Complete Works of G K Chesterton, page 351
“After the usual family greetings and inquiries, he explained everything in a quite satisfactory and entirely scientific manner. The whole story, indeed, is a most profitable lesson to the young, showing that diligence and study are always profitable in later life. Those scientific researches, which I had thought so abstract and theoretical, were not thrown away. We all are scientific enough to know the thing as a general theory; we know that touching particular nerves produces reflex actions jerking particular limbs. But as but few of us have ever happened to be swallowed alive by an enormous prehistoric fish cast up out of the deep seas by a submarine volcano, we have had but little opportunity of seeing the problem, so to speak, from the inside. My Uncle William, with his immense knowledge of ichthyology, and especially of anatomy and nerve structure, soon found that it was possible to work the fish from the inside, just as if he were steering a boat. The interior of a prehistoric fish is a simple and unpretentious place; and he was as well acquainted with the points at which it communicated with motor nerves and muscular action as you are with the corners of your room containing the telephone or the electric bell. He was thus enabled, long after the fish was dead, to travel about in it, visiting foreign countries at leisure, and even forcing the fish to perform many athletic acts to which it was quite unaccustomed in life. Such are the profoundly practical advantages of purely theoretical study.”
The traveller looked around him with an air of simple benevolence; then he seemed to remember the argument, and turned to the parson with a polite explanatory gesture.
“Now why can we all believe a story of that simple sort immediately?” he asked. “Why is it instantly accepted by all as reasonable, and even probable, in itself? Why do none of you feel any of that faint scepticism about my story which distresses you in the Biblical story? Because there is nothing supernatural about it. It needs nothing beyond man as our friend says, the mind of man is the explanation and the scientist can explain it step by step. It is plainly preposterous to say that God who made the fishes could open and shut a fish’s mouth if He liked. But we can believe anything, as our friend says, about the marvellous things that Man can do. That is why my story, so to speak, carries conviction on the face of it.”
“I’m hanged if I know what you mean,” grumbled the fisherman. “Are you making fun of the parson?”
“That must be it, I think,” said the parson, cheerfully putting his pipe in his pocket, and he smiled at the traveller; and they parted.
On Private Property
When Captain Nicholas Nicholson found himself falling head downwards through empty space, the whole of his previous life passed before him. At least if it did not, the narrator of his adventures will certainly say it did; as it affords that unscrupulous scribe the most rapid method of describing who the Captain was and how he happened to be in mid air at the moment. He would describe at some length the life at a public school, the first faint stirring of the human brain at Cambridge, the joining of a Socialist society, the growing belief in social order and system of the German type so abruptly interrupted by enlistment in 1914, the incident of the girl in the tea-shop of whom he could never find further traces, the quarrel with the solicitor who had put all the family patrimony to the higher purposes of finance, and finally the experiences in the Air Force which had terminated in the way described above.
He never heard himself crash; but he came to semi-consciousness in an atmosphere of racking clamour which gradually lessened till he heard voices round him; one saying something about somebody having an artificial leg and the other observing that such legs were very beautifully made nowadays. Then he relapsed into unconsciousness with an under current of pain; and woke in a white light to see men standing about in white clothes and wearing spectacles; he supposed they were Prussians, but their faces looked hard and alien enough to be Chinese. The talk was still of the excellence of artificial limbs; and looking down, Nicholas saw that his own legs had been replaced by lengths of shining steel rods with mechanical joints of glittering complexity.
“Well,” he said, forcing his courage to cheerfulness, “by your account it is almost as good as having real ones.”
“It is much better,” said a man with shaven head and shining spectacles, without a movement in his wooden face, “The leg of nature is a most inefficient instrument.”
“Come now,” said Nicholas, “if that were true you might just as well cut off my arms as well.”
“We are going to,” said the man in goggles.
Darkness redescended and when he awoke he was sitting up with metal arms and legs and looking down a long white-washed corridor; and the man at his side told him breakfast would be ready in half-an- hour. They walked past rows of doors, as in the passages of an hotel, and outside each door stood a pair of steel legs, newly burnished, like the boots left outside bedrooms to be cleaned.
“You won’t want your legs at breakfast,” said his companion; and such was clearly the case; for he was lowered by a sort of chain from above so that his truncated body fitted into a hole in the long benches flanking the tables. He had left his legs in a sort of cloakroom, duly receiving a ticket. He said something about exercise; and was gravely told that after the meal (which was of a simple but scientific sort) he would parade for a proper constitutional in the grounds. It is true that when the time came for this, he was in turn relieved of his arms, by another official (duly receiving a ticket for them) since science had already discovered that arms are not used in walking or legs in eating.
After this his story becomes a little confused; there are improbable passages about his renewing the quarrel with the solicitor and sending for legs to kick him, or reunion with the tea-shop girl and a temporary lack of arms with which to embrace her; but familiar faces and old emotions often come back in this confused way in dreams; and this experience must be regarded as a dream; for he shortly woke up in an ordinary hospital and found the world had not yet progressed quite so far as he had fancied.
