CHESTERTON-ALL THING CONSIDERED - LIMERICKS AND COUNSELS OF PERFECTION


ANONYMITY AND FURTHER COUNSELS

The end of the article which I write is always cut off, and,

unfortunately, I belong to that lower class of animals in whom the tail

is important. It is not anybody's fault but my own; it arises from the

fact that I take such a long time to get to the point. Somebody, the

other day, very reasonably complained of my being employed to write

prefaces. He was perfectly right, for I always write a preface to the

preface, and then I am stopped; also quite justifiably.

In my last article I said that I favoured three things--first, the legal

punishment of deliberately false information; secondly, a distinction,

in the matter of reported immorality, between those sins which any

healthy man can see in himself and those which he had better not see

anywhere; and thirdly, an absolute insistence in the great majority of

cases upon the signing of articles. It was at this point that I was cut

short, I will not say by the law of space, but rather by my own

lawlessness in the matter of space. In any case, there is something more

that ought to be said.

It would be an exaggeration to say that I hope some day to see an

anonymous article counted as dishonourable as an anonymous letter. For

some time to come, the idea of the leading article, expressing the

policy of the whole paper, must necessarily remain legitimate; at any

rate, we have all written such leading articles, and should never think

the worse of any one for writing one. But I should certainly say that

writing anonymously ought to have some definite excuse, such as that of

the leading article. Writing anonymously ought to be the exception;

writing a signed article ought to be the rule. And anonymity ought to be

not only an exception, but an accidental exception; a man ought always

to be ready to say what anonymous article he had written. The

journalistic habit of counting it something sacred to keep secret the

origin of an article is simply part of the conspiracy which seeks to put

us who are journalists in the position of a much worse sort of Jesuits

or Freemasons.

As has often been said, anonymity would be all very well if one could

for a moment imagine that it was established from good motives. Suppose,

for instance, that we were all quite certain that the men on the

Thunderer newspaper were a band of brave young idealists who were so

eager to overthrow Socialism, Municipal and National, that they did not

care to which of them especially was given the glory of striking it

down. Unfortunately, however, we do not believe this. What we believe,

or, rather, what we know, is that the attack on Socialism in the

Thunderer arises from a chaos of inconsistent and mostly evil motives,

any one of which would lose simply by being named. A jerry-builder

whose houses have been condemned writes anonymously and becomes the

Thunderer. A Socialist who has quarrelled with the other Socialists

writes anonymously, and he becomes the Thunderer. A monopolist who has

lost his monopoly, and a demagogue who has lost his mob, can both write

anonymously and become the same newspaper. It is quite true that there

is a young and beautiful fanaticism in which men do not care to reveal

their names. But there is a more elderly and a much more common

excitement in which men do not dare to reveal them.

Then there is another rule for making journalism honest on which I

should like to insist absolutely. I should like it to be a fixed thing

that the name of the proprietor as well as the editor should be printed

upon every paper. If the paper is owned by shareholders, let there be a

list of shareholders. If (as is far more common in this singularly

undemocratic age) it is owned by one man, let that one man's name be

printed on the paper, if possible in large red letters. Then, if there

are any obvious interests being served, we shall know that they are

being served. My friends in Manchester are in a terrible state of

excitement about the power of brewers and the dangers of admitting them

to public office. But at least, if a man has controlled politics through

beer, people generally know it: the subject of beer is too fascinating

for any one to miss such personal peculiarities. But a man may control

politics through journalism, and no ordinary English citizen know that

he is controlling them at all. Again and again in the lists of Birthday

Honours you and I have seen some Mr. Robinson suddenly elevated to the

Peerage without any apparent reason. Even the Society papers (which we

read with avidity) could tell us nothing about him except that he was a

sportsman or a kind landlord, or interested in the breeding of badgers.

Now I should like the name of that Mr. Robinson to be already familiar

to the British public. I should like them to know already the public

services for which they have to thank him. I should like them to have

seen the name already on the outside of that organ of public opinion

called Tootsie's Tips, or The Boy Blackmailer, or Nosey Knows,

that bright little financial paper which did so much for the Empire and

which so narrowly escaped a criminal prosecution. If they had seen it

thus, they would estimate more truly and tenderly the full value of the

statement in the Society paper that he is a true gentleman and a sound

Churchman.

