I've been re-reading Orthodoxy this past week, and could not pass up the chance to share with you this excerpt on the differences between the secular-materialist and Judeo-Christian worldview from Chapter 2: The Maniac.  It's one of those sections of a Chesterton book that confirm in my mind why I adore the man's writing to the extent I truly do.

We must remember that the materialist philosophy (whether true or not) is certainly much more limiting than any religion.  In one sense, of course, all intelligent ideas are narrow.  They cannot be broader than themselves.  A Christian is only restricted in the same sense that an atheist is restricted.  He cannot think Christianity false and continue to be a Christian; and the atheist cannot think atheism false and continue to be an atheist.

But as it happens, there is a very special sense in which materialism has more restrictions than theism (belief in a "Higher Power").  Mr. McCabe thinks me a slave because I am not allowed to believe in determinism.  I think Mr. McCabe a slave because he is not allowed to believe in fairies.

If we examine the two vetoes we shall see that his is really much more of a pure veto than mine.

The Christian is quite free to believe that there is a considerable amount of settled order and inevitable development in the universe.  But the materialist is not allowed to admit into his spotless machine the slightest speck of spiritualism or miracle...The Christian admits that the universe is manifold and even miscellaneous, just as a sane man knows that he is complex.  The sane man knows that he has a touch of the beast, a touch of the devil, a touch of the saint, a touch of the citizen.  Nay, the really sane man knows that he has a touch of the madman.

But the materialist's world is quite simple and solid, just as the madman is quite sure he is sane.  The materialist is sure that history has been simply and solely a chain of causation, just as the man who thinks himself a chicken is quite sure that he is simply and solely a chicken.

Materialists and madmen never have doubts.

Spiritual doctrines do not actually limit the mind as do materialistic denials.  Even if I believe in immortality, I need not think about it.  But if I disbelieve in immortality,  I must not think about it.  In the first case the road is open and I can go as far as I like; in the second the road is shut.

You can read the entire book, or even just this chapter (or this section of this chapter) here.  Please do.

In a series of debates, both in person and in print, with Robert Blatchford (renowned secular-Socialist in early 20th century England), Chesterton defended the existence of miracles from historical, philosophical, metaphysical, and logical angles.  Below are excerpts from an essay entitled "Miracles and Modern Civilization":

Mr. Blatchford has summed up all that is important in his whole position in three sentences. They are perfectly honest and clear. Nor are they any the less honest and clear because the first two of them are falsehoods and the third is a fallacy. He says "The Christian denies the miracles of the Mahommedan. The Mahommedan denies the miracles of the Christian. The Rationalist denies all miracles alike."

The historical error in the first two remarks I will deal with shortly. I confine myself for the moment to the courageous admission of Mr. Blatchford that the Rationalist denies all miracles alike. He does not question them. He does not pretend to be agnostic about them. He does not suspend his judgment until they shall be proved. He denies them.

Faced with this astounding dogma I asked Mr. Blatchford why he thought miracles would not occur. He replied that the Universe was governed by laws. Obviously this answer is of no use whatever. For we cannot call a thing impossible because the world is governed by laws, unless we know what laws. Does Mr. Blatchford know all about all the laws in the Universe? And if he does not know about the laws how can he possibly know anything about the exceptions?

For, obviously, the mere fact that a thing happens seldom, under odd circumstances and with no explanation within our knowledge, is no proof that it is against natural law. That would apply to the Siamese twins, or to a new comet, or to radium three years ago.

He continues:

The philosophical case against miracles is somewhat easily dealt with. There is no philosophical case against miracles. There are such things as the laws of Nature rationally speaking. What everybodyknows is this only. That there is repetition in nature. What everybody knows is that pumpkins produce pumpkins. What nobody knows is why they should not produce elephants and giraffes.

There is one philosophical question about miracles and only one. Many able modern Rationalists cannot apparently even get it into their heads. The poorest lad at Oxford in the Middle Ages would have understood it. (Note. As the last sentence will seem strange in our "enlightened" age I may explain that under "the cruel reign of mediaeval superstition," poor lads were educated at Oxford to a most reckless extent. Thank God, we live in better days.)

The question of miracles is merely this. Do you know why a pumpkin goes on being a pumpkin? If you do not, you cannot possibly tell whether a pumpkin could turn into a coach or couldn't. That is all.

All the other scientific expressions you are in the habit of using at breakfast are words and winds. You say "It is a law of nature that pumpkins should remain pumpkins." That only means that pumpkins generally do remain pumpkins, which is obvious; it does not say why. You say "Experience is against it." That only means, "I have known many pumpkins intimately and none of them turned into coaches."

