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{{title
{{TextQuality|75%}}{{title
|title= The Thing
|title= The Thing
|author= Gilbert Keith Chesterton
|author= Gilbert Keith Chesterton
|notes=
|notes= 1929.
}}
}}


== TOC ==


* [[The Thing/1|1. Introduction]]
* [[The Thing/1|1. Introduction]]
Line 43: Line 42:
* [[The Thing/35|35. The Spirit of Christmas]]
* [[The Thing/35|35. The Spirit of Christmas]]


 
[[Category:Gilbert Keith Chesterton]]
 
[[Category:1929]]
 
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== PEACE AND THE PAPACY ==
 
THERE is a famous saying which to some has seemed lacking in reverence,
though in fact it is a support of one important part of religion;
"If God had not existed, it would have been necessary to invent Him."
It is not at all unlike some of the daring questions with which
St. Thomas Aquinas begins his great defence of the faith.
Some of the modern critics of his faith, especially the Protestant
critics of it, have fallen into an amusing error, chiefly through
ignorance of Latin and of the old use of the word DIVUS,
and have accused Catholics of describing the Pope as God.
Catholics, I need not say, are about as likely to call the Pope God
as to call a grasshopper the Pope.  But there is a sense in which
they do recognise an eternal correspondence between the position
of the King of Kings in the universe and of his Viceroy in the world,
like the correspondence between a real thing and its shadow;
a similarity something like the damaged and defective similarity
between God and the image of God.  And among the coincidences
of this comparison may be classed the case of this epigram.
The world will more and more find itself in a position in which
even politicians and practical men will find themselves saying,
"If the Pope had not existed, it would be necessary to invent him."
 
It is not at all impossible that they may really try to invent him.
The truth is that multitudes of them would already accept the Pope
if he were not called the Pope.  I firmly believe that it would
be quite possible, in this and many other matters, to play a sort
of pious practical joke on large numbers of heretics and heathens.
I fancy it would be quite feasible to describe in accurate
but abstract terms the general idea of an office or obligation,
which would exactly correspond to the position of the Papacy
in history, and which would be accepted on ethical and social ground
by numbers of Protestants and free-thinkers; until they discovered
with a reaction of rage and astonishment that they had been
entrapped into accepting the international arbitration of the Pope.
Suppose somebody were to advance the old idea as if it were
a new idea; suppose he were to say; "I propose that there be
erected in some central city in the more civilised part of our
civilisation the seat of a permanent official to represent peace
and the basis of agreement among all the surrounding nations;
let him be by the nature of his post set apart from them all and yet
sworn to consider the rights and wrongs of all; Let him be put there
as a judge to expound an ethical law and system of social relations;
let him be of a certain type and training different from that
which encourages the ordinary ambitions of military glory or even
the ordinary attachments of tribal tradition; let him be protected
by a special sentiment from the pressure of kings and princes;
let him be sworn in a special manner to the consideration of men as men."
There are not a few already, and there will soon be many more,
who would be perfectly capable of proposing such an ideal international
institution on their own account; there are also many who would really,
in their innocence, suppose that it had never been attempted before.
 
It is true that as yet large numbers of such social reformers would
shrink from the idea of the institution being an individual.
But even that prejudice is weakening under the wear and tear of real
political experience.  We may be attached, as many of us are,
to the democratic ideal; but most of us have already realised
that direct democracy, the only true democracy which satisfies
a true democrat, is a thing applicable to some things and not others;
and not applicable at all to a question such as this.  The actual
speaking voice of a vast international civilisation, or of a vast
international religion, will not in any case be the actual articulate
distinguishable voices or cries of all the millions of the faithful.
It is not the people who would be the heirs of a dethroned Pope;
it is some synod or bench of bishops.  It is not an alternative
between monarchy and democracy, but an alternative between monarchy
and oligarchy.  And, being myself one of the democratic idealists,
I have not the faintest hesitation in my choice between the two latter
forms of privilege.  A monarch is a man; but an oligarchy is not men;
it is a few men forming a group small enough to be insolent
and large enough to be irresponsible.  A man in the position
of a Pope, unless he is literally mad, must be responsible.
But aristocrats can always throw the responsibility on each other;
and yet create a common and corporate society from which
is shut out the very vision of the rest of the world.
These are conclusions to which many people in the world are coming;
and many who would still be much astonished and horrified to find
where those conclusions lead.  But the point here is that even
if our civilisation does not rediscover the need of a Papacy,
it is extremely likely that sooner or later it will try to supply
the need of something like a Papacy; even if it tries to do it
on its own account.  That will be indeed an ironical situation.
The modern world will have set up a new Anti-Pope, even if, as in
Monsignor Benson's romance, the Anti-Pope has rather the character
of an Antichrist.
 
