-=[ THE CASE FOR THE EPHEMERAL ]=-
[Excerpted from ALL THINGS CONSIDERED by G. K. Chesterton; an etext in progress, from an edition by John Lane Company, New York, 1909.
This etext was typed by Rob Szarka.]
I cannot understand the people who take literature seriously; but I can love them, and I do. Out of my love I warn them to keep clear of this book. It is a collection of crude and shapeless papers upon current or rather flying subjects; and they must be published pretty much as they stand. They were written, as a rule, at the last moment; they were handed in the moment before it was too late, and I do not think the commonwealth would have been shaken to its foundations if they had been handed in the moment after. They must go out now, with all their imperfections on their head, or rather on mine; for their vices are too vital to be improved with a blue pencil, or with anything I can think of, except dynamite.
Their chief vice is that so many of them are very serious; because I had no time to make them flippant. It is so easy to be solemn; it is so hard to be frivolous. Let any honest reader shut his eyes for a few moments, and approaching the secret tribunal of his soul, ask himself whether he would really rather be asked in the next two hours to write the front page of THE TIMES, which is full of long leading articles, or the front page of TIT-BITS, which is full of short jokes. If the reader is the fine conscientious fellow I take him for, he will at once reply that he would rather on the spur of the moment write ten TIMES articles than one TIT-BITS joke. Responsibility, a heavy and cautious responsibility of speech, is the easiest thing in the world; anybody can do it. That is why so many tired, elderly, and wealthy men go in for politics. They are responsible, because they have not the strength of mind left to be irresponsible. It is more dignified to sit still than to dance the Barn Dance. It is also easier. So in these easy pages I keep myself on the whole on the level of THE TIMES: it is only occasionally that I leap upwards almost to the level of TIT-BITS.
I resume the defence of this indefensible book. These articles have another disadvantage arising from the scurry in which they were written; they are too long-winded and elaborate. One of the great disadvantages of hurry is that it takes such a long time. If I have to start for Highgate this day week, I may perhaps go the shortest way. If I have to start this minute, I shall almost certainly go the longest. In these essays (as I read them over) I feel frightfully annoyed with myself for not getting to the point more quickly; but I had not enough leisure to be quick. There are several maddening cases in which I took two or three pages in attempting to describe an attitude of which the essence could be expressed in an epigram; only there was no time for epigrams. I do not repent of one shade of opinion here expressed; but I feel that they might have been expressed so much more briefly and precisely. For instance, these pages contain a sort of recurring protest against the boast of certain writers that they are merely recent. They brag that their philosophy of the universe is the last philosophy or the new philosophy, or the advanced and progressive philosophy. I have said much against a mere modernism. When I use the word “modernism,” I am not alluding specially to the current quarrel in the Roman Catholic Church, though I am certainly astonished at any intellectual group accepting so weak and unphilosophical a name. It is incomprehensible to me that any thinker can calmly call himself a modernist; he might as well call himself a Thursdayite. But apart altogether from that particular disturbance, I am conscious of a general irritation expressed against the people who boast of their advancement and modernity in the discussion of religion. But I never succeeded in saying the quite clear and obvious thing that is really the matter with modernism. The real objection to modernism is simply that it is a form of snobbishness. It is an attempt to crush a rational opponent not by reason, but by some mystery of superiority, by hinting that one is specially up to date or particularly “in the know.” To flaunt the fact that we have had all the last books from Germany is simply vulgar; like flaunting the fact that we have had all the last bonnets from Paris. To introduce into philosophical discussions a sneer at a creed’s antiquity is like introducing a sneer at a lady’s age. It is caddish because it is irrelevant. The pure modernist is merely a snob; he cannot bear to be a month behind the fashion.
