woman, whose uncle was always Cambridge at the Boat Race. But in her
grey-green hollows, she knew nothing of this; she didn't know that
there was a Boat Race. Also she did not know that she had an uncle. She
had heard of nobody at all, except of George the First, of whom she
had heard (I know not why), and in whose historical memory she put her
simple trust. And by and by, in God's good time, it was discovered that
this uncle of hers was really not her uncle, and they came and told her
so. She smiled through her tears, and said only, 'Virtue is its own
reward.'
_'The Napoleon of Notting Hill.'_
AUGUST 20th
Surely the vilest point of human vanity is exactly that; to ask to be
admired for admiring what your admirers do not admire.
_Introduction to 'Bleak House.'_
AUGUST 21st
There is more simplicity in the man who eats caviar on impulse than in
the man who eats grape-nuts on principle.
_'Heretics.'_
AUGUST 22nd
There was until lately a law forbidding a man to marry his deceased
wife's sister; yet the thing happened constantly. There was no law
forbidding a man to marry his deceased wife's scullery-maid; yet it
did not happen nearly so often. It did not happen because the marriage
market is managed in the spirit and by the authority of women.
_'What's Wrong with the World.'_
AUGUST 23rd
This world and all our powers in it are far more awful and beautiful
than we ever know until some accident reminds us. If you wish to
perceive that limitless felicity, limit yourself if only for a moment.
If you wish to realize how fearfully and wonderfully God's image is
made, stand upon one leg. If you want to realize the splendid vision of
all visible things--wink the other eye.
_'Tremendous Trifles.'_
AUGUST 24th _ST. BARTHOLOMEW'S DAY_
The Secularist says that Christianity produced tumult and cruelty. He
seems to suppose that this proves it to be bad. But it might prove it
to be very good. For men commit crimes not only for bad things, far
more often for good things. For no bad things can be desired quite
so passionately and persistently as good things can be desired, and
only very exceptional men desire very bad and unnatural things. Most
crime is committed because, owing to some peculiar complication, very
beautiful and necessary things are in some danger. For instance, if we
wanted to abolish thieving and swindling at one blow, the best thing
to do would be to abolish babies. Babies, the most beautiful things
on earth, have been the excuse and origin of almost all the business
brutality and financial infamy on earth. If we could abolish monogamic
or romantic love, the country would be dotted with Maiden Assizes.
_'Religious Doubts of Democracy.'_
AUGUST 25th
There are only three things in the world that women do not understand;
and they are Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.
_'What's Wrong with the World.'_
AUGUST 26th
Modern Nonconformist newspapers distinguish themselves by suppressing
precisely those nouns and adjectives which the founders of
Nonconformity distinguished themselves by flinging at kings and queens.
_'Heretics.'_
AUGUST 27th
Many of us live publicly with featureless public puppets, images of the
small public abstractions. It is when we pass our own private gate, and
open our own secret door, that we step into the land of the giants.
_'Charles Dickens.'_
AUGUST 28th
With any recovery from morbidity there must go a certain healthy
humiliation. There comes a certain point in such conditions when only
three things are possible: first, a perpetuation of Satanic pride;
secondly, tears; and third, laughter.
_'The Man who was Thursday.'_
AUGUST 29th
Did Herbert Spencer ever convince you--did he ever convince
anybody--did he ever for one mad moment convince himself--that it
must be to the interest of the individual to feel a public spirit? Do
you believe that, if you rule your department badly, you stand any
more chance, or one half of the chance, of being guillotined that an
angler stands of being pulled into the river by a strong pike? Herbert
Spencer refrained from theft for the same reason he refrained from
wearing feathers in his hair, because he was an English gentleman with
different tastes.
_'The Napoleon of Notting Hill.'_
AUGUST 30th
War is a dreadful thing; but it does prove two points sharply and
unanswerably--numbers and an unnatural valour. One does discover the
two urgent matters; how many rebels there are alive, and how many are
ready to be dead.
_'What's Wrong with the World.'_
AUGUST 31st
Carlyle said that men were mostly fools. Christianity, with a surer and
more reverent realism, says that they are all fools. This doctrine is
sometimes called the doctrine of original sin. It may also be described
as the doctrine of the equality of men.
_'Heretics.'_
SEPTEMBER
SEPTEMBER 1st
If a modern philanthropist came to Dotheboys Hall I fear he would not
employ the simple, sacred and truly Christian solution of beating Mr.
