Last week, in an idle metaphor, I took the tumbling of trees and the
secret energy of the wind as typical of the visible world moving under
the violence of the invisible. I took this metaphor merely because I
happened to be writing the article in a wood. Nevertheless, now that I
return to Fleet Street (which seems to me, I confess, much better and
more poetical than all the wild woods in the world), I am strangely
haunted by this accidental comparison. The people’s figures seem a
forest and their soul a wind. All the human personalities which speak or
signal to me seem to have this fantastic character of the fringe of the
forest against the sky. That man that talks to me, what is he but an
articulate tree? That driver of a van who waves his hands wildly at me
to tell me to get out of the way, what is he but a bunch of branches
stirred and swayed by a spiritual wind, a sylvan object that I can
continue to contemplate with calm? That policeman who lifts his hand
to warn three omnibuses of the peril that they run in encountering my
person, what is he but a shrub shaken for a moment with that blast
of human law which is a thing stronger than anarchy? Gradually this
impression of the woods wears off. But this black-and-white contrast
between the visible and invisible, this deep sense that the one
essential belief is belief in the invisible as against the visible,
is suddenly and sensationally brought back to my mind. Exactly at
the moment when Fleet Street has grown most familiar (that is, most
bewildering and bright), my eye catches a poster of vivid violet, on
which I see written in large black letters these remarkable words:
“Should Shop Assistants Marry?”
.....
When I saw those words everything might just as well have turned upside
down. The men in Fleet Street might have been walking about on their
hands. The cross of St. Paul’s might have been hanging in the air upside
down. For I realise that I have really come into a topsy-turvy country;
I have come into the country where men do definitely believe that the
waving of the trees makes the wind. That is to say, they believe
that the material circumstances, however black and twisted, are more
important than the spiritual realities, however powerful and pure.
“Should Shop Assistants Marry?” I am puzzled to think what some periods
and schools of human history would have made of such a question. The
ascetics of the East or of some periods of the early Church would have
thought that the question meant, “Are not shop assistants too saintly,
too much of another world, even to feel the emotions of the sexes?” But
I suppose that is not what the purple poster means. In some pagan cities
it might have meant, “Shall slaves so vile as shop assistants even be
allowed to propagate their abject race?” But I suppose that is not what
the purple poster meant. We must face, I fear, the full insanity of what
it does mean. It does really mean that a section of the human race
is asking whether the primary relations of the two human sexes are
particularly good for modern shops. The human race is asking whether
Adam and Eve are entirely suitable for Marshall and Snelgrove. If this
is not topsy-turvy I cannot imagine what would be. We ask whether
the universal institution will improve our (please God) temporary
institution. Yet I have known many such questions. For instance, I have
known a man ask seriously, “Does Democracy help the Empire?” Which is
like saying, “Is art favourable to frescoes?”
I say that there are many such questions asked. But if the world
ever runs short of them, I can suggest a large number of questions of
precisely the same kind, based on precisely the same principle.
“Do Feet Improve Boots?”--“Is Bread Better when Eaten?”--“Should
Hats have Heads in them?”--“Do People Spoil a Town?”--“Do Walls
Ruin Wall-papers?”--“Should Neckties enclose Necks?”--“Do Hands Hurt
Walking-sticks?”--“Does Burning Destroy Firewood?”--“Is Cleanliness Good
for Soap?”--“Can Cricket Really Improve Cricket-bats?”--“Shall We Take
Brides with our Wedding Rings?” and a hundred others.
Not one of these questions differs at all in intellectual purport or in
intellectual value from the question which I have quoted from the
purple poster, or from any of the typical questions asked by half of the
earnest economists of our times. All the questions they ask are of this
character; they are all tinged with this same initial absurdity. They do
not ask if the means is suited to the end; they all ask (with profound
and penetrating scepticism) if the end is suited to the means. They do
not ask whether the tail suits the dog. They all ask whether a dog is
(by the highest artistic canons) the most ornamental appendage that can
be put at the end of a tail. In short, instead of asking whether our
modern arrangements, our streets, trades, bargains, laws, and concrete
institutions are suited to the primal and permanent idea of a healthy
human life, they never admit that healthy human life into the discussion
at all, except suddenly and accidentally at odd moments; and then they
only ask whether that healthy human life is suited to our streets and
trades. Perfection may be attainable or unattainable as an end. It may
or may not be possible to talk of imperfection as a means to perfection.
But surely it passes toleration to talk of perfection as a means to
imperfection. The New Jerusalem may be a reality. It may be a dream. But
surely it is too outrageous to say that the New Jerusalem is a reality
on the road to Birmingham.
.....
This is the most enormous and at the same time the most secret of the
modern tyrannies of materialism. In theory the thing ought to be simple
enough. A really human human being would always put the spiritual
things first. A walking and speaking statue of God finds himself at
one particular moment employed as a shop assistant. He has in himself
a power of terrible love, a promise of paternity, a thirst for some
loyalty that shall unify life, and in the ordinary course of things he
asks himself, “How far do the existing conditions of those assisting in
shops fit in with my evident and epic destiny in the matter of love and
marriage?” But here, as I have said, comes in the quiet and crushing
power of modern materialism. It prevents him rising in rebellion, as he
would otherwise do. By perpetually talking about environment and visible
things, by perpetually talking about economics and physical necessity,
painting and keeping repainted a perpetual picture of iron machinery
and merciless engines, of rails of steel, and of towers of stone, modern
materialism at last produces this tremendous impression in which the
truth is stated upside down. At last the result is achieved. The man
does not say as he ought to have said, “Should married men endure being
modern shop assistants?” The man says, “Should shop assistants marry?”
Triumph has completed the immense illusion of materialism. The
slave does not say, “Are these chains worthy of me?” The slave says
scientifically and contentedly, “Am I even worthy of these chains?”