{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_1717/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_1717","id":"gutenberg_1717","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1717","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Social problems"],"text":"Produced by Georges Allaire, and Martin Ward\n\n\n\n\n\nWHAT\u2019S WRONG WITH THE WORLD\n\nBy G.K. Chesterton\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n     PART ONE:  THE HOMELESSNESS OF MAN\n\n      I      The Medical Mistake\n      II     Wanted: An Unpractical Man\n      III    The New Hypocrite\n      IV     The Fear of the Past\n      V      The Unfinished Temple\n      VI     The Enemies of Property\n      VII    The Free Family\n      XIII   The Wildness of Domesticity\n      IX     History of Hudge and Gudge\n      X      Oppression by Optimism\n      XI     The Homelessness of Jones\n\n     PART TWO:  IMPERIALISM, OR THE MISTAKE ABOUT MAN\n\n      I      The Charm of Jingoism\n      II     Wisdom and the Weather\n      III    The Common Vision\n      IV     The Insane Necessity\n\n     PART THREE:  FEMINISM, OR THE MISTAKE ABOUT WOMAN\n\n      I      The Unmilitary Suffragette\n      II     The Universal Stick\n      III    The Emancipation of Domesticity\n      IV     The Romance of Thrift\n      V      The Coldness of Chloe\n      VI     The Pedant and the Savage\n      VII    The Modern Surrender of Woman\n      VIII   The Brand of the Fleur-de-Lis\n      IX     Sincerity and the Gallows\n      X      The Higher Anarchy\n      XI     The Queen and the Suffragettes\n      XII    The Modern Slave\n\n     PART FOUR:  EDUCATION, OR THE MISTAKE ABOUT THE CHILD\n\n      I      The Calvinism of To-day\n      II     The Tribal Terror\n      III    The Tricks of Environment\n      IV     The Truth About Education\n      V      An Evil Cry\n      VI     Authority the Unavoidable\n      VII    The Humility of Mrs. Grundy\n      VIII   The Broken Rainbow\n      IX     The Need for Narrowness\n      X      The Case for the Public Schools\n      XI     The School for Hypocrites\n      XII    The Staleness of the New Schools\n      XIII   The Outlawed Parent\n      XIV    Folly and Female Education\n\n     PART FIVE:  THE HOME OF MAN\n\n      I      The Empire of the Insect\n      II     The Fallacy of the Umbrella Stand\n      III    The Dreadful Duty of Gudge\n      IV     A Last Instance\n      V      Conclusion\n\n     THREE NOTES\n\n      I      On Female Suffrage\n      II     On Cleanliness in Education\n      III    On Peasant Proprietorship\n\n\nDEDICATION\n\nTo C. F G. Masterman, M. P.\n\nMy Dear Charles,\n\nI originally called this book \u201cWhat is Wrong,\u201d and it would\nhave satisfied your sardonic temper to note the number of social\nmisunderstandings that arose from the use of the title. Many a mild lady\nvisitor opened her eyes when I remarked casually, \u201cI have been doing\n\u2018What is Wrong\u2019 all this morning.\u201d And one minister of religion moved\nquite sharply in his chair when I told him (as he understood it) that I\nhad to run upstairs and do what was wrong, but should be down again in\na minute. Exactly of what occult vice they silently accused me I cannot\nconjecture, but I know of what I accuse myself; and that is, of having\nwritten a very shapeless and inadequate book, and one quite unworthy\nto be dedicated to you. As far as literature goes, this book is what is\nwrong and no mistake.\n\nIt may seem a refinement of insolence to present so wild a composition\nto one who has recorded two or three of the really impressive visions of\nthe moving millions of England. You are the only man alive who can\nmake the map of England crawl with life; a most creepy and enviable\naccomplishment. Why then should I trouble you with a book which, even\nif it achieves its object (which is monstrously unlikely) can only be a\nthundering gallop of theory?\n\nWell, I do it partly because I think you politicians are none the worse\nfor a few inconvenient ideals; but more because you will recognise the\nmany arguments we have had, those arguments which the most wonderful\nladies in the world can never endure for very long. And, perhaps, you\nwill agree with me that the thread of comradeship and conversation must\nbe protected because it is so frivolous. It must be held sacred, it\nmust not be snapped, because it is not worth tying together again. It\nis exactly because argument is idle that men (I mean males) must take it\nseriously; for when (we feel), until the crack of doom, shall we have so\ndelightful a difference again? But most of all I offer it to you because\nthere exists not only comradeship, but a very different thing, called\nfriendship; an agreement under all the arguments and a thread which,\nplease God, will never break.\n\nYours always,\n\nG. K. Chesterton.\n\n\n\n\nPART ONE. THE HOMELESSNESS OF MAN\n\n\n\n\nI. THE MEDICAL MISTAKE\n\nA book of modern social inquiry has a shape that is somewhat sharply\ndefined. It begins as a rule with an analysis, with statistics, tables\nof population, decrease of crime among Congregationalists, growth of\nhysteria among policemen, and similar ascertained facts; it ends with a\nchapter that is generally called \u201cThe Remedy.\u201d It is almost wholly due\nto this careful, solid, and scientific method that \u201cThe Remedy\u201d is never\nfound. For this scheme of medical question and answer is a blunder;\nthe first great blunder of sociology. It is always called stating the\ndisease before we find the cure. But it is the whole definition and\ndignity of man that in social matters we must actually find the cure\nbefore we find the disease.\n\nThe fallacy is one of the fifty fallacies that come from the modern\nmadness for biological or bodily metaphors. It is convenient to speak\nof the Social Organism, just as it is convenient to speak of the British\nLion. But Britain is no more an organism than Britain is a lion. The\nmoment we begin to give a nation the unity and simplicity of an animal,\nwe begin to think wildly. Because every man is a biped, fifty men are\nnot a centipede. This has produced, for instance, the gaping absurdity\nof perpetually talking about \u201cyoung nations\u201d and \u201cdying nations,\u201d as\nif a nation had a fixed and physical span of life. Thus people will say\nthat Spain has entered a final senility; they might as well say that\nSpain is losing all her teeth. Or people will say that Canada should\nsoon produce a literature; which is like saying that Canada must soon\ngrow a new moustache. Nations consist of people; the first generation\nmay be decrepit, or the ten thousandth may be vigorous. Similar\napplications of the fallacy are made by those who see in the increasing\nsize of national possessions, a simple increase in wisdom and stature,\nand in favor with God and man. These people, indeed, even fall short in\nsubtlety of the parallel of a human body. They do not even ask whether\nan empire is growing taller in its youth, or only growing fatter in its\nold age. But of all the instances of error arising from this physical\nfancy, the worst is that we have before us: the habit of exhaustively\ndescribing a social sickness, and then propounding a social drug.\n\nNow we do talk first about the disease in cases of bodily breakdown; and\nthat for an excellent reason. Because, though there may be doubt about\nthe way in which the body broke down, there is no doubt at all about\nthe shape in which it should be built up again. No doctor proposes to\nproduce a new kind of man, with a new arrangement of eyes or limbs. The\nhospital, by necessity, may send a man home with one leg less: but\nit will not (in a creative rapture) send him home with one leg extra.\nMedical science is content with the normal human body, and only seeks to\nrestore it.\n\nBut social science is by no means always content with the normal human\nsoul; it has all sorts of fancy souls for sale. Man as a social idealist\nwill say \u201cI am tired of being a Puritan; I want to be a Pagan,\u201d or\n\u201cBeyond this dark probation of Individualism I see the shining paradise\nof Collectivism.\u201d Now in bodily ills there is none of this difference\nabout the ultimate ideal. The patient may or may not want quinine; but\nhe certainly wants health.  No one says \u201cI am tired of this headache; I\nwant some toothache,\u201d or \u201cThe only thing for this Russian influenza is\na few German measles,\u201d or \u201cThrough this dark probation of catarrh I see\nthe shining paradise of rheumatism.\u201d But exactly the whole difficulty in\nour public problems is that some men are aiming at cures which other\nmen would regard as worse maladies; are offering ultimate conditions\nas states of health which others would uncompromisingly call states of\ndisease. Mr. Belloc once said that he would no more part with the idea\nof property than with his teeth; yet to Mr. Bernard Shaw property is\nnot a tooth, but a toothache. Lord Milner has sincerely attempted to\nintroduce German efficiency; and many of us would as soon welcome German\nmeasles. Dr. Saleeby would honestly like to have Eugenics; but I would\nrather have rheumatics.\n\nThis is the arresting and dominant fact about modern social discussion;\nthat the quarrel is not merely about the difficulties, but about the\naim. We agree about the evil; it is about the good that we should tear\neach other\u2019s eyes out. We all admit that a lazy aristocracy is a bad\nthing. We should not by any means all admit that an active aristocracy\nwould be a good thing. We all feel angry with an irreligious priesthood;\nbut some of us would go mad with disgust at a really religious one.\nEveryone is indignant if our army is weak, including the people who\nwould be even more indignant if it were strong. The social case is\nexactly the opposite of the medical case. We do not disagree, like\ndoctors, about the precise nature of the illness, while agreeing about\nthe nature of health. On the contrary, we all agree that England is\nunhealthy, but half of us would not look at her in what the other half\nwould call blooming health. Public abuses are so prominent and pestilent\nthat they sweep all generous people into a sort of fictitious unanimity.\nWe forget that, while we agree about the abuses of things, we should\ndiffer very much about the uses of them. Mr. Cadbury and I would agree\nabout the bad public house. It would be precisely in front of the good\npublic-house that our painful personal fracas would occur.\n\nI maintain, therefore, that the common sociological method is quite\nuseless: that of first dissecting abject poverty or cataloguing\nprostitution. We all dislike abject poverty; but it might be another\nbusiness if we began to discuss independent and dignified poverty. We\nall disapprove of prostitution; but we do not all approve of purity.\nThe only way to discuss the social evil is to get at once to the social\nideal. We can all see the national madness; but what is national sanity?\nI have called this book \u201cWhat Is Wrong with the World?\u201d and the upshot\nof the title can be easily and clearly stated. What is wrong is that we\ndo not ask what is right.\n\n*****\n\n\n\n\nII. WANTED, AN UNPRACTICAL MAN\n\nThere is a popular philosophical joke intended to typify the endless\nand useless arguments of philosophers; I mean the joke about which came\nfirst, the chicken or the egg? I am not sure that properly understood,\nit is so futile an inquiry after all. I am not concerned here to enter\non those deep metaphysical and theological differences of which the\nchicken and egg debate is a frivolous, but a very felicitous, type. The\nevolutionary materialists are appropriately enough represented in the\nvision of all things coming from an egg, a dim and monstrous oval germ\nthat had laid itself by accident. That other supernatural school of\nthought (to which I personally adhere) would be not unworthily typified\nin the fancy that this round world of ours is but an egg brooded upon by\na sacred unbegotten bird; the mystic dove of the prophets. But it is\nto much humbler functions that I here call the awful power of such a\ndistinction. Whether or no the living bird is at the beginning of our\nmental chain, it is absolutely necessary that it should be at the end of\nour mental chain. The bird is the thing to be aimed at--not with a gun,\nbut a life-bestowing wand. What is essential to our right thinking is\nthis: that the egg and the bird must not be thought of as equal cosmic\noccurrences recurring alternatively forever. They must not become a mere\negg and bird pattern, like the egg and dart pattern. One is a means\nand the other an end; they are in different mental worlds. Leaving\nthe complications of the human breakfast-table out of account, in an\nelemental sense, the egg only exists to produce the chicken. But the\nchicken does not exist only in order to produce another egg. He may also\nexist to amuse himself, to praise God, and even to suggest ideas to a\nFrench dramatist. Being a conscious life, he is, or may be, valuable\nin himself. Now our modern politics are full of a noisy forgetfulness;\nforgetfulness that the production of this happy and conscious life\nis after all the aim of all complexities and compromises. We talk of\nnothing but useful men and working institutions; that is, we only think\nof the chickens as things that will lay more eggs. Instead of seeking to\nbreed our ideal bird, the eagle of Zeus or the Swan of Avon, or whatever\nwe happen to want, we talk entirely in terms of the process and the\nembryo. The process itself, divorced from its divine object, becomes\ndoubtful and even morbid; poison enters the embryo of everything; and\nour politics are rotten eggs.\n\nIdealism is only considering everything in its practical essence.\nIdealism only means that we should consider a poker in reference to\npoking before we discuss its suitability for wife-beating; that we\nshould ask if an egg is good enough for practical poultry-rearing before\nwe decide that the egg is bad enough for practical politics. But I know\nthat this primary pursuit of the theory (which is but pursuit of the\naim) exposes one to the cheap charge of fiddling while Rome is burning.\nA school, of which Lord Rosebery is representative, has endeavored to\nsubstitute for the moral or social ideals which have hitherto been the\nmotive of politics a general coherency or completeness in the social\nsystem which has gained the nick-name of \u201cefficiency.\u201d I am not very\ncertain of the secret doctrine of this sect in the matter. But, as\nfar as I can make out, \u201cefficiency\u201d means that we ought to discover\neverything about a machine except what it is for. There has arisen in\nour time a most singular fancy: the fancy that when things go very wrong\nwe need a practical man. It would be far truer to say, that when things\ngo very wrong we need an unpractical man. Certainly, at least, we need a\ntheorist. A practical man means a man accustomed to mere daily practice,\nto the way things commonly work. When things will not work, you must\nhave the thinker, the man who has some doctrine about why they work at\nall. It is wrong to fiddle while Rome is burning; but it is quite right\nto study the theory of hydraulics while Rome is burning.\n\nIt is then necessary to drop one\u2019s daily agnosticism and attempt rerum\ncognoscere causas. If your aeroplane has a slight indisposition, a handy\nman may mend it. But, if it is seriously ill, it is all the more likely\nthat some absent-minded old professor with wild white hair will have to\nbe dragged out of a college or laboratory to analyze the evil. The more\ncomplicated the smash, the whiter-haired and more absent-minded will be\nthe theorist who is needed to deal with it; and in some extreme cases,\nno one but the man (probably insane) who invented your flying-ship could\npossibly say what was the matter with it.\n\n\u201cEfficiency,\u201d of course, is futile for the same reason that strong men,\nwill-power and the superman are futile. That is, it is futile because\nit only deals with actions after they have been performed. It has no\nphilosophy for incidents before they happen; therefore it has no power\nof choice. An act can only be successful or unsuccessful when it is\nover; if it is to begin, it must be, in the abstract, right or wrong.\nThere is no such thing as backing a winner; for he cannot be a winner\nwhen he is backed. There is no such thing as fighting on the winning\nside; one fights to find out which is the winning side. If any operation\nhas occurred, that operation was efficient. If a man is murdered, the\nmurder was efficient. A tropical sun is as efficient in making people\nlazy as a Lancashire foreman bully in making them energetic. Maeterlinck\nis as efficient in filling a man with strange spiritual tremors as\nMessrs. Crosse and Blackwell are in filling a man with jam. But it\nall depends on what you want to be filled with. Lord Rosebery, being\na modern skeptic, probably prefers the spiritual tremors. I, being an\northodox Christian, prefer the jam. But both are efficient when they\nhave been effected; and inefficient until they are effected. A man who\nthinks much about success must be the drowsiest sentimentalist; for he\nmust be always looking back. If he only likes victory he must always\ncome late for the battle. For the man of action there is nothing but\nidealism.\n\nThis definite ideal is a far more urgent and practical matter in our\nexisting English trouble than any immediate plans or proposals. For the\npresent chaos is due to a sort of general oblivion of all that men were\noriginally aiming at. No man demands what he desires; each man demands\nwhat he fancies he can get. Soon people forget what the man really\nwanted first; and after a successful and vigorous political life, he\nforgets it himself. The whole is an extravagant riot of second bests,\na pandemonium of pis-aller. Now this sort of pliability does not merely\nprevent any heroic consistency, it also prevents any really practical\ncompromise. One can only find the middle distance between two points if\nthe two points will stand still. We may make an arrangement between two\nlitigants who cannot both get what they want; but not if they will\nnot even tell us what they want. The keeper of a restaurant would much\nprefer that each customer should give his order smartly, though it\nwere for stewed ibis or boiled elephant, rather than that each customer\nshould sit holding his head in his hands, plunged in arithmetical\ncalculations about how much food there can be on the premises. Most of\nus have suffered from a certain sort of ladies who, by their perverse\nunselfishness, give more trouble than the selfish; who almost clamor\nfor the unpopular dish and scramble for the worst seat. Most of us\nhave known parties or expeditions full of this seething fuss of\nself-effacement. From much meaner motives than those of such admirable\nwomen, our practical politicians keep things in the same confusion\nthrough the same doubt about their real demands. There is nothing that\nso much prevents a settlement as a tangle of small surrenders. We are\nbewildered on every side by politicians who are in favor of secular\neducation, but think it hopeless to work for it; who desire total\nprohibition, but are certain they should not demand it; who regret\ncompulsory education, but resignedly continue it; or who want peasant\nproprietorship and therefore vote for something else. It is this dazed\nand floundering opportunism that gets in the way of everything. If our\nstatesmen were visionaries something practical might be done. If we ask\nfor something in the abstract we might get something in the concrete.\nAs it is, it is not only impossible to get what one wants, but it is\nimpossible to get any part of it, because nobody can mark it out plainly\nlike a map. That clear and even hard quality that there was in the old\nbargaining has wholly vanished. We forget that the word \u201ccompromise\u201d\n contains, among other things, the rigid and ringing word \u201cpromise.\u201d\n Moderation is not vague; it is as definite as perfection. The middle\npoint is as fixed as the extreme point.\n\nIf I am made to walk the plank by a pirate, it is vain for me to offer,\nas a common-sense compromise, to walk along the plank for a reasonable\ndistance. It is exactly about the reasonable distance that the pirate\nand I differ. There is an exquisite mathematical split second at which\nthe plank tips up. My common-sense ends just before that instant; the\npirate\u2019s common-sense begins just beyond it. But the point itself is as\nhard as any geometrical diagram; as abstract as any theological dogma.\n\n*****\n\n\n\n\nIII. THE NEW HYPOCRITE\n\nBut this new cloudy political cowardice has rendered useless the old\nEnglish compromise. People have begun to be terrified of an improvement\nmerely because it is complete. They call it utopian and revolutionary\nthat anyone should really have his own way, or anything be really done,\nand done with. Compromise used to mean that half a loaf was better than\nno bread. Among modern statesmen it really seems to mean that half a\nloaf is better than a whole loaf.\n\nAs an instance to sharpen the argument, I take the one case of our\neverlasting education bills. We have actually contrived to invent a new\nkind of hypocrite. The old hypocrite, Tartuffe or Pecksniff, was a man\nwhose aims were really worldly and practical, while he pretended that\nthey were religious. The new hypocrite is one whose aims are really\nreligious, while he pretends that they are worldly and practical. The\nRev. Brown, the Wesleyan minister, sturdily declares that he cares\nnothing for creeds, but only for education; meanwhile, in truth, the\nwildest Wesleyanism is tearing his soul. The Rev. Smith, of the Church\nof England, explains gracefully, with the Oxford manner, that the only\nquestion for him is the prosperity and efficiency of the schools; while\nin truth all the evil passions of a curate are roaring within him. It\nis a fight of creeds masquerading as policies. I think these reverend\ngentlemen do themselves wrong; I think they are more pious than they\nwill admit. Theology is not (as some suppose) expunged as an error. It\nis merely concealed, like a sin. Dr. Clifford really wants a theological\natmosphere as much as Lord Halifax; only it is a different one. If Dr.\nClifford would ask plainly for Puritanism and Lord Halifax ask plainly\nfor Catholicism, something might be done for them. We are all, one\nhopes, imaginative enough to recognize the dignity and distinctness of\nanother religion, like Islam or the cult of Apollo. I am quite ready\nto respect another man\u2019s faith; but it is too much to ask that I should\nrespect his doubt, his worldly hesitations and fictions, his political\nbargain and make-believe. Most Nonconformists with an instinct for\nEnglish history could see something poetic and national about the\nArchbishop of Canterbury as an Archbishop of Canterbury. It is when\nhe does the rational British statesman that they very justifiably get\nannoyed. Most Anglicans with an eye for pluck and simplicity could\nadmire Dr. Clifford as a Baptist minister. It is when he says that he is\nsimply a citizen that nobody can possibly believe him.\n\nBut indeed the case is yet more curious than this. The one argument that\nused to be urged for our creedless vagueness was that at least it saved\nus from fanaticism. But it does not even do that. On the contrary, it\ncreates and renews fanaticism with a force quite peculiar to itself.\nThis is at once so strange and so true that I will ask the reader\u2019s\nattention to it with a little more precision.\n\nSome people do not like the word \u201cdogma.\u201d Fortunately they are free, and\nthere is an alternative for them. There are two things, and two things\nonly, for the human mind, a dogma and a prejudice. The Middle Ages\nwere a rational epoch, an age of doctrine. Our age is, at its best, a\npoetical epoch, an age of prejudice. A doctrine is a definite point; a\nprejudice is a direction. That an ox may be eaten, while a man should\nnot be eaten, is a doctrine. That as little as possible of anything\nshould be eaten is a prejudice; which is also sometimes called an ideal.\nNow a direction is always far more fantastic than a plan. I would\nrather have the most archaic map of the road to Brighton than a general\nrecommendation to turn to the left. Straight lines that are not parallel\nmust meet at last; but curves may recoil forever. A pair of lovers might\nwalk along the frontier of France and Germany, one on the one side and\none on the other, so long as they were not vaguely told to keep away\nfrom each other. And this is a strictly true parable of the effect of\nour modern vagueness in losing and separating men as in a mist.\n\nIt is not merely true that a creed unites men. Nay, a difference of\ncreed unites men--so long as it is a clear difference. A boundary\nunites. Many a magnanimous Moslem and chivalrous Crusader must have been\nnearer to each other, because they were both dogmatists, than any two\nhomeless agnostics in a pew of Mr. Campbell\u2019s chapel. \u201cI say God is\nOne,\u201d and \u201cI say God is One but also Three,\u201d that is the beginning of a\ngood quarrelsome, manly friendship. But our age would turn these creeds\ninto tendencies. It would tell the Trinitarian to follow multiplicity as\nsuch (because it was his \u201ctemperament\u201d), and he would turn up later with\nthree hundred and thirty-three persons in the Trinity. Meanwhile, it\nwould turn the Moslem into a Monist: a frightful intellectual fall. It\nwould force that previously healthy person not only to admit that there\nwas one God, but to admit that there was nobody else. When each had, for\na long enough period, followed the gleam of his own nose (like the Dong)\nthey would appear again; the Christian a Polytheist, and the Moslem a\nPanegoist, both quite mad, and far more unfit to understand each other\nthan before.\n\nIt is exactly the same with politics. Our political vagueness divides\nmen, it does not fuse them. Men will walk along the edge of a chasm in\nclear weather, but they will edge miles away from it in a fog. So a\nTory can walk up to the very edge of Socialism, if he knows what is\nSocialism. But if he is told that Socialism is a spirit, a sublime\natmosphere, a noble, indefinable tendency, why, then he keeps out of its\nway; and quite right too. One can meet an assertion with argument; but\nhealthy bigotry is the only way in which one can meet a tendency. I\nam told that the Japanese method of wrestling consists not of suddenly\npressing, but of suddenly giving way. This is one of my many reasons for\ndisliking the Japanese civilization. To use surrender as a weapon is the\nvery worst spirit of the East. But certainly there is no force so hard\nto fight as the force which it is easy to conquer; the force that\nalways yields and then returns. Such is the force of a great impersonal\nprejudice, such as possesses the modern world on so many points. Against\nthis there is no weapon at all except a rigid and steely sanity, a\nresolution not to listen to fads, and not to be infected by diseases.\n\nIn short, the rational human faith must armor itself with prejudice in\nan age of prejudices, just as it armoured itself with logic in an age of\nlogic. But the difference between the two mental methods is marked and\nunmistakable. The essential of the difference is this: that prejudices\nare divergent, whereas creeds are always in collision. Believers bump\ninto each other; whereas bigots keep out of each other\u2019s way. A creed\nis a collective thing, and even its sins are sociable. A prejudice is a\nprivate thing, and even its tolerance is misanthropic. So it is with our\nexisting divisions. They keep out of each other\u2019s way; the Tory paper\nand the Radical paper do not answer each other; they ignore each other.\nGenuine controversy, fair cut and thrust before a common audience, has\nbecome in our special epoch very rare. For the sincere controversialist\nis above all things a good listener. The really burning enthusiast never\ninterrupts; he listens to the enemy\u2019s arguments as eagerly as a spy\nwould listen to the enemy\u2019s arrangements. But if you attempt an actual\nargument with a modern paper of opposite politics, you will find that no\nmedium is admitted between violence and evasion. You will have no answer\nexcept slanging or silence. A modern editor must not have that eager ear\nthat goes with the honest tongue. He may be deaf and silent; and that is\ncalled dignity. Or he may be deaf and noisy; and that is called slashing\njournalism. In neither case is there any controversy; for the whole\nobject of modern party combatants is to charge out of earshot.\n\nThe only logical cure for all this is the assertion of a human ideal.\nIn dealing with this, I will try to be as little transcendental as is\nconsistent with reason; it is enough to say that unless we have some\ndoctrine of a divine man, all abuses may be excused, since evolution\nmay turn them into uses. It will be easy for the scientific plutocrat to\nmaintain that humanity will adapt itself to any conditions which we now\nconsider evil. The old tyrants invoked the past; the new tyrants\nwill invoke the future evolution has produced the snail and the owl;\nevolution can produce a workman who wants no more space than a snail,\nand no more light than an owl. The employer need not mind sending a\nKaffir to work underground; he will soon become an underground animal,\nlike a mole. He need not mind sending a diver to hold his breath in the\ndeep seas; he will soon be a deep-sea animal. Men need not trouble to\nalter conditions, conditions will so soon alter men. The head can be\nbeaten small enough to fit the hat. Do not knock the fetters off\nthe slave; knock the slave until he forgets the fetters. To all this\nplausible modern argument for oppression, the only adequate answer is,\nthat there is a permanent human ideal that must not be either confused\nor destroyed. The most important man on earth is the perfect man who\nis not there. The Christian religion has specially uttered the ultimate\nsanity of Man, says Scripture, who shall judge the incarnate and human\ntruth. Our lives and laws are not judged by divine superiority, but\nsimply by human perfection. It is man, says Aristotle, who is the\nmeasure. It is the Son of Man, says Scripture, who shall judge the quick\nand the dead.\n\nDoctrine, therefore, does not cause dissensions; rather a doctrine alone\ncan cure our dissensions. It is necessary to ask, however, roughly,\nwhat abstract and ideal shape in state or family would fulfil the human\nhunger; and this apart from whether we can completely obtain it or not.\nBut when we come to ask what is the need of normal men, what is the\ndesire of all nations, what is the ideal house, or road, or rule, or\nrepublic, or king, or priesthood, then we are confronted with a strange\nand irritating difficulty peculiar to the present time; and we must call\na temporary halt and examine that obstacle.\n\n*****\n\n\n\n\nIV. THE FEAR OF THE PAST\n\nThe last few decades have been marked by a special cultivation of\nthe romance of the future. We seem to have made up our minds to\nmisunderstand what has happened; and we turn, with a sort of relief, to\nstating what will happen--which is (apparently) much easier. The modern\nman no longer presents the memoirs of his great grandfather; but\nis engaged in writing a detailed and authoritative biography of his\ngreat-grandson. Instead of trembling before the specters of the dead,\nwe shudder abjectly under the shadow of the babe unborn. This spirit is\napparent everywhere, even to the creation of a form of futurist romance.\nSir Walter Scott stands at the dawn of the nineteenth century for the\nnovel of the past; Mr. H. G. Wells stands at the dawn of the twentieth\ncentury for the novel of the future. The old story, we know, was\nsupposed to begin: \u201cLate on a winter\u2019s evening two horsemen might have\nbeen seen--.\u201d The new story has to begin: \u201cLate on a winter\u2019s evening\ntwo aviators will be seen--.\u201d The movement is not without its elements\nof charm; there is something spirited, if eccentric, in the sight of so\nmany people fighting over again the fights that have not yet happened;\nof people still glowing with the memory of tomorrow morning. A man in\nadvance of the age is a familiar phrase enough. An age in advance of the\nage is really rather odd.\n\nBut when full allowance has been made for this harmless element of\npoetry and pretty human perversity in the thing, I shall not hesitate to\nmaintain here that this cult of the future is not only a weakness but\na cowardice of the age. It is the peculiar evil of this epoch that even\nits pugnacity is fundamentally frightened; and the Jingo is contemptible\nnot because he is impudent, but because he is timid. The reason why\nmodern armaments do not inflame the imagination like the arms and\nemblazonments of the Crusades is a reason quite apart from optical\nugliness or beauty. Some battleships are as beautiful as the sea; and\nmany Norman nosepieces were as ugly as Norman noses. The atmospheric\nugliness that surrounds our scientific war is an emanation from that\nevil panic which is at the heart of it. The charge of the Crusades was a\ncharge; it was charging towards God, the wild consolation of the braver.\nThe charge of the modern armaments is not a charge at all. It is a rout,\na retreat, a flight from the devil, who will catch the hindmost. It is\nimpossible to imagine a mediaeval knight talking of longer and longer\nFrench lances, with precisely the quivering employed about larger and\nlarger German ships The man who called the Blue Water School the \u201cBlue\nFunk School\u201d uttered a psychological truth which that school itself\nwould scarcely essentially deny. Even the two-power standard, if it be\na necessity, is in a sense a degrading necessity. Nothing has more\nalienated many magnanimous minds from Imperial enterprises than the fact\nthat they are always exhibited as stealthy or sudden defenses against a\nworld of cold rapacity and fear. The Boer War, for instance, was colored\nnot so much by the creed that we were doing something right, as by\nthe creed that Boers and Germans were probably doing something wrong;\ndriving us (as it was said) to the sea. Mr. Chamberlain, I think, said\nthat the war was a feather in his cap and so it was: a white feather.\n\nNow this same primary panic that I feel in our rush towards patriotic\narmaments I feel also in our rush towards future visions of society. The\nmodern mind is forced towards the future by a certain sense of fatigue,\nnot unmixed with terror, with which it regards the past. It is propelled\ntowards the coming time; it is, in the exact words of the popular\nphrase, knocked into the middle of next week. And the goad which drives\nit on thus eagerly is not an affectation for futurity Futurity does not\nexist, because it is still future. Rather it is a fear of the past; a\nfear not merely of the evil in the past, but of the good in the past\nalso. The brain breaks down under the unbearable virtue of mankind.\nThere have been so many flaming faiths that we cannot hold; so many\nharsh heroisms that we cannot imitate; so many great efforts of\nmonumental building or of military glory which seem to us at once\nsublime and pathetic. The future is a refuge from the fierce competition\nof our forefathers. The older generation, not the younger, is knocking\nat our door. It is agreeable to escape, as Henley said, into the Street\nof By-and-Bye, where stands the Hostelry of Never. It is pleasant to\nplay with children, especially unborn children. The future is a blank\nwall on which every man can write his own name as large as he likes;\nthe past I find already covered with illegible scribbles, such as Plato,\nIsaiah, Shakespeare, Michael Angelo, Napoleon. I can make the future as\nnarrow as myself; the past is obliged to be as broad and turbulent as\nhumanity. And the upshot of this modern attitude is really this: that\nmen invent new ideals because they dare not attempt old ideals. They\nlook forward with enthusiasm, because they are afraid to look back.\n\nNow in history there is no Revolution that is not a Restoration. Among\nthe many things that leave me doubtful about the modern habit of fixing\neyes on the future, none is stronger than this: that all the men in\nhistory who have really done anything with the future have had their\neyes fixed upon the past. I need not mention the Renaissance, the very\nword proves my case. The originality of Michael Angelo and Shakespeare\nbegan with the digging up of old vases and manuscripts. The mildness of\npoets absolutely arose out of the mildness of antiquaries. So the great\nmediaeval revival was a memory of the Roman Empire. So the Reformation\nlooked back to the Bible and Bible times. So the modern Catholic\nmovement has looked back to patristic times. But that modern movement\nwhich many would count the most anarchic of all is in this sense the\nmost conservative of all. Never was the past more venerated by men than\nit was by the French Revolutionists. They invoked the little republics\nof antiquity with the complete confidence of one who invokes the gods.\nThe Sans-culottes believed (as their name might imply) in a return to\nsimplicity. They believed most piously in a remote past; some might call\nit a mythical past. For some strange reason man must always thus plant\nhis fruit trees in a graveyard. Man can only find life among the dead.\nMan is a misshapen monster, with his feet set forward and his face\nturned back. He can make the future luxuriant and gigantic, so long as\nhe is thinking about the past. When he tries to think about the future\nitself, his mind diminishes to a pin point with imbecility, which some\ncall Nirvana. To-morrow is the Gorgon; a man must only see it mirrored\nin the shining shield of yesterday. If he sees it directly he is turned\nto stone. This has been the fate of all those who have really seen fate\nand futurity as clear and inevitable. The Calvinists, with their perfect\ncreed of predestination, were turned to stone. The modern sociological\nscientists (with their excruciating Eugenics) are turned to stone. The\nonly difference is that the Puritans make dignified, and the Eugenists\nsomewhat amusing, statues.\n\nBut there is one feature in the past which more than all the rest defies\nand depresses the moderns and drives them towards this featureless\nfuture. I mean the presence in the past of huge ideals, unfulfilled and\nsometimes abandoned. The sight of these splendid failures is melancholy\nto a restless and rather morbid generation; and they maintain a strange\nsilence about them--sometimes amounting to an unscrupulous silence. They\nkeep them entirely out of their newspapers and almost entirely out of\ntheir history books. For example, they will often tell you (in their\npraises of the coming age) that we are moving on towards a United States\nof Europe. But they carefully omit to tell you that we are moving away\nfrom a United States of Europe, that such a thing existed literally\nin Roman and essentially in mediaeval times. They never admit that the\ninternational hatreds (which they call barbaric) are really very recent,\nthe mere breakdown of the ideal of the Holy Roman Empire. Or again, they\nwill tell you that there is going to be a social revolution, a great\nrising of the poor against the rich; but they never rub it in that\nFrance made that magnificent attempt, unaided, and that we and all the\nworld allowed it to be trampled out and forgotten. I say decisively that\nnothing is so marked in modern writing as the prediction of such ideals\nin the future combined with the ignoring of them in the past. Anyone\ncan test this for himself. Read any thirty or forty pages of pamphlets\nadvocating peace in Europe and see how many of them praise the old Popes\nor Emperors for keeping the peace in Europe. Read any armful of essays\nand poems in praise of social democracy, and see how many of them praise\nthe old Jacobins who created democracy and died for it. These colossal\nruins are to the modern only enormous eyesores. He looks back along the\nvalley of the past and sees a perspective of splendid but unfinished\ncities. They are unfinished, not always through enmity or accident,\nbut often through fickleness, mental fatigue, and the lust for alien\nphilosophies. We have not only left undone those things that we ought to\nhave done, but we have even left undone those things that we wanted to\ndo\n\nIt is very currently suggested that the modern man is the heir of\nall the ages, that he has got the good out of these successive human\nexperiments. I know not what to say in answer to this, except to ask the\nreader to look at the modern man, as I have just looked at the modern\nman--in the looking-glass. Is it really true that you and I are two\nstarry towers built up of all the most towering visions of the past?\nHave we really fulfilled all the great historic ideals one after the\nother, from our naked ancestor who was brave enough to kill a mammoth\nwith a stone knife, through the Greek citizen and the Christian saint\nto our own grandfather or great-grandfather, who may have been sabred by\nthe Manchester Yeomanry or shot in the \u201848? Are we still strong enough\nto spear mammoths, but now tender enough to spare them? Does the cosmos\ncontain any mammoth that we have either speared or spared? When we\ndecline (in a marked manner) to fly the red flag and fire across a\nbarricade like our grandfathers, are we really declining in deference to\nsociologists--or to soldiers? Have we indeed outstripped the warrior and\npassed the ascetical saint? I fear we only outstrip the warrior in the\nsense that we should probably run away from him. And if we have passed\nthe saint, I fear we have passed him without bowing.\n\nThis is, first and foremost, what I mean by the narrowness of the new\nideas, the limiting effect of the future. Our modern prophetic idealism\nis narrow because it has undergone a persistent process of elimination.\nWe must ask for new things because we are not allowed to ask for old\nthings. The whole position is based on this idea that we have got all\nthe good that can be got out of the ideas of the past. But we have not\ngot all the good out of them, perhaps at this moment not any of the\ngood out of them. And the need here is a need of complete freedom for\nrestoration as well as revolution.