All Things Considered | Page 2

universe is the last philosophy or the new philosophy,
or the advanced and progressive philosophy. I have said much against a
mere modernism. When I use the word "modernism," I am not alluding
specially to the current quarrel in the Roman Catholic Church, though I
am certainly astonished at any intellectual group accepting so weak and
unphilosophical a name. It is incomprehensible to me that any thinker
can calmly call himself a modernist; he might as well call himself a
Thursdayite. But apart altogether from that particular disturbance, I am
conscious of a general irritation expressed against the people who boast
of their advancement and modernity in the discussion of religion. But I
never succeeded in saying the quite clear and obvious thing that is
really the matter with modernism. The real objection to modernism is
simply that it is a form of snobbishness. It is an attempt to crush a
rational opponent not by reason, but by some mystery of superiority, by
hinting that one is specially up to date or particularly "in the know." To
flaunt the fact that we have had all the last books from Germany is
simply vulgar; like flaunting the fact that we have had all the last
bonnets from Paris. To introduce into philosophical discussions a sneer
at a creed's antiquity is like introducing a sneer at a lady's age. It is
caddish because it is irrelevant. The pure modernist is merely a snob;
he cannot bear to be a month behind the fashion Similarly I find that I
have tried in these pages to express the real objection to philanthropists
and have not succeeded. I have not seen the quite simple objection to
the causes advocated by certain wealthy idealists; causes of which the
cause called teetotalism is the strongest case. I have used many abusive
terms about the thing, calling it Puritanism, or superciliousness, or

aristocracy; but I have not seen and stated the quite simple objection to
philanthropy; which is that it is religious persecution. Religious
persecution does not consist in thumbscrews or fires of Smithfield; the
essence of religious persecution is this: that the man who happens to
have material power in the State, either by wealth or by official
position, should govern his fellow-citizens not according to their
religion or philosophy, but according to his own. If, for instance, there
is such a thing as a vegetarian nation; if there is a great united mass of
men who wish to live by the vegetarian morality, then I say in the
emphatic words of the arrogant French marquis before the French
Revolution, "Let them eat grass." Perhaps that French oligarch was a
humanitarian; most oligarchs are. Perhaps when he told the peasants to
eat grass he was recommending to them the hygienic simplicity of a
vegetarian restaurant. But that is an irrelevant, though most fascinating,
speculation. The point here is that if a nation is really vegetarian let its
government force upon it the whole horrible weight of vegetarianism.
Let its government give the national guests a State vegetarian banquet.
Let its government, in the most literal and awful sense of the words,
give them beans. That sort of tyranny is all very well; for it is the
people tyrannising over all the persons. But "temperance reformers" are
like a small group of vegetarians who should silently and
systematically act on an ethical assumption entirely unfamiliar to the
mass of the people. They would always be giving peerages to
greengrocers. They would always be appointing Parliamentary
Commissions to enquire into the private life of butchers. Whenever
they found a man quite at their mercy, as a pauper or a convict or a
lunatic, they would force him to add the final touch to his inhuman
isolation by becoming a vegetarian. All the meals for school children
will be vegetarian meals. All the State public houses will be vegetarian
public houses. There is a very strong case for vegetarianism as
compared with teetotalism. Drinking one glass of beer cannot by any
philosophy be drunkenness; but killing one animal can, by this
philosophy, be murder. The objection to both processes is not that the
two creeds, teetotal and vegetarian, are not admissible; it is simply that
they are not admitted. The thing is religious persecution because it is
not based on the existing religion of the democracy. These people ask
the poor to accept in practice what they know perfectly well that the

poor would not accept in theory. That is the very definition of religious
persecution. I was against the Tory attempt to force upon ordinary
Englishmen a Catholic theology in which they do not believe. I am
even more against the attempt to force upon them a Mohamedan
morality which they actively deny.
Again, in the case of anonymous journalism I