Orthodoxy (eBook)

VII THE ETERNAL REVOLUTION

The following propositions have been urged:  First, that some faith in our life is required even to improve it; second, that some dissatisfaction with things as they are is necessary even in order to be satisfied; third, that to have this necessary content and necessary discontent it is not sufficient to have the obvious equilibrium of the Stoic.  For mere resignation has neither the gigantic levity of pleasure nor the superb intolerance of pain. There is a vital objection to the advice merely to grin and bear it. The objection is that if you merely bear it, you do not grin. Greek heroes do not grin:  but gargoyles do--because they are Christian. And when a Christian is pleased, he is (in the most exact sense) frightfully pleased; his pleasure is frightful.  Christ prophesied the whole of Gothic architecture in that hour when nervous and respectable people (such people as now object to barrel organs) objected to the shouting of the gutter-snipes of Jerusalem. He said, "If these were silent, the very stones would cry out." Under the impulse of His spirit arose like a clamorous chorus the facades of the mediaeval cathedrals, thronged with shouting faces and open mouths.  The prophecy has fulfilled itself:  the very stones cry out.

 If these things be conceded, though only for argument, we may take up where we left it the thread of the thought of the natural man, called by the Scotch (with regrettable familiarity), "The Old Man."  We can ask the next question so obviously in front of us.  Some satisfaction is needed even to make things better. But what do we mean by making things better?  Most modern talk on this matter is a mere argument in a circle--that circle which we have already made the symbol of madness and of mere rationalism. Evolution is only good if it produces good; good is only good if it helps evolution.  The elephant stands on the tortoise, and the tortoise on the elephant.

 Obviously, it will not do to take our ideal from the principle in nature; for the simple reason that (except for some human or divine theory), there is no principle in nature.  For instance, the cheap anti-democrat of to-day will tell you solemnly that there is no equality in nature.  He is right, but he does not see the logical addendum.  There is no equality in nature; also there is no inequality in nature.  Inequality, as much as equality, implies a standard of value.  To read aristocracy into the anarchy of animals is just as sentimental as to read democracy into it. Both aristocracy and democracy are human ideals:  the one saying that all men are valuable, the other that some men are more valuable. But nature does not say that cats are more valuable than mice; nature makes no remark on the subject.  She does not even say that the cat is enviable or the mouse pitiable.  We think the cat superior because we have (or most of us have) a particular philosophy to the effect that life is better than death.  But if the mouse were a German pessimist mouse, he might not think that the cat had beaten him at all.  He might think he had beaten the cat by getting to the grave first.  Or he might feel that he had actually inflicted frightful punishment on the cat by keeping him alive. Just as a microbe might feel proud of spreading a pestilence, so the pessimistic mouse might exult to think that he was renewing in the cat the torture of conscious existence.  It all depends on the philosophy of the mouse.  You cannot even say that there is victory or superiority in nature unless you have some doctrine about what things are superior.  You cannot even say that the cat scores unless there is a system of scoring.  You cannot even say that the cat gets the best of it unless there is some best to be got.

 We cannot, then, get the ideal itself from nature, and as we follow here the first and natural speculation, we will leave out (for the present) the idea of getting it from God. We must have our own vision.  But the attempts of most moderns to express it are highly vague.

 Some fall back simply on the clock:  they talk as if mere passage through time brought some superiority; so that even a man of the first mental calibre carelessly uses the phrase that human morality is never up to date.  How can anything be up to date?-- a date has no character.  How can one say that Christmas celebrations are not suitable to the twenty-fifth of a month? What the writer meant, of course, was that the majority is behind his favourite minority--or in front of it.  Other vague modern people take refuge in material metaphors; in fact, this is the chief mark of vague modern people.  Not daring to define their doctrine of what is good, they use physical figures of speech without stint or shame, and, what is worst of all, seem to think these cheap analogies are exquisitely spiritual and superior to the old morality. Thus they think it intellectual to talk about things being "high." It is at least the reverse of intellectual; it is a mere phrase from a steeple or a weathercock.  "Tommy was a good boy" is a pure philosophical statement, worthy of Plato or Aquinas.  "Tommy lived the higher life" is a gross metaphor from a ten-foot rule.

 This, incidentally, is almost the whole weakness of Nietzsche, whom some are representing as a bold and strong thinker. No one will deny that he was a poetical and suggestive thinker; but he was quite the reverse of strong.  He was not at all bold. He never put his own meaning before himself in bald abstract words: as did Aristotle and Calvin, and even Karl Marx, the hard, fearless men of thought.  Nietzsche always escaped a question by a physical metaphor, like a cheery minor poet.  He said, "beyond good and evil," because he had not the courage to say, "more good than good and evil," or, "more evil than good and evil." Had he faced his thought without metaphors, he would have seen that it was nonsense.  So, when he describes his hero, he does not dare to say, "the purer man," or "the happier man," or "the sadder man," for all these are ideas; and ideas are alarming.  He says "the upper man," or "over man," a physical metaphor from acrobats or alpine climbers. Nietzsche is truly a very timid thinker.  He does not really know in the least what sort of man he wants evolution to produce. And if he does not know, certainly the ordinary evolutionists, who talk about things being "higher," do not know either.

 Then again, some people fall back on sheer submission and sitting still.  Nature is going to do something some day; nobody knows what, and nobody knows when.  We have no reason for acting, and no reason for not acting.  If anything happens it is right: if anything is prevented it was wrong.  Again, some people try to anticipate nature by doing something, by doing anything. Because we may possibly grow wings they cut off their legs. Yet nature may be trying to make them centipedes for all they know.

 Lastly, there is a fourth class of people who take whatever it is that they happen to want, and say that that is the ultimate aim of evolution.  And these are the only sensible people. This is the only really healthy way with the word evolution, to work for what you want, and to call THAT evolution.  The only intelligible sense that progress or advance can have among men, is that we have a definite vision, and that we wish to make the whole world like that vision.  If you like to put it so, the essence of the doctrine is that what we have around us is the mere method and preparation for something that we have to create. This is not a world, but rather the material for a world. God has given us not so much the colours of a picture as the colours of a palette.  But he has also given us a subject, a model, a fixed vision.  We must be clear about what we want to paint. This adds a further principle to our previous list of principles. We have said we must be fond of this world, even in order to change it. We now add that we must be fond of another world (real or imaginary) in order to have something to change it to.

 We need not debate about the mere words evolution or progress: personally I prefer to call it reform.  For reform implies form. It implies that we are trying to shape the world in a particular image; to make it something that we see already in our minds.  Evolution is a metaphor from mere automatic unrolling.  Progress is a metaphor from merely walking along a road--very likely the wrong road.  But reform is a metaphor for reasonable and determined men:  it means that we see a certain thing out of shape and we mean to put it into shape. And we know what shape.

 Now here comes in the whole collapse and huge blunder of our age. We have mixed up two different things, two opposite things. Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to suit the vision.  Progress does mean (just now) that we are always changing the vision.  It should mean that we are slow but sure in bringing justice and mercy among men:  it does mean that we are very swift in doubting the desirability of justice and mercy:  a wild page from any Prussian sophist makes men doubt it.  Progress should mean that we are always walking towards the New Jerusalem.  It does mean that the New Jerusalem is always walking away from us. ...