Subidiarity, Dr. Thursday, and a High School Class

Dr. Thursday writes us today:

My book Subsidiarity (partially available on the web here) is being used in a high school theology class! Several have already made comments, including one which surely suggests an addition (what happens if rules are broken) and another on the use of Subsidiarity in "Spongebob" !!!

What a great joy this is! Young people will learn about WATCHER, PUMP, spot delivery and ad insertion - but more importantly, they will learn the principles of this important idea. (and with just a couple of weeks to go before its ninth anniversary (March 2)...

Finally, I wish to once again express my sincere thanks to my friends who helped make this work possible, especially the two Joes and the Control Room guys...

I tried to look up the Spongebob episode (thinking perhaps it is on Youtube) and if anyone knows how to find that episode, please let me know. Thanks.

The Christian God of Divorce

Yes, that's a stunning title, isn't it? You'll have to read the rest of this posting if you want to really understand it - it's not as simple as it sounds. (Just in case you suspect something, I will tell you that GKC wrote a pamphlet called "Divorce Versus Democracy" (in CW4); neither he nor I approve of it. But that's all the more you get for now.)

Today, we conclude our study of the chapter called "The Flag of the World" in GKC's Orthodoxy. There are just seven more paragraphs to examine, and they are very rich - not only with allusions and with new tools and insights - but with a grand unity of tying together much of the foregoing arguments and allusions. The density and importance are such that I must forgo my dull "stage-setting" - so let us plunge right in.

((click here to plunge in))

Good... here we go.

It is commonly the loose and latitudinarian Christians who pay quite indefensible compliments to Christianity. They talk as if there had never been any piety or pity until Christianity came, a point on which any medieval would have been eager to correct them. They represent that the remarkable thing about Christianity was that it was the first to preach simplicity or self-restraint, or inwardness and sincerity. They will think me very narrow (whatever that means) if I say that the remarkable thing about Christianity was that it was the first to preach Christianity. Its peculiarity was that it was peculiar, and simplicity and sincerity are not peculiar, but obvious ideals for all mankind. Christianity was the answer to a riddle, not the last truism uttered after a long talk. Only the other day I saw in an excellent weekly paper of Puritan tone this remark, that Christianity when stripped of its armour of dogma (as who should speak of a man stripped of his armour of bones), turned out to be nothing but the Quaker doctrine of the Inner Light. Now, if I were to say that Christianity came into the world specially to destroy the doctrine of the Inner Light, that would be an exaggeration. But it would be very much nearer to the truth. The last Stoics, like Marcus Aurelius, were exactly the people who did believe in the Inner Light. Their dignity, their weariness, their sad external care for others, their incurable internal care for themselves, were all due to the Inner Light, and existed only by that dismal illumination. Notice that Marcus Aurelius insists, as such introspective moralists always do, upon small things done or undone; it is because he has not hate or love enough to make a moral revolution. He gets up early in the morning, just as our own aristocrats living the Simple Life get up early in the morning; because such altruism is much easier than stopping the games of the amphitheatre or giving the English people back their land. Marcus Aurelius is the most intolerable of human types. He is an unselfish egoist. An unselfish egoist is a man who has pride without the excuse of passion. Of all conceivable forms of enlightenment the worst is what these people call the Inner Light. Of all horrible religions the most horrible is the worship of the god within. Any one who knows any body knows how it would work; any one who knows any one from the Higher Thought Centre knows how it does work. That Jones shall worship the god within him turns out ultimately to mean that Jones shall worship Jones. Let Jones worship the sun or moon, anything rather than the Inner Light; let Jones worship cats or crocodiles, if he can find any in his street, but not the god within. Christianity came into the world firstly in order to assert with violence that a man had not only to look inwards, but to look outwards, to behold with astonishment and enthusiasm a divine company and a divine captain. The only fun of being a Christian was that a man was not left alone with the Inner Light, but definitely recognized an outer light, fair as the sun, clear as the moon, terrible as an army with banners.[Song of Songs, 6:9-10]
[CW1:278-9]

Wow, did you catch that great joke? "They will think me very narrow (whatever that means)..." This, from the man who replied "I have no sideways" when he was trying to get out of a car and someone quipped, try getting out sideways"! Yes. It would be easy enough (though I am no historian or lit'ry scholar) to consider how Homer or Virgil's Aeneid reveal pagan pity and piety - but more important is these essential phrases:

Christianity ... was the first to preach Christianity.
Its peculiarity was that it was peculiar...
Christianity was the answer to a riddle...
Christianity came into the world specially to destroy the doctrine of the Inner Light...
Christianity came into the world firstly in order to assert with violence that a man had not only to look inwards, but to look outwards, to behold with astonishment and enthusiasm a divine company and a divine captain.

Words which might make a great hymn - or at least a great rock song. (Hmm...)
Who was Marcus Aurelius? He lived from 121 to 180 A.D. and was a Roman emperor (161-180) and an eminent Stoic philosopher; he wrote a collection of precepts of practical morality called Meditations. This bit about "looking outwards" - remember we were talking about eyes and sight a few pages back? In a future chapter we will read this about eyes: "the Christian saint always has them very wide open" [CW1:336] And there is the famous "vision statement" about all the educational institutions which base themselves on the writings of GKC: "the object of my school is to show how many extraordinary things even a lazy and ordinary man may see if he can spur himself to the single activity of seeing." [Tremendous Trifles 6] Ah, yes. But we must proceed, for GKC does not want us to leave that paragraph with a mistaken notion:

All the same, it will be as well if Jones does not worship the sun and moon. If he does, there is a tendency for him to imitate them; to say, that because the sun burns insects alive, he may burn insects alive. He thinks that because the sun gives people sun-stroke, he may give his neighbour measles. He thinks that because the moon is said to drive men mad, he may drive his wife mad. This ugly side of mere external optimism had also shown itself in the ancient world. About the time when the Stoic idealism had begun to show the weaknesses of pessimism, the old nature worship of the ancients had begun to show the enormous weaknesses of optimism. Nature worship is natural enough while the society is young, or, in other words, Pantheism is all right as long as it is the worship of Pan. But Nature has another side which experience and sin are not slow in finding out, and it is no flippancy to say of the god Pan that he soon showed the cloven hoof. The only objection to Natural Religion is that somehow it always becomes unnatural. A man loves Nature in the morning for her innocence and amiability, and at nightfall, if he is loving her still, it is for her darkness and her cruelty. He washes at dawn in clear water as did the Wise Man of the Stoics, yet, somehow at the dark end of the day, he is bathing in hot bull's blood, as did Julian the Apostate. The mere pursuit of health always leads to something unhealthy. Physical nature must not be made the direct object of obedience; it must be enjoyed, not worshipped. Stars and mountains must not be taken seriously. If they are, we end where the pagan nature worship ended. Because the earth is kind, we can imitate all her cruelties. Because sexuality is sane, we can all go mad about sexuality. Mere optimism had reached its insane and appropriate termination. The theory that everything was good had become an orgy of everything that was bad.
[CW1:280]