The End of Wisdom
We have all had dreams or memories about some gang of pirates, grim to the point of the grotesque, as they were in the story-books of childhood, who yet pointed with awe, and almost with horror, at some super-pirate in the background; a solitary and sinister figure, compared with whose unsearchable wickedness they were all as innocent as an infant school. Such was the attitude of the hard-headed and acquisitive business men of Bison City, III., U.S.A., towards a certain Mr. Crake, who had committed the Unpardonable Sin.
He committed it at a lucheon party of the B.B.B., supposed by some to stand for “Better and Brighter Bisons,” but by the moderate for “Better and Brighter Business.” The room in the large hotel was already decorated with American flags and also with bright bunches of American ladies, the beauty and fashion of Bison City, who were allowed to lean over the stone balustrade of the gallery and look down on the Bisons feeding. But the Bisons themselves were rather late, as is the habit of the brisk business-like salesmen of those parts; and for some time there was only one lean, leathery, bilious-looking man, whose profound gloom was relieved by a large disc or label on his coat, inscribed, “Call me Johnny.” After a time, however, similar revellers arrived with similar decorations; notably a white-haired withered little man, whose label bore the blazon of, “Please, I’m Tom,” and a very hearty, heavy man, with dark sleek hair, whose disc was adorned with the words, “Oh, Boy, I’m Little Frankie.” As the seats gradually filled up, it was seen that all the guests were decked with such gay proclamations, except two. One of these was evidently a guest of importance from outside: a compact, carefully dressed man, with yellow hair, which shone like yellow soap. The other sat further down the table, dark and angular, with a hatchet face, which was somehow handsome, and a rather sullen expression. This was John P. Crake; but there was no invitation, either in his dress or in his demeanour, to call him Johnny.
He was far from being an outcast, however; his fellow-townsmen being only too delighted to recite the precise number of dollars which he made every week in the biggest business in that neighbourhood. For Americans, who are accused of loving money, have this most generous trait: that they can actually love each other’s money. They were ready to put it down to his being “sick,” in the American sense, if he really failed to rejoice in the eloquence around him. That anybody could be sick of it, in the English sense, never crossed their minds. He heard the big dark Bison still orating: “...A man like that’s just God’s own American citizen and won’t stay down. He goes right out for the highest ideal in sight. He won’t stay ‘put’ with ten thousand dollars when there’s twenty thousand dollars knocking around. Now we figure that about the highest ideal going is this Service....”As in a dream, Crake heard the voice change, and knew that the yellow- haired politician was speaking: “... Here on false pretences, gentlemen. I am not a Bison. Nor was George Washington, but he would have been. (Cheers.) Wasn’t it just this ideal of Service....” There were more cheers, silence, a little commotion, and Crake heard his own name. Everybody was looking at him; they wanted a speech; a speech from the first citizen of Bison City. He refused. They cheered and hammered the table as if he had accepted. He refused again. The man from Washington, shining all over with diplomacy and yellow soap, insinuated his persuasion; could not be expected to leave Bison City without hearing its greatest American citizen. John P. Crake boiled with black indescribable rage and shot suddenly and rigidly to his feet. He began in a harsh jarring voice:
“Gentlemen. We’re all here to tell lies, and I’ll begin with that one. Gentlemen.” He gazed around at the somewhat startled audience and went on: “We all tell lies in business, because we only want to make money; but I can’t see why the hell we should tell lies for fun in the lunch hour. I don’t care a blasted button for Service, and I don’t intend to be anybody’s servant; certainly not yours. Every business man here wants to make money for himself, including me; and though he may use other men, he doesn’t care if they’re dead and damned when he’s used them. That’s the reality, and I like doing business with realities. As for ideals, I’ve nothing to say of them except that they make me sick as a dog.” He sat down more slowly and with a greater air of calm and relief.
It would be hard to say how the luncheon party broke up; but the first to come was the last to go. For, as Crake went out of the room, he found the lean bilious man looking more unpleasant than ever, because his face was deformed with a smile.
“Good for you,” he said, showing his yellow teeth. “I daren’t do it; I have to wear this fool thing. But that’s the way to get on top. Treat ’em like dirt.” After pause, he added: “Say can I see you about that consignment?”
“Come round to my office at four,” said Crake abstractedly, and went out.
At four he was going through a pile of letters, not without a grim smile. Personal letters had already begun to arrive, sent round by hand as a sequel to his disgraceful outburst. Ladies especially, whom he had never seen in his life, remonstrated with him at enormous length over his unfamiliarity with Ideals. Some recommended particular books, especially their own books; some particular ministers, at whose feet a taste for ideals might be imbibed. As he turned them over, the bilious man was shown in, a certain J. Jackson Drill, a broker, and, incidentally, a bootlegger. Crake pushed the papers across to him with a gesture of contempt; a contempt, it is to be feared, which included Mr. Drill as well as the papers. For Crake was inconsistent, like many such men; and did not really like the dirty pessimism of Jackson Drill any more than the greasy optimism of Little Frankie. Perhaps the cynic does not respect somebody else’s cynicism.
