WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE WORLD

by G.K. Chesterton



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


I  THE CHARM OF JINGOISM

I have cast about widely to find a title for this section; and I confess
that the word "Imperialism" is a clumsy version of my meaning. But no
other word came nearer; "Militarism" would have been even more misleading,
and "The Superman" makes nonsense of any discussion that he enters.
Perhaps, upon the whole, the word "Caesarism" would have been better;
but I desire a popular word; and Imperialism (as the reader will perceive)
does cover for the most part the men and theories that I mean to discuss.

This small confusion is increased, however, by the fact that I
do also disbelieve in Imperialism in its popular sense,
as a mode or theory of the patriotic sentiment of this country.
But popular Imperialism in England has very little to do
with the sort of Caesarean Imperialism I wish to sketch.
I differ from the Colonial idealism of Rhodes' and Kipling;
but I do not think, as some of its opponents do, that it
is an insolent creation of English harshness and rapacity.
Imperialism, I think, is a fiction created, not by English hardness,
but by English softness; nay, in a sense, even by English kindness.

The reasons for believing in Australia are mostly as sentimental
as the most sentimental reasons for believing in heaven.
New South Wales is quite literally regarded as a place where the wicked
cease from troubling and the weary are at rest; that is, a paradise
for uncles who have turned dishonest and for nephews who are born tired.
British Columbia is in strict sense a fairyland, it is a world where
a magic and irrational luck is supposed to attend the youngest sons.
This strange optimism about the ends of the earth is an English weakness;
but to show that it is not a coldness or a harshness it is quite
sufficient to say that no one shared it more than that gigantic
English sentimentalist--the great Charles Dickens. The end
of "David Copperfield" is unreal not merely because it is an
optimistic ending, but because it is an Imperialistic ending.
The decorous British happiness planned out for David Copperfield and Agnes
would be embarrassed by the perpetual presence of the hopeless tragedy
of Emily, or the more hopeless farce of Micawber. Therefore, both Emily
and Micawber are shipped off to a vague colony where changes
come over them with no conceivable cause, except the climate.
The tragic woman becomes contented and the comic man becomes responsible,
solely as the result of a sea voyage and the first sight of a kangaroo.

To Imperialism in the light political sense, therefore, my only
objection is that it is an illusion of comfort; that an Empire whose
heart is failing should be specially proud of the extremities,
is to me no more sublime a fact than that an old dandy whose
brain is gone should still be proud of his legs. It consoles men
for the evident ugliness and apathy of England with legends of fair
youth and heroic strenuousness in distant continents and islands.
A man can sit amid the squalor of Seven Dials and feel that
life is innocent and godlike in the bush or on the veldt.
Just so a man might sit in the squalor of Seven Dials and feel that
life was innocent and godlike in Brixton and Surbiton. Brixton and
Surbiton are "new"; they are expanding; they are "nearer to nature,"
in the sense that they have eaten up nature mile by mile.
The only objection is the objection of fact. The young men of Brixton
are not young giants. The lovers of Surbiton are not all pagan poets,
singing with the sweet energy of the spring. Nor are the people
of the Colonies when you meet them young giants or pagan poets.
They are mostly Cockneys who have lost their last music of real things
by getting out of the sound of Bow Bells. Mr. Rudyard Kipling,
a man of real though decadent genius, threw a theoretic glamour
over them which is already fading. Mr. Kipling is, in a precise
and rather startling sense, the exception that proves the rule.
For he has imagination, of an oriental and cruel kind, but he has it,
not because he grew up in a new country, but precisely because he grew
up in the oldest country upon earth. He is rooted in a past--
an Asiatic past. He might never have written "Kabul River"
if he had been born in Melbourne.

