Take
a healthy dose of G.K. Chesterton once each week
A
state of freedom ought to mean a state in which no man can silence another. As
it is, it means a state in which every man must silence himself. It ought to
mean that Mr. Shaw can say a thing twenty times, and still not make me believe
it. As it is, it means that Mr. Shaw must leave off saying it, because my
exquisite nerves will not endure to hear somebody saying something with which I
do not agree. Freedom means that we cannot oppress each other. But unless we
insult each other we shall never do anything.
- The Illustrated London News, 10 March 1906.
Published in:
on November 19, 2008 at
1:32 pm Comments (0)
“The poetry
of wrecks and islands”
Let
us try to get back to that desert island, and the moral to be drawn from all
the happy Australians and their adventure [*]. The first and more
important point is this: that when one reads of these forty-five people tipped
out into an empty island in the Pacific, one’s first and instantaneous flash of
feeling is one of envy. Afterwards one remembers that there would
doubtless be inconveniences, that the sun is hot, that awnings give you no
shelter until you have put them up; that biscuits and tinned meat might begin
to taste monotonous, and that the most adventurous person, having got on to the
island, would before very long begin to turn his thoughts to the problem of
getting off again. But the fact remains that before all these reflections the
soul of man has said like the snap of a gun, “How jolly!” I think this
instinct in humanity is somewhat interesting; it may be worth while to analyse
this secret desire (seething under the top-hats of so many City clerks and
country clergymen), this desire to be wrecked on an island.
The
feeling partly arises from an idea which is at the root of all the arts — the
idea of separation. Romance seeks to divide certain people from the lump
of humanity, as the statue is divided from the lump of marble. We read a
good novel not in order to know more people, but in order to know fewer.
Instead of the humming swarm of human beings, relatives, customers, servants,
postmen, afternoon callers, tradesmen, strangers who tell us the time,
strangers who remark on the weather, beggars, waiters, and telegraph-boys —
instead of this bewildering human swarm which passes us every day, fiction asks
us to follow one figure (say the postman) consistently through his ecstasies
and agonies. That is what makes one so impatient with that type of
pessimistic rebel who is always complaining of the narrowness of his life, and
demanding a larger sphere. Life is too large for us as it is: we have all
too many things to attend to. All true romance is an attempt to simplify
it, to cut it down to plainer and more pictorial proportions. What
dullness there is in our life arises mostly from its rapidity: people pass us
too quickly to show us their interesting side. By the end of the week we
have talked to a hundred bores; whereas, if we had stuck to one of them, we
might have found ourselves talking to a new friend, or a humourist, or a
murderer, or a man who has seen a ghost.
I
do not believe that there are any ordinary people. That is, I do not
believe that there are any people whose lives are really humdrum or whose
characters are really colourless. But the trouble is that one can so
quickly see them all in a lump, like a land surveyor, and it would take so long
to see them one by one as they really are, like a great novelist. Looking out
of the window, I see a very steep little street, with a row of prim little
houses breaking their necks downhill in a most decorous single file. If I
were landlord of that street, or agent for that street, or policeman at the
corner of that street, or visiting philanthropist making myself objectionable
down that street, I could easily take it all in at a glance, sum it all up, and
say, “Houses at £40 a year.” But suppose I could be father confessor to
that street, how awful and altered it would look! Each house would be
sundered from its neighbour as by an earthquake, and would stand alone in a
wilderness of the soul. I should know that in this house a man was going
mad with drink, that in that a man had kept single for a woman, that in the
next a woman was on the edge of abysses, that in the next a woman was living an
unknown life which might in more devout ages have been gilded in hagiographies
and made a fountain of miracles. People talk much of the quarrel between
science and religion; but the deepest difference is that the individual is so
much bigger than the average, that the inside of life is much larger than the
outside.
Often
when riding with three or four strangers on the top of an omnibus I have felt a
wild impulse to throw the driver off his seat, to seize his whip, to drive the
omnibus far out into the country, and tip them all out into a field, and say,
“We may never meet again in this world; come, let us understand each
other.” I do not affirm that the experiment would succeed, but I think
the impulse to do it is at the root of all that tradition of the poetry of
wrecks and islands.
– The Illustrated London News, 24 October 1908.
[*]
On 18 July 1908, the Australian vessel S.S. Aeon was wrecked on the shores of a remote
island, and the passengers were not rescued until some weeks later.
