Of the New Paganism (or neo-Paganism), as it was preached flamboyantly
by Mr. Swinburne or delicately by Walter Pater, there is no necessity
to take any very grave account, except as a thing which left behind it
incomparable exercises in the English language. The New Paganism is no
longer new, and it never at any time bore the smallest resemblance to
Paganism. The ideas about the ancient civilization which it has left
loose in the public mind are certainly extraordinary enough. The term
“pagan” is continually used in fiction and light literature as meaning
a man without any religion, whereas a pagan was generally a man with
about half a dozen. The pagans, according to this notion, were
continually crowning themselves with flowers and dancing about in an
irresponsible state, whereas, if there were two things that the best
pagan civilization did honestly believe in, they were a rather too
rigid dignity and a much too rigid responsibility. Pagans are depicted
as above all things inebriate and lawless, whereas they were above all
things reasonable and respectable. They are praised as disobedient when
they had only one great virtue—civic obedience. They are envied and
admired as shamelessly happy when they had only one great sin—despair.
Mr. Lowes Dickinson, the most pregnant and provocative of recent
writers on this and similar subjects, is far too solid a man to have
fallen into this old error of the mere anarchy of Paganism. In order to
make hay of that Hellenic enthusiasm which has as its ideal mere
appetite and egotism, it is not necessary to know much philosophy, but
merely to know a little Greek. Mr. Lowes Dickinson knows a great deal
of philosophy, and also a great deal of Greek, and his error, if error
he has, is not that of the crude hedonist. But the contrast which he
offers between Christianity and Paganism in the matter of moral
ideals—a contrast which he states very ably in a paper called “How
long halt ye?” which appeared in the Independent Review—does, I think,
contain an error of a deeper kind. According to him, the ideal of
Paganism was not, indeed, a mere frenzy of lust and liberty and
caprice, but was an ideal of full and satisfied humanity. According to
him, the ideal of Christianity was the ideal of asceticism. When I say
that I think this idea wholly wrong as a matter of philosophy and
history, I am not talking for the moment about any ideal Christianity
of my own, or even of any primitive Christianity undefiled by after
events. I am not, like so many modern Christian idealists, basing my
case upon certain things which Christ said. Neither am I, like so many
other Christian idealists, basing my case upon certain things that
Christ forgot to say. I take historic Christianity with all its sins
upon its head; I take it, as I would take Jacobinism, or Mormonism, or
any other mixed or unpleasing human product, and I say that the meaning
of its action was not to be found in asceticism. I say that its point
of departure from Paganism was not asceticism. I say that its point of
difference with the modern world was not asceticism. I say that St.
Simeon Stylites had not his main inspiration in asceticism. I say that
the main Christian impulse cannot be described as asceticism, even in
the ascetics.
Let me set about making the matter clear. There is one broad fact
about the relations of Christianity and Paganism which is so simple
that many will smile at it, but which is so important that all moderns
forget it. The primary fact about Christianity and Paganism is that
one came after the other. Mr. Lowes Dickinson speaks of them as if
they were parallel ideals—even speaks as if Paganism were the newer of
the two, and the more fitted for a new age. He suggests that the Pagan
ideal will be the ultimate good of man; but if that is so, we must at
least ask with more curiosity than he allows for, why it was that man
actually found his ultimate good on earth under the stars, and threw it
away again. It is this extraordinary enigma to which I propose to
attempt an answer.
There is only one thing in the modern world that has been face to face
with Paganism; there is only one thing in the modern world which in
that sense knows anything about Paganism: and that is Christianity.
That fact is really the weak point in the whole of that hedonistic
neo-Paganism of which I have spoken. All that genuinely remains of the
ancient hymns or the ancient dances of Europe, all that has honestly
come to us from the festivals of Phoebus or Pan, is to be found in the
festivals of the Christian Church. If any one wants to hold the end of
a chain which really goes back to the heathen mysteries, he had better
take hold of a festoon of flowers at Easter or a string of sausages at
Christmas. Everything else in the modern world is of Christian origin,
even everything that seems most anti-Christian. The French Revolution
is of Christian origin. The newspaper is of Christian origin. The
anarchists are of Christian origin. Physical science is of Christian
origin. The attack on Christianity is of Christian origin. There is
one thing, and one thing only, in existence at the present day which
can in any sense accurately be said to be of pagan origin, and that is
Christianity.
