G. K. Chesterton: Social Criticism and the Sense of Wonder

8/8/2019 G. K. Chesterton: Social Criticism and the Sense of Wonder

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AN ANGLO-AMERICAN

LITERARY REVIEW

VOLUME 23

2006


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G.K. Chesterton: Social Criticism andthe Sense of Wonder

At the heart of G.K. Chestertons Christian orthodoxy was a sense of wonderat Gods Creation which called for the human response of gratitude. But Ches-tertons sense of wonder was also directed into the everyday world of humanaffairs, providing his work with the distinctive democratic character that set itapart from so much that was considered progressive in Edwardian England.Chesterton perceived that the progressive mind was devoid of wonder,anchored in neither love of God or neighbour but in the self itself. Much ofChestertons own literary energy was devoted to exposing the lunacies thatdeveloped when intellectuals turned away from the strange and unexpected

nature of reality in order to construct their own highly logical, utterly consis-tent, yet ultimately mad ideologiesin practical terms, Chesterton realised thatsuch ideologies were likely to bring tyranny in their wake. Chestertons senseof wonder underpinned his religious thoughtbut it was also a driving forcebehind his social critique and his ceaseless challenging of social and politicalschemes that threatened the common life in the name of some utopian vision.1

The young Chesterton was propelled into his writing career by his experi-ence of evil, his struggle with introspection, and his need to face realitythepivotal events which occurred while he was a student at the Slade School ofArt in London during the mid-1890s. At that time the Slade was dominatedby the philosophy of Impressionism which, in Chestertons understanding,was a form of skepticism and subjectivism. It was in such a climate that hecame to have doubts about the reality of existence itself. In this atmosphere

of unreality and sterile isolation, as he describes it in his Autobiography(1936), he began to feel an overpowering impulse to record or draw horribleideas and images; plunging deeper and deeper as in a blind spiritual suicide.. . . I dug quite low enough to discover the devil; and even in some dim wayto recognise the devil (93). Chesterton recoiled from this encounter with eviland pulled himself out of his morbid state by inventing his own rudimen-tary and makeshift mystical theory based on the gratitude for there beingany existence at all (93-94). Cutting his studies shorthe did not obtain adegreeChesterton broke through his morbid state of mind and embarkedon a literary rather than an artistic career which was fuelled by a consciousrebellion against the skeptical and nihilistic fashions of the day. In devel-oping this theory of thanks, he sought to reawaken the sense of wonder at

the miraculous and mysterious fact of existence: Of one thing I am certain,that the age needs, first and foremost to be startled; to be taught the nature ofwonder (Man Who Was Orthodox 160).

By 1905 and the publication ofHeretics, a collection of essays which exam-ined the negative spirit underlying the works of various popular intel-


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lectuals and novelists, Chesterton had come to understand his makeshiftmystical theory to be but a pale copy of orthodox Christianitya fact hewould elaborate on in his classic Orthodoxy (1908). His wonder at sheer exis-tence would now entail the unambiguous recognition of God the Creatorthat supreme Being upon whom all being was contingent:

Until we realize that things might not be, we cannot realize that

things are. Until we see the background of darkness we cannot

admire the light as a single and created thing. As soon as we have

seen that darkness, all light is lightning, sudden, blinding, and

divine. Until we picture nonentity we underrate the victory of

God, and can realize none of the trophies of His ancient war. It is

one of the million wild jests of truth that we know nothing until

we know nothing. (Heretics 58-59)

This wonder at the sheer fact that there is something and not nothingis the red thread which runs through all of Chestertons voluminous writ-ings. It is reflected in the fact that he could write about anythingeven themost trivial of subjectsbecause against the backdrop of nothing, everythingwas interesting. Thus Chesterton believed that in the course of his work asa public intellectual he should do all he could to undermine the moderntendency to take things for granted, for that is taking them without grati-tude; that is, emphatically as not granted (Irish Impressions 21).

Chestertons aim to rekindle the sense of wonder in the mind of his audi-ence represented not just the need for a sense of wonder at existence, at theuniverse and the earth in and upon which we find ourselves, but of a wonder

at the humanly established world as well. Chesterton directed his sense ofwonder into the realm of human affairs too, hence his countless essays on suchobjects as cheese, lamp-posts, or the contents of his pockets, objects whichare easily overlooked, but which, against the background of nothingness, arethemselves miraculous: To the child the tree and the lamp-post are as naturaland as artificial as each other; or rather, neither of them are natural but bothsupernatural. For both are splendid and unexplained. The flower with whichGod crowns the one, and the flame with which Sam the lamplighter crownsthe other, are equally of the gold of fairy-tales (Heretics 135-36).2

Chesterton regained his child-like sense of wonder, his appreciation of theactuality and goodness of everyday existence, through his own struggle withthefin-de-sicle pessimists and, as Margaret Canovan has pointed out, he wasone of the twice-born, his own innocence and spontaneity something grate-fully recovered from his youthful crisis (37). And so, if Chesterton distancedhimself from such pessimists, his own position, which was marked by hisfirm belief in the reality of spiritual evil, was equally opposed to the vulgaroptimists of his time who believed this earth and our life on it to be the


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best of all possible worlds untouched by sin or human tragedy. Chestertonthus located his own turn towards reality between the poles of optimismand pessimism: The heresies that have attacked human happiness in mytime have all been variations of either presumption or despair; which in thecontroversies of modern culture are called optimism and pessimism (ManWho Was Orthodox 170). Neither attitude was conducive to defending theinterests of the poor against the designs of the privileged.

