A Voice in the Wilderness In Defense of "Mere Conservatism"

G.K. Day (Much Better Than “Tax Day”)

(Almost) every Thursday, we here at AVITW try to bring you a little shining light of wit and wisdom from the legendary British author and journalist, G.K. Chesterton.

One of Chesterton's favorite topics to write about is my own: History!

Here is an excerpt from an essay G.K. penned entitled "History Versus The Historians":

In my innocent and ardent youth I had a fixed fancy. I held that children in a school ought to be taught history, and ought to be taught nothing else. The story of human society is the only fundamental framework outside of religion in which everything can fall into its place. A boy cannot see the importance of Latin simply by learning Latin. But he might see it by learning the history of the Latins. Nobody can possibly see any sense in learning geography or in learning arithmetic - both studies are obviously nonsense. But on the eager eve of Austerlitz, where Napoleon was fighting a superior force in a foreign country, one might see the need for Napoleon knowing a little geography and a little arithmetic.

I have thought that if people would only learn history, they would learn to learn everything else. Algebra might seem ugly, yet the very name of it is connected with something so romantic as the Crusades, for the word is from the Saracens. Greek might be ugly until one knew the Greeks, but surely not afterwards. History is simply humanity. And history will humanise all studies, even anthropology.

Since that age of innocence I have, however, realised that there is a difficulty in this teaching of history. And the difficulty is that there is no history to teach. This is not a scrap of cynicism - it is a genuine and necessary product of the many points of view and the strong mental separations of our society, for in our age every man has a cosmos of his own, and is therefore horribly alone. There is no history; there are only historians. To tell the tale plainly is now much more difficult than to tell it treacherously. It is unnatural to leave the facts alone; it is instinctive to pervert them. The very words involved in the chronicles - "Pagan", "Puritan", "Catholic", "Republican", "Imperialist" - are words which make us leap out of our armchairs.

No good modern historians are impartial. All modern historians are divided into two classes - those who tell half the truth, like Macaulay and Froude, and those who tell none of the truth, like Hallam and the Impartials. The angry historians see one side of the question. The calm historians see nothing at all, not even the question itself.

But there is another possible attitude towards the records of the past, and I have never been able to understand why it has not been more often adopted. To put it in its curtest form, my proposal is this: That we should not read historians, but history. Let us read the actual text of the times. Let us, for a year, or a month, or a fortnight, refuse to read anything about Oliver Cromwell except what was written while he was alive.

There is plenty of material; from my own memory (which is all I have to rely on in the place where I write) I could mention offhand many long and famous efforts of English literature that cover the period. Clarendon's History, Evelyn's Diary, the Life of Colonel Hutchinson. Above all let us read all Cromwell's own letters and speeches, as Carlyle published them. But before we read them let us carefully paste pieces of stamp-paper over every sentence written by Carlyle. Let us blot out in every memoir every critical note and every modern paragraph. For a time let us cease altogether to read the living men on their dead topics. Let us read only the dead men on their living topics.

History is so important.  Girls instinctively understand this and try and take pictures of every historical event in their life for future reference (and Facebook additions).  But history is bigger than what happened on Spring Break sophomore year of college.  And not knowing it can lead a life, a family, or even a country off a cliff that might have been avoided if those involved simply had cared enough to learn, observe, and consider the implications of their own history.

Chesterton didn't idolize the past; he simply hated the obsession modern men and women had with the future and the ever-changing, never-clearly-defined "progress."  Progressing towards what?  To answer that, you must first know where you came from.

Thursday: The Day That Was G.K.’s

Every Thursday (except last Thursday) we bring you an excerpt from the selected works of one Gilbert Keith Chesterton.  G.K. is my favorite writer, and I hope you learn to love him too.

From Heretics, Chapter Four, "Mr. Bernard Shaw":

The truth is, that it is quite an error to suppose that the absence of definite convictions gives the mind freedom and agility.  A man who believes something is ready and witty, because he has all his weapons about him, he can apply his test in an instant.

The man engaged in a conflict with Mr. Bernard Shaw may fancy he has ten faces; similarly a man engaged against a brilliant duellist may fancy that the sword of his foe has turned to ten swords in his hand.  But this is not really because the man is playing with ten swords, it is because he is aiming very straight with one.

Moreover, a man with a definite belief always appears bizarre, because he does not change with the world; he has climbed into a fixed star and the earth whizzes below him like a zoetrope.  Millions of mild black-coated men call themselves sane and sensible because they always catch the fashionable insanity, because they are hurried into madness after madness by the maelstrom of the world.

Chesterton Quote of the Week

In honor of my favorite writer, G.K. Chesterton, and his novel The Man Who Was Thursday, I hereby declare Thursdays to be "G.K. Day" on A Voice in the Wilderness.  Every Thursday tune in for a new and interesting quote or section of an essay from the brilliant Brit himself.

From "Negative and Positive Morality":

A vast amount of nonsense is talked against negative and destructive things. The silliest sort of progressive complains of negative morality, and compares it unfavorably with positive morality. The silliest sort of conservative complains of destructive reform and compares it unfavorably with constructive reform. Both the progressive and the conservative entirely neglect to consider the very meaning of the words "yes" and "no". To give the answer "yes" to one question is to imply the answer "no" to another question. To desire the construction of something is to desire the destruction of whatever prevents its construction. This is particularly plain in the fuss about the "negative" morality of the Ten Commandments.

The truth is that the curtness of the Commandments is an evidence, not of the gloom and narrowness of a religion but of its liberality and humanity. It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted precisely because most things are permitted and only a few things are forbidden. An optimist who insisted on a purely positive morality would have to begin by telling a man that he might pick dandelions on a common and go on for months before he came to the fact that he might throw pebbles into the sea. In comparison with this positive morality the Ten Commandments rather shine in that brevity which is the soul of wit.

But of course the fallacy is even more fundamental than this. Negative morality is positive morality, stated in the plainest and therefore the most positive way. If I am told not to murder Mr. Robinson, if I am stopped in the very act of murdering Mr. Robinson, it is obvious that Mr. Robinson is not only spared, but in a sense renewed, and even created. And those who like Mr. Robinson, among them my reactionary romanticism might suggest the inclusion of Mrs. Robinson, will be well aware that they have recovered a living and complex unity. And similarly, those who like European civilisation, and the common code of what used to be called Christendom, will realize that salvation is not negative, but highly positive, and even highly complex. They will rejoice at its escape, long before they have leisure for its examination. But, without examination, they will know that there is a great deal to be examined, and a great deal that is worth examination. Nothing is negative except nothing. It is not our rescue that was negative, but only the nothingness and annihilation from which we were rescued.

You can even see the big guy (he was 300lb) himself right here: