democracy was in some way opposed to tradition. It is obvious that
tradition is only democracy extended through time. It is trusting to
a consensus of common human voices rather than to some isolated or
arbitrary record. The man who quotes some German historian against the
tradition of the Catholic Church, for instance, is strictly appealing
to aristocracy. He is appealing to the superiority of one expert
against the awful authority of a mob. It is quite easy to see why a
legend is treated, and ought to be treated, more respectfully than a
book of history. The legend is generally made by the majority of people
in the village, who are sane. The book is generally written by the one
man in the village, who is mad. Those who urge against tradition--that
men in the past were ignorant--may go and urge it at the Carlton Club,
along with the statement that voters in the slums are ignorant. It will
not do for us. If we attach great importance to the opinion of ordinary
men in great unanimity when we are dealing with daily matters, there is
no reason why we should disregard it when we are dealing with history
or fable. Tradition may be defined as an extension of the franchise.
Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes--our
ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit
to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be
walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the
accident of birth: tradition objects to their being disqualified by
the accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man's
opinion, even if he is our groom: tradition asks us not to neglect a
good man's opinion, even if he is our father.
_'Orthodoxy.'_
JUNE 7th
You hold that your heretics and sceptics have helped the world forward
and handed on a lamp of progress. I deny it. Nothing is plainer from
real history than that each of your heretics invented a complete cosmos
of his own which the next heretic smashed entirely to pieces. Who knows
now exactly what Nestorius taught? Who cares? There are only two things
that we know for certain about it. The first is that Nestorius, as a
heretic, taught something quite opposite to the teaching of Arius,
the heretic who came before him, and something quite useless to James
Turnbull, the heretic who comes after. I defy you to go back to the
Freethinkers of the past and find any habitation for yourself at all.
I defy you to read Godwin or Shelley, or the deists of the eighteenth
century, or the nature-worshipping humanists of the Renaissance,
without discovering that you differ from them twice as much as you
differ from the Pope. You are a nineteenth-century sceptic, and you are
always telling me that I ignore the cruelty of Nature. If you had been
an eighteenth-century sceptic you would have told me that I ignore the
kindness and benevolence of Nature. You are an Atheist, and you praise
the deists of the eighteenth century. Read them instead of praising
them, and you will find that their whole universe stands or falls with
the deity. You are a Materialist, and you think Bruno a scientific
hero. See what he said, and you will think him an insane mystic. No;
the great Freethinker, with his genuine ability and honesty, does
not in practice destroy Christianity. What he does destroy is the
Freethinker who went before.
_'The Ball and the Cross.'_
JUNE 8th
When the old Liberals removed the gags from all the heresies, their
idea was that religious and philosophical discoveries might thus be
made. Their view was that cosmic truth was so important that everyone
ought to bear independent testimony. The modern idea is that cosmic
truth is so unimportant that it cannot matter what anyone says. The
former freed inquiry as men loose a noble hound; the latter frees
inquiry as men fling back into the sea a fish unfit for eating. Never
has there been so little discussion about the nature of men as now,
when, for the first time, anyone can discuss it.
_'Heretics.'_
JUNE 9th _DICKENS DIED_
The hour of absinthe is over. We shall not be much further troubled
with the little artists who found Dickens too sane for their sorrows
and too clean for their delights. But we have a long way to travel
before we get back to what Dickens meant; and the passage is along an
English rambling road--a twisting road such as Mr. Pickwick travelled.
But this at least is part of what he meant: that comradeship and
serious joy are not interludes in our travel, but that rather our
travels are interludes in comradeship and joy, which, through God,
shall endure for ever. The inn does not point to the road: the road
points to the inn. And all roads point at last to an ultimate inn,
where we shall meet Dickens and all his characters. And when we drink
again it shall be from the great flagons in the tavern at the end of
the world.
_'Charles Dickens.'_
JUNE 10th
I have always been inclined to believe the ruck of hard-working people
rather than to believe that special and troublesome literary class
to which I belong. I prefer even the fancies and prejudices of the
people who see life from the inside to the clearest demonstrations of
the people who see life from the outside. I would always trust the
old wives' fables against the old maids' facts. As long as wit is
mother-wit it can be as wild as it pleases.
