What is the matter with the world to-day is that it is too much with us; too much with everybody. It will not leave a man long enough by himself for him to discover that he is himself. Therefore, we have a perpetual pouring of gifts from the State to the individual, but less and less given back by the individual to the State. This is hard on all humanity; but it is especially hard on the English. They are a nation of humorists, in the old sense; which is the very opposite of a nation of Society wits. Their wits have worked best upon poetry and leisurely fiction, which grow best in lives of quiet and detachment. And I do seriously think that Englishmen ought to make some fight for that right of ancient sanctuary, before it is broken down by the mere American herd-instinct. I have never been a Jingo, or uttered political boasts about the Splendid Isolation of England, but I would do a good deal to preserve the Splendid Isolation of the Englishman.

  XV. On the Importance of Why We Do (or Don’t)

  ON the whole, I am rather less interested in what people do than in why they do it. Of course, there are extremes which are exceptions. I daresay that if somebody suddenly smashed my hat over my eyes, as I walked down the street, I might feel a momentary and confused resentment against the act and even the actor, in spite of the fact that he might have acted from either friendly or unfriendly motives. He might be a proof-reader of, say, The Illustrated London News, maddened by years of boredom in having to read through my articles in that paper, and resolved to be revenged at last. But he also might be a social sympathizer who, knowing that a steel and concrete Temple of Progress, in the American manner, had been built in that street that morning, was resolved to spare me the shock of beholding it, and had with that object intervened, abruptly indeed, but with no little presence of mind. Yet even here the principle holds, for it would be much more worth while to have a quiet talk afterwards with either of those two interesting lunatics than to continue in the mere bewildered irritation arising from the thing having happened at all. Moreover, though the abstract attitude will be called unpractical, the motive does make all the difference to practicality, in the sense of probability. The man who hits me because I am approaching a Temple of Progress will not hit me when I am not approaching a Temple of Progress. And, normally speaking, I am happy to say, I am not. But nothing will turn aside the pursuing vengeance of the proof-reader, who will hit me wherever and whenever he can — and quite right too.

  In short, the principle is much more reasonable than it sounds; and any number of examples could be given of it. I might be selfishly vexed to find I had been poisoned with prussic acid; and this apart from the mere detached detective interest of whether it was done by an enthusiastic Darwinian, sworn to kill every Anti-Darwinian, or merely by an enthusiastic Christian Scientist, sworn to prove that poisons do not kill. But if I retained my logical faculty while writhing in my last agonies, I should still contend that there was a difference between the fanatical poisoner and the faith-healer; and I should probably add (with my dying breath) that the faith-healer is much the more dangerous of the two. For the Darwinian would only murder the small intelligent minority which has sufficient intellectual independence not to be frightened of the name of Darwin; whereas the healer might murder everybody, with every intention of healing everybody. In short, the real reason of things is every bit as important as the things themselves; and that is what ought to be meant by being a rationalist. Unfortunately, a man who is in this real sense a rationalist is generally denounced for being a mystic.

  For instance, there is an ever-increasing quarrel about the license or limits of what is called Sex Literature. Mr. James Douglas made a very vigorous and (as I think) a very just protest against various poisonous passions being poured out to all and sundry. He then proceeded to consider what should be done about it. He drew up a scheme for a sort of unofficial literary licensing committee. It was by no means a bad scheme; I for one might, after due consideration, be disposed to support it; and anyhow I am not here disposed to criticize it. But I am disposed to criticize some of the philosophical remarks with which Mr. Douglas seems to think he is supporting it, when he is in fact undermining it. I am true to my perverse test; I want to know from Mr. Douglas, not what is his practical scheme, but what is his theoretical reason for it. He has himself, as I have noted, fought an admirable fight for normal morality and the resistance to moral disease. But he is not quite theoretical enough to get a grip on the thing itself; and he defends it better than he defines it. For when he comes to the general ethical problem, he surrenders the ground suddenly to the enemy. He says that the practical problem of fixing decorum in a special society is very difficult, which is very true. But he adds that morality (apparently in the real sense of right and wrong) changes continually from age to age, which is the very devil.

