,,what',s ,,wrong ,,with ,,the ,,world ,by ,g4,k4 ,chesterton ,,contents ,,part ,,one3 ,,the ,,homelessness ,,of ,,man ,i ,the ,medical ,mistake ,,ii ,wanted3 ,an ,unpractical ,man ,,iii ,the ,new ,hypocrite ,,iv ,the ,fear of the ,past ,v ,the ,unfinished ,temple ,,vi ,the ,enemies of ,property ,,vii ,the ,free ,family ,,xiii ,the ,wildness of ,domesticity ,,ix ,history of ,hudge and ,gudge ,x ,oppression by ,optimism ,,xi ,the ,homelessness of ,jones ,,part ,,two3 ,,imperialism1 ,,or ,,the ,,mistake ,,about ,,man ,i ,the ,charm of ,jingoism ,,ii ,wisdom and the ,weather ,,iii ,the ,common ,vision ,,iv ,the ,insane ,necessity ,,part ,,three3 ,,feminism1 ,,or ,,the ,,mistake ,,about ,,woman ,i ,the ,unmilitary ,suffragette ,,ii ,the ,universal ,stick ,,iii ,the ,emancipation of ,domesticity ,,iv ,the ,romance of ,thrift ,v ,the ,coldness of ,chloe ,,vi ,the ,pedant and the ,savage ,,vii ,the ,modern ,surrender of ,woman ,,viii ,the ,brand of the ,fleur-de-,lis ,,ix ,sincerity and the ,gallows ,x ,the ,higher ,anarchy ,,xi ,the ,queen and the ,suffragettes ,,xii ,the ,modern ,slave ,,part ,,four3 ,,education1 ,,or ,,the ,,mistake ,,about ,,the ,,child ,i ,the ,calvinism of ,to-day ,,ii ,the ,tribal ,terror ,,iii ,the ,tricks of ,environment ,,iv ,the ,truth ,about ,education ,v ,an ,evil ,cry ,,vi ,authority the ,unavoidable ,,vii ,the ,humility of ,mrs4 ,grundy ,,viii ,the ,broken ,rainbow ,,ix ,the ,need for ,narrowness ,x ,the ,case for the ,public ,schools ,,xi ,the ,school for ,hypocrites ,,xii ,the ,staleness of the ,new ,schools ,,xiii ,the ,outlawed ,parent ,,xiv ,folly and ,female ,education ,,part ,,five3 ,,the ,,home ,,of ,,man ,i ,the ,empire of the ,insect ,,ii ,the ,fallacy of the ,umbrella ,stand ,,iii ,the ,dreadful ,duty of ,gudge ,,iv ,a ,last ,instance ,v ,conclusion ,,three ,,notes ,i ,on ,female ,suffrage ,,ii ,on ,cleanliness in ,education ,,iii ,on ,peasant ,proprietorship ,,dedication ,to ,c4 ,f ,g4 ,masterman1 ,m4 ,p4 ,my ,dear ,charles1 ,i originally called this book 8,what is ,wrong10 and it would have satisfied your sardonic temper to note the number of social misunderstandings that arose from the use of the title4 ,many a mild lady visitor opened her eyes when ,i remarked casually1 8,i have been doing #8,what is ,wrong' all this morning40 ,and one minister of religion moved quite sharply in his chair when ,i told him 7as he understood it7 that ,i had to run upstairs and do what was wrong1 but should be down again in a minute4 ,exactly of what occult vice they silently accused me ,i cannot conjecture1 but ,i know of what ,i accuse myself2 and that is1 of having written a very shapeless and inadequate book1 and one quite unworthy to be dedicated to you4 ,as far as literature goes1 this book is what is wrong and no mistake4 ,it may seem a refinement of insolence to present so wild a composition to one who has recorded two or three of the really impressive visions of the moving millions of ,england4 ,you are the only man alive who can make the map of ,england crawl with life2 a most creepy and enviable accomplishment4 ,why then should ,i trouble you with a book which1 even if it achieves its object 7which is monstrously unlikely7 can only be a thundering gallop of theory8 ,well1 ,i do it partly because ,i think you politicians are none the worse for a few inconvenient ideals2 but more because you will recognise the many arguments we have had1 those arguments which the most wonderful ladies in the world can never endure for very long4 ,and1 perhaps1 you will agree with me that the thread of comradeship and conversation must be protected because it is so frivolous4 ,it must be held sacred1 it must not be snapped1 because it is not worth tying together again4 ,it is exactly because argument is idle that men 7,i mean males7 must take it seriously2 for when 7we feel71 until the crack of doom1 shall we have so delightful a difference again8 ,but most of all ,i offer it to you because there exists not only comradeship1 but a very different thing1 called friendship2 an agreement under all the arguments and a thread which1 please ,god1 will never break4 ,yours always1 ,g4 ,k4 ,chesterton4 ,,part ,,one4 ,,the ,,homelessness ,,of ,,man ,i4 ,,the ,,medical ,,mistake ,a book of modern social inquiry has a shape that is somewhat sharply defined4 ,it begins as a rule with an analysis1 with statistics1 tables of population1 decrease of crime among ,congregationalists1 growth of hysteria among policemen1 and similar ascertained facts2 it ends with a chapter that is generally called 8,the ,remedy40 ,it is almost wholly due to this careful1 solid1 and scientific method that 8,the ,remedy0 is never found4 ,for this scheme of medical question and answer is a blunder2 the first great blunder of sociology4 ,it is always called stating the disease before we find the cure4 ,but it is the whole definition and dignity of man that in social matters we must actually find the cure before we find the disease4 ,the fallacy is one of the fifty fallacies that come from the modern madness for biological or bodily metaphors4 ,it is convenient to speak of the ,social ,organism1 just as it is convenient to speak of the ,british ,lion4 ,but ,britain is no more an organism than ,britain is a lion4 ,the moment we begin to give a nation the unity and simplicity of an animal1 we begin to think wildly4 ,because every man is a biped1 fifty men are not a centipede4 ,this has produced1 for instance1 the gaping absurdity of perpetually talking about 8young nations0 and 8dying nations10 as if a nation had a fixed and physical span of life4 ,thus people will say that ,spain has entered a final senility2 they might as well say that ,spain is losing all her teeth4 ,or people will say that ,canada should soon produce a literature2 which is like saying that ,canada must soon grow a new moustache4 ,nations consist of people2 the first generation may be decrepit1 or the ten thousandth may be vigorous4 ,similar applications of the fallacy are made by those who see in the increasing size of national possessions1 a simple increase in wisdom and stature1 and in favor with ,god and man4 ,these people1 indeed1 even fall short in subtlety of the parallel of a human body4 ,they do not even ask whether an empire is growing taller in its youth1 or only growing fatter in its old age4 ,but of all the instances of error arising from this physical fancy1 the worst is that we have before us3 the habit of exhaustively describing a social sickness1 and then propounding a social drug4 ,now we do talk first about the disease in cases of bodily breakdown2 and that for an excellent reason4 ,because1 though there may be doubt about the way in which the body broke down1 there is no doubt at all about the shape in which it should be built up again4 ,no doctor proposes to produce a new kind of man1 with a new arrangement of eyes or limbs4 ,the hospital1 by necessity1 may send a man home with one leg less3 but it will not 7in a creative rapture7 send him home with one leg extra4 ,medical science is content with the normal human body1 and only seeks to restore it4 ,but social science is by no means always content with the normal human soul2 it has all sorts of fancy souls for sale4 ,man as a social idealist will say 8,i am tired of being a ,puritan2 ,i want to be a ,pagan10 or 8,beyond this dark probation of ,individualism ,i see the shining paradise of ,collectivism40 ,now in bodily ills there is none of this difference about the ultimate ideal4 ,the patient may or may not want quinine2 but he certainly wants health4 ,no one says 8,i am tired of this headache2 ,i want some toothache10 or 8,the only thing for this ,russian influenza is a few ,german measles10 or 8,through this dark probation of catarrh ,i see the shining paradise of rheumatism40 ,but exactly the whole difficulty in our public problems is that some men are aiming at cures which other men would regard as worse maladies2 are offering ultimate conditions as states of health which others would uncompromisingly call states of disease4 ,mr4 ,belloc once said that he would no more part with the idea of property than with his teeth2 yet to ,mr4 ,bernard ,shaw property is not a tooth1 but a toothache4 ,lord ,milner has sincerely attempted to introduce ,german efficiency2 and many of us would as soon welcome ,german measles4 ,dr4 ,saleeby would honestly like to have ,eugenics2 but ,i would rather have rheumatics4 ,this is the arresting and dominant fact about modern social discussion2 that the quarrel is not merely about the difficulties1 but about the aim4 ,we agree about the evil2 it is about the good that we should tear each other's eyes out4 ,we all admit that a lazy aristocracy is a bad thing4 ,we should not by any means all admit that an active aristocracy would be a good thing4 ,we all feel angry with an irreligious priesthood2 but some of us would go mad with disgust at a really religious one4 ,everyone is indignant if our army is weak1 including the people who would be even more indignant if it were strong4 ,the social case is exactly the opposite of the medical case4 ,we do not disagree1 like doctors1 about the precise nature of the illness1 while agreeing about the nature of health4 ,on the contrary1 we all agree that ,england is unhealthy1 but half of us would not look at her in what the other half would call blooming health4 ,public abuses are so prominent and pestilent that they sweep all generous people into a sort of fictitious unanimity4 ,we forget that1 while we agree about the abuses of things1 we should differ very much about the uses of them4 ,mr4 ,cadbury and ,i would agree about the bad public house4 ,it would be precisely in front of the good public-house that our painful personal fracas would occur4 ,i maintain1 therefore1 that the common sociological method is quite useless3 that of first dissecting abject poverty or cataloguing prostitution4 ,we all dislike abject poverty2 but it might be another business if we began to discuss independent and dignified poverty4 ,we all disapprove of prostitution2 but we do not all approve of purity4 ,the only way to discuss the social evil is to get at once to the social ideal4 ,we can all see the national madness2 but what is national sanity8 ,i have called this book 8,what ,is ,wrong with the ,world80 and the upshot of the title can be easily and clearly stated4 ,what is wrong is that we do not ask what is right4 9999999999 ,,ii4 ,,wanted1 ,,an ,,unpractical ,,man ,there is a popular philosophical joke intended to typify the endless and useless arguments of philosophers2 ,i mean the joke about which came first1 the chicken or the egg8 ,i am not sure that properly understood1 it is so futile an inquiry after all4 ,i am not concerned here to enter on those deep metaphysical and theological differences of which the chicken and egg debate is a frivolous1 but a very felicitous1 type4 ,the evolutionary materialists are appropriately enough represented in the vision of all things coming from an egg1 a dim and monstrous oval germ that had laid itself by accident4 ,that other supernatural school of thought 7to which ,i personally adhere7 would be not unworthily typified in the fancy that this round world of ours is but an egg brooded upon by a sacred unbegotten bird2 the mystic dove of the prophets4 ,but it is to much humbler functions that ,i here call the awful power of such a distinction4 ,whether or no the living bird is at the beginning of our mental chain1 it is absolutely necessary that it should be at the end of our mental chain4 ,the bird is the thing to be aimed at--not with a gun1 but a life-bestowing wand4 ,what is essential to our right thinking is this3 that the egg and the bird must not be thought of as equal cosmic occurrences recurring alternatively forever4 ,they must not become a mere egg and bird pattern1 like the egg and dart pattern4 ,one is a means and the other an end2 they are in different mental worlds4 ,leaving the complications of the human breakfast-table out of account1 in an elemental sense1 the egg only exists to produce the chicken4 ,but the chicken does not exist only in order to produce another egg4 ,he may also exist to amuse himself1 to praise ,god1 and even to suggest ideas to a ,french dramatist4 ,being a conscious life1 he is1 or may be1 valuable in himself4 ,now our modern politics are full of a noisy forgetfulness2 forgetfulness that the production of this happy and conscious life is after all the aim of all complexities and compromises4 ,we talk of nothing but useful men and working institutions2 that is1 we only think of the chickens as things that will lay more eggs4 ,instead of seeking to breed our ideal bird1 the eagle of ,zeus or the ,swan of ,avon1 or whatever we happen to want1 we talk entirely in terms of the process and the embryo4 ,the process itself1 divorced from its divine object1 becomes doubtful and even morbid2 poison enters the embryo of everything2 and our politics are rotten eggs4 ,idealism is only considering everything in its practical essence4 ,idealism only means that we should consider a poker in reference to poking before we discuss its suitability for wife-beating2 that we should ask if an egg is good enough for practical poultry-rearing before we decide that the egg is bad enough for practical politics4 ,but ,i know that this primary pursuit of the theory 7which is but pursuit of the aim7 exposes one to the cheap charge of fiddling while ,rome is burning4 ,a school1 of which ,lord ,rosebery is representative1 has endeavored to substitute for the moral or social ideals which have hitherto been the motive of politics a general coherency or completeness in the social system which has gained the nick-name of 8efficiency40 ,i am not very certain of the secret doctrine of this sect in the matter4 ,but1 as far as ,i can make out1 8efficiency0 means that we ought to discover everything about a machine except what it is for4 ,there has arisen in our time a most singular fancy3 the fancy that when things go very wrong we need a practical man4 ,it would be far truer to say1 that when things go very wrong we need an unpractical man4 ,certainly1 at least1 we need a theorist4 ,a practical man means a man accustomed to mere daily practice1 to the way things commonly work4 ,when things will not work1 you must have the thinker1 the man who has some doctrine about why they work at all4 ,it is wrong to fiddle while ,rome is burning2 but it is quite right to study the theory of hydraulics while ,rome is burning4 ,it is then necessary to drop one's daily agnosticism and attempt rerum cognoscere causas4 ,if your aeroplane has a slight indisposition1 a handy man may mend it4 ,but1 if it is seriously ill1 it is all the more likely that some absent-minded old professor with wild white hair will have to be dragged out of a college or laboratory to analyze the evil4 ,the more complicated the smash1 the whiter-haired and more absent-minded will be the theorist who is needed to deal with it2 and in some extreme cases1 no one but the man 7probably insane7 who invented your flying-ship could possibly say what was the matter with it4 8,efficiency10 of course1 is futile for the same reason that strong men1 will-power and the superman are futile4 ,that is1 it is futile because it only deals with actions after they have been performed4 ,it has no philosophy for incidents before they happen2 therefore it has no power of choice4 ,an act can only be successful or unsuccessful when it is over2 if it is to begin1 it must be1 in the abstract1 right or wrong4 ,there is no such thing as backing a winner2 for he cannot be a winner when he is backed4 ,there is no such thing as fighting on the winning side2 one fights to find out which is the winning side4 ,if any operation has occurred1 that operation was efficient4 ,if a man is murdered1 the murder was efficient4 ,a tropical sun is as efficient in making people lazy as a ,lancashire foreman bully in making them energetic4 ,maeterlinck is as efficient in filling a man with strange spiritual tremors as ,messrs4 ,crosse and ,blackwell are in filling a man with jam4 ,but it all depends on what you want to be filled with4 ,lord ,rosebery1 being a modern skeptic1 probably prefers the spiritual tremors4 ,i1 being an orthodox ,christian1 prefer the jam4 ,but both are efficient when they have been effected2 and inefficient until they are effected4 ,a man who thinks much about success must be the drowsiest sentimentalist2 for he must be always looking back4 ,if he only likes victory he must always come late for the battle4 ,for the man of action there is nothing but idealism4 ,this definite ideal is a far more urgent and practical matter in our existing ,english trouble than any immediate plans or proposals4 ,for the present chaos is due to a sort of general oblivion of all that men were originally aiming at4 ,no man demands what he desires2 each man demands what he fancies he can get4 ,soon people forget what the man really wanted first2 and after a successful and vigorous political life1 he forgets it himself4 ,the whole is an extravagant riot of second bests1 a pandemonium of pis-aller4 ,now this sort of pliability does not merely prevent any heroic consistency1 it also prevents any really practical compromise4 ,one can only find the middle distance between two points if the two points will stand still4 ,we may make an arrangement between two litigants who cannot both get what they want2 but not if they will not even tell us what they want4 ,the keeper of a restaurant would much prefer that each customer should give his order smartly1 though it were for stewed ibis or boiled elephant1 rather than that each customer should sit holding his head in his hands1 plunged in arithmetical calculations about how much food there can be on the premises4 ,most of us have suffered from a certain sort of ladies who1 by their perverse unselfishness1 give more trouble than the selfish2 who almost clamor for the unpopular dish and scramble for the worst seat4 ,most of us have known parties or expeditions full of this seething fuss of self-effacement4 ,from much meaner motives than those of such admirable women1 our practical politicians keep things in the same confusion through the same doubt about their real demands4 ,there is nothing that so much prevents a settlement as a tangle of small surrenders4 ,we are bewildered on every side by politicians who are in favor of secular education1 but think it hopeless to work for it2 who desire total prohibition1 but are certain they should not demand it2 who regret compulsory education1 but resignedly continue it2 or who want peasant proprietorship and therefore vote for something else4 ,it is this dazed and floundering opportunism that gets in the way of everything4 ,if our statesmen were visionaries something practical might be done4 ,if we ask for something in the abstract we might get something in the concrete4 ,as it is1 it is not only impossible to get what one wants1 but it is impossible to get any part of it1 because nobody can mark it out plainly like a map4 ,that clear and even hard quality that there was in the old bargaining has wholly vanished4 ,we forget that the word 8compromise0 contains1 among other things1 the rigid and ringing word 8promise40 ,moderation is not vague2 it is as definite as perfection4 ,the middle point is as fixed as the extreme point4 ,if ,i am made to walk the plank by a pirate1 it is vain for me to offer1 as a common-sense compromise1 to walk along the plank for a reasonable distance4 ,it is exactly about the reasonable distance that the pirate and ,i differ4 ,there is an exquisite mathematical split second at which the plank tips up4 ,my common-sense ends just before that instant2 the pirate's common-sense begins just beyond it4 ,but the point itself is as hard as any geometrical diagram2 as abstract as any theological dogma4 9999999999 ,,iii4 ,,the ,,new ,,hypocrite ,but this new cloudy political cowardice has rendered useless the old ,english compromise4 ,people have begun to be terrified of an improvement merely because it is complete4 ,they call it utopian and revolutionary that anyone should really have his own way1 or anything be really done1 and done with4 ,compromise used to mean that half a loaf was better than no bread4 ,among modern statesmen it really seems to mean that half a loaf is better than a whole loaf4 ,as an instance to sharpen the argument1 ,i take the one case of our everlasting education bills4 ,we have actually contrived to invent a new kind of hypocrite4 ,the old hypocrite1 ,tartuffe or ,pecksniff1 was a man whose aims were really worldly and practical1 while he pretended that they were religious4 ,the new hypocrite is one whose aims are really religious1 while he pretends that they are worldly and practical4 ,the ,rev4 ,brown1 the ,wesleyan minister1 sturdily declares that he cares nothing for creeds1 but only for education2 meanwhile1 in truth1 the wildest ,wesleyanism is tearing his soul4 ,the ,rev4 ,smith1 of the ,church of ,england1 explains gracefully1 with the ,oxford manner1 that the only question for him is the prosperity and efficiency of the schools2 while in truth all the evil passions of a curate are roaring within him4 ,it is a fight of creeds masquerading as policies4 ,i think these reverend gentlemen do themselves wrong2 ,i think they are more pious than they will admit4 ,theology is not 7as some suppose7 expunged as an error4 ,it is merely concealed1 like a sin4 ,dr4 ,clifford really wants a theological atmosphere as much as ,lord ,halifax2 only it is a different one4 ,if ,dr4 ,clifford would ask plainly for ,puritanism and ,lord ,halifax ask plainly for ,catholicism1 something might be done for them4 ,we are all1 one hopes1 imaginative enough to recognize the dignity and distinctness of another religion1 like ,islam or the cult of ,apollo4 ,i am quite ready to respect another man's faith2 but it is too much to ask that ,i should respect his doubt1 his worldly hesitations and fictions1 his political bargain and make-believe4 ,most ,nonconformists with an instinct for ,english history could see something poetic and national about the ,archbishop of ,canterbury as an ,archbishop of ,canterbury4 ,it is when he does the rational ,british statesman that they very justifiably get annoyed4 ,most ,anglicans with an eye for pluck and simplicity could admire ,dr4 ,clifford as a ,baptist minister4 ,it is when he says that he is simply a citizen that nobody can possibly believe him4 ,but indeed the case is yet more curious than this4 ,the one argument that used to be urged for our creedless vagueness was that at least it saved us from fanaticism4 ,but it does not even do that4 ,on the contrary1 it creates and renews fanaticism with a force quite peculiar to itself4 ,this is at once so strange and so true that ,i will ask the reader's attention to it with a little more precision4 ,some people do not like the word 8dogma40 ,fortunately they are free1 and there is an alternative for them4 ,there are two things1 and two things only1 for the human mind1 a dogma and a prejudice4 ,the ,middle ,ages were a rational epoch1 an age of doctrine4 ,our age is1 at its best1 a poetical epoch1 an age of prejudice4 ,a doctrine is a definite point2 a prejudice is a direction4 ,that an ox may be eaten1 while a man should not be eaten1 is a doctrine4 ,that as little as possible of anything should be eaten is a prejudice2 which is also sometimes called an ideal4 ,now a direction is always far more fantastic than a plan4 ,i would rather have the most archaic map of the road to ,brighton than a general recommendation to turn to the left4 ,straight lines that are not parallel must meet at last2 but curves may recoil forever4 ,a pair of lovers might walk along the frontier of ,france and ,germany1 one on the one side and one on the other1 so long as they were not vaguely told to keep away from each other4 ,and this is a strictly true parable of the effect of our modern vagueness in losing and separating men as in a mist4 ,it is not merely true that a creed unites men4 ,nay1 a difference of creed unites men--so long as it is a clear difference4 ,a boundary unites4 ,many a magnanimous ,moslem and chivalrous ,crusader must have been nearer to each other1 because they were both dogmatists1 than any two homeless agnostics in a pew of ,mr4 ,campbell's chapel4 8,i say ,god is ,one10 and 8,i say ,god is ,one but also ,three10 that is the beginning of a good quarrelsome1 manly friendship4 ,but our age would turn these creeds into tendencies4 ,it would tell the ,trinitarian to follow multiplicity as such 7because it was his 8temperament071 and he would turn up later with three hundred and thirty-three persons in the ,trinity4 ,meanwhile1 it would turn the ,moslem into a ,monist3 a frightful intellectual fall4 ,it would force that previously healthy person not only to admit that there was one ,god1 but to admit that there was nobody else4 ,when each had1 for a long enough period1 followed the gleam of his own nose 7like the ,dong7 they would appear again2 the ,christian a ,polytheist1 and the ,moslem a ,panegoist1 both quite mad1 and far more unfit to understand each other than before4 ,it is exactly the same with politics4 ,our political vagueness divides men1 it does not fuse them4 ,men will walk along the edge of a chasm in clear weather1 but they will edge miles away from it in a fog4 ,so a ,tory can walk up to the very edge of ,socialism1 if he knows what is ,socialism4 ,but if he is told that ,socialism is a spirit1 a sublime atmosphere1 a noble1 indefinable tendency1 why1 then he keeps out of its way2 and quite right too4 ,one can meet an assertion with argument2 but healthy bigotry is the only way in which one can meet a tendency4 ,i am told that the ,japanese method of wrestling consists not of suddenly pressing1 but of suddenly giving way4 ,this is one of my many reasons for disliking the ,japanese civilization4 ,to use surrender as a weapon is the very worst spirit of the ,east4 ,but certainly there is no force so hard to fight as the force which it is easy to conquer2 the force that always yields and then returns4 ,such is the force of a great impersonal prejudice1 such as possesses the modern world on so many points4 ,against this there is no weapon at all except a rigid and steely sanity1 a resolution not to listen to fads1 and not to be infected by diseases4 ,in short1 the rational human faith must armor itself with prejudice in an age of prejudices1 just as it armoured itself with logic in an age of logic4 ,but the difference between the two mental methods is marked and unmistakable4 ,the essential of the difference is this3 that prejudices are divergent1 whereas creeds are always in collision4 ,believers bump into each other2 whereas bigots keep out of each other's way4 ,a creed is a collective thing1 and even its sins are sociable4 ,a prejudice is a private thing1 and even its tolerance is misanthropic4 ,so it is with our existing divisions4 ,they keep out of each other's way2 the ,tory paper and the ,radical paper do not answer each other2 they ignore each other4 ,genuine controversy1 fair cut and thrust before a common audience1 has become in our special epoch very rare4 ,for the sincere controversialist is above all things a good listener4 ,the really burning enthusiast never interrupts2 he listens to the enemy's arguments as eagerly as a spy would listen to the enemy's arrangements4 ,but if you attempt an actual argument with a modern paper of opposite politics1 you will find that no medium is admitted between violence and evasion4 ,you will have no answer except slanging or silence4 ,a modern editor must not have that eager ear that goes with the honest tongue4 ,he may be deaf and silent2 and that is called dignity4 ,or he may be deaf and noisy2 and that is called slashing journalism4 ,in neither case is there any controversy2 for the whole object of modern party combatants is to charge out of earshot4 ,the only logical cure for all this is the assertion of a human ideal4 ,in dealing with this1 ,i will try to be as little transcendental as is consistent with reason2 it is enough to say that unless we have some doctrine of a divine man1 all abuses may be excused1 since evolution may turn them into uses4 ,it will be easy for the scientific plutocrat to maintain that humanity will adapt itself to any conditions which we now consider evil4 ,the old tyrants invoked the past2 the new tyrants will invoke the future evolution has produced the snail and the owl2 evolution can produce a workman who wants no more space than a snail1 and no more light than an owl4 ,the employer need not mind sending a ,kaffir to work underground2 he will soon become an underground animal1 like a mole4 ,he need not mind sending a diver to hold his breath in the deep seas2 he will soon be a deep-sea animal4 ,men need not trouble to alter conditions1 conditions will so soon alter men4 ,the head can be beaten small enough to fit the hat4 ,do not knock the fetters off the slave2 knock the slave until he forgets the fetters4 ,to all this plausible modern argument for oppression1 the only adequate answer is1 that there is a permanent human ideal that must not be either confused or destroyed4 ,the most important man on earth is the perfect man who is not there4 ,the ,christian religion has specially uttered the ultimate sanity of ,man1 says ,scripture1 who shall judge the incarnate and human truth4 ,our lives and laws are not judged by divine superiority1 but simply by human perfection4 ,it is man1 says ,aristotle1 who is the measure4 ,it is the ,son of ,man1 says ,scripture1 who shall judge the quick and the dead4 ,doctrine1 therefore1 does not cause dissensions2 rather a doctrine alone can cure our dissensions4 ,it is necessary to ask1 however1 roughly1 what abstract and ideal shape in state or family would fulfil the human hunger2 and this apart from whether we can completely obtain it or not4 ,but when we come to ask what is the need of normal men1 what is the desire of all nations1 what is the ideal house1 or road1 or rule1 or republic1 or king1 or priesthood1 then we are confronted with a strange and irritating difficulty peculiar to the present time2 and we must call a temporary halt and examine that obstacle4 9999999999 ,,iv4 ,,the ,,fear ,,of ,,the ,,past ,the last few decades have been marked by a special cultivation of the romance of the future4 ,we seem to have made up our minds to misunderstand what has happened2 and we turn1 with a sort of relief1 to stating what will happen--which is 7apparently7 much easier4 ,the modern man no longer presents the memoirs of his great grandfather2 but is engaged in writing a detailed and authoritative biography of his great-grandson4 ,instead of trembling before the specters of the dead1 we shudder abjectly under the shadow of the babe unborn4 ,this spirit is apparent everywhere1 even to the creation of a form of futurist romance4 ,sir ,walter ,scott stands at the dawn of the nineteenth century for the novel of the past2 ,mr4 ,h4 ,g4 ,wells stands at the dawn of the twentieth century for the novel of the future4 ,the old story1 we know1 was supposed to begin3 8,late on a winter's evening two horsemen might have been seen--40 ,the new story has to begin3 8,late on a winter's evening two aviators will be seen--40 ,the movement is not without its elements of charm2 there is something spirited1 if eccentric1 in the sight of so many people fighting over again the fights that have not yet happened2 of people still glowing with the memory of tomorrow morning4 ,a man in advance of the age is a familiar phrase enough4 ,an age in advance of the age is really rather odd4 ,but when full allowance has been made for this harmless element of poetry and pretty human perversity in the thing1 ,i shall not hesitate to maintain here that this cult of the future is not only a weakness but a cowardice of the age4 ,it is the peculiar evil of this epoch that even its pugnacity is fundamentally frightened2 and the ,jingo is contemptible not because he is impudent1 but because he is timid4 ,the reason why modern armaments do not inflame the imagination like the arms and emblazonments of the ,crusades is a reason quite apart from optical ugliness or beauty4 ,some battleships are as beautiful as the sea2 and many ,norman nosepieces were as ugly as ,norman noses4 ,the atmospheric ugliness that surrounds our scientific war is an emanation from that evil panic which is at the heart of it4 ,the charge of the ,crusades was a charge2 it was charging towards ,god1 the wild consolation of the braver4 ,the charge of the modern armaments is not a charge at all4 ,it is a rout1 a retreat1 a flight from the devil1 who will catch the hindmost4 ,it is impossible to imagine a mediaeval knight talking of longer and longer ,french lances1 with precisely the quivering employed about larger and larger ,german ships ,the man who called the ,blue ,water ,school the 8,blue ,funk ,school0 uttered a psychological truth which that school itself would scarcely essentially deny4 ,even the two-power standard1 if it be a necessity1 is in a sense a degrading necessity4 ,nothing has more alienated many magnanimous minds from ,imperial enterprises than the fact that they are always exhibited as stealthy or sudden defenses against a world of cold rapacity and fear4 ,the ,boer ,war1 for instance1 was colored not so much by the creed that we were doing something right1 as by the creed that ,boers and ,germans were probably doing something wrong2 driving us 7as it was said7 to the sea4 ,mr4 ,chamberlain1 ,i think1 said that the war was a feather in his cap and so it was3 a white feather4 ,now this same primary panic that ,i feel in our rush towards patriotic armaments ,i feel also in our rush towards future visions of society4 ,the modern mind is forced towards the future by a certain sense of fatigue1 not unmixed with terror1 with which it regards the past4 ,it is propelled towards the coming time2 it is1 in the exact words of the popular phrase1 knocked into the middle of next week4 ,and the goad which drives it on thus eagerly is not an affectation for futurity ,futurity does not exist1 because it is still future4 ,rather it is a fear of the past2 a fear not merely of the evil in the past1 but of the good in the past also4 ,the brain breaks down under the unbearable virtue of mankind4 ,there have been so many flaming faiths that we cannot hold2 so many harsh heroisms that we cannot imitate2 so many great efforts of monumental building or of military glory which seem to us at once sublime and pathetic4 ,the future is a refuge from the fierce competition of our forefathers4 ,the older generation1 not the younger1 is knocking at our door4 ,it is agreeable to escape1 as ,henley said1 into the ,street of ,by-and-,bye1 where stands the ,hostelry of ,never4 ,it is pleasant to play with children1 especially unborn children4 ,the future is a blank wall on which every man can write his own name as large as he likes2 the past ,i find already covered with illegible scribbles1 such as ,plato1 ,isaiah1 ,shakespeare1 ,michael ,angelo1 ,napoleon4 ,i can make the future as narrow as myself2 the past is obliged to be as broad and turbulent as humanity4 ,and the upshot of this modern attitude is really this3 that men invent new ideals because they dare not attempt old ideals4 ,they look forward with enthusiasm1 because they are afraid to look back4 ,now in history there is no ,revolution that is not a ,restoration4 ,among the many things that leave me doubtful about the modern habit of fixing eyes on the future1 none is stronger than this3 that all the men in history who have really done anything with the future have had their eyes fixed upon the past4 ,i need not mention the ,renaissance1 the very word proves my case4 ,the originality of ,michael ,angelo and ,shakespeare began with the digging up of old vases and manuscripts4 ,the mildness of poets absolutely arose out of the mildness of antiquaries4 ,so the great mediaeval revival was a memory of the ,roman ,empire4 ,so the ,reformation looked back to the ,bible and ,bible times4 ,so the modern ,catholic movement has looked back to patristic times4 ,but that modern movement which many would count the most anarchic of all is in this sense the most conservative of all4 ,never was the past more venerated by men than it was by the ,french ,revolutionists4 ,they invoked the little republics of antiquity with the complete confidence of one who invokes the gods4 ,the ,sans-culottes believed 7as their name might imply7 in a return to simplicity4 ,they believed most piously in a remote past2 some might call it a mythical past4 ,for some strange reason man must always thus plant his fruit trees in a graveyard4 ,man can only find life among the dead4 ,man is a misshapen monster1 with his feet set forward and his face turned back4 ,he can make the future luxuriant and gigantic1 so long as he is thinking about the past4 ,when he tries to think about the future itself1 his mind diminishes to a pin point with imbecility1 which some call ,nirvana4 ,to-morrow is the ,gorgon2 a man must only see it mirrored in the shining shield of yesterday4 ,if he sees it directly he is turned to stone4 ,this has been the fate of all those who have really seen fate and futurity as clear and inevitable4 ,the ,calvinists1 with their perfect creed of predestination1 were turned to stone4 ,the modern sociological scientists 7with their excruciating ,eugenics7 are turned to stone4 ,the only difference is that the ,puritans make dignified1 and the ,eugenists somewhat amusing1 statues4 ,but there is one feature in the past which more than all the rest defies and depresses the moderns and drives them towards this featureless future4 ,i mean the presence in the past of huge ideals1 unfulfilled and sometimes abandoned4 ,the sight of these splendid failures is melancholy to a restless and rather morbid generation2 and they maintain a strange silence about them--sometimes amounting to an unscrupulous silence4 ,they keep them entirely out of their newspapers and almost entirely out of their history books4 ,for example1 they will often tell you 7in their praises of the coming age7 that we are moving on towards a ,united ,states of ,europe4 ,but they carefully omit to tell you that we are moving away from a ,united ,states of ,europe1 that such a thing existed literally in ,roman and essentially in mediaeval times4 ,they never admit that the international hatreds 7which they call barbaric7 are really very recent1 the mere breakdown of the ideal of the ,holy ,roman ,empire4 ,or again1 they will tell you that there is going to be a social revolution1 a great rising of the poor against the rich2 but they never rub it in that ,france made that magnificent attempt1 unaided1 and that we and all the world allowed it to be trampled out and forgotten4 ,i say decisively that nothing is so marked in modern writing as the prediction of such ideals in the future combined with the ignoring of them in the past4 ,anyone can test this for himself4 ,read any thirty or forty pages of pamphlets advocating peace in ,europe and see how many of them praise the old ,popes or ,emperors for keeping the peace in ,europe4 ,read any armful of essays and poems in praise of social democracy1 and see how many of them praise the old ,jacobins who created democracy and died for it4 ,these colossal ruins are to the modern only enormous eyesores4 ,he looks back along the valley of the past and sees a perspective of splendid but unfinished cities4 ,they are unfinished1 not always through enmity or accident1 but often through fickleness1 mental fatigue1 and the lust for alien philosophies4 ,we have not only left undone those things that we ought to have done1 but we have even left undone those things that we wanted to do ,it is very currently suggested that the modern man is the heir of all the ages1 that he has got the good out of these successive human experiments4 ,i know not what to say in answer to this1 except to ask the reader to look at the modern man1 as ,i have just looked at the modern man--in the looking-glass4 ,is it really true that you and ,i are two starry towers built up of all the most towering visions of the past8 ,have we really fulfilled all the great historic ideals one after the other1 from our naked ancestor who was brave enough to kill a mammoth with a stone knife1 through the ,greek citizen and the ,christian saint to our own grandfather or great-grandfather1 who may have been sabred by the ,manchester ,yeomanry or shot in the #8#dh8 ,are we still strong enough to spear mammoths1 but now tender enough to spare them8 ,does the cosmos contain any mammoth that we have either speared or spared8 ,when we decline 7in a marked manner7 to fly the red flag and fire across a barricade like our grandfathers1 are we really declining in deference to sociologists--or to soldiers8 ,have we indeed outstripped the warrior and passed the ascetical saint8 ,i fear we only outstrip the warrior in the sense that we should probably run away from him4 ,and if we have passed the saint1 ,i fear we have passed him without bowing4 ,this is1 first and foremost1 what ,i mean by the narrowness of the new ideas1 the limiting effect of the future4 ,our modern prophetic idealism is narrow because it has undergone a persistent process of elimination4 ,we must ask for new things because we are not allowed to ask for old things4 ,the whole position is based on this idea that we have got all the good that can be got out of the ideas of the past4 ,but we have not got all the good out of them1 perhaps at this moment not any of the good out of them4 ,and the need here is a need of complete freedom for restoration as well as revolution4 ,we often read nowadays of the valor or audacity with which some rebel attacks a hoary tyranny or an antiquated superstition4 ,there is not really any courage at all in attacking hoary or antiquated things1 any more than in offering to fight one's grandmother4 ,the really courageous man is he who defies tyrannies young as the morning and superstitions fresh as the first flowers4 ,the only true free-thinker is he whose intellect is as much free from the future as from the past4 ,he cares as little for what will be as for what has been2 he cares only for what ought to be4 ,and for my present purpose ,i specially insist on this abstract independence4 ,if ,i am to discuss what is wrong1 one of the first