Squeers with a stick. I fancy he would petition the Government to
appoint a Royal Commission to inquire into Mr. Squeers. I think he
would every now and then write letters to the newspapers reminding
people that, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, there was a
Royal Commission to inquire into Mr. Squeers. I agree that he might
even go the length of calling a crowded meeting in St. James's Hall
on the subject of the best policy with regard to Mr. Squeers. At this
meeting some very heated and daring speakers might even go the length
of alluding sternly to Mr. Squeers. Occasionally even hoarse voices
from the back of the hall might ask (in vain) what was going to be
done with Mr. Squeers. The Royal Commission would report about three
years afterwards and would say that many things had happened which were
certainly most regrettable, that Mr. Squeers was the victim of a bad
system; that Mrs. Squeers was also the victim of a bad system; but that
the man who sold Squeers' cane had really acted with great indiscretion
and ought to be spoken to kindly. Something like this would be what,
after four years, the Royal Commission would have said; but it would
not matter in the least what the Royal Commission had said, for by that
time the philanthropists would be off on a new tack and the world would
have forgotten all about Dotheboys Hall and everything connected with
it. By that time the philanthropists would be petitioning Parliament
for another Royal Commission; perhaps a Royal Commission to inquire
into whether Mr. Mantalini was extravagant with his wife's money;
perhaps a commission to inquire into whether Mr. Vincent Crummies kept
the Infant Phenomenon short by means of gin.
_Introduction to 'Nicholas Nickleby.'_
SEPTEMBER 2nd _BATTLE OF SEDAN_
The Germans have not conquered very much in history as a whole. About
fifty years ago they beat the French and fifty years before that the
French very soundly beat them. If we see history as a whole there is
no more doubt that the French people is the more military than there
is that the German people is the more musical. Germany is a great and
splendid nation; and there are millions of sensible German patriots
grappling with the sins and follies which are part of her problem.
_'Illustrated London News.'_
SEPTEMBER 3rd
If votes for women do not mean mobs for women they do not mean what
they were meant to mean.
_'What's Wrong with the World.'_
SEPTEMBER 4th
There is a notion adrift everywhere that imagination, especially
mystical imagination, is dangerous to man's mental balance. Poets are
commonly spoken of as psychologically unreliable; and generally there
is a vague association between wreathing laurels in your hair and
sticking straws in it. Facts and history utterly contradict this view.
Most of the very great poets have been not only sane, but extremely
business-like; and if Shakespeare ever really held horses, it was
because he was much the safest man to hold them. Imagination does not
breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do
not go mad, but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers,
but creative artists very seldom.
_'Orthodoxy.'_
SEPTEMBER 5th
Our modern mystics make a mistake when they wear long hair or loose
ties to attract the spirits. The elves and the old gods when they
revisit the earth really go straight for a dull top-hat. For it means
simplicity, which the gods love.
_'Charles Dickens.'_
SEPTEMBER 6th
Women have been set free to be Bacchantes. They have been set free to
be virgin martyrs; they have been set free to be witches. Do not ask
them now to sink so low as the higher culture.
_'All Things Considered.'_
SEPTEMBER 7th
The sin and sorrow of despotism is not that it does not love men, but
that it loves them too much and trusts them too little.
_'Robert Browning.'_
SEPTEMBER 8th
A philosopher cannot talk about any single thing, down to a pumpkin,
without showing whether he is wise or foolish; but he can easily talk
about everything without anyone having any views about him, beyond
gloomy suspicions.
_'G. F. Watts.'_
SEPTEMBER 9th
Chattering finch and water-fly
Are not merrier than I;
Here among the flowers I lie
Laughing everlastingly.
No: I may not tell the best;
Surely, friends, I might have guessed
Death was but the good King's jest,
It was hid so carefully.
