disinterestedness? But in logic there is no need even to go back to Jesus or the Jewish prophets. Karl Marx is as much a part of the past as King John Sobieski; and the Russian Revolution is as past as the Roman Empire. The book is full of violent affirmations of this sort, entirely unsupported by arguments ot any sort. Nevertheless, there is an argument running through the book; and a very curious and interesting one it is.
The writer starts, as he starts with so many unexplained things, with the very dangerous word, “disinterested.” It is dangerous because a mere touch will make it mean “uninterested”; in the sense of the Buddhist and the pessimist. We all know it has a sane sense, as meaning sincerely unselfish, self-sacrificing for a faith, and so on. But Mr. Murry does not mean merely giving up our pleasures for the sake of our ideals. In some places, he really seems to mean giving up our ideals, or some of our ideals, for a sort of super-ideal which has sometimes precious little to say for itself, except that it is Destiny. There really is a wild cry from Asia in his classic speech; an altruism that is almost nihilism; a sacrifice that is nearly suicide. We are to give up liberty; we are to give up everything. This passionate paradox is undoubtedly sincere; and yet it conceals another paradox which it will be well to watch and suspect. Morally, it is all very heroic; but intellectually, it actually contains too much caution; it is more cautious than wise. It has behind its position two alternative lines of retreat. For the logical reader will at once perceive that, by thus rising into wild renunciation, the controversialist really has it both ways. Wherever Communism can be made attractive, he will make it attractive. Wherever Communism is quite obviously repulsive, he will say it proves the selfless hardihood of Communists who embrace so repulsive a thing. When it is human, it is in sympathy with all humanity; when it is inhuman, it calls for a superhuman sympathy. When it is good it is good; and when it is bad, they are very good to swallow it. This form of Necessity might be found in that proverb from the mouldering past: “Heads I win, tails you lose.”
What Mr. Middleton Murry wants, of course, is real religion; and in parts of this book he seems to be growing desperate, or almost going mad, under the limitations of his unreal religion. He has got authority in the wrong place and asceticism in the wrong place. He is more limited by the idea of Destiny than we are by the idea of Deity. And he wants man to sacrifice civilisation as monks sacrifice luxury. He seems almost satisfied with it as a giant gesture of renunciation; there is really uncommonly little in this book about what will be the practical advantages of Communism when established. Reading between the lines, we almost find the meaning to be merely this: that he and the rest of us have come to breaking point; and this is the obvious point at which to break. There are other aspects of the book, with many of which I warmly agree, but I will conclude by saying that my fundamental objection to his Communism is that it consents to be the heir of Capitalism. His unfortunate necessitarianism narrows the possibilities of politics; and is content to say that industrialism has turned the world into One Man, who is aching in all his limbs. No doubt; and so would you and I, if we were all unnaturally tied to each other neck and heels, that we might make up together the monstrous and tottering figure of a pantomime ogre. But I do not want the ogre; I only want to cut him up. I am more revolutionary than Mr. Middleton Murry. I do not believe the unnatural monster will ache any the less, because he calls himself a Communist. I am more sceptical than Mr. Middleton Murry. I deny the pantomime myth of the One Man; and I should like to break him up again into men.
IL NICHILISMO SUPERIORE
IL SIGNOR MIDDLETON MURRY ha scritto un libro generoso, stimolante e piuttosto strano. Si intitola La necessità del comunismo: e i miei primi sentimenti al riguardo si possono esprimere dicendo che nutro assai più simpatia per il comunismo che per la necessità. Non posso non avvertire che il signor Middleton Murry è preso in una sorta di rete di necessità; che la sua mente vivace e attiva è di fatto intralciata dalla sua bizzarra religione del destino. Il lettore vi inciampa, come se fosse filo spinato, mentre avanza a grandi passi in quello che per il resto è un aperto campo di libertà e imparzialità. Per fare un esempio; nessun cattolico potrebbe chiedere un giudizio più giusto o persino più generoso sul Medioevo, e sul suo rapporto con la Riforma, di quello dato nel capitolo del signor Murry intitolato «Il disegno della Storia»; eppure esso si chiude con una svolta di frase così brusca e perversa che quasi gridai a voce alta per l’incoerenza. «In Inghilterra la Chiesa fu espropriata da uomini che, come individui, non avevano la benché minima superiorità etica su coloro che espropriavano, ma che avevano l’impersonale giustificazione di essere strumenti del destino economico.» Ora, con tutto il rispetto, non so minimamente che cosa significhino le ultime parole di quella frase. Che cos’è la «giustificazione impersonale»? Come può qualcosa che non sia una persona essere giustificato, e come può egli essere giustificato se non da un’altra persona che lo giudica giusto? Che cosa sono gli «strumenti del destino economico» o di qualsiasi altro destino? Strumenti significa arnesi scelti da qualche persona per qualche scopo. Chi è il Destino; e in che senso può avere uno scopo? Mi pare sempre che tutta questa sorta di cose non sia neppure metafisica, e ancor meno metabiologia, ma semplicemente metafora. È tanto più difficile da trattare, perché le idee che essa rappresenta vengono presentate assai dogmaticamente come dogmi. Il signor Middleton Murry ci dice fin dal principio che un uomo deve essere un materialista completo; che è mero tentennare l’essere soltanto un comportamentista. Ma egli non dà a un uomo come me alcuna ragione per essere né l’uno né l’altro; e io non ho la minima intenzione di essere né l’uno né l’altro. Dice che ogni ritorno al passato è «proibito», e io posso solo dire: «Da chi?» Sarebbe un mero, gratuito veto su ogni arte e azione proibirci di attingere materiali dal passato. Ma di fatto è impossibile per chiunque evitare di usare il passato. In realtà, è impossibile usare qualcosa che non sia il passato. E perché mai è più proibito a me dire che la Chiesa cattolica è cosa del futuro e del presente, oltre che del passato, di quanto lo sia al signor Murry dire che Karl Marx adempì lo scopo dei Profeti ebrei o che Gesù di Nazareth divenne il tipo supremo del disinteresse? Ma in logica non c’è nemmeno bisogno di risalire a Gesù o ai profeti ebrei. Karl Marx fa parte del passato tanto quanto Re Giovanni Sobieski; e la Rivoluzione russa è passata quanto l’Impero Romano. Il libro è pieno di violente affermazioni di questo genere, del tutto prive di argomenti di qualsiasi tipo. Nondimeno, un ragionamento percorre l’intero libro; e assai curioso e interessante esso è.
Lo scrittore parte, come parte con tante cose non spiegate, dalla parola assai pericolosa, «disinteressato». È pericolosa perché un semplice tocco le farà significare «indifferente»; nel senso del buddista e del pessimista. Tutti sappiamo che ha un senso sano, come significare sinceramente altruista, che si autosacrifica per una fede, e così via. Ma il signor Murry non intende semplicemente rinunciare ai nostri piaceri per amore dei nostri ideali. In certi punti, sembra davvero intendere il rinunciare ai nostri ideali, o ad alcuni dei nostri ideali, per una sorta di super-ideale che talvolta ha ben poco da dire a proprio favore, tranne che è il Destino. C’è davvero un selvaggio grido dall’Asia nel suo classico discorso; un altruismo che è quasi nichilismo; un sacrificio che è quasi suicidio. Dobbiamo rinunciare alla libertà; dobbiamo rinunciare a tutto. Questo appassionato paradosso è indubbiamente sincero; eppure ne cela un altro, paradosso che sarà bene sorvegliare e sospettare. Moralmente, è tutto assai eroico; ma intellettualmente, contiene in realtà troppa cautela; è più cauto che saggio. Ha dietro la sua posizione due alternative linee di ritirata. Poiché il lettore logico percepirà subito che, innalzandosi così a una selvaggia rinuncia, il polemista vince davvero su entrambi i fronti. Ovunque il comunismo possa essere reso attraente, egli lo renderà attraente. Ovunque il comunismo sia palesemente repulsivo, egli dirà che ciò prova l’altruistica intrepidezza dei comunisti che abbracciano una cosa tanto repulsiva. Quando è umano, è in sintonia con tutta l’umanità; quando è disumano, richiede una simpatia sovrumana. Quando è buono, è buono; e quando è cattivo, sono molto bravi a inghiottirlo. Questa forma di Necessità potrebbe ritrovarsi in quel proverbio del passato in sfacelo: «Testa vinco io, croce perdi tu».
Ciò che il signor Middleton Murry vuole, s’intende, è una religione vera; e in certe parti di questo libro sembra farsi disperato, o quasi impazzire, sotto le limitazioni della sua religione irreale. Ha collocato l’autorità nel posto sbagliato e l’ascetismo nel posto sbagliato. È più limitato dall’idea del Destino di quanto noi lo siamo dall’idea della Divinità. E vuole che l’uomo sacrifichi la civiltà come i monaci sacrificano il lusso. Sembra quasi appagato da essa come da un gigantesco gesto di rinuncia; c’è davvero straordinariamente poco in questo libro su quali saranno i vantaggi pratici del comunismo una volta instaurato. Leggendo tra le righe, quasi troviamo che il significato sia semplicemente questo: che egli e tutti noi siamo giunti al punto di rottura; e questo è il punto ovvio in cui rompere. Vi sono altri aspetti del libro, con molti dei quali concordo calorosamente, ma concluderò dicendo che la mia obiezione fondamentale al suo comunismo è che esso acconsente a essere l’erede del capitalismo. Il suo sventurato necessitarismo restringe le possibilità della politica; e si accontenta di dire che l’industrialismo ha trasformato il mondo in un Solo Uomo, che duole in tutte le sue membra. Senza dubbio; e così saremmo io e voi, se fossimo tutti innaturalmente legati l’uno all’altro mani e piedi, sì da comporre insieme la mostruosa e barcollante figura di un orco da pantomima. Ma io non voglio l’orco; voglio soltanto farlo a pezzi. Sono più rivoluzionario del signor Middleton Murry. Non credo che l’innaturale mostro dolerà un po’ meno perché si dichiara comunista. Sono più scettico del signor Middleton Murry. Nego il mito da pantomima del Solo Uomo; e vorrei tornare a scomporlo in uomini.
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THE ASCETIC AT LARGE
MY note on the Communism of Mr. Middleton Murry reads to me as rather too hasty and hostile; because I had no space to mention some strong and substantial parts of the book; notably those expressing contempt for the respectable sort of Socialist who will not call himself a Communist. The study of ‘parasitic’ Parliamentary Labour is masterly, and my own sympathies would be all with a man like Mr. Maxton as compared with a man like Mr. Thomas. But the sequel is still puzzling; for in the last short note there is no practical programme except a Minimum Wage for all, which is said to obviate the need of expropriation of land and property. I suppose this means that employers would be taxed till they were too poor to employ; and then the State would employ. But what State—and, my God, what statesmen! Why, presumably (if nothing is needed but a new wage raised by a new tax) just the jolly statesmen the world produces at present, the parasitic Parliamentarians turned into omnipotent bureaucrats. I should refuse it, of course; first, because it preserves the wage-system; second because the worst wage-system is one with only one employer, who may be an omnipresent enemy; and third because, in the purely practical statement, there is no provision for any change in the type of tyrant. But this is unfair to the unpractical part; which of course is the better part. Mr. Murry does demand a terrific change of heart, though his scheme hardly ensures it. We may well struggle on as Distributists, when Communism seems so steep even to Communists; and they must endure the same abnormal austerity in order to be abnormal, that we endure to be normal.
In theory, or this part of his theory at least, Mr. Middleton Murry is an ascetic who wishes to transfer asceticism from the individual life, where it may be noble and beautiful, to the whole social and historical life, where it becomes simply vandalism or barbaric destruction. In this he is undoubtedly at one with the Puritan or the Prohibitionist or the more mechanical sort of Pacifist; in short he is entirely at one with that sort of modern world which he most justly detests. Broadly considered, the fact that bulks biggest in the modern industrial world is this: that its moral movements are much more utterly and ruthlessly repressive than the past forms of mysticism or fanaticism that commonly affected only the few. Mediaeval men endured frightful fasts; but none of them would have dreamed of seriously proposing that nobody anywhere should ever have wine any more. And Prohibition, which was accepted by a huge modern industrial civilisation, did seriously propose that nobody should ever have wine any more. Cranks who dislike tobacco would utterly destroy all tobacco; I doubt whether they would even allow it medically as a sedative. Some Pagan sages and some Christian saints have been vegetarians, but nobody in the ancient world would ever have prophesied that flocks and herds would utterly vanish from the earth. But in the Utopia of the true vegetarian, I suppose they would utterly vanish from the earth. The more pedantic Pacifist has the same view of fighting, even for justice, and disarmament is as universal as conscription. For both conscription and disarmament are very modern notions. And modern notions of the sort are not only negative but nihilist; they always demand the absolute annihilation or “total prohibition” of something.
Now I am as adamant against Mr. Murry in this notion of mutilating our whole culture in a frenzy of moral renunciation. I admit that a saint may cut off his hand and enter heaven, and have a higher place there than the rest of us. But a plea for the amputation of the hands of all human beings, the vision of a Handless Humanity as the next evolutionary stage after that of the tailless ape, leaves me cold, however much it is commended as a splendid corporate self-sacrifice. These things are an allegory, in more ways than one. We may say indeed that the inhuman industrial era did really abolish the Hand, since it did abolish the Handicraft. I admit that monks have their own reasons for shaving their heads or nuns for cutting off their hair; but my advice to humanity outside such ecstasies would be to remain calm and keep its hair on. That a man should surrender his luxury is one thing; that mankind should surrender its liberty to deal with the problem of luxury is quite another. It is one thing to impoverish oneself; it is quite another responsibility to impoverish a whole cultural system of its culture. I might or might not be the better for giving up wine; I am absolutely certain that the world would not be better for giving up wine. Mr. Middleton Murry may be moved by a noble impulse to give up private property, but I do not for one single moment believe that humanity would be happier for giving up private property.
As a matter of fact, it is exactly this sort of sweeping destruction that has made it unhappy. The modern Capitalist world, which we unite to curse, actually came out of that notion of utterly abandoning the old for the promise of the new. Men said about the business of scarring English hills with rails or rolling English villages in smoke, exactly what Mr. Murry is now saying about sacrificing ancient faith or freedom and taxing moderate property out of existence. They said, as he does, that it was sad, that it was hard, that it called for a heroic sacrifice; but that we must not be sentimentalists clinging to the past, but must look to the brighter and broader future. And the brighter future was the epoch of Mr. Carnegie and Mr. Ford. Capitalism was actually founded by urging a new realism against an old romanticism. The answer is that it was not necessary for a whole society to give up beauty; and it is not necessary for a whole society to give up liberty. And if we look back at history, we shall see that these sweeping social renunciations have done nothing but harm. Over all America lies like an incubus the cold corpse of Puritanism, because one fervid generation thought that man must say farewell for ever to priests as well as play-actors, to sacraments as well as feasts. In short, men were asked to sacrifice everything for Calvinism as they are now asked to sacrifice everything for Communism. But though man may sacrifice anything, Everyman must not sacrifice everything. Individual men must sacrifice their own liberties, but only to restore liberty. And it is a grand irony that, while the cultured Communist (with all respect to him) is rending everybody else’s garments and scattering ashes on other people’s heads, away in many quiet places, on the hills of Lanark or deep in my own Buckingham beech-woods, priests and friars who have themselves renounced private property are rebuilding the farms and families of Distributism.
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L’ASCETA A PIEDE LIBERO
LA mia nota sul comunismo del signor Middleton Murry mi appare fin troppo frettolosa e ostile; perché non ho avuto spazio per menzionare alcune parti forti e sostanziali del libro; in particolare quelle che esprimono disprezzo per quella rispettabile specie di socialista che non vuole definirsi comunista. Lo studio del laburismo parlamentare «parassitario» è magistrale, e le mie simpatie andrebbero tutte a un uomo come il signor Maxton, se paragonato a un uomo come il signor Thomas. Ma il seguito resta sconcertante; giacché nell’ultima breve nota non v’è alcun programma pratico se non un salario minimo per tutti, il quale, si dice, ovvierebbe alla necessità dell’espropriazione della terra e della proprietà. Suppongo che ciò significhi che i datori di lavoro sarebbero tassati finché non fossero troppo poveri per dare lavoro; e allora sarebbe lo Stato a darne. Ma quale Stato… e, Dio mio, quali statisti! Ebbene, presumibilmente (se non occorre nulla se non un nuovo salario raccolto con una nuova tassa) proprio gli allegri statisti che il mondo produce al presente, i parlamentari parassiti mutati in burocrati onnipotenti. Io lo rifiuterei, naturalmente; primo, perché conserva il sistema salariale; secondo, perché il peggiore sistema salariale è quello con un solo datore di lavoro, che può essere un nemico onnipresente; e terzo, perché, nell’enunciato puramente pratico, non vi è alcuna disposizione per un qualche mutamento nel tipo di tiranno. Ma questo è ingiusto verso la parte impratica; la quale, s’intende, è la parte migliore. Il signor Murry esige senza dubbio un tremendo mutamento del cuore, benché il suo schema difficilmente lo assicuri. Possiamo ben continuare a lottare come distributisti, quando il comunismo pare tanto arduo perfino ai comunisti; ed essi devono sopportare la medesima austerità anormale per essere anormali, che noi sopportiamo per essere normali.
In teoria, o almeno in questa parte della sua teoria, il signor Middleton Murry è un asceta che desidera trasferire l’ascetismo dalla vita individuale, dove può essere nobile e bello, all’intera vita sociale e storica, dove diviene semplicemente vandalismo o distruzione barbarica. In questo egli è indubbiamente d’accordo col puritano o col proibizionista o con la specie più meccanica di pacifista; in breve, è interamente d’accordo con quella sorta di mondo moderno che, con tutta giustizia, egli più d’ogni cosa detesta. Considerato in senso ampio, il fatto che campeggia più grande nel mondo industriale moderno è questo: che i suoi movimenti morali sono assai più totalmente e spietatamente repressivi delle passate forme di misticismo o di fanatismo che comunemente toccavano soltanto i pochi. Gli uomini del Medioevo sopportavano digiuni spaventosi; ma nessuno di loro avrebbe mai sognato di proporre seriamente che nessuno, in alcun luogo, dovesse mai più avere del vino. E il proibizionismo, che fu accettato da un’immensa civiltà industriale moderna, propose seriamente che nessuno dovesse mai più avere del vino. I fanatici che detestano il tabacco distruggerebbero interamente ogni tabacco; dubito che lo consentirebbero perfino a scopo medico come sedativo. Alcuni saggi pagani e alcuni santi cristiani sono stati vegetariani, ma nessuno nel mondo antico avrebbe mai profetizzato che greggi e mandrie sarebbero interamente scomparse dalla terra. Ma nell’Utopia del vero vegetariano, suppongo che scomparirebbero interamente dalla terra. Il pacifista più pedante ha la medesima veduta del combattere, anche per la giustizia, e il disarmo è universale quanto la coscrizione. Poiché tanto la coscrizione quanto il disarmo sono nozioni assai moderne. E le nozioni moderne di tal genere non sono soltanto negative ma nichiliste; esse esigono sempre l’annientamento assoluto o la «proibizione totale» di qualcosa.
Ora, io sono altrettanto irremovibile contro il signor Murry in questa idea di mutilare la nostra intera cultura in una frenesia di rinuncia morale. Ammetto che un santo possa tagliarsi la mano ed entrare in cielo, e avervi un posto più alto del resto di noi. Ma un’invocazione all’amputazione delle mani di tutti gli esseri umani, la visione di un’Umanità Senza Mani come prossimo stadio evolutivo dopo quello della scimmia senza coda, mi lascia freddo, per quanto la si esalti come splendido autosacrificio collettivo. Queste cose sono un’allegoria, in più di un senso. Possiamo dire in verità che l’era industriale disumana abolì davvero la Mano, giacché abolì l’artigianato. Ammetto che i monaci hanno le loro ragioni per radersi il capo, o le monache per tagliarsi i capelli; ma il mio consiglio all’umanità, al di fuori di simili estasi, sarebbe di restare calma e di tenersi i capelli in testa. Che un uomo rinunci al proprio lusso è una cosa; che l’umanità rinunci alla propria libertà di affrontare il problema del lusso è tutt’altra. Una cosa è impoverire se stessi; ben altra responsabilità è privare un intero sistema culturale della sua cultura. Io potrei o non potrei star meglio rinunciando al vino; sono assolutamente certo che il mondo non starebbe meglio rinunciando al vino. Il signor Middleton Murry può essere mosso da un nobile impulso a rinunciare alla proprietà privata, ma non credo per un solo istante che l’umanità sarebbe più felice rinunciando alla proprietà privata.
Di fatto, è proprio questa sorta di distruzione radicale che l’ha resa infelice. Il mondo capitalista moderno, che ci uniamo a maledire, nacque in realtà proprio da quell’idea di abbandonare totalmente il vecchio per la promessa del nuovo. Gli uomini dicevano, a proposito dell’impresa di sfregiare le colline inglesi con le rotaie o di avvolgere i villaggi inglesi nel fumo, esattamente ciò che il signor Murry va ora dicendo a proposito del sacrificare l’antica fede o l’antica libertà e del tassare la proprietà moderata fino a farla sparire. Dicevano, come fa lui, che era triste, che era duro, che esigeva un eroico sacrificio; ma che non dovevamo essere sentimentali aggrappati al passato, bensì guardare al futuro più luminoso e più ampio. E il futuro più luminoso fu l’epoca del signor Carnegie e del signor Ford. Il capitalismo fu in realtà fondato sollecitando un nuovo realismo contro un vecchio romanticismo. La risposta è che non era necessario che un’intera società rinunciasse alla bellezza; e non è necessario che un’intera società rinunci alla libertà. E se guardiamo indietro alla storia, vedremo che queste radicali rinunce sociali non hanno fatto che danno. Su tutta l’America giace come un incubo il freddo cadavere del puritanesimo, perché una generazione fervida pensò che l’uomo dovesse dire addio per sempre ai sacerdoti come pure ai commedianti, ai sacramenti come pure ai banchetti. In breve, si chiese agli uomini di sacrificare tutto per il calvinismo, come ora si chiede loro di sacrificare tutto per il comunismo. Ma benché l’uomo possa sacrificare qualsiasi cosa, Ognuno non deve sacrificare ogni cosa. I singoli uomini devono sacrificare le proprie libertà, ma soltanto per restaurare la libertà. Ed è una grande ironia che, mentre il colto comunista (con tutto il rispetto per lui) straccia le vesti di tutti gli altri e sparge cenere sul capo altrui, lontano, in molti luoghi tranquilli, sulle colline di Lanark o nel folto dei miei propri boschi di faggio del Buckingham, sacerdoti e frati che hanno essi stessi rinunciato alla proprietà privata stanno ricostruendo le fattorie e le famiglie del distributismo.
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THE BACKWARD BOLSHIE
AFTER all, the Bolshevist is really a Victorian. His is a nineteenth-century dream, even if it be a twentieth-century reality. It is notably so in the aspect which now makes the dream a nightmare; I mean the mad optimism about the advantages of machinery. What was offered to us as a Five Years Hence Plan ought really to have been called a Fifty Years Ago Plan. For they are only trying to do with Russia exactly what the Victorians did actually do with England; turn it into the workshop of the world and fill it with dirty tools and dismal mechanics. Marx was much more of a Victorian than Morris. He may not have been technically a subject of Queen Victoria, though it is quite likely that he was. By geographical extraction I suppose he was a German—like Queen Victoria’s husband and more remotely, Queen Victoria herself. By real or racial extraction he was a Jew; like Queen Victoria’s favourite Prime Minister and a good many other persons unnecessary to mention. But the late Victorian period was the very period at which the Jews, and especially the German Jews, were at the very top of their power and influence. From the time when they forced the Egyptian War to the time when they forced the South African War, they were imperial and immune. Certainly much more so than they are now; for the Jews are now being jumped on very unjustly in Germany itself, and old Victorians like Mr. Belloc and myself, who began in the days of Jewish omnipotence by attacking the Jews, will now probably die defending them. Anyhow, Karl Marx did not differ from any number of Victorian Jews in type or externals. He lived mostly in England, and launched his world religion from something more British than the British Empire: the British Museum. The Beard which moves Mr. Wells to impatience was simply the beard of Victorian romance; the beard of Tennyson and Longfellow and Trollope. And though his plan has been very imperfectly applied in the one place in the world where he would have said it could not be applied at all (for this true Victorian saw the great commercial cities of Western Europe as the only possible battlefields of the future) it has all the character of a new and rather barbaric people imitating something that is already stale, not to say stinking, for civilised people. It was exactly like the very Victorian incident of the industrialising of Japan. That is, it was and is something essentially behind the times. The Japanese wear billycock hats presumably under the impression that we admire billycock hats. But, whatever just vengeance may fall upon our hats, this is to do an injustice to our heads. Now, as a matter of fact, our heads have in many ways advanced a little, since the days when our own Five Year Plan filled England with filth and smoke. Some rather deeper questions have arisen; questions about the individual, about the purpose of life, about religion in history, and so on. Philosophy, even Thomist philosophy, is heard again in Paris and Oxford.
Now Marx had no more philosophy than Macaulay. The Marxians therefore have no more philosophy than the Manchester School. It was enough for Macaulay to rejoice in the mere excitement of extension, in the hope that “the roofs and chimneys of a new Manchester may rise in the wilds of Connemara.” Similarly, it is enough for the Moscow Marxians to hope that the roofs and chimneys of a new Manchester may rise in the wilds of Siberia. It is true that the original Manchester men desired competition while the Marxians desire combination; or the Combine of All Combines. But the competition ended in a Combine and the Combine has not really ended in a Communist State. For it seems clear that grades of unequal wages do exist in Bolshevist Russia, and the Bolshevist rulers can only explain that it is a temporary necessity at this political stage and that true, pure, perfect Communism will come in the future. It might be the Labour Party, mightn’t it?
But to carry competition to any lengths, because it is the fashion, or to carry combination to any lengths because it is the fashion, is not a Philosophy. A philosophy begins with Being; with the end and value of a living thing; and it is manifest that a materialism that only considers economic ethics, cannot cover the question at all. If the problem of happiness were so solved by economic comfort, the classes who are now comfortable would be happy, which is absurd. This humourless hammering on one note is like the worst Victorian fads; Temperance or Feminism. It is especially like that very old-fashioned Feminism that hated to be feminine. I am told that in Russia men and women dress roughly alike. But, mark you, that does not mean that men wear flowers in their hair or trail about in those noble pontifical robes with which tradition clothed every woman like a queen. It means that women dress like men; not that men dress like women. Now that is sheer stark, stale, dead Victorianism. That is the only original Woman’s Rights Woman, who deliberately made herself hideous with bloomers and goggles. By the following reigns, even the Suffragettes had learned better than that; but while the Suffragettes are things of the past for us, they are still far in the rosy future for the backward and belated Bolshevist. He is still plodding through that foggy factory twilight that was supposed to be the enlightened daylight of the nineteenth century; and it is truer now than in the time of the Czars to say that Russia is the most backward of the nations.
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IL BOLSCEVICO RETROGRADO
Dopotutto, il bolscevico è in realtà un vittoriano. Il suo è un sogno ottocentesco, anche se è una realtà novecentesca. Lo è in modo particolare nell’aspetto che ora rende quel sogno un incubo; intendo il folle ottimismo circa i vantaggi del macchinario. Ciò che ci fu offerto come Piano Quinquennale in Avanti avrebbe dovuto in verità chiamarsi Piano di Cinquant’anni Fa. Poiché non stanno facendo altro che tentare con la Russia esattamente ciò che i vittoriani fecero davvero con l’Inghilterra; trasformarla nell’officina del mondo e riempirla di sporchi arnesi e di tetri meccanici. Marx era assai più vittoriano di Morris. Può non essere stato tecnicamente un suddito della Regina Vittoria, benché sia assai probabile che lo fosse. Per provenienza geografica suppongo fosse tedesco — come il marito della Regina Vittoria e, più alla lontana, la Regina Vittoria stessa. Per estrazione reale o razziale era un ebreo; come il Primo Ministro prediletto della Regina Vittoria e parecchie altre persone che non è necessario menzionare. Ma il tardo periodo vittoriano fu proprio il periodo in cui gli ebrei, e specialmente gli ebrei tedeschi, erano al culmine assoluto della loro potenza e influenza. Dal tempo in cui imposero la Guerra d’Egitto al tempo in cui imposero la Guerra Sudafricana, furono imperiali e immuni. Certamente assai più di quanto lo siano ora; poiché gli ebrei vengono ora bistrattati assai ingiustamente nella Germania stessa, e vecchi vittoriani come il signor Belloc e me, che iniziarono nei giorni dell’onnipotenza ebraica attaccando gli ebrei, probabilmente moriranno ora difendendoli. In ogni caso, Karl Marx non differiva da un gran numero di ebrei vittoriani per tipo o aspetto esteriore. Visse per lo più in Inghilterra, e lanciò la sua religione mondiale da qualcosa di più britannico dell’Impero Britannico: il British Museum. La Barba che muove il signor Wells all’impazienza era semplicemente la barba del romanticismo vittoriano; la barba di Tennyson e Longfellow e Trollope. E benché il suo piano sia stato applicato in modo assai imperfetto nell’unico luogo del mondo in cui egli avrebbe detto che non poteva affatto essere applicato (poiché questo autentico vittoriano vedeva le grandi città commerciali dell’Europa occidentale come gli unici possibili campi di battaglia del futuro), esso ha tutto il carattere di un popolo nuovo e piuttosto barbaro che imita qualcosa che è già stantio, per non dire putrido, per la gente civile. Fu esattamente come l’assai vittoriana vicenda dell’industrializzazione del Giappone. Ossia, era ed è qualcosa di essenzialmente arretrato rispetto ai tempi. I giapponesi portano bombette presumibilmente nella convinzione che noi ammiriamo le bombette. Ma, qualunque giusta vendetta possa abbattersi sui nostri cappelli, questo significa fare un’ingiustizia alle nostre teste. Ora, in verità, le nostre teste sono per molti versi progredite un poco, dai giorni in cui il nostro Piano Quinquennale riempì l’Inghilterra di sudiciume e fumo. Sono sorte alcune questioni piuttosto più profonde; questioni sull’individuo, sullo scopo della vita, sulla religione nella storia, e così via. La filosofia, persino la filosofia tomista, torna a farsi sentire a Parigi e a Oxford.
Ora, Marx non aveva più filosofia di Macaulay. I marxisti dunque non hanno più filosofia della Scuola di Manchester. A Macaulay bastava rallegrarsi della semplice eccitazione dell’espansione, nella speranza che «i tetti e i camini di una nuova Manchester possano sorgere nelle terre selvagge del Connemara». Similmente, ai marxisti di Mosca basta sperare che i tetti e i camini di una nuova Manchester possano sorgere nelle terre selvagge della Siberia. È vero che gli uomini della Manchester originaria desideravano la concorrenza mentre i marxisti desiderano la coalizione; ovvero il Cartello di Tutti i Cartelli. Ma la concorrenza finì in un cartello e il cartello non è finito davvero in uno Stato comunista. Poiché sembra chiaro che gradi di salari diseguali esistono davvero nella Russia bolscevica, e i governanti bolscevichi possono solo spiegare che si tratta di una necessità temporanea in questa fase politica e che il vero, puro, perfetto comunismo verrà in futuro. Potrebbe essere il Partito Laburista, non è vero?
Ma spingere la concorrenza a qualsiasi estremo, perché è la moda, o spingere la coalizione a qualsiasi estremo perché è la moda, non è una Filosofia. Una filosofia comincia con l’Essere; con il fine e il valore di una cosa vivente; ed è manifesto che un materialismo il quale considera solo l’etica economica non può affatto abbracciare la questione. Se il problema della felicità fosse così risolto dall’agiatezza economica, le classi che ora sono agiate sarebbero felici, il che è assurdo. Questo martellare privo di umorismo su una sola nota somiglia alle peggiori manie vittoriane; il Temperantismo o il Femminismo. Somiglia specialmente a quel Femminismo assai antiquato che detestava l’essere femminile. Mi si dice che in Russia uomini e donne si vestano press’a poco allo stesso modo. Ma, badate, ciò non significa che gli uomini portino fiori tra i capelli o si aggirino strascicando quelle nobili vesti pontificali di cui la tradizione ammantava ogni donna come una regina. Significa che le donne si vestono come gli uomini; non che gli uomini si vestano come le donne. Ora, questo è puro, schietto, stantio, morto vittorianesimo. È l’unica autentica Donna dei Diritti della Donna, che deliberatamente si rese orrenda con i pantaloni alla zuava e gli occhialoni. Nei regni successivi, persino le suffragette avevano imparato a fare di meglio; ma mentre per noi le suffragette sono cose del passato, per il retrogrado e attardato bolscevico sono ancora lontane, nel roseo futuro. Egli arranca ancora attraverso quel nebbioso crepuscolo di fabbrica che si supponeva fosse la luminosa alba dell’Ottocento; ed è più vero ora che al tempo degli zar dire che la Russia è la più arretrata delle nazioni.
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THE LAST TURN
THE only difficulty about the evident reawakening of Catholicism in modern England, is that conversion calls on a man to stretch his mind, as a man awakening from a sleep may stretch his arms and legs. It calls on the imagination to stretch itself, for instance, over a wider area than England, and a longer period than English history. And, for certain rather curious reasons, the stretching of the mind generally stops short of anything like a complete comprehension of any great historical or philosophical process. This is what Bernard Shaw meant when he said that the world will never really progress, until every man lives for three hundred years. I remember remarking at the time that there was a sort of truth symbolised in this; and that, most certainly, if Bernard Shaw had lived for three hundred years he would be a Catholic.
This preliminary point can be quite sufficiently proved even from this particular case. Three hundred years would mean that he would remember, as part of the positive poetry of childhood, the first phase of the Reformation. The first phase of the Reformation in England was the Divine Right of Kings. It was a romantic enthusiasm for Royalty itself, and the duty of an utterly prostrate passive obedience to it. This was the first effect of the New Religion; but before the child was barely a boy it would be overthrown by another New Religion. The Calvinist killed the sacred King, who had been sacred enough to kill the Church; and darkened the land with a creed of Total Depravity and the Scottish Sabbath. By the time Mr. Shaw was a growing lad of only a hundred years old, the world would have rebelled against this tyranny in turn. The Scottish Mr. Hume would soon be preparing to burst up the Scottish Sabbath. The ingenious Mr. Rousseau would be denying Total Depravity and asserting Total Innocence, Naturalness and Niceness. Out of this, as he grew to maturity, nearing a century and a half, there would grow gradually the most pleasant and plausible, the most happy, healthy and exhilarating of all the purely human visions: the vision of Liberty. Let men be only free from their feudal chains and theological gags; let them speak as they like, write as they like, buy and sell as they like, trade and travel and enquire as they like; and the race will waken from the nightmare of ages into the broad brotherhood of reason and justice. About the time when Mr. Shaw’s first grey hair appeared, in the year 1832, when he was barely two hundred, there was much talk about a Reform Bill in England; but I do not think Mr. Shaw would have been taken in, even then. Already, for a long time, men had been buying and selling as they liked, and trading and travelling as they liked. And already the result stood up solid and enormous, in the thing called Capitalism: that is the dispossession of the populace of all forms of real productive property; all instruments of production in the hands of the few; all the millions merely the servants of the few, working for a wage, always an insecure wage, generally a mean and inhuman wage. It was when this process had gone even further that the real historical Mr. Bernard Shaw was born; with the natural consequence that Mr. Bernard Shaw has devoted his life to making war on Capitalism. He has done so because the special evil of his own lifetime was Capitalism. But shall we not guess that he would have done it rather differently, if he had already spent two or three lifetimes warring against Divine Right, and then against the Calvinism that attacked Divine Right, and then against the Rousseauan prostration before Liberty, which destroyed Calvinism—and produced Capitalism. Would he not conclude that the whole State had been staggering about in a most extraordinary and irrational manner, ever since he was first born under the Elizabethan Settlement? Would it not be obvious that the mind of man had been filled with nothing but frantic exaggerations, crude simplifications, provincial panaceas and quack medicines and sheer raving monomania, ever since it had broken away from the central civilisation and the philosophy which the Saints had handed down from the Ancients? Would it not interest him to find that, all the time, there had been written in the open books of Aquinas or Bellarmine or Suarez, a perfectly reasonable apportionment of the authority of princes, the claims of peoples, the possibilities of democracy, the use and abuse of property, and the right function of freedom?
Three hundred years felt with their full weight, really measured out in time and experience, endured as a man actually endures the passage of his days, would prove the whole Protestant story to have been the most preposterous and disproportionate detour, or straggling a chapter of accidents, that ever set out in the wrong direction and came back to the same place. For we have in a hundred ways come back to the same place; even to the detail of an exaggerated reaction, like that of the Action Française, renewing the absolute appeal to The King. And nothing is more amusing than to note the way in which those who regard themselves as the most advanced leaders, of the most modern groups, are already rearing and bucking against the whole tendency of liberal and humanitarian progress, which the last revolutionary leaders marked out for them. Nobody is less in the spirit of Walt Whitman than Wyndham Lewis or T. S. Eliot; nobody less a real heir of H. G. Wells than Aldous Huxley; nobody less disposed to follow the humanitarian paths of Mr. Nevinson the adventurous journalist, than his son Mr. Nevinson the Futurist painter. All these of the most recent school of rebels are rebelling against rebellion; that is, against the Revolution and all its heritage of liberty, equality and fraternity. Mr. Eliot, though an American, is an avowed Royalist. Mr. Nevinson has become a quite ferocious Kiplingite Imperialist. Mr. Wyndham Lewis seems to prefer a Dictatorship, in so far as he may be said to prefer anything. All this last turn of the twisting road of progress is pointing back towards what we have called for a hundred years reaction. It is apparent in the Fascists; in the Hitlerites; and even in the open anti-democracy of the Bolshevists.
Now the great danger of the moment is that young men will go on being content with these revolts against revolt, these reactions against reactions; so that we have nothing but an everlasting seesaw of the Old Young and the New Young; the last always content with its fleeting triumph over the last but one. And the only way to avoid that result is to teach men to stretch their minds and inhabit a larger period of time. It is to insist, not that we now feel inclined to stress this or stress that, in mere fashion or mere fatigue, but that there really does exist somewhere a reasonable plan of the proportions of things, which, at least in its general outline, is true all the time. The moment men, so intelligent as those I have named, begin to realise that this permanent plan is necessary, they will certainly realise that the only existing plan, that has any plausible claim to look like it, is the plan of the Catholic Faith. For the present, they seem to be quite content to continue the old squabble of fathers and sons; even if the fathers are very young fathers, or the sons actually appeal to the grandfathers against them. But this merely modern squabble is after all local and therefore provincial; it can never satisfy the thirst of thinking people for the reality of things. Nevertheless, as I stated at the beginning, the great difficulty is whether a man can stretch his mind, or (as the moderns would say) can broaden his mind, enough to see the need for an eternal Church.
And yet surely this is only the last lap in the long race in which the ancient truth, so heavily handicapped, has one by one outdistanced all the runners who prided themselves on their youth or their advance positions. If a man could have learned it by a process of elimination, merely by living through the last three hundred years, he would learn the same lesson even more clearly by living through the next three hundred years. By that time it will be more apparent than ever that these jerks of novelty do not create either a progress or an equilibrium. The very newest of the intellectuals have already learnt not to trust to mere progress, in the sense of a process of change; they already know that they have sometimes more in common with some antique authority than with some merely modern rebellion. Some of them would set up Dictators to enforce obedience; it is hard if we may not obey willingly, when they would have men obey even unwillingly. They would set up violent authority in the hands of individuals; they can hardly complain if we recognise merely moral authority in a merely mystical office. For that mystical office contains all the liberties and all the philosophies, and judges only upon their right balance and proportion; and every other thing that the moderns call a movement is only securing for a monomania the brief life of a sect.
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L’ULTIMA SVOLTA
L’unica difficoltà riguardo all’evidente risveglio del cattolicesimo nell’Inghilterra moderna è che la conversione chiede a un uomo di distendere la propria mente, come un uomo che si desta da un sonno può distendere le braccia e le gambe. Chiede all’immaginazione di distendersi, per esempio, su un’area più vasta dell’Inghilterra e su un periodo più lungo della storia inglese. E, per certe ragioni piuttosto curiose, la distensione della mente generalmente si arresta prima di giungere a qualcosa come una completa comprensione di un qualsiasi grande processo storico o filosofico. È questo che intendeva Bernard Shaw quando disse che il mondo non progredirà mai davvero finché ogni uomo non vivrà trecento anni. Ricordo di aver osservato al tempo che vi era una sorta di verità simboleggiata in ciò; e che, molto certamente, se Bernard Shaw fosse vissuto trecento anni sarebbe stato cattolico.
Questo punto preliminare può essere provato in modo del tutto sufficiente proprio a partire da questo caso particolare. Trecento anni significherebbero che egli ricorderebbe, come parte della positiva poesia dell’infanzia, la prima fase della Riforma. La prima fase della Riforma in Inghilterra fu il Diritto Divino dei Re. Fu un entusiasmo romantico per la Regalità stessa, e per il dovere di un’obbedienza passiva del tutto prostrata verso di essa. Questo fu il primo effetto della Nuova Religione; ma prima che il fanciullo fosse appena un ragazzo, esso sarebbe stato rovesciato da un’altra Nuova Religione. Il calvinista uccise il sacro Re, che era stato abbastanza sacro da uccidere la Chiesa; e oscurò il paese con un credo di Totale Depravazione e con il Sabato scozzese. Al tempo in cui il signor Shaw fosse stato un ragazzo in crescita di soli cent’anni, il mondo si sarebbe a sua volta ribellato contro questa tirannia. Lo scozzese signor Hume si sarebbe presto preparato a far saltare il Sabato scozzese. L’ingegnoso signor Rousseau avrebbe negato la Totale Depravazione e affermato la Totale Innocenza, la Naturalezza e la Gradevolezza. Da ciò, man mano che egli giungeva alla maturità, avvicinandosi al secolo e mezzo, sarebbe cresciuta gradualmente la più piacevole e plausibile, la più felice, sana ed esaltante di tutte le visioni puramente umane: la visione della Libertà. Che gli uomini siano soltanto liberi dalle loro catene feudali e dai bavagli teologici; che parlino come vogliono, scrivano come vogliono, comprino e vendano come vogliono, commercino e viaggino e indaghino come vogliono; e la razza si desterà dall’incubo dei secoli nella vasta fratellanza della ragione e della giustizia. Intorno al tempo in cui apparve il primo capello grigio del signor Shaw, nell’anno 1832, quando egli aveva appena duecento anni, si parlava molto di una legge di Riforma in Inghilterra; ma non credo che il signor Shaw si sarebbe lasciato ingannare, neppure allora. Già da lungo tempo gli uomini compravano e vendevano come volevano, e commerciavano e viaggiavano come volevano. E già il risultato si ergeva solido ed enorme, nella cosa chiamata Capitalismo: cioè la spoliazione della popolazione di ogni forma di reale proprietà produttiva; tutti gli strumenti di produzione nelle mani dei pochi; tutti i milioni di uomini meri servitori dei pochi, che lavorano per un salario, sempre un salario insicuro, generalmente un salario meschino e disumano. Fu quando questo processo era andato ancora più avanti che nacque il vero, storico signor Bernard Shaw; con la naturale conseguenza che il signor Bernard Shaw ha dedicato la propria vita a far guerra al Capitalismo. Lo ha fatto perché il male speciale della sua stessa epoca era il Capitalismo. Ma non dovremmo forse supporre che lo avrebbe fatto piuttosto diversamente, se avesse già trascorso due o tre esistenze a guerreggiare contro il Diritto Divino, e poi contro il Calvinismo che attaccò il Diritto Divino, e poi contro la prostrazione rousseauiana dinanzi alla Libertà, che distrusse il Calvinismo — e produsse il Capitalismo? Non concluderebbe forse che l’intero Stato aveva barcollato qua e là nel modo più straordinario e irrazionale, sin da quando egli nacque per la prima volta sotto il Compromesso elisabettiano? Non sarebbe evidente che la mente dell’uomo era stata riempita di nient’altro che frenetiche esagerazioni, rozze semplificazioni, panacee provinciali e medicine ciarlatanesche e pura vaneggiante monomania, sin da quando si era staccata dalla civiltà centrale e dalla filosofia che i Santi avevano tramandato dagli Antichi? Non gli interesserebbe scoprire che, per tutto il tempo, era stata scritta nei libri aperti di Aquino o di Bellarmino o di Suárez una ripartizione perfettamente ragionevole dell’autorità dei principi, delle rivendicazioni dei popoli, delle possibilità della democrazia, dell’uso e dell’abuso della proprietà, e della retta funzione della libertà?
Trecento anni sentiti con tutto il loro peso, realmente misurati in tempo ed esperienza, sopportati come un uomo effettivamente sopporta il passaggio dei suoi giorni, proverebbero che l’intera vicenda protestante è stata la più assurda e sproporzionata deviazione, o il più disordinato capitolo di accidenti, che mai si sia messo in cammino nella direzione sbagliata per tornare poi allo stesso luogo. Poiché in cento modi siamo tornati allo stesso luogo; perfino nel dettaglio di una reazione esagerata, come quella dell’Action Française, che rinnova l’appello assoluto al Re. E nulla è più divertente che notare il modo in cui coloro che si considerano i capi più avanzati, dei gruppi più moderni, già s’impennano e scalciano contro l’intera tendenza del progresso liberale e umanitario, che gli ultimi capi rivoluzionari avevano tracciato per loro. Nessuno è meno nello spirito di Walt Whitman di Wyndham Lewis o T. S. Eliot; nessuno è meno un vero erede di H. G. Wells di Aldous Huxley; nessuno è meno disposto a seguire i sentieri umanitari del signor Nevinson, l’avventuroso giornalista, di suo figlio, il signor Nevinson, il pittore futurista. Tutti costoro, della più recente scuola di ribelli, si ribellano contro la ribellione; ossia contro la Rivoluzione e tutta la sua eredità di libertà, uguaglianza e fraternità. Il signor Eliot, benché americano, è un dichiarato monarchico. Il signor Nevinson è divenuto un imperialista kiplinghiano assai feroce. Il signor Wyndham Lewis sembra preferire una Dittatura, nella misura in cui si possa dire che egli preferisca qualcosa. Tutta quest’ultima svolta della tortuosa strada del progresso punta indietro verso ciò che da cent’anni abbiamo chiamato reazione. Essa è manifesta nei fascisti; negli hitleriani; e perfino nell’aperta anti-democrazia dei bolscevichi.
Ora, il grande pericolo del momento è che i giovani continuino ad accontentarsi di queste rivolte contro la rivolta, di queste reazioni contro le reazioni; sicché non abbiamo nient’altro che un eterno altalenare dei Vecchi Giovani e dei Nuovi Giovani; l’ultimo sempre pago del suo fugace trionfo sul penultimo. E l’unico modo per evitare questo esito è insegnare agli uomini a distendere la propria mente e ad abitare un periodo di tempo più ampio. Si tratta di insistere non sul fatto che ora ci sentiamo inclini a dare rilievo a questo o a quello, per mera moda o mera stanchezza, ma sul fatto che esiste davvero da qualche parte un ragionevole disegno delle proporzioni delle cose, il quale, almeno nel suo tratto generale, è vero per tutto il tempo. Nel momento in cui uomini così intelligenti come quelli che ho nominato cominceranno a rendersi conto che questo disegno permanente è necessario, si renderanno certamente conto che l’unico disegno esistente che abbia una qualche plausibile pretesa di somigliargli è il disegno della Fede cattolica. Per il momento, essi sembrano del tutto contenti di continuare la vecchia baruffa tra padri e figli; anche se i padri sono padri molto giovani, o i figli si appellano addirittura ai nonni contro di loro. Ma questa baruffa meramente moderna è dopo tutto locale, e perciò provinciale; non potrà mai saziare la sete che le persone pensanti hanno della realtà delle cose. Nondimeno, come ho affermato all’inizio, la grande difficoltà è se un uomo possa distendere la propria mente, o (come direbbero i moderni) possa allargare la propria mente, abbastanza da vedere la necessità di una Chiesa eterna.
E tuttavia, sicuramente, questo è soltanto l’ultimo giro nella lunga corsa in cui l’antica verità, così pesantemente svantaggiata, ha a una a una distanziato tutti i corridori che si vantavano della propria giovinezza o delle proprie posizioni di vantaggio. Se un uomo potesse impararlo per un processo di eliminazione, semplicemente vivendo attraverso gli ultimi trecento anni, imparerebbe la stessa lezione ancora più chiaramente vivendo attraverso i prossimi trecento anni. Per quel tempo sarà più evidente che mai che questi scatti di novità non creano né un progresso né un equilibrio. I più recentissimi tra gli intellettuali hanno già imparato a non affidarsi al mero progresso, nel senso di un processo di mutamento; sanno già di avere talvolta più in comune con qualche antica autorità che con qualche ribellione meramente moderna. Alcuni di loro erigerebbero Dittatori per imporre l’obbedienza; sarebbe duro che non ci fosse concesso di obbedire volentieri, quando essi vorrebbero che gli uomini obbedissero perfino contro voglia. Essi erigerebbero un’autorità violenta nelle mani di individui; ben poco possono lamentarsi se noi riconosciamo un’autorità meramente morale in un ufficio meramente mistico. Poiché quell’ufficio mistico contiene tutte le libertà e tutte le filosofie, e giudica soltanto del loro giusto equilibrio e della loro giusta proporzione; e ogni altra cosa che i moderni chiamano un movimento non fa che assicurare a una monomania la breve vita di una setta.
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THE NEW LUTHER
IT seems that there is some movement or other of a religious sort; which, being founded by a Lutheran of German race and American origin, naturally connects itself with the name of Oxford. Some people say it is called the Oxford Group Movement. Other people seem to be somewhat needlessly alarmed, lest it be identified by historians with the Oxford Movement. I would suggest, in a friendly spirit, that it should be called the Oxford Street Movement. Oxford Street does actually contain the name of the University town, which seems to be all that is required; and at the same time, it is a long way from Oxford. I think the atmosphere there would be more congruous and comfortable; and somehow I feel that Mr. Gordon Selfridge, being in the neighbourhood, would be more really sympathetic and spiritually helpful than the Master of Balliol.
When I had made some such idle jest I received a letter of remonstrance against what I had written of the Buchman Group Movement. The letter was written in a pained and almost pathetic tone, expressing regret that I should depreciate anything that brought men back to the reality of religion; and I ought at least to assure the writer that I am not insensible to any such plea. In this as in many things, however religion is treated in a curious manner, as distinct from politics or ethics or economics. Nobody says that because all political parties may be presumed to contain many well-wishers to the public good, therefore we must not resist Communism or attack Capitalism, or express our trust or. distrust of Fascism. The roads which lead to different social solutions are recognised as divergent. It is only the paths to hell and heaven of which it is enough to say that they are paved with good intentions. Let me say at once that I do sympathise with any sinners who seek such an outlet; even with the rather exclusive and arrogant spiritual aristocracy which writes over its gates, “For Sinners Only.” I sympathise with them, not so much as I sympathise with the ignorant fishermen bawling hymns in any dingy old chapel in any Devonshire fishing village; not quite so much as I sympathise with a company of Holy Rollers rolling on the ground in the neighbourhood of Dayton, Tennessee, to avert the curse of Evolution; and not half so much as I sympathise with Moslem fakirs howling in the desert and shaking their splendid spears and dying on the British bayonets. But I do sympathise with all these people; since they are all seeking God. And I am sufficiently orthodox to know that, in some mystical way beyond our measurement, it is true that seeking is finding.