Towards the end of his Autobiography, after spelling out his own senseof gratitude for an undeserved gift of Creation, Chesterton points to thissecond core element of his world-view, which was to defend the dignity ofthe downtrodden: It was my instinct to defend liberty in small nations andpoor families; that is, to defend the rights of man as including the rights ofproperty; especially the property of the poor (342). Indeed, Chesterton asso-

ciates wonder with the reaction of anger at evil and so he maintains that afirm grasp of reality is intimately entwined with the power to resist existingsocial injustices. For example, Chesterton writes that Dickens encountersevil with that beautiful surprise which, as it is the beginning of all real plea-sure, is also the beginning of all righteous indignation. He enters the work-house just as Oliver Twist enters it, as a little child (Appreciations 48). Andfor Chesterton, of course, the defining aspect of the child was the capacity forwonder. Preserving the element of surprisean intrinsic part of wonderseems to have been essential for Chesterton in facing up to and resisting evil:From the reformer is required a simplicity of surprise. He must have thefaculty of a violent and virgin astonishment. It is not enough that he shouldthink injustice distressing; he must think injustice absurd, an anomaly in exis-tence, a matter less for tears than for shattering laughter (Charles Dickens

6-7). The capacities for both wonder and horror are present in the balancedmind which embraces both aspects of truth which are isolated in the mindsof the optimist and pessimist and which thereby lead to mere acquiescenceor despair. Christianity, with its teaching of both the goodness of Creationand the evil of the Fall embraces both dimensions of reality.

The trouble with both optimists and pessimists in Chestertons account isthat they take an aspect of truth and treat it as the whole truth. What is needed,according to Chesterton, is not a compromise between the two positions butboth attitudes at the same time: For our Titanic purposes of faith and revolu-tion, what we need is not the cold acceptance of the world as a compromise,but some way in which we can heartily hate and heartily love it. We do notwant joy and anger to neutralise each other and produce a surly contentment;we want a fiercer delight and a fiercer discontent (Orthodoxy 128).

So for Chesterton the experience of wonder at and gratitude for sheerexistence did not lead to a resigned inactivity, the cultivation of a privatespirituality content with letting things be. The problem with the sensibilitiesof optimism and pessimism was that they were not conducive to political


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resistance to the present state of affairs: The optimist will say that reformis needless. The pessimist will say that reform is hopeless (Charles Dickens270). Chestertons own view is expressed by way of contrast with outlookswhich would consider the world so good that nothing need be done, or sobad that nothing can be done. Our initial attitude should not be one of criti-cism or approval but rather the fundamental sense of loyalty of the cosmicpatriot: The world is not a lodging-house at Brighton, which we are toleave because it is miserable. It is the fortress of our family, with the flagflying 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; thepoint 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 (Orthodoxy 119). Any criticismof the world must be based on its prior affirmation: we need to love a thing

before it can be made loveableas we shall see, before we ask what is wrongwith the world we need to know what is right with it.

Chestertons social criticism was also deeply infused by a sense of thelimited nature of the human condition. As Chesterton recounts in hisAutobi-ography, an awareness of a sense of limits was a fundamental element of hiswhole perception of existence: All my life I have loved frames and limits;and I will maintain that the largest wilderness looks larger seen through awindow (32). Gratitude for the wondrous fact that things exist implies theresponse of self restraint: we should thank God for beer and Burgundy bynot drinking too much of them (Orthodoxy 116). If the spirit of wonder wasinscribed in the philosophy of the fairy-tales of childhoodas Chestertonrevealed in Orthodoxyso too was the principle of limitation. Human happi-ness depends upon our acceptance of certain limits of the human condition.

Life in Elfland is not marked by lawlessness but by the principle of a sanc-tion which Chesterton terms the Doctrine of Conditional Joy. Happinessdepends on our not doing something which we could at any moment do:The note of the fairy utterance always is, You may live in a palace of goldand sapphire, ifyou do not say the word cow; or You may live happilywith the Kings daughter, ifyou do not show her an onion. The vision alwaysrests upon a veto. All the dizzy and colossal things conceded depend uponone small thing withheld. All the wild and whirling things that are let loosedepend upon one thing that is forbidden (97).

Chestertons sense of the wonder at reality and his awareness of theimportance of the principle of limitation are reflected in his fondness for thedistinctness of thingsa limit, after all, signifies where one thing ends andanother begins. Chesterton was repelled by modern modes of thought whichremove the clear outlines and boundaries which separate and distinguishone things identity from another. This emphasis on the distinctions betweenthings often appears in a religious framework through Chestertons critiqueof a pantheism which would lead to the smoothing away of the distinctions


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between nature and God, body and spirit, animal and mansomething weshall consider later. It is also manifest in Chestertons stress on the impor-tance of private property and the limits of boundary fences together withthe distinction between father-mother-child in the familythe fundamentalaspect behind Chestertons distributist socio-political perspective with whichhe challenged both capitalism and socialism.

Chestertons first published novel reflected this sense of limits in its oppo-sition to the large-scale, centralizing schemes of imperialism and socialismtogether with the celebration of the varieties and virtues of the small city-state. The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904) is set eighty years in the future,but it is a future very similar to the present for the people had lost faithin the possibility of revolutions due to the lack of any positive enduringidealsin essence, it is a world without wonder. It is a dull, bureaucratic

world in which democracy has decayed into a form of random despotismwith a King being selected on the basis of alphabetical rotation. In reactionto the lack of color and variety around him, Auberon Quinthe newlyselected Kingissues a proclamation that reinstates the medieval bound-aries, heraldries and offices of the various London boroughs. While Quinhimself sees this all as a grand joke, one man takes it all very seriously:Adam Wayne, the Provost of Notting Hill. When a proposed road devel-opment threatens to destroy a small Notting Hill street, Wayne raises asmall army to defend Notting Hill against the overwhelming forces of thesurrounding boroughs. While his opponents believe in the power of sheernumbers, Wayne is driven by a local patriotism which sees the wonder inthe world around him. He perceives the poetry in the commonplace anddeclares to King Auberon:

I was born, like other men, in a spot of the earth which I loved

because I had played boys games there, and fallen in love, and

talked with my friends through nights that were nights of the gods.

And I feel the riddle. These little gardens where we told our loves.