Finally, it should be practically imposed by custom (it so happens that

it could not possibly be imposed by law) that letters of definite and

practical complaint should be necessarily inserted by any editor in any

paper. Editors have grown very much too lax in this respect. The old

editor used dimly to regard himself as an unofficial public servant for

the transmitting of public news. If he suppressed anything, he was

supposed to have some special reason for doing so; as that the material

was actually libellous or literally indecent. But the modern editor

regards himself far too much as a kind of original artist, who can

select and suppress facts with the arbitrary ease of a poet or a

caricaturist. He "makes up" the paper as man "makes up" a fairy tale, he

considers his newspaper solely as a work of art, meant to give pleasure,

not to give news. He puts in this one letter because he thinks it

clever. He puts in these three or four letters because he thinks them

silly. He suppresses this article because he thinks it wrong. He

suppresses this other and more dangerous article because he thinks it

right. The old idea that he is simply a mode of the expression of the

public, an "organ" of opinion, seems to have entirely vanished from his

mind. To-day the editor is not only the organ, but the man who plays on

the organ. For in all our modern movements we move away from Democracy.

This is the whole danger of our time. There is a difference between the

oppression which has been too common in the past and the oppression

which seems only too probable in the future. Oppression in the past, has

commonly been an individual matter. The oppressors were as simple as the

oppressed, and as lonely. The aristocrat sometimes hated his inferiors;

he always hated his equals. The plutocrat was an individualist. But in

our time even the plutocrat has become a Socialist. They have science

and combination, and may easily inaugurate a much greater tyranny than

the world has ever seen.








ON THE CRYPTIC AND THE ELLIPTIC



Surely the art of reporting speeches is in a strange state of

degeneration. We should not object, perhaps, to the reporter's making

the speeches much shorter than they are; but we do object to his making

all the speeches much worse than they are. And the method which he

employs is one which is dangerously unjust. When a statesman or

philosopher makes an important speech, there are several courses which

the reporter might take without being unreasonable. Perhaps the most

reasonable course of all would be not to report the speech at all. Let

the world live and love, marry and give in marriage, without that

particular speech, as they did (in some desperate way) in the days when

there were no newspapers. A second course would be to report a small

part of it; but to get that right. A third course, far better if you can

do it, is to understand the main purpose and argument of the speech, and

report that in clear and logical language of your own. In short, the

three possible methods are, first, to leave the man's speech alone;

second, to report what he says or some complete part of what he says;

and third, to report what he means. But the present way of reporting

speeches (mainly created, I think, by the scrappy methods of the Daily

Mail) is something utterly different from both these ways, and quite

senseless and misleading.

The present method is this: the reporter sits listening to a tide of

words which he does not try to understand, and does not, generally

speaking, even try to take down; he waits until something occurs in the

speech which for some reason sounds funny, or memorable, or very

exaggerated, or, perhaps, merely concrete; then he writes it down and

waits for the next one. If the orator says that the Premier is like a

porpoise in the sea under some special circumstances, the reporter gets

in the porpoise even if he leaves out the Premier. If the orator begins

by saying that Mr. Chamberlain is rather like a violoncello, the

reporter does not even wait to hear why he is like a violoncello. He has

got hold of something material, and so he is quite happy. The strong

words all are put in; the chain of thought is left out. If the orator

uses the word "donkey," down goes the word "donkey." If the orator uses

the word "damnable," down goes the word "damnable." They follow each

other so abruptly in the report that it is often hard to discover the

fascinating fact as to what was damnable or who was being compared with

a donkey. And the whole line of argument in which these things occurred

is entirely lost. I have before me a newspaper report of a speech by Mr.

Bernard Shaw, of which one complete and separate paragraph runs like

this--

"Capital meant spare money over and above one's needs. Their country was

not really their country at all except in patriotic songs."

