PREFACE
This book is meant to be a companion to
"Heretics," and to put the positive side in addition to the negative.
Many critics complained of the book called "Heretics" because it
merely criticised current philosophies without offering any alternative
philosophy. This book is an attempt to answer the challenge. It is unavoidably
affirmative and therefore unavoidably autobiographical. The writer has been
driven back upon somewhat the same difficulty as that which beset Newman in
writing his Apologia; he has been forced to be egotistical only in order to be
sincere. While everything else may be different the motive in both cases is the
same. It is the purpose of the writer to attempt an explanation, not of whether
the Christian Faith can be believed, but of how he personally has come to
believe it. The book is therefore arranged upon the positive principle of a
riddle and its answer. It deals first with all the writer's own solitary and
sincere speculations and then with all the startling style in which they were
all suddenly satisfied by the Christian Theology. The writer regards it as
amounting to a convincing creed. But if it is not that it is at least a
repeated and surprising coincidence.
Gilbert
K. Chesterton.
I - INTRODUCTION IN DEFENCE OF
EVERYTHING ELSE
The only possible excuse for this book is that it
is an answer to a challenge. Even a bad shot is dignified when he accepts a
duel. When some time ago I published a series of hasty but sincere papers,
under the name of "Heretics," several critics for whose intellect I
have a warm respect (I may mention specially Mr. G.S.Street) said that it was
all very well for me to tell everybody to affirm his cosmic theory, but that I
had carefully avoided supporting my precepts with example. "I will begin
to worry about my philosophy," said Mr. Street, "when Mr. Chesterton
has given us his." It was perhaps an incautious suggestion to make to a
person only too ready to write books upon the feeblest provocation. But after
all, though Mr. Street has inspired and created this book, he need not read it.
If he does read it, he will find that in its pages I have attempted in a vague
and personal way, in a set of mental pictures rather than in a series of
deductions, to state the philosophy in which I have come to believe. I will not
call it my philosophy; for I did not make it. God and humanity made it; and it
made me.
I have often had a fancy for writing a romance
about an English yachtsman who slightly miscalculated his course and discovered
England under the impression that it was a new island in the South Seas. I
always find, however, that I am either too busy or too lazy to write this fine
work, so I may as well give it away for the purposes of philosophical
illustration. There will probably be a general impression that the man who
landed (armed to the teeth and talking by signs) to plant the British flag on
that barbaric temple which turned out to be the Pavilion at Brighton, felt
rather a fool. I am not here concerned to deny that he looked a fool. But if
you imagine that he felt a fool, or at any rate that the sense of folly was his
sole or his dominant emotion, then you have not studied with sufficient
delicacy the rich romantic nature of the hero of this tale. His mistake was
really a most enviable mistake; and he knew it, if he was the man I take him
for. What could be more delightful than to have in the same few minutes all the
fascinating terrors of going abroad combined with all the humane security of
coming home again? What could be better than to have all the fun of discovering
South Africa without the disgusting necessity of landing there? What could be
more glorious than to brace one's self up to discover New South Wales and then
realize, with a gush of happy tears, that it was really old South Wales. This
at least seems to me the main problem for philosophers, and is in a manner the
main problem of this book. How can we contrive to be at once astonished at the
world and yet at home in it? How can this queer cosmic town, with its
many-legged citizens, with its monstrous and ancient lamps, how can this world
give us at once the fascination of a strange town and the comfort and honour of
being our own town?
To show that a faith or a philosophy is true from
every standpoint would be too big an undertaking even for a much bigger book
than this; it is necessary to follow one path of argument; and this is the path
that I here propose to follow. I wish to set forth my faith as particularly
answering this double spiritual need, the need for that mixture of the familiar
and the unfamiliar which Christendom has rightly named romance. For the very
word "romance" has in it the mystery and ancient meaning of Rome. Any
one setting out to dispute anything ought always to begin by saying what he
does not dispute. Beyond stating what he proposes to prove he should always
state what he does not propose to prove. The thing I do not propose to prove,
the thing I propose to take as common ground between myself and any average
reader, is this desirability of an active and imaginative life, picturesque and
full of a poetical curiosity, a life such as western man at any rate always
seems to have desired. If a man says that extinction is better than existence
or blank existence better than variety and adventure, then he is not one of the
ordinary people to whom I am talking. If a man prefers nothing I can give him
nothing. But nearly all people I have ever met in this western society in which
I live would agree to the general proposition that we need this life of
practical romance; the combination of something that is strange with something
that is secure. We need so to view the world as to combine an idea of wonder
and an idea of welcome. We need to be happy in this wonderland without once
being merely comfortable. It is THIS achievement of my creed that I shall
chiefly pursue in these pages.
