Orthodoxy

G >> G. K. Chesterton >> Orthodoxy


When I had written this down, I felt once again the presence
of something else in the discussion: as a man hears a church bell
above the sound of the street. Something seemed to be saying,
"My ideal at least is fixed; for it was fixed before the foundations
of the world. My vision of perfection assuredly cannot be altered;
for it is called Eden. You may alter the place to which you
are going; but you cannot alter the place from which you have come.
To the orthodox there must always be a case for revolution;
for in the hearts of men God has been put under the feet of Satan.
In the upper world hell once rebelled against heaven. But in this
world heaven is rebelling against hell. For the orthodox there
can always be a revolution; for a revolution is a restoration.
At any instant you may strike a blow for the perfection which
no man has seen since Adam. No unchanging custom, no changing
evolution can make the original good any thing but good.
Man may have had concubines as long as cows have had horns:
still they are not a part of him if they are sinful. Men may
have been under oppression ever since fish were under water;
still they ought not to be, if oppression is sinful. The chain may
seem as natural to the slave, or the paint to the harlot, as does
the plume to the bird or the burrow to the fox; still they are not,
if they are sinful. I lift my prehistoric legend to defy all
your history. Your vision is not merely a fixture: it is a fact."
I paused to note the new coincidence of Christianity: but I
passed on.

I passed on to the next necessity of any ideal of progress.
Some people (as we have said) seem to believe in an automatic
and impersonal progress in the nature of things. But it is clear
that no political activity can be encouraged by saying that progress
is natural and inevitable; that is not a reason for being active,
but rather a reason for being lazy. If we are bound to improve,
we need not trouble to improve. The pure doctrine of progress
is the best of all reasons for not being a progressive. But it
is to none of these obvious comments that I wish primarily to
call attention.

The only arresting point is this: that if we suppose
improvement to be natural, it must be fairly simple. The world
might conceivably be working towards one consummation, but hardly
towards any particular arrangement of many qualities. To take
our original simile: Nature by herself may be growing more blue;
that is, a process so simple that it might be impersonal. But Nature
cannot be making a careful picture made of many picked colours,
unless Nature is personal. If the end of the world were mere
darkness or mere light it might come as slowly and inevitably
as dusk or dawn. But if the end of the world is to be a piece
of elaborate and artistic chiaroscuro, then there must be design
in it, either human or divine. The world, through mere time,
might grow black like an old picture, or white like an old coat;
but if it is turned into a particular piece of black and white art--
then there is an artist.

If the distinction be not evident, I give an ordinary instance. We
constantly hear a particularly cosmic creed from the modern humanitarians;

I use the word humanitarian in the ordinary sense, as meaning one
who upholds the claims of all creatures against those of humanity.
They suggest that through the ages we have been growing more and
more humane, that is to say, that one after another, groups or
sections of beings, slaves, children, women, cows, or what not,
have been gradually admitted to mercy or to justice. They say
that we once thought it right to eat men (we didn't); but I am not
here concerned with their history, which is highly unhistorical.
As a fact, anthropophagy is certainly a decadent thing, not a
primitive one. It is much more likely that modern men will eat
human flesh out of affectation than that primitive man ever ate
it out of ignorance. I am here only following the outlines of
their argument, which consists in maintaining that man has been
progressively more lenient, first to citizens, then to slaves,
then to animals, and then (presumably) to plants. I think it wrong
to sit on a man. Soon, I shall think it wrong to sit on a horse.
Eventually (I suppose) I shall think it wrong to sit on a chair.
That is the drive of the argument. And for this argument it can
be said that it is possible to talk of it in terms of evolution or
inevitable progress. A perpetual tendency to touch fewer and fewer
things might--one feels, be a mere brute unconscious tendency,
like that of a species to produce fewer and fewer children.
This drift may be really evolutionary, because it is stupid.

