WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE WORLD
by G.K. Chesterton
CONTENTS
PART ONE: THE HOMELESSNESS OF MAN
I The Medical Mistake
II Wanted: An Unpractical Man
III The New Hypocrite
IV The Fear of the Past
V The Unfinished Temple
VI The Enemies of Property
VII The Free Family
XIII The Wildness of Domesticity
IX History of Hudge and Gudge
X Oppression by Optimism
XI The Homelessness of Jones
PART TWO: IMPERIALISM, OR THE MISTAKE ABOUT MAN
I The Charm of Jingoism
II Wisdom and the Weather
III The Common Vision
IV The Insane Necessity
PART THREE: FEMINISM, OR THE MISTAKE ABOUT WOMAN
I The Unmilitary Suffragette
II The Universal Stick
III The Emancipation of Domesticity
IV The Romance of Thrift
V The Coldness of Chloe
VI The Pedant and the Savage
VII The Modern Surrender of Woman
VIII The Brand of the Fleur-de-Lis
IX Sincerity and the Gallows
X The Higher Anarchy
XI The Queen and the Suffragettes
XII The Modern Slave
PART FOUR: EDUCATION, OR THE MISTAKE ABOUT THE CHILD
I The Calvinism of To-day
II The Tribal Terror
III The Tricks of Environment
IV The Truth About Education
V An Evil Cry
VI Authority the Unavoidable
VII The Humility of Mrs. Grundy
VIII The Broken Rainbow
IX The Need for Narrowness
X The Case for the Public Schools
XI The School for Hypocrites
XII The Staleness of the New Schools
XIII The Outlawed Parent
XIV Folly and Female Education
PART FIVE: THE HOME OF MAN
I The Empire of the Insect
II The Fallacy of the Umbrella Stand
III The Dreadful Duty of Gudge
IV A Last Instance
V Conclusion
THREE NOTES
I On Female Suffrage
II On Cleanliness in Education
III On Peasant Proprietorship
* * *
DEDICATION
To C. F G. Masterman, M. P.
My Dear Charles,
I originally called this book "What is Wrong," and it would
have satisfied your sardonic temper to note the number of social
misunderstandings that arose from the use of the title.
Many a mild lady visitor opened her eyes when I remarked casually,
"I have been doing 'What is Wrong' all this morning."
And one minister of religion moved quite sharply in his chair
when I told him (as he understood it) that I had to run upstairs
and do what was wrong, but should be down again in a minute.
Exactly of what occult vice they silently accused me I
cannot conjecture, but I know of what I accuse myself; and that is,
of having written a very shapeless and inadequate book, and one
quite unworthy to be dedicated to you. As far as literature goes,
this book is what is wrong and no mistake.
It may seem a refinement of insolence to present so wild
a composition to one who has recorded two or three of the really
impressive visions of the moving millions of England. You are
the only man alive who can make the map of England crawl with life;
a most creepy and enviable accomplishment. Why then should I
trouble you with a book which, even if it achieves its object
(which is monstrously unlikely) can only be a thundering
gallop of theory?
Well, I do it partly because I think you politicians are none
the worse for a few inconvenient ideals; but more because you
will recognise the many arguments we have had, those arguments
which the most wonderful ladies in the world can never endure
for very long. And, perhaps, you will agree with me that
the thread of comradeship and conversation must be protected
because it is so frivolous. It must be held sacred, it must
not be snapped, because it is not worth tying together again.
It is exactly because argument is idle that men (I mean males)
must take it seriously; for when (we feel), until the crack
of doom, shall we have so delightful a difference again?
But most of all I offer it to you because there exists not
only comradeship, but a very different thing, called friendship;
an agreement under all the arguments and a thread which,
please God, will never break.
Yours always,
G. K. Chesterton.
PART ONE
THE HOMELESSNESS OF MAN
THE MEDICAL MISTAKE
A book of modern social inquiry has a shape that is somewhat
sharply defined. It begins as a rule with an analysis, with statistics,
tables of population, decrease of crime among Congregationalists,
growth of hysteria among policemen, and similar ascertained facts;
it ends with a chapter that is generally called "The Remedy." It is
almost wholly due to this careful, solid, and scientific method
that "The Remedy" is never found. For this scheme of medical question
and answer is a blunder; the first great blunder of sociology.
It is always called stating the disease before we find the cure.
But it is the whole definition and dignity of man that in social
matters we must actually find the cure before we find the disease .
The fallacy is one of the fifty fallacies that come from the modern
madness for biological or bodily metaphors. It is convenient
to speak of the Social Organism, just as it is convenient to
speak of the British Lion. But Britain is no more an organism
than Britain is a lion. The moment we begin to give a nation
the unity and simplicity of an animal, we begin to think wildly.
Because every man is a biped, fifty men are not a centipede.
