FYI: Nicholls Family Found!

If any of you have read my column in Gilbert magazine, you may recall my search for the Nicholls family, who were called "The Last Family" in the Maisie Ward biography Return to Chesterton.

After tracing clues for years, I had another clue recently that led me directly to the family. Someone in England (Denis Conlon) is interviewing Joan Nicholls, who is still alive and very alert at age 96. She is one of the girls "adopted" by Gilbert and Frances when they moved to Top Meadow.

I am, at this moment, corresponding with the daughter of Barbara Nicholls, who has graciously agreed to be interviewed for Gilbert magazine. She was born after Gilbert and Frances died, but remembers stories her mother and aunts told, and they have some memorabilia handed down in the family.

I think it is amazing to think that someone who actually talked, walked and had fun with Gilbert is still alive. I think this is a rare find, and I look forward to Denis's interview.

If you want to start a huge controversy...

...just tell your homeschool group you think maybe your group shouldn't discuss politics.

Then sit back and watch the fireworks.

I know I worded it wrongly, because I didn't really mean let's not discuss politics, I really meant, let's not tell people they have to to vote for Mr. X, or they risk going to hell.

It's kind of like a church. If they want to maintain their tax-free status, churches can't make political endorsements. But they can tell people what the important issues are, and hope they are intelligent enough to use the minds God gave them and come to the right conclusion.

A homeschool group, even a Catholic homeschool group, which you would think would be as homogeneous as you can get, is actually quite a diverse group. Kind of like a family is diverse, despite the fact that the people all hang out under one roof.

Mrs. Laura Bush quotes our man GKC

Mrs. Bush quoted GKC at a National Book Festival.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, WASHINGTON, D.C.
7:16 P.M. EDT, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2008

MRS. BUSH: Thank you, Dr. Billington. Thank you, and the Library of Congress for hosting this beautiful evening for the eighth year in a row.

Welcome to the Eighth Annual National Book Festival. Tonight, we celebrate what G.K. Chesterton called "the mere brute pleasure of reading." Tomorrow, our celebration will continue on the National Mall. More than 70 authors, many of whom are here tonight, will tell the stories behind the books we love and introduce readers to new favorites. Thanks to the Library of Congress for organizing tomorrow's great festival. ...

H/T/: David Z.

Don't Forget - Starting on Monday September 29

Huh? Don't forget what, Doctor?

Well... do these verses mean anything to you?

Dim drums throbbing, in the hills half heard,
Where only on a nameless throne a crownless prince has stirred,
Where, risen from a doubtful seat and half-attainted stall,
The last knight of Europe takes weapons from the wall...

Yes, that's GKC's "Lepanto".... and on Monday September 29 (which is the feast of St. Michael the Archangel!) we shall begin our annual "Lepanto Novena" to end on October 7 - which is the anniversary of Lepanto, and the feast of the Holy Rosary.

Please plan accordingly. We need everyone to work together!

It's very simple - here's all you have to do. Join in prayer with us - whether by daily Mass, daily Rosary, or your own choice of communications protocol. Our preferred selection is the five Luminous mysteries of the Rosary, wherein we consider the work of the public ministry of Jesus.

For what intentions? First and foremost, for the thwarting of the powers of darkness. Then for each other - for family, city, and country.

That's it. Simple. Also high tech. Join with St. Pius V and Don John of Austria in the on-going battle...

St. Michael protect us!

The One Real Objection to Christianity: GKC Answers

A real objection to Christianity? Perhaps you thought there wasn't any such thing? Well, you are going to have to eat a better breakfast before you go on these jaunts with us. (No, this time I had lunch before I wrote this!) Perhaps you need to try standing on your head. You need to begin seeing things upside down, at least on occasion. You need to begin to see the world through Chestertonian eyes - which sometimes means seeing the opposite of what you expect.

This is nothing new with Chesterton: the "Schoolmen" - the Scholastic Philosophers of the Middle Ages - trained themselves to be able to argue both sides of a topic. This is not at all restricted to philosophers, or lawyers! This technique is a kind of compass (Didn't I recently quote an R.E.M. song about carrying a compass? Hee hee.) - and a compass is a great tool to give direction, yet it contains two polar opposites. Direction to what? It is a tool in the search for truth.

If you don't have a copy of the Summa you might perhaps wish to get one - or at least find it at the library and borrow it or examine it. (If you do, just check out the "First Part" for now.) You will be grandly surprised by it, as it is gigantic. It will seem to be quite dull and very confusing if you just jump into it at random. But it is almost unsettlingly dramatic in import if not in style, and only confusing if one does not know a handful of special terms, and if one has not started from its beginning. You will find as you flip through it that it sticks with a very standard shape of writing, which is of course the whole idea, and part of what makes the dullness. Each entry starts with a question, followed by "It seems that" and an answer, with two, three, or four explanations about why that answer is right. Then comes the very famous words "On the other hand" - followed by two, three, or four explanations of why the given answer is wrong. Then comes more famous words: "I answer that", followed by his own explanation, with details of why the reasons for the original answer were wrong. He quotes pagans and heretics without concern, whoever and whatever helps him get the right answer. But just as people get shocked to learn that there's a verse in the Bible that says "there is no God" [Ps 13(14):1] they are even more amazed to hear this:

...St. Thomas Aquinas begins his inquiry by saying in effect, "Is there a God? it would seem not, for the following reasons..."
[GKC The Thing CW3:289]

Yes, this is really what you will find if you go to the Summa First Part, Question 2 Article 3. Of course, like that quote from the Psalm, there's a little more besides. And there's a little more to our discussion today - so when you are ready...

((click here to read more))

Even if you are not a lawyer who may have to argue either side of the case, there is a better reason (better even for the lawyers) for you to know about this technique - because it is a fair way of proceeding. It also happens to be effective in getting to the truth, and as I have said somewhere, this trick (which IS the real form of "argument") is actually better when it happens with friends. It's also more fun. GKC has a famous quote about the Schoolmen (Scholastics) in general, and St. Thomas Aquinas in particular:

Now the Schoolman always had two ideas in his head; if they were only the Yes and No of his own proposition. The Schoolman was not only the schoolmaster but also the schoolboy; he examined himself; he cross-examined himself; he may be said to have heckled himself for hundreds of pages. Nobody can read St. Thomas's theology without hearing all the arguments against St. Thomas's theology. Therefore, even when that sort of faith produced what many would call ferocity, it always produced what I mean here by fairness; the almost involuntary intellectual fairness of one who cannot help knowing that the universe is a many-sided thing.
[Chaucer CW18:367]

And this is precisely the issue GKC brings up in our next paragraph of Orthodoxy, when he tells us of another example - remember, he is showing us how strange Christianity must be, because it seems to have all the most appalling opposites all mixed together.

I take a third case; the strangest of all, because it involves the one real objection to the faith. The one real objection to the Christian religion is simply that it is one religion. The world is a big place, full of very different kinds of people. Christianity (it may reasonably be said) is one thing confined to one kind of people; it began in Palestine, it has practically stopped with Europe. I was duly impressed with this argument in my youth, and I was much drawn towards the doctrine often preached in Ethical Societies - I mean the doctrine that there is one great unconscious church of all humanity founded on the omnipresence of the human conscience. Creeds, it was said, divided men; but at least morals united them. The soul might seek the strangest and most remote lands and ages and still find essential ethical common sense. It might find Confucius under Eastern trees, and he would be writing "Thou shalt not steal." It might decipher the darkest hieroglyphic on the most primeval desert, and the meaning when deciphered would be "Little boys should tell the truth." I believed this doctrine of the brotherhood of all men in the possession of a moral sense, and I believe it still - with other things. And I was thoroughly annoyed with Christianity for suggesting (as I supposed) that whole ages and empires of men had utterly escaped this light of justice and reason. But then I found an astonishing thing. I found that the very people who said that mankind was one church from Plato to Emerson were the very people who said that morality had changed altogether, and that what was right in one age was wrong in another. If I asked, say, for an altar, I was told that we needed none, for men our brothers gave us clear oracles and one creed in their universal customs and ideals. But if I mildly pointed out that one of men's universal customs was to have an altar, then my agnostic teachers turned clean round and told me that men had always been in darkness and the superstitions of savages. I found it was their daily taunt against Christianity that it was the light of one people and had left all others to die in the dark. But I also found that it was their special boast for themselves that science and progress were the discovery of one people, and that all other peoples had died in the dark. Their chief insult to Christianity was actually their chief compliment to themselves, and there seemed to be a strange unfairness about all their relative insistence on the two things. When considering some pagan or agnostic, we were to remember that all men had one religion; when considering some mystic or spiritualist, we were only to consider what absurd religions some men had. We could trust the ethics of Epictetus, because ethics had never changed. We must not trust the ethics of Bossuet, because ethics had changed. They changed in two hundred years, but not in two thousand.
[CW1:291-3]

Who is Bossuet? Jacques-Benigne Bossuet (1627-1704) was a French bishop whom GKC calls "the greatest Catholic controversialist of all time" [The Superstitions of the Sceptic 44] and GKC refers to him a handful of times - just about as often as he mentions Epictetus (55-135 A.D.) who was a Greek Stoic philosopher who taught in Rome. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) was an American essayist and poet, also a Universalist minister, he devised something he called Transcendental Philosophy, best characterised here: "And while they [ordinary people] might easily get more satisfaction out of a screaming article in The War Cry than out of a page of Emerson about the Oversoul, this would not be because the page of Emerson is another and superior kind of literature. It would be because the page of Emerson is another (and inferior) kind of religion." [GKC Charles Dickens CW15:99] Of course there is a really funny bit here about that brag of the agnostics how "science...was the discovery of one people" - once one has looked into the actual history, one will find that the "one people" is Christianity - the argument is a bit too long for us to examine here, but if you want to learn more, get Science and Creation by S. L. Jaki. The short version is simply that Christianity divided God from the cosmos (as we heard GKC tell us a few pages back, CW1:281), because the ancient Christian creeds state "I believe ... in Jesus Christ... the only-begotten Son of God". Pagans and others who believe that it's the universe that was the only-begotten always get stuck and cannot do science at all. But we must proceed.

