Charlatans and Quacks

"THE argument used by professional men of science that what they call quack remedies are superstitions is really an argument in a circle. It amounts to this, that the herbs used by an old woman are untrustworthy because she is superstitious; and she is superstitious because she believes in such herbs. Her method is bad because she is stupid; but the main proof of her stupidity is that she pursues her own method."

~G.K. Chesterton: Illustrated London News, Feb. 15, 1908.

"The pirate"

"THE pirate who grew rich on the high seas at least could not be a coward; the pirate who grows rich on the high prices may be that, as well as everything else that is unworthy."

~G.K. Chesterton: Illustrated London News, Jan. 7, 1928.

The Outline of Sanity

“THE practical tendency of all trade and business today is towards big commercial combinations, more imperial, more impersonal, more international than many a communist commonwealth.” ~G.K. Chesterton
 
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“G.K. Chesterton was one of those masters who charted a course for us back to the real and the normal, and whose counsel is available to us through a thorough reading of “The Outline of Sanity.” This is “not” another book about the dissolution of the West. It is rather a book that pulls the plug on the lies; it draw lines and makes distinctions. It does so in order to highlight feasible and wholly attainable remedies for our very precarious situation…. Chesterton begins his “Outline” by attacking the illusions that clutter our lives and thus pollute our thinking. He begins at the beginning, which means talking about the mess that both Capitalism and Socialism have made of the world. He explains what these ‘isms’ are and what they are leading to inexorably.” ~from the Preface, by Directors of IHS Press.

 

• IHS Press, http://www.ihspress.com/

 

• The Outline at ACS bookstore, http://bit.ly/19ylBWS

 

• The Outline of Sanity, a lecture by Dale Ahlquist, http://bit.ly/17UGkjE

"We must awake with a yell"

"THE disease called aphasia, in which people begin by saying tea when they mean coffee, commonly ends in their silence. Silence of this stiff sort is the chief mark of the powerful parts of modern society. They all seem straining to keep things in rather than to let things out. For the kings of finance speechlessness is counted a way of being strong, though it should rather be counted a way of being sly. By this time the Parliament does not parley any more than the Speaker speaks. Even the newspaper editors and proprietors are more despotic and dangerous by what they do not utter than by what they do. We have all heard the expression "golden silence." The expression "brazen silence" is the only adequate phrase for our editors. If we wake out of this throttled, gaping, and wordless nightmare, we must awake with a yell."

~G.K. Chesterton: The Nameless Man.

"We should need no other apocalypse"

"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: The Defendant, 'A Defense of Baby-Worship.'

Milky Way Over Ancient Ghost Panel.
(Clicking on an image will enlarge it.)

 

"They were not fond of the universe"

"I HAVE remarked that the materialist, like the madman, is in prison; in the prison of one thought. These people seemed to think it singularly inspiring to keep on saying that the prison was very large. The size of this scientific universe gave one no novelty, no relief. The cosmos went on for ever, but not in its wildest constellation could there be anything really interesting; anything, for instance, such as forgiveness or free will. The grandeur or infinity of the secret of its cosmos added nothing to it. It was like telling a prisoner in Reading gaol that he would be glad to hear that the gaol now covered half the county. The warder would have nothing to show the man except more and more long corridors of stone lit by ghastly lights and empty of all that is human. So these expanders of the universe had nothing to show us except more and more infinite corridors of space lit by ghastly suns and empty of all that is divine...

"These people professed that the universe was one coherent thing; but they were not fond of the universe.  But I was frightfully fond of the universe and wanted to address it by a diminutive. I often did so; and it never seemed to mind.  Actually and in truth I did feel that these dim dogmas of vitality were better expressed by calling the world small than by calling it large. For about infinity there was a sort of carelessness which was the reverse of the fierce and pious care which I felt touching the pricelessness and the peril of life.  They showed only a dreary waste; but I felt a sort of sacred thrift.  For economy is far more romantic than extravagance.  To them stars were an unending income of halfpence; but I felt about the golden sun and the silver moon as a schoolboy feels if he has one sovereign and one shilling...

"Even those dim and shapeless monsters of notions which I have not been able to describe, much less defend, stepped quietly into their places like colossal caryatids of the creed.  The fancy that the cosmos was not vast and void, but small and cosy, had a fulfilled significance now, for anything that is a work of art must be small in the sight of the artist; to God the stars might be only small and dear, like diamonds."

~G.K. Chesterton: Orthodoxy.

(Hubble image: Star Cluster NGC 265)

"The universe is a single jewel"

"FOR the universe is a single jewel, and while it is a natural cant to talk of a jewel as peerless and priceless, of this jewel it is literally true.  This cosmos is indeed without peer and without price: for there cannot be another one."

~G.K. Chesterton: Orthodoxy," IV.

Image: Hubble Ultra Deep Field.