The New Paganism
I
SOME years ago there appeared in England a single number of a magazine styled The New Pagan Review. It was edited by William Sharp, and it is commonly believed that he himself wrote all the articles which were contained in it. His other writings, particularly those which were published under the pseudonym of Fiona Macleod, had considerable vogue; and it may have been this fact which determined him to so bold a venture. The Review was a failure; and was at once dropped.
It is not difficult to account for this, quite apart from the fact that the contents of the magazine — although they were explosive enough — were of no great interest or merit, and did less than justice alike to the editor and to the subject which he chose in this provocative fashion to present to the world. For to give a name to a thing is often to damn it. A label is a distinguishing mark which not seldom has an extinguishing effect. It frequently happens that to pin a nickname on a man is as good as to hang him; in the narrow circle of his friends the name may pass as a term of endearment, but it provides the general public with a jest and a weapon. The Germans were rapidly conquering the world by a process of ‘peaceful penetration,’ but in a fatal hour they inscribed ‘Pan-Germanism’ upon a banner, hoisted it over a park of heavy artillery for all the world to see, and the world — saw it! William Sharp may have thought that it was the NeoPagan element in his books which made them so attractive to a large and faithful company of readers, and he may have been quite right in so thinking; but he did not perceive the risks he ran in abstracting them from their imaginative and literary setting, and exposing them in all the nakedness of their proper name. It is one thing to have ‘The Dominion of Dreams’ upon your table; and another to be seen handling The New Pagan Review; the former might reveal the delicacy of your taste in modern literature, the latter would throw some shadow of suspicion upon the correctness of your morals. The label killeth. The great majority among even intelligent people are not unlike the woman — an ardent teetotaler— who during a serious illness had a shrewd idea that she was being dosed with brandy — with excellent effect. ‘Give me the — medicine, nurse,’ she would say, ‘but for heaven’s sake don’t let me see the bottle.’ We can — and do — take a good deal from the Devil provided that his horns are concealed beneath a silk hat and his hoofs in patent leather.
Had Neo-Paganism been a movement of any volume, it would have been strong enough to carry its label, and could easily have run its own review, but it has never been such in our western civilization; least of all modernly in Anglo-Saxon, Protestant countries, which are for the most part under the hand of traditional religion and conventional morality, and in which the tyranny of material prosperity is very exacting. Under such conditions the perennial root-stock of Paganism is not likely to sprout with vigor. Not that, even here, it has been without its voices; but they have been sporadic. Emerson and Walt Whitman, for example, — too great, both of them, to be discredited by the label, — are among its major prophets; but they cried in the wilderness, and the feebler tones of their successors, if there be any, serve only to make the irresponsiveness of the world the more impressive. For the rest, it was chiefly to be found lurking as a gentle and innocuous cult in coteries chiefly of leisured folk with artistic leanings. We may speak, therefore, of the Neo-Pagan attitude toward life, or of the Neo-Pagan spirit, but scarcely of a Neo-Pagan movement.
When William Sharp, who, like other minor prophets, was more enterprising than the greater ones, placed his ear to the ground and believed that he could hear the sound of waters rising in such strong tide that on the crest of its advancing wave The New Pagan Review would be borne into popularity and wide fame, he must have been using a microphone. Perhaps it would be more fair to him to say that he was listening with a prophetic ear. Certainly, during the years immediately preceding the outbreak of the war there were signs that sympathy with the NeoPagan spirit was deepening and becoming more widespread. In literature and art, in journalism, in philosophy, and even in the Church, among social reformers, there were solitary individuals and small groups of men and women who were beginning to make themselves heard, and it almost seemed as if the world, weary of the old shibboleths, were pricking up its ears to listen. The most potent element in this hopeful ferment was probably the increasing influence of Nietzsche among those who were willing to read him and trusted not either in his interpreters or in his slanderers. It is not unlikely, however, — such are the tricks which the gods are pleased to play upon us, — that, since it is popularly (and therefore fallaciously) supposed that next to the Kaiser himself Nietzsche is responsible for the war, his very name will nip the growing bud like an untimely frost. Indeed, there are already those who endeavor to discredit Neo-Paganism by giving it the nickname of Nietzscheanism — a not inapt illustration of the point referred to above.
