National Review: Chesterton’s Marvelous Year

National Review's current issue (July 14, 2008) contains this gem: "Chesterton’s Marvelous Year" by M. D. Aeschliman, who revisits The Man Who Was Thursday and more.

It is just a hundred years ago that one of the noblest and wittiest thinkers ever to write in our language, G. K. Chesterton, burst upon the scene with two masterworks. He is impossible to categorize in our specialized subject-area pigeonholes: He wrote vast amounts across a wide horizon, and must ultimately be categorized simply as a writer. In 1908 Chesterton published, among other things, two of the great works of modern literature, his novel The Man Who Was Thursday and his apologetic credo Orthodoxy. His essays and incidental journalism were also represented in a collection that same year, titled All Things Considered.

Although much shorter than the New Yorker article, this one at least praises Chesterton for who he really was.

H/T: Bob C.

Sir John Templeton dies

May he rest in peace.

Three degrees of separation: Templeton created the Templeton prize, which Fr. Stanley Jaki won, who is a Chestertonian scientist.

GKC on a Kindle: First Report

This is the first I've seen that someone has GKC on his Kindle. A paradoxical combination!

Something from G.K.'s Weekly

From the Combox came a request for this quote, which I thought more people would like to read, since it's so "right on!"

I checked the original essay in GK's Weekly, April 25, 1925. This seems to be what you are looking for:

About all those arguments affecting human equality, I myself always have one
feeling; which finds expression in a little test of my own. I shall begin to
take seriously those classifications of superiority and inferiority, when I
find a man classifying himself as inferior. It will be noted that Mr. Ford
does not say that he is only fitted to mind machines; he confesses frankly
that he is too fine and free and fastidious a being for such tasks. I shall
believe the doctrine when I hear somebody say: " I have only got the wits to
turn a wheel." That would be real, that would be realistic, that would be
scientific. That would be independent testimony that could not easily be
disputed. It is exactly the same, of course, with all the other
superiorities and denials of human equality, that are so specially
characteristic of a scientific age. It is so with the men who talk about
superior and inferior races; I never heard a man say:" Anthropology shows
that I belong to an inferior race." If he did, he might be talking like an
anthropologist; as it is, he is talking like a man, and not infrequently
like a fool. I have long hoped that I might some day hear a man explaining
on scientific principles his own unfitness for any important post or
privilege, say: " The world should belong to the free and fighting races,
and not to persons of that servile disposition that you will notice in
myself; the intelligent will know how to form opinions, but the weakness of
intellect from which I so obviously suffer renders my opinion manifestly
absurd on the face of them: there are indeed stately and god-like races- but
look at me! Observe my shapeless and fourth-rate features! Gaze, if you can
bear it, on my commonplace and repulsive face! "If I heard a man making a
scientific demonstration in that style, I might admit that he was really
scientific. But as it invariably happens, by a curious coincidence, that the
superior race is his own race, the superior type is his own type, and the
superior preference for work the sort of work he happens to prefer.

The New Yorker article

Our esteemed President and #1 Chestertonian, Dale Ahlquist, has responded to the New Yorker, and this will hopefully be published in the next issue of the same magazine. I am priviledged to read his response, and will give you a hint at it:

For those of us who love Chesterton, we are always distressed to see him subjected to any vile charge. But we’ve gotten a little tired of the charge of anti-Semitism...Mr. Gopnik has added a new technique to making the charge stick – declaring that Chesterton’s admirers should not defend Chesterton against the horrible accusation. Hm. That is certainly one way to end the debate. I would meekly suggest that a better way would be for people to stop repeating charges that have already been dropped.

There's more, much more, and as always, well written. Let's hope the New Yorker finds this fit to print, and will carry it in the next issue.

Chesterton on American Independence

Collected Works Volume 21: What I Saw in America; The Resurrection of Rome; Sidelights

I have never managed to lose my old conviction that travel narrows the mind. At least a man must make a double effort of moral humility and imaginative energy to prevent it from narrowing his mind. Indeed there is something touching and even tragic about the thought of the thoughtless tourist, who might have stayed at home loving Laplanders, embracing Chinamen, and clasping Patagonians to his heart in Hampstead or Surbiton, but for his blind and suicidal impulse to go and see what they looked like. This is not meant for nonsense; still less is it meant for the silliest sort of nonsense, which is cynicism. The human bond that he feels at home is not an illusion. On the contrary, it is rather an inner reality. Man is inside all men. In a real sense any man may be inside any men. But to travel is to leave the inside and draw dangerously near the outside. So long as he thought of men in the abstract, like naked toiling figures in some classic frieze, merely as those who labour and love their children and die, he was thinking the fundamental truth about them. By going to look at their unfamiliar manners and customs he is inviting them to disguise themselves in fantastic masks and costumes. Many modern internationalists talk as if men of different nationalities had only to meet and mix and understand each other. In reality that is the moment of supreme danger - the moment when they meet. We might shiver, as at the old euphemism by which a meeting meant a duel.

How can one not love a man who starts by turning the old "travel broadens the mind" phrase on its head, and ends with a duel?

This weekend, I invite you to sit back, relax, enjoy your freedom and independence, watch the fireworks, and read Chesterton. The perfect choice, shown above as a teaser, is What I Saw in America available in Collected Works 21. Happy 4th of July!

