CHESTERTON-ALL THING CONSIDERED - SCIENCE AND RELIGION


THE METHUSELAHITE



I Saw in a newspaper paragraph the other day the following entertaining

and deeply philosophical incident. A man was enlisting as a soldier at

Portsmouth, and some form was put before him to be filled up, common, I

suppose, to all such cases, in which was, among other things, an inquiry

about what was his religion. With an equal and ceremonial gravity the

man wrote down the word "Methuselahite." Whoever looks over such papers

must, I should imagine, have seen some rum religions in his time; unless

the Army is going to the dogs. But with all his specialist knowledge he

could not "place" Methuselahism among what Bossuet called the variations

of Protestantism. He felt a fervid curiosity about the tenets and

tendencies of the sect; and he asked the soldier what it meant. The

soldier replied that it was his religion "to live as long as he could."

Now, considered as an incident in the religious history of Europe, that

answer of that soldier was worth more than a hundred cartloads of

quarterly and monthly and weekly and daily papers discussing religious

problems and religious books. Every day the daily paper reviews some new

philosopher who has some new religion; and there is not in the whole two

thousand words of the whole two columns one word as witty as or wise as

that word "Methuselahite." The whole meaning of literature is simply to

cut a long story short; that is why our modern books of philosophy are

never literature. That soldier had in him the very soul of literature;

he was one of the great phrase-makers of modern thought, like Victor

Hugo or Disraeli. He found one word that defines the paganism of to-day.

Henceforward, when the modern philosophers come to me with their new

religions (and there is always a kind of queue of them waiting all the

way down the street) I shall anticipate their circumlocutions and be

able to cut them short with a single inspired word. One of them will

begin, "The New Religion, which is based upon that Primordial Energy in

Nature...." "Methuselahite," I shall say sharply; "good morning." "Human

Life," another will say, "Human Life, the only ultimate sanctity, freed

from creed and dogma...." "Methuselahite!" I shall yell. "Out you go!"

"My religion is the Religion of Joy," a third will explain (a bald old

man with a cough and tinted glasses), "the Religion of Physical Pride

and Rapture, and my...." "Methuselahite!" I shall cry again, and I shall

slap him boisterously on the back, and he will fall down. Then a pale

young poet with serpentine hair will come and say to me (as one did only

the other day): "Moods and impressions are the only realities, and these

are constantly and wholly changing. I could hardly therefore define my

religion...." "I can," I should say, somewhat sternly. "Your religion is

to live a long time; and if you stop here a moment longer you won't

fulfil it."

A new philosophy generally means in practice the praise of some old

vice. We have had the sophist who defends cruelty, and calls it

masculinity. We have had the sophist who defends profligacy, and calls

it the liberty of the emotions. We have had the sophist who defends

idleness, and calls it art. It will almost certainly happen--it can

almost certainly be prophesied--that in this saturnalia of sophistry

there will at some time or other arise a sophist who desires to idealise

cowardice. And when we are once in this unhealthy world of mere wild

words, what a vast deal there would be to say for cowardice! "Is not

life a lovely thing and worth saving?" the soldier would say as he ran

away. "Should I not prolong the exquisite miracle of consciousness?" the

householder would say as he hid under the table. "As long as there are

roses and lilies on the earth shall I not remain here?" would come the

voice of the citizen from under the bed. It would be quite as easy to

defend the coward as a kind of poet and mystic as it has been, in many

recent books, to defend the emotionalist as a kind of poet and mystic,

or the tyrant as a kind of poet and mystic. When that last grand

sophistry and morbidity is preached in a book or on a platform, you may

depend upon it there will be a great stir in its favour, that is, a

great stir among the little people who live among books and platforms.

There will be a new great Religion, the Religion of Methuselahism: with

pomps and priests and altars. Its devout crusaders will vow themselves

in thousands with a great vow to live long. But there is one comfort:

they won't.

For, indeed, the weakness of this worship of mere natural life (which

is a common enough creed to-day) is that it ignores the paradox of

courage and fails in its own aim. As a matter of fact, no men would be

killed quicker than the Methuselahites. The paradox of courage is that a

man must be a little careless of his life even in order to keep it. And

in the very case I have quoted we may see an example of how little the

theory of Methuselahism really inspires our best life. For there is one

riddle in that case which cannot easily be cleared up. If it was the

man's religion to live as long as he could, why on earth was he

enlisting as a soldier?






