Winds of Doctrine | Page 2

negative forces, hateful black devils, whose existence might
make life difficult but could not confuse the ideal of life. No one sought
to understand these enemies of his, nor even to conciliate them, unless
under compulsion or out of insidious policy, to convert them against
their will; he merely pelted them with blind refutations and clumsy
blows. Every one sincerely felt that the right was entirely on his side, a
proof that such intelligence as he had moved freely and exclusively
within the lines of his faith. The result of this was that his faith was
intelligent, I mean, that he understood it, and had a clear, almost

instinctive perception of what was compatible or incompatible with it.
He defended his walls and he cultivated his garden. His position and
his possessions were unmistakable.
When men and minds were so distinct it was possible to describe and to
count them. During the Reformation, when external confusion was at
its height, you might have ascertained almost statistically what persons
and what regions each side snatched from the other; it was not doubtful
which was which. The history of their respective victories and defeats
could consequently be written. So in the eighteenth century it was easy
to perceive how many people Voltaire and Rousseau might be
alienating from Bossuet and Fénelon. But how shall we satisfy
ourselves now whether, for instance, Christianity is holding its own?
Who can tell what vagary or what compromise may not be calling itself
Christianity? A bishop may be a modernist, a chemist may be a
mystical theologian, a psychologist may be a believer in ghosts. For
science, too, which had promised to supply a new and solid foundation
for philosophy, has allowed philosophy rather to undermine its
foundation, and is seen eating its own words, through the mouths of
some of its accredited spokesmen, and reducing itself to something
utterly conventional and insecure. It is characteristic of human nature to
be as impatient of ignorance regarding what is not known as lazy in
acquiring such knowledge as is at hand; and even those who have not
been lazy sometimes take it into their heads to disparage their science
and to outdo the professional philosophers in psychological scepticism,
in order to plunge with them into the most vapid speculation. Nor is
this insecurity about first principles limited to abstract subjects. It
reigns in politics as well. Liberalism had been supposed to advocate
liberty; but what the advanced parties that still call themselves liberal
now advocate is control, control over property, trade, wages, hours of
work, meat and drink, amusements, and in a truly advanced country
like France control over education and religion; and it is only on the
subject of marriage (if we ignore eugenics) that liberalism is growing
more and more liberal. Those who speak most of progress measure it
by quantity and not by quality; how many people read and write, or
how many people there are, or what is the annual value of their trade;
whereas true progress would rather lie in reading or writing fewer and

better things, and being fewer and better men, and enjoying life more.
But the philanthropists are now preparing an absolute subjection of the
individual, in soul and body, to the instincts of the majority--the most
cruel and unprogressive of masters; and I am not sure that the liberal
maxim, "the greatest happiness of the greatest number," has not lost
whatever was just or generous in its intent and come to mean the
greatest idleness of the largest possible population.
Nationality offers another occasion for strange moral confusion. It had
seemed that an age that was levelling and connecting all nations, an age
whose real achievements were of international application, was
destined to establish the solidarity of mankind as a sort of axiom. The
idea of solidarity is indeed often invoked in speeches, and there is an
extreme socialistic party that--when a wave of national passion does
not carry it the other way--believes in international brotherhood. But
even here, black men and yellow men are generally excluded; and in
higher circles, where history, literature, and political ambition dominate
men's minds, nationalism has become of late an omnivorous
all-permeating passion. Local parliaments must be everywhere
established, extinct or provincial dialects must be galvanised into
national languages, philosophy must be made racial, religion must be
fostered where it emphasises nationality and denounced where it
transcends it. Man is certainly an animal that, when he lives at all, lives
for ideals. Something must be found to occupy his imagination, to raise
pleasure and pain into love and hatred, and change the prosaic
alternative between comfort and discomfort into the tragic one between
happiness and sorrow. Now that the hue of daily adventure is so dull,
when religion for the most part is so