Dr. Thursday's Post: Glass

The Glory of Glass

As mentioned last time, I have lots of books nearby which help me do things. I thank God for my parents and teachers who taught me to read, and for the bounty God arranged for me to earn which has permitted me to buy and keep these wonderful treasures. Have you remembered to thank those responsible for your gifts?

One of them is somewhat dated two-volume set called Chemical Elements and Their Compounds, which I was reading in preparation for a large-scale poetry project. other things have gotten in the way, and I don't know when I will be able to get to... You want to know why a computer scientist is writing poems about elements? Perhaps you've forgotten this blogg is a CHESTERTONIAN blogg? There's no such thing as a different subject. [GKC, ILN Feb 17 1906 CW27:126] Remember, and write it in your notebook: "There is no such thing as an irrelevant thing in the universe; for all things in the universe are at least relevant to the universe."

Anyway, in this book from the 1950s I found the answer to that poor Vulcan's speculation - and so many others - on the idea of silicon-based life. People love to imagine that because silicon is so much like carbon, with its four bonds, there could be silicon-based life... maybe somewhere in the universe.

These people are not chemists; they don't know how the four bonds of silicon are different from the four bonds of carbon:

The idea that silicon has an organic chemistry of its own, rivalling that of carbon, is now realized to be untrue, owing to the instability of the Si-Si and Si-H links.
[Sidgwick, Chemical Elements and Their Compounds, I 555]

Sorry, it's not happening. However! I have chosen to begin today's journey into Orthodoxy with this bit from chemistry, not to abase silicon, but to exalt it. It is no insult to this wonderful and plentiful element to speak of its limitations - for we remember (all together): "Art is limitation; the essence of every picture is the frame." [CW1:243] Very good. (Are you starting to have some clue as to why I wanted to write poems about the elements? I thought so. Hee hee.)

And the glory of silicon - well, not of silicon itself, which is a rather odd substance, and rarely found outside the laboratory. (People persist in saying "silicone" which is something else, almost a kind of rubber - it is a polymer of the form -SiR₂O- where R is a group such as methyl.) The silicon in an integrated circuit (the "chip" of modern electronics) has been treated with a variety of "doping" agents (things which change how it conducts electricity) and then etched into a fantastic multi-layered mosaic...They are one of the genuine marvels of our day, and an extreme form of grand cooperation among very different fields of study. Again, all very interesting and worth spending time on, but not today.

No, as I started to say, the glory of silicon is in one very famous, and very ancient, compound - one in which silicon is combined with two atoms of oxygen - SiO₂ - one of the main constituents of the Earth's crust, commonly known as quartz, and worked by humans for over 5000 years. From common sand we get the wonderful and highly Chestertonian thing called GLASS.

Now, last week I pointed to the humorous aspects of frogs and dragons - I have at least one bit of that sort of humour this week too, so when you have finished your drink you can proceed, and then I will tell you more about glass.

Swallow, then click here.
As a computer scientist, and a lunatic Chestertonian who moreover has spoken at three Chesterton Conferences, I usually have to find something suitable to express this unusual truth. I found it, and it is quite good - unfortunately the first time I tried to use it in a speech, I laughed so hard I could not continue for a couple of minutes. It's from "The Crime of Gabriel Gale" in The Poet and the Lunatics (Ah, you are seeing some more about my plans, are you?) when our hero has been caught observing a storm, and he says:

"I often stare at windows."

Yes, GG - me too. Even if the windows are not the Gates kind, most of the modern user-interface methods use such a layered, multi-panel approach. Yes, OK - it's funny. Now, let's get back to glass. And please don't bring up that Father Brown story about the absence of Mr. Glass, or I will start laughing. Hee hee hee.

OK, (ahem!) now that we have both regained some control... Recall where we are. We have just introduced very Chestertonian ideas: (1) the importance of gratitude and (2) the "Doctrine of Conditional Joy".

First, Chesterton urges us to be thankful for all things, even the dull or trivial or commonplace; this is the correct and healthy view of reality, and provides a working basis for true contemplation, whether it be scientific, literary, or philosophical. We're given this world (the KOSMOS, or universe) - all of it. We do NOT deserve it at all, and yet we have it. Even if it is not obvious what good it is - a frog, a sea-dragon, a telegraph, a pane of glass - we need to be grateful it is that and not something else. (An aside: this gets into a very deep piece of philosophy: the ontological idea of the perfection of being. But that is a steep and dangerous path. We shall merely note its blazes, perhaps for a future hike, and move on.)

Second, Chesterton points out that this grand delight in the ALL comes with a little warning label. We have the ALL, but only on conditions - and those conditions most likely seem crazily unrelated to anything. Even after some lengthy consideration, there seems to be no good reason for the imposition of such conditions, as slight as they may seem. But then (GKC asks) what's the reason for the grand gift? That's the point. Conditional Joy. (If this is not clear, we're about to see some more.)

