 This is a LibraVox recording. All LibraVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibraVox.org. All Things Considered by G. K. Chesterton Section 7. An Onimity and Further Councils The end of the article, which I write, is always cut off, and unfortunately I belong to that lower class of animals in whom the tale is important. It is not anybody's fault but my own. It arises from the fact that I take such a long time to get to the point. Somebody the other day very reasonably complained of my being employed to write prefaces. He was perfectly right, for I always write a preface to the preface, and then I am stopped also quite justifiably. In my last article I said that I favored three things. First, the legal punishment of deliberately false information. Secondly, a distinction in the matter of reported immorality between those sins which any healthy man can see in himself and those which he had better not see anywhere. And thirdly, an absolute insistence in the great majority of cases upon the signing of articles. It was at this point that I was cut short. I will not say by the law of space but rather by my own lawlessness in the matter of space. In any case, there is something more that ought to be said. It would be an exaggeration to say that I hope someday to see an anonymous article counted as dishonorable as an anonymous letter. For some time to come, the idea of the leading article expressing the policy of the whole paper must necessarily remain legitimate. At any rate, we have all written such leading articles and should never think the worst of anyone for writing one. But I should certainly say that writing anonymously ought to have some definite excuse, such as that of the leading article. Writing anonymously ought to be the exception. Writing a signed article ought to be the rule. And anonymity ought to be not only an exception but an accidental exception. A man ought always to be ready to say what anonymous article he had written. The journalistic habit of counting it something sacred to keep secret the origin of an article is simply part of the conspiracy which seeks to put us who are journalists in the position of a much worse sort of Jesuits or Freemasons. It has often been said anonymity would be all very well if one could for a moment imagine that it was established from good motives. Suppose for instance that we are all quite certain that the men on the Thunderer newspaper were a band of brave young idealists who were so eager to overthrow socialism, municipal and national that they did not care to which of them especially was given the glory of striking it down. Unfortunately, however, we do not believe this. What we believe or rather what we know is that the attack on socialism in the Thunderer arises from a chaos of inconsistent and mostly evil motives, any one of which would lose simply by being named. A Jerry builder whose houses have been condemned writes anonymously and becomes the Thunderer. A socialist who has quarreled with the other socialists writes anonymously and he becomes the Thunderer. A monopolist who has lost his monopoly and a demagogue who has lost his mob can both write anonymously and become the same newspaper. It is quite true there is a young and beautiful fanaticism in which men do not care to reveal their names, but there is a more elderly and a much more common excitement in which men do not dare to reveal them. Then there is another rule for making journalism honest on which I should like to insist absolutely. I should like it to be a fixed thing that the name of the proprietor as well as the editor should be printed upon every paper. If the paper is owned by shareholders, let there be a list of shareholders. If, as is far more common in this singularly undemocratic age, it is owned by one man, let that one man's name be printed on the paper. If possible, enlarge red letters. Then if there are any obvious interests being served, we shall know that they are being served. My friends in Manchester are in a terrible state of excitement about the power of brewers and the dangers of admitting them to public office. But at least if a man has controlled politics through beer, people generally know it. The subject of beer is too fascinating for anyone to miss such personal peculiarities. But a man may control politics through journalism and no ordinary English citizen know that he is controlling them at all. Again and again in the lists of birthday honours, you and I have seen some Mr. Robinson suddenly elevated to the peerage without any apparent reason. Even the society papers, which we read with avidity, could tell us nothing about him except that he was a sportsman or a kind landlord or interested in the breeding of badgers. Now I should like the name of that Mr. Robinson to be already familiar to the British public. I should like them to know already the public services for which they have to thank him. I should like them to have seen the name already on the outside of that organ of public opinion called Tutsi's Tips or the Boy Blackmailer or Nosey Nose, that bright little financial paper which did so much for the empire and which so narrowly escaped a criminal prosecution. If they had seen it thus, they would estimate more truly and tenderly the full value of the statement in the society paper that he is a true gentleman and a sound churchman. Finally it should be practically imposed by custom. It so happens that it could not possibly be imposed by law, that letters of definite and practical complaint should be necessarily inserted by any editor in any paper. Editors have grown very much to lax in this respect. The old editor used dimly to regard himself as an unofficial public servant for the transmitting of public news. If he suppressed anything he was supposed to have some special reason for doing so, as that the material was actually libelous or literally indecent. But the modern editor regards himself far too much as a kind of original artist who can select and suppress facts with the arbitrary ease of a poet or caricaturist. He makes up the paper as man makes up a fairy tale. He considers his newspaper solely as a work of art meant to give pleasure, not to give news. He puts in this one letter because he thinks it clever. He puts in these three or four letters because he thinks them silly. He suppresses this article because he thinks it wrong. He suppresses this other and more dangerous article because he thinks it right. The old idea that he is simply a mode of the expression of the public, an organ of opinion, seems to have entirely vanished from his mind. Today the editor is not only the organ, but the man who plays on the organ, for in all our modern movements we move away from democracy. This is the whole danger of our time. There is a difference between the oppression which has been too common in the past and the oppression which seems only too probable in the future. Oppression in the past has commonly been an individual matter. The oppressors were as simple as the oppressed and as lonely. The aristocrat sometimes hated his inferiors. He always hated his equals. The plutocrat was an individualist, but in our time even the plutocrat has become a socialist. They have science and combination and may easily inaugurate a much greater tyranny than the world has ever seen. On the Cryptic and the Elliptic Surely the art of reporting speeches is in a strange state of degeneration. We should not object perhaps to the reporters making the speeches much shorter than they are, but we do object to his making all the speeches much worse than they are. And the method which he employs is one which is dangerously unjust. When a statesman or a philosopher makes an important speech there are several courses which the reporter might take without being unreasonable. Perhaps the most reasonable course of all would be not to report the speech at all. Let the world live and love merry and given marriage without that particular speech, as they did in some desperate way in the days when there were no newspapers. A second course would be to report a small part of it, but to get that right. A third course, far better if you can do it, is to understand the main purpose and argument of the speech and report that in clear and logical language of your own. In short the three possible methods are first to leave the man's speech alone. Second to report what he says or some complete part of what he says and third to report what he means. But the present way of reporting speeches, mainly created I think by the scrappy methods of the Daily Mail, is something utterly different from both these ways and quite senseless and misleading. The present method is this. The reporter sits listening to a tide of words which he does not try to understand and does not, generally speaking, even try to take down. He waits until something occurs in the speech which for some reason sounds funny or memorable or very exaggerated or perhaps merely concrete. Then he writes it down and waits for the next one. If the orator says that the premiere is like a porpoise in the sea under some special circumstances, the reporter gets in the porpoise even if he leaves out the premiere. If the orator begins by saying that Mr. Chamberlain is rather like a violin cello, the reporter does not even wait to hear why he is like a violin cello. He has got hold of something material and so he is quite happy. The strong words all are put down. The chain of thought is left out. If the orator uses the word donkey, down goes the word donkey. They follow each other so abruptly in the report that it is often hard to discover the fascinating fact as to what was damnable or who was being compared with the donkey. And the whole line of argument in which these things occurred is entirely lost. I have before me a newspaper report of a speech by Mr. Bernard Shaw of which one complete and separate paragraph runs like this. Capital meant spare money over and above one's needs. Their country was not really their country at all except in patriotic songs. I am well enough acquainted with the whole map of Mr. Bernard Shaw's philosophy to know that those two statements might have been related to each other in a hundred ways. But I think that if they were read by an ordinary intelligent man who happened not to know Mr. Shaw's views, he would form no impression at all except that Mr. Shaw was a lunatic of more than usually abrupt conversation and disconnected mind. The other two methods would certainly have done Mr. Shaw more justice. The reporter should either have taken down verbatim what the speaker really said about capital, or have given an outline of the way in which this idea was connected with the idea about patriotic songs. But we have not the advantage of knowing what Mr. Shaw really did say, so we had better illustrate the different methods from something that we do know. Most of us, I suppose, know Mark Antony's funeral speech in Julius Caesar. Now, Mark Antony would have no reason to complain if he were not reported at all, if the daily pillum or the morning fascis or whatever it was confined itself to saying Mr. Mark Antony also spoke, or Mr. Mark Antony having addressed the audience, the meeting broke up in some confusion. The next honest method, worthy of a noble Roman reporter, would be that since he could not report the whole of the speech he could report some of the speech. He might say, Mr. Mark Antony in the course of his speech said, When that the poor have cried Caesar hath wept, ambition should be made of sterner stuff. In that case one good solid argument of Mark Antony would be correctly reported. The third and far higher course for the Roman reporter would be to give a philosophical statement of the purport of the speech, as thus Mr. Mark Antony in the course of a powerful speech conceded the high motives of the Republican leaders and disclaimed any intention of raising the people against them. He thought, however, that many instances could be