3.16. A COMMENT.
The preceding section has been criticized by a friend who writes:--
"In religious matters apparent assent produces false unanimity. There is
no convention about these things; if there were they would not exist. On
the contrary, the only way to get perfunctory tests and so forth
abrogated, is for a sufficient number of people to refuse to take them.
It is in this case as in every other; secession is the beginning of a
new integration. The living elements leave the dead or dying form and
gradually create in virtue of their own combinations a new form more
suited to present things. There is a formative, a creative power in
sincerity and also in segregation itself. And the new form, the new
species produced by variation and segregation will measure itself and
its qualities with the old one. The old one will either go to the wall,
accept the new one and be renewed by it, or the new one will itself be
pushed out of existence if the old one has more vitality and is better
adapted to the circumstances. This process of variation, competition and
selection, also of intermarriage between equally vital and equally
adapted varieties, is after all the process by which not only races
exist but all human thoughts."
So my friend, who I think is altogether too strongly swayed by
biological analogies. But I am thinking not of the assertion of opinions
primarily but of co-operation with an organization with which, save for
the matter of the test, one may agree. Secession may not involve the
development of a new and better moral organization; it may simply mean
the suicide of one's public aspect. There may be no room or no need of a
rival organization. To secede from State employment, for example, is not
to create the beginnings of a new State, however many--short of a
revolution--may secede with you. It is to become a disconnected private
person, and throw up one's social side.
