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ON
HILAIRE BELLOC
_By the Same Author_
EMMANUEL BURDEN
A CHANGE IN THE CABINET
PARIS
THE PYRENEES
MARIE ANTOINETTE
HILLS AND THE SEA
ON NOTHING
ON EVERYTHING
ON SOMETHING
FIRST AND LAST
THIS AND THAT AND THE OTHER
A PICKED COMPANY
ON
BY
HILAIRE BELLOC
NEW [Illustration: Logo] YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1923,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
[Illustration: Logo]
ON. II
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
CONTENTS
PAGE
ON ACHMET BOULEE BEY 9
ON AN EDUCATIONAL REFORM 16
ON KIND HEARTS BEING MORE THAN CORONETS 26
ON MUMBO-JUMBO 34
ON FOOTNOTES 43
A FEW KIND WORDS TO MAMMON 52
ON TREVES 60
ON THE CATHEDRAL OF SEVILLE AND "THE MISANTHROPE" 66
ON THE "BUCOLICS" OF VIRGIL, A CAFÉ IN PARIS, THE
LENGTH OF ESSAYS, PHŒBUS, BACCHUS, A WANTON MAID,
AND OTHER MATTERS 74
ON TITLES 80
ON BAD VERSE 89
THE UNITED POETS 97
ON CONVINCING PEOPLE 105
ON CONTROVERSY 113
ON INACCURACY 121
ON TECHNICAL WORDS 127
ON THE ACCURSED CLIMATE 134
ON ACCENT 141
ON TRUTH AND THE ADMIRALTY 150
A SHORT ADVENTURE 157
ON SAILING THE SEAS 167
OFF EXMOUTH 181
ON A PIECE OF ROPE 186
"ULTIMO RATIO" 193
ON A TAG PROVIDER 200
ON "AND" 211
THE CAD'S ENCYCLOPÆDIA 220
ON THE MELTING OF THE ICE 228
ON THE HATRED OF NUMBERS 235
ON THE LAST INFIRMITY 248
ON
ON ACHMET BOULEE BEY
There is a book, I have a book, printed in 1806. It was compiled
(rather than written) by a country clergyman, who had before him (so he
tells me on the title page) these objects:--"To increase _knowledge_,
to promote _virtue_, to discourage _vice_, and to furnish Topics for
Innocent and Ingenious _Conversation_."
On the 208th page I find this passage:
The Pacha Achmet Boulee Bey, Governor of Egypt, was remarkable for
a great sensibility of heart. The pleasures permitted to him by
law were far from satisfying him. He wanted to meet with a return
of love, and had assembled, at a very considerable expense, a
numerous seraglio, in hopes of meeting a beauty not only capable
of inspiring love but of feeling all its force and impulse.
Not one of this disposition did he find among twelve hundred
Circassian, Georgian and Greek ladies whom he had purchased at
different times.
Oh, admirable excerpt! Oh, Divine anecdote! Oh, perfect theme!
What! You also, Achmet? You also, Boulee? _You_ set out upon that
quest, there, among the Levantines so many years ago--and with what
advantages!... _You_ also failed?... My soul is fired to exalt the high
complaint of man. But stay. First let me savour, point by point, that
complete, that inimitable, text.
This Governor of Egypt "was remarkable for a great sensibility of
heart." More sensible than the mass of us, was he? Greater in him than
in you and me, my brothers, the hunger for the answering tone, for
the echo to the soul? Yes, it would seem so. A more active hunger, at
least; for it produced action, as we see farther on: he did not dream,
he did. He did not ache forlorn, he sought: he hunted. Hence was he
"remarkable." All men have wasted for the home of the spirit, for the
completion of their being. All, all have waited in vain for the woman
that should call them by their name. But in varying degrees. _He_ was
at the head of the chase. For _him_ it was a rage, a fury, a crusade.
He did not wait, he plunged, he charged. He would discover. He put it
to trial and reached the limit of effort. He is our master and our
exemplar. My homage is to Achmet Boulee Bey.
"The pleasures permitted him by law were far from satisfying him."
There comes in the minor note. After that grand opening, after that
crash upon the organ, "remarkable"--even among lovers, still questing
lovers--the tone softens to our common dream. It is the weeping of
Achilles, it is the sleep of Charlemagne, it is the dog of Ulysses--it
is that domestic lesser something in the hero which is common to us
all. There are laws: especially laws divine. They permit us this and
that--the more gratitude to them. But, oh! my friends, the things they
fend away! "Visitors are requested not to touch," says the ordinance
in the bazaar; though it also has a sign above it "Entry free," and
the same is true of this world. You may desire--desire is put quite
lavishly at your disposition. But when it comes to enjoyment, there are
restrictions, little friend.
