THE ETERNAL REVOLUTION - GK CHESTERTON ORTHODOXY

THE ETERNAL REVOLUTION FROM "ORTHODOXY" BY GKC:<br /><br /><br />vague modern<br />people take refuge in material metaphors; in fact, this is the chief<br />mark of vague modern people. Not daring to define their doctrine<br />of what is good, they use physical figures of speech without stint<br />or shame, and, what is worst of all, seem to think these cheap<br />analogies are exquisitely spiritual and superior to the old morality.<br />Thus they think it intellectual to talk about things being "high."<br />It is at least the reverse of intellectual; it is a mere phrase<br />from a steeple or a weathercock. "Tommy was a good boy" is a pure<br />philosophical statement, worthy of Plato or Aquinas. "Tommy lived<br />the higher life" is a gross metaphor from a ten-foot rule.<br /><br /> This, incidentally, is almost the whole weakness of Nietzsche,<br />whom some are representing as a bold and strong thinker.<br />No one will deny that he was a poetical and suggestive thinker;<br />but he was quite the reverse of strong. He was not at all bold.<br />He never put his own meaning before himself in bald abstract words:<br />as did Aristotle and Calvin, and even Karl Marx, the hard,<br />fearless men of thought. Nietzsche always escaped a question<br />by a physical metaphor, like a cheery minor poet. He said,<br />"beyond good and evil," because he had not the courage to say,<br />"more good than good and evil," or, "more evil than good and evil."<br />Had he faced his thought without metaphors, he would have seen that it<br />was nonsense. So, when he describes his hero, he does not dare to say,<br />"the purer man," or "the happier man," or "the sadder man," for all<br />these are ideas; and ideas are alarming. He says "the upper man,"<br />or "over man," a physical metaphor from acrobats or alpine climbers.<br />Nietzsche is truly a very timid thinker. He does not really know<br />in the least what sort of man he wants evolution to produce.<br />And if he does not know, certainly the ordinary evolutionists,<br />who talk about things being "higher," do not know either.<br /><br /><br />-----<br /><br /><br />We have said we must be fond of this world, even in order to change it.<br />We now add that we must be fond of another world (real or imaginary)<br />in order to have something to change it to.<br /><br /> We need not debate about the mere words evolution or progress:<br />personally I prefer to call it reform. For reform implies form.<br />It implies that we are trying to shape the world in a particular image;<br />to make it something that we see already in our minds. Evolution is<br />a metaphor from mere automatic unrolling. Progress is a metaphor from<br />merely walking along a road--very likely the wrong road. But reform<br />is a metaphor for reasonable and determined men: it means that we<br />see a certain thing out of shape and we mean to put it into shape.<br />And we know what shape.<br /><br /> Now here comes in the whole collapse and huge blunder of our age.<br />We have mixed up two different things, two opposite things.<br />Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to suit<br />the vision. Progress does mean (just now) that we are always changing<br />the vision. It should mean that we are slow but sure in bringing<br />justice and mercy among men: it does mean that we are very swift<br />in doubting the desirability of justice and mercy: a wild page<br />from any Prussian sophist makes men doubt it. Progress should mean<br />that we are always walking towards the New Jerusalem. It does mean<br />that the New Jerusalem is always walking away from us. We are not<br />altering the real to suit the ideal. We are altering the ideal:<br />it is easier.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />We may say broadly that free thought is the best of all the<br />safeguards against freedom. Managed in a modern style the emancipation<br />of the slave's mind is the best way of pr