  Now, that is where the whole mistake and the whole mischief begin. If Mr. Douglas tells some decadent or other that morality changes from age to age, the decadent will reply, as indeed he does reply, ‘Yes, and I have the morality of the new age; you have the morality of the age that is passing; I am in advance of the times, you are behind the times. I am the Superman who is expected about the end of the twentieth century, you are a dusty old Victorian and ought to have died in the nineteenth.’ Mr. Douglas may think that the decadent is more likely to decay than he is; and that he is as lively and likely to survive as the other. But if everything is perpetually changing, it is impossible to prove it, or to test how fast it is changing or how far it has changed. The truth is that Mr. Douglas, who has denounced all such decadents far more furiously and flamboyantly than I have, has yet fallen back before them exactly where he ought to stand firm. It is not true that the idea of right and wrong changes. The particular concentration on a certain sort of right changes; the relative toleration of a certain sort of wrong changes. Men in medieval times tolerated more ruthless punishments; men in modern times tolerate more reckless and irresponsible financial speculation and control. But a medieval man did not think mercy a bad thing. A modern man does not think dishonesty a good thing. The proportions differ in practice; the ethical expression differs in emphasis; but virtue is virtue and vice is vice, in all ages and for all people, except a very few lunatics.

  As it is about cruelty or commercial rapacity, so it is about the basic ideas of modesty and fidelity and sexual self-control. One age does differ from another in manner of expression, and may differ for the better or the worse; but precisely what does not really differ is fundamental morality. One age does differ from another about whether certain plain words that are used in the Bible shall be used in the drawing-room. But using fashionable words in the drawing-room is not morality. One age does differ from another about whether skirts are reasonably long or short; but fashionable skirts are not morality. The motive is morality, even when the motive happens to concern these trivial things. To insult our fellow-creatures with coarse words to which they are unaccustomed may be an immoral act; it may sometimes, under certain conditions, be a highly moral act. It entirely depends on why it is done. Now, so far as this fundamental and final morality is concerned, it leaves the modern problem still to be settled; but it provides some sort of firm basis on which it can be settled. We may even say that it ends where the controversy begins; but it does make it possible for the controversy to begin — and (what is not unimportant) for it to end. It is impossible for any controversy to end, it is impossible for any to begin, in a chaos of incalculable change. But, anyhow, there is a permanent ethic, and without it nobody will effect even a temporary reform.

  XVI. On the Open Conspiracy

  MR. H. G. WELLS believes that the world now wants a world peace; and apparently wants it more than anything else. The world has always wanted a world peace; and often wanted it very much; only (and this is the point) it certainly did not then, and it possibly may not now, want it more than any thing else. And it is to that distinction that Mr. Wells, as it seems to me, pays too little attention. Europe felt that need for unity so strongly that it four or five times attempted it and two or three times practically achieved it. And the queer thing is that when, for once in a way, it was achieved, Mr. Wells does not think much of the achievement. It was largely achieved in the material sphere by Pagan Rome; and Mr. Wells detests Pagan Rome. It was largely achieved in the moral sphere by Christian Rome; and Mr. Wells abominates Christi Rome. Its establishment was attempted by Charlemagne; and I do not think he thinks much of Charlemagne. Its establishment was re-attempted by Napoleon; and I know he foams with rage at the very name of Napoleon. He thus finds himself in a somewhat difficult relation to the whole Outline of History; perpetually affirming that a certain thing must be done and perpetually abusing everybody who ever tried to do it. St. Augustine said in jest, ‘Confound the people who said beforehand what I wanted to say.’ Mr. Wells seems to find it necessary to say seriously, ‘Confound the people who did beforehand what I want to do.’ Of course their work was unfinished as his is untried. But it is by eliminating theirs that he reaches his own alternative idea. He suggests that there is a third way of bringing about international unification; and it is this which he calls the Open Conspiracy.

