[Extract from Chesterton's Book Heretics"(1907)]

Science and the Savages

A permanent disadvantage of the study of folk-lore and kindred

subjects is that the man of science can hardly be in the nature

of things very frequently a man of the world. He is a student

of nature; he is scarcely ever a student of human nature.

And even where this difficulty is overcome, and he is in some sense

a student of human nature, this is only a very faint beginning

of the painful progress towards being human. For the study

of primitive race and religion stands apart in one important

respect from all, or nearly all, the ordinary scientific studies.

A man can understand astronomy only by being an astronomer; he can

understand entomology only by being an entomologist (or, perhaps,

an insect); but he can understand a great deal of anthropology

merely by being a man. He is himself the animal which he studies.

Hence arises the fact which strikes the eye everywhere in the records

of ethnology and folk-lore--the fact that the same frigid and detached

spirit which leads to success in the study of astronomy or botany

leads to disaster in the study of mythology or human origins.

It is necessary to cease to be a man in order to do justice

to a microbe; it is not necessary to cease to be a man in order

to do justice to men. That same suppression of sympathies,

that same waving away of intuitions or guess-work which make a man

preternaturally 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 a

subscription 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 teamed 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 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 exceedingly 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 odd or clever;

there is nothing in the world to prevent their having happened to somebody

as an adventure any more than there is anything to prevent their

having occurred, as they certainly did occur, to somebody as an idea.

But they are not likely to have happened to many people.

The second class of their "myths" consist of the stories that are

told everywhere for the simple reason that they happen everywhere.

Of the first class, for instance, we might take such an example

as the story of William Tell, now generally ranked among legends upon

the sole ground that it is found in the tales of other peoples.

Now, it is obvious that this was told everywhere because whether

true or fictitious it is what is called "a good story;"

it is odd, exciting, and it has a climax. But to suggest that

some such eccentric incident can never have happened in the whole

history of archery, or that it did not happen to any particular

person of whom it is told, is stark impudence. The idea of shooting

at a mark attached to some valuable or beloved person is an idea

doubtless that might easily have occurred to any inventive poet.

But it is also an idea that might easily occur to any boastful archer.

It might be one of the fantastic caprices of some story-teller. It

might equally well be one of the fantastic caprices of some tyrant.

It might occur first in real life and afterwards occur in legends.

Or it might just as well occur first in legends and afterwards occur

in real life. If no apple has ever been shot off a boy's head

from the beginning of the world, it may be done tomorrow morning,

and by somebody who has never heard of William Tell.

This type of tale, indeed, may be pretty fairly paralleled with

the ordinary anecdote terminating in a repartee or an Irish bull.

Such a retort as the famous "je ne vois pas la necessite" we have

all seen attributed to Talleyrand, to Voltaire, to Henri Quatre,

to an anonymous judge, and so on. But this variety does not in any

way make it more likely that the thing was never said at all.

It is highly likely that it was really said by somebody unknown.

It is highly likely that it was really said by Talleyrand.

In any case, it is not any more difficult to believe that the mot might

have occurred to a man in conversation than to a man writing memoirs.

It might have occurred to any of the men I have mentioned.

But there is this point of distinction about it, that it

is not likely to have occurred to all of them. And this is

where the first class of so-called myth differs from the second

to which I have previously referred. For there is a second class

of incident found to be common to the stories of five or six heroes,

say to Sigurd, to Hercules, to Rustem, to the Cid, and so on.

And the peculiarity of this myth is that not only is it highly

reasonable to imagine that it really happened to one hero, but it is

highly reasonable to imagine that it really happened to all of them.

Such a story, for instance, is that of a great man having his

strength swayed or thwarted by the mysterious weakness of a woman.

The anecdotal story, the story of William Tell, is as I

have said, popular, because it is peculiar. But this kind of story,

the story of Samson and Delilah of Arthur and Guinevere, is obviously

popular because it is not peculiar. It is popular as good,

quiet fiction is popular, because it tells the truth about people.

If the ruin of Samson by a woman, and the ruin of Hercules by a woman,

have a common legendary origin, it is gratifying to know that we can

also explain, as a fable, the ruin of Nelson by a woman and the ruin

of Parnell by a woman. And, indeed, I have no doubt whatever that,

some centuries hence, the students of folk-lore will refuse altogether

to believe that Elizabeth Barrett eloped with Robert Browning,

and will prove their point up to the hilt by the, unquestionable fact

that the whole fiction of the period was full of such elopements

from end to end.

Possibly the most pathetic of all the delusions of the modern

students of primitive belief is the notion they have about the thing

they call anthropomorphism. They believe that primitive men

attributed phenomena to a god in human form in order to explain them,

because his mind in its sullen limitation could not reach any

further than his own clownish existence. The thunder was called

the voice of a man, the lightning the eyes of a man, because by this

explanation they were made more reasonable and comfortable.

The final cure for all this kind of philosophy is to walk down

a lane at night. Any one who does so will discover very quickly

that men pictured something semi-human at the back of all things,

not because such a thought was natural, but because it was supernatural;

not because it made things more comprehensible, but because it

made them a hundred times more incomprehensible and mysterious.

For a man walking down a lane at night can see the conspicuous fact

that as long as nature keeps to her own course, she has no power

with us at all. As long as a tree is a tree, it is a top-heavy

monster with a hundred arms, a thousand tongues, and only one leg.

But so long as a tree is a tree, it does not frighten us at all.

It begins to be something alien, to be something strange, only when it

looks like ourselves. When a tree really looks like a man our knees

knock under us. And when the whole universe looks like a man we

fall on our faces.