incurable internal care for themselves, were all due
to the Inner Light, and existed only by that dismal illumination. Notice
that Marcus Aurelius insists, as such introspective moralists always do,
upon small things done or undone; it is because he has not hate or love
enough to make a moral revolution. He gets up early in the morning, just
as our own aristocrats living the Simple Life get up early in the
morning; because such altruism is much easier than stopping the games of
the amphitheatre or giving the English people back their land. Marcus
Aurelius is the most intolerable of human types. He is an unselfish
egoist. An unselfish egoist is a man who has pride without the excuse of
passion. Of all conceivable forms of enlightenment the worst is what
these people call the Inner Light. Of all horrible religions the most
horrible is the worship of the god within. Any one who knows any body
knows how it would work; any one who knows any one from the Higher
Thought Centre knows how it does work. That Jones shall worship the god
within him turns out ultimately to mean that Jones shall worship Jones.
Let Jones worship the sun or moon, anything rather than the Inner Light;
let Jones worship cats or crocodiles, if he can find any in his street,
but not the god within. Christianity came into the world firstly in
order to assert with violence that a man had not only to look inwards,
but to look outwards, to behold with astonishment and enthusiasm a
divine company and a divine captain. The only fun of being a Christian
was that a man was not left alone with the Inner Light, but definitely
recognised an outer light, fair as the sun, clear as the moon, terrible
as an army with banners.

All the same, it will be as well if Jones does not worship the sun and
moon. If he does, there is a tendency for him to imitate them; to say,
that because the sun burns insects alive, he may burn insects alive. He
thinks that because the sun gives people sun-stroke, he may give his
neighbour measles. He thinks that because the moon is said to drive men
mad, he may drive his wife mad. This ugly side of mere external optimism
had also shown itself in the ancient world. About the time when the
Stoic idealism had begun to show the weaknesses of pessimism, the old
nature worship of the ancients had begun to show the enormous weaknesses
of optimism. Nature worship is natural enough while the society is
young, or, in other words, Pantheism is all right as