Similarly I find that I have tried in these pages to express the real objection to philanthropists and have not succeeded. I have not seen the quite simple objection to the causes advocated by certain wealthy idealists; causes of which the cause called teetotalism is the strongest case. I have used many abusive terms about the thing, calling it Puritanism, or superciliousness, or aristocracy; but I have not seen and stated the quite simple objection to philanthropy; which is that it is religious persecution. Religious persecution does not consist in thumbscrews or fires of Smithfield; the essence of religious persecution is this: that the man who happens to have material power in the State, either by wealth or by official position, should govern his fellow-citizens not according to their religion or philosophy, but according to his own. If, for instance, there is such a thing as a vegetarian morality, then I say in the emphatic words of the arrogant French marquis before the French Revolution, “Let them eat grass.” Perhaps that French oligarch was a humanitarian; most oligarchs are. Perhaps when he told the peasants to eat grass he was recommending to them the hygienic simplicity of a vegetarian restaurant. But that is an irrelevant, though most fascinating, speculation. The point here is that if a nation is really vegetarian let its government force upon it the whole horrible weight of vegetarianism. Let its government give the national guests a State vegetarian banquet. Let its government, in the most literal and awful sense of the words, give them beans. That sort of tyranny is all very well; for it is the people tyrannising over all the persons. But “temperance reformers” are like a small group of vegetarians who should silently and systematically act on an ethical assumption entirely unfamiliar to the mass of the people. They would always be giving peerages to greengrocers. They would always be appointing Parliamentary Commissions to enquire into the private life of butchers. Whenever they found a man quite at their mercy, as a pauper or a convict or a lunatic, they would force him to add the final touch to his inhuman isolation by becoming a vegetarian. All the meals for school children will be vegetarian meals. All the State public houses will be vegetarian public houses. There is a very strong case for vegetarianism as compared with teetotalism. Drinking one glass of beer cannot by any philosophy be drunkenness; but killing one animal can, by this philosophy, be murder. The objection to both processes is not that the two creeds, teetotal and vegetarian, are not admissible; it is simply that they are not admitted. The thing is religious persecution because it is not based on the existing religion of the democracy. These people ask the poor to accept in practice what they know perfectly well that the poor would not accept in theory. That is the very definition of religious persecution. I was against the Tory attempt to force upon ordinary Englishmen a Catholic theology in which they do not believe. I am even more against the attempt to force upon them a Mohamedan morality which they actively deny.
Again, in the case of anonymous journalism I seem to have said a great deal without getting out the point very clearly. Anonymous journalism is dangerous, and is poisonous in our existing life simply because it is so rapidly becoming an anonymous life. That is the horrible thing about our contemporary atmosphere. Society is becoming a secret society. The modern tyrant is evil because of his elusiveness. He is more nameless than his slave. He is not more of a bully than the tyrant of the past; but he is more of a coward. The rich publisher may treat the poor poet better or worse than the old master workman treated the old apprentice. But the apprentice ran away and the master ran after him. Nowadays it is the poet who pursues and tries in vain to fix the fact of responsibility. It is the publisher who runs away. The clerk of Mr. Solomon gets the sack; the beautiful Greek slave of the Sultan Suliman also gets the sack; or the sack gets her. But though she is concealed under the black waves of the Bosphorus, at least her destroyer is not concealed. He goes behind golden trumpets riding on a white elephant. But in the case of the clerk it is almost as difficult to know where the dismissal comes from as to know where the clerk goes to. It may be Mr. Solomon or Mr. Solomon’s manager, or Mr. Solomon’s rich aunt in Cheltenham, or Mr. Solomon’s rich creditor in Berlin. The elaborate machinery which was once used to make men responsible is now used solely in order to shift the responsibility. People talk about the pride of tyrants; but we in this age are not suffering from the pride of tyrants. We are suffering from the shyness of tyrants; from the shrinking modesty of tyrants. Therefore we must not encourage leader-writers to be shy; we must not inflame their already exaggerated modesty. Rather we must attempt to lure them to be vain and ostentatious; so that through ostentation they may at last find their way to honesty.
