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Lepanto Novena: Sept. 29 - Oct. 7

Please join us for our novena, beginning tomorrow, September 29, the feast of St. Michael, and completing on the feast of the Most Holy Rosary, October 7.

You may say the rosary or choose whatever prayer you like. Remember that the FIRST novena was performed at the direction of our Lord, when just before He ascended He told the apostles to go back to the city and pray for the Holy Spirit.

Our intentions are for the defeat of evil, and for the special needs of all who are participating in prayer, and their families.

In case you wish to know more about Lepanto and its connection to all this, see here for the poem, or here for more.

Rochester, NY Chesterton Conference this weekend

Rochester, NY is the place to be this weekend! (So what am I doing in Peoria???)

ChesterTen Big Announcement

The 29th Annual G.K. Chesterton Conference will by Aug. 5-7, 2010, at Mt. St. Mary’s University in Emmitsburg, Maryland. It will be the centennial of “What’s Wrong with the World.”

Already scheduled to speak are Nancy Brown, Msgr. Stewart Swetland, Tom Martin, Regina Doman, and Dale Ahlquist.

Mt. St. Mary’s is a beautiful campus located about an hour north of Washington DC, and only about 20 minutes from Gettysburg.

Something heartening...

No, this is not about WWWTW - things have gotten very difficult and I have to suspend that project, and have serious doubts that it will be resumed.

But it is Thursday, and so I was seeking something heartening, not really knowing what I might find.... and I found this following interesting excerpt. You may find it as surprising as I did. (If you were wondering what it was I was seeking, it was a pithy remark about people who write articles ABOUT fiction instead of actually writing fiction... but it may have been written by some other author than GKC. If it was poetry I would know where to look.)

--Dr. Thursday.

Now, I will take that one small point about Napoleon and love. Mr. Wells might actually have quoted, and would doubtless have taken quite seriously, a real remark of Napoleon. He did once say, among many other random and cynical remarks in a busy life, that he doubted whether he really loved anybody. If human beings in history were treated with half the sympathy and subtlety given to human beings in novels, we should all understand that this was probably the bitter and brief expression of some mood of hardening, common in middle age, but faced with all the realism of a Latin. Mr. Wells himself might easily have made one of his middle-aged heroes say it. If it had occurred in one of his own novels, he would have believed it; but he might not so easily believe it when it occurs in real life. For the modern rule is that fictitious characters are to be tinted with every shade of shady or shabby grey, but historical characters are to remain in sensational black and white. Mr. Wells's middle-aged hero might say he loved nobody, and yet go on to love quite an unnecessary number of people in the course of the novel. And Napoleon, in early life, had quite certainly loved not wisely, but too well. So much for the remark itself, which Mr. Wells would understand if only he were writing fiction. And now let me draw attention to something that went along with it, and something that Mr. Wells cannot for the life of him understand even when he is sincerely trying to write history. Immediately after Napoleon had said in his haste that he loved nobody, he corrected himself and added as an after-thought some such words as these: "Except perhaps Joseph, from a sort of habit, because he is the eldest of us." Now, those who regard Napoleon either as a Satan or a Superman would never have dreamed of his saying that. It is the very last thing they would expect him to say; it is the very last exception they would expect him to make. They are familiar enough in their romances with the idea of Satan not being so black as he is painted, of the iron Superman having a soft spot somewhere. But they would never dream of looking for the soft spot there. They would understand the sinister hero being faithful to one faithless woman; or worshipping some Princesse Lointaine of legendary beauty; or having his weary heart refreshed by a golden-haired child or beggar-maid; or taking the advice of some wild prophet or jester in whom anything was tolerated. But that he should still have a humdrum and almost humble attachment to the head of the family, bigger than he in the nursery and the playground, and for no other reason whatever, is an anti-climax to all anarchical romance. The Superman is still actually looking up to his elder brother, simply because he is his elder brother. We look for Napoleon and we find Buonaparte cadet, still respectfully attached to Buonaparte ainé. In Thackeray and nearly all English fiction, it is taken for granted, with a laugh, that a fellow can hardly be expected to be very fond of his elder brother. In the Code of the Corsican Ogre it is taken for granted, with entire innocence, that a fellow cannot help being fond of his elder brother, even if it is only a habit. That is what I mean when I say that men like Mr. Wells, if they wanted to find the virtues of men like Napoleon, would always look for them in the wrong place. That is what I mean when I say that they do not understand even what such a Latin would mean by trying to be good, if he did try to be good. His virtues would startle us by their staleness. The devil would hardly become anything so romantic as a monk; but rather a bourgeois. He would be domestic and almost dowdy.
[GKC ILN June 17 1922 CW32:392-4]

Please pray for Rod Bennett

Rod was at the conference in Seattle, speaking about the connection between Chesterton and Frank Capra, and a very interesting talk, too. Gilbert magazine was planning to interview him for the upcoming "conference" edition of the magazine, but we received this news this morning. Please pray for Rod and his family during this trying time.

We've lost our home and pretty much its entire contents in the flooding...(including all my Chesterton books! ). Were gonna be homeless for a while, with very limited time...Rod B.

Chesterton's Political "Party"?

People often wonder what Chesterton's political party was - or would be. There are times when he is very "conservative" - others where he is very "liberal"... as we now use those terms. But this is not that kind of a post. It is really very short, and not even argumentative. You see, when I was hunting up some details about word use for my previous posting about semicolons, I found I had done another little study of "proper names"... and I happened to stumble on a very long series of words, and wondered what it meant. It turned out to be Chesterton's name for his own political party, and you will enjoy learning what it is:

...the sort of expression which it would be necessary for the happy crowd to cry with one voice, if it elected me to Parliament. I am a Radical Nationalist Anti-Imperialist Anti-Collectivist Distributivist Christian Social Democrat. I am all that; and there are about three more of me. But my party, though of a wisdom and virtue vastly superior to all others, has not reached the stage which distracts it with the temptations of power and patronage. And my revolutionary movement has at present no axe to grind, not even the axe of the guillotine.
[GKC ILN July 16 1921 CW32:205]

This is a nice little tricky tongue twister to memorise, and once you have mastered GKC's famous poem called "Plakkopytrixophylisperambulantiobatrix" (to be found in The Coloured Lands) you can go for this one next.

Note: I typed that word in from memory - it was NOT cut-and-pasted. It also can be sung to that "Poppins" song, if you like that sort of thing. It is also four letters longer, and you will sound even more precocious if you learn to say it. Hee hee. Tea parties on the ceiling, I tell you.... Innocent Smith having picnics on the roof!

Reports of the Minneapolis Conference?

So far, I've only seen this, but would love to hear more about the conference last Saturday. Anyone go? If so, please leave us some thoughts in the combox. Thanks.

The ChesterTones get serious

From Bob:

Nancy,

I'm starting to work on forming a barbershop quartet for the next conference. Dale seemed genuinely pleased that we might form a quartet and perform. I sing bass, and Don B. and Mark C. sing lead and baritone, respectively. We need a tenor. We plan to learn a couple of standard barbershop songs and then try to have something Chestertonian put to music in the barbershop style. (The woman I take voice lessons from has joined the Chillicothe Chesterton Society and she has offered to create the music if I find the right words).

So I have a request. Can you put something on the blog asking if there is someone who would like to sing tenor (we'll learn the parts on our own and then practice together at the conference before the banquet) and if so, please contact me?

Also, can someone suggest one of Chesterton's short poems that might be humorous that we can put to music?

Thanks

Bob

If interested, write to me and I'll put you in touch with Bob.
UPDATE: A tenor has already come forward!
BUT--we still need ideas about what Chesterton work might work well with a barbershop quartet of singers. Any ideas?