quoted against the theory of Caesar's ambition, and he concluded by reading, at the request of the audience, the will of Caesar, which proved that he had the most benevolent designs toward the Roman people. That is, I admit, not quite so fine a Shakespeare, but it is a statement of the man's political position. But if a daily male reporter were sent to take down Antony's oration he would simply wait for any expressions that struck him as odd and put them down one after another without any logical connection at all. It would turn out something like this. Mr. Mark Antony wished for his audience's ears. He had thrice offered Caesar a crown. Caesar was like a deer. If he were brutus he would put a wound in every tongue. The stones of Rome would mutiny. See what a rent the envious casca paid. Brutus was Caesar's angel. The right honorable gentleman concluded by saying that he and the audience had all fallen down. That is the report of a political speech in a modern progressive or American manner, and I wonder whether the Romans would have put up with it. The reports of the debates in the House of Parliament are constantly growing smaller and smaller in our newspapers. Perhaps this is partly because the speeches are growing duller and duller. I think, in some degree, the two things act and react on each other. For fear of the newspapers politicians are dull, and at last they are too dull even for the newspapers. The speeches in our time are more careful and elaborate because they are meant to be read and not to be heard, and exactly because they are more careful and elaborate they are not so likely to be worthy of a careful and elaborate report. They are not interesting enough, so the moral cowardice of modern politicians has, after all, some punishment attached to it by the silent anger of heaven. Precisely because our political speeches are meant to be reported they are not worth reporting. Precisely because they are carefully designed to be read, nobody reads them. Thus we may concede that politicians have done something toward degrading journalism. It was not entirely done by us, the journalists, but most of it was. It was mostly the fruit of our first and most natural sin, the habit of regarding ourselves as conjurers rather than priests, for the definition is that a conjurer is apart from his audience, while a priest is a part of his. The conjurer despises his congregation. If the priest despises anyone it must be himself. The curse of all journalism, but especially that of yellow journalism, which is the shame of our profession, is that we think ourselves cleverer than the people for whom we write, whereas in fact we are generally even stupider. But this insolence has its nemesis, and that nemesis is well illustrated in this matter of reporting. For the journalists having grown accustomed to talking down to the public, commonly talks too low at last, and becomes merely barbaric and unencheligible. By his very efforts to be obvious he becomes obscure. This just punishment may especially be noted in the case of those staggering and staring headlines which American journalism introduced, and which some English journalism imitates. I once saw a headline in a London paper which ran simply thus, Dobbins Little Mary. This was intended to be familiar and popular, and therefore presumably lucid, but it was some time before I realized after reading about half the printed matter underneath that it had something to do with the proper feeding of horses. At first sight I took it as the historical leader of the future, will certainly take it, as containing some illusion to the little daughter who so monopolized the affections of the major at the end of Vanity Fair. The Americans carry to an even wider extreme this darkness by excess of light. You may find a column in American paper headed, Poet Brown Off Orange Flowers, or Senator Robinson Shoehorn's Hats Now, and it may be quite a long time before the full meaning breaks upon you. It has not broken upon me yet. And something of this intellectual vengeance pursues also those who adopt the modern method of reporting speeches. They also become mystical simply by trying to be vulgar. They also are condemned to trying always to write like George R. Sims, and succeed in spite of themselves in writing like Matterlink. That combination of words which I have quoted from alleged speech by Mr. Bernard Shaw was written down by the reporter with the idea that he was being particularly plain and democratic. But as a matter of fact, if there is any connection between the two sentences it must be something as dark as the deepest roots of Browning, or something as invisible as the most airy filament of Meredith. To be simple and not to be democratic are two very honorable and austere achievements, and it is not given to all the snobs and self-seekers to achieve them. I above even Master Link or Meredith stand those like Homer and Milton whom no one can misunderstand. And Homer and Milton are not only better poets than Browning, great as he was, but they would also have been very much better journalists than the young men on the Daily Mail. As it is, however, this mess representation of speeches is only a part of a vast journalistic misrepresentation of all life as it is. Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers another. The public enjoys both, but it is more or less conscious of the difference. People do not believe, for instance, that the debates in the House of Commons are as dramatic as they appear in the Daily Papers. If they did they would go, not to the Daily Paper, but to the House of Commons. The galleries would be crowded every night as they were in the French Revolution, for instead of seeing a printed story for a penny they would be seeing an active drama for nothing. But the people know in their hearts that journalism is a conventional art like any other, that it selects, heightens, and falsifies. Only its nemesis is the same as that of other arts. If it loses all care for truth, it loses all form likewise. The modern who paints too cleverly produces a picture of a cow which might be the earthquake at San Francisco, and the journalist who reports a speech too cleverly makes it mean nothing at all. The worship of the wealthy. There has crept, I notice, into our literature and journalism a new way of flattering the wealthy and the great. In more straightforward times flattery itself was more straightforward. Falsehood itself was more true. A poor man wishing to please a rich man simply said that he was the wisest, bravest, tallest, strongest, most benevolent, and most beautiful of mankind. And as even the rich man probably knew that he wasn't that, the thing did the less harm. When courtiers sang the praises of a king, they attributed to him things that were entirely improbable, as that he resembled the sun at noonday, that they had to shade their eyes when he entered the room, that his people could not breathe without him, or that he had with his single sword conquered Europe. Asia, Africa, and America. The safety of this method was its artificiality. Between the king and his public image there was really no relation. But the moderns have invented a much subtler and more poisonous kind of eulogy. The modern method is to take the prince or rich man, to give a credible picture of his type, of personality, as that he is a business-like or sportsman or fond of art or convivial or reserved, and then enormously exaggerate the value and importance of these natural qualities. Those who praise Mr. Carnegie do not say that he is as wise as Solomon and as brave as Mars. I wish they did. It would be the next most honest thing to give their real reason for praising him, which is simply that he has money. The journalists, who write about Mr. Pierpont Morgan, do not say that he is as beautiful as Apollo. I wish they did. What they do is to take the rich man's superficial life and manner, clothes, hobbies, love of cats, dislike of doctors, or what not, and then with the assistance of this realism make the man out to be a prophet and a savior of his kind. Whereas he is merely a private and stupid man who happens to like cats or to dislike doctors. The old flatterer took for granted that the king was an ordinary man and set to work to make him out extraordinary. The newer and clever flatterer takes for granted that he is extraordinary and that therefore even ordinary things about him will be of interest. I have noticed one very amusing way in which this is done. I notice the method applied to about six of the wealthiest men in England in a book of interviews published by an able and well-known journalist. The flatterer contries to combine strict truth of fact with a vast atmosphere of awe and mystery by the simple operation of dealing almost entirely in negatives. Suppose you are writing a sympathetic study of Mr. Pierpont Morgan. Perhaps there is not much to say about what he does think or like or admire. But you can suggest whole vistas of his taste and philosophy by talking a great deal about what he does not think or like or admire. You say of him, but little attracted to the most recent schools of German philosophy, he stands almost as resolutely aloof from the tendencies of transcendental pantheism as from the narrow or ecstasies of neo-Catholicism. Or suppose I am called upon to praise the charwoman, who has just come into my house and who certainly deserves it much more. I say it would be a mistake to class Mrs. Higgs among the followers of Loisey. Her position is in many ways different, nor is she wholly to be identified with the concrete hebraism of Harnack. It is a splendid method, as it gives the flatterer an opportunity of talking about something else beside the subject of the flattery, and it gives the subject of the flattery a rich, if somewhat bewildered mental glow, as of one who has somehow gone through agonies of philosophical choice of which he was previously unaware. It is a splendid method, but I wish it were applied sometimes to charwomen, rather than only to millionaires. There is another way of flattering important people, which has become very common, I notice, among writers in newspapers and elsewhere. It consists in applying to them the phrase simple, or quiet, or modest, without any sort of meaning or relation to the person to whom they are applied. To be simple is the best thing in the world. To be modest is the next best thing. I'm not so sure about being quiet. I'm rather inclined to think that really modest people make a great deal of noise. It is quite self-evident that really simple people make a great deal of noise, but simplicity and modesty at least are very rare and royal human virtues not to be lightly talked about. Few human beings, and at rare intervals, have really risen into being modest. Not one man in ten or in twenty has by long wars become simple, as an actual old soldier does by long wars become simple. These virtues are not things to fling about as mere flattery. Many prophets and righteous men have desired to see these things, and have not seen them. But in the description of the birds, lives and deaths of very luxurious men, they are used incessantly and quite without thought. If a journalist has to describe a great politician or financier, the things are always substantially the same. Entering a room or walking down a thoroughfare, he always says, Mr. Midas was quietly dressed in a black frock coat, a white waistcoat, and light grey trousers, with a plain green tie and simple flower in his buttonhole, as if anyone would expect him to have a crimson frock coat or spangled trousers, as if anyone would expect him to have a burning Catherine wheel in his buttonhole. But this process, which is absurd enough when applied to the ordinary and external lives of a worldly people, becomes perfectly intolerable when it is applied, as it always is applied, to the one episode which is serious, even in the lives of politicians. I mean their death. When we have been sufficiently