"Should shop assistants marry?"

I am puzzled to think what some periods and schools of human history would have made of such a question. The ascetics of the East or of some periods of the Early Church would have thought that the question meant, "Are not shop assistants too saintly, too much of another world, even to feel the emotions of the sexes?" But I suppose that is not what the purple poster means. In some pagan cities it might have meant, "Shall slaves so vile as shop assistants even be allowed to propagate their abject race?" But I suppose that is not what the purple poster meant. We must face, I fear, the full insanity of what it does mean. It does really mean that a section of the human race is asking whether the primary relations of the two human sexes are particularly good for modern shops. The human race is asking whether Adam and Eve are entirely suitable for Marshall and Snelgrove. If this is not topsy-turvy I cannot imagine what would be. We ask whether the universal institution will improve our (please God) temporary institution. Yet I have known many such questions.

As a sequel to 'The wind and the trees' (see below), Chesterton again exposes materialistic reasonings about what is really the essence of things in chapter XIV of 'Tremendous Trifles'.