I am well enough acquainted with the whole map of Mr. Bernard Shaw's

philosophy to know that those two statements might have been related to

each other in a hundred ways. But I think that if they were read by an

ordinary intelligent man, who happened not to know Mr. Shaw's views, he

would form no impression at all except that Mr. Shaw was a lunatic of

more than usually abrupt conversation and disconnected mind. The other

two methods would certainly have done Mr. Shaw more justice: the

reporter should either have taken down verbatim what the speaker really

said about Capital, or have given an outline of the way in which this

idea was connected with the idea about patriotic songs.

But we have not the advantage of knowing what Mr. Shaw really did say,

so we had better illustrate the different methods from something that we

do know. Most of us, I suppose, know Mark Antony's Funeral Speech in

"Julius Caesar." Now Mark Antony would have no reason to complain if he

were not reported at all; if the Daily Pilum or the Morning Fasces,

or whatever it was, confined itself to saying, "Mr. Mark Antony also

spoke," or "Mr. Mark Antony, having addressed the audience, the meeting

broke up in some confusion." The next honest method, worthy of a noble

Roman reporter, would be that since he could not report the whole of the

speech, he should report some of the speech. He might say--"Mr. Mark

Antony, in the course of his speech, said--

'When that the poor have cried Caesar hath wept:

Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.'"

In that case one good, solid argument of Mark Antony would be correctly

reported. The third and far higher course for the Roman reporter would

be to give a philosophical statement of the purport of the speech. As

thus--"Mr. Mark Antony, in the course of a powerful speech, conceded the

high motives of the Republican leaders, and disclaimed any intention of

raising the people against them; he thought, however, that many

instances could be quoted against the theory of Caesar's ambition, and

he concluded by reading, at the request of the audience, the will of

Caesar, which proved that he had the most benevolent designs towards the

Roman people." That is (I admit) not quite so fine as Shakspere, but it

is a statement of the man's political position. But if a Daily Mail

reporter were sent to take down Antony's oration, he would simply wait

for any expressions that struck him as odd and put them down one after

another without any logical connection at all. It would turn out

something like this: "Mr. Mark Antony wished for his audience's ears. He

had thrice offered Caesar a crown. Caesar was like a deer. If he were

Brutus he would put a wound in every tongue. The stones of Rome would

mutiny. See what a rent the envious Casca paid. Brutus was Caesar's

angel. The right honourable gentleman concluded by saying that he and

the audience had all fallen down." That is the report of a political

speech in a modern, progressive, or American manner, and I wonder

whether the Romans would have put up with it.

The reports of the debates in the Houses of Parliament are constantly

growing smaller and smaller in our newspapers. Perhaps this is partly

because the speeches are growing duller and duller. I think in some

degree the two things act and re-act on each other. For fear of the

newspapers politicians are dull, and at last they are too dull even for

the newspapers. The speeches in our time are more careful and elaborate,

because they are meant to be read, and not to be heard. And exactly

because they are more careful and elaborate, they are not so likely to

be worthy of a careful and elaborate report. They are not interesting

enough. So the moral cowardice of modern politicians has, after all,

some punishment attached to it by the silent anger of heaven. Precisely

because our political speeches are meant to be reported, they are not

worth reporting. Precisely because they are carefully designed to be

read, nobody reads them.

Thus we may concede that politicians have done something towards

degrading journalism. It was not entirely done by us, the journalists.

But most of it was. It was mostly the fruit of our first and most

natural sin--the habit of regarding ourselves as conjurers rather than

priests, for the definition is that a conjurer is apart from his

audience, while a priest is a part of his. The conjurer despises his

congregation; if the priest despises any one, it must be himself. The

curse of all journalism, but especially of that yellow journalism which

is the shame of our profession, is that we think ourselves cleverer than

the people for whom we write, whereas, in fact, we are generally even

stupider. But this insolence has its Nemesis; and that Nemesis is well

illustrated in this matter of reporting.

For the journalist, having grown accustomed to talking down to the

public, commonly talks too low at last, and becomes merely barbaric and

unintelligible. By his very efforts to be obvious he becomes obscure.