Published in:
on November 12, 2008 at
9:00 am Comments (2)
The
advantage of a fixed form is not at all understood by people in our times. The
advantage of a fixed form is that it really varies — that is, by its very
fixity, it measures the various moods in which we approach it. Getting up
in the morning is a fixed form; if it were not a fixed form, I, for one, would
never do it. No getting up for me — nisi me compelleret ecclesiae
auctoritas. But it is
exactly because I have to get up every morning that I notice that one day is
bright blue, another brown and foggy, another cold, clear, and silvery, and my
mood varies accordingly. On the bright blue day my spirits go slightly
down; there seems something pitiless about perfect weather. On the clear
cool day, my spirits are normal. In the fog, my spirits go up; it feels
like the end of the world, or better still, a detective story. But I
should not appreciate any of these differences if I had not a fixed common duty
to perform on each of such days; if it were not that under the blue dome of
summer or the yellow umbrella of the fog, I have to go through the same
disgusting rites of washing and getting dressed. It is the same with the
advantages of keeping up a fixed ceremonial through the ages. The fixed
formality stands as a permanent critic of the changing society. Thus, if
we continue one form from childhood, such as keeping a diary, or a birthday,
this is the only thing that enables us to realise change.
– The Illustrated London News, 26 September 1908.
Published in:
on October 29, 2008 at
7:09 am Comments (2)
I
have always heard from my youth that in America it is possible to get a divorce
for incompatibility of temper. In my childhood I always thought it was a
joke; but I thought it even more of a joke when I discovered that it was true.
If married people are to be divorced for incompatibility of temper, I cannot
imagine why all married people are not divorced. Any man and any woman must
have incompatible tempers; it is the definition of sex. It is the whole point
of being married. Nay, it is the whole fun of being engaged. You do not fall in
love with a compatible person. You do not love somebody exactly like yourself.
I am prepared to bet that no two people were ever betrothed for a week without
discovering that they suffered from incompatibility of temper. As long as a
marriage is founded on a good solid incompatibility, that marriage has a fair
chance of continuing to be a happy marriage, and even a romance. Someone said,
“As long as lovers can quarrel they are still lovers.” Whoever said it
had, at least, more wisdom and knowledge of human nature than some of the
legislators in America.
– The Illustrated London News, 19 September 1908.
Published in:
on September 24, 2008 at
7:09 am Comments (0)
“It made
these things beautiful”
.
. . no religion was quite so blasphemous as to pretend that it was
scientifically investigating its god to see what he was made of. Bacchanals did
not say, ‘Let us discover whether there is a god of wine.’ They enjoyed wine so
much that they cried out naturally to the god of it. Christians did not say, ‘A
few experiments will show us whether there is a god of goodness.’ They loved
good so much that they knew that it was a god. Moreover, all the great religions
always loved passionately and poetically the symbols and machinery by which
they worked -– the temple, the coloured robes, the altar, the symbolic flowers,
or the sacrificial fire. It made these things beautiful: it laid itself open to
the charge of idolatry. And into these great ritual religions there has
descended, whatever be the meaning of it, the thing of which Sophocles spoke,
‘The power of the gods, which is mighty and groweth not old.’
- The Illustrated London News, 14 April 1906.
Published in:
on September 17, 2008 at
8:05 am Comments (0)
Some
little time ago, when I was sitting in a small tavern not far from the river,
the door of the place swung open behind me, and there came striding in one of
the Kings of the Saxon Heptarchy. He was a big, blonde, handsome man,
with something of that sleepy swagger which has in all ages been the innocent
affectation of the German blood. His tunic was belted and clasped with
big barbaric jewels; he had a clumsy, iron-hilted sword; he was cross-gartered
up to the knee. And, by a custom which royalty has since, most unfortunately,
abandoned, he wore his crown on his head, even when he went into a
public-house.
This
potentate sat down opposite me, and ordered a pot of beer, for beer is probably
one of the few things that are still found surviving out of the
Heptarchy. I fell into respectful conversation with him, and he told me
that he was the King of Wessex, and mentioned his very ugly name. I tried
to remember the facts about that prince, but found them a little foggy in my
mind. I said to him delicately: “Excuse my asking so personal a question,
but, with the exception of your military reputation, I am disgracefully
ill-informed about the rest of your career. Let me see now — pray forgive
my curiosity — but were you ever baptised?” The question seemed in some
mysterious way to offend him. He said that he had been baptised, like
other people; but it was (I understood him to say) “a long while ago,” and “he
did not remember the ceremony.” I said of course it was a long while ago,
as it must have been somewhere in the ninth century; but I thought that, even
amid the numerous social functions of the King of Wessex, he might remember the
moment when, if ever, he embraced Christianity. By this time he had
emptied his pewter pot and I reverently requested permission to have it
refilled, a course of action which alone, I believe, averted a serious
misunderstanding between that noble barbarian and myself. He explained,
somewhat gloomily, that he didn’t care much about centuries, but that they were
rehearsing for the pageant and had got him to be King of Wessex. Then
circumstances began to arrange themselves in my mind, and by the time that a
little more beer had disappeared on both sides of the table, I fell into a
comparatively friendly conversation with him, for he was hearty and sensible
and companionable and a man, in short, much more like a fighting Saxon King
than any of the pompous versions of King Alfred in most statues and poems and
plays.
