ed qualities
that are inherent in the ascending force, and they are no more to be
accepted as authoritative than are the others. They have their value
however, for they are prophetic, and even in their exaggeration there is
the clear forecast of things to be. Trace them in turn to the source.
What is their source? The new power issues out of obscurity and its
character is veiled, but we can estimate it from the very nature of the
exaggerated reactions we _can_ see. If something shows itself, in
sociology, economics, politics, religion, art, what you will, that is
especially a denial of what has been a controlling agency during the
past four or five hundred years: if it is by common consent impractical
and "outside the current of manifest evolutionary development," then,
shorn of its exaggerations, reduced to its essential quality, it is very
probably a clear showing forth of what is about to come to birth and
condition human life for the next five hundred years. This, I suppose,
explains the comprehensive return to Medievalism that, to the scorn of
biologists, sociologists and professors of political economy, is
flaunting itself before us today, at the hands of a very small minority,
in all the categories I have named, as well as in many others besides.

A glance at the diagram will show a curious pattern round about the
nodal point. One may say that the reactions are somewhat mixed. Quite
so. At this moment we are beaten upon by numberless reforms, both
"radical" and "reactionary." Materialism, democracy, rationalism,
anarchy contending against Medievalism of twenty sorts, and strange
mysticisms out of the East. Which shall we choose, _if_ we choose, and
do not content ourselves with an easier inertia that allows nature to
take its course? It is simply the question; On which wave will you ride;
that which is descending to oblivion or that which has within itself the
power and potency to control man's destiny for the next five hundred
years?

APPENDIX B

CERTAIN BOOKS SUGGESTED FOR COLLATERAL READING

ADAMS, HENRY Mont Saint-Michel and Chartres.

ADAMS, HENRY Degradation of the Democratic Dogma.

BAUDRILLART, A. Catholic Church, Renaissance and Protestantism.

BELL, BERNARD IDDINGS Right and Wrong after the War.

BELLOC, HILAIRE The Servile State.

BRYCE, VISCOUNT Modern Democracies.

BULL, PAUL B. The Sacramental Principle.

CHESTERTON, G.K. Orthodoxy.

CHESTERTON, G.K. What's Wrong with the Wo