things that are wrong is this3 the deep and silent modern assumption that past things have become impossible4 ,there is one metaphor of which the moderns are very fond2 they are always saying1 8,you can't put the clock back40 ,the simple and obvious answer is 8,you can40 ,a clock1 being a piece of human construction1 can be restored by the human finger to any figure or hour4 ,in the same way society1 being a piece of human construction1 can be reconstructed upon any plan that has ever existed4 ,there is another proverb1 8,as you have made your bed1 so you must lie on it02 which again is simply a lie4 ,if ,i have made my bed uncomfortable1 please ,god ,i will make it again4 ,we could restore the ,heptarchy or the stage coaches if we chose4 ,it might take some time to do1 and it might be very inadvisable to do it2 but certainly it is not impossible as bringing back last ,friday is impossible4 ,this is1 as ,i say1 the first freedom that ,i claim3 the freedom to restore4 ,i claim a right to propose as a solution the old patriarchal system of a ,highland clan1 if that should seem to eliminate the largest number of evils4 ,it certainly would eliminate some evils2 for instance1 the unnatural sense of obeying cold and harsh strangers1 mere bureaucrats and policemen4 ,i claim the right to propose the complete independence of the small ,greek or ,italian towns1 a sovereign city of ,brixton or ,brompton1 if that seems the best way out of our troubles4 ,it would be a way out of some of our troubles2 we could not have in a small state1 for instance1 those enormous illusions about men or measures which are nourished by the great national or international newspapers4 ,you could not persuade a city state that ,mr4 ,beit was an ,englishman1 or ,mr4 ,dillon a desperado1 any more than you could persuade a ,hampshire ,village that the village drunkard was a teetotaller or the village idiot a statesman4 ,nevertheless1 ,i do not as a fact propose that the ,browns and the ,smiths should be collected under separate tartans4 ,nor do ,i even propose that ,clapham should declare its independence4 ,i merely declare my independence4 ,i merely claim my choice of all the tools in the universe2 and ,i shall not admit that any of them are blunted merely because they have been used4 9999999999 ,v4 ,,the ,,unfinished ,,temple ,the task of modern idealists indeed is made much too easy for them by the fact that they are always taught that if a thing has been defeated it has been disproved4 ,logically1 the case is quite clearly the other way4 ,the lost causes are exactly those which might have saved the world4 ,if a man says that the ,young ,pretender would have made ,england happy1 it is hard to answer him4 ,if anyone says that the ,georges made ,england happy1 ,i hope we all know what to answer4 ,that which was prevented is always impregnable2 and the only perfect ,king of ,england was he who was smothered4 ,exactly be cause ,jacobitism failed we cannot call it a failure4 ,precisely because the ,commune collapsed as a rebellion we cannot say that it collapsed as a system4 ,but such outbursts were brief or incidental4 ,few people realize how many of the largest efforts1 the facts that will fill history1 were frustrated in their full design and come down to us as gigantic cripples4 ,i have only space to allude to the two largest facts of modern history3 the ,catholic ,church and that modern growth rooted in the ,french ,revolution4 ,when four knights scattered the blood and brains of ,st4 ,thomas of ,canterbury1 it was not only a sign of anger but of a sort of black admiration4 ,they wished for his blood1 but they wished even more for his brains4 ,such a blow will remain forever unintelligible unless we realise what the brains of ,st4 ,thomas were thinking about just before they were distributed over the floor4 ,they were thinking about the great mediaeval conception that the church is the judge of the world4 ,becket objected to a priest being tried even by the ,lord ,chief ,justice4 ,and his reason was simple3 because the ,lord ,chief ,justice was being tried by the priest4 ,the judiciary was itself sub judice4 ,the kings were themselves in the dock4 ,the idea was to create an invisible kingdom1 without armies or prisons1 but with complete freedom to condemn publicly all the kingdoms of the earth4 ,whether such a supreme church would have cured society we cannot affirm definitely2 because the church never was a supreme church4 ,we only know that in ,england at any rate the princes conquered the saints4 ,what the world wanted we see before us2 and some of us call it a failure4 ,but we cannot call what the church wanted a failure1 simply because the church failed4 ,tracy struck a little too soon4 ,england had not yet made the great ,protestant discovery that the king can do no wrong4 ,the king was whipped in the cathedral2 a performance which ,i recommend to those who regret the unpopularity of church-going4 ,but the discovery was made2 and ,henry ,,viii scattered ,becket's bones as easily as ,tracy had scattered his brains4 ,of course1 ,i mean that ,catholicism was not tried2 plenty of ,catholics were tried1 and found guilty4 ,my point is that the world did not tire of the church's ideal1 but of its reality4 ,monasteries were impugned not for the chastity of monks1 but for the unchastity of monks4 ,christianity was unpopular not because of the humility1 but of the arrogance of ,christians4 ,certainly1 if the church failed it was largely through the churchmen4 ,but at the same time hostile elements had certainly begun to end it long before it could have done its work4 ,in the nature of things it needed a common scheme of life and thought in ,europe4 ,yet the mediaeval system began to be broken to pieces intellectually1 long before it showed the slightest hint of falling to pieces morally4 ,the huge early heresies1 like the ,albigenses1 had not the faintest excuse in moral superiority4 ,and it is actually true that the ,reformation began to tear ,europe apart before the ,catholic ,church had had time to pull it together4 ,the ,prussians1 for instance1 were not converted to ,christianity at all until quite close to the ,reformation4 ,the poor creatures hardly had time to become ,catholics before they were told to become ,protestants4 ,this explains a great deal of their subsequent conduct4 ,but ,i have only taken this as the first and most evident case of the general truth3 that the great ideals of the past failed not by being outlived 7which must mean over-lived71 but by not being lived enough4 ,mankind has not passed through the ,middle ,ages4 ,rather mankind has retreated from the ,middle ,ages in reaction and rout4 ,the ,christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting4 ,it has been found difficult2 and left untried4 ,it is1 of course1 the same in the case of the ,french ,revolution4 ,a great part of our present perplexity arises from the fact that the ,french ,revolution has half succeeded and half failed4 ,in one sense1 ,valmy was the decisive battle of the ,west1 and in another ,trafalgar4 ,we have1 indeed1 destroyed the largest territorial tyrannies1 and created a free peasantry in almost all ,christian countries except ,england2 of which we shall say more anon4 ,but representative government1 the one universal relic1 is a very poor fragment of the full republican idea4 ,the theory of the ,french ,revolution presupposed two things in government1 things which it achieved at the time1 but which it has certainly not bequeathed to its imitators in ,england1 ,germany1 and ,america4 ,the first of these was the idea of honorable poverty2 that a statesman must be something of a stoic2 the second was the idea of extreme publicity4 ,many imaginative ,english writers1 including ,carlyle1 seem quite unable to imagine how it was that men like ,robespierre and ,marat were ardently admired4 ,the best answer is that they were admired for being poor--poor when they might have been rich4 ,no one will pretend that this ideal exists at all in the haute politique of this country4 ,our national claim to political incorruptibility is actually based on exactly the opposite argument2 it is based on the theory that wealthy men in assured positions will have no temptation to financial trickery4 ,whether the history of the ,english aristocracy1 from the spoliation of the monasteries to the annexation of the mines1 entirely supports this theory ,i am not now inquiring2 but certainly it is our theory1 that wealth will be a protection against political corruption4 ,the ,english statesman is bribed not to be bribed4 ,he is born with a silver spoon in his mouth1 so that he may never afterwards be found with the silver spoons in his pocket4 ,so strong is our faith in this protection by plutocracy1 that we are more and more trusting our empire in the hands of families which inherit wealth without either blood or manners4 ,some of our political houses are parvenue by pedigree2 they hand on vulgarity like a coat of-arms4 ,in the case of many a modern statesman to say that he is born with a silver spoon in his mouth1 is at once inadequate and excessive4 ,he is born with a silver knife in his mouth4 ,but all this only illustrates the ,english theory that poverty is perilous for a politician4 ,it will be the same if we compare the conditions that have come about with the ,revolution legend touching publicity4 ,the old democratic doctrine was that the more light that was let in to all departments of ,state1 the easier it was for a righteous indignation to move promptly against wrong4 ,in other words1 monarchs were to live in glass houses1 that mobs might throw stones4 ,again1 no admirer of existing ,english politics 7if there is any admirer of existing ,english politics7 will really pretend that this ideal of publicity is exhausted1 or even attempted4 ,obviously public life grows more private every day4 ,the ,french have1 indeed1 continued the tradition of revealing secrets and making scandals2 hence they are more flagrant and palpable than we1 not in sin but in the confession of sin4 ,the first trial of ,dreyfus might have happened in ,england2 it is exactly the second trial that would have been legally impossible4 ,but1 indeed1 if we wish to realise how far we fall short of the original republican outline1 the sharpest way to test it is to note how far we fall short even of the republican element in the older regime4 ,not only are we less democratic than ,danton and ,condorcet1 but we are in many ways less democratic than ,choiseul and ,marie ,antoinette4 ,the richest nobles before the revolt were needy middle-class people compared with our ,rothschilds and ,roseberys4 ,and in the matter of publicity the old ,french monarchy was infinitely more democratic than any of the monarchies of today4 ,practically anybody who chose could walk into the palace and see the king playing with his children1 or paring his nails4 ,the people possessed the monarch1 as the people possess ,primrose ,hill2 that is1 they cannot move it1 but they can sprawl all over it4 ,the old ,french monarchy was founded on the excellent principle that a cat may look at a king4 ,but nowadays a cat may not look at a king2 unless it is a very tame cat4 ,even where the press is free for criticism it is only used for adulation4 ,the substantial difference comes to something uncommonly like this3 ,eighteenth century tyranny meant that you could say 8,the ,k of ,brrd is a profligate40 ,twentieth century liberty really means that you are allowed to say 8,the ,king of ,brentford is a model family man40 ,but we have delayed the main argument too long for the parenthetical purpose of showing that the great democratic dream1 like the great mediaeval dream1 has in a strict and practical sense been a dream unfulfilled4 ,whatever is the matter with modern ,england it is not that we have carried out too literally1 or achieved with disappointing completeness1 either the ,catholicism of ,becket or the equality of ,marat4 ,now ,i have taken these two cases merely because they are typical of ten thousand other cases2 the world is full of these unfulfilled ideas1 these uncompleted temples4 ,history does not consist of completed and crumbling ruins2 rather it consists of half-built villas abandoned by a bankrupt-builder4 ,this world is more like an unfinished suburb than a deserted cemetery4 9999999999 ,,vi4 ,,the ,,enemies ,,of ,,property ,but it is for this especial reason that such an explanation is necessary on the very threshold of the definition of ideals4 ,for owing to that historic fallacy with which ,i have just dealt1 numbers of readers will expect me1 when ,i propound an ideal1 to propound a new ideal4 ,now ,i have no notion at all of propounding a new ideal4 ,there is no new ideal imaginable by the madness of modern sophists1 which will be anything like so startling as fulfilling any one of the old ones4 ,on the day that any copybook maxim is carried out there will be something like an earthquake on the earth4 ,there is only one thing new that can be done under the sun2 and that is to look at the sun4 ,if you attempt it on a blue day in ,june1 you will know why men do not look straight at their ideals4 ,there is only one really startling thing to be done with the ideal1 and that is to do it4 ,it is to face the flaming logical fact1 and its frightful consequences4 ,christ knew that it would be a more stunning thunderbolt to fulfil the law than to destroy it4 ,it is true of both the cases ,i have quoted1 and of every case4 ,the pagans had always adored purity3 ,athena1 ,artemis1 ,vesta4 ,it was when the virgin martyrs began defiantly to practice purity that they rent them with wild beasts1 and rolled them on red-hot coals4 ,the world had always loved the notion of the poor man uppermost2 it can be proved by every legend from ,cinderella to ,whittington1 by every poem from the ,magnificat to the ,marseillaise4 ,the kings went mad against ,france not because she idealized this ideal1 but because she realized it4 ,joseph of ,austria and ,catherine of ,russia quite agreed that the people should rule2 what horrified them was that the people did4 ,the ,french ,revolution1 therefore1 is the type of all true revolutions1 because its ideal is as old as the ,old ,adam1 but its fulfilment almost as fresh1 as miraculous1 and as new as the ,new ,jerusalem4 ,but in the modern world we are primarily confronted with the extraordinary spectacle of people turning to new ideals because they have not tried the old4 ,men have not got tired of ,christianity2 they have never found enough ,christianity to get tired of4 ,men have never wearied of political justice2 they have wearied of waiting for it4 ,now1 for the purpose of this book1 ,i propose to take only one of these old ideals2 but one that is perhaps the oldest4 ,i take the principle of domesticity3 the ideal house2 the happy family1 the holy family of history4 ,for the moment it is only necessary to remark that it is like the church and like the republic1 now chiefly assailed by those who have never known it1 or by those who have failed to fulfil it4 ,numberless modern women have rebelled against domesticity in theory because they have never known it in practice4 ,hosts of the poor are driven to the workhouse without ever having known the house4 ,generally speaking1 the cultured class is shrieking to be let out of the decent home1 just as the working class is shouting to be let into it4 ,now if we take this house or home as a test1 we may very generally lay the simple spiritual foundations of the idea4 ,god is that which can make something out of nothing4 ,man 7it may truly be said7 is that which can make something out of anything4 ,in other words1 while the joy of ,god be unlimited creation1 the special joy of man is limited creation1 the combination of creation with limits4 ,man's pleasure1 therefore1 is to possess conditions1 but also to be partly possessed by them2 to be half-controlled by the flute he plays or by the field he digs4 ,the excitement is to get the utmost out of given conditions2 the conditions will stretch1 but not indefinitely4 ,a man can write an immortal sonnet on an old envelope1 or hack a hero out of a lump of rock4 ,but hacking a sonnet out of a rock would be a laborious business1 and making a hero out of an envelope is almost out of the sphere of practical politics4 ,this fruitful strife with limitations1 when it concerns some airy entertainment of an educated class1 goes by the name of ,art4 ,but the mass of men have neither time nor aptitude for the invention of invisible or abstract beauty4 ,for the mass of men the idea of artistic creation can only be expressed by an idea unpopular in present discussions--the idea of property4 ,the average man cannot cut clay into the shape of a man2 but he can cut earth into the shape of a garden2 and though he arranges it with red geraniums and blue potatoes in alternate straight lines1 he is still an artist2 because he has chosen4 ,the average man cannot paint the sunset whose colors be admires2 but he can paint his own house with what color he chooses1 and though he paints it pea green with pink spots1 he is still an artist2 because that is his choice4 ,property is merely the art of the democracy4 ,it means that every man should have something that he can shape in his own image1 as he is shaped in the image of heaven4 ,but because he is not ,god1 but only a graven image of ,god1 his self-expression must deal with limits2 properly with limits that are strict and even small4 ,i am well aware that the word 8property0 has been defied in our time by the corruption of the great capitalists4 ,one would think1 to hear people talk1 that the ,rothchilds and the ,rockefellers were on the side of property4 ,but obviously they are the enemies of property2 because they are enemies of their own limitations4 ,they do not want their own land2 but other people's4 ,when they remove their neighbor's landmark1 they also remove their own4 ,a man who loves a little triangular field ought to love it because it is triangular2 anyone who destroys the shape1 by giving him more land1 is a thief who has stolen a triangle4 ,a man with the true poetry of possession wishes to see the wall where his garden meets ,smith's garden2 the hedge where his farm touches ,brown's4 ,he cannot see the shape of his own land unless he sees the edges of his neighbor's4 ,it is the negation of property that the ,duke of ,sutherland should have all the farms in one estate2 just as it would be the negation of marriage if he had all our wives in one harem4 9999999999 ,,vii4 ,,the ,,free ,,family ,as ,i have said1 ,i propose to take only one central instance2 ,i will take the institution called the private house or home2 the shell and organ of the family4 ,we will consider cosmic and political tendencies simply as they strike that ancient and unique roof4 ,very few words will suffice for all ,i have to say about the family itself4 ,i leave alone the speculations about its animal origin and the details of its social reconstruction2 ,i am concerned only with its palpable omnipresence4 ,it is a necessity far mankind2 it is 7if you like to put it so7 a trap for mankind4 ,only by the hypocritical ignoring of a huge fact can any one contrive to talk of 8free love02 as if love were an episode like lighting a cigarette1 or whistling a tune4 ,suppose whenever a man lit a cigarette1 a towering genie arose from the rings of smoke and followed him everywhere as a huge slave4 ,suppose whenever a man whistled a tune he 8drew an angel down0 and had to walk about forever with a seraph on a string4 ,these catastrophic images are but faint parallels to the earthquake consequences that ,nature has attached to sex2 and it is perfectly plain at the beginning that a man cannot be a free lover2 he is either a traitor or a tied man4 ,the second element that creates the family is that its consequences1 though colossal1 are gradual2 the cigarette produces a baby giant1 the song only an infant seraph4 ,thence arises the necessity for some prolonged system of co-operation2 and thence arises the family in its full educational sense4 ,it may be said that this institution of the home is the one anarchist institution4 ,that is to say1 it is older than law1 and stands outside the ,state4 ,by its nature it is refreshed or corrupted by indefinable forces of custom or kinship4 ,this is not to be understood as meaning that the ,state has no authority over families2 that ,state authority is invoked and ought to be invoked in many abnormal cases4 ,but in most normal cases of family joys and sorrows1 the ,state has no mode of entry4 ,it is not so much that the law should not interfere1 as that the law cannot4 ,just as there are fields too far off for law1 so there are fields too near2 as a man may see the ,north ,pole before he sees his own backbone4 ,small and near matters escape control at least as much as vast and remote ones2 and the real pains and pleasures of the family form a strong instance of this4 ,if a baby cries for the moon1 the policeman cannot procure the moon--but neither can he stop the baby4 ,creatures so close to each other as husband and wife1 or a mother and children1 have powers of making each other happy or miserable with which no public coercion can deal4 ,if a marriage could be dissolved every morning it would not give back his night's rest to a man kept awake by a curtain lecture2 and what is the good of giving a man a lot of power where he only wants a little peace8 ,the child must depend on the most imperfect mother2 the mother may be devoted to the most unworthy children2 in such relations legal revenges are vain4 ,even in the abnormal cases where the law may operate1 this difficulty is constantly found2 as many a bewildered magistrate knows4 ,he has to save children from starvation by taking away their breadwinner4 ,and he often has to break a wife's heart because her husband has already broken her head4 ,the ,state has no tool delicate enough to deracinate the rooted habits and tangled affections of the family2 the two sexes1 whether happy or unhappy1 are glued together too tightly for us to get the blade of a legal penknife in between them4 ,the man and the woman are one flesh--yes1 even when they are not one spirit4 ,man is a quadruped4 ,upon this ancient and anarchic intimacy1 types of government have little or no effect2 it is happy or unhappy1 by its own sexual wholesomeness and genial habit1 under the republic of ,switzerland or the despotism of ,siam4 ,even a republic in ,siam would not have done much towards freeing the ,siamese ,twins4 ,the problem is not in marriage1 but in sex2 and would be felt under the freest concubinage4 ,nevertheless1 the overwhelming mass of mankind has not believed in freedom in this matter1 but rather in a more or less lasting tie4 ,tribes and civilizations differ about the occasions on which we may loosen the bond1 but they all agree that there is a bond to be loosened1 not a mere universal detachment4 ,for the purposes of this book ,i am not concerned to discuss that mystical view of marriage in which ,i myself believe3 the great ,european tradition which has made marriage a sacrament4 ,it is enough to say here that heathen and ,christian alike have regarded marriage as a tie2 a thing not normally to be sundered4 ,briefly1 this human belief in a sexual bond rests on a principle of which the modern mind has made a very inadequate study4 ,it is1 perhaps1 most nearly paralleled by the principle of the second wind in walking4 ,the principle is this3 that in everything worth having1 even in every pleasure1 there is a point of pain or tedium that must be survived1 so that the pleasure may revive and endure4 ,the joy of battle comes after the first fear of death2 the joy of reading ,virgil comes after the bore of learning him2 the glow of the sea-bather comes after the icy shock of the sea bath2 and the success of the marriage comes after the failure of the honeymoon4 ,all human vows1 laws1 and contracts are so many ways of surviving with success this breaking point1 this instant of potential surrender4 ,in everything on this earth that is worth doing1 there is a stage when no one would do it1 except for necessity or honor4 ,it is then that the ,institution upholds a man and helps him on to the firmer ground ahead4 ,whether this solid fact of human nature is sufficient to justify the sublime dedication of ,christian marriage is quite an other matter1 it is amply sufficient to justify the general human feeling of marriage as a fixed thing1 dissolution of which is a fault or1 at least1 an ignominy4 ,the essential element is not so much duration as security4 ,two people must be tied together in order to do themselves justice2 for twenty minutes at a dance1 or for twenty years in a marriage ,in both cases the point is1 that if a man is bored in the first five minutes he must go on and force himself to be happy4 ,coercion is a kind of encouragement2 and anarchy 7or what some call liberty7 is essentially oppressive1 because it is essentially discouraging4 ,if we all floated in the air like bubbles1 free to drift anywhere at any instant1 the practical result would be that no one would have the courage to begin a conversation4 ,it would be so embarrassing to start a sentence in a friendly whisper1 and then have to shout the last half of it because the other party was floating away into the free and formless ether4 ,the two must hold each other to do justice to each other4 ,if ,americans can be divorced for 8incompatibility of temper0 ,i cannot conceive why they are not all divorced4 ,i have known many happy marriages1 but never a compatible one4 ,the whole aim of marriage is to fight through and survive the instant when incompatibility becomes unquestionable4 ,for a man and a woman1 as such1 are incompatible4 9999999999 ,,viii4 ,,the ,,wildness ,,of ,,domesticity ,in the course of this crude study we shall have to touch on what is called the problem of poverty1 especially the dehumanized poverty of modern industrialism4 ,but in this primary matter of the ideal the difficulty is not the problem of poverty1 but the problem of wealth4 ,it is the special psychology of leisure and luxury that falsifies life4 ,some experience of modern movements of the sort called 8advanced0 has led me to the conviction that they generally repose upon some experience peculiar to the rich4 ,it is so with that fallacy of free love of which ,i have already spoken2 the idea of sexuality as a string of episodes4 ,that implies a long holiday in which to get tired of one woman1 and a motor car in which to wander looking for others2 it also implies money for maintenances4 ,an omnibus conductor has hardly time to love his own wife1 let alone other people's4 ,and the success with which nuptial estrangements are depicted in modern 8problem plays0 is due to the fact that there is only one thing that a drama cannot depict--that is a hard day's work4 ,i could give many other instances of this plutocratic assumption behind progressive fads4 ,for instance1 there is a plutocratic assumption behind the phrase 8,why should woman be economically dependent upon man80 ,the answer is that among poor and practical people she isn't2 except in the sense in which he is dependent upon her4 ,a hunter has to tear his clothes2 there must be somebody to mend them4 ,a fisher has to catch fish2 there must be somebody to cook them4 ,it is surely quite clear that this modern notion that woman is a mere 8pretty clinging parasite10 8a plaything10 etc41 arose through the somber contemplation of some rich banking family1 in which the banker1 at least1 went to the city and pretended to do something1 while the banker's wife went to the ,park and did not pretend to do anything at all4 ,a poor man and his wife are a business partnership4 ,if one partner in a firm of publishers interviews the authors while the other interviews the clerks1 is one of them economically dependent8 ,was ,hodder a pretty parasite clinging to ,stoughton8 ,was ,marshall a mere plaything for ,snelgrove8 ,but of all the modern notions generated by mere wealth the worst is this3 the notion that domesticity is dull and tame4 ,inside the home 7they say7 is dead decorum and routine2 outside is adventure and variety4 ,this is indeed a rich man's opinion4 ,the rich man knows that his own house moves on vast and soundless wheels of wealth1 is run by regiments of servants1 by a swift and silent ritual4 ,on the other hand1 every sort of vagabondage of romance is open to him in the streets outside4 ,he has plenty of money and can afford to be a tramp4 ,his wildest adventure will end in a restaurant1 while the yokel's tamest adventure may end in a police-court4 ,if he smashes a window he can pay for it2 if he smashes a man he can pension him4 ,he can 7like the millionaire in the story7 buy an hotel to get a glass of gin4 ,and because he1 the luxurious man1 dictates the tone of nearly all 8advanced0 and 8progressive0 thought1 we have almost forgotten what a home really means to the overwhelming millions of mankind4 ,for the truth is1 that to the moderately poor the home is the only place of liberty4 ,nay1 it is the only place of anarchy4 ,it is the only spot on the earth where a man can alter arrangements suddenly1 make an experiment or indulge in a whim4 ,everywhere else he goes he must accept the strict rules of the shop1 inn1 club1 or museum that he happens to enter4 ,he can eat his meals on the floor in his own house if he likes4 ,i often do it myself2 it gives a curious1 childish1 poetic1 picnic feeling4 ,there would be considerable trouble if ,i tried to do it in an ,a4,b4,c4 tea-shop4 ,a man can wear a dressing gown and slippers in his house2 while ,i am sure that this would not be permitted at the ,savoy1 though ,i never actually tested the point4 ,if you go to a restaurant you must drink some of the wines on the wine list1 all of them if you insist1 but certainly some of them4 ,but if you have a house and garden you can try to make hollyhock tea or convolvulus wine if you like4 ,for a plain1 hard-working man the home is not the one tame place in the world of adventure4 ,it is the one wild place in the world of rules and set tasks4 ,the home is the one place where he can put the carpet on the ceiling or the slates on the floor if he wants to4 ,when a man spends every night staggering from bar to bar or from music-hall to music-hall1 we say that he is living an irregular life4 ,but he is not2 he is living a highly regular life1 under the dull1 and often oppressive1 laws of such places4 ,some times he is not allowed even to sit down in the bars2 and frequently he is not allowed to sing in the music-halls4 ,hotels may be defined as places where you are forced to dress2 and theaters may be defined as places where you are forbidden to smoke4 ,a man can only picnic at home4 ,now ,i take1 as ,i have said1 this small human omnipotence1 this possession of a definite cell or chamber of liberty1 as the working model for the present inquiry4 ,whether we can give every ,english man a free home of his own or not1 at least we should desire it2 and he desires it4 ,for the moment we speak of what he wants1 not of what he expects to get4 ,he wants1 for instance1 a separate house2 he does not want a semi-detached house4 ,he may be forced in the commercial race to share one wall with another man4 ,similarly he might be forced in a three-legged race to share one leg with another man2 but it is not so that he pictures himself in his dreams of elegance and liberty4 ,again1 he does not desire a flat4 ,he can eat and sleep and praise ,god in a flat2 he can eat and sleep and praise ,god in a railway train4 ,but a railway train is not a house1 because it is a house on wheels4 ,and a flat is not a house1 because it is a house on stilts4 ,an idea of earthy contact and foundation1 as well as an idea of separation and independence1 is a part of this instructive human picture4 ,i take1 then1 this one institution as a test4 ,as every normal man desires a woman1 and children born of a woman1 every normal man desires a house of his own to put them into4 ,he does not merely want a roof above him and a chair below him2 he wants an objective and visible kingdom2 a fire at which he can cook what food he likes1 a door he can open to what friends he chooses4 ,this is the normal appetite of men2 ,i do not say there are not exceptions4 ,there may be saints above the need and philanthropists below it4 ,opalstein1 now he is a duke1 may have got used to more than this2 and when he was a convict may have got used to less4 ,but the normality of the thing is enormous4 ,to give nearly everybody ordinary houses would please nearly everybody2 that is what ,i assert without apology4 ,now in modern ,england 7as you eagerly point out7 it is very difficult to give nearly everybody houses4 ,quite so2 ,i merely set up the desideratum2 and ask the reader to leave it standing there while he turns with me to a consideration of what really happens in the social wars of our time4 9999999999 ,,ix4 ,,history ,,of ,,hudge ,,and ,,gudge ,there is1 let us say1 a certain filthy rookery in ,hoxton1 dripping with disease and honeycombed with crime and promiscuity4 ,there are1 let us say1 two noble and courageous young men1 of pure intentions and 7if you prefer it7 noble birth2 let us call them ,hudge and ,gudge4 ,hudge1 let us say1 is of a bustling sort2 he points out that the people must at all costs be got out of this den2 he subscribes and collects money1 but he finds 7despite the large financial interests of the ,hudges7 that the thing will have to be done on the cheap if it is to be done on the spot4 ,he therefore1 runs up a row of tall bare tenements like beehives2 and soon has all the poor people bundled into their little brick cells1 which are certainly better than their old quarters1 in so far as they are weather proof1 well ventilated and supplied with clean water4 ,but ,gudge has a more delicate nature4 ,he feels a nameless something lacking in the little brick boxes2 he raises numberless objections2 he even assails the celebrated ,hudge ,report1 with the ,gudge ,minority ,report2 and by the end of a year or so has come to telling ,hudge heatedly that the people were much happier where they were before4 ,as the people preserve in both places precisely the same air of dazed amiability1 it is very difficult to find out which is right4 ,but at least one might safely say that no people ever liked stench or starvation as such1 but only some peculiar pleasures en tangled with them4 ,not so feels the sensitive ,gudge4 ,long before the final quarrel 7,hudge v4 ,gudge and ,another71 ,gudge has succeeded in persuading himself that slums and stinks are really very nice things2 that the habit of sleeping fourteen in a room is what has made our ,england great2 and that the smell of open drains is absolutely essential to the rearing of a viking breed4 ,but1 meanwhile1 has there been no degeneration in ,hudge8 ,alas1 ,i fear there has4 ,those maniacally ugly buildings which he originally put up as unpretentious sheds barely to shelter human life1 grow every day more and more lovely to his deluded eye4 ,things he would never have dreamed of defending1 except as crude necessities1 things like common kitchens or infamous asbestos stoves1 begin to shine quite sacredly before him1 merely because they reflect the wrath of ,gudge4 ,he maintains1 with the aid of eager little books by ,socialists1 that man is really happier in a hive than in a house4 ,the practical difficulty of keeping total strangers out of your bedroom he describes as ,brotherhood2 and the necessity for climbing twenty-three flights of cold stone stairs1 ,i dare say he calls ,effort4 ,the net result of their philanthropic adventure is this3 that one has come to defending indefensible slums and still more indefensible slum-landlords1 while the other has come to treating as divine the sheds and pipes which he only meant as desperate4 ,gudge is now a corrupt and apoplectic old ,tory in the ,carlton ,club2 if you mention poverty to him he roars at you in a thick1 hoarse voice something that is conjectured to be 8,do #8em good60 ,nor is ,hudge more happy2 for he is a lean vegetarian with a gray1 pointed beard and an unnaturally easy smile1 who goes about telling everybody that at last we shall all sleep in one universal bedroom2 and he lives in a ,garden ,city1 like one forgotten of ,god4 ,such is the lamentable history of ,hudge and ,gudge2 which ,i merely introduce as a type of an endless and exasperating misunderstanding which is always occurring in modern ,england4 ,to get men out of a rookery men are put into a tenement2 and at the beginning the healthy human soul loathes them both4 ,a man's first desire is to get away as far as possible from the rookery1 even should his mad course lead him to a model dwelling4 ,the second desire is1 naturally1 to get away from the model dwelling1 even if it should lead a man back to the rookery4 ,but ,i am neither a ,hudgian nor a ,gudgian2 and ,i think the mistakes of these two famous and fascinating persons arose from one simple fact4 ,they arose from the fact that neither ,hudge nor ,gudge had ever thought for an instant what sort of house a man might probably like for himself4 ,in short1 they did not begin with the ideal2 and1 therefore1 were not practical politicians4 ,we may now return to the purpose of our awkward parenthesis about the praise of the future and the failures of the past4 ,a house of his own being the obvious ideal for every man1 we may now ask 7taking this need as typical of all such needs7 why he hasn't got it2 and whether it is in any philosophical sense his own fault4 ,now1 ,i think that in some philosophical sense it is his own fault1 ,i think in a yet more philosophical sense it is the fault of his philosophy4 ,and this is what ,i have now to attempt to explain4 ,burke1 a fine rhetorician1 who rarely faced realities1 said1 ,i think1 that an ,englishman's house is his castle4 ,this is honestly entertaining2 for as it happens the ,englishman is almost the only man in ,europe whose house is not his castle4 ,nearly everywhere else exists the assumption of peasant proprietorship2 that a poor man may be a landlord1 though he is only lord of his own land4 ,making the landlord and the tenant the same person has certain trivial advantages1 as that the tenant pays no rent1 while the landlord does a little work4 ,but ,i am not concerned with the defense of small proprietorship1 but merely with the fact that it exists almost everywhere except in ,england4 ,it is also true1 however1 that this estate of small possession is attacked everywhere today2 it has never existed among ourselves1 and it may be destroyed among our neighbors4 ,we have1 therefore1 to ask ourselves what it is in human affairs generally1 and in this domestic ideal in particular1 that has really ruined the natural human creation1 especially in this country4 ,man has always lost his way4 ,he has been a tramp ever since ,eden2 but he always knew1 or thought he knew1 what he was looking for4 ,every man has a house somewhere in the elaborate cosmos2 his house waits for him waist deep in slow ,norfolk rivers or sunning itself upon ,sussex downs4 ,man has always been looking for that home which is the subject matter of this book4 ,but in the bleak and blinding hail of skepticism to which he has been now so long subjected1 he has begun for the first time to be chilled1 not merely in his hopes1 but in his desires4 ,for the first time in history he begins really to doubt the object of his wanderings on the earth4 ,he has always lost his way2 but now he has lost his address4 ,under the pressure of certain upper-class philosophies 7or in other words1 under the pressure of ,hudge and ,gudge7 the average man has really become bewildered about the goal of his efforts2 and his efforts1 therefore1 grow feebler and feebler4 ,his simple notion of having a home of his own is derided as bourgeois1 as sentimental1 or as despicably ,christian4 ,under various verbal forms he is recommended to go on to the streets--which is called ,individualism2 or to the work-house--which is called ,collectivism4 ,we shall consider this process somewhat more carefully in a moment4 ,but it may be said here that ,hudge and ,gudge1 or the governing class generally1 will never fail for lack of some modern phrase to cover their ancient predominance4 ,the great lords will refuse the ,english peasant his three acres and a cow on advanced grounds1 if they cannot refuse it longer on reactionary grounds4 ,they will deny him the three acres on grounds of ,state ,ownership4 ,they will forbid him the cow on grounds of humanitarianism4 ,and this brings us to the ultimate analysis of this singular influence that has prevented doctrinal demands by the ,english people4 ,there are1 ,i believe1 some who still deny that ,england is governed by an oligarchy4 ,it is quite enough for me to know that a man might have gone to sleep some thirty years ago over the day's newspaper and woke up last week over the later newspaper1 and fancied he was reading about the same people4 ,in one paper he would have found a ,lord ,robert ,cecil1 a ,mr4 ,gladstone1 a ,mr4 ,lyttleton1 a ,churchill1 a ,chamberlain1 a ,trevelyan1 an ,acland4 ,in the other paper he would find a ,lord ,robert ,cecil1 a ,mr4 ,gladstone1 a ,mr4 ,lyttleton1 a ,churchill1 a ,chamberlain1 a ,trevelyan1 an ,acland4 ,if this is not being governed by families ,i cannot imagine what it is4 ,i suppose it is being governed by extraordinary democratic coincidences4 9999999999 ,x4 ,,oppression ,,by ,,optimism ,but we are not here concerned with the nature and existence of the aristocracy1 but with the origin of its peculiar power1 why is it the last of the true oligarchies of ,europe2 and why does there seem no very immediate prospect of our seeing the end of it8 ,the explanation is simple though it remains strangely unnoticed4 ,the friends of aristocracy often praise it for preserving ancient and gracious traditions4 ,the enemies of aristocracy often blame it for clinging to cruel or antiquated customs4 ,both its enemies and its friends are wrong4 ,generally speaking the aristocracy does not preserve either good or bad traditions2 it does not preserve anything except game4 ,who would dream of looking among aristocrats anywhere for an old custom8 ,one might as well look for an old costume6 ,the god of the aristocrats is not tradition1 but fashion1 which is the opposite