Welsh Journals

argument as it affects Wales and that, because the real difficulty arises from what I call the radical myth. Before I say much of the radical myth I ought, of course, to say what I mean by the myth. And relying here on that great English tory, John Henry Newman, whose study of the myth as such profoundly interested the editor of a French royalist periodical, Georges Sorel, I would venture these words. The human mind is often able to grasp more than it can express. This is the origin of that 'implicit reason' which Newman in his Grammar of Assent contrasted with explicit reason. That men commonly reason by some inward faculty rather than by an explicit rule seemed plain enough to him. But how to reproduce this curious process in its entirety? 'The mind ranges to and fro and spreads out and advances forward with a quickness, which has become a proverb, and a subtlety which baffles investigation. It passes from point to point, gaining one by some indication, another on a probability; then availing itself of an associa- tion; then falling back on some received law; next seizing on testi- mony; then committing itself to some popular impression or some in- ward instinct or some obscure memory.' That is the process of the implicit reason. But it is virtually the way in which the myth comes into being. In accordance with the ideas indi- cated, if the alleged facts did not occur, they ought to have occurred. If Churchill did not actually send the 18th Hussars to quell the Tonypandy Riots, he ought to have sent them, for otherwise the average Rhondda man's understanding of recent Rhondda history is no understanding. (Digression here: I do not regard Churchill as a tory but as an old Whig.) If the alleged facts did not occur, they are such as might have oc- curred and would have occurred under this or that circumstance. Many a theory or view of things on which such and such an institution is founded or a party held together is of the same sort. Arguments used by zealots have this character. The real ground upon which such men act is not in those arguments, for such men would continue with those argu- ments despite all refutation. The most we can say of them is that they are near descriptions of the men's feelings in the shape of argument, and it is to such near descriptions, such 'myths', that they recur when per- plexed and appeal when questioned. I anticipate a possible objection here, as I am on the edge of attacking