Complete Works of G K Chesterton, page 907
Two general impressions from a study of such encyclopaedic knowledge strike me at the moment. One is that there are many more things that are mere matters of opinion, and much fewer things that are mere matters of fact, than many of these people suppose. Another is that even the best information is very seldom the latest information It is a commonplace that encyclopaedias tend too rapidly to get out of date It is said that a very valuable encyclopaedia was pressed upon the public some years ago, and it was only at the last moment that somebody mildly remonstrated against an article on French history, from which it would appear that Napoleon the Third is still on the throne of France. But that was when the matter was in the hands of a really brisk and bustling business man. And things managed by hustlers are always behind the times. Things are better than that now, being largely in the hands of educated people who can afford the time for a proper comprehension of the times. But even in the very latest and lightest forms of ephemeral journalism there is some tendency for this fossilization to take place; and even to take place rather rapidly. I do not say that in all cases the delay can be avoided. I do not say that in all cases the hustlers can be blamed. Sometimes the latest news would be too late. Sometimes it would be too libellous. But, knowing what I know, or what we all know, about the realities of England to-day, I cannot but think that most of the latest news describes the England of twenty years ago. Perhaps this is defensible and makes for stability and social continuity; but it does not exactly make for people knowing where they are.
I have just opened a magazine on a page full of these questions, and I am struck by the fact that I should myself give very different answers. It is even possible in some cases that the paper would not print my answers. But I am not now provoking controversy; I am merely pointing out that many things are controversial that are supposed to be non-controversial. And I am pointing out that in almost every case the change recorded is not really the last, but rather the last but one. On the page before me one question concerns the pawnbroker’s sign; another the date of the Eiffel Tower; the third the meaning of the Parliamentary term ‘Whip’. Now, modest as is my stock of knowledge, I knew that the three balls were originally the blazonry of the Lombard merchant princes. But I should not think it the chief point of the position that what had been the coat of arms of great lords had come down to be a dingy shop-sign for dirty moneylenders. I should reverse the argument, and point out that it is even more interesting to know that the dirty moneylenders are now once more being given titles and coats of arms. I should not merely point out that the Lombard princes had lost their escutcheon to people as humble as the pawn brokers; I should point out that the pawnbrokers may now again become as proud as the princes. That is the latest news; that is the real modern information; that is what is interesting about the present practical state of affairs. The other fact is interesting enough in its way; but it is merely ancient history, and even ancient heraldry. Or, again, it is reasonably interesting to know that the Eiffel Tower was put up at the time of the Paris Exhibition. But it is even more interesting to know that the Eiffel Tower was put up just before the time of the Panama Scandal; and that Eiffel himself got into very hot water, while many of his colleagues or co-workers fled the country or became bywords for fraud. For that story is a part of the really vital and important story of the modern war against political corruption; a struggle that has already had its sequel in Rome and may yet have its sequel in Paris. I do not know whether a reaction in Paris would knock down the Eiffel Tower; though I am sure I hope so. But I do know that there may be a culmination as sensational in the life of the country as the fall of the Eiffel Tower would be in the landscape. But this sort of thing, which might be called the inner history of the Eiffel Tower, is not generally the sort of history provided in this popular information. I do not say it can be, or ought to be; but I do say that it makes a difference to popular education that it is not.
And so it is with the third example, out of our own politics. The public is duly informed that a Whip is so called from the practice of whipping-in, as applied to the mobilizing of all available party votes, and the discipline that drives them into the right Lobby. But though this is still true, and still perhaps rather unfortunately true, it is by no means the most modern truth or the most modern misfortune. The Whip nowadays is not primarily the man who merely looks after the telling of votes passing into the right Lobby. The Whip nowadays is primarily the man who looks after the Party Fund, and conducts a number of highly dubious negotiations about it in the matter of titles and political concessions. This is the latest use of the office; this is the most recent meaning of the word. But because it is really recent it is not a part of what is called Information. Because it is the latest news it is not in the latest editions. Thus there arises, in connexion with this new popular game of ‘How Much Do You Know?’ a query not about how much the public knows but about how much the questioner knows. There is also, of course, the question of how much the questioner may think it tactful to tell of what he knows.
In the case of encyclopaedias, and similar works of reference, it is perfectly natural that the writers should avoid all that seems controversial or paradoxical, or can be regarded as a matter of opinion, to say nothing of whim. But, at the best, it is very difficult to mention even common facts apart from controversial feelings. Many things which most of the readers, and even the writers, of such a book would honestly suppose to be self-evident, are very disputable indeed to those who happen to be the disputants. The truth is that there did underlie the latter half of the nineteenth century, at least in this country, a vague common agreement in philosophy. But it is by no means true to-day that all philosophers agree with that agreement. Nor was it true before the nineteenth century, any more than after the century. It may be well to remember the real history of the word Encyclopaedia; and in the dawn of what destructive revolution it appeared in the world. The Encyclopaedists were no more impartial than the Bolshevists. They were a band of fighters determined to uproot and renew. And though the making of a dictionary sounds to us a mild occupation, Dr. Johnson was by no means a mild person, and sometimes almost made it a slang dictionary, when he had a chance of slinging abuse at the Whigs.
