~G.K. Chesterton: Heretics, XX. Concluding Remarks on the Importance of Orthodoxy.
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3/8/15
"Men dying in agonies to find a place where no man can live"
"THUS because we are not in a civilization which believes strongly in oracles or sacred places, we see the full frenzy of those who killed themselves to find the sepulchre of Christ. But being in a civilization which does believe in this dogma of fact for fact's sake, we do not see the full frenzy of those who kill themselves to find the North Pole. I am not speaking of a tenable ultimate utility, which is true both of the Crusades and the polar explorations. I mean merely that we do see the superficial and aesthetic singularity, the startling quality, about the idea of men crossing a continent with armies to conquer the place where a man died. But we do not see the aesthetic singularity and the startling quality of men dying in agonies to find a place where no man can live — a place only interesting because it is supposed to be the meeting-place of some lines that do not exist."
~G.K. Chesterton: Heretics, XX. Concluding Remarks on the Importance of Orthodoxy.
~G.K. Chesterton: Heretics, XX. Concluding Remarks on the Importance of Orthodoxy.
3/6/15
A Defence of Humility
THE act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has to-day all the exhilaration of a vice. Moral truisms have been so much disputed that they have begun to sparkle like so many brilliant paradoxes. And especially (in this age of egoistic idealism) there is about one who defends humility something inexpressibly rakish.
It is no part of my intention to defend humility on practical grounds. Practical grounds are uninteresting, and, moreover, on practical grounds the case for humility is overwhelming. We all know that the 'divine glory of the ego' is socially a great nuisance; we all do actually value our friends for modesty, freshness, and simplicity of heart. Whatever may be the reason, we all do warmly respect humility—in other people.
But the matter must go deeper than this. If the grounds of humility are found only in social convenience, they may be quite trivial and temporary. The egoists may be the martyrs of a nobler dispensation, agonizing for a more arduous ideal. To judge from the comparative lack of ease in their social manner, this seems a reasonable suggestion.
There is one thing that must be seen at the outset of the study of humility from an intrinsic and eternal point of view. The new philosophy of self-esteem and self-assertion declares that humility is a vice. If it be so, it is quite clear that it is one of those vices which are an integral part of original sin. It follows with the precision of clockwork every one of the great joys of life. No one, for example, was ever in love without indulging in a positive debauch of humility. All full-blooded and natural people, such as schoolboys, enjoy humility the moment they attain hero-worship. Humility, again, is said both by its upholders and opponents to be the peculiar growth of Christianity. The real and obvious reason of this is often missed. The pagans insisted upon self-assertion because it was the essence of their creed that the gods, though strong and just, were mystic, capricious, and even indifferent. But the essence of Christianity was in a literal sense the New Testament—a covenant with God which opened to men a clear deliverance. They thought themselves secure; they claimed palaces of pearl and silver under the oath and seal of the Omnipotent; they believed themselves rich with an irrevocable benediction which set them above the stars; and immediately they discovered humility. It was only another example of the same immutable paradox. It is always the secure who are humble.
This particular instance survives in the evangelical revivalists of the street. They are irritating enough, but no one who has really studied them can deny that the irritation is occasioned by these two things, an irritating hilarity and an irritating humility. This combination of joy and self-prostration is a great deal too universal to be ignored. If humility has been discredited as a virtue at the present day, it is not wholly irrelevant to remark that this discredit has arisen at the same time as a great collapse of joy in current literature and philosophy. Men have revived the splendour of Greek self-assertion at the same time that they have revived the bitterness of Greek pessimism. A literature has arisen which commands us all to arrogate to ourselves the liberty of self-sufficing deities at the same time that it exhibits us to ourselves as dingy maniacs who ought to be chained up like dogs. It is certainly a curious state of things altogether. When we are genuinely happy, we think we are unworthy of happiness. But when we are demanding a divine emancipation we seem to be perfectly certain that we are unworthy of anything.
