Dr. Thursday's Post

Learning to See What is Really There

When Frances and Gilbert Chesterton are canonised, as I hope and pray for, one of the many patronic activities he ought to undertake is for all who deal with the eyes - opticians, optometrists, ophthalmologists - and all who read, and all who study the world. One might easily assemble a large collection of GKC quotes by which this very strong sense of a concern for our VISION is expressed. You may probably recall my favourite, which I quote from time to time:

Most probably we are in Eden still. It is only our eyes that have changed.
[The Defendant 3]

which has its echo here: "the most ignorant of humanity know by the very look of earth that they have forgotten heaven." [TEN CW2:226] And, far more important to our topic, in this poem:

"The Mystery"

If sunset clouds could grow on trees
It would but match the may in flower;
And skies be underneath the seas
No topsyturvier than a shower.

If mountains rose on wings to wander
They were no wilder than a cloud;
Yet all my praise is mean as slander,
Mean as these mean words spoken aloud.

And never more than now I know
That man's first heaven is far behind;
Unless the blazing seraph's blow
Has left him in the garden blind.

Witness, O Sun that blinds our eyes,
Unthinkable and unthankable King,
That though all other wonder dies
I wonder at not wondering.

[Collected Poems 63-64]

Are you wondering yet? You should be. But let us return to last week's stopping point, and see what more we can see.
Click here to SEE more.

Nursery tales, fairy tales - fantasies. Not simply science texts, not source material for graduate work in literature, not signs of a defective or immature intellect - No - they are medicine, and enrich all the fields of Wisdom:

...even nursery tales only echo an almost pre-natal leap of interest and amazement. These tales say that apples were golden only to refresh the forgotten moment when we found that they were green. They make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water.
[CW1:257]

Remember, O scientist, that you must see what is there before you go back to the lab and dream about what might be behind, beyond, under, over, or within... Remember, O lit'ry person, that your characters and plots, your complications and your imaginations are to embolden, as a signpost to us who are on the Road, whether it be of "Nice View, Pull Over" or "Caution: Bump Ahead" or "Do NOT Enter!" Or, perhaps, "Turn Here for a Better Road".

The next few lines are a bit complex - they are very interesting. They look at first to be about science - then they seem to be about literature - you may discover they have a curious jab at the philosophers... It is a curious thing, that we may advance in reason by forgetting, indeed, by being agnostic? Is that what he says? Yes, but be careful to read it with attention, and think about the rivers and what they run with:

I have said that this is wholly reasonable and even agnostic. And, indeed, on this point I am all for the higher agnosticism; its better name is Ignorance. We have all read in scientific books, and, indeed, in all romances, the story of the man who has forgotten his name. This man walks about the streets and can see and appreciate everything; only he cannot remember who he is. Well, every man is that man in the story. Every man has forgotten who he is. One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God; but thou shalt not know thyself. We are all under the same mental calamity; we have all forgotten our names. We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstacy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget.
[CW1:257]

Yes, tricky. There is a famous line, "Know Thyself" which (according to my Bartlett's Quotations) was claimed by Plutarch to be inscribed on the Delphic Oracle, and ascribed by him to Plato; but Pythagoras and others...

Clearly this is an interesting aside - but it is an aside. It is a reminder that all the interesting things around us still cannot help us know the one thing that is really interesting - our own self. It may be trite for me to mention a theme song from a TV show, but GKC stooped to such tritenesses. There is one which makes me think, very pungently, of our Lord, and the great verse of Genesis, "Let us make Man in Our own image." It is this:

No one could ever know me
No one could ever see me
Seems you're the only one who knows
What it's like to be me
[The Rembrants, "Friends" theme song]

Yes, only He does know this, because we certainly don't. Why delve into this? Because it is a reminder to ALL the fields of Wisdom that they omit this most important aspect of our studies...

Now, do not lose heart here. This healthy, forgetful agnosticism is not what we're here for. I said it was almost an aside, though an important aside. Look at the next bit, please:

But though (like the man without memory in the novel) we walk the streets with a sort of half-witted admiration, still it is admiration. It is admiration in English and not only admiration in Latin. The wonder has a positive element of praise. This is the next milestone to be definitely marked on our road through fairyland. I shall speak in the next chapter about optimists and pessimists in their intellectual aspect, so far as they have one. Here I am only trying to describe the enormous emotions which cannot be described. And the strongest emotion was that life was as precious as it was puzzling. It was an ecstacy because it was an adventure; it was an adventure because it was an opportunity.
[CW1:257-8]

Wow, verbal fireworks doubled, tripled - and all kinds of things to unpack!

First, admiration in English is "marvelling esteem accompanied by gratification and delight" or "observation attended by such esteem". In Latin, miror, mirari (a deponent verb, if you wish to know!) means "to wonder, be astonished at".

And praise... I cannot go into this just now; it would bring up a long discussion of the marvellous five verbs at the beginning of the Gloria... but not just now. Note, too, GKC tells us this is our next topic, and note that this is NOT disjoint from what we were talking about - about LAW and about reality, and such things - and about Story, with the capital S.

Then we come to that other troublesome word (I skip ahead here for pedagogical reasons; on real hikes you cannot take the third step BEFORE the second!) - I mean the word "adventure". All of you who have read Tolkien's The Hobbit will recall the very famous dialog of Bilbo with Gandalf at the very beginning - "Adventures! Nasty, inconvenient things. Make one late for dinner." [I quote from memory]

Behold, a junction on the Road! Bilbo meets Uncle Gilbert:

"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."
[ILN July 21 1906 CW27:242]

Now, the one bit I skipped, which comes suitably after mentioning Bilbo, where GKC says "life was as precious as it was puzzling". (hee hee: Riddles in the Dark, anyone?) Ahem. But this word here is cross-connected to our larger topic, that is to elfland, and to reality. In a very few pages we shall read one of the keystone settings of GKC's "motif" about glass, which he felt was most precious:

I felt and feel that life itself is as bright as the diamond, but as brittle as the window-pane; and when the heavens were compared to the terrible crystal I can remember a shudder. I was afraid that God would drop the cosmos with a crash.
[CW1:259-260]

Here is not the time to go further into that particular trail - but the allusion to glass links back to my title. Glass is wonderful, and windows a delight (I mean the lower-case kind, Mr. Gates) but there are certain "indwelling limitations" in these things, which GKC discusses in the splendid discourse on the Seven Windows in Lunacy and Letters. (Again I do not refer to the brittle/smashing aspect, which we shall see when we get to that part of the text.)

Rather, I refer to the transparency of glass and the clarity of windows. (Quiet, please, Mr. Gates!)

"For behind all designs for specific windows stands eternally the essential idea of a window; and the essential idea of a window is a thing which admits light." [Lunacy and Letters, 41]

Perhaps this seems to have wandered very far. No; I am trying to join in other matters. We are struggling along on a great journey which others have also made; some have gone a different route, but gotten to where we are by other means, such as St. Thomas Aquinas,

a very great man who reconciled religion with reason, who expanded it towards experimental science, who insisted that the senses were the windows of the soul and that the reason had a divine right to feed upon facts, and that it was the business of the Faith to digest the strong meat of the toughest and most practical of pagan philosophies. ... St. Thomas insisted that it was lit by five windows, that we call the windows of the senses. But he wanted the light from without to shine on what was within. He wanted to study the nature of Man, and not merely of such moss and mushrooms as he might see through the window, and which he valued as the first enlightening experience of man.
[GKC, St. Thomas Aquinas CW2:430-1, 525]

Please jot that down somewhere nearby. You need to remember that one phrase: "The sense are the windows of the soul." That's what is going on here. We are seeing things as they are, but we are still using windows, even when we talk of retinas or mesons or galaxies... Perhaps you do need to go along this side path just a little, so you'll see what I mean:

When a child looks out of the nursery window and sees anything, say the green lawn of the garden, what does he actually know; or does he know anything? There are all sorts of nursery games of negative philosophy played round this question. A brilliant Victorian scientist delighted in declaring that the child does not see any grass at all; but only a sort of green mist reflected in a tiny mirror of the human eye. This piece of rationalism has always struck me as almost insanely irrational. If he is not sure of the existence of the grass, which he sees through the glass of a window, how on earth can he be sure of the existence of the retina, which he sees through the glass of a microscope?
[ibid CW2:528]

Yes, nursery games, fairy tales. They help us see what is really there: grass, sun - and retina.

If you want to know yourself, you might find no better way than to get to know the Elves. ("Elves, sir!" cried Sam Gamgee.)

--Dr. Thursday

Dr. Thursday's Post

Change is NOT GOOD: Reality and Law and Magic
Or, "Mere life is interesting enough."

No I am NOT at the conference this year. That wasn't possible for me, due to various dull complications. Mere life, as you shall see.

Because of other dull complications, this morning I had to set up another means of e-mailing myself using this "web" method everybody seems to like. If I had time I would have written the program myself, but I don't. It IS Thursday. And, much like Chesterton, who reacted profitably to his surroundings, even when he was late for a train, I have taken a verse from that horrible "web" mail program to drive today's posting.

This poorly scripted web thing, from a most poor company, proclaims "Change is Good".

Dante didn't say so, but I believe that that epigram is burnt into Satan's tongue... Ahem! I said I wasn't going to get into demonology here. Yes. Instead I will do it another way. Let's see. Let us use a syllogism: a bit roughly formed, yes, but who knows "Barbara Celarent" any more?

