On Aids to Golf

Among those remarkable "Sayings of the Day" that are quoted in the daily Press, I remember a sentence that is quite significant. Sandwiched in between two other epigrams, between Sir Humphrey PumpernickePs paradox, "The British Empire must look to Britons for its defence" and the equally arresting hon mot of the Dean of Ditchbury, "True religion includes the desire for truth" — interposed, I say, in the same setting between some such jewels as these, I find a remark that really seems to me to be a text for the philosopher. I have forgotten who said itj but he was somebody of a social importance equal to that of the great men I have named. And what he said was this, or in almost these words: "The Charleston may really be of great practical use in teaching a man to be a good golfer."

Now that is really interesting j for it raises so many deep questions. First of all, would it be just as good if we said, "Golf may really be of great practical use in teaching us to dance the Charleston"? If not, why not? If so, have we established any principle by which we can distinguish between the primary and secondary aim? Why is one game good enough to be an end, and the other only good enough

■■^■^■■^•■^■^■^.^j to be a means to an end? Many men may regard golf as an end. Some may regard it as a sad endj or even as connected with coming to a bad end. Such was the opinion of the Scottish minister 3 presumably the only Scottish minister who did not play golf. Unless, indeed, it was of himself that he was speaking in hollow tones of remorse, when he said of the man who plays golf, "He neglects his business 3 he forsakes his wife 3 he forgets his God." Some have held that these three things are arranged in their order of importance in the mind of a Scottish Puritan. But I think this is unfair 3 and that the minister was only leading up to a literary effect of climax. Anyhow, God is an end, but Golf is not an end. It is just as unphilosophical for a man to dance with a girl in order to play golf as it is immoral for a man to desert a wife in order to play golf. Girls are more than golf-clubs in any rationally arranged hierarchy of the creatures of God. And dancing is at least as good as playing ball in any such system of relative values. It seems to me, that, of the two, the reverse order is the more reasonable. It really is, I think, more sensible to play golf to perfect one's dancing than to dance to perfect one's golf. Dancing has much more approximate claim to be considered an end in itself than hitting a little ball about with a long stick. Dancing can be beautiful 3 and beauty can be an absolute 3 it can certainly be a joy in itself. I do not say that I think most of the modern dancing I see is likely to be a diabolic distraction from the beatific vision j but that is a matter of particular taste and passing fashion. But certainly a man and a woman dancing. might be something symbolical, spiritual, almost sacramental 3 certainly satisfying and complete. An artist could arrange a man and a girl in such a manner as to make a statuary group that could stand in marble and be immortal. But I am not sure whether the artist, in arranging a man and a golf-club, could satisfy his fastidious taste with any lines that would be at once light and final j living and yet eternally at rest. I can imagine him trying the golf-club at a good many different angles, before he got anything like a flowing melody in stone. The golf-club would give him no assistance anyhow j it could not arrange itself j while the girl might fall quite naturally into the perfect pose. Pure and absolute beauty is attainable by dancing, if not always attained by dancers. It seems clear that it ought to take precedence of what is solely a physical exercise, in any consideration of the means and the end. The ball-room where the Charleston is danced should stand at the end of the links and not at the beginning. The hero who hopes to hole out in one should be sustained by the vision of the more purely aesthetic sport. His long driving should be directed towards his late dancing. This is a normal and comprehensible order of interests. But it would certainly be most unseemly if he were suddenly to leave oflF dancing because he thought he had sufficiently reduced his handicap. It would be the reverse of a graceful group, in the spirit of perfect sculpture, if he were suddenly to break away from the girl and do a bolt for the door, from the feeling that he was now suddenly summoned to the higher duties of golf. He would be lacking in finesse, and in instinctive psychological sympathy, were he even to explain at length to the young lady that he was only dancing with her for the good of his golf. It would be almost better to rush madly away without any explanation at all 5 to leap wildly through the window and vanish in the direction of the links. But I am sure that arranging the ideas in this order reveals its insufficiency even in the practical manifestations of private life. It is more natural, even by the normal human habit, to treat the dance as pure enjoyment and the sport as having a little more of the character of the day's work. The very fact that the dance has generally come in the evening and the hunt in the daytime illustrates this instinct about it. The dance is in a double sense the endj it is something more like a termination and it is also something more like a goal or a prize.

I take this text because there is nothing about which men are now in such a muddle as about means and ends. Most of them have quite forgotten that there are such things. They not only put the cart before the horse, but they really believe that a cart is a mechanism constructed specially to draw horses. They not only empty out the baby with the bath, but they believe that a baby is a sort of secondary part of the bath-fittings made only to fit the bath. In all the current controversies people begin at the wrong end as readily as the right endj never stopping to consider which is really the end. A little while ago an intellectual weekly started an argument among the intellectuals about whether Man has improved the earth he lives on, whether nature as a whole was better for the presence of Man. Nobody seemed to notice that this is assuming that the end of Man is to grow more grass or improve the breed of rattlesnakes, apart from any theory about the origin or object of these things. A man may serve God and be good to mankind for that reason j or a man may serve mankind and be good to other things to preserve the standard of mankind; but it is very hard to prove exactly how far he is bound to make the jungle thicke^r or encourage very tall giraffes. Here again the common sense of mankind, even working unconsciously, has always stated the matter the other way round. All sane men have assumed that, while a man may be right to feel benevolently towards the jungle, he is also right to treat it as something that may be put to his use, and something which he may refuse to assist in definitely for its own sake at his own expense. A man should be kind to a giraffe 3 he should if necessary feed itj he may very properly stroke it or pat it on the head, even if he has to procure a ladder for these good offices. He is perfectly right to pat a giraffe j there is no objection to his patting a palm-tree. But he is not bound to regard a man as something created for the good of a palm-tree. Nor is he bound to answer the question, with any burden on his conscience: "If there were no men, would there be more palm-trees?" I only give this as one example out of many, that have caught my eye lately, of the fact that even thoughtful people seem to have forgotten how to think.

There are a great many other examples of putting the cart before the horse or the means before the end. One very common form of the blunder is to make modern conditions an absolute end and then try to fit human necessities to that end, as if they were only a means. Thus people say, "Home life is not suited to the business life of today." Which is as if they said, "Heads are not suited to the sort of hats now in fashion." Then they might go round cutting off people's heads to meet the shortage or shrinkage of hatsj and calling it the Hat Problem. They have already done this if not with heads, at least with heads of hair. And if some of us ventured to say that we thought that Eve's golden garment or St. Paul's "crown of glory" refer to a rather more elementary and eternal thing than the particular shape of hat to be seen in the shops for a month or so, we are rebuked as romantic and reactionary and very much behind the times. But this is an error. We are not especially behind the times. What we are is behind the scenes. And having been behind the scenes for a reasonable period, we know pretty well how often and how rapidly the scene-shifters shift the scenes. But anyhow we do not believe in rebuilding the whole theatre to fit one piece of pasteboard marked Dr op-Scene Between Acts IV and Vj still less in rebuilding the whole world to suit the fashion of the theatre. We have adopted the habit of distinguishing the means from the ends.