These two ideas are the substrate (the foundation, the building blocks) of many fairy tales - and even some stories which are hardly considered such. But let us hear GKC:

This is the tone of fairy tales, and it is certainly not lawlessness or even liberty, though men under a mean modern tyranny may think it liberty by comparison. People out of Portland Gaol might think Fleet Street free; but closer study will prove that both fairies and journalists are the slaves of duty. Fairy godmothers seem at least as strict as other godmothers. Cinderella received a coach out of Wonderland and a coachman out of nowhere, but she received a command - which might have come out of Brixton - that she should be back by twelve. Also, she had a glass slipper; and it cannot be a coincidence that glass is so common a substance in folk-lore. This princess lives in a glass castle, that princess on a glass hill; this one sees all things in a mirror; they may all live in glass houses if they will not throw stones. For this thin glitter of glass everywhere is the expression of the fact that the happiness is bright but brittle, like the substance most easily smashed by a housemaid or a cat. And this fairy-tale sentiment also sank into me and became my sentiment towards the whole world. 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]

Ah, recall some weeks ago I said we would hear more about glass? Here it is - or perhaps I should say here it comes. But let us consider what we've just read, and not skip the unfamiliar parts.

What is Portland Gaol? Well, "Gaol" is the English spelling for "jail" (both come from a Latin word cavea = a cavity or cage).

What is Fleet Street? A street in London, built on the long-vanished Fleet River. But the term is often used as a symbol more than as a geographic reference, as it was (and still is, I am told) the centre of what we now call "The Media" - the site of all the big newspapers - which is why GKC mentions "journalists" in oblique apposition to it. (SO when GKC says "Fleet Street" you can just about always read "The Media" and you'll have it - just remember it's also a real place that GKC walked along...)

Now that you know these terms, please look at this one line again:

"People out of Portland Gaol might think Fleet Street free; but closer study will prove that both fairies and journalists are the slaves of duty."

I think that is a grand line. It was anticipated in GKC's Browning where he says this deeply profound line:

we forget that free speech is a paradox.

We are bound to tradition if we wish to communicate, far more tightly bound than those kept in Portland Gaol. Even "liberals" (modern sense) from the Far Left bow in humble submission as deeply as conservatives (modern sense) when they speak and write - they may try to redefine "is" but don't dare take that method very far - especially when it comes to their paychecks! Any of us, from whatever point in the political spectrum, might bend the rules when we speak or write - but we writers risk losing our readers if we go too far. Free speech is indeed a paradox, and so is free writing. No wonder St. John's most grand line - the grandest of the whole Gospel - is this: "And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us" - the line in the Last Gospel at which we genuflect, like in the English hobby of change-ringing of bells, where the great "tenor" bell is rung after all the others, as all the possible patterns are rung..., or the 01000111 pattern coming every 188 characters in an MPEG stream on cable TV - it keeps us in sync... Ahem. Sorry I was distracted; it is so thrilling to write about this. And someday, if you remind me, I will write something on what he means about fairies being the slaves of duty. But for now let us go back to GKC and glass.

Remember, however, that to be breakable is not the same as to be perishable. Strike a glass, and it will not endure an instant; simply do not strike it, and it will endure a thousand years. Such, it seemed, was the joy of man, either in elfland or on earth; the happiness depended on not doing something which you could at any moment do and which, very often, it was not obvious why you should not do. Now, the point here is that to me this did not seem unjust. If the miller's third son said to the fairy, "Explain why I must not stand on my head in the fairy palace," the other might fairly reply, "Well, if it comes to that, explain the fairy palace." If Cinderella says, "How is it that I must leave the ball at twelve?" her godmother might answer, "How is it that you are going there till twelve?" If I leave a man in my will ten talking elephants and a hundred winged horses, he cannot complain if the conditions partake of the slight eccentricity of the gift. He must not look a winged horse in the mouth. And it seemed to me that existence was itself so very eccentric a legacy that I could not complain of not understanding the limitations of the vision when I did not understand the vision they limited. The frame was no stranger than the picture. The veto might well be as wild as the vision; it might be as startling as the sun, as elusive as the waters, as fantastic and terrible as the towering trees.
[CW1:260]

Yes, indeed - in Egypt there are pieces of glass some three or more thousand years old. The wonder of glass... In another essay GKC points out a marvel which seems to be lost on many people these days, even intelligent ones, even computer people, lit'ry people, and philosophers. Here are the critical verses:

...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. A dark window cannot be a good window, though it may be an excellent picture. ... There is an almost infinite variety of meanings which can be expressed by windows and pillars and all other forms of artistic workmanship - but they have their indwelling limitations. They cannot express darkness in a window or a surrender in a column of stone.
["The Meaning of the Theatre" in Lunacy and Letters]

It is worth considering. How does that link? Because carbon is not silicon! (A window might be made of carbon in its form of diamond, but it won't be nearly as beautiful as it would be if it were cut into dozens of facets.) Because a frog is not a sea-dragon, nor a telegraph! (See my writing from last week.) There is a variety of things in Fairy Land - and in the real world - and they really are different, and not to be confused, even when they are mixed. A wizard does not tell the hero "wave the dragon over the wand and it will vanish" - it only sounds like drunken babble.

Yes, there are some other side paths here, but let us attend to the main trail. We are exploring this "Doctrine of Conditional Joy" - and I must stress something here. We are NOT talking about this abstractly! This "Doctrine" (though it may sound academic, or theoretical) is a real idea, and had its powerful effect on GKC... like this trail, it leads us onward to something more. Re-read how he rephrased it:

"...it seemed to me that existence was itself so very eccentric a legacy that I could not complain of not understanding the limitations of the vision when I did not understand the vision they limited. The frame was no stranger than the picture."

Ah, you sigh. Now you grasp something deeper - and something unexpected - in that famous quote about the frame. Yes. And there's a reason GKC continually weaves, and re-weaves, and links, and re-links: Like a good mystery, like a good story, like a good computer program, like a good sweater or meal or family, like - like Reality - all things relate to all things - and to the ALL: "all things in the universe are at least relevant to the universe."

