This desire produces an unwillingness to
abandon the Eastern policy, although it is realized that, until it is
abandoned, peace with capitalist England is impossible. I do not know
whether there are some to whom the thought occurs that if England were
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.
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