The very cause of their quarrel was the cause
of their fraternity; they both liked land. But suppose one of them a
teetotaler who desired the abolition of hops on both farms; suppose the
other a vegetarian who desired the abolition of chickens on both farms:
and it is at once apparent that a quarrel of quite a different kind
would begin; and that in that quarrel it would not be a question of
farmer against farmer, but of individual against individual. This
fundamental sense of human fraternity can only exist in the presence of
positive religion. Man is merely man only when he is seen against the
sky. If he is seen against any landscape, he is only a man of that land.
If he is seen against any house, he is only a householder. Only where
death and eternity are intensely present can human beings fully feel
their fellowship. Once the divine darkness against which we stand is
really dismissed from the mind (as it was very nearly dismissed in the
Victorian time) the differences between human beings become
overpoweringly plain; whether they are expressed in the high caricatures
of Dickens or the low lunacies of Zola.
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