I
- INTRODUCTION IN DEFENCE OF
EVERYTHING ELSE
THE only possible excuse for this
book is that it is an answer to a challenge.
Even a bad shot is dignified when
he accepts a duel. When some time ago I published a series of hasty
but sincere papers, under the name of "Heretics," several critics
for whose intellect I have a warm respect (I may mention specially
Mr. G.S.Street) said that it was all very well for me to tell
everybody to affirm his cosmic theory, but that I had carefully
avoided supporting my precepts with example. "I will begin to worry
about my philosophy," said Mr. Street, "when Mr. Chesterton has
given us his." It was perhaps an incautious suggestion to make to a
person only too ready to write books upon the feeblest
provocation. But after all, though Mr. Street has inspired and
created this book, he need not read it. If he does read it, he will
find that in its pages I have attempted in a vague and personal
way, in a set of mental pictures rather than in a series of
deductions, to state the philosophy in which I have come to
believe. I will not call it my philosophy; for I did not make it.
God and humanity made it; and it made me.
I have often had a fancy for
writing a romance about an English yachtsman who slightly
miscalculated his course and discovered England under the
impression that it was a new island in the South Seas. I
always find, however, that I am either too busy or too lazy to
write this fine work, so I may as well give it away for the
purposes of philosophical illustration. There will probably be a
general impression that the man who landed (armed to the teeth and
talking by signs) to plant the British flag on that barbaric temple
which turned out to be the Pavilion at Brighton, felt rather a
fool. I am not here concerned to deny that he looked a fool. But
if you imagine that he felt a fool, or at any rate that the sense
of folly was his sole or his dominant emotion, then you have not
studied with sufficient delicacy the rich romantic nature of the
hero of this tale. His mistake was really a most enviable mistake;
and he knew it, if he was the man I take him for. What could be
more delightful than to have in the same few minutes all the
fascinating terrors of going abroad combined with all the humane
security of coming home again? What could be better than to have
all the fun of discovering South Africa without the disgusting
necessity of landing there? What could be more glorious than to
brace one's self up to discover New South Wales and then realize,
with a gush of happy tears, that it was really old South
Wales. This at least seems to me the main problem for
philosophers, and is in a manner the main problem of this book.
How can we contrive to be at once astonished at the world and yet
at home in it? How can this queer cosmic town, with its many-
legged citizens, with its monstrous and ancient lamps, how can this
world give us at once the fascination of a strange town and the
comfort and honour of being our own town?
To show that a faith or a
philosophy is true from every standpoint would be too big an
undertaking even for a much bigger book than this; it is necessary
to follow one path of argument; and this is the path that I here
propose to follow. I wish to set forth my faith as particularly
answering this double spiritual need, the need for that mixture of
the familiar and the unfamiliar which Christendom has rightly named
romance. For the very word "romance" has in it the mystery and
ancient meaning of Rome. Any one setting out to dispute anything
ought always to begin by saying what he does not dispute. Beyond
stating what he proposes to prove he should always state what he
does not propose to prove. The thing I do not propose to prove, the
thing I propose to take as common ground between myself and any
average reader, is this desirability of an active and imaginative
life, picturesque and full of a poetical curiosity, a life such as
western man at any rate always seems to have desired. If a man says
that extinction is better than existence or blank existence better
than variety and adventure, then he is not one of the ordinary
people to whom I am talking. If a man prefers nothing I can give
him nothing. But nearly all people I have ever met in this western
society in which I live would agree to the general proposition that
we need this life of practical romance; the combination of
something that is strange with something that is secure. We need so
to view the world as to combine an idea of wonder and an idea of
welcome. We need to be happy in this wonderland without once being
merely comfortable. It is THIS achievement of my creed that I
shall chiefly pursue in these pages.
But I have a peculiar reason for
mentioning the man in a yacht, who discovered England. For I
am that man in a yacht. I discovered England. I do not see how
this book can avoid being egotistical; and I do not quite see (to
tell the truth) how it can avoid being dull. Dulness will, however,
free me from the charge which I most lament; the charge of being
flippant. Mere light sophistry is the thing that I happen to
despise most of all things, and it is perhaps a wholesome fact
that this is the thing of which I am generally accused. I know
nothing so contemptible as a mere paradox; a mere ingenious defence
of the indefensible. If it were true (as has been said) that Mr.
