barbarians.  Mr. Blatchford is in great danger of becoming a barbarian.  For barbarians (especially the truly squalid and unhappy barbarians) are always talking about these scientific subjects from morning till night.  That is why they remain squalid and unhappy; that is why they remain barbarians.  Hottentots are always talking about heredity, like Mr. Blatchford.  Sandwich Islanders are always talking about environment, like Mr. Suthers.  Savages—­those that are truly stunted or depraved—­dedicate nearly all their tales and sayings to the subject of physical kinship, of a curse on this or that tribe, of a taint in this or that family, of the invincible law of blood, of the unavoidable evil of places.  The true savage is a slave, and is always talking about what he must do; the true civilised man is a free man and is always talking about what he may do.  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.

I cannot help thinking that there is some shadow of this uncivilised materialism lying at present upon a much more dignified and valuable cause.  Every one is talking just now about the desirability of ingeminating peace and averting war.  But even war and peace are physical states rather than moral states, and in talking about them only we have by no means got to the bottom of the matter.  How, for instance, do we as a matter of fact create peace in one single community?  We do not do it by vaguely telling every one to avoid fighting and to submit to anything that is done to him.  We do it by definitely defining his rights and then undertaking to avenge his wrongs.  We shall never have a common peace in Europe till we have a common principle in Europe.  People talk of “The United States of Europe;” but they forget that it needed the very doctrinal “Declaration of Independence” to make the United States of America.  You cannot agree about nothing any more than you can quarrel about nothing.