Darwinism can be used to back up two mad moralities,
but it cannot be used to back up a single sane one. The kinship
and competition of all living creatures can be used as a reason for
being insanely cruel or insanely sentimental; but not for a healthy
love of animals. On the evolutionary basis you may be inhumane,
or you may be absurdly humane; but you cannot be human. That you
and a tiger are one may be a reason for being tender to a tiger.
Or it may be a reason for being as cruel as the tiger. It is one way
to train the tiger to imitate you, it is a shorter way to imitate
the tiger. But in neither case does evolution tell you how to treat
a tiger reasonably, that is, to admire his stripes while avoiding
his claws.

If you want to treat a tiger reasonably, you must go back to
the garden of Eden. For the obstinate reminder continued to recur:
only the supernatural has taken a sane view of Nature. The essence
of all pantheism, evolutionism, and modern cosmic religion is really
in this proposition: that Nature is our mother. Unfortunately, if you
regard Nature as a mother, you discover that she is a step-mother. The
main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother:
Nature is our sister. We can be proud of her beauty, since we have
the same father; but she has no authority over us; we have to admire,
but not to imitate. This gives to the typically Christian pleasure
in this earth a strange touch of lightness that is almost frivolity.
Nature was a solemn mother to the worshippers of Isis and Cybele.
Nature was a solemn mother to Wordsworth or to Emerson.
But Nature is not solemn to Francis of Assisi or to George Herbert.
To St. Francis, Nature is a sister, and even a younger sister:
a little, dancing sister, to be laughed at as well as loved.

This, however, is hardly our main point at present; I have admitted
it only in order to show how constantly, and as it were accidentally,
the key would fit the smallest doors. Our main point is here,
that if there be a mere trend of impersonal improvement in Nature,
it must presumably be a simple trend towards some simple triumph.
One can imagine that some automatic tendency in biology might work
for giving us longer and longer noses. But the question is,
do we want to have longer and longer noses? I fancy not;
I believe that we most of us want to say to our noses, "thus far,
and no farther; and here shall thy proud point be stayed:"
we require a nose of such length as may ensure an interesting face.
But we cannot imagine a mere biological trend towards producing
interesting faces; because an interesting face is one particular
arrangement of eyes, nose, and mouth, in a most complex relation
to each other. Proportion cannot be a drift: it is either
an accident or a design. So with the ideal of human morality
and its relation to the humanitarians and the anti-humanitarians.
It is conceivable that we are going more and more to keep our hands
off things: not to drive horses; not to pick flowers. We may
eventually be bound not to disturb a man's mind even by argument;
not to disturb the sleep of birds even by coughing. The ultimate
apotheosis would appear to be that of a man sitting quite still,
nor daring to stir for fear of disturbing a fly, nor to eat for fear
of incommoding a microbe. To so crude a consummation as that we
might perhaps unconsciously drift. But do we want so crude
a consummation? Similarly, we might unconsciously evolve along
the opposite or Nietzschian line of development--superman crushing
superman in one tower of tyrants until the universe is smashed
up for fun. But do we want the universe smashed up for fun?
Is it not quite clear that what we really hope for is one particular
management and proposition of these two things; a certain amount
of restraint and respect, a certain amount of energy and mastery?
If our life is ever really as beautiful as a fairy-tale, we shall
have to remember that all the beauty of a fairy-tale lies in this:
that the prince has a wonder which just stops short of being fear.
If he is afraid of the giant, there is an end of him; but also if he
is not astonished at the giant, there is an end of the fairy-tale. The
whole point depends upon his being at once humble enough to wonder,
and haughty enough to defy. So our attitude to the giant of the world
must not merely be increasing delicacy or increasing contempt:
it must be one particular proportion of the two--which is exactly right.
We must have in us enough reverence for all things outside us
to make us tread fearfully on the grass. We must also have enough
disdain for all things outside us, to make us, on due occasion,
spit at the stars. Yet these two things (if we are to be good
or happy) must be combined, not in any combination, but in one
particular combination. The perfect happiness of men on the earth
(if it ever comes) will not be a flat and solid thing, like the
satisfaction of animals. It will be an exact and perilous balance;
like that of a desperate romance. Man must have just enough faith
in himself to have adventures, and just enough doubt of himself to
enjoy them.