The point is that men will attempt to put some sort of moral power
out of the reach of material powers.  It is the weakness of many
worthy and well-meaning attempts at international justice just now,
that the international council can hardly help being merely
a microcosm or model of the world outside it, with all its little
things and big things, including the things that are much too big.
Suppose that in the international interchanges of the future some power,
say Sweden, is felt to be disproportionate or problematical.
If Sweden is powerful in Europe, she will be powerful in the council
of Europe.  If Sweden is too powerful in Europe, she will be too
powerful in the council of Europe.  And because she is the very
thing that is irresistible, she is the very thing to be resisted;
or at any rate to be restrained.  I do not see how Europe can ever
escape from that logical dilemma, except by discovering again
an authority that is purely moral and is the recognised custodian
of a morality.  It may very reasonably be said that even those
dedicated to that duty may not always practise what they profess.
But the other rulers of the world are not even bound to profess it.
 
Again and again in history, especially in mediaeval history,
the Papacy has intervened in the interests of peace and humanity;
just as the greatest saints have thrown themselves between
the swords and daggers of contending factions.  But if there
had been no Papacy and no saints and no Catholic Church at all,
the world left to itself would certainly not have substituted social
abstractions for theological creeds.  As a whole, humanity has
been far from humanitarian.  If the world had been left to itself,
let us say in the age of feudalism, all the decisions would
have been rigidly and ruthlessly on the lines of feudalism.
There was only one institution in that world that had existed
before feudalism.  There was only one institution which could possibly
carry on some faint memory of the Republic and the Roman Law.
If the world had been left to itself in the time of the Renaissance
and the Italian statecraft of the Prince, it would have been arranged
entirely in the current fashion of the glorification of princes.
There was only one institution that could at any moment be moved
to repeat, "Put not your trust in princes."  Had it been absent,
the only result would have been that the famous settlement of
CUJUS REGIO EJUS RELIGIO would have been all REGIO with precious
little RELIGIO.  And so, of course, our own day has its unconscious
dogmas and its universal prejudices; and it needs a special,
a sacred and what seems to many an inhuman separation to stand
above them or to see beyond.
 
I know that this ideal has been abused like any other; I only
say that even those who most denounce the reality will probably
begin again to search for the ideal.  But I do not, in fact,
propose that any such spiritual tribunal should act like a legal
tribunal or be given powers of practical interference with normal
and national government.  I am quite sure, for one thing,
that it would never accept any such material entanglement.
Nor do I, for that matter, desire that any of the secular tribunals
now set up in the interests of international peace should thus
have the power to interfere with nationality and local liberty.
I would much rather give such power to a pope than to politicians
and diplomatists of the sort to whom the world is giving it.
But I do not want to give it to anybody and the authority in question
does not want to accept it from anybody.  The thing of which I speak
is purely moral and cannot exist without a certain moral loyalty;
it is a thing of atmosphere and even in a sense of affection.
There is no space to describe here the manner in which such
a general popular attachment grows up; but there is no doubt
whatever that it did once grow up round such a religious
centre of our civilisation; and that it is not likely to grow
up again except for something which aims at a higher standard
of humility and charity than the ordinary standard of the world.
Men cannot have an affection for other people's emperors,
or even for other people's politicians; they have sometimes been
known to cool in affection even for their own politicians.
I see no prospect of any such positive nucleus of amity except in some
positive enthusiasm for something that moves the deepest parts of man's
moral nature; something which can unite us not (as the prigs say)
by being entirely international, but by being universally human.
Men cannot agree about nothing any more than they can disagree
about nothing.  And anything wide enough to make such an agreement
must itself be wider than the world.
 
-/-
 
== THE SPIRIT OF CHRISTMAS ==
 
I HAVE rather rashly undertaken to write of the Spirit of Christmas;
and it presents a preliminary difficulty about which I must be candid.
People are very curious nowadays in their way of talking
about "the spirit" of a thing.  There is, for example,
a particular sort of prig who is always lecturing us about having
the spirit of true Christianity, apart from all names and forms.
As far as I can make out, he means the very opposite of what he says.
He means that we are to go on using the names "Christian"
and "Christianity," and so on, for something in which it is quite
specially the spirit that is not Christian; something that is a sort
of combination of the baseless optimism of an American atheist
with the pacifism of a mild Hindoo.  In the same way, we read
a great deal about the Spirit of Christmas in modern journalism
or commercialism; but it is really a reversal of the same kind.
So far from preserving the essentials without the externals, it is
rather preserving the externals where there cannot be the essentials.
It means taking two mere material substances, like holly and mistletoe,
and spreading them all over huge and homeless cosmopolitan hotels
or round the Doric columns of impersonal clubs full of jaded
and cynical old gentlemen; or in any other place where the actual
spirit of Christmas is least likely to be.  But there is also
another way in which modern commercial complexity eats out the heart
of the thing, while actually leaving the painted shell of it.
And that is the much too elaborate system of dependence on buying
and selling, and therefore on bustle and hustle; and the actual
neglect of the new things that might be done by the old Christmas.
 