of tradition4 ,if you wanted to find an old-world ,norwegian head-dress1 would you look for it in the ,scandinavian ,smart ,set8 ,no2 the aristocrats never have customs2 at the best they have habits1 like the animals4 ,only the mob has customs4 ,the real power of the ,english aristocrats has lain in exactly the opposite of tradition4 ,the simple key to the power of our upper classes is this3 that they have always kept carefully on the side of what is called ,progress4 ,they have always been up to date1 and this comes quite easy to an aristocracy4 ,for the aristocracy are the supreme instances of that frame of mind of which we spoke just now4 ,novelty is to them a luxury verging on a necessity4 ,they1 above all1 are so bored with the past and with the present1 that they gape1 with a horrible hunger1 for the future4 ,but whatever else the great lords forgot they never forgot that it was their business to stand for the new things1 for whatever was being most talked about among university dons or fussy financiers4 ,thus they were on the side of the ,reformation against the ,church1 of the ,whigs against the ,stuarts1 of the ,baconian science against the old philosophy1 of the manufacturing system against the operatives1 and 7to-day7 of the increased power of the ,state against the old-fashioned individualists4 ,in short1 the rich are always modern2 it is their business4 ,but the immediate effect of this fact upon the question we are studying is somewhat singular4 ,in each of the separate holes or quandaries in which the ordinary ,englishman has been placed1 he has been told that his situation is1 for some particular reason1 all for the best4 ,he woke up one fine morning and discovered that the public things1 which for eight hundred years he had used at once as inns and sanctuaries1 had all been suddenly and savagely abolished1 to increase the private wealth of about six or seven men4 ,one would think he might have been annoyed at that2 in many places he was1 and was put down by the soldiery4 ,but it was not merely the army that kept him quiet4 ,he was kept quiet by the sages as well as the soldiers2 the six or seven men who took away the inns of the poor told him that they were not doing it for themselves1 but for the religion of the future1 the great dawn of ,protestantism and truth4 ,so whenever a seventeenth century noble was caught pulling down a peasant's fence and stealing his field1 the noble pointed excitedly at the face of ,charles ,i or ,james ,,ii 7which at that moment1 perhaps1 wore a cross expression7 and thus diverted the simple peasant's attention4 ,the great ,puritan lords created the ,commonwealth1 and destroyed the common land4 ,they saved their poorer countrymen from the disgrace of paying ,ship ,money1 by taking from them the plow money and spade money which they were doubtless too weak to guard4 ,a fine old ,english rhyme has immortalized this easy aristocratic habit-- ,you prosecute the man or woman ,who steals the goose from off the common1 ,but leave the larger felon loose ,who steals the common from the goose4 ,but here1 as in the case of the monasteries1 we confront the strange problem of submission4 ,if they stole the common from the goose1 one can only say that he was a great goose to stand it4 ,the truth is that they reasoned with the goose2 they explained to him that all this was needed to get the ,stuart fox over seas4 ,so in the nineteenth century the great nobles who became mine-owners and railway directors earnestly assured everybody that they did not do this from preference1 but owing to a newly discovered ,economic ,law4 ,so the prosperous politicians of our own generation introduce bills to prevent poor mothers from going about with their own babies2 or they calmly forbid their tenants to drink beer in public inns4 ,but this insolence is not 7as you would suppose7 howled at by everybody as outrageous feudalism4 ,it is gently rebuked as ,socialism4 ,for an aristocracy is always progressive2 it is a form of going the pace4 ,their parties grow later and later at night2 for they are trying to live to-morrow4 9999999999 ,,xi4 ,,the ,,homelessness ,,of ,,jones ,thus the ,future of which we spoke at the beginning has 7in ,england at least7 always been the ally of tyranny4 ,the ordinary ,englishman has been duped out of his old possessions1 such as they were1 and always in the name of progress4 ,the destroyers of the abbeys took away his bread and gave him a stone1 assuring him that it was a precious stone1 the white pebble of the ,lord's elect4 ,they took away his maypole and his original rural life and promised him instead the ,golden ,age of ,peace and ,commerce inaugurated at the ,crystal ,palace4 ,and now they are taking away the little that remains of his dignity as a householder and the head of a family1 promising him instead ,utopias which are called 7appropriately enough7 8,anticipations0 or 8,news from ,nowhere40 ,we come back1 in fact1 to the main feature which has already been mentioned4 ,the past is communal3 the future must be individualist4 ,in the past are all the evils of democracy1 variety and violence and doubt1 but the future is pure despotism1 for the future is pure caprice4 ,yesterday1 ,i know ,i was a human fool1 but to-morrow ,i can easily be the ,superman4 ,the modern ,englishman1 however1 is like a man who should be perpetually kept out1 for one reason after another1 from the house in which he had meant his married life to begin4 ,this man 7,jones let us call him7 has always desired the divinely ordinary things2 he has married for love1 he has chosen or built a small house that fits like a coat2 he is ready to be a great grandfather and a local god4 ,and just as he is moving in1 something goes wrong4 ,some tyranny1 personal or political1 suddenly debars him from the home2 and he has to take his meals in the front garden4 ,a passing philosopher 7who is also1 by a mere coincidence1 the man who turned him out7 pauses1 and leaning elegantly on the railings1 explains to him that he is now living that bold life upon the bounty of nature which will be the life of the sublime future4 ,he finds life in the front garden more bold than bountiful1 and has to move into mean lodgings in the next spring4 ,the philosopher 7who turned him out71 happening to call at these lodgings1 with the probable intention of raising the rent1 stops to explain to him that he is now in the real life of mercantile endeavor2 the economic struggle between him and the landlady is the only thing out of which1 in the sublime future1 the wealth of nations can come4 ,he is defeated in the economic struggle1 and goes to the workhouse4 ,the philosopher who turned him out 7happening at that very moment to be inspecting the workhouse7 assures him that he is now at last in that golden republic which is the goal of mankind2 he is in an equal1 scientific1 ,socialistic commonwealth1 owned by the ,state and ruled by public officers2 in fact1 the commonwealth of the sublime future4 ,nevertheless1 there are signs that the irrational ,jones still dreams at night of this old idea of having an ordinary home4 ,he asked for so little1 and he has been offered so much4 ,he has been offered bribes of worlds and systems2 he has been offered ,eden and ,utopia and the ,new ,jerusalem1 and he only wanted a house2 and that has been refused him4 ,such an apologue is literally no exaggeration of the facts of ,english history4 ,the rich did literally turn the poor out of the old guest house on to the road1 briefly telling them that it was the road of progress4 ,they did literally force them into factories and the modern wage-slavery1 assuring them all the time that this was the only way to wealth and civilization4 ,just as they had dragged the rustic from the convent food and ale by saying that the streets of heaven were paved with gold1 so now they dragged him from the village food and ale by telling him that the streets of ,london were paved with gold4 ,as he entered the gloomy porch of ,puritanism1 so he entered the gloomy porch of ,industrialism1 being told that each of them was the gate of the future4 ,hitherto he has only gone from prison to prison1 nay1 into darkening prisons1 for ,calvinism opened one small window upon heaven4 ,and now he is asked1 in the same educated and authoritative tones1 to enter another dark porch1 at which he has to surrender1 into unseen hands1 his children1 his small possessions and all the habits of his fathers4 ,whether this last opening be in truth any more inviting than the old openings of ,puritanism and ,industrialism can be discussed later4 ,but there can be little doubt1 ,i think1 that if some form of ,collectivism is imposed upon ,england it will be imposed1 as everything else has been1 by an instructed political class upon a people partly apathetic and partly hypnotized4 ,the aristocracy will be as ready to 8administer0 ,collectivism as they were to administer ,puritanism or ,manchesterism2 in some ways such a centralized political power is necessarily attractive to them4 ,it will not be so hard as some innocent ,socialists seem to suppose to induce the ,honorable ,tomnoddy to take over the milk supply as well as the stamp supply--at an increased salary4 ,mr4 ,bernard ,shaw has remarked that rich men are better than poor men on parish councils because they are free from 8financial timidity40 ,now1 the ,english ruling class is quite free from financial timidity4 ,the ,duke of ,sussex will be quite ready to be ,administrator of ,sussex at the same screw4 ,sir ,william ,harcourt1 that typical aristocrat1 put it quite correctly4 8,we0 7that is1 the aristocracy7 8are all ,socialists now40 ,but this is not the essential note on which ,i desire to end4 ,my main contention is that1 whether necessary or not1 both ,industrialism and ,collectivism have been accepted as necessities--not as naked ideals or desires4 ,nobody liked the ,manchester ,school2 it was endured as the only way of producing wealth4 ,nobody likes the ,marxian school2 it is endured as the only way of preventing poverty4 ,nobody's real heart is in the idea of preventing a free man from owning his own farm1 or an old woman from cultivating her own garden1 any more than anybody's real heart was in the heartless battle of the machines4 ,the purpose of this chapter is sufficiently served in indicating that this proposal also is a pis aller1 a desperate second best--like teetotalism4 ,i do not propose to prove here that ,socialism is a poison2 it is enough if ,i maintain that it is a medicine and not a wine4 ,the idea of private property universal but private1 the idea of families free but still families1 of domesticity democratic but still domestic1 of one man one house--this remains the real vision and magnet of mankind4 ,the world may accept something more official and general1 less human and intimate4 ,but the world will be like a broken-hearted woman who makes a humdrum marriage because she may not make a happy one2 ,socialism may be the world's deliverance1 but it is not the world's desire4 ,,part ,,two4 ,,imperialism1 ,,or ,,the ,,mistake ,,about ,,man ,i4 ,,the ,,charm ,,of ,,jingoism ,i have cast about widely to find a title for this section2 and ,i confess that the word 8,imperialism0 is a clumsy version of my meaning4 ,but no other word came nearer2 8,militarism0 would have been even more misleading1 and 8,the ,superman0 makes nonsense of any discussion that he enters4 ,perhaps1 upon the whole1 the word 8,caesarism0 would have been better2 but ,i desire a popular word2 and ,imperialism 7as the reader will perceive7 does cover for the most part the men and theories that ,i mean to discuss4 ,this small confusion is increased1 however1 by the fact that ,i do also disbelieve in ,imperialism in its popular sense1 as a mode or theory of the patriotic sentiment of this country4 ,but popular ,imperialism in ,england has very little to do with the sort of ,caesarean ,imperialism ,i wish to sketch4 ,i differ from the ,colonial idealism of ,rhodes' and ,kipling2 but ,i do not think1 as some of its opponents do1 that it is an insolent creation of ,english harshness and rapacity4 ,imperialism1 ,i think1 is a fiction created1 not by ,english hardness1 but by ,english softness2 nay1 in a sense1 even by ,english kindness4 ,the reasons for believing in ,australia are mostly as sentimental as the most sentimental reasons for believing in heaven4 ,new ,south ,wales is quite literally regarded as a place where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest2 that is1 a paradise for uncles who have turned dishonest and for nephews who are born tired4 ,british ,columbia is in strict sense a fairyland1 it is a world where a magic and irrational luck is supposed to attend the youngest sons4 ,this strange optimism about the ends of the earth is an ,english weakness2 but to show that it is not a coldness or a harshness it is quite sufficient to say that no one shared it more than that gigantic ,english sentimentalist--the great ,charles ,dickens4 ,the end of 8,david ,copperfield0 is unreal not merely because it is an optimistic ending1 but because it is an ,imperialistic ending4 ,the decorous ,british happiness planned out for ,david ,copperfield and ,agnes would be embarrassed by the perpetual presence of the hopeless tragedy of ,emily1 or the more hopeless farce of ,micawber4 ,therefore1 both ,emily and ,micawber are shipped off to a vague colony where changes come over them with no conceivable cause1 except the climate4 ,the tragic woman becomes contented and the comic man becomes responsible1 solely as the result of a sea voyage and the first sight of a kangaroo4 ,to ,imperialism in the light political sense1 therefore1 my only objection is that it is an illusion of comfort2 that an ,empire whose heart is failing should be specially proud of the extremities1 is to me no more sublime a fact than that an old dandy whose brain is gone should still be proud of his legs4 ,it consoles men for the evident ugliness and apathy of ,england with legends of fair youth and heroic strenuousness in distant continents and islands4 ,a man can sit amid the squalor of ,seven ,dials and feel that life is innocent and godlike in the bush or on the veldt4 ,just so a man might sit in the squalor of ,seven ,dials and feel that life was innocent and godlike in ,brixton and ,surbiton4 ,brixton and ,surbiton are 8new02 they are expanding2 they are 8nearer to nature10 in the sense that they have eaten up nature mile by mile4 ,the only objection is the objection of fact4 ,the young men of ,brixton are not young giants4 ,the lovers of ,surbiton are not all pagan poets1 singing with the sweet energy of the spring4 ,nor are the people of the ,colonies when you meet them young giants or pagan poets4 ,they are mostly ,cockneys who have lost their last music of real things by getting out of the sound of ,bow ,bells4 ,mr4 ,rudyard ,kipling1 a man of real though decadent genius1 threw a theoretic glamour over them which is already fading4 ,mr4 ,kipling is1 in a precise and rather startling sense1 the exception that proves the rule4 ,for he has imagination1 of an oriental and cruel kind1 but he has it1 not because he grew up in a new country1 but precisely because he grew up in the oldest country upon earth4 ,he is rooted in a past--an ,asiatic past4 ,he might never have written 8,kabul ,river0 if he had been born in ,melbourne4 ,i say frankly1 therefore 7lest there should be any air of evasion71 that ,imperialism in its common patriotic pretensions appears to me both weak and perilous4 ,it is the attempt of a ,european country to create a kind of sham ,europe which it can dominate1 instead of the real ,europe1 which it can only share4 ,it is a love of living with one's inferiors4 ,the notion of restoring the ,roman ,empire by oneself and for oneself is a dream that has haunted every ,christian nation in a different shape and in almost every shape as a snare4 ,the ,spanish are a consistent and conservative people2 therefore they embodied that attempt at ,empire in long and lingering dynasties4 ,the ,french are a violent people1 and therefore they twice conquered that ,empire by violence of arms4 ,the ,english are above all a poetical and optimistic people2 and therefore their ,empire is something vague and yet sympathetic1 something distant and yet dear4 ,but this dream of theirs of being powerful in the uttermost places1 though a native weakness1 is still a weakness in them2 much more of a weakness than gold was to ,spain or glory to ,napoleon4 ,if ever we were in collision with our real brothers and rivals we should leave all this fancy out of account4 ,we should no more dream of pitting ,australian armies against ,german than of pitting ,tasmanian sculpture against ,french4 ,i have thus explained1 lest anyone should accuse me of concealing an unpopular attitude1 why ,i do not believe in ,imperialism as commonly understood4 ,i think it not merely an occasional wrong to other peoples1 but a continuous feebleness1 a running sore1 in my own4 ,but it is also true that ,i have dwelt on this ,imperialism that is an amiable delusion partly in order to show how different it is from the deeper1 more sinister and yet more persuasive thing that ,i have been forced to call ,imperialism for the convenience of this chapter4 ,in order to get to the root of this evil and quite un-,english ,imperialism we must cast back and begin anew with a more general discussion of the first needs of human intercourse4 9999999999 ,,ii4 ,,wisdom ,,and ,,the ,,weather ,it is admitted1 one may hope1 that common things are never commonplace4 ,birth is covered with curtains precisely because it is a staggering and monstrous prodigy4 ,death and first love1 though they happen to everybody1 can stop one's heart with the very thought of them4 ,but while this is granted1 something further may be claimed4 ,it is not merely true that these universal things are strange2 it is moreover true that they are subtle4 ,in the last analysis most common things will be found to be highly complicated4 ,some men of science do indeed get over the difficulty by dealing only with the easy part of it3 thus1 they will call first love the instinct of sex1 and the awe of death the instinct of self-preservation4 ,but this is only getting over the difficulty of describing peacock green by calling it blue4 ,there is blue in it4 ,that there is a strong physical element in both romance and the ,memento ,mori makes them if possible more baffling than if they had been wholly intellectual4 ,no man could say exactly how much his sexuality was colored by a clean love of beauty1 or by the mere boyish itch for irrevocable adventures1 like running away to sea4 ,no man could say how far his animal dread of the end was mixed up with mystical traditions touching morals and religion4 ,it is exactly because these things are animal1 but not quite animal1 that the dance of all the difficulties begins4 ,the materialists analyze the easy part1 deny the hard part and go home to their tea4 ,it is complete error to suppose that because a thing is vulgar therefore it is not refined2 that is1 subtle and hard to define4 ,a drawing-room song of my youth which began 8,in the gloaming1 ,o1 my darling10 was vulgar enough as a song2 but the connection between human passion and the twilight is none the less an exquisite and even inscrutable thing4 ,or to take another obvious instance3 the jokes about a mother-in-law are scarcely delicate1 but the problem of a mother-in-law is extremely delicate4 ,a mother-in-law is subtle because she is a thing like the twilight4 ,she is a mystical blend of two inconsistent things--law and a mother4 ,the caricatures misrepresent her2 but they arise out of a real human enigma4 8,comic ,cuts0 deals with the difficulty wrongly1 but it would need ,george ,meredith at his best to deal with the difficulty rightly4 ,the nearest statement of the problem perhaps is this3 it is not that a mother-in-law must be nasty1 but that she must be very nice4 ,but it is best perhaps to take in illustration some daily custom we have all heard despised as vulgar or trite4 ,take1 for the sake of argument1 the custom of talking about the weather4 ,stevenson calls it 8the very nadir and scoff of good conversationalists40 ,now there are very deep reasons for talking about the weather1 reasons that are delicate as well as deep2 they lie in layer upon layer of stratified sagacity4 ,first of all it is a gesture of primeval worship4 ,the sky must be invoked2 and to begin everything with the weather is a sort of pagan way of beginning everything with prayer4 ,jones and ,brown talk about the weather3 but so do ,milton and ,shelley4 ,then it is an expression of that elementary idea in politeness--equality4 ,for the very word politeness is only the ,greek for citizenship4 ,the word politeness is akin to the word policeman3 a charming thought4 ,properly understood1 the citizen should be more polite than the gentleman2 perhaps the policeman should be the most courtly and elegant of the three4 ,but all good manners must obviously begin with the sharing of something in a simple style4 ,two men should share an umbrella2 if they have not got an umbrella1 they should at least share the rain1 with all its rich potentialities of wit and philosophy4 8,for ,he maketh ,his sun to shine44440 ,this is the second element in the weather2 its recognition of human equality in that we all have our hats under the dark blue spangled umbrella of the universe4 ,arising out of this is the third wholesome strain in the custom2 ,i mean that it begins with the body and with our inevitable bodily brotherhood4 ,all true friendliness begins with fire and food and drink and the recognition of rain or frost4 ,those who will not begin at the bodily end of things are already prigs and may soon be ,christian ,scientists4 ,each human soul has in a sense to enact for itself the gigantic humility of the ,incarnation4 ,every man must descend into the flesh to meet mankind4 ,briefly1 in the mere observation 8a fine day0 there is the whole great human idea of comradeship4 ,now1 pure comradeship is another of those broad and yet bewildering things4 ,we all enjoy it2 yet when we come to talk about it we almost always talk nonsense1 chiefly because we suppose it to be a simpler affair than it is4 ,it is simple to conduct2 but it is by no means simple to analyze4 ,comradeship is at the most only one half of human life2 the other half is ,love1 a thing so different that one might fancy it had been made for another universe4 ,and ,i do not mean mere sex love2 any kind of concentrated passion1 maternal love1 or even the fiercer kinds of friendship are in their nature alien to pure comradeship4 ,both sides are essential to life2 and both are known in differing degrees to everybody of every age or sex4 ,but very broadly speaking it may still be said that women stand for the dignity of love and men for the dignity of comradeship4 ,i mean that the institution would hardly be expected if the males of the tribe did not mount guard over it4 ,the affections in which women excel have so much more authority and intensity that pure comradeship would be washed away if it were not rallied and guarded in clubs1 corps1 colleges1 banquets and regiments4 ,most of us have heard the voice in which the hostess tells her husband not to sit too long over the cigars4 ,it is the dreadful voice of ,love1 seeking to destroy ,comradeship4 ,all true comradeship has in it those three elements which ,i have remarked in the ordinary exclamation about the weather4 ,first1 it has a sort of broad philosophy like the common sky1 emphasizing that we are all under the same cosmic conditions4 ,we are all in the same boat1 the 8winged rock0 of ,mr4 ,herbert ,trench4 ,secondly1 it recognizes this bond as the essential one2 for comradeship is simply humanity seen in that one aspect in which men are really equal4 ,the old writers were entirely wise when they talked of the equality of men2 but they were also very wise in not mentioning women4 ,women are always authoritarian2 they are always above or below2 that is why marriage is a sort of poetical see-saw4 ,there are only three things in the world that women do not understand2 and they are ,liberty1 ,equality1 and ,fraternity4 ,but men 7a class little understood in the modern world7 find these things the breath of their nostrils2 and our most learned ladies will not even begin to understand them until they make allowance for this kind of cool camaraderie4 ,lastly1 it contains the third quality of the weather1 the insistence upon the body and its indispensable satisfaction4 ,no one has even begun to understand comradeship who does not accept with it a certain hearty eagerness in eating1 drinking1 or smoking1 an uproarious materialism which to many women appears only hoggish4 ,you may call the thing an orgy or a sacrament2 it is certainly an essential4 ,it is at root a resistance to the superciliousness of the individual4 ,nay1 its very swaggering and howling are humble4 ,in the heart of its rowdiness there is a sort of mad modesty2 a desire to melt the separate soul into the mass of unpretentious masculinity4 ,it is a clamorous confession of the weakness of all flesh4 ,no man must be superior to the things that are common to men4 ,this sort of equality must be bodily and gross and comic4 ,not only are we all in the same boat1 but we are all seasick4 ,the word comradeship just now promises to become as fatuous as the word 8affinity40 ,there are clubs of a ,socialist sort where all the members1 men and women1 call each other 8,comrade40 ,i have no serious emotions1 hostile or otherwise1 about this particular habit3 at the worst it is conventionality1 and at the best flirtation4 ,i am convinced here only to point out a rational principle4 ,if you choose to lump all flowers together1 lilies and dahlias and tulips and chrysanthemums and call them all daisies1 you will find that you have spoiled the very fine word daisy4 ,if you choose to call every human attachment comradeship1 if you include under that name the respect of a youth for a venerable prophetess1 the interest of a man in a beautiful woman who baffles him1 the pleasure of a philosophical old fogy in a girl who is impudent and innocent1 the end of the meanest quarrel or the beginning of the most mountainous love2 if you are going to call all these comradeship1 you will gain nothing1 you will only lose a word4 ,daisies are obvious and universal and open2 but they are only one kind of flower4 ,comradeship is obvious and universal and open2 but it is only one kind of affection2 it has characteristics that would destroy any other kind4 ,anyone who has known true comradeship in a club or in a regiment1 knows that it is impersonal4 ,there is a pedantic phrase used in debating clubs which is strictly true to the masculine emotion2 they call it 8speaking to the question40 ,women speak to each other2 men speak to the subject they are speaking about4 ,many an honest man has sat in a ring of his five best friends under heaven and forgotten who was in the room while he explained some system4 ,this is not peculiar to intellectual men2 men are all theoretical1 whether they are talking about ,god or about golf4 ,men are all impersonal2 that is to say1 republican4 ,no one remembers after a really good talk who has said the good things4 ,every man speaks to a visionary multitude2 a mystical cloud1 that is called the club4 ,it is obvious that this cool and careless quality which is essential to the collective affection of males involves disadvantages and dangers4 ,it leads to spitting2 it leads to coarse speech2 it must lead to these things so long as it is honorable2 comradeship must be in some degree ugly4 ,the moment beauty is mentioned in male friendship1 the nostrils are stopped with the smell of abominable things4 ,friendship must be physically dirty if it is to be morally clean4 ,it must be in its shirt sleeves4 ,the chaos of habits that always goes with males when left entirely to themselves has only one honorable cure2 and that is the strict discipline of a monastery4 ,anyone who has seen our unhappy young idealists in ,east ,end ,settlements losing their collars in the wash and living on tinned salmon will fully understand why it was decided by the wisdom of ,st4 ,bernard or ,st4 ,benedict1 that if men were to live without women1 they must not live without rules4 ,something of the same sort of artificial exactitude1 of course1 is obtained in an army2 and an army also has to be in many ways monastic2 only that it has celibacy without chastity4 ,but these things do not apply to normal married men4 ,these have a quite sufficient restraint on their instinctive anarchy in the savage common-sense of the other sex4 ,there is only one very timid sort of man that is not afraid of women4 9999999999 ,,iii4 ,,the ,,common ,,vision ,now this masculine love of an open and level camaraderie is the life within all democracies and attempts to govern by debate2 without it the republic would be a dead formula4 ,even as it is1 of course1 the spirit of democracy frequently differs widely from the letter1 and a pothouse is often a better test than a ,parliament4 ,democracy in its human sense is not arbitrament by the majority2 it is not even arbitrament by everybody4 ,it can be more nearly defined as arbitrament by anybody4 ,i mean that it rests on that club habit of taking a total stranger for granted1 of assuming certain things to be inevitably common to yourself and him4 ,only the things that anybody may be presumed to hold have the full authority of democracy4 ,look out of the window and notice the first man who walks by4 ,the ,liberals may have swept ,england with an over-whelming majority2 but you would not stake a button that the man is a ,liberal4 ,the ,bible may be read in all schools and respected in all law courts2 but you would not bet a straw that he believes in the ,bible4 ,but you would bet your week's wages1 let us say1 that he believes in wearing clothes4 ,you would bet that he believes that physical courage is a fine thing1 or that parents have authority over children4 ,of course1 he might be the millionth man who does not believe these things2 if it comes to that1 he might be the ,bearded ,lady dressed up as a man4 ,but these prodigies are quite a different thing from any mere calculation of numbers4 ,people who hold these views are not a minority1 but a monstrosity4 ,but of these universal dogmas that have full democratic authority the only test is this test of anybody4 ,what you would observe before any newcomer in a tavern--that is the real ,english law4 ,the first man you see from the window1 he is the ,king of ,england4 ,the decay of taverns1 which is but a part of the general decay of democracy1 has undoubtedly weakened this masculine spirit of equality4 ,i remember that a roomful of ,socialists literally laughed when ,i told them that there were no two nobler words in all poetry than ,public ,house4 ,they thought it was a joke4 ,why they should think it a joke1 since they want to make all houses public houses1 ,i cannot imagine4 ,but if anyone wishes to see the real rowdy egalitarianism which is necessary 7to males1 at least7 he can find it as well as anywhere in the great old tavern disputes which come down to us in such books as ,boswell's ,johnson4 ,it is worth while to mention that one name especially because the modern world in its morbidity has done it a strange injustice4 ,the demeanor of ,johnson1 it is said1 was 8harsh and despotic40 ,it was occasionally harsh1 but it was never despotic4 ,johnson was not in the least a despot2 ,johnson was a demagogue1 he shouted against a shouting crowd4 ,the very fact that he wrangled with other people is proof that other people were allowed to wrangle with him4 ,his very brutality was based on the idea of an equal scrimmage1 like that of football4 ,it is strictly true that he bawled and banged the table because he was a modest man4 ,he was honestly afraid of being overwhelmed or even overlooked4 ,addison had exquisite manners and was the king of his company2 he was polite to everybody2 but superior to everybody2 therefore he has been handed down forever in the immortal insult of ,pope-- 8,like ,cato1 give his little ,senate laws ,and sit attentive to his own applause40 ,johnson1 so far from being king of his company1 was a sort of ,irish ,member in his own ,parliament4 ,addison was a courteous superior and was hated4 ,johnson was an insolent equal and therefore was loved by all who knew him1 and handed down in a marvellous book1 which is one of the mere miracles of love4 ,this doctrine of equality is essential to conversation2 so much may be admitted by anyone who knows what conversation is4 ,once arguing at a table in a tavern the most famous man on earth would wish to be obscure1 so that his brilliant remarks might blaze like the stars on the background of his obscurity4 ,to anything worth calling a man nothing can be conceived more cold or cheerless than to be king of your company4 ,but it may be said that in masculine sports and games1 other than the great game of debate1 there is definite emulation and eclipse4 ,there is indeed emulation1 but this is only an ardent sort of equality4 ,games are competitive1 because that is the only way of making them exciting4 ,but if anyone doubts that men must forever return to the ideal of equality1 it is only necessary to answer that there is such a thing as a handicap4 ,if men exulted in mere superiority1 they would seek to see how far such superiority could go2 they would be glad when one strong runner came in miles ahead of all the rest4 ,but what men like is not the triumph of superiors1 but the struggle of equals2 and1 therefore1 they introduce even into their competitive sports an artificial equality4 ,it is sad to think how few of those who arrange our sporting handicaps can be supposed with any probability to realize that they are abstract and even severe republicans4 ,no2 the real objection to equality and self-rule has nothing to do with any of these free and festive aspects of mankind2 all men are democrats when they are happy4 ,the philosophic opponent of democracy would substantially sum up his position by saying that it 8will not work40 ,before going further1 ,i will register in passing a protest against the assumption that working is the one test of humanity4 ,heaven does not work2 it plays4 ,men are most themselves when they are free2 and if ,i find that men are snobs in their work but democrats on their holidays1 ,i shall take the liberty to believe their holidays4 ,but it is this question of work which really perplexes the question of equality2 and it is with that that we must now deal4 ,perhaps the truth can be put most pointedly thus3 that democracy has one real enemy1 and that is civilization4 ,those utilitarian miracles which science has made are anti-democratic1 not so much in their perversion1 or even in their practical result1 as in their primary shape and purpose4 ,the ,frame-,breaking ,rioters were right2 not perhaps in thinking that machines would make fewer men workmen2 but certainly in thinking that machines would make fewer men masters4 ,more wheels do mean fewer handles2 fewer handles do mean fewer hands4 ,the machinery of science must be individualistic and isolated4 ,a mob can shout round a palace2 but a mob cannot shout down a telephone4 ,the specialist appears and democracy is half spoiled at a stroke4 9999999999 ,,iv4 ,,the ,,insane ,,necessity ,the common conception among the dregs of ,darwinian culture is that men have slowly worked their way out of inequality into a state of comparative equality4 ,the truth is1 ,i fancy1 almost exactly the opposite4 ,all men have normally and naturally begun with the idea of equality2 they have only abandoned it late and reluctantly1 and always for some material reason of detail4 ,they have never naturally felt that one class of men was superior to another2 they have always been driven to assume it through certain practical limitations of space and time4 ,for example1 there is one element which must always tend to oligarchy--or rather to despotism2 ,i mean the element of hurry4 ,if the house has caught fire a man must ring up the fire engines2 a committee cannot ring them up4 ,if a camp is surprised by night somebody must give the order to fire2 there is no time to vote it4 ,it is solely a question of the physical limitations of time and space2 not at all of any mental limitations in the mass of men commanded4 ,if all the people in the house were men of destiny it would still be better that they should not all talk into the telephone at once2 nay1 it would be better that the silliest man of all should speak uninterrupted4 ,if an army actually consisted of nothing but ,hanibals and ,napoleons1 it would still be better in the case of a surprise that they should not all give orders together4 ,nay1 it would be better if the stupidest of them all gave the orders4 ,thus1 we see that merely military subordination1 so far from resting on the inequality of men1 actually rests on the equality of men4 ,discipline does not involve the ,carlylean notion that somebody is always right when everybody is wrong1 and that we must discover and crown that somebody4 ,on the contrary1 discipline means that in certain frightfully rapid circumstances1 one can trust anybody so long as he is not everybody4 ,the military spirit does not mean 7as ,carlyle fancied7 obeying the strongest and wisest man4 ,on the contrary1 the military spirit means1 if anything1 obeying the weakest and stupidest man1 obeying him merely because he is a man1 and not a thousand men4 ,submission to a weak man is discipline4 ,submission to a strong man is only servility4 ,now it can be easily shown that the thing we call aristocracy in ,europe is not in its origin and spirit an aristocracy at all4 ,it is not a system of spiritual degrees and distinctions like1 for example1 the caste system of ,india1 or even like the old ,greek distinction between free men and slaves4 ,it is simply the remains of a military organization1 framed partly to sustain the sinking ,roman ,empire1 partly to break and avenge the awful onslaught of ,islam4 ,the word ,duke simply means ,colonel1 just as the word ,emperor simply means ,commander-in-,chief4 ,the whole story is told in the single title of ,counts of the ,holy ,roman ,empire1 which merely means officers in the ,european army against the contemporary ,yellow ,peril4 ,now in an army nobody ever dreams of supposing that difference of rank represents a difference of moral reality4 ,nobody ever says about a regiment1 8,your ,major is very humorous and energetic2 your ,colonel1 of course1 must be even more humorous and yet more energetic40 ,no one ever says1 in reporting a mess-room conversation1 8,lieutenant ,jones was very witty1 but was naturally inferior to ,captain ,smith40 ,the essence of an army is the idea of official inequality1 founded on unofficial equality4 ,the ,colonel is not obeyed because he is the best man1 but because he is the ,colonel4 ,such was probably the spirit of the system of dukes and counts when it first arose out of the military spirit and military necessities of ,rome4 ,with the decline of those necessities it has gradually ceased to have meaning as a military organization1 and become honeycombed with unclean plutocracy4 ,even now it is not a spiritual aristocracy--it is not so bad as all that4 ,it is simply an army without an enemy--billeted upon the people4 ,man1 therefore1 has a specialist as well as comrade-like aspect2 and the case of militarism is not the only case of such specialist submission4 ,the tinker and tailor1 as well as the soldier and sailor1 require a certain rigidity of rapidity of action3 at least1 if the tinker is not organized that is largely why he does not tink on any large scale4 ,the tinker and tailor often represent the two nomadic races in ,europe3 the ,gipsy and the ,jew2 but the ,jew alone has influence because he alone accepts some sort of discipline4 ,man1 we say1 has two sides1 the specialist side where he must have subordination1 and the social side where he must have equality4 ,there is a truth in the saying that ten tailors go to make a man2 but we must remember also that ten ,poets ,laureate or ten ,astronomers ,royal go to make a man1 too4 ,ten million tradesmen go to make ,man himself2 but humanity consists of tradesmen when they are not talking shop4 ,now the peculiar peril of our time1 which ,i call for argument's sake ,imperialism or ,caesarism1 is the complete eclipse of comradeship and equality by specialism and domination4 ,there are only two kinds of social structure conceivable--personal government and impersonal government4 ,if my anarchic friends will not have rules--they will have rulers4 ,preferring personal government1 with its tact and flexibility1 is called ,royalism4 ,preferring impersonal government1 with its dogmas and definitions1 is called ,republicanism4 ,objecting broadmindedly both to kings and creeds is called ,bosh2 at least1 ,i know no more philosophic word for it4 ,you can be guided by the shrewdness or presence of mind of one ruler1 or by the equality and ascertained justice of one rule2 but you must have one or the other1 or you are not a nation1 but a nasty mess4 ,now men in their aspect of equality and debate adore the idea of rules2 they develop and complicate them greatly to excess4 ,a man finds far more regulations and definitions in his club1 where there are rules1 than in his home1 where there is a ruler4 ,a deliberate assembly1 the ,house of ,commons1 for instance1 carries this mummery to the point of a methodical madness4 ,the whole system is stiff with rigid unreason2 like the ,royal ,court in ,lewis ,carroll4 ,you would think the ,speaker would speak2 therefore he is mostly silent4 ,you would think a man would take off his hat to stop and put it on to go away2 therefore he takes off his hat to walk out and puts it on to stop in4 ,names are forbidden1 and a man must call his own father 8my right honorable friend the member for ,west ,birmingham40 ,these are1 perhaps1 fantasies of decay3 but fundamentally they answer a masculine appetite4 ,men feel that rules1 even if irrational1 are universal2 men feel that law is equal1 even when it is not equitable4 ,there is a wild fairness in the thing--as there is in tossing up4 ,again1 it is gravely unfortunate that when critics do attack such cases as the ,commons it is always