Now that GKC has given us three examples of these odd contraries of Christianity, he will examine the situation, and see what he can learn - but just in case we missed the point he will give us three more bonus examples, even funnier than the others:

This began to be alarming. It looked not so much as if Christianity was bad enough to include any vices, but rather as if any stick was good enough to beat Christianity with. What again could this astonishing thing be like which people were so anxious to contradict, that in doing so they did not mind contradicting themselves? I saw the same thing on every side. I can give no further space to this discussion of it in detail; but lest any one supposes that I have unfairly selected three accidental cases I will run briefly through a few others. Thus, certain sceptics wrote that the great crime of Christianity had been its attack on the family; it had dragged women to the loneliness and contemplation of the cloister, away from their homes and their children. But, then, other sceptics (slightly more advanced) said that the great crime of Christianity was forcing the family and marriage upon us; that it doomed women to the drudgery of their homes and children, and forbade them loneliness and contemplation. The charge was actually reversed. Or, again, certain phrases in the Epistles or the marriage service, were said by the anti-Christians to show contempt for woman's intellect. But I found that the anti-Christians themselves had a contempt for woman's intellect; for it was their great sneer at the Church on the Continent that "only women" went to it. Or again, Christianity was reproached with its naked and hungry habits; with its sackcloth and dried peas. But the next minute Christianity was being reproached with its pomp and its ritualism; its shrines of porphyry and its robes of gold. It was abused for being too plain and for being too coloured. Again Christianity had always been accused of restraining sexuality too much, when Bradlaugh the Malthusian discovered that it restrained it too little. It is often accused in the same breath of prim respectability and of religious extravagance. Between the covers of the same atheistic pamphlet I have found the faith rebuked for its disunion, "One thinks one thing, and one another," and rebuked also for its union, "It is difference of opinion that prevents the world from going to the dogs." In the same conversation a freethinker, a friend of mine, blamed Christianity for despising Jews, and then despised it himself for being Jewish.
[CW1:293-4]

I am sure you have yourselves heard some of these hilarious whines. You can find them almost everywhere, in newspapers, TV shows, bloggs. Charles Bradlaugh (1833-1891) was a freethinker and reformer, and champion of birth control. A Malthusian is one who ascribes to the views of Malthus the economist - who apparently thought that humans were an infection of the earth. These names are as upsetting to read or think about as Darwin or Marx - and in fact they are cross-linked in their evil - but lest you think I am putting my own ideas out too much, hear GKC about this important matter:

For Scrooge, though not perhaps a very real character in fiction, was a very real character in history. There really was a time when the determining mind of England (which was the mind of the more ambitious middle class) came within an ace of admitting the philosophy of Scrooge, with all its frost-bitten efficiency and ungainly bustle. People did say 'let them die and decrease the surplus population.' Many of the followers of Malthus said so openly; and, what is more important, were not kicked for saying it. Now that Malthus has intellectually disappeared (as diabolists always do when they have done all the harm they can); now that their successors, the sociologists of to-day, are much more frightened of the population drying up than of it developing extravagantly, it is really difficult for us to imagine how iron and enormous this economic argument appeared to our grandfathers.
[GKC's introduction to A Christmas Carol and Other Tales by Charles Dickens; reprinted as "Dickens As Santa Claus" in GKC as MC]

Here I might observe that GKC predicted the future all too well - there are a horrible lot of people running around with that "surplus population" cant again, though the population of Europe is actually vanishing. But I wanted you to see those precise words - where he stands "Malthus" in apposition to "diabolist". It is better that we are warned, even if this means getting into big arguments. But there is another phrase here which might lead into arguments too, the use of the term "Jews" - please read it again carefully and understand what he is saying.

Now, amid all this clash of opposites, GKC proceeds to tell us what he learns from it:

I wished to be quite fair then, and I wish to be quite fair now; and I did not conclude that the attack on Christianity was all wrong. I only concluded that if Christianity was wrong, it was very wrong indeed. Such hostile horrors might be combined in one thing, but that thing must be very strange and solitary. There are men who are misers, and also spendthrifts; but they are rare. There are men sensual and also ascetic; but they are rare. But if this mass of mad contradictions really existed, quakerish and bloodthirsty, too gorgeous and too thread-bare, austere, yet pandering preposterously to the lust of the eye, the enemy of women and their foolish refuge, a solemn pessimist and a silly optimist, if this evil existed, then there was in this evil something quite supreme and unique. For I found in my rationalist teachers no explanation of such exceptional corruption. Christianity (theoretically speaking) was in their eyes only one of the ordinary myths and errors of mortals. They gave me no key to this twisted and unnatural badness. Such a paradox of evil rose to the stature of the supernatural. It was, indeed, almost as supernatural as the infallibility of the Pope. An historic institution, which never went right, is really quite as much of a miracle as an institution that cannot go wrong. The only explanation which immediately occurred to my mind was that Christianity did not come from heaven, but from hell. Really, if Jesus of Nazareth was not Christ, He must have been Antichrist.
[CW1:294]

Oh my. And I thought that mention (even a distant mention!) of topics like birth control or Malthus or Darwin or Jews was going to produce controversy - now GKC says that Christianity came from hell and Jesus was the antichrist??? What on earth can all this mean? (What a great cliff-hanger - though for my hiking analogy that is not a very comforting term, hee hee!) So let us read on.

And then in a quiet hour a strange thought struck me like a still thunderbolt. There had suddenly come into my mind another explanation. Suppose we heard an unknown man spoken of by many men. Suppose we were puzzled to hear that some men said he was too tall and some too short; some objected to his fatness, some lamented his leanness; some thought him too dark, and some too fair. One explanation (as has been already admitted) would be that he might be an odd shape. But there is another explanation. He might be the right shape. Outrageously tall men might feel him to be short. Very short men might feel him to be tall. Old bucks who are growing stout might consider him insufficiently filled out; old beaux who were growing thin might feel that he expanded beyond the narrow lines of elegance. Perhaps Swedes (who have pale hair like tow) called him a dark man, while negroes considered him distinctly blonde. Perhaps (in short) this extraordinary thing is really the ordinary thing; at least the normal thing, the centre. Perhaps, after all, it is Christianity that is sane and all its critics that are mad - in various ways. I tested this idea by asking myself whether there was about any of the accusers anything morbid that might explain the accusation. I was startled to find that this key fitted a lock. For instance, it was certainly odd that the modern world charged Christianity at once with bodily austerity and with artistic pomp. But then it was also odd, very odd, that the modern world itself combined extreme bodily luxury with an extreme absence of artistic pomp. The modern man thought Becket's robes too rich and his meals too poor. But then the modern man was really exceptional in history; no man before ever ate such elaborate dinners in such ugly clothes. The modern man found the church too simple exactly where modern life is too complex; he found the church too gorgeous exactly where modern life is too dingy. The man who disliked the plain fasts and feasts was mad on entrées. The man who disliked vestments wore a pair of preposterous trousers. And surely if there was any insanity involved in the matter at all it was in the trousers, not in the simply falling robe. If there was any insanity at all, it was in the extravagant entrées, not in the bread and wine.
[CW1:294-5]

Ah. Just as a musician sets up the dissonance of (say) a dominant seventh, only to resolve it in satisfaction to a glorious tonic in a concluding cadence of chords - or Aquinas heaped argument upon argument to justify something he could not possibly believe or accept - so too GKC was setting up dissonances to reveal his satisfactory resolution of the matter. It is no accident (and I am not making a Scholastic pun here) that GKC has one book called The Everlasting Man and another called The Common Man. It is also no accident that in The Phantom Tollbooth our hero Milo found that within the normal-size house where the doors read "The Giant" and "The Midget" and so forth, there lived a very ordinary-sized man! Yes. The resolution to the apparent opposites is understood by an error of viewpoint - NOT that the viewpoints had to be wrong, but that the viewer has neglected to be fair - to see from yet another angle. Again - what a plea for scientists to preserve their humility in their work! (And for the lit'ry and philosophers as well.) Yes, I note that he again mentions the key/lock analogy, which we have seen before, and will see again, here and in grander form in The Everlasting Man. I think there is something hilarious about the idea of dress - I apologise if the lit'ry reference is not to your liking, but the secret world of Harry Potter certainly is in agreement with GKC's argument about the simplicity of the robes versus the "Muggle" oddity of "trousers" and all the rest of ephemeral fashion. (Who is Becket? That's St. Thomas Becket, bishop and martyr - it was while on their way to his grave in Canterbury that Chaucer's pilgrims told their tales.) But speaking of clothes, it may be worth noting here two other comments by GKC:

A human being is not even completely human without clothes, because they have become a part of him as the symbol of purely human things; of dignity, of modesty, of self-ownership, of property, and privacy and honour. Even in the purely artistic sense humanity would never have become human without them, because the range of self-expression and symbolic decoration would have been hopelessly limited, and there would have been no outlet even for the most primary instincts about colour and form.
[ILN Jan 10 1931 CW35:450]

For instance, all we can infer from primitive legend, and all we know of barbaric life, supports a certain moral and even mystical idea of which the commonest symbol is clothes. For clothes are very literally vestments and man wears them because he is a priest. It is true that even as an animal he is here different from the animals. Nakedness is not nature to him; it is not his life but rather his death; even in the vulgar sense of his death of cold. But clothes are worn for dignity or decency or decoration where they are not in any way wanted for warmth. It would sometimes appear that they are valued for ornament before they are valued for use. It would almost always appear that they are felt to have some connection with decorum.
[The Everlasting Man CW2:184]

And this, I think, (as Aquinas might answer) settles all the argument from Darwin and Marx and Malthus and the other diabolists. Man is a priest, and clothes are his vestments. He transcends the other parts of creation, for he has an exalted duty no other creature has, and he must offer daily sacrifice on behalf of the stars and flowers and rivers and telegraph poles and bookcases. Remember? "...we should thank God for beer and Burgundy by not drinking too much of them." [CW1:268]

The issue of course then turns on what it is he is the priest of - that is, what is it he is to offer. In my own (and in GKC's) case, he gives the hint. It is the same as was once offered by that mysterious man, Melchisidek, the King of Salem... and if I (like GKC) am not offering it in the immediate sacramental sense that the ordained do, I can co-offer it... Why? Because of gratitude. No, it's not spelled out in the next paragraph, which we shall see next time - but it's everywhere throughout GKC's writing. It's the "thin thread of thanks" we must use to hold onto reality. Think of this, and offer prayers of thanks when next you put on your daily vestments...