The only explanation of the matter must be found in the conviction that humility has infinitely deeper roots than any modern men suppose; that it is a metaphysical and, one might almost say, a mathematical virtue. Probably this can best be tested by a study of those who frankly disregard humility and assert the supreme duty of perfecting and expressing one's self. These people tend, by a perfectly natural process, to bring their own great human gifts of culture, intellect, or moral power to a great perfection, successively shutting out everything that they feel to be lower than themselves. Now shutting out things is all very well, but it has one simple corollary—that from everything that we shut out we are ourselves shut out. When we shut our door on the wind, it would be equally true to say that the wind shuts its door on us. Whatever virtues a triumphant egoism really leads to, no one can reasonably pretend that it leads to knowledge. Turning a beggar from the door may be right enough, but pretending to know all the stories the beggar might have narrated is pure nonsense; and this is practically the claim of the egoism which thinks that self-assertion can obtain knowledge. A beetle may or may not be inferior to a man—the matter awaits demonstration; but if he were inferior by ten thousand fathoms, the fact remains that there is probably a beetle view of things of which a man is entirely ignorant. If he wishes to conceive that point of view, he will scarcely reach it by persistently revelling in the fact that he is not a beetle. The most brilliant exponent of the egoistic school, Nietzsche, with deadly and honourable logic, admitted that the philosophy of self-satisfaction led to looking down upon the weak, the cowardly, and the ignorant. Looking down on things may be a delightful experience, only there is nothing, from a mountain to a cabbage, that is really seen when it is seen from a balloon. The philosopher of the ego sees everything, no doubt, from a high and rarified heaven; only he sees everything foreshortened or deformed.
Now if we imagine that a man wished truly, as far as possible, to see everything as it was, he would certainly proceed on a different principle. He would seek to divest himself for a time of those personal peculiarities which tend to divide him from the thing he studies. It is as difficult, for example, for a man to examine a fish without developing a certain vanity in possessing a pair of legs, as if they were the latest article of personal adornment. But if a fish is to be approximately understood, this physiological dandyism must be overcome. The earnest student of fish morality will, spiritually speaking, chop off his legs. And similarly the student of birds will eliminate his arms; the frog-lover will with one stroke of the imagination remove all his teeth, and the spirit wishing to enter into all the hopes and fears of jelly-fish will simplify his personal appearance to a really alarming extent. It would appear, therefore, that this great body of ours and all its natural instincts, of which we are proud, and justly proud, is rather an encumbrance at the moment when we attempt to appreciate things as they should be appreciated. We do actually go through a process of mental asceticism, a castration of the entire being, when we wish to feel the abounding good in all things. It is good for us at certain times that ourselves should be like a mere window—as clear, as luminous, and as invisible.
In a very entertaining work, over which we have roared in childhood, it is stated that a point has no parts and no magnitude. Humility is the luxurious art of reducing ourselves to a point, not to a small thing or a large one, but to a thing with no size at all, so that to it all the cosmic things are what they really are—of immeasurable stature. That the trees are high and the grasses short is a mere accident of our own foot-rules and our own stature. But to the spirit which has stripped off for a moment its own idle temporal standards the grass is an everlasting forest, with dragons for denizens; the stones of the road are as incredible mountains piled one upon the other; the dandelions are like gigantic bonfires illuminating the lands around; and the heath-bells on their stalks are like planets hung in heaven each higher than the other. Between one stake of a paling and another there are new and terrible landscapes; here a desert, with nothing but one misshapen rock; here a miraculous forest, of which all the trees flower above the head with the hues of sunset; here, again, a sea full of monsters that Dante would not have dared to dream. These are the visions of him who, like the child in the fairy tales, is not afraid to become small. Meanwhile, the sage whose faith is in magnitude and ambition is, like a giant, becoming larger and larger, which only means that the stars are becoming smaller and smaller. World after world falls from him into insignificance; the whole passionate and intricate life of common things becomes as lost to him as is the life of the infusoria to a man without a microscope. He rises always through desolate eternities. He may find new systems, and forget them; he may discover fresh universes, and learn to despise them. But the towering and tropical vision of things as they really are—the gigantic daisies, the heaven-consuming dandelions, the great Odyssey of strange-coloured oceans and strange-shaped trees, of dust like the wreck of temples, and thistledown like the ruin of stars—all this colossal vision shall perish with the last of the humble.
~G.K. Chesterton: The Defendant.
It is no part of my intention to defend humility on practical grounds. Practical grounds are uninteresting, and, moreover, on practical grounds the case for humility is overwhelming. We all know that the 'divine glory of the ego' is socially a great nuisance; we all do actually value our friends for modesty, freshness, and simplicity of heart. Whatever may be the reason, we all do warmly respect humility—in other people.
But the matter must go deeper than this. If the grounds of humility are found only in social convenience, they may be quite trivial and temporary. The egoists may be the martyrs of a nobler dispensation, agonizing for a more arduous ideal. To judge from the comparative lack of ease in their social manner, this seems a reasonable suggestion.