on the points 7perhaps the few points7 where the ,commons are right4 ,they denounce the ,house as the ,talking-,shop1 and complain that it wastes time in wordy mazes4 ,now this is just one respect in which the ,commons are actually like the ,common ,people4 ,if they love leisure and long debate1 it is because all men love it2 that they really represent ,england4 ,there the ,parliament does approach to the virile virtues of the pothouse4 ,the real truth is that adumbrated in the introductory section when we spoke of the sense of home and property1 as now we speak of the sense of counsel and community4 ,all men do naturally love the idea of leisure1 laughter1 loud and equal argument2 but there stands a specter in our hall4 ,we are conscious of the towering modern challenge that is called specialism or cut-throat competition--,business4 ,business will have nothing to do with leisure2 business will have no truck with comradeship2 business will pretend to no patience with all the legal fictions and fantastic handicaps by which comradeship protects its egalitarian ideal4 ,the modern millionaire1 when engaged in the agreeable and typical task of sacking his own father1 will certainly not refer to him as the right honorable clerk from the ,laburnum ,road1 ,brixton4 ,therefore there has arisen in modern life a literary fashion devoting itself to the romance of business1 to great demigods of greed and to fairyland of finance4 ,this popular philosophy is utterly despotic and anti-democratic2 this fashion is the flower of that ,caesarism against which ,i am concerned to protest4 ,the ideal millionaire is strong in the possession of a brain of steel4 ,the fact that the real millionaire is rather more often strong in the possession of a head of wood1 does not alter the spirit and trend of the idolatry4 ,the essential argument is 8,specialists must be despots2 men must be specialists4 ,you cannot have equality in a soap factory2 so you cannot have it anywhere4 ,you cannot have comradeship in a wheat corner2 so you cannot have it at all4 ,we must have commercial civilization2 therefore we must destroy democracy40 ,i know that plutocrats have seldom sufficient fancy to soar to such examples as soap or wheat4 ,they generally confine themselves1 with fine freshness of mind1 to a comparison between the state and a ship4 ,one anti-democratic writer remarked that he would not like to sail in a vessel in which the cabin-boy had an equal vote with the captain4 ,it might easily be urged in answer that many a ship 7the ,victoria1 for instance7 was sunk because an admiral gave an order which a cabin-boy could see was wrong4 ,but this is a debating reply2 the essential fallacy is both deeper and simpler4 ,the elementary fact is that we were all born in a state2 we were not all born on a ship2 like some of our great ,british bankers4 ,a ship still remains a specialist experiment1 like a diving-bell or a flying ship3 in such peculiar perils the need for promptitude constitutes the need for autocracy4 ,but we live and die in the vessel of the state2 and if we cannot find freedom camaraderie and the popular element in the state1 we cannot find it at all4 ,and the modern doctrine of commercial despotism means that we shall not find it at all4 ,our specialist trades in their highly civilized state cannot 7it says7 be run without the whole brutal business of bossing and sacking1 8too old at forty0 and all the rest of the filth4 ,and they must be run1 and therefore we call on ,caesar4 ,nobody but the ,superman could descend to do such dirty work4 ,now 7to reiterate my title7 this is what is wrong4 ,this is the huge modern heresy of altering the human soul to fit its conditions1 instead of altering human conditions to fit the human soul4 ,if soap boiling is really inconsistent with brotherhood1 so much the worst for soap-boiling1 not for brotherhood4 ,if civilization really cannot get on with democracy1 so much the worse for civilization1 not for democracy4 ,certainly1 it would be far better to go back to village communes1 if they really are communes4 ,certainly1 it would be better to do without soap rather than to do without society4 ,certainly1 we would sacrifice all our wires1 wheels1 systems1 specialties1 physical science and frenzied finance for one half-hour of happiness such as has often come to us with comrades in a common tavern4 ,i do not say the sacrifice will be necessary2 ,i only say it will be easy4 ,,part ,,three4 ,,feminism1 ,,or ,,the ,,mistake ,,about ,,woman ,i4 ,,the ,,unmilitary ,,suffragette ,it will be better to adopt in this chapter the same process that appeared a piece of mental justice in the last4 ,my general opinions on the feminine question are such as many suffragists would warmly approve2 and it would be easy to state them without any open reference to the current controversy4 ,but just as it seemed more decent to say first that ,i was not in favor of ,imperialism even in its practical and popular sense1 so it seems more decent to say the same of ,female ,suffrage1 in its practical and popular sense4 ,in other words1 it is only fair to state1 however hurriedly1 the superficial objection to the ,suffragettes before we go on to the really subtle questions behind the ,suffrage4 ,well1 to get this honest but unpleasant business over1 the objection to the ,suffragettes is not that they are ,militant ,suffragettes4 ,on the contrary1 it is that they are not militant enough4 ,a revolution is a military thing2 it has all the military virtues2 one of which is that it comes to an end4 ,two parties fight with deadly weapons1 but under certain rules of arbitrary honor2 the party that wins becomes the government and proceeds to govern4 ,the aim of civil war1 like the aim of all war1 is peace4 ,now the ,suffragettes cannot raise civil war in this soldierly and decisive sense2 first1 because they are women2 and1 secondly1 because they are very few women4 ,but they can raise something else2 which is altogether another pair of shoes4 ,they do not create revolution2 what they do create is anarchy2 and the difference between these is not a question of violence1 but a question of fruitfulness and finality4 ,revolution of its nature produces government2 anarchy only produces more anarchy4 ,men may have what opinions they please about the beheading of ,king ,charles or ,king ,louis1 but they cannot deny that ,bradshaw and ,cromwell ruled1 that ,carnot and ,napoleon governed4 ,someone conquered2 something occurred4 ,you can only knock off the ,king's head once4 ,but you can knock off the ,king's hat any number of times4 ,destruction is finite1 obstruction is infinite3 so long as rebellion takes the form of mere disorder 7instead of an attempt to enforce a new order7 there is no logical end to it2 it can feed on itself and renew itself forever4 ,if ,napoleon had not wanted to be a ,consul1 but only wanted to be a nuisance1 he could1 possibly1 have prevented any government arising successfully out of the ,revolution4 ,but such a proceeding would not have deserved the dignified name of rebellion4 ,it is exactly this unmilitant quality in the ,suffragettes that makes their superficial problem4 ,the problem is that their action has none of the advantages of ultimate violence2 it does not afford a test4 ,war is a dreadful thing2 but it does prove two points sharply and unanswerably--numbers1 and an unnatural valor4 ,one does discover the two urgent matters2 how many rebels there are alive1 and how many are ready to be dead4 ,but a tiny minority1 even an interested minority1 may maintain mere disorder forever4 ,there is also1 of course1 in the case of these women1 the further falsity that is introduced by their sex4 ,it is false to state the matter as a mere brutal question of strength4 ,if his muscles give a man a vote1 then his horse ought to have two votes and his elephant five votes4 ,the truth is more subtle than that2 it is that bodily outbreak is a man's instinctive weapon1 like the hoofs to the horse or the tusks to the elephant4 ,all riot is a threat of war2 but the woman is brandishing a weapon she can never use4 ,there are many weapons that she could and does use4 ,if 7for example7 all the women nagged for a vote they would get it in a month4 ,but there again1 one must remember1 it would be necessary to get all the women to nag4 ,and that brings us to the end of the political surface of the matter4 ,the working objection to the ,suffragette philosophy is simply that overmastering millions of women do not agree with it4 ,i am aware that some maintain that women ought to have votes whether the majority wants them or not2 but this is surely a strange and childish case of setting up formal democracy to the destruction of actual democracy4 ,what should the mass of women decide if they do not decide their general place in the ,state8 ,these people practically say that females may vote about everything except about ,female ,suffrage4 ,but having again cleared my conscience of my merely political and possibly unpopular opinion1 ,i will again cast back and try to treat the matter in a slower and more sympathetic style2 attempt to trace the real roots of woman's position in the western state1 and the causes of our existing traditions or perhaps prejudices upon the point4 ,and for this purpose it is again necessary to travel far from the modern topic1 the mere ,suffragette of today1 and to go back to subjects which1 though much more old1 are1 ,i think1 considerably more fresh4 9999999999 ,,ii4 ,,the ,,universal ,,stick ,cast your eye round the room in which you sit1 and select some three or four things that have been with man almost since his beginning2 which at least we hear of early in the centuries and often among the tribes4 ,let me suppose that you see a knife on the table1 a stick in the corner1 or a fire on the hearth4 ,about each of these you will notice one speciality2 that not one of them is special4 ,each of these ancestral things is a universal thing2 made to supply many different needs2 and while tottering pedants nose about to find the cause and origin of some old custom1 the truth is that it had fifty causes or a hundred origins4 ,the knife is meant to cut wood1 to cut cheese1 to cut pencils1 to cut throats2 for a myriad ingenious or innocent human objects4 ,the stick is meant partly to hold a man up1 partly to knock a man down2 partly to point with like a finger-post1 partly to balance with like a balancing pole1 partly to trifle with like a cigarette1 partly to kill with like a club of a giant2 it is a crutch and a cudgel2 an elongated finger and an extra leg4 ,the case is the same1 of course1 with the fire2 about which the strangest modern views have arisen4 ,a queer fancy seems to be current that a fire exists to warm people4 ,it exists to warm people1 to light their darkness1 to raise their spirits1 to toast their muffins1 to air their rooms1 to cook their chestnuts1 to tell stories to their children1 to make checkered shadows on their walls1 to boil their hurried kettles1 and to be the red heart of a man's house and that hearth for which1 as the great heathens said1 a man should die4 ,now it is the great mark of our modernity that people are always proposing substitutes for these old things2 and these substitutes always answer one purpose where the old thing answered ten4 ,the modern man will wave a cigarette instead of a stick2 he will cut his pencil with a little screwing pencil-sharpener instead of a knife2 and he will even boldly offer to be warmed by hot water pipes instead of a fire4 ,i have my doubts about pencil-sharpeners even for sharpening pencils2 and about hot water pipes even for heat4 ,but when we think of all those other requirements that these institutions answered1 there opens before us the whole horrible harlequinade of our civilization4 ,we see as in a vision a world where a man tries to cut his throat with a pencil-sharpener2 where a man must learn single-stick with a cigarette2 where a man must try to toast muffins at electric lamps1 and see red and golden castles in the surface of hot water pipes4 ,the principle of which ,i speak can be seen everywhere in a comparison between the ancient and universal things and the modern and specialist things4 ,the object of a theodolite is to lie level2 the object of a stick is to swing loose at any angle2 to whirl like the very wheel of liberty4 ,the object of a lancet is to lance2 when used for slashing1 gashing1 ripping1 lopping off heads and limbs1 it is a disappointing instrument4 ,the object of an electric light is merely to light 7a despicable modesty72 and the object of an asbestos stove444 ,i wonder what is the object of an asbestos stove8 ,if a man found a coil of rope in a desert he could at least think of all the things that can be done with a coil of rope2 and some of them might even be practical4 ,he could tow a boat or lasso a horse4 ,he could play cat's-cradle1 or pick oakum4 ,he could construct a rope-ladder for an eloping heiress1 or cord her boxes for a travelling maiden aunt4 ,he could learn to tie a bow1 or he could hang himself4 ,far otherwise with the unfortunate traveller who should find a telephone in the desert4 ,you can telephone with a telephone2 you cannot do anything else with it4 ,and though this is one of the wildest joys of life1 it falls by one degree from its full delirium when there is nobody to answer you4 ,the contention is1 in brief1 that you must pull up a hundred roots1 and not one1 before you uproot any of these hoary and simple expedients4 ,it is only with great difficulty that a modern scientific sociologist can be got to see that any old method has a leg to stand on4 ,but almost every old method has four or five legs to stand on4 ,almost all the old institutions are quadrupeds2 and some of them are centipedes4 ,consider these cases1 old and new1 and you will observe the operation of a general tendency4 ,everywhere there was one big thing that served six purposes2 everywhere now there are six small things2 or1 rather 7and there is the trouble71 there are just five and a half4 ,nevertheless1 we will not say that this separation and specialism is entirely useless or inexcusable4 ,i have often thanked ,god for the telephone2 ,i may any day thank ,god for the lancet2 and there is none of these brilliant and narrow inventions 7except1 of course1 the asbestos stove7 which might not be at some moment necessary and lovely4 ,but ,i do not think the most austere upholder of specialism will deny that there is in these old1 many-sided institutions an element of unity and universality which may well be preserved in its due proportion and place4 ,spiritually1 at least1 it will be admitted that some all-round balance is needed to equalize the extravagance of experts4 ,it would not be difficult to carry the parable of the knife and stick into higher regions4 ,religion1 the immortal maiden1 has been a maid-of-all-work as well as a servant of mankind4 ,she provided men at once with the theoretic laws of an unalterable cosmos and also with the practical rules of the rapid and thrilling game of morality4 ,she taught logic to the student and told fairy tales to the children2 it was her business to confront the nameless gods whose fears are on all flesh1 and also to see the streets were spotted with silver and scarlet1 that there was a day for wearing ribbons or an hour for ringing bells4 ,the large uses of religion have been broken up into lesser specialities1 just as the uses of the hearth have been broken up into hot water pipes and electric bulbs4 ,the romance of ritual and colored emblem has been taken over by that narrowest of all trades1 modern art 7the sort called art for art's sake71 and men are in modern practice informed that they may use all symbols so long as they mean nothing by them4 ,the romance of conscience has been dried up into the science of ethics2 which may well be called decency for decency's sake1 decency unborn of cosmic energies and barren of artistic flower4 ,the cry to the dim gods1 cut off from ethics and cosmology1 has become mere ,psychical ,research4 ,everything has been sundered from everything else1 and everything has grown cold4 ,soon we shall hear of specialists dividing the tune from the words of a song1 on the ground that they spoil each other2 and ,i did once meet a man who openly advocated the separation of almonds and raisins4 ,this world is all one wild divorce court2 nevertheless1 there are many who still hear in their souls the thunder of authority of human habit2 those whom ,man hath joined let no man sunder4 ,this book must avoid religion1 but there must 7,i say7 be many1 religious and irreligious1 who will concede that this power of answering many purposes was a sort of strength which should not wholly die out of our lives4 ,as a part of personal character1 even the moderns will agree that many-sidedness is a merit and a merit that may easily be overlooked4 ,this balance and universality has been the vision of many groups of men in many ages4 ,it was the ,liberal ,education of ,aristotle2 the jack-of-all-trades artistry of ,leonardo da ,vinci and his friends2 the august amateurishness of the ,cavalier ,person of ,quality like ,sir ,william ,temple or the great ,earl of ,dorset4 ,it has appeared in literature in our time in the most erratic and opposite shapes1 set to almost inaudible music by ,walter ,pater and enunciated through a foghorn by ,walt ,whitman4 ,but the great mass of men have always been unable to achieve this literal universality1 because of the nature of their work in the world4 ,not1 let it be noted1 because of the existence of their work4 ,leonardo da ,vinci must have worked pretty hard2 on the other hand1 many a government office clerk1 village constable or elusive plumber may do 7to all human appearance7 no work at all1 and yet show no signs of the ,aristotelian universalism4 ,what makes it difficult for the average man to be a universalist is that the average man has to be a specialist2 he has not only to learn one trade1 but to learn it so well as to uphold him in a more or less ruthless society4 ,this is generally true of males from the first hunter to the last electrical engineer2 each has not merely to act1 but to excel4 ,nimrod has not only to be a mighty hunter before the ,lord1 but also a mighty hunter before the other hunters4 ,the electrical engineer has to be a very electrical engineer1 or he is outstripped by engineers yet more electrical4 ,those very miracles of the human mind on which the modern world prides itself1 and rightly in the main1 would be impossible without a certain concentration which disturbs the pure balance of reason more than does religious bigotry4 ,no creed can be so limiting as that awful adjuration that the cobbler must not go beyond his last4 ,so the largest and wildest shots of our world are but in one direction and with a defined trajectory3 the gunner cannot go beyond his shot1 and his shot so often falls short2 the astronomer cannot go beyond his telescope and his telescope goes such a little way4 ,all these are like men who have stood on the high peak of a mountain and seen the horizon like a single ring and who then descend down different paths towards different towns1 traveling slow or fast4 ,it is right2 there must be people traveling to different towns2 there must be specialists2 but shall no one behold the horizon8 ,shall all mankind be specialist surgeons or peculiar plumbers2 shall all humanity be monomaniac8 ,tradition has decided that only half of humanity shall be monomaniac4 ,it has decided that in every home there shall be a tradesman and a ,jack-of-all-trades4 ,but it has also decided1 among other things1 that the ,jack-of-all-trades shall be a ,jill-of-all-trades4 ,it has decided1 rightly or wrongly1 that this specialism and this universalism shall be divided between the sexes4 ,cleverness shall be left for men and wisdom for women4 ,for cleverness kills wisdom2 that is one of the few sad and certain things4 ,but for women this ideal of comprehensive capacity 7or common-sense7 must long ago have been washed away4 ,it must have melted in the frightful furnaces of ambition and eager technicality4 ,a man must be partly a one-idead man1 because he is a one-weaponed man--and he is flung naked into the fight4 ,the world's demand comes to him direct2 to his wife indirectly4 ,in short1 he must 7as the books on ,success say7 give 8his best02 and what a small part of a man 8his best0 is6 ,his second and third best are often much better4 ,if he is the first violin he must fiddle for life2 he must not remember that he is a fine fourth bagpipe1 a fair fifteenth billiard-cue1 a foil1 a fountain pen1 a hand at whist1 a gun1 and an image of ,god4 9999999999 ,,iii4 ,,the ,,emancipation ,,of ,,domesticity ,and it should be remarked in passing that this force upon a man to develop one feature has nothing to do with what is commonly called our competitive system1 but would equally exist under any rationally conceivable kind of ,collectivism4 ,unless the ,socialists are frankly ready for a fall in the standard of violins1 telescopes and electric lights1 they must somehow create a moral demand on the individual that he shall keep up his present concentration on these things4 ,it was only by men being in some degree specialist that there ever were any telescopes2 they must certainly be in some degree specialist in order to keep them going4 ,it is not by making a man a ,state wage-earner that you can prevent him thinking principally about the very difficult way he earns his wages4 ,there is only one way to preserve in the world that high levity and that more leisurely outlook which fulfils the old vision of universalism4 ,that is1 to permit the existence of a partly protected half of humanity2 a half which the harassing industrial demand troubles indeed1 but only troubles indirectly4 ,in other words1 there must be in every center of humanity one human being upon a larger plan2 one who does not 8give her best10 but gives her all4 ,our old analogy of the fire remains the most workable one4 ,the fire need not blaze like electricity nor boil like boiling water2 its point is that it blazes more than water and warms more than light4 ,the wife is like the fire1 or to put things in their proper proportion1 the fire is like the wife4 ,like the fire1 the woman is expected to cook3 not to excel in cooking1 but to cook2 to cook better than her husband who is earning the coke by lecturing on botany or breaking stones4 ,like the fire1 the woman is expected to tell tales to the children1 not original and artistic tales1 but tales--better tales than would probably be told by a first-class cook4 ,like the fire1 the woman is expected to illuminate and ventilate1 not by the most startling revelations or the wildest winds of thought1 but better than a man can do it after breaking stones or lecturing4 ,but she cannot be expected to endure anything like this universal duty if she is also to endure the direct cruelty of competitive or bureaucratic toil4 ,woman must be a cook1 but not a competitive cook2 a school mistress1 but not a competitive schoolmistress2 a house-decorator but not a competitive house-decorator2 a dressmaker1 but not a competitive dressmaker4 ,she should have not one trade but twenty hobbies2 she1 unlike the man1 may develop all her second bests4 ,this is what has been really aimed at from the first in what is called the seclusion1 or even the oppression1 of women4 ,women were not kept at home in order to keep them narrow2 on the contrary1 they were kept at home in order to keep them broad4 ,the world outside the home was one mass of narrowness1 a maze of cramped paths1 a madhouse of monomaniacs4 ,it was only by partly limiting and protecting the woman that she was enabled to play at five or six professions and so come almost as near to ,god as the child when he plays at a hundred trades4 ,but the woman's professions1 unlike the child's1 were all truly and almost terribly fruitful2 so tragically real that nothing but her universality and balance prevented them being merely morbid4 ,this is the substance of the contention ,i offer about the historic female position4 ,i do not deny that women have been wronged and even tortured2 but ,i doubt if they were ever tortured so much as they are tortured now by the absurd modern attempt to make them domestic empresses and competitive clerks at the same time4 ,i do not deny that even under the old tradition women had a harder time than men2 that is why we take off our hats4 ,i do not deny that all these various female functions were exasperating2 but ,i say that there was some aim and meaning in keeping them various4 ,i do not pause even to deny that woman was a servant2 but at least she was a general servant4 ,the shortest way of summarizing the position is to say that woman stands for the idea of ,sanity2 that intellectual home to which the mind must return after every excursion on extravagance4 ,the mind that finds its way to wild places is the poet's2 but the mind that never finds its way back is the lunatic's4 ,there must in every machine be a part that moves and a part that stands still2 there must be in everything that changes a part that is unchangeable4 ,and many of the phenomena which moderns hastily condemn are really parts of this position of the woman as the center and pillar of health4 ,much of what is called her subservience1 and even her pliability1 is merely the subservience and pliability of a universal remedy2 she varies as medicines vary1 with the disease4 ,she has to be an optimist to the morbid husband1 a salutary pessimist to the happy-go-lucky husband4 ,she has to prevent the ,quixote from being put upon1 and the bully from putting upon others4 ,the ,french ,king wrote-- 8,toujours femme varie ,bien fol qui s'y fie10 but the truth is that woman always varies1 and that is exactly why we always trust her4 ,to correct every adventure and extravagance with its antidote in common-sense is not 7as the moderns seem to think7 to be in the position of a spy or a slave4 ,it is to be in the position of ,aristotle or 7at the lowest7 ,herbert ,spencer1 to be a universal morality1 a complete system of thought4 ,the slave flatters2 the complete moralist rebukes4 ,it is1 in short1 to be a ,trimmer in the true sense of that honorable term2 which for some reason or other is always used in a sense exactly opposite to its own4 ,it seems really to be supposed that a ,trimmer means a cowardly person who always goes over to the stronger side4 ,it really means a highly chivalrous person who always goes over to the weaker side2 like one who trims a boat by sitting where there are few people seated4 ,woman is a trimmer2 and it is a generous1 dangerous and romantic trade4 ,the final fact which fixes this is a sufficiently plain one4 ,supposing it to be conceded that humanity has acted at least not unnaturally in dividing itself into two halves1 respectively typifying the ideals of special talent and of general sanity 7since they are genuinely difficult to combine completely in one mind71 it is not difficult to see why the line of cleavage has followed the line of sex1 or why the female became the emblem of the universal and the male of the special and superior4 ,two gigantic facts of nature fixed it thus3 first1 that the woman who frequently fulfilled her functions literally could not be specially prominent in experiment and adventure2 and second1 that the same natural operation surrounded her with very young children1 who require to be taught not so much anything as everything4 ,babies need not to be taught a trade1 but to be introduced to a world4 ,to put the matter shortly1 woman is generally shut up in a house with a human being at the time when he asks all the questions that there are1 and some that there aren't4 ,it would be odd if she retained any of the narrowness of a specialist4 ,now if anyone says that this duty of general enlightenment 7even when freed from modern rules and hours1 and exercised more spontaneously by a more protected person7 is in itself too exacting and oppressive1 ,i can understand the view4 ,i can only answer that our race has thought it worth while to cast this burden on women in order to keep common-sense in the world4 ,but when people begin to talk about this domestic duty as not merely difficult but trivial and dreary1 ,i simply give up the question4 ,for ,i cannot with the utmost energy of imagination conceive what they mean4 ,when domesticity1 for instance1 is called drudgery1 all the difficulty arises from a double meaning in the word4 ,if drudgery only means dreadfully hard work1 ,i admit the woman drudges in the home1 as a man might drudge at the ,cathedral of ,amiens or drudge behind a gun at ,trafalgar4 ,but if it means that the hard work is more heavy because it is trifling1 colorless and of small import to the soul1 then as ,i say1 ,i give it up2 ,i do not know what the words mean4 ,to be ,queen ,elizabeth within a definite area1 deciding sales1 banquets1 labors and holidays2 to be ,whiteley within a certain area1 providing toys1 boots1 sheets1 cakes and books1 to be ,aristotle within a certain area1 teaching morals1 manners1 theology1 and hygiene2 ,i can understand how this might exhaust the mind1 but ,i cannot imagine how it could narrow it4 ,how can it be a large career to tell other people's children about the ,rule of ,three1 and a small career to tell one's own children about the universe8 ,how can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone1 and narrow to be everything to someone8 ,no2 a woman's function is laborious1 but because it is gigantic1 not because it is minute4 ,i will pity ,mrs4 ,jones for the hugeness of her task2 ,i will never pity her for its smallness4 ,but though the essential of the woman's task is universality1 this does not1 of course1 prevent her from having one or two severe though largely wholesome prejudices4 ,she has1 on the whole1 been more conscious than man that she is only one half of humanity2 but she has expressed it 7if one may say so of a lady7 by getting her teeth into the two or three things which she thinks she stands for4 ,i would observe here in parenthesis that much of the recent official trouble about women has arisen from the fact that they transfer to things of doubt and reason that sacred stubbornness only proper to the primary things which a woman was set to guard4 ,one's own children1 one's own altar1 ought to be a matter of principle--or if you like1 a matter of prejudice4 ,on the other hand1 who wrote ,junius's ,letters ought not to be a principle or a prejudice1 it ought to be a matter of free and almost indifferent inquiry4 ,but take an energetic modern girl secretary to a league to show that ,george ,,iii wrote ,junius1 and in three months she will believe it1 too1 out of mere loyalty to her employers4 ,modern women defend their office with all the fierceness of domesticity4 ,they fight for desk and typewriter as for hearth and home1 and develop a sort of wolfish wifehood on behalf of the invisible head of the firm4 ,that is why they do office work so well2 and that is why they ought not to do it4 9999999999 ,,iv4 ,,the ,,romance ,,of ,,thrift ,the larger part of womankind1 however1 have had to fight for things slightly more intoxicating to the eye than the desk or the typewriter2 and it cannot be denied that in defending these1 women have developed the quality called prejudice to a powerful and even menacing degree4 ,but these prejudices will always be found to fortify the main position of the woman1 that she is to remain a general overseer1 an autocrat within small compass but on all sides4 ,on the one or two points on which she really misunderstands the man's position1 it is almost entirely in order to preserve her own4 ,the two points on which woman1 actually and of herself1 is most tenacious may be roughly summarized as the ideal of thrift and the ideal of dignity4 ,unfortunately for this book it is written by a male1 and these two qualities1 if not hateful to a man1 are at least hateful in a man4 ,but if we are to settle the sex question at all fairly1 all males must make an imaginative attempt to enter into the attitude of all good women toward these two things4 ,the difficulty exists especially1 perhaps1 in the thing called thrift2 we men have so much encouraged each other in throwing money right and left1 that there has come at last to be a sort of chivalrous and poetical air about losing sixpence4 ,but on a broader and more candid consideration the case scarcely stands so4 ,thrift is the really romantic thing2 economy is more romantic than extravagance4 ,heaven knows ,i for one speak disinterestedly in the matter2 for ,i cannot clearly remember saving a half-penny ever since ,i was born4 ,but the thing is true2 economy1 properly understood1 is the more poetic4 ,thrift is poetic because it is creative2 waste is unpoetic because it is waste4 ,it is prosaic to throw money away1 because it is prosaic to throw anything away2 it is negative2 it is a confession of indifference1 that is1 it is a confession of failure4 ,the most prosaic thing about the house is the dustbin1 and the one great objection to the new fastidious and aesthetic homestead is simply that in such a moral menage the dustbin must be bigger than the house4 ,if a man could undertake to make use of all things in his dustbin he would be a broader genius than ,shakespeare4 ,when science began to use by-products2 when science found that colors could be made out of coaltar1 she made her greatest and perhaps her only claim on the real respect of the human soul4 ,now the aim of the good woman is to use the by-products1 or1 in other words1 to rummage in the dustbin4 ,a man can only fully comprehend it if he thinks of some sudden joke or expedient got up with such materials as may be found in a private house on a rainy day4 ,a man's definite daily work is generally run with such rigid convenience of modern science that thrift1 the picking up of potential helps here and there1 has almost become unmeaning to him4 ,he comes across it most 7as ,i say7 when he is playing some game within four walls2 when in charades1 a hearthrug will just do for a fur coat1 or a tea-cozy just do for a cocked hat2 when a toy theater needs timber and cardboard1 and the house has just enough firewood and just enough bandboxes4 ,this is the man's occasional glimpse and pleasing parody of thrift4 ,but many a good housekeeper plays the same game every day with ends of cheese and scraps of silk1 not because she is mean1 but on the contrary1 because she is magnanimous2 because she wishes her creative mercy to be over all her works1 that not one sardine should be destroyed1 or cast as rubbish to the void1 when she has made the pile complete4 ,the modern world must somehow be made to understand 7in theology and other things7 that a view may be vast1 broad1 universal1 liberal and yet come into conflict with another view that is vast1 broad1 universal and liberal also4 ,there is never a war between two sects1 but only between two universal ,catholic ,churches4 ,the only possible collision is the collision of one cosmos with another4 ,so in a smaller way it must be first made clear that this female economic ideal is a part of that female variety of outlook and all-round art of life which we have already attributed to the sex3 thrift is not a small or timid or provincial thing2 it is part of that great idea of the woman watching on all sides out of all the windows of the soul and being answerable for everything4 ,for in the average human house there is one hole by which money comes in and a hundred by which it goes out2 man has to do with the one hole1 woman with the hundred4 ,but though the very stinginess of a woman is a part of her spiritual breadth1 it is none the less true that it brings her into conflict with the special kind of spiritual breadth that belongs to the males of the tribe4 ,it brings her into conflict with that shapeless cataract of ,comradeship1 of chaotic feasting and deafening debate1 which we noted in the last section4 ,the very touch of the eternal in the two sexual tastes brings them the more into antagonism2 for one stands for a universal vigilance and the other for an almost infinite output4 ,partly through the nature of his moral weakness1 and partly through the nature of his physical strength1 the male is normally prone to expand things into a sort of eternity2 he always thinks of a dinner party as lasting all night2 and he always thinks of a night as lasting forever4 ,when the working women in the poor districts come to the doors of the public houses and try to get their husbands home1 simple minded 8social workers0 always imagine that every husband is a tragic drunkard and every wife a broken-hearted saint4 ,it never occurs to them that the poor woman is only doing under coarser conventions exactly what every fashionable hostess does when she tries to get the men from arguing over the cigars to come and gossip over the teacups4 ,these women are not exasperated merely at the amount of money that is wasted in beer2 they are exasperated also at the amount of time that is wasted in talk4 ,it is not merely what goeth into the mouth but what cometh out the mouth that1 in their opinion1 defileth a man4 ,they will raise against an argument 7like their sisters of all ranks7 the ridiculous objection that nobody is convinced by it2 as if a man wanted to make a body-slave of anybody with whom he had played single-stick4 ,but the real female prejudice on this point is not without a basis2 the real feeling is this1 that the most masculine pleasures have a quality of the ephemeral4 ,a duchess may ruin a duke for a diamond necklace2 but there is the necklace4 ,a coster may ruin his wife for a pot of beer2 and where is the beer8 ,the duchess quarrels with another duchess in order to crush her1 to produce a result2 the coster does not argue with another coster in order to convince him1 but in order to enjoy at once the sound of his own voice1 the clearness of his own opinions and the sense of masculine society4 ,there is this element of a fine fruitlessness about the male enjoyments2 wine is poured into a bottomless bucket2 thought plunges into a bottomless abyss4 ,all this has set woman against the ,public ,house--that is1 against the ,parliament ,house4 ,she is there to prevent waste2 and the 8pub0 and the parliament are the very palaces of waste4 ,in the upper classes the 8pub0 is called the club1 but that makes no more difference to the reason than it does to the rhyme4 ,high and low1 the woman's objection to the ,public ,house is perfectly definite and rational1 it is that the ,public ,house wastes the energies that could be used on the private house4 ,as it is about feminine thrift against masculine waste1 so it is about feminine dignity against masculine rowdiness4 ,the woman has a fixed and very well-founded idea that if she does not insist on good manners nobody else will4 ,babies are not always strong on the point of dignity1 and grown-up men are quite unpresentable4 ,it is true that there are many very polite men1 but none that ,i ever heard of who were not either fascinating women or obeying them4 ,but indeed the female ideal of dignity1 like the female ideal of thrift1 lies deeper and may easily be misunderstood4 ,it rests ultimately on a strong idea of spiritual isolation2 the same that makes women religious4 ,they do not like being melted down2 they dislike and avoid the mob4 ,that anonymous quality we have remarked in the club conversation would be common impertinence in a case of ladies4 ,i remember an artistic and eager lady asking me in her grand green drawing-room whether ,i believed in comradeship between the sexes1 and why not4 ,i was driven back on offering the obvious and sincere answer 8,because if ,i were to treat you for two minutes like a comrade you would turn me out of the house40 ,the only certain rule on this subject is always to deal with woman and never with women4 8,women0 is a profligate word2 ,i have used it repeatedly in this chapter2 but it always has a blackguard sound4 ,it smells of oriental cynicism and hedonism4 ,every woman is a captive queen4 ,but every crowd of women is only a harem broken loose4 ,i am not expressing my own views here1 but those of nearly all the women ,i have known4 ,it is quite unfair to say that a woman hates other women individually2 but ,i think it would be quite true to say that she detests them in a confused heap4 ,and this is not because she despises her own sex1 but because she respects it2 and respects especially that sanctity and separation of each item which is represented in manners by the idea of dignity and in morals by the idea of chastity4 9999999999 ,v4 ,,the ,,coldness ,,of ,,chloe ,we hear much of the human error which accepts what is sham and what is real4 ,but it is worth while to remember that with unfamiliar things we often mistake what is real for what is sham4 ,it is true that a very young man may think the wig of an actress is her hair4 ,but it is equally true that a child yet younger may call the hair of a negro his wig4 ,just because the woolly savage is remote and barbaric he seems to be unnaturally neat and tidy4 ,everyone must have noticed the same thing in the fixed and almost offensive color of all unfamiliar things1 tropic birds and tropic blossoms4 ,tropic birds look like staring toys out of a toy-shop4 ,tropic flowers simply look like artificial flowers1 like things cut out of wax4 ,this is a deep matter1 and1 ,i think1 not unconnected with divinity2 but anyhow it is the truth that when we see things for the first time we feel instantly that they are fictive creations2 we feel the finger of ,god4 ,it is only when we are thoroughly used to them and our five wits are wearied1 that we see them as wild and objectless2 like the shapeless tree-tops or the shifting cloud4 ,it is the design in ,nature that strikes us first2 the sense of the crosses and confusions in that design only comes afterwards through experience and an almost eerie monotony4 ,if a man saw the stars abruptly by accident he would think them as festive and as artificial as a firework4 ,we talk of the folly of painting the lily2 but if we saw the lily without warning we should think that it was painted4 ,we talk of the devil not being so black as he is painted2 but that very phrase is a testimony to the kinship between what is called vivid and what is called artificial4 ,if the modern sage had only one glimpse of