Outspoken Essays by William Ralph Inge

W >> William Ralph Inge >> Outspoken Essays

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24

OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS

BY

WILLIAM RALPH INGE, C.V.O., D.D.

DEAN OF ST. PAUL'S

FIFTH IMPRESSION

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
FOURTH AVENUE & 30TH STREET, NEW YORK
BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS

1920

PREFACE

All the Essays in this volume, except the first, have appeared in the
_Edinburgh Review_, the _Quarterly Review_, or the _Hibbert Journal_. I
have to thank the Publishers and Editors of those Reviews for their
courtesy in permitting me to reprint them. The articles on _The
Birth-Rate, The Future of the English Race, Bishop Gore and the Church
of England_, and _Cardinal Newman_ are from the _Edinburgh Review_;
those on _Patriotism, Catholic Modernism, St. Paul_, and _The Indictment
against Christianity_ are from the _Quarterly Review_; those on
_Institutionalism and Mysticism_ and _Survival and Immortality_ from the
_Hibbert Journal_. I have not attempted to remove all traces of
overlapping, which I hope may be pardoned in essays written
independently of each other; but a few repetitions have been excised.

CONTENTS

PAGE

I. OUR PRESENT DISCONTENTS 1

II. PATRIOTISM 35

III. THE BIRTH-RATE 59

IV. THE FUTURE OF THE ENGLISH RACE 82

V. BISHOP GORE AND THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 106

VI. ROMAN CATHOLIC MODERNISM 137

VII. CARDINAL NEWMAN 172

VIII. ST. PAUL 205

IX. INSTITUTIONALISM AND MYSTICISM 230

X. THE INDICTMENT AGAINST CHRISTIANITY 243

XI. SURVIVAL AND IMMORTALITY 266

Photera theleist soi malthaka pseydhe lhego, he sklher' alethhe;
phrhaze, she gar he krhisist.

_Euripides_.

The case of historical writers is hard; for if they tell the truth
they provoke man, and if they write what is false they offend
God.--_Matthew Paris_.

Quattuor sunt maxime comprehendendae veritatis offendicula; videlicet,
fragilis et indignae auctoritatis exemplum, consuetudinis diuturnitas,
vulgi sensus imperiti, et propriae ignorantiae occultatio cum
ostentatione sapientiae superioris.--_Roger Bacon_.

Iudicio perpende; et si tibi vera videntur,
Dede manus; aut si falsum est, accingere contra.

_Lucretius_.

Eventu rerum stolidi didicere magistro.

_Claudian_.

'All' he toi men tahyta thehon en gohynasi kehitai.

_Homer_.

I

OUR PRESENT DISCONTENTS

(AUGUST, 1919)

The Essays in this volume were written at various times before and
during the Great War. In reading them through for republication, I have
to ask myself whether my opinions on social science and on the state of
religion, the two subjects which are mainly dealt with in this
collection, have been modified by the greatest calamity which has ever
befallen the civilised world, or by the issue of the struggle. I find
very little that I should now wish to alter. The war has caused events
to move faster, but in the same direction as before. The social
revolution has been hurried on; the inevitable counter-revolution has
equally been brought nearer. For if there is one safe generalisation in
human affairs, it is that revolutions always destroy themselves. How
often have fanatics proclaimed 'the year one'! But no revolutionary era
has yet reached 'year twenty-five.' As regards the national character,
there is no sign, I fear, that much wisdom has been learnt. We are more
wasteful and reckless than ever. The doctrinaire democrat still vapours
about democracy, though representative government has obviously lost
both its power and its prestige. The labour party still hugs its
comprehensive assortment of economic heresies. Organised religion
remains as impotent as it was before the war. But one fact has emerged
with startling clearness. Human nature has not been changed by
civilisation. It has neither been levelled up nor levelled down to an
average mediocrity. Beneath the dingy uniformity of international
fashions in dress, man remains what he has always been--a splendid
fighting animal, a self-sacrificing hero, and a bloodthirsty savage.
Human nature is at once sublime and horrible, holy and satanic. Apart
from the accumulation of knowledge and experience, which are external
and precarious acquisitions, there is no proof that we have changed much
since the first stone age.

