Belloc constantly kept himself engaged with things. His understanding of the Catholic tradition escapes the purely symbolic and academic order. What he sees in the river valleys and inns of Europe _is_ symbolic of a great historical effort stamped with the City of God; but what is so stamped is good in itself. If you would understand the past that has made you and grasp something of the spirit of its religion, Belloc urges that you go to Arles, for example; but above all, _see_ Arles. Belloc’s Grizzlebeard, the custodian of tradition, is one with his Sailor, the man of “the five senses.” If his Grizzlebeard were without a Sailor, Belloc’s traditionalism would have stiffened into something Egyptian, mummified. But since he is of the West himself, of an order which has been eminently practical and concrete as well as visionary, these two remain one. To exemplify the nature of tradition, Belloc finds his best instance to be a seaman’s knot. If his Sailor had had no Grizzlebeard, then Belloc’s concrete vision and communion with reality would have degenerated into a kind of irrational naturalism. Naturalism is merely an escape into the physical universe, away from burdens which are peculiarly human. It is one of the less healthy offshoots of the fertile tree of Romanticism. Since no man can just wallow in nature for long without reacting in some way, the pure Romantic soon comes up with a view of nature as an irrational force within whose bosom is to be found salvation. The spectacle of D. H. Lawrence comes to mind immediately. The humanist reacts to nature by taming the beast; the Christian humanist tames a Good Beast. But the romantic naturalist attunes himself to the wilderness and finally renounces his social nature. The eighteenth-century City of Man appeared to the early Romantics to be an utter sham. The Age of Reason had run its course, and the intellect had become an intolerable burden. The Romantics tried to escape from their humanity into a physical beyond; having surrendered the reason, they gave themselves up to mythmaking. Mr. Auden has analyzed the peculiar significance of the “sea” and the “desert” for European Romanticism.[33] The “sea” represented the infinite possibilities that urged human nature to break its bond. But this optimism carried within itself the seeds of a subsequent despair. The “desert” represented the possibilities exhausted, the sea dried up. The surrender of the reason and of the corporate wisdom of society ended in giving the spirit over to darkness. The older traditions reminiscent of the Catholic Unity were jettisoned, and the result is known to us all. The _Walpurgisnacht_ orgies under Nazism bore bitter fruit in a cult of blood and soil that just missed wiping out the remnants of Western Christian Europe.