bored with the account of the simple costume of the millionaire, which is generally about as complicated as any that could assume without being simply thought mad, when we have been told about the modest home of the millionaire, a home which is generally much too immodest to be called a home at all, when we have followed him through all these unmeaning eulogies we are always asked last of all to admire his quiet funeral. I do not know what else people think a funeral should be except quiet. Yet again and again, over the grave of every one of those sad rich men for whom one should surely feel first and last, a speechless pity, over the grave of Biet, over the grave of Whitley, this sickening nonsense about modesty and simplicity has been poured out. I well remember that when Biet was buried the paper said that the mourning coaches contained everybody of importance, that the floral tributes were sumptuous, splendid, intoxicating, but for all that it was a simple and quiet funeral. What in the name of Asheron did they expect it to be? Did they think there would be human sacrifice, the immolation of oriental slaves upon the tomb? Did they think that long rows of oriental dancing girls would sway hither and thither in an ecstasy of lament? Did they look for the funeral games of Petroclas? I fear they had no such splendid and pagan meaning. I fear they were only using the words quiet and modest as words to fill up a page, a mere piece of the automatic hypocrisy which does become too common among those who have to write rapidly and often. The word modest will soon become like the word honorable, which is said to be employed by the Japanese before any word that occurs in a polite sentence, as put honorable umbrella in honorable umbrella stand, or condescend to clean out honorable boots. We shall read in the future that the modest king went out in his modest crown, clad from head to foot in modest gold and attended with ten thousand modest earls, their swords modestly drawn. No, if we have to pay for Splendor, let us praise it as Splendor, not as simplicity. When I next meet a rich man, I intend to walk up to him in the street and address him with oriental hyperbole. He will probably run away. End of Section 7 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. All Things Considered by G. K. Chesterton Section 8 Science and Religion In these days we are accused of attacking science because we want to be scientific. Surely there is not any undue respect to our doctor in saying that he is our doctor, not our priest or our wife or our self. It is not the business of the doctor to say that we must go to a watering place. It is his affair to say that certain results of health will follow if we do go to a watering place. After that obviously it is for us to judge. Physical science is like simple addition. It is either infallible or it is false. To mix science up with philosophy is only to produce a philosophy that has lost all its ideal value and a science that has lost all its practical value. I want my private physician to tell me whether this or that food will kill me. It is for my private philosopher to tell me whether I ought to be killed. I apologize for stating all these truisms. But the truth is that I have just been reading a thick pamphlet written by a mass of highly intelligent men who seem never to have heard of any of these truisms in their lives. Those who detest the harmless writer of this column are generally reduced in their final ecstasy of anger to calling him brilliant, which has long ago in our journalism become a mere expression of contempt. But I am afraid even this disdainful phrase does me too much honor. I am more and more convinced that I suffer not from a shiny or showy impertinence, but from a simplicity that verges upon imbecility. I think more and more that I must be very dull and that everybody else in the modern world must be very clever. I have just been reading this important compilation sent to me in the name of a number of men for whom I have a high respect and called New Theology and Applied Religion. And it is literally true that I have read through whole columns of the things without knowing what the people were talking about. Either they must be talking about some black and bestial religion in which they were brought up and of which I never even heard, or else they must be talking about some blazing and blinding vision of God which they have found which I have never found, and which by its very splendor confuses their logic and confounds their speech. But the best instance, I can quote of the thing, is in connection with this matter of the business of physical science on the earth, of which I have just spoken. The following words are written over the signature of a man whose intelligence I respect, and I cannot make head or tail of them. When modern science declared that the cosmic process knew nothing of a historical event corresponding to a fall, but told on the contrary the story of an incessant rise in the scale of being, it was quite plain that the Pauline scheme, I mean the argumentative process of Paul's scheme of salvation, had lost its very foundation. For was not that foundation the total depravity of the human race inherited from their first parents? But now there was no fall, there was no total depravity or imminent danger of endless doom, and the basis gone the superstructure followed. It is written with earnestness, and in excellent English, it must mean something, but what can it mean? How could physical science prove that man is not depraved? You do not cut a man open to find his sins. You do not boil him until he gives forth the unmistakable green fumes of depravity. How could physical science find any trace of a moral fall? What traces did the writer expect to find? Did he expect to find a fossil Eve with a fossil apple inside her? Did he suppose that the ages would have spared for him a complete skeleton of Adam attached to a slightly faded fig leaf? The whole paragraph, which I have quoted, is simply a series of inconsequent sentences, all quite untrue in themselves, and all quite irrelevant to each other. Science never said that there could have been no fall. There might have been ten falls, one on top of the other, and the thing would have been quite consistent with everything we know from physical science. Humanity might have grown morally worse for millions of years, for millions of centuries, and the thing would in no way have contradicted the principle of evolution. Man of science, not to being raving lunatics, never said that there had been an incessant rise in the scale of being. For an incessant rise would mean a rise without any relapse or failure, and a physical evolution is full of relapse and failure. There were certainly some physical falls. There may have been any number of moral falls. So that, as I have said, I am honestly bewildered as to the meaning of such passages as this, in which the advanced person writes that because geologists know nothing about the fall, therefore any doctrine of depravity is untrue. Because science has not found something which obviously it could not find, therefore something entirely different, the psychological sense of evil is untrue. You might sum up this writer's argument abruptly, but accurately, in some way like this. We have not dug up the bones of the archangel Gabriel, who presumably had none, therefore little boys left to themselves will not be selfish. To me it is all wild and whirling, as if a man said, the plumber can find nothing wrong with our piano, so I suppose my wife does love me. I am not going to enter here into the real doctrine of original sin, or that probably false version of it, which the new theology writer calls the doctrine of depravity. But whatever else the worst doctrine of depravity may have been, it was a product of spiritual conviction. It had nothing to do with remote physical origins. Men thought mankind wicked because they felt wicked themselves. If man feels wicked, I cannot see why he should suddenly feel good because somebody tells him that his ancestors once had tales. Man's primary purity and innocence may have dropped off with his tale, for all anybody knows. The only thing we all know about that primary purity and innocence is that we have not got it. Nothing can be, in the strictest sense of the word, more comic than to set so shadowy a thing as the conjectures made by the vaguer anthropologists about primitive man against so solid a thing as the human sense of sin. By its nature the evidence of Eden is something that one cannot find. By its nature the evidence of sin is something that one cannot help finding. Some statements I disagree with, others I do not understand. If a man says I think the human race would be better if it abstained totally from fermented liquor, I quite understand what he means and how his view could be defended. If a man says I wish to abolish beer because I am a temperance man, his remark conveys no meaning to my mind. It is like saying I wish to abolish roads because I am a moderate whopper. If a man says I am not a Trinitarian, I understand. But if he says, as the lady once said to me, I believe in the Holy Ghost in a spiritual sense. I go away dazed. In what other sense could one believe in the Holy Ghost? And I am sorry to say that this pamphlet of progressive religious views is full of baffling observations of that kind. What can people mean when they say that science has disturbed their view of sin? What sort of view of sin can they have had before science disturbed it? Did they think it was something to eat? When people say that science has shaken their faith in immortality, what do they mean? Do they think that immortality was a gas? Of course the real truth is that science has introduced no new principle into the matter at all. A man can be a Christian to the end of the world for the simple reason that a man could have been an atheist from the beginning of it. The materialism of things is on the face of things. It does not require any science to find it out. A man who has lived and loved falls down dead and the worms eat him. That is materialism, if you like. That is atheism, if you like. If mankind has believed in spite of that, it can believe in spite of anything. But why our human lot is made any more hopeless because we know the names of all the worms who eat him or the names of all the parts of him that they eat is, to a thoughtful mind, somewhat difficult to discover. My chief objective to these semi-scientific revolutionists is that they are not at all revolutionary. They are the party of platitude. They do not shake religion. Rather, religion seems to shake them. They can only answer the great paradox by repeating the truism, the Methuselite. I saw in a newspaper photograph the other day the following entertaining and deeply philosophical incident. A man was enlisting as a soldier at Portsmouth and some form was put before him to be filled up. Common, I suppose, to all such cases, in which was among other things an inquiry about what was his religion. With an equal and ceremonial gravity the man wrote down the word, Methuselite. Whoever looks over such papers must, I should imagine, have seen some rum religion in his time, unless the army is going to the dogs. But with all his specialist knowledge he could not place Methuselism among what Besuit calls the variations of Protestantism. He felt a verve curiosity about the tenets and tendencies of the sect and asked the soldier what it meant. The soldier replied that it was his religion to live as long as he could. Now, considered as an incident in the religion, religious history of Europe, that answer of that soldier was worth more than a hundred cartloads of quarterly and monthly and weekly and daily papers discussing religious problems and religious books. Every day the daily paper reviews some new philosopher who has some new religion, and there is not in the whole two thousand words of the whole two