as placed
us in the best of possible worlds, which so lowers men's aims and
unstrings their firmness of purpose. Pleasure saps high interests, and
the weakening of high interests leaves more undisputed room for
pleasure." "The political spirit has grown to be the strongest element
in our national life; the dominant force, extending its influence over
all our ways of thinking in matters that have least to do with politics,
or even nothing at all to do with them. There has thus been engendered
among us the real sense of political responsibility. In a corresponding
degree has been discouraged ... the sense of intellectual
responsibility.... Practically, and as a matter of history, a society is
seldom at the same time successfully energetic both in temporals and
spirituals; seldom prosperous alike in seeking abstract truth and
nursing the political spirit."

The result of the new phase of English life was, on the one hand,
industrialism with its material values, and on the other hand the
beginnings of a Socialism equally pagan. The motto of both schools was
that a man's life consisteth in the abundance of the things that he
possesseth, that you should seek first all these things, and that the
Kingdom of God and His righteousness may be added unto you, if you have
any room for them. Make yourself secure of all these other things; seek
comfort whether you be rich or poor; make this world as agreeable to
yourself as your means will allow, and seek to increase your means of
making it still more agreeable. After you have done all that, anything
that is left over will do for your idealism. Your God can be seen to
after you have abundantly provided for the needs of your body. Nothing
could be more characteristic paganism than this, which makes material
comfort the real end of life, and all spiritual things a residual
element. It is the story which Isaiah tells, with such sublimity of
sarcasm, of the huntsman and craftsman who warms his hands and cries to
himself, "Aha! I am warm. I have seen the fire." He bakes bread and
roasts flesh, and, with the residue of the same log which he has used
for kindling his fire, he maketh a god. So this modern god of England,
when England had become materialised, was just that ancient fire-worship
and comfort-worship in its nineteenth-century phase. In the first demand
of life there is no thought of God or of idealism of any kind. These, if
they appear at all, have to be made out of what is left.