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| G. K. Chesterton
"My country, right or wrong" is a thing no patriot would ever think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying "My mother, drunk or sober." A change of opinions is almost unknown in an elderly military man.A citizen can hardly distinguish between a tax and a fine, except that the fine is generally much lighter.A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it. A detective story generally describes six living men discussing how it is that a man is dead. a modern philosophic story generally describes six dead men discussing how any man can possible be alive. A good man's work is effected by doing what he does, a woman's by being what she is. A man imagines a happy marriage as a marriage of love; even if he makes fun of marriages that are without love, or feels sorry for lovers who are without marriage. A thing may be too sad to be believed or too wicked to be believed or too good to be believed; but it cannot be too absurd to be believed in this planet of frogs and elephants, of crocodiles and cuttle-fish. Aesthetes never do anything but what they are told. All but the hard hearted man must be torn with pity for this pathetic dilemma of the rich man, who has to keep the poor man just stout enough to do the work and just thin enough to have to do it. All government is an ugly necessity. All men thirst to confess their crimes more than tired beasts thirst for water; but they naturally object to confessing them while other people, who have also committed the same crimes, sit by and laugh at them. All science, even the divine science, is a sublime detective story. Only it is not set to detect why a man is dead; but the darker secret of why he is alive. All the exaggerations are right, if they exaggerate the right thing. America has a genius for the encouragement of fame. America is the only country ever founded on a creed. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered; an adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered. And all over the world, the old literature, the popular literature, is the same. It consists of very dignified sorrow and very undignified fun. Its sad tales are of broken hearts; its happy tales are of broken heads. Anyone thinking of the Holy Child as born in December would mean by it exactly what we mean by it; that Christ is not merely a summer sun of the prosperous but a winter fire for the unfortunate. Anyone who is not an anarchist agrees with having a policeman at the corner of the street; but the danger at present is that of finding the policeman half-way down the chimney or even under the bed. Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere. Big Business and State Socialism are very much alike, especially Big Business. Bigotry is an incapacity to conceive seriously the alternative to a proposition. Bigotry may be roughly defined as the anger of men who have no opinions. Business, especially big business, is now organized like an army. It is, as some would say, a sort of mild militarism without bloodshed; as I say, a militarism without the military virtues. By a curious confusion, many modern critics have passed from the proposition that a masterpiece may be unpopular to the other proposition that unless it is unpopular it cannot be a masterpiece. By experts in poverty I do not mean sociologists, but poor men. Capitalism is that commercial system in which supply immediately answers to demand, and in which everybody seems to be thoroughly dissatisfied and unable to get anything he wants. Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried. Civilization has run on ahead of the soul of man, and is producing faster than he can think and give thanks. Complaint always comes back in an echo from the ends of the world; but silence strengthens us. Customs are generally unselfish. Habits are nearly always selfish. Do not look at the faces in the illustrated papers. Look at the faces in the street. Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions. For fear of the newspapers politicians are dull, and at last they are too dull even for the newspapers. From the standpoint of any sane person, the present problem of capitalist concentration is not only a question of law, but of criminal law, not to mention criminal lunacy. From time to time, as we all know, a sect appears in our midst announcing that the world will very soon come to an end. Generally, by some slight confusion or miscalculation, it is the sect that comes to an end. Great truths can only be forgotten and can never be falsified. He is a very shallow critic who cannot see an eternal rebel in the heart of a conservative. He is a [sane] man who can have tragedy in his heart and comedy in his head. How can we contrive to be at once astonished at the world and yet at home in it? How quickly revolutions grow old; and, worse still, respectable. I agree with the realistic Irishman who said he preferred to prophesy after the event. I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean. I have little doubt that when St. George had killed the dragon he was heartily afraid of the princess. I never could see anything wrong in sensationalism; and I am sure our society is suffering more from secrecy than from flamboyant revelations. I say that a man must be certain of his morality for the simple reason that he has to suffer for it. I still hold ... that the suburbs ought to be either glorified by romance and religion or else destroyed by fire from heaven, or even by firebrands from the earth. I think the oddest thing about the advanced people is that, while they are always talking about things as problems, they have hardly any notion of what a real problem is. I would give a woman not more rights, but more privileges. Instead of sending her to seek such freedom as notoriously prevails in banks and factories, I would design specially a house in which she can be free. Idolatry is committed, not merely by setting up false gods, but also by setting up false devils; by making men afraid of war or alcohol, or economic law, when they should be afraid of spiritual corruption and cowardice. If there were no God, there would be no atheists. If you attempt an actual argument with a modern paper of opposite politics, you will have no answer except slanging or silence. Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference, which is an elegant name for ignorance. In the struggle for existence, it is only on those who hang on for ten minutes after all is hopeless, that hope begins to dawn. It has been often said, very truely, that religion is the thing that makes the ordinary man feel extraordinary; it is an equally important truth that religion is the thing that makes the extraordinary man feel ordinary. It is hard to make government representative when it is also remote. It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong. It is terrible to contemplete how few politicians are hanged. It is the main earthly business of a human being to make his home, and the immediate surroundings of his home, as symbolic and significant to his own imagination as he can. It is true that I am of an older fashion; much that I love has been destroyed or sent into exile. It's not that we don't have enough scoundrels to curse; it's that we don't have enough good men to curse them. Journalism largely consists of saying "Lord Jones is Dead" to people who never knew that Lord Jones was alive. Let all the babies be born. Then let us drown those we do not like. Love means loving the unlovable – or it is no virtue at all. Making the landlord and the tenant the same person has certain advantages, as that the tenant pays no rent, while the landlord does a little work. Marriage is a duel to the death which no man of honour should decline. Marxism will in a generation or so go into the limbo of most heresies, but meanwhile it will have poisoned the Russian Revolution. Men are ruled, at this minute by the clock, by liars who refuse them news, and by fools who cannot govern. Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable. Men invent new ideals because they dare not attempt old ideals. They look forward with enthusiasm, because they are afraid to look back. Misers get up early in the morning; and burglars, I am informed, get up the night before. Moderate strength is shown in violence, supreme strength is shown in levity. Modern broad-mindedness benefits the rich; and benefits nobody else. Modern man is staggering and losing his balance because he is being pelted with little pieces of alleged fact which are native to the newspapers; and, if they turn out not to be facts, that is still more native to newspapers. Most modern freedom is at root fear. It is not so much that we are too bold to endure rules; it is rather that we are too timid to endure responsibilities. My attitude toward progress has passed from antagonism to boredom. I have long ceased to argue with people who prefer Thursday to Wednesday because it is Thursday. My forthcoming work in five volumes, "The Neglect of Cheese in European Literature" is a work of such unprecedented and laborious detail that it is doubtful if I shall live to finish it. No society can survive the socialist fallacy that there is an absolutely unlimited number of inspired officials and an absolutely unlimited amount of money to pay them. None of the modern machines, none of the modern paraphernalia ... have any power except over the people who choose to use them. Once abolish the God, and the government becomes the God. One of the chief uses of religion is that it makes us remember our coming from darkness, the simple fact that we are created. Only poor men get hanged. Our materialistic masters could, and probably will, put Birth Control into an immediate practical programme while we are all discussing the dreadful danger of somebody else putting it into a distant Utopia. Over-civilization and barbarism are within an inch of each other. and a mark of both is the power of medicine-men. Price is a crazy and incalculable thing, while Value is an intrinsic and indestructible thing. Progress is a comparative of which we have not settled the superlative. Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to fit the vision, instead we are always changing the vision. Psychoanalysis is a science conducted by lunatics for lunatics. They are generally concerned with proving that people are irresponsible; and they certainly succeed in proving that some people are. Puritanism was an honourable mood; it was a noble fad. In other words, it was a highly creditable mistake. Religious liberty might be supposed to mean that everybody is free to discuss religion. In practice it means that hardly anybody is allowed to mention it. Self-denial is the test and definition of self-government. Some people leave money for the improvement of public buildings. I can leave dynamite for the improvement of public buildings. The act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has today all the exhilaration of a vice. The aim of good prose words is to mean what they say. The aim of good poetical words is to mean what they do not say. The artistic temperament is a disease that afflicts amateurs. The beautification of the world is not a work of nature, but a work of art, then it involves an artist. The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people. The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried. The comedy of man survives the tragedy of man. The decay of society is praised by artists as the decay