I say frankly, therefore (lest there should be any air of evasion),
that Imperialism in its common patriotic pretensions appears to me both
weak and perilous. It is the attempt of a European country to create
a kind of sham Europe which it can dominate, instead of the real Europe,
which it can only share. It is a love of living with one's inferiors.
The notion of restoring the Roman Empire by oneself and for oneself
is a dream that has haunted every Christian nation in a different shape
and in almost every shape as a snare. The Spanish are a consistent
and conservative people; therefore they embodied that attempt at Empire
in long and lingering dynasties. The French are a violent people,
and therefore they twice conquered that Empire by violence of arms.
The English are above all a poetical and optimistic people;
and therefore their Empire is something vague and yet sympathetic,
something distant and yet dear. But this dream of theirs of being
powerful in the uttermost places, though a native weakness, is still
a weakness in them; much more of a weakness than gold was to Spain
or glory to Napoleon. If ever we were in collision with our real
brothers and rivals we should leave all this fancy out of account.
We should no more dream of pitting Australian armies against German than
of pitting Tasmanian sculpture against French. I have thus explained,
lest anyone should accuse me of concealing an unpopular attitude,
why I do not believe in Imperialism as commonly understood.
I think it not merely an occasional wrong to other peoples,
but a continuous feebleness, a running sore, in my own.
But it is also true that I have dwelt on this Imperialism that is
an amiable delusion partly in order to show how different it is from
the deeper, more sinister and yet more persuasive thing that I have
been forced to call Imperialism for the convenience of this chapter.
In order to get to the root of this evil and quite un-English Imperialism
we must cast back and begin anew with a more general discussion
of the first needs of human intercourse.

* * *

II WISDOM AND THE WEATHER

It is admitted, one may hope, that common things are never commonplace.
Birth is covered with curtains precisely because it is a staggering
and monstrous prodigy. Death and first love, though they happen
to everybody, can stop one's heart with the very thought of them.
But while this is granted, something further may be claimed.
It is not merely true that these universal things are strange;
it is moreover true that they are subtle. In the last analysis
most common things will be found to be highly complicated.
Some men of science do indeed get over the difficulty by dealing
only with the easy part of it: thus, they will call first
love the instinct of sex, and the awe of death the instinct
of self-preservation. But this is only getting over the difficulty
of describing peacock green by calling it blue. There is blue in it.
That there is a strong physical element in both romance and
the Memento Mori makes them if possible more baffling than if they
had been wholly intellectual. No man could say exactly how much
his sexuality was colored by a clean love of beauty, or by the mere
boyish itch for irrevocable adventures, like running away to sea.
No man could say how far his animal dread of the end was mixed
up with mystical traditions touching morals and religion.
It is exactly because these things are animal, but not
quite animal, that the dance of all the difficulties begins.
The materialists analyze the easy part, deny the hard part and go
home to their tea.

It is complete error to suppose that because a thing is vulgar
therefore it is not refined; that is, subtle and hard to define.
A drawing-room song of my youth which began "In the gloaming,
O, my darling," was vulgar enough as a song; but the connection
between human passion and the twilight is none the less an exquisite
and even inscrutable thing. Or to take another obvious instance:
the jokes about a mother-in-law are scarcely delicate,
but the problem of a mother-in-law is extremely delicate.
A mother-in-law is subtle because she is a thing like the twilight.
She is a mystical blend of two inconsistent things--
law and a mother. The caricatures misrepresent her;
but they arise out of a real human enigma. "Comic Cuts"
deals with the difficulty wrongly, but it would need
George Meredith at his best to deal with the difficulty rightly.
The nearest statement of the problem perhaps is this:
it is not that a mother-in-law must be nasty, but that she must
be very nice.

But it is best perhaps to take in illustration some daily
custom we have all heard despised as vulgar or trite.
Take, for the sake of argument, the custom of talking about
the weather. Stevenson calls it "the very nadir and scoff
of good conversationalists." Now there are very deep reasons
for talking about the weather, reasons that are delicate as well
as deep; they lie in layer upon layer of stratified sagacity.
First of all it is a gesture of primeval worship.
The sky must be invoked; and to begin everything with the weather
is a sort of pagan way of beginning everything with prayer.
Jones and Brown talk about the weather: but so do Milton
and Shelley. Then it is an expression of that elementary
idea in politeness--equality. For the very word politeness
is only the Greek for citizenship. The word politeness is akin
to the word policeman: a charming thought. Properly understood,
the citizen should be more polite than the gentleman; perhaps the
policeman should be the most courtly and elegant of the three.
But all good manners must obviously begin with the sharing of
something in a simple style. Two men should share an umbrella;
if they have not got an umbrella, they should at least share
the rain, with all its rich potentialities of wit and philosophy.
"For He maketh His sun to shine...." This is the second element
in the weather; its recognition of human equality in that we all have
our hats under the dark blue spangled umbrella of the universe.
Arising out of this is the third wholesome strain in the custom;
I mean that it begins with the body and with our inevitable
bodily brotherhood. All true friendliness begins with fire
and food and drink and the recognition of rain or frost.
Those who will not begin at the bodily end of things are already
prigs and may soon be Christian Scientists. Each human soul
has in a sense to enact for itself the gigantic humility
of the Incarnation. Every man must descend into the flesh
to meet mankind.

