music, of which I know even less than of the technique of natural
history. To begin with a simple though moving musical instrument,
suppose an expert told me that a coach-horn could be blown quite as well
if it were only two feet long. I should believe him; partly because it
seems probable enough, and partly because I know nothing about the
matter. I am not even an incompetent coach-horn blower. But I should
certainly not believe him if he told me, as a generalization about all
musical instruments, that half a musical instrument was better than no
music, or even as good as any music. I should disbelieve it because it
is inconsistent with the general nature of a musical instrument, or any
instrument. I should disbelieve it long before I had thought of the
thousand particular instruments to which it does not apply. I should
not primarily need to think of the particular examples, though they are
obvious enough. A stringed instrument cannot even be called stringed
without two fixed points to hold both ends of the string. At the stage
when the fiddle-strings floated like filaments in the void, feeling
their way towards an evolutionary other end of nowhere, there could be
nothing serving any purpose of a fiddle. A drum with a hole in is not a
drum at all. But an evolutionary drum has to turn slowly into a drum,
when it has begun by being only a hole. I cannot see any survival for a
bagpipe that begins by being slit; I think such bagpipes would die with
all their music in them. I feel a faint doubt, mingled with fascination,
about the idea that a violin could grow out of the ground like a tree;
it would at least make a charming fairy story. But whether or no a
fiddle could grow like a tree, I feel sure nobody could play on it while
it was still only a twig. But all these, as I say, are only examples
that throng into the mind afterwards, of a principle seen in a flash
from the first. Of things serving particular purposes, by a balance and
arrangement of parts, it _cannot_ be generally true that they are fit
for use before they are finished for use. It is against the general
nature of such things; and can only be true by an individual
coincidence. I can see for myself, for instance, that some particular
case like the trunk of an elephant might really be compared to the
simpler case of the coach-horn. Length and flexibility _are_ mere
matters of degree; and I might possibly find it convenient if my nose
were six inches longer, and sufficiently lively to be able to point
right and left at various objects on the tea-table. But this is simply
an accident of the particular qualities of length and laxity, not a
general truth about the qualities of growth and use. It is not in the
least true that I should experience the least convenience from the
membrane between my fingers thickening or widening a little; even if an
evolutionist at my elbow comforted and inspired me with the far-off
divine event when my descendant should have the wings of a bat. Until
the membrane can really be spread properly from point to point it is
like the fiddle-string before it is stretched properly from point to
point. It is no nearer serving its ultimate purpose than if it were not
there at all. But it would be easy to find a similar animal parallel to
the drum with a hole in it. There are monsters who would die instantly
if they could not close the holes in their head under water. One
supposes they would have died swiftly, before their closing apparatus
could develop slowly. But the principle is a general one, and is
involved in the very nature of any apparatus. It is only by way of
figure of speech, in defence of the freedom of the ignorant, that I take
the type of a musical apparatus. I take it because I am entirely
ignorant of musical instruments. I am of the candid class of those who
have “never tried” to perform on the violin. I cannot play upon this
pipe; especially if it be a bagpipe. But if anybody tells me that the
wildest pibroch rose from a whisper gradually, as a hole in the wind-bag
was filled up gradually--why then I shall not be so rude, I hope, as to
say that there is a windbag in his head, but I shall venture to say that
there is a hole in his argument. And if he says that pieces of wood came
together slowly, stick by stick, to form a fiddle, and that before it
was yet a fiddle at all the sticks discoursed most excellent
music--why, I fear I shall be content to say “fiddlesticks.”
There is another answer often made which seems to me even more
illogical. The critic generally says it is unreasonable to expect from
the geological record that continuous gradation of types which the
challengers of Darwinism demand. He says that only a part of the earth
can be examined and that it could not in any case prove so much. This
mode of argument involves an amazing oblivion of what is the thing to be
proved, and who is trying to prove it. By hypothesis the Darwinians are
trying to prove Darwinism. The Anti-Darwinians are not trying to prove
anything; except that the Darwinians have not proved it. I do not demand
anything, in the sense of complaining anything or the absence of
anything. I am quite comfortable in a completely mysterious cosmos. I am
not reviling the rocks or cursing the eternal hills for not containing
these things. I am only saying that these are the things they would have
to contain to make me believe something that somebody else wants me to
believe. These traces are not things that the Anti-Darwinian demands.