The last indictment against this book is the worst of all. It is simply this: that if all goes well this book will be unintelligible gibberish. For it is mostly concerned with attacking attitudes which are in their nature accidental and incapable of enduring. Brief as is the career of such a book as this, it may last just twenty minutes longer than most of the philosophies that it attacks. In the end it will not matter to us whether we wrote well or ill; whether we fought with flails or reeds. It will matter to us greatly on which side we fought.
-=[ THE CASE FOR THE EPHEMERAL ]=-
[Excerpted from ALL THINGS CONSIDERED by G. K. Chesterton; an etext in progress, from an edition by John Lane Company, New York, 1909.
This etext was typed by Rob Szarka.]
I cannot understand the people who take literature seriously; but I can love them, and I do. Out of my love I warn them to keep clear of this book. It is a collection of crude and shapeless papers upon current or rather flying subjects; and they must be published pretty much as they stand. They were written, as a rule, at the last moment; they were handed in the moment before it was too late, and I do not think the commonwealth would have been shaken to its foundations if they had been handed in the moment after. They must go out now, with all their imperfections on their head, or rather on mine; for their vices are too vital to be improved with a blue pencil, or with anything I can think of, except dynamite.
Their chief vice is that so many of them are very serious; because I had no time to make them flippant. It is so easy to be solemn; it is so hard to be frivolous. Let any honest reader shut his eyes for a few moments, and approaching the secret tribunal of his soul, ask himself whether he would really rather be asked in the next two hours to write the front page of THE TIMES, which is full of long leading articles, or the front page of TIT-BITS, which is full of short jokes. If the reader is the fine conscientious fellow I take him for, he will at once reply that he would rather on the spur of the moment write ten TIMES articles than one TIT-BITS joke. Responsibility, a heavy and cautious responsibility of speech, is the easiest thing in the world; anybody can do it. That is why so many tired, elderly, and wealthy men go in for politics. They are responsible, because they have not the strength of mind left to be irresponsible. It is more dignified to sit still than to dance the Barn Dance. It is also easier. So in these easy pages I keep myself on the whole on the level of THE TIMES: it is only occasionally that I leap upwards almost to the level of TIT-BITS.
I resume the defence of this indefensible book. These articles have another disadvantage arising from the scurry in which they were written; they are too long-winded and elaborate. One of the great disadvantages of hurry is that it takes such a long time. If I have to start for Highgate this day week, I may perhaps go the shortest way. If I have to start this minute, I shall almost certainly go the longest. In these essays (as I read them over) I feel frightfully annoyed with myself for not getting to the point more quickly; but I had not enough leisure to be quick. There are several maddening cases in which I took two or three pages in attempting to describe an attitude of which the essence could be expressed in an epigram; only there was no time for epigrams. I do not repent of one shade of opinion here expressed; but I feel that they might have been expressed so much more briefly and precisely. For instance, these pages contain a sort of recurring protest against the boast of certain writers that they are merely recent. They brag that their philosophy of the universe is the last philosophy or the new philosophy, or the advanced and progressive philosophy. I have said much against a mere modernism. When I use the word “modernism,” I am not alluding specially to the current quarrel in the Roman Catholic Church, though I am certainly astonished at any intellectual group accepting so weak and unphilosophical a name. It is incomprehensible to me that any thinker can calmly call himself a modernist; he might as well call himself a Thursdayite. But apart altogether from that particular disturbance, I am conscious of a general irritation expressed against the people who boast of their advancement and modernity in the discussion of religion. But I never succeeded in saying the quite clear and obvious thing that is really the matter with modernism. The real objection to modernism is simply that it is a form of snobbishness. It is an attempt to crush a rational opponent not by reason, but by some mystery of superiority, by hinting that one is specially up to date or particularly “in the know.” To flaunt the fact that we have had all the last books from Germany is simply vulgar; like flaunting the fact that we have had all the last bonnets from Paris. To introduce into philosophical discussions a sneer at a creed’s antiquity is like introducing a sneer at a lady’s age. It is caddish because it is irrelevant. The pure modernist is merely a snob; he cannot bear to be a month behind the fashion.