Recall, a few weeks ago, how I said something about GKC always dealing with vision? Like free speech, vision is a paradox too, with mystic and eccentric limitations. We must be grateful.

--Dr. Thursday
Thank you Dr. T. for this marvelous post.

Taking Umbridge

New Yorker says:

But his core readers are mainly conservative pre-Vatican II types who are indignant about his neglect without stopping to reflect whether their own uncritical enthusiasm might have contributed to it.

I beg to differ. I personally am not a "conservative pre-Vatican II" anything. I'm not a liberal post-Vatican II anything either. And I don't know many Chestertonians who are either.

We are an extremely diverse group, I'd say. I am always amazed at the variety of people who show up at any Chesterton events: from truck drivers to nurses, to DC lobbyists to PhD Computer Scientists. From triple PhD Physics professors to homeschooling homemaking mothers. From Jew to Gentile, from Protestant to Catholic, from young to old, from Greek to Norwegian. There is nothing homogeneous about us, no category to fit us into, other than a mutual love of a certain large writer.

And to say that we, the American Chesterton Society are the contributing factor to Chesterton's lack of popularity today seems to me absolutely absurd. And offensive. Ridiculous. Paradoxical.

Commonweal thinks it is a mistake to defend the anti-Semitic allegations in the New Yorker Chesterton article.

Second Spring goes ahead and defends our man.

GKC in current New Yorker

I'm hearing through the grapevine that there's an article on our man in the current New Yorker and I'm curious to know if anyone's seen it yet?

I'll have to make a trip to my library tonight.

Chestertonian Twins

The picture of Del Teeter and Ross Arnold has surfaced. I have listed them (paradoxically) from right to left, instead of the usual left to right.

Del, you dared me, so here it is!

Wall Street Notices Chesterton?

OK, this is amazing.

Important days this weekend

Saturday June 28
1869 Frances Blogg was born
1901 Gilbert and Frances married
1932 My father, Kenneth James Carpentier, was born.

Sunday June 29
Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul - beginning of the Year of St. Paul (there
are special indulgences; I'll see if I can find a link)

Dr. Thursday has speculated that GKC can be considered a disciple of St. Paul
(Thursday March 20) but we also might note how St. Paul is a convert, a
brilliant thinker and a prolific writer... certainly both men had a
great love for our Lord....

Things to ponder this weekend. And have a piece of cake for Frances, Ken, and the Gilbert and Frances anniversary.

Young Catholic Ladies "Get" GKC

Very refreshing.

Dr. Thursday's Post

Telegraphs, Dragons and Frogs (Oh my!)
GKC's "Doctrine of Conditional Joy"

Before you proceed, please finish your drinks and snacks. (Hey, why are you eating or drinking at the keyboard?) I warn you now, as you may find some of today's writing rather funny. I do.

In preparing to write these Thursday essays, I do a variety of mental tricks to get into the Chestertonian view of things. No drugs, no "virtual reality" gear - often not even a beer - I merely rely on the high tech device known as "books" and the physiology of sight. What a gift. I have a few hundred books nearby to help jumpstart me when necessary, and some are even by Chesterton. But some are not.

One of the curious books I have is the Roman Ritual, this edition printed in 1898, which has some fantastic multi-window graphics, such as our Lord being baptized by St. John (whose birthday we celebrated on Tuesday). I may deal with it more another time, because it has hints of explanation about certain things in Chesterton's writing - but today I shall tell you of one, quite apropos both because of John-the-Baptist and also the medium you are presently enjoying: there is a "Blessing of a Telegraph"! Yes. It is begun by the chanting of the Benedictus, the song of St. John's father and the great Morning Canticle of the Church (Lk 1:68-79). That is followed by Psalm 103 (104), with the antiphon "Blessed are You O Lord, Who makest the clouds thy chariot: who walkest upon the wings of the winds, Who makest thy angels spirits: and thy ministers a burning fire." [103:3-4] The allusion may perhaps be lost on the modern age, as most computing devices rely on 5 volts or less... in the old days things worked on somewhat higher voltages, and so there was a reason that the radio and telegraph people were called "Sparky"!!! Recall also that "angel" is a function, (a job description, if you will) - it means one who carries a message! The telegraph with its sparks is angelic - and thus the Church recalls this powerful image from the Psalms when her minister blesses such devices.

Does that seem just a bit childish? Yes, it does to me, too. Good. You see, as I had cause to state to someone in another context, God gets His hand into everything, unless we work to shut Him out. It's all due to that line in the Creed, per quem omnia facta sunt = "Through Him all things were made."

Yes - all things. Even telegraphs - and dragons.

Remember, I am not the first one to link these disparate thoughts. (Nor was GKC; he just said it more memorably.) I merely recall the famous line "I have often thanked God for the telephone" from GKC's 1910 book What's Wrong With the World (CW4:112). But in this thought - and in particular in that psalm - there is not simply a sense of awesome order, a sense of profound power, a sense of majesty, and a sense of deep and careful planning.

There is also something else. There is, as hard as it will be for you to believe, a sense of humor.
Click here to have laughter and more.

Yes, there is humor. And also something more beyond even that, which we shall hear more about as we proceed. But first the humor.