The war itself, as we shall soon be compelled to recognise, had its
roots deep in the political and social structure of Europe. The growth
of wealth and population, and the law of diminishing returns, led to a
scramble for unappropriated lands producing the raw materials of
industry. It was, in a sense, a war of capital; but capitalism is no
accretion upon the body politic; it is the creator of the modern world
and an essential part of a living organism. The Germans unquestionably
made a deep-laid plot to capture all markets and cripple or ruin all
competitors. Their aims and methods were very like those of the Standard
Oil Trust on a still larger scale. The other nations had not followed
the logic of competition in the same ruthless manner; there were several
things which they were not willing to do. But war to the knife cannot be
confined to one of the combatants; the alternative, _Weltmacht oder
Niedergang_, was thrust by Germany upon the Allies when she chose that
motto for herself. If the modern man were as much dominated by economic
motives as is sometimes supposed, the suicidal results of such a
conflict would have been apparent to all; but the poetry and idealism of
human nature, no longer centred, as formerly, in religion, had gathered
round a romantic patriotism, for which the belligerents were willing to
sacrifice their all without counting the cost. Like other idealisms,
patriotism varies from a noble devotion to a moral lunacy.

But there was another cause which led to the war. Germany was a curious
combination of seventeenth century theory and very modern practice. An
Emperor ruling by divine right was the head of the most scientific state
that the world has seen. In many ways Germany, with an intelligent,
economical, and uncorrupt Government, was a model to the rest of the
world. But the whole structure was menaced by that form of
individualistic materialism which calls itself social democracy, and
which in practice is at once the copy of organic materialism and the
reaction against it. The motives for drilling a whole nation in the
pursuit of purely national and purely materialistic aims are not strong
enough to prevent disintegration. The German _Kriegsstaat_ was falling
to pieces through internal fissures. A successful war might give the
empire a new lease of life; otherwise, the rising tide of revolution was
certain to sweep it away. As Sir Charles Walston has shown, it was for
some years doubtful whether the democratic movement would obtain control
before the bureaucracy and army chiefs succeeded in precipitating a war.
There was a kind of race between the two forces. This was the situation
which Lord Haldane found still existing in his famous visit to Germany.
In the event, the conservative powers were able to strike and to rush
public opinion. Perhaps the bureaucracy was carried along by its own
momentum. Two or three years before the war a German publicist, replying
to an eminent Englishman, who asked him who really directed the policy
of Germany, answered: 'It is a difficult question. Nominally, of course,
the Emperor is responsible; but he is a man of moods, not a strong man.
In reality, the machine runs itself. Whither it is carrying us we none
of us know; I fear towards some great disaster.' This seems to be the
truth of the matter. No doubt, a romantic imperialism, with dreams of
restoring the empire of Charlemagne, was a factor in the criminal
enterprise. No doubt the natural ambitions of officers, and the greed of
contractors and speculators, played their part in promoting it. But when
we consider that Germany held all the winning cards in a game of
peaceful penetration and economic competition, we should attribute to
the Imperial Government a strange recklessness if we did not conclude
that the political condition of Germany itself, and the automatic
working of the machine, were the main causes why the attack was made.
There is, in fact, abundant evidence that it was so. The scheme failed
only because Germany was foolish enough to threaten England before
settling accounts with Russia. But this, again, was the result of
internal pressure. Hamburg, and all the interests which the name stands
for, cared less for expansion in the East than for the capture of
markets overseas. For this important section of conservative Germany,
England was the enemy. So the gauntlet was thrown down to the whole
civilised world at once, and the odds against Germany were too great.

