seeing kitchen company or being taught by a woman like Peggotty. But
surely it is more important to be educated in a sense of human dignity
and equality than in anything else in the world. And a child who has
once had to respect a kind and capable woman of the lower classes
will respect the lower classes for ever. The true way to overcome the
evil in class distinctions is not to denounce them as revolutionists
denounce them, but to ignore them as children ignore them.
'_Charles Dickens._'
MARCH 22nd
There is no clearer sign of the absence of originality among modern
poets than their disposition to find new topics. Really original poets
write poems about the spring. They are always fresh, just as the spring
is always fresh. Men wholly without originality write poems about
torture, or new religions, or some perversion of obscenity, hoping
that the mere sting of the subject may speak for them. But we do not
sufficiently realize that what is true of the classic ode is also
true of the classic joke. A true poet writes about the spring being
beautiful because (after a thousand springs) the spring really is
beautiful. In the same way the true humorist writes about a man sitting
down on his hat because the act of sitting down on one's own hat
(however often and admirably performed) really is extremely funny. We
must not dismiss a new poet because his poem is called 'To a Skylark';
nor must we dismiss a humorist because his new farce is called 'My
Mother-in-Law.' He may really have splendid and inspiring things to say
upon an eternal problem. The whole question is whether he has.
_Introduction to 'Sketches by Boz.'_
MARCH 23rd
Man is an exception, whatever else he is. If he is not the image of
God, then he is a disease of the dust. If it is not true that a divine
being fell, then we can only say that one of the animals went entirely
off its head.
'_All Things Considered._'
MARCH 24th
Social reformers have fired a hundred shots against the public-house,
but never one against its really shameful character. The sign of
decay is not in the public-house, but in the private bar; or rather
the row of five or six private bars, into each of which a respectable
dipsomaniac can go in solitude, and by indulging his own half-witted
sin violates his own half-witted morality. Nearly all these places are
equipped with an atrocious apparatus of ground-glass windows which
can be so closed that they practically conceal the face of the buyer
from the seller. Words cannot express the abysses of human infamy
and hateful shame expressed by that elaborate piece of furniture.
Whenever I go into a public-house, which happens fairly often, I always
carefully open all these apertures and then leave the place in every
way refreshed.
'_George Bernard Shaw._'
MARCH 25th _LADY DAY_
Fearfully plain the flowers grew,
Like a child's book to read,
Or like a friend's face seen in a glass.
He looked, and there Our Lady was;
She stood and stroked the tall live grass
As a man strokes his steed.
Her face was like a spoken word
When brave men speak and choose,
The very colours of her coat
Were better than good news....
'The gates of heaven are tightly locked,
We do not guard our gain,
The heaviest hind may easily
Come silently and suddenly
Upon me in a lane.
'And any little maid that walks
In good thoughts apart,
May break the guard of the Three Kings,
And see the dear and dreadful things
I hid within my heart.'
'_Ballad of Alfred._'
MARCH 26th
It is one of the mean and morbid modern lies that physical courage
is connected with cruelty. The Tolstoian and Kiplingite are nowhere
more at one than in maintaining this. They have, I believe, some
small sectarian quarrel with each other: the one saying that courage
must be abandoned because it is connected with cruelty, and the other
maintaining that cruelty is charming because it is a part of courage.
But it is all, thank God, a lie. An energy and boldness of body may
make a man stupid or reckless or dull or drunk or hungry, but it does
not make him spiteful.
'_What's Wrong with the World._'
MARCH 27th
For human beings, being children, have the childish wilfulness and the
childish secrecy. And they never have from the beginning of the world
done what the wise men have seen to be inevitable.
'_The Napoleon of Notting Hill._'
MARCH 28th
Cruelty to animals is cruelty and a vile thing; but cruelty to a man is
not cruelty; it is treason. Tyranny over a man is not tyranny: it is
rebellion, for man is royal. Now, the practical weakness of the vast
mass of modern pity for the poor and the oppressed is precisely that it
is merely pity; the pity is pitiful, but not respectful. Men feel that
the cruelty to the poor is a kind of cruelty to animals. They never
feel that it is injustice to equals; nay, it is treachery to comrades.