What's this about showing the cloven hoof? Well, the Jews had specific laws governing what they were allowed to eat (see Leviticus 11:3-8) - but of course there is also the allusion to the devil being represented with goat feet. (Why a goat? See St. Matthew 25:31-46 for one explanation.) Pan? He was the Greek god of the forest and - uh - other things; I must defer that to another time. (There is more about him The Everlasting Man; also you ought to know that there is a pun in Greek because pan means "all" as in "pantheism" = "all gods".)
How about Julian the Apostate? Again we will hear some more about him in TEM if we ever get to it, but you need to know at least this much. Julian reversed the orders of Constantine, and restored (as far as he could) the pagan forms of worship: "If there really was something that began with Constantine, then it ended with Julian." [TEM CW2:359] I have also read a very strange report of how he attempted to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem, in a pamphlet by Fr. Jaki. But we must defer that too.
Then we have a superlative defeat of all the global-warmer, ecology, physical-fitness and "tree-hugger" mentality: "The mere pursuit of health always leads to something unhealthy. Physical nature must not be made the direct object of obedience; it must be enjoyed, not worshipped. Stars and mountains must not be taken seriously." In a few weeks we shall hear why that must be so: "The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister. We can be proud of her beauty, since we have the same father; but she has no authority over us; we have to admire, but not to imitate." [CW1:317] Finally, someone not only stands up to these heretics, but defeats them and wipes them completely off the playing field! Ah.

But let us proceed.

On the other side our idealist pessimists were represented by the old remnant of the Stoics. Marcus Aurelius and his friends had really given up the idea of any god in the universe and looked only to the god within. They had no hope of any virtue in nature, and hardly any hope of any virtue in society. They had not enough interest in the outer world really to wreck or revolutionise it. They did not love the city enough to set fire to it. Thus the ancient world was exactly in our own desolate dilemma. The only people who really enjoyed this world were busy breaking it up; and the virtuous people did not care enough about them to knock them down. In this dilemma (the same as ours) Christianity suddenly stepped in and offered a singular answer, which the world eventually accepted as the answer. It was the answer then, and I think it is the answer now.
This answer was like the slash of a sword; it sundered; it did not in any sense sentimentally unite. Briefly, it divided God from the cosmos. That transcendence and distinctness of the deity which some Christians now want to remove from Christianity, was really the only reason why any one wanted to be a Christian. It was the whole point of the Christian answer to the unhappy pessimist and the still more unhappy optimist. As I am here only concerned with their particular problem, I shall indicate only briefly this great metaphysical suggestion. All descriptions of the creating or sustaining principle in things must be metaphorical, because they must be verbal. Thus the pantheist is forced to speak of God in all things as if he were in a box. Thus the evolutionist has, in his very name, the idea of being unrolled like a carpet. All terms, religious and irreligious, are open to this charge. The only question is whether all terms are useless, or whether one can, with such a phrase, cover a distinct idea about the origin of things. I think one can, and so evidently does the evolutionist, or he would not talk about evolution. And the root phrase for all Christian theism was this, that God was a creator, as an artist is a creator. A poet is so separate from his poem that he himself speaks of it as a little thing he has "thrown off." Even in giving it forth he has flung it away. This principle that all creation and procreation is a breaking off is at least as consistent through the cosmos as the evolutionary principle that all growth is a branching out. A woman loses a child even in having a child. All creation is separation. Birth is as solemn a parting as death.
[CW1:280-281]

Fr. Jaki's Genesis 1 Through the Ages contains a discussion of the Hebrew word bara, the word used for "create" in the Bible, and its "human" meaning of "to divide or hack". This is a deep and very interesting matter, and I must spend just a little time on it.

Division. People misunderstand this term , and think division evil. (I don't mean the mathematical operation here, not at all.) But Jesus Himself told us He had come to divide: "Think ye, that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, no; but separation." [Luke 12:51] And at the End of Time, He will perform an everlasting division, removing death and all evil permanently from the Land of the Living. This is an important matter and worth more consideration than I can give it now. But GKC is not going to this relatively shallow matter here, he is going to something far more deep, and far more mystical: the ontological division which is creation: the idea that God made something exterior to Himself, independent and simultaneously utterly dependent. GKC means creation has a divisive component. A great fantasy talks about someone (the Ring-maker!) putting his power into his art; the scientist in "Tron" said that programmers put something of themselves into their software, and I know this to be the case! But this is always necessarily true of all art, indeed, even of all making - for we have been made in the image and likeness of The Maker. (See Genesis 1:26) And Chestertonians recall "The medieval word for a Poet was a Maker, which indeed is the original meaning of a Poet." [Chaucer CW18:155]

So deep, so touching, so artistic, so warm and so well known to us that GKC immediately gives us the analogy of a mother giving birth. But even the male of the species can struggle with this mystery: Tolkien wrote an essay (perhaps his greatest work, "On Fairy-Tales") and Sayers wrote a book (also one of her mightiest, The Mind of the Maker) on the lesser human "creations" of art - with the power of the trained wordsmith, Tolkien gives us the unique term "sub-creation" to clarify what it is we are doing. GKC strews his insights on this all over his works, most densely in TEM's chapter called "The Escape from Paganism". But here we have a more grand insight, in the mystery of motherhood (remember this book is dedicated to his mother!)

It was the prime philosophic principle of Christianity that this divorce in the divine act of making (such as severs the poet from the poem or the mother from the new-born child) was the true description of the act whereby the absolute energy made the world. According to most philosophers, God in making the world enslaved it. According to Christianity, in making it, He set it free. God had written, not so much a poem, but rather a play; a play he had planned as perfect, but which had necessarily been left to human actors and stage-managers, who had since made a great mess of it. I will discuss the truth of this theorem later. Here I have only to point out with what a startling smoothness it passed the dilemma we have discussed in this chapter. In this way at least one could be both happy and indignant without degrading one's self to be either a pessimist or an optimist. On this system one could fight all the forces of existence without deserting the flag of existence. One could be at peace with the universe and yet be at war with the world. St. George could still fight the dragon, however big the monster bulked in the cosmos, though he were bigger than the mighty cities or bigger than the everlasting hills. [see Genesis 49:26] If he were as big as the world he could yet be killed in the name of the world. St. George had not to consider any obvious odds or proportions in the scale of things, but only the original secret of their design. He can shake his sword at the dragon, even if it is everything; even if the empty heavens over his head are only the huge arch of its open jaws.
[CW1:281-2]

Here, from GKC's first line, you now understand my title. Our Christian God is indeed a god of divorce - not of the supposed (and false) breaking of the marriage bond, but One Whose transcendent power and authority can govern being in itself and truly create and so make things to Be, other than Himself: the ultimate divorce.

