[Footnote 1: Introduction to Sordello.]
[Footnote 2: The Cathedral. By M.T.K. Huysman. Translated by
Clare Bell.]
[Footnote 3: R. P. Pacher, S.J., De Dante à Verlaine.]
XIX.
TRACTS FOR THE MILLION.
The paradoxes of one generation are the common-places of the next; what the savants of to-day whisper in the ear, the Hyde Park orators of to-morrow will bawl from their platforms. Moreover, it is just when its limits begin to be felt by the critical, when its pretended all-sufficingness can no longer be maintained, that a theory or hypothesis begins to be popular with the uncritical and to work its irrevocable ill-effects on the general mind. In this, as in many other matters, the lower orders adopt the abandoned fashions of their betters, though with less of the well-bred taste which sometimes in the latter makes even absurdity graceful. In this way it has come to pass that at the very moment in which a reaction against the irreligious or anti-religious philosophy of a couple of generations ago is making itself felt in the study, the spreading pestilence of negation and unbelief has gained and continues to gain possession of the street. Some fifty years ago religion and even Christianity, seemed to the sanguine eyes of Catholics so firmly rooted in England that the recovery of the country to their faith depended almost entirely on the settlement of the Anglo-Roman controversy; to which controversy they accordingly devoted, and, in virtue of the still unexhausted impetus of that effort, do still devote their energies, almost exclusively. But together with a dawning consciousness that times and conditions have considerably changed, there is growing up in certain quarters a feeling that we too shall have to make some modifications in order to adapt ourselves to the altered circumstances. It is becoming increasingly evident that even could the said Anglo-Roman controversy be settled by some argument so irresistibly evident as to leave no locus standi to the opponents of the Petrine claims, yet the number of those Anglicans who admit the historical, critical, philosophical, and theological assumptions upon which the controversy is based and which are presumed as common ground, is so small and dwindling that, were they all gained to the Church, we should be still a "feeble folk" in the face of that tidal wave of unbelief whose gathering force bids fair to sweep everything before it. Also the lingering impression left from "Tractarian" days as to the intellectual pre-eminence of the Catholicizing party in the Anglican Church, which pre-eminence might make amends for their numerical insignificance, is gradually giving way to the recognition of the sobering fact that at present that party in no exclusive sense represents the cultivated intellect of the country. It is no disrespect to that party to say that while scholarship and intelligence are therein well represented by scattered individuals, yet it is cumbered, like most religious movements after they have streamed some distance from their source, with a majority of those whose adhesion has little or no pretence to an intellectual basis; and whose occasional accession to the Catholic Church is almost entirely their own gain.
To give the last decisive push to those who are already toppling over the border-line that divides England from Rome, to reap and gather-in the harvest already ripe for the sickle, is a useful, a necessary, and a charitable work; one that calls for a certain kind of patient skill not to be underestimated; but there is a wider and perhaps more fruitful field whose soil is as yet scarcely broken. It may even be asserted with only seeming paradox that the best religious intelligence of the country is to be found in the camp of negation rather than in that of affirmation; among Broad Churchmen, Nonconformists, Unitarians, and Positivists, rather than among those who seek rest in the unstable position of a modified Catholicism. The very instability and difficulty of that position elicits much ingenuity from its theological defenders, though it also divides their counsels not a little; nor do we quarrel with them for affirming instead of denying, but for not affirming enough. But this attempt at compromise, this midway abortion of the natural growth of an idea, even were it justifiable as sometimes happens when legitimate issues are obscured through failure of evidence, repels the great multitude of religious thinkers who are not otherwise sufficiently drawn towards Catholicism to care to examine these claims. To say that there is no logical alternative between Rome and Agnosticism is a sufficiently shallow though popular sophism. At most it means that from certain given premisses one or other of those conclusions must follow syllogistically—a statement that would be more interesting were the said premisses indisputable and admitted by all the world. Still it may be allowed that a criticism of these premisses, which is a third alternative, opens up to religious thought a number of roads, all of which lead away from, rather than towards the extreme Anglican position, and hence that the more searching religious intelligence of the country is as adverse to that position—and for the same reasons—as it is to our own. And by the "religious intelligence" I mean all that intelligence that is interested in the religious problem; be that interest hostile or friendly; be it, in its issue, negative or constructive. For it must not be forgotten that the enemies of a truth are as interested in it as its friends; or that the friendliest interest, the strongest "wish to believe," may at times issue in reluctant negation. So far then as the great mass of religious intelligence in this country is not "Anglo-Catholic" in its sympathies; and so far as it is chiefly on the "Anglo-Catholic" section that we make any perceptible impression, the conversion of England, for what depends on our own efforts, does not seem to be as imminent a contingency as it would appear to be in the eyes of those foreign critics for whom Lord Halifax is the type of every English Churchman and the English Church co-extensive with the nation—save for a small irreclaimable residue of Liberals and Freemasons.
