Solving the Problem

I was speaking with a friend recently about how some time ago (when I was doing my PhD) there was a big to-do about one of those talking dolls that said "Math is hard". (No, there is no hidden joke here because today is the feast of St. Matthias.) In one of those impromptu seminars grad students have in the hall or in the lab, we discussed the topic and I volunteered to try to find the official answer. Of course, I found it in Aquinas, but the answer came as a surprise to some.

((click here to find out the answer!))


The answer is that math is easy. Oh, yes, I know this provides just another reason to detest Aquinas and Thomism and medieval philosophy and the Catholic Church - or at the least, Chestertonian computer scientists who write about such things. I know you were expecting a discussion of that question, and you can find a short one here, but I have another topic today - though a related one. Hee hee.

Instead of dolls, I want to talk about another aspect of education, which may help me make some progress in my study of pedagogy... Incidentally, did I ever tell you that I used dolls to help teach computer science? Oh, yes, I did, I had forgotten. (See here for details!) What was I teaching? The curious and very general tool called "recursion" which also happens to be related to today's topic.

So what is today's topic again?

It's the very strange term which one hears in the Media from time to time, usually referring to how some grade-school teacher doesn't want to teach addition or such things, because she wants the children to learn "problem-solving skills". I've heard that a few too many times now, and think it is silly. You see, I am a computer scientist, and have been in the field for over 30 years, having faced a bizarre range of wacky questions both in academics and in industry - and except for a very tiny handful of tools, I cannot even imagine what they mean by a "problem-solving skill". One of the most powerful I have is finite state machines - I would undertake to teach an attentive fifth-grade class this, and have them reasonably fluent in a few weeks - but I doubt that anyone teaches that. It's too hard. Another tool very powerful, is recursion - which I taught to college students with those wonderful nesting dolls. But I am sure there would be restrictions to that pedagogical method, not to say a series of odd comments about the sanity and stability of the professor.

Well, I do not know what skills they mean, since the few useful methods we have to actually solve problems are not the ones they teach! And when I mention something that is traditionally taught in grade school - I guess I ought to say had been traditionally taught - that is, long division - these people throw things at me, whining about how we have calculators now. But I am not going to talk about long division either - maybe another day. Oddly enough if you cannot do long division, certain parts of mathematics and computer science will be forever closed to you as being beyond your understanding. How sad. (And I thought they say how they want the children to learn problem-solving skills???)

Let us instead look at another branch of mathematics, which you may have heard about indirectly without knowing there is such a thing. It is a very splendid and interesting branch, with very easy and fun parts, as well as very hard and exciting and difficult parts, rather like hikes or sporting events or even cooking recipes... I was motivated by a posting by our friend "Old Fashioned Liberal" who alluded to "degrees of separation". I have never seen the movie, but I seem to recall that the number "six" is used.

Now, I might spend a lot of energy - and blogg-space - writing about six. It is a very interesting number. It is called "perfect" because its factors other than itself sum to itself. (Two others like this are 28 and 496.) Or we might bring up "psephy": the very curious old trick from ancient days, wherein numbers are written as letters, and discuss the "number of the beast" (Rv 13:18) which has three sixes. But I won't.

Instead, I will tell you just two things about six, which perhaps may augment the topic of the movie - which I seem to recall hearing was the suggestion that each human is "related" by no more than "six degrees of separation" to each other human. Demonstrating such a thing would require a "problem solving skill" in spades - and I don't know if they proved it in the movie or just assumed it. But I happen to have a small acquaintance with one "problem solving skill" - that interesting branch of mathematics called "graph theory" - and it might play a role in solving the problem.

However, I don't feel up to tackling that issue today, so I will tell you about two others which are much easier and more fun. But first, since you may be thinking you got onto some math guy's blogg, and not the Chesterton blogg, I will give you the relevant Chesterton quote, which is really wonderful and may give you chuckles...

An infinite number of years ago, when I was the chief weakness of a publisher's office, I remember that there was issued from that establishment a book of highly modern philosophy: a work of elaborate evolutionary explanation of everything and nothing; a work of the New Theology. It was called "The Great Problem Solved" or some such title. When this book had been out for a few days it began to promise an entirely unexpected success. Booksellers sent to ask about it, travellers came in and asked for it, even the ordinary public stood in a sort of knot outside the door, and sent in their bolder spirits to make inquiries.

Even to the publisher this popularity seemed remarkable; to me (who had dipped into the work, when I should have been otherwise employed) it appeared utterly incredible.

After some little time, however, when they had examined "The Great Problem Solved", the lesser problem was also solved. We found that people were buying it under the impression that it was a detective story. I do not blame them for their desire, and most certainly I do not blame them for their disappointment. It must have exasperated them, it would certainly infuriate me, to open a book expecting to find a cosy, kindly, human story about a murdered man found in a cupboard, and find instead a lot of dull, bad philosophy about the upward progress and the purer morality. I would rather read any detective book than that book. I would rather spend my time in finding out why a dead man was dead than in slowly comprehending why a certain philosopher had never been alive.
[GKC "Reading the Riddle" in The Common Man 60]

Now, I promised two interesting things about six which will shed some light on OFL's phrase about "degrees of separation".

First, I will give you a very curious fact from graph theory, but translated. (I suspect this is the fact that lurks behind that movie.)

In any group of six people, there must be either three mutual acquaintances or three mutual strangers.

And now you prove it, Doctor?

Proof? You want proof? Hee hee. I'd rather ask another question, oh "skilled problem-solver": How many kinds of groups of six people can be formed, considering just the relation of being acquainted? How can you find out?

Please don't grab a sheet of paper, it will take you quite a little bit of time, since there are 156. (See here if you wish to see what they look like!) These groups run from six total strangers to six mutual acquaintances. If you thought there were 32768, you get partial credit, since that's how many distinct groups of "six-humans-related-by-acquaintance" there are, but not the kinds of groups. Here's what I mean. If one group has all strangers except for Andy and Bill, and another all strangers except for Edith and Francesca, these are the same "kind" since both have one pair of acquaintances.

(In graph theory I have asked the number of graphs having six vertices, which are unique up to isomorphism.)

The fun thing is to show it... but as you have pointed out, this is not a mathematics blogg.

Now, let us take something a bit more profound - and a bit more human - which also has six in it, though it requires seven people.

Huh? you say. How can that be?

That is the famous "fencepost problem", sometimes called "the error of plus or minus one" - a certain organist I know has a musical way of putting it: "Consonance is always just a half-step away." (hee hee) But you are distracting me, and you will understand in just a moment!

Here's the statement of the fact:

Every Catholic is related through no more than six links to every other Catholic.

Yes, and here is how the chain works:

Joe Catholic

His parish priest

His bishop

The Pope

Another bishop

Another priest

Another Catholic

Now, this particular kind of graph is called a "tree" - er - but I have no time to give you all the details now. (You may recall the words in St. John's Gospel about "I am the vine and you are the branches", which suggests that our Lord also knew about this.)

As you can see, there are seven individuals, and six links between them. In another class during grad school our professor called attention to this hierarchical structure, pointing out there are just four levels to the tree... he noted that the comparable structure for academics is far deeper. And yes, in case you hadn't caught on, the very common file technique for Unix and Windows and all comparable systems - the hierarchical file system of directories and files - parallels the structure of the Catholic Church! (Oh, yes, the "root" directory is just the computer's analogy for the Pope. How elegant that computing offers a demostration of the distinction between clergy and laity... alas, but that is a topic for another time and place.)

Lest you think I have gone completely askew into the depths of my tech world and forgotten Chesterton, I shall present Chesterton's own explanation, which keeps things linked, yes, whether pork or pyrotechnics, pigs or the binomial theorem...

...a philosophical connection there always is between any two items imaginable. This must be so, so long as we allow any harmony or unity in the cosmos at all. There must be a philosophical connection between any two things in the universe; if it is not so, we can only say that there is no universe, and can be no philosophy. A possible connection of thought there is, then, between any two newspaper paragraphs, though we may not always happen to think of it. And, as I say, it is my mental malady that I almost always do happen to think of it.
[GKC ILN Feb 17 1906 CW27:127]

And if that does not help, I will give you the real stinger, which goes back to my original matter of pedagogy and the far larger topic of the purpose of things...

I am sure that, in so far as there is any sort of social breakdown, it is not so much a moral breakdown as a mental breakdown. It is much more like a softening of the brain than a hardening of the heart. What does seem to me to have slackened or weakened is not so much the connection between conscience and conduct clearly approved by conscience, as the connection between any two ideas that could enable anybody to see anything clearly at all. It is not a question of free thought but of free thoughtlessness. The difficulty is not so much to get people to follow a commandment as to get them even to follow an argument. It seems to tire their heads like a game of chess when they are in the mood for a game of tennis. And in truth their philosophy does seem to be rather like a game of tennis, with the motto of "Love all." But, it will be noticed that the rules of tennis are really rather more arbitrary than the rules of chess; only, while they claim the same obedience, they are easier to obey. It seems to me that this modern mood does not mind anything being arbitrary so long as it is also easy. It does not inquire into the authority or even the origin of any order which it has come to regard as ordinary. It only asks to move smoothly along the grooves that have been graven for it by unknown and nameless powers - such as the powers that organise the tubes or the trams. It does not object to ruts if they are also rails. It does, indeed, wish to be comfortable, and will sometimes abandon convention for the sake of comfort. But it seems to me that this generation has rather less than its fathers and grandfathers of the special sort of discomfort that used to be called divine discontent. Divine discontent, of the older sort, was disposed to drive its questions backwards against the movement of existence and discover the causes of things. The old abstract revolutionist would have had the star-defying audacity to ask who it is who really runs the trams or controls the tubes. Most of the young rebels of to-day are content to ask whether they will not soon be made a little bigger or a little quicker or a little more convenient. In other words, the individual has indeed a certain kind of independence but I am not sure that it is the kind of independence which requires most intelligence.
[GKC ILN March 13 1926 CW34:58]

Maybe we need to start teaching graph theory in grade school... along with long division. It might just solve the problem! Math is easy, you know...

