a dog is (by the highest artistic canons) the most
ornamental appendage that can be put at the end of
a tail. In short, instead of asking whether our
modern arrangements, our streets, trades, bargains,
laws, and concrete institutions are suited to the
primal and permanent idea of a healthy human life,
they never admit that healthy human life into the discussion
at all, except suddenly and accidentally at odd moments;
and then they only ask whether that healthy human life
is suited to our streets and trades. Perfection
may be attainable or unattainable as an end.
It may or may not be possible to talk of imperfection
as a means to perfection. But surely it passes
toleration to talk of perfection as a means to imperfection.
The New Jerusalem may be a reality. It may be
a dream. But surely it is too outrageous to say
that the New Jerusalem is a reality on the road to
Birmingham.
. . . . .
This is the most enormous and at the same time the
most secret of the modern tyrannies of materialism.
In theory the thing ought to be simple enough.
A really human human being would always put the spiritual
things first. A walking and speaking statue of
God finds himself at one particular moment employed
as a shop assistant. He has in himself a power
of terrible love, a promise of paternity, a thirst
for some loyalty that shall unify life, and in the
ordinary course of things he asks himself, “How
far do the existing conditions of those assisting
in shops fit in with my evident and epic destiny in
the matter of love and marriage?” But here,
as I have said, comes in the quiet and crushing power
of modern materialism. It prevents him rising
in rebellion, as he would otherwise do. By perpetually
talking about environment and visible things, by perpetually
talking about economics and physical necessity, painting
and keeping repainted a perpetual picture of iron
machinery and merciless engines, of rails of steel,
and of towers of stone, modern materialism at last
produces this tremendous impression in which the truth
is stated upside down. At last the result is
achieved. The man does not say as he ought to
have said, “Should married men endure being modern
shop assistants?” The man says, “Should
shop assistants marry?” Triumph has completed
the immense illusion of materialism. The slave
does not say, “Are these chains worthy of me?”
The slave says scientifically and contentedly, “Am
I even worthy of these chains?”
XV
What I Found in My Pocket
Once when I was very young I met one of those men
who have made the Empire what it is—a man
in an astracan coat, with an astracan moustache—a
tight, black, curly moustache. Whether he put
on the moustache with the coat or whether his Napoleonic
will enabled him not only to grow a moustache in the
usual place, but also to grow little moustaches all
over his clothes, I do not know. I only remember
that he said to me the following words: “A