SPIRITUALISM.



I Have received a letter from a gentleman who is very indignant at what

he considers my flippancy in disregarding or degrading Spiritualism. I

thought I was defending Spiritualism; but I am rather used to being

accused of mocking the thing that I set out to justify. My fate in most

controversies is rather pathetic. It is an almost invariable rule that

the man with whom I don't agree thinks I am making a fool of myself, and

the man with whom I do agree thinks I am making a fool of him. There

seems to be some sort of idea that you are not treating a subject

properly if you eulogise it with fantastic terms or defend it by

grotesque examples. Yet a truth is equally solemn whatever figure or

example its exponent adopts. It is an equally awful truth that four and

four make eight, whether you reckon the thing out in eight onions or

eight angels, or eight bricks or eight bishops, or eight minor poets or

eight pigs. Similarly, if it be true that God made all things, that

grave fact can be asserted by pointing at a star or by waving an

umbrella. But the case is stronger than this. There is a distinct

philosophical advantage in using grotesque terms in a serious

discussion.

I think seriously, on the whole, that the more serious is the discussion

the more grotesque should be the terms. For this, as I say, there is an

evident reason. For a subject is really solemn and important in so far

as it applies to the whole cosmos, or to some great spheres and cycles

of experience at least. So far as a thing is universal it is serious.

And so far as a thing is universal it is full of comic things. If you

take a small thing, it may be entirely serious: Napoleon, for instance,

was a small thing, and he was serious: the same applies to microbes. If

you isolate a thing, you may get the pure essence of gravity. But if you

take a large thing (such as the Solar System) it must be comic, at

least in parts. The germs are serious, because they kill you. But the

stars are funny, because they give birth to life, and life gives birth

to fun. If you have, let us say, a theory about man, and if you can only

prove it by talking about Plato and George Washington, your theory may

be a quite frivolous thing. But if you can prove it by talking about the

butler or the postman, then it is serious, because it is universal. So

far from it being irreverent to use silly metaphors on serious

questions, it is one's duty to use silly metaphors on serious questions.

It is the test of one's seriousness. It is the test of a responsible

religion or theory whether it can take examples from pots and pans and

boots and butter-tubs. It is the test of a good philosophy whether you

can defend it grotesquely. It is the test of a good religion whether you

can joke about it.

When I was a very young journalist I used to be irritated at a peculiar

habit of printers, a habit which most persons of a tendency similar to

mine have probably noticed also. It goes along with the fixed belief of

printers that to be a Rationalist is the same thing as to be a

Nationalist. I mean the printer's tendency to turn the word "cosmic"

into the word "comic." It annoyed me at the time. But since then I have

come to the conclusion that the printers were right. The democracy is

always right. Whatever is cosmic is comic.

Moreover, there is another reason that makes it almost inevitable that

we should defend grotesquely what we believe seriously. It is that all

grotesqueness is itself intimately related to seriousness. Unless a

thing is dignified, it cannot be undignified. Why is it funny that a man

should sit down suddenly in the street? There is only one possible or

intelligent reason: that man is the image of God. It is not funny that

anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down. No one

sees anything funny in a tree falling down. No one sees a delicate

absurdity in a stone falling down. No man stops in the road and roars

with laughter at the sight of the snow coming down. The fall of

thunderbolts is treated with some gravity. The fall of roofs and high

buildings is taken seriously. It is only when a man tumbles down that we

laugh. Why do we laugh? Because it is a grave religious matter: it is

the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.

The above, which occupies the great part of my article, is a

parenthises. It is time that I returned to my choleric correspondent who

rebuked me for being too frivolous about the problem of Spiritualism. My

correspondent, who is evidently an intelligent man, is very angry with

me indeed. He uses the strongest language. He says I remind him of a

brother of his: which seems to open an abyss or vista of infamy. The

main substance of his attack resolves itself into two propositions.

First, he asks me what right I have to talk about Spiritualism at all,

as I admit I have never been to a seance. This is all very well, but

there are a good many things to which I have never been, but I have not

the smallest intention of leaving off talking about them. I refuse (for

instance) to leave off talking about the Siege of Troy. I decline to be

mute in the matter of the French Revolution. I will not be silenced on

the late indefensible assassination of Julius Caesar. If nobody has any

right to judge of Spiritualism except a man who has been to a seance,

the results, logically speaking, are rather serious: it would almost

seem as if nobody had any right to judge of Christianity who had not

been to the first meeting at Pentecost. Which would be dreadful. I

conceive myself capable of forming my opinion of Spiritualism without

seeing spirits, just as I form my opinion of the Japanese War without

seeing the Japanese, or my opinion of American millionaires without

(thank God) seeing an American millionaire. Blessed are they who have

not seen and yet have believed: a passage which some have considered as

a prophecy of modern journalism.

But my correspondent's second objection is more important. He charges me

with actually ignoring the value of communication (if it exists) between

this world and the next. I do not ignore it. But I do say this--That a

different principle attaches to investigation in this spiritual field

from investigation in any other. If a man baits a line for fish, the

fish will come, even if he declares there are no such things as fishes.

If a man limes a twig for birds, the birds will be caught, even if he

thinks it superstitious to believe in birds at all. But a man cannot

bait a line for souls. A man cannot lime a twig to catch gods. All wise

schools have agreed that this latter capture depends to some extent on

the faith of the capturer. So it comes to this: If you have no faith in

the spirits your appeal is in vain; and if you have--is it needed? If

you do not believe, you cannot. If you do--you will not.

That is the real distinction between investigation in this department

and investigation in any other. The priest calls to the goddess, for the

same reason that a man calls to his wife, because he knows she is there.

If a man kept on shouting out very loud the single word "Maria," merely

with the object of discovering whether if he did it long enough some

woman of that name would come and marry him, he would be more or less in

the position of the modern spiritualist. The old religionist cried out

for his God. The new religionist cries out for some god to be his. The

whole point of religion as it has hitherto existed in the world was that

you knew all about your gods, even before you saw them, if indeed you

ever did. Spiritualism seems to me absolutely right on all its mystical

side. The supernatural part of it seems to me quite natural. The

incredible part of it seems to me obviously true. But I think it so far

dangerous or unsatisfactory that it is in some degree scientific. It

inquires whether its gods are worth inquiring into. A man (of a certain

age) may look into the eyes of his lady-love to see that they are

beautiful. But no normal lady will allow that young man to look into her

eyes to see whether they are beautiful. The same vanity and idiosyncrasy

has been generally observed in gods. Praise them; or leave them alone;

but do not look for them unless you know they are there. Do not look for

them unless you want them. It annoys them very much.








THE ERROR OF IMPARTIALITY



The refusal of the jurors in the Thaw trial to come to an agreement is

certainly a somewhat amusing sequel to the frenzied and even fantastic

caution with which they were selected. Jurymen were set aside for

reasons which seem to have only the very wildest relation to the

case--reasons which we cannot conceive as giving any human being a real

bias. It may be questioned whether the exaggerated theory of

impartiality in an arbiter or juryman may not be carried so far as to be

more unjust than partiality itself. What people call impartiality may

simply mean indifference, and what people call partiality may simply

mean mental activity. It is sometimes made an objection, for instance,

to a juror that he has formed some prima-facie opinion upon a case: if

he can be forced under sharp questioning to admit that he has formed

such an opinion, he is regarded as manifestly unfit to conduct the

inquiry. Surely this is unsound. If his bias is one of interest, of

class, or creed, or notorious propaganda, then that fact certainly

proves that he is not an impartial arbiter. But the mere fact that he

did form some temporary impression from the first facts as far as he

knew them--this does not prove that he is not an impartial arbiter--it

only proves that he is not a cold-blooded fool.

If we walk down the street, taking all the jurymen who have not formed

opinions and leaving all the jurymen who have formed opinions, it seems

highly probable that we shall only succeed in taking all the stupid

jurymen and leaving all the thoughtful ones. Provided that the opinion

formed is really of this airy and abstract kind, provided that it has no

suggestion of settled motive or prejudice, we might well regard it not

merely as a promise of capacity, but literally as a promise of justice.

The man who took the trouble to deduce from the police reports would

probably be the man who would take the trouble to deduce further and

different things from the evidence. The man who had the sense to form an

opinion would be the man who would have the sense to alter it.

