The Dawn of All

by Robert Hugh Benson

  (I)

  "I shall be delighted, Monsignor," said the thin, clever-facedstatesman, in his high, dry voice; "I shall be delighted tosketch out what seem to me the principal points in thecentury's development."

  A profound silence fell upon all the table.

  Really, Monsignor Masterman thought to himself, as he settleddown to listen, he had done very well so far. He had noticed theold priest opposite smiling more than once, contentedly, astheir eyes met.

  Father Jervis had come to him as he had promised, for half anhour's good talk before lunch; and they had spent a very earnestthirty minutes together. First they had discussed with great careall the persons who would be present at lunch--not more thaneight, besides themselves; the priest had given him a little planof the table, showing where each would sit, and had describedtheir personal appearance and recounted a salient fact or twoabout every one. These were all priests except Mr. Mannershimself and his secretary. The rest of the time had been occupiedin information being given to the man who had lost his memory,with regard to a few very ordinary subjects of conversation--theextraordinary fairness of the weather; a new opera produced withunparalleled success by a "well-known" composer of whom Monsignorhad never heard; a recent Eucharistic congress in Tokio, fromwhich the Cardinal had just returned; and the scheme forredecorating the interior of Archbishop's House.

  There had not been time for more; but these subjects, under theadroit handling of Father Jervis, had proved sufficient; and upto the preconcerted moment when Monsignor had uttered thesentence about his study of Mr. Manners' _History of TwentiethCentury Development_ which had drawn from the author the wordsrecorded above, all had gone perfectly smoothly.

  There had been a few minor hitches; for example, the food and themanner of serving it and the proper method of consuming it hadfurnished a bad moment or two; and once Monsignor had beenobliged to feign sudden deafness on being asked a question on asubject of which he knew nothing by a priest whose name he hadforgotten, until Father Jervis slid in adroitly and saved him.Yet these were quite unnoticed, it appeared, and could easily beattributed to the habit of absent-mindedness for which, MonsignorMasterman was relieved to learn, he was almost notorious.

  And now the crisis was past and Mr. Manners was launched.Monsignor glanced almost happily round the tall dining-room, fromwhich the servants had already disappeared, and, with his glassin his hand, settled himself down to listen and remember.

  * * * * *

  "The crisis, to my mind, in the religious situation," began thestatesman, looking more professional than ever, with his closedeyes, thin, wrinkled face, and high forehead--"the real crisis isto be sought in the period from 1900 to 1920.

  "This was the period, you remember, of tremendous socialagitation. There was the widespread revolution of the Latincountries, beginning with France and Portugal, chiefly againstAuthority, and most of all against Monarchy (since Monarchy isthe most vivid and the most concrete embodiment of authority);and in Teutonic and Anglo-Saxon countries against Capital andAristocracy. It was in these years that Socialism came most nearto dominating the civilized world; and, indeed, you will rememberthat for long after that date it did dominate civilization incertain places.

  "Now the real trouble at the bottom of all this was the state inwhich Religion found itself. And you will find, gentlemen," saidthe quasi-lecturer in parenthesis, glancing round the attentivefaces, "that Religion always is and always has been at the rootof every world-movement. In fact it must be so. The deepestinstinct in man is his religion, that is, his attitude to eternalissues; and on that attitude must depend his relation to temporalthings. This is so, largely, even in the case of the individual;it must therefore be infinitely more so in large bodies ornations; since every crowd is moved by principles that are theleast common multiple of the principles of the units whichcompose it. Of course this is universally recognized now; but itwas not always so. There was a time, particularly at this periodof which I am now speaking, when men attempted to treat Religionas if it were one department of life, instead of being the wholefoundation of every and all life. To treat it so is, of course,to proclaim oneself as fundamentally irreligious--and, indeed,very ignorant and uneducated.

  "To resume, however:

  "Religion at this period was at a very strange crisis. That itcould possibly be treated in the way I have mentioned shows howvery deeply irreligion had spread. There is no such thing, ofcourse, really as Irreligion--except by a purely conventionaluse of the word: the 'irreligious' man is one who has made uphis mind either that there is no future world, or that it is soremote, as regards effectivity, as to have no bearing uponthis. And that is a religion--at least it is a dogmaticcreed--as much as any other.