But if my correspondent, or anybody else, wishes to know why I rather prefer the followers of the Mad Mullah to the followers of Herr Buchman, he will find it perfectly summed up in an interview and article which appeared in the News-Chronicle and was headed in huge letters with the words, “Vision of a New Reformation: Group Leader’s Hope from Germany.” He will find it exquisitely and exactly concentrated, as in the crystallization of a gem, in these words; read them; re-read them; ponder them. They contain the whole substance of the subject. “These Groupers think on a large scale. The Canadians, for instance, have not only booked the Chateau Frontenac for a house-party of 3,000 at Quebec next year, but have already chartered a C.P.R. liner to bring their contingent to England for the next Oxford house-party.”
That, you will observe, is thinking largely. To rude, rustic, Distributist minds, it would not appear that it is thinking at all. There have been any number of sectarians and Puritan fanatics who have very genuinely thought; some who have thought and thought until they went mad. But I should say that the sanity and solidity of the Group Movement was quite safe from any such danger as that. Note that it is not a question of whether religion may think too much about pomp and grandeur. It is a question of whether religion is to boast of having pomp without thinking at all. There is a real case to be made out both for and against the most Pagan phase of the Papacy, which filled Rome with trophies that might have stood for the triumphs of Trajan or Augustus. But it does need some thought to build even a Pagan temple or erect even an Imperialistic monument. The dome which Michelangelo made the culmination of St. Peter’s is not only a large dome. It is a dome made by a man who was thinking largely. Nay, it might have been less large if it had been larger. Lift it a little higher in the air and the curve is constricted; spread it a little wider and the curve is flattened. That is what is meant by thinking; and especially by thinking largely. At any rate, it is a rather different operation from buying up somebody else’s steamboat, or securing all the beds in somebody else’s hotel.
Finally, what shall we say in the light (or twilight) of all this, of the magnificent claim made in such large letters that they would cover a whole paragraph of this essay; the “Vision of a New Reformation: Group Leader’s Hope from Germany?” We may say this to begin with; that here, as in every single thing I have read about the Group Movement, as in every page and paragraph of the book called For Sinners Only, there is an extraordinary ambiguity. What is meant by a New Reformation? What is it that is to be reformed? Is it just possible that it is the Reformation that is to be reformed? And, for those who have a pedantic fancy for looking at the structure of the words they write or speak, into what form is it to be reformed? Can it be into the old original form? Certainly in all this there is no trace or outline of any new form. Or does it mean by a New Reformation, a repetition of the Reformation? Does it mean an extension of the Reformation? Does it mean that we are to look for somebody who shall be more Lutheran than Luther? I suppose the real doctrine of the great Reformer might possibly be pushed further than he pushed it. It is very difficult to imagine any doctrine that could make man more base, describe human nature as more desperately impotent, blacken the reason and the will of man with a more utterly bottomless and hopeless despair than did the real doctrine of Luther. But it may be that there are depths below the depths and that it is possible to damn the dignity of Adam more completely than Luther damned it. Is that what is meant by a New Reformation? That is the only Reformation that would bear the remotest resemblance to the old Reformation. But that is just the difficulty; and that is just the point. I cannot accuse the Buchmanites of repeating the Lutheran pessimism. I cannot accuse them of revolting against the Lutheran pessimism. The very language they use is so loose and vague and journalistic, that it might mean either that the New Reformation is to restore Luther or reverse Luther. All they are sure about is that it will come from Germany, like Luther—or like Hitler. There is a certain intellectual courage, which some would call impudence, about saying at this moment that the Vision of a New Reformation is of necessity a Hope from Germany. It is amusing to read it at the very moment when even the Pro-Germans have begun to think that Germany is hopeless. Anyhow, the religious leader in question is welcome, so far as I am concerned, to any New Reformation which puts the Swastika above the Cross and teaches men first to be very arrogant Germans before it allows them to be very apologetic Christians. All that may be a reformation in the sense of a new form; but it seems to me, on the side of religious thought, to be the very essence of formlessness.
IL NUOVO LUTERO
SEMPLICE che ci sia un movimento o qualcosa del genere di natura religiosa; che, essendo stato fondato da un luterano di razza tedesca e origine americana, si collega naturalmente al nome di Oxford. Alcune persone dicono che si chiama il Movimento del Gruppo di Oxford. Altre persone sembrano essere inutilmente allarmate, per timore che venga identificato dagli storici con il Movimento di Oxford. Vorrei suggerire, in uno spirito amichevole, che dovrebbe essere chiamato il Movimento della Strada di Oxford. La Oxford Street contiene effettivamente il nome della città universitaria, che sembra essere tutto ciò che è richiesto; e allo stesso tempo, è lontana da Oxford. Penso che l’atmosfera lì sarebbe più congrua e confortevole; e in qualche modo sento che il signor Gordon Selfridge, essendo nei paraggi, sarebbe più veramente comprensivo e spiritualmente utile del Rettore di Balliol.
Quando avevo fatto qualche battuta del genere ricevetti una lettera di protesta contro ciò che avevo scritto sul movimento del gruppo Buchman. La lettera era scritta in un tono afflitto e quasi patetico, esprimendo rammarico per il fatto che io dovessi svalutare qualsiasi cosa riportasse gli uomini alla realtà della religione; e avrei almeno dovuto assicurare all’autore di non essere insensibile a un tale appello. In questo come in molti altri casi, la religione è trattata in modo curioso, distinta dalla politica o dall’etica o dall’economia. Nessuno dice che poiché tutti i partiti politici possono presumibilmente contenere molti ben-pensanti per il bene pubblico, quindi non dovremmo opporci al Comunismo né attaccare il Capitalismo, né esprimere la nostra fiducia o sfiducia nel Fascismo. Le strade che conducono a diverse soluzioni sociali sono riconosciute come divergenti. È solo per i sentieri verso l’inferno e il paradiso che basta dire che sono pavimentati di buone intenzioni. Lasciatemi dire subito che simpatizzo con tutti i peccatori che cercano una tale via d’uscita; anche con quell’aristocrazia spirituale piuttosto esclusiva e arrogante che scrive sopra le sue porte: “Solo per Peccatori”. Simpatizzo con loro, non quanto simpatizzo con quei pescatori ignoranti che cantano inni in una vecchia cappella squallida in un villaggio di pescatori del Devonshire; non proprio tanto quanto simpatizzo con un gruppo di rotolanti Santi Rotolanti per terra nei dintorni di Dayton, Tennessee, per evitare la maledizione dell’Evolutionismo; e neanche la metà di quanto simpatizzo con i fakiri musulmani che ululano nel deserto scuotendo le loro splendide lance e morendo sulle baionette britanniche. Ma simpatizzo con tutte queste persone, poiché sono tutti alla ricerca di Dio. E sono sufficientemente ortodosso da sapere che, in qualche modo mistico al di là della nostra comprensione, è vero che cercare significa trovare.
Ma se il mio corrispondente o chiunque altro desidera sapere perché io preferisco piuttosto i seguaci del Mullah Pazzo a quelli di Herr Buchman, lo troverà perfettamente riassunto in un’intervista e articolo apparsi sul News-Chronicle con titolo enorme: “Visione di una nuova riforma: la speranza del Leader del Gruppo dalla Germania.” Lo troverà squisitamente ed esattamente concentrato, come nella cristallizzazione di un gioiello, in queste parole; leggetele; rileggetele; ponderatele. Esse contengono l’intera sostanza dell’argomento. “Questi Gruppisti pensano su larga scala. I canadesi, per esempio, non solo hanno prenotato il Chateau Frontenac per una festa in casa di 3.000 persone a Quebec l’anno prossimo, ma hanno già noleggiato un transatlantico della C.P.R. per portare il loro contingente in Inghilterra per la prossima Oxford festa in casa.”
Questo, come noterete, è pensare su larga scala. Per menti rozze e rustiche, distributiste, non sembrerebbe che sia pensiero affatto. Ci sono stati un numero infinito di settari e fanatici puritani che hanno davvero pensato; alcuni hanno pensato e ripensato fino a impazzire. Ma direi che la sanità e solidità del Movimento Gruppo erano al sicuro da qualsiasi pericolo del genere. Si tratta di capire se la religione può pensare troppo alla pompa e alla grandezza, oppure se deve vantarsi di avere pompa senza pensare affatto. C’è un caso reale da fare sia a favore che contro la fase più pagana del Papato, che ha riempito Roma di trofei che avrebbero potuto rappresentare i trionfi di Traiano o Augusto. Ma ci vuole qualche riflessione per costruire anche un tempio pagano o erigere un monumento imperialistico. La cupola che Michelangelo fece culminare San Pietro non è solo una grande cupola, ma è stata fatta da un uomo che pensava su larga scala. Anzi, avrebbe potuto essere meno grande se fosse stata più grande. Sollevarla un po’ più in alto nell’aria restringe la curva; allargarla un po’ appiattisce la curva. Questo è ciò che si intende per pensare e soprattutto per pensare su larga scala. Comunque sia, è un’operazione piuttosto diversa dal comprare il battello a vapore di qualcun altro o assicurarsi tutti i letti in albergo di qualcun altro.
Infine, che cosa diremo alla luce (o al crepuscolo) di tutto questo, dell’enorme pretesa fatta con lettere così grandi da coprire un intero paragrafo di questo saggio; la “Visione di una nuova Riforma: la Speranza del Capogruppo dalla Germania?” Possiamo dire innanzitutto che qui, come in ogni singola cosa che ho letto sul Movimento dei Gruppi, come in ogni pagina e paragrafo del libro chiamato For Sinners Only, c’è un’ambiguità straordinaria. Che cosa si intende per una nuova Riforma? Che cosa deve essere riformato? È forse possibile che sia la Riforma stessa a dover essere riformata? E, per coloro che hanno il pedante gusto di guardare alla struttura delle parole che scrivono o dicono, in quale forma deve essere riformata? Può essere nella vecchia forma originale? Certamente in tutto questo non c’è traccia né contorno di alcuna nuova forma. O forse per una Nuova Riforma si intende una ripetizione della Riforma? Vuol dire un’estensione della Riforma? Vuol dire che dobbiamo aspettarci qualcuno che sia più luterano di Lutero? Suppongo che la vera dottrina del grande Riformatore potrebbe essere spinta oltre il punto in cui lui l’ha portata. È molto difficile immaginare una dottrina che possa rendere l’uomo più vile, descrivere la natura umana come più disperatamente impotente, annerire la ragione e la volontà dell’uomo con un disperazione più assolutamente senza fondo e senza speranza di quanto non abbia fatto la vera dottrina di Lutero. Ma è possibile che ci siano profondità sotto le profondità e che sia possibile dannare la dignità di Adamo più completamente di quanto l’abbia dannata Lutero. È questo ciò che si intende per una Nuova Riforma? Questa è l’unica riforma che avrebbe la minima somiglianza con la vecchia Riforma. Ma questa è proprio la difficoltà; e questo è il punto cruciale. Non posso accusare i Buchmaniti di ripetere il pessimismo luterano. Non posso accusarli di ribellarsi contro il pessimismo luterano. Il linguaggio che usano è così vago, sciatto e giornalistico, che potrebbe voler dire sia che la Nuova Riforma dovrà restaurare o rovesciare Lutero. Tutto ciò di cui sono sicuri è che verrà dalla Germania, come Lutero— o come Hitler. C’è una certa intelligenza, che alcuni chiamerebbero impudenza, nel dire in questo momento che la Visione di una Nuova Riforma è necessariamente una Speranza dalla Germania. È divertente leggerlo proprio nel momento in cui anche i filo-tedeschi hanno cominciato a pensare che la Germania sia senza speranza. Comunque, il leader religioso in questione è benvenuto, per quanto mi riguarda, con qualsiasi Nuova Riforma che metta la Swastika al di sopra della Croce e insegni agli uomini a essere prima dei tedeschi molto arroganti prima di permettere loro di essere cristiani molto scusanti. Tutto ciò può essere una riforma nel senso di una nuova forma; ma mi sembra, dal punto di vista del pensiero religioso, l’essenza stessa della forma informe.
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BABIES AND DISTRIBUTISM
I HOPE it is not a secret arrogance to say that I do not think I am exceptionally arrogant; or if I were, my religion would prevent me from being proud of my pride. Nevertheless, for those of such a philosophy, there is a very terrible temptation to intellectual pride, in the welter of wordy and worthless philosophies that surround us to-day. Yet there are not many things that move me to anything like a personal contempt. I do not feel any contempt for an atheist, who is often a man oflimited and constrained by his own logic to a very sad simplification. I do not feel any contempt for a Bolshevist, who is a man driven to the same-negative simplification by a revolt against very positive wrongs. But there is one type of person for whom I feel what I can only call contempt. And that is the popular propagandist of what he or she absurdly describes as Birth-Control.
I despise Birth-Control first because it is a weak and wobbly and cowardly word. It is also an entirely meaningless word; and is used so as to curry favour even with those who would at first recoil from its real meaning. The proceeding these quack doctors recommend does not control any birth. It only makes sure that there shall never be any birth to control. It cannot, for instance, determine sex, or even make any selection in the style of the pseudo-science of Eugenics. Normal people can only act so as to produce birth; and these people can only act so as to prevent birth. But these people know perfectly well that they dare not write the plain word Birth-Prevention, in any one of the hundred places where they write the hypocritical word Birth-Control. They know as well as I do that the very word Birth-Prevention would strike a chill into the public, the instant it was blazoned on headlines, or proclaimed on platforms, or scattered in advertisements like any other quack medicine. They dare not call it by its name, because its name is very bad advertising. Therefore they use a conventional and unmeaning word, which may make the quack medicine sound more innocuous.
Second, I despise Birth-Control because it is a weak and wobbly and cowardly thing. It is not even a step along the muddy road they call Eugenics; it is a flat refusal to take the first and most obvious step along the road of Eugenics. Once grant that their philosophy is right, and their course of action is obvious; and they dare not take it; they dare not even declare it. If there is no authority in things which Christendom has called moral, because their origins were mystical, then they are clearly free to ignore all difference between animals and men; and treat men as we treat animals. They need not palter with the stale and timid compromise and convention called Birth-Control. Nobody applies it to the cat. The obvious course for Eugenists is to act towards babies as they act towards kittens. Let all the babies be born and then let us drown those we do not like. I cannot see any objection to it; except the moral or mystical sort of objection that we advance against Birth-Prevention. And that would be real and even reasonable Eugenics; for we could then select the best, or at least the healthiest, and sacrifice what are called the unfit. By the weak compromise of Birth-Prevention, we are very probably sacrificing the fit and only producing the unfit. The births we prevent may be the births of the best and most beautiful children; those we allow, the weakest or worst. Indeed, it is probable; for the habit discourages the early parentage of young and vigorous people; and lets them put off the experience to later years, mostly from mercenary motives. Until I see a real pioneer and progressive leader coming out with a good, bold, scientific programme for drowning babies, I will not join the movement.
But there is a third, reason for my contempt, much deeper and therefore much more difficult to express; in which is rooted all my reasons for being anything I am or attempt to be; and above all, for being a Distributist. Perhaps the nearest to a description of it is to say this: that my contempt boils over into bad behaviour when I hear the common suggestion that a birth is avoided because people want to be “free” to go to the cinema or buy a gramophone or a loud-speaker. What makes me want to walk over such people like doormats is that they use the word “free.” By every act of that sort they chain themselves to the most servile and mechanical system yet tolerated by men. The cinema is a machine for unrolling certain regular patterns called pictures; expressing the most vulgar millionaires’ notion of the taste of the most vulgar millions. The gramophone is a machine for recording such tunes as certain shops and other organisations choose to sell. The wireless is better; but even that is marked by the modern mark of all three; the impotence of the receptive party. The amateur cannot challenge the actor; the householder will find it vain to go and shout into the gramophone; the mob cannot pelt the modern speaker, especially when he is a loud-speaker. It is all a central mechanism giving out to men exactly what their masters think they should have.
Now a child is the very sign and sacrament of personal freedom. He is a fresh free will added to the wills of the world; he is something that his parents have freely chosen to produce and which they freely agree to protect. They can feel that any amusement he gives (which is often considerable) really comes from him and from them, and from nobody else. He has been born without the intervention of any master or lord. He is a creation and a contribution; he is their own creative contribution to creation. He is also a much more beautiful, wonderful, amusing and astonishing thing than any of the stale stories or ijingling jazz tunes turned out bv the machines. When men no longer feel that he is so, they have lost the appreciation of primary things, and therefore all sense of proportion about the world. People who prefer the mechanical pleasures, to such a miracle, are jaded and enslaved. They are preferring the very dregs of life to the first fountains of life. They are preferring the last, crooked, indirect, borrowed, repeated and exhausted things of our dying Capitalist civilisation, to the reality which is the only rejuvenation of all civilisation. It is they who are hugging the chains of their old slavery; it is the child who is ready for the new world.
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BAMBINI E DISTRIBUTISMO
Spero che non sia una segreta arroganza dire che non credo di essere eccezionalmente arrogante; o, se lo fossi, la mia religione mi impedirebbe di andare fiero del mio orgoglio. Ciononostante, per chi professa una tale filosofia, esiste una tentazione davvero terribile all’orgoglio intellettuale, nel guazzabuglio di filosofie verbose e prive di valore che oggi ci circondano. Eppure non sono molte le cose che mi muovono a qualcosa di simile a un disprezzo personale. Non provo alcun disprezzo per un ateo, che spesso è un uomo di mente limitata, costretto dalla propria logica a una tristissima semplificazione. Non provo alcun disprezzo per un bolscevico, che è un uomo spinto alla medesima semplificazione negativa da una rivolta contro torti quanto mai positivi. Ma esiste un tipo di persona per cui provo ciò che posso solo chiamare disprezzo. E cioè il popolare propagandista di quello che lui o lei descrive assurdamente come Controllo delle Nascite.
In primo luogo, disprezzo il Controllo delle Nascite perché è una parola debole, malferma e vigliacca. È anche una parola del tutto priva di senso; e viene usata così da accattivarsi il favore perfino di coloro che, sulle prime, indietreggerebbero dinanzi al suo vero significato. Il procedimento che questi medici ciarlatani raccomandano non controlla alcuna nascita. Si limita ad assicurare che non vi sia mai alcuna nascita da controllare. Non può, per esempio, determinare il sesso, né operare alcuna selezione nello stile della pseudo-scienza dell’Eugenetica. Le persone normali possono agire soltanto in modo da produrre nascite; e costoro possono agire soltanto in modo da impedire la nascita. Ma costoro sanno benissimo che non osano scrivere la semplice parola Prevenzione delle Nascite, in nessuno dei cento luoghi in cui scrivono l’ipocrita parola Controllo delle Nascite. Sanno bene quanto me che la sola parola Prevenzione delle Nascite getterebbe un brivido nel pubblico, nell’istante stesso in cui fosse spiattellata sui titoli dei giornali, o proclamata dai palchi, o sparsa nelle inserzioni come qualsiasi altra medicina da ciarlatano. Non osano chiamarla col suo nome, perché il suo nome è una pessima réclame. Perciò usano una parola convenzionale e priva di significato, che possa far suonare più innocua la medicina da ciarlatano.
In secondo luogo, disprezzo il Controllo delle Nascite perché è una cosa debole, malferma e vigliacca. Non è nemmeno un passo lungo la fangosa strada che chiamano Eugenetica; è un netto rifiuto di compiere il primo e più ovvio passo lungo la strada dell’Eugenetica. Una volta ammesso che la loro filosofia sia giusta, il loro corso d’azione è ovvio; ed essi non osano intraprenderlo; non osano nemmeno dichiararlo. Se non vi è alcuna autorità nelle cose che la Cristianità ha chiamato morali, poiché le loro origini erano mistiche, allora sono chiaramente liberi di ignorare ogni differenza tra gli animali e gli uomini; e di trattare gli uomini come noi trattiamo gli animali. Non hanno bisogno di trastullarsi col vieto e timido compromesso e convenzione chiamato Controllo delle Nascite. Nessuno lo applica al gatto. Il corso ovvio per gli Eugenisti è comportarsi coi neonati come si comportano coi gattini. Che tutti i bambini nascano e poi anneghiamo quelli che non ci piacciono. Non riesco a scorgervi alcuna obiezione; se non l’obiezione morale o mistica che avanziamo contro la Prevenzione delle Nascite. E quella sì che sarebbe una Eugenetica reale e persino ragionevole; poiché potremmo allora scegliere i migliori, o almeno i più sani, e sacrificare quelli che vengono chiamati inadatti. Col debole compromesso della Prevenzione delle Nascite, con ogni probabilità sacrifichiamo gli adatti e produciamo soltanto gli inadatti. Le nascite che impediamo potrebbero essere quelle dei bambini migliori e più belli; quelle che consentiamo, dei più deboli o dei peggiori. Anzi, è probabile; perché quest’abitudine scoraggia la genitorialità precoce delle persone giovani e vigorose, e induce a rimandare l’esperienza agli anni più tardi, per lo più per motivi venali. Finché non vedrò un vero pioniere e leader progressista uscirsene con un buon programma, ardito e scientifico, per annegare i neonati, non mi unirò al movimento.
Ma vi è una terza ragione per il mio disprezzo, assai più profonda e perciò assai più difficile da esprimere; in cui affondano le radici tutte le mie ragioni per essere qualunque cosa io sia o cerchi di essere; e soprattutto per essere un Distributista. Forse ciò che più si avvicina a descriverla è dire questo: che il mio disprezzo trabocca in cattive maniere quando odo la comune insinuazione che si eviti una nascita perché si vuole essere «liberi» di andare al cinema o di comprare un grammofono o un altoparlante. Ciò che mi fa venir voglia di calpestare simili persone come zerbini è che usano la parola «libero». Con ogni atto di quella sorta si incatenano al sistema più servile e meccanico finora tollerato dagli uomini. Il cinema è una macchina per srotolare certi disegni regolari chiamati immagini; che esprimono la più volgare idea dei milionari intorno al gusto dei più volgari milioni. Il grammofono è una macchina per registrare quelle arie che certi negozi e altre organizzazioni scelgono di vendere. La radio è meglio; ma persino essa è segnata dal marchio moderno di tutte e tre: l’impotenza della parte ricevente. Il dilettante non può sfidare l’attore; il padrone di casa troverà vano andare a gridare dentro il grammofono; la folla non può prendere a sassate l’oratore moderno, specie quando è un altoparlante. È tutto un meccanismo centrale che dispensa agli uomini esattamente ciò che i loro padroni pensano essi debbano avere.
Ora, un bambino è il segno e il sacramento stesso della libertà personale. Egli è una nuova volontà libera aggiunta alle volontà del mondo; è qualcosa che i suoi genitori hanno liberamente scelto di produrre e che liberamente convengono di proteggere. Possono sentire che ogni divertimento che egli offre (spesso considerevole) proviene davvero da lui e da loro, e da nessun altro. È venuto al mondo senza l’intervento di alcun padrone o signore. È una creazione e un contributo; è il loro proprio contributo creativo alla creazione. È inoltre una cosa assai più bella, meravigliosa, divertente e stupefacente di qualsiasi vieta storiella o strimpellante aria di jazz sfornata dalle macchine. Quando gli uomini non sentono più che sia così, hanno perduto l’apprezzamento delle cose primarie, e quindi ogni senso della proporzione riguardo al mondo. Le persone che preferiscono i piaceri meccanici a un simile miracolo sono spossate e asservite. Preferiscono le vere fecce della vita alle prime fonti della vita. Preferiscono le ultime cose, storte, indirette, prese in prestito, ripetute ed esauste della nostra morente civiltà capitalista, alla realtà che è l’unico ringiovanimento di ogni civiltà. Sono loro che stringono a sé le catene della loro vecchia schiavitù; è il bambino a essere pronto per il mondo nuovo.
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THREE FOES OF THE FAMILY
IT was certainly a very brilliant lightning-flash of irony by which Mr. Aldous Huxley lit up the whole loathsome landscape of his satirical Utopia, of synthetic humanity and manufactured men and women, by the old romantic quotation of “Brave New World”. The quotation comes, of course, from that supreme moment of the magic of youth, nourished by the magic of old age, when Miranda the marvellous becomes Miranda the marvelling, at the unique wonder of first love. To use it for the very motto of a system which, having lost all innocence, would necessarily lose all wonder, was a touch of very withering wit. And yet it will be well to remember that, in comparison with some other worlds, where the same work is done more weakly and quite as wickedly, the Utopia of the extremists really has something of the intellectual integrity which belongs to extremes, even of madness. In that sense the two ironical adjectives are not merely ironical. The horrible human, or inhuman, hive described in Mr. Huxley’s romance is certainly a base world, and a filthy world, and a fundamentally unhappy world. But it is in one sense a new world; and it is in one sense a brave world. At least a certain amount of bravery, as well as brutality, would have to be shown before anything of the sort could be established in the world of fact. It would need some courage, and even some self-sacrifice, to establish anything so utterly disgusting as that.
But the same work is being done in other worlds that are not particularly new, and not in the least brave. There are people of another sort, much more common and conventional, who are not only working to create such a paradise of cowardice, but who actually try to work for it through a conspiracy of cowards. The attitude of these people towards the Family and the tradition of its Christian virtues is the attitude of men willing to wound and yet afraid to strike; or ready to sap and mine so long as they are not called upon to fire or fight in the open. And those who do this cover much more than half, or nearly two-thirds, of the people who write in the most respectable and conventional Capitalist newspapers. It cannot be too often repeated that what destroyed the Family in the modern world was Capitalism. No doubt it might have been Communism, if Communism had ever had a chance, outside that semi-Mongolian wilderness where it actually flourishes. But, so far as we are concerned, what has broken up households and encouraged divorces, and treated the old domestic virtues with more and more open contempt, is the epoch and Power of Capitalism. It is Capitalism that has forced a moral feud and a commercial competition between the sexes; that has destroyed the influence of the parent in favour of the influence of the employer; that has driven men from their homes to look for jobs; that has forced them to live near their factories or their firms instead of near their families; and, above all, that has encouraged, for commercial reasons, a parade of publicity and garish novelty, which is in its nature the death of all that was called dignity and modesty by our mothers and fathers. It is not the Bolshevist but the Boss, the publicity man, the salesman and the commercial advertiser who have, like a rush and riot of barbarians, thrown down and trampled under foot the ancient Roman statue of Verecundia. But because the thing is done by men of this sort, of course it is done in their own muggy and muddle-headed way; by all the irresponsible tricks of their foul Suggestion and their filthy Psychology. It is done, for instance, by perpetually guying the old Victorian virtues or limitations which, as they are no longer there, are not likely to retaliate. It is done more by pictures than by printed words; because printed words are supposed to make a some sense and a man may be answerable for printing a them. Stiff and hideous effigies of women in crinolines or bonnets are paraded, as if that could possibly be all there was to see when Maud came into the garden, and was saluted by such a song. Fortunately, Maud’s friends, who would have challenged the pressman and photographer to a duel, are all dead; and these satirists of Victorianism are very careful to find out that all their enemies are dead. Some of their bold caricaturists have been known to charge an old-fashioned bathing-machine as courageously as if it were a machine-gun. It is convenient thus courageously to attack bathing-machines, because there are no bathing-machines to attack. Then they balance these things by photographs of the Modern Girl at various stages of the nudist movement; and trust that any thing so obviously vulgar is bound to be popular. For the rest, the Modern Girl is floated on a sea of sentimental sloppiness; a continuous gush about her frankness and freshness, the perfect naturalness of her painting her face or the unprecedented courage of her having no children. The whole is diluted with a dreary hypocrisy about comradeship, far more sentimental than the old-fashioned sentiment. When I see the Family sinking in these swamps of amorphous amorous futility, I feel inclined to say, “Give me the Communists.” Better Bolshevist battles and the Brave New World than the ancient house of man rotted away silently by such worms of secret sensuality and individual appetite. “The coward does it with a kiss; the brave man with a sword.”
But there is, curiously enough, a third thing of the kind, which I am really inclined to think that I dislike even more than the other two. It is not the Communist attacking the family or the Capitalist betraying the family; it is the vast and very astonishing vision of the Hitlerite defending the family. Hitler’s way of defending the independence of the family is to make every family dependent on him and his semi-Socialist State; and to preserve the authority of parents by authoritatively telling all the parents what to do. His notion of keeping sacred the dignity of domestic life is to issue peremptory orders that the grandfather is to get up at five in the morning and do dumb-bell exercises, or the grand mother to march twenty miles to a camp to procure a Swastika flag. In other words, he appears to interfere with family life more even than the Bolshevists do; and to do it in the name of the sacredness of the family. It is not much more encouraging than the other two social manifestations; but at least it is more entertaining.
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TRE NEMICI DELLA FAMIGLIA
Fu certamente un brillantissimo lampo d’ironia quello con cui il signor Aldous Huxley illuminò l’intero ripugnante paesaggio della sua Utopia satirica, fatta di umanità sintetica e di uomini e donne fabbricati, con l’antica citazione romantica di «Brave New World». La citazione proviene, naturalmente, da quel momento supremo della magia della giovinezza, nutrita dalla magia della vecchiaia, quando Miranda la meravigliosa diventa Miranda la meravigliata, dinanzi all’unica meraviglia del primo amore. Usarla come motto stesso di un sistema che, avendo perduto ogni innocenza, perderebbe necessariamente ogni meraviglia, fu un tocco di arguzia assai fulminante. E tuttavia sarà bene ricordare che, in confronto ad altri mondi, dove la medesima opera è compiuta più debolmente e altrettanto malvagiamente, l’Utopia degli estremisti possiede realmente qualcosa dell’integrità intellettuale che appartiene agli estremi, perfino a quelli della follia. In tal senso i due aggettivi ironici non sono soltanto ironici. L’orribile alveare umano, o disumano, descritto nel romanzo del signor Huxley è certamente un mondo abietto, un mondo lurido e un mondo fondamentalmente infelice. Ma in un certo senso è un mondo nuovo; e in un certo senso è un mondo coraggioso. Quantomeno un certo grado di coraggio, oltre che di brutalità, dovrebbe essere dimostrato prima che qualcosa del genere potesse instaurarsi nel mondo dei fatti. Occorrerebbe un po’ di coraggio, e perfino un po’ di sacrificio di sé, per instaurare qualcosa di tanto assolutamente disgustoso.
Ma la medesima opera viene compiuta in altri mondi che non sono particolarmente nuovi, né minimamente coraggiosi. Vi è gente di un’altra specie, assai più comune e convenzionale, che non solo si adopera per creare un simile paradiso di viltà, ma cerca effettivamente di realizzarlo mediante una congiura di codardi. L’atteggiamento di costoro verso la Famiglia e la tradizione delle sue virtù cristiane è quello di uomini disposti a ferire eppure timorosi di colpire; o pronti a scavare mine e trincee finché non siano chiamati a sparare o a combattere allo scoperto. E coloro che fanno questo costituiscono ben più della metà, o quasi i due terzi, di quanti scrivono sui più rispettabili e convenzionali giornali capitalisti. Non si ripeterà mai abbastanza che ciò che distrusse la Famiglia nel mondo moderno fu il Capitalismo. Senza dubbio avrebbe potuto essere il Comunismo, se il Comunismo avesse mai avuto un’occasione, fuori da quella landa semi-mongola dove effettivamente prospera. Ma, per quanto ci riguarda, ciò che ha disgregato i focolari e incoraggiato i divorzi, e trattato le antiche virtù domestiche con disprezzo sempre più aperto, è l’epoca e la Potenza del Capitalismo. È il Capitalismo ad aver imposto una faida morale e una concorrenza commerciale tra i sessi; ad aver distrutto l’influenza del genitore a favore dell’influenza del datore di lavoro; ad aver cacciato gli uomini dalle loro case in cerca di lavoro; ad averli costretti a vivere presso le loro fabbriche o le loro ditte anziché presso le loro famiglie; e, soprattutto, ad aver incoraggiato, per ragioni commerciali, una sfilata di pubblicità e di sgargiante novità, che è per sua natura la morte di tutto ciò che le nostre madri e i nostri padri chiamavano dignità e pudore. Non è il bolscevico ma il Padrone, l’uomo della pubblicità, il venditore e il pubblicitario commerciale ad avere, come un’ondata tumultuosa di barbari, abbattuto e calpestato l’antica statua romana della Verecundia. Ma poiché la cosa è compiuta da uomini di questa risma, naturalmente è compiuta a modo loro, afoso e confuso; con tutti gli espedienti irresponsabili della loro turpe Suggestione e della loro lurida Psicologia. La si compie, per esempio, mettendo perpetuamente in ridicolo le antiche virtù o limitazioni vittoriane che, non essendo più presenti, difficilmente potranno reagire. La si compie più con le immagini che con le parole stampate; perché si suppone che le parole stampate abbiano un qualche senso e che un uomo possa esser chiamato a rispondere di averle stampate. Si esibiscono rigide e orride effigi di donne in crinolina o in cuffia, come se quello potesse mai essere tutto ciò che v’era da vedere quando Maud entrava nel giardino, ed era salutata da un tal canto. Per fortuna, gli amici di Maud, che avrebbero sfidato a duello il giornalista e il fotografo, sono tutti morti; e questi satirici del vittorianesimo hanno gran cura di accertarsi che tutti i loro nemici siano morti. Si è saputo di certi loro arditi caricaturisti che hanno caricato una macchina da bagno all’antica con lo stesso coraggio con cui avrebbero assalito una mitragliatrice. È comodo attaccare così coraggiosamente le macchine da bagno, perché non vi sono macchine da bagno da attaccare. Poi bilanciano queste cose con fotografie della Ragazza Moderna a vari stadi del movimento nudista; e confidano che qualcosa di così palesemente volgare non possa che essere popolare. Per il resto, la Ragazza Moderna è tenuta a galla su un mare di sdolcinatezza sentimentale; un continuo profluvio sulla sua franchezza e freschezza, sulla perfetta naturalezza del suo dipingersi il volto o sull’inaudito coraggio del suo non aver figli. Il tutto è diluito con una tetra ipocrisia sul cameratismo, assai più sentimentale del sentimento all’antica. Quando vedo la Famiglia sprofondare in queste paludi di amorfa e amorosa futilità, mi sento incline a dire: «Datemi i Comunisti». Meglio le battaglie bolsceviche e il Mondo Nuovo che l’antica casa dell’uomo corrosa silenziosamente da simili vermi di segreta sensualità e di appetito individuale. «Il codardo lo fa con un bacio; l’uomo coraggioso con una spada».
Ma vi è, per quanto curioso, una terza cosa del genere, che sono davvero incline a credere di detestare persino più delle altre due. Non è il Comunista che attacca la famiglia né il Capitalista che tradisce la famiglia; è la vasta e sbalorditiva visione dell’Hitleriano che difende la famiglia. Il modo di Hitler di difendere l’indipendenza della famiglia consiste nel rendere ogni famiglia dipendente da lui e dal suo Stato semi-socialista; e nel preservare l’autorità dei genitori dicendo autoritariamente a tutti i genitori che cosa devono fare. La sua idea di mantenere sacra la dignità della vita domestica è di emanare ordini perentori che il nonno debba alzarsi alle cinque del mattino e fare esercizi con i manubri, o la nonna marciare per venti miglia fino a un campo per procurarsi una bandiera con la svastica. In altre parole, egli sembra interferire nella vita familiare ancor più di quanto facciano i bolscevichi; e farlo nel nome della sacralità della famiglia. Non è molto più incoraggiante delle altre due manifestazioni sociali; ma almeno è più divertente.
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THE DON AND THE CAVALIER
MR. CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS has written an excellent book on John Dryden. It is an instructive book; it is also an amusing book; but not so amusing as some of the reviews of it. And it concerns me here, at the moment mainly in relation to the general position to-day of the school of academic critics, who have upheld for so long a time the historical theory which is often called Parliamentarism and is in fact Plutocracy. It is of some moment to the Distributist movement because it was the official defence of this policy which made possible the dispossession of the populace. Now about the present position of that official criticism there are several rather curious things to note. The first is its tone; which is quite queer in its difference from the tone used in my youth, when historians were as simple as Macaulay; I might almost say when scholars were as ignorant as Macaulay. For a man can be very learned and very ignorant; and Macaulay achieved the combination to the admiration of heaven and earth. Macaulay would make short work, or imagine that he could make short work, of any young man who played at being a Jacobite; he was impatient with him as with a crank; but he was honestly impatient; his impatience was a sort of innocence. The critics on the same side to-day have lost their innocence. They know perfectly well that they have been defeated in battle after battle upon the big facts; and they have a curious carefulness in dealing only with very small facts. Anybody who said thirty years ago that Charles the First was not in fact a tyrant, dethroned by an indignant democracy, could really be treated as a sort of Mr. Dick, with a weakness for weeping over King Charles’s Head. The modern critic does not really dare to-day to appear as the executioner (even though the critic, like the executioner, can wear a mask and remain nameless); he has not now the nerve to shake King Charles’s Head at the people and shout confidently, “Behold the Head of a Traitor.” So he becomes more fussy and particular than ever over the ancient, profound, pressing and all-important question: “Out of which window in Whitehall did Charles the First step to have his head cut off?” And that, as Disraeli very truly observed, is one of the two or three quite infallible ways of becoming a bore.
And the new professor of the old history is rather a bore; but what is much worse, he is a nervous bore. He not only drawls, but he also stammers. And his tone, as I have said, has achieved a most peculiar accent of acrid timidity. I read one criticism of Mr. Hollis’s book, in a highly learned and authoritative weekly; and it largely left me wondering whether the critic who wrote it had read that particular passage in it, in which Mr. Hollis, contrasting the methods of Dryden and Pope, quotes the whole of the latter poet’s famous satire upon Addison. Whether or no it was like Addison, it was exactly like the critic.
“Willing to wound and yet afraid to strike, Just hint a doubt and hesitate dislike; Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, And without sneering teach the rest to sneer.”
Again, over and above this unmistakable tone, there is the change in the method which I have compared to the change from laughing at Mr. Dick over King Charles’s Head to quarrelling about which window-sill had the honour to be bestridden by King Charles’s legs. There was an excellent example in this review, of the method of avoiding battle on the main issue and picking a quarrel about a trifle. Mr. Hollis made the general remark, which is a true and valuable remark, that it is rather a disadvantage of revolutions that they often have to be followed by new and rigid repressions, set up by the revolutionists themselves. He gives the example that William of Orange’s government censored a sort of controversy which under the last Stuarts was much more free. The critic then suggested that the whole book and its author were historically unreliable, upon some verbal interpretation of William of Orange’s government; because the censorship was removed later; I think in 1695. The point of general interest is that there was a new censorship; and the critic’s way of proving that there was not a censorship is to say that there was a censorship, that lasted for about eight years. Now Mr. Hollis’s general philosophy may be right or wrong; but Mr. Hollis’s general remark was perfectly philosophical and a quite reasonable comment on this and many other cases of the same truth. The critic’s correction, if his correction is correct, is not of the slightest philosophical or rational interest to anybody; it has no relation to the point that was really raised; it only says that somebody did something, but did not do it all the time. That is what I mean by the one side being concerned with triviality and the other side with truth. Mr. Hollis’s suggestion is of some intelligent importance to us, who are living among real revolutions; Bolshevist revolutions or Hitlerite revolutions. It is not necessarily a complete condemnation of revolutions. It is simply a note on the natural history of revolutionists. But his history really is natural history, and the academic and pedantic history has become utterly unnatural.
There is a saying that a great silence broods over the great battlefields. There is certainly a very astounding silence over the great recent defeats of the Orangemen’s theory of history. Mr. Hollis begins his book by noting the picturesque coincidence that Dryden sat fishing in the river upon which Mary Stuart had looked out from the Tower of Fotheringay. The storming and taking of that Tower, with all its secrets, was a struggle that once made an amazing noise, that has now been followed by a more amazing stillness. Hardly anything is said about its sensational termination; simply because the main part of the old accepted case against the Catholic Queen has completely broken down. Considering how frightfully important it was that the Casket Letters were all certainly genuine, it is very funny to find how unimportant it is that they are most of them probably forgeries. The war was so fierce and ruthless while they thought they were winning it; it is so very quiet and casual and gentlemanly, now that they know they are losing it. That intellectual interlude at least is over; England is returning to her own past, and could hardly march under a better battle-sign than what Macaulay himself had the magnanimity to call “the towering crest of Dryden.”
IL DON E IL CAVALIERE
Il signor CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS ha scritto un eccellente libro su John Dryden. È un libro istruttivo; è anche un libro divertente; ma non così divertente come alcune delle sue recensioni. E qui mi riguarda, per il momento, soprattutto in relazione alla posizione generale odierna della scuola dei critici accademici, che hanno sostenuto per così lungo tempo la teoria storica che viene spesso chiamata parlamentarismo ed è in realtà plutocrazia. Ha una certa importanza per il movimento distributista perché fu la difesa ufficiale di questa politica a rendere possibile l’espropriazione del popolo. Ora, riguardo all’attuale posizione di quella critica ufficiale vi sono parecchie cose piuttosto curiose da notare. La prima è il suo tono; che è assai bizzarro nella sua differenza dal tono usato nella mia giovinezza, quando gli storici erano semplici come Macaulay; potrei quasi dire quando gli studiosi erano ignoranti come Macaulay. Poiché un uomo può essere molto dotto e molto ignorante; e Macaulay raggiunse tale combinazione con l’ammirazione del cielo e della terra. Macaulay avrebbe liquidato in fretta, o si sarebbe immaginato di poter liquidare in fretta, qualunque giovane che giocasse a fare il giacobita; era spazientito con lui come con un esaltato; ma era onestamente spazientito; la sua impazienza era una sorta di innocenza. I critici dalla stessa parte, oggi, hanno perduto la loro innocenza. Sanno perfettamente bene di essere stati sconfitti in battaglia dopo battaglia sui grandi fatti; e hanno una curiosa premura nel trattare soltanto fatti piccolissimi. Chiunque avesse detto trent’anni fa che Carlo I non era in realtà un tiranno, detronizzato da un’indignata democrazia, poteva davvero essere trattato come una sorta di Mr. Dick, con la debolezza di piangere sulla Testa di re Carlo. Il critico moderno non osa davvero oggi presentarsi come il boia (anche se il critico, come il boia, può indossare una maschera e restare senza nome); non ha più il fegato di agitare la Testa di re Carlo davanti al popolo e gridare con sicurezza: «Ecco la Testa di un Traditore». Così diventa più pignolo e cavilloso che mai riguardo all’antica, profonda, pressante e importantissima questione: «Da quale finestra di Whitehall Carlo I uscì per farsi tagliare la testa?». E ciò, come Disraeli molto giustamente osservò, è uno dei due o tre modi assolutamente infallibili per diventare un seccatore.
E il nuovo professore della vecchia storia è piuttosto un seccatore; ma, cosa assai peggiore, è un seccatore nervoso. Non solo strascica le parole, ma per giunta balbetta. E il suo tono, come ho detto, ha raggiunto un accento singolarissimo di acre timidezza. Ho letto una critica al libro del signor Hollis, in un settimanale assai dotto e autorevole; e in gran parte mi ha lasciato a chiedermi se il critico che l’aveva scritta avesse letto quel particolare passo, in cui il signor Hollis, mettendo a confronto i metodi di Dryden e Pope, cita per intero la celebre satira di quest’ultimo poeta contro Addison. Somigliasse o no ad Addison, somigliava esattamente al critico.
«Pronto a ferire eppur timoroso di colpire, basta accennare un dubbio ed esitare l’avversione; dannare con tiepida lode, acconsentire con cortese sogghigno, e senza sogghignare insegnare agli altri a sogghignare».
Di nuovo, al di sopra di questo tono inconfondibile, vi è il cambiamento nel metodo che ho paragonato al passaggio dal ridere di Mr. Dick sulla Testa di re Carlo al litigare su quale davanzale della finestra ebbe l’onore d’essere scavalcato dalle gambe di re Carlo. Vi era in questa recensione un eccellente esempio del metodo di evitare la battaglia sulla questione principale e attaccar briga per un’inezia. Il signor Hollis fece l’osservazione generale, che è un’osservazione vera e preziosa, che è piuttosto uno svantaggio delle rivoluzioni il fatto che spesso debbano essere seguite da nuove e rigide repressioni, instaurate dagli stessi rivoluzionari. Egli porta l’esempio che Guglielmo d’Orange col suo governo censurò un tipo di polemica che sotto gli ultimi Stuart era assai più libera. Il critico allora insinuò che l’intero libro e il suo autore fossero storicamente inattendibili, sulla base di qualche interpretazione verbale del governo di Guglielmo d’Orange; perché la censura fu abolita più tardi; credo nel 1695. Il punto di interesse generale è che vi fu una nuova censura; e il modo del critico di dimostrare che non vi fu una censura è dire che vi fu una censura, durata circa otto anni. Ora, la filosofia generale del signor Hollis può essere giusta o sbagliata; ma l’osservazione generale del signor Hollis era perfettamente filosofica e un commento del tutto ragionevole su questo e molti altri casi della medesima verità. La correzione del critico, se la sua correzione è corretta, non è del minimo interesse filosofico o razionale per chicchessia; non ha alcuna relazione col punto che fu realmente sollevato; dice soltanto che qualcuno fece qualcosa, ma non lo fece per tutto il tempo. Questo è ciò che intendo dicendo che una parte si occupa della banalità e l’altra della verità. Il suggerimento del signor Hollis è di una certa intelligente importanza per noi, che viviamo tra rivoluzioni reali; rivoluzioni bolsceviche o rivoluzioni hitleriane. Non è necessariamente una condanna completa delle rivoluzioni. È semplicemente un’annotazione sulla storia naturale dei rivoluzionari. Ma la sua storia è davvero storia naturale, e la storia accademica e pedantesca è diventata del tutto innaturale.
Vi è un detto secondo cui un grande silenzio incombe sui grandi campi di battaglia. Vi è certamente un silenzio assai sbalorditivo sulle grandi recenti disfatte della teoria della storia degli orangisti. Il signor Hollis apre il suo libro rilevando la pittoresca coincidenza che Dryden sedesse a pescare nel fiume su cui Maria Stuarda aveva guardato dalla Torre di Fotheringay. L’assalto e la presa di quella Torre, con tutti i suoi segreti, furono una lotta che un tempo fece un frastuono straordinario, cui ora è seguita una quiete ancor più straordinaria. Quasi nulla si dice della sua sensazionale conclusione; semplicemente perché la parte principale della vecchia tesi accolta contro la regina cattolica è del tutto crollata. Considerando quanto fosse spaventosamente importante che le Lettere del Cofanetto fossero tutte sicuramente autentiche, è molto buffo scoprire quanto sia irrilevante che la maggior parte di esse siano probabilmente falsi. La guerra fu tanto feroce e spietata finché credevano di vincerla; è tanto tranquilla e disinvolta e signorile, ora che sanno di perderla. Quell’interludio intellettuale almeno è finito; l’Inghilterra sta tornando al proprio passato, e difficilmente potrebbe marciare sotto un’insegna di battaglia migliore di quella che Macaulay stesso ebbe la magnanimità di chiamare «la torreggiante cresta di Dryden».
I also came upon another critique of the book on Dryden; and one which goes far beyond the sort of negative hostility in the critics which I have criticised. That was, after all, only the confession that the Whig and Puritan school of history is fighting the rearguard action of a retreat, and that it mostly consists of rather futile sniping. Instead of the old uproarious cannonade of Macaulay, we do now in practice only “hear the distant and random gun that the foe is sullenly firing.” But the later criticism involved something more universal and significant than that. It really did represent the amazing, mystifying and in some ways almost exciting muddle, in what calls itself the Modern Mind. I say exciting, because when a mystification becomes as mad as that, it has almost the character of a mystery story; it is as if the modern man must have had a knock on the head, and we were all detectives trying to find out who really did it. How did it really happen that the cultivated, sometimes even the classical critic of this particular period, suffers from a heavy blow from some blunt instrument, so that he thinks and writes in the following fashion?
The critic in question said in these words, or almost these words: “We have no reason to doubt the sincerity of Dryden’s conversion to Roman Catholicism; but, after all, in the case of so great a man as Dryden, does the question matter very much?” That is the Modern Mind. This is the forest primeval, the murmuring pines and the hemlocks. This is the Jungle. This is the thickest of all thickets and the thorniest of all earthly briar-patches; and though I was born and bred in that briar-patch, like Brer Rabbit, I found it difficult to discover a path out of it; and I did not know how we are really to make a path through it.
Of course we can always begin by using the primitive implement of reason; and try to let in a little light merely by letting in a little logic. So far as I understand the argument as an argument, it is this. If John Dryden had been born half-witted, or if he had been a dunce and a dull fellow entirely insignificant in the intellectual and social life of his time-then it would have been frightfully and sensationally important to know whether he was or was not sincere, with a soul-searching sincerity, in his intellectual acceptance of the complete Catholic philosophy. But as he was not a dunce but a poet, as he was not a half-wit but a wit, as he was not a mindless person but a very great mind, then it must be a matter of indifference whether such an intellect can accept such an intellectual philosophy. Dryden was so great a thinker that it does not matter what he thought; he was almost certainly in search of the truth, but he was so capable of searching for it that nobody can take any interest in whether he found it; and it is only in the case of a small man that we could take a great interest in the great truth that he thought he found. How, I ask you, do people get their minds into a tangle like that? How could a man be sincere in his Catholicism, and yet think himself superior to his Catholicism? How could his greatness be detached from anything so great as a belief in a universal order of life, death and eternity; if he really had the greatness and really had the belief? It might make some sense if Dryden was not sincere; but it is practically admitted that he was sincere. It might make some sense if Dryden was small; but it is actually based on the view that he was great.
While the world has been talking about removing Victorian taboos, I have been resolved from the first to remove that one Victorian taboo; which really was a senseless and strangling taboo: the taboo on the topic of real religion, and its real and inevitable place in practical life. Most of the things the Moderns call Victorian taboos are about as Victorian as the Ten Commandments or the maxims of Confucius. But this really was Victorian, in the sense of having arisen recently in a vulgar, commercial and cowardly social system. It is not the notion that it is right or wrong to be a Moslem; it is the notion that it cannot really matter even to a Moslem that he is a Moslem. What is totally intolerable is the idea that everybody must pretend, for the sake of peace and decorum, that moral inspiration only comes from secular things like Distributism, and cannot possibly come from spiritual things like Catholicism. That is the fixed idea like a fossil that lies under all the labyrinthine wrappings or coil of contradictory conventions, in the mind of the reviewer whose words I quote.
It has nothing to do with what he would call being religious; or forcing religion upon him or anybody else. No Catholic thinks he is a good Catholic; or he would by that thought become a bad Catholic. I for one am not even tempted to any illusion in that matter; I fear that very often, when I have got up early to go to Mass, I have said with a groan, Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum, which, I may explain to the Moslem, is not a quotation from the Mass. But the critic here in question does not say, in the grand Lucretian manner, “Religion alone can persuade men to such evils.” He says, “Religion alone cannot really have persuaded anybody to anything.” He stands for a stupid interlude of intellectual history, in which men would not recognise religion either as a friend or an enemy, which supposed that a great. man must be great, not merely in spite of it, but even without reference to it. That intellectual interlude was never very intellectual; and anyhow, it is over.
