In other words, we have not found St. George; but we have found
the Dragon. We have found in the desert, as I have said,
the bones of the monster we did not believe in, more plainly than
the footprints of the hero we did. We have found them not because we
expected to find them, for our progressive minds look to the promise
of something much brighter and even better; not because we wanted
to find them, for our modern mood, as well as our human nature,
is entirely in favour of more amiable and reassuring things;
not because we thought it even possible to find them, for we really
thought it impossible so far as we ever thought of it at all.
We have found them because they are _there_; and we are bound
to come on them even by falling over them. It is Huxley's
method that has upset Huxley's conclusion. As I have said,
that conclusion itself is completely reversed. What he thought
indisputable is disputed; and what he thought impossible is possible.
Instead of Christian morals surviving in the form of humanitarian morals,
Christian demonology has survived in the form of heathen demonology.
But it has not survived by scholarly traditionalism in the style
of Gladstone, but rather by obstinate objective curiosity according
to the advice of Huxley.
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