Dickens then had this English feeling of a grotesque democracy. By that is more properly meant a vastly varying democracy. The intoxicating variety of men -- that was his vision and conception of human brotherhood. And certainly it is a great part of human brotherhood. In one sense things can only be equal if they are entirely different...similarity always means inequality. If everything is trying to be green, some things will be greener than others; but there is an immortal and indestructible equality between green and red. Something of the same kind of irrefutable equality exists between the violent and varying creations of such a writer as Dickens. They are all equally ecstatic fulfilments of a separate line of development. It would be hard to say that there could be any comparison or inequality, let us say between Mr. Sapsea and Mr. Elijah Pogram. They are both in the same difficulty; they can neither of them contrive to exist in this world; they are both too big for the gate of birth.

-Charles Dickens (1906)

New Art

It is one thing to swallow the new art and another thing merely to swallow the new art criticism. And as a rule, I fancy, it is rather easier to find new art criticism than new art. What I mean by the new art criticism is a sort of metaphysics which involves not only mysticism but prophecy. It is an anticipation of the artistic forms that could be produced; an indignant challenge as to why they should not be produced; a solemn warning of the fate of the blind and belated who shall be found among their persecutors when they are produced. The only thing it does not do is to produce them...Suppose a man says: “Why am I not free to produce a sublime architectural effect with thirty-seven butter-tubs, three gas pipes, and a packing case? Why should I not make beauty out of these?” There seems to be no answer except to say, “Why not, indeed?” If he will produce sublime architecture out of them, I shall not complain of the sublimity. If he will make beauty from them, I shall not condemn them for contriving to be beautiful…. My attitude toward the experiment may be described as one of patient expectancy—of hope not unmingled with doubt. I am waiting for the moment when the pagoda of tubs shall strike my soul like a thunderbolt out of the sky; when I shall stagger with admiration at some perfect poise and balance of pipes and packing-cases which I had never foreseen even in my dreams. I say nothing of that inspiring moment of my life, except that it has not yet come. And in the same way, the conundrum of the workshops, as propounded concerning poetry or paining, seems to be simply a riddle which is not, in fact, accompanied with an answer.

-February 11, 1922, Illustrated London News 

(h/t G.K. Chesterton Facebook page) 

"How to Write a Novel"

A series is issued entitled the "How To" series. It teaches in one volume "How to Choose Your Banker,'' in another "How to Dine in Paris," and in a third, which now lies before us, "How to Write a Novel." It never seems to strike the writers of this school that there is some difference between the psychological profundity and delicacy of choosing your banker and that of choosing your idea. An idea is a nameless thing; it melts into all other ideas, whereas a banker is detachable and does not melt into any one. The same is true, though in a lesser degree, of the comparison which the author makes in his first chapter. He says, with some apparent reason, that as painting and sculpture require training on fixed lines there is no reason why such training should not be given in fiction. Surely the answer is distinct. Fiction is more dark and chaotic than painting because, though both arts symbolise spiritual conditions, painting employs as its symbol the bodily form, which has been measured, while fiction employs as its symbol the thoughts and actions which have never been measured. Painting deals with what a man looks like, which we can all know; fiction deals with what he means, which he generally does not know himself. It is not possible to know how many thoughts a man has; it is possible to know, with reasonable industry, how many legs he has.

-March 23, 1901, The Speaker

"One pleasure can kill another pleasure as much as one colour can kill another colour."

I think the truth is this: that the modern world has had far too little understanding of the art of keeping young. Its notion of progress has been to pile one thing on top of another, without caring if each thing was crushed in turn. People forget that the human soul can enjoy a thing most when there is time to think about it and be thankful for it. And by crowding things together they lost the sense of surprise; and surprise is the secret of joy. They forgot that there is a kind of familiarity that really does breed contempt, and that contempt by its nature breeds boredom...

Now this problem is not solved by one side saying that there is far too much pleasure-seeking, and the other side answering that it is natural for the young to seek pleasure. The point is that this may be pleasure-seeking, but it is not pleasure-finding. The cynicism bordering on pessimism, which is the real matter in dispute, would itself be evidence that the pleasure had not been found. And the moral is in a law of the mind which mere anarchy always attempts to forget. One pleasure can kill another pleasure as much as one colour can kill another colour. Every coloured figure requires a background, and is often all the brighter for a grey background or even a black background. The proportions between pleasure and sobriety are a delicate problem, like the proportions between blue and black, or gold and grey. But it is a problem of finding the proportions, and not merely of piling up the pleasures.  Life should be so mixed that there is in all our pleasures a slight element of surprise. Every child understands that; but the question at issue is whether precocious children do not become too clever to understand it.

-December 9, 1922, Illustrated London News

"Books exist to produce emotions: if we are not moved by them we practically have not read them. If a real book has not touched us we might as well not have touched the book."