This dark, scientific pity, this brutal pity, has an elemental
sincerity of its own, but it is entirely useless for all ends of social
reform. Democracy swept Europe with the sabre when it was founded upon
the Rights of Man. It has done literally nothing at all since it has
been founded only upon the wrongs of man. Or, more strictly speaking,
its recent failure has been due to its not admitting the existence
of any rights or wrongs, or indeed of any humanity. Evolution (the
sinister enemy of revolution) does not especially deny the existence
of God: what it does deny is the existence of man. And all the despair
about the poor, and the cold and repugnant pity for them, has been
largely due to the vague sense that they have literally relapsed into
the state of the lower animals.
'_Charles Dickens._'
MARCH 29th
The modern humanitarian can love all opinions, but he cannot love all
men; he seems sometimes, in the ecstasy of his humanitarianism, even to
hate them all. He can love all opinions, including the opinion that men
are unlovable.
_Introduction to 'Hard Times.'_
MARCH 30th
Every man is dangerous who only cares for one thing.
'_The Napoleon of Notting Hill._'
MARCH 31st
As Mr. Blatchford says, 'The world does not want piety, but soap--and
Socialism.' Piety is one of the popular virtues, whereas soap and
Socialism are two hobbies of the upper middle class.
'_What's Wrong with the World._'
APRIL
APRIL 1st _ALL FOOLS' DAY_
We shall never make anything of democracy until we make fools of
ourselves. For if a man really cannot make a fool of himself, we may be
quite certain that the effort is superfluous.
'_The Defendant._'
APRIL 2nd
Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon
the organ of conviction--where it was never meant to be. A man was
meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth;
this has been exactly reversed. Nowadays the part of a man that a man
does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert--himself. The
part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt--the Divine
Reason. Huxley preached a humility content to learn from Nature. But
the new sceptic is so humble that he doubts if he can even learn. Thus
we should be wrong if we had said hastily that there is no humility
typical of our time. The truth is that there is a real humility typical
of our time; but it so happens that it is practically a more poisonous
humility than the wildest prostrations of the ascetic. The old humility
was a spur that prevented a man from stopping: not a nail in his boot
that prevented him from going on. For the old humility made a man
doubtful about his efforts, which might make him work harder. But the
new humility makes a man doubtful about his aims, which will make him
stop working altogether.
'_Orthodoxy._'
APRIL 3rd
It is very currently suggested that the modern man is the heir of
all the ages, that he has got the good out of these successive human
experiments. I know not what to say in answer to this, except to ask
the reader to look at the modern man, as I have just looked at the
modern man--in the looking-glass. Is it really true that you and I
are two starry towers built up of all the most towering visions of
the past? Have we really fulfilled all the great historic ideals one
after the other, from our naked ancestor who was brave enough to
kill a mammoth with a stone knife, through the Greek citizen and the
Christian saint to our own grandfather or great-grandfather, who may
have been sabred by the Manchester Yeomany or shot in the '48? Are
we still strong enough to spear mammoths, but now tender enough to
spare them? Does the cosmos contain any mammoth that we have either
speared or spared? When we decline (in a marked manner) to fly the red
flag and fire across a barricade like our grandfathers, are we really
declining in deference to sociologists--or to soldiers? Have we indeed
outstripped the warrior and passed the ascetical saint? I fear we only
outstrip the warrior in the sense that we should probably run away from
him. And if we have passed the saint, I fear we have passed him without
bowing.
'_What's Wrong with the World._'
APRIL 4th
The prophet who is stoned is not a brawler or a marplot. He is simply a
rejected lover. He suffers from an unrequited attachment to things in
general.
'_The Defendant._'
APRIL 5th
Laughter and love are everywhere. The cathedrals, built in the ages
that loved God, are full of blasphemous grotesques. The mother laughs
continually at the child, the lover laughs continually at the lover,
the wife at the husband, the friend at the friend.
'_The Napoleon of Notting Hill._'
APRIL 6th
Fairy-tales do not give a child his first idea of bogy. What
fairy-tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible
defeat of bogy. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since
he had an imagination. What the fairy-tale provides for him is a St.