Achmet was, I take it, from his name, employment and longitude
(and latitude) (30° 2" N., 31° 16" E.--or thereabouts--I date from
Greenwich, not from Paris or the Azores) a servant of Mahound and his
law, the Mahoundish law. He might drink no wine--except champagne, if
you call that a wine. No liqueur except _crême de Menthe_. No beer of
the Franks. He might not (I understand--but this may be mere legend)
exceed four wives. The pastime of divorce was open to him only under
certain limitations: for instance, he had to return the dowers. He was
under the law. And though this same law gave him much to delight his
soul, gardens and good food, adventure, praise and a sort of monotonous
music sung through the nose, horseback riding and camel-back riding,
the dawn, the sea, the moon, and day and night, and the iron titles
of the night--yet was he not satisfied. Nay, these things were _far_
from satisfying him, says the text. For he desired what the law does
not forbid, indeed, but also cannot give. He sought the great human
converse, the plenitude, the deep embrace. Therefore, did his great
soul starve and weaken, and attempt recovery again if only to pursue
what never yet was attained: the quarry that fails the hunter, the
pearl that slips back into the sea. The law did its best. It said: "I
am for your good. I desire your happiness. Come, you may play with
dolls and go a walk after lessons," but he turned away and sickened.
"He was far from satisfied." He had heard the fairy horn. He had caught
the savour of what content might be: a hint, a summons; and "he was far
from satisfied."
"He wanted to meet with a return of love." Only that? My word, Achmet,
you were easily pleased! You desired the wealth that is beyond the
world: not only did you desire it, you claimed it as a matter of
course. You wondered why you had it not, you thought it your due:
your rightful food--this thing unknown to all the exiled sons of
Pithecanthropus, this lost serene of Eden! The simple words give it in
its high simplicity. "He wanted." Well! We also want, and we may go on
wanting.
But you did not stand halted in mere wanting, strong soldier of the
Nile. You struck spurs and rode. You are a model for us here. _You_
set out to conquer and to hold. Life passes while _we_ seek here and
there forlornly; and how many little experiments must be tried, each
separate, each ending in despair, before the first hint of achievement
comes to _us_. We, the lesser ones, have ourselves to thank for such
poor spoil, after such single-handed hunting! Not so you! You swept
widely and at once--ranging a vast field, marching on a broad front,
taking large sample of the world. Hence those masterly words, that you
"had assembled at a very considerable expense a numerous seraglio."
What manhood and what courtesy combined; what generosity and largesse,
what proper care as well! You did not drive or coerce--for not thus
is the unseizable attained. You did not order, no, nor wheedle; and
you did not command, though you sat on the throne of a king. You did
not coax or threaten, or play a pretended indifference, or protest a
passionate worship. You "assembled" them.
And they were ladies. Right, and right, and right again, Achmet! More
than right! Twenty thousand times right! If the Thing can be found
at all there must be something of leisure perhaps and certainly of
equality. Ladies for love, not women: oh! yes! No doubt at all! And
so for you, my Lord, they had to be "Ladies." And you "purchased
them." Right again! You went about it in the honourable way, with
no misunderstanding, no room for false issues on either side: an
honourable price was honourably paid. That, if anything, should open
the door of the treasure house. You paid high, you paid well. You were
at a charge. You made yourself the poorer to make yourself the richer.
You proved to them as to the whole world that you held them dearly
indeed--"at a considerable expense."
You acted with discretion and with a fine distinction. You purchased
not in bulk or by contract, but neatly, carefully, "at different
times." You weighed each opportunity, you gauged each transaction.
Achmet, your perseverance alone should have made you the one, the
satisfied of lovers. Into how many eyes you looked! How many whispering
voices you gauged! The sincerity of how many protestations did you
not search with the white-hot flame of your own profound and tortured
spirit! Is it she, or she? Is she here at last ...? Twelve hundred
of them--the splendid tale, the royal regiment of many and many, and
more still, the dwindling perspective of research. "Who knows?" you
said. "At last, as the feet stumble in the final excess of weariness,
the fountain may be heard ... at last." You deserved it beyond all
men, Boulee, and as we read we expect, breathless, the climax of your
surpassing endeavour, we expect to hear at the very end the low tones
of the beloved voice that answers, "Que tu perdes ou que tu gagnes, tu
les aura toujours." Your reward is upon you. You shall be greeted with
the divine reply, "Tecum vivere amem, tecum obeam libens."
Achmet, take your ease. To one man Paradise shall be restored, and one
man shall be, once in the story of the race, secure. One man shall make
harbour. One man shall rest in his home.
* * * * *
But what is this comes at the close of all? Wind of death! I know
that chill--and Achmet knew it, too. Alas! Boulee! "Not one of this
disposition did he find."
They were twelve hundred, come from the tenderest and the best; chosen
out of all the Orient; patiently comprehended one by one; approached,
protected, adored each in holy turn, "in hopes of meeting _one_ not
only capable of inspiring love but of feeling all its force and
impulse" in her own breast.... Mortality returns: "Not one of this
disposition did he find."
ON AN EDUCATIONAL REFORM
Since we are determined (as I am not, but as all my colleagues seem to
be) that a new world has arisen; since, therefore, all institutions may
be remodelled at will, I trust there will appear in the education of
wealthy children a reform overdue these many years.
This reform is an addition, of a certain subject, to the curriculum of
schools. We have all at one time or another deplored its absence: we
all, in one crisis or another of our lives, recognise its necessity. If
it be true that we have to-day an opportunity for new things, do let us
inaugurate this novelty at least, which would be of such vast advantage
to the generation now sprouting. And the new subject is Fraud.
Fraud is the sole basis of the only form of success recognised among
us. By Fraud alone are those vast fortunes suddenly acquired which--and
which only--are the condition of greatness in a modern man.
