 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 1. The Case for the Ephemeral I cannot understand the people who take literature seriously, but I can love them, and I do. Out of my love I warn them to keep clear of this book. It is a collection of crude and shapeless papers upon current or rather flying subjects, and they must be published pretty much as they stand. They were written as a rule at the last moment. They were handed in the moment before it was too late, and I do not think that our Commonwealth would have been shaken to its foundations if they had been handed in the moment after. They must go out now with all their imperfections on their head, or rather on mine, for their vices are too vital to be improved with a blue pencil, or with anything I can think of except dynamite. Their chief vice is that so many of them are very serious, because I had no time to make them flippant. It is so easy to be solemn. It is so hard to be frivolous. Let any honest reader shut his eyes for a few moments, and approaching the secret tribunal of his soul, ask himself whether he would really rather be asked in the next two hours to write the front page of the Times, which is full of long leading articles, or the front page of tit-bits, which is full of short jokes. If the reader is the fine conscientious fellow I take him for, he will at once reply that he would rather, on the spur of the moment, write ten Times articles than want tit-bits joke. Responsibility, a heavy and cautious responsibility of speech, is the easiest thing in the world. Anybody can do it. That is why so many tired elderly and wealthy men go in for politics. They are responsible, because they have not the strength of mind left to be irresponsible. It is more dignified to sit still than to dance the barn dance. It is also easier. So in these easy pages, I keep myself on the whole, on the level of the Times. It is only occasionally that I leap upwards almost to the level of tit-bits. I resume the defense of this indefensible book. These articles have another disadvantage arising from the story in which they were written. They are too long-winded and elaborate. One of the great disadvantages of hurry is that it takes such a long time. If I have to start for Highgate this day week, I may perhaps go the shortest way. If I have to start this minute, I shall almost certainly go the longest. In these essays, as I read them over, I feel frightfully annoyed with myself for not getting to the point more quickly. But I had not enough leisure to be quick. There are several maddening cases in which I took two or three pages in attempting to describe an attitude of which the essence could be expressed in an epigram. Only there was no time for epigrams. I do not repent of one shade of opinion here expressed. But I feel that they might have been expressed so much more briefly and precisely. For instance, these pages contain a sort of recurring protest against the boast of certain writers that they are merely recent. They brag that their philosophy of the universe is the last philosophy, or the new philosophy, or the advanced and progressive philosophy. I have said much against a mere modernism. When I use the word modernism, I am not alluding especially to the current quarrel in the Roman Catholic Church, though I am certainly astonished at any intellectual group accepting so weak and unphilosophical a name. It is incomprehensible to me that any thinker can calmly call himself a modernist. He might as well call himself a Thursdayite. But apart altogether from that particular disturbance, I am conscious of a general irritation expressed against the people who boast of their advancement and modernity in the discussion of religion. But I never succeeded in saying the quite clear and obvious thing that is really the matter with modernism. The real objection to modernism is simply that it is a form of snobbishness. It is an attempt to crush a rational opponent, not by reason, but by some mystery of superiority, by hinting that one is specially up to date, or particularly in the know. To flaunt the fact that we have had all the last books from Germany is simply vulgar, like flaunting the fact that we have had all the last bonnets from Paris. To introduce into philosophical discussions a sneer at a creed's antiquity is like introducing a sneer at a lady's age. It is cat-ish because it is irrelevant. The pure modernist is merely a snob. He cannot bear to be a month behind the fashion. Simply I find that I have tried in these pages to express the real objection to philanthropists and have not succeeded. I have not seen the quite simple objection to the causes advocated by certain wealthy idealists, causes of which the cause called t-totalism is the strongest case. I have used many abusive terms about the thing, calling it puritanism, or superciliousness, or aristocracy. But I have not seen and stated the quite simple objection to philanthropy, which is that it is religious persecution. Religious persecution does not consist in thumb screws or fires of Smithfield. The essence of religious persecution is this, that the man who happens to have material power in the state, either by wealth or by official position, should govern his fellow citizens not according to their religion or philosophy, but according to his own. If, for instance, there is such a thing as a vegetarian nation, if there is a great united mass of men who wish to live by the vegetarian morality, then I say in the emphatic words of the arrogant French Marquis before the French Revolution, let them eat grass. Perhaps that French oligarch was a humanitarian, most oligarchs are. Perhaps when he told the peasants to eat grass, he was recommending to them the hygienic simplicity of a vegetarian restaurant. But that is an irrelevant, though most fascinating, speculation. The point here is that if a nation is really vegetarian, let its government force upon it the whole horrible weight of vegetarianism. Let its government give the national guests a state vegetarian banquet. Let its government, in the most literal and awful sense of the words, give them beans. That sort of tyranny is all very well, for it is the people tyrannizing over all the persons. But temperance reformers are like a small group of vegetarians who should silently and systematically act on an ethical assumption entirely unfamiliar to the mass of the people. They would always be giving peerages to greengrocers. They would always be appointing parliamentary commissions to inquire into the private life of butchers. Whenever they found a man quite at their mercy, as a pauper, or a convict, or a lunatic, they would force him to add the final touch to his inhuman isolation by becoming a vegetarian. All the meals for school children will be vegetarian meals. All the state public houses will be vegetarian public houses. There is a very strong case for vegetarianism, as compared with T. totalism. Drinking one glass of beer cannot by any philosophy be drunkenness, but killing one animal can by this philosophy be murder. The objection to both processes is not that the two creeds, T. totaling and vegetarian, are not admissible. It is simply that they are not admitted. The thing is religious persecution, because it is not based on the existing religion of the democracy. These people ask the poor to accept in practice what they know perfectly well that the poor would not accept in theory. That is the very definition of religious persecution. I was against the Tory attempt to force upon ordinary Englishmen a Catholic theology in which they do not believe. I am even more against the attempt to force upon them a mohabitant morality which they actively deny. Again, in the case of anonymous journalism, I seem to have said a great deal without getting out the point very clearly. Anonymous journalism is dangerous and is poisonous in our existing life, simply because it is so rapidly becoming an anonymous life. That is the horrible thing about our contemporary atmosphere. Society is becoming a secret society. The modern tyrant is evil because of his elusiveness. He is more nameless than his slave. He is not more of a bully than the tyrants of the past, but he is more of a coward. The rich publisher may treat the poor poet better or worse than the old master workman treated the old apprentice. But the apprentice ran away and the master ran after him. Nowadays it is the poet who pursues and tries in vain to fix the fact of responsibility. It is the publisher who runs away. The clerk of Mr. Solomon gets the sack. The beautiful Greek slave of the sultan Solomon also gets the sack, or the sack gets her. But though she is concealed under the black waves of the Bosphorus, at least her destroyer is not concealed. He goes behind golden trumpets riding on a white elephant. But in the case of the clerk it is almost as difficult to know where the dismissal comes from as to know where the clerk goes to. It may be Mr. Solomon or Mr. Solomon's manager or Mr. Solomon's rich aunt in Cheltenham or Mr. Solomon's rich creditor in Berlin. The elaborate machinery which was once used to make men responsible is now used solely in order to shift the responsibility. People talk about the pride of tyrants, but we in this age are not suffering from the pride of tyrants. We are suffering from the shyness of tyrants, from the shrinking modesty of tyrants. Therefore we must not encourage leader writers to be shy. We must not inflame their already exaggerated modesty. Rather we must attempt to lure them to be vain and ostentatious, so that through ostentation they may at last find their way to honesty. The last indictment against this book is the worst of all. It is simply this, that if all goes well this book will be unintelligible gibberish. For it is mostly concerned with attacking attitudes which are in their nature accidental and incapable of enduring. Brief as is the career of such a book as this, it may last just twenty minutes longer than most of the philosophies that it attacks. In the end it will not matter to us whether we wrote well or ill, whether we fought with flails or beads. It will matter to us greatly on what side we fought. Cockneys and their jokes. A writer in the Yorkshire Evening Post is very angry indeed with my performances in this column. His precise terms of reproach are, Mr. G. K. Chesterton is not a humorist, not even a cockney humorist. I do not mind his saying that I am not a humorist, in which to tell the truth I think he is quite right, but I do resent his saying that I am not a cockney. That in Venom Darrow I admit went home. If a French writer said of me he is no metaphysician, not even an English metaphysician, I could swallow the insult to my metaphysics, but I should feel angry about the insult to my country. So I do not urge that I am a humorist, but I do insist that I am a cockney. If I were a humorist, I should certainly be a cockney humorist. If I were a saint, I should certainly be a cockney saint. I need not recite the splendid catalog of cockney saints who have