  "The causes of this state of affairs I take to have been as follows:

  "Religion up to the Reformation had been a matter of authority,as it is again now; but the enormous development of varioussciences and the wide spread of popular 'knowledge' had, in thefirst flush, distracted attention from that which is now, in allcivilized countries, simply an axiom of thought, viz., that aRevelation of God must be embodied in a living authoritysafeguarded by God. Further, at that time science and exactknowledge generally had not reached the point which they reacheda little later--of corroborating in particular after particular,so far as they are capable of doing so, the Revelation of Godknown as Catholicism; and of knowing their limitations where theycannot. Many sciences, at this time, had gone no further than toestablish certain facts which appeared, to the very imperfectlyeducated persons of that period, to challenge and even to refutecertain facts or deductions of Revelation. Psychology, forexample, strange as it now appears in our own day, actuallyseemed to afford other explanations of the Universe than that ofRevelation. (We will discuss details presently.) Social Science,at that time, too, moved in the direction of Democracy and evenSocialism. I know it appears monstrous, and indeed almostincredible, that men who really had some claim to be callededucated seriously maintained that the most stable and the mostreasonable method of government lay in the extension of thefranchise--that is, in reversing the whole eternal and logicalorder of things, and permitting the inexpert to rule the expert,and the uneducated and the ill-informed to control by theirvotes--that is, by sheer weight of numbers--the educated and thewell-informed. Yet such was the case. And the result was--sinceall these matters act and react--that the idea of authority fromabove in matters of religion was thought to be as 'undemocratic'as in matters of government and social life. Men had learnt, thatis to say, something of the very real truth in the theory of theLeast Common Multiple, and, as in psychology and many othersciences, had presumed that the little fragment of truth thatthey had perceived was the whole truth."

  Mr. Manners paused to draw breath. Obviously he was enjoyinghimself enormously. He was a born lecturer, and somehow the ratherpompous sentences were strangely alive and strangely interesting.Above all, they fascinated and amazed the prelate at the head ofthe table, for they revealed to him an advance of thought, and anassurance in the position they described, that seemed whollyinexplicable. Such phrases as "all educated men," "thewell-informed," and the rest--these were vaguely familiar to him,yet surely in a very different connection. He had at the back ofhis mind a kind of idea that these were the phrases that theirreligious or the agnostics applied to themselves; yet here was aman, obviously a student, and a statesman as he knew, calmlyassuming (scarcely even giving himself the trouble to state) thatall educated and well-informed persons were Catholic Christians!

  He settled himself down to listen with renewed interest as Mr.Manners began once more.

  "Well," he said, "to come more directly to our point; let us nextconsider what were those steps and processes by which Catholictruth once more became the religion of the civilized world, as ithad been five centuries earlier.

  "And first we must remark that, even at the very beginning ofthis century, popular thought--in England as elsewhere--hadretraced its steps so far as to acknowledge that if
Christianitywere true--true, really and actually--the Catholic Church was theonly possible embodiment of it. Not only did the shrewdestagnostic minds of the time acknowledge this--such men as Huxleyin the previous century, Sir Leslie Stephen, Mallock, and scoresof others--but even popular Christianity itself began to turn inthat direction. Of course there were survivals and reactions, aswe should expect. There was a small body of Christians in Englandcalled Anglicans, who attempted to hold another view; there wasthat short-lived movement called Modernism, that held yet a thirdposition. But, for the rest, it was as I say.

  "It was the Catholic Church or nothing. And just for a few yearsit seemed humanly possible that it might be nothing.

  "And now for the causes of the revival.

  "Briefly, I should say they were all included under one head--thecorrelation of sciences and their coincidence into one point. Letus take them one by one. We have only time to glance verysuperficially at each.

  "First there was Psychology.