But the greatest difficulty which Neo-Paganism has to overcome (we may now return The New Pagan Review to the momentarily disturbed dust on the shelves of the British Museum) is the fact that the word ‘Pagan’ continues to stink in the nostrils of Christendom. This is an obstinate reminiscence of those far-past days when the early Church perceived Paganism as among its most powerful and subtle foes, fought it tooth and nail by every device it could lay its mind to, and celebrated the triumph achieved on Golgotha with the ringing cry ‘Great Pan is dead!’
It may be said, by the way, that Pan is not dead; nor, happily, is he ever likely to die. No deity has a juster claim to live than he; and, could he die, all other deities would perforce become silent and powerless, for the natural is the taproot of the spiritual. It is interesting also to remember in this connection that, in dividing so absolutely between Pan and Christ that the triumph of the one involved the annihilation of the other, the Church committed a mistake which all along has dogged its heels and now threatens to overtake it with judgment. In the Church’s logic Pan and Christ were contraries; but in Life there are no contraries. The Church treated the artificialities of its logic, which are valuable in their way, as if they were the realities of Life. Life is a unity; but the Church ran a schism through the universe, and authorized a deed of separation between Flesh and Spirit, Pan and Christ, the World and itself, thus putting asunder what God had joined together.
This schism has been perpetuated and is rife to this day. Christianity and Paganism are commonly regarded as two adversaries so utterly opposed to each other that they cannot by any manner of means settle down in the same universe together. Nor have there been any half-measures in the age-long dispute. The antagonism is bitter and àoutrance. To vilify one’s opponent is an ancient trick, and one so serviceable that it may be questioned whether mankind will ever let it drop.
A conquering race, bringing its own gods with it, was in the habit, not only of settingup their worship in the shrines of the conquered gods, but of turning these latter into devils. Thus was victory sealed and made secure. Doubtless to the early Christians Pan became as one of the devils, perhaps the very Devil. Paganism meant — Saturnalia. There was, of course, a good deal more in Paganism than that! There were Socrates and Aristotle; there were Pheidias, Homer, and Pindar; there were Æschylus and Euripides; there was even Archilochus! But to the sheep in the Christian fold, Paganism was the wolf. To the children in the Christian nursery, Paganism was the bogey-man.
We are not disputing the expediency of this, but showing cause why it comes about that nowadays the word ‘ Pagan,’in the minds of respectable citizens in a Christian land, usually connotes little more than orgy, libertinism, lawlessness, riot, and all manner of self-indulgent excess. The vision of an over-fed, wine-bibbing Epicurean is allowed to loom so large before the mind as to exclude even a glimpse of the frugal, highly-disciplined Stoic, who was no less a pagan; and neither the sweet-smelling sanity of Walt Whitman, nor the clean, frosty, bracing savor of Nietzsche’s doctrine of renunciation as expounded in his Will to Power, makes itself felt, because the nose is altogether occupied with the sensual vagaries of some Oscar Wilde.
II
Life is too short to argue with a prejudice, but to those who are still of open and expectant mind, — and it is through such alone that the forward movement of life is achieved, — it may be worth while to point out what the spirit of Paganism really is, and what is in the thoughts of those who look for and announce its revival, sooner or later, in the modern world.
It will be at once observed that we speak of the revival of the pagan spirit — not of a set of pagan tricks, nor of the ancient pagan cultus as a whole. In order to make this point clear, we propose now to discuss the idea of revival, and to show that, while it is absurd to speak of the restoration of an old cultus (for this is impossible in the nature of things), it is natural to expect a revival of the pagan spirit, and that nowhere would this rebirth appear more congruous than from within Christendom itself.
The word ‘revival’ conceals a snare. The prefix is apt to mislead. In ordinary speech the term is used of bringing an old thing back again, as for example the revival of a play, or of a fashion. But in the unbroken flux of Life there can be no such thing as ‘back again.’ The answer to our ‘encore,’ even if it be the same song, is always different, if only for the fact that we have already heard it once. Nothing recurs. The fallacy which lurks behind Nietzsche’s doctrine of Eternal Recurrence arises from the vain attempt to apply mathematical and logical principles to a spiritual, indeterminate movement such as life is. There can be no revival in the sense of the restoration of the same identical fact; events, epochs, take their place in the living texture of that seamless fabric which is ever issuing forth from the loom of Time; they are not like beads upon a string, so that they might repeat themselves here and there as the thread lengthens. Whatever it is which is to be revived, it must have suffered change by having been excluded for the time being; the second circumstance, also, must vary from the first; it will therefore be subject to a twofold modification. Life proceeds in a spiral, it does not move in a circle. History climbs. Like travelers zigzagging up a mountain pass, we may come back several times to the same view, but at higher points of vantage; a corresponding view, therefore, rather than the same view. Ourselves also have changed because of the experience in the interim, and hence a further modification, since what we see is largely determined by what we are. The relation between the primitive animism and the modern immanentist theory is an excellent illustration of a true historical revival.