Podcasting Update

If you haven't checked out the website lately, go here and you can see that I've now got three podcasts up! I'm getting some good feedback, and I hope you're listening, too.

Acorn takedown mastermind a Chestertonian

According to this article, the man behind the coup to take down ACORN was non other than a Chesterton fan who considers Chesterton his intellectual backbone.

He's also a good friend of a reader of this blog, David, who tipped me off to the article adding that when O'Keefe mentioned G.K. Chesterton's name, the reporter was apparently silenced, dumbfounded. The reporter had never heard anyone say something like that before.

I like the subversive, Man Who Was Thursday with a spy camera aspect to the story.

Thanks, David M.

What is it about GKC and the semicolon?

I thought it would be fun to give you a bit of a a laugh today, which I will do by giving you some lovely academic gobbling about what some writers consider one of the most annoying parts of Chesterton's work - that is, his use of the semicolon.

Now, as I am a computer scientist, and I have been slammed into that altered mental state from my own use of very frequent semicolons in PASCAL and "C" (that's the language, not the grade) - not to mention all the other odd punctuation things we get into since no one has seen fit to actually extend the keyboard, except for those APL people.... Ahem! Pardon me for trying to drag in my own work. Let's try this again.

I recall reading somewhere that one of the major objections to Chesterton (besides the old canard that he was usually wrong about everything) was what they call his "poor style", exemplified by his "over-use" of the semicolon. I have wondered about that; I didn't seem to recall noting any over-use, but then I have my own style anyway, altered (as I have stated) by spending too many hours typing semicolons at the end of every line. Hee hee. Nevertheless, I am just enough of a scholar to wonder how many semicolons GKC really did use - and perhaps you wondered too.

Apparently back in 1998 a study was made of this very matter, and after some searching in old and forgotten piles of paper, I found a copy. In an article by someone named "Peter Floriani" published in the little-known and all-too-short-lived Mideast Chesterton News, for April 25, 1998, I learned that Chesterton wrote 1533 essays for the Illustrated London News, ranging in size from 782 to 2847 words. The average word count was 1459.5. The article included this very interesting graph:
(MeCN 1:3, Apr 25, 1998; used by kind permission of the Editor-in-Chief.)
Finally, the article reported that these essays use semicolons ranging from 2 to 39, at an average semicolon frequency of 14.2 per essay, or just about one every ten words.

However, the article did not report on Chesterton's other use of the semicolon, which I shall now reveal. It turns out that he used the WORD (not the symbol) twice, at least as far as I can tell:

But that Seymour invented anything in the letterpress large or small, that he invented either the outline of Mr. Pickwick's character or the number of Mr. Pickwick's cabman, that he invented either the story, or so much as a semi-colon in the story was not only never proved, but was never very lucidly alleged.
[GKC Charles Dickens CW15:81]

With scarcely a semicolon after his hearty thanks, the little man began his recital:
[GKC "The Absence Of Mr. Glass" in The Wisdom of Father Brown]

Though Maisie Ward had this to say:

...Gilbert liked anyhow to distribute the stops and commas and especially the semi-colons on a method rather markedly his own.
[Ward, Return To Chesterton 157]

Oh my. I may be biassed, of course, from writing software, but I am sorry. I do not find the issue worth whining over. Really! Using "semicolon" two times - and once hyphenated - in some eight million words is hardly an over-use.

GKC - of Bag End?

Yes, well, he was rather LARGE for a Hobbit, but there are some points of similarity... something about having dinner twice a day makes me think of GKC. Hee hee.

Ah - yes - no, your calendar is not wrong. This is not Thursday. Nor even Tuesday.

Why do I mention Tuesday? See GKC's "A Picture of Tuesday" in CW14:60 et seq; also the first Harry Potter story begins on Tuesday. So, too, according to some commentators, was the miracle at the wedding in Cana. [Jn 2] It's a mystery. But then, some things remain mysterious even in plain sight: "The mystic allows one thing to be mysterious, and everything else becomes lucid." [GKC Orthodoxy CW1:231] Ahem.

And so, to help Nancy out, here are two little cross-links I noted as I begin RE-reading JRRT's The Hobbit as I celebrate 31 autumns since the first time...

JRRT: Hobbits like cheerful colours, chiefly green and gold. [JRRT The Hobbit]
GKC: "There is your precious order, that lean, iron lamp, ugly and barren; and there is anarchy, rich, living, reproducing itself - there is anarchy, splendid in green and gold." [GKV TMWWT CW6:483]

JRRT: [Bilbo said] "Adventures - nasty uncomfortable things. Make you late for dinner." [JRRT The Hobbit]
GKC: Adventures are to those to whom they are most unexpected - that is, most romantic. Adventures are to the shy: in this sense adventures are to the unadventurous. [GKC Heretics CW1:74]
An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered. [GKC ILN July 21 1906 CW27:242]

(note, I quote JRRT from memory.)

And I thought I spotted something else but forgot to note it. Like Bilbo, who forgot appointments unless he wrote them down: "Gandalf. Tea. Wednesday." which I recall as having made me laugh uproariously when I first read it, and gave me confidence that I had made a good decision!

Actually, though I have read it and LotR over 20 times, just today I noted - for the VERY FIRST TIME - a hilarious pun in the missive from "Thorin and Company" to Bilbo which was left on his mantel.

I refer, of course, to the "Yours deeply"... how else would dwarves sign a letter! Hee hee hee hee hee!

And since "thanks is the highest form of thought" [GKC, A Short History of England] I must not forget to express my sincere thanks to Mr. Tolkien for his very wonderful work, and to my friend "CJ" who urged me to explore it, and who gave me the three volumes of LotR.

A Question For Our Readers

So.... with all the whine about the publishing of yet another dull anti-Catholic book, I was wondering why that has to be.

Gosh, there are so few good NEW stories around, not like there used to be: Chesterton, Doyle, Sayers, Carr, E.E. "Doc" Smith... Buchan's Thirty-Nine Steps, Janney's The Miracle of the Bells, Morley's The Haunted Bookshop, Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth, Brinley's The Adventures of the Mad Scientists' Club, and so many others - even Dr. Thursday's The Three Relics:


Oops, sorry - that last one doesn't count. Not yet anyway. (Don't you wish it did count?)

(The irate reader grumbles: Hey Doc - I though you had a QUESTION for us.)

Yeah, I do. Hold your mouses, I had to set the stage, even if it's a toy theatre.

So, here's the question. What do you enjoy in a story? What kind do you prefer? Short, novel, trilogy, series? What would you want to read - if it was something NEWLY written? Should it be mystery, thriller, sci-fi, fantasy, western, historical.... What time period? What style? (Fill in additional details here.)

Please tell us.

Yeah, I have lots to work on, but I think maybe if SOMEONE gets busy writing some good stuff, there will be less whining. At least we will start to have a clue about what Chestertonians like.

P.S. If you are wondering what I like, you might get a clue from the above list. But I had to stop somewhere. And there are other books I like which don't count as fiction, alas. Sometimes I am surprised by the CRC Handbook - or Gray's Anatomy - or even Liddell and Scott...




P.P.S. Yes, I know I have also promised that book about the Pope - but that also needed its stage to be set. I think I may be ready to start work on it very soon, though I may also have to write a prequel or two. We'll see. Someone promised to nag me to get it done, and I have not heard any nagging.

