Books: A Miscellany of Men
G >>
G. K. Chesterton >> A Miscellany of Men
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 | 10 |
11 |
12
I did not know they were furniture-vans; at the first glance and in the
smoky distance I thought they were a row of cottages. A low stone wall
cut off the wheels, and the vans were somewhat of the same colour as the
yellowish clay or stone of the buildings around them. I had come across
that interminable Eastern plain which is like the open sea, and all the
more so because the one small hill and tower of Lincoln stands up in it
like a light-house. I had climbed the sharp, crooked streets up to this
ecclesiastical citadel; just in front of me was a flourishing and richly
coloured kitchen garden; beyond that was the low stone wall; beyond that
the row of vans that looked like houses; and beyond and above that,
straight and swift and dark, light as a flight of birds, and terrible as
the Tower of Babel, Lincoln Cathedral seemed to rise out of human sight.
As I looked at it I asked myself the questions that I have asked here;
what was the soul in all those stones? They were varied, but it was not
variety; they were solemn, but it was not solemnity; they were farcical,
but it was not farce. What is it in them that thrills and soothes a man
of our blood and history, that is not there in an Egyptian pyramid or an
Indian temple or a Chinese pagoda? All of a sudden the vans I had
mistaken for cottages began to move away to the left. In the start this
gave to my eye and mind I really fancied that the Cathedral was moving
towards the right. The two huge towers seemed to start striding across
the plain like the two legs of some giant whose body was covered with the
clouds. Then I saw what it was.
The truth about Gothic is, first, that it is alive, and second, that it is
on the march. It is the Church Militant; it is the only fighting
architecture. All its spires are spears at rest; and all its stones are
stones asleep in a catapult. In that instant of illusion, I could hear the
arches clash like swords as they crossed each other. The mighty and
numberless columns seemed to go swinging by like the huge feet of imperial
elephants. The graven foliage wreathed and blew like banners going into
battle; the silence was deafening with ail the mingled noises of a
military march; the great bell shook down, as the organ shook up its
thunder. The thirsty-throated gargoyles shouted like trumpets from all
the roofs and pinnacles as they passed; and from the lectern in the core
of the cathedral the eagle of the awful evangelist clashed his wings of
brass,
And amid all the noises I seemed to hear the voice of a man shouting in
the midst like one ordering regiments hither and thither in the fight; the
voice of the great half-military master-builder; the architect of spears.
I could almost fancy he wore armour while he made that church; and I knew
indeed that, under a scriptural figure, he had borne in either hand the
trowel and the sword.
I could imagine for the moment that the whole of that house of life had
marched out of the sacred East, alive and interlocked, like an army.
Some Eastern nomad had found it solid and silent in the red circle of the
desert. He had slept by it as by a world-forgotten pyramid; and been woke
at midnight by the wings of stone and brass, the tramping of the tall
pillars, the trumpets of the waterspouts. On such a night every snake or
sea-beast must have turned and twisted in every crypt or corner of the
architecture. And the fiercely coloured saints marching eternally in the
flamboyant windows would have carried their glorioles like torches across
dark lands and distant seas; till the whole mountain of music and darkness
and lights descended roaring on the lonely Lincoln hill. So for some
hundred and sixty seconds I saw the battle-beauty of the Gothic; then the
last furniture-van shifted itself away; and I saw only a church tower in a
quiet English town, round which the English birds were floating.
THE MAN ON TOP
There is a fact at the root of all realities to-day which cannot be stated
too simply. It is that the powers of this world are now not trusted
simply because they are not trustworthy. This can be quite clearly seen
and said without any reference to our several passions or partisanships.
It does not follow that we think such a distrust a wise sentiment to
express; it does not even follow that we think it a good sentiment to
entertain. But such is the sentiment, simply because such is the fact.
The distinction can be quite easily defined in an example. I do not
think that private workers owe an indefinite loyalty to their employer.
But I do think that patriotic soldiers owe a more or less indefinite
loyalty to their leader in battle. But even if they ought to trust their
captain, the fact remains that they often do not trust him; and the fact
remains that he often is not fit to be trusted.
