ENDS AND MEANS
or Fascist than Catholic. In the past, the fetters of Christian
ritualism may have held people back from enlightenment;
but these fetters did at least serve as strong ties binding
individuals to the body of Christian society. To-day they
have, to a great extent, outlived this social function.
Indeed, it would be almost true to say that preoccupation
with traditional religious rites and ceremonies is some-
thing which actually separates people from the society in
the midst of which they live. There are only too many
men and women who think that, if they have scrupulously
repeated the prescribed phrases, made the proper gestures
and observed the traditional taboos, they are excused
from bothering about anything else. For these people,
the performance of traditional custom has become a sub-
stitute for moral effort and intelligence. They' fly from
the problems of real life into symbolical ceremonial; they
neglect their duties towards themselves, their neighbours
afid their God in order to give idolatrous worship to some
traditionally hallowed object, to play liturgical charades
or go through some piece of ancient mummery. Let me
cite a recent example of this. In the early autumn of 1936
the London -Times recorded the fact that, in deference to
religious sentiment, flying-boats were henceforward not to
be allowed to come down on the Sea of Galilee. This is
a characteristic instance of the way in which preoccupation
with sacred objects acts as a fetter holding men back, not
only from personal enlightenment, but even from a rational
consideration of the facts of contemporary reality. Here
is a * religious sentiment' which feels itself deeply offended
if flying machines settle on a certain hallowed sheet of
water, but wliich (to judge by the published utterances of
Anglican deans and bishops) does not" find anything
1 specially shocking in the thought that these same flying
machines may be used to drop fire, poison and high-
explosives upon the inhabitants of unfortified to^tis. If
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