The real difference between Paganism and Christianity is perfectly
summed up in the difference between the pagan, or natural, virtues, and
those three virtues of Christianity which the Church of Rome calls
virtues of grace. The pagan, or rational, virtues are such things as
justice and temperance, and Christianity has adopted them. The three
mystical virtues which Christianity has not adopted, but invented, are
faith, hope, and charity. Now much easy and foolish Christian rhetoric
could easily be poured out upon those three words, but I desire to
confine myself to the two facts which are evident about them. The
first evident fact (in marked contrast to the delusion of the dancing
pagan)—the first evident fact, I say, is that the pagan virtues, such
as justice and temperance, are the sad virtues, and that the mystical
virtues of faith, hope, and charity are the gay and exuberant virtues.
And the second evident fact, which is even more evident, is the fact
that the pagan virtues are the reasonable virtues, and that the
Christian virtues of faith, hope, and charity are in their essence as
unreasonable as they can be.
As the word “unreasonable” is open to misunderstanding, the matter may
be more accurately put by saying that each one of these Christian or
mystical virtues involves a paradox in its own nature, and that this is
not true of any of the typically pagan or rationalist virtues. Justice
consists in finding out a certain thing due to a certain man and giving
it to him. Temperance consists in finding out the proper limit of a
particular indulgence and adhering to that. But charity means
pardoning what is unpardonable, or it is no virtue at all. Hope means
hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all. And faith
means believing the incredible, or it is no virtue at all.
It is somewhat amusing, indeed, to notice the difference between the
fate of these three paradoxes in the fashion of the modern mind.
Charity is a fashionable virtue in our time; it is lit up by the
gigantic firelight of Dickens. Hope is a fashionable virtue to-day;
our attention has been arrested for it by the sudden and silver trumpet
of Stevenson. But faith is unfashionable, and it is customary on every
side to cast against it the fact that it is a paradox. Everybody
mockingly repeats the famous childish definition that faith is “the
power of believing that which we know to be untrue.” Yet it is not one
atom more paradoxical than hope or charity. Charity is the power of
defending that which we know to be indefensible. Hope is the power of
being cheerful in circumstances which we know to be desperate. It is
true that there is a state of hope which belongs to bright prospects
and the morning; but that is not the virtue of hope. The virtue of hope
exists only in earthquake and, eclipse. It is true that there is a
thing crudely called charity, which means charity to the deserving
poor; but charity to the deserving is not charity at all, but justice.
It is the undeserving who require it, and the ideal either does not
exist at all, or exists wholly for them. For practical purposes it is
at the hopeless moment that we require the hopeful man, and the virtue
either does not exist at all, or begins to exist at that moment.
Exactly at the instant when hope ceases to be reasonable it begins to
be useful. Now the old pagan world went perfectly straightforward until
it discovered that going straightforward is an enormous mistake. It was
nobly and beautifully reasonable, and discovered in its death-pang this
lasting and valuable truth, a heritage for the ages, that
reasonableness will not do. The pagan age was truly an Eden or golden
age, in this essential sense, that it is not to be recovered. And it is
not to be recovered in this sense again that, while we are certainly
jollier than the pagans, and much more right than the pagans, there is
not one of us who can, by the utmost stretch of energy, be so sensible
as the pagans. That naked innocence of the intellect cannot be
recovered by any man after Christianity; and for this excellent reason,
that every man after Christianity knows it to be misleading. Let me
take an example, the first that occurs to the mind, of this impossible
plainness in the pagan point of view. The greatest tribute to
Christianity in the modern world is Tennyson’s “Ulysses.” The poet
reads into the story of Ulysses the conception of an incurable desire
to wander. But the real Ulysses does not desire to wander at all. He
desires to get home. He displays his heroic and unconquerable
qualities in resisting the misfortunes which baulk him; but that is
all. There is no love of adventure for its own sake; that is a
Christian product. There is no love of Penelope for her own sake; that
is a Christian product. Everything in that old world would appear to
have been clean and obvious. A good man was a good man; a bad man was
a bad man. For this reason they had no charity; for charity is a
reverent agnosticism towards the complexity of the soul. For this
reason they had no such thing as the art of fiction, the novel; for the
novel is a creation of the mystical idea of charity. For them a
pleasant landscape was pleasant, and an unpleasant landscape
unpleasant. Hence they had no idea of romance; for romance consists in
thinking a thing more delightful because it is dangerous; it is a
Christian idea. In a word, we cannot reconstruct or even imagine the
beautiful and astonishing pagan world. It was a world in which common
sense was really common.
My general meaning touching the three virtues of which I have spoken
will now, I hope, be sufficiently clear. They are all three
paradoxical, they are all three practical, and they are all three
paradoxical because they are practical. It is the stress of ultimate
need, and a terrible knowledge of things as they are, which led men to
set up these riddles, and to die for them. Whatever may be the meaning
of the contradiction, it is the fact that the only kind of hope that is
of any use in a battle is a hope that denies arithmetic. Whatever may
be the meaning of the contradiction, it is the fact that the only kind
of charity which any weak spirit wants, or which any generous spirit
feels, is the charity which forgives the sins that are like scarlet.