  I cannot say that this entirely convinces me as a thing likely to convince mankind. It seems to me that if we cannot get a general rule accepted, like that of the Rome of Augustus, we must get a general moral philosophy accepted, like that of the Rome of Gregory. That is, we must either submit to one common culture or we must agree on one common creed; that is the nearest we can ever get to making an authority that can really arbitrate and have its arbitration accepted. Even then we cannot make conflict impossible. But we can make controversy possible. We can make it rational to argue and debate, by agreeing on the first principles we debate on, and accepting a certain standard of values. Otherwise conflict will always be possible, because controversy is impossible. Suppose there is a Prussian who thinks that nothing matters except Prussia, and a Bolshevist who thinks that nothing matters except Bolshevism. It is utterly futile to ask that they should argue and not fight. What have they got to argue about? What have they got to argue with? Where is the argument supposed to begin and how is it supposed to end? The Junker can be told that his arrogance is bad internationalism; but he does not care what happens to internationalism. The Communist can be told that his internationalism would destroy patriotism; but he wants to destroy patriotism. There can be no sort of agreement, there can be no sort of argument, there can certainly be no sort of acceptable arbitration, between people whose fundamental values are different. I take the harsh and narrow sort of patriotism that was called Prussianism and the harsh and narrow form of Collectivism that is called Bolshevism, because they happen to be the two best modern examples of entirely separatist and self-existent new philosophies. It is perhaps worth noting that they are the two philosophies, belonging to the two great communities, which were never inside the system either of Pagan or of Christian Rome.

  Anyhow, Mr. Wells faces fairly enough the fact that he wants something done which several people have tried to do; and that he cannot abide their way of doing it. He therefore has to sketch out some suggestion at least of his own way of doing it. And it is this which makes the book exceedingly interesting and not very convincing. He is certainly in no sense a rigid or rabid Socialist, after the fashion of a Bolshevist. He makes it clear that he has no belief in the crude Communist simplification; that he believes, as he expresses it, that the Russian Revolution was but a blundering side-issue and an accident on the flank of true progress.

  I think it is true that Bolshevism is much weaker for having won. Utopia always wins best in what is, in another than the Wellsian sense, a War in the Air. When the heavenly kingdom becomes an earthly paradise, it sometimes tends to be a hell upon earth. But it sometimes tends to be what is even worse, or at least weaker: a very earthy imitation of the earth. So long as revolution is a failure, we all feel that it holds the promise of success. It is when it is a success that it is so often a failure. In any case, Mr. Wells leaves it on one side for a failure; if only because he does not like any of these definite solutions, old or new. He dislikes the Romans became they had a military grasp, and the Popes because they had a moral grasp, and even the Marxians because, like the Calvinists, they had at least a sort of logical grasp. It is his instinct that any sort of grasp is too grasping. It is associated in his mind with what I should call tyranny and he would probably miscall authority. And as he will not establish a universal order by grasping, he wishes to do it by groping. By a process which he frankly admits to be casual, sporadic, patchy, and even partly unconscious, there is to grow up a general tendency towards establishing a world control. But it seems to me that a good many other things might happen, if there is nothing to control the movement towards control. Ideas can be perverted only too easily even when they are strict ideas; I cannot see how we preserve them from perversion merely by making them loose ideas. A thing like the Catholic system is a system; that is, one idea balances and corrects another. A man like Mohammed or Marx, or in his own way Calvin, finds that system too complex, and simplifies everything to a single idea; but it is a definite idea. He naturally builds a rather unbalanced system with his one definite idea. But I cannot see why there should be a better chance for a man trying to build up a balanced system with one indefinite idea. And universality is not only an indefinite idea. Universality is also a narrow idea. It is all on one note; it is not the true harmony; which is the right proportion of the universal and the particular. ‘God is not infinity,’ said Coventry Patmore profoundly; ‘He is the synthesis of infinity and boundary.’

