On Impartiality

There are many excellent societies, organizing debates as well as dances or concerts, which are careful to explain to their lecturers that they must not talk about politics or religion. What else there really is in the world to talk about, I do not know. But these societies probably do not realize the scope of their own statement. They would be surprised, for instance, if I were to object to one of their concerts at which the proceedings concluded with the National Anthem. Yet obviously if there ever was one self-evident, solid, compact compendium of religion and politics, it is in the four words, "God Save the King." Personally I do not object either to the politics or the religion 3 on the contrary, I would sing with peculiar fervour the lines which are commonly omitted: "Confound their politics, frustrate their knavish tricks," being prepared, if necessary, to mention a few names by way of illustration from contemporary history and fashionable society. But certainly the refrain in question does consist, first, of a quite definite theological dogma j and, second, of a positive recommendation of a particular political arrangement. It could not be supported by an atheist or a devil-worshipper of any delicacy of conscience j

2i6 GENERALLY SPEAKING nor by any practical professional regicide with scruples and fine feelings. These societies generally reply vaguely that it is undenominational religion, or that it is not party politics. But this seems to me very insecure and accidental. There have been groups denominated atheist, and there have been parties avowedly regicide. And I should vastly prefer things thus honestly described and declared j I know there are people who are cowed by the scale of the big stars, or feel themselves helpless in a flood of evolutionary change, and who then say they believe in God in a sense. But I should class them with people who should deliberately go and shoot the King, and then say they were saving the King in a sense, from the work and worry of his royal duties.

Anyhow, an incident of this kind set me reflecting upon what people mean by being impartial j by being undenominational or undogmaticj by being non-political or non-party, or non-controversial. Generally it means something very simple indeed. It means that some people suppose the whole world to be of their denomination 3 and therefore anything that agrees with them is universal and anything that disagrees with them insane. It means simply that they have never disputed their own dogma, and do not even know that it has ever been disputed. In other words, it simply means that they are very good, sincere, and serious people, only provincial or local or limited in the very last degree. But the curious thing is that this provincial assumption can be found in all sorts of people who are not at all, in the ordinary sense, provincial 5 for instance, in good classical scholars or good literary critics. I have known several examples in my own experience of this inconsistency appearing in the field of literary criticism j of the very sort of thing that is supposed to be colourless in the controversial sense. I hope it will not appear egotistical to take such examples from experience, merely because they do not depend on hearsay.

For example, some years ago I was asked to write a little book on Victorian literature, for a series edited by good academic authorities. They were very complimentary and courteous, but they thought it their duty to preface the book with a note explaining that they were not responsible for my opinions, with the implication that the opinions were rather wild. As a matter of fact, in so far as the opinions implied were more or less mystical, they belonged to what is by far the commonest, the most cosmopolitan, and the most popular sort of mysticism. Anyhow, they thought it necessary to protect their own impartiality. Many of them were men whom I greatly admire 5 nor was their action one which I in any way resent. But I confess I was amused some time after in opening a book in the same series called A History of

Free Thoughty or some such name, by an ordinary academic agnostic. This book was devoted entirely, down to the last detail, to demonstrating the proposition that religion has been a nonsensical nightmare from first to last, that Christianity is dead, and that the world is well rid of it. There was no preliminary note of apology to that. There was no warning against that bias 3 there was no disavowal of that partisanship. Nor can it be explained by supposing that it referred to the facts and not the theories of the agnostic and myself. I could easily imagine that my information was sometimes incorrect 3 but it is quite sufficient to save me from supposing that his was always correct. There were no dates in my book, so they could not be put right j but it was afterwards shown that the dates in his book were wildly wrong. No 3 the simple explanation is that the editors did not think his bias was a bias. They thought that sort of secularism was simply sanity j what has been called the religion of all sensible men. As a matter of fact, there are many more sensible men, many more intelligent and instructed men, in modern Europe agreeing with me than agreeing with them. But they lived in a rather limited world, and within it they acted honestly according to their lights.

Here is another case in my own experience. The excellent popular series called The Outline of Literature and Art contains a very complete series of notices of contemporary writers, including one on myself. This, again, is far too complimentary in a literary sense j but the critic is far too sincere to be able to write about my views without attacking them. I might say he is too sincere to contain himself about them, without breaking out into the sort of healthy remonstrance which is controversial rather than critical. I am the last person in the world to complain of this 3 for it is what I have done with every single author I have ever written about. But here, again, what interests me is that it is not done to everybody. The same review considered all sorts of modern pessimists and atheists merely as artists. The writers did not argue with Thomas Hardy, and try to prove to him that life is not a cockpit of cruelty for the cold laughter of the gods. They did not quarrel with the Shropshire Lad for saying that all our passions are vain, and it is better to be dead. They would not think it necessary to provide an antidote of argument to the poisonous pessimism of The Island of the Penguins. For they have a vague idea that all this stale and stagnant scepticism is now the normal air of the world 3 which shows they are rather ignorant of the world. As I say, I am myself only too delighted that the critic should controvert with me. I should be delighted to controvert with him 5 and I do not think it would be difficult to defend what he condemns. He complains, for instance, of my saying that natural law is not inevitable, because the moon is not logically connected with the tide, any more than the moon with the moon-struck lover. He thinks this is answered by saying that the first two things always go together, and the other two only occasionally. But this is a failure to understand my statement, or what is meant by a logical connexion. What I said was that moon and tide do not make one thing in the sense that two and two make four. And the test, as I also said, is the imagination. We can imagine the moon without a tide, or a tide without a moon. We cannot imagine two and two not making four. In other words, such a critic really answers himself, even in saying that the two things always go together. For he admits they are two things, and therefore need not always go together. Four and 2 + 2 are not two things 3 they are one thing stated in two different ways.

What I was pointing out was that natural sequence is a mysterious thing which is not truly inevitable, because we could imagine something different j and that this does not apply to the sequences that really are inevitable, such as those of logic and mathematics. I was not maintaining that the repetitions in nature are not real, or that it is not reasonable to reckon on them for practical purposes. I was only maintaining that, as we do not know the reason of the repetition, it might just as well be a consistent will as an inevitable law. All this is an argument on which I should be delighted to dilate elsewhere j indeed, I am thinking of writing a series of articles in answer to some recent critics of my views in general. But I only mention it here as another example of the curious confusion about what is controversial as distinct from critical j and why one man may steal and ride the horse, though it be the horrible nightmare, while another may not look over the hedge and compare it, even in jest, to the hedge of fairyland.