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Mi sono imbattuto anche in un’altra critica al libro su Dryden; e in una che va assai oltre quella sorta di ostilità negativa dei critici che ho biasimato. Quella, dopo tutto, non era che la confessione che la scuola whig e puritana della storia combatte l’azione di retroguardia di una ritirata, e che consiste per lo più in un cecchinaggio piuttosto futile. Invece della vecchia fragorosa cannonata di Macaulay, in pratica non facciamo ora che «udire il colpo lontano e casuale che il nemico spara imbronciato». Ma la critica più recente implicava qualcosa di più universale e significativo di ciò. Rappresentava davvero il guazzabuglio stupefacente, sconcertante e per certi versi quasi eccitante di ciò che si autodefinisce la Mente Moderna. Dico eccitante, perché quando una mistificazione diventa folle a tal punto, assume quasi il carattere di un racconto poliziesco; è come se l’uomo moderno avesse dovuto ricevere un colpo in testa, e noi fossimo tutti detective intenti a scoprire chi l’abbia davvero fatto. Come è potuto accadere davvero che il critico colto, talvolta persino quello classico di questo particolare periodo, soffra di un pesante colpo inferto da qualche corpo contundente, cosicché pensa e scrive nella maniera seguente?
Il critico in questione disse con queste parole, o quasi con queste parole: «Non abbiamo ragione di dubitare della sincerità della conversione di Dryden al cattolicesimo romano; ma, dopo tutto, nel caso di un uomo tanto grande come Dryden, la questione ha poi molta importanza?». Questa è la Mente Moderna. Questa è la foresta primeva, i pini mormoranti e gli abeti. Questa è la Giungla. Questo è il più intricato di tutti i boschetti e il più spinoso di tutti i roveti terreni; e per quanto io sia nato e cresciuto in quel roveto, come Fratel Coniglio, ho trovato difficile scoprirne una via d’uscita; e non sapevo come dovremmo davvero aprirci un sentiero attraverso di esso.
Naturalmente possiamo sempre cominciare adoperando il primitivo strumento della ragione; e cercare di far entrare un poco di luce semplicemente lasciando entrare un poco di logica. Per quanto io comprenda l’argomentazione in quanto argomentazione, essa è questa. Se John Dryden fosse nato ottuso di mente, o se fosse stato uno zuccone e un tipo insulso, del tutto insignificante nella vita intellettuale e sociale del suo tempo — allora sarebbe stato tremendamente e clamorosamente importante sapere se fosse o non fosse sincero, con una sincerità che scandaglia l’anima, nella sua accettazione intellettuale della completa filosofia cattolica. Ma poiché egli non era uno zuccone bensì un poeta, poiché non era uno stolto bensì un ingegno, poiché non era una persona senza mente bensì una grandissima mente, allora dovrebbe essere cosa indifferente che un tale intelletto possa accettare una tale filosofia intellettuale. Dryden era un pensatore così grande che non importa che cosa pensasse; era quasi certamente in cerca della verità, ma era così capace di cercarla che nessuno può interessarsi al fatto che l’abbia trovata; ed è soltanto nel caso di un uomo piccolo che potremmo prendere grande interesse nella grande verità che egli credette di aver trovato. Come mai, vi domando, la gente si ingarbuglia la mente in quel modo? Come poteva un uomo essere sincero nel suo cattolicesimo, e tuttavia ritenersi superiore al suo cattolicesimo? Come poteva la sua grandezza essere staccata da qualcosa di tanto grande quanto la fede in un ordine universale della vita, della morte e dell’eternità; se davvero possedeva la grandezza e davvero possedeva quella fede? Avrebbe un qualche senso se Dryden non fosse stato sincero; ma è praticamente ammesso che fu sincero. Avrebbe un qualche senso se Dryden fosse stato piccolo; ma esso in realtà si fonda sull’idea che egli fu grande.
Mentre il mondo è andato parlando di rimuovere i tabù vittoriani, io ero risoluto fin dal principio a rimuovere quell’unico tabù vittoriano; che era davvero un tabù insensato e soffocante: il tabù sull’argomento della religione vera, e del suo posto reale e inevitabile nella vita pratica. La maggior parte delle cose che i Moderni chiamano tabù vittoriani sono vittoriane press’a poco quanto i Dieci Comandamenti o le massime di Confucio. Ma questo era davvero vittoriano, nel senso di essere sorto di recente in un sistema sociale volgare, commerciale e codardo. Non è l’idea che sia giusto o sbagliato essere musulmano; è l’idea che non possa davvero importare nemmeno a un musulmano di essere musulmano. Ciò che è totalmente intollerabile è l’idea che tutti debbano fingere, per amore della pace e del decoro, che l’ispirazione morale provenga soltanto da cose secolari come il Distributismo, e non possa in alcun modo provenire da cose spirituali come il cattolicesimo. Questa è l’idea fissa simile a un fossile che giace sotto tutti i labirintici involucri o le spire di convenzioni contraddittorie, nella mente del recensore le cui parole cito.
Non ha nulla a che vedere con ciò che egli chiamerebbe essere religiosi; o con l’imporre la religione a lui o a chiunque altro. Nessun cattolico si crede un buon cattolico; o, con quel pensiero, diverrebbe un cattivo cattolico. Io, per parte mia, non sono nemmeno tentato da alcuna illusione in tale materia; temo che molto spesso, quando mi sono alzato presto per andare a Messa, abbia detto con un gemito: Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum, il che, posso spiegarlo al musulmano, non è una citazione dalla Messa. Ma il critico qui in questione non dice, alla grande maniera lucreziana: «La religione sola può persuadere gli uomini a simili mali». Egli dice: «La religione sola non può in realtà aver persuaso nessuno a nulla». Egli rappresenta uno stupido intermezzo della storia intellettuale, in cui gli uomini non volevano riconoscere la religione né come amica né come nemica, e che supponeva che un grande uomo dovesse essere grande non solo a dispetto di essa, ma persino senza alcun riferimento ad essa. Quell’intermezzo intellettuale non fu mai molto intellettuale; e comunque, è finito.
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THE CHURCH AND AGORAPHOBIA
THE erection of a great cathedral in a great city, and especially in a great port, that is a city that is also a wide gate of the world, recalls certain truths that are curiously forgotten, or sometimes still more astonishingly contradicted or reversed. Before we come to count the million mistakes and misunderstandings which separate men from the Catholic Church, there is one enormous and elementary mistake, which has to do with this question of scale and position in the world. To put it shortly; the man who fears to enter the Church commonly fancies that what he feels is a sort of claustrophobia. As a fact, what he really feels, is rather a sort of agoraphobia. Some silly little historical accidents, almost entirely peculiar to the particular way in which Catholicism survived in England, have given many Englishmen an extraordinary notion that it is a sort of hole and corner affair. These honest Protestants, like the imaginary nuns in the impossible romances, walk about in perpetual fear of being “walled up.” For them the typical Catholic act is not going into a great thing like a church, but into a small thing like a confessional box. And to their nightmare fancy a confessional box is a sort of man-trap; and presents in its very appearance some combination of a coffin and a cage. The same notion is reinforced by the use of the word “cells,” which in a Protestant community means prison-cells, and not monastic cells. The same is suggested by the word “crypt,” about which there must obviously be something cryptic. These and many other tags of tradition have preserved in this country the custom of talking as if the danger of being a Catholic was the danger of being buried in a deep dark hole. And yet even the tradition was, not only a legend, but very nearly a pretence. Even the man who said these things knew in his heart, or at least had a vague knowledge at the back of his mind, that his fear was really a fear of something larger than himself and his tribal traditions; that he was really, as it was sometimes stated from both points of view, leaving a national for an international church. As I have said, it was not claustrophobia, the fear of the crypt or the cell; it was agoraphobia, or the fear of the forum, of the market-place, of the open spaces and the colossal public buildings. To the really insular and individualistic type of sectarian, even the fear of the Church was also partly a fear of the world. It can be seen in the terror which some of the English Tories, in the old times, felt towards the cosmopolitan culture of the Jesuits; who honestly seemed to them a sort of universal anarchists. It can be seen in the exaggerated revulsion from the very varied experiments, failures and successes of the Baroque. Of nearly all the non-Catholic types of our time we can truly say, that any such type must broaden his mind to become a Catholic. He must grow more used than he is at present to the long avenues and the large spaces. This is really what is meant by the Puritans who say that the Church is Pagan; that it does open a very long avenue, which is the only avenue left connecting us with Pagan antiquity. That is largely what is meant by insisting that the Church covers all sorts of dubious or disreputable people; all the motley mobs of tramps and pedlars and beggars, who do make up the life of an open market-place. Quicquid agunt homines; which even Matthew Arnold wisely saw was the true motto of the practical life of the Roman Catholic Church.
Now a great deal has been said by Protestants, naturally enough, and not a little even by Catholics, about the danger of displaying before the world a pomp and triumph that may easily be called worldly. Undoubtedly some harm was done, and some misunderstandings did arise, when the Popes of the Renaissance filled Rome with trophies that might have marked the triumphs of the Caesars, and permitted the slander that the father of Christian man had usurped the title of King of Kings and forgotten his own actual title of Servant of Servants. But, taking human nature as a whole, the method is justified; because it is some sort of proclamation of the profound truth mentioned above; that the Faith belongs to the heights and the open spaces, and the circle of the whole world, and is not the one thing which its enemies go on desperately calling it; a conspiracy. There could not be a better way of suggesting the very reverse of that suggestion, than by the continual use in public buildings of what is large in design and hospitable in gesture. Art, and especially architecture, can here express actualities that are at once too large and too elusive to be expressed in words. St. Mark’s Cathedral at Venice is in some ways a very curious building, and to some northern eyes does not look like a cathedral at all; but it does look like a thing coloured with the sunrise and the sunset, in touch with the very ends of the earth; open like a harbour and full of popular poetry like a fairy-palace. That is, it does express the first essential fact that Catholicism is not a narrow thing; that it knows more than the world knows about the potentialities and creative possibilities of the world, and that it will outlast all the worldly and temporary expressions of the same culture. Christianity has gone northward and established richer ports in colder seas; it has been changed and chilled for a time by colder heresies; but the same principle still stands for its expansion and exaltation; that which is expressed in the expansion and exaltation of great buildings; in the breadth of great gates declaring the brotherhood of men or the lifting of great domes pointing the way of their destiny. To-day another such building is being reared in what Mr. Belloc’s fantasy once called a Harbour in the North; and its scope and scale would indeed be idle things, if they did not remind us of the two essential truths: first, that even within the world the boundaries of the Faith are being enlarged; and second, and much more important, that the Faith itself enlarges the world; which would be a small thing without it.
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LA CHIESA E L’AGORAFOBIA
L’erezione di una grande cattedrale in una grande città, e specialmente in un grande porto, cioè una città che è anche un’ampia porta del mondo, richiama alla mente certe verità curiosamente dimenticate, o talvolta, in modo ancora più stupefacente, contraddette o rovesciate. Prima di giungere a contare il milione di errori e di malintesi che separano gli uomini dalla Chiesa cattolica, vi è un errore enorme ed elementare, che ha a che fare con questa questione di scala e di posizione nel mondo. Per dirla in breve: l’uomo che teme di entrare nella Chiesa immagina comunemente che ciò che prova sia una sorta di claustrofobia. In realtà, ciò che egli prova davvero è piuttosto una sorta di agorafobia. Alcuni piccoli e sciocchi accidenti storici, quasi interamente peculiari al modo particolare in cui il cattolicesimo sopravvisse in Inghilterra, hanno dato a molti inglesi la straordinaria idea che esso sia una sorta di faccenda clandestina e rintanata. Questi onesti protestanti, come le monache immaginarie degli impossibili romanzi, se ne vanno in giro nel perpetuo timore di essere «murati vivi». Per loro l’atto cattolico tipico non è entrare in qualcosa di grande come una chiesa, bensì in qualcosa di piccolo come un confessionale. E alla loro fantasia da incubo un confessionale è una sorta di trappola per uomini; e presenta nel suo stesso aspetto una qualche combinazione di bara e di gabbia. La medesima idea è rafforzata dall’uso della parola «celle», che in una comunità protestante significa celle di prigione, e non celle monastiche. Lo stesso è suggerito dalla parola «cripta», intorno alla quale deve ovviamente esservi qualcosa di criptico. Questi e molti altri stralci di tradizione hanno conservato in questo paese l’abitudine di parlare come se il pericolo di essere cattolico fosse il pericolo di essere sepolto in una fossa profonda e oscura. E tuttavia perfino la tradizione era non solo una leggenda, ma quasi una finzione. Perfino l’uomo che diceva queste cose sapeva in cuor suo, o almeno aveva una vaga consapevolezza in fondo alla mente, che il suo timore era in realtà un timore di qualcosa di più grande di lui e delle sue tradizioni tribali; che egli stava in realtà, come talvolta si affermava da entrambi i punti di vista, lasciando una chiesa nazionale per una internazionale. Come ho detto, non era claustrofobia, il timore della cripta o della cella; era agorafobia, ovvero il timore del foro, della piazza del mercato, degli spazi aperti e dei colossali edifici pubblici. Per il tipo di settario davvero insulare e individualista, perfino il timore della Chiesa era anche in parte un timore del mondo. Lo si può vedere nel terrore che alcuni dei Tory inglesi, nei tempi antichi, provavano verso la cultura cosmopolita dei gesuiti; i quali sinceramente sembravano loro una sorta di anarchici universali. Lo si può vedere nell’esagerata repulsione verso i variatissimi esperimenti, fallimenti e successi del Barocco. Di quasi tutti i tipi non cattolici del nostro tempo possiamo dire con verità che qualsiasi tipo simile deve allargare la propria mente per divenire cattolico. Deve abituarsi più di quanto lo sia attualmente ai lunghi viali e ai grandi spazi. È questo in realtà ciò che intendono i puritani quando dicono che la Chiesa è pagana; che essa apre un viale assai lungo, il quale è l’unico viale rimasto che ci colleghi con l’antichità pagana. È in gran parte ciò che si intende insistendo sul fatto che la Chiesa accoglie ogni sorta di gente dubbia o malfamata; tutte le variopinte folle di vagabondi e ambulanti e mendicanti, che compongono la vita di una piazza di mercato aperta. Quicquid agunt homines; che perfino Matthew Arnold saggiamente vide essere il vero motto della vita pratica della Chiesa cattolica romana.
Ora molto è stato detto dai protestanti, com’è naturale, e non poco perfino dai cattolici, circa il pericolo di ostentare davanti al mondo una pompa e un trionfo che facilmente possono essere definiti mondani. Indubbiamente qualche danno fu fatto, e sorsero alcuni malintesi, quando i papi del Rinascimento riempirono Roma di trofei che avrebbero potuto contrassegnare i trionfi dei Cesari, e permisero la calunnia secondo cui il padre dell’uomo cristiano avesse usurpato il titolo di Re dei Re e dimenticato il proprio effettivo titolo di Servo dei Servi. Ma, considerando la natura umana nel suo insieme, il metodo è giustificato; perché è una sorta di proclamazione della profonda verità menzionata sopra; che la Fede appartiene alle altezze e agli spazi aperti, e al cerchio del mondo intero, e non è quell’unica cosa che i suoi nemici continuano disperatamente a chiamarla: una cospirazione. Non potrebbe esservi modo migliore di suggerire l’esatto contrario di quel suggerimento, che l’uso continuo, negli edifici pubblici, di ciò che è ampio nel disegno e ospitale nel gesto. L’arte, e specialmente l’architettura, può qui esprimere realtà che sono al contempo troppo vaste e troppo sfuggenti per essere espresse a parole. La Cattedrale di San Marco a Venezia è per certi versi un edificio assai curioso, e a certi occhi nordici non sembra affatto una cattedrale; ma sembra proprio una cosa colorata dall’alba e dal tramonto, in contatto con i confini estremi della terra; aperta come un porto e colma di poesia popolare come un palazzo delle fate. Cioè, essa esprime il primo fatto essenziale, che il cattolicesimo non è una cosa angusta; che esso sa più di quanto il mondo sappia riguardo alle potenzialità e alle possibilità creative del mondo, e che sopravvivrà a tutte le espressioni mondane e temporanee della medesima cultura. Il cristianesimo è andato verso nord e ha stabilito porti più ricchi in mari più freddi; è stato mutato e raffreddato per un tempo da eresie più fredde; ma il medesimo principio vale ancora per la sua espansione ed esaltazione; ciò che si esprime nell’espansione ed esaltazione dei grandi edifici; nell’ampiezza di grandi portali che proclamano la fratellanza degli uomini o nell’innalzamento di grandi cupole che indicano la via del loro destino. Oggi un altro edificio simile viene innalzato in quello che la fantasia del signor Belloc chiamò un tempo un Porto nel Nord; e la sua portata e la sua scala sarebbero davvero cose vane, se non ci rammentassero le due verità essenziali: primo, che perfino entro il mondo i confini della Fede vengono ampliati; e secondo, e assai più importante, che la Fede stessa amplia il mondo; il quale senza di essa sarebbe cosa piccola.
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BACK IN THE FOG
THE dome of sky above Dublin was clear with the awful clarity of a burning-glass, and such a glaring gap or rent in the grey skies of Ireland was itself a portent, with some savour of a miracle. But though it was very rare in the Dublin climate, it was curiously representative of the Dublin mentality. It was none the less Irish weather because it is almost unknown in Ireland. It corresponded to the Irish brilliancy of intercourse; to the continual blend of lucidity and levity. And it was all the more Irish because there was, as there always is, in the intensity of summer, a faint thrill of thunder. It was as if the very light were lightning, and shone between two storms.
And I, who love both countries, but my own best and with most anxiety, could not help saying to myself, “This is always the real Dublin daylight. And the moment I return home, I shall find myself in the London fog.”
The difference is indescribable; but that is the nearest description. There is more hatred in Dublin; and yet there is a harder sense of the obligation of justice. There is even more slander in Dublin; and yet in some strange way there is more truth. What there is in London is something that is not so much falsehood as falsification; and not so much falsification as simply fog. After a week in Ireland, the newspaper politics of England seem to be like a vast vapour, inhabited only by phantoms. There is no question of hating men or slandering men; for they are not the same men for ten weeks together; and they are never the real men at all. I will take two examples; the two men who happened to be the heads of the two Parliamentary systems of the two countries at that moment. I will not take the case of Jim Thomas; because it is beneath the seriousness of this subject. Jim Thomas is a joke; and I am sorry to say that the joke is against us. He is not a person in the same historical world as de Valera, even as seen by those who hate de Valera, of whom there are probably more in Ireland than in England. But I will take the relatively dignified figure of Mr. Thomas’s revered leader; and point out as respectfully as possible that he is a ghost. He is an apparition. He is not really there. At least the figure that is recognised is not really there. Londoners live in a fog of journalism, out of which there looms from time to time a figure, who strikes certain spectral attitudes, and then vanishes in the fog and is forgotten. Not many years ago we saw start out of the mist, like the pale face of a fiend, the face of a traitor. He was reeling and ragged as if torn by patriot mobs; a golf-club was broken in his hand; as if it had been broken across his head, when he was expelled for treason from his club of fashionable golfers. He had been detected in a dastardly effort to escape to Stockholm and make a treacherous peace, and was only frustrated by the gallantry of our British tars. He was the wildest ruffian of the I.L.P. and wore a red tie, which had certainly been sent to him secretly from Moscow. Well, this person, after throwing himself into a few bodily postures expressive of moral baseness and political perfidy, vanished in the fog and was never seen again. This was the infamous James Ramsay MacDonald, of atrocious memory. Only, as it happens there has been a slight lapse in the memory. The crowd waiting in the fog, however, has had other diversions. There even burst upon it just recently a beautiful and ennobling vision: a stately and handsome presence, clad almost entirely in Union Jacks, with a few patches of tartan, and wearing the ancient Civic Crown; ob cives servatos: the Saviour of the State. For this being was indeed that noble statesman who became the head of the National Government, sacrificing Party to Patriotism, and triumphantly routing the traitor Henderson. This was the heroic James Ramsay MacDonald, of immortal memory, so long as he is remembered. There had once been another person called Henderson who had been a Patriot; when the other person called MacDonald was a Traitor; but neither of these persons could possibly be remembered. Perhaps it is quite right that they should none of them be remembered; for none of them ever really existed at all. There never was any traitor named MacDonald who betrayed his country to its enemies, any more than there ever was any patriot called MacDonald who preferred his country to his party. All these shadows in the shadow-pantomime of London politics have no reference to the respectable, rather vain, very serious, self-respecting “Scotsman on the make” who has risen in the profession of politics rather less scandalously than most. That is what I mean by the London fog, and that is what I mean by the Dublin daylight.
In Dublin there are men who would kill de Valera; and there are men who would die for de Valera. But there are no men who do not know the main facts for or against him. That he is not a native Irishman, in the normal sense; that he came from America, is admitted as much by his friends as his foes. It had to be, in Ireland; for there the family is everything; and a man could not even announce himself as Mr. Brown, without provoking the most sweeping generalisations about the Browns. That he helped the guerilla war which some would call the murder of English soldiers is, of course, a matter of pride and not of apology; but at least it is not a matter of mystification. That he was anti-clerical, in the sense that the bishops and priests mostly opposed his irreconcilable indignation, is known to everybody; even to the clerics or clericals who may afterwards come to support him. There is nobody in Dublin who does not know the story of de Valera; and there is next to nobody in London wlio does know the story of MacDonald. That is what I mean by the London Fog.
RITORNO NELLA NEBBIA
La cupola di cielo sopra Dublino era limpida con la terribile limpidezza di una lente ustoria, e un simile squarcio o strappo abbagliante nei grigi cieli d’Irlanda era esso stesso un portento, con un certo sapore di miracolo. Ma per quanto fosse assai raro nel clima di Dublino, esso era curiosamente rappresentativo della mentalità di Dublino. Non era per questo meno tempo irlandese perché è quasi sconosciuto in Irlanda. Corrispondeva alla brillantezza irlandese della conversazione; al continuo intreccio di lucidità e leggerezza. Ed era tanto più irlandese perché vi era, come vi è sempre, nell’intensità dell’estate, un debole fremito di tuono. Era come se la luce stessa fosse lampo, e risplendesse fra due tempeste.
E io, che amo entrambi i paesi, ma il mio più di tutto e con la maggiore ansia, non potevo fare a meno di dire fra me: «Questa è sempre la vera luce del giorno di Dublino. E nel momento in cui tornerò a casa, mi ritroverò nella nebbia di Londra».
La differenza è indescrivibile; ma questa è la descrizione più prossima. Vi è più odio a Dublino; eppure vi è un più severo senso dell’obbligo della giustizia. Vi è persino più calunnia a Dublino; eppure in qualche strano modo vi è più verità. Ciò che vi è a Londra è qualcosa che non è tanto falsità quanto falsificazione; e non tanto falsificazione quanto semplicemente nebbia. Dopo una settimana in Irlanda, la politica dei giornali d’Inghilterra sembra un vasto vapore, abitato soltanto da fantasmi. Non si tratta di odiare uomini o di calunniare uomini; poiché non sono gli stessi uomini per dieci settimane di seguito; e non sono mai affatto gli uomini reali. Prenderò due esempi; i due uomini che si trovavano a essere i capi dei due sistemi parlamentari dei due paesi in quel momento. Non prenderò il caso di Jim Thomas; perché è al di sotto della serietà di questo argomento. Jim Thomas è una barzelletta; e mi dispiace dire che la barzelletta è a nostro sfavore. Egli non è un personaggio del medesimo mondo storico di de Valera, nemmeno agli occhi di coloro che odiano de Valera, dei quali ve ne sono probabilmente più in Irlanda che in Inghilterra. Ma prenderò la figura relativamente dignitosa del riverito capo del signor Thomas; e farò notare con quanto più rispetto possibile che egli è un fantasma. È un’apparizione. Non è realmente lì. Almeno la figura che viene riconosciuta non è realmente lì. I londinesi vivono in una nebbia di giornalismo, dalla quale di tempo in tempo si profila una figura, che assume certi atteggiamenti spettrali, e poi svanisce nella nebbia ed è dimenticata. Non molti anni fa vedemmo emergere dalla foschia, come il pallido volto di un demonio, il volto di un traditore. Barcollava e cencioso come se fosse stato dilaniato da folle patriottiche; una mazza da golf era spezzata nella sua mano; come se fosse stata spezzata sulla sua testa, quando fu espulso per tradimento dal suo club di golfisti alla moda. Era stato scoperto in un vile tentativo di fuggire a Stoccolma e stipulare una pace fraudolenta, ed era stato frustrato soltanto dal valore dei nostri marinai britannici. Era il più sfrenato furfante dell’I.L.P. e portava una cravatta rossa, che gli era certamente stata mandata di nascosto da Mosca. Ebbene, costui, dopo essersi gettato in alcune posture corporee espressive di bassezza morale e di perfidia politica, svanì nella nebbia e non fu mai più visto. Questo era l’infame James Ramsay MacDonald, di atroce memoria. Solo che, guarda caso, vi è stata una lieve amnesia nella memoria. La folla in attesa nella nebbia, tuttavia, ha avuto altri diversivi. Le si è persino manifestata proprio di recente una visione bella e nobilitante: una presenza maestosa e avvenente, ammantata quasi interamente di Union Jack, con qualche toppa di tartan, e recante l’antica Corona Civica; ob cives servatos: il Salvatore dello Stato. Poiché questo essere era davvero quel nobile statista che divenne il capo del Governo Nazionale, sacrificando il Partito alla Patria, e mettendo trionfalmente in rotta il traditore Henderson. Questo era l’eroico James Ramsay MacDonald, di immortale memoria, fintanto che sarà ricordato. Vi era stato un tempo un’altra persona chiamata Henderson che era stata un Patriota; quando l’altra persona chiamata MacDonald era un Traditore; ma nessuna di queste persone poteva in alcun modo essere ricordata. Forse è del tutto giusto che nessuno di loro venga ricordato; poiché nessuno di loro è mai realmente esistito affatto. Non vi fu mai alcun traditore di nome MacDonald che tradì il proprio paese ai suoi nemici, non più di quanto vi fu mai alcun patriota di nome MacDonald che preferì il proprio paese al proprio partito. Tutte queste ombre nella pantomima d’ombre della politica di Londra non hanno alcun riferimento al rispettabile, piuttosto vanitoso, assai serio “scozzese in carriera” pieno di amor proprio che si è elevato nella professione della politica in modo un po’ meno scandaloso della maggior parte. Questo è ciò che intendo con la nebbia di Londra, e questo è ciò che intendo con la luce del giorno di Dublino.
A Dublino vi sono uomini che ucciderebbero de Valera; e vi sono uomini che morirebbero per de Valera. Ma non vi sono uomini che non conoscano i fatti principali a suo favore o contro di lui. Che egli non sia un irlandese nativo, nel senso normale; che sia venuto dall’America, è ammesso tanto dai suoi amici quanto dai suoi nemici. Doveva essere così, in Irlanda; poiché là la famiglia è tutto; e un uomo non potrebbe nemmeno annunciarsi come il signor Brown, senza provocare le più radicali generalizzazioni sui Brown. Che egli abbia aiutato la guerriglia che alcuni chiamerebbero l’assassinio di soldati inglesi è, naturalmente, motivo d’orgoglio e non di scusa; ma almeno non è motivo di mistificazione. Che fosse anticlericale, nel senso che i vescovi e i preti per lo più si opponevano alla sua irriducibile indignazione, è noto a tutti; persino ai chierici o clericali che possono in seguito venire a sostenerlo. Non vi è nessuno a Dublino che non conosca la storia di de Valera; e non vi è quasi nessuno a Londra che conosca la storia di MacDonald. Questo è ciò che intendo con la Nebbia di Londra.
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THE HISTORIC MOMENT (1)
THE Eucharistic Congress in Dublin has one aspect which most Englishmen will almost certainly miss altogether. It is not the Irish aspect. The English have thought too much of Ireland, even when they thought too little for Ireland; or thought only against Ireland. When debaters are informed that they must not debate on politics or religion, the more spirited and intelligent naturally retort that there is nothing else to debate about. And yet there is a third thing, which is not identical with the debate about politics and religion in Ireland, which has filled all the debating-clubs of England. That third thing is History; and it sums up the whole problem to say that the average Englishman will hardly know what is meant by mentioning it.
The average Englishman once had a hearty and even heroic hatred of the Roman Catholic religion; it has long since turned into something much milder and more tolerant. It has slowly broadened down, if not from precedent to precedent, at least from prejudice to prejudice. At worst a morbid and malignant curiosity has been replaced by a more Christian condition of ignorance. But the point is that the religious hostility has been softened; and that the special political hostility has been softened too. The average Englishman once had a passionate patriotic distrust of the political Irish; he regarded their hope of national self-expression as a mere mad mutinous breaking up of his own Empire. That also has since turned into something much milder and more tolerant. The average Englishman probably does not understand the Irish any better, if so well, as in the time of Gladstone and Parnell; but he is much less disposed to punish them for being different. The Englishman no longer execrates Mr. Gladstone; he is not very likely to attend the anniversary celebration of the Boyne; and is the less anxious to incur the curse of Cromwell, because he has lately begun rather to curse the Puritans himself. But there is one thought that will hardly cross his mind. And that is—how very small a part of History is that which divides us from Gladstone, or from William of Orange, or even from Oliver Cromwell.
Ages before Englishmen had any notion of being Protestants, ages before Irishmen had any need to be Nationalists, there moved across the world the great searchlights of Rome; the omnipresence of those historic and hieratic things now enthroned on their two thousand years. What corresponds to the Congress is the Council; that ancient assembly of Christendom which shifted so swiftly from Athens to Spain, or from Arabia to Gaul. Any man whose mind has been magnified by History, the greatest of all the works of the imagination, can feel the futility of allowing lesser and later quarrels entirely to obliterate the memory of that marching capital; the winged and Flying City. Wherever was that presence there was Rome; Rome was set up in the sands of the African desert; Rome in the rocky plains about Toledo. And but a few years ago, Rome was in Australia, a raw and remote colony under the Southern Cross; and to-day Rome is in Ireland, the most ancient of the Celtic cultural countries of the West. That presence was already old when Ireland civilised stood up and taught England barbarous; or rather taught something still too barbarous to be called England. It was already old when England converted Germany; when St. Boniface went forth from among our own people, to baptize the barbarians of the Rhine. It is this sense of the grandeur of the great distances of human history, and the huge changes they have made between nation and nation, that is the true manner of assuaging and healing the tribal quarrels of men.
It is Ancient History that will unite the nations. It is certainly not Modern History; which has only managed to divide them. It is, least of all, Future History, of which nobody knows anything at all; which is described in a series of Utopias discarded in turn by the Utopians. The best hope for the relations of England and Ireland is that they should both acknowledge the human authority of history; and the fact which is a fact, whether we call it Europe or Christendom, The difficulty of the English is to understand that they come out of the old religion. The difficulty of the Irish is to understand that they come out of the old civilisation. Ireland was Roman in religion but never Roman in rule. England was always Roman in rule and suddenly ceased to be Roman in religion. The essential for both is to find something deep and distant enough to be shared without the exasperation of recent political memories. To say that new things like wireless and aviation have united nations is simply false. England and Ireland are only two out of many now much more divided. It is not new but old things that unify mankind; it is at the back of history that we rediscover humanity; it is quite strictly, in Genesis or the beginnings that we find the brotherhood of men; even if some controversy continues about which was Abel or Cain.
- Written at the Eucharist Congress in Dublin.
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MARY AND THE CONVERT
I WAS brought up in a part of the Protestant world which can best be described by saying that it referred to the Blessed Virgin as the Madonna. Sometimes it referred to her as a Madonna; from a general memory of Italian pictures. It was not a bigoted or uneducated world; it did not regard all Madonnas as idols or all Italians as Dagoes. But it had selected this expression, by the English instinct for compromise, so as to avoid both reverence ana irreverence. It was, when we came to think about it, a very curious expression. It amounted to saying that a Protestant must not call Mary “Our Lady,” but he may call her “My Lady.” This would seem, in the abstract, to indicate an even more intimate and mystical familiarity than the Catholic devotion. But I need not say that it was not so. It was not untouched by that queer Victorian evasion; of translating dangerous or improper words into foreign languages. But it was also not untouched by a certain sincere though vague respect for the part that Madonnas had played, in the actual cultural and artistic history of our civilisation. Certainly the ordinary reasonably reverent Englishman would never have intended to be disrespectful to that tradition in that aspect; even when he was much less liberal, travelled and well-read than were my own parents. Certainly, on the other hand, he was entirely unaware that he was saying “My Lady”; and if you had pointed out to him that, in fact, he was generally saying “a My Lady,” or “the My Lady,” he would have agreed that it was rather odd.
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IL MOMENTO STORICO (1)
IL Congresso Eucaristico di Dublino ha un aspetto che la maggior parte degli inglesi mancherà quasi certamente del tutto. Non è l’aspetto irlandese. Gli inglesi hanno pensato troppo all’Irlanda, anche quando pensavano troppo poco per l’Irlanda; o pensavano soltanto contro l’Irlanda. Quando ai contendenti di un dibattito si comunica che non devono dibattere di politica o di religione, i più spiritosi e intelligenti ribattono naturalmente che non v’è null’altro su cui dibattere. Eppure c’è una terza cosa, che non coincide con il dibattito su politica e religione in Irlanda, il quale ha riempito tutti i circoli di dibattito d’Inghilterra. Quella terza cosa è la Storia; e riassume l’intero problema il dire che l’inglese medio a stento saprà che cosa si intenda menzionandola.
L’inglese medio nutrì un tempo un odio schietto e persino eroico per la religione cattolica romana; da lungo tempo esso si è mutato in qualcosa di assai più mite e più tollerante. Si è lentamente ampliato, se non di precedente in precedente, almeno di pregiudizio in pregiudizio. Nel peggiore dei casi una curiosità morbosa e maligna è stata sostituita da una più cristiana condizione di ignoranza. Ma il punto è che l’ostilità religiosa si è addolcita; e che anche la particolare ostilità politica si è addolcita. L’inglese medio nutrì un tempo un’appassionata diffidenza patriottica verso gli irlandesi della politica; considerava la loro speranza di autoespressione nazionale come una folle e ammutinata disgregazione del proprio Impero. Anche questo da allora si è mutato in qualcosa di assai più mite e più tollerante. L’inglese medio probabilmente non comprende gli irlandesi meglio, se pur altrettanto bene, di quanto facesse al tempo di Gladstone e Parnell; ma è assai meno disposto a punirli per il fatto di essere diversi. L’inglese non esecra più Mr. Gladstone; non è molto propenso a partecipare alla celebrazione anniversaria del Boyne; ed è tanto meno ansioso di incorrere nella maledizione di Cromwell, perché di recente ha piuttosto cominciato a maledire lui stesso i Puritani. Ma c’è un pensiero che a stento gli attraverserà la mente. Ed è questo: quanto piccola parte della Storia sia quella che ci divide da Gladstone, o da Guglielmo d’Orange, o persino da Oliver Cromwell.
Secoli prima che gli inglesi avessero una qualche nozione di essere protestanti, secoli prima che gli irlandesi avessero un qualche bisogno di essere nazionalisti, si muovevano attraverso il mondo i grandi fari di Roma; l’onnipresenza di quelle cose storiche e ieratiche ora assise in trono sui loro duemila anni. Ciò che corrisponde al Congresso è il Concilio; quell’antica assemblea della Cristianità che si spostava così rapidamente da Atene alla Spagna, o dall’Arabia alla Gallia. Ogni uomo la cui mente sia stata ingrandita dalla Storia, la più grande fra tutte le opere dell’immaginazione, può sentire la futilità del lasciare che dispute minori e più tarde cancellino interamente la memoria di quella capitale in marcia; la alata e volante Città. Ovunque fosse quella presenza vi era Roma; Roma fu innalzata nelle sabbie del deserto africano; Roma nelle rocciose pianure attorno a Toledo. E solo pochi anni or sono, Roma era in Australia, colonia grezza e remota sotto la Croce del Sud; e oggi Roma è in Irlanda, il più antico dei paesi di cultura celtica dell’Occidente. Quella presenza era già antica quando l’Irlanda civile si levò e insegnò all’Inghilterra barbara; o piuttosto insegnò a qualcosa ancora troppo barbaro per essere chiamato Inghilterra. Era già antica quando l’Inghilterra convertì la Germania; quando San Bonifacio uscì di mezzo al nostro stesso popolo, per battezzare i barbari del Reno. È questo senso della grandezza delle grandi distanze della storia umana, e degli enormi mutamenti che essa ha prodotto fra nazione e nazione, che è il vero modo di lenire e sanare le contese tribali degli uomini.
È la Storia antica che unirà le nazioni. Non è certo la Storia moderna; la quale è riuscita soltanto a dividerle. È, meno di tutto, la Storia futura, di cui nessuno sa assolutamente nulla; la quale è descritta in una serie di Utopie scartate a turno dagli utopisti. La migliore speranza per i rapporti fra l’Inghilterra e l’Irlanda è che entrambe riconoscano l’autorità umana della storia; e il fatto che è un fatto, lo si chiami Europa o Cristianità. La difficoltà degli inglesi è comprendere che essi provengono dall’antica religione. La difficoltà degli irlandesi è comprendere che essi provengono dall’antica civiltà. L’Irlanda fu romana nella religione ma mai romana nel governo. L’Inghilterra fu sempre romana nel governo e a un tratto cessò di essere romana nella religione. L’essenziale per entrambe è trovare qualcosa di abbastanza profondo e lontano da poter essere condiviso senza l’esasperazione di recenti memorie politiche. Dire che cose nuove come la radiotelegrafia e l’aviazione hanno unito le nazioni è semplicemente falso. L’Inghilterra e l’Irlanda sono soltanto due fra molte ora assai più divise. Non sono le cose nuove ma le antiche che uniscono l’umanità; è sul fondo della storia che riscopriamo l’umanità; è, a rigor di termini, nella Genesi o negli inizî che troviamo la fratellanza degli uomini; anche se qualche controversia permane su chi fosse Abele o Caino.
- Scritto al Congresso Eucaristico di Dublino.
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MARIA E IL CONVERTITO
FUI allevato in una parte del mondo protestante che può descriversi al meglio dicendo che si riferiva alla Beata Vergine come alla Madonna. Talvolta si riferiva a lei come a una Madonna; da un generico ricordo di quadri italiani. Non era un mondo bigotto o ignorante; non considerava tutte le Madonne come idoli né tutti gli italiani come «Dagoes». Ma aveva scelto questa espressione, per l’inglese istinto del compromesso, in modo da evitare tanto la riverenza quanto l’irriverenza. Era, quando ci si mise a pensarci, un’espressione assai curiosa. Equivaleva a dire che un protestante non deve chiamare Maria «Our Lady», ma può chiamarla «My Lady». Ciò parrebbe, in astratto, indicare una familiarità ancor più intima e mistica della devozione cattolica. Ma non ho bisogno di dire che non era così. Non era immune da quella bizzarra evasione vittoriana; del tradurre parole pericolose o sconvenienti in lingue straniere. Ma non era neppure immune da un certo sincero benché vago rispetto per la parte che le Madonne avevano avuto nella reale storia culturale e artistica della nostra civiltà. Certamente l’inglese comune e ragionevolmente reverente non avrebbe mai inteso mancare di rispetto a quella tradizione sotto quell’aspetto; anche quando era assai meno liberale, viaggiato e colto di quanto lo fossero i miei stessi genitori. Certamente, d’altra parte, egli era del tutto inconsapevole di star dicendo «My Lady»; e se gli aveste fatto notare che, di fatto, egli generalmente diceva «a My Lady», o «the My Lady», avrebbe convenuto che era piuttosto strano.
I do not forget, and indeed it would be a very thankless thing in me to forget, that I was lucky in this relative reasonablenesss and moderation of my own family and friends; and that there is a whole Protestant world that would consider such moderation a very poor-spirited sort of Protestantism. That strange mania against Mariolatry; that mad vigilance that watches for the first faint signs of the cult of Mary as for the spots of a plague; that apparently presumes her to be perpetually and secretly encroaching upon the prerogatives of Christ; that logically infers from a mere glimpse of the blue robe the presence of the Scarlet Woman— all that I have never felt or known or understood, even as a child; nor did those who had the care of my childhood. They knew nothing to speak of about the Catholic Church; they certainly did not know that anybody connected with them was ever likely to belong to it; but they did know that noble and beautiful ideas had been presented to the world under the form of this sacred figure, as under that of the Greek gods or heroes. But, while putting aside all pretence that this Protestant atmosphere was actively an anti-Catholic atmosphere, I may still say that my personal case was a little curious.
I have here rashly undertaken to write on a subject at once intimate and daring; a subject which ought indeed, by its own majesty, to make it impossible to be egotistical; but which does also make it impossible to be anything but personal. “Mary and the Convert” is the most personal of topics, because conversion is something more personal and less corporate than communion; and involves isolated feelings as an introduction to collective feelings. But also because the cult of Mary is in a rather peculiar sense a personal cult; over and above that greater sense that must always attach to the worship of a personal God. God is God, Maker of all things visible and invisible; the Mother of God is in a rather special sense connected with things visible; since she is of this earth, and through her bodily being God was revealed to the senses. In the presence of God, we must remember what is invisible, even in the sense of what is merely intellectual; the abstractions and the absolute laws of thought; the love of truth, and the respect for right reason and honourable logic in things, which God himself has respected. For, as St. Thomas Aquinas insists, God himself does not contradict the law of contradiction. But Our Lady, reminding us especially of God Incarnate, does in some degree gather up and embody all those elements of the heart and the higher instincts, which are the legitimate short cuts to the love of God. Dealing with those personal feelings, even in this rude and curt outline, is therefore very far from easy. I hope I shall not be misunderstood if the example I take is merely personal; since it is this particular part of religion that really cannot be impersonal. It may be an accident, or a highly unmerited favour of heaven, but anyhow it is a fact, that I always had a curious longing for the remains of this particular tradition, even in a world where it was regarded as a legend. I was not only haunted by the idea while still stuck in the ordinary stage of schoolboy scepticism; I was affected by it before that, before I had shed the ordinary nursery religion in which the Mother of God had no fit or adequate place. I found not long ago, scrawled in very bad handwriting, screeds of an exceedingly bad imitation of Swinburne, which was, nevertheless, apparently addressed to what I should have called a picture of the Madonna. And I can distinctly remember reciting the lines of the “Hymn To Proserpine,” out of pleasure in their roll and resonance; but deliberately directing them away from Swinburne’s intention, and supposing them addressed to the new Christian Queen of life, rather than to the fallen Pagan queen of death.
“But I turn to her still; having seen she shall surely abide in the end; Goddess and maiden and queen, be near me now and befriend.”
And I had obscurely, from that time onwards, the very vague but slowly clarifying idea of defending all that Constantine had set up, just as Swinburne’s Pagan had defended all he had thrown down.
It may still be noted that the unconverted world, Puritan or Pagan, but perhaps especially when it is Puritan, has a very strange notion of the collective unity of Catholic things or thoughts. Its exponents, even when not in any rabid sense enemies, give the most curious lists of things which they think make up the Catholic life; an odd assortment of objects, such as candles, rosaries, incense (they are always intensely impressed with the enormous importance and necessity of incense), vestments, pointed windows, and then all sorts of essentials or unessentials thrown in in any sort of order; fasts, relics, penances or the Pope. But even in their bewilderment, they do bear witness to a need which is not so nonsensical as their attempts to fulfil it; the need of somehow summing up “all that sort of thing,” which does really describe Catholicism and nothing else except Catholicism. It should of course be described from within, by the definition and development of its theological first principles; but that is not the sort of need I am talking about. I mean that men need an image, single, coloured and clear in outline, an image to be called up instantly in the imagination, when what is Catholic is to be distinguished from what claims to be Christian or even what in one sense is Christian. Now I can scarcely remember a time when the image of Our Lady did not stand up in my mind quite definitely, at the mention or the thought of all these things. I was quite distant from these things, and then doubtful about these things; and then disputing with the world for them, and with myself against them; for that is the condition before conversion. But whether the figure was distant, or was dark and mysterious, or was a scandal to my contemporaries, or was a challenge to myself—I never doubted that this figure was the figure of the Faith; that she embodied, as a complete human being still only human, all that this Thing had to say to humanity. The instant I remembered the Catholic Church, I remembered her; when I tried to forget the Catholic Church, I tried to forget her; when I finally saw what was nobler than my fate, the freest and the hardest of all my acts of freedom, it was in front of a gilded and very gaudy little image of her in the port of Brindisi, that I promised the thing that I would do, if I returned to my own land.
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Non dimentico, e in verità sarebbe cosa assai ingrata da parte mia dimenticarlo, che fui fortunato in questa relativa ragionevolezza e moderazione della mia stessa famiglia e dei miei amici; e che esiste un intero mondo protestante che considererebbe una simile moderazione una sorta di protestantesimo assai pusillanime. Quella strana mania contro la Mariolatria; quella folle vigilanza che spia i primi deboli segni del culto di Maria come le macchie di una peste; che a quanto pare la presume perpetuamente e segretamente intenta a usurpare le prerogative di Cristo; che logicamente inferisce dal solo balenare della veste azzurra la presenza della Donna Scarlatta— tutto ciò io non l’ho mai sentito né conosciuto né compreso, nemmeno da bambino; né lo conobbero coloro che ebbero cura della mia fanciullezza. Non sapevano nulla di rilevante intorno alla Chiesa Cattolica; certamente non sapevano che qualcuno legato a loro avrebbe mai potuto appartenervi; ma sapevano bene che idee nobili e belle erano state presentate al mondo sotto la forma di questa sacra figura, come sotto quella degli dèi o degli eroi greci. Ma, pur mettendo da parte ogni pretesa che questa atmosfera protestante fosse attivamente un’atmosfera anticattolica, posso nondimeno dire che il mio caso personale era un poco curioso.
Mi sono qui avventurato temerariamente a scrivere di un argomento a un tempo intimo e ardito; un argomento che dovrebbe invero, per la sua stessa maestà, rendere impossibile l’egotismo; ma che rende altresì impossibile essere qualcosa di diverso dal personale. «Maria e il Convertito» è il più personale dei temi, poiché la conversione è qualcosa di più personale e meno corporativo della comunione; e implica sentimenti isolati come introduzione a sentimenti collettivi. Ma anche perché il culto di Maria è, in un senso piuttosto peculiare, un culto personale; al di sopra e al di là di quel senso più grande che deve sempre accompagnarsi all’adorazione di un Dio personale. Dio è Dio, Creatore di tutte le cose visibili e invisibili; la Madre di Dio è, in un senso piuttosto speciale, connessa con le cose visibili; poiché ella è di questa terra, e attraverso il suo essere corporeo Dio fu rivelato ai sensi. Alla presenza di Dio, dobbiamo ricordare ciò che è invisibile, anche nel senso di ciò che è meramente intellettuale; le astrazioni e le leggi assolute del pensiero; l’amore della verità, e il rispetto per la retta ragione e per l’onorevole logica nelle cose, che Dio stesso ha rispettato. Poiché, come insiste san Tommaso d’Aquino, Dio stesso non contraddice la legge di contraddizione. Ma Nostra Signora, ricordandoci specialmente il Dio Incarnato, in qualche misura raccoglie e incarna tutti quegli elementi del cuore e dei più alti istinti, che sono le legittime scorciatoie all’amore di Dio. Trattare di quei sentimenti personali, anche in questo rozzo e sbrigativo abbozzo, è dunque tutt’altro che facile. Spero di non essere frainteso se l’esempio che prendo è meramente personale; poiché è proprio questa particolare parte della religione che davvero non può essere impersonale. Può essere un caso, o un favore altamente immeritato del cielo, ma comunque è un fatto, che ebbi sempre un curioso anelito verso i resti di questa particolare tradizione, persino in un mondo in cui essa era considerata una leggenda. Non solo ne fui ossessionato mentre ero ancora bloccato nell’ordinario stadio dello scetticismo scolaresco; ne fui toccato prima ancora, prima che avessi deposto l’ordinaria religione dell’infanzia in cui la Madre di Dio non aveva posto acconcio o adeguato. Non molto tempo fa trovai, scarabocchiate in pessima grafia, tirate di un’oltremodo cattiva imitazione di Swinburne, la quale tuttavia era, a quanto pare, rivolta a quello che avrei dovuto chiamare un quadro della Madonna. E posso distintamente ricordare di aver recitato i versi dell’«Inno a Proserpina», per il piacere del loro rullo e della loro risonanza; ma deliberatamente distogliendoli dall’intenzione di Swinburne, e supponendoli rivolti alla nuova Regina cristiana della vita, piuttosto che alla caduta regina pagana della morte.
«Ma a lei mi rivolgo ancora; avendo veduto che di certo ella resisterà alla fine; Dea e vergine e regina, siimi vicina ora e soccorrimi.»
E da quel tempo in avanti ebbi, oscuramente, l’idea assai vaga ma lentamente chiarentesi di difendere tutto ciò che Costantino aveva edificato, proprio come il pagano di Swinburne aveva difeso tutto ciò che egli aveva abbattuto.
Si può ancora notare che il mondo non convertito, puritano o pagano, ma forse specialmente quando è puritano, ha una nozione assai strana dell’unità collettiva delle cose o dei pensieri cattolici. I suoi esponenti, anche quando non sono in alcun senso rabbioso dei nemici, danno gli elenchi più curiosi delle cose che, a loro parere, compongono la vita cattolica; un bizzarro assortimento di oggetti, quali candele, rosari, incenso (sono sempre intensamente colpiti dall’enorme importanza e necessità dell’incenso), paramenti, finestre a sesto acuto, e poi ogni sorta di essenziali o inessenziali gettati dentro in un ordine qualsiasi; digiuni, reliquie, penitenze o il Papa. Ma persino nel loro smarrimento, essi rendono testimonianza a un bisogno che non è così insensato come i loro tentativi di soddisfarlo; il bisogno di riassumere in qualche modo «tutta quella sorta di cose», che davvero descrive il cattolicesimo e null’altro se non il cattolicesimo. Esso dovrebbe naturalmente essere descritto dall’interno, mediante la definizione e lo sviluppo dei suoi primi principi teologici; ma non è quel genere di bisogno di cui sto parlando. Intendo che gli uomini hanno bisogno di un’immagine, unica, colorata e chiara nel contorno, un’immagine da evocare all’istante nell’immaginazione, quando ciò che è cattolico debba essere distinto da ciò che pretende di essere cristiano o persino da ciò che in un certo senso è cristiano. Ora, riesco a stento a ricordare un tempo in cui l’immagine di Nostra Signora non si ergesse nella mia mente in modo affatto definito, alla menzione o al pensiero di tutte queste cose. Ero assai distante da queste cose, e poi dubbioso intorno a queste cose; e poi in disputa con il mondo per esse, e con me stesso contro di esse; poiché questa è la condizione che precede la conversione. Ma sia che la figura fosse distante, o oscura e misteriosa, o uno scandalo per i miei contemporanei, o una sfida a me stesso—non dubitai mai che questa figura fosse la figura della Fede; che ella incarnasse, come essere umano completo eppure ancora soltanto umano, tutto ciò che questa Cosa aveva da dire all’umanità. Nell’istante in cui ricordavo la Chiesa Cattolica, ricordavo lei; quando tentavo di dimenticare la Chiesa Cattolica, tentavo di dimenticare lei; quando finalmente vidi ciò che era più nobile del mio destino, il più libero e il più arduo di tutti i miei atti di libertà, fu dinanzi a una piccola immagine di lei, dorata e assai vistosa, nel porto di Brindisi, che promisi la cosa che avrei fatto, se fossi tornato alla mia terra.
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A CENTURY OF EMANCIPATION
WHEN we really wish to know how the world is going, it is no bad test to take some tag or current phrase of the press and reverse it, substituting the precise contrary, and see whether it makes more sense that way. It generally does; such a mass of outworn conventions has our daily commentary become. An excellent example occurred recently concerning the prospects of Protestantism and Catholicism. The editor of the Sunday Express, once better known as a sympathetic critic of letters, summed up the matter by saying that he had no prejudice against Catholicism or Anglo-Catholicism, that he had every respect for them, but that England (evidently including himself) was solidly Protestant. This is a very neat and convenient statement of the exact opposite of the truth. I have most friendly feelings to the gentleman in question; and it is without the least animosity to him that I say that what is sincere and alive and active in him is Anti-Catholicism and nothing else. What is really working in the world to-day is Anti-Catholicism and nothing else. It certainly is not Protestantism; not half so much as it is Pelagianism. And if the religion of modern England is to be called Protestant, there is at least one other adjective which cannot conceivably be applied to it. Whatever else it is, it is not solid Protestantism. There might perhaps be a case for calling it liquid Protestantism.
