CHESTERTON-ALL THING CONSIDERED - HUMANITARIANISM AND STRENGTH


WINE WHEN IT IS RED



I suppose that there will be some wigs on the green in connection with

the recent manifesto signed by a string of very eminent doctors on the

subject of what is called "alcohol." "Alcohol" is, to judge by the sound

of it, an Arabic word, like "algebra" and "Alhambra," those two other

unpleasant things. The Alhambra in Spain I have never seen; I am told

that it is a low and rambling building; I allude to the far more

dignified erection in Leicester Square. If it is true, as I surmise,

that "alcohol" is a word of the Arabs, it is interesting to realise that

our general word for the essence of wine and beer and such things comes

from a people which has made particular war upon them. I suppose that

some aged Moslem chieftain sat one day at the opening of his tent and,

brooding with black brows and cursing in his black beard over wine as

the symbol of Christianity, racked his brains for some word ugly enough

to express his racial and religious antipathy, and suddenly spat out the

horrible word "alcohol." The fact that the doctors had to use this word

for the sake of scientific clearness was really a great disadvantage to

them in fairly discussing the matter. For the word really involves one

of those beggings of the question which make these moral matters so

difficult. It is quite a mistake to suppose that, when a man desires an

alcoholic drink, he necessarily desires alcohol.

Let a man walk ten miles steadily on a hot summer's day along a dusty

English road, and he will soon discover why beer was invented. The fact

that beer has a very slight stimulating quality will be quite among the

smallest reasons that induce him to ask for it. In short, he will not be

in the least desiring alcohol; he will be desiring beer. But, of course,

the question cannot be settled in such a simple way. The real difficulty

which confronts everybody, and which especially confronts doctors, is

that the extraordinary position of man in the physical universe makes it

practically impossible to treat him in either one direction or the other

in a purely physical way. Man is an exception, whatever else he is. If

he is not the image of God, then he is a disease of the dust. If it is

not true that a divine being fell, then we can only say that one of the

animals went entirely off its head. In neither case can we really argue

very much from the body of man simply considered as the body of an

innocent and healthy animal. His body has got too much mixed up with his

soul, as we see in the supreme instance of sex. It may be worth while

uttering the warning to wealthy philanthropists and idealists that this

argument from the animal should not be thoughtlessly used, even against

the atrocious evils of excess; it is an argument that proves too little

or too much.

Doubtless, it is unnatural to be drunk. But then in a real sense it is

unnatural to be human. Doubtless, the intemperate workman wastes his

tissues in drinking; but no one knows how much the sober workman wastes

his tissues by working. No one knows how much the wealthy philanthropist

wastes his tissues by talking; or, in much rarer conditions, by

thinking. All the human things are more dangerous than anything that

affects the beasts--sex, poetry, property, religion. The real case

against drunkenness is not that it calls up the beast, but that it calls

up the Devil. It does not call up the beast, and if it did it would not

matter much, as a rule; the beast is a harmless and rather amiable

creature, as anybody can see by watching cattle. There is nothing

bestial about intoxication; and certainly there is nothing intoxicating

or even particularly lively about beasts. Man is always something worse

or something better than an animal; and a mere argument from animal

perfection never touches him at all. Thus, in sex no animal is either

chivalrous or obscene. And thus no animal ever invented anything so bad

as drunkenness--or so good as drink.