columns one word is witty or as wise as that word Methuselite. The whole meaning of literature is simply to cut a long story short. That is why our modern books of philosophy are never literature. That soldier had in him the very soul of literature. He was one of the great phrase makers of modern thought like Victor Hugo or Disraeli. He found one word that defines the paganism of today. Henceforward when modern philosophers come to me with their new religions and there is always a kind of queue of them waiting all the way down the street I shall anticipate their circumlocutions and be able to cut them short with a single inspired word. One of them will begin with the new religion which is based upon that primordial energy in nature. Methuselite I shall say sharply. Good morning. Human life another will say Human life the only ultimate sanctity freed from creed and dogma. Methuselite I shall yell out you go. My religion is the religion of joy a third will explain. A bald old man with a cough and tinted glasses. The religion of physical pride and rapture. And Methuselite I shall cry again and I shall slap him boisterously on the back and he will fall down. Then a pale young poet with serpentine hair will come and say to me as one did only the other day. Moods and impressions are the only realities and these are constantly and wholly changing. I could hardly therefore define my religion. I can I should say somewhat sternly. Your religion is to live a long time and if you stop here a moment longer you won't fulfill it. A new philosophy generally means in practice the praise of some old vice. We have had the Sophist who defends cruelty and calls it masculinity. We have had the Sophist who defends profligacy and calls it the liberty of the emotions. We have had the Sophist who defends idleness and calls it art. It will almost certainly happen it can almost certainly be prophesied that in this Saturnalia of Sophistry there will at some time or other arise a Sophist who desires to idealize cowardice. And when we are once in this unhealthy world of mere wild words what a vast deal there would be to say for cowardice. Is not life a lovely thing and worth saving? The soldier would say as he ran away. Should I not prolong the exquisite miracle of consciousness? The householder would say as he hid under the table. As long as there are roses and lilies on the earth shall I not remain here? We come the voice of the citizen from under the bed. It would be quite as easy to defend the coward as a kind of poet and mystic as it has been in many recent books to defend the emotionalists as a kind of poet and mystic or the tyrant as a kind of poet and mystic. When that last grand sophistry and morbidity is preached in a book on a platform you may depend upon it there will be a great stir in his favor that is a great stir among the little people who live among books and platforms. There will be a new great religion the religion of Methuselism with pumps and priests and altars its devout crusaders will vow themselves in thousands with a great vow to live long but there is one comfort they won't for indeed the weakness of this worship of mere natural life which is a common enough creed today is that it ignores the paradox of courage and fails in its own aim as a matter of fact no man would be killed quicker than the Methuselites the paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his life even in order to keep it and in the very case I have quoted we may see an example of how little the theory of Methuselism really inspires our best life for there is one riddle in that case which cannot easily be cleared up if it was the man's religion to live as long as he could why on earth was he enlisting as the soldier spiritualism I have received a fancy letter from a gentleman who is very indignant at what he considers my flippancy in disregarding or degrading spiritualism I thought I was defending spiritualism but I'm rather used to being accused of mocking the thing that I set out to justify my fate and most controversies is rather pathetic it is an almost invariable rule that the man with whom I don't agree thinks I am making a fool of myself and the man with whom I do agree thinks I am making a fool of him there seems to be some sort of idea that you are not treating a subject properly if you eulogize it with fantastic terms or defend it by grotesque examples yet a truth is equally solemn whatever figure or example is exponent adopts it is an equally awful truth that four and four make eight whether you reckon the thing out in eight onions or eight angels or eight bricks or eight bishops or eight minor poets or eight pigs similarly if it be true that God made all things that gray fact can be asserted by pointing at a star or waving an umbrella but the case is stronger than this there is a distinct philosophical advantage in using grotesque terms in a serious discussion I think seriously on the whole that the more serious is the discussion the more grotesque should be the terms for this as I say there is an evident reason for a subject is really solemn and important in so far as it applies to the whole cosmos or to some great spheres and cycles of experience at least so far as a thing is universal it is serious and so far as a thing is universal it is full of comic things if you take a small thing it may be entirely serious Napoleon for instance was a small thing and he was serious the same applies to microbes if you isolate a thing you may get the pure essence of gravity but if you take a large thing such as the solar system it must be comic at least in parts the germs are serious because they kill you but the stars are funny because they give birth to life and life gives birth to fun if you have let us say a theory about a man and you can only prove it by talking about Plato and George Washington your theory may be a quite frivolous thing but if you can prove it by talking about the butler or the postman then it is serious because it is universal so far from it being irrelevant to use silly metaphors on serious questions it is one's duty to use silly metaphors on serious questions it is the test of one's seriousness it is the test of a responsible religion or theory whether it can take examples from pots and pans and boots and buttertubs it is the test of a good philosophy whether you can defend it grotesquely it is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it when I was a very young journalist I used to be irritated at a peculiar habit of printers a habit which most persons of a tendency similar to mine would have probably noticed also it goes along with the fixed belief of printers that to be a rationalist is the same thing as to be a nationalist I mean the printer's tendency to turn the word cosmic into the word comic it annoyed me at the time but since then I have come to the conclusion that the printers were right the democracy is always right whatever is cosmic is comic moreover there is another reason that makes it almost inevitable that we should defend grotesquely what we believe seriously it is that all grotesqueness is itself intimately related to seriousness unless a thing is dignified it cannot be undignified why is it funny that a man should sit down suddenly in the street there's only one possible or intelligent reason that man is the image of God it is not funny that anything else should fall down only that a man should fall down no one sees anything funny in a tree falling down no one sees a delicate absurdity in a stone falling down no man stops in the road and roars with laughter at the sight of the snow coming down the fall of thunderbolts is treated with some gravity the fall of roofs and high buildings is taken seriously it is only when a man tumbles down that we laugh because it is a grave religious matter it is the fall of man only man can be absurd for only man can be dignified the above which occupies the great part of my article is a parenthesis it is time that I return to my choleric correspondent who rebuked me for being too frivolous about the problem of spiritualism my correspondent who is evidently an intelligent man is very angry with me indeed he uses the strongest language he says I remind him of a brother of his which seems to open an abyss or vista of infamy the main substance of his attack resolves itself into two propositions first he asks me what right I have to talk about spiritualism at all as I admit I have never been to a séance well this is all very well but there are a good many things to which I have never been but I have not the smallest intention of leaving off talking about them I refuse for instance to leave off talking about the Siege of Troy I decline to be mute in the matter of the French Revolution I will not be silenced on the late indefensible assassination of Julius Caesar if nobody has any right to judge of spiritualism except the man who has been to a séance the results logically speaking are rather serious it would almost seem as if nobody had any right to judge of Christianity who had not been to the first meeting at Pentecost which would be dreadful I conceive myself capable of forming my opinion of spiritualism without seeing spirits just as I have formed my opinion of the Japanese war without seeing the Japanese or my opinion of the American millionaires without thank God seeing an American millionaire blessed are they who have not seen and yet have believed a passage which some have considered as a prophecy of modern journalism but my correspondence second objection is more important he charges me with actually ignoring the value of communication if it exists between this world and the next I do not ignore it but I do say this that a different principle attaches to investigation in this spiritual field from investigation and any other if a man bates a line for fish the fish will come even if he declares there are no such things as fishes if a man limes a twig for birds the birds will be caught even if he thinks it's superstitious to believe in birds at all but a man cannot bait a line for souls a man cannot lime a twig to catch gods all wise schools have agreed that this letter capture depends to some extent on the faith of the capturer so it comes to this if you have no faith in the spirits your appeal is in vain and if you have is it needed if you do not believe you cannot if you do you will not that is the real distinction between investigation in this department and investigation in any other the priest calls to the goddess for the same reason that a man calls to his wife because he knows she is there if a man kept on shouting out very loud the single word Maria merely with the object of discovering whether if he did it long enough some woman of that name would come and marry him he would be more or less in the position of the modern spiritualist the old religionist cried out for his god the new religionist cries out for some god to be his the whole point of religion as it has hitherto existed in the world was that you knew all about your gods even before you saw them if indeed you ever did spiritualism seems to me absolutely right on all its mystical side the supernatural part of it seems to me quite natural the incredible part of it seems to me obviously true but I think it's so far dangerous or unsatisfactory that it is in some degree scientific it inquires whether its gods are worth inquiring into a man of a certain age may look into the eyes of his lady love to see that they are beautiful but no normal lady will allow that young man to look into her eyes to see whether they are painted the same vanity and idiosyncrasy has been generally observed in gods praise them or leave them alone but not look for them unless you know they are there do not look for them unless you want them it annoys them very much end of section 8 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org all things considered by G.K. Chesterton section 9 the error of impartiality the refusal of the jurors in