What's Wrong with the WorldChesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
Philosophy
What's Wrong with the World
Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
Social problems
Briefly, in the mere observation “a fine day” there is the whole great
human idea of comradeship. Now, pure comradeship is another of those
broad and yet bewildering things. We all enjoy it; yet when we come to
talk about it we almost always talk nonsense, chiefly because we suppose
it to be a simpler affair than it is. It is simple to conduct; but it is
by no means simple to analyze. Comradeship is at the most only one half
of human life; the other half is Love, a thing so different that one
might fancy it had been made for another universe. And I do not mean
mere sex love; any kind of concentrated passion, maternal love, or
even the fiercer kinds of friendship are in their nature alien to pure
comradeship. Both sides are essential to life; and both are known in
differing degrees to everybody of every age or sex. But very broadly
speaking it may still be said that women stand for the dignity of love
and men for the dignity of comradeship. I mean that the institution
would hardly be expected if the males of the tribe did not mount guard
over it. The affections in which women excel have so much more authority
and intensity that pure comradeship would be washed away if it were not
rallied and guarded in clubs, corps, colleges, banquets and regiments.
Most of us have heard the voice in which the hostess tells her husband
not to sit too long over the cigars. It is the dreadful voice of Love,
seeking to destroy Comradeship.
All true comradeship has in it those three elements which I have
remarked in the ordinary exclamation about the weather. First, it has
a sort of broad philosophy like the common sky, emphasizing that we are
all under the same cosmic conditions. We are all in the same boat, the
“winged rock” of Mr. Herbert Trench. Secondly, it recognizes this bond
as the essential one; for comradeship is simply humanity seen in that
one aspect in which men are really equal. The old writers were entirely
wise when they talked of the equality of men; but they were also very
wise in not mentioning women. Women are always authoritarian; they
are always above or below; that is why marriage is a sort of poetical
see-saw. There are only three things in the world that women do not
understand; and they are Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. But men
(a class little understood in the modern world) find these things the
breath of their nostrils; and our most learned ladies will not even
begin to understand them until they make allowance for this kind of cool
camaraderie. Lastly, it contains the third quality of the weather, the
insistence upon the body and its indispensable satisfaction. No one
has even begun to understand comradeship who does not accept with it a
certain hearty eagerness in eating, drinking, or smoking, an uproarious
materialism which to many women appears only hoggish. You may call the
thing an orgy or a sacrament; it is certainly an essential. It is at
root a resistance to the superciliousness of the individual. Nay, its
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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