Page:Future of England - Peel.djvu/210

198 with her steam-roller of democratic right, in reality avails little, for, if she is levelling out caste on the surface, it is only tightening down below. Though India may be giving ground nominally before the materialistic jehad, yet perhaps her retreat will only be on the first line of her entrenchments. She will fall back on the inner keep of her mysticism, upon the central fortalice of her esoteric faith. In the last resort of battle she will turn the stream of her despondency upon Europe, and will open upon our optimism the dykes of her immemorial despair.

Beyond this, the thinker may ponder on a still more audacious hypothesis. If we will kill their faith, they may try to kill our faith too. They will have no Metz. They will sally out for a religious sortie in force. They will argue that this one life on which, in our view, all our future status hinges, is, to them, more scientifically, but a link in the long chain. We desire consciousness; they would be rid of it. We presuppose, they deny, the soul. We anchor ourselves on a Personal Godhead; to them such personality of the divine is the most repugnant of heresies. As for immortal life, they draw back with horror from its torture or its bliss. Such is the arch of meditation through which they would have us gaze on the vista of reality. Such is the height, terraced by wisdom or by folly, which they would have us tread. Such is the forbidden opium of metaphysics which they will export West.

Thus at last would be realised the old prophecy