Fraud is the master subject, ignorance or inability in which dooms a
man to toil and obscurity. Yet Fraud is never taught at school. Men who
had the parts for a most brilliant career fail on leaving the Academies
because they are outwitted by Guttersnipes who have no letters but
_can_ cheat.
There used to be taught in schools Latin and Greek after a grammatical
fashion, which made the better pupils true masters of the inwards of
these languages. When they were so formed they were called "scholars."
To this expertise was added some knowledge of a foreign language
(usually French or German, but only a smattering thereof), and latterly
also the elements of physical science and of mathematics, until these
last branches took up so much time that often a choice was made between
them and the older humanities.
So far, so good. Indirectly the young people were taught also the
manner of their society, and this especially through the modern
discipline of games. But there is not one of them (and I speak with
feeling on the matter, for I have experience myself) who upon leaving
school or the University has not suddenly found himself in a world
where a ready practice in cheating proved the only thing of serious
importance and yet was to him quite unfamiliar. He found himself,
usually without resources, cast upon a world, wherein survival (or even
decent honour and spiritual security) depended upon the exercise of
certain arts of deceit to which he had never been trained, and which he
must acquire at his peril. In proportion as he failed to acquire these
arts he failed altogether and was cast away.
Every one will admit that the swindling of one's fellow-beings is
a necessary practice. Upon it is based all really sound commercial
success, and through it men arrive at those solid positions which
command the honour and respect of our contemporaries. Thus, the chief
way of making money is by buying cheap and selling dear, or, rather, by
buying cheap and selling dear quickly; but when you buy cheap you only
do so by taking in the vendor, and, when you sell dear, the purchaser.
Your action may be remote and indirect, as when you gamble upon the
Stock Exchange. It is commonly direct and personal as when you acquire
under contract the services of another man. But it is essentially an
exercise in overreaching. It is of its very nature getting some other
human being into a state of mind in which he underestimates what you
desire to get out of him or overestimates what you desire to unload
upon him. Thus, in my own poor trade, I am a good business man if I can
persuade some unhappy publisher or newspaper owner that the public is
athirst for my words. Conversely, my honourable employers and masters
will be good business men if they persuade me that no one is so base
as to want to hear me at all, and that I am only employed as a sort of
charity. And so it is with the selling of a boat or a house, or with
the buying of land.
Another master-gate to fortune is abuse of confidence: you persuade men
to entrust you with money for one purpose and then use it secretly for
a very different end. If you bring off the deal it is your gain. If you
drop the money the loss is theirs.
Another royal road is "merger"; another false description; another
plain straightforward theft.
All these repose on a sound talent in Fraud, and, in general, so it is
in all forms of fortune-getting, save in the highly specialised craft
or mystery of blackmail. Upon cheating all honour, and therefore all
happiness, depends. It is wealth so made which (save for those who
inherit wealth and who are securely tied up as well) determines the
position of a man to-day among his fellows.
Well, what trace is there of this great truth in the curriculum of
our schools? It is entirely neglected! I admit that pomposity, which
is a necessary element in all success, is indirectly taught. I admit
still more freely and fully that the spirit of falsehood is taught as a
sort of general subject, but I maintain that swindling as a particular
subject is not taught at all, and even the most elementary forms of it,
with which every boy ought to be acquainted in his early 'teens, come
upon him with a shock when he is already a young married man launched
in life and, as the phrase goes, battling with the world.
This, I say, is a shameful neglect. Here is an instance: the most
elementary form of swindling, that which is, as it were, the gambit of
every operation, and that which is the sum total of all the simpler
operations of commerce, consists in giving a verbal assurance which it
is intended to repudiate later by document or action. You promise a
man something which you do not intend to perform, or you give a false
description which reality will later expose, or in some other way you
use the psychology of affirmation to your advantage.
Well, what could be simpler than to have a class (even if it were but
half an hour a week) where all boys over a certain age could be trained
by example both to be upon their guard against the false affirmation
of others and (what is more important) to make false but plausible
affirmations themselves with all the boldness which breeds success--to
make affirmations particular, affirmations emphatic, affirmations
probable, affirmations flattering.
Even the negative side of this very necessary piece of training is
omitted, and boys are not taught (at least in any school with which I
have acquaintance) the importance of _economy_ in falsehood.
The immature mind will, of course, tend to falsehood as a natural human
instinct, but the force of kindly nature is here wasted because it
lacks direction. Young men go out into the world lying freely about the
grandeur of their acquaintance, their personal prowess, and the rest,
all matters conducing in no way to the accumulation of wealth--which is
the end of man. Now, what could be simpler than, in such a class as I
suggest (I admit that half an hour a week is rather short commons, but
everything must have a beginning)--what could be simpler than to give
some direction at least to this pseudological factor in the mind and
train it to the right end?
Examples should be set before youth. Let the master recite some
braggart story of strength or skill such as is common among the young
of the rich. Then let him show what a waste of energy it is, and how
an equal amount of pseudological force expended in a useful channel, a
false description or a flattery, might have earned £100. "It is just as
easy," the good preceptor would tell his young charges, "to brag about
a horse that you want to sell as about, say, your horsemanship, for
which there is no market. It is just as easy to lie about the value of
something you have for sale as it is to lie about your lineage. But in
the first case you trouser the dibs, while in the second there is no
stuff--it is wasted effort. Remember, therefore, my dear boys, to check
yourselves when you are about to tell an uneconomical falsehood. Count
ten before you speak and consider whether there be not ready to your
hand some subject in which you can fully satisfy this natural instinct
of lying and at the same time prepare some advantage for your pocket."
