The hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true / That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make four…
Copybooks are exercise books in which schoolchildren copy the phrase at the head of the page on every line to practice handwriting. Those phrases usually have also educational contents; they teach children the trite but true proverbs that have stood the test of time, which concentrate the experience of generations. “Don’t play with fire or you’ll get burned”, “stick to the devil you know and not to the saint you don’t”, “not all that glitters is gold”, “what sounds too good to be true usually is” – such are the Gods of the Copybook Headings: the elementary truths, which we can ignore only at our own risk.
These messages of Kipling pertain not only to social and political, but also to personal situations. In a nineteen – year difficult on-and-off relationship with a woman to whom I was fatally attracted, this line kept returning to my mind: “And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the fire …“
Many people may recognize the force of this poem, but will be reluctant to accept its conclusion: that human nature is not capable of improving in the space of a few dozen generations – “As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn / The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return! “
The Gods of the Copybook Headings
As I pass through my reincarnations in every age and race I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market-Place. Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall, And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all. We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn: But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind, So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind. We moved as the spirit listed. They never altered their pace, Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market-Place; But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come That a tribe had been wiped off its ice-field, or the lights had gone out in Rome. (1) With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch, They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch. (2) They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings. So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things. When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace. They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease. But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe, And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the devil you know." On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life (Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife) Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith, And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death." In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all, (3) By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul; But though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy, And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die". Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew, And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four - And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more. . . . . . . . . . . . As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man - There are only four things certain since Social Progress began: - That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire, And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the fire; (4) And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins When all men are paid for living and no man must pay for his sins, As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn, The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
Notes
[1] i.e. that things were breaking down, both in the far-off reaches (Liberia, Somalia, Haiti, etc… and in the very center of the civilized world. The phrase “…or the lights went out in Rome” proved prophetic of the New York 24-hour power failure in 1964, when many people froze to death, and many general power failures since.
[2] i.e. Stilton or Dutch cheese.
[3] ‘Carboniferous Epoch’ – The Industrial Revolution.
[4] ‘Wabbling’ – wobbling.