--Dr. Thursday

P.S. Next time we shall hear a little more about Malthus, which should resolve any lingering issues you have. We'll also hear more about this strangeness of the normal (ooh another paradox!), for Christianity is not simply some sort of average. Feel free to read ahead!

Are You Still Thinking about Ron Paul?

I'm wondering what in the world will help our country turn itself around and become who it is, a group of united states. You know, we used to say, "The United States are..." because we each functioned individually, and then had some things in common in which sometimes involved national government. But State's Rights were a big thing at one time.

Big government. Chesterton had a name for it, was it Hudge? or Gudge? The other one is Big Business. Together, they make an ugly pair.

Big government seems to be pretty out of control, this latest economic situation is only the visible sign of a sick body.

But what can be done? Here we have a prefect chance, with an election coming up, and very poor choices. We can't vote for Chesterton, although there are some places where the dead still get voted into office. What happened to Ron Paul? And even with that thought, we still have to go back to McCain and Obama, because no matter what we think of Ron Paul, either McCain or Obama is going to be our next president.

So, since we can dismiss both of them, let's talk about our states again. What can we do to convince good people to run for public office? What can we do to help good people to run for public office? Why does it seem that when good people become public servants (don't hear that term much anymore, either), they become corrupt? And maybe that's the reason good people don't run for public office.

The system is broken, and yet, here we are, we must live here and try to fix it.

What ways are you fighting Hudge and Gudge?

Speaking of Economics and Politics...

Does anyone else feel like we're all in kindergarten, and some kids got out of line, and the teacher makes everyone stay in from recess; while the principal bails out the misbehaving kids, gets them out of trouble— but the rest of us still have to stay inside as a punishment for the bad kids?

We've worked really hard to live against the norm. We paid off our home mortgage. We don't buy cars until we can pay for them. We have credit cards but we limit them, and pay them off each month. In other words, contrary to the country, we aren't in debt, and we even save money. We gave our government "economic stimulus" check (doesn't that seem a farce now?--of course, it did then, as well) back to the government by paying our property taxes with it.

When we went to the bank, they wanted to give us a bigger home loan, but we refused. We had to be the mature adults and tell the bank where to go with their big loans and high interest rates. But apparently, there are quite a few Americans who fall for those big numbers, and think banks know what they're doing. Now we know they don't. But why should we all have to pay for their mistakes?

Chesterton on Politics

When Barack's berserkers lost the plot

Nick Cohen
07 September 2008

My colleagues in the American liberal press had little to fear at the
start of the week. Their charismatic candidate was ahead in virtually
every poll. George W Bush was so unpopular that conservatives were
scrambling around for reasons not to invite the Republican President to
the Republican convention. Democrats had only to maintain their
composure and the White House would be theirs. During the 1997 British
general election, the late Lord Jenkins said that Tony Blair was like a
man walking down a shiny corridor carrying a precious vase. He was the
favourite and held his fate in his hands. If he could just reach the end
of the hall without a slip, a Labour victory was assured. The same could
have been said of the American Democrats last week. But instead of
protecting their precious advantage, they succumbed to a spasm of hatred
and threw the vase, the crockery, the cutlery and the kitchen sink at an
obscure politician from Alaska.

For once, the postmodern theories so many of them were taught at
university are a help to the rest of us. As a Christian, conservative
anti-abortionist who proved her support for the Iraq War by sending her
son to fight in it, Sarah Palin was 'the other' - the threatening alien
presence they defined themselves against. They might have soberly
examined her reputation as an opponent of political corruption to see if
she was truly the reformer she claimed to be. They might have gently
mocked her idiotic creationism, while carefully avoiding all discussion
of the racist conspiracy theories of Barack Obama's church.

But instead of following a measured strategy, they went berserk. On the
one hand, the media treated her as a sex object. The New York Times led
the way in painting Palin as a glamour-puss in go-go boots you were more
likely to find in an Anchorage lap-dancing club than the Alaska
governor's office.

On the other, liberal journalists turned her family into an object of
sexual disgust: inbred rednecks who had stumbled out of Deliverance.
Palin was meant to be pretending that a handicapped baby girl was her
child when really it was her wanton teenage daughter's. When that turned
out to be a lie, the media replaced it with prurient coverage of her
teenage daughter, who was, after all, pregnant, even though her mother
was not going to do a quick handover at the maternity ward and act as if
the child was hers.

Hatred is the most powerful emotion in politics. At present, American
liberals are not fighting for an Obama presidency. I suspect that most
have only the haziest idea of what it would mean for their country. The
slogans that move their hearts and stir their souls are directed against
their enemies: Bush, the neo-cons, the religious right.

In this, American liberals are no different from the politically
committed the world over. David Cameron knew that he would never be
Prime Minister until he had killed the urgent hatred of the Conservative
party in liberal England. A measure of his success is that hardly anyone
now is caught up by the once ubiquitous feeling that no compromise is
too great if it stops the Tories regaining power. Hate can sell better
than hope.

When a hate campaign goes wrong, however, disaster follows. And
everything that could go wrong with the campaign against Palin did.
American liberals forgot that the public did not know her. By the time
she spoke at the Republican convention, journalists had so lowered
expectations that a run-of-the-mill speech would have been enough to win
the evening.

As it was, her family appeared on stage without a goitre or a club foot
between them, and Palin made a fighting speech that appealed over the
heads of reporters to the public we claim to represent. 'I'm not going
to Washington to seek their good opinion,' she said as she deftly
detached journalists from their readers and viewers. 'I'm going to
Washington to serve the people of this country.'

English leftists made the same mistake of allowing their hatred to
override their judgment after the Iraq war. If they had confined
themselves to charging Tony Blair with failing to find the weapons of
mass destruction he promised were in Iraq, and sending British troops
into a quagmire, they might have forced him out. They were so consumed
by loathing, however, they insisted that he had lied, which he clearly
had not. They set the bar too low and Blair jumped it with ease. 'When a
man believes that any stick will do, he at once picks up a boomerang,'
said GK Chesterton, and when the politically committed go on a berserker
you should listen for the sound of their own principles smacking them in
the face.

Journalists who believe in women's equality should not spread sexual
smears about a candidate, or snigger at her teenage daughter's
pregnancy, or declare that a mother with a young family cannot hold down
a responsible job for the pragmatic reason that they will look like
gross hypocrites if they do. Before Palin, we saw hypocrisy of the right
when shock jocks who had spent years denouncing feminism came over all
politically correct when Bill Clinton had an affair with Monica Lewinsky.

In Britain, the most snobbish attacks on Margaret Thatcher did not come
from aristocrats but from the communist historian Eric Hobsbawm, who
opined that Thatcherism was the 'anarchism of the lower middle classes'
and the liberal Jonathan Miller, who deplored her 'odious suburban
gentility'. More recently, George Osborne, of the supposedly
compassionate Conservative party, revealed himself to be a playground
bully when he derided Gordon Brown for being 'faintly autistic'.

In an age when politics is choreographed, voters watch out for the
moments when the public-relations facade breaks down and venom pours
through the cracks. Their judgment is rarely favourable when it does.
Barack Obama knows it. All last week, he was warning American liberals
to stay away from the Palin family. He understands better than his
supporters that it is not a politician's enemies who lose elections, but
his friends.
H/T: Dale A.

A Chestertonian Teacher explains the Bentley Poem

H/T: Dale A.

Steve Knapp teaches English at Indian River State College in Ft. Pierce, Florida. He includes Chesterton in his courses. To help out his students, he has annotated Chesterton’s dedicatory poem to Bentley from The Man Who Was Thursday.

Question on a passage from Orthodoxy from a reader

From Tim, in my In Box:

Dear Ms. Brown,

I have just finished Orthodoxy with a reading group and a question has emerged that I cannot resolve. I was wondering if you would know the answer or would be willing to post this to your site to see if there is anyone who can be of help. I am pretty new to blogging. Here is the question:

In Section VI (The Paradoxes of Christianity) of Orthodoxy, there is a paragraph that I am having difficulty understanding. It is the second to the last paragraph which begins "Last and most important, it is exactly this which explains what is so inexplicable to all the modern critics of the history of Christianity. I mean the monstrous wars about small points of theology, the earthquakes of emotion about a gesture or a word. . . ."

In the context of the chapter, this paragraph continues a discussion of the tension or equilibrium of "balancing one emphasis against another emphasis." One way of reading this passage appears to be that Chesterton attempted to respond to those who criticized the use of murder and torture in the name of the church by saying that these events in church history were necessary in order to protect sound doctrine. The paragraph ends "Doctrines had to be defined within strict limits, even in order that man might enjoy general human liberties. The Church had to be careful, if only that the world might be careless." According to Chesterton, what was at stake were "the best best statutes in Europe," dances, Christmas trees, and Easter eggs. Surely Chesterton is not suggesting that murder and torture were necessary tools in order to maintain this equilibrium and preserve statutes, dances, Christmas trees, and Easter eggs. Such a reading appears to me to be inconsistent with the book as a whole. It would also lack biblical justification. is this a misreading of the passage? What am I missing? I appreciate any thoughts you can provide me.

Thank you in advance for your help.

And my response:

Dear Timothy,
What I have to say in response, I can only hope will sound Chestertonian.