written their names on our noble Old City churches. I need not trouble you with the long list of the cockney humorists who have discharged their bills or failed to discharge them in our noble Old City taverns. We can weave together over the pathos of the poor Yorkshiremen, whose country has never produced some humor not intelligible to the rest of the world. And we can smile together when he says that somebody or other is not even a cockney humorist like Samuel Johnson or Charles Lamb. It is surely sufficiently obvious that all the best humor that exists in our language is cockney humor. Chaucer was a cockney. He had his house close to the Abbey. Dickens was a cockney. He said he could not think without the London streets, the London taverns heard always the quaintest conversation, whether it was Ben Johnson's at the Mermaid or Sam Johnson's at the Cock. Even in our own time it may be noted that the most vital and genuine humor is still written about London. Of this type is the mild and humane irony which marked Mr. Pet Bridges' studies of the small grey streets. Of this type is the simple but smashing laughter of the best tales of Mr. W. W. Jacobs, telling of the smoke and sparkle of the tames. No, I can see that I am not a cockney humorist. No, I am not worthy to be. Sometime after sad and strenuous afterlives, sometime after fierce and apocalyptic incarnations in some strange world beyond the stars, I may become at last a cockney humorist. In that potential paradise I may walk among the cockney humorists, if not an equal, at least a companion. I may feel for a moment on my shoulder the hearty hand of Dryden and thread the labyrinths of the sweet insanity of Lamb. But that could only be if I were not only much cleverer, but much better than I am. Before I reach that sphere I shall have left behind, perhaps, the sphere that is inhabited by angels, and even past that, which is appropriated exclusively to the use of Yorkshiremen. No, London is in this matter attacked upon its strongest ground. London is the largest of the bloated modern cities. London is the smokiest. London is the dirtiest. London is, if you will, the most somber. London is, if you will, the most miserable. But London is certainly the most amusing and the most amused. You may prove that we have the most tragedy, the fact remains that we have the most comedy, that we have the most farce. We have, at the very worst, the splendid hypocrisy of humor. We conceal our sorrow behind a screaming derision. You speak of people who laugh through their tears. It is our boast that we only weep through our laughter. There remains always this great boast, perhaps the greatest boast that is possible to human nature. I mean the great boast that the most unhappy part of our population is also the most hilarious part. The poor can forget that social problem, which the moderately rich ought never to forget. Blessed are the poor, for they alone have not the poor always with them. The honest poor can sometimes forget poverty. The honest rich can never forget it. I believe firmly in the value of all vulgar notions, especially of vulgar jokes, when once you have got hold of a vulgar joke you may be certain that you have got hold of a subtle and spiritual idea. The men who made the jokes saw something deep which they could not express except by something silly and emphatic. They saw something delicate, which they could only express by something indelicate. I remember that Mr. Max Bierbaum, who has every merit except democracy, attempted to analyze the jokes at which the mob laughs. He divided them into three sections, jokes about bodily humiliation, jokes about things alien such as foreigners, and jokes about bad cheese. Mr. Max Bierbaum thought he understood the first two forms, but I am not sure that he did. In order to understand vulgar humor, it is not enough to be humorous. One must also be vulgar, as I am. And in the first case, it is surely obvious that it is not merely at the fact of something being hurt that we laugh, as I trust we do, when a Prime Minister sits down on his hat. If that were so, we should laugh whenever we saw a funeral. We do not laugh at the mere fact of something falling down. There is nothing humorous about leaves falling or the sun going down. When our house falls down, we do not laugh. All the birds of the air might drop around us in a perpetual shower like a hailstorm without arousing a smile. If you really ask yourself why we laugh at a man sitting down suddenly in the street, you will discover that the reason is not only recondent, but ultimately religious. All the jokes about men sitting down on their hats are really theological jokes. They are concerned with the dual nature of man. They refer to the primary paradox that man is superior to all the things around him, and yet is at their mercy. Quite equally subtle and spiritual is the idea at the back of laughing at foreigners. It concerns the almost torturing truth of a thing being like oneself and yet not like oneself. Nobody laughs at what is entirely foreign. Nobody laughs at a palm tree. But it is sunny to see the familiar image of God disguised behind the black beard of a Frenchman or the black face of a Negro. There is nothing funny in the sounds that are wholly inhuman, a howling of wild beasts or of the wind. But if a man begins to talk like oneself but all the syllables come out different, then if one is a man one feels inclined to laugh, though if one is a gentleman one resists the inclination. Mr. Max Beerbaum, I remember, professed to understand the first two forms of popular wit, but said that the third quite stumped him. He could not see why there should be anything funny about bad cheese. I can tell him at once he has missed the idea because it is subtle and philosophical, but he is looking for something ignorant and foolish. Bad cheese is funny because it is like the foreigner or the man fallen on the pavement, the type of the transition or transgression across a great mystical boundary. Bad cheese symbolizes the change from the inorganic to the organic. Bad cheese symbolizes the startling prodigy of matter taking on vitality. It symbolizes the origin of life itself and it is only about such solemn matters as the origin of life that the democracy condescends the joke. Thus, for instance, the democracy jokes about marriage because marriage is a part of mankind, but the democracy would never deign to joke about free love because free love is a piece of prigishness. As a matter of fact it will be generally found that the popular joke is not true to the letter but is true to the spirit. The vulgar joke is generally in the oddest way the truth, and yet not the fact. For instance, it is not in the least true that mothers-in-law are as a class oppressive and intolerable. Most of them are both devoted and useful. All the mothers-in-law I have ever had were admirable. Yet the legend of the comic papers is profoundly true. It draws attention to the fact that it is much harder to be a nice mother-in-law than to be nice in any other conceivable relation of life. The caricatures have drawn the worst mother-in-law a monster by a way of expressing the fact that the best mother-in-law is a problem. The same is true of the perpetual jokes in comic papers about truish wives and hen-packed husbands. It is all a frantic exaggeration, but it is an exaggeration of a truth, whereas all the modern mouthings about oppressed women are the exaggerations of a falsehood. If you read even the best of the intellectuals of today, you will find them saying that in the mass of the democracy the woman is the chattel of her Lord, like his bath or his bed. But if you read the comic literature of the democracy, you will find that the Lord hides under the bed the shape from the wrath of his chattel. This is not the fact, but it is much nearer than the truth. Every man who is married knows quite well not only that he does not regard his wife as a chattel, but that no man can conceivably ever have done so. The joke stands for an ultimate truth, and that is a subtle truth. It is one not very easy to state correctly. It can perhaps be most correctly stated by saying that even if the man is the head of the house, he knows he is the figurehead. But the vulgar comic papers are so subtle and true that they are even prophetic. If you really want to know what is going to happen to the future of our democracy, do not read the modern sociological prophecies. Do not read even Mr. Wells Utopias for this purpose, though you should certainly read them if you are fond of good honesty and good English. If you want to know what will happen, study the pages of snaps or patchy bits as if they were the dark tablets graven with the oracle of the gods. For mean and gross as they are, in all seriousness they contain what is entirely absent from all Utopias and all the sociological conjectures of our time. They contain some hint of the actual habits and manifest desires of the English people. If we are really to find out what the democracy will ultimately do with itself, we shall surely find it not in the literature which studies the people, but in the literature which the people studies. I can give two chance cases in which the common or cockney joke was a much better prophecy than the careful observations of the most cultured observer. When England was agitated, previous to the last general election about the existence of Chinese labor, there was a distinct difference between the tone of the politicians and the tone of the populace. The politicians who disapproved of Chinese labor were most careful to explain that they did not in any sense disapprove of Chinese. According to them it was a pure question of legal propriety, of whether certain clauses in the contract of indenture were not inconsistent with their constitutional traditions. According to them the case would have been the same if the people were either Chinese or Englishmen. It all sounded wonderfully enlightened and lucid, and in comparison the popular joke looked of course very poor, for the popular joke against the Chinese laborers was simply that they were Chinese. It was an objection to an alien type. The popular papers were full of jibes about pigtails and yellow faces. It seemed that the liberal politicians were raising an intellectual objection to a doubtful document of state, while it seemed that the radical populace were merely roaring with idiotic laughter at the sight of a Chinaman's clothes. But the popular instinct was justified, for the vices revealed were Chinese vices. But there is another case more pleasant and more up to date. The popular papers always persisted in representing the new woman or the suffragette as an ugly woman, fat in spectacles with bulging clothes and generally falling off a bicycle. As a matter of plain external fact, there was not a word of truth in this. The leaders of the movement of female emancipation are not at all ugly. Most of them are extraordinarily good looking, nor are they at all indifferent to art or decorative costume. Many