What Conference Traditions Remain the Same?

I suppose the biggest question on anyone's mind is will Miki make Petta wine? (Is Miki coming?)

I also wonder, will anyone be bringing Stilton cheese?

Will there be cheese and crackers and wine between talks?

Will there be roast hot dogs and home brew after talks?

I think meals will be different, except for the Saturday Night Banquet. It looks like we may eat our meals in our own dorm cafeteria? Or maybe there is a general cafeteria where we'll go? I just noticed that when I signed up for my dorm room, it said breakfast and lunch were included. So I'm also wondering, what about supper Thursday and Friday?

Dale Answers All Questions If Only You Click Here!
From Dale Ahlquist:

It would be nice to preserve every conference tradition, but that sort of stopped when St. Thomas brought down the hammer last year, which is why we fled. We are going to look at this as a great opportunity to bring Chesterton cheer to a different city every year.

The plan is to serve wine and snacks during the conference, as in years past, something that we were prevented from doing last year at St. Thomas.
As of right now, Miki is planning to come with homemade wine.
There will be Stilton.
Hot dogs were always a spontaneous event in other years, so there is no way of knowing what will happen in that regard. There will, however, be an excellent cigar smoking area in a lovely garden setting for late night philosophical discussions.
All the meals, except the banquet, will be at the university cafeteria and can be purchased right on site. However, the cost for breakfast and lunch on Friday and Saturday is included in the price of the rooms. It was just an odd requirement we had to deal with from Seattle University.
The only meal we have to pre-sell is the Saturday Banquet, which is catered.

Chesterton Conference Firsts

This year's conference has many firsts.

This is the first time the conference has been held in Seattle.
This is the first time the conference has charged a fee for attending.
This is the first time there is a picture of a chandelier at the bottom of the conference info page. (What's that all about?)
This is the first time I know if that a movie will premiere at the conference.

There may be more firsts, have you found any?

Seattle Conference

Sign up today! The Seattle Chesterton Conference is going to rock.

The Monster Zero

I have a lot of projects just now, which is usual - and you might be interested in one of the newest, which may end up being a commentary on pedagogy: the "science" of teaching, especially as it deals with mathematics and the sciences. No, I am not going to take a hint from Fr. Jaki and write Chesterton a Seer of Mathematics - though that would make a very interesting collection. It would send all our lit'ry friends screaming down the hall. But it is certain that he mentions mathematics with at least some reasonable skills, even if he was no specialist - but then that is Jaki's argument in Chesterton a Seer of Science. How else could someone write something as wonderful as this:

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

No - but if we are serious about God and Chesterton we cannot evade mathematics, just as we cannot evade technology...

Nor can you evade clicking here if you wish to read more...

Quite some time ago, I wrote a column on my own blogg linking numbers and Chesterton and Aquinas and that old whine about the Barbie doll that said "Math is hard". As usual my rambling discourse was larded with several Chesterton quotes - and part of this argument gets to the root of the matter: the mystical and difficult topic of epistemology - the science of knowledge itself, as well as pedagogy: What do we know, how do we know it, how do we impart that knowledge to others?

Since I have only a limited time today, and I do not expect to begin the writing of this massive text just now, I must try to take another and Chestertonian approach. Rather than proceeding formally, I would try to do what Chesterton di, and propose sample ideas which may help get to the larger abstractions. For example:

One of the issues which comes up in any discussion of mathematics is the spectacular thing called "zero". It is easy enough to begin talking about the history of the idea, or about the convenience it provides - the grand simplification we have in our "base ten" scheme of writing numbers is a fantastic advance over what the Romans had, and even the Greeks for all their mathematical cleverness (think Euclid!) If you doubt this, just get out a nice big sheet of paper and try multiplying LXXVII by CIX. Or, if that is too easy, try multiplying oz by rq. Take your time... then try multiplying 77 by 109, and see how much easier a time you have!

But there is another aspect of zero which is lots more interesting than its history or its convenience in numeric notation. It is a place where something deeper lurks - at least according to some writers, it touches on metaphysics. They begin with the idea that it is a kind of word - a "something" - which stands for what they call "nothing"... but I cannot go there. For one, I think there is a difference between the number zero and the idea of nothing, since zero is just as "real" a thing as every other number. But I was not just being a rebel - at least I didn't think I was. (Besides, there's a time when it may be good to be a rebel: we saw that not so long ago when we read Orthodoxy, remember?)

So I sat and thought about this, trying to figure out what was going on. I remembered the technical definition of zero as a number - I mean a value - and not as a digit (a symbol) which is a convenience for writing numbers.

You mean there's a real definition, Doctor?

Oh, yes. Zero is the identity in what we call the monoid of the integers under the operation of addition. (Yes, zero is also the identity for the reals, and so forth, but we'll leave that for another day.) What does that mean? It means you can add zero to any number and not change that number. Obvious, you say - but there didn't have to be such a thing. There are other things in mathematics called "semigroups" which do NOT have zero! Sure they are strange, but contrary to Barbie, math is easy - St. Thomas Aquinas himself said so.

OK... but.. what does all this blather about zero have to do with Chesterton, Doctor?

Well, I wondered whether GKC had anything at all to say about "zero" and it turns out that "zero" comes up very rarely in the AMBER collection. But when it does, it sheds a marvellous light on the topic. Just consider this,

The great psychological discovery of Paganism, which turned it into Christianity, can be expressed with some accuracy in one phrase. The pagan set out, with admirable sense, to enjoy himself. By the end of his civilization he had discovered that a man cannot enjoy himself and continue to enjoy anything else. Mr. Lowes Dickinson has pointed out in words too excellent to need any further elucidation, the absurd shallowness of those who imagine that the pagan enjoyed himself only in a materialistic sense. Of course, he enjoyed himself, not only intellectually even, he enjoyed himself morally, he enjoyed himself spiritually. But it was himself that he was enjoying; on the face of it, a very natural thing to do. Now, the psychological discovery is merely this, that whereas it had been supposed that the fullest possible enjoyment is to be found by extending our ego to infinity, the truth is that the fullest possible enjoyment is to be found by reducing our ego to zero.
[GKC Heretics CW1:127]

...something of which Christmas is the best traditional symbol. It was then no more than a notion about the point at which extremes meet, and the most common thing becomes a cosmic and mystical thing. I did not want so much to alter the place and use of things as to weight them with a new dimension; to deepen them by going down to the potential nothing; to lift them to infinity by measuring from zero. The most logical form of this is in thanks to a Creator, but at every stage I felt that such praises could never rise too high; because they could not even reach the height of our own thanks for unthinkable existence, or horror of more unthinkable non-existence. And the commonest things, as much as the most complex, could thus leap up like fountains of praise....
[GKC G. K.'s Weekly Dec 13, 1934 quoted in M. Ward, Gilbert Keith Chesterton]

It is commonly in a somewhat cynical sense that men have said, "Blessed is he that expecteth nothing, for he shall not be disappointed." It was in a wholly happy and enthusiastic sense that St. Francis said, "Blessed is he who expecteth nothing, for he shall enjoy everything." It was by this deliberate idea of starting from zero, from the dark nothingness of his own deserts, that he did come to enjoy even earthly things as few people have enjoyed them; and they are in themselves the best working example of the idea. For there is no way in which a man can earn a star or deserve a sunset. But there is more than this involved, and more indeed than is easily to be expressed in words. It is not only true that the less a man thinks of himself, the more he thinks of his good luck and of all the gifts of God. It is also true that he sees more of the things themselves when he sees more of their origin; for their origin is a part of them and indeed the most important part of them. Thus they become more extraordinary by being explained. He has more wonder at them but less fear of them; for a thing is really wonderful when it is significant and not when it is insignificant; and a monster, shapeless or dumb or merely destructive, may be larger than the mountains, but is still in a literal sense insignificant. For a mystic like St. Francis the monsters had a meaning, that is, they had delivered their message. They spoke no longer in an unknown tongue. That is the meaning of all those stories, whether legendary or historical in which he appears as a magician speaking the language of beasts and birds. The mystic will have nothing to do with mere mystery; mere mystery is generally a mystery of iniquity.
[GKC St. Francis of Assisi CW2:73-4]

That last might well set the tone for my text, if it is ever written - just read this bit again:

...he sees more of the things themselves when he sees more of their origin; for their origin is a part of them and indeed the most important part of them. Thus they become more extraordinary by being explained. He has more wonder at them but less fear of them; for a thing is really wonderful when it is significant and not when it is insignificant...

Perhaps by now zero has become just a tiny bit extraordinary to you - which, if it is nothing at all, is quite a trick.

P.S. Having reread this before I posted it, I find it hilarious that he uses the word "significant" there - it is a clue to understanding the use of zero as a digit, for the zero in "10" or "100" or "1000" is quite significant for a mere nothing... Hee hee.

Conference Information Available Now!

Your Challenge: Write a Clerihew about the Swine Flu

Blog challenge: write a clerihew where instead of a person, we put in "swine flu" or H1N1, if you can find a rhyme for that.

Class, get to work!

Chesterton on Swine Flu

I just know Chesterton would have come up with some good humorous ways to talk about swine flu. Have you heard any? Thought of any?