First, we have to understand that murder and torture are wrong, and Chesterton believed that. What Chesterton is talking about is not murder or torture, but war. And war is another thing altogether. Wars must be fought (and he was not a pacifist) because men must fight for what they believe in, or their way of life will be usurped by the invading army and its beliefs. War is not the same as murder, even though people are killed in the process; there are "just war" arguments, and war is sometimes necessary; and especially when an army of men with different beliefs conquers a land and forces their beliefs on the inhabitants, the inhabitants are justified in fighting back for their own possessions, their land, their beliefs. And, as Chesterton believed, every war is a war of religion.

Recall Chesterton's distinction between suicide and martyrdom. He would make the same distinction between murder, and taking a life in a battle for one's country, or one's home. Both end in the end of someone's life, but how it happens is quite different.

The best example I can think of to tell you what Chesterton means when he says that "monstrous wars about small points of theology" are fought is what happened in 1054 with the major schism between the east and the west. It was basically a war of one word, sometimes referred to as the filioque. This is a war and a schism lasting for a thousand years, which was pretty much started because of one word in the Nicene Creed. But, as Chesterton sees it, it is still right, despite the disunity it caused (which Jesus prayed, that we may all be ONE and not disunity, so we know it is wrong to be split, yet we must split if one party is wrong about a point of Truth), it is still right to fight over this one word, because if there is Truth, one must fight for it. If we stand for something, we must stand for Truth, and if we do, we must be willing to fight for it.

No one can justify murder and torture, and Chesterton would certainly agree about that. He would not defend murder, nor torture. But, he would defend a man's right to fight for the Truth, and that is what he is attempting to say here, to the best of my knowledge.

Tim asked that I might post this, for anyone else having trouble with this particular point, so here it is.

Turnips and Taximeter Cabs

You, courageous reader, must often wonder why a computer scientist deals with Chesterton, DNA, fiction, astronomy, Catholicism, Latin and Greek, children's stories, and all the other odd things I mention from time to time. Speaking strictly from the professional, rather than from the personal, view, it is simple to explain. Computer science might be (in a broad sense) called "applied mathematics", or perhaps the Engineering branch of the Mathematical Science... it is applied, you see, to anything and everything which may need or benefit from its assistance. Clearly I do not use software to make my coffee, or my brownies, or to select the colours for my artwork, or to assist me when I go to Holy Mass, or to write poetry. But computing is a Chestertonian discipline, indeed a catholic discipline, unlike most other branches of engineering. It has come to serve, and so it has the Chestertonian perspective of things. (Of course it is possible I am merely trying to explain how my Catholicism has "leavened" my profession, but such things are beyond analysis.)

Have I fallen into the trap of making all things a nut because I can use a nutcracker? No; not in the slightest do I suggest that all matters must somehow be dealt with by computing. No. Some silly critics seem to think that our beloved Uncle Gilbert treats all things as literature - again, no. But literature - I mean real literature - is also a form of Engineering. I have no time now to argue that, but when the precision of the written word fails to express one's meaning, or when it conveys a great evil, it does far more damage than the failure of any number of bridges or power plants. But computing or literature is just a term for expression - what I mean is that the person who does these things in a professional and honest human manner finds that he will be dealing with all manner of subjects as he proceeds, and like a grand minestrone, each ingredient enriches the whole, and subtlely alters and is altered by the other ingredients. For example, there is a very famous children's book which ought to be required reading for every computer scientist. No, besides the Alice books! I mean Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth, one of my favourite Chestertonian books that wasn't by GKC. It has all the warfare of The Lord of the Rings with a grand admixture of verbal and mathematical puns, and deals with very Chestertonian topics like boredom or the division between words and numbers... Ahem.

However, this column is not a review of that book. And no, it's not about me, or about computing. Or cooking! (I thought I said I wouldn't write these before lunch. Hmm.) I have brought up this dull matter because I want you to share in that perspective that Chesterton wrote about, which is truly catholic - not in the liturgical or doctrinal sense, but in the Greek sense, which is "universal" - it touches, assists with, is interested in all things. That is why today's title is "Turnips and Taximeter Cabs", which comes from today's selection from Orthodoxy. There are other titles from other sources I could have used: "From Pork to Pyrotechnics" has the fun of alliteration, and "Pigs or the Binomial Theory" has a challenging alternative. What? Yes, this column is about Chesterton - it's supposed to be, anyway, if I can ever get started - but really it is about God. But you need the context, like this:

"I would undertake to pick up any topic at random, from pork to pyrotechnics, and show that it illustrates the truth of the only true philosophy; so realistic is the remark that all roads lead to Rome." [The Thing CW3:189]

"You cannot evade the issue of God; whether you talk about pigs or the binomial theory, you are still talking about Him." [Daily News, Dec. 12th, 1903 quoted in Maycock, The Man Who Was Orthodox]

But this idea is not original with GKC. You can find it in the Psalms:

"How great are thy works, O Lord! Thou hast made all things in wisdom: the earth is filled with thy riches." [Ps 103(104):24]

All things. As I said, a catholic view. Yes, this is overwhelming. And this is how Chesterton begins in today's excerpt...

((read more))

You may recall last week we heard the famous list of things why one might prefer civilisation: the bookcase, the coal in the coal-scuttle, the piano, the policemen... what things do you find useful or delightful there, in your office or home or wherever you may be? No - what things do you find useful or delightful in your Home, here in the Cosmos? All manner... you would be busy all day and all night, like Bing Crosby in "White Christmas" counting your blessings instead of sheep. This vastness of examples can make things harder, not easier - especially when we are trying to understand what every one of those things are screaming at us. For they are all telling us, quite loudly, a certain truth. Now, what happens? Here's what GKC noticed:

There is, therefore, about all complete conviction a kind of huge helplessness. The belief is so big that it takes a long time to get it into action. And this hesitation chiefly arises, oddly enough, from an indifference about where one should begin. All roads lead to Rome; which is one reason why many people never get there. In the case of this defence of the Christian conviction I confess that I would as soon begin the argument with one thing as another; I would begin it with a turnip or a taximeter cab. But if I am to be at all careful about making my meaning clear, it will, I think, be wiser to continue the current arguments of the last chapter, which was concerned to urge the first of these mystical coincidences, or rather ratifications. All I had hitherto heard of Christian theology had alienated me from it. I was a pagan at the age of twelve, and a complete agnostic by the age of sixteen; and I cannot understand any one passing the age of seventeen without having asked himself so simple a question. I did, indeed, retain a cloudy reverence for a cosmic deity and a great historical interest in the Founder of Christianity. But I certainly regarded Him as a man; though perhaps I thought that, even in that point, He had an advantage over some of His modern critics. I read the scientific and sceptical literature of my time - all of it, at least, that I could find written in English and lying about; and I read nothing else; I mean I read nothing else on any other note of philosophy. The penny dreadfuls which I also read were indeed in a healthy and heroic tradition of Christianity; but I did not know this at the time. I never read a line of Christian apologetics. I read as little as I can of them now. It was Huxley and Herbert Spencer and Bradlaugh who brought me back to orthodox theology. They sowed in my mind my first wild doubts of doubt. Our grandmothers were quite right when they said that Tom Paine and the freethinkers unsettled the mind. They do. They unsettled mine horribly. The rationalist made me question whether reason was of any use whatever; and when I had finished Herbert Spencer I had got as far as doubting (for the first time) whether evolution had occurred at all. As I laid down the last of Colonel Ingersoll's atheistic lectures the dreadful thought broke across my mind, "Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian." I was in a desperate way.
[CW1:287-8]

What is a "taximeter cab"? That's the "full name" of what we now call a "taxi". A "taximeter" is a gadget that measures how far the vehicle has gone, and shows the charge (the "tax") which you owe for the journey. I won't define turnip, but I must point out that the term has a somewhat different sense for GKC than it might for us. They use turnips as we use pumpkins(I can just imagine a cartoon version of "It's the Great Turnip, GKC!" Hee hee.) and also as a mild insult: "Lord, what a turnip I am!" Father Brown remarked when Flambeau casually handed him the solution to a mystery. ["The Honour of Israel Gow" in The Innocence of Father Brown] How about a "penny dreadful"? A "story book full of horrors" - the kind of cheap entertainment young people liked a century ago - but which still contained important moral lessons. [I have no room here to discuss them, but see GKC's "defence" of them in his The Defendant.] And these folk: Huxley here means Thomas (1825-95) called "Darwin's Bulldog" for his work in supporting Darwin's views; Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) was a philosopher also connected with Darwin; Charles Bradlaugh (1833-91) was a freethinker; Tom Paine (1737-1809) was an American political philosopher.

Here we see GKC giving a summary of his own intellectual development. There is a famous line of C. S. Lewis to the effect that a young atheist cannot be too careful about what he reads - he meant because when he was an atheist, he happened to read a book which convinced him of certain truths of Christianity... what book? Oh, GKC's The Everlasting Man. (That's reported in CSL's Surprised by Joy if I recall correctly.) But here (oh I can hardly keep my typing straight, I am laughing so hard) we see a perfect Chestertonian inversion! GKC seems to say he was "converted" by the humanists, the rationalists, the neo-pagan and the anti-Christian writers he was reading! Ha HA! Yes, because if you by any chance become serious about that modern attitude called "questioning authority" or "relativity" or "tolerance" or "openmindedness" - sooner or later, if you are serious, you MUST apply that attitude to itself. Like this: "WHY must I question authority? Who are YOU to tell me that I must do such a thing, imposing your doubt on me?" Or: "What do you mean everything is relative? If that were true, I can readily select any number of absolutes - and you must not mind at all!" Or: "Where do you get off telling me to be openminded/judgemental/tolerant? You are being the very reverse of what you wish me to be, closeminded to me, judgemental of me, intolerant of me!" Ah, what a relief to hear Chesterton debunk these dull old failed philosophies. But no. He didn't just debunk them. They were the very means he used to recover Christianity.

