But any modern Christian thus
criticising the Moslem movement will do well to criticise himself
and his world at the same time. For in truth most modern things
are mere movements in the same sense as the Moslem movement.
They are at best fashions, in which one thing is exaggerated
because it has been neglected. They are at worst mere monomanias,
in which everything is neglected that one thing may be exaggerated.
Good or bad, they are alike movements which in their nature can only
move for a certain distance and then stop. Feminism, for instance,
is in its nature a movement, and one that must stop somewhere.
But the Suffragettes no more established a philosophy of the sexes
by their feminism than the Arabs did by their anti-feminism. A woman
can find her home on the hustings even less than in the harem;
but such movements do not really attempt to find a final home for
anybody or anything. Bolshevism is a movement; and in my opinion
a very natural and just movement considered as a revolt against
the crude cruelty of Capitalism. But when we find the Bolshevists
making a rule that the drama "must encourage the proletarian spirit,"
it is obvious that those who say so are not only maniacs but,
what is more to the point here, are monomaniacs.
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