THE EMPIRE OF THE IGNORANT

Utopia of Userers, et al

by Gilbert K. Chesterton

THE EMPIRE OF THE IGNORANT, UTOPIA OF USERERS, ET AL by Gilbert K. Chesterton
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That anarchic future which the more timid Tories professed to fear has
already fallen upon us. We are ruled by ignorant people. But the most
ignorant people in modern Britain are to be found in the upper class, the
middle class, and especially the upper middle class. I do not say it
with the smallest petulance or even distaste; these classes are often
really beneficent in their breeding or their hospitality, or their
humanity to animals.

There is still no better company than the young at the two Universities,
or the best of the old in the Army or some of the other services. Also,
of course, there are exceptions in the matter of learning; real scholars
like Professor Gilbert Murray or Professor Phillimore are not ignorant,
though they _are_ gentlemen. But when one looks up at any mass of the
wealthier and more powerful classes, at the Grand Stand at Epsom, at the
windows of Park-lane, at the people at a full-dress debate or a
fashionable wedding, we shall be safe in saying that they are, for the
most part, the most ill-taught, or untaught, creatures in these islands.


Literally Illiterate

It is indeed their feeble boast that they are not literally illiterate.
They are always saying the ancient barons could not sign their own
names--for they know less of history perhaps than of anything else. The
modern barons, however, can sign their own names--or someone else's for a
change. They can sign their own names; and that is about all they can do.
They cannot face a fact, or follow an argument, or feel a tradition; but,
least of all, can they, upon any persuasion, read through a plain
impartial book, English or foreign, that is not specially written to
soothe their panic or to please their pride. Looking up at these seats of
the mighty I can only say, with something of despair, what Robert Lowe
said of the enfranchised workmen: "We must educate our masters."

I do not mean this as paradoxical, or even as symbolical; it is simply
tame and true. The modern English rich know nothing about things, not
even about the things to which they appeal. Compared with them, the poor
are pretty sure to get some enlightenment, even if they cannot get liberty;
they must at least be technical. An old apprentice learnt a trade, even
if his master came like any Turk and banged him most severely. The old
housewife knew which side her bread was buttered, even if it were so thin
as to be almost imperceptible. The old sailor knew the ropes; even if he
knew the rope's end. Consequently, when any of these revolted, they were
concerned with things they knew, pains, practical impossibilities, or the
personal record.


But They Know

The apprentice cried "Clubs?" and cracked his neighbours' heads with the
precision and fineness of touch which only manual craftsmanship can give.
The housewives who flatly refused to cook the hot dinner knew how much or
how little, cold meat there was in the house. The sailor who defied
discipline by mutinying at the Nore did not defy discipline in the sense
of falling off the rigging or letting the water into the hold. Similarly
the modern proletariat, however little it may know, knows what it is
talking about.

But the curious thing about the educated class is that exactly what it
does not know is what it is talking about. I mean that it is startlingly
ignorant of those special things which it is supposed to invoke and keep
inviolate. The things that workmen invoke may be uglier, more acrid, more
sordid; but they know all about them. They know enough arithmetic to know
that prices have risen; the kind Levantine gentleman is always there to
make them fully understand the meaning of an interest sum; and the
landlord will define Rent as rigidly as Ricardo. The doctors can always
tell them the Latin for an empty stomach; and when the poor man is treated
for the time with some human respect (by the Coronet) it almost seems a
pity he is not alive to hear how legally he died.

Against this bitter shrewdness and bleak realism in the suffering classes
it is commonly supposed that the more leisured classes stand for certain
legitimate ideas which also have their place in life; such as history,
reverence, the love of the land. Well, it might be no bad thing to have
something, even if it were something narrow, that testified to the truths
of religion or patriotism. But such narrow things in the past have always
at least known their own history; the bigot knew his catechism; the
patriot knew his way home. The astonishing thing about the modern rich is
their real and sincere ignorance--especially of the things they like.


No!

Take the most topical case you can find in any drawing-room: Belfast.
Ulster is most assuredly a matter of history; and there is a sense in
which Orange resistance is a matter of religion. But go and ask any of
the five hundred fluttering ladies at a garden party (who find Carson so
splendid and Belfast so thrilling) what it is all about, when it began,
where it came from, what it really maintains? What was the history of
Ulster? What is the religion of Belfast? Do any of them know where
Ulstermen were in Grattan's time; do any of them know what was the
"Protestantism" that came from Scotland to that isle; could any of them
tell what part of the old Catholic system it really denied?

It was generally something that the fluttering ladies find in their own
Anglican churches every Sunday. It were vain to ask them to state the
doctrines of the Calvinist creed; they could not state the doctrines of
their own creed. It were vain to tell them to read the history of
Ireland; they have never read the history of England. It would matter as
little that they do not know these things, as that I do not know German;
but then German is not the only thing I am supposed to know. History and
ritual are the only things aristocrats are supposed to know; and they
don't know them.


Smile and Smile

I am not fed on turtle soup and Tokay because of my exquisite intimacy
with the style and idiom of Heine and Richter. The English governing
class is fed on turtle soup and Tokay to represent the past, of which it
is literally ignorant, as I am of German irregular verbs; and to represent
the religious traditions of the State, when it does not know three words
of theology, as I do not know three words of German.

This is the last insult offered by the proud to the humble. They rule
them by the smiling terror of an ancient secret. They smile and smile;
but they have forgotten the secret.