Then there is this: "Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian." Do you know what that is? It is what King Agrippa said to St. Paul - see Acts 26:28. Please get out your Bible and read that part (chapter 26), very exciting. But think: in GKC's case, we do not see a great Christian arguing for Christianity. No, it was some of Christianity's greatest recent foes - and from their work Chesterton found himself strongly attracted to Christianity! He proceeds to explain:

This odd effect of the great agnostics in arousing doubts deeper than their own might be illustrated in many ways. I take only one. As I read and re-read all the non-Christian or anti-Christian accounts of the faith, from Huxley to Bradlaugh, a slow and awful impression grew gradually but graphically upon my mind - the impression that Christianity must be a most extraordinary thing. For not only (as I understood) had Christianity the most flaming vices, but it had apparently a mystical talent for combining vices which seemed inconsistent with each other. It was attacked on all sides and for all contradictory reasons. No sooner had one rationalist demonstrated that it was too far to the east than another demonstrated with equal clearness that it was much too far to the west. No sooner had my indignation died down at its angular and aggressive squareness than I was called up again to notice and condemn its enervating and sensual roundness. In case any reader has not come across the thing I mean, I will give such instances as I remember at random of this self-contradiction in the sceptical attack. I give four or five of them; there are fifty more.
[CW1:288-9]

Yes. You can find this today, in the silly Media: TV, radio, and newspapers - or in the even sillier blogg-postings and rantings and commentaries. Watch for it. It's funny. But let us see GKC's examples, which will help attune you to what to watch for:

Thus, for instance, I was much moved by the eloquent attack on Christianity as a thing of inhuman gloom; for I thought (and still think) sincere pessimism the unpardonable sin. Insincere pessimism is a social accomplishment, rather agreeable than otherwise; and fortunately nearly all pessimism is insincere. But if Christianity was, as these people said, a thing purely pessimistic and opposed to life, then I was quite prepared to blow up St. Paul's Cathedral. But the extraordinary thing is this. They did prove to me in Chapter I. (to my complete satisfaction) that Christianity was too pessimistic; and then, in Chapter II., they began to prove to me that it was a great deal too optimistic. One accusation against Christianity was that it prevented men, by morbid tears and terrors, from seeking joy and liberty in the bosom of Nature. But another accusation was that it comforted men with a fictitious providence, and put them in a pink-and-white nursery. One great agnostic asked why Nature was not beautiful enough, and why it was hard to be free. Another great agnostic objected that Christian optimism, "the garment of make-believe woven by pious hands," hid from us the fact that Nature was ugly, and that it was impossible to be free. One rationalist had hardly done calling Christianity a nightmare before another began to call it a fool's paradise. This puzzled me; the charges seemed inconsistent. Christianity could not at once be the black mask on a white world, and also the white mask on a black world. The state of the Christian could not be at once so comfortable that he was a coward to cling to it, and so uncomfortable that he was a fool to stand it. If it falsified human vision it must falsify it one way or another; it could not wear both green and rose-coloured spectacles. I rolled on my tongue with a terrible joy, as did all young men of that time, the taunts which Swinburne hurled at the dreariness of the creed -

Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilaean, the world has grown gray with Thy breath.

But when I read the same poet's accounts of paganism (as in "Atalanta"), I gathered that the world was, if possible, more gray before the Galilaean breathed on it than afterwards. The poet maintained, indeed, in the abstract, that life itself was pitch dark. And yet, somehow, Christianity had darkened it. The very man who denounced Christianity for pessimism was himself a pessimist. I thought there must be something wrong. And it did for one wild moment cross my mind that, perhaps, those might not be the very best judges of the relation of religion to happiness who, by their own account, had neither one nor the other.
[CW1:289-90]

Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909) was an English poet; I don't presently have his works to give you detailed citations that GKC mentions - but GKC tells us what we need to know. Ah, do you see? Haven't we all heard the "media" say "Oh, how terrible celibacy is!" and then a few moments later "Oh, how terrible it is to have so many children!" Yes, sheer delight, and a perfect intellectual argument for Christianity, which has a reasoned way of having both. We shall see much more on this as we proceed. But we need to have this odd contradiction well in hand, so let us hear some more:

It must be understood that I did not conclude hastily that the accusations were false or the accusers fools. I simply deduced that Christianity must be something even weirder and wickeder than they made out. A thing might have these two opposite vices; but it must be a rather queer thing if it did. A man might be too fat in one place and too thin in another; but he would be an odd shape. At this point my thoughts were only of the odd shape of the Christian religion; I did not allege any odd shape in the rationalistic mind.
[CW1:290]

OK, I gave you a hint, way back at the beginning, that we would hear from the Chestertonian book called The Phantom Tollbooth. Anyone remember? Milo and the Watchdog and the Humbug are wandering in the woods and come to a little house where lives the world's tallest midget, and the shortest giant, and the thinnest fat man, and the widest thin man? Ah, yes... I am not saying Norton Juster was quoting (or even paraphrasing) GKC here - I am saying that both have gotten onto an important insight. Juster reveals something to Milo, our young hero, and GKC reveals something to us. But maybe this is still not clear, so GKC will try again. This time I think you will easily recognize usual nonsense the Media likes to spew:

Here is another case of the same kind. I felt that a strong case against Christianity lay in the charge that there is something timid, monkish, and unmanly about all that is called "Christian," especially in its attitude towards resistance and fighting. The great sceptics of the nineteenth century were largely virile. Bradlaugh in an expansive way, Huxley, in a reticent way, were decidedly men. In comparison, it did seem tenable that there was something weak and over patient about Christian counsels. The Gospel paradox about the other cheek, the fact that priests never fought, a hundred things made plausible the accusation that Christianity was an attempt to make a man too like a sheep. I read it and believed it, and if I had read nothing different, I should have gone on believing it. But I read something very different. I turned the next page in my agnostic manual, and my brain turned upside down. Now I found that I was to hate Christianity not for fighting too little, but for fighting too much. Christianity, it seemed, was the mother of wars. Christianity had deluged the world with blood. I had got thoroughly angry with the Christian, because he never was angry. And now I was told to be angry with him because his anger had been the most huge and horrible thing in human history; because his anger had soaked the earth and smoked to the sun. The very people who reproached Christianity with the meekness and non-resistance of the monasteries were the very people who reproached it also with the violence and valour of the Crusades. It was the fault of poor old Christianity (somehow or other) both that Edward the Confessor did not fight and that Richard Coeur de Leon did. The Quakers (we were told) were the only characteristic Christians; and yet the massacres of Cromwell and Alva were characteristic Christian crimes. What could it all mean? What was this Christianity which always forbade war and always produced wars? What could be the nature of the thing which one could abuse first because it would not fight, and second because it was always fighting? In what world of riddles was born this monstrous murder and this monstrous meekness? The shape of Christianity grew a queerer shape every instant.
[CW1:290-91]

Richard Coeur de Leon, or the Lion-heart, (1157-1199) was King of England; he fought in the Third Crusade. Thomas Cromwell (1485?-1540) was an adviser to Henry VIII, confiscating monasteries and so on. Alva is Fernando Alvarez de Toledo (1507-1582) tyrannical governor of the Netherlands.

I feel I ought to say something about this war business, since it always comes up in Chestertonian discussions, either when people find out GKC liked swords, or always had people duelling, or something. They make the usual Media-inspired mistake of failing to grasp something very important about fighting in general, which was all argued out in detail by Aquinas and even in more recent documents - but has its roots in the Christian Gospels. However, rather than giving my own reasoning, I will just give you a starting point from GKC, writing about what a man who actually reads the Gospels will find:

...he would not find a word of all that obvious rhetoric against war which has filled countless books and odes and orations; not a word about the wickedness of war, the wastefulness of war, the appalling scale of the slaughter in war and all the rest of the familiar frenzy; indeed not a word about war at all. There is nothing that throws any particular light on Christ's attitude towards organised warfare, except that he seems to have been rather fond of Roman soldiers.
[GKC The Everlasting Man CW2:323]

To which I affix these references if you wish to learn more: Mt 8:5-13, Luke 7:1-10; also Summa Theologica II-II Q40 A1.

Now we are not done. I have broken the argument here, because GKC proceeds to another demonstration, and I think it will work better next time, as it takes us onward to new discoveries. For now, if you have a copy of The Phantom Tollbooth in the house, or can borrow it from the library - or (even better) get yourself a copy to have around - I suggest you read (or re-read) it. Go over these demonstrations, and think about them, ponder the contradictions.. we are going to see more, and come to a very satisfactory grasp of what is going on. Also, I wish that you pay attention to the next time the Media gurgles about some Christian thing, and see how their silly views will assist you in becoming more firmly convinced, as GKC was... it takes a little thought, but it is not hard. You will get additional insights as we proceed; this is some of the meatiest and most gratifying work of the book.

--Dr. Thursday

If you live in or around Wheaton, IL

You can download a poster (Click on "this poster") to put up in your parish, school, library, coffee shop, or wherever you think people interested might be.

And if you live nearby, I hope you'll stop over and see Dale on October 23, or Chuck on October 24th.

PARADOX and the Pursuit of Truth Rochesterton (NY) Conference

PARADOX
and the
Pursuit
of Truth

Presented by the Rochester NY Chesterton Society
Speakers include:
Joseph Pearce, Author • Dale Ahlquist, American Chesterton Society • Hon. Judge David Fuhry • Dr. John Edelman, Nazareth College

Saturday, September 27th, 2008
9 am — 3 pm

St. John Fisher College, Coleman Chapel, Murphy Hall
Donation: $5. Free to students. Lunch will be available.

Funded by the Basilian Fathers of St. John Fisher College.

Recordings of our 2007 conference, Conversion of Heart: St. Paul, St. Augustine, John Henry Newman, GK Chesterton, are also available.
The Rochester NY Chesterton Society meets the third Thursday of the month, September-December, and March-June. Among our goals are lively discussion, good fellowship, and a deeper appreciation of the work of GKC. Direct questions to here.

