There are,of course,many other instances;for modern society is almost made up of these large monochrome patches.Thus I,for one,regret the supersession of the old Puritan unity,founded on theology,but embracing all types from Milton to the grocer,by that newer Puritan unity which is founded rather on certain social habits,certain common notions,both permissive and prohibitive,in connection with Particular social pleasures.
Thus I,for one,regret that (if you are going to have an aristocracy)it did not remain a logical one founded on the science of heraldry;a thing asserting and defending the quite defensible theory that physical genealogy is the test;instead of being,as it is now,a mere machine of Eton and Oxford for varnishing anybody rich enough with one monotonous varnish.
And it is supremely so in the case of religion.As long as you have a creed,which every one in a certain group believes or is supposed to believe,then that group will consist of the old recurring figures of religious history,who can be appealed to by the creed and judged by it;the saint,the hypocrite,the brawler,the weak brother.These people do each other good;or they all join together to do the hypocrite good,with heavy and repeated blows.But once break the bond of doctrine which alone holds these people together and each will gravitate to his own kind outside the group.The hypocrites will all get together and call each other saints;the saints will get lost in a desert and call themselves weak brethren;the weak brethren will get weaker and weaker in a general atmosphere of imbecility;and the brawler will go off looking for somebody else with whom to brawl.
This has very largely happened to modern English religion;I have been in many churches,chapels,and halls where a confident pride in having got beyond creeds was coupled with quite a paralysed incapacity to get beyond catchwords.But wherever the falsity appears it comes from neglect of the same truth:that men should agree on a principle,that they may differ on everything else;that God gave men a law that they might turn it into liberties.
There was hugely more sense in the old people who said that a wife and husband ought to have the same religion than there is in all the contemporary gushing about sister souls and kindred spirits and auras of identical colour.As a matter of fact,the more the sexes are in violent contrast the less likely they are to be in violent collision.The more incompatible their tempers are the better.Obviously a wife's soul cannot possibly be a sister soul.It is very seldom so much as a first cousin.
There are very few marriages of identical taste and temperament;they are generally unhappy.But to have the same fundamental theory,to think the same thing a virtue,whether you practise or neglect it,to think the same thing a sin,whether you punish or pardon or laugh at it,in the last extremity to call the same thing duty and the same thing disgrace--this really is necessary to a tolerably happy marriage;and it is much better represented by a common religion than it is by affinities and auras.And what applies to the family applies to the nation.A nation with a root religion will be tolerant.A nation with no religion will be bigoted.Lastly,the worst effect of all is this:that when men come together to profess a creed,they come courageously,though it is to hide in catacombs and caves.But when they come together in a clique they come sneakishly,eschewing all change or disagreement,though it is to dine to a brass band in a big London hotel.For birds of a feather flock together,but birds of the white feather most of all.