  "Even at the end of the nineteenth century it was beginning to beperceived that there was an inexplicable force working behindmere matter. This force was given a number of names--the'subliminal consciousness,' in man, and 'Nature' in the animal,vegetable, and even mineral creation; and it gave birth to aseries of absurd superstitions such as that now wholly extinctsect of the 'Christian Scientists,' or the Mental Healers; andamong the less educated of the Materialists, to Pantheism. Butthe force was acknowledged, and it was perceived to move alongdefinite lines of law. Further, in the great outburst ofSpiritualism it began gradually to be evident to the world thatthis force occasionally manifested itself in a personal, thoughalways a malevolent manner. Now it must be remembered that eventhis marked an immense advance in the circles called scientific;since in the middle of the nineteenth century, even the phenomenaso carefully recorded by the Church were denied. These were nowno longer denied, since phenomena, at least closely resemblingthem, were matters of common occurrence under the eyes of themost sceptical. Of course, since the enquiries were made alongpurely 'scientific' lines--lines which in those days were nothingother than materialistic--an attempt was made to account for thephenomena by new anti-spiritual theories hastily put together tomeet the emergency. But, little by little, an uneasy sense beganto manifest itself that the Church had already been familiar withthe phenomena for about two thousand years, and that a body,which had marked and recorded facts with greater accuracy thanall the 'scientists' put together, at least had some claim toconsideration with regard to her hypothesis concerning them.Further, it began to be seen (what is perfectly familiar to usall now) that Religion contributed an element which nothing elsecould contribute--that, for example, 'Religious Suggestion,' asit was called in the jargon of the time, could accomplish thingsthat ordinary 'Suggestion' could not. Finally, the researches ofpsychologists into what was then called the phenomenon of'Alternating Personality' prepared the way for a frank acceptanceof the Catholic teaching concerning Possession andExorcism--teaching which half a century before would have beenlaughed out of court by all who claimed the name of Scientist.Psychology then, up to this point, had rediscovered that a Forcewas working behind physical phenomena, itself not physical; thatthis Force occasionally exhibited characteristics of Personality;and finally that the despised Catholic Church had been morescientific than scientists in her observation of facts; and thatthis Force, dealt with along Christian lines, could accomplishwhat it was unable to accomplish along any other.

  "The next advance lay along the lines of Comparative Religion.

  "The study of Comparative Religion was practically a new scienceat the end of the nineteenth century, and like all new sciences,claimed at once, before it had constructed its own, to destroythe schemes of others. For instance, there were actually educatedpersons who advanced as an argument against Christianity the factthat many Christian dogmas and ceremonies were to be found inother religions. It is extremely difficult for us now, even inimagination, to sympathize with such a mentality as this; but itmust be remembered that the science was very youthful, and hadall the inexperience and the arrogance of youth. As time went on,however, this argument began to disappear, except in veryelementary rationalistic manuals, as the fact became evident thatwhile this or that particular religion had one or more identitieswith Christian doctrines, Christianity possessed them all; thatChristianity, in short, had all the principal doctrines of allreligions--or at least all doctrines that were of any strength toother religions, as well as several others necessary to weldthese detached dogmas into a coherent whole; that, to use asimple metaphor, Christianity stood in the world like a lightupon a hill, and that partial and imperfect reflections of thislight were thrown back, with more or less clearness, from thevarious human systems of belief that surrounded it. And at lastit became evident, even to the most unintelligent, that the onlyscientific explanation of this phenomenon lay in the theory thatChristianity was indeed unique, and, at the very least, was themost perfect human system of faith--perfectly human, I mean, inthat it embodied and answered adequately all the religiousaspirations of the human race--the most perfect system of faiththe world had ever seen.

  "A third cause was to be found in the new philosophy of evidencethat began to prevail soon after the dawn of the century.

  "Up to that period, so-called Physical Science had so fartyrannized over men's minds as to persuade them to accept herclaim that evidence that could not be reduced to her terms wasnot, properly speaking, evidence at all. Men demanded that purelyspiritual matters should be, as they said, 'proved,' by whichthey meant should be reduced to physical terms. Little by little,however, the preposterous nature of this claim was understood.People began to perceive that each order of life had evidenceproper to itself--that there were such things, for instance, asmoral proofs, artistic proofs, and philosophical proofs; and thatthese proofs were not interchangeable. To demand physical prooffor every article of belief was as fantastic as to demand, let ussay, a chemical proof of the beauty of a picture, or evidence interms of light or sound for the moral character of a friend, ormathematical proof for the love of a mother for her child. Thisvery elementary idea seems to have come like a thunderclap uponmany who claimed the name of 'thinkers'; for it entirelydestroyed a whole artillery of arguments previously employedagainst Revealed Religion.

