distress because in a gay moment I once called Edmund Burke
an atheist
A cultivated Conservative friend of mine once exhibited great
distress because in a gay moment I once called Edmund Burke
an atheist. I need scarcely say that the remark lacked
something of biographical precision; it was meant to.
Burke was certainly not an atheist in his conscious cosmic theory,
though he had not a special and flaming faith in God,
like Robespierre. Nevertheless, the remark had reference to a truth
which it is here relevant to repeat. I mean that in the quarrel
over the French Revolution, Burke did stand for the atheistic attitude
and mode of argument, as Robespierre stood for the theistic.
The Revolution appealed to the idea of an abstract and
eternal justice, beyond all local custom or convenience.
If there are commands of God, then there must be rights of man.
Here Burke made his brilliant diversion; he did not attack
the Robespierre doctrine with the old mediaeval doctrine of
jus divinum (which, like the Robespierre doctrine, was theistic),
he attacked it with the modern argument of scientific relativity;
in short, the argument of evolution. He suggested that
humanity was everywhere molded by or fitted to its environment
and institutions; in fact, that each people practically got,
not only the tyrant it deserved, but the tyrant it ought to have.
'I know nothing of the rights of men,' he said, 'but I know something
of the rights of Englishmen.' There you have the essential atheist.
His argument is that we have got some protection by natural
accident and growth; and why should we profess to think beyond it,
for all the world as if we were the images of God! We are born
under a House of Lords, as birds under a house of leaves;
we live under a monarchy as niggers live under a tropic sun;
it is not their fault if they are slaves, and it is not ours
if we are snobs. Thus, long before Darwin struck his great blow
at democracy, the essential of the Darwinian argument had been
already urged against the French Revolution. Man, said Burke
in effect, must adapt himself to everything, like an animal;
he must not try to alter everything, like an angel.
The last weak cry of the pious, pretty, half-artificial optimism
and deism of the eighteenth century carne in the voice
of Sterne, saying, 'God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb.'
And Burke, the iron evolutionist, essentially answered,
'No; God tempers the shorn lamb to the wind.' It is the lamb
that has to adapt himself. That is, he either dies or becomes
a particular kind of lamb who likes standing in a draught.
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