Briefly, in the mere observation "a fine day" there is the whole
great human idea of comradeship. Now, pure comradeship is another
of those broad and yet bewildering things. We all enjoy it;
yet when we come to talk about it we almost always talk nonsense,
chiefly because we suppose it to be a simpler affair than it is.
It is simple to conduct; but it is by no means simple to analyze.
Comradeship is at the most only one half of human life;
the other half is Love, a thing so different that one might fancy
it had been made for another universe. And I do not mean mere
sex love; any kind of concentrated passion, maternal love,
or even the fiercer kinds of friendship are in their nature alien
to pure comradeship. Both sides are essential to life; and both
are known in differing degrees to everybody of every age or sex.
But very broadly speaking it may still be said that women stand
for the dignity of love and men for the dignity of comradeship.
I mean that the institution would hardly be expected if the males
of the tribe did not mount guard over it. The affections
in which women excel have so much more authority and intensity
that pure comradeship would be washed away if it were not rallied
and guarded in clubs, corps, colleges, banquets and regiments.
Most of us have heard the voice in which the hostess tells her
husband not to sit too long over the cigars. It is the dreadful
voice of Love, seeking to destroy Comradeship.

All true comradeship has in it those three elements which I have
remarked in the ordinary exclamation about the weather. First, it has
a sort of broad philosophy like the common sky, emphasizing that we
are all under the same cosmic conditions. We are all in the same boat,
the "winged rock" of Mr. Herbert Trench. Secondly, it recognizes
this bond as the essential one; for comradeship is simply
humanity seen in that one aspect in which men are really equal.
The old writers were entirely wise when they talked of the equality
of men; but they were also very wise in not mentioning women.
Women are always authoritarian; they are always above or below;
that is why marriage is a sort of poetical see-saw. There are
only three things in the world that women do not understand;
and they are Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. But men (a class
little understood in the modern world) find these things the breath
of their nostrils; and our most learned ladies will not even begin
to understand them until they make allowance for this kind of
cool camaraderie. Lastly, it contains the third quality of the weather,
the insistence upon the body and its indispensable satisfaction.
No one has even begun to understand comradeship who does not accept
with it a certain hearty eagerness in eating, drinking, or smoking,
an uproarious materialism which to many women appears only hoggish.
You may call the thing an orgy or a sacrament; it is certainly
an essential. It is at root a resistance to the superciliousness
of the individual. Nay, its very swaggering and howling are humble.
In the heart of its rowdiness there is a sort of mad modesty; a desire
to melt the separate soul into the mass of unpretentious masculinity.
It is a clamorous confession of the weakness of all flesh.
No man must be superior to the things that are common to men.
This sort of equality must be bodily and gross and comic.
Not only are we all in the same boat, but we are all seasick.