In brief, revival is a phenomenon which appears within the general circumstance of progress. Progress is constant. The fact of periodic retrogression does not deny this, any more than the retreat of the broken wave is a denial of the rising of the tide; it only serves to warn us that, progress must be measured vertically, not horizontally. Some sweeps of the spiral may be long and flat, others shorter and steeper; so that the same degree of progress may, at one time, be registered in a single generation of extraordinary spiritual illumination and impulse, which, at another time of dimmer vision and less potent inspiration, may require an age. Life proceeds irregularly. Nature does make leaps. But the upward movement is continuous and universal. It involves even the gods. We insist that our gods themselves must grow. It was not only a different people, but a different god also, which emerged now from Egyptian bondage, now from Babylonian exile.
The revival of Paganism must be considered as subject to this general principle. It does not mean the return of Pan. We have no intention of repeating the foolishness of those who set up the images of Jupiter in the seats of Jehovah. Mere substitution never effects anything. The timidest reader need not be alarmed that anything so crude is likely to be attempted. In our wildest dreams we have never imagined Pan with his pipes and little hoofs capering up the solemn aisle of the church and taking his seat by the altar, while the congregation rises to do him honor; or the displacement of the prayer-meeting in favor of a bacchic revel. Pan will always have his shrines and his company of followers with their quaint antics, for no civilization is ever homogeneous, and any god may get at least some worshipers at any time; but in a world permeated by the Christian impulse and considerably transformed by the Christian discipline, there can be no question of the return of this halfman and half-goat to recognized authority. Old Pan will not do, any more than old Jehovah will do.
The Pan of the New Paganism will have suffered change by reason of the exile into which the Church drove him. His proportions will have been altered. Such a suggestion as this would, anciently, have been reckoned a gross impiety. In the classic representations of Pan there are no prognostications of change, no hint of tension between the dramatically consorted parts. On the contrary, he is apparently satisfied (which means that his worshipers were satisfied) with the proportion of man and goat in him. Indeed, the absence of anything like aspiration in the upper portions of the figure conveys the impression that, on the whole, the lower half is the predominant partner. He is not so much a partly humanized goat, as he is a goat represented anthropomorphically.
This is one of the cases — perhaps rare— in which the modern view of life is profounder and truer than the ancient. That spiritual and artistic genius, Auguste Rodin, has handled this antique symbolism, and has taken as the subject of one of his masterpieces, La Centauresse — a figure half-human and half-brute. But in this astonishingly vigorous presentation of the dualism in human nature, between the forepart and the hinder part there is immense strain. The pose of the human portion of the figure — face, head, torso, and every subordinate feature and muscle — suggests striving and forwardness. Contemplating it, the impression grows more and more vivid that the human part is not so much issuing out of the animal part as a snake sloughs its skin; nor is the former dragging the latter along with it as an Old Man of the Sea; but rather that the emerging Soul is, by the very energy of its aspiration, transmuting those lower elements which are united with it in the whole nature of Man.
La Centauresse does not, and is not intended to, represent a deity. There could be no such thing as worship of a being at such strain within itself. It is essential that a deity should exhibit harmony, poise, and repose. He must symbolize a unity of some sort. Blake’s Jehovah, for example, is effective as a representation of deity because, although the head is that of an old man and the tree-like limbs are those of youth, the whole figure suggests a complete harmony between wisdom and strength, between the power to conceive and the will to execute. The images of Buddha convey the impression of a unity attained through self-conquest, and a transcendence of the Soul over Sense. Pan himself, undistinguished figure though he be, has the unity of animal innocence. Buddha strikes us as being all soul, with the flesh finally shut out; Pan, on the other hand, as being all flesh, with the soul totally absent. This denial of an integral part of human nature — flesh or soul as the case may be — makes each of these deities, which are the extreme opposites of each other, unsatisfactory. The unity they represent is artificial, for it is not possible to reach a real unity by the method of abstraction.
