Towards a Career
A CURIOUS LITTLE incident comes towards the end of
Gilbert's time at the Slade School. In a letter he wrote to
E. C. Bentley we see him, on the eve of his 21st birthday, being
invited to write for the _Academy_:
Mr. Cotton is a little bristly, bohemian man, as fidgetty as a
kitten, who runs round the table while he talks to you. When he
agrees with you he shuts his eyes tight and shakes his head. When he
means anything rather seriously he ends up with a loud nervous laugh.
He talks incessantly and is mad on the history of Oxford. I sent him
my review of Ruskin and he read it before me (Note. Hell) and
delivered himself with astonishing rapidity to the following effect:
"This is very good: you've got something to say: Oh, yes: this is
worth saying: I agree with you about Ruskin and about the Century:
this is good: you've no idea: if you saw some stuff: some reviews I
get: the fellows are practised but of all the damned fools: you've no
idea: they know the trade in a way: but such infernal asses: as send
things up: but this is very good: that sentence does run _nicely:_
but I like your point: make it a little longer and then send it in:
I've got another book for you to review: you know Robert Bridges? Oh
very good, very good: here it is: about two columns you know: by the
way: keep the Ruskin for yourself: you deserve that anyhow."
Here I got a word in: one of protest and thanks. But Mr. Cotton
insisted on my accepting the Ruskin. So I am really to serve Laban.
Laban proves on analysis to be of the consistency of brick. It is
such men as this that have made our Cosmos what it is. At one point
he said, literally dancing with glee: "Oh, the other day I stuck some
pins into Andrew Lang." I said, "Dear me, that must be a very good
game." It was something about an edition of Scott, but I was told
that Andrew "took" the painful operation "very well." We sat up
horribly late together talking about Browning, Afghans, Notes, the
Yellow Book, the French Revolution, William Morris, Norsemen and Mr.
Richard le Gallienne. "I don't despair for anyone," he said suddenly.
"Hang it all, that's what you mean by humanity." This appears to be a
rather good editor of the _Academy_. And my joy in having begun my
life is very great. "I am tired," I said to Mr. Brodribb, "of writing
only what I like." "Oh well," he said heartily, "you'll have no
reason to make that complaint in journalism."
But here is a mystery. Nowhere in the _Academy_ columns for 1895
or 1896 are to be seen the initials G.K.C., yet at that date all
the reviews are signed. Mr. Eccles, who was writing for it at
the time, told me that he had no recollection of G.K. among the
contributors--and later he came to know him well when both were
together on the _Speaker_. In any case, the idea of reviewing for no
reward except the book reviewed would scarcely appeal to a more
practical man than Gilbert as a hopeful beginning. Perhaps the
mystery is solved by the fact that soon after the date of this letter
Mr. Cotton got an appointment in India. To Mr. Eccles it appeared
somewhat ironical that the unpaid contributors to the _Academy_ were
circularised with a suggestion of contributions of money towards a
parting present for their late editor.
The actual beginning of G.K.'s journalism was in _The Bookman_; and
in the _Autobiography_ he insists that it was a matter of mere luck:
"these opportunities were merely things that happened to me." While
still at the Slade School, he was, as we have seen, attending English
lectures at University College. There he met a fellow-student, Ernest
Hodder Williams, of the family which controlled the publishing house
of Hodder & Stoughton. He gave Chesterton some books on art to review
for _The Bookman_, a monthly paper published by the firm. "I need not
say," G.K. comments, "that having entirely failed to learn how to
draw or paint, I tossed off easily enough some criticisms of the
weaker points of Rubens or the misdirected talents of Tintoretto. I
had discovered the easiest of all professions, which I have pursued
ever since." But neither in the art criticism he wrote for _The
Bookman_ nor in the poems he was to publish in _The Outlook_ and _The
Speaker_ was there a living. He left the Slade School and went to
work for a publisher.
