A Miscellany of Men by G. K. Chesterton

Page 1 of 78

Produced by Michael Pullen, Michael K. Johnson, and Joe Moretti

A MISCELLANY OF MEN

By G. K. Chesterton

Contents

THE SUFFRAGIST

THE POET AND THE CHEESE

THE THING

THE MAN WHO THINKS BACKWARDS

THE NAMELESS MAN

THE GARDENER AND THE GUINEA

THE VOTER AND THE TWO VOICES

THE MAD OFFICIAL

THE ENCHANTED MAN

THE SUN WORSHIPPER

THE WRONG INCENDIARY

THE FREE MAN

THE HYPOTHETICAL HOUSEHOLDER

THE PRIEST OF SPRING

THE REAL JOURNALIST

THE SENTIMENTAL SCOT

THE SECTARIAN OF SOCIETY

THE FOOL

THE CONSCRIPT AND THE CRISIS

THE MISER AND HIS FRIENDS

THE MYSTAGOGUE

THE RED REACTIONARY

THE SEPARATIST AND SACRED THINGS

THE MUMMER

THE ARISTOCRATIC 'ARRY

THE NEW THEOLOGIAN

THE ROMANTIC IN THE RAIN

THE FALSE PHOTOGRAPHER

THE SULTAN

THE ARCHITECT OF SPEARS

THE MAN ON TOP

THE OTHER KIND OF MAN

THE MEDIAEVAL VILLAIN

THE DIVINE DETECTIVE

THE ELF OF JAPAN

THE CHARTERED LIBERTINE

THE CONTENTED MAN

THE ANGRY AUTHOR: HIS FAREWELL

THE SUFFRAGIST

Rightly or wrongly, it is certain that a man both liberal and chivalric, can and very often does feel a dis-ease and distrust touching those political women we call Suffragettes. Like most other popular sentiments, it is generally wrongly stated even when it is rightly felt. One part of it can be put most shortly thus: that when a woman puts up her fists to a man she is putting herself in the only posture in which he is not afraid of her. He can be afraid of her speech and still more of her silence; but force reminds him of a rusted but very real weapon of which he has grown ashamed. But these crude summaries are never quite accurate in any matter of the instincts. For the things which are the simplest so long as they are undisputed invariably become the subtlest when once they are disputed: which was what Joubert meant, I suppose, when he said, "It is not hard to believe in God if one does not define Him." When the evil instincts of old Foulon made him say of the poor, "Let them eat grass," the good and Christian instincts of the poor made them hang him on a lamppost with his mouth stuffed full of that vegetation. But if a modern vegetarian aristocrat were to say to the poor, "But why don't you like grass?" their intelligences would be much more taxed to find such an appropriate repartee. And this matter of the functions of the sexes is primarily a matter of the instincts; sex and breathing are about the only two things that generally work best when they are least worried about. That, I suppose, is why the same sophisticated age that has poisoned the world with Feminism is also polluting it with Breathing Exercises. We plunge at once into a forest of false analogies and bad blundering history; while almost any man or woman left to themselves would know at least that sex is quite different from anything else in the world.

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