This has produced, for instance, the gaping absurdity of
perpetually talking about "young nations" and "dying nations,"
as if a nation had a fixed and physical span of life.
Thus people will say that Spain has entered a final senility;
they might as well say that Spain is losing all her teeth.
Or people will say that Canada should soon produce a literature;
which is like saying that Canada must soon grow a new moustache.
Nations consist of people; the first generation may
be decrepit, or the ten thousandth may be vigorous.
Similar applications of the fallacy are made by those who see
in the increasing size of national possessions, a simple
increase in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.
These people, indeed, even fall short in subtlety of the parallel
of a human body. They do not even ask whether an empire is growing
taller in its youth, or only growing fatter in its old age.
But of all the instances of error arising from this
physical fancy, the worst is that we have before us:
the habit of exhaustively describing a social sickness,
and then propounding a social drug.
Now we do talk first about the disease in cases of bodily breakdown;
and that for an excellent reason. Because, though there may be doubt
about the way in which the body broke down, there is no doubt at all
about the shape in which it should be built up again. No doctor proposes
to produce a new kind of man, with a new arrangement of eyes or limbs.
The hospital, by necessity, may send a man home with one leg less:
but it will not (in a creative rapture) send him home with one leg extra.
Medical science is content with the normal human body, and only seeks
to restore it.
But social science is by no means always content with the normal
human soul; it has all sorts of fancy souls for sale. Man as a
social idealist will say "I am tired of being a Puritan; I want
to be a Pagan," or "Beyond this dark probation of Individualism I
see the shining paradise of Collectivism." Now in bodily ills
there is none of this difference about the ultimate ideal.
The patient may or may not want quinine; but he certainly
wants health No one says "I am tired of this headache;
I want some toothache," or "The only thing for this Russian
influenza is a few German measles," or "Through this dark
probation of catarrh I see the shining paradise of rheumatism."
But exactly the whole difficulty in our public problems
is that some men are aiming at cures which other men would
regard as worse maladies; are offering ultimate conditions
as states of health which others would uncompromisingly
call states of disease. Mr. Belloc once said that he would
no more part with the idea of property than with his teeth;
yet to Mr. Bernard Shaw property is not a tooth, but a toothache.
Lord Milner has sincerely attempted to introduce German efficiency;
and many of us would as soon welcome German measles.
Dr. Saleeby would honestly like to have Eugenics; but I would
rather have rheumatics.
This is the arresting and dominant fact about modern
social discussion; that the quarrel is not merely about
the difficulties, but about the aim. We agree about the evil;
it is about the good that we should tear each other's eyes cut.
We all admit that a lazy aristocracy is a bad thing.
We should not by any means all admit that an active aristocracy would
be a good thing. We all feel angry with an irreligious priesthood;
but some of us would go mad with disgust at a really religious one.
Everyone is indignant if our army is weak, including the people
who would be even more indignant if it were strong.
The social case is exactly the opposite of the medical case.
We do not disagree, like doctors, about the precise nature
of the illness, while agreeing about the nature of health.
On the contrary, we all agree that England is unhealthy, but half
of us would not look at her in what the other half would call blooming
health . Public abuses are so prominent and pestilent that they
sweep all generous people into a sort of fictitious unanimity.
We forget that, while we agree about the abuses of things,
we should differ very much about the uses of them.
Mr. Cadbury and I would agree about the bad public house.
It would be precisely in front of the good public-house that our
painful personal fracas would occur.
I maintain, therefore, that the common sociological method
is quite useless: that of first dissecting abject poverty
or cataloguing prostitution. We all dislike abject poverty;
but it might be another business if we began to discuss independent
and dignified poverty. We all disapprove of prostitution;
but we do not all approve of purity. The only way to discuss
the social evil is to get at once to the social ideal.
We can all see the national madness; but what is national sanity?
I have called this book "What Is Wrong with the World?"
and the upshot of the title can be easily and clearly stated.
What is wrong is that we do not ask what is right.
II
WANTED, AN UNPRACTICAL MAN
There is a popular philosophical joke intended to typify
the endless and useless arguments of philosophers; I mean
the joke about which came first, the chicken or the egg?
I am not sure that properly understood, it is so futile an inquiry
after all. I am not concerned here to enter on those deep
metaphysical and theological differences of which the chicken
and egg debate is a frivolous, but a very felicitous, type.
The evolutionary materialists are appropriately enough
represented in the vision of all things coming from an egg,
a dim and monstrous oval germ that had laid itself by accident.
That other supernatural school of thought (to which I
personally adhere) would be not unworthily typified in the fancy
that this round world of ours is but an egg brooded upon
by a sacred unbegotten bird; the mystic dove of the prophets.
But it is to much humbler functions that I here call the awful
power of such a distinction. Whether or no the living bird
is at the beginning of our mental chain, it is absolutely
necessary that it should be at the end of our mental chain.