But I have a peculiar reason for mentioning the
man in a yacht, who discovered England. For I am that man in a yacht. I
discovered England. I do not see how this book can avoid being egotistical; and
I do not quite see (to tell the truth) how it can avoid being dull. Dulness
will, however, free me from the charge which I most lament; the charge of being
flippant. Mere light sophistry is the thing that I happen to despise most of
all things, and it is perhaps a wholesome fact that this is the thing of which
I am generally accused. I know nothing so contemptible as a mere paradox; a
mere ingenious defence of the indefensible. If it were true (as has been said)
that Mr. Bernard Shaw lived upon paradox, then he ought to be a mere common
millionaire; for a man of his mental activity could invent a sophistry every
six minutes. It is as easy as lying; because it is lying. The truth is, of
course, that Mr. Shaw is cruelly hampered by the fact that he cannot tell any lie
unless he thinks it is the truth. I find myself under the same intolerable
bondage. I never in my life said anything merely because I thought it funny;
though of course, I have had ordinary human vainglory, and may have thought it
funny because I had said it. It is one thing to describe an interview with a
gorgon or a griffin, a creature who does not exist. It is another thing to
discover that the rhinoceros does exist and then take pleasure in the fact that
he looks as if he didn't. One searches for truth, but it may be that one
pursues instinctively the more extraordinary truths. And I offer this book with
the heartiest sentiments to all the jolly people who hate what I write, and
regard it (very justly, for all I know), as a piece of poor clowning or a
single tiresome joke.
For if this book is a joke it is a joke against
me. I am the man who with the utmost daring discovered what had been discovered
before. If there is an element of farce in what follows, the farce is at my own
expense; for this book explains how I fancied I was the first to set foot in
Brighton and then found I was the last. It recounts my elephantine adventures
in pursuit of the obvious. No one can think my case more ludicrous than I think
it myself; no reader can accuse me here of trying to make a fool of him: I am
the fool of this story, and no rebel shall hurl me from my throne. I freely
confess all the idiotic ambitions of the end of the nineteenth century. I did,
like all other solemn little boys, try to be in advance of the age. Like them I
tried to be some ten minutes in advance of the truth. And I found that I was
eighteen hundred years behind it. I did strain my voice with a painfully
juvenile exaggeration in uttering my truths. And I was punished in the fittest
and funniest way, for I have kept my truths: but I have discovered, not that
they were not truths, but simply that they were not mine. When I fancied that I
stood alone I was really in the ridiculous position of being backed up by all
Christendom. It may be, Heaven forgive me, that I did try to be original; but I
only succeeded in inventing all by myself an inferior copy of the existing
traditions of civilized religion. The man from the yacht thought he was the
first to find England; I thought I was the first to find Europe. I did try to
found a heresy of my own; and when I had put the last touches to it, I
discovered that it was orthodoxy.
It may be that somebody will be entertained by the
account of this happy fiasco. It might amuse a friend or an enemy to read how I
gradually learnt from the truth of some stray legend or from the falsehood of
some dominant philosophy, things that I might have learnt from my catechism—if
I had ever learnt it. There may or may not be some entertainment in reading how
I found at last in an anarchist club or a Babylonian temple what I might have
found in the nearest parish church. If any one is entertained by learning how
the flowers of the field or the phrases in an omnibus, the accidents of
politics or the pains of youth came together in a certain order to produce a
certain conviction of Christian orthodoxy, he may possibly read this book. But
there is in everything a reasonable division of labour. I have written the
book, and nothing on earth would induce me to read it.
I add one purely pedantic note which comes, as a
note naturally should, at the beginning of the book. These essays are concerned
only to discuss the actual fact that the central Christian theology
(sufficiently summarized in the Apostles' Creed) is the best root of energy and
sound ethics. They are not intended to discuss the very fascinating but quite
different question of what is the present seat of authority for the
proclamation of that creed. When the word "orthodoxy" is used here it
means the Apostles' Creed, as understood by everybody calling himself Christian
until a very short time ago and the general historic conduct of those who held
such a creed. I have been forced by mere space to confine myself to what I have
got from this creed; I do not touch the matter much disputed among modern
Christians, of where we ourselves got it. This is not an ecclesiastical
treatise but a sort of slovenly autobiography. But if any one wants my opinions
about the actual nature of the authority, Mr. G.S.Street has only to throw me
another challenge, and I will write him another book.
II - THE MANIAC
Thoroughly worldly people never understand even
the world; they rely altogether on a few cynical maxims which are not true.
Once I remember walking with a prosperous publisher, who made a remark which I
had often heard before; it is, indeed, almost a motto of the modern world. Yet
I had heard it once too often, and I saw suddenly that there was nothing in it.
