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Unit 31: G.K. Chesterton-On Lying In Bed ...

already covered with wall-paper, and I found the wall-paper to be already covered with very Notes
uninteresting images, all bearing a ridiculous resemblance to each other. I could not understand
why one arbitrary symbol (a symbol apparently entirely devoid of any religious or philosophical
significance) should thus be sprinkled all over my nice walls like a sort of small-pox. The Bible
must be referring to wall-papers, I think, when it says “Use not vain repetitions, as the Gentiles
do.” I found the Turkey carpet a mass of unmeaning colours, rather like the Turkish Empire, or
like the sweetmeat called Turkish delight. I do not exactly know what Turkish delight really is; but
I suppose it is Macedonian Massacres. Everywhere that I went forlornly, with my pencil or my
paint brush, I found that others had unaccountably been before me, spoiling the walls, the curtains,
and the furniture with their childish and barbaric designs.
Nowhere did I find a really clear place for sketching until this occasion when I prolonged beyond
the proper limit the process of lying on my back in bed. Then the light of that white heaven broke
upon my vision, that breadth of mere white which is indeed almost the definition of Paradise,
since it means purity and also means freedom. But alas! like all heavens, now that it is seen it is
found to be unattainable; it looks more austere and more distant than the blue sky outside the
window. For my proposal to paint on it with the bristly end of a broom has been discouraged—
never mind by whom; by a person debarred from all political rights—and even my minor proposal
to put the other end of the broom into the kitchen fire and turn it into charcoal has not been
conceded. Yet I am certain that it was from persons in my position that all the original inspiration
came for covering the ceilings of palaces and cathedrals with a riot of fallen angels or victorious
gods. I am sure that it was only because Michael Angelo was engaged in the ancient and honourable
occupation of lying in bed that he ever realised how the roof of the Sistine Chapel might be made
into an awful imitation of a divine drama that could only be acted in the heavens.
The tone now commonly taken towards the practice of lying in bed is hypocritical and unhealthy.
Of all the marks of modernity that seem to mean a kind of decadence, there is none more menacing
and dangerous than the exultation of very small and secondary matters of conduct at the expense
of very great and primary ones, at the expense of eternal public and tragic human morality. If
there is one thing worse than the modern weakening of major morals it is the modern strengthening
of minor morals. Thus it is considered more withering to accuse a man of bad taste than of bad
ethics. A playwright can attack the institution of marriage so long as he does not misrepresent the
manners of society, and I have met Ibsenite pessimists who thought it wrong to take beer but right
to take prussic acid. Especially this is so in matters of hygiene; notably such matters as lying in
bed. Instead of being regarded, as it ought to be, as a matter of personal convenience and adjustment,
it has come to be regarded by many as if it were a part of essential morals to get up early in the
morning. It is upon the whole part of practical wisdom; but there is nothing good about it or bad
about its opposite.

Cleanliness is not next to godliness nowadays, for cleanliness is made an essential
and godliness is regarded as an offence.

Misers get up early in the morning; and burglars, I am informed, get up the night before. It is the
great peril of our society that all its mechanism may grow more fixed while its spirit grows more
fickle. A man’s minor actions and arrangements ought to be free, flexible, creative; the things that
should be unchangeable are his principles, his ideals. But with us the reverse is true; our views
change constantly; but our lunch does not change. Now, I should like men to have strong and
rooted conceptions, but as for their lunch, let them have it sometimes in the garden, sometimes in
bed, sometimes on the roof, sometimes in the top of a tree. Let them argue from the same first
principles, but let them do it in a bed, or a boat, or a balloon. This alarming growth of good habits

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