Mr. Redway, in whose office Gilbert now found himself, was a
publisher largely of spiritualist literature. Gilbert has described
in his _Autobiography_ his rather curious experience of ghostly
authorship, but he relates nothing of his office experience, which is
described in another undated letter to Mr. Bentley:
I am writing this letter just when I like most to write one, late
at night, after a beastly lot of midnight oil over a contribution for
a _Slade Magazine_, intended as a public venture. I am sending them a
recast of that "Picture of Tuesday."
Like you, I am beastly busy, but there is something exciting about
it. If I must be busy (as I certainly must, being an approximately
honest man) I had much rather be busy in a varied, mixed up way, with
half a hundred things to attend to, than with one blank day of
monotonous "study" before me. To give you some idea of what I mean. I
have been engaged in 3 different tiring occupations and enjoyed them
all. (1) Redway says, "We've got too many MSS; read through them,
will you, and send back those that are too bad at once." I go slap
through a room full of MSS, criticising deuced conscientiously, with
the result that I post back some years of MSS to addresses, which I
should imagine, must be private asylums. But one feels worried,
somehow. . . .
(2) Redway says, "I'm going to give you entire charge of the press
department, sending copies to Reviews, etc." Consequence is, one has
to keep an elaborate book and make it tally with other elaborate
books, and one has to remember all the magazines that exist and what
sort of books they'd crack up. I used to think I hated
responsibility: I am positively getting to enjoy it. (3) There is
that confounded "Picture of Tuesday" which I have been scribbling at
the whole evening, and have at last got it presentable. This sounds
like mere amusement, but, now that I have tried other kinds of hurry
and bustle, I solemnly pledge myself to the opinion that there is no
work so tiring as writing, that is, not for fun, but for publication.
Other work has a repetition, a machinery, a reflex action about it
somewhere, but to be on the stretch inventing fillings, making them
out of nothing, making them as good as you can for a matter of four
hours leaves me more inclined to lie down and read Dickens than I
ever feel after nine hours ramp at Redway's. The worst of it is that
you always think the thing so bad too when you're in that state. I
can't imagine anything more idiotic than what I've just finished.
Well, enough of work and all its works. By all means come on Monday
evening, but don't be frightened if by any chance I'm not in till
about 6.30, as Monday is a busy day. Of course you'll stop to
dinner . . . what an idiotically long time 8 weeks is. . . .
This letter does not seem to bear out the suggestion in Cecil's book*
of Gilbert's probable uselessness to the publishers for whom he
worked. After all, literacy is more needful to most publishers than
automatic practicality, because it is so very much rarer. Probably
G.K. would have been absolutely invaluable had he been a little less
kind-hearted. His dislike of sending back a manuscript and making an
author unhappy would have been a bar to his utility as a reader. But
there are lots of other things to do besides rejecting manuscripts,
and two later letters show how capable Gilbert was felt to be in
doing most of them.
[* _G. K. Chesterton: A Criticism_, see p. 23.]
The exact date at which he left Redway's for the publishing firm of
Fisher Unwin (of 11 Paternoster Buildings) I cannot discover, but it
was fairly early and he was several years with Fisher Unwin, only
gradually beginning to move over into journalism.
"He did nothing for himself," says Lucian Oldershaw, "till we
[Bentley and Oldershaw] came down from Oxford and pushed him."
The following letters belong to 1898, being written to Frances when
they were already engaged, but I put them here as they give some
notion of the work he did for his employer.
. . . The book I have to deal with for Unwin is an exhaustive and I
am told interesting work on "Rome and the Empire" a kind of
realistic, modern account of the life of the ancient world. I have
got to fix it up, choose illustrations, introductions, notes, etc.,
and all because I am the only person who knows a little Latin and
precious little Roman history and no more archaeology than a blind
cat. It is entertaining, and just like our firm's casual way. The
work ought to be done by an authority on Roman antiquities. If I
hadn't been there they would have given it to the office boy.
