Page:Critical Woodcuts (1926).pdf/265

 In the midst of its grobianism there are glimmers of better things. Mr. Mencken, to be sure, still attacks mob psychology with the weapons of the mob. He roars at the populace in the voice of the populace. He still identifies God with the universe, with nature, with the "cosmic process." And his popularity he has won in great part by a demagogic encouragement of the cosmic process, by hurrahing for the liberation in the populace of its natural grobianism. But his radical skepticism has got him half way out of that Serbonian bog. In a brief theological paragraph, entitled "The Goal," he announces that "the central aim of civilization, it must be plain, is simply to defy and correct the obvious intent of God!" He is right. So long as he defines God as he does, he is right. So long as he identifies God with unimproved Nature, it must be the central aim of civilization "to defy and correct the obvious intent of God." This God is careless, improvident, and lacks a heart.

If he follows that clew, he will inevitably return to the reality of religion, poetry and romantic love and to the sense of their necessity in the culture of a civilized minority. If he follows that clew he may eventually make plain that his faith in science, his allegiance to reason, his passion for music, his devotion to letters and learning and his increasing abomination for mass action and all impositions of brutal force—all the things that he cares most for are the religion, are the poetry of romantic lovers, created by them and held in existence by their fidelity. If Mr. Mencken does that, he will remind me still more of Heine and will strengthen his claim to the sword of a Liberator.