G K Chesterton

What's Wrong with the World G K Chesterton

There is a popular philosophical joke intended to typify the endless and uselessarguments of philosophers; I mean the joke about which came first, the chicken or the egg?I am not sure that properly understood, it is so futile an inquiry after all. I am notconcerned here to enter on those deep metaphysical and theological differences of whichthe chicken and egg debate is a frivolous, but a very felicitous, type. The evolutionarymaterialists are appropriately enough represented in the vision of all things coming froman egg, a dim and monstrous oval germ that had laid itself by accident. That othersupernatural school of thought (to which I personally adhere) would be not unworthilytypified in the fancy that this round world of ours is but an egg brooded upon by a sacredunbegotten bird; the mystic dove of the prophets. But it is to much humbler functions that Ihere call the awful power of such a distinction. Whether or no the living bird is at thebeginning of our mental chain, it is absolutely necessary that it should be at the end of ourmental chain. The bird is the thing to be aimed at-not with a gun, but a life-bestowingwand. What is essential to our right thinking is this: that the egg and the bird must not bethought of as equal cosmic occurrences recurring alternatively forever. They must notbecome a mere egg and bird pattern, like the egg and dart pattern. One is a means and theother an end; they are in different mental worlds. Leaving the complications of the humanbreakfast-table out of account, in an elemental sense, the egg only exists to produce thechicken. But the chicken does not exist only in order to produce another egg. He may alsoexist to amuse himself, to praise God, and even to suggest ideas to a French dramatist. Being a conscious life, he is, or may be, valuable in himself. Now our modern politics are fullof a noisy forgetfulness; forgetfulness that the production of this happy and conscious life isafter all the aim of all complexities and compromises. We talk of nothing but useful menand working institutions; that is, we only think of the chickens as things that will lay moreeggs. Instead of seeking to breed our ideal bird, the eagle of Zeus or the Swan of Avon, orwhatever we happen to want, we talk entirely in terms of the process and the embryo. Theprocess itself, divorced from its divine object, becomes doubtful and even morbid; poisonenters the embryo of everything; and our politics are rotten eggs.