However, I shall get through it all right: the more I see of the
publishing world, the more I come to the conclusion that I know next
to nothing, but that the vast mass of literary people know less. This
is sometimes called having "a public-school education."*
[* Extract from undated letter (postmarked, Aug. 11, 1898).]
* * *
I have a lot of work to do, as Unwin has given the production of an
important book entirely into my hands, as a kind of invisible editor.
It is complimentary, but very worrying, and will mean a lot of time
at the British Museum.*
[* Extract from undated letter (postmarked, Aug. 29, 1898).]
11 Paternoster Bldgs.
(Postmark, December 1898)
. . . For fear that you should really suppose that my observations
about being busy are the subterfuges of a habitual liar, I may give
you briefly some idea of the irons at present in the fire. As far as
I can make out there are at least seven things that I have undertaken
to do and everyone of them I ought to do before any of the others.
1st. There is the book about Ancient Rome which I have to do for
T.F.U.--arrange and get illustrations etc. This all comes of showing
off. It is a story with a moral (Greedy Gilbert: or Little Boys
Should be Seen and not Heard). A short time ago I had to read a
treatise by Dean Stubbs on "The Ideal Woman of the Poets" in which
the Dean remarked that "all the women admired by Horace were
wantons." This struck me as a downright slander, slight as is my
classical knowledge, and in my report I asked loftily what Dean
Stubbs made of those noble lines on the wife who hid her husband
from his foes.
_Splendide mendax et in omne virgo
Nobilis aevum_
One of the purest and stateliest tributes ever made to a woman.
(The lines might be roughly rendered "A magnificent liar and a noble
lady for all eternity"; but no translation can convey the
organ-voice of the verse, in which the two strong and lonely words
"noble" and "eternity" stand solitary for the last line.) In
consequence of my taking up the cudgels against a live Dean for the
manly moral sense of the dear old Epicurean, the office became
impressed with a vague idea that I know something about Latin
literature--whereas, as a matter of fact I have forgotten even the
line before the one I quoted. However, in the most confidential and
pathetic manner I was entrusted with doing with "Rome et l'Empire"
work which ought to be done by a scholar. . . .
2nd. Then there is Captain Webster. You ask (in gruff, rumbling
tones) "Who is Captain Webster?" I will tell you.
Captain Webster is a small man with a carefully waxed moustache and
a very Bond Street get up, living at the Grosvenor Hotel. Talking to
him you would say: he is an ass, but an agreeable ass, a humble,
transparent honourable ass. He is an innocent and idiotic butterfly.
The interesting finishing touch is that he has been to New Guinea for
four years or so, and had some of the most hideous and extravagant
adventures that could befall a modern man. His yacht was surrounded
by shoals of canoes full of myriads of cannibals of a race who file
their teeth to look like the teeth of dogs, and hang weights in their
ears till the ears hang like dogs' ears, on the shoulder. He held his
yacht at the point of the revolver and got away, leaving some of his
men dead on the shore. All night long he heard the horrible noise of
the banqueting gongs and saw the huge fires that told his friends
were being eaten. Now he lives in the Grosvenor Hotel. Captain
Webster finds the pen, not only mightier than the sword, but also
much more difficult. He has written his adventures and we are to
publish them and I am translating the honest captain into English
grammar, a thing which appals him much more than Papuan savages. This
means going through it carefully of course and rewriting many parts
of it, where relatives and dependent sentences have been lost past
recovery. I went to see him, and his childlike dependence on me was
quite pathetic. His general attitude was, "You see I'm such a damned
fool." And so he is. But when I compare him with the Balzacian
hauteur and the preposterous posing of many of our Fleet Street
decadent geniuses, I feel a movement of the blood which declares that
perhaps there are worse things than War. (Between ourselves, I have a
sneaking sympathy with fighting: I fought horribly at school. It is
well you should know my illogicalities.)