These streets where we brought out our dead. Why should they

be commonplace? Why should they be absurd? Why should it be

grotesque to say that a pillar-box is poetic when for a year I could

not see a red pillar-box against the yellow evening in a certain

street without being wracked with something of which God keeps

the secret, but which is stronger than sorrow or joy? Why should

any one be able to raise a laugh by saying the Cause of Notting

Hill?Notting Hill where thousands of immortal spirits blaze

with alternate hope and fear. (62-63)

The Napoleon of Notting Hill was an adventure novel which stemmed fromChestertons youthful sympathies for the Boer farmers who took to rifle


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and horse against the might of the British Empire. Six years later he wouldprovide a sustained account of his political thought. Whats Wrong with theWorld (1910) represented Chestertons first major work of social analysis anddisplays his interest in the importance of limited and widely spread privateproperty and of the distinct gender and generational roles within the family.What was fundamentally wrong, Chesterton argued, was that other works ofsocial analysis failed to begin by asking what was rightwhat was the idealto which we should be striving? For Chesterton, this ideal was representedby the free family with its independence embodied in its own home: Asevery normal man desires a woman, and children born of a woman, everynormal man desires a house of his own to put them into (59). This was thepermanent human ideal to be asserted against contemporary society: thehuge modern heresy of altering the human soul to fit its conditions, instead

of altering human conditions to fit the human soul (109).Chesterton identified that one of the worst notions of modern ideologies

was that domesticity was dull. Rather, in a world which consisted of set tasksand rules, the home was very often the only place of liberty for the poor.Furthermore, as Chesterton believed that the ability to create against a back-ground of limits was an essential aspect of human nature then the possessionof property was a fundamental requirement for human fulfillment: Prop-erty is merely the art of democracy. It means that every man should havesomething that he can shape in his own image, as he is shaped in the imageof Heaven. But because he is not God, but only a graven image of God, hisself expression must deal with limits; properly with limits that are strict andeven small (47-48).

It is an ideal, Chesterton maintains, which should not be confused with

capitalism, for capitalism, although commonly assumed to be based on theownership of private property, is a system based both on the denial of themeans of production to the majority and the principle of limitation. Thetrue meaning of property is thus lost to the capitalist who has concentratedthe property of others into his own hands: A man with the true poetry ofpossession wishes to see the wall where his garden meets Smiths garden;the hedge where his farm touches Browns. He cannot see the shape of hisown land unless he sees the edges of his neighbours (48).

In Whats Wrong with the World Chesterton also sought to emphasize thedistinctions between both the sexes and the generations. Men and womenwere radically different and Chesterton felt it necessary to counter modernmovements which would seek to obscure this fundamental fact. For Ches-terton, a womans nature suited her to the work within the realm of thehouseholdand, despite the protests of a minority of feminists, this was thetype of life which most women desired.

Comradeship and love were two distinct and very different things and areembodied in sexual difference: women stand for the dignity of love and men


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for the dignity of comradeship (90). Furthermore, while men had a tendencyto be specialists, women were the great universalists: Women were not keptat home in order to keep them narrow; on the contrary, they were kept at homein order to keep them broad. The world outside the home was one mass ofnarrowness, a maze of cramped paths, a madhouse of monomaniacs (128).The education of the young exemplified the universalism of the woman, fora child needs to be introduced into a human culture, not learn the specifics ofa job: To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets,labours and holidays; to be Whiteley within a certain area, teaching morals,manners, theology, and hygiene; I can understand how this might exhaust themind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it (132). The womans rolewas not to be belittled; it represented a monumental task concerned with thoseprimary things which were of such importance that only a sense of sacred

loyalty was appropriatea sense inappropriate to the outside economy.In being in command of a household, the woman is omnipotent in the

small sphere of the private house. Inherent in this role is the ability to prac-tice thrift: economy, says Chesterton, is more romantic than extravagancebecause it is creative. Along with feminine dignity, it was a sense of thriftwhich set women apart from men; from the wordiness, wastefulness andpleasure seeking of male companionshipthe rowdiness one might find ina public house.

While Chesterton could see that the traditional relations between thesexes were being undermined he also noted that the distinctions betweenthe generations were being eroded as well. Education is the transmission ofknowledge across the generations and rests on authority: A teacher whois not dogmatic is simply a teacher who is not teaching (197). However,

Chesterton notes that a fashionable idea has developed which maintains thatteaching is not a form of instructionand so does not rest on authoritybuta form of drawing out the latent tendencies within the child. Unable tobelieve in any objective truth themselves, teachers were thus abdicating theirresponsibility towards childrenin undermining authority they can be seento be eroding the very distinction between adult and child itself.

Chestertons stress on the importance of limits and distinctions isalso reflected in his emphasis that people be understood as unique indi-viduals, each with their own destiniesChesterton had a deep sense ofwhat Hannah Arendt referred to in The Human Condition (1958) as thehuman condition of plurality, . . . the fact that men, not Man, live on theearth and inhabit the world (7). Chestertons words on Robert Browningreveal his own profound awareness of human plurality: The sense of theabsolute sanctity of human difference was the deepest of all his senses. Hewas hungrily interested in all human things, but it would have been quiteimpossible to have said of him that he loved humanity. He did not lovehumanity but men (Robert Browning 187).