Those who, influenced by such considerations, would have us extend our efforts from the narrowing circle of Anglo-Catholicism to the ever-widening circle of doubt and negation, are not always clear about the practically important distinction to be drawn between the active leaders of doubt, and those who are passively led; the more or less independent few, and the more or less dependent many; between the man of the study and the man of the street—a distinction analogous to that between the Ecclesia docens and Ecclesia discens, and which permeates every well-established school of belief, whether historical, ethical, political, or religious.
Dealing first with the latter, that is, with those who are led; we are becoming more explicitly conscious of the fact that in all departments of knowledge and opinion the beliefs of the many are not determined by reasoning from premisses, but by the authority of reputed specialists in the particular matter, or else by the force of the general consent of those with whom they dwell. There may be other non-rational causes of belief, but these are the principal and more universal. And when we say they are non-rational causes, we do not mean that they are non-reasonable or unreasonable. They provide such a generally trustworthy, though occasionally fallible, method of getting at truth, as is sufficient and possible for the practical needs of life—social, moral, and religious. There is an inborn instinct to think as the crowd does and to be swayed by the confident voice of authority. If at times it fail of its end, as do other instincts, yet it is so trustworthy in the main that to resist it in ordinary conditions is always imprudent. That our eyes sometimes deceive us would not justify us in always distrusting their evidence. If a child is deceived through instinctively trusting the word of its parents, the blame of its error rests with them, not with it. And so, whatever error the many are led into by obeying the instinct of submission to authority or to general consent, is their misfortune, not their fault. Of course there are higher criteria by which the general consent and the opinion of experts can be criticized and modified; but such criticism is not obligatory on the many who have neither leisure nor competence for the task. For here, as elsewhere, a certain diversity of gifts results in a natural division of labour in human society; those who have, giving to those who have not; some ministering spiritual, others temporal benefits to their neighbours. Not that a man can save another's soul for him any more than he can eat his dinner for him, but he can minister to him better food or worse.
The Mussulman child, then, may be bound, during his intellectual minority, to accept the religious teaching of its parents, just as is the Christian child. That one, in obeying this natural but fallible rule, is led into error, the other into, truth, only verifies the principle that right faith is a gift of God,—a grace, a bit of good fortune. None of those who are not professedly teachers of religion and experts, can be morally bound to a criticism above their competence, or to more than an obedience to those ordinary causes of assent to whose influence they are subjected by their circumstances. The ideal of a Catholic religion is to provide, by means of a divinely guided body of authorities and experts, an universal, international, inter-racial consensus regarding truths that are as obscure as they are vital to individual and social happiness; and thus to afford a means of sure and easy guidance to those uncritical multitudes whose necessary preoccupations forbid their engaging in theology and controversy. This ideal was sufficiently realized for practical purposes in the "ages of faith," when the whole public opinion of Europe, then believed to be coterminous with civilization, was Catholic; when dissent needed as much independence of character, as in so many places, profession does now. And surely it is a narrow-hearted criticism to prefer the primitive conditions in which none but those strong enough to face persecution could reap the benefits of Christianity. The weak and dependent are ever the majority, and if Christianity had been intended to pass them by or sift them out, "its province were not large," nor could it claim to be the religion of humanity. The Christian leaven was never meant to be kept apart, but to be hidden and lost in that unleavened mass which it seeks slowly to transform into its own nature. The majority, in respect to religion and civilization, are like unwilling school-boys who need to be coerced for their own benefit, to be kept to their work till they learn (if they ever do) to like it, and to need no more coercion. The support that Catholic surroundings give to numbers, who else were too weak to stand alone, cannot be overvalued, although it may weaken a few who else had exerted themselves more strenuously, or may foster hypocrisy in secret unbelievers who would like to, but dare not withstand public opinion.