3rd. There is the selection of illustrations for the History of
China we are producing. I know no more of China than the Man in the
Moon (less, for he has seen it, at any rate), except what I got from
reading the book, but of course I shall make the most of what I do
know and airily talk of La-o-tsee and Wu-sank-Wei, criticise
Chung-tang and Fu-Tche, compare Tchieu Lung with his great successor,
whose name I have forgotten, and the Napoleonic vigour of Li with the
weak opportunism of Woo. Before I have done I hope people will be
looking behind for my pig-tail. The name I shall adopt will be
Tches-Ter-Ton.
4th. A MS to read translated from the Norwegian: a History of the
Kiss, Ceremonial, Amicable, Amatory, etc.--in the worst French
sentimental style. God alone knows how angry I am with the author of
that book. I am not sure that I shall not send up the brief report.
"A snivelling hound."
5th. The book for Nutt [_Greybeards at Play_], which has reached
its worst stage, that of polishing up for the eye of Nutt, instead of
merely rejoicing in the eye of God. Do you know this is the only one
of the lot about which I am at all worried. I do not feel as if
things like the Fish poem are really worth publishing. I know they
are better than many books that are published, but Heaven knows that
is not saying much. In support of some of my work I would fight to
the last. But with regard to this occasional verse I feel a humbug.
To publish a book of my nonsense verses seems to me exactly like
summoning the whole of the people of Kensington to see me smoke
cigarettes.
Macgregor told me that I should do much better in the business of
literature if I found the work more difficult. My facility, he said,
led me to undervalue my work. I wonder whether this is true, and
those silly rhymes are any good after all.
6th. The collection of more serious poems of which I spoke to you.
You shall have a hand in the selection of these when you get back.
7th. The Novel--which though I have put it aside for the present,
yet has become too much a part of me not to be constantly having
chapters written--or rather growing out of the others.
And all these things, with the exception of the last one, are
supposed to be really urgent, and to be done immediately. . . . Now I
hope I have sickened you forever of wanting to know the details of my
dull affairs. But I hope it may give you some notion of how hard it
really is to get time for writing just now. For you see they are none
of them even mechanical things: they all require some thinking about.
I am afraid . . . that if you really want to know what I do, you
must forgive me for seeming egoistic. That is the tragedy of the
literary person: his very existence is an assertion of his own mental
vanity: he must pretend to be conceited even if he isn't. . . .
Beginning to publish, beginning to write, and still developing
mentally at a frantic rate--this is a summary of the years 1895-8.
As the Notebook shows, Gilbert was reflecting deeply at this time on
the relations both between God and man and between man and his fellow
man. The realisation that their relations had gone very far wrong was
necessarily followed--for Gilbert's _mind_ was an immensely practical
one--by the question of what the proposed remedies were worth. He has
told us that he became a Socialist at this time only because it was
intolerable not to be a Socialist. The Socialists seemed the only
people who were looking at conditions as they were and finding them
unendurable. Christian Socialism seemed at first sight, for anyone
who admired Christ, to be the obvious form of Socialism, and, in a
fragment of this period, G.K. traces the resemblance of modern
collectivism to early Christianity.
The points in which Christian and Socialistic collectivism are at
one are simple and fundamental. As, however, we must proceed
carefully in this matter, we may state these points of resemblance
under three heads.
(1) Both rise from the deeps of an emotion, the emotion of compassion
for misfortune, as such. This is really a very important point.
Collectivism is not an intellectual fad, even if erroneous, but a
passionate protest and aspiration: it arises as a secret of the
heart, a dream of the injured feeling, long before it shapes itself
as a definite propaganda at all. The intellectual philosophies ally
themselves with success and preach competition, but the human heart
allies itself with misfortune and suggests communism.
(2) Both trace the evil state of society to "covetousness," the
competitive desire to accumulate riches. Thus, both in one case and
the other, the mere possession of wealth is in itself an offence
against moral order, the absence of it in itself a recommendation and
training for the higher life.