Now this marks the chief change of the century since Catholic Emancipation. The political circumstances of the final Tory surrender to Emancipation were, of course, complex. Emancipation seemed to some a sort of mongrel and monster; produced by two opposites; the survival of the Old Religion and the principles of the French Revolution. But in such things there are complex harmonies as well as contradictions. In some ways the ultimate quarrel of Rome with the French Revolution was rather like the recent quarrel of Rome with the French Royalists. It was resistance to a pagan extreme; but there had been not a little Catholic sympathy before the thing reached that extreme. There had been countless liberal clerics in the first movements of the reform; Pius IX had begun by being the reverse of reactionary; and the atmosphere was such that the gigantic protagonist of Catholic Emancipation himself, the great Daniel O’Connell, could combine passionate Ultramontanism with the largest political Liberalism without any division in the simplicity of his mind or the general humanity of his ideals. Those who hated him both as a Radical and a Roman Catholic would have seen no inconsistency in those two hated things. The truth to seize about all that earlier situation is that the bigotry was on the other side; in one sense the theology was on the other side. We cannot see it clearly in the statesmen; for they were either freethinkers or opportunists. Wellington met his Waterloo; but he was a good soldier and therefore retreated when it was futile to stand. But if we look at the mass of the people, we find a real religious resistance—because there was a real religion. That resistance is now only found in America where just such a Democrat as Daniel O’Connell is still threatened with political exclusion solely for being a Catholic. In some points the Americans are a hundred years behind the times.
But this sort of purely political exclusiveness will not be the chief problem of the future. Whatever be the relation of Rome to the new world, her authority will not be transferred to Dayton, Tennessee. The political effects of the political emancipation are relatively simple and in a sense the easiest part of the speculation. Everybody knows that Catholic Emancipation has never led, and will never lead, to the direct political disasters that some foretold. The Duke of Norfolk was never actually caught in the act of imitating Guy Fawkes; and Lord Russell of Killowen seldom if ever invited a Spanish Armada to these shores. Outside certain local Puritan fevers, chiefly in America, there is no reason to suppose that the world will be so unreasonable as to repent having elected Catholic Mayors or sent out Catholic Ambassadors. The cant about a foreign allegiance is still heard; but that is because a cant can long outlive a cause. Men who are wide awake are well aware that the Catholic internationalism, which bids men respect their national governments, is considerably less dangerous than the financial internationalism which may make a man betray his country, or the revolutionary internationalism which may make him destroy it. It is, of course, possible that, under the pressure of Catholic conversions, the world may return to older and rougher types of persecution; but it is not immediately probable. But when we turn from the political to the spiritual prospect, we find a change which is exactly represented by the reversal of the journalistic maxim mentioned above. We must realise what England has become, under all titles and terminology, if we would make a guess about what she is next destined to be.
If we want to measure the distance between the date of emancipation and the day in which we live, between Catholic Emancipation and its consequences after a century, we shall find this newspaper quotation very important. If we want to describe the conditions a hundred years ago in this country, we could not do it better than by saying that then England was solidly Protestant; or the Protestantism of England was solid. And we shall still better understand the modern change, if we ask what is meant by that solidarity. It had a very definite meaning, which has now so completely disappeared that even those who most frequently invoke it are least able to imagine it. There is nothing like that sort of solid confidence to-day. It meant this: that the types and ranks of society really and sincerely interested in religion did really and sincerely believe that Protestant religion had been proved superior to Catholic religion. It was strongest in the middle class, especially the wealthier middle class; but that middle class had been steadily growing stronger and wealthier, as was natural in a specially mercantile and capitalist community. It covered a multitude of healthy, hard-headed and even clear-headed professional and commercial men; I say “even clear-headed” because, though the English had the name of not being logical, they were far more logical in those days than they are now. If they sat longer over their wine, they argued longer over their politics; they did not live on hurried cocktails and hurried headlines. Their mercantile politics might be narrow; but the number of them who could expound some connected thesis, such as Free Trade, was very large. And as their politics consisted of certain definite theories, right or wrong, so their religion consisted of certain definite doctrines, true or false. If you had asked any such Protestant why he was a Protestant, or what he meant by being a Protestant, he would have instantly stated or explained those doctrines; just as a Free Trader would explain Free Trade. There were Englishmen, of course, for whom the whole business was vaguer or more indifferent; but they did not make the tone of that solid mercantile England. The populace made the Pope a guy, just as they made Guy Fawkes a guy; but the poor were at the best treated like children and left, like children, to make a guy or a game of anything. A great part of the higher aristocracy had been quite sceptical and pagan throughout the eighteenth century, or even from the seventeenth century; but the same tact and informal secrecy, which keeps such a class together, kept it from any public insult to the Protestant religion of England. And that religion was a religion; it was Protestant, and it was national; that is, it was the religion of the normal citizen.
UN SECOLO DI EMANCIPAZIONE
Quando desideriamo davvero sapere come vada il mondo, non è cattiva prova prendere qualche etichetta o frase corrente della stampa e rovesciarla, sostituendovi il preciso contrario, per vedere se acquista maggior senso in tal modo. Di solito lo acquista; tanto ammasso di convenzioni logore è divenuto il nostro quotidiano commentario. Un eccellente esempio si è dato di recente a proposito delle prospettive del Protestantesimo e del Cattolicesimo. Il direttore del Sunday Express, un tempo meglio noto come critico letterario di simpatie benevole, riassunse la questione dicendo che non nutriva alcun pregiudizio contro il Cattolicesimo o l’Anglo-Cattolicesimo, che ne aveva ogni rispetto, ma che l’Inghilterra (evidentemente compreso lui stesso) era solidamente protestante. Questa è un’assai lineare e comoda enunciazione dell’esatto contrario della verità. Provo sentimenti quanto mai amichevoli verso il signore in questione; ed è senza la minima animosità nei suoi confronti che dico come ciò che in lui è sincero e vivo e attivo sia l’Anti-Cattolicesimo e null’altro. Ciò che davvero opera nel mondo d’oggi è l’Anti-Cattolicesimo e null’altro. Non è certo il Protestantesimo; non tanto quanto è Pelagianesimo. E se la religione dell’Inghilterra moderna si deve chiamare protestante, vi è almeno un altro aggettivo che non le si può in alcun modo concepibilmente applicare. Qualunque cosa essa sia, non è solido Protestantesimo. Vi sarebbe forse motivo di chiamarlo Protestantesimo liquido.
Ora, ciò segna il mutamento principale del secolo trascorso dall’Emancipazione cattolica. Le circostanze politiche della resa finale dei Tory all’Emancipazione furono, naturalmente, complesse. L’Emancipazione parve ad alcuni una sorta di ibrido e di mostro; prodotto da due opposti: la sopravvivenza della Vecchia Religione e i principii della Rivoluzione francese. Ma in simili cose vi sono complesse armonie non meno che contraddizioni. Per certi versi il conflitto ultimo di Roma con la Rivoluzione francese somigliava piuttosto al recente conflitto di Roma con i realisti francesi. Era resistenza a un estremo pagano; ma vi era stata non poca simpatia cattolica prima che la cosa raggiungesse quell’estremo. Vi erano stati innumerevoli chierici liberali nei primi moti della riforma; Pio IX aveva cominciato con l’essere l’opposto di un reazionario; e l’atmosfera era tale che il gigantesco protagonista dell’Emancipazione cattolica in persona, il grande Daniel O’Connell, poteva unire un appassionato ultramontanismo al più ampio liberalismo politico senza alcuna scissione nella semplicità della sua mente o nella generale umanità dei suoi ideali. Coloro che lo odiavano sia come radicale sia come cattolico romano non avrebbero scorto alcuna incoerenza in quelle due cose odiate. La verità da cogliere circa tutta quella situazione anteriore è che il fanatismo stava dall’altra parte; in un certo senso la teologia stava dall’altra parte. Non possiamo scorgerlo con chiarezza negli uomini di Stato; poiché erano o liberi pensatori o opportunisti. Wellington affrontò la sua Waterloo; ma era un buon soldato e perciò si ritirava quando era vano tener testa. Ma se guardiamo alla massa del popolo, troviamo una vera resistenza religiosa — perché vi era una vera religione. Quella resistenza si trova oggi soltanto in America, dove proprio un democratico come Daniel O’Connell è ancora minacciato di esclusione politica per il solo fatto di essere cattolico. Su certi punti gli americani sono indietro di cent’anni rispetto ai tempi.
Ma questa sorta di esclusivismo puramente politico non sarà il problema principale del futuro. Quale che sia la relazione di Roma con il nuovo mondo, la sua autorità non sarà trasferita a Dayton, nel Tennessee. Gli effetti politici dell’emancipazione politica sono relativamente semplici e in un certo senso la parte più facile della speculazione. Ognuno sa che l’Emancipazione cattolica non ha mai condotto, e mai condurrà, ai diretti disastri politici che taluni pronosticavano. Il Duca di Norfolk non fu mai colto in flagrante nell’atto di imitare Guy Fawkes; e Lord Russell di Killowen di rado, se mai, invitò un’Armada spagnola su queste sponde. Al di fuori di certe febbri puritane locali, principalmente in America, non v’è ragione di supporre che il mondo sarà tanto irragionevole da pentirsi di aver eletto sindaci cattolici o inviato ambasciatori cattolici. La cantilena su una fedeltà straniera si ode ancora; ma ciò accade perché una cantilena può sopravvivere a lungo a una causa. Gli uomini ben desti sanno bene che l’internazionalismo cattolico, il quale ordina agli uomini di rispettare i loro governi nazionali, è assai meno pericoloso dell’internazionalismo finanziario, che può indurre un uomo a tradire il proprio paese, o dell’internazionalismo rivoluzionario, che può indurlo a distruggerlo. È, naturalmente, possibile che, sotto la pressione delle conversioni cattoliche, il mondo ritorni a più antichi e rozzi tipi di persecuzione; ma non è cosa immediatamente probabile. Ma quando volgiamo dalla prospettiva politica a quella spirituale, troviamo un mutamento che è esattamente rappresentato dal rovesciamento della massima giornalistica sopra menzionata. Dobbiamo comprendere ciò che l’Inghilterra è divenuta, sotto tutti i titoli e le terminologie, se vogliamo azzardare una congettura su ciò che è poi destinata a essere.
Se vogliamo misurare la distanza tra la data dell’emancipazione e il giorno in cui viviamo, tra l’Emancipazione cattolica e le sue conseguenze dopo un secolo, troveremo questa citazione di giornale molto importante. Se vogliamo descrivere le condizioni di cent’anni fa in questo paese, non potremmo far di meglio che dire che allora l’Inghilterra era solidamente protestante; ovvero che il Protestantesimo dell’Inghilterra era solido. E comprenderemo ancor meglio il mutamento moderno, se ci chiediamo che cosa si intenda per quella solidità. Aveva un significato ben definito, che ora è così completamente scomparso che perfino coloro che più di frequente vi si appellano sono i meno capaci di immaginarlo. Non v’è nulla oggi che assomigli a quella sorta di solida fiducia. Significava questo: che i tipi e i ranghi della società realmente e sinceramente interessati alla religione realmente e sinceramente credevano che la religione protestante fosse stata provata superiore alla religione cattolica. Era più forte nella classe media, specialmente nella classe media più agiata; ma quella classe media era andata costantemente crescendo in forza e in ricchezza, come era naturale in una comunità particolarmente mercantile e capitalistica. Comprendeva una moltitudine di uomini d’affari e di professionisti sani, dalla testa dura e persino dalla mente lucida; dico «persino dalla mente lucida» perché, sebbene gli inglesi avessero fama di non essere logici, erano assai più logici a quei tempi di quanto lo siano ora. Se sedevano più a lungo davanti al vino, discutevano più a lungo intorno alla loro politica; non vivevano di cocktail frettolosi e titoli di giornale frettolosi. La loro politica mercantile poteva essere angusta; ma il numero di quelli che sapevano esporre qualche tesi coerente, come il Libero Scambio, era assai grande. E come la loro politica consisteva di certe teorie definite, giuste o sbagliate, così la loro religione consisteva di certe dottrine definite, vere o false. Se aveste chiesto a un tale protestante perché fosse protestante, o che cosa intendesse con l’essere protestante, egli avrebbe immediatamente enunciato o spiegato quelle dottrine; proprio come un fautore del Libero Scambio spiegherebbe il Libero Scambio. Vi erano inglesi, s’intende, per i quali l’intera faccenda era più vaga o più indifferente; ma non erano essi a dare il tono a quella solida Inghilterra mercantile. Il popolino faceva del Papa un fantoccio, proprio come faceva un fantoccio di Guy Fawkes; ma i poveri erano nel migliore dei casi trattati come bambini e lasciati, come bambini, a fare di qualsiasi cosa un fantoccio o un gioco. Gran parte dell’alta aristocrazia era stata del tutto scettica e pagana per tutto il diciottesimo secolo, o persino dal diciassettesimo secolo; ma quello stesso tatto e quella informale segretezza, che tengono unita una simile classe, la trattennero da ogni pubblico insulto alla religione protestante d’Inghilterra. E quella religione era una religione; era protestante, ed era nazionale; vale a dire, era la religione del normale cittadino.
Now if you had asked an educated English Protestant in 1828 why Protestantism was right, or why Popery was wrong, he would not have had the smallest difficulty in answering. Of course the first thing to be emphasised would have been what has since been the first thing to be doubted or denied. It was the literal inspiration and inerrancy of the Hebrew Scriptures, and sometimes even of the English translation of those Scriptures. It was the view that still lingers in provincial corners and is called Fundamentalism.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, practically all Protestantism was Fundamentalism. But it is a great mistake to suppose that the true Protestant of history had nothing better to do for men than to throw a Bible at their heads. What he valued was the theological Scheme of Salvation supposed to be set forth in that work; as the Free Trader valued Adam Smith as the instrument of a theory. Of that theological theory there were two main versions; one, universal in Scotland and very prevalent in England, that God chose some to receive the benefits of redemption and rejected others even in the act of creating them; the other, that men could accept God but only by accepting this theological scheme of salvation, and that their good works had no effect on the result. This was the great doctrine of Faith independent of Works, which was so universally recognised as the chief mark and test of Protestantism that we might almost say that it was the whole of Protestantism, except indeed where Protestantism took the very fiercest form of Calvinism. It is not a question of making points against Protestantism; this was the chief point that could be made for Protestantism. It was especially the popular point; the most persuasive point, the most sympathetic point. From this idea of instantaneous individualist acceptance of the Atonement, by a pure act of faith, came the whole system of appeals on which this form of Christianity relied. That was why it was so easy, so personal, so emotional; that was why the whole of Christian’s burden fell off at the foot of the Cross. There were no degrees of sin or details of penance; because works were not in question at all. That is why they needed no Confessor or Sacrament of Penance; because there was nothing they could do to diminish sins either hopeless or already abolished or ignored. That was why it was wicked to pray for the dead; for the dead could not be anything but instantly beatified by dogmatic faith alone, or lost for lack of it. That was why there could be no progress of further enlightenment in the life to come; or, in other words, no Purgatory. And that was what was meant by being a Protestant; disapproving of prayers for the dead, disapproving of progress after death; disapproving of any religion that relied on good works. That was the great Protestant religion of Western Europe, of which we would speak as respectfully as we would of the virility and equality of Islam; and a hundred years ago it was normal and national. It was, in the newspaper phrase, solid.
To-day, as a national and normal thing, it has utterly vanished. Not one man in ninety really disapproves of praying for the dead. The War, in killing many million men, killed that pedantry and perversity. Not one man in ninety is either a Calvinist or an upholder of Faith against Works. Not one man in ninety thinks he will go to hell if he does not instantly accept the theological theory of redemption; perhaps it would be better if he did. Not one man in ninety believes the Bible infallible, as real Protestants believed it infallible. Of all that wonderful system of religious thought, thundered against Rome in so many sermons, argued against Rome in so many pamphlets, thrown out scornfully against Rome in so many Exeter Hall meetings and Parliamentary debates, nothing remains. Of all that, as it affects the forward movement of the educated classes, and the future of the world, nothing remains.
But there is something that remains. Anti-Catholicism remains; though it is no longer Protestantism, any more than it is Albigensianism or Donatism. And that is the factor we must grasp and estimate, if we are to estimate the outlook to-day. Protestantism is now only a name; but it is a name that can be used to cover any or every “ism” except Catholicism. It is now a vessel or receptacle into which can be poured all the thousand things that for a thousand reasons react against Rome; but it can only be full of these things because it is now hollow; because it is itself empty. Every sort of negation, every sort of new religion, every sort of moral revolt or intellectual irritation, that can make a man resist the claim of the Catholic Faith, is here gathered into a heap and covered with a convenient but quite antiquated label. When the journalists sav that there is solid Protestantism, all they mean is that there is a pretty heavy reluctance or resistance in the matter of any return of the English to their ancient religion; and this, up to a point, may be quite true. But the heap is a hotch-potch; the resistance is not a rational resistance, in the sense of having a clear and commonly accepted reason; and in so far as it has a prevailing colour, it is quite the contrary colour to that which prevailed in Protestantism. It is even more against Calvinism than against Catholicism; it is even more insistent on works than were the Catholics; it would make a future life far less final and more purely progressive than did the Catholic doctrine of Purgatory; it would make the Bible far less important than it is to a Catholic. On every single point on which the Protestant attacked the Pope, he would now say that the modern spirit was a mere exaggeration of the Popish errors. In so far as there is such a vague modern spirit, common to all these things, a spirit that may be called either liberality or laxity, it never was at any time the spirit of Protestantism. It came from the Revolution and the Romantic Movement, indirectly perhaps from the Renaissance of men like Rabelais and Montaigne; and ultimately much more from men like More and Erasmus than from men like Calvin and Knox. When the Protestant orators in the present crisis repeat rather monotonously, “We will not lose the freedom we gained four hundred years ago,” they show how little they share the religion which they defend. Men gained no freedom four hundred years ago; there was no particular freedom about creating the Scottish Sabbath or preaching nothing but Predestination or even yielding to the Tudor Terror or the Cromwellian Terror. But it is arguable that they gained freedom a hundred years ago, as Catholics gained it a hundred years ago. It is tenable that such freedom was the expanding effect of the American and French Revolutions and the democratic idealism which came with the nineteenth century and seems in some danger of declining with the twentieth. Above all, it is arguable that they have a certain kind of freedom now, not because they are Protestants, for they are not; but because they are anything they like and nothing if they like that better; because they are theists, theosophists, materialists, monists or mystics on their own. How much such freedom is worth, or how much chance it has of bearing any fruit in anything positive or creative, is another matter; but in order to anticipate the next phase, it is necessary to realise that this phase is one of negative liberty, not to say anarchy. Whatever it is, it is not Protestantism; and whatever it is, it is not solid.
Ora, se aveste chiesto a un colto protestante inglese nel 1828 perché il protestantesimo fosse nel giusto, o perché il papismo fosse nel torto, egli non avrebbe avuto la minima difficoltà a rispondere. Naturalmente la prima cosa da sottolineare sarebbe stata ciò che da allora è stata la prima cosa a essere messa in dubbio o negata. Era l’ispirazione letterale e l’inerranza delle Scritture ebraiche, e talvolta persino della traduzione inglese di quelle Scritture. Era la concezione che ancora indugia negli angoli di provincia e si chiama Fondamentalismo.
All’inizio dell’Ottocento, praticamente tutto il protestantesimo era Fondamentalismo. Ma è un grave errore supporre che il vero protestante della storia non avesse nulla di meglio da fare per gli uomini che scagliare loro una Bibbia in testa. Ciò a cui teneva era lo Schema teologico della Salvezza che si supponeva esposto in quell’opera; come il liberista teneva ad Adam Smith quale strumento di una teoria. Di quella teoria teologica c’erano due versioni principali; l’una, universale in Scozia e assai diffusa in Inghilterra, che Dio scegliesse alcuni per ricevere i benefici della redenzione e ne respingesse altri persino nell’atto stesso di crearli; l’altra, che gli uomini potessero accettare Dio ma solo accettando questo schema teologico di salvezza, e che le loro buone opere non avessero alcun effetto sul risultato. Questa era la grande dottrina della Fede indipendente dalle Opere, così universalmente riconosciuta come il segno e la prova principale del protestantesimo che potremmo quasi dire fosse l’intero protestantesimo, salvo appunto là dove il protestantesimo assumeva la forma più feroce di tutte, il calvinismo. Non si tratta di segnare punti contro il protestantesimo; questo era il punto principale che si poteva segnare a favore del protestantesimo. Era soprattutto il punto popolare; il punto più persuasivo, il punto più attraente. Da questa idea di un’accettazione istantanea e individualista dell’Espiazione, per puro atto di fede, veniva l’intero sistema di appelli su cui si fondava questa forma di Cristianesimo. Ecco perché era così facile, così personale, così emotivo; ecco perché l’intero fardello di Christian si staccava ai piedi della Croce. Non c’erano gradi di peccato né dettagli di penitenza; perché le opere non erano affatto in questione. Ecco perché non avevano bisogno di alcun Confessore o Sacramento della Penitenza; perché nulla potevano fare per diminuire peccati o senza speranza o già aboliti o ignorati. Ecco perché era empio pregare per i morti; poiché i morti non potevano che essere all’istante beatificati dalla fede dogmatica soltanto, o perduti per mancanza di essa. Ecco perché non poteva esserci alcun progresso di ulteriore illuminazione nella vita a venire; ovvero, in altre parole, nessun Purgatorio. E questo era ciò che si intendeva per essere protestante; disapprovare le preghiere per i morti, disapprovare il progresso dopo la morte; disapprovare qualsiasi religione che si affidasse alle buone opere. Quella era la grande religione protestante dell’Europa occidentale, della quale parleremmo con lo stesso rispetto con cui parleremmo della virilità e dell’uguaglianza dell’Islam; e cent’anni fa era normale e nazionale. Era, per usare l’espressione dei giornali, solida.
Oggi, come cosa nazionale e normale, è completamente svanita. Non un uomo su novanta disapprova davvero il pregare per i morti. La Guerra, uccidendo molti milioni di uomini, uccise quella pedanteria e perversità. Non un uomo su novanta è calvinista o sostenitore della Fede contro le Opere. Non un uomo su novanta pensa che andrà all’inferno se non accetta all’istante la teoria teologica della redenzione; forse sarebbe meglio se lo facesse. Non un uomo su novanta crede infallibile la Bibbia, come i veri protestanti la credevano infallibile. Di tutto quel meraviglioso sistema di pensiero religioso, tuonato contro Roma in tante prediche, argomentato contro Roma in tanti opuscoli, scagliato con disprezzo contro Roma in tante adunanze all’Exeter Hall e in tanti dibattiti parlamentari, nulla rimane. Di tutto ciò, per quanto concerne il moto in avanti delle classi colte e il futuro del mondo, nulla rimane.
Ma c’è qualcosa che rimane. Rimane l’anticattolicesimo; benché non sia più protestantesimo, non più di quanto sia albigismo o donatismo. Ed è questo il fattore che dobbiamo cogliere e valutare, se vogliamo valutare la prospettiva odierna. Il protestantesimo è ormai solo un nome; ma è un nome che può servire a coprire qualsiasi «ismo», o tutti, tranne il cattolicesimo. È ormai un vaso o recipiente in cui si possono versare tutte le mille cose che per mille ragioni reagiscono contro Roma; ma può essere colmo di queste cose solo perché è ormai cavo; perché è esso stesso vuoto. Ogni sorta di negazione, ogni sorta di nuova religione, ogni sorta di rivolta morale o irritazione intellettuale, che possa indurre un uomo a resistere alla pretesa della Fede cattolica, è qui radunata in un mucchio e coperta con un’etichetta comoda ma del tutto antiquata. Quando i giornalisti dicono che esiste un solido protestantesimo, tutto ciò che intendono è che c’è una riluttanza o resistenza piuttosto pesante riguardo a un eventuale ritorno degli inglesi alla loro antica religione; e questo, fino a un certo punto, può essere del tutto vero. Ma il mucchio è un guazzabuglio; la resistenza non è una resistenza razionale, nel senso di avere una ragione chiara e comunemente accettata; e nella misura in cui ha un colore prevalente, è proprio il colore opposto a quello che prevaleva nel protestantesimo. È persino più contro il calvinismo che contro il cattolicesimo; insiste sulle opere persino più di quanto facessero i cattolici; renderebbe una vita futura assai meno definitiva e più puramente progressiva di quanto facesse la dottrina cattolica del Purgatorio; renderebbe la Bibbia assai meno importante di quanto lo sia per un cattolico. Su ogni singolo punto in cui il protestante attaccava il Papa, egli direbbe ora che lo spirito moderno era una mera esagerazione degli errori papisti. Nella misura in cui esiste un tale vago spirito moderno, comune a tutte queste cose, uno spirito che si può chiamare o liberalità o lassismo, esso non fu in alcun tempo lo spirito del protestantesimo. Venne dalla Rivoluzione e dal Movimento Romantico, forse indirettamente dal Rinascimento di uomini come Rabelais e Montaigne; e in ultima analisi assai più da uomini come More ed Erasmo che da uomini come Calvino e Knox. Quando gli oratori protestanti nell’attuale crisi ripetono con una certa monotonia: «Non perderemo la libertà che conquistammo quattrocento anni fa», mostrano quanto poco condividano la religione che difendono. Gli uomini non conquistarono alcuna libertà quattrocento anni fa; non c’era alcuna particolare libertà nel creare il Sabato scozzese o nel predicare null’altro che la Predestinazione o persino nel cedere al Terrore dei Tudor o al Terrore di Cromwell. Ma è sostenibile che essi conquistarono la libertà cent’anni fa, come i cattolici la conquistarono cent’anni fa. È difendibile che tale libertà fosse l’effetto dilatante delle Rivoluzioni americana e francese e dell’idealismo democratico che venne con l’Ottocento e sembra correre un certo rischio di declinare col Novecento. Soprattutto, è sostenibile che essi abbiano ora un certo tipo di libertà, non perché siano protestanti, giacché non lo sono; ma perché sono qualsiasi cosa a loro piaccia e nulla se ciò preferiscono; perché sono teisti, teosofi, materialisti, monisti o mistici per conto proprio. Quanto valga tale libertà, o quante probabilità abbia di portare frutto in qualcosa di positivo o creativo, è un altro discorso; ma per anticipare la fase successiva, è necessario rendersi conto che questa fase è di libertà negativa, per non dire di anarchia. Qualunque cosa sia, non è protestantesimo; e qualunque cosa sia, non è solida.
This is the truth symbolised in the remark on the Prayer-Book Debate; that a crowd of Free-Thinkers and Noncomformists and people of any opinions dictated the affairs of the Church of England. I am very proud of the fact that Catholics abstained from doing so and avoided a very obvious piece of bad taste. But the fact itself contains fine shades that have hardly been noticed. It is not sufficiently realised that even a congregation at the City Temple, or a crowd hearing a Dean or Canon in St. Paul’s Cathedral, is often in fact almost as mixed and dubious in religion as the members of the House of Commons. Many Nonconformists are not conforming to Non-conformity; and a churchman often means only a man who never goes to chapel. Such differences exist in the same sect or even in the same man. If we would grasp the modern problem, we must simply take at random some fairly typical English man and note how little he really is anything. He has, let us say, been brought up a Congregationalist and drifted away; he is by normal and rather negative habit an Anglican; he has become by unanswered doubts and vague popular science an Agnostic; he has often wondered if there is anything in being a Theosophist; he has attended one or two seances and might be persuaded to be a Spiritualist. That is the man we have got to deal with; and not some rigid Protestant labelled Methodist or even some rigid Atheist labelled Materialist. It is that man whom we have to set out to convert, after a hundred years of relative political liberty have left the old Protestant England far behind us and the new Catholic England still far away.
It is only fair to say, of course, that events have falsified almost as much the prophecies of those who promoted Catholic Emancipation as of those who resisted it. Many Liberals hardly disguised the idea that to emancipate Catholicism would be to extinguish Catholicism. Many thought they were tolerating a dying superstition; some thought they were killing it. It is the other superstition that has been killed. But there are always new superstitions; or, to put it more moderately, new religions. And a general estimate of the chances will see them chiefly affected, I think, by the presence of these new religions side by side with that very ancient thing called Agnosticism. The real interest of the speculation is in the question of which of the two will turn out to be the really formidable opponent of the Faith in the future.
We know what is really meant by saying that the Church is merely conservative and the modern world progressive. It means that the Church is always continuous and the heresies always contradictory. We have already noted it in the case of Protestantism; and the men who now completely contradict Protestantism, even in order to contradict Catholicism. But one effect of this contrast between continuity and bewildering variety is that the Church is generally seen in the light of the last heresy. The Church is supposed to consist chiefly of the things of which that heresy happens to disapprove. So much of the Protestant tradition still remains that a great many people suppose that the chief marks of Catholicity are those which stood out as stains in the eyes of the last school of critics. Romanism is supposed to be made up of Popery and Purgatory and the Confessional, with the queerest things thrown in, such as incense and rosaries and the images of saints. But these were often the things most important to Protestants, not most important to Catholics; and not most important to the other opponents of Catholics. A Mahommedan would not connect Rome with Purgatory, because he himself believes in Purgatory; a Buddhist would not connect her with images, because he himself has images; an old pagan would not have been horrified at incense, because he used it himself. In the same way the new religions will not attack the old religion for the old reasons. A Christian Scientist will not assume that all stories of miraculous healing must have been frauds. A Spiritualist will not assume that all supernatural messages received through men must be impossible. It will be an entirely new list of charges or challenges that will come from the new mystics, who have imitated so many of the old marvels. In so far as the new religions become the leaders of the opposition, a new class of controversies will arise; with the faith-healers, for instance, upon the mystery of matter; with the psychic investigators upon the influences of evil. All this will bring us further and further from the special Protestant problems; and a hundred years hence the Church may look to her enemies something utterly different from what she looked like a hundred years ago. She will look different because she will be the same.
But if no new religion becomes important enough to be the main issue, the immediate change will be much simpler. The two centuries will probably have completed the full transition from Protestantism to Paganism. The Church will be facing once more her first and her most formidable enemy; a thing more attractive because more human than any of the heresies. This condition that can only be called Paganism is not easily defined and has often been misrepresented. In one aspect, it may be called practical materialism without the narrowness of theoretical materialism. The Pagan looks for his pleasures to the natural forces of this world; but he does not insist so strictly upon dry negations about the other; he has commonly admitted a vague borderland of the unknown, providing him with possibilities of inspiration or of awe which are forbidden to the cheap modern atheist with his clock-work cosmos. The worshippers of the Unknown God could at least build an altar, though they could not inscribe it with a name. But I fancy that men who have once been Christians, or whose fathers have been Christians, will not be long in discovering, or rather rediscovering, the profound defect that destroyed Paganism and filled centuries with a horror of its final phase. The natural forces, when they are turned into gods, betray mankind by something that is in the very nature of nature-worship. We can already see men becoming unhealthy by the worship of health; becoming hateful by the worship of love; becoming paradoxically solemn and overstrained even by the idolatry of sport; and in some cases strangely morbid and infected with horrors by the perversion of a just sympathy with animals. Unless all these things are subject to a more centralised and well-balanced conception of the universe, the local god becomes too vivid, we might say too visible, and strikes his worshippers with madness. The pantheist is always too near to the polytheist and the polytheist to the idolater; the idolater to the man offering human sacrifice. There is nothing in Paganism to check its own exaggerations; and for that reason the world will probably find again, as it found before, the necessity of a universal moral philosophy supported by an authority that can define. In any case, that quarrel between Paganism and Catholicism will again be one raising issues very unfamiliar to many even now; and issues that would have very much mystified the men who debated a hundred years ago the issue of Catholic Emancipation.
Questa è la verità simboleggiata nell’osservazione sul dibattito del Libro di preghiere; ossia che una folla di liberi pensatori, di dissidenti e di gente di ogni opinione dettò gli affari della Chiesa d’Inghilterra. Sono molto fiero del fatto che i cattolici si siano astenuti dal farlo, evitando così un’assai evidente caduta di cattivo gusto. Ma il fatto stesso racchiude sfumature sottili che a malapena sono state notate. Non ci si rende sufficientemente conto che perfino una congregazione al City Temple, o una folla che ascolta un decano o un canonico nella Cattedrale di San Paolo, è spesso, di fatto, quasi altrettanto mescolata e incerta in fatto di religione quanto i membri della Camera dei Comuni. Molti anticonformisti non si conformano all’anticonformismo; e con «uomo di Chiesa» si intende spesso soltanto un uomo che non mette mai piede in una cappella. Simili differenze esistono all’interno della stessa setta o persino dello stesso uomo. Se vogliamo cogliere il problema moderno, dobbiamo semplicemente prendere a caso un inglese abbastanza tipico e notare quanto poco egli sia realmente qualcosa. È stato, poniamo, educato come congregazionalista e poi se n’è allontanato; è anglicano per abitudine normale e piuttosto negativa; è divenuto agnostico per dubbi rimasti senza risposta e per una vaga scienza popolare; si è spesso chiesto se vi sia qualcosa di buono nell’essere teosofo; ha assistito a una o due sedute spiritiche e potrebbe lasciarsi persuadere a farsi spiritista. È quest’uomo che dobbiamo affrontare; e non un rigido protestante etichettato come metodista, né un rigido ateo etichettato come materialista. È quest’uomo che dobbiamo proporci di convertire, dopo che un secolo di relativa libertà politica ha lasciato molto dietro di noi la vecchia Inghilterra protestante e ancora molto lontana la nuova Inghilterra cattolica.
È giusto riconoscere, naturalmente, che gli eventi hanno smentito quasi altrettanto le profezie di coloro che promossero l’Emancipazione cattolica quanto quelle di coloro che vi si opposero. Molti liberali dissimulavano a stento l’idea che emancipare il cattolicesimo significasse estinguerlo. Molti credevano di tollerare una superstizione morente; alcuni credevano di ucciderla. È l’altra superstizione a essere stata uccisa. Ma vi sono sempre nuove superstizioni; o, per dirla in modo più moderato, nuove religioni. E una valutazione generale delle probabilità le vedrà influenzate soprattutto, io credo, dalla presenza di queste nuove religioni accanto a quella cosa antichissima che si chiama agnosticismo. Il vero interesse della congettura sta nella domanda su quale dei due si rivelerà in futuro il vero, formidabile avversario della Fede.
Sappiamo che cosa si intenda davvero dicendo che la Chiesa è meramente conservatrice e il mondo moderno progressista. Significa che la Chiesa è sempre continua e le eresie sempre contraddittorie. Lo abbiamo già osservato nel caso del protestantesimo; e negli uomini che oggi contraddicono completamente il protestantesimo, sia pure per contraddire il cattolicesimo. Ma un effetto di questo contrasto tra continuità e sconcertante varietà è che la Chiesa viene generalmente vista alla luce dell’ultima eresia. Si suppone che la Chiesa consista soprattutto in quelle cose che quella data eresia si trova a disapprovare. Della tradizione protestante rimane ancora tanto che moltissime persone suppongono che i tratti principali della cattolicità siano quelli che spiccavano come macchie agli occhi dell’ultima scuola di critici. Si suppone che il romanesimo sia fatto di papismo, di Purgatorio e del confessionale, con l’aggiunta delle cose più bizzarre, come l’incenso, i rosari e le immagini dei santi. Ma queste erano spesso le cose più importanti per i protestanti, non le più importanti per i cattolici; e neppure le più importanti per gli altri avversari dei cattolici. Un maomettano non assocerebbe Roma al Purgatorio, poiché egli stesso crede nel Purgatorio; un buddista non l’assocerebbe alle immagini, poiché egli stesso ha immagini; un antico pagano non sarebbe stato inorridito dall’incenso, poiché lo usava egli stesso. Allo stesso modo le nuove religioni non attaccheranno la vecchia religione per le vecchie ragioni. Uno scientista cristiano non darà per scontato che tutte le storie di guarigioni miracolose debbano essere state frodi. Uno spiritista non darà per scontato che tutti i messaggi soprannaturali ricevuti attraverso gli uomini debbano essere impossibili. Sarà un elenco interamente nuovo di accuse o di sfide quello che verrà dai nuovi mistici, i quali hanno imitato tante delle antiche meraviglie. Nella misura in cui le nuove religioni diventeranno i capofila dell’opposizione, sorgerà una nuova classe di controversie; con i guaritori per la fede, per esempio, sul mistero della materia; con gli investigatori psichici sulle influenze del male. Tutto ciò ci porterà sempre più lontano dai problemi specificamente protestanti; e fra cento anni la Chiesa potrà apparire ai suoi nemici qualcosa di completamente diverso da ciò che appariva cento anni fa. Apparirà diversa perché sarà la stessa.
Ma se nessuna nuova religione diventerà tanto importante da costituire la questione principale, il mutamento immediato sarà assai più semplice. I due secoli avranno probabilmente compiuto l’intera transizione dal protestantesimo al paganesimo. La Chiesa si troverà ancora una volta di fronte al suo primo e più formidabile nemico; una cosa più attraente perché più umana di qualsiasi eresia. Questa condizione, che si può chiamare soltanto paganesimo, non è facile da definire ed è stata spesso travisata. Sotto un aspetto, la si può chiamare materialismo pratico senza la ristrettezza del materialismo teorico. Il pagano cerca i suoi piaceri nelle forze naturali di questo mondo; ma non insiste in modo così rigido su aride negazioni riguardo all’altro; ha comunemente ammesso una vaga terra di confine dell’ignoto, che gli offre possibilità di ispirazione o di timore reverenziale precluse al dozzinale ateo moderno col suo cosmo a orologeria. Gli adoratori del Dio Ignoto potevano almeno erigere un altare, anche se non potevano inciderlo con un nome. Ma immagino che gli uomini che un tempo sono stati cristiani, o i cui padri sono stati cristiani, non tarderanno a scoprire, o piuttosto a riscoprire, il difetto profondo che distrusse il paganesimo e riempì i secoli d’orrore per la sua fase finale. Le forze naturali, quando vengono trasformate in dèi, tradiscono l’umanità per qualcosa che è nella natura stessa del culto della natura. Possiamo già vedere uomini che si ammalano per il culto della salute; che si fanno odiosi per il culto dell’amore; che diventano paradossalmente solenni e sovraccarichi persino per l’idolatria dello sport; e, in certi casi, stranamente morbosi e contaminati da orrori per la perversione di una giusta compassione verso gli animali. A meno che tutte queste cose non siano soggette a una concezione dell’universo più centralizzata e ben bilanciata, il dio locale diventa troppo vivido, potremmo dire troppo visibile, e colpisce i suoi adoratori con la follia. Il panteista è sempre troppo vicino al politeista, e il politeista all’idolatra; l’idolatra all’uomo che offre sacrifici umani. Non c’è nulla nel paganesimo che ne freni le proprie esagerazioni; e per questa ragione il mondo ritroverà probabilmente, come già la trovò in passato, la necessità di una filosofia morale universale sostenuta da un’autorità capace di definire. In ogni caso, quella contesa tra paganesimo e cattolicesimo tornerà a sollevare questioni assai poco familiari a molti persino oggi; questioni che avrebbero grandemente sconcertato gli uomini che cento anni fa dibattevano la questione dell’Emancipazione cattolica.
In any case, this emergence of new issues will reveal more and more one of the advantages of an old religion. Whole aspects of Catholic doctrine and tradition, hidden by historical accident and the special quarrels of recent times, will be revealed to the world when it begins to address new questions to the Church. This is a point that has not been sufficiently stressed in the relations between Protestantism and Catholicism. Very often a Protestant was not only a man merely protesting, but a man merely protesting against a particular thing. He sometimes thought that thing was Rome; but it was really only one of the thousand aspects of Rome. When new aspects appear under new searchlights, he will be not so much defeated as simply outside the affair. A Baptist disapproves of baptising babies; a Presbyterian disapproves of bishops; a Prohibitionist disapproves of beer, and so on. But a Presbyterian, as such, has nothing very special to say about the Subconscious Mind. A Baptist as such has nothing special to say to a Behaviourist as such. But a Catholic may have a great deal to say to these people. For the Catholic commentary on life has gone on so much longer, it has covered so many different social conditions, has dealt so carefully with countless fine shades of metaphysics or casuistry, that it really has a relation to almost any class of speculation that may arise. Thus, in the matter of psycho-analysis and the study of the subconscious, the Church will probably be found sooner or later defending certain essentials about Will and Conscience against a welter of wild impersonality. Catholics remembering Catholicism will have a right and reason to do this. But Calvinists who have half forgotten Calvinism have no particular reason to do it.
There is, for instance, one influence that grows stronger every day, never mentioned in the news papers, not even intelligible to people in the newspaper frame of mind. It is the return of the Thomist Philosophy; which is the philosophy of commonsense, as compared with the paradoxes of Kant and Hegel and the Pragmatists. The Roman religion will be, in the exact sense, the only Rationalistic religion. The other religions will not be Rationalist but Relativist; declaring that the reason is itself relative and unreliable; declaring that Being is only Becoming or that all time is only a time of transition; saying in mathematics that two and two make five in the fixed stars, saying in metaphysics and in morals that there is a good beyond good and evil. Instead of the materialist who said that the soul did not exist, we shall have the new mystic who says that the body does not exist. Amid all these things the return of the Scholastic will simply be the return of the sane man. There will perhaps be belated and benighted modernists, lingering from the nineteenth century, who will repeat the jaded journalistic catchword that the Schoolman only cared to ask how many angels could stand on the point of a needle. But it will be difficult to make even that fancy appear very fantastic, in a world where men deny that it hurts a man to stick the point of the needle in his leg. If there are angels, they have presumably some intellectual relation to place and space; and if there are no angels, there are still men and presumably sane men. But to say that there is no pain, or no matter, or no evil, or no difference between man and beast, or indeed between anything and anything else—this is a desperate effort to destroy all experience and sense of reality; and men will weary of it more and more, when it has ceased to be the latest fashion; and will look once more for something that will give form to such a chaos and keep the proportions of the mind of man. Millions of men are already at least wondering whether this solution is not to be found in the Catholic order and philosophy. Above all, the Church has regained that unique position in the world in a fair field and under the very reverse of favour; having had tor a hundred years no more than the common right of speaking and publishing and voting in popular assemblies; and as her Master affirmed his divinity by becoming a man among men, she has become for a season a sect among sects, to emerge at the end as something separate or supreme.
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In ogni caso, questo emergere di nuove questioni rivelerà sempre più uno dei vantaggi di una religione antica. Interi aspetti della dottrina e della tradizione cattolica, occultati dall’accidente storico e dalle particolari controversie dei tempi recenti, saranno rivelati al mondo quando esso comincerà a rivolgere nuove domande alla Chiesa. Questo è un punto che non è stato sufficientemente rimarcato nei rapporti tra protestantesimo e cattolicesimo. Assai spesso un protestante non era soltanto un uomo che semplicemente protestava, ma un uomo che semplicemente protestava contro una cosa particolare. Egli talvolta pensava che quella cosa fosse Roma; ma in realtà era soltanto uno dei mille aspetti di Roma. Quando nuovi aspetti appaiono sotto nuovi fasci di luce, egli non sarà tanto sconfitto quanto semplicemente estraneo alla faccenda. Un battista disapprova il battesimo dei bambini; un presbiteriano disapprova i vescovi; un proibizionista disapprova la birra, e così via. Ma un presbiteriano, in quanto tale, non ha nulla di particolare da dire sulla Mente Subconscia. Un battista in quanto tale non ha nulla di particolare da dire a un comportamentista in quanto tale. Ma un cattolico può avere moltissimo da dire a queste persone. Poiché il commentario cattolico sulla vita è proseguito tanto più a lungo, ha abbracciato tante diverse condizioni sociali, ha trattato con tanta cura innumerevoli sottili sfumature di metafisica o di casistica, che esso ha davvero una relazione con quasi ogni genere di speculazione che possa sorgere. Così, nella questione della psicoanalisi e dello studio del subconscio, la Chiesa sarà probabilmente trovata, prima o poi, a difendere certi princìpi essenziali riguardo alla Volontà e alla Coscienza contro un guazzabuglio di sfrenata impersonalità. I cattolici che ricordano il cattolicesimo avranno un diritto e una ragione per farlo. Ma i calvinisti che hanno per metà dimenticato il calvinismo non hanno alcuna particolare ragione per farlo.
Vi è, per esempio, un influsso che si fa più forte ogni giorno, mai menzionato sui giornali, neppure intelligibile a chi ha la mentalità del giornale. È il ritorno della filosofia tomista; che è la filosofia del buon senso, se paragonata ai paradossi di Kant e di Hegel e dei pragmatisti. La religione romana sarà, nel senso esatto, l’unica religione razionalistica. Le altre religioni non saranno razionaliste ma relativiste; dichiarando che la ragione è essa stessa relativa e inaffidabile; dichiarando che l’Essere è soltanto Divenire o che ogni tempo è soltanto un tempo di transizione; affermando in matematica che due più due fanno cinque nelle stelle fisse, affermando in metafisica e in morale che vi è un bene al di là del bene e del male. Al posto del materialista che diceva che l’anima non esisteva, avremo il nuovo mistico che dice che il corpo non esiste. In mezzo a tutte queste cose il ritorno dello Scolastico sarà semplicemente il ritorno dell’uomo sano di mente. Vi saranno forse modernisti tardivi e ottenebrati, attardati dal diciannovesimo secolo, che ripeteranno lo stanco slogan giornalistico secondo cui lo Scolastico si curava soltanto di chiedere quanti angeli potessero stare sulla punta di un ago. Ma sarà difficile far apparire molto fantastica anche quella fantasia, in un mondo dove gli uomini negano che faccia male a un uomo conficcarsi la punta dell’ago nella gamba. Se vi sono angeli, essi hanno presumibilmente qualche relazione intellettuale con il luogo e lo spazio; e se non vi sono angeli, vi sono pur sempre uomini e presumibilmente uomini sani di mente. Ma dire che non vi è dolore, o non vi è materia, o non vi è male, o non vi è differenza tra l’uomo e la bestia, o addirittura tra una cosa e un’altra qualsiasi — questo è uno sforzo disperato di distruggere ogni esperienza e senso della realtà; e gli uomini se ne stancheranno sempre più, quando avrà cessato di essere l’ultima moda; e cercheranno ancora una volta qualcosa che dia forma a un tale caos e mantenga le proporzioni della mente dell’uomo. Milioni di uomini già almeno si domandano se questa soluzione non sia da trovarsi nell’ordine e nella filosofia cattolica. Soprattutto, la Chiesa ha riguadagnato quella posizione unica nel mondo in campo aperto e nelle condizioni del tutto opposte al favore; non avendo avuto per cent’anni più del comune diritto di parlare e di pubblicare e di votare nelle assemblee popolari; e come il suo Maestro affermò la propria divinità facendosi uomo tra gli uomini, essa è divenuta per una stagione una setta tra le sette, per emergere alla fine come qualcosa di separato o di supremo.
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TRADE TERMS
IT is grimly significant that the Organ of Empire has already begun to call its Imperial policy by the cheerful name of “The Empire Merger.” The sort of combine, which all free peoples have punished as a conspiracy, is now so fashionable that it is considered quite a compliment to apply this commercial term instead of a political title. Courtiers in the future, instead of saying “Your Majesty” will say “Your Monopoly”; especially when addressing Moritz IV, of the historic House of Mond, by that time Emperor of the World State. But indeed we rather doubt whether there will be even so much dignity as this in such a despotism as that. The man who prefers to say, “Imperial Merger” rather than Imperial Protection or Imperial Free Trade, is already in this curious modern mood which actually thinks mercantile terms higher than moral or social ones. The whole system of a great nation will be remodelled on the habits of a big business. The national envoy in Paris, instead of being called, “His Excellency the British Ambassador,” will be called “Our Mr. Honey-bubble,” and he will travel with samples and be proud of being called a commercial traveller. The monopolist newspapers never weary of telling us that the world ought to have outgrown the stilted and pompous language of the old Protocols and Ultimatums, and all the formal statements of the treaties which have so often been denounced as Secret Diplomacy. Doubtless the great statesmen of the great states, the heirs of Richelieu and Canning, will correspond in a brighter and brisker English, running “Yrs. rcd. and conts: noted,” when indeed it is necessary to put the arrangements into writing at all. After all, it will be even more business-like to make the international arrangements in a husky and confidential voice, in the intervals of observing “What’s yours?” and “Say when.” That is the great advantage of the New Diplomacy over the old Secret Diplomacy. The old was so very secret as to write down all its secrets in laborious documents and send them round to about fifty people in Government offices. The New Diplomacy need never be written down at all; indeed, it is better not.
We are prepared, of course, to be told that all this ugly and undignified school of manners is very practical, and that the old stately or stilted school of manners was very unpractical. After all, the old theory of dignity did only trivial and incidental things, such as creating the Roman Empire, creating the French Monarchy and the French Revolution, founding the American Republic and establishing by personal adventure that very Empire, which our hustlers and hucksters can only help by impersonal advertisement. These are slight achievements compared with that of insuring that the same bad ginger-beer shall be sold everywhere, to the exclusion and extinction of good ginger-beer, or that over some thousand square miles of God’s green earth nobody shall have anything but one kind of hat or one kind of house. But though these arguments are undoubtedly cogent and persuasive, and bear a certain appearance of practicality and realism, we are disposed to supplement them by a suggestion or reminder; the hint of something which even thinkers so lucid seem to have overlooked. Nowadays, it is considered very horrible to mention it; and it is indeed very horrible to test it or experience it. Nevertheless, it is a thing that may be tested or experienced; and, even to be avoided, had much better be mentioned.
Authority ruling men must be respected; it must even be loved. Men must in the last resort love it; for the simple reason that men must in the last resort die for it. No community or constitution can survive and retain its identity at all, that has not in the minds of its subjects enough of an ideal identity, to appear to them in certain extremes of peril as the vision of something to be saved. It is on that ideal, inhering in the reality, that every state will depend when there is a struggle of life and death. Men must feel something more about England than that she is commercial, something more about France than that Frenchmen are practical and careful about money, something more about America than that she happens at the moment to be monstrously rich[1], before any healthy and humorous human being will kill somebody else or be killed himself, and go out from the sunlight and the sane loves of this world, for the sake of any such abstraction. It will be found, therefore, that the practical theory fails at the most practical moment. It is useful while there is question of whether the commonwealth shall continue to be rich, or continue to be imperial, or continue to be monopolist. It is useless when there is question of whether the commonwealth shall continue to be. The materialistic state, cemented only with money as with mud, will fall apart under the blow of any people who have love or loyalty to their leaders or their cause; for the simple reason that those who care most for money care more for life. One may like or dislike the Fascism of Italy, the fiery nationalism of the Poles, the deep Catholicism of the Irish; but there is no doubt that their ideals can be idealised. They are conceptions for which real men can be worked up into a real rapture of sacrifice. The images under which they are presented to the world, and especially the world of their worshippers, the golden or the silver eagle, the breastplate of St. Patrick, the Roman salute, are things that do in fact lift up the heart, and were made by the mind so that they should uplift the heart. In short there is in them poetry; and that poetry is the most practical thing in the world.
[1] But easier to die for, now she is poor.
