All things considered

ALL THINGS
CONSIDERED

O.K.CHESTERTON

S* GUjattttgng

Uniform with this Volume

1 The Mighty Atom

2 Jane

3 Boy
231 Cameos

4 Spanish Gold

9 The Unofficial Honeymoon

1 8 Round the Red Lamp

20 Light Freights

22 The Long Road

71 The Gates of Wratb

8 1 The Card

87 Lalage's Lovers

92 White Fang

108 The Adventures ! Dr. Whitty
113 Lavender and Old Lace
125 The Regent
135 A Spinner in Use Sun
137 The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu
143 Sandy Married
313 Under Western Eyes
215 Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo
224 Broken Shackles
227 Byeways

229 My Friend the Chauffeur
259 Anthony Cuthbert
261 Tarzan of the Apes
268 Mis Island Princes*

275 Secret History

276 Mary All-alone

277 Darneley Place

278 The Desert Trail

279 The War Wedding

281 Because of these Things

282 Mrs. Peter Howard
288 A Great Man

389 The Rest Cure

290 The Devil Doctor

291 Master of the Vineyard

293 The Si- Fan Mysteries

294 The Guiding Thread

395 The Hlllman

396 William, by the Grace of God

397 Below Stairs

301 Love and Louisa

302 The Joss

303 The Carissima

304 The Return of Tarzan
313 The Wall Street Giri

315 The Hying Inn

316 Whom God Hath Joined
318 An Affair of State

320 The Dweller on the Threshold
325 A Set of Six

329 1914*

330 The Fortune of Christina McNab
334 Bellamy

343 The Shadow of Victory

344 Thfs Woman to this Man

345 Something Fresh

Marie Corelii
Marie Corelii
Marie Corelii
Marie Corelii
G. A. Birmingham
Dolt Wyllarcte
Sir A. Cooan Doyle
W. W. Jacobs
John Oxenham
Arnold Bennett
Arnold Bennett
G. A. Bt>aiingham
Jack London
G. A. Birmingham
Myrtle Reed
Arnold Bennett
Myrtle Reed
Sax Rohmer
Dorothea Conyers
Joseph Conrad
. Phillips Oppenheim
John Oxenham
Robert Hichens
C. N. & A. M. Williamson
Richard Baeoc
Edgar Rice Burroughs
W. Clark RusseH
C. N. and A. M. Williamson
John Oxenham
Richard Bagot
Dane Cooiidge
C. N and A. M. Williamson
Marjorie Bnwen
Mary E. Mann
Arnold Bennett
W. B. Maxwell
Sax Rohmer
Myrtle Reed
Sax Rohmer
Beatrice Harraden
E. PhiHips (>ppenheim
Marjorie Howen
Mrs, Alfred Sidgvrick
E. Maria Afbanesi
Richard Marsh
Lucas Malet
Edgar Rice Burroughs
Frederick Orin Bartlett
G. K. Chesterton
Arnold Bennett
J C. Snaith
Robert Hichens
Joseph Conrad
John Oxenham
S. MacrnauKhtan
Elinor Mordaunt
Myr le Reed

C. N. and A. M. Williamson
P. G. Wodehouse

A short Selection only.

Uniterm with this Volume

36 De Profundis

27 Lord Arthur Savile's CrinM

38 Selected Poems

39 An Ideal Husband

40 Intentions

41 Lady Windermere's Fan

77 Selected Prose

85 The Importance of Being Earnest
146 A Woman of No Importance

43 Harvest Home

44 A Little of Everything

78 The Best of Lamb
141 Variety Lane

292 Mixed Vintages

45 Vallima Letters
So Selected Letters

46 Hills and the Sea
96 A Picked Company

193 On Nothing
226 On Everything
254 On Something

47 The Blue Bird
214 Select Essays

50 Charles Dickens

94 All Things Considered
54 The Life of John Raskin

57 Sevastopol and ether Stories
91 Social Evils and tbeir Remedy

223 Two Generations

253 My Childhood and Boyhood

266 My Youth

58 The Lore of the Hoey-B

63 Oscar Wilde

64 The Vicar of Morwenstow
76 Home Life In France

83 Reason and Belief
93 The Substance of Faith
116 The Survival of Man

284 Modern Problems

95 The Mirror of the Sea

126 Science from an Easy Chair

149 A Shepherd's Life

200 Jane Austen and her Times

218 R. L. S.

234 Records and Reminiscences

285 The Old Time Parson

287 The Customs o1 Old England

A Selection only.

Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
E. V. Lucas
E.V.Lucas
E. V. Lucas
E. V. Lucas
E, V. Lucas
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
Hilaire Belloc
Hilaire Belloc
Hilaire Belloc
Hilaire Belloc
Hilaire Belloc
Maurice Maeterlinck
Maurice Maeterlinck
G. K. Chesterton
G. K. Chesterton
W. G. Col I ing wood
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
Ttdcner Edwardes
Arthur Ransome
S. Baring-Gould
fef. Betham- Ed wards
Sir Oliver Lodge
Sir Oliver Lodge
Sir Oliver Lodge
Sir Olivet Lodge
Joseph Conrad
Sir Ray Lankester
W. H. Hudson
G. E. Mitton
Francis Watt
Sir Francis Burnand
P. H. Ditchfield
F. J. Snell

ALL THINGS
CONSIDERED

BY

G. K. CHESTERTON

TIUBTBBHTH EDITION

METHUEN & CO., LTD.

36 ESSEX STREET W.C

LONDON

This Book was First Published (F"caj> 8vo.) . . . September 1908

Second and Third Editions /P

Fotvth and Fifth Editions ' /pop

Sixth Edition *9*o

Seventh Edition . *9 1 S

First Issued in this Cheap Form (Eighth Edition) . . September /ptf

Ninth Edition (Cheap Form) . /P/5

Tenth Edition ( h* cap 8w>.) t 19*6

Eleventh Edition, (Cheap Form) . . /P/<J

Twelfth Edition (Cheap Form) ........ /P/7

Thirteenth Edition (Cheap Form) /P/9

CONTENTS

THE CASH FOR THE EPHEMERA!, 7

COCKNEYS AND THEIR JOKES . . . . . 13

THE FAU,ACY OF SUCCESS . . . 21

ON RUNNING AFTER ONE'S HAT . w . 29

THE VOTE AND THE HOUSE 34

CONCEIT AND CARICATURE 42

PATRIOTISM AND SPORT 48

AN ESSAY ON TWO CITIES ..... 54

FRENCH AND ENGUSH 59

THE ZOI<A CONTROVERSY . . . . .65

OXFORD FROM WITHOUT 71

WOMAN 79

THE MODERN MARTYR 85

ON POI,ITICAI, SECRECY 91

EDWARD VH. AND SCOTLAND 98

THOUGHTS AROUHD KOEPENICK . . . .105

THE BOY . .112

ZJMERICKS AKD COUNSElrS OF PERFECTION . . 119

ANONYMITY AND FURTHER COUNSELS . . .125

ON THE CRYFMC AND THE EI,I<IPTIC - . .130

vi ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

THB WORSHIP OP THE WEALTHY .

SCIENCE AND RELIGION

THE MBTHUSELAHITE . . . . *

SPIRITUALISM

THE ERROR OF IMPARTIALITY .

PHONETIC SPELLING

HUMANITARIANISM AND STKKNGTil

WINE WHEN IT IS RED

DEMAGOGUES AND MYSTAGOGUES
THE "EATANSWIW* GAZETTE " .

FAIRY TALES

TOM JONES AND MORATJTY . . . * ,

THE MAID OF ORLEANS

A DEAD POET

CHRISTMAS ,

ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

THE CASE FOR THE EPHEMERAL

I CANNOT understand the people who take
literature seriously; but I can love them, and
I do. Out of my love I warn them to keep
clear of this book. It is a collection of crude
and shapeless papers upon current or rather
flying subjects ; and they must be published
pretty much as they stand. They were written,
as a rule, at the last moment ; they were handed
in the moment before it was too late, and I do
not think that our commonwealth would have
been shaken to its foundations if they had been
handed in the moment after. They must go out
now, with all their imperfections on their head,
or rather on mine ; for their vices are too vital
to be improved with a blue pencil, or with any-
thing I can think of, except dynamite.

Their ifchief vice is that so many of them are
very serious ; because I had no time to make
them flippant. It is so easy to be solemn ; it is
so hard to be frivolous. Let any honest reader
shut his eyes for a few moments, and approaching
the secret tribunal of his soul, ask himself whether
he would really rather be asked in the next two
hours to write the front page of the Times, which
is full of long leading articles, or the front page
of Tit~Bits 9 which is full of short jokes. If the

8 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

reader is the fine conscientious fellow I take him
for, he will at once reply that he would rather on
the spur of the moment write ten Times articles
than one Til- Bits joke. Responsibility, a heavy
and cautious responsibility of speech, is the easiest
thing in the world ; anybody can do it. That is
why so many tired, elderly, and wealthy men go
in for politics. They are responsible, because
they have not the strength of mind left to be
irresponsible. It is more dignified to sit still
than to dance the Barn Dance. It is also easier.
So in these easy pages I keep myself on the
whole on the level of the Times: it is only
occasionally that I leap upwards almost to the
levd of Tit-Bits.

I resume the defence of this indefensible book.
These articles have another disadvantage arising
from the scurry in which they were written ;
they are too long-winded and elaborate. One of
the great disadvantages of hurry is that -it takes
such a long time. If I have to start for High-
gate this day week, I may perhaps go the
shortest way. If I have to start this minute, I
shall almost certainly go the longest. In these
essays (as I read them over) I feel frightfully
annoyed with myself for not getting to the point
more quickly ; but I had not enough leisure to
be quick. There are several maddening cases
in which I took two or three pages in attempting
to describe an attitude of which the essence
could be expressed in an epigram ; only there
was no time for epigrams. I do not repent of
one shade of opinion here expressed ; but I feel
that they might have been expressed so much

THE CASE FOR THE EPHEMERAL 9

more briefly and precisely. For instance, these
pages contain a sort of recurring protest against
the boast of certain writers that they are merely
recent. They brag that their philosophy of the
universe is the last philosophy or the new philo-
sophy, or the advanced and progressive philosophy,
I have said much against a mere modernism.
When I use the word " modernism," I am not
alluding specially to the current quarrel in the
Roman Catholic Church, though I am certainly
astonished at any intellectual group accepting so
weak and unphilosophical a name. It is incom-
prehensible to me that any thinker can calmly call
himself a modernist ; he might as well call himself
a Thursdayite. But apart altogether from that
particular disturbance, I am conscious of a general
irritation expressed against the people who boast of
their advancement and modernity in the discussion
of religion. But I never succeeded in saying the
quite clear and obvious thing that is really the
matter with modernism. The real objection to
modernism is simply that it is a form of snob-
bishness. It is an attempt to crush a rational
opponent not by reason, but by some mystery of
superiority, by hinting that one is specially up to
date or particularly " in the know." To flaunt
the fact that we have had all the last books from
Germany is simply vulgar ; like flaunting the fact
that we have had all the last bonnets from Paris,
To introduce into philosophical discussions a
sneer at a creed's antiquity is like introducing a
sneer at a lady's age. It is caddish because if is
irrelevant. The pure modernist is merely a snob ;
he cannot bear to be a month behind the fashion.

io ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

Similarly I find that I have tried in these pages
to express the real objection to philanthropists and
have not succeeded. I have not seen the quite
simple objection to the causes advocated by cer-
tain wealthy idealists ; causes of which the cause
called teetotalism is the strongest case. I have
" used many abusive terms about the thing, calling
it Puritanism, or superciliousness, or aristocracy ;
but I have not seen and stated the quite simple
objection to philanthropy ; which is that it is
religious persecution. Religious persecution does
not consist in thumbscrews or fires of Smithfield ;
the essence of religious persecution is this : that
the man who happens to have material power
in the State, either by wealth or by official posi-
tion, should govern his fellow-citizens not ac-
cording to their religion or philosophy, but ac-
cording to his own. If, for instance, there is
such a thing as a vegetarian nation ; if there is
a great united mass of men who wish to live by
the vegetarian morality, then I say in the emphatic
words of the arrogant French marquis before the
French Revolution, " Let them eat grass." Per-
haps that French oligarch was a humanitarian ;
most oligarchs are. Perhaps when he told the
peasants to eat grass he was recommending to them
the hygienic simplicity of a vegetarian restaurant.
But that is an irrelevant, though most fascinating,
speculation. The point here is that if a nation is
really vegetarian let its government force upon it
the whole horrible weight of vegetarianism. Let
its government give the national guests a State
vegetarian banquet. Let its government, in the
most literal and awful sense of the words, give

THE CASE FOR THE EPHEMERAL n

them beans. That sort of tyranny is all very well ;
for it is the people tyrannising over all the persons.
But " temperance reformers " are like a small
group of vegetarians who should silently and
systematically act on an ethical assumption en-
tirely unfamiliar to the mass of the people. They
would always be giving peerages to greengrocers.
They would always be appointing Parliamentary
Commissions to enquire into the private life of
butchers. Whenever they found a man quite at
their mercy, as a pauper or a convict or a lunatic,
they would force him to add the final touch to his
inhuman isolation by becoming a vegetarian. All
the meals for school children will be vegetarian
meals. All the State public houses will be vege-
tarian public houses. There is a very strong case
for vegetarianism as compared with teetotalism.
Drinking one glass of beer cannot by any philo-
sophy be drunkenness ; but killing one animal can,
by this philosophy, be murder. The objection to
both processes is not that the two creeds, teetotal
and vegetarian, are not admissible; it is simply
that they are not admitted. The thing is religious
persecution because it is not based on the existing
religion of the democracy. These people ask the
poor to accept in practice what they know perfectly
well that the poor would not accept in theory.
That is the very definition of religious persecution.
I was against the Tory attempt to force upon
ordinary Englishmen a Catholic theology in which
they do not believe. I am even more against
the attempt to force upon them a Mohamedan
morality which they actively deny.
Again, in the case of anonymous journalism I

12 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

seem to have said a great deal without getting out
the point very clearly. Anonymous journalism is
dangerous, and is poisonous in our existing life
simply because it is so rapidly becoming an anony-
mous life. That is the horrible thing about
our contemporary atmosphere. Society is be-
coming a secret society. The modern tyrant is
evil because of his elusiveness. He is more name-
less than his slave. He is not more of a bully
than the tyrants of the past ; but he is more of a
coward. The rich publisher may treat the poor
poet better or worse than the old master workman
treated the oM apprentice. But the apprentice
ran away and the master ran after him. Nowa-
days it is the poet who pursues and tries in vain to
fix the fact of responsibility. It is the publisher
who runs away. The clerk of Mr. Solomon gets
the sack : the beautiful Greek slave of the Sultan
Suliman also gets the sack ; or the sack gets her.
But though she is concealed under the black waves
of the Bosphorus, at least her destroyer is not
concealed. He goes behind golden trumpets
riding on a white elephant. But in the case of the
clerk it is almost as difficult to know where the
dismissal comes from as to know where the clerk
goes to. It may be Mr. Solomon or Mr. Solomon's
manager, or Mr. Solomon's rich aunt in Chelten-
ham, or Mr. Soloman's rich creditor in Berlin.
The elaborate machinery which was once used to
make men respor^sible is now used solely in order
to shift the responsibility. People talk about the
pride of tyrants ; but we in this age are not suffer-
ing from the pride of tyrants. We are suffering
from the shyness of tyrants ; from the shrinking

COCKNEYS AND THEIR JOKES 13

modesty of tyrants. Therefore we must not en-
courage leader-writers to be shy ; we must not
inflame their already exaggerated modes'ty.
Rather we must attempt to lure them to be vain
and ostentatious ; so that through ostentation
they may at last find their way to honesty.

The last indictment against this book is the worst
of all. It is simply this : that if all goes well
this book will be unintelligible gibberish. For it
is mostly concerned with attacking attitudes which
are in their nature accidental and incapable of
enduring. Brief as is the career of such a book as
this, it may last just twenty minutes longer than
most of the philosophies that it attacks. In the
end it will not matter to us whether we wrote well
or ill ; whether we fought with flails or reeds. It
will matter to us greatly on what side we fought.

COCKNEYS AND THEIR JOKES

A WRITER in the Yorkshire Evening Post is
/A very angry indeed with my performances
in this column. His precise terms of re-
proach are, " Mr. G. K. Chesterton is not a humour-
ist : not even a Cockney humourist." I do not
mind his saying that I am not a humourist in
which (to tell the truth) I think he is quite right.
But I do resent his saying that I am not a Cockney.
That envenomed arrow, I admit, went home. If
a French writer said of me, " He is no meta-
physician : not even an English metaphysician,"
I could swallow the insult to my metaphysics,

14 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

but I should feel angry about the insult to my
country. So I do not urge that I am a humourist ;
but I do insist that I am a Cockney. If I were a
humourist, I should certainly be a Cockney
humourist ; if I were a saint, I should certainly
be a Cockney saint. I need not recite the splendid
catalogue of Cockney saints who have written
their names on our noble old City churches. I
need not trouble you with the long list of the
Cockney humourists who have discharged their
bills (or failed to discharge them) in our noble
old City taverns. We can weep together over the
pathos of the poor Yorkshireman, whose county
has never produced some humour not intelligible
to the rest of the world. And we can smile
together when he says that somebody or other
is "not even " a Cockney humourist like Samuel
Johnson or Charles Lamb. It is surely sufficiently
obvious that all the best humour that exists in
our language is Cockney humour. Chaucer was
a Cockney ; he had his house close to the Abbey.
Dickens was a Cockney ; he said he could not
think without the London streets. The London
taverns heard always the quaintest conversation,
whether it was Ben Johnson's at the Mermaid or
Sam Johnson's at the Cock. Even in our own
time it may be noted that the most vital and
genuine humour is still written about London.
Of this type is the mild and humane irony which
marks Mr. Pett Ridge's studies of the small grey
streets. Of this type is the simple but smashing
laughter of the best tales of Mr. W. W. Jacobs,
telling of the smoke and sparkle of the Thames.
No ; I concede that I am not a Cockney humourist.

COCKNEYS AND THEIR JOKES 15

No ; I am not worthy to be. Some time, after
sad and strenuous after-lives ; some time, after
fierce and apocalyptic incarnations ; in some
strange world beyond the stars, I may become at
last a Cockney humourist. In that potential
paradise I may walk among the Cockney humour-
ists, if not an equal, at least a companion. I may
feel for a moment on my shoulder the hearty hand
of Dryden and thread the labyrinths of the sweet
insanity of Lamb. But that could only be if I
were not only much cleverer, but much better
than I am. Before I reach that sphere I shall
have left behind, perhaps, the sphere that is
inhabited by angels, and even passed that which
is appropriated exclusively to the use of York-
shiremen.

No ; London is in this matter attacked upon
its strongest ground. London is the largest of
the bloated modern cities ; London is the smokiest;
London is the dirtiest ; London is, if you will, the
most sombre ; London is, if you will, the most
miserable. But London is certainly the most
amusing and the most amused. You may prove
that we have the most tragedy ; the fact remains
that we have the most comedy, that we have the
most farce. We have at the very worst a splendid
hypocrisy of humour. We conceal our sorrow
behind a screaming derision. You speak of people
who laugh through their tears ; it is our boast
that we only weep through our laughter. There
remains always this great boast, perhaps the
greatest boast that is possible to human nature.
I mean the great boast that the most unhappy
part of our population is also the most hilarious

16 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

part. The poor can forget that social problem
which we (the moderately rich) ought never to
forget. Blessed are the poor ; for they alone have
not the poor always with them. The honest poor
can sometimes forget poverty. The honest rich
can never forget it.

I believe firmly in the value of all vulgar notions,
especially of vulgar jokes. When once you have
got hold of a vulgar joke, you may be certain that
you have got hold of a subtle and spiritual idea.
The men who made the joke saw something deep
which they could not express except by something
silly and emphatic. They saw something delicate
which they could only express by something
indelicate. I remember that Mr. Max Beerbohm
(who has every merit except democracy) attempted
to analyse the jokes at which the mob laughs. He
divided them into three sections : jokes about
bodily humiliation, jokes about things alien, such
as foreigners, and jokes about bad cheese. Mr.
Max Beerbohm thought he understood the first
two forms ; but I am not sure that he did. In
order to understand vulgar humour it is not
enough to be humorous. One must also be vulgar,
as I am. And in the first case it is surely obvious
that it is not merely at the fact of something being
hurt that we laugh (as I trust we do) when a
Prime Minister sits down on his hat. If that were
so we should laugh whenever we saw a funeral.
We do not -laugh at the mere fact of something
falling down ; there is nothing humorous about
leaves falling or the sun going down. When
our house falls down we do not laugh. All the
birds of the air might drop around us in a per-

COCKNEYS AND THEIR JOKES 17

petual shower like a hailstorm without arousing a
smile. If you really ask yourself why we laugh
at a man sitting down suddenly in the street you
will discover that the reason is not only recondite,
but ultimately religious. All the jokes about men
sitting down on their hats are really theological
jokes ; they are concerned with the Dual Nature
of Man. They refer to the primary paradox that
man is superior to all the things around him and
yet is at their mercy.

Quite equally subtle and spiritual is the idea at
the back of laughing at foreigners. It concerns
the almost torturing truth of a thing being like
oneself and yet not like oneself. Nobody laughs
at what is entirely foreign ; nobody laughs at
a palm tree. But it is funny to see the familiar
image of God disguised behind the black beard
of a Frenchman or the black face of a Negro.
There is nothing funny in the sounds that are
wholly inhuman, the howling of wild beasts or
of the wind. But if a man begins to talk like
oneself, but all the syllables come out different,
then if one is a man one feels inclined to laugh,
though if one is a, gentleman one resists the inclin-
ation.

Mr. Max Beerbohm, I remember, professed to
understand the first two forms of popular wit, but
said that the third quite stumped him. He could
not see why there should be anything funny about
bad cheese. I can tell him at once. He has
missed the idea because it is subtle and philo-
sophical, and he was looking for something ignor-
ant and foolish. Bad cheese is funny because
it is (like the foreigner or the man fallen on tha

i8 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

pavement) the type of the transition or transgres-
sion across a great mystical boundary. Bad
cheese symbolises the change from the inorganic
to the organic. Bad cheese symbolises the
startling prodigy of matter taking on vitality.
It symbolises the origin of life itself. And it is
only about such solemn matters as the origin
of life that the democracy condescends to joke.
Thus, for instance, the democracy jokes about
marriage, because marriage is a part of mankind.
But the democracy would never deign to joke
about Free Love, because Free Love is a piece of
priggishness.

As a matter of fact, it will be generally found
that the popular joke is not true to the letter, but
is true to the spirit. The vulgar joke is generally
in the oddest way the truth and yet not the fact.
For instance, it is not in the least true that mothers-
in-law are as a class oppressive and intolerable ;
most of them are both devoted and useful. All the
mothers-in-law I have ever had were admirable.
Yet the legend of the comic papers is profoundly
true. It draws attention to the fact that it is much
harder to be a nice mother-in-law than to be nice
in any other conceivable relation of life. The
caricatures have drawn the worst mother-in-law a
monster, by way of expressing the fact that the
best mother-in-law is a problem. The same is true
of the perpetual jokes in comic papers about
shrewish wives and henpecked husbands. It is
all a frantic exaggeration, but it is an exaggeration
of a truth; whereas all the modern mouthings
about oppressed women are the exaggerations of
a falsehood. If you read even the best of the

COCKNEYS AND THEIR JOKES 19

intellectuals of to-day you will find them saying
that in the mass of the democracy the woman is
the chattel of her lord, like his bath or his bed.
But if you read the comic literature of the
democracy you will find that the lord hides under
the bed to escape from the wrath of his chattel.
This is not the fact, but it is much nearer the
truth. Every man who is married knows quite
well, not only that he does not regard his wife as a
chattel, but that no man can conceivably ever have
done so. The joke stands for an ultimate truth,
and that is a subtle truth. It is one not very
easy to state correctly. It can, perhaps, be most
correctly stated by saying that, even if the man
is the head of the house, he knows he is the figure-
head.

But the vulgar comic papers are so subtle and
true that they are even prophetic. If you really
want to know what is going to happen to the
future of our democracy, do not read the modern
sociological prophecies, do not read even Mr.
Wells -s Utopias for this purpose, though you
should certainly read them if you are fond of
good honesty and good English. If you want to
know what will happen, study the pages of Snaps
or Patchy Bits as if they were the dark tablets
graven with the oracles of the gods. For, mean
and gross as they are, in all seriousness, they con-
tain what is entirely absent from all Utopias and
all the sociological conjectures of our time : they
contain some hint of the actual habits and mani-
fest desires of the English people. If we are
really to find out what the democracy will ultim-
ately do with itself, we shall surely find it, not

20 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

in the literature which studies the people, but
in the literature which the people studies.

I can give two chance cases in which the common
or Cockney joke was a much better prophecy
than the careful observations of the most cultured
observer. When England was agitated, previous
to the last General Election, about the existence
of Chinese labour, there was a distinct difference
between the tone of the politicians and the tone
of the populace. The politicians who disapproved
of Chinese labour were most careful to explain
that they did not in any sense disapprove of
Chinese. According to them, it was a pure ques-
tion of legal propriety, of whether certain clauses
in the contract of indenture were not inconsistent
with our constitutional traditions : according to
them, the case would have been the same if the
people had been Kaffirs or Englishmen. It all
sounded wonderfully enlightened and lucid ; and
in comparison the popular joke looked, of course,
very poor. For the popular joke against the
Chinese labourers was simply that they were
Chinese ; it was an objection to an alien type ;
the popular papers were full of gibes about pigtails
and yellow faces. It seemed that the Liberal
politicians were raising an intellectual objection
to a doubtful document of State ; while it seemed
that the Radical populace were merely roaring
with idiotic laughter at the sight of a Cl inaman's
clothes. But the popular instinct was justmed, for
the vices revealed were Chinese vices.

