issues in the disintegration of society, and in the con- PAGE 232 The Shibboleths considered in the foregoing pages appear fairly to represent the body of opinion specially characteristic of the time. No doubt, in the vast majority of minds, they exist as mere nebulous notions: as mere symbols in problems which are never worked out. To work them out is the task of philosophy The special disease of the body politic in this age is a spurious, mechanical Individualism which ignores or Nothing is falser than the notion that the history of peoples is the result of merely external causes, or of blind force, or of occult destiny. There is an inner necessity determining the course of national events. That necessity issues from national character. And national character is really the outcome of the characters of the men and women composing the 241 241 nation. It is in the supersensuous, the transcendental, the spiritual, that the deep foundations of character are laid. The best hope for the future of our country lies in men who have grasped the ethical significance of the facts of life: yes, and of the fact of death too PAGE 243 ON SHIBBOLETHS. CHAPTER I. PROGRESS. ONE of the most striking characteristics of the times in which we live is the influence exercised by Shibboleths. They have always, indeed, played a considerable part in human history. But their power at the present day is far greater than it has ever been: "la phrase," it has been said, "est le tyran de notre siècle." And the reason why this is so, is not far to seek. The great contemporary fact of the public order, in Europe and America, is the domination of the Many. The appeal on all questions, human and divine, is to the opinion cf the masses. But the vast majority of men, and almost all women, are swayed by rhetoric rather than by logic, by the emotions more than by the intellect. "Pray don't speak against claptrap," said Berryer, "I have always succeeded best with it." In truth it is the stock in trade of nisi prius advocates and leader-writing journalists, of elec. B tioneering agents and old Parliamentary hands. I am far from imputing this to them as a fault. The man whose business it is, as Plato expresses it, "to study the whims and humours of the many-headed multitude," must speak a language which the multitude can understand. The number of people who are capable of following-to say nothing of judging—a sustained argument is not large. But an apt phrase goes home to the dullest with singular persuasiveness. And, in some cases, it becomes a Shibboleth, the faculty of effectively pronouncing which is a key to popular favour. It is easy to gibe at this mode of leading men by the ears. It is more philosophical to remember that as precedents are the application or misapplication of principles, so Shibboleths are the application or misapplication of syllogisms. And it may not be altogether lost labour to examine some of them specially influential at the present time, and to exhibit the truths which they present or distort. Such is the task which I shall essay in the following pages regarding seven Shibboleths which largely dominate contemporary life. And I shall begin with one of them which is, in some sort, the parent of the other six. I shall consider in this chapter the Shibboleth of Progress. Perhaps no word is more common upon the tongues of men. Certainly none is used more 1.] "A COMFORTABLE DOCTRINE." 3 vaguely. If we inquire even of people who pass for educated-take as the type of them an average Member of Parliament—what they mean by it, we evoke the most extraordinary, the most discordant, answers. Unless, indeed, -and this more frequently happens-they are struck dumb by a demand for the unwonted accuracy of thought implied in a definition. But however indeterminately and incongruously the word is used, this much is clear, that it symbolises a conviction deeply rooted in the popular mind of the surpassing excellence of the times in which we live, and of the still more surpassing excellence of the times that shall come after. "A comfortable doctrine and much may be said of it." Much is said. After dinner orators and newspaper philosophers find in it a never failing and ever welcome theme for their rhetoric. Every one who aspires to popular favour must surely believe, or, at all events, loudly profess it. To question the "most high and palmy state" of the nineteenth century, or to hint a doubt that with the twentieth a still ampler day must dawn for the world, is accounted flat blasphemy. I, for my part, have no intention of contravening this first article of the popular creed. I am ready, with Browning, to salute Progress, as "man's distinctive mark alone: Not God's and not the beasts: God is, they are: |