of them are alarmingly attached to these things. Yet the popular instinct was right, while the popular instinct was that in this movement rightly or wrongly there was an element of indifference to female dignity of a quite new willingness of women to be grotesque. These women did truly despise the punt-official quality of women. And in our streets and around our parliament we have seen the stately woman of art and culture turn into the comic woman of comic bits. And whether we think the exhibition justifiable or not, the fallacy of the comic papers is justified. The healthy and vulgar masses were conscious of a hidden enemy to their traditions who has now come out into the daylight that the scriptures might be fulfilled. For the two things that a healthy person hates most between heaven and hell are a woman who is not dignified and a man who is the fallacy of success. There has appeared in our time similar class of books and articles which I sincerely and solemnly think may be called the silliest ever known among men. They are much more wild than the wildest romances of chivalry and much more dull than the dullest religious tract. Moreover, the romances of chivalry were at least about chivalry. The religious tracts are about religion but these things are about nothing. They are about what is called success. On every bookstore in every magazine you may find works telling people how to succeed. They are books showing men how to succeed in everything. They are written by men who cannot even succeed in writing books. To begin with, of course, there is no such thing as success. Or if you like to put it so there is nothing that is not successful. That a thing is successful merely means that it is. A millionaire is successful in being a millionaire and a donkey in being a donkey. Any live man has succeeded in living. Any dead man may have succeeded in committing suicide. But passing over the bad logic and bad philosophy and the phrase, we may take it as these writers do in the ordinary sense of success in obtaining money or worldly position. These writers profess to tell the ordinary man how he may succeed in his trade or speculation. If he is a builder, he may succeed as a builder. How, if he is a stockbroker, he may succeed as a stockbroker. They profess to show him how, if he is a grocer, he may become a sporting yachtsman. How, if he is a tenth-rate journalist, he may become a peer. And how, if he is a German Jew, he may become an Anglo-Saxon. This is a definite and business-like proposal. And I really think that the people of books, if any people do by them, have a moral, if not legal, right to ask for their money back. Nobody would dare to publish a book about electricity, which literally told nothing about electricity. No one would dare to publish an article on botany, which showed that the writer did not know which end of a plant grew in the earth. Yet our modern world is full of books about success and successful people, which literally contain no kind of idea and scarcely any kind of verbal sense. It is perfectly obvious that in any decent occupation, such as bricklaying or writing books, there are only two ways in any special sense of succeeding. One is by doing very good work. The other is by cheating. Both are much too simple to require any literary explanation. If you are in for the high jump, either jump higher than anyone else, or manage somehow to pretend that you have done so. If you want to succeed at WIST, either be a good WIST player or play with marked cards. You may want a book about jumping, you may want a book about WIST, you may want a book about cheating at WIST, but you cannot want a book about success, especially you cannot want a book about success such as those which you can now find scattered by the hundred about the book market. You may want to jump to play cards, but you do not want to read wandering statements to the effect that jumping is jumping, or that games are won by winners. If these writers, for instance, said anything about success in jumping, he would be something like this. The jumper must have a clear meaning for him. He must desire definitely to jump higher than the other men who are in for the same competition. He must let no feeble feelings of mercy, sneaked from the sickening little Englander and pro-bores, prevent him from trying to do his best. He must remember that a competition in jumping is distinctly competitive, and that as Darwin has gloriously demonstrated, that is the kind of thing the book would say, and very useful it would be, no doubt, if read out in a low and tense voice to a young man just about to take the high jump. Or suppose that in the course of his intellectual rambles the philosopher of success dropped upon our other case that of playing cards. His bracing advice would run, in playing cards it is very necessary to avoid the mistake of modeling humanitarians and free traders of permitting your opponent to win the game. You must have grit and snap and go, in to win. The days of idealism and superstition are over. We live in a time of science and hard common sense, and if it has now been definitely proved that in any game where two are playing, if one does not win the other will, it is all very of course, but I confess that if I were playing cards I would rather have some decent little book which told me the rules of the game. Beyond the rules of the game it is all a question either of talent or dishonesty and I will undertake to provide either one or the other which is not for me to say. Turning over a popular magazine I find a queer and amusing example. There is an article called The Instinct that makes people rich. It is decorated in front with a formidable portrait of Lord Ross Child. There are many definite methods honest and dishonest which make people rich. The only instinct I know of which does it is that instinct which theological Christianity crudely describes as the sin of avarice. That however is beside the present point. I wish to quote the following exquisite paragraphs as a piece of historical advice as to how to succeed. It is so practical it leaves so little doubt about what should be our next step. The name of Vanderbilt is synonymous with wealth gained by modern enterprise. Cornelius, the founder of the family, was the first of the great American magnates of commerce. He started as the son of a poor farmer. He ended as a millionaire twenty times over. He had the money making instinct. The opportunities that were given by the application of the steam engine to ocean traffic and by the birth of railway locomotion in the wealthy but undeveloped United States of America and consequently he amassed an immense fortune. Now it is of course obvious that we cannot all follow exactly in the footsteps of this great railway monarch. The precise opportunities that fell through him do not occur to us. Circumstances have changed. But although this is so, still in our own sphere and in our own circumstances, we can follow his general methods. We can seize those opportunities that are given us and give ourselves a very fair chance of attaining riches. In such strange utterances we see quite clearly what is really at the bottom of all these articles and books. It is not mere business. It is mere cynicism. It is mysticism. The horrible mysticism of money. The writer of that passage did not really have the remotest notion of how Vanderbilt made his money or of how anybody else is to make his. He does indeed conclude his remarks by advocating some scheme. But it has nothing in the world to do with Vanderbilt. To prostrate himself before the mystery of a millionaire. For when we really worship anything we love not only its clearness but its obscurity. We exalt in its very invisibility. Thus, for instance, when a man is in love with a woman he takes special pleasure in the fact that a woman is unreasonable. Thus again the very pious poet celebrating his creator takes pleasure in saying that God moves in a mysterious way. Now the writer of the paragraph which I have quoted does not seem to have had anything to do with the God and I should not think, judging by his extreme unpracticality that he ever had been really in love with a woman. The thing he does worship Vanderbilt he treats in exactly this mystical manner. He really revels in the fact his deity Vanderbilt is keeping a secret from him and fills his soul with a sort of transport of cunning an ecstasy of priestcraft that he should pretend to be telling to the multitude that terrible secret which he does not know. Speaking about the instinct that makes people rich the same writer remarks in olden days its existence was fully understood. The Greeks enshrined it the progress of the golden touch here was a man who turned everything he laid his hands upon into gold his life was a progress amidst riches out of everything that came in his way he created the precious metal a foolish legend said the wise acres of the Victorian age the truth we say of today we all know of such men we are ever meeting or reading about such persons that we touch into gold success dogs their very footsteps their life's pathway leads unerringly upwards they cannot fail unfortunately however Midas could fail he did his path did not lead unerringly upward he starved because whenever he touched a biscuit or a ham sandwich it turned to gold that was the whole point of the story the writer has to suppress it delicately writing so near to a portrait of Lord Rothschild the old fables of mankind are indeed unfathomably wise but we must not have them expurgated in the interests of Mr. Vanderbilt we must not have King Midas represented as an example of success he was a failure of an unusually painful kind also he had the ears of an ass also like most other prominent and wealthy persons he endeavored to conceal the fact it was his barber if I remember right who had to be treated on a confidential footing with regard to this peculiarity and his barber instead of behaving like a go-ahead person of the succeeded all-cost school and trying to blackmail King Midas went away and whispered this splendid piece of society's scandal to the reeds who enjoyed it enormously it is said that they also whispered it as the winds swayed them to and fro I look reverently at the portrait of Lord Rothschild I read reverently about the exploits that Mr. Vanderbilt I know that I cannot turn everything I touch to gold then I also know that I have never tried having a preference for other substances such as grass and good wine I know that these people have certainly succeeded in something that they have certainly overcome somebody I know that they are kings in a sense that no men ever were kings before that they create markets and be stride continents yet it always seemed to me that there is some small domestic fact that they are hiding and I have sometimes thought I heard upon the wind the laughter and whisper of the reeds at least let us hope we shall all live to see these absurd books about success covered with a proper derision and neglect they do not teach people to be