Bernard Shaw lived upon paradox, then he ought to be a mere common
millionaire; for a man of his mental activity could invent a
sophistry every six minutes. It is as easy as lying; because it is
lying. The truth is, of course, that Mr. Shaw is cruelly hampered
by the fact that he cannot tell any lie unless he thinks it is the
truth. I find myself under the same intolerable bondage. I never in
my life said anything merely because I thought it funny; though of
course, I have had ordinary human vainglory, and may have
thought it funny because I had said it. It is one thing to describe
an interview with a gorgon or a griffin, a creature who does not
exist. It is another thing to discover that the rhinoceros does
exist and then take pleasure in the fact that he looks as if he
didn't. One searches for truth, but it may be that one
pursues instinctively the more
extraordinary truths. And I offer this book with the heartiest
sentiments to all the jolly people who hate what I write, and
regard it (very justly, for all I know), as a piece of poor
clowning or a single tiresome joke.
For if this book is a joke it is
a joke against me. I am the man who with the utmost daring
discovered what had been discovered before. If there is an element
of farce in what follows, the farce is at my own expense; for this
book explains how I fancied I was the first to set foot in
Brighton and then found I was the last. It recounts my
elephantine adventures in pursuit of the obvious. No one can
think my case more ludicrous than I think it myself; no reader
can accuse me here of trying to make a fool of him: I am the fool
of this story, and no rebel shall hurl me from my throne. I freely
confess all the idiotic ambitions of the end of the nineteenth
century. I did, like all other solemn little boys, try to be in
advance of the age. Like them I tried to be some ten minutes in
advance of the truth. And I found that I was eighteen hundred years
behind it. I did strain my voice with a painfully juvenile
exaggeration in uttering my truths. And I was punished in the
fittest and funniest way, for I have kept my truths: but I have
discovered, not that they were not truths, but simply that they
were not mine. When I fancied that I stood alone I was really in
the ridiculous position of being backed up by all
Christendom.
It may be, Heaven forgive me,
that I did try to be original; but I only succeeded in inventing
all by myself an inferior copy of the existing traditions of
civilized religion. The man from the yacht thought he was the first
to find England; I thought I was the first to find Europe. I did
try to found a heresy of my own; and when I had put the last
touches to it, I discovered that it was orthodoxy.
It may be that somebody will be
entertained by the account of this happy fiasco. It might amuse a
friend or an enemy to read how I gradually learnt from the truth of
some stray legend or from the falsehood of some dominant
philosophy, things that I might have learnt from my catechism--if
I had ever learnt it. There may or may not be some entertainment
in reading how I found at last in an anarchist club or a Babylonian
temple what I might have found in the nearest parish church. If
any one is entertained by learning how the flowers of the field
or the phrases in an omnibus, the accidents of politics or the
pains of youth came together in a certain order to produce a
certain conviction of Christian orthodoxy, he may possibly read
this book. But there is in everything a reasonable division of
labour. I have written the book, and nothing on earth would
induce me to read it.
I add one purely pedantic note
which comes, as a note naturally should, at the beginning of the
book. These essays are concerned only to discuss the actual fact
that the central Christian theology (sufficiently summarized in the
Apostles'
Creed) is the best root of energy
and sound ethics. They are not intended to discuss the very
fascinating but quite different question of what is the present
seat of authority for the proclamation of that creed. When the
word "orthodoxy" is used here it means the Apostles' Creed, as
understood by everybody calling himself Christian until a very
short time ago and the general historic conduct of those who held
such a creed. I have been forced by mere space to confine myself to
what I have got from this creed; I do not touch the matter much
disputed among modern Christians, of where we ourselves got it.
This is not an ecclesiastical treatise but a sort of slovenly
autobiography. But if any one wants my opinions about the actual
nature of the authority, Mr. G.S.Street has only to throw me
another challenge, and I will write him another book.
