The New Jerusalem | Page 4

are with the Socialists; in so far that there is something to
be said for Socialism, and nothing to be said for Capitalism. But the
point is that when there is something to be said for one thing, it is now
commonly said in support of the opposite thing. Never since the mob
called out, "Less bread! More taxes!" in the nonsense story, has there
been so truly nonsensical a situation as that in which the strikers
demand Government control and the Government denounces its own
control as anarchy. The mob howls before the palace gates, "Hateful
tyrant, we demand that you assume more despotic powers"; and the
tyrant thunders from the balcony, "Vile rebels, do you dare to suggest
that my powers should be extended?" There seems to be a little
misunderstanding somewhere.

In truth everything I saw told me that there was a large
misunderstanding everywhere; a misunderstanding amounting to a
mess. And as this was the last impression that London left on me, so it
was the impression I carried with me about the whole modern problem
of Western civilisation, as a riddle to be read or a knot to be untied. To
untie it it is necessary to get hold of the right end of it, and especially
the other end of it. We must begin at the beginning; we must return to
our first origins in history, as we must return to our first principles in
philosophy. We must consider how we came to be doing what we do,
and even saying what we say. As it is, the very terms we use are either
meaningless or something more than meaningless, inconsistent even
with themselves. This applies, for instance, to the talk of both sides in
that Labour controversy, which I merely took in passing, because it was
the current controversy in London when I left. The Capitalists say
Bolshevism as one might say Boojum. It is merely a mystical and
imaginative word suggesting horror. But it might mean many things;
including some just and rational things. On the other hand, there could
never be any meaning at all in the phrase "the dictatorship of the
proletariat." It is like saying, "the omnipotence of
omnibus-conductors." It is fairly obvious that if an omnibus-conductor
were omnipotent, he would probably prefer to conduct something else
besides an omnibus. Whatever its exponents mean, it is clearly
something different from what they say; and even this verbal
inconsistency, this mere welter of words, is a sign of the common
confusion of thought. It is this sort of thing that made London seem like
a limbo of lost words, and possibly of lost wits. And it is here we find
the value of what I have called walking backwards through history.
It is one of the rare merits of modern mechanical travel that it enables
us to compare widely different cities in rapid succession. The stages of
my own progress were the chief cities of separate countries; and though
more is lost in missing the countries, something is gained in so sharply
contrasting the capitals. And again it was one of the advantages of my
own progress that it was a progress backwards; that it happened, as I
have said, to retrace the course of history to older and older things; to
Paris and to Rome and to Egypt, and almost, as it were, to Eden. And
finally it is one of the advantages of such a return that it did really

begin to clarify the confusion of names and notions in modern society.
I first became conscious of this when I went out of the Gare de Lyon
and walked along a row of cafes, until I saw again a distant column
crowned with a dancing figure; the freedom that danced over the fall of
the Bastille. Here at least, I thought, is an origin and a standard, such as
I missed in the mere muddle of industrial opportunism. The modern
industrial world is not in the least democratic; but it is supposed to be
democratic, or supposed to be trying to be democratic. The ninth
century, the time of the Norse invasions, was not saintly in the sense of
being filled with saints; it was filled with pirates and petty tyrants, and
the first feudal anarchy. But sanctity was the only ideal those
barbarians had, when they had any at all. And democracy is the only
ideal the industrial millions have, when they have any at all. Sanctity
was the light of the Dark Ages, or if you will the dream of the Dark
Ages. And democracy is the dream of the dark age of industrialism; if it
be very much of a dream. It is this which prophets promise to achieve,
and politicians pretend to achieve, and poets sometimes