If we could imagine Rodin’s Centauresse as having fought out its inner warfare, harmonized its discord, recomposed itself into a unity wherein the soul and the flesh alike should find proper place and function, dwelling together in mutuality and at peace, we should have for the first time in history a conception of deity — that is to say, of the goal of human aspiration — which would be adequate to the facts of life and to the witness of religious experience. So far all deities have been one-sided; therefore exaggerated; therefore unreal. Because of this, their shrines, one after another, have been forsaken, first by Life itself, and then by living worshipers. The perfect god is still to come.
The Church has said, ‘ Pan or Christ’, and in so saying has rendered impossible the fullness of religious experience to all who accept the antithesis. The ultimate achievements of Life can never be formulated as a disjunction. The irresistible tendency of Life is toward synthesis. ‘Either-Or’ may occur in the mid-course of some vital process, but no living movement ever rested in an ‘Either-Or.’ Why ‘Pan or Christ’? Why not ‘Pan and Christ’? Not as a compromise for the sake of peace, nor as two coördinate principles sharing the throne together, but as a true synthesis in which all that is divine in human life and all that is human in divine life shall find due place.
The hands cannot be put back upon the dial of Time. The gates on Life’s highway open only in the forward direction. There cannot be a restoration of an old cultus, but there may well be a reëntry of an old spirit after a period of suppression. It is, indeed, natural to expect that there should be. To look for the revival of the pagan spirit after nearly two thousand years of Christian discipline is as legitimate, and withal as exhilarating, as to look for a renewal of one’s youth in middle life. An analogy crops up here, and it is worth examining more closely.
To renew one’s youth! Is that only a fantastic dream, a delusive mirage, or is it a promise? Sub-human nature offers a hint of this human experience. The new-born butterfly which, having dried its wings in the genial sunlight, has just flitted away across the garden, exhibits every mark and sign of youth. Last spring, this same creature was born a caterpillar. Between these two states of youth successive the one to the other there is no break in the continuity of individual existence. From the laying of the egg to the spinning of the cocoon, the insect passes through all the natural stages of infancy, youth, maturity. But lo, a second youth!
It would scarcely be possible to set before one’s self a brighter, more alluring hope than that of renewing one’s youth in middle life. For it is superfluous to praise Youth, and its ‘self-confident morning.’ How beautiful are its properties — exuberant energy, measureless trust, unbaffled resiliency, insatiate curiosity, fearless venture, and a passion which idealizes both its loves and its hates! How good are its quests — to live, to enjoy life, to plunge in the cup and drink deep of the waters of experience, to express one’s self, to give one’s self away! The Inner Wisdom would stand openly convicted of unwisdom if these gifts were bestowed only to be lost before we could fully advantage by them, and not rather to be more firmly possessed. Is Youth intended to be nothing but a bright, tantalizing memory? We do not ignore its threats and perils. Exuberance easily degenerates into rankness and riot. The lack, as yet, of an established personal centre means many a door left open for dissipation. Instability may harden into a habit of fickleness. Independence tends to pass into a looseness which is the reverse of liberty. Until the inward throne is secure, Youth’s fine scorn of external authority is fraught with great danger. Strength which is not focussed and duly controlled may often be overrated, and, like bluster and bravado, injures far more than it effects.
III
Nevertheless, when all has been said, and the last warning uttered, the spirit of Youth remains the only true and healthful spirit of life. The objects which the passionate heart of Youth pursues remain always the vital ones. The direction given to Youth by the creative impulse which brings it into being, before Society coerces it and the Church warps it, remains the right direction unto the end of life. Nor can there be a higher reach of faith than that of which the unwritten creed of Youth is the expression — I believe in joy, in lifewardness, in self-expression. I believe in the world and in the flesh. I believe in the natural man, the health of his instincts, the purity of his functions, and in his divine potentialities. I believe in the soundness of the human heart, the goodness of life, the beauty of all experience.
The worst of it is that, when we are young as years go, we never possess our Youth.
It is a fact of common experience that this first paradise is lost. Upon the wildness, passionate adventure, vigorous self-expression of Youth there follows a period of restraint amply provided for by the State with its education and its policemen, Society with its codes and conventions, the Church with its ‘Thou shalt’ and ‘Thou shalt not.’ Circumstances, too, press more closely and more heavily upon the youth as he comes to practical grips with them, and there is a consequent hardening at the surface, a thickening of the epidermis of personality. So the vision fades; the fires burn low; the spirit descends more deeply into matter.
