“Sentimentalism is the most broken reed on which righteousness can
lean”; these were, I think, the exact words of a distinguished American
visitor at the Guildhall, and may Heaven forgive me if I do him a wrong.
It was spoken in illustration of the folly of supporting Egyptian and
other Oriental nationalism, and it has tempted me to some reflections on
the first word of the sentence.
The Sentimentalist, roughly speaking, is the man who wants to eat his
cake and have it. He has no sense of honour about ideas; he will not see
that one must pay for an idea as for anything else. He will not see
that any worthy idea, like any honest woman, can only be won on its own
terms, and with its logical chain of loyalty. One idea attracts him;
another idea really inspires him; a third idea flatters him; a fourth
idea pays him. He will have them all at once in one wild intellectual
harem, no matter how much they quarrel and contradict each other. The
Sentimentalist is a philosophic profligate, who tries to capture every
mental beauty without reference to its rival beauties; who will not even
be off with the old love before he is on with the new. Thus if a man
were to say, “I love this woman, but I may some day find my affinity in
some other woman,” he would be a Sentimentalist. He would be saying, “I
will eat my wedding-cake and keep it.” Or if a man should say, “I am
a Republican, believing in the equality of citizens; but when the
Government has given me my peerage I can do infinite good as a
kind landlord and a wise legislator”; then that man would be a
Sentimentalist. He would be trying to keep at the same time the classic
austerity of equality and also the vulgar excitement of an aristocrat.
Or if a man should say, “I am in favour of religious equality; but I
must preserve the Protestant Succession,” he would be a Sentimentalist
of a grosser and more improbable kind.
This is the essence of the Sentimentalist: that he seeks to enjoy every
idea without its sequence, and every pleasure without its consequence.
Now it would really be hard to find a worse case of this inconsequent
sentimentalism than the theory of the British Empire advanced by Mr.
Roosevelt himself in his attack on Sentimentalists. For the Imperial
theory, the Roosevelt and Kipling theory, of our relation to Eastern
races is simply one of eating the Oriental cake (I suppose a Sultana
Cake) and at the same time leaving it alone.
Now there are two sane attitudes of a European statesman towards Eastern
peoples, and there are only two.
First, he may simply say that the less we have to do with them the
better; that whether they are lower than us or higher they are so
catastrophically different that the more we go our way and they go
theirs the better for all parties concerned. I will confess to some
tenderness for this view. There is much to be said for letting that calm
immemorial life of slave and sultan, temple and palm tree flow on as it
has always flowed. The best reason of all, the reason that affects me
most finally, is that if we left the rest of the world alone we might
have some time for attending to our own affairs, which are urgent to
the point of excruciation. All history points to this; that intensive
cultivation in the long run triumphs over the widest extensive
cultivation; or, in other words, that making one's own field superior is
far more effective than reducing other people's fields to inferiority.
If you cultivate your own garden and grow a specially large cabbage,
people will probably come to see it. Whereas the life of one selling
small cabbages round the whole district is often forlorn.
Now, the Imperial Pioneer is essentially a commercial traveller; and
a commercial traveller is essentially a person who goes to see people
because they don't want to see him. As long as empires go about urging
their ideas on others, I always have a notion that the ideas are no
good. If they were really so splendid, they would make the country
preaching them a wonder of the world. That is the true ideal; a great
nation ought not to be a hammer, but a magnet. Men went to the mediaeval
Sorbonne because it was worth going to. Men went to old Japan because
only there could they find the unique and exquisite old Japanese art.
Nobody will ever go to modern Japan (nobody worth bothering about, I
mean), because modern Japan has made the huge mistake of going to the
other people: becoming a common empire. The mountain has condescended to
Mahomet; and henceforth Mahomet will whistle for it when he wants it.
That is my political theory: that we should make England worth copying
instead of telling everybody to copy her.
But it is not the only possible theory. There is another view of our
relations to such places as Egypt and India which is entirely tenable.
It may be said, “We Europeans are the heirs of the Roman Empire; when
all is said we have the largest freedom, the most exact science, the
most solid romance. We have a deep though undefined obligation to
give as we have received from God; because the tribes of men are truly
thirsting for these things as for water. All men really want clear
laws: we can give clear laws. All men really want hygiene: we can
give hygiene. We are not merely imposing Western ideas. We are simply
fulfilling human ideas--for the first time.”
On this line, I think, it is possible to justify the forts of Africa and
the railroads of Asia; but on this line we must go much further. If it
is our duty to give our best, there can be no doubt about what is our
best. The greatest thing our Europe has made is the Citizen: the idea
of the average man, free and full of honour, voluntarily invoking on his
own sin the just vengeance of his city. All else we have done is mere
machinery for that: railways exist only to carry the Citizen; forts only
to defend him; electricity only to light him, medicine only to heal him.
Popularism, the idea of the people alive and patiently feeding history,
that we cannot give; for it exists everywhere, East and West. But
democracy, the idea of the people fighting and governing--that is the
only thing we have to give.
Those are the two roads. But between them weakly wavers the
Sentimentalist--that is, the Imperialist of the Roosevelt school. He
wants to have it both ways, to have the splendours of success without
the perils. Europe may enslave Asia, because it is flattering: but
Europe must not free Asia, because that is responsible. It tickles
his Imperial taste that Hindoos should have European hats: it is too
dangerous if they have European heads. He cannot leave Asia Asiatic: yet
he dare not contemplate Asia as European. Therefore he proposes to have
in Egypt railway signals, but not flags; despatch boxes, but not ballot
boxes.
In short, the Sentimentalist decides to spread the body of Europe
without the soul.