successful but they do teach people to be snobbish they do spread a sort of evil poetry of worldliness the Puritans are always denouncing books that inflame lust what shall we say of books that inflame the vile or passions of Everest and pride a hundred years ago we had the ideal of the industrious boys were told that by thrift and work they would all become lord mayors this was fallacious but it was manly and had a minimum of moral truth in our society temperance will not help a poor man to enrich himself but it may help him to respect himself good work will not make him a rich man but good work may make him a good workman the industrious apprentice rose by virtue's few and narrow indeed but still virtues but what shall we say of the gospel preached to the new industrial apprentice the apprentice who rises not by his virtues but avowedly by his vices end of section one 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 on running after one's hat I feel an almost savage envy on hearing that London has been flooded in my absence while I am in the mere country my own Battersea has been I understand particularly favored as a meeting of the waters Battersea was already as I need hardly say the most beautiful of human localities now that it has the additional splendor of great sheets of water there must be something quite incomparable in the landscape or waterscape of my own romantic town Battersea must be a vision of Venice the boat that brought the need from the butchers must have shot along those lanes of rippling silver with the strange smoothness of the gondola the greengrocer who brought cabbages to the corner of Lachmere road must have lent upon the oar with the unearthly grace of the gondolier there is nothing so perfectly poetical as an island and when a district is flooded it becomes an archipelago some consider such romantic views of flood there slightly lacking in reality but really this romantic view of such inconveniences is quite as practical as the other the true optimist who sees in such things an opportunity for enjoyment is quite as logical and much more sensible than the ordinary indignant rate payer who sees in them an opportunity for grumbling real pain as in the case of being burnt at Smithfield or having a toothache is a positive thing it can be supported but scarcely enjoyed but after all our toothaches are the exception and as for being burnt at Smithfield it only happens to us at the very longest intervals and most of the inconvenience that makes men swear or women cry are really sentimental or imaginative inconveniences things altogether of the mind for instance we often hear grown up people complaining of having to hang about a railway station and wait for a train did you ever hear a small boy complain of having to hang about a railway station and wait for a train no to him to be inside a railway station is to be inside a cavern of wonder and a palace of poetical pleasures because to him the red light and the green light on the signal are like a new sun and a new moon because to him when the wooden arm of the signal falls down suddenly it is as if a great king had thrown down his staff as the signal and started a shrieking tournament of trains I myself am of little boy's habit in this matter they also serve who only stand and wait for the 215 their meditations may be full of rich and fruitful things many of the most purple hours of my life have been passed at Clapham Junction which is now I suppose under water I've been there in many moods so fixed and mystical that the water might well have come up to my waist before I noticed it particularly but in the case of all such annoyances as I have said everything depends upon the emotional point of view you can safely apply the test to almost every one of the things that are currently talked of as the typical nuisance of daily life for instance there is a current impression that it is unpleasant to have to run after one's hat why should it be unpleasant to the well ordered and pious mind not merely because it is running and running exhausts one the same people run much faster in games and sports the same people run much more eagerly after an uninteresting little leather ball than they will after a nice silk hat there is an idea that it is humiliating to run after one's hat and when people say it is humiliating they mean that it is comic it certainly is comic but man is a very comic creature and most of the things he does are comic eating for instance and the most comic things of all are exactly the things that are most worth doing such as making love a man's running after a hat is not half so ridiculous as a man's running after a wife now a man could if he felt rightly in the matter run after his hat with the manliest arder and the most sacred joy he might regard himself as jolly huntsman pursuing a wild animal if certainly no animal could be wilder in fact I am inclined to believe that hat hunting on windy days will be the sport of the upper classes in the future there will be a meet of ladies and gentlemen on some high ground on a gusty morning they will be told that the professional attendants have started a hat in such and such a thicket or whatever be the technical term notice that employment will in the fullest degree combine sport with humanitarianism the hunters would feel that they were not inflicting pain nay, they would feel that they were inflicting pleasure rich, almost riotous pleasure upon the people who were looking on when last I saw an old gentleman running after his hat in Hyde Park I told him that a heart so benevolent as his ought to be filled with peace and thanks at the thought of how much unaffected pleasure his every gesture and bodily attitude were at that moment giving to the crowd the same principle can be applied to every other typical domestic worry a gentleman trying to get a fly out of the milk or a piece of cork out of his glass of wine often imagines himself to be irritated let him think for a moment of the patience of anglers driven by dark pools and let his soul be immediately irradiated with gratification and repose again, I have known some people of very moderate views driven by their distress to the use of theological terms to which they attached no doctrinal significance merely because a drawer was jammed tight and they could not pull it out a friend of mine was particularly in this way every day his drawer was jammed and every day in consequence it was something else that rhymes to it but I pointed out to him that this sense of wrong was really subjective and relative it rested entirely upon the assumption that the drawer could, should, and would come out easily but if I said, you picture to yourself that you are pulling against some powerful and depressive enemy the struggle will become merely exciting and not exasperating imagine that you are tugging up a lifeboat out of the sea imagine that you are roping up a fellow creature out of the alpine crevasse imagine even that you are a boy again and engaged in a tug of war between French and English shortly after saying this I left him but I have no doubt at all that my words bore the best possible fruit I have no doubt that every day of his life he hangs on to the handle of that drawer with a flushed face and eyes bright with battle uttering encouraging shouts to himself and seeming to hear all round him the roar of an applauding ring so I do not think that it is altogether fanciful or incredible to suppose that even the floods in London may be accepted and enjoyed poetically nothing beyond inconvenience seems really to have been caused by them and inconvenience, as I have said, is only one aspect and that the most unimaginative and accidental aspect of a really romantic situation an adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered an inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered the water that girdled the houses and shops of London must, if anything have only increased their previous witchery and wonder for, as the Roman Catholic priest in the story said wine is good with everything except water and on a similar principle water is good with everything except wine the vote and the house most of us will be canvas soon I suppose some of us may even canvas upon which side of course nothing will induce me to state beyond saying that by a remarkable coincidence it will in every case be the only side in which a high-minded public-spirited and patriotic citizen can take an even momentary interest but the general question of canvassing itself being a non-party question is one which we may be permitted to approach the rules for canvassers are fairly familiar to anyone who has ever canvassed they are printed on the little card which you carry about with you and lose there is a statement I think that you must not offer a voter food or drink however hospitable you may feel towards him in his own house you must not carry his lunch about with you you must not produce a veal cutlet from your tailcoat pocket you must not conceal poached eggs about your person you must not like a kind of conjurer produce baked potatoes from your hat the canvasser must not feed the voter in any way whether the voter is allowed to feed the canvasser whether the voter may give the canvasser veal cutlets and baked potatoes is a point of law on which I have never been able to inform myself when I found myself canvassing a gentleman I have sometimes felt tempted to ask him if there was any rule against his giving me food and drink but the matter seemed a delicate one his attitude to me also sometimes suggested a doubt as to whether he would even if he could but there are voters who might find it worthwhile to discover if there is any law against bribing a canvasser they might bribe him to go away the second veto for canvassers which was printed on the little card said that you must not persuade anyone to personate a voter I have no idea what it means to dress up as an average voter seems a little vague there is no well-recognized uniform as far as I know with civic waistcoat and patriotic whiskers the enterprise resolves itself into one somewhat similar to the enterprise of a rich friend of mine who went to a fancy dress ball dressed up as a gentleman perhaps it means that there is a practice of personating some individual voter the canvasser creeps up to the house of his fellow conspirator carrying makeup in a bag he produces from it a pair of white mustaches and a single eyeglass which are sufficient to give the most commonplace person a startling resemblance to the colonel at number eighty or he hurriedly affixes to his friend that large nose and that bald head which are all that is essential to an illusion of the presence of Professor Budger I do not undertake to unravel these knots I can only say that when I was a canvasser I was told by the little card with every circumstance of seriousness and authority that I was not to persuade anybody to personate a voter and I can lay my hand upon my heart and affirm that I never did the third injunction on the card was one which