Fancies Versus FadsChesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
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Fancies Versus Fads
Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
English essays -- 20th century
Under the title of “How to Think” there are twenty-four rules of which
the first few are: “Empty Your Mind,” “Think of the Best Things,”
“Appreciate,” “Analyse,” “Prepare Physically,” “Prepare Mentally,” and
so on. I have met some earnest students of this school, who had
apparently entered on this course, but at the time of our meeting had
only graduated so far as the fulfilment of the first rule. It was more
obvious, on the whole, that they had succeeded in the preliminary
process of emptying the mind than that they had as yet thought of the
best things, or analysed or appreciated anything in particular. But
there were others, I willingly admit, who had really thought of certain
things in a genuinely thoughtful fashion, though whether they were
really the best things might involve a difference of opinion between us.
Still, so far as they are concerned, it is a school of thought, and
therefore worth thinking about. Having been able to this extent to
appreciate, I will now attempt to analyse. I have attempted to discover
in my own mind where the difference between us really lies, apart from
all these superficial jests and journalistic points; to ask myself why
it is exactly that their ideal vegetarian differs so much from my ideal
Christian. And the result of the concentrated contemplation of their
ideal is, I confess, a somewhat impatient forward plunge in the progress
of my initiation. I am strongly disposed to “Prepare Physically” for a
conflict with the ideal vegetarian, with the holy hope of hitting him on
the nose. In one of Mr. P. G. Wodehouse’s stories the vegetarian rebukes
his enemy for threatening to skin him, by reminding him that man should
only think beautiful thoughts; to which the enemy gives the unanswerable
answer: “Skinning you is a beautiful thought.” In the same way I am
quite prepared to think of the best things; but I think hitting the
ideal vegetarian on the nose would be one of the best things in the
world. This may be an extreme example; but it involves a much more
serious principle. What such philosophers often forget is that among the
best things in the world are the very things which their placid
universalism forbids; and that there is nothing better or more beautiful
than a noble hatred. I do not profess to feel it for them; but they
themselves do not seem to feel it for anything.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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