There is one thing that must be seen at the outset of the study of humility from an intrinsic and eternal point of view. The new philosophy of self-esteem and self-assertion declares that humility is a vice. If it be so, it is quite clear that it is one of those vices which are an integral part of original sin. It follows with the precision of clockwork every one of the great joys of life. No one, for example, was ever in love without indulging in a positive debauch of humility. All full-blooded and natural people, such as schoolboys, enjoy humility the moment they attain hero-worship. Humility, again, is said both by its upholders and opponents to be the peculiar growth of Christianity. The real and obvious reason of this is often missed. The pagans insisted upon self-assertion because it was the essence of their creed that the gods, though strong and just, were mystic, capricious, and even indifferent. But the essence of Christianity was in a literal sense the New Testament—a covenant with God which opened to men a clear deliverance. They thought themselves secure; they claimed palaces of pearl and silver under the oath and seal of the Omnipotent; they believed themselves rich with an irrevocable benediction which set them above the stars; and immediately they discovered humility. It was only another example of the same immutable paradox. It is always the secure who are humble.
This particular instance survives in the evangelical revivalists of the street. They are irritating enough, but no one who has really studied them can deny that the irritation is occasioned by these two things, an irritating hilarity and an irritating humility. This combination of joy and self-prostration is a great deal too universal to be ignored. If humility has been discredited as a virtue at the present day, it is not wholly irrelevant to remark that this discredit has arisen at the same time as a great collapse of joy in current literature and philosophy. Men have revived the splendour of Greek self-assertion at the same time that they have revived the bitterness of Greek pessimism. A literature has arisen which commands us all to arrogate to ourselves the liberty of self-sufficing deities at the same time that it exhibits us to ourselves as dingy maniacs who ought to be chained up like dogs. It is certainly a curious state of things altogether. When we are genuinely happy, we think we are unworthy of happiness. But when we are demanding a divine emancipation we seem to be perfectly certain that we are unworthy of anything.
The only explanation of the matter must be found in the conviction that humility has infinitely deeper roots than any modern men suppose; that it is a metaphysical and, one might almost say, a mathematical virtue. Probably this can best be tested by a study of those who frankly disregard humility and assert the supreme duty of perfecting and expressing one's self. These people tend, by a perfectly natural process, to bring their own great human gifts of culture, intellect, or moral power to a great perfection, successively shutting out everything that they feel to be lower than themselves. Now shutting out things is all very well, but it has one simple corollary—that from everything that we shut out we are ourselves shut out. When we shut our door on the wind, it would be equally true to say that the wind shuts its door on us. Whatever virtues a triumphant egoism really leads to, no one can reasonably pretend that it leads to knowledge. Turning a beggar from the door may be right enough, but pretending to know all the stories the beggar might have narrated is pure nonsense; and this is practically the claim of the egoism which thinks that self-assertion can obtain knowledge. A beetle may or may not be inferior to a man—the matter awaits demonstration; but if he were inferior by ten thousand fathoms, the fact remains that there is probably a beetle view of things of which a man is entirely ignorant. If he wishes to conceive that point of view, he will scarcely reach it by persistently revelling in the fact that he is not a beetle. The most brilliant exponent of the egoistic school, Nietzsche, with deadly and honourable logic, admitted that the philosophy of self-satisfaction led to looking down upon the weak, the cowardly, and the ignorant. Looking down on things may be a delightful experience, only there is nothing, from a mountain to a cabbage, that is really seen when it is seen from a balloon. The philosopher of the ego sees everything, no doubt, from a high and rarified heaven; only he sees everything foreshortened or deformed.
Now if we imagine that a man wished truly, as far as possible, to see everything as it was, he would certainly proceed on a different principle. He would seek to divest himself for a time of those personal peculiarities which tend to divide him from the thing he studies. It is as difficult, for example, for a man to examine a fish without developing a certain vanity in possessing a pair of legs, as if they were the latest article of personal adornment. But if a fish is to be approximately understood, this physiological dandyism must be overcome. The earnest student of fish morality will, spiritually speaking, chop off his legs. And similarly the student of birds will eliminate his arms; the frog-lover will with one stroke of the imagination remove all his teeth, and the spirit wishing to enter into all the hopes and fears of jelly-fish will simplify his personal appearance to a really alarming extent. It would appear, therefore, that this great body of ours and all its natural instincts, of which we are proud, and justly proud, is rather an encumbrance at the moment when we attempt to appreciate things as they should be appreciated. We do actually go through a process of mental asceticism, a castration of the entire being, when we wish to feel the abounding good in all things. It is good for us at certain times that ourselves should be like a mere window—as clear, as luminous, and as invisible.
