G K Chesterton

What's Wrong with the World G K Chesterton

A book of modern social inquiry has a shape that is somewhat sharply defined. It beginsas a rule with an analysis, with statistics, tables of population, decrease of crime amongCongregationalists, growth of hysteria among policemen, and similar ascertained facts; itends with a chapter that is generally called "The Remedy." It is almost wholly due to thiscareful, solid, and scientific method that "The Remedy" is never found. For this scheme ofmedical question and answer is a blunder; the first great blunder of sociology. It is alwayscalled stating the disease before we find the cure. But it is the whole definition and dignityof man that in social matters we must actually find the cure before we find the disease. The fallacy is one of the fifty fallacies that come from the modern madness for biologicalor bodily metaphors. It is convenient to speak of the Social Organism, just as it isconvenient to speak of the British Lion. But Britain is no more an organism than Britain is alion. The moment we begin to give a nation the unity and simplicity of an animal, we beginto think wildly. Because every man is a biped, fifty men are not a centipede. This hasproduced, for instance, the gaping absurdity of perpetually talking about "young nations"and "dying nations," as if a nation had a fixed and physical span of life. Thus people will saythat Spain has entered a final senility; they might as well say that Spain is losing all herteeth. Or people will say that Canada should soon produce a literature; which is like sayingthat Canada must soon grow a new moustache. Nations consist of people; the firstgeneration may be decrepit, or the ten thousandth may be vigorous. Similar applications ofthe fallacy are made by those who see in the increasing size of national possessions, asimple increase in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man. These people, indeed, even fall short in subtlety of the parallel of a human body. They do not even askwhether an empire is growing taller in its youth, or only growing fatter in its old age. But ofall the instances of error arising from this physical fancy, the worst is that we have beforeus: the habit of exhaustively describing a social sickness, and then propounding a socialdrug