IN his book on William Blake, Chesterton says that he is "personally
quite convinced that if every human being lived a thousand years, every
human being would end up either in utter pessimistic scepticism or in
the Catholic creed." In course of time, in fact, everybody would have to
decide whether they preferred to be an intellectualist or a mystic. A
debauch of intellectualism, lasting perhaps nine hundred and fifty
years, is a truly terrible thing to contemplate. Perhaps it is safest to
assert that if our lives were considerably lengthened, there would be
more mystics and more madmen.
To Chesterton modern thought is merely the polite description of a noisy
crowd of persons proclaiming that something or other is wrong. Mr.
Bernard Shaw denounces meat and has been understood to denounce
marriage. Ibsen is said to have anathematized almost everything (by
those who have not read his works). Mr. MacCabe and Mr. Blatchford think
that, on the whole, there is no God, and Tolstoy told us that nearly
everything we did, and quite all we wanted to do, was opposed to the
spirit of Christ's teaching. Auberon Herbert disapproved of law, and
John Davidson disapproved of life. Herbert Spencer objected to
government, Passive Resisters to State education, and various
educational reformers to education of any description. There are people
who would abolish our spelling, our clothing, our food and, most
emphatically, our drink. Mr. H. G. Wells adds the finishing touch to
this volume of denials, by blandly suggesting in an appendix to his
Modern Utopia, headed "Scepticism of the Instrument," that our senses
are so liable to err, that we can never be really sure of anything at
all. This spirit of denial is extraordinarily infectious. A man begins
to suspect what he calls the "supernatural." He joins an ethical
society, and before he knows where he is, he is a vegetarian. The
rebellious moderns have a curious tendency to flock together in
self-defence, even when they have nothing in common. The mere
aggregation of denials rather attracts the slovenly and the unattached.
The lack of positive dogma expressed by such a coalition encourages the
sceptic and the uneducated, who do not realize that the deliberate
suppression of dogma is itself a dogma of extreme arrogance. We trust
too much to the label, nowadays, and the brief descriptions we attach to
ourselves have a gradually increasing connotation. In politics for
example, the conservative creed, which originally contained the single
article that aristocracy, wealth and government should be in the same
few hands, now also implies adhesion to the economic doctrine of
protection, and the political doctrine that unitary government is
preferable to federal. The liberal creed, based principally upon
opposition to the conservative, and to a lesser degree upon disrespect
for the Established Church, has been enlarged concurrently with the
latter. The average liberal or conservative now feels himself in honour
bound to assert or to deny political dogmas out of sheer loyalty to his
party. This does not make for sanity. The only political creed in which
a man may reasonably expect to remain sane is Socialism, which is
catholic and not the least dependent upon other beliefs. Apart from the
inconsiderable number of Socialists, the average politician follows in
the footsteps of those gentlemen already mentioned. He is not allowed to
believe, so he contents himself with a denial of the other side's
promises. Assertion is infinitely more brain-wearing than denial.
Side by side with the increase in those who deny is a growth in the
numbers of those who come to regard apathy, suspended judgment, or a
lack of interest in a religious matter as a state of positive belief.
There are agnostics quite literally all over the place. Belief peters
down into acceptance, acceptance becomes a probability, a probability
declines into a reasonable doubt, and a reasonable doubt drifts into "it
is highly conjectural and indeed extremely unlikely," or something of
that sort. Tolerance was once an instrument for ensuring that truth
should not be suppressed; it is now an excuse for refusing to bother.
There is, in fact, a growing disrespect for truth. A great many men went
to the stake years ago rather than admit the possibility that they were
wrong; they protested, so far as human endurance allowed them to
protest, that they were orthodox and that their persecutors, and not
they, were the heretics. To-day a bunch of Cambridge men calls itself
"The Heretics" and imagines it has found a clever title. At the same
time there is an apparent decline in the power to believe. The average
politician (the principal type of twentieth-century propagandist)
hardly ever makes a speech which does not contain one at least of the
following phrases:
"I may be mistaken, but it seems to me that . . ."
"We are all subject to correction, but as far as
we know . . ."
"In this necessarily imperfect world . . ."