In a very entertaining work, over which we have roared in childhood, it is stated that a point has no parts and no magnitude. Humility is the luxurious art of reducing ourselves to a point, not to a small thing or a large one, but to a thing with no size at all, so that to it all the cosmic things are what they really are—of immeasurable stature. That the trees are high and the grasses short is a mere accident of our own foot-rules and our own stature. But to the spirit which has stripped off for a moment its own idle temporal standards the grass is an everlasting forest, with dragons for denizens; the stones of the road are as incredible mountains piled one upon the other; the dandelions are like gigantic bonfires illuminating the lands around; and the heath-bells on their stalks are like planets hung in heaven each higher than the other. Between one stake of a paling and another there are new and terrible landscapes; here a desert, with nothing but one misshapen rock; here a miraculous forest, of which all the trees flower above the head with the hues of sunset; here, again, a sea full of monsters that Dante would not have dared to dream. These are the visions of him who, like the child in the fairy tales, is not afraid to become small. Meanwhile, the sage whose faith is in magnitude and ambition is, like a giant, becoming larger and larger, which only means that the stars are becoming smaller and smaller. World after world falls from him into insignificance; the whole passionate and intricate life of common things becomes as lost to him as is the life of the infusoria to a man without a microscope. He rises always through desolate eternities. He may find new systems, and forget them; he may discover fresh universes, and learn to despise them. But the towering and tropical vision of things as they really are—the gigantic daisies, the heaven-consuming dandelions, the great Odyssey of strange-coloured oceans and strange-shaped trees, of dust like the wreck of temples, and thistledown like the ruin of stars—all this colossal vision shall perish with the last of the humble.
~G.K. Chesterton: The Defendant.
3/5/15
The Cradle of the Winds
By Frances Chesterton
FROM frozen ice lands blows the wind of the North,
The cold wind of danger, wild wind of wrath,
Mystery wind, sing loud, sing deep,
Sing to a Babe that is lying asleep,
Sing loud, sing deep;
Blow wind, blow through the stable door,
Scatter the dead leaves over the floor.
Mary, fold closer the covering hay;
Wind of the North that comes this way,
Is quick to harden, quick to slay;
Pray, Mary pray.
From the high mountain blows the wind of the East,
The dry wind of menace, anger released;
Magical wind, sing low, sing high,
Sing to an ass that standing by,
Sing low, sing high.
Blow wind, blow through the narrow chink,
Ox, ass and sheep may tremble and shrink.
Mary, wait for the sign of day;
Wind of the East that comes this way,
Ready for battle, ready to flay;
Pray, Mary pray.
From golden deserts blows the wind of the south,
Wind of the spices, a kiss on the mouth;
Whispering wind, sing up, sing down,
Sing to a Maid, that shall wear a crown,
Sing up, sing down.
Blow wind, blow through the broken rafter,
Fill the pitiful stable with laughter,
Gently blow where Angels play;
Wind of the South that comes this way
Ever to wander, never to stay.
Pray, Mary pray.
From the deep forest blows the wind of the West,
Wind of the Spirit, wind of the Quest,
O changing wind, sing shine, sing rain,
Sing to the world that is born again,
Sing shine, sing rain;
Breathe, softly breather and lift the hair
Of the Child that lies in slumber there,
Wind so gracious, wind so gay,
Wind of the West that comes this way,
Lightly let His cradle sway,
Pray, Mary pray.
He holds the great winds in His helpless hand
From forest and desert, mountain and land,
The octave notes from near and far
Call to the men who follow a Star
From near, from far;
Winds, shake the bells in the high church steeple,
Summon the king, the priest and the people,
Each in his ordained array,
To holy night, to holy day;
The winds of God have come this way.
Pray, Mary pray.
—from G.K.’s Weekly
FROM frozen ice lands blows the wind of the North,
The cold wind of danger, wild wind of wrath,
Mystery wind, sing loud, sing deep,
Sing to a Babe that is lying asleep,
Sing loud, sing deep;
Blow wind, blow through the stable door,
Scatter the dead leaves over the floor.
Mary, fold closer the covering hay;
Wind of the North that comes this way,
Is quick to harden, quick to slay;
Pray, Mary pray.
From the high mountain blows the wind of the East,
The dry wind of menace, anger released;
Magical wind, sing low, sing high,
Sing to an ass that standing by,
Sing low, sing high.
