E-text prepared by Tim Lindell, Martin Pettit,
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
()
from page images generously made available by
Internet Archive
(https://archive.org)
| Note: | Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/ploughsharepruni00hous |
PLOUGHSHARE AND PRUNING-HOOK
PLOUGHSHARE
AND
PRUNING-HOOK
Ten Lectures on Social Subjects
BY
LAURENCE HOUSMAN
THE SWARTHMORE PRESS LTD.
(formerly trading as Headley Bros. Publishers Ltd.)
72 OXFORD STREET, LONDON, W1
FIRST PRINTED SEPTEMBER, 1919
PREFACE
These papers, originally given as lectures, make no pretence to thesolution of the social or political problems with which they areconcerned. They indicate rather a certain standpoint or attitude ofmind from which these and like questions may be viewed, one which mayfind acceptance with only a few of my readers. Even those who arefriendly may consider it too idealistic; those who are adverse willemploy other and harder terms.
With regard to that standpoint, while not wishing to avert criticism,I would like to secure understanding; and if a few words of generalapplication can make that more possible it may be well to offer themhere.
Whether these lectures were primarily intended for the pulpit orthe platform it would be hard to say. Most of them have been givenin both places: and their drawback to some who heard them in theformer was (I have been told) their occasional tendency to make thecongregation laugh. That in itself is no special recommendation; ittakes so much less to make a congregation laugh than an audience.Between the pulpit and the platform there is bound to be a difference;even the fact that the preacher is normally immune from interjectionor debate tends to give to his statements a complacency which[Pg vi] is notalways intellectually justified. And I remember well that two of theselectures, after having been accepted in a church with only momentarybreaches of decorum, aroused elsewhere a storm of criticism and rebukewhich taught me, if I did not know it before, that a preacher occupiesa very privileged position, and can turn a church, if he chooses, intoa place of licence which elsewhere will not be accorded him.
But there is one point of difference between the pulpit and theplatform, between the exposition of religion and politics, which Ihave never been able to understand. After all, in both cases, youare dealing with and making your appeal to human nature; you maybe inciting it to virtue, you may be exposing its imperfectionsand its faults. Why is it, then, that in the religious appeal“conversion”—change of heart—stands for almost everything, whilst onthe political platform it is hardly reckoned with? It is so much easierand safer to tell a congregation t