II
That doubt is only the expenditure of the treasures of life for future gain human history bears witness in a striking way. Times of a general scepticism among any people have always been also times of conventionalism and utilitarianism towards all things great and small. To employ again a word used before, this means that life has come to regard its establishments of all sorts as only “instrumental,” not final. Of course, conventionalism and utilitarianism are commonly decried, just as the accompanying attitude of doubt is commonly decried; but the fears, though not altogether idle, are usually short-sighted, for there is gain ahead. In a certain community, for example, patriotism, morality, and piety, long identified with specific forms and customs and doctrines, have come at last to seem quite unsubstantial. A rising cosmopolitanism perhaps has undone the first, sensationalism or naturalism the second, and mingled ritualism and secularism the third. But however unsubstantial all three may appear in consequence, they are nevertheless retained as still useful, as means to some end, being at least good things to wear or to assume in any way, and from the change, though it appear so like decline, the community in the end is most decidedly enriched.
How can this be? In answer, let us beard the very king of the race of the conventionalists and utilitarians in his forbidding den. Machiavelli, with his teaching that the end always justifies the means, and his open advice to the leader who would be successful, to make a point of at least seeming loyal and good and pious, shows a typical mingling of the sceptic and the utilitarian in sacred things. Moreover, what Machiavelli taught was also common practice in his time, and soon became a principle of brilliant statesmanship all over Europe. And to add meaning to his case by associating it with others, conspicuously in Descartes’ time, as we have observed, and also in Athens at the time of the Sophists, and in Jerusalem when the Pharisees flourished, the same standpoint was much in vogue; while in our own times we do not need to look far to find it. Education, social life, politics, religion abound in it, for the tribe of the Machiavellists is no more a lost tribe than it is one that began with him whose name it bears. If the name is too offensive to some by reason of its connection with a particular character and a particular period in Italian history, for Machiavellism they may substitute institutionalism, certainly a more innocent term at first sight; but the offensiveness, though hidden, or half-hidden, still remains a part of the fact with which we have to deal. The meaning of institutionalism is just that of some asserted end justifying any available means, and so under cover of its peculiar conceits sanctioning violence. Watch any institution and see how one or another of life’s objects of devotion is become, or fast becoming, a mere utility. The institution makes life mechanical, and doing this it is as treacherous as it seems loyal to the treasured things of life, the developed ideas and established customs; it is even as sceptical towards them as it seems faithful; and in the spirit, if not in the letter, of Machiavellism it shows them no longer implicitly worshipped, but in use, which is to say, “put to the bankers,” and so robbed of their character of sacred treasures. And as for Machiavelli himself, it may be worth while to remember that with all his offensiveness he has undoubtedly been very much maligned, and that to any student of history he seems only a very apt though an unpleasantly outspoken pupil of the most powerful institution of his time—the Roman Church—for which things moral and religious had certainly become effective instruments of very worldly ambitions. So in Machiavellism or in institutionalism, the name now being indifferent to us, we see worship passing into use; we see sacred things become secular, or things supposed final becoming only instrumental; and we see, therefore, what appears like loss or decline.1
But can there be anything besides loss or decline? This again is our question, and the answer now comes quick and decisive, whether we are thinking of Machiavelli or the Sophists, of the old-time Pharisees, or of those in our own life. Decline and even fall never tell the whole story of anything, and just because they mean use, even secular use. That men must worship is surely true, but also men must and do use, and the use, in spite of the strain of the offence and resistance which it is sure to arouse, brings profit always. Use, secular use, may imply sacrifice of the letter or the established form, but it always leads to liberation of the spirit. In scepticism, therefore, and the coincident conventionalism and utilitarianism towards sacred things, in the institutionalism which harbours all these, though often darkly and secretly, we may always read, what in truth history has again and again exemplified, the throes of birth, the birth of the spirit. Must it not be that any visible institution, be it ecclesiastical or industrial or political or educational or ceremonial, just because an institution designed in some way to serve an active, growing life, is always an outgrown, falling institution? As in the case of the Roman Church in the days of Machiavelli, an institution upon its establishment actually justifies its enemies by its own practices, while the enemies, so justified, do but lay it bare, exposing its hidden thoughts and ways, forcing reform upon it, and perhaps in the end themselves “remaining to pray.”
So is the spirit born, and so do we see in the personnel of society what a wonderful triumvirate, working for the real growth of human life with a power that nothing can resist, is made by the avowed sceptic, the loyalist, always secretly conventional and utilitarian, and the reformer, the great spiritual leader. Even Machiavelli in his most offensive pronouncements must have felt something between his lines which expressed would have transfigured their meaning, not to say also his reputation, greatly, and, consciously or unconsciously, he was certainly a party to the development of what is best in modern life. As for the Sophists, whether we see them as sceptics or conventionalists, did they not have Socrates among them? Between them and him, when all is said, the difference was only that between talent and genius, between great formal ingenuity, which always means opportunism, and really vital insight, which, shattering opportunism with its own weapons, means loyalty, not to existing forms, but to the spirit dwelling in the forms. Much in the same way, too, the Jewish Pharisees had Jesus, a contemporary, who did but recognize and earnestly teach what they were really practising, namely, the utility of the law, or the law for man, not man for the law. Only what for them was merely a selfish opportunity, absorbed as they were in the vested interests of their time and generation, was manifest to him—who was a genius and who used for real gain the talent which they hoarded—as a great spiritual fact, as a universal truth, bringing opportunity and freedom to all men under all law, not to some men under one law. Thus they were institutionalists; he, by merely turning their narrowness into a principle of all life, became a reformer, and, indebted to them as he was, he could forgive them even when they opposed him. Genius always forgives; the spirit always recalls and cherishes the letter that has given it birth.
So the institution as an historical fact, whether we see it with the eyes of Machiavelli or with those of a pope, with the eyes of Protagoras or with those of Socrates, with the eyes of the Pharisees or with those of Christ, may show worship turning into use, the sacred becoming secular, but it shows also the life of society becoming enriched; it shows investment for future gain; it shows doubt, not destroying anything, but achieving only what is real; it shows the life of the spirit.