A Day For G.K.
Thursday's are "G.K. Chesterton Day" here at AVITW, where we share an excerpt from a beloved Chesterton book, essay, or article. It is our hope that a new generation of Americans will re-discover the wit, wisdom, and insights of a great man, thinker, and writer.
In the opening to The Everlasting Man (1925), Chesterton takes aim at the type of journalist or social commentator whose fall-back position on social issues is to blame the religious population of a nation:
The clergyman appears in person and could easily be kicked as he came out of church; the journalist concelas even his name so that nobody can kick him...[Anti-religious writers] will suddenly turn round and revile the Church for not having prevented World War I, which they themselves did not want to prevent; and which nobody had ever professed to be able to prevent, except some of that very school of progressive and cosmopolitan skeptics who are the chief enemies of the Church. It was the anti-clerical and agnostic world that was always prophesying the advent of universal peace; it is that world that was, or should have been, abashed and confounded by the advent of universal war.
As for the general view that the Church was discredited by World War I - they might as well say that the Ark was discredited by the Flood. When the world goes wrong, it proves rather that the Church is right. The Church is justified, not because her children do not sin, but because they do.
But that marks this type of modern anti-religious writer's mood about the whole religious tradition: they are in a state of reaction against it. It is well with the boy when he lives on his father's land; and it is well with him again when he is off on his own and far enough from it to look back and see it as a whole. But these people have got into an intermediate state, have fallen into an intervening valley from which they can see neither the heights beyond them nor the heights behind. They cannot get out from under the shadow of Christianity. They cannot be Christians and they cannot leave off being Anti-Christians.
Their whole atmosphere is the atmosphere of a reaction: sulks, perversity, petty criticism. They live in the shadow of the faith and have lost the light of the faith...
The worst judge of all is the man who these days is now most ready with his judgments; the ill-educated Christian turning gradually into the ill-tempered agnostic, entangled in the end of a feud of which he never understood the beginning, blighted with a sort of hereditary boredom with he knows not what, and already weary of hearing what he has never heard.
If you are up for an intellectual challenge (with a huge pay-off), get The Everlasting Man.
Happy Reading!
-RJM
G.K. Day
G.K. Chesterton's What's Wrong With The World is a commentary on the socio-cultural landscape of his native England in the first decade of the 1900's. Published in 1910, this book contains some of the most practical, insightful, and controversial writings of Chesterton's career.
Although written exactly 100 years ago, the wisdom contained in the pages of this book is timeless. He might as well have been writing it about contemporary America.
The section I've chosen is from the first chapter, "The Medical Mistake":
Social science is by no means always content with the normal human soul; it has all sorts of fancy souls for sale. Man as a social idealist will say, "I'm tired of being a Puritan; I want to be a Pagan," or "Beyond this dark probation of individualism lies the shining future paradise of Collectivism."
Now in bodily ills there is none of this difference about the ultimate ideal. The patient may or may not want a particular brand of medicine; but he certainly wants health. No one says, "I am tired of this headache; I think I'd like a toothache," or, "The only cure for this Russian influenza is a few German measles," or, "Through this dark probation of cataracts I can see the shining paradise of rheumatism."
But exactly the whole difficulty in our public problems is that some men are aiming at cures which other men would regard as worse maladies; are offering ultimate conditions as states of health which others would uncompromisingly call states of disease. Mr. Belloc once said that he would no more part with the idea of property than he would with his teeth; yet to Mr. Bernard Shaw property is not a tooth, but a toothache. Lord Milner has sincerely attempted to introduce German efficiency; and many of us would as soon welcome German measles. Dr. Saleeby would honestly like to have eugenics; I would rather have rheumatics.
This is the arresting and dominant fact about modern social discussion; that the quarrel is not merely about the difficulties, but about the aim. We agree about the evil; it is about the good that we should tear each other's eyes out.
Another shot of G.K.
In lieu of my forgetfulness last week, and to honor the request of my dear friend AEC, I decided to post another G.K. Chesterton quote this weekend. Today's is from his classic work Orthodoxy. This is probably Chesterton's most widely known book, and with good reason. It is a summary of what led G.K. to become the "Knight of Faith" he most certainly was.
From Orthodoxy, Chapter 2 "The Maniac":
This chapter is purely practical and is concerned with what actually is the chief mark and element of insanity; we may say in summary that it is reason used without root, reason in the void. The man who begins to think without the proper first principles goes mad; he begins to think at the wrong end. And for the rest of these pages we have to try and discover what is the right end. But we may ask in conclusion, if this be what drives men mad, what is it that keeps them sane? By the end of this book I hope to give a definite, some will think too definite, answer.
But for the moment it is possible in the same solely practical manner to give a general answer touching with in actual human history keeps men sane.
Mysticism keeps men sane.
As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. The ordinary man has always been the same because the ordinary man has always been a mystic. He has permitted the twilight. He has always had one foot in earth and the other in fairyland. He has always left himself free to doubt his gods; but (unlike the the agnostic of today) free also to believe in them. He has always cared more for truth than consistency.
If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and the contradiction along with them. His spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two different pictures at once and yet sees all the better for that. Thus he has always believed that there was such a thing as fate, but such as thing as free will also. Thus he believed that children were indeed the kingdom of heaven, but nevertheless ought to be obedient to the kingdom of earth. He admired youth because it was young, and age because it was not.
