High School Chesterton Class OnLine Starting in Feb 2010

From Maureen:

Hey Nancy!

Wondering if you can help promote Robert Gotcher's Chesterton course coming up next semester. It's an evening course so it wouldn't be restricted to homeschoolers. Catholic students in other schools would be welcomed too. It'd be cool to get Chesterton out to as many high school kids as possible! The link is http://tinyurl.com/hschesterton

Dr. Gotcher picked the 2 books that Kolbe and MODG students need to read so this class would be helpful in fulfilling those school requirements. A nice bonus!

For people who like to save money, there's a $10 off coupon that expires this Thursday: r1ns52. Plus there's also an early registration discount that expires 12/31/09. So, if they register with the coupon this week, they'd save $25. Pretty sweet.

Anything you can do to get the word out to the Chestertonians would be superbalous!

Seattle Conference CDs NOW AVAILABLE!

Come and get 'em!

Uncommon Sense #10

New Leaf Theater in Lincoln Park, IL puts on The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton and adapted by Bilal Dardai for a new audience. Tickets available until November 21, 2009.
I talk first with Jessica Hutchinson, the director of the play, and then with Deb Lillig, who attended the play to find out more about how this 100 year old play came to life.
Rochester, NY Re-awakening Wonder Conference CDs are available now here.
Chesterton and the Romance of Orthodoxy by William Oddie available here.

http://newleaftheatre.org/

Web sites:
http://chesterton.org
http://americanchestertonsociety.blogspot.com
http://www.twitter.com/amchestertonsoc
FaceBook Fan Page: The American Chesterton Society
http://music.mevio.com
(Pictures: Left is Deb, next to her is Jessica)

Uncommons Sense #9 is posted

Victoria Darkey recently attended the Re-Awakening Wonder conference in Rochester, NY sponsored by the Rochester Chesterton Society.
Vicky relates the highlights of the conference.
Vicky tells us how she came to start her own Chesterton Society in Western Pennsylvania.
Conference CDs are now available for only $25 here.

Websites:
http://www.siministries.com/Store
http://chesterton.org
http://www.twitter.com/amchestertonsoc
FaceBook Fan Page: The American Chesterton Society
http://music.mevio.com

Tickets still available for The Man Who Was Thursday at New Leaf Theater now through November 21, 2009.

Tidbits

Thanks to Dr. Thursday for the post yesterday and for trading post dates due to his travel schedule. Over the next two weeks, I'll be traveling, so posting may be sporadic.
Meanwhile, I'm working on two different podcasts, which I hope to finish up before I leave. Big changes are coming soon for the blog, so stay tuned.

Anglican-Catholic-Chesterton

Thanks to alert reader Tzard:

Jeffrey is a new Catholic (ex Anglican Priest) who has good things to say. He uses the unshakable arguments of Chesterton to comment on the possibility of Anglicans joining the Church en-masse (per recent news from Rome).

Check it out.

Thanks for the tip!

GKC: on Love and Liberty

I will not be able to write a posting for tomorrow, so I am rudely intruding into the rest of the week and posting a very interesting and relevant excerpt today, with the hope that it will provoke some discussion - or at least some thought.
--Dr. Thursday

... one very simple thing was true both of Love and Liberty; the gods of the Romantics and the Republicans. They were both simply fragments of Christian mysticism, and even of Christian theology, torn out of their proper place, flung loosely about and finally hurled forward into an age of hard materialism which instantly destroyed them. They were not really rational ideas, still less rationalistic ideas. At least, they were never rational ideas after they had left off being religious ideas. One of them was a hazy human exaggeration of the sacramental idea of marriage. The other was a hazy human exaggeration of the brotherhood of men in God. When the Romantic laid his hand on his Red Waistcoat and swore to George Sand or some other lady that their souls were two affinities wedded before the world was made, he was drawing on the Christian capital of the old ideas of immortality and sanctity. When he explained to his mistress in his garret the delicacy and dignity of cutting her throat and his own, and called it "the world well lost for love," he was really appealing to the old tradition of the martyr and the ascetic, who lost the world to save his soul. He was not, in any very exact sense of the word, talking sense. He was not uttering purely rational remarks; certainly not remarks that our more rationalistic generation would call rational. Often, when he had done himself particularly well with champagne and old brandy, he would let the cat out of the bag rather badly by calling the blanchisseuse or the artist's model "his bride in the sight of God."

Anyhow, he could not make the sort of appeals to deific faith or demonic jealousy, which constituted the vigorous love poetry of the age of Hugo and Alfred du Musset, without implying an immortal significance in passion, which the modern realists refuse to see in mere appetite. He could not so praise love without also praising loyalty. He might not admit that there was a sacred bond between Guinevere and Arthur; but he could not write at all without assuming that there was a sacred bond between Guinevere and Lancelot. The later sex writers would refuse to admit that there is any sacred bond between anybody and anybody else. The truth is that this mystical feeling about the love of man and woman was treated so clumsily that it fell between two stools. When it was really mediaeval, it could be preserved for ever in a story like that of Dante and Beatrice. When it was really modern, it simply fell to pieces, into little decaying scraps rather like wriggling worms, the hundred little loves and lusts of the modern sex novel. But the Romantics of the nineteenth century held it up in a sort of indeterminate pre-eminence; a dizzy and toppling idolatry; trying to make it at once as sacred as they thought good and as free as they found convenient. They wanted to eat their wedding-cake and have it. They wanted to make their wild wedding sacred without making it secure. They did put woman upon a pedestal; but they did not look to see if it was a solid pedestal.

