On the Real Animal

Storm Troops, launching that tempest of steel from which they take their title, boldly assailed a number of little boys, assembled for something in the way of a Catholic School-Treat. It is no doubt impressive to know that, henceforward, no children of any superstitious Sunday School will be able to assemble, without the whole armed might of Germany summoning up the courage to attack them. But I still do not think the incident so striking as the stopping of the Red Armies at the moment when they were really ready to overrun Europe. But, so far as my present argument is concerned, it is quite open to anybody to say that in these particular cases my preferences are prejudices. Whether we like or dislike this or that manifestation of the new Nationalism, we can all see that Nationalism has taken a turn that is more or less new. De Valera is quite as national as Mussolini; and the Poles are quite as patriotic as the Prussians; a fact which the world will be wise not to forget.

What interests me just now is a sort of guess about the philosophy behind these things, or, perhaps, rather the difference between a philosophy and a religion. I 'fancy a religion might really unite nations; as Islam, for instance, has united the most amazingly varied jpeoples. But Internationalism is not a religion; it is an "ism"; and an "ism" is never a religion. It is an abstraction without being an absolute. Now, a nation, is a thing; it may be a bad thing or a deplorable thing, but it is a thing and not a theory. There are certain ways of linking up living things that are, as it were, along the lines of life; they are coherent in the sense of prehensile; they are not pinned together or pasted together or scientifically wired together; they cling together; they hold on to each other; they grip. And there is always^ a misunderstanding..^between the two types'^! thinkers, those^^who live on two planes^ of ti^^ht^jhejgeople who think of Jiuman beings as hmnanity; and the people who

Yet the humanitarians might learn the lesson even from the example of humanity. Even in our relations with the other animals, there is a pedantic extension of humanity and a human extension of humanity. I know I am an animal described by the Greeks as an Anthropos; not a very perfect specimen for the museum, perhaps; but still, unmistakably of that species. But if the professor, showing people round the museum, points me out as an Anthropoid, I experience a chill of doubt and a sense of unreality. I may, in fact, be biologically related to the larger apes in the adjoining cage or glass case; though by this rime, I fancy, die professor has found that I am the nephew of a marmoset or the poor relation of a lemur. Let us agree, for the sake of argument, that in a certain sort of abstract scientific classification I am closer to an anthropoid ape than to any other animal. But if anybody says that I am really closer to an anthropoid ape than to any other animal, I simply know it is not true. I am very much closer to my dog. I do not, in fact, feel the fine shades in the feelings of an orang-outang; I seldom touch on sentiment and affection in my relations with a chimpanzee; it is but rarely that I take practical advantage of my confidence that a baboon is to be trusted to guard a baby or even to detect a burglar. I know that the relation between a man and a dog is a real relation, and I know that the relation between a man and an anthropoid ape is a theoretical relation; even though the theory may refer to some realities in the scientific world.

And those two animals will serve very well as fables to illustrate what I mean by the difference between a fact and a fad. The dog represents all the realities connected with what is historic. The ape represents all the abstractions connected with what is prehistoric. Historic man, through all his history, has had a dog, and has never forgotten the dog; as may be seen in Tobit or Ulysses. If prehistoric man really had an uncle who was a prehistoric ape, he had completely forgotten it by the time he came to be historic man. Indeed, I think he never even discovered his uncle until he began to shoot him in Africa, late in the eighteenth centuty. Now, according to whether men feel that difference between an experience and a notion, they will or will not understand the good and evil of a nation; for a nation is not a notion. You may say that nations do more harm than good, as you may say that dogs are more nuisance than they are worth; you can say that it is barbarous that nationalities should be free to fight, as you can say that it is barbarous that dogs should be kept to hunt. But you are dealing with a very different thing from any theory about how living creatures could be related, or ought to be related, or may some day be related; you are dealing with living creatures that are related.

It is quite true that the culture of Europe comes from something that is much older than all the modern nations. It is quite true that Christendom existed long before any of the nations. But it is also true that those who cling to the nations, however ignorantly, cling to the leavings, and to the living leavings, of the original life; while those who say they are making new things are not making new things, but only making new names. I know exactly what I mean when I say that I am an Englishman and not a Frenchman, though I

•C9I3- happen to have an enormous admiration for French culture and tradition. I do not know for certain what other people mean when they say that I am subject to the League of Nations, or am a party to a Pact made up by politicians in a series of Swiss hotels. In the same way, I do not know what other people mean when they say I am descended from Anthropoid Apes or AngloSaxons or Aryans, as Mr. Hitler would say. I do not know what they mean in the sense that I know what being an Englishman means.

As I have said, a real religion wou|d be different; because a real religion is a big reality, where a nation is a much smaller reality. I have taken the case of the religion of Mahomet, and it will serve as well as another. Islam is not merely an abstract statement that there is one God, or that the Creed in the Koran is true. Islam is a way of going on. Some people like living the Moslem life; some people loathe it. The same true testimony is borne by the man who says that the Turk is a barbarian, and the other man (who is generally an old woman) who says that the Turk is the only gentleman in Europe. They both mean something; because they both really refer to something. They do not refer to anything that any chance politician may choose to put into a Pact. But, so long as we are not Moslems, and have no other religion in Europe, men will never entirely abandon what is at least relatively real; the traditions of their own fathers and the teeming vitality o£ the dead.

XV On Dogs with Bad Names

A NEGATIVE disadvantage attaches to almost any man who has a positive character or, what commonly goes with it and is even more important, positive convictions. A literary man, for instance, who has strong likes and dislikes, in the style of Dr. Johnson or Cobbett or Coventry Patmore, becomes so much of a proverb or a joke that nobody can believe there is anything new to be learnt about him. Anything new that he does say is coloured, or rather discoloured, either by what people know he has said or by what people think he would say. Even what they know they very often know wrong; and when they come to guess, they almost invariably guess wrong. But the still more curious fact is that even when they know they still go on guessing. When the new statement is actually written, it is not actually read. Something else is read into it, which is the recognized rumour about what the eccentric m question is likely to state. For, in truth, most of the critics have not realized anything about the writer except that he is an eccentric, and even in that they are wrong. He has generally earned that reputation by