the Thaw trial to come to an agreement is certainly a somewhat amusing sequel to the frenzied and even fantastically well to the frenzied and even fantastic caution with which they were selected jurymen were set aside for reasons which seem to have only the very wildest relation to the case reasons which we cannot conceive as giving any human being a real bias it may be questioned whether the exaggerated theory of impartiality in an arbiter or a juryman may not be carried so far as to be more unjust than partiality itself what people call impartiality may simply mean indifference and what people call partiality may simply mean mental activity it is sometimes made an objection, for instance, to a juror that he has formed some prima facie opinion upon a case if he can be forced under sharp questioning to admit that he has formed such an opinion he is regarded as manifestly unfit to conduct the inquiry surely this is unsound if his bias is one of interest of class or creed or notorious propaganda then that fact certainly proves that he is not an impartial arbiter but the mere fact that he did form some temporary impression from the first facts as far as he knew them this does not prove that he is not an impartial arbiter it only proves that he is not a cold blooded fool if we walk down the street taking all the jurymen who have not formed opinions and leaving all the jurymen who have formed opinions it seems highly probable that we shall only succeed in taking all the stupid jurymen and leaving all the thoughtful ones provided that the opinion formed is really of this airy and abstract kind provided that it has no suggestion of settled motive or prejudice we might well regard it not merely as a promise of capacity but literally as a promise of justice the man who took the trouble to deduce from the police reports would probably be the man who would take the trouble to deduce further and different things from the evidence the man who had the sense to form an opinion would be the man who would have the sense to alter it it is worthwhile to dwell for a moment on this minor aspect of the matter because the error about impartiality and justice is by no means confined to a criminal question in much more serious matters it is assumed that the agnostic is impartial whereas the agnostic is merely ignorant the logical outcome of the fastidiousness about the thought jurors would be that the case ought to be tried by Esquimaux or Hutton Tutts or savages from the cannibal islands by some class of people who could have no conceivable interest in the parties and moreover no conceivable interest in the case the pure and starry perfection of impartiality would be reached by people who not only had no opinion before they had heard the case but also who had no opinion after they had heard it in the same way there is in modern discussions of religion and philosophy an absurd assumption that a man is in some way just and well poised because he has come to no conclusion and that a man is in some way knocked off the list of fair judges because he has come to a conclusion it is assumed that the skeptic has no bias whereas he has a very obvious bias in favor of skepticism I remember once arguing with an honest young atheist who was very much shocked at my disputing some of the assumptions which were absolute sanctities to him such as the quite unproved proposition of the independence of matter and the quite improbable proposition of its power to originate mind and he at length fell back upon this question which he delivered with an honorable heat of defiance and indignation well, can you tell me any man of intellect great in sciences or philosophy who accepted the miraculous I said with pleasure Descartes Dr. Johnson Newton Faraday Newman Gladstone Pasteur Browning Bruntier as many more as you please to which that quite admirable and idealistic young man made this astonishing reply oh, but of course they had to say that they were Christians first he challenged me to find a black swan and then he ruled out all my swans because they were black the fact that all these great intellects had come to the Christian view was somehow or other approved either that they were not great intellects or that they had not really come to that view the argument thus stood in a charmingly convenient form all men that count have come to my conclusion for if they come to your conclusion they do not count it did not seem to occur to such controversialists that if Cardinal Newman was really a man of intellect the fact that he adhered to a dogmatic religion proved exactly as much as the fact that Professor Huxley another man of intellect found that he could not adhere to dogmatic religion that is to say as I cheerfully admit it proved precious little either way if there is one class of men whom history has proved especially and supremely capable of going quite wrong in all directions it is the class of highly intellectual men I would always prefer to go by the bulk of humanity that is why I am a Democrat but whatever be the truth about exceptional intelligence and the masses it is manifestly most unreasonable that intelligent men should be divided upon the absurd modern principle of regarding every clever man who cannot make up his mind as an impartial judge and regarding every clever man who can make up his mind as a servile phonetic as it is we seem to regard it as a positive objection to a reasoner that he has taken one side or the other we regard it in other words as a positive objection to a reasoner that he has contrived to reach the object of his reasoning we call a man a bigot or a slave of dogma because he is a thinker who has thought through and to a definite end we say that the juryman is not a juryman because he has brought in a verdict we say that the judge is not a judge because he gives judgment we say that the sincere believer has no right to vote simply because he has voted phonetic spelling a correspondent asked me to make more lucid my remarks about phonetic spelling I have no detailed objection to items of spelling reform my objection is to a general principle and it is this it seems to me that what is really wrong with all the modern and highly civilized language is that it does so largely consist of dead words half our speech consists of similes that remind us of no similarity of pictorial phrases that call up no picture of historical illusions the origin of which we have forgotten take any instance on which the eye happens to a light I saw in the paper some days ago that well-known leader of a certain religious party wrote to supporter of his following curious words I have not forgotten the talented way in which you held up the banner at Birkenhead taking the ordinary vague meaning of the word talented there is no coherency in the picture the trumpets blow the spear shake and glitter and in the thick of the purple battle there stands a gentleman holding up a banner in a talented way and when we come to the original force of the word talent the matter is worse a talent is a Greek coin used in the New Testament as a symbol of the mental capital committed to an individual at birth if the religious leader in question had really meant anything by his phrases he would have been puzzled to know how a man could use a Greek coin to hold up a banner but really he meant nothing by his phrases holding up the banner was to him a colorless term for doing the proper thing and talented was a colorless term for doing it successfully now my own fear touching anything in the way of phonetic spelling is that it would simply increase this tendency to use words as counters and not as coins the original life in a word as in the word talent burns low as it is sensible spelling might extinguish it all together suppose any sentence you like suppose a man says republics generally encourage holidays it looks like the top line of a copy book now it is perfectly true that if you wrote that sentence exactly as it is pronounced even by highly educated people the sentence would run republics generally incur holidays spelled R-I-P-U-B-L-I-K-S-J-E-N-R-A-L-L-Y-I-N-K-U-R-R-I-J-H-O-L-L-I-D-I-E-S it looks ugly but I have not the smallest objection to ugliness my objection is that these four words each have a history and hidden treasures in them that this history and hidden treasures which we tend to forget too much as it is phonetic spelling tends to make us forget all together republic does not mean merely a mode of political choice republic as we see when we look at the structure of the word means the public thing the abstraction which is us all a republican is not a man who wants a constitution with a president a republican is a man who prefers to think of government as impersonal he is opposed to the royalist who prefers to think of government as personal take the second word generally this is always used as meaning in the majority of cases but again, if we look at the shape and spelling of the words we shall see that generally means something more like generically and is akin to such words as generation or regenerate pigs are generally dirty does not mean that pigs are in the majority of cases dirty but that pigs as a race or genus are dirty that pigs as pigs are dirty an important philosophical distinction take the third word encourage the word encourage is used in such modern sentences in merely automatic sense of promote to encourage poetry means merely to advance or assist poetry but to encourage poetry means properly to put courage into poetry a fine idea take the fourth word holidays as long as that word remains it will always answer the ignorance slander which asserts that religion was opposed to human cheerfulness that word will always assert that when a day is holy it should also be happy properly spelt these words all tell a sublime story like Westminster Abbey phonetically spelt they might lose the last traces of any such story generally is an exalted metaphysical term J-E-N-R-A-L-L-Y is not if you encourage a man you pour into him the chivalry of a hundred princes this does not happen if you merely I-N-K-U-R-R-I-J republics if spelt phonetically might actually forget to be public holidays if spelt phonetically might actually forget to be holy here is a case that has just occurred a certain magistrate told somebody whom he was examining in court that he or she should always be polite to the police I do not know whether the magistrate noticed the circumstances but the word polite and the word police have the same origin and meaning politeness means the atmosphere and ritual of the city the symbol of human civilization the policeman means the representative and guardian of the city the symbol of human civilization and it may be doubted whether the two ideas are commonly connected in the mind it is probable that we often hear of politeness without thinking of a policeman it is even possible that our eyes often alight upon a policeman without our thoughts instantly flying to the subject of politeness yet the idea of the sacred city is not only the link of them both it is the only serious justification and the only serious corrective of them both if politeness means too often a mere frippery it is because it has not enough to do with serious patriotism and public dignity if policemen are coarse or casual it is because they are not sufficiently convinced that they are the servants of the beautiful city and the agents of sweetness and light politeness is not really a frippery politeness is not really even a thing merely suave and deprecating politeness is an armed guard, stern and splendid and vigilant watching over all the ways of men in other words politeness is a policeman a policeman is not merely a heavy man with a truncheon a policeman is a machine for the smoothing and sweetening of the accidents of everyday existence in other words a policeman is politeness a veiled image of politeness sometimes impenetrably veiled but my point is here that by losing the original idea of the city which is