Now, oddly enough, it was the same with Liberty as with Love. It was the same with the democratic ideal of political freedom for all. And Democracy is being criticised just now for exactly the same reason that Romance is being criticised just now. It is that all the sense there ever was in either of them rested on a religious idea. The nineteenth century took away the religious idea and left a sense that rapidly turned into nonsense. All men are equal because God loves all equally; and nothing can compare with that equality. But in what other way are men equal? The vague Liberals of the nineteenth century cut away the Divine ground from under Democracy, and Democracy was left to stand by itself. In other words, it is left to fall by itself. Jefferson said that men were given equal rights by their Creator. Ingersoll said that they had no Creator, but had received equal rights from nowhere. Even in the democratic atmosphere of America, it began to dawn on a great many people that it is very difficult to prove that men ever received the equal rights at all. In short, the Republican theory will turn out to be another form of Romance; and will be classed with the illusion of the too idealistic lover unless it can be reconnected with the positive beliefs from which it was originally borrowed. The Red Cap will follow the Red Waistcoat into the old clothes' shop unless it can be made something more than a fashion, or dipped in that enduring dye that coloured the red roses of St. Dorothy or the red cross of St. George.

[GKC ILN Aug 27 1932, also reprinted in All I Survey. Special thanks to Frank Petta and to my mother.]

For Dale's Roadies

G.K. Chesterton: His Wit, Wisdom & Sanctity

Dale Ahlquist, author, TV host, and president of the G.K. Chesterton Society, presents an illuminating and inspiring talk on the wit, wisdom and sanctity of G.K. Chesterton. Chesterton was profound and prolific in his defense of Christianity and the Church, using his good-humored battle with words against various evils in today’s world. Free. Nov. 15, 7:30 p.m. Kolbe Academy-Trinity Prep, 2055 Redwood Road, Napa. Info, tony@ignatius.com

What I Said

Lee blogs some thoughts about something I've often thought and feared myself about Chesterton.

It almost seems that his eminently quotable nature makes it easy to focus more on what he said and less on what he had to say. For too often the quotations are simply treated as quips that are now divorced from the larger contexts of cogent discussions of some significant topics.

I have this feeling almost weekly as I, like Lee, often search the Internet for Chesterton to see what people are saying about him or his work. Most often what I find is some quote of his used to the writer's benefit, and not an engagement with his ideas.

Loyola reviews New Leaf The Man Who Was Thursday

Be sure to see the combox below where Nick Keenan of New Leaf Theater responds and invites your discussion of the play they have currently going on there, an adaptation of The Man Who Was Thursday.

I completely agree with Nick: the play is, whether good or bad, at least making people aware of the man G.K. Chesterton. Maybe it will help someone pick up the novel and actually read it for the first time. Maybe someone will wonder about Chesterton and read a biography of him. Maybe it will make some people think, and that, as we know, is what the mind is there to do.

If you've attended, I'd love to hear from you. I know of one person with tickets in her hands, and when she sees the play, I hope to hear from her. Maybe even do a podcast interview of it, which would be great, too.

And welcome Nick to the blog!

Read the Loyola review here, and also see Nick's comment and the link to more reviews.

If you attend this weekend and dress like an anarchist, you get a discounted ticket!

Rochester Conference CDs are here!

You can now find the conference CDs from the Re-Awakening Wonder conference here, the entire set from the entire day is only $25! Order yours today.

"It is as" what?

Rather than blogg myself into virtual tar - and virtual feathers - I shall refrain from responding to the quarrelsome, interesting and even hilarious comments for last week - apparently I really did cause some division, hee hee - since there are other things to say, though most of them must be deferred for the present.

To vary my complex (x+iy) metaphor - if you are an engineer, read this (x+jy) - Oh, am I alluding to something you don't know? Sorry, sometimes I naturally quote a fitting math epigram the way Chesterton would quote a fitting Latin epigram. Of course I was trying to be funny, since the number (x+iy) is called a "complex" number, made of both real and imaginary parts, though of course "i" (or "j") is just as real to us as "5"! (That"!" makes it even funnier, but let us defer that too, hee hee!) Yes, mathematicians dignify "i" (or "j") with the glorious term "imaginary" - one imagines GKC illustrating an addition problem (or one in phasor analysis or wave mechanics) with horns and forked tails etc... Oh my, hee hee! If you have ever read the wonderful "Calvin and Hobbes" comic strip, you may recall one where Hobbes mentions some other forms of imaginary numbers like "eleventeen" and "thirty-twelve" Ah! What joy. Ahem. Of course numbers are real, including those called "imaginary" by mathematicians; they do wonderful things like make your electric light work, and your radio - and if you treat them poorly, you will find that you have overdrawn your bank account.

Ahem! but as I started to say, to vary my complex metaphor, let us turn to the other wing of the University and see what curiousities we can find lurking in the halls of language. Of course, since I am an engineer I am not expected to know very much Latin or Greek, but from my youth I had read the mystic Ambrosian "TE DEVM LAVDAMVS" scribed far about the main altar at our church, and seen the strange letters "A" and "W" on the altar itself. And I kept the visitors into the Control Room where we did work for A Certain Cable Television Company by putting Latin epigrams like Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? onto the big screens where the tool called WATCHER kept us informed about system status... But you are not interested in what I know or don't know, but in what Chesterton knew, which we begin to gain hints of by reading his books.