II
- THE MANIAC
Thoroughly worldly people never
understand even the world; they rely altogether on a few cynical
maxims which are not true. Once I remember walking with a
prosperous publisher, who made a remark which I had often heard
before; it is, indeed, almost a motto of the modern world. Yet I
had heard it once too often, and I saw suddenly that there was
nothing in it. The publisher said of somebody, "That man will get
on; he believes in himself." And I remember that as I lifted my
head to listen, my eye caught an omnibus on which was written
"Hanwell." I said to him, "Shall I tell you where the men are who
believe most in themselves? For I can tell you. I know of men who
believe in themselves more colossally than Napoleon or Caesar. I
know where flames the fixed star of certainty and success. I can
guide you to the thrones of the Super-men. The men who really
believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums." He said mildly
that there were a good many men after all who believed in
themselves and who were not in lunatic asylums. "Yes, there are," I
retorted, "and you of all men ought to know them. That drunken poet
from whom you would not take a dreary tragedy, he believed in
himself. That elderly minister with an epic from whom you were
hiding in a back room, he believed in himself. If you consulted
your business experience instead of your ugly individualistic
philosophy, you would know that believing in himself is one of
the commonest signs of a rotter. Actors who can't act believe
in themselves; and debtors who won't pay. It would be much truer to
say that a man will certainly fail, because he believes in himself.
Complete self- confidence is not merely a sin; complete
self-confidence is a weakness. Believing utterly in one's self is a
hysterical and superstitious belief like believing in Joanna
Southcote: the man who has it has `Hanwell' written on his face as
plain as it is written on that omnibus." And to all this my friend
the publisher made this very deep and effective reply, "Well, if a
man is not to believe in himself, in what is he to believe?" After
a long pause I replied, "I will go home and write a book in answer
to that question." This is the book that I have written in answer
to it.
But I think this book may well
start where our argument started-- in the neighbourhood of the
mad-house. 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 no 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.
In this remarkable situation it
is plainly not now possible (with any hope of a universal appeal)
to start, as our fathers did, with the fact of sin. This very fact
which was to them (and is to me) as plain as a pikestaff, is the
very fact that has been specially diluted or denied. But though
moderns deny the existence of sin, I do not think that they have
yet denied the existence of a lunatic asylum. We all agree still
that there is a collapse of the intellect as unmistakable as a
falling house. Men deny hell, but not, as yet, Hanwell. For the
purpose of our primary argument the one may very well stand where
the other stood. I mean that as all thoughts and theories were once
judged by whether they tended to make a man lose his soul, so for
our present purpose all modern thoughts and theories may be judged
by whether they tend to make a man lose his wits.
It is true that some speak
lightly and loosely of insanity as in itself attractive. But a
moment's thought will show that if disease is beautiful, it is
generally some one else's disease. A blind man may be picturesque;
but it requires two eyes to see the picture. And similarly even the
wildest poetry of insanity can only be enjoyed by the sane. To
the insane man his insanity is quite prosaic, because it is
quite true. A man who thinks himself a chicken is to himself as
ordinary as a chicken. A man who thinks he is a bit of glass is to
himself as dull as a bit of glass. It is the homogeneity of his
mind which makes him dull, and which makes him mad. It is only
because we see the irony of his idea that we think him even
amusing; it is only because he does not see the irony of his idea
that he is put in Hanwell at all. In short, oddities only strike
ordinary people. Oddities do not strike odd people. This is why
ordinary people have a much more exciting time; while odd people
are always complaining of the dulness of life. This is also why
the new novels die so quickly, and why the old fairy tales endure
for ever. The old fairy tale makes the hero a normal human boy; it
is his adventures that are startling; they startle him because he
is normal. But in the modern psychological novel the hero is
abnormal; the centre is not central. Hence the fiercest
adventures fail to affect him adequately, and the book is
monotonous. You can make a story out of a hero among dragons;
but not out of a dragon among dragons. The fairy tale discusses
what a sane man will do in a mad world. The sober realistic novel
of to-day discusses what an essential lunatic will do in a
dull
world.