-=[ IN DIFESA DELL’EFFIMERO ]=-
[Tratto da ALL THINGS CONSIDERED di G. K. Chesterton; un etext in corso d’opera, da un’edizione della John Lane Company, New York, 1909.
Questo etext è stato battuto a macchina da Rob Szarka.]
Non riesco a comprendere le persone che prendono la letteratura sul serio; ma posso amarle, e le amo. Per amore le avverto di tenersi alla larga da questo libro. È una raccolta di scritti grezzi e informi su argomenti attuali o piuttosto volanti; e devono essere pubblicati più o meno così come sono. Furono scritti, di regola, all’ultimo momento; furono consegnati un istante prima che fosse troppo tardi, e non credo che il bene comune sarebbe stato scosso nelle sue fondamenta se fossero stati consegnati un istante dopo. Devono uscire ora, con tutte le loro imperfezioni sul capo, o piuttosto sul mio; poiché i loro vizi sono troppo vitali per essere emendati con una matita blu, o con qualsiasi altra cosa mi venga in mente, tranne che con la dinamite.
Il loro vizio principale è che tanti di essi sono molto seri; perché non ho avuto tempo di renderli frivoli. È così facile essere solenni; è così difficile essere frivoli. Che ogni lettore onesto chiuda gli occhi per qualche istante e, avvicinandosi al segreto tribunale della propria anima, si chieda se davvero preferirebbe che gli venisse chiesto, nelle prossime due ore, di scrivere la prima pagina del TIMES, che è piena di lunghi articoli di fondo, oppure la prima pagina di TIT-BITS, che è piena di battute brevi. Se il lettore è il bravo e coscienzioso individuo che lo credo, risponderà subito che preferirebbe, su due piedi, scrivere dieci articoli del TIMES piuttosto che una sola battuta di TIT-BITS. La responsabilità, una pesante e cauta responsabilità del discorso, è la cosa più facile del mondo; chiunque può farlo. Ecco perché tanti uomini stanchi, anziani e facoltosi si danno alla politica. Sono responsabili, perché non hanno più la forza d’animo per essere irresponsabili. È più dignitoso starsene fermi che ballare il Barn Dance. Ed è anche più facile. Così in queste facili pagine mi mantengo nel complesso al livello del TIMES: è solo di tanto in tanto che spicco un balzo verso l’alto quasi fino al livello di TIT-BITS.
Riprendo la difesa di questo libro indifendibile. Questi articoli hanno un altro svantaggio derivante dalla fretta con cui furono scritti: sono troppo prolissi ed elaborati. Uno dei grandi svantaggi della fretta è che richiede tanto tempo. Se devo partire per Highgate fra una settimana da oggi, forse prenderò la via più breve. Se devo partire in questo istante, prenderò quasi certamente la più lunga. In questi saggi (mentre li rileggo) mi sento tremendamente irritato con me stesso per non essere andato al punto più rapidamente; ma non avevo abbastanza agio per essere rapido. Vi sono parecchi casi esasperanti in cui ho impiegato due o tre pagine nel tentare di descrivere un atteggiamento la cui essenza avrebbe potuto essere espressa in un epigramma; solo che non c’era tempo per gli epigrammi. Non mi pento di una sola sfumatura delle opinioni qui espresse; ma sento che avrebbero potuto essere espresse in modo tanto più breve e preciso. Per esempio, queste pagine contengono una sorta di ricorrente protesta contro il vanto di certi scrittori di essere semplicemente recenti. Si vantano che la loro filosofia dell’universo sia l’ultima filosofia o la nuova filosofia, o la filosofia avanzata e progressista. Ho detto molto contro il mero modernismo. Quando uso la parola “modernismo”, non alludo in modo particolare all’attuale disputa nella Chiesa cattolica romana, per quanto io sia certo stupito che un qualsiasi gruppo intellettuale accetti un nome così debole e antifilosofico. Mi è incomprensibile che un pensatore possa tranquillamente definirsi un modernista; tanto varrebbe che si definisse un giovediista. Ma a parte del tutto quella particolare agitazione, sono consapevole di una generale irritazione espressa contro le persone che si vantano del proprio progresso e della propria modernità