WWWTW I.2 Wanted: An Unpractical Man

Today is the feast of St. Robert Bellarmine, and I would love to digress into the usual discussion of Galileo, what some seem to think is the ultimate "proof" of the stupidity of the Catholic Church when it comes to Science. Oh... except that the Church was right when it came to the science: Galileo's "proof" from the tides had a math error, and he neglected to hear from Kepler about some new data which demonstrated that the planets moved in ellipses, not circles. (We call them Kepler's laws, not Galileo's!) And yet, Galileo was right about the theology, because he quoted St. Augustine about the right use of sacred scripture:

Augustine’s appreciation of quantitative relationships had, of course, no immediate consequences for the emergence of scientific method. His main concern went far beyond the acquisition of numerical data in particular and learning in general. What interested him most was the quest for happiness, and this implied far more than marshaling bookish details, a point well to remember in this age threatened by the tyranny of sheer learning and by the voracious storing of information. Possibly, he underestimated the role of man’s mastery of nature by knowledge in the process of securing happiness. He took the view that the knowledge of natural sciences, astronomy in particular, could not help one much in understanding the biblical message, as it concerned not man’s natural skill but his supernatural destiny. On the other hand, he wanted no part of a study of the Bible which purposely ignored the well-established results of scientific studies. He put the matter bluntly: “It is often the case that a non-Christian happens to know something with absolute certainty and through experimental evidence about the earth, sky, and other elements of this world, about the motion, rotation, and even about the size and distances of stars, about certain defects [eclipses] of the sun and moon, about the cycles of years and epochs, about the nature of animals, fruits, stones, and the like. It is, therefore, very deplorable and harmful, and to be avoided at any cost that he should hear a Christian to give, so to speak, a ‘Christian account’ of these topics in such a way that he could hardly hold his laughter on seeing, as the saying goes, the error rise sky-high.” Such a performance, Augustine remarked, would undercut the credibility of the Christian message by creating in the minds of infidels the impression that the Bible was wrong on points “which can be verified experimentally, or to be established by unquestionable proofs.”
[Jaki, Science and Creation 182]

But I am very far behind and must get on with today's lesson, so I will just add one more thing. Whenever someone says "Galileo" and moans, say "Pasteur" or "Volta" or "Ampere" or "Piazzi" or "Galvani" or "Fresnel" or "Agnesi" or "Hermite" or "St. Albert the Great" ... and LAUGH! (For more about these Catholic scientists, see here.)

Very well. Yes, GKC has things to say about Galileo, such as that famous retort, "I should not be surprised if your vague notions of the Church as the persecutor of science was a generalization from Galileo." from The Ball and the Cross. Indeed, GKC on GG would be fun, but it must be deferred - another study for another time.

Now that we've settled that, let us get into something even more argumentative - Chesterton versus technology. I think you will be quite surprised, as we proceed, that ...

Ahem. Well, I was going to get into a discussion here, but I find my time is running short, so I will have to merely present today's text and give you a few notes - and perhaps we can talk about it more later. I do think you will find that GKC gives us plenty to argue about, once we've exhausted the Galileo topic. However, I should point out that there is one of the Great Chesterton Quotes here... watch for it.

There is a popular philosophical joke intended to typify the endless and useless arguments of philosophers; I mean the joke about which came first, the chicken or the egg? I am not sure that properly understood, it is so futile an inquiry after all. I am not concerned here to enter on those deep metaphysical and theological differences of which the chicken and egg debate is a frivolous, but a very felicitous, type. The evolutionary materialists are appropriately enough represented in the vision of all things coming from an egg, a dim and monstrous oval germ that had laid itself by accident. That other supernatural school of thought (to which I personally adhere) would be not unworthily typified in the fancy that this round world of ours is but an egg brooded upon by a sacred unbegotten bird; the mystic dove of the prophets. But it is to much humbler functions that I here call the awful power of such a distinction. Whether or no the living bird is at the beginning of our mental chain, it is absolutely necessary that it should be at the end of our mental chain. The bird is the thing to be aimed at - not with a gun, but a life-bestowing wand. What is essential to our right thinking is this: that the egg and the bird must not be thought of as equal cosmic occurrences recurring alternatively forever. They must not become a mere egg and bird pattern, like the egg and dart pattern. One is a means and the other an end; they are in different mental worlds. Leaving the complications of the human breakfast-table out of account, in an elemental sense, the egg only exists to produce the chicken. But the chicken does not exist only in order to produce another egg. He may also exist to amuse himself, to praise God, and even to suggest ideas to a French dramatist. Being a conscious life, he is, or may be, valuable in himself. Now our modern politics are full of a noisy forgetfulness; forgetfulness that the production of this happy and conscious fife is after all the aim of all complexities and compromises. We talk of nothing but useful men and working institutions; that is, we only think of the chickens as things that will lay more eggs. Instead of seeking to breed our ideal bird, the eagle of Zeus or the Swan of Avon, or whatever we happen to want, we talk entirely in terms of the process and the embryo. The process itself, divorced from its divine object, becomes doubtful and even morbid; poison enters the embryo of everything; and our politics are rotten eggs.

Idealism is only considering everything in its practical essence. Idealism only means that we should consider a poker in reference to poking before we discuss its suitability for wife-beating; that we should ask if an egg is good enough for practical poultry-rearing before we decide that the egg is bad enough for practical politics. But I know that this primary pursuit of the theory (which is but pursuit of the aim) exposes one to the cheap charge of fiddling while Rome is burning. A school, of which Lord Rosebery is representative, has endeavored to substitute for the moral or social ideals which have hitherto been the motive of politics a general coherency or completeness in the social system which has gained the nick-name of "efficiency." I am not very certain of the secret doctrine of this sect in the matter. But, as far as I can make out, "efficiency" means that we ought to discover everything about a machine except what it is for. There has arisen in our time a most singular fancy: the fancy that when things go very wrong we need a practical man. It would be far truer to say, that when things go very wrong we need an unpractical man. Certainly, at least, we need a theorist. A practical man means a man accustomed to mere daily practice, to the way things commonly work. When things will not work, you must have the thinker, the man who has some doctrine about why they work at all. It is wrong to fiddle while Rome is burning; but it is quite right to study the theory of hydraulics while Rome is burning.

It is then necessary to drop one's daily agnosticism and attempt rerum cognoscere causas. If your aeroplane has a slight indisposition, a handy man may mend it. But, if it is seriously ill, it is all the more likely that some absent-minded old professor with wild white hair will have to be dragged out of a college or laboratory to analyze the evil. The more complicated the smash, the whiter-haired and more absent-minded will be the theorist who is needed to deal with it; and in some extreme cases, no one but the man (probably insane) who invented your flying-ship could possibly say what was the matter with it.

"Efficiency," of course, is futile for the same reason that strong men, will-power and the superman are futile. That is, it is futile because it only deals with actions after they have been performed. It has no philosophy for incidents before they happen; therefore it has no power of choice. An act can only be successful or unsuccessful when it is over; if it is to begin, it must be, in the abstract, right or wrong. There is no such thing as backing a winner; for he cannot be a winner when he is backed. There is no such thing as fighting on the winning side; one fights to find out which is the winning side. If any operation has occurred, that operation was efficient. If a man is murdered, the murder was efficient. A tropical sun is as efficient in making people lazy as a Lancashire foreman bully in making them energetic. Maeterlinck is as efficient in filling a man with strange spiritual tremors as Messrs. Crosse and Blackwell are in filling a man with jam. But it all depends on what you want to be filled with. Lord Rosebery, being a modern skeptic, probably prefers the spiritual tremors. I, being an orthodox Christian, prefer the jam. But both are efficient when they have been effected; and inefficient until they are effected. A man who thinks much about success must be the drowsiest sentimentalist; for he must be always looking back. If he only likes victory he must always come late for the battle. For the man of action there is nothing but idealism.

