The reader will perhaps forgive the hackneyed references to Sir Thomas Browne peacefully writing his Religio Medici amid all the commotions of the Civil War, and to Gautier calmly correcting the proofs of his new poems during the siege of Paris.  The milkman goes his rounds amid the crash of empires.  It is not his business to fight.  His business is to distribute his milk—­as much after half-past seven as may be inconvenient.  Similarly, the business of the thinker is with his thought, the poet with his poetry.  It is the business of politicians to make national quarrels, and the business of the soldier to fight them.  But as for the poet—­let him correct his proofs, or beware the printer.

The idea, then, of a nation is a grandiloquent fallacy in the interests of commerce and ambition, political and military.  All the great and good, clever and charming people belong to one secret nation, for which there is no name unless it be the Chosen People.  These are the lost tribes of love, art, and religion, lost and swamped amid alien peoples, but ever dreaming of a time when they shall meet once more in Jerusalem.

Yet though they are thus aliens, taking and wishing no part in the organisation of the ‘nations’ among which they dwell, this does not prevent those nations taking part and credit in them.  And whenever a brave soldier wins a battle, or an intrepid traveller discovers a new land, his particular nation flatters itself, as though it—­the million nobodies—­had done it.  With a profound indifference to, indeed an active dislike of, art and poetry, there is nothing on which a nation prides itself so much as upon its artists and poets, whom, invariably, it starves, neglects, and even insults, as long as it is not too silly to do so.

Thus the average Englishman talks of Shakespeare—­as though he himself had written the plays; of India—­as though he himself had conquered it.  And thus grow up such fictions as ‘national greatness’ and ’public opinion.’

For what is ‘national greatness’ but the glory reflected from the memories of a few great individuals? and what is ‘public opinion’ but the blustering echoes of the opinion of a few clever young men on the morning papers?

For how can people in themselves little become great by merely congregating into a crowd, however large?  And surely fools do not become wise, or worth listening to, merely by the fact of their banding together.

A ‘public opinion’ on any matter except football, prize-fighting, and perhaps cricket, is merely ridiculous—­by whatever brutal physical powers it may be enforced—­ridiculous as a town council’s opinion upon art; and a nation is merely a big fool with an army.

THE GREATNESS OF MAN

Ignorant, as I inevitably am, dear reader, of your intellectual and spiritual upbringing, I can hardly guess whether the title of my article will impress you as a platitude or as a paradox.  Goodness knows, some men and women think quite enough of themselves as it is, and, from a certain momentary point of view, there may seem little occasion indeed to remind man of his importance.