The publisher said of somebody, "That man will get on; he believes in
himself." And I remember that as I lifted my head to listen, my eye caught
an omnibus on which was written "Hanwell." I said to him, "Shall
I tell you where the men are who believe most in themselves? For I can tell
you. I know of men who believe in themselves more colossally than Napoleon or
Caesar. I know where flames the fixed star of certainty and success. I can
guide you to the thrones of the Super-men. The men who really believe in
themselves are all in lunatic asylums." He said mildly that there were a
good many men after all who believed in themselves and who were not in lunatic
asylums. "Yes, there are," I retorted, "and you of all men ought
to know them. That drunken poet from whom you would not take a dreary tragedy,
he believed in himself. That elderly minister with an epic from whom you were
hiding in a back room, he believed in himself. If you consulted your business
experience instead of your ugly individualistic philosophy, you would know that
believing in himself is one of the commonest signs of a rotter. Actors who
can't act believe in themselves; and debtors who won't pay. It would be much
truer to say that a man will certainly fail, because he believes in himself.
Complete self-confidence is not merely a sin; complete self-confidence is a
weakness. Believing utterly in one's self is a hysterical and superstitious
belief like believing in Joanna Southcote: the man who has it has `Hanwell'
written on his face as plain as it is written on that omnibus." And to all
this my friend the publisher made this very deep and effective reply,
"Well, if a man is not to believe in himself, in what is he to
believe?" After a long pause I replied, "I will go home and write a
book in answer to that question." This is the book that I have written in
answer to it.
But I think this book may well start where our
argument started— in the neighbourhood of the mad-house. Modern masters of
science are much impressed with the need of beginning all inquiry with a fact.
The ancient masters of religion were quite equally impressed with that
necessity. They began with the fact of sin—a fact as practical as potatoes.
Whether or no man could be washed in miraculous waters, there was no doubt at
any rate that he wanted washing. But certain religious leaders in London, not
mere materialists, have begun in our day not to deny the highly disputable
water, but to deny the indisputable dirt. Certain new theologians dispute
original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be
proved. Some followers of the Reverend R.J.Campbell, in their almost too
fastidious spirituality, admit divine sinlessness, which they cannot see even
in their dreams. But they essentially deny human sin, which they can see in the
street. The strongest saints and the strongest sceptics alike took positive
evil as the starting-point of their argument. If it be true (as it certainly
is) that a man can feel exquisite happiness in skinning a cat, then the
religious philosopher can only draw one of two deductions. He must either deny
the existence of God, as all atheists do; or he must deny the present union
between God and man, as all Christians do. The new theologians seem to think it
a highly rationalistic solution to deny the cat.
In this remarkable situation it is plainly not now
possible (with any hope of a universal appeal) to start, as our fathers did,
with the fact of sin. This very fact which was to them (and is to me) as plain
as a pikestaff, is the very fact that has been specially diluted or denied. But
though moderns deny the existence of sin, I do not think that they have yet
denied the existence of a lunatic asylum. We all agree still that there is a
collapse of the intellect as unmistakable as a falling house. Men deny hell,
but not, as yet, Hanwell. For the purpose of our primary argument the one may
very well stand where the other stood. I mean that as all thoughts and theories
were once judged by whether they tended to make a man lose his soul, so for our
present purpose all modern thoughts and theories may be judged by whether they
tend to make a man lose his wits.
It is true that some speak lightly and loosely of
insanity as in itself attractive. But a moment's thought will show that if
disease is beautiful, it is generally some one else's disease. A blind man may
be picturesque; but it requires two eyes to see the picture. And similarly even
the wildest poetry of insanity can only be enjoyed by the sane. To the insane
man his insanity is quite prosaic, because it is quite true. A man who thinks
himself a chicken is to himself as ordinary as a chicken. A man who thinks he
is a bit of glass is to himself as dull as a bit of glass. It is the
homogeneity of his mind which makes him dull, and which makes him mad. It is
only because we see the irony of his idea that we think him even amusing; it is
only because he does not see the irony of his idea that he is put in Hanwell at
all. In short, oddities only strike ordinary people. Oddities do not strike odd
people. This is why ordinary people have a much more exciting time; while odd
people are always complaining of the dulness of life. This is also why the new
novels die so quickly, and why the old fairy tales endure for ever. The old
fairy tale makes the hero a normal human boy; it is his adventures that are
startling; they startle him because he is normal. But in the modern
psychological novel the hero is abnormal; the centre is not central. Hence the
fiercest adventures fail to affect him adequately, and the book is monotonous.
You can make a story out of a hero among dragons; but not out of a dragon among
dragons. The fairy tale discusses what a sane man will do in a mad world. The
sober realistic novel of to-day discusses what an essential lunatic will do in
a dull world.
