Potterism | Page 7

piece of Potterism I have
seen for some time. Perpendicular, but restored fifty years ago,
according to the taste of the period. Vile windows; painted deal pews;
incredible braying of bad chants out of tune; a sermon from a pie-faced
fellow about going to church. Why should they go to church? He didn't
tell them; he just said if they didn't, some being he called God would be
angry with them. What did he mean by God? I'm hanged if he'd ever
thought it out. Some being, apparently, like a sublimated Potterite, who
rejoices in bad singing, bad art, bad praying, and bad preaching, and
sits aloft to deal out rewards to those who practise these and
punishments to those who don't. The Potter God will save you if you
please him; that means he'll save your body from danger and not let
you starve. Potterism has no notion of a God who doesn't care a
twopenny damn whether you starve or not, but does care whether
you're following the truth as you see it. In fact, Potterism has no room

for Christianity; it prefers the God of the Old Testament. Of course,
with their abominable cheek, the Potterites have taken Christianity and
watered it down to suit themselves, till they've produced a form of
Potterism which they call by its name; but they wouldn't know the real
thing if they saw it.... The Pharisees were Potterites....'
The others listened to Juke on religious Potterism tolerantly. None of
them (with the doubtful exception of Johnny, who had not entirely
made up his mind) believed in religion; they were quite prepared to
agree that most of its current forms were soaked in Potterism, but they
could not be expected to care, as Juke did.
Gideon said he had heard a dreadful band on the beach, and heard a
dreadful fellow proclaiming the Precious Blood. That was Potterism,
because it was an appeal to sentiment over the head, or under the head,
of reason. Neither the speaker nor any one else probably had the least
idea what he was talking about or what he meant.
'He had the kind of face which is always turned away from facts,'
Gideon said. 'Facts are too difficult, too complicated for him. Hard,
jolly facts, with clear sharp edges that you can't slur and talk away.
Potterism has no use for them. It appeals over their heads to prejudice
and sentiment.... It's the very opposite to the scientific temper. No good
scientist could conceivably be a Potterite, because he's concerned with
truth, and the kind of truth, too, that it's difficult to arrive at. Potterism
is all for short and easy cuts and showy results. Science has to work its
way step by step, and then hasn't much to show for it. It isn't greedy.
Potterism plays a game of grab all the time--snatches at success in a
hurry.... It's greedy,' repeated Gideon, thinking it out, watching Jane's
firm little sun-browned hand with its short square fingers rooting in the
sand for shells.
Jane had visited the stationer, who kept a circulating library, and seen
holiday visitors selecting books to read. They had nearly all chosen the
most Potterish they could see, and asked for some more Potterish still,
leaving Conrad and Hardy despised on the shelves. But these people
were not Cornish, but Saxon visitors.

And Katherine had seen the local paper, but it had been much less
Potterish than most of the London papers, which confirmed them in
their theory about Celts.
Thus they talked and discussed and played, and wrote their book in
patches, and travelled from place to place, and thought that they found
things out. And Gideon, because he was the cleverest, found out the
most; and Katherine, because she was the next cleverest, saw all that
Gideon found out; and Juke, because he was religious, was for ever
getting on to Potterism its cure, before they had analysed the disease;
and the twins enjoyed life in their usual serene way, and found it very
entertaining to be Potters inquiring into Potterism. The others were
scrupulously fair in not attributing to them, because they happened to
be Potters by birth, more Potterism than they actually possessed. A
certain amount, said Juke, is part of the make-up of very nearly every
human being; it has to be fought down, like the notorious ape and tiger.
But he thought that Gideon and Katherine Varick had less of it than any
one else he knew; the mediocre was repellent to them; cant and
sentiment made them sick; they made a fetish of hard truth, and so
much despised most of their neighbours that they would not experience
the temptation to grab at popularity. In fact, they would dislike it if it
came.
3
Socialist Cecily came