\n\nWe often read nowadays of the valor or audacity with which some rebel\nattacks a hoary tyranny or an antiquated superstition. There is not\nreally any courage at all in attacking hoary or antiquated things, any\nmore than in offering to fight one\u2019s grandmother. The really courageous\nman is he who defies tyrannies young as the morning and superstitions\nfresh as the first flowers. The only true free-thinker is he whose\nintellect is as much free from the future as from the past. He cares\nas little for what will be as for what has been; he cares only for\nwhat ought to be. And for my present purpose I specially insist on this\nabstract independence. If I am to discuss what is wrong, one of\nthe first things that are wrong is this: the deep and silent modern\nassumption that past things have become impossible. There is one\nmetaphor of which the moderns are very fond; they are always saying,\n\u201cYou can\u2019t put the clock back.\u201d The simple and obvious answer is \u201cYou\ncan.\u201d A clock, being a piece of human construction, can be restored by\nthe human finger to any figure or hour. In the same way society, being a\npiece of human construction, can be reconstructed upon any plan that has\never existed.\n\nThere is another proverb, \u201cAs you have made your bed, so you must lie on\nit\u201d; which again is simply a lie. If I have made my bed uncomfortable,\nplease God I will make it again. We could restore the Heptarchy or the\nstage coaches if we chose. It might take some time to do, and it might\nbe very inadvisable to do it; but certainly it is not impossible as\nbringing back last Friday is impossible. This is, as I say, the first\nfreedom that I claim: the freedom to restore. I claim a right to propose\nas a solution the old patriarchal system of a Highland clan, if that\nshould seem to eliminate the largest number of evils. It certainly would\neliminate some evils; for instance, the unnatural sense of obeying cold\nand harsh strangers, mere bureaucrats and policemen. I claim the right\nto propose the complete independence of the small Greek or Italian\ntowns, a sovereign city of Brixton or Brompton, if that seems the best\nway out of our troubles. It would be a way out of some of our troubles;\nwe could not have in a small state, for instance, those enormous\nillusions about men or measures which are nourished by the great\nnational or international newspapers. You could not persuade a city\nstate that Mr. Beit was an Englishman, or Mr. Dillon a desperado,\nany more than you could persuade a Hampshire Village that the\nvillage drunkard was a teetotaller or the village idiot a statesman.\nNevertheless, I do not as a fact propose that the Browns and the Smiths\nshould be collected under separate tartans. Nor do I even propose\nthat Clapham should declare its independence. I merely declare my\nindependence. I merely claim my choice of all the tools in the universe;\nand I shall not admit that any of them are blunted merely because they\nhave been used.\n\n*****\n\n\n\n\nV. THE UNFINISHED TEMPLE\n\nThe task of modern idealists indeed is made much too easy for them by\nthe fact that they are always taught that if a thing has been defeated\nit has been disproved. Logically, the case is quite clearly the other\nway. The lost causes are exactly those which might have saved the world.\nIf a man says that the Young Pretender would have made England happy,\nit is hard to answer him. If anyone says that the Georges made England\nhappy, I hope we all know what to answer. That which was prevented is\nalways impregnable; and the only perfect King of England was he who\nwas smothered. Exactly be cause Jacobitism failed we cannot call it\na failure. Precisely because the Commune collapsed as a rebellion we\ncannot say that it collapsed as a system. But such outbursts were brief\nor incidental. Few people realize how many of the largest efforts, the\nfacts that will fill history, were frustrated in their full design and\ncome down to us as gigantic cripples. I have only space to allude to the\ntwo largest facts of modern history: the Catholic Church and that modern\ngrowth rooted in the French Revolution.\n\nWhen four knights scattered the blood and brains of St. Thomas of\nCanterbury, it was not only a sign of anger but of a sort of black\nadmiration. They wished for his blood, but they wished even more for his\nbrains. Such a blow will remain forever unintelligible unless we realise\nwhat the brains of St. Thomas were thinking about just before they were\ndistributed over the floor. They were thinking about the great mediaeval\nconception that the church is the judge of the world. Becket objected to\na priest being tried even by the Lord Chief Justice. And his reason was\nsimple: because the Lord Chief Justice was being tried by the priest.\nThe judiciary was itself sub judice. The kings were themselves in the\ndock. The idea was to create an invisible kingdom, without armies or\nprisons, but with complete freedom to condemn publicly all the kingdoms\nof the earth. Whether such a supreme church would have cured society we\ncannot affirm definitely; because the church never was a supreme church.\nWe only know that in England at any rate the princes conquered the\nsaints. What the world wanted we see before us; and some of us call it\na failure. But we cannot call what the church wanted a failure, simply\nbecause the church failed. Tracy struck a little too soon. England had\nnot yet made the great Protestant discovery that the king can do no\nwrong. The king was whipped in the cathedral; a performance which I\nrecommend to those who regret the unpopularity of church-going. But the\ndiscovery was made; and Henry VIII scattered Becket\u2019s bones as easily as\nTracy had scattered his brains.\n\nOf course, I mean that Catholicism was not tried; plenty of Catholics\nwere tried, and found guilty. My point is that the world did not tire\nof the church\u2019s ideal, but of its reality. Monasteries were impugned not\nfor the chastity of monks, but for the unchastity of monks. Christianity\nwas unpopular not because of the humility, but of the arrogance of\nChristians. Certainly, if the church failed it was largely through the\nchurchmen. But at the same time hostile elements had certainly begun to\nend it long before it could have done its work. In the nature of\nthings it needed a common scheme of life and thought in Europe. Yet\nthe mediaeval system began to be broken to pieces intellectually, long\nbefore it showed the slightest hint of falling to pieces morally. The\nhuge early heresies, like the Albigenses, had not the faintest excuse in\nmoral superiority. And it is actually true that the Reformation began\nto tear Europe apart before the Catholic Church had had time to pull\nit together. The Prussians, for instance, were not converted to\nChristianity at all until quite close to the Reformation. The poor\ncreatures hardly had time to become Catholics before they were told\nto become Protestants. This explains a great deal of their subsequent\nconduct. But I have only taken this as the first and most evident case\nof the general truth: that the great ideals of the past failed not by\nbeing outlived (which must mean over-lived), but by not being lived\nenough. Mankind has not passed through the Middle Ages. Rather mankind\nhas retreated from the Middle Ages in reaction and rout. The Christian\nideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult;\nand left untried.\n\nIt is, of course, the same in the case of the French Revolution. A great\npart of our present perplexity arises from the fact that the French\nRevolution has half succeeded and half failed. In one sense, Valmy was\nthe decisive battle of the West, and in another Trafalgar. We have,\nindeed, destroyed the largest territorial tyrannies, and created a free\npeasantry in almost all Christian countries except England; of which we\nshall say more anon. But representative government, the one universal\nrelic, is a very poor fragment of the full republican idea. The theory\nof the French Revolution presupposed two things in government, things\nwhich it achieved at the time, but which it has certainly not bequeathed\nto its imitators in England, Germany, and America. The first of these\nwas the idea of honorable poverty; that a statesman must be something of\na stoic; the second was the idea of extreme publicity. Many imaginative\nEnglish writers, including Carlyle, seem quite unable to imagine how it\nwas that men like Robespierre and Marat were ardently admired. The best\nanswer is that they were admired for being poor--poor when they might\nhave been rich.\n\nNo one will pretend that this ideal exists at all in the haute politique\nof this country. Our national claim to political incorruptibility is\nactually based on exactly the opposite argument; it is based on the\ntheory that wealthy men in assured positions will have no temptation to\nfinancial trickery. Whether the history of the English aristocracy,\nfrom the spoliation of the monasteries to the annexation of the mines,\nentirely supports this theory I am not now inquiring; but certainly\nit is our theory, that wealth will be a protection against political\ncorruption. The English statesman is bribed not to be bribed. He is born\nwith a silver spoon in his mouth, so that he may never afterwards be\nfound with the silver spoons in his pocket. So strong is our faith in\nthis protection by plutocracy, that we are more and more trusting our\nempire in the hands of families which inherit wealth without either\nblood or manners. Some of our political houses are parvenue by pedigree;\nthey hand on vulgarity like a coat of-arms. In the case of many a modern\nstatesman to say that he is born with a silver spoon in his mouth, is\nat once inadequate and excessive. He is born with a silver knife in his\nmouth. But all this only illustrates the English theory that poverty is\nperilous for a politician.\n\nIt will be the same if we compare the conditions that have come about\nwith the Revolution legend touching publicity. The old democratic\ndoctrine was that the more light that was let in to all departments of\nState, the easier it was for a righteous indignation to move promptly\nagainst wrong. In other words, monarchs were to live in glass houses,\nthat mobs might throw stones. Again, no admirer of existing English\npolitics (if there is any admirer of existing English politics) will\nreally pretend that this ideal of publicity is exhausted, or even\nattempted. Obviously public life grows more private every day. The\nFrench have, indeed, continued the tradition of revealing secrets and\nmaking scandals; hence they are more flagrant and palpable than we, not\nin sin but in the confession of sin. The first trial of Dreyfus might\nhave happened in England; it is exactly the second trial that would have\nbeen legally impossible. But, indeed, if we wish to realise how far we\nfall short of the original republican outline, the sharpest way to test\nit is to note how far we fall short even of the republican element\nin the older regime. Not only are we less democratic than Danton and\nCondorcet, but we are in many ways less democratic than Choiseul and\nMarie Antoinette. The richest nobles before the revolt were needy\nmiddle-class people compared with our Rothschilds and Roseberys. And\nin the matter of publicity the old French monarchy was infinitely more\ndemocratic than any of the monarchies of today. Practically anybody\nwho chose could walk into the palace and see the king playing with his\nchildren, or paring his nails. The people possessed the monarch, as the\npeople possess Primrose Hill; that is, they cannot move it, but they can\nsprawl all over it. The old French monarchy was founded on the excellent\nprinciple that a cat may look at a king. But nowadays a cat may not look\nat a king; unless it is a very tame cat. Even where the press is free\nfor criticism it is only used for adulation. The substantial difference\ncomes to something uncommonly like this: Eighteenth century tyranny\nmeant that you could say \u201cThe K__ of Br__rd is a profligate.\u201d Twentieth\ncentury liberty really means that you are allowed to say \u201cThe King of\nBrentford is a model family man.\u201d\n\nBut we have delayed the main argument too long for the parenthetical\npurpose of showing that the great democratic dream, like the great\nmediaeval dream, has in a strict and practical sense been a dream\nunfulfilled. Whatever is the matter with modern England it is not\nthat we have carried out too literally, or achieved with disappointing\ncompleteness, either the Catholicism of Becket or the equality of Marat.\nNow I have taken these two cases merely because they are typical of\nten thousand other cases; the world is full of these unfulfilled ideas,\nthese uncompleted temples. History does not consist of completed and\ncrumbling ruins; rather it consists of half-built villas abandoned by\na bankrupt-builder. This world is more like an unfinished suburb than a\ndeserted cemetery.\n\n\n*****\n\n\n\n\nVI. THE ENEMIES OF PROPERTY\n\nBut it is for this especial reason that such an explanation is necessary\non the very threshold of the definition of ideals. For owing to that\nhistoric fallacy with which I have just dealt, numbers of readers will\nexpect me, when I propound an ideal, to propound a new ideal. Now I\nhave no notion at all of propounding a new ideal. There is no new ideal\nimaginable by the madness of modern sophists, which will be anything\nlike so startling as fulfilling any one of the old ones. On the day\nthat any copybook maxim is carried out there will be something like an\nearthquake on the earth. There is only one thing new that can be done\nunder the sun; and that is to look at the sun. If you attempt it on a\nblue day in June, you will know why men do not look straight at their\nideals. There is only one really startling thing to be done with the\nideal, and that is to do it. It is to face the flaming logical fact, and\nits frightful consequences. Christ knew that it would be a more stunning\nthunderbolt to fulfil the law than to destroy it. It is true of both\nthe cases I have quoted, and of every case. The pagans had always adored\npurity: Athena, Artemis, Vesta. It was when the virgin martyrs began\ndefiantly to practice purity that they rent them with wild beasts, and\nrolled them on red-hot coals. The world had always loved the notion of\nthe poor man uppermost; it can be proved by every legend from Cinderella\nto Whittington, by every poem from the Magnificat to the Marseillaise.\nThe kings went mad against France not because she idealized this ideal,\nbut because she realized it. Joseph of Austria and Catherine of Russia\nquite agreed that the people should rule; what horrified them was that\nthe people did. The French Revolution, therefore, is the type of all\ntrue revolutions, because its ideal is as old as the Old Adam, but\nits fulfilment almost as fresh, as miraculous, and as new as the New\nJerusalem.\n\nBut in the modern world we are primarily confronted with the\nextraordinary spectacle of people turning to new ideals because they\nhave not tried the old. Men have not got tired of Christianity; they\nhave never found enough Christianity to get tired of. Men have never\nwearied of political justice; they have wearied of waiting for it.\n\nNow, for the purpose of this book, I propose to take only one of these\nold ideals; but one that is perhaps the oldest. I take the principle\nof domesticity: the ideal house; the happy family, the holy family of\nhistory. For the moment it is only necessary to remark that it is like\nthe church and like the republic, now chiefly assailed by those who have\nnever known it, or by those who have failed to fulfil it. Numberless\nmodern women have rebelled against domesticity in theory because they\nhave never known it in practice. Hosts of the poor are driven to the\nworkhouse without ever having known the house. Generally speaking, the\ncultured class is shrieking to be let out of the decent home, just as\nthe working class is shouting to be let into it.\n\nNow if we take this house or home as a test, we may very generally lay\nthe simple spiritual foundations of the idea. God is that which can make\nsomething out of nothing. Man (it may truly be said) is that which can\nmake something out of anything. In other words, while the joy of God\nbe unlimited creation, the special joy of man is limited creation, the\ncombination of creation with limits. Man\u2019s pleasure, therefore, is\nto possess conditions, but also to be partly possessed by them; to\nbe half-controlled by the flute he plays or by the field he digs. The\nexcitement is to get the utmost out of given conditions; the conditions\nwill stretch, but not indefinitely. A man can write an immortal sonnet\non an old envelope, or hack a hero out of a lump of rock. But hacking\na sonnet out of a rock would be a laborious business, and making a hero\nout of an envelope is almost out of the sphere of practical politics.\nThis fruitful strife with limitations, when it concerns some airy\nentertainment of an educated class, goes by the name of Art. But\nthe mass of men have neither time nor aptitude for the invention of\ninvisible or abstract beauty. For the mass of men the idea of artistic\ncreation can only be expressed by an idea unpopular in present\ndiscussions--the idea of property. The average man cannot cut clay into\nthe shape of a man; but he can cut earth into the shape of a garden; and\nthough he arranges it with red geraniums and blue potatoes in alternate\nstraight lines, he is still an artist; because he has chosen. The\naverage man cannot paint the sunset whose colors be admires; but he can\npaint his own house with what color he chooses, and though he paints it\npea green with pink spots, he is still an artist; because that is his\nchoice. Property is merely the art of the democracy. It means that every\nman should have something that he can shape in his own image, as he is\nshaped in the image of heaven. But because he is not God, but only a\ngraven image of God, his self-expression must deal with limits; properly\nwith limits that are strict and even small.\n\nI am well aware that the word \u201cproperty\u201d has been defied in our time by\nthe corruption of the great capitalists. One would think, to hear people\ntalk, that the Rothchilds and the Rockefellers were on the side of\nproperty. But obviously they are the enemies of property; because they\nare enemies of their own limitations. They do not want their own land;\nbut other people\u2019s. When they remove their neighbor\u2019s landmark, they\nalso remove their own. A man who loves a little triangular field ought\nto love it because it is triangular; anyone who destroys the shape, by\ngiving him more land, is a thief who has stolen a triangle. A man with\nthe true poetry of possession wishes to see the wall where his garden\nmeets Smith\u2019s garden; the hedge where his farm touches Brown\u2019s. He\ncannot see the shape of his own land unless he sees the edges of his\nneighbor\u2019s. It is the negation of property that the Duke of Sutherland\nshould have all the farms in one estate; just as it would be the\nnegation of marriage if he had all our wives in one harem.\n\n*****\n\n\n\n\nVII. THE FREE FAMILY\n\nAs I have said, I propose to take only one central instance; I will take\nthe institution called the private house or home; the shell and organ of\nthe family. We will consider cosmic and political tendencies simply as\nthey strike that ancient and unique roof. Very few words will suffice\nfor all I have to say about the family itself. I leave alone the\nspeculations about its animal origin and the details of its social\nreconstruction; I am concerned only with its palpable omnipresence. It\nis a necessity far mankind; it is (if you like to put it so) a trap for\nmankind. Only by the hypocritical ignoring of a huge fact can any\none contrive to talk of \u201cfree love\u201d; as if love were an episode like\nlighting a cigarette, or whistling a tune. Suppose whenever a man lit a\ncigarette, a towering genie arose from the rings of smoke and followed\nhim everywhere as a huge slave. Suppose whenever a man whistled a tune\nhe \u201cdrew an angel down\u201d and had to walk about forever with a seraph on\na string. These catastrophic images are but faint parallels to the\nearthquake consequences that Nature has attached to sex; and it is\nperfectly plain at the beginning that a man cannot be a free lover; he\nis either a traitor or a tied man. The second element that creates\nthe family is that its consequences, though colossal, are gradual; the\ncigarette produces a baby giant, the song only an infant seraph. Thence\narises the necessity for some prolonged system of co-operation; and\nthence arises the family in its full educational sense.\n\nIt may be said that this institution of the home is the one anarchist\ninstitution. That is to say, it is older than law, and stands outside\nthe State. By its nature it is refreshed or corrupted by indefinable\nforces of custom or kinship. This is not to be understood as meaning\nthat the State has no authority over families; that State authority\nis invoked and ought to be invoked in many abnormal cases. But in most\nnormal cases of family joys and sorrows, the State has no mode of entry.\nIt is not so much that the law should not interfere, as that the law\ncannot. Just as there are fields too far off for law, so there are\nfields too near; as a man may see the North Pole before he sees his own\nbackbone. Small and near matters escape control at least as much as vast\nand remote ones; and the real pains and pleasures of the family form\na strong instance of this. If a baby cries for the moon, the policeman\ncannot procure the moon--but neither can he stop the baby. Creatures so\nclose to each other as husband and wife, or a mother and children, have\npowers of making each other happy or miserable with which no public\ncoercion can deal. If a marriage could be dissolved every morning it\nwould not give back his night\u2019s rest to a man kept awake by a curtain\nlecture; and what is the good of giving a man a lot of power where he\nonly wants a little peace? The child must depend on the most imperfect\nmother; the mother may be devoted to the most unworthy children; in such\nrelations legal revenges are vain. Even in the abnormal cases where\nthe law may operate, this difficulty is constantly found; as many a\nbewildered magistrate knows. He has to save children from starvation by\ntaking away their breadwinner. And he often has to break a wife\u2019s heart\nbecause her husband has already broken her head. The State has no tool\ndelicate enough to deracinate the rooted habits and tangled affections\nof the family; the two sexes, whether happy or unhappy, are glued\ntogether too tightly for us to get the blade of a legal penknife in\nbetween them. The man and the woman are one flesh--yes, even when they\nare not one spirit. Man is a quadruped. Upon this ancient and anarchic\nintimacy, types of government have little or no effect; it is happy or\nunhappy, by its own sexual wholesomeness and genial habit, under the\nrepublic of Switzerland or the despotism of Siam. Even a republic in\nSiam would not have done much towards freeing the Siamese Twins.\n\nThe problem is not in marriage, but in sex; and would be felt under the\nfreest concubinage. Nevertheless, the overwhelming mass of mankind has\nnot believed in freedom in this matter, but rather in a more or less\nlasting tie. Tribes and civilizations differ about the occasions on\nwhich we may loosen the bond, but they all agree that there is a bond to\nbe loosened, not a mere universal detachment. For the purposes of this\nbook I am not concerned to discuss that mystical view of marriage in\nwhich I myself believe: the great European tradition which has made\nmarriage a sacrament. It is enough to say here that heathen and\nChristian alike have regarded marriage as a tie; a thing not normally\nto be sundered. Briefly, this human belief in a sexual bond rests on a\nprinciple of which the modern mind has made a very inadequate study. It\nis, perhaps, most nearly paralleled by the principle of the second wind\nin walking.\n\nThe principle is this: that in everything worth having, even in every\npleasure, there is a point of pain or tedium that must be survived, so\nthat the pleasure may revive and endure. The joy of battle comes after\nthe first fear of death; the joy of reading Virgil comes after the bore\nof learning him; the glow of the sea-bather comes after the icy shock of\nthe sea bath; and the success of the marriage comes after the failure of\nthe honeymoon. All human vows, laws, and contracts are so many ways of\nsurviving with success this breaking point, this instant of potential\nsurrender.\n\nIn everything on this earth that is worth doing, there is a stage when\nno one would do it, except for necessity or honor. It is then that the\nInstitution upholds a man and helps him on to the firmer ground ahead.\nWhether this solid fact of human nature is sufficient to justify the\nsublime dedication of Christian marriage is quite an other matter, it is\namply sufficient to justify the general human feeling of marriage as a\nfixed thing, dissolution of which is a fault or, at least, an ignominy.\nThe essential element is not so much duration as security. Two people\nmust be tied together in order to do themselves justice; for twenty\nminutes at a dance, or for twenty years in a marriage In both cases the\npoint is, that if a man is bored in the first five minutes he must go on\nand force himself to be happy. Coercion is a kind of encouragement; and\nanarchy (or what some call liberty) is essentially oppressive, because\nit is essentially discouraging. If we all floated in the air like\nbubbles, free to drift anywhere at any instant, the practical result\nwould be that no one would have the courage to begin a conversation. It\nwould be so embarrassing to start a sentence in a friendly whisper,\nand then have to shout the last half of it because the other party was\nfloating away into the free and formless ether. The two must hold each\nother to do justice to each other. If Americans can be divorced for\n\u201cincompatibility of temper\u201d I cannot conceive why they are not all\ndivorced. I have known many happy marriages, but never a compatible one.\nThe whole aim of marriage is to fight through and survive the instant\nwhen incompatibility becomes unquestionable. For a man and a woman, as\nsuch, are incompatible.\n\n*****\n\n\n\n\nVIII. THE WILDNESS OF DOMESTICITY\n\nIn the course of this crude study we shall have to touch on what is\ncalled the problem of poverty, especially the dehumanized poverty\nof modern industrialism. But in this primary matter of the ideal the\ndifficulty is not the problem of poverty, but the problem of wealth.\nIt is the special psychology of leisure and luxury that falsifies life.\nSome experience of modern movements of the sort called \u201cadvanced\u201d has\nled me to the conviction that they generally repose upon some experience\npeculiar to the rich. It is so with that fallacy of free love of which I\nhave already spoken; the idea of sexuality as a string of episodes. That\nimplies a long holiday in which to get tired of one woman, and a motor\ncar in which to wander looking for others; it also implies money for\nmaintenances. An omnibus conductor has hardly time to love his own\nwife, let alone other people\u2019s. And the success with which nuptial\nestrangements are depicted in modern \u201cproblem plays\u201d is due to the fact\nthat there is only one thing that a drama cannot depict--that is a\nhard day\u2019s work. I could give many other instances of this plutocratic\nassumption behind progressive fads. For instance, there is a plutocratic\nassumption behind the phrase \u201cWhy should woman be economically dependent\nupon man?\u201d The answer is that among poor and practical people she isn\u2019t;\nexcept in the sense in which he is dependent upon her. A hunter has to\ntear his clothes; there must be somebody to mend them. A fisher has\nto catch fish; there must be somebody to cook them. It is surely quite\nclear that this modern notion that woman is a mere \u201cpretty clinging\nparasite,\u201d \u201ca plaything,\u201d etc., arose through the somber contemplation\nof some rich banking family, in which the banker, at least, went to the\ncity and pretended to do something, while the banker\u2019s wife went to the\nPark and did not pretend to do anything at all. A poor man and his\nwife are a business partnership. If one partner in a firm of publishers\ninterviews the authors while the other interviews the clerks, is one of\nthem economically dependent? Was Hodder a pretty parasite clinging to\nStoughton? Was Marshall a mere plaything for Snelgrove?\n\nBut of all the modern notions generated by mere wealth the worst is\nthis: the notion that domesticity is dull and tame. Inside the home\n(they say) is dead decorum and routine; outside is adventure and\nvariety. This is indeed a rich man\u2019s opinion. The rich man knows that\nhis own house moves on vast and soundless wheels of wealth, is run by\nregiments of servants, by a swift and silent ritual. On the other hand,\nevery sort of vagabondage of romance is open to him in the streets\noutside. He has plenty of money and can afford to be a tramp. His\nwildest adventure will end in a restaurant, while the yokel\u2019s tamest\nadventure may end in a police-court. If he smashes a window he can\npay for it; if he smashes a man he can pension him. He can (like the\nmillionaire in the story) buy an hotel to get a glass of gin. And\nbecause he, the luxurious man, dictates the tone of nearly all\n\u201cadvanced\u201d and \u201cprogressive\u201d thought, we have almost forgotten what a\nhome really means to the overwhelming millions of mankind.\n\nFor the truth is, that to the moderately poor the home is the only place\nof liberty. Nay, it is the only place of anarchy. It is the only spot\non the earth where a man can alter arrangements suddenly, make an\nexperiment or indulge in a whim. Everywhere else he goes he must accept\nthe strict rules of the shop, inn, club, or museum that he happens to\nenter. He can eat his meals on the floor in his own house if he likes.\nI often do it myself; it gives a curious, childish, poetic, picnic\nfeeling. There would be considerable trouble if I tried to do it in\nan A.B.C. tea-shop. A man can wear a dressing gown and slippers in his\nhouse; while I am sure that this would not be permitted at the Savoy,\nthough I never actually tested the point. If you go to a restaurant\nyou must drink some of the wines on the wine list, all of them if you\ninsist, but certainly some of them. But if you have a house and garden\nyou can try to make hollyhock tea or convolvulus wine if you like. For a\nplain, hard-working man the home is not the one tame place in the world\nof adventure. It is the one wild place in the world of rules and set\ntasks. The home is the one place where he can put the carpet on the\nceiling or the slates on the floor if he wants to. When a man spends\nevery night staggering from bar to bar or from music-hall to music-hall,\nwe say that he is living an irregular life. But he is not; he is living\na highly regular life, under the dull, and often oppressive, laws of\nsuch places. Some times he is not allowed even to sit down in the bars;\nand frequently he is not allowed to sing in the music-halls. Hotels may\nbe defined as places where you are forced to dress; and theaters may\nbe defined as places where you are forbidden to smoke. A man can only\npicnic at home.\n\nNow I take, as I have said, this small human omnipotence, this\npossession of a definite cell or chamber of liberty, as the working\nmodel for the present inquiry. Whether we can give every English man\na free home of his own or not, at least we should desire it; and he\ndesires it. For the moment we speak of what he wants, not of what he\nexpects to get. He wants, for instance, a separate house; he does not\nwant a semi-detached house. He may be forced in the commercial race\nto share one wall with another man. Similarly he might be forced in a\nthree-legged race to share one leg with another man; but it is not so\nthat he pictures himself in his dreams of elegance and liberty. Again,\nhe does not desire a flat. He can eat and sleep and praise God in a\nflat; he can eat and sleep and praise God in a railway train. But a\nrailway train is not a house, because it is a house on wheels. And a\nflat is not a house, because it is a house on stilts. An idea of\nearthy contact and foundation, as well as an idea of separation and\nindependence, is a part of this instructive human picture.\n\nI take, then, this one institution as a test. As every normal man\ndesires a woman, and children born of a woman, every normal man desires\na house of his own to put them into. He does not merely want a roof\nabove him and a chair below him; he wants an objective and visible\nkingdom; a fire at which he can cook what food he likes, a door he can\nopen to what friends he chooses. This is the normal appetite of men; I\ndo not say there are not exceptions. There may be saints above the need\nand philanthropists below it. Opalstein, now he is a duke, may have got\nused to more than this; and when he was a convict may have got used\nto less. But the normality of the thing is enormous. To give nearly\neverybody ordinary houses would please nearly everybody; that is what I\nassert without apology. Now in modern England (as you eagerly point out)\nit is very difficult to give nearly everybody houses. Quite so; I merely\nset up the desideratum; and ask the reader to leave it standing there\nwhile he turns with me to a consideration of what really happens in the\nsocial wars of our time.\n\n*****\n\n\n\n\nIX. HISTORY OF HUDGE AND GUDGE\n\nThere is, let us say, a certain filthy rookery in Hoxton, dripping with\ndisease and honeycombed with crime and promiscuity. There are, let us\nsay, two noble and courageous young men, of pure intentions and (if you\nprefer it) noble birth; let us call them Hudge and Gudge. Hudge, let us\nsay, is of a bustling sort; he points out that the people must at all\ncosts be got out of this den; he subscribes and collects money, but he\nfinds (despite the large financial interests of the Hudges) that the\nthing will have to be done on the cheap if it is to be done on the spot.\nHe therefore, runs up a row of tall bare tenements like beehives; and\nsoon has all the poor people bundled into their little brick cells,\nwhich are certainly better than their old quarters, in so far as they\nare weather proof, well ventilated and supplied with clean water. But\nGudge has a more delicate nature. He feels a nameless something lacking\nin the little brick boxes; he raises numberless objections; he even\nassails the celebrated Hudge Report, with the Gudge Minority Report; and\nby the end of a year or so has come to telling Hudge heatedly that the\npeople were much happier where they were before. As the people preserve\nin both places precisely the same air of dazed amiability, it is very\ndifficult to find out which is right. But at least one might safely say\nthat no people ever liked stench or starvation as such, but only some\npeculiar pleasures en tangled with them. Not so feels the sensitive\nGudge. Long before the final quarrel (Hudge v. Gudge and Another), Gudge\nhas succeeded in persuading himself that slums and stinks are really\nvery nice things; that the habit of sleeping fourteen in a room is\nwhat has made our England great; and that the smell of open drains is\nabsolutely essential to the rearing of a viking breed.\n\nBut, meanwhile, has there been no degeneration in Hudge? Alas, I fear\nthere has. Those maniacally ugly buildings which he originally put up\nas unpretentious sheds barely to shelter human life, grow every day more\nand more lovely to his deluded eye. Things he would never have dreamed\nof defending, except as crude necessities, things like common kitchens\nor infamous asbestos stoves, begin to shine quite sacredly before him,\nmerely because they reflect the wrath of Gudge. He maintains, with the\naid of eager little books by Socialists, that man is really happier in\na hive than in a house. The practical difficulty of keeping total\nstrangers out of your bedroom he describes as Brotherhood; and the\nnecessity for climbing twenty-three flights of cold stone stairs, I dare\nsay he calls Effort. The net result of their philanthropic adventure is\nthis: that one has come to defending indefensible slums and still more\nindefensible slum-landlords, while the other has come to treating as\ndivine the sheds and pipes which he only meant as desperate. Gudge\nis now a corrupt and apoplectic old Tory in the Carlton Club; if\nyou mention poverty to him he roars at you in a thick, hoarse voice\nsomething that is conjectured to be \u201cDo \u2018em good!\u201d Nor is Hudge more\nhappy; for he is a lean vegetarian with a gray, pointed beard and an\nunnaturally easy smile, who goes about telling everybody that at last we\nshall all sleep in one universal bedroom; and he lives in a Garden City,\nlike one forgotten of God.\n\nSuch is the lamentable history of Hudge and Gudge; which I merely\nintroduce as a type of an endless and exasperating misunderstanding\nwhich is always occurring in modern England. To get men out of a rookery\nmen are put into a tenement; and at the beginning the healthy human\nsoul loathes them both. A man\u2019s first desire is to get away as far as\npossible from the rookery, even should his mad course lead him to a\nmodel dwelling. The second desire is, naturally, to get away from the\nmodel dwelling, even if it should lead a man back to the rookery. But\nI am neither a Hudgian nor a Gudgian; and I think the mistakes of these\ntwo famous and fascinating persons arose from one simple fact. They\narose from the fact that neither Hudge nor Gudge had ever thought for\nan instant what sort of house a man might probably like for himself.\nIn short, they did not begin with the ideal; and, therefore, were not\npractical politicians.\n\nWe may now return to the purpose of our awkward parenthesis about the\npraise of the future and the failures of the past. A house of his own\nbeing the obvious ideal for every man, we may now ask (taking this need\nas typical of all such needs) why he hasn\u2019t got it; and whether it is\nin any philosophical sense his own fault. Now, I think that in\nsome philosophical sense it is his own fault, I think in a yet more\nphilosophical sense it is the fault of his philosophy. And this is what\nI have now to attempt to explain.\n\nBurke, a fine rhetorician, who rarely faced realities, said, I think,\nthat an Englishman\u2019s house is his castle. This is honestly entertaining;\nfor as it happens the Englishman is almost the only man in Europe whose\nhouse is not his castle. Nearly everywhere else exists the assumption of\npeasant proprietorship; that a poor man may be a landlord, though he is\nonly lord of his own land. Making the landlord and the tenant the same\nperson has certain trivial advantages, as that the tenant pays no rent,\nwhile the landlord does a little work. But I am not concerned with the\ndefense of small proprietorship, but merely with the fact that it exists\nalmost everywhere except in England. It is also true, however, that this\nestate of small possession is attacked everywhere today; it has never\nexisted among ourselves, and it may be destroyed among our neighbors. We\nhave, therefore, to ask ourselves what it is in human affairs generally,\nand in this domestic ideal in particular, that has really ruined the\nnatural human creation, especially in this country.\n\nMan has always lost his way. He has been a tramp ever since Eden; but he\nalways knew, or thought he knew, what he was looking for. Every man has\na house somewhere in the elaborate cosmos; his house waits for him waist\ndeep in slow Norfolk rivers or sunning itself upon Sussex downs. Man has\nalways been looking for that home which is the subject matter of this\nbook. But in the bleak and blinding hail of skepticism to which he\nhas been now so long subjected, he has begun for the first time to be\nchilled, not merely in his hopes, but in his desires. For the first time\nin history he begins really to doubt the object of his wanderings on the\nearth. He has always lost his way; but now he has lost his address.\n\nUnder the pressure of certain upper-class philosophies (or in other\nwords, under the pressure of Hudge and Gudge) the average man has\nreally become bewildered about the goal of his efforts; and his efforts,\ntherefore, grow feebler and feebler. His simple notion of having a home\nof his own is derided as bourgeois, as sentimental, or as despicably\nChristian. Under various verbal forms he is recommended to go on to the\nstreets--which is called Individualism; or to the work-house--which\nis called Collectivism. We shall consider this process somewhat more\ncarefully in a moment. But it may be said here that Hudge and Gudge, or\nthe governing class generally, will never fail for lack of some modern\nphrase to cover their ancient predominance. The great lords will refuse\nthe English peasant his three acres and a cow on advanced grounds, if\nthey cannot refuse it longer on reactionary grounds. They will deny him\nthe three acres on grounds of State Ownership. They will forbid him the\ncow on grounds of humanitarianism.\n\nAnd this brings us to the ultimate analysis of this singular influence\nthat has prevented doctrinal demands by the English people. There are,\nI believe, some who still deny that England is governed by an oligarchy.\nIt is quite enough for me to know that a man might have gone to sleep\nsome thirty years ago over the day\u2019s newspaper and woke up last week\nover the later newspaper, and fancied he was reading about the same\npeople. In one paper he would have found a Lord Robert Cecil, a Mr.\nGladstone, a Mr. Lyttleton, a Churchill, a Chamberlain, a Trevelyan,\nan Acland. In the other paper he would find a Lord Robert Cecil, a Mr.\nGladstone, a Mr. Lyttleton, a Churchill, a Chamberlain, a Trevelyan, an\nAcland. If this is not being governed by families I cannot imagine\nwhat it is. I suppose it is being governed by extraordinary democratic\ncoincidences.\n\n*****\n\n\n\n\nX. OPPRESSION BY OPTIMISM\n\nBut we are not here concerned with the nature and existence of the\naristocracy, but with the origin of its peculiar power, why is it the\nlast of the true oligarchies of Europe; and why does there seem no\nvery immediate prospect of our seeing the end of it? The explanation is\nsimple though it remains strangely unnoticed. The friends of aristocracy\noften praise it for preserving ancient and gracious traditions.\nThe enemies of aristocracy often blame it for clinging to cruel\nor antiquated customs. Both its enemies and its friends are wrong.