Let us begin, then, with the mad-house; from this
evil and fantastic inn let us set forth on our intellectual journey. Now, if we
are to glance at the philosophy of sanity, the first thing to do in the matter
is to blot out one big and common mistake. There is a notion adrift everywhere
that imagination, especially mystical imagination, is dangerous to man's mental
balance. Poets are commonly spoken of as psychologically unreliable; and
generally there is a vague association between wreathing laurels in your hair
and sticking straws in it. Facts and history utterly contradict this view. Most
of the very great poets have been not only sane, but extremely business-like;
and if Shakespeare ever really held horses, it was because he was much the
safest man to hold them. Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does
breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do.
Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am
not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger
does lie in logic, not in imagination. Artistic paternity is as wholesome as
physical paternity. Moreover, it is worthy of remark that when a poet really
was morbid it was commonly because he had some weak spot of rationality on his
brain. Poe, for instance, really was morbid; not because he was poetical, but
because he was specially analytical. Even chess was too poetical for him; he
disliked chess because it was full of knights and castles, like a poem. He
avowedly preferred the black discs of draughts, because they were more like the
mere black dots on a diagram. Perhaps the strongest case of all is this: that
only one great English poet went mad, Cowper. And he was definitely driven mad
by logic, by the ugly and alien logic of predestination. Poetry was not the
disease, but the medicine; poetry partly kept him in health. He could sometimes
forget the red and thirsty hell to which his hideous necessitarianism dragged
him among the wide waters and the white flat lilies of the Ouse. He was damned
by John Calvin; he was almost saved by John Gilpin. Everywhere we see that men
do not go mad by dreaming. Critics are much madder than poets. Homer is
complete and calm enough; it is his critics who tear him into extravagant
tatters. Shakespeare is quite himself; it is only some of his critics who have
discovered that he was somebody else. And though St. John the Evangelist saw
many strange monsters in his vision, he saw no creature so wild as one of his
own commentators. The general fact is simple. Poetry is sane because it floats
easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make
it finite. The result is mental exhaustion, like the physical exhaustion of Mr.
Holbein. To accept everything is an exercise, to understand everything a
strain. The poet only desires exaltation and expansion, a world to stretch
himself in. The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the
logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that
splits.
It is a small matter, but not irrelevant, that
this striking mistake is commonly supported by a striking misquotation. We have
all heard people cite the celebrated line of Dryden as "Great genius is to
madness near allied." But Dryden did not say that great genius was to
madness near allied. Dryden was a great genius himself, and knew better. It
would have been hard to find a man more romantic than he, or more sensible.
What Dryden said was this, "Great wits are oft to madness near
allied"; and that is true. It is the pure promptitude of the intellect
that is in peril of a breakdown. Also people might remember of what sort of man
Dryden was talking. He was not talking of any unworldly visionary like Vaughan
or George Herbert. He was talking of a cynical man of the world, a sceptic, a
diplomatist, a great practical politician. Such men are indeed to madness near
allied. Their incessant calculation of their own brains and other people's
brains is a dangerous trade. It is always perilous to the mind to reckon up the
mind. A flippant person has asked why we say, "As mad as a hatter." A
more flippant person might answer that a hatter is mad because he has to
measure the human head.
And if great reasoners are often maniacal, it is
equally true that maniacs are commonly great reasoners. When I was engaged in a
controversy with the CLARION on the matter of free will, that able writer Mr.
R.B.Suthers said that free will was lunacy, because it meant causeless actions,
and the actions of a lunatic would be causeless. I do not dwell here upon the
disastrous lapse in determinist logic. Obviously if any actions, even a
lunatic's, can be causeless, determinism is done for. If the chain of causation
can be broken for a madman, it can be broken for a man. But my purpose is to
point out something more practical. It was natural, perhaps, that a modern
Marxian Socialist should not know anything about free will. But it was
certainly remarkable that a modern Marxian Socialist should not know anything
about lunatics. Mr. Suthers evidently did not know anything about lunatics. The
last thing that can be said of a lunatic is that his actions are causeless. If
any human acts may loosely be called causeless, they are the minor acts of a
healthy man; whistling as he walks; slashing the grass with a stick; kicking
his heels or rubbing his hands. It is the happy man who does the useless
things; the sick man is not strong enough to be idle. It is exactly such
careless and causeless actions that the madman could never understand; for the
madman (like the determinist) generally sees too much cause in everything. The madman
would read a conspiratorial significance into those empty activities. He would
think that the lopping of the grass was an attack on private property. He would
think that the kicking of the heels was a signal to an accomplice. If the
madman could for an instant become careless, he would become sane. Every one
who has had the misfortune to talk with people in the heart or on the edge of
mental disorder, knows that their most sinister quality is a horrible clarity
of detail; a connecting of one thing with another in a map more elaborate than
a maze. If you argue with a madman, it is extremely probable that you will get
the worst of it; for in many ways his mind moves all the quicker for not being
delayed by the things that go with good judgment. He is not hampered by a sense
of humour or by charity, or by the dumb certainties of experience. He is the
more logical for losing certain sane affections. Indeed, the common phrase for
insanity is in this respect a misleading one. The madman is not the man who has
lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his
reason.
