Study Edition · Essay 81
On Sandals and Simplicity
Source: Chapter X of Heretics (1905). Text from Project Gutenberg #470. Complete. Archaic verb forms modernized; vocabulary kept and glossed.
In Heretics, Chesterton argues with the famous thinkers and fashions of his day. Around 1900, the “simple life” movement, inspired by the Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, urged people to wear sandals and loose wool clothing, eat vegetables, give up luxuries, and reject patriotism and war. Chesterton replies that real simplicity is a matter of the heart, not of diet or dress, and that the “simple lifers” are simple in small things but complicated in the big ones. Notice his reversals (“high living and plain thinking”), his comic tomato, and how he uses the child as the model of true simplicity.
70 sentences: 21 simple, 33 moderate, 16 complex. Hover a number for its paraphrase; click it for the full note.
Key Vocabulary
- boastfultoo proud of oneself
- robustnessstrength and good health
- perpetualnever ending
- etiquetterules of polite behaviour
- caviarexpensive fish eggs, eaten as a luxury
- ritualismdevotion to ceremonies
- raimentclothing
- hindrancesomething that gets in the way
- materialisticvaluing physical things above spiritual ones
- entréea dish served at dinner
- submissiongiving in; obedience
- rusticof the countryside
- abstractionan idea rather than a physical thing
- eloquencefluent, persuasive speaking
- superlativelyto the highest degree
- rationalizeto think something through by logic alone
The Essay
The great misfortune of the modern English is not at all that they are more boastful than other people (they are not); it is that they are boastful about those particular things which nobody can boast of without losing them.1 A Frenchman can be proud of being bold and logical, and still remain bold and logical.2 A German can be proud of being reflective and orderly, and still remain reflective and orderly.3 But an Englishman cannot be proud of being simple and direct, and still remain simple and direct.4 In the matter of these strange virtues, to know them is to kill them.5 A man may be conscious of being heroic or conscious of being divine, but he cannot (in spite of all the Anglo-Saxon poets) be conscious of being unconscious.6
Now, I do not think that it can be honestly denied that some portion of this impossibility attaches to a class very different in their own opinion, at least, to the school of Anglo-Saxonism.7 I mean that school of the simple life, commonly associated with Tolstoy.8 If a perpetual talk about one’s own robustness leads to being less robust, it is even more true that a perpetual talking about one’s own simplicity leads to being less simple.9 One great complaint, I think, must stand against the modern upholders of the simple life—the simple life in all its varied forms, from vegetarianism to the honourable consistency of the Doukhobors.10 This complaint against them stands, that they would make us simple in the unimportant things, but complex in the important things.11 They would make us simple in the things that do not matter—that is, in diet, in costume, in etiquette, in economic system.12 But they would make us complex in the things that do matter—in philosophy, in loyalty, in spiritual acceptance, and spiritual rejection.13 It does not so very much matter whether a man eats a grilled tomato or a plain tomato; it does very much matter whether he eats a plain tomato with a grilled mind.14 The only kind of simplicity worth preserving is the simplicity of the heart, the simplicity which accepts and enjoys.15 There may be a reasonable doubt as to what system preserves this; there can surely be no doubt that a system of simplicity destroys it.16 There is more simplicity in the man who eats caviar on impulse than in the man who eats grape-nuts on principle.17 The chief error of these people is to be found in the very phrase to which they are most attached—“plain living and high thinking.”18 These people do not stand in need of, will not be improved by, plain living and high thinking.19 They stand in need of the contrary.20 They would be improved by high living and plain thinking.21 A little high living (I say, having a full sense of responsibility, a little high living) would teach them the force and meaning of the human festivities, of the banquet that has gone on from the beginning of the world.22 It would teach them the historic fact that the artificial is, if anything, older than the natural.23 It would teach them that the loving-cup is as old as any hunger.24 It would teach them that ritualism is older than any religion.25 And a little plain thinking would teach them how harsh and fanciful are the mass of their own ethics, how very civilized and very complicated must be the brain of the Tolstoyan who really believes it to be evil to love one’s country and wicked to strike a blow.26
A man approaches, wearing sandals and simple raiment, a raw tomato held firmly in his right hand, and says, “The affections of family and country alike are hindrances to the fuller development of human love;” but the plain thinker will only answer him, with a wonder not untinged with admiration, “What a great deal of trouble you must have taken in order to feel like that.”27 High living will reject the tomato.28 Plain thinking will equally decisively reject the idea of the invariable sinfulness of war.29 High living will convince us that nothing is more materialistic than to despise a pleasure as purely material.30 And plain thinking will convince us that nothing is more materialistic than to reserve our horror chiefly for material wounds.31
