Whats Wrong With The World | Page 4

may seem a refinement of insolence to present so wild a composition
to one who has recorded two or three of the really impressive visions of
the moving millions of England. You are the only man alive who can
make the map of England crawl with life; a most creepy and enviable
accomplishment. Why then should I trouble you with a book which,
even if it achieves its object (which is monstrously unlikely) can only
be a thundering gallop of theory?
Well, I do it partly because I think you politicians are none the worse
for a few inconvenient ideals; but more because you will recognise the
many arguments we have had, those arguments which the most

wonderful ladies in the world can never endure for very long. And,
perhaps, you will agree with me that the thread of comradeship and
conversation must be protected because it is so frivolous. It must be
held sacred, it must not be snapped, because it is not worth tying
together again. It is exactly because argument is idle that men (I mean
males) must take it seriously; for when (we feel), until the crack of
doom, shall we have so delightful a difference again? But most of all I
offer it to you because there exists not only comradeship, but a very
different thing, called friendship; an agreement under all the arguments
and a thread which, please God, will never break.
Yours always,
G. K. Chesterton.
* * *
PART ONE
THE HOMELESSNESS OF MAN
* * *
THE MEDICAL MISTAKE
A book of modern social inquiry has a shape that is somewhat sharply
defined. It begins as a rule with an analysis, with statistics, tables of
population, decrease of crime among Congregationalists, growth of
hysteria among policemen, and similar ascertained facts; it ends with a
chapter that is generally called "The Remedy." It is almost wholly due
to this careful, solid, and scientific method that "The Remedy" is never
found. For this scheme of medical question and answer is a blunder; the
first great blunder of sociology. It is always called stating the disease
before we find the cure. But it is the whole definition and dignity of
man that in social matters we must actually find the cure before we find
the disease .
The fallacy is one of the fifty fallacies that come from the modern
madness for biological or bodily metaphors. It is convenient to speak of
the Social Organism, just as it is convenient to speak of the British Lion.
But Britain is no more an organism than Britain is a lion. The moment
we begin to give a nation the unity and simplicity of an animal, we
begin to think wildly. Because every man is a biped, fifty men are not a
centipede. This has produced, for instance, the gaping absurdity of
perpetually talking about "young nations" and "dying nations," as if a
nation had a fixed and physical span of life. Thus people will say that

Spain has entered a final senility; they might as well say that Spain is
losing all her teeth. Or people will say that Canada should soon
produce a literature; which is like saying that Canada must soon grow a
new moustache. Nations consist of people; the first generation may be
decrepit, or the ten thousandth may be vigorous. Similar applications of
the fallacy are made by those who see in the increasing size of national
possessions, a simple increase in wisdom and stature, and in favor with
God and man. These people, indeed, even fall short in subtlety of the
parallel of a human body. They do not even ask whether an empire is
growing taller in its youth, or only growing fatter in its old age. But of
all the instances of error arising from this physical fancy, the worst is
that we have before us: the habit of exhaustively describing a social
sickness, and then propounding a social drug.
Now we do talk first about the disease in cases of bodily breakdown;
and that for an excellent reason. Because, though there may be doubt
about the way in which the body broke down, there is no doubt at all
about the shape in which it should be built up again. No doctor
proposes to produce a new kind of man, with a new arrangement of
eyes or limbs. The hospital, by necessity, may send a man home with
one leg less: but it will not (in a creative rapture) send him home with
one leg extra. Medical science is content with the normal human body,
and only seeks to restore it.
But social science is by no means always content with the normal
human soul; it has all sorts of fancy souls for sale. Man as a social
idealist will