“Kneeling or uncovering of the head”

Whenever men really believe that they can get to the spiritual they always employ the material. When the purpose is good, it is bread and wine; when the purpose is evil, it is eye of newt and toe of frog. In this particular matter the witch’s charm included the hair of a black cat. But this is no more insane than the ingredients that have been immortalized by Shakspere. And indeed it is beside the mark to call the ingredients insane. They are chosen because they are insane. They are meant to put men into communication with the insane elements of the universe — with the lunatics of the spiritual world. How far they can succeed nobody can tell; but it is as reasonable to suppose that ugly actions (like tearing off a frog’s toe) may dispose us toward bad influences as to suppose that beautiful actions (like kneeling or uncovering of the head) may dispose us toward good ones. How much is the act and how much the association we do not know; but neither do we know it in daily life. If you are braced with a sea bath you do not know how much of it is the chemistry of the salt and how much of it is the poetry of the sea. If you are warmed with a glass of wine you do not know how much of it is wine and how much of it is the idea of wine.

– Illustrated London News, 6 October 1906.

“You can toast muffins at it”

Go to the man who likes gas-stoves (if such a man there be) and ask him what he thinks a fire is for. If he thinks that a fire is for the sake of heat, dismiss him with derision to his doom. He will have heat enough if his spiritual ruin is at all parallel to his intellectual. Every sound human institution has at least four different objects and different justifications. Man was never so silly as to sit down on a one-legged stool. All his supports are quadrupedal. A man’s fireside, the open fire on his hearth, is delightful for all kinds of different reasons. It does, among other things, heat the room; but it also lights the room. It looks beautiful. You can roast chestnuts at it. You can see pictures in it. You can toast muffins at it. If you happen (as is no doubt the case) to be a Parsee, you can worship it. You can, with dexterity, light your pipe at it; you can tell ghost-stories round it, with Rembrandtesque effects. If a man gives me heat instead of a fire, I am no more satisfied than if he gives me little red pictures instead of a fire, because I can see them in the coals. I want a fire; not one of the uses of a fire.

- Illustrated London News, 11 April 1908.

“Strong, humble faces”

You and I, it is to be hoped, do not hold the theory that the highest and most prominent figures in Society are the highest and best specimens of the human race. We are not such desolate pessimists as all that. For certainly if the people who rule England are the best people in England, England is going to the dogs, or, rather, has already gone there. The most gloomy of all possible theories is the theory that the best man wins. We know the man who wins, and if he is the best man we can only express our feelings in the words of a vulgar music-hall song about a wedding, which ran (if I remember right) — “I was the best man, the best man, the best man; Oh! Jerusalem, you ought to have seen the worst!” If Mr. Rockefeller really rose by superior merit, America must be a kind of hell. But I am an optimist, and I believe that evil is frequently victorious; a thought full of peace, comfort, and the possibilities of human affection. We can all love mankind if we remember not to judge them by their leaders. There are some who say that England has lost its last chance, has carried on just too long its shapeless compromises and its cloudy pride. I do not believe it for a moment. England is a million times stronger nation than one would fancy by merely looking at its great men. Do not look at the faces in the illustrated papers; look at the faces in the street. See what a great and reasonable number of them are strong, humble faces, full of humour and hard work, faces with sad eyes and humorous mouths. There are plenty of good people about. Religion says that the good people will be on the top in Heaven; Socialism says that they will be on top in the near future; but nobody in possession of his five wits can pretend that they are on top now; and if they are, the quality of those below them must be somewhat disheartening. True faith has its eye on the unsuccessful; it endures the small human output which is actually exhibited and admired; but it rejoices in the rich and dark treasures of human virtue and valour which have always been neglected. It is even slightly depressed when it thinks of the small good that we have used. But it sings for joy when it thinks of all the good that we have wasted.

- The Illustrated London News, 16 November 1907.

“A thing of clear images”

Imagination is a thing of clear images, and the more a thing becomes vague the less imaginative it is. Similarly, the more a thing becomes wild and lawless the less imaginative it is. To cook a cutlet in a really new way would be an act of imagination. But there is nothing imaginative about eating a cutlet at the end of a string, or eating it at the top of a tree, or catching it in one’s mouth, or consuming it while standing on one leg. Nonsense of this sort is not imaginative for the simple reason that it is infinite.

- The Illustrated London News, 24 March 1906.

“Brought to a verdict”

There is in modern discussions of religion and philosophy an absurd assumption that a man is in some way just and well-poised because he has come to no conclusion; and that a man is in some way knocked off the list of fair judges because he has come to a conclusion. It is assumed that the sceptic has no bias; whereas he has a very obvious bias in favour of scepticism. I remember once arguing with an honest young atheist, who was very much shocked at my disputing some of the assumptions which were absolute sanctities to him (such as the quite unproved proposition of the independence of matter and the quite improbable proposition of its power to originate mind), and he at length fell back upon this question, which he delivered with an honourable heat of defiance and indignation: “Well, can you tell me any man of intellect, great in science or philosophy, who accepted the miraculous?” I said, “With pleasure. Descartes, Dr. Johnson, Newton, Faraday, Newman, Gladstone, Pasteur, Browning, Brunetiere–as many more as you please.” To which that quite admirable and idealistic young man made this astonishing reply — “Oh, but of course they had to say that; they were Christians.” First he challenged me to find a black swan, and then he ruled out all my swans because they were black. The fact that all these great intellects had come to the Christian view was somehow or other a proof either that they were not great intellects or that they had not really come to that view. The argument thus stood in a charmingly convenient form: “All men that count have come to my conclusion; for if they come to your conclusion they do not count.”

