I cannot understand the people who take literature seriously; but I can
love them, and I do. Out of my love I warn them to keep clear of this
book. It is a collection of crude and shapeless papers upon current or
rather flying subjects; and they must be published pretty much as they
stand. They were written, as a rule, at the last moment; they were
handed in the moment before it was too late, and I do not think that
our commonwealth would have been shaken to its foundations if they had
been handed in the moment after. They must go out now, with all their
imperfections on their head, or rather on mine; for their vices are too
vital to be improved with a blue pencil, or with anything I can think
of, except dynamite.
Their chief vice is that so many of them are very serious; because I
had no time to make them flippant. It is so easy to be solemn; it is so
hard to be frivolous. Let any honest reader shut his eyes for a few
moments, and approaching the secret tribunal of his soul, ask himself
whether he would really rather be asked in the next two hours to write
the front page of the _Times_, which is full of long leading articles,
or the front page of _Tit-Bits,_ which is full of short jokes. If the
reader is the fine conscientious fellow I take him for, he will at once
reply that he would rather on the spur of the moment write ten _Times_
articles than one _Tit-Bits_ joke. Responsibility, a heavy and cautious
responsibility of speech, is the easiest thing in the world; anybody
can do it. That is why so many tired, elderly, and wealthy men go in
for politics. They are responsible, because they have not the strength
of mind left to be irresponsible. It is more dignified to sit still
than to dance the Barn Dance. It is also easier. So in these easy pages
I keep myself on the whole on the level of the _Times_: it is only
occasionally that I leap upwards almost to the level of _Tit-Bits._
I resume the defence of this indefensible book. These articles have
another disadvantage arising from the scurry in which they were
written; they are too long-winded and elaborate. One of the great
disadvantages of hurry is that it takes such a long time. If I have to
start for High-gate this day week, I may perhaps go the shortest way.
If I have to start this minute, I shall almost certainly go the
longest. In these essays (as I read them over) I feel frightfully
annoyed with myself for not getting to the point more quickly; but I
had not enough leisure to be quick. There are several maddening cases
in which I took two or three pages in attempting to describe an
attitude of which the essence could be expressed in an epigram; only
there was no time for epigrams. I do not repent of one shade of opinion
here expressed; but I feel that they might have been expressed so much
more briefly and precisely. For instance, these pages contain a sort of
recurring protest against the boast of certain writers that they are
merely recent. They brag that their philosophy of the universe is the
last philosophy or the new philosophy, or the advanced and progressive
philosophy. I have said much against a mere modernism. When I use the
word “modernism,” I am not alluding specially to the current quarrel in
the Roman Catholic Church, though I am certainly astonished at any
intellectual group accepting so weak and unphilosophical a name. It is
incomprehensible to me that any thinker can calmly call himself a
modernist; he might as well call himself a Thursdayite. But apart
altogether from that particular disturbance, I am conscious of a
general irritation expressed against the people who boast of their
advancement and modernity in the discussion of religion. But I never
succeeded in saying the quite clear and obvious thing that is really
the matter with modernism. The real objection to modernism is simply
that it is a form of snobbishness. It is an attempt to crush a rational
opponent not by reason, but by some mystery of superiority, by hinting
that one is specially up to date or particularly “in the know.” To
flaunt the fact that we have had all the last books from Germany is
simply vulgar; like flaunting the fact that we have had all the last
bonnets from Paris. To introduce into philosophical discussions a sneer
at a creed’s antiquity is like introducing a sneer at a lady’s age. It
is caddish because it is irrelevant. The pure modernist is merely a
snob; he cannot bear to be a month behind the fashion.
