to embark on revolution we should become willing to abandon India to
the Russians. But I am certain that the converse thought occurs,
namely that, if India could be taken from us, the blow to imperialist
feeling might lead us to revolution. In either case, the two policies,
of revolution in the West and conquest (disguised as liberation of
oppressed peoples) in the East, work in together, and dovetail into a
strongly coherent whole.

Bolshevism as a social phenomenon is to be reckoned as a religion, not
as an ordinary political movement. The important and effective mental
attitudes to the world may be broadly divided into the religious and
the scientific. The scientific attitude is tentative and piecemeal,
believing what it finds evidence for, and no more. Since Galileo, the
scientific attitude has proved itself increasingly capable of
ascertaining important facts and laws, which are acknowledged by all
competent people regardless of temperament or self-interest or
political pressure. Almost all the progress in the world from the
earliest times is attributable to science and the scientific temper;
almost all the major ills are attributable to religion.

By a religion I mean a set of beliefs held as dogmas, dominating the
conduct of life, going beyond or contrary to evidence, and inculcated
by methods which are emotional or authoritarian, not intellectual. By
this definition, Bolshevism is a religion: that its dogmas go beyond
or contrary to evidence, I shall try to prove in what follows. Those
who accept Bolshevism become impervious to scientific evidence, and
commit intellectual suicide. Even if all the doctrines of Bolshevism
were true, this would still be the case, since no unbiased examination
of them is tolerated. One who believes, as I do, that the free
intellect is the chief engine of human progress, cannot but be