The Defendant by G.K. Chesterton

Some little time ago I stood among immemorial English trees that seemed / to take hold upon the stars like a brood of Ygdrasils. As I walked among / these living pillars I became gradually aware that the rustics who lived / and died in their shadow adopted a very curious conversational tone. / They seemed to be constantly apologizing for the trees, as if they were / a very poor show. After elaborate investigation, I discovered that their / gloomy and penitent tone was traceable to the fact that it was winter / and all the trees were bare. I assured them that I did not resent the / fact that it was winter, that I knew the thing had happened before, and / that no forethought on their part could have averted this blow of / destiny. But I could not in any way reconcile them to the fact that it / _was_ winter. There was evidently a general feeling that I had caught / the trees in a kind of disgraceful deshabille, and that they ought not / to be seen until, like the first human sinners, they had covered / themselves with leaves. So it is quite clear that, while very few / people appear to know anything of how trees look in winter, the actual / foresters know less than anyone. So far from the line of the tree when / it is bare appearing harsh and severe, it is luxuriantly indefinable to / an unusual degree; the fringe of the forest melts away like a vignette.

The tops of two or three high trees when they are leafless are so soft / that they seem like the gigantic brooms of that fabulous lady who was / sweeping the cobwebs off the sky. The outline of a leafy forest is in / comparison hard, gross and blotchy; the clouds of night do not more / certainly obscure the moon than those green and monstrous clouds obscure / the tree; the actual sight of the little wood, with its gray and silver / sea of life, is entirely a winter vision. So dim and delicate is the / heart of the winter woods, a kind of glittering gloaming, that a figure / stepping towards us in the chequered twilight seems as if he were / breaking through unfathomable depths of spiders' webs.

But surely the idea that its leaves are the chief grace of a tree is a / vulgar one, on a par with the idea that his hair is the chief grace of a / pianist. When winter, that healthy ascetic, carries his gigantic razor / over hill and valley, and shaves all the trees like monks, we feel / surely that they are all the more like trees if they are shorn, just as / so many painters and musicians would be all the more like men if they / were less like mops. But it does appear to be a deep and essential / difficulty that men have an abiding terror of their own structure, or of / the structure of things they love. This is felt dimly in the skeleton of / the tree: it is felt profoundly in the skeleton of the man.

The importance of the human skeleton is very great, and the horror with / which it is commonly regarded is somewhat mysterious. Without claiming / for the human skeleton a wholly conventional beauty, we may assert that / he is certainly not uglier than a bull-dog, whose popularity never / wanes, and that he has a vastly more cheerful and ingratiating / expression. But just as man is mysteriously ashamed of the skeletons of / the trees in winter, so he is mysteriously ashamed of the skeleton of / himself in death. It is a singular thing altogether, this horror of the / architecture of things. One would think it would be most unwise in a man / to be afraid of a skeleton, since Nature has set curious and quite / insuperable obstacles to his running away from it.

One ground exists for this terror: a strange idea has infected humanity / that the skeleton is typical of death. A man might as well say that a / factory chimney was typical of bankruptcy. The factory may be left naked / after ruin, the skeleton may be left naked after bodily dissolution; but / both of them have had a lively and workmanlike life of their own, all / the pulleys creaking, all the wheels turning, in the House of Livelihood / as in the House of Life. There is no reason why this creature (new, as I / fancy, to art), the living skeleton, should not become the essential / symbol of life.

The truth is that man's horror of the skeleton is not horror of death at / all. It is man's eccentric glory that he has not, generally speaking, / any objection to being dead, but has a very serious objection to being / undignified. And the fundamental matter which troubles him in the / skeleton is the reminder that the ground-plan of his appearance is / shamelessly grotesque. I do not know why he should object to this. He / contentedly takes his place in a world that does not pretend to be / genteel -- a laughing, working, jeering world. He sees millions of animals / carrying, with quite a dandified levity, the most monstrous shapes and / appendages, the most preposterous horns, wings, and legs, when they are / necessary to utility. He sees the good temper of the frog, the / unaccountable happiness of the hippopotamus. He sees a whole universe / which is ridiculous, from the animalcule, with a head too big for its / body, up to the comet, with a tail too big for its head. But when it / comes to the delightful oddity of his own inside, his sense of humour / rather abruptly deserts him.