Premise 1: We assume that "Change is good."
Premise 2: At present in America we do not permit ownership of slaves.
Premise 3: It is a change to go from not permitting ownership of slaves to permitting it.
Thus we deduce: It will be good to permit ownership of slaves.
BUT: we know that ownership of slaves is bad.
THEREFORE: we have logically demonstrated that "change" is NOT good. Correct. (Thank God.)

Certainly "Change" is an aspect of the nature of time, BUT there are things that do NOT change:

There must in every machine be a part that moves and a part that stands still; there must be in everything that changes a part that is unchangeable.
[GKC What's Wrong With the World CW 4:116-117]

Today, we are going to learn more about this, and why it is so. I know some of you will have a problem with my use of the "M" word, but perhaps, after today, you won't. In any case, you will now need to use magic. Wands out, please... OK you are going to be stubborn? Then I will have to call in the Law...

Click here to advance.Actually that's the whole mystery of today's study. Law and magic, things that repeat and things that change, even if they don't change much. Like sunrise. And if I stepped on a lot of toes last week, you ain't seen nothin' yet. (We shall consider pages 255-256 of CW1 today.)

Now that we all got our boots on, let's stomp some toes - ready?

In fairyland we avoid the word "law"; but in the land of science they are singularly fond of it.
[CW1:255]

All the white-lab coat gang cringe. Sure! There are Newton's Laws (really Buridan's of course, for those of us who've been keeping up with the history of science). There are Kepler's Laws - no, Galileo, modern science does NOT agree with you; they are ellipses, not circles! Boyle and Snell and Steno and Ohm and Ampere and (all bow) MAXWELL'S LAWS... yes.

But (as they pull their chemical stained hankies from their lab coats and sniffle) Chesterton goes on to say:

Thus they will call some interesting conjecture about how forgotten folks pronounced the alphabet, Grimm's Law.[CW1:255]

The lab-coated ones look around... is Chem? no; Geo? no; Physics or Bio? No, nope... wait a second .... they look around frantically...

Oh, ho! the boot is stomping on the other side of the aisle!

GRIMM ISN'T A SCIENTIST. And they are brothers - LITR'Y brothers. (also known as "Liberal Arts") Yeah, these are the same Grimm brothers that did the fairy tales - but they also did some philological thing or other - you know, the mechanics of language, like Tolkien. (The Law is something like this: the "p" in Latin and Greek becomes "f" in Germanic languages, which is why Latin has pater and English has father, but there are exceptions and all kinds of modifications... well. This is part of what GKC is getting at.)

But for the moment, it's just hilarious to see that bunch squirm, because like all the historical fields, there is no science (in the scientific sense) in them. There is, in the Latin sense - for there is knowledge. If we ever do GKC's The Everlasting Man we'll hear more about that sort of "science". And you ought to be hearing GKC on this, not me:

But Grimm's Law is far less intellectual than Grimm's Fairy Tales. The tales are, at any rate, certainly tales; while the law is not a law. A law implies that we know the nature of the generalisation and enactment; not merely that we have noticed some of the effects.
[CW1:255]

Sure, and now the philologists agree - they love Tolkien, and the brothers Grimm, even if they've long since modified their Law. But now, of course, the lawyers will be throwing torts and subpoenas and all their weaponry at us. (I prefer strawberry tort, myself.) But it is best if they read it, and find they too must agree:

If there is a law that pick-pockets shall go to prison, it implies that there is an imaginable mental connection between the idea of prison and the idea of picking pockets. And we know what the idea is. We can say why we take liberty from a man who takes liberties.
[CW1:255]

Ah, now you feel some harmony about that syllogism I started off with. They tried a verbal firework ("Change is good") but it went off in their faces - for slavery is not good. After all, there must be something unchangeable...

Now, if we wanted to get into a REAL discussion about "law" in science, we might take Newton (Buridan) and see what happened when Einstein got into that whole speed of light thing. But besides being kicked by all the litr'ry people, the scientists would be screaming "You're forgetting Maxwell!" (with a bow, of course). But remember how, in past chapters, we saw that GKC makes a point, sometimes very sketchily, but always a sharp point? GKC is NOT setting up to argue Grimm's Law (or Newton/Buridan, or even Maxwell (bow)). He's trying to get to the essence of "LAW".

And the avenue he takes is the one most feared by some - the avenue of magic. And NOW we get to the really important thing.

Because the power of magic is not in its mechanism - for then it would be strict science (I mean physics, let us say, or another such branch). It is in its AUTHORITY. At stake is not the means - I distill various materials in my lab, and make a stick, and wave the stick and it glows ... because of the oxidation of luminol, or the friction of red phosphorus with potassium chlorate, or a spiral of tungsten, or perhaps a layered arrangement of certain doped semiconductors, wired together with a metal and reactive chemical power source - and so on. Those means, as mystical and as occult (remember that means HIDDEN) as they are, are completely natural, and straightforward for anyone to accomplish with some training and understanding of the terms.

But - if a certain person walked into a forest, danced around a tree in the dead of night, then picked a branch from it and waved it thrice above his head, muttering some poorly conjugated Latin imperative - and it burst into flame - why, then we are talking about authority - this is NOT something to be explained by chemistry or electronics, and one does not find it in standard reference books. Either he is working by divine power (which is good) or by abuse of divine power (which is evil). Obviously, you can light your flashlight which you bought in a department store and use it to help rescue a stranded traveller - or to burgle a house - again, you are working either by divine power, or abusing it - and no occult issue arises.

We are NOT exploring magic. We are getting at an issue. The Great issue. The reality of things, and the idea of "law" which makes things as they are in our world... and it must be understood, not as a clever game (like Grimm, or even Maxwell (bow)!) but as a personal power, somehow attached to one who is able to make choices... that is, as Magic.

But let GKC tell you:

All the terms used in the science books, "law," "necessity," "order," "tendency," and so on, are really unintellectual, because they assume an inner synthesis, which we do not possess. The only words that ever satisfied me as describing Nature are the terms used in the fairy books, "charm," "spell," "enchantment." They express the arbitrariness of the fact and its mystery. ... I deny altogether that this is fantastic or even mystical. We may have some mysticism later on; but this fairy-tale language about things is simply rational and agnostic. It is the only way I can express in words my clear and definite perception that one thing is quite distinct from another; that there is no logical connection between flying and laying eggs. It is the man who talks about "a law" that he has never seen who is the mystic.
[CW1:256]

We must here turn, for a moment, to see how incredibly high we have journeyed today. We are at the almost unimaginable height, where science and law and even Grimm's Law and its literary congeners meet - and we find a path leading upwards labelled "Story". GKC does not here advance along it, but he notes a little of its character. You can find an excellent essay, "On Fairy-Stories" in A Tolkien Reader and the essential guidebook in GKC's The Everlasting Man CW2:380. But for now, you may be content with even this glimpse:

Just as we all like love tales because there is an instinct of sex, we all like astonishing tales because they touch the nerve of the ancient instinct of astonishment. This is proved by the fact that when we are very young children we do not need fairy tales: we only need tales. Mere life is interesting enough. A child of seven is excited by being told that Tommy opened a door and saw a dragon. But a child of three is excited by being told that Tommy opened a door. Boys like romantic tales; but babies like realistic tales - because they find them romantic.
[CW1:256]

I thought I would have more to say, but I cannot say it now; I find this overwhelmingly lovely and am now impelled to resume my work...

You might read some more; try to get to page 260 if you can; this is all the same matter, and deserves reading, re-reading, and discussion. I shall resume on the topic next time.

Do not forget that on Saturday we celebrate the 72nd anniversary of the departure of GKC for the Inn at the End of the World. Let us pause for a moment in prayer, and gratitude for this great man.

Monsignor Smith anointed him and then Father Vincent arrived in response to a message from Frances which he thought meant she wanted him to see Gilbert for the last time. Taken to the sick room he sang over the dying man the Salve Regina. This hymn to Our Lady is sung in the Dominican Order over every dying friar and it was surely fitting for the biographer of St. Thomas and the ardent suppliant of Our Lady:

"Salve Regina, mater misericordiae, vita dulcedo et spes nostra salve.... Et Jesum benedictum fructum ventris tui nobis post hoc exsilium ostende...."

Gilbert's pen lay on the table beside his bed and Father Vincent picked it up and kissed it.

It was June 14, 1936, the Sunday within the Octave of Corpus Christi, the same Feast as his reception into the Church fourteen years earlier. The Introit for that day's Mass was printed on his Memorial card, so that, as Father Ignatius Rice noted with a smile, even his Memorial card had a joke about his size:

The Lord became my protector and he brought me forth into a large place. He saved me because he was well pleased with me. I will love Thee O Lord my strength. The Lord is my firmament and my refuge and my deliverer. [Ps17:19-20, 2-3]

To these words from the Mass, Frances added Walter de la Mare's tribute:

Knight of the Holy Ghost, he goes his way
Wisdom his motley, Truth his loving jest;
The mills of Satan keep his lance in play,
Pity and innocence his heart at rest.

[Quoted from Maisie Ward's biography, Gilbert Keith Chesterton 650-651]

Requiescat in pace. Gilbert and Frances pray for us, and lead us to the Everlasting Man.

--Dr. Thursday

Exposing my Ignorance: Telos Magazine

Today was the first time I came across this magazine. James Schall, who also writes for Gilbert magazine, has written something on the centenary of the publication of Orthodoxy.

