ESSAYS IN PERSUASION

PART

3°8

a heaven which is elsewhere or in progress as asure means towards a heaven upon earth here-after; and if heaven is not elsewhere and nothereafter, it must be here and now or not at all.If there is no moral objective in economic pro-gress, then it follows that we must not sacrifice,even for a day, moral to material advantage—in other words, that we may no longer keepbusiness and religion in separate compartmentsof the soul. In so far as a man’s thoughts arecapable of straying along these paths, he will beready to search with curiosity for something atthe heart of Communism quite different fromthe picture of its outward parts which our Presspaints.

At any rate to me it seems clearer every daythat the moral problem of our age i3 concernedwith the love of money, with the habitual appealto the money motive in nine-tenths of theactivities of life, with the universal striving afterindividual economic security as the prime objectof endeavour, with the social approbation ofmoney as the measure of constructive success,and with the social appeal to the hoarding in-stinct as the foundation of the necessary pro-vision for the family and for the future. Thedecaying religions around us, which have lessand less interest for most people unless it be asan agreeable form of magical ceremonial or ofsocial observance, have lost their moral sig-nificance just because—unlike some of theirearlier versions—they do not touch in the leastdegree on these essential matters. A revolu-