"Chesterton, G.K. - Usurers and other Essays" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chesterton G.K)

you are kind, think of the man who was kinder than you.

That is what was meant by having a patron saint. That is the link between
the poor saint who received bodily lepers and the great hotel proprietor
who (as a rule) receives spiritual lepers. But a word yet weaker than
"hotel" illustrates the same point--the word "restaurant." There again
you have the admission that there is a definite building or statue to
"restore"; that ineffaceable image of man that some call the image of God.
And that is the holiday; it is the restaurant or restoring thing that, by
a blast of magic, turns a man into himself.

This complete and reconstructed man is the nightmare of the modern
capitalist. His whole scheme would crack across like a mirror of Shallot,
if once a plain man were ready for his two plain duties--ready to live and
ready to die. And that horror of holidays which marks the modern
capitalist is very largely a horror of the vision of a whole human being:
something that is not a "hand" or a "head for figutes." But an awful
creature who has met himself in the wilderness. The employers will give
time to eat, time to sleep; they are in terror of a time to think.

To anyone who knows any history it is wholly needless to say that holidays
have been destroyed. As Mr. Belloc, who knows much more history than you
or I, recently pointed out in the "Pall Mall Magazine," Shakespeare's
title of "Twelfth Night: or What You Will" simply meant that a winter
carnival for everybody went on wildly till the twelfth night after
Christmas. Those of my readers who work for modern offices or factories
might ask their employers for twelve days' holidays after Christmas. And
they might let me know the reply.



V. THE CHURCH OF THE SERVILE STATE

I confess I cannot see why mere blasphemy by itself should be an excuse
for tyranny and treason; or how the mere isolated fact of a man not
believing in God should be a reason for my believing in Him.

But the rather spinsterish flutter among some of the old Freethinkers has
put one tiny ripple of truth in it; and that affects the idea which I wish
to emphasise even to monotony in these pages. I mean the idea that the
new community which the capitalists are now constructing will be a very
complete and absolute community; and one which will tolerate nothing
really independent of itself. Now, it is true that any positive creed,
true or false, would tend to be independent of itself. It might be Roman
Catholicism or Mahomedanism or Materialism; but, if strongly held, it
would be a thorn in the side of the Servile State. The Moslem thinks all
men immortal: the Materialist thinks all men mortal. But the Moslem does
not think the rich Sinbad will live forever; but the poor Sinbad will die
on his deathbed. The Materialist does not think that Mr. Haeckel will go
to heaven, while all the peasants will go to pot, like their chickens.