# Being current and being better are different claims

Commentary on Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton.

On [CH07.P005](https://glosses.org/orthodoxy/pg16769-r1/CH07.P005/#char=219,275): "How can anything be up to date? a date has no character."

The sweeping question becomes more precise when set beside Chesterton's next book on Shaw. In *George Bernard Shaw* (1909), ‘The Philosopher,’ he repeats the almanac joke but immediately grants a legitimate sense of being up to date: correcting a stale description so that it fits what is actually happening. He praises Shaw for bringing contemporary life onto the stage. The inspected Project Gutenberg witness reproduces the John Lane Company, New York, 1909 edition, pp. 244–45. Thus Chesterton can value accurate attention to the present while denying that presentness is a moral standard. [*George Bernard Shaw*, pp. 244–45](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/19535/19535-h/19535-h.htm#Page_244).

The underlying argument already appears in *Heretics* (first published 1905), chapter II, ‘On the negative spirit’: progress indicates a direction, so calling a movement progressive presupposes some agreed destination. The inspected Gutenberg text derives from the twelfth John Lane edition (1919). Its complaint about modern slogans is not that improvement is impossible, but that asking whether we are getting more good cannot replace deciding what good means. That distinction explains the apparently extravagant comparison between Tommy's goodness and his ‘higher life’: the first openly makes an ethical judgment; the second can conceal the absence of one behind a spatial comparison. The plain sentence does not prove Tommy virtuous; it states the kind of judgment that must be defended. [*Heretics*, chapter II, paragraphs beginning ‘Every one of the popular modern phrases’ and ‘The case of the general talk’](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/470).

## Sources

- [G. K. Chesterton, George Bernard Shaw (1909), Project Gutenberg #19535](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/19535/19535-h/19535-h.htm#Page_244), ‘The Philosopher,’ printed pp. 244–45; paragraph beginning ‘To be up to date is a paltry ambition’
- [G. K. Chesterton, Heretics (1905), Project Gutenberg #470, derived from twelfth edition (1919)](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/470), Chapter II, ‘On the negative spirit,’ paragraphs beginning ‘Every one of the popular modern phrases’ and ‘The case of the general talk’

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