grass and sky1 he would say that grass was not as green as it was painted2 that sky was not as blue as it was painted4 ,if one could see the whole universe suddenly1 it would look like a bright-colored toy1 just as the ,south ,american hornbill looks like a bright-colored toy4 ,and so they are--both of them1 ,i mean4 ,but it was not with this aspect of the startling air of artifice about all strange objects that ,i meant to deal4 ,i mean merely1 as a guide to history1 that we should not be surprised if things wrought in fashions remote from ours seem artificial2 we should convince ourselves that nine times out of ten these things are nakedly and almost indecently honest4 ,you will hear men talk of the frosted classicism of ,corneille or of the powdered pomposities of the eighteenth century1 but all these phrases are very superficial4 ,there never was an artificial epoch4 ,there never was an age of reason4 ,men were always men and women women3 and their two generous appetites always were the expression of passion and the telling of truth4 ,we can see something stiff and quaint in their mode of expression1 just as our descendants will see something stiff and quaint in our coarsest slum sketch or our most naked pathological play4 ,but men have never talked about anything but important things2 and the next force in femininity which we have to consider can be considered best perhaps in some dusty old volume of verses by a person of quality4 ,the eighteenth century is spoken of as the period of artificiality1 in externals at least2 but1 indeed1 there may be two words about that4 ,in modern speech one uses artificiality as meaning indefinitely a sort of deceit2 and the eighteenth century was far too artificial to deceive4 ,it cultivated that completest art that does not conceal the art4 ,its fashions and costumes positively revealed nature by allowing artifice2 as in that obvious instance of a barbering that frosted every head with the same silver4 ,it would be fantastic to call this a quaint humility that concealed youth2 but1 at least1 it was not one with the evil pride that conceals old age4 ,under the eighteenth century fashion people did not so much all pretend to be young1 as all agree to be old4 ,the same applies to the most odd and unnatural of their fashions2 they were freakish1 but they were not false4 ,a lady may or may not be as red as she is painted1 but plainly she was not so black as she was patched4 ,but ,i only introduce the reader into this atmosphere of the older and franker fictions that he may be induced to have patience for a moment with a certain element which is very common in the decoration and literature of that age and of the two centuries preceding it4 ,it is necessary to mention it in such a connection because it is exactly one of those things that look as superficial as powder1 and are really as rooted as hair4 ,in all the old flowery and pastoral love-songs1 those of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries especially1 you will find a perpetual reproach against woman in the matter of her coldness2 ceaseless and stale similes that compare her eyes to northern stars1 her heart to ice1 or her bosom to snow4 ,now most of us have always supposed these old and iterant phrases to be a mere pattern of dead words1 a thing like a cold wall-paper4 ,yet ,i think those old cavalier poets who wrote about the coldness of ,chloe had hold of a psychological truth missed in nearly all the realistic novels of today4 ,our psychological romancers perpetually represent wives as striking terror into their husbands by rolling on the floor1 gnashing their teeth1 throwing about the furniture or poisoning the coffee2 all this upon some strange fixed theory that women are what they call emotional4 ,but in truth the old and frigid form is much nearer to the vital fact4 ,most men if they spoke with any sincerity would agree that the most terrible quality in women1 whether in friendship1 courtship or marriage1 was not so much being emotional as being unemotional4 ,there is an awful armor of ice which may be the legitimate protection of a more delicate organism2 but whatever be the psychological explanation there can surely be no question of the fact4 ,the instinctive cry of the female in anger is noli me tangere4 ,i take this as the most obvious and at the same time the least hackneyed instance of a fundamental quality in the female tradition1 which has tended in our time to be almost immeasurably misunderstood1 both by the cant of moralists and the cant of immoralists4 ,the proper name for the thing is modesty2 but as we live in an age of prejudice and must not call things by their right names1 we will yield to a more modern nomenclature and call it dignity4 ,whatever else it is1 it is the thing which a thousand poets and a million lovers have called the coldness of ,chloe4 ,it is akin to the classical1 and is at least the opposite of the grotesque4 ,and since we are talking here chiefly in types and symbols1 perhaps as good an embodiment as any of the idea may be found in the mere fact of a woman wearing a skirt4 ,it is highly typical of the rabid plagiarism which now passes everywhere for emancipation1 that a little while ago it was common for an 8advanced0 woman to claim the right to wear trousers2 a right about as grotesque as the right to wear a false nose4 ,whether female liberty is much advanced by the act of wearing a skirt on each leg ,i do not know2 perhaps ,turkish women might offer some information on the point4 ,but if the western woman walks about 7as it were7 trailing the curtains of the harem with her1 it is quite certain that the woven mansion is meant for a perambulating palace1 not for a perambulating prison4 ,it is quite certain that the skirt means female dignity1 not female submission2 it can be proved by the simplest of all tests4 ,no ruler would deliberately dress up in the recognized fetters of a slave2 no judge would appear covered with broad arrows4 ,but when men wish to be safely impressive1 as judges1 priests or kings1 they do wear skirts1 the long1 trailing robes of female dignity ,the whole world is under petticoat government2 for even men wear petticoats when they wish to govern4 9999999999 ,,vi4 ,,the ,,pedant ,,and ,,the ,,savage ,we say then that the female holds up with two strong arms these two pillars of civilization2 we say also that she could do neither1 but for her position2 her curious position of private omnipotence1 universality on a small scale4 ,the first element is thrift2 not the destructive thrift of the miser1 but the creative thrift of the peasant2 the second element is dignity1 which is but the expression of sacred personality and privacy4 ,now ,i know the question that will be abruptly and automatically asked by all that know the dull tricks and turns of the modern sexual quarrel4 ,the advanced person will at once begin to argue about whether these instincts are inherent and inevitable in woman or whether they are merely prejudices produced by her history and education4 ,now ,i do not propose to discuss whether woman could now be educated out of her habits touching thrift and dignity2 and that for two excellent reasons4 ,first it is a question which cannot conceivably ever find any answer3 that is why modern people are so fond of it4 ,from the nature of the case it is obviously impossible to decide whether any of the peculiarities of civilized man have been strictly necessary to his civilization4 ,it is not self-evident 7for instance71 that even the habit of standing upright was the only path of human progress4 ,there might have been a quadrupedal civilization1 in which a city gentleman put on four boots to go to the city every morning4 ,or there might have been a reptilian civilization1 in which he rolled up to the office on his stomach2 it is impossible to say that intelligence might not have developed in such creatures4 ,all we can say is that man as he is walks upright2 and that woman is something almost more upright than uprightness4 ,and the second point is this3 that upon the whole we rather prefer women 7nay1 even men7 to walk upright2 so we do not waste much of our noble lives in inventing any other way for them to walk4 ,in short1 my second reason for not speculating upon whether woman might get rid of these peculiarities1 is that ,i do not want her to get rid of them2 nor does she4 ,i will not exhaust my intelligence by inventing ways in which mankind might unlearn the violin or forget how to ride horses2 and the art of domesticity seems to me as special and as valuable as all the ancient arts of our race4 ,nor do ,i propose to enter at all into those formless and floundering speculations about how woman was or is regarded in the primitive times that we cannot remember1 or in the savage countries which we cannot understand4 ,even if these people segregated their women for low or barbaric reasons it would not make our reasons barbaric2 and ,i am haunted with a tenacious suspicion that these people's feelings were really1 under other forms1 very much the same as ours4 ,some impatient trader1 some superficial missionary1 walks across an island and sees the squaw digging in the fields while the man is playing a flute2 and immediately says that the man is a mere lord of creation and the woman a mere serf4 ,he does not remember that he might see the same thing in half the back gardens in ,brixton1 merely because women are at once more conscientious and more impatient1 while men are at once more quiescent and more greedy for pleasure4 ,it may often be in ,hawaii simply as it is in ,hoxton4 ,that is1 the woman does not work because the man tells her to work and she obeys4 ,on the contrary1 the woman works because she has told the man to work and he hasn't obeyed4 ,i do not affirm that this is the whole truth1 but ,i do affirm that we have too little comprehension of the souls of savages to know how far it is untrue4 ,it is the same with the relations of our hasty and surface science1 with the problem of sexual dignity and modesty4 ,professors find all over the world fragmentary ceremonies in which the bride affects some sort of reluctance1 hides from her husband1 or runs away from him4 ,the professor then pompously proclaims that this is a survival of ,marriage by ,capture4 ,i wonder he never says that the veil thrown over the bride is really a net4 ,i gravely doubt whether women ever were married by capture ,i think they pretended to be2 as they do still4 ,it is equally obvious that these two necessary sanctities of thrift and dignity are bound to come into collision with the wordiness1 the wastefulness1 and the perpetual pleasure-seeking of masculine companionship4 ,wise women allow for the thing2 foolish women try to crush it2 but all women try to counteract it1 and they do well4 ,in many a home all round us at this moment1 we know that the nursery rhyme is reversed4 ,the queen is in the counting-house1 counting out the money4 ,the king is in the parlor1 eating bread and honey4 ,but it must be strictly understood that the king has captured the honey in some heroic wars4 ,the quarrel can be found in moldering ,gothic carvings and in crabbed ,greek manuscripts4 ,in every age1 in every land1 in every tribe and village1 has been waged the great sexual war between the ,private ,house and the ,public ,house4 ,i have seen a collection of mediaeval ,english poems1 divided into sections such as 8,religious ,carols10 8,drinking ,songs10 and so on2 and the section headed1 8,poems of ,domestic ,life0 consisted entirely 7literally1 entirely7 of the complaints of husbands who were bullied by their wives4 ,though the ,english was archaic1 the words were in many cases precisely the same as those which ,i have heard in the streets and public houses of ,battersea1 protests on behalf of an extension of time and talk1 protests against the nervous impatience and the devouring utilitarianism of the female4 ,such1 ,i say1 is the quarrel2 it can never be anything but a quarrel2 but the aim of all morals and all society is to keep it a lovers' quarrel4 9999999999 ,,vii4 ,,the ,,modern ,,surrender ,,of ,,woman ,but in this corner called ,england1 at this end of the century1 there has happened a strange and startling thing4 ,openly and to all appearance1 this ancestral conflict has silently and abruptly ended2 one of the two sexes has suddenly surrendered to the other4 ,by the beginning of the twentieth century1 within the last few years1 the woman has in public surrendered to the man4 ,she has seriously and officially owned that the man has been right all along2 that the public house 7or ,parliament7 is really more important than the private house2 that politics are not 7as woman had always maintained7 an excuse for pots of beer1 but are a sacred solemnity to which new female worshipers may kneel2 that the talkative patriots in the tavern are not only admirable but enviable2 that talk is not a waste of time1 and therefore 7as a consequence1 surely7 that taverns are not a waste of money4 ,all we men had grown used to our wives and mothers1 and grandmothers1 and great aunts all pouring a chorus of contempt upon our hobbies of sport1 drink and party politics4 ,and now comes ,miss ,pankhurst with tears in her eyes1 owning that all the women were wrong and all the men were right2 humbly imploring to be admitted into so much as an outer court1 from which she may catch a glimpse of those masculine merits which her erring sisters had so thoughtlessly scorned4 ,now this development naturally perturbs and even paralyzes us4 ,males1 like females1 in the course of that old fight between the public and private house1 had indulged in overstatement and extravagance1 feeling that they must keep up their end of the see-saw4 ,we told our wives that ,parliament had sat late on most essential business2 but it never crossed our minds that our wives would believe it4 ,we said that everyone must have a vote in the country2 similarly our wives said that no one must have a pipe in the drawing room4 ,in both cases the idea was the same4 8,it does not matter much1 but if you let those things slide there is chaos40 ,we said that ,lord ,huggins or ,mr4 ,buggins was absolutely necessary to the country4 ,we knew quite well that nothing is necessary to the country except that the men should be men and the women women4 ,we knew this2 we thought the women knew it even more clearly2 and we thought the women would say it4 ,suddenly1 without warning1 the women have begun to say all the nonsense that we ourselves hardly believed when we said it4 ,the solemnity of politics2 the necessity of votes2 the necessity of ,huggins2 the necessity of ,buggins2 all these flow in a pellucid stream from the lips of all the suffragette speakers4 ,i suppose in every fight1 however old1 one has a vague aspiration to conquer2 but we never wanted to conquer women so completely as this4 ,we only expected that they might leave us a little more margin for our nonsense2 we never expected that they would accept it seriously as sense4 ,therefore ,i am all at sea about the existing situation2 ,i scarcely know whether to be relieved or enraged by this substitution of the feeble platform lecture for the forcible curtain-lecture4 ,i am lost without the trenchant and candid ,mrs4 ,caudle4 ,i really do not know what to do with the prostrate and penitent ,miss ,pankhurst4 ,this surrender of the modern woman has taken us all so much by surprise that it is desirable to pause a moment1 and collect our wits about what she is really saying4 ,as ,i have already remarked1 there is one very simple answer to all this2 these are not the modern women1 but about one in two thousand of the modern women4 ,this fact is important to a democrat2 but it is of very little importance to the typically modern mind4 ,both the characteristic modern parties believed in a government by the few2 the only difference is whether it is the ,conservative few or ,progressive few4 ,it might be put1 somewhat coarsely perhaps1 by saying that one believes in any minority that is rich and the other in any minority that is mad4 ,but in this state of things the democratic argument obviously falls out for the moment2 and we are bound to take the prominent minority1 merely because it is prominent4 ,let us eliminate altogether from our minds the thousands of women who detest this cause1 and the millions of women who have hardly heard of it4 ,let us concede that the ,english people itself is not and will not be for a very long time within the sphere of practical politics4 ,let us confine ourselves to saying that these particular women want a vote and to asking themselves what a vote is4 ,if we ask these ladies ourselves what a vote is1 we shall get a very vague reply4 ,it is the only question1 as a rule1 for which they are not prepared4 ,for the truth is that they go mainly by precedent2 by the mere fact that men have votes already4 ,so far from being a mutinous movement1 it is really a very ,conservative one2 it is in the narrowest rut of the ,british ,constitution4 ,let us take a little wider and freer sweep of thought and ask ourselves what is the ultimate point and meaning of this odd business called voting4 9999999999 ,,viii4 ,,the ,,brand ,,of ,,the ,,fleur-,,de-,,lis ,seemingly from the dawn of man all nations have had governments2 and all nations have been ashamed of them4 ,nothing is more openly fallacious than to fancy that in ruder or simpler ages ruling1 judging and punishing appeared perfectly innocent and dignified4 ,these things were always regarded as the penalties of the ,fall2 as part of the humiliation of mankind1 as bad in themselves4 ,that the king can do no wrong was never anything but a legal fiction2 and it is a legal fiction still4 ,the doctrine of ,divine ,right was not a piece of idealism1 but rather a piece of realism1 a practical way of ruling amid the ruin of humanity2 a very pragmatist piece of faith4 ,the religious basis of government was not so much that people put their trust in princes1 as that they did not put their trust in any child of man4 ,it was so with all the ugly institutions which disfigure human history4 ,torture and slavery were never talked of as good things2 they were always talked of as necessary evils4 ,a pagan spoke of one man owning ten slaves just as a modern business man speaks of one merchant sacking ten clerks3 8,it's very horrible2 but how else can society be conducted80 ,a mediaeval scholastic regarded the possibility of a man being burned to death just as a modern business man regards the possibility of a man being starved to death3 8,it is a shocking torture2 but can you organize a painless world80 ,it is possible that a future society may find a way of doing without the question by hunger as we have done without the question by fire4 ,it is equally possible1 for the matter of that1 that a future society may reestablish legal torture with the whole apparatus of rack and fagot4 ,the most modern of countries1 ,america1 has introduced with a vague savor of science1 a method which it calls 8the third degree40 ,this is simply the extortion of secrets by nervous fatigue2 which is surely uncommonly close to their extortion by bodily pain4 ,and this is legal and scientific in ,america4 ,amateur ordinary ,america1 of course1 simply burns people alive in broad daylight1 as they did in the ,reformation ,wars4 ,but though some punishments are more inhuman than others there is no such thing as humane punishment4 ,as long as nineteen men claim the right in any sense or shape to take hold of the twentieth man and make him even mildly uncomfortable1 so long the whole proceeding must be a humiliating one for all concerned4 ,and the proof of how poignantly men have always felt this lies in the fact that the headsman and the hangman1 the jailors and the torturers1 were always regarded not merely with fear but with contempt2 while all kinds of careless smiters1 bankrupt knights and swashbucklers and outlaws1 were regarded with indulgence or even admiration4 ,to kill a man lawlessly was pardoned4 ,to kill a man lawfully was unpardonable4 ,the most bare-faced duelist might almost brandish his weapon4 ,but the executioner was always masked4 ,this is the first essential element in government1 coercion2 a necessary but not a noble element4 ,i may remark in passing that when people say that government rests on force they give an admirable instance of the foggy and muddled cynicism of modernity4 ,government does not rest on force4 ,government is force2 it rests on consent or a conception of justice4 ,a king or a community holding a certain thing to be abnormal1 evil1 uses the general strength to crush it out2 the strength is his tool1 but the belief is his only sanction4 ,you might as well say that glass is the real reason for telescopes4 ,but arising from whatever reason the act of government is coercive and is burdened with all the coarse and painful qualities of coercion4 ,and if anyone asks what is the use of insisting on the ugliness of this task of state violence since all mankind is condemned to employ it1 ,i have a simple answer to that4 ,it would be useless to insist on it if all humanity were condemned to it4 ,but it is not irrelevant to insist on its ugliness so long as half of humanity is kept out of it4 ,all government then is coercive2 we happen to have created a government which is not only coercive2 but collective4 ,there are only two kinds of government1 as ,i have already said1 the despotic and the democratic4 ,aristocracy is not a government1 it is a riot2 that most effective kind of riot1 a riot of the rich4 ,the most intelligent apologists of aristocracy1 sophists like ,burke and ,nietzsche1 have never claimed for aristocracy any virtues but the virtues of a riot1 the accidental virtues1 courage1 variety and adventure4 ,there is no case anywhere of aristocracy having established a universal and applicable order1 as despots and democracies have often done2 as the last ,caesars created the ,roman law1 as the last ,jacobins created the ,code ,napoleon4 ,with the first of these elementary forms of government1 that of the king or chieftain1 we are not in this matter of the sexes immediately concerned4 ,we shall return to it later when we remark how differently mankind has dealt with female claims in the despotic as against the democratic field4 ,but for the moment the essential point is that in self-governing countries this coercion of criminals is a collective coercion4 ,the abnormal person is theoretically thumped by a million fists and kicked by a million feet4 ,if a man is flogged we all flogged him2 if a man is hanged1 we all hanged him4 ,that is the only possible meaning of democracy1 which can give any meaning to the first two syllables and also to the last two4 ,in this sense each citizen has the high responsibility of a rioter4 ,every statute is a declaration of war1 to be backed by arms4 ,every tribunal is a revolutionary tribunal4 ,in a republic all punishment is as sacred and solemn as lynching4 9999999999 ,,ix4 ,,sincerity ,,and ,,the ,,gallows ,when1 therefore1 it is said that the tradition against ,female ,suffrage keeps women out of activity1 social influence and citizenship1 let us a little more soberly and strictly ask ourselves what it actually does keep her out of4 ,it does definitely keep her out of the collective act of coercion2 the act of punishment by a mob4 ,the human tradition does say that1 if twenty men hang a man from a tree or lamp-post1 they shall be twenty men and not women4 ,now ,i do not think any reasonable ,suffragist will deny that exclusion from this function1 to say the least of it1 might be maintained to be a protection as well as a veto4 ,no candid person will wholly dismiss the proposition that the idea of having a ,lord ,chancellor but not a ,lady ,chancellor may at least be connected with the idea of having a headsman but not a headswoman1 a hangman but not a hangwoman4 ,nor will it be adequate to answer 7as is so often answered to this contention7 that in modern civilization women would not really be required to capture1 to sentence1 or to slay2 that all this is done indirectly1 that specialists kill our criminals as they kill our cattle4 ,to urge this is not to urge the reality of the vote1 but to urge its unreality4 ,democracy was meant to be a more direct way of ruling1 not a more indirect way2 and if we do not feel that we are all jailers1 so much the worse for us1 and for the prisoners4 ,if it is really an unwomanly thing to lock up a robber or a tyrant1 it ought to be no softening of the situation that the woman does not feel as if she were doing the thing that she certainly is doing4 ,it is bad enough that men can only associate on paper who could once associate in the street2 it is bad enough that men have made a vote very much of a fiction4 ,it is much worse that a great class should claim the vote be cause it is a fiction1 who would be sickened by it if it were a fact4 ,if votes for women do not mean mobs for women they do not mean what they were meant to mean4 ,a woman can make a cross on a paper as well as a man2 a child could do it as well as a woman2 and a chimpanzee after a few lessons could do it as well as a child4 ,but nobody ought to regard it merely as making a cross on paper2 everyone ought to regard it as what it ultimately is1 branding the fleur-de-lis1 marking the broad arrow1 signing the death warrant4 ,both men and women ought to face more fully the things they do or cause to be done2 face them or leave off doing them4 ,on that disastrous day when public executions were abolished1 private executions were renewed and ratified1 perhaps forever4 ,things grossly unsuited to the moral sentiment of a society cannot be safely done in broad daylight2 but ,i see no reason why we should not still be roasting heretics alive1 in a private room4 ,it is very likely 7to speak in the manner foolishly called ,irish7 that if there were public executions there would be no executions4 ,the old open-air punishments1 the pillory and the gibbet1 at least fixed responsibility upon the law2 and in actual practice they gave the mob an opportunity of throwing roses as well as rotten eggs2 of crying 8,hosannah0 as well as 8,crucify40 ,but ,i do not like the public executioner being turned into the private executioner4 ,i think it is a crooked oriental1 sinister sort of business1 and smells of the harem and the divan rather than of the forum and the market place4 ,in modern times the official has lost all the social honor and dignity of the common hangman4 ,he is only the bearer of the bowstring4 ,here1 however1 ,i suggest a plea for a brutal publicity only in order to emphasize the fact that it is this brutal publicity and nothing else from which women have been excluded4 ,i also say it to emphasize the fact that the mere modern veiling of the brutality does not make the situation different1 unless we openly say that we are giving the suffrage1 not only because it is power but because it is not1 or in other words1 that women are not so much to vote as to play voting4 ,no suffragist1 ,i suppose1 will take up that position2 and a few suffragists will wholly deny that this human necessity of pains and penalties is an ugly1 humiliating business1 and that good motives as well as bad may have helped to keep women out of it4 ,more than once ,i have remarked in these pages that female limitations may be the limits of a temple as well as of a prison1 the disabilities of a priest and not of a pariah4 ,i noted it1 ,i think1 in the case of the pontifical feminine dress4 ,in the same way it is not evidently irrational1 if men decided that a woman1 like a priest1 must not be a shedder of blood4 9999999999 ,x4 ,,the ,,higher ,,anarchy ,but there is a further fact2 forgotten also because we moderns forget that there is a female point of view4 ,the woman's wisdom stands partly1 not only for a wholesome hesitation about punishment1 but even for a wholesome hesitation about absolute rules4 ,there was something feminine and perversely true in that phrase of ,wilde's1 that people should not be treated as the rule1 but all of them as exceptions4 ,made by a man the remark was a little effeminate2 for ,wilde did lack the masculine power of dogma and of democratic cooperation4 ,but if a woman had said it it would have been simply true2 a woman does treat each person as a peculiar person4 ,in other words1 she stands for ,anarchy2 a very ancient and arguable philosophy2 not anarchy in the sense of having no customs in one's life 7which is inconceivable71 but anarchy in the sense of having no rules for one's mind4 ,to her1 almost certainly1 are due all those working traditions that cannot be found in books1 especially those of education2 it was she who first gave a child a stuffed stocking for being good or stood him in the corner for being naughty4 ,this unclassified knowledge is sometimes called rule of thumb and sometimes motherwit4 ,the last phrase suggests the whole truth1 for none ever called it fatherwit4 ,now anarchy is only tact when it works badly4 ,tact is only anarchy when it works well4 ,and we ought to realize that in one half of the world--the private house--it does work well4 ,we modern men are perpetually forgetting that the case for clear rules and crude penalties is not self-evident1 that there is a great deal to be said for the benevolent lawlessness of the autocrat1 especially on a small scale2 in short1 that government is only one side of life4 ,the other half is called ,society1 in which women are admittedly dominant4 ,and they have always been ready to maintain that their kingdom is better governed than ours1 because 7in the logical and legal sense7 it is not governed at all4 8,whenever you have a real difficulty10 they say1 8when a boy is bumptious or an aunt is stingy1 when a silly girl will marry somebody1 or a wicked man won't marry somebody1 all your lumbering ,roman ,law and ,british ,constitution come to a standstill4 ,a snub from a duchess or a slanging from a fish-wife are much more likely to put things straight40 ,so1 at least1 rang the ancient female challenge down the ages until the recent female capitulation4 ,so streamed the red standard of the higher anarchy until ,miss ,pankhurst hoisted the white flag4 ,it must be remembered that the modern world has done deep treason to the eternal intellect by believing in the swing of the pendulum4 ,a man must be dead before he swings4 ,it has substituted an idea of fatalistic alternation for the mediaeval freedom of the soul seeking truth4 ,all modern thinkers are reactionaries2 for their thought is always a reaction from what went before4 ,when you meet a modern man he is always coming from a place1 not going to it4 ,thus1 mankind has in nearly all places and periods seen that there is a soul and a body as plainly as that there is a sun and moon4 ,but because a narrow ,protestant sect called ,materialists declared for a short time that there was no soul1 another narrow ,protestant sect called ,christian ,science is now maintaining that there is no body4 ,now just in the same way the unreasonable neglect of government by the ,manchester ,school has produced1 not a reasonable regard for government1 but an unreasonable neglect of everything else4 ,so that to hear people talk to-day one would fancy that every important human function must be organized and avenged by law2 that all education must be state education1 and all employment state employment2 that everybody and everything must be brought to the foot of the august and prehistoric gibbet4 ,but a somewhat more liberal and sympathetic examination of mankind will convince us that the cross is even older than the gibbet1 that voluntary suffering was before and independent of compulsory2 and in short that in most important matters a man has always been free to ruin himself if he chose4 ,the huge fundamental function upon which all anthropology turns1 that of sex and childbirth1 has never been inside the political state1 but always outside of it4 ,the state concerned itself with the trivial question of killing people1 but wisely left alone the whole business of getting them born4 ,a ,eugenist might indeed plausibly say that the government is an absent-minded and inconsistent person who occupies himself with providing for the old age of people who have never been infants4 ,i will not deal here in any detail with the fact that some ,eugenists have in our time made the maniacal answer that the police ought to control marriage and birth as they control labor and death4 ,except for this inhuman handful 7with whom ,i regret to say ,i shall have to deal with later7 all the ,eugenists ,i know divide themselves into two sections3 ingenious people who once meant this1 and rather bewildered people who swear they never meant it--nor anything else4 ,but if it be conceded 7by a breezier estimate of men7 that they do mostly desire marriage to remain free from government1 it does not follow that they desire it to remain free from everything4 ,if man does not control the marriage market by law1 is it controlled at all8 ,surely the answer is broadly that man does not control the marriage market by law1 but the woman does control it by sympathy and prejudice4 ,there was until lately a law forbidding a man to marry his deceased wife's sister2 yet the thing happened constantly4 ,there was no law forbidding a man to marry his deceased wife's scullery-maid2 yet it did not happen nearly so often4 ,it did not happen because the marriage market is managed in the spirit and by the authority of women2 and women are generally conservative where classes are concerned4 ,it is the same with that system of exclusiveness by which ladies have so often contrived 7as by a process of elimination7 to prevent marriages that they did not want and even sometimes procure those they did4 ,there is no need of the broad arrow and the fleur-de lis1 the turnkey's chains or the hangman's halter4 ,you need not strangle a man if you can silence him4 ,the branded shoulder is less effective and final than the cold shoulder2 and you need not trouble to lock a man in when you can lock him out4 ,the same1 of course1 is true of the colossal architecture which we call infant education3 an architecture reared wholly by women4 ,nothing can ever overcome that one enormous sex superiority1 that even the male child is born closer to his mother than to his father4 ,no one1 staring at that frightful female privilege1 can quite believe in the equality of the sexes4 ,here and there we read of a girl brought up like a tom-boy2 but every boy is brought up like a tame girl4 ,the flesh and spirit of femininity surround him from the first like the four walls of a house2 and even the vaguest or most brutal man has been womanized by being born4 ,man that is born of a woman has short days and full of misery2 but nobody can picture the obscenity and bestial tragedy that would belong to such a monster as man that was born of a man4 9999999999 ,,xi4 ,,the ,,queen ,,and ,,the ,,suffragettes ,but1 indeed1 with this educational matter ,i must of necessity embroil myself later4 ,the fourth section of discussion is supposed to be about the child1 but ,i think it will be mostly about the mother4 ,in this place ,i have systematically insisted on the large part of life that is governed1 not by man with his vote1 but by woman with her voice1 or more often1 with her horrible silence4 ,only one thing remains to be added4 ,in a sprawling and explanatory style has been traced out the idea that government is ultimately coercion1 that coercion must mean cold definitions as well as cruel consequences1 and that therefore there is something to be said for the old human habit of keeping one-half of humanity out of so harsh and dirty a business4 ,but the case is stronger still4 ,voting is not only coercion1 but collective coercion4 ,i think ,queen ,victoria would have been yet more popular and satisfying if she had never signed a death warrant4 ,i think ,queen ,elizabeth would have stood out as more solid and splendid in history if she had not earned 7among those who happen to know her history7 the nickname of ,bloody ,bess4 ,i think1 in short1 that the great historic woman is more herself when she is persuasive rather than coercive4 ,but ,i feel all mankind behind me when ,i say that if a woman has this power it should be despotic power--not democratic power4 ,there is a much stronger historic argument for giving ,miss ,pankhurst a throne than for giving her a vote4 ,she might have a crown1 or at least a coronet1 like so many of her supporters2 for these old powers are purely personal and therefore female4 ,miss ,pankhurst as a despot might be as virtuous as ,queen ,victoria1 and she certainly would find it difficult to be as wicked as ,queen ,bess1 but the point is that1 good or bad1 she would be irresponsible--she would not be governed by a rule and by a ruler4 ,there are only two ways of governing3 by a rule and by a ruler4 ,and it is seriously true to say of a woman1 in education and domesticity1 that the freedom of the autocrat appears to be necessary to her4 ,she is never responsible until she is irresponsible4 ,in case this sounds like an idle contradiction1 ,i confidently appeal to the cold facts of history4 ,almost every despotic or oligarchic state has admitted women to its privileges4 ,scarcely one democratic state has ever admitted them to its rights ,the reason is very simple3 that something female is endangered much more by the violence of the crowd4 ,in short1 one ,pankhurst is an exception1 but a thousand ,pankhursts are a nightmare1 a ,bacchic orgie1 a ,witches ,sabbath4 ,for in all legends men have thought of women as sublime separately but horrible in a herd4 9999999999 ,,xii4 ,,the ,,modern ,,slave ,now ,i have only taken the test case of ,female ,suffrage because it is topical and concrete2 it is not of great moment for me as a political proposal4 ,i can quite imagine anyone substantially agreeing with my view of woman as universalist and autocrat in a limited area2 and still thinking that she would be none the worse for a ballot paper4 ,the real question is whether this old ideal of woman as the great amateur is admitted or not4 ,there are many modern things which threaten it much more than suffragism2 notably the increase of self-supporting women1 even in the most severe or the most squalid employments4 ,if there be something against nature in the idea of a horde of wild women governing1 there is something truly intolerable in the idea of a herd of tame women being governed4 ,and there are elements in human psychology that make this situation particularly poignant or ignominous4 ,the ugly exactitudes of business1 the bells and clocks the fixed hours and rigid departments1 were all meant for the male3 who1 as a rule1 can only do one thing and can only with the greatest difficulty be induced to do that4 ,if clerks do not try to shirk their work1 our whole great commercial system breaks down4 ,it is breaking down1 under the inroad of women who are adopting the unprecedented and impossible course of taking the system seriously and doing it well4 ,their very efficiency is the definition of their slavery4 ,it is generally a very bad sign when one is trusted very much by one's employers4 ,and if the evasive clerks have a look of being blackguards1 the earnest ladies are often something very like blacklegs4 ,but the more immediate point is that the modern working woman bears a double burden1 for she endures both the grinding officialism of the new office and the distracting scrupulosity of the old home4 ,few men understand what conscientiousness is4 ,they understand duty1 which generally means one duty2 but conscientiousness is the duty of the universalist4 ,it is limited by no work days or holidays2 it is a lawless1 limitless1 devouring decorum4 ,if women are to be subjected to the dull rule of commerce1 we must find some way of emancipating them from the wild rule of conscience4 ,but ,i rather fancy you will find it easier to leave the conscience and knock off the commerce4 ,as it is1 the modern clerk or secretary exhausts herself to put one thing straight in the ledger and then goes home to put everything straight in the house4 ,this condition 7described by some as emancipated7 is at least the reverse of my ideal4 ,i would give woman1 not more rights1 but more privileges4 ,instead of sending her to seek such freedom as notoriously prevails in banks and factories1 ,i would design specially a house in which she can be free4 ,and with that we come to the last point of all2 the point at which we can perceive the needs of women1 like the rights of men1 stopped and falsified by something which it is the object of this book to expose4 ,the ,feminist 7which means1 ,i think1 one who dislikes the chief feminine characteristics7 has heard my loose monologue1 bursting all the time with one pent-up protest4 ,at this point he will break out and say1 8,but what are we to do8 ,there is modern commerce and its clerks2 there is the modern family with its unmarried daughters2 specialism is expected everywhere2 female thrift and conscientiousness are demanded and supplied4 ,what does it matter whether we should in the abstract prefer the old human and housekeeping woman2 we might prefer the ,garden of ,eden4 ,but since women have trades they ought to have trades unions4 ,since women work in factories1 they ought to vote on factory-acts4 ,if they are unmarried they must be commercial2 if they are commercial they must be political4 ,we must have new rules for a new world--even if it be not a better one40 ,i said to a ,feminist once3 8,the question is not whether women are good enough for votes3 it is whether votes are good enough for women40 ,he only answered3 8,ah1 you go and say that to the women chain-makers on ,cradley ,heath40 ,now this is the attitude which ,i attack4 ,it is the huge heresy of ,precedent4 ,it is the view that because we have got into a mess we must grow messier to suit it2 that because we have taken a wrong turn some time ago we must go forward and not backwards2 that because we have lost our way we must lose our map also2 and because we have missed our ideal1 we must forget it4 8,there are numbers of excellent people who do not think votes unfeminine2 and there may be enthusiasts for our beautiful modern industry who do not think factories unfeminine40 ,but if these things are unfeminine it is no answer to say that they fit into each other4 ,i am not satisfied with the statement