ly astonished at any intellectual group accepting so
weak and unphilosophical a name. It is incomprehensible to me that any
thinker can calmly call himself a modernist; he might as well call
himself a Thursdayite. But apart altogether from that particular
disturbance, I am conscious of a general irritation expressed against
the people who boast of their advancement and modernity in the
discussion of religion. But I never succeeded in saying the quite clear
and obvious thing that is really the matter with modernism. The real
objection to modernism is simply that it is a form of snobbishness. It
is an attempt to crush a rational opponent not by reason, but by some
mystery of superiority, by hinting that one is specially up to date or
particularly "in the know." To flaunt the fact that we have had all the
last books from Germany is simply vulgar; like flaunting the fact that
we have had all the last bonnets from Paris. To introduce into
philosophical discussions a sneer at a creed's antiquity is like
introducing a sneer at a lady's age. It is caddish because it is
irrelevant. The pure modernist is merely a snob; he cannot bear to be a
month behind the fashion Similarly I find that I have tried in these
pages to express the real objection to philanthropists and have not
succeeded. I have not seen the quite simple objection to the causes
advocated by certain wealthy idealists; causes of which the cause called
teetotalism is the strongest case. I have used many abusive terms about
the thing, calling it Puritanism, or superciliousness, or aristocracy;
but I have not seen and stated the quite simple objection to
philanthropy; which is that it is religious persecution. Religious
persecution does not consist in thumbscrews or fires of Smithfield; the
essence of religious persecution is this: that the man who happens to
have material power in the State, either by wealth or by official
position, should govern his fellow-citizens not according to their
religion or philosophy, but according to his own. If, for instance,
there is such a thing as a vegetarian nation; if there is a great united
mass of men who wish to live by the vegetarian morality, then I say in
the emphatic words of the arrogant French marquis before the French
Revolution, "Let them eat grass." Perhaps that French oligarch was a
humanitarian; most oligarchs are. Perhaps when he told the peasants to
eat grass he was recommending to them the hygienic simplicity of a
veg