This tampering with
the moral law, or, what amounts to the same thing, this overriding
of the veto power in man, has been largely a result, though not a
necessary result, of the rupture with the traditional forms of
wisdom. The Baconian naturalist repudiated the past because he
wished to be more positive and critical, to plant himself on the
facts. But the veto power is itself a fact--the weightiest with
which man has to reckon. The Rousseauistic naturalist threw off
traditional control because he wished to be more imaginative. Yet
without the veto power imagination falls into sheer anarchy. Both
Baconian and Rousseauist were very impatient of any outer authority
that seemed to stand between them and their own perceptions. Yet the
veto power is nothing abstract, nothing that one needs to take on
hearsay, but is very immediate. The naturalistic leaders may be
proved wrong without going beyond their own principles, and their
wrongness is of a kind to wreck civilisation.
Pages:
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244