THE INCONCLUSIVENESS OF FEELINGS 427
left wondering how an eighteenth-century philosopher who was a merci-
less critic of 'Gothic* credulity could ever have come to harbour so in-
credible a belief as this. The answer must be that a conventional Chris-
tian Weltanschauung in Bossuet's vein, which Gibbon had repudiated on
the level of his consciousness, had taken its revenge upon him by dis-
appearing underground in order to. evolve a secularized caricature of
itself out of the sump of an outraged Subconscious Psyche.

This irrational eighteenth-century complacency about the present
state and future prospects of a latter-day Western Society was not easily
disturbed, though History lost no time in retorting to Gibbon's ponti-
fical sentence of expulsion by recurring as inconscionably as Nature
herself.1 Gibbon had fallen into the naive observational error of mis-
taking for the Millennium a spell of low ideological temperature (durabat
circa A.D. 1660-1792) between two paroxysms of savage fratricidal war-
fare, owing to the lucky accident that his magnum opus happened to have
been on the stocks when this low temperature had been at its nadir. The
twenty years2 (circa 1768-87) during which he had been writing The
History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire had elapsed within
the lull (durabat AJD. 1763-92) between the martial aftermath of one
general war—the most temperate and undecisive contest of its kind in
Modern Western history—and the onset of another general war into
which the newly kindled fire of Democracy was to put an ominously
fervent drive.3 Yet the experience of the General War of A.D. 1792-1815
and its aftermath did not save a latter-day Western bourgeoisie that was
born into a subsequent lull (durabat AJD. 1871—1914) from hugging
Gibbon's error; and, even after the great cataclysm of A.D. 1914-18,
Gibbon's eulogy of a Modern Western international anarchy was re-
edited in the form of an apologia by a distinguished English historian
and public servant of the prediluvian generation, Sir James Headlam-
Morley (vivebat AJX 1863-1929)—as witness the following passage in an
address delivered by hi™ in April 1924.

'In our analysis of this [Western] culture the first great fact that we will
notice is that, though undoubtedly there is a common history and common
civilisation for all Western Europe, the people were not joined in any
formal political union, nor has the country ever been subjected to one
common government. For a moment, indeed, it looked as though Charle-
magne would establish his authority over the whole area; that hope, as we
know, was to be disappointed; his attempt to create a new empire failed,
as all subsequent attempts have failed. Again and again attempts were
made by the later Empire, by the rulers of Spain and France, to unite the
whole of Western Europe in one great state or empire. Always we find the
same thing: the appeal to local patriotism and personal liberty inspires a
resistance which breaks down the efforts of every conqueror. And so there
has been as a permanent characteristic of Europe that which critics call
anarchy; for the absence of a common rule means struggle, fighting, and
war, a ceaseless confusion between rival units of government [contending
with one another] for territory and predominance.

1 Horace: Epistulaf, Book I, Ep. z, 1. 24.

2 See The History of the DecRae and Fall of the Roman Empire, chap. Ixsi, adfinem.

3 See IV. Iv. 150-1.