Let us begin, then, with the
mad-house; from this evil and fantastic inn let us set forth on our
intellectual journey. Now, if we are to glance at the philosophy of
sanity, the first thing to do in the matter is to blot out one
big and common mistake. 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. I am not, as will be
seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger
does lie in logic, not in imagination. Artistic paternity is as
wholesome as physical paternity. Moreover, it is worthy of remark
that when a poet really was morbid it was commonly because he had
some weak spot of rationality on his brain. Poe, for instance,
really was morbid; not because he was poetical, but because he was
specially analytical. Even chess was too poetical for him; he
disliked chess because it was full of knights and castles, like a
poem. He avowedly preferred the black discs of draughts, because
they were more like the mere black dots on a diagram. Perhaps the
strongest case of all is this: that only one great English poet
went mad, Cowper. And he was definitely driven mad by logic, by the
ugly and alien logic of predestination. Poetry was not the disease,
but the medicine; poetry partly kept him in health. He could
sometimes forget the red and thirsty hell to which his hideous
necessitarianism dragged him among the wide waters and the white
flat lilies of the Ouse. He was damned by John Calvin; he was
almost saved by John Gilpin. Everywhere we see that men do not go
mad by dreaming. Critics are much madder than poets.
Homer is complete and calm
enough; it is his critics who tear him into extravagant tatters.
Shakespeare is quite himself; it is only some of his critics who
have discovered that he was somebody else. And though St. John the
Evangelist saw many strange monsters in his vision, he saw no
creature so wild as one of his own commentators. The general fact
is simple. Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite
sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it
finite. The result is mental exhaustion, like the physical
exhaustion of Mr. Holbein. To accept everything is an exercise, to
understand everything a strain. The poet only desires exaltation
and expansion, a world to stretch himself in. The poet only asks to
get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get
the heavens into his head. And it is his head that
splits.
It is a small matter, but not
irrelevant, that this striking mistake is commonly supported by a
striking misquotation. We have all heard people cite the celebrated
line of Dryden as "Great genius is to madness near allied." But
Dryden did not say that great genius was to madness near allied.
Dryden was a great genius himself, and knew better. It would have
been hard to find a man more romantic than he, or more sensible.
What Dryden said was this, "Great wits are oft to madness near
allied"; and that is true. It is the pure promptitude of the
intellect that is in peril of a breakdown. Also people might
remember of what sort of man Dryden was talking. He was not talking
of any unworldly visionary like Vaughan or George Herbert. He was
talking of a cynical man of the world, a sceptic, a diplomatist, a
great practical politician. Such men are indeed to madness near
allied. Their incessant calculation of their own brains and other
people's brains is a dangerous trade. It is always perilous to the
mind to reckon up the mind. A flippant person has asked why we say,
"As mad as a hatter." A more flippant person might answer that a
hatter is mad because he has to measure the human head.
And if great reasoners are often
maniacal, it is equally true that maniacs are commonly great
reasoners. When I was engaged in a controversy with the CLARION on
the matter of free will, that able writer Mr. R.B.Suthers said that
free will was lunacy, because it meant causeless actions, and the
actions of a lunatic would be causeless. I do not dwell here upon
the disastrous lapse in determinist logic. Obviously if any
actions, even a lunatic's, can be causeless, determinism is done
for. If the chain of causation can be broken for a madman, it can
be broken for a man. But my purpose is to point out something
more practical. It was natural, perhaps, that a modern Marxian
Socialist should not know anything about free will. But it was
certainly remarkable that a modern Marxian Socialist should not
know anything about lunatics. Mr. Suthers evidently did not know
anything about lunatics. The last thing that can be said of a
lunatic is that his actions are causeless. If any human acts
may loosely be called causeless, they are the minor acts of a
healthy man; whistling as he walks; slashing the grass with a
stick; kicking his heels or rubbing his hands. It is the happy
man who does the useless things; the sick man is not strong
enough to be idle. It is exactly such careless and causeless
actions that the madman could never understand; for the
madman (like the determinist) generally sees too much cause in
everything. The madman would read a conspiratorial significance
into those empty activities. He would think that the lopping of the
grass was an attack on private property. He would think that the
kicking of the heels was a signal to an accomplice. If the madman
could for an instant become careless, he would become sane.