\nGenerally speaking the aristocracy does not preserve either good or bad\ntraditions; it does not preserve anything except game. Who would dream\nof looking among aristocrats anywhere for an old custom? One might\nas well look for an old costume! The god of the aristocrats is not\ntradition, but fashion, which is the opposite of tradition. If you\nwanted to find an old-world Norwegian head-dress, would you look for it\nin the Scandinavian Smart Set? No; the aristocrats never have customs;\nat the best they have habits, like the animals. Only the mob has\ncustoms.\n\nThe real power of the English aristocrats has lain in exactly the\nopposite of tradition. The simple key to the power of our upper classes\nis this: that they have always kept carefully on the side of what is\ncalled Progress. They have always been up to date, and this comes quite\neasy to an aristocracy. For the aristocracy are the supreme instances\nof that frame of mind of which we spoke just now. Novelty is to them a\nluxury verging on a necessity. They, above all, are so bored with the\npast and with the present, that they gape, with a horrible hunger, for\nthe future.\n\nBut whatever else the great lords forgot they never forgot that it was\ntheir business to stand for the new things, for whatever was being most\ntalked about among university dons or fussy financiers. Thus they were\non the side of the Reformation against the Church, of the Whigs against\nthe Stuarts, of the Baconian science against the old philosophy, of\nthe manufacturing system against the operatives, and (to-day) of the\nincreased power of the State against the old-fashioned individualists.\nIn short, the rich are always modern; it is their business. But the\nimmediate effect of this fact upon the question we are studying is\nsomewhat singular.\n\nIn each of the separate holes or quandaries in which the ordinary\nEnglishman has been placed, he has been told that his situation is, for\nsome particular reason, all for the best. He woke up one fine morning\nand discovered that the public things, which for eight hundred years\nhe had used at once as inns and sanctuaries, had all been suddenly and\nsavagely abolished, to increase the private wealth of about six or seven\nmen. One would think he might have been annoyed at that; in many places\nhe was, and was put down by the soldiery. But it was not merely the\narmy that kept him quiet. He was kept quiet by the sages as well as the\nsoldiers; the six or seven men who took away the inns of the poor told\nhim that they were not doing it for themselves, but for the religion\nof the future, the great dawn of Protestantism and truth. So whenever a\nseventeenth century noble was caught pulling down a peasant\u2019s fence and\nstealing his field, the noble pointed excitedly at the face of Charles I\nor James II (which at that moment, perhaps, wore a cross expression) and\nthus diverted the simple peasant\u2019s attention. The great Puritan lords\ncreated the Commonwealth, and destroyed the common land. They saved\ntheir poorer countrymen from the disgrace of paying Ship Money,\nby taking from them the plow money and spade money which they were\ndoubtless too weak to guard. A fine old English rhyme has immortalized\nthis easy aristocratic habit--\n\nYou prosecute the man or woman Who steals the goose from off the common,\nBut leave the larger felon loose Who steals the common from the goose.\n\nBut here, as in the case of the monasteries, we confront the strange\nproblem of submission. If they stole the common from the goose, one can\nonly say that he was a great goose to stand it. The truth is that they\nreasoned with the goose; they explained to him that all this was needed\nto get the Stuart fox over seas. So in the nineteenth century the great\nnobles who became mine-owners and railway directors earnestly assured\neverybody that they did not do this from preference, but owing to a\nnewly discovered Economic Law. So the prosperous politicians of our own\ngeneration introduce bills to prevent poor mothers from going about with\ntheir own babies; or they calmly forbid their tenants to drink beer in\npublic inns. But this insolence is not (as you would suppose) howled at\nby everybody as outrageous feudalism. It is gently rebuked as Socialism.\nFor an aristocracy is always progressive; it is a form of going the\npace. Their parties grow later and later at night; for they are trying\nto live to-morrow.\n\n*****\n\n\n\n\nXI. THE HOMELESSNESS OF JONES\n\nThus the Future of which we spoke at the beginning has (in England at\nleast) always been the ally of tyranny. The ordinary Englishman has been\nduped out of his old possessions, such as they were, and always in the\nname of progress. The destroyers of the abbeys took away his bread and\ngave him a stone, assuring him that it was a precious stone, the white\npebble of the Lord\u2019s elect. They took away his maypole and his original\nrural life and promised him instead the Golden Age of Peace and Commerce\ninaugurated at the Crystal Palace. And now they are taking away the\nlittle that remains of his dignity as a householder and the head of a\nfamily, promising him instead Utopias which are called (appropriately\nenough) \u201cAnticipations\u201d or \u201cNews from Nowhere.\u201d We come back, in fact,\nto the main feature which has already been mentioned. The past is\ncommunal: the future must be individualist. In the past are all the\nevils of democracy, variety and violence and doubt, but the future is\npure despotism, for the future is pure caprice. Yesterday, I know I was\na human fool, but to-morrow I can easily be the Superman.\n\nThe modern Englishman, however, is like a man who should be perpetually\nkept out, for one reason after another, from the house in which he had\nmeant his married life to begin. This man (Jones let us call him) has\nalways desired the divinely ordinary things; he has married for love, he\nhas chosen or built a small house that fits like a coat; he is ready\nto be a great grandfather and a local god. And just as he is moving\nin, something goes wrong. Some tyranny, personal or political, suddenly\ndebars him from the home; and he has to take his meals in the front\ngarden. A passing philosopher (who is also, by a mere coincidence, the\nman who turned him out) pauses, and leaning elegantly on the railings,\nexplains to him that he is now living that bold life upon the bounty of\nnature which will be the life of the sublime future. He finds life in\nthe front garden more bold than bountiful, and has to move into mean\nlodgings in the next spring. The philosopher (who turned him out),\nhappening to call at these lodgings, with the probable intention of\nraising the rent, stops to explain to him that he is now in the real\nlife of mercantile endeavor; the economic struggle between him and the\nlandlady is the only thing out of which, in the sublime future, the\nwealth of nations can come. He is defeated in the economic struggle, and\ngoes to the workhouse. The philosopher who turned him out (happening at\nthat very moment to be inspecting the workhouse) assures him that he is\nnow at last in that golden republic which is the goal of mankind; he is\nin an equal, scientific, Socialistic commonwealth, owned by the State\nand ruled by public officers; in fact, the commonwealth of the sublime\nfuture.\n\nNevertheless, there are signs that the irrational Jones still dreams\nat night of this old idea of having an ordinary home. He asked for so\nlittle, and he has been offered so much. He has been offered bribes\nof worlds and systems; he has been offered Eden and Utopia and the New\nJerusalem, and he only wanted a house; and that has been refused him.\n\nSuch an apologue is literally no exaggeration of the facts of English\nhistory. The rich did literally turn the poor out of the old guest house\non to the road, briefly telling them that it was the road of\nprogress. They did literally force them into factories and the modern\nwage-slavery, assuring them all the time that this was the only way to\nwealth and civilization. Just as they had dragged the rustic from the\nconvent food and ale by saying that the streets of heaven were paved\nwith gold, so now they dragged him from the village food and ale by\ntelling him that the streets of London were paved with gold. As he\nentered the gloomy porch of Puritanism, so he entered the gloomy porch\nof Industrialism, being told that each of them was the gate of the\nfuture. Hitherto he has only gone from prison to prison, nay, into\ndarkening prisons, for Calvinism opened one small window upon heaven.\nAnd now he is asked, in the same educated and authoritative tones, to\nenter another dark porch, at which he has to surrender, into unseen\nhands, his children, his small possessions and all the habits of his\nfathers.\n\nWhether this last opening be in truth any more inviting than the old\nopenings of Puritanism and Industrialism can be discussed later. But\nthere can be little doubt, I think, that if some form of Collectivism is\nimposed upon England it will be imposed, as everything else has been, by\nan instructed political class upon a people partly apathetic and\npartly hypnotized. The aristocracy will be as ready to \u201cadminister\u201d\n Collectivism as they were to administer Puritanism or Manchesterism; in\nsome ways such a centralized political power is necessarily attractive\nto them. It will not be so hard as some innocent Socialists seem to\nsuppose to induce the Honorable Tomnoddy to take over the milk supply as\nwell as the stamp supply--at an increased salary. Mr. Bernard Shaw\nhas remarked that rich men are better than poor men on parish councils\nbecause they are free from \u201cfinancial timidity.\u201d Now, the English ruling\nclass is quite free from financial timidity. The Duke of Sussex will be\nquite ready to be Administrator of Sussex at the same screw. Sir William\nHarcourt, that typical aristocrat, put it quite correctly. \u201cWe\u201d (that\nis, the aristocracy) \u201care all Socialists now.\u201d\n\nBut this is not the essential note on which I desire to end. My main\ncontention is that, whether necessary or not, both Industrialism and\nCollectivism have been accepted as necessities--not as naked ideals or\ndesires. Nobody liked the Manchester School; it was endured as the only\nway of producing wealth. Nobody likes the Marxian school; it is endured\nas the only way of preventing poverty. Nobody\u2019s real heart is in the\nidea of preventing a free man from owning his own farm, or an old woman\nfrom cultivating her own garden, any more than anybody\u2019s real heart was\nin the heartless battle of the machines. The purpose of this chapter\nis sufficiently served in indicating that this proposal also is a pis\naller, a desperate second best--like teetotalism. I do not propose to\nprove here that Socialism is a poison; it is enough if I maintain that\nit is a medicine and not a wine.\n\nThe idea of private property universal but private, the idea of families\nfree but still families, of domesticity democratic but still domestic,\nof one man one house--this remains the real vision and magnet of\nmankind. The world may accept something more official and general, less\nhuman and intimate. But the world will be like a broken-hearted woman\nwho makes a humdrum marriage because she may not make a happy one;\nSocialism may be the world\u2019s deliverance, but it is not the world\u2019s\ndesire.\n\n\n\n\nPART TWO. IMPERIALISM, OR THE MISTAKE ABOUT MAN\n\n\n\n\nI. THE CHARM OF JINGOISM\n\nI have cast about widely to find a title for this section; and I confess\nthat the word \u201cImperialism\u201d is a clumsy version of my meaning. But\nno other word came nearer; \u201cMilitarism\u201d would have been even more\nmisleading, and \u201cThe Superman\u201d makes nonsense of any discussion that he\nenters. Perhaps, upon the whole, the word \u201cCaesarism\u201d would have been\nbetter; but I desire a popular word; and Imperialism (as the reader will\nperceive) does cover for the most part the men and theories that I mean\nto discuss.\n\nThis small confusion is increased, however, by the fact that I do also\ndisbelieve in Imperialism in its popular sense, as a mode or theory\nof the patriotic sentiment of this country. But popular Imperialism in\nEngland has very little to do with the sort of Caesarean Imperialism\nI wish to sketch. I differ from the Colonial idealism of Rhodes\u2019 and\nKipling; but I do not think, as some of its opponents do, that it is\nan insolent creation of English harshness and rapacity. Imperialism,\nI think, is a fiction created, not by English hardness, but by English\nsoftness; nay, in a sense, even by English kindness.\n\nThe reasons for believing in Australia are mostly as sentimental as the\nmost sentimental reasons for believing in heaven. New South Wales\nis quite literally regarded as a place where the wicked cease from\ntroubling and the weary are at rest; that is, a paradise for uncles\nwho have turned dishonest and for nephews who are born tired. British\nColumbia is in strict sense a fairyland, it is a world where a magic and\nirrational luck is supposed to attend the youngest sons. This strange\noptimism about the ends of the earth is an English weakness; but to show\nthat it is not a coldness or a harshness it is quite sufficient to\nsay that no one shared it more than that gigantic English\nsentimentalist--the great Charles Dickens. The end of \u201cDavid\nCopperfield\u201d is unreal not merely because it is an optimistic ending,\nbut because it is an Imperialistic ending. The decorous British\nhappiness planned out for David Copperfield and Agnes would be\nembarrassed by the perpetual presence of the hopeless tragedy of Emily,\nor the more hopeless farce of Micawber. Therefore, both Emily and\nMicawber are shipped off to a vague colony where changes come over them\nwith no conceivable cause, except the climate. The tragic woman becomes\ncontented and the comic man becomes responsible, solely as the result of\na sea voyage and the first sight of a kangaroo.\n\nTo Imperialism in the light political sense, therefore, my only\nobjection is that it is an illusion of comfort; that an Empire whose\nheart is failing should be specially proud of the extremities, is to me\nno more sublime a fact than that an old dandy whose brain is gone should\nstill be proud of his legs. It consoles men for the evident ugliness and\napathy of England with legends of fair youth and heroic strenuousness in\ndistant continents and islands. A man can sit amid the squalor of Seven\nDials and feel that life is innocent and godlike in the bush or on the\nveldt. Just so a man might sit in the squalor of Seven Dials and feel\nthat life was innocent and godlike in Brixton and Surbiton. Brixton and\nSurbiton are \u201cnew\u201d; they are expanding; they are \u201cnearer to nature,\u201d\n in the sense that they have eaten up nature mile by mile. The only\nobjection is the objection of fact. The young men of Brixton are not\nyoung giants. The lovers of Surbiton are not all pagan poets, singing\nwith the sweet energy of the spring. Nor are the people of the Colonies\nwhen you meet them young giants or pagan poets. They are mostly Cockneys\nwho have lost their last music of real things by getting out of the\nsound of Bow Bells. Mr. Rudyard Kipling, a man of real though decadent\ngenius, threw a theoretic glamour over them which is already fading. Mr.\nKipling is, in a precise and rather startling sense, the exception that\nproves the rule. For he has imagination, of an oriental and cruel kind,\nbut he has it, not because he grew up in a new country, but precisely\nbecause he grew up in the oldest country upon earth. He is rooted in a\npast--an Asiatic past. He might never have written \u201cKabul River\u201d if he\nhad been born in Melbourne.\n\nI say frankly, therefore (lest there should be any air of evasion), that\nImperialism in its common patriotic pretensions appears to me both weak\nand perilous. It is the attempt of a European country to create a kind\nof sham Europe which it can dominate, instead of the real Europe, which\nit can only share. It is a love of living with one\u2019s inferiors. The\nnotion of restoring the Roman Empire by oneself and for oneself is a\ndream that has haunted every Christian nation in a different shape\nand in almost every shape as a snare. The Spanish are a consistent and\nconservative people; therefore they embodied that attempt at Empire\nin long and lingering dynasties. The French are a violent people, and\ntherefore they twice conquered that Empire by violence of arms. The\nEnglish are above all a poetical and optimistic people; and therefore\ntheir Empire is something vague and yet sympathetic, something distant\nand yet dear. But this dream of theirs of being powerful in the\nuttermost places, though a native weakness, is still a weakness in them;\nmuch more of a weakness than gold was to Spain or glory to Napoleon. If\never we were in collision with our real brothers and rivals we should\nleave all this fancy out of account. We should no more dream of pitting\nAustralian armies against German than of pitting Tasmanian sculpture\nagainst French. I have thus explained, lest anyone should accuse me of\nconcealing an unpopular attitude, why I do not believe in Imperialism as\ncommonly understood. I think it not merely an occasional wrong to other\npeoples, but a continuous feebleness, a running sore, in my own. But it\nis also true that I have dwelt on this Imperialism that is an amiable\ndelusion partly in order to show how different it is from the deeper,\nmore sinister and yet more persuasive thing that I have been forced to\ncall Imperialism for the convenience of this chapter. In order to get to\nthe root of this evil and quite un-English Imperialism we must cast\nback and begin anew with a more general discussion of the first needs of\nhuman intercourse.\n\n*****\n\n\n\n\nII. WISDOM AND THE WEATHER\n\nIt is admitted, one may hope, that common things are never commonplace.\nBirth is covered with curtains precisely because it is a staggering\nand monstrous prodigy. Death and first love, though they happen to\neverybody, can stop one\u2019s heart with the very thought of them. But while\nthis is granted, something further may be claimed. It is not merely true\nthat these universal things are strange; it is moreover true that they\nare subtle. In the last analysis most common things will be found to\nbe highly complicated. Some men of science do indeed get over the\ndifficulty by dealing only with the easy part of it: thus, they will\ncall first love the instinct of sex, and the awe of death the instinct\nof self-preservation. But this is only getting over the difficulty of\ndescribing peacock green by calling it blue. There is blue in it. That\nthere is a strong physical element in both romance and the Memento\nMori makes them if possible more baffling than if they had been wholly\nintellectual. No man could say exactly how much his sexuality was\ncolored by a clean love of beauty, or by the mere boyish itch for\nirrevocable adventures, like running away to sea. No man could say how\nfar his animal dread of the end was mixed up with mystical traditions\ntouching morals and religion. It is exactly because these things are\nanimal, but not quite animal, that the dance of all the difficulties\nbegins. The materialists analyze the easy part, deny the hard part and\ngo home to their tea.\n\nIt is complete error to suppose that because a thing is vulgar therefore\nit is not refined; that is, subtle and hard to define. A drawing-room\nsong of my youth which began \u201cIn the gloaming, O, my darling,\u201d was\nvulgar enough as a song; but the connection between human passion and\nthe twilight is none the less an exquisite and even inscrutable thing.\nOr to take another obvious instance: the jokes about a mother-in-law\nare scarcely delicate, but the problem of a mother-in-law is extremely\ndelicate. A mother-in-law is subtle because she is a thing like the\ntwilight. She is a mystical blend of two inconsistent things--law and a\nmother. The caricatures misrepresent her; but they arise out of a real\nhuman enigma. \u201cComic Cuts\u201d deals with the difficulty wrongly, but it\nwould need George Meredith at his best to deal with the difficulty\nrightly. The nearest statement of the problem perhaps is this: it is not\nthat a mother-in-law must be nasty, but that she must be very nice.\n\nBut it is best perhaps to take in illustration some daily custom we have\nall heard despised as vulgar or trite. Take, for the sake of argument,\nthe custom of talking about the weather. Stevenson calls it \u201cthe very\nnadir and scoff of good conversationalists.\u201d Now there are very deep\nreasons for talking about the weather, reasons that are delicate as well\nas deep; they lie in layer upon layer of stratified sagacity. First of\nall it is a gesture of primeval worship. The sky must be invoked; and\nto begin everything with the weather is a sort of pagan way of beginning\neverything with prayer. Jones and Brown talk about the weather: but so\ndo Milton and Shelley. Then it is an expression of that elementary idea\nin politeness--equality. For the very word politeness is only the Greek\nfor citizenship. The word politeness is akin to the word policeman: a\ncharming thought. Properly understood, the citizen should be more polite\nthan the gentleman; perhaps the policeman should be the most courtly and\nelegant of the three. But all good manners must obviously begin with\nthe sharing of something in a simple style. Two men should share an\numbrella; if they have not got an umbrella, they should at least share\nthe rain, with all its rich potentialities of wit and philosophy.\n\u201cFor He maketh His sun to shine....\u201d This is the second element in the\nweather; its recognition of human equality in that we all have our hats\nunder the dark blue spangled umbrella of the universe. Arising out of\nthis is the third wholesome strain in the custom; I mean that it begins\nwith the body and with our inevitable bodily brotherhood. All true\nfriendliness begins with fire and food and drink and the recognition of\nrain or frost. Those who will not begin at the bodily end of things are\nalready prigs and may soon be Christian Scientists. Each human soul has\nin a sense to enact for itself the gigantic humility of the Incarnation.\nEvery man must descend into the flesh to meet mankind.\n\nBriefly, in the mere observation \u201ca fine day\u201d there is the whole great\nhuman idea of comradeship. Now, pure comradeship is another of those\nbroad and yet bewildering things. We all enjoy it; yet when we come to\ntalk about it we almost always talk nonsense, chiefly because we suppose\nit to be a simpler affair than it is. It is simple to conduct; but it is\nby no means simple to analyze. Comradeship is at the most only one half\nof human life; the other half is Love, a thing so different that one\nmight fancy it had been made for another universe. And I do not mean\nmere sex love; any kind of concentrated passion, maternal love, or\neven the fiercer kinds of friendship are in their nature alien to pure\ncomradeship. Both sides are essential to life; and both are known in\ndiffering degrees to everybody of every age or sex. But very broadly\nspeaking it may still be said that women stand for the dignity of love\nand men for the dignity of comradeship. I mean that the institution\nwould hardly be expected if the males of the tribe did not mount guard\nover it. The affections in which women excel have so much more authority\nand intensity that pure comradeship would be washed away if it were not\nrallied and guarded in clubs, corps, colleges, banquets and regiments.\nMost of us have heard the voice in which the hostess tells her husband\nnot to sit too long over the cigars. It is the dreadful voice of Love,\nseeking to destroy Comradeship.\n\nAll true comradeship has in it those three elements which I have\nremarked in the ordinary exclamation about the weather. First, it has\na sort of broad philosophy like the common sky, emphasizing that we are\nall under the same cosmic conditions. We are all in the same boat, the\n\u201cwinged rock\u201d of Mr. Herbert Trench. Secondly, it recognizes this bond\nas the essential one; for comradeship is simply humanity seen in that\none aspect in which men are really equal. The old writers were entirely\nwise when they talked of the equality of men; but they were also very\nwise in not mentioning women. Women are always authoritarian; they\nare always above or below; that is why marriage is a sort of poetical\nsee-saw. There are only three things in the world that women do not\nunderstand; and they are Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. But men\n(a class little understood in the modern world) find these things the\nbreath of their nostrils; and our most learned ladies will not even\nbegin to understand them until they make allowance for this kind of cool\ncamaraderie. Lastly, it contains the third quality of the weather, the\ninsistence upon the body and its indispensable satisfaction. No one\nhas even begun to understand comradeship who does not accept with it a\ncertain hearty eagerness in eating, drinking, or smoking, an uproarious\nmaterialism which to many women appears only hoggish. You may call the\nthing an orgy or a sacrament; it is certainly an essential. It is at\nroot a resistance to the superciliousness of the individual. Nay, its\nvery swaggering and howling are humble. In the heart of its rowdiness\nthere is a sort of mad modesty; a desire to melt the separate soul into\nthe mass of unpretentious masculinity. It is a clamorous confession of\nthe weakness of all flesh. No man must be superior to the things that\nare common to men. This sort of equality must be bodily and gross and\ncomic. Not only are we all in the same boat, but we are all seasick.\n\nThe word comradeship just now promises to become as fatuous as the word\n\u201caffinity.\u201d There are clubs of a Socialist sort where all the members,\nmen and women, call each other \u201cComrade.\u201d I have no serious emotions,\nhostile or otherwise, about this particular habit: at the worst it is\nconventionality, and at the best flirtation. I am convinced here only\nto point out a rational principle. If you choose to lump all flowers\ntogether, lilies and dahlias and tulips and chrysanthemums and call\nthem all daisies, you will find that you have spoiled the very fine word\ndaisy. If you choose to call every human attachment comradeship, if\nyou include under that name the respect of a youth for a venerable\nprophetess, the interest of a man in a beautiful woman who baffles him,\nthe pleasure of a philosophical old fogy in a girl who is impudent and\ninnocent, the end of the meanest quarrel or the beginning of the most\nmountainous love; if you are going to call all these comradeship, you\nwill gain nothing, you will only lose a word. Daisies are obvious and\nuniversal and open; but they are only one kind of flower. Comradeship is\nobvious and universal and open; but it is only one kind of affection;\nit has characteristics that would destroy any other kind. Anyone who\nhas known true comradeship in a club or in a regiment, knows that it is\nimpersonal. There is a pedantic phrase used in debating clubs which is\nstrictly true to the masculine emotion; they call it \u201cspeaking to the\nquestion.\u201d Women speak to each other; men speak to the subject they are\nspeaking about. Many an honest man has sat in a ring of his five\nbest friends under heaven and forgotten who was in the room while he\nexplained some system. This is not peculiar to intellectual men; men are\nall theoretical, whether they are talking about God or about golf. Men\nare all impersonal; that is to say, republican. No one remembers after\na really good talk who has said the good things. Every man speaks to a\nvisionary multitude; a mystical cloud, that is called the club.\n\nIt is obvious that this cool and careless quality which is essential to\nthe collective affection of males involves disadvantages and dangers.\nIt leads to spitting; it leads to coarse speech; it must lead to these\nthings so long as it is honorable; comradeship must be in some degree\nugly. The moment beauty is mentioned in male friendship, the nostrils\nare stopped with the smell of abominable things. Friendship must be\nphysically dirty if it is to be morally clean. It must be in its shirt\nsleeves. The chaos of habits that always goes with males when left\nentirely to themselves has only one honorable cure; and that is the\nstrict discipline of a monastery. Anyone who has seen our unhappy young\nidealists in East End Settlements losing their collars in the wash and\nliving on tinned salmon will fully understand why it was decided by the\nwisdom of St. Bernard or St. Benedict, that if men were to live without\nwomen, they must not live without rules. Something of the same sort of\nartificial exactitude, of course, is obtained in an army; and an army\nalso has to be in many ways monastic; only that it has celibacy without\nchastity. But these things do not apply to normal married men. These\nhave a quite sufficient restraint on their instinctive anarchy in the\nsavage common-sense of the other sex. There is only one very timid sort\nof man that is not afraid of women.\n\n*****\n\n\n\n\nIII. THE COMMON VISION\n\nNow this masculine love of an open and level camaraderie is the life\nwithin all democracies and attempts to govern by debate; without it the\nrepublic would be a dead formula. Even as it is, of course, the spirit\nof democracy frequently differs widely from the letter, and a pothouse\nis often a better test than a Parliament. Democracy in its human sense\nis not arbitrament by the majority; it is not even arbitrament by\neverybody. It can be more nearly defined as arbitrament by anybody. I\nmean that it rests on that club habit of taking a total stranger for\ngranted, of assuming certain things to be inevitably common to yourself\nand him. Only the things that anybody may be presumed to hold have the\nfull authority of democracy. Look out of the window and notice the\nfirst man who walks by. The Liberals may have swept England with an\nover-whelming majority; but you would not stake a button that the man is\na Liberal. The Bible may be read in all schools and respected in all law\ncourts; but you would not bet a straw that he believes in the Bible. But\nyou would bet your week\u2019s wages, let us say, that he believes in wearing\nclothes. You would bet that he believes that physical courage is a fine\nthing, or that parents have authority over children. Of course, he might\nbe the millionth man who does not believe these things; if it comes\nto that, he might be the Bearded Lady dressed up as a man. But these\nprodigies are quite a different thing from any mere calculation\nof numbers. People who hold these views are not a minority, but a\nmonstrosity. But of these universal dogmas that have full democratic\nauthority the only test is this test of anybody. What you would observe\nbefore any newcomer in a tavern--that is the real English law. The first\nman you see from the window, he is the King of England.\n\nThe decay of taverns, which is but a part of the general decay of\ndemocracy, has undoubtedly weakened this masculine spirit of equality. I\nremember that a roomful of Socialists literally laughed when I told them\nthat there were no two nobler words in all poetry than Public House.\nThey thought it was a joke. Why they should think it a joke, since they\nwant to make all houses public houses, I cannot imagine. But if anyone\nwishes to see the real rowdy egalitarianism which is necessary (to\nmales, at least) he can find it as well as anywhere in the great\nold tavern disputes which come down to us in such books as Boswell\u2019s\nJohnson. It is worth while to mention that one name especially because\nthe modern world in its morbidity has done it a strange injustice.\nThe demeanor of Johnson, it is said, was \u201charsh and despotic.\u201d It was\noccasionally harsh, but it was never despotic. Johnson was not in the\nleast a despot; Johnson was a demagogue, he shouted against a shouting\ncrowd. The very fact that he wrangled with other people is proof that\nother people were allowed to wrangle with him. His very brutality was\nbased on the idea of an equal scrimmage, like that of football. It\nis strictly true that he bawled and banged the table because he was\na modest man. He was honestly afraid of being overwhelmed or even\noverlooked. Addison had exquisite manners and was the king of his\ncompany; he was polite to everybody; but superior to everybody;\ntherefore he has been handed down forever in the immortal insult of\nPope--\n\n\u201cLike Cato, give his little Senate laws And sit attentive to his own\napplause.\u201d\n\nJohnson, so far from being king of his company, was a sort of Irish\nMember in his own Parliament. Addison was a courteous superior and was\nhated. Johnson was an insolent equal and therefore was loved by all who\nknew him, and handed down in a marvellous book, which is one of the mere\nmiracles of love.\n\nThis doctrine of equality is essential to conversation; so much may be\nadmitted by anyone who knows what conversation is. Once arguing at a\ntable in a tavern the most famous man on earth would wish to be\nobscure, so that his brilliant remarks might blaze like the stars on the\nbackground of his obscurity. To anything worth calling a man nothing can\nbe conceived more cold or cheerless than to be king of your company. But\nit may be said that in masculine sports and games, other than the great\ngame of debate, there is definite emulation and eclipse. There is\nindeed emulation, but this is only an ardent sort of equality. Games are\ncompetitive, because that is the only way of making them exciting. But\nif anyone doubts that men must forever return to the ideal of equality,\nit is only necessary to answer that there is such a thing as a handicap.\nIf men exulted in mere superiority, they would seek to see how far such\nsuperiority could go; they would be glad when one strong runner came\nin miles ahead of all the rest. But what men like is not the triumph of\nsuperiors, but the struggle of equals; and, therefore, they introduce\neven into their competitive sports an artificial equality. It is sad\nto think how few of those who arrange our sporting handicaps can be\nsupposed with any probability to realize that they are abstract and even\nsevere republicans.\n\nNo; the real objection to equality and self-rule has nothing to do with\nany of these free and festive aspects of mankind; all men are democrats\nwhen they are happy. The philosophic opponent of democracy would\nsubstantially sum up his position by saying that it \u201cwill not work.\u201d\n Before going further, I will register in passing a protest against the\nassumption that working is the one test of humanity. Heaven does not\nwork; it plays. Men are most themselves when they are free; and if I\nfind that men are snobs in their work but democrats on their holidays,\nI shall take the liberty to believe their holidays. But it is this\nquestion of work which really perplexes the question of equality; and\nit is with that that we must now deal. Perhaps the truth can be put\nmost pointedly thus: that democracy has one real enemy, and that is\ncivilization. Those utilitarian miracles which science has made are\nanti-democratic, not so much in their perversion, or even in\ntheir practical result, as in their primary shape and purpose. The\nFrame-Breaking Rioters were right; not perhaps in thinking that machines\nwould make fewer men workmen; but certainly in thinking that machines\nwould make fewer men masters. More wheels do mean fewer handles;\nfewer handles do mean fewer hands. The machinery of science must be\nindividualistic and isolated. A mob can shout round a palace; but a mob\ncannot shout down a telephone. The specialist appears and democracy is\nhalf spoiled at a stroke.\n\n*****\n\n\n\n\nIV. THE INSANE NECESSITY\n\nThe common conception among the dregs of Darwinian culture is that\nmen have slowly worked their way out of inequality into a state\nof comparative equality. The truth is, I fancy, almost exactly the\nopposite. All men have normally and naturally begun with the idea of\nequality; they have only abandoned it late and reluctantly, and always\nfor some material reason of detail. They have never naturally felt that\none class of men was superior to another; they have always been driven\nto assume it through certain practical limitations of space and time.\n\nFor example, there is one element which must always tend to\noligarchy--or rather to despotism; I mean the element of hurry. If the\nhouse has caught fire a man must ring up the fire engines; a committee\ncannot ring them up. If a camp is surprised by night somebody must give\nthe order to fire; there is no time to vote it. It is solely a question\nof the physical limitations of time and space; not at all of any mental\nlimitations in the mass of men commanded. If all the people in the house\nwere men of destiny it would still be better that they should not\nall talk into the telephone at once; nay, it would be better that the\nsilliest man of all should speak uninterrupted. If an army actually\nconsisted of nothing but Hanibals and Napoleons, it would still be\nbetter in the case of a surprise that they should not all give orders\ntogether. Nay, it would be better if the stupidest of them all gave the\norders. Thus, we see that merely military subordination, so far from\nresting on the inequality of men, actually rests on the equality of men.\nDiscipline does not involve the Carlylean notion that somebody is always\nright when everybody is wrong, and that we must discover and crown that\nsomebody. On the contrary, discipline means that in certain frightfully\nrapid circumstances, one can trust anybody so long as he is not\neverybody. The military spirit does not mean (as Carlyle fancied)\nobeying the strongest and wisest man. On the contrary, the military\nspirit means, if anything, obeying the weakest and stupidest man,\nobeying him merely because he is a man, and not a thousand men.\nSubmission to a weak man is discipline. Submission to a strong man is\nonly servility.\n\nNow it can be easily shown that the thing we call aristocracy in Europe\nis not in its origin and spirit an aristocracy at all. It is not a\nsystem of spiritual degrees and distinctions like, for example, the\ncaste system of India, or even like the old Greek distinction\nbetween free men and slaves. It is simply the remains of a military\norganization, framed partly to sustain the sinking Roman Empire, partly\nto break and avenge the awful onslaught of Islam. The word Duke simply\nmeans Colonel, just as the word Emperor simply means Commander-in-Chief.\nThe whole story is told in the single title of Counts of the Holy Roman\nEmpire, which merely means officers in the European army against\nthe contemporary Yellow Peril. Now in an army nobody ever dreams of\nsupposing that difference of rank represents a difference of moral\nreality. Nobody ever says about a regiment, \u201cYour Major is very humorous\nand energetic; your Colonel, of course, must be even more humorous\nand yet more energetic.\u201d No one ever says, in reporting a mess-room\nconversation, \u201cLieutenant Jones was very witty, but was naturally\ninferior to Captain Smith.\u201d The essence of an army is the idea of\nofficial inequality, founded on unofficial equality. The Colonel is not\nobeyed because he is the best man, but because he is the Colonel. Such\nwas probably the spirit of the system of dukes and counts when it first\narose out of the military spirit and military necessities of Rome. With\nthe decline of those necessities it has gradually ceased to have\nmeaning as a military organization, and become honeycombed with unclean\nplutocracy. Even now it is not a spiritual aristocracy--it is not so bad\nas all that. It is simply an army without an enemy--billeted upon the\npeople.\n\nMan, therefore, has a specialist as well as comrade-like aspect; and the\ncase of militarism is not the only case of such specialist submission.\nThe tinker and tailor, as well as the soldier and sailor, require a\ncertain rigidity of rapidity of action: at least, if the tinker is not\norganized that is largely why he does not tink on any large scale. The\ntinker and tailor often represent the two nomadic races in Europe: the\nGipsy and the Jew; but the Jew alone has influence because he alone\naccepts some sort of discipline. Man, we say, has two sides, the\nspecialist side where he must have subordination, and the social side\nwhere he must have equality. There is a truth in the saying that ten\ntailors go to make a man; but we must remember also that ten Poets\nLaureate or ten Astronomers Royal go to make a man, too. Ten million\ntradesmen go to make Man himself; but humanity consists of tradesmen\nwhen they are not talking shop. Now the peculiar peril of our time,\nwhich I call for argument\u2019s sake Imperialism or Caesarism, is the\ncomplete eclipse of comradeship and equality by specialism and\ndomination.\n\nThere are only two kinds of social structure conceivable--personal\ngovernment and impersonal government. If my anarchic friends will not\nhave rules--they will have rulers. Preferring personal government, with\nits tact and flexibility, is called Royalism. Preferring impersonal\ngovernment, with its dogmas and definitions, is called Republicanism.\nObjecting broadmindedly both to kings and creeds is called Bosh; at\nleast, I know no more philosophic word for it. You can be guided by\nthe shrewdness or presence of mind of one ruler, or by the equality and\nascertained justice of one rule; but you must have one or the other,\nor you are not a nation, but a nasty mess. Now men in their aspect of\nequality and debate adore the idea of rules; they develop and complicate\nthem greatly to excess. A man finds far more regulations and definitions\nin his club, where there are rules, than in his home, where there is\na ruler. A deliberate assembly, the House of Commons, for instance,\ncarries this mummery to the point of a methodical madness. The whole\nsystem is stiff with rigid unreason; like the Royal Court in Lewis\nCarroll. You would think the Speaker would speak; therefore he is mostly\nsilent. You would think a man would take off his hat to stop and put it\non to go away; therefore he takes off his hat to walk out and puts it on\nto stop in. Names are forbidden, and a man must call his own father\n\u201cmy right honorable friend the member for West Birmingham.\u201d These are,\nperhaps, fantasies of decay: but fundamentally they answer a masculine\nappetite. Men feel that rules, even if irrational, are universal; men\nfeel that law is equal, even when it is not equitable. There is a wild\nfairness in the thing--as there is in tossing up.