It did not seem to occur to such controversialists that if Cardinal Newman was really a man of intellect, the fact that he adhered to dogmatic religion proved exactly as much as the fact that Professor Huxley, another man of intellect, found that he could not adhere to dogmatic religion; that is to say (as I cheerfully admit), it proved precious little either way. If there is one class of men whom history has proved especially and supremely capable of going quite wrong in all directions, it is the class of highly intellectual men. I would always prefer to go by the bulk of humanity; that is why I am a democrat. But whatever be the truth about exceptional intelligence and the masses, it is manifestly most unreasonable that intelligent men should be divided upon the absurd modern principle of regarding every clever man who cannot make up his mind as an impartial judge, and regarding every clever man who can make up his mind as a servile fanatic. As it is, we seem to regard it as a positive objection to a reasoner that he has taken one side or the other. We regard it (in other words) as a positive objection to a reasoner that he has contrived to reach the object of his reasoning. We call a man a bigot or a slave of dogma because he is a thinker who has thought thoroughly and to a definite end. We say that the juryman is not a juryman because he has brought in a verdict. We say that the judge is not a judge because he gives judgment. We say that the sincere believer has no right to vote, simply because he has voted.

- The Illustrated London News, 4 May 1907.

“A picture is an assault”

There is no editorial responsibility so serious as the responsibility for pictures. Morally and democratically, the illustrations of a book are far more important than the book. Most of us can read writing, but none of us can help reading picture-reading. We can start reading a printed page and decide whether we will read it; we cannot start looking at a pictured page and decide whether we will see it – we have seen it. Print is at the best a temptation; a picture is an assault. Hence the responsibility of those giving truth through popular histories must be specially judged by whether their pictures are really meant to help the history or only to help the sale. Certainly the pictures of a book sum up and decide its real tendency.

- The Illustrated London News, 9 November 1907.

“Extremely unpleasant”

I do not think, as my opponent supposes, that punishing people severely solely for their opinions was a nice or proper human action. But I should be quite content if I could make people understand that it was a human action at all. As the matter is commonly stated in our day the difficulty is generally to imagine, not how a good man could be led to persecute, but why even a bad man should be bothered to do so. Persecution as described in our histories sounds like something too strange to be even a sin. All through my boyhood (which I need hardly say was studious and industrious in an almost feverish degree) I used to wonder why people hit or stoned people with an opposite philosophy. A little experience of the world, however, has taught me that the explanation is simple: the reason is that people with an opposite philosophy are extremely unpleasant. Whether or no heretics are unpleasing to God, there is no doubt at all about their being unpleasing to man.

- The Illustrated London News, 30 June 1906.

“To amaze and to awaken”

I write this article in a kind of crooked, half-country lane which, taking a turn at the bottom, opens upon the sea. Now I might walk down that lane a million times, and I should still feel that it was right to have walked down it a million times; that it was right to dwell in such a place and to be used to it. The lane is irregular, but it is not abrupt. The sea is awful, but it is not startling. It seems easy to accept the fact that they are always there; it is natural that Nature should be natural. But I know another lane in England crooked also, though a little broader round one corner, of which one sees something more splendid than the sea. The name of this lane is Fleet Street, and the sight is the dreadful dome and cross which Wren set in the sky. Now, when I see this, I do not feel that it is a thing meant to be seen a million times; but once or twice or thrice at some strange crisis of the soul. The sea lies in wait to soothe, but this lies in wait to amaze and to awaken. The sea is a lullaby; the church is an alarum. The waves beyond this little lane are waiting to tell me that Nature is patient and long-lived, and that we are secure in her bosom. But the Cathedral is waiting to tell me that we are not secure, that the sea can be upheaved and the earth be shaken, that heaven and earth shall pass away, but that words shall not pass away. No sceptic or blasphemer, perhaps, ever uttered a more profoundly un-Christian sentiment (in its implication) than that line of a pious Christian writer — “God made the country, but man made the town.” I think Cowper wrote it, I am not sure. If Cowper did write it, Cowper was a worshipper of Pan, and not of Christ. The whole point of Christianity is that man at his highest has a divine authority which is denied to Nature. Nature is not supernatural; in a sense art is supernatural, because man is supernatural. But exactly because Nature is only natural, we ought normally to live in Nature. And exactly because great architecture is in some sense supernatural, we ought to go specially to see it at special times. Our present position is like that of a man who should dine and go to bed in church, and then go and sing hymns in his bedroom. The best mystical tradition is not to be found in the modern poet, whose notion of a holiday is to go into the country. The best mystical tradition is to be found in the old rustic whose notion of a holiday is to go up to London. He sees the green hedges and the grey sea as what they are, the quiet and rational background of man’s life. And he sees St. Paul’s Cathedral as what it is — a sight. But for people like you and me this natural relation of town and country is turned entirely upside down. I see the natural turf and sand about once a year. And I see the exceptional and astonishing Fleet Street almost every day of my life.

