A Miscellany of Men | Page 6

queries as these: "I. Are
the green biscuits eaten by the peasants of Eastern Lithuania in your
opinion fit for human food? II. Are the religious professions of the
President of the Orange Free State hypocritical or sincere? III. Do you

think that the savages in Prusso-Portuguese East Bunyipland are as
happy and hygienic as the fortunate savages in Franco-British West
Bunyipland? IV. Did the lost Latin Charter said to have been exacted
from Henry III reserve the right of the Crown to create peers? V. What
do you think of what America thinks of what Mr. Roosevelt thinks of
what Sir Eldon Gorst thinks of the state of the Nile? VI. Detect some
difference between the two persons in frock-coats placed before you at
this election."
Now, it never was supposed in any natural theory of self-government
that the ordinary man in my neighbourhood need answer fantastic
questions like these. He is a citizen of South Bucks, not an editor of
'Notes and Queries'. He would be, I seriously believe, the best judge of
whether farmsteads or factory chimneys should adorn his own sky-line,
of whether stupid squires or clever usurers should govern his own
village. But these are precisely the things which the oligarchs will not
allow him to touch with his finger. Instead, they allow him an Imperial
destiny and divine mission to alter, under their guidance, all the things
that he knows nothing about. The name of self-government is noisy
everywhere: the Thing is throttled.
The wind sang and split the sky like thunder all the night through; in
scraps of sleep it filled my dreams with the divine discordances of
martyrdom and revolt; I heard the horn of Roland and the drums of
Napoleon and all the tongues of terror with which the Thing has gone
forth: the spirit of our race alive. But when I came down in the morning
only a branch or two was broken off the tree in my garden; and none of
the great country houses in the neighbourhood were blown down, as
would have happened if the Thing had really been abroad.

THE MAN WHO THINKS BACKWARDS
The man who thinks backwards is a very powerful person to-day:
indeed, if he is not omnipotent, he is at least omnipresent. It is he who
writes nearly all the learned books and articles, especially of the
scientific or skeptical sort; all the articles on Eugenics and Social

Evolution and Prison Reform and the Higher Criticism and all the rest
of it. But especially it is this strange and tortuous being who does most
of the writing about female emancipation and the reconsidering of
marriage. For the man who thinks backwards is very frequently a
woman.
Thinking backwards is not quite easy to define abstractedly; and,
perhaps, the simplest method is to take some object, as plain as possible,
and from it illustrate the two modes of thought: the right mode in which
all real results have been rooted; the wrong mode, which is confusing
all our current discussions, especially our discussions about the
relations of the sexes. Casting my eye round the room, I notice an
object which is often mentioned in the higher and subtler of these
debates about the sexes: I mean a poker. I will take a poker and think
about it; first forwards and then backwards; and so, perhaps, show what
I mean.
The sage desiring to think well and wisely about a poker will begin
somewhat as follows: Among the live creatures that crawl about this
star the queerest is the thing called Man. This plucked and plumeless
bird, comic and forlorn, is the butt of all the philosophies. He is the
only naked animal; and this quality, once, it is said, his glory, is now
his shame. He has to go outside himself for everything that he wants.
He might almost be considered as an absent-minded person who had
gone bathing and left his clothes everywhere, so that he has hung his
hat upon the beaver and his coat upon the sheep. The rabbit has white
warmth for a waistcoat, and the glow-worm has a lantern for a head.
But man has no heat in his hide, and the light in his body is darkness;
and he must look for light and warmth in the wild, cold universe in
which he is cast. This is equally true of his soul and of his body; he is
the one creature that has lost his heart as much as he has lost his hide.
In a spiritual sense he has taken leave of his senses; and even in a literal
sense he has been unable to keep his hair on. And just as this external
need of his has lit in his dark brain the dreadful star called