And just for fun, since one may say that I am biassed, or (worsely argued) that I didn't know GKC personally, I shall give you a nice little quote from someone else who DID know him personally, and who also read his books:

Chesterton by his intellectual inheritance from the high Unitarian English culture was highly sympathetic with the general classical culture of Europe. He could illustrate it and pass it on (often unconsciously), as could not a writer or a man who knew not the soul of that culture. He could not have conceived a world which should be of our civilisation in a fashion and yet not based on Latin and Greek.
I remember, some years before he was received into the Church and before he ever visited America, his asking me, as one with a wide experience of the United States, whether it were true that the Latin and Greek classics were there of no effect. I told him this was increasingly so, save in a very few academic coteries and, of course, in the ubiquitous and very numerous Catholic clergy, and those influenced by them.
[Belloc, On the Place of Gilbert Chesterton in English Letters 23-4]

Curious - but let us proceed. Besides, we shall come back to Belloc in order for me to explain my complex (hee hee) title for today.

Anyhow, in my explorations of GKC I have seen one or two Spanish words, a handful of German words, and a handful of Italian words, and a handful of Greek words, including some wonderful comments on learning Greek - see his Autobiography (CW16:60) for the startling revelation that the ancients did not write their Greek with accent marks! Of course as we know, they also wrote their Greek and Latin without spaces, which is hardly a simplification...

(See here for more on this item.) Ahem. But by far the two other languages we see in his writing are French and Latin. I've often wondered whether he used more Latin than French, but do not have the time to give all the details today. I can note a couple of lengthy bits, just to see how well you do without a dictionary:

The one case for Revolution is that it is the only quite clean and complete road to anything - even to restoration. Revolution alone can be not merely a revolt of the living, but also a resurrection of the dead. A friend of mine (one, in fact, who writes prominently on this paper) was once walking down the street in a town of Western France, situated in that area that used to be called La Vendée; which in that great creative crisis about 1790 formed a separate and mystical soul of its own, and made a revolution against a revolution. As my friend went down this street he whistled an old French air which he had found, like Mr. Gandish, "in his researches into 'istry," and which had somehow taken his fancy; the song to which those last sincere loyalists went into battle. I think the words ran:-

Monsieur de Charette
Dit au gens d'ici
Le roi va remettre
Le fleur de lys.

My friend was (and is) a Radical, but he was (and is) an Englishman, and it never occurred to him that there could be any harm in singing archaic lyrics out of remote centuries; that one had to be a Catholic to enjoy the "Dies Irae", or a Protestant to remember "Lillibullero." Yet he was stopped and gravely warned that things so politically provocative might get him at least into temporary trouble.
[GKC "The Red Reactionary" in A Miscelleny of Men 182-3]

Amazing! Now, I wonder what he said, and what it means. Here is a nice little project for someone to post about! Gee, maybe it is time for us to start homework assignments?

Here is another bit, again something curious which needs commentary:

We have ample evidence that the old leaders of feudal war could speak on occasion with a certain natural symbolism and eloquence that they had not gained from boots. When Cyrano de Bergerac, in Rostand's play, throws doubts on the reality of Christian's dulness and lack of culture, the latter replies:

'Bah! on trouve des mots quand on monte à l'assaut;
Oui, j'ai un certain esprit facile et militaire;'

and these two lines sum up a truth about the old oligarchy. They could not write three legible letters, but they could sometimes speak literature.
[GKC "A Defence of Slang" in The Defendant 107]

Now, let us go further into the past and hear GKC in the tongue of ancient Roma. There are several possible selections I could make where GKC quotes Aquinas or Virgil or others. He knows Juvenal's "Satires" well enough to apply his great dictum "quis custodiet ipsos custodes?, ("Who will watch the WATCHERs themselves?" - a line well known to the WATCHERs of Cable Television) into the excellent "Quis docebit ipsum doctorem?" (Who will teach the teacher himself?) which he wrote in "The Mad Official" in his A Miscellany of Men. Yes, that line would play well into last week's topic, but we must proceed.

That wonderful book of essays contains another glorious bit, which I will give you in a larger excerpt since it is pure delight - and of course because it deals with those great Chesterton topics, CHEESE and BEER:

I entered an inn which stood openly in the market-place yet was almost as private as a private house. Those who talk of "public-houses" as if they were all one problem would have been both puzzled and pleased with such a place. In the front window a stout old lady in black with an elaborate cap sat doing a large piece of needlework. She had a kind of comfortable Puritanism about her; and might have been (perhaps she was) the original Mrs. Grundy. A little more withdrawn into the parlour sat a tall, strong, and serious girl, with a face of beautiful honesty and a pair of scissors stuck in her belt, doing a small piece of needlework. Two feet behind them sat a hulking labourer with a humorous face like wood painted scarlet, with a huge mug of mild beer which he had not touched, and probably would not touch for hours. On the hearthrug there was an equally motionless cat; and on the table a copy of Household Words.
I was conscious of some atmosphere, still and yet bracing, that I had met somewhere in literature. There was poetry in it as well as piety; and yet it was not poetry after my particular taste. It was somehow at once solid and airy. Then I remembered that it was the atmosphere in some of Wordsworth's rural poems; which are full of genuine freshness and wonder, and yet are in some incurable way commonplace. This was curious; for Wordsworth's men were of the rocks and fells, and not of the fenlands or. flats. But perhaps it is the clearness of still water and the mirrored skies of meres and pools that produces this crystalline virtue. Perhaps that is why Wordsworth is called a Lake Poet instead of a mountain poet. Perhaps it is the water that does it. Certainly the whole of that town was like a cup of water given at morning.
After a few sentences exchanged at long intervals in the manner of rustic courtesy, I inquired casually what was the name of the town. The old lady answered that its name was Stilton, and composedly continued her needlework. But I had paused with my mug in air, and was gazing at her with a suddenly arrested concern.
"I suppose," I said, "that it has nothing to do with the cheese of that name."
"Oh, yes," she answered, with a staggering indifference, "they used to make it here."
I put down my mug with a gravity far greater than her own. "But this place is a Shrine!" I said. "Pilgrims should be pouring into it from wherever the English legend has endured alive. There ought to be a colossal statue in the market-place of the man who invented Stilton cheese. There ought to be another colossal statue of the first cow who provided the foundations of it. There should be a burnished tablet let into the ground on the spot where some courageous man first ate Stilton, cheese, and survived. On the top of a neighbouring hill (if there are any neighbouring hills) there should be a huge model of a Stilton cheese, made of some rich green marble and engraven with some haughty motto: I suggest something like 'Ver non semper viret; sed Stiltonia semper virescit.'"
The old lady said, "Yes, sir," and continued her domestic occupations.
[GKC "The Poet and the Cheese" in A Miscellany of Men 12-14]