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Such a sense of wonder at the human world is directly linked to Ches-tertons defense of the common life against the abstract schemes devisedby intellectuals and other members of the establishment. Indeed, unlike somany other liberals, socialists, progressives, or conservatives, Chesterton didhave a fundamental faith that the everyday beliefs and opinions of ordinarypeople were likely to be more sane than those of their supposed betters. AsAnthony Wright points out, for example, the Fabian socialists distrusted andhad little understanding of the needs of ordinary working people. Indeed,Beatrice Webbs diary entry of 1894 reads: we have little faith in the averagesensual man, we do not believe that he can do much more than describe hisgrievances, we do not think he can prescribe his remedies (qtd. in Wright55). Thus Mrs. Sidney Webb, says Chesterton, settles things by the simpleprocess of ordering about the citizens of a state, as she might the servants in

a kitchen (Victorian Age 91).Rooted in his sense of wonder at the world, Chestertons radical demo-

cratic outlook embodied his reaction to the fact that workers and the poorremained invisible as fellow human beings in the eyes of the privileged. Asthe character of the Trades Unionist John Braintree declares in Chestertonsnovel The Return of Don Quixote (1927) after hearing that there were no menin the aristocratic household at which he was visiting: There is a man in thenext room, there is a man in the passage; there is a man in the garden; thereis a man at the front door; there is a man in the stables; there is a man in thekitchen; there is a man in the cellar. What sort of palace of lies have you builtfor yourselves when you see all these around you every day and do not evenknow that they are men? Why do we strike? Because you forget our veryexistence when we do not strike (qtd. in Clark 11).3

And the philanthropists were no betterto them the poor were to be pitiedas if they were unfortunate animals and administered to for their own good.Neither the rich man nor the philanthropist would recognize the dignityof the poor as human beingssuch a recognition being for Chesterton theprerequisite for securing radical and egalitarian social change. Chesterton,who was one of the most radically democratic English writers of the twen-tieth century, maintained that notpity but solidarity was the mark of the truedemocratic sentiment:

Democracy is not philanthropy; it is not even altruism or social

reform. Democracy is not founded on pity for the common man;

democracy is founded on reverence for the common man, or, if

you will, even on fear of him. It does not champion man because

man is so miserable, but because man is so sublime. It does not

object so much to the ordinary man being a slave as to his not

being a king, for its dream is always the dream of the First Roman

republic, a nation of kings. (Heretics 270)


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For Chesterton, a primary role of the artist was to express in a more sublimemanner the everyday truths about the human condition formed amongstordinary men and women and maintained in popular tradition rather thandevised in the solitary mind of the intellectual. That is, to portray the ordi-nary as what it in fact isextraordinary. It was in this ability, according toChesterton, where Charles Dickens displayed one aspect of his greatness:

Dickens stands first as a defiant monument of what happens

when a great literary genius has a literary taste akin to that of the

community. For this kinship was deep and spiritual. Dickens was

not like our ordinary demagogues and journalists. Dickens did not

write what the people wanted. Dickens wanted what the people

wanted. And with this was connected that other fact which must

never be forgotten, and which I have more than once insisted on,that Dickens and his school had a hilarious faith in democracy and

thought of the service of it as a sacred priesthood. Hence there was

this vital point in his popularism, that there was no condescension

in it. . . . Dickens never talked down to the people. He talked up to

the people. He approached the people like a deity and poured out

his riches and his blood. (Charles Dickens 106)

By contrast, the distance which the progressive intellectual placed betweenhimself and the common life was an attitude which destroyed any possibilityof real reform:

What cuts this spirit off from Christian common sense is the fact

that the delusion, like most insane delusions, is merely egotistical.It is simply the pleasure of thinking extravagantly well of oneself,

and unlimited indulgence in that pleasure is far more weakening

than any indulgence in drink or dissipation. But so completely

does it construct an unreal cosmos round the ego, that the criti-

cism of the world cannot be felt even for worldly purposes. (Irish

Impressions 221-22)

If such haughty disdain for the common life paralyses radical reform, thereal danger is that the delusions of the egotistic intellectual may be imposedon a recalcitrant populace who remainalbeit often unconsciouslyloyalto common sense and the Christian affirmation of existence. Eugenicsthe attempt to improve the genetic makeup of societyis one exampleof such disdain for ordinary life and Chesterton devoted an entire bookto its refutation, and we shall take this as an exemplar of Chestertonssocial criticismthough, of course, it is but one aspect of his quarrel withmodern society.


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In Eugenics and Other Evils (1922) Chesterton maintained that the eugenicmovement represented something radically new in history and involveda revolutionary reversal of conventional morality. Whereas all precedingmorality had maintained that ones primary duty was to the partner in procre-ationthat is, to an actually existing personthe moral duty demanded byeugenic theory was towards a hypothetical person, i.e. the child who has beenconceived only in theory. To introduce an ethic which makes that fidelityor infidelity vary with some calculation about heredity is that rarest of allthings, a revolution that has not happened before (8). Chesterton arguedthat the eugenic movement was an example of science trying to tyrannizethrough the state; that it marked a transformation in persecution from tortureto vivisection (for the eugenists did not actually know what they were doing);and that it was a form of intellectual madness which could take root in a

climate of anarchythat is, an inability to accept limits to liberty togetherwith a feeling of powerlessness to halt processes once started. Fundamen-tally, Chesterton views eugenics as a tool of the capitalist class which seeks away out of the social malaise it had itself created.

For Chesterton, the founding of a family was of the very essence offreedomthe eugenic movement represented a direct assault on that freedomand instead represented the subordination of atomized individuals to theorgans of the State and Big Business. In its practical dimension, eugenics aimsto control some families at least as if they were families of pagan slaves (10).Chesterton maintained that the revolution which will issue in the EugenicState had already begun and draws his readers attention to the Mental Defi-ciency Act which he believes represents the first Eugenic Law. The upshotof this Feeble-Minded Bill (as Chesterton names it) is that anyone who is

deemed to be weak-minded is liable to be incarcerated as if they were a homi-cidal lunaticand everyone was to be a likely suspect. In such a situation,declares Chesterton, nothing remains to us but rebellion (21).4

The upshot of the industrial-capitalist system was that the poor, havingbeen excluded from public life, crushed by draconian laws, and ravaged bythe effects of malnutrition had become unemployable. Alarming for the richwas a growing population superfluous to the process of capital accumula-tion: Men who had no human bond with the instructed man, men whoseemed to him monsters and creatures without mind, became an eyesore inthe market-place and a terror on the empty roads. The rich were afraid (132).Although it was not too late for the capitalist system to reform, the provisionof better living conditions for the immiserated workers would after all costmoney and granting them a degree of independence might foster rebellioussensibilities. So much more attractive to the capitalist would be the prospectof altering the nature of marriage itself, eliminating those deemed unde-sirable whilst diverting the free reproductive energy of sex to specificallycommercial ends: He could divert the force of sex from producing vaga-


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bonds. And he could harness to his high engines unbought the red unbrokenriver of the blood of man in his youth, as he has already harnessed to themall the wild waste rivers of the world (135). Human nature, in other words,was now to be considered as a mere resource just as the industrialist hadalready reduced external nature to a mere commodity.