\n\nAgain, it is gravely unfortunate that when critics do attack such cases\nas the Commons it is always on the points (perhaps the few points) where\nthe Commons are right. They denounce the House as the Talking-Shop,\nand complain that it wastes time in wordy mazes. Now this is just one\nrespect in which the Commons are actually like the Common People. If\nthey love leisure and long debate, it is because all men love it; that\nthey really represent England. There the Parliament does approach to the\nvirile virtues of the pothouse.\n\nThe real truth is that adumbrated in the introductory section when we\nspoke of the sense of home and property, as now we speak of the sense\nof counsel and community. All men do naturally love the idea of leisure,\nlaughter, loud and equal argument; but there stands a specter in our\nhall. We are conscious of the towering modern challenge that is called\nspecialism or cut-throat competition--Business. Business will\nhave nothing to do with leisure; business will have no truck with\ncomradeship; business will pretend to no patience with all the legal\nfictions and fantastic handicaps by which comradeship protects its\negalitarian ideal. The modern millionaire, when engaged in the agreeable\nand typical task of sacking his own father, will certainly not refer\nto him as the right honorable clerk from the Laburnum Road, Brixton.\nTherefore there has arisen in modern life a literary fashion devoting\nitself to the romance of business, to great demigods of greed and to\nfairyland of finance. This popular philosophy is utterly despotic and\nanti-democratic; this fashion is the flower of that Caesarism against\nwhich I am concerned to protest. The ideal millionaire is strong in the\npossession of a brain of steel. The fact that the real millionaire is\nrather more often strong in the possession of a head of wood, does not\nalter the spirit and trend of the idolatry. The essential argument is\n\u201cSpecialists must be despots; men must be specialists. You cannot have\nequality in a soap factory; so you cannot have it anywhere. You cannot\nhave comradeship in a wheat corner; so you cannot have it at all. We\nmust have commercial civilization; therefore we must destroy democracy.\u201d\n I know that plutocrats have seldom sufficient fancy to soar to such\nexamples as soap or wheat. They generally confine themselves, with fine\nfreshness of mind, to a comparison between the state and a ship. One\nanti-democratic writer remarked that he would not like to sail in a\nvessel in which the cabin-boy had an equal vote with the captain. It\nmight easily be urged in answer that many a ship (the Victoria, for\ninstance) was sunk because an admiral gave an order which a cabin-boy\ncould see was wrong. But this is a debating reply; the essential fallacy\nis both deeper and simpler. The elementary fact is that we were all\nborn in a state; we were not all born on a ship; like some of our great\nBritish bankers. A ship still remains a specialist experiment, like\na diving-bell or a flying ship: in such peculiar perils the need for\npromptitude constitutes the need for autocracy. But we live and die in\nthe vessel of the state; and if we cannot find freedom camaraderie and\nthe popular element in the state, we cannot find it at all. And the\nmodern doctrine of commercial despotism means that we shall not find it\nat all. Our specialist trades in their highly civilized state cannot (it\nsays) be run without the whole brutal business of bossing and sacking,\n\u201ctoo old at forty\u201d and all the rest of the filth. And they must be run,\nand therefore we call on Caesar. Nobody but the Superman could descend\nto do such dirty work.\n\nNow (to reiterate my title) this is what is wrong. This is the huge\nmodern heresy of altering the human soul to fit its conditions, instead\nof altering human conditions to fit the human soul. If soap boiling\nis really inconsistent with brotherhood, so much the worst for\nsoap-boiling, not for brotherhood. If civilization really cannot get on\nwith democracy, so much the worse for civilization, not for democracy.\nCertainly, it would be far better to go back to village communes, if\nthey really are communes. Certainly, it would be better to do without\nsoap rather than to do without society. Certainly, we would sacrifice\nall our wires, wheels, systems, specialties, physical science and\nfrenzied finance for one half-hour of happiness such as has often come\nto us with comrades in a common tavern. I do not say the sacrifice will\nbe necessary; I only say it will be easy.\n\n\n\n\nPART THREE. FEMINISM, OR THE MISTAKE ABOUT WOMAN\n\n\n\n\nI. THE UNMILITARY SUFFRAGETTE\n\nIt will be better to adopt in this chapter the same process that\nappeared a piece of mental justice in the last. My general opinions on\nthe feminine question are such as many suffragists would warmly approve;\nand it would be easy to state them without any open reference to the\ncurrent controversy. But just as it seemed more decent to say first\nthat I was not in favor of Imperialism even in its practical and popular\nsense, so it seems more decent to say the same of Female Suffrage, in\nits practical and popular sense. In other words, it is only fair to\nstate, however hurriedly, the superficial objection to the Suffragettes\nbefore we go on to the really subtle questions behind the Suffrage.\n\nWell, to get this honest but unpleasant business over, the objection\nto the Suffragettes is not that they are Militant Suffragettes. On the\ncontrary, it is that they are not militant enough. A revolution is a\nmilitary thing; it has all the military virtues; one of which is that\nit comes to an end. Two parties fight with deadly weapons, but under\ncertain rules of arbitrary honor; the party that wins becomes the\ngovernment and proceeds to govern. The aim of civil war, like the aim of\nall war, is peace. Now the Suffragettes cannot raise civil war in\nthis soldierly and decisive sense; first, because they are women; and,\nsecondly, because they are very few women. But they can raise something\nelse; which is altogether another pair of shoes. They do not create\nrevolution; what they do create is anarchy; and the difference between\nthese is not a question of violence, but a question of fruitfulness and\nfinality. Revolution of its nature produces government; anarchy only\nproduces more anarchy. Men may have what opinions they please about\nthe beheading of King Charles or King Louis, but they cannot deny that\nBradshaw and Cromwell ruled, that Carnot and Napoleon governed. Someone\nconquered; something occurred. You can only knock off the King\u2019s\nhead once. But you can knock off the King\u2019s hat any number of times.\nDestruction is finite, obstruction is infinite: so long as rebellion\ntakes the form of mere disorder (instead of an attempt to enforce a new\norder) there is no logical end to it; it can feed on itself and renew\nitself forever. If Napoleon had not wanted to be a Consul, but only\nwanted to be a nuisance, he could, possibly, have prevented any\ngovernment arising successfully out of the Revolution. But such a\nproceeding would not have deserved the dignified name of rebellion.\n\nIt is exactly this unmilitant quality in the Suffragettes that makes\ntheir superficial problem. The problem is that their action has none of\nthe advantages of ultimate violence; it does not afford a test. War is\na dreadful thing; but it does prove two points sharply and\nunanswerably--numbers, and an unnatural valor. One does discover the two\nurgent matters; how many rebels there are alive, and how many are\nready to be dead. But a tiny minority, even an interested minority, may\nmaintain mere disorder forever. There is also, of course, in the case of\nthese women, the further falsity that is introduced by their sex. It is\nfalse to state the matter as a mere brutal question of strength. If his\nmuscles give a man a vote, then his horse ought to have two votes and\nhis elephant five votes. The truth is more subtle than that; it is that\nbodily outbreak is a man\u2019s instinctive weapon, like the hoofs to the\nhorse or the tusks to the elephant. All riot is a threat of war; but the\nwoman is brandishing a weapon she can never use. There are many weapons\nthat she could and does use. If (for example) all the women nagged for\na vote they would get it in a month. But there again, one must remember,\nit would be necessary to get all the women to nag. And that brings us to\nthe end of the political surface of the matter. The working objection\nto the Suffragette philosophy is simply that overmastering millions of\nwomen do not agree with it. I am aware that some maintain that women\nought to have votes whether the majority wants them or not; but this is\nsurely a strange and childish case of setting up formal democracy to the\ndestruction of actual democracy. What should the mass of women decide\nif they do not decide their general place in the State? These people\npractically say that females may vote about everything except about\nFemale Suffrage.\n\nBut having again cleared my conscience of my merely political and\npossibly unpopular opinion, I will again cast back and try to treat the\nmatter in a slower and more sympathetic style; attempt to trace the real\nroots of woman\u2019s position in the western state, and the causes of our\nexisting traditions or perhaps prejudices upon the point. And for this\npurpose it is again necessary to travel far from the modern topic, the\nmere Suffragette of today, and to go back to subjects which, though much\nmore old, are, I think, considerably more fresh.\n\n*****\n\n\n\n\nII. THE UNIVERSAL STICK\n\nCast your eye round the room in which you sit, and select some three or\nfour things that have been with man almost since his beginning; which at\nleast we hear of early in the centuries and often among the tribes. Let\nme suppose that you see a knife on the table, a stick in the corner,\nor a fire on the hearth. About each of these you will notice one\nspeciality; that not one of them is special. Each of these ancestral\nthings is a universal thing; made to supply many different needs; and\nwhile tottering pedants nose about to find the cause and origin of some\nold custom, the truth is that it had fifty causes or a hundred origins.\nThe knife is meant to cut wood, to cut cheese, to cut pencils, to cut\nthroats; for a myriad ingenious or innocent human objects. The stick\nis meant partly to hold a man up, partly to knock a man down; partly to\npoint with like a finger-post, partly to balance with like a balancing\npole, partly to trifle with like a cigarette, partly to kill with like a\nclub of a giant; it is a crutch and a cudgel; an elongated finger and an\nextra leg. The case is the same, of course, with the fire; about which\nthe strangest modern views have arisen. A queer fancy seems to be\ncurrent that a fire exists to warm people. It exists to warm people, to\nlight their darkness, to raise their spirits, to toast their muffins,\nto air their rooms, to cook their chestnuts, to tell stories to their\nchildren, to make checkered shadows on their walls, to boil their\nhurried kettles, and to be the red heart of a man\u2019s house and that\nhearth for which, as the great heathens said, a man should die.\n\nNow it is the great mark of our modernity that people are always\nproposing substitutes for these old things; and these substitutes always\nanswer one purpose where the old thing answered ten. The modern man\nwill wave a cigarette instead of a stick; he will cut his pencil with\na little screwing pencil-sharpener instead of a knife; and he will even\nboldly offer to be warmed by hot water pipes instead of a fire. I have\nmy doubts about pencil-sharpeners even for sharpening pencils; and about\nhot water pipes even for heat. But when we think of all those other\nrequirements that these institutions answered, there opens before us the\nwhole horrible harlequinade of our civilization. We see as in a vision a\nworld where a man tries to cut his throat with a pencil-sharpener; where\na man must learn single-stick with a cigarette; where a man must try to\ntoast muffins at electric lamps, and see red and golden castles in the\nsurface of hot water pipes.\n\nThe principle of which I speak can be seen everywhere in a comparison\nbetween the ancient and universal things and the modern and specialist\nthings. The object of a theodolite is to lie level; the object of a\nstick is to swing loose at any angle; to whirl like the very wheel of\nliberty. The object of a lancet is to lance; when used for slashing,\ngashing, ripping, lopping off heads and limbs, it is a disappointing\ninstrument. The object of an electric light is merely to light (a\ndespicable modesty); and the object of an asbestos stove... I wonder\nwhat is the object of an asbestos stove? If a man found a coil of rope\nin a desert he could at least think of all the things that can be done\nwith a coil of rope; and some of them might even be practical. He could\ntow a boat or lasso a horse. He could play cat\u2019s-cradle, or pick oakum.\nHe could construct a rope-ladder for an eloping heiress, or cord her\nboxes for a travelling maiden aunt. He could learn to tie a bow, or he\ncould hang himself. Far otherwise with the unfortunate traveller\nwho should find a telephone in the desert. You can telephone with a\ntelephone; you cannot do anything else with it. And though this is\none of the wildest joys of life, it falls by one degree from its full\ndelirium when there is nobody to answer you. The contention is, in\nbrief, that you must pull up a hundred roots, and not one, before you\nuproot any of these hoary and simple expedients. It is only with great\ndifficulty that a modern scientific sociologist can be got to see that\nany old method has a leg to stand on. But almost every old method has\nfour or five legs to stand on. Almost all the old institutions are\nquadrupeds; and some of them are centipedes.\n\nConsider these cases, old and new, and you will observe the operation of\na general tendency. Everywhere there was one big thing that served six\npurposes; everywhere now there are six small things; or, rather (and\nthere is the trouble), there are just five and a half. Nevertheless, we\nwill not say that this separation and specialism is entirely useless or\ninexcusable. I have often thanked God for the telephone; I may any\nday thank God for the lancet; and there is none of these brilliant and\nnarrow inventions (except, of course, the asbestos stove) which might\nnot be at some moment necessary and lovely. But I do not think the most\naustere upholder of specialism will deny that there is in these old,\nmany-sided institutions an element of unity and universality which\nmay well be preserved in its due proportion and place. Spiritually,\nat least, it will be admitted that some all-round balance is needed to\nequalize the extravagance of experts. It would not be difficult to carry\nthe parable of the knife and stick into higher regions. Religion, the\nimmortal maiden, has been a maid-of-all-work as well as a servant\nof mankind. She provided men at once with the theoretic laws of an\nunalterable cosmos and also with the practical rules of the rapid and\nthrilling game of morality. She taught logic to the student and told\nfairy tales to the children; it was her business to confront the\nnameless gods whose fears are on all flesh, and also to see the streets\nwere spotted with silver and scarlet, that there was a day for wearing\nribbons or an hour for ringing bells. The large uses of religion have\nbeen broken up into lesser specialities, just as the uses of the hearth\nhave been broken up into hot water pipes and electric bulbs. The romance\nof ritual and colored emblem has been taken over by that narrowest of\nall trades, modern art (the sort called art for art\u2019s sake), and men are\nin modern practice informed that they may use all symbols so long as\nthey mean nothing by them. The romance of conscience has been dried\nup into the science of ethics; which may well be called decency for\ndecency\u2019s sake, decency unborn of cosmic energies and barren of artistic\nflower. The cry to the dim gods, cut off from ethics and cosmology,\nhas become mere Psychical Research. Everything has been sundered from\neverything else, and everything has grown cold. Soon we shall hear of\nspecialists dividing the tune from the words of a song, on the ground\nthat they spoil each other; and I did once meet a man who openly\nadvocated the separation of almonds and raisins. This world is all one\nwild divorce court; nevertheless, there are many who still hear in\ntheir souls the thunder of authority of human habit; those whom Man hath\njoined let no man sunder.\n\nThis book must avoid religion, but there must (I say) be many, religious\nand irreligious, who will concede that this power of answering many\npurposes was a sort of strength which should not wholly die out of our\nlives. As a part of personal character, even the moderns will agree that\nmany-sidedness is a merit and a merit that may easily be overlooked.\nThis balance and universality has been the vision of many groups of\nmen in many ages. It was the Liberal Education of Aristotle; the\njack-of-all-trades artistry of Leonardo da Vinci and his friends; the\naugust amateurishness of the Cavalier Person of Quality like Sir William\nTemple or the great Earl of Dorset. It has appeared in literature in our\ntime in the most erratic and opposite shapes, set to almost inaudible\nmusic by Walter Pater and enunciated through a foghorn by Walt Whitman.\nBut the great mass of men have always been unable to achieve this\nliteral universality, because of the nature of their work in the world.\nNot, let it be noted, because of the existence of their work. Leonardo\nda Vinci must have worked pretty hard; on the other hand, many a\ngovernment office clerk, village constable or elusive plumber may do\n(to all human appearance) no work at all, and yet show no signs of the\nAristotelian universalism. What makes it difficult for the average man\nto be a universalist is that the average man has to be a specialist; he\nhas not only to learn one trade, but to learn it so well as to uphold\nhim in a more or less ruthless society. This is generally true of males\nfrom the first hunter to the last electrical engineer; each has not\nmerely to act, but to excel. Nimrod has not only to be a mighty hunter\nbefore the Lord, but also a mighty hunter before the other hunters.\nThe electrical engineer has to be a very electrical engineer, or he is\noutstripped by engineers yet more electrical. Those very miracles of the\nhuman mind on which the modern world prides itself, and rightly in the\nmain, would be impossible without a certain concentration which disturbs\nthe pure balance of reason more than does religious bigotry. No creed\ncan be so limiting as that awful adjuration that the cobbler must not go\nbeyond his last. So the largest and wildest shots of our world are but\nin one direction and with a defined trajectory: the gunner cannot go\nbeyond his shot, and his shot so often falls short; the astronomer\ncannot go beyond his telescope and his telescope goes such a little way.\nAll these are like men who have stood on the high peak of a mountain and\nseen the horizon like a single ring and who then descend down different\npaths towards different towns, traveling slow or fast. It is right;\nthere must be people traveling to different towns; there must be\nspecialists; but shall no one behold the horizon? Shall all mankind\nbe specialist surgeons or peculiar plumbers; shall all humanity be\nmonomaniac? Tradition has decided that only half of humanity shall be\nmonomaniac. It has decided that in every home there shall be a tradesman\nand a Jack-of-all-trades. But it has also decided, among other things,\nthat the Jack-of-all-trades shall be a Jill-of-all-trades. It has\ndecided, rightly or wrongly, that this specialism and this universalism\nshall be divided between the sexes. Cleverness shall be left for men and\nwisdom for women. For cleverness kills wisdom; that is one of the few\nsad and certain things.\n\nBut for women this ideal of comprehensive capacity (or common-sense)\nmust long ago have been washed away. It must have melted in the\nfrightful furnaces of ambition and eager technicality. A man must be\npartly a one-idead man, because he is a one-weaponed man--and he is\nflung naked into the fight. The world\u2019s demand comes to him direct; to\nhis wife indirectly. In short, he must (as the books on Success say)\ngive \u201chis best\u201d; and what a small part of a man \u201chis best\u201d is! His\nsecond and third best are often much better. If he is the first violin\nhe must fiddle for life; he must not remember that he is a fine fourth\nbagpipe, a fair fifteenth billiard-cue, a foil, a fountain pen, a hand\nat whist, a gun, and an image of God.\n\n*****\n\n\n\n\nIII. THE EMANCIPATION OF DOMESTICITY\n\nAnd it should be remarked in passing that this force upon a man to\ndevelop one feature has nothing to do with what is commonly called\nour competitive system, but would equally exist under any rationally\nconceivable kind of Collectivism. Unless the Socialists are frankly\nready for a fall in the standard of violins, telescopes and electric\nlights, they must somehow create a moral demand on the individual that\nhe shall keep up his present concentration on these things. It was\nonly by men being in some degree specialist that there ever were any\ntelescopes; they must certainly be in some degree specialist in order to\nkeep them going. It is not by making a man a State wage-earner that you\ncan prevent him thinking principally about the very difficult way he\nearns his wages. There is only one way to preserve in the world that\nhigh levity and that more leisurely outlook which fulfils the old vision\nof universalism. That is, to permit the existence of a partly protected\nhalf of humanity; a half which the harassing industrial demand troubles\nindeed, but only troubles indirectly. In other words, there must be in\nevery center of humanity one human being upon a larger plan; one who\ndoes not \u201cgive her best,\u201d but gives her all.\n\nOur old analogy of the fire remains the most workable one. The fire need\nnot blaze like electricity nor boil like boiling water; its point is\nthat it blazes more than water and warms more than light. The wife is\nlike the fire, or to put things in their proper proportion, the fire\nis like the wife. Like the fire, the woman is expected to cook: not to\nexcel in cooking, but to cook; to cook better than her husband who is\nearning the coke by lecturing on botany or breaking stones. Like the\nfire, the woman is expected to tell tales to the children, not original\nand artistic tales, but tales--better tales than would probably be\ntold by a first-class cook. Like the fire, the woman is expected to\nilluminate and ventilate, not by the most startling revelations or the\nwildest winds of thought, but better than a man can do it after breaking\nstones or lecturing. But she cannot be expected to endure anything\nlike this universal duty if she is also to endure the direct cruelty\nof competitive or bureaucratic toil. Woman must be a cook, but not\na competitive cook; a school mistress, but not a competitive\nschoolmistress; a house-decorator but not a competitive house-decorator;\na dressmaker, but not a competitive dressmaker. She should have not\none trade but twenty hobbies; she, unlike the man, may develop all her\nsecond bests. This is what has been really aimed at from the first in\nwhat is called the seclusion, or even the oppression, of women. Women\nwere not kept at home in order to keep them narrow; on the contrary,\nthey were kept at home in order to keep them broad. The world outside\nthe home was one mass of narrowness, a maze of cramped paths, a madhouse\nof monomaniacs. It was only by partly limiting and protecting the woman\nthat she was enabled to play at five or six professions and so come\nalmost as near to God as the child when he plays at a hundred trades.\nBut the woman\u2019s professions, unlike the child\u2019s, were all truly and\nalmost terribly fruitful; so tragically real that nothing but her\nuniversality and balance prevented them being merely morbid. This is the\nsubstance of the contention I offer about the historic female position.\nI do not deny that women have been wronged and even tortured; but I\ndoubt if they were ever tortured so much as they are tortured now by the\nabsurd modern attempt to make them domestic empresses and competitive\nclerks at the same time. I do not deny that even under the old tradition\nwomen had a harder time than men; that is why we take off our hats. I do\nnot deny that all these various female functions were exasperating; but\nI say that there was some aim and meaning in keeping them various. I do\nnot pause even to deny that woman was a servant; but at least she was a\ngeneral servant.\n\nThe shortest way of summarizing the position is to say that woman stands\nfor the idea of Sanity; that intellectual home to which the mind must\nreturn after every excursion on extravagance. The mind that finds its\nway to wild places is the poet\u2019s; but the mind that never finds its way\nback is the lunatic\u2019s. There must in every machine be a part that moves\nand a part that stands still; there must be in everything that changes\na part that is unchangeable. And many of the phenomena which moderns\nhastily condemn are really parts of this position of the woman as the\ncenter and pillar of health. Much of what is called her subservience,\nand even her pliability, is merely the subservience and pliability of\na universal remedy; she varies as medicines vary, with the disease. She\nhas to be an optimist to the morbid husband, a salutary pessimist to the\nhappy-go-lucky husband. She has to prevent the Quixote from being put\nupon, and the bully from putting upon others. The French King wrote--\n\n     \u201cToujours femme varie Bien fol qui s\u2019y fie,\u201d\n\nbut the truth is that woman always varies, and that is exactly why we\nalways trust her. To correct every adventure and extravagance with its\nantidote in common-sense is not (as the moderns seem to think) to be\nin the position of a spy or a slave. It is to be in the position\nof Aristotle or (at the lowest) Herbert Spencer, to be a universal\nmorality, a complete system of thought. The slave flatters; the complete\nmoralist rebukes. It is, in short, to be a Trimmer in the true sense of\nthat honorable term; which for some reason or other is always used in a\nsense exactly opposite to its own. It seems really to be supposed that\na Trimmer means a cowardly person who always goes over to the stronger\nside. It really means a highly chivalrous person who always goes over\nto the weaker side; like one who trims a boat by sitting where there are\nfew people seated. Woman is a trimmer; and it is a generous, dangerous\nand romantic trade.\n\nThe final fact which fixes this is a sufficiently plain one. Supposing\nit to be conceded that humanity has acted at least not unnaturally in\ndividing itself into two halves, respectively typifying the ideals of\nspecial talent and of general sanity (since they are genuinely difficult\nto combine completely in one mind), it is not difficult to see why the\nline of cleavage has followed the line of sex, or why the female became\nthe emblem of the universal and the male of the special and superior.\nTwo gigantic facts of nature fixed it thus: first, that the woman who\nfrequently fulfilled her functions literally could not be specially\nprominent in experiment and adventure; and second, that the same natural\noperation surrounded her with very young children, who require to be\ntaught not so much anything as everything. Babies need not to be taught\na trade, but to be introduced to a world. To put the matter shortly,\nwoman is generally shut up in a house with a human being at the time\nwhen he asks all the questions that there are, and some that there\naren\u2019t. It would be odd if she retained any of the narrowness of a\nspecialist. Now if anyone says that this duty of general enlightenment\n(even when freed from modern rules and hours, and exercised more\nspontaneously by a more protected person) is in itself too exacting and\noppressive, I can understand the view. I can only answer that our race\nhas thought it worth while to cast this burden on women in order to\nkeep common-sense in the world. But when people begin to talk about this\ndomestic duty as not merely difficult but trivial and dreary, I simply\ngive up the question. For I cannot with the utmost energy of imagination\nconceive what they mean. When domesticity, for instance, is called\ndrudgery, all the difficulty arises from a double meaning in the word.\nIf drudgery only means dreadfully hard work, I admit the woman drudges\nin the home, as a man might drudge at the Cathedral of Amiens or drudge\nbehind a gun at Trafalgar. But if it means that the hard work is more\nheavy because it is trifling, colorless and of small import to the soul,\nthen as I say, I give it up; I do not know what the words mean. To be\nQueen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labors\nand holidays; to be Whiteley within a certain area, providing toys,\nboots, sheets, cakes and books, to be Aristotle within a certain area,\nteaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene; I can understand how\nthis might exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow\nit. How can it be a large career to tell other people\u2019s children about\nthe Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one\u2019s own children about\nthe universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and\nnarrow to be everything to someone? No; a woman\u2019s function is laborious,\nbut because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. I will pity Mrs.\nJones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its\nsmallness.\n\nBut though the essential of the woman\u2019s task is universality, this does\nnot, of course, prevent her from having one or two severe though largely\nwholesome prejudices. She has, on the whole, been more conscious than\nman that she is only one half of humanity; but she has expressed it (if\none may say so of a lady) by getting her teeth into the two or three\nthings which she thinks she stands for. I would observe here in\nparenthesis that much of the recent official trouble about women has\narisen from the fact that they transfer to things of doubt and reason\nthat sacred stubbornness only proper to the primary things which a woman\nwas set to guard. One\u2019s own children, one\u2019s own altar, ought to be a\nmatter of principle--or if you like, a matter of prejudice. On the\nother hand, who wrote Junius\u2019s Letters ought not to be a principle or\na prejudice, it ought to be a matter of free and almost indifferent\ninquiry. But take an energetic modern girl secretary to a league to show\nthat George III wrote Junius, and in three months she will believe it,\ntoo, out of mere loyalty to her employers. Modern women defend their\noffice with all the fierceness of domesticity. They fight for desk\nand typewriter as for hearth and home, and develop a sort of wolfish\nwifehood on behalf of the invisible head of the firm. That is why they\ndo office work so well; and that is why they ought not to do it.\n\n*****\n\n\n\n\nIV. THE ROMANCE OF THRIFT\n\nThe larger part of womankind, however, have had to fight for things\nslightly more intoxicating to the eye than the desk or the typewriter;\nand it cannot be denied that in defending these, women have developed\nthe quality called prejudice to a powerful and even menacing degree. But\nthese prejudices will always be found to fortify the main position of\nthe woman, that she is to remain a general overseer, an autocrat within\nsmall compass but on all sides. On the one or two points on which she\nreally misunderstands the man\u2019s position, it is almost entirely in order\nto preserve her own. The two points on which woman, actually and of\nherself, is most tenacious may be roughly summarized as the ideal of\nthrift and the ideal of dignity.\n\nUnfortunately for this book it is written by a male, and these two\nqualities, if not hateful to a man, are at least hateful in a man. But\nif we are to settle the sex question at all fairly, all males must make\nan imaginative attempt to enter into the attitude of all good women\ntoward these two things. The difficulty exists especially, perhaps, in\nthe thing called thrift; we men have so much encouraged each other in\nthrowing money right and left, that there has come at last to be a sort\nof chivalrous and poetical air about losing sixpence. But on a broader\nand more candid consideration the case scarcely stands so.\n\nThrift is the really romantic thing; economy is more romantic than\nextravagance. Heaven knows I for one speak disinterestedly in the\nmatter; for I cannot clearly remember saving a half-penny ever since I\nwas born. But the thing is true; economy, properly understood, is the\nmore poetic. Thrift is poetic because it is creative; waste is unpoetic\nbecause it is waste. It is prosaic to throw money away, because it is\nprosaic to throw anything away; it is negative; it is a confession of\nindifference, that is, it is a confession of failure. The most prosaic\nthing about the house is the dustbin, and the one great objection to the\nnew fastidious and aesthetic homestead is simply that in such a moral\nmenage the dustbin must be bigger than the house. If a man could\nundertake to make use of all things in his dustbin he would be a broader\ngenius than Shakespeare. When science began to use by-products; when\nscience found that colors could be made out of coaltar, she made her\ngreatest and perhaps her only claim on the real respect of the human\nsoul. Now the aim of the good woman is to use the by-products, or, in\nother words, to rummage in the dustbin.\n\nA man can only fully comprehend it if he thinks of some sudden joke or\nexpedient got up with such materials as may be found in a private house\non a rainy day. A man\u2019s definite daily work is generally run with such\nrigid convenience of modern science that thrift, the picking up of\npotential helps here and there, has almost become unmeaning to him. He\ncomes across it most (as I say) when he is playing some game within four\nwalls; when in charades, a hearthrug will just do for a fur coat, or a\ntea-cozy just do for a cocked hat; when a toy theater needs timber\nand cardboard, and the house has just enough firewood and just enough\nbandboxes. This is the man\u2019s occasional glimpse and pleasing parody of\nthrift. But many a good housekeeper plays the same game every day with\nends of cheese and scraps of silk, not because she is mean, but on the\ncontrary, because she is magnanimous; because she wishes her creative\nmercy to be over all her works, that not one sardine should be\ndestroyed, or cast as rubbish to the void, when she has made the pile\ncomplete.\n\nThe modern world must somehow be made to understand (in theology and\nother things) that a view may be vast, broad, universal, liberal and yet\ncome into conflict with another view that is vast, broad, universal and\nliberal also. There is never a war between two sects, but only between\ntwo universal Catholic Churches. The only possible collision is the\ncollision of one cosmos with another. So in a smaller way it must be\nfirst made clear that this female economic ideal is a part of that\nfemale variety of outlook and all-round art of life which we have\nalready attributed to the sex: thrift is not a small or timid or\nprovincial thing; it is part of that great idea of the woman watching\non all sides out of all the windows of the soul and being answerable for\neverything. For in the average human house there is one hole by which\nmoney comes in and a hundred by which it goes out; man has to do with\nthe one hole, woman with the hundred. But though the very stinginess\nof a woman is a part of her spiritual breadth, it is none the less true\nthat it brings her into conflict with the special kind of spiritual\nbreadth that belongs to the males of the tribe. It brings her into\nconflict with that shapeless cataract of Comradeship, of chaotic\nfeasting and deafening debate, which we noted in the last section. The\nvery touch of the eternal in the two sexual tastes brings them the more\ninto antagonism; for one stands for a universal vigilance and the other\nfor an almost infinite output. Partly through the nature of his moral\nweakness, and partly through the nature of his physical strength, the\nmale is normally prone to expand things into a sort of eternity; he\nalways thinks of a dinner party as lasting all night; and he always\nthinks of a night as lasting forever. When the working women in the poor\ndistricts come to the doors of the public houses and try to get their\nhusbands home, simple minded \u201csocial workers\u201d always imagine that every\nhusband is a tragic drunkard and every wife a broken-hearted saint. It\nnever occurs to them that the poor woman is only doing under coarser\nconventions exactly what every fashionable hostess does when she tries\nto get the men from arguing over the cigars to come and gossip over the\nteacups. These women are not exasperated merely at the amount of money\nthat is wasted in beer; they are exasperated also at the amount of time\nthat is wasted in talk. It is not merely what goeth into the mouth but\nwhat cometh out the mouth that, in their opinion, defileth a man. They\nwill raise against an argument (like their sisters of all ranks) the\nridiculous objection that nobody is convinced by it; as if a man wanted\nto make a body-slave of anybody with whom he had played single-stick.\nBut the real female prejudice on this point is not without a basis; the\nreal feeling is this, that the most masculine pleasures have a quality\nof the ephemeral. A duchess may ruin a duke for a diamond necklace; but\nthere is the necklace. A coster may ruin his wife for a pot of beer; and\nwhere is the beer? The duchess quarrels with another duchess in order to\ncrush her, to produce a result; the coster does not argue with another\ncoster in order to convince him, but in order to enjoy at once the sound\nof his own voice, the clearness of his own opinions and the sense of\nmasculine society. There is this element of a fine fruitlessness about\nthe male enjoyments; wine is poured into a bottomless bucket; thought\nplunges into a bottomless abyss. All this has set woman against the\nPublic House--that is, against the Parliament House. She is there to\nprevent waste; and the \u201cpub\u201d and the parliament are the very palaces of\nwaste. In the upper classes the \u201cpub\u201d is called the club, but that makes\nno more difference to the reason than it does to the rhyme. High and\nlow, the woman\u2019s objection to the Public House is perfectly definite and\nrational, it is that the Public House wastes the energies that could be\nused on the private house.\n\nAs it is about feminine thrift against masculine waste, so it is about\nfeminine dignity against masculine rowdiness. The woman has a fixed\nand very well-founded idea that if she does not insist on good manners\nnobody else will. Babies are not always strong on the point of dignity,\nand grown-up men are quite unpresentable. It is true that there are\nmany very polite men, but none that I ever heard of who were not either\nfascinating women or obeying them. But indeed the female ideal of\ndignity, like the female ideal of thrift, lies deeper and may easily\nbe misunderstood. It rests ultimately on a strong idea of spiritual\nisolation; the same that makes women religious. They do not like being\nmelted down; they dislike and avoid the mob. That anonymous quality we\nhave remarked in the club conversation would be common impertinence in\na case of ladies. I remember an artistic and eager lady asking me in her\ngrand green drawing-room whether I believed in comradeship between\nthe sexes, and why not. I was driven back on offering the obvious and\nsincere answer \u201cBecause if I were to treat you for two minutes like a\ncomrade you would turn me out of the house.\u201d The only certain rule on\nthis subject is always to deal with woman and never with women. \u201cWomen\u201d\n is a profligate word; I have used it repeatedly in this chapter; but\nit always has a blackguard sound. It smells of oriental cynicism and\nhedonism. Every woman is a captive queen. But every crowd of women is\nonly a harem broken loose.\n\nI am not expressing my own views here, but those of nearly all the women\nI have known. It is quite unfair to say that a woman hates other women\nindividually; but I think it would be quite true to say that she detests\nthem in a confused heap. And this is not because she despises her own\nsex, but because she respects it; and respects especially that sanctity\nand separation of each item which is represented in manners by the idea\nof dignity and in morals by the idea of chastity.\n\n*****\n\n\n\n\nV. THE COLDNESS OF CHLOE\n\nWe hear much of the human error which accepts what is sham and what is\nreal. But it is worth while to remember that with unfamiliar things\nwe often mistake what is real for what is sham. It is true that a very\nyoung man may think the wig of an actress is her hair. But it is equally\ntrue that a child yet younger may call the hair of a negro his wig.\nJust because the woolly savage is remote and barbaric he seems to be\nunnaturally neat and tidy. Everyone must have noticed the same thing in\nthe fixed and almost offensive color of all unfamiliar things, tropic\nbirds and tropic blossoms. Tropic birds look like staring toys out of\na toy-shop. Tropic flowers simply look like artificial flowers,\nlike things cut out of wax. This is a deep matter, and, I think, not\nunconnected with divinity; but anyhow it is the truth that when we\nsee things for the first time we feel instantly that they are fictive\ncreations; we feel the finger of God. It is only when we are thoroughly\nused to them and our five wits are wearied, that we see them as wild and\nobjectless; like the shapeless tree-tops or the shifting cloud. It is\nthe design in Nature that strikes us first; the sense of the crosses and\nconfusions in that design only comes afterwards through experience and\nan almost eerie monotony. If a man saw the stars abruptly by accident he\nwould think them as festive and as artificial as a firework. We talk of\nthe folly of painting the lily; but if we saw the lily without warning\nwe should think that it was painted. We talk of the devil not being\nso black as he is painted; but that very phrase is a testimony to the\nkinship between what is called vivid and what is called artificial. If\nthe modern sage had only one glimpse of grass and sky, he would say that\ngrass was not as green as it was painted; that sky was not as blue as it\nwas painted. If one could see the whole universe suddenly, it would look\nlike a bright-colored toy, just as the South American hornbill looks\nlike a bright-colored toy. And so they are--both of them, I mean.