"So far as one is able to judge . . ."
"Appearances are notoriously deceptive, but . . ."
"Human experience is necessarily limited to . . ."
"We can never be really sure . . ."
"Pilate asked, 'What is truth?' Ah, my brethren,
what indeed?"
"The best minds of the country have failed to come
to an agreement on this question; one can only
surmise . . ."
"Art is long and life is short. Art to-day is even
longer than it used to be."
Now the politician, to do him justice, has retained the courage of his
convictions to a greater extent than the orthodox believer in God. Men
are still prepared to make Home Rule the occasion of bloodshed, or to
spend the midnight hours denouncing apparent political heresies. But
whereas the politician, like the orthodox believer once pronounced
apologetics, they now merely utter apologies. To-day, equipped as never
before with the heavy artillery of argument in the shape of Higher
Criticism, research, blue-books, statistics, cheap publications, free
libraries, accessible information, public lectures, and goodness only
knows what else, the fighting forces of the spiritual and temporal
decencies lie drowsing as in a club-room, placarded "Religion and
politics must not be discussed here."
All this, with the exception of the political references, is a summary
of Chesterton's claim that a return to orthodoxy is desirable and
necessary. It will be found at length in _Heretics_ and in the first
chapters of _Orthodoxy_, and sprinkled throughout all his writings of a
later date than 1906 or so. He protests on more than one occasion
against Mr. Shaw's epigram, which seems to him to contain the essence of
all that is wrong to-day, "The golden rule is that there is no golden
rule." Chesterton insists that there is a golden rule, that it is a very
old one, and that it is known to a great many people, most of whom
belong to the working classes.
In his argument that, on the whole, the masses are (or were) right about
religion, and that the intellectuals are wrong, Chesterton is
undoubtedly at his most bellicose and his sincerest. His is the
pugnacity that prefers to pull down another's banner rather than to
raise his own. His "defences" in _The Defendant_, and the six hundred
odd cases made out by him in the columns of The Daily News are largely
and obviously inspired by the wish, metaphorically speaking, to punch
somebody's head. The fact that he is not a mere bully appears in the
appeal to common decency which Chesterton would be incapable of omitting
from an article. Nevertheless he prefers attack to defence. In war, the
offensive is infinitely more costly than the defensive. But in
controversy this is reversed. The opener of a debate is in a much more
difficult position than his opponent. The latter need only criticize the
former's case; he is not compelled to disclose his own defences.
Chesterton used to have a grand time hoisting people on their own
petards, and letting forth strings of epigrams at the expense of those
from whom he differed, and only incidentally revealing his own position.
Then, as he tells us in the preface to _Orthodoxy_, when he had
published the saltatory series of indictments entitled _Heretics_, a
number of his critics said, in effect, "Please, Mr. Chesterton, what
are we to believe?" Mr. G. S. Street, in particular, begged for
enlightenment. G.K.C. joyously accepted the invitation, and wrote
_Orthodoxy_, his most brilliant book.
There are few works in the English language the brilliancy of which is
so sustained. _Orthodoxy_ is a rapid torrent of epigrammatically
expressed arguments. Chesterton's method in writing it is that of the
digger wasp. This intelligent creature carries on the survival of the
fittest controversy by paralyzing its opponent first, and then
proceeding to lay the eggs from which future fitness will proceed in the
unresisting but still living body. Chesterton begins by paralyzing his
reader, by savagely attacking all the beliefs which the latter, if he be
a modern and a sceptic, probably regards as first principles. Tolerance
is dismissed, as we have just seen, as a mere excuse for not caring.
Reason, that awful French goddess, is shown to be another apology.
Nietzsche and various other authors to whom some of us have bent the
knee are slaughtered without misery. Then Chesterton proceeds to the
argument, the reader being by this time receptive enough to swallow a
camel, on the sole condition that G.K.C. has previously slightly
treacled the animal.
