The total significance of the man cannot be grasped by isolating him within his time, nor by analyzing separately his accomplishments in the dozen and more disciplines in which he laboured. The specific Bellocian theses—his espousal of both French Republicanism and the monarchical principle, his distributist economics, his defence of the Western continuity with Rome, his doctrine on the relationship between Catholicism and Europe, his contempt and his arrogance before all things demonstrative of the modern temper—march forth and deploy themselves controversially as commanded by an essential, integrated position that can only be called classical in the larger sense of the word. It is for this reason that the causes for which Belloc fought so long and so eloquently can be understood in all their grandeur, and can be evaluated objectively and with full sympathetic precision only if his cardinal intuition is explored and fully grasped. Above all else, Belloc is an unalienated man: a representative of a rarely achieved ideal, that of the integrated Christian humanist.
The integrated man achieves himself by making his own all those dimensions of human personality and perfection which when isolated one from another seem mutually incompatible. Integration is a steady struggle. It is not usually characterized by any sudden and dramatic affirmation or negation; it does not lend itself easily to artistic depiction. Integration grows from within, and if it flowers in grace and the supernatural order, it has its roots in the hidden depths of natural man. The classical humanist spirit, whether it be found in the pre-Christian or in the Christian world, always aims at placing before man an ideal that is neither angelic nor animal, but human, and which is therefore limited in the way man is limited. It is an ideal oriented in harmony with the reserves of reality at hand to human beings. For the humanist hopes to unite perfections in the concrete order of existence which, if left to themselves, would tend to conflict. The Christian humanist places his faith and hope in the Incarnation not only as a doctrine to be believed, but as a Divine vindication of the intrinsic goodness of man and of the world in which he lives. He restores all things to God, not by suppressing them, but by seeing in them the Creative Act which is the patent letter of nobility to whatsoever is, in any sense, being. A Christian humanist realizes that he cannot be a Christian man unless he is first man, and hence his supernatural life is grounded in a natural life which has been harmonized. Unfortunately Christian humanism has more often remained an academic ideal than a reality, and in a day in which human dignity is more and more suppressed in a society increasingly inhuman in its techniques and accomplishments, a man who actualized within himself this ideal to an astounding degree should grow in significance.
Belloc’s centralized personality was not given him; it was achieved. His realization of his own destiny does not appear as an easy victory, but as something battled for. It is precisely in that battle that its grandeur lies.
The most articulate and symbolic statement of the natural humanism underlying his militant Catholicism is to be found in Belloc’s The Four Men, a curious “Farrago” written rather early in his career. This book reveals the necessity of harmonizing the separate drives in man if man would be himself. It faces man with the paradox of natural humanism: its insufficiency in the face of death. Man, after a struggle, wins the battle against personal alienation only to face an alienation that strikes at deeper roots: an alienation of his very self, of his very being.
The Four Men is a book filled with an earth-sadness, and an almost pagan prescience of the passing of things. A favourite theme of Belloc’s, the mood of the second of November, All Hallow’s Eve, the Night of the Dead, runs like a somber motif through the entire work. The South English countryside, the land of Sussex, the author’s own county, is permeated with an autumnal gloom; the hills and the valley of Arun, the surf booming quietly in the night, the sea air stiffening the drama of things, all this is threatened by a dissolution, not so imminent as to rob nature of its beauty, but present enough to render more lovely the things that pass.
“Myself” sits in the inn George, “drinking that port of theirs and staring at the fire,”[2] and moved by thoughts of youth and of the river Arun, he arouses himself and resolves to be off to see his home once again. He is joined by an old man (still vigorous against the march of the years) who lets himself be known as Grizzlebeard. The following day, October 30, 1902, the two men are met by a Sailor, a fellow in the full flood of life, a singer of songs and a profound realist; and the company is completed by a Poet, a man with visions and no money. The Four Men join in a pilgrimage to “the land they know.”
They pass through the Sussex weald regaling one another with stories and songs, and they speak of the “Worst and the Best Thing in the World.” That night they rest in a hut. The next day is given over to good bacon and to the singing of many songs, among which is the incomparable “Bishop of Old Auxerre.” It is in this fashion that they arrive by easy stages at the house of Myself, where they rest until the following morning. The next night, the first of November, finds them at a little inn, and Grizzlebeard engages a philosopher, a “metaphysician,” in heated conversation over the ultimate causes of things.
On the second of November, Myself awakes “from a dream,” and Grizzlebeard tells him solemnly that it is the day of parting. The Four Men walk slowly and silently through the mists until they take “that lane northward which turns through Redlands and up to the hill of Elstead and its inn.”[3] Then they break bread together for the last time in the communion of friendship, and the Three, led by Grizzlebeard, part company from Myself, who until the very end protests and urges yet another day of comradeship. Grizzlebeard replies:
“There is nothing at all that remains: nor any house; nor any castle, however strong; nor any love, however tender and sound; nor any comradeship among men, however hardy. Nothing remains but the things of which I will not speak, because we have spoken enough of them already during these four days. But I who am old will give you advice, which is this—to consider chiefly from now onward those permanent things which are, as it were, the shores of this age and the harbours of our glittering and pleasant but dangerous and wholly changeful sea.”
When he said this (by which he meant Death), the other two, looking sadly at me, stood silent also for about the time in which a man can say good-by with reverence. Then they all turned about and went rapidly and with a purpose up the village street.