It may be objected to me that if this very necessary reform were
introduced and the elements of modern commerce were taught in all our
schools, the results would cancel out; for since all our youth would
be forearmed, there would still be waged in the great world outside
the conflict of the better sharper against the worse, with victory as
now to the master-thief. But such an objection applies to all forms
of learning. My desire is to raise the general level of our gentry in
this department, and especially not to leave men in middle age with
the bitter memory of lost opportunities: opportunities lost through no
personal fault but through the neglect of those who had a sacred trust
and who did not fulfil it. At least let the man of fifty be able to
say to himself: "I had every advantage. My masters at school (and no
one more than my dear old headmaster, Dr. Buggins) repeatedly warned
me against the peril of honesty and were at pains to teach me how to
overreach the innocent; if I have proved clumsy and am now living as a
publisher's hack, the fault is all with me." As things now are, many a
man who has sunk to be a proof-reader, or even an author, is, in his
heart, bitterly reproaching those who launched him upon the world quite
ignorant of affairs.
I conceive that the educationist who is ever eager to improve his
changing science will here suggest particular subjects in this new
department. He will see an expanding horizon of opportunity. My words
have roused enthusiasm in him. He will ask me, for instance, why I
have not included special classes in blackmail, monopoly, bullying,
bribery, perjury, and so forth.
Yes, certainly; all these should have their place, especially for older
boys. But they may well be considered later. Perhaps such subjects
would best be left to special institutions, such as those which were
so successful in the last generation under the name of "crammers."
Blackmail in particular, very like the art of outflanking in military
science, requires a judgment of the world to which the mind can hardly
attain till it is mature. Napoleon said: "Beware when you attempt
to outflank that you be not outflanked yourself"; a sound saying,
for any one in process of edging round his opponent extends his own
communications, and leaves an opportunity for that opponent to edge
round him. And so it is with blackmail; too often the blackmailer just
in the act of seizing his prize (a post in the Ministry or what not)
feels a sharp bite and discovers to his horror that the tables are
turned.
In a word, the teaching of this art of blackmail is the teaching of a
very difficult and skilful, complex action which must not be attempted
rashly, and that is why I have some hesitation in recommending it for
the ordinary curriculum of schools. Nevertheless, the very rudiments
of it, or, at any rate, some idea of what it is, might profitably be
given even to the younger boys, and for this purpose I would suggest
a visit to some neighbouring aquarium, where the slow antics of the
crab in his tank so graphically mimic our public life. The attention
of the lads could be directed by their master to the alternate furtive
movements of two crabs. They will observe how the first pursues the
second sideways across the tank and makes a clutch with his claw, how
the second eludes this and in his turn chases his opponent off. "This
grotesque manœuvre, my dear boys," the Pastor will declaim, "may
remain in your minds as an example of what later you will be called
upon to do if you are called to serve your country in Parliament."
The youngsters will soon forget all about it, as is the fashion of boys
with their lessons; but something, I think, will remain in the mind,
though half obscured by time. And when they come to the vast affairs of
which Westminster is the theatre, the object-lesson of the two crabs
will not be without service to them.
Bribery, I take it, should not be taught except in the point of degree,
for it comes naturally enough to all men both to give and to take
bribes, and all that you need fix in the young mind is the double
importance of avoiding avarice upon the one side and lavishness upon
the other. For the _taking_ of a bribe no art or training whatsoever is
required, but in the _giving_ of bribes it is of some importance not
to give too much, and of absolutely vital importance not to offer too
little. It is upon this last point that many a noble career has made
shipwreck.
I have in mind one poor fellow whose father had left him a few
millions. He was perpetually putting down, with all manner of
hesitation, sums just insufficient to purchase the object of his
desires. In the long run he had disbursed what should easily have
commanded a high administrative position in the Cabinet, a Viceroyalty
or a first-class Embassy. Yet he had nothing to show for it all but one
private secretaryship, two chairmanships of committee, and a baronetcy:
and this last only because he was childless.
ON KIND HEARTS BEING MORE THAN CORONETS
That is true. But a friend having remarked to me that Cash was more
than kind hearts, I put the thing down in a formula for myself, thus,
Cash > Kind Hearts > Coronets
and sat gazing at it for a long time, until it awoke other thoughts in
me.
And the first was this: "'Kind hearts are more than Coronets.' What an
intolerably bad line! What a shocking line--or rather, half-line! What
an outrage!"
When verse is concerned one must not mince matters. It is too sacred.
One must have no reservations. One must ride roughshod over one's
nearest and dearest, and proclaim bad verse aloud, and say, "Aroint!
Honi!"
No reverend name, no illustrious label half-mixed with the State
itself, should deter one. Nothing should impede the truth on bad verse
save a substantial offer of money--and where is the chance of that in
such a galley?
No! It is prime duty. Having the thing before you, having seen it,
whether your opinion is asked or no, speak out at once and say: "Madam,
this is not poetry, it is verse. It is not good verse; it is bad
verse."