The madman's explanation of a thing is always
complete, and often in a purely rational sense satisfactory. Or, to speak more
strictly, the insane explanation, if not conclusive, is at least unanswerable;
this may be observed specially in the two or three commonest kinds of madness.
If a man says (for instance) that men have a conspiracy against him, you cannot
dispute it except by saying that all the men deny that they are conspirators;
which is exactly what conspirators would do. His explanation covers the facts
as much as yours. Or if a man says that he is the rightful King of England, it
is no complete answer to say that the existing authorities call him mad; for if
he were King of England that might be the wisest thing for the existing
authorities to do. Or if a man says that he is Jesus Christ, it is no answer to
tell him that the world denies his divinity; for the world denied Christ's.
Nevertheless he is wrong. But if we attempt to
trace his error in exact terms, we shall not find it quite so easy as we had
supposed. Perhaps the nearest we can get to expressing it is to say this: that
his mind moves in a perfect but narrow circle. A small circle is quite as
infinite as a large circle; but, though it is quite as infinite, it is not so
large. In the same way the insane explanation is quite as complete as the sane
one, but it is not so large. A bullet is quite as round as the world, but it is
not the world. There is such a thing as a narrow universality; there is such a
thing as a small and cramped eternity; you may see it in many modern religions.
Now, speaking quite externally and empirically, we may say that the strongest
and most unmistakable MARK of madness is this combination between a logical
completeness and a spiritual contraction. The lunatic's theory explains a large
number of things, but it does not explain them in a large way. I mean that if
you or I were dealing with a mind that was growing morbid, we should be chiefly
concerned not so much to give it arguments as to give it air, to convince it
that there was something cleaner and cooler outside the suffocation of a single
argument. Suppose, for instance, it were the first case that I took as typical;
suppose it were the case of a man who accused everybody of conspiring against
him. If we could express our deepest feelings of protest and appeal against
this obsession, I suppose we should say something like this: "Oh, I admit
that you have your case and have it by heart, and that many things do fit into
other things as you say. I admit that your explanation explains a great deal;
but what a great deal it leaves out! Are there no other stories in the world
except yours; and are all men busy with your business? Suppose we grant the
details; perhaps when the man in the street did not seem to see you it was only
his cunning; perhaps when the policeman asked you your name it was only because
he knew it already. But how much happier you would be if you only knew that
these people cared nothing about you! How much larger your life would be if
your self could become smaller in it; if you could really look at other men
with common curiosity and pleasure; if you could see them walking as they are
in their sunny selfishness and their virile indifference! You would begin to be
interested in them, because they were not interested in you. You would break
out of this tiny and tawdry theatre in which your own little plot is always
being played, and you would find yourself under a freer sky, in a street full
of splendid strangers." Or suppose it were the second case of madness,
that of a man who claims the crown, your impulse would be to answer, "All
right! Perhaps you know that you are the King of England; but why do you care?
Make one magnificent effort and you will be a human being and look down on all
the kings of the earth." Or it might be the third case, of the madman who
called himself Christ. If we said what we felt, we should say, "So you are
the Creator and Redeemer of the world: but what a small world it must be! What
a little heaven you must inhabit, with angels no bigger than butterflies! How
sad it must be to be God; and an inadequate God! Is there really no life fuller
and no love more marvellous than yours; and is it really in your small and
painful pity that all flesh must put its faith? How much happier you would be,
how much more of you there would be, if the hammer of a higher God could smash
your small cosmos, scattering the stars like spangles, and leave you in the
open, free like other men to look up as well as down!"
And it must be remembered that the most purely
practical science does take this view of mental evil; it does not seek to argue
with it like a heresy but simply to snap it like a spell. Neither modern
science nor ancient religion believes in complete free thought. Theology
rebukes certain thoughts by calling them blasphemous. Science rebukes certain
thoughts by calling them morbid. For example, some religious societies
discouraged men more or less from thinking about sex. The new scientific
society definitely discourages men from thinking about death; it is a fact, but
it is considered a morbid fact. And in dealing with those whose morbidity has a
touch of mania, modern science cares far less for pure logic than a dancing
Dervish. In these cases it is not enough that the unhappy man should desire
truth; he must desire health. Nothing can save him but a blind hunger for
normality, like that of a beast. A man cannot think himself out of mental evil;
for it is actually the organ of thought that has become diseased, ungovernable,
and, as it were, independent. He can only be saved by will or faith. The moment
his mere reason moves, it moves in the old circular rut; he will go round and
round his logical circle, just as a man in a third-class carriage on the Inner
Circle will go round and round the Inner Circle unless he performs the
voluntary, vigorous, and mystical act of getting out at Gower Street. Decision
is the whole business here; a door must be shut for ever. Every remedy is a
desperate remedy. Every cure is a miraculous cure. Curing a madman is not
arguing with a philosopher; it is casting out a devil. And however quietly
doctors and psychologists may go to work in the matter, their attitude is
profoundly intolerant— as intolerant as Bloody Mary. Their attitude is really
this: that the man must stop thinking, if he is to go on living. Their counsel
is one of intellectual amputation. If thy HEAD offend thee, cut it off; for it
is better, not merely to enter the Kingdom of Heaven as a child, but to enter
it as an imbecile, rather than with your whole intellect to be cast into hell—
or into Hanwell.
