PRIEST AS SCAPEGOAT
457
plore all scapegoats and (with Frazer) regard their history as 'an
endless number of very unamiable devices for palming off upon
some one elSe the trouble which a man shrinks from bearing himself.'
But if we are in favor of the natural man or if we despair of extermi–
nating in ourselves 'the cunning, selfish savage' and the homeless
child, yet it is still clearly preferable that scapegoats should be volun–
teers, as they frequently were in the ancient world and as they are at
the New Year festival
in
Lhasa to-day. In this respect, M. Bernanos
exhibits a fine willingness. The degree of his self-identification with
his victims is unusual. Many people in this country believed that
The
Diary of a Country Priest
was a true diary and, although we are
unused to priests with moustaches, that the person on the jacket
wrapped in a great muffler and with burning, phthisic eyes was the
dying priest himself. It is he in fact, the author, who will take away
your sins. It may be observed, however, that, in making this offer,
M. Bernanos is doing no more than his duty as an intellectual to-day.
For, despite the long and distinguished succession of
poetes maudits,
there never was an age in which of itself the possession of exceptional
gifts of intelligence or sensibility so qualified a man for employment
in the vicarious expulsion of evils.
,