Consider - remembering the bishop (or priest) is blessing a telegraph, as the choir sings:

...Draco iste, quem formasti ad illudendum ei...

Yes, that says "draco" - Latin for "dragon", one of the north circumpolar constellations, and also the genus of a "small arboreal lizard of the East Indies"... But maybe here it means what you think it means - a big monster, probably aquatic, possibly fire-breathing. (His friends call him "Sparky"... hee hee)

Now, depending on what translation you have at your disposal, you may wish to read to the verse numbered 103(104):26. The Douay version gives this as "...This sea dragon which thou hast formed to play therein" [in the great sea]. The Jerusalem version is even funnier: "... and Leviathan whom You made to amuse You." ("Leviathan" is a crocodile or a whale - er what some call the dragon - I mean the dragon-like creature you and I know as "Sparky". Hee hee.)

Now, while you are pondering the mystic sense of God being entertained at watching these great sea creatures jumping and cavorting, as He claps and laughs like a child at their antics (see Job 38:7 but especially Proverbs 8:30-31) - you ought to recall some of our animal friends we have met previously on this journey, like the giraffe, or the turkey. Today we meet another, as GKC transcribes for us a boyhood riddle. I shall give you the context, because while the gem is important, the setting is far more so. Remember some weeks ago we heard "Art is limitation; the essence of every picture is the frame." [CW1:243] Yes, I think you wrote it down, it's quite important. Now you will begin to see how we apply such things. (But please finish your drink before proceeding. I've told you twice now.)

The goodness of the fairy tale was not affected by the fact that there might be more dragons than princesses; it was good to be in a fairy tale. The test of all happiness is gratitude; and I felt grateful, though I hardly knew to whom. Children are grateful when Santa Claus puts in their stockings gifts of toys or sweets. Could I not be grateful to Santa Claus when he put in my stockings the gift of two miraculous legs? We thank people for birthday presents of cigars and slippers. Can I thank no one for the birthday present of birth?
There were, then, these two first feelings, indefensible and indisputable. The world was a shock, but it was not merely shocking; existence was a surprise, but it was a pleasant surprise. In fact, all my first views were exactly uttered in a riddle that stuck in my brain from boyhood. The question was, "What did the first frog say?" And the answer was, "Lord, how you made me jump!" That says succinctly all that I am saying. God made the frog jump; but the frog prefers jumping.
[CW1:258]

I might as well explain here that this is the foundation motif of GKC's writing, and is of all things he wrote the most important, even transcending his work on humility and pride (though clearly coupled together, as you'd expect!) He was not just thankful for the exciting things - the candy and toys - but for the mundane that no one notices (like legs) or the exotic and dull human things (like the telephone!) Yes, indeed - and note he doesn't thank Parliament or the King or the phone company - but God.

How else can he say, "I have often thanked God for the telephone"?

Because God had His hand in that too. (No; I will not talk about Galvani, Ampere, Maxwell and the rest here; that's for another time.)

You see, unlike others who quarrel or complain, GKC saw (with a shock, like the frog) these things have their purpose. They have been called into existence, directly or indirectly, by divine arrangement, not just the obvious and necessary (the legs) and the pretty and delightful (flowers and candy) but even the strange exotic and curious (the sea monster/dragon, the telegraph, and so on.)

Whew. We are at a peak here, as you see. You sense that term - the "rapture of the heights" - in the sheer hilarity of the moment, which is simultaneously profundity. The silliest bit about a frog (or any animal you care to substitute) is directly connected with something as utterly important and foundational as thanksgiving - remember the very term used for the great Sacrifice of the Mass is "Eucharist" - Greek for "thanksgiving"... And so (I heave a sigh) as your guide I must now point to the next part of the trail. This curious meditation on how the strangeness of reality leads to the height of gratitude - but it leads onward as well, to something rather difficult. Come along.

But when these things are settled there enters the second great principle of the fairy philosophy. Any one can see it who will simply read "Grimm's Fairy Tales" or the fine collections of Mr. Andrew Lang.

[An aside: Grimm and Lang books are available from Dover.]

For the pleasure of pedantry I will call it the Doctrine of Conditional Joy.
Touchstone talked of much virtue in an "if"; according to elfin ethics all virtue is in an "if." The note of the fairy utterance always is, "You may live in a palace of gold and sapphire, if you do not say the word 'cow'"; or "You may live happily with the King's daughter, if you do not show her an onion." The vision always hangs upon a veto. All the dizzy and colossal things conceded depend upon one small thing withheld. All the wild and whirling things that are let loose depend upon one thing that is forbidden.
Mr. W. B. Yeats, in his exquisite and piercing elfin poetry, describes the elves as lawless; they plunge in innocent anarchy on the unbridled horses of the air -

Ride on the crest of the dishevelled tide,
And dance upon the mountains like a flame.

