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Heretics | Gilbert K. Chesterton | |
On Mr. Rudyard Kipling and Making the World Small |
Page 3 of 4 |
Being devoted to this multitudinous vision of duty, Mr. Kipling is naturally a cosmopolitan. He happens to find his examples in the British Empire, but almost any other empire would do as well, or, indeed, any other highly civilized country. That which he admires in the British army he would find even more apparent in the German army; that which he desires in the British police he would find flourishing, in the French police. The ideal of discipline is not the whole of life, but it is spread over the whole of the world. And the worship of it tends to confirm in Mr. Kipling a certain note of worldly wisdom, of the experience of the wanderer, which is one of the genuine charms of his best work. The great gap in his mind is what may be roughly called the lack of patriotism--that is to say, he lacks altogether the faculty of attaching himself to any cause or community finally and tragically; for all finality must be tragic. He admires England, but he does not love her; for we admire things with reasons, but love them without reasons. He admires England because she is strong, not because she is English. There is no harshness in saying this, for, to do him justice, he avows it with his usual picturesque candour. In a very interesting poem, he says that-- "If England was what England seems" --that is, weak and inefficient; if England were not what (as he believes) she is--that is, powerful and practical-- "How quick we'd chuck 'er! But she ain't!" |
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Heretics Gilbert K. Chesterton |
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