This just punishment may specially be noticed in the case of those

staggering and staring headlines which American journalism introduced

and which some English journalism imitates. I once saw a headline in a

London paper which ran simply thus: "Dobbin's Little Mary." This was

intended to be familiar and popular, and therefore, presumably, lucid.

But it was some time before I realised, after reading about half the

printed matter underneath, that it had something to do with the proper

feeding of horses. At first sight, I took it, as the historical leader

of the future will certainly take it, as containing some allusion to the

little daughter who so monopolised the affections of the Major at the

end of "Vanity Fair." The Americans carry to an even wilder extreme this

darkness by excess of light. You may find a column in an American paper

headed "Poet Brown Off Orange-flowers," or "Senator Robinson Shoehorns

Hats Now," and it may be quite a long time before the full meaning

breaks upon you: it has not broken upon me yet.

And something of this intellectual vengeance pursues also those who

adopt the modern method of reporting speeches. They also become

mystical, simply by trying to be vulgar. They also are condemned to be

always trying to write like George R. Sims, and succeeding, in spite of

themselves, in writing like Maeterlinck. That combination of words

which I have quoted from an alleged speech of Mr. Bernard Shaw's was

written down by the reporter with the idea that he was being

particularly plain and democratic. But, as a matter of fact, if there is

any connection between the two sentences, it must be something as dark

as the deepest roots of Browning, or something as invisible as the most

airy filaments of Meredith. To be simple and to be democratic are two

very honourable and austere achievements; and it is not given to all the

snobs and self-seekers to achieve them. High above even Maeterlinck or

Meredith stand those, like Homer and Milton, whom no one can

misunderstand. And Homer and Milton are not only better poets than

Browning (great as he was), but they would also have been very much

better journalists than the young men on the Daily Mail.

As it is, however, this misrepresentation of speeches is only a part of

a vast journalistic misrepresentation of all life as it is. Journalism

is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and

life seen in the newspapers another; the public enjoys both, but it is

more or less conscious of the difference. People do not believe, for

instance, that the debates in the House of Commons are as dramatic as

they appear in the daily papers. If they did they would go, not to the

daily paper, but to the House of Commons. The galleries would be crowded

every night as they were in the French Revolution; for instead of seeing

a printed story for a penny they would be seeing an acted drama for

nothing. But the, people know in their hearts that journalism is a

conventional art like any other, that it selects, heightens, and

falsifies. Only its Nemesis is the same as that of other arts: if it

loses all care for truth it loses all form likewise. The modern who

paints too cleverly produces a picture of a cow which might be the

earthquake at San Francisco. And the journalist who reports a speech too

cleverly makes it mean nothing at all.








THE WORSHIP OF THE WEALTHY



There has crept, I notice, into our literature and journalism a new way

of flattering the wealthy and the great. In more straightforward times

flattery itself was more straight-forward; falsehood itself was more

true. A poor man wishing to please a rich man simply said that he was

the wisest, bravest, tallest, strongest, most benevolent and most

beautiful of mankind; and as even the rich man probably knew that he

wasn't that, the thing did the less harm. When courtiers sang the

praises of a King they attributed to him things that were entirely

improbable, as that he resembled the sun at noonday, that they had to

shade their eyes when he entered the room, that his people could not

breathe without him, or that he had with his single sword conquered

Europe, Asia, Africa, and America. The safety of this method was its

artificiality; between the King and his public image there was really no

relation. But the moderns have invented a much subtler and more

poisonous kind of eulogy. The modern method is to take the prince or

rich man, to give a credible picture of his type of personality, as that

he is business-like, or a sportsman, or fond of art, or convivial, or

reserved; and then enormously exaggerate the value and importance of

these natural qualities. Those who praise Mr. Carnegie do not say that

he is as wise as Solomon and as brave as Mars; I wish they did. It would

be the next most honest thing to giving their real reason for praising

him, which is simply that he has money. The journalists who write about

Mr. Pierpont Morgan do not say that he is as beautiful as Apollo; I wish

they did. What they do is to take the rich man's superficial life and

manner, clothes, hobbies, love of cats, dislike of doctors, or what not;

and then with the assistance of this realism make the man out to be a

prophet and a saviour of his kind, whereas he is merely a private and

stupid man who happens to like cats or to dislike doctors. The old

flatterer took for granted that the King was an ordinary man, and set to

work to make him out extraordinary. The newer and cleverer flatterer

takes for granted that he is extraordinary, and that therefore even

ordinary things about him will be of interest.

