- •Pilgrim's regress
- •Preface to third edition
- •Did the instructors really mean it?
- •He hears of Death and what his elders pretend to believe about it
- •Everyone except John cheers up on the way home
- •Greed to recover Desire hides the real offer of its return
- •Ichabod11
- •Sin and the Law torment him, each aggravating the other
- •In hand she boldly took
- •Which can explain away religion by any number of methods
- •"Evolution" and "Comparative Religion"
- •And all the guess-work which masquerades as "Science"
- •He abandons his religion with profound relief
- •The Moral Imperative does not fully understand itself
- •John decides that Aesthetic Experience is the thing to pursue
- •For a moment it seems to have kept its promise
- •And would finally turn into Lust, but that in the nick of time
- •Ichabod22
- •The "modern" literary movement offers to "debunk" it
- •The poetry of the Machine Age is so very pure
- •The poetry of Silly Twenties
- •The "Courage" and mutual loyalty of Artists
- •It was a low-brow blunder to mention the most obvious thing about it
- •If Religion is a Wish-Fulfilment dream, whose wishes does it fulfil?
- •Its pretentiousness and cold frivolity
- •Its hatred of all systematic reasoning
- •Its ignorant and dilettante scepticism
- •Its unacknowledged dependences
- •These "sensible" men are parasitic
- •Their culture is precarious
- •Take away its power of commanding labour
- •And the whole thing collapses
- •In the presence of these thought traditional morality falters
- •Vertue is Sick
- •It is friends with the World and goes on no pilgrimage;
- •It is fond of wildflowers
- •Idealist Philosophy rejects the literal truth of religion
- •It is dangerous to welcome Sweet Desire, but fatal to reject it
- •Ignorantia
- •Its supreme mode of temptation is to make all else insipid
- •19 Leah for rachel refers to Genesis 29, where Jacob was tricked by his uncle Laban into taking Leah for his wife, rather than her sister Rachel, whom Jacob had really wanted.
- •24 Non est hic "He is not here." Vulgate for Luke 24:5-6
- •43 Archtype and Ectype words used by Locke: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, II, XXX-XXXI, to mean "original" and "copy".
- •44 Esse is Percipi - "to be is to be perceived", Berkeley: Principles of Human Knowledge.
- •115 Exoteric and esoteric what is for public consumption, and what is for private consumption; for everybody, and for the inner few.
- •123 Monism the doctrine that matter and mind are one and inseparable--the philosophical corollary of pantheism, which sees God and uncreated Nature as indistinguishable
- •159 Limbo in traditional Christian belief the place where babies who die before baptism go and live forever in a state of natural happiness.
Its hatred of all systematic reasoning
"There might be different people on the other side of the canyon," suggested John in the momentary pause that followed.
"That is even less likely," said Mr. Sensible. "Human nature is always the same. The dress and the manners may vary, but I detect the unchanging heart69 beneath the shifting disguises. If there are men beyond the canyon, rest assured that we know them already. They are born and they die: and in the interval between they are the same lovable rascals that we know at home."
"Still," said John, "you can't really be certain that there is no such place as my Island. Reason left it an open question."
"Reason!" exclaimed Mr. Sensible. "Do you mean the mad woman who goes riding about the country dressed up in armour? I trust that when I spoke of the reasonable life you did not think that I meant anything under her auspices? There is a strange confusion in our language here, for the reasonableness which I commend has no more dangerous enemy than Reason. Perhaps I should drop the use of the name altogether, and say that my deity is not reasons but le von sens70."
"What is the difference?" said Vertue.
"Sense is easy, Reason is hard. Sense knows where to stop with gracious inconsistency, while Reason slavishly follows and abstract logic whither she knows not. The one seeks comfort and finds it, the other seeks truth and is still seeking. Le bon sens is the father of a flourishing family: Reason is barren and a virgin. If I had my way I should clap this Reason of your in the bridewell71 to pursue her meditations in the straw. The baggage has a pretty face, I allow: but she leads us from our true aim--joy, pleasure, ease, content, whate'er the name! She is a fanatic who has never learned form my master to pursue the golden mean, and, being mortal, to think mortal thoughts. Auream quisquis72--"
"It is very odd that you should say that," interrupted Vertue, "for I also was brought up on Aristotle. But I think my text must have differed from yours. In mine, the doctrine of the Mean does not bear the sense you have given it at all. He specially says that there is no excess of goodness. You cannot go too far in the right direction. The line that we should follow may start from a middle point in the base of a triangle: but the further off the apex is, the better. In that dimension--"
Its ignorant and dilettante scepticism
"Do manus73!" broke out Mr. Sensible. "Spare us the rest, young man. We are not at a lecture, and I readily admit that your scholarship is more recent than mine. Philosophy should be our mistress, no our master: and the pursuit of a pedantic accuracy amidst the freedom of our social pleasures is as unwelcome as--"
"And the bit about thinking mortal thoughts," continued Vertue, whose social experience, as I dreamed, was not extensive, "the bit about mortal thoughts was quoted by Aristotle to say that he disagreed with it. He held that the end of mortal life was to put on immortality as much as might be. And he also said the most useless of studies was the noblest."
"I see you are letter-perfect, young man," said Mr. Sensible, with a rather chilly smile, "and I am sure these pieces of information, if repeated to your teachers, would win the applause they deserve. Here, if you will forgive me, they are a little out of place. A gentleman's knowledge of the ancient authors is not that of a pedant: and I think you have misunderstood the place which philosophy ought to hold in the reasonable life. We do not memorize systems. What system can stand? What system does not leave us with the old refrain--que sais--je74? It is in her power to remind us of the strangeness of things--in the brown charm75 of her secluded meditations--above all, in her decorative function--that philosophy becomes instrumental to the good life. We go to the Porch and the Academy76 to be spectators, not partisans. Drudge!!"
"Dinner is served, sir," said Drudge, appearing at the door.
Then I dreamed that they went into the dining-room and so to table.
CHAPTER FIVE
Table Talk
The cowslip wine came with the oysters. it was a little rough, as the old gentleman had prophesied, and the glasses were so very small that Vertue drained his at once. John was afraid that there might be no more to come and therefore dallied over his, partly because he feared that he might put his host out of countenance and partly because he