Every one who has had the misfortune to talk with people in the
heart or on the edge of mental disorder, knows that their most
sinister quality is a horrible clarity of detail; a connecting of
one thing with another in a map more elaborate than a maze. If you
argue with a madman, it is extremely probable that
you will get the worst of it; for
in many ways his mind moves all the quicker for not being delayed
by the things that go with good judgment. He is not hampered by a
sense of humour or by charity, or by the dumb certainties of
experience. He is the more logical for losing certain sane
affections. Indeed, the common phrase for insanity is in this
respect a misleading one. The madman is not the man who has lost
his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except
his reason.
The madman's explanation of a
thing is always complete, and often in a purely rational sense
satisfactory. Or, to speak more strictly, the insane
explanation, if not conclusive, is at least unanswerable; this may
be observed specially in the two or three commonest kinds of
madness. If a man says (for instance) that men have a conspiracy
against him, you cannot dispute it except by saying that all the
men deny that they are conspirators; which is exactly what
conspirators would do. His explanation covers the facts as much
as yours. Or if a man says that he is the rightful King of England,
it is no complete answer to say that the existing authorities call
him mad; for if he were King of England that might be the wisest
thing for the existing authorities to do. Or if a man says that
he is Jesus Christ, it is no answer to tell him that the world
denies his divinity; for the world denied Christ's.
Nevertheless he is wrong. But if
we attempt to trace his error in exact terms, we shall not find it
quite so easy as we had supposed. Perhaps the nearest we can get to
expressing it is to say this: that his mind moves in a perfect but
narrow circle. A small circle is quite as infinite as a large
circle; but, though it is quite as infinite, it is not so large. In
the same way the insane explanation is quite as complete as the
sane one, but it is not so large. A bullet is quite as round as the
world, but it is not the world. There is such a thing as a
narrow universality; there is such a thing as a small and cramped
eternity; you may see it in many modern religions. Now, speaking
quite externally and empirically, we may say that the strongest and
most unmistakable MARK of madness is this combination between a
logical completeness and a spiritual contraction. The lunatic's
theory explains a large number of things, but it does not explain
them in a large way. I mean that if you or I were dealing with a
mind that was growing morbid, we should be chiefly concerned not so
much to give it arguments as to give it air, to convince it that
there was something cleaner and cooler outside the suffocation of a
single argument. Suppose, for instance, it were the first case
that I took as typical; suppose it were the case of a man who
accused everybody of conspiring against him. If we could express
our deepest feelings of protest and appeal against this
obsession, I suppose we should say something like this: "Oh, I
admit that you have your case and have it by heart, and that many
things do fit into other things as you say. I admit that your
explanation explains a great deal; but what a great deal it leaves
out! Are there no other stories in the world except
yours; and are all men busy with
your business? Suppose we grant the details; perhaps when the man
in the street did not seem to see you it was only his cunning;
perhaps when the policeman asked you your name it was only because
he knew it already. But how much happier you would be if you only
knew that these people cared nothing about you! How much larger
your life would be if your self could become smaller in it; if you
could really look at other men with common curiosity and pleasure;
if you could see them walking as they are in their sunny
selfishness and their virile indifference! You would begin to
be interested in them, because they were not interested in you.
You would break out of this tiny and tawdry theatre in which your
own little plot is always being played, and you would find yourself
under a freer sky, in a street full of splendid strangers." Or
suppose it were the second case of madness, that of a man who
claims the crown, your impulse would be to answer, "All right!
Perhaps you know that you are the King of England; but why do you
care? Make one magnificent effort and you will be a human being
and look down on all the kings of the earth." Or it might be the
third case, of the madman who called himself Christ. If we said
what we felt, we should say, "So you are the Creator and Redeemer
of the world: but what a small world it must be! What a little
heaven you must inhabit, with angels no bigger than butterflies!
