I was travelling down to Devonshire the other day when I met a man in
the train with whom I fell into conversation. It was a wonderful
day. We had left the fog behind us in London and the countryside
glowed, rich and warm, under the sunshine of a cloudless November
day. It seemed an occasion on which one could have found a thousand
agreeable things to talk about, but I noticed that wherever the
conversation with the stranger started it always got round to the
taxation of land values. Now I happen to be in favour of the
taxation of land values. It is a question about which my mind is as
clear as it is about anything in this perplexing world. I am
prepared to vote in favour of it in due season and to speak in favour
of it when I think any useful purpose can be served. But I confess I
got painfully bored by this well-meaning man and that I hailed the
opportunity of going to the restaurant car to lunch with secret
thanksgiving. I don't think I shall ever be caught _tête-à-tête_
with that missionary of the One Idea again. I have got him on the
list of People I Can Do Without.
It is a list made up largely of those who wear a bee in their bonnet.
There is no surer prescription for the Complete Bore than the tyranny
of an idea. We flee instinctively from the man who is always telling
us the same thing, who comes into the circle with one ceaseless
theme, to which he hitches the heavens above and the earth beneath,
and the waters under the earth. There is that excellent publicist,
Vernon Pizzey, for example. You have but to say "Good day" to him in
the street, and he will buttonhole you, and, with the abstracted air
of one who has seen a vision, will open the flood-gates of Birth
Control upon you.
When I first knew him he was the passionate pilgrim of Prohibition.
Banish alcohol from the face of the earth, and all the problems of
life would be solved, and sorrow and sighing would flee away. He has
passed out of that phase. It is no longer the abolition of Drink
that lights the fires of fanatical faith in his eyes: it is the
Abolition of Children. The New Jerusalem which he will build in
England's green and pleasant land will have no children playing in
its streets. When he hears of a childless home, a ghost of a smile
flits over his features, and when he hears of a family of six he
looks as though he has heard of some unmentionable sin. He dreams of
a golden age when the propagation of children among the poor will be
a punishable offence, and when the people of whom he does not approve
will be sterilised by order of the court. His prophet is Dean Inge.
I am not concerned here with the merits of his obsession. I refer to
him only as an example of those who are ridden by an idea. An idea
may be good or bad, but no idea is good enough to claim one's whole
waking thoughts. We like people who have many facets to their minds,
who hold strong opinions on a variety of subjects and know how to
keep them under control, airing them when they are in season and
putting them in cold storage when they are not of season. We like
them to think in many quantities, to let their thought range over the
whole landscape of things, to have plenty of windows to their mind
and to open them in turn to all the winds that blow. We ought not to
be the slave of one idea, but the master of legions which we should
exercise and discipline and from which we should extract a working
philosophy of life. However good the text we ought not always to be
preaching a sermon from it. I remember when I was a boy a most
excellent man, a lawyer, who, every evening in the week, would take
his stand on the plinth of a Sebastopol cannon in front of the Shire
Hall that faced down the High Street of the country town in which I
lived, and from thence would exhort the passers-by to repentance. No
one ever heeded him, no one ever even paused to listen to him, and he
lives in my memory a solitary figure weighed down with the wickedness
of men, giving his life unselfishly to the delivery of his unregarded
message, a man whose very agony had become a town jest.
Life is a multitudinous affair, and we suspect the sanity of a mind
which is chained to one idea about it. I remember leaving the House
of Commons on that tremendous day, the 3rd of August, 1914, when Sir
Edward Grey had just made a speech that announced the most
world-shaking event in history. In a few hours we should be involved
in the greatest war the world had ever seen. An acquaintance of mine
left the House with me, and as we seated ourselves in a cab he turned
to me and said, "Did you see that outrageous vivisection case down at
Wigan?"--or some such place. I forget what I answered, but I
remember the strange feeling that came over me that I was cooped up
with Mr. Dick. Here was the old, kindly world we had known for a
lifetime plunging down into the gulf of unimaginable things. And
beside me, indifferent to all the enormous happening, was Mr. Dick,
his mind tortured with the wicked doings down at Wigan, or wherever
it was.
There is of course another side to the shield of the man with One
Idea. He could make out a good case for himself and I think I could
make out a good case for him. The mere fact that his passion is
disinterested is alone enough to command respect in a world where
disinterested enthusiasm is a rare commodity. He is of the stuff of
martyrs. He is prepared to die for his idea, or what is harder, to
take the whips and scorns of men who are often, spiritually, not fit
to black his boots. It is his uncalculating passion that keeps the
flame of ideas burning in a dark world. Without him our moral
currency would be sadly depreciated and the quality of the general
life would lose its salt and savour. I often admire his singleness
of purpose. I sometimes even envy a disinterestedness which leaves
me ashamed by comparison. But I do not want to spend a week-end with
him and I will not travel down to Devonshire with him if I can find a
seat in the luggage-van or standing room in the corridor.