But there is another case more pleasant and
more up to date. The popular papers always per-
sisted in representing the New Woman or the

THE FALLACY OF SUCCESS 21

Suffragette as an ugly woman, fat, in spectacles,
with bulging clothes, and generally falling off a
bicycle. As a matter of plain external fact, there
was not a word of truth in this. The leaders oi
the movement of female emancipation are not at
all ugly ; most of them are extraordinarily good-
looking. Nor are they at all indifferent to art
or decorative costume ; many of them are alarm-
ingly attached to these things. Yet the popular
instinct was right. For the popular instinct was
that in this movement, rightly or wrongly, there
was an element of indifference to female dignity,
of a quite new willingness of women to be grotesque.
These women did truly despise the pontifical
quality of woman. And in our streets and around
our Parliament we have seen the stately woman
of art and culture turn into the comic woman
of Comic Bits. And whether we think the exhi-
bition justifiable or not, the prophecy of the comic
papers is justified : the healthy and vulgar masses
were conscious of a hidden enemy to their tra-
ditions who has now come out into the daylight,
that the scriptures might be fulfilled. For the
two things that a healthy person hates most
between heaven and hell are a woman who is not
dignified and a man who is.

THE FALLACY OF SUCCESS

has appeared in our time a particu-
lar class of books and articles which I
sincerely and solemnly think may be
called the silliest ever known among men. They

22 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

are much more wild than the wildest romances
of chivalry and much more dull than the dullest
religious tract. Moreover, the romances of chi-
valry were at least about chivalry ; the religious
tracts are about religion. But these things are
about nothing; they are about what is called
Success. On every bookstall, in every magazine,
you may find works telling people how to succeed.
They are books showing men how to succeed in
everything ; they are written by men who cannot
even succeed in writing books. To begin with,
of course, there is no such thing as Success. Or,
if you like to put it so, there is nothing that is not
successful. That a thing is successful merely
means that it is ; a millionaire is successful in
being a millionaire and a donkey in being a donkey.
Any live man has succeeded in living ; any dead
man may have succeeded in committing suicide.
But, passing over the bad logic and bad philosophy
in the phrase, we may take it, as these writers do,
in the ordinary sense of success in obtaining money
or worldly position. These writers profess to tell
the ordinary man how he may succeed in his
trade or speculation how, if he is a builder, he
may succeed as a builder ; how, if he is a stock-
broker, he may succeed as -a stockbroker. They
profess to show him how, if he is a grocer, he may
become a sporting yachtsman ; how, if he is a
tenth-rate journalist, he may become a peer ; and
how, if he is a German Jew, he may become an
Anglo-Saxon. This is a definite and business-like
proposal, and I really think that the people who
buy these books (if any people do buy them) have
a moral, if not a legal, right to ask for their money

THE FALLACY OF SUCCESS 23

back. Nobody would dare to publish a book
about electricity which literally told one nothing
about electricity ; no one would dare to publish
an article on botany which showed that the writer
did not know which end of a plant grew in the
earth. Yet our modern world is full of books
about Success and successful people which literally
contain no kind of idea, and scarcely any kind
of verbal sense.

It is perfectly obvious that in any decent
occupation (such as bricklaying or writing books)
there are only two ways (in any special sense) of
succeeding. One is by doing very good work, the
other is by cheating. Both are much too simple
to require any literary explanation. If you are
in for the high jump, either jump higher than
any one else, or manage somehow to pretend that
you have done so. If you want to succeed at
whist, either be a good whist-player, or play with
marked cards. You may want a book about
jumping ; you may want a book about whist ;
you may want a book about cheating at whist.
But you cannot want a book about Success.
Especially you cannot want a book about Success
such as those which you can now find scattered
by the hundred about the book-market. You
may want to jump or to play cards ; but you do
not want to read wandering statements to the
effect that jumping is jumping, or that games are
won by winners. If these writers, for instance,
said anything about success in jumping it would
be something like this : "The jumper must have
a clear aim before him. He must desire definitely
to jump higher than the other men who are in

24 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

for the same competition. He must let no feeble
feelings of mercy (sneaked from the sickening
Little Englanders and Pro-Boers) prevent him
from trying to do his best. He must remember
that a competition in jumping is distinctly com-
petitive, and that, as Darwin has gloriously demon-
strated, THE WEAKEST GO TO THE WALL." That is

the kind of thing the book would say, and very use-
ful it would be, no doubt, if read out in a low and
tense voice to a young man just about to take the
high jump. Or suppose that in the course of his
intellectual rambles the philosopher of Success
dropped upon our other case, that of playing
cards, his bracing advice would run "In playing
cards it is very necessary to avoid the mistake
(commonly made by maudlin humanitarians and
Free Traders) of permitting your opponent to win
the game. You must have grit and snap and go
in to win. The days of idealism and superstitition
are over. We live in a time of science and hard
common sense, and it has now been definitely
proved that in any game where two are playing

IF ONE DOES NOT WIN THE OTHER WILL." It is all

very stirring, of course ; but I confess that if I were
playing cards I would rather have some decent
little book which told me the rules of the game.
Beyond the rules of the game it is all a question
either of talent or dishonesty ; and I will undertake
to provide either one or the other which, it is not
for me to say. ^

Turning over a popular ''magazine, I find a queer
and amusing example. There is an article called
"The Instinct that Makes People Rich." It
is decorated in front with a formidable portrait

THE FALLACY OF SUCCESS 25

of Lord Rothschild. There are many definite
methods, honest and dishonest, which make people
rich ; the only "instinct " I know of which does
it is that instinct which theological Christianity
crudely describes as "the sin of avarice." That,
however, is beside the present point. I wish to
quote the following exquisite paragraphs as a piece
of typical advice as to how to succeed. It is so
practical ; it leaves so little doubt about what
should be our next step

"The name of Vanderbilt is synonymous with
wealth gained by modern enterprise. * Cornelius/
the founder of the family, was the first of the great
American magnates of commerce. He started as
the son of a poor farmer ; he ended as a million-
aire twenty times over.

" He had the money-making instinct. He seized
his opportunities, the opportunities that were given
by the application of the steam-engine to ocean
traffic, and by the birth of railway locomotion in
the wealthy but undeveloped United States of
America, and consequently he amassed an immense
fortune.

"Now it is, of course, obvious that we cannot all
follow exactly in the footsteps of this great railway
monarch. The precise opportunities that fell to
him do not occur to us. Circumstances have
changed. But, although this is so, still, in our
own sphere and in our own circumstances, we
can follow his general methods ; we can seize those
opportunities that are given us, and give ourselves
a very fair chance of attaining riches."

In such strange utterances we see quite clearly
what is really at the bottom of all these articles

26 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

and books. It is not mere business ; it is not
even mere cynicism. It is mysticism ; the horrible
mysticism of money. The writer of that passage
did not really have the remotest notion of how
Vanderbilt made his money, or of how anybody
else is to make his. He does, indeed, conclude
his remarks by advocating some scheme ; but it
has nothing in the world to do with Vanderbilt.
He merely wished to prostrate himself before the
mystery of a millionaire. For when we really
worship anything, we love not only its clearness
but its obscurity. We exult in its very invisibility.
Thus, for instance, when a man is in love with a
woman he takes special pleasure in the fact that
a woman is unreasonable. Thus, again, the very
pious poet, celebrating his Creator, takes pleasure
in saying that God moves in a mysterious way.
Now, the writer of the paragraph which I have
quoted does not seem to have had anything to
do with a god, and I should not think (judging
by his extreme unpracticality) that he had ever
been really in love with a woman. But the thing
he does worship Vanderbilt he treats in exactly
this mystical manner. He really revels in the fact
his deity Vanderbilt is keeping a secret from him.
And it fills his soul with a sort of transport of
cunning, an ecstasy of priestcraft, that he should
pretend to be telling to the multitude that terrible
secret which he does not know.

Speaking about the instinct that makes people
rich, the same writer remarks

"In olden days its existence was fully under-
stood. The Greeks enshrined it in the story of
Midas, of the ' Golden Tpuch/ Here was a man

THE FALLACY OF SUCCESS 27

who turned everything he laid his hands upon into
gold. His life was a progress amidst riches. Out
of everything that came in his way he created the
precious metal. ' A foolish legend/ said the wise-
acres of the Victorian age. ' A truth/ say we of
to-day. We all know of such men. We are ever
meeting or reading about such persons who turn
everything they touch into gold. Success dogs
their very footsteps. Their life's pathway leads
unerringly upwards. They cannot fail."

Unfortunately, however, Midas could fail ; he
did. His path did not lead unerringly upward.
He starved because whenever he touched a biscuit
or a ham sandwich it turned to gold. That was
the whole point of the story, though the writer
has to suppress it delicately, writing so near to
a portrait of Lord Rothschild. The old fables
of mankind are, indeed, unfathomably wise ; but
we must not have them expurgated in the interests
of Mr. Vanderbilt. We must not have King
Midas represented as an example of success ; he
was a failure of an unusually painful kind. Also,
he had the ears of an ass. Also (like most other
prominent and wealthy persons) he endeavoured
to conceal the fact. It was his barber (if I remem-
ber right) who had to be treated on a confidential
footing with regard to this peculiarity ; and his
barber, instead of behaving like a go-ahead person
of the Succeed-at-all-costs school and trying to
blackmail King Midas, went away and whispered
this splendid piece of society scandal to the reeds,
who enjoyed it enormously. It is said that they
also whispered it as the winds swayed them to
and fro. I look reverently at the poatrait of Lord

28 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

Rothschild ; I read reverently about the exploits
of Mr. Vanderbilt. I know that I cannot turn
everything I touch to gold ; but then I also know
that I have never tried, having a preference for
other substances, such as grass, and good wine.
I know that these people have certainly succeeded
in something ; that they have certainly overcome
somebody ; I know that they are kings in a sense
that no men were ever kings before ; that they
create markets and bestride continents. Yet it
always seems to me that there is some small
domestic fact that they are hiding, and I have
sometimes thought I heard upon the wind the
laughter and whisper of the reeds.

At least, let us hope that we shall all live to see
these absurd books about Success covered with a
proper derision and neglect. They do next teach
people to be successful, but they do teach people
to be snobbish ; they do spread a sort of evil
poetry of worldliness. The Puritans are always
denouncing books that inflame lust ; what shall
we say of books that inflame the viler passions
of avarice and pride ? A hundred years ago we
had the ideal of the Industrious Apprentice ; boys
were told that by thrift and work they would all
become Lord Mayors. This was fallacious, but
it was manly, and had a minimum of moral truth.
In our society, temperance will not help a poor
man to enrich himself, but it may help him to
respect himself. Good work will not make him
a rich man, but good work may make him a good
workman. The Industrious Apprentice rose by
virtues few and narrow indeed, but still virtues.
But what shall we say of the gospel preached to

ON RUNNING AFTER ONE'S HAT 29

the new Industrious Apprentice ; the Apprentice
who rises not by his virtues, but avowedly by his
vices ?

ON RUNNING AFTER ONE'S HAT

T FEEL an almost savage envy on hearing that
London has been flooded in my absence,
while I am in the mere country. My own
Battersea has been, I understand, particularly
favoured as a meeting of the waters. Battersea
was already, as I need hardly say, the most beauti-
ful of human localities. Now that it has the
additional splendour of great sheets of water, there
must be something quite incomparable in the land-
scape (or waterscape) of my own romantic town.
Battersea must be a vision of Venice. The boat
that brought the meat from the butcher's must
have shot along those lanes of rippling silver with
the stfange smoothness of the gondola. The
greengrocer who brought cabbages to the corner
of the Latchmere Road must have leant upon the
oar with the unearthly grace of the gondolier.
There is nothing so perfectly poetical as an island ;
and when a district is flooded it becomes an
archipelago.

Some consider such romantic views of flood
or fire slightly lacking in reality. But really this
romantic view of such inconveniences is quite as
practical as the other. The true optimist who
sees in such things an opportunity for enjoyment
is quite as logical and much more sensible than

30 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

the ordinary " Indignant Ratepayer " who sees in
them an opportunity for grumbling. Real pain,
as in the case of being burnt at Smithfield or
having a toothache, is a positive thing ; it can
be supported, but scarcely enjoyed. But, after
all, our toothaches are the exception, and as for
being burnt at Smithfield, it only happens to us
at the very longest intervals. And most of the
inconveniences that make men swear or women
cry are really sentimental or imaginative incon-
veniences things altogether of the mind. For
instance, we often hear grown-up people com-
plaining oi having to hang about a railway station
and wait for a train. Did you ever hear a small
boy complain of having to hang about a railway
station and wait for a train ? No ; for to him
to be inside a railway station is to be inside a
cavern of wonder and a palace of poetical pleasures.
Because to him the red light and the green light
on the signal are like a new sun and a new moon.
Because to him when the wooden arm of the signal
falls down suddenly, it is as if a great king had
thrown down his staff as a signal and started a
shrieking tournament of trains. I myself am of
little boys' habit in this matter. They also serve
who only stand and wait for the two fifteen.
Their meditations may be full of rich and fruitful
things. Many of the most purple hours of my life
have been passed at Clapham Junction, which is
now, I suppose, under water. I have been there
in many moods so fixed and mystical that the
water might well have come up to my waist before
I noticed it particularly. But in the case of all
such annoyances, as I have said, everything de-

ON RUNNING AFTER ONE'S HAT 31

pends upon the emotional point of view. You can
safely apply the test to almost every one of the
things that are currently talked of as the typical
nuisance of daily life.

For instance, there is a current impression that
it is unpleasant to have to run after one's hat
Why should it be unpleasant to the well-ordered
and pious mind ? Not merely because it is run-
ning, and running exhausts one. The same people
run much faster in games and sports. The same
people run much more eagerly after an uninterest-
ing little leather ball than they will after a nice
silk hat. There is an idea that it is humiliating
to run after one's hat ; and when people say it is
humiliating they mean that it is comic. It cer-
tainly is comic ; but man is a very comic, creature,
and most of the things he does are comic eating,
for instance. And the most comic things of all
are exactly the things that are most worth doing
such as making love. A man running after a hat
is not half so ridiculous as a man running after a
wife.

Now a man could, if he felt rightly in the
matter, run after his hat with the manliest ardour
and the most sacred joy. He might regard him-
self as a jolly huntsman pursuing a wild animal,
for certainly no animal could be wilder. In fact,
I am inclined to believe that hat-hunting on windy
days will be the sport of the upper classes in the
future. There will be a meet of ladies and gentle-
men on some high ground on a gusty morning.
They will be told that the professional attendants
have started a hat in such-and-such a thicket, or
whatever be the technical term. Notice that this

32 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

employment will in the fullest degree combine
sport with humanitarianism. The hunters would
feel that they were not inflicting pain. Nay, they
would feel that they were inflicting pleasure, rich,
almost riotous pleasure, upon the people who were
looking on. When last I saw an old gentleman
running after his hat in Hyde Park, I told him that
a heart so benevolent as his ought to be filled with
peace and thanks at the thought of how much
unaffected pleasure his every gesture and bodily
attitude were at that moment giving to the crowd.
The same principle can be applied to every
other typical domestic worry. A gentleman trying
to get a fly out of the milk or a piece of cork out
of his glass of wine often imagines himself to be
irritated. Let him think for a moment of the
patience of anglers sitting by dark pools, and let
his soul be immediately irradiated with gratifica-
tion and repose. Again, I have known some
people of very modern views driven by their
distress to the use of theological terms to which
they attached no doctrinal significance, merely
because a drawer was jammed tight and they
could not pull it out. A friend of mine was
particularly afflicted in this way. Every day his
drawer was jammed, and every day in consequence
it was something else that rhymes to it. But I
pointed out to him that this sense of wrong was
really subjective and relative ; it rested entirely
upon the assumption that the drawer could,
should, and would come out easily. "But if,"
I said, "you picture to yourself that you are pull-
ing against some powerful and oppressive enemy,
the struggle will become merely exciting and not

ON RUNNING AFTER ONE'S HAT 33

exasperating. Imagine that you are tugging up
a lifeboat out of the sea. Imagine that you are
roping up a fellow-creature out of an Alpine
crevass. Imagine even that you are a boy again
and engaged in a tug-of-war between French and
English." Shortly after saying this I left him ;
but I have no doubt at all that my words bore
the best possible fruit. I have no doubt that
every day of his life he hangs on to the handle
of that drawer with a flushed face and eyes bright
with battle, uttering encouraging shouts to himself,
and seeming to hear all round him the roar of an
applauding ring.

So I do not think that it is altogether fanciful
or incredible to suppose that even the floods in
London may be accepted and enjoyed poetically.
Nothing beyond inconvenience seems really to
have been caused by them ; and inconvenience,
as I have said, is only one aspect, and that the
most unimaginative and accidental aspect of a
really romantic situation. An adventure is only
an inconvenience rightly considered. An incon-
venience is only an adventure wrongly considered.
The water that girdled the houses and shops of
London must, if anything, have only increased
their previous witchery and wonder. For as the
Roman Catholic priest in the story said : " Wine
is good with everything except water," and on
a similar principle, water is good with everything
except wine.

34 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

THE VOTE AND THE HOUSE

"Jl ff OST of us will be canvassed soon, I suppose ;

iVjl some f us ma y even cany ass- Upon
which side, of course, nothing will induce
me to state, beyond saying that by a remarkable
coincidence it will in every case be the only side
in which a high-minded, public-spirited, and
patriotic citizen can take even a momentary
interest. But the general question of canvassing
itself, being a non-party question, is one which
we may be permitted to approach. The rules for
canvassers are fairly familiar to any one who has
ever canvassed. They are printed on the little
card which you carry about with you and lose.
There is a statement, I think, that you must not
offer a voter food or drink. However hospitable
you may feel towards him in his own house,
you must not carry his lunch about with you.
You must not produce a veal cutlet from your
tail-coat pocket. You must not conceal poached
eggs about your person. You must not, like a
kind of conjurer, produce baked potatoes from
your hat. In short, the canvasser must not
feed the voter in any way. Whether the voter is
allowed to feed the canvasser, whether the voter
may give the canvasser veal cutlets and baked
potatoes, is a point of law on which I have never
been able to inform myself. When I found myself
canvassing a gentleman, I have sometimes felt
tempted to ask him if there was any rule against
his giving me food and drink ; but the matter

THE VOTE AND THE HOUSE 35

seemed a delicate one to approach. His attitude
to me also sometimes suggested a doubt as to
whether he would, even if he could. But there
are voters who might find it worth while to dis-
cover if there is any law against bribing a can-
vasser. They might bribe him to go away.

The second veto for canvassers which was
printed on the little card said that you must not
persuade any one to personate a voter. I have no
idea what it means. To dress up as an average
voter seems a little vague. There is no well-
recognised uniform, as far as I know, with civic
waistcoat and patriotic whiskers. The enterprise
resolves itself into one somewhat similar to the
enterprise of a rich friend of mine who went to a
fancy-dress ball dressed up as a gentleman. Per-
haps it means that there is a practice of person-
ating some individual voter. The canvasser
creeps to the house of his fellow-conspirator
carrying a make-up in a bag. He produces from
it a pair of white moustaches and a single eye-
glass, which are sufficient to give the most common-
place person a startling resemblance to the Colonel
at No. 80. Or he hurriedly affixes to his friend
that large nose and that bald head which are all
that is essential to an illusion of the presence of
Professor Budger. I do not undertake to unravel
these knots. I can only say that when I was a
canvasser I was told by the little card, with every
circumstance of seriousness and authority, that
I was not to persuade anybody to personate
a voter : and I can lay my hand upon my heart
and affirm that I never did.

The third injunction on the card 4 was one which

36 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

seemed to me, if interpreted exactly and according
to its words, to undermine the very foundations of
our politics. It told me that I must not "threaten
a voter with any consequence whatever." No
doubt this was intended to apply ,to threats of a
personal and illegitimate character ; as, for in-
stance, if a wealthy candidate were to threaten to
raise all the rents, or to put up a statue of himself.
But as verbally and grammatically expressed, it
certainly would cover those general threats of
disaster to the whole community which are the
main matter of political discussion. When a
canvasser says that if the opposition candidate
gets in the country will be ruined, he is threatening
the voters with certain consequences. When the
Free Trader says that if Tariffs are adopted the
people in Brompton or Bayswater will crawl about
eating grass, he is threatening them with conse-
quences. When the Tariff Reformer says that
if Free Trade exists for another year St. Paul's
Cathedral will be a ruin and Ludgate Hill as
deserted as Stonehenge, he is also threatening.
And what is the good of being a Tariff Reformer
if you can't say that ? What is the use of being
a politician or a Parliamentary candidate at all
if one cannot tell the people that if the other man
gets in, England will be instantly invaded and
enslaved, blood be pouririg down the Strand, and
all the English ladies carried off into harems.
But these things are, after all, consequences, so
to speak.

The majority of refined persons in our day may
generally be heard abusing the practice of can-
vassing. In the same way the majority of refined

THE VOTE AND THE HOUSE 37

persons (commonly the same refined persons) may
be heard abusing the practice of interviewing
celebrities. It seems a very singular thing to me
that this refined world reserves all its indignation
for the comparatively open and innocent element
in both walks of life. There is really a vast amount
of corruption and hypocrisy in our election
politics ; about the most honest thing in the whole
mess is the canvassing. A man has not got a
right to "nurse" a constituency with aggressive
charities, to buy it with great presents of parks and
libraries, to open vague vistas of future benpvo-
lence ; all this, which goes on unrebuked, is bribery
and nothing else. But a man has got the right
to go to another free man and ask him with civility
whether he will vote for him. The information
can be asked, granted, or refused without any loss
of dignity on either side, which is more than can be
said of a park. It is the same with the place of
interviewing in journalism. In a trade where
there are labyrinths of insincerity, interviewing
is about the most simple and the most sincere
thing there is. The canvasser, when he wants to
know a man's opinions, goes and asks him. It
may be a bore ; but it is about as plain and
straight a thing as he could do. So the inter-
viewer, when he wants to know a man's opinions,
goes and asks him. Again, it may be a bore ;
but again, it is about as plain and straight as any-
thing could be. But all the other real and sys-
tematic cynicisms of our journalism pass without
being vituperated and even without being known
the financial motives of policy, the misleading
posters, the suppression of just letters of com-

38 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

plaint. A statement about a man may be
infamously untrue, but it is read calmly. But a
statement by a man to an interviewer is felt as
indefensibly vulgar. That the paper should mis-
represent him is nothing ; that he should repre-
sent himself is bad taste. The whole error in
both cases lies in the fact that the refined persons
are attacking politics and journalism on the
ground of vulgarity. Of course, politics and
journalism are, as it happens, very vulgar. But
their vulgarity is not the worst thing about them.
Things are so bad with both that by this time their
vulgarity is the best thing about them. Their
vulgarity is at least a noisy thing ; and their great
danger is that silence that always comes before
decay. The conversational persuasion at elections
is perfectly human and rational ; it is the silent
persuasions that are utterly damnable.

If it is true that the Commons' House will not
hold all the Commons, it is a very good example
of what we call the anomalies of the English Con-
stitution. It is also, I think, a very good example
of how highly undesirable those anomalies really
are. Most Englishmen say that these anomalies
do not matter ; they are not ashamed of being'
illogical ; they are proud of being illogical. Lord
Macaulay (a very typical Englishman, romantic,
prejudiced, poetical), Lord Macaulay said that
he would not lift his hand to get rid of an anomaly
that was not also a grievance. Many other sturdy
romantic Englishmen say the same. They boast
of our anomalies ; they boast of our illogicality ;
they say it shows what a practical people we are.
They are utterly wrong. Lord Macaulay was in

THE VOTE AND THE HOUSE 39

thfe matter, as in a few others, utterly wrong.
Anomalies do matter very much, and do a great
deal of harm ; abstract illogicalities do matter
a great deal, and do a great deal of harm. And
this for a reason that any one at all acquainted
with human nature can see for himself. All
injustice begins in the mind. And anomalies
accustom the mind to the idea of unreason and
untruth. Suppose I had by some prehistoric law
the power of forcing every man in Battersea to
aod his head three times before he got out of
bed. The practical politicians might say that
this power was a harmless anomaly ; that it was
not a grievance. It could do my subjects no
harm ; it could do me no good. The people of
Battersea, they would say, might safely submit to
it. But the people of Battersea could not safely
submit to it, for all that. If I had nodded their
heads for them for fifty years I could cut off
their heads for them at the end of it with im-
measurably greater ease. For there would have
permanently sunk into every man's mind the
notion that it was a natural thing for me to
have a fantastic and irrational power. They
would have grown accustomed to insanity.

For, in order that men should resist injustice,
something more is necessary than that they should
think injustice unpleasant. They must think in-
justice absurd; above all, they must think it
startling. They must retain the violence of a
virgin astonishment. That is the explanation of
the singular fact which must have struck many
people in the relations of philosophy and reform.
It is the fact (I mean) that optimists are more

40 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

practical reformers than pessimists. Superficially,
one would imagine that the railer would be the
reformer ; that the man who thought that every-
thing was wrong would be the man to put every-
thing right. In historical practice the thing
is quite the other way ; curiously enough, it
is the man who likes things as they are who
really makes them better. The optimist Dickens
has achieved more reforms than the pessimist
Gissing. A man like Rousseau has far too rosy
a theory of human nature ; but he produces a
revolution. A man like David Hume thinks that
almost all things are depressing ; but he is a
Conservative, and wishes to keep them as they
are. A man like Godwin believes existence to
be kindly ; but he is a rebel. A man like Carlyle
believes existence to be cruel ; but he is a Tory.
Everywhere the man who alters things begins by
liking things. ' And the real explanation of this
success of the optimistic reformer, of this failure
of the pessimistic reformer, is, after all, an explan-
ation of sufficient simplicity. It is because the
optimist can look at wrong not only with indigna-
tion, but with a startled indignation. When the
pessimist looks at any infamy, it is to him, after
all, only a repetition of the infamy of existence.
The Court of Chancery is indefensible like
mankind. The Inquisition is abominable like
the universe. But the optimist sees injustice
as something discordant and unexpected, and it
stings him into action. The pessimist can be
enraged at wrong ; but only the optimist can be
surprised at it.
And it is the same with the relations of an

THE VOTE AND THE HOUSE 41

anomaly to the logical mind. The pessimist
resents evil (like Lord Macaulay) solely because
it is a grievance. The optimist resents it also,
because it is an anomaly ; a contradiction to his
conception of the course of things. And it is
not at all unimportant, but on the contrary
most important, that this course of things in
politics and elsewhere should be lucid, explicable
and defensible. When people have got used to
unreason they can no longer be startled at in-
justice. When people have grown familiar with
an anomaly, they are prepared to that extent for a
grievance ; they may think the grievance grievous,
but they can no longer think it strange. Take, if
only as an excellent example, the very matter
alluded to before ; I mean the seats, or rather the
lack of seats, in the House of Commons. Perhaps
it is true that under the best conditions it would
never happen that every member turned up.
Perhaps a complete attendance would never actu-
ally be. But who can tell how much influence
in keeping members away may have been exerted
by this calm assumption that they would stop
away ? How can any man be expected to help
to make a full attendance when he knows that a
full attendance is actually forbidden ? How can
the men who make up the Chamber do their
duty reasonably when the very men who built
the House have not doiie theirs reasonably ?
If the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall
prepare himself for the battle ? And what if the
remarks of the trumpet take this form, " I charge
you as you love your King and country to come
to this Council. And I know you won't."