How sad it must be to be God; and an inadequate God!
Is there really no life fuller
and no love more marvellous than yours; and is it really in your
small and painful pity that all flesh must put its faith? How much
happier you would be, how much more of you there would be, if the
hammer of a higher God could smash your small cosmos, scattering
the stars like spangles, and leave you in the open, free like
other men to look up as well as down!"
And it must be remembered that
the most purely practical science does take this view of mental
evil; it does not seek to argue with it like a heresy but simply to
snap it like a spell. Neither modern science nor ancient religion
believes in complete free thought. Theology rebukes certain
thoughts by calling them blasphemous. Science rebukes certain
thoughts by calling them morbid. For example, some religious
societies discouraged men more or less from thinking about sex. The
new scientific society definitely discourages men from thinking
about death; it is a fact, but it is considered a morbid fact. And
in dealing with those whose morbidity has a touch of mania, modern
science cares far less for pure logic than a dancing Dervish. In
these cases it is not enough that the unhappy man should desire
truth; he must desire health. Nothing can save him but a blind
hunger for normality, like that of a beast. A man cannot think
himself out of mental evil; for it is actually the organ of thought
that has become diseased, ungovernable, and, as it were,
independent. He can only be saved by will or faith. The moment his
mere reason moves, it moves in the old circular rut; he will go
round and round his logical circle, just as a man in a third-class
carriage on the Inner Circle will go round and round the Inner
Circle unless he performs the voluntary, vigorous, and mystical act
of getting out at Gower Street.
Decision is the whole business
here; a door must be shut for ever. Every remedy is a desperate
remedy. Every cure is a miraculous cure. Curing a madman is not
arguing with a philosopher; it is casting out a devil. And however
quietly doctors and psychologists may go to work in the matter,
their attitude is profoundly intolerant-- as intolerant as Bloody
Mary. Their attitude is really this: that the man must stop
thinking, if he is to go on living. Their counsel is one of
intellectual amputation. If thy HEAD offend thee, cut it off; for
it is better, not merely to enter the Kingdom of Heaven as a child,
but to enter it as an imbecile, rather than with your whole
intellect to be cast into hell-- or into Hanwell.
Such is the madman of experience;
he is commonly a reasoner, frequently a successful reasoner.
Doubtless he could be vanquished in mere reason, and the case
against him put logically. But it can be put much more precisely in
more general and even aesthetic terms. He is in the clean and
well-lit prison of one idea: he is sharpened to one painful point.
He is without healthy hesitation and healthy complexity. Now, as I
explain in the introduction, I have determined in these early
chapters to give not so much a diagram of a doctrine as some
pictures of a point of view. And I have described at length my
vision of the maniac for this reason: that just as I am affected by
the maniac, so I am affected by most modern thinkers. That
unmistakable mood or note that I hear from Hanwell, I hear also
from half the chairs of science and seats of learning to-day; and
most of the mad doctors are mad doctors in more senses than one.
They all have exactly that combination we have noted: the
combination of an expansive and exhaustive reason with a
contracted common sense. They are universal only in the sense that
they take one thin explanation and carry it very far. But a
pattern can stretch for ever and still be a small pattern. They
see a chess-board white on black, and if the universe is paved
with it, it is still white on black. Like the lunatic, they
cannot alter their standpoint; they cannot make a mental effort and
suddenly see it black on white.
Take first the more obvious case
of materialism. As an explanation of the world, materialism has a
sort of insane simplicity. It has just the quality of the madman's
argument; we have at once the sense of it covering everything and
the sense of it leaving everything out. Contemplate some able and
sincere materialist, as, for instance, Mr. McCabe, and you will
have exactly this unique sensation. He understands everything, and
everything does not seem worth understanding. His cosmos may be
complete in every rivet and cog-wheel, but still his cosmos is
smaller than our world. Somehow his scheme, like the lucid scheme
of the madman, seems unconscious of the alien energies and the
large indifference of the earth; it is not thinking of the real
things of the earth, of fighting peoples or proud mothers, or first
love or fear upon the sea. The earth is so very large, and the
cosmos is so very small. The cosmos is about the smallest hole that
a man can hide his head in.