seemed to me if interpreted exactly and according to its words to undermine the very foundation of our politics it told me that I must not threaten a voter with any consequences whatever no doubt this was intended to apply to threats of personal and illegitimate character as for instance if a wealthy candidate were to threaten to raise all the rents or to put up a statue of himself but as verbally and grammatically expressed it certainly would cover those general threats of disaster to the whole community which are the main matter of political discussion when a canvasser says that if the opposition candidate gets in the country will be ruined he is threatening the voters with certain consequences when the free trader says that if tariffs are adopted the people in Brompton or Bayswater will crawl about eating grass he is threatening them with consequences when the tariff reformer says that if free trade exists for another year St. Paul's Cathedral will be a ruin and Ludgate Hill is deserted as Stonehenge he is also threatening and what is the good of being a tariff reformer if you can't say that what is the use of being a politician or a parliamentary candidate at all if one cannot tell the people that if the other man gets in England will be instantly invaded and enslaved Lud be pouring down the strand and all the English ladies carried off into harems but these things are after all consequences so to speak the majority of refined persons in our day may generally be hurt abusing the practice of canvassing in the same way the majority of refined persons commonly the same refined persons may be hurt abusing the practice of interviewing celebrities it seems a very singular thing to me that this refined world reserves all its indignation for the comparative open and innocent element in both walks of life there is really a vast amount of corruption and hypocrisy in our election politics about the most honest thing in the whole mess is the canvassing a man has not got a right to nurse a constituency with aggressive charities to buy it with great presence of parks and libraries big vistas of future benevolence all this which goes on on rebuked is bribery and nothing else but a man has got the right to go to another free man and ask him with civility whether he will vote for him the information can be asked granted or refused without any laws of dignity on either side which is more than can be said of a park it is the same with the place of interviewing in journalism in a trade where there are labyrinths of insincerity interviewing is about the most simple and most sincere thing there is the canvasser when he wants to know a man's opinion goes out and asks him it may be a bore but it is about as plain and straight a thing as he could do so the interviewer when he wants to know a man's opinions goes and asks him but all the other real and systematic of our journalism pass without being vituperated and even without being known the financial motives of policy the misleading posters the suppression of just letters of complaint a statement about a man may be infamously untrue but it is read calmly but a statement by a man to an interviewer is felt as indefensibly vulgar that the paper should misrepresent him as nothing that he should represent himself is bad taste the whole error in both cases lies in the fact that the refined persons are attacking politics and journalism on the ground of vulgarity of course politics and journalism are as it happens very vulgar but their vulgarity is not the worst thing about them things are so bad with both that by this time their vulgarity is the best thing about them their vulgarity is at least a noisy thing and their great danger is that silence that always comes before decay the conversational persuasion at elections is perfectly human and rational it is the silent persuasions that are utterly damnable if it is true that the commons house will not hold all the commons it is very good example of what we call the anomalies of the english constitution it is also I think a very good example of how highly undesirable those anomalies really are most englishmen say that these anomalies do not matter they are not ashamed of being illogical they are proud of being illogical lord makali a very typical englishman romantic, prejudiced, poetical lord makali said that he would not lift his hand to get rid of an anomaly and not also agreements many other sturdy romantic englishmen say the same thing they boast of our anomalies they boast of our illogicality they say it shows what a practical people we are they are utterly wrong lord makali was in this matter as in a few others utterly wrong anomalies do matter very much and do a great deal of harm in fact, illogicalities do matter a great deal and do a great deal of harm and this for a reason that anyone at all acquainted with human nature can see for himself all injustice begins in the mind and anomalies accustom the mind to the idea of unreason and untruth suppose I had by some prehistoric law the power of forcing every man in bettersy to nod his head three times before he got out a bit the practical politicians might say that this power was a harmless anomaly that it was not a grievance it could do my subjects no harm it could do me no good the people of bettersy they would say might safely submit to it but the people of bettersy could not safely submit to it for all that if I had nodded their heads for them for fifty years I could cut off their heads with immeasurably greater ease for there would have permanently sunk into every man's mind the notion that it was a natural thing for me to have a fantastic and irrational power they would have grown accustomed to insanity for in order that men should resist injustice something more is necessary than that they should think injustice unpleasant they must think injustice absurd above all they must think it startling they must retain the violence of a virgin astonishment that is the explanation of the singular fact which must have struck many people in the relations of philosophy and reform it is the fact I mean that optimists are more practical reformers than pessimists superficially one would imagine that the railer would be the reformer that the man who thought that everything was wrong would be the man to put everything right in historical practice the thing is quite the other way curiously enough it is the man who likes things as they are who really makes them better the optimist Dickens has achieved more reforms than the pessimist gissing a man like Rousseau has far too rosy a theory of human nature but he produced a revolution a man like David Hume thinks that almost all things are depressing but he is a conservative and wishes to keep them as they are a man like Godwin believes existence to be kindly but he is a rebel a man like Carlisle believes existence to be cruel but he is a Tory everywhere the man who alters things begins by liking things and the real explanation of this success of the optimistic reformer of this failure by the pessimistic reformer is, after all an explanation of sufficient simplicity it is because the optimist can look at wrong not only with indignation but with a startled indignation when the pessimist looks at any infamy it is to him after all only a repetition of the infamy of existence the court of chancery is indefensible like mankind and indignation is abominable like the universe but the optimist sees injustice as something discordant and unexpected and it stings him into action the pessimist can be enraged at wrong but only the optimist can be surprised at it and it is the same with the relations of an anomaly to the logical mind the pessimist resents evil like Lord Macaulay because it is a grievance the optimist resents it also because it is an anomaly a contradiction to his conception of the course of things and it is not at all unimportant but on the contrary most important that this course of things in politics and elsewhere should be lucid explicable and defensible when people have got used to unreason they can no longer be startled at injustice when people have grown familiar with an anomaly they are prepared to that extent for a grievance they may think the grievance grievous but they can no longer think it strange take if only as an excellent example the very matter alluded to before I mean the seats or rather lack of seats in the House of Commons perhaps it is true that under the best conditions it would never happen that every member turned up perhaps a complete attendance would never actually be but who can tell how much influence in keeping members away may have been exerted by this calm assumption that they would stop away how can a man be expected to help to make full attendance when he knows that a full attendance is actually forbidden how can the men who make up the chambers do their duty reasonably when the very men who built the House have not done theirs reasonably if the trumpet give an uncertain sound who shall prepare himself for the battle and what if the remarks of the trumpet take this form I charge you as you love your king and country to come to this council and I know you won't concede and caricature if a man must needs be conceded it is certainly better that he should be conceded about some merits or talents that he does not really possess for then his vanity remains more or less superficial it remains a mere mistake of fact like that of a man who thinks he inherits the royal blood or thinks he has an infallible system for Monte Carlo because the merit is an unreal merit it does not corrupt or sophisticate his real merits he is vain about the virtue he has not got but he may be humble about the virtues that he has got his truly honorable qualities remain in their primordial innocence he cannot see them and he cannot spoil them if a man's mind is erroneously possessed with the idea that he is a great violinist that need not prevent his being a gentleman and an honest man but if once his mind is possessed in any strong degree with the knowledge that he is a gentleman he does not cease to be one but there is a third kind of satisfaction of which I have noticed one or two examples lately another kind of satisfaction which is neither a pleasure in the virtues that we do possess nor a pleasure in the virtues we do not possess it is the pleasure which a man takes in the presence or absence of certain things in himself without ever adequately asking himself whether in his case he constitute virtues at all a man will plume himself because he is not bad in some particular way when the truth is that he is not good enough to be bad in that particular way some priggish little clerk will say I have reason to congratulate myself that I am a civilized person and not so bloodthirsty as the mad mullah somebody ought to say to him a really good man would be less bloodthirsty than the mullah but you are less bloodthirsty not because you are more of a good man but because you are a great deal less of a man you are not bloodthirsty not because you would spare your enemy