The word comradeship just now promises to become as fatuous as
the word "affinity." There are clubs of a Socialist sort where all
the members, men and women, call each other "Comrade." I have no
serious emotions, hostile or otherwise, about this particular habit:
at the worst it is conventionality, and at the best flirtation.
I am convinced here only to point out a rational principle.
If you choose to lump all flowers together, lilies and dahlias
and tulips and chrysanthemums and call them all daisies,
you will find that you have spoiled the very fine word daisy.
If you choose to call every human attachment comradeship,
if you include under that name the respect of a youth for a
venerable prophetess, the interest of a man in a beautiful woman
who baffles him, the pleasure of a philosophical old fogy in a girl
who is impudent and innocent, the end of the meanest quarrel
or the beginning of the most mountainous love; if you are going
to call all these comradeship, you will gain nothing, you will
only lose a word. Daisies are obvious and universal and open;
but they are only one kind of flower. Comradeship is obvious
and universal and open; but it is only one kind of affection;
it has characteristics that would destroy any other kind.
Anyone who has known true comradeship in a club or in a regiment,
knows that it is impersonal. There is a pedantic phrase used
in debating clubs which is strictly true to the masculine emotion;
they call it "speaking to the question." Women speak to each other;
men speak to the subject they are speaking about. Many an honest
man has sat in a ring of his five best friends under heaven
and forgotten who was in the room while he explained some system.
This is not peculiar to intellectual men; men are all theoretical,
whether they are talking about God or about golf.
Men are all impersonal; that is to say, republican. No one
remembers after a really good talk who has said the good things.
Every man speaks to a visionary multitude; a mystical cloud,
that is called the club.

It is obvious that this cool and careless quality which is essential
to the collective affection of males involves disadvantages and dangers.
It leads to spitting; it leads to coarse speech; it must lead to
these things so long as it is honorable; comradeship must be in some
degree ugly. The moment beauty is mentioned in male friendship,
the nostrils are stopped with the smell of abominable things.
Friendship must be physically dirty if it is to be morally clean.
It must be in its shirt sleeves. The chaos of habits that always goes
with males when left entirely to themselves has only one honorable cure;
and that is the strict discipline of a monastery. Anyone who has
seen our unhappy young idealists in East End Settlements losing their
collars in the wash and living on tinned salmon will fully understand
why it was decided by the wisdom of St. Bernard or St. Benedict,
that if men were to live without women, they must not live without rules.
Something of the same sort of artificial exactitude, of course,
is obtained in an army; and an army also has to be in many ways monastic;
only that it has celibacy without chastity. But these things do not
apply to normal married men. These have a quite sufficient restraint
on their instinctive anarchy in the savage common-sense of the other sex.
There is only one very timid sort of man that is not afraid of women.

* * *

III THE COMMON VISION

Now this masculine love of an open and level camaraderie is
the life within all democracies and attempts to govern by debate;
without it the republic would be a dead formula. Even as it is,
of course, the spirit of democracy frequently differs widely
from the letter, and a pothouse is often a better test than
a Parliament. Democracy in its human sense is not arbitrament
by the majority; it is not even arbitrament by everybody.
It can be more nearly defined as arbitrament by anybody.
I mean that it rests on that club habit of taking a total
stranger for granted, of assuming certain things to be inevitably
common to yourself and him. Only the things that anybody
may be presumed to hold have the full authority of democracy.
Look out of the window and notice the first man who walks by.
The Liberals may have swept England with an over-whelming majority;
but you would not stake a button that the man is a Liberal. The Bible
may be read in all schools and respected in all law courts; but you
would not bet a straw that he believes in the Bible. But you would bet
your week's wages, let us say, that he believes in wearing clothes.
You would bet that he believes that physical courage is a fine thing,
or that parents have authority over children. Of course,
he might be the millionth man who does not believe these things;
if it comes to that, he might be the Bearded Lady dressed up as a man.
But these prodigies are quite a different thing from any mere
calculation of numbers. People who hold these views are not a minority,
but a monstrosity. But of these universal dogmas that have full
democratic authority the only test is this test of anybody.
What you would observe before any newcomer in a tavern--that is
the real English law. The first man you see from the window,
he is the King of England.

The decay of taverns, which is but a part of the general decay
of democracy, has undoubtedly weakened this masculine spirit
of equality. I remember that a roomful of Socialists literally
laughed when I told them that there were no two nobler words
in all poetry than Public House. They thought it was a joke.
Why they should think it a joke, since they want to make all houses
public houses, I cannot imagine. But if anyone wishes to see
the real rowdy egalitarianism which is necessary (to males, at least)
he can find it as well as anywhere in the great old tavern disputes
which come down to us in such books as Boswell's Johnson. It is
worth while to mention that one name especially because the modern
world in its morbidity has done it a strange injustice.
The demeanor of Johnson, it is said, was "harsh and despotic."
It was occasionally harsh, but it was never despotic.
Johnson was not in the least a despot; Johnson was a demagogue,
he shouted against a shouting crowd. The very fact that he wrangled
with other people is proof that other people were allowed
to wrangle with him. His very brutality was based on the idea
of an equal scrimmage, like that of football. It is strictly true
that he bawled and banged the table because he was a modest man.
He was honestly afraid of being overwhelmed or even overlooked.
Addison had exquisite manners and was the king of his company;
he was polite to everybody; but superior to everybody;
therefore he has been handed down forever in the immortal
insult of Pope--