  "For a time, Pragmatism came to the rescue from the philosophicalcamp; but the assault was but a very short one; since, tested byPragmatic methods (that is, the testing of the truth of areligion by its appeal to human consciousness), if one fact stoodout luminous and undisputed, it was that the Catholic Religion,with its eternal appeal in every century and to every type oftemperament, was utterly supreme.

  "Let us turn to another point----"

  (Mr. Manners lifted the glass he had been twirling between hisfingers, and drank it off with an appearance of great enjoyment.Then he smacked his lips once or twice and continued.)

  "Let us turn to the realm of politics--even to the realm of trade.

  "Socialism, in its purely economic aspect, was a well-meantattempt to abolish the law of competition--that is, the naturallaw of the Survival of the Fittest. It was an attempt, I say; andit ended, as we know, in disaster; for it established instead, sofar as it was successful, the law of the Survival of theMajority, and tyrannized first over the minority and then overthe individual.

  "But it was a well-meant attempt; since its instinct wasperfectly right, that competition is not the highest law of theUniverse. And there were several other ideals in Socialism thatwere most commendable in theory: for example, the idea that theSociety sanctifies and safeguards the individual, not theindividual the Society; that obedience is a much-neglectedvirtue, and so forth.

  "Then, suddenly almost, it seems to have dawned upon the worldthat all the _ideals_ of Socialism (apart from its methods andits dogmas) had been the ideals of Christianity; and that theChurch had, in her promulgation of the Law of Love, anticipatedthe Socialist's discovery by about two thousand years. Further,that in th
e Religious Orders these ideals had been actuallyincarnate; and that by the doctrine of Vocation--that is by thefreedom of the individual to submit himself to a superior--therights of the individual were respected and the rights of theSociety simultaneously vindicated.

  "A very good example of all this is to be found in thePoor-law system.

  "You remember that before the Reformation, and in Catholiccountries long after, there was no Poor-law system, because theReligious Houses looked after the sick and needy. Well, when theReligious Houses were destroyed in England the State had to dotheir work. You could not simply flog beggars out of existence,as Elizabeth tried to do. Then the inevitable happened, and itbegan to be a mark of disgrace to be helped by the State in aworkhouse: people often preferred to starve. Then at thebeginning of the twentieth century a well-meant attempt was made,in the Old-Age Pensions and George's State Insurance Act, toremedy this and to help the poor in a manner that would notinjure their self-respect. Of course that failed, too. It isincredible that statesmen did not see it must be so. Old-AgePensions, too, and State-Insurance (so soon as it was sociallydigested), began to be considered a mark of disgrace--for thesimple cause that it is not the receiving of money that isresented, but the motive for which the money is given and theposition of the giver. The State can only give for economicreasons, however conscientious and individually charitablestatesmen may be; while the Church gives for the Love of God, andthe Love of God never yet destroyed any man's self-respect. Well,you know the end. The Church came forward once more and, undercertain conditions, offered to relieve the State of the entireburden. Two results followed--first, all grievances vanished; andsecondly, the whole pauper population of England within ten yearswas Catholic in sympathies. And yet all this is only a reversionto medieval times--a reversion made absolutely necessary by thefailure of every attempt to supplant Divine methods by human.

  "Now look at it all in another way--the general situation, I mean.

  "The Socialist saw plainly the rights of the Society; theAnarchist saw the rights of the Individual. How therefore werethese to be reconciled? The Church stepped in at that crucialpoint and answered, By the Family--whether domestic orReligious. For in the Family you have both claims recognized:there is authority and yet there is liberty. For the union ofthe Family lies in Love; and _Love is the only reconciliation ofauthority and liberty_.

  "Now, as I have put it--and as we all now see it--the argument issimplicity itself. But it took a long time to be recognized; andit was not until after the appalling events of the first twentyyears of the century, and the discrediting of the absurdSocialistic attempt to preach the Law of Love by methods of Force,that civilization as a whole saw the point. Yet for all that itwas beginning to mould popular opinion even as early as 1910.

  "Turn now to a completely different plane. Turn to Art. This,too, drove men back to the Church."

  (Mr. Manners' air was becoming now less professional and more vivid.He glanced quickly from face to face with a kind of sharp triumph;his long, thin hands waved a slight gesture now and again.)