And what wickedly bad verse!
I remember coming down on to Stamford one July morning (I was following
the Roman road across Burleigh Park, and so down to the river), when I
saw in the window of a little shop among the first houses of the town,
hither of the bridge, a card; an ornamented card; a florally ornamented
card, put up for sale. It was a set of verses all about a rich man who
owned Burleigh, that great house, and who married a young woman much
poorer than himself. I read them and paid little attention to them. I
thought they were some local thing made up to sell in a charity. But a
little way on I found another set in another window, and then another,
all just the same. I read them again, and something familiar echoed
in my mind; something of childhood ... I sought.... There was an odd
connection with "Locksley Hall." Yet what had "Locksley Hall" to do
with Burleigh? Then it broke in on me like an evil-doer breaking sacred
locks: Tennyson! Tennyson had written this amazing thing!
And so he did "Lady Clara Vere de Vere." And in Lady Clara comes "Kind
Hearts = Coronets + K" ("K" being some positive number)--I had found it!
The answer to all those who ask why great poets (and especially our
great poets, and especially our modern great poets) write rubbish is as
old as the Higher Criticism. It is because a poet is only a man used by
the gods. It is not the man himself who is the poet. He is only the
reed. Those Good Poets who don't publish their Bad Verse along with
their Poetry are only those who happen to be good critics _and_ at the
same time very keen on their reputation as verse-writers. All good
Poets have written execrable verse, but as to who writes Poetry I will
tell you: it is a god.
A lot might be written, by the way (but I will not write it), on the
different kinds of bad verse put out by Good Poets. The "Kind hearts
and Coronets" monstrosity is quite, quite different from Wordsworth's
prose, or Corneille's dotage. Some might say that each great poet
had his own kind of bad verse. It is not so. Their bad verse is not
good enough to be individual. They do it in commonplace groups; and
I suppose each falls into the group natural to him when the god is
not blowing through the reed; or when it proves a broken reed. Thus
Hugo left un-godded becomes mere rhetoric and Milton, a stately
painter at the best, a tiresome tractarian at the worst--as in the
theological bits of "Paradise Regained." Horace (I think--I won't
look it up) said that a poet was such that however bad a line might
be, you felt the poet in it. If Horace said that, or if any one said
that, it isn't true. But talking of truth, "kind hearts are more than
coronets" is quite true, and I can imagine that truth being put into
fine verse--even into poetry, if and when the god should feel inclined
... and here I pause to praise you, Phœbus Apollo, my protector, my
leader, my Capitan; but you have a way of quitting; you leave them in
the Scæan Gate....
There is nothing against Truth being expressed in Poetry, even though
most Poetry is lies.
"_Nox est perpetua una dormiunda_" is Poetry--though it is sternly
true; at least, it is half true.
And "between a sleep and a sleep" is Poetry, and so is "Our little life
is rounded with a sleep" ... where the operative word is "rounded."
("Every English sentence, Gentlemen," said the Professor to his class,
"contains an _operative word_. For instance, in the sentence: 'Every
gentleman who hits a cocoanut will receive a good cigar,' the operative
word is not 'gentleman,' but 'good.'")
So also is both Poetry and profoundly true that line of granite:
L'amour est un plaisir, l'honneur est un devoir
which I quote again and again; though I suppose a great many people
will say it is not Poetry at all, and cannot be, because it is written
in a foreign language. Well! Well!
So is also:
Dead honour risen out-does love at last.
That also is Poetry, though in the more formal manner. But that last
line has this drawback about it; which is, that only those who have
lived to a certain age and in a certain way can know the truth of it;
and that those who have not lived the truth of it will not make much
of it anyhow. Young people will make nothing of it, nor those who have
become old blamelessly, of whom a great number are to be found to this
day in the outlying parts and among seafaring men.
But I say that truth is no bar to poetry, nor bad verse to truth
either. And I say that this half-line of horribly bad verse, "kind
hearts are more than coronets," is as true as true.
Which of you, O my companions, having drunk the wine of this world and
half-despaired would not rather fetch up in your dereliction against
a kind heart than a coronet? I don't say the two combined are to be
despised. I only ask: Which of you having strictly to choose in the
dark passage of this life between: (_a_) a coronet with a bad heart;
(_b_) a kind heart without a coronet--wealth being equal--would not
choose (_b_)? I would. So would you all. I cannot answer for women, but
as Mr. Joseph Chamberlain said, "I know my own people," and the bearded
ones (or those who would be bearded but for the detestable necessity of
shaving) will with one moaning voice reply: "Kind Hearts!... No, thank
you; I do not feel inclined for a Coronet this evening; bring me a Kind
Heart."
Which of you, O my brethren, having suffered the things of this
world and finding yourself sitting lonely on the bank of a stream in
some forest place would not desire to have approach him, rather than
a shallow, silly, boring, untenacious, stupid, cranky, ill-tempered,
nagging, sour, pinched, haggard woman with a little coronet on her wig,
a warm, a just, an experienced, a tender, an at-the-right-time-silent,
a speaking-the-unexpected-word-of-salvation-at-the-Heaven-sent-moment,
true, profoundly-loving, sufficiently admiring, comforting, regally
beautiful woman with a kind heart? Which of you would not leave the
first to approach the second? (Supposing, of course, equal incomes.)
