On Abolishing Sunday
From Come to Think of It by G.K.Chesterton
XXXIV. On Abolishing Sunday
THE report that the Bolshevist Government had abolished Sunday might be read in several ways. Some of the Bolshevists were of the race which might be expected to substitute Saturday. Others have a marked intellectual affinity to the great religion which, oddly enough, selects Friday. The Moslem day of rest is Friday; and, when I was in Jerusalem, very quaint results sometimes followed from the three religious festivals coming on the three successive days. It was complained that the Jews took an unfair advantage of the fact that their Sabbath ceases at sunset; but, anyhow, it was highly significant of a universal human need that the three great cosmopolitan communions, which all disagreed about the choice of a sacred day, all agreed in having one. They had fought and persecuted and oppressed and exploited each other in all sorts of ways. But they all had the profound human instinct of a Truce of God, in which men should, if possible, leave off fighting, and even (if the thought be conceivable) leave off exploiting.
If the Bolshevists have really declared war on the intrinsic idea of a common Day of Rest, it is not perhaps the first point in which they have proved themselves much stupider than Jews, Turks, infidels and heretics. We all tend to talk naturally about antiquated pedantry. But the most pedantic sort of pedant is he who is too limited to be antiquated. He is cut off from antiquity and therefore from humanity; he will learn nothing from things, but only from theories; and, in the very act of claiming to teach by experiment, refuses to learn by experience. There could hardly be a stronger example of this sort of deaf and dull impatience than a merely destructive attitude towards Sabbaths and special days. The fact that men have always felt them necessary only makes this sort of prig more certain that they are unnecessary. Their universality, even in variety, ought to warn him that he is dealing with something deep and delicate—something at once subtle and stubborn. I do not say that he is bound to consider them right; but he is bound to consider them. And he never does consider them, because he finds it the line of least resistance to condemn them. It is almost enough for him that mankind has always desired something; he will instantly set to work to deliver mankind from anything that it has always desired. Sooner or later, we shall doubt less see a movement for freeing men from the old and barbarous custom of eating food. We have already, for that matter, seen something like a movement for delivering them from the fantastic habit of drinking drinks. We shall have revolutionists denouncing the degrading necessity of going to bed at night. Alter all, the prostrate posture might be considered servile or touched with the superstitions of the suppliant. The true active, alert, and self-respecting citizen may reasonably be expected to stand upright for twenty-four hours on end. The progressive philosopher may be required to walk in his sleep, and even to talk in his sleep; and, considering what he says and where he walks to, it seems likely enough. Anyhow, the same sort of dehumanized philosophy which destroys the recurrence of one day in seven may well disregard the recurrence of six hours in twenty-four. We may see a vast intellectual revolt against the Slavery of Sleep. I can vividly imagine the pamphlets and the posters; the elaborate statistics showing that, if people never stopped working, they would produce more than they do at present; the lucid diagrams setting forth the loss to labour by the fact that few men axe actually at work in their factor while they are asleep in their beds. These scientific demonstrations are always so close and cogent. I can almost see the rows of figures showing successively in the case of coal, cotton, butter, boot-laces, pork and pig-iron, that in every single example more work would be done if every body could only go on working. It is true that this sort of argument is generally of most ultimate use to Capitalism. But so is Bolshevism.
But these true friends of Capitalism, who still call themselves Communists, do not, of course, mean that nobody should have any leisure, any more than that nobody should have any sleep. The Communists would say that there should be shifts of labour, and frequent recurrences of leisure; but so would the capitalists. They would say that the labour should be organized for all, and the leisure given in turn to each individual; but so would the Capitalists. There is really not much difference in the general plan of the factory system presided over by the collectivism of Moscow and the individualism of Detroit. It is only fair to say that Mr. Ford has forgotten what anybody ever meant by Individualism, quite as completely as the Bolshevist leaders have forgotten what they themselves originally meant by Bolshevism. The holiday is given to the individual, but there is nothing individual about it. It is given by an impersonal power by a mechanical rotation, over which the individual himself has no power. It is not given to him on his birthday, or the day of his patron saint, or even on the day that he would personally prefer; God forbid!— or, rather (as the Bolshevists would say), Godlessness forbid!