Closing out the piece, Chesterton states:

Mr. Blatchford is quite wrong in supposing that the Christian and the Moslem deny each other's miracles. No religion that thinks itself true bothers about the miracles of another religion. It denies the doctrines of the religion; it denies its morals; but it never thinks it worth while to deny its signs and wonders.

And why not? Because these things some men have always thought possible. Because any wandering gipsy may have Psychical powers. Because the general existence of a world of spirits and of strange mental powers is a part of the common sense of all mankind. The Pharisees did not dispute the miracles of Christ; they said they were worked by devilry. The Christians did not dispute the miracles of Mahomed. They said they were worked by devilry. The Roman world did not deny the possibility that Christ was a God. It was far too enlightened for that.

In so far as the Church did (chiefly during the corrupt and sceptical eighteenth century) urge miracles as a reason for belief, her fault is evident: but it is not what Mr. Blatchford supposes. It is not that she asked men to believe anything so incredible; it is that she asked men to be converted by anything so commonplace.

What matters about a religion is not whether it can work marvels like any ragged Indian conjurer, but whether it has a true philosophy of the Universe. The Romans were quite willing to admit that Christ was a God. What they denied was the He was the God - the highest truth of the cosmos. And this is the only point worth discussing about Christianity.

I really cannot add anything to what G.K. said here without diminishing it.  I would love to hear your thoughts though, so please post a comment below.

One of Chesterton's favorite topics to write about is my own: History!

Here is an excerpt from an essay G.K. penned entitled "History Versus The Historians":

In my innocent and ardent youth I had a fixed fancy. I held that children in a school ought to be taught history, and ought to be taught nothing else. The story of human society is the only fundamental framework outside of religion in which everything can fall into its place. A boy cannot see the importance of Latin simply by learning Latin. But he might see it by learning the history of the Latins. Nobody can possibly see any sense in learning geography or in learning arithmetic - both studies are obviously nonsense. But on the eager eve of Austerlitz, where Napoleon was fighting a superior force in a foreign country, one might see the need for Napoleon knowing a little geography and a little arithmetic.

I have thought that if people would only learn history, they would learn to learn everything else. Algebra might seem ugly, yet the very name of it is connected with something so romantic as the Crusades, for the word is from the Saracens. Greek might be ugly until one knew the Greeks, but surely not afterwards. History is simply humanity. And history will humanise all studies, even anthropology.

Since that age of innocence I have, however, realised that there is a difficulty in this teaching of history. And the difficulty is that there is no history to teach. This is not a scrap of cynicism - it is a genuine and necessary product of the many points of view and the strong mental separations of our society, for in our age every man has a cosmos of his own, and is therefore horribly alone. There is no history; there are only historians. To tell the tale plainly is now much more difficult than to tell it treacherously. It is unnatural to leave the facts alone; it is instinctive to pervert them. The very words involved in the chronicles - "Pagan", "Puritan", "Catholic", "Republican", "Imperialist" - are words which make us leap out of our armchairs.

No good modern historians are impartial. All modern historians are divided into two classes - those who tell half the truth, like Macaulay and Froude, and those who tell none of the truth, like Hallam and the Impartials. The angry historians see one side of the question. The calm historians see nothing at all, not even the question itself.

But there is another possible attitude towards the records of the past, and I have never been able to understand why it has not been more often adopted. To put it in its curtest form, my proposal is this: That we should not read historians, but history. Let us read the actual text of the times. Let us, for a year, or a month, or a fortnight, refuse to read anything about Oliver Cromwell except what was written while he was alive.

There is plenty of material; from my own memory (which is all I have to rely on in the place where I write) I could mention offhand many long and famous efforts of English literature that cover the period. Clarendon's History, Evelyn's Diary, the Life of Colonel Hutchinson. Above all let us read all Cromwell's own letters and speeches, as Carlyle published them. But before we read them let us carefully paste pieces of stamp-paper over every sentence written by Carlyle. Let us blot out in every memoir every critical note and every modern paragraph. For a time let us cease altogether to read the living men on their dead topics. Let us read only the dead men on their living topics.

History is so important.  Girls instinctively understand this and try and take pictures of every historical event in their life for future reference (and Facebook additions).  But history is bigger than what happened on Spring Break sophomore year of college.  And not knowing it can lead a life, a family, or even a country off a cliff that might have been avoided if those involved simply had cared enough to learn, observe, and consider the implications of their own history.

Chesterton didn't idolize the past; he simply hated the obsession modern men and women had with the future and the ever-changing, never-clearly-defined "progress."  Progressing towards what?  To answer that, you must first know where you came from.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

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.