…it is the sceptics who
are the sentimentalists. More than half the "revolt" and the talk of
being advanced and progressive is
simply a weak sort of snobbishness which takes the form of a worship of Youth. Some men of my generation
delight in declaring that they are of the Party of the Young and defending
every detail of the latest
fashions or freaks. If I do not do that, it is for the same reason that
I do not dye my hair or wear stays. But even when it is less despicable than that, the current phrase that
everything must be done for youth, that the rising generation is all
that matters, is in sober fact apiece of
pure sentimentalism. It is also, within reason, a perfectly natural piece of sentiment. All healthy people
like to see the young enjoying themselves; but if we turn that pleasure into a
principle, we
are sentimentalists. If we desire the greatest happiness of
the greatest number, it will be obvious that
the greatest number, at any given moment, are rather more likely to be
between twenty-five and seventy than to be between seventeen and twenty-five.
Sacrificing everything to the young will be
like working only for the rich. They will be a privileged class and the rest will be snobs or slaves. Moreover, the young will always have a fair amount of fun under
the worst conditions; if we really
wish to console the world, it will be much more rational to console the
old. This is what I call facing facts; and I have continued to believe in most
of these traditions because they are facts. I could give a great many other examples;
for instance, chivalry. Chivalry is not the
romantic, but the realistic, view of the sexes. It is so realistic that
the real reasons for it cannot always be given in print.
If those called free-thinkers
are sentimentalists, those called free-lovers
are open and obvious sentimentalists. We can always convict such people
of sentimentalism by their weakness for euphemism. The phrase they use is
always softened and suited for journalistic appeals. They talk of free love when they mean something quite different, better
defined as free lust. But being sentimentalists they feel bound to simper and coo over the word "love."
They insist on talking about Birth
Control when they mean less birth and no control. We could smash them to atoms, if we could be as indecent in
our language as they are immoral in their conclusions. And as it is with
morals, so it is with religion. The general notion that science establishes
agnosticism is a sort of mystification produced by talking Latin and Greek
instead of plain English. Science is the Latin for knowledge. Agnosticism is the Greek for ignorance. It is not self-evident
that ignorance is the goal of knowledge. It is the ignorance and not the
knowledge that produces the current notion that free thought weakens
theism. It is the real world,that we see
with our own eyes, that obviously unfolds a plan of things that fit into each
other. It is only a remote and misty legend that ever pretended to
explain it by the automatic advantage of the
"fit." As a fact, modern evolutionists, even when they are still Darwinians, do not pretend that the theory
explains all varieties and adaptations.
Those who know are rather rescuing Darwin
at the expense of Darwinism. But it is those who do not know who doubt
or deny; it is typical that their myth
is actually called the Missing Link. They
actually know nothing of their own argument except that it breaks down somewhere. But it is worth while to
ask why this loose legend has such
power over many; and I will proceed to my suggestion. I have not changed my mind; nor, indeed, have they changed
their mind. They have only changed their mood.
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