Most of the employers and many of the Socialists seem to have got a very
muddled ethic about the basis of such loyalty; and perpetually try to put
employers and officers upon the same disciplinary plane. I should have
thought myself that the difference was alphabetical enough. It has
nothing to do with the idealising of war or the materialising of trade; it
is a distinction in the primary purpose. There might be much more
elegance and poetry in a shop under William Morris than in a regiment
under Lord Kitchener. But the difference is not in the persons or the
atmosphere, but in the aim. The British Army does not exist in order to
pay Lord Kitchener. William Morris's shop, however artistic and
philanthropic, did exist to pay William Morris. If it did not pay the
shopkeeper it failed as a shop; but Lord Kitchener does not fail if he is
underpaid, but only if he is defeated. The object of the Army is the
safety of the nation from one particular class of perils; therefore, since
all citizens owe loyalty to the nation, all citizens who are soldiers owe
loyalty to the Army. But nobody has any obligation to make some
particular rich man richer. A man is bound, of course, to consider the
indirect results of his action in a strike; but he is bound to consider
that in a swing, or a giddy-go-round, or a smoking concert; in his wildest
holiday or his most private conversation. But direct responsibility like
that of a soldier he has none. He need not aim solely and directly at the
good of the shop; for the simple reason that the shop is not aiming solely
and directly at the good of the nation. The shopman is, under decent
restraints, let us hope, trying to get what he can out of the nation; the
shop assistant may, under the same decent restraints, get what he can out
of the shopkeeper. All this distinction is very obvious. At least I
should have thought so.
But the primary point which I mean is this. That even if we do take the
military view of mercantile service, even if we do call the rebellious
shop assistant "disloyal"--that leaves exactly where it was the question
of whether he is, in point of fact, in a good or bad shop. Granted that
all Mr. Poole's employees are bound to follow for ever the cloven pennon
of the Perfect Pair of Trousers, it is all the more true that the pennon
may, in point of fact, become imperfect. Granted that all Barney Barnato's
workers ought to have followed him to death or glory, it is still a
Perfectly legitimate question to ask which he was likely to lead them to.
Granted that Dr. Sawyer's boy ought to die for his master's medicines, we
may still hold an inquest to find out if he died of them. While we
forbid the soldier to shoot the general, we may still wish the general
were shot.
The fundamental fact of our time is the failure of the successful man.
Somehow we have so arranged the rules of the game that the winners are
worthless for other purposes; they can secure nothing except the prize.
The very rich are neither aristocrats nor self-made men; they are
accidents--or rather calamities. All revolutionary language is a
generation behind the times in talking of their futility. A revolutionist
would say (with perfect truth) that coal-owners know next to nothing about
coal-mining. But we are past that point. Coal-owners know next to
nothing about coal-owning. They do not develop and defend the nature of
their own monopoly with any consistent and courageous policy, however
wicked, as did the old aristocrats with the monopoly of land. They have
not the virtues nor even the vices of tyrants; they have only their powers.
It is the same with all the powerful of to-day; it is the same, for
instance, with the high-placed and high-paid official. Not only is the
judge not judicial, but the arbiter is not even arbitrary. The arbiter
decides, not by some gust of justice or injustice in his soul like the old
despot dooming men under a tree, but by the permanent climate of the class
to which he happens to belong. The ancient wig of the judge is often
indistinguishable from the old wig of the flunkey.
To judge about success or failure one must see things very simply; one
must see them in masses, as the artist, half closing his eyes against
details, sees light and shade. That is the only way in which a just
judgment can be formed as to whether any departure or development, such as
Islam or the American Republic, has been a benefit upon the whole. Seen
close, such great erections always abound in ingenious detail and
impressive solidity; it is only by seeing them afar off that one can tell
if the Tower leans.
Now if we thus take in the whole tilt or posture of our modern state, we
shall simply see this fact: that those classes who have on the whole
governed, have on the whole failed. If you go to a factory you will see
some very wonderful wheels going round; you will be told that the employer
often comes there early in the morning; that he has great organising power;
that if he works over the colossal accumulation of wealth he also works
over its wise distribution. All this may be true of many employers, and
it is practically said of all.