I can just hear him saying something like, "Apparently, I shall now have to give up the habit of kissing bovine, a habit which I had, up till now, preferred not to indulge in. However, it seems to me as though it isn't that different than kissing a frog, something which princesses have done through all the ages. As I am not a princess, however, it seems more likely that those of you so inclined shall have to give up kissing me, temporarily, I hope. Let this be a lesson to us all. Kiss with trepidation and fear, cautiously and sanitarily. The prince you kiss may turn to swine before his time." Or perhaps something better than that. Your turn.

Patience Is A Virtue

Is anyone else checking the ACS web site 10 times a day in hopes that the conference details will be announced? Especially in light of the fact that the site declares the information will be released at the "end of April", a date which has, in fact, passed.

I am eagerly looking forward to the conference in Seattle this year; for one, there are some interesting speakers and events taking place (i.e., Israel Gow and Manalive); for two, I have an e-friend in Seattle that I will actually get to meet when I get there; and for three, I will get to see Mark Shea again in person, a delight to be sure. Last time I met him, he tipped me off to a movie that our family has enjoyed over and over again (maybe you can vote on whether or not I tell you the title of that movie, it's one you either love or hate so I hesitate to mention it, because when you find out we love it, you may think differently about me and my family--in case you already don't, that is :-))

Meanwhile, I keep telling myself to be patient. And then I go check the site again :-)

Chesterton Music Video Appearance

Via Chesterteens, thanks to Clare, here is an oldish Rickie Lee Jones singing Satellite video in which Chesterton makes a "guest" appearance.

Pretty fun, thanks Clare!

Wow. Great Report on the Vatican Evolution Conference in March

Art Livingston to Speak in Chicago

Centuries & Sleuths Bookstore, 7419 W. Madison St., Forest Park. (708) 771-7243.

May 9, 2 p.m.: G.K. Chesterton Society will host lecturer Arthur Livingston presenting "The Yeoman Farmer in the Old South."

The Pope of Lepanto

We complete this month of April today - a busy month with Holy Week, the Triduum, and the Octave of Easter, with completing our study of GKC's Orthodoxy and with the obsequies for Fr. Stanley L. Jaki, and the usual assortment of the less dramatic matters of life.

Rather than start a new large project (what it might be I have no idea - do you?) rather than just wandering around through our AMBER collection bumping into unusual GKC quotes, I thought that since today, April 30, the feast of St. Pius V, is a Thursday, we might just take a brief look at this man, the Pope of Lepanto...

((click here to read more))
What is that "Lepanto" you ask? It was one of the greatest naval battles of history - Chesterton wrote a grand poem about it, and the ACS has a handy annotated edition with historical and literary commentaries - so I shall not try to condense it all here. But the battle happened on October 7, 1571, where the united forces of the West (the "Holy League") under the leadership of Don John of Austria, defeated the Turkish Armada in the bay of Lepanto, in Greece...

It was not a sure thing. The "Soldan of Byzantium", the leader of the Turks, had his eyes on Rome, the "Golden Apple" - the West was unstable, and seemed to be refusing to unite against him, and so he hoped to invade Italy and take a great prize, the heart of the Western World:

For the inmost sea of all the earth is shaken with his ships.
They have dared the white republics up the capes of Italy,
They have dashed the Adriatic round the Lion of the Sea,
And the Pope has cast his arms abroad for agony and loss,
And called the kings of Christendom for swords about the Cross...

This great Pope, Pius V, a Dominican, turned to God - he asked that Christians everywhere recite the Rosary, and people prayed - and they were heard:

The Pope was in his chapel before day or battle broke,
(Don John of Austria is hidden in the smoke.)
The hidden room in a man's house where God sits all the year,
The secret window whence the world looks small and verydear.
He sees as in a mirror on the monstrous twilight sea
The crescent of his cruel ships whose name is mystery;
They fling great shadows foe-wards, making Cross and Castle dark,
They veil the plumed lions on the galleys of St. Mark...

Yes... in Rome he had a vision of the battle, far to the east... and knew of the victory. But you need to read the poem in its entirety, and then get the book for more details.

In my study of the works of Fr. Jaki, I found another interesting detail, well worth some consideration in our present circumstances...

The Church was founded by Christ to be the embodiment of extraordinary faith or perspective. And it should seem nothing short of extraordinary that in spite of most ordinary churchmen - from popes through bishops to priests - that extraordinary perspective or mental vision was kept alive as time went on. The times were at times dark indeed. The history of celibacy is a case in point. Countless councils went on record against priestly concubinage. Canonical punishments of the harshest kind were leveled at offenders - apparently to no avail. At even worse times the abuses were tacitly condoned from the highest places. But even then there have been shining examples to the contrary. There were times of drastic shortage of priests, such as the years immediately following the Council of Trent. As a remedy, Emperor Maximilian begged the pope, Pius V, to permit priests to marry. The adamant refusal of the pope (he was adamant because he was a saint) was amply justified by the end of the sixteenth century. God once more produced children of Abraham out of an apparently barren landscape covered with stones. New orders - Jesuits, Piarists, Oratorians - and renewed old ones, Capuchin Franciscans in particular, and the seminaries set up by the decree of the Council of Trent, began to bear ample fruit.
[Jaki, "Man of One Wife or Celibacy" in Catholic Essays, 84-5]

Possibly we need to pray more...

Yes, the Archconfraternity of the Holy Rosary still exists, and it is still fighting the Powers of Darkness, which are busy working against us... See here for details on how to join.

A Blogger Convert's Story Involving Chesterton

Andrew Pudewa

Over the weekend, I had the privilege of meeting Andrew Pudewa, director of the Institute for Excellence in Writing, who was giving talks at the homeschooling conference I was attending.

Mr. Pudewa's talks were filled with humor and a huge dose of common sense. It seemed to me as if he were borrowing a lot of ideas from our largest and best friend, GKC.

So it was not a surprise to hear that not only does Andrew love Chesterton, he is a lifetime member of the American Chesterton Society. I didn't know we had lifetime members, that must be from a lifetime ago, before my time with the ACS, I guess.

Another Young Adult Novelist Inspired by Chesterton

James Kennedy interviewed by Chicagoist:

C: It’s very, Roald Dahlian? Dahl-esque?

JK: Oh, he is exactly what I want to be like.

C: It’s very James and the Giant Peach-ish. I take it his writing was--

JK: Love Dahl. Love everything about him.

C: One of the biggest inspirations in this book?

JK: He’s one of the inspirations but he’s not the biggest. Probably the biggest is—have you read anything by GK Chesterton?

C: No.

JK: He wrote a book in around 1905 called The Man Who Was Thursday. It’s about a group of anarchists in turn-of-the-century London, each of them named after a day of the week. They’re led by Sunday, who’s this larger-than-life, beyond-good-and-evil character. The hero, a policeman, infiltrates the group as Thursday, to get at Sunday. The Belgian Prankster and Sunday have a lot in common. Sunday seems to float above the narrative. His character reminded me of like, when you see Bill Murray in a movie, he sometimes seems like he’s detached from the movie he’s in, that he’s ironically distant from the story that his character is in. Anyway, the idea of Sunday fed into my idea of the Belgian Prankster, who’s ironically removed from the entire world. Of somebody who he wants to make the worst joke ever.

Conference Logo Found in Secret Internet Location!

Designed by Ted. Schluenderfritz, artist extraordinaire!

Fr. Rutler on Fr. Jaki

From the Rutler article:

Father Jaki's great lights were Newman and Chesterton, about whom he wrote books from his unique perspective as a philosopher of science, but his intellectual father was Pierre Duhem, mathematician and physicist. He even wrote a book about Duhem's hobby of painting landscapes. That spectacular French pioneer in thermodynamics and hydrodynamics paved the way for Father Jaki's perception of the essential role of Christianity, and in particular medieval scholastics such as Oresme, in providing the mental and cultural matrix for the development of modern physics.

...and...

In electing Newman and Duhem and Chesterton for mental fraternity, he was organizing in subconscious hope what might be a convivium in the heavens of the Savior of Science.

Read it all here.

St. George and Father Jaki

Sean, our steadfast editor-of-the-magazine, reminds me that today is the feast dayof St. George, who "was for England", and so I gladly fly his banner, full of strong heraldry, which is blazoned "Argent, a cross gules".

And so, to supply Sean's patrons at his Blue Boar blogg, I hunt through the nearly 300 references to St. George in AMBER, wondering (as I am during this time) if there might be something which will help shed some light on Father Jaki and his work. And I found something remarkable...

((click here to read more ))

I saw this morning a literary competition in an exceedingly highbrow weekly, a prize being awarded for a conversation between a modern interviewer and St. George. And I was struck by the fact that clever, and even brilliant, contributors missed much of the point, even about the modern interviewer, by missing the point about the ancient saint. I am not setting up as an authority on either. I am not pretending to be learned; nor is there here any question of learning. It is a question of quite superficial information, but of information that is fairly well spread out over the whole surface. I have not been right slap-bang through "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" lately, any more than had Mr. Silas Wegg; I have not read every word of the "Acta Sanctorum" within the last week or so; I have not even read very closely the relatively romance of "The Seven Champions of Christendom." I have nothing but general information; but it is fairly general. What surprises me in people younger, brighter, and more progressively educated than myself is that their general information is very patchy.

