ed--dedicate nearly all their tales and sayings to the subject of
physical kinship, of a curse on this or that tribe, of a taint in this
or that family, of the invincible law of blood, of the unavoidable evil
of places. The true savage is a slave, and is always talking about what
he must do; the true civilised man is a free man and is always talking
about what he may do. Hence all the Zola heredity and Ibsen heredity
that has been written in our time affects me as not merely evil, but as
essentially ignorant and retrogressive. This sort of science is almost
the only thing that can with strict propriety be called reactionary.
Scientific determinism is simply the primal twilight of all mankind; and
some men seem to be returning to it.

Another savage trait of our time is the disposition to talk about
material substances instead of about ideas. The old civilisation talked
about the sin of gluttony or excess. We talk about the Problem of
Drink--as if drink could be a problem. When people have come to call the
problem of human intemperance the Problem of Drink, and to talk about
curing it by attacking the drink traffic, they have reached quite a dim
stage of barbarism. The thing is an inverted form of fetish worship; it
is no sillier to say that a bottle is a god than to say that a bottle is
a devil. The people who talk about the curse of drink will probably
progress down that dark hill. In a little while we shall have them
calling the practice of wife-beating the Problem of Pokers; the habit of
housebreaking will be called the Problem of the Skeleton-Key Trade; and
for all I know they may try to prevent forgery by shutting up all the
stationers' shops by Act of Parliament.

I cannot help thinking that there is some shadow of this uncivilised
materialism lying at present upon a much more dignified and valuable
cause. Every one is talking just now about the desirability of
ingeminating peace and averting war. But even war and peace are physical
states rather than moral states, and in talking about them only we have
by no means got to the bottom of the matter. How, for instance, do we as
a matter of fact create peace in one single community? We do not do it
by vaguely telling every one to avoid fighting and to submit to anything
that is done to him. We do it by definitely defining his rights and then
undertaking to avenge his wrongs. We shall never have a common peace in
Europe till we have a common principle in Europe. People