It is time that we gave a second thought to Puritanism. In the heyday of
release from forms which had lost their meaning, it was natural to look
back on that period of our history with eyes that saw in it nothing but
fanatical excess; we approved the picturesque phrase which showed the
English mind going into prison and having the key turned upon it. Now,
when the peril of emancipation becomes as manifest as was the hardship of
restraint, we shall do well to remember all the good that lay in that
stern Puritan discipline, how it renewed the spiritual vitality of our
race, and made for the civic freedom which is our highest national
privilege. An age of intellectual glory is wont to be paid for in the
general decline of that which follows. Imagine England under Stuart
rule, with no faith but the Protestantism of the Tudor. Imagine (not to
think of worse) English literature represented by Cowley, and the name of
Milton unknown. The Puritan came as the physician; he brought his tonic
at the moment when lassitude and supineness would naturally have followed
upon a supreme display of racial vitality. Regret, if you will, that
England turned for her religion to the books of Israel; this suddenly
revealed sympathy of our race with a fierce Oriental theocracy is perhaps
not difficult to explain, but one cannot help wishing that its piety had
taken another form; later, there had to come the "exodus from
Houndsditch," with how much conflict and misery! Such, however, was the
price of the soul's health; we must accept the fact, and be content to
see its better meaning. Health, of course, in speaking of mankind, is
always a relative term. From the point of view of a conceivable
civilization, Puritan England was lamentably ailing; but we must always
ask, not how much better off a people might be, but how much worse. Of
all theological systems, the most convincing is Manicheism, which, of
course, under another name, was held by the Puritans themselves. What we
call Restoration morality--the morality, that is to say, of a king and
court--might well have become that of the nation at large under a Stuart
dynasty safe from religious revolution.
The political services of Puritanism were inestimable; they will be more
feelingly remembered when England has once more to face the danger of
political tyranny. I am thinking now of its effects upon social life. To
it we owe the characteristic which, in some other countries, is expressed
by the term English prudery, the accusation implied being part of the
general charge of hypocrisy. It is said by observers among ourselves
that the prudish habit of mind is dying out, and this is looked upon as a
satisfactory thing, as a sign of healthy emancipation. If by prude be
meant a secretly vicious person who affects an excessive decorum, by all
means let the prude disappear, even at the cost of some shamelessness.
If, on the other hand, a prude is one who, living a decent life,
cultivates, either by bent or principle, a somewhat extreme delicacy of
thought and speech with regard to elementary facts of human nature, then
I say that this is most emphatically a fault in the right direction, and
I have no desire to see its prevalence diminish. On the whole, it is the
latter meaning which certain foreigners have in mind when they speak of
English prudery--at all events, as exhibited by women; it being, not so
much an imputation on chastity, as a charge of conceited foolishness. An
English woman who typifies the _begueule_ may be spotless as snow; but
she is presumed to have snow's other quality, and at the same time to be
a thoroughly absurd and intolerable creature. Well, here is the point of
difference. Fastidiousness of speech is not a direct outcome of
Puritanism, as our literature sufficiently proves; it is a refinement of
civilization following upon absorption into the national life of all the
best things which Puritanism had to teach. We who know English women by
the experience of a lifetime are well aware that their careful choice of
language betokens, far more often than not, a corresponding delicacy of
mind. Landor saw it as a ridiculous trait that English people were so
mealy-mouthed in speaking of their bodies; De Quincey, taking him to task
for this remark, declared it a proof of blunted sensibility due to long
residence in Italy; and, whether the particular explanation held good or
not, as regards the question at issue, De Quincey was perfectly right. It
is very good to be mealy-mouthed with respect to everything that reminds
us of the animal in man. Verbal delicacy in itself will not prove an
advanced civilization, but civilization, as it advances, assuredly tends
that way.