The only simplicity that matters is the simplicity of the heart.32 If that is gone, it can be brought back by no turnips or cellular clothing; but only by tears and terror and the fires that are not quenched.33 If that remains, it matters very little if a few Early Victorian armchairs remain along with it.34 Let us put a complex entrée into a simple old gentleman; let us not put a simple entrée into a complex old gentleman.35 So long as human society will leave my spiritual inside alone, I will allow it, with a comparative submission, to work its wild will with my physical interior.36 I will submit to cigars.37 I will meekly embrace a bottle of Burgundy.38 I will humble myself to a hansom cab.39 If only by this means I may preserve to myself the virginity of the spirit, which enjoys with astonishment and fear.40 I do not say that these are the only methods of preserving it.41 I incline to the belief that there are others.42 But I will have nothing to do with simplicity which lacks the fear, the astonishment, and the joy alike.43 I will have nothing to do with the devilish vision of a child who is too simple to like toys.44
The child is, indeed, in these, and many other matters, the best guide.45 And in nothing is the child so righteously childlike, in nothing does he exhibit more accurately the sounder order of simplicity, than in the fact that he sees everything with a simple pleasure, even the complex things.46 The false type of naturalness harps always on the distinction between the natural and the artificial.47 The higher kind of naturalness ignores that distinction.48 To the child the tree and the lamp-post are as natural and as artificial as each other; or rather, neither of them are natural but both supernatural.49 For both are splendid and unexplained.50 The flower with which God crowns the one, and the flame with which Sam the lamplighter crowns the other, are equally of the gold of fairy-tales.51 In the middle of the wildest fields the most rustic child is, ten to one, playing at steam-engines.52 And the only spiritual or philosophical objection to steam-engines is not that men pay for them or work at them, or make them very ugly, or even that men are killed by them; but merely that men do not play at them.53 The evil is that the childish poetry of clockwork does not remain.54 The wrong is not that engines are too much admired, but that they are not admired enough.55 The sin is not that engines are mechanical, but that men are mechanical.56
In this matter, then, as in all the other matters treated in this book, our main conclusion is that it is a fundamental point of view, a philosophy or religion which is needed, and not any change in habit or social routine.57 The things we need most for immediate practical purposes are all abstractions.58 We need a right view of the human lot, a right view of the human society; and if we were living eagerly and angrily in the enthusiasm of those things, we should, ipso facto, be living simply in the genuine and spiritual sense.59 Desire and danger make every one simple.60 And to those who talk to us with interfering eloquence about Jaeger and the pores of the skin, and about Plasmon and the coats of the stomach, at them shall only be hurled the words that are hurled at fops and gluttons, “Take no thought what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink, or wherewithal ye shall be clothed.61 For after all these things do the Gentiles seek.62 But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.”63 Those amazing words are not only extraordinarily good, practical politics; they are also superlatively good hygiene.64 The one supreme way of making all those processes go right, the processes of health, and strength, and grace, and beauty, the one and only way of making certain of their accuracy, is to think about something else.65 If a man is bent on climbing into the seventh heaven, he may be quite easy about the pores of his skin.66 If he harnesses his waggon to a star, the process will have a most satisfactory effect upon the coats of his stomach.67 For the thing called “taking thought,” the thing for which the best modern word is “rationalizing,” is in its nature, inapplicable to all plain and urgent things.68 Men take thought and ponder rationalistically, touching remote things—things that only theoretically matter, such as the transit of Venus.69 But only at their peril can men rationalize about so practical a matter as health.70
Sentence Notes
In plain English: The big problem with the modern English is not that they boast more than other people (they don't), but that they boast about exactly the things that you lose as soon as you boast about them.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: The opening paradox: some virtues vanish the moment you claim them.
In plain English: A Frenchman can be proud of being bold and logical and still be bold and logical.
In plain English: A German can be proud of being thoughtful and orderly and still be thoughtful and orderly.
Reference & context: These are national stereotypes of the time, used here for humour.
In plain English: But an Englishman can't be proud of being simple and straightforward and still be simple and straightforward.
In plain English: With these odd virtues, becoming aware of them destroys them.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: A compact epigram that sums up the paragraph.
In plain English: A man may know he is heroic, or even know he is divine, but he can't (whatever the patriotic English poets say) be aware of being unaware of himself.
Reference & context: Around 1900, writers such as Kipling praised the “Anglo-Saxon” race for its unselfconscious, natural vigour.
In plain English: Now I think it can't honestly be denied that some of this same impossibility applies to a group of people who think of themselves as very different from the Anglo-Saxon patriots.
In plain English: I mean the “simple life” movement, usually linked with Tolstoy.
Reference & context: Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910), author of War and Peace, gave up his wealth in later life, dressed as a peasant, became vegetarian and preached non-violence.