Today is a New Day

Poetry via norumbega:

G. K. Chesterton
When Plain Folk, such as you or I,
See the Sun sinking in the sky,
We think it is the Setting Sun,
But Mr. Gilbert Chesterton
Is not so easily misled.
He calmly stands upon his head,
And upside down obtains a new
And Chestertonian point of view,
Observing thus, how from his toes
The sun creeps nearer to his nose,
He cries with wonder and delight,
“How Grand the sunrise is to-night!”

by Oliver Herford
from Confessions of a Caricaturist

Paradox Incarnate: the Victory of the Cross

It can be hard for some to come smack up against the crazy contrasts of the Cross.

You can read about it in several of GKC's books, not only The Ball and the Cross which seems so crazy at times. But to have a feast - to make a special day for celebrating a death (though it be one which gives life) or exulting over an old obsolete object of torture and capital punishment, so much as to have a special annual celebration about its most historic use? This seems even more crazy.

But then, that's Christianity: a scandal and a foolishness. That's the cross. And there cannot be Christianity without the cross.

Today, Christians of every version or edition ought to recall St. Paul's words: "While I was among you I determined to speak of nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified." (I quote from memory, this is really 1Cor2:2) Or, to put it in the words of another great Pauline disciple:

They [the early Christians in ancient Rome] seemed to be saying that God was dead and that they themselves had seen him die. This might be one of the many manias produced by the despair of the age; only they did not seem particularly despairing. They seemed quite unnaturally joyful about it, and gave the reason that the death of God had allowed them to eat him and drink his blood. According to other accounts God was not exactly dead after all; there trailed through the bewildered imagination some sort of fantastic procession of the funeral of God, at which the sun turned black, but which ended with the dead omnipotence breaking out of the tomb and rising again like the sun.
[GKC The Everlasting Man CW2:295-6]

But you may recall we were talking recently about paradox. The idea that a death can give life is not all that unusual - the whole nature of food, in all its forms, even in its solar origin, is a matter of death that gives life. But I cannot examine that in detail just now. Rather I would like to offer for your consideration a rather ridiculous poem, full of odd contradictions, wherein the sandy old place of capital punishment is converted to another use. But that's not the real paradox.

No, the paradox is in the titles of a certain Woman who appears in GKC's poem. And that's all you really need to know. Maybe then you'll understand all that other stuff about food and death too.

The Arena
Causa Nostrae Laetitae
Dedicated to the University of Our Lady, Indiana

There uprose a golden giant
On the gilded house of Nero
Even his far-flung flaming shadow and his image swollen large
Looking down on the dry whirlpool
Of the round Arena Spinning
As a chariot-wheel goes spinning; and the chariots at the charge.

And the molten monstrous visage
Saw the pageants. saw the torments.
Down the golden dust undazzled saw the gladiators go,
Heard the cry in the closed desert,
Te salutant morituri,
As the slaves of doom went stumbling, shuddering, to the shades below.

"Lord of Life, of lyres and laughter,
Those about to die salute thee,
At thy godlike fancy feeding men with bread and beasts with men,
But for us the Fates point deathward
In a thousand thumbs thrust downward,
And the Dog of Hell is roaring through the lions in their den."

I have seen, where a strange country
Opened its secret plains about me,
One great golden dome stand lonely with its golden image, one
Seen afar, in strange fulfillment,
Through the sunlit Indian summer
That Apocalyptic portent that has clothed her with the Sun.

She too looks on the Arena,
Sees the gladiators in grapple,
She whose names are Seven Sorrows and the Cause of All Our Joy,
Sees the pit that stank with slaughter
Scoured to make the courts of morning
For the cheers of jesting kindred and the scampering of a boy.

"Queen of Death and deadly weeping
Those about to live salute thee,
Youth untroubled; youth untortured; hateless war and harmless mirth
And the New Lord's larger largesse
Holier bread and happier circus,
Since the Queen of Sevenfold Sorrow has brought joy upon the earth."

Burns above the broad arena
Where the whirling centuries circle,
Burns the Sun-clothed on the summit, golden-sheeted, golden shod,
Like a sun-burst on the mountains,
Like the flames upon the forest
Of the sunbeams of the sword-blades of the Gladiators of God.

And I saw them shock the whirlwind
Of the World of dust and dazzle:
And thrice they stamped, a thunderclap; and thrice the sand-wheel swirled;
And thrice they cried like thunder
On Our Lady of the Victories,
The Mother of the Master of the Masterers of the World.

"Queen of Death and Life undying
Those about to live salute thee;
Not the crawlers with the cattle; looking deathward with the swine,
But the shout upon the mountains
Of the men that live for ever
Who are free of all things living but a Child; and He was thine."

[GKC CW10:108-109]

The Scientists Explain God

H/T: Rob D.

Illumination through an Unexpected Juxtaposition

In Memoriam
September 11, 2001

"...a date that ought to be among the most famous in history - September 11, 1683..."
-- H. Belloc, The Great Heresies

"...part of what historians call 'the specious present' for Muslims."
-- in an essay by W. Cinfici in The Annotated Lepanto

Yes. This was the day, seven years ago. Last year I posted a fictional account of how I experienced it. But for today, I wish to proceed with our study of Orthodoxy - which is a very Chestertonian way of marking the day.

Why? Well, there is a extremely famous GKC quote, which will seem to be utterly unrelated to the matter. But I shall quote it for you anyway, so that you may contemplate it and learn:

It is wrong to fiddle while Rome is burning; but it is quite right to study the theory of hydraulics while Rome is burning.
[GKC What's Wrong With the World CW4:43]

We ought to be studying the theories which underpin our society, even if it is under attack - perhaps thereby we shall acquire the tools we must have.

Also, I did the math (yes, I do that from time to time, even without a computer to help me) and I am appalled to see that while we have covered five chapters of Orthodoxy and have four more to go, we have not yet reached the halfway point in total pages. So we must proceed.

The chapter we have reached, the sixth of our text, which (alas) is still not the halfway mark, is called "The Paradoxes of Christianity". Now we all know that GKC is considered the "master of paradox", though I think that title correctly belongs to Another Man, whom some of us call "Master" (with bended knee). You see, to be accurate, all that GKC has done is point out and write about the paradoxes which already decorate our cosy universe called home. But there will be some (perhaps even out here in the e-cosmos) who will argue with me about this. People always make a big deal over GKC's "paradoxes" - so much so that "paradox", especially in connection with Christianity, is expected to have something to do with GKC:

Q. What was Jesus Christ like in real life?
A. He was a good man - so good as to be called the Son of God. He is to be identified in some way with God the Son. He was meek and mild and preached a simple religion of love and pacifism. He had no sense of humour. Anything in the Bible that suggests another side to His character must be an interpolation, or a paradox invented by G. K. Chesterton. If we try to live like Him, God the Father will let us off being damned hereafter and only have us tortured in this life instead.
[Dorothy L. Sayers, "The Dogma is the Drama" in Creed or Chaos?]

Anyway, GKC uses the term over a thousand times according to the latest AMBER. Even during his life, people stumbled over his dramatic verbal fireworks and puzzles, and called him "an inveterate paradox-monger" [Ward, Return To Chesterton 2] But for the authentic explanation, let us hear from his good friend, Hilaire Belloc:

His [Chesterton's] most concise and epigrammatic judgments are often taken as mere verbal exploits, and the half-educated and uncultured, who are of the stuff by which modern opinion is ruled, use of him the term "paradoxical", in that special meaning of their own which they give to this word, meaning "nonsense through contradiction"; not the original and cultured meaning of "paradox": "illumination through an unexpected juxtaposition".
[HB, On the Place of Gilbert Chesterton in English Letters, 21]

There you have it. Please repeat those mystic tongue-twistic words:
Paradox is an illumination through an unexpected juxtaposition.
That is what you need to know. In that marvellous Chestertonian book called The Miracle of the Bells, our hero the publicity agent Bill (White Spats) Dunnigan tells Father Paul something to the effect that "maybe your God could use a publicity agent!" Which might sound blasphemous, until one reads Saint Paul:

How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? Or how shall they believe him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? [Romans 10:14]

Well, looks like Bill Dunnigan was right! Therefore, let us now hear some unexpected juxtapositions from a great preacher, who will lead us to the illumination of the Master of Paradox...
((click here to proceed))
Our next chapter begins with what we might call a Chestertonian meditation upon the curious power of vision, and how it can lead us astray. Remember that so much of GKC's work is about seeing old things in a new way, or common things from an uncommon vantage point? He also knows just where the dangers lie in such a strategy:

The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, nor even that it is a reasonable one. The commonest kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite. Life is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for logicians. It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wildness lies in wait. I give one coarse instance of what I mean. Suppose some mathematical creature from the moon were to reckon up the human body; he would at once see that the essential thing about it was that it was duplicate. A man is two men, he on the right exactly resembling him on the left. Having noted that there was an arm on the right and one on the left, a leg on the right and one on the left, he might go further and still find on each side the same number of fingers, the same number of toes, twin eyes, twin ears, twin nostrils, and even twin lobes of the brain. At last he would take it as a law; and then, where he found a heart on one side, would deduce that there was another heart on the other. And just then, where he most felt he was right, he would be wrong.

It is this silent swerving from accuracy by an inch that is the uncanny element in everything. It seems a sort of secret treason in the universe. An apple or an orange is round enough to get itself called round, and yet is not round after all. The earth itself is shaped like an orange in order to lure some simple astronomer into calling it a globe. A blade of grass is called after the blade of a sword, because it comes to a point; but it doesn't. Everywhere in things there is this element of the quiet and incalculable. It escapes the rationalists, but it never escapes till the last moment. From the grand curve of our earth it could easily be inferred that every inch of it was thus curved. It would seem rational that as a man has a brain on both sides, he should have a heart on both sides. Yet scientific men are still organizing expeditions to find the North Pole, because they are so fond of flat country. Scientific men are also still organizing expeditions to find a man's heart; and when they try to find it, they generally get on the wrong side of him.