And
I came away from the conversation with the feeling that these pageants of which
the English grow so fond are open to a certain criticism; that they have a
defect which prevents them from being the really national things they might
otherwise be. Of this defect my friend the King of Wessex was a large and
magnificent example. A local pageant ought to be a festival of real local
patriotism, which is one of the finest things in the world. It ought to
be concerned with the real pride of real people in their town. Therefore,
it ought never to consist of mere dead history; but, as far as possible, of
living traditions. Legends should be honoured, if the legends are really
current; lies should be honoured, if the lies are really told. Old wives’
tales should be represented, if the old wives really tell them. But mere
historical coincidences of place and person, the mere fact that such-and-such a
man did stand for a moment in such-and-such a spot — these we do not require in
a popular pageant. Suppose they have a pageant in Pimlico — I hope they
will. Then let Pimlico lift up in its pride anything that it is really
proud of, if it be only the parish pump or the public-house sign. Let
Pimlico parade whatever Pimlico delights to honour, whether it is its best
donkey, its blackest chimney-sweep, or even its member of Parliament.
That is all dignified and reasonable. But it is not reasonable to send
somebody to read up dry history until he discovers that William Wallace stopped
three minutes at Pimlico on his way to execution, or that on the spot now
occupied by the Pimlico Police-court Caractacus made a speech to the blue and
bellowing Britons. There is no patriotism in the thought that some alien
and uninteresting person stood on the soil of Pimlico before Pimlico
existed. The parish has no living legend of the thing. Whatever be
the cause of that faint poetic melancholy that does seem to hover over Pimlico,
it cannot be referred to any regrets at the fate of William Wallace.
However blue the modern Britons may look and feel in that district, it has no connection
with the blueness of ancient Britons. There is no true Pimlico sentiment
in celebrating names which can be discovered in the British Museum Library, but
cannot be discovered in Pimlico. If Pimlico has any real memories, I care
not of what, of prizefighters or dandies, or gentlemen deservedly hanged, let
her celebrate those traditions. If she has none, let her celebrate what
is happening to her now, that at least she may have some traditions in the
future.
– Illustrated London News, 8 August 1908.
Published in:
on August 13, 2008 at 6:00
am Comments (1)
Unfortunately,
however, this trouble about conjunctions, about “ands” and “althoughs”, is used
in our time to help the cowardice of modern thought. If modern journalists have
to state unpopular or unpleasant truths, if they have to admit something which does
not fit in with the policy of their paper, they can always cloud the question
with a swarm of bewildering conjunctions. Despite this, nevertheless that, and
considering the third, consequently the other, and while black, yet in some
ways white — until the brain of the reader reels under the mere number of
parenthetical sentences, under the burden of the number of brackets in this
extraordinary equation. I remember a journalist who carried this weird use of
conjunctions to the point of madness. He had to write the religious notes in
some daily paper, and he was wildly anxious (being a worldly man) to treat
religion reverently, and not to offend any Churchman, or any Nonconformist, or
any Roman Catholic, or any Atheist, or anybody. But such dim convictions as he
had he tried to convey by the selection of these small words in his sentences.
The consequence was that he always left his whole meaning in an impenetrable
darkness: nobody could understand why any of the conjunctions came in exactly
where they did. He used to run all the religious scraps of news into a long
sentence something like this: “While the Salvation Army is holding a meeting in
the Albert Hall, and notwithstanding the fact that the Archbishop of Canterbury
has been compelled by his health to go to the Riviera, yet the Pope is likely
to quarrel finally with the French Republic, and the Presbyterian Missions are
doing well in the Hebrides; moreover, the Buddhist Cosmic Council has met in
Chicago, and Canon Hensley Henson has even preached on the subject of
immortality, although the Wesleyans have built a new church at Reading.” I used
to read those paragraphs over and over again until my brain almost split, and I
could not make out what was opposed to what, or, if so, why so. But the truth,
I think, is that obscurity is a kind of curse from God, which often falls upon
people either for the sin of intellectual pride or for that of moral timidity.
