daydream of idolatry. And just as we have all sprung from sleep with a
start and found ourselves saying some sentence that has no meaning, save
in the mad tongues of the midnight; so the human mind starts from its
trances of stupidity with some complete phrase upon its lips; a complete
phrase which is a complete folly. Unfortunately it is not like the dream
sentence, generally forgotten in the putting on of boots or the putting
in of breakfast. This senseless aphorism, invented when man's mind was
asleep, still hangs on his tongue and entangles all his relations to
rational and daylight things. All our controversies are confused by
certain kinds of phrases which are not merely untrue, but were
always unmeaning; which are not merely inapplicable, but were always
intrinsically useless. We recognise them wherever a man talks of "the
survival of the fittest," meaning only the survival of the survivors; or
wherever a man says that the rich "have a stake in the country," as
if the poor could not suffer from misgovernment or military defeat; or
where a man talks about "going on towards Progress," which only means
going on towards going on; or when a man talks about "government by the
wise few," as if they could be picked out by their pantaloons. "The wise
few" must mean either the few whom the foolish think wise or the very
foolish who think themselves wise.

There is one piece of nonsense that modern people still find themselves
saying, even after they are more or less awake, by which I am
particularly irritated. It arose in the popularised science of the
nineteenth century, especially in connection with the study of myths and
religions. The fragment of gibberish to which I refer generally takes
the form of saying "This god or hero really represents the sun." Or
"Apollo killing the Python MEANS that the summer drives out the winter."
Or "The King dying in a western battle is a SYMBOL of the sun setting
in the west." Now I should really have thought that even the skeptical
professors, whose skulls are as shallow as frying-pans, might have
reflected that human beings never think or feel like this. Consider what
is involved in this supposition. It presumes that primitive man went out
for a walk and saw with great interest a big burning spot on the sky. He
then said to primitive woman, "My dear, we had better keep this quiet.
We mustn't let it get about. The children and the slaves are so very
sharp. They might discover the sun