XXI. On Preaching
NO journalist will complain of the journalistic necessity of occasionally changing a title, or, especially, abbreviating a title. If I choose to head an article, An Inquiry into the Conditions of Mycenaean Civilization in the Heroic Epoch, with Special Reference to the Economic and Domestic Functions of Women Before and After the Conjectural Date of the Argive Expedition against Troy — if, I say, I choose to give my article some snappy little title like that, I really have no right to complain if (when I send it to the Chicago Daily Scoop) they alter the title to How Helen Did the Housekeeping. And even in milder cases the transformation is often unavoidable; especially if some thing intended for the serious book public has to be transferred to the more impetuous newspaper-reading public. But, however harmless the change may be, it is sometimes of a certain intellectual interest. For example, I myself was asked some time ago to write a sort of ethical essay on the theme If I Had Only One Sermon to Preach. When, in the course of events, it came to appear in a daily paper, it appeared under the title, If I Were a Preacher. I do not in the least complain of that; it was obviously a mere matter of space and simplification. All the same, there is a difference. ‘If I Had Only One Sermon to Preach’ presents the pleasing spectacle of myself gagged and rendered speechless for the greater part of my life. It consoles humanity with the prospect of my never talking at all for twenty or thirty years on end; it almost approaches to the ideal or Utopian condition of my being deaf and dumb. But it supposes that the gag is taken out of my mouth once and once only, and I am allowed a short space in which to offer the reflections of a taciturn lifetime. Taking the matter in this sense, I dealt directly with the most deadly moral danger in my experience of mankind: the danger of egoism and spiritual pride. If I had only one moment in which to shout one warning, I should shout that one, and thereafter for ever hold my peace.
But ‘If I Were a Preacher’ is quite a different idea. That presents, not the reassuring image of myself safely gagged and throttled until the inevitable hour shall come, but the menacing and unwelcome image of myself let loose to talk in a pulpit as long as I like, and to preach as a professional occupation. It offers, not the brief and salutary irritation of hearing me deliver one sermon, but the long vista of despair implied in my delivering an indefinite number of sermons. Above all, my own attitude would necessarily be entirely different in the two cases. Instead of concentrating what I really had to say in one address upon one text, I should have to proceed, like any other professional preacher, to search the Scriptures for more and more texts, and my mind for more and more sermons. And, though a great deal of nonsense has been talked about the unfair authority of the preacher (which is really much less illogical than the unfair anonymity of the pressman), it is true that in one sense the preacher has an advantage, or at least his congregation a disadvantage. While it might well be a beautiful sight to see the congregation gradually thinning away as my sermon proceeded from Fourthly to Fifthly, it is, as a matter of fact, unusual for people to rise in the front pews, with ostentatious yawns and in large numbers, and to walk out of the church to express their lack of enthusiasm for the sermon. Perhaps the best form of protest was that of the man who took off his boots and put them outside the pew, to indicate that he had had enough and was now retiring to rest. But humorists of that heroic type are very rare. The congregation is commonly kept in its place, by reverence or by convention; and in that sense everybody has to listen to the sermon. But nobody has to read this article unless he wants to; and I should not imagine that anybody ever did.
The distinction between being a preacher and having one sermon to preach is, however, of some practical interest in raising a point about preaching. I mean merely about the technical or professional aspect of preaching; which would naturally be considered by the man who was for some reason doomed to be a preacher. If I had originally written my article to fit that title, it would have been quite a different business. Preaching, in that sense, is no business of mine; but listening, or trying to listen, is the business of nearly everybody. And there really is something to be said about the probable or prefer able preliminaries of being a preacher; and even here, in another place and another connexion, it may possibly be worth while to say it. Anyhow, I propose to say it; principally because it would seem to be the exact opposite of what everybody is now saying. For the preacher, like everybody else, is receiving practical advice: and, as with everybody else, it is always exactly the wrong advice. He is told, of course, to eschew ‘creed and dogma’; which will soon, I imagine, be stereotyped and turned into one word, ‘creedanddogma’ so regularly and mechanically is it repeated. I could never discover what the journalists who use this form imagine that creeds and dogmas are. I could never understand what a prominent and successful journalist meant when he said that prayer had no sort of relation with any creed or dogma. He added that any agnostic could pray: one felt he was just about to add that any atheist could pray. What all this is supposed to mean, I have no idea. To any atheist, to any rational rationalist, it would be at once obvious that prayer does depend on two or three quite definite dogmas. First, it implies that there is an invisible being, who can hear our prayer without ordinary material communication; which is a dogma. Second, it implies that the being is benevolent and not hostile; which is also a dogma. Third, it implies that he is not limited by the logic of causation, but can act with reference to our action; which is a great thundering dogma. But I merely give this as a passing example of the first fallacy in the advice to preachers. The preacher is told to cast aside all systems and speak out of his own heart, or (in favour able cases) out of his own head. It does not seem to occur to these critics that they are making the priest or preacher much more important than he was before. They are demanding from him a genius and originality which cannot be expected from all the individual members of any profession. The poor ordinary parson is not allowed to teach what he has learnt, a certain system of religious thought. But he is expected, all by himself, to be a sort of compound of Savonarola and Swedenborg and M. Coué. All men are not born mesmerists or prose poets or persons of magnetic personality. But all men can expound a rational scheme of religion and morals, if there is one to expound.