Dr. Thursday's Post

Testing Your Imagination: the Sunny Country of Common Sense, and the Decrees of Cold Reason

In one week, Chestertonians will be meeting in Minnesota to eat together, buy books, talk, drink various liquids (Petta wine... ah, and perhaps homebrewed beers) talk, laugh, play games, and other things. They may even get to listen to talks about the book we have been examining here on Thursdays... I understand there are to be talks on each of its chapters, and if you wish to know more about this great book, I strongly urge you to go to the conference if you can - I cannot. But if you cannot go, you may purchase the talks on CD for your own listening pleasure. It's just like a blogg, except you won't be able to post comments. This may be the next big project once we figure out how to stop using 2,2,4 trimethyl pentane. (That's that stuff you feed your automobile with.) Ahem.

But let us proceed to the next part of our chapter. We are in "The Ethics of Elfland" - as GKC says, "I deal here with what ethic and philosophy come from being fed on fairy tales." [CW1:253]

Much to the lit'ry folk's dismay, however, and to the scientist's glee, this chapter is one of the most bold, and richest sources of what we could call GKC's philosophy of science. I do not have room to elaborate on this today - you can find it in Fr. Jaki's wonderful Chesterton A Seer of Science - he calls it "one of the most penetrating discourses on the nature of scientific reasoning that has been so far produced." [CASOS 13] And, if you read that book, you will learn where this chapter was once excerpted - one of the most surprising places any Chestertonian can imagine finding GKC...

I will tell you if you click here.

On page 14, Fr. Jaki tells us that "about one-third of chapter 4 of Orthodoxy, "The Ethics of Elfland," was "reprinted in 1957 in, of all places, Great Essays in Science, a title in the Pocket Library. A typical first printing of titles in that series was in the tens of thousands, and copies were available not only in all bookshops but also at many newsstands in the 1950s and 1960s. There was Chesterton in the company of Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin, Henri Fabre, J.R. Oppenheimer, Arthur Stanley Eddington, Alfred North Whitehead, and Bertrand Russell, so many giants in mathematics, physics, and natural history. Chesterton was also in the company of such prominent interpreters of science as John Dewey, Ernest Nagel, and even T. H. and Julian Huxley."

I believe I have mentioned this before, but now that we are here, you need to hear it again. That volume was edited by Martin Gardner, who had his own comments to make on why he put GKC there, but we are talking about GKC, not Gardner or Jaki. I must, however, here briefly quote Jaki about GKC, for Jaki's own prowess as a philosopher and a critic of GKC is important to our task of grasping GKC's work - and to bolster our confidence that we are truly on the high road of Truth:

A summing up of the selection is not an easy task, as it is never easy to give a concise and systematic outline of any of Chesterton's philosophical chapters and books. A philosopher of tremendous incisiveness, he is never discursive.
[Jaki, CASOS 15]

I have used the analogy of a hike for our tour of this book - you must recall that hikes are often strenuous, and even dangerous in places; they tax you, and are sometimes inconvenient - but they give you views which you cannot acquire on the highway, or stuck in your office or your home. Also, they do another thing, something which brings me to today's excerpt: they take you to your destination.

Now, you are whining again. People don't go on hikes to get somewhere, sort of like Mary and Joseph going to Bethlehem to get there by April 15... er - you know what I mean, that's what I get for saying this was "taxing", hee hee. The typical hike seems to be a loop - you start here, go out for a while and come back to where you started (home, your car, whatever). So what's the point?

Whiner.

That is the point. (remember GKC talking about discovering England???) Think about it, and once you've started your thought machinery, take the next paragraph:

If I were describing them [fairy tales] in detail I could note many noble and healthy principles that arise from them. There is the chivalrous lesson of "Jack the Giant Killer"; that giants should be killed because they are gigantic. It is a manly mutiny against pride as such. For the rebel is older than all the kingdoms, and the Jacobin has more tradition than the Jacobite. There is the lesson of "Cinderella," which is the same as that of the Magnificat - exaltavit humiles. There is the great lesson of "Beauty and the Beast"; that a thing must be loved before it is loveable. There is the terrible allegory of the "Sleeping Beauty," which tells how the human creature was blessed with all birthday gifts, yet cursed with death; and how death also may perhaps be softened to a sleep. But I am not concerned with any of the separate statutes of elfland, but with the whole spirit of its law, which I learnt before I could speak, and shall retain when I cannot write. I am concerned with a certain way of looking at life, which was created in me by the fairy tales, but has since been meekly ratified by the mere facts.
[CW1:253]

OK, some notes may be helpful here.

"Jacobin": a member of a political group during the French Revolution.
"Jacobite": a Scottish supporter of King James II (around 1688) James is the usual English rendering of the Hebrew name Jacob.
"exaltavit humiles": Latin for "He has lifted up the lowly" this is from Mary's "Magnificat" - see Luke 1:52.

Wow... How many other bible scholars have connected "Cinderella" with the Magnificat? There you go.

Also, in my own copy of the book I have a cross-link to another essay of GKC, which I give for your own reference. It shows that GKC had been working on this matter for some years before 1908:

Fairy tales are the only true accounts that man has ever given of his destiny. ‘Jack the Giant-Killer’ is the embodiment of the first of the three great paradoxes by which men live. It is the paradox of Courage: the paradox which says, ‘You must defy the thing that is terrifying; unless you are frightened, you are not brave.’ ‘Cinderella’ is the embodiment of the second of the paradoxes by which men live: the paradox of Humility which says ‘Look for the best in the thing, ignorant of its merit; he that abases himself shall be exalted’. And ‘Beauty and the Beast’ is the embodiment of the third of the paradoxes by which men live: the paradox of Faith - the absolutely necessary and wildly unreasonable maxim which says to every mother with a child or to every patriot with a country, ‘You must love the thing first and make it lovable afterwards.’
[GKC's essay for Sept 27 1904 in The World, excerpted in Maycock's The Man Who Was Orthodox]

Now, of course, the lit'ry people are all happy; they have a Latin quote, and some history and all that. The scientists are bored. Now, as usual with these hikes, we flip. Which means it's time for a humour break:

Q. "How far can a dog run into the forest?"
A. "Halfway. After that, he's running out."

Yes... for the next paragraph begins the "penetrating discourse" on science that Jaki sees in GKC. Please read it carefully. Warning! This is an uphill leg, and shall continue for some time - We - and the elves - are now going to DIG into the great matter of logic and of math and of science - and find out - well, we will find out something akin to our discovery that our hike takes us home. Ready? Proceed:

... There are certain sequences or developments (cases of one thing following another), which are, in the true sense of the word, reasonable. They are, in the true sense of the word, necessary. Such are mathematical and merely logical sequences. We in fairyland (who are the most reasonable of all creatures) admit that reason and that necessity. For instance, if the Ugly Sisters are older than Cinderella, it is (in an iron and awful sense) necessary that Cinderella is younger than the Ugly Sisters. There is no getting out of it. Haeckel may talk as much fatalism about that fact as he pleases: it really must be. If Jack is the son of a miller, a miller is the father of Jack. Cold reason decrees it from her awful throne: and we in fairyland submit. If the three brothers all ride horses, there are six animals and eighteen legs involved: that is true rationalism, and fairyland is full of it. But as I put my head over the hedge of the elves and began to take notice of the natural world, I observed an extraordinary thing. I observed that learned men in spectacles were talking of the actual things that happened - dawn and death and so on - as if they were rational and inevitable. They talked as if the fact that trees bear fruit were just as necessary as the fact that two and one trees make three. But it is not. There is an enormous difference by the test of fairyland; which is the test of the imagination. You cannot imagine two and one not making three. But you can easily imagine trees not growing fruit; you can imagine them growing golden candlesticks or tigers hanging on by the tail. These men in spectacles spoke much of a man named Newton, who was hit by an apple, and who discovered a law. But they could not be got to see the distinction between a true law, a law of reason, and the mere fact of apples falling. If the apple hit Newton's nose, Newton's nose hit the apple. That is a true necessity: because we cannot conceive the one occurring without the other. But we can quite well conceive the apple not falling on his nose; we can fancy it flying ardently through the air to hit some other nose, of which it had a more definite dislike. We have always in our fairy tales kept this sharp distinction between the science of mental relations, in which there really are laws, and the science of physical facts, in which there are no laws, but only weird repetitions. We believe in bodily miracles, but not in mental impossibilities. We believe that a Bean-stalk climbed up to Heaven; but that does not at all confuse our convictions on the philosophical question of how many beans make five.
[CW1:253-4]

We are going to investigate more on this Chestertonian view of "law" and "necessity" - yes, and "miracle" - and find out that while we get much higher, the climb gets easier. You note, of course, that GKC continually gives us parables - or examples - we are not dealing with equations or meticulous philosophical terms and links. Nevertheless, the ideas are clear, they are not irrational, or unreasonable.

But! here we have the rich troves where all the departments of the Kingdom of Wisdom may cavort and rejoice. The hedge of the elves - try poking your own head over it. People are commonly of the opinion that "imagination" means dragons or stuff like that, and is great for writing fantasies or maybe video games. But actually, there are few fields of study which need imagination more than the hard sciences - yes, and even mathematics.

You may, of course, realize that GKC is talking about some profound philosophy here: the ideas of causality, of reason, and of imagination - and perhaps you think this is a height the untrained hiker ought to avoid! Oh, no. There is a famous line from the Gospels, where Jesus tells the apostles on Peter's little ship, "Set out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch". [Lk 5:4] The Latin has Duc in altum. Huh - it sounds like "altitude"? Yes, the same word is both "high, height" and "deep"! You must set out, even in your little boat, that you may have a good catch...

(Yes, I know, it's a mixed metaphor: hiking, fishing... well, I do what I can. Mix well.)

But let us see just one more paragraph today, which mixes apples and ogres, physics and fantasy...