Similarly I find that I have tried in these pages to express the real
objection to philanthropists and have not succeeded. I have not seen
the quite simple objection to the causes advocated by certain wealthy
idealists; causes of which the cause called teetotalism is the
strongest case. I have used many abusive terms about the thing, calling
it Puritanism, or superciliousness, or aristocracy; but I have not seen
and stated the quite simple objection to philanthropy; which is that it
is religious persecution. Religious persecution does not consist in
thumbscrews or fires of Smithfield; the essence of religious
persecution is this: that the man who happens to have material power in
the State, either by wealth or by official position, should govern his
fellow-citizens not according to their religion or philosophy, but
according to his own. If, for instance, there is such a thing as a
vegetarian nation; if there is a great united mass of men who wish to
live by the vegetarian morality, then I say in the emphatic words of
the arrogant French marquis before the French Revolution, “Let them eat
grass.” Perhaps that French oligarch was a humanitarian; most oligarchs
are. Perhaps when he told the peasants to eat grass he was recommending
to them the hygienic simplicity of a vegetarian restaurant. But that is
an irrelevant, though most fascinating, speculation. The point here is
that if a nation is really vegetarian let its government force upon it
the whole horrible weight of vegetarianism. Let its government give the
national guests a State vegetarian banquet. Let its government, in the
most literal and awful sense of the words, give them beans. That sort
of tyranny is all very well; for it is the people tyrannising over all
the persons. But “temperance reformers” are like a small group of
vegetarians who should silently and systematically act on an ethical
assumption entirely unfamiliar to the mass of the people. They would
always be giving peerages to greengrocers. They would always be
appointing Parliamentary Commissions to enquire into the private life
of butchers. Whenever they found a man quite at their mercy, as a
pauper or a convict or a lunatic, they would force him to add the final
touch to his inhuman isolation by becoming a vegetarian. All the meals
for school children will be vegetarian meals. All the State public
houses will be vegetarian public houses. There is a very strong case
for vegetarianism as compared with teetotalism. Drinking one glass of
beer cannot by any philosophy be drunkenness; but killing one animal
can, by this philosophy, be murder. The objection to both processes is
not that the two creeds, teetotal and vegetarian, are not admissible;
it is simply that they are not admitted. The thing is religious
persecution because it is not based on the existing religion of the
democracy. These people ask the poor to accept in practice what they
know perfectly well that the poor would not accept in theory. That is
the very definition of religious persecution. I was against the Tory
attempt to force upon ordinary Englishmen a Catholic theology in which
they do not believe. I am even more against the attempt to force upon
them a Mohamedan morality which they actively deny.
Again, in the case of anonymous journalism I seem to have said a great
deal without getting out the point very clearly. Anonymous journalism
is dangerous, and is poisonous in our existing life simply because it
is so rapidly becoming an anonymous life. That is the horrible thing
about our contemporary atmosphere. Society is becoming a secret
society. The modern tyrant is evil because of his elusiveness. He is
more nameless than his slave. He is not more of a bully than the
tyrants of the past; but he is more of a coward. The rich publisher may
treat the poor poet better or worse than the old master workman treated
the old apprentice. But the apprentice ran away and the master ran
after him. Nowadays it is the poet who pursues and tries in vain to fix
the fact of responsibility. It is the publisher who runs away. The
clerk of Mr. Solomon gets the sack: the beautiful Greek slave of the
Sultan Suliman also gets the sack; or the sack gets her. But though she
is concealed under the black waves of the Bosphorus, at least her
destroyer is not concealed. He goes behind golden trumpets riding on a
white elephant. But in the case of the clerk it is almost as difficult
to know where the dismissal comes from as to know where the clerk goes
to. It may be Mr. Solomon or Mr. Solomon’s manager, or Mr. Solomon’s
rich aunt in Cheltenham, or Mr. Soloman’s rich creditor in Berlin. The
elaborate machinery which was once used to make men responsible is now
used solely in order to shift the responsibility. People talk about the
pride of tyrants; but we in this age are not suffering from the pride
of tyrants. We are suffering from the shyness of tyrants; from the
shrinking modesty of tyrants. Therefore we must not encourage
leader-writers to be shy; we must not inflame their already exaggerated
modesty. Rather we must attempt to lure them to be vain and
ostentatious; so that through ostentation they may at last find their
way to honesty.
The last indictment against this book is the worst of all. It is simply
this: that if all goes well this book will be unintelligible gibberish.
For it is mostly concerned with attacking attitudes which are in their
nature accidental and incapable of enduring. Brief as is the career of
such a book as this, it may last just twenty minutes longer than most
of the philosophies that it attacks. In the end it will not matter to
us whether we wrote well or ill; whether we fought with flails or
reeds. It will matter to us greatly on what side we fought.