ress? There is a suggestion in this stanza that society pushes people into excessive actions.
Chesterton next lays out a seemingly silly, random series of reasons not to die. What is there to live for, but everyday life? One supposes tomorrow always is the day one takes one’s pay. And the sword recalls past honor—a mere reminder now of distant deeds of war? Beyond the advantageous and the noble, there is a vague matter tied to the religion of the place, a nuisance that might be avoided. These are supposed to be the mundane worries of our mundane lives, the kinds of things with which one keeps so busy as to pass the time. These are also the institutions that order society, if mentioned in passing. Yet they are piddling stuff, and talk of cookery is fit for Homer’s talking pigs, who have so reasonably learned to say the pleasant is the good. Save possibly the works of Juvenal, for he seems to have made a living telling all who’d listen how unbearable their lives were… For all that, the two reasons in the second half of the stanza are personal, individual, in a way the others are not quite. There is a motion from most general to most particular here that culminates in moralizing satire, which is not a surprise. If life were this assortment of unease and guilty memories, if life were this, the fighting vainly ‘gainst the old ennui, then life were not worth living and we’d all be reasonable to just go hang.
There is more at stake here. Let’s look at only one image: “My uncle’s sword is hanging in the hall.” Chesterton’s poetic rhetoric is at work here. First, the importance of this image is that it opposes the preceding. That was about the future, this is about the past. That was explicit, this one is not. That was about money or property or advantage, this is about reputation or honor. Secondly, the image itself, what it says. Forensic skill is required here: A sword is an officer’s weapon and it signifies some achievement. But an uncle is not a father or grandfather, so this is not a military family. At the same time, the uncle must have died in war, for otherwise, his sword would be hanging on his own wall, if at all. Thirdly, what is the importance to the stanza or poem of this past present to sight? The sword is followed by talk of a rector’s mother. These two things recall the old aristocratic order. These are two of the objects that relate to the past. This second stanza is about reasons to live, what there is to look forward to if one does not commit suicide. But this is the only one which might move a man to life. Why should that be? A soldier is tied up with death! Recall the opposition of future and past, money and honor. A soldier lives for his country and risks death for her, whereas a suicide cannot reasonably be said to be serving his country, or acting for anyone but himself. The family example further strengthens a kind of duty, because of likeness. One should not be unworthy of one’s own. The nearness in time and generations further suggests that honor is a living possibility, perhaps not only in war. All this leads to another, more serious matter. Manliness is the first of the moral virtues, without which no other is possible. Manliness is the man’s self-defense, but it extends to his own. A man then can hold his country as his own and defend it, but also principles. A man standing up for himself is implicitly standing up for man’s dignity. In what does this dignity consist? Why is man worth defending? In the very question we find the beginning of our answer: Manliness presupposes and affirms man’s ability to act. Human action is held to be worthy, and, implicitly, possible. That affirms the special dignity of man among the other beings. Man’s dignity is what a man needs to assert in order not to commit suicide.
The third stanza is taken up with a contempt for the most famous and most sophisticated educated people in Britain, then the world empire. There is a corruption in this sophistication, and it earns its natural or poetic punishment. The decadents do decay, irrespective of the truth or falsity of thei