This definite ideal is a far more urgent and practical matter in our existing English trouble than any immediate plans or proposals. For the present chaos is due to a sort of general oblivion of all that men were originally aiming at. No man demands what he desires; each man demands what he fancies he can get. Soon people forget what the man really wanted first; and after a successful and vigorous political life, he forgets it himself. The whole is an extravagant riot of second bests, a pandemonium of pis-aller. Now this sort of pliability does not merely prevent any heroic consistency; it also prevents any really practical compromise. One can only find the middle distance between two points if the two points will stand still. We may make an arrangement between two litigants who cannot both get what they want; but not if they will not even tell us what they want. The keeper of a restaurant would much prefer that each customer should give his order smartly, though it were for stewed ibis or boiled elephant, rather than that each customer should sit holding his head in his hands, plunged in arithmetical calculations about how much food there can be on the premises. Most of us have suffered from a certain sort of ladies who, by their perverse unselfishness, give more trouble than the selfish; who almost clamor for the unpopular dish and scramble for the worst seat. Most of us have known parties or expeditions full of this seething fuss of self-effacement. From much meaner motives than those of such admirable women, our practical politicians keep things in the same confusion through the same doubt about their real demands. There is nothing that so much prevents a settlement as a tangle of small surrenders. We are bewildered on every side by politicians who are in favor of secular education, but think it hopeless to work for it; who desire total prohibition, but are certain they should not demand it; who regret compulsory education, but resignedly continue it; or who want peasant proprietorship and therefore vote for something else. It is this dazed and floundering opportunism that gets in the way of everything. If our statesmen were visionaries something practical might be done. If we ask for something in the abstract we might get something in the concrete. As it is, it is not only impossible to get what one wants, but it is impossible to get any part of it, because nobody can mark it out plainly like a map. That clear and even hard quality that there was in the old bargaining has wholly vanished. We forget that the word "compromise" contains, among other things, the rigid and ringing word "promise." Moderation is not vague; it is as definite as perfection. The middle point is as fixed as the extreme point.

If I am made to walk the plank by a pirate, it is vain for me to offer, as a common-sense compromise, to walk along the plank for a reasonable distance. It is exactly about the reasonable distance that the pirate and I differ. There is an exquisite mathematical split second at which the plank tips up. My common-sense ends just before that instant; the pirate's common-sense begins just beyond it. But the point itself is as hard as any geometrical diagram; as abstract as any theological dogma.
[GKC WWWTW CW4:42-6, emphasis added]

A couple of notes to help out:
pis-aller is French for "to go worst", that is, the only possible course, the last resort.
rerum cognoscere causas is Latin for "to know the causes of things". It is from Virgil's Georgics, Book II, which says "felix qui potuit cognoscere causas rerum". Chesterton gives a translation in a companion text to ours, and it is worth hearing it in context:

Many must have quoted the stately tag from Virgil which says, "Happy were he who could know the causes of things," without remembering in what context it comes. Many have probably quoted it because the others have quoted it. Many, if left in ignorance to guess whence it comes, would probably guess wrong. Everybody knows that Virgil, like Homer, ventured to describe boldly enough the most secret councils of the gods. Everybody knows that Virgil, like Dante, took his hero into Tartarus and the labyrinth of the last and lowest foundations of the universe. Every one knows that he dealt with the fall of Troy and the rise of Rome, with the laws of an empire fitted to rule all the children of men, with the ideals that should stand like stars before men committed to that awful stewardship. Yet it is in none of these connections, in none of these passages, that he makes the curious remark about human happiness consisting in a knowledge of causes. He says it, I fancy, in a pleasantly didactic poem about the rules for keeping bees. Anyhow, it is part of a series of elegant essays on country pursuits, in one sense, indeed, trivial, but in another sense almost technical. It is in the midst of these quiet and yet busy things that the great poet suddenly breaks out into the great passage, about the happy man whom neither kings nor mobs can cow; who, having beheld the root and reason of all things, can even hear under his feet, unshaken, the roar of the river of hell.
[GKC The Outline of Sanity CW5:136]

P.S. It is a bit mean for me to tantalise you, but this concept of Purpose (writ large as Father Jaki would say) comes up in my book on Subsidiarity, where I quote this very section of WWWTW, both about solving one's airplane problems, and about studying hydraulics. I also mention the Virgil quote about knowning causes. Yes, I am preparing the text for submission to a publisher, and hope to have some news eventually. I can be very unpractical some days, since as a computer scientist I have to deal with the causes of things - I've read Boethius, I use theory to to aid my practice! Are you shocked to hear that a tech reads classics? Sure - I have a tough time with that term "Impassable Divide" for I am trying to "rebuild ... this bridge between science and human nature" [GKC The Defendant 75] Or as I like to say, I sit squarely on the fence, and it can be uncomfortable, but I get advantages - I can use papal encyclicals to help me write software; I can use software to help me write poems and essays on "lit'ry" topics. Ah! I don't really like the term "Renaissance Man" (except in the context of John 3:3) we Chestertonians ought to be rather a Medieval Man: "I revert to the doctrinal methods of the thirteenth century, inspired by the general hope of getting something done." [GKC Heretics CW1:46] Where I used to work, we once were so unpractical that we built machinery to transport and play some 200,000 TV commercials inspired by that very line from Chesterton - and some stuff from Leo XIII, Pius XI, and John Paul II.

Now, what was that about Galileo and the Church?

Chesterton on Dan Brown

An exclusive interview!

GKC: on a mystic senseof art- and the Cross

I jump in again out of my normal heptameral cycle to offer a meditative excerpt from a very wonderful book, GKC's Chaucer, which as you may expect, contains many wonderful studies on topics other than Chaucer. This excerpt is very complex and deep and wonderful - please read it carefully, and think about this great insight into art and religion. Especially if you are an artist, please ponder it before you next touch brush to canvas, or set forth to work in whatever medium you use. And if you are not, pay attention to your life, your decoration, your music, your words....
--Dr. Thursday

...the old ascetic was looking for joy and beauty, whether we think his vision of joy and beauty impossible or merely invisible. But the true Puritan was not primarily looking for joy and beauty, but for strength and even violence. This can be stated, and for a hundred years has been stated, in a form favourable to the Puritan. He has been called the stalwart and virile Puritan; he is always very much gratified to be called the grim and rugged Puritan. The other religious ideal can as easily be stated in an unfavourable form; suggesting a sentimental and childish attraction to bright colours or costly trinkets. I am not at all concerned with the favourable or unfavourable comments here. But, favourable or unfavourable, they point to a clean-cut contrast between the two things. There is such a contrast between those things; which is why so many modern writers describe them as the same.

The contrast instantly appears in black and white, when the two creeds express themselves in externals. When once the ascetic was assured that certain things were dedicated to divine things, he wanted them to be exceptionally brilliant and gorgeous things. He wanted the vestments of the priest to run through all the colours of the rainbow or the marbles of the shrine to mimic all the sunsets of the world. The Puritan insisted that the preacher should wear a black Geneval gown, instead of any coloured vestment, and that the chapel should be a shed or barn and not a temple shining with marbles; and he was consistent with his fundamental conception. He was not merely stern towards other people's religion or irreligion. He was stern towards his own religion; and was most stern where he was most religious. In his religious picture even the high light was a hard light; the sort of harsh and hueless light that can be seen in the black engravings in the old Family Bibles. It was not a question of preferring light to darkness; it was a question of preferring a colourless light to coloured light. It was not a question of flowers or beautiful raiment, conceived as a vision of heaven rather than of earth; it was a question of being on the side of the storm against the flower or of the stark bones against the garment. As I say, it can be described as a sublime exultation in strength and severity; appealing to sturdy races or to strict family traditions. It can also be described (so far as I am concerned) as a return to heathenism and a howling to the gods of fear. But it is a fact of history, which still plays a part even in politics; that certain people were proud, not of being stern to this or that indulgence; but simply proud of being stern.