The pronouncement of these particular doctors is very clear and

uncompromising; in the modern atmosphere, indeed, it even deserves some

credit for moral courage. The majority of modern people, of course, will

probably agree with it in so far as it declares that alcoholic drinks

are often of supreme value in emergencies of illness; but many people, I

fear, will open their eyes at the emphatic terms in which they describe

such drink as considered as a beverage; but they are not content with

declaring that the drink is in moderation harmless: they distinctly

declare that it is in moderation beneficial. But I fancy that, in saying

this, the doctors had in mind a truth that runs somewhat counter to the

common opinion. I fancy that it is the experience of most doctors that

giving any alcohol for illness (though often necessary) is about the

most morally dangerous way of giving it. Instead of giving it to a

healthy person who has many other forms of life, you are giving it to a

desperate person, to whom it is the only form of life. The invalid can

hardly be blamed if by some accident of his erratic and overwrought

condition he comes to remember the thing as the very water of vitality

and to use it as such. For in so far as drinking is really a sin it is

not because drinking is wild, but because drinking is tame; not in so

far as it is anarchy, but in so far as it is slavery. Probably the worst

way to drink is to drink medicinally. Certainly the safest way to drink

is to drink carelessly; that is, without caring much for anything, and

especially not caring for the drink.

The doctor, of course, ought to be able to do a great deal in the way of

restraining those individual cases where there is plainly an evil

thirst; and beyond that the only hope would seem to be in some increase,

or, rather, some concentration of ordinary public opinion on the

subject. I have always held consistently my own modest theory on the

subject. I believe that if by some method the local public-house could

be as definite and isolated a place as the local post-office or the

local railway station, if all types of people passed through it for all

types of refreshment, you would have the same safeguard against a man

behaving in a disgusting way in a tavern that you have at present

against his behaving in a disgusting way in a post-office: simply the

presence of his ordinary sensible neighbours. In such a place the kind

of lunatic who wants to drink an unlimited number of whiskies would be

treated with the same severity with which the post office authorities

would treat an amiable lunatic who had an appetite for licking an

unlimited number of stamps. It is a small matter whether in either case

a technical refusal would be officially employed. It is an essential

matter that in both cases the authorities could rapidly communicate with

the friends and family of the mentally afflicted person. At least, the

postmistress would not dangle a strip of tempting sixpenny stamps before

the enthusiast's eyes as he was being dragged away with his tongue out.

If we made drinking open and official we might be taking one step

towards making it careless. In such things to be careless is to be sane:

for neither drunkards nor Moslems can be careless about drink.






DEMAGOGUES AND MYSTAGOGUES



I once heard a man call this age the age of demagogues. Of this I can

only say, in the admirably sensible words of the angry coachman in

"Pickwick," that "that remark's political, or what is much the same, it

ain't true." So far from being the age of demagogues, this is really and

specially the age of mystagogues. So far from this being a time in which

things are praised because they are popular, the truth is that this is

the first time, perhaps, in the whole history of the world in which

things can be praised because they are unpopular. The demagogue succeeds

because he makes himself understood, even if he is not worth

understanding. But the mystagogue succeeds because he gets himself

misunderstood; although, as a rule, he is not even worth

misunderstanding. Gladstone was a demagogue: Disraeli a mystagogue. But

ours is specially the time when a man can advertise his wares not as a

universality, but as what the tradesmen call "a speciality." We all know

this, for instance, about modern art. Michelangelo and Whistler were

both fine artists; but one is obviously public, the other obviously

private, or, rather, not obvious at all. Michelangelo's frescoes are

doubtless finer than the popular judgment, but they are plainly meant to

strike the popular judgment. Whistler's pictures seem often meant to

escape the popular judgment; they even seem meant to escape the popular

admiration. They are elusive, fugitive; they fly even from praise.

Doubtless many artists in Michelangelo's day declared themselves to be

great artists, although they were unsuccessful. But they did not declare

themselves great artists because they were unsuccessful: that is the

peculiarity of our own time, which has a positive bias against the

populace.

Another case of the same kind of thing can be found in the latest

conceptions of humour. By the wholesome tradition of mankind, a joke was

a thing meant to amuse men; a joke which did not amuse them was a

failure, just as a fire which did not warm them was a failure. But we

have seen the process of secrecy and aristocracy introduced even into

jokes. If a joke falls flat, a small school of aesthetes only ask us to

notice the wild grace of its falling and its perfect flatness after its

fall. The old idea that the joke was not good enough for the company has

been superseded by the new aristocratic idea that the company was not

worthy of the joke. They have introduced an almost insane individualism

into that one form of intercourse which is specially and uproariously

communal. They have made even levities into secrets. They have made

laughter lonelier than tears.