that my daughter must have unwomanly powers because she has unwomanly wrongs4 ,industrial soot and political printer's ink are two blacks which do not make a white4 ,most of the ,feminists would probably agree with me that womanhood is under shameful tyranny in the shops and mills4 ,but ,i want to destroy the tyranny4 ,they want to destroy womanhood4 ,that is the only difference4 ,whether we can recover the clear vision of woman as a tower with many windows1 the fixed eternal feminine from which her sons1 the specialists1 go forth2 whether we can preserve the tradition of a central thing which is even more human than democracy and even more practical than politics2 whether1 in word1 it is possible to re-establish the family1 freed from the filthy cynicism and cruelty of the commercial epoch1 ,i shall discuss in the last section of this book4 ,but meanwhile do not talk to me about the poor chain-makers on ,cradley ,heath4 ,i know all about them and what they are doing4 ,they are engaged in a very wide-spread and flourishing industry of the present age4 ,they are making chains4 ,,part ,,four4 ,,education3 ,,or ,,the ,,mistake ,,about ,,the ,,child ,i4 ,,the ,,calvinism ,,of ,,to-,,day ,when ,i wrote a little volume on my friend ,mr4 ,bernard ,shaw1 it is needless to say that he reviewed it4 ,i naturally felt tempted to answer and to criticise the book from the same disinterested and impartial standpoint from which ,mr4 ,shaw had criticised the subject of it4 ,i was not withheld by any feeling that the joke was getting a little obvious2 for an obvious joke is only a successful joke2 it is only the unsuccessful clowns who comfort themselves with being subtle4 ,the real reason why ,i did not answer ,mr4 ,shaw's amusing attack was this3 that one simple phrase in it surrendered to me all that ,i have ever wanted1 or could want from him to all eternity4 ,i told ,mr4 ,shaw 7in substance7 that he was a charming and clever fellow1 but a common ,calvinist4 ,he admitted that this was true1 and there 7so far as ,i am concerned7 is an end of the matter4 ,he said that1 of course1 ,calvin was quite right in holding that 8if once a man is born it is too late to damn or save him40 ,that is the fundamental and subterranean secret2 that is the last lie in hell4 ,the difference between ,puritanism and ,catholicism is not about whether some priestly word or gesture is significant and sacred4 ,it is about whether any word or gesture is significant and sacred4 ,to the ,catholic every other daily act is dramatic dedication to the service of good or of evil4 ,to the ,calvinist no act can have that sort of solemnity1 because the person doing it has been dedicated from eternity1 and is merely filling up his time until the crack of doom4 ,the difference is something subtler than plum-puddings or private theatricals2 the difference is that to a ,christian of my kind this short earthly life is intensely thrilling and precious2 to a ,calvinist like ,mr4 ,shaw it is confessedly automatic and uninteresting4 ,to me these threescore years and ten are the battle4 ,to the ,fabian ,calvinist 7by his own confession7 they are only a long procession of the victors in laurels and the vanquished in chains4 ,to me earthly life is the drama2 to him it is the epilogue4 ,shavians think about the embryo2 ,spiritualists about the ghost2 ,christians about the man4 ,it is as well to have these things clear4 ,now all our sociology and eugenics and the rest of it are not so much materialist as confusedly ,calvinist1 they are chiefly occupied in educating the child before he exists4 ,the whole movement is full of a singular depression about what one can do with the populace1 combined with a strange disembodied gayety about what may be done with posterity4 ,these essential ,calvinists have1 indeed1 abolished some of the more liberal and universal parts of ,calvinism1 such as the belief in an intellectual design or an everlasting happiness4 ,but though ,mr4 ,shaw and his friends admit it is a superstition that a man is judged after death1 they stick to their central doctrine1 that he is judged before he is born4 ,in consequence of this atmosphere of ,calvinism in the cultured world of to-day1 it is apparently necessary to begin all arguments on education with some mention of obstetrics and the unknown world of the prenatal4 ,all ,i shall have to say1 however1 on heredity will be very brief1 because ,i shall confine myself to what is known about it1 and that is very nearly nothing4 ,it is by no means self-evident1 but it is a current modern dogma1 that nothing actually enters the body at birth except a life derived and compounded from the parents4 ,there is at least quite as much to be said for the ,christian theory that an element comes from ,god1 or the ,buddhist theory that such an element comes from previous existences4 ,but this is not a religious work1 and ,i must submit to those very narrow intellectual limits which the absence of theology always imposes4 ,leaving the soul on one side1 let us suppose for the sake of argument that the human character in the first case comes wholly from parents2 and then let us curtly state our knowledge rather than our ignorance4 9999999999 ,,ii4 ,,the ,,tribal ,,terror ,popular science1 like that of ,mr4 ,blatchford1 is in this matter as mild as old wives' tales4 ,mr4 ,blatchford1 with colossal simplicity1 explained to millions of clerks and workingmen that the mother is like a bottle of blue beads and the father is like a bottle of yellow beads2 and so the child is like a bottle of mixed blue beads and yellow4 ,he might just as well have said that if the father has two legs and the mother has two legs1 the child will have four legs4 ,obviously it is not a question of simple addition or simple division of a number of hard detached 8qualities10 like beads4 ,it is an organic crisis and transformation of the most mysterious sort2 so that even if the result is unavoidable1 it will still be unexpected4 ,it is not like blue beads mixed with yellow beads2 it is like blue mixed with yellow2 the result of which is green1 a totally novel and unique experience1 a new emotion4 ,a man might live in a complete cosmos of blue and yellow1 like the 8,edinburgh ,review02 a man might never have seen anything but a golden cornfield and a sapphire sky2 and still he might never have had so wild a fancy as green4 ,if you paid a sovereign for a bluebell2 if you spilled the mustard on the blue-books2 if you married a canary to a blue baboon2 there is nothing in any of these wild weddings that contains even a hint of green4 ,green is not a mental combination1 like addition2 it is a physical result like birth4 ,so1 apart from the fact that nobody ever really understands parents or children either1 yet even if we could understand the parents1 we could not make any conjecture about the children4 ,each time the force works in a different way2 each time the constituent colors combine into a different spectacle4 ,a girl may actually inherit her ugliness from her mother's good looks4 ,a boy may actually get his weakness from his father's strength4 ,even if we admit it is really a fate1 for us it must remain a fairy tale4 ,considered in regard to its causes1 the ,calvinists and materialists may be right or wrong2 we leave them their dreary debate4 ,but considered in regard to its results there is no doubt about it4 ,the thing is always a new color2 a strange star4 ,every birth is as lonely as a miracle4 ,every child is as uninvited as a monstrosity4 ,on all such subjects there is no science1 but only a sort of ardent ignorance2 and nobody has ever been able to offer any theories of moral heredity which justified themselves in the only scientific sense2 that is that one could calculate on them beforehand4 ,there are six cases1 say1 of a grandson having the same twitch of mouth or vice of character as his grandfather2 or perhaps there are sixteen cases1 or perhaps sixty4 ,but there are not two cases1 there is not one case1 there are no cases at all1 of anybody betting half a crown that the grandfather will have a grandson with the twitch or the vice4 ,in short1 we deal with heredity as we deal with omens1 affinities and the fulfillment of dreams4 ,the things do happen1 and when they happen we record them2 but not even a lunatic ever reckons on them4 ,indeed1 heredity1 like dreams and omens1 is a barbaric notion2 that is1 not necessarily an untrue1 but a dim1 groping and unsystematized notion4 ,a civilized man feels himself a little more free from his family4 ,before ,christianity these tales of tribal doom occupied the savage north2 and since the ,reformation and the revolt against ,christianity 7which is the religion of a civilized freedom7 savagery is slowly creeping back in the form of realistic novels and problem plays4 ,the curse of ,rougon-,macquart is as heathen and superstitious as the curse of ,ravenswood2 only not so well written4 ,but in this twilight barbaric sense the feeling of a racial fate is not irrational1 and may be allowed like a hundred other half emotions that make life whole4 ,the only essential of tragedy is that one should take it lightly4 ,but even when the barbarian deluge rose to its highest in the madder novels of ,zola 7such as that called 8,the ,human ,beast01 a gross libel on beasts as well as humanity71 even then the application of the hereditary idea to practice is avowedly timid and fumbling4 ,the students of heredity are savages in this vital sense2 that they stare back at marvels1 but they dare not stare forward to schemes4 ,in practice no one is mad enough to legislate or educate upon dogmas of physical inheritance2 and even the language of the thing is rarely used except for special modern purposes1 such as the endowment of research or the oppression of the poor4 9999999999 ,,iii4 ,,the ,,tricks ,,of ,,environment ,after all the modern clatter of ,calvinism1 therefore1 it is only with the born child that anybody dares to deal2 and the question is not eugenics but education4 ,or again1 to adopt that rather tiresome terminology of popular science1 it is not a question of heredity but of environment4 ,i will not needlessly complicate this question by urging at length that environment also is open to some of the objections and hesitations which paralyze the employment of heredity4 ,i will merely suggest in passing that even about the effect of environment modern people talk much too cheerfully and cheaply4 ,the idea that surroundings will mold a man is always mixed up with the totally different idea that they will mold him in one particular way4 ,to take the broadest case1 landscape no doubt affects the soul2 but how it affects it is quite another matter4 ,to be born among pine-trees might mean loving pine-trees4 ,it might mean loathing pine-trees4 ,it might quite seriously mean never having seen a pine-tree4 ,or it might mean any mixture of these or any degree of any of them4 ,so that the scientific method here lacks a little in precision4 ,i am not speaking without the book2 on the contrary1 ,i am speaking with the blue book1 with the guide-book and the atlas4 ,it may be that the ,highlanders are poetical because they inhabit mountains2 but are the ,swiss prosaic because they inhabit mountains8 ,it may be the ,swiss have fought for freedom because they had hills2 did the ,dutch fight for freedom because they hadn't8 ,personally ,i should think it quite likely4 ,environment might work negatively as well as positively4 ,the ,swiss may be sensible1 not in spite of their wild skyline1 but be cause of their wild skyline4 ,the ,flemings may be fantastic artists1 not in spite of their dull skyline1 but because of it4 ,i only pause on this parenthesis to show that1 even in matters admittedly within its range1 popular science goes a great deal too fast1 and drops enormous links of logic4 ,nevertheless1 it remains the working reality that what we have to deal with in the case of children is1 for all practical purposes1 environment2 or1 to use the older word1 education4 ,when all such deductions are made1 education is at least a form of will-worship2 not of cowardly fact-worship2 it deals with a department that we can control2 it does not merely darken us with the barbarian pessimism of ,zola and the heredity-hunt4 ,we shall certainly make fools of ourselves2 that is what is meant by philosophy4 ,but we shall not merely make beasts of ourselves2 which is the nearest popular definition for merely following the laws of ,nature and cowering under the vengeance of the flesh4 ,education contains much moonshine2 but not of the sort that makes mere mooncalves and idiots the slaves of a silver magnet1 the one eye of the world4 ,in this decent arena there are fads1 but not frenzies4 ,doubtless we shall often find a mare's nest2 but it will not always be the nightmare's4 9999999999 ,,iv4 ,,the ,,truth ,,about ,,education ,when a man is asked to write down what he really thinks on education1 a certain gravity grips and stiffens his soul1 which might be mistaken by the superficial for disgust4 ,if it be really true that men sickened of sacred words and wearied of theology1 if this largely unreasoning irritation against 8dogma0 did arise out of some ridiculous excess of such things among priests in the past1 then ,i fancy we must be laying up a fine crop of cant for our descendants to grow tired of4 ,probably the word 8education0 will some day seem honestly as old and objectless as the word 8justification0 now seems in a ,puritan folio4 ,gibbon thought it frightfully funny that people should have fought about the difference between the 8,homoousion0 and the 8,homoiousion40 ,the time will come when somebody will laugh louder to think that men thundered against ,sectarian ,education and also against ,secular ,education2 that men of prominence and position actually denounced the schools for teaching a creed and also for not teaching a faith4 ,the two ,greek words in ,gibbon look rather alike2 but they really mean quite different things4 ,faith and creed do not look alike1 but they mean exactly the same thing4 ,creed happens to be the ,latin for faith4 ,now having read numberless newspaper articles on education1 and even written a good many of them1 and having heard deafening and indeterminate discussion going on all around me almost ever since ,i was born1 about whether religion was part of education1 about whether hygiene was an essential of education1 about whether militarism was inconsistent with true education1 ,i naturally pondered much on this recurring substantive1 and ,i am ashamed to say that it was comparatively late in life that ,i saw the main fact about it4 ,of course1 the main fact about education is that there is no such thing4 ,it does not exist1 as theology or soldiering exist4 ,theology is a word like geology1 soldiering is a word like soldering2 these sciences may be healthy or no as hobbies2 but they deal with stone and kettles1 with definite things4 ,but education is not a word like geology or kettles4 ,education is a word like 8transmission0 or 8inheritance02 it is not an object1 but a method4 ,it must mean the conveying of certain facts1 views or qualities1 to the last baby born4 ,they might be the most trivial facts or the most preposterous views or the most offensive qualities2 but if they are handed on from one generation to another they are education4 ,education is not a thing like theology1 it is not an inferior or superior thing2 it is not a thing in the same category of terms4 ,theology and education are to each other like a love-letter to the ,general ,post ,office4 ,mr4 ,fagin was quite as educational as ,dr4 ,strong2 in practice probably more educational4 ,it is giving something--perhaps poison4 ,education is tradition1 and tradition 7as its name implies7 can be treason4 ,this first truth is frankly banal2 but it is so perpetually ignored in our political prosing that it must be made plain4 ,a little boy in a little house1 son of a little tradesman1 is taught to eat his breakfast1 to take his medicine1 to love his country1 to say his prayers1 and to wear his ,sunday clothes4 ,obviously ,fagin1 if he found such a boy1 would teach him to drink gin1 to lie1 to betray his country1 to blaspheme and to wear false whiskers4 ,but so also ,mr4 ,salt the vegetarian would abolish the boy's breakfast2 ,mrs4 ,eddy would throw away his medicine2 ,count ,tolstoi would rebuke him for loving his country2 ,mr4 ,blatchford would stop his prayers1 and ,mr4 ,edward ,carpenter would theoretically denounce ,sunday clothes1 and perhaps all clothes4 ,i do not defend any of these advanced views1 not even ,fagin's4 ,but ,i do ask what1 between the lot of them1 has become of the abstract entity called education4 ,it is not 7as commonly supposed7 that the tradesman teaches education plus ,christianity2 ,mr4 ,salt1 education plus vegetarianism2 ,fagin1 education plus crime4 ,the truth is1 that there is nothing in common at all between these teachers1 except that they teach4 ,in short1 the only thing they share is the one thing they profess to dislike3 the general idea of authority4 ,it is quaint that people talk of separating dogma from education4 ,dogma is actually the only thing that cannot be separated from education4 ,it is education4 ,a teacher who is not dogmatic is simply a teacher who is not teaching4 9999999999 ,v4 ,,an ,,evil ,,cry ,the fashionable fallacy is that by education we can give people something that we have not got4 ,to hear people talk one would think it was some sort of magic chemistry1 by which1 out of a laborious hotchpotch of hygienic meals1 baths1 breathing exercises1 fresh air and freehand drawing1 we can produce something splendid by accident2 we can create what we cannot conceive4 ,these pages have1 of course1 no other general purpose than to point out that we cannot create anything good until we have conceived it4 ,it is odd that these people1 who in the matter of heredity are so sullenly attached to law1 in the matter of environment seem almost to believe in miracle4 ,they insist that nothing but what was in the bodies of the parents can go to make the bodies of the children4 ,but they seem somehow to think that things can get into the heads of the children which were not in the heads of the parents1 or1 indeed1 anywhere else4 ,there has arisen in this connection a foolish and wicked cry typical of the confusion4 ,i mean the cry1 8,save the children40 ,it is1 of course1 part of that modern morbidity that insists on treating the ,state 7which is the home of man7 as a sort of desperate expedient in time of panic4 ,this terrified opportunism is also the origin of the ,socialist and other schemes4 ,just as they would collect and share all the food as men do in a famine1 so they would divide the children from their fathers1 as men do in a shipwreck4 ,that a human community might conceivably not be in a condition of famine or shipwreck never seems to cross their minds4 ,this cry of 8,save the children0 has in it the hateful implication that it is impossible to save the fathers2 in other words1 that many millions of grown-up1 sane1 responsible and self-supporting ,europeans are to be treated as dirt or debris and swept away out of the discussion2 called dipsomaniacs because they drink in public houses instead of private houses2 called unemployables because nobody knows how to get them work2 called dullards if they still adhere to conventions1 and called loafers if they still love liberty4 ,now ,i am concerned1 first and last1 to maintain that unless you can save the fathers1 you cannot save the children2 that at present we cannot save others1 for we cannot save ourselves4 ,we cannot teach citizenship if we are not citizens2 we cannot free others if we have forgotten the appetite of freedom4 ,education is only truth in a state of transmission2 and how can we pass on truth if it has never come into our hand8 ,thus we find that education is of all the cases the clearest for our general purpose4 ,it is vain to save children2 for they cannot remain children4 ,by hypothesis we are teaching them to be men2 and how can it be so simple to teach an ideal manhood to others if it is so vain and hopeless to find one for ourselves8 ,i know that certain crazy pedants have attempted to counter this difficulty by maintaining that education is not instruction at all1 does not teach by authority at all4 ,they present the process as coming1 not from the outside1 from the teacher1 but entirely from inside the boy4 ,education1 they say1 is the ,latin for leading out or drawing out the dormant faculties of each person4 ,somewhere far down in the dim boyish soul is a primordial yearning to learn ,greek accents or to wear clean collars2 and the schoolmaster only gently and tenderly liberates this imprisoned purpose4 ,sealed up in the newborn babe are the intrinsic secrets of how to eat asparagus and what was the date of ,bannockburn4 ,the educator only draws out the child's own unapparent love of long division2 only leads out the child's slightly veiled preference for milk pudding to tarts4 ,i am not sure that ,i believe in the derivation2 ,i have heard the disgraceful suggestion that 8educator10 if applied to a ,roman schoolmaster1 did not mean leading our young functions into freedom2 but only meant taking out little boys for a walk4 ,but ,i am much more certain that ,i do not agree with the doctrine2 ,i think it would be about as sane to say that the baby's milk comes from the baby as to say that the baby's educational merits do4 ,there is1 indeed1 in each living creature a collection of forces and functions2 but education means producing these in particular shapes and training them to particular purposes1 or it means nothing at all4 ,speaking is the most practical instance of the whole situation4 ,you may indeed 8draw out0 squeals and grunts from the child by simply poking him and pulling him about1 a pleasant but cruel pastime to which many psychologists are addicted4 ,but you will wait and watch very patiently indeed before you draw the ,english language out of him4 ,that you have got to put into him2 and there is an end of the matter4 9999999999 ,,vi4 ,,authority ,,the ,,unavoidable ,but the important point here is only that you cannot anyhow get rid of authority in education2 it is not so much 7as poor ,conservatives say7 that parental authority ought to be preserved1 as that it cannot be destroyed4 ,mr4 ,bernard ,shaw once said that he hated the idea of forming a child's mind4 ,in that case ,mr4 ,bernard ,shaw had better hang himself2 for he hates something inseparable from human life4 ,i only mentioned educere and the drawing out of the faculties in order to point out that even this mental trick does not avoid the inevitable idea of parental or scholastic authority4 ,the educator drawing out is just as arbitrary and coercive as the instructor pouring in2 for he draws out what he chooses4 ,he decides what in the child shall be developed and what shall not be developed4 ,he does not 7,i suppose7 draw out the neglected faculty of forgery4 ,he does not 7so far at least7 lead out1 with timid steps1 a shy talent for torture4 ,the only result of all this pompous and precise distinction between the educator and the instructor is that the instructor pokes where he likes and the educator pulls where he likes4 ,exactly the same intellectual violence is done to the creature who is poked and pulled4 ,now we must all accept the responsibility of this intellectual violence4 ,education is violent2 because it is creative4 ,it is creative because it is human4 ,it is as reckless as playing on the fiddle2 as dogmatic as drawing a picture2 as brutal as building a house4 ,in short1 it is what all human action is2 it is an interference with life and growth4 ,after that it is a trifling and even a jocular question whether we say of this tremendous tormentor1 the artist ,man1 that he puts things into us like an apothecary1 or draws things out of us1 like a dentist4 ,the point is that ,man does what he likes4 ,he claims the right to take his mother ,nature under his control2 he claims the right to make his child the ,superman1 in his image4 ,once flinch from this creative authority of man1 and the whole courageous raid which we call civilization wavers and falls to pieces4 ,now most modern freedom is at root fear4 ,it is not so much that we are too bold to endure rules2 it is rather that we are too timid to endure responsibilities4 ,and ,mr4 ,shaw and such people are especially shrinking from that awful and ancestral responsibility to which our fathers committed us when they took the wild step of becoming men4 ,i mean the responsibility of affirming the truth of our human tradition and handing it on with a voice of authority1 an unshaken voice4 ,that is the one eternal education2 to be sure enough that something is true that you dare to tell it to a child4 ,from this high audacious duty the moderns are fleeing on every side2 and the only excuse for them is1 7of course17 that their modern philosophies are so half-baked and hypothetical that they cannot convince themselves enough to convince even a newborn babe4 ,this1 of course1 is connected with the decay of democracy2 and is somewhat of a separate subject4 ,suffice it to say here that when ,i say that we should instruct our children1 ,i mean that we should do it1 not that ,mr4 ,sully or ,professor ,earl ,barnes should do it4 ,the trouble in too many of our modern schools is that the ,state1 being controlled so specially by the few1 allows cranks and experiments to go straight to the schoolroom when they have never passed through the ,parliament1 the public house1 the private house1 the church1 or the marketplace4 ,obviously1 it ought to be the oldest things that are taught to the youngest people2 the assured and experienced truths that are put first to the baby4 ,but in a school to-day the baby has to submit to a system that is younger than himself4 ,the flopping infant of four actually has more experience1 and has weathered the world longer1 than the dogma to which he is made to submit4 ,many a school boasts of having the last ideas in education1 when it has not even the first idea2 for the first idea is that even innocence1 divine as it is1 may learn something from experience4 ,but this1 as ,i say1 is all due to the mere fact that we are managed by a little oligarchy2 my system presupposes that men who govern themselves will govern their children4 ,to-day we all use ,popular ,education as meaning education of the people4 ,i wish ,i could use it as meaning education by the people4 ,the urgent point at present is that these expansive educators do not avoid the violence of authority an inch more than the old school masters4 ,nay1 it might be maintained that they avoid it less4 ,the old village schoolmaster beat a boy for not learning grammar and sent him out into the playground to play anything he liked2 or at nothing1 if he liked that better4 ,the modern scientific schoolmaster pursues him into the playground and makes him play at cricket1 because exercise is so good for the health4 ,the modern ,dr4 ,busby is a doctor of medicine as well as a doctor of divinity4 ,he may say that the good of exercise is self-evident2 but he must say it1 and say it with authority4 ,it cannot really be self-evident or it never could have been compulsory4 ,but this is in modern practice a very mild case4 ,in modern practice the free educationists forbid far more things than the old-fashioned educationists4 ,a person with a taste for paradox 7if any such shameless creature could exist7 might with some plausibility maintain concerning all our expansion since the failure of ,luther's frank paganism and its replacement by ,calvin's ,puritanism1 that all this expansion has not been an expansion1 but the closing in of a prison1 so that less and less beautiful and humane things have been permitted4 ,the ,puritans destroyed images2 the ,rationalists forbade fairy tales4 ,count ,tostoi practically issued one of his papal encyclicals against music2 and ,i have heard of modern educationists who forbid children to play with tin soldiers4 ,i remember a meek little madman who came up to me at some ,socialist soiree or other1 and asked me to use my influence 7have ,i any influence87 against adventure stories for boys4 ,it seems they breed an appetite for blood4 ,but never mind that2 one must keep one's temper in this madhouse4 ,i need only insist here that these things1 even if a just deprivation1 are a deprivation4 ,i do not deny that the old vetoes and punishments were often idiotic and cruel2 though they are much more so in a country like ,england 7where in practice only a rich man decrees the punishment and only a poor man receives it7 than in countries with a clearer popular tradition--such as ,russia4 ,in ,russia flogging is often inflicted by peasants on a peasant4 ,in modern ,england flogging can only in practice be inflicted by a gentleman on a very poor man4 ,thus only a few days ago as ,i write a small boy 7a son of the poor1 of course7 was sentenced to flogging and imprisonment for five years for having picked up a small piece of coal which the experts value at #e;d4 ,i am entirely on the side of such liberals and humanitarians as have protested against this almost bestial ignorance about boys4 ,but ,i do think it a little unfair that these humanitarians1 who excuse boys for being robbers1 should denounce them for playing at robbers4 ,i do think that those who understand a guttersnipe playing with a piece of coal might1 by a sudden spurt of imagination1 understand him playing with a tin soldier4 ,to sum it up in one sentence3 ,i think my meek little madman might have understood that there is many a boy who would rather be flogged1 and unjustly flogged1 than have his adventure story taken away4 9999999999 ,,vii4 ,,the ,,humility ,,of ,,mrs4 ,,grundy ,in short1 the new education is as harsh as the old1 whether or no it is as high4 ,the freest fad1 as much as the strictest formula1 is stiff with authority4 ,it is because the humane father thinks soldiers wrong that they are forbidden2 there is no pretense1 there can be no pretense1 that the boy would think so4 ,the average boy's impression certainly would be simply this3 8,if your father is a ,methodist you must not play with soldiers on ,sunday4 ,if your father is a ,socialist you must not play with them even on week days40 ,all educationists are utterly dogmatic and authoritarian4 ,you cannot have free education2 for if you left a child free you would not educate him at all4 ,is there1 then1 no distinction or difference between the most hide-bound conventionalists and the most brilliant and bizarre innovators8 ,is there no difference between the heaviest heavy father and the most reckless and speculative maiden aunt8 ,yes2 there is4 ,the difference is that the heavy father1 in his heavy way1 is a democrat4 ,he does not urge a thing merely because to his fancy it should be done2 but1 because 7in his own admirable republican formula7 8,everybody does it40 ,the conventional authority does claim some popular mandate2 the unconventional authority does not4 ,the ,puritan who forbids soldiers on ,sunday is at least expressing ,puritan opinion2 not merely his own opinion4 ,he is not a despot2 he is a democracy1 a tyrannical democracy1 a dingy and local democracy perhaps2 but one that could do and has done the two ultimate virile things--fight and appeal to ,god4 ,but the veto of the new educationist is like the veto of the ,house of ,lords2 it does not pretend to be representative4 ,these innovators are always talking about the blushing modesty of ,mrs4 ,grundy4 ,i do not know whether ,mrs4 ,grundy is more modest than they are2 but ,i am sure she is more humble4 ,but there is a further complication4 ,the more anarchic modern may again attempt to escape the dilemma by saying that education should only be an enlargement of the mind1 an opening of all the organs of receptivity4 ,light 7he says7 should be brought into darkness2 blinded and thwarted existences in all our ugly corners should merely be permitted to perceive and expand2 in short1 enlightenment should be shed over darkest ,london4 ,now here is just the trouble2 that1 in so far as this is involved1 there is no darkest ,london4 ,london is not dark at all2 not even at night4 ,we have said that if education is a solid substance1 then there is none of it4 ,we may now say that if education is an abstract expansion there is no lack of it4 ,there is far too much of it4 ,in fact1 there is nothing else4 ,there are no uneducated people4 ,everybody in ,england is educated2 only most people are educated wrong4 ,the state schools were not the first schools1 but among the last schools to be established2 and ,london had been educating ,londoners long before the ,london ,school ,board4 ,the error is a highly practical one4 ,it is persistently assumed that unless a child is civilized by the established schools1 he must remain a barbarian4 ,i wish he did4 ,every child in ,london becomes a highly civilized person4 ,but here are so many different civilizations1 most of them born tired4 ,anyone will tell you that the trouble with the poor is not so much that the old are still foolish1 but rather that the young are already wise4 ,without going to school at all1 the gutter-boy would be educated4 ,without going to school at all1 he would be over-educated4 ,the real object of our schools should be not so much to suggest complexity as solely to restore simplicity4 ,you will hear venerable idealists declare we must make war on the ignorance of the poor2 but1 indeed1 we have rather to make war on their knowledge4 ,real educationists have to resist a kind of roaring cataract of culture4 ,the truant is being taught all day4 ,if the children do not look at the large letters in the spelling-book1 they need only walk outside and look at the large letters on the poster4 ,if they do not care for the colored maps provided by the school1 they can gape at the colored maps provided by the ,daily ,mail4 ,if they tire of electricity1 they can take to electric trams4 ,if they are unmoved by music1 they can take to drink4 ,if they will not work so as to get a prize from their school1 they may work to get a prize from ,prizy ,bits4 ,if they cannot learn enough about law and citizenship to please the teacher1 they learn enough about them to avoid the policeman4 ,if they will not learn history forwards from the right end in the history books1 they will learn it backwards from the wrong end in the party newspapers4 ,and this is the tragedy of the whole affair3 that the ,london poor1 a particularly quick-witted and civilized class1 learn everything tail foremost1 learn even what is right in the way of what is wrong4 ,they do not see the first principles of law in a law book2 they only see its last results in the police news4 ,they do not see the truths of politics in a general survey4 ,they only see the lies of politics1 at a ,general ,election4 ,but whatever be the pathos of the ,london poor1 it has nothing to do with being uneducated4 ,so far from being without guidance1 they are guided constantly1 earnestly1 excitedly2 only guided wrong4 ,the poor are not at all neglected1 they are merely oppressed2 nay1 rather they are persecuted4 ,there are no people in ,london who are not appealed to by the rich2 the appeals of the rich shriek from every hoarding and shout from every hustings4 ,for it should always be remembered that the queer1 abrupt ugliness of our streets and costumes are not the creation of democracy1 but of aristocracy4 ,the ,house of ,lords objected to the ,embankment being disfigured by trams4 ,but most of the rich men who disfigure the street-walls with their wares are actually in the ,house of ,lords4 ,the peers make the country seats beautiful by making the town streets hideous4 ,this1 however1 is parenthetical4 ,the point is1 that the poor in ,london are not left alone1 but rather deafened and bewildered with raucous and despotic advice4 ,they are not like sheep without a shepherd4 ,they are more like one sheep whom twenty-seven shepherds are shouting at4 ,all the newspapers1 all the new advertisements1 all the new medicines and new theologies1 all the glare and blare of the gas and brass of modern times--it is against these that the national school must bear up if it can4 ,i will not question that our elementary education is better than barbaric ignorance4 ,but there is no barbaric ignorance4 ,i do not doubt that our schools would be good for uninstructed boys4 ,but there are no uninstructed boys4 ,a modern ,london school ought not merely to be clearer1 kindlier1 more clever and more rapid than ignorance and darkness4 ,it must also be clearer than a picture postcard1 cleverer than a ,limerick competition1 quicker than the tram1 and kindlier than the tavern4 ,the school1 in fact1 has the responsibility of universal rivalry4 ,we need not deny that everywhere there is a light that must conquer darkness4 ,but here we demand a light that can conquer light4 9999999999 ,,viii4 ,,the ,,broken ,,rainbow ,i will take one case that will serve both as symbol and example3 the case of color4 ,we hear the realists 7those sentimental fellows7 talking about the gray streets and the gray lives of the poor4 ,but whatever the poor streets are they are not gray2 but motley1 striped1 spotted1 piebald and patched like a quilt4 ,hoxton is not aesthetic enough to be monochrome2 and there is nothing of the ,celtic twilight about it4 ,as a matter of fact1 a ,london gutter-boy walks unscathed among furnaces of color4 ,watch him walk along a line of hoardings1 and you will see him now against glowing green1 like a traveler in a tropic forest2 now black like a bird against the burning blue of the ,midi2 now passant across a field gules1 like the golden leopards of ,england4 ,he ought to understand the irrational rapture of that cry of ,mr4 ,stephen ,phillips about 8that bluer blue1 that greener green40 ,there is no blue much bluer than ,reckitt's ,blue and no blacking blacker than ,day and ,martin's2 no more emphatic yellow than that of ,colman's ,mustard4 ,if1 despite this chaos of color1 like a shattered rainbow1 the spirit of the small boy is not exactly intoxicated with art and culture1 the cause certainly does not lie in universal grayness or the mere starving of his senses4 ,it lies in the fact that the colors are presented in the wrong connection1 on the wrong scale1 and1 above all1 from the wrong motive4 ,it is not colors he lacks1 but a philosophy of colors4 ,in short1 there is nothing wrong with ,reckitt's ,blue except that it is not ,reckitt's4 ,blue does not belong to ,reckitt1 but to the sky2 black does not belong to ,day and ,martin1 but to the abyss4 ,even the finest posters are only very little things on a very large scale4 ,there is something specially irritant in this way about the iteration of advertisements of mustard3 a condiment1 a small luxury2 a thing in its nature not to be taken in quantity4 ,there is a special irony in these starving streets to see such a great deal of mustard to such very little meat4 ,yellow is a bright pigment2 mustard is a pungent pleasure4 ,but to look at these seas of yellow is to be like a man who should swallow gallons of mustard4 ,he would either die1 or lose the taste of mustard altogether4 ,now suppose we compare these gigantic trivialities on the hoardings with those tiny and tremendous pictures in which the mediaevals recorded their dreams2 little pictures where the blue sky is hardly longer than a single sapphire1 and the fires of judgment only a pigmy patch of gold4 ,the difference here is not merely that poster art is in its nature more hasty than illumination art2 it is not even merely that the ancient artist was serving the ,lord while the modern artist is serving the lords4 ,it is that the old artist contrived to convey an impression that colors really were significant and precious things1 like jewels and talismanic stones4 ,the color was often arbitrary2 but it was always authoritative4 ,if a bird was blue1 if a tree was golden1 if a fish was silver1 if a cloud was scarlet1 the artist managed to convey that these colors were important and almost painfully intense2 all the red red-hot and all the gold tried in the fire4 ,now that is the spirit touching color which the schools must recover and protect if they are really to give the children any imaginative appetite or pleasure in the thing4 ,it is not so much an indulgence in color2 it is rather1 if anything1 a sort of fiery thrift4 ,it fenced in a green field in heraldry as straitly as a green field in peasant proprietorship4 ,it would not fling away gold leaf any more than gold coin2 it would not heedlessly pour out purple or crimson1 any more than it would spill good wine or shed blameless blood4 ,that is the hard task before educationists in this special matter2 they have to teach people to relish colors like liquors4 ,they have the heavy business of turning drunkards into wine tasters4 ,if even the twentieth century succeeds in doing these things1 it will almost catch up with the twelfth4 ,the principle covers1 however1 the whole of modern life4 ,morris and the merely aesthetic mediaevalists always indicated that a crowd in the time of ,chaucer would have been brightly clad and glittering1 compared with a crowd in the time of ,queen ,victoria4 ,i am not so sure that the real distinction is here4 ,there would be brown frocks of friars in the first scene as well as brown bowlers of clerks in the second4 ,there would be purple plumes of factory girls in the second scene as well as purple lenten vestments in the first4 ,there would be white waistcoats against white ermine2 gold watch chains against gold lions4 ,the real difference is this3 that the brown earth-color of the monk's coat was instinctively chosen to express labor and humility1 whereas the brown color of the clerk's hat was not chosen to express anything4 ,the monk did mean to say that he robed himself in dust4 ,i am sure the clerk does not mean to say that he crowns himself with clay4 ,he is not putting dust on his head1 as the only diadem of man4 ,purple1 at once rich and somber1 does suggest a triumph temporarily eclipsed by a tragedy4 ,but the factory girl does not intend her hat to express a triumph temporarily eclipsed by a tragedy2 far from it4 ,white ermine was meant to express moral purity2 white waistcoats were not4 ,gold lions do suggest a flaming magnanimity2 gold watch chains do not4 ,the point is not that we have