the force and youth of both the words both the things actually degenerate our politeness loses all manliness because we forget that politeness is only the Greek for patriotism our policemen lose all delicacy because we forget that a policeman is only the Greek for something civilized a policeman should often have the functions of a nighterrant a policeman should always have the elegance of a nighterrant but I am not sure that he would succeed any better in remembering this obligation of romantic grace if his name were spelled phonetically supposing that it could be spelled phonetically some spelling reformers I am told in the poorer parts of London do spell his name phonetically very phonetically they call him a policeman P-L-E-E-C-E-M-A-N thus the whole romance of the ancient city disappears in the word and the policeman's reverent courtesy of the meaner deserts him quite suddenly this does seem to me the case against any extreme revolution in spelling if you spell a word wrong you have some temptation to think it wrong humanitarianism and strength somebody writes complainingly of something I said about progress I have forgotten what I said but I am quite certain that it was like a certain Mr. Douglas in a poem which I have also forgotten tender and true in any case what I say now is this human history is so rich and complicated that you can make out a case for any course of improvement or retrogression I could make out that the world has been growing more democratic for the English franchise has certainly grown more democratic I could also make out that the world has been growing more aristocratic for the English public schools have certainly grown more aristocratic I could prove the decline of militarism by the decline of flogging I could prove the increase of militarism by the increase of standing armies and conscription but I can prove anything in this way I can prove that the world has always been growing greener only lately men have invented absinthe and the Westminster Gazette I could prove the world has grown less green there are no more Robin Hood foresters and fields are being covered with houses I could show that the world was less red with khaki or more red with new penny stamps but in all cases progress means progress only in some particular thing have you ever noticed that strange line of Tennyson in which he confesses half consciously how very conventional progress is let the great world spin forever down the ringing grooves of change even in praising change he takes for assembly the most unchanging thing he calls our modern change a groove and it is a groove perhaps there never was anything so groovy nothing would induce me in so idle a monologue as this to discuss adequately a great political matter like the question of the military punishments in Egypt but I may suggest one broad reality to be observed by both sides and which is generally speaking observed by neither whatever else is right it is utterly wrong to employ the argument that we Europeans must do to savages and asiatics whatever savages and asiatics do to us I have seen some controversialists use the metaphor we must fight them with their own weapons very well let those controversialists take their metaphor and take it literally let us fight the Sudanese with their own weapons their own weapons are largely very clumsy knives with an occasional old fashioned gun their own weapons are also torture and slavery if we fight them with torture and slavery we shall be fighting badly precisely as if we fought them with clumsy knives and old guns that is the whole strength of our Christian civilization that it does fight with its own weapons and not with other peoples it is not true that superiority suggests a tit for tat it is not true that if a small hooligan puts his tongue out at the lord chief justice the lord chief justice immediately realizes that his only chance of maintaining his position is to put his tongue out at the little hooligan the hooligan may or may not have any respect at all for the lord chief justice that is a matter which we may contentedly leave as a solemn psychological mystery but if the hooligan has any respect at all for the lord chief justice that respect is certainly extended to the lord chief justice entirely because he does not put his tongue out exactly in the same way the ruder or more sluggish races regard the civilization of Christendom if they have any respect for it it is precisely because it does not use their own course and cruel expedience according to some modern moralists whenever Zulus cut off the heads of dead Englishmen Englishmen must cut off the heads of dead Zulus whenever Arabs or Egyptians constantly use the whip to their slaves Englishmen must constantly use the whip to their subjects and on a similar principle I suppose whenever an English admiral has to fight cannibals the English admiral ought to eat them however unattractive a menu consisting entirely of barbaric kings may appear to an English gentleman he must try to sit down to it with an appetite he must fight the sandwich islanders with their own weapons and their own weapons or knives and forks but the truth of the matter is of course that to do this kind of thing is to break the whole spell of our supremacy all the mystery of the white man all the fearful poetry of the white man so far as it exists in the eyes of these savages consists in the fact that we do not do such things the Zulus point to us and say observe the advent of these inexplicable demigods these magicians who do not cut off the noses of their enemies the Sudanese say to each other this hearty people never flogs its servants it is superior to the simplest and most obvious human pleasures and the cannibals say the austere and terrible race the race that denies itself even boiled missionary is upon us let us flee whether or no these details are a little conjectural the general proposition I suggest is the plainest common sense the elements that make Europe upon the whole the most humanitarian civilization are precisely the elements that make it upon the whole the strongest for the power which makes a man able to entertain a good impulse is the same as that which enables him to make a good gun it is imagination it is imagination that makes a man out with his enemy and it is imagination that makes him spare his enemy it is precisely because this picturing of the other man's point of view is in the main a thing in which Christians and Europeans specialize that Christians and Europeans with all their faults have carried to sets perfection both the art and peace of war they alone have invented machine guns and they alone have invented ambulances they have invented ambulances strange as it may sound for the same reason for which they have invented machine guns both involve a vivid calculation of remote events it is precisely because the east with all its wisdom is cruel that the east with all its wisdom is weak and it is precisely because savages are pitiless that they are still merely savages and if they could imagine their enemy's sufferings they could also imagine his tactics if Zulus did not cut off the Englishman's head they might really borrow it for if you do not understand a man you cannot crush him and if you do understand him you very probably will not when I was about seven years old I used to think that the chief modern danger was a danger of over-civilization I am inclined to think now that the chief modern danger is that of a slow return towards barbarism just such a return towards barbarism as indicated in the suggestions of barbaric retaliation of which I have just spoken civilization in the best sense merely means the full authority of the human spirit over all externals barbarism means the worship of those externals in their crude and unconquered state barbarism means the worship of nature and in recent poetry, science and philosophy there has been too much of the worship of nature wherever men begin to talk much and with great salinity about the forces outside man the note of it is barbaric when men talk much about heredity and environment they are almost barbarians the modern men of science are many of them almost barbarians Mr. Blatchford is in great danger of becoming a barbarian for barbarians especially the truly squalid and unhappy barbarians are always talking about the scientific subjects from morning till night that is why they remain squalid and unhappy that is why they remain barbarians Houghton Tots are always talking about heredity like Mr. Blatchford Sandwich Islanders are always talking about environment like Mr. Souther's savages, those that are truly stunted or depraved dedicate nearly all their tales and sayings to the subject of physical kinship of a curse on this or that tribe of a taint in this or that family of the invincible law of blood of the unavoidable evil of places the true savage is a slave and is always talking about what he must do the true civilized man is a free man and always talking about what he may do hence all the Zola heredity and Ibsen heredity that has been written in our time affects me as not merely evil but as essentially ignorant and retrogressive this sort of science is almost the only thing that can be called reactionary scientific determinism is simply the primal twilight of all mankind and some men seem to be returning to it another savage trait of our time is the disposition to talk about material substances instead of about ideas the old civilization talked about the sin of gluttony or excess we talk about the problem of drink as if drink could be a problem when people have come to call the problem of human intemperance the problem of drink and to talk about curing it by attacking the drink traffic they have reached quite a dim stage of barbarism the thing is an inverted form of fetish worship it is no sillier to say that a bottle is a god than to say that a bottle is a devil the people who talk about the curse of drink will probably progress down that dark hill have them calling the practice of wife beating the problem of pokers the habit of housebreaking will be called the problem of skeleton key trade and for all I know they may try to prevent forgery by shutting up all the stationer shops by an act of parliament I cannot help thinking that there is some shadow of this uncivilized materialism lying at present upon a much more dignified and valuable cause everyone is talking just now about the desirability of ingeminating peace and averting war but even war and peace are physical states rather than moral states and in talking about them only we have by no means got to the bottom of the matter for instance do we as a matter of fact create peace in one single community we do not do it by vaguely telling everyone to avoid fighting and to submit to anything that is done to him we do it by definitely defining his rights and then undertaking to avenge his wrongs we shall never have a common peace in Europe till we have a common principle in Europe people talk of the united states of Europe but they forget that it needed the very doctrinal declaration of independence to make the united states of America you cannot agree about nothing any more than you can quarrel about nothing end of section 9 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org all things considered by G. K. Chesterton section 10 wine when it is red I suppose that there will be some wigs on the green in connection with the recent manifesto signed by a string of very imminent doctors on the subject of what is called alcohol alcohol is to judge by the sound of it an Arabic word like Algebra and Alhambra those two other unpleasant things the Alhambra in Spain I have never seen I am told that it is a low and rambling building I allude to the far more dignified erection in Leicester Square if it is true, as I surmise, that alcohol is a word of the Arabs it is interesting to realize that our general word for the essence of wine and beer and such things comes from a