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never has. But it is equally true to say that culture has never existed
without cooking, which is more to the point. However advanced a
small section of society may have become, there has always been a
positive religion for the uneducated mass. An examination of history
shows that most periods of great cultural productivity correspond
with periods of expanding trade or other forms of increased pros–
perity, and at such times there is usually a decline in faith. This is
notably true for the last three hundred years, and it holds good
even for the Renaissance in Italy, when the Church, as an institu–
tion, was rich and powerful. In the great century of the Greeks,
which witnessed the swiftest advance in thought that has ever been
seen, the culture was largely secular; but unfortunately such forward–
moving, thought-liberating periods have always been brought to a
close, or interrupted, by periods of reaction. We are in such a period
now, but whether it will be of major or minor duration it is still too
early to say. It
looks
major from here.
The tide of individualism set in motion by Martin Luther, and
some others, reached its high point during the French Revolution
and the Napoleonic wars, which brought about the inevitable turn,
and set the stage for the great prophet of the ebb of individualism,
Karl Marx. His disciple, Lenin, established a Church whose members
are pledged to do no individual thinking whatever. And his greatest
opponent, Hitler, founded a fanatical faith that only fell short by
a little of being as effective as Mohammedanism.
The Christian churches may play an important part in com–
batting Russian communism at the present time, but their past
records, for the most part, make their claims to superiority very
shaky. I believe that the surrendering of oneself to the authority of
any type of institution is reactionary, and I regret that there is a trend
among intellectuals today, as there undoubtedly is, towards formal,
institutional religion and the authority of tradition.
Intellectuals, on the whole, are somewhat timid. Any advance
in thought that is a little too swift for them frightens them. I am
reminded of the army of the Sabines in Andreyev's comedy,
The
Sabine Women.
Mter the Romans had carried off their women,
the Sabines armed themselves with many heavy volumes, and set
out to march on Rome. The books were to convince the Romans that
they had no right to the women; and the Sabine soldiers, all the way