George to kill the dragon.
Exactly what the fairy-tale does is this: it accustoms him by a series
of clear pictures to the idea that these limitless terrors have a
limit, that these shapeless enemies have enemies, that these infinite
enemies of man have enemies in the knights of God, that there is
something in the universe more mystical than darkness, and stronger
than strong fear. When I was a child I have stared at the darkness
until the whole black bulk of it turned into one negro giant taller
than heaven. If there was one star in the sky it only made him a
Cyclops. But fairy-tales restored my mental health. For next day I read
an authentic account of how a negro giant with one eye, of quite equal
dimensions, had been baffled by a little boy like myself (of similar
inexperience and even lower social status) by means of a sword, some
bad riddles, and a brave heart.
'_Tremendous Trifles._'
APRIL 7th
The full value of this life can only be got by fighting; the violent
take it by storm. And if we have accepted everything we have missed
something--war. This life of ours is a very enjoyable fight, but a very
miserable truce.
'_Charles Dickens._'
APRIL 8th
The old religionists tortured men physically for a moral truth. The new
realists torture men morally for a physical truth.
'_Tremendous Trifles._'
APRIL 9th
'I sincerely maintain that Nature-worship is more morally dangerous
than the most vulgar Man-worship of the cities; since it can easily be
perverted into the worship of an impersonal mystery, carelessness, or
cruelty. Thoreau would have been a jollier fellow if he had devoted
himself to a green-grocer instead of to greens.'
'_Alarms and Discursions._'
April 10th
Suppose that a great commotion arises in the street about
something--let us say a lamp-post, which many influential persons
desire to pull down. A grey-clad monk, who is the spirit of the Middle
Ages, is approached on the matter, and begins to say, in the arid
manner of the Schoolmen, 'Let us first of all consider, my brethren,
the value of Light. If Light be in itself good----' At this point he
is somewhat excusably knocked down. All the people make a rush for the
lamp-post, the lamp-post is down in ten minutes, and they go about
congratulating each other on their unmedieval practicality. But as
things go on they do not work out so easily. Some people have pulled
the lamp-post down because they wanted the electric light; some because
they wanted old iron; some because they wanted darkness, because their
deeds were evil. Some thought it not enough of a lamp-post, some too
much; some acted because they wanted to smash municipal machinery;
some because they wanted to smash something. And there is war in the
night, no man knowing whom he strikes. So, gradually and inevitably,
to-day, to-morrow, or the next day, there comes back the conviction
that the monk was right after all, and that all depends on what is
the philosophy of Light. Only what we might have discussed under the
gas-lamp we must now discuss in the dark.
'_Heretics._'
APRIL 11th
His soul will never starve for exploits or excitements who is wise
enough to be made a fool of. He will make himself happy in the traps
that have been laid for him; he will roll in their nets and sleep. All
doors will fly open to him who has a mildness more defiant than mere
courage. The whole is unerringly expressed in one fortunate phrase--he
will be always 'taken in.' To be taken in everywhere is to see the
inside of everything. It is the hospitality of circumstance. With
torches and trumpets, like a guest, the greenhorn is taken in by Life.
And the sceptic is cast out by it.
'_Charles Dickens._'
APRIL 12th
You cannot admire will in general, because the essence of will is that
it is particular. A brilliant anarchist like Mr. John Davidson felt
an irritation against ordinary morality, and therefore he invokes
will--will to anything. He only wants humanity to want something. But
humanity does want something. It wants ordinary morality. He rebels
against the law and tells us to will something or anything. But we
_have_ willed something. We have willed the law against which he rebels.
'_Orthodoxy._'
APRIL 13th
I have often been haunted with a fancy that the creeds of men might
be paralleled and represented in their beverages. Wine might stand
for genuine Catholicism, and ale for genuine Protestantism; for these
at least are real religions with comfort and strength in them. Clean
cold Agnosticism would be clean cold water--an excellent thing if you
can get it. Most modern ethical and idealistic movements might be well
represented by soda-water--which is a fuss about nothing. Mr. Bernard
Shaw's philosophy is exactly like black coffee--it awakens, but it does
not really inspire. Modern hygienic materialism is very like cocoa; it
would be impossible to express one's contempt for it in stronger terms
than that. Sometimes one may come across something that may honestly
be compared to milk, an ancient and heathen mildness, an earthly yet
sustaining mercy--the milk of human kindness. You can find it in a few
pagan poets and a few old fables; but it is everywhere dying out.
