|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 46
Is there any answer to the proposition that those who have
had the best opportunities will probably be our best guides?
Is there any answer to the argument that those who have breathed
clean air had better decide for those who have breathed foul?
As far as I know, there is only one answer, and that answer
is Christianity. Only the Christian Church can offer any rational
objection to a complete confidence in the rich. For she has maintained
from the beginning that the danger was not in man's environment,
but in man. Further, she has maintained that if we come to talk of a
dangerous environment, the most dangerous environment of all is the
commodious environment. I know that the most modern manufacture has
been really occupied in trying to produce an abnormally large needle.
I know that the most recent biologists have been chiefly anxious
to discover a very small camel. But if we diminish the camel
to his smallest, or open the eye of the needle to its largest--if,
in short, we assume the words of Christ to have meant the very least
that they could mean, His words must at the very least mean this--
that rich men are not very likely to be morally trustworthy.
Christianity even when watered down is hot enough to boil all modern
society to rags. The mere minimum of the Church would be a deadly
ultimatum to the world. For the whole modern world is absolutely
based on the assumption, not that the rich are necessary (which is
tenable), but that the rich are trustworthy, which (for a Christian)
is not tenable. You will hear everlastingly, in all discussions
about newspapers, companies, aristocracies, or party politics,
this argument that the rich man cannot be bribed. The fact is,
of course, that the rich man is bribed; he has been bribed already.
That is why he is a rich man. The whole case for Christianity is that
a man who is dependent upon the luxuries of this life is a corrupt man,
spiritually corrupt, politically corrupt, financially corrupt.
There is one thing that Christ and all the Christian saints
have said with a sort of savage monotony. They have said simply
that to be rich is to be in peculiar danger of moral wreck.
It is not demonstrably un-Christian to kill the rich as violators
of definable justice. It is not demonstrably un-Christian to crown
the rich as convenient rulers of society. It is not certainly
un-Christian to rebel against the rich or to submit to the rich.
But it is quite certainly un-Christian to trust the rich, to regard
the rich as more morally safe than the poor. A Christian may
consistently say, "I respect that man's rank, although he takes bribes."
But a Christian cannot say, as all modern men are saying at lunch
and breakfast, "a man of that rank would not take bribes."
For it is a part of Christian dogma that any man in any rank may
take bribes. It is a part of Christian dogma; it also happens by
a curious coincidence that it is a part of obvious human history.
When people say that a man "in that position" would be incorruptible,
there is no need to bring Christianity into the discussion. Was Lord
Bacon a bootblack? Was the Duke of Marlborough a crossing sweeper?
In the best Utopia, I must be prepared for the moral fall of any man
in any position at any moment; especially for my fall from my position
at this moment.
Much vague and sentimental journalism has been poured out
to the effect that Christianity is akin to democracy, and most
of it is scarcely strong or clear enough to refute the fact that
the two things have often quarrelled. The real ground upon which
Christianity and democracy are one is very much deeper. The one
specially and peculiarly un-Christian idea is the idea of Carlyle--
the idea that the man should rule who feels that he can rule.
Whatever else is Christian, this is heathen. If our faith comments
on government at all, its comment must be this--that the man should
rule who does NOT think that he can rule. Carlyle's hero may say,
"I will be king"; but the Christian saint must say "Nolo episcopari."
If the great paradox of Christianity means anything, it means this--
that we must take the crown in our hands, and go hunting in dry
places and dark corners of the earth until we find the one man
who feels himself unfit to wear it. Carlyle was quite wrong;
we have not got to crown the exceptional man who knows he can rule.
Rather we must crown the much more exceptional man who knows he
can't.
Now, this is one of the two or three vital defences of
working democracy. The mere machinery of voting is not democracy,
though at present it is not easy to effect any simpler democratic method.
But even the machinery of voting is profoundly Christian in this
practical sense--that it is an attempt to get at the opinion of those
who would be too modest to offer it. It is a mystical adventure;
it is specially trusting those who do not trust themselves.
That enigma is strictly peculiar to Christendom. There is nothing
really humble about the abnegation of the Buddhist; the mild Hindoo
is mild, but he is not meek. But there is something psychologically
Christian about the idea of seeking for the opinion of the obscure
rather than taking the obvious course of accepting the opinion
of the prominent. To say that voting is particularly Christian may
seem somewhat curious. To say that canvassing is Christian may seem
quite crazy. But canvassing is very Christian in its primary idea.
It is encouraging the humble; it is saying to the modest man,
"Friend, go up higher." Or if there is some slight defect
in canvassing, that is in its perfect and rounded piety, it is only
because it may possibly neglect to encourage the modesty of the canvasser.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|