But if we shade our eyes from all this dazzle of detail; if we simply ask
what has been the main feature, the upshot, the final fruit of the
capitalist system, there is no doubt about the answer. The special and
solid result of the reign of the employers has been--unemployment.
Unemployment not only increasing, but becoming at last the very pivot upon
which the whole process turns.
Or, again, if you visit the villages that depend on one of the great
squires, you will hear praises, often just, of the landlord's good sense
or good nature; you will hear of whole systems of pensions or of care for
the sick, like those of a small and separate nation; you will see much
cleanliness, order, and business habits in the offices and accounts of the
estate. But if you ask again what has been the upshot, what has been the
actual result of the reign of landlords, again the answer is plain. At
the end of the reign of landlords men will not live on the land. The
practical effect of having landlords is not having tenants. The practical
effect of having employers is that men are not employed. The unrest of
the populace is therefore more than a murmur against tyranny; it is
against a sort of treason. It is the suspicion that even at the top of
the tree, even in the seats of the mighty, our very success is
unsuccessful.
THE OTHER KIND OF MAN
There are some who are conciliated by Conciliation Boards. There are some
who, when they hear of Royal Commissions, breathe again--or snore again.
There are those who look forward to Compulsory Arbitration Courts as to
the islands of the blest. These men do not understand the day that they
look upon or the sights that their eyes have seen.
The almost sacramental idea of representation, by which the few may
incarnate the many, arose in the Middle Ages, and has done great things
for justice and liberty. It has had its real hours of triumph, as when
the States General met to renew France's youth like the eagle's; or when
all the virtues of the Republic fought and ruled in the figure of
Washington. It is not having one of its hours of triumph now. The real
democratic unrest at this moment is not an extension of the representative
process, but rather a revolt against it. It is no good giving those now
in revolt more boards and committees and compulsory regulations. It is
against these very things that they are revolting. Men are not only
rising against their oppressors, but against their representatives or, as
they would say, their misrepresentatives. The inner and actual spirit of
workaday England is coming out not in applause, but in anger, as a god who
should come out of his tabernacle to rebuke and confound his priests.
There is a certain kind of man whom we see many times in a day, but whom
we do not, in general, bother very much about. He is the kind of man of
whom his wife says that a better husband when he's sober you couldn't have.
She sometimes adds that he never is sober; but this is in anger and
exaggeration. Really he drinks much less and works much more than the
modern legend supposes. But it is quite true that he has not the horror
of bodily outbreak, natural to the classes that contain ladies; and it is
quite true that he never has that alert and inventive sort of industry
natural to the classes from which men can climb into great wealth. He has
grown, partly by necessity, but partly also by temper, accustomed to have
dirty clothes and dirty hands normally and without discomfort. He regards
cleanliness as a kind of separate and special costume; to be put on for
great festivals. He has several really curious characteristics, which
would attract the eyes of sociologists, if they had any eyes. For
instance, his vocabulary is coarse and abusive, in marked contrast to his
actual spirit, which is generally patient and civil. He has an odd way of
using certain words of really horrible meaning, but using them quite
innocently and without the most distant taint of the evils to which they
allude. He is rather sentimental; and, like most sentimental people, not
devoid of snobbishness. At the same time, he believes the ordinary manly
commonplaces of freedom and fraternity as he believes most of the decent
traditions of Christian men: he finds it very difficult to act according
to them, but this difficulty is not confined to him. He has a strong and
individual sense of humour, and not much power of corporate or militant
action. He is not a Socialist. Finally, he bears no more resemblance to
a Labour Member than he does to a City Alderman or a Die-Hard Duke. This
is the Common Labourer of England; and it is he who is on the march at
last.