'_William Blake._'
APRIL 14th
As it is in politics with the specially potent man, so it is in history
with the specially learned. We do not need the learned man to teach
us the important things. We all know the important things, though we
all violate and neglect them. Gigantic industry, abysmal knowledge
are needed for the discovery of the tiny things--the things that seem
hardly worth the trouble. Generally speaking, the ordinary man should
be content with the terrible secret that men are men--which is another
way of saying that they are brothers.
'_Illustrated London News._'
APRIL 15th
The women were of the kind vaguely called emancipated, and professed
some protest against male supremacy. Yet these new women would always
pay to a man the extraordinary compliment which no ordinary woman ever
pays to him--that of listening while he is talking.
'_The Man who was Thursday._'
APRIL 16th
Whatever the merits or demerits of the Pantheistic sentiment of melting
into nature of 'Oneness' (I think they call it) with seas and skies,
it is not and it never has been a popular sentiment. It has been the
feeling of a few learned aesthetes or secluded naturalists. Popular
poetry is all against Pantheism and quite removed from Immanence. It is
all about the beautiful earth as an edge or fringe of something much
better and quite distinct. Ballads and carols do not go to the tune of
'One with the Essence of the Boundless World.' Ballads and carols go to
the tune of 'Over the hills and far away;' the sense that life leads by
a strange and special path to something sacred and separate.
'_Daily News._'
APRIL 17th
How high the sea of human happiness rose in the Middle Ages, we now
only know by the colossal walls that they built to keep it in bounds.
How low human happiness sank in the twentieth century, our children
will only know by these extraordinary modern books, which tell people
to be cheerful and that life is not so bad after all. Humanity never
produces optimists till it has ceased to produce happy men. It is
strange to be obliged to impose a holiday like a fast, and to drive men
to a banquet with spears.
'_George Bernard Shaw._'
APRIL 18th
If a god does come upon the earth, he will descend at the sight of the
brave. Our prostrations and litanies are of no avail; our new moons and
sabbaths are an abomination. The great man will come when all of us are
feeling great, not when all of us are feeling small. He will ride in at
some splendid moment when we all feel that we could do without him.
'_Charles Dickens._'
APRIL 19th _PRIMROSE DAY_
If the great Jew who led the English Tories understood patriotism (as
I do not doubt that he did) it must have been a decidedly special and
peculiar kind of patriotism, and it necessarily laid him open to the
mistake about the relative positions of the terms Emperor and King. To
him no doubt Emperor seemed obviously a higher title; just as Brother
of the Sun and Moon would have seemed to him a higher title than
Second Cousin of the Evening Star. Among Orientals all such titles are
towering and hyperbolical. But of kingship as it has been felt among
Christian men he had no notion, and small blame to him. He did not
understand the domestic, popular, and priestly quality in the thing;
the idea expressed in the odd old phrase of being the breath of his
people's nostrils; the mystical life pumped through the lungs and
framework of a state.
'_Illustrated London News._'
APRIL 20th
'I know of a magic wand, but it is a wand that only one or two may
rightly use, and only seldom. It is a fairy wand of great fear,
stronger than those who use it--often frightful, often wicked to use.
But whatever is touched with it is never again wholly common; whatever
is touched with it takes a magic from outside the world. It has made
mean landscapes magnificent and hovels outlast cathedrals. The touch of
it is the finger of a strange perfection.
'There it is!'--he pointed to the floor where his sword lay flat and
shining.
'_The Napoleon of Notting Hill._'
APRIL 21st
There are many definite methods, honest and dishonest, which make men
rich; the only 'instinct' I know of which does it is that instinct
which theological Christianity crudely describes as 'the sin of
avarice.'
'_All Things Considered_.'