(3) Both propose to remedy the evil of competition by a system of
"bearing each other's burdens" in the literal sense, that is to say,
of levelling, silencing and reducing one's own chances, for the
chance of your weaker brethren. The desirability, they say, of a
great or clever man acquiring fame is small compared with the
desirability of a weak and broken man acquiring bread. The strong man
is a man, and should modify or adapt himself to the hopes of his
mates. He that would be first among you, let him be the servant of
all.
These are the three fountains of collectivist passion. I have not
considered it necessary to enter into elaborate proof of the presence
of these three in the Gospels. That the main trend of Jesus'
character was compassion for human ills, that he denounced not merely
covetousness but riches again and again, and with an almost impatient
emphasis, and that he insisted on his followers throwing up personal
aims and sharing funds and fortune entirely, these are plain matters
of evidence presented again and again, and, in fact, of common
admission.
Yet that uncanny thing in Gilbert which always forced him to see
facts, mutinied again at this point and produced another fragment in
which he has moved closer to Christianity and thereby further away
from modern Socialism. The world he lived in contained a certain
number of Christians who were, he found, highly doubtful about the
Christian impulse of Socialism. And most of his Socialist friends had
about them a tone of bitterness and an atmosphere of hopelessness
utterly unlike the tone and the atmosphere of Christianity. Just as
atheists were the first people to turn Gilbert from Atheism towards
dogmatic Christianity, so the Socialists were now turning him from
Socialism.
The next fragment is rather long, but it was never published and I
think it so important, as showing how his mind was moving, that it
cannot well be shortened. It is a document of capital importance for
the biography of Chesterton.
Now, for my own part, I cannot in the least agree with those who
see no difference between Christian and modern Socialism, nor do I
for a moment join in some Christian Socialists' denunciations of
those worthy middle-class people who cannot see the connection. For I
cannot help thinking that in a way these latter people are right. No
reasonable man can read the Sermon on the Mount and think that its
tone is not very different from that of most collectivist speculation
of the present day, and the Philistines feel this, though they cannot
distinctly express it. There is a difference between Christ's
Socialist program and that of our own time, a difference deep,
genuine and all important, and it is this which I wish to point out.
Let us take two types side by side, or rather the same type in the
two different atmospheres. Let us take the "rich young man" of the
Gospels and place beside him the rich young man of the present day,
on the threshold of Socialism. If we were to follow the difficulties,
theories, doubts, resolves, and conclusions of each of these
characters, we should find two very distinct threads of
self-examination running through the two lives. And the essence of
the difference was this: the modern Socialist is saying, "What will
society do?" while his prototype, as we read, said, "What shall I
do?" Properly considered, this latter sentence contains the whole
essence of the older Communism. The modern Socialist regards his
theory of regeneration as a duty which society owes to him, the early
Christian regarded it as a duty which he owed to society; the modern
Socialist is busy framing schemes for its fulfilment, the early
Christian was busy considering whether he would himself fulfil it
there and then; the ideal of modern Socialism is an elaborate Utopia
to which he hopes the world may be tending, the ideal of the early
Christian was an actual nucleus "living the new life" to whom he
might join himself if he liked. Hence the constant note running
through the whole gospel, of the importance, difficulty and
excitement of the "call," the individual and practical request made
by Christ to every rich man, "sell all thou hast and give to the
poor."
To us Socialism comes speculatively as a noble and optimistic
theory of what may [be] the crown of progress, to Peter and James and
John it came practically as a crisis of their own Daily life, a
stirring question of conduct and renunciation.
We do not therefore in the least agree with those who hold that
modern Socialism is an exact counterpart or fulfilment of the
socialism of Christianity. We find the difference important and
profound, despite the common ground of anti-selfish collectivism. The
modern Socialist regards Communism as a distant panacea for society,
the early Christian regarded it as an immediate and difficult
regeneration of himself: the modern Socialist reviles, or at any rate
reproaches, society for not adopting it, the early Christian
concentrated his thoughts on the problem of his own fitness and
unfitness to adopt it: to the modern Socialist it is a theory, to the
early Christian it was a call; modern Socialism says, "Elaborate a
broad, noble and workable system and submit it to the progressive
intellect of society." Early Christianity said, "Sell all thou hast
and give to the poor."
