On Monsters and Logic

loch, or a sea-serpent in the sea. But I am very much interested in another monster; a much more monstrous monster; one so fantastic that he might well be a fabulous monster. This monster is called Man; and instead of the humps and horns and writhing tails, with which such creatures are credited, he has an abnormal excrescence called a Head. In this, it has beeti conjectured, there resides some mysterious principle called a Mind; but really, it has lately become almost as elusive and evasive as the Monster of Loch Ness.

For the way in which most critics, especially sceptical critics, write about a thing like the lake-monster is very like the way in which they wrote about the sea-serpent. That is, it is both mysterious and mystical and irrational. First of all, there is a vague assumption, the very reverse of the truth, which is made silently at the start, and thus confuses the whole controversy; the vague assumption that the subject is in some way a semi-mystical subject. One article, by a very able journalist, actually opened with some such phrase as, "In dealing with these stories of ghosts or monsters." I cannot for the life of me see that a sea-serpent is any more mystical than a.sea-snail. In one sense they are all mystical, since the mystery of the Creator is in all His works; but that sort of mystery attaches quite as much to the smallest shrimp eaten by a tripper at Margate. But the largest snake in the sea is no more supernatural than the smallest snake in the sea. How large such creatures can be in the depths of the sea may be a matter of scientific discussion; but it ought, to be a matter of purely scientific discussion. There is nothing particularly transcendental about holding that there are bigger fish in the sea than ever came out of it. Nor is there any touch of the Celtic Twilight, or any glamour of Gaelic witchery and vision, about the proposition that a very large live animal, if there be any such large live animal, might be in the bottom of a Scotch loch as much as anywhere else. Whether there is or not is simply a question of human evidence; and even the waverers admit that the evidence for it is pretty strong.

Now it is here I note that queer quality in the Mind, since it has become what is called the Modern Mind. I do not say it with a sneer; for in this case it covers some modern minds that really are minds, and, on their own line, some of our best minds. The truth I thinkjs this: that since theriumphof what was called rationalism, "we have successfully cultivated everything except reason^ Many mo3ern min3sT^or^n^emTnent but normal modern minds, have been trained to a quite exquisite appreciation of art or music or landscape; and can detect and even describe fine shades in these things, that would probably have been missed altogether by

Aristotle or Dr. Johnson. But if it came to argument, to clear and connected argument, either Aristotle or Dr. Johnson would have thought he had got into an infant school. Dr. Johnson would probably have said an idiot school. But I do not say it; having no claim to emulate Dr. Johnson in his talents and virtues, I need not needlessly emulate him in his faults and exaggerations. The men with this mental disproportion are not fools; many of them are brilliant and subtle writers, along literary lines where I could never hope to follow them. But they seem somehow to have forgotten how to set about forming a reasonable conclusion about anything. They are masters in the art of appreciating, describing, and analysing impressions; but they do not seem to know how to make any deductions. As an Impressionist artist could paint a perfect impression of Loch Ness, so this Impressionist critic could record a perfect impression of the Monster of Loch Ness. But when he is asked to test the impression in relation to truth, he does not seem to know the technique of such a test. For instance, there is 00 finer or more penetrating literary critic than. Mr. Robert Lynd, especially when the literary critic is really criticizing literature, Set Mr. Robert Lynd to write about Mr. W. B. Yeats, and he will estimate the style and stature of that great poet about as well as it could be done, and certainly much better than I could do it. But set him to inquire whether Mr. Yeats's stories of eastern wizards or Irish fairies are true, and I respectfully doubt whether he would be half so scientific as I should.

He wrote an article on the Monster o£ Loch Ness, in a recent issue of the Daily News, which exactly illustrates the elusive thing I mean. It was a very good article; but it was full of hesitations and (if I may use the jargon) of inhibitions. He said first, with obvious common sense, that it is very difficult to contradict the evidence of a score of apparently normal and respectable and independent witnesses. The same might be said of the Great Sea-serpent; the number of people who could swear to having seen it must by this time amount to pretty nearly a hundred. So far so good. It is for the other side to rebut this evidence definitely and in detail; to cross-examine these witnesses; to prove a rather improbable conspiracy, or to construct some theory to explain that number of people having been deceived. But the critic, feeling that in fairness he must pass on to state the other side, states it in a way which is supremely typical of modern irrationalism. He says, in these words or words to the same effect: "But if I agree to believe in the Monster of Loch Ness, where am I to draw the line? There are such a lot of other stories about other monsters" — and he proceeds to pour forth the riches o£ his wide reading, introducing us to the most fascinating and agreeable monsters of Celtic or Norse mythology; and seems gloomily resigned to go through with it and swallow all the monsters one after another, back to the whale that swallowed Jonah or the dragon that was to devour Andromeda. Anyone addicted to the antiquated mystery of Logic, so much studied by the superstitious Schoolmen of the Middle Ages, will be rather disposed to stare at this statement of the difficulty. He will naturally answer: "Well, I suppose you will draw the line where the evidence fails* You accept this Monster because there are twenty people to give evidence. You will naturally believe less where there is less evidence; and not at all where there is no evidence. There is really no need for you to draw abstract a priori distinctions between a Seven-headed Dragon in Persia and a Nine-headed Dragon in Japan,' The truth is that the critic is misled from the first by that vague idea that, in accepting any such story, he is stepping across the border of fairyland, where any fantastic thing may happen This is a fallacy even about preternatural things. A man may believe one miracle and not another miracle; knowing there are true and false miracles, as there are true and false banknotes. But the Monster is not a miracle. Something like it may occur along with magic in magic tales. But a man might as well say that millers and cats and princesses are fabulous animals, because they appear side by side with goblins and mermaids in the stories of the nursery.