\n\nBut it was not with this aspect of the startling air of artifice about\nall strange objects that I meant to deal. I mean merely, as a guide to\nhistory, that we should not be surprised if things wrought in fashions\nremote from ours seem artificial; we should convince ourselves that nine\ntimes out of ten these things are nakedly and almost indecently honest.\nYou will hear men talk of the frosted classicism of Corneille or of the\npowdered pomposities of the eighteenth century, but all these phrases\nare very superficial. There never was an artificial epoch. There never\nwas an age of reason. Men were always men and women women: and their two\ngenerous appetites always were the expression of passion and the\ntelling of truth. We can see something stiff and quaint in their mode of\nexpression, just as our descendants will see something stiff and quaint\nin our coarsest slum sketch or our most naked pathological play. But\nmen have never talked about anything but important things; and the next\nforce in femininity which we have to consider can be considered best\nperhaps in some dusty old volume of verses by a person of quality.\n\nThe eighteenth century is spoken of as the period of artificiality, in\nexternals at least; but, indeed, there may be two words about that. In\nmodern speech one uses artificiality as meaning indefinitely a sort of\ndeceit; and the eighteenth century was far too artificial to deceive.\nIt cultivated that completest art that does not conceal the art. Its\nfashions and costumes positively revealed nature by allowing artifice;\nas in that obvious instance of a barbering that frosted every head with\nthe same silver. It would be fantastic to call this a quaint humility\nthat concealed youth; but, at least, it was not one with the evil pride\nthat conceals old age. Under the eighteenth century fashion people did\nnot so much all pretend to be young, as all agree to be old. The same\napplies to the most odd and unnatural of their fashions; they were\nfreakish, but they were not false. A lady may or may not be as red as\nshe is painted, but plainly she was not so black as she was patched.\n\nBut I only introduce the reader into this atmosphere of the older and\nfranker fictions that he may be induced to have patience for a moment\nwith a certain element which is very common in the decoration and\nliterature of that age and of the two centuries preceding it. It is\nnecessary to mention it in such a connection because it is exactly one\nof those things that look as superficial as powder, and are really as\nrooted as hair.\n\nIn all the old flowery and pastoral love-songs, those of the seventeenth\nand eighteenth centuries especially, you will find a perpetual reproach\nagainst woman in the matter of her coldness; ceaseless and stale similes\nthat compare her eyes to northern stars, her heart to ice, or her bosom\nto snow. Now most of us have always supposed these old and iterant\nphrases to be a mere pattern of dead words, a thing like a cold\nwall-paper. Yet I think those old cavalier poets who wrote about the\ncoldness of Chloe had hold of a psychological truth missed in nearly all\nthe realistic novels of today. Our psychological romancers perpetually\nrepresent wives as striking terror into their husbands by rolling on the\nfloor, gnashing their teeth, throwing about the furniture or poisoning\nthe coffee; all this upon some strange fixed theory that women are what\nthey call emotional. But in truth the old and frigid form is much nearer\nto the vital fact. Most men if they spoke with any sincerity would\nagree that the most terrible quality in women, whether in friendship,\ncourtship or marriage, was not so much being emotional as being\nunemotional.\n\nThere is an awful armor of ice which may be the legitimate protection of\na more delicate organism; but whatever be the psychological explanation\nthere can surely be no question of the fact. The instinctive cry of the\nfemale in anger is noli me tangere. I take this as the most obvious and\nat the same time the least hackneyed instance of a fundamental quality\nin the female tradition, which has tended in our time to be almost\nimmeasurably misunderstood, both by the cant of moralists and the cant\nof immoralists. The proper name for the thing is modesty; but as we live\nin an age of prejudice and must not call things by their right names, we\nwill yield to a more modern nomenclature and call it dignity. Whatever\nelse it is, it is the thing which a thousand poets and a million lovers\nhave called the coldness of Chloe. It is akin to the classical, and is\nat least the opposite of the grotesque. And since we are talking here\nchiefly in types and symbols, perhaps as good an embodiment as any of\nthe idea may be found in the mere fact of a woman wearing a skirt. It is\nhighly typical of the rabid plagiarism which now passes everywhere for\nemancipation, that a little while ago it was common for an \u201cadvanced\u201d\n woman to claim the right to wear trousers; a right about as grotesque as\nthe right to wear a false nose. Whether female liberty is much advanced\nby the act of wearing a skirt on each leg I do not know; perhaps Turkish\nwomen might offer some information on the point. But if the western\nwoman walks about (as it were) trailing the curtains of the harem\nwith her, it is quite certain that the woven mansion is meant for\na perambulating palace, not for a perambulating prison. It is quite\ncertain that the skirt means female dignity, not female submission; it\ncan be proved by the simplest of all tests. No ruler would deliberately\ndress up in the recognized fetters of a slave; no judge would appear\ncovered with broad arrows. But when men wish to be safely impressive, as\njudges, priests or kings, they do wear skirts, the long, trailing robes\nof female dignity The whole world is under petticoat government; for\neven men wear petticoats when they wish to govern.\n\n\n*****\n\n\n\n\nVI. THE PEDANT AND THE SAVAGE\n\nWe say then that the female holds up with two strong arms these two\npillars of civilization; we say also that she could do neither, but for\nher position; her curious position of private omnipotence, universality\non a small scale. The first element is thrift; not the destructive\nthrift of the miser, but the creative thrift of the peasant; the second\nelement is dignity, which is but the expression of sacred personality\nand privacy. Now I know the question that will be abruptly and\nautomatically asked by all that know the dull tricks and turns of the\nmodern sexual quarrel. The advanced person will at once begin to argue\nabout whether these instincts are inherent and inevitable in woman\nor whether they are merely prejudices produced by her history and\neducation. Now I do not propose to discuss whether woman could now be\neducated out of her habits touching thrift and dignity; and that for two\nexcellent reasons. First it is a question which cannot conceivably ever\nfind any answer: that is why modern people are so fond of it. From the\nnature of the case it is obviously impossible to decide whether any of\nthe peculiarities of civilized man have been strictly necessary to his\ncivilization. It is not self-evident (for instance), that even the habit\nof standing upright was the only path of human progress. There might\nhave been a quadrupedal civilization, in which a city gentleman put on\nfour boots to go to the city every morning. Or there might have been\na reptilian civilization, in which he rolled up to the office on his\nstomach; it is impossible to say that intelligence might not have\ndeveloped in such creatures. All we can say is that man as he is\nwalks upright; and that woman is something almost more upright than\nuprightness.\n\nAnd the second point is this: that upon the whole we rather prefer women\n(nay, even men) to walk upright; so we do not waste much of our noble\nlives in inventing any other way for them to walk. In short, my second\nreason for not speculating upon whether woman might get rid of these\npeculiarities, is that I do not want her to get rid of them; nor does\nshe. I will not exhaust my intelligence by inventing ways in which\nmankind might unlearn the violin or forget how to ride horses; and the\nart of domesticity seems to me as special and as valuable as all the\nancient arts of our race. Nor do I propose to enter at all into those\nformless and floundering speculations about how woman was or is regarded\nin the primitive times that we cannot remember, or in the savage\ncountries which we cannot understand. Even if these people segregated\ntheir women for low or barbaric reasons it would not make our reasons\nbarbaric; and I am haunted with a tenacious suspicion that these\npeople\u2019s feelings were really, under other forms, very much the same as\nours. Some impatient trader, some superficial missionary, walks across\nan island and sees the squaw digging in the fields while the man is\nplaying a flute; and immediately says that the man is a mere lord of\ncreation and the woman a mere serf. He does not remember that he might\nsee the same thing in half the back gardens in Brixton, merely because\nwomen are at once more conscientious and more impatient, while men are\nat once more quiescent and more greedy for pleasure. It may often be\nin Hawaii simply as it is in Hoxton. That is, the woman does not work\nbecause the man tells her to work and she obeys. On the contrary, the\nwoman works because she has told the man to work and he hasn\u2019t obeyed. I\ndo not affirm that this is the whole truth, but I do affirm that we have\ntoo little comprehension of the souls of savages to know how far it\nis untrue. It is the same with the relations of our hasty and surface\nscience, with the problem of sexual dignity and modesty. Professors find\nall over the world fragmentary ceremonies in which the bride affects\nsome sort of reluctance, hides from her husband, or runs away from\nhim. The professor then pompously proclaims that this is a survival of\nMarriage by Capture. I wonder he never says that the veil thrown over\nthe bride is really a net. I gravely doubt whether women ever were\nmarried by capture I think they pretended to be; as they do still.\n\nIt is equally obvious that these two necessary sanctities of thrift\nand dignity are bound to come into collision with the wordiness,\nthe wastefulness, and the perpetual pleasure-seeking of masculine\ncompanionship. Wise women allow for the thing; foolish women try to\ncrush it; but all women try to counteract it, and they do well. In many\na home all round us at this moment, we know that the nursery rhyme is\nreversed. The queen is in the counting-house, counting out the money.\nThe king is in the parlor, eating bread and honey. But it must be\nstrictly understood that the king has captured the honey in some heroic\nwars. The quarrel can be found in moldering Gothic carvings and in\ncrabbed Greek manuscripts. In every age, in every land, in every tribe\nand village, has been waged the great sexual war between the Private\nHouse and the Public House. I have seen a collection of mediaeval\nEnglish poems, divided into sections such as \u201cReligious Carols,\u201d\n \u201cDrinking Songs,\u201d and so on; and the section headed, \u201cPoems of Domestic\nLife\u201d consisted entirely (literally, entirely) of the complaints\nof husbands who were bullied by their wives. Though the English was\narchaic, the words were in many cases precisely the same as those which\nI have heard in the streets and public houses of Battersea, protests on\nbehalf of an extension of time and talk, protests against the nervous\nimpatience and the devouring utilitarianism of the female. Such, I say,\nis the quarrel; it can never be anything but a quarrel; but the aim of\nall morals and all society is to keep it a lovers\u2019 quarrel.\n\n*****\n\n\n\n\nVII. THE MODERN SURRENDER OF WOMAN\n\nBut in this corner called England, at this end of the century, there has\nhappened a strange and startling thing. Openly and to all appearance,\nthis ancestral conflict has silently and abruptly ended; one of the two\nsexes has suddenly surrendered to the other. By the beginning of the\ntwentieth century, within the last few years, the woman has in public\nsurrendered to the man. She has seriously and officially owned that the\nman has been right all along; that the public house (or Parliament) is\nreally more important than the private house; that politics are not\n(as woman had always maintained) an excuse for pots of beer, but are\na sacred solemnity to which new female worshipers may kneel; that the\ntalkative patriots in the tavern are not only admirable but enviable;\nthat talk is not a waste of time, and therefore (as a consequence,\nsurely) that taverns are not a waste of money. All we men had grown used\nto our wives and mothers, and grandmothers, and great aunts all\npouring a chorus of contempt upon our hobbies of sport, drink and party\npolitics. And now comes Miss Pankhurst with tears in her eyes, owning\nthat all the women were wrong and all the men were right; humbly\nimploring to be admitted into so much as an outer court, from which she\nmay catch a glimpse of those masculine merits which her erring sisters\nhad so thoughtlessly scorned.\n\nNow this development naturally perturbs and even paralyzes us. Males,\nlike females, in the course of that old fight between the public and\nprivate house, had indulged in overstatement and extravagance, feeling\nthat they must keep up their end of the see-saw. We told our wives that\nParliament had sat late on most essential business; but it never crossed\nour minds that our wives would believe it. We said that everyone must\nhave a vote in the country; similarly our wives said that no one must\nhave a pipe in the drawing room. In both cases the idea was the same.\n\u201cIt does not matter much, but if you let those things slide there\nis chaos.\u201d We said that Lord Huggins or Mr. Buggins was absolutely\nnecessary to the country. We knew quite well that nothing is necessary\nto the country except that the men should be men and the women women.\nWe knew this; we thought the women knew it even more clearly; and we\nthought the women would say it. Suddenly, without warning, the women\nhave begun to say all the nonsense that we ourselves hardly believed\nwhen we said it. The solemnity of politics; the necessity of votes;\nthe necessity of Huggins; the necessity of Buggins; all these flow in a\npellucid stream from the lips of all the suffragette speakers. I suppose\nin every fight, however old, one has a vague aspiration to conquer; but\nwe never wanted to conquer women so completely as this. We only expected\nthat they might leave us a little more margin for our nonsense; we never\nexpected that they would accept it seriously as sense. Therefore I am\nall at sea about the existing situation; I scarcely know whether to be\nrelieved or enraged by this substitution of the feeble platform lecture\nfor the forcible curtain-lecture. I am lost without the trenchant and\ncandid Mrs. Caudle. I really do not know what to do with the prostrate\nand penitent Miss Pankhurst. This surrender of the modern woman has taken\nus all so much by surprise that it is desirable to pause a moment, and\ncollect our wits about what she is really saying.\n\nAs I have already remarked, there is one very simple answer to all this;\nthese are not the modern women, but about one in two thousand of the\nmodern women. This fact is important to a democrat; but it is of very\nlittle importance to the typically modern mind. Both the characteristic\nmodern parties believed in a government by the few; the only difference\nis whether it is the Conservative few or Progressive few. It might\nbe put, somewhat coarsely perhaps, by saying that one believes in any\nminority that is rich and the other in any minority that is mad. But in\nthis state of things the democratic argument obviously falls out for the\nmoment; and we are bound to take the prominent minority, merely\nbecause it is prominent. Let us eliminate altogether from our minds the\nthousands of women who detest this cause, and the millions of women who\nhave hardly heard of it. Let us concede that the English people itself\nis not and will not be for a very long time within the sphere of\npractical politics. Let us confine ourselves to saying that these\nparticular women want a vote and to asking themselves what a vote is. If\nwe ask these ladies ourselves what a vote is, we shall get a very\nvague reply. It is the only question, as a rule, for which they are not\nprepared. For the truth is that they go mainly by precedent; by the mere\nfact that men have votes already. So far from being a mutinous movement,\nit is really a very Conservative one; it is in the narrowest rut of\nthe British Constitution. Let us take a little wider and freer sweep of\nthought and ask ourselves what is the ultimate point and meaning of this\nodd business called voting.\n\n*****\n\n\n\n\nVIII. THE BRAND OF THE FLEUR-DE-LIS\n\nSeemingly from the dawn of man all nations have had governments; and\nall nations have been ashamed of them. Nothing is more openly fallacious\nthan to fancy that in ruder or simpler ages ruling, judging and\npunishing appeared perfectly innocent and dignified. These things were\nalways regarded as the penalties of the Fall; as part of the humiliation\nof mankind, as bad in themselves. That the king can do no wrong was\nnever anything but a legal fiction; and it is a legal fiction still. The\ndoctrine of Divine Right was not a piece of idealism, but rather a piece\nof realism, a practical way of ruling amid the ruin of humanity; a very\npragmatist piece of faith. The religious basis of government was not so\nmuch that people put their trust in princes, as that they did not\nput their trust in any child of man. It was so with all the ugly\ninstitutions which disfigure human history. Torture and slavery were\nnever talked of as good things; they were always talked of as necessary\nevils. A pagan spoke of one man owning ten slaves just as a modern\nbusiness man speaks of one merchant sacking ten clerks: \u201cIt\u2019s very\nhorrible; but how else can society be conducted?\u201d A mediaeval scholastic\nregarded the possibility of a man being burned to death just as a modern\nbusiness man regards the possibility of a man being starved to death:\n\u201cIt is a shocking torture; but can you organize a painless world?\u201d It\nis possible that a future society may find a way of doing without the\nquestion by hunger as we have done without the question by fire. It\nis equally possible, for the matter of that, that a future society may\nreestablish legal torture with the whole apparatus of rack and fagot.\nThe most modern of countries, America, has introduced with a vague savor\nof science, a method which it calls \u201cthe third degree.\u201d This is simply\nthe extortion of secrets by nervous fatigue; which is surely uncommonly\nclose to their extortion by bodily pain. And this is legal and\nscientific in America. Amateur ordinary America, of course, simply burns\npeople alive in broad daylight, as they did in the Reformation Wars. But\nthough some punishments are more inhuman than others there is no such\nthing as humane punishment. As long as nineteen men claim the right in\nany sense or shape to take hold of the twentieth man and make him even\nmildly uncomfortable, so long the whole proceeding must be a humiliating\none for all concerned. And the proof of how poignantly men have always\nfelt this lies in the fact that the headsman and the hangman, the\njailors and the torturers, were always regarded not merely with fear but\nwith contempt; while all kinds of careless smiters, bankrupt knights\nand swashbucklers and outlaws, were regarded with indulgence or even\nadmiration. To kill a man lawlessly was pardoned. To kill a man lawfully\nwas unpardonable. The most bare-faced duelist might almost brandish his\nweapon. But the executioner was always masked.\n\nThis is the first essential element in government, coercion; a necessary\nbut not a noble element. I may remark in passing that when people say\nthat government rests on force they give an admirable instance of the\nfoggy and muddled cynicism of modernity. Government does not rest on\nforce. Government is force; it rests on consent or a conception of\njustice. A king or a community holding a certain thing to be abnormal,\nevil, uses the general strength to crush it out; the strength is his\ntool, but the belief is his only sanction. You might as well say that\nglass is the real reason for telescopes. But arising from whatever\nreason the act of government is coercive and is burdened with all the\ncoarse and painful qualities of coercion. And if anyone asks what is the\nuse of insisting on the ugliness of this task of state violence since\nall mankind is condemned to employ it, I have a simple answer to that.\nIt would be useless to insist on it if all humanity were condemned to\nit. But it is not irrelevant to insist on its ugliness so long as half\nof humanity is kept out of it.\n\nAll government then is coercive; we happen to have created a government\nwhich is not only coercive; but collective. There are only two kinds\nof government, as I have already said, the despotic and the democratic.\nAristocracy is not a government, it is a riot; that most effective\nkind of riot, a riot of the rich. The most intelligent apologists of\naristocracy, sophists like Burke and Nietzsche, have never claimed\nfor aristocracy any virtues but the virtues of a riot, the accidental\nvirtues, courage, variety and adventure. There is no case anywhere of\naristocracy having established a universal and applicable order, as\ndespots and democracies have often done; as the last Caesars created\nthe Roman law, as the last Jacobins created the Code Napoleon. With\nthe first of these elementary forms of government, that of the king or\nchieftain, we are not in this matter of the sexes immediately concerned.\nWe shall return to it later when we remark how differently mankind\nhas dealt with female claims in the despotic as against the democratic\nfield. But for the moment the essential point is that in self-governing\ncountries this coercion of criminals is a collective coercion. The\nabnormal person is theoretically thumped by a million fists and kicked\nby a million feet. If a man is flogged we all flogged him; if a man\nis hanged, we all hanged him. That is the only possible meaning of\ndemocracy, which can give any meaning to the first two syllables\nand also to the last two. In this sense each citizen has the high\nresponsibility of a rioter. Every statute is a declaration of war, to\nbe backed by arms. Every tribunal is a revolutionary tribunal. In a\nrepublic all punishment is as sacred and solemn as lynching.\n\n*****\n\n\n\n\nIX. SINCERITY AND THE GALLOWS\n\nWhen, therefore, it is said that the tradition against Female Suffrage\nkeeps women out of activity, social influence and citizenship, let us\na little more soberly and strictly ask ourselves what it actually does\nkeep her out of. It does definitely keep her out of the collective act\nof coercion; the act of punishment by a mob. The human tradition does\nsay that, if twenty men hang a man from a tree or lamp-post, they\nshall be twenty men and not women. Now I do not think any reasonable\nSuffragist will deny that exclusion from this function, to say the least\nof it, might be maintained to be a protection as well as a veto. No\ncandid person will wholly dismiss the proposition that the idea of\nhaving a Lord Chancellor but not a Lady Chancellor may at least be\nconnected with the idea of having a headsman but not a headswoman, a\nhangman but not a hangwoman. Nor will it be adequate to answer (as is\nso often answered to this contention) that in modern civilization women\nwould not really be required to capture, to sentence, or to slay; that\nall this is done indirectly, that specialists kill our criminals as they\nkill our cattle. To urge this is not to urge the reality of the vote,\nbut to urge its unreality. Democracy was meant to be a more direct way\nof ruling, not a more indirect way; and if we do not feel that we are\nall jailers, so much the worse for us, and for the prisoners. If it is\nreally an unwomanly thing to lock up a robber or a tyrant, it ought to\nbe no softening of the situation that the woman does not feel as if she\nwere doing the thing that she certainly is doing. It is bad enough that\nmen can only associate on paper who could once associate in the street;\nit is bad enough that men have made a vote very much of a fiction. It\nis much worse that a great class should claim the vote be cause it is\na fiction, who would be sickened by it if it were a fact. If votes for\nwomen do not mean mobs for women they do not mean what they were meant\nto mean. A woman can make a cross on a paper as well as a man; a child\ncould do it as well as a woman; and a chimpanzee after a few lessons\ncould do it as well as a child. But nobody ought to regard it merely\nas making a cross on paper; everyone ought to regard it as what it\nultimately is, branding the fleur-de-lis, marking the broad arrow,\nsigning the death warrant. Both men and women ought to face more fully\nthe things they do or cause to be done; face them or leave off doing\nthem.\n\nOn that disastrous day when public executions were abolished, private\nexecutions were renewed and ratified, perhaps forever. Things grossly\nunsuited to the moral sentiment of a society cannot be safely done in\nbroad daylight; but I see no reason why we should not still be roasting\nheretics alive, in a private room. It is very likely (to speak in the\nmanner foolishly called Irish) that if there were public executions\nthere would be no executions. The old open-air punishments, the pillory\nand the gibbet, at least fixed responsibility upon the law; and in\nactual practice they gave the mob an opportunity of throwing roses as\nwell as rotten eggs; of crying \u201cHosannah\u201d as well as \u201cCrucify.\u201d But I\ndo not like the public executioner being turned into the private\nexecutioner. I think it is a crooked oriental, sinister sort of\nbusiness, and smells of the harem and the divan rather than of the forum\nand the market place. In modern times the official has lost all the\nsocial honor and dignity of the common hangman. He is only the bearer of\nthe bowstring.\n\nHere, however, I suggest a plea for a brutal publicity only in order\nto emphasize the fact that it is this brutal publicity and nothing else\nfrom which women have been excluded. I also say it to emphasize the\nfact that the mere modern veiling of the brutality does not make\nthe situation different, unless we openly say that we are giving the\nsuffrage, not only because it is power but because it is not, or in\nother words, that women are not so much to vote as to play voting. No\nsuffragist, I suppose, will take up that position; and a few suffragists\nwill wholly deny that this human necessity of pains and penalties is\nan ugly, humiliating business, and that good motives as well as bad may\nhave helped to keep women out of it. More than once I have remarked in\nthese pages that female limitations may be the limits of a temple as\nwell as of a prison, the disabilities of a priest and not of a pariah. I\nnoted it, I think, in the case of the pontifical feminine dress. In the\nsame way it is not evidently irrational, if men decided that a woman,\nlike a priest, must not be a shedder of blood.\n\n*****\n\n\n\n\nX. THE HIGHER ANARCHY\n\nBut there is a further fact; forgotten also because we moderns forget\nthat there is a female point of view. The woman\u2019s wisdom stands partly,\nnot only for a wholesome hesitation about punishment, but even for a\nwholesome hesitation about absolute rules. There was something feminine\nand perversely true in that phrase of Wilde\u2019s, that people should not\nbe treated as the rule, but all of them as exceptions. Made by a man the\nremark was a little effeminate; for Wilde did lack the masculine power\nof dogma and of democratic cooperation. But if a woman had said it\nit would have been simply true; a woman does treat each person as a\npeculiar person. In other words, she stands for Anarchy; a very ancient\nand arguable philosophy; not anarchy in the sense of having no customs\nin one\u2019s life (which is inconceivable), but anarchy in the sense of\nhaving no rules for one\u2019s mind. To her, almost certainly, are due all\nthose working traditions that cannot be found in books, especially those\nof education; it was she who first gave a child a stuffed stocking\nfor being good or stood him in the corner for being naughty. This\nunclassified knowledge is sometimes called rule of thumb and sometimes\nmotherwit. The last phrase suggests the whole truth, for none ever\ncalled it fatherwit.\n\nNow anarchy is only tact when it works badly. Tact is only anarchy\nwhen it works well. And we ought to realize that in one half of\nthe world--the private house--it does work well. We modern men are\nperpetually forgetting that the case for clear rules and crude penalties\nis not self-evident, that there is a great deal to be said for the\nbenevolent lawlessness of the autocrat, especially on a small scale;\nin short, that government is only one side of life. The other half is\ncalled Society, in which women are admittedly dominant. And they have\nalways been ready to maintain that their kingdom is better governed than\nours, because (in the logical and legal sense) it is not governed at\nall. \u201cWhenever you have a real difficulty,\u201d they say, \u201cwhen a boy is\nbumptious or an aunt is stingy, when a silly girl will marry somebody,\nor a wicked man won\u2019t marry somebody, all your lumbering Roman Law and\nBritish Constitution come to a standstill. A snub from a duchess or a\nslanging from a fish-wife are much more likely to put things straight.\u201d\n So, at least, rang the ancient female challenge down the ages until the\nrecent female capitulation. So streamed the red standard of the higher\nanarchy until Miss Pankhurst hoisted the white flag.\n\nIt must be remembered that the modern world has done deep treason to the\neternal intellect by believing in the swing of the pendulum. A man\nmust be dead before he swings. It has substituted an idea of fatalistic\nalternation for the mediaeval freedom of the soul seeking truth.\nAll modern thinkers are reactionaries; for their thought is always a\nreaction from what went before. When you meet a modern man he is always\ncoming from a place, not going to it. Thus, mankind has in nearly all\nplaces and periods seen that there is a soul and a body as plainly\nas that there is a sun and moon. But because a narrow Protestant sect\ncalled Materialists declared for a short time that there was no\nsoul, another narrow Protestant sect called Christian Science is\nnow maintaining that there is no body. Now just in the same way\nthe unreasonable neglect of government by the Manchester School has\nproduced, not a reasonable regard for government, but an unreasonable\nneglect of everything else. So that to hear people talk to-day one would\nfancy that every important human function must be organized and avenged\nby law; that all education must be state education, and all employment\nstate employment; that everybody and everything must be brought to the\nfoot of the august and prehistoric gibbet. But a somewhat more liberal\nand sympathetic examination of mankind will convince us that the cross\nis even older than the gibbet, that voluntary suffering was before and\nindependent of compulsory; and in short that in most important matters\na man has always been free to ruin himself if he chose. The huge\nfundamental function upon which all anthropology turns, that of sex\nand childbirth, has never been inside the political state, but always\noutside of it. The state concerned itself with the trivial question of\nkilling people, but wisely left alone the whole business of getting them\nborn. A Eugenist might indeed plausibly say that the government is\nan absent-minded and inconsistent person who occupies himself with\nproviding for the old age of people who have never been infants. I will\nnot deal here in any detail with the fact that some Eugenists have\nin our time made the maniacal answer that the police ought to control\nmarriage and birth as they control labor and death. Except for this\ninhuman handful (with whom I regret to say I shall have to deal with\nlater) all the Eugenists I know divide themselves into two sections:\ningenious people who once meant this, and rather bewildered people who\nswear they never meant it--nor anything else. But if it be conceded\n(by a breezier estimate of men) that they do mostly desire marriage to\nremain free from government, it does not follow that they desire it to\nremain free from everything. If man does not control the marriage market\nby law, is it controlled at all? Surely the answer is broadly that man\ndoes not control the marriage market by law, but the woman does control\nit by sympathy and prejudice. There was until lately a law forbidding\na man to marry his deceased wife\u2019s sister; yet the thing happened\nconstantly. There was no law forbidding a man to marry his deceased\nwife\u2019s scullery-maid; yet it did not happen nearly so often. It did not\nhappen because the marriage market is managed in the spirit and by the\nauthority of women; and women are generally conservative where classes\nare concerned. It is the same with that system of exclusiveness by\nwhich ladies have so often contrived (as by a process of elimination)\nto prevent marriages that they did not want and even sometimes procure\nthose they did. There is no need of the broad arrow and the fleur-de\nlis, the turnkey\u2019s chains or the hangman\u2019s halter. You need not strangle\na man if you can silence him. The branded shoulder is less effective and\nfinal than the cold shoulder; and you need not trouble to lock a man in\nwhen you can lock him out.\n\nThe same, of course, is true of the colossal architecture which we call\ninfant education: an architecture reared wholly by women. Nothing can\never overcome that one enormous sex superiority, that even the male\nchild is born closer to his mother than to his father. No one, staring\nat that frightful female privilege, can quite believe in the equality of\nthe sexes. Here and there we read of a girl brought up like a tom-boy;\nbut every boy is brought up like a tame girl. The flesh and spirit of\nfemininity surround him from the first like the four walls of a house;\nand even the vaguest or most brutal man has been womanized by being\nborn. Man that is born of a woman has short days and full of misery; but\nnobody can picture the obscenity and bestial tragedy that would belong\nto such a monster as man that was born of a man.\n\n*****\n\n\n\n\nXI. THE QUEEN AND THE SUFFRAGETTES\n\nBut, indeed, with this educational matter I must of necessity embroil\nmyself later. The fourth section of discussion is supposed to be about\nthe child, but I think it will be mostly about the mother. In this\nplace I have systematically insisted on the large part of life that is\ngoverned, not by man with his vote, but by woman with her voice, or more\noften, with her horrible silence. Only one thing remains to be added.\nIn a sprawling and explanatory style has been traced out the idea\nthat government is ultimately coercion, that coercion must mean cold\ndefinitions as well as cruel consequences, and that therefore there\nis something to be said for the old human habit of keeping one-half of\nhumanity out of so harsh and dirty a business. But the case is stronger\nstill.\n\nVoting is not only coercion, but collective coercion. I think Queen\nVictoria would have been yet more popular and satisfying if she had\nnever signed a death warrant. I think Queen Elizabeth would have stood\nout as more solid and splendid in history if she had not earned (among\nthose who happen to know her history) the nickname of Bloody Bess. I\nthink, in short, that the great historic woman is more herself when she\nis persuasive rather than coercive. But I feel all mankind behind\nme when I say that if a woman has this power it should be despotic\npower--not democratic power. There is a much stronger historic argument\nfor giving Miss Pankhurst a throne than for giving her a vote. She might\nhave a crown, or at least a coronet, like so many of her supporters;\nfor these old powers are purely personal and therefore female. Miss\nPankhurst as a despot might be as virtuous as Queen Victoria, and she\ncertainly would find it difficult to be as wicked as Queen Bess, but the\npoint is that, good or bad, she would be irresponsible--she would not be\ngoverned by a rule and by a ruler. There are only two ways of governing:\nby a rule and by a ruler. And it is seriously true to say of a woman, in\neducation and domesticity, that the freedom of the autocrat appears\nto be necessary to her. She is never responsible until she is\nirresponsible. In case this sounds like an idle contradiction, I\nconfidently appeal to the cold facts of history. Almost every despotic\nor oligarchic state has admitted women to its privileges. Scarcely one\ndemocratic state has ever admitted them to its rights The reason is very\nsimple: that something female is endangered much more by the violence\nof the crowd. In short, one Pankhurst is an exception, but a thousand\nPankhursts are a nightmare, a Bacchic orgie, a Witches Sabbath. For in\nall legends men have thought of women as sublime separately but horrible\nin a herd.\n\n*****\n\n\n\n\nXII. THE MODERN SLAVE\n\nNow I have only taken the test case of Female Suffrage because it is\ntopical and concrete; it is not of great moment for me as a political\nproposal. I can quite imagine anyone substantially agreeing with my\nview of woman as universalist and autocrat in a limited area; and still\nthinking that she would be none the worse for a ballot paper. The real\nquestion is whether this old ideal of woman as the great amateur is\nadmitted or not. There are many modern things which threaten it much\nmore than suffragism; notably the increase of self-supporting women,\neven in the most severe or the most squalid employments. If there be\nsomething against nature in the idea of a horde of wild women governing,\nthere is something truly intolerable in the idea of a herd of tame women\nbeing governed. And there are elements in human psychology that make\nthis situation particularly poignant or ignominous. The ugly exactitudes\nof business, the bells and clocks the fixed hours and rigid departments,\nwere all meant for the male: who, as a rule, can only do one thing and\ncan only with the greatest difficulty be induced to do that. If clerks\ndo not try to shirk their work, our whole great commercial system breaks\ndown. It is breaking down, under the inroad of women who are adopting\nthe unprecedented and impossible course of taking the system seriously\nand doing it well. Their very efficiency is the definition of their\nslavery. It is generally a very bad sign when one is trusted very much\nby one\u2019s employers. And if the evasive clerks have a look of being\nblackguards, the earnest ladies are often something very like blacklegs.\nBut the more immediate point is that the modern working woman bears a\ndouble burden, for she endures both the grinding officialism of the\nnew office and the distracting scrupulosity of the old home. Few men\nunderstand what conscientiousness is. They understand duty, which\ngenerally means one duty; but conscientiousness is the duty of the\nuniversalist. It is limited by no work days or holidays; it is a\nlawless, limitless, devouring decorum. If women are to be subjected to\nthe dull rule of commerce, we must find some way of emancipating them\nfrom the wild rule of conscience. But I rather fancy you will find it\neasier to leave the conscience and knock off the commerce. As it is, the\nmodern clerk or secretary exhausts herself to put one thing straight in\nthe ledger and then goes home to put everything straight in the house.\n\nThis condition (described by some as emancipated) is at least the\nreverse of my ideal. I would give woman, not more rights, but more\nprivileges. Instead of sending her to seek such freedom as notoriously\nprevails in banks and factories, I would design specially a house in\nwhich she can be free. And with that we come to the last point of all;\nthe point at which we can perceive the needs of women, like the rights\nof men, stopped and falsified by something which it is the object of\nthis book to expose.\n\nThe Feminist (which means, I think, one who dislikes the chief feminine\ncharacteristics) has heard my loose monologue, bursting all the time\nwith one pent-up protest. At this point he will break out and say, \u201cBut\nwhat are we to do? There is modern commerce and its clerks; there is\nthe modern family with its unmarried daughters; specialism is expected\neverywhere; female thrift and conscientiousness are demanded and\nsupplied. What does it matter whether we should in the abstract prefer\nthe old human and housekeeping woman; we might prefer the Garden of\nEden. But since women have trades they ought to have trades unions.\nSince women work in factories, they ought to vote on factory-acts. If\nthey are unmarried they must be commercial; if they are commercial they\nmust be political. We must have new rules for a new world--even if it\nbe not a better one.\u201d I said to a Feminist once: \u201cThe question is not\nwhether women are good enough for votes: it is whether votes are good\nenough for women.\u201d He only answered: \u201cAh, you go and say that to the\nwomen chain-makers on Cradley Heath.\u201d\n\nNow this is the attitude which I attack. It is the huge heresy of\nPrecedent. It is the view that because we have got into a mess we must\ngrow messier to suit it; that because we have taken a wrong turn some\ntime ago we must go forward and not backwards; that because we have lost\nour way we must lose our map also; and because we have missed our ideal,\nwe must forget it. \u201cThere are numbers of excellent people who do not\nthink votes unfeminine; and there may be enthusiasts for our beautiful\nmodern industry who do not think factories unfeminine.