All Things Considered | Page 6

a pure question of legal propriety,
of whether certain clauses in the contract of indenture were not
inconsistent with our constitutional traditions: according to them, the
case would have been the same if the people had been Kaffirs or
Englishmen. It all sounded wonderfully enlightened and lucid; and in
comparison the popular joke looked, of course, very poor. For the
popular joke against the Chinese labourers was simply that they were
Chinese; it was an objection to an alien type; the popular papers were
full of gibes about pigtails and yellow faces. It seemed that the Liberal
politicians were raising an intellectual objection to a doubtful document
of State; while it seemed that the Radical populace were merely roaring
with idiotic laughter at the sight of a Chinaman's clothes. But the

popular instinct was justified, for the vices revealed were Chinese
vices.
But there is another case more pleasant and more up to date. The
popular papers always persisted in representing the New Woman or the
Suffragette as an ugly woman, fat, in spectacles, with bulging clothes,
and generally falling off a bicycle. As a matter of plain external fact,
there was not a word of truth in this. The leaders of the movement of
female emancipation are not at all ugly; most of them are
extraordinarily good-looking. Nor are they at all indifferent to art or
decorative costume; many of them are alarmingly attached to these
things. Yet the popular instinct was right. For the popular instinct was
that in this movement, rightly or wrongly, there was an element of
indifference to female dignity, of a quite new willingness of women to
be grotesque. These women did truly despise the pontifical quality of
woman. And in our streets and around our Parliament we have seen the
stately woman of art and culture turn into the comic woman of _Comic
Bits_. And whether we think the exhibition justifiable or not, the
prophecy of the comic papers is justified: the healthy and vulgar
masses were conscious of a hidden enemy to their traditions who has
now come out into the daylight, that the scriptures might be fulfilled.
For the two things that a healthy person hates most between heaven and
hell are a woman who is not dignified and a man who is.

THE FALLACY OF SUCCESS
There has appeared in our time a particular class of books and articles
which I sincerely and solemnly think may be called the silliest ever
known among men. They are much more wild than the wildest
romances of chivalry and much more dull than the dullest religious
tract. Moreover, the romances of chivalry were at least about chivalry;
the religious tracts are about religion. But these things are about
nothing; they are about what is called Success. On every bookstall, in
every magazine, you may find works telling people how to succeed.
They are books showing men how to succeed in everything; they are
written by men who cannot even succeed in writing books. To begin

with, of course, there is no such thing as Success. Or, if you like to put
it so, there is nothing that is not successful. That a thing is successful
merely means that it is; a millionaire is successful in being a millionaire
and a donkey in being a donkey. Any live man has succeeded in living;
any dead man may have succeeded in committing suicide. But, passing
over the bad logic and bad philosophy in the phrase, we may take it, as
these writers do, in the ordinary sense of success in obtaining money or
worldly position. These writers profess to tell the ordinary man how he
may succeed in his trade or speculation--how, if he is a builder, he may
succeed as a builder; how, if he is a stockbroker, he may succeed as a
stockbroker. They profess to show him how, if he is a grocer, he may
become a sporting yachtsman; how, if he is a tenth-rate journalist, he
may become a peer; and how, if he is a German Jew, he may become
an Anglo-Saxon. This is a definite and business-like proposal, and I
really think that the people who buy these books (if any people do buy
them) have a moral, if not a legal, right to ask for their money back.
Nobody would dare to publish a book about electricity which literally
told one nothing about electricity; no one would dare to publish an
article on botany which showed that the writer did not know which end
of a plant grew in the earth. Yet our modern world is full of books
about Success and successful people which literally contain no kind of
idea, and scarcely any kind of verbal sense.
It is perfectly obvious that in any decent occupation (such as