This supervening discipline has its value, and is by no means negative only — as the youth himself is apt to think. It plays an essential part in the development of life. Only failure awaits such as miss it, or refuse it. It is like the pruning of the tree which fosters root-growth; or the narrowing of the channel which deepens the bed of the river. It is the resistance under which the centre crystallizes and is established — for the secret of effective selfexpression is self-possession. Tradition, usage, convention, prohibition, creed, rules, and all the other props and externally provided authorities, are the paraphernalia of the nursery and the schoolroom through which all the children of the higher life must pass. They have their time. But they have their term, also.
Discipline is a means, not an end. A means whereto?
There is no virtue in restraint in itself. If one should say, ‘See what a disciplined, orderly, regular person I am!’ the Wise Man will not be greatly impressed; for such a one may be as dull as the proverbial ditch-water, void of illumination, incapable of passion. He does not swear, or lie, or stand in danger of the constable; but it requires still to be asked concerning the style and quality of the life redeemed by discipline from the follies of Youth — is it bold, gay, rich in enterprise?
Another says proudly, ‘I am master of myself!’ To him the Wise Man answers, ‘Thou doest well. But what of this Self over which thou boastest mastery— is it whole or emasculate? What sort of a creature is this which thou hast harnessed and boldest the reins on — can it soar to the sun, or are its wings clipped? Hast thou broken its spirit and drawn its teeth? Is it a docile ass, a safe hack, or a rampant steed?’
We now approach to where the secret lurks. The purpose of discipline is not to quench but to centralize the spirit of youth with a view to its reëntry and revival. The value of restraint is that, when its lesson has been learned, the quests of Youth may be sought and won with greater boldness, steadier resolve, and a more single will. Control derives all its importance from the straightness and constancy it imparts to life. There is no real advantage in virtue if it chills and diminishes passion. Mistakes matter little. Correctness is a mean thing. Excess, which is the vice of the weak, is the virtue of the strong, and (as Blake said) for him the highway of wisdom. The great sin is, not to live with enthusiasm and power when one is ready and the opportunity is at hand. The great untruth is to be unreal. The great treachery is to refuse expression to a Self which is, at last, concentrated and free. Personal discipline is a means to the renewal of youth.
The renascence of Youth! Oh, the dreary length of the days in which we go to school with the Law — the old dame with her cupboard full of pains and penalties! Oh, the bitterness of the continual repression of desire, the galling of the bands, the chafing of the fetters! Oh, the heavy stupidity of authority — how it makes us fume and fret! Oh, the monotony of the path with its trim hedges, and the everlasting warning to trespassers wherever to our furtive eye there comes a glimpse of a wider wilder world which promises the chance of risk and adventure! But, patience, my heart, patience a little while. Something meanwhile is growing deep and strong within thee. This is thy true freedom, and at such a cost has it to be purchased. One day, when at last thou art able to bear thy freedom, thou shalt awake to a world in which thou mayest roam in every wood, loiter in every glade, drink of every stream, follow what path thy desire prompts thee to, and, without hurt or peril, all things shall be thine richly to enjoy!
Here, then, on the plane of personal life there is a sequence of natural development— immature youth, discipline, second youth. Is it too bold to prophesy that, on the plane of moral and religious history, there should be a parallel development — Old Paganism, Christianity, New Paganism? Is it not, on the contrary, a natural expectation? The Church supervened upon the Old Paganism as a discipline. That is the significance of the Church in respect of the practice of life — it represents a discipline, an obedience. As every one who comes under its influence knows, it works first as a repression, a restriction. The vast majority of its members never seem to get clear of this tutelage. They run their life with the brakes on, or else with the foot nervously hovering about the brake-pedal. They talk much about the liberty of the spirit, but they do not manifest it.
Now, discipline is good, but its worth is vindicated only in the issue of a freer life. What is the purpose of the Church’s discipline as perceived by itself? It is, chiefly, that we may gain the freedom of the next world. But why the next world? Why not this world? Why beggar ourselves in respect of the beauty, the delight, the triumph, the glory of living in this world, for the sake of a world to come — which, possibly, may not come? Why not reap the fruits of discipline here in the free usage and the complete enjoyment of this world? The Christian may say, ‘I find the fruit of my discipline in the fact that I no longer need this world’; to which the reply is, ‘Because you no longer need it, you are precisely the one who should enjoy it.’ If he says, ‘But it no longer interests me,’ the only answer is a silent regret that any religious practice should be able to take from him all interest in anything so wide, so rich, so full of adventure, so lofty in challenge, as this world proves itself to be to one who confronts it with selfpossession and mastery. The freedom of this world is a rich heritage to enter into, and it awaits the claim of those who, having learned the lessons of restraint and obedience, are able and worthy to receive it. For our part, we believe that the real function of Christianity has been, and is, that of a disciplinary interim; its law, also, is a schoolmaster; and, because of this, it is from within Christendom that we look for the revival of that youthful spirit which long ago, and according to its knowledge and experience at the time, said ‘yes’ to this world and to life in it.