Now this note is never found in medieval asceticism. Nobody can imagine St. Thomas Aquinas saying, 'I am a grand grim old Dominican, who stands no nonsense; we are a rugged stock, scorning the pleasures of the world.' Nobody can conceive St. Bernard boasting, 'We Burgundians are a harsh, hardy race and like the thunder in our hills more than the pretty flowers of a garden paradise.' These men may have dwelt too much on the supernatural as compared to the natural, according to our own views upon such matters; but they thought the supernatural more beautiful than the natural; not merely more naked or elemental or terrible. M. Reinach, a learned Jew who has an artistic admiration for medievalism certainly quite untinged with Catholicism, has very truly pointed out that the purely medieval artists always represented heavenly beings as gay and happy, and attributed sorrow only to the lost. The insistence even on the Man of Sorrows and the Mater Dolorosa, in artistic expression, belongs to a time after the medieval. It was in the seventeenth century that the two more sombre religious moods appeared in the two religions. In the Catholic world it became in some sense a worship of sorrow; in the Puritan world a worship of severity, and in some cases of savagery. The point here, however, is that we cannot understand medieval men, even the most extreme or extravagant ascetics, unless we understand that to them the contrast was quite clear between the cross and the crown; between the harsh and the angular timber of the cross and the coloured jewels of the crown. A man like Fra Angelico might live a very plain life; but he did not imagine paradise as a penny plain, but very decidedly as twopence coloured. A man like John Knox prided himself on being plain even in his religious conceptions; some might say flippantly that he was too much of a Scot to spare the twopence. From him descends a sort of pride in rudeness, growing more self-conscious with later times; but unknown even to the rudest people in older times. We may think that the earlier saints tried to be saved by an excess of humility; but nobody tried to be admired for an excess of hardness. They did not even excuse themselves for being hard-hearted by calling themselves hard-headed. As a rule, they did not call themselves anything, except miserable sinners.

[GKC Chaucer CW18:351-3]

Is this true?

At the conference in Seattle, Carl Hasler suggested reading the book The Dumbest Generation, which I recently obtained through inter-library loan and skimmed.

One thing that caught my eye, though, was a comment on student use of the internet as a research tool. The researches conducting the test provided students with web sites, and apparently the students were supposed to identify which of the endings of web sites would provide you with better or more accurate resources. The correct answer was supposed to be .edus or .govs.

My "skept-o-meter" rang and I scoffed to myself. "Says who?" was my reaction.

But then I got to thinking. Should I really trust .edus and .govs more than .coms? Maybe at some level, I do give them higher credibility. I would still verify the information, however, and not trust them utterly, or completely. And I can't say that I personally would rate them higher than a .com address, because I would check and need to verify those, too.

What do you think? Are .edus and .gov web sites more trustworthy than .coms?

Miscellany

First, I want to thank Dr. Thursday for helping out here, and for starting on What's Wrong, which I anticipate to be a great discussion starter.

This is always a tough time of year: school starts, and I homeschool; the art fairs continue on till October (and even November this year) and I am the artist assistant and general all-around framer for a very busy artist, plus this year I'm learning podcasting from scratch (golly, there's a lot to it), trying to keep up on the home, van (130,000 miles and still going...erm, not-so-strong!), family events, etc.

Funny story:

We're reading Romeo and Juliet out loud, my ninth grader and I, and we just finish the balcony scene where they've pledged their undying love for each other and the nurse calls for Juliet, so we stop reading. My daughter puts the book down and just says, "Kids!" A moment passes, and we both burst out laughing. It was just so spot on, good comedic timing, and an apt summary of what had just taken place. And she's 14 who made this assessment. When I was 14, all I could see was the romance.

So, the big news is, our first podcast is up on iTunes, thanks to YOU wonderful supporters here. Thank you so much. I have to say, I still have much to learn, but podcasting is really fun. I'm having a good time when my computer isn't crashing. To hear the first episode (only 8 1/2 minutes long) check it out here.

Have a wonderful weekend! (I'll be at an art fair.)

September 11 - the Specious Present

Just to help out our blogg-mistress, I am posting a link to the little story I wrote about where I was eight years ago. You'll also find out where our title's term comes from.

Incidentally, I had found a snapshot of WATCHER - it's not very good, and I had to - ah - edit out a company name, but you CAN see the American Flag in the upper right...

WWWTW I.1 on Logic and Homelessness

Hurray! Today, September 10, we actually set forth on our way - we begin our journey into Chesterton's soon-to-be-centennial text What's Wrong With the World. As we may expect, this very serious study of very difficult problems begins with some of Chesterton's famed "verbal fireworks" - what the casual reader will think is nothing more than sheer silliness of words.

Or is it?

Ah. One of the most difficult tasks we have in this modern "high-tech" world is to try to set forth the underpinnings of truth. So many people have adopted a very pointless and stupid view of things, a view which often appears to be unarguable, because they claim it is "SCIENTIFIC" or "LOGICAL". They use the word quite freely, even though they have no idea what "logical" really means - but once it is attached to something, no matter how stupid or false, they feel they have made their case adamant against all attacks.

Fortunately, Chesterton has the perfect tool to pry off that illness which has attached itself to so many little minds in our time. It is the tool called HUMOR. He uses it again and again, trying to awaken our reason.

Yes, I even try it myself - I have taken the analogy of a "hike" to represent our journey into this text, since it permits a variety of analogies. But let us go back to this term "logical".

Now, you can go and listen to the "Logical Song" by Supertramp which I happen to like - their phrase about deep questions late at night reminds me of Subsidiarity, but I cannot go into that now. Or you can watch the original "Star Trek" episodes or read the many additional stories of Kirk, Spock, McCoy and the gang, some of which are quite good - but (as hard as it will be for you to accept) you will find very little logic there. Alas, neither rock-and-roll nor sci-fi can help if we want to understand this easy and ancient idea. (No, I am NOT going to lecture about logic in computers, that's going too far afield!) By now you should know that I will always use GKC to help understand GKC - and so, at the risk of delaying today's expedition, let us see what Chesterton says about logic. "Indeed Captain!" You may be quite surprised...

Logic and truth, as a matter of fact, have very little to do with each other. Logic is concerned merely with the fidelity and accuracy with which a certain process is performed, a process which can be performed with any materials, with any assumption. You can be as logical about griffins and basilisks as about sheep and pigs. ... The relations of logic to truth depend, then, not upon its perfection as logic, but upon certain pre-logical faculties and certain pre-logical discoveries, upon the possession of those faculties, upon the power of making those discoveries. If a man starts with certain assumptions, he may be a good logician and a good citizen, a wise man, a successful figure. If he starts with certain other assumptions, he may be an equally good logician and a bankrupt, a criminal, a raving lunatic. Logic, then, is not necessarily an instrument for finding truth; on the contrary, truth is necessarily an instrument for using logic - for using it, that is, for the discovery of further truth and for the profit of humanity. Briefly, you can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it.
[GKC Daily News Feb 25, 1905 quoted in Maycock, The Man Who Was Orthodox]

Yes. And sometimes GKC uses tricks to get us to pay attention to these assumptions. Let us hear a little more, and then we shall proceed to our hike.

