Tuesday, April 12, 2011

"...and as people object (why I cannot imagine) to theology and animal spirits being mixed up..."

I feel vaguely impelled to apologize for my article last week, which was, as far as I remember, an incoherent rhapsody about a pig. The truth is that I had been occupied all day in writing a theological article for a heavy and correct Quarterly; and as people object (why I cannot imagine) to theology and animal spirits being mixed up, one has to take those two essential elements and turn about. The serious magazines, without having any convictions to speak of, are just sufficiently stern or bigoted to forbid irreverence. The frivolous magazines are even more stern and biogted; for they forbid reverence. They actually veto the instinctive mention of mighty and holy things. Thus the sincere journalist is kept constantly in a state of roaring inaction; having been forced to make his theology dry he plunges with ardour into pure folly; and then, having elaborately and seriously played the fool, he plunges with a far more boyish ardour into the pleasures of theology.

-May 15, 1909, Illustrated London News

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