I have noticed one very amusing way in which this is done. I notice the

method applied to about six of the wealthiest men in England in a book

of interviews published by an able and well-known journalist. The

flatterer contrives to combine strict truth of fact with a vast

atmosphere of awe and mystery by the simple operation of dealing almost

entirely in negatives. Suppose you are writing a sympathetic study of

Mr. Pierpont Morgan. Perhaps there is not much to say about what he

does think, or like, or admire; but you can suggest whole vistas of his

taste and philosophy by talking a great deal about what he does not

think, or like, or admire. You say of him--"But little attracted to the

most recent schools of German philosophy, he stands almost as resolutely

aloof from the tendencies of transcendental Pantheism as from the

narrower ecstasies of Neo-Catholicism." Or suppose I am called upon to

praise the charwoman who has just come into my house, and who certainly

deserves it much more. I say--"It would be a mistake to class Mrs. Higgs

among the followers of Loisy; her position is in many ways different;

nor is she wholly to be identified with the concrete Hebraism of

Harnack." It is a splendid method, as it gives the flatterer an

opportunity of talking about something else besides the subject of the

flattery, and it gives the subject of the flattery a rich, if somewhat

bewildered, mental glow, as of one who has somehow gone through agonies

of philosophical choice of which he was previously unaware. It is a

splendid method; but I wish it were applied sometimes to charwomen

rather than only to millionaires.

There is another way of flattering important people which has become

very common, I notice, among writers in the newspapers and elsewhere. It

consists in applying to them the phrases "simple," or "quiet," or

"modest," without any sort of meaning or relation to the person to whom

they are applied. To be simple is the best thing in the world; to be

modest is the next best thing. I am not so sure about being quiet. I am

rather inclined to think that really modest people make a great deal of

noise. It is quite self-evident that really simple people make a great

deal of noise. But simplicity and modesty, at least, are very rare and

royal human virtues, not to be lightly talked about. Few human beings,

and at rare intervals, have really risen into being modest; not one man

in ten or in twenty has by long wars become simple, as an actual old

soldier does by long wars become simple. These virtues are not things to

fling about as mere flattery; many prophets and righteous men have

desired to see these things and have not seen them. But in the

description of the births, lives, and deaths of very luxurious men they

are used incessantly and quite without thought. If a journalist has to

describe a great politician or financier (the things are substantially

the same) entering a room or walking down a thoroughfare, he always

says, "Mr. Midas was quietly dressed in a black frock coat, a white

waistcoat, and light grey trousers, with a plain green tie and simple

flower in his button-hole." As if any one would expect him to have a

crimson frock coat or spangled trousers. As if any one would expect him

to have a burning Catherine wheel in his button-hole.

