Suppose that in some convulsion of the planets there fell
upon this earth from Mars, a creature of a shape totally
unfamiliar, a creature
about whose actual structure we were
of necessity so dark that we could not tell
which was creature
and which was clothes. We could see that it had, say, six
red tufts on its head, but we should not know whether they
were a highly
respectable head-covering or simply a head.
We should see that the tail ended in
three yellow stars, but it
would be very difficult for us to know whether this was
part
of a ritual or simply part of a tail. Well, man has been from
the
beginning of time this unknown monster. People have
always differed about what part
of him belonged to himself,
and what part was merely an accident. People have
said
successively that it was natural to him to do everything and
anything
that was diverse and mutually contradictory; that
it was natural to him to worship
God, and natural to him to
be an atheist; natural to him to drink water, and
natural to
him to drink wine; natural to him to be equal, natural to be
unequal; natural to obey kings, natural to kill them. The
divergence is quite sufficient to justify us in asking if there are
not many
things that are really natural, which really appear
early and strong in every
normal human being, which are not
embodied in any of his after affairs. Whether
there are
not morbidities which are as fresh and recurrent as the
flowers of
spring. Whether there are not superstitions whose
darkness is as wholesome as the
darkness that falls nightly
on all living things. Whether we have not treated
things
essential as portents; whether we have not seen the sun as a
meteor, a
star of ill-luck.
It would at least appear that we tend to become
separated
from what is really natural, by the fact that we always talk
about those people who are really natural as if they were goblins.
There are three
classes of people for instance, who are in a
greater or less degree elemental:
children, poor people, and to
some extent, and in a darker and more terrible
manner, women.
The reason why men have from the beginning of literature
talked
about women as if they were more or less mad, is
simply because women are natural,
and men, with their
formalities and social theories, are very artificial. It is the
same
with children; children are simply human beings who are
allowed to do
what everyone else really desires to do, as for
instance, to fly kites, or when
seriously wronged to emit pro-
longed screams for several minutes. So again, the
poor man
is simply a person who expends upon treating himself and his
friends
in public houses about the same proportion of his
income as richer people spend on
dinners or hansom cabs, that
is a great deal more than he ought. But nothing can be done
until people give up
talking about these people as if they were
too eccentric for us to understand,
when, as a matter of fact, if
there is any eccentricity involved, we are too
eccentric to under-
stand them. A poor man, as it is weirdly ordained, is
definable
as a man who has not got much money; to hear philan-
thropists talk
about him one would think he was a kangaroo.
A child is a human being who has not
grown up; to hear
educationalists talk one would think he was some variety of
a
deep-sea fish. The case of the sexes is at once more obvious
and more
difficult. The stoic philosophy and the early church
discussed woman as if she were
an institution, and in many
cases decided to abolish her. The modern feminine
output of
literature discusses man as if he were an institution, and
decides
to abolish him. It can only timidly be suggested that
neither man nor woman are
institutions, but things that are
really quite natural and all over the place.
If we take children for instance, as examples of the
uncor-
rupted human animal, we see that the very things which
appear in
them in a manner primary and prominent, are the
very things that philosophers have
taught us to regard as
sophisticated and over-civilised. The things which
really
come first are the things which we are accustomed to think
come last.
The instinct for a pompous intricate and recurring
ceremonial for instance, comes
to a child like an organic
hunger; he asks for a formality as he might ask for a
drink of
water.
Those who think, for instance, that the thing called
super-
stition is something heavily artificial, are very numerous; that
is those who think that it has only been the power of priests or
of some very
deliberate system that has built up boundaries,
that has called one course of
action lawful and another un-
lawful, that has called one piece of ground sacred and
another
profane. Nothing it would seem, except a large and powerful
conspiracy
could account for men so strangely distinguishing
between one field and another,
between one city and another,
between one nation and another. To all those who
think
in this way there is only one answer to be given. It is to
approach each
of them and whisper in his ear: “Did you
or did you not as a child try to step on
every alternate paving-
stone?” Was that artificial and a superstition ? Did
priests
come in the dead of night and mark out by secret signs the
stones on
which you were allowed to tread? Were children
threatened with the oubliette or the
fires of Smithfield if they
failed to step on the right stone? Has the Church
issued a
bull “Quisquam non pavemento?” No! On this point on
which we were
really free, we invented our servitude. We
chose to say that between the first and
the third paving-stone
there was an abyss of the eternal darkness into which
we
must not fall. We were walking along a steady, and safe and
modern road,
and it was more pleasant to us to say that we
were leaping desperately from peak to
peak. Under mean and
oppressive systems it was no doubt our instinct to free
our
-selves. But this truth written on the paving-stones is of even
greater emphasis, that under liberal systems it was our instinct
to limit
ourselves. We limited ourselves so gladly that we
limited ourselves at random, as
if limitation were one of the
adventures of boyhood.