There is a third thing to which the mystagogues have recently been

applying the methods of a secret society: I mean manners. Men who sought

to rebuke rudeness used to represent manners as reasonable and ordinary;

now they seek to represent them as private and peculiar. Instead of

saying to a man who blocks up a street or the fireplace, "You ought to

know better than that," the moderns say, "You, of course, don't know

better than that."

I have just been reading an amusing book by Lady Grove called "The

Social Fetich," which is a positive riot of this new specialism and

mystification. It is due to Lady Grove to say that she has some of the

freer and more honourable qualities of the old Whig aristocracy, as well

as their wonderful worldliness and their strange faith in the passing

fashion of our politics. For instance, she speaks of Jingo Imperialism

with a healthy English contempt; and she perceives stray and striking

truths, and records them justly--as, for instance, the greater democracy

of the Southern and Catholic countries of Europe. But in her dealings

with social formulae here in England she is, it must frankly be said, a

common mystagogue. She does not, like a decent demagogue, wish to make

people understand; she wishes to make them painfully conscious of not

understanding. Her favourite method is to terrify people from doing

things that are quite harmless by telling them that if they do they are

the kind of people who would do other things, equally harmless. If you

ask after somebody's mother (or whatever it is), you are the kind of

person who would have a pillow-case, or would not have a pillow-case. I

forget which it is; and so, I dare say, does she. If you assume the

ordinary dignity of a decent citizen and say that you don't see the harm

of having a mother or a pillow-case, she would say that of course you

wouldn't. This is what I call being a mystagogue. It is more vulgar than

being a demagogue; because it is much easier.

The primary point I meant to emphasise is that this sort of aristocracy

is essentially a new sort. All the old despots were demagogues; at

least, they were demagogues whenever they were really trying to please

or impress the demos. If they poured out beer for their vassals it was

because both they and their vassals had a taste for beer. If (in some

slightly different mood) they poured melted lead on their vassals, it

was because both they and their vassals had a strong distaste for

melted lead. But they did not make any mystery about either of the two

substances. They did not say, "You don't like melted lead?.... Ah! no,

of course, you wouldn't; you are probably the kind of person who would

prefer beer.... It is no good asking you even to imagine the curious

undercurrent of psychological pleasure felt by a refined person under

the seeming shock of melted lead." Even tyrants when they tried to be

popular, tried to give the people pleasure; they did not try to overawe

the people by giving them something which they ought to regard as

pleasure. It was the same with the popular presentment of aristocracy.

Aristocrats tried to impress humanity by the exhibition of qualities

which humanity admires, such as courage, gaiety, or even mere splendour.

The aristocracy might have more possession in these things, but the

democracy had quite equal delight in them. It was much more sensible to

offer yourself for admiration because you had drunk three bottles of

port at a sitting, than to offer yourself for admiration (as Lady Grove

does) because you think it right to say "port wine" while other people

think it right to say "port." Whether Lady Grove's preference for port

wine (I mean for the phrase port wine) is a piece of mere nonsense I do

not know; but at least it is a very good example of the futility of such

tests in the matter even of mere breeding. "Port wine" may happen to be

the phrase used n certain good families; but numberless aristocrats say

"port," and all barmaids say "port wine." The whole thing is rather

more trivial than collecting tram-tickets; and I will not pursue Lady

Grove's further distinctions. I pass over the interesting theory that I

ought to say to Jones (even apparently if he is my dearest friend), "How

is Mrs. Jones?" instead of "How is your wife?" and I pass over an

impassioned declamation about bedspreads (I think) which has failed to

fire my blood.

