The New JerusalemChesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
Religion
The New Jerusalem
Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
Jerusalem; Jews -- Restoration; Palestine
more solid is involved than literary style. There is a logic
and justice in the distinction, even in the world of ideas.
That most people with much more education than the Arab, and therefore
much less excuse than the Arab, entirely ignore that distinction,
is merely a result of their ignoring ideas, and being satisfied
with long words. They like democracy because it is a long word;
that is the only thing they do like about it.
People are entitled to self-government; that is, to such
government as is self-made. They are not necessarily entitled
to a special and elaborate machinery that somebody else has made.
It is their right to make it for themselves, but it is also their
duty to think of it for themselves. Self-government of a simple
kind has existed in numberless simple societies, and I shall
always think it a horrible responsibility to interfere with it.
But representative government, or theoretically representative government,
of an exceedingly complicated kind, may exist in certain complicated
societies without their being bound to transfer it to others,
or even to admire it for themselves. At any rate, for good or evil,
they have invented it themselves. And there is a moral distinction,
which is perfectly rational and democratic, between such inventions
and the self-evident rights which no man can claim to have invented.
If the Arab says to me, "I don't care a curse for Europe; I demand bread,"
the reproach is to me both true and terrible. But if he says,
"I don't care a curse for Europe; I demand French cookery,
Italian confectionery, English audit ale," and so on, I think he is
rather an unreasonable Arab. After all, we invented these things;
in _auctore auctoritas_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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