t Armageddon and we battle for the Lord"?

Let no one dismiss M. Sorel then as an empty paradoxer. The myth is not
one of the outgrown crudities of our pagan ancestors. We, in the midst of
our science and our rationalism, are still making myths, and their force
is felt in the actual affairs of life. They convey an impulse, not a
program, nor a plan of reconstruction. Their practical value cannot be
ignored, for they embody the motor currents in social life.

Myths are to be judged, as M. Sorel says, by their ability to express
aspiration. They stand or fall by that. In such a test the Christian
myth, for example, would be valued for its power of incarnating human
desire. That it did not do so completely is the cause of its decline.
From Aucassin to Nietzsche men have resented it as a partial and stunting
dream. It had too little room for profane love, and only by turning the
Church of Christ into the Church Militant could the essential Christian
passivity obtain the assent of aggressive and masculine races. To-day
traditional Christianity has weakened in the face of man's interest in
the conquest of this world. The liberal and advanced churches recognize
this fact by exhibiting a great preoccupation with everyday affairs. Now
they may be doing important service--I have no wish to deny that--but
when the Christian Churches turn to civics, to reformism or socialism,
they are in fact announcing that the Christian dream is dead. They may
continue to practice some of its moral teachings and hold to some of its
creed, but the Christian impulse is for them no longer active. A new
dream, which they reverently call Christian, has sprung from their
desires.

During their life these social myths contain a nation's finest energy. It
is just because they are "not descriptions of things, but expressions of
will" that their influence is so great. Ignore what a man desires and you
ignore the very source of his power; run against the grain of a nation's
genius and see where you get with your laws. Robert Burns was right when
he preferred poetry to charters. The recognition of this truth by Sorel
is one of the most impressive events in the revolutionary movement.
Standing as a spokesman of an actual social revolt, he has not lost his
vision because he understands its function. If Machiavelli is a symbol of
the political theorist making reason an instrument of purpose, we may
take Sorel as a self-conscious representative of the impulses