But, even apart from the failure of the solitary holiday to be a personal holiday, there is a deeper objection to the disappearance of a social holiday. It lies deep in the mysteries of human nature, the one thing which the pedantic revolutionist is always too impatient to understand. He will study mathematics in a week and metaphysics in a fortnight; and as for economics, he has picked up the whole truth about them by looking at a little pamphlet in the lunch-hour. But he will not study Man; he dodges that science by simply dismissing all the elements he cannot understand as superstitions. Now one thing that is essential to man is rhythm; and not merely a rhythm in his own life, but to some extent in the living world around him. I will even remark, chiefly for the pleasure of annoying the scientific sociologist, that the most profound and practical truth of the matter is found in the statement that God made the world in six days and rested on the seventh day. In other words, there is a rhythm at the back of things, and in the beginning and nature of the universe; and there must be something of the same kind in the social and secular manifestations of the world. Men are not happy if things always look the same; it is recognized in practice in the common medical case for what is called ‘a change’. The mere fact that a man has not got to do any work himself on Tuesday is a very small part of the general sense of release or refreshment that existed in an institution like Sunday. I once ventured to use the expression (though I put it into the mouth of a bull- terrier), ‘the smell of Sunday morning’. And I am prepared to say that there is such a thing, though my own sense of smell is very deficient compared with a bull-terrier’s. There is something in the very light and air of a world in which most people are not working, or not working as much or in the same way as usual, which satisfied the subconscious craving for crisis and fulfilment. If men have nothing but an endless series of days which look alike, it would matter little whether they were days of leisure or labour. They would not give that particular sense of something achieved, or, at least, of something measured; of the image of God resting on the seventh day. it is a psychological fact that such monotony would take on a character as of mathematical insanity. It would be like the endless corridors of a nightmare. Men have always known this by instinct, Pagans as well as Christians. And when nil humanity has agreed on the necessity for some thing, we may be perfectly certain that some sort of humanitarian will want to destroy it.
On Abolishing Sunday
From Come to Think of It by G.K.Chesterton
XXXIV. On Abolishing Sunday
THE report that the Bolshevist Government had abolished Sunday might be read in several ways. Some of the Bolshevists were of the race which might be expected to substitute Saturday. Others have a marked intellectual affinity to the great religion which, oddly enough, selects Friday. The Moslem day of rest is Friday; and, when I was in Jerusalem, very quaint results sometimes followed from the three religious festivals coming on the three successive days. It was complained that the Jews took an unfair advantage of the fact that their Sabbath ceases at sunset; but, anyhow, it was highly significant of a universal human need that the three great cosmopolitan communions, which all disagreed about the choice of a sacred day, all agreed in having one. They had fought and persecuted and oppressed and exploited each other in all sorts of ways. But they all had the profound human instinct of a Truce of God, in which men should, if possible, leave off fighting, and even (if the thought be conceivable) leave off exploiting.
If the Bolshevists have really declared war on the intrinsic idea of a common Day of Rest, it is not perhaps the first point in which they have proved themselves much stupider than Jews, Turks, infidels and heretics. We all tend to talk naturally about antiquated pedantry. But the most pedantic sort of pedant is he who is too limited to be antiquated. He is cut off from antiquity and therefore from humanity; he will learn nothing from things, but only from theories; and, in the very act of claiming to teach by experiment, refuses to learn by experience. There could hardly be a stronger example of this sort of deaf and dull impatience than a merely destructive attitude towards Sabbaths and special days. The fact that men have always felt them necessary only makes this sort of prig more certain that they are unnecessary. Their universality, even in variety, ought to warn him that he is dealing with something deep and delicate—something at once subtle and stubborn. I do not say that he is bound to consider them right; but he is bound to consider them. And he never does consider them, because he finds it the line of least resistance to condemn them. It is almost enough for him that mankind has always desired something; he will instantly set to work to deliver mankind from anything that it has always desired. Sooner or later, we shall doubt less see a movement for freeing men from the old and barbarous custom of eating food. We have already, for that matter, seen something like a movement for delivering them from the fantastic habit of drinking drinks. We shall have revolutionists denouncing the degrading necessity of going to bed at night. Alter all, the prostrate posture might be considered servile or touched with the superstitions of the suppliant. The true active, alert, and self-respecting citizen may reasonably be expected to stand upright for twenty-four hours on end. The progressive philosopher may be required to walk in his sleep, and even to talk in his sleep; and, considering what he says and where he walks to, it seems likely enough. Anyhow, the same sort of dehumanized philosophy which destroys the recurrence of one day in seven may well disregard the recurrence of six hours in twenty-four. We may see a vast intellectual revolt against the Slavery of Sleep. I can vividly imagine the pamphlets and the posters; the elaborate statistics showing that, if people never stopped working, they would produce more than they do at present; the lucid diagrams setting forth the loss to labour by the fact that few men axe actually at work in their factor while they are asleep in their beds. These scientific demonstrations are always so close and cogent. I can almost see the rows of figures showing successively in the case of coal, cotton, butter, boot-laces, pork and pig-iron, that in every single example more work would be done if every body could only go on working. It is true that this sort of argument is generally of most ultimate use to Capitalism. But so is Bolshevism.