"Like Cato, give his little Senate laws And sit attentive
to his own applause."

Johnson, so far from being king of his company, was a sort of Irish Member
in his own Parliament. Addison was a courteous superior and was hated.
Johnson was an insolent equal and therefore was loved by all who knew him,
and handed down in a marvellous book, which is one of the mere
miracles of love.

This doctrine of equality is essential to conversation;
so much may be admitted by anyone who knows what conversation is.
Once arguing at a table in a tavern the most famous man on
earth would wish to be obscure, so that his brilliant remarks
might blaze like the stars on the background of his obscurity.
To anything worth calling a man nothing can be conceived
more cold or cheerless than to be king of your company.
But it may be said that in masculine sports and games, other than
the great game of debate, there is definite emulation and eclipse.
There is indeed emulation, but this is only an ardent sort
of equality. Games are competitive, because that is the only
way of making them exciting. But if anyone doubts that men
must forever return to the ideal of equality, it is only
necessary to answer that there is such a thing as a handicap.
If men exulted in mere superiority, they would seek to see
how far such superiority could go; they would be glad
when one strong runner came in miles ahead of all the rest.
But what men like is not the triumph of superiors,
but the struggle of equals; and, therefore, they introduce
even into their competitive sports an artificial equality.
It is sad to think how few of those who arrange our sporting
handicaps can be supposed with any probability to realize
that they are abstract and even severe republicans.

No; the real objection to equality and self-rule has nothing to do with
any of these free and festive aspects of mankind; all men are democrats
when they are happy. The philosophic opponent of democracy would
substantially sum up his position by saying that it "will not work."
Before going further, I will register in passing a protest
against the assumption that working is the one test of humanity.
Heaven does not work; it plays. Men are most themselves when they
are free; and if I find that men are snobs in their work but democrats
on their holidays, I shall take the liberty to believe their holidays.
But it is this question of work which really perplexes the question
of equality; and it is with that that we must now deal.
Perhaps the truth can be put most pointedly thus: that democracy
has one real enemy, and that is civilization. Those utilitarian
miracles which science has made are anti-democratic, not so much
in their perversion, or even in their practical result, as in their
primary shape and purpose. The Frame-Breaking Rioters were right;
not perhaps in thinking that machines would make fewer men workmen;
but certainly in thinking that machines would make fewer men masters.
More wheels do mean fewer handles; fewer handles do mean fewer hands.
The machinery of science must be individualistic and isolated.
A mob can shout round a palace; but a mob cannot shout down a telephone.
The specialist appears and democracy is half spoiled at a stroke.

* * *

IV THE INSANE NECESSITY

The common conception among the dregs of Darwinian culture
is that men have slowly worked their way out of inequality
into a state of comparative equality. The truth is, I fancy,
almost exactly the opposite. All men have normally and naturally
begun with the idea of equality; they have only abandoned it late
and reluctantly, and always for some material reason of detail.
They have never naturally felt that one class of men was superior
to another; they have always been driven to assume it through
certain practical limitations of space and time.