They are things that the Darwinian requires. The Darwinian requires them
in order to convince his opponent of Darwinism; his opponent may be
right or wrong, but he cannot be expected to accept the mere absence of
them as proof of Darwinism. If the evidences in support of the theory
are unfortunately hidden, why then we do not know whether they were in
support of the theory. If the proofs of natural selection are lost, why
then there are no proofs of natural selection; and there is an end of
it.
And I would respectfully ask these critics what would be thought of a
theological or miraculous argument which thus based itself on the very
gaps in its own evidence. Let them indulge in the flight of fancy that I
have just told them, let us say, that I saw the Devil at Brighton: and
that the proof of his presence there can still be seen on the sands, in
gigantic marks of a cloven hoof as big as the foot of an elephant.
Suppose we all search the sands of Brighton and find no such thing. And
suppose I then say that, after all, the tide might have washed away the
footprints, or that the fiend may have flown through the air from his
little country seat at the Dyke, or that he may have walked along the
hard asphalt of Brighton parade, as proudly as once upon the flaming
marl. To those acquainted with Brighton parade this will seem probable
enough; but there would be a fallacy in merely saying that the evil
spirit may have done all this. The sceptic will not unnaturally reply:
“Yes, he may; and he may not; and it may be a legend; and you may be a
liar; and I think our little investigation is now concluded.” I am very
far indeed from calling the Darwinian a liar; but I shall continue to
say that he is not always a logician.
Turning Inside Out
When the author of “If Winter Comes” brought out another book about the
life of the family, it was almost as much criticized as the first book
was praised. I do not say that there was nothing to criticize, but I do
say that I was not convinced by the abstract logic of the criticism.
Probably the critics would have accepted it as a true story if the
author had not been so incautious as to give it a true moral. And the
moral is not fashionable in the press at the moment; for it is to the
effect that a woman may gain a professional success at the price of a
domestic failure. And it is the convention of journalism at this moment
to support what is feminist against what is feminine. Anyhow, while the
story might be criticized, the criticisms can certainly be criticized.
It is not really conclusive to say that a woman may be ambitious in
business without her children going to the bad. It is just as easy to
say that a woman may be ambitious in politics without helping to murder
an old gentleman in his bed. But that does not make “Macbeth” either
inartistic or untrue. It is just as easy to say that a woman may be
ambitious in society without tricking her husband into a debtor’s
prison, so that she may spend the time with a bald-headed nobleman with
red whiskers. But that does not make the great scene in “Vanity Fair”
unconvincing either in detail or design. The question in fiction is not
whether that thing must occur, but whether that sort of thing may occur,
and whether it is significant of larger things. Now this business of the
woman at work and the woman at home is a very large thing, and this
story about it is highly significant.
For in this matter the modern mind is inconsistent with itself. It has
managed to get one of its rather crude ideals in flat contradiction to
the other. People of the progressive sort are perpetually telling us
that the hope of the world is in education. Education is everything.
Nothing is so important as training the rising generation. Nothing is
really important except the rising generation. They tell us this over
and over again, with slight variations of the same formula, and never
seem to see what it involves. For if there be any word of truth in all
this talk about the education of the child, then there is certainly
nothing but nonsense in nine-tenths of the talk about the emancipation
of the woman. If education is the highest function in the State, why
should anybody want to be emancipated from the highest function in the
State? It is as if we talked of commuting the sentence that condemned a
man to be President of the United States; or a reprieve coming in time
to save him from being Pope. If education is the largest thing in the
world, what is the sense of talking about a woman being liberated from
the largest thing in the world? It is as if we were to rescue her from
the cruel doom of being a poet like Shakespeare; or to pity the
limitations of an all-round artist like Leonardo da Vinci. Nor can
there be any doubt that there is truth in this claim for education. Only
precisely the sort of which it is particularly true is the sort called
domestic education. Private education really is universal. Public
education can be comparatively narrow. It would really be an
exaggeration to say that the schoolmaster who takes his pupils in
freehand drawing is training them in all the uses of freedom. It really
would be fantastic to say that the harmless foreigner who instructs a
class in French or German is talking with all the tongues of men and
angels. But the mother dealing with her own daughters in her own home
does literally have to deal with all forms of freedom, because she has
to deal with all sides of a single human soul. She is obliged, if not to
talk with the tongues of men and angels, at least to decide how much she
shall talk about angels and how much about men.