C-r

42 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

CONCEIT AND CARICATURE

IF a man must needs be conceited, it is cer-
tainly better that he should be conceited
about some merits or talents that he does
not really possess. For then his vanity remains
more or less superficial ; it remains a mere mis-
take of fact, like that of a man who thinks he
inherits the royal blood or thinks he has an in-
fallible system for Monte Carlo. Because the
merit is an unreal merit, it does not corrupt or
sophisticate his real merits. He is vain about
the virtue he has not got ; but he may be humble
about the virtues that he has got. His truly
honourable qualities remain in their primordial
innocence ; he cannot see them and he cannot
spoil them. If a man's mind is erroneously pos-
sessed with the idea that he is a great violinist,
that need not prevent his being a gentleman and
an honest man. But if once his mind is possessed
in any strong degree with the knowledge that
fee is a gentleman, he will soon cease to be one.
But there is a third kind of satisfaction of which
I have noticed one or two examples lately another
kind of satisfaction which is neither a pleasure in
the virtues that we do possess nor a pleasure in
the virtues we do not possess. It is the pleasure
which a man takes in the presence or absence of
certain things in himself without ever adequately
asking himself whether in his case they con-
stitute virtues at all. A man will plume himself
because he is not bad in some particular way,

CONCEIT AND CARICATURE 43

when the truth is that he is not good enough to
be bad in that particular way. Some prggish
little clerk will say, "I have reason to congratulate
myself that I am a civilised person, and not so
bloodthirsty as the Mad Mullah." Somebody
ought to say to him, "A really good man would
be less bloodthirsty than the Mullah. But you are
less bloodthirsty, not because you are more of a
good man, but because you are a great deal less
of a man. You are not bloodthirsty, not because
you would spare your enemy, but because you
would run away from him." Or again, some
Puritan with a sullen type of piety would say,
"I have reason to congratulate myself that I do
not worship graven images like the old heathen
Greeks." And again somebody ought to say to
him, "The best religion may not worship graven
images, because it may see beyond them. But if
you do not worship graven images, it is only
because you are mentally and morally quite
incapable of graving them. True religion, per-
haps, is above idolatry. But you are below
idolatry. You are not holy enough yet to wor-
ship a lump of stone."

Mr. F. C. Gould, the brilliant and felicitous
caricaturist, recently delivered a most interesting
speech upon the nature and atmosphere of our
modern English caricature. I think there is
really very little to congratulate oneself about
in the condition of English caricature. There
are few causes for pride ; probably the greatest
cause for pride is Mr. F. C. Gould. But Mr.
F. C. Gould, forbidden by modesty to adduce
this excellent ground for optimism, fell back upon

44 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

saying a thing which is said by numbers of other
people, but has not perhaps been said lately with
the full authority of an eminent cartoonist. He
said that he thought "that they might congratu-
late themselves that the style of caricature which
found acceptation nowadays was very different
from the lampoon of the old days." Continuing,
he said, according to the newspaper report, "On
looking back to the political lampoons of Row-
landson's and Gilray's time they would find them
coarse and brutal. In some countries abroad
still, ' even in America/ the method of political
caricature was of the bludgeon kind. The fact
was we had passed the bludgeon stage. If they
were brutal in attacking a man, even for political
reasons, they roused sympathy for the man who
was attacked. What they had to do was to rub
in the point they wanted to emphasise as gently
as they could." (Laughter and applause.)

Anybody reading these words, and anybody
who heard them, will certainly feel that there is in
them a great deal of truth, as well as a great deal
of geniality. But along with that truth and with
that geniality there is a streak of that erroneous
type of optimism which is founded on the fallacy
of which I have spoken above. Before we con-
gratulate ourselves upon the absence of certain
faults from our nation or society, we ought to
ask ourselves why it is that these faults are absent.
Are we without the fault because we have the
opposite virtue ? Or are we without the fault
because we have the opposite fault ? It is a
good thing assuredly, to be innocent of any excess ;
but let us be sure that we are not innocent of

CONCEIT AND CARICATURE 45

excess merely by being guilty of defect. Is it
really true that our English political satire is so
moderate because it is so magnanimous, so for-
giving, so saintly ? Is it penetrated through and
through with a mystical charity, with a psycho-
logical tenderness ? Do we spare the feelings of
the Cabinet Minister because we pierce through
all his apparent crimes and follies down to the
dark virtues of which his own soul is unaware ?
Do we temper the wind to the Leader of the
Opposition because in our all-embracing heart we
pity and cherish the struggling spirit of the Leader
of the Opposition ? Briefly, have we left off being
brutal because we are too grand and generous to
be brutal ? Is it really true that we are better
than brutality ? Is it really true that we have
passed the bludgeon stage ?

I fear that there is, to say the least of it, another
side to the matter. Is it not only too probable
that the mildness of our political satire, when
compared with the political satire of our fathers,
arises simply from the profound unreality of our
current politics ? Rowlandson and Gilray did
not fight merely because they were naturally
pothouse pugilists ; they fought because they had
something to fight about. It is easy enough to be
refined about things that do not matter ; but men
kicked and plunged a little in that portentous
wrestle in which swung to and fro, alike dizzy
with danger, the independence of England, the
independence of Ireland, the independence of
France. If we wish for a proof of this fact that
the lack of refinement did not come from mere
brutality, the proof is easy. The proof is that in

46 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

that struggle no personalities were more brutal
than the really refined personalities. None were
more violent and intolerant than those who were
by nature polished and sensitive. Nelson, for
instance, had the nerves and good manners of a
woman : nobody in his senses, I suppose, would
call Nelson "brutal." But when he was touched
upon the national matter, there sprang out of him
a spout of oaths, and he could only tell men to

"Kill! kill! kill the d d Frenchmen." It

would be as easy to take examples on the other
side. Camille Desmoulins was a man of much
the same type, not only elegant and sweet in
temper, but almost tremulously tender and
humanitarian. But he was ready, he said, "to
embrace Liberty upon a pile of corpses." In
Ireland there were even more instances. Robert
Emmet was only one famous example of a whole
family of men at once sensitive and savage/ I
think that Mr. F. C. Gould is altogether wrong in
talking of this political ferocity as if it were some
sort of survival from ruder conditions, like a flint
axe or a hairy man. Cruelty is, perhaps, the
worst kind of sin. Intellectual cruelty is certainly
the worst kind of cruelty. But there is nothing
in the least barbaric or ignorant about intellectual
cruelty. The great Renaissance artists who mixed
colours exquisitely mixed poisons equally ex-
quisitely ; the great Renaissance princes who
designed instruments of music also designed
instruments of torture. Barbarity, malignity,
the desire to hurt men, are the evil things gener-
ated in atmospheres of intense reality when great
nations or great causes are at war. We may,

CONCEIT AND CARICATURE 47

perhaps, be glad that we have not got them :
but it is somewhat dangerous to be proud that we
have not got them. Perhaps we are hardly great
enough to have them. Perhaps some great virtues
have to be generated, as in men like Nelson or
Emmet, before we can have these vices at all,
even as temptations. I, for one, believe that if
our caricaturists do not hate their enemies, it is
not because they are too big to hate * them, but
because their enemies are not big enough to hate.
I do not think we have passed the bludgeon stage.
I believe we have not come to the bludgeon
stage. We must be better, braver, and purer
men than we are before we come to the bludgeon
stage.

Let us then, by all mean's, be proud of the
virtues that we have not got ; but let us not be
too arrogant about the virtues that we cannot help
having. It may be that a man living on a desert
island has a right to congratulate himself upon the
fact that he can meditate at his ease. But he must
not congratulate himself on the fact that he is on
a desert island, and at the same time congratulate
himself on the self-restraint he shows in not going
to a ball every night. Similarly our England may
have a right to congratulate itself upon the fact
that her politics are very quiet, amicable, and
humdrum. But she must not congratulate her-
self upon that fact and also congratulate herself
upon the self-restraint she shows in not tearing
herself and her citizens into rags. Between two
English Privy Councillors polite language is a
mark of civilisation, but really not a mark of
magnanimity.

48 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

Allied to this question is the kindred question on
which we so often hear an innocent British boast
the fact that our statesmen are privately on very
friendly relations, although in Parliament they sit
on opposite sides of the House. Here, again, it is
as well to have no illusions. Our statesmen are
not monsters of mystical generosity or insane
logic, who are really able to hate a man from
three to twelve and to love him from twelve to
three. If our social relations are more peaceful
than those of France or America or the England
of a hundred years ago, it is simply because our
politics are more peaceful ; not improbably be-
cause our politics are more fictitious. If our
statesmen agree more in private, it is for the very
simple reason that they agree more in public.
And the reason they agree so much in both cases
is really that they belong to one social class ; and
therefore the dining life is the real life. Tory and
Liberal statesmen like each other, but it is not
because they are both expansive ; it is because
they are both exclusive.

PATRIOTISM AND SPORT.

I NOTICE that some papers, especially papers
that call themselves patriotic, have fallen
into quite a panic over the fact that we Jiave
been twice beaten in the world of sport, that a
Frenchman has beaten us at golf, and that Belgians
have beaten us at rowing. I suppose that the
incidents are important to any people who ever

PATRIOTISM AND SPORT 49

believed IB the self-satisfied English legend on
this srubject. I suppose that there are men who
vaguely believe that we could never be beaten by
a Frenchman, despite the fact that we have often
been beaten by Frenchmen, and once by a French-
woman. In the old pictures in Punch you will
find a recurring piece of satire. The English
caricaturists always assumed that a Frenchman
could not ride to hounds or enjoy English hunting.
It did not seem to occur to them that all the people
who founded English hunting were Frenchmen.
All the Kings and nobles who originally rode to
hounds spoke French. Large numbers of those
Englishmen who still ride to hounds have French
names. I suppose that the thing is important to
any one who is ignorant of such evident matters
as these. I suppose that if a man has ever believed
that we English have some sacred and separate
right to be athletic, such reverses do appear quite
enormous and shocking. They feel as if, while
the proper sun was rising in the east, some other
and unexpected sun had begun to rise in the north-
north-west by north. For the benefit, the moral
and intellectual benefit of such people, it may be
worth while to point out that the Anglo-Saxon
has in these cases been defeated precisely by those
competitors whom he has always regarded as
being out of the running ; by Latins, and by
Latins of the most easy and unstrenuous type ;
not only by Frenchman, but by Belgians. All
this, I say, is worth telling to any intelligent
person who believes in the haughty theory of
Anglo-Saxon superiority. But, then, no intelli-
gent person does believe in the haughty theory

50 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

of Anglo-Saxon superiority. No quite genuine
Englishman ever did believe in it. And the
genuine Englishman these defeats will in no respect
dismay.

The genuine English patriot will know that the
strength of England has never depended upon any
of these things ; that the glory of England has
never had anything to do with them, except in the
opinion of a large section of the rich and a loose
section of the poor which copies the idleness oil
the rich. These people will, of course, think too
much of our failure, just as they thought too much
of our success. The typical Jingoes who have
admired their countrymen too much for being
conquerors will, 4 u btless, despise their country-
men too much for being conquered. But the
Englishman with any feeling for England will
know that athletic failures do not prove that
England is weak, any more than athletic successes
proved that England was strong. The truth is
that athletics, like all other things, especially
modern, are insanely individualistic. The English-
men who win sporting prizes are exceptional
among Englishmen, for the simple reason that
they are exceptional even among men. English
athletes represent England just about as much
as Mr. Barnum's freaks represent America.. There
are so few of such people in the whole world that
it is almost a toss-up whether they are fouftd in
this or that country.

If any one wants a simple proof of this, it is
easy to find. When the great English athletes are
not exceptional Englishmen they are generally
not Englishmen at all. Nay, they are often

PATRIOTISM AND SPORT 5*

representatives of races of which the average tone
is specially incompatible with athletics. For
instance, the English are supposed to rule the
natives of India in virtue of their superior hardi-
ness, superior activity, superior health of body
and mind. The Hindus are supposed to be our
subjects because they are less fond of action, less
fond of openness and the open air. In a word,
less fond of cricket. And, substantially, this is
probably true, that the Indians are less fond of
cricket. All the same, if you ask among English-
men for the very best cricket-player, you will
find that he is an Indian. Or, to take another
case : it is, broadly speaking, true that the Jews
are, as a race, pacific, intellectual, indifferent to
war, like the Indians, or, perhaps, contemptuous
of war, like the Chinese : nevertheless, of the very
good prize-fighters, one or two have been Jews.

This is one of the strongest instances of the
particular kind of evil that arises from our English
form of the worship of athletics. It concentrates
too much upon the success of individuals. It
began, quite naturally and rightly, with wanting
England to win. The second stage was that it
wanted some Englishmen to win. The third stage
Was (in the ecstasy and agony of some special com-
petition) that it wanted one particular English-
man to win. And the fourth stage was that when
he had won, it discovered that he was not even an
Englishman.

This is one of the points, I think, on which
something might really be said for Lord Roberta
and his rather vague ideas which vary between
rifle clubs and conscription. Whatever may be

52 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

the advantages or disadvantages otherwise of the
idea, it is at least an idea of procuring equality
and a sort of average in the athletic capacity of
the people ; it might conceivably act as a correc-
tive to -our mere tendency to see ourselves in
certain exceptional athletes. As it is, there are
millions of Englishmen who realty think that they
are a muscular race because C. B. Fry is an English-
man. And there are many of them who think
vaguely that athletics must belong to England
because Ranjitsinhji is an Indian.

But the real historic strength of England,
physical and moral, has never had anything to do
with this athletic specialism ; it has been rather
hindered by it. Somebody said that the Battle
of Waterloo was won on Eton playing-fields. It
was a particularly unfortunate remark, for the
English contribution to the victory of Waterloo
depended very much more than is common in
victories upon the steadiness of the rank and file
in an almost desperate situation. The Battle of
Waterloo was won by the stubbornness of the
common soldier that is to say, it was won by
the man who had never been to Eton. It was
absurd to say that Waterloo was won on Eton
cricket-fields. But it might have been fairly said
that Waterloo was won on the village green, where
clumsy boys played a very clumsy cricket. In a
word, it was the average of the nation that was
strong, and athletic glories do not indicate much
about the average of a nation. Waterloo was not
won by good cricket-players. But Waterloo was
won by bad cricket-players, by a mass of men who
had some minimum of athletic instincts and habits.

PATRIOTISM AND SPORT 53

It is a good sign in a nation when such things are
done badly. It shows that all the people are doing
them. And it is a bad sign in a nation when such
things are done very well, for it shows that only a
few experts and eccentrics are doing them, and
that the nation is merely looking on. Suppose
that whenever we heard of walking in England it
always meant walking forty-five miles a day with-
out fatigue. We should be perfectly certain that
only a few men were walking at all, and that aH
the other British subjects were being wheeled
about in Bath-chairs. But if when we hear of
walking it means slow walking, painful walking,
and frequent fatigue, then we know that the mass
of the nation still is walking. We know that
England is still literally on its feet.

The difficulty is therefore that the actual raising
of the standard of athletics has probably beea
bad for national athleticism. Instead of the
tournament being a healthy melee into which any
ordinary man would rush and take his chance,
it has become a fenced and guarded tilting-yard
for the collision of particular champions against
whom no ordinary man would pit himself or even
be permitted to pit himself. If Waterloo was won
on Eton cricket-fields it was because Eton cricket
was probably much more careless then than it is
now. As long as the game was a game, everybody
wanted to join in it. When it becomes an art,
every one wants to look at it. When it was frivo-
lous it may have won Waterloo : when it was
serious and efficient it lost Magersfontein.

In the Waterloo period there was a general
rough-and-tumble athleticism among average

54 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

Englishmen. It cannot be re-created by cricket,
or by conscription, or by any artificial means. It
was a thing of the soul. It came out of laughter,
religion, and the spirit of the place. But it was
like the modern French duel in this that it might
happen to anybody. If I were a French journalist
it might really happen that Monsieur Clemenceau
might challenge me to meet him with pistols. But
I do not think that it is at all likely that Mr.
C B. Fry will ever challenge me to meet him
with cricket-bats.

AN ESSAY ON TWO CITIES.

A LITTLE while ago I fell out of England
A\ into the town of Paris. If a man fell out
of the moon into the town of Paris he would
know that it was the capital of a great nation.
If, however, he fell (perhaps off some other side of
the moon) so as to hit the city of London, he
would not know so well that it was the capital
of a great nation ; at any rate, he would not
know that the nation was so great as it is. This
would be so even on the assumption that the
man from the moon could not read our alpha-
bet, as presumably he could not, unless elementary
education in* that planet has gone to rather unsus-
pected lengths. But it is true that a great part of
the distinctive quality which separates Paris from
London may be even seen in the names. Real
democrats always insist that England is an aristo-
cratic country. Real aristocrats always insist (for

AN ESSAY ON TWO CITIES 55

some mysterious reason) that it is a democratic
country. But if any one has any real doubt about
the matter let him consider simply the names of
the streets. Nearly all the streets out of the
Strand, for instance, are named after the first
name, second name, third name, fourth, fifth,
and sixth names of some particular noble family ;
after their relations, connections, or places of resi-
dence Arundel Street, Norfolk Street, Villiers
Street, Bedford Street, Southampton Street, and
any number of others. The names are varied, so
as to introduce the same family under all sorts of
different surnames. Thus we have Arundel Street
and also Norfolk Street ; thus we have Bucking-
ham Street and also Villiers Street. To say that
this is not aristocracy is simply intellectual impii-
dence. I am an ordinary citizen, and my name is
Gilbert Keith Chesterton ; and I confess that if
I found three streets in a row in the Strand, the
first called Gilbert Street, the second Keith Street,
and the third Chesterton Street, I should consider
that I had become a somewhat more important
person in the commonwealth than was altogether
good for its health. If 'Frenchmen ran London
(which God forbid !), they would think it quite as
ludicrous that those streets should be named after
the Duke of Buckingham as that they should be
named after me. They are streets out of one of
the main thoroughfares of London. If French
methods were adopted, one of them would be
called Shakspere Street, another Cromwell Street,
another Wordsworth Street ; there would be
statues of each of these persons at the end of each
of these streets, and any streets left ove would be

56 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

named after the date on which the Reform Bill was
passed or the Penny Postage established.

Suppose a man tried to find people in London
by the names of the places. It would make a
fine farce, illustrating our illogicality. Our hero
having nee realised that Buckingham Street was
named after the Buckingham family, would natur-
ally walk into Buckingham Palace in search of
the Duke of Buckingham. To his astonishment
he would meet somebody quite different. His
simple kinar logic would lead him to suppose that
if he wanted the Duke of Marlborough (which
seems unlikely) he would find him at Marlborough
House. He would find the Prince of Wales.
When at last he understood that the Marlboroughs
live at Blenheim, named after the great Marl-
borough's victory, he would, no doubt, go there.
But he would again find himself in error if, acting
upon this principle,, he tried to find the Duke of
Wellington, and told the cabman to drive to
Waterloo. I wonder that no one has written a
wild romance about the adventures of such an
alien, seeking the great English aristocrats, and
only guided by the names ; looking for the Duke
of Bedford in the town of that name, seeking for
some trace of the Duke of Norfolk in Norfolk.
He might sail for Wellington in New Zealand to
find the ancient seat of the Wellingtons. The
last scene might show him trying to learn Welsh
in order to converse with the Prince of Wales.

But even if the imaginary traveller knew no
alphabet of this earth at all, I think it would still
be possible to suppose him seeing a difference
between London and Paris, and, upon the whole,

AN ESSAY ON TWO CITIES 57

the real difference. He would not be able to
read the words "Quai Voltaire ; " but he would
see the sneering statue and the hard, straight
roads ; without having heard of Voltaire he would
understand that the city was Voltairean. He
would not know that Fleet Street was named
after the Fleet Prison. But the same national
spirit which kept the Fleet Prison closed and
narrow still keeps Fleet Street closed and narrow.
Or, if you will, you may call Fleet Street cosy, and
the Fleet Prison cosy. I think I could be more
comfortable in the Fleet Prison, in an English
way of comfort, than just under the statue of
Voltaire. I think that the man from the moon
, would know France without knowing French ; I
think that he would know England without having
heard the word. For in the last resort all men
talk by signs. To talk by statues is to talk by
signs ; to talk by cities is to talk by signs. Pillars,
palaces, cathedrals, temples, pyramids, are an
enormous dumb alphabet : as if some giant held
up his fingers of stone. The most important
things at the last are always said by signs, even
if, like the Cross on St. Paul's, they are signs in
heaven. If men do not understand signs, they
will never understand words.

For my part, I should be incline^ to suggest
that the chief object of education should be to
restore simplicity. If you like to put it so, the
chief object of education is not to learn things ;
nay, the chief object of education is to unlearn
things. The chief object of education is to un-
learn all the weariness and wickedness of the
world and to get back into that state of exhilar-

58 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

ation we all instinctively celebrate when we write
by preference of children and of boys. If I were
an examiner appointed to examine all examiners
(which does not at present appear probable), I
would not only ask the teachers how much know-
ledge they had imparted ; I would ask them how
much splendid and scornful ignorance they had
erected, like some royal tower in arms. But, in
any case, I would insist that people should have so
much simplicity as would enable them to see
things suddenly and to see things as they are.
I do not care so much whether they can read
the names over the shops. I do care very much
whether they can read the shops. I do not
feel deeply troubled as to whether they can tell
where London is on the map so long as they can
tell where Brixton is on the way home. I do not
even mind whether they can put two and two
together in the mathematical sense ; I am content
if they can put two and two together in the
metaphorical sense. But all this longer statement
of an obvious view comes back to the metaphor
I have employed. I do not care a dump whether ,
they know the alphabet, so long as they know the
dumb alphabet.

Unfortunately, I have noticed in many aspects
of our popular education that this is not done at
all. One teaches our London children to see
London with abrupt and simple eyes. And
London is far more difficult to see properly than
any other place. London is a riddle. Paris is
an explanation. The education of the Parisian
child is something corresponding to the clear
avenues and the exact squares of Paris. When

FRENCH AND ENGLISH 59

the Parisian boy has done learning about the
French reason and the Roman order he can go
out and see the thing repeated in the shapes of
many shining public places, in the angles of
many streets. But when the English boy goes
out, after learning about a vague progress and
idealism, he cannot see it anywhere. He cannot
see anything anywhere, except Sapolio and the
Daily Mail. We must either alter London to
suit the ideals of our education, or else alter our
education to suit the great beauty of London.

FRENCH AND ENGLISH

IT is obvious that there is a great deal of
difference between being international and
being cosmopolitan. All good men are inter-
national. Nearly all bad men are cosmopolitan,
If we are to be international we must be national.
And it is largely because those who call them-
selves the friends of peace have not dwelt suffi-
ciently on this distinction that they do not impress
the bulk of any of the nations to which they
belong. International peace means a peace be-
tween nations, not a peace after the destruction
of nations, like the Buddhist peace after the
destruction of personality. The golden age of
the good European is like the heaven of the
Christian : it is a place where people will love
each other ; not like the heaven of the Hindu, a
place where they will be each other. And in the
case of national character this can be seen in a

60 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

curious way. It will generally be found, I think,
that the more a man really appreciates and admires
the soul of another people the less he will attempt
to imitate it ; he will be conscious that there is
something in it too deep and too unmanageable
to imitate. The Englishman who has a fancy for
France will try to be French ; the Englishman who
admires France will remain obstinately English.
This is to be particularly noticed in the case of
our relations with the French, because it is one
of the outstanding peculiarities of the French
that their vices are all on the surface, and their
extraordinary virtues concealed. One might al-
most say that their vices are the flower of their
virtues.

Thus their obscenity is the expression of then-
passionate love of dragging all things into the light.
The avarice of their peasants means the indepen-
dence of their peasants. What the English call
their rudeness in the streets is a phase of their
social equality. The worried look of their women
is connected with the responsibility of their women;
and a certain unconscious brutality of hurry and
gesture in the men is related to their inexhaustible
and extraordinary military courage. Of all coun-
tries, therefore, France is the worst country for a
superficial fool to admire. Let a fool hate France :
if the fool loves it he will soon be a knave. He will
certainly admire it, not only for the things that
are not creditable, but actually for the things that
are not there. He will admire the grace and indo-
lence of the most industrious people in the world.
He will admire the romance and fantasy of the
most determinedly respectable and commoDplace

FRENCH AND ENGLISH 61

people in the world. This mistake the Englishman
will make if he admires France too hastily ; but
the mistake that he makes about France will be
slight compared with the mistake that he makes
about himself. An Englishman who professes
really to like French realistic novels, really to be
at home in a French modern theatre, really tp
experience no shock on first seeing the savage
French caricatures, is making a mistake very
dangerous for his own sincerity. He is admiring
something he does not understand. He is reaping
where he has not sown, and taking up where he
has not laid down ; he is trying to taste the fruit
when he has never toiled over the tree. He
is trying to pluck the exquisite fruit of French
cynicism, when he has never tilled the rude but
rich soil of French virtue.

