it. But even in this case it would be useless, because incapable
of spreading. Christianity is a step in moral evolution which is
independent of any individual preacher. If Jesus had never
existed (and that he ever existed in any other sense than that in
which Shakespear's Hamlet existed has been vigorously questioned)
Tolstoy would have thought and taught and quarrelled with the
Greek Church all the same. Their creed has been fragmentarily
practised to a considerable extent in spite of the fact that the
laws of all countries treat it, in effect, as criminal. Many of
its advocates have been militant atheists. But for some reason
the imagination of white mankind has picked out Jesus of Nazareth
as THE Christ, and attributed all the Christian doctrines to him;
and as it is the doctrine and not the man that matters, and, as,
besides, one symbol is as good as another provided everyone
attaches the same meaning to it, I raise, for the moment, no
question as to how far the gospels are original, and how far they
consist of Greek and Chinese interpolations. The record that
Jesus said certain things is not invalidated by a demonstration
that Confucius said them before him. Those who claim a literal
divine paternity for him cannot be silenced by the discovery that
the same claim was made for Alexander and Augustus. And I am not
just now concerned with the credibility of the gospels as records
of fact; for I am not acting as a detective, but turning our
modern lights on to certain ideas and doctrines in them which
disentangle themselves from the rest because they are flatly
contrary to common practice, common sense, and common belief, and
yet have, in the teeth of dogged incredulity and recalcitrance,
produced an irresistible impression that Christ, though rejected
by his posterity as an unpractical dreamer, and executed by his
contemporaries as a dangerous anarchist and blasphemous madman,