It is worth while to dwell for a moment on this minor aspect of the

matter because the error about impartiality and justice is by no means

confined to a criminal question. In much more serious matters it is

assumed that the agnostic is impartial; whereas the agnostic is merely

ignorant. The logical outcome of the fastidiousness about the Thaw

jurors would be that the case ought to be tried by Esquimaux, or

Hottentots, or savages from the Cannibal Islands--by some class of

people who could have no conceivable interest in the parties, and

moreover, no conceivable interest in the case. The pure and starry

perfection of impartiality would be reached by people who not only had

no opinion before they had heard the case, but who also had no opinion

after they had heard it. In the same way, there is in modern discussions

of religion and philosophy an absurd assumption that a man is in some

way just and well-poised because he has come to no conclusion; and that

a man is in some way knocked off the list of fair judges because he has

come to a conclusion. It is assumed that the sceptic has no bias;

whereas he has a very obvious bias in favour of scepticism. I remember

once arguing with an honest young atheist, who was very much shocked at

my disputing some of the assumptions which were absolute sanctities to

him (such as the quite unproved proposition of the independence of

matter and the quite improbable proposition of its power to originate

mind), and he at length fell back upon this question, which he delivered

with an honourable heat of defiance and indignation: "Well, can you tell

me any man of intellect, great in science or philosophy, who accepted

the miraculous?" I said, "With pleasure. Descartes, Dr. Johnson, Newton,

Faraday, Newman, Gladstone, Pasteur, Browning, Brunetiere--as many more

as you please." To which that quite admirable and idealistic young man

made this astonishing reply--"Oh, but of course they had to say that;

they were Christians." First he challenged me to find a black swan, and

then he ruled out all my swans because they were black. The fact that

all these great intellects had come to the Christian view was somehow or

other a proof either that they were not great intellects or that they

had not really come to that view. The argument thus stood in a

charmingly convenient form: "All men that count have come to my

conclusion; for if they come to your conclusion they do not count."

It did not seem to occur to such controversialists that if Cardinal

Newman was really a man of intellect, the fact that he adhered to

dogmatic religion proved exactly as much as the fact that Professor

Huxley, another man of intellect, found that he could not adhere to

dogmatic religion; that is to say (as I cheerfully admit), it proved

precious little either way. If there is one class of men whom history

has proved especially and supremely capable of going quite wrong in all

directions, it is the class of highly intellectual men. I would always

prefer to go by the bulk of humanity; that is why I am a democrat. But

whatever be the truth about exceptional intelligence and the masses, it

is manifestly most unreasonable that intelligent men should be divided

upon the absurd modern principle of regarding every clever man who

cannot make up his mind as an impartial judge, and regarding every

clever man who can make up his mind as a servile fanatic. As it is, we

seem to regard it as a positive objection to a reasoner that he has

taken one side or the other. We regard it (in other words) as a positive

objection to a reasoner that he has contrived to reach the object of his

reasoning. We call a man a bigot or a slave of dogma because he is a

thinker who has thought thoroughly and to a definite end. We say that

the juryman is not a juryman because he has brought in a verdict. We say

that the judge is not a judge because he gives judgment. We say that the

sincere believer has no right to vote, simply because he has voted.






PHONETIC SPELLING



A correspondent asks me to make more lucid my remarks about phonetic

spelling. I have no detailed objection to items of spelling-reform; my

objection is to a general principle; and it is this. It seems to me that

what is really wrong with all modern and highly civilised language is

that it does so largely consist of dead words. Half our speech consists

of similes that remind us of no similarity; of pictorial phrases that

call up no picture; of historical allusions the origin of which we have

forgotten. Take any instance on which the eye happens to alight. I saw

in the paper some days ago that the well-known leader of a certain

religious party wrote to a supporter of his the following curious words:

"I have not forgotten the talented way in which you held up the banner

at Birkenhead." Taking the ordinary vague meaning of the word

"talented," there is no coherency in the picture. The trumpets blow, the

spears shake and glitter, and in the thick of the purple battle there

stands a gentleman holding up a banner in a talented way. And when we

come to the original force of the word "talent" the matter is worse: a

talent is a Greek coin used in the New Testament as a symbol of the

mental capital committed to an individual at birth. If the religious

leader in question had really meant anything by his phrases, he would

have been puzzled to know how a man could use a Greek coin to hold up a

banner. But really he meant nothing by his phrases. "Holding up the

banner" was to him a colourless term for doing the proper thing, and

"talented" was a colourless term for doing it successfully.

Now my own fear touching anything in the way of phonetic spelling is

that it would simply increase this tendency to use words as counters and

not as coins. The original life in a word (as in the word "talent")

burns low as it is: sensible spelling might extinguish it altogether.

