tion that
righteousness is filthy rags, his scorn for Mr Legality in the village
of Morality, his defiance of the Church as the supplanter of religion,
his insistence on courage as the virtue of virtues, his estimate of the
career of the conventionally respectable and sensible Worldly Wiseman
as no better at bottom than the life and death of Mr Badman: all
this, expressed by Bunyan in the terms of a tinker's theology, is what
Nietzsche has expressed in terms of post-Darwinian, post-Schopenhaurian
philosophy; Wagner in terms of polytheistic mythology; and Ibsen in
terms of mid-XIX century Parisian dramaturgy. Nothing is new in these
matters except their novelties: for instance, it is a novelty to
call Justification by Faith "Wille," and Justification by Works
"Vorstellung." The sole use of the novelty is that you and I buy and
read Schopenhaur's treatise on Will and Representation when we should
not dream of buying a set of sermons on Faith versus Works. At bottom
the controversy is the same, and the dramatic results are the same.
Bunyan makes no attempt to present his pilgrims as more sensible or
better conducted than Mr Worldly Wiseman. Mr W. W.'s worst enemies, as
Mr Embezzler, Mr Never-go-to-Church-on-Sunday, Mr Bad Form, Mr Murderer,
Mr Burglar, Mr Co-respondent, Mr Blackmailer, Mr Cad, Mr Drunkard, Mr
Labor Agitator and so forth, can read the Pilgrim's Progress without
finding a word said against them; whereas the respectable people who
snub them and put them in prison, such as Mr W.W. himself and his young
friend Civility; Formalist and Hypocrisy; Wildhead, Inconsiderate, and
Pragmatick (who were clearly young university men of good family
and high feeding); that brisk lad Ignorance, Talkative, By-Ends of
Fairspeech and his mother-in-law Lady Feigning, and other reputable
gentlemen and citizens, catch it very severely. Even Little Faith,
though he gets to heaven at last, is given to understand that it served
him right to be mobbed by the brothers Faint Heart, Mistrust, and
Guilt, all three recognized members of respectable society and veritable
pillars of the law. The whole allegory is a consistent attack on
morality and respectability, without a word that one can remember
against vice and crime. Exactly what is complained of in Nietzsche and
Ibsen, is it not? And also exactly what would be complained of in all
the literature which is great enough and old enough to have attained
canonical rank, officially or unoffi