Sublime

But one of the strange marks of the strength of Christianity is that, since it came, no pagan in our civilisation has been able to be really human.

for it is a return to the past by men ignorant of the past, like the subconscious action of some man who has lost his memory.

John Dewey argued that every political project needs to create the public that can be its author.8 In the same way, every utopia has to call into existence the public necessary for its creation, a public that can champion and own it.

But though the story of the Stuarts was a tragedy, I think it was also an epilogue. I make the guess, for it can be no more, that the change really came with the fall of Richard II, following on his failure to use mediaeval despotism in the interests of mediaeval democracy. England, like the other nations of Christendom, had been created not so muc

The last hundred years has seen a general decline in the democratic idea. If there be anybody left to whom this historical truth appears a paradox, it is only because during that period nobody has been taught history, least of all the history of ideas.

Empires break; industrial conditions change; the suburbs will not last for ever. What will remain? I will tell you. The Catholic Saint will remain.”

A few centuries later, the Roman Empire would once again bring back absolute power to a single ruler, and Christianity would once again bring back knowledge in the hands of the divinity. The marriage of imperial and Christian powers would bring theocracy back.

Though the modern world may know a million secrets, the ancient world knew one—and that one was greater than the million; for the million secrets breed death, disaster, sorrow, selfishness, lust, and avarice, but the one secret confers life, light, and truth. The time will come when the secret wisdom shall again be the dominating religious and phil