_'Orthodoxy.'_
JUNE 11th
However far aloft a man may go he is still looking up, not only at
God (which is obvious), but in a manner at men also: seeing more and
more all that is towering and mysterious in the dignity and destiny
of the lonely house of Adam.... So it may be hoped, until we die,
you and I will always look up rather than down at the labours and
habitations of our race; we will lift up our eyes to the valleys from
whence cometh our help. For from every special eminence beyond every
sublime landmark, it is good for our souls to see only vaster and
vaster visions of that dizzy and divine level, and to behold from our
crumbling turrets the tall plains of equality.
_'Alarms and Discursions.'_
JUNE 12th
There is more of the song and music of mankind in a clerk putting on
his Sunday clothes than in a fanatic running naked down Cheapside.
_'William Blake.'_
JUNE 13th
If we are to save the oppressed, we must have two apparently
antagonistic emotions in us at the same time. We must think the
oppressed man intensely miserable, and at the same time intensely
attractive and important. We must insist with violence upon his
degradation; we must insist with the same violence upon his dignity.
For if we relax by one inch the one assertion, men will say he does
not need saving. And if we relax by one inch the other assertion men
will say he is not worth saving. The optimists will say that reform
is needless. The pessimists will say that reform is hopeless. We must
apply both simultaneously to the same oppressed man; we must say that
he is a worm and a god; and we must thus lay ourselves open to the
accusation (or the compliment) of transcendentalism.
_'Charles Dickens.'_
JUNE 14th
You say your civilization will include all talents. Will it? Do you
really mean to say that at the moment when the Esquimaux has learnt to
vote for a County Council, you will have learnt to spear a walrus?
_'The Napoleon of Notting Hill.'_
JUNE 15th
'Certainly, it is untrue that three is no company. Three is splendid
company. Three is the ideal number for pure comradeship: as in the
'Three Musketeers.' But if you reject the proverb altogether; if you
say that two and three are the same sort of company; if you cannot see
that there is a wider abyss between two and three than between three
and three million--then I regret to inform you that you shall have no
company either of two or three, but shall be alone in a howling desert
till you die.'
_'Alarms and Discursions.'_
JUNE 16th
Blasphemy is an artistic effect, because blasphemy depends on a
philosophical conviction. Blasphemy depends upon belief, and is fading
with it. If anyone doubts this, let him sit down seriously and try to
think blasphemous thoughts about Thor. I think his family will find him
at the end of the day in a state of some exhaustion.
_'Heretics.'_
JUNE 17th
Just as the rivalry of armaments is only a sort of sulky plagiarism,
so the rivalry of parties is only a sort of sulky inheritance. Men
have votes, so women must soon have votes; poor children are taught by
force, so they must soon be fed by force; the police shut public-houses
by twelve o'clock, so soon they must shut them by eleven o'clock;
children stop at school till they are fourteen, so soon they will stop
till they are forty. No gleam of reason, no momentary return to first
principles, no abstract asking of any obvious question, can interrupt
this mad and monotonous gallop of mere progress by precedent.
_'What's Wrong with the World.'_
JUNE 18th _WATERLOO DAY_
The time of big theories was the time of big results. In the era
of sentiment and fine words, at the end of the eighteenth century,
men were really robust and effective. The sentimentalists conquered
Napoleon. The cynics could not catch De Wet. A hundred years ago our
affairs for good or evil were wielded triumphantly by rhetoricians. Now
our affairs are hopelessly muddled by strong, silent men.
_'Heretics.'_
JUNE 19th
Herein lies the peculiar significance, the peculiar sacredness
even, of penny dreadfuls and the common printed matter made for our
errand-boys. Here in dim and desperate forms, under the ban of our
base culture, stormed at by silly magistrates, sneered at by silly
schoolmasters--here is the old popular literature still popular; here
is the unmistakable voluminousness, the thousand-and-one tales of Dick
Deadshot, like the thousand-and-one tales of Robin Hood. Here is the
splendid and static boy, the boy who remains a boy through a thousand
volumes and a thousand years. Here in mean alleys and dim shops,
shadowed and shamed by the police, mankind is still driving its dark
trade in heroes. And elsewhere, and in all ages, in braver fashion,
under cleaner skies, the same eternal tale-telling still goes on, and
the whole mortal world is a factory of immortals.
