Avowals And Denials A Book Of Essays Author:G. K. Chesterton AVOWALS and DENIALS BOOK OF ESSAYS By G. K. CHESTERTON DODD, MEAD COMPANY NEW YORK 1935 . A M...... N. N.. Note THE essays of which this book is composed are reprinted, often with slight alterations, from the Illustrated London News, by kind permission of the proprietors of that paper. . Contents PAGE I ON MONSTERS AND LOGIC I II ON CHRISTMAS TH... more »AT IS COMING ... 8 III ON THE MAN ON THE SPOT . . . . 15 IV ON SHAW AND HIS BLACK GIRL .... 22 V ON THE ATHEIST MUSEUM 28 VI ON THE NEW PRUDERY 34 VII ON THE RETURN OF THE BARBARIAN . . 41 VIII ON WOMEN WHO VOTE 47 IX ON THE FALLACY OF EUGENICS . 53 X ON THE CLASSICISM OF THE TERROR . . 60 XI ON THE RETURN TO THE LAND .... 67 XII ON DIALECT AND DECENCY 74 XIII ON MAN HEIR OF ALL THE AGES . . . 8 1 XIV ON THE REAL ANIMAL 87 XV ON DOGS WITH BAD NAMES 94 XVI ON THE PRISON OF JAZZ IOO XVII ON THE DECEPTIBILITY OF YOUTH . . .107 XVIII ON THE DUKE OF MARLBOROUGH . . . 1 14 XIX ON THE CRANK AND THE CAD . . . .121 XX ON DREAMS 127 XXI ON THE FOSSIL OF A FANATIC .... 133 CONTENTS PAGE XXII ON BLAKE AND HIS CRITICS 139 XXIII ON THE INSTABILITY OF THE STATE . . . 146 XXIV ON A MELODRAMA 152 XXV ON THE ONE-PARTY SYSTEM . . . .158 XXVI ON BOOKS FOR PESSIMISTS 165 XXVII ON THE SCIENCE OF SOCIOLOGY . . .1 1 XXVIII ON THE LETTER-BAG NOVEL . . . .178 XXIX ON THE TOUCHY REALIST 184 XXX ON WORDSWORTH 191 XXXI ON FACING FACTS . . . , . . .198 XXXII ON FREE VERSE 205 XXXIII ON ERIC GILL 2U XXXIV ON PRUSSIAN PAGANISM 2 17 XXXV ON THE GREAT RELAPSE 224 XXXVI ON THE NEXT HUNDRED YEARS . . . ,231 AVOWALS AND DENIALS On Monsters and Logic AT the time of writing, the Press is boiling and bubbling with the emergence and appearance, or the submersion and disappearance, of the Monster who is supposed to live, for reasons best known to himself, at the bottom of Loch Ness. I need not say that such a Monster, whether or no he is an inhabitant of Loch Ness, is a very popular inhabitant of Fleet Street. He is doubtless a benevolent Monster and has helped many poor journalists to place paragraphs here and there. In the grand imagery of the Book of Job, he maketh the deep to boil like a pot and has also been the occasion of a good deal of pot-boiling. But all this is a casual and even happy accident, and does not affect the question itself one way or the other. Nor indeed am I myself primarily concerned to settle the question itself one way or the other. What interests me is the argument as an argument which has followed almost exactly in the ancient serpentine track of the Great Sea-serpent. I am not especially excited about these alleged animals and I do not understand why any body should be so curiously excited about them. I do not know, or care, whether there is a monster in the ON MONSTERS AND LOGIC loch, or a sea-serpent in the sea. But I am very much in terested in another monster a much more monstrous monster one so fantastic that he might well be a fabu lous monster. This monster is called Man and instead of the humps and horns and writhing tails, with which such creatures are credited, he has an abnormal ex crescence called a Head. In this, it has beeti conjectured, there resides some mysterious principle called a Mind but really, it has lately become almost as elusive and evasive as the Monster of Loch Ness. For the way in which most critics, especially sceptical critics, write about a thing like the lake-monster is very like the way in which they wrote about the sea-serpent. That is, it is both mysterious and mystical and irrational. First of all, there is a vague assumption, the very reverse of the truth, which is made silently at the start, and thus confuses the whole controversy the vague assump tion that the subject is in some way a semi-mystical sub ject. One article, by a very able journalist, actually opened with some such phrase as, In dealing with these stories of ghosts or monsters. I cannot for the life of me see that a sea-serpent is any more mystical than a . sea snail...« less