but because you would run away from him or again some puritan with a sullen type of piety would say I have reason to congratulate myself that I do not worship graven images like the old heathen Greeks and again somebody ought to say to him the best religion may not worship graven images because it may see beyond them but if you do not worship graven images it is only because you are mentally and morally quite incapable of graving them true religion perhaps is above idolatry but you are below idolatry you are not holy enough yet to worship a lump of stone Mr. F. C. Gould the brilliant and felicitous caricaturist recently delivered a most interesting speech upon the nature and atmosphere of our modern English caricature I think there is really very little to congratulate oneself about in the condition of English caricature there are a few causes for pride probably the greatest cause for pride is Mr. F. C. Gould but Mr. F. C. Gould, forbidden by modesty to adduce this excellent ground of journalism, fell back about saying a thing which is said by numbers of other people but has not perhaps been said lately with the full authority of an eminent cartoonist he said that he thought they might congratulate themselves that the style of caricature which found exceptation nowadays was very different from the lampoon of the old days continuing he said according to the newspaper report on looking back to the political lampoons of Rowlinson's and Gilray's time they would find them coarse and brutal in some countries abroad still even in America the method of political caricature was of the bludgeon kind the fact was we had passed the bludgeon stage if they were brutal in attacking a man even for political reasons they roused sympathy for the man who was attacked what they had to do was rub in the point they wanted to emphasize as gently as they could laughter and applause anybody reading these words and anybody who heard them will certainly feel that there is in them a great deal of truth as well as a great deal of genealogy but along with that truth and with that genealogy there is a streak of that erroneous type of optimism which is founded on the fallacy of which I have spoken above before we congratulate ourselves upon the absence of certain faults from our nation or society we ought to ask ourselves why it is that these faults are absent are we without the fault because we have the opposite virtue or are we without the fault because we have the opposite fault it is a good thing, assuredly to be innocent of any excess but let us be sure that we are not innocent of excess merely by being guilty of defect is it really true that our English political satire is so moderate because it is so magnanimous, so forgiving so saintly is it penetrated through and through with a mystical charity with a psychological tenderness do we spare the feelings of the cabinet minister because we pierce through all his apparent crimes and follies down to the dark virtues of which his own soul is unaware do we temper the win to the leader of the opposition because in all our embracing heart we pity and cherish the struggling spirit of the leader of the opposition briefly have we left off being brutal because we are too grand and generous to be brutal is it really true that we are better than brutality is it really true that we have passed the bludgeon stage I fear that there is the least of it on other side to the matter it is not only too probable that the mildness of our political satire when compared with the political satire of our fathers arises simply from the profound unreality of our current politics Rowlinson and Gilray did not fight merely because they were natural pothouse pugilists they fought because they had something to fight about it is easy enough to be refined about things that do not matter we have had portentious wrestle in which swung true and fro like dizzy with danger the independence of England the independence of Ireland the independence of France if we wish for a proof of this fact that the lack of refinement did not come from mere brutality the proof is easy the proof is that in the struggle no personalities were more brutal than the really refined personalities none were more violent and tolerant than those who were by nature polished and sensitive Nelson for instance had the nerves and good manners of a woman nobody in his senses I suppose would call Nelson brutal but when he was touched upon the national matter there sprang out of him a spout of ults and he could only tell men to kill, kill, kill the Frenchman it would be as easy to take examples on the other side Neil Desmoulins was a man of much the same type not only elegant and sweet and temper but almost tremulously tender and humanitarian but he was ready he said to embrace liberty upon a pile of corpses in Ireland there were even more instances Robert Emmett was only one famous example of a whole family of men at one sensitive and savage I think that Mr. F. C. Gould is altogether wrong in talking of this political ferocity as if it were some sort of survival from ruder conditions like a flint axe or a hairy man cruelty is perhaps the worst kind of sin intellectual cruelty is certainly the worst kind of cruelty but there is nothing in the least barbaric or ignorant about intellectual cruelty the great renaissance artists who mixed colors exquisitely mixed poisons equally exquisitely the great renaissance princes who designed instruments of music also designed instruments of torture barbarity, malignity the desire to hurt men are the evil things generated in atmospheres of intense reality when great nations or great causes are at war we may perhaps be glad that we have not got them but it is somewhat dangerous to be proud that we have not got them perhaps some great virtues have to be generated as in men like Nelson or Emmett before we can have these vices at all even as temptations I for one believe that if our caricatures do not hate their enemies it is not because they are too big to hate them but because their enemies are not big enough to hate I do not think we have passed the bludgeon stage I believe we have not come to the bludgeon stage we must be better braver and purer men than we are before we come to the bludgeon stage let us then by all means be proud of the virtues that we have not got but let us not be too arrogant about the virtues that we cannot help having it may be that a man living on a desert island has a right to congratulate himself upon the fact that he can meditate his ease but he must not congratulate himself on the fact that he is on a desert island and at the same time congratulate himself on the self-restraint he shows in not going to a ball every night similarly our England may have a right to congratulate itself upon the fact that her politics are very quiet amicable and humdrum but she must not congratulate herself upon that fact to congratulate herself upon the self-restraint she shows in not tearing herself and her citizens into rags between two English privy consulers polite language is a mark of civilization but really not a mark of magnanimity allied to this question is the kindred question on which we so often hear an innocent British boast the fact that our statesmen are privately on very friendly relations so in parliament they sit on opposite sides of the house here again it is well to have no illusions our statesmen are not monsters of mystical generosity or insane logic who are really able to hate a man from three to twelve and love him from twelve to three if our social relations are more peaceful than those of France or America or the England of a hundred years ago it is simply because our politics are more peaceful not improbably because our politics are more fictitious if our statesmen agree more in private it is for the very simple reason that they agree more in public and the reason they agree so much in both cases is really that they belong to one social class and therefore the dining life is the real life Tory and liberal statesmen like each other but it is not because they are both expansive it is because they are both exclusive end of section two 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 three patriotism and sport I noticed that some papers especially papers that call themselves patriotic have fallen into quite a panic over the fact that we have been twice beaten in the world of sport that a Frenchman has beaten us at golf and that Belgians have beaten us at rowing I suppose that the incidents are important to any people who ever believed in the self-satisfied English legend on this subject I suppose that there are men who vaguely believed that we could never be beaten by a Frenchman despite the fact that we have often been beaten by a Frenchman and once by a French woman in the old pictures in punch you will find a recurring piece of satire English caricaturists always assumed that a Frenchman could not ride to hounds or enjoy English hunting it did not seem to occur to them that all the people who founded English hunting were Frenchmen all the kings and nobles who originally rode to the hounds spoke French large numbers of those Englishmen who still ride to hounds have French names I suppose that the thing is important to anyone who is ignorant of such evident matters as these I suppose that if a man has ever believed that we English have some sacred and separate right to be athletic such reverses do appear quite enormous and shocking they feel as if, while the proper sun was rising in the east some other and unexpected sun had begun to rise in the north-northwest by north for the benefit the moral and intellectual benefit of such people it may be worthwhile to point out that the Anglo-Saxon has in these cases been defeated precisely by those competitors whom he has always regarded as being out of the running by Latins and by Latins of the most easy and unstrenuous type not only by Frenchmen but by Belgians all this I say is worth telling to any intelligent person who believes in the haughty theory of Anglo-Saxon superiority but then no intelligent person does believe in the haughty theory of Anglo-Saxon superiority no quite genuine Englishman ever did believe in it and the genuine Englishman these defeats will in no respect may the genuine English patriot will know that the strength of England has never depended upon any of these things that the glory of England has never had anything to do with them except in the opinion of a large section of the rich and a loose section of the poor which copies the idleness of the rich these people will of course think too much of our failure of each of our success the typical jingles who have admired their countrymen too much for being conquerors will doubtless despise their countrymen too much for being conquered but the Englishman with any feeling for England will know that athletic failures do not prove that England is weak any more than athletic successes proved that England was strong the truth is that athletics and all other things especially modern are insanely