Blow wind, blow through the narrow chink,
Ox, ass and sheep may tremble and shrink.
Mary, wait for the sign of day;
Wind of the East that comes this way,
Ready for battle, ready to flay;
Pray, Mary pray.
From golden deserts blows the wind of the south,
Wind of the spices, a kiss on the mouth;
Whispering wind, sing up, sing down,
Sing to a Maid, that shall wear a crown,
Sing up, sing down.
Blow wind, blow through the broken rafter,
Fill the pitiful stable with laughter,
Gently blow where Angels play;
Wind of the South that comes this way
Ever to wander, never to stay.
Pray, Mary pray.
From the deep forest blows the wind of the West,
Wind of the Spirit, wind of the Quest,
O changing wind, sing shine, sing rain,
Sing to the world that is born again,
Sing shine, sing rain;
Breathe, softly breather and lift the hair
Of the Child that lies in slumber there,
Wind so gracious, wind so gay,
Wind of the West that comes this way,
Lightly let His cradle sway,
Pray, Mary pray.
He holds the great winds in His helpless hand
From forest and desert, mountain and land,
The octave notes from near and far
Call to the men who follow a Star
From near, from far;
Winds, shake the bells in the high church steeple,
Summon the king, the priest and the people,
Each in his ordained array,
To holy night, to holy day;
The winds of God have come this way.
Pray, Mary pray.
—from G.K.’s Weekly
Poem: The Trinkets
A wandering world of rivers,
A wavering world of trees,
If the world grow dim and dizzy
With all changes and degrees,
It is but Our Lady's mirror
Hung dreaming in its place,
Shining with only shadows
Till she wakes it with her face.
The standing whirlpool of the stars,
The wheel of all the world,
Is a ring on Our Lady's finger
With the suns and moons empearled
With stars for stones to please her
Who sits playing with her rings
With the great heart that a woman has
And the love of little things.
Wings of the whirlwind of the world
From here to Ispahan,
Spurning the flying forests,
Are light as Our Lady's fan:
For all things violent here and vain
Lie open and all at ease
Where God has girded heaven to guard
Her holy vanities.
~G.K. Chesterton
A wavering world of trees,
If the world grow dim and dizzy
With all changes and degrees,
It is but Our Lady's mirror
Hung dreaming in its place,
Shining with only shadows
Till she wakes it with her face.
The standing whirlpool of the stars,
The wheel of all the world,
Is a ring on Our Lady's finger
With the suns and moons empearled
With stars for stones to please her
Who sits playing with her rings
With the great heart that a woman has
And the love of little things.
Wings of the whirlwind of the world
From here to Ispahan,
Spurning the flying forests,
Are light as Our Lady's fan:
For all things violent here and vain
Lie open and all at ease
Where God has girded heaven to guard
Her holy vanities.
~G.K. Chesterton
The Old Song
(ON THE EMBANKMENT IN STORMY WEATHER)
A livid sky on London
And like the iron steeds that rear
A shock of engines halted
And I knew the end was near:
And something said that far away, over the hills and far away
There came a crawling thunder and the end of all things here.
For London Bridge is broken down, broken down, broken down,
As digging lets the daylight on the sunken streets of yore,
The lightning looked on London town, the broken bridge of London town.
The ending of a broken road where men shall go no more.
I saw the kings of London town,
The kings that buy and sell,
That built it up with penny loaves
And penny lies as well:
And where the streets were paved with gold the shrivelled paper
shone for gold,
The scorching light of promises that pave the streets of hell.
For penny loaves will melt away, melt away, melt away,
Mock the men that haggled in the grain they did not grow;
With hungry faces in the gate, a hundred thousand in the gate,
A thunder-flash on London and the finding of the foe.
I heard the hundred pin-makers
Slow down their racking din,
Till in the stillness men could hear
The dropping of the pin:
And somewhere men without the wall, beneath the wood, without
the wall,
Had found the place where London ends and England can begin.
For pins and needles bend and break, bend and break, bend and break,
Faster than the breaking spears or the bending of the bow,
Of pageants pale in thunder-light, 'twixt thunder-load and thunder-light,
The Hundreds marching on the hills in the wars of long ago.
I saw great Cobbett riding,
The horseman of the shires;
And his face was red with judgement
And a light of Luddite fires:
And south to Sussex and the sea the lights leapt up for liberty,
The trumpet of the yeomanry, the hammer of the squires;
For bars of iron rust away, rust away, rust away,
Rend before the hammer and the horseman riding in,
Crying that all men at the last, and at the worst and at the last,
Have found the place where England ends and England can begin.