Now if the new Imperialists insist on talking of everything in terms of the counter and the commercial room, if they insist on calling Imperial Preference a Merger, as Lord Beaverbrook did, if they insist on comparing a General Election to a Company Flotation, as Mr. Amery did, they will make men familiar indeed with their government, and in a sense at home with it, but no more capable of loving it than of loving any unlucky investment. The time will come when its existence will depend on its power on the imagination; and it will be dignity or death. Nor will that dignity come solely from an Imperial Isolation; which seems merely to mean, “How we may think in continents without thinking of the Continents.”
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TERMINI COMMERCIALI
È cupamente significativo che l’Organo dell’Impero abbia già cominciato a chiamare la propria politica imperiale con l’allegro nome di «Fusione dell’Impero». Il genere di combine che tutti i popoli liberi hanno punito come una cospirazione è oggi tanto di moda che si ritiene addirittura un complimento applicare questo termine commerciale invece di un titolo politico. In futuro i cortigiani, anziché dire «Vostra Maestà», diranno «Vostro Monopolio»; specialmente rivolgendosi a Moritz IV, della storica casata di Mond, ormai a quel tempo Imperatore dello Stato Mondiale. Ma in verità dubitiamo piuttosto che vi sarà anche solo tanta dignità quanta questa in un dispotismo simile a quello. L’uomo che preferisce dire «Fusione Imperiale» anziché Protezione Imperiale o Libero Scambio Imperiale è già in questo curioso stato d’animo moderno che in realtà ritiene i termini mercantili più alti di quelli morali o sociali. L’intero sistema di una grande nazione sarà rimodellato sulle abitudini di un grande affare. L’inviato nazionale a Parigi, anziché essere chiamato «Sua Eccellenza l’Ambasciatore Britannico», sarà chiamato «Il nostro signor Miele-frizzante», e viaggerà con i campioni e sarà fiero di essere chiamato commesso viaggiatore. I giornali monopolisti non si stancano mai di dirci che il mondo avrebbe ormai dovuto superare il linguaggio artificioso e pomposo dei vecchi Protocolli e Ultimatum, e tutte le formali dichiarazioni dei trattati che così spesso sono stati denunciati come Diplomazia Segreta. Senza dubbio i grandi statisti dei grandi Stati, gli eredi di Richelieu e di Canning, corrisponderanno in un inglese più brillante e spedito, buttando giù «Vs. ric. e cont: annotato», quando davvero sia necessario mettere per iscritto gli accordi. Dopotutto, sarà ancora più sbrigativo concludere gli accordi internazionali con voce roca e confidenziale, negli intervalli fra un «Tu cosa prendi?» e un «Dimmi quando». Questo è il grande vantaggio della Nuova Diplomazia sulla vecchia Diplomazia Segreta. La vecchia era così segreta da mettere per iscritto tutti i suoi segreti in laboriosi documenti e spedirli in giro a una cinquantina di persone negli uffici del Governo. La Nuova Diplomazia non ha mai bisogno di essere messa per iscritto; anzi, è meglio di no.
Siamo pronti, naturalmente, a sentirci dire che tutta questa brutta e indecorosa scuola di maniere è molto pratica, e che la vecchia scuola di maniere solenne o artificiosa era molto poco pratica. Dopotutto, la vecchia teoria della dignità fece soltanto cose banali e accessorie, come creare l’Impero Romano, creare la Monarchia Francese e la Rivoluzione Francese, fondare la Repubblica Americana e stabilire mediante avventura personale quello stesso Impero che i nostri affaristi e mercanteggiatori possono soltanto aiutare con l’impersonale réclame. Sono conquiste da poco, in confronto a quella di assicurare che la stessa cattiva gassosa allo zenzero sia venduta ovunque, a esclusione ed estinzione della buona gassosa allo zenzero, oppure che su qualche migliaio di miglia quadrate della verde terra di Dio nessuno abbia altro che un solo tipo di cappello o un solo tipo di casa. Ma per quanto questi argomenti siano indubbiamente stringenti e persuasivi, e rechino una certa apparenza di concretezza e realismo, siamo propensi a integrarli con un suggerimento o un promemoria; l’accenno a qualcosa che perfino pensatori così lucidi paiono aver trascurato. Oggigiorno si considera cosa assai orribile menzionarlo; ed è in effetti cosa assai orribile metterlo alla prova o farne esperienza. Nondimeno è una cosa che può essere messa alla prova o sperimentata; e, anche solo per evitarla, sarebbe molto meglio menzionarla.
L’autorità che governa gli uomini deve essere rispettata; deve persino essere amata. Gli uomini devono in ultima istanza amarla; per la semplice ragione che gli uomini devono in ultima istanza morire per essa. Nessuna comunità o costituzione può sopravvivere e conservare in alcun modo la propria identità se non possiede, nelle menti dei suoi sudditi, abbastanza di un’ideale identità da apparire loro, in certi estremi di pericolo, come la visione di qualcosa da salvare. È su quell’ideale, insito nella realtà, che ogni Stato farà affidamento quando vi sarà una lotta di vita e di morte. Gli uomini devono sentire qualcosa di più intorno all’Inghilterra che non il suo essere commerciale, qualcosa di più intorno alla Francia che non il fatto che i francesi siano pratici e attenti al denaro, qualcosa di più intorno all’America che non il suo trovarsi in questo momento mostruosamente ricca[1], prima che un qualsiasi essere umano sano e faceto uccida qualcun altro o venga ucciso egli stesso, e abbandoni la luce del sole e gli affetti sereni di questo mondo, per amore di una simile astrazione. Si scoprirà, dunque, che la teoria pratica fallisce nel momento più pratico. Essa è utile finché si tratta di stabilire se lo Stato debba continuare a essere ricco, o continuare a essere imperiale, o continuare a essere monopolista. È inutile quando si tratta di stabilire se lo Stato debba continuare a essere. Lo Stato materialistico, cementato soltanto col denaro come col fango, cadrà a pezzi sotto il colpo di un qualsiasi popolo che nutra amore o lealtà verso i propri capi o la propria causa; per la semplice ragione che coloro che più tengono al denaro tengono di più alla vita. Si può amare o detestare il Fascismo d’Italia, l’ardente nazionalismo dei polacchi, il profondo cattolicesimo degli irlandesi; ma non v’è dubbio che i loro ideali possano essere idealizzati. Sono concezioni per le quali uomini reali possono essere trascinati in un reale rapimento di sacrificio. Le immagini sotto le quali essi vengono presentati al mondo, e specialmente al mondo dei loro adoratori — l’aquila d’oro o d’argento, la corazza di San Patrizio, il saluto romano — sono cose che di fatto sollevano il cuore, e furono foggiate dalla mente affinché sollevassero il cuore. Insomma, in esse vi è poesia; e quella poesia è la cosa più pratica del mondo.
[1] Ma più facile morire per lei, ora che è povera.
Ora, se i nuovi Imperialisti insistono nel parlare di ogni cosa in termini di bancone e di sala di commercio, se insistono nel chiamare Fusione la Preferenza Imperiale, come fece Lord Beaverbrook, se insistono nel paragonare un’Elezione Generale al Collocamento di una Società, come fece il signor Amery, renderanno gli uomini davvero familiari col loro governo, e in un certo senso a proprio agio con esso, ma non più capaci di amarlo di quanto lo siano di amare un qualsiasi sfortunato investimento. Verrà il tempo in cui la sua esistenza dipenderà dal suo potere sull’immaginazione; e sarà dignità o morte. Né quella dignità verrà unicamente da un Isolamento Imperiale; il che sembra significare soltanto: «Come possiamo pensare in continenti senza pensare ai Continenti».
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FROZEN FREE THOUGHT
I BELIEVE I am in possession of a piece of news which, as we say in Fleet Street, has a certain news-value. It is hardly fitted to be flashed along the telegraph wires or blazoned on the big posters; it does not definitely involve an individual, but rather generally a school; it is an historical event; something that has happened and has hardly been noticed among the many changes of the day. The substance of the news is this. The sort of man we once knew as a Secularist has become a religious maniac.
Of course he is not actually mad, in the medical sense; nor, for that matter, is he religious in the religious sense, or perhaps in any sense. Yet the words I have used, to cover very varying stages of the malady in a fairly loose group, are the only words that convey the sharpness and importance of the incident. I mean that the tone of the old Fleet Street atheism, which I knew and loved of old, has entirely altered. It has come to resemble almost exactly the tone of the Seventh Day Adventists or the Millennial Dawnists, or all those queerly prosaic and even prim fanatics who wander about handing out pamphlets, crowded with texts and vivid with italics, in which a new heaven and a new earth can be made out of a neglected cloud in the Book of Daniel or an unusually Little Horn in the Apocalypse. Perhaps the shortest way of distinguishing between the two literary styles is to record that the first was readable and the second is unreadable. The old atheist arguments, inherited from Bradlaugh and Foote, were always crude and therefore a little heavy, even for any agnostic with some background of history and philosophy. But they were at least as clear as they were crude; and we should all of us have agreed that a paper like the Freethinker was easy to read; even if some of us would have added that it was easy to answer. The Freethinker as it is to-day is not easy to read. I know, because I have just been reading it. Its editor has kindly sent me a copy, containing what appears from the frequent mention of my name to be an attack on myself; and when I am thus personally addressed I think it only polite to answer. If it is now not so easy to answer, it is simply because it is now not so easy to understand. It seems to be about a book I wrote on Victorian Literature several years before the War; but the Freethinkers of Fleet Street, ever on the alert for fresh developments, have pounced upon it already. I have read the critique over patiently several times, and am still somewhat puzzled by what the critic can possibly mean by some of his allusions and complaints. I remember that in that very able book The Flight from Reason, Mr. Arnold Lunn narrates a similar experience with the same paper. He prints the whole of the Freethinker’s criticism on him, and, naturally not being able to make head or tail of it, simply leaves it to the reader in despair. It was something about how anybody, who thinks there is good historical evidence for the Resurrection, is logically bound to believe the story of Aladdin in the Arabian Nights. I have no idea why. But what I would first emphasise, before trying to explain my critic’s remarks to myself and him, is the curious character of this change in the Secularist Press, from a tone that was crude to a tone that is really crazy.
We might take a working parallel; fortunately outside the sphere of religion. I can imagine a jolly old Radical working man talking in the old mutinous manly fashion against the King or the House of Lords, saying with surly geniality and some repetition; “What we want with a King?’ Why should ‘e ‘ave a golden crown on ‘is ‘ead and me only my old boko? What’s ‘e blasted well doing in Buckingham Palace---” and so on. Now I like that sort of man. I like him very much. I know what he means. I think there is, in the last resort, a lot to be said for it. It is not in the style of the De Monarchia; it hardly appreciates the subtleties of Mr. Charles Maurras. But it has truths behind it; the equality of men and something that is right in republican simplicity. But suppose that man, who begins by saying he is as good as the King, broods and eventually goes mad saying that he is the King. Suppose his grievance becomes a personal grievance about his great-grandfather, and he goes about boring people with plans and pedigrees to prove his Plantagenet blood. We know the whole atmosphere will alter; but chiefly in clarity. Everybody knew what the grumbler meant; nobody will listen to what the lunatic means. That is very like the difference between the Old Secularist and the New Secularist or the Millennial Dawnist.
Take some puzzles out of this page about me. “Chesterton uses his talents tyrannously in the service of the most reactionary of all Churches,“—to which he didn’t belong at the time. And how do you use talents tyrannously? I wish I knew. “He has nothing but the crudest insults for the great intellectuals.” Well, there is the book; anybody can see what I really said about Mill, about Meredith, about Matthew Arnold, about Huxley, even supposing that nobody is an intellectual unless he is an agnostic. To say I had “nothing” but crude insult for them is— well, something that could be described still more crudely. Swinburne, it seems “is accused of composing a learned and sympathetic and indecent parody on the Litany of the Blessed Virgin.” And the critic adds mysteriously, “an ironical suggestion in a Protestant country.” I do not know what the word “accused” means here. If the critic has read Swinburne he knows that an early verse in Dolores is a parody of the Litany of the Virgin. It is hardly an accusation to call it learned and sympathetic; by which I meant artistically sympathetic in an archaic Gothic mode; as were the profane Pre-Raphaelites as well as the pious ones. Whether such a thing is indecent may be discussed; but the critic is quite wrong in fancying that only Papists thought it indecent. The indecency of Dolores was denounced, more harshly than I dreamed of doing it, by the first Freethinker in English public life; the late John Morley.
IL PENSIERO LIBERO CONGELATO
Credo di essere in possesso di una notizia che, come diciamo in Fleet Street, ha un certo valore giornalistico. Non è granché adatta a essere lanciata lungo i fili del telegrafo o strombazzata sui grandi manifesti; non coinvolge in modo preciso un individuo, ma piuttosto, in generale, una scuola; è un evento storico; qualcosa che è accaduto e che è stato appena notato in mezzo ai molti mutamenti del giorno. La sostanza della notizia è questa. Quel tipo d’uomo che una volta conoscevamo come Secolarista è diventato un maniaco religioso.
Naturalmente non è realmente pazzo, in senso medico; né, del resto, è religioso in senso religioso, o forse in alcun senso. Eppure le parole che ho usato, per abbracciare gli stadi assai variabili della malattia in un gruppo piuttosto vago, sono le uniche parole che rendono l’acutezza e l’importanza dell’episodio. Voglio dire che il tono del vecchio ateismo di Fleet Street, che conoscevo e amavo un tempo, è interamente cambiato. È giunto a somigliare quasi esattamente al tono degli Avventisti del Settimo Giorno o dei Millenaristi dell’Alba, o di tutti quei fanatici stranamente prosaici e persino compassati che vanno in giro distribuendo opuscoli, gremiti di citazioni scritturali e vividi di corsivi, nei quali un nuovo cielo e una nuova terra possono essere ricavati da una nube trascurata nel Libro di Daniele o da un Piccolo Corno insolito nell’Apocalypse. Forse il modo più breve di distinguere fra i due stili letterari è annotare che il primo era leggibile e il secondo è illeggibile. I vecchi argomenti degli atei, ereditati da Bradlaugh e Foote, erano sempre rozzi e perciò un poco pesanti, persino per un agnostico dotato di un qualche retroterra di storia e di filosofia. Ma erano almeno tanto chiari quanto rozzi; e avremmo tutti convenuto che un giornale come il Freethinker era facile da leggere; anche se qualcuno di noi avrebbe aggiunto che era facile da confutare. Il Freethinker com’è oggi non è facile da leggere. Lo so, perché l’ho appena letto. Il suo direttore ha avuto la cortesia di mandarmene una copia, contenente quello che, dalla frequente menzione del mio nome, appare essere un attacco contro di me; e quando sono così personalmente interpellato ritengo cosa cortese rispondere. Se ora non è così facile rispondere, è semplicemente perché ora non è così facile capire. Sembra trattarsi di un libro che scrissi sulla Letteratura Vittoriana parecchi anni prima della Guerra; ma i Liberi Pensatori di Fleet Street, sempre all’erta per i nuovi sviluppi, gli sono già piombati addosso. Ho letto la critica con pazienza parecchie volte, e sono ancora alquanto perplesso su ciò che il critico possa mai intendere con alcune delle sue allusioni e lagnanze. Ricordo che in quel libro davvero notevole, La Fuga dalla Ragione, il signor Arnold Lunn narra un’esperienza simile con lo stesso giornale. Egli stampa per intero la critica del Freethinker su di lui e, non riuscendo naturalmente a raccapezzarcisi, la lascia semplicemente al lettore nella disperazione. Riguardava qualcosa sul come chiunque ritenga vi siano buone prove storiche della Resurrection sia logicamente tenuto a credere alla storia di Aladino nelle Mille e una Notte. Non ho idea del perché. Ma ciò che vorrei anzitutto sottolineare, prima di tentare di spiegare le osservazioni del mio critico a me stesso e a lui, è il carattere curioso di questo mutamento nella Stampa Secolarista, da un tono che era rozzo a un tono che è veramente folle.
Potremmo prendere un parallelo utile; per fortuna al di fuori della sfera della religione. Posso immaginare un allegro vecchio operaio Radicale che discorre alla vecchia maniera ribelle e virile contro il Re o la Camera dei Lord, dicendo con burbera cordialità e qualche ripetizione: «Che ce ne facciamo d’un Re? Perché lui deve avere una corona d’oro in testa e io solo il mio vecchio nasone? Che diavolo ci fa a Buckingham Palace---» e così via. Ebbene, quel genere d’uomo mi piace. Mi piace moltissimo. So cosa intende. Penso che, in ultima analisi, ci sia molto da dire in suo favore. Non è nello stile del De Monarchia; non apprezza granché le sottigliezze del signor Charles Maurras. Ma ha delle verità dietro di sé; l’uguaglianza degli uomini e qualcosa che è giusto nella semplicità repubblicana. Ma supponete che quell’uomo, il quale comincia dicendo di valere quanto il Re, rimugini e alla fine impazzisca dicendo di essere il Re. Supponete che il suo cruccio diventi un cruccio personale riguardo al suo bisnonno, e che vada in giro ad annoiare la gente con piani e alberi genealogici per provare il suo sangue Plantageneto. Sappiamo che l’intera atmosfera muterà; ma soprattutto in chiarezza. Tutti capivano cosa intendesse il brontolone; nessuno starà ad ascoltare cosa intenda il pazzo. Ciò somiglia molto alla differenza fra il Vecchio Secolarista e il Nuovo Secolarista, ovvero il Millenarista dell’Alba.
Prendiamo alcuni rompicapi da questa pagina su di me. «Chesterton usa i suoi talenti tirannicamente al servizio della più reazionaria di tutte le Chiese»,---alla quale non apparteneva a quel tempo. E come si usano i talenti tirannicamente? Vorrei saperlo. «Non ha altro che i più rozzi insulti per i grandi intellettuali.» Ebbene, c’è il libro; chiunque può vedere cosa dissi realmente su Mill, su Meredith, su Matthew Arnold, su Huxley, anche ammesso che nessuno sia un intellettuale a meno che non sia un agnostico. Dire che non avevo «nulla» tranne rozzi insulti per loro è---ebbene, qualcosa che potrebbe essere descritto in modo ancora più rozzo. Swinburne, a quanto pare «è accusato di comporre una parodia dotta e partecipe e indecente sulla Litania della Beata Vergine.» E il critico aggiunge misteriosamente: «un suggerimento ironico in un paese Protestante.» Non so cosa significhi qui la parola «accusato». Se il critico ha letto Swinburne, sa che una delle prime strofe di Dolores è una parodia della Litania della Vergine. Non è certo un’accusa definirla dotta e partecipe; con il che intendevo artisticamente partecipe in un arcaico modo Gotico; come lo erano i Preraffaelliti profani tanto quanto quelli pii. Se una cosa simile sia indecente può essere discusso; ma il critico si sbaglia di grosso nell’immaginare che solo i Papisti la ritenessero indecente. L’indecenza di Dolores fu denunciata, più aspramente di quanto io mi sognassi di fare, dal primo Libero Pensatore della vita pubblica inglese; il defunto John Morley.
Finally, here is one wonderful example of how the Freethinker gets hold of the wrong end of the stick, even when I actually offer him the right end. He writes the amazing sentence, “Even the great authors of the nineteenth century do not escape his Romish censure, and are dubbed, spitefully, ‘lame giants’.” It is not very spiteful to call an author a giant; but anyone consulting the book will see that the men I called “lame giants” were not “the great authors of the nineteenth century,” but specially the English authors of the Victorian time; whom I compared unfavourably with the franker and bolder Freethinkers of France and the Continent. Thus I praised Renan as a more logical sceptic than Tennyson, who was a lame sceptic, hampered by respectability and provincial religion. You would think a Freethinker would recognise that as an obvious concession to Freethinkers. But the new Freethinker does not read a book. He looks through it feverishly for texts to be twisted in favour of a prejudice, like the religious maniac with the Bible.
To take another instance. I wrote an article, which appeared in the London Mercury and was called “The End of the Moderns,” in which I tried to describe a certain quality in works like Brave New World, and in much of the cult of D. H. Lawrence; a quality (not necessarily a bad quality) of being near the end of its tether, or having nearly run through its resources: of having stretched something very nearly as far as it will go. It was a psychological and literary note upon certain literary psychologists of recent years; it had nothing directly to do with religion, still less with irreligion; it had nothing in the world to do with any attack on atheism. Now the Freethinker reads through all this stuff about Lawrence and Aldous Huxley, all terribly modern to him, of course; but the point is that he cannot believe that any article I write can be anything except an attack on atheism; and especially on his own antediluvian sort of atheism. That anybody should want to write an article about modern authors, and their psychological, sociological and ethical difficulties, he cannot conceive. Therefore he runs his eye through my article, until it brightens suddenly at the sight of the word “blasphemy”. At last he has found something that he understands; something that he knows all about. Blasphemy brings back Bradlaugh and the brave days of old; and, by a pardonable optical illusion, I appear to him in the form of Lord Randolph Churchill in the ’80s, moving the expulsion of the Senior Member for Northampton. I am, after all, making my unscrupulous Attack on Atheism, though (for some dark reasons best known to myself) I prefer to stick it into the middle of an article stuffed with all sorts of strange nonsense about literature and a man named Lawrence.
Why, and in what connection, as a matter of fact, did I use the sacred word “blasphemy?” The point was this; I wished to give the reader a rough working example, to begin with, of what I meant by saying that a literary process or argument could be doomed to an early exhaustion; could be of a kind that was fated to come to a finish. And I gave the example of the purely literary and artistic effect of blasphemy. I was careful to state, in so many words, that I was only talking of the literary and artistic effect. I said the particular shock or thrill, given by breaking the silence about a sanctity, cannot be repeated indefinitely, when the sanctity is no longer there. I never said a word about whether it would be a good thing, on general social grounds, that the sanctity should be no longer there. I was not discussing that question, but another question about short-lived literary effects, of which blasphemy happens to be a good working example. But the monomaniac solemnity of the Freethinker leads him to come blundering out with a very heavy club, against the blasphemer who has blasphemed the sanctity of blasphemy. He labours a ludicrous comparison, according to which saying, “there is no sense in blasphemy when there is nothing sacred to blaspheme” is no more sensible than saying “there is no sense in sanitation, when there are no enemies of sanitation to attack.” What has become of the reasoning power of atheists, I cannot think. This comparison is obviously rubbish; because sanitation is supposed to be useful whether it is opposed or no; and all I said was that blasphemy was not startling or thrilling unless there was something to which it was opposed. Whether secularism would be a good thing, when once established and unopposed, as sanitation is supposed to be a good thing when established and unopposed, was a question which I simply did not raise in that particular article at all. I only said that such a settled secular state could not enjoy eternally the artistic excitement of blasphemy; and this the secularist, after beating wildly about the bush is eventually forced to admit. “What Mr. Chesterton ought to have said is that the defiance of God, the criticism of God, or ridiculing God, can only exist so long as men believe in God. That is quite true.” That is also, as it happens, exactly what Mr. Chesterton said, and all that Mr. Chesterton said; and Mr. Chesterton is very much gratified to learn that it is also what he ought to have said. But Mr. Chesterton also said a lot more, on literary and psychological matters of the moment, in which he happens to be interested; and he is now mildly interested in the fact that The Freethinker is not in the least interested in them. The atheist is not interested in anything except attacks on atheism, so he insists that I am attacking atheism, even when I explain elaborately that I am doing something else. He therefore blames me for saying what he himself declares to be true; or for not proving what I had never set out to prove.
But the queerest thing of all is this. I was not then attacking atheism, and I was actually defending rationalism. I was doing the poor old Freethinker’s job for him; and defending the Reason that he ought to defend. I was defending it against the more modern mysticism of D. H. Lawrence, who said that we should rebel against reason: and rely entirely upon instinct and emotion. And this, I pointed out, was an instance of something which, like blasphemy in literature, may be stimulating at the very start, but cannot run very long. An attempt really to conduct life, without constant reference to reason, would quite certainly break down. That was my point about all these modern social suggestions; that they would break down. For the rest, he repeats at intervals with hissing emphasis that I am a Roman Catholic; he is so much out of touch with the twentieth century that he really seems to imagine that a Roman Catholic is now at an intellectual disadvantage among other Christians. But I want to know why the Roman Catholic is left to do the work of the Rationalist; and attack the really recent upheaval of Unreason in the world, and why the Rationalist actually attacks him for attacking it.
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Infine, ecco un esempio mirabile di come il Libero Pensatore riesca a prendere il bastone dalla parte sbagliata, persino quando gli porgo io stesso la parte giusta. Egli scrive questa frase sorprendente: «Nemmeno i grandi autori dell’Ottocento sfuggono alla sua censura romanistica, e vengono soprannominati, con astio, “giganti zoppi”.» Non è molto astioso dare a un autore del gigante; ma chiunque consulti il libro vedrà che gli uomini da me chiamati «giganti zoppi» non erano «i grandi autori dell’Ottocento», ma specificamente gli autori inglesi dell’età vittoriana (epoca); che io paragonavo sfavorevolmente ai più schietti e arditi Liberi Pensatori di Francia e del Continente. Così lodavo Renan come scettico più logico di Tennyson, il quale era uno scettico zoppo, impacciato dalla rispettabilità e da una religione provinciale. Verrebbe da pensare che un Libero Pensatore riconoscesse in ciò un’ovvia concessione ai Liberi Pensatori. Ma il nuovo Libero Pensatore non legge un libro. Lo scorre febbrilmente in cerca di passi da distorcere a favore di un pregiudizio, come il fanatico religioso con la Bibbia.
Prendiamo un altro caso. Scrissi un articolo, apparso sul Mercury di Londra e intitolato «La fine dei moderni», nel quale cercavo di descrivere una certa qualità in opere come Il mondo nuovo, e in gran parte del culto di D. H. Lawrence; una qualità (non necessariamente cattiva) dell’essere prossimi alla fine della propria corda, o dell’aver quasi esaurito le proprie risorse: dell’aver teso qualcosa quasi fino al limite estremo cui può giungere. Era una nota psicologica e letteraria su certi psicologi letterari degli ultimi anni; non aveva nulla a che fare direttamente con la religione, e ancor meno con l’irreligione; non aveva assolutamente nulla a che vedere con un qualche attacco all’ateismo. Ebbene, il Libero Pensatore legge tutta questa roba su Lawrence e Aldous Huxley, tutta terribilmente moderna per lui, s’intende; ma il punto è che non riesce a credere che un qualsiasi articolo da me scritto possa essere altro che un attacco all’ateismo; e specialmente al suo antidiluviano genere di ateismo. Che qualcuno possa voler scrivere un articolo sugli autori moderni, e sulle loro difficoltà psicologiche, sociologiche ed etiche, egli non riesce a concepirlo. Perciò scorre con l’occhio il mio articolo, finché non si illumina all’improvviso alla vista della parola «blasfemia». Finalmente ha trovato qualcosa che capisce; qualcosa di cui sa tutto. La blasfemia gli richiama Bradlaugh e i giorni coraggiosi d’un tempo; e, per una scusabile illusione ottica, io gli appaio nelle sembianze di Lord Randolph Churchill negli anni ‘80, mentre propone l’espulsione del Deputato Anziano di Northampton. Sto, dopo tutto, conducendo il mio Attacco senza scrupoli all’Ateismo, sebbene (per qualche oscura ragione a me solo nota) io preferisca ficcarlo in mezzo a un articolo infarcito d’ogni sorta di strane sciocchezze sulla letteratura e su un uomo di nome Lawrence.
Perché, e in quale nesso, usai in realtà la sacra parola «blasfemia»? Il punto era questo; volevo dare al lettore un rozzo esempio pratico, tanto per cominciare, di ciò che intendevo dicendo che un procedimento o argomento letterario poteva essere condannato a un rapido esaurimento; poteva essere di quel genere destinato a giungere a una fine. E portai l’esempio del puro effetto letterario e artistico della blasfemia. Ebbi cura di affermare, con parole esplicite, che parlavo soltanto dell’effetto letterario e artistico. Dissi che il particolare urto o brivido, dato dal rompere il silenzio attorno a una sacralità, non può ripetersi indefinitamente, quando la sacralità non è più là. Non dissi mai una parola sul fatto se sarebbe stata una buona cosa, su generali fondamenti sociali, che la sacralità non fosse più là. Non stavo discutendo quella questione, ma un’altra questione, sugli effetti letterari di breve vita, dei quali la blasfemia si dà il caso sia un buon esempio pratico. Ma la monomaniaca solennità del Libero Pensatore lo induce a venir fuori goffamente con una clava assai pesante, contro il bestemmiatore che ha bestemmiato la sacralità della blasfemia. Egli si arrovella su un paragone ridicolo, secondo cui dire «non c’è senso nella blasfemia quando non c’è nulla di sacro da bestemmiare» non è più sensato che dire «non c’è senso nell’igiene, quando non ci sono nemici dell’igiene da combattere». Che ne sia della facoltà di ragionamento degli atei, non riesco a immaginarlo. Questo paragone è manifestamente una sciocchezza; perché l’igiene si suppone utile, che le si opponga resistenza o no; e tutto ciò che io dissi fu che la blasfemia non era sorprendente né elettrizzante se non c’era qualcosa cui essa si opponesse. Se il secolarismo sarebbe una buona cosa, una volta stabilito e incontrastato, come l’igiene si suppone sia una buona cosa una volta stabilita e incontrastata, era una questione che semplicemente non sollevai affatto in quel particolare articolo. Dissi soltanto che un simile stabilito stato secolare non potrebbe godere eternamente dell’eccitazione artistica della blasfemia; e questo il secolarista, dopo aver menato colpi all’impazzata attorno al cespuglio, è alla fine costretto ad ammettere. «Ciò che il signor Chesterton avrebbe dovuto dire è che la sfida a Dio, la critica di Dio, o il mettere Dio in ridicolo, possono esistere soltanto finché gli uomini credono in Dio. Questo è verissimo.» Questo è anche, guarda caso, esattamente ciò che il signor Chesterton disse, e tutto ciò che il signor Chesterton disse; e il signor Chesterton è assai lieto di apprendere che è anche ciò che avrebbe dovuto dire. Ma il signor Chesterton disse anche molto di più, su questioni letterarie e psicologiche del momento, alle quali si dà il caso egli si interessi; e ora si interessa mitemente al fatto che The Freethinker non se ne interessi minimamente. L’ateo non si interessa a nulla tranne che agli attacchi all’ateismo, sicché insiste che io stia attaccando l’ateismo, persino quando spiego minuziosamente che sto facendo qualcos’altro. Perciò mi rimprovera di dire ciò che egli stesso dichiara vero; oppure di non dimostrare ciò che io non m’ero mai proposto di dimostrare.
Ma la cosa più curiosa di tutte è questa. Io allora non stavo attaccando l’ateismo, ma difendevo in realtà il razionalismo. Facevo il lavoro del povero vecchio Libero Pensatore al posto suo; e difendevo la Ragione che lui avrebbe dovuto difendere. La difendevo contro il più moderno misticismo di D. H. Lawrence, il quale diceva che dovremmo ribellarci alla ragione: e affidarci interamente all’istinto e all’emozione. E questo, io facevo notare, era un esempio di qualcosa che, come la blasfemia in letteratura, può essere stimolante proprio all’inizio, ma non può durare a lungo. Un tentativo di condurre davvero la vita, senza costante riferimento alla ragione, crollerebbe quasi certamente. Questo era il mio punto su tutti questi moderni suggerimenti sociali; che essi crollerebbero. Del resto, egli ripete a intervalli con sibilante enfasi che io sono cattolico romano; è talmente fuori sintonia col ventesimo secolo che sembra immaginare davvero che un cattolico romano sia ora in svantaggio intellettuale rispetto agli altri cristiani. Ma io voglio sapere perché il cattolico romano sia lasciato a fare il lavoro del Razionalista; e ad attaccare il davvero recente sollevamento della Non-Ragione nel mondo, e perché il Razionalista in realtà lo attacchi per averlo attaccato.
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SHOCKING THE MODERNISTS
How do we manage to stagger on blinded by the blaze of wit and starry brilliancy, that is showered upon us like everlasting fireworks every day in the daily papers? The writers in those papers who so often remind us, with never-failing freshness, that things that were once rare luxuries are now multiplied and minutely and exactly imitated everywhere, surely will not fail to apply this same striking truth to the intellectual world. They will doubtless point out that those perfect and pointed epigrams, which were once heard only from exceptional individuals, like Voltaire and Talleyrand, are now invented by the hundred in every column of every newspaper, and it is hardly possible to find a single dull sentence wedged between the witty repartees and immortal jests, which can now, like everything else of any value, be produced in any quantity by mass production.
However this may be, there can be no doubt that our journalism, and the world it describes, has reached an acute sensibility to wit and verbal brilliance, which has never been known before; and is so vividly alert and alive to any such ringing and rapier-like logical fencing as to cry “a hit! a palpable hit!” in circumstances in which it is only too likely that our duller forefathers would have remained deaf or indifferent. I once read a paragraph in a daily paper, about a notable outburst among the most advanced intellects in the Church of England, which bears witness to the promptitude with which such triumphs are appreciated. Under the two headlines of “Youth Finds Church a Bore,” and “A Girl Tells Clergy,” the paragraph, or rather series of paragraphs was arranged in a suitably sensational way as follows:-
“Youth finds church a bore—and stays away from it. This contention, put forward by a girl of eighteen from the platform at Girton College, Cambridge, yesterday, made the elderly delegates to the Modern Churchman’s Conference sit up sharply in their seats.
“The speaker was the attractive daughter of a Portsmouth naval chaplain. Her most telling passage was this: ‘I don’t think public worship has any attraction whatsoever for the young. Religion is supposed to express God through truth and beauty, we are told, but in this age of specialisation people turn to science, art and philosophy to satisfy those needs’.”
I wonder what her least telling passage was.
Of course the fun really begins with the astounding and staggering effect produced by the original thunderbolt of thought “Youth Finds Church a Bore,” on all those admittedly elderly delegates who were sufficiently ancient to be described as Modern Churchmen. Dr. Major leapt to his feet with a howl; Dean Inge bounced up to the ceiling like a ball. Dr. Rashdall uttered one piercing shriek and fainted; for not one of these venerable doctors, in all their long experience of the Modernist Movement, had ever heard one human being articulate with human lips the star-staggering blasphemy that youth finds church a bore. Not one of them had ever heard so much as a rumour of young people yawning during a sermon; to none had any voice dared to whisper that little boys have been known to catch flies or dig penknives into pews during Divine service; not one of them had ever in his life heard a baby begin to squeal in church; none had ever listened to the hideous slander that youths and maidens in church had been known to look at each other instead of keeping their eyes fixed rigidly on the lectern (for nobody in the church of a Modern Churchman would condescend to look at the altar); none of them ever knew before that there had ever been any friction between the fits and moods of youth and the routine of religion. Never, until the attractive daughter of a Portsmouth naval chaplain made this stupendous discovery in modern psychology, had they even thought of the possibility that a long religious service might be rather a bore to a boy.
But yet, even about that discovery, it seems as if there might be more to be said. Some of the elderly Modern Churchmen have been schoolmasters. It seems just possible that some of them had discovered that the Sixth Book of the AEneid can be a bore to a boy. But in those cases it was not invariably assumed that the boy was right and the poet was wrong. It was not taken for granted that the boredom of the boy in itself proves that Virgil is a bad poet; still less did anyone ever propose that a simplified and modernised version of Virgil must be substituted for the old one. Nobody proposed that passages from Kipling about the British Empire should be substituted for the more austere salutations of Virgil to the Roman Empire, because such education would be more modern, compact and convenient to a truly National Church. Nobody proposed that a really smart and snappy up-to-date description of the Derby, taken from an evening paper, should be regarded as a complete substitute for that thundering line in which the very earth shakes with the horsehoofs of the charioteers. And, if I may venture to hint a disagreement with the Prophetess of Girton College, Cambridge, I think it will be found that the same argument applies even to the substitutes that she herself proposes. She says that people turn to science, art and philosophy. Will she swear by the Death of Nelson, or whatever oath binds the daughter of a Portsmouth naval chaplain, that no science student ever shirks or plays truant in a science school? It will be vain for her to swear any such thing in the case of an art school; for I have been to an art school myself, and I can assure her that there were quite as many art students who found application to art a bore as there could possibly be divinity students who found divinity a bore. As for young philosophers, I have known a good many of them; at an age when nearly all of them were much more fond of philosophising than of learning philosophy. And I might hint that there are other young agitators, of the sort that seem to agitate so strangely the Modern Churchmen and the modern newspapers, who seem to have a certain spirited and spontaneous preference for saying things rather than for thinking what they are saying. Is it really necessary that we should toil through all this tiresome repetition about the perfectly obvious difficulty of getting young people to work when they naturally want to play, before we even begin to discuss the mature problem of the relation of doctrine to the mind? It is perfectly natural that the boy should find the church a bore. But why are we bound to treat what is natural as something actually superior to what is supernatural; as something which is not even merely supernatural, but is in the exact sense super-supernatural?
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SCANDALIZZARE I MODERNISTI
Come riusciamo a barcollare avanti, accecati dal bagliore di arguzia e di stellare brillantezza, che ci viene riversato addosso come eterni fuochi d’artificio ogni giorno sui quotidiani? Gli scrittori di quei giornali che tanto spesso ci ricordano, con mai spenta freschezza, che le cose un tempo rare e lussuose sono ora moltiplicate e minutamente ed esattamente imitate ovunque, non mancheranno di certo di applicare questa stessa lampante verità al mondo intellettuale. Ci faranno senza dubbio notare che quegli epigrammi perfetti e taglienti, un tempo uditi soltanto da individui eccezionali, come Voltaire e Talleyrand, sono ora inventati a centinaia in ogni colonna di ogni giornale, ed è a stento possibile trovare una sola frase scialba incastrata tra le argute repliche e le immortali facezie, che ora, come ogni altra cosa di qualche valore, si possono produrre in qualsiasi quantità mediante la produzione di massa.
Comunque stiano le cose, non vi può essere alcun dubbio che il nostro giornalismo, e il mondo che esso descrive, abbia raggiunto un’acuta sensibilità all’arguzia e alla brillantezza verbale, quale mai si era conosciuta prima; ed è così vivacemente vigile e desto a ogni squillante e affilata schermaglia logica da gridare «un colpo! un colpo evidente!» in circostanze nelle quali è fin troppo probabile che i nostri più ottusi antenati sarebbero rimasti sordi o indifferenti. Lessi una volta un paragrafo su un quotidiano, riguardo a un notevole scoppio tra gli intelletti più avanzati della Chiesa d’Inghilterra, che rende testimonianza della prontezza con cui simili trionfi vengono apprezzati. Sotto i due titoli «I giovani trovano la Chiesa noiosa» e «Una ragazza lo dice al clero», il paragrafo, o piuttosto la serie di paragrafi, era disposto in modo opportunamente sensazionalistico come segue:—
«I giovani trovano la Chiesa noiosa—e se ne stanno alla larga. Questa tesi, avanzata da una ragazza di diciotto anni dal podio del Girton College, a Cambridge, ieri, fece sobbalzare bruscamente gli attempati delegati della Conferenza dei Chierici Moderni sui loro seggi.
«L’oratrice era l’avvenente figlia di un cappellano navale di Portsmouth. Il suo passo più incisivo fu questo: “Non credo che il culto pubblico abbia la benché minima attrattiva per i giovani. La religione dovrebbe esprimere Dio attraverso la verità e la bellezza, così ci si dice, ma in quest’epoca di specializzazione la gente si rivolge alla scienza, all’arte e alla filosofia per soddisfare quei bisogni”.»
Mi domando quale fosse il suo passo meno incisivo.
Naturalmente il divertimento comincia davvero con l’effetto sbalorditivo e sconvolgente prodotto dall’originale fulmine di pensiero «I giovani trovano la Chiesa noiosa», su tutti quei delegati notoriamente attempati abbastanza antichi da poter essere definiti Chierici Moderni. Il dottor Major balzò in piedi con un urlo; il decano Inge rimbalzò fino al soffitto come una palla. Il dottor Rashdall lanciò un solo penetrante strillo e svenne; poiché nessuno di questi venerabili dottori, in tutta la loro lunga esperienza del Movimento Modernista, aveva mai udito un solo essere umano articolare con labbra umane la blasfemia sconvolgente come un astro secondo cui i giovani trovano la Chiesa noiosa. Nessuno di loro aveva mai udito neppure una voce di giovani che sbadigliavano durante un sermone; a nessuno una voce aveva mai osato sussurrare che si sa di ragazzini che acchiappano mosche o piantano temperini nei banchi durante il servizio divino; nessuno di loro aveva mai in vita sua udito un bimbo mettersi a strillare in chiesa; nessuno aveva mai prestato ascolto all’orrenda calunnia che giovani e fanciulle in chiesa si sapesse guardarsi l’un l’altra invece di tenere gli occhi rigidamente fissi sul leggìo (poiché nessuno nella chiesa di un Chierico Moderno si degnerebbe di guardare l’altare); nessuno di loro aveva mai saputo prima che vi fosse mai stato alcun attrito tra gli slanci e gli umori della gioventù e la routine della religione. Mai, prima che l’avvenente figlia di un cappellano navale di Portsmouth facesse questa stupenda scoperta nella psicologia moderna, avevano anche solo pensato alla possibilità che un lungo servizio religioso potesse riuscire piuttosto noioso a un ragazzo.
Eppure, anche su quella scoperta, pare che vi sia qualcosa di più da dire. Alcuni degli attempati Chierici Moderni sono stati maestri di scuola. Pare appena possibile che qualcuno di loro avesse scoperto che il Sesto Libro dell’Eneide può riuscire noioso a un ragazzo. Ma in quei casi non si dava invariabilmente per scontato che il ragazzo avesse ragione e il poeta torto. Non si dava per certo che la noia del ragazzo dimostri di per sé che Virgilio è un cattivo poeta; ancor meno mai qualcuno propose che si dovesse sostituire una versione semplificata e modernizzata di Virgilio a quella antica. Nessuno propose che passi di Kipling sull’Impero britannico si dovessero sostituire ai più austeri saluti di Virgilio all’Impero romano, perché tale istruzione sarebbe più moderna, compatta e comoda per una Chiesa davvero Nazionale. Nessuno propose che una descrizione davvero brillante, spiccia e aggiornata del Derby, tratta da un giornale della sera, dovesse essere considerata un completo sostituto di quel tonante verso in cui la terra stessa trema sotto gli zoccoli dei cavalli degli aurighi. E, se posso azzardarmi ad accennare un dissenso con la Profetessa del Girton College, a Cambridge, credo si scoprirà che il medesimo argomento vale anche per i sostituti che ella stessa propone. Ella dice che la gente si rivolge alla scienza, all’arte e alla filosofia. Giurerà, sulla morte di Nelson, o su qualunque giuramento vincoli la figlia di un cappellano navale di Portsmouth, che nessuno studente di scienze mai marina o fa forca in una scuola di scienze? Sarà vano per lei giurare alcunché di simile nel caso di una scuola d’arte; poiché io stesso sono stato a una scuola d’arte, e posso assicurarle che c’erano ben altrettanti studenti d’arte che trovavano noioso applicarsi all’arte, quanti potrebbero mai esservi studenti di teologia che trovano noiosa la teologia. Quanto ai giovani filosofi, ne ho conosciuti parecchi; a un’età in cui quasi tutti erano assai più amanti del filosofeggiare che dell’imparare la filosofia. E potrei accennare che vi sono altri giovani agitatori, del genere che pare agitare così stranamente i Chierici Moderni e i moderni giornali, i quali paiono avere una certa vivace e spontanea preferenza per il dire le cose piuttosto che per il pensare ciò che stanno dicendo. È proprio necessario che si debba faticare attraverso tutta questa tediosa ripetizione sulla perfettamente ovvia difficoltà di indurre i giovani a lavorare quando naturalmente vogliono giocare, prima ancora di cominciare a discutere il maturo problema del rapporto tra dottrina e mente? È perfettamente naturale che il ragazzo trovi la Chiesa noiosa. Ma perché siamo tenuti a trattare ciò che è naturale come qualcosa di realmente superiore a ciò che è soprannaturale; come qualcosa che non è nemmeno meramente soprannaturale, ma è nel senso esatto super-soprannaturale?
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A GRAMMAR OF KNIGHTHOOD
I THINK it very likely that many have never even heard of The Broadstone of Honour, the manual of chivalry written by Kenelm Digby early in the nineteenth century; unless they remember one contemptuous reference to it in Macaulay’s Essays. The reference is not much of a criticism on the Broadstone of Honour, but it is a very damaging criticism of Macaulay’s Essays. It illustrates, not only his spirited superficiality, but that considerable element of ignorance that went along with his remarkable reputation for omniscience. Just as his celebrated sneer at Spenser shows that he had not read Spenser, so his less famous sneer at Kenelm Digby shows that he had not read Kenelm Digby. He set himself to belittle certain old tales of courtesy, which is the wedding of humility with dignity. He scoffed at such stories as that of the Black Prince waiting like a servant on his helpless captive; and he thought he could not scoff at them more effectively than by saying they would be suitable to Kenelm Digby; or, as he put it, to “those who think, like the author of The Broadstone of Honour, that God made the world for the use of gentlemen.” One is tempted to reply, in some moods, that there will always be enough bounders, even among the learned, to redress the balance.
Now Kenelm Henry Digby was, as his name implies, a member of an old Catholic family, established in Ireland; and, as with the other branches of such old families established in England, it would not be very unnatural if he did attach some importance to being a gentleman. If the weakness has sometimes been too apparent in the old Catholics of England, it is at least pardonable and rather pathetic. When you are an honest and perfectly patriotic squire, and all your countrymen regard you as a liar, a traitor, a poisoner and a devil-worshipper, it must be something of a sentimental comfort to you that they cannot deny you are a gentleman. Poor human nature being what it is, you may be excused if you come to think a little too much of it. And Kenelm Digby might have been excused if he really had thought too much of it; and talked nonsense about gentlemen, as if God had made the world for them. But as a simple fact, it was not Digby who talked nonsense about gentlemen, but Macaulay who talked nonsense about Digby.
What would Macaulay have said if after writing his epigram about a universe created for the gentry, he had made the bold experiment of opening the book at random, as I did, and reading a paragraph like this:
“The noble Italian Arnigio shows how truly generous and heroic peasants and men of the lowest rank of life may become.” “The glorious nativity of the Redeemer of the world,” he observes, “was revealed to shepherds, as to men pure, just and vigilant. When our adorable Saviour was to be born blessed Mary and the devout Joseph were so little possessed of worldly grandeur that the stable of an inn was their only place of refuge. For mark, says a holy man, the evangelists do not say that there was no room in the inn, but there was no room for them. Oh what a noble school is poverty! What a temple of sovereign honour! Pope Urban IV was so little ashamed of being the son of a shoemaker that he ordered the pulpit of the church of St. Urban, at Troyes, his native city, to be adorned on great festivals with tapestry representing his father’s stall. There is even an example of legislation, on the principles of the romances, which places Chivalry before nobility, for the state of Pistoja, in the thirteenth century ennobled men as a punishment for their crimes.”
Do you think that perhaps even Macaulay would have felt slightly ashamed of himself?
Anyhow the author of The Broadstone of Honour did not think the world was made only for gentlemen He thought in his simplicity that it was made for man; and he could not escape from a prejudice in favour of brave men and honest men and (I am so antiquated as to add) men who felt a special consideration for women. The book has some of the faults of its type and time; in that sense it is now rather dated; nearly as much dated as Macaulay. We must read it, or at least parts of it, rather as we read a song of Tom Moore or a patriotic poem of Thomas Davis, or all that rather rhetorical yet very red-blooded tradition ot talking and writing that derived from the mishty melodrama of Byron or was sympathetically satirised in Micawber. But when we have allowed for variations in the taste for purple patches, a matter entirely relative in our taste as in his, the book is sustained from first to last by what can only be called a sustained energy of virtue. It does anybody good to meet a man so little ashamed of an enthusiasm for mere goodness. Many of his gestures are as noble as any of those that make the decisive moments in the Chansons de Geste. Many of his concessions are as graceful as any that he himself praises in the chronicles of the tournament or the tented field. But he was very far from being merely an amiable old antiquary haunting Melrose by moonlight; or even a dazed Don Quixote with his head hidden in folios about Arthur and Amadis of Gaul. I cannot resist making another quotation which will serve to show that Kenelm Digby was not by any means unconscious of what was going on in his own time—and, I will add, is still going on in ours.
After speaking of St. Francis and of many knights who would feed the poor and eat with them and carry their coffins, he says, “Oh! is it for the rich of the nineteenth century to talk of the inhumanity of the Middle Ages? To give alms, with them, is to encourage idleness. He is hungry, he is naked? Let him work. But he is old? There are employments for all. But he is a child? Do not teach him to beg. It is the mother of a large family? Perhaps she does not tell the truth. We have institutions on a new system. Yes truly, and woe to the unhappy ones who are doomed to receive relief from them! In order that the children of pleasure may not be incommoded by the sight of poverty the poor are shut up within high walls and condemned to confinement for the crime of being poor and miserable. When they are thus secluded from the enjoyment of nature an odious Board of Governors takes care that they should be provided with what is sufficient to support life. And then they have to endure the countenances of ferocious barbarians who are the officers to administer this horrible humanity.”
That is the testimony of Digby, as it is the testimony of Dickens, who did not presumably labour under the illusion that God made the world only for gentlemen. That is also the testimony of Cobbett, of Carlyle, of Hood, of Ruskin, of everybody who actually watched the modern industrial movement with his eyes open; but the fact that Digby wrote that paragraph may alone be my apology for writing this note on his neglected name.
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UNA GRAMMATICA DELLA CAVALLERIA
CREDO assai probabile che molti non abbiano mai neppure sentito nominare The Broadstone of Honour, il manuale di cavalleria scritto da Kenelm Digby all’inizio dell’Ottocento; a meno che non ricordino un unico sprezzante accenno a esso nei Saggi di Macaulay. L’accenno non è una gran critica al Broadstone of Honour, ma è una critica assai dannosa ai Saggi di Macaulay. Esso illustra non solo la sua brillante superficialità, ma quel considerevole elemento d’ignoranza che accompagnava la sua notevole fama di onniscienza. Proprio come il suo celebre sarcasmo verso Spenser mostra che non aveva letto Spenser, così il suo meno famoso sarcasmo verso Kenelm Digby mostra che non aveva letto Kenelm Digby. Egli si accinse a sminuire certe vecchie storie di cortesia, che è lo sposalizio dell’umiltà con la dignità. Schernì storie come quella del Principe Nero che serviva al pari di un domestico il suo inerme prigioniero; e pensò di non poterle schernire più efficacemente che dicendo che sarebbero adatte a Kenelm Digby; o, come ebbe a dire, a «coloro che pensano, come l’autore del Broadstone of Honour, che Dio abbia fatto il mondo per uso dei gentiluomini». Si è tentati di replicare, in certi stati d’animo, che vi saranno sempre zoticoni a sufficienza, persino tra i dotti, a raddrizzare la bilancia.
Ora, Kenelm Henry Digby era, come il suo nome implica, membro di un’antica famiglia cattolica, stabilitasi in Irlanda; e, come per gli altri rami di simili antiche famiglie stabilitesi in Inghilterra, non sarebbe molto innaturale se egli attribuisse qualche importanza all’essere un gentiluomo. Se la debolezza è talvolta stata fin troppo evidente negli antichi cattolici d’Inghilterra, essa è per lo meno scusabile e piuttosto commovente. Quando sei un onesto e perfettamente patriottico possidente, e tutti i tuoi compatrioti ti considerano un bugiardo, un traditore, un avvelenatore e un adoratore del diavolo, dev’essere per te un certo sentimentale conforto il fatto che non possano negarti d’essere un gentiluomo. Essendo la povera natura umana ciò che è, ti si può scusare se arrivi a farne un po’ troppo caso. E Kenelm Digby avrebbe potuto essere scusato se davvero ne avesse fatto troppo caso; e avesse detto sciocchezze sui gentiluomini, come se Dio avesse fatto il mondo per loro. Ma, come semplice dato di fatto, non fu Digby a dire sciocchezze sui gentiluomini, bensì Macaulay a dire sciocchezze su Digby.
