"The Barbarian hopes—and that is the very mark of him—that he can have his cake and eat it too. He will consume what civilisation has slowly produced after generations of selection and effort but he will not be at the pains to replace such goods nor indeed has he a comprehension of the virtue that has brought them into being. .... In a word, the Barbarian is discoverable everywhere in this that he cannot make; that he can befog or destroy, but that he cannot sustain; and of every Barbarian in the decline or peril of every civilisation exactly that has been true.
"We sit by and watch the Barbarian, we tolerate him; in the long stretches of peace we are not afraid.
"We are tickled by his irreverence, his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creeds refreshes us: we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond: and on these faces there is no smile.
"He is, I repeat, not an agent, but merely a symptom..."~ Hilaire Belloc, from his essay 'The Barbarians' collected in his book This, That & the Other
Wednesday 6 March 2024
"The Barbarian cannot *make*, but he can destroy"
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2 comments:
The link didn’t work, but I googled the author to get a sense of what he was about and the context in which he made these statements. My understanding was somewhat vague and incomplete, so it’s possible I’ve got it wrong, but here’s where I got to:
In the context in which he lived (2 world wars) , the “barbarian” was the omnipresent threat of war from aggressors, and this was the main threat to peace and rationality. So he was right to be castigating the barbarian.
In the context in which we live, the “barbarian” is regarded as anyone who says something that may offend conventional sensibilities. Sensibilities that are often weak and soft and need to be offended to preserve liberty. So in that sense I’m happy to be the barbarian.
Based on what I read about his personality and history, I’m unclear if he were alive today whether he would be for me or against me. I’m thinking more likely against me based on what I read, but I’d be pleased to be corrected.
Oh, link works for me -- takes you to various versions of the book, in which you can then find the chapter.
Yes, you're right, Mr Belloc is a mixed fellow: an inconsistent thinker, a clever children's poet; e.g.,
'The Microbe'
The Microbe is so very small
You cannot make him out at all,
But many sanguine people hope
To see him through a microscope.
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