Such is the madman of experience; he is commonly a
reasoner, frequently a successful reasoner. Doubtless he could be vanquished in
mere reason, and the case against him put logically. But it can be put much
more precisely in more general and even aesthetic terms. He is in the clean and
well-lit prison of one idea: he is sharpened to one painful point. He is
without healthy hesitation and healthy complexity. Now, as I explain in the
introduction, I have determined in these early chapters to give not so much a
diagram of a doctrine as some pictures of a point of view. And I have described
at length my vision of the maniac for this reason: that just as I am affected
by the maniac, so I am affected by most modern thinkers. That unmistakable mood
or note that I hear from Hanwell, I hear also from half the chairs of science
and seats of learning to-day; and most of the mad doctors are mad doctors in
more senses than one. They all have exactly that combination we have noted: the
combination of an expansive and exhaustive reason with a contracted common
sense. They are universal only in the sense that they take one thin explanation
and carry it very far. But a pattern can stretch for ever and still be a small
pattern. They see a chess-board white on black, and if the universe is paved
with it, it is still white on black. Like the lunatic, they cannot alter their
standpoint; they cannot make a mental effort and suddenly see it black on
white.
Take first the more obvious case of materialism.
As an explanation of the world, materialism has a sort of insane simplicity. It
has just the quality of the madman's argument; we have at once the sense of it
covering everything and the sense of it leaving everything out. Contemplate
some able and sincere materialist, as, for instance, Mr. McCabe, and you will
have exactly this unique sensation. He understands everything, and everything
does not seem worth understanding. His cosmos may be complete in every rivet
and cog-wheel, but still his cosmos is smaller than our world. Somehow his
scheme, like the lucid scheme of the madman, seems unconscious of the alien
energies and the large indifference of the earth; it is not thinking of the
real things of the earth, of fighting peoples or proud mothers, or first love
or fear upon the sea. The earth is so very large, and the cosmos is so very
small. The cosmos is about the smallest hole that a man can hide his head in.
It must be understood that I am not now discussing
the relation of these creeds to truth; but, for the present, solely their
relation to health. Later in the argument I hope to attack the question of
objective verity; here I speak only of a phenomenon of psychology. I do not for
the present attempt to prove to Haeckel that materialism is untrue, any more
than I attempted to prove to the man who thought he was Christ that he was
labouring under an error. I merely remark here on the fact that both cases have
the same kind of completeness and the same kind of incompleteness. You can
explain a man's detention at Hanwell by an indifferent public by saying that it
is the crucifixion of a god of whom the world is not worthy. The explanation
does explain. Similarly you may explain the order in the universe by saying
that all things, even the souls of men, are leaves inevitably unfolding on an
utterly unconscious tree— the blind destiny of matter. The explanation does
explain, though not, of course, so completely as the madman's. But the point
here is that the normal human mind not only objects to both, but feels to both
the same objection. Its approximate statement is that if the man in Hanwell is
the real God, he is not much of a god. And, similarly, if the cosmos of the
materialist is the real cosmos, it is not much of a cosmos. The thing has
shrunk. The deity is less divine than many men; and (according to Haeckel) the
whole of life is something much more grey, narrow, and trivial than many
separate aspects of it. The parts seem greater than the whole.
For we must remember that the materialist
philosophy (whether true or not) is certainly much more limiting than any
religion. In one sense, of course, all intelligent ideas are narrow. They
cannot be broader than themselves. A Christian is only restricted in the same
sense that an atheist is restricted. He cannot think Christianity false and
continue to be a Christian; and the atheist cannot think atheism false and
continue to be an atheist. But as it happens, there is a very special sense in
which materialism has more restrictions than spiritualism. Mr. McCabe thinks me
a slave because I am not allowed to believe in determinism. I think Mr. McCabe
a slave because he is not allowed to believe in fairies. But if we examine the
two vetoes we shall see that his is really much more of a pure veto than mine.