The truth of the matter is really quite simple. An aristocracy is a

secret society; and this is especially so when, as in the modern world,

it is practically a plutocracy. The one idea of a secret society is to

change the password. Lady Grove falls naturally into a pure perversity

because she feels subconsciously that the people of England can be more

effectively kept at a distance by a perpetual torrent of new tests than

by the persistence of a few old ones. She knows that in the educated

"middle class" there is an idea that it is vulgar to say port wine;

therefore she reverses the idea--she says that the man who would say

"port" is a man who would say, "How is your wife?" She says it because

she knows both these remarks to be quite obvious and reasonable.

The only thing to be done or said in reply, I suppose, would be to apply

the same principle of bold mystification on our own part. I do not see

why I should not write a book called "Etiquette in Fleet Street," and

terrify every one else out of that thoroughfare by mysterious allusions

to the mistakes that they generally make. I might say: "This is the kind

of man who would wear a green tie when he went into a tobacconist's," or

"You don't see anything wrong in drinking a Benedictine on

Thursday?.... No, of course you wouldn't." I might asseverate with

passionate disgust and disdain: "The man who is capable of writing

sonnets as well as triolets is capable of climbing an omnibus while

holding an umbrella." It seems a simple method; if ever I should master

it perhaps I may govern England.






THE "EATANSWILL GAZETTE."



The other day some one presented me with a paper called the Eatanswill

Gazette. I need hardly say that I could not have been more startled if

I had seen a coach coming down the road with old Mr. Tony Weller on the

box. But, indeed, the case is much more extraordinary than that would

be. Old Mr. Weller was a good man, a specially and seriously good man, a

proud father, a very patient husband, a sane moralist, and a reliable

ally. One could not be so very much surprised if somebody pretended to

be Tony Weller. But the Eatanswill Gazette is definitely depicted in

"Pickwick" as a dirty and unscrupulous rag, soaked with slander and

nonsense. It was really interesting to find a modern paper proud to take

its name. The case cannot be compared to anything so simple as a

resurrection of one of the "Pickwick" characters; yet a very good

parallel could easily be found. It is almost exactly as if a firm of

solicitors were to open their offices to-morrow under the name of

Dodson and Fogg.

It was at once apparent, of course, that the thing was a joke. But what

was not apparent, what only grew upon the mind with gradual wonder and

terror, was the fact that it had its serious side. The paper is

published in the well-known town of Sudbury, in Suffolk. And it seems

that there is a standing quarrel between Sudbury and the county town of

Ipswich as to which was the town described by Dickens in his celebrated

sketch of an election. Each town proclaims with passion that it was

Eatanswill. If each town proclaimed with passion that it was not

Eatanswill, I might be able to understand it. Eatanswill, according to

Dickens, was a town alive with loathsome corruption, hypocritical in all

its public utterances, and venal in all its votes. Yet, two highly

respectable towns compete for the honour of having been this particular

cesspool, just as ten cities fought to be the birthplace of Homer. They

claim to be its original as keenly as if they were claiming to be the

original of More's "Utopia" or Morris's "Earthly Paradise." They grow

seriously heated over the matter. The men of Ipswich say warmly, "It

must have been our town; for Dickens says it was corrupt, and a more

corrupt town than our town you couldn't have met in a month." The men of

Sudbury reply with rising passion, "Permit us to tell you, gentlemen,

that our town was quite as corrupt as your town any day of the week. Our

town was a common nuisance; and we defy our enemies to question it."

"Perhaps you will tell us," sneer the citizens of Ipswich, "that your

politics were ever as thoroughly filthy as----" "As filthy as anything,"

answer the Sudbury men, undauntedly. "Nothing in politics could be

filthier. Dickens must have noticed how disgusting we were." "And could

he have failed to notice," the others reason indignantly, "how

disgusting we were? You could smell us a mile off. You Sudbury fellows

may think yourselves very fine, but let me tell you that, compared to

our city, Sudbury was an honest place." And so the controversy goes on.

