It was the kingdoms of the world and the police and the judges who were heretics. He was the center of the universe; it was round him that the stars swung.
ON THE NEGATIVE SPIRIT
It is the drunkard’s liver of the New Testament that is marred for us, which we take in remembrance of him. It is as if a man were asked, “What is the use of a hammer?” and answered,.
ON MR. RUDYARD KIPLING AND MAKING THE WORLD SMALL
Kipling has taught, is the romance of the division of labor and the discipline of all the trades. But Timbuctoo is not a place, since there, at least, live men who regard it as the universe, and breathe, not an air of locality, but the winds of the world.
MR. BERNARD SHAW
It is one of the million wild jests of truth that we know nothing until we know nothing,. The whole secret of the practical success of Christendom lies in the Christian humility, however imperfectly fulfilled.
CHRISTMAS AND THE AESTHETES
William Archer does not sing carols descriptive of the infancy of Ibsen outside people’s doors in the snow. There are innumerable persons with eye-glasses and green garments who pray for the return of the maypole or the Olympian games.
OMAR AND THE SACRED VINE
Some one called Omar “the sad, glad old Persian.” Sad he is; glad he is not, in any sense of the word whatever. The quarrel of the highest Christianity with this skepticism is not in the least that the skepticism denies the existence of God; it is that it denies the existence of man. Many of the most brilliant intellects of our time have urged us to the same self-conscious snatching at a rare delight.
The warrior enjoys the moment, but not for the sake of the moment; he enjoys it for the sake of the flag.
THE MILDNESS OF THE YELLOW PRESS
For it is one of the most dangerous things on earth genuinely to surprise anybody. It is not the folly of the man which brings about this necessary fall; it is his wisdom. Now the whole of this passage is admirably characteristic of the new journalism which Mr.
This is the sort of intelligence which now sits in the seat of the sane and.
THE MOODS OF MR. GEORGE MOORE
It is not only true that humility is a much wiser and more vigorous thing than pride. Moore, because it is really the weakness of work which is not without its strength. Moore’s egoism is not merely a moral weakness, it is a very constant and influential aesthetic weakness as well.
He is profoundly absorbed even in views he no longer holds, and he expects us to be.
ON SANDALS AND SIMPLICITY
A man approaches, wearing sandals and simple raiment, a raw tomato held firmly in his right hand, and says, “The affections of family and country alike are hindrances to the fuller development of human love;” but the plain thinker will only answer him, with a wonder not untinged with admiration,. The flower with which God crowns the one, and the flame with which Sam the lamplighter crowns the other, are equally of the gold of fairy-tales. In the middle of the wildest fields the most rustic child is, ten to one, playing at steam-engines.
For the thing called “taking thought,” the thing for which the best modern word is “rationalizing,” is in its nature, inapplicable to all plain and urgent things.
SCIENCE AND THE SAVAGES
The process is industrious, it is fascinating, and the whole of it rests on one of the plainest fallacies in the world. Of the first class, for instance, we might take such an example as the story of William Tell, now generally ranked among legends upon the sole ground that it is found in the tales of other peoples. But there is this point of distinction about it, that it is not likely to have occurred to all of them.
The anecdotal story, the story of William Tell, is as I have said, popular, because it is peculiar.
PAGANISM AND MR. LOWES DICKINSON
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. 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. 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.
CELTS AND CELTOPHILES
Nationality is a thing like a church or a secret society; it is a product of the human soul and will; it is a spiritual product. It is idle to ask why Greenwich should not cohere in this spiritual manner while Athens or Sparta did. It is like asking why a man falls in love with one woman and not with another.
This being the true and strange glory of Ireland, it is impossible to hear without impatience of the attempt so constantly made among her modern sympathizers to talk about Celts and Celticism.
ON CERTAIN MODERN WRITERS AND THE INSTITUTION OF THE FAMILY
And it is the whole effort of the typically modern person to escape from the street in which he lives. He says he is fleeing from his street because it is dull; he is lying. It is precisely because our uncle Henry does not approve of the theatrical ambitions of our sister Sarah that the family is like humanity.
The reason is very simple; it is merely that the novel is more true than they are.
ON SMART NOVELISTS AND THE SMART SET
This habit of insisting on the wit of the wealthier classes is the last and most servile of all the servilities. The strength of the aristocracy is not in the aristocracy at all; it is in the slums. It is not in the House of Lords; it is not in the Civil Service; it is not in the Government offices; it is not even in the huge and disproportionate monopoly of the English land.
But it is scarcely necessary to multiply examples of the essentially romantic Englishman when one.
ON MR. MCCABE AND A DIVINE FRIVOLITY
Evidently it is not here that we have to look for genuine examples of what is meant by a vain use of the name. The people (as I tactfully pointed out to them) who really take the name of the Lord in vain are the clergymen themselves. McCabe, which runs as follows: “The ballets of the Alhambra and the fireworks of the Crystal Palace and Mr.
But let us ask ourselves (in a spirit of love, as Mr. Chadband would say), what are the ballets of the Alhambra.
ON THE WIT OF WHISTLER
Indeed, the truth is that it was not so much a question of the weaknesses of Whistler as of the intrinsic and primary weakness of Whistler. And when Browning said in brackets to the simple, sensible people who did not like his books, “God love you!” he was not sneering in the least. But the great tragedy of the artistic temperament is that it cannot produce any art.
He never threw off from himself that disproportionate accumulation of aestheticism which is the burden of the amateur.
THE FALLACY OF THE YOUNG NATION
The educational systems, including the last Education Act, are here, as in the case of Scotland, a very good test of the matter. We may call it a young club, in the light of the fact that it was founded yesterday. But the force and the novelty are not in the new writers; the force and the novelty are in the ancient heart of the English.
What really moves their souls with a kindly terror is not the mystery of the wilderness, but the Mystery of a Hansom Cab.
SLUM NOVELISTS AND THE SLUMS
It is amusing to think how much conservative ingenuity has been wasted in the defense of the House of Lords by men who were desperately endeavoring to prove that the House of Lords consisted of clever men. In religion and morals we should admit, in the abstract, that the sins of the educated classes were as great as, or perhaps greater than, the sins of the poor and ignorant. We are always ready to make a saint or prophet of the educated man who goes into cottages to give a little kindly advice to the uneducated.
They are a record of the psychology of wealth and culture when brought in contact with poverty.
CONCLUDING REMARKS ON THE IMPORTANCE OF ORTHODOXY
It is for the vast and universal church, of which he is the only member. It is ludicrous to suppose that the more skeptical we are the more we see good in everything. This latter situation is certainly possible; in fact, it is the situation of the whole modern world.
Some, with a sumptuous literary turn, believe in the existence of the lady clothed with the sun.
THE END
The AGES Digital Library hopefully will reflect — as its components are released — the necessary breadth and depth for a solid personal library. Most of the books and documents have been scanned or typed from works that have entered the public domain. Some have been reproduced by special arrangement with the current publisher or holder of the copyright.
They have been put in a format that can be readily used by computer users everywhere.