A great deal is said in these days about the value or valuelessness of logic. In the main, indeed, logic is not a productive tool so much as a weapon of defence. A man building up an intellectual system has to build like Nehemiah, with the sword in one hand and the trowel in the other. The imagination, the constructive quality, is the trowel, and argument is the sword. A wide experience of actual intellectual affairs will lead most people to the conclusion that logic is mainly valuable as a weapon wherewith to exterminate logicians. Logic is a machine of the mind, and if it is used honestly it ought to bring out an honest conclusion. When people say that you can prove anything by logic, they are not using words in a fair sense. What they mean is that you can prove anything by bad logic. Deep in the mystic ingratitude of the soul of man there is an extraordinary tendency to use the name for an organ, when what is meant is the abuse or decay of that organ. Thus we speak of a man suffering from "nerves," which is about as sensible as talking about a man suffering from ten fingers. We speak of "liver" and "digestion" when we mean the failure of liver and the absence of digestion. And in the same manner we speak of the dangers of logic, when what we really mean is the danger of fallacy. But the real point about the limitation of logic and the partial overthrow of logic by writers like Carlyle is deeper and somewhat different. The fault of the great mass of logicians is not that they bring out a false result, or, in other words, are not logicians at all. Their fault is that by an inevitable psychological habit they tend to forget that there are two parts of a logical process, the first the choosing of an assumption, and the second the arguing upon it, and humanity, if it devotes itself too persistently to the study of sound reasoning, has a certain tendency to lose the faculty of sound assumption. It is astonishing how constantly one may hear from rational and even rationalistic persons such a phrase as " He did not prove the very thing with which he started," or, "the whole of his case rested upon a pure assumption," two peculiarities which may be found by the curious in the works of Euclid. It is astonishing, again, how constantly one bears rationalists arguing upon some deep topic, apparently without troubling about the deep assumptions involved, having lost their sense, as it were, of the real colour and character of a man's assumption.
[GKC "Thomas Carlyle" in Varied Types 112-5; see Nehemiah (2 Esdras) 4:17]

Very well. Now, having taken all this very preliminary training, we can now proceed up the first simple slope, the first chapter of Part One - or is it something far steeper? Let us see!

PART ONE The Homelessness of Man.
Chapter 1 The Medical Mistake.

A book of modern social inquiry has a shape that is somewhat sharply defined. It begins as a rule with an analysis, with statistics, tables of population, decrease of crime among Congregationalists, growth of hysteria among policemen, and similar ascertained facts; it ends with a chapter that is generally called "The Remedy." It is almost wholly due to this careful, solid, and scientific method that "The Remedy" is never found. For this scheme of medical question and answer is a blunder; the first great blunder of sociology. It is always called stating the disease before we find the cure. But it is the whole definition and dignity of man that in social matters we must actually find the cure before we find the disease.

The fallacy is one of the fifty fallacies that come from the modern madness for biological or bodily metaphors. It is convenient to speak of the Social Organism, just as it is convenient to speak of the British Lion. But Britain is no more an organism than Britain is a lion. The moment we begin to give a nation the unity and simplicity of an animal, we begin to think wildly. Because every man is a biped, fifty men are not a centipede. This has produced, for instance, the gaping absurdity of perpetually talking about "young nations" and "dying nations," as if a nation had a fixed and physical span of life. Thus people will say that Spain has entered a final senility; they might as well say that Spain is losing all her teeth. Or people will say that Canada should soon produce a literature; which is like saying that Canada must soon grow a mustache. Nations consist of people; the first generation may be decrepit, or the ten thousandth may be vigorous. Similar applications of the fallacy are made by those who see in the increasing size of national possessions, a simple increase in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man. These people, indeed, even fall short in subtlety of the parallel of a human body. They do not even ask whether an empire is growing taller in its youth, or only growing fatter in its old age. But of all the instances of error arising from this physical fancy, the worst is that we have before us: the habit of exhaustively describing a social sickness, and then propounding a social drug.

Now we do talk first about the disease in cases of bodily breakdown; and that for an excellent reason. Because, though there may be doubt about the way in which the body broke down, there is no doubt at all about the shape in which it should be built up again. No doctor proposes to produce a new kind of man, with a new arrangement of eyes or limbs. The hospital, by necessity, may send a man home with one leg less: but it will not (in a creative rapture) send him home with one leg extra. Medical science is content with the normal human body, and only seeks to restore it.

But social science is by no means always content with the normal human soul; it has all sorts of fancy souls for sale. Man as a social idealist will say "I am tired of being a Puritan; I want to be a Pagan," or "Beyond this dark probation of Individualism I see the shining paradise of Collectivism." Now in bodily ills there is none of this difference about the ultimate ideal. The patient may or may not want quinine; but he certainly wants health. No one says "I am tired of this headache; I want some toothache," or "The only thing for this Russian influenza is a few German measles," or "Through this dark probation of catarrh I see the shining paradise of rheumatism." But exactly the whole difficulty in our public problems is that some men are aiming at cures which other men would regard as worse maladies; are offering ultimate conditions as states of health which others would uncompromisingly call states of disease. Mr. Belloc once said that he would no more part with the idea of property than with his teeth; yet to Mr. Bernard Shaw property is not a tooth, but a toothache. Lord Milner has sincerely attempted to introduce German efficiency; and many of us would as soon welcome German measles. Dr. Saleeby would honestly like to have Eugenics; but I would rather have rheumatics.

This is the arresting and dominant fact about modern social discussion; that the quarrel is not merely about the difficulties, but about the aim. We agree about the evil; it is about the good that we should tear each other's eyes out. We all admit that a lazy aristocracy is a bad thing. We should not by any means all admit that an active aristocracy would be a good thing. We all feel angry with an irreligious priesthood; but some of us would go mad with disgust at a really religious one. Everyone is indignant if our army is weak, including the people who would be even more indignant if it were strong.- The social case is exactly the opposite of the medical case. We do not disagree, like doctors, about the precise nature of the illness, while agreeing about the nature of health. On the contrary, we all agree that England is unhealthy, but half of us would not look at her in what the other half would call blooming health. Public abuses are so prominent and pestilent that they sweep all generous people into a sort of fictitious unanimity. We forget that, while we agree about the abuses of things, we should differ very much about the uses of them. Mr. Cadbury and I would agree about the bad public-house. It would be precisely in front of the good public-house that our painful personal fracas would occur.

I maintain, therefore, that the common sociological method is quite useless: that of first dissecting abject poverty or cataloguing prostitution. We all dislike abject poverty; but it might be another business if we began to discuss independent and dignified poverty. We all disapprove of prostitution; but we do not all approve of purity. The only way to discuss the social evil is to get at once to the social ideal. We can all see the national madness; but what is national sanity? I have called this book "What Is Wrong with the World?" and the upshot of the title can be easily and clearly stated. What is wrong is that we do not ask what is right. [GKC WWWTW CW4:39-41

Yes, that's all of it - we're back home on the same day! As you see, these chapters are nice and short, and very convenient for us. But all that joking around, you grumble - why doesn't he just say something? Well, you laugh because you are thinking - you can put things together and see the analogies - which is what he wants! He wants you to pay attention, because once you are awake and laughing, perhaps you will think a little about what he is saying, and realize that some others are saying things which don't make any sense at all.

Now. I have just one little note to mention here, which I shall give only in a reference form, rather than provoke a lot of unnecessary quarrelling, since its proper treatment belongs to another forum. That is, this view of "organism" goes back to the ancient Greek philosophers, and is discussed at great length in the first chapter of Jaki's The Relevance of Physics. It is not pleasant, but it needs to be faced. Interested students of such topics should proceed to their local Duhem Society - or wait until I get a chance to post more about it on the blogg. But I make no promises. Please note that all this is an aside, and a reference for completeness; GKC has already said all you really need with his line about how 50 men do not make one centipede. Hee hee.