nella discussione della religione. Ma non sono mai riuscito a dire la cosa del tutto chiara ed evidente che è realmente il difetto del modernismo. La vera obiezione al modernismo è semplicemente che esso è una forma di snobismo. È un tentativo di schiacciare un avversario razionale non con la ragione, ma con qualche misteriosa superiorità, insinuando di essere particolarmente aggiornati o particolarmente “dentro alle cose”. Ostentare il fatto di aver ricevuto tutti gli ultimi libri dalla Germania è semplicemente volgare; come ostentare il fatto di aver ricevuto tutte le ultime cuffie da Parigi. Introdurre in una discussione filosofica un sogghigno sull’antichità di un credo è come introdurre un sogghigno sull’età di una signora. È da villani perché è irrilevante. Il modernista puro non è che uno snob; non sopporta di essere un mese indietro rispetto alla moda.
Similarly I find that I have tried in these pages to express the real objection to philanthropists and have not succeeded. I have not seen the quite simple objection to the causes advocated by certain wealthy idealists; causes of which the cause called teetotalism is the strongest case. I have used many abusive terms about the thing, calling it Puritanism, or superciliousness, or aristocracy; but I have not seen and stated the quite simple objection to philanthropy; which is that it is religious persecution. Religious persecution does not consist in thumbscrews or fires of Smithfield; the essence of religious persecution is this: that the man who happens to have material power in the State, either by wealth or by official position, should govern his fellow-citizens not according to their religion or philosophy, but according to his own. If, for instance, there is such a thing as a vegetarian morality, then I say in the emphatic words of the arrogant French marquis before the French Revolution, “Let them eat grass.” Perhaps that French oligarch was a humanitarian; most oligarchs are. Perhaps when he told the peasants to eat grass he was recommending to them the hygienic simplicity of a vegetarian restaurant. But that is an irrelevant, though most fascinating, speculation. The point here is that if a nation is really vegetarian let its government force upon it the whole horrible weight of vegetarianism. Let its government give the national guests a State vegetarian banquet. Let its government, in the most literal and awful sense of the words, give them beans. That sort of tyranny is all very well; for it is the people tyrannising over all the persons. But “temperance reformers” are like a small group of vegetarians who should silently and systematically act on an ethical assumption entirely unfamiliar to the mass of the people. They would always be giving peerages to greengrocers. They would always be appointing Parliamentary Commissions to enquire into the private life of butchers. Whenever they found a man quite at their mercy, as a pauper or a convict or a lunatic, they would force him to add the final touch to his inhuman isolation by becoming a vegetarian. All the meals for school children will be vegetarian meals. All the State public houses will be vegetarian public houses. There is a very strong case for vegetarianism as compared with teetotalism. Drinking one glass of beer cannot by any philosophy be drunkenness; but killing one animal can, by this philosophy, be murder. The objection to both processes is not that the two creeds, teetotal and vegetarian, are not admissible; it is simply that they are not admitted. The thing is religious persecution because it is not based on the existing religion of the democracy. These people ask the poor to accept in practice what they know perfectly well that the poor would not accept in theory. That is the very definition of religious persecution. I was against the Tory attempt to force upon ordinary Englishmen a Catholic theology in which they do not believe. I am even more against the attempt to force upon them a Mohamedan morality which they actively deny.