The thing can only be made clear to English-
men by turning it round. Suppose a Frenchman
came out of democratic France to live in England,
where the shadow of the great houses still falls
everywhere, and where even freedom was, in its
origin, aristocratic. If the Frenchman saw our
aristocracy and liked it, if he saw our snobbishness
and liked it, if he set himself to imitate it, we all
know what we should feel. We all know that we
should feel that that particular Frenchman was
a repulsive little gnat. He would be imitating
English aristocracy ; he would be imitating the
English vice. But he would not even understand
the vice he plagiarised: especially he would not
understand that the vice is partly a virtue. He
would not understand those elements in the
English which balance snobbishness and make it

6a ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

human : the great kindness of the English, their
hospitality, their unconscious poetry, their senti-
mental conservatism, which really admires the
gentry. The French Royalist sees that the English
fike their King. But he does not grasp that while
it is base to worship a King, it is almost noble
to worship a powerless King. The impotence of
the Hanoverian Sovereigns has raised the English
loyal subject almost to the chivalry and dignity
of a Jacobite. The Frenchman sees that the
English servant is respectful : he does not realise
that he is also disrespectful ; that there is ah Eng-
lish legend of the humorous and faithful servant,
who is as much a personality as his master ; the
Caleb Balderstone, the Sam Weller. He sees that
the English do admire a nobleman ; he does not
allow for the fact that they admire a nobleman
most when he does not behave like one. They
like a noble to be unconscious and amiable : the
slave may be humble, but the master must not
be proud. The master is Life, as they would like
to enjoy it ; and among the joys they desire in
him there is none which they desire more sincerely
than that of generosity, of throwing money about
among mankind, or, to use the noble mediaeval
word, largesse the joy of largeness. That is why
a cabman tells you you are no gentleman if you
give him his correct fare. Not only his pocket,
but his soul is hurt. You have wounded his
ideal. You have defaced his vision of the perfect
aristocrat. All this is really very subtle and elu-
sive ; it is very difficult to separate what is mere
slavishness from what is a sort of vicarious nobility
in the English love of a lord. And no Frenchman

FRENCH AND ENGLISH 63

could easily grasp it at all. He would think it
was mere slavishness ; and if he liked it, he would
be a slave. So every Englishman must (at first)
feel French candour to be mere brutality. And
if he likes it, he is a brute. . These national merits
must not be understood so easily. It requires long
years of plenitude and quiet, the slow growth of
great parks, the seasoning of oaken beams, the
dark enrichment of red wine in cellars and in inns,
all the leisure and the life of England through
many centuries, to produce at last the generous
and genial fruit of English snobbishness. And
it requires battery and barricade, songs in the
streets, and ragged men dead for an idea, to pro-
duce and justify the terrible flower of French
indecency.

When I was in Paris a short time ago, I went
with an English friend of mine to an extremely
brilliant and rapid succession of French plays,
each occupying about twenty minutes. They were
all astonishingly effective ; but there was one of
them which was so effective that my friend and
I fought about it outside, and had almost to be
separated by the police. It was intended to indi-
cate how men really behaved in a wreck or naval
disaster, how they break down, how they scream,
how they fight each other without object and in
a mere hatred of everything. And then there was
added, with all that horrible irony which Voltaire
began, a scene in which a great statesman made
a speech over their bodies, saying that they were
all heroes and had died in a fraternal embrace.
My friend and I came out of this theatre, and as
he had lived long in Paris, he said, like a French-

64 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

man : "What admirable artistic arrangement !
Is it not exquisite ? " "No/* I replied, assuming
as far as possible the traditional attitude of John
Bull in the pictures in Punch "No, it is not ex-
quisite. Perhaps it is unmeaning ; if it is unmean-
ing I do not mind. But if it has a meaning I know
what the meaning is ; it is that under all their
pageant of chivalry men are not only beasts, but
even hunted beasts. I do not know much of
humanity, especially when humanity talks in
French. But I know when a thing is meant to
uplift the human soul, and when it is meant to
depress it. I know .that ' Cyrano de Bergerac *
(where the actors talked even quicker) was meant
to encourage man. And I know that this was
meant to discourage him." "These sentimental
and moral views of art," began my friend, but I
broke into his words as a light broke into my mind.
"Let me say to you," I said, "what Jaur&s said
to Liebknecht at the Socialist Conference : ' You
have not died on the barricades. You are an
Englishman, as I am, and you ought to be as
amiable as I am. These people have some right
to be terrible in art, for they have been terrible
in politics. They may endure mock tortures on
the stage ; they have seen real tortures in the
streets. They have been hurt for the idea of
Democracy. They have been hurt for the idea
of Catholicism. It is not so utterly unnatural to
them that they should be hurt for, the idea of
literature. But, by blazes, it is altogether un-
natural to me ! And the worst thing of all is that
I, who am an Englishman, loving comfort, stiould
find comfort in such things as this. The French

THE ZOLA CONTROVERSY 65

do not seek comfort here, but rather unrest. This
restless people seeks to keep itself in a perpetual
agony of the revolutionary mood. Frenchmen,
seeking revolution, may find the humiliation of
humanity inspiring. But God forbid that two
pleasure-seeking Englishmen should ever find it
pleasant ! "

THE ZOLA CONTROVERSY

difference between two great nations can
be illustrated by the coincidence that at
this moment both France and England are
engaged in discussing the memorial of a literary
man. France is considering the celebration of the
late Zola, England is considering that of the re-
cently deceased Shakspere. There is some
national significance, it may be, in the time that
'has elapsed. Some will find impatience and
indelicacy in this early attack on Zola or deifica-
tion of him ; but the nation which has sat still
'for three hundred years after Shakspere 's funeral
may be considered, perhaps, to have carried
delicacy too far. But much deeper things are
iinvolved than the mere matter of time. The
: point of the contrast is that the French are dis-
cussing whether there shall be any monument,
while the English are discussing only what the
monument shall be. In other words, the French
are discussing a living question, while we are dis-
cussing a dead one. Or rather, not a dead one,
but a settled one, which is quite a different thing,
D

66 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

When a thing of the intellect is settled it is not
dead : rather it is immortal. The multiplication
table is immortal, and so is the fame of Shakspere.
But the fame of Zola is not dead or not immortal ;
it is at its crisis, it is in the balance ; and may be
found wanting. The French, therefore, are quite
right in considering it a living question. It is
still living as a question, because it is not yet solved.
But Shakspere is not a living question : he is a
living answer.

For my part, therefore, I think the French Zola
controversy much more practical and exciting
than the English Shakspere one. The admission
of Zola to the Pantheon may be regarded as
defining Zola's position. But nobody could say
that a statue of Shakspere, even fifty feet high,
on the top of St. Paul's Cathedral, could define
Shakspere 's position. It only defines our position
towards Shakspere. It is he who is fixed ; it is
we who are unstable. The nearest approach to an
English parallel to the Zola case would be furnished
if it were proposed to put some savagely contro-
versial and largely repulsive author among the
ashes of the greatest English poets. Suppose,
for instance, it were proposed to bury Mr. Rudyard
Kipling in Westminster Abbey. I should be
against burying him in Westminster Abbey ; first,
because he is still alive (and here I think even he
himself might admit the justice of my protest) ;
and second, because I should like to reserve that
rapidly narrowing space for the great permanent
examples, not for the interesting foreign inter-
ruptions, of English literature. I would not have
either Mr. Kipling or Mr. George Moore in West-

THE ZOLA CONTROVERSY 67

minster Abbey, though Mr. Kipling has certainly
caught even more cleverly than Mr. Moore the
lucid and cool cruelty of the French short story.
I am very sure that Geoffrey Chaucer and Joseph
Addison get on very well together in the Poets'
Corner, despite the centuries that sunder them.
But I feel that Mr. George Moore would be much
happier in Pere-la-Chaise, with a riotous statue by.
Rodin on the top of him ; and Mr. Kipling much
happier under some huge Asiatic monument,
carved with all the cruelties of the gods.

As to the affair of the English monument t
Shakspere, every people has its own mode of
commemoration, and I think there is a great deal
to be said for ours. There is the French monu-
mental style, which consists in erecting very
pompous statues, very well done. There is the
German monumental style, which consists hi
erecting very pompous statues, badly done. And
there is the English monumental method, the
great English way with statues, which consists in
not erecting them at all. A statue may be digni-
fied ; but the absence of a statue is always digni-
fied. For my part, I feel there is something
national, something wholesomely symbolic, in the
fact that there is no statue of Shakspere. There
is, of course, one in Leicester Square ; but the
very place where it stands shows that it was put
up by a foreigner for foreigners. There is surely
something modest and manly about not attempt-
ing to express our greatest poet in the plastic arts
in which we do not excel. We honour Shakspere
as the Jews honour God by not daring to make of
him a graven image. Our sculpture, our statues,

68 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

are good enough for bankers and philanthropists,
who are our curse : not good enough for him, who
is our benediction. Why should we celebrate the
very art in which we triumph by the very art in
which we fail ?

England is most easily understood as the country
of amateurs. It is especially the country of ama-
teur soldiers (that is, of Volunteers), of amateur
statesmen (that is, of aristocrats), and it is not
unreasonable or out of keeping that it should be
rather specially the country of a careless and
lounging view of literature. Shakspere has no
academic monument for the same reason that
he had no academic education. He had small
Latin and less Greek, and (in the same spirit)
he has never been commemorated in Latin epi-
taphs or Greek marble. If there is nothing clear
and fixed about the emblems of his fame, it is
because there 'was nothing clear and fixed about
the origins of it. Those great schools and Uni-
versities which watch a man in his youth may
record him in his death ; but Shakspere had
no such unifying traditions. We can only say of
him what we can say of Dickens. We can only
say that he came from nowhere and that he went
everywhere. For him a monument in any place is
ut of place. A cold statue in a certain square is
unsuitable to him as it would be unsuitable to
Dickens. If we put up a statue of Dickens in
Portland Place to-morrow we should feel the
stiffness as unnatural. We should fear that the
statue might stroll about the street at night.

But in France the question of whether Zola shall
go to the Pantheon when he is dead is quite as

THE ZOLA CONTROVERSY 69

practicable as the question whether he should go
to prison when he was alive. It is the problem of
whether the nation shall take one turn of thought
or another. In raising a monument to Zola they
do not raise merely a trophy, but a finger-post.
The question is one -which will have to be settled
in most European countries ; but like all such
questions, it has come first to a head in France ;
because France is the battlefield of Christendom.
That question is, of course, roughly this : whether
in that ill-defined area of verbal licence on certain
dangerous topics it is an extenuation of indelicacy
or an aggravation of it that the indelicacy was
deliberate and solemn. Is indecency more in-
decent if it is grave, or more indecent if it is gay ?
For my part, I belong to an old school in this
matter. When a book or a play strikes me as
a crime, I am not disarmed by being told that
it is a serious crime. If a man has written some-
thing vile, I am not comforted by the explanation
that he quite meant to do it. I know all the evils
of flippancy ; I do not like the man who laughs at
the sight of virtue. But I prefer him to the man
who weeps at the sight of virtue and complains
bitterly of there being any such thing. I am not
reassured, when ethics are as wild as cannibalism,
by the fact that they are also as grave and sincere
as suicide. And I think there is an obvious fallacy
in the bitter contrasts drawn by some moderns
between the aversion to Ibsen's "Ghosts " and the
popularity of some such joke as " Dear Old Charlie."
Surely there is nothing mysterious or unphilosophic
in the popular preference. The joke of "Dear
Old Charlie" is passed because it is a joke.

^0 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

" Ghosts " are exorcised because they are
ghosts.

This is, of course, the whole question of Zola.
I am grown up, and I do not worry myself much
about Zola's immorality. The thing I cannot
stand is his morality. If ever a man on this earth
lived to embody the tremendous text, "But if the
light in your body be darkness, how great is the
darkness," it was certainly he. Great men like
Ariosto, Rabelais, and Shakspere fall in foul places,
flounder in violent but venial sin, sprawl for pages,
exposing their gigantic weakness, are dirty, are
indefensible ; and then they struggle up again and
can still speak with a convincing kindness and an
unbroken honour of the best things in the world :
Rabelais, of the instruction of ardent and austere
youth ; Ariosto, of holy chivalry ; Shakspere, of
the splendid stillness of mercy. But in Zola even
the ideals are undesirable ; Zola's mercy is colder
than justice nay, Zola's mercy is more bitter in
the mouth than injustice. When Zola shows us an
ideal training he does not take us, like Rabelais,
into the happy fields of humanist learning. He
takes us into the schools of inhumanist learning,
where there are neither books nor flowers, nor
wine nor wisdom, but only deformities in glass
bottles, and where the rule is taught from the
exceptions. Zola's truth answers the exact de-
scription of the skeleton in the cupboard ; that is,
it is something of which a domestic custom forbids
the discovery, but which is quite dead, even when
it is discovered. Macaulay said that the .Puritans
hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the
bear, but because it gave pleasure to the specta-

OXFORD FROM WITHOUT 71

tors. Of such substance also was this Puritan who
had lost his God. A Puritan of this type is worse
than the Puritan who hates pleasure because there
is evil in it. This man actually hates evil because
there is pleasure in it. Zola was worse than a
pornographer, he was a pessimist. He did worse
than encourage sin : he encouraged discourage-
ment. He made lust loathsome because to him
lust meant life.

OXFORD FROM WITHOUT

time ago I ventured to defend that
race of hunted and persecuted outlaws,
the Bishops ; but until this week I had no
idea of how much persecuted they were. For
instance, the Bishop of Birmingham made some
extremely sensible remarks in the House of lords,
to the effect that Oxford and Cambridge were (as
everybody knows they are) far too much merely
plutocratic playgrounds. One would have thought
that an Anglican Bishop might be allowed to know
something about the English University system,
and even to have, if anything, some bias in its
favour. But (as I pointed out) the rollicking
Radicalism of Bishops has to be restrained. The
man who writes the notes in the weekly paper
called the Outlook feels that it is his business to
restrain it. The passage has such simple sub-
limity that I must quote it

"Dr. Gore talked unworthily of his reputation

72 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

when he spoke of the older Universities as play-
grounds for the rich and idle. In the first place,
the rich men there are not idle. Some of the rich
men are, and so are some of the poor men. On
the whole, the sons of noble and wealthy families
keep up the best traditions of academic life."

So far this seems all very nice. It is a part of
the universal principle on which Englishmen have
acted in recent years. As you will not try to
make the best people the most powerfui^eople,
persuade yourselves that the most powerful people
are the best people. Mad Frenchmen and Irish-
men try to realise the ideal. To you belongs
the nobler (and much easier) task of idealising the
real. First give your Universities entirely into the
power of the rich ; then let the rich start traditions;
and then congratulate yourselves on the fact that
the sons of the rich keep up these traditions. All
that is quite simple and jolly. But then this critic,
who crushes Dr. Gore from the high throne of the
Outlook, goes on in a way that is really perplexing.
"It is distinctly advantageous," he says, "that
rich and poor i.e., young men with a smooth path
in life before them, and those who have to hew out
a road for themselves should be brought into
association. Each class learns a great deal from
the other. On the one side, social conceit and
exclusiveness give way to the free spirit of com-
petition amongst all classes ; on the other side,
angularities and prejudices are rubbed away."
Even this I might have swallowed. But the para-
graph concludes with this extraordinary sentence :
"We get the net result in such careers as those

OXFORD FROM WITHOUT 73

of Lord Milner, Lord Curzon, and Mr. Asquith."
. Those three names lay my intellect prostrate.
The rest of the argument I understand quite well.
The social exclusiveness of aristocrats at Oxford
and Cambridge gives way before the free spirit
of competition amongst all classes. That is to
say, there is at Oxford so hot and keen a struggle,
consisting of coal-heavers, London clerks, gypsies,
navvies, drapers' assistants, grocers' assistants in
short, all the classes that make up the bulk of
England there is such a fierce competition at
Oxford among all these people that in its presence
aristocratic exclusiveness gives way. That is all
quite clear. I am not quite sure about the facts,
but I quite understand the argument. But then,
having been called upon to contemplate this
bracing picture of a boisterous turmoil of all the
classes of England, I am suddenly asked to accept
as example of it, Lord Milner, Lord Curzon, and
the present Chancellor of the Exchequer. What
part do these gentlemen play in the mental pro-
cess ? Is Lord Curzon one of the rugged and
ragged poor men whose angularities have been
rubbed away ? Or is he one of those whom
Oxford immediately deprived of all kind of social
exclusiveness ? His Oxford reputation does not
seem to bear out either account of him. To
regard Lord Milner as a typical product of Oxford
would surely be unfair. It would be to deprive
the educational tradition of Germany of one of its
most typical products. English aristocrats have
their faults, but they are not at all like Lord
Milner. What Mr. Asquith was meant to prove,
whether he was a rich man who lost his exclusive-

D-r

74 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

ness, or a poor man who lost his angles, I am
utterly unable to conceive.

There is, however, one mild but very evident
truth that might perhaps be mentioned. And it is
this : that none of those three excellent persons is,
or ever has been, a poor man in the sense that
that word is understood by the overwhelming
majority of the English nation. There are no
poor men at Oxford in the sense that the majority
of men in the street are poor. The very fact that
the writer in the Oktlook can talk about such
people as poor shows that he does not understand
what the modern problem is. His kind of poor
man rather reminds me of the Earl in the ballad
by that great English satirist, Sir W. S. Gilbert,
whose angles (very acute angles) had, I fear,
never been rubbed down by an old English Uni-
versity. The reader will remember that when
the Periwinkle-girl was adored by two Dukes, the
poet added

" A third adorer had the girl,
A r\an of lowly station ;
A miserable grovelling Earl
Besought her approbation."

Perhaps, indeed, some allusion to our University
system, and to the universal clash in it of all the
classes of the community, may be found in the
verse a little farther on, which says

" He'd had, it happily befell,

A decent education ;
His views would have befitted well
A far superior station."

Possibly there was as simple a chasm between

OXFORD FROM WITHOUT 75

Lord Curzon and Lord Milner. But I am afraid
that the chasm will become almost imperceptible,
a microscopic crack, if we compare it with the
chasm that separates either or both of them from
the people of this country.

Of course the truth is exactly as the Bishop of
Birmingham put it. I am sure that he did not put
it in any unkindly or contemptuous spirit towards
those old English seats of learning, which whether
they are or are not seats of learning, are, at any
rate, old and English, and those are two very good
things to be. The Old English University is a
playground for the governing class. That does
not prove that it is a bad thing ; it might prove
that it was a very good thing. Certainly if there
is a governing class, let there be a playground for
the governing class. I would much rather be
ruled by men who know how to play than by men
who do not know how to play. Granted that we
are to be governed by a rich section of the com-
munity, it is certainly very important that that
section should be kept tolerably genial and jolly.
If the sensitive man on the Outlook does not like
the phrase, " Playground of the rich," I can
suggest a phrase that describes such a place as
Oxford perhaps with more precision. It is a place
for humanising those who might otherwise be
tyrants, or even experts.

To pretend that the aristocrat meets all classes
at Oxford is too ludicrous to be worth discussion.
But it may be true that he meets more different
kinds of men than he would meet under a strictly
aristocratic regime of private tutors and small
schools. It all comes back to the fact that the

7 6 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

English, if they were resolved to have an aristo-
cracy, were at least resolved to have a good-natured
aristocracy. And it is due to them to say that
almost alone among the peoples of the world, they
have succeeded in getting one. One could almost
tolerate the thing, if it were not for the praise
of it. One might endure Oxford, but not the
Outlook.

When the poor man at Oxford loses his angles
(which means, I suppose, his independence), he
may perhaps, even if his poverty is of that highly
relative type possible at Oxford, gain a certain
amount of worldly advantage from the surrender
of those angles. I must confess, however, that I
can imagine nothing nastier than to lose one's
angles. It seems to me that a desire to retain
some angles about one's person is a desire common
to all those human beings who do not set their
ultimate hopes upon looking like Humpty-Dumpty.
Our angles are simply our shapes. I cannot
imagine any phrase more full of the subtle and
exquisite vileness which is poisoning and weaken-
ing our country than such a phrase as this, about
the desirability of rubbing down the angularities of
poor men. Reduced to permanent and practical
human speech, it means nothing whatever except
the corrupting of that first human sense of justice
which is the critic of all human institutions.

It is not in any such spirit of facile and reckless
reassurance that we should approach the really
difficult problem of the delicate virtues and the
deep dangers of our two historic seats of learning.
A good son does not easily admit that his sick
mother is dying ; but neither does a good son

OXFORD FROM WITHOUT 77

cheerily assert that she is "all right." There are
many good arguments for leaving the two historic
Universities exactly as they are. There are many
good arguments for smashing them or altering
them entirely. But in either case the plain truth
told by the Bishop of Birmingham remains. If
these Universities were destroyed, they would not
be destroyed as Universities. If they are pre-
served, they will not be preserved as Universities.
They will be preserved strictly and literally as
playgrounds ; places valued for their hours of
leisure more than for their hours of work. I do
not say that this is unreasonable ; as a matter
of private temperament I find it attractive. It is
not only possible to say a great deal in praise of
play ; it is really possible to say the highest things
in praise of it. It might reasonably be maintained
that the true object of all human life is play.
Earth is a task garden ; heaven is a playground.
To be at last in such secure innocence that one
can juggle with the universe and the stars, to be so
good that one can treat everything as a joke
that may be, perhaps, the real end and final holi-
day of human souls. When we are really holy we
may regard the Universe as a lark ; so perhaps
it is not essentially wrong to regard the University
as a lark. But the plain and present fact is that
our upper classes do regard the University as a
lark, and do not regard it as a University. It also
happens very often that through some oversight
they neglect to provide themselves with that ex-
treme degree of holiness which I have postulated
as a necessary preliminary to such indulgence in
the higher frivolity.

78 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

Humanity, always dreaming of a happy race,
free, fantastic, and at ease, has sometimes pictured
them in some mystical island, sometimes in some
celestial city, sometimes as fairies, gods, or citizens
of Atlantis. But one method in which it has often
indulged is to picture them as aristocrats, as a
special human class that could actually be seen
hunting in the woods or driving about the streets.
And this never was (as some silly Germans say)
a worship of pride and scorn ; mankind never
really admired pride ; mankind never had any
thing but a scorn for scorn. It was a worship of
the spectacle of happiness ; especially of the spec-
tacle of youth. This is what the old Universities
in their noblest aspect really are ; and this is why
there is always something to be said for keeping
them as they are. Aristocracy is not a tyranny ;
it is not even merely a spell. It is a vision. It
is a deliberate indulgence in a certain picture of
pleasure painted for the purpose ; every Duchess
is (in an innocent sense) painted, like Gains-
borough's "Duchess of Devonshire." She is only
beautiful because, at the back of all, the English
people wanted her to be beautiful. In the same
way, the lads at Oxford and Cambridge are only
larking because England, in the depths of its
solemn soul, really wishes them to lark. All this
is very human and pardonable, and would be even
harmless if there were no such things in the world
as danger and honour and intellectual responsi-
bility. But if aristocracy is a vision, it is perhaps
the most unpractical of all visions. It is not a
working way of doing things to put q.11 your
happiest people on a lighted platform and stare

WOMAN 79

only at them. It is not a working way of manag-
ing education to be entirely content with the mere
fact that you have (to a degree unexampled in the
world) given the luckiest boys the jolliest time.
It would be easy enough, like the writer in the
Outlook, to enjoy the pleasures and deny the perils.
Oh what a happy place England would be to live
in if only one did not love it !

WOMAN

A CORRESPONDENT has written me an able
A\ and interesting letter in the matter of some
allusions of mine to the subject of communal
kitchens. He defends communal kitchens very
lucidly from the standpoint of the calculating
collect ivist ; but, like many of his school, he
cannot apparently grasp that there is another
test of the whole matter, with which such cal-
culation has nothing at all to do. He knows
it would be cheaper if a number of us ate at
the same time, so as to use the same table. So
it would. It would also be cheaper if a number
of us slept at different times, so as to use the same
pair of trousers. But the question is not how
cheap are we buying a thing, but what are we
buying ? It is cheap to own a slave. And it is
cheaper still to be a slave.

My correspondent also says that the habit of
dining out in restaurants, etc., is growing. So,
I believe, is the habit of committing suicide. I
do not desire to connect the two facts together,

So ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

It seems fairly clear that a man could not dine
at a restaurant because he had just committed
suicide ; and it would be extreme, perhaps, to
suggest that he commits suicide because he has
just dined at a restaurant. But the two cases,
when put side by side, are enough to indicate
the falsity and poltroonery of this eternal modern
argument from what is in fashion. The question
for brave men is not whether a certain thing is
increasing * the question is whether we are in-
creasing it. I dine very often in restaurants
because the nature of my trade makes it con-
venient : but if I thought that by dining in
restaurants I was working for the creation of
communal meals, I would never enter a restaurant
again ; I would carry bread and cheese in my
pocket or eat chocolate out of automatic machines.
For the personal element in some things is sacred.
I heard Mr. Will Crooks put it perfectly the other
day : "The most sacred thing is to be able to
shut your own door."

My correspondent says, "Would not our women
be spared the drudgery of cooking and all its
attendant w r orries, leaving them free for higher
culture ? " The first thing that occurs to me to
say about this is very simple, and is, I imagine,
a part of all our experience. If my correspondent
can find any way of preventing women from worry-
ing, he will indeed be a remarkable man. I
think the matter is a much deeper one. First of
all, my correspondent overlooks a distinction
which is elementary in our human nature. Theori-
cally, I suppose, every one would like to be freed
from worries. But nobody in the world would

WOMAN 81

always like to be freed from worrying occupations.
I should very much like (as far as my feelings at
the moment go) to be free from the consuming
nuisance of writing this article. But it does not
follow that I should like to be free from the
consuming nuisance of being a journalist. Be-
cause we are worried about a thing, it does not
follow that w r e are not interested in it. The truth
is the other w r ay. If we are not interested, why
on earth should we be worried ? Women are
worried about housekeeping, but f those that are
most interested are the most worried. Women
are still more worried about their husbands and
their children. And I suppose if we strangled
the children and poleaxed the husbands it would
leave women free for higher culture. That is, it
would leave them free to begin to worry about
that. For women would worry about higher
culture as much as they worry about everything
else.