This, then, is our second requirement for the ideal of progress.
First, it must be fixed; second, it must be composite. It must not
(if it is to satisfy our souls) be the mere victory of some one thing
swallowing up everything else, love or pride or peace or adventure;
it must be a definite picture composed of these elements in their best
proportion and relation. I am not concerned at this moment to deny
that some such good culmination may be, by the constitution of things,
reserved for the human race. I only point out that if this composite
happiness is fixed for us it must be fixed by some mind; for only
a mind can place the exact proportions of a composite happiness.
If the beatification of the world is a mere work of nature, then it
must be as simple as the freezing of the world, or the burning
up of the world. But if the beatification of the world is not
a work of nature but a work of art, then it involves an artist.
And here again my contemplation was cloven by the ancient voice
which said, "I could have told you all this a long time ago.
If there is any certain progress it can only be my kind of progress,
the progress towards a complete city of virtues and dominations
where righteousness and peace contrive to kiss each other.
An impersonal force might be leading you to a wilderness of perfect
flatness or a peak of perfect height. But only a personal God can
possibly be leading you (if, indeed, you are being led) to a city
with just streets and architectural proportions, a city in which each
of you can contribute exactly the right amount of your own colour
to the many coloured coat of Joseph."

Twice again, therefore, Christianity had come in with the exact
answer that I required. I had said, "The ideal must be fixed,"
and the Church had answered, "Mine is literally fixed, for it
existed before anything else." I said secondly, "It must be
artistically combined, like a picture"; and the Church answered,
"Mine is quite literally a picture, for I know who painted it."
Then I went on to the third thing, which, as it seemed to me,
was needed for an Utopia or goal of progress. And of all the three it
is infinitely the hardest to express. Perhaps it might be put thus:
that we need watchfulness even in Utopia, lest we fall from Utopia
as we fell from Eden.

We have remarked that one reason offered for being a progressive
is that things naturally tend to grow better. But the only real
reason for being a progressive is that things naturally tend
to grow worse. The corruption in things is not only the best
argument for being progressive; it is also the only argument
against being conservative. The conservative theory would really
be quite sweeping and unanswerable if it were not for this one fact.
But all conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave
things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not.
If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change.
If you leave a white post alone it will soon be a black post. If you
particularly want it to be white you must be always painting it again;
that is, you must be always having a revolution. Briefly, if you
want the old white post you must have a new white post. But this
which is true even of inanimate things is in a quite special and
terrible sense true of all human things. An almost unnatural vigilance
is really required of the citizen because of the horrible rapidity
with which human institutions grow old. It is the custom in passing
romance and journalism to talk of men suffering under old tyrannies.
But, as a fact, men have almost always suffered under new tyrannies;
under tyrannies that had been public liberties hardly twenty
years before. Thus England went mad with joy over the patriotic
monarchy of Elizabeth; and then (almost immediately afterwards)
went mad with rage in the trap of the tyranny of Charles the First.
So, again, in France the monarchy became intolerable, not just
after it had been tolerated, but just after it had been adored.
The son of Louis the well-beloved was Louis the guillotined.
So in the same way in England in the nineteenth century the Radical
manufacturer was entirely trusted as a mere tribune of the people,
until suddenly we heard the cry of the Socialist that he was a tyrant
eating the people like bread. So again, we have almost up to the
last instant trusted the newspapers as organs of public opinion.
Just recently some of us have seen (not slowly, but with a start)
that they are obviously nothing of the kind. They are, by the nature
of the case, the hobbies of a few rich men. We have not any need
to rebel against antiquity; we have to rebel against novelty.
It is the new rulers, the capitalist or the editor, who really hold
up the modern world. There is no fear that a modern king will
attempt to override the constitution; it is more likely that he
will ignore the constitution and work behind its back; he will take
no advantage of his kingly power; it is more likely that he will
take advantage of his kingly powerlessness, of the fact that he
is free from criticism and publicity. For the king is the most
private person of our time. It will not be necessary for any one
to fight again against the proposal of a censorship of the press.
We do not need a censorship of the press. We have a censorship by
the press.