In short, if education is really the larger matter, then certainly
domestic life is the larger matter; and official or commercial life the
lesser matter. It is a mere matter of arithmetic that anything taken
from the larger matter will leave it less. It is a mere matter of simple
subtraction that the mother must have less time for the family if she
has more time for the factory. If education, ethical and cultural,
really were a trivial and mechanical matter, the mother might possibly
rattle through it as a rapid routine, before going about her more
serious business of serving a capitalist for hire. If education were
merely instruction, she might briefly instruct her babies in the
multiplication tables, before she mounted to higher and nobler spheres
as the servant of a Milk Trust or the secretary of a Drug Combine. But
the moderns are perpetually assuring us that education is not
instruction; they are perpetually insisting that it is not a mechanical
exercise, and must on no account be an abbreviated exercise. It must go
on at every hour. It must cover every subject. But if it must go on at
all hours, it must not be neglected in business hours. And if the child
is to be free to cover every subject, the parent must be free to cover
every subject too.
For the idea of a non-parental substitute is simply an illusion of
wealth. The advanced advocate of this inconsistent and infinite
education for the child is generally thinking of the rich child; and all
this particular sort of liberty should rather be called luxury. It is
natural enough for a fashionable lady to leave her little daughter with
the French governess or the Czecho-Slovakian governess or the Ancient
Sanskrit governess, and know that one or other of these sides of the
infant’s intelligence is being developed; while she, the mother, figures
in public as a money-lender or some other modern position of dignity.
But among poorer people there cannot be five teachers to one pupil.
Generally there are about fifty pupils to one teacher. There it is
impossible to cut up the soul of a single child and distribute it among
specialists. It is all we can do to tear in pieces the soul of a single
schoolmaster, and distribute it in rags and scraps to a whole mob of
boys. And even in the case of the wealthy child it is by no means clear
that specialists are a substitute for spiritual authority. Even a
millionaire can never be certain that he has not left out one governess,
in the long procession of governesses perpetually passing under his
marble portico; and the omission may be as fatal as that of the king
who forgot to ask the bad fairy to the christening. The daughter, after
a life of ruin and despair, may look back and say, “Had I but also had a
Lithuanian governess, my fate as a diplomatist’s wife in Eastern Europe
would have been very different.” But it seems rather more probable, on
the whole, that what she would miss would not be one or other of these
special accomplishments, but some commonsense code of morals or general
view of life. The millionaire could, no doubt, hire a mahatma or
mystical prophet to give his child a general philosophy. But I doubt if
the philosophy would be very successful even for the rich child, and it
would be quite impossible for the poor child. In the case of comparative
poverty, which is the common lot of mankind, we come back to a general
parental responsibility, which is the common sense of mankind. We come
back to the parent as the person in charge of education. If you exalt
the education, you must exalt the parental power with it. If you
exaggerate the education, you must exaggerate the parental power with
it. If you depreciate the parental power, you must depreciate education
with it. If the young are always right and can do as they like, well and
good; let us all be jolly, old and young, and free from every kind of
responsibility. But in that case do not come pestering us with the
importance of education, when nobody has any authority to educate
anybody. Make up your mind whether you want unlimited education or
unlimited emancipation, but do not be such a fool as to suppose you can
have both at once.
