Whats Wrong With The World | Page 6

must not become a
mere egg and bird pattern, like the egg and dart pattern. One is a means
and the other an end; they are in different mental worlds. Leaving the
complications of the human breakfast-table out of account, in an
elemental sense, the egg only exists to produce the chicken. But the
chicken does not exist only in order to produce another egg. He may
also exist to amuse himself, to praise God, and even to suggest ideas to
a French dramatist. Being a conscious life, he is, or may be, valuable in
himself. Now our modern politics are full of a noisy forgetfulness;
forgetfulness that the production of this happy and conscious life is
after all the aim of all complexities and compromises. We talk of
nothing but useful men and working institutions; that is, we only think
of the chickens as things that will lay more eggs. Instead of seeking to
breed our ideal bird, the eagle of Zeus or the Swan of Avon, or
whatever we happen to want, we talk entirely in terms of the process
and the embryo. The process itself, divorced from its divine object,
becomes doubtful and even morbid; poison enters the embryo of
everything; and our politics are rotten eggs.
Idealism is only considering everything in its practical essence.
Idealism only means that we should consider a poker in reference to

poking before we discuss its suitability for wife-beating; that we should
ask if an egg is good enough for practical poultry-rearing before we
decide that the egg is bad enough for practical politics. But I know that
this primary pursuit of the theory (which is but pursuit of the aim)
exposes one to the cheap charge of fiddling while Rome is burning. A
school, of which Lord Rosebery is representative, has endeavored to
substitute for the moral or social ideals which have hitherto been the
motive of politics a general coherency or completeness in the social
system which has gained the nick-name of "efficiency." I am not very
certain of the secret doctrine of this sect in the matter. But, as far as I
can make out, "efficiency" means that we ought to discover everything
about a machine except what it is for. There has arisen in our time a
most singular fancy: the fancy that when things go very wrong we need
a practical man. It would be far truer to say, that when things go very
wrong we need an unpractical man. Certainly, at least, we need a
theorist. A practical man means a man accustomed to mere daily
practice, to the way things commonly work. When things will not work,
you must have the thinker, the man who has some doctrine about why
they work at all. It is wrong to fiddle while Rome is burning; but it is
quite right to study the theory of hydraulics while Rome is burning.
It is then necessary to drop one's daily agnosticism and attempt rerum
cognoscere causas. If your aeroplane has a slight indisposition, a handy
man may mend it. But, if it is seriously ill, it is all the more likely that
some absent-minded old professor with wild white hair will have to be
dragged out of a college or laboratory to analyze the evil. The more
complicated the smash, the whiter-haired and more absent-minded will
be the theorist who is needed to deal with it; and in some extreme cases,
no one but the man (probably insane) who invented your flying-ship
could possibly say what was the matter with it.
"Efficiency," of course, is futile for the same reason that strong men,
will-power and the superman are futile. That is, it is futile because it
only deals with actions after they have been performed. It has no
philosophy for incidents before they happen; therefore it has no power
of choice. An act can only be successful or unsuccessful when it is over;
if it is to begin, it must be, in the abstract, right or wrong. There is no
such thing as backing a winner; for he cannot be a winner when he is
backed. There is no such thing as fighting on the winning side; one

fights to find out which is the winning side. If any operation has
occurred, that operation was efficient. If a man is murdered, the murder
was efficient. A tropical sun is as efficient in making people lazy as a
Lancashire foreman bully in making them energetic. Maeterlinck is as
efficient in filling a man with strange spiritual tremors as Messrs.
Crosse and Blackwell are in filling a man with jam. But it all depends
on what you want to be filled with. Lord Rosebery, being a modern
skeptic, probably prefers the spiritual tremors. I, being an orthodox
Christian, prefer the jam.