people which has made particular war upon them I suppose that some aged Muslim chieftains sat one day at the opening of his tent and brooding with black brows and cursing in his black beard over wine as the symbol of Christianity racked his brains for some word ugly enough to express his racial and religious antipathy and suddenly spat out the horrible word alcohol the fact that the doctors had to use this word for the sake of scientific clearness was really a great disadvantage to them and fairly discussing the matter for the word really involves one of those begging of the question which make these moral matters so difficult it is quite a mistake to suppose that when a man desires an alcoholic drink he necessarily desires alcohol let a man walk ten miles steadily on a hot summer's day along a dusty English road and he will soon discover why beer was invented the fact that beer has very slight stimulating quality will be quite among the smallest reasons that induce him to ask for it in short he will not be in the least desiring alcohol he will be desiring beer but of course the question cannot be settled in such a simple way the real difficulty which confronts everybody and which especially confronts doctors is that the extraordinary position of man in the physical universe makes it practically impossible to treat him in either one direction or in the other in a purely physical way man is an exception whatever else he is if he is not the image of God then he is the disease of the dust if it is not true that a divine being fell then we can only say that one of the animals went entirely off its head in neither case can we really argue very much from the body of man simply considered as the body of an innocent and healthy animal his body has got too much mixed up with his soul as we see in the supreme instance of sex it may well be worthwhile uttering the warning to wealthy philanthropists and idealists that this argument from the animal should not be thoughtlessly used even against the atrocious evils of excess it is an argument that proves too little or too much doubtless it is unnatural to be drunk but then in a real sense it is unnatural to be human doubtless the intemperate workman wastes his tissues in drinking but no one knows how much the sober workman wastes his tissues by working no one knows how much the wealthy philanthropists wastes his tissues by talking or in much rarer conditions by thinking all the human things are more dangerous than anything that affects the beasts sex, poetry, property, religion the real case against drunkenness is not that it calls up the beast but that it calls up the devil it does not call up the beast and if it did it would not matter much as a rule the beast is harmless and rather amiable creature as anybody can see by watching cattle there is nothing beastial about intoxication and certainly there is nothing intoxicating or even particularly lively about beasts man is always something worse or something better than an animal and a mere argument from animal perfection never touches him at all thus in sex no animal is either chivalrous or obscene and thus no animal ever invented anything so bad as drunkenness or so good as drink the pronouncement of these particular doctors is very clear and uncompromising in the modern atmosphere indeed it even deserves some credit for moral courage the majority of modern people of course will probably agree with it in so far as it declares that alcoholic drinks are often of supreme value in emergencies of illnesses but many people I fear in their eyes at the emphatic terms in which they describe such drink as considered as a beverage but they are not content with declaring that the drink is in moderation harmless they distinctly declare that it is in moderation beneficial but I fancy that in saying this the doctors had in mind a truth that runs somewhat counter to the common opinion I fancy that it is the experience of most doctors that giving any alcohol for illness though often necessary is about the most morally dangerous way of giving it instead of giving it to a healthy person who has many other forms of life you are giving it to a desperate person to whom it is the only form of life the invalid can hardly be blamed if by some accident of his erratic and overwrought condition he comes to remember the thing as the very water of vitality and to use it as such for in so far as drinking is really a sin it is not because drinking is wild but because drinking is tame not in so far as it is anarchy but in so far as it is slavery probably the worst way to drink is to drink medicinally certainly the safest way to drink is to drink carelessly that is without caring much for anything and especially not caring for the drink the doctor of course could be able to do a great deal in the way of restraining those individual cases where there is plainly an evil thirst and beyond that the only hope would seem to be in some increase or rather some concentration of ordinary public opinion on the subject I have always held consistently my own modest theory on the subject I believe that if by some method the local public house could be as definite and isolated a place as the local post office or the local railway station if all types of people pass through it for all types of refreshment you would have the same safeguard against a man behaving in a disgusting way in a tavern that you have at present against his behaving in a disgusting way in a post office simply the presence of his ordinary sensible neighbors in such a place the kind of lunatic who wants to drink an unlimited number of whiskies would be treated with the same severity with which the post office authorities would treat an amiable lunatic tight for licking an unlimited number of stamps it is a small matter whether in either case a technical refusal would be officially employed it is an essential matter that in both cases the authorities could rapidly communicate with the friends and family of the mentally afflicted person at least the postmistress would not dangle a strip attempting six penny stamps before the enthusiast sighs as he was being dragged away with his tongue out if we make drinking open and official we might be taking one step toward making it careless in such things to be careless is to be sane for neither drunkards nor Muslims can be careless about drink demagogues and mystagogues I once heard a man call this age the age of demagogues of this I can only say in the admirably sensible words of the angry coachman in Pickwick that that remarks political or what is much the same it ain't true so far from being the age of demagogues this is really and especially the age of mystagogues so far from this being a time in which things are praised because they are popular the truth is that this is the first time perhaps in the whole history of the world in which things can be praised because they are unpopular the demagogue succeeds because he makes himself understood even if he is not worth understanding but the mystagogue succeeds because he gets himself misunderstood although as a rule he is not even worth misunderstanding Gladstone was a demagogue Disraeli a mystagogue but ours especially the time when a man can advertise his wares not as a universality but as what the tradesmen call a speciality we all know this for instance about modern art Michelangelo and Whistler were both fine artists but one is obviously public the other obviously private or rather not obvious at all Michelangelo's frescoes are doubtless finer than the popular judgment but they are plainly meant to strike the popular judgment whistler's pictures seem often meant to escape the popular judgment they even seem meant to escape the popular admiration they are elusive fugitive they fly even from praise doubtless many artists in Michelangelo's day declared themselves to be great artists though they were unsuccessful but they did not declare themselves great artists because they were unsuccessful that is the peculiarity of their own time which has a positive bias against the populace another case of the same kind of thing can be found in the latest conceptions of humor by the wholesome tradition of mankind a joke was a thing meant to amuse men a joke which did not amuse them was a failure just as a fire which did not warn them was a failure but we have seen the process of secrecy and aristocracy introduced even into jokes if a joke falls flat a small school of esthetes only asks us to notice the wild grace of its falling and its perfect flatness after its fall the old ideas that the joke was not good enough for the company has been superseded by the new aristocratic idea that the company was not worthy of the joke they have introduced an almost insane individualism into that one form of intercourse which is a pluriously communal they have made even levities into secrets they have made laughter lonelier than tears there is a third thing to which the mystagogues have recently been applying the methods of a secret society I mean manners men who sought to rebuke rudeness used to represent manners as reasonable and ordinary now they seek to represent them as private and peculiar instead of saying to a man who blocks up a street or the fireplace you want to know better than that the modern say you of course don't know better than that I have just been reading an amusing book by Lady Grove called the social fetish which is a positive riot of this new specialism and mystification it is due to Lady Grove to say that she has some of the freer and more honorable qualities as well as their wonderful worldliness and their strange faith in the passing fashion of our politics for instance she speaks of jingo imperialism with the healthy English contempt and she perceives stray and striking truths and records them justly as for instance the great democracy of the Southern and Catholic countries of Europe but in her dealings here in England she is, it must frankly be said a common mysticog she does not like a decent demagogue wish to make people understand she wishes to make them painfully conscious of not understanding her favorite method is to terrify people from doing things that are quite harmless by telling them that if they do they are the kind of people who would do other things equally harmless you are the kind of person who would have a pillowcase or would not have a pillowcase I forget what it is and so I dare say does she if you assume the ordinary dignity of a decent citizen and say that you don't see the harm of having a mother or a pillowcase she would say that of course you wouldn't this is what I call being a mysticog it is more vulgar than being a demagogue because it is much easier the primary point I meant to emphasize is that this sort of aristocracy is essentially a new sort all the old despots were demagogues at least they were demagogues whenever they were really trying to please or impress the demos if they pour out beer for their vassals it was because both they and their vassals had a taste for beer if in some slightly different mood they poured melted lead on their vassals they and their vassals had a strong distaste for melted lead but they did not make any mystery about either of the two substances they did not say you don't like melted lead no of course you wouldn't you are probably the kind of person who would prefer beer it is no good asking you even to imagine the curious undercurrents of psychological pleasure felt by a refined person under the seeming shock of melted lead in tyrants when they tried to be popular tried to give the people pleasure they did not try to over all the people by giving them something which they ought to regard as pleasure it was the same with the popular presentment of aristocracy aristocrats tried to impress humanity by the exhibition of qualities which humanity admires such as courage gaiety or even mere splendor the aristocracy might have more possession in these things but the democracy had quite