For the time being, the world has no example of a strong monarchy. The
three great European empires are, at the time of writing, in a state of
septic dissolution. The victors have sprung to the welcome conclusion
that democracy is everywhere triumphant, and that before long no other
type of civilised state will exist. The amazing provincialism of
American political thought accepts this conclusion without demur; and
our public men, some of whom doubtless know better, have served the
needs of the moment by effusions of political nonsense which almost
surpass the orations delivered every year on the Fourth of July. But no
historian can suppose that one of the most widespread and successful
forms of human association has been permanently extinguished because the
Central Empires were not quite strong enough to conquer Europe, an
attempt which has always failed, and probably will always fail. The
issue is not fully decided, even for our own generation. The ascendancy
will belong to that nation which is the best organised, the most
strenuous, the most intelligent, the most united. Before the war none
would have hesitated to name Germany as holding this position; and until
the downfall of the Empire the nation seemed to possess those qualities
unimpaired. The three Empires collapsed in hideous chaos as soon as they
deposed their monarchs. In the case of Russia, it is difficult to
imagine any recovery until the monarchy is restored; and Germany would
probably be well-advised to choose some member of the imperial family as
a constitutional sovereign. A monarch frequently represents his
subjects better than an elected assembly; and if he is a good judge of
character he is likely to have more capable and loyal advisers.
President Wilson's declaration that 'a steadfast concert for peace can
never be maintained except by a partnership of democratic nations; for
no autocratic government could ever be trusted to keep faith within it,'
is one of the most childish exhibitions of doctrinaire _naivete_ which
ever proceeded from the mouth of a public man. History gives no
countenance to the theory that popular governments are either more moral
or more pacific than strong monarchies. The late Lord Salisbury, in one
of his articles in the _Quarterly Review_, spoke the truth on this
subject. 'Moderation, especially in the matter of territory, has never
been a characteristic of democracy. Wherever it has had free play, in
the ancient world or the modern, in the old hemisphere or the new, a
thirst for empire and a readiness for aggressive war has always marked
it. Though governments may have an appearance and even a reality of
pacific intent, their action is always liable to be superseded by the
violent and vehement operations of mere ignorance.' The United States
are no exception to this rule. They have extended their dominion by much
the same means as the empire of the Tsars or our own. Texas and Upper
California, the Philippines and Porto Rico, were annexed forcibly; New
Mexico, Alaska, and Louisiana were bought; Florida was acquired by
treaty; Maine filched from Canada. In no case were the wishes of the
inhabitants consulted. Our own experience of republicanism is the same.
It was during the short period when Great Britain had no king that
Cromwell's court-poet, Andrew Marvell, urged him to complete his
glorious career by demolishing our present allies:

A Caesar he, ere long, to Gaul,
To Italy an Hannibal.

On the other hand, none of the 'autocrats' wanted this war. The Kaiser
was certainly pushed into it.

Democracy is a form of government which may be rationally defended, not
as being good, but as being less bad than any other. Its strongest
merits seem to be: first, that the citizens of a democracy have a sense
of proprietorship and responsibility in public affairs, which in times
of crisis may add to their tenacity and endurance. The determination of
the Federals in the American Civil War, and of the French and British in
the four years' struggle against Germany, may be legitimately adduced as
arguments for democracy. When De Tocqueville says that 'it is hard for a
democracy to begin or to end a war,' the second is truer than the first.
And, secondly, the educational value of democracy is so great that it
may be held to counterbalance many defects. Mill decides in favour of
democracy mainly on the ground that 'it promotes a better and higher
form of national character than any other polity,' since government by
authority stunts the intellect, narrows the sympathies, and destroys the
power of initiative. 'The perfect commonwealth,' says Mr. Zimmern,' is a
society of free men and women, each at once ruling and being ruled,' It
is also fair to argue that monarchies do not escape the worst evils of
democracies. An autocracy is often obliged to oppress the educated
classes and to propitiate the mob. Domitian massacred senators with
impunity, and only fell '_postquam cerdonibus esse timendus coeperat_.'
If an autocracy does not rest on the army, which leads to the chaos of
praetorianism, it must rely on '_panem et circenses_.' Hence it has some
of the worst faults of democracy, without its advantages. As Mr. Graham
Wallas says: 'When a Tsar or a bureaucracy finds itself forced to govern
in opposition to a vague national feeling which may at any moment create
an overwhelming national purpose, the autocrat becomes the most
unscrupulous of demagogues, and stirs up racial or religious or social
hatred, or the lust for foreign war, with less scruple than a newspaper
proprietor under a democracy,' The autocrat, in fact, is often a slave,
as the demagogue is often a tyrant. Lastly, the democrat may urge that
one of the commonest accusations against democracy--that the populace
chooses its rulers badly--is not true in times of great national danger.
On the contrary, it often shows a sound instinct in finding the
strongest man to carry it through a crisis. At such times the parrots
and monkeys are discarded, and a Napoleon or a Kitchener is given a
free hand, though he may have despised all the demagogic arts. In other
words, a democracy sometimes knows when to abdicate. The excesses of
revolutionists are not an argument against democracy, since revolutions
are anything rather than democratic.