But this process, which is absurd enough when applied to the ordinary

and external lives of worldly people, becomes perfectly intolerable when

it is applied, as it always is applied, to the one episode which is

serious even in the lives of politicians. I mean their death. When we

have been sufficiently bored with the account of the simple costume of

the millionaire, which is generally about as complicated as any that he

could assume without being simply thought mad; when we have been told

about the modest home of the millionaire, a home which is generally much

too immodest to be called a home at all; when we have followed him

through all these unmeaning eulogies, we are always asked last of all to

admire his quiet funeral. I do not know what else people think a funeral

should be except quiet. Yet again and again, over the grave of every one

of those sad rich men, for whom one should surely feel, first and last,

a speechless pity--over the grave of Beit, over the grave of

Whiteley--this sickening nonsense about modesty and simplicity has been

poured out. I well remember that when Beit was buried, the papers said

that the mourning-coaches contained everybody of importance, that the

floral tributes were sumptuous, splendid, intoxicating; but, for all

that, it was a simple and quiet funeral. What, in the name of Acheron,

did they expect it to be? Did they think there would be human

sacrifice--the immolation of Oriental slaves upon the tomb? Did they

think that long rows of Oriental dancing-girls would sway hither and

thither in an ecstasy of lament? Did they look for the funeral games of

Patroclus? I fear they had no such splendid and pagan meaning. I fear

they were only using the words "quiet" and "modest" as words to fill up

a page--a mere piece of the automatic hypocrisy which does become too

common among those who have to write rapidly and often. The word

"modest" will soon become like the word "honourable," which is said to

be employed by the Japanese before any word that occurs in a polite

sentence, as "Put honourable umbrella in honourable umbrella-stand;" or

"condescend to clean honourable boots." We shall read in the future that

the modest King went out in his modest crown, clad from head to foot in

modest gold and attended with his ten thousand modest earls, their

swords modestly drawn. No! if we have to pay for splendour let us praise

it as splendour, not as simplicity. When next I meet a rich man I intend

to walk up to him in the street and address him with Oriental hyperbole.

He will probably run away.






SCIENCE AND RELIGION



In these days we are accused of attacking science because we want it to

be scientific. Surely there is not any undue disrespect to our doctor in

saying that he is our doctor, not our priest, or our wife, or ourself.

It is not the business of the doctor to say that we must go to a

watering-place; it is his affair to say that certain results of health

will follow if we do go to a watering-place. After that, obviously, it

is for us to judge. Physical science is like simple addition: it is

either infallible or it is false. To mix science up with philosophy is

only to produce a philosophy that has lost all its ideal value and a

science that has lost all its practical value. I want my private

physician to tell me whether this or that food will kill me. It is for

my private philosopher to tell me whether I ought to be killed. I

apologise for stating all these truisms. But the truth is, that I have

just been reading a thick pamphlet written by a mass of highly

intelligent men who seem never to have heard of any of these truisms in

their lives.

Those who detest the harmless writer of this column are generally

reduced (in their final ecstasy of anger) to calling him "brilliant;"

which has long ago in our journalism become a mere expression of

contempt. But I am afraid that even this disdainful phrase does me too

much honour. I am more and more convinced that I suffer, not from a

shiny or showy impertinence, but from a simplicity that verges upon

imbecility. I think more and more that I must be very dull, and that

everybody else in the modern world must be very clever. I have just been

reading this important compilation, sent to me in the name of a number

of men for whom I have a high respect, and called "New Theology and

Applied Religion." And it is literally true that I have read through

whole columns of the things without knowing what the people were talking

about. Either they must be talking about some black and bestial religion

in which they were brought up, and of which I never even heard, or else

they must be talking about some blazing and blinding vision of God which

they have found, which I have never found, and which by its very

splendour confuses their logic and confounds their speech. But the best

instance I can quote of the thing is in connection with this matter of

the business of physical science on the earth, of which I have just

spoken. The following words are written over the signature of a man

whose intelligence I respect, and I cannot make head or tail of them--

"When modern science declared that the cosmic process knew nothing of a

historical event corresponding to a Fall, but told, on the contrary, the

story of an incessant rise in the scale of being, it was quite plain

that the Pauline scheme--I mean the argumentative processes of Paul's

scheme of salvation--had lost its very foundation; for was not that

foundation the total depravity of the human race inherited from their

first parents?.... But now there was no Fall; there was no total

depravity, or imminent danger of endless doom; and, the basis gone, the

superstructure followed."

It is written with earnestness and in excellent English; it must mean

something. But what can it mean? How could physical science prove that

man is not depraved? You do not cut a man open to find his sins. You do

not boil him until he gives forth the unmistakable green fumes of

depravity. How could physical science find any traces of a moral fall?

