he evening are ritual, and nothing else
but ritual. No one would pretend that white ties in the evening are
primary and poetical. Nobody would maintain that the ordinary human
instinct would in any age or country tend to symbolize the idea of
evening by a white necktie. Rather, the ordinary human instinct would,
I imagine, tend to symbolize evening by cravats with some of the
colours of the sunset, not white neckties, but tawny or crimson
neckties--neckties of purple or olive, or some darkened gold. Mr. J.
A. Kensit, for example, is under the impression that he is not a
ritualist. But the daily life of Mr. J. A. Kensit, like that of any
ordinary modern man, is, as a matter of fact, one continual and
compressed catalogue of mystical mummery and flummery. To take one
instance out of an inevitable hundred: I imagine that Mr. Kensit takes
off his hat to a lady; and what can be more solemn and absurd,
considered in the abstract, than, symbolizing the existence of the
other sex by taking off a portion of your clothing and waving it in the
air? This, I repeat, is not a natural and primitive symbol, like fire
or food. A man might just as well have to take off his waistcoat to a
lady; and if a man, by the social ritual of his civilization, had to
take off his waistcoat to a lady, every chivalrous and sensible man
would take off his waistcoat to a lady. In short, Mr. Kensit, and
those who agree with him, may think, and quite sincerely think, that
men give too much incense and ceremonial to their adoration of the
other world. But nobody thinks that he can give too much incense and
ceremonial to the adoration of this world. All men, then, are
ritualists, but are either conscious or unconscious ritualists. The
conscious ritualists are generally satisfied with a few very simple and
elementary signs; the unconscious ritualists are not satisfied with
anything short of the whole of human life, being almost insanely
ritualistic. The first is called a ritualist because he invents and
remembers one rite; the other is called an anti-ritualist because he
obeys and forgets a thousand. And a somewhat similar distinction to
this which I have drawn with some unavoidable length, between the
conscious ritualist and the unconscious ritualist, exists between the
conscious idealist and the unconscious idealist. It is idle to inveigh
against cynics and materialists--there are no cynics, there are no
materialists. Every man is idealistic; only