Nevertheless, the indictment against democracy is a very heavy one, and
it is worth while to state the main items in the charge.

1. Whatever may be truly said about the good sense of a democracy during
a great crisis, at ordinary times it does not bring the best men to the
top. Professor Hearnshaw, in his admirable 'Democracy at the
Crossroads,' collects a number of weighty opinions confirming this
judgment. Carlyle, who proclaimed the merits of silence in some thirty
volumes, blames democracy for ignoring the 'noble, silent men' who could
serve it best, and placing power in the hands of windbags. Ruskin,
Matthew Arnold, Sir James Stephen, Sir Henry Maine, and Lecky, all agree
that 'the people have for the most part neither the will nor the power
to find out the best men to lead them.' In France the denunciations of
democratic politicians are so general that it would be tedious to
enumerate the writers who have uttered them. One example will suffice;
the words are the words of Anatole Beaulieu in 1885:

The wider the circle from which politicians and
state-functionaries are recruited, the lower seems their
intellectual level to have sunk. This deterioration in the
personnel of government has been yet more striking from the
moral point of view. Politics have tended to become more
corrupt, more debased, and to soil the hands of those who
take part in them and the men who get their living by them.
Political battles have become too bitter and too vulgar not
to have inspired aversion in the noblest and most upright
natures by their violence and their intrigues. The elite of
the nation in more than one country are showing a tendency
to have nothing to do with them. Politics is an industry in
which a man, to prosper, requires less intelligence and
knowledge than boldness and capacity for intrigue. It has
already become in some states the most ignominious of
careers. Parties are syndicates for exploitation, and its
forms become ever more shameless.

A later account of French politics, drawn from inside knowledge and
experience, is the remarkable novel, 'Les Morts qui parlent,' by the
Vicomte Le Vogue. Readers of this book will not forget the description
of the _bain de haine_ in which a new deputy at once finds himself
plunged, and the canker of corruption which eats into the whole system.
It is no wonder that the majority of Frenchmen do not care to record
their votes. In 1906, 5,209,606 votes were given, 6,383,852 electors did
not go to the poll. The record of democracy in the new countries is no
better. We must regretfully admit that Louis Simond was right when he
said, 'Few people take the trouble to persuade the people, except those
who see their interest in deceiving them.'

2. The democracy is a ready victim to shibboleths and catchwords, as all
demagogues know too well. 'The abstract idea,' as Scherer says, 'is the
national aliment of popular rhetoric, the fatal form of thought which,
for want of solid knowledge, operates in a vacuum.' The politician has
only to find a fascinating formula; facts and arguments are powerless
against it. The art of the demagogue is the art of the parrot; he must
utter some senseless catchword again and again, working on the
suggestibility of the crowd. Archbishop Trench, 'On the Study of Words,'
notices this fact of psychology and the use which is commonly made of
it.

If I wanted any further evidence of the moral atmosphere
which words diffuse, I would ask you to observe how the
first thing men do, when engaged in controversy with others,
is ever to assume some honourable name to themselves, such
as, if possible, shall beg the whole subject in dispute, and
at the same time to affix on their adversaries a name which
shall place them in a ridiculous or contemptible or odious
light. A deep instinct, deeper perhaps than men give any
account of to themselves, tells them how far this will go;
that multitudes, utterly unable to weigh the arguments on
one side or the other, will yet be receptive of the
influences which these words are evermore, however
imperceptibly, diffusing. By argument they might hope to
gain over the reason of a few, but by help of these
nicknames the prejudices and passions of the many.

The chief instrument of this base art is no longer the public speech
but the newspaper.

The psychology of the crowd has been much studied lately, by Le Bon and
other writers in France, by Mr. Graham Wallas in England. I think that
Le Bon is in danger of making The Crowd a mystical, superhuman entity.
Of course, a crowd is made up of individuals, who remain individuals
still. We must not accept the stuffed idol of Rousseau and the
socialists, 'The General Will,' and turn it into an evil spirit. There
is no General Will. All we have a right to say is that individuals are
occasionally guided by reason, crowds never.

