For that matter, our own British politics have lately illustrated vividly enough the fact that a division accompanies such a unification. We have seen it, first in the case of Ireland and then in the case of India. It was exactly at the time when they were easiest to reach that they were hardest to hold. No improvement in the trains from Euston or the boats from Holyhead, can alter the fact that our folly allowed Ireland to float farther and farther away, in the sea of the spirit, till it was as remote as a South Sea Island. It was perhaps too much to expect that we should ever really understand India; but in the old days it was at least understood how much we proposed to understand. If a hostile critic likes to put it so, it was understood that we should continue to misunderstand. But at least something was understood; and in the present welter and dissolution of bonds, it is not too much to say that nothing is understood. The new India is more of a riddle than the old; and the country grows more mysterious as it grows more near, or even more new. For we are for the first time near enough to feel the full force of the differences; and that sort of silent shock of collision is occurring with the closer communications all over the world. But there is, moreover, as I have said, a moral division due to the growth of new ideas. When we dealt with the active resistance of Hyder Ali the Moslem, both sides were fighting with the same weapons and in the same world. When we deal with the passive resistance of Gandhi the Mahatma, we are in a world as unfamiliar as magic. The paradox of this parallel of contraction and expansion is really simple enough. It follows on the modern attempt to combine wild spiritual speculation with systematic scientific order. Philosophy sprouts and sprawls in every direction, and science tries in vain to tie the bundle together. Men were united by religions and loyalties, and then it did not matter how widely they were scattered. A clan or tribe would he spread thinly over a whole moorland or prairie. Each hut would be as solitary as a hermitage, but they would be hermits of the same creed. The modern method is to stick up a row of villas all exactly alike, and all close together for convenience of electricity and drainage. But the man living in the first house may be a Buddhist, and in the second a Papist, and in the third an atheist, and in the fourth a diabolist; and each villa is an isolated universe.

  XIV. On Christian Science

  THE friends of Christian Science say proudly that very good business men are Christian Scientists. The foes of Christian Science say, unkindly, that Christian Scientists are very good business men. I will not debate whether these are only two ways of saying the same thing, far less whether it is a nice thing to say. The former point radiantly to rows and rows of hard-headed millionaires, reverently listening to readings from Science and Health, under the rather extraordinary impression that the presence of millionaires helps them to prove that Christian Science is Christian. The latter explain that Mrs. Eddy, though doubtless unconscious of the existence of matter, was not wholly unconscious of the existence of money. I have no intention of entering upon these purely personal feuds here. But I should like to point out that there really is a moral connexion between the two things, that extends beyond the defined boundaries of either. Just as there are more invisible (and therefore, presumably, more spiritual) forms of money than mere material coin — such as dues, debts, expectations, dead men’s shoes, mortgage, usury, economic threats and blackmail, and all the other purer and more immaterial forms of wealth — so there are indirect and impalpable influences of Christian Science which affect many who do not profess to be Scientists and could not, without some implication of humour, pretend to be Christians.

  The truth is that in one sense Christian Science has succeeded and really become the religion of the age, though it does not follow of necessity that this is a compliment to the age. I do not mean by this that most people have studied and accepted Mrs. Eddy’s original metaphysics; if, indeed, they were original, or if they were really Mrs. Eddy’s. Still less do I mean that the world accepts the original morals of Christian Science, for I am told that they are no longer accepted even by Christian Scientists. The primary principle of the cult obviously forbade them to run for a doctor if Mrs. Eddy broke her leg, since either the leg, or certainly the break, or possibly both, were illusions of Mortal Mind. Whether there really were people who would have let a man bleed to death, because the blood was a result of the mere flow of his thoughts, I have my doubts; but that did seem to be involved in some of the original definitions, though not, I understand, in some of the later modifications of them. But this practical morality about doctors does not here concern me, however practical or unpractical it may be. What I mean, when I say that this is the age of Christian Science, is not that most people living in it are in any sense Christian Scientists. I mean that the world is in a certain mood, of which Christian Science is the expression and exaggeration. It is not so much that the age could not find a more accommodating religion, as that the religion could not find a more accommodating age. Men have sometimes talked about people who were Christians before Christ, and in one sense there were certainly any number of people who were Christian Scientists before Christian Science. There was something in the whole air and movement of that time, and especially of that nation, and it was of a curious blind, sweeping, and abnormal sort. The air was rather like a whirl wind and the movement rather like a whirlpool. It had an element of formlessness that was rather that of abstraction than anarchy; that rushed head long, yet followed the curves of a tendency or a fate. Indeed, among the queer jokes so often to be found in American names, there is none more quaintly expressive than the very name of Mrs. Eddy.