It seems to me to be a new and odd kind of controversy.

Naturally, an outsider feels inclined to ask why Eatanswill should be

either one or the other. As a matter of fact, I fear Eatanswill was

every town in the country. It is surely clear that when Dickens

described the Eatanswill election he did not mean it as a satire on

Sudbury or a satire on Ipswich; he meant it as a satire on England. The

Eatanswill election is not a joke against Eatanswill; it is a joke

against elections. If the satire is merely local, it practically loses

its point; just as the "Circumlocution Office" would lose its point if

it were not supposed to be a true sketch of all Government offices; just

as the Lord Chancellor in "Bleak House" would lose his point if he were

not supposed to be symbolic and representative of all Lord Chancellors.

The whole moral meaning would vanish if we supposed that Oliver Twist

had got by accident into an exceptionally bad workhouse, or that Mr.

Dorrit was in the only debtors' prison that was not well managed.

Dickens was making game, not of places, but of methods. He poured all

his powerful genius into trying to make the people ashamed of the

methods. But he seems only to have succeeded in making people proud of

the places. In any case, the controversy is conducted in a truly

extraordinary way. No one seems to allow for the fact that, after all,

Dickens was writing a novel, and a highly fantastic novel at that. Facts

in support of Sudbury or Ipswich are quoted not only from the story

itself, which is wild and wandering enough, but even from the yet wilder

narratives which incidentally occur in the story, such as Sam Weller's

description of how his father, on the way to Eatanswill, tipped all the

voters into the canal. This may quite easily be (to begin with) an

entertaining tarradiddle of Sam's own invention, told, like many other

even more improbable stories, solely to amuse Mr. Pickwick. Yet the

champions of these two towns positively ask each other to produce a

canal, or to fail for ever in their attempt to prove themselves the most

corrupt town in England. As far as I remember, Sam's story of the canal

ends with Mr. Pickwick eagerly asking whether everybody was rescued, and

Sam solemnly replying that one old gentleman's hat was found, but that

he was not sure whether his head was in it. If the canal is to be taken

as realistic, why not the hat and the head? If these critics ever find

the canal I recommend them to drag it for the body of the old gentleman.

Both sides refuse to allow for the fact that the characters in the story

are comic characters. For instance, Mr. Percy Fitzgerald, the eminent

student of Dickens, writes to the Eatanswill Gazette to say that

Sudbury, a small town, could not have been Eatanswill, because one of

the candidates speaks of its great manufactures. But obviously one of

the candidates would have spoken of its great manufactures if it had had

nothing but a row of apple-stalls. One of the candidates might have said

that the commerce of Eatanswill eclipsed Carthage, and covered every

sea; it would have been quite in the style of Dickens. But when the

champion of Sudbury answers him, he does not point out this plain

mistake. He answers by making another mistake exactly of the same kind.

He says that Eatanswill was not a busy, important place. And his odd

reason is that Mrs. Pott said she was dull there. But obviously Mrs.

Pott would have said she was dull anywhere. She was setting her cap at

Mr. Winkle. Moreover, it was the whole point of her character in any

case. Mrs. Pott was that kind of woman. If she had been in Ipswich she

would have said that she ought to be in London. If she was in London she

would have said that she ought to be in Paris. The first disputant

proves Eatanswill grand because a servile candidate calls it grand. The

second proves it dull because a discontented woman calls it dull.

