Chestertonian Philosophy.

Horowhenua Chronicle, 25 July 1910, Page 4

Chestertonian Philosophy.

A HOMIM ON HOUSES

(By G. K. Chesterton.) Within a stone's throw of my • house thoy are building house. lam glad they are building it and 3 am glad it is within a stone's throw; quite well within it, with a good catapult. Nevertheless, I have not yet oast the first stone at the new house—not being, strictly speaking, "without sin" in the matter of new houses. And, indeed, in such cases thero is a strong protest to be made. The whole curse of the last century has been what is called 1 the Swing _of the Pejidulum; that is, the idea that Main must go alternately from one extreme to the other. It is a shameful and even shocking fancy; it is tho denial of the whole dignity of mankind. When slan is alive he stands still. It is only when he is dead that he swings.

But whomever one meets modern thinkers (as on© often does) procrossing towards a. niadlhouse, one alway finds, on enquiry., that they have just had a splendid escape ifrom ancltlher madhouse), hundreds of people become Socialists, not because thoy have tried Socialism 'and found _ fit but because thev have tried" Individualism and ' found it particularly nasty. Thus many embrace Chrislt;ian Scionce solely they are cjuito sick of heathen science; they are so tired of believing that every tilling is matter _ (that • that will even take refuge in the revolting fable that everything is mind. Man ouglit to march' somewhere. But modern man (in his sick reaction) is ready to inarch nowhere— so long as it is the Other End of ' nowhere. The case of building houses s a strong instance of ithis. Early in tho nineteenth century our civilisation dlio.se to abandon the Greek and mediaeval idea Off a tiown with walls, limited, and designed', with a temple for faith and a mar-ket-place foj* politics ;and it chose f/i lot, t.lm citv ptow like <a jungle

with blind cruelty and .bestial unconsciousness ; so that London and Liverpool are the groat cities \v© now see. Well, people have reached against that; they (have grown tired of living in a city Which is as (lark and 'barbaric as a 'forest, only not as beautful, and there has been n exodus into the country of those who could afford it, and some I could name who can't. _ Now, as soon as this quita rational recoil occurred, it flew at once to the opposite extreme. People went about with 1 beaming faces, 'boasting that they were twenty-three miles from a station. RulWxing their Lands, they exclaimed in rollick" ng asides that their butcher only called once a month, and that their baker started out with' fresh hot loaves which were quite staile before they reached the table. A man would praise his little houso in a quiet valley, but gloomily admit (with a slight shake of the head) that a

human iwihdtatian on _ the distant horizon was faintly discernible on a clear day. Rival rnrailists won Id quarrel about which liad the most completely 'inconvenient postal service; and there wore many jealous heartburnings if one friend found out any uncomfortable puliation which the other friend had -thoughtlessly overlooked. In the feverish summer of ■ hia fanaticism there arose the phrase that this or that part of England

is being "built ovor." Now, thero is not the slightest olbjecition, ill itself, io England being ibuilt over by men, any more than there is to it sbeing (as it is already) built over by birds, or squirrels, or by spiders. But if birds' neets were so tiliick on a tree that on© could roc nothing but nests and no leaves at all, I should say that bird civilisation was becoming a bit decadent. If whenever I tried to walk down the road I found the whole thoroughfare one crawling oarp«t of spiders, closely interlocked, 1 should feel a distress verging on distaste. If one were at every turn crowded, elbowed, overlooked, overcharged, sweated, rack-rented, swindled, and sold up by avaricious and arrogant (squirrels, one miighit ia)t ildast •remonstrate. But the great towns have grown intolerable solely because of such suffocating vulgarities and tyrannies. It is not humanity that disgusts us in the huge cities; it is inhumanity. lit) is not that there are human beings, .but that they are not treated as such. We do not, I hope, dislike men and women; we only dislike their being made into a sort of jam; crushed together so that they are not merely powerless but shapeless. It is not the presence of people that makes London appalling. It is merely the aSsence of The People. Hherefore, I dance with joy to think .that any pant of England: is being built over so long as it is being built over in a human proportion. So long, in short, as I am not myself 'built over, like a pagan slave buried in the .foundations of a temple, or an American clerk in a star-striking pagoda of

flats, I am delighted to see the faces and the homes o fa race of bipeds, t owhic.h I am not only attracted by a strange affection, but to which also (by touching co-inci-denco) I actually happen to belong. I am not one desiring deserts. I am not Timon of Athens: if my town wore Athens I would stay in it. lam not Simeon Stylites; except in the .mournful sense that every Saturday I find myself on the top of this column. lam mot in the desert repenting of some monstrous sins; at least. I am repenting of thom all right, but. not in tho desert. I do not want tliie nearest human house to be too distant t osee; that is my objection to the wilderness. But neither do T want the nearest human house t« be too close ito see; that is my objection to the modern city. I love my fellow-man; I do not want him so far off that I can only observe anything of liim through a teleal cope, nor do I want him so close that) I can examine parts of him with a microscope. I want him within a stone's throw oF me; so that whenever it is really noceflsairy, I may throw the stone. Perhaps, after all, it may not be a stone. Perhaps, after (all, it may he a bouquet, or <a snowball, or a firework, or a Free Trade Leaf; perliaps they will ask £or a stone and I will give them bread. But it is essential that (they should be witihin reach ; how can I love my neighbour as myself if he gets out of range for snowballs? There should be no institution ouifc of th? reacli of an indignana or .admiding humanity. I could hitfc the nearest house Quite well with tihie catapult ; but the truth .is that the catapult belongs to a little boy I know; and, with characteristic youthful selfishness, he ihias taken it away.