The Objective Ideal

Extract

We have become accustomed to condemn outright those reactionaries who would wish to return to the manners of the Middle Ages. So much apparent good has come to light since those dim and ruthless days that its denial seems almost blasphemy against the Creator who gave man powers capable of continuous development. In the main a condemnation of this sort may be justified, yet there existed at least one fundamental attitude of mind, lost in the debris of the medieval ruin, the absence of which we must deeply lament for it would be capable of setting the modem world in order if it were present to-day. This attitude, crystallized in the word “objectivism,” has been supplanted by its opposite, a disruptive force which is responsible for many of the modem evils, for when modem subjectivism ousted the medieval objectivism at the Reformation a unity in multiplicity gave place to a multitude of units. It is a commonplace that the Reformation with its insistence on the importance of the individual and its implicit denial of the mainstays of human society gave birth to a subjectivism and a concentration upon self which the Christian world has never since been able to master.

This false attitude of mind has become part and parcel of our mental make-up. It has been handed on from father to son until it has become almost connatural in every act of the mind or will. We can to-day think only in terms of reference to ourselves, forming all things to our own image and likeness as though we were at once the begetter and the conclusion of all things. One’s birthday is a great feast, remembered every year, for that was the beginning. In the beginning was myself, and I am my own god.