Drill picked up the letters with his unpleasing grin, and began reading fragments aloud:”... If your ideals do not satisfy you, I am sure you have not heard the real message of the Broad Daylight Church, which promises spiritual progress and business success for all. The Church is now in serious need of funds....” Drill dropped the letter and took up another: “...May a sister in the sight of God express her grief at the dreadful avowal revealing your spiritual state touching dollars. Wealth is worthless in itself (seem to be a lot of Bible references here; handwriting very illiterate); it is a means to an end, and some of our wealthiest citizens set a noble example....” Drill picked up a third letter, remarking, “Not so illiterate; nice handwriting,” but continued in the same derisive sing-song, “I have been thinking about what you said today, and I cannot decide whether it was the Only Way. Of course, I see your point. If these people go on being idealists, there won’t be a decent ideal, or a decent idea left in the world. Somebody must do something to stop their befouling everything. Courage has come to mean readiness to risk other people’s money. Service has come to mean servility to any rich man who waddles along.”
Crake had lifted his head and was listening, suddenly alert with curiosity, but the other went droning on:
“Somebody must do something; and you did do something. You broke the back of it with sheer brutality; but I can’t help wondering whether there isn’t another way. I expect you’ve wondered yourself; because you are not a brute. You’re supposed to be sulky because you are always longing for a little time to yourself, to think these things out. So am I.”
“Here,” said Crake sharply, “give me that letter.”
“Rather a scream, isn’t it?” said Drill; “it goes on, ‘If we can’t shut off this deafening nonsense, we shall have no inner life at all....’ “Crake snatched the letter out of his companion’s hand with a violence that tore it across at the corner. Then he spread it out before him and looked at Drill; and Drill knew that he was not wanted in that room any more.
The letter was an extraordinary letter. The extracts he had heard gave no real idea of it. There were moments when he thought he was reading his own diary. In some cases it was rather as if he were looking into his own subconsciousness. It was signed with an evasive female pen-name, and had an address that was no clue to identity. Yet he was not primarily impressed with how much, or rather how little, he knew about the writer. He was impressed with how much the writer knew about him. She knew one thing at least, which he hardly knew himself till he had done reading. That he hated ideals and idealism because he was himself very much too bitter and fastidious an idealist. That he hated his wealth and his work and his fellow-workmen because of an unnamed comparison and because his kingdom was not of this world. He sat down and wrote a long and even laborious letter in reply; the beginning of a prolonged private correspondence that spread over years. And through all those years he never made an effort (so strong was something in him making for refinement and renunciation) to find out the name or dwelling of the woman who was his best friend.
For some little time Bison City did regard Mr. Crake as something between a leper, a lunatic, a wicked wizard commanding the elements and the blasphemer whose duty it is to be struck by lightning in the religious tracts of that region. Americans do not worship riches in the sense of forgiving anything to the rich; and they do not easily forgive a blasphemy against the gods whom they do worship. Mr. Crake had defied the gods of the tribe that were of stone and brass- especially brass. He had violated the highest morality of Bison City, which is well named, because its morality consists of going at anything with your head down. Yet, strangely enough, Mr. Crake grew happier as time went on, and even more good humoured with his fellows; so that his unpopularity began to fade away. In fact, his loneliness was ended. He no longer boiled with an incommunicable disgust. He poured out his feelings every night in long letters to his unknown friend; and received letters which had a slow but steady effect of restoring him to sanity and even to sociability. In this respect his invisible companion both puzzled and pleased him. She had read much more than he, though he was not an uncultivated man; but she seemed to have reached a balance from the study of opposite extremes. Left alone, with one book at a time, he might have been tempted to go mad like Nietzsche or turn peasant like Tolstoy. But she seemed to have accepted all the abnormalities and then returned to the normal. She was sufficiently cultured to know even the case against culture; and he could not shock her by cursing books as he shocked Bison City by cursing business. The result was that, unknown to himself and by minute gradations, he was turning from a monomaniac into a man. And then, one fine day, something happened to him, that suddenly revealed to him his manhood; which came on him with a rush like a return of boyhood.
And the strangest thing about it was this: That when he sat down, on the evening of that fine day, to write the letter that had become like a diary, to be read only by a second self, he found for the first time that he could not write. At least it seemed in a new unnatural way impossible...almost indecent. Nothing might seem more remote than that relation; yet his friend had always remained a woman; the mere fact, the slope of the feminine handwriting, a hundred delicate details, had left hanging over the affair that distant and disembodied sentiment that can never be conjured away; something like the smell of old gardens or that dust of dead roses that was preserved in old bowls and cabinets. He knew now that he had been living through a long convalescence in the large rooms of some such ancient and quiet house; under the large tact of an invisible hostess. And what had just happened to him, in the street outside, was so vivid and violent, so concrete, so incongruous. After poising his pen for a moment of doubt, he dismissed the matter, and only answered her remarks about the poetry of Claudel. And then a strange thing happened; giving him a rather terrifying sense of being watched in that house of healing by an all-seeing eye. For she wrote, in her next letter, quite casually and even humorously: “Something has happened to you. I was very much interested in what you did not tell me.”
