NOTES ON CULTURE
155
dissolution of the primitive pattern, with the advance of liberty of \
thought and behavior, imposes a strain upon human beings greater
than the majority can bear. Hence the tendency-dissimulated as a
reaction from overt disorder-towards the unification of thought and
behavior, in an artificial pattern, of totalitarian society. We must
remember also that the progress of humanity can be conceived in
terms of the breaking down of limited cultural patterns and the sub–
sequent formation of larger and more complex ones, while its deterio–
ration can be seen in terms of regression towards smaller and more
simplified patterns. At certain stages of transition, the elements in the
struggle may be disguised, so that what to the protagonists in an
historical situation seemed a religious conflict, may appear to posterity
to have been really a struggle of social and economic interest-and
vice versa.
These considerations have a bearing on a question which has
presented itself, and no doubt will continue to present itself, to the
human mind at various times and in various places: the scruple of the
devout. Should the human soul aspiring towards salvation, intended
by its Creator for the bliss of the beatific vision, concern itself with
such an ephemeral pastime as the cultivation of art and letters? The
extreme puritanism which leads to the rejection of "images" may aim
at any other worldly goal, or it may be fortified by humanitarian zeal
or by the doubt of the right to pleasures which lack of opportunity
or native insensibility denies to the majority of fellow-beings. The
doubt may lurk in the consciences of many who do not openly con–
fess it; it may be employed to condemn pleasures which a man is
'incapable of enjoying, and which he therefore conceives to be merely
"pleasures of the senses." I do not dispute that the repudiation of
these interests may present itself as necessary in a life of peculiar
ascetic vocation, as may the repudiation of many other activities
lawful and desirable for most individuals: but to repudiate them, not
only for oneself, but for the -rest of humanity, is a religious perversion
which in the long run can only damage the cause it
aims
to serve.
Religious fanaticism may lead to the rejection of temporal govern–
ment and order, sometimes to the denial of common morality. To deny
the arts in the name of religion
is
to deny the flesh, and partakes of
the nature of heresy. Or we may describe it as the assumption that
religion can flourish in a soil one of the essential constituents of which
has been removed.
But if the
arts
are an essential element
in
culture, and if culture
is
necessary for the development of the highest spiritual capacities
of a people, it must not be forgotten that without a religion there