Suppose any sentence you like: suppose a man says, "Republics generally

encourage holidays." It looks like the top line of a copy-book. Now, it

is perfectly true that if you wrote that sentence exactly as it is

pronounced, even by highly educated people, the sentence would run:

"Ripubliks jenrally inkurrij hollidies." It looks ugly: but I have not

the smallest objection to ugliness. My objection is that these four

words have each a history and hidden treasures in them: that this

history and hidden treasure (which we tend to forget too much as it is)

phonetic spelling tends to make us forget altogether. Republic does not

mean merely a mode of political choice. Republic (as we see when we look

at the structure of the word) means the Public Thing: the abstraction

which is us all.

A Republican is not a man who wants a Constitution with a President. A

Republican is a man who prefers to think of Government as impersonal; he

is opposed to the Royalist, who prefers to think of Government as

personal. Take the second word, "generally." This is always used as

meaning "in the majority of cases." But, again, if we look at the shape

and spelling of the word, we shall see that "generally" means something

more like "generically," and is akin to such words as "generation" or

"regenerate." "Pigs are generally dirty" does not mean that pigs are, in

the majority of cases, dirty, but that pigs as a race or genus are

dirty, that pigs as pigs are dirty--an important philosophical

distinction. Take the third word, "encourage." The word "encourage" is

used in such modern sentences in the merely automatic sense of promote;

to encourage poetry means merely to advance or assist poetry. But to

encourage poetry means properly to put courage into poetry--a fine idea.

Take the fourth word, "holidays." As long as that word remains, it will

always answer the ignorant slander which asserts that religion was

opposed to human cheerfulness; that word will always assert that when a

day is holy it should also be happy. Properly spelt, these words all

tell a sublime story, like Westminster Abbey. Phonetically spelt, they

might lose the last traces of any such story. "Generally" is an exalted

metaphysical term; "jenrally" is not. If you "encourage" a man, you pour

into him the chivalry of a hundred princes; this does not happen if you

merely "inkurrij" him. "Republics," if spelt phonetically, might

actually forget to be public. "Holidays," if spelt phonetically, might

actually forget to be holy.

Here is a case that has just occurred. A certain magistrate told

somebody whom he was examining in court that he or she "should always be

polite to the police." I do not know whether the magistrate noticed the

circumstance, but the word "polite" and the word "police" have the same

origin and meaning. Politeness means the atmosphere and ritual of the

city, the symbol of human civilisation. The policeman means the

representative and guardian of the city, the symbol of human

civilisation. Yet it may be doubted whether the two ideas are commonly

connected in the mind. It is probable that we often hear of politeness

without thinking of a policeman; it is even possible that our eyes often

alight upon a policeman without our thoughts instantly flying to the

subject of politeness. Yet the idea of the sacred city is not only the

link of them both, it is the only serious justification and the only

serious corrective of them both. If politeness means too often a mere

frippery, it is because it has not enough to do with serious patriotism

and public dignity; if policemen are coarse or casual, it is because

they are not sufficiently convinced that they are the servants of the

beautiful city and the agents of sweetness and light. Politeness is not

really a frippery. Politeness is not really even a thing merely suave

and deprecating. Politeness is an armed guard, stern and splendid and

vigilant, watching over all the ways of men; in other words, politeness

is a policeman. A policeman is not merely a heavy man with a truncheon:

a policeman is a machine for the smoothing and sweetening of the

accidents of everyday existence. In other words, a policeman is

politeness; a veiled image of politeness--sometimes impenetrably veiled.

But my point is here that by losing the original idea of the city, which

is the force and youth of both the words, both the things actually

degenerate. Our politeness loses all manliness because we forget that

politeness is only the Greek for patriotism. Our policemen lose all

delicacy because we forget that a policeman is only the Greek for

something civilised. A policeman should often have the functions of a

knight-errant. A policeman should always have the elegance of a

knight-errant. But I am not sure that he would succeed any the better n

remembering this obligation of romantic grace if his name were spelt

phonetically, supposing that it could be spelt phonetically. Some

spelling-reformers, I am told, in the poorer parts of London do spell

his name phonetically, very phonetically. They call him a "pleeceman."

