This is thinking forwards.Now our modern discussions about everything,Imperialism,Socialism,or Votes for Women,are all entangled in an opposite train of thought,which runs as follows:-A modern intellectual comes in and sees a poker.He is a positivist;he will not begin with any dogmas about the nature of man,or any day-dreams about the mystery of fire.He will begin with what he can see,the poker;and the first thing he sees about the poker is that it is crooked.He says,"Poor poker;it's crooked."Then he asks how it came to be crooked;and is told that there is a thing in the world (with which his temperament has hitherto left him unacquainted)--a thing called fire.He points out,very kindly and clearly,how silly it is of people,if they want a straight poker,to put it into a chemical combustion which will very probably heat and warp it."Let us abolish fire,"he says,"and then we shall have perfectly straight pokers.Why should you want a fire at all?"They explain to him that a creature called Man wants a fire,because he has no fur or feathers.He gazes dreamily at the embers for a few seconds,and then shakes his head."I doubt if such an animal is worth preserving,"he says."He must eventually go under in the cosmic struggle when pitted against well-armoured and warmly protected species,who have wings and trunks and spires and scales and horns and shaggy hair.
If Man cannot live without these luxuries,you had better abolish Man."At this point,as a rule,the crowd is convinced;it heaves up all its clubs and axes,and abolishes him.At least,one of him.
Before we begin discussing our various new plans for the people's welfare,let us make a kind of agreement that we will argue in a straightforward way,and not in a tail-foremost way.The typical modern movements may be right;but let them be defended because they are right,not because they are typical modern movements.Let us begin with the actual woman or man in the street,who is cold;like mankind before the finding of fire.Do not let us begin with the end of the last red-hot discussion--like the end of a redhot poker.Imperialism may be right.But if it is right,it is right because England has some divine authority like Israel,or some human authority like Rome;not because we have saddled ourselves with South Africa,and don't know how to get rid of it.Socialism may be true.
But if it is true,it is true because the tribe or the city can really declare all land to be common land,not because Harrod's Stores exist and the commonwealth must copy them.Female suffrage may be just.But if it is just,it is just because women are women,not because women are sweated workers and white slaves and all sorts of things that they ought never to have been.Let not the Imperialist accept a colony because it is there,nor the Suffragist seize a vote because it is lying about,nor the Socialist buy up an industry merely because it is for sale.
Let us ask ourselves first what we really do want,not what recent legal decisions have told us to want,or recent logical philosophies'proved that we must want,or recent social prophecies predicted that we shall some day want.If there must be a British Empire,let it be British,and not,in mere panic,American or Prussian.If there ought to be female suffrage,let it be female,and not a mere imitation as coarse as the male blackguard or as dull as the male clerk.If there is to be Socialism,let it be social;that is,as different as possible from all the big commercial departments of to-day.The really good journeyman tailor does not cut his coat according to his cloth;he asks for more cloth.The really practical statesman does not fit himself to existing conditions,he denounces the conditions as unfit.History is like some deeply planted tree which,though gigantic in girth,tapers away at last into tiny twigs;and we are in the topmost branches.Each of us is trying to bend the tree by a twig:to alter England through a distant colony,or to capture the State through a small State department,or to destroy all voting through a vote.In all such bewilderment he is wise who resists this temptation of trivial triumph or surrender,and happy (in an echo of the Roman poet)who remembers the roots of things.