For example, there is one element which must always tend
to oligarchy--or rather to despotism; I mean the element of hurry.
If the house has caught fire a man must ring up the fire engines;
a committee cannot ring them up. If a camp is surprised by night
somebody must give the order to fire; there is no time to vote it.
It is solely a question of the physical limitations of time and space;
not at all of any mental limitations in the mass of men commanded.
If all the people in the house were men of destiny it would
still be better that they should not all talk into the telephone
at once; nay, it would be better that the silliest man of all should
speak uninterrupted. If an army actually consisted of nothing
but Hanibals and Napoleons, it would still be better in the case
of a surprise that they should not all give orders together.
Nay, it would be better if the stupidest of them all gave the orders.
Thus, we see that merely military subordination, so far from resting
on the inequality of men, actually rests on the equality of men.
Discipline does not involve the Carlylean notion that somebody
is always right when everybody is wrong, and that we must discover
and crown that somebody. On the contrary, discipline means that
in certain frightfully rapid circumstances, one can trust anybody
so long as he is not everybody. The military spirit does not mean
(as Carlyle fancied) obeying the strongest and wisest man.
On the contrary, the military spirit means, if anything, obeying the
weakest and stupidest man, obeying him merely because he is a man,
and not a thousand men. Submission to a weak man is discipline.
Submission to a strong man is only servility.

Now it can be easily shown that the thing we call aristocracy
in Europe is not in its origin and spirit an aristocracy at all.
It is not a system of spiritual degrees and distinctions like,
for example, the caste system of India, or even like the old Greek
distinction between free men and slaves. It is simply the remains
of a military organization, framed partly to sustain the sinking
Roman Empire, partly to break and avenge the awful onslaught
of Islam. The word Duke simply means Colonel, just as the word
Emperor simply means Commander-in-Chief. The whole story is told
in the single title of Counts of the Holy Roman Empire, which merely
means officers in the European army against the contemporary
Yellow Peril. Now in an army nobody ever dreams of supposing
that difference of rank represents a difference of moral reality.
Nobody ever says about a regiment, "Your Major is very humorous
and energetic; your Colonel, of course, must be even more
humorous and yet more energetic " No one ever says, in reporting
a mess-room conversation, "Lieutenant Jones was very witty,
but was naturally inferior to Captain Smith." The essence of an army
is the idea of official inequality, founded on unofficial equality.
The Colonel is not obeyed because he is the best man, but because he is
the Colonel. Such was probably the spirit of the system of dukes
and counts when it first arose out of the military spirit and military
necessities of Rome. With the decline of those necessities it
has gradually ceased to have meaning as a military organization,
and become honeycombed with unclean plutocracy. Even now it
is not a spiritual aristocracy--it is not so bad as all that.
It is simply an army without an enemy--billeted upon the people.

Man, therefore, has a specialist as well as comrade-like aspect;
and the case of militarism is not the only case of such
specialist submission. The tinker and tailor, as well as the soldier
and sailor, require a certain rigidity of rapidity of action:
at least, if the tinker is not organized that is largely why he does
not tink on any large scale. The tinker and tailor often represent
the two nomadic races in Europe: the Gipsy and the Jew; but the Jew
alone has influence because he alone accepts some sort of discipline.
Man, we say, has two sides, the specialist side where he must
have subordination, and the social side where he must have equality.
There is a truth in the saying that ten tailors go to make a man;
but we must remember also that ten Poets Laureate or ten Astronomers Royal
go to make a man, too. Ten million tradesmen go to make Man himself;
but humanity consists of tradesmen when they are not talking shop.
Now the peculiar peril of our time, which I call for argument's sake
Imperialism or Caesarism, is the complete eclipse of comradeship
and equality by specialism and domination.

There are only two kinds of social structure conceivable--
personal government and impersonal government. If my
anarchic friends will not have rules--they will have rulers.
Preferring personal government, with its tact and flexibility,
is called Royalism. Preferring impersonal government,
with its dogmas and definitions, is called Republicanism.
Objecting broadmindedly both to kings and creeds is called Bosh;
at least, I know no more philosophic word for it. You can
be guided by the shrewdness or presence of mind of one ruler,
or by the equality and ascertained justice of one rule; but you must
have one or the other, or you are not a nation, but a nasty mess.
Now men in their aspect of equality and debate adore the idea
of rules; they develop and complicate them greatly to excess.
A man finds far more regulations and definitions in his club,
where there are rules, than in his home, where there is a ruler.
A deliberate assembly, the House of Commons, for instance,
carries this mummery to the point of a methodical madness.
The whole system is stiff with rigid unreason;
like the Royal Court in Lewis Carroll. You would think
the Speaker would speak; therefore he is mostly silent.
You would think a man would take off his hat to stop and put
it on to go away; therefore he takes off his hat to walk out
and puts in on to stop in. Names are forbidden, and a man
must call his own father "my right honorable friend the member
for West Birmingham." These are, perhaps, fantasies of decay:
but fundamentally they answer a masculine appetite.
Men feel that rules, even if irrational, are universal;
men feel that law is equal, even when it is not equitable.
There is a wild fairness in the thing--as there is in tossing up.

