Page:The venture; an annual of art and literature.djvu/21

 Imperialist would be pleased if he came home in the evening from business and found his wife eight feet high.

The dangers upon the side of this transcendental insularity are no doubt considerable. There lies in it primarily the great danger of the thing called idolatry, the worship of the object apart from or against the idea it represents. But he must surely have had a singular experience who thinks that this insular or idolatrous fault is the particular fault of one age. We are not likely to suffer from any painful resemblance to the men of Thermopylae, the Zealots, who raged round the fall of Jerusalem, to the thunderbolts of Eastern faith and valour who hurled themselves on the guns of Lord Kitchener. If we are rushing upon any destruction it is not, at least, upon this.

G. K. CHESTERTON.