  There are two other difficulties I feel in this glorification of world government. One is the very simple fact that the real difficulty of representative government is how to make it represent, even in the smallest of small nationalities, even in the nearest parish council. Why we should talk as if we should have more influence over rulers governing the whole earth from Geneva or Chicago I have never been able to see. Mr. Wells can spread himself in describing how ‘world controls’ would control us. He seems relatively vague about how we should control them. The other objection is less simple and would need a more atmospheric description; but it is even more real. Mr. Wells is driven to perpetual disparagement of patriotism and militant memories, and yet his appeal is always to the historic pride of man. Now nearly all normal men have in fact received their civilization through their citizenship; and to lose their past would be to lose their link with mankind. An Englishman who is not English is not European; a Frenchman who is not fully French is not fully human. Nations have not always been seals or stoppers closing up the ancient wine of the world; they have been the vessels that received it. And, as with many ancient vessels, each of them is a work of art.

  XVII. On the Closed Conspiracy

  IN a comparison of Socialism with the scheme of society going by the name of Distributism, an authoritative writer on such topics has very kindly remarked that, while Mr. Wells is working for an Open Conspiracy, there is much that is interesting in my experiment of a Closed Conspiracy. Indeed, Distributism is rather too open to be a conspiracy at all. It is comparatively easy to organize on behalf of mere organization. It is much harder to drill independent individuals to fight in defence of independence. Nothing can be less conspiratorial than a voice crying in the wilderness. And even when the wilderness begins to be dotted with hermits, they still retain some of the faults and eccentricities of hermits. Even when, in the course of history, the hermits are brigaded into brotherhoods of monks, something of the solitude and mysticism of the eremitical life lingers in the background. I am well aware of all these difficulties in any movement that springs from the liberty of the lonely human soul. Monks, though they call themselves the slaves of slaves, are never the slaves of masters. And a peasantry is never like a tenantry, or, for that matter, a trade union, individually bound to sacrifice liberty to loyalty. Wherever we have a peasantry, we shall have some pretty queer and crazy peasants. Wherever we have a Distributive State, we shall have some tolerably troublesome Distributists.

  Nevertheless, the writer is correct in her use of the expression ‘closed’, in the sense that I do definitely, as a general principle, believe in Enclosures. I could not sum up my own political philosophy more compactly and completely than by saying that I do believe in Enclosures. Needless to say, I mean it in the old peasant sense of a man enclosing his own land; not in the more aristocratic and advanced sense of a man enclosing everybody else’s land. I believe, in the old Scriptural sense, that there is indeed a supreme supernatural and natural curse clinging to the man who removes his neighbour’s landmark. Of course, as the writer in question hints, this belief in Enclosure, or lines of division between this and that, rests on a more general theory of truth and falsehood than any particular principles about land or landmarks. There is in all that universal philosophy of Mr. H. G. Wells an assumption which he has never really tried to prove, and which I think it would be much easier to disprove. In all that Open Conspiracy there is the notion that the opening of all doors and windows is always an advantage; which is no more self-evidently true of a human civilization than it is of a house or a hospital. It is often highly desirable to let cool air into a room. But it is not always desirable to cool the room; it is not even always true that opening the window does cool the room. The men of the Mediterranean keep their rooms cool by shutting the windows and not by opening them. By this means they preserve the cold, refreshing air of the morning through the long, intolerant and intolerable heat of day. They turn their rooms into tanks of morning air, through hours when opening a window would be loosening the blast of a furnace. These things also are an allegory, and would explain many things that moderns do not understand about simplicity and the preservation of childhood. But, apart from any particular parable, it is obviously not common sense to say that good results from the mere mixing of anything with anything, the mere pouring in of any wind through any window, the mere pouring of any fluid into any flood.