Cosa avrebbe detto Macaulay se, dopo aver scritto il suo epigramma su un universo creato per la nobiltà, avesse fatto l’ardito esperimento di aprire il libro a caso, come feci io, e di leggere un paragrafo come questo:
«Il nobile italiano Arnigio mostra quanto veramente generosi ed eroici possano diventare i contadini e gli uomini del più umile rango della vita.» «La gloriosa natività del Redentore del mondo», egli osserva, «fu rivelata ai pastori, in quanto uomini puri, giusti e vigilanti. Quando il nostro adorabile Salvatore stava per nascere, la beata Maria e il devoto Giuseppe erano così poco provvisti di grandezza mondana che la stalla di una locanda fu il loro unico luogo di rifugio. Poiché, osserva un sant’uomo, gli evangelisti non dicono che non vi fosse posto nella locanda, ma che non vi fosse posto per loro. Oh, che nobile scuola è la povertà! Che tempio del sovrano onore! Papa Urbano IV si vergognava così poco d’essere figlio di un calzolaio, che ordinò che il pulpito della chiesa di Sant’Urbano, a Troyes, sua città natale, fosse adornato nelle grandi festività con un arazzo raffigurante il banchetto di suo padre. Vi è persino un esempio di legislazione, secondo i principi dei romanzi cavallereschi, che pone la Cavalleria al di sopra della nobiltà, giacché lo stato di Pistoia, nel tredicesimo secolo, nobilitava gli uomini come punizione per i loro delitti.»
Non pensate che forse persino Macaulay avrebbe provato una leggera vergogna di sé stesso?
Comunque, l’autore del Broadstone of Honour non pensava che il mondo fosse fatto solo per i gentiluomini. Egli pensava, nella sua semplicità, che fosse fatto per l’uomo; e non poteva sfuggire a un pregiudizio in favore degli uomini coraggiosi e degli uomini onesti e (sono così antiquato da aggiungerlo) degli uomini che nutrivano un particolare riguardo per le donne. Il libro ha alcuni dei difetti del suo genere e della sua epoca; in tal senso è ormai piuttosto datato; datato quasi quanto Macaulay. Dobbiamo leggerlo, o almeno certe sue parti, piuttosto come leggiamo una canzone di Tom Moore o un poema patriottico di Thomas Davis, o tutta quella tradizione piuttosto retorica eppure assai focosa di parlare e scrivere che derivava dal possente melodramma di Byron o veniva bonariamente satireggiata in Micawber. Ma quando abbiamo tenuto conto delle variazioni nel gusto per le tirate purpuree, faccenda del tutto relativa al nostro gusto come al suo, il libro è sorretto dal principio alla fine da ciò che si può solo chiamare una sostenuta energia della virtù. Fa bene a chiunque incontrare un uomo così poco imbarazzato di un entusiasmo per la mera bontà. Molti dei suoi gesti sono nobili quanto qualsiasi di quelli che segnano i momenti decisivi nelle Chansons de Geste. Molte delle sue concessioni sono aggraziate quanto qualsiasi egli stesso ne lodi nelle cronache del torneo o del campo attendato. Ma egli era assai lontano dall’essere un mero amabile vecchio antiquario che aleggia intorno a Melrose al chiaro di luna; o anche un frastornato Don Chisciotte con la testa nascosta in folianti su Artù e Amadigi di Gaula. Non posso resistere dal fare un’altra citazione che servirà a mostrare che Kenelm Digby non era affatto inconsapevole di ciò che accadeva ai suoi tempi—e, aggiungerò, accade ancora ai nostri.
Dopo aver parlato di san Francesco e di molti cavalieri che nutrivano i poveri e mangiavano con loro e ne portavano le bare, egli dice: «Oh! spetta forse ai ricchi dell’Ottocento parlare dell’inumanità del Medioevo? Fare l’elemosina, per loro, è incoraggiare l’ozio. Ha fame, è nudo? Lavori. Ma è vecchio? Vi sono occupazioni per tutti. Ma è un bambino? Non insegnargli a mendicare. È la madre di una famiglia numerosa? Forse non dice la verità. Abbiamo istituzioni fondate su un nuovo sistema. Sì, davvero, e guai agli infelici che sono condannati a ricevere soccorso da esse! Affinché i figli del piacere non siano molestati dalla vista della povertà, i poveri vengono rinchiusi entro alte mura e condannati alla reclusione per il delitto di essere poveri e miserabili. Quando così sono segregati dal godimento della natura, un odioso Consiglio di Governatori si cura che siano provvisti di quanto basta a sostenere la vita. E poi devono sopportare i volti di feroci barbari che sono i funzionari incaricati di amministrare questa orribile umanità.»
Questa è la testimonianza di Digby, come è la testimonianza di Dickens, il quale presumibilmente non pativa l’illusione che Dio avesse fatto il mondo solo per i gentiluomini. Questa è anche la testimonianza di Cobbett, di Carlyle, di Hood, di Ruskin, di chiunque abbia davvero osservato il moderno movimento industriale a occhi aperti; ma il fatto che Digby abbia scritto quel paragrafo può da solo essere la mia scusa per scrivere questa nota sul suo trascurato nome.
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REFLECTIONS ON A ROTTEN APPLE
OUR age is obviously the Nonsense Age; the wiser sort of nonsense being provided for the children and the sillier sort of nonsense for the grown-up people. The eighteenth century has been called the Age of Reason; I suppose there is no doubt that the twentieth century is the Age of Unreason. But even that is an understatement. The Age of Reason was nicknamed from a famous rationalist book. But the rationalist was not really so much concerned to urge the rational against the irrational; but rather specially to urge the natural against the supernatural. But there is a degree of the unreasonable that would go even beyond the unnatural. It is not merely an incredible tale, but an inconsistent idea. As I pointed out to somebody long ago, it is one thing to believe that a beanstalk scaled the sky, and quite another to believe that fifty-seven beans make five.
For instance, a man may disbelieve in miracles; normally on some a priori principle of determinist thought; in some cases even on examination of the evidence. But on being told of the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, he is told something that is logical if it is not natural. He is not told that there were fewer fishes because the fishes had been multiplied. Multiplication is still a mathematical term; and a mob all feeding on miraculous fishes is a less mysterious or monstrous sight than a man saying that multiplication is the same as subtraction. Such a story, for such a sceptic, does not carry conviction; but it does make sense. He can recognise the logical consequence, if he cannot understand the logical cause. But no pope or priest ever asked him to believe that thousands died of starvation in the desert because they were loaded with loaves and fishes. No creed or dogma ever declared that there was too little food because there was too much fish. But that is the precise, practical and prosaic definition of the present situation in the modern science of economics. And the man of the Nonsense Age must bow his head and repeat his credo, the motto of his time. Credo quia impossibile.
Or again, the term unreason is sometimes used rather more reasonably; for a sort of loose or elliptical statement, which is at least illogical in form. The most popular case is what was called the Irish Bull; often suspected of resembling the Papal Bull, in being a supernatural monster bred of credulity and superstition. But even this old sort of confusion stopped short of the new sort of contradiction. If any Irishman really does say, “We are not birds, to be in two places at once,” at least we know what he means, even if it is not what he says. But suppose he says that one bird has been miraculously multiplied into a million birds, and that in consequence there are fewer birds in the world than there were before. We should then be dealing, not merely with an Irish Bull but with a Mad Bull, and concerned not with the incredible but with the incomprehensible. Or, to apply the parable, the Irish have sometimes been accused of unbalanced emotion or morbid sentiment. But nobody says that they merely imagined the Great Famine, in which multitudes starved because the potatoes were few and small. Only suppose an Irishman had said that they starved because the potatoes were gigantic and innumerable. I think we should not yet have heard the last of the wrong-headed absurdity of that Irishman. Yet that is an exact description of the economic condition to-day as it affects the Englishman. And, to a great extent, the American. We learn that there is a famine because there is not a scarcity; and there is such a good potato-crop that there are no potatoes. The Irishman, with his bull or his bird, is quite a hard-headed realist and rationalist compared to that. Thus, the old examples of the fantastic fell far short of the modern fact; whether they were mysteries supposed to be above reason or merely muddles supposed to be below it. Their miracles were more normal than our scientific averages; and the Irish blunder was less illogical than the actual logic of events.
For it seems that we live to-day in a world of witchcraft, in which the orchards wither because they prosper, and the multitude of apples on the apple-tree of itself turns them into forbidden fruit, and makes the effort to consume them in every sense fruitless. This is the modern economic paradox, which is called Over-Production, or a glut in the market, and though at first sight it sounds like the wildest fantasy, it is well to realise in what sense it is the most solid of facts. Let it be clearly understood, therefore, that as a description of the objective social situation at this instant in this industrial society, the paradox is perfectly true. But it is not really true that the contradiction in terms is true. If we take it, not as a description but as a definition, if we take it as a matter of abstract argument, then certainly the contradiction is untrue, as every contradiction is untrue. The truth is that a third element has entered into the matter, which is not mentioned in this abstract statement of it. That element might be stated in many ways; perhaps the shortest statement of it is in the fable of the man who sold razors, and afterwards explained to an indignant customer, with simple dignity, that he had never said the razors would shave. When asked if razors were not made to shave, he replied that they were made to sell. That is A Short History of Trade and Industry During the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries.
God made a world of reason as sure as God made little apples (as the beautiful proverb goes); and God did not make little apples larger than large apples. It is not true that a man whose apple-tree is loaded with apples will suffer from a want of apples; though he may indulge in a waste of apples. But if he never looks upon apples as things to eat, but always looks on them as things to sell, he will really get into another sort of complication; which may end in a sort of contradiction. If, instead of producing as many apples as he wants, he produces as many apples as he imagines the whole world wants, with the hope of capturing the trade of the whole world—then he will be either successful or unsuccessful in competing with the man next door who also wants the whole world’s trade to himself. Between them, they will produce so many apples that apples in the market will be about as valuable as pebbles on the beach. Thus each of them will find he has very little money in his pocket, with which to go and buy fresh pears at the fruiterer’s shop. If he had never expected to get fruit at the fruiterer’s shop, but had put up his hand and pulled them off his own tree, his difficulty would never have arisen. It seems simple; but at the root of all apple-trees and apple-growing, it is really as simple as that.
RIFLESSIONI SU UNA MELA MARCIA
LA nostra epoca è manifestamente l’Età dell’Assurdo; il genere più saggio di assurdo essendo destinato ai bambini e il genere più sciocco di assurdo alle persone adulte. Il Settecento è stato chiamato l’Età della Ragione; suppongo non vi sia dubbio che il ventesimo secolo sia l’Età della Non-Ragione. Ma persino questo è dir poco. L’Età della Ragione fu così soprannominata da un famoso libro razionalista. Ma il razionalista non era davvero tanto interessato a sostenere il razionale contro l’irrazionale; quanto piuttosto specialmente a sostenere il naturale contro il soprannaturale. Ma vi è un grado dell’irragionevole che andrebbe persino oltre l’innaturale. Non è meramente un racconto incredibile, ma un’idea incoerente. Come feci notare a qualcuno molto tempo fa, una cosa è credere che un fagiolo magico scalasse il cielo, e tutt’altra cosa è credere che cinquantasette fagioli ne facciano cinque.
Per esempio, un uomo può non credere ai miracoli; di norma su qualche principio a priori del pensiero determinista; in certi casi persino sull’esame delle prove. Ma quando gli si racconta del miracolo della moltiplicazione dei pani e dei pesci, gli si racconta qualcosa che è logico anche se non è naturale. Non gli si dice che vi fossero meno pesci perché i pesci erano stati moltiplicati. La moltiplicazione è pur sempre un termine matematico; e una folla che tutta si nutre di pesci miracolosi è uno spettacolo meno misterioso o mostruoso di un uomo che afferma che la moltiplicazione è la stessa cosa della sottrazione. Una simile storia, per un simile scettico, non porta convinzione; ma ha un senso. Egli può riconoscere la conseguenza logica, anche se non può comprendere la causa logica. Ma nessun papa o sacerdote gli chiese mai di credere che a migliaia morirono di fame nel deserto perché erano carichi di pani e di pesci. Nessun credo o dogma dichiarò mai che vi era troppo poco cibo perché vi era troppo pesce. Ma questa è la precisa, pratica e prosaica definizione della presente situazione nella moderna scienza dell’economia. E l’uomo dell’Età dell’Assurdo deve chinare il capo e ripetere il suo credo, il motto del suo tempo. Credo quia impossibile.
Oppure, di nuovo, il termine non-ragione è talvolta usato in modo un po’ più ragionevole; per una sorta di enunciato vago o ellittico, che è per lo meno illogico nella forma. Il caso più celebre è quello che veniva chiamato il Toro Irlandese; spesso sospettato di somigliare alla Bolla Papale, nell’essere un soprannaturale mostro generato da credulità e superstizione. Ma persino questo vecchio genere di confusione si fermava ben prima del nuovo genere di contraddizione. Se un irlandese dice davvero: «Non siamo mica uccelli, da stare in due luoghi contemporaneamente», almeno sappiamo cosa intende, anche se non è ciò che dice. Ma supponiamo che dica che un uccello è stato miracolosamente moltiplicato in un milione di uccelli, e che di conseguenza vi sono meno uccelli al mondo di quanti ve ne fossero prima. Avremmo allora a che fare non semplicemente con un Toro Irlandese, ma con un Toro Impazzito, e ci occuperemmo non dell’incredibile ma dell’incomprensibile. O, per applicare la parabola, gli irlandesi sono talvolta stati accusati di emozione squilibrata o di sentimento morboso. Ma nessuno dice che essi semplicemente immaginarono la Grande Carestia, in cui moltitudini morirono di fame perché le patate erano poche e piccole. Si supponga soltanto che un irlandese avesse detto che morivano di fame perché le patate erano gigantesche e innumerevoli. Credo che non avremmo ancora sentito l’ultima parola sull’ottusa assurdità di quell’irlandese. Eppure questa è un’esatta descrizione della condizione economica odierna per come colpisce l’inglese. E, in gran misura, l’americano. Apprendiamo che vi è una carestia perché non vi è penuria; e vi è un raccolto di patate così buono che non ci sono patate. L’irlandese, col suo toro o col suo uccello, è un realista assai concreto e razionalista in confronto a ciò. Così, i vecchi esempi del fantastico restavano assai al di sotto del fatto moderno; sia che fossero misteri supposti al di sopra della ragione o meri pasticci supposti al di sotto di essa. I loro miracoli erano più normali delle nostre medie scientifiche; e la topica irlandese era meno illogica dell’effettiva logica degli eventi.
Poiché pare che viviamo oggi in un mondo di stregoneria, in cui i frutteti appassiscono perché prosperano, e la moltitudine delle mele sul melo di per sé le trasforma in frutto proibito, e rende in ogni senso vano lo sforzo di consumarle. Questo è il moderno paradosso economico, chiamato Sovrapproduzione, o saturazione del mercato, e sebbene a prima vista suoni come la più sfrenata fantasia, è bene rendersi conto in quale senso esso sia il più solido dei fatti. Sia dunque chiaramente inteso che, come descrizione dell’oggettiva situazione sociale in questo istante in questa società industriale, il paradosso è perfettamente vero. Ma non è davvero vero che la contraddizione in termini sia vera. Se lo prendiamo non come descrizione ma come definizione, se lo prendiamo come materia di argomentazione astratta, allora certamente la contraddizione è falsa, come ogni contraddizione è falsa. La verità è che un terzo elemento è entrato in questa faccenda, che non è menzionato in questo enunciato astratto di essa. Quell’elemento potrebbe essere enunciato in molti modi; forse l’enunciato più breve di esso è nella favola dell’uomo che vendeva rasoi, e che in seguito spiegò a un cliente indignato, con semplice dignità, di non aver mai detto che i rasoi avrebbero rasato. Quando gli si chiese se i rasoi non fossero fatti per rasare, egli rispose che erano fatti per vendere. Ecco Una Breve Storia del Commercio e dell’Industria Durante il Diciannovesimo e il Primo Ventesimo Secolo.
Dio fece un mondo di ragione, com’è vero che Dio fece le piccole mele (come recita il bel proverbio); e Dio non fece le piccole mele più grandi delle mele grandi. Non è vero che un uomo il cui melo è carico di mele patirà una mancanza di mele; sebbene possa concedersi uno spreco di mele. Ma se non guarda mai alle mele come a cose da mangiare, ma sempre le guarda come a cose da vendere, si caccerà davvero in un altro genere di complicazione; che può finire in una sorta di contraddizione. Se, invece di produrre tante mele quante ne desidera, ne produce tante quante immagina che ne desideri il mondo intero, con la speranza di accaparrarsi il commercio del mondo intero—allora avrà successo o insuccesso nel competere con l’uomo della porta accanto, che pure vuole per sé il commercio del mondo intero. Tra loro due produrranno tante mele che le mele sul mercato varranno all’incirca quanto i ciottoli sulla spiaggia. Così ciascuno di loro si troverà con ben pochi soldi in tasca, con cui andare a comprare pere fresche dal fruttivendolo. Se non si fosse mai aspettato di procurarsi frutta dal fruttivendolo, ma avesse alzato la mano e le avesse colte dal proprio albero, la sua difficoltà non sarebbe mai sorta. Sembra semplice; ma alla radice di tutti i meli e della coltivazione delle mele, è davvero tutto semplice così.
Of course I do not mean that the practice is at present simple; for no practical problem is simple, least of all at the present time, when everything is confused by the corrupt and evasive muddlers who are called practical politicians. But the principle is simple; and the only way to proceed through a complex situation is to start with the right first principle. How far we can do without, or control, or merely modify the disadvantages of buying and selling is quite another matter. But the disadvantages do arise from buying and selling, and not from producing: not even from over-producing. And it is some satisfaction to realise that we are not living in a nightmare in which No is the same as Yes; that even the modern world has not actually gone mad, with all its ingenious attempts to do so; that two and two do in fact make four; and that the man who has four apples really has more than the man who has three. For some modern metaphysicians and moral philosophers seem disposed to leave us in doubt on these points. It is not the fundamental reason in things that is at fault; it is a particular hitch or falsification, arising from a very recent trick of regarding everything only in relation to trade. Trade is all very well in its way, but Trade has been put in the place of Truth. Trade, which is in its nature a secondary or dependent thing, has been treated as a primary and independent thing; as an absolute. The moderns, mad upon mere multiplication, have even made a plural out of what is eternally singular, in the sense of single. They have taken what all ancient philosophers called the Good, and translated it as the Goods.
I believe that certain mystics, in the American business world, protested against the slump by pinning labels to their coats inscribed, “Trade Is Good,” along with other similar proclamations, such as, “Capone Is Dead,” or “Cancer Is Pleasant,” or “Death Is Abolished,” or any other hard realistic truths for which they might find space upon their persons. But what interests me about these magicians is that, having decided to call up ideal conditions by means of spells and incantations to control the elements, they did not (so to speak) understand the elements of the elements. They did not go to the root of the matter, and imagine that their troubles had really come to an end. Rather they worshipped the means instead of the end. While they were about it, they ought to have said, not “Trade is Good,” but “Living Is Good,” or “Life Is Good.” I suppose it would be too much to expect such thoroughly respectable people to say, “God Is Good”; but it is really true that their conception of what is good lacks the philosophical finality that belonged to the goodness of God. When God looked on created things and saw that they were good, it meant that they were good in themselves and as they stood; but by the modern mercantile idea, God would only have looked at them and seen that they were The Goods. In other words, there would be a label tied to the tree or the hill, as to the hat of the Mad Hatter, with “This Style, 10/6.” All the flowers and birds would be ticketed with their reduced prices; all the creation would be for sale or all the creatures seeking employment; with all the morning stars making sky-signs together and all the Sons of God shouting for jobs. In other words, these people are incapable of imagining any good except that which comes from bartering something for something else. The idea of a man enjoying a thing in itself, for himself, is inconceivable to them. The notion of a man eating his own apples off his own apple-tree seems like a fairy-tale. Yet the fall from that first creation that was called good has very largely come from the restless impotence for valuing things in themselves; the madness of the trader who cannot see any good in a good, except as something to get rid of. It was once admitted that with sin and death there entered the world something that we call change. It is none the less true and tragic, because what we called change, we called afterwards exchange. Anyhow, the result of that extravagance of exchange has been that when there are too many apples there are too few apple-eaters. I do not insist on the symbol of Eden, or the parable of the apple-tree, but it is odd to notice that even that accidental image pursues us at every stage of this strange story. The last result of treating a tree as a shop or a store instead of as a store-room, the last ettect ot treating apples as goods rather than as good, has been in a desperate drive of public charity and in poor men selling apples in the street.
In all normal civilisations the trader existed and must exist. But in all normal civilisations the trader was the exception; certainly he was never the rule; and most certainly he was never the ruler. The predominance which he has gained in the modern world is the cause of all the disasters of the modern world. The universal habit of humanity has been to produce and consume as part of the same process; largely conducted by the same people in the same place. Sometimes goods were produced and consumed on the same great feudal manor; sometimes even on the same small peasant farm. Sometimes there was a tribute from serfs as yet hardly distinguishable from slaves; sometimes there was a cooperation between free-men which the superficial can hardly distinguish from communism. But none of these many historical methods, whatever their vices or limitations, was strangled in the particular tangle of our own time; because most of the people, for most of the time, were thinking about growing food and then eating it; not entirely about growing food and selling it at the stiffest price to somebody who had nothing to eat. And I for one do not believe that there is any way out of the modern tangle, except to increase the proportion of the people who are living according to the ancient simplicity. Nobody in his five wits proposes that there should be no trade and no traders. Nevertheless, it is important to remember, as a matter of mere logic, that there might conceivably be great wealth, even if there were no trade and no traders. It is important for the sort of man whose only hope is that Trade Is Good or whose only secret terror is that Trade Is Bad. In principle, prosperity might be very great, even if trade were very bad. If a village were so fortunately situated that, for some reason, it was easy for every family to keep its own chickens, to grow its own vegetables, to milk its own cow and (I will add) to brew its own beer, the standard of life and property might be very high indeed, even though the long memory of the Oldest Inhabitant only recorded two or three pure transactions of trade; if he could only recall the one far-off event of his neighbour buying a new hat from a gipsy’s barrow; or the singular incident of Farmer Billings purchasing an umbrella.
Naturalmente non intendo che la pratica sia al presente semplice; poiché nessun problema pratico è semplice, meno che mai al presente tempo, quando ogni cosa è confusa dai corrotti ed evasivi pasticcioni che vengono chiamati politici pratici. Ma il principio è semplice; e l’unico modo di procedere attraverso una situazione complessa è partire dal giusto primo principio. Fin dove possiamo fare a meno, o controllare, o meramente mitigare gli svantaggi del comprare e del vendere è tutt’altra faccenda. Ma gli svantaggi sorgono davvero dal comprare e dal vendere, e non dal produrre: e nemmeno dal sovrapprodurre. Ed è una certa soddisfazione rendersi conto che non stiamo vivendo in un incubo in cui No è la stessa cosa di Sì; che persino il mondo moderno non è realmente impazzito, con tutti i suoi ingegnosi tentativi di farlo; che due più due fanno di fatto quattro; e che l’uomo che ha quattro mele ne ha davvero più dell’uomo che ne ha tre. Poiché certi moderni metafisici e filosofi morali paiono disposti a lasciarci nel dubbio su questi punti. Non è la ragione fondamentale delle cose a essere in difetto; è un particolare intoppo o falsificazione, sorto da un vezzo assai recente di considerare ogni cosa solo in rapporto al commercio. Il commercio va bene a modo suo, ma il Commercio è stato messo al posto della Verità. Il Commercio, che è per sua natura una cosa secondaria o dipendente, è stato trattato come una cosa primaria e indipendente; come un assoluto. I moderni, folli di mera moltiplicazione, hanno persino fatto un plurale di ciò che è eternamente singolare, nel senso di unico. Hanno preso ciò che tutti gli antichi filosofi chiamavano il Bene, e l’hanno tradotto nei Beni.
Credo che certi mistici, nel mondo degli affari americano, protestassero contro la crisi appuntandosi alle giacche etichette recanti la scritta «Il Commercio è Buono», insieme ad altri simili proclami, quali «Capone è Morto», o «Il Cancro è Piacevole», o «La Morte è Abolita», o qualsiasi altra dura verità realistica cui potessero trovar posto sulla propria persona. Ma ciò che mi interessa di questi maghi è che, avendo deciso di evocare condizioni ideali per mezzo di formule e incantesimi per dominare gli elementi, non compresero (per così dire) gli elementi degli elementi. Non andarono alla radice della faccenda, e immaginarono che i loro guai fossero davvero giunti a una fine. Piuttosto adorarono i mezzi anziché il fine. Già che c’erano, avrebbero dovuto dire non «Il Commercio è Buono», ma «Vivere è Bene», o «La Vita è Buona». Suppongo sarebbe troppo aspettarsi da persone così del tutto rispettabili che dicessero «Dio è Buono»; ma è davvero vero che la loro concezione di ciò che è buono manca di quella finalità filosofica che apparteneva alla bontà di Dio. Quando Dio guardò le cose create e vide che erano buone, ciò significava che erano buone in sé stesse e per come stavano; ma secondo la moderna idea mercantile, Dio le avrebbe soltanto guardate e viste come i Beni. In altre parole, vi sarebbe stata un’etichetta legata all’albero o alla collina, come al cappello del Cappellaio Matto, con la scritta «Questo Modello, 10/6». Tutti i fiori e gli uccelli sarebbero stati cartellinati coi loro prezzi ribassati; tutto il creato sarebbe stato in vendita o tutte le creature in cerca di impiego; con tutte le stelle del mattino che insieme fanno insegne luminose nel cielo e tutti i Figli di Dio che reclamano lavoro a gran voce. In altre parole, questa gente è incapace di immaginare alcun bene tranne quello che viene dal barattare qualcosa per qualcos’altro. L’idea di un uomo che gode di una cosa in sé, per sé stesso, è per loro inconcepibile. La nozione di un uomo che mangia le proprie mele dal proprio melo sembra una fiaba. Eppure la caduta da quella prima creazione che fu detta buona è in gran parte derivata dalla irrequieta impotenza a stimare le cose in sé stesse; la follia del mercante che non riesce a vedere alcun bene in un bene, se non come qualcosa di cui disfarsi. Un tempo si ammetteva che col peccato e con la morte entrò nel mondo qualcosa che chiamiamo mutamento. Non è meno vero e tragico, per il fatto che ciò che chiamammo mutamento, lo chiamammo in seguito scambio. Comunque, il risultato di quello stravagante eccesso di scambio è stato che quando vi sono troppe mele vi sono troppo pochi mangiatori di mele. Non insisto sul simbolo dell’Eden, o sulla parabola del melo, ma è curioso notare che persino quell’immagine accidentale ci insegue a ogni passo di questa strana storia. L’ultimo risultato del trattare un albero come una bottega o un magazzino invece che come una dispensa, l’ultimo effetto del trattare le mele come merci anziché come cosa buona, è stato una disperata campagna di pubblica carità e uomini poveri che vendono mele per strada.
In tutte le civiltà normali il mercante esisteva e deve esistere. Ma in tutte le civiltà normali il mercante era l’eccezione; di certo non fu mai la regola; e di certissimo non fu mai il sovrano. La preminenza che egli ha conquistato nel mondo moderno è la causa di tutti i disastri del mondo moderno. La consuetudine universale dell’umanità è stata quella di produrre e consumare come parte del medesimo processo; in gran parte condotto dalle medesime persone nel medesimo luogo. Talvolta i beni venivano prodotti e consumati nel medesimo grande maniero feudale; talvolta persino nella medesima piccola fattoria contadina. Talvolta vi era un tributo di servi ancora appena distinguibili dagli schiavi; talvolta vi era una cooperazione tra uomini liberi che i superficiali possono a stento distinguere dal comunismo. Ma nessuno di questi molti metodi storici, quali che fossero i loro vizi o limiti, era strangolato nel particolare groviglio del nostro tempo; perché la maggior parte della gente, per la maggior parte del tempo, pensava a coltivare il cibo e poi a mangiarlo; non interamente a coltivare il cibo e a venderlo al prezzo più caro a qualcuno che non aveva nulla da mangiare. E io per primo non credo che vi sia alcuna via d’uscita dal groviglio moderno, se non quella di accrescere la proporzione delle persone che vivono secondo l’antica semplicità. Nessuno che sia sano di mente propone che non vi debba essere alcun commercio e alcun mercante. Ciò nondimeno, è importante ricordare, come mera questione di logica, che potrebbe concepibilmente esservi grande ricchezza, anche se non vi fosse alcun commercio e alcun mercante. È importante per quel genere d’uomo la cui unica speranza è che il Commercio sia Buono o il cui unico segreto terrore è che il Commercio sia Cattivo. In linea di principio, la prosperità potrebbe essere assai grande, anche se il commercio fosse assai cattivo. Se un villaggio fosse così fortunatamente situato che, per qualche ragione, fosse facile a ogni famiglia allevare le proprie galline, coltivare i propri ortaggi, mungere la propria vacca e (aggiungerò) fabbricarsi la propria birra, il tenore di vita e di proprietà potrebbe essere davvero assai alto, anche se la lunga memoria dell’Abitante Più Anziano registrasse soltanto due o tre pure transazioni di commercio; se egli riuscisse a rammentare solo l’unico lontano evento del vicino che comprava un cappello nuovo dal carretto di uno zingaro; o il singolare episodio del Fattore Billings che acquistava un ombrello.
As I have said, I do not imagine, or desire, that things would ever be quite so simple as that. But we must understand things in their simplicity before we can explain or correct their complexity. The complexity of commercial society has become intolerable, because that society is commercial and nothing else. The whole mind of the community is occupied, not with the idea of possessing things, but with the idea of passing them on. When the simple enthusiasts already mentioned say that Trade is Good, they mean that all the people who possess goods are perpetually parting with them. These Optimists presumably invoke the poet, with some slight emendation of the poet’s meaning, when he cries aloud, ‘Our souls are love and a perpetual farewell.’ In that sense, our individualistic and commercial modern society is actually the very reverse of a society founded on Private Property. I mean that the actual direct and isolated enjoyment of private property, as distinct from the excitement of exchanging it or getting a profit on it, is rather rarer than in many simple communities that seem almost communal in their simplicity. In the case of this sort of private consumption, which is also private production, it is very unlikely that it will run continually into overproduction. There is a limit to the number of apples a man can eat, and there will probably be a limit, drawn by his rich and healthy hatred of work, to the number of apples which he will produce but cannot eat. But there is no limit to the number of apples he may possibly sell; and he soon becomes a pushing, dexterous and successful Salesman and turns the whole world upside-down. For it is he who produces this huge pantomimic paradox with which this rambling reflection began. It is he who makes a wilder revolution than the apple of Adam which was the loosening of death, or the apple of Newton which was the apocalypse of gravitation, by proclaiming the supreme blasphemy and heresy, that the apple was made for the market and not for the mouth. It was he, by starting the wild race of pouring endless apples into a bottomless market, who opened the abyss of irony and contradiction into which we are staring to-day. That trick of treating the trade as the test, and the only test, has left us face to face with a piece of stark staring nonsense written in gigantic letters across the world; more gigantic than all its own absurd advertisements and announcements; the statement that the more we produce the less we possess.
Oscar Wilde would probably have fainted with equal promptitude, if told he was being used in an argument about American salesmanship, or in defence of a thrifty and respectable family life on the farm. But it does so happen that one true epigram, among many of his false epigrams, sums up correctly and compactly a certain truth, not (I am happy to say) about Art, but about all that he desired to separate from Art; ethics and even economics. He said in one of his plays: “A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.” It is extraordinarily true; and the answer to most other things that he said. But it is yet more extraordinary that the modern men who make that mistake most obviously are not the cynics. On the contrary, they are those who call themselves the Optimists; perhaps even those who would call themselves the Idealists; certainly those who regard themselves as the Regular Guys and the Sons of Service and Uplift. It is too often those very people who have spoilt all their good effect, and weakened their considerable good example in work and social contact, by that very error: that things are to be judged by the price and not by the value. And since Price is a crazy and incalculable thing, while Value is an intrinsic and indestructible thing, they have swept us into a society which is no longer solid but fluid, as unfathomable as a sea and as treacherous as a quicksand. Whether anything more solid can be built again upon a social philosophy of values, there is now no space to discuss at length here; but I am certain that nothing solid can be built on any other philosophy; certainly not upon the utterly un-philosophical philosophy of blind buying and selling; of bullying people into purchasing what they do not want; of making it badly so that they may break it and imagine they want it again; of keeping rubbish in rapid circulation like a dust-storm in a desert; and pretending that you are teaching men to hope, because you do not leave them one intelligent instant in which to despair.
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Come ho detto, non immagino, né desidero, che le cose siano mai del tutto così semplici. Ma dobbiamo comprendere le cose nella loro semplicità prima di poterne spiegare o correggere la complessità. La complessità della società commerciale è divenuta intollerabile, perché quella società è commerciale e nient’altro. L’intera mente della comunità è occupata, non con l’idea di possedere le cose, ma con l’idea di passarle ad altri. Quando i semplici entusiasti già menzionati dicono che il Commercio è Buono, intendono che tutte le persone che possiedono beni si stanno perpetuamente disfacendo di essi. Questi Ottimisti presumibilmente invocano il poeta, con un lieve emendamento del senso del poeta, quando egli grida a gran voce: «Le nostre anime sono amore e un perpetuo commiato». In tal senso, la nostra individualistica e commerciale società moderna è in realtà l’esatto rovescio di una società fondata sulla Proprietà Privata. Intendo che l’effettivo, diretto e isolato godimento della proprietà privata, distinto dall’eccitazione dello scambiarla o del ricavarne un profitto, è piuttosto più raro che in molte semplici comunità che paiono quasi comunistiche nella loro semplicità. Nel caso di questo genere di consumo privato, che è anche produzione privata, è assai improbabile che esso trascorra di continuo nella sovrapproduzione. Vi è un limite al numero di mele che un uomo può mangiare, e vi sarà probabilmente un limite, tracciato dal suo ricco e sano odio del lavoro, al numero di mele che egli produrrà ma non può mangiare. Ma non vi è alcun limite al numero di mele che egli può eventualmente vendere; ed egli diventa presto un intraprendente, destro e fortunato Venditore e mette a soqquadro il mondo intero. Poiché è lui a produrre questo enorme, pantomimico paradosso con cui questa vagabonda riflessione ha avuto inizio. È lui a compiere una rivoluzione più sfrenata della mela di Adamo, che fu lo scatenamento della morte, o della mela di Newton, che fu l’apocalisse della gravitazione, proclamando la suprema blasfemia ed eresia, che la mela fu fatta per il mercato e non per la bocca. Fu lui che, dando avvio alla folle corsa a riversare infinite mele in un mercato senza fondo, spalancò l’abisso d’ironia e di contraddizione in cui oggi restiamo a fissare. Quel vezzo di trattare il commercio come la prova, e l’unica prova, ci ha lasciati faccia a faccia con un pezzo di pura, sfacciata insensatezza scritta a lettere gigantesche in tutto il mondo; più gigantesche di tutte le sue assurde réclame e annunci; l’affermazione che quanto più produciamo tanto meno possediamo.
Oscar Wilde sarebbe probabilmente svenuto con pari prontezza, se gli avessero detto che veniva usato in un’argomentazione sull’arte di vendere americana, o in difesa di una parsimoniosa e rispettabile vita familiare in fattoria. Ma si dà il caso che un unico vero epigramma, tra i suoi molti falsi epigrammi, riassuma correttamente e concisamente una certa verità, non (sono lieto di dirlo) sull’Arte, ma su tutto ciò che egli desiderava separare dall’Arte; l’etica e persino l’economia. Egli disse in una delle sue commedie: «Un cinico è un uomo che conosce il prezzo di ogni cosa e il valore di nessuna». È straordinariamente vero; ed è la risposta alla maggior parte delle altre cose che egli disse. Ma è ancor più straordinario che i moderni che commettono quell’errore nel modo più evidente non siano i cinici. Al contrario, sono coloro che si definiscono gli Ottimisti; forse persino coloro che si definirebbero gli Idealisti; di certo coloro che si considerano i Bravi Ragazzi e i Figli del Servizio e dell’Elevazione. Sono fin troppo spesso proprio quelle persone che hanno guastato tutto il loro buon effetto, e indebolito il loro considerevole buon esempio nel lavoro e nel contatto sociale, con quello stesso errore: che le cose vadano giudicate dal prezzo e non dal valore. E poiché il Prezzo è una cosa folle e incalcolabile, mentre il Valore è una cosa intrinseca e indistruttibile, essi ci hanno trascinati in una società che non è più solida ma fluida, insondabile come un mare e infida come una sabbia mobile. Se qualcosa di più solido possa essere di nuovo edificato su una filosofia sociale dei valori, non c’è ora spazio per discuterlo a lungo qui; ma io sono certo che nulla di solido possa essere edificato su qualsiasi altra filosofia; di certo non su quella del tutto non-filosofica filosofia del cieco comprare e vendere; del costringere la gente ad acquistare ciò che non desidera; del fabbricarlo malamente affinché lo rompa e s’immagini di volerlo di nuovo; del tenere il ciarpame in rapida circolazione come una tempesta di polvere e sabbia in un deserto; e del fingere che si stia insegnando agli uomini a sperare, perché non si lascia loro un solo intelligente istante in cui disperare.
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SEX AND PROPERTY
IN the dull, dusty, stale, stiff-jointed and lumbering language, to which most modern discussion is limited, it is necessary to say that there is at this moment the same fashionable fallacy about Sex and about Property. In the older and freer language, in which men could both speak and sing, it is truer to say that the same evil spirit has blasted the two great powers that make the poetry of life; the Love of Woman and the Love of the Land. It is important to observe, to start with, that these two things were closely connected so long as humanity was human, even when it was heathen. Nay, they were still closely connected, even when it was a decadent heathenism. But even the stink of decaying heathenism has not been so bad as the stink of decaying Christianity. The corruption of the best…
For instance, there were throughout antiquity, both in its first stage and its last, modes of idolatry and imagery of which Christian men can hardly speak. “Let them not be so much as named among you.” Men wallowed in the mere sexuality of a mythology of sex; they organised prostitution like priesthood, for the service of their temples; they made pornography their only poetry; they paraded emblems that turned even architecture into a sort of cold and colossal exhibitionism. Many learned books have been written of all these phallic cults; and anybody can go to them for the details, for all I care. But what interests me is this:
In one way all this ancient sin was infinitely superior, immeasurably superior, to the modern sin. All those who write of it at least agree on one fact; that it was the cult of Fruitfulness. It was unfortunately too often interwoven, very closely, with the cult of the fruitfulness of the land. It was at least on the side of Nature. It was at least on the side of Life. It has been left to the last Christians, or rather to the first Christians fully committed to blaspheming and denying Christianity, to invent a new kind of worship of Sex, which is not even a worship of Life. It has been left to the very latest Modernists to proclaim an erotic religion which at once exalts lust and forbids fertility. The new Paganism literally merits the reproach of Swinburne, when mourning for the old Paganism: “and rears not the bountiful token and spreads not the fatherly feast.” The new priests abolish the fatherhood and keep the feast-to themselves. They are worse than Swinburne’s Pagans. The priests of Priapus and Cotytto go into the kingdom of heaven before them.
Now it is not unnatural that this unnatural separation, between sex and fruitfulness, which even the Pagans would have thought a perversion, has been accompanied with a similar separation and perversion about the nature of the love of the land. In both departments there is precisely the same fallacy; which it is quite possible to state precisely. The reason why our contemporary countrymen do not understand what we mean by Property is that they only think of it in the sense of Money; in the sense of salary; in the sense of something which is immediately consumed, enjoyed and expended; something which gives momentary pleasure and disappears. They do not understand that we mean by Property something that includes that pleasure incidentally; but begins and ends with something far more grand and worthy and creative. The man who makes an orchard where there has been a field, who owns the orchard and decides to whom it shall descend, does also enjoy the taste of apples; and let us hope, also, the taste of cider. But he is doing something very much grander, and ultimately more gratifying, than merely eating an apple. He is imposing his will upon the world in the manner of the charter given him by the will of God; he is asserting that his soul is his own, and does not belong to the Orchard Survey Department, or the chief Trust in the Apple Trade. But he is also doing something which was implicit in all the most ancient religions of the earth; in those great panoramas of pageantry and ritual that followed the order of the seasons in China or Babylonia; he is worshipping the fruitfulness of the world. Now the notion of narrowing property merely to enjoying money is exactly like the notion of narrowing love merely to enjoying sex. In both cases an incidental, isolated, servile and even secretive pleasure is substituted for participation in a great creative process; even in the everlasting Creation of the world.
The two sinister things can be seen side by side in the system of Bolshevist Russia; for Communism is the only complete and logical working model of Capitalism. The sins are there a system which are everywhere else a sort of repeated blunder. From the first, it is admitted, that the whole system was directed towards encouraging or driving the worker to spend his wages; to have nothing left on the next pay day; to enjoy everything and consume everything and efface everything; in short, to shudder at the thought of only one crime; the creative crime of thrift. It was a tame extravagance; a sort of disciplined dissipation; a meek and submissive prodigality. For the moment the slave left off drinking all his wages, the moment he began to hoard or hide any property, he would be saving up something which might ultimately purchase his liberty. He might begin to count for something in the State; that is, he might become less of a slave and more of a citizen. Morally considered, there has been nothing quite so unspeakably mean as this Bolshevist generosity. But it will be noted that exactly the same spirit and tone pervades the manner of dealing with the other matter. Sex also is to come to the slave merely as a pleasure; that it may never be a power. He is to know as little as possible, or at least to think as little as possible, of the pleasure as anything else except a pleasure; to think or know nothing of where it comes from or where it will go to, when once the soiled object has passed through his own hands. He is not to trouble about its origin in the purposes of God or its sequel in the posterity of man. In every department he is not a possessor, but only a consumer; even if it be of the first elements of life and fire in so far as they are consumable; he is to have no notion of the sort of Burning Bush that burns and is not consumed. For that bush only grows on the soil, on the real land where human beings can behold it; and the spot on which they stand is holy ground. Thus there is an exact parallel between the two modern moral, or immoral, ideas of social reform. The world has forgotten simultaneously that the making of a Farm is something much larger than the making of a profit, or even a product, in the sense of liking the taste of beetroot sugar; and that the founding of a Family is something much larger than sex in the limited sense of.current literature; which was anticipated in one bleak and blinding flash in a single line of George Meredith; “And eat our pot of honey on the grave.”
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SESSO E PROPRIETÀ
NEL linguaggio ottuso, polveroso, stantio, rigido nelle giunture e pesante, a cui è limitata gran parte della discussione moderna, è necessario dire che vi è in questo momento la medesima fallacia di moda riguardo al Sesso e riguardo alla Proprietà. Nel linguaggio più antico e più libero, in cui gli uomini sapevano insieme parlare e cantare, è più vero dire che il medesimo spirito maligno ha inaridito le due grandi potenze che fanno la poesia della vita; l’Amore della Donna e l’Amore della Terra. È importante osservare, per cominciare, che queste due cose erano strettamente connesse finché l’umanità fu umana, persino quando fu pagana. Anzi, esse erano ancora strettamente connesse, persino quando fu un paganesimo decadente. Ma persino il fetore del paganesimo in decomposizione non è stato così pessimo come il fetore del Cristianesimo in decomposizione. La corruzione del migliore…
Per esempio, vi furono attraverso tutta l’antichità, sia nel suo primo stadio sia nell’ultimo, forme d’idolatria e immagini di cui gli uomini cristiani possono a stento parlare. «Non siano neppure nominate fra voi.» Gli uomini si rotolavano nella mera sessualità di una mitologia del sesso; organizzavano la prostituzione come un sacerdozio, per il servizio dei loro templi; facevano della pornografia la loro unica poesia; ostentavano emblemi che trasformavano persino l’architettura in una sorta di freddo e colossale esibizionismo. Molti dotti libri sono stati scritti su tutti questi culti fallici; e chiunque può ricorrervi per i dettagli, per quel che me ne importa. Ma ciò che mi interessa è questo:
Per un verso tutto questo antico peccato era infinitamente superiore, incommensurabilmente superiore, al peccato moderno. Tutti coloro che ne scrivono concordano almeno su un fatto: che esso era il culto della Fecondità. Era purtroppo troppo spesso intrecciato, assai strettamente, col culto della fecondità della terra. Era per lo meno dalla parte della Natura. Era per lo meno dalla parte della Vita. È toccato agli ultimi cristiani, o piuttosto ai primi cristiani interamente votati a bestemmiare e a rinnegare il Cristianesimo, inventare un nuovo genere di culto del Sesso, che non è neppure un culto della Vita. È toccato ai più recenti Modernisti proclamare una religione erotica che al contempo esalta la lussuria e proibisce la fertilità. Il nuovo Paganesimo merita alla lettera il rimprovero di Swinburne, quando piange l’antico Paganesimo: «e non erge il generoso segno e non imbandisce il paterno banchetto». I nuovi sacerdoti aboliscono la paternità e si tengono il banchetto—per sé stessi. Sono peggiori dei Pagani di Swinburne. I sacerdoti di Priapo e di Cotitto li precedono nel regno dei cieli.
Ora, non è innaturale che questa innaturale separazione, tra sesso e fecondità, che persino i Pagani avrebbero ritenuto una perversione, si sia accompagnata a una simile separazione e perversione riguardo alla natura dell’amore della terra. In entrambi gli ambiti vi è precisamente la medesima fallacia; che è del tutto possibile enunciare con precisione. La ragione per cui i nostri contemporanei compatrioti non capiscono cosa intendiamo per Proprietà è che essi la pensano soltanto nel senso del Denaro; nel senso dello stipendio; nel senso di qualcosa che è immediatamente consumato, goduto e speso; qualcosa che dà un piacere momentaneo e scompare. Non capiscono che noi intendiamo per Proprietà qualcosa che include quel piacere per incidenza; ma comincia e finisce con qualcosa di assai più grande e degno e creativo. L’uomo che fa un frutteto dove c’era stato un campo, che possiede il frutteto e decide a chi debba passare, gode anch’egli del sapore delle mele; e, speriamo, anche del sapore del sidro. Ma sta facendo qualcosa di assai più grande, e in ultima analisi più gratificante, che il semplice mangiare una mela. Egli sta imponendo la propria volontà al mondo secondo la carta concessagli dalla volontà di Dio; sta affermando che la sua anima è sua propria, e non appartiene al Dipartimento del Catasto dei Frutteti, o al principale Trust del Commercio delle Mele. Ma sta anche facendo qualcosa che era implicito in tutte le più antiche religioni della terra; in quei grandi panorami di sfarzo e di rito che seguivano l’ordine delle stagioni in Cina o in Babilonia; egli sta adorando la fecondità del mondo. Ora, la nozione di restringere la proprietà al mero godimento del denaro è esattamente come la nozione di restringere l’amore al mero godimento del sesso. In entrambi i casi un piacere incidentale, isolato, servile e persino segreto è sostituito alla partecipazione a un grande processo creativo; persino nell’eterna Creazione del mondo.
Le due sinistre cose si possono vedere fianco a fianco nel sistema della Russia bolscevica; poiché il Comunismo è l’unico completo e logico modello funzionante del Capitalismo. I peccati sono là un sistema che ovunque altrove sono una sorta di errore ripetuto. Fin dal principio, è ammesso, l’intero sistema era diretto a incoraggiare o a spingere il lavoratore a spendere il proprio salario; a non aver più nulla il giorno di paga successivo; a godere ogni cosa e a consumare ogni cosa e a cancellare ogni cosa; in breve, a rabbrividire al pensiero di un solo delitto; il delitto creativo della parsimonia. Era una docile stravaganza; una sorta di dissipazione disciplinata; una mite e sottomessa prodigalità. Poiché nel momento in cui lo schiavo smetteva di bere tutto il suo salario, nel momento in cui cominciava ad accumulare o a nascondere qualche proprietà, egli avrebbe messo da parte qualcosa che poteva alla fine acquistargli la libertà. Egli poteva cominciare a contare per qualcosa nello Stato; cioè, poteva diventare meno uno schiavo e più un cittadino. Considerata moralmente, non vi è stata cosa così indicibilmente meschina come questa generosità bolscevica. Ma si noterà che esattamente il medesimo spirito e tono pervade il modo di trattare l’altra faccenda. Anche il sesso deve giungere allo schiavo meramente come un piacere; cosicché non possa mai essere una potenza. Egli deve sapere il meno possibile, o almeno pensare il meno possibile, del piacere come di qualcosa d’altro che un piacere; deve pensare o sapere nulla di dove esso venga o di dove andrà, una volta che l’oggetto insozzato è passato per le sue proprie mani. Egli non deve preoccuparsi della sua origine nei disegni di Dio o del suo seguito nella posterità dell’uomo. In ogni ambito egli non è un possessore, ma soltanto un consumatore; foss’anche dei primi elementi della vita e del fuoco in quanto essi sono consumabili; egli non deve avere alcuna nozione di quella sorta di Roveto Ardente che brucia e non si consuma. Poiché quel roveto cresce soltanto sul suolo, sulla terra reale dove gli esseri umani possono contemplarlo; e il luogo su cui essi stanno è terra santa. Vi è dunque un esatto parallelo tra le due moderne idee morali, o immorali, di riforma sociale. Il mondo ha dimenticato simultaneamente che il fare una Fattoria è qualcosa di assai più grande del fare un profitto, o persino un prodotto, nel senso di gradire il sapore dello zucchero di barbabietola; e che il fondare una Famiglia è qualcosa di assai più grande del sesso nel senso limitato della letteratura corrente; il che fu anticipato in un cupo e accecante lampo in un solo verso di George Meredith: «E mangiamo il nostro vasetto di miele sulla tomba».
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ST. THOMAS MORE
MOST would understand the phrase that the mind of More was like a diamond that a tyrant threw away into a ditch, because he could not break it. It is but a metaphor; but it does sometimes happen that the metaphor is many-sided, like the diamond. What moved the tyrant to a sort of terror of that mind was its clarity; it was the very reverse of a cloudy crystal filled only with opalescent dreams or visions of the past. The King and his great Chancellor had been companions as well as contemporaries; in many ways, both were Renaissance men; but in some ways, the man who was the more Catholic was the less medieval. That is, there was perhaps more in the Tudor of that mere musty fag-end of decayed medievalism, which the real Renaissance reformers felt to be the corruption of the time. In More’s mind there was nothing but clarity; in Henry’s mind, though he was no fool and certainly no Protestant, there was something of confused conservatism. Like many a better man who is an Anglo-Catholic, he had a touch of the antiquary. Thomas More was a better rationalist, which was why there was nothing in his religion that was merely local, or in that sense merely loyal. More’s mind was like a diamond also in a power like that of cutting glass; of cutting through things that seemed equally transparent, but were at once less solid and less many-sided. For the true consistent heresies generally look very clear indeed; like Calvinism then or Communism now. They sometimes even look very true; they sometimes even are very true, in the limited sense of a truth that is less than the Truth. They are at once more thin and more brittle than the diamond. For a heresy is not often a mere lie; as Thomas More himself said, “Never was there a heretic that spoke all false.” A heresy is a truth that hides all the other truths. A mind like More’s was full of light like a house made of windows; but the windows looked out on all sides and in all directions. We might say that, as the jewel has many facets, so the man had many faces; only none of them were masks.