His horse-hoofs go before you
Far beyond your bursting tyres;
And time is bridged behind him
And our sons are with our sires.
A trailing meteor on the Downs he rides above the rotting towns,
The Horseman of Apocalypse, the Rider of the Shires.
For London Bridge is broken down, broken down, broken down;
Blow the horn of Huntington from Scotland to the sea—
. . . Only flash of thunder-light, a flying dream of thunder-light,
Had shown under the shattered sky a people that were free.
~G.K. Chesterton
A livid sky on London
And like the iron steeds that rear
A shock of engines halted
And I knew the end was near:
And something said that far away, over the hills and far away
There came a crawling thunder and the end of all things here.
For London Bridge is broken down, broken down, broken down,
As digging lets the daylight on the sunken streets of yore,
The lightning looked on London town, the broken bridge of London town.
The ending of a broken road where men shall go no more.
I saw the kings of London town,
The kings that buy and sell,
That built it up with penny loaves
And penny lies as well:
And where the streets were paved with gold the shrivelled paper
shone for gold,
The scorching light of promises that pave the streets of hell.
For penny loaves will melt away, melt away, melt away,
Mock the men that haggled in the grain they did not grow;
With hungry faces in the gate, a hundred thousand in the gate,
A thunder-flash on London and the finding of the foe.
I heard the hundred pin-makers
Slow down their racking din,
Till in the stillness men could hear
The dropping of the pin:
And somewhere men without the wall, beneath the wood, without
the wall,
Had found the place where London ends and England can begin.
For pins and needles bend and break, bend and break, bend and break,
Faster than the breaking spears or the bending of the bow,
Of pageants pale in thunder-light, 'twixt thunder-load and thunder-light,
The Hundreds marching on the hills in the wars of long ago.
I saw great Cobbett riding,
The horseman of the shires;
And his face was red with judgement
And a light of Luddite fires:
And south to Sussex and the sea the lights leapt up for liberty,
The trumpet of the yeomanry, the hammer of the squires;
For bars of iron rust away, rust away, rust away,
Rend before the hammer and the horseman riding in,
Crying that all men at the last, and at the worst and at the last,
Have found the place where England ends and England can begin.
His horse-hoofs go before you
Far beyond your bursting tyres;
And time is bridged behind him
And our sons are with our sires.
A trailing meteor on the Downs he rides above the rotting towns,
The Horseman of Apocalypse, the Rider of the Shires.
For London Bridge is broken down, broken down, broken down;
Blow the horn of Huntington from Scotland to the sea—
. . . Only flash of thunder-light, a flying dream of thunder-light,
Had shown under the shattered sky a people that were free.
~G.K. Chesterton
On Secular Education
ONCE UPON A TIME a boy was born in a square enclosure between four blank walls, where he grew up without knowledge of any other place; nor did he remember his mother or what had become of her. The only person he ever saw, as he grew up, was a sort of Guardian or Warder of the place, who passed a great deal of the time walking round and round the top of the walls like a sentinel. He was a rather remarkable old party, with a quaint sort of old-fashioned top hat and very big and bushy beard or whiskers. But he wore a very big and powerful pair of spectacles, which showed that he was delightfully scientific as well as nearly blind; and he always carried under his arm a big gun; which was enough to prove that he was the Law and the Executive.
The occupation of the boy, to which he was introduced very early in life, was as follows. In one of the walls there was a round hole, just large enough to allow a sort of iron rope or rod to pass out across the enclosure and vanish into an exactly identical round hole in the opposite wall. In this continuously moving cord it was the boy’s business to cut notches at very exact intervals and with very considerable exertion. Sometimes, at noon and late at night, he was allowed to desist, to sleep and eat a little food which the old gentleman brought to him; and on these occasions the old gentleman was so kind as to utter a short homily of the most human and sympathetic sort; pointing out the privileges which the youth enjoyed in so orderly and reliable an environment.
“You have complete liberty of thought,” explained the Guardian, “and you are doubtless exercising that faculty by admiring the neatness of the mechanism and wondering how less happy human beings can support a rude existence without it.”
“Well,” answered the boy, “it must be remembered that I have never yet seen any other human beings, happy or otherwise. As a matter of fact, I am rather wondering who I am.”
“We will resume this discussion in twelve hours’ time,” said the Guardian, looking at his watch, “when the conversation will turn upon what is the most hygienic meal-time.”