See this man in your mind as you see him in the street, realise that it is
his open mind we wish to influence or his empty stomach we wish to cure,
and then consider seriously (if you can) the five men, including two of
his own alleged oppressors, who were summoned as a Royal Commission to
consider his claims when he or his sort went out on strike upon the
railways. I knew nothing against, indeed I knew nothing about, any of the
gentlemen then summoned, beyond a bare introduction to Mr. Henderson,
whom I liked, but whose identity I was in no danger of confusing with that
of a railway-porter. I do not think that any old gentleman, however
absent-minded, would be likely on arriving at Euston, let us say, to hand
his Gladstone-bag to Mr. Henderson or to attempt to reward that politician
with twopence. Of the others I can only judge by the facts about their
status as set forth in the public Press. The Chairman, Sir David Harrell,
appeared to be an ex-official distinguished in (of all things in the
world) the Irish Constabulary. I have no earthly reason to doubt that the
Chairman meant to be fair; but I am not talking about what men mean to be,
but about what they are. The police in Ireland are practically an army of
occupation; a man serving in them or directing them is practically a
soldier; and, of course, he must do his duty as such. But it seems truly
extraordinary to select as one likely to sympathise with the democracy of
England a man whose whole business in life it has been to govern against
its will the democracy of Ireland. What should we say if Russian strikers
were offered the sympathetic arbitration of the head of the Russian Police
in Finland or Poland? And if we do not know that the whole civilised
world sees Ireland with Poland as a typical oppressed nation, it is time
we did. The Chairman, whatever his personal virtues, must be by instinct
and habit akin to the capitalists in the dispute. Two more of the
Commissioners actually were the capitalists in the dispute. Then came Mr.
Henderson (pushing his trolley and cheerily crying, "By your leave."),
and then another less known gentleman who had "corresponded" with the
Board of Trade, and had thus gained some strange claim to represent the
very poor.
Now people like this might quite possibly produce a rational enough report,
and in this or that respect even improve things. Men of that kind are
tolerably kind, tolerably patriotic, and tolerably business-like. But if
any one supposes that men of that kind can conceivably quiet any real
'quarrel with the Man of the Other Kind, the man whom I first described,
it is frantic. The common worker is angry exactly because he has found
out that all these boards consist of the same well-dressed Kind of Man,
whether they are called Governmental or Capitalist. If any one hopes that
he will reconcile the poor, I say, as I said at the beginning, that such a
one has not looked on the light of day or dwelt in the land of the living.
But I do not criticise such a Commission except for one most practical and
urgent purpose. It will be answered to me that the first Kind of Man of
whom I spoke could not really be on boards and committees, as modern
England is managed. His dirt, though necessary and honourable, would be
offensive: his speech, though rich and figurative, would be almost
incomprehensible. Let us grant, for the moment, that this is so. This
Kind of Man, with his sooty hair or sanguinary adjectives, cannot be
represented at our committees of arbitration. Therefore, the other Kind
of Man, fairly prosperous, fairly plausible, at home at least with the
middle class, capable at least of reaching and touching the upper class,
he must remain the only Kind of Man for such councils.
Very well. If then, you give at any future time any kind of compulsory
powers to such councils to prevent strikes, you will be driving the first
Kind of Man to work for a particular master as much as if you drove him
with a whip.
THE MEDIAEVAL VILLAIN
I see that there have been more attempts at the whitewashing of King John.
But the gentleman who wrote has a further interest in the matter; for he
believes that King John was innocent, not only on this point, but as a
whole. He thinks King John has been very badly treated; though I am not
sure whether he would attribute to that Plantagenet a saintly merit or
merely a humdrum respectability.
I sympathise with the whitewashing of King John, merely because it is a
protest against our waxwork style of history. Everybody is in a
particular attitude, with particular moral attributes; Rufus is always
hunting and Coeur-de-Lion always crusading; Henry VIII always marrying,
and Charles I always having his head cut off; Alfred rapidly and in
rotation making his people's clocks and spoiling their cakes; and King
John pulling out Jews' teeth with the celerity and industry of an American
dentist. Anything is good that shakes all this stiff simplification, and
makes us remember that these men were once alive; that is, mixed, free,
flippant, and inconsistent. It gives the mind a healthy kick to know that
Alfred had fits, that Charles I prevented enclosures, that Rufus was
really interested in architecture, that Henry VIII was really interested
in theology.
And as these scraps of reality can startle us into more solid imagination
of events, so can even errors and exaggerations if they are on the right
side. It does some good to call Alfred a prig, Charles I a Puritan, and
John a jolly good fellow; if this makes us feel that they were people whom
we might have liked or disliked. I do not myself think that John was a
nice gentleman; but for all that the popular picture of him is all wrong.
