Why common humanity matters for self-government

the things common to all men are more important than the things peculiar to any men.

This first proposition needs the second, supplied in the next paragraph: political participation must itself count among the common human functions. Shared humanity alone does not establish that conclusion. Chesterton had already exposed the disputed boundary in Heretics (1905), chapter XVI, ‘On Mr. McCabe and a Divine Frivolity’: technical specialization, he argues, can encourage the transfer of government to specialists too. See the paragraph beginning ‘The truth is that the scientific civilization’. The question is therefore which activities should be entrusted to superior performers and which should remain acts of ordinary people themselves. Reading the two propositions together prevents ‘more important’ from becoming a blanket assertion that expertise has no value.

Sources

G. K. Chesterton, Heretics
Chapter XVI, ‘On Mr. McCabe and a Divine Frivolity,’ paragraph beginning ‘The truth is that the scientific civilization’; inspected Gutenberg transcription of the twelfth (1919) edition
G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
Chapter IV, ‘The Ethics of Elfland,’ successive paragraphs beginning ‘I take this instance’ and ‘This is the first principle of democracy’

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