THE BANKRUPTCY OF RELATIVISM AND OBJECTIVISM---
By G.K. Chesterton
Introductory Remarks on the Importance of Orthodoxy
Nothing more strangely indicates an enormous and silent evil of modern society than the
extraordinary use which is made nowadays of the word "orthodox." In former days the heretic was
proud of not being a heretic. It was the kingdoms of the world and the police and the judges who
were heretics. He was orthodox. He had no pride in having rebelled against them; they had rebelled
against him. The armies with their cruel security, the kings with their cold faces, the decorous
processes of State, the reasonable processes of law--all these like sheep had gone astray. The man
was proud of being orthodox, was proud of being right. If he stood alone in a howling wilderness he
was more than a man; he was a church. He was the centre of the universe; it was round him that the
stars swung. All the tortures torn out of forgotten hells could not make him admit that he was
heretical. But a few modern phrases have made him boast of it. He says, with a conscious laugh, "I
suppose I am very heretical," and looks round for applause. The word "heresy" not only means no
longer being wrong; it practically means being clear-headed and courageous. The word "orthodoxy"
not only no longer means being right; it practically means being wrong. All this can mean one thing,
and one thing only. It means that people care less for whether they are philosophically right. For
obviously a man ought to confess himself crazy before he confesses himself heretical. The Bohemian,
with a red tie, ought to pique himself on his orthodoxy. The dynamiter, laying a bomb, ought to feel
that, whatever else he is, at least he is orthodox.
It is foolish, generally speaking, for a philosopher to set fire to another philosopher in Smithfield
Market because they do not agree in their theory of the universe. That was done very frequently in
the last decadence of the Middle Ages, and it failed altogether in its object. But there is one thing
that is infinitely more absurd and unpractical than burning a man for his philosophy. This is the habit
of saying that his philosophy does not matter, and this is done universally in the twentieth century, in
the decadence of the great revolutionary period. General theories are everywhere contemned; the
doctrine of the Rights of Man is dismissed with the doctrine of the Fall of Man. Atheism itself is too
theological for us to-day. Revolution itself is too much of a system; liberty itself is too much of a
restraint. We will have no generalizations. Mr. Bernard Shaw has put the view in a perfect epigram:
"The golden rule is that there is no golden rule." We are more and more to discuss details in art,
politics, literature. A man's opinion on tramcars matters; his opinion on Botticelli matters; his opinion
on all things does not matter. He may turn over and explore a million objects, but he must not find
that strange object, the universe; for if he does he will have a religion, and be lost. Everything
matters--except everything.
Examples are scarcely needed of this total levity on the subject of cosmic philosophy. Examples are
scarcely needed to show that, whatever else we think of as affecting practical affairs, we do not
think it matters whether a man is a pessimist or an optimist, a Cartesian or a Hegelian, a materialist
or a spiritualist. Let me, however, take a random instance. At any innocent tea-table we may easily
hear a man say, "Life is not worth living." We regard it as we regard the statement that it is a fine
day; nobody thinks that it can possibly have any serious effect on the man or on the world. And yet
if that utterance were really believed, the world would stand on its head. Murderers would be given
medals for saving men from life; firemen would be denounced for keeping men from death; poisons
would be used as medicines; doctors would be called in when people were well; the Royal Humane
Society would be rooted out like a horde of assassins. Yet we never speculate as to whether the
conversational pessimist will strengthen or disorganize society; for we are convinced that theories do
not matter.
This was certainly not the idea of those who introduced our freedom. When the old Liberals
removed the gags from all the heresies, their idea was that religious and philosophical discoveries
might thus be made. Their view was that cosmic truth was so important that every one ought to bear
independent testimony. The modern idea is that cosmic truth is so unimportant that it cannot matter
what any one says. The former freed inquiry as men loose a noble hound; the latter frees inquiry as
men fling back into the sea a fish unfit for eating. Never has there been so little discussion about the
nature of men as now, when, for the first time, any one can discuss it. The old restriction meant that
only the orthodox were allowed to discuss religion. Modern liberty means that nobody is allowed to
discuss it. Good taste, the last and vilest of human superstitions, has succeeded in silencing us where
all the rest have failed. Sixty years ago it was bad taste to be an avowed atheist. Then came the
Bradlaughites, the last religious men, the last men who cared about God; but they could not alter it.
It is still bad taste to be an avowed atheist. But their agony has achieved just this-- that now it is
equally bad taste to be an avowed Christian. Emancipation has only locked the saint in the same
tower of silence as the heresiarch. Then we talk about Lord Anglesey and the weather, and call it
the complete liberty of all the creeds.
But there are some people, nevertheless--and I am one of them-- who think that the most practical
and important thing about a man is still his view of the universe. We think that for a landlady
considering a lodger, it is important to know his income, but still more important to know his
philosophy. We think that for a general about to fight an enemy, it is important to know the enemy's
numbers, but still more important to know the enemy's philosophy. We think the question is not
whether the theory of the cosmos affects matters, but whether in the long run, anything else affects
them. In the fifteenth century men cross-examined and tormented a man because he preached some
immoral attitude; in the nineteenth century we feted and flattered Oscar Wilde because he preached
such an attitude, and then broke his heart in penal servitude because he carried it out. It may be a
question which of the two methods was the more cruel; there can be no kind of question which was
the more ludicrous. The age of the Inquisition has not at least the disgrace of having produced a
society which made an idol of the very same man for preaching the very same things which it made
him a convict for practising.
Now, in our time, philosophy or religion, our theory, that is, about ultimate things, has been driven
out, more or less simultaneously, from two fields which it used to occupy. General ideals used to
dominate literature. They have been driven out by the cry of "art for art's sake." General ideals used
to dominate politics. They have been driven out by the cry of "efficiency," which may roughly be
translated as "politics for politics' sake." Persistently for the last twenty years the ideals of order or
liberty have dwindled in our books; the ambitions of wit and eloquence have dwindled in our
parliaments. Literature has purposely become less political; politics have purposely become less
literary. General theories of the relation of things have thus been extruded from both; and we are in a
position to ask, "What have we gained or lost by this extrusion? Is literature better, is politics better,
for having discarded the moralist and the philosopher?"
When everything about a people is for the time growing weak and ineffective, it begins to talk about
efficiency. So it is that when a man's body is a wreck he begins, for the first time, to talk about
health. Vigorous organisms talk not about their processes, but about their aims. There cannot be any
better proof of the physical efficiency of a man than that he talks cheerfully of a journey to the end of
the world. And there cannot be any better proof of the practical efficiency of a nation than that it
talks constantly of a journey to the end of the world, a journey to the Judgment Day and the New
Jerusalem. There can be no stronger sign of a coarse material health than the tendency to run after
high and wild ideals; it is in the first exuberance of infancy that we cry for the moon. None of the
strong men in the strong ages would have understood what you meant by working for efficiency.
Hildebrand would have said that he was working not for efficiency, but for the Catholic Church.
Danton would have said that he was working not for efficiency, but for liberty, equality, and
fraternity. Even if the ideal of such men were simply the ideal of kicking a man downstairs, they
thought of the end like men, not of the process like paralytics. They did not say, "Efficiently elevating
my right leg, using, you will notice, the muscles of the thigh and calf, which are in excellent order, I--"
Their feeling was quite different. They were so filled with the beautiful vision of the man lying flat at
the foot of the staircase that in that ecstasy the rest followed in a flash. In practice, the habit of
generalizing and idealizing did not by any means mean worldly weakness. The time of big theories
was the time of big results. In the era of sentiment and fine words, at the end of the eighteenth
century, men were really robust and effective. The sentimentalists conquered Napoleon. The cynics
could not catch De Wet. A hundred years ago our affairs for good or evil were wielded triumphantly
by rhetoricians. Now our affairs are hopelessly muddled by strong, silent men. And just as this
repudiation of big words and big visions has brought forth a race of small men in politics, so it has
brought forth a race of small men in the arts. Our modern politicians claim the colossal license of
Caesar and the Superman, claim that they are too practical to be pure and too patriotic to be moral;
but the upshot of it all is that a mediocrity is Chancellor of the Exchequer. Our new artistic
philosophers call for the same moral license, for a freedom to wreck heaven and earth with their
energy; but the upshot of it all is that a mediocrity is Poet Laureate. I do not say that there are no
stronger men than these; but will any one say that there are any men stronger than those men of old
who were dominated by their philosophy and steeped in their religion? Whether bondage be better
than freedom may be discussed. But that their bondage came to more than our freedom it will be
difficult for any one to deny.