This startling swiftness with which popular systems turn
oppressive is the third fact for which we shall ask our perfect theory
of progress to allow. It must always be on the look out for every
privilege being abused, for every working right becoming a wrong.
In this matter I am entirely on the side of the revolutionists.
They are really right to be always suspecting human institutions;
they are right not to put their trust in princes nor in any child
of man. The chieftain chosen to be the friend of the people
becomes the enemy of the people; the newspaper started to tell
the truth now exists to prevent the truth being told. Here, I say,
I felt that I was really at last on the side of the revolutionary.
And then I caught my breath again: for I remembered that I was once
again on the side of the orthodox.

Christianity spoke again and said: "I have always maintained
that men were naturally backsliders; that human virtue tended of its
own nature to rust or to rot; I have always said that human beings
as such go wrong, especially happy human beings, especially proud
and prosperous human beings. This eternal revolution, this suspicion
sustained through centuries, you (being a vague modern) call the
doctrine of progress. If you were a philosopher you would call it,
as I do, the doctrine of original sin. You may call it the cosmic
advance as much as you like; I call it what it is--the Fall."

I have spoken of orthodoxy coming in like a sword; here I
confess it came in like a battle-axe. For really (when I came to
think of it) Christianity is the only thing left that has any real
right to question the power of the well-nurtured or the well-bred.
I have listened often enough to Socialists, or even to democrats,
saying that the physical conditions of the poor must of necessity make
them mentally and morally degraded. I have listened to scientific
men (and there are still scientific men not opposed to democracy)
saying that if we give the poor healthier conditions vice and wrong
will disappear. I have listened to them with a horrible attention,
with a hideous fascination. For it was like watching a man
energetically sawing from the tree the branch he is sitting on.
If these happy democrats could prove their case, they would strike
democracy dead. If the poor are thus utterly demoralized, it may
or may not be practical to raise them. But it is certainly quite
practical to disfranchise them. If the man with a bad bedroom cannot
give a good vote, then the first and swiftest deduction is that he
shall give no vote. The governing class may not unreasonably say:
"It may take us some time to reform his bedroom. But if he is the
brute you say, it will take him very little time to ruin our country.
Therefore we will take your hint and not give him the chance."
It fills me with horrible amusement to observe the way in which the
earnest Socialist industriously lays the foundation of all aristocracy,
expatiating blandly upon the evident unfitness of the poor to rule.
It is like listening to somebody at an evening party apologising
for entering without evening dress, and explaining that he had
recently been intoxicated, had a personal habit of taking off
his clothes in the street, and had, moreover, only just changed
from prison uniform. At any moment, one feels, the host might say
that really, if it was as bad as that, he need not come in at all.
So it is when the ordinary Socialist, with a beaming face,
proves that the poor, after their smashing experiences, cannot be
really trustworthy. At any moment the rich may say, "Very well,
then, we won't trust them," and bang the door in his face.
On the basis of Mr. Blatchford's view of heredity and environment,
the case for the aristocracy is quite overwhelming. If clean homes
and clean air make clean souls, why not give the power (for the
present at any rate) to those who undoubtedly have the clean air?
If better conditions will make the poor more fit to govern themselves,
why should not better conditions already make the rich more fit
to govern them? On the ordinary environment argument the matter is
fairly manifest. The comfortable class must be merely our vanguard
in Utopia.