In this paragraph, the term "play" appears as a suggestion for understanding just how it was that God created the universe (that is, in the specific sense of the universe with humans bopping around within it). It is important, because this very idea GKC made into a play of his own, which is called The Surprise. You can find it in CW11, or order the video edition from the ACS. (But I can't say any more about it here, I don't want to spoil it for you.) But you are about to receive another surprise, along with GKC as you read on:

And then followed an experience impossible to describe. It was as if I had been blundering about since my birth with two huge and unmanageable machines, of different shapes and without apparent connection - the world and the Christian tradition. I had found this hole in the world: the fact that one must somehow find a way of loving the world without trusting it; somehow one must love the world without being worldly. I found this projecting feature of Christian theology, like a sort of hard spike, the dogmatic insistence that God was personal, and had made a world separate from Himself. The spike of dogma fitted exactly into the hole in the world - it had evidently been meant to go there - and then the strange thing began to happen. When once these two parts of the two machines had come together, one after another, all the other parts fitted and fell in with an eerie exactitude. I could hear bolt after bolt over all the machinery falling into its place with a kind of click of relief. Having got one part right, all the other parts were repeating that rectitude, as clock after clock strikes noon. Instinct after instinct was answered by doctrine after doctrine. Or, to vary the metaphor, I was like one who had advanced into a hostile country to take one high fortress. And when that fort had fallen the whole country surrendered and turned solid behind me. The whole land was lit up, as it were, back to the first fields of my childhood. All those blind fancies of boyhood which in the fourth chapter I have tried in vain to trace on the darkness, became suddenly transparent and sane. I was right when I felt that roses were red by some sort of choice: it was the divine choice. I was right when I felt that I would almost rather say that grass was the wrong colour than say it must by necessity have been that colour: it might verily have been any other. My sense that happiness hung on the crazy thread of a condition did mean something when all was said: it meant the whole doctrine of the Fall. Even those dim and shapeless monsters of notions which I have not been able to describe, much less defend, stepped quietly into their places like colossal caryatides of the creed. The fancy that the cosmos was not vast and void, but small and cosy, had a fulfilled significance now, for anything that is a work of art must be small in the sight of the artist; to God the stars might be only small and dear, like diamonds. And my haunting instinct that somehow good was not merely a tool to be used, but a relic to be guarded, like the goods from Crusoe's ship - even that had been the wild whisper of something originally wise, for, according to Christianity, we were indeed the survivors of a wreck, the crew of a golden ship that had gone down before the beginning of the world.
[CW1:282-3]

This is a glorious image GKC paints, of how he suddenly saw a grand unity: the puzzle of the world, and its solution in Christianity. In TEM he extends this argument of Christianity as the thing that fits perfectly into the mess of our broken world, using the concept of "key" [CW2:346 et seq; also see Jaki's The Keys of the Kingdom: a Tool's Witness to Truth] But the key comes up even in our current book, in the next chapter: "A stick might fit a hole or a stone a hollow by accident. But a key and a lock are both complex. And if a key fits a lock, you know it is the right key." [CW1:287] For the GKC fiction enthusiast, more about the projecting spike can be found in The Ball and the Cross.
Yes, like Watson's delight as Holmes explains the mystery, or like the denouement of any good mystery or even any good novel, all the little details, even those almost insignificant asides of the author, are now linked up and seen in their right light as forming a perfect whole... but you are shaking my arm - eh? What are "caryatides"? Oh. They are the gigantic pillars, often seen in ancient temples, sometimes carved as women, that hold up the roof. NO! This is not a mean dig at women - just the opposite. Remember, all the really great "abstract nouns" of Greek - words like sophia = Wisdom, or aletheia = Truth, or agatha = Good - these are all feminine, and we still use some as female names! But they, like the mother in the home, are the supporting members, which make the home. But let us talk about that another time, for we are nearly finished.

But the important matter was this, that it entirely reversed the reason for optimism. And the instant the reversal was made it felt like the abrupt ease when a bone is put back in the socket. I had often called myself an optimist, to avoid the too evident blasphemy of pessimism. But all the optimism of the age had been false and disheartening for this reason, that it had always been trying to prove that we fit in to the world. The Christian optimism is based on the fact that we do not fit in to the world. I had tried to be happy by telling myself that man is an animal, like any other which sought its meat from God. [see Psalm 103(104):21] But now I really was happy, for I had learnt that man is a monstrosity. I had been right in feeling all things as odd, for I myself was at once worse and better than all things. The optimist's pleasure was prosaic, for it dwelt on the naturalness of everything; the Christian pleasure was poetic, for it dwelt on the unnaturalness of everything in the light of the supernatural. The modern philosopher had told me again and again that I was in the right place, and I had still felt depressed even in acquiescence. But I had heard that I was in the wrong place, and my soul sang for joy, like a bird in spring. The knowledge found out and illuminated forgotten chambers in the dark house of infancy. I knew now why grass had always seemed to me as queer as the green beard of a giant, and why I could feel homesick at home.
[CW1:283-4]

This is a wonderful conclusion, but alas, I must add something. GKC give us this strange self-evaluation: "I myself was at once worse and better than all things." In a few pages we shall hear a fuller expression, that Christianity "separated the two ideas and then exaggerated them both. In one way Man was to be haughtier than he had ever been before; in another way he was to be humbler than he had ever been before. In so far as I am Man I am the chief of creatures. In so far as I am a man I am the chief of sinners." [CW1:298-299]

Ah. Note carefully the use of the article: I am Man, I am a man. This is the note of paradox. In Gregorian chant (and I write this on September 3, the feast of St. Gregory!) there often appears a tiny "hint" note at the very end of one line, so when you are singing, you will know what note the next line begins with. I have given you the hint note. The next chapter is called "The Paradoxes of Christianity." Get ready to sing.

Joe: Read More

Dr. Thursday has posted more Joe. Only it doesn't look like it because he wants it to look like a book, read from top to bottom, not like a blog which reads from bottom to top. So, scroll down and start reading the story!

Our Cosy Little Universe

(A preliminary note of warning: there will be more animal humour today, not quite as severe as other times, but then I do not know your tolerance for it. Mine is quite low, and there is a goodly amount, and other things besides. Finish your drinks and snacks...)

Well, I hope you have spent the last week going around chanting "do it again" to yourself, and maybe playing your Beach Boys albums, too? I mean, the beach is the place to go. Hee hee. Since then, I found a wonderful Latin quote which surely links into our discussion about amplifiers that go up to eleven:

Decies repetita placebit
(ten times repeated please)
[Horace, Art of Poetry, 365]

That is, a good work of art can seen again and again, and still will be fresh and wonderful. (Horace meant a poem, but it pertains to sculpture, painting, music, movies as well!)

Of course, if I had known of this last week, I might have said duodecies... hee hee. But then Spinal Tap were - er - musicians, who usually have a thing about 12, or should. No, I don't mean the Apostles that time! But in computing we go up to 16, or 32, or 64, or other powers of two. And since we use "hex" (base 16, not a magic spell, hee hee!) our amps still only go up to 10₁₆. Ahem.

