Principles of western civilisation

116 WESTERN CIVILISATION CHAP.

In the growing light of the time in which we are living, it is of the highest interest to note a solitary form which stands out in bold relief against the background of events in this period of transition. It is the figure of Burke, to whom the modern mind in England has already begun to turn with instinctive perception of the relation to a coming epoch of knowledge of the message of which he struggled to deliver himself in the period of the French Revolution. Burke has been continually charged by critics with inconsistency. He is pointed to at one stage of his career as applaud-

political religion. ‘‘ The tenets of political religion,” he said, ‘ should be few and simple; they should be laid down with precision and without comment. The existence of a deity, powerful, intelligent, beneficent, prescient, and provident ; a future state, the reward of the righteous, the punishment of the wicked, the sacred nature of the social contract and of the laws—these should be its positive tenets. As to negative dogmas, I limit them to one—it is intolerance. Those who affect to make a distinction between civil and religious intolerance are in my opinion mistaken. These two intolerances are inseparable. It is impossible to live in peace with those whom we firmly believe devoted to damnation; to love them would be to hate God who punishes them. It is therefore absolutely necessary for us either to torment or to convert them. Wherever theological intolerance is admitted, it is impossible that it should not have some civil effect ; and so soon as it has, the sovereign is no longer sovereign even in secular matters; the priests become the real masters, and kings are only their officers” (Zhe Socéal Contract). Most writers who have dealt with this passage have noted only the inconsistency involved, or the hostility of Rousseau to the Church in France. But the student of the development of social theory finds in it a much deeper interest than this. For, in the doctrine of the prescription of religious principles ov account of their civil effects, we have to distinguish a midway stage in a development which was henceforward to follow widely diverging lines. Along one characteristic line, as we shall see later, the theory of the political State was to be developed apart from the theory of religion and absolute ethics; along the other line there was to be the frank return to the stand-point of the ancient world, the controlling centre of consciousness being once more placed in the midst of the existing civil organisation. Rousseau’s intermediate position may with advantage be compared with that developed later in modern Marxian socialism, where, the centre of social consciousness being now ayowedly posited in the existing political organisation, the subject of religion is logically eliminated, and the stage of antagonism to the principle which is subordinating the present to the future is clearly defined.