GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

6lO ETHICS AND POLITICS: THE MODERNS
initiative are also oppressed by the growing standardi-
zation of the times. In a modern democracy a vigorous
member of the middle classes, conscious ofuntapped powers
and unsatisfied impulses, is apt to find the life of office,
train, dinner, radio and bed, with golf, a motor-ride
or the sea-side at weekends, insufferably dull.
which he lives in common with thousands,
It is a life
yet he is
prevented by snobbery and tradition from following the
example of the members of the working class, and combining
with the thousands to improve his conditions and remake
his life. While, on the one hand, he is deprived of the
spiritual comfort which comes from co-operation with his
fellows, on the other he lives a life which affords no scope
for courage, no hope of adventure and no occasion for the
exercise of initiative or rather, he must contrive to make
shift with such poor occasions as are offered by the pursuit
of what are vaguely known as hobbies.
In the contemporary world such a man is oppressed with
a sense of smouldering, though often unconscious discontent.
To such a one Fascism appears as a deliverance.
Fascism as a Substitute for Religion. There is also
the point of view that sees in Fascism a substitute for
religion. Mankind has a need to believe and in all ages
religion has existed to satisfy the need. In none has the
official
religion satisfied this need so inadequately as in our
own. Broadly speaking, educated men and women in
contemporary Europe are for the most part without
religion. Nature abhors a vacuum no less in the spiritual
than in the physical realm, and religious substitutes con-
sequently spring up to take the place of religion* Of these
one of the most important is Fascism. The following
quotation from Canon F. R. Barry's What has Christianity
to S