In plain English: If constantly talking about how strong you are makes you less strong, it's even more true that constantly talking about how simple you are makes you less simple.
In plain English: I think one major complaint must be made against today's defenders of the simple life, in all its forms, from vegetarianism to the admirably consistent Doukhobors.
Reference & context: The Doukhobors were Russian Christian pacifists who refused military service; with Tolstoy's help, thousands emigrated to Canada in 1899.
In plain English: The complaint is this: they would make us simple in the things that don't matter, but complicated in the things that do.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: The thesis of the essay, in one balanced sentence.
In plain English: They would make us simple in unimportant things: food, clothes, manners and economics.
In plain English: But they would make us complicated in the important things: in our beliefs, our loyalties, and what our souls accept or reject.
In plain English: It doesn't matter much whether a man eats a cooked tomato or a raw one; it matters a great deal if he eats a raw tomato with an over-cooked, overheated mind.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: A comic transfer of the adjective from the tomato to the mind.
In plain English: The only simplicity worth keeping is simplicity of heart, the kind that accepts and enjoys things.
In plain English: We may reasonably wonder what way of life keeps it alive; but surely a planned “system” of simplicity kills it.
In plain English: A man who eats caviar on a whim is simpler than a man who eats health cereal because of his principles.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: A perfectly balanced contrast: luxury on impulse versus plainness on principle.
Reference & context: Grape-Nuts, an American health-food breakfast cereal, was launched in 1897.
In plain English: These people's main mistake is in the very phrase they love most: “plain living and high thinking.”
Reference & context: From Wordsworth's sonnet “O Friend! I know not which way I must look” (1802): “Plain living and high thinking are no more.”
In plain English: These people don't need, and won't be improved by, plain living and high thinking.
In plain English: They need the opposite.
In plain English: They would be improved by living well and thinking plainly.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: Chesterton simply swaps the two adjectives, a classic chiasmus (reversed pattern).
In plain English: A little luxury (and I say this fully aware of what I'm saying, a little luxury) would teach them the power and meaning of human celebrations, of the feast that has been going on since the world began.
In plain English: It would teach them the historical fact that the artificial is, if anything, older than the natural.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: A deliberately startling claim: humans have always made things, held feasts and performed rituals.
In plain English: It would teach them that the shared celebration cup is as old as hunger itself.
Reference & context: A loving-cup is a large two-handled cup passed around at a feast for everyone to drink from.
In plain English: It would teach them that ceremony is older than any religion.
In plain English: And a little plain thinking would show them how harsh and far-fetched most of their own morality is, and how very sophisticated and complicated the mind of a Tolstoyan must be to truly believe that loving your country is evil and that striking any blow is wicked.
Reference & context: Tolstoy taught total non-violence and rejected patriotism. Chesterton was a strong patriot and believed in just wars.
In plain English: A man comes up in sandals and simple clothes, holding a raw tomato firmly in his right hand, and says, “Love of family and country both get in the way of a fuller love of humanity”; but the plain thinker will just reply, with amazement mixed with some admiration, “You must have gone to an awful lot of trouble to feel like that.”
Why this phrase is worth keeping: A comic portrait, and a reply that shows the “simple” man's ideas are actually very unnatural.
In plain English: Living well will reject the raw tomato.
In plain English: Plain thinking will just as firmly reject the idea that war is always sinful.
In plain English: Living well will convince us that nothing is more materialistic than looking down on a pleasure because it's “merely physical.”
Why this phrase is worth keeping: The vegetarian ascetic, who thinks he is spiritual, is shown to be obsessed with material things.
In plain English: And plain thinking will convince us that nothing is more materialistic than saving most of our horror for physical injuries.
Reference & context: Chesterton implies that wounds to the soul, such as cowardice or betrayal, are worse than wounds to the body.
In plain English: The only simplicity that matters is simplicity of heart.
In plain English: If that is gone, no turnips or health-wear can bring it back; only tears, terror and the fires of hell that are never put out can.
Reference & context: “Cellular clothing” was loose, open-weave cotton underwear sold as healthy. “The fire that is not quenched” is from Mark 9:44, describing hell.
Modernized: be → is
In plain English: If it remains, it hardly matters if a few old-fashioned, over-stuffed armchairs remain too.
Reference & context: Early Victorian furniture was heavy and fussy, the opposite of the simple-life style.
Modernized: remain → remains
In plain English: Let's put a fancy dish into a simple-hearted old man, rather than a plain dish into a complicated old man.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: Another chiasmus, with Chesterton's comic love of food.
In plain English: As long as society leaves my soul alone, I'll let it do whatever it wants with my stomach, more or less obediently.
In plain English: I will give in to cigars.
In plain English: I will humbly accept a bottle of French red wine.
In plain English: I will lower myself to riding in a horse-drawn taxi.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: Pleasures described as acts of humble submission: mock-heroic comedy.