Is there any answer to the proposition that those who have
had the best opportunities will probably be our best guides?
Is there any answer to the argument that those who have breathed
clean air had better decide for those who have breathed foul?
As far as I know, there is only one answer, and that answer
is Christianity. Only the Christian Church can offer any rational
objection to a complete confidence in the rich. For she has maintained
from the beginning that the danger was not in man's environment,
but in man. Further, she has maintained that if we come to talk of a
dangerous environment, the most dangerous environment of all is the
commodious environment. I know that the most modern manufacture has
been really occupied in trying to produce an abnormally large needle.
I know that the most recent biologists have been chiefly anxious
to discover a very small camel. But if we diminish the camel
to his smallest, or open the eye of the needle to its largest--if,
in short, we assume the words of Christ to have meant the very least
that they could mean, His words must at the very least mean this--
that rich men are not very likely to be morally trustworthy.
Christianity even when watered down is hot enough to boil all modern
society to rags. The mere minimum of the Church would be a deadly
ultimatum to the world. For the whole modern world is absolutely
based on the assumption, not that the rich are necessary (which is
tenable), but that the rich are trustworthy, which (for a Christian)
is not tenable. You will hear everlastingly, in all discussions
about newspapers, companies, aristocracies, or party politics,
this argument that the rich man cannot be bribed. The fact is,
of course, that the rich man is bribed; he has been bribed already.
That is why he is a rich man. The whole case for Christianity is that
a man who is dependent upon the luxuries of this life is a corrupt man,
spiritually corrupt, politically corrupt, financially corrupt.
There is one thing that Christ and all the Christian saints
have said with a sort of savage monotony. They have said simply
that to be rich is to be in peculiar danger of moral wreck.
It is not demonstrably un-Christian to kill the rich as violators
of definable justice. It is not demonstrably un-Christian to crown
the rich as convenient rulers of society. It is not certainly
un-Christian to rebel against the rich or to submit to the rich.
But it is quite certainly un-Christian to trust the rich, to regard
the rich as more morally safe than the poor. A Christian may
consistently say, "I respect that man's rank, although he takes bribes."
But a Christian cannot say, as all modern men are saying at lunch
and breakfast, "a man of that rank would not take bribes."
For it is a part of Christian dogma that any man in any rank may
take bribes. It is a part of Christian dogma; it also happens by
a curious coincidence that it is a part of obvious human history.
When people say that a man "in that position" would be incorruptible,
there is no need to bring Christianity into the discussion. Was Lord
Bacon a bootblack? Was the Duke of Marlborough a crossing sweeper?
In the best Utopia, I must be prepared for the moral fall of any man
in any position at any moment; especially for my fall from my position
at this moment.

Much vague and sentimental journalism has been poured out
to the effect that Christianity is akin to democracy, and most
of it is scarcely strong or clear enough to refute the fact that
the two things have often quarrelled. The real ground upon which
Christianity and democracy are one is very much deeper. The one
specially and peculiarly un-Christian idea is the idea of Carlyle--
the idea that the man should rule who feels that he can rule.
Whatever else is Christian, this is heathen. If our faith comments
on government at all, its comment must be this--that the man should
rule who does NOT think that he can rule. Carlyle's hero may say,
"I will be king"; but the Christian saint must say "Nolo episcopari."
If the great paradox of Christianity means anything, it means this--
that we must take the crown in our hands, and go hunting in dry
places and dark corners of the earth until we find the one man
who feels himself unfit to wear it. Carlyle was quite wrong;
we have not got to crown the exceptional man who knows he can rule.
Rather we must crown the much more exceptional man who knows he
can't.

Now, this is one of the two or three vital defences of
working democracy. The mere machinery of voting is not democracy,
though at present it is not easy to effect any simpler democratic method.
But even the machinery of voting is profoundly Christian in this
practical sense--that it is an attempt to get at the opinion of those
who would be too modest to offer it. It is a mystical adventure;
it is specially trusting those who do not trust themselves.
That enigma is strictly peculiar to Christendom. There is nothing
really humble about the abnegation of the Buddhist; the mild Hindoo
is mild, but he is not meek. But there is something psychologically
Christian about the idea of seeking for the opinion of the obscure
rather than taking the obvious course of accepting the opinion
of the prominent. To say that voting is particularly Christian may
seem somewhat curious. To say that canvassing is Christian may seem
quite crazy. But canvassing is very Christian in its primary idea.
It is encouraging the humble; it is saying to the modest man,
"Friend, go up higher." Or if there is some slight defect
in canvassing, that is in its perfect and rounded piety, it is only
because it may possibly neglect to encourage the modesty of the canvasser.