Again, in the case of anonymous journalism I seem to have said a great deal without getting out the point very clearly. Anonymous journalism is dangerous, and is poisonous in our existing life simply because it is so rapidly becoming an anonymous life. That is the horrible thing about our contemporary atmosphere. Society is becoming a secret society. The modern tyrant is evil because of his elusiveness. He is more nameless than his slave. He is not more of a bully than the tyrant of the past; but he is more of a coward. The rich publisher may treat the poor poet better or worse than the old master workman treated the old apprentice. But the apprentice ran away and the master ran after him. Nowadays it is the poet who pursues and tries in vain to fix the fact of responsibility. It is the publisher who runs away. The clerk of Mr. Solomon gets the sack; the beautiful Greek slave of the Sultan Suliman also gets the sack; or the sack gets her. But though she is concealed under the black waves of the Bosphorus, at least her destroyer is not concealed. He goes behind golden trumpets riding on a white elephant. But in the case of the clerk it is almost as difficult to know where the dismissal comes from as to know where the clerk goes to. It may be Mr. Solomon or Mr. Solomon’s manager, or Mr. Solomon’s rich aunt in Cheltenham, or Mr. Solomon’s rich creditor in Berlin. The elaborate machinery which was once used to make men responsible is now used solely in order to shift the responsibility. People talk about the pride of tyrants; but we in this age are not suffering from the pride of tyrants. We are suffering from the shyness of tyrants; from the shrinking modesty of tyrants. Therefore we must not encourage leader-writers to be shy; we must not inflame their already exaggerated modesty. Rather we must attempt to lure them to be vain and ostentatious; so that through ostentation they may at last find their way to honesty.
The last indictment against this book is the worst of all. It is simply this: that if all goes well this book will be unintelligible gibberish. For it is mostly concerned with attacking attitudes which are in their nature accidental and incapable of enduring. Brief as is the career of such a book as this, it may last just twenty minutes longer than most of the philosophies that it attacks. In the end it will not matter to us whether we wrote well or ill; whether we fought with flails or reeds. It will matter to us greatly on which side we fought.
Analogamente trovo di aver tentato in queste pagine di esprimere la vera obiezione ai filantropi, e di non esserci riuscito. Non ho colto la semplicissima obiezione alle cause perorate da certi facoltosi idealisti; cause di cui quella detta astinenzialismo è il caso più forte. Ho usato molti termini ingiuriosi a proposito della cosa, chiamandola puritanesimo, o supponenza, o aristocrazia; ma non ho colto né enunciato la semplicissima obiezione alla filantropia; ossia che essa è persecuzione religiosa. La persecuzione religiosa non consiste in strumenti di tortura o nei roghi di Smithfield; l’essenza della persecuzione religiosa è questa: che l’uomo il quale per caso detiene il potere materiale nello Stato, sia per ricchezza sia per posizione ufficiale, governi i propri concittadini non secondo la loro religione o filosofia, ma secondo la propria. Se, per esempio, esiste una cosa come una morale vegetariana, allora dico, con le enfatiche parole dell’arrogante marchese francese prima della Rivoluzione francese, “Che mangino l’erba”. Forse quell’oligarca francese era un umanitario; la maggior parte degli oligarchi lo è. Forse quando disse ai contadini di mangiare l’erba stava raccomandando loro l’igienica semplicità di un ristorante vegetariano. Ma questa è una speculazione irrilevante, benché affascinantissima. Il punto qui è che se una nazione è davvero vegetariana il suo governo le imponga tutto l’orribile peso del vegetarianismo. Che il suo governo offra agli ospiti nazionali un banchetto vegetariano di Stato. Che il suo governo, nel senso più letterale e tremendo delle parole, dia loro fagioli. Quella specie di tirannia va benissimo; perché è il popolo che tiranneggia