_'The Skeleton.'_
SEPTEMBER 10th
England is still ruled by the great Barnacle family. Parliament is
still ruled by the great Barnacle trinity--the solemn old Barnacle, who
knew that the Circumlocution Office was a protection; the sprightly
young Barnacle, who knew that it was a fraud; and the bewildered
young Barnacle who knew nothing about it. From these three types our
Cabinets are still exclusively recruited. People talk of the tyrannies
and anomalies which Dickens denounced as things of the past like the
Star Chamber. They believe that the days of the old brutal optimism
and the old brutal indifference are gone for ever. In truth, this very
belief is only the continuance of the old stupid optimism and the old
brutal indifference. We believe in a free England and a pure England,
because we still believe in the Circumlocution Office account of this
matter. Undoubtedly our serenity is widespread. We believe that England
is really reformed, we believe that England is really democratic,
we believe that English politics are free from corruption. But this
general satisfaction of ours does not show that Dickens has beaten the
Barnacles. It only shows that the Barnacles have beaten Dickens.
_'Charles Dickens.'_
SEPTEMBER 11th
When a man begins to think that the grass will not grow at night unless
he lies awake to watch it, he generally ends either in an asylum or on
the throne of an emperor.
_'Robert Browning.'_
SEPTEMBER 12th
Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their
property that they may more perfectly respect it. But philosophers
dislike property as property; they wish to destroy the very idea of
personal possession. Bigamists respect marriage, or they would not go
through the highly ceremonial and even ritualistic formality of bigamy.
But philosophers despise marriage as marriage. Murderers respect human
life; they merely wish to attain a greater fullness of human life in
themselves by the sacrifice of what seems to them to be lesser lives.
But philosophers hate life itself, their own as much as other people's.
_'The Man who was Thursday.'_
SEPTEMBER 13th
The lunatic is the man who lives in a small world but thinks it is a
large one; he is a man who lives in a tenth of the truth, and thinks it
is the whole. The madman cannot conceive any cosmos outside a certain
tale or conspiracy or vision. Hence the more clearly we see the world
divided into Saxons and non-Saxons, into our splendid selves and the
rest, the more certain we may be that we are slowly and quietly going
mad. The more plain and satisfying our state appears, the more we may
know that we are living in an unreal world. For the real world is not
satisfying. The more clear become the colours and facts of Anglo-Saxon
superiority, the more surely we may know we are in a dream. For the
real world is not clear or plain. The real world is full of bracing
bewilderments and brutal surprises. Comfort is the blessing and the
curse of the English, and of Americans of the Pogram type also. With
them it is a loud comfort, a wild comfort, a screaming and capering
comfort; but comfort at bottom still. For there is but an inch of
difference between the cushioned chamber and the padded cell.
_'Charles Dickens.'_
SEPTEMBER 14th
I never said a word against eminent men of science. What I complain of
is a vague popular philosophy which supposes itself to be scientific
when it is really nothing but a sort of new religion and an uncommonly
nasty one. When people talked about the Fall of Man, they knew they
were talking about a mystery, a thing they didn't understand. Now they
talk about the survival of the fittest: they think they do understand
it, whereas they have not merely no notion, they have an elaborately
false notion of what the words mean.
_'The Club of Queer Trades.'_
SEPTEMBER 15th
The only way of catching a train I have ever discovered is to miss the
train before.
_'Tremendous Trifles.'_
SEPTEMBER 16th
Many people have wondered why it is that children's stories are so full
of moralizing. The reason is perfectly simple: it is that children like
moralizing more than anything else, and eat it up as if it were so much
jam. The reason why we, who are grown up, dislike moralizing is equally
clear: it is that we have discovered how much perversion and hypocrisy
can be mixed with it; we have grown to dislike morality not because
morality is moral, but because morality is so often immoral. But the
child has never seen the virtues twisted into vices; the child does not
know that men are not only bad from good motives, but also often good
from bad motives. The child does not know that whereas the Jesuit may
do evil that good may come, the man of the world often does good that
evil may come. Therefore, the child has a hearty, healthy, unspoiled,
and insatiable appetite for mere morality; for the mere difference
between a good little girl and a bad little girl. And it can be proved
by innumerable examples that when we are quite young we do like the
moralizing story. Grown-up people like the "Comic Sandford and Merton,"
but children like the real "Sandford and Merton."
_'Daily News.'_
SEPTEMBER 17th
One of the few gifts that can really increase with old age is a
sense of humour. That is the whole fun of belonging to an ancient
civilization like our own great civilization of Europe. In my vision I
see Europe still sitting on her mighty bull, the enormous and mystic
mother from whom we come, who has given us everything from the 'Iliad'
to the French Revolution. And from her awful lips I seem to hear the
words:--
'Think of me, old Mother Scrubbs,
A-joining these 'ere totty clubs:
Fancy me deserting the pubs
At my time of life!'