Whatever may be the meaning of faith, it must always mean a certainty
about something we cannot prove. Thus, for instance, we believe by
faith in the existence of other people.
But there is another Christian virtue, a virtue far more obviously and
historically connected with Christianity, which will illustrate even
better the connection between paradox and practical necessity. This
virtue cannot be questioned in its capacity as a historical symbol;
certainly Mr. Lowes Dickinson will not question it. It has been the
boast of hundreds of the champions of Christianity. It has been the
taunt of hundreds of the opponents of Christianity. It is, in essence,
the basis of Mr. Lowes Dickinson’s whole distinction between
Christianity and Paganism. I mean, of course, the virtue of humility.
I admit, of course, most readily, that a great deal of false Eastern
humility (that is, of strictly ascetic humility) mixed itself with the
main stream of European Christianity. We must not forget that when we
speak of Christianity we are speaking of a whole continent for about a
thousand years. But of this virtue even more than of the other three,
I would maintain the general proposition adopted above. Civilization
discovered Christian humility for the same urgent reason that it
discovered faith and charity—that is, because Christian civilization
had to discover it or die.
The great psychological discovery of Paganism, which turned it into
Christianity, can be expressed with some accuracy in one phrase. The
pagan set out, with admirable sense, to enjoy himself. By the end of
his civilization he had discovered that a man cannot enjoy himself and
continue to enjoy anything else. Mr. Lowes Dickinson has pointed out in
words too excellent to need any further elucidation, the absurd
shallowness of those who imagine that the pagan enjoyed himself only in
a materialistic sense. Of course, he enjoyed himself, not only
intellectually even, he enjoyed himself morally, he enjoyed himself
spiritually. But it was himself that he was enjoying; on the face of
it, a very natural thing to do. Now, the psychological discovery is
merely this, that whereas it had been supposed that the fullest
possible enjoyment is to be found by extending our ego to infinity, the
truth is that the fullest possible enjoyment is to be found by reducing
our ego to zero.
Humility is the thing which is for ever renewing the earth and the
stars. It is humility, and not duty, which preserves the stars from
wrong, from the unpardonable wrong of casual resignation; it is through
humility that the most ancient heavens for us are fresh and strong. The
curse that came before history has laid on us all a tendency to be
weary of wonders. If we saw the sun for the first time it would be the
most fearful and beautiful of meteors. Now that we see it for the
hundredth time we call it, in the hideous and blasphemous phrase of
Wordsworth, “the light of common day.” We are inclined to increase our
claims. We are inclined to demand six suns, to demand a blue sun, to
demand a green sun. Humility is perpetually putting us back in the
primal darkness. There all light is lightning, startling and
instantaneous. Until we understand that original dark, in which we have
neither sight nor expectation, we can give no hearty and childlike
praise to the splendid sensationalism of things. The terms “pessimism”
and “optimism,” like most modern terms, are unmeaning. But if they can
be used in any vague sense as meaning something, we may say that in
this great fact pessimism is the very basis of optimism. The man who
destroys himself creates the universe. To the humble man, and to the
humble man alone, the sun is really a sun; to the humble man, and to
the humble man alone, the sea is really a sea. When he looks at all the
faces in the street, he does not only realize that men are alive, he
realizes with a dramatic pleasure that they are not dead.
I have not spoken of another aspect of the discovery of humility as a
psychological necessity, because it is more commonly insisted on, and
is in itself more obvious. But it is equally clear that humility is a
permanent necessity as a condition of effort and self-examination. It
is one of the deadly fallacies of Jingo politics that a nation is
stronger for despising other nations. As a matter of fact, the
strongest nations are those, like Prussia or Japan, which began from
very mean beginnings, but have not been too proud to sit at the feet of
the foreigner and learn everything from him. Almost every obvious and
direct victory has been the victory of the plagiarist. This is, indeed,
only a very paltry by-product of humility, but it is a product of
humility, and, therefore, it is successful. Prussia had no Christian
humility in its internal arrangements; hence its internal arrangements
were miserable. But it had enough Christian humility slavishly to copy
France (even down to Frederick the Great’s poetry), and that which it
had the humility to copy it had ultimately the honour to conquer. The
case of the Japanese is even more obvious; their only Christian and
their only beautiful quality is that they have humbled themselves to be
exalted. All this aspect of humility, however, as connected with the
matter of effort and striving for a standard set above us, I dismiss as
having been sufficiently pointed out by almost all idealistic writers.
