G K Chesterton

What's Wrong with the World G K Chesterton

The fallacy is one of the fifty fallacies that come from the modern madness for biological orbodily metaphors. It is convenient to speak of the Social Organism, just as it is convenient to speakof the British Lion. But Britain is no more an organism than Britain is a lion. The moment we beginto give a nation the unity and simplicity of an animal, we begin to think wildly. Because every man isa biped, fifty men are not a centipede. This has produced, for instance, the gaping absurdity ofperpetually talking about "young nations" and "dying nations," as if a nation had a fixed andphysical span of life. Thus people will say that Spain has entered a final senility; they might as wellsay that Spain is losing all her teeth. Or people will say that Canada should soon produce a literature;which is like saying that Canada must soon grow a new moustache. Nations consist of people; thefirst generation may be decrepit, or the ten thousandth may be vigorous. Similar applications of thefallacy are made by those who see in the increasing size of national possessions, a simple increase inwisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man. These people, indeed, even fall short insubtlety of the parallel of a human body. They do not even ask whether an empire is growing tallerin its youth, or only growing fatter in its old age. But of all the instances of error arising from thisphysical fancy, the worst is that we have before us: the habit of exhaustively describing a socialsickness, and then propounding a social drug.