I believe this way of talking about women and
their higher culture is almost entirely a growth
of the classes which (unlike the journalistic class
to which I belong) have always a reasonable
amount of money. One odd thing I specially
notice. Those who write like this seem entirely
to forget the existence of the working and wage-
earning classes. They say eternally, like my
correspondent, that the ordinary woman is always
a drudge. And what, in the name of the Nine
Gods, is the ordinary man ? These people seem to
think that the ordinary man is a Cabinet Minister.
They are always talking about man going forth
to wield power, to carve his own way, to stamp

82 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

his individuality on the world, to command and
to be obeyed. This may be true of a certain
class. Dukes, perhaps, are not drudges ; but,
then, neither are Duchesses. The Ladies and
Gentlemen of the Smart Set are quite free for
the higher culture, which consists chiefly of
motoring and Bridge. But the ordinary man
who typifies and constitutes the millions that
make up our civilisation is no more free for
the higher culture than his wife is.

Indeed, he is not so free. Of the two sexes the
woman is in the more powerful position. For the
average woman is at the head of something with
which she can do as she likes ; the average man
has to obey orders and do nothing else. He has
to put one dull brick on another dull brick, and
do nothing else ; he has to add one dull figure to
another dull figure, and do nothing else. The
woman's world is a small one, perhaps, but she
can alter it. The woman can tell the tradesman
with whom she deals some realistic things about
himself. The clerk who does this to the manager
generally gets the sack, or shall we say (to avoid
the vulgarism), finds himself free for higher
culture. Above all, as I said in my previous
article, the woman does work which is in some
small degree creative and individual. She can
put the flowers or the furniture in fancy arrange-
ments of her own. I fear the bricklayer cannot
put the bricks in fancy arrangements of his own,
without disaster to himself and others. If the
woman is only putting a patch into a carpet, she
can choose the thing with regard to colour. I
fear it would not do for the office boy dispatching

WOMAN 83

a parcel to choose his stamps with a view to
colour ; to prefer the tender mauve of the six-
penny to the crude scarlet of the penny stamp.
A woman cooking may not always cook artisti-
cally ; still she can cook artistically. She can
introduce a personal and imperceptible alteration
into the composition of a soup. The clerk is
not encouraged to introduce a personal and im-
perceptible alteration into the figures in a ledger.

The trouble is that the real question I raised
is not discussed. It is argued as a problem in
pennies, not as a problem in people. It is not
the proposals of these reformers that I feel to
be false so much as their temper and their argu-
ments. I am not nearly so certain that communal
kitchens are wrong as I am that the defenders of
communal kitchens are wrong. Of course, for
one thing, there is a vast difference between the
communal kitchens of which I spoke and the
communal meal (monstmm horrendum, informe)
which the darker and wilder mind of my corres-
pondent diabolically calls up. But in both the
trouble is that their defenders will not defend
them humanly as human institutions. They will
not interest themselves in the staring psychological
fact that there are some things that a man or a
woman, as the case may be, wishes to do for him-
self or herself. He or she must do it inventively,
creatively, artistically, individually in a word,
badly. Choosing your wife (say) is one of these
things. Is choosing your husband's dinner one
of these things ? That is the whole question :
it is never asked.

And then the higher culture. I know that

84 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

culture. I would not set any man free for it
if I could help it. The effect of it on the rich
men who are free for it is so horrible that it is
worse than any of the other amusements of the
millionaire worse than gambling, worse even
than philanthropy. It means thinking the
smallest poet in Belgium greater than the greatest
poet of England. It means losing every demo-
cratic sympathy. It means being unable to talk
to a navvy about sport, or'about beer, or about the
Bible, or about the Derby, or about patriotism,
or about anything whatever that he, the navvy,
wants to talk about. It means taking literature
seriously, a very amateurish thing to do. It
means pardoning indecency only when it is gloomy
indecency. Its disciples will call a spade a spade ;
but only when it is a grave-digger's spade. The
higher culture is sad, cheap, impudent, unkind,
without honesty and without ease. In short, it
is "high." That abominable word (also applied
to game) admirably describes it.

No ; if you were setting women free for some-
thing else, I might be more melted. If you can
assure me, privately and gravely, that you are
setting women free to dance on the mountains
like Maenads, or to worship some monstrous
goddess, I will make a note of your request. If
you are quite sure that the ladies in Brixton, the
moment they give up cooking, will beat great
gongs and blow horns to Mumbo- Jumbo, then
I will agree that the occupation is at least human
and is more or less entertaining. Women have
been set free to be Bacchantes ; they have been
set free to be Virgin Martyrs ; they have been

THE MODERN MARTYR 85

set free to be Witches. Do not ask them now
to sink so low as the higher culture.

I have my own little notions of the possible
emancipation of women ; but I suppose I should
not be taken very seriously if I propounded them.
I should favour anything that would increase the
present enormous authority of women and their
creative action in their own homes. The average
woman, as I have said, is a despot ; the average
man is a serf. I am for any scheme that any
one can suggest that will make the average
woman more of a despot. So far from wishing
her to get her cooked meals from outside, I should
like her to cook more wildly and at her own will
than she does. So far from getting always the
same meals from the same place, let her invent,
if she likes, a new dish every day of her life.
Let woman be more of a maker, not less. We
are right to talk about "Woman : " only black-
guards talk about women. Yet all men talk about
men, and that is the whole difference. Men
represent the deliberative and democratic element
in life. Woman represents the despotic.

THE MODERN MARTYR

f^HE incident of the Suffragettes who chained
themselves with iron chains to the railings of
Downing Street is a good ironical allegory of
most modern martyrdom. It generally consists
of a man chaining himself up and then complain-
ing that he is not free. Some say that such larks

86 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

retard the cause of female suffrage, others say
that such larks alone can advance it ; as a matter
of fact, I do not believe that they have the smallest
effect one way or the other.

The modern notion of impressing the public by
a mere demonstration of unpopularity, by being
thrown out of meetings or thrown into jail is
largely a mistake. It rests on a fallacy touching
the true popular value of martyrdom. People
look at human history and see that it has often
happened that persecutions have not only adver-
tised but even advanced a persecuted creed, and
given to its validity the public and dreadful wit-
ness of dying men. The paradox was pictorially
expressed in Christian art, in which saints were
shown brandishing as weapons the very tools that
had slain them. And because his martyrdom is
thus a power to the martyr, modern people think
that any one who makes himself slightly uncom-
fortable in public will immediately be uproariously
popular. This element of inadequate martyrdom
is not true only of the Suffragettes ; it is true of
many movements I respect and some that I agree
with. It was true, for instance, of the Passive
Resisters, who had pieces of their furniture sold
up. The assumption is that if you show your
ordinary sincerity (or even your political ambition)
by being a nuisance to yourself as well as to other
people, you will have the strength of the great
saints who passed through the fire. Any one who
can be hustled in a hall for five minutes, or put in
a cell for five days, has achieved what was meant
by martyrdom, and has a halo in the Christian art
of the future. Miss Pankhurst will be represented

THE MODERN MARTYR 87

holding a policeman in each hand the instru-
ments of her martyrdom. The Passive Resister
will be shown symbolically carrying the teapot
that was torn from him by tyrannical auctioneers.
But there is a fallacy in this analogy of martyr-
dom. The truth is that the special impressive-
ness which does come from being persecuted only
happens in the case of extreme persecution. For
the fact that the modern enthusiast will undergo
some inconvenience for the creed he holds only
proves that he does hold it, which no one ever
doubted. No one doubts that the Nonconformist
minister cares more for Nonconformity than he
does for his teapot. No one doubts that Miss
Pankhurst wants a vote more than she wants a
quiet afternoon and an armchair. All our ordinary
intellectual opinions are worth a bit of a row :
I remember during the Boer War fighting an
Imperialist clerk outside the Queen's Hall, and
giving and receiving a bloody nose ; but I did not
think it one of the incidents that produce the
psychological effect of the Roman amphitheatre
or the stake at Smithfield. For in that impression
there is something more than the mere fact that
a man is sincere enough to give his time or his
comfort. Pagans were not impressed by the
torture of Christians merely because it showed
that they honestly held their opinion ; they knew
that millions of people honestly held all sorts of
opinions. The point of such extreme martyrdom
is much more subtle. It is that it gives an ap-
pearance of a man having something quite speci-
ally strong to back him up, of his drawing upon
some power. And this can only be proved when

88 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

all his physical contentment is destroyed; when
all the current of his bodily being is reversed
and turned to pain. If a man is seen to be roar-
ing with laughter all the time that he is skinned
alive, it would not be unreasonable to deduce
that somewhere in the recesses of his mind he
had thought of a rather good joke. Similarly, if
men smiled and sang (as they did) while they were
being boiled or torn in pieces, the spectators felt
the presence of something more than mere mental
honesty : they felt the presence of some new
and unintelligible kind of pleasure, which, pre-
sumably, came from somewhere. It might be
a strength of madness, or a lying spirit from Hell ;
but it was something quite positive and extra-
ordinary ; as positive as brandy and as extra-
ordinary as conjuring. The Pagan said to him-
self : "If Christianity makes a man happy while
his legs are being eaten by a lion, might it not
make me happy while my legs are still attached
to me and walking down the street ? " The Secu-
larists laboriously explain that martyrdoms do not
prove a faith to be true, as if anybody was ever
such a fool as to suppose that they did. What
they did prove, or, rather, strongly suggest, was
that something had entered human psychology
which was stronger than strong pain. If a young
girl, scourged and bleeding to death, saw nothing
but a crown descending on her from Go3, the first
mental step was not that her philosophy was
correct, but that she was certainly feeding on
something. But this particular point of psychology
does not arise at all in the modern cases of mere
public discomfort or inconvenience. The causes of

THE MODERN MARTYR 89

Miss Pankhurst's cheerfulness require no mystical
explanations. If she were being burned alive as a
witch, if she then looked up in unmixed rapture
and saw a ballot-box descending out of heaven,
then I should say that the inciderit, though not
conclusive, was frightfully impressive. It would
not prove logically that she ought to have the
vote, or that anybody ought to have the vote.
But it would prove this : that there was, for some
reason, a sacramental reality in the vote, that the
soul could take the vote and feed on it ; that it
was in itself a positive and overpowering pleasure,
capable of being pitted against positive and over-
powering pain.

I should advise modern agitators, therefore, to
give up this particular method : the method of
making very big efforts to get a very small punish-
ment. It does not really go down at all ; the
punishment is too small, and the efforts are too
obvious. It has not any of the effectiveness of
the old savage rrtartyrdom, because it does not
leave the victim absolutely alone with his cause,
so that his cause alone can support him. At the
same time it has about it that element of the
pantomimic and the absurd, which was the
cruellest part of the slaying and the mocking of
the real prophets. St. Peter was crucified upside
down as a huge inhuman joke ; but his human
seriousness survived the inhuman joke, because,
in whatever posture, he had died for his faith.
The modern martyr of the Pankhurst type courts
the absurdity without making the suffering strong
enough to eclipse the absurdity. She is like a
St. Peter who should deliberately stand on his

90 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

head for ten seconds and then expect to be
canonised for it.

Or, again, the matter might be put in this way.
Modern martyrdpms fail even as demonstrations,
because they do not prove even that the martyrs
are completely serious. I think, as a fact, that
the modern martyrs generally are serious, perhaps
a trifle too serious. But their martyrdom does not
prove it ; and the public does not always believe
it. Undoubtedly, as a fact, Dr. Clifford is quite
honourably indignant with what he considers to
be clericalism, but he does not prove it by having
his teapot sold ; for a man might easily have his
teapot sold as an actress has her diamonds stolen
as a personal advertisement. As a matter of
fact, Miss Pankhurst is quite in earnest about
votes for women. But she does not prove it by
being chucked out of meetings. A person might
be chucked out of meetings just as young men
are chucked out of music-halls for fun. But no
man has himself eaten by a lion as a personal
advertisement. No woman is broiled on a grid-
iron for fun. That is where the testimony of
St. Perpetua and St. Faith comes in. Doubtless
it is no fault of these enthusiasts that they are
not subjected to the old and searching penalties ;
very likely they would pass through them as
triumphantly as St. Agatha. I am simply advis-
ing them upon a point of policy, things being
as they are. And I say that the average man is
not impressed with their sacrifices simply because
they are not and cannot be more decisive than
the sacrifices which the average man himself
would make for mere fun if he were drunk. Drunk-

ON POLITICAL SECRECY 91

ards would interrupt meetings and take the
consequences. And as for selling a teapot, it is
an act, I imagine, in which any properly con-
stituted drunkard would take a positive pleasure.
The advertisement is not good enough ; it does
not tell. If I were really martyred for an opinion
(which is more improbable than words can say),
it would certainly only be for one or two of my
most central and sacred opinions. I might,
perhaps, be shot for England, but certainly not
for the British Empire. I might conceivably die
for political freedom, but I certainly wouldn't
die for Free Trade. But as for kicking up the
particular kind of shindy that the Suffragettes are
kicking up, I would as soon do it for my shallowest
opinion as for my deepest one. It never could be
anything worse than an inconvenience ; it never
could be anything better than a spree. Hence
the British public, and especially the working
classes, regard the whole demonstration with
fundamental indifference ; for, while it is a demon-
stration that probably is adopted from the most
fanatical motives, it is a demonstration which
might be adopted from the most frivolous.

ON POLITICAL SECRECY

ENERALLY, instinctively, in the absence of
any special reason, humanity hates the idea
of anything being hidden that is, it hates

the idea of anything being successfully hidden.

Hide-and-seek is a popular pastime ; but it

92 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

assumes the truth of the text, "Seek and ye shall
find." Ordinary mankind (gigantic and uncon-
querable in its power of joy) can get a great deal
of pleasure out of a game called "hide the thimble,"
but that is only because it is really a game of "see
the thimble." Suppose that at the end of such a
game the thimble had not been found at all ;
suppose its place was unknown for ever : the
result on the players would not be playful, it
would be tragic. That thimble would hag-ride
all their dreams. They would all die in asylums.
The pleasure is all in the poignant moment of
passing from not knowing to knowing. Mystery
stories are very popular, especially when sold at
sixpence ; but that is because the author of a
mystery story reveals. He is enjoyed not because
he creates mystery, but because he destroys
mystery. Nobody would have the courage to
publish a detective-story which left the problem
exactly where it found it. That would rouse
even the London public to revolution. No
one dare publish a detective-story that did not
detect.

There are three broad classes of the special
things in which human wisdom does permit
privacy. The first is the case I have mentioned
that of hide-and-seek, or the police novel, in
which it permits privacy only in order to explode
and smash privacy. The author makes first a
fastidious secret of how the Bishop was murdered,
only in order that he may at last declare, as
from a high tower, to the whole democracy
the great glad news that he was murdered by
the governess. In that case, ignorance is only

ON POLITICAL SECRECY 93

valued because being ignorant is the best and
purest preparation for receiving the horrible
revelations of high life. Somewhat in the same
way being an agnostic is the best and purest
preparation for receiving the happy revelations
of St. John.

This first sort of secrecy we may dismiss, for
its whole ultimate object is not to keep the secret,
but to tell it. Then there is a second and far more
important class of things which humanity does
agree to hide. They are so important that they
cannot possibly be discussed here. But every
one will know the kind of things I mean. In
connection with these, I wish to remark that
though they are, in one sense, a secret, they are
also always a "secret de Polichinelle." Upon
sex and such matters we are in a human free-
masonry ; the freemasonry is disciplined, but the
freemasonry is free. We are asked to be silent
about these things, but we are not asked to be
ignorant about them. On the contrary, the
fundamental human argument is entirely the
other way. It is the thing most common to
humanity that is most veiled by humanity. It is
exactly because we all know that it is there that
we need not say that it is there.

Then there is a third class of things on which
the best civilisation does permit privacy, does
resent all inquiry or explanation. This is in the
case of things which need not be explained,
because they cannot be explained, things too
airy, instinctive, or intangible caprices, sudden
impulses, and the more innocent kind of pre-
judice. A man must not be asked why he is

94 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

talkative or silent, for the simple reason that he
does not know. A man is not asked (even ia
Germany) why he walks slow or quick, simply
because he could not answer. A man must take
his own road through a wood, and make his owa
use of a holiday. And the reason is this : not
because he has a strong reason, but actually
because he has a weak reason ; because he has
a slight and fleeting feeling about the matter
which he eould not explain to a policeman, which
perhaps the very appearance of a policeman out
of the bushes might destroy. He must act on the
impulse, because the impulse is unimportant, and
he may never have the same impulse again. If
you like to put it so he must act on the impulse
because the impulse is not worth a moment's
thought. All these fancies men feel should be
private ; and even Fabians have never proposed
to interfere with them.

Now, for the last fortnight the newspapers have
been full of very varied comments upon the
problem of the secrecy of certain parts of our
political finance, and especially of the problem
of the party funds. Some papers have failed
entirely to understand what the quarrel is about.
They have urged that Irish members and Labour
members are also under the shadow, or, as some
have said, even more under it. The ground of
this frantic statement seems, when patiently
considered, to be simply this : that Irish and
Labour members receive money for what they do.
All persons, as far as I know, on this earth receive
money for what they do ; the only difference is
that some people, like the Irish members, do it.

ON POLITICAL SECRECY 95

I cannot imagine that any human being could
think any other human being capable of main-
taining the proposition that men ought not to
receive money. The simple point is that, as we
know that some money is given rightly and some
wrongly, an elementary common-sense leads us
to look with indifference at the money that is
given in the middle of Ludgate Circus, and to
look with particular suspicion at the money which
a man will not give unless he is shut up in a box
or a bathing-machine. In short, it is too silly
to suppose that anybody could ever have dis-
cussed the desirability of funds. The only thing
that even idiots could ever have discussed is the
concealment of funds. Therefore, the whole
question that we have to consider is whether the
concealment of political money-transactions, the
purchase of peerages, the payment of election
expenses, is a kind of concealment that falls under
any of the three classes I have mentioned as those
in which human custom and instinct does permit
us to conceal. I have suggested three kinds of
secrecy which are human and defensible. Can
this institution be defended by means of any of
them?

Now the question is whether this political
secrecy is of any of the kinds that can be called
legitimate. We have roughly divided legitimate
secrets into three classes. First comes the secret
that is only kept in order to be revealed, as in
the detective stories ; secondly, the secret which is
kept because everybody knows it, as in sex ; and
third, the secret which is kept because it is too
delicate and vague to be explained at all, as in

96 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

the choice of a country walk. Do any of these
broad human divisions cover such a case as that
of secrecy of the political and party finances ?
It would be absurd, and even delightfully absurd,
to pretend that any of them did. It would be
a wild and charming fancy to suggest that our
politicians keep political secrets only that they may
make political revelations. A modern peer only
pretends that he has earned his peerage in order
that he may more dramatically declare, with a
scream of scorn and joy, that he really bought
it. The Baronet pretends that he deserved his
title only in order to make more exquisite and
startling the grand historical fact that he did
not deserve it. Surely this sounds improbable.
Surely all our statesmen cannot be saving them-
selves up for the excitement of a death-bed
repentance. The writer of detective tales makes
a man a duke solely in order to blast him with
a charge of burglary. But surely the Prime
Minister does not make a man a duke solely in
order to blast him with a charge of bribery. No ;
the detective-tale theory of the secrecy of political
funds must (with a sigh) be given up.

Neither can we say that the thing is explained
by that second case of human secrecy which is
so secret that it is hard to discuss it in public.
A decency is preserved about certain primary
human matters precisely because every one knows
all about them. But the decency touching con-
tributions, purchases, and peerages is not kept
up because most ordinary men know what is
happening ; it is kept up precisely because most
ordinary men do not know what is happening.

ON POLITICAL SECRECY 97

The ordinary curtain of decorum covers normal
proceedings. But no one will say that being
bribed is a normal proceeding.

And if we apply the third test to this problem
of political secrecy, the case is even clearer and
even more funny. Surely no one will say that the
purchase of peerages and such things are kept
secret because they are so light and impulsive
and unimportant that they must be matters of
individual fancy. A child sees a -flower and for
the first time feels inclined to pick it. But surely
no one will say that a brewer sees a coronet
and for the first time suddenly thinks that he
would like to be a peer. The child's impulse
need not be explained to the police, for the simple
reason that it could not be explained to any-
body. But does any one believe that the laborious
political ambitions of modern commercial men
ever have this airy and incommunicable character ?
A man lying on the beach may throw stones into
the sea without any particular reason. But does
any one believe that the brewer throws bags of
gold into the party funds without any particular
reason ? This theory of the secrecy of political
money must also be regretfully abandoned ; and
with it the two other possible excuses as well.
This secrecy is one which cannot be justified as a
sensational joke nor as a common human free-
masonry, nor as an indescribable personal whim.
Strangely enough, indeed, it violates all three
conditions and classes at once. It is not hidden
in order to be revealed : it is hidden in order
to be hidden. It is not kept secret because it
is a common secret of mankind, but because

E

g8 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

mankind must not get hold of it. And it is
not kept secret because it is too unimportant to
be told, but because it is much too important to
bear telling. In short, the thing we have is the
real and perhaps rare political phenomenon of
au occult government. We have an exoteric and
an esoteric doctrine. England is really ruled by
priestcraft, but not by priests. We have in this
country all that has ever been alleged against
the evil side of religion ; the peculiar class with
privileges, the sacred words that are unpronounce-
able ; the important things known only to the few.
In fact we lack nothing except the religion.

EDWARD VII. AND SCOTLAND

I HAVE received a serious, and to me, at any
rate, an impressive remonstrance from the
Scottish Patriotic Association. It appears
that I recently referred to Edward VII. of Great
Britain and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith,
under the horrible description of the King of
England. The Scottish Patriotic Association
draws my attention to the fact that by the pro-
visions of the Act of Union, and the tradition of
nationality, the monarch should be referred to
as the King of Britain. The blow thus struck at
me is particularly wounding because it is particu-
larly unjust. I believe in the reality of the
independent nationalities under the British Crown
much more passionately and positively than any

EDWARD VII. AND SCOTLAND 99

other educated Englishman of my acquaintance
believes in it. I am quite certain that Scotland
is a nation ; I am Quite certain that nationality
is the key of Scotland ; I am quite certain that
all our success with Scotland has been due to the
fact that we have in spirit treated it as a nation.
I am quite certain that Ireland is a nation ; I am
quite certain that nationality is the key to Ireland ;
I am quite certain that all our failure in Ireland
arose from the fact that we would not in spirit
treat it as a nation. It would be difficult to find,
even among the innumerable examples that exist,
a stronger example of the immensely superior
importance of sentiment to what is called practi-
cality than this case of the two sister nations.
It is not that we have encouraged a Scotchman
to be rich ; it is not that we have encouraged a
Scotchman to be active ; it is not that we have
encouraged a Scotchman to be free. It is that we
have quite definitely encouraged a Scotchman
to be Scotch.

A vague, but vivid impression was received
from -all our writers of history, philosophy, and
rhetoric that the Scottish element was something
really valuable in itself, was something which even
Englishmen were forced to recognise and respect.
If we ever admitted the beauty of Ireland, it
was as something which might be loved by an
Englishman but which could hardly be respected
even by an Irishman. A Scotchman might be
proud of Scotland ; it was enough for an Irishman
that he could be fond of Ireland. Our success
with the two nations has been exactly propor-
tioned to our encouragement of their independent

ioo ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

national emotion ; the one that we would not
treat nationally has alone produced Nationalists.
The one nation that we would not recognise as
a nation in theory is the one that we have been
forced to recognise as a nation in arms. The
Scottish Patriotic Association has no need to draw
my attention to the importance of the separate
national sentiment or the need of keeping the
Border as a sacred line. The case is quite suffi-
ciently proved by the positive history of Scotland.
The place of Scottish loyalty to England has been
taken by English admiration of Scotland. They
do not need to envy us our titular leadership,
when we seem to envy them their separation.

I wish to make very clear my entire sympathy
with the national sentiment of the Scottish
Patriotic Association. But I wish also to make
clear this very enlightening comparison between
the fate of Scotch and of Irish patriotism. In
life it is always the little facts that express the
large emotions, and if the English once respected
Ireland as they respect Scotland, it would come
out in a hundred small ways. For instance,
there are crack regiments in the British Army
which wear the kilt the kilt which, as Macjaulay
says with perfect truth, was regarded by nine
Scotchmen out of ten as the dress of a thief.
The Highland officers carry a silver-hilted version
of the old barbarous Gaelic broadsword with a
basket-hilt, which split the skulls of so many
English soldiers at Killiecrankie and Prestonpans.
When you have a regiment of men in the British
Army carrying ornamental silver shillelaghs you
will have done the same thing for Ireland, and

EDWARD VII. AND SCOTLAND. 101

not before or when you mention Brian Boru
with the same intonation as Bruce.

Let me be considered therefore to have made
quite clear that I believe with a quite special
intensity in the independent consideration of Scot-
land and Ireland as apart from England. I believe
that, in the proper sense of the words, Scotland
is an independent nation, even if Edward VII.
is the King of Scotland. I believe that, in the
proper sense of words, Ireland is an independent
nation, even if Edward VII. -is King of Ireland.
But the fact is that I have an even bolder and
wilder belief than either of these. I believe that
England is an independent nation. I believe that
England also has its independent colour and
history, and meaning. I believe that England
could produce costumes quite as queer as the
kilt ; I believe that England has heroes fully as
untranslateable as Brian Boru, and consequently
I believe that Edward VII. is, among his innu-
merable other functions, really King of England.
If my Scotch friends insist, let us call it one of
his quite obscure, unpopular, and minor titles ;
one of his relaxations. A little while ago he was
Duke of Cornwall ; but for a family accident he
might still have been King of Hanover. Nor do
I think that we should blame the simple Cornish-
men if they spoke of him in a rhetorical moment
by his Cornish title, nor the well-meaning Hano-
verians if they classed him with Hanoverian
Princes.