One more note - which I almost forgot. Perhaps someone will think I ought to have saved it for the END of this part, but I think we shall need it now. You will recall that I made some mention last week to the Fall as a wayof stating "What's Wrong With the World". You will find that Chesterton has already coupled the idea in another way, in one of his most touching poems:

"The House Of Christmas"

There fared a mother driven forth
Out of an inn to roam;
In the place where she was homeless
All men are at home.
The crazy stable close at hand,
With shaking timber and shifting sand,
Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand
Than the square stones of Rome.

For men are homesick in their homes,
And strangers under the sun,
And they lay their heads in a foreign land
Whenever the day is done.
Here we have battle and blazing eyes,
And chance and honour and high surprise,
But our homes are under miraculous skies
Where the yule tale was begun.

A Child in a foul stable,
Where the beasts feed and foam;
Only where He was homeless
Are you and I at home;
We have hands that fashion and heads that know,
But our hearts we lost - how long ago!
In a place no chart nor ship can show
Under the sky's dome.

This world is wild as an old wives' tale,
And strange the plain things are,
The earth is enough and the air is enough
For our wonder and our war;
But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings
And our peace is put in impossible things
Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings
Round an incredible star.

To an open house in the evening
Home shall men come,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home.
[GKC CW10:139-140]

Western Pennsylvania Chesterton Society Seeks New Members

The Brand New Western Pennsylvania Chesterton Society is up and running and hoping that if you live in the area, you will come to the meeting.

Here is their FaceBook page, and since their next meeting is September 10th, this is quite timely.

You can also email.

Let everyone in Western PA know the good news!

The Portents of Doom

What are they? Chris Chan answers that in the latest Gilbert Magazine.

As you probably guessed, the portents of doom are today's media outlets, designed to upset you and let you know how environmentally irresponsible you probably are. Which links in nicely to the News with Views article about the secret (how secret could it be if we found out about it?) meeting between the US's richest people, gathering to pray at the altar of over-population, birth control and environmentalism where it concerns having fewer people around to breathe the rest of our oxygen.

This all ties back in nicely to Chesterton's "Social Reform Versus Birth Control" article in the early pages of the issue.

It's probably a coincidence, or do you think the editors actually planned all those neat connections? Huh, I just don't know. ;-)

An Excellent Article on Subsidiarity

I have run this past my resident subsidiarity expert, and we both agree this article is excellent and accurate.

For those who mix up subsidiarity and distributism, this explains what subsidiarity really is.

New Pictures Found on LIFE Magazine site

Check this out!

WWWTW: the Dedication to Masterman

I write in advance, as I am meeting some friends for lunch to discuss Subsidiarity, which we once used when we all worked at the same company some four years ago. So I am rather rushed, but never fear, for today you will have plenty of Chesterton to read.

Today we begin our study of the text of What's Wrong With the World by reading GKC's dedication, which through the occult power of AMBER will bring us to a very surprising essay, bearing most powerfully upon the text we are about to explore.

DEDICATION

To C. F. G. MASTERMAN, M. P.

My Dear Charles,
I originally called this book "What is Wrong," and it would have satisfied your sardonic temper to note the number of social misunderstandings that arose from the use of the title. Many a mild lady visitor opened her eyes when I remarked casually, "I have been doing 'What is Wrong' all this morning." And one minister of religion moved quite sharply in his chair when I told him (as he understood it) that I had to run upstairs and do what was wrong, but should be down again in a minute. Exactly of what occult vice they silently accused me I cannot conjecture, but I know of what I accuse myself, and that is, of having written a very shapeless and inadequate book, and one quite unworthy to be dedicated to you. As far as literature goes, this book is what is wrong, and no mistake.
It may seem a refinement of insolence to present so wild a composition to one who has recorded two or three of the really impressive visions of the moving millions of England. You are the only man alive who can make the map of England crawl with life; a most creepy and enviable accomplishment. Why then should I trouble you with a book which, even if it achieves its object (which is monstrously unlikely) can only be a thundering gallop of theory?

Well, I do it partly because I think you politicians are none the worse for a few inconvenient ideals; but more because you will recognise the many arguments we have had; those arguments which the most wonderful ladies in the world can never endure for very long. And, perhaps, you will agree with me that the thread of comradeship and conversation must be protected because it is so frivolous. It must be held sacred, it must not be snapped, because it is not worth tying together again. It is exactly because argument is idle that men (I mean males) must take it seriously; for when (we feel), until the crack of doom, shall we have so delightful a difference again? But most of all I offer it to you because there exists not only comradeship, but a very different thing, called friendship; an agreement under all the arguments and a thread which, please God, will never break.

Yours always,
G. K. Chesterton.

A footnote in the IP edition tells us:

Charles P. G. Masterman (1873-1927), politician, author, Liberal Member of Parliament, 1906-1911.

But you may wish to know a little more, as I did. So I turned to a trustworthy source for more information.

Charles Masterman ... was a very remarkable man. He was also a very subtle and curious character; and many of my own best friends entirely misunderstood and underrated him. It is true that as he rose higher in politics, the veil of the politician began to descend a little on him also; but he became a politician from the noblest bitterness on behalf of the poor; and what was blamed in him was the fault of much more ignoble men. What was blamable, as distinct from what was blamed, in him was due to two things; he was a pessimistic official. He had had a dark Puritan upbringing and retained a sort of feeling of the perversity of the gods; he said to me, "I am the sort of man who goes under a hedge to eat an apple." But he was also an organiser and liked governing; only his pessimism made him think that government had always been bad, and was now no worse than usual. Therefore, to men on fire for reform, he came to seem an obstacle and an official apologist; but the last thing he really wanted was to apologise for anything. He had a startling insight into character, and a way of suddenly expressing it, so that it braced rather than hurt. As Oldershaw once said to me, "His candour is beautiful." But his melancholy made him contented, where happier men were discontented. His pessimism did the worst work of optimism. In person he was long, loose and lounging; and nearly as untidy as I was.
[GKC Autobiography CW16:122-3]

There is also this remarkable review-of-a-review, which I shall give in full, because it is a Chestertonian reprise of his entire thesis, both of Orthodoxy and of our own work - the thesis (much debated in the long-running discussion of some of our friends) that a thing ought to be itself.

I see that somebody or other, in reviewing Mr. C. F. G. Masterman's striking and searching study called "England After the War," has said that nobody could expect Mr. Masterman to understand Mr. Chesterton. Now, I have every reason to believe that Mr. Masterman and I are exactly the sort of people who do understand each other; though he was always labelled a pessimist when I was labelled an optimist. We understood each other because we agreed in not judging things by labels. And it is precisely because I think he does understand that I wish to explain; for it is no good explaining such personal things to people who do not understand. I wish to give him the true explanation of something. He says about me, in effect, that I used to be an optimist trying to awake wonder at common things, but have become too much of a war controversialist. "He has seen the world fall to pieces in the extremity of misery and pain; and the proclamation of the greatness of the thistledown or the pillarbox has passed into controversy more brilliant, indeed, but almost as tedious as that of most of his competitors, on whether Germany was responsible for the war, and how much we should eat of her now we have won."

Now, I think I could make Mr. Masterman see, much quicker than most people, that there really is a very direct connection between my early fairy-tales about the thistledown and the pillarbox and our controversial case in the late war. Of course, a man cannot fill his life with fairy-tales; it is his business to take serious things seriously, to defend justice and do his best for his country. In such a war a romancer ought to be proud to become a controversialist, as a hair-dresser is proud to become a soldier. But in this case there is no inconsistency, but a very close connection. When I was called an optimist for saying we should wonder at the thistledown or thank God for the pillar-box, I was saying something that I should still say, and especially as to the real moral of the Great War. It is a moral that seems to be entirely missed; and I think it is hugely important.