  The truth about the tendency was this: that the world had become a world of Commerce. And there is about Commerce an invisible thing that may be called Confidence; even if it sometimes means no more than the Confidence Trick. It depends on faith, even if it prove to be bad faith. It does not depend on plain matters of material fact and experience. The millionaires in the Church of Christ Scientist are supposed to be hard-headed; I have myself a suspicion that they are rather soft-headed. But, anyhow, they do not really deal in hardware; they do emphatically deal in what may be called soft goods. They deal in things that easily receive impressions from without, and are especially sensitive to the impressions that we call depressions. They deal in rumours, in understandings, in fictitious values, in temporary offers, in things that are never what they seem, and seldom do exactly what they promise. Business is such stuff as dreams are made on, and its little life is rounded with a slump.

  This nervous and not very sane state of affairs is the origin of Optimism and the general advice to the salesman to Keep Smiling. If he left off smiling for one single second, he might blight the market for hundreds of miles around. The whole condition has now become so terribly atmospheric; not in the milder sense of men suffering from the atmosphere, but in the almost agonizing sense of men making the atmosphere. That is why the whole of this commercial world is struck by the stubborn dissatisfaction or harsh discontent of the more rooted rural populations. They say that the farmer always grumbles; and so he does, for he can afford to grumble. He thinks the weather is bad, but he knows that his grumbling will not make it worse. He knows he cannot produce a cloud in the sky by every curse that comes to his tongue; that he cannot blight his own crops, even by declaring falsely that they are blighted. He cannot create a slump in turnips merely by turning a melancholy face upon them, or frown at the cabbages until they close weak and quiet when they began brisk and strong. He is dealing with absolute and unalterable realities, and, as he is dealing with real facts, he can express his real feelings. He is, in a rather curious and eccentric sense, in a position in which the truth has made him free. He is a realist be cause he is dealing with realities. The commercial man almost has to be a romanticist because he so often deals with unrealities. And that is what Americans mean when they talk about The Romance of Salesmanship.

  Now, for an atmosphere so atmospheric as that the obvious religion was Christian Science, with its general suggestion of men creating their own atmosphere. To say that there was no such thing as a headache was part of the same mentality as saying that there would be no such thing as a slump; it was of the very essence of that mythology and genealogy that the wish was father to the thought. It had all kinds of minor manifestations, apart from any acceptance of that particular creed; but it was obviously more in touch with that particular creed than with any other creed. It was closely akin to all that astonishing mass of advertisement and suggestion about Personality and Will-Power and all the rest which we see sprawling over so many American books and magazines. It is an ironic jest that the religion is revealed, or betrayed, by its images or icons. The American papers show portraits of men who have Personality; which is why they all look exactly alike.

  I have remarked recently that the world is now occupied with the Study of the Mind rather than with the Use of the Mind. This is what is meant by calling it the Age of Psychology. It is also what is meant by calling it, in a somewhat sinister sense, the Age of Physical Jerks. It is a nervous and unrestful sort of optimism that is thus perpetually trying to impose a mood upon the objective universe, and the world, like Wall Street, is liable to reactions of panic. But certainly Christian Science did for a time suit the mood, if it does not for any long period suit the mind; if, indeed, we return to using the mind instead of merely doctoring it with drugs.

  XV. On Rest Cures for Nations

  WE certainly need a new theory of Progress, for all existing theories about the future have a very hopeless air of being things of the past. There is even a detachable grain of truth in the doctrine of Spengler, which roughly maintains that there is no such thing as Progress, but only Progresses. That is, there is such a thing as one civilization becoming completely civilized in its own way, and then getting out of the way to make room for a totally different civilization. Unfortunately, every heathen seems fated to be a fatalist, and every fatalist seems fated to be a pessimist. The heathen in his blindness bows down to wood and stone; in other words, he is pitifully cramped and crushed by the study of botany and geology. Sometimes he even passes from botany to biology, or, worse still, to anthropology. Now, in these dead or undeveloped things, it is more or less true that there is no Progress, but only Progresses. It is not easy to compare one completed phase with another; it is idle to ask whether old red sandstone is redder than greengages are green. The fossil that was and the flower that is cannot call to each other across the ages, and though there may be, in one sense, an upward spiral of evolution, it is not a spiritual spiral, or, as the Yankees would say, a live wire. There is not, in that manifest manner, at least, a memory in nature; but there is a memory of mankind. Cultures do not so completely perish as the pessimists pretend. Men do own the cave-drawings of a Neolithic man, as birds do not own the fossil of a pterodactyl. Still, there is a truth in that substitution of Progresses for Progress.