lost the material hues1 but that we have lost the trick of turning them to the best advantage4 ,we are not like children who have lost their paint box and are left alone with a gray lead-pencil4 ,we are like children who have mixed all the colors in the paint-box together and lost the paper of instructions4 ,even then 7,i do not deny7 one has some fun4 ,now this abundance of colors and loss of a color scheme is a pretty perfect parable of all that is wrong with our modern ideals and especially with our modern education4 ,it is the same with ethical education1 economic education1 every sort of education4 ,the growing ,london child will find no lack of highly controversial teachers who will teach him that geography means painting the map red2 that economics means taxing the foreigner1 that patriotism means the peculiarly un-,english habit of flying a flag on ,empire ,day4 ,in mentioning these examples specially ,i do not mean to imply that there are no similar crudities and popular fallacies upon the other political side4 ,i mention them because they constitute a very special and arresting feature of the situation4 ,i mean this1 that there were always ,radical revolutionists2 but now there are ,tory revolutionists also4 ,the modern ,conservative no longer conserves4 ,he is avowedly an innovator4 ,thus all the current defenses of the ,house of ,lords which describe it as a bulwark against the mob1 are intellectually done for2 the bottom has fallen out of them2 because on five or six of the most turbulent topics of the day1 the ,house of ,lords is a mob itself2 and exceedingly likely to behave like one4 9999999999 ,,ix4 ,,the ,,need ,,for ,,narrowness ,through all this chaos1 then we come back once more to our main conclusion4 ,the true task of culture to-day is not a task of expansion1 but very decidedly of selection--and rejection4 ,the educationist must find a creed and teach it4 ,even if it be not a theological creed1 it must still be as fastidious and as firm as theology4 ,in short1 it must be orthodox4 ,the teacher may think it antiquated to have to decide precisely between the faith of ,calvin and of ,laud1 the faith of ,aquinas and of ,swedenborg2 but he still has to choose between the faith of ,kipling and of ,shaw1 between the world of ,blatchford and of ,general ,booth4 ,call it1 if you will1 a narrow question whether your child shall be brought up by the vicar or the minister or the popish priest4 ,you have still to face that larger1 more liberal1 more highly civilized question1 of whether he shall be brought up by ,harmsworth or by ,pearson1 by ,mr4 ,eustace ,miles with his ,simple ,life or ,mr4 ,peter ,keary with his ,strenuous ,life2 whether he shall most eagerly read ,miss ,annie ,s4 ,swan or ,mr4 ,bart ,kennedy2 in short1 whether he shall end up in the mere violence of the ,s4 ,d4 ,f41 or in the mere vulgarity of the ,primrose ,league4 ,they say that nowadays the creeds are crumbling2 ,i doubt it1 but at least the sects are increasing2 and education must now be sectarian education1 merely for practical purposes4 ,out of all this throng of theories it must somehow select a theory2 out of all these thundering voices it must manage to hear a voice2 out of all this awful and aching battle of blinding lights1 without one shadow to give shape to them1 it must manage somehow to trace and to track a star4 ,i have spoken so far of popular education1 which began too vague and vast and which therefore has accomplished little4 ,but as it happens there is in ,england something to compare it with4 ,there is an institution1 or class of institutions1 which began with the same popular object1 which has since followed a much narrower object1 but which had the great advantage that it did follow some object1 unlike our modern elementary schools4 ,in all these problems ,i should urge the solution which is positive1 or1 as silly people say1 8optimistic40 ,i should set my face1 that is1 against most of the solutions that are solely negative and abolitionist4 ,most educators of the poor seem to think that they have to teach the poor man not to drink4 ,i should be quite content if they teach him to drink2 for it is mere ignorance about how to drink and when to drink that is accountable for most of his tragedies4 ,i do not propose 7like some of my revolutionary friends7 that we should abolish the public schools4 ,i propose the much more lurid and desperate experiment that we should make them public4 ,i do not wish to make ,parliament stop working1 but rather to make it work2 not to shut up churches1 but rather to open them2 not to put out the lamp of learning or destroy the hedge of property1 but only to make some rude effort to make universities fairly universal and property decently proper4 ,in many cases1 let it be remembered1 such action is not merely going back to the old ideal1 but is even going back to the old reality4 ,it would be a great step forward for the gin shop to go back to the inn4 ,it is incontrovertibly true that to mediaevalize the public schools would be to democratize the public schools4 ,parliament did once really mean 7as its name seems to imply7 a place where people were allowed to talk4 ,it is only lately that the general increase of efficiency1 that is1 of the ,speaker1 has made it mostly a place where people are prevented from talking4 ,the poor do not go to the modern church1 but they went to the ancient church all right2 and if the common man in the past had a grave respect for property1 it may conceivably have been because he sometimes had some of his own4 ,i therefore can claim that ,i have no vulgar itch of innovation in anything ,i say about any of these institutions4 ,certainly ,i have none in that particular one which ,i am now obliged to pick out of the list2 a type of institution to which ,i have genuine and personal reasons for being friendly and grateful3 ,i mean the great ,tudor foundations1 the public schools of ,england4 ,they have been praised for a great many things1 mostly1 ,i am sorry to say1 praised by themselves and their children4 ,and yet for some reason no one has ever praised them the one really convincing reason4 9999999999 ,x4 ,,the ,,case ,,for ,,the ,,public ,,schools ,the word success can of course be used in two senses4 ,it may be used with reference to a thing serving its immediate and peculiar purpose1 as of a wheel going around2 or it can be used with reference to a thing adding to the general welfare1 as of a wheel being a useful discovery4 ,it is one thing to say that ,smith's flying machine is a failure1 and quite another to say that ,smith has failed to make a flying machine4 ,now this is very broadly the difference between the old ,english public schools and the new democratic schools4 ,perhaps the old public schools are 7as ,i personally think they are7 ultimately weakening the country rather than strengthening it1 and are therefore1 in that ultimate sense1 inefficient4 ,but there is such a thing as being efficiently inefficient4 ,you can make your flying ship so that it flies1 even if you also make it so that it kills you4 ,now the public school system may not work satisfactorily1 but it works2 the public schools may not achieve what we want1 but they achieve what they want4 ,the popular elementary schools do not in that sense achieve anything at all4 ,it is very difficult to point to any guttersnipe in the street and say that he embodies the ideal for which popular education has been working1 in the sense that the fresh-faced1 foolish boy in 8,etons0 does embody the ideal for which the headmasters of ,harrow and ,winchester have been working4 ,the aristocratic educationists have the positive purpose of turning out gentlemen1 and they do turn out gentlemen1 even when they expel them4 ,the popular educationists would say that they had the far nobler idea of turning out citizens4 ,i concede that it is a much nobler idea1 but where are the citizens8 ,i know that the boy in 8,etons0 is stiff with a rather silly and sentimental stoicism1 called being a man of the world4 ,i do not fancy that the errand-boy is rigid with that republican stoicism that is called being a citizen4 ,the schoolboy will really say with fresh and innocent hauteur1 8,i am an ,english gentleman40 ,i cannot so easily picture the errand-boy drawing up his head to the stars and answering1 8,romanus civis sum40 ,let it be granted that our elementary teachers are teaching the very broadest code of morals1 while our great headmasters are teaching only the narrowest code of manners4 ,let it be granted that both these things are being taught4 ,but only one of them is being learned4 ,it is always said that great reformers or masters of events can manage to bring about some specific and practical reforms1 but that they never fulfill their visions or satisfy their souls4 ,i believe there is a real sense in which this apparent platitude is quite untrue4 ,by a strange inversion the political idealist often does not get what he asks for1 but does get what he wants4 ,the silent pressure of his ideal lasts much longer and reshapes the world much more than the actualities by which he attempted to suggest it4 ,what perishes is the letter1 which he thought so practical4 ,what endures is the spirit1 which he felt to be unattainable and even unutterable4 ,it is exactly his schemes that are not fulfilled2 it is exactly his vision that is fulfilled4 ,thus the ten or twelve paper constitutions of the ,french ,revolution1 which seemed so business-like to the framers of them1 seem to us to have flown away on the wind as the wildest fancies4 ,what has not flown away1 what is a fixed fact in ,europe1 is the ideal and vision4 ,the ,republic1 the idea of a land full of mere citizens all with some minimum of manners and minimum of wealth1 the vision of the eighteenth century1 the reality of the twentieth4 ,so ,i think it will generally be with the creator of social things1 desirable or undesirable4 ,all his schemes will fail1 all his tools break in his hands4 ,his compromises will collapse1 his concessions will be useless4 ,he must brace himself to bear his fate2 he shall have nothing but his heart's desire4 ,now if one may compare very small things with very great1 one may say that the ,english aristocratic schools can claim something of the same sort of success and solid splendor as the ,french democratic politics4 ,at least they can claim the same sort of superiority over the distracted and fumbling attempts of modern ,england to establish democratic education4 ,such success as has attended the public schoolboy throughout the ,empire1 a success exaggerated indeed by himself1 but still positive and a fact of a certain indisputable shape and size1 has been due to the central and supreme circumstance that the managers of our public schools did know what sort of boy they liked4 ,they wanted something and they got something2 instead of going to work in the broad-minded manner and wanting everything and getting nothing4 ,the only thing in question is the quality of the thing they got4 ,there is something highly maddening in the circumstance that when modern people attack an institution that really does demand reform1 they always attack it for the wrong reasons4 ,thus many opponents of our public schools1 imagining themselves to be very democratic1 have exhausted themselves in an unmeaning attack upon the study of ,greek4 ,i can understand how ,greek may be regarded as useless1 especially by those thirsting to throw themselves into the cut throat commerce which is the negation of citizenship2 but ,i do not understand how it can be considered undemocratic4 ,i quite understand why ,mr4 ,carnegie has a hatred of ,greek4 ,it is obscurely founded on the firm and sound impression that in any self-governing ,greek city he would have been killed4 ,but ,i cannot comprehend why any chance democrat1 say ,mr4 ,quelch1 or ,mr4 ,will ,crooks1 ,i or ,mr4 ,john ,m4 ,robertson1 should be opposed to people learning the ,greek alphabet1 which was the alphabet of liberty4 ,why should ,radicals dislike ,greek8 ,in that language is written all the earliest and1 ,heaven knows1 the most heroic history of the ,radical party4 ,why should ,greek disgust a democrat1 when the very word democrat is ,greek8 ,a similar mistake1 though a less serious one1 is merely attacking the athletics of public schools as something promoting animalism and brutality4 ,now brutality1 in the only immoral sense1 is not a vice of the ,english public schools4 ,there is much moral bullying1 owing to the general lack of moral courage in the public-school atmosphere4 ,these schools do1 upon the whole1 encourage physical courage2 but they do not merely discourage moral courage1 they forbid it4 ,the ultimate result of the thing is seen in the egregious ,english officer who cannot even endure to wear a bright uniform except when it is blurred and hidden in the smoke of battle4 ,this1 like all the affectations of our present plutocracy1 is an entirely modern thing4 ,it was unknown to the old aristocrats4 ,the ,black ,prince would certainly have asked that any knight who had the courage to lift his crest among his enemies1 should also have the courage to lift it among his friends4 ,as regards moral courage1 then it is not so much that the public schools support it feebly1 as that they suppress it firmly4 ,but physical courage they do1 on the whole1 support2 and physical courage is a magnificent fundamental4 ,the one great1 wise ,englishman of the eighteenth century said truly that if a man lost that virtue he could never be sure of keeping any other4 ,now it is one of the mean and morbid modern lies that physical courage is connected with cruelty4 ,the ,tolstoian and ,kiplingite are nowhere more at one than in maintaining this4 ,they have1 ,i believe1 some small sectarian quarrel with each other1 the one saying that courage must be abandoned because it is connected with cruelty1 and the other maintaining that cruelty is charming because it is a part of courage4 ,but it is all1 thank ,god1 a lie4 ,an energy and boldness of body may make a man stupid or reckless or dull or drunk or hungry1 but it does not make him spiteful4 ,and we may admit heartily 7without joining in that perpetual praise which public-school men are always pouring upon themselves7 that this does operate to the removal of mere evil cruelty in the public schools4 ,english public school life is extremely like ,english public life1 for which it is the preparatory school4 ,it is like it specially in this1 that things are either very open1 common and conventional1 or else are very secret indeed4 ,now there is cruelty in public schools1 just as there is kleptomania and secret drinking and vices without a name4 ,but these things do not flourish in the full daylight and common consciousness of the school1 and no more does cruelty4 ,a tiny trio of sullen-looking boys gather in corners and seem to have some ugly business always2 it may be indecent literature1 it may be the beginning of drink1 it may occasionally be cruelty to little boys4 ,but on this stage the bully is not a braggart4 ,the proverb says that bullies are always cowardly1 but these bullies are more than cowardly2 they are shy4 ,as a third instance of the wrong form of revolt against the public schools1 ,i may mention the habit of using the word aristocracy with a double implication4 ,to put the plain truth as briefly as possible1 if aristocracy means rule by a rich ring1 ,england has aristocracy and the ,english public schools support it4 ,if it means rule by ancient families or flawless blood1 ,england has not got aristocracy1 and the public schools systematically destroy it4 ,in these circles real aristocracy1 like real democracy1 has become bad form4 ,a modern fashionable host dare not praise his ancestry2 it would so often be an insult to half the other oligarchs at table1 who have no ancestry4 ,we have said he has not the moral courage to wear his uniform2 still less has he the moral courage to wear his coat-of-arms4 ,the whole thing now is only a vague hotch-potch of nice and nasty gentlemen4 ,the nice gentleman never refers to anyone else's father1 the nasty gentleman never refers to his own4 ,that is the only difference1 the rest is the public-school manner4 ,but ,eton and ,harrow have to be aristocratic because they consist so largely of parvenues4 ,the public school is not a sort of refuge for aristocrats1 like an asylum1 a place where they go in and never come out4 ,it is a factory for aristocrats2 they come out without ever having perceptibly gone in4 ,the poor little private schools1 in their old-world1 sentimental1 feudal style1 used to stick up a notice1 8,for the ,sons of ,gentlemen only40 ,if the public schools stuck up a notice it ought to be inscribed1 8,for the ,fathers of ,gentlemen only40 ,in two generations they can do the trick4 9999999999 ,,xi4 ,,the ,,school ,,for ,,hypocrites ,these are the false accusations2 the accusation of classicism1 the accusation of cruelty1 and the accusation of an exclusiveness based on perfection of pedigree4 ,english public-school boys are not pedants1 they are not torturers2 and they are not1 in the vast majority of cases1 people fiercely proud of their ancestry1 or even people with any ancestry to be proud of4 ,they are taught to be courteous1 to be good tempered1 to be brave in a bodily sense1 to be clean in a bodily sense2 they are generally kind to animals1 generally civil to servants1 and to anyone in any sense their equal1 the jolliest companions on earth4 ,is there then anything wrong in the public-school ideal8 ,i think we all feel there is something very wrong in it1 but a blinding network of newspaper phraseology obscures and entangles us2 so that it is hard to trace to its beginning1 beyond all words and phrases1 the faults in this great ,english achievement4 ,surely1 when all is said1 the ultimate objection to the ,english public school is its utterly blatant and indecent disregard of the duty of telling the truth4 ,i know there does still linger among maiden ladies in remote country houses a notion that ,english schoolboys are taught to tell the truth1 but it cannot be maintained seriously for a moment4 ,very occasionally1 very vaguely1 ,english schoolboys are told not to tell lies1 which is a totally different thing4 ,i may silently support all the obscene fictions and forgeries in the universe1 without once telling a lie4 ,i may wear another man's coat1 steal another man's wit1 apostatize to another man's creed1 or poison another man's coffee1 all without ever telling a lie4 ,but no ,english school-boy is ever taught to tell the truth1 for the very simple reason that he is never taught to desire the truth4 ,from the very first he is taught to be totally careless about whether a fact is a fact2 he is taught to care only whether the fact can be used on his 8side0 when he is engaged in 8playing the game40 ,he takes sides in his ,union debating society to settle whether ,charles ,i ought to have been killed1 with the same solemn and pompous frivolity with which he takes sides in the cricket field to decide whether ,rugby or ,westminster shall win4 ,he is never allowed to admit the abstract notion of the truth1 that the match is a matter of what may happen1 but that ,charles ,i is a matter of what did happen--or did not4 ,he is ,liberal or ,tory at the general election exactly as he is ,oxford or ,cambridge at the boat race4 ,he knows that sport deals with the unknown2 he has not even a notion that politics should deal with the known4 ,if anyone really doubts this self-evident proposition1 that the public schools definitely discourage the love of truth1 there is one fact which ,i should think would settle him4 ,england is the country of the ,party ,system1 and it has always been chiefly run by public-school men4 ,is there anyone out of ,hanwell who will maintain that the ,party ,system1 whatever its conveniences or inconveniences1 could have been created by people particularly fond of truth8 ,the very ,english happiness on this point is itself a hypocrisy4 ,when a man really tells the truth1 the first truth he tells is that he himself is a liar4 ,david said in his haste1 that is1 in his honesty1 that all men are liars4 ,it was afterwards1 in some leisurely official explanation1 that he said the ,kings of ,israel at least told the truth4 ,when ,lord ,curzon was ,viceroy he delivered a moral lecture to the ,indians on their reputed indifference to veracity1 to actuality and intellectual honor4 ,a great many people indignantly discussed whether orientals deserved to receive this rebuke2 whether ,indians were indeed in a position to receive such severe admonition4 ,no one seemed to ask1 as ,i should venture to ask1 whether ,lord ,curzon was in a position to give it4 ,he is an ordinary party politician2 a party politician means a politician who might have belonged to either party4 ,being such a person1 he must again and again1 at every twist and turn of party strategy1 either have deceived others or grossly deceived himself4 ,i do not know the ,east2 nor do ,i like what ,i know4 ,i am quite ready to believe that when ,lord ,curzon went out he found a very false atmosphere4 ,i only say it must have been something startlingly and chokingly false if it was falser than that ,english atmosphere from which he came4 ,the ,english ,parliament actually cares for everything except veracity4 ,the public-school man is kind1 courageous1 polite1 clean1 companionable2 but1 in the most awful sense of the words1 the truth is not in him4 ,this weakness of untruthfulness in the ,english public schools1 in the ,english political system1 and to some extent in the ,english character1 is a weakness which necessarily produces a curious crop of superstitions1 of lying legends1 of evident delusions clung to through low spiritual self-indulgence4 ,there are so many of these public-school superstitions that ,i have here only space for one of them1 which may be called the superstition of soap4 ,it appears to have been shared by the ablutionary ,pharisees1 who resembled the ,english public-school aristocrats in so many respects3 in their care about club rules and traditions1 in their offensive optimism at the expense of other people1 and above all in their unimaginative plodding patriotism in the worst interests of their country4 ,now the old human common sense about washing is that it is a great pleasure4 ,water 7applied externally7 is a splendid thing1 like wine4 ,sybarites bathe in wine1 and ,nonconformists drink water2 but we are not concerned with these frantic exceptions4 ,washing being a pleasure1 it stands to reason that rich people can afford it more than poor people1 and as long as this was recognized all was well2 and it was very right that rich people should offer baths to poor people1 as they might offer any other agreeable thing--a drink or a donkey ride4 ,but one dreadful day1 somewhere about the middle of the nineteenth century1 somebody discovered 7somebody pretty well off7 the two great modern truths1 that washing is a virtue in the rich and therefore a duty in the poor4 ,for a duty is a virtue that one can't do4 ,and a virtue is generally a duty that one can do quite easily2 like the bodily cleanliness of the upper classes4 ,but in the public-school tradition of public life1 soap has become creditable simply because it is pleasant4 ,baths are represented as a part of the decay of the ,roman ,empire2 but the same baths are represented as part of the energy and rejuvenation of the ,british ,empire4 ,there are distinguished public school men1 bishops1 dons1 headmasters1 and high politicians1 who1 in the course of the eulogies which from time to time they pass upon themselves1 have actually identified physical cleanliness with moral purity4 ,they say 7if ,i remember rightly7 that a public-school man is clean inside and out4 ,as if everyone did not know that while saints can afford to be dirty1 seducers have to be clean4 ,as if everyone did not know that the harlot must be clean1 because it is her business to captivate1 while the good wife may be dirty1 because it is her business to clean4 ,as if we did not all know that whenever ,god's thunder cracks above us1 it is very likely indeed to find the simplest man in a muck cart and the most complex blackguard in a bath4 ,there are other instances1 of course1 of this oily trick of turning the pleasures of a gentleman into the virtues of an ,anglo-,saxon4 ,sport1 like soap1 is an admirable thing1 but1 like soap1 it is an agreeable thing4 ,and it does not sum up all mortal merits to be a sportsman playing the game in a world where it is so often necessary to be a workman doing the work4 ,by all means let a gentleman congratulate himself that he has not lost his natural love of pleasure1 as against the blase1 and unchildlike4 ,but when one has the childlike joy it is best to have also the childlike unconsciousness2 and ,i do not think we should have special affection for the little boy who ever lastingly explained that it was his duty to play ,hide and ,seek and one of his family virtues to be prominent in ,puss in the ,corner4 ,another such irritating hypocrisy is the oligarchic attitude towards mendicity as against organized charity4 ,here again1 as in the case of cleanliness and of athletics1 the attitude would be perfectly human and intelligible if it were not maintained as a merit4 ,just as the obvious thing about soap is that it is a convenience1 so the obvious thing about beggars is that they are an inconvenience4 ,the rich would deserve very little blame if they simply said that they never dealt directly with beggars1 because in modern urban civilization it is impossible to deal directly with beggars2 or if not impossible1 at least very difficult4 ,but these people do not refuse money to beggars on the ground that such charity is difficult4 ,they refuse it on the grossly hypocritical ground that such charity is easy4 ,they say1 with the most grotesque gravity1 8,anyone can put his hand in his pocket and give a poor man a penny2 but we1 philanthropists1 go home and brood and travail over the poor man's troubles until we have discovered exactly what jail1 reformatory1 workhouse1 or lunatic asylum it will really be best for him to go to40 ,this is all sheer lying4 ,they do not brood about the man when they get home1 and if they did it would not alter the original fact that their motive for discouraging beggars is the perfectly rational one that beggars are a bother4 ,a man may easily be forgiven for not doing this or that incidental act of charity1 especially when the question is as genuinely difficult as is the case of mendicity4 ,but there is something quite pestilently ,pecksniffian about shrinking from a hard task on the plea that it is not hard enough4 ,if any man will really try talking to the ten beggars who come to his door he will soon find out whether it is really so much easier than the labor of writing a check for a hospital4 9999999999 ,,xii4 ,,the ,,staleness ,,of ,,the ,,new ,,schools ,for this deep and disabling reason therefore1 its cynical and abandoned indifference to the truth1 the ,english public school does not provide us with the ideal that we require4 ,we can only ask its modern critics to remember that right or wrong the thing can be done2 the factory is working1 the wheels are going around1 the gentlemen are being produced1 with their soap1 cricket and organized charity all complete4 ,and in this1 as we have said before1 the public school really has an advantage over all the other educational schemes of our time4 ,you can pick out a public-school man in any of the many companies into which they stray1 from a ,chinese opium den to a ,german ,jewish dinner-party4 ,but ,i doubt if you could tell which little match girl had been brought up by undenominational religion and which by secular education4 ,the great ,english aristocracy which has ruled us since the ,reformation is really1 in this sense1 a model to the moderns4 ,it did have an ideal1 and therefore it has produced a reality4 ,we may repeat here that these pages propose mainly to show one thing3 that progress ought to be based on principle1 while our modern progress is mostly based on precedent4 ,we go1 not by what may be affirmed in theory1 but by what has been already admitted in practice4 ,that is why the ,jacobites are the last ,tories in history with whom a high-spirited person can have much sympathy4 ,they wanted a specific thing2 they were ready to go forward for it1 and so they were also ready to go back for it4 ,but modern ,tories have only the dullness of defending situations that they had not the excitement of creating4 ,revolutionists make a reform1 ,conservatives only conserve the reform4 ,they never reform the reform1 which is often very much wanted4 ,just as the rivalry of armaments is only a sort of sulky plagiarism1 so the rivalry of parties is only a sort of sulky inheritance4 ,men have votes1 so women must soon have votes2 poor children are taught by force1 so they must soon be fed by force2 the police shut public houses by twelve o'clock1 so soon they must shut them by eleven o'clock2 children stop at school till they are fourteen1 so soon they will stop till they are forty4 ,no gleam of reason1 no momentary return to first principles1 no abstract asking of any obvious question1 can interrupt this mad and monotonous gallop of mere progress by precedent4 ,it is a good way to prevent real revolution4 ,by this logic of events1 the ,radical gets as much into a rut as the ,conservative4 ,we meet one hoary old lunatic who says his grandfather told him to stand by one stile4 ,we meet another hoary old lunatic who says his grandfather told him only to walk along one lane4 ,i say we may repeat here this primary part of the argument1 because we have just now come to the place where it is most startlingly and strongly shown4 ,the final proof that our elementary schools have no definite ideal of their own is the fact that they so openly imitate the ideals of the public schools4 ,in the elementary schools we have all the ethical prejudices and exaggerations of ,eton and ,harrow carefully copied for people to whom they do not even roughly apply4 ,we have the same wildly disproportionate doctrine of the effect of physical cleanliness on moral character4 ,educators and educational politicians declare1 amid warm cheers1 that cleanliness is far more important than all the squabbles about moral and religious training4 ,it would really seem that so long as a little boy washes his hands it does not matter whether he is washing off his mother's jam or his brother's gore4 ,we have the same grossly insincere pretense that sport always encourages a sense of honor1 when we know that it often ruins it4 ,above all1 we have the same great upperclass assumption that things are done best by large institutions handling large sums of money and ordering everybody about2 and that trivial and impulsive charity is in some way contemptible4 ,as ,mr4 ,blatchford says1 8,the world does not want piety1 but soap--and ,socialism40 ,piety is one of the popular virtues1 whereas soap and ,socialism are two hobbies of the upper middle class4 ,these 8healthy0 ideals1 as they are called1 which our politicians and schoolmasters have borrowed from the aristocratic schools and applied to the democratic1 are by no means particularly appropriate to an impoverished democracy4 ,a vague admiration for organized government and a vague distrust of individual aid cannot be made to fit in at all into the lives of people among whom kindness means lending a saucepan and honor means keeping out of the workhouse4 ,it resolves itself either into discouraging that system of prompt and patchwork generosity which is a daily glory of the poor1 or else into hazy advice to people who have no money not to give it recklessly away4 ,nor is the exaggerated glory of athletics1 defensible enough in dealing with the rich who1 if they did not romp and race1 would eat and drink unwholesomely1 by any means so much to the point when applied to people1 most of whom will take a great deal of exercise anyhow1 with spade or hammer1 pickax or saw4 ,and for the third case1 of washing1 it is obvious that the same sort of rhetoric about corporeal daintiness which is proper to an ornamental class cannot1 merely as it stands1 be applicable to a dustman4 ,a gentleman is expected to be substantially spotless all the time4 ,but it is no more discreditable for a scavenger to be dirty than for a deep-sea diver to be wet4 ,a sweep is no more disgraced when he is covered with soot than ,michael ,angelo when he is covered with clay1 or ,bayard when he is covered with blood4 ,nor have these extenders of the public-school tradition done or suggested anything by way of a substitute for the present snobbish system which makes cleanliness almost impossible to the poor2 ,i mean the general ritual of linen and the wearing of the cast-off clothes of the rich4 ,one man moves into another man's clothes as he moves into another man's house4 ,no wonder that our educationists are not horrified at a man picking up the aristocrat's second-hand trousers1 when they themselves have only taken up the aristocrat's second-hand ideas4 9999999999 ,,xiii4 ,,the ,,outlawed ,,parent ,there is one thing at least of which there is never so much as a whisper inside the popular schools2 and that is the opinion of the people4 ,the only persons who seem to have nothing to do with the education of the children are the parents4 ,yet the ,english poor have very definite traditions in many ways4 ,they are hidden under embarrassment and irony2 and those psychologists who have disentangled them talk of them as very strange1 barbaric and secretive things4 ,but1 as a matter of fact1 the traditions of the poor are mostly simply the traditions of humanity1 a thing which many of us have not seen for some time4 ,for instance1 workingmen have a tradition that if one is talking about a vile thing it is better to talk of it in coarse language2 one is the less likely to be seduced into excusing it4 ,but mankind had this tradition also1 until the ,puritans and their children1 the ,ibsenites1 started the opposite idea1 that it does not matter what you say so long as you say it with long words and a long face4 ,or again1 the educated classes have tabooed most jesting about personal appearance2 but in doing this they taboo not only the humor of the slums1 but more than half the healthy literature of the world2 they put polite nose-bags on the noses of ,punch and ,bardolph1 ,stiggins and ,cyrano de ,bergerac4 ,again1 the educated classes have adopted a hideous and heathen custom of considering death as too dreadful to talk about1 and letting it remain a secret for each person1 like some private malformation4 ,the poor1 on the contrary1 make a great gossip and display about bereavement2 and they are right4 ,they have hold of a truth of psychology which is at the back of all the funeral customs of the children of men4 ,the way to lessen sorrow is to make a lot of it4 ,the way to endure a painful crisis is to insist very much that it is a crisis2 to permit people who must feel sad at least to feel important4 ,in this the poor are simply the priests of the universal civilization2 and in their stuffy feasts and solemn chattering there is the smell of the baked meats of ,hamlet and the dust and echo of the funeral games of ,patroclus4 ,the things philanthropists barely excuse 7or do not excuse7 in the life of the laboring classes are simply the things we have to excuse in all the greatest monuments of man4 ,it may be that the laborer is as gross as ,shakespeare or as garrulous as ,homer2 that if he is religious he talks nearly as much about hell as ,dante2 that if he is worldly he talks nearly as much about drink as ,dickens4 ,nor is the poor man without historic support if he thinks less of that ceremonial washing which ,christ dismissed1 and rather more of that ceremonial drinking which ,christ specially sanctified4 ,the only difference between the poor man of to-day and the saints and heroes of history is that which in all classes separates the common man who can feel things from the great man who can express them4 ,what he feels is merely the heritage of man4 ,now nobody expects of course that the cabmen and coal-heavers can be complete instructors of their children any more than the squires and colonels and tea merchants are complete instructors of their children4 ,there must be an educational specialist in loco parentis4 ,but the master at ,harrow is in loco parentis2 the master in ,hoxton is rather contra parentem4 ,the vague politics of the squire1 the vaguer virtues of the colonel1 the soul and spiritual yearnings of a tea merchant1 are1 in veritable practice1 conveyed to the children of these people at the ,english public schools4 ,but ,i wish here to ask a very plain and emphatic question4 ,can anyone alive even pretend to point out any way in which these special virtues and traditions of the poor are reproduced in the education of the poor8 ,i do not wish the coster's irony to appeal as coarsely in the school as it does in the tap room2 but does it appear at all8 ,is the child taught to sympathize at all with his father's admirable cheerfulness and slang8 ,i do not expect the pathetic1 eager pietas of the mother1 with her funeral clothes and funeral baked meats1 to be exactly imitated in the educational system2 but has it any influence at all on the educational system8 ,does any elementary schoolmaster accord it even an instant's consideration or respect8 ,i do not expect the schoolmaster to hate hospitals and ,c4,o4,s4 centers so much as the schoolboy's father2 but does he hate them at all8 ,does he sympathize in the least with the poor man's point of honor against official institutions8 ,is it not quite certain that the ordinary elementary schoolmaster will think it not merely natural but simply conscientious to eradicate all these rugged legends of a laborious people1 and on principle to preach soap and ,socialism against beer and liberty8 ,in the lower classes the school master does not work for the parent1 but against the parent4 ,modern education means handing down the customs of the minority1 and rooting out the customs of the majority4 ,instead of their ,christlike charity1 their ,shakespearean laughter and their high ,homeric reverence for the dead1 the poor have imposed on them mere pedantic copies of the prejudices of the remote rich4 ,they must think a bathroom a necessity because to the lucky it is a luxury2 they must swing ,swedish clubs because their masters are afraid of ,english cudgels2 and they must get over their prejudice against being fed by the parish1 because aristocrats feel no shame about being fed by the nation4 9999999999 ,,xiv4 ,,folly ,,and ,,female ,,education ,it is the same in the case of girls4 ,i am often solemnly asked what ,i think of the new ideas about female education4 ,but there are no new ideas about female education4 ,there is not1 there never has been1 even the vestige of a new idea4 ,all the educational reformers did was to ask what was being done to boys and then go and do it to girls2 just as they asked what was being taught to young squires and then taught it to young chimney sweeps4 ,what they call new ideas are very old ideas in the wrong place4 ,boys play football1 why shouldn't girls play football2 boys have school colors1 why shouldn't girls have school-colors2 boys go in hundreds to day-schools1 why shouldn't girls go in hundreds to day-schools2 boys go to ,oxford1 why shouldn't girls go to ,oxford--in short1 boys grow mustaches1 why shouldn't girls grow mustaches--that is about their notion of a new idea4 ,there is no brain-work in the thing at all2 no root query of what sex is1 of whether it alters this or that1 and why1 anymore than there is any imaginative grip of the humor and heart of the populace in the popular education4 ,there is nothing but plodding1 elaborate1 elephantine imitation4 ,and just as in the case of elementary teaching1 the cases are of a cold and reckless inappropriateness4 ,even a savage could see that bodily things1 at least1 which are good for a man are very likely to be bad for a woman4 ,yet there is no boy's game1 however brutal1 which these mild lunatics have not promoted among girls4 ,to take a stronger case1 they give girls very heavy home-work2 never reflecting that all girls have home-work already in their homes4 ,it is all a part of the same silly subjugation2 there must be a hard stick-up collar round the neck of a woman1 because it is already a nuisance round the neck of a man4 ,though a ,saxon serf1 if he wore that collar of cardboard1 would ask for his collar of brass4 ,it will then be answered1 not without a sneer1 8,and what would you prefer8 ,would you go back to the elegant early ,victorian female1 with ringlets and smelling-bottle1 doing a little in water colors1 dabbling a little in ,italian1 playing a little on the harp1 writing in vulgar albums and painting on senseless screens8 ,do you prefer that80 ,to which ,i answer1 8,emphatically1 yes40 ,i solidly prefer it to the new female education1 for this reason1 that ,i can see in it an intellectual design1 while there is none in the other4 ,i am by no means sure that even in point of practical fact that elegant female would not have been more than a match for most of the inelegant females4 ,i fancy ,jane ,austen was stronger1 sharper and shrewder than ,charlotte ,bronte2 ,i am quite certain she was stronger1 sharper and shrewder than ,george ,eliot4 ,she could do one thing neither of them could do3 she could coolly and sensibly describe a man4 ,i am not sure that the old great lady who could only smatter ,italian was not more vigorous than the new great lady who can only stammer ,american2 nor am ,i certain that the bygone duchesses who were scarcely successful when they painted ,melrose ,abbey1 were so much more weak-minded than the modern duchesses who paint only their own faces1 and are bad at that4 ,but that is not the point4 ,what was the theory1 what was the idea1 in their old1 weak water-colors and their shaky ,italian8 ,the idea was the same which in a ruder rank expressed itself in home-made wines and hereditary recipes2 and which still1 in a thousand unexpected ways1 can be found clinging to the women of the poor4 ,it was the idea ,i urged in the second part of this book3 that the world must keep one great amateur1 lest we all become artists and perish4 ,somebody must