Chesterton G.K. Heretics

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clever in dealing with the stomach of a spider, will make him preternaturally stupid in dealing with
the heart of man. He is making himself inhuman in order to understand humanity. An ignorance
of the other world is boasted by many men of science; but in this matter their defect arises, not
from ignorance of the other world, but from ignorance of this world. For the secrets about which
anthropologists concern themselves can be best learnt, not from books or voyages, but from the
ordinary commerce of man with man. The secret of why some savage tribe worships monkeys or
the moon is not to be found even by travelling among those savages and taking down their answers
in a note-book, although the cleverest man may pursue this course. The answer to the riddle is in
England; it is in London; nay, it is in his own heart. When a man has discovered why men in Bond
Street wear black hats he will at the same moment have discovered why men in Timbuctoo wear
red feathers. The mystery in the heart of some savage war-dance should not be studied in books of
scientific travel; it should be studied at asubscription ball. If a man desires to find out the origins
of religions, let him not go to the Sandwich Islands; let him go to church. If a man wishes to know
the origin of human society, to know what society, philosophically speaking, really is, let him not
go into the British Museum; let him go into society.
This total misunderstanding of the real nature of ceremonial gives rise to the most awkward
and dehumanized versions of the conduct of men in rude lands or ages. The man of science, not
realizing that ceremonial is essentially a thing which is done without a reason, has to find a reason
for every sort of ceremonial, and, as might be supposed, the reason is generally a very absurd one
absurd because it originates not in the simple mind of the barbarian, but in the sophisticated
mind of the professor. The learned man will say, for instance, The natives of Mumbojumbo Land
believe that the dead man can eat and will require food upon his journey to the other world. This
is attested by the fact that they place food in the grave, and that any family not complying with this
rite is the object of the anger of the priests and the tribe. To any one acquainted with humanity
this way of talking is topsy-turvy. It is like saying, The English in the twentieth century believed
that a dead man could smell. This is attested by the fact that they always covered his grave with
lilies, violets, or other flowers. Some priestly and tribal terrors were evidently attached to the neglect
of this action, as we have records of several old ladies who were very much disturbed in mind
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Heretics Gilbert K. Chesterton
because their wreaths had not arrived in time for the funeral. It may be of course that savages put
food with a dead man because they think that a dead man can eat, or weapons with a dead man
because they think that a dead man can fight. But personally I do not believe that they think anything
of the kind. I believe they put food or weapons on the dead for the same reason that we put flowers,
because it is an exiceedingly natural and obvious thing to do. We do not understand, it is true, the
emotion which makes us think it obvious and natural; but that is because, like all the important
emotions of human existence it is essentially irrational. We do not understand the savage for the
same reason that the savage does not understand himself. And the savage does not understand
himself for the same reason that we do not understand ourselves either.
The obvious truth is that the moment any matter has passed through the human mind it is finally
and for ever spoilt for all purposes of science. It has become a thing incurably mysterious and
infinite; this mortal has put on immortality. Even what we call our material desires are spiritual,
because they are human. Science can analyse a pork-chop, and say how much of it is phosphorus
and how much is protein; but science cannot analyse any man s wish for a pork-chop, and say how
much of it is hunger, how much custom, how much nervous fancy, how much a haunting love of
the beautiful. The man s desire for the pork-chop remains literally as mystical and ethereal as his
desire for heaven. All attempts, therefore, at a science of any human things, at a science of history,
a science of folk-lore, a science of sociology, are by their nature not merely hopeless, but crazy.
You can no more be certain in economic history that a man s desire for money was merely a desire
for money than you can be certain in hagiology that a saint s desire for God was merely a desire
for God. And this kind of vagueness in the primary phenomena of the study is an absolutely final
blow to anything in the nature of a science. Men can construct a science with very few instruments,
or with very plain instruments; but no one on earth could construct a science with unreliable
instruments. A man might work out the whole of mathematics with a handful of pebbles, but not
with a handful of clay which was always falling apart into new fragments, and falling together into
new combinations. A man might measure heaven and earth with a reed, but not with a growing
reed.
As one of the enormous follies of folk-lore, let us take the case of the transmigration of stories,
and the alleged unity of their source. Story after story the scientific mythologists have cut out of
its place in history, and pinned side by side with similar stories in their museum of fables. The
process is industrious, it is fascinating, and the whole of it rests on one of the plainest fallacies in
the world. That a story has been told all over the place at some time or other, not only does not
prove that it never really happened; it does not even faintly indicate or make slightly more probable
that it never happened. That a large number of fishermen have falsely asserted that they have caught
a pike two feet long, does not in the least affect the question of whether any one ever really did so.
That numberless journalists announce a Franco-German war merely for money is no evidence one
way or the other upon the dark question of whether such a war ever occurred. Doubtless in a few
hundred years the innumerable Franco-German wars that did not happen will have cleared the
scientific mind of any belief in the legendary war of 70 which did. But that will be because if
folk-lore students remain at all, their nature win be unchanged; and their services to folk-lore will
be still as they are at present, greater than they know. For in truth these men do something far more
godlike than studying legends; they create them.
There are two kinds of stories which the scientists say cannot be true, because everybody tells
them. The first class consists of the stories which are told everywhere, because they are somewhat
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