One of the things that comes up in this very complex discussion of the nature of "law" in the sciences, and one of the things people like to flaunt in such discussions of science versus religion, is the idea of a "miracle". I am not going to give a whole long argument here, nor does GKC - but he does bring up the issue, and I wish to call it to your attention. If you wish to know more, there are several books by Father Jaki which I recommend, such as the very interesting God and the Sun at Fatima (about the miracle of the sun dancing), or the discussion of the Ninth Bridgewater Treatise by Charles Babbage in Jaki's Brain, Mind, and Computers. Babbage, if you do not yet know, was the First Computer Scientist (he lived from 1792-1871), and wrote about God as well as programming - in fact, he suggested that God really is a programmer... but I must reserve that to my own blogg for additional discussion. (Yes, I have re-established my blogg, so perhaps I will examine BMC there. But for now, let us proceed.

(( click here to read more. ))

Remember, Chesterton has just finished telling us about his principle of "Do it again": the idea that God claps His hands and commands an encore of the sun and moon, of trees and dogs and humans - but this was in demonstration of his pair of convictions he derived from Fairy Tales: "first, that this world is a wild and startling place, which might have been quite different, but which is quite delightful; second, that before this wildness and delight one may well be modest and submit to the queerest limitations of so queer a kindness."

This was my first conviction; made by the shock of my childish emotions meeting the modern creed in mid-career. I had always vaguely felt facts to be miracles in the sense that they are wonderful: now I began to think them miracles in the stricter sense that they were wilful. I mean that they were, or might be, repeated exercises of some will. In short, I had always believed that the world involved magic: now I thought that perhaps it involved a magician. And this pointed a profound emotion always present and sub-conscious; that this world of ours has some purpose; and if there is a purpose, there is a person. I had always felt life first as a story: and if there is a story there is a story-teller.
[CW1:264]

Here we have another deep idea - I mean a high point in our journey, from which a grand and wonderful Road leads off to the very heart of elfland! This insight, the sense that creation has a creator, but now exalted to the idea of story and storyteller: this is given a great exposition in GKC's The Everlasting Man (see CW2:380) and in J. R. R. Tolkien's essay "On Fairy-Tales"... alas we have no time to proceed down it and examine the splendid sights and come to a wonderful place in the end, where the best Story comes true...

But modern thought also hit my second human tradition. It went against the fairy feeling about strict limits and conditions. The one thing it loved to talk about was expansion and largeness. Herbert Spencer would have been greatly annoyed if any one had called him an imperialist, and therefore it is highly regrettable that nobody did. But he was an imperialist of the lowest type. He popularized this contemptible notion that the size of the solar system ought to over-awe the spiritual dogma of man. Why should a man surrender his dignity to the solar system any more than to a whale? If mere size proves that man is not the image of God, then a whale may be the image of God; a somewhat formless image; what one might call an impressionist portrait. It is quite futile to argue that man is small compared to the cosmos; for man was always small compared to the nearest tree. But Herbert Spencer, in his headlong imperialism, would insist that we had in some way been conquered and annexed by the astronomical universe. He spoke about men and their ideals exactly as the most insolent Unionist talks about the Irish and their ideals. He turned mankind into a small nationality. And his evil influence can be seen even in the most spirited and honourable of later scientific authors; notably in the early romances of Mr. H. G. Wells. Many moralists have in an exaggerated way represented the earth as wicked. But Mr. Wells and his school made the heavens wicked. We should lift up our eyes to the stars from whence would come our ruin.[contrast this with Psalm 121:1]
[CW1:264-5]

Some notes:

• An imperialist is someone who supports the idea of a large British Empire. At the time GKC was writing, it was much bigger, and there were some who wanted it bigger. As you may have noticed, GKC preferred small things, but we must be very careful not to misinterpret this preference; we shall hear from GKC himself about that very shortly.
• Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) an English philosopher, whose philosophy was "at once dingy and dapper" [ILN March 14 1914 CW30:59]; "in some ways the most mediaeval of modern men." [ILN July 14, 1906 CW27:237] A Darwinian who hung out with others of that type, like Huxley and John Stuart Mill; he is not treated in GKC's Heretics by name, but appears over 100 times in AMBER, but the best single hint about him is most likely this: "the youth of Herbert Spencer was emphatically a misspent youth. It was spent over the scientific names of things instead of over the things themselves - Herbert Spencer never saw a thing in his life; if he had seen a thing he would have fled screaming." [ILN Sept 1 1906 CW27:274]
• An impressionist portrait: "a type of Realism the aim of which is to render the iummediate sense imporession of the artist apart from any element of inference or study of detail" (such as done by Monet, Degas, Pissarro, Renoir).
• A Unionist (according to one reference) is a member of the political party that advanced maintenance of the parliamentary union between Great Britain and Ireland, in opposition to Irish home rule.
• H. G. Wells wrote early science fiction classics such as The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds and The Invisible Man (to be distinguished from the Father Brown short story of the same name!)
  

I see one line that I feel deserves to be re-read: "It is quite futile to argue that man is small compared to the cosmos; for man was always small compared to the nearest tree." A whole mound of blogging might be done on it, and it is worth contemplating how far into the Large (the galaxies and their groupings) as well as the Small (the atomic and subatomic particles) we have been able to "see"... even in our observatories and our particle-accelerators we can walk out and stand under a tree and understand. But we are going to see something quite a bit more marvellous shortly.

But the expansion of which I speak was much more evil than all this. I have remarked that the materialist, like the madman, is in prison; in the prison of one thought. These people seemed to think it singularly inspiring to keep on saying that the prison was very large. The size of this scientific universe gave one no novelty, no relief. The cosmos went on for ever, but not in its wildest constellation could there be anything really interesting; anything, for instance, such as forgiveness or free will. The grandeur or infinity of the secret of its cosmos added nothing to it. It was like telling a prisoner in Reading gaol that he would be glad to hear that the gaol now covered half the county. The warder would have nothing to show the man except more and more long corridors of stone lit by ghastly lights and empty of all that is human. So these expanders of the universe had nothing to show us except more and more infinite corridors of space lit by ghastly suns and empty of all that is divine.

In fairyland there had been a real law; a law that could be broken, for the definition of a law is something that can be broken. But the machinery of this cosmic prison was something that could not be broken; for we ourselves were only a part of its machinery. We were either unable to do things or we were destined to do them. The idea of the mystical condition quite disappeared; one can neither have the firmness of keeping laws nor the fun of breaking them. The largeness of this universe had nothing of that freshness and airy outbreak which we have praised in the universe of the poet. This modern universe is literally an empire; that is, it was vast, but it is not free. One went into larger and larger windowless rooms, rooms big with Babylonian perspective; but one never found the smallest window or a whisper of outer air.
[CW1:265-6]

I think we had some discussion on this horror of infinitely recursive nested buildings last year, when we talked about fractals (did we really talk about fractals here? Wow.) This is quite a horrifying image of hell, and though it may take some pondering, is quite preceisely accurate in a theological sense: an infinity which has no End. Heaven, of course is the infinity which has an End, Who is God. This is the true and glorious intersection where my own computing meets theology, as Chesterton has revealed! The end which has no end, or the endless End... it's our choice (we had that word too last week, didn't we!) But let us go on, as we are coming to the point...

