The Outline of Sanity
by . New York: Dodd, Mead & Co. 1927. 8v0. viii+256 pp. 2.50.
‘ A MIXTURE of a gossip and a gospel’ Chesterton calls his last book, which is chiefly a reprint of articles dealing with his beloved Distributism. Defense of private property inspired by sad recognition that few people to-day can have any; return to small holdings; animosity against the department store and its kin; plea for manufacture to regain now and then at least its etymological meaning — here they are, his familiar motifs, paradoxically, discursively, but earnestly defended. There is no use in getting impatient with a w himsical mind. Some people enjoy, some don’t, economic theory illustrated by absurd anecdotes, or a pun doing duty for an argument. Plodding intellects are prone to scorn the nimblewitted, and ingenuity in phrase-making is usually found suspicious. But Chesterton’s hooks should not be regarded as a mere magazine of paradoxes. The puns often summarize close reasoning; the fables are true tales.
Here he is a ware that we are between two fires: the conflagration of capitalism, slowly consuming civilization, and will-o’-the-wisp socialism, hiring us toward a morass. This last he deems mirage, but be is as sure as anyone in Moscow that the glow in the opposite direction is burning up the world. So be follows tlie gleam of a Distributive State, descried by few eyes except bis own and those of Mr. Belloc. And he says good things about it. He thinks that tlie two enemy fires are tending to meet as they spread, that ‘socialism is the completion of capitalistic civilization’; nor is lie ever cleverer than when he demonstrates that our capitalist monopolies are developing the worst features of socialism, unredeemed by elements of tlie idealist dream. Averse, in the sacred name of Persons, to centralization and monopoly, he demands that our mad stampede in that direction lie stopped. Accordingly we are all to quit trading in big stores and to hunt, up wee shops in side streets. A number of us are to acquire little lots of land and live on them, growing turnips not to sell but to eat. ‘Consume what you produce!’ It. shall be a mystic battle cry. on the banners which high souls ready for sacrifice shall follow. And if we skeptically demand a more definite plan we are reminded that the author’s predecessors — Carlyle, Buskin, Arnold, Rousseau, and the rest — never had any. Chesterton for his part, declines to be discouraged; insists that ‘a law of nature can be recognized by resisting it,’ and that we can give up our bad ways if we like. Material prosperity may suffer — who, cares? ‘If we can make men happier it does not matter if we make them poorer, it does not matter if we make them less productive.’ To release men from tlie tyranny of the stereotype we must break up our regimented society.
No apology for vagueness is needed. Technical propositions of possible ways to counteract the rush to concentrate property appear casually in the midst of the fireworks. But the book is concerned rather with furthering an attitude than with presenting a programme, and the attitude is a popular one just now. The demand to set people free to be whole men. not pieces of men nor men run in moulds, is at work in the crudest forms of revolt among young people as well as in the theories of our social philosophers. A way out must be found, and the bureaucratic solutions proposed by socialist schools of the eighties are discredited. Whether peasant proprietorship is the way, who knows? Chesterton perceives that civilization is always going to have a number of diverse expressions. lie even realizes that sporadically, as in the case of Ford ears, mass production may restore individual freedom, or an electric power plant help the peasant to contentment which, parenthetically, happens in Switzerland, where electric bulbs inside the chalets contrast so queerly with manure heaps outside. The most ardent socialist can grant that the instinct for personal properly has a value not to be forfeited, and tlmt in the better society of the future the small farm, the small shop, may play a pleasant part. Chesterton would probably confess that he is nearer the. socialists than the capitalists. For the socialist appeal owes half its force to its indictment, with which lie is in complete accord, The spectacle of masses of men held in wage dependence is obnoxious to him. Between the capitalists and himself there can hardly be truce: between him and the socialists it is hard to discern a present quarrel, though the roads will obviously diverge in time. Ruskin could not energize Ins Guild of St. George; Tolstoy has bequeathed a memory of tragic defeat. Will Chesterton succeed where they failed? If not, lie will take failure with his own imperturbable good humor and optimism.
VIDA D. SCURDER