Hence all the Zola heredity and Ibsen heredity
that has been written in our time affects me as not merely evil, but as
essentially ignorant and retrogressive. This sort of science is almost
the only thing that can with strict propriety be called reactionary.
Scientific determinism is simply the primal twilight of all mankind; and
some men seem to be returning to it.
Another savage trait of our time is the disposition to talk about
material substances instead of about ideas. The old civilisation talked
about the sin of gluttony or excess. We talk about the Problem of
Drink--as if drink could be a problem. When people have come to call the
problem of human intemperance the Problem of Drink, and to talk about
curing it by attacking the drink traffic, they have reached quite a dim
stage of barbarism. The thing is an inverted form of fetish worship; it
is no sillier to say that a bottle is a god than to say that a bottle is
a devil. The people who talk about the curse of drink will probably
progress down that dark hill. In a little while we shall have them
calling the practice of wife-beating the Problem of Pokers; the habit of
housebreaking will be called the Problem of the Skeleton-Key Trade; and
for all I know they may try to prevent forgery by shutting up all the
stationers' shops by Act of Parliament.
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