The great part of the controversy seems to be conducted in the spirit of

highly irrelevant realism. Sudbury cannot be Eatanswill, because there

was a fancy-dress shop at Eatanswill, and there is no record of a

fancy-dress shop at Sudbury. Sudbury must be Eatanswill because there

were heavy roads outside Eatanswill, and there are heavy roads outside

Sudbury. Ipswich cannot be Eatanswill, because Mrs. Leo Hunter's country

seat would not be near a big town. Ipswich must be Eatanswill because

Mrs. Leo Hunter's country seat would be near a large town. Really,

Dickens might have been allowed to take liberties with such things as

these, even if he had been mentioning the place by name. If I were

writing a story about the town of Limerick, I should take the liberty of

introducing a bun-shop without taking a journey to Limerick to see

whether there was a bun-shop there. If I wrote a romance about Torquay,

I should hold myself free to introduce a house with a green door without

having studied a list of all the coloured doors in the town. But if, in

order to make it particularly obvious that I had not meant the town for

a photograph either of Torquay or Limerick, I had gone out of my way to

give the place a wild, fictitious name of my own, I think that in that

case I should be justified in tearing my hair with rage if the people of

Limerick or Torquay began to argue about bun-shops and green doors. No

reasonable man would expect Dickens to be so literal as all that even

about Bath or Bury St. Edmunds, which do exist; far less need he be

literal about Eatanswill, which didn't exist.

I must confess, however, that I incline to the Sudbury side of the

argument. This does not only arise from the sympathy which all healthy

people have for small places as against big ones; it arises from some

really good qualities in this particular Sudbury publication. First of

all, the champions of Sudbury seem to be more open to the sensible and

humorous view of the book than the champions of Ipswich--at least, those

that appear in this discussion. Even the Sudbury champion, bent on

finding realistic clothes, rebels (to his eternal honour) when Mr. Percy

Fitzgerald tries to show that Bob Sawyer's famous statement that he was

neither Buff nor Blue, "but a sort of plaid," must have been copied from

some silly man at Ipswich who said that his politics were "half and

half." Anybody might have made either of the two jokes. But it was the

whole glory and meaning of Dickens that he confined himself to making

jokes that anybody might have made a little better than anybody would

have made them.








FAIRY TALES



Some solemn and superficial people (for nearly all very superficial

people are solemn) have declared that the fairy-tales are immoral; they

base this upon some accidental circumstances or regrettable incidents in

the war between giants and boys, some cases in which the latter indulged

in unsympathetic deceptions or even in practical jokes. The objection,

however, is not only false, but very much the reverse of the facts. The

fairy-tales are at root not only moral in the sense of being innocent,

but moral in the sense of being didactic, moral in the sense of being

moralising. It is all very well to talk of the freedom of fairyland, but

there was precious little freedom in fairyland by the best official

accounts. Mr. W.B. Yeats and other sensitive modern souls, feeling that

modern life is about as black a slavery as ever oppressed mankind (they

are right enough there), have especially described elfland as a place of

utter ease and abandonment--a place where the soul can turn every way at

will like the wind. Science denounces the idea of a capricious God; but

Mr. Yeats's school suggests that in that world every one is a capricious

god. Mr. Yeats himself has said a hundred times in that sad and splendid

literary style which makes him the first of all poets now writing in

English (I will not say of all English poets, for Irishmen are familiar

with the practice of physical assault), he has, I say, called up a

hundred times the picture of the terrible freedom of the fairies, who

typify the ultimate anarchy of art--



"Where nobody grows old or weary or wise,

Where nobody grows old or godly or grave."



But, after all (it shocking thing to say), I doubt whether Mr.

Yeats really knows the real philosophy of the fairies. He is not simple

enough; he is not stupid enough. Though I say it who should not, in good

sound human stupidity I would knock Mr. Yeats out any day. The fairies

like me better than Mr. Yeats; they can take me in more. And I have my

doubts whether this feeling of the free, wild spirits on the crest of

hill or wave is really the central and simple spirit of folk-lore. I

think the poets have made a mistake: because the world of the

fairy-tales is a brighter and more varied world than ours, they have

fancied it less moral; really it is brighter and more varied because it

is more moral. Suppose a man could be born in a modern prison. It is

impossible, of course, because nothing human can happen in a modern

prison, though it could sometimes in an ancient dungeon. A modern prison

is always inhuman, even when it is not inhumane. But suppose a man were

born in a modern prison, and grew accustomed to the deadly silence and

the disgusting indifference; and suppose he were then suddenly turned

loose upon the life and laughter of Fleet Street. He would, of course,

think that the literary men in Fleet Street were a free and happy race;

