"Many people believe that they are attracted by God, or by Nature, when they are only repelled by man"
About this Quote
A clergyman’s line that quietly skewers both secular modernity and religious self-flattery, Inge’s aphorism turns “attraction to God” into a diagnostic test for social disgust. The wit lies in the reversal: what people narrate as a positive spiritual calling is often a negative reaction dressed up as nobility. You’re not being pulled upward, he implies; you’re backing away.
Inge wrote from a period when industrial life, mass politics, and the jostle of crowded modern cities made “humanity” feel less like fellowship and more like abrasion. In that context, the quote reads as a pastoral warning about motives. Retreat into Nature can be a genuine reverence for creation, but it can also be misanthropy with better branding. Retreat into God can be sincere devotion, but it can also be an attempt to escape the compromises, irritations, and moral mess of other people while claiming the moral high ground.
The subtext cuts two ways. It critiques a certain religious temperament: the person who seeks purity by avoidance, preferring the clean vertical line to heaven over the sticky horizontal obligations of neighbors. At the same time, it indicts “man” as repellant enough to make flight plausible - a bleak comment on social cruelty, conformity, and the disappointments of community.
What makes it work is its psychological accuracy: it names a common alchemy, where aversion converts into virtue. Inge doesn’t deny God or Nature’s magnetism; he just insists we check whether our piety is, at root, recoil.
Inge wrote from a period when industrial life, mass politics, and the jostle of crowded modern cities made “humanity” feel less like fellowship and more like abrasion. In that context, the quote reads as a pastoral warning about motives. Retreat into Nature can be a genuine reverence for creation, but it can also be misanthropy with better branding. Retreat into God can be sincere devotion, but it can also be an attempt to escape the compromises, irritations, and moral mess of other people while claiming the moral high ground.
The subtext cuts two ways. It critiques a certain religious temperament: the person who seeks purity by avoidance, preferring the clean vertical line to heaven over the sticky horizontal obligations of neighbors. At the same time, it indicts “man” as repellant enough to make flight plausible - a bleak comment on social cruelty, conformity, and the disappointments of community.
What makes it work is its psychological accuracy: it names a common alchemy, where aversion converts into virtue. Inge doesn’t deny God or Nature’s magnetism; he just insists we check whether our piety is, at root, recoil.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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