This distinction between the social and personal way of regarding
the change has two sides, a spiritual and a practical which we
propose to notice. The spiritual side of it, though of less direct
and revolutionary importance than the practical, has still a very
profound philosophic significance. To us it appears something
extraordinary that this Christian side of Socialism, the side of the
difficulty of the personal sacrifice, and the patience, cheerfulness,
and good temper necessary for the protracted personal surrender is so
constantly overlooked. The literary world is flooded with old men
seeing visions and young men dreaming dreams, with various stages of
anti-competitive enthusiasm, with economic apocalypses, elaborate
Utopias and mushroom destinies of mankind. And, as far as we have
seen, in all this whirlwind of theoretic excitement there is not a
word spoken of the intense practical difficulty of the summons to the
individual, the heavy, unrewarding cross borne by him who gives up
the world.
For it will not surely be denied that not only will Socialism be
impossible without some effort on the part of individuals, but that
Socialism if once established would be rapidly dissolved, or worse
still, diseased, if the individual members of the community did not
make a constant effort to do that which in the present state of human
nature must mean an effort, to live the higher life. Mere state
systems could not bring about and still less sustain a reign of
unselfishness, without a cheerful decision on the part of the members
to forget selfishness even in little things, and for that most
difficult and at the same time most important personal decision
Christ made provision and the modern theorists make no provision at
all. Some modern Socialists do indeed see that something more is
necessary for the golden age than fixed incomes and universal stores
tickets, and that the fountain heads of all real improvement are to
be found in human temper and character. Mr. William Morris, for
instance, in his "News from Nowhere" gives a beautiful picture of a
land ruled by Love, and rightly grounds the give-and-take camaraderie
of his ideal state upon an assumed improvement in human nature. But
he does not tell us how such an improvement is to be effected, and
Christ did. Of Christ's actual method in this matter I shall speak
afterwards when dealing with the practical aspect, my object just now
is to compare the spiritual and emotional effects of the call of
Christ, as compared to those of the vision of Mr. William Morris.
When we compare the spiritual attitudes of two thinkers, one of whom
is considering whether social history has been sufficiently a course
of improvement to warrant him in believing that it will culminate in
universal altruism, while the other is considering whether he loves
other people enough to walk down tomorrow to the market-place and
distribute everything but his staff and his scrip, it will not be
denied that the latter is likely to undergo certain deep and acute
emotional experiences, which will be quite unknown to the former. And
these emotional experiences are what we understand as the spiritual
aspect of the distinction. For three characteristics at least the
Galilean programme makes more provision; humility, activity,
cheerfulness, the real triad of Christian virtues.
Humility is a grand, a stirring thing, the exalting paradox of
Christianity, and the sad want of it in our own time is, we believe,
what really makes us think life dull, like a cynic, instead of
marvellous, like a child. With this, however, we have at present
nothing to do. What we have to do with is the unfortunate fact that
among no persons is it more wanting than among Socialists, Christian
and other. The isolated or scattered protest for a complete change in
social order, the continual harping on one string, the necessarily
jaundiced contemplation of a system already condemned, and above all,
the haunting pessimistic whisper of a possible hopelessness of
overcoming the giant forces of success, all these impart undeniably
to the modern Socialist a tone excessively imperious and bitter. Nor
can we reasonably blame the average money-getting public for their
impatience with the monotonous virulence of men who are constantly
reviling them for not living communistically, and who after all, are
not doing it themselves. Willingly do we allow that these latter
enthusiasts think it impossible in the present state of society to
practise their ideal, but this fact, while vindicating their
indisputable sincerity, throws an unfortunate vagueness and
inconclusiveness over their denunciations of other people in the same
position. Let us compare with this arrogant and angry tone among the
modern Utopians who can only dream "the life," the tone of the early
Christian who was busy living it. As far as we know, the early
Christians never regarded it as astonishing that the world as they
found it was competitive and unregenerate; they seem to have felt
that it could not in its pre-Christian ignorance have been anything
else, and their whole interest was bent on their own standard of
conduct and exhortation which was necessary to convert it. They felt
that it was by no merit of theirs that they had been enabled to enter
into the life before the Romans, but simply as a result of the fact
that Christ had appeared in Galilee and not in Rome. Lastly, they
never seem to have entertained a doubt that the message would itself
convert the world with a rapidity and ease which left no room for
severe condemnation of the heathen societies.
