The Uses Of Diversity A Book Of Essays

Author : G K Chesterton
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 92 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (48 download)

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Download or read book The Uses of Diversity written by G K Chesterton and published by . This book was released on 2021-02-06 with total page 92 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: IN contemplating some common object of the modern street, such as an omnibus or a lamp-post, itis sometimes well worth while to stop and think about why such common objects are regarded ascommonplace. It is well worth while to try to grasp what is the significance of them-or rather, thequality in modernity which makes them so often seem not so much significant as insignificant. Ifyou stop the omnibus while you stop to think about it, you will be unpopular. Even if you try tograsp the lamp-post in your effort to grasp its significance, you will almost certainly bemisunderstood. Nevertheless, the problem is a real one, and not without bearing upon the mostpoignant politics and ethics of to-day. It is certainly not the things themselves, the idea and upshotof them, that are remote from poetry or even mysticism. The idea of a crowd of human strangersturned into comrades for a journey is full of the oldest pathos and piety of human life. Thatprofound feeling of mortal fraternity and frailty, which tells us we are indeed all in the same boat, isnot the less true if expressed in the formula that we are all in the same bus. As for the idea of thelamp-post, the idea of the fixed beacon of the branching thoroughfares, the terrestrial star of theterrestrial traveller, it not only could be, but actually is, the subject of countless songs.Nor is it even true that there is something so trivial or ugly about the names of the things as to makethem commonplace in all connexions. The word "lamp" is especially beloved by the moredecorative and poetic writers; it is a symbol, and very frequently a title. It is true that if Ruskin hadcalled his eloquent work "The Seven Lamp-Posts of Architecture" the effect, to a delicate ear, wouldnot have been quite the same. But even the word "post" is in no sense impossible in poetry; it canbe found with a fine military ring in phrases like "The Last Post" or "Dying at his Post." Iremember, indeed, hearing, when a small child, the line in Macaulay's "Armada" about "with looserein and bloody spur rode inland many a post," and being puzzled at the picture of a pillar-box or alamp-post displaying so much activity. But certainly it is not the mere sound of the word that makesit unworkable in the literature of wonder or beauty. "Omnibus" may seem at first sight a moredifficult thing to swallow-if I may be allowed a somewhat gigantesque figure of speech. This, itmay be said, is a Cockney and ungainly modern word, as it is certainly a Cockney and ungainlymodern thing. But even this is not true. The word "omnibus" is a very noble word with a very noblemeaning and even tradition. It is derived from an ancient and adamantine tongue which has rolled itwith very authoritative thunders: quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus. It is a word really morehuman and universal than republic or democracy. A man might very consistently build a temple forall the tribes of men, a temple of the largest pattern and the loveliest design, and then call it anomnibus. It is true that the dignity of this description has really been somewhat diminished by theillogical habit of clipping the word down to the last and least important part of it. But that is onlyone of many modern examples in which real vulgarity is not in democracy, but rather in the loss ofdemocracy. It is about as democratic to call an omnibus a bus as it would be to call a democrat a rat.