12 - Literature and the Counter-Revolution II

Summary

‘We may say broadly that free thought is the best of all the safeguards against freedom. Managed in a modern style the emancipation of the slave's mind is the best way of preventing the emancipation of the slave. Teach him to worry about whether he wants to be free, and he will not free himself … The man we see every day – the worker in Mr Gradgrind's factory, the little clerk in Mr Gradgrind's office – he is too mentally worried to believe in freedom. He is kept quiet with revolutionary literature. He is calmed and kept in his place by a constant succession of wild philosophies. He is Marxian one day, a Nietzscheite the next day, a Superman (probably) the next day; and a slave every day. The only thing that remains after all the philosophies is the factory. The only man who gains by all the philosophies is Gradgrind. It would be worth his while to keep his commercial helotry supplied with sceptical literature. And now I come to think of it, of course, Gradgrind is famous for giving libraries.’

G. K. Chesterton Orthodoxy (1908) 1961 edn p. 106.

‘There was sadness and decay, of course, in Hanoi, as there couldn't help being in a city emptied of all the well-to-do. For such as I there was sadness in the mere lack of relaxation: nothing in the cinemas but propaganda films, the only restaurants prohibitive in price, no café in which to while away the hours watching people pass. But the peasant doesn't miss the café, the restaurant, the French or the American film – he's never had them. […]