There are people who think, perhaps, indeed, there is almost nobody who
does not think, that action is the sole end of life. Criticism, they
hold, is a kind of disease to which some people are subject, and which,
in extreme cases, may easily be fatal. The healthy state, on the other
hand, they think, is that of the enthusiast; of the man who believes
and never doubts. Now, that such a state is happy I am very ready to
admit; but I cannot hold that it is healthy. How could it be, unless
it were based upon a sound, intellectual foundation? But no such
foundation has been or will be reached except through criticism; and
all criticism implies and engenders doubt. A man who has never
experienced, nay, I will say who is not constantly reiterating, the
process of criticism, is a man who has no right to his enthusiasm. For
he has won it at the cost of drugging his mind with passion; and that I
maintain is a bad and wrong thing. I maintain it to be bad and wrong
in itself, and quite apart from any consequences it may produce; for it
is a primary duty to seek what is true and eschew what is false. But
even from the secondary point of view of consequences, I have the
gravest doubts as to the common assumption that the effects of
enthusiasm are always preponderantly if not wholly good. When I
consider, for example, the history of religion, I find no warrant for
affirming that its services have outweighed its disservices. Jesus
Christ, the greatest and, I think, the sanest of enthusiasts, lit the
fires of the Inquisition and set up the Pope at Rome. Mahomet deluged
the earth with blood, and planted the Turk on the Bosphorus. Saint
Frances created a horde of sturdy beggars. Luther declared the Thirty
Years War. Criticism would have arrested the course of these men; but
would the world have been the worse? I doubt it. There would have
been less heat; but there might have been more light. And, for my
part, I believe in light. It may, indeed, be true that intellect
without passion is barren; but it is certain that passion without
intellect is mischievous. And since these powers, which should be
united, are, in fact, at war in the great duel which runs through
history, I take my stand with the intellect. If I must choose, I would
rather be barren than mischievous. But it is my aim to be fruitful and
to be fruitful through criticism. That means, I fear, that I am bound
to make myself unpleasant to everybody. But I