Perhaps it would be more accurate to assert that at this point
Chesterton pretends to begin his argument. As a matter of strict fact he
only describes his adventures in Fairyland, which is all the earth. He
tells us of his profound astonishment at the consistent recurrence of
apples on apple trees, and at the general jolliness of the earth. He
describes, very beautifully, some of the sensations of childhood making
the all-embracing discovery that things are what they seem, and the even
more joyful feeling of pretending that they are not, or that they will
cease to be at any moment. A young kitten will watch a large cushion,
which to it is a very considerable portion of the universe, flying at it
without indicating any very appreciable surprise. A child, in the same
way, would not be surprised if his house suddenly developed wings and
flew away. Chesterton cultivated this attitude of always expecting to be
surprised by the most natural things in the world, until it became an
obsession, and a part of his journalistic equipment. In a sense
Chesterton is the everlasting boy, the Undergraduate Who Would Not Grow
Up. There must be few normally imaginative town-bred children to whom
the pointed upright area-railings do not appear an unsearchable armoury
of spears or as walls of protective flames, temporarily frozen black so
that people should be able to enter and leave their house. Every child
knows that the old Norse story of a sleeping Brunnhilde encircled by
flames is true; to him or her, there is a Brunnhilde in every street,
and the child knows that there it always has a chance of being the
chosen Siegfried. But because this view of life is so much cosier than
that of the grown-ups, Chesterton clings to his childhood's neat little
universe and weeps pathetically when anybody mentions Herbert Spencer,
and makes faces when he hears the word Newton. He insists on a fair dole
of surprises. "Children are grateful when Santa Claus puts in their
stockings gifts of toys and sweets. Could I not be grateful to Santa
Claus when he put in my stockings the gift of two miraculous legs?"
Now this fairyland business is frankly overdone. Chesterton conceives of
God, having carried the Creation as far as this world, sitting down to
look at the new universe in a sort of ecstasy. "And God saw every thing
that he had made, and, behold it was very good." He enjoyed His new toy
immensely, and as He sent the earth spinning round the sun, His pleasure
increased. So He said "Do it again" every time the sun had completed its
course, and laughed prodigiously, and behaved like a happy child. And
so He has gone on to this day saying "Do it again" to the sun and the
moon and the stars, to the animal creation, and the trees, and every
living thing. So Chesterton pictures God, giving His name to what
others, including Christians, call natural law, or the laws of God, or
the laws of gravitation, conservation of energy, and so on, but always
laws. For which reason, one is compelled to assume that in his opinion
God is now [1915] saying to Himself, "There's another bloody war, do it
again, sun," and gurgling with delight. It is dangerous to wander in
fairyland, as Chesterton has himself demonstrated, "one might meet a
fairy." It is not safe to try to look God in the face. A prophet in
Israel saw the glory of Jehovah, and though He was but the God of a
small nation, the prophet's face shone, and, so great was the vitality
he absorbed from the great Source that he "was an hundred and twenty
years old when he died: his eye was not dim, nor his natural force
abated." That is the reverent Hebrew manner of conveying the glory of
God. But Chesterton, cheerfully playing toss halfpenny among the
fairies, sees an idiot child, and calls it God.
Fortunately for the argument, Chesterton has no more to say about his
excursion in Fairyland after his return. He goes on to talk about the
substitutes which people have invented for Christianity. The Inner Light
theory has vitriol sprayed upon it. Marcus Aurelius, it is explained,
acted according to the Inner Light. "He gets up early in the morning,
just as our own aristocrats leading the Simple Life get up early in the
morning; because such altruism is much easier than stopping the games in
the amphitheatre or giving the English people back their land." The
present writer does not profess any ability to handle philosophic
problems philosophically; it seems to him, however, that if Chesterton
had been writing a few years later, he would have attempted to
extinguish the latest form of the Inner Light, that "intuition" which
has been so much associated with M. Bergson's teachings.
The Inner Light is finally polished off as follows:
Of all conceivable forms of enlightenment the
worst is what these people call the Inner Light.
Of all horrible religions the most horrible is the
worship of the god within. Any one who knows
anybody knows how it would work; anybody who knows
any one from the Higher Thought Centre knows how
it does work. That Jones should worship the god
within him turns out ultimately to mean that Jones
shall worship Jones. . . . Christianity came into
the world firstly in order to assert with
violence that a man has not only to look inwards,
but to look outwards, to behold with astonishment
and enthusiasm a divine company and a divine
captain.