_'Illustrated London News.'_
SEPTEMBER 18th _DR. JOHNSON BORN_
If anyone wishes to see the real rowdy egalitarianism which is
necessary (to males at least) he can find it as well as anywhere in
the great old tavern disputes which come down to us in such books
as Boswell's 'Johnson.' It is worth while to mention that one name
especially, because the modern world in its morbidity has done it a
grave injustice. The demeanour of Johnson, it is said, was 'harsh
and despotic.' It was occasionally harsh, but it was never despotic.
Johnson was not in the least a despot. Johnson was a demagogue, he
shouted against a shouting crowd. The very fact that he wrangled with
other people is a proof that other people were allowed to wrangle with
him. His very brutality was based on the idea of an equal scrimmage
like that of football. It is strictly true that he bawled and banged
the table because he was a modest man. He was honestly afraid of being
overwhelmed or even overlooked. Addison had exquisite manners and was
the king of his company. He was polite to everybody, but superior to
everybody; therefore he has been handed down for ever in the immortal
insult of Pope:--
Like Cato give his little Senate laws
And sit attention to his own applause.
Johnson, so far from being king of his company, was a sort of Irish
Member in his own Parliament. Addison was a courteous superior and was
hated. Johnson was an insolent equal, and therefore was loved by all
who knew him and handed down in a marvellous book which is one of the
mere miracles of love.
_'What's Wrong with the World.'_
SEPTEMBER 19th
Brave men are all vertebrates: they have their softness on the surface
and their toughness in the middle.
_'Tremendous Trifles.'_
SEPTEMBER 20th
The teetotaller has chosen a most unfortunate phrase for the drunkard
when he says that the drunkard is making a beast of himself. The man
who drinks ordinarily makes nothing but an ordinary man of himself.
The man who drinks excessively makes a devil of himself. But nothing
connected with a human and artistic thing like wine can bring one
nearer to the brute life of Nature. The only man who is, in the exact
and literal sense of the words, making a beast of himself is the
teetotaller.
_'Charles Dickens.'_
SEPTEMBER 21st _ST. MATTHEW'S DAY_
The abyss between Christ and all His modern interpreters is that we
have no record that He ever wrote a word, except with His finger in
the sand. The whole is the history of one continuous and sublime
conversation. It was not for any pompous proclamation, it was not for
any elaborate output of printed volumes; it was for a few splendid and
idle words that the cross was set up on Calvary and the earth gaped,
and the sun was darkened at noonday.
_'Twelve Types.'_
SEPTEMBER 22nd
So with the wan waste grasses on my spear,
I ride for ever seeking after God.
My hair grows whiter than my thistle plume
And all my limbs are loose; but in my eyes
The star of an unconquerable praise:
For in my soul one hope for ever sings,
That at the next white corner of a road
My eyes may look on Him.
_'The Wild Knight.'_
SEPTEMBER 23rd
An error is more menacing than a crime, for an error begets crimes....
A free lover is worse than a profligate. For a profligate is serious
and reckless even in his shortest love; while a free lover is cautious
and irresponsible even in his longest devotion.
_'Tremendous Trifles.'_
SEPTEMBER 24th
If the barricades went up in our streets and the poor became masters,
I think the priests would escape, I fear the gentlemen would; but
I believe the gutters would be simply running with the blood of
philanthropists.
_'Charles Dickens.'_
SEPTEMBER 25th
Pessimism says that life is so short that it gives nobody a chance;
religion says that life is so short that it gives everybody his final
chance.
_Introduction to 'Nicholas Nickleby.'_
SEPTEMBER 26th
In short, one Pankhurst is an exception, but a thousand Pankhursts are
a nightmare, a Bacchic orgy, a witch's sabbath. For in all legends men
have thought of women as sublime separately, but horrible in a crowd.
_'What's Wrong with the World.'_
SEPTEMBER 27th
Individually, men may present a more or less rational appearance,
eating, sleeping, and scheming. But humanity as a whole is changeful,
mystical, fickle, delightful. Men are men, but Man is a woman.
_'The Napoleon of Notting Hill.'_
SEPTEMBER 28th
I should not be at all surprised if I turned one corner in Fleet Street
and saw a queer looking window, turned another corner and saw a yet
queerer looking lamp; I should not be surprised if I turned a third
corner and found myself in Elfland.
