On the other side there is a blend of two quite different aims:  first, the desire to promote revolution in the Western nations, which is in line with Communist theory, and is also thought to be the only way of obtaining a really secure peace; secondly, the desire for Asiatic dominion, which is probably accompanied in the minds of some with dreams of sapphires and rubies and golden thrones and all the glories of their forefather Solomon.  This desire produces an unwillingness to abandon the Eastern policy, although it is realized that, until it is abandoned, peace with capitalist England is impossible.  I do not know whether there are some to whom the thought occurs that if England were to embark on revolution we should become willing to abandon India to the Russians.  But I am certain that the converse thought occurs, namely that, if India could be taken from us, the blow to imperialist feeling might lead us to revolution.  In either case, the two policies, of revolution in the West and conquest (disguised as liberation of oppressed peoples) in the East, work in together, and dovetail into a strongly coherent whole.

Bolshevism as a social phenomenon is to be reckoned as a religion, not as an ordinary political movement.  The important and effective mental attitudes to the world may be broadly divided into the religious and the scientific.  The scientific attitude is tentative and piecemeal, believing what it finds evidence for, and no more.  Since Galileo, the scientific attitude has proved itself increasingly capable of ascertaining important facts and laws, which are acknowledged by all competent people regardless of temperament or self-interest or political pressure.  Almost all the progress in the world from the earliest times is attributable to science and the scientific temper; almost all the major ills are attributable to religion.

By a religion I mean a set of beliefs held as dogmas, dominating the conduct of life, going beyond or contrary to evidence, and inculcated by methods which are emotional or authoritarian, not intellectual.  By this definition, Bolshevism is a religion:  that its dogmas go beyond or contrary to evidence, I shall try to prove in what follows.  Those who accept Bolshevism become impervious to scientific evidence, and commit intellectual suicide.  Even if all the doctrines of Bolshevism were true, this would still be the case, since no unbiased examination of them is tolerated.  One who believes, as I do, that the free intellect is the chief engine of human progress, cannot but be fundamentally opposed to Bolshevism, as much as to the Church of Rome.