_'Charles Dickens.'_
JUNE 20th
There are two very curious things which the critic of life may observe.
The first is the fact that there is one real difference between men and
women: that women prefer to talk in two's, while men prefer to talk in
three's. The second is that when you find (as you often do) three young
cads and idiots going about together and getting drunk together every
day, you generally find that one of the three cads and idiots is (for
some extraordinary reason) not a cad and not an idiot. In those small
groups devoted to a drivelling dissipation there is almost always one
man who seems to have condescended to his company: one man who, while
he can talk a foul triviality with his fellows, can also talk politics
with a Socialist, or philosophy with a Catholic.
_'Tremendous Trifles.'_
JUNE 21st
Mankind has in nearly all places and periods seen that there is a soul
and a body as plainly as that there is a sun and moon. But because a
narrow Protestant sect called Materialists declared for a short time
that there was no soul, another narrow Protestant sect called Christian
Scientist is now maintaining that there is no body.
_'What's Wrong with the World.'_
JUNE 22nd
THOSE thinkers who cannot believe in any gods often assert that the
love of humanity would be in itself sufficient for them; and so,
perhaps, it would, if they had it.
_'Tremendous Trifles.'_
JUNE 23rd
Only the Christian Church can offer any rational objection to a
complete confidence in the rich. For she has maintained from the
beginning that the danger was not in man's environment, but in man.
Further, she has maintained that if we come to talk of a dangerous
environment, the most dangerous of all is the commodious environment.
I know that the most modern manufacture has been really occupied in
trying to produce an abnormally large needle. I know that the most
recent biologists have been chiefly anxious to discover a very small
camel. But if we diminish the camel to his smallest, or open the eye of
the needle to its largest: if, in short, we assume the words of Christ
to have meant the very least that they could mean, His words must at
the very least mean this--that rich men are not very likely to be
morally trustworthy.
_'Orthodoxy.'_
JUNE 24th _MIDSUMMER DAY_
O well for him that loves the sun,
That sees the heaven-race ridden or run,
The splashing seas of sunset won,
And shouts for victory.
God made the sun to crown his head,
And when death's dart at last is sped,
At least it will not find him dead,
And pass the carrion by.
O ill for him that loves the sun;
Shall the sun stoop for anyone?
Shall the sun weep for hearts undone
Or heavy souls that pray?
Not less for us and everyone
Was that white web of splendour spun;
O well for him who loves the sun
Although the sun should slay.
_'Ballad of the Sun.'_
JUNE 25th
A man's good work is effected by doing what he does: a woman's by being
what she is.
_'Robert Browning.'_
JUNE 26th
If the old priests forced a statement on mankind, at least they
previously took some trouble to make it lucid. It has been left for the
modern mobs of Anglicans and Nonconformists to persecute for a doctrine
without even stating it.
_'Heretics.'_
JUNE 27th
From the time of the first fairy tales men had always believed ideally
in equality; they had always thought that something ought to be done,
if anything could be done, to redress the balance between Cinderella
and the ugly sisters. The irritating thing about the French was
not that they said this ought to be done: everybody said that. The
irritating thing about the French was that they did it.
_Introduction to 'Hard Times.'_
JUNE 28th
My Lady clad herself in grey,
That caught and clung about her throat;
Then all the long grey winter-day
On me a living splendour smote;
And why grey palmers holy are,
And why grey minsters great in story,
And grey skies ring the morning star,
And grey hairs are a crown of glory.
My Lady clad herself in green,
Like meadows where the wind-waves pass;
Then round my spirit spread, I ween,
A splendour of forgotten grass.
Then all that dropped of stem or sod,
Hoarded as emeralds might be,
I bowed to every bush, and trod
Amid the live grass fearfully.
My Lady clad herself in blue,
Then on me, like the seer long gone,
The likeness of a sapphire grew,
The throne of him that sat thereon.
