CHESTERTON-ALL THING CONSIDERED
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Ninth Edition
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 one 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 defence of this indefensible book. These articles have
another disadvantage arising from the scurry 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
High-gate 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 specially 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 caddish because it is
irrelevant. The pure modernist is merely a snob; he cannot bear to be a
month behind the fashion Similarly 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
teetotalism 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 thumbscrews 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 tyrannising 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 enquire 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
teetotalism. 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, teetotal 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 Mohamedan 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 Suliman
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. Soloman'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 reeds. It
will matter to us greatly on what side we fought.
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 humourist: not even a Cockney humourist." I do
not mind his saying that I am not a humourist--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 envenomed arrow, 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 humourist; but I do insist that I am a Cockney. If I were a
humourist, I should certainly be a Cockney humourist; if I were a saint,
I should certainly be a Cockney saint. I need not recite the splendid
catalogue 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 humourists who have discharged their bills (or failed to
discharge them) in our noble old City taverns. We can weep together
over the pathos of the poor Yorkshireman, whose county has never
produced some humour 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 humourist like Samuel Johnson or Charles Lamb. It is surely
sufficiently obvious that all the best humour that exists in our
language is Cockney humour. 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 humour is still written about London. Of this
type is the mild and humane irony which marks Mr. Pett Ridge's 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 Thames. No; I concede that I am not a Cockney humourist.
No; I am not worthy to be. Some time, after sad and strenuous
after-lives; some time, after fierce and apocalyptic incarnations; in
some strange world beyond the stars, I may become at last a Cockney
humourist. In that potential paradise I may walk among the Cockney
humourists, 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 passed 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 sombre; 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 a splendid hypocrisy of humour. 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 we (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 joke 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
Beerbohm (who has every merit except democracy) attempted to analyse 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 Beerbohm thought he
understood the first two forms; but I am not sure that he did. In order
to understand vulgar humour 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 recondite, 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 funny 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, the 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 Beerbohm, 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, and he was 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 symbolises the change from the
inorganic to the organic. Bad cheese symbolises the startling prodigy of
matter taking on vitality. It symbolises the origin of life itself. And
it is only about such solemn matters as the origin of life that the
democracy condescends to 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 priggishness.
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 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 shrewish wives and henpecked 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 to-day 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 to escape from the wrath of his chattel. This is not the fact, but
it is much nearer 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's 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
oracles 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 labour, there was a distinct
difference between the tone of the politicians and the tone of the
populace. The politicians who disapproved of Chinese labour 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
our constitutional traditions: according to them, the case would have
been the same if the people had been Kaffirs 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 labourers was simply that they were Chinese; it was an objection
to an alien type; the popular papers were full of gibes 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. For 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 pontifical quality of
woman. 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
prophecy 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.
There has appeared in our time a particular 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 bookstall, 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 in 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--how, 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
who buy these books (if any people do buy them) have a moral, if not a
legal, right to ask for their money back. Nobody would dare to publish
a book about electricity which literally told one 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 any one else,
or manage somehow to pretend that you have done so. If you want to
succeed at whist, either be a good whist-player, or play with marked
cards. You may want a book about jumping; you may want a book about
whist; you may want a book about cheating at whist. 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 or 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 it would be something like this: "The
jumper must have a clear aim before 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
Englanders and Pro-Boers) 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, THE WEAKEST GO TO THE
WALL." 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 (commonly made by
maudlin 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 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 stirring, 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, it 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 Rothschild. 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 typical 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. He seized his opportunities, 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 to 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
not even 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. He merely
wished 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 exult 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 a god, and I should not think (judging by
his extreme unpracticality) that he had ever been really in love with a
woman. But 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 it 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 in the story of Midas, 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 wiseacres of
the Victorian age. 'A truth,' say we of to-day. We all know of such men.
We are ever meeting or reading about such persons who turn everything
they 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,
though 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 endeavoured 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 Succeed-at-all-costs school and trying to blackmail King
Midas, went away and whispered this splendid piece of society 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
of Mr. Vanderbilt. I know that I cannot turn everything I touch to gold;
but 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 were ever
kings before; that they create markets and bestride continents. Yet it
always seems 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 that 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 viler passions of avarice and pride? A hundred years
ago we had the ideal of the Industrious Apprentice; 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 virtues few and narrow indeed, but still virtues. But what shall
we say of the gospel preached to the new Industrious Apprentice; the
Apprentice who rises not by his virtues, but avowedly by his vices?
CHESTERTON-ALL THING CONSIDERED