It is a dreadful thing to say that Mr. W. B. Yeats does not understand fairyland. But I do say it. He is an ironical Irishman, full of intellectual reactions. He is not stupid enough to understand fairyland. Fairies prefer people of the yokel type like myself; people who gape and grin and do as they are told. Mr. Yeats reads into elfland all the righteous insurrection of his own race. But the lawlessness of Ireland is a Christian lawlessness, founded on reason and justice. The Fenian is rebelling against something he understands only too well; but the true citizen of fairyland is obeying something that he does not understand at all. In the fairy tale an incomprehensible happiness rests upon an incomprehensible condition. A box is opened, and all evils fly out. A word is forgotten, and cities perish. A lamp is lit, and love flies away. A flower is plucked, and human lives are forfeited. An apple is eaten, and the hope of God is gone.
[CW1:258-9, emphasis added]

Do you see? Please read this again. You will find an important idea, and also two lit'ry allusions. I will handle them first so you can go past them to the important idea, which is not literary but computational. (hee hee)

GKC mentions "Touchstone" - at first I figured that this was some dull heretic, perhaps someone he missed dealing with in Heretics. But I looked around, with the power of AMBER, and found out that he is a clown - a character in a play called "As You Like It" - and in Act 5 Scene 4 you will find this:

I knew when seven justices could not take up a quarrel, but when the parties were met themselves, one of them thought but of an If, as, 'If you said so, then I said so;' and they shook hands and swore brothers. Your If is the only peacemaker; much virtue in If.

Then there is the quote from Yeats, which I am told is from his play called The Land of Heart's Desire.

Now, as a computer scientist, an "IF" is one of the foundational elements of software - it is the idea that a mechanical determination of the truth or falsity of something can be made, and from that determination, a change is made as to which path the future work of that machine will follow. This "conditional device" can be as simple as a thermostat sensing a temperature difference and switching on the heater (or cooler) - or it could be the more interesting determination of whether a given number is larger or smaller than another - and so on. You may be expecting me to quote a rock song, so I will: the very Tolkienesque "Stairway to Heaven" has this:

Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run
There's still time to change the Road you're on.

Two paths and the Road - possibly hinting at Bilbo's Road (that goes ever on), and the debate between Gandalf and Aragorn about crossing the Misty Mountains - but I also hear our Lord saying "I am the Way" [Jn 14:6]... ah... I could also quote the song "Free Will" by Rush: "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice"... But (ahem!) I cannot lecture about conditional paths now, when I am trying to guide you to an understanding of "Conditional Joy"!

Please read this line again:

"In the fairy tale an incomprehensible happiness rests upon an incomprehensible condition."

Do you not hear this:

And the Lord God took man, and put him into the paradise of pleasure, to dress it, and to keep it. And he commanded him, saying: Of every tree of paradise thou shalt eat: But of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat. For in what day soever thou shalt eat of it, thou shalt die the death.
[Genesis 2:15-17]

Sure you do. And just in case you overlooked it, GKC adds: "An apple is eaten, and the hope of God is gone." [CW1:259]

Yes, but now hear again my quote from last week:

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

Fairyland.... We are there, even if you cannot quite see it.

But now you know.

Amazing, isn't it? Yes, weep if you must, but then dry your tears and laugh - and be refreshed.

This the sort of thing that happens when you visit the Elves. And you will find even more surprises as we proceed. You must learn to be grateful for them.

--Dr. Thursday.

What Chesterton Work Are YOU Reading?

Right now, I'm reading The Man Who Was Thursday over again for a project I'm working on. But I'm one of those multi-task readers who is also reading a book on St. Paul, a recently-published novel by a friend, and a yet-to-be-published novel by another friend.

What are YOU reading?

Meeting Up with David Zach

Over the weekend, Futurist David Zach met up with us at the Milwaukee Lakefront Festival of the Arts, and informed my husband that he collects Art Deco antiques (pdf file), which Mike thought was funny for a futurist.

Another Conference Blog post

People are slowly but surely distilling the conference, and talking about it on their blogs.

These are fun to read, and get different perspectives. Here's another.

Conference Notes

Notes about David Zach.

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

Photo Request

From the comments box:

If you get your hands on the rare photo of Del Teeter standing next to Ross Arnold in matching 25th Annniversary Shirts, please let me know!

If anyone can help Del out, please do! Thanks.

Discovery of More Conference Blogging

I'm very sorry I missed the blogging of the Chesterteens, but I have now discovered it. They are posting about the conference and their experience, which is fun to read.

We Have a Winner!

Thanks to all those who entered the 100,000th hit contest, we had a great turnout and you all are so great, and are truly my favorite blog readers and posters.

So now, to announce the lucky winner of the fabulous prize, a recording of the Innocence of Father Brown on CD, recorded by the talented actor, Kevin O'Brien. I have had a preview of this recording, and it is so fun. I hope those of you who didn't win will put it on your wish lists. And I want to particularly thank Ignatius Press and Carl Olson for their generous donation.

The winner is: Entry #15: m All I can tell is you are male and a programmer and live in Purgatory, USA, which is pretty interesting. "m": Please e-mail me your address, and the CDs will be on their way to you.

Thanks again to all who played along with our contest.

Deadline extended to July 1st for Chesterton papers

If you are interested, you have a little more time to get your proposal in.

Vote for Chesterton!

The Summer Reading Program at Aquinas and More is asking for votes to narrow down the reading choices to the top three for the summer. Please go vote for Chesterton!

Thanks.

Dale's New Do

After all the conference talk, no one has yet mentioned to me about Dale's completely new hairdo. Lookin' good, Mr. President!

Last Day to Enter 100,000th prize drawing

Happy 100,000 hits, American Chesterton Society Blog! We've had a lot of entries (20) so you still have a good chance to win. You have until tonight at midnight.

Prize here.

Contest info here.

For some reason, Kevin O'Brien hasn't entered yet. Hmmmm...