But these true friends of Capitalism, who still call themselves Communists, do not, of course, mean that nobody should have any leisure, any more than that nobody should have any sleep. The Communists would say that there should be shifts of labour, and frequent recurrences of leisure; but so would the capitalists. They would say that the labour should be organized for all, and the leisure given in turn to each individual; but so would the Capitalists. There is really not much difference in the general plan of the factory system presided over by the collectivism of Moscow and the individualism of Detroit. It is only fair to say that Mr. Ford has forgotten what anybody ever meant by Individualism, quite as completely as the Bolshevist leaders have forgotten what they themselves originally meant by Bolshevism. The holiday is given to the individual, but there is nothing individual about it. It is given by an impersonal power by a mechanical rotation, over which the individual himself has no power. It is not given to him on his birthday, or the day of his patron saint, or even on the day that he would personally prefer; God forbid!— or, rather (as the Bolshevists would say), Godlessness forbid!
Sull’abolire la domenica
Da Come to Think of It di G.K. Chesterton
XXXIV. Sull’abolire la domenica
LA notizia che il Governo bolscevico avesse abolito la domenica poteva essere letta in vari modi. Alcuni bolscevichi erano di quella stirpe da cui ci si sarebbe potuto aspettare la sostituzione col sabato. Altri hanno una marcata affinità intellettuale con la grande religione che, per quanto strano, sceglie il venerdì. Il giorno di riposo dei musulmani è il venerdì; e, quando mi trovavo a Gerusalemme, dal cadere delle tre festività religiose nei tre giorni successivi scaturivano talvolta esiti assai bizzarri. Ci si lamentava che gli Ebrei traessero un vantaggio sleale dal fatto che il loro Sabato cessa al tramonto; ma, comunque sia, era altamente significativo di un bisogno umano universale che le tre grandi comunioni cosmopolite, che pur non concordavano affatto sulla scelta di un giorno sacro, concordassero tutte nell’averne uno. Si erano combattute e perseguitate e oppresse e sfruttate a vicenda in ogni sorta di modi. Ma tutte possedevano il profondo istinto umano di una Tregua di Dio, in cui gli uomini dovessero, se possibile, cessare di combattere, e persino (se il pensiero è concepibile) cessare di sfruttare.