It is as true a thing as ever was said. But it was said badly. He ought
not to have attempted it in metre until he was feeling in the mood.
I can hear arguments on the other side. A coronet is more amenable to
the will of man. You can buy a coronet. You cannot buy a kind heart.
To call kind hearts "better" than coronets, therefore, is like calling
fine weather "better" than a good boat. For the sea the boat is more
important than the weather. You can guarantee the one, you can't the
other. You can make sure of your coronet, but not of your kind heart.
Again, a coronet does not change or fade--money being always taken for
granted. It is incorruptible. It is not subject to our poor mortal
years; but what it is on the brow of the infant, that it remains
on the senile and wrinkled front of him last ticked off to answer
questions in the House of Lords; but a Kind Heart!... Oh! Chronos!
Again, a coronet is heritable. A kind heart hardly so. A coronet is
definable. All are agreed upon it. It is there or it is not there, and
that's an end of it. Not so the Kind Heart. One having seized on a
companion for ever, and all on account of a Kind Heart, many will say,
"I can't for the life of me discover what he (she) saw in her (him)
to make him (her) marry her (him)." But no one ever says that of a
coronet. They may wonder what the coronet saw in the non-coronet, but
never what the non-coronet saw in the coronet. When the fellow (or the
wench) mates upwards with a coronet everybody knows why; it's plain
sailing and there can be no dispute. A coronet, I say, is something
objective, substantial, real. It is made of ashwood covered with plush,
it has spikes and each spike a ball on the top. But who shall define a
Kind Heart? It is one thing to one man, one to another; it is elusive;
it is all in the mind like the Metaphysician's Donkey.
More: a Coronet of itself can bring about no evil. It is good in itself
absolutely. It conveys a definitely good thing, enjoyable to those who
enjoy it and at the worst indifferent to those who do not. It is a
steady, unmixed, absolute pleasure to its owner and to others. But a
Kind Heart? No! A kind heart suffers; and it causes suffering--more
than it heals. It makes its owner as often as not despised, always
taken advantage of. It is a perilous, uncertain thing.
Nevertheless, I return to my original judgment; kind hearts _are_ more
than coronets. They are less rare; they are more easily captured; they
are much cheaper--yet they are more. One may put them somewhere between
coronets and good verse, but, of course, nowhere near Poetry.
* * * * *
"Oh! Sir!" cries the Reader of Proofs, "have you verified your
references in all this?"
"No, My Child, nor will I. It is an extra labour, and should be charged
overtime. Let them go."
ON MUMBO-JUMBO
Mumbo-Jumbo is that department in the ruling of men which is made
of dead, false, apparatus; unreasonable; contemptible to the free;
unworthy of authority--and Mumbo-Jumbo is the most necessary ingredient
in all government.
All government is by persuasion. Odd it is that so many do not yet see
this! Perhaps not so odd after all; for words trick the mind, and the
words of government are not the words of persuasion.
But think of the matter for a moment, and you will see that government
is of necessity by persuasion. Here I catch the voices of two men,
an ass and his uterine brother--that sort of braying centaur, half a
rational being and half an ass. The ass tells me that government is
merely the use of force; the centaur, half man half donkey, tells me
that it lives by the threat of force.
Well, take an example. I come to a properly governed State: a State,
that is, where government is taken for granted and obeyed; why is it
so? Because that government works for the good of the Governed. But
an individual desiring to break a commandment even in such a state
refrains only from fear of force? True; but who executes that force?
Not the person who gave the command; not one man--for one is not
strong. No, what executes the force is many; and how are many got to
obey the will of one? It is by a process of suggestion, dope; that is,
persuasion. While men were persuaded of the rights of private property,
private property stood secure. Now that they are in transition it
is insecure. If ever they are persuaded that private property is an
injury, the institution will no longer be merely insecure; it will
perish; and no amount of force will save it. It will perish as a
general institution and only millionaires and the mass of their servile
dependents will remain.
Now, in this function of persuasion (which is the life of government)
mark the imperative power of Mumbo-Jumbo! And mark it not only in
political government, but in all those subsidiary forms of government
(or persuasion) by which one mind influences another and directs it
towards an end not originally its own. When the Police were on their
last strike (I forget when it was--they succeed each other and will
probably continue), an aged woman of means said in my hearing--seeing a
batch go by in civilian clothes--"Surely those can't be policemen!" By
these words did the Crone prove how powerfully Mumbo-Jumbo had worked
upon her mind. For her the Policeman was the helmet, the coat, the belt.
With soldiers it is even more so (I am prepared to defend the use
of this elliptic idiom in private when next I have the leisure). Men
used to wearing some particular accoutrement cannot regard another
accoutrement as military; what is more, it is with difficulty--unless
their profession is to judge armies--that they can see any military
qualities in human beings clothed too much out of their fashion. When
I was in garrison in the town of Toul in the year 1891, there came an
English circus, with the men of which I made friends at once, for I
had not heard English for a weary while. One of them said to me sadly:
"They seem to have a lot of military about here, but they are not real
soldiers." I have no doubt that if you got a man out of the fourteenth
century and showed him suddenly a modern regiment in peace (without
tin hats), he would think they were lackeys or pages; certainly not
soldiers.