Ah, class - let us recite this excellent epigram together!

Ver non semper viret sed Stiltonia semper virescit.

(Roughly, "Spring is not always green, but Stilton always turns green.")

Excellent! And now, before I leave for lunch, let us return to Belloc.

Now parallelism is a gift or method of vast effect in the conveyance of truth.
Parallelism consists in the illustration of some unperceived truth by its exact consonance with the reflection of a truth already known and perceived.
A truth may be missed by too constant a use, so that familiarity has dulled it; or by mere lack of acquaintance with it (the opposite danger); or by the repeated statement of it in false and imperfect forms. When the truth has been missed, it is recalled and fixed in the mind of the hearer by an unexpected and vivid use of parallelism.
Whenever Chesterton begins a sentence with, "It is as though," (in exploding a false bit of reasoning,) you may expect a stroke of parallelism as vivid as a lightning flash. Thus if some ass propounds that a difference of application destroys the validity of a doctrine, or that particulars are the enemies of universals, Chesterton will answer: "It is as though you were to say I cannot be an Englishman because I am a Londoner," or "It is as though you were to say that I cannot be an Englishman because I travel," or "As though you were to say Brown and Smith cannot both be Englishmen because one of them talks West Country and the other North Country."
[Belloc 37-8]

What is truly funny about this - and somehow chiming in with my previous posting about mathematics is this: The phrase "It is as though" only appears three times (more or less) in all of GKC's books I have presently available!!!

However, "it is as if" appears over 250 times.

The funny thing here is that Belloc's argument is correct despite this minor variation in terms. Of course, this is why we computer people learn not to use the standard solutions for the quadratic equation, since under some conditions small errors can creep in - oh yes. It is as if we must be ever vigilant in both our words and our numbers - but then Chesterton told us, as he quoted John Curran's famous "the price of liberty is eternal vigilance" - this "is only what the theologians say of every other virtue, and is itself only a way of stating the truth of original sin." [GKC The Thing CW3:312] Yes! Let us be ever vigilant, both in our words and in our numbers, and so (as Milo did in The Phantom Tollbooth) defend the Kingdom of Wisdom against the Demons of Ignorance.

P.S. May I mention this? Please do NOT run those French quotes through a mechanical translator and post them. (I could have done that.) I gladly admit I do not know French, and wish I had time to learn it, and many other languages. However, if you desire to write a reply based on your authentic knowledge of the tongues and the issues being referenced, please do so, either as a comment or a link to a posting on your own blogg. There are plenty of such things to clarify, and we shall all benefit from hearing experts in these matters.

The International American Chesterton Society

This morning, I was randomly checking statistics on the Fan Page of the American Chesterton Society on Face Book.

Besides a ton of American fans, (totalling 200+ right now), we also have some international fans from:

Estonia
Mexico
Indonesia
Norway
Italy
and
France!

I believe this makes us quite an international national society and I'm proud of us.

Podcast Contest

Contest! Anyone who leaves audio feedback on the line 206-337-9049 or sends me an audio .wav or .aiff file via email in the next two weeks is entered to win one of my books (Mystery of Harry Potter, Father Brown Reader, Study Guide to Blue Cross or St. Francis).
Ideas:

"Hi! My name is (fill in blank) and I love the American Chesterton Society."

"Hi! My name is (X) and I follow the American Chesterton Society on the FaceBook Fan Page."

"Greetings! I'm (X) and I follow the American Chesterton Society on Twitter."

Or--make up your own original and fun greeting!

Deadline: Nov 9 midnight.

Israel Gow: The Movie

Have you seen it on EWTN? Need to see it again? Order it here.

You go play...

Like Chesterton, I am busy with thing upstairs, so you go play until I can get back down here and toss buns in the air to catch them.

Yesterday, we visited a potential college for my hs senior, and today, my hs freshman is making her Confirmation. I'll join up with you soon. Have a treasure hunt while I'm away, will you?

I have come for division!

One of the sillier "education" notions these days - I mentioned it recently - is the idea that children ought to be taught "problem-solving skills" rather than the ordinary traditional subjects which they will need if they are ever to solve problems. No teacher, no administrator, no "doctor" of education (I use it in quotes since they are rarely PhDs and almost never actually teach, which is what the Latin word means!) - none of these educators actually specifies what skills these are, since the few which I know of (e.g. math induction & recursion, automata, graph theory, force diagrams, dimensional analysis, and so forth) all require the basic tools of learning. Ah, well - you think I mean these things ought to be taught in grade school? Certainly, but not necessarily. I think kids are lots smarter than any educator - or any Media Personage - can grasp, and could be getting far more meat far sooner, if there was discipline (which means living & acting as a student does!) and lots less trash and distractions. But this posting is not on the "Thursday" method of education, as interesting as that might be. Besides there is a better way of showing my point on this topic, and it is quite funny. For at the same time these dear ones are pushing for "problem solving skills" they are rejecting traditional skills - like (don't get scared now) - like "LONG DIVISION".