Now it so happens that in the passage com-
plained of I said the King of England merely
because I meant the King of England. I was

102 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

speaking strictly and especially of English Kings,
of Kings in the tradition of the old Kings of
England. I wrote as an English nationalist keenly
conscious of the sacred boundary of the Tweed
that keeps (or used to keep) our ancient enemies
at bay. I wrote as an English nationalist resolved
for one wild moment to throw off the tyranny of
the Scotch and Irish who govern and oppress my
country. I felt that England was at least spiritu-
ally guarded against these surrounding nation-
alities. I dreamed that the Tweed was guarded
by the ghosts of Scropes and Percys ; I dreamed
that St. George's Channel was guarded by St.
George. And in this insular security I spoke
deliberately and specifically of the King of England,
of the representative of the Tudors and Planta-
genets. It is true that the two Kings of England,
of whom I especially spoke, Charles II. and George
III., had both an alien origin, not very recent
and not very remote. Charles II. came oi a
family originally Scotch. George III. came of a
family originally German. But the same, so far
as that goes, could be said of the English royal
houses when England stood quite alone. The
Plantagenets were originally a French family.
The Tudors were originally a Welsh family. But
I was not talking of the amount of English senti-
ment in the English Kings. I was talking of the
amount of English sentiment in the English treat-
ment and popularity of the English Kings. With
that Ireland and Scotland have nothing whatever
to do.

Charles II. may, for all I know, have not only
been King of Scotland ; he may, by virtue of his

EDWARD VII. AND SCOTLAND 103

temper and ancestry, have been a Scotch King of
Scotland. There was something Scotch about his
combination of clear-headedness with sensuality.
There was something Scotch about his combina-
tion of doing what he liked with knowing what
he was doing. But I was not talking of the
personality of Charles, which may have been
Scotch. I was talking of the popularity of Charles,
which was certainly English. One thing is quite
certain : whether or ijo he ever ceased to be a
Scotch man, he ceased as soon as he conveniently
could to be a Scotch King. He had actually tried
the experiment of being a national ruler north of
the Tweed, and his people liked him as little as
he liked them. Of Presbyterianism, of the
Scottish religion, he left on record the exquisitely
English judgment that it was "no religion for a
gentleman." His popularity then was purely
English ; his royalty was purely English ; and I
was using the words with the utmost narrowness
and deliberation when I spoke of this particular
popularity and royalty as the popularity and
royalty of a King of England. I said of the
English people specially that they like to pick up
the King's crown when he has dropped it. I do
not feel at all sure that this does apply to the Scotch
or the Irish. I think that the Irish would knock
his crown off for him. I think that the Scotch
would keep it for him after they had picked it up.
For my part, I should be inclined to adopt quite
the opposite method of asserting nationality.
Why should good Scotch nationalists call Edward
VII. the King of Britain ? They ought to call him
King Edward I. of Scotland. What is Britain ?

104 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

Where is Britain ? There is no such place. There
never was a nation of Britain ; there never was
a King of Britain ; unless perhaps Vortigern or
Uther Pendragon had a taste for the title. If
we are to develop our Monarchy, I should be
altogether in favour of developing it along the line
of local patriotism and of local proprietorship in
the King. I think that the Londoners ought to
call him the King of London, and the Liverpudlians
ought to call him the King of Liverpool. I do
x not go so far as to say that the people of Birming-
ham ought to call Edward VII. the King of
Birmingham ; for that would be high treason
to a holier and more established power. But I
think we might read in the papers : "The King
of Brighton left Brighton at half-past two this
afternoon," and then immediately afterwards,
'The King of Worthing entered Worthing at ten
minutes past three." Or, " The people of Mar-
gate bade a reluctant farewell to the popular King
of Margate this morning," and then, " His Majesty
the King of Ramsgate returned to his country and
capital this afternoon after his long sojourn in
strange lands." It might be pointed out that by
a curious coincidence the departure of the King of
Oxford occurred a very short time before the
triumphal arrival of the King of Reading. I
cannot imagine any method which would more
increase the kindly and normal relations between
the Sovereign and his people. Nor do I think
that such a method would be in any sense a de-
preciation of the royal dignity ; for, as a matter
of fact, it would put the King upon the same
platform with the gods. The saints, the most

THOUGHTS AROUND KEOPENICK 105

exalted of human figures, were also the most local.
It was exactly the men whom we most easily
connected with heaven whom we also most easily
connected with earth.

THOUGHTS AROUND KOEPENICK

A FAMOUS and epigrammatic author said that
life copied literature ; it seems clear that life
really caricatures it. I suggested recently
that the Germans submitted to, and even admired,
a solemn and theatrical assertion of authority.
A few hours after I had sent up my " copy/'
I saw the first announcement of the affair of the
comic Captain at Koepenick. The most absurd
part of this absurd fraud (at least, to English eyes)
is one which, oddly enough, has received com-
paratively little comment. I mean the point at
which the Mayor asked for a warrant, and the
Captain pointed to the bayonets of his soldiery
and said. " These are my authority." One
would have thought any one would have known
that no soldier would talk like that. The dupes
were blamed for not knowing that the man wore
the wrong cap or the wrong sash, or had his sword
buckled on the wrong way ; but these are techni-
calities which they might surely be excused for
not knowing. I certainly should not know if a
soldier's sash were on inside out or his cap on
behind before. But I should know uncommonly
well that genuine professional soldiers do not talk

E-r

io6 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

like Adelphi villains and utter theatrical epigrams
in praise of abstract violence.

We can see this more clearly, perhaps, if we
suppose it to be the case of any other dignified
and clearly distinguishable profession. Suppose
a Bishop called upon me. My great modesty
and my rather distant reverence for the higher
clergy might lead me certainly to a strong sus-
picion that any Bishop who called on me was a
bogus Bishop. But if I wished to test his geniune-
ness I should not dream of attempting to do so by
examining the shape of his apron or the way his
gaiters were done up. I have not the remotest
idea of the way his gaiters ought to be done up.
A very vague approximation to an apron would
probably take me in ; and if he behaved like an
approximately Christian gentleman he would be
safe enough from my detection. But suppose the
Bishop, the moment he entered the room, fell on
his knees on the mat, clasped his hands, and
poured out a flood of passionate and somewhat
hysterical extempore prayer, I should say at once
and without the smallest hesitation, " Whatever
else this man is, he is not an elderly and wealthy
cleric of the Church of England. They don't do
such things." Or suppose a man came to me
pretending to be a qualified doctor, and flourished
a stethoscope, or what he said was a stethoscope.
I am glad to say that I have not even the remotest
notion of what a stethoscope looks like ; so that if
he flourished a musical-box or a coffee-mill it
would be all one to me. But I do think that I am
not exaggerating my own sagacity if I say that I
should begin to suspect the doctor if on entering

THOUGHTS AROUND KOEPENICK 107

my room he flung his legs and arms about, crying
wildly, r ' Health! Health! priceless gift of
Nature ! I possess it ! I overflow with it ! I
yearn to impart it ! Oh, the sacred rapture of
imparting health ! " In that case I should sus-
pect him of being rather in a position to receive
than to offer medical superintendence.

Now, it is no exaggeration at all to say that
any one who has ever known any soldiers (I can
only answer for English and Irish and Scotch
soldiers) would find it just as easy to believe that a
real Bishop would grovel on the carpet in a re-
ligious ecstasy, or that a real doctor would dance
about the drawing-room to show the invigorating
effects of his own medicine, as to believe that a
soldier, when asked for his authority, would point
to a lot of shining weapons and declare symboli-
cally that might was right. Of course, a real
soldier would go rather red in the face and huskily
repeat the proper formula, whatever it was, a?
that he came in the King's name.

Soldiers have many faults, but they have tine
redeeming merit ; they are never worshippers of
force. Soldiers more than any other men are
taught severely and systematically that might is
not right. The fact is obvious. The might is in
the hundred men who obey. The right (or what is
held to be right) is in the one man who commands
them. They learn to obey symbols, arbitrary
things, stripes on an arm, buttons on a coat, a
title, a flag. These may be artificial things ; they
may be unreasonable things ; they may, if you
will, be'wicked things ; but they are weak things.
They are not Force, and they do not look like

io8 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

Force. They are parts of an idea : of the idea of
discipline ; if you will, of the idea of tyranny ;
but still an idea. No soldier could possibly say
that his own bayonets were his authority. No
soldier could possibly say that he came in the
name of his own bayonets. It would be as absurd
as if a postman said that he came inside his bag.
I do not, as I have said, underrate the evils that
really do arise from militarism and the military
ethic. It tends to give people wooden faces and
sometimes wooden heads. It tends moreover
(both through its specialisation and through its
constant obedience) to a certain loss of real inde-
pendence and strength of character. This has
almost always been found when people made the
mistake of turning the soldier into a statesman,
under the mistaken impression that he was a
strong man. The Duke of Wellington, for instance,
was a strong soldier and therefore a weak states-
man. But the soldier is always, by the nature of
things, loyal to something. And as long as one is
loyal to something one can never be a worshipper
of mere force. For mere force, violence in the
abstract, is the enemy of anything we love. To
love anything is to see it at once under lowering
skies of danger. Loyalty implies loyalty in mis-
fortune ; and when a soldier has accepted any
nation's uniform he has already accepted its
defeat.

Nevertheless, it does appear to be possible in
Germany for a man to point to fixed bayonets and
say, " These are my authority," and yet to con-
vince ordinarily sane men that he is a soldier. If
this is so, it does really seem to point to some

THOUGHTS AROUND KOEPENICK 109

habit of high-falutin* in the German nation, such
as that of which I spoke previously. It almost
looks as if the advisers, and even the officials, of
the German Army had become infected in some
degree with the false and feeble doctrine that
might is right. As this doctrine is invariably
preached by physical weaklings like Nietzsche it
is a very serious thing even to entertain the
supposition that it is affecting men who have
really to do military work It would be the end
of German soldiers to be affected by German
philosophy. Energetic people use energy as a
means, but only very tired people ever use energy
as a reason. Athletes, go in for games, because
athletes desire glory. Invalids go in for calisthenics;
for invalids (alone of all human beings) desire
strength. So long as the German Army points
to its heraldic eagle and says, " I come in the
name of this fierce but fabulous animal/' the
German Army will be all right. If ever it says,
" I come in the name of bayonets/' the bayonets
will break like glass, for only the weak exhibit
strength without an aim.

At the same time, as I said before, do not let us
forget our own faults. Do not let us forget them
any the more easily because they are the opposite
to the German faults. Modern England is too
prone to present the spectacle of a person who is
enormously delighted because he has not got the
contrary disadvantages to his own. The English-
man is always saying " My house is not damp "
at the moment when his house is on fire. The
Englishman is always saying, " I have thrown off
all traces of anaemia " in the middle of a fit of

no ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

apoplexy. Let us always remember that if an
Englishman wants to swindle English people, he
does not dress up in the uniform of a soldier. If
an Englishman wants to swindle English people he
would as soon think of dressing up in the uniform
of a messenger boy. Everything in England is
done unofficially, casually, by conversations and
cliques. The one Parliament that really does rule
England is a secret Parliament ; the debates of
which must not be published the Cabinet. The
debates of the Commons are sometimes important ;
but only the debates in the Lobby, never the
debates in the House. Journalists do control
public opinion ; but it is not controlled by the
arguments they publish it is controlled by the
arguments between the editor and sub-editor,
which they do not publish. This casualness
is our English vice. It is at once casual and
secret. Our public life is conducted privately.
Hence it follows that if an English swindler
wished to impress us, the last thing he would
think of doing would be to put on a uniform.
He would put on a polite slouching air and a
careless, expensive suit of clothes ; he would
stroll up to the Mayor, be so awfully sorry to
disturb him, find he had forgotten his card-case,
mention, as if he were ashamed of it, that he was
the Duke of Mercia, and carry the whole thing
through with the air of a man who could get two
hundred witnesses and two thousand retainers, but
who was too tired to call any of them. And if
he did it very well I strongly suspect that he
would be as successful as the indefensible Captain
at Koepenick.

THOUGHTS AROUND KEOPENICK HI

Our tendency for many centuries past has been,
not so much towards creating an aristocracy
(which may or may not be a good thing in itself),
as towards substituting an aristocracy for eve^v-
thing else. In England we have an aristocracy
instead of a religion. The nobility are to the
English poor what the saints and the fairies
are to the Irish poor, what the large devil with
a black face was to the Scotch poor the poetry
of life. In the same way in England we have an
aristocracy instead of a Government. We rely on
a certain good humour and education in the
upper class to interpret to us our contradictory
Constitution. No educated man born of woman
will be quite so absurd as the system that he has
to administer. In short, we do not get good laws
to restrain bad people. We get good people to
restrain bad laws. And last of all we in England
have an aristocracy instead of an Army. We have
an Army of which the officers are proud of their
families and ashamed of their uniforms. If I were
a king of any country whatever, and one of my
officers were ashamed of my uniform, I should be
ashamed of my officer. Beware, then, of the
really well-bred and apologetic gentleman whose
clothes are at once quiet and fashionable, whose
manner is at once diffident and frank. Beware
how you admit him into your domestic secrets, for
he may be a bogus Earl. Or, worse still, a real
one.

H2 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

THE BOY

I HAVE no sympathy with international aggres-
sion when it is taken seriously, but I have a
certain dark and wild sympathy with it when
it is quite absurd. Raids are all wrong as practical
politics, but they are human and imaginable as
practical jokes. In fact, almost any act of ragging
or violence can be forgiven on this strict condition
that it is of no use at all to anybody. If the
aggressor gets anything out of it, then it is quite
unpardonable. It is damned by the least hint of
utility or profit. A man of spirit and breeding
may brawl, but he does not steal. A gentleman
knocks; off his friend's hat ; but he does not annex
his friend's hat. For this reason (as Mr. Belloc
has pointed out somewhere), the very militant
French people have always returned after their
immense raids the raids of Godfrey the Crusader,
the raids of Napoleon ; " they are sucked back,
having accomplished nothing but an epic."

Sometimes I see small fragments of information
in the newspapers which make my heart leap with
an irrational patriotic sympathy. I have had the
misfortune to be left comparatively cold by many
of the enterprises and proclamations of my country
in recent times. But the other day I found in the
Tribune the following paragraph, which I may be
permitted to set down as an example of the kind
of international outrage with which I have by far
the most instinctive sympathy. There is some-
thing attractive, too, in the austere simplicity
with which the affair is set forth

THE BOY 113

" Geneva, Oct. 31.

" The English schoolboy Allen, who was arrested
at Lausanne railway station on Saturday, for
having painted red the statue of General Jomini
of Payerne, was liberated yesterday, after paying
a fine of 24. Allen has proceeded to Germany,
where he will continue his studies. The people
of Payerne are indignant, and clamoured for his
detention in prison/'

Now I have no doubt that ethics and social
necessity require a contrary attitude, but I will
freely confess that my first emotions on reading
of this exploit were those of profound and ele-
mental pleasure. There is something so large
and simple about the operation of painting a
whole stone General a bright red. Of course
I can understand that the people of Payerne
were indignant. They had passed to their homes
at twilight through the streets of that beautiful
city (or is it a province ?), and they had seen
against the silver ending of the sunset the grand
grey figure of the hero of that land remaining
to guard the town under the stars. It certainly
must have been a shock to come out in the broad
white morning and find a large vermilion General
staring under the staring sun. I do not blame
them at all for clamouring for the schoolboy's
detention in prison ; I dare say a little detention
in prison would do him no harm. Still, I think
the immense act has something about it human
and excusable ; and when I endeavour to analyse
the reason of this feeling I find it to lie, not
in the fact that the thing was big or bold or sue-

H 4 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

cessful, but in the fact that the thing was perfectly
useless to everybody, including the person who
did it. The raid ends in itself; and so Master
Allen is sucked back again, having accomplished
nothing but an epic.

There is one thing which, in the presence of
average modern journalism, is perhaps worth
saying in connection with such an idle matter
as this. The morals of a matter like this are
exactly like the morals of anything else ; they
are concerned with mutual contract, or with the
rights of independent human lives. But the whole
modern world, or at any rate the whole modern
Press, has a perpetual and consuming terror of
plain morals. Men always attempt to avoid
condemning a thing upon merely moral grounds.
If I beat my grandmother to death to-morrow in
the middle of Battersea Park, you may be perfectly
certain that people will say everything about it
except the simple and fairly obvious fact that
it is wrong. Some will call it insane ; that is,
will accuse it of a deficiency of intelligence.
This is not necessarily true at all. You could not
tell whether the act was unintelligent or not unless
you knew my grandmother. Some will call it
vulgar, disgusting, and the rest of it ; that is,
they will accuse it of a lack of manners. Perhaps
it does show a lack of manners ; but this is scarcely
its most serious disadvantage. Others will talk
about the loathsome spectacle and the revolting
scene ; that is, they will accuse it of a deficiency
of art, or aesthetic beauty. This again depends
on the circumstances : in order to be quite certain
that the appearance of the old lady has definitely

THE BOY 115

deteriorated under the process of being beaten
to death, it is necessary for the philosophical
critic to be quite certain how ugly she was before.
Another school of thinkers will say that the
action is lacking in efficiency : that it is an
uneconomic waste of a good grandmother. But
that could only depend on the value, which is
again an individual matter. The only real point
that is worth mentioning is that the action is
wicked, because your grandmother has a right
not to be beaten to death. But of this simple
moral explanation modern journalism has, as I
say, a standing fear. It will call the action any-
thing else mad, bestial, vulgar, idiotic, rather
than call it sinful.

One example can be found in such cases as that
of the prank of the boy and the statue. When
some trick of this sort is played, the newspapers
opposed to it always describe it as " a senseless
joke." What is the good of saying that ? Every
joke is a senseless joke. A joke is by its nature
a protest against sense. It is no good attacking
nonsense for being successfully nonsensical. Of
course it is nonsensical to paint a celebrated
Italian General a bright red ; it is as nonsensical
as " Alice in Wonderland." It is also, in my
opinion, very nearly as funny. But the real
answer to the affair is not to say that it is non-
sensical or even to say that it is not funny, but
to point out that it is wrong to spoil statues
which belong to other people. If the modern
world will not insist on having some sharp and
definite moral law, capable of resisting the counter-
attractions of art and humour, the modern world

u6 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

will simply be given over as a spoil to anybody
who can manage to do a nasty thing in a nice
way. Every murderer who can murder enter-
tainingly will be allowed to murder. Every
burglar who burgles in really humorous attitudes
will burgle as much as he likes.

There is another case of the thing that I mean.
Why on earth do the newspapers, in describing
a dynamite outrage or any other political assassi-
nation, call it a " dastardly outrage " or a
cowardly outrage ? It is perfectly evident that
it is not dastardly in the least. It is perfectly
evident that it is about as cowardly as the Chris-
tians going to the lions. The man who does it
exposes himself to the chance of being torn in
pieces by two thousand people. What the thing
is, is not cowardly, but profoundly and detestably
wicked. The man who does it is very infamous
and very brave. But, again, the explanation is
that our modern Press would rather appeal to
physical arrogance, or to anything, rather than
appeal to right and wrong.

In most of the matters of modern England,
the real difficulty is that there is a negative re-
volution without a positive revolution. Positive
aristocracy is breaking up without any particular
appearance of positive democracy taking its place.
The polished' class is becoming less polished with-
out becoming less of a class ; the nobleman who
becomes a guinea-pig keeps all his privileges but
loses some of his tradition ; he becomes less of
a gentleman without becoming less of a noble-
man. In the same way (until some recent and
happy revivals) it seemed highly probable that

THE BOY 117

the Church of England would cease to be a religion
long before it had ceased to be a Church. And in
the same way, the vulgarisation of the old, simple
middle class does not even have the advantage of
doing away with class distinctions ; the vulgar
man is always the most distinguished, for the
very desire to be distinguished is vulgar.

At the same time, it must be remembered that
when a class has a morality it does not follow that
it is an adequate morality. The middle-class
ethic was inadequate for some purposes ; so is
the public-school ethic, the ethic of the upper
classes. On this last matter of the public schools
Dr. Spenser, the Head Master of University
College School, has lately made some valuable
observations. But even he, I think, overstates
the claim of the public schools. " The strong
point of the English public schools," he says,
" has always lain in their efficiency as agencies
for the formation of character and for the incul-
cation of the great notion of obligation which
distinguishes a gentleman. On the physical and
moral sides the public-school men of England
are, I believe, unequalled. " And he goes on to
say that it is on the mental side that they are
defective. But, as a matter of fact, the public-
school tra : ning is in the strict sense defective
upon the moral side also ; it leaves out about
half of morality. Its just claim is that, like the
old middle class (and the Zulus), it trains some
virtues and therefore suits some people for some
situations. Put an old English merchant to serve
in an army and he would have been irritated and
clumsy. Put the men from English public schools

n8 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

to rule Ireland, and they make the greatest hash
in human history.

Touching the morality of the public schools,
I will take one point only, which is enough to
prove the case. People have got into their heads
an extraordinary dea that English public-school
boys and English youth generally are taught to
tell the truth. They are taught absolutely nothing
of the kind. At no English public school is it
even suggested, except by accident, that it is a
man's duty to tell the truth. What is suggested
is something entirely different : that it is a man's
duty not to tell lies. So completely does this
mistake soak through all civilisation that we hardly
ever think even of the difference between the two
things. When we say to a child, " You must tell
the truth," we do merely mean that he must refrain
from verbal inaccuracies. But the thing we never
teach at all is the general duty of telling the truth,
of giving a complete and fair picture of anything
we are talking about, of not misrepresenting,
not evading, not suppressing, not using plausible
arguments that we know to be unfair, not selecting
unscrupulously to prove an ex parte case, not
telling all the nice stories about the Scotch, and
all the nasty stories about the Irish, not pretending
to be disinterested when you are really angry, not
pretending to be angry when you are really only
avaricious. The one thing that is never taught
by any chance in the atmosphere of public schools
is exactly that that there is a whole truth of
things, and that in knowing it and speaking it
we are happy.

If any one has the smallest doubt of this neglect

COUNSELS OF PERFECTION 119

of truth in public schools he can kill his doubt
with one plain question. Can any one on earth
believe that if the seeing and telling of the whole
truth were really one of the ideals of the English
governing class, there could conceivably exist
such a thing as the English party system ? Why,
the English party system is founded upon the
principle that telling the whole truth does not
matter. It is founded upon the principle that
half a truth is better than no politics. Our system
deliberately turns a crowd of men who might
be impartial into irrational partisans. It teaches
some of them to tell lies and all of them to believe
lies. It gives every man an arbitrary brief that
he has to work up as best he may and defend as
best he can. It turns a room full of citizens into
a room full of barristers. I know that it has many
charms and virtues, fighting and good-fellowship ;
it has all the charms and virtues of a game. I
only say that it would be a stark impossibility in
a nation which believed in telling the truth.

LIMERICKS AND COUNSELS OF
PERFECTION

IT is customary to remark that modern problems
cannot easily be attacked because they are
so complex. In many cases I believe it is
really because they are so simple. Nobody would
believe in such simplicity of scoundrelism even
if it were pointed out. People would say that
the truth was a change of mere melodramatic

120 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

villainy ; forgetting that nearly all villains really
are melodramatic. Thus, for instance, we say that
some good measures are frustrated or some bad
officials kept in power by the press and confusion
of public business ; whereas very often the reason
is simple healthy human bribery. And thus espec-
ially we say that the Yellow Press is exaggerative,
over-emotional, illiterate, and anarchical, and a
hundred other long words ; whereas the only
objection to it is that it tells lies. We waste our
fine intellects in finding exquisite phraseology to
fit a man, when in a well-ordered society we
ought to be finding handcuffs to fit him.

This criticism of the modern type of righteous
indignation must have come into many people's
minds, I think, in reading Dr. Horton 's eloquent
expressions of disgust at the " corrupt Press/'
especially in connection with the Limerick craze.
Upon the Limerick craze itself, I fear Dr. Horton
will not have much effect ; such fads perish before
one has had time to kill them. But Dr. Horton 's
protest may really do good if it enables us to
come to some clear understanding about what is
really wrong with the popular Press, and which
means it might be useful and which permissible
to use for its reform. We do not want a censor-
ship of the Press ; but we are long past talking
about that. At present it is not we that silence
the Press ; it is the Press that silences us. It is
not a case of the Commonwealth settling how
much the editors shall say ; it is a case of the
editors settling how much the Commonwealth
shall know. If we attack the Press we shall be
rebelling, not repressing. But shall we attack it ?

COUNSELS OF PERFECTION 121

Now it is just here that the chief difficulty
occurs. It arises from the very rarity and recti-
tude of those minds which commonly inaugurate
such crusades. I have the warmest respect for
Dr. Morton's thirst after righteousness ; but it has
always seemed to me that his righteousness would
be more effective without his refinement. The
curse of the Nonconformists is .their universal
refinement. They dimly connect being good with
being delicate, and even dapper ; with not being
grotesque or loud or violent ; with not sitting
down on one's hat. Now it is always a pleasure
to be loud and violent, and sometimes it is a
duty. Certainly it has nothing to do with sin ;
a man can be loudly and violently virtuous nay,
he can be loudly and violently saintly, though that
is not the type of saintliness that we recognise
in Dr. Horton. And as for sitting on one's hat,
if it is done for any sublime object (as, for instance,
to amuse the children), it is obviously an act of
very beautiful self-sacrifice, the destruction and
surrender of the symbol of personal dignity upon
the shrine of public festivity. Now it will not
do to attack the modern editor merely for being
unrefined, like the great mass of mankind. We
must be able to say that he is immoral, not that
he is undignified or ridiculous. I do not mind
the Yellow Press editor sitting on his hat. My
only objection to him begins to dawn, when he
attempts to sit on my hat ; or, indeed (as is at
present the case), when he proceeds to sit on my
head.