It may be worth while, however, to point out the interesting disparity
in the matter of humility between the modern notion of the strong man
and the actual records of strong men. Carlyle objected to the
statement that no man could be a hero to his valet. Every sympathy can
be extended towards him in the matter if he merely or mainly meant that
the phrase was a disparagement of hero-worship. Hero-worship is
certainly a generous and human impulse; the hero may be faulty, but the
worship can hardly be. It may be that no man would be a hero to his
valet. But any man would be a valet to his hero. But in truth both the
proverb itself and Carlyle’s stricture upon it ignore the most
essential matter at issue. The ultimate psychological truth is not
that no man is a hero to his valet. The ultimate psychological truth,
the foundation of Christianity, is that no man is a hero to himself.
Cromwell, according to Carlyle, was a strong man. According to
Cromwell, he was a weak one.
The weak point in the whole of Carlyle’s case for aristocracy lies,
indeed, in his most celebrated phrase. Carlyle said that men were
mostly fools. Christianity, with a surer and more reverent realism,
says that they are all fools. This doctrine is sometimes called the
doctrine of original sin. It may also be described as the doctrine of
the equality of men. But the essential point of it is merely this, that
whatever primary and far-reaching moral dangers affect any man, affect
all men. All men can be criminals, if tempted; all men can be heroes,
if inspired. And this doctrine does away altogether with Carlyle’s
pathetic belief (or any one else’s pathetic belief) in “the wise few.”
There are no wise few. Every aristocracy that has ever existed has
behaved, in all essential points, exactly like a small mob. Every
oligarchy is merely a knot of men in the street—that is to say, it is
very jolly, but not infallible. And no oligarchies in the world’s
history have ever come off so badly in practical affairs as the very
proud oligarchies—the oligarchy of Poland, the oligarchy of Venice.
And the armies that have most swiftly and suddenly broken their enemies
in pieces have been the religious armies—the Moslem Armies, for
instance, or the Puritan Armies. And a religious army may, by its
nature, be defined as an army in which every man is taught not to exalt
but to abase himself. Many modern Englishmen talk of themselves as the
sturdy descendants of their sturdy Puritan fathers. As a fact, they
would run away from a cow. If you asked one of their Puritan fathers,
if you asked Bunyan, for instance, whether he was sturdy, he would have
answered, with tears, that he was as weak as water. And because of
this he would have borne tortures. And this virtue of humility, while
being practical enough to win battles, will always be paradoxical
enough to puzzle pedants. It is at one with the virtue of charity in
this respect. Every generous person will admit that the one kind of sin
which charity should cover is the sin which is inexcusable. And every
generous person will equally agree that the one kind of pride which is
wholly damnable is the pride of the man who has something to be proud
of. The pride which, proportionally speaking, does not hurt the
character, is the pride in things which reflect no credit on the person
at all. Thus it does a man no harm to be proud of his country, and
comparatively little harm to be proud of his remote ancestors. It does
him more harm to be proud of having made money, because in that he has
a little more reason for pride. It does him more harm still to be proud
of what is nobler than money—intellect. And it does him most harm of
all to value himself for the most valuable thing on earth—goodness.
The man who is proud of what is really creditable to him is the
Pharisee, the man whom Christ Himself could not forbear to strike.
My objection to Mr. Lowes Dickinson and the reassertors of the pagan
ideal is, then, this. I accuse them of ignoring definite human
discoveries in the moral world, discoveries as definite, though not as
material, as the discovery of the circulation of the blood. We cannot
go back to an ideal of reason and sanity. For mankind has discovered
that reason does not lead to sanity. We cannot go back to an ideal of
pride and enjoyment. For mankind has discovered that pride does not
lead to enjoyment. I do not know by what extraordinary mental accident
modern writers so constantly connect the idea of progress with the idea
of independent thinking. Progress is obviously the antithesis of
independent thinking. For under independent or individualistic
thinking, every man starts at the beginning, and goes, in all
probability, just as far as his father before him. But if there really
be anything of the nature of progress, it must mean, above all things,
the careful study and assumption of the whole of the past. I accuse
Mr. Lowes Dickinson and his school of reaction in the only real sense.
If he likes, let him ignore these great historic mysteries—the mystery
of charity, the mystery of chivalry, the mystery of faith. If he likes,
let him ignore the plough or the printing-press. But if we do revive
and pursue the pagan ideal of a simple and rational self-completion we
shall end—where Paganism ended. I do not mean that we shall end in
destruction. I mean that we shall end in Christianity.