CHAPTER VIII

THE ANCIENT TEMPER

What now about that “modern temper,” which seeks to do away with the romantic ideal of a world well lost for love and with the classic ideal of austere dignity? We have followed it through many channels of expression, and have discovered that it was well described. Of either dignity or love it has not a shred.

But we have discovered another thing. It is not being driven from the old ideals by science. Or rather there are two sciences, one modern, scientific and inspiring. The other not quite so modern in anything but the names which it applies to itself, not quite so scientific--indeed, no longer scientific at all.

Its chariot comes thundering down Main street, and all are bidden to throw themselves before it and let its wheels pass over them. One would think it was the car of Juggernaut. But its license, when we come to look it up, proves to have been taken out by Propaganda.

Sometimes these propagandists descend and try to persuade us with pleasant words. More often they prefer to threaten. Those who stand upright before them or try to block their passage are termed morons, or ignoramuses. To be snubbed by this new snobbery is almost like not being in society. Yet after all, a university professor is sometimes only a school-teacher, and not necessarily a good one. The letters PH.D. after a man’s name do not turn him necessarily either into a scientist or a Venerable Don Bosco. Beyond question, some of our Misbehaviorists would have constructed better theories had they come more in contact with other than diseased or adolescent minds.

But why the propaganda? Why this endeavor to make man out a machine or worse? The ancient hypothesis was that such teachings emanated from the devil. To discuss that ancient hypothesis would take us beyond the limits of the present volume, but it cannot be denied that it seems rather to fit the case. Certainly the temper of these gentleman is no newer than is the temperament of Lucifer. Among the many things which distinguish man from the animals is this strange perversity, this ability to sink beneath himself.

The “modern temper” then is but the ancient temper, and like the ancient it is of two sorts. This division also is old--as old as the distinction between good and evil.

Fundamentally, man never changes. I do not mean the individual man. He may change immensely, and from having chosen to turn to the left may turn and choose the right. But this choice has always been open before him.

Not even our fashions, our methods, our ways of doing things are quite as novel as we sometimes like to think. Albertus Magnus, though he died in 1280, laid down the principles of our cherished “experimental method,”--and they were already old. Says Fenelon, “If an enlightened man were to gather from the books of St. Augustine the sublime truths which this great man has scattered at random therein, such a composition ... would be far superior to Descartes’ ‘Meditations.’” That takes us back to before the year 430--and wisdom then was far from being a child. There is going on about us all the while a systematic falsification of history so that the present may seem to stand upon an isolated pedestal, or rest like a tumbleweed upon a heap of sand, or like a thistledown to float seemingly upon nothing. Probably this sort of thing, too, is coeval with the dawn of human life.

Pyrrho, the Greek philosopher, who attained fame from having made the remark that “nothing is more one thing than it is another,”--in other words that black is no blacker than is white nor white whiter than black--Pyrrho died 270 years before Christ. He voiced the “modern temper” of his day as Watson and Freud voice it in ours. For we have seen that Psycho-Analysis and Behaviorism spring from the same root. It makes little difference to what we are slaves, whether to reflexes or passions. If there be but one stuff, it is the same stuff whether we call it spirit or matter. No man ever yet succeeded in thinking of an abstract triangle, let alone an impersonal God.

So, of old time as today, reason was Psyche’s good servant but a sorry master. Then, as now, reason died with the fool who said in his heart, “There is no God.” Then as now Wisdom cried, not in the class-room but in the streets, and had its being in that Love--“_che muove il sole e l’altre stelle_”--which moves the sun in heaven and all the stars.

Transcriber’s Notes

- Italics represented by _underscores_.

- Small caps converted to ALL CAPS.

- Footnotes renumbered consecutively and relocated to the end of each chapter.

- Obvious typographic and grammatical errors silently corrected.

- Variations in hyphenation and spelling kept as in the original.