Continuing his spiritual autobiography, Chesterton describes his gradual
emergence from the wonted agnosticism of sixteen through the mediumship
of agnostic literature. Once again that remark of Bacon's showed itself
to be true, "A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but
depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion." A man may
read Huxley and Bradlaugh, who knew their minds, and call himself an
agnostic. But when it comes to reading their followers, there's another
story to tell. What especially struck Chesterton was the wholesale
self-contradictoriness of the literature of agnosticism. One man would
say that Christianity was so harmful that extermination was the least
that could be desired for it, and another would insist that it had
reached a harmless and doddering old age. A writer would assert that
Christianity was a religion of wrath and blood, and would point to the
Inquisition, and to the religious wars which have at one time or another
swept over the civilized world. But by the time the reader's blood was
up, he would come across some virile atheist's proclamation of the
feeble, mattoid character of the religion in question, as illustrated by
its quietist saints, the Quakers, the Tolstoyans, and non-resisters in
general. When he had cooled down, he would run into a denunciation of
the asceticism of Christianity, the monastic system, hair-shirts, and so
on. Then he would come across a sweeping condemnation of its sensual
luxuriousness, its bejewelled chalices, its pompous rituals, the
extravagance of its archbishops, and the like. Christianity "was abused
for being too plain and for being too coloured." And then the sudden
obvious truth burst upon Chesterton, What if Christianity was the happy
mean?
Perhaps, after all, it is Christianity that is
sane and all its critics that are mad--in various
ways. I tested this idea by asking myself whether
there was about any of the accusers anything
morbid that might explain the accusation. I was
startled to find that this key fitted a lock. For
instance, it was certainly odd that the modern
world charged Christianity at once with bodily
austerity and with artistic pomp. But then it was
also odd, very odd, that the modern world itself
combined extreme bodily luxury with an extreme
absence of artistic pomp. The modern man thought
Becket's robes too rich and his meals too poor.
But then the modern man was really exceptional in
history. No man before ever ate such elaborate
dinners in such ugly clothes. The modern man found
the church too simple exactly where modern life
is too complex; he found the church too gorgeous
exactly where modern life is too dingy. The man
who disliked the plain fasts and feasts was mad on
_entrees_. The man who disliked vestments wore a
pair of preposterous trousers. And surely if there
was any insanity involved in the matter at all it
was in the trousers, not in the simply falling
robe. If there was any insanity at all, it was in
the extravagant _entrees_, not in the bread and
wine.
Nevertheless, Christianity was centrifugal rather than centripetal; it
was not a mere average, but a centre of gravity; not a compromise, but a
conflict. Christ was not half-God and half-man, like Hercules, but
"perfect God and perfect man." Man was not only the highest, but also
the lowest. "The Church was positive on both points. One can hardly
think too little of one's self. One can hardly think too much of one's
soul."
At this point agreement with Mr. Chesterton becomes difficult.
Christianity, he tells us, comes in with a flaming sword and performs
neat acts of bisection. It separates the sinner from the sin, and tells
us to love the former and hate the latter. He also tells us that no
pagan would have thought of this. Leaving aside the question whether or
not Plato was a Christian, it may be pointed out that whereas Chesterton
condemns Tolstoyanism whenever he recognizes it, he here proclaims
Tolstoy's doctrine. On the whole, however, the mild perverseness of the
chapter on _The Paradoxes of Christianity_ leaves its major implications
safe. It does not matter greatly whether we prefer to regard
Christianity as a centre of gravity, or a point of balance. We need only
pause to note Chesterton personifies this dualism. _The Napoleon of
Notting Hill_ is the arrangement of little bits of iron--the inhabitants
of London, in this case--around the two poles of a fantastic magnet, of
which one is Adam Wayne, the fanatic, and the other, Auberon Quin, the
humorist. In _The Ball and the Cross_ the diagram is repeated. James
Turnbull, the atheist, and Evan MacIan, the believer, are the two poles.