Their infernal parallels seemed to expand with distance; but for me all good things come to a point, swords for instance. So finding the boast of the big cosmos so unsatisfactory to my emotions I began to argue about it a little; and I soon found that the whole attitude was even shallower than could have been expected. According to these people the cosmos was one thing since it had one unbroken rule. Only (they would say) while it is one thing it is also the only thing there is. Why, then, should one worry particularly to call it large? There is nothing to compare it with. It would be just as sensible to call it small. A man may say, "I like this vast cosmos, with its throng of stars and its crowd of varied creatures." But if it comes to that why should not a man say, "I like this cosy little cosmos, with its decent number of stars and as neat a provision of live stock as I wish to see"? One is as good as the other; they are both mere sentiments. It is mere sentiment to rejoice that the sun is larger than the earth; it is quite as sane a sentiment to rejoice that the sun is no larger than it is. A man chooses to have an emotion about the largeness of the world: why should he not choose to have an emotion about its smallness?

It happened that I had that emotion. When one is fond of anything one addresses it by diminutives, even if it is an elephant or a life-guardsman. The reason is, that anything, however huge, that can be conceived of as complete, can be conceived of as small. If military moustaches did not suggest a sword or tusks a tail, then the object would be vast because it would be immeasurable. But the moment you can imagine a guardsman you can imagine a small guardsman. The moment you really see an elephant you can call it "Tiny." If you can make a statue of a thing you can make a statuette of it. These people professed that the universe was one coherent thing; but they were not fond of the universe. But I was frightfully fond of the universe and wanted to address it by a diminutive. I often did so; and it never seemed to mind. Actually and in truth I did feel that these dim dogmas of vitality were better expressed by calling the world small than by calling it large. For about infinity there was a sort of carelessness which was the reverse of the fierce and pious care which I felt touching the pricelessness and the peril of life. They showed only a dreary waste; but I felt a sort of sacred thrift. For economy is far more romantic than extravagance. To them stars were an unending income of halfpence; but I felt about the golden sun and the silver moon as a schoolboy feels if he has one sovereign and one shilling.
[CW1:266-7]

Though GKC just mentions money (a sovereign is a British gold coin worth one pound sterling, and a shilling is a British silver coin worth 1/20 of a pound) consider this priceless line:

"I was frightfully fond of the universe and wanted to address it by a diminutive. I often did so; and it never seemed to mind."

Remember the famous essay "What I Found In My Pocket" from Tremendous Trifles? "For the knife is only a short sword; and the pocket-knife is a secret sword." It has a point... something very small, but very penetrating.

--Dr. Thursday

Dr. Thursday's New Novel on a Blog!

Dr. Thursday hinted about his new book, and now he's decided to begin publishing it on a blog. This is a great story, so I suggest bookmarking it so you can read it as it gets blogged.

I hope you will enjoy reading this extraordinary story about an ordinary guy named Joe as much as I did.

Please go visit the new blog and leave a comment.

Dr. Thursday's Post

The Amps of "Spinal Tap" May Go Up to Eleven, but Ours Go Up to Twelve

I have just completed a book which combines humor, books, work, a shipwreck, magic, crime, music, cloistered Carmelites, cable TV, Latin, computers, secret passages, food, boredom, beer, Mass, death, and a few other things of interest to Chestertonians. Joe, its main character, likes rock-and-roll, and hopes one day to buy an electric guitar. Yes, like Joe, I also like rock and roll - at least some songs, and some bands. (My instrument, however is the bass.)

Certain people may find this musical taste just as sinful as liking stories about magic, or about murder (some of which I also like.) Obviously, there are times and places for all things, including loud music, whether it be the 1812 Overture or - uh - you choose the band. But whenever the topic of loud music comes up, Chestertonians should recall these famous words:

I remember a debate in which I had praised militant music in ritual, and some one asked me if I could imagine Christ walking down the street before a brass band. I said I could imagine it with the greatest ease; for Christ definitely approved a natural noisiness at a great moment. When the street children shouted too loud, certain priggish disciples did begin to rebuke them in the name of good taste. He said: "If these were silent the very stones would cry out." [Luke 19:40] With these words He called up all the wealth of artistic creation that has been founded on this creed.
["The Tower" in Tremendous Trifles]

OK, He didn't say the very rocks would cry out, but still... (hm, feels like a St. Peter joke in there somewhere...) No, I am not going to get into the various issues of rock today. I mean rock music. Yes, there are lyrics of some songs which come right out of hell. But on the contrary (hee hee) there are others, even from hard rock songs, which might pass for something from Aquinas.

So. If Pope Benedict XVI can quote Nietzsche in his first encyclical [Deus Caritas Est 3, note 1], and Aquinas can quote the gods-and-goddesses-worshipping, slave-approving, milky-way-from-swamp-dreaming Aristotle [e.g. Summa I Q5A2 and many other places], and St. Paul can quote pagan poets [Acts 17:28] we too can quote rock lyrics when they assist us in understanding Chesterton, which is to say in understanding reality: God, the Universe, ourselves.

The paradox we shall encounter today, however, is the reverse: when rock musicians quote Chesterton.

The hero of the story I mentioned earlier grew up in a small town on the Atlantic shore, and though he works in cable TV, he still thinks of himself as a "beach boy" - which is also the name of a famous surfer rock band from California. Today we shall learn that they happen to have written a song which quotes GKC's Orthodoxy - one of the greatest and most powerful and mystical quotes of the entire book, and one which happens to unite God, the Universe and ourselves...

Click here to find out more.
We are, as you may recall, fairly far into the chapter of Orthodoxy called "The Ethics of Elfland" and we have seen some very strange things. We have learned that we are living in a marvellous, magical world. (If that second "M" word bothers you, let us say "unexpected") and the marvel gives rise to two important things: a sense of gratitude, and the very important thing GKC calls "the Doctrine of Conditional Joy": the idea that we are given this marvel on certain strange conditions. Now, as we are starting to come toward the conclusion of the chapter, GKC provides a kind of review, stunning in its implied recommendation:

Well, I left the fairy tales lying on the floor of the nursery, and I have not found any books so sensible since. I left the nurse guardian of tradition and democracy, and I have not found any modern type so sanely radical or so sanely conservative. But the matter for important comment was here: that when I first went out into the mental atmosphere of the modern world, I found that the modern world was positively opposed on two points to my nurse and to the nursery tales. It has taken me a long time to find out that the modern world is wrong and my nurse was right. The really curious thing was this: that modern thought contradicted this basic creed of my boyhood on its two most essential doctrines. I have explained that the fairy tales founded in me two convictions; first, that this world is a wild and startling place, which might have been quite different, but which is quite delightful; second, that before this wildness and delight one may well be modest and submit to the queerest limitations of so queer a kindness. But I found the whole modern world running like a high tide against both my tendernesses; and the shock of that collision created two sudden and spontaneous sentiments, which I have had ever since and which, crude as they were, have since hardened into convictions.

