ce himself with a savage irony into this
caricature of nature; we have emptied reality of its content in our
thought and he will empty it of its content to our eyes; that is not how
we really see things, but it is how we ought to see them if what we
believe about the nature of things is true. This irony we find in Mr.
Nevinson's pictures of the war, whether it be a despairing irony or the
rebellion of an unshaken faith. He has emptied man of his content, just
as the Prussian drill sergeant would empty him of his content for the
purposes of war; and only a Prussian drill sergeant could consent to
this version of man with any joy.

That, perhaps, is how we shall all come to see everything if we continue
for some centuries to believe that process and not person is the
ultimate reality. Emptying ourselves of all our content in thought, we
shall at last empty ourselves of all content in reality; we shall become
what now we fear we are, and our very senses will be obedient to our
unfaith. For unfaith is the belief in process; and faith is the belief
in person. It is the belief in process that makes men sacrifice other
men in thousands to some idol; it is the belief in person that makes
them refuse to sacrifice anyone but themselves; and they are afraid when
they sacrifice others, but confident when they sacrifice themselves.
Ultimately process has no value and can have no value for us. It is
merely what exists or what we believe to exist, and our effort to value
it is only the obsequiousness of the slave to the power that he fears.
All our values come from the sense of person as more real than process.
We will not do wrong to a man because he is a man; if he is to us only
part of a process, we cannot value him and we can do what we will to him
without any sense of wrong. All the old cruelties and iniquities of the
world arose out of a belief in process and a fear of it. It is not a
modern scientific discovery, but the oldest and darkest superstition
that has oppressed the mind of man. To all religious persecutors
salvation was a process, like that struggle for life which is the modern
form of the struggle for salvation to the superstitious. And because
salvation was a process human beings were sacrificed to it. It did not
matter how they were tortured, provided this abstract process was
maintained. So it does not matter now how they are slaughtered, provided
the abstract process of the struggle for life is maintained. To the