Now, it is unfair to say that they know nothing about St. George, because it may fairly be answered that there is nothing to be known about St. George. In one sense, nobody knows who St. George was; we only know who he was not. The only clear and solid fact about him is that he certainly was not what Gibbon said he was; the contractor of Cappadocia. He was merely recorded as a common soldier of the legions martyred with multitudes under Diocletian; nor is there any particular reason to doubt that he was. All the rest is legend, though legend is often very valuable to history. And I mean by general information the sense of the life in legends; how they grow; where they come from; why they remain. I know what saints
were supposed to be; what patron saints were supposed to do; how they often did it for the most diverse groups ages after their death; how other saints besides George dealt with dragons; how other nations besides England invoked St. George; how the saints were before the knights; how the knights were before the nations; and so
on. In short, I have picked up quite crudely what Mr. Wells calls an Outline of History; but a more scientifically educated generation still seems to have only snippets of history; the lie out of Gibbon; the legend about the dragon; the phrase "St. George for Merry England," and such isolated items. The result is a curious sort of narrowness, even about the problem of the present or the immediate past. For instance, one quite intelligent contributor apparently identified "St. George" as somebody supposed to have lived in "Merry England," and explained that his period (whatever it was supposed to be) was not really merry, because there was a great deal of mud in the streets, or people lived in mud hovels. Apart from everything else, I call it narrow for a man to suppose that Mud is the opposite of merriment. Did he never make any mud-pies? Was he not much merrier making them than contributing to intellectual weeklies?

But the essential point is this. Everybody thought the joke must be found in showing how unlike St. George's time was to ours. I think it would be a much better joke to show how extremely like St. George's time was to ours. But the writers are hampered in this by being extremely vague about what was St. George's time. Now, a man in the later Roman Empire, like George the Martyr, would have seen all round him an ancient world that was astonishingly like the modern world. Whether or no Merry England was a suitable phrase for mediaevalism, whether or no mediaevalism was all mud, it is quite certain that the Empire of Diocletian was not all mud. Imperial Rome was not all mud, but all marble, all mortar and massive building, all pipes and tanks and engineering, all sorts of elaborate equipments of luxury or hygiene. And among all those palatial baths and towering aqueducts, George would probably be thinking pretty much what many an intelligent man is thinking now - that man does not live by soap alone; [Cf Mt 4:4 quoting Dt. 8:3] and that hygiene, or even health, is not much good unless you can take a healthy view of it - or, better still, feel a healthy indifference to it.

Suppose, for instance, that the soldier George had read some of the satires on fashionable society that were produced in that old Pagan world. He would find fact after fact and fashion after fashion exactly parallel to our own. He would find Juvenal making fun of fashionable ladies who join in masculine sports or adventures in a spirit of self-advertisement. The Roman satirist describes how grand Roman ladies would appear as gladiators in the arena, sacrificing not only modesty, but the manners of their rank in order to be in the limelight. That exact fashionable blend of Feminism and Publicity did really exist in the real epoch of the real St. George; almost exactly as it exists today. Or suppose the Roman soldier read the religious and philosophical literature circulating through the Roman Empire. He would find all that we call New Religions now already called New Religions then. He would find idealists who were Vegetarians, like Apollonius of Tyana; theosophists who had learned all about Reincarnation from Brahmins and Hindu seers; prophets of the Simple Life in the drawing-rooms of duchesses, talking about the secrets of health., wealth, and wisdom; promises of a new Universal Religion, which should include all beliefs without any particular belief in any of them. If the real original St. George did find himself interviewed by a modern newspaper man, he would think that hardly anything in the newspaper was new. He would not think primarily that he had come into a strange world, far away from dragons and princesses and mediaeval armour. he would think he had got back into the old bewildered and decaying world of the last phase of Paganism, loud with denials of religion and louder with the howlings of superstition. Certainly he would find himself in a world in which it was possible to say much of what the Pagan philosophers and much of what the Christian Fathers said of those original Last Days. But I will not push the enquiry so far as to ask whether, in this epoch or in that, there was anything particular for the Saint to do, except to die.

[ILN June 18 1932 reprinted in All I Survey; thanks to Frank Petta and my mother]

You may be wondering what any of that has to do with Father Jaki and his work. It's very simple. As GKC says, "I think it would be a much better joke to show how extremely like St. George's time was to ours. But the writers are hampered in this by being extremely vague about what was St. George's time." One of the important things Fr. Jaki has done is to bring to light some very interesting details about the past - in particular about science and scientists. He wrote with far more erudition - which is a fancy word meaning he uses lots more footnotes, which tell you what books he's read - but his argument is much the same as GKC's. It's a matter of seeing things more clearly, more deeply - and knowing how "saints dealt with dragons".

It's a useful skill, for there still are dragons around. To arms!

World Wide Library Holdings of Chesterton Works

From Ellen:

Hi Nancy,

I came across an interesting GKC source on the internet today, and it might be of interest to your blog readers.

Or simply, go here, search G.K. Chesterton.

It is a public catalog listing of holdings of all libraries that subscribe to a cataloging database once known as OCLC. It is a good source to find books, check titles, etc.

I looked at the GK Chesterton page, and it had all kinds of neat features, including a publications "timeline", works in other languages, etc. Remember, this lists LIBRARY HOLDINGS, not everything everywhere, but it is an interesting resource, I think.

Or a great timewaster.

Or blog fodder.

Thanks, Ellen!

E.C. Bentley's Mystery Fiction Reviewed

Gilbert Columnist speaking in Chicago

Gilbert columnist David Fagerberg is participating in an upcoming conference in the Chicago Archdiocese:

The Liturgical Institute presents

Liturgy, Justice and Social Reconstruction
April 24, 2009

A one day conference restoring the link between the grace given in the Sacred Liturgy and the renewal of society. Find out more.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church states, “…it is not easy for man, wounded by sin, to maintain moral balance.” Grace is therefore necessary to purify and elevate these human acts, and the surest font of grace is the sacred liturgy. Real societal reconstruction, often called “social justice,” is only possible when connected to the Church’s worship. More than secular social work or political activism alone, societal reconstruction grows from the inspiration of the Holy Spirit to make human beings the “hands” of Christ so that in a life of virtue, we may love our neighbor as ourselves for the love of God.

Please join the Liturgical Institute and the following speakers as we address this topic:
Dr. David Fagerberg, University of Notre Dame; Reverend Dennis Gill, Office of Worship, Archdiocese of Philadelphia; Dr. Elizabeth Nagel, Mundelein Seminary; Reverend Edward Oakes, SJ, Mundelein Seminary; Reverend Martin Zielinski, Mundelein Seminary

WHEN: April 24, 2009
WHERE: University of Saint Mary of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary
Conference Center, Mundelein, IL
REGISTRATION
FEE: $75.00
ADDITIONAL: www.liturgicalinstitute.org
INFORMATION: Barbara – 847.837.4542

Does God Exist? A Modern Debate

It took place recently at Biola University in California.

I wish Chesterton had been on the other side of that stage, don't you? I mean, how easy it is to say, "you have the burden of proof, since you say God exists. *I* don't have to prove anything, since I say he doesn't exist."

(I can see Chesterton chuckling to himself, and taking notes with a pencil on scraps of paper while Mr. Hitchens speaks. Then, he may turn and say, "Well, maybe you don't have to prove God exists, since you, though a notable orator and skilled debater on a variety of subjects, cannot take up this simplest of subjects; perhaps you'd like to prove to us then your own existence. Are you real, Mr. Hitchens? Are you alive, Mr. Hitchens? How do you prove your own existence and what, exactly, and more importantly I might add, are you existing for? For what purpose and meaning is your life, to go round the country telling people their beliefs are nonsense? Then, by virtue of your own words, your own beliefs are nonsense. For people believe, Mr. Hitchens, in dogma, whether they know they do, or not." Or something like that, and chuckling and smiling all the time.)

Yes, Mr. Hitchens. That's why you make money on books about how God doesn't exist, by stating you don't have anything to prove?

Well, this sounds like a lower form of evolution to me. And a lower form of debate, too.

The first principle of debate is for the sides to be open to being persuadable. Mr. Hitchens is obviously dogmatically tied to his doctrine. The Christians were too nice to him. They should have brought out swords and prepared to fight to the death. Mr. Hitchens has already proved for years he is unmoved by words. He needs a "Chesterton" to befriend him and love him into faith (which still might not happen--look at Shaw), or someone to threaten him, like in a foxhole, or a 9-11, or a miracle. His heart is completely hardened. This can't be fixed on one evening's debate.

Dr. Thomas Dillon of TAC

The American Chesterton Society mourns the loss of Dr. Thomas Dillon of Thomas Aquinas College in California. Dr. Dillon died in a tragic car accident while traveling in Ireland.

Captalist Socialist Distributist Conference Report

Dear friends of The Society for Distributism,

Photographs and a brief summary of last week's conference may be found here.

Many of you have asked if the conference was taped. The event was recorded, however we will inform all of you if and when this becomes available.

I want to thank each and every one of you for your prayers and support. The event was a success thanks to all of you. --Richard Aleman

Easter Meditation, GKC and Jaki

Happy Thursday in the Octave of Easter!

Few paragraphs of GKC have the sheer emotional power of this one. It will make you cry - and laugh - and jump up and down... it will make you want to write, to cook, to work, to play, to do whatever you have to do - in order to have your share of the utterly amazing life that GKC describes...

((click here to continue))
And it's what Christians have been doing for the last 2000 years:

The members of some Eastern sect or secret society or other seemed to have made a scene somewhere; nobody could imagine why. One incident occurred once or twice again and began to arouse irritation out of proportion to its insignificance. It was not exactly what these provincials said; though of course it sounded queer enough. They seemed to be saying that God was dead and that they themselves had seen him die. This might be one of the many manias produced by the despair of the age; only they did not seem particularly despairing. They seemed quite unnaturally joyful about it, and gave the reason that the death of God had allowed them to eat him and drink his blood. According to other accounts God was not exactly dead after all; there trailed through the bewildered imagination some sort of fantastic procession of the funeral of God, at which the sun turned black, but which ended with the dead omnipotence breaking out of the tomb and rising again like the sun.
[GKC The Everlasting Man CW2:295-6, emphasis added]

As you know, last week was the completion of the commentary on GKC's Orthodocy - and though I did make a small tribute to Fr. Jaki there, and thereby a token bow to the dramatic liturgical moment of Holy Thursday, I hardly could write what I wanted to about either Jaki or Holy Thursday.

