The Life of Reason | Page 5

make them forget her uses. Bacon indeed
had prized science for adding to the comforts of life, a function still
commemorated by positivists in their eloquent moments. Habitually,
however, when they utter the word progress it is, in their mouths, a
synonym for inevitable change, or at best for change in that direction
which they conceive to be on the whole predominant. If they combine
with physical speculation some elements of morals, these are usually
purely formal, to the effect that happiness is to be pursued (probably,
alas! because to do so is a psychological law); but what happiness
consists in we gather only from casual observations or by putting
together their national prejudices and party saws.
[Sidenote: Positivism no positive ideal.]
The truth is that even this radical school, emancipated as it thinks itself,
is suffering from the after-effects of supernaturalism. Like children
escaped from school, they find their whole happiness in freedom. They
are proud of what they have rejected, as if a great wit were required to
do so; but they do not know what they want. If you astonish them by
demanding what is their positive ideal, further than that there should be
a great many people and that they should be all alike, they will say at
first that what ought to be is obvious, and later they will submit the
matter to a majority vote. They have discarded the machinery in which
their ancestors embodied the ideal; they have not perceived that those
symbols stood for the Life of Reason and gave fantastic and
embarrassed expression to what, in itself, is pure humanity; and they
have thus remained entangled in the colossal error that ideals are
something adventitious and unmeaning, not having a soil in mortal life
nor a possible fulfilment there.
[Sidenote: Christian philosophy mythical: it misrepresents facts and
conditions.]
The profound and pathetic ideas which inspired Christianity were

attached in the beginning to ancient myths and soon crystallised into
many new ones. The mythical manner pervades Christian philosophy;
but myth succeeds in expressing ideal life only by misrepresenting its
history and conditions. This method was indeed not original with the
Fathers; they borrowed it from Plato, who appealed to parables himself
in an open and harmless fashion, yet with disastrous consequences to
his school. Nor was he the first; for the instinct to regard poetic fictions
as revelations of supernatural facts is as old as the soul's primitive
incapacity to distinguish dreams from waking perceptions, sign from
thing signified, and inner emotions from external powers. Such
confusions, though in a way they obey moral forces, make a rational
estimate of things impossible. To misrepresent the conditions and
consequences of action is no merely speculative error; it involves a
false emphasis in character and an artificial balance and co-ordination
among human pursuits. When ideals are hypostasised into powers
alleged to provide for their own expression, the Life of Reason cannot
be conceived; in theory its field of operation is pre-empted and its
function gone, while in practice its inner impulses are turned awry by
artificial stimulation and repression.
The Patristic systems, though weak in their foundations, were
extraordinarily wise and comprehensive in their working out; and while
they inverted life they preserved it. Dogma added to the universe
fabulous perspectives; it interpolated also innumerable incidents and
powers which gave a new dimension to experience. Yet the old world
remained standing in its strange setting, like the Pantheon in modern
Rome; and, what is more important, the natural springs of human
action were still acknowledged, and if a supernatural discipline was
imposed, it was only because experience and faith had disclosed a
situation in which the pursuit of earthly happiness seemed hopeless.
Nature was not destroyed by its novel appendages, nor did reason die in
the cloister: it hibernated there, and could come back to its own in due
season, only a little dazed and weakened by its long confinement. Such,
at least, is the situation in Catholic regions, where the Patristic
philosophy has not appreciably varied. Among Protestants Christian
dogma has taken a new and ambiguous direction, which has at once
minimised its disturbing effect in practice and isolated its primary
illusion. The symptoms have been cured and the disease driven in.

[Sidenote: Liberal theology a superstitious attitude toward a natural
world.]
The tenets of Protestant bodies are notoriously varied and on principle
subject to change. There is hardly a combination of tradition and
spontaneity which has not been tried in some quarter. If we think,
however, of broad tendencies and ultimate issues, it appears that in
Protestantism myth, without disappearing, has changed its relation to
reality: instead of being an extension to the natural world myth has
become its substratum. Religion no longer reveals divine personalities,
future rewards, and tenderer Elysian consolations; nor does