Whats Wrong With The World | Page 5

say "I am tired of being a Puritan; I want to be a Pagan," or
"Beyond this dark probation of Individualism I see the shining paradise
of Collectivism." Now in bodily ills there is none of this difference
about the ultimate ideal. The patient may or may not want quinine; but
he certainly wants health No one says "I am tired of this headache; I
want some toothache," or "The only thing for this Russian influenza is
a few German measles," or "Through this dark probation of catarrh I
see the shining paradise of rheumatism." But exactly the whole
difficulty in our public problems is that some men are aiming at cures
which other men would regard as worse maladies; are offering ultimate
conditions as states of health which others would uncompromisingly
call states of disease. Mr. Belloc once said that he would no more part
with the idea of property than with his teeth; yet to Mr. Bernard Shaw

property is not a tooth, but a toothache. Lord Milner has sincerely
attempted to introduce German efficiency; and many of us would as
soon welcome German measles. Dr. Saleeby would honestly like to
have Eugenics; but I would rather have rheumatics.
This is the arresting and dominant fact about modern social discussion;
that the quarrel is not merely about the difficulties, but about the aim.
We agree about the evil; it is about the good that we should tear each
other's eyes cut. We all admit that a lazy aristocracy is a bad thing. We
should not by any means all admit that an active aristocracy would be a
good thing. We all feel angry with an irreligious priesthood; but some
of us would go mad with disgust at a really religious one. Everyone is
indignant if our army is weak, including the people who would be even
more indignant if it were strong. The social case is exactly the opposite
of the medical case. We do not disagree, like doctors, about the precise
nature of the illness, while agreeing about the nature of health. On the
contrary, we all agree that England is unhealthy, but half of us would
not look at her in what the other half would call blooming health .
Public abuses are so prominent and pestilent that they sweep all
generous people into a sort of fictitious unanimity. We forget that,
while we agree about the abuses of things, we should differ very much
about the uses of them. Mr. Cadbury and I would agree about the bad
public house. It would be precisely in front of the good public-house
that our painful personal fracas would occur.
I maintain, therefore, that the common sociological method is quite
useless: that of first dissecting abject poverty or cataloguing
prostitution. We all dislike abject poverty; but it might be another
business if we began to discuss independent and dignified poverty. We
all disapprove of prostitution; but we do not all approve of purity. The
only way to discuss the social evil is to get at once to the social ideal.
We can all see the national madness; but what is national sanity? I have
called this book "What Is Wrong with the World?" and the upshot of
the title can be easily and clearly stated. What is wrong is that we do
not ask what is right.
* * *
II
WANTED, AN UNPRACTICAL MAN
There is a popular philosophical joke intended to typify the endless and

useless arguments of philosophers; I mean the joke about which came
first, the chicken or the egg? I am not sure that properly understood, it
is so futile an inquiry after all. I am not concerned here to enter on
those deep metaphysical and theological differences of which the
chicken and egg debate is a frivolous, but a very felicitous, type. The
evolutionary materialists are appropriately enough represented in the
vision of all things coming from an egg, a dim and monstrous oval
germ that had laid itself by accident. That other supernatural school of
thought (to which I personally adhere) would be not unworthily
typified in the fancy that this round world of ours is but an egg brooded
upon by a sacred unbegotten bird; the mystic dove of the prophets. But
it is to much humbler functions that I here call the awful power of such
a distinction. Whether or no the living bird is at the beginning of our
mental chain, it is absolutely necessary that it should be at the end of
our mental chain. The bird is the thing to be aimed at--not with a gun,
but a life-bestowing wand. What is essential to our right thinking is this:
that the egg and the bird must not be thought of as equal cosmic
occurrences recurring alternatively forever. They