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passion for proving that he will have no personal existence after death that he falls back
on the position that he has no personal existence now. He invokes Buddhism and says
that all souls fade into each other; in order to prove that he cannot go to heaven he
proves that he cannot go to Hartle-pool. I have known people who protested against
religious education with arguments against any education, saying that the child s mind
must grow freely or that the old must not teach the young. I have known people who
showed that there could be no divine judgment by showing that there can be no human
judgment, even for practical purposes. They burned their own corn to set fire to the
church; they smashed their own tools to smash it; any stick was good enough to beat it
with, though it were the last stick of their own dismembered furniture. We do not admire,
we hardly excuse, the fanatic who wrecks this world for love of the other. But what are
we to say of the fanatic who wrecks this world out of hatred of the other? He sacrifices
the very existence of humanity to the non-existence of God. He offers his victims not to
the altar, but merely to assert the idleness of the altar and the emptiness of the throne.
He is ready to ruin even that primary ethic by which all things live, for his strange and
eternal vengeance upon some one who never lived at all.
And yet the thing hangs in the heavens unhurt. Its opponents only succeed in
destroying all that they themselves justly hold dear. They do not destroy orthodoxy; they
only destroy political and common courage sense. They do not prove that Adam was
not responsible to God; how could they prove it? They only prove (from their premises)
that the Czar is not responsible to Russia. They do not prove that Adam should not
have been punished by God; they only prove that the nearest sweater should not be
punished by men. With their oriental doubts about personality they do not make certain
that we shall have no personal life hereafter; they only make certain that we shall not
have a very jolly or complete one here. With their paralysing hints of all conclusions
coming out wrong they do not tear the book of the Recording Angel; they only make it a
little harder to keep the books of Marshall & Snelgrove. Not only is the faith the mother
of all worldly energies, but its foes are the fathers of all worldly confusion. The
secularists have not wrecked divine things; but the secularists have wrecked secular
things, if that is any comfort to them. The Titans did not scale heaven; but they laid
waste the world.
IX Authority and the Adventurer
THE last chapter has been concerned with the contention that orthodoxy is not
only (as is often urged) the only safe guardian of morality or order, but is also the only
logical guardian of liberty, innovation and advance. If we wish to pull down the
prosperous oppressor we cannot do it with the new doctrine of human perfectibility; we
can do it with the old doctrine of Original Sin. If we want to uproot inherent cruelties or
lift up lost populations we cannot do it with the scientific theory that matter precedes
mind; we can do it with the supernatural theory that mind precedes matter. If we wish
specially to awaken people to social vigilance and tireless pursuit of practise, we cannot
help it much by insisting on the Immanent God and the Inner Light: for these are at best
reasons for contentment; we can help it much by insisting on the transcendent God and
the flying and escaping gleam; for that means divine discontent. If we wish particularly
to assert the idea of a generous balance against that of a dreadful autocracy we shall
instinctively be Trinitarian rather than Unitarian. If we desire European civilization to be
a raid and a rescue, we shall insist rather that souls are in real peril than that their peril
is ultimately unreal. And if we wish to exalt the outcast and the crucified, we shall rather
wish to think that a veritable God was crucified, rather than a mere sage or hero. Above
all, if we wish to protect the poor we shall be in favour of fixed rules and clear dogmas.
The rules of a club are occasionally in favour of the poor member. The drift of a club is
always in favour of the rich one.
And now we come to the crucial question which truly concludes the whole matter.
A reasonable agnostic, if he has happened to agree with me so far, may justly turn
round and say, You have found a practical philosophy in the doctrine of the Fall; very
well. You have found a side of democracy now dangerously neglected wisely asserted
in Original Sin; all right. You have found a truth in the doctrine of hell; I congratulate you.
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