First, I found the whole modern world talking scientific fatalism; saying that everything is as it must always have been, being unfolded without fault from the beginning. The leaf on the tree is green because it could never have been anything else. Now, the fairy-tale philosopher is glad that the leaf is green precisely because it might have been scarlet. He feels as if it had turned green an instant before he looked at it. He is pleased that snow is white on the strictly reasonable ground that it might have been black. Every colour has in it a bold quality as of choice; the red of garden roses is not only decisive but dramatic, like suddenly spilt blood. He feels that something has been done. But the great determinists of the nineteenth century were strongly against this native feeling that something had happened an instant before. In fact, according to them, nothing ever really had happened since the beginning of the world. Nothing ever had happened since existence had happened; and even about the date of that they were not very sure.
[CW1:261-2]

Ah... it is like something DONE. I had a resonance in my mind as I read this, and it took some work to find out what, as I do not know French. Some time ago, a friend (who does know French) was speaking about a matter of philosophy, and used the term donné meaning something given (that is, a starting point of discussion, or a matter not presently under debate, something taken for granted). But this is quite apt: the green grass is a donné, something given - it is something DONE. It was chosen to be that way, and so it is. We cannot debate it, even if we might be color blind or have our eyes closed, or be out at night... it is that way and no other. Green grass is so poetic (which means something MADE; see GKC's Chaucer CW18:155.) But we are not being poets here; we are simply observing. Someone else already was a poet, when He made the grass, or we could not even be its critics. (Some joke ought to read: if a critic doesn't read any books, or watch any movies, what does he write about? This strongly hints at the contingent ontology of evil, but we cannot go into that now.)

Here, my own discipline compels me to mention, we find the great and glorious mark of Doctor Chesterton, the true scientist: he approaches Reality in humility. He does not "expect" the leaf to be green, for it might have been something else. He takes the leaf as something "done" - which reveals his true understanding of experiment, which comes from the same root as "experience", and for a very good reason: an experiment is performed so that we might experience what occurs. We seem to think "experiment" means "test". It doesn't. It means "live through it, experience it, witness it". Which is why some branches of science, like astronomy, weather, archaeology and geology, have such a hard time with experiments: you cannot RE-experience what has already happened. All you can do is look at what's left over. Ahem. But that's going too deep into that very interesting side trail called "epistemology of the sciences" and we cannot go there either; we're not equipped for such strenuous work. (Whew.)

But, as GKC emphasizes, and I repeated, these things - like green leaves and so on - have this feeling of something that has been done. Someone good waved a wand, made a choice, and made it to be SO. Sure, it might have been done differently! That's the nature of a choice. Here's the moment for that delicious quote from the song "Free Will" by Rush: "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice." But God did decide. He chose the green leaf and it was so. He saw it, and it was good. [See Genesis chapter 1.]

Are you feeling a strong wind, buffeting us here on the trail? Yes, we are rather shocked to discover that we happen to stand on a very high point indeed, and some of you may be horrified. We are seeing that somehow we are getting at the supreme matter of the Divine Will here. Yes, oh, my, yes. But isn't that what we are supposed to do: "Jesus saith to them: My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, that I may perfect his work." [Jn 4:34 emphasis added; cf Mt 12:50; see also Mt 26:39]

Divine will? How can this be science? I mean Physics and stuff like that! Are we not confusing the disciplines? Shall we not be criticised by the great student-of-study, Cardinal Newman:

If they certainly would resist the divine who determined the orbit of Jupiter by the Pentateuch, why am I to be accused of cowardice or illiberality, because I will not tolerate their attempt in turn to theologize by means of astronomy? And if experimentalists would be sure to cry out, did I attempt to install the Thomist philosophy in the schools of astronomy and medicine, why may not I, when Divine Science is ostracized, and La Place, or Buffon, or Humboldt, sits down in its chair, why may not I fairly protest against their exclusiveness, and demand the emancipation of Theology?
[Newman, The Idea of a University IV, 14]

No, we are not doing that. We are in elfland, and we are observing its wonders, in awe of the wizard Who put them here. Haven't you heard that song, which seems to be quoted sometimes at Mass:

If ever, o ever, a wiz there was, the Wizard of Oz is one because...
Because of the wonderful things he does.

Confer:

All Your actions show Your wisdom and love. [Eucharistic Prayer IV]

Yes. Well? Don't you wonder how it happens? GKC tells us. It's not what you expect. And the funny thing is, these next two paragraphs give us the true foundation - no, even better, the license - to practice "science" (meaning physics, chemistry, and so on) - even while they speak so gloriously about will, and about God and His free choices of His creation.

A warning before you proceed. In previous postings I warned you to finish your drink or snack, before making you laugh. And there is a bit of animal humour coming, so you ought to finish it anyway. But this time, my warning is more profound. You may possibly feel the urge to genuflect. This is one of the Great Heights of this book, and perhaps one of the most important insights of the last century. If you read it with humility, you will be moved. Then please read it again, and take it to your lab, or your workplace, or your classroom, or your home, and act upon it. It may seem too technical at first, or even third reading, but it will surely seep in, once you do it again...

The modern world as I found it was solid for modern Calvinism, for the necessity of things being as they are. But when I came to ask them I found they had really no proof of this unavoidable repetition in things except the fact that the things were repeated. Now, the mere repetition made the things to me rather more weird than more rational. It was as if, having seen a curiously shaped nose in the street and dismissed it as an accident, I had then seen six other noses of the same astonishing shape. I should have fancied for a moment that it must be some local secret society. So one elephant having a trunk was odd; but all elephants having trunks looked like a plot. I speak here only of an emotion, and of an emotion at once stubborn and subtle. But the repetition in Nature seemed sometimes to be an excited repetition, like that of an angry schoolmaster saying the same thing over and over again. The grass seemed signalling to me with all its fingers at once; the crowded stars seemed bent upon being understood. The sun would make me see him if he rose a thousand times. The recurrences of the universe rose to the maddening rhythm of an incantation, and I began to see an idea.

All the towering materialism which dominates the modern mind rests ultimately upon one assumption; a false assumption. It is supposed that if a thing goes on repeating itself it is probably dead; a piece of clockwork. People feel that if the universe was personal it would vary; if the sun were alive it would dance. This is a fallacy even in relation to known fact. For the variation in human affairs is generally brought into them, not by life, but by death; by the dying down or breaking off of their strength or desire. A man varies his movements because of some slight element of failure or fatigue. He gets into an omnibus because he is tired of walking; or he walks because he is tired of sitting still. But if his life and joy were so gigantic that he never tired of going to Islington, he might go to Islington as regularly as the Thames goes to Sheerness. The very speed and ecstacy of his life would have the stillness of death. The sun rises every morning. I do not rise every morning; but the variation is due not to my activity, but to my inaction. Now, to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life. The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore. Heaven may encore the bird who laid an egg. If the human being conceives and brings forth a human child instead of bringing forth a fish, or a bat, or a griffin, the reason may not be that we are fixed in an animal fate without life or purpose. It may be that our little tragedy has touched the gods, that they admire it from their starry galleries, and that at the end of every human drama man is called again and again before the curtain. Repetition may go on for millions of years, by mere choice, and at any instant it may stop. Man may stand on the earth generation after generation, and yet each birth be his positively last appearance.
[CW1:261-264]

Before we proceed, a few notes to assist:

* Islington: a borough of London. GKC uses it in a number of places as a general-purpose town. (See below for a sample.)
* Thames/Sheerness: The Thames is the river of London. Sheerness is a town on the mouth of the Thames. (American translation: "as regularly as the Mississippi goes to New Orleans".)
* encore: a French interjection, meaning "again!" or "once more!"
* "signalling with all its fingers": yes, you get five points if you recalled the Professor de Worms' code from The Man Who Was Thursday.
* "if the sun were alive it would dance": this was some nine years before Fatima where the sun danced. See Jaki's God and the Sun at Fatima for a very interesting study of that event.
* "incantation": You wonder why this is elfland? But do not forget the root of "incantation" is the Latin word for "song". No wonder Sam Gamgee, in awe of the singing of the Elves of Rivendell (or was it Lorien?), talked about being "inside a song"; that's almost a literal translation of the word.