tutte le persone. Ma i “riformatori della temperanza” sono come un piccolo gruppo di vegetariani che agissero in silenzio e sistematicamente su un presupposto etico del tutto estraneo alla massa del popolo. Regalerebbero sempre titoli nobiliari agli erbivendoli. Nominerebbero sempre Commissioni parlamentari per indagare sulla vita privata dei macellai. Ogni volta che trovassero un uomo del tutto alla loro mercé, come un miserabile o un galeotto o un folle, lo costringerebbero ad aggiungere il tocco finale al suo disumano isolamento facendolo diventare vegetariano. Tutti i pasti per i bambini delle scuole saranno pasti vegetariani. Tutte le osterie di Stato saranno osterie vegetariane. Vi è un argomento assai più forte a favore del vegetarianismo rispetto all’astinenzialismo. Bere un bicchiere di birra non può, per nessuna filosofia, essere ubriachezza; ma uccidere un animale può, per questa filosofia, essere omicidio. L’obiezione a entrambi i procedimenti non è che i due credi, astinenziale e vegetariano, siano inammissibili; è semplicemente che non sono ammessi. La cosa è persecuzione religiosa perché non è fondata sulla religione esistente della democrazia. Costoro chiedono ai poveri di accettare nella pratica ciò che sanno benissimo che i poveri non accetterebbero in teoria. Questa è la definizione stessa della persecuzione religiosa. Ero contrario al tentativo dei Tory di imporre agli inglesi comuni una teologia cattolica in cui non credono. Sono ancora più contrario al tentativo di imporre loro una morale maomettana che essi attivamente rinnegano.
Di nuovo, nel caso del giornalismo anonimo mi pare di aver detto molto senza far emergere il punto con grande chiarezza. Il giornalismo anonimo è pericoloso, ed è velenoso nella nostra vita presente semplicemente perché essa sta così rapidamente diventando una vita anonima. È questa la cosa orribile della nostra atmosfera contemporanea. La società sta diventando una società segreta. Il moderno tiranno è malvagio a causa della sua inafferrabilità. È più senza nome del suo schiavo. Non è più prepotente del tiranno del passato; ma è più codardo. Il ricco editore può trattare il povero poeta meglio o peggio di come il vecchio maestro artigiano trattava il vecchio apprendista. Ma l’apprendista fuggiva e il maestro gli correva dietro. Oggigiorno è il poeta che insegue e tenta invano di fissare il fatto della responsabilità. È l’editore che fugge. L’impiegato del signor Solomon viene licenziato; anche la bella schiava greca del sultano Solimano viene messa nel sacco; o è il sacco a mettere lei. Ma sebbene ella sia celata sotto le onde nere del Bosforo, almeno il suo distruttore non è celato. Egli procede dietro trombe d’oro cavalcando un elefante bianco. Ma nel caso dell’impiegato è quasi altrettanto difficile sapere da dove venga il licenziamento quanto sapere dove vada l’impiegato. Può essere il signor Solomon o il direttore del signor Solomon, o la ricca zia del signor Solomon a Cheltenham, o il ricco creditore del signor Solomon a Berlino. L’elaborato macchinario che un tempo serviva a rendere gli uomini responsabili ora è usato unicamente per scaricare la responsabilità. Si parla dell’orgoglio dei tiranni; ma noi in quest’epoca non soffriamo dell’orgoglio dei tiranni. Soffriamo della timidezza dei tiranni; della schiva modestia dei tiranni. Perciò non dobbiamo incoraggiare gli articolisti a essere timidi; non dobbiamo infiammare la loro già esagerata modestia. Piuttosto dobbiamo tentare di adescarli a essere vanitosi e ostentatori; così che attraverso l’ostentazione possano infine trovare la via dell’onestà.
L’ultima accusa contro questo libro è la peggiore di tutte. È semplicemente questa: che se tutto andrà bene questo libro sarà un farfugliamento inintelligibile. Poiché esso si occupa perlopiù di attaccare atteggiamenti che sono per loro natura accidentali e incapaci di durare. Per quanto breve sia la carriera di un libro come questo, esso potrà durare giusto venti minuti più a lungo della maggior parte delle filosofie che attacca. Alla fine non ci importerà se scrivemmo bene o male; se combattemmo con correggiati o con canne. Ci importerà grandemente da quale parte combattemmo.