Now, the funny thing is that long division is a problem-solving skill! It solves the question of how many times some given number (say the number of stars) can be split up ("divided") among another given number (say the number of students in a classroom). If there are 5000 stars, and there are 40 students, then each person gets 125 stars. I know that was an easy one, but I am not lecturing about the technique today. (I can, if you want, but it will have to be on my own blogg. But see below for GKC's comments on the topic.)

These dear educatists will say that we use calculators for chores like long division - but that is like saying we can use bicycles to go around the bases during a baseball game! Sure, we could, and get Home lots faster than running! But as worthy a tool as the bicycle is, it is not admitted to be fair part of the game of baseball.

Nor is the calculator a fair part of the game of long division.

That is because long division is a skill which is necesary for other tasks than getting the result of dividing one number by another. It is a SKILL, writ large as FAther Jaki likes to write, and comes up in a whole range of places in mathematics, computing, and such disciplines. But there is another reason for it, which completely escapes the understanding of these educators.

That is Long Division is a means of teaching something much harder to describe than the very simple idea of getting the quotient. In fact, it exemplifies the First Problem Solving Skill one ought to have.

Oh, Doc! Really?

Yes, my child. Really. It is simply stated, and something I would guess you've heard from your mother, especially if you've ever helped her in the kitchen. It is simply this:

Follow the Directions.

Yes. You see, Long Division is a bunch of Directions - it is a - well, since I am a computer scientist, I should use the word "algorithm" - but I am often a baker (and even occasional cook) so I should use the word "recipe", and I am also a scientist (yes, I have a white lab coat!) and so can use the term "lab protocol"; I have been a musician so I could suggest the term "score", and I have read GKC's plays, so I could call it a "script", and I am also a Catholic so I might use the term "rite" (though that is a bit of a stretch).

Long Division is a lot more interesting than "Long Addition" or even "Long Multiplication" because it contains a "step" we computer people call a "conditional" - that is something with an "IF". That is nothing new to any of the above fields of human activity: recipes often have "if" statements, and everything from lab protocols to liturgical rites contain such things.

Does this division business connect to Chesterton? Sure, and in a startling way. I am sure you know the Gospel lines "Think ye, that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, no; but separation." (Luke 12:51) or "Do not think that I came to send peace upon earth: I came not to send peace, but the sword." (Matthew 10:34) which GKC relied on when he writes:

Christianity suddenly stepped in and offered a singular answer, which the world eventually accepted as answer. It was the answer then, and I think it is the answer now.
This answer was like the slash of a sword; it sundered; it did not in any sense sentimentally unite. Briefly, it divided God from the cosmos. ... And the root phrase for all Christian theism was this, that God was a creator, as an artist is a creator. A poet is so separate from his poem that he himself speaks of it as a little thing he has "thrown off." Even in giving it forth he has flung it away. This principle that all creation and procreation is a breaking off is at least as consistent through the cosmos as the evolutionary principle that all growth is a branching out. A woman loses a child even in having a child. All creation is separation. Birth is as solemn a parting as death.
[GKC Orthodoxy CW1:281]

Father Jaki elaborates on this idea in several places, notably in his Genesis 1 Through the Ages where he discusses the Hebrew bara which means "create" but also "divide, hack".

Not that I suggest the learning of Long Division is somehow a part of theological training - but of course it is. Theologians, like Philosophers and Historians and all the Students of Words, no less than the Students of Numbers, need to FIRST learn to think according to simple, easy, formulated rules - in order that they can proceed to examine issues for which there might not be such rules! Yes, Long Division is as important to the most esoteric branches of literature and philosophy as good grammar is to the most esoteric branches of engineering and science and mathematics.

Besides, and you may find this most surprising to learn: there are lovely problems in mathematics that calculators (and even computers) cannot solve, and that is one good reason why we need to learn Long Division. I've seen such things at work, and it was not something esoteric either. But as much fun as it is I cannot go into the math of such things here.

To conclude, I'll let you enjoy the only four excellent insights which I found where GKC uses the term "Long Division". The hilarious thing is that one of them says almost the same thing I've been trying to say - but it's nearly 100 years old. Odd that the modern up-to-date educators are still trying such failed and fusty old methods...

It is unfortunate that common-sense has come to mean almost the contrary of the sense that is common. Indeed, we might say that when men boast of common-sense, it generally means a contempt for common people. A man who will not listen to any evidence in favour of ghosts or witches may (especially in his own opinion) possess sense; but what exactly he does not possess is common-sense. He has no realisation of the common bond of human instinct and experience which binds him to the very varied memories and lives of his fellows. He may be right in saying that he has no nonsense about him; a very lamentable gap in any man's character. But the general impression of a borderland of abnormal experiences is not nonsense. It IS sense, even if to some it seems like the suggestion of a sixth sense. It is not nonsense either in the bad or in the good sense. It is not a confusion of thought or a contradiction in terms. It is not a fantastic form of art or a grotesque form of beauty. Spirit-rapping does not introduce us to the Mad Hatter or the Pobble Who Had No Toes; would that it ever introduced us to anybody so entertaining! On the other hand, it is not nonsense to say that a man's soul went out of his own body, as it is nonsense to say that he jumped down his own throat. It is simply an assertion, true or false, about certain conditions on another plane, which are different from the laws of our planet, but not different from the laws of our reason. It is certainly unknown; it may be unknowable; but it is not unthinkable. It is not like saying that long division is green, or that Wednesday is oblong, or that thought is a molecular movement.
[GKC ILN Jan 12 1929 CW35:21-22]