Thus the whole romance of the ancient city disappears from the word, and

the policeman's reverent courtesy of demeanour deserts him quite

suddenly. This does seem to me the case against any extreme revolution

in spelling. If you spell a word wrong you have some temptation to think

it wrong.






HUMANITARIANISM AND STRENGTH



Somebody writes complaining of something I said about progress. I have

forgotten what I said, but I am quite certain that it was (like a

certain Mr. Douglas in a poem which I have also forgotten) tender and

true. In any case, what I say now is this. Human history is so rich and

complicated that you can make out a case for any course of improvement

or retrogression. I could make out that the world has been growing more

democratic, for the English franchise has certainly grown more

democratic. I could also make out that the world has been growing more

aristocratic, for the English Public Schools have certainly grown more

aristocratic I could prove the decline of militarism by the decline of

flogging; I could prove the increase of militarism by the increase of

standing armies and conscription. But I can prove anything in this way.

I can prove that the world has always been growing greener. Only lately

men have invented absinthe and the Westminster Gazette. I could prove

the world has grown less green. There are no more Robin Hood foresters,

and fields are being covered with houses. I could show that the world

was less red with khaki or more red with the new penny stamps. But in

all cases progress means progress only in some particular thing. Have

you ever noticed that strange line of Tennyson, in which he confesses,

half consciously, how very conventional progress is?--



"Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing

grooves of change."



Even in praising change, he takes for a simile the most unchanging

thing. He calls our modern change a groove. And it is a groove; perhaps

there was never anything so groovy.

Nothing would induce me in so idle a monologue as this to discuss

adequately a great political matter like the question of the military

punishments in Egypt. But I may suggest one broad reality to be observed

by both sides, and which is, generally speaking, observed by neither.

Whatever else is right, it is utterly wrong to employ the argument that

we Europeans must do to savages and Asiatics whatever savages and

Asiatics do to us. I have even seen some controversialists use the

metaphor, "We must fight them with their own weapons." Very well; let

those controversialists take their metaphor, and take it literally. Let

us fight the Soudanese with their own weapons. Their own weapons are

large, very clumsy knives, with an occasional old-fashioned gun. Their

own weapons are also torture and slavery. If we fight them with torture

and slavery, we shall be fighting badly, precisely as if we fought them

with clumsy knives and old guns. That is the whole strength of our

Christian civilisation, that it does fight with its own weapons and not

with other people's. It is not true that superiority suggests a tit for

tat. It is not true that if a small hooligan puts his tongue out at the

Lord Chief Justice, the Lord Chief Justice immediately realises that his

only chance of maintaining his position is to put his tongue out at the

little hooligan. The hooligan may or may not have any respect at all for

the Lord Chief Justice: that is a matter which we may contentedly leave

as a solemn psychological mystery. But if the hooligan has any respect

at all for the Lord Chief Justice, that respect is certainly extended to

the Lord Chief Justice entirely because he does not put his tongue out.

Exactly in the same way the ruder or more sluggish races regard the

civilisation of Christendom. If they have any respect for it, it is

precisely because it does not use their own coarse and cruel expedients.

According to some modern moralists whenever Zulus cut off the heads of

dead Englishmen, Englishmen must cut off the heads of dead Zulus.

Whenever Arabs or Egyptians constantly use the whip to their slaves,

Englishmen must use the whip to their subjects. And on a similar

principle (I suppose), whenever an English Admiral has to fight

cannibals the English Admiral ought to eat them. However unattractive a

menu consisting entirely of barbaric kings may appear to an English

gentleman, he must try to sit down to it with an appetite. He must fight

the Sandwich Islanders with their own weapons; and their own weapons are

knives and forks. But the truth of the matter is, of course, that to do

this kind of thing is to break the whole spell of our supremacy. All the

mystery of the white man, all the fearful poetry of the white man, so

far as it exists in the eyes of these savages, consists in the fact that

we do not do such things. The Zulus point at us and say, "Observe the

advent of these inexplicable demi-gods, these magicians, who do not cut

off the noses of their enemies." The Soudanese say to each other, "This

hardy people never flogs its servants; it is superior to the simplest

and most obvious human pleasures." And the cannibals say, "The austere

and terrible race, the race that denies itself even boiled missionary,

is upon us: let us flee."