The Christian is quite free to believe that there is a considerable amount of
settled order and inevitable development in the universe. But the materialist
is not allowed to admit into his spotless machine the slightest speck of spiritualism
or miracle. Poor Mr. McCabe is not allowed to retain even the tiniest imp,
though it might be hiding in a pimpernel. The Christian admits that the
universe is manifold and even miscellaneous, just as a sane man knows that he
is complex. The sane man knows that he has a touch of the beast, a touch of the
devil, a touch of the saint, a touch of the citizen. Nay, the really sane man
knows that he has a touch of the madman. But the materialist's world is quite
simple and solid, just as the madman is quite sure he is sane. The materialist
is sure that history has been simply and solely a chain of causation, just as
the interesting person before mentioned is quite sure that he is simply and
solely a chicken. Materialists and madmen never have doubts.
Spiritual doctrines do not actually limit the mind
as do materialistic denials. Even if I believe in immortality I need not think
about it. But if I disbelieve in immortality I must not think about it. In the
first case the road is open and I can go as far as I like; in the second the
road is shut. But the case is even stronger, and the parallel with madness is
yet more strange. For it was our case against the exhaustive and logical theory
of the lunatic that, right or wrong, it gradually destroyed his humanity. Now
it is the charge against the main deductions of the materialist that, right or
wrong, they gradually destroy his humanity; I do not mean only kindness, I mean
hope, courage, poetry, initiative, all that is human. For instance, when
materialism leads men to complete fatalism (as it generally does), it is quite
idle to pretend that it is in any sense a liberating force. It is absurd to say
that you are especially advancing freedom when you only use free thought to
destroy free will. The determinists come to bind, not to loose. They may well
call their law the "chain" of causation. It is the worst chain that
ever fettered a human being. You may use the language of liberty, if you like,
about materialistic teaching, but it is obvious that this is just as inapplicable
to it as a whole as the same language when applied to a man locked up in a
mad-house. You may say, if you like, that the man is free to think himself a
poached egg. But it is surely a more massive and important fact that if he is a
poached egg he is not free to eat, drink, sleep, walk, or smoke a cigarette.
Similarly you may say, if you like, that the bold determinist speculator is
free to disbelieve in the reality of the will. But it is a much more massive
and important fact that he is not free to raise, to curse, to thank, to
justify, to urge, to punish, to resist temptations, to incite mobs, to make New
Year resolutions, to pardon sinners, to rebuke tyrants, or even to say
"thank you" for the mustard.
In passing from this subject I may note that there
is a queer fallacy to the effect that materialistic fatalism is in some way
favourable to mercy, to the abolition of cruel punishments or punishments of
any kind. This is startlingly the reverse of the truth. It is quite tenable
that the doctrine of necessity makes no difference at all; that it leaves the
flogger flogging and the kind friend exhorting as before. But obviously if it
stops either of them it stops the kind exhortation. That the sins are
inevitable does not prevent punishment; if it prevents anything it prevents
persuasion. Determinism is quite as likely to lead to cruelty as it is certain
to lead to cowardice. Determinism is not inconsistent with the cruel treatment
of criminals. What it is (perhaps) inconsistent with is the generous treatment
of criminals; with any appeal to their better feelings or encouragement in
their moral struggle. The determinist does not believe in appealing to the
will, but he does believe in changing the environment. He must not say to the
sinner, "Go and sin no more," because the sinner cannot help it. But
he can put him in boiling oil; for boiling oil is an environment. Considered as
a figure, therefore, the materialist has the fantastic outline of the figure of
the madman. Both take up a position at once unanswerable and intolerable.
Of course it is not only of the materialist that
all this is true. The same would apply to the other extreme of speculative
logic. There is a sceptic far more terrible than he who believes that
everything began in matter. It is possible to meet the sceptic who believes
that everything began in himself. He doubts not the existence of angels or
devils, but the existence of men and cows. For him his own friends are a
mythology made up by himself. He created his own father and his own mother.
This horrible fancy has in it something decidedly attractive to the somewhat
mystical egoism of our day. That publisher who thought that men would get on if
they believed in themselves, those seekers after the Superman who are always
looking for him in the looking-glass, those writers who talk about impressing
their personalities instead of creating life for the world, all these people
have really only an inch between them and this awful emptiness. Then when this
kindly world all round the man has been blackened out like a lie; when friends
fade into ghosts, and the foundations of the world fail; then when the man,
believing in nothing and in no man, is alone in his own nightmare, then the
great individualistic motto shall be written over him in avenging irony. The
stars will be only dots in the blackness of his own brain; his mother's face
will be only a sketch from his own insane pencil on the walls of his cell. But
over his cell shall be written, with dreadful truth, "He believes in himself."
All that concerns us here, however, is to note
that this panegoistic extreme of thought exhibits the same paradox as the other
extreme of materialism. It is equally complete in theory and equally crippling
in practice. For the sake of simplicity, it is easier to state the notion by
saying that a man can believe that he is always in a dream. Now, obviously
there can be no positive proof given to him that he is not in a dream, for the
simple reason that no proof can be offered that might not be offered in a dream.