Now... (Ahem!) Speaking of songs...

Yes, "Do It Again" is the title of a song by the Beach Boys. And yes, "Do It Again" is also the Official Cheer of all sports teams at Chesterton University. (It was selected by one of our Favorite Chestertonians at a Conference some years ago.) Actually there's just the one, the Gype team. They're undefeated since no other school has one. If you don't know about Gype, you need to read GKC's Autobiography (see CW16:211-2).

An aside: It might be argued, by the critics who have nothing better to do, and certainly nothing creative to make, that this argument of lively repetition is rebutted by GKC himself in the story called "A Somewhat Improbable Story" in CW14:91 et seq about how Bumpton Street goes to heaven for justice against a dull man. But that is an error caused by a failure to read the story carefully. The story is actually the usual instance of an idea of GKC's non-fiction appearing in GKC's fiction. Another, simpler counter-example to these critics is provided by the threefold repetition (which is, of course, not a repetition at all) of what we might call "Magic By Iteration". Here is one:

There is a truth in talking of the variety of Nature; but I think that Nature often shows her chief strangeness in her sameness. There is a weird rhythm in this very repetition; it is as if the earth were resolved to repeat a single shape until the shape shall turn terrible. Have you ever tried the experiment of saying some plain word, such as "dog," thirty times? By the thirtieth time it has become a word like "snark" or "pobble." It does not become tame, it becomes wild, by repetition.
[GKC, "The Telegraph Poles" in Alarms and Discursions]

Another aside: Father Jaki has done important work on Islam and its view of the Divine Will, noting its historical underpinnings and showing how its theology makes modern science impossible, because of its emphasis on the freedom of the divine will. [See e.g. chapter 9 in Science and Creation or his booklet called Jesus, Islam, Science] As GKC shows in his Heretics a heresy is an exaggeration of a truth, to the neglect of even related truths. Here, this single paragraph of GKC spells the fullness of defeat for such a heretical view of God, for if God's will is free, He is also free to repeat Himself, even vast numbers of times, even always. When one day a new Summa is written, it will surely cite Chesterton on this matter.

There is much more to say about all this, but it will have to be said another day, when God says "Do it again" to the sun. Crank up the amps, for He approves natural noisiness at a great moment, and surely this is one. Yeah!

--Dr. Thursday

P.S. Here is the promised sample about Islington. I think you will find it very instructive.

The Bible tells us to love our neighbours, [See Mt 22:39 quoting Lev 19:18] and also to love our enemies; [See Mt 5:44] probably because they are generally the same people. And there is a real human reason for this. You think of a remote man merely as a man; that is, you think of him in the right way. Suppose I say to you suddenly - "Oblige me by brooding on the soul of the man who lives at 351, High Street, Islington." Perhaps (now I come to think of it) you are the man who lives at 351, High Street, Islington; for this journal has a wide circulation. In that case substitute some other unknown address and pursue the intellectual sport. Now you will probably be broadly right about the man in Islington whom you have never seen or heard of, because you will begin at the right end - the human end. The man in Islington is at least a man. The soul of the man in Islington is certainly a soul. He also has been bewildered and broadened by youth; he also has been tortured and intoxicated by love; he also is sublimely doubtful about death. You can think about the soul of that nameless man who is a mere number in Islington High Street. But you do not think about the soul of your next-door neighbour. He is not a man; he is an environment. He is the barking of a dog; he is the noise of a pianola; he is a dispute about a party wall; he is drains that are worse than yours, or roses that are better than yours. Now, all these are the wrong ends of a man; and a man, like many other things in this world, such as a cat-o'-nine-tails, has a large number of wrong ends, and only one right one.
[ILN July 16 1910 CW28:563-4]
My goodness what a great post. Read it, and be amazed.
P.S. Your blogmistress has read Dr. Thursday novel, mentioned above, and thinks it Wonderful. Dr. Thursday needs some encouragement from the peanut gallery here to go for publication, which IMHO this novel needs. What do you think?

Dr. Thursday's Post

The Well-Known Secret of Six
(but with a different vowel)

Today we face a very interesting topic, though it arises from only a single paragraph of Orthodoxy. It is, as you shall see when you read that paragraph, a fairly powerful word. It is, as GKC points out in the very important ILN essay for August 10, 1907 (also reprinted in All Things Considered), one of the three great secrets of all humanity. Assuming you were properly equipped when you started this little lit'ry outing, you should have in your packs a small laminated card with these three points listed upon it. You might take it out and refresh your memory:

1. Detective Story Secrets. The first is ... that of hide-and-seek, or the police novel, in which it permits privacy only in order to explode and smash privacy. The author makes first a fastidious secret of how the Bishop was murdered, only in order that he may at last declare, as from a high tower, to the whole democracy the great glad news that he was murdered by the governess. ... for its whole ultimate object is not to keep the secret, but to tell it.
2. [Today's Topic] There is a far more important class of things which humanity does agree to hide. They are so important that they cannot possibly be discussed here. But everyone will know the kind of things I mean. Upon ... such matters we are in a human freemasonry; the freemasonry is disciplined, but the freemasonry is free. We are asked to be silent about these things, but we are not asked to be ignorant about them. On the contrary, the fundamental human argument is entirely the other way. It is the thing most common to humanity that is most veiled by humanity. It is exactly because we all know that it is there that we need not say that it is there.
3. There is also a class of things on which the best civilisation does permit privacy, does resent all inquiry or explanation. This is in the case of things which need not be explained, because they cannot be explained, things too airy, instinctive, or intangible - caprices, sudden impulses, and the more innocent kind of prejudice.
[ILN Aug 10 1907 C27W524-5]

I have of course omitted the key word from point two; you can read it on your own cards. (If you have lost yours you ought to be able to think what it is rather easily. In any case you will learn it very shortly.

I have been a bit mysterious because this paragraph, and that very powerful topic, are mysterious. There will probably be some consternation about this matter; I cannot help it. All I can do is guide, and sometimes assist; it is not my path, but GKC's.

You might recall: we have been high up in the Elfland of our world, pondering the joint ideas of gratitude and of "The Doctrine of Conditional Joy". We are about to encounter a very short, but very interesting study of this - uh - certain secret. A secret known to everyone (at least over a certain age, I might add) and a wonderful, terrible, mysterious secret - one entirely bound up with this idea of "conditional joy".