\u201d But if these\nthings are unfeminine it is no answer to say that they fit into each\nother. I am not satisfied with the statement that my daughter must have\nunwomanly powers because she has unwomanly wrongs. Industrial soot and\npolitical printer\u2019s ink are two blacks which do not make a white. Most\nof the Feminists would probably agree with me that womanhood is under\nshameful tyranny in the shops and mills. But I want to destroy the\ntyranny. They want to destroy womanhood. That is the only difference.\n\nWhether we can recover the clear vision of woman as a tower with\nmany windows, the fixed eternal feminine from which her sons, the\nspecialists, go forth; whether we can preserve the tradition of a\ncentral thing which is even more human than democracy and even\nmore practical than politics; whether, in word, it is possible to\nre-establish the family, freed from the filthy cynicism and cruelty of\nthe commercial epoch, I shall discuss in the last section of this book.\nBut meanwhile do not talk to me about the poor chain-makers on Cradley\nHeath. I know all about them and what they are doing. They are engaged\nin a very wide-spread and flourishing industry of the present age. They\nare making chains.\n\n\n\n\nPART FOUR. EDUCATION: OR THE MISTAKE ABOUT THE CHILD\n\n\n\n\nI. THE CALVINISM OF TO-DAY\n\nWhen I wrote a little volume on my friend Mr. Bernard Shaw, it is\nneedless to say that he reviewed it. I naturally felt tempted to answer\nand to criticise the book from the same disinterested and impartial\nstandpoint from which Mr. Shaw had criticised the subject of it. I was\nnot withheld by any feeling that the joke was getting a little\nobvious; for an obvious joke is only a successful joke; it is only the\nunsuccessful clowns who comfort themselves with being subtle. The real\nreason why I did not answer Mr. Shaw\u2019s amusing attack was this: that one\nsimple phrase in it surrendered to me all that I have ever wanted, or\ncould want from him to all eternity. I told Mr. Shaw (in substance) that\nhe was a charming and clever fellow, but a common Calvinist. He admitted\nthat this was true, and there (so far as I am concerned) is an end of\nthe matter. He said that, of course, Calvin was quite right in holding\nthat \u201cif once a man is born it is too late to damn or save him.\u201d That is\nthe fundamental and subterranean secret; that is the last lie in hell.\n\nThe difference between Puritanism and Catholicism is not about whether\nsome priestly word or gesture is significant and sacred. It is about\nwhether any word or gesture is significant and sacred. To the Catholic\nevery other daily act is dramatic dedication to the service of good\nor of evil. To the Calvinist no act can have that sort of solemnity,\nbecause the person doing it has been dedicated from eternity, and is\nmerely filling up his time until the crack of doom. The difference\nis something subtler than plum-puddings or private theatricals; the\ndifference is that to a Christian of my kind this short earthly life\nis intensely thrilling and precious; to a Calvinist like Mr. Shaw it is\nconfessedly automatic and uninteresting. To me these threescore years\nand ten are the battle. To the Fabian Calvinist (by his own confession)\nthey are only a long procession of the victors in laurels and the\nvanquished in chains. To me earthly life is the drama; to him it is\nthe epilogue. Shavians think about the embryo; Spiritualists about the\nghost; Christians about the man. It is as well to have these things\nclear.\n\nNow all our sociology and eugenics and the rest of it are not so much\nmaterialist as confusedly Calvinist, they are chiefly occupied in\neducating the child before he exists. The whole movement is full of a\nsingular depression about what one can do with the populace, combined\nwith a strange disembodied gayety about what may be done with posterity.\nThese essential Calvinists have, indeed, abolished some of the more\nliberal and universal parts of Calvinism, such as the belief in an\nintellectual design or an everlasting happiness. But though Mr. Shaw and\nhis friends admit it is a superstition that a man is judged after death,\nthey stick to their central doctrine, that he is judged before he is\nborn.\n\nIn consequence of this atmosphere of Calvinism in the cultured world of\nto-day, it is apparently necessary to begin all arguments on education\nwith some mention of obstetrics and the unknown world of the prenatal.\nAll I shall have to say, however, on heredity will be very brief,\nbecause I shall confine myself to what is known about it, and that is\nvery nearly nothing. It is by no means self-evident, but it is a current\nmodern dogma, that nothing actually enters the body at birth except a\nlife derived and compounded from the parents. There is at least quite as\nmuch to be said for the Christian theory that an element comes from\nGod, or the Buddhist theory that such an element comes from previous\nexistences. But this is not a religious work, and I must submit to those\nvery narrow intellectual limits which the absence of theology always\nimposes. Leaving the soul on one side, let us suppose for the sake of\nargument that the human character in the first case comes wholly from\nparents; and then let us curtly state our knowledge rather than our\nignorance.\n\n*****\n\n\n\n\nII. THE TRIBAL TERROR\n\nPopular science, like that of Mr. Blatchford, is in this matter as mild\nas old wives\u2019 tales. Mr. Blatchford, with colossal simplicity, explained\nto millions of clerks and workingmen that the mother is like a bottle of\nblue beads and the father is like a bottle of yellow beads; and so the\nchild is like a bottle of mixed blue beads and yellow. He might just as\nwell have said that if the father has two legs and the mother has two\nlegs, the child will have four legs. Obviously it is not a question\nof simple addition or simple division of a number of hard detached\n\u201cqualities,\u201d like beads. It is an organic crisis and transformation of\nthe most mysterious sort; so that even if the result is unavoidable, it\nwill still be unexpected. It is not like blue beads mixed with yellow\nbeads; it is like blue mixed with yellow; the result of which is green,\na totally novel and unique experience, a new emotion. A man might live\nin a complete cosmos of blue and yellow, like the \u201cEdinburgh Review\u201d; a\nman might never have seen anything but a golden cornfield and a sapphire\nsky; and still he might never have had so wild a fancy as green. If\nyou paid a sovereign for a bluebell; if you spilled the mustard on the\nblue-books; if you married a canary to a blue baboon; there is nothing\nin any of these wild weddings that contains even a hint of green. Green\nis not a mental combination, like addition; it is a physical result\nlike birth. So, apart from the fact that nobody ever really understands\nparents or children either, yet even if we could understand the parents,\nwe could not make any conjecture about the children. Each time the force\nworks in a different way; each time the constituent colors combine into\na different spectacle. A girl may actually inherit her ugliness from\nher mother\u2019s good looks. A boy may actually get his weakness from his\nfather\u2019s strength. Even if we admit it is really a fate, for us it must\nremain a fairy tale. Considered in regard to its causes, the Calvinists\nand materialists may be right or wrong; we leave them their dreary\ndebate. But considered in regard to its results there is no doubt about\nit. The thing is always a new color; a strange star. Every birth is as\nlonely as a miracle. Every child is as uninvited as a monstrosity.\n\nOn all such subjects there is no science, but only a sort of ardent\nignorance; and nobody has ever been able to offer any theories of moral\nheredity which justified themselves in the only scientific sense; that\nis that one could calculate on them beforehand. There are six cases,\nsay, of a grandson having the same twitch of mouth or vice of character\nas his grandfather; or perhaps there are sixteen cases, or perhaps\nsixty. But there are not two cases, there is not one case, there are no\ncases at all, of anybody betting half a crown that the grandfather will\nhave a grandson with the twitch or the vice. In short, we deal with\nheredity as we deal with omens, affinities and the fulfillment of\ndreams. The things do happen, and when they happen we record them; but\nnot even a lunatic ever reckons on them. Indeed, heredity, like dreams\nand omens, is a barbaric notion; that is, not necessarily an untrue, but\na dim, groping and unsystematized notion. A civilized man feels himself\na little more free from his family. Before Christianity these tales of\ntribal doom occupied the savage north; and since the Reformation and\nthe revolt against Christianity (which is the religion of a civilized\nfreedom) savagery is slowly creeping back in the form of realistic\nnovels and problem plays. The curse of Rougon-Macquart is as heathen and\nsuperstitious as the curse of Ravenswood; only not so well written.\nBut in this twilight barbaric sense the feeling of a racial fate is not\nirrational, and may be allowed like a hundred other half emotions that\nmake life whole. The only essential of tragedy is that one should take\nit lightly. But even when the barbarian deluge rose to its highest in\nthe madder novels of Zola (such as that called \u201cThe Human Beast\u201d, a\ngross libel on beasts as well as humanity), even then the application\nof the hereditary idea to practice is avowedly timid and fumbling. The\nstudents of heredity are savages in this vital sense; that they stare\nback at marvels, but they dare not stare forward to schemes. In practice\nno one is mad enough to legislate or educate upon dogmas of physical\ninheritance; and even the language of the thing is rarely used except\nfor special modern purposes, such as the endowment of research or the\noppression of the poor.\n\n*****\n\n\n\n\nIII. THE TRICKS OF ENVIRONMENT\n\nAfter all the modern clatter of Calvinism, therefore, it is only with\nthe born child that anybody dares to deal; and the question is not\neugenics but education. Or again, to adopt that rather tiresome\nterminology of popular science, it is not a question of heredity but of\nenvironment. I will not needlessly complicate this question by urging\nat length that environment also is open to some of the objections and\nhesitations which paralyze the employment of heredity. I will merely\nsuggest in passing that even about the effect of environment modern\npeople talk much too cheerfully and cheaply. The idea that surroundings\nwill mold a man is always mixed up with the totally different idea that\nthey will mold him in one particular way. To take the broadest case,\nlandscape no doubt affects the soul; but how it affects it is\nquite another matter. To be born among pine-trees might mean loving\npine-trees. It might mean loathing pine-trees. It might quite seriously\nmean never having seen a pine-tree. Or it might mean any mixture of\nthese or any degree of any of them. So that the scientific method here\nlacks a little in precision. I am not speaking without the book; on the\ncontrary, I am speaking with the blue book, with the guide-book and the\natlas. It may be that the Highlanders are poetical because they inhabit\nmountains; but are the Swiss prosaic because they inhabit mountains? It\nmay be the Swiss have fought for freedom because they had hills; did the\nDutch fight for freedom because they hadn\u2019t? Personally I should\nthink it quite likely. Environment might work negatively as well as\npositively. The Swiss may be sensible, not in spite of their wild\nskyline, but be cause of their wild skyline. The Flemings may be\nfantastic artists, not in spite of their dull skyline, but because of\nit.\n\nI only pause on this parenthesis to show that, even in matters\nadmittedly within its range, popular science goes a great deal too fast,\nand drops enormous links of logic. Nevertheless, it remains the working\nreality that what we have to deal with in the case of children is,\nfor all practical purposes, environment; or, to use the older word,\neducation. When all such deductions are made, education is at least\na form of will-worship; not of cowardly fact-worship; it deals with a\ndepartment that we can control; it does not merely darken us with the\nbarbarian pessimism of Zola and the heredity-hunt. We shall certainly\nmake fools of ourselves; that is what is meant by philosophy. But we\nshall not merely make beasts of ourselves; which is the nearest popular\ndefinition for merely following the laws of Nature and cowering under\nthe vengeance of the flesh. Education contains much moonshine; but not\nof the sort that makes mere mooncalves and idiots the slaves of a silver\nmagnet, the one eye of the world. In this decent arena there are fads,\nbut not frenzies. Doubtless we shall often find a mare\u2019s nest; but it\nwill not always be the nightmare\u2019s.\n\n*****\n\n\n\n\nIV. THE TRUTH ABOUT EDUCATION\n\nWhen a man is asked to write down what he really thinks on education, a\ncertain gravity grips and stiffens his soul, which might be mistaken by\nthe superficial for disgust. If it be really true that men sickened\nof sacred words and wearied of theology, if this largely unreasoning\nirritation against \u201cdogma\u201d did arise out of some ridiculous excess of\nsuch things among priests in the past, then I fancy we must be laying up\na fine crop of cant for our descendants to grow tired of. Probably the\nword \u201ceducation\u201d will some day seem honestly as old and objectless as\nthe word \u201cjustification\u201d now seems in a Puritan folio. Gibbon thought\nit frightfully funny that people should have fought about the difference\nbetween the \u201cHomoousion\u201d and the \u201cHomoiousion.\u201d The time will come when\nsomebody will laugh louder to think that men thundered against Sectarian\nEducation and also against Secular Education; that men of prominence and\nposition actually denounced the schools for teaching a creed and also\nfor not teaching a faith. The two Greek words in Gibbon look rather\nalike; but they really mean quite different things. Faith and creed do\nnot look alike, but they mean exactly the same thing. Creed happens to\nbe the Latin for faith.\n\nNow having read numberless newspaper articles on education, and\neven written a good many of them, and having heard deafening and\nindeterminate discussion going on all around me almost ever since I\nwas born, about whether religion was part of education, about whether\nhygiene was an essential of education, about whether militarism was\ninconsistent with true education, I naturally pondered much on this\nrecurring substantive, and I am ashamed to say that it was comparatively\nlate in life that I saw the main fact about it.\n\nOf course, the main fact about education is that there is no such thing.\nIt does not exist, as theology or soldiering exist. Theology is a word\nlike geology, soldiering is a word like soldering; these sciences may\nbe healthy or no as hobbies; but they deal with stone and kettles, with\ndefinite things. But education is not a word like geology or kettles.\nEducation is a word like \u201ctransmission\u201d or \u201cinheritance\u201d; it is not an\nobject, but a method. It must mean the conveying of certain facts, views\nor qualities, to the last baby born. They might be the most trivial\nfacts or the most preposterous views or the most offensive qualities;\nbut if they are handed on from one generation to another they are\neducation. Education is not a thing like theology, it is not an inferior\nor superior thing; it is not a thing in the same category of terms.\nTheology and education are to each other like a love-letter to the\nGeneral Post Office. Mr. Fagin was quite as educational as Dr. Strong;\nin practice probably more educational. It is giving something--perhaps\npoison. Education is tradition, and tradition (as its name implies) can\nbe treason.\n\nThis first truth is frankly banal; but it is so perpetually ignored\nin our political prosing that it must be made plain. A little boy in a\nlittle house, son of a little tradesman, is taught to eat his breakfast,\nto take his medicine, to love his country, to say his prayers, and to\nwear his Sunday clothes. Obviously Fagin, if he found such a boy, would\nteach him to drink gin, to lie, to betray his country, to blaspheme\nand to wear false whiskers. But so also Mr. Salt the vegetarian would\nabolish the boy\u2019s breakfast; Mrs. Eddy would throw away his medicine;\nCount Tolstoi would rebuke him for loving his country; Mr. Blatchford\nwould stop his prayers, and Mr. Edward Carpenter would theoretically\ndenounce Sunday clothes, and perhaps all clothes. I do not defend any of\nthese advanced views, not even Fagin\u2019s. But I do ask what, between the\nlot of them, has become of the abstract entity called education. It is\nnot (as commonly supposed) that the tradesman teaches education plus\nChristianity; Mr. Salt, education plus vegetarianism; Fagin, education\nplus crime. The truth is, that there is nothing in common at all between\nthese teachers, except that they teach. In short, the only thing they\nshare is the one thing they profess to dislike: the general idea of\nauthority. It is quaint that people talk of separating dogma from\neducation. Dogma is actually the only thing that cannot be separated\nfrom education. It is education. A teacher who is not dogmatic is simply\na teacher who is not teaching.\n\n*****\n\n\n\n\nV. AN EVIL CRY\n\nThe fashionable fallacy is that by education we can give people\nsomething that we have not got. To hear people talk one would think\nit was some sort of magic chemistry, by which, out of a laborious\nhotchpotch of hygienic meals, baths, breathing exercises, fresh air and\nfreehand drawing, we can produce something splendid by accident; we can\ncreate what we cannot conceive. These pages have, of course, no other\ngeneral purpose than to point out that we cannot create anything good\nuntil we have conceived it. It is odd that these people, who in the\nmatter of heredity are so sullenly attached to law, in the matter of\nenvironment seem almost to believe in miracle. They insist that nothing\nbut what was in the bodies of the parents can go to make the bodies of\nthe children. But they seem somehow to think that things can get into\nthe heads of the children which were not in the heads of the parents,\nor, indeed, anywhere else.\n\nThere has arisen in this connection a foolish and wicked cry typical of\nthe confusion. I mean the cry, \u201cSave the children.\u201d It is, of course,\npart of that modern morbidity that insists on treating the State (which\nis the home of man) as a sort of desperate expedient in time of panic.\nThis terrified opportunism is also the origin of the Socialist and other\nschemes. Just as they would collect and share all the food as men do in\na famine, so they would divide the children from their fathers, as men\ndo in a shipwreck. That a human community might conceivably not be in a\ncondition of famine or shipwreck never seems to cross their minds. This\ncry of \u201cSave the children\u201d has in it the hateful implication that it is\nimpossible to save the fathers; in other words, that many millions of\ngrown-up, sane, responsible and self-supporting Europeans are to be\ntreated as dirt or debris and swept away out of the discussion; called\ndipsomaniacs because they drink in public houses instead of private\nhouses; called unemployables because nobody knows how to get them work;\ncalled dullards if they still adhere to conventions, and called loafers\nif they still love liberty. Now I am concerned, first and last, to\nmaintain that unless you can save the fathers, you cannot save the\nchildren; that at present we cannot save others, for we cannot save\nourselves. We cannot teach citizenship if we are not citizens; we cannot\nfree others if we have forgotten the appetite of freedom. Education is\nonly truth in a state of transmission; and how can we pass on truth if\nit has never come into our hand? Thus we find that education is of\nall the cases the clearest for our general purpose. It is vain to save\nchildren; for they cannot remain children. By hypothesis we are teaching\nthem to be men; and how can it be so simple to teach an ideal manhood to\nothers if it is so vain and hopeless to find one for ourselves?\n\nI know that certain crazy pedants have attempted to counter this\ndifficulty by maintaining that education is not instruction at all, does\nnot teach by authority at all. They present the process as coming, not\nfrom the outside, from the teacher, but entirely from inside the boy.\nEducation, they say, is the Latin for leading out or drawing out the\ndormant faculties of each person. Somewhere far down in the dim boyish\nsoul is a primordial yearning to learn Greek accents or to wear clean\ncollars; and the schoolmaster only gently and tenderly liberates this\nimprisoned purpose. Sealed up in the newborn babe are the intrinsic\nsecrets of how to eat asparagus and what was the date of Bannockburn.\nThe educator only draws out the child\u2019s own unapparent love of long\ndivision; only leads out the child\u2019s slightly veiled preference for milk\npudding to tarts. I am not sure that I believe in the derivation; I have\nheard the disgraceful suggestion that \u201ceducator,\u201d if applied to a Roman\nschoolmaster, did not mean leading our young functions into freedom; but\nonly meant taking out little boys for a walk. But I am much more certain\nthat I do not agree with the doctrine; I think it would be about as\nsane to say that the baby\u2019s milk comes from the baby as to say that the\nbaby\u2019s educational merits do. There is, indeed, in each living creature\na collection of forces and functions; but education means producing\nthese in particular shapes and training them to particular purposes, or\nit means nothing at all. Speaking is the most practical instance of the\nwhole situation. You may indeed \u201cdraw out\u201d squeals and grunts from the\nchild by simply poking him and pulling him about, a pleasant but cruel\npastime to which many psychologists are addicted. But you will wait and\nwatch very patiently indeed before you draw the English language out\nof him. That you have got to put into him; and there is an end of the\nmatter.\n\n*****\n\n\n\n\nVI. AUTHORITY THE UNAVOIDABLE\n\nBut the important point here is only that you cannot anyhow get rid of\nauthority in education; it is not so much (as poor Conservatives say)\nthat parental authority ought to be preserved, as that it cannot be\ndestroyed. Mr. Bernard Shaw once said that he hated the idea of forming\na child\u2019s mind. In that case Mr. Bernard Shaw had better hang himself;\nfor he hates something inseparable from human life. I only mentioned\neducere and the drawing out of the faculties in order to point out that\neven this mental trick does not avoid the inevitable idea of parental or\nscholastic authority. The educator drawing out is just as arbitrary and\ncoercive as the instructor pouring in; for he draws out what he chooses.\nHe decides what in the child shall be developed and what shall not be\ndeveloped. He does not (I suppose) draw out the neglected faculty of\nforgery. He does not (so far at least) lead out, with timid steps, a\nshy talent for torture. The only result of all this pompous and\nprecise distinction between the educator and the instructor is that the\ninstructor pokes where he likes and the educator pulls where he likes.\nExactly the same intellectual violence is done to the creature who is\npoked and pulled. Now we must all accept the responsibility of this\nintellectual violence. Education is violent; because it is creative.\nIt is creative because it is human. It is as reckless as playing on the\nfiddle; as dogmatic as drawing a picture; as brutal as building a house.\nIn short, it is what all human action is; it is an interference with\nlife and growth. After that it is a trifling and even a jocular question\nwhether we say of this tremendous tormentor, the artist Man, that he\nputs things into us like an apothecary, or draws things out of us, like\na dentist.\n\nThe point is that Man does what he likes. He claims the right to take\nhis mother Nature under his control; he claims the right to make\nhis child the Superman, in his image. Once flinch from this creative\nauthority of man, and the whole courageous raid which we call\ncivilization wavers and falls to pieces. Now most modern freedom is at\nroot fear. It is not so much that we are too bold to endure rules; it\nis rather that we are too timid to endure responsibilities. And Mr. Shaw\nand such people are especially shrinking from that awful and ancestral\nresponsibility to which our fathers committed us when they took the wild\nstep of becoming men. I mean the responsibility of affirming the truth\nof our human tradition and handing it on with a voice of authority, an\nunshaken voice. That is the one eternal education; to be sure enough\nthat something is true that you dare to tell it to a child. From this\nhigh audacious duty the moderns are fleeing on every side; and the only\nexcuse for them is, (of course,) that their modern philosophies are so\nhalf-baked and hypothetical that they cannot convince themselves enough\nto convince even a newborn babe. This, of course, is connected with the\ndecay of democracy; and is somewhat of a separate subject. Suffice it\nto say here that when I say that we should instruct our children, I mean\nthat we should do it, not that Mr. Sully or Professor Earl Barnes should\ndo it. The trouble in too many of our modern schools is that the State,\nbeing controlled so specially by the few, allows cranks and experiments\nto go straight to the schoolroom when they have never passed through\nthe Parliament, the public house, the private house, the church, or the\nmarketplace. Obviously, it ought to be the oldest things that are taught\nto the youngest people; the assured and experienced truths that are put\nfirst to the baby. But in a school to-day the baby has to submit to\na system that is younger than himself. The flopping infant of four\nactually has more experience, and has weathered the world longer, than\nthe dogma to which he is made to submit. Many a school boasts of having\nthe last ideas in education, when it has not even the first idea;\nfor the first idea is that even innocence, divine as it is, may learn\nsomething from experience. But this, as I say, is all due to the mere\nfact that we are managed by a little oligarchy; my system presupposes\nthat men who govern themselves will govern their children. To-day we all\nuse Popular Education as meaning education of the people. I wish I could\nuse it as meaning education by the people.\n\nThe urgent point at present is that these expansive educators do\nnot avoid the violence of authority an inch more than the old school\nmasters. Nay, it might be maintained that they avoid it less. The old\nvillage schoolmaster beat a boy for not learning grammar and sent him\nout into the playground to play anything he liked; or at nothing, if he\nliked that better. The modern scientific schoolmaster pursues him into\nthe playground and makes him play at cricket, because exercise is so\ngood for the health. The modern Dr. Busby is a doctor of medicine as\nwell as a doctor of divinity. He may say that the good of exercise is\nself-evident; but he must say it, and say it with authority. It cannot\nreally be self-evident or it never could have been compulsory. But this\nis in modern practice a very mild case. In modern practice the\nfree educationists forbid far more things than the old-fashioned\neducationists. A person with a taste for paradox (if any such shameless\ncreature could exist) might with some plausibility maintain concerning\nall our expansion since the failure of Luther\u2019s frank paganism and its\nreplacement by Calvin\u2019s Puritanism, that all this expansion has not\nbeen an expansion, but the closing in of a prison, so that less and less\nbeautiful and humane things have been permitted. The Puritans destroyed\nimages; the Rationalists forbade fairy tales. Count Tostoi practically\nissued one of his papal encyclicals against music; and I have heard of\nmodern educationists who forbid children to play with tin soldiers. I\nremember a meek little madman who came up to me at some Socialist soiree\nor other, and asked me to use my influence (have I any influence?)\nagainst adventure stories for boys. It seems they breed an appetite for\nblood. But never mind that; one must keep one\u2019s temper in this madhouse.\nI need only insist here that these things, even if a just deprivation,\nare a deprivation. I do not deny that the old vetoes and punishments\nwere often idiotic and cruel; though they are much more so in a country\nlike England (where in practice only a rich man decrees the punishment\nand only a poor man receives it) than in countries with a clearer\npopular tradition--such as Russia. In Russia flogging is often inflicted\nby peasants on a peasant. In modern England flogging can only in\npractice be inflicted by a gentleman on a very poor man. Thus only a\nfew days ago as I write a small boy (a son of the poor, of course) was\nsentenced to flogging and imprisonment for five years for having picked\nup a small piece of coal which the experts value at 5d. I am entirely\non the side of such liberals and humanitarians as have protested against\nthis almost bestial ignorance about boys. But I do think it a little\nunfair that these humanitarians, who excuse boys for being robbers,\nshould denounce them for playing at robbers. I do think that those who\nunderstand a guttersnipe playing with a piece of coal might, by a sudden\nspurt of imagination, understand him playing with a tin soldier. To\nsum it up in one sentence: I think my meek little madman might have\nunderstood that there is many a boy who would rather be flogged, and\nunjustly flogged, than have his adventure story taken away.\n\n*****\n\n\n\n\nVII. THE HUMILITY OF MRS. GRUNDY\n\nIn short, the new education is as harsh as the old, whether or no it is\nas high. The freest fad, as much as the strictest formula, is stiff with\nauthority. It is because the humane father thinks soldiers wrong that\nthey are forbidden; there is no pretense, there can be no pretense, that\nthe boy would think so. The average boy\u2019s impression certainly would\nbe simply this: \u201cIf your father is a Methodist you must not play with\nsoldiers on Sunday. If your father is a Socialist you must not play\nwith them even on week days.\u201d All educationists are utterly dogmatic and\nauthoritarian. You cannot have free education; for if you left a child\nfree you would not educate him at all. Is there, then, no distinction\nor difference between the most hide-bound conventionalists and the most\nbrilliant and bizarre innovators? Is there no difference between the\nheaviest heavy father and the most reckless and speculative maiden aunt?\nYes; there is. The difference is that the heavy father, in his heavy\nway, is a democrat. He does not urge a thing merely because to his\nfancy it should be done; but, because (in his own admirable republican\nformula) \u201cEverybody does it.\u201d The conventional authority does claim some\npopular mandate; the unconventional authority does not. The Puritan who\nforbids soldiers on Sunday is at least expressing Puritan opinion;\nnot merely his own opinion. He is not a despot; he is a democracy, a\ntyrannical democracy, a dingy and local democracy perhaps; but one that\ncould do and has done the two ultimate virile things--fight and appeal\nto God. But the veto of the new educationist is like the veto of\nthe House of Lords; it does not pretend to be representative. These\ninnovators are always talking about the blushing modesty of Mrs. Grundy.\nI do not know whether Mrs. Grundy is more modest than they are; but I am\nsure she is more humble.\n\nBut there is a further complication. The more anarchic modern may again\nattempt to escape the dilemma by saying that education should only be\nan enlargement of the mind, an opening of all the organs of receptivity.\nLight (he says) should be brought into darkness; blinded and thwarted\nexistences in all our ugly corners should merely be permitted to\nperceive and expand; in short, enlightenment should be shed over\ndarkest London. Now here is just the trouble; that, in so far as this\nis involved, there is no darkest London. London is not dark at all; not\neven at night. We have said that if education is a solid substance, then\nthere is none of it. We may now say that if education is an abstract\nexpansion there is no lack of it. There is far too much of it. In fact,\nthere is nothing else.\n\nThere are no uneducated people. Everybody in England is educated; only\nmost people are educated wrong. The state schools were not the first\nschools, but among the last schools to be established; and London had\nbeen educating Londoners long before the London School Board. The error\nis a highly practical one. It is persistently assumed that unless\na child is civilized by the established schools, he must remain a\nbarbarian. I wish he did. Every child in London becomes a highly\ncivilized person. But here are so many different civilizations, most of\nthem born tired. Anyone will tell you that the trouble with the poor is\nnot so much that the old are still foolish, but rather that the young\nare already wise. Without going to school at all, the gutter-boy would\nbe educated. Without going to school at all, he would be over-educated.\nThe real object of our schools should be not so much to suggest\ncomplexity as solely to restore simplicity. You will hear venerable\nidealists declare we must make war on the ignorance of the poor;\nbut, indeed, we have rather to make war on their knowledge. Real\neducationists have to resist a kind of roaring cataract of culture. The\ntruant is being taught all day. If the children do not look at the large\nletters in the spelling-book, they need only walk outside and look at\nthe large letters on the poster. If they do not care for the colored\nmaps provided by the school, they can gape at the colored maps provided\nby the Daily Mail. If they tire of electricity, they can take to\nelectric trams. If they are unmoved by music, they can take to drink. If\nthey will not work so as to get a prize from their school, they may work\nto get a prize from Prizy Bits. If they cannot learn enough about law\nand citizenship to please the teacher, they learn enough about them to\navoid the policeman. If they will not learn history forwards from the\nright end in the history books, they will learn it backwards from the\nwrong end in the party newspapers. And this is the tragedy of the whole\naffair: that the London poor, a particularly quick-witted and civilized\nclass, learn everything tail foremost, learn even what is right in the\nway of what is wrong. They do not see the first principles of law in a\nlaw book; they only see its last results in the police news. They do not\nsee the truths of politics in a general survey. They only see the lies\nof politics, at a General Election.\n\nBut whatever be the pathos of the London poor, it has nothing to do with\nbeing uneducated. So far from being without guidance, they are guided\nconstantly, earnestly, excitedly; only guided wrong. The poor are not\nat all neglected, they are merely oppressed; nay, rather they are\npersecuted. There are no people in London who are not appealed to by the\nrich; the appeals of the rich shriek from every hoarding and shout\nfrom every hustings. For it should always be remembered that the queer,\nabrupt ugliness of our streets and costumes are not the creation of\ndemocracy, but of aristocracy. The House of Lords objected to the\nEmbankment being disfigured by trams. But most of the rich men who\ndisfigure the street-walls with their wares are actually in the House\nof Lords. The peers make the country seats beautiful by making the town\nstreets hideous. This, however, is parenthetical. The point is, that the\npoor in London are not left alone, but rather deafened and bewildered\nwith raucous and despotic advice. They are not like sheep without a\nshepherd. They are more like one sheep whom twenty-seven shepherds are\nshouting at. All the newspapers, all the new advertisements, all the\nnew medicines and new theologies, all the glare and blare of the gas and\nbrass of modern times--it is against these that the national school must\nbear up if it can. I will not question that our elementary education is\nbetter than barbaric ignorance. But there is no barbaric ignorance. I\ndo not doubt that our schools would be good for uninstructed boys. But\nthere are no uninstructed boys. A modern London school ought not merely\nto be clearer, kindlier, more clever and more rapid than ignorance and\ndarkness. It must also be clearer than a picture postcard, cleverer than\na Limerick competition, quicker than the tram, and kindlier than\nthe tavern. The school, in fact, has the responsibility of universal\nrivalry. We need not deny that everywhere there is a light that must\nconquer darkness. But here we demand a light that can conquer light.\n\n*****\n\n\n\n\nVIII. THE BROKEN RAINBOW\n\nI will take one case that will serve both as symbol and example: the\ncase of color. We hear the realists (those sentimental fellows) talking\nabout the gray streets and the gray lives of the poor. But whatever\nthe poor streets are they are not gray; but motley, striped, spotted,\npiebald and patched like a quilt. Hoxton is not aesthetic enough to be\nmonochrome; and there is nothing of the Celtic twilight about it. As a\nmatter of fact, a London gutter-boy walks unscathed among furnaces of\ncolor. Watch him walk along a line of hoardings, and you will see him\nnow against glowing green, like a traveler in a tropic forest; now black\nlike a bird against the burning blue of the Midi; now passant across a\nfield gules, like the golden leopards of England. He ought to understand\nthe irrational rapture of that cry of Mr. Stephen Phillips about \u201cthat\nbluer blue, that greener green.\u201d There is no blue much bluer than\nReckitt\u2019s Blue and no blacking blacker than Day and Martin\u2019s; no more\nemphatic yellow than that of Colman\u2019s Mustard. If, despite this chaos\nof color, like a shattered rainbow, the spirit of the small boy is not\nexactly intoxicated with art and culture, the cause certainly does not\nlie in universal grayness or the mere starving of his senses. It lies in\nthe fact that the colors are presented in the wrong connection, on the\nwrong scale, and, above all, from the wrong motive. It is not colors he\nlacks, but a philosophy of colors. In short, there is nothing wrong with\nReckitt\u2019s Blue except that it is not Reckitt\u2019s. Blue does not belong to\nReckitt, but to the sky; black does not belong to Day and Martin, but to\nthe abyss. Even the finest posters are only very little things on a very\nlarge scale. There is something specially irritant in this way about the\niteration of advertisements of mustard: a condiment, a small luxury;\na thing in its nature not to be taken in quantity. There is a special\nirony in these starving streets to see such a great deal of mustard to\nsuch very little meat. Yellow is a bright pigment; mustard is a pungent\npleasure. But to look at these seas of yellow is to be like a man who\nshould swallow gallons of mustard. He would either die, or lose the\ntaste of mustard altogether.\n\nNow suppose we compare these gigantic trivialities on the hoardings\nwith those tiny and tremendous pictures in which the mediaevals recorded\ntheir dreams; little pictures where the blue sky is hardly longer than\na single sapphire, and the fires of judgment only a pigmy patch of gold.\nThe difference here is not merely that poster art is in its nature more\nhasty than illumination art; it is not even merely that the ancient\nartist was serving the Lord while the modern artist is serving the\nlords. It is that the old artist contrived to convey an impression that\ncolors really were significant and precious things, like jewels and\ntalismanic stones. The color was often arbitrary; but it was always\nauthoritative. If a bird was blue, if a tree was golden, if a fish was\nsilver, if a cloud was scarlet, the artist managed to convey that these\ncolors were important and almost painfully intense; all the red red-hot\nand all the gold tried in the fire. Now that is the spirit touching\ncolor which the schools must recover and protect if they are really to\ngive the children any imaginative appetite or pleasure in the thing. It\nis not so much an indulgence in color; it is rather, if anything, a sort\nof fiery thrift. It fenced in a green field in heraldry as straitly as a\ngreen field in peasant proprietorship. It would not fling away gold\nleaf any more than gold coin; it would not heedlessly pour out purple or\ncrimson, any more than it would spill good wine or shed blameless blood.\nThat is the hard task before educationists in this special matter; they\nhave to teach people to relish colors like liquors. They have the heavy\nbusiness of turning drunkards into wine tasters. If even the twentieth\ncentury succeeds in doing these things, it will almost catch up with the\ntwelfth.\n\nThe principle covers, however, the whole of modern life. Morris and the\nmerely aesthetic mediaevalists always indicated that a crowd in the time\nof Chaucer would have been brightly clad and glittering, compared with\na crowd in the time of Queen Victoria. I am not so sure that the real\ndistinction is here. There would be brown frocks of friars in the first\nscene as well as brown bowlers of clerks in the second. There would be\npurple plumes of factory girls in the second scene as well as purple\nlenten vestments in the first. There would be white waistcoats against\nwhite ermine; gold watch chains against gold lions. The real difference\nis this: that the brown earth-color of the monk\u2019s coat was instinctively\nchosen to express labor and humility, whereas the brown color of the\nclerk\u2019s hat was not chosen to express anything. The monk did mean to say\nthat he robed himself in dust. I am sure the clerk does not mean to say\nthat he crowns himself with clay. He is not putting dust on his head, as\nthe only diadem of man. Purple, at once rich and somber, does suggest a\ntriumph temporarily eclipsed by a tragedy. But the factory girl does not\nintend her hat to express a triumph temporarily eclipsed by a tragedy;\nfar from it. White ermine was meant to express moral purity; white\nwaistcoats were not. Gold lions do suggest a flaming magnanimity; gold\nwatch chains do not. The point is not that we have lost the material\nhues, but that we have lost the trick of turning them to the best\nadvantage. We are not like children who have lost their paint box and\nare left alone with a gray lead-pencil. We are like children who have\nmixed all the colors in the paint-box together and lost the paper of\ninstructions. Even then (I do not deny) one has some fun.