What traces did the writer expect to find? Did he expect to find a

fossil Eve with a fossil apple inside her? Did he suppose that the ages

would have spared for him a complete skeleton of Adam attached to a

slightly faded fig-leaf? The whole paragraph which I have quoted is

simply a series of inconsequent sentences, all quite untrue in

themselves and all quite irrelevant to each other. Science never said

that there could have been no Fall. There might have been ten Falls, one

on top of the other, and the thing would have been quite consistent with

everything that we know from physical science. Humanity might have grown

morally worse for millions of centuries, and the thing would in no way

have contradicted the principle of Evolution. Men of science (not being

raving lunatics) never said that there had been "an incessant rise in

the scale of being;" for an incessant rise would mean a rise without any

relapse or failure; and physical evolution is full of relapse and

failure. There were certainly some physical Falls; there may have been

any number of moral Falls. So that, as I have said, I am honestly

bewildered as to the meaning of such passages as this, in which the

advanced person writes that because geologists know nothing about the

Fall, therefore any doctrine of depravity is untrue. Because science has

not found something which obviously it could not find, therefore

something entirely different--the psychological sense of evil--is

untrue. You might sum up this writer's argument abruptly, but

accurately, in some way like this--"We have not dug up the bones of the

Archangel Gabriel, who presumably had none, therefore little boys, left

to themselves, will not be selfish." To me it is all wild and whirling;

as if a man said--"The plumber can find nothing wrong with our piano; so

I suppose that my wife does love me."

I am not going to enter here into the real doctrine of original sin, or

into that probably false version of it which the New Theology writer

calls the doctrine of depravity. But whatever else the worst doctrine

of depravity may have been, it was a product of spiritual conviction; it

had nothing to do with remote physical origins. Men thought mankind

wicked because they felt wicked themselves. If a man feels wicked, I

cannot see why he should suddenly feel good because somebody tells him

that his ancestors once had tails. Man's primary purity and innocence

may have dropped off with his tail, for all anybody knows. The only

thing we all know about that primary purity and innocence is that we

have not got it. Nothing can be, in the strictest sense of the word,

more comic than to set so shadowy a thing as the conjectures made by the

vaguer anthropologists about primitive man against so solid a thing as

the human sense of sin. By its nature the evidence of Eden is something

that one cannot find. By its nature the evidence of sin is something

that one cannot help finding.

Some statements I disagree with; others I do not understand. If a man

says, "I think the human race would be better if it abstained totally

from fermented liquor," I quite understand what he means, and how his

view could be defended. If a man says, "I wish to abolish beer because I

am a temperance man," his remark conveys no meaning to my mind. It is

like saying, "I wish to abolish roads because I am a moderate walker."

If a man says, "I am not a Trinitarian," I understand. But if he says

(as a lady once said to me), "I believe in the Holy Ghost in a spiritual

sense," I go away dazed. In what other sense could one believe in the

Holy Ghost? And I am sorry to say that this pamphlet of progressive

religious views is full of baffling observations of that kind. What can

people mean when they say that science has disturbed their view of sin?

What sort of view of sin can they have had before science disturbed it?

Did they think that it was something to eat? When people say that

science has shaken their faith in immortality, what do they mean? Did

they think that immortality was a gas?

Of course the real truth is that science has introduced no new principle

into the matter at all. A man can be a Christian to the end of the

world, for the simple reason that a man could have been an Atheist from

the beginning of it. The materialism of things is on the face of things;

it does not require any science to find it out. A man who has lived and

loved falls down dead and the worms eat him. That is Materialism if you

like. That is Atheism if you like. If mankind has believed in spite of

that, it can believe in spite of anything. But why our human lot is made

any more hopeless because we know the names of all the worms who eat

him, or the names of all the parts of him that they eat, is to a

thoughtful mind somewhat difficult to discover. My chief objection to

these semi-scientific revolutionists is that they are not at all

revolutionary. They are the party of platitude. They do not shake

religion: rather religion seems to shake them. They can only answer the

great paradox by repeating the truism.








CHESTERTON-ALL THING CONSIDERED - LIMERICKS AND COUNSELS OF PERFECTION