Shelley invented half a hundred goddesses, but he could not pray to them, not even as well as the old atheist Lucretius could pray to Venus, Mother of Rome. All Shelley's deities were abstractions; they were Beauty or Liberty or Love; but they might as well have been Algebra and Long Division, so far as inviting the gesture of worship goes. In this, as in everything else, what is the matter with the new pagan is that he is not a pagan; he has not any of the customs or consolations of a pagan.
[GKC Jul 5 1930 CW35:339]

A peasant who merely says, "I have five pigs; if I kill one I shall have four pigs," is thinking in an extremely simple and elementary way; but he is thinking as clearly and correctly as Aristotle or Euclid. But suppose he reads or half-reads newspapers and books of popular science. Suppose he starts to call one pig the Land and another pig Capital and a third pig Exports, and finally brings out the result that the more pigs he kills the more he possesses; or that every sow that litters decreases the number of pigs in the world. He has learnt economic terminology, merely as a means of becoming entangled in economic fallacy. It is a fallacy he could never have fallen into while he was grounded in the divine dogma that Pigs is Pigs. Now for that sort of intellectual instruction and advancement we have no use at all; and in that sense only it is true that we prefer the ignorant peasant to the instructed pedant. But that is not because we think ignorance better than instruction or barbarism better than culture. It is merely that we think a short length of the untangled logical chain is better than an interminable length of it that is interminably tangled. It is merely that we prefer a man to do a sum of simple addition right than a sum of long division wrong.
[GKC The Thing CW3:165]


Education is only truth in a state of transmission; and how can we pass on truth if it has never come into our hand? Thus we find that education is of all the cases the clearest for our general purpose. It is vain to save children; for they cannot remain children. By hypothesis we are teaching them to be men; and how can it be so simple to teach an ideal manhood to others if it is so vain and hopeless to find one for ourselves?
I know that certain crazy pedants have attempted to counter this difficulty by maintaining that education is not instruction at all, does not teach by authority at all. They present the process as coming, not from the outside, from the teacher, but entirely from inside the boy. Education, they say, is the Latin for leading out or drawing out the dormant faculties of each person. Somewhere far down in the dim boyish soul is a primordial yearning to learn Greek accents or to wear clean collars; and the schoolmaster only gently and tenderly liberates this imprisoned purpose. Sealed up in the newborn babe are the intrinsic secrets of how to eat asparagus and what was the date of Bannockburn. The educator only draws out the child's own unapparent love of long division; only leads out the child's slightly veiled preference for milk pudding to tarts. I am not sure that I believe in the derivation; I have heard the disgraceful suggestion that "educator," if applied to a Roman schoolmaster, did not mean leading our young functions into freedom; but only meant taking out little boys for a walk. But I am much more certain that I do not agree with the doctrine; I think it would be about as sane to say that the baby's milk comes from the baby as to say that the baby's educational merits do. There is, indeed, in each living creature a collection of forces and functions; but education means producing these in particular shapes and training them to particular purposes, or it means nothing at all. Speaking is the most practical instance of the whole situation. You may indeed "draw out" squeals and grunts from the child by simply poking him and pulling him about, a pleasant but cruel pastime to which many psychologists are addicted. But you will wait and watch very patiently indeed before you draw the English language out of him. That you have got to put into him; and there is an end of the matter.
[GKC What's Wrong With the World CW4:64-5]

Interesting Review

I can't tell if this is an honest review that aims to flatter, or a flattering review that contains pointed barbs.

Has anyone here seen the play?

"Acting is deft across the board, and the quicksilver pacing, along with gorgeous technical theater, keeps the play afloat—even the facile last scene Dardai added that makes a vapid reference to terrorism (not to mention completely compromises Chesterton’s message) remains buoyant in the hands of director and cast."

(Emphasis added by Ed.)

Some Pictures from ReAwakening Wonder in Rochester

Thanks and H/T: Su
Includes Dale and Tom Howard, the four speakers (Joseph Pearce, Dale Ahlquist, Tom Howard, and David Higbee), Ellen Finan, Vicki Darkey, and Jeff Force, who were all in Seattle.

It should be noted that Vicki, Ellen and Su (whom I received these pictures from) are all heads of their local Chesterton Societies, way to go!

Podcast #7- Ted Olsen Eaten Alive?

Ted Olsen interview about Eaten Alive Conference held in Twin Cities. Cardinal George's new book-The Difference God Makes. Who will debate these modern atheists like Chesterton debated Clarence Darrow or GBShaw? ENDOW for Catholic women. ChesterTen news.

Audio feedback: 206-337-9049 uncommonsensepodcast@gmail.com

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Christianity Today: GKC subverts the subversives

The ACS's own David Deavel has had an article published in Christianity Today, and it's available on line here. Exerpt:

Chesterton's Return
How GKC subverts the subversives.
David Paul Deavel | posted 10/08/2009

A prophet is never welcome in his own hometown. For a long time after the tumult of the Sixties, G. K. Chesterton's writings seemed to have lost a welcome anywhere, except, perhaps, among the detective fiction enthusiasts who have kept the Father Brown tales in circulation continuously on both sides of the Atlantic. According to Denis J. Conlon, an English literary scholar who has specialized in Chesterton for many years, much of Chesterton's work is still out of print and hard-to-get in his own merry England. A friend of mine studying in Rome a few years ago told me that the English and Irish Catholic seminarians he met almost universally regarded Chesterton a pre-modern, pre-Vatican II embarrassment. The situation was about the same in America for a long time. As of 1985 there were probably fewer than ten of Chesterton's books in print, and those were, aside from his detective fiction, mostly published by small and often obscure Catholic presses.

