we regard as essential to sound thinking; I mean, a clear conception of nature and its inexorable laws. During brilliant epochs, no disadvantage arose from that. On the contrary, the scientific spirit, which it is the eternal glory of Greece to have introduced into the world, in a sense owes its origin to polytheism. It is quite remarkable, indeed, that the nomad Semitic peoples, who from the beginning seem more or less to have tended toward monotheism, never had an indigenous science or philosophy. Islam, which is the purest product of the Semitic genius, and may be regarded as the ideal form of monotheism, has stifled all curiosity, all investigation into causes, among the peoples who are under its sway. 'God is great!' 'God knows!'-such is the response of the Arab to the narratives best calculated to astonish him. The Jews, so superior in point of religion to all the other peoples of antiquity, do not present one single trace of a scientific movement before their contact with the Greeks. From the earliest times,' as M. Ravaisson well says, 'the Hebrew religion, in order to account for man and nature, had invoked the holy and omnipotent God, the Eternal One, anterior and superior to the world, sole author of all things, and supreme legislator over all. On the contrary, the innumerable divinities of other religions, and notably of the Hellenic, were only particular powers, mutually limited, comparable to natural objects, and subject in much the same way to imperfection and change. As a result, seeing in the universe-in its successive phenomena and in its different parts-a unity, an order, a harmony, which neither the discordant wills of the gods nor their chance adventures in any way served to explain, the need was very early felt of trying to discover, by means of the reason, that universal reason in things, concerning which mythology was silent. Such was, it would seem, the origin of philosophy amongst the Greeks."

Accordingly, the absence of a rule of religion proved only an advantage so long as the Greek spirit preserved its vigor and originality. But when intellectual culture lost ground, superstition, to which polytheism offered too little obstruction, spread over the world, and damaged even the best minds. I know of nothing sadder in this regard than the spectacle presented by philosophy from the third century of our era on. What men they were-Ammonius, Plotinus, Proclus, Isidore! What nobility of mind and heart! Where is the martyr to compare for her austere beauty with Hypatia? More than all, what a man was Porphyry, perhaps the

3 Ravaisson, Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres 21.1.1 ff.

only scholar in antiquity (as Niebuhr and M. Letronne have well shown) who was critical and exact! And yet what an indelible blot appeared in the life of these great persons! What aberrations in all matters concerning demons, familiar spirits, and white magic! Porphyry, an excellent critic in all other respects, in the field of metempsychosis and apparitions accepts things that are hardly less extravagant than table-turning and spirit-rapping. Some time ago I set about reading the lives of these great men, in so many ways admirable, with a view to presenting them as the saints of philosophy; and assuredly for their beauty of character, their moral grandeur, their elevation of spirit, and often, too, for the legends attaching to their names, they are worthy to be set side by side with the most revered Christian ascetics. But their credulity on the head of spirits grieved me, and prevented my taking any pleasure in the beautiful aspects of their lives. There, too, is the poison which taints the otherwise highly attractive character of Julian. If the restoration of paganism was to serve no other purpose than to revive the crude superstitions with which one sees that emperor so constantly occupied, it is hard to understand that a man of so much intelligence should have acquired the evil name of 'apostate' for the sake of such trivial nonsense.

XX

PAGANISM AND MR. LOWES DICKINSON 1

BY GILBERT K. CHESTERTON

1

Of the New Paganism (or neo-Paganism), as it was preached flamboyantly by Mr. Swinburne or delicately by Walter Pater, there is no necessity to take any very grave account, except as a thing which left behind it incomparable exercises in the English language. The New Paganism is no longer new, and it never at any time bore the smallest resemblance to Paganism. The ideas about the ancient civilization which it has left loose in the public mind are certainly extraordinary enough. The term 'pagan' is continually used in fiction and light literature as meaning a man without any religion, whereas a pagan was generally a man with about half a dozen. The pagans, according to this notion, were continually crowning themselves with flowers and dancing about in an irresponsible state, whereas, if there were two things that the best pagan civilization did honestly believe in, they were a rather too rigid dignity and a much too rigid responsibility. Pagans are depicted as above all things inebriate and lawless, whereas they were above all things reasonable and respectable. They are praised as disobedient when they had only one great virtue-civic obedience. They are envied and admired as shamelessly happy when they had only one great sin-despair.