The disappointment after the war, including the disappointment of Mr. Masterman, seems to me to have been due to the very fact that the world went into it with a false notion of progress. We thought a man could fight to improve things; and especially to improve his own position. We forgot that a man may fight not to improve things, but to rescue them. He may fight, not to improve his position, but to save his life. It is not fantastically quixotic to say that he may sometimes even fight to save somebody else's life. To save things implies that they are worth saving; and the point is that their very peril makes us feel that they are worth saving. But it is unreasonable to expect them to be intrinsically improved only by being nearly destroyed. Perseus delivers Andromeda from the monster; and everybody naturally rejoices, not excluding Andromeda. But it would be unreasonable to expect Andromeda to be actually improved in health by being exposed to the sea-breezes, on the analogy of sea-bathing. It would be too exacting to demand that she should not only live happily ever after, but actually grow younger every day. What may reasonably be expected is that her family, which had got used to her good looks, may realise that such beauty is something to be loved, when it has been nearly lost. St. George kills the dragon and saves the princess; and we are glad, unless we are among those imperial or international evolutionists who always desire the smaller organism to be absorbed into the larger. But it would be irrational to expect the princess to turn into a goddess merely by being tied to a tree. It is nonsense to say that St. George ought to have worked a miracle, and turned the princess into three princesses with a touch of his magic spear. The change might be appropriate to the polygamous regions of the Sultan, her papa; but the most we can hope for is not to present the Sultan with three daughters, but to teach him to appreciate one. Now, the whole of this notion of appreciating what we have got was entirely ignored by the pessimists of the period when Mr. Masterman and I were young. That indifference to the intrinsic beauty of things, apart from the improvement of things, was the thing against which I urged the claims of the thistledown and the pillar-box. I was quite certain that, if people had not imagination enough to enjoy things in themselves, they would not enjoy them in any infinite or ideal extension. I was sure that if people saw no significance at all in the present function of the present pillar-box, they would see none in a row of pillar-boxes as regular as lamp-posts, or as continuous as railings, erected all the way down the street by the beatific bureaucracy of the Fabian State. I was sure that if people did not realise that a chance tuft of thistledown drifting in the air was a dazzling and divine mystery, they would see quite as little in rows on rows of carefully cultivated thistles, the appropriate vegetarian diet of the professors of scientific sociology.

Now, the war did point that moral of the intrinsic preciousness of threatened things. I did really look at the pillar-box at the street corner, when it seemed to glow red under black skies where the birds of death were abroad and all the lights extinguished. It was all the more bursting with symbolism because it might at any moment literally burst under a bomb out of the sky. I should really have looked at the thistledown, or at the thistle itself, in its bristling halo of defiance, with more of the militant mysticism with which a Scotsman would regard it: "Nemo me impune lacessit." Ordinary things did seem to be extraordinary - not because they were being improved, but because they were being defended and delivered. And that was the true triumph of the Great War, which is hidden from those who cannot imagine anything except their own progressive prejudice, their monomania of meliorism. They cannot bring themselves to believe that a mother wishes to rescue a baby, not an improved baby, from a burning house; that a man wishes to reprieve his friend, not his more fully developed friend, from the gallows. The war was not a scheme elaborately constructed to make things better. It was the successful beating off of besieging barbarians who wanted to make things worse. It did not make things better than they were, but better than they would have been.

Nor is this a barren retrospect, unless the whole study of history is a barren retrospect. It is very important to insist on whatever is the main moral of history; and I hold that history has for its main moral this defensive war against the destroyers of civilization. Sometimes the civilization itself becomes very corrupt or oppressive, and has to be cleansed by democratic reforms and revolutions; and Mr. Masterman knows that I have been mostly on the side of those revolutions. But it is only quite recently that the only historic test has been this notion of innovation and improvement. Most of the heroes of legend and history have been great because they saved society. The Great War was great because it saved society. It could not have been waged by pessimists who did not think Society worth saving. In other words, it could not have been waged by men who did not think pillar-boxes and other common objects worth saving. That is what I mean by saying that there is a direct connection between the mysticism of wonder and the morality of war. But it is also true that we cannot say we saved them without deciding from whom they were saved. This theory of the defence of human culture implies that there are enemies of human culture, people who are liable to attack human culture; and I think there are. And it is not in the least irrelevant to discuss whether they did it, if only because they are quite likely to do it again.

On the particular point of responsibility for the war, and whether retrospective debate on it is barren, I am content to wait till Mr. Masterman or anybody else has answered a perfectly plain question I have often repeated without getting a reply. If we merely forget and forgive in the matter of who began the war, are we not plainly telling the next aggressor to begin a war and all will be forgotten and forgiven? If we merely distribute the blame for the sin on all parties, are we not obviously encouraging the next man to commit the sin in the hope of distributing the blame? I have never been able to see the answer to that argument, and I have never heard Mr. Masterman or any of his school attempt to give one. They are always asking for an international tribunal. But a tribunal is not a thing that forgets and forgives; it is a thing that investigates and vindicates. If there were such a tribunal, it would have to decide who began the last war, in order to prevent the next one. But I am not dealing here with these large political matters, but only with one small and rather personal point about consistency in moral sentiment. I know Mr. Masterman is not the servile sort of pacifist or the inhuman sort of pessimist; and, so far from misunderstanding me, I am sure he will understand me very well if I take pleasure in renewing here, after such varied times and troubles, the debates of our youth.

[GKC ILN May 5, 1923 CW33:91-5]

The IP edition notes that the Latin Nemo me impune lacessit means "No one provokes me with impunity". I've explored my own references of heraldry and found that this is the motto on the arms of Scotland; I should also note that the heraldic "badge" of Scotland is a thistle, which is of course hinted at by GKC's mention of "thistledown" which (if you were paying attention earlier this year) is mentioned in Orthodoxy CW1:261. (My Latin consultant reminds me that this phrase appears with this translation in Poe's The Cask of Amontillado. Yes, for the love of God.)

Two notes added as I go to press:
(1) "meliorism" comes from the Latin melior ("better") the comparative of bonus ("good"); thus meaning one who works for or desires "the better".
(2) a "pillarbox" is called a mailbox in America: the old small kind of box mounted on a pole or pillar. We hear about pillarboxes (sometimes in their hyphenated form) in other GKC places like NNH and this:

The word "pillar-box" is unpoetical. But the thing pillar-box is not unpoetical; it is the place to which friends and lovers commit their messages, conscious that when they have done so they are sacred, and not to be touched, not only by others, but even (religious touch!) by themselves. That red turret is one of the last of the temples. Posting a letter and getting married are among the few things left that are entirely romantic; for to be entirely romantic a thing must be irrevocable. We think a pillar-box prosaic, because there is no rhyme to it. We think a pillar-box unpoetical, because we have never seen it in a poem. But the bold fact is entirely on the side of poetry.
[GKC Heretics CW1:55-6]

New EWTN Shows featuring Chestertonians

Here are the press photos for the new EWTN series, Theater of the Word, featuring stars of stage and screen, Chestertonians (L to R) Eric Kaiser Johnson (as Porter) and Kevin O'Brien (as Father Brown), I'm sorry to say I don't know the name of the actor playing Israel Gow, standing with the deseased Lord Glengoyle (played by the alive Dale Ahlquist), and Dale's promo shot for the 5th season of The Apostle of Common Sense.