Se i bolscevichi hanno davvero dichiarato guerra all’idea intrinseca di un comune Giorno di Riposo, non è forse il primo punto in cui si sono dimostrati assai più stupidi di Ebrei, Turchi, infedeli ed eretici. Tutti tendiamo a parlare con naturalezza di pedanteria antiquata. Ma il più pedante fra i pedanti è colui che è troppo limitato per essere antiquato. Egli è tagliato fuori dall’antichità e perciò dall’umanità; nulla imparerà dalle cose, ma solo dalle teorie; e, proprio nell’atto di pretendere di insegnare per mezzo dell’esperimento, rifiuta di imparare per mezzo dell’esperienza. Difficilmente vi potrebbe essere esempio più forte di questa sorta di sorda e ottusa insofferenza che un atteggiamento meramente distruttivo verso i Sabati e i giorni speciali. Il fatto che gli uomini li abbiano sempre sentiti necessari non fa che rendere questo genere di saccente più certo che siano superflui. La loro universalità, pur nella varietà, dovrebbe avvertirlo che ha a che fare con qualcosa di profondo e delicato: qualcosa insieme sottile e ostinato. Non dico che egli sia tenuto a considerarli giusti; ma è tenuto a considerarli. E non li considera mai, perché trova che condannarli sia la via di minor resistenza. Gli basta quasi che l’umanità abbia sempre desiderato qualcosa; si metterà all’istante all’opera per liberare l’umanità da tutto ciò che essa ha sempre desiderato. Prima o poi, non ne dubiteremo meno, vedremo un movimento per liberare gli uomini dall’antica e barbara usanza di mangiare il cibo. Del resto abbiamo già visto qualcosa di simile a un movimento per liberarli dalla fantastica abitudine di bere le bevande. Vedremo rivoluzionari denunciare la degradante necessità di andare a letto la notte. In fondo, la postura prostrata potrebbe essere considerata servile o toccata dalle superstizioni del supplice. Dal cittadino davvero attivo, vigile e rispettoso di sé ci si può ragionevolmente aspettare che se ne stia ritto in piedi per ventiquattro ore di fila. Al filosofo progressista si potrà richiedere di camminare nel sonno, e persino di parlare nel sonno; e, considerando ciò che dice e dove cammina, la cosa pare abbastanza probabile. Comunque, lo stesso genere di filosofia disumanizzata che distrugge il ricorrere di un giorno ogni sette può ben disprezzare il ricorrere di sei ore ogni ventiquattro. Potremo vedere una vasta rivolta intellettuale contro la Schiavitù del Sonno. Riesco a immaginare vividamente gli opuscoli e i manifesti; le elaborate statistiche che mostrano come, se la gente non smettesse mai di lavorare, produrrebbe più di quanto produca al presente; i lucidi diagrammi che espongono la perdita per il lavoro dovuta al fatto che pochi uomini sono effettivamente al lavoro nelle loro fabbriche mentre dormono nei loro letti. Queste dimostrazioni scientifiche sono sempre così serrate e stringenti. Riesco quasi a vedere le file di cifre che mostrano via via, nel caso del carbone, del cotone, del burro, dei lacci da scarpe, del maiale e della ghisa, che in ogni singolo esempio si compirebbe più lavoro se ogni corpo potesse solo continuare a lavorare. È vero che questo genere di argomentazione torna generalmente di massima utilità ultima al Capitalismo. Ma così è anche del Bolscevismo.
Ma questi veri amici del Capitalismo, che ancora si dicono Comunisti, non intendono affatto, si capisce, che nessuno debba avere alcun tempo libero, così come non intendono che nessuno debba avere sonno. I Comunisti direbbero che dovrebbero esserci turni di lavoro, e frequenti ricorrenze di riposo; ma così direbbero anche i capitalisti. Direbbero che il lavoro dovrebbe essere organizzato per tutti, e il riposo concesso a turno a ciascun individuo; ma così direbbero anche i Capitalisti. Non vi è in realtà gran differenza nel piano generale del sistema di fabbrica presieduto dal collettivismo di Mosca e dall’individualismo di Detroit. È giusto dire che il signor Ford ha dimenticato che cosa mai qualcuno abbia inteso con Individualismo, tanto completamente quanto i capi bolscevichi hanno dimenticato che cosa essi stessi intendessero in origine con Bolscevismo. La vacanza è concessa all’individuo, ma non vi è nulla di individuale in essa. È concessa da un potere impersonale mediante una rotazione meccanica, sulla quale l’individuo stesso non ha alcun potere. Non gli è concessa nel giorno del suo compleanno, o nel giorno del suo santo patrono, o nemmeno nel giorno che egli personalmente preferirebbe; Dio non voglia!— o, piuttosto (come direbbero i bolscevichi), l’assenza di Dio non voglia!