renounce all specialist conquests1 that she may conquer all the conquerors4 ,that she may be a queen of life1 she must not be a private soldier in it4 ,i do not think the elegant female with her bad ,italian was a perfect product1 any more than ,i think the slum woman talking gin and funerals is a perfect product2 alas6 there are few perfect products4 ,but they come from a comprehensible idea2 and the new woman comes from nothing and nowhere4 ,it is right to have an ideal1 it is right to have the right ideal1 and these two have the right ideal4 ,the slum mother with her funerals is the degenerate daughter of ,antigone1 the obstinate priestess of the household gods4 ,the lady talking bad ,italian was the decayed tenth cousin of ,portia1 the great and golden ,italian lady1 the ,renascence amateur of life1 who could be a barrister because she could be anything4 ,sunken and neglected in the sea of modern monotony and imitation1 the types hold tightly to their original truths4 ,antigone1 ugly1 dirty and often drunken1 will still bury her father4 ,the elegant female1 vapid and fading away to nothing1 still feels faintly the fundamental difference between herself and her husband3 that he must be ,something in the ,city1 that she may be everything in the country4 ,there was a time when you and ,i and all of us were all very close to ,god2 so that even now the color of a pebble 7or a paint71 the smell of a flower 7or a firework71 comes to our hearts with a kind of authority and certainty2 as if they were fragments of a muddled message1 or features of a forgotten face4 ,to pour that fiery simplicity upon the whole of life is the only real aim of education2 and closest to the child comes the woman--she understands4 ,to say what she understands is beyond me2 save only this1 that it is not a solemnity4 ,rather it is a towering levity1 an uproarious amateurishness of the universe1 such as we felt when we were little1 and would as soon sing as garden1 as soon paint as run4 ,to smatter the tongues of men and angels1 to dabble in the dreadful sciences1 to juggle with pillars and pyramids and toss up the planets like balls1 this is that inner audacity and indifference which the human soul1 like a conjurer catching oranges1 must keep up forever4 ,this is that insanely frivolous thing we call sanity4 ,and the elegant female1 drooping her ringlets over her water-colors1 knew it and acted on it4 ,she was juggling with frantic and flaming suns4 ,she was maintaining the bold equilibrium of inferiorities which is the most mysterious of superiorities and perhaps the most unattainable4 ,she was maintaining the prime truth of woman1 the universal mother3 that if a thing is worth doing1 it is worth doing badly4 ,,part ,,five4 ,,the ,,home ,,of ,,man ,i4 ,,the ,,empire ,,of ,,the ,,insect ,a cultivated ,conservative friend of mine once exhibited great distress because in a gay moment ,i once called ,edmund ,burke an atheist4 ,i need scarcely say that the remark lacked something of biographical precision2 it was meant to4 ,burke was certainly not an atheist in his conscious cosmic theory1 though he had not a special and flaming faith in ,god1 like ,robespierre4 ,nevertheless1 the remark had reference to a truth which it is here relevant to repeat4 ,i mean that in the quarrel over the ,french ,revolution1 ,burke did stand for the atheistic attitude and mode of argument1 as ,robespierre stood for the theistic4 ,the ,revolution appealed to the idea of an abstract and eternal justice1 beyond all local custom or convenience4 ,if there are commands of ,god1 then there must be rights of man4 ,here ,burke made his brilliant diversion2 he did not attack the ,robespierre doctrine with the old mediaeval doctrine of jus divinum 7which1 like the ,robespierre doctrine1 was theistic71 he attacked it with the modern argument of scientific relativity2 in short1 the argument of evolution4 ,he suggested that humanity was everywhere molded by or fitted to its environment and institutions2 in fact1 that each people practically got1 not only the tyrant it deserved1 but the tyrant it ought to have4 8,i know nothing of the rights of men10 he said1 8but ,i know something of the rights of ,englishmen40 ,there you have the essential atheist4 ,his argument is that we have got some protection by natural accident and growth2 and why should we profess to think beyond it1 for all the world as if we were the images of ,god6 ,we are born under a ,house of ,lords1 as birds under a house of leaves2 we live under a monarchy as niggers live under a tropic sun2 it is not their fault if they are slaves1 and it is not ours if we are snobs4 ,thus1 long before ,darwin struck his great blow at democracy1 the essential of the ,darwinian argument had been already urged against the ,french ,revolution4 ,man1 said ,burke in effect1 must adapt himself to everything1 like an animal2 he must not try to alter everything1 like an angel4 ,the last weak cry of the pious1 pretty1 half-artificial optimism and deism of the eighteenth century came in the voice of ,sterne1 saying1 8,god tempers the wind to the shorn lamb40 ,and ,burke1 the iron evolutionist1 essentially answered1 8,no2 ,god tempers the shorn lamb to the wind40 ,it is the lamb that has to adapt himself4 ,that is1 he either dies or becomes a particular kind of lamb who likes standing in a draught4 ,the subconscious popular instinct against ,darwinism was not a mere offense at the grotesque notion of visiting one's grandfather in a cage in the ,regent's ,park4 ,men go in for drink1 practical jokes and many other grotesque things2 they do not much mind making beasts of themselves1 and would not much mind having beasts made of their forefathers4 ,the real instinct was much deeper and much more valuable4 ,it was this3 that when once one begins to think of man as a shifting and alterable thing1 it is always easy for the strong and crafty to twist him into new shapes for all kinds of unnatural purposes4 ,the popular instinct sees in such developments the possibility of backs bowed and hunch-backed for their burden1 or limbs twisted for their task4 ,it has a very well-grounded guess that whatever is done swiftly and systematically will mostly be done by a successful class and almost solely in their interests4 ,it has therefore a vision of inhuman hybrids and half-human experiments much in the style of ,mr4 ,wells's 8,island of ,dr4 ,moreau40 ,the rich man may come to breeding a tribe of dwarfs to be his jockeys1 and a tribe of giants to be his hall-porters4 ,grooms might be born bow-legged and tailors born cross-legged2 perfumers might have long1 large noses and a crouching attitude1 like hounds of scent2 and professional wine-tasters might have the horrible expression of one tasting wine stamped upon their faces as infants4 ,whatever wild image one employs it cannot keep pace with the panic of the human fancy1 when once it supposes that the fixed type called man could be changed4 ,if some millionaire wanted arms1 some porter must grow ten arms like an octopus2 if he wants legs1 some messenger-boy must go with a hundred trotting legs like a centipede4 ,in the distorted mirror of hypothesis1 that is1 of the unknown1 men can dimly see such monstrous and evil shapes2 men run all to eye1 or all to fingers1 with nothing left but one nostril or one ear4 ,that is the nightmare with which the mere notion of adaptation threatens us4 ,that is the nightmare that is not so very far from the reality4 ,it will be said that not the wildest evolutionist really asks that we should become in any way unhuman or copy any other animal4 ,pardon me1 that is exactly what not merely the wildest evolutionists urge1 but some of the tamest evolutionists too4 ,there has risen high in recent history an important cultus which bids fair to be the religion of the future--which means the religion of those few weak-minded people who live in the future4 ,it is typical of our time that it has to look for its god through a microscope2 and our time has marked a definite adoration of the insect4 ,like most things we call new1 of course1 it is not at all new as an idea2 it is only new as an idolatry4 ,virgil takes bees seriously but ,i doubt if he would have kept bees as carefully as he wrote about them4 ,the wise king told the sluggard to watch the ant1 a charming occupation--for a sluggard4 ,but in our own time has appeared a very different tone1 and more than one great man1 as well as numberless intelligent men1 have in our time seriously suggested that we should study the insect because we are his inferiors4 ,the old moralists merely took the virtues of man and distributed them quite decoratively and arbitrarily among the animals4 ,the ant was an almost heraldic symbol of industry1 as the lion was of courage1 or1 for the matter of that1 the pelican of charity4 ,but if the mediaevals had been convinced that a lion was not courageous1 they would have dropped the lion and kept the courage2 if the pelican is not charitable1 they would say1 so much the worse for the pelican4 ,the old moralists1 ,i say1 permitted the ant to enforce and typify man's morality2 they never allowed the ant to upset it4 ,they used the ant for industry as the lark for punctuality2 they looked up at the flapping birds and down at the crawling insects for a homely lesson4 ,but we have lived to see a sect that does not look down at the insects1 but looks up at the insects1 that asks us essentially to bow down and worship beetles1 like ancient ,egyptians4 ,maurice ,maeterlinck is a man of unmistakable genius1 and genius always carries a magnifying glass4 ,in the terrible crystal of his lens we have seen the bees not as a little yellow swarm1 but rather in golden armies and hierarchies of warriors and queens4 ,imagination perpetually peers and creeps further down the avenues and vistas in the tubes of science1 and one fancies every frantic reversal of proportions2 the earwig striding across the echoing plain like an elephant1 or the grasshopper coming roaring above our roofs like a vast aeroplane1 as he leaps from ,hertfordshire to ,surrey4 ,one seems to enter in a dream a temple of enormous entomology1 whose architecture is based on something wilder than arms or backbones2 in which the ribbed columns have the half-crawling look of dim and monstrous caterpillars2 or the dome is a starry spider hung horribly in the void4 ,there is one of the modern works of engineering that gives one something of this nameless fear of the exaggerations of an underworld2 and that is the curious curved architecture of the under ground railway1 commonly called the ,twopenny ,tube4 ,those squat archways1 without any upright line or pillar1 look as if they had been tunneled by huge worms who have never learned to lift their heads4 ,it is the very underground palace of the ,serpent1 the spirit of changing shape and color1 that is the enemy of man4 ,but it is not merely by such strange aesthetic suggestions that writers like ,maeterlinck have influenced us in the matter2 there is also an ethical side to the business4 ,the upshot of ,m4 ,maeterlinck's book on bees is an admiration1 one might also say an envy1 of their collective spirituality2 of the fact that they live only for something which he calls the ,soul of the ,hive4 ,and this admiration for the communal morality of insects is expressed in many other modern writers in various quarters and shapes2 in ,mr4 ,benjamin ,kidd's theory of living only for the evolutionary future of our race1 and in the great interest of some ,socialists in ants1 which they generally prefer to bees1 ,i suppose1 because they are not so brightly colored4 ,not least among the hundred evidences of this vague insectolatry are the floods of flattery poured by modern people on that energetic nation of the ,far ,east of which it has been said that 8,patriotism is its only religion02 or1 in other words1 that it lives only for the ,soul of the ,hive4 ,when at long intervals of the centuries ,christendom grows weak1 morbid or skeptical1 and mysterious ,asia begins to move against us her dim populations and to pour them westward like a dark movement of matter1 in such cases it has been very common to compare the invasion to a plague of lice or incessant armies of locusts4 ,the ,eastern armies were indeed like insects2 in their blind1 busy destructiveness1 in their black nihilism of personal outlook1 in their hateful indifference to individual life and love1 in their base belief in mere numbers1 in their pessimistic courage and their atheistic patriotism1 the riders and raiders of the ,east are indeed like all the creeping things of the earth4 ,but never before1 ,i think1 have ,christians called a ,turk a locust and meant it as a compliment4 ,now for the first time we worship as well as fear2 and trace with adoration that enormous form advancing vast and vague out of ,asia1 faintly discernible amid the mystic clouds of winged creatures hung over the wasted lands1 thronging the skies like thunder and discoloring the skies like rain2 ,beelzebub1 the ,lord of ,flies4 ,in resisting this horrible theory of the ,soul of the ,hive1 we of ,christendom stand not for ourselves1 but for all humanity2 for the essential and distinctive human idea that one good and happy man is an end in himself1 that a soul is worth saving4 ,nay1 for those who like such biological fancies it might well be said that we stand as chiefs and champions of a whole section of nature1 princes of the house whose cognizance is the backbone1 standing for the milk of the individual mother and the courage of the wandering cub1 representing the pathetic chivalry of the dog1 the humor and perversity of cats1 the affection of the tranquil horse1 the loneliness of the lion4 ,it is more to the point1 however1 to urge that this mere glorification of society as it is in the social insects is a transformation and a dissolution in one of the outlines which have been specially the symbols of man4 ,in the cloud and confusion of the flies and bees is growing fainter and fainter1 as is finally disappearing1 the idea of the human family4 ,the hive has become larger than the house1 the bees are destroying their captors2 what the locust hath left1 the caterpillar hath eaten2 and the little house and garden of our friend ,jones is in a bad way4 9999999999 ,,ii4 ,,the ,,fallacy ,,of ,,the ,,umbrella ,,stand ,when ,lord ,morley said that the ,house of ,lords must be either mended or ended1 he used a phrase which has caused some confusion2 because it might seem to suggest that mending and ending are somewhat similar things4 ,i wish specially to insist on the fact that mending and ending are opposite things4 ,you mend a thing because you like it2 you end a thing because you don't4 ,to mend is to strengthen4 ,i1 for instance1 disbelieve in oligarchy2 so ,i would no more mend the ,house of ,lords than ,i would mend a thumbscrew4 ,on the other hand1 ,i do believe in the family2 therefore ,i would mend the family as ,i would mend a chair2 and ,i will never deny for a moment that the modern family is a chair that wants mending4 ,but here comes in the essential point about the mass of modern advanced sociologists4 ,here are two institutions that have always been fundamental with mankind1 the family and the state4 ,anarchists1 ,i believe1 disbelieve in both4 ,it is quite unfair to say that ,socialists believe in the state1 but do not believe in the family2 thousands of ,socialists believe more in the family than any ,tory4 ,but it is true to say that while anarchists would end both1 ,socialists are specially engaged in mending 7that is1 strengthening and renewing7 the state2 and they are not specially engaged in strengthening and renewing the family4 ,they are not doing anything to define the functions of father1 mother1 and child1 as such2 they are not tightening the machine up again2 they are not blackening in again the fading lines of the old drawing4 ,with the state they are doing this2 they are sharpening its machinery1 they are blackening in its black dogmatic lines1 they are making mere government in every way stronger and in some ways harsher than before4 ,while they leave the home in ruins1 they restore the hive1 especially the stings4 ,indeed1 some schemes of labor and ,poor ,law reform recently advanced by distinguished ,socialists1 amount to little more than putting the largest number of people in the despotic power of ,mr4 ,bumble4 ,apparently1 progress means being moved on--by the police4 ,the point it is my purpose to urge might perhaps be suggested thus3 that ,socialists and most social reformers of their color are vividly conscious of the line between the kind of things that belong to the state and the kind of things that belong to mere chaos or uncoercible nature2 they may force children to go to school before the sun rises1 but they will not try to force the sun to rise2 they will not1 like ,canute1 banish the sea1 but only the sea-bathers4 ,but inside the outline of the state their lines are confused1 and entities melt into each other4 ,they have no firm instinctive sense of one thing being in its nature private and another public1 of one thing being necessarily bond and another free4 ,that is why piece by piece1 and quite silently1 personal liberty is being stolen from ,englishmen1 as personal land has been silently stolen ever since the sixteenth century4 ,i can only put it sufficiently curtly in a careless simile4 ,a ,socialist means a man who thinks a walking-stick like an umbrella because they both go into the umbrella-stand4 ,yet they are as different as a battle-ax and a bootjack4 ,the essential idea of an umbrella is breadth and protection4 ,the essential idea of a stick is slenderness and1 partly1 attack4 ,the stick is the sword1 the umbrella is the shield1 but it is a shield against another and more nameless enemy--the hostile but anonymous universe4 ,more properly1 therefore1 the umbrella is the roof2 it is a kind of collapsible house4 ,but the vital difference goes far deeper than this2 it branches off into two kingdoms of man's mind1 with a chasm between4 ,for the point is this3 that the umbrella is a shield against an enemy so actual as to be a mere nuisance2 whereas the stick is a sword against enemies so entirely imaginary as to be a pure pleasure4 ,the stick is not merely a sword1 but a court sword2 it is a thing of purely ceremonial swagger4 ,one cannot express the emotion in any way except by saying that a man feels more like a man with a stick in his hand1 just as he feels more like a man with a sword at his side4 ,but nobody ever had any swelling sentiments about an umbrella2 it is a convenience1 like a door scraper4 ,an umbrella is a necessary evil4 ,a walking-stick is a quite unnecessary good4 ,this1 ,i fancy1 is the real explanation of the perpetual losing of umbrellas2 one does not hear of people losing walking sticks4 ,for a walking-stick is a pleasure1 a piece of real personal property2 it is missed even when it is not needed4 ,when my right hand forgets its stick may it forget its cunning4 ,but anybody may forget an umbrella1 as anybody might forget a shed that he has stood up in out of the rain4 ,anybody can forget a necessary thing4 ,if ,i might pursue the figure of speech1 ,i might briefly say that the whole ,collectivist error consists in saying that because two men can share an umbrella1 therefore two men can share a walking-stick4 ,umbrellas might possibly be replaced by some kind of common awnings covering certain streets from particular showers4 ,but there is nothing but nonsense in the notion of swinging a communal stick2 it is as if one spoke of twirling a communal mustache4 ,it will be said that this is a frank fantasia and that no sociologists suggest such follies4 ,pardon me if they do4 ,i will give a precise parallel to the case of confusion of sticks and umbrellas1 a parallel from a perpetually reiterated suggestion of reform4 ,at least sixty ,socialists out of a hundred1 when they have spoken of common laundries1 will go on at once to speak of common kitchens4 ,this is just as mechanical and unintelligent as the fanciful case ,i have quoted4 ,sticks and umbrellas are both stiff rods that go into holes in a stand in the hall4 ,kitchens and washhouses are both large rooms full of heat and damp and steam4 ,but the soul and function of the two things are utterly opposite4 ,there is only one way of washing a shirt2 that is1 there is only one right way4 ,there is no taste and fancy in tattered shirts4 ,nobody says1 8,tompkins likes five holes in his shirt1 but ,i must say1 give me the good old four holes40 ,nobody says1 8,this washerwoman rips up the left leg of my pyjamas2 now if there is one thing ,i insist on it is the right leg ripped up40 ,the ideal washing is simply to send a thing back washed4 ,but it is by no means true that the ideal cooking is simply to send a thing back cooked4 ,cooking is an art2 it has in it personality1 and even perversity1 for the definition of an art is that which must be personal and may be perverse4 ,i know a man1 not otherwise dainty1 who cannot touch common sausages unless they are almost burned to a coal4 ,he wants his sausages fried to rags1 yet he does not insist on his shirts being boiled to rags4 ,i do not say that such points of culinary delicacy are of high importance4 ,i do not say that the communal ideal must give way to them4 ,what ,i say is that the communal ideal is not conscious of their existence1 and therefore goes wrong from the very start1 mixing a wholly public thing with a highly individual one4 ,perhaps we ought to accept communal kitchens in the social crisis1 just as we should accept communal cat's-meat in a siege4 ,but the cultured ,socialist1 quite at his ease1 by no means in a siege1 talks about communal kitchens as if they were the same kind of thing as communal laundries4 ,this shows at the start that he misunderstands human nature4 ,it is as different as three men singing the same chorus from three men playing three tunes on the same piano4 9999999999 ,,iii4 ,,the ,,dreadful ,,duty ,,of ,,gudge ,in the quarrel earlier alluded to between the energetic ,progressive and the obstinate ,conservative 7or1 to talk a tenderer language1 between ,hudge and ,gudge71 the state of cross-purposes is at the present moment acute4 ,the ,tory says he wants to preserve family life in ,cindertown2 the ,socialist very reasonably points out to him that in ,cindertown at present there isn't any family life to preserve4 ,but ,hudge1 the ,socialist1 in his turn1 is highly vague and mysterious about whether he would preserve the family life if there were any2 or whether he will try to restore it where it has disappeared4 ,it is all very confusing4 ,the ,tory sometimes talks as if he wanted to tighten the domestic bonds that do not exist2 the ,socialist as if he wanted to loosen the bonds that do not bind anybody4 ,the question we all want to ask of both of them is the original ideal question1 8,do you want to keep the family at all80 ,if ,hudge1 the ,socialist1 does want the family he must be prepared for the natural restraints1 distinctions and divisions of labor in the family4 ,he must brace himself up to bear the idea of the woman having a preference for the private house and a man for the public house4 ,he must manage to endure somehow the idea of a woman being womanly1 which does not mean soft and yielding1 but handy1 thrifty1 rather hard1 and very humorous4 ,he must confront without a quiver the notion of a child who shall be childish1 that is1 full of energy1 but without an idea of independence2 fundamentally as eager for authority as for information and butter-scotch4 ,if a man1 a woman and a child live together any more in free and sovereign households1 these ancient relations will recur2 and ,hudge must put up with it4 ,he can only avoid it by destroying the family1 driving both sexes into sexless hives and hordes1 and bringing up all children as the children of the state--like ,oliver ,twist4 ,but if these stern words must be addressed to ,hudge1 neither shall ,gudge escape a somewhat severe admonition4 ,for the plain truth to be told pretty sharply to the ,tory is this1 that if he wants the family to remain1 if he wants to be strong enough to resist the rending forces of our essentially savage commerce1 he must make some very big sacrifices and try to equalize property4 ,the overwhelming mass of the ,english people at this particular instant are simply too poor to be domestic4 ,they are as domestic as they can manage2 they are much more domestic than the governing class2 but they cannot get what good there was originally meant to be in this institution1 simply because they have not got enough money4 ,the man ought to stand for a certain magnanimity1 quite lawfully expressed in throwing money away3 but if under given circumstances he can only do it by throwing the week's food away1 then he is not magnanimous1 but mean4 ,the woman ought to stand for a certain wisdom which is well expressed in valuing things rightly and guarding money sensibly2 but how is she to guard money if there is no money to guard8 ,the child ought to look on his mother as a fountain of natural fun and poetry2 but how can he unless the fountain1 like other fountains1 is allowed to play8 ,what chance have any of these ancient arts and functions in a house so hideously topsy-turvy2 a house where the woman is out working and the man isn't2 and the child is forced by law to think his schoolmaster's requirements more important than his mother's8 ,no1 ,gudge and his friends in the ,house of ,lords and the ,carlton ,club must make up their minds on this matter1 and that very quickly4 ,if they are content to have ,england turned into a beehive and an ant-hill1 decorated here and there with a few faded butterflies playing at an old game called domesticity in the intervals of the divorce court1 then let them have their empire of insects2 they will find plenty of ,socialists who will give it to them4 ,but if they want a domestic ,england1 they must 8shell out10 as the phrase goes1 to a vastly greater extent than any ,radical politician has yet dared to suggest2 they must endure burdens much heavier than the ,budget and strokes much deadlier than the death duties2 for the thing to be done is nothing more nor less than the distribution of the great fortunes and the great estates4 ,we can now only avoid ,socialism by a change as vast as ,socialism4 ,if we are to save property1 we must distribute property1 almost as sternly and sweepingly as did the ,french ,revolution4 ,if we are to preserve the family we must revolutionize the nation4 9999999999 ,,iv4 ,a ,,last ,,instance ,and now1 as this book is drawing to a close1 ,i will whisper in the reader's ear a horrible suspicion that has sometimes haunted me3 the suspicion that ,hudge and ,gudge are secretly in partnership4 ,that the quarrel they keep up in public is very much of a put-up job1 and that the way in which they perpetually play into each other's hands is not an everlasting coincidence4 ,gudge1 the plutocrat1 wants an anarchic industrialism2 ,hudge1 the idealist1 provides him with lyric praises of anarchy4 ,gudge wants women-workers because they are cheaper2 ,hudge calls the woman's work 8freedom to live her own life40 ,gudge wants steady and obedient workmen1 ,hudge preaches teetotalism--to workmen1 not to ,gudge--,gudge wants a tame and timid population who will never take arms against tyranny2 ,hudge proves from ,tolstoi that nobody must take arms against anything4 ,gudge is naturally a healthy and well-washed gentleman2 ,hudge earnestly preaches the perfection of ,gudge's washing to people who can't practice it4 ,above all1 ,gudge rules by a coarse and cruel system of sacking and sweating and bi-sexual toil which is totally inconsistent with the free family and which is bound to destroy it2 therefore ,hudge1 stretching out his arms to the universe with a prophetic smile1 tells us that the family is something that we shall soon gloriously outgrow4 ,i do not know whether the partnership of ,hudge and ,gudge is conscious or unconscious4 ,i only know that between them they still keep the common man homeless4 ,i only know ,i still meet ,jones walking the streets in the gray twilight1 looking sadly at the poles and barriers and low red goblin lanterns which still guard the house which is none the less his because he has never been in it4 9999999999 ,v4 ,,conclusion ,here1 it may be said1 my book ends just where it ought to begin4 ,i have said that the strong centers of modern ,english property must swiftly or slowly be broken up1 if even the idea of property is to remain among ,englishmen4 ,there are two ways in which it could be done1 a cold administration by quite detached officials1 which is called ,collectivism1 or a personal distribution1 so as to produce what is called ,peasant ,proprietorship4 ,i think the latter solution the finer and more fully human1 because it makes each man as somebody blamed somebody for saying of the ,pope1 a sort of small god4 ,a man on his own turf tastes eternity or1 in other words1 will give ten minutes more work than is required4 ,but ,i believe ,i am justified in shutting the door on this vista of argument1 instead of opening it4 ,for this book is not designed to prove the case for ,peasant ,proprietorship1 but to prove the case against modern sages who turn reform to a routine4 ,the whole of this book has been a rambling and elaborate urging of one purely ethical fact4 ,and if by any chance it should happen that there are still some who do not quite see what that point is1 ,i will end with one plain parable1 which is none the worse for being also a fact4 ,a little while ago certain doctors and other persons permitted by modern law to dictate to their shabbier fellow-citizens1 sent out an order that all little girls should have their hair cut short4 ,i mean1 of course1 all little girls whose parents were poor4 ,many very unhealthy habits are common among rich little girls1 but it will be long before any doctors interfere forcibly with them4 ,now1 the case for this particular interference was this1 that the poor are pressed down from above into such stinking and suffocating underworlds of squalor1 that poor people must not be allowed to have hair1 because in their case it must mean lice in the hair4 ,therefore1 the doctors propose to abolish the hair4 ,it never seems to have occurred to them to abolish the lice4 ,yet it could be done4 ,as is common in most modern discussions the unmentionable thing is the pivot of the whole discussion4 ,it is obvious to any ,christian man 7that is1 to any man with a free soul7 that any coercion applied to a cabman's daughter ought1 if possible1 to be applied to a ,cabinet ,minister's daughter4 ,i will not ask why the doctors do not1 as a matter of fact apply their rule to a ,cabinet ,minister's daughter4 ,i will not ask1 because ,i know4 ,they do not because they dare not4 ,but what is the excuse they would urge1 what is the plausible argument they would use1 for thus cutting and clipping poor children and not rich8 ,their argument would be that the disease is more likely to be in the hair of poor people than of rich4 ,and why8 ,because the poor children are forced 7against all the instincts of the highly domestic working classes7 to crowd together in close rooms under a wildly inefficient system of public instruction2 and because in one out of the forty children there may be offense4 ,and why8 ,because the poor man is so ground down by the great rents of the great ground landlords that his wife often has to work as well as he4 ,therefore she has no time to look after the children1 therefore one in forty of them is dirty4 ,because the workingman has these two persons on top of him1 the landlord sitting 7literally7 on his stomach1 and the schoolmaster sitting 7literally7 on his head1 the workingman must allow his little girl's hair1 first to be neglected from poverty1 next to be poisoned by promiscuity1 and1 lastly1 to be abolished by hygiene4 ,he1 perhaps1 was proud of his little girl's hair4 ,but he does not count4 ,upon this simple principle 7or rather precedent7 the sociological doctor drives gayly ahead4 ,when a crapulous tyranny crushes men down into the dirt1 so that their very hair is dirty1 the scientific course is clear4 ,it would be long and laborious to cut off the heads of the tyrants2 it is easier to cut off the hair of the slaves4 ,in the same way1 if it should ever happen that poor children1 screaming with toothache1 disturbed any schoolmaster or artistic gentleman1 it would be easy to pull out all the teeth of the poor2 if their nails were disgustingly dirty1 their nails could be plucked out2 if their noses were indecently blown1 their noses could be cut off4 ,the appearance of our humbler fellow-citizen could be quite strikingly simplified before we had done with him4 ,but all this is not a bit wilder than the brute fact that a doctor can walk into the house of a free man1 whose daughter's hair may be as clean as spring flowers1 and order him to cut it off4 ,it never seems to strike these people that the lesson of lice in the slums is the wrongness of slums1 not the wrongness of hair4 ,hair is1 to say the least of it1 a rooted thing4 ,its enemy 7like the other insects and oriental armies of whom we have spoken7 sweep upon us but seldom4 ,in truth1 it is only by eternal institutions like hair that we can test passing institutions like empires4 ,if a house is so built as to knock a man's head off when he enters it1 it is built wrong4 ,the mob can never rebel unless it is conservative1 at least enough to have conserved some reasons for rebelling4 ,it is the most awful thought in all our anarchy1 that most of the ancient blows struck for freedom would not be struck at all to-day1 because of the obscuration of the clean1 popular customs from which they came4 ,the insult that brought down the hammer of ,wat ,tyler might now be called a medical examination4 ,that which ,virginius loathed and avenged as foul slavery might now be praised as free love4 ,the cruel taunt of ,foulon1 8,let them eat grass10 might now be represented as the dying cry of an idealistic vegetarian4 ,those great scissors of science that would snip off the curls of the poor little school children are ceaselessly snapping closer and closer to cut off all the corners and fringes of the arts and honors of the poor4 ,soon they will be twisting necks to suit clean collars1 and hacking feet to fit new boots4 ,it never seems to strike them that the body is more than raiment2 that the ,sabbath was made for man2 that all institutions shall be judged and damned by whether they have fitted the normal flesh and spirit4 ,it is the test of political sanity to keep your head4 ,it is the test of artistic sanity to keep your hair on4 ,now the whole parable and purpose of these last pages1 and indeed of all these pages1 is this3 to assert that we must instantly begin all over again1 and begin at the other end4 ,i begin with a little girl's hair4 ,that ,i know is a good thing at any rate4 ,whatever else is evil1 the pride of a good mother in the beauty of her daughter is good4 ,it is one of those adamantine tendernesses which are the touchstones of every age and race4 ,if other things are against it1 other things must go down4 ,if landlords and laws and sciences are against it1 landlords and laws and sciences must go down4 ,with the red hair of one she-urchin in the gutter ,i will set fire to all modern civilization4 ,because a girl should have long hair1 she should have clean hair2 because she should have clean hair1 she should not have an unclean home3 because she should not have an unclean home1 she should have a free and leisured mother2 because she should have a free mother1 she should not have an usurious landlord2 because there should not be an usurious landlord1 there should be a redistribution of property2 because there should be a redistribution of property1 there shall be a revolution4 ,that little urchin with the gold-red hair1 whom ,i have just watched toddling past my house1 she shall not be lopped and lamed and altered2 her hair shall not be cut short like a convict's2 no1 all the kingdoms of the earth shall be hacked about and mutilated to suit her4 ,she is the human and sacred image2 all around her the social fabric shall sway and split and fall2 the pillars of society shall be shaken1 and the roofs of ages come rushing down1 and not one hair of her head shall be harmed4 ,,three ,,notes ,i4 ,,on ,,female ,,suffrage ,not wishing to overload this long essay with too many parentheses1 apart from its thesis of progress and precedent1 ,i append here three notes on points of detail that may possibly be misunderstood4 ,the first refers to the female controversy4 ,it may seem to many that ,i dismiss too curtly the contention that all women should have votes1 even if most women do not desire them4 ,it is constantly said in this connection that males have received the vote 7the agricultural laborers for instance7 when only a minority of them were in favor of it4 ,mr4 ,galsworthy1 one of the few fine fighting intellects of our time1 has talked this language in the 8,nation40 ,now1 broadly1 ,i have only to answer here1 as everywhere in this book1 that history is not a toboggan slide1 but a road to be reconsidered and even retraced4 ,if we really forced ,general ,elections upon free laborers who definitely disliked ,general ,elections1 then it was a thoroughly undemocratic thing to do2 if we are democrats we ought to undo it4 ,we want the will of the people1 not the votes of the people2 and to give a man a vote against his will is to make voting more valuable than the democracy it declares4 ,but this analogy is false1 for a plain and particular reason4 ,many voteless women regard a vote as unwomanly4 ,nobody says that most voteless men regarded a vote as unmanly4 ,nobody says that any voteless men regarded it as unmanly4 ,not in the stillest hamlet or the most stagnant fen could you find a yokel or a tramp who thought he lost his sexual dignity by being part of a political mob4 ,if he did not care about a vote it was solely because he did not know about a vote2 he did not understand the word any better than ,bimetallism4 ,his opposition1 if it existed1 was merely negative4 ,his indifference to a vote was really indifference4 ,but the female sentiment against the franchise1 whatever its size1 is positive4 ,it is not negative2 it is by no means indifferent4 ,such women as are opposed to the change regard it 7rightly or wrongly7 as unfeminine4 ,that is1 as insulting certain affirmative traditions to which they are attached4 ,you may think such a view prejudiced2 but ,i violently deny that any democrat has a right to override such prejudices1 if they are popular and positive4 ,thus he would not have a right to make millions of ,moslems vote with a cross if they had a prejudice in favor of voting with a crescent4 ,unless this is admitted1 democracy is a farce we need scarcely keep up4 ,if it is admitted1 the ,suffragists have not merely to awaken an indifferent1 but to convert a hostile majority4 9999999999 ,,ii4 ,,on ,,cleanliness ,,in ,,education ,on re-reading my protest1 which ,i honestly think much needed1 against our heathen idolatry of mere ablution1 ,i see that it may possibly be misread4 ,i hasten to say that ,i think washing a most important thing to be taught both to rich and poor4 ,i do not attack the positive but the relative position of soap4 ,let it be insisted on even as much as now2 but let other things be insisted on much more4 ,i am even ready to admit that cleanliness is next to godliness2 but the moderns will not even admit godliness to be next to cleanliness4 ,in their talk about ,thomas ,becket and such saints and heroes they make soap more important than soul2 they reject godliness whenever it is not cleanliness4 ,if we resent this about remote saints and heroes1 we should resent it more about the many saints and heroes of the slums1 whose unclean hands cleanse the world4 ,dirt is evil chiefly as evidence of sloth2 but the fact remains that the classes that wash most are those that work least4 ,concerning these1 the practical course is simple2 soap should be urged on them and advertised as what it is--a luxury4 ,with regard to the poor also the practical course is not hard to harmonize with our thesis4 ,if we want to give poor people soap we must set out deliberately to give them luxuries4 ,if we will not make them rich enough to be clean1 then emphatically we must do what we did with the saints4 ,we must reverence them for being dirty4 9999999999 ,,iii4 ,,on ,,peasant ,,proprietorship ,i have not dealt with any details touching distributed ownership1 or its possibility in ,england1 for the reason stated in the text4 ,this book deals with what is wrong1 wrong in our root of argument and effort4 ,this wrong is1 ,i say1 that we will go forward because we dare not go back4 ,thus the ,socialist says that property is already concentrated into ,trusts and ,stores3 the only hope is to concentrate it further in the ,state4 ,i say the only hope is to unconcentrate it2 that is1 to repent and return2 the only step forward is the step backward4 ,but in connection with this distribution ,i have laid myself open to another potential mistake4 ,in speaking of a sweeping redistribution1 ,i speak of decision in the aim1 not necessarily of abruptness in the means4 ,it is not at all too late to restore an approximately rational state of ,english possessions without any mere confiscation4 ,a policy of buying out landlordism1 steadily adopted in ,england as it has already been adopted in ,ireland 7notably in ,mr4 ,wyndham's wise and fruitful ,act71 would in a very short time release the lower end of the see-saw and make the whole plank swing more level4 ,the objection to this course is not at all that it would not do1 only that it will not be done4 ,if we leave things as they are1 there will almost certainly be a crash of confiscation4 ,if we hesitate1 we shall soon have to hurry4 ,but if we start doing it quickly we have still time to do it slowly4 ,this point1 however1 is not essential to my book4 ,all ,i have to urge between these two boards is that ,i dislike the big ,whiteley shop1 and that ,i dislike ,socialism because it will 7according to ,socialists7 be so like that shop4 ,it is its fulfilment1 not its reversal4 ,i do not object to ,socialism because it will revolutionize our commerce1 but because it will leave it so horribly the same4