Pictures Please

I'd love to see and post pictures from the conference, so don't be shy now, email them to me.

Prayers Update

John is doing much better, baby David is doing much better, thanks for praying.

Please pray for our family, who had a Voldemortish incident occur over the weekend. Actually, it reminded me of the anarchists in The Man Who Was Thursday. Thanks.

More Conference Follow Up

Carolyn's post here.

Kevin was thinking as he made a detour.

Crying with the Chestertonians

I got this message from Dave Zach this am, and I cried when I read it. Because I was cursed and was not present except for my mind, heart and soul, which constantly flew to the conference, and wanted so badly to be there.

And now I raise my glass with you, and expecially to all you, who like me, longed to be there but couldn't:

The Toast to the American Chesterton Society

Dale asked me last night to give this toast, which sort of threw me into a slight panic because it takes me a lot of time to wrestle words to the ground so they'll do what I say. Probably the best proof of that is the fact that my favorite comments after my talk came from two of the Chesterteens (Katie and Sarah, actually) who quite excitedly came up after the talk, holding out their notebooks and said, "You can hear your semi-colons!" "You can hear your punctuation!"

And, I guess you can because I wrestle with the punctuation marks too. [The following bit did not happen, but after chatting with Eleanor Bourg Donlon, who has the same sort of love of language, I should have then and there toasted semi-colons and then toasted giggling teens who actually can spot a semi-colon from thirty paces. I regret this error.]

But I accepted the challenge, gave it a try and here it is:

First of all, I want to share with you one of my favorite drinking toasts:

We are all mortal until our first kiss and our second glass of wine. Eduardo Galeano said that.

And then I found this one this afternoon:

In Vino Veritas
In Cervesio Felicitas

(In Wine there is Wisdom
In Beer there is Joy.)

And this is my favorite romantic toast.

Won't you come into the garden?
I want my roses to see you.

Richard Brinsley Lord Sheridan said that one.

Of course, that's not really a romantic toast but it is a charming thing to say and and it is a romantic thing to say and one of the most important lessons we learned this weekend is that we must defend romance.

On Wednesday night we had a small dinner for the speakers and the Alhquist family. At the end of the dinner we all did toasts. As I was near the end of the line, I kept mine short. I've always loved the St. Cripins's Day speech from Shakespeare's Henry V, so I toasted, "We few, we happy few . . . "

And now, with apologies to Will Shakespeare, Joseph Pearce and, well, everyone one else in the room and, well, everyone else outside of the room,

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers & sisters & Sisters & Fathers,

For those today that have paid attention with Ross, committed suicide with Sean, went mad with Tom, did not go mad with James, were delighted by the romantic Father Dwight, were Shaken (and stirred) by Joseph, enchanted by our lovely Elfin Jen, hit the road with William, found sense & sensibility, but no pride or prejudice with Sara, united for the Trinity with Scott, laughed with Dale, laughed at Dale, and shed their tears with Geir,

They shall be our friends; be they Catholic or Protestant, or anyone else simply trying to find their way home,

These days here have gentled our condition;
And gentlefolk around the world now-sitting before a dull TV
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here, and will hold cheap
their cell phones & laptops & teenaged major appliances
while Any speaks to tell the tale that they fought for
the permanent things with us upon St. Gilbert’s Day.

Ladies and Gentlemen, please raise your glass and toast the American Chesterton Society.

Thank you, Dave, from the bottom of my heart.

Conference Blogging Postlude

Fr. Dwight here.

Alicia here.

Ana asks if you can top her five starvacation.

And a final report from our intrepid yellow journalist, Kevin.

Conference Blogging

Must reads: Kevin's reports. Thanks you Kevin, you don't know how much your efforts are appreciated!

Contest Winner to receive prize

The prize is the coveted "O'Brien" edition of the Father Brown mysteries on audio CD, newly published by Ignatius, and graciously given to us as a gift from Ignatius Press (thank you so much!).

Be sure to go here to enter the contest, and I am now announcing that the contest will close on Tuesday, June 17th at midnight. Good luck, and happy anniversary!

Lonely Meatballs

Apparently, I inspired Dr. Thursday the other day with a comment about making supper. See what you make of this poem.

"Lonely Meatballs"
For Nancy, based on her idea.

Time to make dinner
kids get your crayons and toys and your books out of here
(I need a beer)
Look in the pantry
Thank God they had pasta and sauce and the jello on sale
Thank God for Ale!

All the lonely meatballs...
My cooking has begun
All the lonely meatballs,
I'll have to taste just one.

Out in the kitchen
stirring the sauce in the pot on the stove in the heat
"When do we eat?"
Wash your hands NOW, kids,
Water is boiling, hey kids get out forks, cups and mats
And pasta vats!

All the lonely meatballs...
I buy 'em by the ton
All the lonely meatballs,
I'll have to taste just one.

Look at it cooking,
Taste to be sure that the garlic Oh no I have added too much
Look in the hutch
Add some more sauce - fixed.
Now for the meatballs I baked and I froze: In the pot!
Stir until hot...

All the lonely meatballs...
(A salad would be fun)
All the lonely meatballs,
I'll have to taste just one.

Chop up some lettuce,
They say that using a knife in that way is a crime
I got no time.
Oil 'n' Balsamic
(Spendthrift and miser) a pinch of the salt and mix well
(Shake it like h*ll!)