People sometimes talk as if everything in the religious
history of men had been done by officials. In all probability
things like the
Dionysian cult or the worship of the Virgin
were almost entirely forced by the
people on the priesthood.
And if children had been sufficiently powerful in the
state,
there is no reason why this paving-stone religion should not
have been
accepted also. There is no reason why the streets
up which we walk should not be
emblazoned so as to com-
memorate this eternal fancy, why black stones and
white
stones alternately, for instance, should not perpetuate the
memory of a
superstition as healthy as health itself.
For what is the idea in human nature which lies at the
back
of this almost automatic ceremonialism? Why is it that a
child who
would be furious if told by his nurse not to walk
off the curbstone, invents a
whole desperate system of foot-
holds and chasms in a plane in which his nurse can
see little
but a commodious level? It is because man has always had
the
instinct that to isolate a thing was to identify it. The flag
only becomes a flag
when it is unique; the nation only becomes
a nation when it is surrounded; the hero
only becomes a hero
when he has before him and behind him men who are not
heroes; the paving-stone only becomes a paving-stone when
it has before it and
behind it things that are not paving-stones.
There are two other obvious instances, of course, of
the
same instinct, the perennial poetry of islands, and the perennial
poetry of ships. A ship like the Argo or the Fram is valued
by the mind because it
is an island, because, that is, it carries
with it floating loose on the desolate
elements the resources,
and rules, and trades, and treasuries of a nation, because
it
has ranks, and shops, and streets, and the whole clinging like
a few
limpets to a lost spar. An island like Ithaca or England
is valued by the mind
because it is a ship, because it can find
itself alone and self-dependent in a
waste of water, because its
orchards and forests can be numbered like bales of
merchandise,
because its corn can be counted like gold, because the starriest
and dreariest snows upon its most forsaken peaks are silver
flags flown from
familiar masts, because its dimmest and most
inhuman mines of coal or lead below
the roots of all things
are definite chatels stored awkwardly in the lowest locker
of
the hold.
In truth nothing has so much spoilt the right artistic
attitude
as the continual use of such words as ” infinite” and
“immeasur-
able.” They were used rightly enough in religion because
religion,
by its very nature, consists of paradoxes. Religion
speaks of an identity which is
infinite, just as it spoke of an
identity that was at once one and three, just as
it might
possibly and rightly speak of an identity that was at once
black and white.
The old mystics spoke of an existence without end or a
happiness without end, with a deliberate defiance, as they
might have spoken of a bird without wings or a sea
without
water. And in this they were right philosophically, far more
right than the world would now admit because all things grow
more paradoxical as we
approach the central truth. But for
all human imaginative or artistic purposes
nothing worse
could be said of a work of beauty than that it is infinite; for
to be infinite is to be shapeless, and to be shapeless is to be
something more than
mis-shapen. No man really wishes a
thing which he believes divine to be in this
earthly sense
infinite. No one would really like a song to last for ever, or
a
religious service to last for ever, or even a glass of good ale
to last for ever.
And this is surely the reason that men have
pursued towards the idea of holiness,
the course that they have
pursued; that they have marked it out in particular
spaces,
limited it to particular days, worshipped an ivory statue,
worshipped
a lump of stone. They have desired to give to it
the chivalry and dignity of
definition, they have desired to save
it from the degradation of infinity. This is
the real weakness
of all imperial or conquering ideals in nationality. No one
can love his country with the particular affection which is
appropriate to the
relation, if he thinks it is a thing in its
nature indeterminate, something which
is growing in the night,
something which lacks the tense excitement of a
boundary.
No Roman citizen could feel the same when once it became
possible
for a rich Parthian or a rich Carthaginian to become
a Roman citizen by waving his
hand. No man wishes the
thing he loves to grow, for he does not wish it to alter.
No
Imperialist would be pleased if he came home in the evening
from business and
found his wife eight feet high.
The dangers upon the side of this transcendental
insularity
are no doubt considerable. There lies in it primarily the
great
danger of the thing called idolatry, the worship of the object
apart
from or against the idea it represents. But he must
surely have had a singular
experience who thinks that this
insular or idolatrous fault is the particular fault
of one age.
We are not likely to suffer from any painful resemblance to
the
men of Thermopylae, the Zealots, who raged round the
fall of Jerusalem, to the
thunderbolts of Eastern faith and
valour who hurled themselves on the guns of Lord
Kitchener.
If we are rushing upon any destruction it is not, at least, upon
this.
G. K. CHESTERTON.
MLA citation:
Chesterton, G. K. “The Philosophy of Islands.” The Venture: an Annual of Art and Literature, vol. 1, 1903, pp. 2-9. Venture Digital Edition, edited by Lorraine Janzen Kooistra, 2019-2021. Yellow Nineties 2.0, Ryerson University Centre for Digital Humanities, 2021, https://1890s.ca/vv1-chesterton-islands