A Miscellany of Men

Miscellany of Men, A

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Title: A Miscellany of Men
Author: G. K. Chesterton
Release Date: December, 1999 [EBook #2015] [This file was last
updated on February 22, 2003]
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MISCELLANY OF MEN ***

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A MISCELLANY OF MEN
By G. K. CHESTERTON

CONTENTS
THE SUFFRAGIST THE POET AND THE CHEESE THE THING
THE MAN WHO THINKS BACKWARDS THE NAMELESS MAN
THE GARDENER AND THE GUINEA THE VOTER AND THE
TWO VOICES THE MAD OFFICIAL THE ENCHANTED MAN
THE SUN WORSHIPPER THE WRONG INCENDIARY THE FREE
MAN THE HYPOTHETICAL HOUSEHOLDER THE PRIEST OF
SPRING THE REAL JOURNALIST THE SENTIMENTAL SCOT
THE SECTARIAN OF SOCIETY THE FOOL THE CONSCRIPT
AND THE CRISIS THE MISER AND HIS FRIENDS THE
MYSTAGOGUE THE RED REACTIONARY THE SEPARATIST
AND SACRED THINGS THE MUMMER THE ARISTOCRATIC
'ARRY THE NEW THEOLOGIAN THE ROMANTIC IN THE RAIN
THE FALSE PHOTOGRAPHER THE SULTAN THE ARCHITECT
OF SPEARS THE MAN ON TOP THE OTHER KIND OF MAN THE
MEDIAEVAL VILLAIN THE DIVINE DETECTIVE THE ELF OF
JAPAN THE CHARTERED LIBERTINE THE CONTENTED MAN
THE ANGRY AUTHOR: HIS FAREWELL

THE SUFFRAGIST
Rightly or wrongly, it is certain that a man both liberal and chivalric,
can and very often does feel a dis-ease and distrust touching those
political women we call Suffragettes. Like most other popular
sentiments, it is generally wrongly stated even when it is rightly felt.
One part of it can be put most shortly thus: that when a woman puts up
her fists to a man she is putting herself in the only posture in which he
is not afraid of her. He can be afraid of her speech and still more of her
silence; but force reminds him of a rusted but very real weapon of
which he has grown ashamed. But these crude summaries are never
quite accurate in any matter of the instincts. For the things which are
the simplest so long as they are undisputed invariably become the
subtlest when once they are disputed: which was what Joubert meant, I
suppose, when he said, "It is not hard to believe in God if one does not
define Him." When the evil instincts of old Foulon made him say of the
poor, "Let them eat grass," the good and Christian instincts of the poor
made them hang him on a lamppost with his mouth stuffed full of that
vegetation. But if a modern vegetarian aristocrat were to say to the poor,
"But why don't you like grass?" their intelligences would be much more
taxed to find such an appropriate repartee. And this matter of the
functions of the sexes is primarily a matter of the instincts; sex and
breathing are about the only two things that generally work best when
they are least worried about. That, I suppose, is why the same
sophisticated age that has poisoned the world with Feminism is also
polluting it with Breathing Exercises. We plunge at once into a forest
of false analogies and bad blundering history; while almost any man or
woman left to themselves would know at least that sex is quite different
from anything else in the world.
There is no kind of comparison possible between a quarrel of man and
woman (however right the woman may be) and the other quarrels of
slave and master, of rich and poor, or of patriot and invader, with which
the Suffragists deluge us every day. The difference is as plain as noon;
these other alien groups never came into contact until they came into
collision. Races and ranks began with battle, even if they afterwards

melted into amity. But the very first fact about the sexes