  The truth seems to me to be this: that men do from time to time make special efforts; these are often crowned with success, and when they are crowned with success they generally end in failure. But that leaves on one side the question of the ordinary human life, which existed before the effort and still exists after the effort. Rome made a great effort and civilized a great part of the world, and the effort was followed by the Dark Ages. But the Dark Ages were not sub-human, any more than the Roman Empire was superhuman. It has been said by historical scholars that the simplicity of the Dark Ages refreshed the world like a sleep. It is certainly true that nations can be notably vigorous and hopeful at the end of what is called a period of decline and might more properly be called a period of neglect. Spain is far more vigorous and hopeful at this moment than many parts of the vast industrial field of what are considered successful societies. Spain made a great effort in the sixteenth century, and opened a new world of wealth and discovery; then it began to sink slowly out of sight. But Spaniards were not stupid and stunted savages in the time of Goya any more than in the time of Velasquez. Very likely the time will soon come when the Spaniards will make another effort; and for this purpose it is likely enough that their repose or retirement will have left them healthier and happier than most other people. In fact, we need a new theory or conception in history; the conception of the historical holiday. Perhaps the Dark Ages were a holiday, if they were a little like a dull and rainy holiday. But there is something to be said for a vacation, even in the literal sense of a vacuum. Anyhow, I think it extremely probable that the Spaniards will turn up again as fresh as paint, even the paint of Velasquez. They have not been so much exhausted and depressed by our dismal industrial materialism or our vast capitalist responsibilities. They have been refreshed and rejuvenated by a little decay; and have thoroughly enjoyed themselves for three centuries as a dying nation.

  I would not insist everywhere on substituting, for the respectable old theory of the Revolution, this disturbing and dangerous theory of the Rest Cure No doubt it might be overdone. People might go on decaying a little too long and degenerate more than was really good for their health. I propose only a moderate indulgence in ruin; a cautious and temperate use of a return to barbarism. There are many quite modern people in whom the merest touch of decomposition, the merest soupçon of corruption and rottenness, would be enough to reassure me. But there are some modern people who are a great deal too modern; who are quite certainly devouring and destroying themselves with the nonsense of novelty, and trying always to hear of something later than the very latest. They are visibly growing old in order to keep up with their youth. They are wasting away to nothing, for want of a little nothing to do. If only some of their friends would persuade them to go away for a few centuries of superstition and ignorance, like the people of the Dark Ages, they might come back and astonish the world by something that the world had never seen before, like Gothic architecture or the portraits in the Canterbury Tales.

  Anyhow, there is something to be said for this theory of the periodical enterprise of humanity. One advantage of it is that it resettles in a sane proportion all that question which was discussed in an earlier article: the question of the real case for the Noble Savage and Rousseau’s conception of a return to Nature. So long as scientific men merely despised savages (much more than the missionaries who were charged with despising them), the ease seemed simple enough. If primitive people were always more cruel and vindictive, as well as more clumsy and ignorant, than we are, then it was possible to present a progressive humanity, which every day and in every way was growing better and better. But (as I remarked elsewhere) even the story of simple tribes is not so simple. There is evidence of simple tribes that are actually milder in their punishments than we are, or kinder to their children than we are; or at least than we very recently were. But though this upsets the whole progressive theory that we civilized people are better than the savages in all respects, it does not force us to the contrary conclusion that the savages are better than we are in all respects. It is arguable that when men marched out on a special enterprise, they had to adopt a special discipline. Civilization might in some ways have more severe laws, because it had more serious problems. There might be harder lessons to learn, because there was more to be learned. The progressive tribe might be under martial law, while the conservative tribe was under common law. But the former might none the less be marching to the promised land.

  For instance, there is a tiresome journalistic habit of fulsomely praising ourselves, and fatuously despising our fathers, because we no longer hang a man for forgery. But, as a fact, it was not an early primitive habit, but a late progressive habit, to hang a man for forgery. The law punishing forgery with death appeared quite late in our history, and was a result of our advancing civilization. It was a highly modern sort of thing to do. For forgery did not become frightfully important until finance and commercial contracts, and banking business of all sorts, had become important. I am very glad that men are no longer hanged for forgery. But I can quite imagine a simple and artless tribe of savages among whom the habit of imitating another man’s handwriting would appear as gay and innocent as making faces in imitation of another man’s face. If Hiawatha wrote his name in picture-writing on the smooth bark of the birch-tree, there would be no particular harm in Chibiabos playfully copying his friend’s particular way of drawing a wigwam or a rising sun. No; there is something after all in the Noble Savage; there is something at least in the Happy Savage. But that does not prove that the tribe should not sacrifice some of its happiness when the Great Spirit bids it go forth to war.

  XVI. On Philosophy versus Fiction

  LOOKING back on a wild and wasted life, I realize that I have especially sinned in neglecting to read novels. I mean the really novel novels; for such old lumber as Dickens and Jane Austen I know fairly well. If instead of trifling away my time over pamphlets about Collectivism or Co-operation, plunging for mere pleasure into the unhealthy excitement of theological debates with dons, or enjoying the empty mirth of statistics about Poland and Czechoslovakia, I had quietly sat at home doing my duty and reading every novel as it comes out, I might be a more serious and earnest man than I am to-day. If instead of loitering to laugh over something, merely because it happened to be laughable, I had walked stiffly and sternly on to the Circulating Library, and put myself under the tuition of our more passionate lady novelists, I might by this time be as intense as they. If instead of leading a riotous life, scrapping with Mr. Shaw about Socialism, or Dean Inge about Science, I had believed everything I was told about marriage by an unmarried young woman in an avowedly imaginary story, I might now have a more undisturbed faith and simplicity. Novels are the great monument of the amazing credulity of the modern mind; for people believe them quite seriously even though they do not pretend to be true.