ty itself is too much
of a restraint. We will have no generalizations. Mr. Bernard Shaw has
put the view in a perfect epigram: "The golden rule is that there is
no golden rule." We are more and more to discuss details in art,
politics, literature. A man's opinion on tramcars matters; his opinion
on Botticelli matters; his opinion on all things does not matter. He
may turn over and explore a million objects, but he must not find that
strange object, the universe; for if he does he will have a religion,
and be lost. Everything matters--except everything.

Examples are scarcely needed of this total levity on the subject of
cosmic philosophy. Examples are scarcely needed to show that, whatever
else we think of as affecting practical affairs, we do not think it
matters whether a man is a pessimist or an optimist, a Cartesian or a
Hegelian, a materialist or a spiritualist. Let me, however, take a
random instance. At any innocent tea-table we may easily hear a man
say, "Life is not worth living." We regard it as we regard the
statement that it is a fine day; nobody thinks that it can possibly
have any serious effect on the man or on the world. And yet if that
utterance were really believed, the world would stand on its head.
Murderers would be given medals for saving men from life; firemen would
be denounced for keeping men from death; poisons would be used as
medicines; doctors would be called in when people were well; the Royal
Humane Society would be rooted out like a horde of assassins. Yet we
never speculate as to whether the conversational pessimist will
strengthen or disorganize society; for we are convinced that theories
do not matter.

This was certainly not the idea of those who introduced our freedom.
When the old Liberals removed the gags from all the heresies, their
idea was that religious and philosophical discoveries might thus be
made. Their view was that cosmic truth was so important that every one
ought to bear independent testimony. The modern idea is that cosmic
truth is so unimportant that it cannot matter what any one says. The
former freed inquiry as men loose a noble hound; the latter frees
inquiry as men fling back into the sea a fish unfit for eating. Never
has there been so little discussion about the nature of men as now,
when, for the first time, any one can discuss it. The old restriction
meant that only the orthodox were allowed to discuss religion. Modern
liberty means that nobody is a