Today, I have at least posted the suitable Chesterton quote for this time - oh, how it ought to be made into a vast bold painting, or a really loud rock song - or perhaps a rock musical... or something, with a gigantic pipe organ and an orchestra, like the Jungen piece called "Symphonie Concertante"... well, I cannot go into that now. I don't have a pipe organ here, or access to one. Not at present, anyway.

And I ought to have written about Holy Thursday too. Perhaps for Corpus Christi I can do something.

But also I need to write about Fr. Stanley L. Jaki, OSB - and yet I find it too soon. Like the Fellowship of the Ring, mourning in Lorien, as Legolas said it is too soon for such things.

So instead I shall quote Jaki, and give you a glimpse of the relation this great Chestertonian scholar had with our Uncle Gilbert...

[My book] Miracles and Physics begins with a quotation of Chesterton's dictum: "The most incredible thing about miracles is that they happen." [from "The Blue Cross" in The Innocence of Father Brown] This dictum is worth quoting not only on account of its paradoxical strength, but also because it is part and parcel of the vast and ever fresh outflow of the thought of a truly Christian philosopher. I did not put it this way either in my book, Chesterton: A Seer of Science, or in my essay, "G. K. C. as R. C.", and much less in my first publication on Chesterton, a study of his criticism of Blatchford, a prominent British atheist of the turn of the century, whose books sold at that time by the millions. That they are now totally forgotten may suggest that atheism may not be the best assurance for a book to be kept in print. Atheism has to be reinvented again and again. Only the unadvised see in it originality as it finds ever new spokesmen for some antiquated arguments.
My original encounter with Chesterton goes back to the mid-1950s, when I read through his Orthodoxy, though I hardly plumbed its depth. One phrase in it, however, became engraved in my memory, and I found it very effective in disarming young atheists, increasingly numerous among Catholic college students. In that phrase, Chesterton exposed the rationalist, who tries to put heaven in his head and finds his skull split in the effort. Years later, when I took a more sustained look at Chesterton's major works, my interest in him was certainly aroused on seeing his remarkable battling of scientism, my bête noire. But since I had already flayed that dead horse more than it deserved, I doubt that I would have been prompted to delve into Chesterton's thought for that reason alone.
Two further promptings had to come so that in the back of my mind there should slowly emerge the plan of Chesterton: A Seer of Science. One of the two was the falling into my hands of an unpretentious volume in the Pocket Books series, Great Essays in Science, put together by Martin Gardner. Most of the essays reprinted there were familiar to me. But I was utterly surprised to find among them "The Logic of Elfland," a chapter from Chesterton's Orthodoxy. When I first read it sometime in 1956 I was utterly blind to the extraordinary grasp which Chesterton displayed there of what science was truly about. The other prompting came when I read, about ten years later, Chesterton's St. Thomas Aquinas and Gilson's astonished comment on it. Gilson had just delivered his famed Gifford Lectures, The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy, but on reading Chesterton's book he became convinced that Chesterton seized the gist of Thomas' thought in a way that could not be improved upon.
As I did my research on Chesterton: A Seer of Science I found that this was not Gilson's first encounter with Chesterton. He had already heard, around 1927, Chesterton lecture at the University of Notre Dame. Gilson felt that he was in the presence of a first-class philosopher who in addition had a facility with phrases that philosophers usually cannot match. Forty or so years later Gilson emphatically repeated this erstwhile evaluation of Chesterton, the philosopher. Chesterton was, of course, a Christian who philosophized without trying to become a philosopher. Like Gilson, Chesterton came to Christian philosophy rather unintentionally. By battling solipsism as a deadly enemy, Chesterton could find life and sanity only in that realism which dogmatic, orthodox Christianity alone could assure. Chesterton soon saw that Catholicism was the only form of Christianity that consistently and firmly stood for facts and reality. The evidence is already in Heretics where Chesterton gives his reasons why Christ chose Peter, the fumbler, to be the rock foundation of His Church. [this is in CW1:70] One of the greatest challenges of Chesterton's biographers is to explain why it took a dozen years before Chesterton formally joined the Church. They must, of course, take into account the inscrutable workings of God's sovereign grace.
In my book on Chesterton I dealt strictly with the richness of his reflections on science, which would have done credit to any accomplished philosopher and historian of science. The chapters of that book came from lectures delivered at the University of Notre Dame, to the dismay of some professors there who found it intolerable that so many "conservatives" came to hear me. Liberals once more displayed their illiberality as well as their shallowness of mind, which resorts to easy categorizations instead of serious appraisals of the matter on hand. One of those professors dismissed Chesterton as a "mere journalist." He did not take note when I personally called his attention to Gilson's testimony about Chesterton's greatness as a philosopher.
Chesterton was also a Catholic who never tried to conceal that he was a Catholic. He knew that concealment in that respect is its most counterproductive form. For it is an ageless truth that man is a religious being and those prove this best who use philosophy to show that they are not. Man is a being who lives by religion whether he admits this or not. By trying to live without religion man can all too readily succeed in turning into an animal, a fact which philosophers have the primary duty to consider, unless they care only for their own ideas. Increasingly they do not care for matters that weigh most heavily on men's minds.
[Jaki, A Mind's Matter: An Intellectual Autobiography 196-8]

If you are a scientist - you ought to get Jaki's Chesterton a Seer of Science and read it. And even if you are not a scientist, you ought to get it and read it.

More another time.

Requiem aeternam dona ei Domine.
Et lux perpetua luceat ei.
Requiescat in pace. Amen.

"Our God knows the way out of the grave." [See GKC TEM CW2:382]

The Ball and the Cross

I've just finished reading The Ball and The Cross for the very first time.

I. Loved. It.

OK, I cried at the end. And sometimes, that makes me love a book. It has a very satisfying and satisfactory ending. But everything that happens along the way is exciting, too. The adventurous travels, the constant seeking to find a place to duel, the introduction of the women, whom you just know become wives, the priest, the devil--this book has it all. It was a page-turner for me, and kept me company during a long illness. I highly recommend it.

I read it in the Ignatius Press Collected Works Vol. 7, which you can get here, or you can get the book alone here.

New Book: A Treasury of Chesterton Aphorisms

G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936), widely considered the greatest Christian apologist of the first third of the twentieth century and champion of the "common man," was a master of the aphorism: pithy, astute, proverb-like sayings or maxims that comment on general truths of life.

This 300-page collection consists of more than 2100 Chesterton quotations: all single sentences, drawn from 34 of his non-fiction books and 229 articles written for The Illustrated London News.

They have been painstakingly selected and organized under 281 topics, with extensive cross-referencing underneath, directing readers to many related topics. The aphorisms under each category are presented in the order they appear in Chesterton’s works, and chronologically from one work to the next. Access is made easier by handy indices of topics and citations categorized by primary sources.

This sounds quite handy.
H/T: Mark C.

Fr. Jaki Obits

Seton Hall University
New York Times
From the Pontifical Academy of Sciences

New Books available from the ACS on-line catalog

William Oddie’s new bio of GKC:

The first volume of the most comprehensive biography of Chesterton ever to appear. Oddie has brought together previously unpublished material to provide insight into Chesterton's spiritual formation. In the process, he methodically dispels many of the unsavory rumors about GKC that have been carelessly bandied about for years. Any serious student of Chesterton must read this book. Highly recommended by the American Chesterton Society.

And The Coloured Lands (with a new afterword by Martin Gardner):

Essays, sketches, poems, short stories and some indescribable stuff from Chesterton, compiled by Maisie Ward. First published just after his death, it is one of his most sought after books, now back in print at last. Includes "Half Hours in Hades," "The Disadvantage of Having Two Heads," "Immortal Idiots," "Mrs. Chesterton's Donkeys," and of course, "Plakkopytrixophylisperambulantiobatrix." Completely Delightful.

A Very Blessed and Happy Easter to you

May this Easter be a peaceful and hopeful time for you and your family.

I am struggling with bronchitis, but I'm on the mend now that I have antibiotics.

And since I won't be sitting next to you in church this Sunday (and you wouldn't want me to, I have the worst sounding cough!), may I wish you a virtual "Kiss of Peace" and say

Peace be with you, Blessed Easter!

News about the Conference!

More news about the conference topics and talks, with specifics coming at the end of April.

The Last Surprise

Twice before I had to post my lengthy wanderings on GKC's Orthodoxy when I and the Chesterton community were in mourning at the departure of dear friends - and today, on this Holy Thursday, as we stand at the end of our journey through this great book, I find we must again pause as we think of Father Stanley L. Jaki, OSB, one of the greatest of Chestertonians, who has now gone to the Inn at the End of the World...

But again, as in the case of Frank Petta, and his dear wife Ann Stull Petta, I find Father urging me on. I think of his revelation in Chesterton a Seer of Science that Martin Gardner chose an excerpt from Orthodoxy to appear in his 1957 volume Great Essays in Science! And many times over this past year you have heard me drag in references to Jaki as we considered certain issues in our study.

Then, it might be urged on me that (due to the surprise which is coming) I ought to "carry over" this posting until next week, and so somehow preserve the holiness and quiet of this day. And so I had planned.

But I thought some more... and I think there is a good reason to complete the study today - as you shall see.

(( but first you have to click here... ))

There is one more thing to be said. One more strange paradox, the most strange of all. And again, we are given a tiny summary, a verbal equivalent of the musical recapitulations and reprises of the great themes of our text...