\n\nNow this abundance of colors and loss of a color scheme is a pretty\nperfect parable of all that is wrong with our modern ideals and\nespecially with our modern education. It is the same with ethical\neducation, economic education, every sort of education. The growing\nLondon child will find no lack of highly controversial teachers who\nwill teach him that geography means painting the map red; that economics\nmeans taxing the foreigner, that patriotism means the peculiarly\nun-English habit of flying a flag on Empire Day. In mentioning these\nexamples specially I do not mean to imply that there are no similar\ncrudities and popular fallacies upon the other political side. I mention\nthem because they constitute a very special and arresting feature of the\nsituation. I mean this, that there were always Radical revolutionists;\nbut now there are Tory revolutionists also. The modern Conservative\nno longer conserves. He is avowedly an innovator. Thus all the current\ndefenses of the House of Lords which describe it as a bulwark against\nthe mob, are intellectually done for; the bottom has fallen out of them;\nbecause on five or six of the most turbulent topics of the day, the\nHouse of Lords is a mob itself; and exceedingly likely to behave like\none.\n\n*****\n\n\n\n\nIX. THE NEED FOR NARROWNESS\n\nThrough all this chaos, then we come back once more to our main\nconclusion. The true task of culture to-day is not a task of expansion,\nbut very decidedly of selection--and rejection. The educationist must\nfind a creed and teach it. Even if it be not a theological creed, it\nmust still be as fastidious and as firm as theology. In short, it must\nbe orthodox. The teacher may think it antiquated to have to decide\nprecisely between the faith of Calvin and of Laud, the faith of Aquinas\nand of Swedenborg; but he still has to choose between the faith of\nKipling and of Shaw, between the world of Blatchford and of General\nBooth. Call it, if you will, a narrow question whether your child shall\nbe brought up by the vicar or the minister or the popish priest. You\nhave still to face that larger, more liberal, more highly civilized\nquestion, of whether he shall be brought up by Harmsworth or by\nPearson, by Mr. Eustace Miles with his Simple Life or Mr. Peter Keary\nwith his Strenuous Life; whether he shall most eagerly read Miss Annie\nS. Swan or Mr. Bart Kennedy; in short, whether he shall end up in the\nmere violence of the S. D. F., or in the mere vulgarity of the Primrose\nLeague. They say that nowadays the creeds are crumbling; I doubt it, but\nat least the sects are increasing; and education must now be sectarian\neducation, merely for practical purposes. Out of all this throng of\ntheories it must somehow select a theory; out of all these thundering\nvoices it must manage to hear a voice; out of all this awful and aching\nbattle of blinding lights, without one shadow to give shape to them, it\nmust manage somehow to trace and to track a star.\n\nI have spoken so far of popular education, which began too vague and\nvast and which therefore has accomplished little. But as it happens\nthere is in England something to compare it with. There is an\ninstitution, or class of institutions, which began with the same popular\nobject, which has since followed a much narrower object, but which had\nthe great advantage that it did follow some object, unlike our modern\nelementary schools.\n\nIn all these problems I should urge the solution which is positive,\nor, as silly people say, \u201coptimistic.\u201d I should set my face, that is,\nagainst most of the solutions that are solely negative and abolitionist.\nMost educators of the poor seem to think that they have to teach the\npoor man not to drink. I should be quite content if they teach him to\ndrink; for it is mere ignorance about how to drink and when to drink\nthat is accountable for most of his tragedies. I do not propose (like\nsome of my revolutionary friends) that we should abolish the public\nschools. I propose the much more lurid and desperate experiment that we\nshould make them public. I do not wish to make Parliament stop working,\nbut rather to make it work; not to shut up churches, but rather to\nopen them; not to put out the lamp of learning or destroy the hedge of\nproperty, but only to make some rude effort to make universities fairly\nuniversal and property decently proper.\n\nIn many cases, let it be remembered, such action is not merely going\nback to the old ideal, but is even going back to the old reality. It\nwould be a great step forward for the gin shop to go back to the inn. It\nis incontrovertibly true that to mediaevalize the public schools would\nbe to democratize the public schools. Parliament did once really mean\n(as its name seems to imply) a place where people were allowed to talk.\nIt is only lately that the general increase of efficiency, that is, of\nthe Speaker, has made it mostly a place where people are prevented from\ntalking. The poor do not go to the modern church, but they went to the\nancient church all right; and if the common man in the past had a grave\nrespect for property, it may conceivably have been because he sometimes\nhad some of his own. I therefore can claim that I have no vulgar itch of\ninnovation in anything I say about any of these institutions. Certainly\nI have none in that particular one which I am now obliged to pick out\nof the list; a type of institution to which I have genuine and personal\nreasons for being friendly and grateful: I mean the great Tudor\nfoundations, the public schools of England. They have been praised for a\ngreat many things, mostly, I am sorry to say, praised by themselves and\ntheir children. And yet for some reason no one has ever praised them the\none really convincing reason.\n\n*****\n\n\n\n\nX. THE CASE FOR THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS\n\nThe word success can of course be used in two senses. It may be used\nwith reference to a thing serving its immediate and peculiar purpose,\nas of a wheel going around; or it can be used with reference to a thing\nadding to the general welfare, as of a wheel being a useful discovery.\nIt is one thing to say that Smith\u2019s flying machine is a failure, and\nquite another to say that Smith has failed to make a flying machine.\nNow this is very broadly the difference between the old English public\nschools and the new democratic schools. Perhaps the old public schools\nare (as I personally think they are) ultimately weakening the country\nrather than strengthening it, and are therefore, in that ultimate sense,\ninefficient. But there is such a thing as being efficiently inefficient.\nYou can make your flying ship so that it flies, even if you also make\nit so that it kills you. Now the public school system may not work\nsatisfactorily, but it works; the public schools may not achieve what we\nwant, but they achieve what they want. The popular elementary schools do\nnot in that sense achieve anything at all. It is very difficult to point\nto any guttersnipe in the street and say that he embodies the ideal\nfor which popular education has been working, in the sense that the\nfresh-faced, foolish boy in \u201cEtons\u201d does embody the ideal for which the\nheadmasters of Harrow and Winchester have been working. The aristocratic\neducationists have the positive purpose of turning out gentlemen, and\nthey do turn out gentlemen, even when they expel them. The popular\neducationists would say that they had the far nobler idea of turning\nout citizens. I concede that it is a much nobler idea, but where are the\ncitizens? I know that the boy in \u201cEtons\u201d is stiff with a rather silly\nand sentimental stoicism, called being a man of the world. I do not\nfancy that the errand-boy is rigid with that republican stoicism that\nis called being a citizen. The schoolboy will really say with fresh\nand innocent hauteur, \u201cI am an English gentleman.\u201d I cannot so easily\npicture the errand-boy drawing up his head to the stars and answering,\n\u201cRomanus civis sum.\u201d Let it be granted that our elementary teachers are\nteaching the very broadest code of morals, while our great headmasters\nare teaching only the narrowest code of manners. Let it be granted\nthat both these things are being taught. But only one of them is being\nlearned.\n\nIt is always said that great reformers or masters of events can manage\nto bring about some specific and practical reforms, but that they never\nfulfill their visions or satisfy their souls. I believe there is a real\nsense in which this apparent platitude is quite untrue. By a strange\ninversion the political idealist often does not get what he asks for,\nbut does get what he wants. The silent pressure of his ideal lasts much\nlonger and reshapes the world much more than the actualities by which he\nattempted to suggest it. What perishes is the letter, which he\nthought so practical. What endures is the spirit, which he felt to be\nunattainable and even unutterable. It is exactly his schemes that are\nnot fulfilled; it is exactly his vision that is fulfilled. Thus the ten\nor twelve paper constitutions of the French Revolution, which seemed so\nbusiness-like to the framers of them, seem to us to have flown away\non the wind as the wildest fancies. What has not flown away, what is a\nfixed fact in Europe, is the ideal and vision. The Republic, the idea\nof a land full of mere citizens all with some minimum of manners and\nminimum of wealth, the vision of the eighteenth century, the reality\nof the twentieth. So I think it will generally be with the creator of\nsocial things, desirable or undesirable. All his schemes will fail,\nall his tools break in his hands. His compromises will collapse, his\nconcessions will be useless. He must brace himself to bear his fate; he\nshall have nothing but his heart\u2019s desire.\n\nNow if one may compare very small things with very great, one may say\nthat the English aristocratic schools can claim something of the same\nsort of success and solid splendor as the French democratic politics.\nAt least they can claim the same sort of superiority over the distracted\nand fumbling attempts of modern England to establish democratic\neducation. Such success as has attended the public schoolboy throughout\nthe Empire, a success exaggerated indeed by himself, but still positive\nand a fact of a certain indisputable shape and size, has been due to the\ncentral and supreme circumstance that the managers of our public schools\ndid know what sort of boy they liked. They wanted something and they\ngot something; instead of going to work in the broad-minded manner and\nwanting everything and getting nothing.\n\nThe only thing in question is the quality of the thing they got. There\nis something highly maddening in the circumstance that when modern\npeople attack an institution that really does demand reform, they always\nattack it for the wrong reasons. Thus many opponents of our public\nschools, imagining themselves to be very democratic, have exhausted\nthemselves in an unmeaning attack upon the study of Greek. I can\nunderstand how Greek may be regarded as useless, especially by those\nthirsting to throw themselves into the cut throat commerce which is\nthe negation of citizenship; but I do not understand how it can be\nconsidered undemocratic. I quite understand why Mr. Carnegie has\na hatred of Greek. It is obscurely founded on the firm and sound\nimpression that in any self-governing Greek city he would have been\nkilled. But I cannot comprehend why any chance democrat, say Mr. Quelch,\nor Mr. Will Crooks, I or Mr. John M. Robertson, should be opposed to\npeople learning the Greek alphabet, which was the alphabet of liberty.\nWhy should Radicals dislike Greek? In that language is written all\nthe earliest and, Heaven knows, the most heroic history of the Radical\nparty. Why should Greek disgust a democrat, when the very word democrat\nis Greek?\n\nA similar mistake, though a less serious one, is merely attacking\nthe athletics of public schools as something promoting animalism and\nbrutality. Now brutality, in the only immoral sense, is not a vice of\nthe English public schools. There is much moral bullying, owing to the\ngeneral lack of moral courage in the public-school atmosphere. These\nschools do, upon the whole, encourage physical courage; but they do not\nmerely discourage moral courage, they forbid it. The ultimate result\nof the thing is seen in the egregious English officer who cannot even\nendure to wear a bright uniform except when it is blurred and hidden\nin the smoke of battle. This, like all the affectations of our present\nplutocracy, is an entirely modern thing. It was unknown to the old\naristocrats. The Black Prince would certainly have asked that any knight\nwho had the courage to lift his crest among his enemies, should also\nhave the courage to lift it among his friends. As regards moral courage,\nthen it is not so much that the public schools support it feebly, as\nthat they suppress it firmly. But physical courage they do, on the\nwhole, support; and physical courage is a magnificent fundamental. The\none great, wise Englishman of the eighteenth century said truly that if\na man lost that virtue he could never be sure of keeping any other. Now\nit is one of the mean and morbid modern lies that physical courage is\nconnected with cruelty. The Tolstoian and Kiplingite are nowhere more at\none than in maintaining this. They have, I believe, some small sectarian\nquarrel with each other, the one saying that courage must be abandoned\nbecause it is connected with cruelty, and the other maintaining that\ncruelty is charming because it is a part of courage. But it is all,\nthank God, a lie. An energy and boldness of body may make a man stupid\nor reckless or dull or drunk or hungry, but it does not make him\nspiteful. And we may admit heartily (without joining in that perpetual\npraise which public-school men are always pouring upon themselves) that\nthis does operate to the removal of mere evil cruelty in the public\nschools. English public school life is extremely like English public\nlife, for which it is the preparatory school. It is like it specially in\nthis, that things are either very open, common and conventional, or else\nare very secret indeed. Now there is cruelty in public schools, just as\nthere is kleptomania and secret drinking and vices without a name.\nBut these things do not flourish in the full daylight and common\nconsciousness of the school, and no more does cruelty. A tiny trio\nof sullen-looking boys gather in corners and seem to have some ugly\nbusiness always; it may be indecent literature, it may be the beginning\nof drink, it may occasionally be cruelty to little boys. But on this\nstage the bully is not a braggart. The proverb says that bullies are\nalways cowardly, but these bullies are more than cowardly; they are shy.\n\nAs a third instance of the wrong form of revolt against the public\nschools, I may mention the habit of using the word aristocracy with a\ndouble implication. To put the plain truth as briefly as possible, if\naristocracy means rule by a rich ring, England has aristocracy and the\nEnglish public schools support it. If it means rule by ancient families\nor flawless blood, England has not got aristocracy, and the public\nschools systematically destroy it. In these circles real aristocracy,\nlike real democracy, has become bad form. A modern fashionable host\ndare not praise his ancestry; it would so often be an insult to half the\nother oligarchs at table, who have no ancestry. We have said he has\nnot the moral courage to wear his uniform; still less has he the moral\ncourage to wear his coat-of-arms. The whole thing now is only a vague\nhotch-potch of nice and nasty gentlemen. The nice gentleman never refers\nto anyone else\u2019s father, the nasty gentleman never refers to his own.\nThat is the only difference, the rest is the public-school manner. But\nEton and Harrow have to be aristocratic because they consist so largely\nof parvenues. The public school is not a sort of refuge for aristocrats,\nlike an asylum, a place where they go in and never come out. It is a\nfactory for aristocrats; they come out without ever having perceptibly\ngone in. The poor little private schools, in their old-world,\nsentimental, feudal style, used to stick up a notice, \u201cFor the Sons of\nGentlemen only.\u201d If the public schools stuck up a notice it ought to be\ninscribed, \u201cFor the Fathers of Gentlemen only.\u201d In two generations they\ncan do the trick.\n\n*****\n\n\n\n\nXI. THE SCHOOL FOR HYPOCRITES\n\nThese are the false accusations; the accusation of classicism, the\naccusation of cruelty, and the accusation of an exclusiveness based on\nperfection of pedigree. English public-school boys are not pedants,\nthey are not torturers; and they are not, in the vast majority of\ncases, people fiercely proud of their ancestry, or even people with any\nancestry to be proud of. They are taught to be courteous, to be good\ntempered, to be brave in a bodily sense, to be clean in a bodily sense;\nthey are generally kind to animals, generally civil to servants, and to\nanyone in any sense their equal, the jolliest companions on earth. Is\nthere then anything wrong in the public-school ideal? I think we all\nfeel there is something very wrong in it, but a blinding network of\nnewspaper phraseology obscures and entangles us; so that it is hard to\ntrace to its beginning, beyond all words and phrases, the faults in this\ngreat English achievement.\n\nSurely, when all is said, the ultimate objection to the English public\nschool is its utterly blatant and indecent disregard of the duty of\ntelling the truth. I know there does still linger among maiden ladies\nin remote country houses a notion that English schoolboys are taught to\ntell the truth, but it cannot be maintained seriously for a moment.\nVery occasionally, very vaguely, English schoolboys are told not to tell\nlies, which is a totally different thing. I may silently support all the\nobscene fictions and forgeries in the universe, without once telling a\nlie. I may wear another man\u2019s coat, steal another man\u2019s wit, apostatize\nto another man\u2019s creed, or poison another man\u2019s coffee, all without\never telling a lie. But no English school-boy is ever taught to tell the\ntruth, for the very simple reason that he is never taught to desire the\ntruth. From the very first he is taught to be totally careless about\nwhether a fact is a fact; he is taught to care only whether the fact can\nbe used on his \u201cside\u201d when he is engaged in \u201cplaying the game.\u201d He takes\nsides in his Union debating society to settle whether Charles I ought to\nhave been killed, with the same solemn and pompous frivolity with\nwhich he takes sides in the cricket field to decide whether Rugby or\nWestminster shall win. He is never allowed to admit the abstract notion\nof the truth, that the match is a matter of what may happen, but that\nCharles I is a matter of what did happen--or did not. He is Liberal or\nTory at the general election exactly as he is Oxford or Cambridge at the\nboat race. He knows that sport deals with the unknown; he has not even a\nnotion that politics should deal with the known. If anyone really\ndoubts this self-evident proposition, that the public schools definitely\ndiscourage the love of truth, there is one fact which I should think\nwould settle him. England is the country of the Party System, and it\nhas always been chiefly run by public-school men. Is there anyone out\nof Hanwell who will maintain that the Party System, whatever its\nconveniences or inconveniences, could have been created by people\nparticularly fond of truth?\n\nThe very English happiness on this point is itself a hypocrisy. When a\nman really tells the truth, the first truth he tells is that he himself\nis a liar. David said in his haste, that is, in his honesty, that\nall men are liars. It was afterwards, in some leisurely official\nexplanation, that he said the Kings of Israel at least told the truth.\nWhen Lord Curzon was Viceroy he delivered a moral lecture to the Indians\non their reputed indifference to veracity, to actuality and intellectual\nhonor. A great many people indignantly discussed whether orientals\ndeserved to receive this rebuke; whether Indians were indeed in a\nposition to receive such severe admonition. No one seemed to ask, as I\nshould venture to ask, whether Lord Curzon was in a position to give\nit. He is an ordinary party politician; a party politician means a\npolitician who might have belonged to either party. Being such a person,\nhe must again and again, at every twist and turn of party strategy,\neither have deceived others or grossly deceived himself. I do not know\nthe East; nor do I like what I know. I am quite ready to believe that\nwhen Lord Curzon went out he found a very false atmosphere. I only say\nit must have been something startlingly and chokingly false if it was\nfalser than that English atmosphere from which he came. The English\nParliament actually cares for everything except veracity. The\npublic-school man is kind, courageous, polite, clean, companionable;\nbut, in the most awful sense of the words, the truth is not in him.\n\nThis weakness of untruthfulness in the English public schools, in the\nEnglish political system, and to some extent in the English\ncharacter, is a weakness which necessarily produces a curious crop of\nsuperstitions, of lying legends, of evident delusions clung to through\nlow spiritual self-indulgence. There are so many of these public-school\nsuperstitions that I have here only space for one of them, which may be\ncalled the superstition of soap. It appears to have been shared by\nthe ablutionary Pharisees, who resembled the English public-school\naristocrats in so many respects: in their care about club rules and\ntraditions, in their offensive optimism at the expense of other people,\nand above all in their unimaginative plodding patriotism in the worst\ninterests of their country. Now the old human common sense about washing\nis that it is a great pleasure. Water (applied externally) is a splendid\nthing, like wine. Sybarites bathe in wine, and Nonconformists drink\nwater; but we are not concerned with these frantic exceptions. Washing\nbeing a pleasure, it stands to reason that rich people can afford it\nmore than poor people, and as long as this was recognized all was\nwell; and it was very right that rich people should offer baths to poor\npeople, as they might offer any other agreeable thing--a drink or a\ndonkey ride. But one dreadful day, somewhere about the middle of the\nnineteenth century, somebody discovered (somebody pretty well off)\nthe two great modern truths, that washing is a virtue in the rich and\ntherefore a duty in the poor. For a duty is a virtue that one can\u2019t do.\nAnd a virtue is generally a duty that one can do quite easily; like\nthe bodily cleanliness of the upper classes. But in the public-school\ntradition of public life, soap has become creditable simply because it\nis pleasant. Baths are represented as a part of the decay of the Roman\nEmpire; but the same baths are represented as part of the energy and\nrejuvenation of the British Empire. There are distinguished public\nschool men, bishops, dons, headmasters, and high politicians, who,\nin the course of the eulogies which from time to time they pass upon\nthemselves, have actually identified physical cleanliness with moral\npurity. They say (if I remember rightly) that a public-school man is\nclean inside and out. As if everyone did not know that while saints can\nafford to be dirty, seducers have to be clean. As if everyone did\nnot know that the harlot must be clean, because it is her business to\ncaptivate, while the good wife may be dirty, because it is her business\nto clean. As if we did not all know that whenever God\u2019s thunder cracks\nabove us, it is very likely indeed to find the simplest man in a muck\ncart and the most complex blackguard in a bath.\n\nThere are other instances, of course, of this oily trick of turning the\npleasures of a gentleman into the virtues of an Anglo-Saxon. Sport, like\nsoap, is an admirable thing, but, like soap, it is an agreeable thing.\nAnd it does not sum up all mortal merits to be a sportsman playing the\ngame in a world where it is so often necessary to be a workman doing the\nwork. By all means let a gentleman congratulate himself that he has\nnot lost his natural love of pleasure, as against the blase, and\nunchildlike. But when one has the childlike joy it is best to have also\nthe childlike unconsciousness; and I do not think we should have special\naffection for the little boy who ever lastingly explained that it was\nhis duty to play Hide and Seek and one of his family virtues to be\nprominent in Puss in the Corner.\n\nAnother such irritating hypocrisy is the oligarchic attitude towards\nmendicity as against organized charity. Here again, as in the case of\ncleanliness and of athletics, the attitude would be perfectly human and\nintelligible if it were not maintained as a merit. Just as the obvious\nthing about soap is that it is a convenience, so the obvious thing about\nbeggars is that they are an inconvenience. The rich would deserve very\nlittle blame if they simply said that they never dealt directly with\nbeggars, because in modern urban civilization it is impossible to deal\ndirectly with beggars; or if not impossible, at least very difficult.\nBut these people do not refuse money to beggars on the ground that such\ncharity is difficult. They refuse it on the grossly hypocritical ground\nthat such charity is easy. They say, with the most grotesque gravity,\n\u201cAnyone can put his hand in his pocket and give a poor man a penny; but\nwe, philanthropists, go home and brood and travail over the poor man\u2019s\ntroubles until we have discovered exactly what jail, reformatory,\nworkhouse, or lunatic asylum it will really be best for him to go to.\u201d\n This is all sheer lying. They do not brood about the man when they get\nhome, and if they did it would not alter the original fact that their\nmotive for discouraging beggars is the perfectly rational one that\nbeggars are a bother. A man may easily be forgiven for not doing this\nor that incidental act of charity, especially when the question is as\ngenuinely difficult as is the case of mendicity. But there is something\nquite pestilently Pecksniffian about shrinking from a hard task on the\nplea that it is not hard enough. If any man will really try talking to\nthe ten beggars who come to his door he will soon find out whether it is\nreally so much easier than the labor of writing a check for a hospital.\n\n*****\n\n\n\n\nXII. THE STALENESS OF THE NEW SCHOOLS\n\nFor this deep and disabling reason therefore, its cynical and abandoned\nindifference to the truth, the English public school does not provide\nus with the ideal that we require. We can only ask its modern critics\nto remember that right or wrong the thing can be done; the factory is\nworking, the wheels are going around, the gentlemen are being produced,\nwith their soap, cricket and organized charity all complete. And in\nthis, as we have said before, the public school really has an advantage\nover all the other educational schemes of our time. You can pick out a\npublic-school man in any of the many companies into which they stray,\nfrom a Chinese opium den to a German Jewish dinner-party. But I doubt\nif you could tell which little match girl had been brought up by\nundenominational religion and which by secular education. The great\nEnglish aristocracy which has ruled us since the Reformation is really,\nin this sense, a model to the moderns. It did have an ideal, and\ntherefore it has produced a reality.\n\nWe may repeat here that these pages propose mainly to show one thing:\nthat progress ought to be based on principle, while our modern progress\nis mostly based on precedent. We go, not by what may be affirmed in\ntheory, but by what has been already admitted in practice. That is why\nthe Jacobites are the last Tories in history with whom a high-spirited\nperson can have much sympathy. They wanted a specific thing; they were\nready to go forward for it, and so they were also ready to go back for\nit. But modern Tories have only the dullness of defending situations\nthat they had not the excitement of creating. Revolutionists make a\nreform, Conservatives only conserve the reform. They never reform\nthe reform, which is often very much wanted. Just as the rivalry of\narmaments is only a sort of sulky plagiarism, so the rivalry of parties\nis only a sort of sulky inheritance. Men have votes, so women must soon\nhave votes; poor children are taught by force, so they must soon be fed\nby force; the police shut public houses by twelve o\u2019clock, so soon they\nmust shut them by eleven o\u2019clock; children stop at school till they\nare fourteen, so soon they will stop till they are forty. No gleam of\nreason, no momentary return to first principles, no abstract asking of\nany obvious question, can interrupt this mad and monotonous gallop of\nmere progress by precedent. It is a good way to prevent real revolution.\nBy this logic of events, the Radical gets as much into a rut as the\nConservative. We meet one hoary old lunatic who says his grandfather\ntold him to stand by one stile. We meet another hoary old lunatic who\nsays his grandfather told him only to walk along one lane.\n\nI say we may repeat here this primary part of the argument, because\nwe have just now come to the place where it is most startlingly and\nstrongly shown. The final proof that our elementary schools have no\ndefinite ideal of their own is the fact that they so openly imitate the\nideals of the public schools. In the elementary schools we have all the\nethical prejudices and exaggerations of Eton and Harrow carefully copied\nfor people to whom they do not even roughly apply. We have the same\nwildly disproportionate doctrine of the effect of physical cleanliness\non moral character. Educators and educational politicians declare,\namid warm cheers, that cleanliness is far more important than all the\nsquabbles about moral and religious training. It would really seem that\nso long as a little boy washes his hands it does not matter whether he\nis washing off his mother\u2019s jam or his brother\u2019s gore. We have the\nsame grossly insincere pretense that sport always encourages a sense of\nhonor, when we know that it often ruins it. Above all, we have the\nsame great upperclass assumption that things are done best by large\ninstitutions handling large sums of money and ordering everybody about;\nand that trivial and impulsive charity is in some way contemptible.\nAs Mr. Blatchford says, \u201cThe world does not want piety, but soap--and\nSocialism.\u201d Piety is one of the popular virtues, whereas soap and\nSocialism are two hobbies of the upper middle class.\n\nThese \u201chealthy\u201d ideals, as they are called, which our politicians and\nschoolmasters have borrowed from the aristocratic schools and applied\nto the democratic, are by no means particularly appropriate to an\nimpoverished democracy. A vague admiration for organized government and\na vague distrust of individual aid cannot be made to fit in at all into\nthe lives of people among whom kindness means lending a saucepan and\nhonor means keeping out of the workhouse. It resolves itself either into\ndiscouraging that system of prompt and patchwork generosity which is a\ndaily glory of the poor, or else into hazy advice to people who have no\nmoney not to give it recklessly away. Nor is the exaggerated glory of\nathletics, defensible enough in dealing with the rich who, if they did\nnot romp and race, would eat and drink unwholesomely, by any means so\nmuch to the point when applied to people, most of whom will take a great\ndeal of exercise anyhow, with spade or hammer, pickax or saw. And for\nthe third case, of washing, it is obvious that the same sort of rhetoric\nabout corporeal daintiness which is proper to an ornamental class\ncannot, merely as it stands, be applicable to a dustman. A gentleman is\nexpected to be substantially spotless all the time. But it is no more\ndiscreditable for a scavenger to be dirty than for a deep-sea diver to\nbe wet. A sweep is no more disgraced when he is covered with soot\nthan Michael Angelo when he is covered with clay, or Bayard when he\nis covered with blood. Nor have these extenders of the public-school\ntradition done or suggested anything by way of a substitute for the\npresent snobbish system which makes cleanliness almost impossible to the\npoor; I mean the general ritual of linen and the wearing of the cast-off\nclothes of the rich. One man moves into another man\u2019s clothes as he\nmoves into another man\u2019s house. No wonder that our educationists are\nnot horrified at a man picking up the aristocrat\u2019s second-hand trousers,\nwhen they themselves have only taken up the aristocrat\u2019s second-hand\nideas.\n\n*****\n\n\n\n\nXIII. THE OUTLAWED PARENT\n\nThere is one thing at least of which there is never so much as a whisper\ninside the popular schools; and that is the opinion of the people. The\nonly persons who seem to have nothing to do with the education of\nthe children are the parents. Yet the English poor have very definite\ntraditions in many ways. They are hidden under embarrassment and irony;\nand those psychologists who have disentangled them talk of them as very\nstrange, barbaric and secretive things. But, as a matter of fact, the\ntraditions of the poor are mostly simply the traditions of humanity,\na thing which many of us have not seen for some time. For instance,\nworkingmen have a tradition that if one is talking about a vile thing it\nis better to talk of it in coarse language; one is the less likely to be\nseduced into excusing it. But mankind had this tradition also, until the\nPuritans and their children, the Ibsenites, started the opposite idea,\nthat it does not matter what you say so long as you say it with long\nwords and a long face. Or again, the educated classes have tabooed most\njesting about personal appearance; but in doing this they taboo not only\nthe humor of the slums, but more than half the healthy literature of\nthe world; they put polite nose-bags on the noses of Punch and Bardolph,\nStiggins and Cyrano de Bergerac. Again, the educated classes have\nadopted a hideous and heathen custom of considering death as too\ndreadful to talk about, and letting it remain a secret for each person,\nlike some private malformation. The poor, on the contrary, make a great\ngossip and display about bereavement; and they are right. They have hold\nof a truth of psychology which is at the back of all the funeral customs\nof the children of men. The way to lessen sorrow is to make a lot of it.\nThe way to endure a painful crisis is to insist very much that it is a\ncrisis; to permit people who must feel sad at least to feel important.\nIn this the poor are simply the priests of the universal civilization;\nand in their stuffy feasts and solemn chattering there is the smell of\nthe baked meats of Hamlet and the dust and echo of the funeral games of\nPatroclus.\n\nThe things philanthropists barely excuse (or do not excuse) in the life\nof the laboring classes are simply the things we have to excuse in all\nthe greatest monuments of man. It may be that the laborer is as gross as\nShakespeare or as garrulous as Homer; that if he is religious he talks\nnearly as much about hell as Dante; that if he is worldly he talks\nnearly as much about drink as Dickens. Nor is the poor man without\nhistoric support if he thinks less of that ceremonial washing which\nChrist dismissed, and rather more of that ceremonial drinking which\nChrist specially sanctified. The only difference between the poor man of\nto-day and the saints and heroes of history is that which in all classes\nseparates the common man who can feel things from the great man who can\nexpress them. What he feels is merely the heritage of man. Now nobody\nexpects of course that the cabmen and coal-heavers can be complete\ninstructors of their children any more than the squires and colonels and\ntea merchants are complete instructors of their children. There must be\nan educational specialist in loco parentis. But the master at Harrow is\nin loco parentis; the master in Hoxton is rather contra parentem. The\nvague politics of the squire, the vaguer virtues of the colonel, the\nsoul and spiritual yearnings of a tea merchant, are, in veritable\npractice, conveyed to the children of these people at the English public\nschools. But I wish here to ask a very plain and emphatic question. Can\nanyone alive even pretend to point out any way in which these special\nvirtues and traditions of the poor are reproduced in the education of\nthe poor? I do not wish the coster\u2019s irony to appeal as coarsely in the\nschool as it does in the tap room; but does it appear at all? Is\nthe child taught to sympathize at all with his father\u2019s admirable\ncheerfulness and slang? I do not expect the pathetic, eager pietas of\nthe mother, with her funeral clothes and funeral baked meats, to be\nexactly imitated in the educational system; but has it any influence at\nall on the educational system? Does any elementary schoolmaster accord\nit even an instant\u2019s consideration or respect? I do not expect the\nschoolmaster to hate hospitals and C.O.S. centers so much as the\nschoolboy\u2019s father; but does he hate them at all? Does he sympathize\nin the least with the poor man\u2019s point of honor against official\ninstitutions? Is it not quite certain that the ordinary elementary\nschoolmaster will think it not merely natural but simply conscientious\nto eradicate all these rugged legends of a laborious people, and on\nprinciple to preach soap and Socialism against beer and liberty? In\nthe lower classes the school master does not work for the parent, but\nagainst the parent. Modern education means handing down the customs of\nthe minority, and rooting out the customs of the majority. Instead of\ntheir Christlike charity, their Shakespearean laughter and their high\nHomeric reverence for the dead, the poor have imposed on them mere\npedantic copies of the prejudices of the remote rich. They must think\na bathroom a necessity because to the lucky it is a luxury; they must\nswing Swedish clubs because their masters are afraid of English cudgels;\nand they must get over their prejudice against being fed by the parish,\nbecause aristocrats feel no shame about being fed by the nation.\n\n*****\n\n\n\n\nXIV. FOLLY AND FEMALE EDUCATION\n\nIt is the same in the case of girls. I am often solemnly asked what\nI think of the new ideas about female education. But there are no new\nideas about female education. There is not, there never has been, even\nthe vestige of a new idea. All the educational reformers did was to ask\nwhat was being done to boys and then go and do it to girls; just as they\nasked what was being taught to young squires and then taught it to young\nchimney sweeps. What they call new ideas are very old ideas in the wrong\nplace. Boys play football, why shouldn\u2019t girls play football; boys\nhave school colors, why shouldn\u2019t girls have school-colors; boys go\nin hundreds to day-schools, why shouldn\u2019t girls go in hundreds to\nday-schools; boys go to Oxford, why shouldn\u2019t girls go to Oxford--in\nshort, boys grow mustaches, why shouldn\u2019t girls grow mustaches--that is\nabout their notion of a new idea. There is no brain-work in the thing\nat all; no root query of what sex is, of whether it alters this or that,\nand why, anymore than there is any imaginative grip of the humor and\nheart of the populace in the popular education. There is nothing but\nplodding, elaborate, elephantine imitation. And just as in the case\nof elementary teaching, the cases are of a cold and reckless\ninappropriateness. Even a savage could see that bodily things, at least,\nwhich are good for a man are very likely to be bad for a woman. Yet\nthere is no boy\u2019s game, however brutal, which these mild lunatics have\nnot promoted among girls. To take a stronger case, they give girls very\nheavy home-work; never reflecting that all girls have home-work already\nin their homes. It is all a part of the same silly subjugation; there\nmust be a hard stick-up collar round the neck of a woman, because it is\nalready a nuisance round the neck of a man. Though a Saxon serf, if he\nwore that collar of cardboard, would ask for his collar of brass.\n\nIt will then be answered, not without a sneer, \u201cAnd what would you\nprefer? Would you go back to the elegant early Victorian female, with\nringlets and smelling-bottle, doing a little in water colors, dabbling\na little in Italian, playing a little on the harp, writing in vulgar\nalbums and painting on senseless screens? Do you prefer that?\u201d To which\nI answer, \u201cEmphatically, yes.\u201d I solidly prefer it to the new female\neducation, for this reason, that I can see in it an intellectual design,\nwhile there is none in the other. I am by no means sure that even in\npoint of practical fact that elegant female would not have been more\nthan a match for most of the inelegant females. I fancy Jane Austen was\nstronger, sharper and shrewder than Charlotte Bronte; I am quite certain\nshe was stronger, sharper and shrewder than George Eliot. She could\ndo one thing neither of them could do: she could coolly and sensibly\ndescribe a man. I am not sure that the old great lady who could only\nsmatter Italian was not more vigorous than the new great lady who can\nonly stammer American; nor am I certain that the bygone duchesses who\nwere scarcely successful when they painted Melrose Abbey, were so much\nmore weak-minded than the modern duchesses who paint only their own\nfaces, and are bad at that. But that is not the point. What was the\ntheory, what was the idea, in their old, weak water-colors and their\nshaky Italian? The idea was the same which in a ruder rank expressed\nitself in home-made wines and hereditary recipes; and which still, in\na thousand unexpected ways, can be found clinging to the women of the\npoor. It was the idea I urged in the second part of this book: that\nthe world must keep one great amateur, lest we all become artists and\nperish. Somebody must renounce all specialist conquests, that she may\nconquer all the conquerors. That she may be a queen of life, she must\nnot be a private soldier in it. I do not think the elegant female with\nher bad Italian was a perfect product, any more than I think the slum\nwoman talking gin and funerals is a perfect product; alas! there are few\nperfect products. But they come from a comprehensible idea; and the new\nwoman comes from nothing and nowhere. It is right to have an ideal, it\nis right to have the right ideal, and these two have the right ideal.