We speak in a loose sort of way of opposite poles when we wish to
express separation. But, in point of fact, they symbolize connection far
more exactly. They are absolutely interdependent. The whole essence of a
North and a South Pole is that we, knowing where one is, should be able
to say where the other is. Nobody has ever suggested a universe in which
the North Pole wandered about at large. This is the idea which
Chesterton seems to have captured and introduced into his definition of
Christianity.
Democracy, to Chesterton, is the theory that one man is as good as
another; Christianity, he finds, is the virtual sanctification by
supernatural authority of democracy. He points out the incompatibility
of political democracy, for example, with the determinism to which Mr.
Blatchford's logical atheism has brought him. If man is the creature of
his heredity and his environment, as Mr. Blatchford asserts, and if a
slum-bred heredity and a slum environment do not make for high
intelligence, then obviously it is against the best interests of the
State to allow the slum inhabitant to vote. On the other hand, it is
entirely to the best interests of the State to entrust its affairs to
the aristocracy, whose breeding and environment gives it an enormous
amount of intelligence. Christianity, by proclaiming that every man's
body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, insists both upon the necessity of
abolishing the slums and of honouring the slum-dwellers as sharers with
the rest of humanity in a common sonship. This is the case for
Socialism, it may be pointed out parenthetically, and Chesterton has let
it slip past him. He insists that orthodoxy is the best conceivable
guardian of liberty, for the somewhat far-fetched reason that no
believer in miracles would have such "a deep and sincere faith in the
incurable routine of the cosmos" as to cling to the theory that men
should not have the liberty to work changes. If a man believed in the
freedom of God, in fact, he would have to believe in the freedom of man.
The obvious answer to which is that he generally doesn't. Christianity
made for eternal vigilance, Chesterton maintains, whereas Buddhism kept
its eye on the Inner Light--which means, in fact, kept it shut. In
proof, or at least in confirmation of this, he points to the statues of
Christian saints and of the Buddha. The former keep their eyes open
wide, the latter keep their eyes firmly closed. Vigilance, however, does
not always make for liberty--the vigilance of the Inquisition, for
example. Leaving out of account this and other monstrous exceptions, we
might say spiritual liberty, perhaps, but not political liberty, not, at
any rate, since the days of Macchiavelli, and the divorce of Church and
State.
By insisting specially on the immanence of God we
get introspection, self-isolation, quietism,
social indifference--Tibet. By insisting specially
on the transcendence of God we get wonder,
curiosity, moral and political adventure,
religious indignation--Christendom. Insisting that
God is inside man, man is always inside himself.
By insisting that God transcends man, man has
transcended himself.
In concluding the book, Chesterton joyously refutes a few anti-Christian
arguments by means of his extraordinary knack of seeing the large and
obvious, and therefore generally overlooked things. He believes in
Christianity because he is a rationalist, and the evidence in its favour
has convinced him. The arguments with which he deals are these. That men
are much like beasts, and probably related to them. Answer: yes, but men
are also quite wonderfully unlike them in many important respects. That
primeval religion arose in ignorance and fear. Answer: we know nothing
about prehistoric man, because he was prehistoric, therefore we cannot
say where he got his religion from. But "the whole human race has a
tradition of the Fall." And so on: the argument that Christ was a poor
sheepish and ineffectual professor of a quiet life is answered by the
flaming energy of His earthly mission; the suggestion that Christianity
belongs to the Dark Ages is countered by the historical fact that it
"was the one path across the Dark Ages that was not dark." It was the
path that led from Roman to modern civilization, and we are here because
of it. And the book ends with a peroration that might be likened to a
torrent, were it not for the fact that torrents are generally narrow
and shallow. It is a most remarkable exhibition of energy, a case from
which flippancies and irrelevancies have been removed, and where the
central conviction advances irresistibly. Elsewhere in the book
Chesterton had been inconsequent, darting from point to point, lunging
at an opponent one moment, formulating a theory in the next, and
producing an effect which, if judged by sample, would be considered
bizarre and undirected. The book contains a few perversities, of course.
