a animal. Men need not trouble to
alter conditions, conditions will so soon alter men. The head can be
beaten small enough to fit the hat. Do not knock the fetters off
the slave; knock the slave until he forgets the fetters. To all this
plausible modern argument for oppression, the only adequate answer is,
that there is a permanent human ideal that must not be either confused
or destroyed. The most important man on earth is the perfect man who
is not there. The Christian religion has specially uttered the ultimate
sanity of Man, says Scripture, who shall judge the incarnate and human
truth. Our lives and laws are not judged by divine superiority, but
simply by human perfection. It is man, says Aristotle, who is the
measure. It is the Son of Man, says Scripture, who shall judge the quick
and the dead.

Doctrine, therefore, does not cause dissensions; rather a doctrine alone
can cure our dissensions. It is necessary to ask, however, roughly,
what abstract and ideal shape in state or family would fulfil the human
hunger; and this apart from whether we can completely obtain it or not.
But when we come to ask what is the need of normal men, what is the
desire of all nations, what is the ideal house, or road, or rule, or
republic, or king, or priesthood, then we are confronted with a strange
and irritating difficulty peculiar to the present time; and we must call
a temporary halt and examine that obstacle.

*****

IV. THE FEAR OF THE PAST

The last few decades have been marked by a special cultivation of
the romance of the future. We seem to have made up our minds to
misunderstand what has happened; and we turn, with a sort of relief, to
stating what will happen--which is (apparently) much easier. The modern
man no longer presents the memoirs of his great grandfather; but
is engaged in writing a detailed and authoritative biography of his
great-grandson. Instead of trembling before the specters of the dead,
we shudder abjectly under the shadow of the babe unborn. This spirit is
apparent everywhere, even to the creation of a form of futurist romance.
Sir Walter Scott stands at the dawn of the nineteenth century for the
novel of the past; Mr. H. G. Wells stands at the dawn of the twentieth
century for the novel of the future. The old story, we know, was
supposed to begin: "Late on a winter's evening two horsemen might have
been seen--." The new story has to begin: "Late on a winter's evening
two aviators will be seen