Enquiries into Religion and Culture (The Works of Christopher Dawson)

III The World Crisis and the English Tradition

27 iii The World Crisis and the English Tradition The crisis that has arisen in the modern world during the post-war period is not merely an economic one. it involves the future of Western culture as a whole, and, consequently, the fate of humanity. But it is not a simple or uniform phenomenon. it is not confined to any one state or any one continent. it is world-wide in its incidence and shows itself in a different form in every different society. the problem of russia is essentially different from that of america, and that of germany from that of England. and yet all are inextricably interwoven in an immense and complicated tangle which politicians and economists are vainly struggling to unravel. Hence it is useless to hope to find the solution of the world crisis in some simple remedy that can be applied to every society indifferently. the problem is a real one, and it cannot be solved by the manipulation of credit and currency. it is a question of how to adjust the traditional forms of social and political order which are the result of a long and gradual process of historical evolution to the new economic forces that have transformed the world during the last century, and above all during the last forty years. thus each people has to find the individual solution that is in conformity with its own sociological and historical structure. and nowhere is this more necessary than in England, for while the English situation is one of the key positions of the world crisis, it has no exact analogy with anything that exists in any other country. it shows a peculiarly abrupt contrast between a highly individual national culture and an ex- 28 Enquiries ceptionally highly developed system of world trade and finance. of all countries England is at once the most national and insular in its cultural tradition and the most cosmopolitan in its economic and imperial position. in this it resembles rome, the peasant state that became the organiser of a world empire and the centre of a cosmopolitan civilisation . and as the development of roman culture was late and backward in comparison with the Hellenic world, so was it with the English national culture as compared with that of continental Europe. the development of a native English culture was checked by the norman Conquest, and during the best part of the Middle ages England was under the dominion of an alien culture that had its roots across the channel. England first began to become herself in the fourteenth century , when the mediaeval unity was passing away, and it was only in the three centuries that followed the renaissance and the reformation that the English national culture acquired its characteristic form. at that time civilisation on the Continent was following in a remarkable way in the footsteps of the great Mediterranean civilisation of the past. renaissance italy inherited the traditions of Hellenism, while spain and Baroque austria and the France of louis XiV inherited the roman Byzantine tradition of state absolutism and sacred monarchy. But in England there is no room for such comparisons. Partly, though not entirely, as a result of the reformation, she remained apart from the main current of European life, following her own path and jealously guarding against any influence from outside, somewhat after the fashion of Japan in the Far East during this very period. Her development was, in fact, the exact opposite to that of germany during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, open as the latter was to all the cultural and political currents in Europe, receiving French influence from across the rhine, italian influence through austria, and swedish influence from the Baltic. it was this accentuation of her island position which was the essential condition of England’s achievement. she was a little world, secure behind the guardian barrier of the narrow seas, the most peaceful land in Europe, almost the only spot in the world that was free from the constant menace of war and invasion. Hence there was a general re- World Crisis and the English Tradition 29 laxation of tension in the social organism. there was no need for the rigid centralisation, the standing armies, the bureaucratic organisation, which on the Continent were absolutely necessary for national survival. and so, while in other countries culture concentrated itself in cities and in the courts of kings, in England...