Now, actual insight or inspiration is best tested by whether it guesses these hidden malformations or surprises. If our mathematician from the moon saw the two arms and the two ears, he might deduce the two shoulder-blades and the two halves of the brain. But if he guessed that the man's heart was in the right place, then I should call him something more than a mathematician. Now, this is exactly the claim which I have since come to propound for Christianity. Not merely that it deduces logical truths, but that when it suddenly becomes illogical, it has found, so to speak, an illogical truth. It not only goes right about things, but it goes wrong (if one may say so) exactly where the things go wrong. Its plan suits the secret irregularities, and expects the unexpected. It is simple about the simple truth; but it is stubborn about the subtle truth. It will admit that a man has two hands, it will not admit (though all the Modernists wail to it) the obvious deduction that he has two hearts. It is my only purpose in this chapter to point this out; to show that whenever we feel there is something odd in Christian theology, we shall generally find that there is something odd in the truth.
[CW1:285-6]

Here we have what must be a brilliant tour-de-force in epistemology, that is the study of knowledge. Indeed, as you shall learn when you read GKC's book on Aquinas, GKC is getting at something about we learn, and how we know - what GKC says "might be called the appeal to Reason and the Authority of the Senses" [St. Thomas Aquinas CW2:429] I wrote more on this here; for now we just need to understand not so much how the interior of our bodies is arranged, but a much larger idea: it is fine to be able to catch on to obvious patterns - but when someone can give good information about something that is not obvious - in fact, is contrary to the obvious - why then that person must have hold of some powerful means of knowing.
Father Jaki quoted [in his Brain, Mind and Computers] an insight by the First Computer Scientist, Charles Babbage, to the effect that God as Master Designer (that is, Programmer) of the Universe, could know the depths of His system in a way that someone looking at it might not grasp - in fact Babbage saw his programming as a means to understanding miracles!
Now, that may seem like I am wandering - no, because that's what GKC is also saying here. Read that last line again: "whenever we feel there is something odd in Christian theology, we shall generally find that there is something odd in the truth." Ah. Remember, I said that GKC is merely calling attention to these odd things - the odd things are all there before he even gets to them? Yes. (You do not blame the hike leader for the rough rocks you climb over, the steepness of the path - or the grandeur of the view at the summit....)

But what are these odd things? Well, I expect an example, and there is one in the next paragraph - though some people, including perhaps some non-Catholic Christians, may feel a bit uneasy. But GKC is not getting into that matter here, so just read it and then we'll discuss the issue:

I have alluded to an unmeaning phrase to the effect that such and such a creed cannot be believed in our age. Of course, anything can be believed in any age. But, oddly enough, there really is a sense in which a creed, if it is believed at all, can be believed more fixedly in a complex society than in a simple one. If a man finds Christianity true in Birmingham, he has actually clearer reasons for faith than if he had found it true in Mercia. For the more complicated seems the coincidence, the less it can be a coincidence. If snowflakes fell in the shape, say, of the heart of Midlothian, it might be an accident. But if snowflakes fell in the exact shape of the maze at Hampton Court, I think one might call it a miracle. It is exactly as of such a miracle that I have since come to feel of the philosophy of Christianity. The complication of our modern world proves the truth of the creed more perfectly than any of the plain problems of the ages of faith. It was in Notting Hill and Battersea that I began to see that Christianity was true. This is why the faith has that elaboration of doctrines and details which so much distresses those who admire Christianity without believing in it. When once one believes in a creed, one is proud of its complexity, as scientists are proud of the complexity of science. It shows how rich it is in discoveries. If it is right at all, it is a compliment to say that it's elaborately right. A stick might fit a hole or a stone a hollow by accident. But a key and a lock are both complex. And if a key fits a lock, you know it is the right key.
[CW1:286-7]

First, some little details for enrichment:

Mercia: the sixth century Anglo-Saxon kingdom in the Midlands of England.
Midlothian - the county in Scotland where Edinburgh is located.
The maze at Hampton Court - a famous maze made of shrubbery, big enough to walk through.

The allusion I expect may concern some readers was to the term "keys" which are blazoned on the Papal flag. GKC has a much longer discussion of the analogy of the keys at the beginning of the chapter called "The Witness of the Heretics" in The Everlasting Man [CW2:346] and Fr. Jaki has wonderful book on the key, both as tool and as a biblical term: The Keys of the Kingdom: a Tool's Witness to Truth. But as GKC points out in his preface to TEM, "this study is not specially concerned with the differences between a Catholic and a Protestant", and I state the same emphatically - while iterating the first part of GKC's sentence: "It is impossible, I hope, for any Catholic to write any book on any subject, above all this subject, without showing that he is a Catholic..." But there are others among our readers who are squirming, and for quite a different reason!

I mean the scientists.

Did you ever hear such a strange thing? "When once one believes in a creed, one is proud of its complexity, as scientists are proud of the complexity of science. It shows how rich it is in discoveries." Well, don't squirm. Have you forgotten so quickly what we heard a few chapters ago? Let us all recite these words again:

It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all.
[CW1:236]

Scientists have a creed, they have a faith: in science! They believe that there will always be order to be found in what they study - they must, or they would never bother doing such boring things: measuring steam pressures in machine after machine, sequencing the DNA from yet another tray of bacteria, doing spectroscopic studies of yet another batch of rock samples, taking photographs of the same tiny wedge of the sky... day after year after century. I have no space to go into the whole philosophical foundations of modern science, based on Christianity and on the work of the Schoolmen of the 13th century - that can be found in the work of the great French thermodynamicist and historian, Pierre Duhem, and in Jaki's Science and Creation and other books. You ought to know about this: it is simply because Christianity divided God from the Universe that there could be science at all!
And you lit'ry guys must not be smug here. You are not hearing a "dissing" - a negative statement about science from GKC. No, not at all. You are hearing grand, stupendously good science, from a grand and stupendously good lit'ry man, GKC. If you don't like the non-fiction, try the fiction, it's lots easier to chew and even tastier:

"...there are only two things that really progress; and they both accept accumulations of authority. They may be progressing uphill or down; they may be growing steadily better or steadily worse; but they have steadily increased in certain definable matters; they have steadily advanced in a certain definable direction; they are the only two things, it seems, that ever progress. The first is strictly physical science. The second is the Catholic Church."
"Physical science and the Catholic Church!" said Turnbull sarcastically; "and no doubt the first owes a great deal to the second."
"If you pressed that point I might reply that it was very probable," answered MacIan calmly.
[GKC, The Ball and the Cross]

Which might be the shortest possible synopsis of Duhem's and Jaki's work ever written. But GKC is not arguing about that. He is trying to show us something in the nature of faith which is like the advance of science. It not easy to see, or for GKC to explain, as he goes on to point out:

But this involved accuracy of the thing makes it very difficult to do what I now have to do, to describe this accumulation of truth. It is very hard for a man to defend anything of which he is entirely convinced. It is comparatively easy when he is only partially convinced. He is partially convinced because he has found this or that proof of the thing, and he can expound it. But a man is not really convinced of a philosophic theory when he finds that something proves it. He is only really convinced when he finds that everything proves it. And the more converging reasons he finds pointing to this conviction, the more bewildered he is if asked suddenly to sum them up. Thus, if one asked an ordinary intelligent man, on the spur of the moment, "Why do you prefer civilization to savagery?" he would look wildly round at object after object, and would only be able to answer vaguely, "Why, there is that bookcase... and the coals in the coal-scuttle... and pianos... and policemen." The whole case for civilization is that the case for it is complex. It has done so many things. But that very multiplicity of proof which ought to make reply overwhelming makes reply impossible.
[CW1:287]

Science (as GKC implies) has advanced so far that nowadays, 100 years later, things are taught in elementary and high schools which were once the staggeringly novel insights and advances known only to the most brilliant workers after long years of study. If you need a proof (pun intended) just go to the library and check out Euclid's Elements - the great Greek geometer of ca. 300 BC. You will be overwhelmed, but high school sophomores are busy working out lessons he and his school once puzzled over. Even grade school children hear of elements that the greatest chemists of the early 1800s could not imagine, and high school seniors learn the formal proofs of the infinitesimals on which all calculus is based - an insight that neither Newton nor Leibnitz had, and which escaped all of the great mathematicians for nearly 200 years - until Cauchy solved it!
You laugh that I recall such things... but you see I have sat and thought about this, like GKC's ordinary intelligent man. Why don't you try it? No, not a list of extreme cutting edge science now taught to children, but the advances of our human world, in sewing or in literature, in art or bread-making... but unite them in one, and learn from the unity you have formed. That is the insight GKC is aiming for: "that very multiplicity of proof which ought to make reply overwhelming makes reply impossible". You hem and haw - then burble, as I did, a few funny examples. Because you really do find the answers everywhere.

Next time GKC goes further with this, and proceeds into the even more paradoxical discovery that GKC made: Christianity was being defended, indeed, the best arguments for her were coming from her greatest opponents!

Yes. Unbelieveable! I won't mind if you read ahead...

--Dr. Thursday

Letters to the Editor

The latest Gilbert magazine has a very funny Letter to the Editor, in the form of a poem, wondering what happened to the writer's subscription.

Equally funny is Dale Ahlquist's response, also in poetry format, stating the human error which caused the mysterious "losing" of the aforementioned subscription.

The other letters were interesting, too. Letters & Lunacy is always one of my favorite things to read. I always hope that The Flying Stars column will have caused some flurry of controversial letters, and the sparks will be flying, with me rebutting their awful line of reasoning, and then them returning to the scene of the crime and tearing my argument apart word for word, and then me coming back with a clever retort or two.

But somehow, that has never happened. Yet.

"The only object of liberty is life."

I spent some enjoyable minutes yesterday looking at the new Gilbert magazine, and finding wonderful pieces of writing and funny stuff here and there.

The article I enjoyed the most was the interview with Ann Petta, because I've wanted to interview her myself, I was so interested in finding out more about her and her connection to Chesterton.

I remember talking to Ann a few years ago when we first met, asking her what first drew her to Chesterton, and she said, "I liked him first as a person" and I could completely understand that, feeling that way myself.

So I thoroughly enjoyed the interview, and the remembrances of Frank.