Here is the peculiar perfection of tone and truth in the nursery tales. The man of science says, "Cut the stalk, and the apple will fall"; but he says it calmly, as if the one idea really led up to the other. The witch in the fairy tale says, "Blow the horn, and the ogre's castle will fall"; but she does not say it as if it were something in which the effect obviously arose out of the cause. Doubtless she has given the advice to many champions, and has seen many castles fall, but she does not lose either her wonder or her reason. She does not muddle her head until it imagines a necessary mental connection between a horn and a falling tower. But the scientific men do muddle their heads, until they imagine a necessary mental connection between an apple leaving the tree and an apple reaching the ground. They do really talk as if they had found not only a set of marvellous facts, but a truth connecting those facts. They do talk as if the connection of two strange things physically connected them philosophically. They feel that because one incomprehensible thing constantly follows another incomprehensible thing the two together somehow make up a comprehensible thing. Two black riddles make a white answer.
[CW1:254-5]

Again, splendid! Such guides ought to be posted in every laboratory, in every research facility... How much further would we go, how much safer would we be, how much less would we waste, if we understood. And you - you lit'ry people - do you not see how you should be seeking to guide the scientists? No, not by your own brand of pompous technical obfuscation - but by bringing your splendid gifts to aid them! They give you your lights, your paper, your ink, your computers, laser printers, and web-search tools - what do you give them? Essays on the esoteric meaning of some play or poem? Dull! Why not give something like this rich harvest of deep thought? Please, both sides ought to be working on that bridge. (That is GKC's "bridge between science and human nature".)

Then, we can stand together and poke our heads "over the hedge of the elves", and rejoice at the wonders we see.

OK... if you think this was a rough journey with all the elves and philosophers and scientists fussing over causality, wait till you see what's coming! Next week, we'll have even more fun when the Law gets involved. "Woe to you lawyers!" [Lk 11:46] Hee, hee. Unless you're at the conference - let's hope the Law doesn't get involved there too.

--Dr. Thursday

HB GKC

GKC's Birthday: his First and Last Philosophy

Today we recall GKC's birthday - and we have a most fitting pair of paragraphs from Orthodoxy to consider - which are to be found in CW1:252-3. (Yes, I know we are going slowly, but I am typing as fast as I can. Hee hee.)

During a previous round of research into GKC, I had reason to obtain some very interesting reference works. One of them is The Oxford Classical Dictionary which I consulted to learn more about the very curious Lares et Penates - the "household gods" which appear when GKC discusses ancient Rome in his The Everlasting Man.
Oy. I hear the whine already: "Ancient Roman gods? Why? Is this some more of that much-vaunted 'demonology' you seem to like so much, Doctor?" Heavens, no! Because like one of those spine-tingling chords from Mendelssohn - or the Beach Boys - there is this very wonderful line in that book, which I needed to understand to penetrate to its richest fullness:

They [the ancient Romans] might have found in that strange place [the cave in Bethlehem] all that was best in the last traditions of the Latins; and something better than a wooden idol standing up forever for the pillar of the human family; a household god.
[GKC The Everlasting Man CW2:308, emphasis added]

Wow. Like that Calvin and Hobbes cartoon, where Calvin says, "you're squeezing me so tight you make my tears leak out." Oh, if only we could really understand how God chose Rome as well as Israel... Besides, if you think THAT is demonology, just wait till you see what's going to rear its ten-horned head in just a bit!

Ahem. But I also got another book. (We were talking about interesting reference books; of course the C&H texts are not on that shelf, but they are not far away at all, oh, no.) It is a two-volume reference work called The Encyclopedia of the Early Church, and I mention it because it was there that I learned a very curious Greek word, the word "psephy" (p. 953) - which comes from the word for "pebble" - and means the practice of taking letters for numbers and getting a number corresponding to some word or other. There's an English word with the same root: "psephology" - which is the science of elections and voting (dimpled chads, you know?) One of the most famous biblical numbers is understood to be a result of this practice - the number 666 (or 616 in some translations) which is also called "the number of the Beast" (Rev 13:18)

Now, strange to say, people rather easily understand the idea of anti-Christ. They have some clue to that infernal horror - simply because they have a clue to Christ. Yes, this writing IS about Orthodoxy; here's GKC's simple statement on the point: "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] But there is a richer and more illuminating link:

Cardinal Newman wrote in his liveliest controversial work a sentence that might be a model of what we mean by saying that his creed tends to lucidity and logical courage. In speaking of the ease with which truth may be made to look like its own shadow or sham, he said, "And if Antichrist is like Christ, Christ I suppose is like Antichrist."
[GKC, St. Francis of Assisi CW2:103-4]

Very instructive for those of us who are studying Cardinal Newman and his connection to GKC! Yes, the infernal being is somehow opposite to Christ - of course it is impossible (as our staff ontologist will tell you) for it to be perfectly opposite, since evil is a privation and every existence as such is good. Ahem. (He talks even more than I do!) But the reason why I brought all this up is to point out that though everybody knows about 666 for antiChrist, very few people have any idea what the number for Christ is. And you most likely cannot guess, unless you happen to know how the ancient Greeks wrote their numbers.

That number happens to stand at the beginning and the ending of the very next bit of our study - the gateway (lit by a Paschal candle) that we must now pass into...
Click to proceed.

The number is 801 - which is the value for Alpha and Omega. ("Number" in The Encyclopedia of the Early Church, p. 606) When Americans talk about such things we say "from sea to shining sea" - musicians say from C to C, unless you are a pipe organ person (which have a C-side and a C-sharp side) or from the Middle Ages, where they had other names for "doe-a-deer" and said from "Gamma" to ut - which is where we get the word "gamut".

What's all this about? All - yes, exactly. It's about "all". GKC is about to state a general idea:

Now, I have to put together a general position, and I pretend to no training in such things. I propose to do it, therefore, by writing down one after another the three or four fundamental ideas which I have found for myself, pretty much in the way that I found them. Then I shall roughly synthesise them, summing up my personal philosophy or natural religion; then I shall describe my startling discovery that the whole thing had been discovered before. It had been discovered by Christianity. But of these profound persuasions which I have to recount in order, the earliest was concerned with this element of popular tradition. And without the foregoing explanation touching tradition and democracy I could hardly make my mental experience clear. As it is, I do not know whether I can make it clear, but I now propose to try.
[CW1:252]

Like I said, the gate. (Oh, no, please Doc, not another side trip about Boolean logic and computer chips and Jesus saying "I am the gate" [Jn10:9]) OK, I won't. Your loss. We can go there some other time.

But erecting the first principle is always the hardest. The ancients knew this, and often performed sacrifice at the inception of a building - we still lay cornerstones with great ceremony, and have graduation ceremonies (those are beginnings, not endings, like birth and death are!) And this particular one - I mean this first of GKC's principles is hard - hard to take. Because some of you are not going to like it. Some scientists, some lit'ry people, some of the Potterites, some of the anti-Potterites. Because it deals with literature and with science, with good and with evil, with reality and with fantasy. But see how GKC states his to Alfa kai to W = the Alpha and Omega of his thought:

My first and last philosophy, that which I believe in with unbroken certainty, I learnt in the nursery. I generally learnt it from a nurse; that is, from the solemn and star-appointed priestess at once of democracy and tradition. The things I believed most then, the things I believe most now, are the things called fairy tales. They seem to me to be the entirely reasonable things. They are not fantasies: compared with them other things are fantastic. Compared with them religion and rationalism are both abnormal, though religion is abnormally right and rationalism abnormally wrong. Fairyland is nothing but the sunny country of common sense. It is not earth that judges heaven, but heaven that judges earth; so for me at least it was not earth that criticised elfland, but elfland that criticised the earth. I knew the magic beanstalk before I had tasted beans; I was sure of the Man in the Moon before I was certain of the moon. This was at one with all popular tradition. Modern minor poets are naturalists, and talk about the bush or the brook; but the singers of the old epics and fables were supernaturalists, and talked about the gods of brook and bush. That is what the moderns mean when they say that the ancients did not "appreciate Nature," because they said that Nature was divine. Old nurses do not tell children about the grass, but about the fairies that dance on the grass; and the old Greeks could not see the trees for the dryads.
[CW1:252-3]

Yes; you see? You thought I was way off base talking about the household gods or about 666. But if you are thinking this path (as hard as it is) leads away from God, from Christianity, or even from real things, and stuff like science and all that - oh, are you going to be surprised!

You see, this idea is not really something new. That's GKC's point. He saw something, something profoundly powerful, in the silly little stories like Jack and the Beanstalk and so on - something true. Something which told him about real things. It is utterly useless for a Christian to talk about Jesus as "God-Man" if he won't first acknowledge the idea of Man. Or for a scientist to talk about galaxies if he won't acknowledge stars. Or - yes - for a literary person to talk about plots or themes if he avoids the best plots and the oldest themes, used for millennia by nearly every civilisation on earth!

This is a key. We wield it, and the gate opens, and we enter through. You are surprised that the gate opens with nursery tales? Prepare for even greater surprises.

The next paragraphs will proceed much, much deeper into the matter of fantasy - and of science - than you may have ever studied, regardless of your background. Please God we shall get to them in coming weeks. But until then, you should re-read just these two paragraphs, and pray that you can be willing to examine them justly, and not with bitterness. They are not easy, but they are also wonderful.

--Dr. Thursday

PS. Wow, it's before lunch and no mention of food? Oh - nope, I missed it. GKC mentions tasting beans. Good. (hee hee) No beans today: birthday cake!