The theory of the unmorality of art has established itself firmly in the strictly artistic classes. They are
free to produce anything they like. They are free to write a "Paradise Lost" in which Satan shall
conquer God. They are free to write a "Divine Comedy" in which heaven shall be under the floor of
hell. And what have they done? Have they produced in their universality anything grander or more
beautiful than the things uttered by the fierce Ghibbeline Catholic, by the rigid Puritan schoolmaster?
We know that they have produced only a few roundels. Milton does not merely beat them at his
piety, he beats them at their own irreverence. In all their little books of verse you will not find a finer
defiance of God than Satan's. Nor will you find the grandeur of paganism felt as that fiery Christian
felt it who described Faranata lifting his head as in disdain of hell. And the reason is very obvious.
Blasphemy is an artistic effect, because blasphemy depends upon a philosophical conviction.
Blasphemy depends upon belief and is fading with it. If any one doubts this, let him sit down
seriously and try to think blasphemous thoughts about Thor. I think his family will find him at the end
of the day in a state of some exhaustion.
Neither in the world of politics nor that of literature, then, has the rejection of general theories
proved a success. It may be that there have been many moonstruck and misleading ideals that have
from time to time perplexed mankind. But assuredly there has been no ideal in practice so
moonstruck and misleading as the ideal of practicality. Nothing has lost so many opportunities as the
opportunism of Lord Rosebery. He is, indeed, a standing symbol of this epoch--the man who is
theoretically a practical man, and practically more unpractical than any theorist. Nothing in this
universe is so unwise as that kind of worship of worldly wisdom. A man who is perpetually thinking
of whether this race or that race is strong, of whether this cause or that cause is promising, is the
man who will never believe in anything long enough to make it succeed. The opportunist politician is
like a man who should abandon billiards because he was beaten at billiards, and abandon golf
because he was beaten at golf. There is nothing which is so weak for working purposes as this
enormous importance attached to immediate victory. There is nothing that fails like success.
And having discovered that opportunism does fail, I have been induced to look at it more largely,
and in consequence to see that it must fail. I perceive that it is far more practical to begin at the
beginning and discuss theories. I see that the men who killed each other about the orthodoxy of the
Homoousion were far more sensible than the people who are quarrelling about the Education Act.
For the Christian dogmatists were trying to establish a reign of holiness, and trying to get defined,
first of all, what was really holy. But our modern educationists are trying to bring about a religious
liberty without attempting to settle what is religion or what is liberty. If the old priests forced a
statement on mankind, at least they previously took some trouble to make it lucid. It has been left for
the modern mobs of Anglicans and Nonconformists to persecute for a doctrine without even stating
it.
For these reasons, and for many more, I for one have come to believe in going back to
fundamentals. Such is the general idea of this book. I wish to deal with my most distinguished
contemporaries, not personally or in a merely literary manner, but in relation to the real body of
doctrine which they teach. I am not concerned with Mr. Rudyard Kipling as a vivid artist or a
vigorous personality; I am concerned with him as a Heretic-- that is to say, a man whose view of
things has the hardihood to differ from mine. I am not concerned with Mr. Bernard Shaw as one of
the most brilliant and one of the most honest men alive; I am concerned with him as a Heretic--that
is to say, a man whose philosophy is quite solid, quite coherent, and quite wrong. I revert to the
doctrinal methods of the thirteenth century, inspired by the general hope of getting something done.
Suppose that a great commotion arises in the street about something, let us say a lamp-post, which
many influential persons desire to pull down. A grey-clad monk, who is the spirit of the Middle
Ages, is approached upon the matter, and begins to say, in the arid manner of the Schoolmen, "Let
us first of all consider, my brethren, the value of Light. If Light be in itself good--" At this point he is
somewhat excusably knocked down. All the people make a rush for the lamp-post, the lamp-post is
down in ten minutes, and they go about congratulating each other on their unmediaeval practicality.
But as things go on they do not work out so easily. Some people have pulled the lamp-post down
because they wanted the electric light; some because they wanted old iron; some because they
wanted darkness, because their deeds were evil. Some thought it not enough of a lamp-post, some
too much; some acted because they wanted to smash municipal machinery; some because they
wanted to smash something. And there is war in the night, no man knowing whom he strikes. So,
gradually and inevitably, to-day, to-morrow, or the next day, there comes back the conviction that
the monk was right after all, and that all depends on what is the philosophy of Light. Only what we
might have discussed under the gas-lamp, we now must discuss in the dark. |
