THE END OF AN AGE

Dean WR Inge (1860-1954) – as he was known – was one of the great thinkers of his time, also a public intellectual publishing many essays and articles in newspapers. He was variously a King's Scholar at Eton – where he taught for a few years – a Fellow in Latin and Greek at Hertford College, Oxford, Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, then in 1911 until his retirement in 1934, Dean of St Paul's Cathedral. I have a whole shelf of his books in my library in Scotland, and I often go back to his Gifford Lectures, The Philosophy of Plotinus (in two volumes) where I found two quotations from the great mystical philosopher that I frequently use: ‘We are within a reality that is also within us;’ and ‘Remembering is for those who have forgotten’ – a classic statement of Platonism. Inge himself was a Christian Platonist, and one of his other books is a history of the English Platonists; in 1899, he had already published Christian Mysti- cism, which I read many years ago. I spent some time in my library in September, and was having a look at the books on the Inge shelf when I came across The End of an Age, which I had not previously read and had evidently picked up in a second-hand bookshop – probably in Cornwall. This volume, published in 1949, speaks directly to our con- dition with its essays on the end of an age, the curse of war, and the twilight of freedom. Inge had lived through two world wars, the Russian revolution, Hitler's Nazism, Mussolini's Fascism, Stalin's Russia, the occupation of France and the demise of the League of Nations (the essay referring to this seems to have been written prior to 1945). In the title essay, he begins his consideration of many of the leading thinkers on culture with Oswald Spengler, whose epoch-defining book, The Decline of the West, appeared in 1917. He thought that western culture had reached its winter phase, where democra- cy must give away to efficiency Caesarism. Nicholas Berdyaeff, whose books I also have in my library, felt that ‘there is some- thing shaken and shattered in the soul of modern man’ (Inge's paraphrase), our faith in humanity is shaken to its founda- tions, and we are living in a time of spiritual decadence. He thought that the Enlightenment was a pale reflection of the Renaissance, ‘which was finally killed by the mechanisation of modern civilisation.’ The Renaissance was a strong affirma- tion of our creative individuality, while the destruction of liberty during the 1930s meant that we had become deperson- alised, which is also an effect of scale and mechanisation. I also have some of the books of the Catholic philosopher Christopher Dawson, along with those of Jacques Maritain, writing at the same time. The idea of progress is based on that of human perfectibility, and was a strong faith during the 19th century. Interestingly, Dawson argued for ‘decen- tralisation and free association rather than the unitary State and bureaucratic control.’ This is the kind of bottom-up community approach that I call ‘glocalisation’ in contrast to centralised and increasingly technocratic globalisation. The planned society advocated by the Fabians is inherently authoritarian and a manifestation of McGilchrist's left hem- isphere disposition for manipulation and control. Dawson was concerned about the development of what he called a democratic despotism, and he felt that ‘the long process of emancipation which began at the Renaissance has come to an end; a sharp reaction in favour of control has set in.’ (1939!) Moreover, he prophetically stated that science has become the servant of power, and the current equivalent of the repressive secret police is digital surveillance and online censorship. Along with other thinkers – and the Stoics be- fore him (p. 152) - he emphasised the importance of natural law and the discernment of good and evil, in the absence of which – on the ‘realist’ Machiavellian principle that there