It is exactly this balance of apparent contradictions that has been the whole buyoancy of the healthy man. The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of what he does not understand.
PLEASE buy Orthodoxy or Heretics this week. Read them and learn.
Thursday: The Day That Was G.K.’s
Every Thursday (except last Thursday) we bring you an excerpt from the selected works of one Gilbert Keith Chesterton. G.K. is my favorite writer, and I hope you learn to love him too.
From Heretics, Chapter Four, "Mr. Bernard Shaw":
The truth is, that it is quite an error to suppose that the absence of definite convictions gives the mind freedom and agility. A man who believes something is ready and witty, because he has all his weapons about him, he can apply his test in an instant.
The man engaged in a conflict with Mr. Bernard Shaw may fancy he has ten faces; similarly a man engaged against a brilliant duellist may fancy that the sword of his foe has turned to ten swords in his hand. But this is not really because the man is playing with ten swords, it is because he is aiming very straight with one.
Moreover, a man with a definite belief always appears bizarre, because he does not change with the world; he has climbed into a fixed star and the earth whizzes below him like a zoetrope. Millions of mild black-coated men call themselves sane and sensible because they always catch the fashionable insanity, because they are hurried into madness after madness by the maelstrom of the world.
G.K. Chesterton Quote Of The Week
As I said last week, Thursday's are G.K. Days here at AVITW. Today we present an excerpt from Heretics, Chesterton's collection of essays exposing the intellectual and moral problems with many of the leading ideologies of his time.
Every one of the popular modern phrases and ideals is a dodge in order to shirk the problem of what is good. We are fond of talking about "liberty"; that, as we talk of it, is a dodge to avoid discussing what is good. We are fond of talking about "progress"; that is a dodge to avoid discussing what is good. We are fond of talking about "education"; that is a dodge to avoid discussing what is good.
The modern man says, "Let us leave all these arbitrary standards and embrace liberty." This is, logicall rendered, "Let us not decide what is good, but let it be considered good not to decide it." He says, "Away with your old moral formulae; I am for progress." This, logically stated, means, "Let us not settle what is good; but let us settle whether we are getting more of it." He says, " Neither in religion nor morality, my friend, lie the hopes of the race, but in education." This , clearly expressed, means, "We cannot decide what is good, but let us give it to our children."
He wrote these words a century ago, but I'm guessing you've already picked up on the fact that they are more than applicable today.
If you've never read any Chesterton, Heretics is the place to start.
Chesterton Quote of the Week
In honor of my favorite writer, G.K. Chesterton, and his novel The Man Who Was Thursday, I hereby declare Thursdays to be "G.K. Day" on A Voice in the Wilderness. Every Thursday tune in for a new and interesting quote or section of an essay from the brilliant Brit himself.
From "Negative and Positive Morality":
A vast amount of nonsense is talked against negative and destructive things. The silliest sort of progressive complains of negative morality, and compares it unfavorably with positive morality. The silliest sort of conservative complains of destructive reform and compares it unfavorably with constructive reform. Both the progressive and the conservative entirely neglect to consider the very meaning of the words "yes" and "no". To give the answer "yes" to one question is to imply the answer "no" to another question. To desire the construction of something is to desire the destruction of whatever prevents its construction. This is particularly plain in the fuss about the "negative" morality of the Ten Commandments.
The truth is that the curtness of the Commandments is an evidence, not of the gloom and narrowness of a religion but of its liberality and humanity. It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted precisely because most things are permitted and only a few things are forbidden. An optimist who insisted on a purely positive morality would have to begin by telling a man that he might pick dandelions on a common and go on for months before he came to the fact that he might throw pebbles into the sea. In comparison with this positive morality the Ten Commandments rather shine in that brevity which is the soul of wit.
But of course the fallacy is even more fundamental than this. Negative morality is positive morality, stated in the plainest and therefore the most positive way. If I am told not to murder Mr. Robinson, if I am stopped in the very act of murdering Mr. Robinson, it is obvious that Mr. Robinson is not only spared, but in a sense renewed, and even created. And those who like Mr. Robinson, among them my reactionary romanticism might suggest the inclusion of Mrs. Robinson, will be well aware that they have recovered a living and complex unity. And similarly, those who like European civilisation, and the common code of what used to be called Christendom, will realize that salvation is not negative, but highly positive, and even highly complex. They will rejoice at its escape, long before they have leisure for its examination. But, without examination, they will know that there is a great deal to be examined, and a great deal that is worth examination. Nothing is negative except nothing. It is not our rescue that was negative, but only the nothingness and annihilation from which we were rescued.
You can even see the big guy (he was 300lb) himself right here:
It’s on them now
Democrats have forced health care reform, and now they own it. They did nothing to bring even one single Republican to their side.
But Harry Reid says he is not worried about any potential political backlash. He and Speaker Pelosi are too busy ruining the country's economy and health care system behind closed doors to worry about political blow-back for Democrats in 2010.
Oh, and by the way, abortions will be paid for with your tax dollars in the current version of the bill. Might want to call your senator and and congressmen if you happen to care about the rights of the unborn.
Pray for your country. If President Obama signs any version of this monstrosity into law, America will be worse off.
Merry Christmas.
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