Chesterton considers what possible forces of resistance stand against thisproposed medical domination of the poor. Unfortunately, Chesterton findsthat official Liberalism is no longer concerned with the defense of individualliberty and asserts his belief that what had prevented so many liberals fromresisting the tide of eugenics was precisely their failure to recognize thatliberty entails limitation. Liberty without limits is liberty undefined; andliberty without definition is devoid of substance. This non-recognition oflimits Chesterton terms anarchy (23) and it was such an atmosphere of

anarchy which allowed eugenics to take a hold in the imaginations of somany progressive intellectuals. Instead of defending individual liberties,Liberalism had become obsessed with safeguarding the health of society asa whole and as a consequence the State had become less concerned withthe public declarations of its citizens than with attempting to manage in themost intrusive manner the private affairs of the home.

As such, the plutocracy had itself taken over the negative aspect ofsocialismthe element of bureaucratic officialdomand rejected the trulyprogressive aspect which was the desire for economic equality: They havenow added all the bureaucratic tyrannies of a Socialist state to the old pluto-cratic tyrannies of a Capitalist State (164). By following the line of leastresistance, socialist bureaucrats could conveniently forget their originalegalitarian ideals and take a place in the state apparatus, concentrating

instead on such things as promoting a propaganda for popular divorcewhich would accustom the populace to a new notion of the shifting andre-grouping of families (167). Official Liberalism and Socialism were thusunlikely forces of resistance to the march of the Eugenic State according toChestertonworse still, individual liberals and socialists were likely to befound amongst its advocates.

In the penultimate chapter of Eugenics and Other Evils Chesterton exploresthe possibility for rebellion by the poor themselvesthe populist resistancewhich he would have hoped for. The chapter in question (which is entitledThe End of the Household Gods and brilliantly illustrates Chestertonsassertion that the reformer should counter the absurd nature of injusticewith shattering laughter) turns on an interpretation of a verse from an oldmusic-hall song he had once heard and which he believes represents the realvoice of the English working class:

Fathers got the sack from the water-works

For smoking of his old cherry-briar;


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Fathers got the sack from the water-works

Cos he might set the water-works on fire. (170)

In an amusingly ironic tone, Chesterton first explains the meaning of theword Father, pointing out to his educated readers that the term is stillin use among the more ignorant and ill-paid of the industrial community;and is the badge of an old convention or unit called the family (171). Inthe family the person of the father represents a natural authority againstwhich is now raised a whole host of new artificial authorities: the official,the schoolmaster, the policeman, the employer, and so on (171-72).

Next, Chesterton explains that got the sack refers to a more recentphenomenon, stating that under contemporary economic conditions thefather is no longer a master but a commercial servant who has not even the

security of the slave. If sacking represents the specifically capitalist dimen-sion of the plutocracy, From the water-works, Chesterton explains, refersto the large scale and impersonal bureaucratic aspect of the system. It makesno difference to the father whether this be a capitalist or socialist enterprise,for his freedom could only be preserved by the independence which his ownprivate property would guarantee. For smoking, Chesterton continues,refers to the minuscule regimentation of everyday life which has been adoptedfrom the socialists and which now confronts the father: while employersstill claim the right to sack him like a stranger, they are already beginningto claim the right to supervise him like a son (173). However, the phraseOf his old Cherry-briar does at least illustrate that amongst the poor theold sentiment for private property still exists, albeit now attached merely totrinkets and toys rather than any actual means of production. Finally, Cos

he might set the water-works on fire is left to speak for itself, revealing thesheer absurdity from which the whole process had begun.

The system of plutocratic state domination was not yet complete however:Property has not quite vanished; slavery has not quite arrived; marriage existsunder difficulties; social regimentation exists under restraints, or rather undersubterfuges. The question which remains is which force is gaining on the other,and whether the old forces are capable of resisting the new (175). Chestertonhoped that the poor would resist the new tyranny but points out that they are at avery big disadvantage. The desire for free and independent family life exists onlyas an instinct and not as an ideal. Christianity is the natural defender of the idealbut there has been an historic rift between Christianity and the working classes.Although Chesterton suggests that the ideal can be defended on purely rationalgrounds, only a religion could give the ideal the pugnacious and popular char-

acter necessary for it to succeedas to why this is we shall consider presently.Chesterton concedes that the possibilities for resisting the march of the

Eugenic State do not appear very hopefulbut Chesterton does not succumbto despair and thunders out his defiance of the plutocracy all the more. The


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unlikely chances of success do not dampen Chestertons protest which headmits may seem as wild words of despair that are written only upon runningwater; unless, indeed, as some so stubbornly and strangely say, they are some-where cut deep into a rock, in the red granite of the wrath of God (179).

However, Chesterton does not pursue the religious dimension in Eugenicsand Other Evilsfor that we have to look elsewhere. In A Miscellany of Men(1912) Chestertons criticism of Eastern mysticism is specifically directed towhat he saw as a worrying development amongst the English intellectualclassesalongside an increasingly liberal attitude towards Eastern religionscould be found an increasingly reactionary attitude towards the conditions ofthe poor. Just as imperialists such as Cecil Rhodes had rationalized their beliefthat the fittest must survive and the weakest go to the wall by oriental ideasof fatalism (Miscellany 202-07), so too were the intellectuals finding a means to

rationalize injustice to the poor of their own countries. Dean Ingewho was oneof a number of progressively-minded clergy who had supported the eugenicproposals of the Mental Deficiency Billis one such example (181-89).