There is evidence, as I have noted, that the more hard-headed people,
even of the most progressive sort, are beginning to come back to
realities in this respect. The new work of Mr. Hutchinson’s is only one
of many indications among the really independent intelligences, working
on modern fiction, that the cruder culture of merely commercial
emancipation is beginning to smell a little stale. The work of Miss
Clemence Dane and even of Miss Sheila Kaye-Smith contains more than one
suggestion of what I mean. People are no longer quite so certain that a
woman’s liberty consists of having a latch-key without a house. They are
no longer wholly convinced that every housekeeper is dull and prosaic,
while every bookkeeper is wild and poetical. And among the intelligent
the reaction is actually strengthened by all the most modern excitements
about psychology and hygiene. We cannot insist that every trick of
nerves or train of thought is important enough to be searched for in
libraries and laboratories, and not important enough for anybody to
watch by simply staying at home. We cannot insist that the first years
of infancy are of supreme importance, and that mothers are not of
supreme importance; or that motherhood is a topic of sufficient interest
for men, but not of sufficient interest for mothers. Every word that is
said about the tremendous importance of trivial nursery habits goes to
prove that being a nurse is not trivial. All tends to the return of the
simple truth that the private work is the great one and the public work
the small. The human house is a paradox, for it is larger inside than
out.
But in the problem of private versus public life there is another
neglected truth. It is true of many masculine problems as well as of
this feminine problem. Indeed, feminism falls here into exactly the same
mistake as militarism and imperialism. I mean that anything on a grand
scale gives the illusion of a grand success. Curiously enough,
multiplication acts as a concealment. Repetition actually disguises
failure. Take a particular man, and tell him to put on a particular kind
of hat and coat and trousers, and to stand in particular attitudes in
the back garden; and you will have great difficulty in persuading
yourself (or him) that he has passed through a triumph and
transfiguration. Order four hundred such hats, and eight hundred such
trousers, and you will have turned the fancy costume into a uniform.
Make all the four hundred men stand in the special attitudes on
Salisbury Plain, and there will rise up before you the spirit of a
regiment. Let the regiment march past, and, if you have any life in you
above the brutes that perish, you will have an overwhelming sense that
something splendid has just happened, or is just going to begin. I
sympathize with this moral emotion in militarism; I think it does
symbolize something great in the soul, which has given us the image of
St. Michael. But I also realize that in practical relations that emotion
can get mixed up with an illusion. It is not really possible to know the
characters of all the four hundred men in the marching column as well as
one might know the character of the one man attitudinizing in the back
garden. If all the four hundred men were individual failures, we could
still vaguely feel that the whole thing was a success. If we know the
one man to be a failure, we cannot think him a success.
That is why a footman has become rather a foolish figure, while a
foot-soldier remains rather a sublime one. Or rather, that is one of the
reasons; for there are others much more worthy. Anyhow, footmen were
only formidable or dignified when they could come in large numbers like
foot-soldiers--when they were in fact the feudal army of some great
local family, having some of the loyalty of local patriotism. Then a
livery was as dignified as a uniform, because it really was a uniform. A
man who said he served the Nevilles or rode with the Douglases could
once feel much like a man fighting for France or England. But military
feeling is mob feeling, noble as mob feeling may be. Parading one
footman is like lunching on one pea, or curing baldness by the growth of
one hair. There ought not to be anything but a plural for flunkeys, any
more than for measles or vermin or animalculæ or the sweets called
hundreds and thousands. Strictly speaking, I suppose that a logical
Latinist could say, “I have seen an animalcula”; but I never heard of a
child having the moderation to remark, “I have eaten a hundred and
thousand.” Similarly, any one of us can feel that to have hundreds and
thousands of slaves, let alone soldiers, might give a certain
imaginative pleasure in magnificence. To have one slave reveals all the
meanness of slavery. For the solitary flunkey really is the man in fancy
dress, the man standing in the back-garden in the strange and the
fantastic coat and breeches. His isolation reveals our illusion. We find
our failure in the back-garden, when we have been dreaming a dream of
success in the market-place. When you ride through the streets amid a
great mob of vassals (you may have noticed) you have a genial and not
ungenerous sense of being at one with them all. You cannot remember
their names or count their numbers, but their very immensity seems a
substitute for intimacy. That is what great men have felt at the head of
great armies; and the reason why Napoleon or Foch would call his
soldiers “_mes enfants_.” He feels at that moment that they are a part
of him, as if he had a million arms and legs. But it is very different
if you disband your army of lackeys; or if (as is, after all, possible)
you have not got an army of lackeys. It is very different if you look at
one lackey; one solitary solemn footman standing in your front hall. You
never have the sense of being caught up into a rapture of unity with
_him_. All your sense of social solidarity with your social inferiors
has dropped from you. It is only in public that people can be so
intimate as that. When you look into the eyes of the lonely footman, you
see that his soul is far away.