Once and again in the history of mankind has there arisen _Iconoclasm_,
which is but a fury against Mumbo-Jumbo. There was a great outburst of
it throughout the West at the end of the eighteenth century. Men were
too classic then to break statues with hammers, but they were all for
tearing the wigs off Judges and the crowns off Kings and patchwork off
Lords and Clowns, and for getting rid of titles, and the rest of it.
They argued thus--"Such things are unworthy of Authority and even of
men. They are lies: they therefore degrade us." And they foamed at the
mouth.
Ah, witless! All these things had a strict, even a logical connection
with public function. You may put it easily in two syllogisms: (1)
Without Mumbo-Jumbo there is no permanent subconscious impression
upon the mind, but without some permanent subconscious impression
upon the mind there is no permanent persuasion; therefore, without
Mumbo-Jumbo there is no persuasion. Now (2) without persuasion there is
no government. Therefore (to take a short cut) there is no government
without Mumbo-Jumbo. And those excellent men, of whom my own ancestry,
French, English, Irish and American, were composed ("And what," you
will say, "has that to do with the matter?" Nothing), having got rid
of Mumbo-Jumbo in a greater or less degree--less in England, more in
France, most in America--immediately proceeded to set it up again.
Carefully did they scoop out the turnip, carefully did they light the
candle within, carefully did they dress it up in rags and tinsel, and
set it on its pole: there it stands to-day.
Flags in particular got a spurt through the slump in Kings. Formal
play-acting in public assemblies got a vast accession through the
contempt of Lords; and now, after a hundred years, we have so much
fiddle-faddle of ceremonious "rules" and "Honourable gentlemen" and
"law of libel" and uniform here and uniform there that the State is now
omnipotent, thanks to Mumbo-Jumbo, god and master of the broken Human
Heart.
Of the Mumbo-Jumbo of the learned in footnotes I shall later write.
And (as you will discover) I shall write also of the Mumbo-Jumbo of
technical words--a most fascinating department of my subject.
The Mumbo-Jumbo of the learned is indeed the very life of all teaching,
of all academic authority. A man never teaches so well as when he is
dressed up in a teaching fashion, and even those who still foolishly
refuse so to dress him up (I quote with sorrow the Sorbonne) none the
less put him on a raised platform; and he is better with a desk, and
I think he is the better also with a certain artificial voice. The
really great teachers also invent a certain artificial expression of
face and affected unnatural accent, which they adopt at the beginning
of a lecture and try to drop at the end of it; but in the process of
years these get fixed and may be recognised at a hundred yards. For
Mumbo-Jumbo holds his servants tight. So also the authority of religion
is badly wounded unless you have an archaic language; and every
religion whatsoever adopts one as soon as it can. Some say that the
most powerful of these instruments is a dead language; others say old,
odd, mouldy forms of a living language, but at any rate Mumbo-Jumbo is
of the essence of the contract.
Then there is the Mumbo-Jumbo of command: Thackeray used to ridicule
it with the phrase "Shaloo-Hump!" or some such sounds, and there is, as
we all know, "Shun" rapidly shouted, and many another. But any one who
has had to drill recruits will admit that he would never have got them
drilled at all if instead of using these interesting idols of language
he had given his commands in a rational and conversational tone with
hesitation and urbanity.
Note you the Mumbo-Jumbo which may everywhere be classed under the
term "Official." A common lie has no such effect as a lie with
"Official" at the top in brackets. Yet no one could tell you exactly
what "Official" meant. It suggests only this: that the news has been
given by the Officer of some organisation. Thus, if you say that a man
has been declared mad, and put "Official," you mean that two members
of the Doctors' Guild have been at work; or, if you are told that a
funeral will not take place ("Official") you mean that a member of the
Undertakers' Union has given you the information, or perhaps even a
member of the family of the dead man. In this class we must also put
the two phrases "By Order" (used in this country) and "Tremble and
Obey," which, till recently stood (I understand) at the foot of Chinese
documents.
"By Order" is a Mumbo-Jumbo pearl! How often in lonely walks through
the London streets have I mused within my own dear mind and marvelled
at "By Order." When I read for instance "No Whistling Allowed (By
Order)" I wonder who gave the order and how he climbed to such a novel
power. How came he so strong that he could prevent my whistling or
in any other way enlivening London? And why did he hide his magic
name? I take it that he had no vulgar legal power, but something more
compelling and more mysterious, a priestly thing. And there are others.
People who own more than 2,000 acres of land love to paint "By Order"
in black letters on little white boards. With these they ornament the
boundaries of their possessions.
Mumbo-Jumbo has this defect, that if the spell fails through
unfamiliarity it looks grotesque; therefore is it essential for all
governments to shoe-horn any new Mumbo-Jumbo very carefully into its
place.
It must begin with some little habit, hardly acknowledged, hardly
noticeable, and it must only gradually grow into admitted authority.