Mr. Lowes Dickinson, the most pregnant and provocative of recent writers on this and similar subjects, is far too solid a man to have fallen into this old error of the mere anarchy of Paganism. In order to make hay of that Hellenic enthusiasm which has as its ideal mere appetite and egotism, it is not necessary to know much philosophy, but merely to know a little Greek. Mr. Lowes Dickinson knows a great deal of philosophy, and also a great deal of Greek, and his error, if error he has, is not that of the crude

[1 Paganism and Mr. Lowes Dickinson, No. XII in Mr. Chesterton's Heretics (pp. 153-170), is here reprinted through the courtesy of the publishers, John Lane Company.-EDITOR.]

hedonist. But the contrast which he offers between Christianity and Paganism in the matter of moral ideals a contrast which he states very ably in a paper called How long halt ye? which appeared in the Independent Review-does, I think, contain an error of a deeper kind. According to him, the ideal of Paganism was not, indeed, a mere frenzy of lust and liberty and caprice, but was an ideal of full and satisfied humanity. According to him, the ideal of Christianity was the ideal of asceticism. When I say that I think this idea wholly wrong as a matter of philosophy and history, I am not talking for the moment about any ideal Christianity of my own, or even of any primitive Christianity undefiled by after events. I am not, like so many modern Christian idealists, basing my case upon certain things which Christ said. Neither am I, like so many other Christian idealists, basing my case upon certain things that Christ forgot to say. I take historic Christianity with all its sins upon its head; I take it, as I would take Jacobinism, or Mormonism, or any other mixed or unpleasing human product, and I say that the meaning of its action was not to be found in asceticism. I say that its point of departure from Paganism was not asceticism. I say that its point of difference with the modern world was not asceticism. I say that St. Simeon Stylites had not his main inspiration in asceticism. I say that the main Christian impulse cannot be described as asceticism, even in the ascetics.

Let me set about making the matter clear. There is one broad fact about the relations of Christianity and Paganism which is so simple that many will smile at it, but which is so important that all moderns forget it. The primary fact about Christianity and Paganism is that one came after the other. Mr. Lowes Dickinson speaks of them as if they were parallel ideals-even speaks as if Paganism were the newer of the two, and the more fitted for a new age. He suggests that the pagan ideal will be the ultimate good of man; but if that is so, we must at least ask with more curiosity than he allows for, why it was that man actually found his ultimate good on earth under the stars, and threw it away again. It is this extraordinary enigma to which I propose to attempt an answer.

There is only one thing in the modern world that has been face to face with Paganism; there is only one thing in the modern world which in that sense knows anything about Paganism; and that is Christianity. That fact is really the weak point in the whole of that hedonistic neo-Paganism of which I have spoken. All that genuinely remains of the ancient hymns or the ancient dances of Europe, all that has honestly come to us from the festivals of

Phoebus or Pan, is to be found in the festivals of the Christian Church. If any one wants to hold the end of a chain which really goes back to the heathen mysteries, he had better take hold of a festoon of flowers at Easter or a string of sausages at Christmas. Everything else in the modern world is of Christian origin, even everything that seems most anti-Christian. The French Revolution is of Christian origin. The newspaper is of Christian origin. The anarchists are of Christian origin. Physical science is of Christian origin. The attack on Christianity is of Christian origin. There is one thing, and one thing only, in existence at the present day, which can in any sense accurately be said to be of pagan origin, and that is Christianity.

The real difference between Paganism and Christianity is perfectly summed up in the difference between the pagan, or natural, virtues, and those three virtues of Christianity which the Church of Rome calls virtues of grace. The pagan, or rational, virtues are such things as justice and temperance, and Christianity has adopted them. The three mystical virtues which Christianity has not adopted, but invented, are faith, hope, and charity. Now much easy and foolish Christian rhetoric could easily be poured out upon those three words, but I desire to confine myself to the two facts which are evident about them. The first evident fact (in marked contrast to the delusion of the dancing pagan)-the first evident fact, I say, is that the pagan virtues, such as justice and temperance, are the sad virtues, and that the mystical virtues of faith, hope, and charity are the gay and exuberant virtues. And the second evident fact, which is even more evident, is the fact that the pagan virtues are the reasonable virtues, and that the Christian virtues of faith, hope, and charity are in their essence as unreasonable as they can be.

As the word 'unreasonable' is open to misunderstanding, the matter may be more accurately put by saying that each one of these Christian or, mystical virtues involves a paradox in its own nature, and that this is not true of any of the typically pagan or rationalist virtues. Justice consists in finding out a certain thing due to a certain man and giving it to him. Temperance consists in finding out the proper limit of a particular indulgence and adhering to that. But charity means pardoning what is unpardonable, or it is no virtue at all. Hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all. And faith means believing the incredible, or it is no virtue at all.

It is somewhat amusing, indeed, to notice the difference between