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Page 48
When the ordinary opponents of Socialism talk about
impossibilities and alterations in human nature they always miss
an important distinction. In modern ideal conceptions of society
there are some desires that are possibly not attainable: but there
are some desires that are not desirable. That all men should live
in equally beautiful houses is a dream that may or may not be attained.
But that all men should live in the same beautiful house is not
a dream at all; it is a nightmare. That a man should love all old
women is an ideal that may not be attainable. But that a man should
regard all old women exactly as he regards his mother is not only
an unattainable ideal, but an ideal which ought not to be attained.
I do not know if the reader agrees with me in these examples;
but I will add the example which has always affected me most.
I could never conceive or tolerate any Utopia which did not leave to me
the liberty for which I chiefly care, the liberty to bind myself.
Complete anarchy would not merely make it impossible to have
any discipline or fidelity; it would also make it impossible
to have any fun. To take an obvious instance, it would not be
worth while to bet if a bet were not binding. The dissolution
of all contracts would not only ruin morality but spoil sport.
Now betting and such sports are only the stunted and twisted
shapes of the original instinct of man for adventure and romance,
of which much has been said in these pages. And the perils, rewards,
punishments, and fulfilments of an adventure must be real, or
the adventure is only a shifting and heartless nightmare. If I bet
I must be made to pay, or there is no poetry in betting. If I challenge
I must be made to fight, or there is no poetry in challenging.
If I vow to be faithful I must be cursed when I am unfaithful,
or there is no fun in vowing. You could not even make a fairy tale
from the experiences of a man who, when he was swallowed by a whale,
might find himself at the top of the Eiffel Tower, or when he
was turned into a frog might begin to behave like a flamingo.
For the purpose even of the wildest romance results must be real;
results must be irrevocable. Christian marriage is the great
example of a real and irrevocable result; and that is why it
is the chief subject and centre of all our romantic writing.
And this is my last instance of the things that I should ask,
and ask imperatively, of any social paradise; I should ask to be kept
to my bargain, to have my oaths and engagements taken seriously;
I should ask Utopia to avenge my honour on myself.
All my modern Utopian friends look at each other rather doubtfully,
for their ultimate hope is the dissolution of all special ties.
But again I seem to hear, like a kind of echo, an answer from beyond
the world. "You will have real obligations, and therefore real
adventures when you get to my Utopia. But the hardest obligation
and the steepest adventure is to get there."
VIII THE ROMANCE OF ORTHODOXY
It is customary to complain of the bustle and strenuousness
of our epoch. But in truth the chief mark of our epoch is
a profound laziness and fatigue; and the fact is that the real
laziness is the cause of the apparent bustle. Take one quite
external case; the streets are noisy with taxicabs and motorcars;
but this is not due to human activity but to human repose.
There would be less bustle if there were more activity, if people
were simply walking about. Our world would be more silent if it
were more strenuous. And this which is true of the apparent physical
bustle is true also of the apparent bustle of the intellect.
Most of the machinery of modern language is labour-saving machinery;
and it saves mental labour very much more than it ought.
Scientific phrases are used like scientific wheels and piston-rods
to make swifter and smoother yet the path of the comfortable.
Long words go rattling by us like long railway trains. We know they
are carrying thousands who are too tired or too indolent to walk
and think for themselves. It is a good exercise to try for once
in a way to express any opinion one holds in words of one syllable.
If you say "The social utility of the indeterminate sentence is
recognized by all criminologists as a part of our sociological
evolution towards a more humane and scientific view of punishment,"
you can go on talking like that for hours with hardly a movement
of the gray matter inside your skull. But if you begin "I wish
Jones to go to gaol and Brown to say when Jones shall come out,"
you will discover, with a thrill of horror, that you are obliged
to think. The long words are not the hard words, it is the short
words that are hard. There is much more metaphysical subtlety in the
word "damn" than in the word "degeneration."
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