It must be understood that I am
not now discussing the relation of these creeds to truth; but,
for the present, solely their relation to health. Later in the
argument I hope to attack the question of objective verity; here I
speak only of a phenomenon of psychology. I do not for the present
attempt to prove to Haeckel that materialism is untrue, any more
than I attempted to prove to the man who thought he was Christ that
he was labouring under an error. I merely remark here on the
fact that both cases have the same kind of completeness and
the same kind of incompleteness. You can explain a man's detention
at Hanwell by an indifferent public by saying that it is the
crucifixion of a god of whom the world is not worthy. The
explanation does explain. Similarly you may explain the order in
the universe by saying that all things, even the souls of men, are
leaves inevitably unfolding on an utterly unconscious tree-- the
blind destiny of matter. The explanation does explain, though not,
of course, so completely as the madman's. But the point here is
that the normal human mind not only objects to both, but feels to
both the same objection. Its approximate statement is that if
the man in Hanwell is the real God, he is not much of a god. And,
similarly, if the cosmos of the materialist is the real cosmos,
it is not much of a cosmos. The thing has shrunk. The deity is
less divine than many men; and (according to Haeckel) the whole of
life is something much more grey, narrow, and trivial than many
separate aspects of it. The parts seem greater than the
whole.
For we must remember that the
materialist philosophy (whether true or not) is certainly much more
limiting than any religion. In one sense, of course, all
intelligent ideas are narrow. They cannot be broader than
themselves. A Christian is only restricted in the same sense that
an atheist is restricted. He cannot think Christianity false and
continue to be a Christian; and the atheist cannot think atheism
false and continue to be an atheist. But as it happens,
there is a very special sense in which materialism has more
restrictions than spiritualism. Mr. McCabe thinks me a slave
because I am not allowed to believe in determinism. I think Mr.
McCabe a slave because he is not allowed to believe in fairies.
But if we examine the two vetoes we shall see that his is
really much more of a pure veto than mine. The Christian is quite
free to believe that there is a considerable amount of settled
order and inevitable development in the universe. But the
materialist is not allowed to admit into his spotless machine the
slightest speck of spiritualism or miracle. Poor Mr. McCabe is
not allowed to retain even the tiniest imp, though it might be
hiding in a pimpernel. The Christian admits that the universe is
manifold and even miscellaneous, just as a sane man knows that he
is complex. The sane man knows that he has a touch of the beast, a
touch of the devil, a touch of the saint, a touch of the citizen.
Nay, the really sane man knows that he has a touch of the
madman. But the materialist's world is quite simple and solid,
just as the madman is quite sure he is sane. The materialist is
sure that history has been simply and solely a chain of
causation, just as the
interesting person before mentioned is quite sure that he is simply
and solely a chicken. Materialists and madmen never have
doubts.
Spiritual doctrines do not
actually limit the mind as do materialistic denials.
Even if I believe in immortality
I need not think about it. But if I disbelieve in immortality I
must not think about it. In the first case the road is open and I
can go as far as I like; in the second the road is shut. But the
case is even stronger, and the parallel with madness is yet more
strange. For it was our case against the exhaustive and logical
theory of the lunatic that, right or wrong, it gradually destroyed
his humanity. Now it is the charge against the main deductions of
the materialist that, right or wrong, they gradually destroy his
humanity; I do not mean only kindness, I mean hope, courage,
poetry, initiative, all that is human. For instance, when
materialism leads men to complete fatalism (as it generally does),
it is quite idle to pretend that it is in any sense a liberating
force. It is absurd to say that you are especially advancing
freedom when you only use free thought to destroy free will. The
determinists come to bind, not to loose. They may well call their
law the "chain" of causation. It is the worst chain that ever
fettered a human being. You may use the language of liberty, if you
like, about materialistic teaching, but it is obvious that this is
just as inapplicable to it as a whole as the same language when
applied to a man locked up in a mad-house.