Then knew I why the Fashioner
Splashed reckless blue on sky and sea;
And ere 'twas good enough for her,
He tried it on Eternity.
Beneath the gnarled old Knowledge-tree
Sat, like an owl, the evil sage:
'The world's a bubble,' solemnly
He read, and turned a second page.
'A bubble, then, old crow,' I cried,
'God keep you in your weary wit!
A bubble--have you ever spied
The colours I have seen on it?'
_'A Chord of Colour.'_
JUNE 29th _ST. PETER'S DAY_
When Christ at a symbolic moment was establishing His great society,
He chose for its corner-stone neither the brilliant Paul nor the
mystic John, but a shuffler, a snob, a coward--in a word, a man. And
upon this rock He has built His Church, and the gates of Hell have not
prevailed against it. All the empires and the kingdoms have failed
because of this inherent and continual weakness, that they were founded
by strong men and upon strong men. But this one thing--the historic
Christian Church--was founded upon a weak man, and for that reason it
is indestructible. For no chain is stronger than its weakest link.
_'Heretics.'_
JUNE 30th
There are thrilling moments, doubtless, for the spectator, the amateur,
and the æsthete; but there is one thrill that is known only to the
soldier who fights for his own flag, to the ascetic who starves himself
for his own illumination, to the lover who makes finally his own
choice. And it is this transfiguring self-discipline that makes the vow
a truly sane thing. It must have satisfied even the giant hunger of
the soul of a lover or a poet to know that in consequence of some one
instant of decision that strange chain would hang for centuries in the
Alps among the silences of stars and snows. All around us is the city
of small sins, abounding in backways and retreats; but surely, sooner
or later, the towering flame will rise from the harbour announcing that
the reign of the cowards is over and a man is burning his ships.
_'The Defendant.'_
JULY
JULY 1st
The average man votes below himself; he votes with half a mind or a
hundredth part of one. A man ought to vote with the whole of himself,
as he worships or gets married. A man ought to vote with his head and
heart, his soul and stomach, his eye for faces and his ear for music;
also (when sufficiently provoked) with his hands and feet. If he has
ever seen a fine sunset, the crimson colour of it should creep into
his vote. If he has ever heard splendid songs, they should be in his
ears when he makes the mystical cross. But as it is, the difficulty
with English democracy at all elections is that it is something less
than itself. The question is not so much whether only a minority of the
electorate votes. The point is that only a minority of the voter votes.
_'Tremendous Trifles.'_
JULY 2nd
Modern masters of science are much impressed with the need of beginning
all inquiry with a fact. The ancient masters of religion were quite
equally impressed with that necessity. They began with the fact of
sin--a fact as practical as potatoes. Whether or not man could be
washed in miraculous waters, there was no doubt at any rate that he
wanted washing. But certain religious leaders in London, not mere
Materialists, have begun in our day not to deny the highly disputable
water, but to deny the indisputable dirt. Certain new theologians
dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology
which can really be proved. Some followers of the Reverend R. J.
Campbell, in their almost too fastidious spirituality, admit divine
sinlessness, which they cannot see even in their dreams. But they
essentially deny human sin, which they can see in the street. The
strongest saints and the strongest sceptics alike took positive evil as
the starting-point of their argument. If it be true (as it certainly
is) that a man can feel exquisite happiness in skinning a cat, then
the religious philosopher can only draw one of two deductions: he must
either deny the existence of God, as all Atheists do, or he must deny
the present union between God and man, as all Christians do. The new
theologians seem to think it a highly rationalistic solution to deny
the cat.
_'Orthodoxy.'_
JULY 3rd
The love of those whom we do not know is quite as eternal a sentiment
as the love of those whom we do know. In our friends the richness of
life is proved to us by what we have gained; in the faces in the street
the richness of life is proved to us by a hint of what we have lost.
_'Robert Browning.'_
JULY 4th _INDEPENDENCE DAY_
The old Anglo-American quarrel was much more fundamentally friendly
than most Anglo-American alliances. Each nation understood the other
enough to quarrel. In our time, neither nation understands itself even
enough to quarrel.