It is no disrespect to such able and interesting works as Professor Dillon's to say that they are only stages in an essentially endless process, the proper appreciation of one of the inexhaustible religious classics. None of them says the last word on Job, for the last word could only be said on the Last Day. For a great poem like Job is in this respect like life itself. The explanations are popular for a month or popular for a century. But they all fall. The unexplained thing is popular for ever. There are weaknesses in the Higher Criticism, as a general phenomenon, which are only gradually unfolding themselves. There are more defects or difficulties than would at first appear in the scientific treatment of Scripture. But after all the greatest defect in the scientific treatment of Scripture is simply that it is scientific. The professor of the Higher Criticism is never tired of declaring that he is detached, that he is disinterested, that he is concerned only with the facts, that he is applying to religious books the unbending methods which are employed by men of science towards the physical order. If what he says of himself is true, he must be totally unfitted to criticize any books whatever.

Books exist to produce emotions: if we are not moved by them we practically have not read them. If a real book has not touched us we might as well not have touched the book. In literature to be dispassionate is simply to be illiterate. To be disinterested is simply to be uninterested. The object of a book on comets, of course, is not to make us all feel like comets; but the object of a poem about warriors is to make us all feel like warriors. It is not merely true that the right method for one may be the wrong method for the other; it must be the wrong method for the other. A critic who takes a scientific view of the Book of Job is exactly like a surgeon who should take a poetical view of appendicitis: he is simply an old muddler.

It is said, of course, that this scientific quality is only applied to the actual facts, which are the department of science. But what are the actual facts? There are very few facts in connection with a work of literature which are really wholly apart from literary tact and grasp. That certain words are on a piece of parchment in a certain order science can say. Whether in that order they make sense or nonsense only literature can say. That in another place (say on a brick) the same words are in another order science can say. Whether it is a more likely order only literature can say. That on two bricks there is the same sentence science can say. Whether it is the sort of sentence one man would write on two bricks, or two men happen to write on their own respective bricks, only literature can say.

-September 9, 1905, The Speaker

To have one's sanctities destroyed violently is terrible; to have them destroyed gently is unforgivable.

-The Fortnightly Review, volume 80 (1903)

"...the real economic tyrant does not cease to be a bully when he becomes a bureaucrat."

...the worst monopolists of our own day are Socialists even while they are sweaters. But it will be very unwise for the victims of sweating to surrender everything to this sweeping and systematising spirit. They will certainly find that the real economic tyrant does not cease to be a bully when he becomes a bureaucrat. The only real freedom for workmen is to have some reserve of possessions independent of any institutions. The new system will have its own vices as well as the old system; it is only what a man owns that he can use to defend himself against any vices of any system. In a word, the man must own his own stick, especially if he has on rare occasions to use it as a cudgel.

-October 25, 1919, Illustrated London News

"Anybody who does not see that, he gently implies, does not really understand what is meant by a Creator."

To step out of these presumptions, prejudices and private disappointments, into the world of St. Thomas, is like escaping from a scuffle in a dark room into the broad daylight. St. Thomas says, quite straightforwardly, that he himself believes this world has a beginning and end; because such seems to be the teaching of the Church; the validity of which mystical message to mankind he defends elsewhere with dozens of quite different arguments...But Aquinas says he sees no particular reason, in reason, why this world should not be a world without end; or even without beginning. And he is quite certain that, if it were entirely without end or beginning, there would still be exactly the same logical need of a Creator. Anybody who does not see that, he gently implies, does not really understand what is meant by a Creator.

-St. Thomas Aquinas: The Dumb Ox (1933)

...that charge of anti-patriotism....is very difficult to believe that any educated man on either side ever took seriously. The charge had literally no meaning at all. It is wearisome to have to point out that if a man thought the war bad for his country his opposition to it must of necessity be in proportion to his patriotism. The doctrine of the united nation is simply a piece of mental confusion. It means that at the precise moment when your country is in most danger you are to become suddenly frivolous and take any opinion you may find lying about the street.

-The Fortnightly Review, volume 80 (1903)

"The world may learn by its mistakes; but they are mostly the mistakes of the learned."

It is true, in a sense, to say that the mob has always been led by more educated men.  It is much more true, in every sense, to say that it has always been misled by educated men.  It is easy enough to say the cultured man should be the crowd’s guide, philosopher and friend.  Unfortunately, he has nearly always been a misguiding guide, a false friend and a very shallow philosopher.  And the actual catastrophes we have suffered, including those we are now suffering, have not in historical fact been due to the prosaic practical people who are supposed to know nothing, but almost invariably to the highly theoretical people who knew that they knew everything.  The world may learn by its mistakes; but they are mostly the mistakes of the learned.

-The Common Man (collection of essays published posthumously in 1950)

Laws

Laws are made not only to restrain the governed, but to restrain the governor

-March 9, 1916, New Witness

[H/T American Chesterton Society Facebook page]

"The hypocrite is that unluckiest of actors who is never out of a job."

The divine punishment of hypocrisy is fatigue. Those, in Shakespeare's fine simile, whose hearts are all as false as stairs of sand, must really have much of that exhausted sensation that comes of walking through sand when it is loose and deep. The hypocrite is that unluckiest of actors who is never out of a job.

-June 13, 1914, Illustrated London News