  "Art, you remember, in the end of the Victorian era had attemptedto become realistic--had attempted, that is, the absurdlyimpossible; and photography exposed the absurdity, For no man canbe truly a realist, since it is literally impossible to paint orto describe all that the eye sees. When photography becamegeneral, this began to be understood; since it was soon seen thatthe only photographer who could lay any claim to artistic workwas the man who selected and altered and posed--arranged hissubject, that is to say, in more or less symbolic form. Thenpeople began to see again that Symbolism was the underlyingspirit of Art--as they had known perfectly well, of course, inmedieval days: that Art consisted in going beneath the materialsurfaces that reflected light, or the material events thathappened, in painting and literature respectively, and, by aprocess of selection, of symbolizing (not photographicallyrepresenting) the Ideas beneath the Things--the Substance beneaththe Accidents--the Thought beneath the Expression--(you can callit what you like). Zola in literature, Strauss in music, theFrench school of painting--these reduced Realism _ad absurdum_.Thus once more the Catholic Church, in this as in everythingelse, was discovered to have possessed the secret all along. TheSymbolic Reaction therefore began, and all our music, all ourpainting, and all our literature to-day are frankly andconfessedly Symbolic--that is, Catholic. And this too, you see,pointed to the same lesson as Psychology, that beneath phenomenathere was a Force which transcended phenomena; and that theChurch had dealt with this Force, knowing It to be Personal,through all her history.

  "Finally--and this was the crowning argument of all, thatcorrelated all the rest--there was the growing scientific andpopular perception of the Recuperative Power of the Church--thatwhich our Divine Lord Himself called the Sign of the ProphetJonas, or Resurrection.

  "There were of course countless other lines of advance, inpractically every science, and they all pointed in the samedirection, and met, so to speak, from every quarter of thecompass the end of the tunnel which the Church had been boringthrough all the heaped-up stupidities and ignorances of man.Psychology tunnelled, and presently heard the voices of theexorcists and the echoes of Lourdes through the darkness. Humanreligions tunnelled--Hinduism with its idea of a DivineIncarnation, Buddhism with its coarse apprehension of the EternalPeace of a Beatific Vision, North American Religion with itsguesses at Sacramentalism, Savage Religion with its caricature ofa Bloody Sacrifice; all from various points; and presently heardthrough the tumult the historical dogma of the Incarnation ofChrist, the dogma of Eternal Life, the Sacramental System and theSacrifice of the Cross--all proclaimed in one coherent andperfectly philosophical Creed. Ideals of Social Reform met withthe same experiences. The Socialist with his dream of a DivineSociety, the Anarchist with his passionate nightmare of completeindividual liberty, both ran up together, in the heart of theblack darkness, against the vast outline of a Divine Family thatwas a fact and not a far-off ambition--a Family that fell in Edenand became a competitive State; a Holy Family that redeemedNazareth and all the world; a Catholic Family in whom was neitherJew nor Greek, nor masters against men--in whom the doctrine ofVocation secured the rights and the dignities of the Society onone side and the Individual on the other. Finally Art, wanderinghither and thither in the mazes of Realism, saw light ahead, andfound in Catholic Art and Symbolism the secret of her life.

  "This, then, was the result--that the Church was found to beeternally right in every plane. In plane after plane she hadbeen condemned. Pilate--the Law of Separate Nations--had foundher guilty of sedition; Herod--the miracle-monger at one instantand the sceptic at the next--the Scientist, in fact--haddeclared her guilty of fraud; Caiaphas had condemned her in thename of National Religion. Or, again, she had been thought theenemy of Art by the Greek-spirited; the enemy of Law by theLatins; the enemy of Religion by the Hebraic Pharisee. She hadborne her title written in Greek and Latin and Hebrew. She hadbeen crucified, and taunted as she hung there; she had seemed todie; and, to and behold! when the Third Day dawned she was aliveagain for evermore. From every single point she had beenjustified and vindicated. Men had thought to invent a newreligion, a new art, a new social order, a new philosophy; theyhad burrowed and explored and digged in every direction; and, atthe end, when they had worked out their theories and found, asthey thought, the reward of their labours, they found themselveslooking once more into the serene, smiling face of Catholicism.She was risen from the dead once more, and was seen to be theDaughter of God, with Power."

  There was a moment's silence.

  "There, gentlemen," said Mr. Manners, dropping back again into thequiet professor, "that, I think, in a few words, is the outline forwhich Monsignor asked. I hope I have not detained you too long."