is no absolute right and wrong in public affairs – the very basis of international law and agreements is undermined. Inge also draws attention to Aldous Huxley's Ends and Means (1937), which I regard as an extraordinarily impor- tant book. He puts forward the ideal of disinterestedness, where supreme virtue is always based on the belief in a spiritual reality underlying the phenomenal world, ‘and imparting to it whatever value or significance it possesses.’ (p. 40) Huxley insisted that political and economic reforms were inadequate, and also wrote that without charity tech- nological progress merely provides us with a more efficient way of going backwards (!). Along with Pitirim Sorokin, he insisted that ‘Violence can achieve nothing except the results of violence – counter-violence, suspicion and resentment, and among the perpetrators a tendency to use more violence’ – a lesson we are still far from learning. For Huxley, war and preparations for war destroy liberty, stimulate senseless ha- tred and fear, and endanger civilisation itself – we are now at this precipice due to persistent geopolitical hubris. His view rests on the theory of the ultimate nature of reality, which he elaborated further in The Perennial Philosophy (1945). Inge summarises (and this is my own view): ‘There are absolute eternal values, in which ultimate reality is knowable by us. To follow the good, to reveal the true, to love the beautiful – this is the whole duty of man.’ (p. 42) Inge writes further on these themes in his essay The Curse of War. In The Sickness of Christendom, Inge contrasts the religion of authority and obedience with the prophetic religion of the Spirit, which Jesus himself lived and died for. After Constan- tine's intervention in 325, the power of love gave way to the love of power, a theocratic empire where ‘political Catholicism is intolerant in principle.’ For Inge, ‘essential Christianity is in- vulnerable… God reveals himself to the heart,’ those in contact with their soul-centre. We are called to the imitation of Christ; ‘the law of love is supreme in all relations of life’, soul must become a spirit – ‘the hidden man of the heart, the Christ in us, which may be but is not yet ourselves.’ (p. 103) This is the Quakers' Inner Light. Inge also points out that mystical and heretical sects such as the medieval Cathars and Bogomils stood up against the violence of the Crusades as an exercise of ecclesiastical power, insisting that they were returning to the original Gospel. The important point is that they sought to embody the same prophetic spirit as Jesus himself. Space permits only a few further remarks on the essay The Twilight of Freedom – which I think speaks especially to our time. Liberty based on natural rights and our equality in the eyes of God, something flatly denied by worshippers of the secular State, and is under threat from intolerance and authoritarianism of both left and right. In his famous book, Liberty, which I read in Grenoble in 1973, John Stuart Mill discusses how freedom requires restraining anti-social con- duct, but he is emphatic that liberty of conscience and liberty of speech are the foundation of liberty (p. 157). He was con- cerned even then about the increasing power of the State. Inge quotes Einstein to the effect that only free people can create the works which make life worth living, and that we must resist the suppression of intellectual and individual freedom. Inge was already aware of how propaganda favours centralised power, noting that ‘the progress of freedom is obstructed quite as much by the many who like to obey as by the few who wish to rule’ – an observation only too pertinent in the light of government policy during Covid. The modern technocratic police state aspires to be a digital Panopticon with far-reaching powers to suppress dissidents and dissent – those who choose to think for themselves. FA Hayek in his book The Road to Serfdom upheld what he regarded as

moral and eternal values: ‘liberty and independence, truth and intellectual honesty, peace and democracy, and respect for the individual.’ (p. 173) He warned against creeping col- lectivism with its inherently centralistic tendencies. For me, reflecting on what I've written above, cultural re- newal can only come about through a widespread spiritual renaissance and awakening, a return to the deep spiritual centre within us all, a reaffirmation of sacred and eternal values, a commitment to community, to our common hu- manity, to love, wisdom, truth, justice and goodness – the five principles of Peter Deunov. This was also well expressed over 50 years ago by Arnold Toynbee, about whom I wrote in the previous issue: ‘I do not believe that the goal of true and lasting peace can be reached without a world-wide spiritual revolution. By this I mean the overcoming of self-centredness, in both individuals and communities, by getting into communion with the spiritual presence behind the universe and by bringing our wills into harmony with it.’ In a speech to the US Congress in 1993, the Czech pres- ident Vaclav Havel echoed these words when he said that ‘Without a global revolution in the sphere of human con- sciousness, nothing will change for the better in our being as humans, and the catastrophe toward which our world is headed….will be unavoidable….We are still incapable of understanding that the only genuine backbone of our actions – if they are to be moral – is responsibility: responsibility to something higher than my family, my country, my firm, my success, responsibility to the order of being where all our ac- tions are indelibly recorded and where, and only where, they will be judged.’ So the question before us is what contribution we can make in our circle of influence to a worldwide spiritual revolution and to a global revolution in the sphere of con- sciousness – this is now a planetary evolutionary imperative.