ESTABLISHED CHURCH OF DOUBT

Let us now finally consider what the honest Eugenists do mean, since
it has become increasingly evident that they cannot mean what they
say. Unfortunately, the obstacles to any explanation of this are such
as to insist on a circuitous approach. The tendency of all that is
printed and much that is spoken to-day is to be, in the only true
sense, behind the times. It is because it is always in a hurry that it
is always too late. Give an ordinary man a day to write an article,
and he will remember the things he has really heard latest; and may
even, in the last glory of the sunset, begin to think of what he
thinks himself. Give him an hour to write it, and he will think of the
nearest text-book on the topic, and make the best mosaic he may out of
classical quotations and old authorities. Give him ten minutes to
write it and he will run screaming for refuge to the old nursery where
he learnt his stalest proverbs, or the old school where he learnt his
stalest politics. The quicker goes the journalist the slower go his
thoughts. The result is the newspaper of our time, which every day can
be delivered earlier and earlier, and which, every day, is less worth
delivering at all. The poor panting critic falls farther and farther
behind the motor-car of modern fact. Fifty years ago he was barely
fifteen years behind the times. Fifteen years ago he was not more than
fifty years behind the times. Just now he is rather more than a
hundred years behind the times: and the proof of it is that the things
he says, though manifest nonsense about our society to-day, really
were true about our society some hundred and thirty years ago. The
best instance of his belated state is his perpetual assertion that the
supernatural is less and less believed. It is a perfectly true and
realistic account--of the eighteenth century. It is the worst possible
account of this age of psychics and spirit-healers and fakirs and
fashionable fortune-tellers. In fact, I generally reply in eighteenth
century language to this eighteenth century illusion. If somebody says
to me, "The creeds are crumbling," I reply, "And the King of Prussia,
who is himself a Freethinker, is certainly capturing Silesia from the
Catholic Empress." If somebody says, "Miracles must be reconsidered in
the light of rational experience," I answer affably, "But I hope that
our enlightened leader, Hebert, will not insist on guillotining that
poor French queen."