But in reading between the lines of Dr. Horton 's
invective one continually feels that he is not only

122 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

angry with the popular Press for being unscrupu-
lous : he is partly angry with the popular Press
for being popular. He is not only irritated with
Limericks for causing a mean money-scramble ;
he is also partly irritated with Limericks for being
Limericks. The enormous size of the levity gets
on his nerves, like the glare and blare of Bank
Holiday. Now this is a motive which, however
human and natural, must be strictly kept out of
the way. It takes all sorts to make a world ; and
it is not in the least necessary that everybody
should have that love of subtle and unobtrusive
perfections in the matter of manners or literature
which does often go with the type of the ethical
idealist. It is not in the least desirable that every-
body should, be earnest. It is highly desirable
that everybody should be honest, but that is a
thing that can go quite easily with a coarse and
cheerful character. But the ineffectualness of
most protests against the abuse of the Press has
been very largely due to the instinct of democracy
(and the instinct of democracy is like the instinct
of one woman, wild but quite right ) that the
people who were trying to purify the Press were
also trying to refine it ; and to this the democracy
very naturally and very justly objected. We are
justified in enforcing good morals, for they belong
to all mankind ; but we are not justified in en-
forcing good manners, for good manners always
mean our own manners. We have no right to
purge the popular Press of all that we think vulgar
or trivial. Dr. Horton may possibly loathe and
detest Limericks just as I loathe and detest
riddles ; but I have no right to call them flippant

COUNSELS OF PERFECTION 123

and unprofitable ; there are wild people in the
world who like riddles. I am so afraid of this
movement passing off into mere formless rhetoric
and platform passion that I will even come close
to the earth and lay down specifically some of the
things that, in my opinion, could be, and ought to
be, done to reform the Press.

First, I would make a law, if there is none such
at present, by which an editor, proved to have
published false news without reasonable verifica-
tion, should simply go to prison. This is not a
question of influences or atmospheres ; the thing
could be carried out as easily and as practically
as the punishment of thieves and murderers. Of
course there would be the usual statement that the
guilt was that of a subordinate. Let the accused
editor have the right of proving this if he can ;
if he does, let the subordinate be tried and go to
prison. Two or three good rich editors and pro-
prietors properly locked up would take the sting
out of the Yellow Press better than centuries of
Dr. Horton.

Second, it is impossible to pass over altogether
the most unpleasant, but the most important part
of this problem. I will deal with it as distantly
as possible. I do not believe there is any harm
whatever in reading about murders ; rather, if any-
thing, good ; for the thought of death operates
very powerfully with the poor in the creation of
brotherhood and a sense of human dignity. I do
not believe there is a pennyworth of harm in the
police news, as such. Even divorce news, though
contemptible enough, can really in most cases be
left to the discretion of grown people ; and how

124 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

far children get hold of such things is a problem
for the home and not for the nation. But there
is a certain class of evils which a healthy man or
woman can actually go through life without know-
ing anything about at all. These, I say, should
be stamped and blackened out of every newspaper
with the thickest black of the Russian censor.
Such cases should either be always tried in camera
or reporting them should be a punishable offence.
The common weakness of Nature and the sins
that flesh is heir to we can leave people to find
in newspapers. Men can safely see in the papers
what they have already seen in the streets. They
may safely find in their journals what they have
already found in themselves. But we do not want
the imaginations of rational and decent people
clouded with the horrors of some obscene insanity
which has no more to do with human life than
the man in Bedlam who thinks he is a chicken.
And, if this vile matter is admitted, let it be
simply with a mention of the Latin or legal name
of the crime, and with no details whatever. As
it is, exactly the reverse is true. Papers are per-
mitted to terrify and darken the fancy of the young
with innumerable details, but not permitted to
state in clean legal language what the thing is
about. They are allowed to give any fact about
the thing except the fact that it is a sin.

Third, I would do my best to introduce every-
where the practice of signed articles. Those who
urge the advantages of anonymity are either people
who do not realise the special peril of our time
or they are people who are profiting by it. It is
true, but futile, for instance, to say that there is

ANONYMITY AND FURTHER COUNSELS 125

something noble in being nameless when a whole
corporate body is bent on a consistent aim : as in
an army or men building a cathedral. The point
of modern newspapers is that there is no such
corporate body and common aim ; but each man
can use the authority of the paper to further his
own private fads and his own private finances.

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.

126 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

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 anony-
mously 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 anony-
mity 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^joumalists in the position
of a much w r orse 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. Sup-
pose, 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. Unfor-
tunately, 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,

ANONYMITY AND FURTHER COUNSELS 127

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 excite-
ment 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 share-
holders. If (as is far more common in this singu-
larly 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 Man-
chester 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

128 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

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

ANONYMITY AND FURTHER COUNSELS 129

poet or a caricaturist. He " makes up " the
paper as man " makes up " a fairy tale, he con-
siders 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 .dea 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 Demo-
cracy.

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 eyar seen.

130 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

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 im-
portant speech, there are several courses which
the reporter might take without being unreason-
able. 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
mislead ng.

The present method is this : the reporter sits

ON THE CRYPTIC AND THE ELLIPTIC 131

listening to a tide of words which he does not
try to understand, and does not, generally speak-
ing, even try to take down ; he waits until some-
thing 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 para-
graph 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

I 3 2 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

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 Piluni 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 con-
fusion." 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
repnrt some of the speech. He might say" Mr.
Mark Antony, in the course of his speech, said

" * When that the poor have cried Ceesar 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

ON THE CRYPTIC AND THE ELLIPTIC 133

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, con-
ceded 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 Gesar,
which proved that he had the most benevolent
designs towards the Roman people. 11 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 con-
nection at all. It would turn out something like
this : " Mr. Mark Antony wished for his audi-
ence'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

134 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

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, be-
cause they are meant to be read, and not to be
heard. And exactly because they are more care-
ful and elaborate, they are not so likely to be
worthy of a careful and elaborate report. They
are not interesting enough. So the moral cowar-
dice 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 re-
porting. 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.

ON THE CRYPTIC AND THE ELLIPTIC 135

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 con-
taining 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/ 1
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 con-
demned to be always trying to write like George
R. Sims, and succeeding, in spite of themselves, in
writing like Maeterlinck. That combination of

136 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

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 particu-
larly 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 in-
risible 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 Brown-
ing (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 mis-
representation 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

THE WORSHIP OF THE WEALTHY 137

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 straight-
forward 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 attri-
buted 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

F :

138 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

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 atmo-
sphere of awe and mystery by the simple operation
of dealing almost entirely in negatives. Suppose
you are writing a sympathetic study of Mr. Pier-

THE WORSHIP OF THE WEALTHY 139

pont Morgan. Perhaps there is not much to say
about what he does thinly, 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 trans-
cendental 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.

140 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

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 sub-
stantially 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 poli-
ticians. I mean their death. When we have
been sufficiently bored with the account of the

THE WORSHIP OF THE WEALTHY 141

simple costume of the millionaire, which is gene-
rally 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 unmean-
ing 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 mean-
ing. 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,'*

I 4 2 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

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 hon-
ourable 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 at-
tended 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 busi-
ness 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 water-
ing-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 philo-
sophy 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

SCIENCE AND RELIGION

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. 1 ' 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, oij 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

144 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

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 corre-
sponding 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 salva-
tion 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 sup-
pose 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

SCIENCE AND RELIGION 145

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 some-
thing 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

146 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

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 them-
selves. 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 con-
jectures 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 under-
stand. 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

SCIENCE AND RELIGION 147

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 dis-
turbed 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 objec-
tion 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.

148 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

THE METHUSELAHITE

I SAW in a newspaper paragraph the other day
the following entertaining and deeply philo-
sophical 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 tenents 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 discuss-
ing 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 liter-
ature is simply to cut a long story short ; that is

THE METHUSELAHITE 149

why our modern books of philosophy are never
literature. That soldier had iii him the very soui
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 aU
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 PrimordiaJ Energy in Nature . . ." " Methu-
selahite," 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, some-
what 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

150 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

the praise of some old vice. We have had the
sophist who defends cruelty, and calls it mascu-
linity. 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 ait. 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 un-
healthy 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 conscious-
ness ? " 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 there ? '
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*

SPIRITUALISM 151

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 Spirit-
ualism. 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 som 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

152 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

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 philo-
sophical 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 Sbout the butler
or the postman, then it is serious, because it is
universal. So far from it being irreverent to use

SPIRITUALISM 153

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 con-
clusion that the printers were right. The demo-
cracy *is always right. Whatever is cosmic is
comic.

Moreover, there is another reason that makes it
almost inevitable that we should defend gro-
tesquely what we believe seriously. It is that all
grotesqueness is itself intimately related to seri-
ousness. 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
aflling down. No one sees a delicate absurdity
in a stone falling down. No man stops in the

154 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

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 I 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 Spirit-
ualism. 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 sub-
stance of his attack resolves itself into two pro-
positions. First, he asks me what right I have to
talk about Spiritualism at all, as I admit I have
never been to a stance. 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.

SPIRITUALISM 155

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 million-
aires 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 jour-
nalism.

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 investiga-
tion 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

156 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

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 re-
ligionist 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 sec
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 some-
what amusing sequel to the frenzied and
even fantastic caution with which they were

THE ERROR OF IMPARTIALITY 157

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 some-
times made an objection, for instance, to a juror
that he has formed some primd-facie opinion upon
a case : if he can be forced under sharp question-
ing 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 jury-
mien who have not formed opinions and leaving
all the jurymen who have formed opinions, it
seems highly probable that we shall only succeed
ki 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

158 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

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 ignor-
ant. 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 per-
fection 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 con-
clusion ; 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

THE ERROR OF IMPARTIALITY 159

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 indigna-
tion : " Well, can you tell me any man of intellect,
great in science or philosophy, who accepted the
miraculous ? " I said, " With pleasure. Des-
cartes, Dr. Joljnson, 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 con-
clusion 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 o!
men whom history has proved especially and
supremely capable of going quite wrong in all

160 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

directions, it is the class of highly intellectual men*
I would always prefer to go by the bulk of human-
ity ; 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

AA 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

PHONETIC SPELLING 161

words. Half our speech consists of similes that
ernind us of no similarity ; of pictorial phrases
;hat call up no picture ; of historical allusions the
origin of which we have forgotten. Take any
nstance on which the eye happens to alight. I
;aw in the paper some days ago that the well-
biown leader of a certain religious party wrote to
\ 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, 1 '
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 gentle-
man 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 Npw 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 spell-
ing might extinguish it altogether. Suppose any
sentence you like: suppose a man says, "Re-

G

162 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

publics gejierally encourage holidays." It looks
like the top line of a copy-book. Now, it is per-
fectly 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 Con-
stitution with a President. A Republican is a man
who prefers to think of Government as imper-
sonal ; 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 "genetically," and is akin to such words as
"generation" or "regenerate." "Pigs are gene-
rally 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

PHONETIC SPELLING 163

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 West-
minster 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 phoneti-
cally, 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 magis-
trate noticed the circumstance, but the word
" polite " and the word " police " have the same
origin and meaning. Politeness means the atmo-
sphere and ritual of the city, the symbol of human
civilisation. The policeman means the representa-
tive 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 pol ce-
man without our thoughts instantly flying to the

164 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

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,
watch ng 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 police-
man is a machine for the smoothing and sweeten-
ng 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 T ,ve 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-arrant. 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 obli-
gation of romantic grace if his name were spelt
phonetically, supposing that it could be spelt

HUMANITARIANISM AND STRENGTH 165

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 qu te suddenly. This does seem to me the
case against any extreme revolution in spelling.
If you spell a word wrong you have some tempta-
tion to think it wrong.

HUMANITARIANISM AND STRENGTH

SOMEBODY writes complaining of someth : ng
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 retrogres-
sion. I could make out that the world has been
growing more democratic, for the English franch se
has certainly grown more democratic. I could
also make out that the world has been grow ng
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

166 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

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 khald 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 punish-
ments in Egypt. But I may suggest one broad
reality to be observed by both sides, and which is,
generally speaking, observed by neither. What-
ever 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 contro-
versialists 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

HUMANITARIANISM AND STRENGTH 167

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 Christen-
dom. 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 English-
men, 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 con-

168 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

sisting 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 o!
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 con-
jectural, 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 h s 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

HUMANITARIANISM AND STRENGTH 169

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 sugges-
tions 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

G-r

170 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

solemnity about the forces outside man, the note
of it is barbaric. When men talk much about
heredity and environment they are almost bar-
barians. 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 un-
happy 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 ol
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 dis-
position to talk about material substances instead
of about ideas. The old civilisation talked about
the s n of gluttony or excess. We talk about the

HUMANITARIANISM AND STRENGTH 171

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

172 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

doctrinal "Declaration of Independence " to make
the United States of America. You cannot agree
about nothing any more than you can quarrel
about nothing.

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 Al-
hambra 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 scienti-
fic clearness was really a great disadvantage to
them in fairly discussing the matter. For the

WINE WHEN IT IS RED 173

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 neces-
sarily 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 can-
not be settled in such a simple way. The real
difficulty which confronts everybody, and which
especially confronts doctors, is that the extra-
ordinary 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 w r ent 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 philan-
thropists 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.

174 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

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 Jiow much the wealthy philan-
thropist 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 harm-
less 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

WINE WHEN IT IS RED 175

as considered as a beverage ; but they are not
content with declaring that the drink is in modera-
tion 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,
hut 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 indi-
vidual 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

176 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

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 ordin-
ary sensible neighbours. In such a place the kind
of lunatic who wants to drink an unlimited num-
ber 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 tempt-
ing sixpenny stamps before the enthusiast's eyes
as he was being dragged aw r ay 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 coach-
man in " Pickwick," that "that remark's political,

DEMAGOGUES AND MYSTAGOGUES. 177

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 suc-
ceeds because he gets himself misunderstood ;
although, as a rule, he is not even worth mis-
understanding. Gladstone was a demagogue :
Disraeli a mystn.gogue. 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 in-
stance, about modern art. Michelangelo and
Whistler were both fine artists ; but one is
obviously public, the other obviously private, or,
rather, not obvious at ail. Michelangelo's frescoes
are doubtless finer than the popular judgment, but
they are plainly meant to strike the popular judg-
ment. 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 Michelange o's day
declared themselves to be great artists, although
they were unsuccessful. But they d;d not declare
themselves great artists because they were un-
successful : 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

x 7 8 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

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 w y e 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 w r as not worthy
of the joke. They have introduced an almost
insane individualism into that one form of inter-
course which is specially and uproariously com-
munal. 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 mysti-
fication. 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

DEMAGOGUES AND MYSTAGOGUES 179

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 mysta-
gogue. She does not, like a decent demagogue,
wish to make people understand ; she wishes to
make them painfully conscious of not under-
standing. 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

i8o ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

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 popu-
lar, tried to give the people pleasure ; they did
not try to overaw r e 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 hu-
manity 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 pre-
ference 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
in certain good families ; but numberless aristo-
crats say "port/ 1 and all barmaids say "port

DEMAGOGUES AND MYSTAGOGUES 181

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 per-
sistence 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

182 ALL tr;iNGS CONSIDERED

don't see anything wrong in drinking a Benedictine
on Thursday ? . . . No, of course you wouldn't.' 1
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/ 1

/
f

* I A HE 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 unscru-
pulous 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

THE " EATANSWILL GAZETTE " 183

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 com-
pete for the honour of having been this particular
cesspool, just as ten cities fought to be the birth-
place 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 ser'ously 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

i84 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

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 dis-
gusting 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 election?. 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 1 prison that was not well
managed. Dickens was making game, not of

THE " EATANSWILL GAZETTE " 185

places, but of methods. He poured all his power-
ful genius into try ng to make the people ashamed
of the methods. But he seems only to have suc-
ceeded 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 wan-
dering 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 im-
probable 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 gentle-
man'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

i86 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

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. Sud-
bury must be Eatanswill because there were heavy
roads outside Eatanswill, and there are heavy

THE "EATANSWILL GAZETTE" 187

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 intro-
duce 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 Eatans-
will, 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

i88 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

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

solemn and superficial people (for
nearly all very superficial people are solemn)
have declared that the fairy-tales are im-
moral ; 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 free-
dom of fairyland, but there was precious little

FAIRY TALES 189

freedom in fairyland by the best official accounts,
Mi. 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 is a 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 ttyan 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.

igo ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

they have fancied it less moral ; really it is
brghter 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 ugli-
ness 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 reaHy read the fairy-tales, you will
observe that one idea runs from one end of them
to the other the idfea 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

FAIRY TALES 191

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

i 9 2 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

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 con-
nection between three beautiful silver spoons
and a large ugly policeman ; but then who in
fairy tales ever could see the direct logical con-
nection 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.

TOM JONES AND MORALITY 193

TOM JONES AND MORALITY

THE two hundredth anniversary of Henry
Fielding is very justly celebrated, even if,
as far as can be discovered, it is only cele-
brated by the newspapers. It would be too much
to expect that any such merely chronological inci-
dent should induce the people who write about
Fielding to read him ; this kind of neglect is only
another name for glory. A great classic means
a man whom one can praise without having read.
This is not in itself wholly unjust ; it merely
implies a certain respect for the realisation and
fixed conclusions of the mass of mankind. I
have never read Pindar (I mean I have never
read the Greek Pindar ; Peter Pindar I have read
all right), but the mere fact that I have not read
Pindar, I think, ought not to prevent me and
certainly would not prevent me from talking of
"the masterpieces of Pindar," or of "great poets
like Pindar or ^Eschylus." The very learned men
are singularly unenlightened on this as on many
other subjects ; and the position they take up
is really quite unreasonable. If any ordinary .
journalist or man of general reading alludes to
Villon or to Homer, they consider it a quite
triumphant sneer to say to the man, " You cannot
read mediaeval French," or "You cannot read
Homeric Greek." But it is not a triumphant
sneer ^or, indeed, a sneer at all. A man has
got as much right to employ in his speech the
established and traditional facts of human history
H

I 9 4 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

as he has to employ any other piece of common
human information. And it is as reasonable for
a man who knows no French to assume that
Villon was a good poet as it would be for a man
who has no ear for music to assume that Beethoven
was a good musician. Because he himself has no
ear for music, that is no reason why he should
assume that the human race has no ear for music.
Because I am ignorant (as I am), it does not
follow that I ought to assume that I am deceived.
The man who would not praise Pindar unless he
had read him would be a low, distrustful fellow,
the worst kind of sceptic, who doubts not only
God, but man. He would be like a man who
could not call Mount Everest high unless he had
climbed it. He would be like a man who would
not admit that the North Pole was cold until he
had been there.

But I think there is a limit, and a highly legiti-
mate limit, to this process. I think a man may
praise Pindar without knowing the top of a
Greek letter from the bottom. But I think that
if a man is going to abuse Pindar, if he is going
to denounce, refute, and utterly expose Pindar,
if he is going to show Pindar up as the utter
ignoramus and outrageous impostor that he is,
then I think it will be just as well perhaps I
think, at any rate, it would do no harm if he
did know a little Greek, and even had read a
little Pindar. And I think the same situation
would be involved if the critic were concerned to
point out that Pindar was scandalously immoral,
pestilently cynical, or low and beastly in his views
of lifo. When people brought such attacks against

TOM JONES AND MORALITY 195

the morality of Pindar, I should regret that they
could not read Greek ; and when they bring such
attacks against the morality of Fielding, I regret
very much that they cannot read English.

There seems to be an extraordinary idea abroad
that Fielding was in some way an immoral or
offensive writer. I have been astounded by the
number of the leading articles, literary articles,
and other articles written about him just now in
which there is a curious tone of apologising for
the man. One critic says that after all he couldn't
help it, because he lived in the eighteenth century ;
another says that we must allow for the change of
manners and ideas ; another says that he was not
altogether without generous and humane feelings ;
another suggests that he clung feebly, after all, to
a few of the less important virtues. What on
earth does all this mean ? Fielding described
Tom Jones as going on in a certain way, in which,
most unfortunately, a very large number of young
men do go on. It is unnecessary to say that Henry
Fielding knew that it was an unfortunate way
of going on. Even Tom Jones knew that. He
said in so many words that it was a very unfor-
tunate way of going on ; he said, one may almost
say, that it had ruined his life ; the passage
is there for the benefit of any one who may take
the trouble to read the book. There is ample
evidence (though even this is of a mystical and
indirect kind), there is ample evidence that
Fielding probably thought that it was better to
be Tom Jones than to be an utter coward and
sneak. There is simply not one rag or thread or
speck of evidence to show that Fielding thought

196 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

that it was better to be Tom Jones than to be a
good man. All that he is concerned with is the
description of a definite and very real type of
young man ; the young man whose passions and
whose selfish necessities sometimes seemed to be
stronger than anything else in him.

The practical morality of Tom Jones is bad,
though not so bad, spiritually speaking, as the
practical morality of Arthur Pendennis or the
practical morality of Pip, and certainly nothing
like so bad as the profound practical immorality
of Daniel Deronda. The practical morality of
Tom Jones is bad ; but I cannot see any proof
that his theoretical morality was particularly bad.
There is no need to tell the majority of modern
young men even to live up to the theoretical
ethics of Henry Fielding. They would suddenly
spring into the stature of archangels if they lived
up to the theoretic ethics of poor Tom Jones.
Tom Jones is still alive, with all his good and all
his evil ; he is walking about the streets ; we meet
him every day. We meet with him, we drink with
him, we smoke with him, we talk with him, we
talk about him. The only difference" is that we
have no longer the intellectual courage to write
about him. We split up the supreme and central
human being, Tom Jones, into a number of
separate aspects. We let Mr. J. M. Barrie write
about him in his good moments, and make him
out better than he is. We let Zola write about
him in his bad moments, and make him out much
worse than he is. We let Maeterlinck celebrate
those moments of spiritual panic which he knows
to be cowardly ; we let Mr. Rudyard Kipling

TOM JONES AND MORALITY 197

celebrate those moments of brutality which he
knows to be far more cowardly. We let obscene
writers write about the obscenities of this ordinary
man. We let puritan writers write about the
purities of this ordinary man. We look through
one peephole that makes men out as devils, and
we call it the new art. . We look through another
peephole that makes men out as angels, and we call
it the New Theology. But if we pull down some
dusty old books from the bookshelf, if we turn over
some old mildewed leaves, and if in that obscurity
and decay we find some faint traces of a J tale
about a complete man, such a man as is walking
on the pavement outside, w r e suddenly pull a
long face, and we call it the coarse morals of a
bygone age.

The truth is that all these things mark a certain
change in the general view of -morals ; not, I
think, a change for the better. We have grown
to associate morality in a book with a kind of
optimism and prettiness ; according to us, a moral
book is a book about moral people. But the old
idea was almost exactly the opposite ; a moral
book was a book about immoral people. A moral
book was full of pictures like Hogarth's "Gin
Lane" or "Stages of Cruelty," or it recorded,
like the popular broadsheet, "God's dreadful
judgment " against some blasphemer or murderer.
There is a philosophical reason for this change.
The homeless scepticism of our time has reached
a sub-conscious feeling that morality is somehow
merely a matter of human taste an accident of
psychology. And if goodness only exists in certain
human minds, a man wishing to praise goodness

198 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

will naturally exaggerate the amount of it that
there is in human minds or the number of human
minds in which it is supreme. Every confession
that man is vicious is a confession that virtue is
visionary. Every book which admits that evil is
real is felt in some vague way to be admitting
that good is unreal. The modern instinct is that
if the heart of man is evil, there is nothing that
remains good. But the older feeling was that
if the heart of man was ever so evil, there was
something that remained good goodness remained
good. An actual avenging virtue existed outside
the human race ; to that men rose, or from that
men fell away. Therefore, of course, this law
itself was as much demonstrated in the breach
as in the observance. If Tom Jones violated
morality, so much the worse for Tom Jones.
Fielding did not feel, as a melancholy modern
would have done, that every sin of Tom Jones
was in some way breaking the spell, or we may
even say destroying the fiction of morality. Men
spoke of the sinner breaking the law ; but it was
rather the law that broke him. And what modern
people call the foulness and freedom of Fielding
is generally the severity and moral stringency
of Fielding. He would not have thought that
he was serving morality at all if he had written
a book all about nice people. Fielding would
have considered Mr. Ian Maclaren extremely
immoral ; and there is something to be said
for that view. Telling the truth about the
terrible struggle of the human soul is surely a
very elementary part of the ethics of honesty. If
the characters are not wicked, the book is.

THE MAID OF ORLEANS 199

This older and firmer conception of right as
existing outside human weakness and without
reference to human error can be felt in the very
lightest and loosest of the works of old English
literature. It is commonly unmeaning enough
to call Shakspere a great moralist ; but in this
particular way Shakspere is a very typical moralist.
Whenever he alludes to right and wrong it is
always with this old implication. Right is rght,
even if nobody does it. Wrong is wrong, even
if everybody is wrong about it.

THE MAID OF ORLEANS

A CONSIDERABLE time ago (at far too early
A\ an age, in fact) I read Voltaire's "La
Pucelle," a savage sarcasm on the tradi-
tional purity of Joan of Arc, very dirty, and very
funny. I had not thought of it again for years,
but it came back into my mind this morning
because I began to turn over the leaves of the new
"Jeanne d'Arc," by that great and graceful
writer, Anatole France. It is written in a tone of
tender sympathy, and a sort of sad reverence ; it
never loses touch with a noble tact and courtesy,
like that of a gentleman escorting a peasant girl
through the modern crowd. It is invariably
respectful to Joan, and even respectful to her
religion. And being myself a furious admirer
of Joan the Maid, I have reflectively compared the
two methods, and I come to the conclusion that
I prefer Voltaire's,

200 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

When a man of Voltaire's school has to explode
a saint or a great religious hero, he says that such
a person is a common human fool, or a common
human fraud. But when a man like Anatole
France has to explode a saint, he explains a saint
as somebody belonging to his particular fussy little
literary set. Voltaire read human nature into
Joan of Arc, though it was only the brutal part of
human nature. At least it \vas not specially Vol-
taire's nature. But M. France read M. France's
nature into Joan of Arc all the cold kindness,
all the homeless sentimentalism of the modern
literary man. There is one book that it recalled
to me with startling vividness, though I have not
seen the matter mentioned anywhere ; Kenan's
"Vie de Jesus." It has just the same general
intention : that if you do not attack Christianity,
you can at least patronise it. My own instinct,
apart from my opinions, would be quite the other
way. If I disbelieved in^Christianity, I should be
the Ipudest blasphemer in Hyde Park. Nothing
ought to be too big for a brave man to attack ;
but there are some things too big for a man to
patronise.

