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Gideon said he had heard a dreadful band on the beach, and heard a dreadful fellow proclaiming the Precious Blood. That was Potterism, because it was an appeal to sentiment over the head, or under the head, of reason. Neither the speaker nor any one else probably had the least idea what he was talking about or what he meant.
To go in for journalism or for public life is to put oneself deliberately into the thick of the mess without being able to clean it up. 'After all, said Jane, more moderately, 'it's all a joke. Everything is. The world is. 'A rotten bad joke. 'You think things matter. You take anti-Potterism seriously, as some people take Potterism. 'Things are serious.
He believed at that time that the League of Nations was going to kill war, that the Labour Party were going to kill industrial inequity, that the country was going to kill the Coalition Government, that the Christian Church was going to kill selfishness, that some one was going to kill Horatio Bottomley, and that we were all going to kill Potterism.
They represent Potterism, and Potterism is a wonderful thing. The twins are far too clear-headed to be Potterites in that sense. You really can, on almost any occasion, say how they will act. So they are rather dull, as a study, though amusing enough as companions. But Arthur Gideon is full of twists and turns and surprises.
Potterism plays a game of grab all the time snatches at success in a hurry.... It's greedy, repeated Gideon, thinking it out, watching Jane's firm little sun-browned hand with its short square fingers rooting in the sand for shells. Jane had visited the stationer, who kept a circulating library, and seen holiday visitors selecting books to read.
And, indeed, it was not aimed at him personally, nor at his wife personally, but at the great mass of thought or of incoherent, muddled emotion that passed for thought which the Anti-Potters had agreed, for brevity's sake, to call 'Potterism. Potterism had very certainly not been created by the Potters, and was indeed no better represented by the goods with which they supplied the market than by those of many others; but it was a handy name, and it had taken the public fancy that here you had two Potters linked together, two souls nobly yoked, one supplying Potterism in fictional, the other in newspaper, form.
The fact is that majorities nearly always are. This is an important thing for statesmen to remember; forgetfulness of it has often led to disaster; ignorance of it has created Potterism as an official faith. It could afford to ignore them because of the good and solid excellence of its contents, and the reputations of many of its contributors.
Potterism, however, as a subject for investigation, had by this time given place to international diplomacy, that still more intriguing study. The Anti-Potters abused every government concerned, and Gideon said, on August 1st, 'We shall be fools if we don't come in. Juke was still dubious. He was a good Radical, and good Radicals were dubious on this point until the invasion of Belgium.
Of course, with their abominable cheek, the Potterites have taken Christianity and watered it down to suit themselves, till they've produced a form of Potterism which they call by its name; but they wouldn't know the real thing if they saw it.... The Pharisees were Potterites.... The others listened to Juke on religious Potterism tolerantly.
'He had the kind of face which is always turned away from facts, Gideon said. 'Facts are too difficult, too complicated for him. Hard, jolly facts, with clear sharp edges that you can't slur and talk away. Potterism has no use for them. It appeals over their heads to prejudice and sentiment.... It's the very opposite to the scientific temper.
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