For such do we conceive the essential spirit of Paganism to be. It is the spirit of yea-saying and of joy in life, in contrast with that nay-saying which is so conspicuous in Christian practice, and that promise of joy in after-life which is central to the Christian gospel.
The primitive pagan is the child in the human family. He approximates to the emotional and spiritual condition of the child. Like the child, he occupies most of his time in eating and sleeping and play; unlike the child, he has to hunt for his food and sometimes to fight for his life, but he relishes both the battle and the chase. Occasionally he suffers hardship, and is no stranger to anger, disappointment, or fear; but sunshine soon blots out the memory of the storm, and his wounds are quickly healed. It may be that his disposition is indolent; certain it is that his world makes but little demand upon his will-power, for Nature is generous and his society is communistic in structure. He may exercise himself to gain skill in a game or with a weapon; he may discipline himself to courage and endurance; but, whatever his discipline may be, it is frankly to the end that he may enter more fully into his world and its life, possess it, enjoy it.
The primitive has often been represented as if he were constantly beset with dreads, and went hourly in fear of his life from sinister and hostile influences lurking around him on all sides. It has been said that out of this fear he created his gods — the first gods that ever were. Modern researches continually increase the number of reasons for doubting this; and it is fairly safe to say that on the whole he finds his world a good, broad world to live in; and he accepts it for better or worse. When better, he has much pleasure; when worse, he sets himself to make the best of it. The thought of another world has not cast its shadow upon him. He affirms his world and its life.
This principle remains fundamental even when Paganism blossoms out into Greek civilization. It lies behind the practical philosophy alike of the Epicurean and of the Stoic. The vulgar formula, ‘Eat, drink, and be merry,’ is rather a caricature than a characterization of Epicureanism; it is false in over-emphasis, but it is true so far as it accents the Epicurean’s acceptance and affirmation of his world.
The Stoic would live ‘according to Nature,’ and he defined Nature in a strangely modern way as a growth, a living movement, an upward tendency toward perfection. In Nature he heard more than the Pipes of Pan; he heard the music of rising waters. For him Nature was good because it constantly performed its function of bringing all things on toward perfection and the fullness of life. Nature was a fountain of Life, pouring forth its waters into all things according to the capacity of each, seeking to fill each to the brim, sometimes finding a free course, sometimes meeting with resistance, but faithful in the ascending effort. Things were good according as they performed well their functions, whatever these might be. Like Nietzsche, the Stoic was determined to see the necessary in all things as beautiful and good. Perfection was interpreted in terms of efficiency; and Nature’s purpose was achieved in any creature when, after its own kind, it was efficient in life. He himself was good on precisely similar terms, — efficiency in functioning, — and it was his function as a self-conscious personality to coöperate with the universal natural striving toward perfection. His heaven was within him, and he had reached it when he was in harmony with himself and the soul of the world. He accepted and affirmed his world. If it was kind to him, he had pleasure; that was good. If it was hard with him, he had battle; and that was good, too. He cultivated self-mastery in order that he might enter into possession of his world and enjoy it.
The revival of Paganism means, therefore, the reëntry of this spirit of affirmation in a world which is all the more able to rise to it because it has suffered for two thousand years the restrictive influence of Christian ideas and practices. The Church has affirmed the Soul as against the World; of this we shall not complain if now we are able to affirm the World for the Soul. In a familiar passage, Amiel says that the Church ‘decomposed the human unity.’ Perhaps it was necessary that this should be done; but its complete justification would appear if now the unity may be recomposed at a higher point — that is to say, all things are good, for use and for enjoyment, because the Soul has become master in its own house.
‘It may be that only in Heaven I shall hear that Grand Amen,’ but why only in Heaven? Why make a deferred expectation of that which is to hand? The revival of Paganism means that this Grand Amen to life should begin to sound here and now; not drowning, but enlarging the music of those pipes which still call to all that is free and young in the human heart.