He felt a fervid curiosity about the tenets and
tendencies of the sect; and he asked the soldier what it meant. The
soldier replied that it was his religion "to live as long as he could."
Now, considered as an incident in the religious history of Europe, that
answer of that soldier was worth more than a hundred cartloads of
quarterly and monthly and weekly and daily papers discussing religious
problems and religious books. Every day the daily paper reviews some new
philosopher who has some new religion; and there is not in the whole two
thousand words of the whole two columns one word as witty as or wise as
that word "Methuselahite." The whole meaning of literature is simply to
cut a long story short; that is why our modern books of philosophy are
never literature. That soldier had in him the very soul of literature;
he was one of the great phrase-makers of modern thought, like Victor
Hugo or Disraeli. He found one word that defines the paganism of to-day.
Henceforward, when the modern philosophers come to me with their new
religions (and there is always a kind of queue of them waiting all the
way down the street) I shall anticipate their circumlocutions and be
able to cut them short with a single inspired word.
Pages:
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187