Read more.

On Being Chestertonian - the Rosary and Presence of Mind

I had already worked out part of my posting for today when I noted an interesting appeal for a quote in a recent posting - but it was far too important to merely answer in the comment box. I don't have the request to quote for you, but here is what Chesterton wrote:

Humanism is quite different from Humanitarianism. It means, as explained here, something like this. Modern science and organization are in a sense only too natural. They herd us like the beasts along lines of heredity or tribal doom; they attach man to the earth like a plant instead of liberating him, even like a bird, let alone an angel. Indeed, their latest psychology is lower than the level of life. What is subconscious is sub-human and, as it were, subterranean: or something less than earthly. This fight for culture is above all a fight for consciousness: what some would call self-consciousness: but anyhow against mere subconsciousness. We need a rally of the really human things; will which is morals, memory which is tradition, culture which is the mental thrift of our fathers.
[GKC The Thing CW3:146-7, emphasis added]

Now this idea of consciousness connects very well with the topic I had selected - that of the Rosary - and it also gives a very powerful answer to our Bloggmistress' question about "how to live Chestertonian".

The fight, as GKC points out, is about achieving consciousness. In other places he calls this "presence of mind". I wish I had room to properly deal with this, especially as it touches my own disciplines, since I keep hearing this silly line about how children need to acquire "problem-solving skills" and I wonder what that means, since without proper formation in reading and writing - and mathematics - all problems remain insoluble, since one cannot even understand their statement! Or are they teaching automata theory and recursion, perhaps? Ahem.

So let us see how GKC handles this issue under an older formula, that is, "How To Think". Oh, my it's hilarious, but wait until you hear what he says. It will be startling to you but only if you have not yet understood why Christ threw the money changers out of the Temple.

I have before me a little pamphlet in which the most precise directions are given for a Mock Turkey, for a vegetarian mince-pie, and for a cautious and hygienic Christmas pudding. I have never quite understood why it should be a part of the Simple Life to have anything so deceptive and almost conspiratorial as an imitation turkey. The coarse and comic alderman may be expected, in his festive ribaldry, to mock a turtle; but surely a lean and earnest humanitarian ought not to mock a turkey. Nor do I understand the theory of the imitation in its relation to the ideal. Surely one who thinks meat eating mere cannibalism ought not to arrange vegetables so as to look like an animal. It is as if a converted cannibal in the Sandwich Islands were to arrange joints of meat in the shape of a missionary. The missionaries would surely regard the proceedings of their convert with something less than approval, and perhaps something akin to alarm. But the consistency of these concessions I will leave on one side, because I am not here concerned with the concessions but with the creed itself. And I am concerned with the creed not merely as affecting its practice in diet or cookery but its general theory. For the compilers of the little book before me are great on philosophy and ethics. There are whole pages about brotherhood and fellowship and happiness and healing. In short, as the writer observes, we have "also some Mental Helps, as set forth in the flood of Psychology Literature to-day - but raised to a higher plane." It may be a little risky to set a thing forth in a flood, or a little difficult to raise a flood to a higher plane; but there is behind these rather vague expressions a very real modern intelligence and point of view, common to considerable numbers of cultivated people, and well worthy of some further study.

Under the title of "How to Think" there are twenty-four rules of which the first few are: "Empty Your Mind," "Think of the Best Things," "Appreciate," "Analyse," "Prepare Physically," "Prepare Mentally," and so on. I have met some earnest students of this school, who had apparently entered on this course, but at the time of our meeting had only graduated so far as the fulfilment of the first rule. It was more obvious, on the whole, that they had succeeded in the preliminary process of emptying the mind than that they had as yet thought of the best things, or analysed or appreciated anything in particular. But there were others, I willingly admit, who had really thought of certain things in a genuinely thoughtful fashion, though whether they were really the best things might involve a difference of opinion between us. Still, so far as they are concerned, it is a school of thought, and therefore worth thinking about. Having been able to this extent to appreciate, I win now attempt to analyse. I have attempted to discover in my own mind where the difference between us really lies, apart from all these superficial jests and journalistic points; to ask myself why it is exactly that their ideal vegetarian differs so much from my ideal Christian. And the result of the concentrated contemplation of their ideal is, I confess, a somewhat impatient forward plunge in the progress of my initiation. I am strongly disposed to "Prepare Physically" for a conflict with the ideal vegetarian, with the holy hope of hitting him on the nose. In one of Mr. P. G. Wodehouse's stories the vegetarian rebukes his enemy for threatening to skin him, by reminding him that man should only think beautiful thoughts; to which the enemy gives the unanswerable answer: "Skinning you is a beautiful thought." In the same way I am quite prepared to think of the best things; but I think hitting the ideal vegetarian on the nose would be one of the best things in the world. This may be an extreme example; but it involves a much more serious principle. What such philosophers often forget is that among the best things in the world are the very things which their placid universalism forbids; and that there is nothing better or more beautiful than a noble hatred. I do not profess to feel it for them; but they themselves do not seem to feel it for anything.
[GKC "The Meaning of Mock Turkey" in Fancies Versus Fads]

Now what do I mean by bringing up the Rosary in such a discussion? Don't I know that some of my readers are not Catholic? Of course. GKC knew that some of his readers weren't vegetarian - and that perhaps even some of them were.