To counter these intellectual movements Chesterton explained why Chris-tianity and the Eastern mysticism favored by the intelligentsia representedtwo very different perspectives on existence:

The Eastern mysticism is an ecstasy of unity; the Christian mysti-

cism is an ecstasy of creation, that is, of separation and mutual

surprise. The latter says, like St. Francis, My brother fire and my

sister water; the former says, Myself fire and myself water.

Whether you call the Eastern attitude an extension of oneself into

everything or a contraction of oneself into nothing is a matter of

metaphysical definition. The effect is the same, an effect whichlives and throbs throughout all the exquisite arts of the East. This

effect is the thing called rhythm, a pulsation of pattern, or of ritual,

or of colours, or of cosmic theory, but always suggesting the unifi-

cation of the individual with the world. (163)

Thus for Chesterton the Christian affirms existence not in the manner ofthe Eastern mystic by projecting the self into nature but in appreciating itsotherness through the sense of wonder. Love requires division and separa-tion: The Christian saint is happy because he has verily been cut off fromthe world; he is separate from things and is staring at them in astonishment(Orthodoxy 245). In order to be able to experience wonder we must be awarethat there is something separate from our selves to wonder at. Edwardiantheosophists and other progressive intellectuals influenced by Eastern mysti-cism would, according to Chesterton, be devoid of the sense of wonder: Thepantheist cannot wonder, for he cannot praise God or praise anything asreally distinct from himself (245).


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Chesterton believed that a sense of wonder was intrinsic to adopting aradical stance towards society and resisting political tyranny. Christianity,which embodied the wonder at a distinct Creation separate from God, was thusinherently a fighting faith: The truth is that the western energy that dethronestyrants has been directly due to the western theology that says I am I, thouart thou (Orthodoxy 246). Dissolving the boundaries between the self intothe All of the theosophist is inherently conformist: By insisting speciallyon the immanence of God we get introspection, self-isolation, quietism, socialindifferenceTibet. By insisting specially on the transcendence of God weget wonder, curiosity, moral and political adventure, righteous indignationChristendom. Insisting that God is inside man, man is always inside himself.By insisting that God transcends man, man has transcended himself (248).

In order to respond to the oppressive and anti-democratic trends he could

see developing within society Chesterton hoped to reawaken the sense ofwonder by looking upon the world and its Western/Christian heritageanew. Thus while Chesterton considered himself to be a radical he also sawhimself as a defender of tradition. Gratitude, which was for Chesterton thereasonable response to wonder, was something not just directed to God forthe act of Creation but towards humans for their own enduring innovations.Chesterton thought that we ought to be grateful for having the opportunityto take part in a tradition of thought and understanding, hence his remarkson Chaucer: He was a great poet of gratitude; he was grateful to God; but hewas also grateful to Gower. He was grateful to the everlasting Romance of theRose; he was still more grateful to Ovid and grateful to Virgil and grateful toPetrarch and Boccaccio. He is always eager to show us over his little libraryand tell us where all his tales come from. He is prouder of having read the

books than of having written the poems (Chaucer 30).There is an important point to grasp here for Chesterton is all too often

considered a mere conservative traditionalist whereas Chestertons perspec-tive would in fact entail a new way of looking upon tradition itself. Over-turning both progressive modernist and reactionary conservative views,Chesterton emphasized the radical democratic nature of tradition:

Tradition may be defined as an extension of the franchise. Tradition

means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ances-

tors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to

the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to

be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified

by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disquali-

fied by the accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect

a good mans opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us

not to neglect a good mans opinion even if he is our father. I, at

any rate, cannot separate the two ideas of democracy and tradi-


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tion; it seems evident to me that they are the same idea. We will

have the dead at our councils. The ancient Greeks voted by stones;

these shall vote by tombstones. It is all quite regular and official,

for most tombstones, like most ballot papers, are marked with a

cross. (Orthodoxy 83-84)

And by tradition Chesterton meant popular tradition and not the way that thepast has been handed on by economic, political or intellectual elitestheseChesterton considered to be the enemies of tradition. The progressive intellec-tuals had no appreciation for the importance of traditionindeed their wholeoutlook, as he pointed out in Whats Wrong with the World, was marked by afear of the past. Reality poses limits on our imagination and the modern intel-lectual could not abide limits. History consists of real people and real events

so the progressive turns from the past and sets his sights on the unwrittenfuture to indulge a fantasy of limitless possibility: The future is a blank wallon which every man can write his own name as large as he likes; the past I findalready covered with illegible scribbles, such as Plato, Isaiah, Shakespeare,Michael Angelo, Napoleon. I can make the future as narrow as myself; the pastis obliged to be as broad and turbulent as humanity (Whats Wrong 27). Theprogressive had no appreciation for people as they actually were. Real peoplesuffered by comparison to the intellectuals own ideological constructionssuch as, for example, the eugenic fantasy of a future Nietzschean Supermanwho could perceive nothing but the transgression of the limits to the humancondition. This basic denial of an objective reality and the limits which itentails recalls the atmosphere of skepticism which Chesterton had encoun-tered at the Slade and as we have already seen greatly disturbed his mental

well-beingthe very same anarchism which would surround Gabriel Syme,the hero of Chestertons novel The Man Who Was Thursday (1908). Behind theanarchistic nightmare in which nothing possesses definition and everythingappears as illusion, Syme is still able to get a glimpse of the real and so appre-ciate that which is all too often dismissed as commonplace: He thought of allthe human things in his storyof the Chinese lanterns in Saffron Park, of thegirls red hair in the garden, of the honest, beer-swilling sailors down by thedock, of his loyal companions standing by. Perhaps he had been chosen as achampion of all these fresh and kindly things to cross swords with the enemyof all creation (120-21).

For Chesterton, the mind of the modern intellectualwhom he attackedfor expressing the world-view of the wealthy and not the pooris essen-tially devoid of wonder and therefore unable to appreciate the extraordinary

nature of the ordinary. Such a pride reflected a lack of openness to externalreality and truth as disclosed to the senses, as strange and misleading asthose appearances often were: Pride consists in a man making his person-ality the only test, instead of making the truth the test ( Common Man 254).


