During the Reformation, when external confusion was at
its height, you might have ascertained almost statistically what
persons and what regions each side snatched from the other; it was not
doubtful which was which. The history of their respective victories
and defeats could consequently be written. So in the eighteenth
century it was easy to perceive how many people Voltaire and Rousseau
might be alienating from Bossuet and Fenelon. But how shall we satisfy
ourselves now whether, for instance, Christianity is holding its own?
Who can tell what vagary or what compromise may not be calling itself
Christianity? A bishop may be a modernist, a chemist may be a mystical
theologian, a psychologist may be a believer in ghosts. For science,
too, which had promised to supply a new and solid foundation for
philosophy, has allowed philosophy rather to undermine its foundation,
and is seen eating its own words, through the mouths of some of its
accredited spokesmen, and reducing itself to something utterly
conventional and insecure. It is characteristic of human nature to be
as impatient of ignorance regarding what is not known as lazy in
acquiring such knowledge as is at hand; and even those who have not
been lazy sometimes take it into their heads to disparage their
science and to outdo the professional philosophers in psychological
scepticism, in order to plunge with them into the most vapid
speculation.
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