some have done so in search of arguments against
Socialism), on their way, they will not have failed to remark the
materialism, the mechanical cunning, the high standard of comfort, the
low standard of honesty, the spiritual indigence, the unholy alliance of
cynicism with sentimentality, the degradation of art and religion to
menial and mountebank offices, common in both, and in both signifying
the mouldy end of what was once a vital agitation. To similise the state
superstitions and observances of Rome with our official devotions and
ministration, the precise busts in the British Museum with the "speaking
likenesses" in the National Portrait Gallery, the academic republicanism
of the cultivated patricians with English Liberalism, and the thrills of
the arena with those of the playing-field, would be pretty sport for any
little German boy. I shall not encourage the brat to lay an historical
finger on callousness, bravado, trembling militarism, superficial
culture, mean political passion, megalomania, and a taste for being in
the majority as attributes common to Imperial Rome and Imperial England.
Rather I will inquire whether the rest of Europe does not labour under
the proverbial disability of those who live in glass-houses. It is not
so much English politics as Western civilisation that reminds me of the
last days of the Empire.

The facility of the comparison disfavours the raking up of
similarities; I need not compare Mr. Shaw with Lucian or the persecution
of Christians with the savage out-bursts of our shopkeepers against
anarchists. One may note, though, that it is as impossible to determine
exactly when and whence came the religious spirit that was to make an
end of Graeco-Roman materialism as to assign a birth-place to the
spiritual ferment that pervades modern Europe. For though we may find a
date for the maturity of Cezanne, and though I agree that the art of one
genius may produce a movement, even Cezanne will hardly suffice to
account for what looks like the beginning of an artistic slope and a
renaissance of the human spirit. One would hesitate to explain the dark
and middle ages by the mosaics at Ravenna. The spirit that was to revive
the moribund Roman world came from the East; that we know. It was at
work long before the world grew conscious of its existence. Its remotest
origins are probably undiscoverable. To-day we can name pioneers, beside
Cezanne, in the new world of emotion; there was Tolstoi, and