But, even apart from the failure of the solitary holiday to be a personal holiday, there is a deeper objection to the disappearance of a social holiday. It lies deep in the mysteries of human nature, the one thing which the pedantic revolutionist is always too impatient to understand. He will study mathematics in a week and metaphysics in a fortnight; and as for economics, he has picked up the whole truth about them by looking at a little pamphlet in the lunch-hour. But he will not study Man; he dodges that science by simply dismissing all the elements he cannot understand as superstitions. Now one thing that is essential to man is rhythm; and not merely a rhythm in his own life, but to some extent in the living world around him. I will even remark, chiefly for the pleasure of annoying the scientific sociologist, that the most profound and practical truth of the matter is found in the statement that God made the world in six days and rested on the seventh day. In other words, there is a rhythm at the back of things, and in the beginning and nature of the universe; and there must be something of the same kind in the social and secular manifestations of the world. Men are not happy if things always look the same; it is recognized in practice in the common medical case for what is called ‘a change’. The mere fact that a man has not got to do any work himself on Tuesday is a very small part of the general sense of release or refreshment that existed in an institution like Sunday. I once ventured to use the expression (though I put it into the mouth of a bull- terrier), ‘the smell of Sunday morning’. And I am prepared to say that there is such a thing, though my own sense of smell is very deficient compared with a bull-terrier’s. There is something in the very light and air of a world in which most people are not working, or not working as much or in the same way as usual, which satisfied the subconscious craving for crisis and fulfilment. If men have nothing but an endless series of days which look alike, it would matter little whether they were days of leisure or labour. They would not give that particular sense of something achieved, or, at least, of something measured; of the image of God resting on the seventh day. it is a psychological fact that such monotony would take on a character as of mathematical insanity. It would be like the endless corridors of a nightmare. Men have always known this by instinct, Pagans as well as Christians. And when nil humanity has agreed on the necessity for some thing, we may be perfectly certain that some sort of humanitarian will want to destroy it.
Ma, anche a prescindere dal fallimento della vacanza solitaria nel farsi vacanza personale, vi è un’obiezione più profonda alla scomparsa di una festa sociale. Essa giace nel profondo dei misteri della natura umana, l’unica cosa che il rivoluzionario pedante è sempre troppo impaziente per comprendere. Egli studierà la matematica in una settimana e la metafisica in una quindicina; e quanto all’economia, ne ha colto l’intera verità dando un’occhiata a un opuscoletto nell’ora di pranzo. Ma non studierà l’Uomo; schiva quella scienza semplicemente liquidando come superstizioni tutti gli elementi che non riesce a comprendere. Ora, una cosa essenziale per l’uomo è il ritmo; e non soltanto un ritmo nella sua propria vita, ma in certa misura anche nel mondo vivente attorno a lui. Osserverò persino, soprattutto per il piacere di irritare il sociologo scientifico, che la verità più profonda e pratica della questione si trova nell’affermazione che Dio fece il mondo in sei giorni e riposò il settimo giorno. In altre parole, c’è un ritmo dietro le cose, e nel principio e nella natura dell’universo; e dev’esserci qualcosa del medesimo genere nelle manifestazioni sociali e secolari del mondo. Gli uomini non sono felici se le cose hanno sempre lo stesso aspetto; lo si riconosce in pratica nel comune caso medico di ciò che si chiama ‘un cambiamento’. Il mero fatto che un uomo non debba svolgere lui stesso alcun lavoro di martedì è una piccolissima parte del generale senso di sollievo o ristoro che esisteva in un’istituzione come la domenica. Una volta osai usare l’espressione (per quanto la ponessi in bocca a un bull-terrier), ‘l’odore della mattina di domenica’. E sono pronto a dire che una cosa simile esiste, benché il mio olfatto sia assai carente rispetto a quello d’un bull-terrier. C’è qualcosa nella luce e nell’aria stesse di un mondo in cui la maggior parte della gente non lavora, o non lavora tanto o nel modo consueto, che soddisfaceva il subconscio anelito alla crisi e all’adempimento. Se gli uomini non avessero che una serie senza fine di giorni tutti uguali, poco importerebbe se fossero giorni d’ozio o di lavoro. Non darebbero quel particolare senso di qualcosa di compiuto, o, almeno, di qualcosa di misurato; dell’immagine di Dio che riposa nel settimo giorno. È un fatto psicologico che tale monotonia assumerebbe un carattere di follia matematica. Sarebbe come gli interminabili corridoi di un incubo. Gli uomini l’hanno sempre saputo per istinto, i pagani non meno dei cristiani. E quando tutta l’umanità si è accordata sulla necessità di qualcosa, possiamo essere perfettamente certi che qualche sorta di umanitarista vorrà distruggerla.