The author attempts to rebut the idea "that priests have blighted
societies with bitterness and gloom," by pointing out that in one or two
priest-ridden countries wine and song and dance abound. Yes, but if
people are jollier in France and Spain and Italy than in savage Africa,
it is due not to the priests so much as to the climate which makes wine
cheap and an open-air life possible. No amount of priests would be able
to set the inhabitants of the Belgian Congo dancing around a maypole
singing the while glad songs handed down by their fathers. No amount of
priests would be able to make the festive Eskimo bask in the sun and
sing in chorus when there wasn't any sun and it was altogether too cold
to open their mouths wide in the open air. In fact the priests are not
the cause of the blight where it exists, just as they are not the cause
of the jolliness, when there is any. But _Orthodoxy_ is Chesterton's
sincerest book. It is perhaps the only one of the whole lot in the
course of which he would not be justified in repeating a remark which
begins one of the _Tremendous Trifles_, "Every now and then I have
introduced into my essays an element of truth."
Twice upon a time there was a Samuel Butler who wrote exhilaratingly and
died and left the paradoxical contents of his notebooks to be published
by posterity. The first (i.e. of Hudibras, not of Erewhon) had many
lively things to say on the question of orthodoxy, being the forerunner
of G.K.C. And I am greatly tempted to treat Samuel Butler as an ancestor
to be described at length. Chesterton might well have said, "It is a
dangerous thing to be too inquisitive, and search too narrowly into a
true Religion, for 50,000 Bethshemites were destroyed only for looking
into the Ark of the Covenant, and ten times as many have been ruined for
looking too curiously into that Booke in which that Story is
recorded"--in fact in _Magic_ he very nearly did say the same thing. He
would have liked (as who would not?) to have been the author of the
saying that "Repentant Teares are the waters upon which the Spirit of
God moves," or that "There is no better Argument to prove that the
Scriptures were written by Divine Inspiration, than that excellent
saying of our Savior, If any man will go to Law with thee for thy cloke,
give him thy Coate also." He might well have written dozens of those
puns and aphorisms of Butler which an unkind fate has omitted from the
things we read, and even from the things we quote. But Butler provides
an answer to Chesterton, for he was an intelligent anticipator who
foresaw exactly what would happen when orthodoxy, which is to say the
injunction to shout with the larger crowd, should be proclaimed as the
easiest way out of religious difficulties. Before a reader has finally
made up his mind on _Orthodoxy_ (and it is highly desirable that he
should do so), let him consider two little texts:
"They that profess Religion and believe it
consists in frequenting of Sermons, do, as if they
should say They have a great desire to serve God,
but would faine be perswaded to it. Why should any
man suppose that he pleases God by patiently
hearing an Ignorant fellow render Religion
ridiculous?"
"He [a Catholic] prefers his Church merely for the
Antiquity of it, and cares not how sound or
rotten it be, so it be but old. He takes a liking
to it as some do to old Cheese, only for the blue
Rottenness of it. If he had lived in the primitive
Times he had never been a _Christian_; for the
Antiquity of the _Pagan_ and _Jewish_ Religion
would have had the same Power over him against the
_Christian_, as the old _Roman_ has against the
modern Reformation."
Here we leave Samuel Butler. The majority stands the largest chance of
being right through the sheer operation of the law of averages. But
somehow one does not easily imagine a mob passing through the gate that
is narrow and the way that is narrow. One prefers to think of men going
up in ones and twos, perhaps even in loneliness, and rejoicing at the
strange miracle of judgment that all their friends should be assembled
at the journey's end.
But the final criticism of Chesterton's _Orthodoxy_ is that it is not
orthodox. He claims that he is "concerned only to discuss . . . the
central Christian theology (sufficiently summarized in the Apostles'
Creed)" and, "When the word 'orthodoxy' is used here it means the
Apostles' Creed, as understood by everybody calling himself Christian
until a very short time ago and the general historic conduct of those
who held such a creed." In other words he counts as orthodox Anglicans,
Roman Catholics, Orthodox Russians, Nonconformists, Lutherans,
Calvinists, and all manner of queer fish, possibly Joanna Southcott,
Mrs. Annie Besant, and Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy. He might even, by
stretching a point or two (which is surely permissible by the rules of
their game), rope in the New Theologians. Now this may be evidence of
extraordinary catholicity, but not of orthodoxy. Chesterton stands by
and applauds the Homoousians scalping the Homoiousians, but he is
apparently willing to leave the Anglican and the Roman Catholic on the
same plane of orthodoxy, which is absurd. We cannot all be right, even
the Duke in _Magic_ would not be mad enough to assert that. And the
average Christian would absolutely refuse his adherence to a statement
of orthodoxy that left the matter of supreme spiritual authority an open
question.