individualistic the Englishman who wins sporting prizes are exceptional among Englishmen for the simple reason that they are exceptional even among men English athletes represent England just about as much as Mr Barnum's freaks represent America there are so few of such people that it is almost a toss up whether they are found in this or that country if anyone wants a simple proof of this it is easy to find when the great English athletes are not exceptional Englishmen they are generally not Englishmen at all nay they are often representatives of races of which the average tone especially incompatible with athletics for instance the English are supposed to rule the natives of India in virtue of their superior heartiness superior activity superior health of body and mind the Hindus are supposed to be our subjects because they are less fond of action less fond of openness and the open air in a word less fond of cricket and substantially this is probably true Indians are less fond of cricket all the same if you ask among Englishmen for the very best cricket player you will find that he is an Indian or to take another case it is broadly true that the Jews are as a race pacific, intellectual, indifferent to war like the Indians or perhaps contemptuous of war like the Chinese nevertheless good prize fighters one or two have been Jews this is one of the strongest instances of the particular kind of evil that arises from our English form of the worship of athletics it concentrates too much upon the success of individuals it began quite naturally and rightly with wanting England to win the second stage was that it wanted some Englishmen to win the fourth stage was in the ecstasy and agony of some special competition that it wanted one particular Englishmen to win and the fourth stage was that when he had won it discovered that he was not even an Englishman this is one of the points I think on which something might really be said for Lord Roberts and his rather vague ideas which vary between rifle clubs and the option whatever may be the advantages or disadvantages or otherwise of the idea it is at least an idea of procuring equality and a sort of average in the athletic capacity of the people it might conceivably act as a corrective to our mere tendency to see ourselves in certain exceptional athletes as it is there are millions of Englishmen that they are a muscular race because C.B. Fry is an Englishman and there are many of them who think vaguely that athletics must belong to England because Ranjit Singhi is an Indian but the real historic strength of England, physical and moral has never had anything to do with this athletic specialism it has been rather hindered by it that the battle of Waterloo was won on Eaton playing fields it was a particularly unfortunate remark for the English contribution to the victory of Waterloo depended very much more than is common in victories upon the steadiness of the rank and file in an almost desperate situation the battle of Waterloo was won by the stubbornness of the common soldier that is to say it was won by the man who had never been to Eaton it was absurd to say that Waterloo was won on Eaton cricket fields but it might have been fairly said that Waterloo was won on the village green where clumsy boys played a very clumsy cricket in a word it was the average of the nation that was strong and athletic glories do not indicate much about the average of a nation Waterloo was not won by good cricket players but Waterloo was won by bad cricket players by a mass of men who had some minimum of athletic instincts and habits it is a good sign in a nation when such things are done badly it shows that all the people are doing them and it is a bad sign in a nation when such things are done very well for it shows that only a few experts and eccentrics are doing them and that the nation is merely looking on suppose that whenever we heard of walking in England it always meant walking 45 miles a day without fatigue we should be perfectly certain that only a few men were walking at all and that all the other British subjects were being wheeled about in bath chairs but if when we hear of walking it means slow walking painful walking and frequent fatigue then we know that the mass of the nation still is walking we know that England is still literally on its feet the difficulty is therefore that the actual raising of the standard of athletics has probably been bad for national athleticism instead of the tournament being a healthy melee into which any ordinary man would rush and take his chance it has become a fenced and guarded tilting yard for the collision of particular champions against whom no ordinary man would pit himself or even be permitted to pit himself if Waterloo was one on Eaton Cricket Fields it was because Eaton Cricket was probably much more careless than it is now as long as the game was a game everybody wanted to join in when it becomes an art everyone wants to look at it when it was frivolous it may have won Waterloo when it was serious and efficient it lost Magersfontein in the Waterloo period there was a general rough and tumble athleticism among average Englishmen it cannot be recreated by Cricket or by conscription or by any artificial means it was a thing of the soul it came out of laughter religion and the spirit of the place but it was like the modern French duel in this that it might happen to anybody if I were a French journalist it might really happen that Montseur Clemenceau might challenge me to meet him with pistols but I do not think that it is at all likely that Mr. C. B. Fry will ever challenge me to meet him with cricket bats an essay on two cities a little while ago I fell out of England into the town of Paris if a man fell out of the moon into the town of Paris he would know that it was the capital of a great nation if however he fell perhaps off some other side of the moon so as to hit the city of London he would not know so well that it was the capital of a great nation at any rate he would not know that the nation was so great as it is this would be so even on the assumption that the man from the moon could not read our alphabet as presumably he could not unless elementary education in that planet has gone to rather unsuspected lengths but it is true that a great part of the distinctive quality which separates Paris from London may be even seen in the names real democrats always insist that England is an aristocratic country real aristocrats always insist for some mysterious reason that it is a democratic country but if anyone has any real doubt about the matter let him consider simply the names of the streets nearly all the streets out of the strand for instance are named after the first name, second name third name, fourth, fifth and sixth names of some particular noble family after their relations connections or places of residence a Rundle Street Norfolk Street Villiers Street Bedford Street Southampton Street and any number of others the names varied so as to introduce the same family under all sorts of different surnames thus we have a Rundle Street and also Norfolk Street thus we have Buckingham Street and also Villiers Street to say that this is not aristocracy is simply intellectual impudence I am an ordinary citizen and my name is Gilbert Keith Chesterton and I confess that if I found three streets in a row in the strand the first called Gilbert Street and the second called Keith Street and the third Chesterton Street I should consider that I had become a somewhat more important person in the commonwealth than was all together good for its health if Frenchmen ran London which God forbid they would think yet quite as ludicrous that those streets should be named after the Duke of Buckingham as that they should be named after me they are streets out of one of the main thoroughfares if French methods were adopted one of them would be called Shakespeare Street another Cromwell Street another Wordsworth Street there would be statues of each of these persons at the end of each of these streets and any street left over would be named after the date on which the reform bill was passed or the penny postage established suppose a man tried to find people in London by the names of the places he would make a fine farce illustrating our illogicality our hero having once realized that Buckingham Street was named after the Buckingham Family would naturally walk into Buckingham Palace in search of the Duke of Buckingham to his astonishment he would meet somebody quite different his simple lunar logic would lead him to suppose if he wanted the Duke of Marlborough which seems unlikely he would find him at Marlborough House he would find the Prince of Wales when at last he understood that the Marlburles lived at Blenheim named after the great Marlburles victory he would no doubt go there but he would again find himself in error if acting upon this principle he tried to find the Duke of Wellington and told the cab man to arrive to Waterloo I wonder that no one has written a wild romance about the adventures of such an alien seeking the great English aristocrats and only guided by the names looking for the Duke of Bedford in the town of that name seeking for some trace of the Duke of Norfolk in Norfolk he might sail for Wellington in New Zealand and find the ancient seat of the Wellington the last scene might show he was then trying to learn Welsh in order to converse with the Prince of Wales but even if the imaginary traveller knew no alphabet of this earth at all I think it would still be possible to suppose him seeing a difference between London and Paris and upon the whole the real difference he would not be able to read the words quite Voltaire but he would see the sneering statue without having heard of Voltaire he would understand that the city was Voltairean he would not know that Fleet Street was named after the Fleet Prison but the same national spirit which kept the Fleet Street prison closed and narrow still keeps Fleet Street closed and narrow or if you will you may call Fleet Street cozy and the Fleet Prison cozy I think I could be more comfortable in the Fleet Prison in an English way of comfort than just under the statue of Voltaire I think that the man from the moon would know France without knowing French I think that he would know England without having heard the word for in the last resort all men talked by signs to talk by statues is to talk by signs to talk by cities is to talk by signs churches, palaces cathedrals, temples pyramids are an enormous dumb alphabet as if some giant held up his fingers of stone the most important things at the last are always said by signs even if like the cross on St. Paul's they are signs in heaven if men do not understand signs they will never understand words for my part I should be inclined to suggest that the chief object of education should be to restore simplicity if you like to put it so the chief object of education is not to learn things nay, the chief object of education is to unlearn things the chief object of