Turn Mumbo-Jumbo on too suddenly and people would only laugh. And
while I think of it let me say that _paint_ is a main incarnation of
Mumbo-Jumbo; paint with varnish--the complete form of paint. People
who sail boats know this very well. I will buy you for a few pounds a
very rotten old hulk, abandoned in Hamble River, I will stop up the
leaks with cement, paint her sides a bright colour, varnish the paint
and then varnish her decks, and sell her at an enormous profit. It is
done continually; lives are lost through it, of course; the boat bursts
asunder in the midst of the sea; but the cheat never fails. Those who
understand the art of horse dealing (which I do not) assure me that
much the same thing attaches to that also. It seems there are poisons
which you can give a horse whereby it acquires a glossy coat, and that
even the eyes of the stupid beast can be made vivacious after long
dulness. It may be so.
But of all the Mumbo-Jumbos, that which I admire most, because of its
excess and potency combined, is the Mumbo-Jumbo of wine. One would
think that in such a matter, where the senses are directly concerned,
and where every man can and should act for himself, there was no room
for this element in persuasion. It would be an error so to think.
There is not one man in a hundred who is not almost entirely guided
in a matter of wine by Mumbo-Jumbo. There is here the Mumbo-Jumbo of
particular terms, very well-chosen metaphors, and a man is told that
a Wine is "full," or "curious," or "dry," or "pretty," or "sound,"
or something of that kind, and even as he tastes the ink he does not
doubt, but believes.
And there is the Mumbo-Jumbo of the years ("This is a '75
Brandy!"--What a lie!), and there is the Mumbo-Jumbo of labels. And
there is the arch-Mumbo-Jumbo of little wicker baskets and dust. And
the whole of that vast trade, the source of so much pleasure and
profit to mankind, floats upon an ocean of Mumbo-Jumbo. Most of the
claret you drink is either a rough Algerian wine filled out with dirty
water of great Garonne, or wine from the Hérault, or the two mixed.
But Lord! what names and titles the concoction bears, including the
Mumbo-Jumbo of "Bottled at the Chateau."
And do you think that men would be happier in the drinking of wine
if they dropped all this? They would not; and that for two reasons.
First, that this would be making them work. They would have to judge
for themselves. It would be calling upon them for Effort, and that is
hateful to all mankind. Secondly, without the Mumbo-Jumbo, most men
would not know whether they were enjoying the wine or not. Therefore I
say let Mumbo-Jumbo flourish--and even increase--if that be possible.
Let Mumbo-Jumbo flourish, not only in the matter of wine, and not only
in the matter of learning, and not only in the matter of positive
government (where it is absolutely _essential_), and not only in the
falsehoods of the daily Press, and not only in the Ecclesiastical
affair, nor only in that still more Mumbo-Jumbo world of sceptical
philosophy, but also in all the most intimate personal relations of
men. I am for it! I am for it! I am for it! Born a Mumbo-Jumboite, I
propose to die in the happy air which surrounds my nourishing Divinity.
ON FOOTNOTES
It is pleasant to consider the various forms of lying, because that
study manifests the creative ingenuity of man and at the same time
affords the diverting spectacle of the dupe. That kind of lying which,
of the lesser sorts, has amused me most is the use of the footnote in
modern history.
It began with no intention of lying at all. The first modest footnote
was an occasional reinforcement of argument in the text. The writer
could not break his narrative; he had said something unusual; he wanted
his reader to accept it; and so he said, in little, "If you doubt this,
look up my authority so and so." That was the age of innocence. Then
came the serpent, or rather a whole brood of them.
The first big man I can find introducing the first considerable serpent
is Gibbon. He still uses the footnote legitimately as the occasional
reinforcement of a highly challengeable statement, but he also brings
in new features.
I do not know if he is original in this. I should doubt it, for he had
not an original mind, but was essentially a copier of the contemporary
French writers and a pupil of Voltaire's. But, anyhow, Gibbon's is the
first considerable work in which I find the beginnings of the earliest
vices or corruptions of the footnote. The first of these is much the
gravest, and I must confess no one has used it so well as Gibbon; he
had genius here as in much else. It is, the use of the footnote to take
in the plain man, the ordinary reader. Gibbon abounds in this use.
His favourite way of doing this is to make a false statement in the
text and then to qualify it in the footnote in such words that the
learned cannot quarrel with him, while the unlearned are thoroughly
deceived. He tells you in the text that the thing was so certainly,
when he very well knows that it was not, and that if there is a scrap
of evidence for it, that evidence is bad. Then he puts in a footnote, a
qualification of what he has just said in the text, so that the critic
who really knows the subject has to admit that Gibbon knew it too. As
though I should write "The Russians marched through England in 1914,"
and then put a footnote, "But see the later criticisms of this story in
the accurate and fanatical Jones." At other times Gibbon bamboozles the
ordinary reader by a reference which _looks_ learned and _is_ inane; so
that your plain man says, "Well, I cannot look up all these old books,
but this great man has evidently done so."
A first-rate example of both these tricks combined in Gibbon is the
famous falsehood he propagated about poor St. George, of whom, Heaven
be witness, little enough[1] is known without having false stories
foisted upon him. You will find it in his twenty-third chapter, where
he puts forward the absurd statement that St. George was identical with
George of Cappadocia, the corrupt and disgraceful bacon-contractor and
the opponent of St. Athanasius.
This particular, classical example of the Evil Footnote is worth
quoting. Here are the words:[2] "The infamous George of Cappadocia has
been transformed into the renowned St. George of England."
And here is the footnote:
This transformation is not given as absolutely certain, but as
extremely probable. See _Longueruana_, Tom. I, p. 194.