But this larger and more adventurous Christian universe has one final mark difficult to express; yet as a conclusion of the whole matter I will attempt to express it. All the real argument about religion turns on the question of whether a man who was born upside down can tell when he comes right way up. The primary paradox of Christianity is that the ordinary condition of man is not his sane or sensible condition; that the normal itself is an abnormality. That is the inmost philosophy of the Fall. In Sir Oliver Lodge's interesting new Catechism, the first two questions were: "What are you?" and "What, then, is the meaning of the Fall of Man?" I remember amusing myself by writing my own answers to the questions; but I soon found that they were very broken and agnostic answers. To the question, "What are you?" I could only answer, "God knows." And to the question, "What is meant by the Fall?" I could answer with complete sincerity, "That whatever I am, I am not myself." This is the prime paradox of our religion; something that we have never in any full sense known, is not only better than ourselves, but even more natural to us than ourselves. And there is really no test of this except the merely experimental one with which these pages began, the test of the padded cell and the open door. It is only since I have known orthodoxy that I have known mental emancipation. But, in conclusion, it has one special application to the ultimate idea of joy.
[CW1:363]

Now, there's another line that has often gotten overlooked - a line which really explains the whole attitude of Christianity. Let us see it all by itself and think about it:

The primary paradox of Christianity is that the ordinary condition of man is not his sane or sensible condition; that the normal itself is an abnormality.

This is no unreasoning Tao, the sheer juxtaposition of meaningless words to give even less meaning to life and being. This is an insight into the unrest that even the Tao - yes, even the Buddhist in the last throes of his forsaking of reality - must still feel, even if he refuses to admit it: the normal itself is an abnormality. For we live our lives here, and are not at home - yet.

Next we have this charming summary of Chestertonian anthropology, which I shall re-format for ease in presentation:

Q: What are you?
A: God knows.
Q: What is meant by the Fall?
A: That whatever I am, I am not myself.

Please memorize and be ready to recite for next week. Ahem.

Then we have that little allusion to the Madman - the theme of that chapter we saw so long ago: "It is only since I have known orthodoxy that I have known mental emancipation." This line will be heard in its proper key (no pun intended) when he will write (in 1927): "To become a Catholic is not to leave off thinking, but to learn how to think." [GKC The Catholic Church and Conversion CW3:106] But we must not go into that today. For GKC has just set up the modulation to go into his final cadence - which, of course, introduces a totally new theme:

It is said that Paganism is a religion of joy and Christianity of sorrow; it would be just as easy to prove that Paganism is pure sorrow and Christianity pure joy. Such conflicts mean nothing and lead nowhere. Everything human must have in it both joy and sorrow; the only matter of interest is the manner in which the two things are balanced or divided. And the really interesting thing is this, that the pagan was (in the main) happier and happier as he approached the earth, but sadder and sadder as he approached the heavens. The gaiety of the best Paganism, as in the playfulness of Catullus or Theocritus, is, indeed, an eternal gaiety never to be forgotten by a grateful humanity. But it is all a gaiety about the facts of life, not about its origin. To the pagan the small things are as sweet as the small brooks breaking out of the mountain; but the broad things are as bitter as the sea. When the pagan looks at the very core of the cosmos he is struck cold. Behind the gods, who are merely despotic, sit the fates, who are deadly. Nay, the fates are worse than deadly; they are dead. And when rationalists say that the ancient world was more enlightened than the Christian, from their point of view they are right. For when they say "enlightened" they mean darkened with incurable despair. It is profoundly true that the ancient world was more modern than the Christian. The common bond is in the fact that ancients and moderns have both been miserable about existence, about everything, while mediaevals were happy about that at least. I freely grant that the pagans, like the moderns, were only miserable about everything - they were quite jolly about everything else. I concede that the Christians of the Middle Ages were only at peace about everything - they were at war about everything else. But if the question turn on the primary pivot of the cosmos, then there was more cosmic contentment in the narrow and bloody streets of Florence than in the theatre of Athens or the open garden of Epicurus. Giotto lived in a gloomier town than Euripides, but he lived in a gayer universe.
[CW1:363-4]

This would be a very appropriate time for me to drag in Jaki - but I shall do so as a cook might wield a garlic clove, with the most delicate use of a great power. For all I need is four words, not even in a lengthy sentence, but simply the title of a chapter in his book on Chesterton: "Champion of the Universe". You see, the moderns really are "miserable about existence, about everything". Oh, they enjoy their fast food, their cable TV, their rock and their... well. You know as well as I do. But they do not ever want to go further. They are in the padded cell.

But the medievals were happy about everything. Jaki has countless pages full of the citations if you wish to learn more - and have not yet believed Chesterton.

An aside. I am struck by the applicability of a paradox voiced by Jesus about this. You can read the original in Matthew 11:17-19., and now I will paraphrase. It is not addressed to you, dear follower of Uncle Gilbert, but to - ah - let us say, Certain Academics and Media Persons: Chesterton came, married and laughing and quoting without footnotes, and you said he is making it up. Jaki came, celibate and laughing and giving countless footnotes, and you said he was boring and unreadable. Actually you ignore them both. Which is terrible.

Ahem. But let us resume. The point is about joy - about happiness - about gaiety. (Please do not veer off because of an shift in meaning due to contemporary politics.) GKC gave us the introductory setting and we shall now hear the final theme by which he shall conclude:

The mass of men have been forced to be gay about the little things, but sad about the big ones. Nevertheless (I offer my last dogma defiantly) it is not native to man to be so. Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial. Melancholy should be an innocent interlude, a tender and fugitive frame of mind; praise should be the permanent pulsation of the soul. Pessimism is at best an emotional half-holiday; joy is the uproarious labour by which all things live. Yet, according to the apparent estate of man as seen by the pagan or the agnostic, this primary need of human nature can never be fulfilled. Joy ought to be expansive; but for the agnostic it must be contracted, it must cling to one corner of the world. Grief ought to be a concentration; but for the agnostic its desolation is spread through an unthinkable eternity. This is what I call being born upside down. The sceptic may truly be said to be topsy-turvy; for his feet are dancing upwards in idle ecstacies, while his brain is in the abyss. To the modern man the heavens are actually below the earth. The explanation is simple; he is standing on his head; which is a very weak pedestal to stand on. But when he has found his feet again he knows it. Christianity satisfies suddenly and perfectly man's ancestral instinct for being the right way up; satisfies it supremely in this; that by its creed joy becomes something gigantic and sadness something special and small. The vault above us is not deaf because the universe is an idiot; the silence is not the heartless silence of an endless and aimless world. Rather the silence around us is a small and pitiful stillness like the prompt stillness in a sick-room. We are perhaps permitted tragedy as a sort of merciful comedy: because the frantic energy of divine things would knock us down like a drunken farce. We can take our own tears more lightly than we could take the tremendous levities of the angels. So we sit perhaps in a starry chamber of silence, while the laughter of the heavens is too loud for us to hear.
[CW1:364-5]

Ah - HA!!! Let's hear just the brass proclaim that theme again:

Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial.

Notify the anthropologists and the lawyers! Let the physicists quit their reactors and the biologists abandon their microscopes! Let the mathematicians cease their calculating and the literati drop their pens! Let the theologians and the philosophers hurry to listen! We men have something more - for "joy is the uproarious labour by which all things live"!!!

Recall too, the famous "toucan" line [CW1:325] about the angels who can take themselves lightly? Now we hear it rightly: it is just the descant line to this theme! The laughter of the heavens is too loud for us to hear. Oh my!

"the frantic energy of divine things"... is this not Chesterton and his verbal fireworks? Is it not Jaki and his countless footnotes, tracking through piles upon piles, shelves upon shelves of works, linking them into one? Do they not reveal some small portion of the "tremendous levity of the angels"?

(Note: If you reply "NO", you have not read any of these works, and you have not been paying attention. Go back and start over.)

And now, my final words. On this Holy Thursday, when the Twelve (less one) heard the great revelations in the Upper Room, the depths of love and the anticipation of the victory, we shall hear the final surprise. This book - called a book on Christianity, but which seems to so rarely mention Christ - concludes with a most profound query - something perhaps no theologian would ever dare to speculate on, even the most heretical. It is well that Chesterton concludes with a paradox, and yet I remind you neither is this one of his invention - he has merely called our attention to it.

I shall not give any further notes, because it is fitting that Chesterton sound the last chords, strange and mystical and triumphant, and fitting as we enter this most sacred time. God bless you all, and thanks for your attention over this past year!

--Dr. Thursday

Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian. And as I close this chaotic volume I open again the strange small book from which all Christianity came; and I am again haunted by a kind of confirmation. The tremendous figure which fills the Gospels towers in this respect, as in every other, above all the thinkers who ever thought themselves tall. His pathos was natural, almost casual. The Stoics, ancient and modern, were proud of concealing their tears. He never concealed His tears; He showed them plainly on His open face at any daily sight, such as the far sight of His native city. [Lk 19:41] Yet He concealed something. Solemn supermen and imperial diplomatists are proud of restraining their anger. He never restrained His anger. He flung furniture down the front steps of the Temple, [Mt 21:12] and asked men how they expected to escape the damnation of Hell. [Mt 23:33] Yet He restrained something. I say it with reverence; there was in that shattering personality a thread that must be called shyness. There was something that He hid from all men when He went up a mountain to pray. There was something that He covered constantly by abrupt silence or impetuous isolation. There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth.
[CW1:365-6]

An Index to the Thursdays of Orthodoxy

Chesterton's Orthodoxy: Notes and Commentary
by Dr. Thursday

This may be useful to some of you who are trying to explore this book. At some future time (when I have a little more time to spare) I will revise this to show the CW pages, and perhaps paragraph numbers treated in each posting. Read more


One other item: if you do have questions on anything about this book (that is, in the chapters I have already examined) please do ask!

--Dr. Thursday.

