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Introduction
After the Great War of 1914-1918, a consensus grew that the world had changed and there must now be a new global economy, a new kind of society, even a new morality. Socio-economic experts — the gods of the market place — declared their laws, and the public worshipped at their shrines; but Rudyard Kipling believed that older gods, the wise maxims of our forebears, would have the last word.
AS I pass through my incarnations 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 icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.*
* Kipling’s target is those economic planners whom governments hold in awe, supposing that their modish theories about social and economic progress, idols of ink and paper, really can defy the laws of common sense and deliver every miracle that is promised in their name. Kipling was thinking in particular of John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946), then very much in vogue across Europe and the USA. But see US President John Adams on A Moral and Religious People.
* Copybooks were used in earlier generations as templates for handwriting practice. Well-known proverbs, sayings and truisms (‘water makes wet, fire burns’) were printed as headings, and students learnt to copy them out beneath in a fair hand. ‘The gods of the copybook headings’ represent folk wisdom, the accumulated store of timeless common sense and universal experience.
* A reference to John 3:8, “The wind [or Spirit] bloweth where it listeth”, but more appositely perhaps to Ephesians 4:14, where St Paul hopes “That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive”.
* Kipling may be thinking of the Fall of Rome to Alaric the Goth in 410. It was this shattering event that caused the Emperor to withdraw troops from the Province of Britannia, ending almost four centuries of Roman Britain. On what happened when word of that fall came to Emperor Honorius, see A Bird in the Hand is Worth....
Précis
Kipling contrasted ‘the gods of the market-place’, those Utopian dreams of the march of progress that spring up and fade away, with ‘the gods of the copybook headings’, the timeless maxims and proverbs which were laboriously copied out as handwriting practice and which, though scorned by the fashionable, nonetheless remain stubbornly relevant while faddish theories come and go. (58 / 60 words)
Kipling contrasted ‘the gods of the market-place’, those Utopian dreams of the march of progress that spring up and fade away, with ‘the gods of the copybook headings’, the timeless maxims and proverbs which were laboriously copied out as handwriting practice and which, though scorned by the fashionable, nonetheless remain stubbornly relevant while faddish theories come and go.
Variations: 1.increase the length of this precis to exactly 65 words. 2.reduce the length of this precis to exactly 55 words. 3.introduce one of the following words into the precis: although, despite, if, may, not, ought, since, whether.
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