Click here to proceed.

You may recall that last time I told you how even the most liberal of left-wing writers are incredibly conservative and tradition-bound - whenever they touch pen to paper, or finger to keyboard, and strive to bring their thoughts into one of the human languages known to others.

Yes, then even anarchists who disdain law, even rebels who hate all such things, bind themselves to powerful and utterly arbitrary rules, set long ago by people who most likely had no idea what they were doing. But unless they, like you and I, so bind themselves, they shall by no means have any possibility of communicating to others! Yes, for they cannot rebel against the alphabet.

If you do not believe me: you could find no stronger prohibition in any religion than those which are propounded to us by technology. No, they are far stronger, and much more intransigent. Without power you cannot boot your computer. Without a connection to a network you cannot do any - er - of the network things (I mean like e-mail or web pages). And without the magic password you cannot (for example) post on a blogg or even "log on" to a system. You cannot "choose" another way; there is no other way. You are bound to the alphabet called ASCII and its mysteries - which represent 01000001 as "A" and 01100001 as "a" and so forth! If your password wants a small "a" you cannot get away with a capital "A", no matter how much of a rebel you are. Indeed, even if you do not understand this code, even if you reject this code, unless you downshift and become like lower-case characters, you shall by no means enter the domain of the system...

There is another alphabet, written into nearly every cell of each human being. It is written in two letters, or rather a pair of letters: XX or XY. (I say nearly every, because the erythrocytes, or red blood cells are celibate. They have no nucleus, no chromosomes, no DNA. See here for more.) We are bound to that alphabet as well. Now, perhaps you will grasp what that secret is all about, and if not, you will find it clearly stated in GKC's next paragraph from Orthodoxy:

For this reason (we may call it the fairy godmother philosophy) I never could join the young men of my time in feeling what they called the general sentiment of revolt. I should have resisted, let us hope, any rules that were evil, and with these and their definition I shall deal in another chapter. But I did not feel disposed to resist any rule merely because it was mysterious. Estates are sometimes held by foolish forms, the breaking of a stick or the payment of a peppercorn: I was willing to hold the huge estate of earth and heaven by any such feudal fantasy. It could not well be wilder than the fact that I was allowed to hold it at all. At this stage I give only one ethical instance to show my meaning. I could never mix in the common murmur of that rising generation against monogamy, because no restriction on sex seemed so odd and unexpected as sex itself. To be allowed, like Endymion, to make love to the moon and then to complain that Jupiter kept his own moons in a harem seemed to me (bred on fairy tales like Endymion's) a vulgar anti-climax. Keeping to one woman is a small price for so much as seeing one woman. To complain that I could only be married once was like complaining that I had only been born once. It was incommensurate with the terrible excitement of which one was talking. It showed, not an exaggerated sensibility to sex, but a curious insensibility to it. A man is a fool who complains that he cannot enter Eden by five gates at once. Polygamy is a lack of the realization of sex; it is like a man plucking five pears in mere absence of mind. The aesthetes touched the last insane limits of language in their eulogy on lovely things. The thistledown made them weep; a burnished beetle brought them to their knees. Yet their emotion never impressed me for an instant, for this reason, that it never occurred to them to pay for their pleasure in any sort of symbolic sacrifice. Men (I felt) might fast forty days for the sake of hearing a blackbird sing. Men might go through fire to find a cowslip. Yet these lovers of beauty could not even keep sober for the blackbird. They would not go through common Christian marriage by way of recompense to the cowslip. Surely one might pay for extraordinary joy in ordinary morals. Oscar Wilde said that sunsets were not valued because we could not pay for sunsets. But Oscar Wilde was wrong; we can pay for sunsets. We can pay for them by not being Oscar Wilde.
[CW1:260-1]

--Dr. Thursday

Dr. Thursday's Post: The Sacramentality of Things

Books, Ancient and Modern

They call it "electronics" this gold boom,
The word for amber from the Greeks we get;
And keyboards now weave books upon its loom.
To Manisa of Turkey is our debt
For now their "northbound stone" is our diskette
Whereon a million letters spin and whir;
No dog-eared floppies you have seen, I bet...
Dale says it's tactile books that most prefer.

Though books on disk make certain searches zoom,
They may succeed too well, to your regret,
A tenth of each book with ten words does bloom,
And paraphrase remains a constant threat,
And 'modern' scanned as 'modem' makes one fret,
This soup of letters I would rather stir
And eat - with a detective novelette.
Dale says it's tactile books that most prefer.

No glowing AMBER words lift sleepless gloom,
Though saving scholars loads of time and sweat,
No CRTs are thrown across the room
When readers' expectations are not met,
Or leather-bound, with gold and jewels set
When with the written word one does concur.
The magnet serves, but print is foe or pet...
Dale says it's tactile books that most prefer.

Oh fly caught in the web, trapped in the net,
Just scan a page which line noise cannot blur,
That touch and smell beyond all hardware yet...
Dale says it's tactile books that most prefer.

--Dr. Thursday

Previously published in Something Good To Read; used with
permission from the Editor-in-Chief.

When it appeared, the following note was appended:

We know that Manisa is the new name for Magnesia, the place in Asia
Minor which gives its name to magnets. But who is "Dale"? While we know
a lot of people named Dale, none of them live in Asia Minor. Perhaps it
is one of those poetry things we don't understand. That's why we have a
staff poet. Eds.

Note from Nancy: I don't know why, but when I just read this, I got the image of St. Jerome throwing a laptop across the room...

Dr. Thursday's Post: Glass

The Glory of Glass

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I often stare at windows."

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

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

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

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

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

This is the tone of fairy tales, and it is certainly not lawlessness or even liberty, though men under a mean modern tyranny may think it liberty by comparison. People out of Portland Gaol might think Fleet Street free; but closer study will prove that both fairies and journalists are the slaves of duty. Fairy godmothers seem at least as strict as other godmothers. Cinderella received a coach out of Wonderland and a coachman out of nowhere, but she received a command - which might have come out of Brixton - that she should be back by twelve. Also, she had a glass slipper; and it cannot be a coincidence that glass is so common a substance in folk-lore. This princess lives in a glass castle, that princess on a glass hill; this one sees all things in a mirror; they may all live in glass houses if they will not throw stones. For this thin glitter of glass everywhere is the expression of the fact that the happiness is bright but brittle, like the substance most easily smashed by a housemaid or a cat. And this fairy-tale sentiment also sank into me and became my sentiment towards the whole world. I felt and feel that life itself is as bright as the diamond, but as brittle as the window-pane; and when the heavens were compared to the terrible crystal I can remember a shudder. I was afraid that God would drop the cosmos with a crash.
[CW1:259-260]

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

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

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

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

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

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

we forget that free speech is a paradox.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dr. Thursday's Post

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

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

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

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

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

Yes - all things. Even telegraphs - and dragons.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Please read this line again:

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

Do you not hear this:

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

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

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

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

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

But now you know.

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

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

--Dr. Thursday.