Thus there are so many aspects of this great story, that the difficulty of dealing with it in an article is one of selection, and even more of proportion. I might attempt and fail to do justice to its highest aspect; to that holiness which now stands beyond even Beatitude; I might equally fill the whole space with the homeliest of the jokes in which the great humorist delighted in daily life; perhaps the biggest joke of all being the book called Utopia. The nineteenth century Utopians imitated the book without seeing the joke. But among a bewildering complexity of such different aspects or angles, I have decided to deal only with two points; not because they were the most important truths about Thomas More, though their importance is very great; but because they are two of the most important truths about the world at this present moment. One appears most clearly in his death and the other in his life; one, perhaps we should rather say, concerns his public life and the other his private life; one is far beyond any adequate admiration and the other may seem in comparison an almost comic bathos; but one hits exactly the right nail on the head in our present discussions about the State; and the other about the Family.
Thomas More died the death of a traitor for defying absolute monarchy; in the strict sense of treating monarchy as an absolute. He was willing, and even eager, to respect it as a relative thing, but not as an absolute thing. The heresy that had just raised its head in his own time was the heresy called the Divine Right of Kings. In that form it is now regarded as an old superstition; but it has already reappeared as a very new superstition, in the form of the Divine Right of Dictators. But most people still vaguely think of it as old; and nearly all of them think it is much older than it is. One of the chief difficulties to-day is to explain to people that this idea was not native to medieval or many older times. People know that the constitutional checks on kings have been increasing for a century or two; they do not realize that any other kind of checks could ever have operated; and in the changed conditions those other checks are hard to describe or imagine. But most certainly medieval men thought of the king as ruling sub deo et lege; rightly translated, “under God and the law,” but also involving something atmospheric that might more vaguely be called, “under the morality implied in all our institutions.” Kings were excommunicated, were deposed, were assassinated, were dealt with in all sorts of defensible and indefensible ways; but nobody thought the whole commonwealth fell with the king, or that he alone had ultimate authority there. The State did not own men so entirely, even when it could send them to the stake, as it sometimes does now where it can send them to the elementary school. There was an idea of refuge, which was generally an idea of sanctuary. In short, in a hundred strange and subtle ways, as we should think them, there was a sort of escape upwards. There were limits to Caesar; and there was liberty with God.
The highest voice of the Church has pronounced that this hero was in the true and traditional sense a Saint and Martyr. And it is appropriate to remember that he does indeed stand, for a rather special reason, with those first Martyrs whose blood was the seed of the Church in the very earliest pagan persecutions. For most of them died; as he did, for refusing to extend a civil loyalty into a religious idolatry. Most of them did not die for refusing to worship Mercury or Venus, or fabulous figures who might be supposed not to exist; or others like Moloch or Priapus whom we might well hope do not exist. Most of them died for refusing to worship somebody who certainly did exist; and even somebody whom they were quite prepared to obey but not to worship. The typical martyrdom generally turned on the business of burning incense before the statue of Divus Augustus; the sacred image of the Emperor. He was not necessarily a demon to be destroyed; he was simply a despot who must not be turned into a deity. That is where their case came so very close to the practical problem of Thomas More; and so very near to the practical problem of mere State-worship to-day. And it is typical of all Catholic thought that men died in torments, not because their foes “spoke all false”; but simply because they would not give an unreasonable reverence where they were perfectly prepared to give a reasonable respect. For us the problem of Progress is always a problem of Proportion: improvement is reaching a right proportion, not merely moving in one direction. And our doubts about most modern developments, about the Socialists in the last generation, or the Fascists in this generation, do not arise from our having any doubts at all about the desirability of economic justice, or of national order, any more than Thomas More bothered his head to object to a hereditary monarchy. He objected to the Divine Right of Kings.
In the very deepest sense he is thus the champion of Liberty in his public life and his still more public death. In his private life he is the type of a truth even less understood to-day; the truth that the real habitation of Liberty is the home. Modern novels and newspapers and problem plays have been piled up in one huge rubbish-heap to hide this simple fact; yet it is a fact that can be proved quite simply. Public life must be rather more regimented than private life; just as a man cannot wander about in the traffic of Piccadilly exactly as he could wander about in his own garden. Where there is traffic there will be regulation of traffic; and this is quite as true, or even more true, where it is what we should call an illicit traffic; where the most modern governments organize sterilization to-day and may organize infanticide to-morrow. Those who hold the modern superstition that the State can do no wrong will be bound to accept such a thing as right. If individuals have any hope of protecting their freedom, they must protect their family life. At the worst there will be rather more personal adaptation in a household than in a concentration camp; at the best there will be rather less routine in a family than in a factory. In any tolerably healthy home the rules are at least partly affected by things that cannot possibly affect fixed laws; for instance, the thing we call a sense of humour.
Therefore More is vividly important as the Humorist; as representing that special phase of the Humanist. Behind his public life, which was so grand a tragedy, there was a private life that was a perpetual comedy. He was, as Mr. Christopher Hollis says in his excellent study, “an incorrigible leg-puller.” Everybody knows, of course, that the comedy and the tragedy met as they meet in Shakespeare, on that last high wooden stage where his drama ended. In that terrible moment he realized and relished the grand joke of the human body, as of a sort of lovable lumber; gravely discussed whether his beard had committed treason; and said in hoisting himself up the ladder, “See me safely up; coming down I can take care of myself.”
But Thomas More never came down that ladder. He had done with all descents and downward goings, and what had been himself vanished from men’s eyes almost in the manner of his Master, who being lifted up shall draw all men after Him. And the dark closed over him and the clouds came between; until long afterwards the wisdom that can a read such secrets saw him fixed far above our heads like a returning star; and established his station in the skies.
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SAN TOMMASO MORO
I più comprenderebbero la frase secondo cui la mente di Moro era come un diamante che un tiranno gettò via in un fosso, perché non riusciva a spezzarlo. È solo una metafora; ma talvolta accade che la metafora sia sfaccettata, come il diamante. Ciò che mosse il tiranno a una sorta di terrore di fronte a quella mente era la sua limpidezza; era l’esatto contrario di un cristallo torbido, colmo soltanto di sogni opalescenti o di visioni del passato. Il King e il suo grande Cancelliere erano stati compagni come pure contemporanei; per molti versi entrambi erano uomini del Renaissance; ma per certi versi colui che era il più cattolico era il meno medievale. Vale a dire, forse c’era di più nel Tudor di quel misero e ammuffito rimasuglio di un medievalismo decaduto, che i veri riformatori del Renaissance sentivano come la corruzione del loro tempo. Nella mente di Moro non c’era altro che limpidezza; nella mente di Enrico, benché non fosse uno sciocco e certamente non un protestante, c’era qualcosa di un confuso conservatorismo. Come tanti uomini migliori che sono anglo-cattolici, aveva un pizzico dell’antiquario. Tommaso Moro era un razionalista migliore, ed è per questo che nella sua religione non c’era nulla di meramente locale, o in quel senso meramente leale. La mente di Moro era simile a un diamante anche in una potenza pari a quella di tagliare il vetro; di tagliare attraverso cose che parevano ugualmente trasparenti, ma che erano insieme meno solide e meno sfaccettate. Poiché le vere eresie coerenti in genere appaiono davvero molto chiare; come il calvinismo allora o il comunismo oggi. A volte sembrano perfino verissime; a volte sono perfino verissime, nel senso limitato di una verità che è meno della Verità. Sono al tempo stesso più esili e più fragili del diamante. Perché un’eresia non è spesso una mera menzogna; come disse lo stesso Tommaso Moro: «Non vi fu mai eretico che dicesse tutto il falso». Un’eresia è una verità che nasconde tutte le altre verità. Una mente come quella di Moro era piena di luce come una casa fatta di finestre; ma le finestre guardavano da ogni lato e in ogni direzione. Potremmo dire che, come il gioiello ha molte facce, così l’uomo aveva molti volti; solo che nessuno di essi era una maschera.
Vi sono dunque tanti aspetti di questa grande storia, che la difficoltà di trattarla in un articolo è una difficoltà di scelta, e ancor più di proporzione. Potrei tentare, e fallire, di rendere giustizia al suo aspetto più alto; a quella santità che ora sta al di là perfino della Beatitudine; potrei allo stesso modo riempire l’intero spazio con le più casalinghe delle facezie di cui il grande umorista si dilettava nella vita quotidiana; e forse la più grande facezia di tutte è il libro chiamato Utopia. Gli utopisti dell’Ottocento imitarono il libro senza cogliere lo scherzo. Ma tra una sconcertante complessità di aspetti o angolazioni tanto diverse, ho deciso di trattare soltanto due punti; non perché fossero le verità più importanti su Tommaso Moro, benché la loro importanza sia grandissima; ma perché sono due delle verità più importanti sul mondo in questo preciso momento. Uno appare più chiaramente nella sua morte e l’altro nella sua vita; l’uno, forse dovremmo piuttosto dire, riguarda la sua vita pubblica e l’altro la sua vita privata; l’uno è ben oltre ogni adeguata ammirazione e l’altro può sembrare, al confronto, un bathos quasi comico; ma l’uno colpisce esattamente il chiodo giusto nelle nostre attuali discussioni intorno allo Stato; e l’altro intorno alla Famiglia.
Tommaso Moro morì la morte di un traditore per aver sfidato la monarchia assoluta; nel senso stretto di trattare la monarchia come un assoluto. Era disposto, e perfino desideroso, di rispettarla come cosa relativa, ma non come cosa assoluta. L’eresia che aveva appena levato il capo ai suoi tempi era l’eresia detta del Diritto Divino dei Re. In quella forma essa è oggi considerata una vecchia superstizione; ma è già riapparsa come una nuovissima superstizione, nella forma del Diritto Divino dei Dittatori. Eppure la maggior parte della gente la pensa ancora vagamente come antica; e quasi tutti la credono molto più antica di quanto sia. Una delle principali difficoltà odierne è spiegare alla gente che quest’idea non era propria dei tempi medievali o di tempi ancora più antichi. La gente sa che i freni costituzionali ai re sono andati crescendo da un secolo o due; ma non si rende conto che potesse mai operare qualche altra specie di freno; e nelle mutate condizioni quegli altri freni sono difficili da descrivere o da immaginare. Ma certissimamente gli uomini medievali pensavano al re come a colui che governava sub deo et lege; rettamente tradotto, «sotto Dio e la legge», ma implicando anche qualcosa di atmosferico che si potrebbe più vagamente chiamare «sotto la moralità implicita in tutte le nostre istituzioni». I re venivano scomunicati, deposti, assassinati, trattati in ogni sorta di modo difendibile e indifendibile; ma nessuno pensava che l’intera comunità cadesse con il re, o che egli solo vi avesse un’autorità ultima. Lo Stato non possedeva gli uomini tanto interamente, anche quando poteva mandarli al rogo, quanto talvolta li possiede ora, dove può mandarli alla scuola elementare. C’era un’idea di rifugio, che era generalmente un’idea di asilo. In breve, in cento modi strani e sottili, come li giudicheremmo noi, c’era una sorta di via di scampo verso l’alto. C’erano limiti a Cesare; e c’era libertà con Dio.
La voce più alta della Chiesa ha proclamato che questo eroe fu, nel senso vero e tradizionale, un Santo e un Martire. Ed è opportuno ricordare che egli sta davvero, per una ragione piuttosto speciale, con quei primi Martiri il cui sangue fu il seme della Chiesa nelle primissime persecuzioni pagane. Poiché la maggior parte di essi morì, come lui, per essersi rifiutata di estendere una lealtà civile in un’idolatria religiosa. La maggior parte di essi non morì per essersi rifiutata di adorare Mercurio o Venere, o figure favolose che si potevano supporre inesistenti; o altre come Moloch o Priapo che potremmo ben sperare non esistano. La maggior parte di essi morì per essersi rifiutata di adorare qualcuno che di certo esisteva; e persino qualcuno cui erano del tutto disposti a obbedire, ma non ad adorare. Il tipico martirio verteva in genere sulla questione di bruciare incenso davanti alla statua di Divus Augustus; la sacra immagine dell’Imperatore. Egli non era necessariamente un demone da distruggere; era semplicemente un despota che non doveva essere trasformato in una divinità. È qui che il loro caso giungeva tanto vicino al problema pratico di Tommaso Moro; e tanto prossimo al problema pratico del mero culto dello Stato d’oggi. Ed è tipico di tutto il pensiero cattolico che gli uomini morissero fra i tormenti, non perché i loro nemici «dicessero tutto il falso»; ma semplicemente perché non volevano tributare una riverenza irragionevole là dove erano perfettamente disposti a tributare un rispetto ragionevole. Per noi il problema del Progresso è sempre un problema di Proporzione: migliorare è raggiungere una giusta proporzione, non semplicemente muoversi in una sola direzione. E i nostri dubbi sulla maggior parte degli sviluppi moderni, sui Socialisti della scorsa generazione, o sui Fascisti di questa generazione, non nascono dall’avere il minimo dubbio sulla desiderabilità della giustizia economica, o dell’ordine nazionale, non più di quanto Tommaso Moro si desse pensiero di opporsi a una monarchia ereditaria. Egli si opponeva al Diritto Divino dei Re.
Nel senso più profondo egli è dunque il campione della Libertà nella sua vita pubblica e nella sua ancor più pubblica morte. Nella sua vita privata egli è il tipo di una verità ancor meno compresa oggi; la verità che la vera dimora della Libertà è la casa. I romanzi e i giornali e i drammi a tesi moderni sono stati ammucchiati in un unico enorme mucchio di rifiuti per nascondere questo semplice fatto; eppure è un fatto che può essere provato assai semplicemente. La vita pubblica dev’essere per forza un po’ più regimentata della vita privata; proprio come un uomo non può vagare nel traffico di Piccadilly esattamente come potrebbe vagare nel suo proprio giardino. Dove c’è traffico ci sarà una regolamentazione del traffico; e ciò è altrettanto vero, o anche più vero, dove si tratta di quel che chiameremmo un traffico illecito; dove i governi più moderni organizzano oggi la sterilizzazione e potranno organizzare domani l’infanticidio. Coloro che nutrono la moderna superstizione secondo cui lo Stato non può fare torto saranno costretti ad accettare una cosa simile come giusta. Se gli individui hanno una qualche speranza di proteggere la propria libertà, devono proteggere la loro vita familiare. Nel peggiore dei casi vi sarà un po’ più di adattamento personale in una famiglia che in un campo di concentramento; nel migliore dei casi vi sarà un po’ meno di routine in una famiglia che in una fabbrica. In ogni casa tollerabilmente sana le regole sono almeno in parte influenzate da cose che non possono in alcun modo influire su leggi fisse; per esempio, quella cosa che chiamiamo senso dell’umorismo.
Perciò Moro è vividamente importante come l’Umorista; come rappresentante di quella fase speciale dell’Umanista. Dietro la sua vita pubblica, che fu una così grande tragedia, c’era una vita privata che fu una perpetua commedia. Egli era, come dice il signor Christopher Hollis nel suo eccellente studio, «un incorreggibile burlone». Tutti sanno, naturalmente, che la commedia e la tragedia si incontrarono come si incontrano in Shakespeare, su quell’ultimo alto palco di legno dove terminò il suo dramma. In quel momento terribile egli comprese e gustò il grande scherzo del corpo umano, come di una sorta di amabile ciarpame; discusse gravemente se la sua barba avesse commesso tradimento; e disse, issandosi su per la scala: «Aiutatemi a salire sano e salvo; a scendere saprò badare a me stesso».
Ma Tommaso Moro non discese mai quella scala. Aveva finito con tutte le discese e con ogni andare verso il basso, e ciò che era stato lui stesso svanì dagli occhi degli uomini quasi alla maniera del suo Maestro, il quale, essendo innalzato, trarrà a Sé tutti gli uomini. E le tenebre si chiusero su di lui e le nubi si frapposero; finché, molto tempo dopo, la sapienza che sa leggere tali segreti lo vide fisso alto sopra le nostre teste come una stella che ritorna; e stabilì la sua stazione nei cieli.
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THE RETURN OF CAESAR
WHETHER or no it be an example of first and second childhood, I sometimes have a whimsical fancy that I shall end as I began, trying to make some sense out of what is called Liberalism in politics. There is a Fleet Street story about me, which may be a fact though I have entirely forgotten it, that when I was asked if I was a Liberal, I answered, “I am the only Liberal.” It will be agreed that, in these days, I should be very nearly the only Liberal. But I hope nobody will accuse me of wanting to be a Liberal leader. The Liberal Party now consists entirely of leaders—or rather mis-leaders. And all they want, all they have left to pray for, is one single simple solitary human being who is willing to be misled. On second thoughts, I rather doubt whether I will offer myself even to fulfil this humble office; whatever may be my qualifications for filling all the seats at a public meeting, and constituting the whole audience, while my five leaders address me from the platform, urging me to five urgent but incompatible courses of action. No, the sense in which I have again become conscious of the existence of purely political Liberalism is not so much due to what remains of it, as to what has vanished from it; not to what the Liberals say as to what they do not say. In the face of fashionable Fascism, and the toppling simplifications of the Totalitarian State, there really is a great deal that ought to be said for Liberalism; or, in clearer language, for Liberty.
Many things return; and thank God we live now in a time when we can talk once more about Church and State; though nowadays it generally means the Catholic Church and the Totalitarian State. But at least we have abolished the most illiberal of the illiberal limitations of Liberalism. We can recognise religion in history at the back of European ideas, including modern ideas; and in this connection the story of Church and State is very strange indeed. Of course, the one thing that has really confused the story of Church and State is the thing called the State Church. But that is a mere illogical interlude; in which God holds his authority from Caesar; instead of Caesar holding it from God. The normal relation between Church and State, through most of the varied phases of history, has not been exactly an establishment, but something more like what we have seen reappear in Germany. When there was not a conflict, there was a Concordat. It will be noted that the Church generally had a Concordat with her enemies rather than her friends. There was a dispute with Napoleon and a Concordat with Napoleon: a dispute with Mussolini and a Concordat with Mussolini; a dispute with Hitler and a Concordat with Hitler. And though the word would not perhaps have been used, and would not perhaps have been correct, something of the same paradox broods like a suspended storm over the State and Church in their relations in even earlier times. It marks the Church in her relation with the Roman Emperors; in her relation witn tne Greek Emperors; in her relation with the German Emperors. There was always some sort of Concordat, and there was never any complete concord.
It needs nearly a lifetime to trace the curve or orbit of the Church, and the rhythm of things returning. But to one growing up as a Liberal, and in many ways still a Liberal, the chief interest of the last days is in this. The Church, roughly speaking, almost always remains at about the same distance from the State and its experiments. There are exceptions, of course; when an Emperor persecutes the Church or the Church excommunicates an Emperor. The Church could hardly be expected to concord very much, even in the coldest manner, with Nero or the No-God Movement in Moscow. But it is most often found at about the same distance from the State as it is now from the Totalitarian State. Leo XIII stood at about that distance from the French Republican State. Few Catholics need originally have stood at any much greater distance even from the French Revolution. But the very names will serve to remind us of the vital point at issue. It is the State that changes; it is the State that destroys; it is nearly always the State that persecutes. The Totalitarian State is now making a clean sweep of all our old notions of liberty, even more than the French Revolution made a clean sweep of all the old ideas of loyalty. It is the Church that excommunicates; but, in that very word, implies that a communion stands open for a restored communicant. It is the State that exterminates; it is the State that abolishes absolutely and altogether; whether it is the American State abolishing beer, or the Fascist State abolishing parties, or the Hitlerite State abolishing almost everything but itself.
Now suppose, for the sake of argument, that I did become again merely an ordinary Liberal, as the term was understood when I was active in Liberal politics. Suppose I thought the time had come to remind men that there really is an intellectual advantage in hearing all sides; a help to order in a measure of liberty; a healthy irritation in government by debate. Suppose I said (as I do say) that every government ought to be checked by an opposition; suppose I said (as I do not say) that free international exchange is demonstrably better than all this economic nationalism. Suppose I said that recognised majority rule is better than random minority rule; suppose I said that Democracy as a failure is better than Dictatorship as a success. I could say all this, and much more, and remain a quite ordinary and orthodox member of the ancient Church. But I could not say it, over a great part of the modern world, without being punished by the modern State. Rome with its religious authority would not silence me. But Fascism with its secular authority would silence me. Bolshevism with its secular authority would silence me. Hitlerism with its secular authority would silence me. When I began to live and (alas) to write, all the other Liberals had inherited a huge legend that all persecution had come from the Church. Some of them still mumble old memories about the Spanish Inquisition (a thing started strictly by the State); with the fact staring them in the face that the actual persecution now going on in Spain is the spoliation of Spaniards, simply because they are Catholic priests and schoolmasters. But anyhow, it was supposed that what was called superstition was somehow the mother of persecution. I appeal to all my fellow-Liberals to admit that the facts have flatly contradicted this idea. Every Catholic enjoys much more freedom in Catholicism than any Liberal does under Bolshevism or Fascism. I might have been a Liberal and belonged to the Centrum in Germany or the Parti to Populare in Italy; it is not the Church but the State that would stop me. For the State has returned with all its ancient terrors out of antiquity; with the Gods of the City thundering from the sky and, marching with the pageant in iron panoply the ghosts of a hundred tyrants; and we have begun to understand in what wide fields and playgrounds of liberty, the Faith that made us free has so long allowed us to wander and to play.
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IL RITORNO DI CESARE
Che sia o no un esempio di prima e seconda infanzia, talvolta accarezzo la bizzarra fantasia che finirò come ho cominciato, cercando di cavare un qualche senso da ciò che in politica si chiama Liberalismo. Circola su di me una storia di Fleet Street, che può essere un fatto, benché io l’abbia interamente dimenticata: che, quando mi fu chiesto se ero un Liberale, risposi: «Sono l’unico Liberale». Si converrà che, di questi tempi, sarei quasi l’unico Liberale. Ma spero che nessuno mi accusi di voler essere un capo liberale. Il Partito Liberale ora consiste interamente di capi — o meglio di sviatori. E tutto ciò che vogliono, tutto ciò che resta loro da implorare, è un unico, semplice, solitario essere umano che sia disposto a lasciarsi sviare. A pensarci meglio, dubito piuttosto che io mi offra anche solo ad adempiere quest’umile ufficio; quali che siano le mie qualifiche per riempire tutti i posti di una pubblica assemblea, e costituire per intero l’uditorio, mentre i miei cinque capi mi arringano dal palco, esortandomi a cinque urgenti ma incompatibili linee d’azione. No, il senso in cui sono di nuovo divenuto consapevole dell’esistenza di un Liberalismo puramente politico non è dovuto tanto a ciò che ne rimane, quanto a ciò che ne è svanito; non a ciò che i Liberali dicono, ma a ciò che non dicono. Di fronte al Fascismo di moda, e alle vacillanti semplificazioni dello Stato Totalitario, c’è davvero moltissimo che andrebbe detto in favore del Liberalismo; o, in linguaggio più chiaro, in favore della Libertà.
Molte cose ritornano; e grazie a Dio viviamo ora in un tempo in cui possiamo tornare a parlare di Chiesa e Stato; benché oggigiorno ciò significhi in genere la Chiesa Cattolica e lo Stato Totalitario. Ma abbiamo almeno abolito la più illiberale delle illiberali limitazioni del Liberalismo. Possiamo riconoscere la religione nella storia, alle spalle delle idee europee, comprese quelle moderne; e sotto questo aspetto la vicenda di Chiesa e Stato è davvero assai strana. Certo, l’unica cosa che ha davvero confuso la vicenda di Chiesa e Stato è quella cosa chiamata Chiesa di Stato. Ma quello è un mero interludio illogico; in cui Dio detiene la sua autorità da Cesare, invece che Cesare detenerla da Dio. Il normale rapporto tra Chiesa e Stato, attraverso la maggior parte delle varie fasi della storia, non è stato propriamente un’istituzione ecclesiastica di Stato, ma qualcosa di più simile a ciò che abbiamo visto riapparire in Germania. Quando non c’era un conflitto, c’era un Concordato. Si noterà che la Chiesa ebbe in genere un Concordato con i suoi nemici piuttosto che con i suoi amici. Ci fu una disputa con Napoleone e un Concordato con Napoleone: una disputa con Mussolini e un Concordato con Mussolini; una disputa con Hitler e un Concordato con Hitler. E benché la parola forse non sarebbe stata usata, e forse non sarebbe stata corretta, qualcosa dello stesso paradosso incombe come una tempesta sospesa sullo Stato e sulla Chiesa nei loro rapporti anche in tempi ben più antichi. Segna la Chiesa nel suo rapporto con gli Imperatori Romani; nel suo rapporto con gli Imperatori Greci; nel suo rapporto con gli Imperatori Germanici. Ci fu sempre una qualche sorta di Concordato, e non ci fu mai una piena concordia.
Ci vuole quasi una vita intera per tracciare la curva o l’orbita della Chiesa, e il ritmo delle cose che ritornano. Ma per chi cresce come un Liberale, e per molti versi è ancora un Liberale, il principale interesse degli ultimi tempi sta in questo. La Chiesa, grosso modo, resta quasi sempre all’incirca alla stessa distanza dallo Stato e dai suoi esperimenti. Vi sono eccezioni, naturalmente; quando un Imperatore perseguita la Chiesa o la Chiesa scomunica un Imperatore. Difficilmente ci si potrebbe aspettare che la Chiesa concordasse gran che, anche nel modo più freddo, con Nerone o con il Movimento del Non-Dio a Mosca. Ma il più delle volte la si trova all’incirca alla stessa distanza dallo Stato in cui è ora dallo Stato Totalitario. Leone XIII stava all’incirca a quella distanza dallo Stato Repubblicano francese. Pochi cattolici avrebbero dovuto in origine stare a una distanza molto maggiore perfino dalla Rivoluzione francese. Ma i nomi stessi serviranno a rammentarci il punto vitale in questione. È lo Stato che muta; è lo Stato che distrugge; è quasi sempre lo Stato che perseguita. Lo Stato Totalitario sta ora facendo tabula rasa di tutte le nostre vecchie nozioni di libertà, ancor più di quanto la Rivoluzione francese fece tabula rasa di tutte le vecchie idee di lealtà. È la Chiesa che scomunica; ma, in quella stessa parola, implica che una comunione resta aperta a un comunicante ristabilito. È lo Stato che stermina; è lo Stato che abolisce assolutamente e del tutto; sia che si tratti dello Stato americano che abolisce la birra, o dello Stato fascista che abolisce i partiti, o dello Stato hitleriano che abolisce quasi tutto tranne se stesso.
Ora, supponiamo, per amor di discussione, che io divenissi di nuovo un semplice Liberale ordinario, come il termine era inteso quando ero attivo nella politica liberale. Supponiamo che io ritenessi giunto il tempo di rammentare agli uomini che c’è davvero un vantaggio intellettuale nell’ascoltare tutte le parti; un aiuto all’ordine in una certa misura di libertà; una salutare irritazione nel governo per mezzo del dibattito. Supponiamo che io dicessi (come dico) che ogni governo dovrebbe essere frenato da un’opposizione; supponiamo che io dicessi (come non dico) che il libero scambio internazionale è dimostrabilmente migliore di tutto questo nazionalismo economico. Supponiamo che io dicessi che il riconosciuto governo della maggioranza è migliore del casuale governo di una minoranza; supponiamo che io dicessi che la Democrazia come fallimento è migliore della Dittatura come successo. Potrei dire tutto questo, e molto di più, e restare un membro del tutto ordinario e ortodosso dell’antica Chiesa. Ma non potrei dirlo, in gran parte del mondo moderno, senza essere punito dallo Stato moderno. Roma, con la sua autorità religiosa, non mi ridurrebbe al silenzio. Ma il Fascismo, con la sua autorità secolare, mi ridurrebbe al silenzio. Il Bolscevismo, con la sua autorità secolare, mi ridurrebbe al silenzio. L’Hitlerismo, con la sua autorità secolare, mi ridurrebbe al silenzio. Quando cominciai a vivere e (ahimè) a scrivere, tutti gli altri Liberali avevano ereditato un’enorme leggenda: che ogni persecuzione fosse venuta dalla Chiesa. Alcuni di essi ancora borbottano vecchi ricordi sull’Inquisizione spagnola (una cosa avviata rigorosamente dallo Stato); con il fatto che li fissa in faccia, cioè che l’effettiva persecuzione ora in corso in Spagna è la spoliazione di Spagnoli, semplicemente perché sono preti e maestri cattolici. Ma comunque, si supponeva che ciò che si chiamava superstizione fosse in qualche modo la madre della persecuzione. Faccio appello a tutti i miei compagni Liberali affinché ammettano che i fatti hanno nettamente contraddetto quest’idea. Ogni cattolico gode di molta più libertà nel Cattolicesimo di quanta ne goda un qualsiasi Liberale sotto il Bolscevismo o il Fascismo. Avrei potuto essere un Liberale e appartenere allo Zentrum in Germania o al Partito Popolare in Italia; non è la Chiesa ma lo Stato che mi fermerebbe. Poiché lo Stato è tornato con tutti i suoi antichi terrori usciti dall’antichità; con gli Dèi della Città che tuonano dal cielo e, in marcia con il corteo in armatura di ferro, i fantasmi di cento tiranni; e abbiamo cominciato a comprendere in quali ampi campi e prati di libertà la Fede che ci ha resi liberi ci abbia così a lungo permesso di vagare e di giocare.
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AUSTRIA
LAST year, the representative of all that remains of the Holy Roman Empire was murdered by the barbarians. As an atrocity it has been adequately denounced; and it breeds in some of us rather a dumb sort of disgust, almost as if it had been done not by barbarians but by beasts. Perhaps the only further fact to be noted, on that side, is the fact that this is the only kind of effort in which these clumsy people are not merely clumsy. The Nordic man of the Nazi type in Germany is a very slow thinker, and incredibly backward and behind the times in science and philosophy. That is why, for instance, he clings to the word “Aryan,” as if he were his own great-grandfather laboriously poring over the first pages of Max Muller, under the concentrated stare of the astounded ethnologists of later days. He is slow in a great many things; as, for instance, in releasing prisoners who are admittedly innocent; or in answering questions put by foreign critics or Catholic bishops. We have good reason to know that he is slow in paying his debts; to the point of ceasing to pay them. He is very slow in bringing about the Utopia that he promised to the German people; the complete financial stability and the total disappearance of unemployment. He is slow in a thousand things, from the length of his meals to the lengthiness of his metaphysics. But in one thing he is not slow but almost slick. He is swift to shed innocent blood; he really has a certain technique in the matter of murdering other people; and the prospect of this sport alone can move him to an animation that is almost human. Hitler really killed quite a creditable number of people for one week-end holiday; and the assassination of Dollfuss did show some touch of that efficiency, which the Nazis once promised to display in other fields of activity.
But it is much more important to insist on the large human and historic matters mentioned at the beginning of this article. Dollfuss died like a loyal and courageous man, asking forgiveness for his murderers; and the souls of the just are in the hands of God, however much their enemies (with that mark of mere mud that is stamped over all they do) take a pleasure in denying them the help of their religion. But Dollfuss dead, even more than Dollfuss living, is also a symbol of something of immense moment to mankind, which is practically never mentioned by our politicians or our papers. We call it for convenience Austria; in a sense we might more truly call it Europe; but, above all (for this is the vital and quite neglected fact), it would be strictly correct and consistent with history to call it Germany. The very fact that the name of “Germany” has been taken from the Austrians and given to the Prussians sums up the tragedy of three hundred years. It was the tale of the war waged by the barbarians against the Empire; the real original German Empire. It began with the first Prussian shot in the Thirty Years’ War; it ended with the shot that killed the Austrian Chancellor.
Whether we call it the Empire, or the Old Germany or the culture of the Danube, what Austria meant and means is this. That it is normal for Europeans, even for Germans, to be civilised; that it is normal for Europeans, even for Germans, to be Christians; and, we must in historic honesty add, normal for them to be Catholics. This culture always incurred the hatred of the barbarians to the north-east; and in the nineteenth century a barbarian of genius, named Bismarck, actually managed to transfer to Prussia the prestige that had always normally belonged to Austria. That is the broad fact which is always left out in all modern enlightened discussion; for it involves two things; an elementary knowledge of history, which is rare, and an elementary knowledge of recent history, which is much rarer than a knowledge of ancient history. There is always a chance that about six politicians have heard of the Roman Empire; and perhaps two and a half politicians have even heard of the Holy Roman Empire. Among the scholarly leader-writers who have hitherto hardly noticed the existence of the Austrians, there are some who have read something about the Ostro-Goths or perhaps (if they are very scholarly) really do know much more about Austrasians than about Austrians. It is sometimes possible to arouse faint interest in anything remotely historic and always possible to arouse a fashionable fuss about anything prehistoric. But the facts which led up to the facts which stare us in the face, those are known practically to nobody in the age of newspapers. And perhaps next to nobody among our rulers will know what is meant by saying that the filthy butchery at Vienna was but the continuation of a policy, expressed in the invasion of Silesia and the victory of Sadowa.
We have at least learned one lesson to-day; that old things return. This is simply that very old remembrance of our race; the barbarian invasion. This is not the Corporative State; or the Fascist Theory; or the thousand theories, including our own, for improving our ancient civilisation. This is the Turks besieging Vienna. If indeed it be not an injustice to the stately, the stable and the reverent religion of Mahomet to compare it with the feverish fads and fallacies that chase each other across the half-baked and half-baptized Teutonism of the North. This is, at least, what all men meant by the Turks besieging Vienna. It is the centre of our civilisation in peril; it is the blow of the barbarian when for once, in his blindness, he happens to aim at the heart.
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AUSTRIA
L’anno scorso il rappresentante di tutto ciò che rimane del Sacro Romano Impero fu assassinato dai barbari. Come atrocità è stata adeguatamente denunciata; e suscita in alcuni di noi piuttosto una sorta di muto disgusto, quasi come se fosse stata compiuta non da barbari ma da bestie. Forse l’unico ulteriore fatto da rilevare, da quel lato, è che questo è l’unico genere di impresa in cui questa goffa gente non è meramente goffa. L’uomo nordico di tipo nazista in Germania è un pensatore assai lento, e incredibilmente arretrato e indietro coi tempi nella scienza e nella filosofia. È per questo, ad esempio, che si aggrappa alla parola «ariano», come se fosse il suo bisnonno che si china laboriosamente sulle prime pagine di Max Müller, sotto lo sguardo fisso e concentrato degli sbalorditi etnologi di epoche successive. È lento in moltissime cose; come, ad esempio, nel rilasciare prigionieri riconosciuti innocenti; o nel rispondere alle domande poste da critici stranieri o da vescovi cattolici. Abbiamo buoni motivi per sapere che è lento nel pagare i suoi debiti; al punto di cessare di pagarli. È molto lento nel realizzare l’Utopia che promise al popolo tedesco; la completa stabilità finanziaria e la totale scomparsa della disoccupazione. È lento in mille cose, dalla durata dei suoi pasti alla prolissità della sua metafisica. Ma in una cosa non è lento, bensì quasi svelto. È rapido nello spargere sangue innocente; ha davvero una certa tecnica nella faccenda di assassinare gli altri; e la prospettiva di questo sport, da sola, può muoverlo a un’animazione che è quasi umana. Hitler uccise davvero un numero piuttosto notevole di persone per un solo fine settimana di vacanza; e l’assassinio di Dollfuss mostrò davvero un certo tocco di quell’efficienza che i nazisti un tempo promisero di dispiegare in altri campi d’attività.
Ma è assai più importante insistere sulle grandi questioni umane e storiche menzionate all’inizio di questo articolo. Dollfuss morì da uomo leale e coraggioso, chiedendo perdono per i suoi assassini; e le anime dei giusti sono nelle mani di Dio, per quanto i loro nemici (con quel marchio di puro fango che è impresso su tutto ciò che fanno) provino piacere nel negare loro il soccorso della propria religione. Ma Dollfuss morto, ancor più di Dollfuss vivo, è anche il simbolo di qualcosa di immenso momento per l’umanità, che non viene praticamente mai menzionato dai nostri politici o dai nostri giornali. Per comodità lo chiamiamo Austria; in un certo senso potremmo più veracemente chiamarlo Europa; ma, soprattutto (poiché questo è il fatto vitale e del tutto trascurato), sarebbe rigorosamente corretto e coerente con la storia chiamarlo Germania. Il fatto stesso che il nome di «Germania» sia stato tolto agli Austriaci e dato ai Prussiani riassume la tragedia di trecento anni. Fu la storia della guerra mossa dai barbari contro l’Impero; il vero, originario Impero germanico. Cominciò col primo colpo prussiano nella Guerra dei Trent’anni; si concluse col colpo che uccise il Cancelliere austriaco.
Sia che lo chiamiamo l’Impero, o la Vecchia Germania, o la cultura del Danubio, ciò che l’Austria significò e significa è questo. Che è normale per gli Europei, perfino per i Tedeschi, essere civili; che è normale per gli Europei, perfino per i Tedeschi, essere cristiani; e, dobbiamo aggiungere per onestà storica, normale per loro essere cattolici. Questa cultura suscitò sempre l’odio dei barbari a nord-est; e nell’Ottocento un barbaro di genio, di nome Bismarck, riuscì effettivamente a trasferire alla Prussia il prestigio che era sempre normalmente appartenuto all’Austria. Questo è il fatto generale che viene sempre tralasciato in ogni moderna e illuminata discussione; poiché implica due cose: una conoscenza elementare della storia, che è rara, e una conoscenza elementare della storia recente, che è assai più rara di una conoscenza della storia antica. C’è sempre la possibilità che una mezza dozzina di politici abbiano sentito parlare dell’Impero Romano; e forse due politici e mezzo hanno persino sentito parlare del Sacro Romano Impero. Tra gli eruditi articolisti di fondo che finora hanno a malapena notato l’esistenza degli Austriaci, ve ne sono alcuni che hanno letto qualcosa sugli Ostrogoti o forse (se sono molto eruditi) sanno davvero assai più sugli Austrasiani che sugli Austriaci. È talvolta possibile suscitare un debole interesse per qualcosa di remotamente storico ed è sempre possibile suscitare un chiasso alla moda intorno a qualcosa di preistorico. Ma i fatti che condussero ai fatti che ci fissano in faccia, quelli sono noti praticamente a nessuno nell’età dei giornali. E forse quasi nessuno tra i nostri governanti saprà che cosa si intenda dicendo che l’immonda carneficina di Vienna non fu che la continuazione di una politica, espressa nell’invasione della Slesia e nella vittoria di Sadowa.
Abbiamo almeno appreso una lezione oggi: che le cose antiche ritornano. Non è che il rammemorare antichissimo della nostra razza; l’invasione barbarica. Questo non è lo Stato Corporativo; o la Teoria Fascista; o le mille teorie, compresa la nostra, per migliorare la nostra antica civiltà. Questo sono i Turchi che assediano Vienna. Se pure non sia un’ingiustizia verso la solenne, la stabile e la reverente religione di Maometto paragonarla alle febbrili manie e fallacie che si rincorrono l’un l’altra attraverso il Teutonismo del Nord, mezzo crudo e mezzo battezzato. Questo è, almeno, ciò che tutti gli uomini intendevano per i Turchi che assediano Vienna. È il centro della nostra civiltà in pericolo; è il colpo del barbaro quando, per una volta, nella sua cecità, gli capita di mirare al cuore.
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THE SCRIPTURE READER
MR. BERNARD SHAW has written a very Protestant tract, on the paramount duty of reading the Bible, and especially of re-reading the Bible; of course in the light of Private Judgment. For Private Judgment is never wrong, just as Private Property is never right. It is something of a triumph to have carried principles so entangled and contradictory, unchanged, untroubled and unenlightened, through a long and valuable life. Some technical difficulties may still prevent Mr. Shaw’s Bible tract from being included in the literature of the British and Foreign Bible Society; but I should imagine that they would soon be overcome; now that the old stuff that calls itself the Modern Mind has become such a muddy amalgam of Puritanism and Modernism that it does not matter, so long as a man reads his Bible, whether he denies his God. But I, who love and admire Bernard Shaw, cannot help being sorry that he should have returned from the land of the Boers so completely transformed into a Baptist missionary beginning to have doubts about Habakkuk. Perhaps it is a judgment on him for having supported the Imperialists in the Boer War; because the Webbs had the truly wonderful notion that it was “practical.”
Of course, like every other sectarian “Scripture-reader,” Mr. Shaw re-reads the Bible and finds something different from what the last sectarian found. That is the whole fun and futility of this “Sunday game,” which has now been played for nearly four hundred years, and is about played out. But the old sectaries, who discovered Calvinism or Quakerism or Mormonism in the Bible, at least had the tenacity to keep hold of what they found; and finish their programme logically. But, alas, Mr. Shaw is a true Modernist in the fact that he cannot complete even his own argument, for fear it should end by proving something. His new theory of Holy Scripture is broadly this; that the Old Testament Prophets were each of them dealing with a different God; though they seem to have been under the impression that it was the same God. Thus the God of Job is better than the God of Noah; the God of Micah is better than the God of Job and therefore … therefore what? The obvious logical conclusion of the argument would be that the God-Man of the Christians, the Second Person of the Trinity, was better than the God of Micah; and rightly replaced him on progressive principles. But here, of course, Mr. Shaw goes all to pieces; wildly reverses the whole of his own theory of theistic improvement, and collapses, muttering some nonsense about the psychological misfortunes of Jesus. That is only one part of the book; but it is typical of the whole of this jointless inconsequent modern way of writing. Pages upon pages are devoted to showing that primitive gods were leading up to something greater and more splendid; and it is perfectly obvious what they did actually lead up to. But the moment the Modernist sees it, he runs away from it.
The actual story of the Black Girl seems to be modelled on Candide; indeed much of it takes place in the famous garden of Voltaire. It was not really a very wide garden; indeed, it was a narrow garden, but it was a neat garden, according to the Dutch gardening of the period: and it is almost a relief after the jungle of journalese that is now called modern thought. Voltaire, unlike Shaw, had a straightforward and logical plan for his story. Candide is a youth brought up by a German professor in a very nonsensical philosophy called Optimism; like many nonsensical philosophies taught by German professors. It was to the effect that everything in this world fits in with our peace and comfort; whatever else it was, it was almost the opposite of Catholicism, or even Protestantism; for Christians had, if anything, rather exaggerated the truth that life is a vale of tears and a place of trial; that peace could only be found in the monastery or justice on the Day of Judgment. But Voltaire has no difficulty in showing how real life knocked this Teutonic heresy of Optimism to pieces. But it marks the more muddled modern mentality that we do not really know, at the end of Mr. Shaw’s parable, what it is that has been knocked to pieces; or whether the Black Girl has found God, or failed to find God, or found that there is no God to find. Anyhow, she has found Mr. Bernard Shaw, who is acting as Voltaire’s gardener, but has not yet learnt the lucid style and thought of his employer. It must be a comfort to Mr. Shaw at least to know that he is truly a Proletarian. Voltaire said that a man should cultivate his garden. It is the measure of Progress that he has since apparently become a servant cultivating his master’s garden.
For the rest, I know there are many simple people who will console and gratify my old friend by being duly shocked at various passages in his book. It would be almost cruel to deprive him of such comfort; but I confess that I myself remained cold, and could not get anything resembling a decent shock out of the whole business. It always seems to me that we must face the question of whether we are dealing with believers or unbelievers; and only a believer can be a blasphemer. We Catholics must realise that by this time we are living in pagan lands; and that the barbarians around us know not what they do. Of course, those who think Jesus was an ordinary man will talk of Him in an ordinary way. What I complain of is that, even then, they cannot talk of Him in a sensible way. For instance, Mr. Shaw has a long dialogue in which his imaginary Jesus feebly implies the idea that everything can be solved by love, and apparently love of any kind. Now there is not a grain of evidence that the historical Jesus of Nazareth ever said that any such emotion, selfish or sensual or sentimental, must be a substitute for everything else everywhere. Rousseau and the Romantics, in the time of Voltaire, sometimes said something a little like it; and the Church resisted it from the beginning, just as Bernard Shaw wakes up to resist it in the end. It is much more important for us to point out that the attack on the Faith breaks down, by its own folly on its own ground, than to express our own feelings about some of the random results of its invincible ignorance, when it stumbles upon ground more sacred.
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IL LETTORE DELLE SCRITTURE
Il SIG. BERNARD SHAW ha scritto un opuscolo assai protestante, sul dovere supremo di leggere la Bibbia, e specialmente di rileggere la Bibbia; naturalmente alla luce del Libero Esame. Poiché il Libero Esame non sbaglia mai, così come la Proprietà Privata non ha mai ragione. È qualcosa di un trionfo aver portato principii tanto ingarbugliati e contraddittori, immutati, imperturbati e non illuminati, attraverso una vita lunga e preziosa. Alcune difficoltà tecniche potrebbero ancora impedire che l’opuscolo biblico del sig. Shaw sia incluso nella letteratura della British and Foreign Bible Society; ma immagino che sarebbero presto superate; ora che quella vecchia roba che si autodefinisce la Mente Moderna è divenuta un amalgama tanto fangoso di Puritanesimo e Modernismo che non importa, purché un uomo legga la sua Bibbia, se rinneghi il suo Dio. Ma io, che amo e ammiro Bernard Shaw, non posso fare a meno di rammaricarmi che egli sia tornato dalla terra dei Boeri così completamente trasformato in un missionario battista che comincia ad avere dubbi su Abacuc. Forse è un castigo per lui, per aver appoggiato gli Imperialisti nella Guerra Boera; perché i Webb ebbero la davvero mirabile idea che essa fosse «pratica».
Naturalmente, come ogni altro settario «lettore delle Scritture», il sig. Shaw rilegge la Bibbia e vi trova qualcosa di diverso da ciò che vi trovò l’ultimo settario. È tutto qui il divertimento e la futilità di questo «gioco della domenica», che si è ormai giocato per quasi quattrocento anni, ed è quasi esaurito. Ma i vecchi settari, che scoprirono il Calvinismo o il Quaccherismo o il Mormonismo nella Bibbia, ebbero almeno la tenacia di tenersi stretti a ciò che avevano trovato; e di portare a compimento il loro programma con logica. Ma, ahimè, il sig. Shaw è un vero Modernista nel fatto che non riesce a completare nemmeno il proprio argomento, per paura che finisca col dimostrare qualcosa. La sua nuova teoria della Sacra Scrittura è in sostanza questa: che i Profeti dell’Antico Testamento avevano ciascuno a che fare con un Dio diverso; benché sembrino essere stati nell’impressione che fosse lo stesso Dio. Così il Dio di Giobbe è migliore del Dio di Noè; il Dio di Michea è migliore del Dio di Giobbe e perciò… perciò che cosa? L’ovvia conclusione logica dell’argomento sarebbe che il Dio-Uomo dei Cristiani, la Seconda Persona della Trinità, era migliore del Dio di Michea; e rettamente lo sostituì secondo principii progressivi. Ma qui, naturalmente, il sig. Shaw va tutto in pezzi; capovolge selvaggiamente l’intera sua teoria del miglioramento teistico, e crolla, borbottando qualche sciocchezza sulle sventure psicologiche di Gesù. Questa è solo una parte del libro; ma è tipica dell’intero, sconnesso e inconseguente modo moderno di scrivere. Pagine su pagine sono dedicate a mostrare che gli dèi primitivi conducevano verso qualcosa di più grande e di più splendido; ed è perfettamente ovvio a che cosa effettivamente condussero. Ma nel momento stesso in cui il Modernista lo vede, fugge da esso.
La vicenda vera e propria della Ragazza Nera pare modellata sul Candide; e anzi buona parte di essa si svolge nel famoso giardino di Voltaire. Non era in realtà un giardino molto ampio; anzi, era un giardino angusto, ma era un giardino ordinato, secondo il giardinaggio olandese dell’epoca: ed è quasi un sollievo dopo la giungla del giornalese che ora si chiama pensiero moderno. Voltaire, a differenza di Shaw, aveva un piano schietto e logico per la sua storia. Candide è un giovane allevato da un professore tedesco in una filosofia assai insensata chiamata Ottimismo; come molte insensate filosofie insegnate da professori tedeschi. Essa sosteneva che ogni cosa in questo mondo si accorda con la nostra pace e il nostro conforto; qualunque altra cosa fosse, era quasi l’opposto del Cattolicesimo, o perfino del Protestantesimo; poiché i Cristiani avevano semmai piuttosto esagerato la verità che la vita è una valle di lacrime e un luogo di prova; che la pace poteva trovarsi solo nel monastero e la giustizia solo nel Giorno del Giudizio. Ma Voltaire non ha alcuna difficoltà a mostrare come la vita reale mandasse in pezzi questa eresia teutonica dell’Ottimismo. Ma segna la mentalità moderna più confusa il fatto che noi non sappiamo davvero, alla fine della parabola del sig. Shaw, che cosa sia stato mandato in pezzi; o se la Ragazza Nera abbia trovato Dio, o non sia riuscita a trovare Dio, o abbia scoperto che non c’è alcun Dio da trovare. Comunque sia, ha trovato il sig. Bernard Shaw, che fa da giardiniere di Voltaire, ma non ha ancora appreso lo stile e il pensiero lucido del suo datore di lavoro. Dev’essere un conforto per il sig. Shaw almeno sapere di essere davvero un Proletario. Voltaire disse che un uomo dovrebbe coltivare il proprio giardino. È la misura del Progresso che egli sia da allora apparentemente divenuto un servo che coltiva il giardino del suo padrone.
Per il resto, so che vi sono molte persone semplici che consoleranno e gratificheranno il mio vecchio amico scandalizzandosi debitamente di vari passi del suo libro. Sarebbe quasi crudele privarlo di un tale conforto; ma confesso che io stesso sono rimasto freddo, e non sono riuscito a ricavare qualcosa che somigliasse a un decente turbamento da tutta la faccenda. Mi pare sempre che dobbiamo affrontare la questione se abbiamo a che fare con credenti o non credenti; e solo un credente può essere un bestemmiatore. Noi cattolici dobbiamo renderci conto che a questo punto viviamo in terre pagane; e che i barbari intorno a noi non sanno quello che fanno. Naturalmente, coloro che ritengono che Gesù fosse un uomo ordinario ne parleranno in modo ordinario. Ciò di cui mi lamento è che, anche allora, non riescono a parlare di Lui in modo sensato. Per esempio, il sig. Shaw ha un lungo dialogo in cui il suo Gesù immaginario insinua fiaccamente l’idea che tutto possa risolversi con l’amore, e apparentemente con l’amore di qualunque specie. Ora, non c’è un grano di prova che il Gesù storico di Nazaret abbia mai detto che una qualsiasi emozione simile, egoistica o sensuale o sentimentale, debba fungere da sostituto di ogni altra cosa ovunque. Rousseau e i Romantici, ai tempi di Voltaire, dissero talvolta qualcosa di un po’ simile; e la Chiesa vi resistette fin dal principio, proprio come Bernard Shaw si desta a resistervi alla fine. È assai più importante per noi far notare che l’attacco alla Fede crolla, per la propria stoltezza sul proprio terreno, piuttosto che esprimere i nostri sentimenti su alcuni dei casuali risultati della sua invincibile ignoranza, quando essa inciampa su un terreno più sacro.