education is to unlearn all the weariness and wickedness of the world and to get back into that state of exhilaration we all instinctively celebrate when we write by preference of children and of boys if I were an examiner appointed to examine all examiners which does not at present appear probable I would not only ask the teachers how much knowledge they had imparted I would ask them how much splendid and scornful ignorance they had erected more in arms but in any case I would insist that people should have so much simplicity as would enable them to see things suddenly and to see things as they are I do not care so much whether they can read the names over the shops I do care very much whether they can read the shops I do not feel deeply troubled as to whether they can tell where London is on the map as long as they can tell where Brixton is on the way home I do not even mind whether they can put two and two together in the mathematical sense I am content if they can put two and two together in the metaphorical sense but all this longer statement of an obvious view comes back to the metaphor I have employed I do not care a dump whether they know the alphabet so long as they know the dumb alphabet unfortunately I have noticed in many respects of our popular education that this is not done at all one teaches our London children to see London with abrupt and simple eyes and London is far more difficult to see properly than any other place London is a riddle Paris is an explanation the education of the Parisian child is something corresponding to the clear avenues and the exact squares of Paris when the Parisian boy has done learning about the French reason and Roman order he can go out and see the thing repeated in the shapes of many shining public places in the angles of many streets but when the English boy goes out after learning about a vague progress and idealism he cannot see it anywhere he cannot see anything anywhere except Sepolio and the Daily Mail we must either alter London to suit the ideals of our education or else alter our education to suit the great beauty of London French and English it is obvious that there is a great deal of difference between being international and being cosmopolitan all good men are international nearly all bad men are cosmopolitan if we are to be international we must be national and it is largely because those who call themselves the friends of peace have not dwelt sufficiently on this distinction that they do not impress the bulk of any of the nations to which they belong international peace means a peace between nations not a peace after the destruction of nations like the Buddhist peace after the destruction of personality the golden age of the good European is like the heaven of the Christian it is a place where people will love each other it is not like the heaven of the Hindu a place where they will be each other and in the case of national character this can be seen in a curious way it will generally be found I think that the more a man really appreciates the soul of another people the less he will attempt to imitate it he will be conscious that there is something in it too deep and too unmanageable to imitate the Englishman who has a fancy for France will try to be French the Englishman who admires France will remain obstinately English this is to be particularly noticed in the case of our relations with the French because it is one of the outstanding peculiarities of the French that their vices are all on the surface and their extraordinary virtues concealed one might almost say that their vices are the flower of their virtues thus their obscenity is the expression of their passionate love of dragging all things into the light the avarice of their peasants means the independence of their peasants what the English call their independence in the streets is a phase of their social equality the worried look of their women is connected with the responsibilities of their women and a certain unconscious brutality of hurry and gesture in the men is related to their inexhaustible and extraordinary military courage of all countries therefore France is the worst country for a superficial fool to admire let a fool hate France yet the fool loves it he will soon be a naive he will certainly admire it not only for the things that are not creditable but actually for the things that are not there he will admire the grace and indolence of the most industrious people in the world he will admire the romance and fantasy of the most determinedly respectable and commonplace people in the world this mistake the Englishman will make if he admires France too hastily but the mistake that he makes about France will be slight compared with the mistake that he makes about himself an Englishman who professes really to like French realistic novels really to be at home in a French modern theater really to experience no shock on first seeing the savage French caricatures is making a mistake very dangerous for his own sincerity he is not admiring something he does not understand he is reaping where he has not sown and taking up where he has not laid down he is trying to taste the fruit when he never toiled over the tree he is trying to pluck the exquisite fruit of French cynicism when he has never tilled the rude but rich soil of French virtue the thing can only be made clear to the Englishman by turning it round suppose a Frenchman came out of the democratic France to live in England where the shadow of the great houses still falls everywhere and where even freedom was in its origin aristocratic if the Frenchman saw our aristocracy and liked it if he saw our snobbishness and liked it if he set himself to imitate it we all know what we should feel that the particular Frenchman was a repulsive little nat he would not be imitating English aristocracy he would be imitating the English vice but he would not even understand the vice he plagiarized especially he would not understand that the vice is partly a virtue he would not understand those elements in the English which balance the snobbishness and make it human the great kindnesses the great kindnesses of the English their hospitality their unconscious poetry their sentimental conservatism which really admires the gentry the French royalist sees that the English like their king but he does not grasp that while it is based to worship a king it is almost noble to worship a powerless king the impotence of the Frenchman's sovereigns has raised the English loyal subject almost to the chivalry and dignity of a Jacobite the Frenchman sees that the English servant is respectful he does not realize that he is also disrespectful that there is an English legend of the humorous and faithful servant who is as much a personality as his master the Caleb Balderstone the Sam Weller the French do admire a nobleman he does not allow for the fact that they admire a nobleman most when he does not behave like one they like a noble to be unconscious and amiable the slave may be humble but the master must not be proud the master is life as they would like to enjoy it and among the joys they desire in him there is none which they desire more sincerely than that of generosity of throwing money about among mankind or to use the noble medieval word largesse the joy of largesse that is why a cab man tells you you are no gentleman if you give him his correct fare not only his pocket but his soul is hurt you have wounded his ideal you have defaced his vision like a aristocrat all this is really very subtle and elusive it is very difficult to separate what is mere slavishness from what is a sort of vicarious nobility in the English love of a lord and no Frenchman could easily grasp it at all he would think it was mere slavishness and if he liked it he would be a slave so every Englishman must at first feel French candor to be mere brutality but if he liked it he is a brute these national merits must not be understood so easily it requires long years of plentitude and quiet the slow growth of great parks the seasoning of oaken beams the dark enrichment of red wine and cellars and in ins all the leisure and the life of England through many centuries to produce at last the generous and it requires battery and barricade songs in the streets and ragged men dead for an idea to produce and justify the terrible flower of French indecency when I was in Paris a short time ago I went with an English friend of mine to an extremely brilliant and rapid succession of French plays each occupying about twenty minutes they were all astonishingly effective but there was one of them which was so effective that my friend and I fought about it outside and had almost to be separated by the police it was intended to indicate how men really behaved in a wreck or navel disaster how they break down how they scream, how they fight each other without object and in a mere hatred of everything and then there was added with all that horrible irony with which Voltaire began a scene in which a great statesman made a speech over their bodies saying that they were all heroes and had died in a fraternal embrace my friend and I came out of this theater and as he had lived long in Paris he said like a Frenchman what admirable artistic arrangement is it not exquisite? no I replied assuming as far as possible the traditional attitude of John Bull in the pictures in punch no, it is not exquisite perhaps it is unmeaning if it is unmeaning I do not mind but if it has a meaning I know what the meaning is it is that under all their pageant of chivalry men are not only beasts but even hunted beasts I do not know much of humanity especially when humanity talks in French but I know when a thing is meant to uplift the human soul and when it is meant to depress it I know that Cyrano de Bergerac where the actors talked even quicker was meant to encourage man and I know that this was meant to discourage him these sentimental and moral views of art began my friend but I broke into his words as the light broke into my mind let me say to you I said what you always said to Leibnacht at the Socialist Conference you have not died on the barricades you are an Englishman as I am and you ought to be as amiable as I am these people have some right to be terrible in art for they have been terrible in politics they may endure mock tortures on the stage they have seen real tortures in the streets they have been hurt for the idea of democracy they have been hurt for the idea of Catholicism it is not so utterly unnatural to them that they should be hurt for the idea of literature but by Blazes it is altogether unnatural to me and the worst thing of all is that I who am an Englishman loving comfort should find comfort in such things as this the French do not seek comfort here but rather unrest this restless people seeks to keep itself in a perpetual agony of the revolutionary mood Frenchmen seeking revolution may find the humiliation of humanity inspiring but God forbid that two pleasures seeking Englishmen should ever find it pleasant at the end of section 3