Sympathetic Rheumatism
268 THE COMMONWEAL July to, i929 SYMPATHETIC RHEUMATISM L UCIDITY of intellect has been defined by some- body as "modern humanity's lost diamond," and is at any rate wofully scarce. We find...
...There is no lack of published comment on the habits and characteristics of both...
...it erects bad baroque-Gothic in the twentieth century...
...therefore it is wasting away...
...And the answer must be: when they have attained to a greater lucidity...
...He would rather order bad British mut- ton in amateur cockney and sit eating it with a copy of Puck in his grip than sample the finest southern cook- ing in a colonial mansion where the hostess herself, despite an intellectual development far beyond the reach of the average English woman, is serving...
...On the other hand, we have the person who cannot for- get the fact that freight cars are smaller in France than they are in Illinois, or the no less astounding truth that he could buy a chateau (if he wanted to) and install plumbing besides...
...268 THE COMMONWEAL July to, i929 SYMPATHETIC RHEUMATISM L UCIDITY of intellect has been defined by some- body as "modern humanity's lost diamond," and is at any rate wofully scarce...
...The drift of European working towns toward the radical left has not yet been halted, and the severance of bonds which once attached the populace to the Faith remains a harrowing phe- nomenon...
...Chesterton's friends have solved the enigma of the new world...
...They should, it seems, be quite visible...
...The details we have enumerated are concrete and of this world...
...When will it be granted men to see that, quite independently of what they personally intend to do or think, the Church is both a mystical and a cor- porate organism, of which the duality of the individual human being is only a picture...
...And, for the sake of the virtue of patience, that time may never come to pass...
...Zimmern deplores the tendency to adjudge either Eu...
...and it is far from clear that if, in our time, Catholicism is growing dangerous, the way to combat it is to bombard Mrs...
...There are the nice, educated people who feel that Europe is "decadent" because Florence is now fairly well along in years, and who are absolutely sure---by a variety of exaggerated parallel--that the Catholic Church is "decadent...
...We suppose that a basic orientation of mind similar in character accounts for much of current ignorance regarding Catholicism in Europe...
...What she would have done if one had actually appeared beneath the mattress we do not know...
...O'Grady with abuse...
...Our American attitude toward Europe, for instance, has constantly hovered between two extremes...
...And how many for-eigners there are who suppose that Hollywood is photographer to His Majesty the American people, or that Mr...
...The truth of the matter is, of course, that Catholicism is both "decadent" and "progressing...
...It is "decadent" in so far as a number of circum- stances have hampered the work of religion in various places or in specific fields...
...the "decadence" of the Church in Europe is well-nigh coextensive with the "decadence" of Europe--a legacy of social and intellectual combats, of unsolved economic and scientif- ic problems, of moral lapses which the race indulges in...
...When they have grown conscious of the contrasts that inevitably sever the conception from the concrete realization...
...Yet even so one knows that the art of adjusting the relation between tradition and change in national habits, of effecting co6peration between warring social groups, and of finding just standards for the guidance of ethical and cultural conduct, is no less profitable to the Church than to Europe...
...That a gulf has lain between the Church and such endeavors as art must also be termed a fact, explicable of course through the history of these en-deavors themselves...
...The other part of the picture is more encouraging...
...Whether the box cars of France ought to be enlarged is a matter upon which religious doctrine has little bear- ing...
...It built Chartres in the thirteenth cen-tury...
...because it displays remarkable tact in dealing with actual conditions, it is "unstable and scheming...
...If in some of its relations with the human species the Church displays a genuinely healthy oppor- tunism--a willingness to secure the "possible" rather than the "desirable"--then it is decried as opportunis- tic...
...New England had its old lady who peered under the bed each evening, lest a "tentacle of Rome" might have crept there unawares...
...Zimmern says that the "mind of the dwellers on the two sides of the Atlantic is an important, if sadly neglected, factor in trans- oceanic relationships...
...One cannot say that the "progress" of European so-ciety as such is always coextensive with the "progress" of the Church, for the reason that group sanitation, though abetted by religion, can be promoted by a stoic intelligence, while supernatural advance is forever a thing apart...
...We find gleams of it in Mr...
...but most of it reads like an old-fashioned picaresque novel, the scenes in which have been treated with a kind of belladonna to make them striking...
...This sounds obvious, but when you have weighed it a little you are astonished to find that it has gone practically unnoticed...
...If on the other hand it retains a stand intransi- gently, it must of course be denounced as an "obstacle to progress...
...The American "brand" seems relatively satisfactory...
...Then there are the other mortals to whom the Holy See is not only not decadent, but a voracious, incessantly expanding monster...
...but if it be demanded by the social intelligence, religion too is ultimately served...
...On the one hand is the man who has spent a month or two at Oxford, and for whom the speech, manners, interests and culture of his own country are thereafter beneath contempt...
...Quite as lamentable is the tendency to see Catholicism in the abstract...
...Alfred Zimmern's America and Europe, a book of essays published recently by the Oxford University Press and devoted in large measure to those differ- ences of opinion which separate the old world from the new...
...Because it clings to an inflexible code, it is "reactionary...
...When they have abandoned the idea of identifying their notions with reality...
...rope or America as "abstract ideas...
...In other words...
...they are, as a matter of fact, widely ignored...
Vol. 10 • July 1929 • No. 10
