There was hugely more sense in the old people who said that a wife and husband ought to have the same religion than there is in all the contemporary gushing about sister souls and kindred spirits and auras of identical colour.  As a matter of fact, the more the sexes are in violent contrast the less likely they are to be in violent collision.  The more incompatible their tempers are the better.  Obviously a wife’s soul cannot possibly be a sister soul.  It is very seldom so much as a first cousin.  There are very few marriages of identical taste and temperament; they are generally unhappy.  But to have the same fundamental theory, to think the same thing a virtue, whether you practise or neglect it, to think the same thing a sin, whether you punish or pardon or laugh at it, in the last extremity to call the same thing duty and the same thing disgrace—­this really is necessary to a tolerably happy marriage; and it is much better represented by a common religion than it is by affinities and auras.  And what applies to the family applies to the nation.  A nation with a root religion will be tolerant.  A nation with no religion will be bigoted.  Lastly, the worst effect of all is this:  that when men come together to profess a creed, they come courageously, though it is to hide in catacombs and caves.  But when they come together in a clique they come sneakishly, eschewing all change or disagreement, though it is to dine to a brass band in a big London hotel.  For birds of a feather flock together, but birds of the white feather most of all.

THE FOOL

For many years I had sought him, and at last I found him in a club.  I had been told that he was everywhere; but I had almost begun to think that he was nowhere.  I had been assured that there were millions of him; but before my late discovery I inclined to think that there were none of him.  After my late discovery I am sure that there is one; and I incline to think that there are several, say, a few hundreds; but unfortunately most of them occupying important positions.  When I say “him,” I mean the entire idiot.

I have never been able to discover that “stupid public” of which so many literary men complain.  The people one actually meets in trains or at tea parties seem to me quite bright and interesting; certainly quite enough so to call for the full exertion of one’s own wits.  And even when I have heard brilliant “conversationalists” conversing with other people, the conversation had much more equality and give and take than this age of intellectual snobs will admit.  I have sometimes felt tired, like other people; but rather tired with men’s talk and variety than with their stolidity or sameness; therefore it was that I sometimes longed to find the refreshment of a single fool.