"When the old Liberals removed
the gags from all the heresies, their idea was that religious and
philosophical discoveries might thus be made. Their view was that
cosmic truth was so important that every one ought to bear
independent testimony. The modern idea is that cosmic truth is so
unimportant that it cannot matter what any one says. The former
freed inquiry as men loose a noble hound; the latter frees inquiry
as men fling back into the sea a fish unfit for eating. Never has
there been so little discussion about the nature of men as now,
when, for the first time, any one can discuss it. The old
restriction meant that only the orthodox were allowed to discuss
religion. Modern liberty means that nobody is allowed to discuss
it. Good taste, the last and vilest of human superstitions, has
succeeded in silencing us where all the rest have failed.
There are some people, nevertheless and I am one of them who
think that the most practical and important thing about a man is
still his view of the universe. ... We think that for a general
about to fight an enemy, it is important to know the enemy's
numbers, but still more important to know the enemy's philosophy.
We think the question is not whether the theory of the cosmos
affects matters, but whether in the long run, anything else affects
them.
When everything about a people is for the time growing weak and
ineffective, it begins to talk about efficiency. So it is that when
a man's body is a wreck he begins, for the first time, to talk
about health. Vigorous organisms talk not about their processes,
but about their aims.
There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the
only thing that can exist is an uninterested person.I wish to deal
with my most distinguished contemporaries, not personally or in a
merely literary manner, but in relation to the real body of
doctrine which they teach. I am not concerned with Mr. Rudyard
Kipling as a vivid artist or a vigorous personality; I am concerned
with him as a Heretic that is to say, a man whose view of things
has the hardihood to differ from mine. I am not concerned with Mr.
Bernard Shaw as one of the most brilliant and one of the most
honest men alive; I am concerned with him as a Heretic that is to
say, a man whose philosophy is quite solid, quite coherent, and
quite wrong."