The youth resumed his labours; but his mind was clearly given over to a morbid brooding, for he actually stopped in the middle of his pleasing industry to say:
“What is all this for?”
“Enjoying as you do complete liberty of speech,” replied the old gentleman on the wall, “you will probably wish to discuss whether your hour of sleep should be fifteen minutes later.”
“I mean,” cried the boy, with a gesture as of despair, “where does all this stuff go to?”
“The complete liberty of public discussion of which you justly boast,” remarked the Guardian, “will be resumed in three weeks time.”
So the boy took up his chopper again and began to chop bits out of the iron rope until he was weary; when he suddenly hurled his chopper over the wall and flung out his arms with a wild gesture to the sky.
“Who made all this?” he cried, “Who built this place, and why?”
“Silence!” cried the Guardian from the wall, in a voice of thunder, “You enjoy complete liberty of thought and speech; and I will not allow you to be fettered by Creed or Dogma.”
+ + +
Source: Daylight and Nightmare: Uncollected Stories and Fables by G.K. Chesterton.
The occupation of the boy, to which he was introduced very early in life, was as follows. In one of the walls there was a round hole, just large enough to allow a sort of iron rope or rod to pass out across the enclosure and vanish into an exactly identical round hole in the opposite wall. In this continuously moving cord it was the boy’s business to cut notches at very exact intervals and with very considerable exertion. Sometimes, at noon and late at night, he was allowed to desist, to sleep and eat a little food which the old gentleman brought to him; and on these occasions the old gentleman was so kind as to utter a short homily of the most human and sympathetic sort; pointing out the privileges which the youth enjoyed in so orderly and reliable an environment.
“You have complete liberty of thought,” explained the Guardian, “and you are doubtless exercising that faculty by admiring the neatness of the mechanism and wondering how less happy human beings can support a rude existence without it.”
“Well,” answered the boy, “it must be remembered that I have never yet seen any other human beings, happy or otherwise. As a matter of fact, I am rather wondering who I am.”
“We will resume this discussion in twelve hours’ time,” said the Guardian, looking at his watch, “when the conversation will turn upon what is the most hygienic meal-time.”
The youth resumed his labours; but his mind was clearly given over to a morbid brooding, for he actually stopped in the middle of his pleasing industry to say:
“What is all this for?”
“Enjoying as you do complete liberty of speech,” replied the old gentleman on the wall, “you will probably wish to discuss whether your hour of sleep should be fifteen minutes later.”
“I mean,” cried the boy, with a gesture as of despair, “where does all this stuff go to?”
“The complete liberty of public discussion of which you justly boast,” remarked the Guardian, “will be resumed in three weeks time.”
So the boy took up his chopper again and began to chop bits out of the iron rope until he was weary; when he suddenly hurled his chopper over the wall and flung out his arms with a wild gesture to the sky.
“Who made all this?” he cried, “Who built this place, and why?”
“Silence!” cried the Guardian from the wall, in a voice of thunder, “You enjoy complete liberty of thought and speech; and I will not allow you to be fettered by Creed or Dogma.”
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Source: Daylight and Nightmare: Uncollected Stories and Fables by G.K. Chesterton.
3/2/15
Chesterton, the "notorious anti-feminist"
From Chesterton, Belloc, Baring (1936)
By Raymond Las Vergnas
IF MARRIAGE is merely a contract, then the union between two spouses falls back into being a capricious, because commercial, alliance. The moment incompatibility becomes evident, divorce flings wide the prison-gates. The Family is disintegrated; the children are distributed according to the legality of the claims. Such is the disastrous effect of the Contract-theory. On the other hand, let divorce be forbidden, let the heroic nobility of the Oath be rediscovered, and Marriage will become again what it should never have ceased to be—an act of Faith and a Sacrament.
In that happy country which Chesterton, by studying the past, could project into the future, in that blessed Family where parents and children are as one, a high place is reserved for the Woman. But in no ‘feminist’ sense. Few writers more than Chesterton have scoffed at the attempts of the modern woman to be no more a woman. The ‘suffragette’ tends to be but a hybrid, halfway between wife and husband, and inspired him with none but the most vivacious jests. Not that he was at all blind to the heavy burden bound by a pro-masculine society on the weaker sex, which was, indeed too often sacrificed. But his argument moves us precisely because of its paradoxical justness. Woman is wrong, he considers, to try to adapt herself to society by making a man of herself. The contrary should come about—Society should adapt itself to womanhood by becoming gentler. To Feminists, he acknowledges that women undergo a revolting tyranny in factories; but he wanted to destroy the factories, while they, he felt, were content with destroying womanhood.
