To come down to more recent times, for open belief in what they doubted,
for doubt well controlled in its expenditure, for doubt as raising
questions of meaning rather than the more radical questions of reality
and existence, perhaps no people of Christendom has been so conspicuous
as the English. Of course, as has been remarked, expenditure may often
become too conservative, and the question of mere meaning may encourage
casuistry; and into the pits of undue conservatism and casuistry the
English have certainly fallen more than once, so that certain critics
have even found them, and in some measure the Anglo-Saxons generally,
given over to hollow disingenuous living. In English political life, for
example, the attitude during the conflict with the American colonies in
the eighteenth century affords a conspicuous illustration of this, and
intellectually and religiously English life, has its chapters of an
unfortunate reserve. But although no good and honest American can fail
to find objectionable solecisms, some of them decidedly British, in the
formulated and manifested life of the Anglo-Saxons; nevertheless English
history is a very obstinate argument in behalf of the English temper.
Frenchmen, though [p.270] so neighbourly to England, have been
conspicuously more radical than the English in their doubts and
problems, and in consequence have been at once more reckless and more
vacillating in their solutions. The English, always so practical,
throughout their history have held to their world as primarily real and
consistent, and have therefore neither lost themselves whether in fear
or in hope of some other sphere, nor been only fickle servants of this.
Consistently and constantly they have sought only the ever more
effective use of what they had, of what they found about them. Not
revolution, then, but evolution has been the keynote of their history.
Their other world, in practice, has meant other parts of this--witness
their colonial activity as well as their missionary enterprises--or only
other in the sense of deeper and fuller expression of this--witness the
testimony of so many of their historians. Macaulay, for a classic
example, dwells at some length and with much emphasis upon the English
people's genius for a progressive conservatism, remarking that in
religion and politics and social life they have given up less of their
past than any other people, and yet at the same time have kept in the
forefront of modern progress. It may be contended that this was truer in
Macaulay's day than at the present time, but there is enough truth in it
now to give it point.
Instead of courting doubt as if it had worth in itself, the English may
be said on the whole to have courted candour. Candour does not exclude
doubt, but it is never merely negative, and for this reason it is
peculiarly normal and wholesome, although of course having its own
dangers. To be candid, in the [p.271] sense of the word here intended,
is to accept what is, which in lack of a better term we may call nature,
and to insist only on seeing this, and living up to it, deeply and
fully. The doubting French have appealed to truth and righteousness or
reality as only an innate conviction, and so have easily missed the
possible realism of such conviction. Descartes made just such an appeal,
and though he did indeed gain, or rather regain, a real world, the
reality did not quite receive even from him, as we have seen, its full
due of closeness and intimacy with human life. Rousseau, later, made the
same appeal, finding his own personal will intrinsically good, but his
philosophy, though a passionate, uncontrolled belief in reality, was
taken, not unnaturally, as a call to revolution. But the simple, candid
English, on their side of the Channel, have appealed, not primarily to
anything abstractly within the self, not to a mere ideal or sentiment or
subjective belief, but to reality embodied and palpable--in a word, to
nature, the great all-inclusive sphere of candid experience. In France,
again, nature has failed ever to be a thoroughly practical thing, a
positive, directly interesting, wholly pertinent situation. It has been
a cry, of course, sometimes of alarm, sometimes of hope; a great
enthusiasm, too; a dream; an ideal--if not unideal--substitute for the
present life; a sphere often, too often, quite opposed to God and
government and organized society; but never, or almost never, a present
responsibility to be clearly recognized and calmly measured; never, or
almost never, a part and parcel of the present life; never, or almost
never, something that lives in and [p.272] through God and government
and society. In England, on the other hand, so differently, if Bacon and
Locke and Berkeley and even David Hume may be trusted; if Shakespeare
and Coleridge and Wordsworth, or Hobbes and Burke and Blackstone, or
Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer are representative; in England nature
has ever been very real and very present; not outside of manifest
English life, but actually incorporated in it. How else understand
English deism; the _laissez faire_ economics; the peculiar nature and
growth of the English constitution; the pragmatism of English science;
the sun-warmed atmosphere of English literature; the nature-homage and
bodily vigour of English recreation? How else account for the English
people's progressive conservatism?
The most radical doubt must eventually appeal to nature and, what is
more, must sooner or later bring man to live with nature practically and
responsibly, intimately and sympathetically; but candour, like the
candour of the English, that never doubts without at the same time
believing, lives ever with her. Perhaps the English people need to have
what they seem never to have had--though the Armada threatened something
of the kind, and the loss of the thirteen colonies, or even the Boer war
was, not without its value--a great, overpowering disaster, a deep
all-searching despair; yet, be this as it may, their part in the
struggle of a life that must always doubt in order to grow is always
instructive and is often inspiring.
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