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Openness to such a reality was the central lesson which Chesterton hopedwe could learna humility centered in the wonder of the world and thehappiness derived from ordinary life:

Human beings are happy so long as they retain the receptive

power and the power of reaction in surprise and gratitude to

something outside. So long as they have this they have as the great

minds have always declared, a something that is present in child-

hood and which can still preserve and invigorate manhood. The

moment the self within is consciously felt as something superior

to any of the gifts that can be brought to it, or any of the adven-

tures that it may enjoy, there has appeared a sort of self-devouring

fastidiousness and a disenchantment in advance, which fulfils all

the Tartarean emblems of thirst and of despair. (252-53)

Chestertons perspective of wonder and gratitude and his embrace ofChristian orthodoxy were therefore intimately connected with his own senseof the desirability of ordinary existence and the concomitant dislike of prig-gish intellectuals who would deliberately court the unusual and the exotic,knowing that they would thus distance themselves from the common lot ofhuman kind. Chesterton, by contrast, was happy to accept that he was anordinary man: I am ordinary in the correct sense of the term; which meansthe acceptance of an order; a Creator and the Creation, the common sense ofgratitude for Creation, life and love as gifts permanently good, marriage andchivalry as laws rightly controlling them, and the rest of the normal tradi-tions of our race and religion (The Thing 51).

However, Chesterton saw the coming cultural revolution and perceivedthat it would be a revolt against all that was considered both common senseand commonly decenta revolt against all the normal traditions, especiallyin terms of the human family, of what he had declared as essentially right inWhats Wrong with the World. In the face of this social transformation Ches-terton hoped for a popular revolt against perversions and pedantries ofvice, which have never, in fact, been popular (Well and the Shallows 92). ForChesterton still maintained that it was in the ordinary common man whohad yet to embrace supposedly liberated practices that the recognition ofdistinction and sexual difference was still to be foundthe old morality hadnot been entirely extinguished, even if it was largely unconscious. To thecommon people, the natural world and other people remain distinct in theirotherness yet are experienced as people and places to which we are ethicallybound through marriage and devotion. Thus we can see that Christian asser-tion of distinction upon which love is based in Chestertons vision in whichthe love between man and woman, between humans and the land, and of thewonder of the child at existence, were all intimately connected:


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[T]he varieties themselves; the reflection of man and woman in

each other, as in two distinct mirrors; the wonder of man at nature

as a strange thing at once above and below him; the quaint and

solitary kingdom of childhood; the local affections and the colour

of certain landscapesthese actually are the things that are the

grace and honour of the earth; these are the things which make life

worth living and the whole framework of things well worthy to be

sustained. (The Apostle 167)

Note that Chestertons praise for existence in What is Right with theWorld (1910)one of his finest essaysconnects the Christian notions ofdistinctness and plurality to a populist defense of the common man, andindeed, the common woman, for the division of the sexes was at the root

of his perception of love and is asserted against the pantheism of the self-elevated intellectuals:

And the best thing remains; that this view, whether conscious

or not, always has been and still is the view of the living and

labouring millions. While a few prigs on platforms are talking

about oneness and absorption in The All, the folk that dwell

in all the valleys of this ancient earth are renewing the varieties for

ever. With them a woman is loved for being unmanly, and a man

loved for being unwomanly. With them the church and the home

are both beautiful, because they are both different; with them fields

are personal and flags are sacred; they are the virtue of existence,

for they are not mankind but men. (The Apostle 167)

Here is what Chesterton believed was fundamentally right with the worldand which was to be asserted against the dominant forces now raised againstthe human personality and the principle of distinction and differentiation:The rooted hope of the modern world is that all these dim democracies dostill believe in that romance of life, that variation of man, woman and childupon which all poetry has hitherto been built. The danger of the modernworld is that these dim democracies are so very dim, and that they are espe-cially dim where they are right. The danger is that the world may fall undera new oligarchythe oligarchy of prigs (167). The central claim of the newelite is essentially that of the perversion of non-distinction, that there is nodifference between the social duties of men and women, the social instruc-tion of men or of children (167-68). Chesterton denied that in comparison

to the progressives and in his defense of the traditional family he was somekind of reactionary (167). Rather, this desire to remove all distinctions wasthe one really reactionary thing in the world today: it represented the spiri-tual desire to return to the state of chaos which had existed prior to the act


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of Creation. The so-called progressives were less concerned with combatingthe specific social conditions which oppressed the families of the poor: theywere in revolt against the limits of the human condition itself.

Chestertons distrust of certain materialistic evolutionists stemmed fromhis belief that when once one begins to think of man as a shifting and alter-able thing, it is always easy for the strong and crafty to twist him into newshapes for all kinds of unnatural purposes (Whats Wrong 259). The eugenicaim of certain evolutionists, says Chesterton in Whats Wrong with the World,is to reform human society into The Empire of the Insect modeled on thecommunal life of ants, bees and locustsa relapse into the unconsciousnessof the Soul of the Hive. Latter-day pantheists and eugenists can thus beseen to share a common aim: the destruction of the family and its principle ofdifferentiation and its replacement by some all-embracing totality composed

of interchangeable drones.Such a scheme was diametrically opposed to that sense of distinction and

particularity which accompanied the Christian vision of St. Francis, (who, inChestertons description, was profoundly gripped by the sense of wonderand gratitude)and which represented a counter-perspective to the eugenic-plutocratic indifference towards the human personality:

To him a man was always a man and did not disappear in a dense

crowd any more than in a desert. He honoured all men; that is, he

not only loved but respected them all. What gave him his extraor-

dinary personal power was this; that from the Pope to the beggar,

from the sultan of Syria in his pavilion to the ragged robbers

crawling out of the wood, there was never a man who looked into

those brown burning eyes without being sure that Francis Berna-done was really interested in him; in his own inner individual life

from the cradle to the grave; that he himself was being valued and

taken seriously, and not merely added to the spoils of some social

policy or the names in some clerical document. (St. Francis 114-15).