But if the man began to burn down London and say that his housekeeper would
soon call him to breakfast, we should take him and put him with other logicians
in a place which has often been alluded to in the course of this chapter. The
man who cannot believe his senses, and the man who cannot believe anything
else, are both insane, but their insanity is proved not by any error in their
argument, but by the manifest mistake of their whole lives. They have both
locked themselves up in two boxes, painted inside with the sun and stars; they
are both unable to get out, the one into the health and happiness of heaven,
the other even into the health and happiness of the earth. Their position is
quite reasonable; nay, in a sense it is infinitely reasonable, just as a
threepenny bit is infinitely circular. But there is such a thing as a mean
infinity, a base and slavish eternity. It is amusing to notice that many of the
moderns, whether sceptics or mystics, have taken as their sign a certain
eastern symbol, which is the very symbol of this ultimate nullity. When they
wish to represent eternity, they represent it by a serpent with his tail in his
mouth. There is a startling sarcasm in the image of that very unsatisfactory
meal. The eternity of the material fatalists, the eternity of the eastern
pessimists, the eternity of the supercilious theosophists and higher scientists
of to-day is, indeed, very well presented by a serpent eating his tail, a
degraded animal who destroys even himself.
This chapter is purely practical and is concerned
with what actually is the chief mark and element of insanity; we may say in
summary that it is reason used without root, reason in the void. The man who
begins to think without the proper first principles goes mad; he begins to think
at the wrong end. And for the rest of these pages we have to try and discover
what is the right end. But we may ask in conclusion, if this be what drives men
mad, what is it that keeps them sane? By the end of this book I hope to give a
definite, some will think a far too definite, answer. But for the moment it is
possible in the same solely practical manner to give a general answer touching
what in actual human history keeps men sane. Mysticism keeps men sane. As long
as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create
morbidity. The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has
always been a mystic. He has permitted the twilight. He has always had one foot
in earth and the other in fairyland. He has always left himself free to doubt
his gods; but (unlike the agnostic of to-day) free also to believe in them. He
has always cared more for truth than for consistency. If he saw two truths that
seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and the
contradiction along with them. His spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like his
physical sight: he sees two different pictures at once and yet sees all the
better for that. Thus he has always believed that there was such a thing as
fate, but such a thing as free will also. Thus he believed that children were
indeed the kingdom of heaven, but nevertheless ought to be obedient to the
kingdom of earth. He admired youth because it was young and age because it was
not. It is exactly this balance of apparent contradictions that has been the
whole buoyancy of the healthy man. The whole secret of mysticism is this: that
man can understand everything by the help of what he does not understand. The
morbid logician seeks to make everything lucid, and succeeds in making
everything mysterious. The mystic allows one thing to be mysterious, and
everything else becomes lucid. The determinist makes the theory of causation
quite clear, and then finds that he cannot say "if you please" to the
housemaid. The Christian permits free will to remain a sacred mystery; but
because of this his relations with the housemaid become of a sparkling and
crystal clearness. He puts the seed of dogma in a central darkness; but it
branches forth in all directions with abounding natural health. As we have taken
the circle as the symbol of reason and madness, we may very well take the cross
as the symbol at once of mystery and of health. Buddhism is centripetal, but
Christianity is centrifugal: it breaks out. For the circle is perfect and
infinite in its nature; but it is fixed for ever in its size; it can never be
larger or smaller. But the cross, though it has at its heart a collision and a
contradiction, can extend its four arms for ever without altering its shape.
Because it has a paradox in its centre it can grow without changing. The circle
returns upon itself and is bound. The cross opens its arms to the four winds;
it is a signpost for free travellers.
Symbols alone are of even a cloudy value in
speaking of this deep matter; and another symbol from physical nature will
express sufficiently well the real place of mysticism before mankind. The one
created thing which we cannot look at is the one thing in the light of which we
look at everything. Like the sun at noonday, mysticism explains everything else
by the blaze of its own victorious invisibility. Detached intellectualism is
(in the exact sense of a popular phrase) all moonshine; for it is light without
heat, and it is secondary light, reflected from a dead world. But the Greeks
were right when they made Apollo the god both of imagination and of sanity; for
he was both the patron of poetry and the patron of healing. Of necessary dogmas
and a special creed I shall speak later. But that transcendentalism by which
all men live has primarily much the position of the sun in the sky. We are
conscious of it as of a kind of splendid confusion; it is something both
shining and shapeless, at once a blaze and a blur. But the circle of the moon
is as clear and unmistakable, as recurrent and inevitable, as the circle of Euclid
on a blackboard. For the moon is utterly reasonable; and the moon is the mother
of lunatics and has given to them all her name.