Reference & context: A hansom cab was a two-wheeled horse-drawn cab, the taxi of the day.
In plain English: If only that way I can keep the innocence of spirit that enjoys things with wonder and awe.
In plain English: I don't say these are the only ways to keep it.
In plain English: I tend to think there are others.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: Comic understatement.
In plain English: But I want nothing to do with a simplicity that has no awe, no wonder and no joy.
In plain English: I want nothing to do with the hellish idea of a child too “simple” to enjoy toys.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: A horrifying image that makes the abstract argument concrete.
In plain English: In this and many other things, the child really is the best guide.
In plain English: And a child is most properly childlike, and shows the healthier kind of simplicity most clearly, in the way he sees everything with simple pleasure, even complicated things.
In plain English: The false kind of naturalness keeps going on about the difference between natural and artificial things.
In plain English: The better kind of naturalness ignores that difference.
In plain English: To a child, a tree and a lamp-post are equally natural and equally artificial; or rather, neither is natural, and both are magical.
In plain English: Because both are wonderful and mysterious.
In plain English: The flower God puts on top of the tree and the flame Sam the lamplighter puts on top of the lamp-post are both made of fairy-tale gold.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: God and Sam the lamplighter, side by side, doing the same marvellous work.
Reference & context: Gas street lamps were lit each evening by a lamplighter with a long pole.
In plain English: In the middle of the wildest fields, the most countrified child is very probably playing at being a steam train.
In plain English: And the only spiritual or philosophical objection to steam engines isn't that people pay for them, work on them, make them ugly, or even get killed by them; it's simply that people don't play at them.
In plain English: The real evil is that the childlike poetry of machinery doesn't last.
In plain English: The problem isn't that engines are admired too much, but that they aren't admired enough.
In plain English: The sin isn't that engines are mechanical, but that people are.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: Three parallel “The … is not … but” sentences build to this sharp conclusion.
In plain English: So here, as with every other subject in this book, my main conclusion is that what we need is a basic outlook, a philosophy or religion, not a change of habits or social routine.
In plain English: The things we need most, for immediate practical purposes, are all ideas.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: A paradox: the most practical things are abstract.
In plain English: We need the right view of human life and of human society; and if we lived eagerly and passionately for those things, we would automatically be living simply, in the true, spiritual sense.
Reference & context: Ipso facto (Latin): by that very fact.
In plain English: Desire and danger make everyone simple.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: Five words that contain the whole argument.
In plain English: And to those who lecture us, persuasively and nosily, about Jaeger wool clothing and skin pores, and about Plasmon health food and the lining of the stomach, we shall only throw back the words thrown at dandies and gluttons: “Don't worry about what you will eat or drink, or what you will wear.
Reference & context: Jaeger sold woollen “sanitary” clothing based on the theories of Dr Gustav Jäger; Plasmon was a milk-protein health food. The quotation is from Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:31–33, King James Version).
In plain English: Those who don't know God chase after all these things.
Reference & context: “Gentiles” here means non-believers. This is a direct Bible quotation, so its old word order is kept.
In plain English: But seek first God's kingdom and his goodness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”
In plain English: Those amazing words are not just extremely good practical politics; they are also the best possible health advice.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: A surprising claim: the Gospel as a health manual.
In plain English: The best way, the only way, to make all those bodily processes go right, health, strength, grace and beauty, is to think about something else.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: A long, grand build-up to a brilliantly simple answer.
In plain English: If a man is set on climbing to the highest heaven, he needn't worry about the pores of his skin.
Reference & context: “Seventh heaven” is the highest heaven in Jewish and Islamic tradition; it now also means perfect happiness.
In plain English: If he hitches his wagon to a star, it will do wonders for the lining of his stomach.
Reference & context: “Hitch your wagon to a star” is Emerson's advice (Society and Solitude, 1870): aim high.
In plain English: Because what the Bible calls “taking thought,” for which the best modern word is “rationalizing,” by its nature doesn't work for simple, urgent things.
In plain English: People think things out logically about distant matters, things that only matter in theory, like the passage of Venus across the sun.
Reference & context: A transit of Venus, when Venus passes across the face of the sun, is rare; transits occurred in 1874 and 1882 and were studied intensely by astronomers.
In plain English: But it's dangerous for people to over-think something as practical as their health.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: The final paradox: thinking too hard about health is bad for it.
Fun Fact
Chesterton and his great friend and rival George Bernard Shaw, a vegetarian teetotaller, made perfect opposites. Shaw supposedly told the enormous Chesterton, “If I were as fat as you, I'd hang myself,” and Chesterton replied, “If I were to hang myself, I'd use you as the rope.” The exchange is probably a legend, but it fits them both.