\nThe slum mother with her funerals is the degenerate daughter of\nAntigone, the obstinate priestess of the household gods. The lady\ntalking bad Italian was the decayed tenth cousin of Portia, the great\nand golden Italian lady, the Renascence amateur of life, who could be a\nbarrister because she could be anything. Sunken and neglected in the\nsea of modern monotony and imitation, the types hold tightly to their\noriginal truths. Antigone, ugly, dirty and often drunken, will still\nbury her father. The elegant female, vapid and fading away to nothing,\nstill feels faintly the fundamental difference between herself and\nher husband: that he must be Something in the City, that she may be\neverything in the country.\n\nThere was a time when you and I and all of us were all very close to\nGod; so that even now the color of a pebble (or a paint), the smell of a\nflower (or a firework), comes to our hearts with a kind of authority and\ncertainty; as if they were fragments of a muddled message, or features\nof a forgotten face. To pour that fiery simplicity upon the whole of\nlife is the only real aim of education; and closest to the child comes\nthe woman--she understands. To say what she understands is beyond me;\nsave only this, that it is not a solemnity. Rather it is a towering\nlevity, an uproarious amateurishness of the universe, such as we felt\nwhen we were little, and would as soon sing as garden, as soon paint as\nrun. To smatter the tongues of men and angels, to dabble in the dreadful\nsciences, to juggle with pillars and pyramids and toss up the planets\nlike balls, this is that inner audacity and indifference which the human\nsoul, like a conjurer catching oranges, must keep up forever. This is\nthat insanely frivolous thing we call sanity. And the elegant female,\ndrooping her ringlets over her water-colors, knew it and acted on it.\nShe was juggling with frantic and flaming suns. She was maintaining\nthe bold equilibrium of inferiorities which is the most mysterious of\nsuperiorities and perhaps the most unattainable. She was maintaining\nthe prime truth of woman, the universal mother: that if a thing is worth\ndoing, it is worth doing badly.\n\n\n\n\nPART FIVE. THE HOME OF MAN\n\n\n\n\nI. THE EMPIRE OF THE INSECT\n\nA cultivated Conservative friend of mine once exhibited great distress\nbecause in a gay moment I once called Edmund Burke an atheist. I need\nscarcely say that the remark lacked something of biographical precision;\nit was meant to. Burke was certainly not an atheist in his conscious\ncosmic theory, though he had not a special and flaming faith in God,\nlike Robespierre. Nevertheless, the remark had reference to a truth\nwhich it is here relevant to repeat. I mean that in the quarrel over the\nFrench Revolution, Burke did stand for the atheistic attitude and mode\nof argument, as Robespierre stood for the theistic. The Revolution\nappealed to the idea of an abstract and eternal justice, beyond all\nlocal custom or convenience. If there are commands of God, then there\nmust be rights of man. Here Burke made his brilliant diversion; he did\nnot attack the Robespierre doctrine with the old mediaeval doctrine of\njus divinum (which, like the Robespierre doctrine, was theistic), he\nattacked it with the modern argument of scientific relativity; in short,\nthe argument of evolution. He suggested that humanity was everywhere\nmolded by or fitted to its environment and institutions; in fact, that\neach people practically got, not only the tyrant it deserved, but the\ntyrant it ought to have. \u201cI know nothing of the rights of men,\u201d he said,\n\u201cbut I know something of the rights of Englishmen.\u201d There you have the\nessential atheist. His argument is that we have got some protection by\nnatural accident and growth; and why should we profess to think beyond\nit, for all the world as if we were the images of God! We are born under\na House of Lords, as birds under a house of leaves; we live under a\nmonarchy as niggers live under a tropic sun; it is not their fault if\nthey are slaves, and it is not ours if we are snobs. Thus, long\nbefore Darwin struck his great blow at democracy, the essential of the\nDarwinian argument had been already urged against the French Revolution.\nMan, said Burke in effect, must adapt himself to everything, like an\nanimal; he must not try to alter everything, like an angel. The last\nweak cry of the pious, pretty, half-artificial optimism and deism of the\neighteenth century came in the voice of Sterne, saying, \u201cGod tempers\nthe wind to the shorn lamb.\u201d And Burke, the iron evolutionist,\nessentially answered, \u201cNo; God tempers the shorn lamb to the wind.\u201d\n It is the lamb that has to adapt himself. That is, he either dies or\nbecomes a particular kind of lamb who likes standing in a draught.\n\nThe subconscious popular instinct against Darwinism was not a mere\noffense at the grotesque notion of visiting one\u2019s grandfather in a cage\nin the Regent\u2019s Park. Men go in for drink, practical jokes and\nmany other grotesque things; they do not much mind making beasts\nof themselves, and would not much mind having beasts made of their\nforefathers. The real instinct was much deeper and much more valuable.\nIt was this: that when once one begins to think of man as a shifting and\nalterable thing, it is always easy for the strong and crafty to twist\nhim into new shapes for all kinds of unnatural purposes. The popular\ninstinct sees in such developments the possibility of backs bowed and\nhunch-backed for their burden, or limbs twisted for their task. It has\na very well-grounded guess that whatever is done swiftly and\nsystematically will mostly be done by a successful class and almost\nsolely in their interests. It has therefore a vision of inhuman hybrids\nand half-human experiments much in the style of Mr. Wells\u2019s \u201cIsland of\nDr. Moreau.\u201d The rich man may come to breeding a tribe of dwarfs to be\nhis jockeys, and a tribe of giants to be his hall-porters. Grooms might\nbe born bow-legged and tailors born cross-legged; perfumers might have\nlong, large noses and a crouching attitude, like hounds of scent; and\nprofessional wine-tasters might have the horrible expression of one\ntasting wine stamped upon their faces as infants. Whatever wild image\none employs it cannot keep pace with the panic of the human fancy, when\nonce it supposes that the fixed type called man could be changed. If\nsome millionaire wanted arms, some porter must grow ten arms like an\noctopus; if he wants legs, some messenger-boy must go with a hundred\ntrotting legs like a centipede. In the distorted mirror of hypothesis,\nthat is, of the unknown, men can dimly see such monstrous and evil\nshapes; men run all to eye, or all to fingers, with nothing left but one\nnostril or one ear. That is the nightmare with which the mere notion of\nadaptation threatens us. That is the nightmare that is not so very far\nfrom the reality.\n\nIt will be said that not the wildest evolutionist really asks that we\nshould become in any way unhuman or copy any other animal. Pardon me,\nthat is exactly what not merely the wildest evolutionists urge, but some\nof the tamest evolutionists too. There has risen high in recent\nhistory an important cultus which bids fair to be the religion of the\nfuture--which means the religion of those few weak-minded people who\nlive in the future. It is typical of our time that it has to look\nfor its god through a microscope; and our time has marked a definite\nadoration of the insect. Like most things we call new, of course, it is\nnot at all new as an idea; it is only new as an idolatry. Virgil takes\nbees seriously but I doubt if he would have kept bees as carefully as\nhe wrote about them. The wise king told the sluggard to watch the ant, a\ncharming occupation--for a sluggard. But in our own time has appeared a\nvery different tone, and more than one great man, as well as numberless\nintelligent men, have in our time seriously suggested that we should\nstudy the insect because we are his inferiors. The old moralists merely\ntook the virtues of man and distributed them quite decoratively and\narbitrarily among the animals. The ant was an almost heraldic symbol of\nindustry, as the lion was of courage, or, for the matter of that, the\npelican of charity. But if the mediaevals had been convinced that a\nlion was not courageous, they would have dropped the lion and kept the\ncourage; if the pelican is not charitable, they would say, so much the\nworse for the pelican. The old moralists, I say, permitted the ant to\nenforce and typify man\u2019s morality; they never allowed the ant to upset\nit. They used the ant for industry as the lark for punctuality; they\nlooked up at the flapping birds and down at the crawling insects for a\nhomely lesson. But we have lived to see a sect that does not look down\nat the insects, but looks up at the insects, that asks us essentially to\nbow down and worship beetles, like ancient Egyptians.\n\nMaurice Maeterlinck is a man of unmistakable genius, and genius always\ncarries a magnifying glass. In the terrible crystal of his lens we have\nseen the bees not as a little yellow swarm, but rather in golden armies\nand hierarchies of warriors and queens. Imagination perpetually peers\nand creeps further down the avenues and vistas in the tubes of science,\nand one fancies every frantic reversal of proportions; the earwig\nstriding across the echoing plain like an elephant, or the grasshopper\ncoming roaring above our roofs like a vast aeroplane, as he leaps from\nHertfordshire to Surrey. One seems to enter in a dream a temple of\nenormous entomology, whose architecture is based on something\nwilder than arms or backbones; in which the ribbed columns have the\nhalf-crawling look of dim and monstrous caterpillars; or the dome is\na starry spider hung horribly in the void. There is one of the modern\nworks of engineering that gives one something of this nameless fear\nof the exaggerations of an underworld; and that is the curious curved\narchitecture of the under ground railway, commonly called the Twopenny\nTube. Those squat archways, without any upright line or pillar, look as\nif they had been tunneled by huge worms who have never learned to lift\ntheir heads. It is the very underground palace of the Serpent, the spirit\nof changing shape and color, that is the enemy of man.\n\nBut it is not merely by such strange aesthetic suggestions that writers\nlike Maeterlinck have influenced us in the matter; there is also an\nethical side to the business. The upshot of M. Maeterlinck\u2019s book on\nbees is an admiration, one might also say an envy, of their collective\nspirituality; of the fact that they live only for something which\nhe calls the Soul of the Hive. And this admiration for the communal\nmorality of insects is expressed in many other modern writers in various\nquarters and shapes; in Mr. Benjamin Kidd\u2019s theory of living only for\nthe evolutionary future of our race, and in the great interest of some\nSocialists in ants, which they generally prefer to bees, I suppose,\nbecause they are not so brightly colored. Not least among the hundred\nevidences of this vague insectolatry are the floods of flattery poured\nby modern people on that energetic nation of the Far East of which\nit has been said that \u201cPatriotism is its only religion\u201d; or, in other\nwords, that it lives only for the Soul of the Hive. When at long\nintervals of the centuries Christendom grows weak, morbid or skeptical,\nand mysterious Asia begins to move against us her dim populations and to\npour them westward like a dark movement of matter, in such cases it\nhas been very common to compare the invasion to a plague of lice\nor incessant armies of locusts. The Eastern armies were indeed like\ninsects; in their blind, busy destructiveness, in their black nihilism\nof personal outlook, in their hateful indifference to individual life\nand love, in their base belief in mere numbers, in their pessimistic\ncourage and their atheistic patriotism, the riders and raiders of the\nEast are indeed like all the creeping things of the earth. But never\nbefore, I think, have Christians called a Turk a locust and meant it\nas a compliment. Now for the first time we worship as well as fear; and\ntrace with adoration that enormous form advancing vast and vague out\nof Asia, faintly discernible amid the mystic clouds of winged creatures\nhung over the wasted lands, thronging the skies like thunder and\ndiscoloring the skies like rain; Beelzebub, the Lord of Flies.\n\nIn resisting this horrible theory of the Soul of the Hive, we of\nChristendom stand not for ourselves, but for all humanity; for the\nessential and distinctive human idea that one good and happy man is an\nend in himself, that a soul is worth saving. Nay, for those who like\nsuch biological fancies it might well be said that we stand as chiefs\nand champions of a whole section of nature, princes of the house whose\ncognizance is the backbone, standing for the milk of the individual\nmother and the courage of the wandering cub, representing the pathetic\nchivalry of the dog, the humor and perversity of cats, the affection of\nthe tranquil horse, the loneliness of the lion. It is more to the point,\nhowever, to urge that this mere glorification of society as it is in\nthe social insects is a transformation and a dissolution in one of the\noutlines which have been specially the symbols of man. In the cloud and\nconfusion of the flies and bees is growing fainter and fainter, as is\nfinally disappearing, the idea of the human family. The hive has become\nlarger than the house, the bees are destroying their captors; what the\nlocust hath left, the caterpillar hath eaten; and the little house and\ngarden of our friend Jones is in a bad way.\n\n*****\n\n\n\n\nII. THE FALLACY OF THE UMBRELLA STAND\n\nWhen Lord Morley said that the House of Lords must be either mended\nor ended, he used a phrase which has caused some confusion; because\nit might seem to suggest that mending and ending are somewhat similar\nthings. I wish specially to insist on the fact that mending and ending\nare opposite things. You mend a thing because you like it; you end a\nthing because you don\u2019t. To mend is to strengthen. I, for instance,\ndisbelieve in oligarchy; so I would no more mend the House of Lords\nthan I would mend a thumbscrew. On the other hand, I do believe in the\nfamily; therefore I would mend the family as I would mend a chair; and\nI will never deny for a moment that the modern family is a chair that\nwants mending. But here comes in the essential point about the mass of\nmodern advanced sociologists. Here are two institutions that have always\nbeen fundamental with mankind, the family and the state. Anarchists, I\nbelieve, disbelieve in both. It is quite unfair to say that Socialists\nbelieve in the state, but do not believe in the family; thousands of\nSocialists believe more in the family than any Tory. But it is true\nto say that while anarchists would end both, Socialists are specially\nengaged in mending (that is, strengthening and renewing) the state; and\nthey are not specially engaged in strengthening and renewing the family.\nThey are not doing anything to define the functions of father, mother,\nand child, as such; they are not tightening the machine up again; they\nare not blackening in again the fading lines of the old drawing. With\nthe state they are doing this; they are sharpening its machinery,\nthey are blackening in its black dogmatic lines, they are making mere\ngovernment in every way stronger and in some ways harsher than before.\nWhile they leave the home in ruins, they restore the hive, especially\nthe stings. Indeed, some schemes of labor and Poor Law reform recently\nadvanced by distinguished Socialists, amount to little more than putting\nthe largest number of people in the despotic power of Mr. Bumble.\nApparently, progress means being moved on--by the police.\n\nThe point it is my purpose to urge might perhaps be suggested thus:\nthat Socialists and most social reformers of their color are vividly\nconscious of the line between the kind of things that belong to the\nstate and the kind of things that belong to mere chaos or uncoercible\nnature; they may force children to go to school before the sun rises,\nbut they will not try to force the sun to rise; they will not, like\nCanute, banish the sea, but only the sea-bathers. But inside the outline\nof the state their lines are confused, and entities melt into each\nother. They have no firm instinctive sense of one thing being in its\nnature private and another public, of one thing being necessarily\nbond and another free. That is why piece by piece, and quite silently,\npersonal liberty is being stolen from Englishmen, as personal land has\nbeen silently stolen ever since the sixteenth century.\n\nI can only put it sufficiently curtly in a careless simile. A Socialist\nmeans a man who thinks a walking-stick like an umbrella because\nthey both go into the umbrella-stand. Yet they are as different as a\nbattle-ax and a bootjack. The essential idea of an umbrella is breadth\nand protection. The essential idea of a stick is slenderness and,\npartly, attack. The stick is the sword, the umbrella is the shield, but\nit is a shield against another and more nameless enemy--the hostile but\nanonymous universe. More properly, therefore, the umbrella is the roof;\nit is a kind of collapsible house. But the vital difference goes far\ndeeper than this; it branches off into two kingdoms of man\u2019s mind, with\na chasm between. For the point is this: that the umbrella is a shield\nagainst an enemy so actual as to be a mere nuisance; whereas the\nstick is a sword against enemies so entirely imaginary as to be a pure\npleasure. The stick is not merely a sword, but a court sword; it is a\nthing of purely ceremonial swagger. One cannot express the emotion in\nany way except by saying that a man feels more like a man with a stick\nin his hand, just as he feels more like a man with a sword at his side.\nBut nobody ever had any swelling sentiments about an umbrella; it is\na convenience, like a door scraper. An umbrella is a necessary evil. A\nwalking-stick is a quite unnecessary good. This, I fancy, is the real\nexplanation of the perpetual losing of umbrellas; one does not hear of\npeople losing walking sticks. For a walking-stick is a pleasure, a piece\nof real personal property; it is missed even when it is not needed. When\nmy right hand forgets its stick may it forget its cunning. But anybody\nmay forget an umbrella, as anybody might forget a shed that he has stood\nup in out of the rain. Anybody can forget a necessary thing.\n\nIf I might pursue the figure of speech, I might briefly say that the\nwhole Collectivist error consists in saying that because two men\ncan share an umbrella, therefore two men can share a walking-stick.\nUmbrellas might possibly be replaced by some kind of common awnings\ncovering certain streets from particular showers. But there is nothing\nbut nonsense in the notion of swinging a communal stick; it is as if one\nspoke of twirling a communal mustache. It will be said that this is a\nfrank fantasia and that no sociologists suggest such follies. Pardon me\nif they do. I will give a precise parallel to the case of confusion\nof sticks and umbrellas, a parallel from a perpetually reiterated\nsuggestion of reform. At least sixty Socialists out of a hundred, when\nthey have spoken of common laundries, will go on at once to speak of\ncommon kitchens. This is just as mechanical and unintelligent as the\nfanciful case I have quoted. Sticks and umbrellas are both stiff rods\nthat go into holes in a stand in the hall. Kitchens and washhouses\nare both large rooms full of heat and damp and steam. But the soul and\nfunction of the two things are utterly opposite. There is only one way\nof washing a shirt; that is, there is only one right way. There is no\ntaste and fancy in tattered shirts. Nobody says, \u201cTompkins likes five\nholes in his shirt, but I must say, give me the good old four holes.\u201d\n Nobody says, \u201cThis washerwoman rips up the left leg of my pyjamas; now\nif there is one thing I insist on it is the right leg ripped up.\u201d The\nideal washing is simply to send a thing back washed. But it is by no\nmeans true that the ideal cooking is simply to send a thing back cooked.\nCooking is an art; it has in it personality, and even perversity, for\nthe definition of an art is that which must be personal and may be\nperverse. I know a man, not otherwise dainty, who cannot touch common\nsausages unless they are almost burned to a coal. He wants his sausages\nfried to rags, yet he does not insist on his shirts being boiled to\nrags. I do not say that such points of culinary delicacy are of high\nimportance. I do not say that the communal ideal must give way to\nthem. What I say is that the communal ideal is not conscious of their\nexistence, and therefore goes wrong from the very start, mixing a wholly\npublic thing with a highly individual one. Perhaps we ought to accept\ncommunal kitchens in the social crisis, just as we should accept\ncommunal cat\u2019s-meat in a siege. But the cultured Socialist, quite at his\nease, by no means in a siege, talks about communal kitchens as if they\nwere the same kind of thing as communal laundries. This shows at the\nstart that he misunderstands human nature. It is as different as three\nmen singing the same chorus from three men playing three tunes on the\nsame piano.\n\n*****\n\n\n\n\nIII. THE DREADFUL DUTY OF GUDGE\n\nIn the quarrel earlier alluded to between the energetic Progressive and\nthe obstinate Conservative (or, to talk a tenderer language, between\nHudge and Gudge), the state of cross-purposes is at the present moment\nacute. The Tory says he wants to preserve family life in Cindertown;\nthe Socialist very reasonably points out to him that in Cindertown\nat present there isn\u2019t any family life to preserve. But Hudge, the\nSocialist, in his turn, is highly vague and mysterious about whether he\nwould preserve the family life if there were any; or whether he will try\nto restore it where it has disappeared. It is all very confusing. The\nTory sometimes talks as if he wanted to tighten the domestic bonds that\ndo not exist; the Socialist as if he wanted to loosen the bonds that do\nnot bind anybody. The question we all want to ask of both of them is\nthe original ideal question, \u201cDo you want to keep the family at all?\u201d If\nHudge, the Socialist, does want the family he must be prepared for the\nnatural restraints, distinctions and divisions of labor in the family.\nHe must brace himself up to bear the idea of the woman having a\npreference for the private house and a man for the public house. He must\nmanage to endure somehow the idea of a woman being womanly, which does\nnot mean soft and yielding, but handy, thrifty, rather hard, and very\nhumorous. He must confront without a quiver the notion of a child who\nshall be childish, that is, full of energy, but without an idea of\nindependence; fundamentally as eager for authority as for information\nand butter-scotch. If a man, a woman and a child live together any more\nin free and sovereign households, these ancient relations will recur;\nand Hudge must put up with it. He can only avoid it by destroying the\nfamily, driving both sexes into sexless hives and hordes, and bringing\nup all children as the children of the state--like Oliver Twist. But if\nthese stern words must be addressed to Hudge, neither shall Gudge escape\na somewhat severe admonition. For the plain truth to be told pretty\nsharply to the Tory is this, that if he wants the family to remain,\nif he wants to be strong enough to resist the rending forces of our\nessentially savage commerce, he must make some very big sacrifices and\ntry to equalize property. The overwhelming mass of the English people at\nthis particular instant are simply too poor to be domestic. They are\nas domestic as they can manage; they are much more domestic than the\ngoverning class; but they cannot get what good there was originally\nmeant to be in this institution, simply because they have not got enough\nmoney. The man ought to stand for a certain magnanimity, quite lawfully\nexpressed in throwing money away: but if under given circumstances\nhe can only do it by throwing the week\u2019s food away, then he is not\nmagnanimous, but mean. The woman ought to stand for a certain wisdom\nwhich is well expressed in valuing things rightly and guarding money\nsensibly; but how is she to guard money if there is no money to guard?\nThe child ought to look on his mother as a fountain of natural fun and\npoetry; but how can he unless the fountain, like other fountains,\nis allowed to play? What chance have any of these ancient arts and\nfunctions in a house so hideously topsy-turvy; a house where the woman\nis out working and the man isn\u2019t; and the child is forced by law to\nthink his schoolmaster\u2019s requirements more important than his mother\u2019s?\nNo, Gudge and his friends in the House of Lords and the Carlton Club\nmust make up their minds on this matter, and that very quickly. If\nthey are content to have England turned into a beehive and an ant-hill,\ndecorated here and there with a few faded butterflies playing at an old\ngame called domesticity in the intervals of the divorce court, then let\nthem have their empire of insects; they will find plenty of Socialists\nwho will give it to them. But if they want a domestic England, they must\n\u201cshell out,\u201d as the phrase goes, to a vastly greater extent than any\nRadical politician has yet dared to suggest; they must endure burdens\nmuch heavier than the Budget and strokes much deadlier than the death\nduties; for the thing to be done is nothing more nor less than the\ndistribution of the great fortunes and the great estates. We can now\nonly avoid Socialism by a change as vast as Socialism. If we are to save\nproperty, we must distribute property, almost as sternly and sweepingly\nas did the French Revolution. If we are to preserve the family we must\nrevolutionize the nation.\n\n*****\n\n\n\n\nIV. A LAST INSTANCE\n\nAnd now, as this book is drawing to a close, I will whisper in the\nreader\u2019s ear a horrible suspicion that has sometimes haunted me: the\nsuspicion that Hudge and Gudge are secretly in partnership. That the\nquarrel they keep up in public is very much of a put-up job, and that\nthe way in which they perpetually play into each other\u2019s hands is not\nan everlasting coincidence. Gudge, the plutocrat, wants an anarchic\nindustrialism; Hudge, the idealist, provides him with lyric praises of\nanarchy. Gudge wants women-workers because they are cheaper; Hudge calls\nthe woman\u2019s work \u201cfreedom to live her own life.\u201d Gudge wants steady\nand obedient workmen, Hudge preaches teetotalism--to workmen, not to\nGudge--Gudge wants a tame and timid population who will never take arms\nagainst tyranny; Hudge proves from Tolstoi that nobody must take\narms against anything. Gudge is naturally a healthy and well-washed\ngentleman; Hudge earnestly preaches the perfection of Gudge\u2019s washing\nto people who can\u2019t practice it. Above all, Gudge rules by a coarse and\ncruel system of sacking and sweating and bi-sexual toil which is totally\ninconsistent with the free family and which is bound to destroy\nit; therefore Hudge, stretching out his arms to the universe with a\nprophetic smile, tells us that the family is something that we shall\nsoon gloriously outgrow.\n\nI do not know whether the partnership of Hudge and Gudge is conscious\nor unconscious. I only know that between them they still keep the common\nman homeless. I only know I still meet Jones walking the streets in\nthe gray twilight, looking sadly at the poles and barriers and low red\ngoblin lanterns which still guard the house which is none the less his\nbecause he has never been in it.\n\n*****\n\n\n\n\nV. CONCLUSION\n\nHere, it may be said, my book ends just where it ought to begin. I have\nsaid that the strong centers of modern English property must swiftly\nor slowly be broken up, if even the idea of property is to remain\namong Englishmen. There are two ways in which it could be done, a\ncold administration by quite detached officials, which is called\nCollectivism, or a personal distribution, so as to produce what is\ncalled Peasant Proprietorship. I think the latter solution the finer and\nmore fully human, because it makes each man as somebody blamed somebody\nfor saying of the Pope, a sort of small god. A man on his own turf\ntastes eternity or, in other words, will give ten minutes more work than\nis required. But I believe I am justified in shutting the door on this\nvista of argument, instead of opening it. For this book is not designed\nto prove the case for Peasant Proprietorship, but to prove the case\nagainst modern sages who turn reform to a routine. The whole of this\nbook has been a rambling and elaborate urging of one purely ethical\nfact. And if by any chance it should happen that there are still some\nwho do not quite see what that point is, I will end with one plain\nparable, which is none the worse for being also a fact.\n\nA little while ago certain doctors and other persons permitted by modern\nlaw to dictate to their shabbier fellow-citizens, sent out an order that\nall little girls should have their hair cut short. I mean, of course,\nall little girls whose parents were poor. Many very unhealthy habits are\ncommon among rich little girls, but it will be long before any doctors\ninterfere forcibly with them. Now, the case for this particular\ninterference was this, that the poor are pressed down from above into\nsuch stinking and suffocating underworlds of squalor, that poor people\nmust not be allowed to have hair, because in their case it must mean\nlice in the hair. Therefore, the doctors propose to abolish the hair. It\nnever seems to have occurred to them to abolish the lice. Yet it could\nbe done. As is common in most modern discussions the unmentionable thing\nis the pivot of the whole discussion. It is obvious to any Christian man\n(that is, to any man with a free soul) that any coercion applied to\na cabman\u2019s daughter ought, if possible, to be applied to a Cabinet\nMinister\u2019s daughter. I will not ask why the doctors do not, as a matter\nof fact apply their rule to a Cabinet Minister\u2019s daughter. I will not\nask, because I know. They do not because they dare not. But what is the\nexcuse they would urge, what is the plausible argument they would use,\nfor thus cutting and clipping poor children and not rich? Their argument\nwould be that the disease is more likely to be in the hair of poor\npeople than of rich. And why? Because the poor children are forced\n(against all the instincts of the highly domestic working classes)\nto crowd together in close rooms under a wildly inefficient system of\npublic instruction; and because in one out of the forty children there\nmay be offense. And why? Because the poor man is so ground down by the\ngreat rents of the great ground landlords that his wife often has\nto work as well as he. Therefore she has no time to look after\nthe children, therefore one in forty of them is dirty. Because the\nworkingman has these two persons on top of him, the landlord sitting\n(literally) on his stomach, and the schoolmaster sitting (literally) on\nhis head, the workingman must allow his little girl\u2019s hair, first to be\nneglected from poverty, next to be poisoned by promiscuity, and, lastly,\nto be abolished by hygiene. He, perhaps, was proud of his little girl\u2019s\nhair. But he does not count.\n\nUpon this simple principle (or rather precedent) the sociological doctor\ndrives gayly ahead. When a crapulous tyranny crushes men down into the\ndirt, so that their very hair is dirty, the scientific course is clear.\nIt would be long and laborious to cut off the heads of the tyrants;\nit is easier to cut off the hair of the slaves. In the same way, if\nit should ever happen that poor children, screaming with toothache,\ndisturbed any schoolmaster or artistic gentleman, it would be easy to\npull out all the teeth of the poor; if their nails were disgustingly\ndirty, their nails could be plucked out; if their noses were indecently\nblown, their noses could be cut off. The appearance of our humbler\nfellow-citizen could be quite strikingly simplified before we had done\nwith him. But all this is not a bit wilder than the brute fact that a\ndoctor can walk into the house of a free man, whose daughter\u2019s hair may\nbe as clean as spring flowers, and order him to cut it off. It never\nseems to strike these people that the lesson of lice in the slums is the\nwrongness of slums, not the wrongness of hair. Hair is, to say the least\nof it, a rooted thing. Its enemy (like the other insects and oriental\narmies of whom we have spoken) sweep upon us but seldom. In truth, it\nis only by eternal institutions like hair that we can test passing\ninstitutions like empires. If a house is so built as to knock a man\u2019s\nhead off when he enters it, it is built wrong.\n\nThe mob can never rebel unless it is conservative, at least enough to\nhave conserved some reasons for rebelling. It is the most awful thought\nin all our anarchy, that most of the ancient blows struck for freedom\nwould not be struck at all to-day, because of the obscuration of the\nclean, popular customs from which they came. The insult that brought\ndown the hammer of Wat Tyler might now be called a medical examination.\nThat which Virginius loathed and avenged as foul slavery might now be\npraised as free love. The cruel taunt of Foulon, \u201cLet them eat grass,\u201d\n might now be represented as the dying cry of an idealistic vegetarian.\nThose great scissors of science that would snip off the curls of the\npoor little school children are ceaselessly snapping closer and closer\nto cut off all the corners and fringes of the arts and honors of the\npoor. Soon they will be twisting necks to suit clean collars, and\nhacking feet to fit new boots. It never seems to strike them that the\nbody is more than raiment; that the Sabbath was made for man; that all\ninstitutions shall be judged and damned by whether they have fitted the\nnormal flesh and spirit. It is the test of political sanity to keep your\nhead. It is the test of artistic sanity to keep your hair on.\n\nNow the whole parable and purpose of these last pages, and indeed of all\nthese pages, is this: to assert that we must instantly begin all over\nagain, and begin at the other end. I begin with a little girl\u2019s hair.\nThat I know is a good thing at any rate. Whatever else is evil, the\npride of a good mother in the beauty of her daughter is good. It is one\nof those adamantine tendernesses which are the touchstones of every age\nand race. If other things are against it, other things must go down. If\nlandlords and laws and sciences are against it, landlords and laws and\nsciences must go down. With the red hair of one she-urchin in the gutter\nI will set fire to all modern civilization. Because a girl should have\nlong hair, she should have clean hair; because she should have clean\nhair, she should not have an unclean home: because she should not have\nan unclean home, she should have a free and leisured mother; because\nshe should have a free mother, she should not have an usurious landlord;\nbecause there should not be an usurious landlord, there should be a\nredistribution of property; because there should be a redistribution\nof property, there shall be a revolution. That little urchin with the\ngold-red hair, whom I have just watched toddling past my house, she\nshall not be lopped and lamed and altered; her hair shall not be cut\nshort like a convict\u2019s; no, all the kingdoms of the earth shall be\nhacked about and mutilated to suit her. She is the human and sacred\nimage; all around her the social fabric shall sway and split and fall;\nthe pillars of society shall be shaken, and the roofs of ages come\nrushing down, and not one hair of her head shall be harmed.\n\n\n\n\nTHREE NOTES\n\n\n\n\nI. ON FEMALE SUFFRAGE\n\nNot wishing to overload this long essay with too many parentheses, apart\nfrom its thesis of progress and precedent, I append here three notes on\npoints of detail that may possibly be misunderstood.\n\nThe first refers to the female controversy. It may seem to many that I\ndismiss too curtly the contention that all women should have votes,\neven if most women do not desire them. It is constantly said in this\nconnection that males have received the vote (the agricultural laborers\nfor instance) when only a minority of them were in favor of it. Mr.\nGalsworthy, one of the few fine fighting intellects of our time, has\ntalked this language in the \u201cNation.\u201d Now, broadly, I have only to\nanswer here, as everywhere in this book, that history is not a toboggan\nslide, but a road to be reconsidered and even retraced. If we really\nforced General Elections upon free laborers who definitely disliked\nGeneral Elections, then it was a thoroughly undemocratic thing to do;\nif we are democrats we ought to undo it. We want the will of the people,\nnot the votes of the people; and to give a man a vote against his will\nis to make voting more valuable than the democracy it declares.\n\nBut this analogy is false, for a plain and particular reason. Many\nvoteless women regard a vote as unwomanly. Nobody says that most\nvoteless men regarded a vote as unmanly. Nobody says that any voteless\nmen regarded it as unmanly. Not in the stillest hamlet or the most\nstagnant fen could you find a yokel or a tramp who thought he lost his\nsexual dignity by being part of a political mob. If he did not care\nabout a vote it was solely because he did not know about a vote; he did\nnot understand the word any better than Bimetallism. His opposition, if\nit existed, was merely negative. His indifference to a vote was really\nindifference.\n\nBut the female sentiment against the franchise, whatever its size, is\npositive. It is not negative; it is by no means indifferent. Such\nwomen as are opposed to the change regard it (rightly or wrongly) as\nunfeminine. That is, as insulting certain affirmative traditions to\nwhich they are attached. You may think such a view prejudiced; but\nI violently deny that any democrat has a right to override such\nprejudices, if they are popular and positive. Thus he would not have\na right to make millions of Moslems vote with a cross if they had a\nprejudice in favor of voting with a crescent. Unless this is admitted,\ndemocracy is a farce we need scarcely keep up. If it is admitted, the\nSuffragists have not merely to awaken an indifferent, but to convert a\nhostile majority.\n\n*****\n\n\n\n\nII. ON CLEANLINESS IN EDUCATION\n\nOn re-reading my protest, which I honestly think much needed, against\nour heathen idolatry of mere ablution, I see that it may possibly be\nmisread. I hasten to say that I think washing a most important thing to\nbe taught both to rich and poor. I do not attack the positive but the\nrelative position of soap. Let it be insisted on even as much as now;\nbut let other things be insisted on much more. I am even ready to admit\nthat cleanliness is next to godliness; but the moderns will not even\nadmit godliness to be next to cleanliness. In their talk about Thomas\nBecket and such saints and heroes they make soap more important than\nsoul; they reject godliness whenever it is not cleanliness. If we resent\nthis about remote saints and heroes, we should resent it more about the\nmany saints and heroes of the slums, whose unclean hands cleanse the\nworld. Dirt is evil chiefly as evidence of sloth; but the fact remains\nthat the classes that wash most are those that work least. Concerning\nthese, the practical course is simple; soap should be urged on them and\nadvertised as what it is--a luxury. With regard to the poor also the\npractical course is not hard to harmonize with our thesis. If we want\nto give poor people soap we must set out deliberately to give them\nluxuries. If we will not make them rich enough to be clean, then\nemphatically we must do what we did with the saints. We must reverence\nthem for being dirty.\n\n*****\n\n\n\n\nIII. ON PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP\n\nI have not dealt with any details touching distributed ownership, or\nits possibility in England, for the reason stated in the text. This book\ndeals with what is wrong, wrong in our root of argument and effort. This\nwrong is, I say, that we will go forward because we dare not go back.\nThus the Socialist says that property is already concentrated into\nTrusts and Stores: the only hope is to concentrate it further in the\nState. I say the only hope is to unconcentrate it; that is, to repent\nand return; the only step forward is the step backward.\n\nBut in connection with this distribution I have laid myself open to\nanother potential mistake. In speaking of a sweeping redistribution,\nI speak of decision in the aim, not necessarily of abruptness in the\nmeans. It is not at all too late to restore an approximately rational\nstate of English possessions without any mere confiscation. A policy of\nbuying out landlordism, steadily adopted in England as it has already\nbeen adopted in Ireland (notably in Mr. Wyndham\u2019s wise and fruitful\nAct), would in a very short time release the lower end of the see-saw\nand make the whole plank swing more level. The objection to this course\nis not at all that it would not do, only that it will not be done. If\nwe leave things as they are, there will almost certainly be a crash of\nconfiscation. If we hesitate, we shall soon have to hurry. But if we\nstart doing it quickly we have still time to do it slowly.\n\nThis point, however, is not essential to my book. All I have to urge\nbetween these two boards is that I dislike the big Whiteley shop, and\nthat I dislike Socialism because it will (according to Socialists) be so\nlike that shop. It is its fulfilment, not its reversal. I do not object\nto Socialism because it will revolutionize our commerce, but because it\nwill leave it so horribly the same.\n\n\n\n\n\nEnd of Project Gutenberg\u2019s What\u2019s Wrong With The World, by G.K. Chesterton","title":"What's Wrong with the World","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":60128}