The bird is the thing to be aimed at--not with a gun, but a
life-bestowing wand. What is essential to our right thinking is this:
that the egg and the bird must not be thought of as equal cosmic
occurrences recurring alternatively forever. They must not become
a mere egg and bird pattern, like the egg and dart pattern. One is
a means and the other an end; they are in different mental worlds.
Leaving the complications of the human breakfast-table out
of account, in an elemental sense, the egg only exists to produce
the chicken. But the chicken does not exist only in order
to produce another egg. He may also exist to amuse himself,
to praise God, and even to suggest ideas to a French dramatist.
Being a conscious life, he is, or may be, valuable in himself.
Now our modern politics are full of a noisy forgetfulness;
forgetfulness that the production of this happy and conscious
life is after all the aim of all complexities and compromises.
We talk of nothing but useful men and working institutions; that is,
we only think of the chickens as things that will lay more eggs.
Instead of seeking to breed our ideal bird, the eagle
of Zeus or the Swan of Avon, or whatever we happen to want,
we talk entirely in terms of the process and the embryo.
The process itself, divorced from its divine object, becomes doubtful
and even morbid; poison enters the embryo of everything;
and our politics are rotten eggs.
Idealism is only considering everything in its practical essence.
Idealism only means that we should consider a poker in reference
to poking before we discuss its suitability for wife-beating;
that we should ask if an egg is good enough for practical
poultry-rearing before we decide that the egg is bad enough
for practical politics. But I know that this primary pursuit
of the theory (which is but pursuit of the aim) exposes one
to the cheap charge of fiddling while Rome is burning.
A school, of which Lord Rosebery is representative, has endeavored
to substitute for the moral or social ideals which have hitherto
been the motive of politics a general coherency or completeness
in the social system which has gained the nick-name of "efficiency."
I am not very certain of the secret doctrine of this sect in the matter.
But, as far as I can make out, "efficiency" means that we ought
to discover everything about a machine except what it is for.
There has arisen in our time a most singular fancy:
the fancy that when things go very wrong we need a practical man.
It would be far truer to say, that when things go very wrong we
need an unpractical man. Certainly, at least, we need a theorist.
A practical man means a man accustomed to mere daily practice,
to the way things commonly work. When things will not work,
you must have the thinker, the man who has some doctrine about why
they work at all. It is wrong to fiddle while Rome is burning;
but it is quite right to study the theory of hydraulics while
Rome is burning.
It is then necessary to drop one's daily agnosticism
and attempt rerum cognoscere causas. If your aeroplane
has a slight indisposition, a handy man may mend it.
But, if it is seriously ill, it is all the more likely that some
absent-minded old professor with wild white hair will have to be
dragged out of a college or laboratory to analyze the evil.
The more complicated the smash, the whiter-haired and more
absent-minded will be the theorist who is needed to deal with it;
and in some extreme cases, no one but the man (probably insane)
who invented your flying-ship could possibly say what was
the matter with it.
"Efficiency," of course, is futile for the same reason
that strong men, will-power and the superman are futile.
That is, it is futile because it only deals with actions after
they have been performed. It has no philosophy for incidents
before they happen; therefore it has no power of choice.
An act can only be successful or unsuccessful when it is over;
if it is to begin, it must be, in the abstract, right or wrong.
There is no such thing as backing a winner; for he cannot be a
winner when he is backed. There is no such thing as fighting on
the winning side; one fights to find out which is the winning side.
If any operation has occurred, that operation was efficient.
If a man is murdered, the murder was efficient. A tropical
sun is as efficient in making people lazy as a Lancashire
foreman bully in making them energetic. Maeterlinck is
as efficient in filling a man with strange spiritual tremors
as Messrs. Crosse and Blackwell are in filling a man with jam.
But it all depends on what you want to be filled with.
Lord Rosebery, being a modern skeptic, probably prefers the
spiritual tremors. I, being an orthodox Christian, prefer the jam.
But both are efficient when they have been effected; and inefficient
until they are effected. A man who thinks much about success must
be the drowsiest sentimentalist; for he must be always looking back.
If he only likes victory he must always come late for the battle.
For the man of action there is nothing but idealism.
This definite ideal is a far more urgent and practical matter in our
existing English trouble than any immediate plans or proposals.
For the present chaos is due to a sort of general oblivion
of all that men were originally aiming at. No man demands
what he desires; each man demands what he fancies he can get.
Soon people forget what the man really wanted first; and after
a successful and vigorous political life, he forgets it himself.
The whole is an extravagant riot of second bests, a pandemonium
of pis-aller. Now this sort of pliability does not merely prevent any
heroic consistency, it also prevents any really practical compromise.
One can only find the middle distance between two point...
PanavPaul