All the lonely meatballs...
Lord how the time doth run!
All the lonely meatballs,
I'll have to taste just one.

Yeah, there's some cheese left.
Find some wine, darling, then get me the grater out please?
(Rhymes about cheese!)
Yes, it's al dente,
Sit yourselves down kids, and darling will you take your place?
Now we'll say grace...

All the lonely meatballs...
Thank you God for each one
All the lonely meatballs,
Our dinner has begun.

Conference Blogging

Jennifer Overcamp's talk on Elfland via Kevin.

Conference Blogging

A report from Kevin from Thursday night and Friday morning.

Thanks, Kevin!

Contest

I am hereby and forthwith announcing an American Chesterton Society Blog Contest!

As our stat counter is immenently about to turn or perhaps has already turned, 100,000 hits, visitors, persons, that is; we are about to celebrate this fact.

How we celebrate is thus: with cake, ice cream, and a contest.

You will put your name in the comments box, wishing us Happy 100,000th Birthday! Your name will be entered into a drawing. If you win, you will win a prize. Chestertonianly, I don't have a prize yet, but I'm working on that.

UPDATE: WE'VE DONE IT! 100,129 this am! I think it is totally appropriate that we did it during the conference. Keep the entries coming! The prize is something Chestertonian.

Conference Blogging

Fr. Dwight Longenecker

Carolyn Hansen

John DeJak

Kevin O'Brien


If you know of any others, let me know, please.

Prayers

Gosh you guys, your prayers work. John is out of the hospital, and feeling better. Test results are not in yet, but he's doing ok. Thanks for praying.

Another prayer request has come in: please pray for the Carter family, who lost their little kindergarten-aged daughter due to complications from pneumonia this week. This family, her friends and teachers are grieving the loss of this innocent little child. Thanks for praying for the Carter family.

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

Innocence of Father Brown on CD-Now Available

The ACS's own Kevin O'Brien presents a dramatic reading of Chesterton's most famous detective fiction. Now available via Ignatius Press.

The 2008 Chesterton Conference begins today!

As the first session isn't till the dinner tonight at 6pm, I suspect that all across America today, people are driving, flying and boarding trains with high anticipation. What is more exciting than a train station? Or an airport terminal? The smells, the sounds, the feeling you get in the pit of your stomach. Something exciting is about to happen, and you're on your way. The trip is part of the excitement, and helps set the stage for the next three days.

God bless ChesterCon08! Long Live ChesterFest! *Clink* Would that we could all be there this year! Next year in Jerusalem!* Amen! *Clink*

Prayers

Please pray for John. He is in the hospital as doctors run tests on his heart. (Joan says he was cutting the grass when all his strength left him.)

John is one of our ACS members, and frequent contributor to Gilbert magazine. Also the founder of the magazine.

Please also pray for safe travels for all those attending the Chesterton conference this week.

UPDATE ON JOHN from Dale: I spoke with Joan this morning. The doctors will be doing tests on John to determine if an infection has gone to his heart. He has a weak heart valve, and he doesn’t do well with infections. So it is the worst combination. He appreciates our prayers.

Thanks for the prayers, and keep them coming.

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.

Blog Administration

It has been noted that our stat counter (over on the left and down a bit) is approaching 100,000 hits. We shall celebrate with style.

Blogger has allowed one to prep ahead posts (for example, when your blogmistress is out of town and might not be allowed on the internet by various and sundry thrifty-minded hotels) and keep them as drafts. However, one must then somehow get on the internet to release these "drafts" from prison and post them.

Then, recently, Blogger began a new service called "Scheduled" posts, where one could create a draft and then say when the post should be posted, and Blogger would "hold" these scheduled posts until the correct time, when they would be automatically posted.

Blogger seems to have lost this ability (perhaps temporarily) and so I noticed that posts I had "scheduled" appeared as "published" as if in the future.

So, I hope this explains the problem to anyone who wondered about it.

Suessical, Jr.

If you live near St. Louis (or will be there June 13 or 14th, you'll want to check out this performance of Suessical, Jr.

Blogging from the Conference

A good friend, lucky enough to be going to the conference AND blogging about it to boot; we'll be following his note-taking with interest next week.

The Annual Chesterton Conference Needs Your Help

And I don't just mean money.

Although we do take money.

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

Roanoke Time recommends Chesterton for Summer Reading

Recommended by a homeschooler, too.

“The Man Who Was Thursday ” is classic, but short, for the medium to avid reader.
It has a suspenseful, quickly paced plot. The book tells the story of Gabriel Syme, a spy in England. It follows him though intricate webs of anarchy, battle and deceit. At only about 100 pages, the book is a quick read and once you pick it up, it’s hard to put down.
Overall, “Thursday” is a magnificent book. It sparks thought about the nature of life, of good and evil and of government. There are twists and nuances all through the book.
By far one of the most entertaining and suspenseful novels I’ve read, “The Man Who Was Thursday,” will not disappoint.
— Elizabeth Sallie, Home School

Book Discussion starting: Heretics

Conference Month

As it is now June, hopefully you've made your plans to attend the conference. If you can make it, you will not regret it. If you cannot, there are tapes or CDs, and also, we can join in prayer that the conference will be good and inspirational to all those who attend.

Summer Reading Program at Aquinas and More

St. Francis is one of the top choices for this year and your study guide will be linked to it.

God bless,
Ian

Aquinas and More Catholic Goods