In the fifteenth century practically every Englishman would have
declared with some emphasis that it lay in the Pope of Rome. In the
twentieth century practically every Englishman would declare with equal
emphasis that it did not. This change of opinion was accompanied by
considerable ill-feeling on both sides, and was, as it were, illuminated
by burning martyrs. The men of both parties burned in both an active
and a passive sense. Those charming Tudor sisters, Bloody Mary (as the
Anglicans call her) and Bloody Bess (as the Roman Catholics
affectionately name her) left a large smudge upon accepted ideas of
orthodoxy; charred human flesh was a principal constituent of it. The
mark remains, the differences are far greater, but, to Chesterton, both
Anglican and Roman Catholic are "orthodox." Of such is the illimitable
orthodoxy of an ethical society, or of a body of Theosophists who
"recognize the essential unity of all creeds and religions"--the liars!
Chesterton tells us that Messrs. Shaw, Kipling, Wells, Ibsen and others
are heretics, because of their doctrines. But he gives us no idea
whether the Pope of Rome, who sells indulgences, is a heretic. And as
the Pope is likely to outlive Messrs. Shaw, etc., by perhaps a thousand
years, it is possible that Chesterton has been attacking the ephemeral
heresies, while leaving the major ones untouched. In effect, Chesterton
tells us no more than that we should shout with the largest crowd. But
the largest crowd prefers, just now, not to do anything so clamorous.
The most curious feature about the present position of Christianity is
the energy with which its opponents combine to keep it going. While Mr.
Robert Blatchford continues to argue that man's will is not free, and
Sir Oliver Lodge continues to maintain that it is, the Doctrine of the
Resurrection is safe; it is not even attacked. But the net result of all
those peculiar modern things called "movements" is a state of immobility
like a nicely balanced tug-of-war. Perhaps a Rugby scrum would make a
better comparison.
The great and grave changes in our political
civilization all belong to the early nineteenth
century, not to the later. They belong to the
black-and-white epoch, when men believed fixedly
in Toryism, in Protestantism, in Calvinism, in
Reform, and not infrequently in Revolution. And
whatever each man believed in, he hammered at
steadily, without scepticism: and there was a time
when the Established Church might have fallen, and
the House of Lords nearly fell. It was because
Radicals were wise enough to be constant and
consistent; it was because Radicals were wise
enough to be conservative. . . . Let beliefs fade
fast and frequently if you wish institutions to
remain the same. The more the life of the mind is
unhinged, the more the machinery of matter will be
left to itself. The net result of all our
political suggestions, Collectivism, Tolstoyanism,
Neo-Feudalism, Communism, Anarchy, Scientific
Bureaucracy--the plain fruit of them all is that
Monarchy and the House of Lords will remain. The
net result of all the new religions will be that
the Church of England will not (for heaven knows
how long) be disestablished. It was Karl Marx,
Nietzsche, Tolstoy, Cunninghame Graham, Bernard
Shaw, and Auberon Herbert, who between them, with
bowed, gigantic backs, bore up the throne of the
Archbishop of Canterbury.
It is on these grounds that we must believe that, even as the Church
survives, and prevails, in order to get a hearing when the atheist and
the New Theologian have finished shouting themselves hoarse at each
other, so must political creeds be in conformity with the doctrines of
the Church. Such is the foundation of democracy, according to
Chesterton. Will anybody revise his political views on this basis?
Probably not. Every Christian believes that his political opinions are
thoroughly Christian, and so entire is the disrepute into which atheism
has fallen as a philosophy of life, that a great many atheists likewise
protest the entire Christianity of their politics. We are all democrats
to-day, in one sense or another; each of us more loosely than his
neighbour. It is strange that by the criterion of almost every living
man who springs to the mind as a representative democrat, Chesterton is
the most undemocratic of us all. This, however, needs a separate chapter
of explanation.