Ignatius Insight Podcast: Chesterton and Orthodoxy

Special guest is Dale Ahlquist. Some of you may know him.

Demons and Democracy: the Strange Color of the Nearby

(If you are reading along: Orthodoxy Chapter IV "The Ethics of Elfland" first five paragraphs CW1:249-252)

I told you last week there would be no demonism on our adventure into Elfland... and there won't be. Except in one punning way, which is one of the really beloved lines spoken by Father Brown. You will perhaps disagree. I think it reveals his humility, and the too-easily forgotten fact that priests must themselves confess their sins:

"I am a man," answered Father Brown gravely; "and therefore have all devils in my heart."
[GKC, "The Hammer Of God" in The Innocence of Father Brown]

One of the prayers the priest says at Holy Mass hints at this authentic view of the priesthood:

"Accept O Holy Father, Almighty and Eternal God, this spotless host, which I, your unworthy servant, offer to You, my living and true God, to atone for my numberless sins, offenses, and negligences; on behalf of all here present and likewise for all faithful Christians living and dead, that it may profit me and them as a means of salvation to life everlasting. Amen.

But we are not here to examine liturgy... but rather demon... ahem, excuse me. I mean democracy.

No, not as in the opposite of "Republican"! (And I thought I was skating on thin ice with the reference to magic. Hee hee.)

But - as I warned you last time, you must pay very close attention to the words here. There will be some words you know, and perhaps have some strong feelings on - like "democracy" and "liberal" and "tradition". Most importantly you need to know that these terms are being used in their full, classical, "rich" or perhaps "proper" sense (in heraldry, something "proper" means it is shown in its true colors), and emphatically not as political terms.

You are puzzled. We have crossed a bridge, into a world which I have rather carefully avoided naming (though you are all writing "May 22 - entering Elfland" down in your hiker log books). You thought we would be meeting strange, remarkable, unexpected, surprising creatures - hobbits and elves or dwarves (dwarfs, if you are not a Tolkien person) or maybe Milo or Bastian or that Poppins woman - or at least Spock or E.T. or even Mr. Potter (it is a wonderful life, you know?) And instead I bring up GKC's drudgery of what sounds like government or maybe education. Oh, how surprised you'll be... we shall indeed meet some remarkable creatures. You must be bold... and you will be surprised!
Wave wand here if you feel bold.

Now, having mentioned Milo, the bored hero of The Phantom Tollbooth, you will be surprised, as I was, in what we find in the very first sentence from our chapter:

When the business man rebukes the idealism of his office-boy, it is commonly in some such speech as this: "Ah, yes, when one is young, one has these ideals in the abstract and these castles in the air; but in middle age they all break up like clouds, and one comes down to a belief in practical politics, to using the machinery one has and getting on with the world as it is."
[CW1:249, emphasis added]

If you've never read that book, you must know that "The Castle in the Air" is the prison to which the princesses of Sweet Rhyme and Pure Reason were banished, and the demons guard the path to it... Ah, so you are starting to feel something? Good, good. It's starting, then.

The start is a bit slow. As usual, GKC uses a rather complex analogy, drawn from his own late Victorian youth, and the world he knows, to try to explain something even more complex. It is a kind of parable, laden as usual with verbal fireworks, and a confusing term or two, but it contains something striking, which is like chrome. For "the strong chromium" as a friend of mine says, "has the strange color of the nearby". Yes, chrome and so many metals act as mirrors when polished. And this is the first kind of magic GKC reveals to us.

We must understand what GKC is doing. He now has "to trace the roots of my personal speculation" - that is, explain how he started to get to HIS view of things, which is so different from what we saw in the previous chapters. He believes in "Liberalism" - but not in "Liberals". Note! I have no time to give you the grand explanation of what these words meant in England of 1908 - but that precision hardly matters to us. You will see it clearly, as in a mirror (!) very shortly, as GKC proceeds. But... if you find this too confusing, read these lines:

They said that I should lose my ideals and begin to believe in the methods of practical politicians. Now, I have not lost my ideals in the least; my faith in fundamentals is exactly what it always was. What I have lost is my old childlike faith in practical politics. ...

I was brought up a Liberal, and have always believed in democracy, in the elementary liberal doctrine of a self-governing humanity. If any one finds the phrase vague or threadbare, I can only pause for a moment to explain that the principle of democracy, as I mean it, can be stated in two propositions. The first is this: that the things common to all men are more important than the things peculiar to any men. Ordinary things are more valuable than extraordinary things; nay, they are more extraordinary. Man is something more awful than men; something more strange. The sense of the miracle of humanity itself should be always more vivid to us than any marvels of power, intellect, art, or civilization. The mere man on two legs, as such, should be felt as something more heartbreaking than any music and more startling than any caricature.
[CW1:249-250]

(Yes, there's a ref. to Manalive where a telegram reads "Man Found Alive With Two Legs" - what you haven't read it yet? Get busy.)

Verbal fireworks? Or words on fire doing work? You will hunt very hard to find a real politician, in either England of 1908 or America of 2008, who acts on these terms, who sees the miracle of humanity.

But (you say) I thought you said it wasn't going to be about politics?

GKC dragged it in, not me. But proceed, and be surprised:

This is the first principle of democracy: that the essential things in men are the things they hold in common, not the things they hold separately. And the second principle is merely this: that the political instinct or desire is one of these things which they hold in common. Falling in love is more poetical than dropping into poetry. The democratic contention is that government (helping to rule the tribe) is a thing like falling in love, and not a thing like dropping into poetry. It is not something analogous to playing the church organ, painting on vellum, discovering the North Pole (that insidious habit), looping the loop, being Astronomer Royal, and so on. For these things we do not wish a man to do at all unless he does them well. It is, on the contrary, a thing analogous to writing one's own love-letters or blowing one's own nose. These things we want a man to do for himself, even if he does them badly. I am not here arguing the truth of any of these conceptions; I know that some moderns are asking to have their wives chosen by scientists, and they may soon be asking, for all I know, to have their noses blown by nurses. I merely say that mankind does recognize these universal human functions, and that democracy classes government among them. In short, the democratic faith is this: that the most terribly important things must be left to ordinary men themselves - the mating of the sexes, the rearing of the young, the laws of the state. This is democracy; and in this I have always believed.
[CW1:250]

Now, the well-read Chestertonian will immediately hear the echo of a very famous quote: "if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly." [GKC, speaking of Woman in What's Wrong With the World CW4:199] And, for completeness, this idea of "blowing your own nose" also appears in Heretics, and I leave it for anyone who wants a nice workout side hike; you can find it in CW1:203.

Again, you are wondering: where is the magic? Where are the strange beings?

YOU ARE SEEING THEM. Elvish zoologists call them "humans". (You'll find out about the magic soon enough.) GKC supposes that there is some fundamental law which underlies all sorts of things - which he sums up in the idea that we ought to do certain things for ourselves, as much as we possibly can. (In another context, this idea is a part of the design method called "Subsidiarity" - an ancient idea, and part of Catholic Social Teaching, and about which I have written elsewhere.) But as a broadly used term in government, not delving into the depths or distinctions of some governing mechanism, "democracy" means "rule by the people" - the people choose the arrangements. Like Athens of long ago... Ah, so nice. The splendid happy life of ancient Greece and all that. Houses, Senates, meetings, elections... Ahem. But GKC does not sit and bask in the Mediterranean warmth. He reveals some real depths to this supposedly well-known term, and gives us some singularly rich insights:

But there is one thing that I have never from my youth up been able to understand. I have never been able to understand where people got the idea that democracy was in some way opposed to tradition. It is obvious that tradition is only democracy extended through time. It is trusting to a consensus of common human voices rather than to some isolated or arbitrary record. The man who quotes some German historian against the tradition of the Catholic Church, for instance, is strictly appealing to aristocracy. He is appealing to the superiority of one expert against the awful authority of a mob. It is quite easy to see why a legend is treated, and ought to be treated, more respectfully than a book of history. The legend is generally made by the majority of people in the village, who are sane. The book is generally written by the one man in the village who is mad. Those who urge against tradition that men in the past were ignorant may go and urge it at the Carlton Club, along with the statement that voters in the slums are ignorant. It will not do for us. If we attach great importance to the opinion of ordinary men in great unanimity when we are dealing with daily matters, there is no reason why we should disregard it when we are dealing with history or fable. Tradition may be defined as an extension of the franchise. Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our father. I, at any rate, cannot separate the two ideas of democracy and tradition; it seems evident to me that they are the same idea. We will have the dead at our councils. The ancient Greeks voted by stones; these shall vote by tombstones. It is all quite regular and official, for most tombstones, like most ballot papers, are marked with a cross.
[CW1:250-251]

If you don't already know it, "tradition" comes from a Latin verb, trado which means "I hand over, hand on, pass on" - and "I entrust". So many things you have, and think of as your own, have actually been handed on to you, often with great expense and at great effort on the part of others who were holding them in trust... you are so used to them you have forgotten where they came from - and (alas) you are most often utterly unaware of the power, the intense and extraordinary thing (for which "magic" might be the only good term) that you are capable of wielding with them.

What, for example? Do you really need me to tell you? OK: by what power are you reading this? (I don't mean the computer; I mean your ability to read, and to understand what I have written.) Your language is a tradition. No revolutionary, no "liberal" - in our modern sense - can escape it. Every science, every field of study presupposes language as a basis for its work; in that sense, even the hardest of the hard sciences is just another Liberal Art.