Preface
chapter 0

Introduction
chapter 1 part 1
chapter 1 part 2
chapter 1 part 3
chapter 1 part 4

The Maniac
chapter 2 part 1
chapter 2 part 2
chapter 2 part 3

The Suicide of Thought
chapter 3 part 1
chapter 3 part 2
chapter 3 part 3
chapter 3 part 4
chapter 3 part 5
chapter 3 part 6
chapter 3 part 7
chapter 3 part 8
chapter 3 part 9

The Ethics of Elfland
chapter 4 part 1
chapter 4 part 2
chapter 4 part 3
chapter 4 part 4
chapter 4 part 5
chapter 4 part 6
chapter 4 part 7
chapter 4 part 8
chapter 4 part 9
chapter 4 part 10
chapter 4 part 11
chapter 4 part 12

The Flag of the World
chapter 5 part 1
chapter 5 part 2
chapter 5 part 3
chapter 5 part 4
chapter 5 part 5

The Paradoxes of Christianity
chapter 6 part 1
chapter 6 part 2
chapter 6 part 3
chapter 6 part 4
chapter 6 part 5
chapter 6 part 6

The Eternal Revolution
chapter 7 part 1
chapter 7 part 2
chapter 7 part 3
chapter 7 part 4
chapter 7 part 5
chapter 7 part 6
chapter 7 part 7
chapter 7 part 8
chapter 7 part 9

The Romance of Orthodoxy
chapter 8 part 1
chapter 8 part 2
chapter 8 part 3
chapter 8 part 4
chapter 8 part 5
chapter 8 part 6

Authority and the Adventurer
chapter 9 part 1
chapter 9 part 2
chapter 9 part 3
chapter 9 part 4
chapter 9 part 5
chapter 9 part 6
chapter 9 part 7

The Surprise

As you will have seen by now, Father Jaki died yesterday in Madrid. He belongs to the ages, like GKC and FBC - and Duhem and Buridan and Aquinas... and it is now up to us to continue his work. (Yes, I know this is Wednesday, but I am sitting in for Nancy for a little while.)

Now I hear you whine: Doc, do you mean this blogg is going to be the "Blogg of the American Jaki Society" from now on?

Oh, no. But, as a kind of memorial, we'll examine a little of Jaki's work - he was a Chestertonian too, you know - and see how that will help us know a little more about GKC.

The simplest way of putting it is that you are in for a Surprise...

(( to open your surprise, click here))

The simplest way of putting it is that Jaki "discovered" that Chesterton had some very powerful insights into science, and so he took advantage of it whenever he could. You can find out for yourself by getting Chesterton a Seer of Science, which is just four chapters long (with an introduction) and gives a very careful study of GKC's work as it touches science. And there are five or six essays which examine various interesting things about GKC and his work.

But the surprise is that you can pick up almost any of Jaki's books - and there are about 50 major ones, and several dozen smaller ones - and find Chesterton mentioned or quoted!

Indeed, it is quite funny. Jaki's books are heavily footnoted - one chapter might have fifty or more, giving bibliographic details on sources and all the good healthy things that academics wish for in a scholarly work. But every so often GKC gets quoted, or alluded to, and - no footnote. (Hee hee. It's a kind of payback for the many quotes of other authors GKC made, though without attribution!) Actually those lapses are quite rare, but they do exist; most of the time all Jaki's GKC quotes are attributed. (As you know I try to do the same.)

Perhaps you'd like to see an example:

The first to phrase in terms of such a question the dynamic of human inquiry, though without noting its universal relevance, was Leibniz, a philosopher, a scientist, a theologian, a historian - all in one. Of these the historian was most at a loss, partly because history is so full of all sorts of suchness that, as Chesterton once noted, they can be mined to demonstrate any case of progression or retrogression. The scientist is far more fortunate because the items of suchness he notices are all quantitative ones. Compared with all other items of suchness, or patterns, they are the most
straightforward, whatever the complexity of the mathematics they invite. The theologian too looks at peculiar facts (the facts of salvation history, for instance) and tries to find in them an overarching pattern or principle. The case of the philosopher, unless he has cast his lot with a phenomenology that tries to make do without ontology, is, of course, the most fundamental: For in asking the question - why such and not something else? - he looks for the ontological ground that explains that suchness.
[Jaki, "The Power and Poverty of Science" in Numbers Decide and Other Essays 52]

Ah... but look Ma, no footnote! I asked AMBER, and here you go.

Human history is so rich and complicated that you can make out a
case for any course of improvement or retrogression.
[GKC ILN Aug 18 1906 CW27:260. Also see ILN Sept 28 1907 CW27:560]

May GKC and SLJ and the souls of all the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in peace.

More surprises to come...



Also - some information about the funeral and some recent photos can be found here. Thanks, Sean!

Father Jaki News

http://wdtprs.com/blog/2009/04/fr-stanley-jaki-osb-rip/

Fr. Jaki

Please continue to pray for Father Jaki. It seems he is not doing well, they can't operate until he recovers from an infection, and the infection is now overwhelming. They are giving comfort to him, and expect he will die soon. He is in Spain where he was on a lecture tour.

Father Jaki is a great Chestertonian, a genius, a physicist, a lover of life, the winner of the Templeton prize, and a brilliant author of many books. Almost every one of his books contains numerous Chesterton quotes, for he loved Chesterton and saw him as a Seer of Science, his book title about Chesterton's wisdom in the realm of science.

The Milwaukee Chesterton Society

If you live near or in Milwaukee, you may be interested to know there is a Chesterton group working at starting up. I attended last Saturday and took this picture, from L to R: Mary B., Rick B., David Z., Bill P. and Marcia P. attended with me.

Madonna Admonished to Leave the Fence Up

At the hearing, the Malawi judge, Esme Chombo, quoted Chesterton.

Thanks to Roy Moore for additional info:

I found this report from the London Daily Mail on Madonna's failed attempt - so far - to adopt a second Malawian baby. The lady judge who is handling the case -- who denied Madonna's request for adoption -- zinged the arrogant pop star with this statement. Which, BTW, includes a delightful quote from the Mighty Gilbert:

The law, she (the judge) said in her ruling, stated that an adoption could not be permitted to anyone who was not resident in Malawi, noting that Madonna had jetted in just days prior to Monday's hearing.

'The issue of residence, I find, is the key upon which the question of adoption rests, and it is the very bedrock of protection that our children need; it must, therefore, not be tampered with.

'As wisely put by G. K. Chesterton: "Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason why it was put up."'

The Past is Still a Guide

Chesterton quoted in Kiplingers in an interesting article about the current economic climate.

Interest in Chesterton Improving in England

From Dale:

The Chesterton Society in England now has a new website.

This is a good sign as the Chesterton Society in Chesterton’s own land has been laying low the last few years. The new chairman is William Oddie, who spoke at last year’s conference. He has already set up a major conference to be held at Oxford this summer. See their new website for details.

Where Dale Ahlquist Will Be Spending His Weekend

From Dale:

I’ve been invited to a dinner at the Library of Congress in Wash DC in honor of the 500th anniversary of St. Paul’s School. They want to honor some of their most illustrious “old boys” and I’ve been asked to say a few words about GKC. Ted Olsen, VP of the ACS, will be coming with me. It should be pretty interesting.

I can't remember the last time I was invited to a LOC event...

Europe Syndrome

This article was recommended to us, and has quite a few good Chestertonian ideas in it.

H/T/: Mike B. who says: I'm an occasional reader of the American Chesterton Society blog, I just wanted to let you know about a good (if a bit lengthy) opinion piece by Charles Murray I read on the Online Wall Street Journal. It's called Europe Syndrome and his basic premise is that when a a government takes the difficulties out of something ( say, for example, raising a family) by socializing it, they also remove any satisfaction one may receive from achieving something of worth.

Freedom Comes From Law: Celibacy and Garden Rakes

Yes, with April Fool day just behind us, the feast day of all Fools, and especially Chestertonians like us, we must turn to the next few measures of the Great Cadence that concludes Orthodoxy. NO, that title is not GKC, but it is remarkably close to his famous "Free speech is a paradox" line from his book on Browning. Such startling paradoxes will pale as today we explore a little of GKC's cosmology - his "Theory of Everything" - which we have heard of previously, and which is the foundation of the soon-to-be-famous Chesterton-Tolkien "Theory of Story". As you know by now, GKC is not going to give us that theory in tensor equations - or even in syllogisms. Rather, Uncle Gilbert gives us a very unusual and interesting example: a comment about Celibacy, and how it is like a garden rake...

(( click here to read more ))

So, since I have accepted Christendom as a mother and not merely as a chance example, I have found Europe and the world once more like the little garden where I stared at the symbolic shapes of cat and rake; I look at everything with the old elvish ignorance and expectancy. This or that rite or doctrine may look as ugly and extraordinary as a rake; but I have found by experience that such things end somehow in grass and flowers. A clergyman may be apparently as useless as a cat, but he is also as fascinating, for there must be some strange reason for his existence. I give one instance out of a hundred; I have not myself any instinctive kinship with that enthusiasm for physical virginity, which has certainly been a note of historic Christianity. But when I look not at myself but at the world, I perceive that this enthusiasm is not only a note of Christianity, but a note of Paganism, a note of high human nature in many spheres. The Greeks felt virginity when they carved Artemis, the Romans when they robed the vestals, the worst and wildest of the great Elizabethan playwrights clung to the literal purity of a woman as to the central pillar of the world. Above all, the modern world (even while mocking sexual innocence) has flung itself into a generous idolatry of sexual innocence - the great modern worship of children. For any man who loves children will agree that their peculiar beauty is hurt by a hint of physical sex. With all this human experience, allied with the Christian authority, I simply conclude that I am wrong, and the church right; or rather that I am defective, while the church is universal. It takes all sorts to make a church; she does not ask me to be celibate. But the fact that I have no appreciation of the celibates, I accept like the fact that I have no ear for music. The best human experience is against me, as it is on the subject of Bach. Celibacy is one flower in my father's garden, of which I have not been told the sweet or terrible name. But I may be told it any day.
[CW1:361]

That paragraph will no doubt be used to argue the point that GKC was not Catholic, since "I have no appreciation of the celibates". But rather I think it demonstrates a very strong acceptance of - perhaps I might call it evidence of an intellectual conversion to - Roman Catholicism, since any mention of celibacy cannot possibly refer to the Anglican church. Moreover, he betrays a mystical (if not intellectual) Catholicism in his very words: "I am defective, while the church is universal. It takes all sorts to make a church..." Remember that "universal" is just Latin for what "catholic" is in Greek! (In English it's "all sorts".)