With regard to the second merit, that of activity, there can be
little doubt as to where it lies between the planner of the Utopia
and the convert of the brotherhood. The modern Socialist is a
visionary, but in this he is on the same ground as half the great men
of the world, and to some extent of the early Christian himself, who
rushed towards a personal ideal very difficult to sustain. The
visionary who yearns toward an ideal which is practically impossible
is not useless or mischievous, but often the opposite; but the person
who is often useless, and always mischievous, is the visionary who
dreams with the knowledge or the half-knowledge that his ideal is
impossible. The early Christian might be wrong in believing that by
entering the brotherhood men could in a few years become perfect even
as their Father in Heaven was perfect, but he believed it and acted
flatly and fearlessly on the belief: this is the type of the higher
visionary. But all the insidious dangers of the vision; the idleness,
the procrastination, the mere mental aestheticism, come in when the
vision is indulged, as half our Socialistic conceptions are, as a
mere humour or fairy-tale, with a consciousness, half-confessed, that
it is beyond practical politics, and that we need not be troubled
with its immediate fulfilment. The visionary who believes in his own
most frantic vision is always noble and useful. It is the visionary
who does not believe in his vision who is the dreamer, the idler, the
Utopian. This then is the second moral virtue of the older school, an
immense direct sincerity of action, a cleansing away, by the sweats
of hard work, of all those subtle and perilous instincts of mere
ethical castle-building which have been woven like the spells of an
enchantress, round so many of the strong men of our own time.
The third merit, which I have called cheerfulness, is really the
most important of all. We may perhaps put the comparison in this way.
It might strike many persons as strange that in a time on the whole
so optimistic in its intellectual beliefs as this is, in an age when
only a small minority disbelieve in social progress, and a large
majority believe in an ultimate social perfection, there should be
such a tired and blasé feeling among numbers of young men. This, we
think, is due, not to the want of an ultimate ideal, but to that of
any immediate way of making for it: not of something to hope but of
something to do. A human being is not satisfied and never will be
satisfied with being told that it is all right: what he wants is not
a prediction of what other people will be hundreds of years hence, to
make him cheerful, but a new and stirring test and task for himself,
which will assuredly make him cheerful. A knight is not contented
with the statement that his commander has hid his plans so as to
insure victory: what the knight wants is a sword. This demand for a
task is not mere bravado, it is an eternal and natural part of the
higher optimism, as deep-rooted as the foreshadowing of perfection.
I do not know whether Gilbert would yet have actually called himself
a Christian. He was certainly tending towards the more Christian
elements in his surroundings. It seems pretty clear from all he wrote
and said later that he did not hold that transformation to have been
fully effected until after his meeting with Frances, to whom he wrote
many years later:
Therefore I bring these rhymes to you
Who brought the Cross to me.
These papers are undated and are arranged in no sequence. It is
possible this last one was written after their first meeting. Certain
it is that in it he had begun feeling after a more Christian
arrangement of society than Socialism offered--and particularly after
an arrangement better suited to the nature of man. This thought of
man's nature as primary was to remain the basis of his social
thinking to the end of his life.