Ah. But consider this sentence again: "Tradition is the democracy of the dead." Are you starting to feel something powerfully magical here? Not just the idea of fairy tale, of some fanciful story told in the nursery. No; the idea that something - ah, like a magic wand - something almost unimaginably powerful was given to you long ago - given as your very own inheritance - and you've always had it. But you never really paid any attention to it, never thought of it as important: that odd wooden stick you've carried, dangling from your belt, or the sparks that flew out when your hand is near it... You don't like that hint of the "m" word? Then think of a pencil in your pocket, and its graphite smears on your hand. (Milo is given such a wand by the Mathemagician.) Not personal enough? Then how about speech? You do not even understand the power of your tongue? Why are so many powerful things attributed to speech? (Read the Epistle of St. James for details!) You have indeed inherited rich, oh, so rich, gifts. You abandon or neglect them at your peril.

One more paragraph brings us to the end of today's leg of our journey, and it is a very elegant summary of today's topic:

I have first to say, therefore, that if I have had a bias, it was always a bias in favour of democracy, and therefore of tradition. Before we come to any theoretic or logical beginnings I am content to allow for that personal equation; I have always been more inclined to believe the ruck of hard-working people than to believe that special and troublesome literary class to which I belong. I prefer even the fancies and prejudices of the people who see life from the inside to the clearest demonstrations of the people who see life from the outside. I would always trust the old wives' fables against the old maids' facts. As long as wit is mother wit it can be as wild as it pleases.
[CW1:251-2]

That word "ruck" is not a typo. (Yes, I had to look it up; I like to look things up, it's fun, you can find so many other things while you are looking!) "Ruck" means "the undistinguished multitude, the crowd of ordinary persons or things". It is one of GKC's favourite topics - you can find all kinds of references throughout GKC's writing to "The Common Man" - there's even a book called that.

GKC wants us, just to begin with, to see ourselves in a mirror (the magic thing with the strange color of the nearby!) It is magic, not because of the mirror, but because of us. We are unusual, we are marvels, we are extraordinary - because we are simply ordinary. And we have not even ventured into preternature (the land of fairy and magic), much less supernature (the Land of the Living, where He dwells in Whose image we are made.)

So - the next time you see a mirror, stop and behold the image and the likeness of God. A broken, sad, weak, confused, often whiney, nasty, mean and rude image, perhaps insanely preferring a demon as a model - but still His image: "For religion all men are equal, as all pennies are equal, because the only value in any of them is that they bear the image of the King." [GKC, Charles Dickens CW15:44] Nothing in the kosmos, except the Most Blessed Sacrament, is as holy as a human being. (Today, for much of the world, is the feast of Corpus Christi, which is transferred to this coming Sunday in the U.S.) Father Brown hints at this great credal mystery:

"It's the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense, and can't see things as they are. Anything that anybody talks about, and says there's a good deal in it, extends itself indefinitely like a vista in a nightmare. ... all because you are frightened of four words: 'He was made Man.' "
[GKC, "The Oracle of the Dog" in The Incredulity of Father Brown]

Yes - one of the effects of reading GKC is we start seeing things as they are. Even in mirrors.

--Dr. Thursday

PS After writing this - and I did it AFTER lunch this time: I find that I have not been of much help at all on this leg. I shall ask you to read GKC's five paragraphs by yourself, and think about them. They are worth it. You will find yourself in awe of such company as we have, both living, and traditional.

Dr. Thursday's Post

Introductory: The Bridge to Elfland

Today, the Thursday in the octave of Pentecost, we come down from the "foothills" of Orthodoxy - what GKC calls the "rough review of recent thought" which is madness (the Maniac, chapter 1), as it is centered on self-destruction (the Suicide of Thought, chapter 2).

And lo: we find a bridge. Bridges could easily occupy several bloggs full of writers, whether one approaches from their science, their engineering, their poetry, their art, their symbolic significance....

Or, as GKC might say, bridges can be viewed as the Common Man views them: in the simple, commonplace sense that they provide a way of getting across chasms, rivers, and other such obstacles.

Sometimes the simple and obvious thing defeats us. (It ought to be the other way around: we ought to be using the simple and obvious to defeat our - uh - opposition.) In this next chapter, perhaps one of GKC's greatest and richest writings, we shall see how magic - yes, real, everyday, honest, homely, fairy-tale magic - can be used in this way. (Oh, are you bothered by that "m" word? Lest you misunderstand, I assure you: there is NO danger of demonism here. See my PS at the end.)

But the bridge before us beckons onward, to a wide and lovely land where we shall start our real quest, because, as we heard a week or so ago, "It is time we gave up looking for questions and began looking for answers." [CW1:241]

Wands out, everyone, and let us proceed.
Click wand here; no spell word is required.

The chapter we are entering is called "The Ethics of Elfland". All the lit'ry folk in the audience (you can tell them from the ink stains on their fingers), and the few philosophers who are still with us, will cheer, expecting this will get into some esoteric discussions of truth, fantasy and fiction. And all the scientists moan. (There are SOME scientists out there, I hope; someone has to be turning the crank to keep this network - uh - networking, and your lights shining. I don't count, as I'm on the hike with you! Then again, even the liberal arts folk have web pages now, and use laser printers, how curious.) As I said, the scientists moan, because they think magic and ethics and all that philosophy is boring. How surprised both sides will be! But I am getting ahead of myself.

I have, in the course of my blogging, often mentioned the works of Father Stanley Jaki, a great Chestertonian, a historian of science, and author of several dozen books, including the excellent little tome called Chesterton a Seer of Science. It contains a most important study of this particular chapter, and from it you will learn that about 1/3 of this "elvish" chapter of GKC was reprinted in Great Essays in Science, a title in the Pocket Library, edited by Martin Gardner (a name well-known in science and math circles). As Fr. Jaki revealed,

There was Chesterton in the company of Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin, Henri Fabre, J.R. Oppenheimer, Arthur Stanley Eddington, Alfred North Whitehead, and Bertrand Russell, so many giants in mathematics, physics, and natural history. Chesterton was also in the company of such prominent interpreters of science as John Dewey, Ernest Nagel, and even T. H. and Julian Huxley.
[Jaki, Chesterton: A Seer of Science, 14]

Now, of course, the moans and cheers from the two realms reverse, with the additional effect of a distinct murmur of confusion.

Well, is GKC crazy? (all that talk of Hanwell earlier, hmm...) What is he talking about? Is this science or magic? The real world or the elvish one?

Yes, that's exactly right. (That's the Boolean Yes, if you know what I mean: it's what the kids say when Mom asks if they want ice cream OR cake!) As I said, we are entering into a lovely, beautiful, amazing - and challenging part of our journey.

But I am talking about GKC, not Jaki. I highly recommend Jaki's book, especially for insight into this particular chapter, and the whole intellectual edifice of GKC, but I dare not go too far into it at present. (It's much like fudge, or donuts, or whatever sweet you delight in... you want to keep eating more... I 've got to stop writing these before lunch.) Ahem.

I said there is a bridge here, and I have intentionally provoked all the audience about it, because I, like GKC, am intent on his great engineering project:

"The rebuilding of this bridge between science and human nature is one of the greatest needs of mankind. We have all to show that before we go on to any visions or creations we can be contented with a planet of miracles."
[GKC The Defendant 75]

Incidentally, I first read that GKC quote in the aforementioned book by Jaki! But it is a magic bridge, and dangerous, as all bridges are. The chasm it crosses is of human make, after all, and so it is much worse than any merely natural division.

GKC gives this name, the Ethics of Elfland, because he wants to give us something as one gives to a child. (And now you MUST hear those ancient words: "Amen I say to you, unless you be converted, and become as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." [Mt 18:3]) We need to sit together, yes, the scientists beside the lit'ry folk, and hear Uncle Gilbert tell us a story... "Will there be dragons?" Certainly. "Will there be real trees?" Oh yes. "Will we be there too?" Why, of course. (And it's a good story, I've heard it before...) You will learn as children do, about reality, and about right and wrong... no! it is NOT a sermon! Erase that thought. It is NOT that kind of tale! It is a story, about a marvellous world. (Will anyone recognize it, I wonder...)

Well, I don't want you to be confused here. This chapter is not in the form of a story. GKC keeps to his wandering wonder of words, marching to unheard music... But the music I hear (in the key of "G") is much like that famous "Promenade" from Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition", a cumbrous but bold waddle in alternate 5/4 and 6/4 signatures, as GKC stops to look at the pictures - of the real world... and hopes we might waddle along with him and see, and admire...

You may feel, as you enter into this chapter, that it is all verbal fireworks and no fusion. Fusion, you know, is the great power source of the universe: it is what makes the sun light up:

Twinkle twinkle little star:
We know much of what you are!

Atomic fusion makes you shine,
Giving us your light so fine...
Twinkle twinkle little star:
We know much of what you are.

Now to you our eyes we lift,
Thanking God for His great gift,
Twinkle twinkle little star:
We know much of what you are.
[from "Stellar Mechanics for Kids" one of my many unpublished works.]

Ahem. But actually the fireworks are works, even if they are not always firey. As you saw, even during the boring parts of the previous chapters, we are advancing. We shall see more of this very lovely, dangerous, and interesting country, the Elvish world wherein we live... but there is something still greater ahead.

GKC begins his serious work in this nursery "fairy tale" place because he is "now to trace the roots of my personal speculation" [CW1:249] and he finds these roots, not surprisingly, in the fairy tales from his early years. Lovely and thoughtful and rich in ideas, delighting the lit'ry realm... AND! At the same time, he gives, (as Jaki indicates) great, stable, reliable underpinnings to the logical and mechanical and scientific - not by taking away, but by adding...