Thus the sense of wonder was for Chesterton not just a case of wonder atBeing but at human beings, together with the everyday objects and institu-tions of the human world. Politically, this translated into a distrust of bothutopian reformers and plutocrats who did not accept the sense of limitswhich the experience of wonder and gratitude implies, and as a consequencecould look down upon ordinary existence with contempt. Chesterton under-stood that we could not escape the limits of the human condition and strivefor a state of perfection. Instead we have to accept both the joys and the tearsthat human experience brings. Abolishing the tears in the name of perfectionwould also abolish laughter. Hannah Arendt perceived this aspect of Ches-terton and his acceptance of human limitation which enabled him to attack


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schemes of oppression while asserting his humanity: Chesterton, havingonce and for all accepted the tears, could put real laughter into his mostviolent attacks (Christianity 153).5 While Chestertons sense of wonderled him to praise the basic goodness of existence it also made him aware thatthe denial of the limits to the human condition and the striving for an illu-sionary perfection would court disasterhis warnings over the potential foroppression in utopian schemes which disdain the common life of the humanfamily are as timely as ever.

Richard Gill

Notes

1

This paper focuses on the element of wonder which underpinned Chestertonssocial criticismwhat might be called his natural philosophy. I would not wishto underplay the importance of the Incarnation to Chestertons social thought andhow this was manifest in his articulation of distributism and defense of marriage asa sacrament rather than a contract. Indeed, I have devoted a separate article to thisvery question: Oikos and Logos: Chestertons Vision of Distributism,Logos: A Journalof Catholic Thought and Culture (forthcoming).

2 In directing his philosophical sense of wonder into the realm of human affairs,Chesterton could be considered a genuine political thinker. See Hannah Arendt,Philosophy and Politics, Social Research Vol. 57 No. 1 (Spring, 1980), 103. Han-nah Arendtnow recognized as one of the most important political theorists of the20th centurywas clearly dismayed that modern philosophy was based on doubtrather than the wonder which motivated Plato and Aristotle. However, these classi-cal philosophers did not transfer their sense of wonder towards the realm of human

affairs. Arendt expressed a hope that a new political philosophy would direct thesense of wonder into the realm of human affairsChesterton was surely a pioneerin this endeavor.

3 I am indebted to Professor Clarks understanding that Chestertons comprehen-sion of Being was transferred into an appreciation of human beings.

4 Chesterton realizes that eugenics is a form of preventative medicine and un-derstands the potential for domination in such a supposedly progressive concept:Prevention is not only not better than cure prevention is even worse than disease.Prevention means being an invalid for life, with the extra exasperation of being quitewell (Eugenics 55). Commenting on this ever popular fallacy that prevention is

better than cure, Aurel Kolnai has added: [T]he utopian negation of sin is notonly not better than penitence and redress but actually worse than sin itself, as theutopian temptation held out by Lucifer is worse than the blighting fury of Satan.[F]ew men have understood better than Chestertonthat great lover of freedom and

finiteness of the creaturethe meaning of the fact that God chose, not to preventbut to cure the evil of mankind. See Aurel Kolnai, Chesterton and Catholicism:Excerpts from Aurel Kolnais Twentieth-Century Memoirs, The Chesterton Review Vol.VIII No. 2 (May, 1982), 155.

5 This essay was originally published in 1945 in The Nation.


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Works Cited

Arendt, Hannah. Christianity and Revolution. Essays in Understanding 1930-1954.Edited and introduced by Jerome Kohn. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1994. 151-5.

. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989.. Philosophy and Politics. Social Research. Vol. 57 No. 1 (Spring, 1980): 73-103.Canovan, Margaret. G.K. Chesterton: Radical Populist. New York and London: Har-

court Brace Jovanovich, 1977.Chesterton, G.K. The Apostle and The Wild Ducks and other essays . Edited by Dorothy

E. Collins. London: Paul Elek, 1975..Appreciations and Criticisms of The Works of Charles Dickens . London: J.M. Dent

and Sons, 1911..Autobiography. London: Hutchinson and Co., 1937.. Charles Dickens. London: Methuen and Co., 1907.. Chaucer. London: Faber & Faber, 1934.. The Common Man. London: Sheed and Ward, 1950.. Eugenics and Other Evils. London: Cassell and Co., 1922..Heretics. London: The Bodley Head, 1928.. Irish Impressions. London: W. Collins Sons and Co., 1919.. The Man Who Was Orthodox: A Selection from the Uncollected Writings of G.K. Ches-

terton. Arranged and introduced by A.L. Maycock. London: Dennis Dobson, 1963.. The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare. Bristol: Arrowsmith, 1947..A Miscellany of Men. London: Methuen and Co., 1930.. The Napoleon of Notting Hill. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1946.. Orthodoxy. London: Bodley Head, 1927.. The Return of Don Quixote. London: Chatto and Windus, 1927.. Robert Browning. London: Macmillan and Co., 1911.. St. Francis of Assisi. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1923.. The Thing. London: Sheed and Ward, 1929.

. The Victorian Age in Literature. London: Thornton Butterworth, 1913.. The Well and the Shallows. London: Sheed and Ward, 1937.. Whats Wrong with the World. London: Cassell and Co., 1912.Clark, Stephen R.L. Substance: or Chestertons Abyss of Light. Proceedings of the

Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume LXIX (1995): 1-14.Gill, Richard. Oikos and Logos: Chestertons Vision of Distributism. Logos: A Jour-

nal of Catholic Thought and Culture, (forthcoming).Kolnai, Aurel. Chesterton and Catholicism: Excerpts from Aurel Kolnais Twentieth-

Century Memoirs. The Chesterton Review Vol. VIII No. 2 (May, 1982): 127-61.Wright, Anthony W. G.D.H. Cole and Socialist Democracy. Oxford: Clarendon, 1979.

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G. K. Chesterton: Social Criticism and the Sense of Wonder

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