“Whom neither kings nor mobs can cow”

Many must have quoted the stately tag from Virgil which says, “Happy were he who could know the causes of things,” without remembering in what context it comes.  Many have probably quoted it because the others have quoted it.  Many, if left in ignorance to guess whence it comes, would probably guess wrong.  Everybody knows that Virgil, like Homer, ventured to describe boldly enough the most secret councils of the gods. Everybody knows that Virgil, like Dante, took his hero into Tartarus and the labyrinth of the last and lowest foundations of the universe. Every one knows that he dealt with the fall of Troy and the rise of Rome, with the laws of an empire fitted to rule all the children of men, with the ideals that should stand like stars before men committed to that awful stewardship.  Yet it is in none of these connections, in none of these passages, that he makes the curious remark about human happiness consisting in a knowledge of causes.  He says it, I fancy, in a pleasantly didactic poem about the rules for keeping bees. Anyhow, it is part of a series of elegant essays on country pursuits, in one sense, indeed, trivial, but in another sense almost technical. It is in the midst of these quiet and yet busy things that the great poet suddenly breaks out into the great passage, about the happy man whom neither kings nor mobs can cow; who, having beheld the root and reason of all things, can even hear under his feet, unshaken, the roar of the river of hell.

– The Outline of Sanity (1926).

“Truth in politics”

We have sometimes been asked why we do not admire advertisers quite so much as they admire themselves.  One answer is that it is of their very nature to admire themselves.  And it is of the very nature of our task that people must be taught to criticize themselves; or rather (preferably) to kick themselves.  They talk about Truth in Advertising; but there cannot be any such thing in the sharp sense in which we need truth in politics.  It is impossible to put in the cheery terms of “publicity” either the truth about how bad things are, or the truth about how hard it will be to cure them. No advertiser is so truthful as to say, “Do your best with our rotten old typewriter; we can’t get anything better just now.” But we have really got to say, “Do your best with your rotten old machine of production; don’t let it fall to pieces too suddenly.” We seldom see a gay and conspicuous hoarding inscribed, “You are in for a rough time if you use our new kitchen-range.” But we have really got to say to our friends, “You are in for a rough time if you start new farms on your own; but it is the right thing.” We cannot pretend to be offering merely comforts and conveniences. Whatever our ultimate view of labour-saving machinery, we cannot offer our ideal as a labour-saving machine.  There is no more question of comfort than there is for a man in a fire, a battle, or a shipwreck. There is no way out of the danger except the dangerous way.

– The Outline of Sanity (1926).

“A stockbroker”

A stockbroker in one sense really is a very poetical figure. In one sense he is as poetical as Shakespeare, and his ideal poet, since he does give to airy nothing a local habitation and a name. He does deal to a great extent in what economists (in their poetical way) describe as imaginaries.  When he exchanges two thousand Patagonian Pumpkins for one thousand shares in Alaskan Whale Blubber, he does not demand the sensual satisfaction of eating the pumpkin or need to behold the whale with the gross eye of flesh. It is quite possible that there are no pumpkins; and if there is somewhere such a thing as a whale, it is very unlikely to obtrude itself upon the conversation in the Stock Exchange. Now what is the matter with the financial world is that it is a great deal too full of imagination, in the sense of fiction. And when we react against it, we naturally in the first place react into realism.

– The Outline of Sanity (1926).

A stockbroker in one sense really is a very poetical figure.
In one sense he is as poetical as Shakespeare, and his ideal poet,
since he does give to airy nothing a local habitation and a name.
He does deal to a great extent in what economists (in their poetical way)
describe as imaginaries.  When he exchanges two thousand
Patagonian Pumpkins for one thousand shares in Alaskan Whale Blubber,
he does not demand the sensual satisfaction of eating the pumpkin
or need to behold the whale with the gross eye of flesh.
It is quite possible that there are no pumpkins; and if there
is somewhere such a thing as a whale, it is very unlikely
to obtrude itself upon the conversation in the Stock Exchange.
Now what is the matter with the financial world is that it is
a great deal too full of imagination, in the sense of fiction.
And when we react against it, we naturally in the first place
react into realism.