3. Several critics of democracy have accused it not only of rash
iconoclasm, but of obstinate conservatism and obstructiveness. It seems
unreasonable to charge the same persons with two opposite faults; but it
is true that where the popular emotions are not touched, the masses will
cling to old abuses from mere force of habit. As Maine says, universal
suffrage would have prohibited the spinning-jenny and the power-loom,
the threshing-machine and the Gregorian calendar; and it would have
restored the Stuarts. The theory of democracy--_vox populi vox dei_--is
a pure superstition, a belief in a divine or natural sanction which does
not exist. And superstition is usually obstructive. 'We erect the
temporary watchwords of evanescent politics into eternal truths; and
having accepted as platitudes the paradoxes of our fathers, we
perpetuate them as obstacles to the progress of our children.'[1]

4. A more serious danger is that of vexatious and inquisitive tyranny.
This is exercised partly through public opinion, a vulgar, impertinent,
anonymous tyrant who deliberately makes life unpleasant for anyone who
is not content to be the average man. But partly it is seen in constant
interference with the legislature and the executive. No one can govern
who cannot afford to be unpopular, and no democratic official can afford
to be unpopular. Sometimes he has to wink at flagrant injustice and
oppression; at other times a fanatical agitation compels him to pass
laws which forbid the citizen to indulge perfectly harmless tastes, or
tax him to contribute to the pleasures of the majority. In many ways a
Russian under the Tsars was far less interfered with than an Englishman
or American or Australian.

5. But the two diseases which are likely to be fatal to democracy are
anarchy and corruption. A democratic government is almost necessarily
weak and timid. A democracy cannot tolerate a strong executive for fear
of seeing the control pass out of the hands of the mob. The executive
must be unarmed and defenceless. The result is that it is at the mercy
of any violent and anti-social faction. No civilised government has ever
given a more ludicrous and humiliating object-lesson than the Cabinet
and House of Commons in the years before the war, in face of the
outrages committed by a small gang of female anarchists. The
legalisation of terrorism by the trade-unions was too tragic a surrender
to be ludicrous, but it was even more disgraceful. None could be
surprised when, during the war, the Government shrank from dealing with
treasonable conspiracy in the same quarter.

The _Times_ for May 24, 1917, contained a noteworthy example
of justice influenced by pressure, and therefore applied
with flagrant inequality. In parallel columns appeared
reports of 'sugar-sellers fined' and 'strike leaders
released.' The former paid the full penalty of their
misdeeds because no body of outside opinion maintained them.
The latter, who were stated to have committed offences for
which the maximum penalty was penal servitude for life, got
off scot-free because they were members of a powerful
organisation which was able to bring immense weight to bear
on the Government.[2]

The 'immense weight' was, of course, the threat of virtually betraying
the country to the Germans. The country is at this moment at the mercy
of any lawless faction which may choose either to hold the community to
ransom by paralysing our trade and channels of supply, or by organised
violence against life and property. Democracy is powerless against
sectional anarchism; and when such movements break out there is no
remedy except by substituting for democracy a government of a very
different type.

Democracy is, in fact, a disintegrating force. It is strong in
destruction, and tends to fall to pieces when the work of demolition
(which may of course be a necessary task) is over. Democracy dissolves
communities into individuals and collects them again into mobs. It pulls
up by the roots the social order which civilisation has gradually
evolved, and leaves men _deracines_, as Bourget says in one of his best
novels, homeless and friendless, with no place ready for them to fill.
It is the opposite extreme to the caste system of India, which, with all
its faults, does not seem to breed the European type of _enrage_, the
enemy of society as such.

6. The corruption of democracies proceeds directly from the fact that
one class imposes the taxes and another class pays them. The
constitutional principle, 'No taxation without representation,' is
utterly set at nought under a system which leaves certain classes
without any effective representation at all. At the present time it is
said that one-tenth of the population pays five-sixths of the taxes. The
class which imposes the taxes has refused to touch the burden of the war
with one of its fingers; and every month new doles at the public expense
are distributed under the camouflage of 'social reform.' At every
election the worldly goods of the minority are put up to auction. This
is far more immoral than the old-fashioned election bribery, which was a
comparatively honest deal between two persons; and in its effects it is
far more ruinous. Democracy is likely to perish, like the monarchy of
Louis XVI, through national bankruptcy.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24