Again, it is gravely unfortunate that when critics do attack
such cases as the Commons it is always on the points
(perhaps the few points) where the Commons are right.
They denounce the House as the Talking-Shop, and complain that it
wastes time in wordy mazes. Now this is just one respect in
which the Commons are actually like the Common People. If they
love leisure and long debate, it is be cause all men love it;
that they really represent England. There the Parliament does
approach to the virile virtues of the pothouse.

The real truth is that adumbrated in the introductory section
when we spoke of the sense of home and property, as now we speak
of the sense of counsel and community. All men do naturally
love the idea of leisure, laughter, loud and equal argument;
but there stands a specter in our hall. We are conscious
of the towering modern challenge that is called specialism
or cut-throat competition--Business. Business will have nothing
to do with leisure; business will have no truck with comradeship;
business will pretend to no patience with all the legal
fictions and fantastic handicaps by which comradeship protects
its egalitarian ideal. The modern millionaire, when engaged
in the agreeable and typical task of sacking his own father,
will certainly not refer to him as the right honorable clerk from
the Laburnum Road, Brixton. Therefore there has arisen in modern
life a literary fashion devoting itself to the romance of business,
to great demigods of greed and to fairyland of finance.
This popular philosophy is utterly despotic and anti-democratic;
this fashion is the flower of that Caesarism against which I am
concerned to protest. The ideal millionaire is strong in the
possession of a brain of steel. The fact that the real millionaire
is rather more often strong in the possession of a head of wood,
does not alter the spirit and trend of the idolatry. The essential
argument is "Specialists must be despots; men must be specialists.
You cannot have equality in a soap factory; so you cannot have
it anywhere. You cannot have comradeship in a wheat corner;
so you cannot hare it at all. We must have commercial civilization;
therefore we must destroy democracy." I know that plutocrats hare
seldom sufficient fancy to soar to such examples as soap or wheat.
They generally confine themselves, with fine freshness of mind,
to a comparison between the state and a ship. One anti-democratic
writer remarked that he would not like to sail in a vessel
in which the cabin-boy had an equal vote with the captain.
It might easily be urged in answer that many a ship (the Victoria,
for instance) was sunk because an admiral gave an order which a
cabin-boy could see was wrong. But this is a debating reply;
the essential fallacy is both deeper and simpler. The elementary fact
is that we were all born in a state; we were not all born on a ship;
like some of our great British bankers. A ship still remains
a specialist experiment, like a diving-bell or a flying ship:
in such peculiar perils the need for promptitude constitutes the need
for autocracy. But we live and die in the vessel of the state;
and if we cannot find freedom camaraderie and the popular element
in the state, we cannot find it at all. And the modern doctrine
of commercial despotism means that we shall not find it at all.
Our specialist trades in their highly civilized state cannot
(it says) be run without the whole brutal business of bossing
and sacking, "too old at forty" and all the rest of the filth.
And they must be run, and therefore we call on Caesar. Nobody but
the Superman could descend to do such dirty work.

Now (to reiterate my title) this is what is wrong. This is the huge
modern heresy of altering the human soul to fit its conditions,
instead of altering human conditions to fit the human soul.
If soap boiling is really inconsistent with brotherhood,
so much the worst for soap-boiling, not for brotherhood.
If civilization really cannot get on with democracy, so much
the worse for civilization, not for democracy. Certainly, it would
be far better to go back to village communes, if they really
are communes. Certainly, it would be better to do without soap
rather than to do without society. Certainly, we would sacrifice
all our wires, wheels, systems, specialties, physical science
and frenzied finance for one half-hour of happiness such
as has often come to us with comrades in a common tavern.
I do not say the sacrifice will be necessary; I only say it
will be easy.

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