Not either/or, but both/AND - for such is the Boolean Yes.

For he is a bridge builder. The bridge is splendid, but the other side awaits! Hurry! Let's go!

--Dr. Thursday

PS. I fear I ought to put some kind of explanation about use of "magic", and put it down here so it will be short. (though I will most likely fail in that too!)

The delight I have in telling you about magic is because it is exquisitely relevant to GKC's title. For as I use it, (and perhaps GKC too) "magic" refers to permission, not method. "Magic" is really just another word for "authority". If you are relying on "the proper authority" for your actions (however be the precise method of their enacting), those actions are therefore good. If, however you resort to the wrong "authority" (a pretender to, or a usurper of, the real authority) then those actions are bad. This is all spelled out (no pun intended) in Biringuccio's Pirotechnia... Hence GKC says "Ethics" - for his story is not just for mere delight (which is good too), but primarily for teaching about good - hence about truth.

One more word I must add here, the word "occult", which is from the Latin for hidden, NOT for evil. When the earth shadows the moon during a lunar eclipse, the moon is occulted, or hidden. Many things are occult, especially nowadays. The means by which your computer or your car works... most likely these are hidden from you. (Do YOU know about finite state machines or semiconductors or distributors or carburetors?) In philosophical terms, even a magnet or the substance called AMBER are said to be occult - no, not because we somehow think they are "demonic" - but because the means of their workings are hidden:

...we have to go on using the Greek
name of amber as the only name of electricity because we have no notion what is the real name or nature of
electricity.
[GKC, The Common Man 170]

Yes, the Greek word "Elektron" means "amber"; and "electricity" means no more than "the strange thing amber does". Sure, we know lots about them now, and can use them in marvellous ways, as your reading this demonstrates, but they are still mysterious, and certainly not simple to explain. You need to think about this, and about words, very carefully, or you will FALL OFF THE BRIDGE.

(No we are NOT going into "magic" like you may have read in - uh... well, let that remain occult. Perhaps we'll talk more, but elsewhere, and after you've read the chapter. Not here and now.)

Please, don't get worried here. You have no cause to worry. GKC (and his awkward assistant who is writing this) wants you to receive a good gift, as one gives something safe and beneficial to a child... for "If you then being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children: how much more will your Father who is in heaven, give good things to them that ask him?" [Mt 7:11] But do watch your step as we cross the bridge...

One more thing, most unrelated. I mentioned Martin Gardner... He is quite old, and as yet is not quite convinced about the truth the GKC strived so hard to present in this and other books. Please pray for him.

Dr. Thursday's Post

Looking for Answers and Feeling Groovy

With all my emphasis on science or philosophy in the last few weeks, you may be happy to hear GKC's digression into some literary matter - somebody named Tennyson. Asking me who Tennyson was is probably like asking your typical Lit'ry Scholar who Gödel or Schnitger or Planck was. Then again I read GKC so I know a little...Ahem.

Anyway, it is quite funny, because of the parallel place where GKC quotes the same line, he uses a word which became lots more famous in the 1960s... I think it is called the 59th Street Bridge Song, which has a very nice little woodwind backup band playing - I think rock bands should get five extra points when they use a bassoon! Ahem again. But first the quote from Orthodoxy:

It is worth remark, in passing, that when Tennyson, in a wild and rather weak manner, welcomed the idea of infinite alteration in society, he instinctively took a metaphor which suggests an imprisoned tedium. He wrote -

Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change

He thought of change itself as an unchangeable groove; and so it is. Change is about the narrowest and hardest groove that a man can get into.
[CW1:239]

Click here to get into the groove.And now, from two years further back:

Somebody writes complaining of something I said about progress. I have forgotten what I said, but I am quite certain that it was (like a certain Mr. Douglas in a poem which I have also forgotten) tender and true. In any case, what I say now is this. Human history is so rich and complicated that you can make out a case for any course of improvement or retrogression. I could make out that the world has been growing more democratic, for the English franchise has certainly grown more democratic. I could also make out that the world has been growing more aristocratic, for the English Public Schools have certainly grown more aristocratic. I could prove the decline of militarism by the decline of flogging; I could prove the increase of militarism by the increase of standing armies and conscription. But I can prove anything in this way. I can prove that the world has always been growing greener. Only lately men have invented absinthe and the Westminster Gazette. I could prove the world has grown less green. There are no more Robin Hood foresters, and fields are being covered with houses. I could show that the world was less red with khaki or more red with the new penny stamps. But in all cases progress means progress only in some particular thing. Have you ever noticed that strange line of Tennyson, in which he confesses, half consciously, how very conventional progress is? -

Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change.

Even in praising change, he takes for a simile the most unchanging thing. He calls our modern change a groove. And it is a groove; perhaps there was never anything so groovy.
[ILN August 18, 1906 CW27:259-60,emphasis added]

You may not know what "absinthe" is - it's from the Greek word for "wormwood" [see Rv 8:11] and contains a dangerous alkaloid (that means POISON, kids) It's a GREEN liqueur, tasting (I'm told) of anise. The Westminster Gazette, I'm told, was originally printed on green paper. My same source tells me that the Tennyson quote is from his "Locksley Hall".

Is all this somehow linked to evolution? Or, more importantly, to the "Suicide of Thought"? Certainly. If all there is is CHANGE, there cannot be thought. We know change may often be needed (this makes me think of a baby crying with a dirty diaper!) and change is a reality, since that's what "time" is all about. But, in one of the most profoundly scientific statements Chesterton ever made, we find this truth:

"There must in every machine be a part that moves and a part that stands still; there must be in everything that changes a part that is unchangeable."

Is this Chesterton's version of the First Law of Motion? Just about. (It also reminds me of Francis Thompson's great poem "New Year's Chimes" - but I must not digress into that just now; perhaps another time.) What's hilarious - and simultaneously deeply moving - is the context of this quote. GKC is speaking about woman. It's in the chapter called "The Emancipation of Domesticity" in What's Wrong With the World. Your assignment: ponder both the physics and the mystical anthropology in that line; it's home work. Pun intended. But jot it down in your log and let us move on.

The main point here, however, is that this idea of a fundamental alteration in the standard is one of the things that make thought about the past or future simply impossible. The theory of a complete change of standards in human history does not merely deprive us of the pleasure of honouring our fathers; it deprives us even of the more modern and aristocratic pleasure of despising them.

This bald summary of the thought-destroying forces of our time would not be complete without some reference to pragmatism; for though I have here used and should everywhere defend the pragmatist method as a preliminary guide to truth, there is an extreme application of it which involves the absence of all truth whatever. My meaning can be put shortly thus. I agree with the pragmatists that apparent objective truth is not the whole matter; that there is an authoritative need to believe the things that are necessary to the human mind. But I say that one of those necessities precisely is a belief in objective truth. The pragmatist tells a man to think what he must think and never mind the Absolute. But precisely one of the things that he must think is the Absolute. This philosophy, indeed, is a kind of verbal paradox. Pragmatism is a matter of human needs; and one of the first of human needs is to be something more than a pragmatist. Extreme pragmatism is just as inhuman as the determinism it so powerfully attacks. The determinist (who, to do him justice, does not pretend to be a human being) makes nonsense of the human sense of actual choice. The pragmatist, who professes to be specially human, makes nonsense of the human sense of actual fact.
[CW1:239-240]

What is pragmatism? Simply, the idea that truth depends on practicality; thought is only important in its result in action. Here for a moment we see the eminent fairness and true Scholastic character of GKC: he sees, admits, and defends its partial truths and good purposes, while warning of the dangers in its extreme form. This issue of "extremes" hints at something we shall see in a later chapter. Jot that down too.

Now, GKC himself pauses, and gives us a quick review of our recent journey:

To sum up our contention so far, we may say that the most characteristic current philosophies have not only a touch of mania, but a touch of suicidal mania. The mere questioner has knocked his head against the limits of human thought; and cracked it. This is what makes so futile the warnings of the orthodox and the boasts of the advanced about the dangerous boyhood of free thought. What we are looking at is not the boyhood of free thought; it is the old age and ultimate dissolution of free thought. It is vain for bishops and pious bigwigs to discuss what dreadful things will happen if wild scepticism runs its course. It has run its course. It is vain for eloquent atheists to talk of the great truths that will be revealed if once we see free thought begin. We have seen it end. It has no more questions to ask; it has questioned itself. You cannot call up any wilder vision than a city in which men ask themselves if they have any selves. You cannot fancy a more sceptical world than that in which men doubt if there is a world. It might certainly have reached its bankruptcy more quickly and cleanly if it had not been feebly hampered by the application of indefensible laws of blasphemy or by the absurd pretence that modern England is Christian. But it would have reached the bankruptcy anyhow. Militant atheists are still unjustly persecuted; but rather because they are an old minority than because they are a new one. Free thought has exhausted its own freedom. It is weary of its own success. If any eager freethinker now hails philosophic freedom as the dawn, he is only like the man in Mark Twain who came out wrapped in blankets to see the sun rise and was just in time to see it set. If any frightened curate still says that it will be awful if the darkness of free thought should spread, we can only answer him in the high and powerful words of Mr. Belloc, "Do not, I beseech you, be troubled about the increase of forces already in dissolution. You have mistaken the hour of the night: it is already morning." We have no more questions left to ask. We have looked for questions in the darkest corners and on the wildest peaks. We have found all the questions that can be found. It is time we gave up looking for questions and began looking for answers.
[CW1:240-241, emphasis added}

Exactly. And though GKC shall review just a little more in this chapter, we have now passed some important peaks in this leg of our journey. Just past that next little dark spot (Nietzche Ridge) which we'll tackle next week, we shall encounter some very lovely, yet very dangerous territory. Risky, yes; but even more bountiful in its answers - and its goodness. You will be surprised.