And it is very odd how often the two things go together. It is very odd how
often you will find that the man who has enough assurance to despise you, has
not enough assurance even to hit you back.
– Illustrated London News, 3 August 1907.
Published in:
on July 9, 2008 at 6:00 am
Comments (1)
“Kneeling or
uncovering of the head”
Whenever
men really believe that they can get to the spiritual they always employ the
material. When the purpose is good, it is bread and wine; when the purpose is
evil, it is eye of newt and toe of frog. In this particular matter the witch’s
charm included the hair of a black cat. But this is no more insane than the
ingredients that have been immortalized by Shakspere. And indeed it is beside
the mark to call the ingredients insane. They are chosen because they are
insane. They are meant to put men into communication with the insane elements
of the universe — with the lunatics of the spiritual world. How far they can
succeed nobody can tell; but it is as reasonable to suppose that ugly actions
(like tearing off a frog’s toe) may dispose us toward bad influences as to
suppose that beautiful actions (like kneeling or uncovering of the head) may
dispose us toward good ones. How much is the act and how much the association
we do not know; but neither do we know it in daily life. If you are braced with
a sea bath you do not know how much of it is the chemistry of the salt and how
much of it is the poetry of the sea. If you are warmed with a glass of wine you
do not know how much of it is wine and how much of it is the idea of wine.
– Illustrated London News, 6 October 1906.
Published in:
on May 21, 2008 at 8:04 am
Comments (1)
Go
to the man who likes gas-stoves (if such a man there be) and ask him what he
thinks a fire is for. If he thinks that a fire is for the sake of heat,
dismiss him with derision to his doom. He will have heat enough if his
spiritual ruin is at all parallel to his intellectual. Every sound human
institution has at least four different objects and different justifications.
Man was never so silly as to sit down on a one-legged stool. All his supports
are quadrupedal. A man’s fireside, the open fire on his hearth, is delightful
for all kinds of different reasons. It does, among other things, heat the room;
but it also lights the room. It looks beautiful. You can roast chestnuts at it.
You can see pictures in it. You can toast muffins at it. If you happen (as is
no doubt the case) to be a Parsee, you can worship it. You can, with dexterity,
light your pipe at it; you can tell ghost-stories round it, with Rembrandtesque
effects. If a man gives me heat instead of a fire, I am no more satisfied than
if he gives me little red pictures instead of a fire, because I can see them in
the coals. I want a fire; not one of the uses of a fire.
-
Illustrated London News, 11 April 1908.
Published in:
on April 2, 2008 at 1:28
pm Comments (1)
You
and I, it is to be hoped, do not hold the theory that the highest and most
prominent figures in Society are the highest and best specimens of the human
race. We are not such desolate pessimists as all that. For certainly if the
people who rule England are the best people in England, England is going to the
dogs, or, rather, has already gone there. The most gloomy of all possible
theories is the theory that the best man wins. We know the man who wins, and if
he is the best man we can only express our feelings in the words of a vulgar
music-hall song about a wedding, which ran (if I remember right) — “I was the
best man, the best man, the best man; Oh! Jerusalem, you ought to have seen the
worst!” If Mr. Rockefeller really rose by superior merit, America must be a
kind of hell. But I am an optimist, and I believe that evil is frequently
victorious; a thought full of peace, comfort, and the possibilities of human
affection. We can all love mankind if we remember not to judge them by their
leaders. There are some who say that England has lost its last chance, has
carried on just too long its shapeless compromises and its cloudy pride. I do
not believe it for a moment. England is a million times stronger nation than
one would fancy by merely looking at its great men. Do not look at the faces in
the illustrated papers; look at the faces in the street. See what a great and
reasonable number of them are strong, humble faces, full of humour and hard
work, faces with sad eyes and humorous mouths. There are plenty of good people
about. Religion says that the good people will be on the top in Heaven;
Socialism says that they will be on top in the near future; but nobody in
possession of his five wits can pretend that they are on top now; and if they
are, the quality of those below them must be somewhat disheartening. True faith
has its eye on the unsuccessful; it endures the small human output which is
actually exhibited and admired; but it rejoices in the rich and dark treasures
of human virtue and valour which have always been neglected. It is even
slightly depressed when it thinks of the small good that we have used. But it
sings for joy when it thinks of all the good that we have wasted.
- The Illustrated London News,
16 November 1907.
Published in:
on January 30, 2008 at
12:48 pm Comments (1)
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