_'Tremendous Trifles.'_
SEPTEMBER 29th _ST. MICHAEL AND ALL ANGELS_
Historic Christianity has always believed in the valour of St. Michael
riding in front of the Church Militant, and in an ultimate and absolute
pleasure, not indirect or utilitarian, the intoxication of the Spirit,
the wine of the blood of God.
_'George Bernard Shaw.'_
SEPTEMBER 30th
When a man really tells the truth, the first truth he tells is that he
himself is a liar.
_'What's Wrong with the World.'_
OCTOBER
OCTOBER 1st
Of all the tests by which the good citizen and strong reformer can be
distinguished from the vague faddist or the inhuman sceptic, I know no
better test than this--that the unreal reformer sees in front of him
one certain future, the future of his fad; while the real reformer sees
before him ten or twenty futures among which his country must choose,
and may in some dreadful hour choose the wrong one. The true patriot is
always doubtful of victory; because he knows that he is dealing with a
living thing; a thing with free will. To be certain of free will is to
be uncertain of success.
_Introduction to 'American Notes.'_
OCTOBER 2nd
Nietzsche scales staggering mountains, but he turns up ultimately in
Tibet. He sits down beside Tolstoy in the land of nothing and Nirvana.
They are both helpless--one because he must not grasp anything, and the
other because he must not let go of anything. The Tolstoian's will is
frozen by a Buddhistic instinct that all special actions are evil. But
the Nietzscheite's will is quite equally frozen by his view that all
special actions are good; for if all special actions are good, none
of them are special. They stand at the cross roads, and one hates all
the roads and the other likes all the roads. The result is--well, some
things are not hard to calculate. They stand at the cross roads.
_'Orthodoxy.'_
OCTOBER 3rd
Modern women defend their office with all the fierceness of
domesticity. They fight for desk and typewriter as for hearth and home,
and develop a sort of wolfish wifehood on behalf of the invisible head
of the firm. That is why they do office work so well; and that is why
they ought not to do it.
_'What's Wrong with the World.'_
OCTOBER 4th _ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI_
For most people there is a fascinating inconsistency in the position
of St. Francis. He expressed in loftier and bolder language than any
earthly thinker the conception that laughter is as divine as tears.
He called his monks the mountebanks of God. He never forgot to take
pleasure in a bird as it flashed past him, or a drop of water as it
fell from his finger; he was perhaps the happiest of the sons of men.
Yet this man undoubtedly founded his whole polity on the negation of
what we think of the most imperious necessities; in his three vows
of poverty, chastity, and obedience he denied to himself, and those
he loved most, property, love, and liberty. Why was it that the most
large-hearted and poetic spirits in that age found their most congenial
atmosphere in these awful renunciations? Why did he who loved where all
men were blind, seek to blind himself where all men loved? Why was he a
monk and not a troubadour? We have a suspicion that if these questions
were answered we should suddenly find that much of the enigma of this
sullen time of ours was answered also.
_'Twelve Types.'_
OCTOBER 5th
It is awful to think that this world which so many poets have praised
has even for a time been depicted as a mantrap into which we may just
have the manhood to jump. Think of all those ages through which men
have had the courage to die, and then remember that we have actually
fallen to talking about having the courage to live.
_'George Bernard Shaw.'_
OCTOBER 6th
We will eat and drink later. Let us remain together a little, we
who have loved each other so sadly, and have fought so long. I seem
to remember only centuries of heroic war, in which you were always
heroes--epic on epic, iliad on iliad, and you always brothers in arms.
Whether it was but recently (for Time is nothing) or at the beginning
of the world, I sent you out to war. I sat in the darkness where there
is not any created thing, and to you I was only a voice commanding
valour and an unnatural virtue. You heard the voice in the dark and
you never heard it again. The sun in heaven denied it, the earth and
sky denied it, all human wisdom denied it. And when I met you in the
daylight I denied it myself. But you were men. You did not forget your
secret honour, though the whole cosmos turned an engine of torture to
tear it out of you.
_'The Man who was Thursday.'_
OCTOBER 7th
The truest kinship with humanity would lie in doing as humanity has
always done, accepting with a sportsman-like relish the estate to which
we are called, the star of our happiness, and the fortunes of the land
of our birth.
_'Twelve Types.'_
OCTOBER 8th