yet how sadly, how ironically, is this the reverse of the case! And so

again these toiling serfs in Fleet Street, when they catch a glimpse of

the fairies, think the fairies are utterly free. But fairies are like

journalists in this and many other respects. Fairies and journalists

have an apparent gaiety and a delusive beauty. Fairies and journalists

seem to be lovely and lawless; they seem to be both of them too

exquisite to descend to the ugliness of everyday duty. But it is an

illusion created by the sudden sweetness of their presence. Journalists

live under law; and so in fact does fairyland.

If you really read the fairy-tales, you will observe that one idea runs

from one end of them to the other--the idea that peace and happiness can

only exist on some condition. This idea, which is the core of ethics, is

the core of the nursery-tales. The whole happiness of fairyland hangs

upon a thread, upon one thread. Cinderella may have a dress woven on

supernatural looms and blazing with unearthly brilliance; but she must

be back when the clock strikes twelve. The king may invite fairies to

the christening, but he must invite all the fairies or frightful results

will follow. Bluebeard's wife may open all doors but one. A promise is

broken to a cat, and the whole world goes wrong. A promise is broken to

a yellow dwarf, and the whole world goes wrong. A girl may be the bride

of the God of Love himself if she never tries to see him; she sees him,

and he vanishes away. A girl is given a box on condition she does not

open it; she opens it, and all the evils of this world rush out at her.

A man and woman are put in a garden on condition that they do not eat

one fruit: they eat it, and lose their joy in all the fruits of the

earth.

This great idea, then, is the backbone of all folk-lore--the idea that

all happiness hangs on one thin veto; all positive joy depends on one

negative. Now, it is obvious that there are many philosophical and

religious ideas akin to or symbolised by this; but it is not with them I

wish to deal here. It is surely obvious that all ethics ought to be

taught to this fairy-tale tune; that, if one does the thing forbidden,

one imperils all the things provided. A man who breaks his promise to

his wife ought to be reminded that, even if she is a cat, the case of

the fairy-cat shows that such conduct may be incautious. A burglar just

about to open some one else's safe should be playfully reminded that he

is in the perilous posture of the beautiful Pandora: he is about to

lift the forbidden lid and loosen evils unknown. The boy eating some

one's apples in some one's apple tree should be a reminder that he has

come to a mystical moment of his life, when one apple may rob him of all

others. This is the profound morality of fairy-tales; which, so far from

being lawless, go to the root of all law. Instead of finding (like

common books of ethics) a rationalistic basis for each Commandment, they

find the great mystical basis for all Commandments. We are in this

fairyland on sufferance; it is not for us to quarrel with the conditions

under which we enjoy this wild vision of the world. The vetoes are

indeed extraordinary, but then so are the concessions. The idea of

property, the idea of some one else's apples, is a rum idea; but then

the idea of there being any apples is a rum idea. It is strange and

weird that I cannot with safety drink ten bottles of champagne; but then

the champagne itself is strange and weird, if you come to that. If I

have drunk of the fairies' drink it is but just I should drink by the

fairies' rules. We may not see the direct logical connection between

three beautiful silver spoons and a large ugly policeman; but then who

in fairy tales ever could see the direct logical connection between

three bears and a giant, or between a rose and a roaring beast? Not only

can these fairy-tales be enjoyed because they are moral, but morality

can be enjoyed because it puts us in fairyland, in a world at once of

wonder and of war.








CHESTERTON-ALL THING CONSIDERED - HUMANITARIANISM AND STRENGTH