While this is interesting, it is rather all an aside, and for another kind of study (on GKC, not on this book!) Let us resume with the topic - but what is the topic - celibacy? No I must caution you. He is NOT so much making an argument about celibacy here as much as he is pointing out what is really the right stance for someone who hasn't quite gotten his mind around one of the truths (or disciplines) of the Faith: you must wait to be told! That applies far more strongly to other matters. But neither is this the point. It's larger, and as Father Brown once remarked, perhaps it "was too big to be noticed." ["The Three Tools of Death" in The Innocence of Father Brown]

Ahem! I am having a difficult time expressing myself on this so I will have to say it in tech. It's like the idea of an integral - it is a functional and not a function! He is NOT trying to convince you, O reader, about celibacy, or even really explain his view on that topic. He is trying to explain a very large truth that he has managed to grasp: the idea that the Faith is like a story told to a child by his father - or his mother.

I will risk adding a bit of my own "slovenly autobiography" here, as we are nearing the end. You may know I like Tolkien and Rowling and Sayers and Stout and a long list of other writers... You may also know I have been writing some stories, about a long-past job in the Control Room, or about a certain bookstore housed in a former church. And it may take a story-teller (take Tolkien at the very least for an example) to point out that there is always more to tell about your story. GKC's famous line "Every short story does truly begin with creation and end with a last judgment." [TEM CW2:379] reveals more of this, but just as St. John could only tell us so much in his Apocalypse/Revelation, some things are "sealed up" (Rv 10:4) But the Author knows them, even if that part of the Story has not yet been written - or published. But there's every chance we'll get told. GKC often quotes a famous line from Scholastic Philosophy, which ties this sense of Story back to my odd title about Law...

It was St. Thomas Aquinas (I think) who pointed out that authority is the same as authorship - in auctore auctoritas. We owe a certain respect to human society, just as we owe a certain respect to parents, because without them we could not have been. In merely walking about the street unmolested we are accepting the parental care of the State. The State has given us life in preventing us from being murdered: without the law, I might be dead; with the law I must be law-abiding. It is only on one exceptional and unpleasant occasion that the policeman comes bodily forward and lays violent hands on Miss Billington. All the rest of the time the policeman (like a modest lover) watches unseen over Miss Billington's safety.
[GKC ILN July 14, 1906 CW27:238]

Poor reader - I can hear you moan: "O Doctor! Latin and scholastics and integrals and functionals (whatever they are) - and that links in to story-writing - and to Faith? I guess it takes a computer scientist to make such a wacky connection." Yes, it does. Or a Chestertonian:

I would undertake to pick up any topic at random, from pork to
pyrotechnics, and show that it illustrates the truth of the only true philosophy...
[GKC The Thing CW3:189]

True, we could sit back and have a nice long academic discussion: does this constitute a Chestertonian "Argument From Childhood"? I don't know. I think it does. Somehow "in auctore auctoritas" = the authority in the authority - is the clue to a whole lot of the mystery of life. If we expect to get to the bottom of the mystery of the universe, we will only find out from the One Who arranged it in the first place. Those who delight in certain authors are always wondering about how their little subcreated world got to be that way... as scientists wonder about our little created world got to be this way. (Yes, I am thinking a lot just now about Father Jaki.)

But let us proceed - and I think GKC will say everything I just said in a lot simpler and clearer way:

This, therefore, is, in conclusion, my reason for accepting the religion and not merely the scattered and secular truths out of the religion. I do it because the thing has not merely told this truth or that truth, but has revealed itself as a truth-telling thing. All other philosophies say the things that plainly seem to be true; only this philosophy has again and again said the thing that does not seem to be true, but is true. Alone of all creeds it is convincing where it is not attractive; it turns out to be right, like my father in the garden. Theosophists for instance will preach an obviously attractive idea like re-incarnation; but if we wait for its logical results, they are spiritual superciliousness and the cruelty of caste. For if a man is a beggar by his own pre-natal sins, people will tend to despise the beggar. But Christianity preaches an obviously unattractive idea, such as original sin; but when we wait for its results, they are pathos and brotherhood, and a thunder of laughter and pity; for only with original sin we can at once pity the beggar and distrust the king. Men of science offer us health, an obvious benefit; it is only afterwards that we discover that by health, they mean bodily slavery and spiritual tedium. Orthodoxy makes us jump by the sudden brink of hell; it is only afterwards that we realise that jumping was an athletic exercise highly beneficial to our health. It is only afterwards that we realise that this danger is the root of all drama and romance. The strongest argument for the divine grace is simply its ungraciousness. The unpopular parts of Christianity turn out when examined to be the very props of the people. The outer ring of Christianity is a rigid guard of ethical abnegations and professional priests; but inside that inhuman guard you will find the old human life dancing like children, and drinking wine like men; for Christianity is the only frame for pagan freedom. But in the modern philosophy the case is opposite; it is its outer ring that is obviously artistic and emancipated; its despair is within.
[CW1:361-2]

In another place I have called this idea "converging evidence". GKC adds something more, revealing his superlative engineering skill. He does not just make a conclusion from all the converging evidence. He points out how the alternative "solutions" are emphatically NOT solutions at all! That is an even more stupendous insight.

I want you to re-read one particular bit again:

Christianity is the only frame for pagan freedom.

You might not like this line. It may seem very - uh - anti-Christian. But it isn't. We all want to know what we can do and what we can't, and we seem to think that the "can't" part ought to be as small as possible. But that's what GKC is calling "pagan freedom". But - fortunately - I do not really have to explain. GKC already did, some pages back, when he wrote:

Any one might say, "Neither swagger nor grovel"; and it would have been a limit. But to say, "Here you can swagger and there you can grovel" - that was an emancipation.
[CW1:303]

Yes, just like the grand conclusion of a symphony, we are hearing little repeats of all the major themes, in their most joyous, and most fitting settings... We are free because of Law, not in spite of it!

Huh? you ask. Again you need to recall GKC's definition: "What exactly is liberty? First and foremost, surely, it is the power of a thing to be itself." [GKC "The Yellow Bird", The Poet and the Lunatics]

Now let me also point out something else, which may be even more of a surprise, since he wrote this 100 years ago: "in the modern philosophy the case is opposite; it is its outer ring that is obviously artistic and emancipated; its despair is within." That is even more true now than it was in 1908. All one has to do is turn on the television and see - government with its taxes and bailouts, and the "arts" from rock to movies, and the "sciences" from AIDS and embryos to energy and evolution - all are bright and shiny outside, and inside are nothing but despair.

GKC now tells us why.

And its despair is this, that it does not really believe that there is any meaning in the universe; therefore it cannot hope to find any romance; its romances will have no plots. A man cannot expect any adventures in the land of anarchy. But a man can expect any number of adventures if he goes travelling in the land of authority. One can find no meanings in a jungle of scepticism; but the man will find more and more meanings who walks through a forest of doctrine and design. Here everything has a story tied to its tail, like the tools or pictures in my father's house; for it is my father's house. I end where I began - at the right end. I have entered at last the gate of all good philosophy. I have come into my second childhood.
[CW1:362-3]

Note that some editions give that sentence as "I have entered at least the gate of all good philosophy." (Sorry I cannot give a citation for this correction, but it sounds more correct than "least".)

Aha. They don't get that they are living in a story. They are in elfland. They are in Eden. "It is only our eyes that have changed." [GKC The Defendant] But they want the story without the Author! They deny authority, so they have no meaning - and (as a result) they are chained. They lose all liberty. They lose all hope. And everything looks gray and dull and empty... It is despair.


But! We have heard all this before - here's three of the other motifs now taking their place in the Grand Final Cadence:

You cannot even say that there is victory or superiority in nature unless you have some doctrine about what things are superior. You cannot even say that the cat scores unless there is a system of scoring. You cannot even say that the cat gets the best of it unless there is some best to be got.
[CW1:308]

You could not even make a fairy tale from the experiences of a man who, when he was swallowed by a whale, might find himself at the top of the Eiffel Tower, or when he was turned into a frog might begin to behave like a flamingo. For the purpose even of the wildest romance results must be real; results must be irrevocable.
[CW1:328]

A mere unmeaning wilderness is not even impressive.
[CW1:360]

But... (oh yes, this is our concluding "but" for today) ...but GKC has "entered at last the gate of all good philosophy."

No, not by a proof. Neither by an example, nor by a syllogism, by experiment by equipment, or by "cunning words".

GKC has found the gate, and enters, as the hero does when he comes home from his adventure. Remember our opening theme: "I am that man in a yacht. I discovered England." [CW1:213] This theme is not GKC's. Another wrote it, who is both the Story and the One Who tells the Story:

"I am the gate." [John 10:9]

Loome Has a Blog!

Check it out.

Peter F. says: I esepcially like the pictures, and the motto, "Saving Western
Civilization... One Book at a Time"

Funny Connection

I find it funny that when one searches for a particular Chesterton work, namely, The Blue Cross, one also finds references to a certain insurance giant in America.

But today was the first time that I wondered if there actually was a connection.