Nature herself dictates. Be self-confident and self-assertive then, not
meek. Remember that the weakness of your neighbour is your own
opportunity. Take care of number one and let the rest take care of
themselves. A man does not go into the stock-exchange or into commerce
in order to exhibit Christian virtues there, but business qualities. In
a word, Christianity, so far as it affects material or commercial or
political progress, is a weakness rather than a strength, an enemy
rather than a friend.

(ii) But if, on the one side, the gentleness and non-resistance
inculcated by Christianity form the material of one charge against the
Church, on the other side, no less, she is blamed for her violence and
intransigeance. Catholics are not yielding enough, we are told, to be
true followers of the meek Prophet of Galilee, not gentle enough to
inherit the blessing which He pronounced. On the contrary there are no
people so tenacious, so obstinate, and even so violent as these
professed disciples of Jesus Christ. See the way, for example, in which
they cling to and insist upon their rights; the obstacles they raise,
for example, to reasonable national schemes of education or to a
sensible system in the divorce courts. And above all, consider their
appalling and brutal violence as exhibited in such institutions as that
of the Index and Excommunication, the fierceness with which they insist
upon absolute and detailed obedience to authority, the ruthlessness with
which they cast out from their company those who will not pronounce
their shibboleths. It is true that in these days they can only enforce
their claims by spiritual threatenings and penalties, but history shows
us that they would do more if they could. The story of the racks and the
fires of the Inquisition shows plainly enough that the Church once used,
and therefore, presumably, would use again if she could, carnal weapons
in her spiritual warfare. Can anything be more unlike the gentle Spirit