What I Saw in America: Original Text

By: Chesterton, G. K.

I have never managed to lose my old conviction that travel narrows the mind. At least aman must make a double effort of moral humility and imaginative energy to prevent it fromnarrowing his mind. Indeed there is something touching and even tragic about the thoughtof the thoughtless tourist, who might have stayed at home loving Laplanders, embracingChinamen, and clasping Patagonians to his heart in Hampstead or Surbiton, but for hisblind and suicidal impulse to go and see what they looked like. This is not meant fornonsense; still less is it meant for the silliest sort of nonsense, which is cynicism. Thehuman bond that he feels at home is not an illusion. On the contrary, it is rather an innerreality. Man is inside all men. In a real sense any man may be inside any men. But to travelis to leave the inside and draw dangerously near the outside. So long as he thought of menin the abstract, like naked toiling figures in some classic frieze, merely as those who labourand love their children and die, he was thinking the fundamental truth about them. Bygoing to look at their unfamiliar manners and customs he is inviting them to disguisethemselves in fantastic masks and costumes. Many modern internationalists talk as if menof different nationalities had only to meet and mix and understand each other. In realitythat is the moment of supreme danger-the moment when they meet. We might shiver, asat the old euphemism by which a meeting meant a duel.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B08J1ZWYVC
• ISBN13: 9798686136502
• Release Date: January 1
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 156 Pages
• Weight: 0.52 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.0" x 9.0"