The Little Review, May 1915 (Vol. 2, No. 3)Various
General
The Little Review, May 1915 (Vol. 2, No. 3)
Various
Literature, Modern -- 20th century -- Periodicals
Some time ago, at a meeting of the Book and Play Club, Mr. Bridges
complained against THE LITTLE REVIEW wherein a certain book was
criticised and labeled “naive and dull as the sermon of an Ethical
Society preacher.” “Ladies and gentlemen, _I am naive and dull_!”
protested Mr. Bridges. The reviewer of that unfortunate book, who
happened to be present, expressed his surprise at the complainer’s
unmodest assumption that those epithets were meant for him, as if he had
monopolized the characteristic features of all ethical preachers. Now
that Mr. Bridges’ book is out, the reviewer wishes to make amends and
apologize; verily, the distinguished preacher was justified in claiming
the honorary titles.
The author analyzes his problems through the prism of empirico-pragmatic
rationalism, if such a combination is thinkable. Whether it be
Chesterton’s theological views, or Ellen Key’s marriage theory, or
Maeterlinck’s mysticism, or Sir Lodge’s ideas on immortality—the author
applies to them the same apparatus for testing their validity and truth:
Are they provable? Are they workable? Are they in harmony with Mr.
Bridges’s ethical standard? A few citations will illustrate the critic’s
method and sense of humor.
He takes Gilbert Chesterton very seriously, and indignantly reproves him
for such typically Chestertonian offences as misquoting his opponents,
as paradoxical buffooneries, “unpardonable tricks” and “inexcusable
mistakes”; he offers him a few lessons in theology, explains to him in
an earnest tone the meaning of miracles, the Fall of Man, and finally
comes to the astounding discovery that the readers “will see in Mr.
Chesterton’s amateur apologetics nothing but a psychological curiosity,
to be read, like his novels, for amusement, in some slight degree
perhaps for edification, but not at all for instruction.” Horribile
dictu!
Mr. Bridges’s heaviest cannon are directed against Ellen Key. He totally
destroys her and Shaw’s opposition to marriage with one humorous stroke,
arguing that if that institution were really bad it would either have
destroyed humanity, or the revolted conscience of mankind would have
“risen and annihilated the abominable thing.” This optimistic argument
needs as little comment as the author’s logical conclusion that “free
love” is equivalent to prostitution and that free divorce is synonymous
with adultery, or as these pearls:
I am decidedly of opinion that in a more enlightened age divorce
will be as completely obsolete as duelling is to-day in England.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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