In other words, you find yourself at the foot of a steep and staggering
mountain crag, that is the real character and conscience of a man. To be
really at one with that man, you would have to solve real problems and
believe that your own solutions were real. In dealing with the one man
you would really have a far huger and harder job than in dealing with
your throng of thousands. And _that_ is the job that people run away
from when they wish to escape from domesticity to public work,
especially educational work. They wish to escape from a sense of failure
which is simply a sense of fact. They wish to recapture the illusion of
the market-place. It is an illusion that departs in the dark interiors
of domesticity, where the realities dwell. As I have said, I am very far
from condemning it altogether; it is a lawful pleasure, and a part of
life, in its proper proportion, like any other. But I am concerned to
point out to the feminists and the faddists that it is not an approach
to truth, but rather the opposite. Publicity is rather of the nature of
a harmless romance. Public life at its very best will contain a great
deal of harmless romancing, and much more often of very harmful
romancing. In other words, I am concerned with pointing out that the
passage from private life to public life, while it may be right or
wrong, or necessary or unnecessary, or desirable or undesirable, is
always of necessity a passage from a greater work to a smaller one, and
from a harder work to an easier one. And that is why most of the moderns
do wish to pass from the great domestic task to the smaller and easier
commercial one. They would rather provide the liveries of a hundred
footmen than be bothered with the love-affairs of one. They would rather
take the salutes of a hundred soldiers than try to save the soul of one.
They would rather serve out income-tax papers or telegraph forms to a
hundred men than meals, conversation, and moral support to one. They
would rather arrange the educational course in history or geography, or
correct the examination papers in algebra or trigonometry, for a hundred
children, than struggle with the whole human character of one. For
anyone who makes himself responsible for one small baby, as a whole,
will soon find that he is wrestling with gigantic angels and demons.
In another way there is something of illusion, or of irresponsibility,
about the purely public function, especially in the case of public
education. The educationist generally deals with only one section of the
pupil’s mind. But he always deals with only one section of the pupil’s
life. The parent has to deal, not only with the whole of the child’s
character, but also with the whole of the child’s career. The teacher
sows the seed, but the parent reaps as well as sows. The schoolmaster
sees more children, but it is not clear that he sees more childhood;
certainly he sees less youth and no maturity. The number of little girls
who take prussic acid is necessarily small. The boys who hang themselves
on bed-posts, after a life of crime, are generally the minority. But the
parent has to envisage the whole life of the individual, and not merely
the school life of the scholar. It is not probable that the parent will
exactly anticipate crime and prussic acid as the crown of the infant’s
career. But he will anticipate hearing of the crime if it is committed;
he will probably be told of the suicide if it takes place. It is quite
doubtful whether the schoolmaster or schoolmistress will ever hear of it
at all. Everybody knows that teachers have a harassing and often heroic
task, but it is not unfair to them to remember that in this sense they
have an exceptionally happy task. The cynic would say that the teacher
is happy in never seeing the results of his own teaching. I prefer to
confine myself to saying that he has not the extra worry of having to
estimate it from the other end. The teacher is seldom in at the death.
To take a milder theatrical metaphor, he is seldom there on the night.
But this is only one of many instances of the same truth: that what is
called public life is not larger than private life, but smaller. What
we call public life is a fragmentary affair of sections and seasons and
impressions; it is only in private life that dwells the fullness of our
life bodily.
Strikes and the Spirit of Wonder