APRIL 22nd
It is a common saying that anything may happen behind our backs:
transcendentally considered, the thing has an eerie truth about it.
Eden may be behind our backs, or Fairyland. But this mystery of the
human back has, again, its other side in the strange impression
produced on those behind: to walk behind anyone along a lane is a thing
that, properly speaking, touches the oldest nerve of awe. Watts has
realized this as no one in art or letters has realized it in the whole
history of the world; it has made him great. There is one possible
exception to his monopoly of this magnificent craze. Two thousand years
before, in the dark scriptures of a nomad people, it had been said that
their prophet saw the immense Creator of all things, but only saw Him
from behind.
'_G. F. Watts._'
APRIL 23rd _ST. GEORGE'S DAY_
I see you how you smile in state
Straight from the Peak to Plymouth Bar;
You need not tell me you are great,
I know how more than great you are.
I know what spirit Chaucer was;
I have seen Gainsborough and the grass.
'_Tremendous Trifles._'
APRIL 24th
There is no fear that a modern king will attempt to override the
constitution: it is more likely that he will ignore the constitution
and work behind its back. He will take no advantage of his kingly
power: it is more likely that he will take advantage of his kingly
powerlessness--of the fact that he is free from criticism and
publicity. For the King is the most private person of our time. It
will not be necessary for anyone to fight against the proposal of a
censorship of the Press. We do not need a censorship of the Press. We
have a censorship by the Press.
'_Orthodoxy._'
APRIL 25th _ST MARK'S DAY_
The only thing still old-fashioned enough to reject miracles is the New
Theology.
'_Orthodoxy._'
APRIL 26th
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 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 entrées.
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 entrées, not in the bread
and wine.
'_Orthodoxy._'
APRIL 27th
THE two things that a healthy person hates most between heaven and hell
are a woman who is not dignified and a man who is.
'_All Things Considered._'
APRIL 28th
For those who study the great art of lying in bed there is one emphatic
caution to be added. Even for those who cannot do their work in bed
(as, for example, the professional harpooners of whales), it is obvious
that the indulgence must be very occasional. But that is not the
caution I mean. The caution is this: if you do lie in bed, be sure
you do it without any reason or justification at all. I do not speak,
of course, of the seriously sick. But if a healthy man lies in bed,
let him do it without a rag of excuse; then he will get up a healthy
man. If he does it for some secondary hygienic reason, if he has some
scientific explanation, he may get up a hypochondriac.
'_Tremendous Trifles._'
APRIL 29th
The creed of our cruel cities is not so sane and just as the creed
of the old country-side; but the people are just as clever in giving
names to their sins in the city as in giving names to their joys in the
wilderness. One could not better sum up Christianity than by calling
a small white insignificant flower 'The Star of Bethlehem.' But then
again one could not better sum up the philosophy deduced from Darwinism
than in the one verbal picture of 'having your monkey up.'
'_Daily News._'
APRIL 30th _ST. CATHERINE OF SIENA'S DAY_
Historic Christianity rose into a high and strange _coup de théâtre_
of morality--things that are to virtue what the crimes of Nero are
to vice. The spirits of indignation and of charity took terrible and
attractive forms, ranging from that monkish fierceness that scourged
like a dog the first and greatest of the Plantagenets, to the sublime
pity of St. Catherine, who, in the official shambles, kissed the
bloody head of the criminal. Our ethical teachers write reasonably
for prison reform; but we are not likely to see Mr. Cadbury, or any
eminent philanthropist, go into Reading Jail to embrace the strangled
corpse before it is cast into the quicklime. Our ethical teachers write
wildly against the power of millionaires, but we are not likely to see
Mr. Rockefeller, or any modern tyrant, publicly whipped in Westminster
Abbey.
'_Orthodoxy._'
MAY
MAY 1st _LABOUR DAY_
It may be we shall rise the last as Frenchmen rose the first;
Our wrath come after Russia's, and our wrath be the worst.
It may be we are set to mark by our riot and our rest
God's scorn of all man's governance: it may be beer is best.
But we are the people of England, and we never have spoken yet.
Mock at us, pay us, pass us; but do not quite forget.
'_The Silent People._'
MAY 2nd