of a corpse is praised by worms. The first two facts which a healthy boy or girl feels about sex are these: first that it is beautiful and then that it is dangerous. The modern city is ugly not because it is a city but because it is not enough of a city, because it is a jungle, because it is confused and anarchic, and surging with selfish and materialistic energies. The modern world is a crowd of very rapid racing cars all brought to a standstill and stuck in a block of traffic. The only defensible war is a war of defense. The past is not what it was. The person who is really in revolt is the optimist, who generally lives and dies in a desperate and suicidal effort to persuade other people how good they are. The purpose of Compulsory Education is to deprive the common people of their commonsense. The real argument against aristocracy is that it always means the rule of the ignorant. For the most dangerous of all forms of ignorance is ignorance of work. The really great person is the person who makes every person feel great. The reformer is always right about what is wrong. He is generally wrong about what is right. The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man. The simplification of anything is always sensational. The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him. The ultimate effect of the great science of Fingerprints is this: that whereas a gentleman was expected to put on gloves to dance with a lady, he may now be expected to put on gloves in order to strangle her. The unconscious democracy of america is a very fine thing. It is a true and deep and instinctive assumption of the equality of citizens, which even voting and elections have not destroyed. The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected. The whole pleasure of marriage is that it is a perpetual crisis. The whole truth is generally the ally of virtue; a half-truth is always the ally of some vice. The world will very soon be divided, unless I am mistaken, into those who still go on explaining our success, and those somewhat more intelligent who are trying to explain our failure. Theology is only thought applied to religion. There are some desires that are not desirable. There are those who hate Christianity and call their hatred an all-embracing love for all religions. There cannot be a nation of millionaires, and there never has been a nation of Utopian comrades; but there have been any number of nations of tolerably contented peasants. There is a case for telling the truth; there is a case for avoiding the scandal; but there is no possible defense for the man who tells the scandal, but does not tell the truth. There is a corollary to the conception of being too proud to fight. It is that the humble have to do most of the fighting. There is only one thing that stands in our midst, attenuated and threatened, but enthroned in some power like a ghost of the Middle ages: the Trade Unions. There'd be a lot less scandal if people didn't idealize sin and pose as sinners. These are the days when the Christian is expected to praise every creed except his own. This is the age in which thin and theoretic minorities can cover and conquer unconscious and untheoretic majorities. To be clever enough to get all that money, one must be stupid enough to want it. To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it. To hurry through one's leisure is the most unbusiness-like of actions. To the humble man, and to the humble man alone, the sun is really a sun; to the humble man, and to the humble man alone, the sea is really a sea. Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists. Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around. Truth is sacred; and if you tell the truth too often nobody will believe it. War is not the best way of settling differences; it is the only way of preventing their being settled for you. We are learning to do a great many clever things ... The next great task will be to learn not to do them. We have had no good comic operas of late, because the real world has been more comic than any possible opera. We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next-door neighbour. What embitters the world is not excess of criticism, but an absence of self-criticism. What is called matriarchy is simply moral anarchy, in which the mother alone remains fixed because all the fathers are fugitive and irresponsible.. What life and death may be to a turkey is not my business; but the soul of Scrooge and the body of Cratchit are my business. What we call emancipation is always and of necessity simply the free choice of the soul between one set of limitations and another. When a politician is in opposition he is an expert on the means to some end; and when he is in office he is an expert on the obstacles to it. When giving treats to friends or children, give them what they like, emphatically not what is good for them. When learned men begin to use their reason, then I generally discover that they haven't got any. When you break the big laws, you do not get freedom; you do not even get anarchy. You get the small laws. With all that we hear of american hustle and hurry, it is rather strange that americans seem to like to linger on longer words. Women are the only realists; their whole object in life is to pit their realism against the extravagant, excessive, and occasionally drunken idealism of men. Women have a thirst for order and beauty as for something physical; there is a strange female power of hating ugliness and waste as good men can only hate sin and bad men virtue. You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution. You can't have the family farm without the family. You cannot grow a beard in a moment of passion. |
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