The return of Woman to her original condition—tending her home and bringing up her children, was not imposed upon Chesterton by any vague contempt for the intellectual or practical potentialities of a wife. Domestic life, in the noblest sense of the word, seemed to him the best possible adornment for the mind and the perfection of the heart’s virtues. What praise for the very nature of woman is the comparison between her and the Church of God—that ‘everlasting Handmaid’! A wife is, too, a modest working-woman, and there exists no vocation ‘more generous, more perilous, and more romantic.’ This romance of humility, this adventurousness of the humdrum, are characteristic of the way in which the essayist thinks of the Family. When he prays that Society shall allow the wife to be not only the soul but the very body of the Home, he is, in reality, rendering the highest homage to the Mistress of the House—a desire, not for superiority, nor even equality, but simply for being there. He recognises the helplessness of the husband, the moment he is reduced to being alone. He declares that he is at all points dependent on his ‘help-meet.’ He owns that what is best in man is the reflection of his ante-natal life in his mother’s womb: and this notorious anti-feminist could write these subtle lines to the glory of Woman:
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Source: Excerpt from Chesterton, Belloc, Baring by Raymond Las Vergnas. Sheed & Ward, New York; 1936. The three studies contained in this book originally appeared in the Revue des Deux Mondes. The studies were slightly amplified and translated by C.C. Martindale, S.J., for publication in a single volume.
By Raymond Las Vergnas
IF MARRIAGE is merely a contract, then the union between two spouses falls back into being a capricious, because commercial, alliance. The moment incompatibility becomes evident, divorce flings wide the prison-gates. The Family is disintegrated; the children are distributed according to the legality of the claims. Such is the disastrous effect of the Contract-theory. On the other hand, let divorce be forbidden, let the heroic nobility of the Oath be rediscovered, and Marriage will become again what it should never have ceased to be—an act of Faith and a Sacrament.
In that happy country which Chesterton, by studying the past, could project into the future, in that blessed Family where parents and children are as one, a high place is reserved for the Woman. But in no ‘feminist’ sense. Few writers more than Chesterton have scoffed at the attempts of the modern woman to be no more a woman. The ‘suffragette’ tends to be but a hybrid, halfway between wife and husband, and inspired him with none but the most vivacious jests. Not that he was at all blind to the heavy burden bound by a pro-masculine society on the weaker sex, which was, indeed too often sacrificed. But his argument moves us precisely because of its paradoxical justness. Woman is wrong, he considers, to try to adapt herself to society by making a man of herself. The contrary should come about—Society should adapt itself to womanhood by becoming gentler. To Feminists, he acknowledges that women undergo a revolting tyranny in factories; but he wanted to destroy the factories, while they, he felt, were content with destroying womanhood.
The return of Woman to her original condition—tending her home and bringing up her children, was not imposed upon Chesterton by any vague contempt for the intellectual or practical potentialities of a wife. Domestic life, in the noblest sense of the word, seemed to him the best possible adornment for the mind and the perfection of the heart’s virtues. What praise for the very nature of woman is the comparison between her and the Church of God—that ‘everlasting Handmaid’! A wife is, too, a modest working-woman, and there exists no vocation ‘more generous, more perilous, and more romantic.’ This romance of humility, this adventurousness of the humdrum, are characteristic of the way in which the essayist thinks of the Family. When he prays that Society shall allow the wife to be not only the soul but the very body of the Home, he is, in reality, rendering the highest homage to the Mistress of the House—a desire, not for superiority, nor even equality, but simply for being there. He recognises the helplessness of the husband, the moment he is reduced to being alone. He declares that he is at all points dependent on his ‘help-meet.’ He owns that what is best in man is the reflection of his ante-natal life in his mother’s womb: and this notorious anti-feminist could write these subtle lines to the glory of Woman:
“Every man is womanized, merely by being born. They talk of the masculine woman; but every man is a feminized man.” (Orthodoxy)The virtues of the Family and Home, due to free choice and limitation, form the basic cell of the social organism. Banish the spirit of Home, and you suppress the very possibility of a sanely constituted society.
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Source: Excerpt from Chesterton, Belloc, Baring by Raymond Las Vergnas. Sheed & Ward, New York; 1936. The three studies contained in this book originally appeared in the Revue des Deux Mondes. The studies were slightly amplified and translated by C.C. Martindale, S.J., for publication in a single volume.
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