Normally, if anything were normal nowadays, it would seem a truism to say
that Christmas has been a family festival.  But it is now possible
(as I have had the good or bad luck to discover) to earn a reputation
for paradox simply by going on saying that truisms are true.
In this case, of course, the reason, the only reasonable reason,
was religious.  It was concerned with a happy family because it
was consecrated to the Holy Family.  But it is perfectly true
that many men saw the fact without specially feeling the reason.
When we say the root was religious, we do not mean that Sam Weller
was concentrated on theological values when he told the Fat Boy
to "put a bit of Christmas," into some object, probably edible.
We do not mean that the Fat Boy had gone into a trance of mystical
contemplation like a monk seeing a vision.  We do not even mean
that Bob Cratchit defended punch by saying he was only looking
on the wine when it was yellow; or that Tiny Tim quoted Timothy.
We only mean that they, including their author, would have confessed
humbly and heartily that there was someone historically quite anterior
to Mr. Scrooge, who might be called the Founder of the Feast.
But in any case, whatever the reason, all would have agreed about
the result.  Mr. Wardle's feast centred in Mr. Wardle's family;
and none the less because the romantic shadows of Mr. Winkle
and Mr. Snodgrass threatened to break it up for the formation
of other families.
 
The Christmas season is domestic; and for that reason most people
now prepare for it by struggling in tramcars, standing in queues,
rushing away in trains, crowding despairingly into tea-shops,
and wondering when or whether they will ever get home.
I do not know whether some of them disappear for ever in the toy
department or simply lie down and die in the tea-rooms; but by
the look of them, it is quite likely.  Just before the great festival
of the home the whole population seems to have become homeless.
It is the supreme triumph of industrial civilisation that,
in the huge cities which seem to have far too many houses,
there is a hopeless shortage of housing.  For a long time past
great numbers of our poor have become practically nomadic.
We even confess the fact; for we talk of some of them as Street Arabs.
But this domestic institution, in its present ironical phase,
has gone beyond such normal abnormality.  The feast of the
family turns the rich as well as the poor into vagabonds.
They are so scattered over the bewildering labyrinth of our traffic
and our trade, that they sometimes cannot even reach the tea-shop;
it would be indelicate, of course, to mention the tavern.
They have a difficulty in crowding into their hotels, let alone
separating to reach their houses.  I mean quite the reverse
of irreverence when I say that their only point of resemblance
to the archetypal Christmas family is that there is no room for them
at the inn.
 
Now Christmas is built upon a beautiful and intentional paradox;
that the birth of the homeless should be celebrated in every home.
But the other sort of paradox is not intentional and is certainly
not beautiful.  It is bad enough that we cannot altogether
disentangle the tragedy of poverty.  It is bad enough that the birth
of the homeless, celebrated at hearth and altar, should sometimes
synchronise with the death of the homeless in workhouses and slums.
But we need not rejoice in this universal restlessness brought upon
rich and poor alike; and it seems to me that in this matter we need
a reform of the modern Christmas.
 
I will now emit another brilliant flash of paradox by remarking
that Christmas occurs in the winter.  That is, it is not only a
feast dedicated to domesticity, but it is one deliberately placed
under the conditions in which it is most uncomfortable to rush
about and most natural to stop at home.  But under the complicated
conditions of modern conventions and conveniences, there arises
this more practical and much more unpleasant sort of paradox.
People have to rush about for a few weeks, if it is only to stay
at home for a few hours.  Now the old and healthy idea of such winter
festivals was this; that people being shut in and besieged by the
weather were driven back on their own resources; or, in other words,
had a chance of showing whether there was anything in them.
It is not certain that the reputation of our most fashionable
modern pleasure-seekers would survive the test.  Some dreadful
exposures would be made of some such brilliant society favourites,
if they were cut off from the power of machinery and money.
They are quite used to having everything done for them; and even
when they go to the very latest American dances, it seems to be
mostly the Negro musicians who dance.  But anyhow, on the average
of healthy humanity I believe the cutting off of all these mechanical
connections would have a thoroughly enlivening and awakening effect.
At present they are always accused of merely amusing themselves;
but they are doing nothing so noble or worthy of their human dignity.
Most of them by this time cannot amuse themselves; they are too used
to being amused.
 