Then I read the column The Flying Stars, and once again prayed a prayer of thanksgiving for my editors.

Read Editor-in-Chief Sean Dailey's reasons for a late issue and more.

Women and The Woman

I have made a special selection for today, September 8, which is the birthday of Mary, the Mother of God. It is a bit complex, and not so obvious as one might wish for in such a selection, but I think it worth studying.

For one, it shows GKC's careful, friendly argumentation, even when he is in serious disagreement with an opponent. Few swordsmen of any age can wield the pen like this!

Second, because of the arguments (really I ought to say quarrels) presently being voiced about woman and her place in the world, not to say the home. Again this selection shows some unexpected traits - GKC, painted by some as an extreme anti-feminist, is revealed in his true chivalry as a powerful defender of Woman - that is, defending her from feminists!

Finally, because of the humble, almost casual and hard-to-notice appearance of Mary in this selection. So appropriate, as Mary, the Woman whose birthday we celebrate today, was always most humble. She did not make herself visible (remember her last words: "Do whatever He tells you." [Jn 2:5]) In fact, sometimes her Son had to phrase things very carefully so as to remind others of her importance: "Blessed is the womb that bore You!" someone shouts. But no, that's not quite right, so very carefully He explains why His mother is important: "Rather, blessed are they who hear the word of God and keep/do it." [Lk 11:27-28]

Only such a Word-smith as her Son could exalt in multiple dimension. (GKC explained it grandly: "the idea of simultaneous happenings on different levels of life" [TEM CW2:305] "use of the comparative in several degrees" [TEM CW2:333]) Yes, multiple, for even we who live long afterwards can hope to follow that Woman if we hear and keep the word that still echoes from a hillside in Galilee...

Remember, it was she who taught the Word to speak... How she must have rejoiced (Lk 1:47) to hear Him say "Abba" - Father.

--Dr. Thursday

Judge Parry is one of the men who have done mountains of good merely by being alive; while so many judges act as if they were already dead, not to say ... but Judge Parry might misunderstand a misuse of theological imagery. He is somewhat anti-clerical; which seems a waste of talent in a country where there is no clericalism. In his last book, Law and the Woman, I find much with which I do not agree, yet nothing which is not agreeable. Not only does he say everything with disarming humour and candour; but even in error he never loses sight of the large factor that sex relations do not depend on the exceptional action of law, but on the normal action of creed and custom. Alone among such lawyers he understands that the poor live on laughter as on a fairy-tale; and can be more scientifically studied in the fictions of Jacobs than the facts of Webb. I might pursue the view further than he on some points; as when he would infer the mere enslavement of women from some stories about the selling of wives. He is doubtless correct in detail; but the rhyme he gives to prove his point may almost be said to disprove it. He quotes a jolly ballad about a man who tried to sell his wife with a halter round her neck and, failing to do so, tried to hang himself in the halter rather than go on living with her. Obviously this is simply the fable of the grey mare; and does not mean that the man ruled his wife, but rather that she ruled him. I do not agree about divorce; but I am not going to argue about it here, or about any such problem of the sexes. This is partly because I should have to begin about the nature of a vow, and it feels like talking to a judge about the nature of an oath, and might almost be contempt of court. But it is more, I hope, for the manlier reason that I do want to argue about something else.

I think this delightful book might really mislead by a view of progress which over-simplifies history: the view that "the thoughts of men are widened by the process of the suns" - a monotonous process which cannot even widen itself. He begins his story of the subjection of women from the Bible story of Adam and Eve. He then proceeds at once to quote, not the Bible, but John Milton, and says it is almost exactly in the form "in which mediaeval man was wont to explain to medieval woman the kind of thing she really was." Now whatever Milton was, he was not mediaeval. He was, in his own opinion and in real though relative truth, highly modern and rationalistic. And he would have regarded his somewhat contemptuous view of woman as part of his emancipation from mediaevalism. Probably the very same attitude made him approve of divorce; and makes the difference between woman's place in his epic and her place in Dante's. On either side of that Gothic gateway of the Middle Ages out of which he had emerged (as he would have said) into the daylight, there had stood two symbolic statues of women, at least of equal importance in the scheme. One represented the weak woman by whom Satan had entered the world; the other the strong woman by whom God had entered the world. Milton and his Puritans deliberately battered and obliterated the image of the good woman and carefully preserved the bad woman, to be a standing reproach to womanhood. But they unquestionably thought their anti-feminist iconoclasm was a great step in progress; and the fact illustrates what an uncommonly crooked and even backward path the path called progress has really been. Nor is it difficult to discover, even in the writer's own account, whence this anti-feminist iconoclasm drew its force; which was certainly not merely from the Book of Genesis. Judge Parry says, perhaps disputably, that the rude Saxons had more legal regard for women than the Romans. But assuming for the sake of argument that the heathen Romans did give a low status to woman, they clearly cannot have got it either from the Hebrew Scriptures or the mediaeval Church. If he will ask where they did get it, he will probably also find where Milton got it. The truth is that there was an element of intellectual brutality in the Renaissance and revival of the pagan world. The very worship of power and reason embodied itself in a preference for the sex that was supposed superior in them. New tyrannies as well as new liberties were encouraged by the New Learning; and Cervantes was laughing at the unreal adventurer who fancied he was unchaining captives, at the very time when Hawkins, the real adventurer, was first leading negroes in chains.

[The above is from GKC's "The Lawlessness of Lawyers" in The Uses of Diversity.]

A few notes about some names:

Judge Parry: Edward Abbott Parry (1863-1943)

I enjoy it [the just-published book called The Overbury Mystery: A Chronicle of Facts and Drama of the Law] because the new study of it is written by Judge Parry, every word of whose works I always enjoy; for, whether they are the most light-headed nonsense or the most hard-headed sense, they are always (as they used to say in the eighteenth century) an honour to his head and heart...
[GKC ILN Jan 16, 1926 CW34:25]

Jacobs: William Wymark Jacobs (1863-1943) author of stories, mostly humorous, and the macabre "The Monkey's Paw". According to GKC, he might be the origin of the blogg-term "ROTFL" ... behold:

Now there are at least four points in which Mr. Jacobs represents the return to the great comic classics; and this is the first of them - the fact that he re-establishes humour as something violent and involuntary and outside ourselves. His best humour is outside criticism, in the sense that physical pain is outside criticism. With him as with Dickens, an absurdity is an absurdity as a blow in the face is a blow in the face. You cannot pause to call the joke a bad joke. You cannot pause to call the joke a good joke. It is simply a fact of natural history that you, having read a certain remark two minutes before, are now rolling about on the carpet and waving your legs in the air.
[GKC "W. W. Jacobs" from The Tribune 1906, reprinted in A Handful of Authors]

Webb: Sidney Webb (1859-1947) one of the founders of the "Fabian Society" (dedicated to establishing socialism in England).

What I have always liked about [H. G.] Wells is his vigorous and unaffected readiness for a lark. He was one of the best men in the world with whom to start a standing joke; though perhaps he did not like it to stand too long after it was started. I remember we worked a toy-theatre together with a pantomime about Sidney Webb.
[GKC Autobiography CW16:211]

Mediaevalism provokes a study, not merely artistic, like Morris and Ruskin, but as economic as that of Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb. Let it be understood that I am not here discussing whether these views are accurate; I am only pointing out that, whatever they are, they are not merely antiquated.
[GKC Where All Roads Lead CW3:32]

John Milton (1608-1674) poet and author, wrote Paradize Lost a blank-verse epic on the fall of man.

Milton prefaced "Paradise Lost" with a ponderous condemnation of rhyme. And perhaps the finest and even the most familiar line in the whole of "Paradise Lost" is really a glorification of rhyme. "Seasons return, but not to me return," is not only an echo that has all the ring of rhyme in its form, but it happens to contain nearly all the philosophy of rhyme in its spirit. The wonderful word "return" has, not only in its sound but in its sense, a hint of the whole secret of song. ... No lover of poetry needs to be told that all poems are full of that noise of returning wheels and none more than the poems of Milton himself. The whole troth is obvious, not merely in the poem, but even in the two words of the title. All poems might be bound in one book under the title of "Paradise Lost." And the only object of writing "Paradise Lost" is to turn it, if only by a magic and momentary illusion, into "Paradise Regained."
[GKC "The Romance of Rhyme" in Fancies Versus Fads]

Cervantes: Miguel de Cervantes(1547-1616) Spanish novelist, author of Don Quixote, he fought in the battle of Lepanto.

They [Latins] are realistic in theory, but they are romantic in practice; and, moreover (for this is the point), highly practical in achieving the romance. When they talk and write they are often incredulous; but the things they do are incredible. They are so vigorous that they can do even what they doubt. The strangest and most striking example, I think, is Cervantes. He wrote a whole novel to show that it was nonsense to expect any adventures in this life, when his own life had been simply crammed with adventures. He seemed to smile Spain's chivalry away, when he had actually been risking his life for that chivalry and driving its Paynim enemies away. At Lepanto he was the first to leap, sword in hand, on to the galley of the Sultan - a thing obviously out of a boy's novelette. The first satirist of crusading romances was one of the last crusaders.
[GKC ILN Dec 6 1919 CW31:574]

Hawkins: Sir John Hawkins (or Hawkyns) (1532-1595) English naval commander who (among other things) engaged in Negro slave trade.

The blackest imp out of the abyss, settling on the congenial shoulder of Sir John Hawkins, suggested to him that he might solve the Labour Problem by stealing the black men and making them work for the white men. So, in a typical age of art, science, and scepticism, the black man and the white man were "brought together." So they opened the golden gates of the Renaissance, and instantly slavery rushed in again - an ancient and heathen river.
In the case of America, few will deny that, but for the unlucky enlightenment of the pirate Hawkins, two races might have coexisted on this planet without an incessant exasperation. America would not have needed either to scourge a helotry or to shoot down an aristocracy; she might have saved both the tears of Uncle Tom and the blood of Stonewall Jackson.
[GKC ILN Aug 19 1911 CW29:140]