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AN EXPLANATION
THE last two essays in this collection have so obviously the character of newspaper correspondence, that a word must be added about the circumstances of their appearance. At the request of the B.B.C., I gave an address in their series on Freedom about the Catholic view of the matter; an address which was very much criticised; but I sometimes fancy that the most deadly criticism was involuntary and unconscious. For I could not help feeling that some of my critics must have gone to sleep, and snatched a brief respite from the recital, only to wake again with a start and all the bewilderments of nightmare, to hear the ruthless infliction still going on. I should be the last to blame them; I sometimes nearly go to sleep myself when listening to myself, let alone to anybody so remote from me as I must naturally be from them. But the actual effect, anyhow, was that most of the agonised questions which they asked me afterwards I had already answered before they were asked. At the beginning of the whole address, I explained the beginning of the whole business; that I had been specially asked to speak as a Catholic and therefore as a controversialist. If they asked Sir Oswald Mosley to explain why he was a Fascist, it might or might not be popular; but it would be a little hard on Sir Oswald to complain that he had dragged the subject of Fascism into politics, or the subject ot politics into the B.B.C. Yet to read some of the innocent criticism I have read, one would really suppose I had been asked to give a literary lecture on Milton or Shelley, and had seized the opportunity to deliver a wild eulogy upon Torquemada and Guy Fawkes. If indeed, in this free country where (I am assured) all views can be expressed, it is unpardonable to suggest that the Protestant view of Freedom is wrong, some responsibility must be shared by those who ask the Catholic to explain why the Catholic view is right. For that peculiar diplomatic and tactful art of saying that Catholicism is true, without suggesting for one moment that anti-Catholicism is false, is an art which I am too old a Rationalist to learn at my time of life.
The second legend that arose out of hearing, or not hearing, my wireless speech, was an extraordinary delusion that I made a speech about drink. Out of nineteen hundred words, the newspapers seemed to have selected three words, in the form of the polished epigram, “I like beer.” Now I fear I am so constituted by cultural tradition, that I cannot for the life of me see anything more comic, or eccentric, or provocative, or sensational, about saying, “I like beer,” than about saying, “I like bananas.” But I do most certainly see that there would be something both egotistical and trivial about saying, “I like bananas,” if it were not a part of an ordinary objective argument. And my remark was a part of an objective argument. Only I was arguing for the exact opposite of what they imagine. I said it was well to remember, to start with, that an ordinary poor man from Catholic countries would find what he regarded as ancient universal popular liberties forbidden in Protestant countries. The obvicus instances are Prohibition and the veto on the Irish Sweepstake. I then said that these lighter instances were balanced indifferently for me, because “I like beer; there is nothing that bores me quite so much as horse-racing. But I have some sense of human rights.” In short it is self-evident that I only said I like beer in order to show that it did not matter a curse what I liked. Yet in face of this fact, an excellent cultivated weekly paper declared that I should not like Liberty if I did not like beer. The editor handsomely admitted the fact when I drew his attention to it, and my quarrel is not here with him. But further comments were made in the matter, which are the text of one these two essays.
For the rest if any one doubts that there is such a thing as Catholic liberty, I think it can do no harm to let him realise that there is such a thing as Catholic controversy; I mean controversy between Catholics. I have, therefore, included here my reply to some frank and friendly but very definite doubts about my action, that were expressed in one of the very best of the modern Catholic papers. For I feel it would not be fair to answer somewhat controversially a criticism in an Anglican organ, while in any way concealing the fact that I have been criticised also in an organ of my own communion. It will also be clear from the context, I think, that a distinguished Italian, Dr. Crespi, who speaks specially as an opponent of Fascism, attacked me at a slightly different angle. And this alone would illustrate the main fact; that the substance of my speech was concerned with all sorts of large modern problems, and had no more to do with my taste in beer than with my familiar appearance as a fashionable figure at Ascot. I pointed out that, by limiting liberty to preaching and printing, we had given a huge advantage to cranks over common Christian people; that we had lost a peasantry and were living under a plutocracy. Indeed, some critics combined the contradictory accusations; having proved that I was wholly concentrated upon booze and betting, they rushed on to rend the sky with cries against my sweeping slanders on the Press, the Parliament, the Landlord System and the British Empire. If they will try compressing all these topics into twenty minutes, they will understand how easy it is for the hearer (even if he manages to keep awake) to miss the proportion and the point.
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WHY PROTESTANTS PROHIBIT (1)
IT is with mingled respect and regret that I differ from a paper I admire so much as I do the Catholic Herald, or a critic for whom I have so much sympathy as I have for Dr. Crespi. I have already said that the Herald is nearly the best, or the only newspaper we have; and my confidence in Dr. Crespi’s sincerity is so complete that I unhesitatingly accept his assurance that he has both read and heard my address on Liberty; for without that assurance, I might be tempted now and then to think he had done neither. But this distressing exhibition of mine seems to have been such a shock to him as to leave him with a strange impression that I uttered some sort of eulogy, or at least apology, touching Italian Fascism, or more generally, the new dictatorships in Europe. Now as a fact, I was very careful to explain that I did nothing of the sort. I said of such a system that I detested some forms of it, that I did not defend any form of it; that it practically proclaimed itself a tyranny, and that I was quite ready to treat it as a tyranny. What I said was that this tyranny, even if it was a tyranny, had not in fact torn up certain traditions of popular freedom in Catholic countries, which have been, and are being, more and more ruthlessly and rapidly torn up and uprooted in Protestant countries. If I say, “Even Nero never forbade people to grow corn,” I am not uttering a eulogy on Nero; and that is the sort of thing I might say about the Prohibitionists who forbade men to drink wine. But there is indeed a curious irony about my two friendly critics on this occasion. My own friendly feeling for the Herald is largely founded on the fact that it does print solid blocks of information about what wicked foreigners have to say for themselves, including Fascists and Hitlerites; so that we can judge for ourselves how wicked the foreigners are. And my unfriendly criticism of British plutocracy is largely founded on the fact that its monopolist newspapers never do this; being owned by one or two millionaires ignorant of Europe and interested only in some silly stunt or slogan. In short, I only say that if dictators suppress newspapers, newspaper proprietors suppress news. And yet I am rebuked for disliking this, even by those who avoid it.
UNA SPIEGAZIONE
Gli ultimi due saggi di questa raccolta hanno così manifestamente il carattere della corrispondenza giornalistica, che occorre aggiungere una parola sulle circostanze della loro comparsa. Su richiesta della B.B.C., tenni un intervento nella loro serie sulla Libertà a proposito della veduta cattolica della questione; un intervento che fu assai criticato; ma talvolta mi immagino che la critica più letale fu involontaria e inconscia. Poiché non potevo fare a meno di sentire che alcuni dei miei critici dovevano essersi addormentati nel sonno, cogliendo un breve sollievo dalla recitazione, solo per ridestarsi di soprassalto e con tutti gli smarrimenti dell’incubo, udendo che l’inflizione spietata era ancora in corso. Sarei l’ultimo a biasimarli; talvolta io stesso quasi cado nel sonno nell’ascoltare me stesso, per non dire nemmeno nell’ascoltare chiunque sia tanto remoto da me quanto io devo naturalmente esserlo da loro. Ma l’effetto reale, comunque, fu che alla maggior parte delle angosciate domande che mi rivolsero in seguito io avevo già risposto prima che fossero poste. All’inizio dell’intero intervento, spiegai l’inizio dell’intera faccenda; che mi era stato espressamente chiesto di parlare come cattolico e perciò come polemista. Se si chiedesse a Sir Oswald Mosley di spiegare perché è fascista, potrebbe risultare popolare oppure no; ma sarebbe un po’ duro nei confronti di Sir Oswald lamentarsi che egli abbia trascinato l’argomento del Fascismo nella politica, o l’argomento della politica nella B.B.C. Eppure, a leggere certe delle innocenti critiche che ho letto, si supporrebbe davvero che mi fosse stato chiesto di tenere una conferenza letteraria su Milton o Shelley, e che io avessi colto l’occasione per pronunciare un selvaggio elogio di Torquemada e di Guy Fawkes. Se invero, in questo libero paese dove (mi si assicura) tutte le opinioni possono essere espresse, è imperdonabile suggerire che la veduta protestante della Libertà sia sbagliata, una qualche responsabilità dev’essere condivisa da coloro che chiedono al cattolico di spiegare perché la veduta cattolica sia giusta. Poiché quella peculiare arte diplomatica e piena di tatto di dire che il Cattolicesimo è vero, senza suggerire per un solo istante che l’anticattolicesimo sia falso, è un’arte che io sono un Razionalista troppo vecchio, a questo tempo della mia vita, per apprendere.
La seconda leggenda che nacque dall’aver ascoltato, o non ascoltato, il mio discorso radiofonico, fu una straordinaria illusione secondo cui io avrei fatto un discorso sul bere. Su millenovecento parole, i giornali parvero averne selezionate tre, nella forma del levigato epigramma: «Mi piace la birra». Ora, temo di essere così costituito dalla tradizione culturale, che per la vita mia non riesco a vedere nulla di più comico, o eccentrico, o provocatorio, o sensazionale, nel dire «Mi piace la birra», che nel dire «Mi piacciono le banane». Ma vedo di certo che ci sarebbe qualcosa di egotistico e triviale nel dire «Mi piacciono le banane», se non fosse parte di un ordinario argomento oggettivo. E la mia osservazione era parte di un argomento oggettivo. Solo che stavo argomentando l’esatto opposto di ciò che essi immaginano. Dissi che era bene ricordare, tanto per cominciare, che un ordinario pover’uomo dei paesi cattolici troverebbe ciò che egli considerava antiche, universali e popolari libertà proibite nei paesi protestanti. Gli esempi ovvi sono il Proibizionismo e il veto sull’Irish Sweepstake. Dissi poi che questi esempi più lievi si bilanciavano indifferentemente per me, perché «mi piace la birra; non c’è nulla che mi annoi tanto quanto le corse dei cavalli. Ma ho un certo senso dei diritti umani». In breve, è di per sé evidente che dissi soltanto che mi piace la birra allo scopo di mostrare che non importava un accidente ciò che a me piaceva. Eppure, di fronte a questo fatto, un eccellente e colto settimanale dichiarò che a me non piacerebbe la Libertà se non mi piacesse la birra. Il direttore ammise galantemente il fatto quando gliene richiamai l’attenzione, e la mia disputa non è qui con lui. Ma sulla questione furono avanzati ulteriori commenti, che sono il testo di uno di questi due saggi.
Per il resto, se qualcuno dubita che esista una cosa come la libertà cattolica, credo non possa nuocere fargli capire che esiste una cosa come la controversia cattolica; intendo la controversia tra cattolici. Ho perciò incluso qui la mia risposta ad alcuni franchi e amichevoli ma assai netti dubbi sul mio operato, espressi in uno dei migliori tra i moderni giornali cattolici. Poiché sento che non sarebbe leale rispondere in modo alquanto polemico a una critica apparsa su un organo anglicano, occultando in qualche modo il fatto che sono stato criticato anche in un organo della mia stessa comunione. Risulterà inoltre chiaro dal contesto, credo, che un illustre italiano, il dottor Crespi, il quale parla specificamente come avversario del Fascismo, mi ha attaccato da un’angolazione lievemente diversa. E questo, da solo, illustrerebbe il fatto principale; cioè che la sostanza del mio discorso riguardava ogni sorta di grandi problemi moderni, e non aveva più a che fare con il mio gusto per la birra di quanto ne avesse la mia consueta apparizione come figura alla moda ad Ascot. Feci notare che, limitando la libertà alla predicazione e alla stampa, avevamo dato un enorme vantaggio agli stravaganti sulla comune gente cristiana; che avevamo perduto un contadiname e vivevamo sotto una plutocrazia. Anzi, alcuni critici combinarono le accuse contraddittorie; dopo aver dimostrato che io ero interamente concentrato sull’alcol e sulle scommesse, si precipitarono a lacerare il cielo con grida contro le mie sferzanti calunnie sulla Stampa, il Parlamento, il Sistema Fondiario e l’Impero Britannico. Se proveranno a comprimere tutti questi temi in venti minuti, capiranno quanto sia facile per l’ascoltatore (anche se riesce a restare sveglio) sfuggire alla proporzione e al punto.
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PERCHÉ I PROTESTANTI PROIBISCONO (1)
È con misto rispetto e rammarico che dissento da un giornale che ammiro tanto quanto ammiro il Catholic Herald, o da un critico verso il quale nutro tanta simpatia quanta ne ho per il dottor Crespi. Ho già detto che l’Herald è quasi il migliore, o l’unico giornale che abbiamo; e la mia fiducia nella sincerità del dottor Crespi è così completa che accetto senza esitazione la sua assicurazione di aver sia letto sia udito il mio intervento sulla Libertà; poiché, senza quell’assicurazione, potrei di tanto in tanto essere tentato di pensare che non avesse fatto né l’una né l’altra cosa. Ma questa mia penosa esibizione pare essere stata per lui un tale colpo da lasciarlo con la strana impressione che io avessi pronunciato una sorta di elogio, o almeno di apologia, a proposito del Fascismo italiano, o più in generale delle nuove dittature in Europa. Ora, di fatto, ebbi molta cura di spiegare che non feci nulla del genere. Dissi di un tale sistema che ne detestavo alcune forme, che non ne difendevo alcuna forma; che esso praticamente si proclamava una tirannia, e che io ero prontissimo a trattarlo come una tirannia. Ciò che dissi fu che questa tirannia, anche se era una tirannia, non aveva di fatto lacerato certe tradizioni di libertà popolare nei paesi cattolici, che sono state, e sono, sempre più spietatamente e rapidamente lacerate e sradicate nei paesi protestanti. Se dico «Persino Nerone non proibì mai alla gente di coltivare il grano», non sto pronunciando un elogio di Nerone; ed è il genere di cosa che potrei dire dei Proibizionisti che vietarono agli uomini di bere vino. Ma c’è davvero una curiosa ironia riguardo ai miei due amichevoli critici in questa occasione. Il mio proprio sentimento amichevole verso l’Herald si fonda in gran parte sul fatto che esso stampa solidi blocchi di informazione su ciò che gli stranieri malvagi hanno da dire a propria difesa, compresi Fascisti e Hitleriani; così che possiamo giudicare da noi quanto siano malvagi gli stranieri. E la mia critica poco amichevole della plutocrazia britannica si fonda in gran parte sul fatto che i suoi giornali monopolisti non fanno mai questo; essendo posseduti da uno o due milionari ignoranti dell’Europa e interessati soltanto a qualche sciocca trovata o slogan. In breve, dico soltanto che se i dittatori sopprimono i giornali, i proprietari di giornali sopprimono le notizie. Eppure vengo rimproverato per il fatto di disapprovare questo, perfino da coloro che lo evitano.
Similarly, I warmly respect Dr. Crespi for trying to free his country from what he regards as oppression and wrong. But apparently he will not allow me to do the same thing for my country. I fear, on this point, I must be firm with him. I respectfully refuse to allow my native land to be ruined by blindness and pride and hypocrisy, and its heart eaten out by corruption and the worship of wealth; merely in order that Dr. Crespi may have a wholly imaginary England to flourish in the face of Signor Mussolini.
I need not in this space destroy the delusion in detail; because for most English economists (especially Catholics) it is already destroyed. I will only say that his paean in praise of nineteenth-century capitalism would have been very welcome to the rich in the nineteenth century; and greatly encouraged those who laid on the millions a yoke little better than slavery. But I will give him a tip: from one who knows (I make bold to say) more about England than he does. Whenever he sees our newspapers announcing revival of trade it simply means that employers have found out how to cut down the wage bill. All recent industrial history here has been a scheme to lower wages; beginning with the triumph of the lock-out that crushed the miners, followed by vindictive laws against Labour after the general strike, and ending by taking advantage of the default on gold, to pay every workman a pound that is not a pound. That is how we do it here. I did not argue whether it is worse when done by a despot or by this anonymous conspiracy. But the tragedy (and to me despotism instead of democracy, even theoretical democracy, is a tragedy) is largely due to reaction against commercial conspiracies. For the rest let not your Wireless Expert weep for me; or imagine that all will be bewildered who “have not the key.” I happen to have stacks of letters from very poor people thanking me for pointing out how the small men are now crushed in England if they attempt independence. They are turned out of house and shop by the hundred, by modern monopolist aggression. They have the key all right; it is called in slang the key of the street. None of them has heard ot the Keys of Peter; but, being poor like St. Peter, they know how poor men are goaded in the House of the Governor; and what rage rises in them against the servant of Caiaphas. They support me sufficiently, thank you, in not encouraging the Englishman to play the Pharisee.
The fact is that Protestant tyranny is totally different from Catholic tyranny; let alone Catholic liberty. It is ineradicably rooted in a totally opposite motive and moral philosophy. You seem to suggest that, where Protestant restrictions are really excessive it is but a part of the normal temptation of officials to magnify their office.
Under your favour, it is nothing of the sort. That is just the point of the whole business. Protestantism is in its nature prone to what may be called Prohibitionism. I do not mean prohibition of drink (though it happens to be a convenient comparison: that none ot the ten thousand tyrants of Mediterranean history would ever have dreamed of uprooting the vine since Pentheus was torn in pieces); I mean that the Protestant tends to prohibit, rather than to curtail or control. His theory of Prohibition is rooted in his theory of progress; which began with expectation of the Millennium; but has ended in similar expectations ot the Superman. I have no notion what Dr Crespi means by my golden age: after Eden I know of no golden age in the past. But Protestant progress does imply a golden age in the future— and one utterly cut off or altered from the past. By now this Dawnism is deeply affected by Darwinism. Man is a monkey who has lost his tail and does not want it back. It is not a question of docking his tail, because it takes up too much room; or telling him to curl up his tail and only wave it on festive occasions; as in the Catholic view of discipline and recreation. No men need tails; so they need amputation.
Now the modern Protestant applies this absolute idea of amputation to all parts of problematical human nature; to all popular customs or historic traditions. He does not mean that men should be restrained in them just now; he means that men should drop them for ever, like the monkey’s tail. When puritans abolish ritualism, it means there shall be no more ritual. When prohibitionists abolished beer, they swore that a whole new generation would grow up and never know the taste of it. When Protestants look to the solution of Socialism, most of them do not merely mean to attack the contemporary congestion called capitalism; they mean to abolish for ever the very idea of private property.
Thus there is a fanatical quality, sweeping, final, almost suicidal, in Protestant reforms which there is not even in Catholic repressions. Once Puritanism pervaded America, once Prussianism pervaded Germany, there appeared a new type of law; sterilization or compulsory eugenics, from which even the dictators ot the Latin tradition would shrink. There have been any number of good Catholics who might be called puritans, from Savonarola to Manning who made their little bonfires of the vanities; but they never mistook them for the everlasting bonfire.
There have been any number of bad Catholics who might be called tyrants from Borgia to Bomba, who drilled or destroyed from hate or ambition; but even when torturing men they never thought they were twisting or altering Man. Therefore their prohibitions were never so prohibitionist. Mussolini may be wrong to suppress newspapers; but who can imagine Mussolini saying, “The world will never again be cursed with printed leaves,” as Jennings Bryan would say, “We shall never again be cursed with alcoholic liquor”? I think some of the recent Fascist schemes for drilling children reach the ridiculous; but they do not reach the point of saying that children should be kept from their mothers; a point which numberless Protestant progressive followers of Wells or Shaw would reach in one wild bound. In short, apart from Catholic liberty, Catholic tyranny is either temporary in the sense of a penance or a fast, or temporary in the sense of a state of siege or a proclamation of martial law. But Protestant liberty is far more oppressive than Catholic tyranny. For Protestant liberty is only the unlimited liberty of the rich to destroy an unlimited number of the liberties of the poor.
Allo stesso modo, rispetto calorosamente il dottor Crespi per il tentativo di liberare il suo paese da ciò che egli considera oppressione e ingiustizia. Ma a quanto pare egli non permetterà a me di fare la stessa cosa per il mio paese. Temo, su questo punto, di dover essere fermo con lui. Rifiuto rispettosamente di lasciare che la mia terra natia sia rovinata dalla cecità, dall’orgoglio e dall’ipocrisia, e il suo cuore divorato dalla corruzione e dal culto della ricchezza; solo affinché il dottor Crespi possa avere un’Inghilterra del tutto immaginaria da sventolare in faccia al Signor Mussolini.
Non occorre che io distrugga in dettaglio l’illusione in questo spazio; perché per la maggior parte degli economisti inglesi (specialmente cattolici) essa è già distrutta. Dirò soltanto che il suo peana in lode del capitalismo ottocentesco sarebbe stato assai gradito ai ricchi nell’Ottocento; e avrebbe grandemente incoraggiato coloro che posero sui milioni un giogo poco migliore della schiavitù. Ma gli darò un suggerimento: da parte di chi ne sa (oso dire) più di lui sull’Inghilterra. Ogni volta che vede i nostri giornali annunciare una ripresa dei commerci, ciò significa semplicemente che i datori di lavoro hanno scoperto come tagliare il monte salari. Tutta la recente storia industriale qui è stata un piano per abbassare i salari; cominciando col trionfo della serrata che schiacciò i minatori, seguito da leggi vendicative contro il Lavoro dopo lo sciopero generale, e terminando col trarre vantaggio dall’abbandono dell’aureo per pagare a ogni operaio una sterlina che non è una sterlina. È così che facciamo le cose qui. Non discussi se sia peggio quando è fatto da un despota o da questa anonima cospirazione. Ma la tragedia (e per me il dispotismo al posto della democrazia, anche della democrazia teorica, è una tragedia) è in gran parte dovuta alla reazione contro le cospirazioni commerciali. Per il resto, il vostro Esperto della Radio non pianga per me; né immagini che tutti saranno sconcertati coloro che «non hanno la chiave». Mi capita di avere pile di lettere da parte di gente assai povera che mi ringrazia per aver fatto notare come i piccoli siano ora schiacciati in Inghilterra se tentano l’indipendenza. Vengono cacciati a centinaia dalla casa e dalla bottega, dalla moderna aggressione monopolista. Ce l’hanno benissimo, la chiave; nel gergo si chiama la chiave della strada. Nessuno di loro ha sentito parlare delle Chiavi di Pietro; ma, essendo poveri come san Pietro, sanno quanto i pover’uomini siano pungolati nella Casa del Governatore; e quale collera monti in loro contro il servo di Caifa. Mi sostengono a sufficienza, grazie, nel non incoraggiare l’Inglese a fare il Fariseo.
Il fatto è che la tirannia protestante è totalmente diversa dalla tirannia cattolica; per non dire nemmeno della libertà cattolica. È inestirpabilmente radicata in un movente e in una filosofia morale del tutto opposti. Voi parete suggerire che, là dove le restrizioni protestanti sono davvero eccessive, si tratta soltanto di una parte della normale tentazione dei funzionari di ingigantire il proprio ufficio.
Con vostra licenza, non è affatto così. È proprio questo il punto di tutta la faccenda. Il Protestantesimo è per sua natura incline a ciò che si può chiamare Proibizionismo. Non intendo la proibizione del bere (benché capiti di essere un comodo paragone: che nessuno dei diecimila tiranni della storia mediterranea avrebbe mai sognato di sradicare la vite, da quando Penteo fu fatto a pezzi); intendo che il protestante tende a proibire, piuttosto che a limitare o controllare. La sua teoria della Proibizione è radicata nella sua teoria del progresso; che cominciò con l’attesa del Millennio; ma è finita in attese analoghe del Superuomo. Non ho idea di che cosa il dottor Crespi intenda per la mia età dell’oro: dopo l’Eden non conosco alcuna età dell’oro nel passato. Ma il progresso protestante implica sì un’età dell’oro nel futuro — e del tutto tagliata via o alterata rispetto al passato. Ormai questo Aurorismo è profondamente influenzato dal Darwinismo. L’uomo è una scimmia che ha perduto la coda e non la rivuole indietro. Non è questione di mozzargli la coda, perché occupa troppo spazio; o di dirgli di arricciare la coda e di agitarla solo nelle occasioni festive; come nella veduta cattolica della disciplina e della ricreazione. Nessun uomo ha bisogno della coda; e dunque essi hanno bisogno dell’amputazione.
Ora il moderno protestante applica quest’idea assoluta di amputazione a tutte le parti della problematica natura umana; a tutte le usanze popolari o le tradizioni storiche. Non intende che gli uomini debbano esserne trattenuti soltanto per ora; intende che gli uomini debbano abbandonarle per sempre, come la coda della scimmia. Quando i puritani aboliscono il ritualismo, ciò significa che non vi sarà più alcun rito. Quando i proibizionisti abolirono la birra, giurarono che un’intera nuova generazione sarebbe cresciuta senza mai conoscerne il sapore. Quando i protestanti guardano alla soluzione del Socialismo, la maggior parte di essi non intende semplicemente attaccare la congestione contemporanea chiamata capitalismo; intende abolire per sempre l’idea stessa della proprietà privata.
Vi è dunque una qualità fanatica, radicale, definitiva, quasi suicida, nelle riforme protestanti, che non c’è nemmeno nelle repressioni cattoliche. Una volta che il Puritanesimo pervase l’America, una volta che il Prussianesimo pervase la Germania, apparve un nuovo tipo di legge; la sterilizzazione o l’Eugenetica obbligatoria, dinanzi alla quale perfino i dittatori della tradizione latina indietreggerebbero. Vi è stato un gran numero di buoni cattolici che si potrebbero chiamare puritani, da Savonarola a Manning, i quali accesero i loro piccoli falò delle vanità; ma non li scambiarono mai per il falò eterno.
Vi è stato un gran numero di cattivi cattolici che si potrebbero chiamare tiranni, da Borgia a Bomba, i quali addestrarono o distrussero per odio o ambizione; ma anche torturando gli uomini non pensarono mai di torcere o alterare l’Uomo. Perciò le loro proibizioni non furono mai così proibizioniste. Mussolini può avere torto a sopprimere i giornali; ma chi può immaginare Mussolini dire: «Il mondo non sarà mai più maledetto da fogli stampati», come Jennings Bryan direbbe: «Non saremo mai più maledetti da liquori alcolici»? Credo che alcuni dei recenti piani fascisti per addestrare i bambini raggiungano il ridicolo; ma non raggiungono il punto di dire che i bambini debbano essere tenuti lontani dalle loro madri; un punto che innumerevoli seguaci progressisti protestanti di Wells o di Shaw raggiungerebbero con un solo balzo selvaggio. In breve, a parte la libertà cattolica, la tirannia cattolica è o temporanea nel senso di una penitenza o di un digiuno, o temporanea nel senso di uno stato d’assedio o di una proclamazione della legge marziale. Ma la libertà protestante è assai più oppressiva della tirannia cattolica. Poiché la libertà protestante non è che la libertà illimitata dei ricchi di distruggere un numero illimitato delle libertà dei poveri.
The B.B.C., much to the credit of its own relatively sound sense of liberty, having asked me specially for what I thought about Catholicism, I did certainly divulge the secret that I thought it was true; and that, therefore, even great cultures falling away from it, in any direction, had fallen into falsehood. I fully appreciate the desire to be fair or friendly that may lead anyone to deplore this disclosure; but I do not myself believe it will do an atom of good to anyone, least of all to the English, to whitewash or conceal the bad results of heresy in history. I was, therefore, a little puzzled when a contributor called it “a sectarian note.” Somehow, I had not expected anybody on the Catholic Herald to call the Catholic Church a sect.
- Letter to the Catholic Herald.
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WHERE IS THE PARADOX?
A WRITER on a High Church paper, being full of the lyric muse, recently described me as a “prolix Papist professor of paradox”; a line which it is my firm intention to extend into a poem of no less than nine verses depending upon the letter p; by which alliterative industry the unaccountable absence of any allusion to polygamous Popes, poisoning Pontiffs, piratical prelates and pestilent peasantries, will be supplied and made good at my own expense. And though the editor very gracefully apologised for having been accidentally prevented, doubtless by my prolixity, from discovering what I actually said in the passage he criticised, another critic has since then broken out on the same paper in the same literary style; and described the same statement as going “beyond such terminological inexactitude as is permissible in the most putrid paradox”; and saying I devote myself to the propaganda of the gutter. I rather wish I knew what it is that makes the most distant prospect of me (of me, a mere dot on the crowded horizon) throw an honest gentleman at the Faith House, Tufton Street, into such astonishing convulsions. It is all the more mysterious because, so far as I am concerned, it is entirely unprovoked. I have never made any particular attack on the Anglo-Catholic theory, or the Anglican Church, or upon any Anglicans, as such. I know the Anglo-Catholic theory can be honestly held; for I held it myself for many years. I have the greatest respect for those who are in such a state of conviction; as well as the greatest sympathy for those who are in any stage of doubt. I still have a large number of Anglo-Catholic friends, who do not find me so very putrid and prolix, and, though of course I differ from them, I have always rather avoided mere dispute with them; partly because there are so many things much more in need of being disputed; and partly because I know from experience that it often does more harm than good. I used to read the paper in question because it was a good paper; and until quite recently a good-humoured paper. Why so innocuous a reader should have this extraordinary effect on the other readers and writers, I do not clearly understand. But the effect is so extraordinary that the critic falls back desperately on a sort of half-defence of Puritanism, of Protestantism and of Prussianism; though these are things which all the old Anglo-Catholics used to denounce, and which I used to denounce quite as much when I was myself an Anglo-Gatholic. On a former occasion, for instance, in the same strained way, it picked a particular personal quarrel with me merely because I joined with the whole civilised world in deploring the assassination of Dollfuss. If it were only a matter of personal quarrels, it would not be worth referring to again; for I am quite content with the admission already made about the facts in dispute; and all is gas and gaiters. But there are much more important quarrels, which concern all Christendom and especially this country, about which I can hardly leave an important organ of opinion under so false an impression.
Touching Mr. C. E. Douglas, the smeller out of putrid paradoxes, I need only record that he complains of “an unhistorical use of the word Catholic,” and assures us that we should be content with the fact that clergy of the national church are attached to nearly all our institutions, as a guarantee that “in theory, the Catholic religion is the official religion of the nation.” I can only say that if he used his imagination about our point of view, as much as I try to use my imagination about his, it would, I think, dawn upon him that it is not altogether unreasonable in a real Catholic, or even a real Anglo-Catholic, to find this official reassurance a little thin. Certainly, in that sense, there are “Catholic” priests attached to all sorts of things; there is a “Catholic” bishop preaching that science has destroyed the whole original Christian scheme; there is a “Catholic” dean who booms Birth-Prevention like a quack medicine; there is a “Catholic” canon who is ready to “break bread” apparently with anybody from Mormons to Moslems; at least I myself should rather prefer the Moslems. But I cannot believe that either Mr. Douglas or the Editor of the paper really regards that retrospective breakfast as a substitute for the Blessed Sacrament. But though Mr. Douglas’s view of our scruples is not highly sympathetic or discerning, there is one point on which Mr. Douglas endears himself to me, though I dare not hope that I am likely to endear myself to him. He may think what he likes about me, so long as he will go on thinking what he now thinks about Prussia. Because I classed Prussia with England among the Protestant countries, he protests against anything like a suggestion that they are the same sort of countries; and there I am warmly with him. They have certain negative things in common; but even in these it would be true to say that the Prussian prefers to be bullied where the Englishman only submits to be blinded. But England is a thousand times jollier and more human as a national culture than Prussia; the disease is milder and the mood more healthy. But it is a mood which is weakened by the absence of a militant creed of Christian morals, and the power to define and defend. The test could best be made by the introduction of some of the new abnormal laws already threatening the world in the name of science. Suppose something of the type of Compulsory Sterilisation or Compulsory Contraception really stalks through the modern State, leading the march of human progress through abortion to infanticide. If the heathens in North Germany received it, they would accept it with howls of barbaric joy, as one of the sacred commands of the Race Religion; the proceedings very probably terminating (by that time) with a little human sacrifice. If the English received it, they would accept it as law-abiding citizens; that is, as something between well-trained servants and bewildered children. There is a great difference; but not so great as the certainty that the Irish would not accept it at all.
La B.B.C., a molto credito del suo proprio senso relativamente sano della libertà, avendomi chiesto espressamente ciò che pensavo del Cattolicesimo, io divulgai di certo il segreto che lo ritenevo vero; e che, perciò, anche grandi culture allontanandosene, in qualsiasi direzione, erano cadute nella falsità. Apprezzo pienamente il desiderio di essere leale o amichevole che può indurre chiunque a deplorare questa rivelazione; ma io stesso non credo che gioverà un atomo a nessuno, meno che mai agli Inglesi, imbiancare o nascondere i cattivi risultati dell’eresia nella storia. Fui perciò un poco perplesso quando un collaboratore la definì «una nota settaria». In qualche modo, non mi ero aspettato che qualcuno sul Catholic Herald chiamasse la Chiesa Cattolica una setta.
- Lettera al Catholic Herald.
-/-
DOV’È IL PARADOSSO?
Uno scrittore di un giornale High Church, pieno della lirica musa, mi ha descritto di recente come un «prolisso professore papista di paradosso»; un verso che è mia ferma intenzione estendere in un poema di non meno di nove strofe imperniate sulla lettera p; con la quale allitterativa industria l’inspiegabile assenza di ogni allusione a Papi poligami, Pontefici avvelenatori, prelati piratici e pestilenti pezzenti sarà colmata e riparata a mie spese. E benché il direttore si sia con molta grazia scusato per essere stato accidentalmente impedito, senza dubbio dalla mia prolissità, di scoprire ciò che realmente dissi nel passo che criticava, un altro critico da allora è prorotto sullo stesso giornale nello stesso stile letterario; e ha descritto la stessa affermazione come qualcosa che va «oltre quella inesattezza terminologica che è ammissibile nel più putrido paradosso»; e dice che io mi dedico alla propaganda del rigagnolo. Vorrei piuttosto sapere che cosa mai sia che fa sì che la più remota prospettiva di me (di me, un mero puntino sull’affollato orizzonte) getti un onesto gentiluomo alla Faith House, Tufton Street, in convulsioni tanto sbalorditive. È tanto più misterioso in quanto, per quel che mi riguarda, è del tutto non provocato. Non ho mai mosso alcun attacco particolare alla teoria anglo-cattolica, o alla Chiesa Anglicana, o a qualsiasi anglicano, in quanto tale. So che la teoria anglo-cattolica può essere onestamente sostenuta; poiché io stesso la sostenni per molti anni. Ho il più grande rispetto per coloro che sono in un tale stato di convinzione; così come la più grande simpatia per coloro che sono in un qualsiasi stadio di dubbio. Ho ancora un gran numero di amici anglo-cattolici, i quali non mi trovano poi così putrido e prolisso, e, benché naturalmente io differisca da loro, ho sempre piuttosto evitato la mera disputa con loro; in parte perché vi sono tante cose assai più bisognose di essere disputate; e in parte perché so per esperienza che spesso fa più male che bene. Ero solito leggere il giornale in questione perché era un buon giornale; e fino a poco tempo fa un giornale di buon umore. Perché un lettore così innocuo debba avere questo straordinario effetto sugli altri lettori e scrittori, non lo comprendo chiaramente. Ma l’effetto è tanto straordinario che il critico ripiega disperatamente su una sorta di mezza difesa del Puritanesimo, del Protestantesimo e del Prussianesimo; benché queste siano cose che tutti i vecchi anglo-cattolici erano soliti denunciare, e che io ero solito denunciare altrettanto quando ero io stesso un anglo-cattolico. In una precedente occasione, per esempio, nello stesso modo forzato, esso attaccò briga personale con me semplicemente perché mi unii al mondo civile intero nel deplorare l’assassinio di Dollfuss. Se si trattasse solo di una questione di beghe personali, non varrebbe la pena di farvi di nuovo riferimento; poiché sono del tutto pago dell’ammissione già fatta circa i fatti in disputa; ed è tutto rose e fiori. Ma vi sono beghe assai più importanti, che riguardano tutta la Cristianità e specialmente questo paese, sulle quali difficilmente posso lasciare un importante organo d’opinione sotto un’impressione tanto falsa.
Quanto al sig. C. E. Douglas, il fiutatore di putridi paradossi, mi basta annotare che egli si lamenta di «un uso astorico della parola Cattolico», e ci assicura che dovremmo accontentarci del fatto che il clero della chiesa nazionale è legato a quasi tutte le nostre istituzioni, come garanzia che «in teoria, la religione Cattolica è la religione ufficiale della nazione». Posso solo dire che se egli usasse la sua immaginazione riguardo al nostro punto di vista, quanto io cerco di usare la mia immaginazione riguardo al suo, gli albeggerebbe, credo, che non è del tutto irragionevole, per un vero cattolico, o perfino per un vero anglo-cattolico, trovare un poco fiacca questa rassicurazione ufficiale. Certamente, in quel senso, vi sono preti «cattolici» legati a ogni sorta di cose; vi è un vescovo «cattolico» che predica che la scienza ha distrutto l’intero schema cristiano originario; vi è un decano «cattolico» che reclamizza la Prevenzione delle Nascite come una medicina da ciarlatano; vi è un canonico «cattolico» pronto a «spezzare il pane» apparentemente con chiunque, dai Mormoni ai Musulmani; almeno io stesso preferirei piuttosto i Musulmani. Ma non posso credere che né il sig. Douglas né il Direttore del giornale considerino davvero quella retrospettiva colazione come un sostituto del Santissimo Sacramento. Ma benché la veduta che il sig. Douglas ha dei nostri scrupoli non sia molto comprensiva o perspicace, vi è un punto su cui il sig. Douglas mi si rende caro, per quanto io non osi sperare di potermi rendere caro a lui. Egli può pensare ciò che vuole di me, purché continui a pensare ciò che ora pensa della Prussia. Poiché io classificai la Prussia insieme all’Inghilterra tra i paesi protestanti, egli protesta contro qualsiasi cosa somigli a un suggerimento che essi siano lo stesso tipo di paesi; e in ciò sono calorosamente con lui. Hanno certe cose negative in comune; ma perfino in queste sarebbe vero dire che il Prussiano preferisce essere vessato là dove l’Inglese si limita a sottomettersi a essere accecato. Ma l’Inghilterra è mille volte più allegra e più umana, come cultura nazionale, della Prussia; la malattia è più mite e l’umore più sano. Ma è un umore che è indebolito dall’assenza di un credo militante di morale cristiana, e dal potere di definire e difendere. La prova migliore si potrebbe fare con l’introduzione di alcune delle nuove leggi anormali che già minacciano il mondo in nome della scienza. Supponiamo che qualcosa del tipo della Sterilizzazione Obbligatoria o della Contraccezione Obbligatoria si aggiri davvero per lo Stato moderno, guidando la marcia del progresso umano attraverso l’aborto fino all’infanticidio. Se i pagani della Germania del Nord la ricevessero, l’accetterebbero con urla di barbarica gioia, come uno dei sacri comandamenti della Religione della Razza; e la cerimonia terminerebbe assai probabilmente (per quel tempo) con un piccolo sacrificio umano. Se gli Inglesi la ricevessero, l’accetterebbero da cittadini rispettosi della legge; cioè come qualcosa a metà tra servitori ben addestrati e bambini sconcertati. C’è una gran differenza; ma non così grande quanto la certezza che gli Irlandesi non l’accetterebbero affatto.
Now the real reason why I have taken the text of these two High Church critics, is that their views happily cancel out upon a point of immense international importance. Mr. Douglas preserves his healthy instinct against Prussia, as being not improbably the source of Prussianism; though he might not admit my view that the error had its original source in Protestantism. But the other writer would protect Protestantism from any such criticism; and falls back on the jolly old catchword of calling Hitler a Catholic. Of course there are countless Catholics whom I think wrong in politics; and countless Catholics who think me wrong in politics. But I wonder if it is much truer to call Hitler a Catholic than to call Bertrand Russell an Anglo-Catholic. He was quite probably christened in an Anglican Church. But the much more important point is the historic and cultural origin of the whole movement of the more admittedly heathenish Hitlerism. The Anglican critic says that this tribal cult of triumph began in Bavaria. It would be as sensible to say that it began in England; because it was popularised, long before anybody had ever heard of Hitler, by Houston Stewart Chamberlain. In fact, the movement began before the Great War; before the Franco-Prussian War; and has its origins far back in history, in the fact that the Protestant edges of Germany only partly emerged from barbarism and soon relapsed into paganism. But in its present practical form, it is simply the tail-end, we might say the rag-tag-and-bobtail of the nineteenth-century Prussianism; the camp-followers of the far better disciplined army of Bismarck. Nobody understands its very rowdy revivalism who does not understand that it is merely a revival. To suppose it began with recent headlines about Hitler is newspaper history, which is knowing no history but only news; and that frequently untrue. The movement that has actually abolished Bavaria, and left no State alive except the Bismarckian Empire, is but the last phase of the Bismarckian plan to Prussianise Germany, by crushing and outnumbering the Catholics of the Rhine; and stealing the old Imperial Crown from the other Catholics of the Danube. In short, he set up a new Protestant Empire, to dwarf and depose the old Catholic Empire; and Hitler is his heir and his executor.
These things can easily be shown to be facts, to anybody who knows anything of what happened before the newspapers of a few months ago. We need merely ask what Bavaria was like when it was Bavaria; before it felt the pressure from Prussia. When Bavaria was allowed to be Bavarian, all sorts of things were said against the Bavarians; that they were dreamy, that they were drunken, that they were ridiculously romantic, that they were mad on music, and so on. But nobody ever said that they were stiff or rigid or ruthless or inhuman or mad on mere official centralisation and militaristic discipline. That particular sort of cold brutality came from Prussian prestige; it could not possibly have come from anything else. And that Prussianism came from Protestantism; not, of course, in the sense that it came to infect all Protestants, or that there are not millions of good Protestants free from this error, or suffering from other errors. But it was a historical fruit of Protestantism; and that is not merely a historical fact; it can also be clearly traced as a philosophical truth. The racial pride of Hitlerism is of the Reformation by twenty tests; because it divides Christendom and makes all such divisions deeper; because it is fatalistic, like Calvinism, and makes superiority depend not upon choice but only on being of the chosen; because it is Caesaro-Papist, putting the State above the Church, as in the claim of Henry VIII; because it is immoral, being an innovator of morals touching things like Eugenics and Sterility; because it is subjective, in suiting the primal fact to the personal fancy, as in asking for a German God, or saying that the Catholic revelation does not suit the German temper; as if I were to say that the Solar System does not suit the Chestertonian taste. I do not apologise, therefore, for saying that this catastrophe in history has been due to heresy; and I cannot see that even an Anglo-Catholic supports his own claim to orthodoxy by denying it.
Naturally, I have never expected that people would agree with these views. Among the remarks which I must have spoken so badly that hardly; anybody heard them, was my preliminary remark that I would very much prefer to talk to my countrymen about the things on which we should agree, about Dickens or the great comic culture of the English tradition; but that any man challenged on his allegiance to a Church must disagree with those who definitely disagree with it. I said on that occasion: “If I say these things, I cannot ask most of you to agree with me; if I did anything else, I could not ask any of you to respect me.” But it does strike me, in amiable retrospect, that the whole situation is a little amusing. We live in an age in which anybody may teach anywhere, by any scientific instrument of instruction, that such a trifle as God was tossed up out of a tribal quarrel about incest or parricide, and so religion poisoned the first springs of progress; in which the Communist can claim that humanity went wrong when private property first appeared among prehistoric men; when anything, however real, in its beginning, however remoter can be called an enormous delusion darkening the whole history of man. But when I choose to think that one island, in one corner of one continent, took the wrong turning in thought at the end of one century, hardly four hundred years ago, when I attribute to that relatively recent and local fad the collapse and despair that has actually fallen on one commercial culture, a cry of protest goes up against an intolerable blasphemy; accompanied with the assurance that those who are thus horrified have, alone among all peoples, the power to tolerate all opinions.
I confess I found a faint whiff of paradox (though by no means putrid) in the fact of these few fanatics telling me in one breath that they were devoted to liberty of thought and that I had disgraced myself by saying what I thought so plainly. But they were only a few; and I ought not to close this episode without bearing testimony to the vast number of messages I received from Protestants, or even from Pagans, quite fairly recognising or quite fairly discussing, what I had really said. Above all, I know well that I could have proved my case, more clearly than appears in this hasty correspondence, if I had merely printed a correspondence far more valuable; the letters I received from very poor people, who had suffered the silent aggression and enslavement by modern monopoly; and who thanked me with only too much of the truly English generosity, for exposing the wrongs they endure with only too much of the truly English good humour.
Ora, la vera ragione per cui ho preso il testo di questi due critici dell’Alta Chiesa è che le loro opinioni felicemente si annullano a vicenda su un punto di immensa importanza internazionale. Il signor Douglas conserva il suo sano istinto contro la Prussia, in quanto non è improbabile che essa sia la fonte del prussianesimo; sebbene egli forse non ammetterebbe la mia opinione, secondo cui l’errore ebbe la sua fonte originaria nel protestantesimo. L’altro scrittore, invece, vorrebbe proteggere il protestantesimo da ogni simile critica; e ripiega sull’allegro vecchio ritornello di chiamare Hitler cattolico. Naturalmente vi sono innumerevoli cattolici che io ritengo in errore in politica; e innumerevoli cattolici che ritengono me in errore in politica. Ma mi domando se sia molto più vero chiamare Hitler cattolico di quanto lo sia chiamare Bertrand Russell anglo-cattolico. Con ogni probabilità egli fu battezzato in una chiesa anglicana. Ma il punto assai più importante è l’origine storica e culturale dell’intero movimento del più dichiaratamente pagano hitlerismo. Il critico anglicano dice che questo culto tribale del trionfo ebbe inizio in Baviera. Sarebbe altrettanto sensato dire che ebbe inizio in Inghilterra; perché fu reso popolare, molto prima che chiunque avesse mai udito parlare di Hitler, da Houston Stewart Chamberlain. In realtà, il movimento cominciò prima della Grande Guerra; prima della guerra franco-prussiana; e affonda le sue origini assai indietro nella storia, nel fatto che i lembi protestanti della Germania emersero solo in parte dalla barbarie e ben presto ricaddero nel paganesimo. Ma nella sua presente forma pratica, esso non è che la coda, potremmo dire lo strascico di plebaglia, del prussianesimo ottocentesco; i vivandieri al seguito dell’esercito assai meglio disciplinato di Bismarck. Nessuno comprende il suo tumultuosissimo revivalismo se non comprende che si tratta soltanto di un revival. Supporre che sia cominciato con i recenti titoli di giornale su Hitler è storia da giornali, che è non conoscere alcuna storia, ma soltanto la cronaca; e per giunta spesso falsa. Il movimento che ha effettivamente abolito la Baviera, e non ha lasciato in vita alcuno Stato tranne l’Impero bismarckiano, non è che l’ultima fase del piano bismarckiano di prussianizzare la Germania, schiacciando e sopraffacendo numericamente i cattolici del Reno; e rubando l’antica Corona imperiale agli altri cattolici del Danubio. In breve, egli eresse un nuovo Impero protestante, per rimpicciolire e detronizzare l’antico Impero cattolico; e Hitler è il suo erede e il suo esecutore.
Queste cose si possono facilmente dimostrare essere fatti, a chiunque sappia qualcosa di ciò che accadde prima dei giornali di pochi mesi fa. Basta chiederci come fosse la Baviera quando era Baviera; prima che sentisse la pressione della Prussia. Quando alla Baviera era concesso di essere bavarese, si dicevano ogni sorta di cose contro i bavaresi; che erano sognatori, che erano ubriaconi, che erano ridicolmente romantici, che erano pazzi per la musica, e così via. Ma nessuno disse mai che fossero rigidi o inflessibili o spietati o disumani o pazzi per la mera centralizzazione ufficiale e la disciplina militaristica. Quel particolare genere di gelida brutalità venne dal prestigio prussiano; non avrebbe potuto in alcun modo venire da altro. E quel prussianesimo venne dal protestantesimo; non, s’intende, nel senso che sia giunto a contagiare tutti i protestanti, o che non vi siano milioni di buoni protestanti liberi da questo errore, o che soffrono di altri errori. Ma fu un frutto storico del protestantesimo; e questo non è soltanto un fatto storico; può anche essere chiaramente rintracciato come una verità filosofica. L’orgoglio razziale dell’hitlerismo appartiene alla Reformation secondo venti criteri; perché divide la cristianità e rende più profonde tutte quelle divisioni; perché è fatalistico, come il calvinismo, e fa dipendere la superiorità non dalla scelta ma soltanto dall’essere fra gli eletti; perché è cesaropapista, ponendo lo Stato al di sopra della Chiesa, come nella pretesa di Henry VIII; perché è immorale, essendo un innovatore della morale in cose come l’eugenetica e la sterilità; perché è soggettivo, adattando il fatto primigenio alla fantasia personale, come nel chiedere un Dio tedesco, o nel dire che la rivelazione cattolica non si addice al temperamento tedesco; come se io dicessi che il Sistema Solare non si addice al gusto chestertoniano. Non mi scuso, dunque, di dire che questa catastrofe nella storia è stata dovuta all’eresia; e non riesco a vedere come persino un anglo-cattolico possa sostenere la propria pretesa all’ortodossia negandolo.
Naturalmente, non mi sono mai aspettato che la gente concordasse con queste opinioni. Fra le osservazioni che devo aver esposto tanto male da farmi udire a stento da chicchessia, vi era la mia osservazione preliminare che avrei di gran lunga preferito parlare ai miei connazionali delle cose sulle quali dovremmo essere d’accordo, di Dickens o della grande cultura comica della tradizione inglese; ma che qualunque uomo interpellato sulla sua fedeltà a una Chiesa deve dissentire da coloro che con essa decisamente dissentono. Dissi in quell’occasione: «Se dico queste cose, non posso chiedere alla maggior parte di voi di concordare con me; se facessi qualcos’altro, non potrei chiedere a nessuno di voi di rispettarmi». Ma mi colpisce, in un amabile ripensamento, che l’intera situazione sia un tantino divertente. Viviamo in un’epoca in cui chiunque può insegnare ovunque, con qualsiasi strumento scientifico d’istruzione, che una bazzecola come Dio fu sputata fuori da una lite tribale sull’incesto o sul parricidio, e così la religione avvelenò le prime sorgenti del progresso; in cui il comunista può sostenere che l’umanità prese la via sbagliata quando la proprietà privata comparve per la prima volta fra gli uomini preistorici; quando qualsiasi cosa, per quanto reale, nel suo inizio, per quanto remoto, può essere chiamata un’enorme illusione che oscura l’intera storia dell’uomo. Ma quando io scelgo di pensare che una sola isola, in un solo angolo di un solo continente, prese la piega sbagliata nel pensiero alla fine di un solo secolo, or sono appena quattrocento anni; quando attribuisco a quella capriccio relativamente recente e locale il crollo e la disperazione che sono effettivamente caduti su una sola cultura commerciale, si leva un grido di protesta contro un’intollerabile bestemmia; accompagnato dall’assicurazione che coloro i quali ne sono così inorriditi hanno, soli fra tutti i popoli, il potere di tollerare tutte le opinioni.
Confesso di aver trovato una lieve zaffata di paradosso (per nulla putrida, tuttavia) nel fatto che questi pochi fanatici mi dicessero nello stesso respiro che erano devoti alla libertà di pensiero e che io mi ero disonorato dicendo ciò che pensavo tanto apertamente. Ma erano soltanto pochi; e non dovrei chiudere questo episodio senza rendere testimonianza dell’enorme numero di messaggi che ho ricevuto da protestanti, o persino da pagani, che riconoscevano assai lealmente, o discutevano assai lealmente, ciò che avevo realmente detto. Soprattutto, so bene che avrei potuto dimostrare la mia tesi, più chiaramente di quanto appaia in questa frettolosa corrispondenza, se avessi semplicemente stampato una corrispondenza assai più preziosa; le lettere che ricevetti da gente molto povera, che aveva sofferto la silenziosa aggressione e l’asservimento del monopolio moderno; e che mi ringraziava con anche troppa di quella genuinamente inglese generosità, per aver denunciato i torti che essa sopporta con anche troppo di quel genuinamente inglese buon umore.