The truth is that creed and dogma are the only things that make preaching tolerable. A system of thought can be explained by any reasonably thinking man; but it does not follow that the thinking man is a thinker. The case is very much the same as that of the medical authority of the general practitioner. We do not expect every ordinary G.P. to be a person like Pasteur or Lister or some great medical discoverer. But we do expect him to know the system he has been taught; the creed and dogma of his profession. To tell the priest to throw away theology and impress us with his personality, is exactly like telling the doctor to throw away physiology and merely hypnotize us with his glittering eye. People are very fond of making unjust complaints about preachers, as they are of making equally unjust com plaints about doctors. But they have not yet got so far as complaining of doctors because they know their business, and because they regard it as a science. And the preacher, even the very worst preacher, would be infinitely more empty and dreary than he is if he had never regarded theology as a science. What makes his preaching tolerable, at its worst, is that he is, after all, in some sense giving us the thoughts of great men like St. Paul or St. Augustine, or even Calvin, and not merely the thoughts of a small man unassisted by any tradition of greatness. I do not know what advice will be given to the preacher by most of the distinguished persons who will probably advise him. But a melancholy familiarity with most current thought, or thoughtlessness, leads me to advise him to listen to it, and then do the opposite.
XXII. On the Timid Thinkers
I SHOULD like to write a book under the general title of The Timid Thinkers. By this term I refer to those who are commonly called The Bold Thinkers. For what strikes me most about the sceptics, who are praised as daring and audacious, is that they dare not carry out any of their own acts of audacity. It is their peculiar feature that they are always starting something that is intended to be very striking, and then being willing to wound and yet afraid to strike. I do not mean that they are base enough to be merely afraid of our law; quite as often they are really afraid of their own lawlessness. But they are afraid; in the sense that they hardly ever venture to complete their own argument. Some of these men I admire, some I find rather tiresome, which is about as near as I get to really resenting them. But I think that what I say of them is true. They are emphatically not men who carry a destructive idea through to its logical consequences; they are men who throw it out like a firework, but do not really wait for it to work its full destruction like a bomb. It is typical that some types of thinkers are called suggestive thinkers. But it is easy enough to suggest something, and leave it to be found unworkable by other people; as it is easy for a little boy to ring a bell and run away. The little boy ringing the bell is doubtless in one sense a rebel defying authority. But he is not quite on a level with the paladins or heroes who blew the horn hung outside the giant’s castle; because they remained to thrash things out in a thoughtful manner with the giant.
Now there are a number of nihilistic phrases wandering about in the air to-day, but those phrases are never really developed into philosophies. If they were, those particular phrases would probably be found to develop into patently absurd philosophies. A man in the time of the Schopenhauer fashion would say, over the tea-cups, that life is not worth living, and he would go on to say something equally significant; as that Pingle’s rondeau in the Yellow Book was an immortal thing of jade and emerald; or that Jubb of the New English Art Club had erased the mistake called Michelangelo. But he would not go on to say, as a serious thesis, that prussic acid should be served out at tea-time instead of tea; or that hospitals should be blown up on the charge that they sometimes save people’s lives. In short, he would talk like a pessimist, but he would not think like a pessimist; above all, he would not complete his pessimistic thinking. Pessimism of that sort is now rather old-fashioned, but it was not full or final even when it was fashionable. And exactly the same suggestive or fragmentary character belongs to the other things that have been fashionable since. A man says to-day, over the cocktails, that he is a Boishevist and believes with Marx that men must be what their economic and material origins make them. He goes on to remark casually something suitable to the same social atmosphere; as that the music of the future must consist entirely of factory-hooters and gas-explosions, or that Mossky’s bust of Lady Smith is supreme in its lack of likeness and its collision of five geometric planes. But he will not go on to apply seriously his own line of logic; as that Lenin is no more to be admired than Stolypin, since both only did what they were materially fated to do. Men throw out these thoughts — if at that stage they can be called thoughts — but they do not think them out; and they soon grow tired of any thinking.
