G.K.Chesterton Orthodoxy

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that more dreary thinker who thinks merely of our contact with the earth from moment to
moment, and that happier thinker who considers rather our primary power of vision and
of choice of road.
But this is a deep mistake in this alternative of the optimist and the pessimist.
The assumption of it is that a man criticises this world as if he were house-hunting, as if
he were being shown over a new suite of apartments. If a man came to this world from
some other world in full possession of his powers he might discuss whether the
advantage of midsummer woods made up for the disadvantage of mad dogs, just as a
man looking for lodgings might balance the presence of a telephone against the
absence of a sea view. But no man is in that position. A man belongs to this world
before he begins to ask if it is nice to belong to it. He has fought for the flag, and often
won heroic victories for the flag long before he has ever enlisted. To put shortly what
seems the essential matter, he has a loyalty long before he has any admiration.
In the last chapter it has been said that the primary feeling that this world is
strange and yet attractive is best expressed in fairy tales. The reader may, if he likes,
put down the next stage to that bellicose and even jingo literature which commonly
comes next in the history of a boy. We all owe much sound morality to the penny
dreadfuls. Whatever the reason, it seemed and still seems to me that our attitude
towards life can be better expressed in terms of a kind of military loyalty than in terms of
criticism and approval. My acceptance of the universe is not optimism, it is more like
patriotism. It is a matter of primary loyalty. The world is not a lodging-house at Brighton,
which we are to leave because it is miserable. It is the fortress of our family, with the
flag flying on the turret, and the more miserable it is the less we should leave it. The
point is not that this world is too sad to love or too glad not to love; the point is that when
you do love a thing, its gladness is a reason for loving it, and its sadness a reason for
loving it more. All optimistic thoughts about England and all pessimistic thoughts about
her are alike reasons for the English patriot. Similarly, optimism and pessimism are alike
arguments for the cosmic patriot.
Let us suppose we are confronted with a desperate thing -- say Pimlico. If we
think what is really best for Pimlico we shall find the thread of thought leads to the
throne or the mystic and the arbitrary. It is not enough for a man to disapprove of
Pimlico: in that case he will merely cut his throat or move to Chelsea. Nor, certainly, is it
enough for a man to approve of Pimlico: for then it will remain Pimlico, which would be
awful. The only way out of it seems to be for somebody to love Pimlico: to love it with a
transcendental tie and without any earthly reason. If there arose a man who loved
Pimlico, then Pimlico would rise into ivory towers and golden pinnacles; Pimlico would
attire herself as a woman does when she is loved. For decoration is not given to hide
horrible things: but to decorate things already adorable. A mother does not give her
child a blue bow because he is so ugly without it. A lover does not give a girl a necklace
to hide her neck. If men loved Pimlico as mothers love children, arbitrarily, because it is
theirs, Pimlico in a year or two might be fairer than Florence. Some readers will say that
this is a mere fantasy. I answer that this is the actual history of mankind. This, as a fact,
is how cities did grow great. Go back to the darkest roots of civilization and you will find
them knotted round some sacred stone or encircling some sacred well. People first paid
honour to a spot and afterwards gained glory for it. Men did not love Rome because she
was great. She was great because they had loved her.
The eighteenth-century theories of the social contract have been exposed to
much clumsy criticism in our time; in so far as they meant that there is at the back of all
historic government an idea of content and co-operation, they were demonstrably right.
But they really were wrong in so far as they suggested that men had ever aimed at
order or ethics directly by a conscious exchange of interests. Morality did not begin by
one man saying to another, I will not hit you if you do not hit me ; there is no trace of
such a transaction. There is a trace of both men having said, We must not hit each
other in the holy place. They gained their morality by guarding their religion. They did
not cultivate courage. They fought for the shrine, and found they had become [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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