The Washington herald., 1920-10-31
BY @. h. CHESTERTON.
Copyright, 1920, Cross-Atlantic Newspaper
Service, Incl.

oeINASet 4nS'J'
y hear that Ernest Newman, that
lively and acute critic, has been
those of US who confessed that We
knew nothing about music. Why
he should suppose we are arrogant
about it, If he does think so. can
not quite understand. l, for one,
am fully conscious of my inferiority
to him and others in this deficiency:
nor is it. alas. the only deficiency.
I have sometimes thought 1t would
be wholesome to anybody who has
succeeded pretty well by some trick
of trade, to have a huge notice
board or diagram hung in front of
him all day; showing exactly where
he stood in all the other crafts and
competitions of mankind. Thus the
poets eye in a fine frenzy rolling,
as it rose from the pap on which an
entirely new type of willamette had
just sprung into being, would en-
counter the disconcerting facts and
figures about his suitability to be
a professional acrobat or pearl
diver. On the other hand. the radi-
ant victor in the great international
egg and spoon race can see at a
glance how very far down he
stands, so to speak, in the line of
those waiting for the post of as
tronomer royal. Most of US have
at least one or two gaps in our
general culture and information; and
sometimes whole departments of
knowledge are practically hidden
from whole generations and classes
of mankind. There is something
very defective and disproportionate
about even the ideal culture of a
modern man. 1t may be that Mr..
Newman is deeply read in medieval
theology which is still the subcon-
scious base of all morality; but it
Is also possible that he is not. He
must have at his fingers ends that
military art which has often turned
the fortunes of history; but he may
not. He would be none the less a
highly cultivated gentleman If he
did rot. Yet the mystical and the
military mind have been at least as
pivotal and practical in history as
the musical mind. 1 can admire
them all, but 1 have no claim to
possess any of them.
DepIores Musical Ignorance.
But my ignorance of music hap
pens to assist me with a convenient
metaphor in the more controversial
matter of my ignorance of science.
Several of my friends of this paper
have made very friendly protests
against my remarks on Darwinism.
and one of them, c. r. Crowther,
says that my conundrums about the
wing of the bat and similar things
could easily be solved on purely
Darwinian lines by any competent
zoologist, or even by one so incom-
petent as myself" The conundrum
in question, of course, concerns the
survival of features in their un-
finished state. If thing can fly it
may survive, and IL it has a wing
it may fly; but If it cannot fly with
half wing, why should IL survive
with half a wing? Yet Darwinism
presupposes that numberless gen.
erations could survive before one
generation could fly. Now it is
quite true that I am not even an
incompetent zoologist, and that Mr..
Crowther is more competent than /,
II only in the mere fact OF being
a zoologist at all. Nevertheless.
adhere to my opinion, and do so
Tor reason that seems 10 me
worthy of some little consideration.
I do IL because this does not hap
pen to be exactly one of those ques-
tions on which, as Il seems TO me,
the independent critic has really a
right TO check the specialist. For
II IL a larger question OF logic and
not a smaller question of fact. II
L. like the difficulty of believing that
n halfpenny eau fall head or tail
ioo times running which has moth.
lag 10 do with the numismatio value
of tho cain, N " THE the a flcuity
% bslieNinH that a mere tas could
make . inaf cheaper, watch has
nothinH a. 10 With the aEfafian
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- A. a.H.