- The Illustrated London News, 31 August 1907.

“Green fumes of depravity”

Those who detest the harmless writer of this column are generally reduced (in their final ecstasy of anger) to calling him “brilliant”; which has long ago in our journalism become a mere expression of contempt. But I am afraid that even this disdainful phrase does me too much honour. I am more and more convinced that I suffer, not from a shiny or showy impertinence, but from a simplicity that verges on imbecility. I think more and more that I must be very dull, and that everybody else in the modern world must be very clever. I have just been reading this important compilation, sent to me in the name of a number of men for whom I have a high respect, and called “New Theology and Applied Religion.” And it is literally true that I have read through whole columns of the things without knowing what the people are talking about. Either they must be talking about some black and bestial religion in which they were brought up, and of which I have never even heard, or else they must be talking about some blazing and blinding vision of God which they have found, and which by its very splendour confuses their logic and confounds their speech. But the best instance I can quote of the thing is in connection with this matter of the business of physical science [. . .] The following words are written over the signature of a man whose intelligence I respect, and I cannot make head or tail or them –

When modern science declared that the cosmic process knew nothing of a historical event corresponding to a Fall, but told, on the contrary, the story of an incessant rise in the scale of being, it was quite plain that the Pauline scheme — I mean the argumentative process of Paul’s scheme of salvation — had lost its very foundation; for was not that foundation the total depravity of the human race inherited from their first parents? . . . But now there was no Fall; there was no total depravity, or imminent danger of endless doom; and, the basis gone, the superstructure followed.

It is written with earnestness and in excellent English; it must mean something. But what can it mean? How could physical science prove that man is not depraved? You do not cut a man open to find his sins. You do not boil him until he gives forth the unmistakable green fumes of depravity. How could physical science find any traces of a moral fall? What traces did the author expect to find? Did he expect to find a fossil Eve with a fossil apple inside her? Did he suppose that the ages would have spared for him a complete skeleton of Adam attached to a slightly faded fig-leaf? The whole paragraph which I have quoted is simply a series of inconsequent sentences, all quite untrue in themselves and all quite irrelevant to each other. Science never said that there could have been no Fall. There might have been ten Falls, one on top of the other, and the thing would have been quite consistent with everything we know from physical science. Humanity might have grown morally worse for millions of centuries, and the thing would in no way contradict the principle of Evolution…

What can people mean when they say that science has disturbed their view of sin? What sort of view of sin can they have had before science disturbed it? Did they think that it was something to eat? When people say that science has disturbed their faith in immortality, what do they mean? Did they think that immortality was a gas?

Of course the real truth is that science has introduced no new principle into the matter at all. A man can be a Christian to the end of the world, for the simple reason that a man could have been an Atheist from the beginning of it. The materialism of things is on the face of things; it does not require any science to find it out. A man who has lived and loved falls down dead and the worms eat him. That is Materialism if you like. That is Atheism if you like. If mankind has believed in spite of that, it can believe in spite of anything. But why our human lot is made any more hopeless because we know the names of all the worms who eat him, or the names of all the parts of him that they eat, is to a thoughtful mind somewhat difficult to discover.

- The Illustrated London News, 28 September 1907.

“Not one in ten”

Some of the people who talk most about “change” and “progress” are the people who can least imagine, really, any alteration in the existing texts and methods of life. For instance, they make “reading and writing” a test for all ages and all civilizations. Reading and writing are in themselves simply accomplishments, very delightful and exciting accomplishments, like playing the mandolin or looping the loop. Some accomplishments are at one time fashionable, some at another. In our civilization nearly everybody can read. In the Saracen civilization nearly everybody could ride. But people persistently apply the three “R”s to all human history. People say, in a shocked sort of voice, “Do you know that in the Middle Ages you could not find one gentlemen in ten who could sign his name?” That is just as if a mediaeval gentlemen cried out in horror, “Do you know that among the gentlemen of the reign of Edward VII, not one in ten knows how to fly a falcon?” Or, to speak more strictly, it would be like a mediaeval gentlemen expressing astonishment that a modern gentleman could not blazon his coat-of-arms. The alphabet is one set of arbitrary symbols. The figures of heraldry are another set of arbitrary symbols. In the fourteenth century every gentlemen knew one: in the twentieth century every gentlemen knows the other…

We talk, with typical bigotry and narrowness, about the Alphabet. But there are in truth a great many alphabets besides the alphabet of letters. The letter alphabet was only slightly used in the Middle Ages: these other alphabets are only slightly used now. A certain number of soldiers learn to convey their meaning to each other by abruptly brandishing small flags. Others talk to each other in an intimate and chatty way by flashes of sunlight on a mirror. These alphabets are as peculiar and restricted an accomplishment as writing was in the Dark Ages. They may some day be as broad and universal a habit as writing is now.

- The Illustrated London News, 2 December 1905.