What's Wrong with the World

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Gilbert Keith Chesterton. What's Wrong with the World

PART ONE. THE HOMELESSNESS OF MAN

I. THE MEDICAL MISTAKE

II. WANTED, 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

VIII. THE WILDNESS OF DOMESTICITY

IX. HISTORY OF HUDGE AND GUDGE

X. OPPRESSION BY OPTIMISM

XI. THE HOMELESSNESS OF JONES

PART TWO. IMPERIALISM, OR THE MISTAKE ABOUT MAN

I. THE CHARM OF JINGOISM

II. WISDOM AND THE WEATHER

III. THE COMMON VISION

IV. THE INSANE NECESSITY

PART THREE. FEMINISM, 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 FOUR. EDUCATION: 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 MRS. 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 FIVE. 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

Отрывок из книги

A book of modern social inquiry has a shape that is somewhat sharply defined. It begins as a rule with an analysis, with statistics, tables of population, decrease of crime among Congregationalists, growth of hysteria among policemen, and similar ascertained facts; it ends with a chapter that is generally called “The Remedy.” It is almost wholly due to this careful, solid, and scientific method that “The Remedy” is never found. For this scheme of medical question and answer is a blunder; the first great blunder of sociology. It is always called stating the disease before we find the cure. But it is the whole definition and dignity of man that in social matters we must actually find the cure before we find the disease.

The fallacy is one of the fifty fallacies that come from the modern madness for biological or bodily metaphors. It is convenient to speak of the Social Organism, just as it is convenient to speak of the British Lion. But Britain is no more an organism than Britain is a lion. The moment we begin to give a nation the unity and simplicity of an animal, we begin to think wildly. Because every man is a biped, fifty men are not a centipede. This has produced, for instance, the gaping absurdity of perpetually talking about “young nations” and “dying nations,” as if a nation had a fixed and physical span of life. Thus people will say that Spain has entered a final senility; they might as well say that Spain is losing all her teeth. Or people will say that Canada should soon produce a literature; which is like saying that Canada must soon grow a new moustache. Nations consist of people; the first generation may be decrepit, or the ten thousandth may be vigorous. Similar applications of the fallacy are made by those who see in the increasing size of national possessions, a simple increase in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man. These people, indeed, even fall short in subtlety of the parallel of a human body. They do not even ask whether an empire is growing taller in its youth, or only growing fatter in its old age. But of all the instances of error arising from this physical fancy, the worst is that we have before us: the habit of exhaustively describing a social sickness, and then propounding a social drug.

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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 disproved. Logically, the case is quite clearly the other way. The lost causes are exactly those which might have saved the world. If a man says that the Young Pretender would have made England happy, it is hard to answer him. If anyone says that the Georges made England happy, I hope we all know what to answer. That which was prevented is always impregnable; and the only perfect King of England was he who was smothered. Exactly be cause Jacobitism failed we cannot call it a failure. Precisely because the Commune collapsed as a rebellion we cannot say that it collapsed as a system. But such outbursts were brief or incidental. Few people realize how many of the largest efforts, the facts that will fill history, were frustrated in their full design and come down to us as gigantic cripples. I have only space to allude to the two largest facts of modern history: the Catholic Church and that modern growth rooted in the French Revolution.

When four knights scattered the blood and brains of St. Thomas of Canterbury, it was not only a sign of anger but of a sort of black admiration. They wished for his blood, but they wished even more for his brains. Such a blow will remain forever unintelligible unless we realise what the brains of St. Thomas were thinking about just before they were distributed over the floor. They were thinking about the great mediaeval conception that the church is the judge of the world. Becket objected to a priest being tried even by the Lord Chief Justice. And his reason was simple: because the Lord Chief Justice was being tried by the priest. The judiciary was itself sub judice. The kings were themselves in the dock. The idea was to create an invisible kingdom, without armies or prisons, but with complete freedom to condemn publicly all the kingdoms of the earth. Whether such a supreme church would have cured society we cannot affirm definitely; because the church never was a supreme church. We only know that in England at any rate the princes conquered the saints. What the world wanted we see before us; and some of us call it a failure. But we cannot call what the church wanted a failure, simply because the church failed. Tracy struck a little too soon. England had not yet made the great Protestant discovery that the king can do no wrong. The king was whipped in the cathedral; a performance which I recommend to those who regret the unpopularity of church-going. But the discovery was made; and Henry VIII scattered Becket’s bones as easily as Tracy had scattered his brains.

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