fight for old errors as if they were new truths. He has somehow heard
of certain shallow simplifications, and imagines that we have never
heard of them. And, as I have said, his limited, but very sincere lunacy
concentrates chiefly in a desire to destroy two ideas, the twin root ideas
of rational society. The first is the idea of record and promise: the
second is the idea of reciprocity.

It is plain that the promise, or extension of responsibility through time,
is what chiefly distinguishes us, I will not say from savages, but from
brutes and reptiles. This was noted by the shrewdness of the Old Testament,
when it summed up the dark irresponsible enormity of Leviathan in the
words, "Will he make a pact with thee?" The promise, like the wheel, is
unknown in Nature: and is the first mark of man. Referring only to human
civilisation, it may be said with seriousness that in the beginning was
the Word. The vow is to the man what the song is to the bird, or the bark
to the dog; his voice, whereby he is known. Just as a man who cannot keep
an appointment is not fit even to fight a duel, so the man who cannot keep
an appointment with himself is not sane enough even for suicide. It is not
easy to mention anything on which the enormous apparatus of human life can
be said to depend. But if it depends on anything, it is on this frail cord,
flung from the forgotten hills of yesterday to the invisible mountains of
to-morrow. On that solitary string hangs everything from Armageddon to an
almanac, from a successful revolution to a return ticket. On that solitary
string the Barbarian is hacking heavily, with a sabre which is fortunately
blunt.

Anyone can see this well enough, merely by reading the last negotiations
between London and Berlin. The Prussians had made a new discovery in
international politics: that it may often be convenient to make a promise;
and yet curiously inconvenient to keep it. They were charmed, in their