equal delight in them it was much more sensible to offer yourself for admiration because you had drunk three bottles of port at a sitting and to offer yourself for admiration as lady grove does because you think it right to say port wine while other people think it right to say port whether lady grove's preference for port wine means for the phrase port wine is a piece of mere nonsense I do not know but at least it is a very good example of the futility of such tests in the matter even of mere breeding port wine may happen to be the phrase used in certain good families but numberless aristocrats say port and all barred maids say port wine the whole thing is rather more trivial and collecting tram tickets and I will not pursue lady grove's further distinctions I pass over the interesting theory that I ought to say to Jones even apparently if he is my dearest friend how is Mr. Jones instead of how is your wife and I pass over an impassioned declamation about bedspreads I think which has failed to fire my blood the truth of the matter is really quite simple an aristocracy is a secret society and this is especially so when as in the modern world it is practically a plutocracy the one idea of a secret society is to change the password lady grove falls naturally into a pure perversity because she feels subconsciously that the people of England can be more effectively kept at a distance by a perpetual torrent of new tests than by the persistence of a few old ones she knows that in the educated middle class there is an idea that it is vulgar to say port wine therefore she reverses the idea she says that the man who would say port is a man who would say how is your wife she says it because she knows both these remarks to be quite obvious and reasonable the only thing to be done or said in reply I suppose would be to apply the same principle of bold mystification on our own part I do not see why I should not write a book called etiquette in fleet street and terrify everyone else out of their thoroughfare by mysterious allusions to the mistakes that they generally make I might say this is the kind of man who would wear a green tie when he went into tobacconists or you don't see anything wrong in drinking a benedictina on Thursday no of course you wouldn't I might aservate with passionate disgust and disdain the man who is capable of writing sonnets as well as trial it's is capable of climbing an omnibus while holding an umbrella it seems a simple method if ever I should master it perhaps I may govern England the Eaton's Will Gazette the other day someone presented me with a paper called the Eaton's Will Gazette I need hardly say that I could not have been more startled if I had seen a coach coming down the road with old Mr. Tony Weller on the box but indeed the case is much more extraordinary than that would be old Mr. Weller was a good man especially and seriously good man a proud father and a very patient husband a sane moralist and a reliable ally one could not be so very much surprised if he somebody pretended to be Tony Weller but the Eaton's Will Gazette is definitely depicted in Pickwick as a dirty and unscrupulous rag soaked with slander and nonsense it was really interesting to find a modern paper proud to take its name the case cannot be compared to anything so simple as a resurrection of one of the Pickwick characters yet a very good parallel could easily be found it is almost exactly as if a firm of something it is almost exactly as if a firm of solicitors were to open their offices tomorrow under the name of Dodson and Fogg it was at once apparent of course that the thing was a joke but what was not apparent what only grew upon the mind with gradual wonder and terror was the fact that it had its serious side the paper is published in the well-known town of Sudbury in Suffolk and it seems that there is a standing quarrel between Sudbury and the country town of Ipswich as to which was the town described by Dickens in his celebrated sketch of an election each town proclaims with passion that it was Eaton's Will if each town proclaimed with passion that it was not Eaton's Will I might be able to understand it Eaton's Will according to Dickens was a town alive with loathsome corruption hypocritical in all its public utterances and venial in all its votes yet too highly respectable town compete for the honor of having been this particular cesspool just as ten cities fought to be the birthplace of Homer they claimed to be its original as keenly as if they were claiming to be the original of Moore's Utopia or Morris's Earthly Paradise they grow seriously heated over the matter the men of Ipswich say warmly it must have been our town for Dickens says it was corrupt and the more corrupt town than our town you couldn't have met in a month the men of Sudbury reply with rising passion permit us to tell you gentlemen that our town was quite as corrupt as your town any day of the week our town was a common nuisance and we defy our enemies to question it perhaps you will tell us sneer the citizens of Ipswich that your politics were ever as thoroughly filthy as as filthy as anything answered the Sudbury men undauntedly nothing in politics could be filthier Dickens must have noticed how disgusting we were and could he have failed to notice the others reason indignantly how disgusting we were you could smell us a mile off you Sudbury fellows may think yourselves very fine but let me tell you that compared to our city Sudbury was an honest place and so the controversy goes on it seems to me to be a new and odd kind of controversy naturally an outsider feels inclined to ask why Eden's will should be either one or the other as a matter of fact I fear Eden's will was every town in the country it is surely clear that when Dickens described the Eden's will election he did not mean it as a satire on Sudbury or a satire on Ipswich he meant it as a satire on England the Eden's will election is not a joke against Eden's will it is a joke against elections if the satire is merely local it practically loses its point just as the circumstances from the Likushan office would lose its point if it were not supposed to be a true sketch of all government offices just as the Lord Chancellor in Bleakhouse would lose his point if he were not supposed to be symbolic and representative of all Lord Chancellor's the whole moral meaning would vanish if we supposed that Oliver Twist had got by accident into an exceptionally bad workhouse or that Mr. Dorrit was in the only debtor's prison was not well managed Dickens was making a game not of places but of methods he poured all his powerful genius into trying to make the people ashamed of the methods but he seems only to have succeeded in making people proud of the places in any case the controversy is conducted in a truly extraordinary way no one seems to allow for the fact that after all he is writing a novel and a highly fantastic novel at that facts in support of Sudbury or Ipswich are quoted not only from the story itself which is wild and wandering enough but even from the get wilder narratives which incidentally occur in the story such as Sam Weller's description of how his father on the way to Eaton's Will tipped all the voters into the canal this may quite easily be to begin with an entertaining of Sam's own invention told like many other even more improbable stories solely to amuse Mr. Pickwick yet the champions of these two towns positively asked each other to produce a canal or to fail forever in their attempts to prove themselves the most corrupt town in England as far as I remember Sam's story of the canal ends with Mr. Pickwick eagerly asking whether everybody was rescued and Sam solemnly replying the old gentleman's hat was found but that he was not sure whether his head was in it if the canal is to be taken as realistic why not the hat and the head if these critics ever find the canal I recommend them to drag it for the body of the old gentleman both sides refuse to allow for the fact that the characters in the story are comic characters for instance Mr. Percy Fitzgerald the imminent student of Dickens writes to the Eaton's Will Gazette to say that Sudbury a small town could not have been Eaton's Will because one of the candidates speaks of its great manufacturers but obviously one of the candidates would have spoken of its great manufacturers if it had nothing but a row of Apple stalls one of the candidates might have said that the commerce of Eaton's Will eclipsed Carthage and covered every sea it would have been quite in the style of Dickens but when the champion of Sudbury answers him he does not point out this plain mistake he answers by making another mistake exactly of the same kind he says that Eaton's Will was not a busy important place and his odd reason is that Mrs. Pot says she was dull there but obviously Mrs. Pot would have said she was dull anywhere she was setting her cap at Mr. Winkle moreover it was the whole point of her character in any case Mrs. Pot was that kind of woman if she had been in Ipswich she would have said that she ought to be in London if she was in London she would have said she ought to be in Paris the first disputant proves Eaton's Will grand because the servile candidate calls it grand the second proves it dull because the discontented woman calls it dull the great part of the controversy seems to be conducted in the spirit of highly irrelevant realism Sudbury cannot be Eaton's Will because there was a fancy dress shop at Eaton's Will and there is no record of a fancy dress shop at Sudbury Sudbury must be Eaton's Will because there were heavy roads outside Eaton's Will and there are heavy roads outside Sudbury Ipswich cannot be Eaton's Will because Mrs. Leo Hunter's country seat would not be near a big town Ipswich must be Eaton's Will because Mrs. Leo Hunter's country seat would be near a large town really Dickon's ought to have been allowed to take liberties with such things as these even if he had been mentioning the place by name if I were writing a story about the town of Limerick I should take the liberty of introducing a bun shop without taking a journey to Limerick to see whether there was a bun shop there if I wrote a romance about Torquay I should hold myself free to introduce a house with a green door without having studied a list of all the colored doors in the town but if in order to make it particularly obvious that I had not meant the town for a photograph either of Torquay or Limerick I had gone out of my way to give the place a wild fictitious name of my own I think that in that case I should be justified in tearing my hair with rage if the people of Limerick or Torquay began to argue about bun shops and green doors no reasonable man would expect Dickon's to be so literal as all that even about Bath or Burry St. Esmond's which do exist far less need he be literal about Ethan's will which did not exist I must confess however that I incline to the Sudbury side of the argument this does not only arise from the sympathy which all healthy people have for small places as against big ones it arises from some really good qualities in this particular Sudbury publication first of all the champions of Sudbury seem to be more open-minded to the sensible and humorous view of the book than the champions of Ipswich at least those that appear in this discussion even the Sudbury champion bent on finding realistic clothes rebels to his eternal honor when Mr. Percy Fitzgerald tries to show that Bob Sawyer's famous statement that he was neither buff nor blue but a sort of plaid must have been copied from some silly man at Ipswich who said that his politics would not be a good thing but a silly man at Ipswich who said that his politics were half and half anybody might have made either of the two jokes but it was the whole glory and meaning of Dickens that he can find himself to making jokes that anybody might have made a little better than anybody would have made them end of section 10