Christmas might be creative.  We are told, even by those who praise
it most, that it is chiefly valuable for keeping up ancient customs
or old-fashioned games.  It is indeed valuable for both those
admirable purposes.  But in the sense of which I am now speaking it
might once more be possible to turn the truth the other way round.
It is not so much old things as new things that a real Christmas
might create.  It might, for instance, create new games, if people
were really driven to invent their own games.  Most of the very
old games began with the use of ordinary tools or furniture.
So the very terms of tennis were founded on the framework of the old
inn courtyard.  So, it is said, the stumps in cricket were originally
only the three legs of the milking-stool. Now we might invent new
things of this kind, if we remembered who is the mother of invention.
How pleasing it would be to start a game in which we scored so much
for hitting the umbrella-stand or the dinner-wagon, or even the host
and hostess; of course, with a missile of some soft material.
Children who are lucky enough to be left alone in the nursery
invent not only whole games, but whole dramas and life-stories
of their own; they invent secret languages; they create
imaginary families; they laboriously conduct family magazines.
That is the sort of creative spirit that we want in the modern world;
want both in the sense of desiring and in the sense of lacking it.
If Christmas could become more domestic, instead of less, I believe
there would be a vast increase in the real Christmas spirit;
the spirit of the Child.  But in indulging this dream we must once
more invert the current convention into the form of a paradox.
It is true in a sense that Christmas is the time at which the doors
should be open.  But I would have the doors shut at Christmas,
or at least just before Christmas; and then the world shall see
what we can do.
 
I cannot but remember, with something of a smile, that on an earlier
and more controversial page of this book I have mentioned a lady
who shuddered at the thought of the things perpetrated by my
co-religionists behind closed doors.  But my memory of it is mellowed
by distance and the present subject, and I feel quite the reverse
of controversial.  I hope that lady, and all of her way of thinking,
may also have the wisdom to close their doors; and discover that only
when all the doors are closed the best thing will be found inside.
If they are Puritans, whose religion is only based on the Bible,
let it for once indeed be a Family Bible.  If they are Pagans, who can
accept nothing but the winter feast, let it at least be a family feast.
The discordance or discomfort complained of by modern critics,
in the family reunion, is not due to that mystical focal fire
having been left burning, but to its having been left to go cold.
It is because cold fragments of a once living thing are clumsily
lumped together; it is no argument against making the thing alive.
Christmas toys are incongruously dangled before heavy and heathen uncles
who wish they were playing golf.  But that does not alter the fact
that they might become much brighter and more intelligent if they
knew how to play with toys; and they are horrible bores about golf.
Their dullness is only the last deadly product of the mechanical
progress of organised and professional sports, in that rigid
world of routine outside the home.  When they were children,
behind closed doors in the home, it is probable that nearly every
one of them had day-dreams and unwritten dramas that belonged to them
as much as Hamlet belonged to Shakespeare or Pickwick to Dickens.
How much more thrilling it would be if Uncle Henry, instead of
describing in detail all the strokes with which he ought to have got
out of the bunker, were to say frankly that he had been on a voyage
to the end of the world and had just caught the Great Sea-Serpent.
How much more truly intellectual would be the conversation of
Uncle William if, instead of telling us the point to which he had
reduced his handicap, he could still say with conviction that he was
King of the Kangaroo Islands, or Chief of the Rango Dango Redskins.
These things, projected from within, were in almost all human spirits;
and it is not normal that the inspiration of them should be so utterly
crushed by the things without.  Let it not be supposed for a moment
that I also am among the tyrants of the earth, who would impose my
own tastes, or force all the other children to play my own games.
I have no disrespect for the game of golf; it is an admirable game.
I have played it; or rather, I have played at it, which is generally
regarded as the very opposite.  By all means let the golfers golf
and even the organisers organise, if their only conception of an organ
is something like a barrel-organ. Let them play golf day after day;
let them play golf for three hundred and sixty-four days, and nights
as well, with balls dipped in luminous paint, to be pursued in the dark.
But let there be one night when things grow luminous from within:
and one day when men seek for all that is buried in themselves,
and discover, where she is indeed hidden, behind locked gates
and shuttered windows, and doors thrice barred and bolted,
the spirit of liberty.

Latest revision as of 10:53, 27 May 2008

The Thing
written by Gilbert Keith Chesterton
1929.




This work is in the public domain in countries where the copyright term is the author's life plus 70 years or less.


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