You may say, if you like, that
the man is free to think himself a poached egg. But it is surely a
more massive and important fact that if he is a poached egg he is
not free to eat, drink, sleep, walk, or smoke a cigarette.
Similarly you may say, if you like, that the bold determinist
speculator is free to disbelieve in the reality of the will. But it
is a much more massive and important fact that he is not free to
raise, to curse, to thank, to justify, to urge, to punish, to
resist temptations, to incite mobs, to make New Year resolutions,
to pardon sinners, to rebuke tyrants, or even to say "thank you"
for the mustard.
In passing from this subject I
may note that there is a queer fallacy to the effect that
materialistic fatalism is in some way favourable to mercy, to the
abolition of cruel punishments or punishments of any kind.
This is startlingly the reverse of the truth. It is quite tenable
that the doctrine of necessity makes no difference at all; that it
leaves the flogger flogging and the kind friend exhorting as
before. But obviously if it stops either of them it stops the kind
exhortation. That the sins are inevitable does not prevent
punishment; if it prevents anything it prevents persuasion.
Determinism is quite as likely to lead to cruelty as it is
certain to lead to cowardice. Determinism is not inconsistent with
the cruel treatment of criminals. What it is (perhaps) inconsistent
with is the generous treatment of criminals; with any appeal to
their better feelings or encouragement in their moral struggle. The
determinist does not believe in appealing to the will, but he does
believe in changing the environment. He must not say to the sinner,
"Go and sin no more," because the sinner cannot help it. But he can
put him in
boiling oil; for boiling oil is
an environment. Considered as a figure, therefore, the materialist
has the fantastic outline of the figure of the madman. Both take up
a position at once unanswerable and intolerable.
Of course it is not only of the
materialist that all this is true. The same would apply to the
other extreme of speculative logic. There is a sceptic far more
terrible than he who believes that everything began in matter. It
is possible to meet the sceptic who believes that everything began
in himself. He doubts not the existence of angels or devils, but
the existence of men and cows. For him his own friends are a
mythology made up by himself. He created his own father and his own
mother. This horrible fancy has in it something decidedly
attractive to the somewhat mystical egoism of our day. That
publisher who thought that men would get on if they believed in
themselves, those seekers after the Superman who are always
looking for him in the looking-glass, those writers who talk about
impressing their personalities instead of creating life for the
world, all these people have really only an inch between them and
this awful emptiness. Then when this kindly world all round the man
has been blackened out like a lie; when friends fade into ghosts,
and the foundations of the world fail; then when the man,
believing in nothing and in no man, is alone in his own nightmare,
then the great individualistic motto shall be written over him in
avenging irony. The stars will be only dots in the blackness of his
own brain; his mother's face will be only a sketch from his own
insane pencil on the walls of his cell. But over his cell shall be
written, with dreadful truth, "He believes in himself."
All that concerns us here,
however, is to note that this panegoistic extreme of thought
exhibits the same paradox as the other extreme of materialism. It
is equally complete in theory and equally crippling in practice.
For the sake of simplicity, it is easier to state the notion by
saying that a man can believe that he is always in a dream. Now,
obviously there can be no positive proof given to him that he is
not in a dream, for the simple reason that no proof can be offered
that might not be offered in a dream. But if the man began to burn
down London and say that his housekeeper would soon call him to
breakfast, we should take him and put him with other logicians in a
place which has often been alluded to in the course of this
chapter. The man who cannot believe his senses, and the man who
cannot believe anything else, are both insane, but their insanity
is proved not by any error in their argument, but by the manifest
mistake of their whole lives.
They have both locked themselves
up in two boxes, painted inside with the sun and stars; they are
both unable to get out, the one into the health and happiness of
heaven, the other even into the health and happiness of the
earth. Their position is quite reasonable; nay, in a sense it is
infinitely reasonable, just as a threepenny bit is infinitely
circular. But there is such a thing as a mean infinity, a base and
slavish eternity. It is amusing to notice that many of the moderns,
whether sceptics or mystics, have taken as their sign a certain
eastern symbol,