"If it does not make us happier"

“THE AIM of human polity is human happiness. For those holding certain beliefs it is conditioned by the hope of a larger happiness, which it must not imperil. But happiness, the making glad of the heart of man, is the secular test and the only realistic test. So far from this test, by the talisman of the heart, being merely sentimental, it is the only test that is in the least practical. There is no law of logic or nature or anything else forcing us to prefer anything else. There is no obligation on us to be richer, or busier, or more efficient, or more productive, or more progressive, or in any way worldlier or wealthier, if it does not make us happier. Mankind has as much right to scrap its machinery and live on the land, if it really likes it better, as any man has to sell his old bicycle and go for a walk; but he has no duty to be fast. And if it can be shown that machinery has come into the world as a curse, there is no reason whatever for our respecting it because it is a marvelous and practical and productive curse. There is no reason why we should not leave all its powers unused, if we really come to the conclusion that the powers do harm us. There mere fact that we shall be missing a number of interesting things would equally apply to any number of impossible things.”

~G.K. Chesterton: The Outline of Sanity.

A Husbandman with His Herd, by Paulus Potter; Oil on oak, 1648.
Staatliche Museen, Kassel.

Economic theory

“WHEN I say “Capitalism,” I commonly mean something that may be stated thus: “That economic condition in which there is a class of capitalists, roughly recognizable and relatively small, in whose possession so much of the capital is concentrated as to necessitate a very large majority of the citizens serving those capitalists for a wage.” ” — The Outline of Sanity.

“BIG Business and State Socialism are very much alike, especially Big Business.” — G.K.’s Weekly, April 10, 1926.

“OUR SOCIETY is so abnormal that the normal man never dreams of having the normal occupation of looking after his own property. When he chooses a trade, he chooses one of the ten thousand trades that involve looking after other people’s property.” — Commonwealth, Oct. 12, 1932.

“FROM the standpoint of any sane person, the present problem of capitalist concentration is not only a question of law, but of criminal law, not to mention criminal lunacy.” — The Outline of Sanity.

~G.K. Chesterton

G.K. Chesterton: Collected Works, Vol. 5, Family, Society, Politics: The Outline of Sanity, The End of the Armistice, The Appetite of Tyranny, Utopia of Usurers--and others.

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"The great truth"

"THERE IS always in the healthy mind an obscure prompting that religion teaches us rather to dig than to climb; that if we could once understand the common clay of earth we should understand everything. Similarly, we have the sentiment that if we could destroy custom at a blow and see the stars as a child sees them, we should need no other apocalypse. This is the great truth which has always lain at the back of baby-worship, and which will support it to the end."

~G.K. Chesterton: A Defence of Baby-Worship (in "The Defendant")

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Milky Way Over Ancient Ghost Panel.
 Photo Credit & Copyright: Bret Webster

Purification and austerity

"THE FACT IS that purification and austerity are even more necessary for the appreciation of life and laughter than for anything else. To let no bird fly past unnoticed, to spell patiently the stones and weeds, to have the mind a storehouse of sunsets, requires a discipline in pleasure and an education in gratitude.

~G.K. Chesterton: Twelve Types.

Photo: Equinox Sunset. Explanation: "Often inspiring, or offering a moment for contemplation, a sunset is probably the most commonly photographed celestial event. But this uncommonly beautiful sunset picture was taken on a special day, the Equinox on September 22. Marking the astronomical change of seasons, on that day Earth dwellers experienced nearly 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness (an equal night). Reflected in the calm waters of Lake Balaton with a motionless sailboat in silhouette, the Sun is setting due west and heading south across the celestial equator. In the background lies the Benedictine Archabbey of Tihany, Hungary." (NASA). Photo Credit & Copyright: Tamas Ladanyi (TWAN).

Twelve Types: A Collection of Mini-Biographies,
by G. K. Chesterton
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"All sensible women"

"IT is true that all sensible women think all studious men mad. It is true, for the matter of that, all women of any kind think all men of any kind mad. But they do not put it in telegrams any more than they wire to you that grass is green or God all-merciful. These things are truisms and often private ones at that."

~G.K. Chesterton: The Club of Queer Trades.

 

 

Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton: The Club of Queer Trades; The

Man Who Was Thursday; The Ball and the Cross;

The Napoleon of Notting Hill.

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The Church

'THE CHURCH is not a thing like the Athenaeum Club,' he cried.' If the Athenaeum Club lost all its members, the Athenaeum Club would dissolve and cease to exist. But when we belong to the Church we belong to something which is outside all of us which is outside everything you talk about, outside the Cardinals and the Pope. They belong to it, but it does not belong to them. If we all fell dead suddenly, the Church would still somehow exist in God.'

~G.K. Chesterton: The Ball and the Cross.

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Materialism

"AS AN explanation of the world, materialism has a sort of insane simplicity. It has just the quality of the madman’s argument; we have at once the sense of it covering everything and the sense of it leaving everything out. Contemplate some able and sincere materialist, . . . and you will have exactly this unique sensation. He understands everything, and everything does not seem worth understanding. His cosmos may be complete in every rivet and cog-wheel, but still his cosmos is smaller than our world. Somehow his scheme, like the lucid scheme of the madman, seems unconscious of the alien energies and the large indifference of the earth; it is not thinking of the real things of the earth, of fighting peoples or proud mothers, or first love or fear upon the sea. The earth is so very large, and the cosmos is so very small. The cosmos is about the smallest hole that a man can hide his head in."

~G.K. Chesterton: Orthodoxy.

 

The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton, Vol. 1: Heretics, Orthodoxy,
the Blatchford Controversies

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