Whether he had any generous qualities or not, he had what commonly makes
them possible, dare-devil courage, for instance, and hotheaded decision.
But, above all, he had a morality which he broke, but which we
misunderstand.
The mediaeval mind turned centrally upon the pivot of Free Will. In their
social system the mediaevals were too much PARTI-PER-PALE, as their
heralds would say, too rigidly cut up by fences and quarterings of guild
or degree. But in their moral philosophy they always thought of man as
standing free and doubtful at the cross-roads in a forest. While they
clad and bound the body and (to some extent) the mind too stiffly and
quaintly for our taste, they had a much stronger sense than we have of the
freedom of the soul. For them the soul always hung poised like an eagle
in the heavens of liberty. Many of the things that strike a modern as
most fantastic came from their keen sense of the power of choice.
For instance, the greatest of the Schoolmen devotes folios to the minute
description of what the world would have been like if Adam had refused the
apple; what kings, laws, babies, animals, planets would have been in an
unfallen world. So intensely does he feel that Adam might have decided
the other way that he sees a complete and complex vision of another world,
a world that now can never be.
This sense of the stream of life in a man that may turn either way can be
felt through all their popular ethics in legend, chronicle, and ballad.
It is a feeling which has been weakened among us by two heavy intellectual
forces. The Calvinism of the seventeenth century and the physical science
of the nineteenth, whatever other truths they may have taught, have
darkened this liberty with a sense of doom. We think of bad men as
something like black men, a separate and incurable kind of people. The
Byronic spirit was really a sort of operatic Calvinism. It brought the
villain upon the stage; the lost soul; the modern version of King John.
But the contemporaries of King John did not feel like that about him, even
when they detested him. They instinctively felt him to be a man of mixed
passions like themselves, who was allowing his evil passions to have much
too good a time of it. They might have spoken of him as a man in
considerable danger of going to hell; but they would have not talked of
him as if he had come from there. In the ballads of Percy or Robin Hood
it frequently happens that the King comes upon the scene, and his ultimate
decision makes the climax of the tale. But we do not feel, as we do in
the Byronic or modern romance, that there is a definite stage direction
"Enter Tyrant." Nor do we behold a deus ex machina who is certain to do
all that is mild and just. The King in the ballad is in a state of virile
indecision. Sometimes he will pass from a towering passion to the most
sweeping magnanimity and friendliness; sometimes he will begin an act of
vengeance and be turned from it by a jest. Yet this august levity is not
moral indifference; it is moral freedom. It is the strong sense in the
writer that the King, being the type of man with power, will probably
sometimes use it badly and sometimes well. In this sense John is
certainly misrepresented, for he is pictured as something that none of his
own friends or enemies saw. In that sense he was certainly not so black
as he is painted, for he lived in a world where every one was piebald.
King John would be represented in a modern play or novel as a kind of
degenerate; a shifty-eyed moral maniac with a twist in his soul's backbone
and green blood in his veins. The mediaevals were quite capable of
boiling him in melted lead, but they would have been quite incapable of
despairing of his soul in the modern fashion. A striking a fortiori case
is that of the strange mediaeval legend of Robert the Devil. Robert was
represented as a monstrous birth sent to an embittered woman actually in
answer to prayers to Satan, and his earlier actions are simply those of
the infernal fire let loose upon earth. Yet though he can be called
almost literally a child of hell, yet the climax of the story is his
repentance at Rome and his great reparation. That is the paradox of
mediaeval morals: as it must appear to the moderns. We must try to
conceive a race of men who hated John, and sought his blood, and believed
every abomination about him, who would have been quite capable of
assassinating or torturing him in the extremity of their anger. And yet
we must admit that they would not really have been fundamentally surprised
if he had shaved his head in humiliation, given all his goods to the poor,
embraced the lepers in a lazar-house, and been canonised as a saint in
heaven. So strongly did they hold that the pivot of Will should turn
freely, which now is rusted, and sticks.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 | 10 |
11 |
12