But you see I find it relevant to the issue, even more so than recursion or automata theory. I could easily give a link from this simple and fully Biblical prayer to the esoteric branch of mathematics called "Graph Theory", or another link to the most interesting and curious qualities of the twenty amino acids as studied by Biochemistry or Molecular Biology.... or my as-yet unwritten link from the Rosary to the extreme high technology of network theory and modern communications protocols.... but not here and now. No; I simply want to give one important detail about it which is relevant to this idea of "presence of mind" and "learning to think" - and yes, to "problem-solving skills".

First, I must deal with the word "prayer" - that is something where some people don't quite get the usage of English words. A "prayer" is an asking - the verb comes up in legal documents "The undersigned PRAY the Court, etc..." without any confusion about adoration of God. Nor should there be any difficulties with asking others - to ask someone to pass the mustard (that famous action beloved by Chesterton) is a prayer. Even funnier is that the prayer which seems to bother some people the most - the Hail Mary - specifically asks her for nothing more than to "pray for US sinners". Quite a good idea. We ought to pray for each other, after all. But there is another verb associated with the Rosary - something far harder to discuss than prayer, and perhaps even more confusing to some these days.

That word is MEDITATION. This word used to have a very sound and powerful sense, a Western and classical sense - and GKC was still using it in that fashion - the sense that one is bringing all one's powers of thought to bear on a topic or issue or idea. It is, in the most perfect sense, the extreme version of Presence of Mind.

And so it is to be formally and absolutely distinguished with the "modern" or "Eastern" form of the term, which is the "emptying of the mind". In the Rosary, one meditates on various scenes of the life of Jesus - one tastes, savours, replays, re-experiences these scenes in the most direct fashion one can. Now, it is possible that too many people have weakened their minds and cannot accomplish this vivid and dramatic experience. They think they cannot do it - they watch too much TV, surf too many websites, play too many video games - they have become intellectual couch potatoes.

But the exercise of the mind is possible - you won't even need a membership card or special equipment, or have to get all sweaty!

You just begin to STUDY these scenes - take your time, use pictures, use gospel texts, whatever will help you acquire the direct personal and intellectual awareness of these Gospel events: What happened. Who did what. WHY did it happen. What does it tell me. What must I do because of this. Those, in my view, are the kind of problem-solving skills worth acquiring!

Why do I urge this? Because, if we say we LOVE our Lord, it is a matter of knowing about His life, and rehearsing those main events so we have them as part of our own life - we are (or claim to be) part of His Family, so we need to catch up on the events the Family has experienced. Think of the Rosary as Christ' home videos, His family photo albums - no equipment, no boredom. With just a little mental effort, you can even picture yourself in the scenes - and perhaps become closer to Him.

Now, Doc (you say) - c'mon Doc - connect this to Chesterton.

Sure. I just discovered it for myself. I happened to be reading part of his The Everlasting Man aloud to a friend and it dawned on me. The first three chapters of Part II ("The Man Called Christ") are really GKC's form of meditation on the Mysteries of the Rosary. They form a kind of literary expression of his meditation, and we get to experience some of his own thoughts when we read it.

So if for some reason you find you cannot yet approach this Presence of Mind, this Western meditation which fills the mind with thought - then just try out GKC's own writing in those chapters of The Everlasting Man and you'll get a kind of test drive experience. There will be no sales pressure. The ride will convince you far better than I can. (hee hee)

Yes really. And there's more. Once you begin this easy and quite healthy practice of Presence of Mind, you will find that these powerful mental skills assist you at other things - things like Graph Theory or the Biochemistry of amino acids - or even software development, hee hee! But then that is what you can expect, since we were told: "seek ye first the kingdom of God and his justice: and all these things shall be added unto you." [Luke 12:31]

Wedding Anniversaries

Gilbert and Frances celebrated 35 years together, and that was tremendous. From 1901 till Gilbert's death in 1936, they remained together in love, companions on the journey of life.

Love is a strange thing. So many young people today are tossing love around like it was meaningless, worthless, or heartless. They hook up and unhook almost as often as they change their brand of sneakers. They live together long past the point of honeymoon, then decide they couldn't ever stay together for life. They chemically induce sterility to keep that idea out of the picture. They go right past that natural urge to join their two lives together as one for life, and join up anyway, without permission and they know it, and it eventually fails, and they know why, but do it anyway. It must be right. TV says so. Movies say so. The culture says so. David Letterman says so. Maybe I'll be the one prove it works.

The long term implications of this current catastrophe are going to be disastrous for the culture. Well, they already are. Kindergartners are witnesses to mom and dad's loose morals. How will they grow up differently?

Perhaps some will choose the path of rebellion. To rebel today has all the excitement of virtue: marry; marry young (meaning in your 20s), marry innocent, have children, stay together. Revolutionary ideas, I know. But if you want to rebel against the culture and against your parents, maybe that's the path you might choose.

How to Live Like a Chestertonian

One complaint I've heard in the last few weeks is that these Chesterton meetings are great, and help you feel like you've got some kindred spirits out there, and it's great talking to people, but then you leave. How do you take what you've learned and live like a Chestertonian?

One thing I've come to believe more and more about Chesterton himself is that he chose the way he wanted to live: cheerfully, lightly, bucking the tide, but humorously. Humility played a huge part. It is, as he said, easy to be heavy, hard to be light.

When someone gets heavy on you and starts saying they disagree with you and get kind of huffy and angry, how can you keep things light without them thinking you're making a joke of the situation? How can you get them to "turn off" the heaviness and get back to a place where you are having a conversation again, instead of a disagreement?