There had been a little vague talk about politics, and someone had quoted a
definition of a true Liberal as a man who, if he had only to press a button
in a dark room to annihilate all cranks, faddists, political quacks,
extremists, propagandists, and nostrum-mongers, would not dream of doing
so, as a matter of conscience, on the ground that everyone has a right to
hold his own beliefs and to persuade the world to accept them if he can.
Father Payne laughed at this; but Rose, who had been nettled, I fancy, at a
lack of deference for his political experience, his father being a Unionist
M.P., said loudly, "Hear, hear! that's the only sort of Liberal whom I
respect."
A look of sudden anger passed over Father Payne's face--unmistakable and
uncompromising wrath. "Come, Rose," he said, "this isn't a political
meeting; and even if it were, why proclaim yourself as accepting a
definition which is almost within the comprehension of a chimpanzee?"
There was a faint laugh at this, but everyone had an uncomfortable sense of
thunder in the air. Rose got rather white, and his nostrils expanded. "I'm
sorry I put it in that way," he said rather frostily, "if you object. But I
mean it, I think. I don't like diluted Liberalism."
"Yes, but you beg the question by calling it diluted," said Father Payne.
"If anyone had said that the only Tory he respected was a man who if he
could press a button in a still darker room, and by doing so bring it to
pass that all institutions on the face of the earth would remain immutably
fixed for ever and ever, and would feel himself bound conscientiously to do
it, you wouldn't accept that as a definition of Conservatism? These things
are not hard and fast matters of principle--they are only tendencies.
Toryism is an instinct to trust custom and authority, Liberalism is an
instinct to welcome development and change. All that the definition of
Liberalism which was quoted means is, that the Liberal has a deep respect
for freedom of opinion; and all that my grotesque definition of Toryism
means is that a Tory prefers to trust a fixed tradition. But, of course,
both want a settled Government, and both have to recognise that the world
and its conditions change. The Tory says, 'Look before you leap'; the
Liberal says, 'Leap before you look.' But it is really all a matter of
infinite gradations, and what differentiates people is merely their idea of
the pace at which things can go and ought to go. Why should you say that
you can only respect a man who wants to go at sixty miles an hour, any more
than I should say I can only respect a man who wants to remain absolutely
still?"
Rose had by this time recovered his temper, and said, "It was rather crude,
I admit. But what I meant was that if a man feels that all opinions are of
equal value, he must give full weight to all opinions. The doctrinaire
Liberal seems to me to be just as much inclined to tyrannise as the
doctrinaire Tory, and to use his authority on the side of suppression when
it is convenient to do so, and against all his own principles."
"I don't think that is quite fair," said Father Payne. "You must have a
working system; you can't try everyone's experiments. All that the Liberal
says is, 'Persuade us if you can.' Pure Liberalism would be anarchy, just
as pure Toryism would be tyranny. Both are intolerable. But just as the
Liberal has to compromise and say, 'This may not be the ultimate theory of
the Government, but meanwhile the world has to be governed,' so the Tory
has to compromise, if a large majority of the people say, 'We will not be
governed by a minority for their interest; we will be governed for our
own.' The parliamentary vote is just a way of avoiding civil war; you can't
always resort to force, so you resort to arbitration. But why the Liberal
position is on the whole the stronger is because it says frankly, 'If you
Tories can persuade the nation to ask you to govern it, we will obey you.'
The weakness of the Tory position is that it has to make exactly the same
concessions, while it claims to be inspired by a divine sort of knowledge
as to what is just and right. I personally mistrust all intuitions which
lead to tyranny. Of course, the weakness of the whole affair is that the
man who believes in democracy has to assume that all have equal rights;
that would be fair enough if all people were born equal in character and
ability, and influence and wealth. But that isn't the case; and so the
Liberal says, 'Democracy is a bad system perhaps, but it is the only
system,' and it is fairer to maintain that everyone who gets into the world
has as good a right as anyone else to be there, than it is to say, 'Some
people have a right to manage the world and some have only a duty to obey.'
Both represent a side of the truth, but neither represents the whole truth.
At worst Liberalism is a combination of the weak against the strong, and
Toryism a combination of the strong against the weak! I personally wish the
weak to have a chance; but what we all really desire is to be governed by
the wise and good, and my hope for the world is that the quality of it is
improving. I want the weak to become sensible and self-restrained, and the
strong to become unselfish and disinterested. It is generosity that I want
to see increase--it is the finest of all qualities--the desire, I mean to
serve others, to admire, to sympathise, to share, to rejoice, in other
people's happiness. That would solve all our difficulties."
"Yes, of course," said Rose. "But I would like to go back again, and say
that what I was praising was consistency."
"But there is no such thing," said Father Payne, "except in combination
with entire irrationality. One can't say at any time of one's life, 'I know
everything worth knowing. I am in a position to form a final judgment.' You
can say, 'I will shut off all fresh light from my mind, and I will consider
no further evidence,' but that isn't a thing to respect! I begin to
suspect, Rose, that why you praised the uncompromising Liberal, as you call
him, is because he is the only kind of opponent who isn't dangerous. A man
who takes up such a position as I have described is practically insane. He
has a fixed idea, which neither argument nor evidence can alter. The
uncompromising man of fixed opinions, whatever those opinions may be, is
almost the only man I do not respect, because he is really the only
inconsistent person. He says, 'I have formed an opinion which is based on
experience, and I shall not alter it.' That is tantamount to saying that
you have done with experience; it is a claim to have attained infallibility
through fallible faculties. Where is the dignity of that? It's just a
deification of stupidity and stubbornness and insolence and complacency."
"But you must take your stand on _some_ certainties," said Rose.
"The fewer the better," said Father Payne. "One may learn to discriminate
between things, and to observe differences; but that is very different from
saying that you have got at the ultimate essence of any one thing. I am all
for clearness--we ought not to confuse things with each other, or use the
same names for different things; but I'm all against claiming absolute and
impeccable knowledge. It may be a comfortable system for a man who doesn't
want to be bothered; but he is only deferring the bother--he is like a man
who stays in bed because he doesn't like dressing. But it isn't a solution
to stay in bed--it is only suspending the solution. No, we mustn't have any
regard for human consistency--it's a very paltry attribute; it's the
opposite of anthropomorphism. That makes out God to be in the image of man,
but consistency claims for man the privilege of God. And that isn't
wholesome, you know, either for a man or his friends!"
"I give up," said Rose: "can nothing be logical?"
"Hardly anything," said Father Payne, "except logic itself. You have to
coin logical ideas into counters to play with. No two things, for instance,
can ever be absolutely equal, except imaginary equalities--and that's the
mischief of logic applied to life, that it presumes an exact valuation of
the ideas it works with, when no two people's valuations of the same idea
are identical, and even one person's valuation varies from time to time;
and logic breeds a phantom sort of consistency which only exists in the
imagination. You know the story of how Smith and Jones were arguing, and
Smith said, 'Brown will agree with me': 'Yes,' said Jones triumphantly, 'he
will, but for my reasons!'"