_Introduction to 'American Notes.'_
JULY 5th
It is the one great weakness of journalism as a picture of our modern
existence, that it must be a picture made up entirely of exceptions. We
announce on flaring posters that a man has fallen off a scaffolding.
We do not announce on flaring posters that a man has not fallen off a
scaffolding. Yet this latter fact is fundamentally more exciting, as
indicating that the moving tower of terror and mystery, a man, is still
abroad upon the earth. That the man has not fallen off a scaffolding
is really more sensational; and it is also some thousand times more
common. But journalism cannot reasonably be expected thus to insist
upon the permanent miracles. Busy editors cannot be expected to put on
their posters 'Mr. Wilkinson Still Safe,' or 'Mr. Jones of Worthing,
Not Dead Yet.' They cannot announce the happiness of mankind at all.
They cannot describe all the forks that are not stolen, or all the
marriages that are not dissolved. Hence the complete picture they give
of life is of necessity fallacious: they can only represent what is
unusual. However democratic they may be, they are only concerned with
the minority.
_'The Ball and the Cross.'_
JULY 6th
Happy, who like Ulysses or that lord
That raped the fleece, returning full and sage,
With usage and the world's wide reason stored,
With his own kin can wait the end of age.
When shall I see, when shall I see, God knows!
My little village smoke; or pass the door,
The old dear door of that unhappy house
That is to me a kingdom and much more?
Mightier to me the house my fathers made
Than your audacious heads, O Halls of Rome!
More than immortal marbles undecayed,
The thin sad slates that cover up my home;
More than your Tiber is my Loire to me,
Than Palatine my little Lyré there;
And more than all the winds of all the sea
The quiet kindness of the Angevin air.
_Translation from 'Du Bellay.'_
JULY 7th
It is a great mistake to suppose that love unites and unifies men.
Love diversifies them, because love is directed towards individuality.
The thing that really unites men and makes them like to each other is
hatred. Thus, for instance, the more we love Germany the more pleased
we shall be that Germany should be something different from ourselves,
should keep her own ritual and conviviality and we ours. But the
more we hate Germany the more we shall copy German guns and German
fortifications in order to be armed against Germany. The more modern
nations detest each other the more meekly they follow each other; for
all competition is in its nature only a furious plagiarism.
_'Charles Dickens.'_
JULY 8th
The temporary decline of theology had involved the neglect of
philosophy and all fine thinking, and Bernard Shaw had to find shaky
justifications in Schopenhauer for the sons of God shouting for joy. He
called it the Will to Live--a phrase invented by Prussian professors
who would like to exist but can't.
_'George Bernard Shaw.'_
JULY 9th
There are only two kinds of social structure conceivable--personal
government and impersonal government. If my anarchic friends will not
have rules, they will have rulers. Preferring personal government, with
its tact and flexibility, is called Royalism. Preferring impersonal
government, with its dogmas and definitions, is called Republicanism.
Objecting broad-mindedly both to kings and creeds is called Bosh--at
least, I know no more philosophic word for it.
_'What's Wrong with the World.'_
JULY 10th
Now, I have no particular objection to people who take the gilt off
the gingerbread: if only for this excellent reason--that I am much
fonder of gingerbread than I am of gilt. But there are some objections
to this task when it becomes a crusade or an obsession. One of them is
this: that people who have really scraped the gilt off the gingerbread
generally waste the rest of their lives in attempting to scrape the
gilt off gigantic lumps of gold. Such has too often been the case with
Shaw. He can, if he likes, scrape the romance off the armaments of
Europe or the party system of Great Britain; but he cannot scrape the
romance off love or military valour, because it is all romance, and
three thousand miles thick.
_'George Bernard Shaw.'_
JULY 11th
'The Church is not a thing like the Athenæum Club,' he cried. 'If the
Athenæum Club lost all its members, the Athenæum Club would dissolve
and cease to exist. But when we belong to the Church we belong to
something which is outside all of us: which is outside everything you
talk about, outside the Cardinals and the Pope. They belong to it, but
it does not belong to them. If we all fell dead suddenly, the Church
would still somehow exist in God.'
_'The Ball and the Cross.'_
JULY 12th