--Dr. Thursday

P.S. Having brought up the "unrolling" word recently, I thought I would give you a bonus quote from a little-known source, copied when I was in high school, revealing how true GKC's views on these matters really are, and how children can always grasp their depth:

"While fish in the ocean were just playing around and having a good time, man was hard at work thinking how to evolve."

All I have for reference is this: "quoted by Harold Dunn, a grade school teacher and collecter of children's malapropisms". Dunn's collection is quoted at length in Art Linkletter's Kids Say the Darndest Things, though I can't seem to locate this particular gem in that reference work. Sorry.

Links to Orthodoxy

Just in time to celebrate its 100th anniversary, Ryan at Catholic Audio has announced a page of links, including audio Orthodoxy, chapter by chapter. Put this in your iPods and smoke it. (Pardon my old-fashioned expression.)

Thanks, Ryan.

Seton Hall Lecture I Wish I Could Attend

Good Friday Thoughts from Chesterton's Orthodoxy

God the rebel, God with his back to the wall, God for atheists

That a good man may have his back to the wall is no more than we knew already; but that God could have his back to the wall is a boast for all insurgents for ever. Christianity is the only religion on earth that has felt that omnipotence made God incomplete.

Christianity alone has felt that God, to be wholly God, must have been a rebel as well as a king. Alone of all creeds, Christianity has added courage to the virtues of the Creator. For the only courage worth calling courage must necessarily mean that the soul passes a breaking point - and does not break.

In this indeed I approach a matter more dark and awful than it is easy to discuss; and I apologise in advance if any of my phrases fall wrong or seem irreverent touching a matter which the greatest saints and thinkers have justly feared to approach. But in that terrific tale of the Passion there is a distinct emotional suggestion that the author of all things (in some unthinkable way) went not only through agony, but through doubt.

It is written, "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." [Mt 4:7 quoting Dt. 6:16] No; but the Lord thy God may tempt Himself; and it seems as if this was what happened in Gethsemane. In a garden Satan tempted man: and in a garden God tempted God. He passed in some superhuman manner through our human horror of pessimism.

When the world shook and the sun was wiped out of heaven, it was not at the crucifixion, but at the cry from the cross: the cry which confessed that God was forsaken of God. [Mt 27:46 quoting Ps 22:1] And now let the revolutionists choose a creed from all the creeds and a god from all the gods of the world, carefully weighing all the gods of inevitable recurrence and of unalterable power. They will not find another god who has himself been in revolt.

Nay (the matter grows too difficult for human speech), but let the atheists themselves choose a god. They will find only one divinity who ever uttered their isolation; only one religion in which God seemed for an instant to be an atheist. [cf The Everlasting Man CW2:344]

--G. K. Chesterton Orthodoxy CW1:343
Thank you, Dr. T.

Holy Thursday

This is Holy Thursday, and just as the Church shifts the calendar of fixed dates to accommodate the variable, we also shall shift our focus. The wonder is that we shall nevertheless consider the very next bit of Orthodoxy, since it plays a role in today's considerations.

As those who attend the evening Mass today shall see, although this Mass is the Mass of Masses - the anniversary, as it were, of the first Mass - the gospel reading for today is not about the Eucharist. It's about Subsidiarity. Yes. Did Dr. Thursday just say subsidiarity? Why? Click here.It's where Jesus washes the feet of the Apostles [John 13] Here we see the truth set forth in very clear, though quite horrifying detail. Horrifying, that is, to the ancient Aristotelian view of society with its slaves serving at the bottom and its "best" people ruling (Greek "aristocracy"= rule by the best) at the top. Horrifying, too, to the modern corporate mind which sees their megastructures built from the top down, paying the do-nothing executives VAST amounts and the least minimum possible to the underlings who actually do the work. (What? Not much different in 2300 years?)

But from Subsidiarity, we learn that the higher orders exist to serve the lower - which Jesus demonstrated by washing the Apostles' feet. Ever think about that? Those were bare, or at best sandal-clad feet, that had recently stomped through dust and mud and trash and ... ah... other things one might find on the horse and donkey and camel-travelled roads of that time.

Hey! That's slave work - being done by the Master? Yes: "He took the form of a slave, being born in the likeness of men..." [Phil 2:7]

Why do I use this word "horrifying"? What does that have to do with Orthodoxy, or with the current moment in the liturgical cycle?

Well, when one is about to die, one has to try to deal with the most important matters in one's life. As we know from St. Paul, and from the three Synoptic evangelists, the Eucharist was established amid the Passover rituals, as the new and everlasting passover-covenant. St. John reports how Jesus repeated this dogma six times, [see John 6] utterly scandalizing many who heard it, so much that they went away. We also know, from St. John, the lengthy prayer-instruction which Jesus gave just after the evening meal [John 14-16] - within which are more clues to this mystery.

But as I said, echoing St. John (13:1), Jesus knew he was about to die. This is the single most talked-about death, the single most dramatic death, the single most important death to occur in history, or even in fiction. This death is, as I have harped on previously, an important thing to remember. Dickens told us how important it was that we know, at the outset of the "Christmas Carol":

Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. ...
There is no doubt that Marley was dead. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate.
[C. Dickens, "A Christmas Carol"]

Likewise, we have to enter into this matter of Christ's death - and be fully convinced of it, in order to proceed into these next days.

But "Horrifying"? Why? Because of the death? Because of the manner of death?

No. Because it was so unreasonable, so inappropriate.

Peter, always the spokesman for the others, certainly thought so: "Lord, far be it from You [to die]..." (Mt. 16:22) And also, St. Paul called the crucifixion (1 Cor 1:23) a "stumbling block" to some - apparently the Greek word is "scandal" - that is, "the distressing effect on others of unseemly or unrighteous conduct". He also called it "foolishness" to others. That is, something quite irrational- the Greek word apparently is "moron".

Now, if you take just a few minutes from your day and read the next two or three paragraphs from Orthodoxy CW1:235-6. But don't worry if you cannot, we shall talk some more about them in the future. What does GKC tell us there? The critical line is in that first short paragraph, near the bottom of 235:

...what peril of morbidity there is for man comes rather from his reason than his imagination.

Well! Chesterton, if we are reading him right, seems to be hinting that the problem we men face comes from expecting REASONABLE things - presumably in places where things are just not going to be reasonable.

Or - maybe - just maybe - he's giving some kind of strange paraphrase ... ah ... of St. Paul.

Did I just write that?

Yes, I did. Just last week I was considering something, and I have begun to note some interesting alignments - maybe we might say that GKC is a disciple of St. Paul. I am not arguing this in any strict sense; nothing more, perhaps than a "slovenly poetry", without rhyme or even rhythm. Unreasonable, perhaps, but imaginative.

But there was one thing, NOT from Orthodoxy which hit me, as I thought of the events we recall this week, and considered my writing on our present book... this idea of a journey. And I recalled this, which I warn you may seem very blunt, and perhaps horrifying:

...the life of Jesus went as swift and straight as a thunderbolt. It was above all things dramatic; it did above all things consist in doing something that had to be done. It emphatically would not have been done, if Jesus had walked about the world forever doing nothing except tell the truth. And even the external movement of it must not be described as a wandering in the sense of forgetting that it was a journey. This is where it was a fulfilment of the myths rather than of the philosophies; it is a journey with a goal and an object, like Jason going to find the Golden Fleece, or Hercules the golden apples of the Hesperides. The gold that he was seeking was death. The primary thing that he was going to do was to die. [see Mt 16:21, Lk 12:49-50] He was going to do other things equally definite and objective; we might almost say equally external and material. But from first to last the most definite fact is that he is going to die.
[GKC, The Everlasting Man CW2:339, emphasis added]

OK, now compare that with this:

For I judged not myself to know anything among you, but Jesus Christ: and him crucified.
[St. Paul's first letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor 2:2)]

I know; the words are not even close. I said I was NOT making that kind of argument! But the thought is the same. It's what I said before; it's the Dickens opening. It's most unreasonable, it's putting the End - (isn't death an End?) at the very beginning. It's upside down. Of course it is! He told us so himself, feeding, as it were, GKC with whole rafts of paradoxes. "I have come to serve, not to be served, and to give his life..." [Mt 20:28, emphasis added; this verse is the very kernel and object of Subsidiarity!] Mary, his mother, carrying Jesus within her as an embryo of just a few cells, stated this of God: "He hath put down the mighty from their seat and hath exalted the humble." [Luke 1:52] And Jesus repeated that this inversion shall occur [Lk 13:20] and, as we heard, demonstrated it by washing those dirty feet.

((An aside: Don't let anyone ever tell you Chesterton is the Master of Paradox. Really, that's just another title of our Lord. Just check out the gospels, and you'll see it's true.))

You look a bit concerned: Is that all? I'm still confused. Isn't there any more?

Sure there's more. There's a lot more - to Dickens, to St. Paul, to GKC - and to our remembrance of these next days. There will be, in a future chapter, very powerful and bitter - and shocking - comments about this death, and we shall see a courageous God, a God with his back to the wall, a God who was a rebel, a God who seemed to be atheistic (See CW1:343) But for today that is all you ought to consider.

May God give you the grace "to know nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified".... "to begin with. Or nothing wonderful can come of the story" you are about to hear. [1Cor2:2, cf. Dickens' "Christmas Carol"]

--Dr. Thursday