And I must say that the historical method seems
to me excessively unreasonable. I have no know-
ledge of history, but I have as much knowledge of
reason as Anatole France. And, if anything is
irrational, it seems to me that the Renan-France
way of dealing with miraculous stories is irrational.
The Renan-France method is simply this : you
explain supernatural stories that have some foun-
dation simply by inventing natural stories that
have no foundation. Suppose that you are con-

THE MAID OF ORLEANS 201

fronted with the statement that Jack climbed up
the beanstalk into the sky. It is perfectly philo-
sophical to reply that you do not think that he
did. It is (in my opinion) even more philo-
sophical to reply that he may very probably have
done so. But the Renan-France method is to
write like this : "When we consider Jack's curious
and even perilous heredity, which no doubt was
derived from a female greengrocer and a profli-
gate priest, we can easily understand how the
ideas of heaven and a beanstalk came to be com-
bined in his mind. Moreover, there is little doubt
that he must have met some wandering conjurer
from India, who told him about the tricks of the
mango plant, and how it is sent up to the sky.
We can imagine these two friends, the old man
and the young, wandering in the woods together
at evening, looking at the red and level clouds, as
on that night when the old man pointed to a small
beanstalk, and told his too imaginative companion
that this also might be made to scale the heavens.
And then, when we remember the quite excep-
tional psychology of Jack, when we remember
how there was in him a union of the prosaic, the
love of plain vegetables, with an almost irrelevant
eagerness for the unattainable, for invisibility and
the void, we shall no longer wonder that it was to
him especially that was sent this sweet, though
merely symbolic, dream of the tree uniting earth
and heaven." That is the way that Renan and
France write, only they do it better. But, really,
a rationalist like myself becomes a little impatient
and feels inclined to say, "But, hang it all, what
do you know about the hrdity of Jack or the

T-T --*

262 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

psychology of Jack ? Yon know nothing about
Jack at all, except that some people say that' he
climbed up a beanstalk. Nobody would ever
have thought of ment oning h m if he hadn't.
You must interpret him in terms of the beanstalk
religion ; you cannot merely interpret religion in
terms of him. We have the materials of this story,
and we can believe them or not. But we have
not got the materials to make another story."

It is no exaggeration to say that this is the
manner of M. Anatole France in dealing with
Joan of Arc. Because her miracle is incredible
to his somewhat old-fashioned materialism, he
does not therefore dismiss it and her to fairyland
with Jack and the Beanstalk. He tries to invent
a real story, for which he can find no real evi-
dence. He produces a scientific explanation
which is quite destitute of any scientific proof. It
is as if I (being entirely ignorant of botany arjd
chemistry) said that the beanstalk grew, to the sky
because nitrogen and argon got into the subsidiary
ducts of the corolla. To take the most obvious
example, the principal character in M. France's
story is a person v/ho never existed at all. All
Joan's wisdom and energy, it seems, came from a
certain priest, of whom there is not the tiniest
trace in all the multitudinous records of her life.
The only foundation I can find for this fancy is
the highly undemocratic idea that a peasant girl
could not possibly have any ideas of her own. It
is very hard for a freethinker to remain democratic.
The writer seems altogether to forget what is
meant by the moral atmosphere of a community.
*To say that Joan must have learnt her vision of

THE MAID OF ORLEANS 203

a virgin overthrowing evil from a priest, is like
saying that some modern girl in London, pitying
the poor, must have learnt it from a Labour
Member. She would learn it where the Labour
Member learnt it in the whole state of our
society.

But that is the modern method : the method
of the reverent sceptic. When you find a life
entirely incredible and incomprehensible from the
outside, you pretend that you understand the
inside. As Renan, the rationalist, could not make
any sense out of Christ's most public acts, he pro-
ceeded to make an ingenious system out of His
private thoughts. As Anatole France, on his own
intellectual principle, cannot believe in what Joan
of Arc did, he professes to be her dearest friend,
and to know exactly what she meant. I cannot
feel it to be a very rational manner of writing
history ; and sooner or later we shall have to find
some more solid way of dealing with those spiritual
phenomena with which all history is as closely
spotted and spangled as the sky is with stars.

Joan of Arc is a wild and wonderful thing
enough, but she is much saner than most of her
critics and biographers. We shall not recover the
common sense of Joan until we have recovered her
mysticism. Our wars fail, because they begin
with something sensible and obvious such as
getting to Pretoria by Christmas. But her
war succeeded because it began with something
wild and perfect the saints delivering France.
She put her idealism in the right place, and her
realism also in the right place : we moderns get
both displaced. She put her dreams and her

204 ACL THINGS CONSIDERED

sentiment into her aims, where they ought to be ;
she put her practicality into her practice. In
modern Imperial wars, the case is reversed. Our
dreams, our aims' are always, we insist, quite
practical. It is our practice that is dreamy.

It is not for us to explain this flaming figure in
terms of our tired and querulous culture. Rather
we must try to explain ourselves by the blaze of
such fixed stars. Those who called her a witch
hot from hell were much more sensible than those
who depict her as a silly sentimental maiden
prompted by her parish priest. If I have to choose
between the two schools of her scattered enemies,
I could take my place with those subtle clerks who
thought her divine mission devilish, rather than
with those rustic aunts and uncles who thought
it impossible.

A DEAD POET

T T 7 ITH Francis Thompson we lose the greatest
V/y poetic energy since Browning. His energy
was of somewhat the same kind. Brown-
ing was intellectually intricate because he was
morally simple. He was too simple to explain
himself ; he was too humble to suppose that other
people needed any explanation. But his real
energy, and the real energy of Francis Thompson,
was best expressed in the fact that both poets
were at once fond of immensity and also fond of
detail. Any common Imperialist can have large
ideas so long as he is not called upon to have small

A DEAD POET 205

ideas ake. Any common scientific philosopher
can have small ideas so long as he is not called
upon to have large ideas as well. But great poets
use the telescope and also the microscope. Great
poets are obscure for two opposite reasons ; now f
because they are talking about something too large
for any one to understand, and now again because
they are talking about something too small for
any one to see. Francis Thompson possessed
both these infinities. He escaped by being too
small, as the microbe escapes ; or he escaped by
being too large, as the universe escapes. Any one
who knows Francis Thompson's poetry knows
quite well the truth to which I refer. For the
benefit of any person who does not know it, I may
mention two cases taken from memory. I have
not the book by me, so I can only render the poeti-
cal passages in a clumsy paraphrase. But there
was one poem of which the image was so vast that
it was literally difficult for a time to take it in ; he
was describing the evening earth with its mist and
fume and fragrance, and represented the whole as
rolling upwards like a smoke ; then suddenly he
called the whole ball of the earth a thurible, and
said that some gigantic spirit swung it slowly before
God. That is the case of the image too large for
comprehension. Another instance sticks in my
mind of the image which is too small. In one of
his poems, he says that abyss between the known
and the unknown is bridged by " Pontifical death."
There are about ten historical and theological puns
in that one word. That a priest means a pontiff,
that a pontiff means a bridge-maker, that death
is certainly a bridge, that death may turn out after

206 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

all to be a reconciling priest, that at least priests
and bridges both attest to the fact that one thing
can get separated from another thing these ideas,
and twenty more, are all actually concentrated in
the word "pontifical." In Francis Thompson's
poetry, as in the poetry of the universe, you can
work infinitely out and out, but yet infinitely in
and in. These two infinities are the mark of
greatness ; and he was a great poet.

Beneath the tide of praise which was obviously
due to the dead poet, there is an evident under-
current of discussion about him ; some charges of
moral weakness were at least important enough to
be authoritatively contradicted in the Nation ;
and, in connection with this and other things,
there has been a continuous stir of comment upon
his attraction to and gradual absorption in Catholic
theological ideas. This question is so important
that I think it ought to be considered and under-
stood even at the present time. It is, of course,
true that Francis Thompson devoted himself more
and more to poems not only purely Catholic, but,
one may say, purely ecclesiastical. And it is,
moreover, true that (if things go on as they are
going on at present) more and more good poets
will do the same. Poets will tend towards Chris-
tian orthodoxy for a perfectly plain reason ; be-
cause it is about the simplest and freest thing now
left in the world. On this point it is very necessary
to be clear. When people impute special vices to
the Christian Church, they seem entirely to forget
that the world (which is the only other thing
there is) has these vices much more. The Church
has been cruel ; but the world has been much

A DEAD POET 207

more cruel. The Church has plotted ; but the
world has plotted much more. The Church has
been superstitious ; but it has never been so
superstitious as the world is when left to itself.

Now, poets in our epoch will tend towards
ecclesiastical religion strictly because it is just a
little more free than anything else. Take, for
instance, the case of symbol and ritualism. All
reasonable men believe in symbol ; but some
reasonable men do not believe in ritualism ; by
which they mean, I imagine, a symbolism too
complex, elaborate, and mechanical. But when-
ever they talk of ritualism they always seem to
riiean the ritualism of the Church. Why should
they not mean the ritual of the world ? It is much
more ritualistic. The ritual of the Army, the
ritual of the Navy, the ritual of the Law Courts,
the ritual of Parliament are much more ritualistic.
The ritual of a dinner-party is much more ritual-
istic. Priests may put gold and great jewels on
the chalice ; but at least there is only one chalice
to put them on. When you go to a dinner-party
they put in front of you five different chalices, of
five weird and heraldic shapes, to symbolise five
different kinds of wine ; an insane extension of
ritual from which Mr. Percy Dearmer would fly
shrieking. A bishop wears a mitre ; but he is
not thought more or less of a bishop according
to whether you can see the very latest curves in
his mitre. But a swell is thought more or less of
a swell according to whether you can see the very
latest curves in his hat. There is more fuss about
symbols in the world than in the Church.

And yet (strangely enough) though men fuss

2o8 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

more about the worldly symbols, they mean less
by them. It is the mark of religious forms that
they declare something unknown. But it is the
mark of worldly forms that they declare something
which is known, and which is known to be untrue.
When the Pope in an Encyclical calls himself your
father, it is a matter of faith or of doubt. But
when the Duke of Devonshire in a letter calls
himself yours obediently, you know that he means
the opposite of what he says. Religious forms are,
at the worst, fables ; they might be true. Secular
forms are falsehoods ; they are not true. Take a
more topical case. The German Emperor has
more uniforms than the Pope. But, moreover, the
Pope's vestments all imply a claim to be some-
thing purely mystical and doubtful. Many of the
German Emperor's uniforms imply a claim to be
something which he certainly is not and which it
would be highly disgusting if he were. The Pope
may or may not be the Vicar of Christ. But the
Kaiser certainly is not an English Colonel. If the
thing were reality it would be treason. If it is
mere ritual, it is by far the most unreal ritual on
earth.

Now, poetical people like Francis Thompson
will, as things stand, tend away from secular
society and towards religion for the reason above
described : that there are crowds of symbols in
both, but that those of religion are simpler and
mean more. To take an evident type, the Cross
is more poetical than the Union Jack, because it
is simpler. The more simple an idea is, the more
it is fertile in variations. Francis Thompson
could have written any number of good poems on

CHRISTMAS 209

the Croae, because it is a primary symbol The
number of poems which Mr. Rudyard Kipling
could write on the Union Jack is, fortunately,
limited, because the Union Jack is too complex to
produce luxuriance. The same principle applies
to any possible number of cases. A poet like
Francis Thompson could deduce perpetually rich
and branching meanings out of two plain facts
like bread and wine ; with bread and wine he can
expand everything to everywhere. But with a
French menu he cannot expand anything ; except
perhaps himself. Complicated ideas do not pro-
duce ?ny more ideas. Mongrels do not breed.
Religious ritual attracts because there is some
sense in it. Religious imagery, so far from being
subtle, is the only simple thing left for poets.
So far from being merely superhuman, it is the
only human thing left for human beings.

CHRISTMAS

*Tr**HERE i? no more dangerous or disgusting
habit than that of celebrating Christmas
before it comes, as I am doing in this article.
It is the very essence of a festival that it breaks
upon one brilliantly and abruptly, that at one
moment the great day is not and the next moment
the great day is. Up to a certain specific instant
you are feeling ordinary and sad ; for it is only
Wednesday. At the next moment your heart
leaps up and your soul and body dance together
like lovers ; for in one burst and blaze it has
become Thursday. I am assuming (of course) that

210 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

you are a worshipper of Thor, and that you cele-
brate his day once a week, possibly with human
sacrifice. If, on the other hand, you are a modern
Christian Englishman, you hail (of course) with
the same explosion of gaiety the appearance of the
English Sunday. But I say that whatever the day
is that is to you festive or symbolic, it is essential
that there should be a quite clear black line between
it and the time going before. And all the old
wholesome customs in connection with Christmas
were to the effect that one should not touch or see
or know or speak of something before the actual
coming of Christmas Day. Thus, for instance,
children were never given their presents until the
actual coming of the appointed hour. The pre-
sents were kept tied up in brown-paper parcels,
out of which an arm of a doll, or the leg of a donkey
sometimes accidentally stuck. I wish this prin-
ciple were adopted in respect of modern Christmas
ceremonies and publications. Especially it ought
to be observed in connection with what are called
the Christmas numbers of magazines. The editors
of the magazines bring out their Christmas num-
bers so long before the time that the reader is more
likely to be still lamenting for the turkey of last
year than to have seriously settled down to- a
solid anticipation of the turkey which is to come.
Christmas numbers of magazines ought to be tied
up in brown paper and kept for Christmas Day.
On consideration, I should favour the editors
being tied up in brown paper. Whether the leg
or arm of an editor should ever be allowed to
protrude I leave to individual choice.

Of course, all this secrecy about Christmas is

CHRISTMAS 211

merely sentimental and ceremonial ;' if you do not
like what is sentimental and ceremonial, do not
celebrate . Christmas at all. You will not be
punished if you don't.; also, since we are no
longer ruled by those sturdy Puritans who won
for us civil and religious liberty, you will not even
be punished if you do. But I cannot understand
why any one should bother about a ceremonial
except ceremonially. If a thing only exists in
order to be graceful, do it gracefully or do not do
it. If a thing only exists as something professing
to be solemn, do it solemnly or do not do it.
There is no sense in doing it slouchingly ; nor is
there even any liberty. I can understand the man
who takes off his hat to a lady because it is the
customary symbol. I can understand him, I say ;
in fact, I know him quite intimately. I can also
understand the man who refuses to take off his
hat to a lady, like the old Quakers, because he
thinks that a symbol is superstition. But what
point would there be in so performing an arbitrary
form of respect that it was not a form of respect ?
We respect the gentleman who takes off his hat
to the lady ; we respect the fanatic who will not
take off his hat to the lady. But what should
we think of the man who kept his hands in his
pockets and asked the lady to take his hat off for
him because he felt tired ?

This is combining insolence and superstitition ;
and the modern world is full of the strange com-
bination. There is no mark of the immense weak-
mindedness of modernity that is more striking
than this general disposition to keep up old forms,
but to keep them up informally and feebly. Why

212 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

take something which was only meant to be re-
spectful and preserve it disrespectfully ? Why
take something which you could easily abolish as
a superstitition and carefully perpetuate it as a
bore ? There have been many instances of this
half-witted compromise. Was it not true, for
instance, that the other day some mad American
was trying to buy Glastonbury Abbey and transfer
it stone by stone to America ? Such things are
not only illogical, but idiotic. There is no particu-
lar reason why a pushing American financier should
pay respect to Glastonbury Abbey at all. But if
he is to pay respect to Glastonbury Abbey, he
must pay respect to Glastonbury. If it is a matter
of sentiment, why should he spoil the scene ?
If it is not a matter of sentiment, why should he
ever have visited the scene ? To call this kind of
thing Vandalism is a very inadequate and unfair
description. The Vandals were very sensible
people. They did not believe in a religion, and
so they insulted it ; they did not see any use for
certain buildings, and so they knocked them down.
But they were not such fools as to encumber their
march with the fragments of the edifice they had
themselves spoilt. They were at least superior to
the modern American mode of reasoning. They
did not desecrate the stones because they held
them sacred.

Another instance of the same illogicality I
observed the other day at some kind of "At
Home." I saw what appeared to be a human
being dressed in a black evening-coat, black dress-
waistcoat, and black dress-trousers, but with a
shirt-front made of Jaegar wool. What can be

CHRISTMAS 213

the sense of this sort of thing ? If a man thinks
hygiene more important than convention (a selfish
and heathen view, for the beasts that perish are
more hygienic than man, and man is only above
them because he is more conventional), if, I say,
a man thinks that hygiene is more important than
convention, what on earth is there to oblige him
to wear a shirt-front at all ? But to take a
costume of which the only conceivable cause or
advantage is that it is a sort of uniform, and then
not wear it in the uniform way this is to be
neither a Bohemian nor a gentleman. It is a
foolish affectation, I think, in an English officer
of the Life Guards never to wear his uniform if
he can help it. But it would be more foolish
still if he showed himself about town in a scarlet
coat and a Jaeger breast-plate. It is the custom
nowadays to have Ritual Commissions and Ritual
Reports to make rather unmeaning compromises
in the ceremonial of the Church of England. So
perhaps we shall have an ecclesiastical compromise
by which all the Bishops shall wear Jaeger copes
and Jaeger mitres. Similarly the King might
insist on having a Jaeger crown. But I do not
think he will, for he understands the logic of the
matter better than that. The modern monarch,
like a reasonable fellow, wears his crown as seldom
as he can ; but if he does it at all, then the only
point of a crown is that it is a crown. So let me
assure the unknown gentleman in the woollen
vesture that the only point of a white shirt-front is
that it is a white shirt-front. Stiffness may be its
impossible defect ; but it is certainly its only
possible merit.

ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

Let us be consistent, therefore, about Christ*
mas, and either keep customs or not keep them.
If you do not like sentiment and symbolism, you
do not like Christmas ; go away and celebrate
something else ; I should suggest the birthday of
Mr. M'Cabe. No doubt you could have a sort
of scientific Christmas with a hygienic pudding
and highly instructive presents stuffed into a
Jaeger stocking ; go and have it then. If you
like those things, doubtless you are a good sort
of fellow, and your intentions are excellent. I
have no doubt that you are really interested in
humanity ; but I cannot think that humanity will
ever be much interested in you. Humanity is
unhygienic from its very nature and beginning.
It is so much an exception in Nature that the laws
of Nature really mean nothing to it. Now Christ-
mas is attacked also on the humanitarian ground.
Ouida called it a feast of slaughter and gluttony.
Mr. Shaw suggested that it was invented by poul-
terers. That should be considered before it be-
comes more considerable.

I do not know whether an animal killed at
Christmas has had a better or a worse time than
it would have had if there had been no Christmas
or no Christmas dinners. But I do know that
the fighting and suffering brotherhood to which
I belong and owe everything, Mankind, would
have a much worse time if there were no such
thing as Christmas or Christmas dinners.
Whether the turkey which Scrooge gave to Bob
Cratchit had experienced a lovelier or more
melancholy career than that of less attractive
turkeys is a subject upon which I cannot even

CHRISTMAS 415

conjecture But that Scrooge was better for
giving the turkey and Cratchit happier for getting
it I know as two facts, as I know that I have two
feet. 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. Nothing
shall induce me to darken human homes, to destroy
human festivities, to insult human gifts and
human benefactions for the sake of some hypotheti-
cal knowledge which Nature curtained from our
eyes. We men and women are all in the same
boat, upon a stormy sea. We owe to each other
a terrible and tragic loyalty. If we catch sharks
for food, let them be killed most mercifully ; let
any one who likes love the sharks, and pet the
sharks, and tie ribbqns round their necks and give
them sugar and teach them to dance. But if
once a man suggests that a shark is to be valued
against a sailor, or that the poor shark might be
permitted to bite off a nigger's leg occasionally ;
then I would court-martial the man he is a
traitor to the ship.

And while I take this view of humanitarianism
of the anti-Christmas kind, it is cogent to say that
I am a strong anti-vivisectionist. That is, if there
is any vivisection, I am against it. I am against
the cutting-up of conscious dogs for the same
reason that I am in favour of the eating of dead
turkeys. The connection may not be obvious ;
but that is because of the strangely unhealthy
condition of modern thought. I am against cruel
vivisection as I am against a cruel anti-Christmas
asceticism, because they both involve the upsetting
of existing fellowships and the shocking of normal

2i6 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

good feelings for the sake of something that is
intellectual, fanciful, and remote. It is not a
human thing, it is not a humane thing, when you
see a poor woman staring hungrily at a bloater,
to think, not of the obvious feelings of the woman,
but of the unimaginable feelings of the deceased
bloater. Similarly, it is not human, it is not
humane, when you look at a dog to think about
what theoretic discoveries you might possibly
make if you were allowed to bore a hole in his
head. Both the humanitarians' fancy about the
feelings concealed inside the bloater, and the vivi-
sectionists' fancy about the knowledge concealed
inside the dog, are unhealthy fancies, because
they upset a human sanity that is certain for
the sake of something that is of necessity un-
certain. The vivisectionist, for the sake of doing
something that may or may not be useful, does
something that certainly is horrible. The anti-
Christmas humanitarian, in seeking to have a
sympathy with a turkey which no man can
have with a turkey, loses the sympathy he has
already with the happiness of millions of the
poor.

It is not uncommon nowadays for the insane
extremes in reality to meet. Thus I have always
felt that brutal Imperialism and Tolstoian non-
resistance were not only not opposite, but were
the same thing. They are the same contemptible
thought that conquest cannot be resisted, looked
at from the two standpoints of the conqueror and
the conquered. Thus again teetotalism and the
really degraded gin-selling and dram-drinking
have exactly the same moral philosophy. They

CHRISTMAS 217

are both based on the idea that fermented liquor
is not a drink, but a drug. But I am specially
certain that the extreme of vegetarian humanity
is, as I have said, akin to the extreme of scientific
cruelty they both permit a dubious speculation
to interfere with their ordinary charity. The
sound moral rule in such matters as vivisection
always presents itself to me in this way. There is
no ethical necessity more essential and vital than
this : that casuistical exceptions, though admitted,
should be admitted as exceptions. And it follows
from this, I think, that, though we may do a horrid
thing in a horrid situation, we must be quite
certain that we actually and already are in that
situation. Thus, all sane moralists admit that
one may sometimes tell a lie ; but no sane moralist
would approve of telling a little boy to practise
telling lies, in case he might one day have to tell a
justifiable one. Thus, morality has often justified
shooting a robber or a burglar. But it would
not justify going into the village Sunday school
and shooting all the little boys who looked as
if they might grow up into burglars. The need
may arise ; but the need must have arisen. It
seems to me quite clear that if you step across this
limit you step off a precipice.

Now, whether torturing an animal is or is not
an immoral thing, it is, at least, a dreadful thing.
It belongs to the order of exceptional and even
desperate acts. Except for some extraordinary
reason I would not grievously hurt an animal ;
with an extraordinary reason I would grievously
hurt him. If (for example) a mad elephant were
pursuing me and my family, and I could only

2i8 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

shoot him so that he would die in agony, he
would have to die in agony. But the elephant
would be there. I would not do it to a hypo-
thetical elephant. Now, it always seems to me
that this is the weak point in the ordinary vivi-
sectionist argument, "Suppose your wife were
dying." Vivisection is not done by a man whose
wife is dying. If it were it might be lifted to the
level of the moment, as would be lying or stealing
bread, or any other ugly action. But this ugly
action is done in cold blood, at leisure, by men
who are not sure that it will be of any use to
anybody men of whom the most that can be
said is that they may conceivably make the be-
ginnings of some discovery which may perhaps
save the life of some one else's wife in some remote
future. That is too cold and distant to rob an
act of its immediate horror. That is like training
the child to tell lies for the sake of some great
dilemma that may never come to him. You
are doing a cruel thing, but not with enough
passion to make it a kindly one.

So much for why I am an anti-vivisectionist ;
and I should like to say, in conclusion, that
all other anti-vivisectionists of my acquaintance
weaken their case infinitely by forming this attack
on a scientific speciality in which the human heart
is commonly on their side, with attacks upon
universal human customs in which the human
heart is not at all on their side. I have heard
humanitarians, for instance, speak of vivisection
and field sports as if they were the same kind of
thing. The difference seems to rne simple and
enormous. In sport a man goes into a wood and

CHRISTMAS 219

mixes with the existing life of that wood ; be-
comes a destroyer only in the simple and healthy
sense in which all the creatures are destroyers ;
becomes for one moment to them what they are to
him another animal. In vivisection a man takes
a simpler creature and subjects it to subtleties
which no one but man could inflict on him, and
for which man is therefore gravely and terribly
responsible.

Meanwhile, it remains true that I shall eat a
great deal of turkey this Christmas ; and it is not
in the least true (as the vegetarians say) that I
shall do it because I do not realise what I am
doing, or because I do what I know is wrong, or
that I do it with shame or doubt or a fundamental
unrest of conscience. In one sense I know quite
well what I am doing ; in another sense I know
quite well that I know not what I do. Scrooge
and the Cratchits and I are, as I have said, all
in one boat ; the turkey and I are, to say the most
of it, ships that pass in the night, and greet each
other in passing. I wish him well ; but it is really
practically impossible to discover whether I treat
him well. I can avoid, and I do avoid with horror,
all special and artificial^ tormenting of him, stick-
ing pins in him for fun or sticking knives in him
for scientific investigation. But whether by feed-
ing him slowly and killing him quickly for the
needs of my brethren, I have improved in his own
solemn eyes his own strange and separate destiny,
whether I have made him in the sight of God a
slave or a martyr, or one whom the gods love and
who die young that is far more removed from
my possibilities of knowledge than the most ab-

220 ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

struse intricacies of mysticism or theology. A
turkey is more occult and awful than all the angels
and archangels. In so far as God has partly
revealed to us an angelic world, he has partly told
us what an angel means. But God has never
told us what a turkey means. And if you go and
stare at a live turkey for an hour or two, you will
find by the end of it that the enigma has rather
increased than diminished.

Jamicson & Munro, Ltd.> Printers, Stirling