Whether or no these details are a little conjectural, the general

proposition I suggest is the plainest common sense. The elements that

make Europe upon the whole the most humanitarian civilisation are

precisely the elements that make it upon the whole the strongest. For

the power which makes a man able to entertain a good impulse is the same

as that which enables him to make a good gun; it is imagination. It is

imagination that makes a man outwit his enemy, and it is imagination

that makes him spare his enemy. It is precisely because this picturing

of the other man's point of view is in the main a thing in which

Christians and Europeans specialise that Christians and Europeans, with

all their faults, have carried to such perfection both the arts of peace

and war.

They alone have invented machine-guns, and they alone have invented

ambulances; they have invented ambulances (strange as it may sound) for

the same reason for which they have invented machine-guns. Both involve

a vivid calculation of remote events. It is precisely because the East,

with all its wisdom, is cruel, that the East, with all its wisdom, is

weak. And it is precisely because savages are pitiless that they are

still--merely savages. If they could imagine their enemy's sufferings

they could also imagine his tactics. If Zulus did not cut off the

Englishman's head they might really borrow it. For if you do not

understand a man you cannot crush him. And if you do understand him,

very probably you will not.

When I was about seven years old I used to think that the chief modern

danger was a danger of over-civilisation. I am inclined to think now

that the chief modern danger is that of a slow return towards barbarism,

just such a return towards barbarism as is indicated in the suggestions

of barbaric retaliation of which I have just spoken. Civilisation in the

best sense merely means the full authority of the human spirit over all

externals. Barbarism means the worship of those externals in their crude

and unconquered state. Barbarism means the worship of Nature; and in

recent poetry, science, and philosophy there has been too much of the

worship of Nature. Wherever men begin to talk much and with great

solemnity about the forces outside man, the note of it is barbaric.

When men talk much about heredity and environment they are almost

barbarians. The modern men of science are many of them almost

barbarians. Mr. Blatchford is in great danger of becoming a barbarian.

For barbarians (especially the truly squalid and unhappy barbarians) are

always talking about these scientific subjects from morning till night.

That is why they remain squalid and unhappy; that is why they remain

barbarians. Hottentots are always talking about heredity, like Mr.

Blatchford. Sandwich Islanders are always talking about environment,

like Mr. Suthers. Savages--those that are truly stunted or

depraved--dedicate nearly all their tales and sayings to the subject of

physical kinship, of a curse on this or that tribe, of a taint in this

or that family, of the invincible law of blood, of the unavoidable evil

of places. The true savage is a slave, and is always talking about what

he must do; the true civilised man is a free man and is always talking

about what he may do. Hence all the Zola heredity and Ibsen heredity

that has been written in our time affects me as not merely evil, but as

essentially ignorant and retrogressive. This sort of science is almost

the only thing that can with strict propriety be called reactionary.

Scientific determinism is simply the primal twilight of all mankind; and

some men seem to be returning to it.

Another savage trait of our time is the disposition to talk about

material substances instead of about ideas. The old civilisation talked

about the sin of gluttony or excess. We talk about the Problem of

Drink--as if drink could be a problem. When people have come to call the

problem of human intemperance the Problem of Drink, and to talk about

curing it by attacking the drink traffic, they have reached quite a dim

stage of barbarism. The thing is an inverted form of fetish worship; it

is no sillier to say that a bottle is a god than to say that a bottle is

a devil. The people who talk about the curse of drink will probably

progress down that dark hill. In a little while we shall have them

calling the practice of wife-beating the Problem of Pokers; the habit of

housebreaking will be called the Problem of the Skeleton-Key Trade; and

for all I know they may try to prevent forgery by shutting up all the

stationers' shops by Act of Parliament.

I cannot help thinking that there is some shadow of this uncivilised

materialism lying at present upon a much more dignified and valuable

cause. Every one is talking just now about the desirability of

ingeminating peace and averting war. But even war and peace are physical

states rather than moral states, and in talking about them only we have

by no means got to the bottom of the matter. How, for instance, do we as

a matter of fact create peace in one single community? We do not do it

by vaguely telling every one to avoid fighting and to submit to anything

that is done to him. We do it by definitely defining his rights and then

undertaking to avenge his wrongs. We shall never have a common peace in

Europe till we have a common principle in Europe. People talk of "The

United States of Europe;" but they forget that it needed the very

doctrinal "Declaration of Independence" to make the United States of

America. You cannot agree about nothing any more than you can quarrel

about nothing.






CHESTERTON-ALL THING CONSIDERED - SCIENCE AND RELIGION